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Why ‘smart drugs’ can make you less clever

Why ‘smart drugs’ can make you less clever

Nadira Faber

Originally posted at The Conversation 

It is an open secret: while athletes dope their bodies, regular office workers dope their brains. They buy prescription drugs such as Ritalin or Provigil on the internet’s flourishing black market to boost their cognitive performance.

It is hard to get reliable data on how many people take such “smart drugs” or “pharmacological cognitive enhancement substances”, as scientists call them. Prevalence studies and surveys suggest, though, that people from different walks of life use them, such as researchers, surgeons, and students. In an informal poll among readers of the journal Nature, 20% reported that they had taken smart drugs. And it seems that their use is on the rise.

So, if you are in a demanding and competitive job, some of your colleagues probably take smart drugs. Does this thought worry you? If so, you are not alone. Studies consistently find that people see brain doping negatively.

A main concern is fairness. Imagine that while you are going for a run to boost your mental energy, your colleague is popping Ritalin instead. While you believe in your afternoon nap to regain concentration, your office mate relies on Provigil. Unfair? The general public thinks that taking smart drugs is cheating, because it can give users a competitive edge. In fact, even several academics have argued that brain doping is unfair towards people who don’t do it.

Read More »Why ‘smart drugs’ can make you less clever

Cross Post: Women’s-Only Swimming Hours: Accommodation Is Not Discrimination

Written by Miriam Rosenbaum and Sajda Ouachtouki 

This article was originally published in First Things.

Women’s-only hours at swimming pools are nothing new. Many secular institutions have long hosted separate swim hours for women and girls who, for reasons of faith or personal preference, desire to swim without the presence of men. The list includes Barnard College, Harvard University, Yale University, and swim clubs, JCCs, and YMCAs across the country. Recently, women’s-only swimming hours have become a topic of debate, especially in New York, where promoters of liberal secularist ideology (including the editorial page of the New York Times) are campaigning against women’s-only hours at a public swimming pool on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. They claim that women’s-only swimming hours, even for a small portion of the day, must be abolished in the interest of “general fairness and equal access” and to avoid “discrimination” in favor of certain religions.Read More »Cross Post: Women’s-Only Swimming Hours: Accommodation Is Not Discrimination

Article Announcement: Should a human-pig chimera be treated as a person?

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Professor Julian Savulescu has recently published an article on the treatment of Human-Pig Chimera in the online Aeon Magazine.  To read the full article and join in the conversation please follow this link: http://bit.ly/29NUj1c   Professor Savulescu has written on this topic in the Practical Ethics in the News blog previously: https://blog.uehiro.ox.ac.uk/2016/06/organ-mules/.

Won’t Someone Think of the Children?

Andrea Leadsom’s suggestion that being a mother made her a better candidate for being a leader than Theresa May, because it gave her a stake in the future that May lacked, seems to have sunk her leadership bid. The horrified responses to her remarks were motivated in important part by the observation that Leadsom was trading on the common sexist belief that it is somehow unnatural or perverse for women (but not men) to be childless. But might Leadsom have had a point? What do we actually know about how having children affects parents’ political engagement and orientation?Read More »Won’t Someone Think of the Children?

In Praise of Ambivalence—“Young” Feminism, Gender Identity, and Free Speech

By Brian D. Earp (@briandavidearp)

Introduction

Alice Dreger, the historian of science, sex researcher, activist, and author of a much-discussed book of last year, has recently called attention to the loss of ambivalence as an acceptable attitude in contemporary politics and beyond. “Once upon a time,” she writes, “we were allowed to feel ambivalent about people. We were allowed to say, ‘I like what they did here, but that bit over there doesn’t thrill me so much.’ Those days are gone. Today the rule is that if someone—a scientist, a writer, a broadcaster, a politician—does one thing we don’t like, they’re dead to us.”

I’m going to suggest that this development leads to another kind of loss: the loss of our ability to work together, or better, learn from each other, despite intense disagreement over certain issues. Whether it’s because our opponent hails from a different political party, or voted differently on a key referendum, or thinks about economics or gun control or immigration or social values—or whatever—in a way we struggle to comprehend, our collective habit of shouting at each other with fingers stuffed in our ears has reached a breaking point.

