[ExI] Nootropics and Anders

Anders Sandberg anders at aleph.se
Fri Dec 27 11:40:20 UTC 2013


On 2013-12-27 10:40, BillK wrote:
> It seems obvious that if you enhance your brain processor then you 
> will enhance all the bad features as well as the good features. 

That is not obvious at all. Most neuropharmacology is about changing 
trade-offs between different modes of function: focused attention is 
good for some things but not others, but it is (usually) separate from 
your mood. In practice real drugs have combination effects that do not 
neatly fit the tasks or faculties (boosting your awakeness by stimulants 
will also up your noradrenergic levels, perhaps changing your mood if 
your mood structure is sensitive to it, but also make you more 
stimulus-response driven).

There is often a bottleneck that is the key limitation: your working 
memory, your motivation, your knowledge base, some stupid assumptions. 
Fixing that has the biggest enhancing effects, fixing something else 
will rarely matter.

> How do you make yourself twice as intelligent, but only think good 
> thoughts?

Well, if you are smarter you might understand what you need to do in 
order to be nicer. You might still not *care* to be nicer, but you are 
better poised to think about it.

(Insert rant about why "twice as intelligence" has no meaning, see past 
posts on that)

-- 
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University




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