Studying stimulants’ and anti-depressants’ long-term effects on productivity and health in healthy people (e.g. Modafinil, Adderall, and Wellbutrin)
Economic Growth, Effective Altruism
Is it beneficial or harmful for long-term productivity to take Modafinil, Adderall, Wellbutrin, or other stimulants on a regular basis as a healthy person (some people speculate that it might make you less productive on days where you’re not taking it)? If it’s beneficial, what’s the effect size? What frequency hits the best trade-off between building up tolerance vs short-term productivity gains? What are the long-term health effects? Does it affect longevity?
Some people think that taking stimulants regularly provides a large net boost to productivity. If true, that would mean we could relatively cheaply increase the productivity of the world and thereby increase economic growth. In particular, it could also increase the productivity of the EA community (which might be unusually willing to act on such information), including AI and biorisk researchers.
My very superficial impression is that many academics avoid researching the use of drugs in healthy people and that there is a bias against taking medications unless “needed”.
So I’d be interested to see a large-scale, longterm RCT (randomized controlled trial) that investigated these issues. I’m unsure about exactly how to do this. One straightforward example would be having two randomized groups, giving the substance to one of them for X months/years, and seeing whether that group has higher earnings after that period. Ideally, the study participants would perform office jobs, rather than manual labor (since that is where most of the value would come from); perhaps even especially cognitively demanding tasks, such as research or trading. In the case of research, metrics such as the number of published articles or number of citations would likely make more sense than earnings.
One could also check health outcomes, probably incl. mental health. Multiple substances or different dosing-regimes could be tested at once by adding study arms.
Notes: - One of the reasons I would most care about this might be improving the effectiveness of people working to prevent X-risks, but I’m not sure whether that fits neatly into any of your categories (and whether that’s intentional). - I’m not at all sure whether this is a good idea, but tried to err on the side of over-including since that seems productive while brainstorming; I haven’t thought about this much. - It may be that such studies exist and I just don’t know about them (pointers?). - It may be impossible to get this approved by ethics boards, though hopefully in some country somewhere it could happen?
Studying stimulants’ and anti-depressants’ long-term effects on productivity and health in healthy people (e.g. Modafinil, Adderall, and Wellbutrin)
Economic Growth, Effective Altruism
Is it beneficial or harmful for long-term productivity to take Modafinil, Adderall, Wellbutrin, or other stimulants on a regular basis as a healthy person (some people speculate that it might make you less productive on days where you’re not taking it)? If it’s beneficial, what’s the effect size? What frequency hits the best trade-off between building up tolerance vs short-term productivity gains? What are the long-term health effects? Does it affect longevity?
Some people think that taking stimulants regularly provides a large net boost to productivity. If true, that would mean we could relatively cheaply increase the productivity of the world and thereby increase economic growth. In particular, it could also increase the productivity of the EA community (which might be unusually willing to act on such information), including AI and biorisk researchers.
My very superficial impression is that many academics avoid researching the use of drugs in healthy people and that there is a bias against taking medications unless “needed”.
So I’d be interested to see a large-scale, longterm RCT (randomized controlled trial) that investigated these issues. I’m unsure about exactly how to do this. One straightforward example would be having two randomized groups, giving the substance to one of them for X months/years, and seeing whether that group has higher earnings after that period. Ideally, the study participants would perform office jobs, rather than manual labor (since that is where most of the value would come from); perhaps even especially cognitively demanding tasks, such as research or trading. In the case of research, metrics such as the number of published articles or number of citations would likely make more sense than earnings.
One could also check health outcomes, probably incl. mental health. Multiple substances or different dosing-regimes could be tested at once by adding study arms.
Notes:
- One of the reasons I would most care about this might be improving the effectiveness of people working to prevent X-risks, but I’m not sure whether that fits neatly into any of your categories (and whether that’s intentional).
- I’m not at all sure whether this is a good idea, but tried to err on the side of over-including since that seems productive while brainstorming; I haven’t thought about this much.
- It may be that such studies exist and I just don’t know about them (pointers?).
- It may be impossible to get this approved by ethics boards, though hopefully in some country somewhere it could happen?