> What might big-time convince me to try out a nootropic substance would be an objective demonstration that someone with typical abilities (say, someone who goe

> What might big-time convince me to try out a nootropic substance would be an objective demonstration that someone with typical abilities (say, someone who goes into online discussion with a known propensity to believe what's on Reddit without checking it) can become a person with thoughtful insight (say, someone like Peter Norvig) at adult age simply by ingesting the nootropic. I note that Norvig is a really high bar, and that reading and discussing articles is not going to have that level of effect either. (Though what effect it does have, comes at less risk.) Many people claim that taking modafinil allows them to lose a night's sleep and feel fine the next day. It seems unlikely that they'd be so completely wrong that modafinil is not doing them any short-term good at all. Like, the typical response to "lose a night's sleep" is "have a really obviously bad day tomorrow". It would be difficult for modafinil to make someone so totally oblivious, to their own performance and the comments of people around them, as to not notice this happening. If modafinil didn't have any clinical studies backing it up, the anecdotal evidence would be enough to convince me with high probability that modafinil has short-term benefits for many people.