5 ms·
If they were truly effective and there were no side effects, I would take them, and not just for work. There is a slippery slope here: If taking moderately eff
by D_Alex 13y ago
If they were truly effective and there were no side effects, I would take them, and not just for work.
There is a slippery slope here: If taking moderately effective drugs with no side effects becomes commonplace, there will be pressure to take more effective drugs with slight side effects, then possibly very effective drugs with considerable side effects. Just like in sports.
In my opinion, this is not something to be afraid of, but something to be aware of, and debated.
- coderzach 13y agoMaybe. However, caffeine is a moderately effective smart drug with no side effects, and is fairly commonplace. I don't think this causes pressure to take Adderall (more effective, slight side effects).
- analog31 13y agoAFAIK caffeine is a diuretic, interferes with sleep, and gives me the shakes at a high enough dosage. I'd consider those things to be side effects. Pushing up against an unacceptable level of side effects is what probably forces most of us to moderate our dosage.
- babby 13y agoCaffeine is only a mild diuretic, and only for those who haven't built a tolerance to it. You're right though, Caffeine sure does have side-effects, especially withdrawal effects.
- gnaritas 13y agoYou may be a slow caffeine metabolizer, its common.
- majkinetor 13y agoThose side effects are trivial. Everything has side effects or lets just call them effects, since drugs don't do what you want them to do.
- VonGuard 13y agoThese drugs do exist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racetam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racetam You can get them from India, and I know a number of coders who've taken them to very great effect. However, there is a very real downside: lack of sleep. I know one guy who went off the fucking deep end with paranoia and deceit after taking this stuff for around a year, non stop. He slept, but not much. From what I can tell of my friends who take these drugs, they're great for the occasional week of crunch, or 48-hour coding binge, but as a daily thing, be very careful to stop and rest your body from the stuff after a week or month.
- greenfieldprod 13y agoCaffeine is addictive and has physical/mental side-effects.
- aianus 13y agoCaffeine reduces appetite
- greenfieldprod 13y agoI'm gonna slide down that slippery slope :). The way I see it, jobs that can be done better while doped will have pressure on their executors to continue to supplement or lose the position. That's not to say it's hopeless, just that highly competitive jobs might be out of reach for those of us who decide that they don't want to be drugged. I look at it like professional sports. So many athletes use performance enhancing drugs, that to compete with the pros, you need to take them as well.
- LogicalBorg 13y agoOn the other hand, sports performance is easier to measure than professional, white-collar job performance. If they ever start measuring every stat about your daily job performance, then what you say would be true. Otherwise, I don't see how they will even determine who is performing worse, let alone weed them out.