It’s time to bring ambivalence back.Read More »In Praise of Ambivalence—“Young” Feminism, Gender Identity, and Free Speech

Cross Post: If you can screen for brown eyes, you should be able to edit out genetic disease

Written by Dr Christopher Gyngell, 
This Article was originally published in The Conversation
Not everyone’s choice of scarf. Shutterstock

It has long been known that cognitive diversity is important to collective performance. Diverse groups are more productive, more innovative and better at solving complex problems than less diverse groups. And recent research suggests that cognitive diversity also drives scientific progress.

Such research has direct implications for how we regulate reproductive technologies. Late last year, the London Sperm Bank was criticised for its decision to ban sperm donors who suffer from minor neurological disorders, including dyslexia and Asperger’s syndrome.Read More »Cross Post: If you can screen for brown eyes, you should be able to edit out genetic disease

Brexit: lessons from the law

37% of the UK electorate voted to leave the European Community – slightly more than voted to remain. There is evidence that some of them regret their votes. The former editor of the Sun, Kelvin Mackenzie, who voted ‘Leave’, has spoken publicly about his ‘buyer’s remorse’.  Others have indicated that they would not vote ‘leave’ again.

There are calls for a second referendum, generally based on assertions that the ‘Leave’ campaign made misrepresentations (for instance about how money saved by leaving the EU would be spent), or on the contention that an issue as constitutionally tectonic should not be decided on such a slender majority, or the observation that an overwhelming number of young voters (who will be affected by the decision for the longest) voted to remain.Read More »Brexit: lessons from the law

Cross Post: Next time you ask the doctor for some antibiotics – consider whether you’re being immoral

Written by Alberto Giubilini, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

This article was originally published in The Conversation

Antimicrobial resistance is the ability of microorganisms causing infections to survive exposure to antimicrobial drugs such as antibiotics. This is considered by some to be a slowly emerging disaster. According to the recently released Review on Antimicrobial Resistance commissioned by the UK government, by 2050 some 10m lives a year will be at risk because of drug resistant infections.

Read More »Cross Post: Next time you ask the doctor for some antibiotics – consider whether you’re being immoral

Announcement: 2016 Effective Altruism Global Research Meeting Call for Abstracts

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Location: August 5th to 7th, University of California, Berkeley

Abstract Deadline: July 10th

Contact: researchmeeting@centerforeffectivealtruism.org

Overview

The 2016 Effective Altruism Global Research Meeting is an opportunity for Postgraduate students and early stage academics from a variety of disciplines to present research relevant to Effective Altruism. The meeting will take place on August 5th to 7th, 2016 at UC Berkeley alongside the Effective Altruism Global conference. The meeting will consist of two events, an academic poster session and a number of short oral presentations. Presentations will be awarded to the most exceptional submissions. Participants selected for presentations will still have the option to present a poster.

The Effective Altruism movement, which promotes the use of reason and evidence to determine the most effective ways to improve the world, has grown rapidly over the last three years. It is an interdisciplinary movement which has gained traction amongst academics in a wide range of fields, including Philosophy, Economics and Health. Last year’s Effective Altruism Global conference welcomed renowned philosopher Peter Singer and behavioral economist Dan Ariely, as well as 1000 attendees. This year, our speakers include Philip Tetlock (author of Superforecasting), Cass Sunstein (legal scholar and former Administrator of the White House OIRA), Thomas Kalil (Deputy Director for Technology and Innovation at the White House OSTP), Jaan Tallinn (Co-Founder of Skype) and Irene Pepperberg (noted animal cognition scientist).  

Effective Altruism Global’s featured topics include discussions of the replication crisis, prediction markets, decision making under uncertainty, CRISPR, our obligations to the global poor, as well as a number of other topics that are important to shaping the future. The Research Meeting will run alongside Effective Altruism Global to give academics access to the large audience of interested attendees, and expose the more than 1,000 expected philanthropists, CEOs, and students to research relevant to Effective Altruism.Read More »Announcement: 2016 Effective Altruism Global Research Meeting Call for Abstracts