> AI makes you feel 20% more productive but in reality makes you 19% slower. How many more billions are we going to waste on this?
Adderall is similar. It makes people feel a lot more productive, but research on its effectiveness[0] seems to show that, at best, we get only a mild improvement in productivity, and marked deterioration of cognitive abilities.
I’m someone with ADHD who takes prescribed stimulants and they don’t make me work faster or smarter, they just make me work. Without them I’ll languish in an unfocused haze for hours, or zone in on irrelevant details until I realise I have an hour left in the day to get anything done. It could make me 20% less intelligent and it would still be worth it; this is obviously an extreme, but given the choice, I’d rather be an average developer that gets boring, functional code done on time than a dysfunctional genius who keeps missing deadlines and cannot be motivated to work on anything but the most exciting shiny new tech.
I have family that had ADHD, as a kid (they called it “hyperactivity,” back then). He is also dyslexic.
The ADHD was caught early, and treated, but the dyslexia was not. He thought he was a moron, for much of his early life, and his peers and employers did nothing to discourage that self-diagnosis.
Since he learned of his dyslexia, and started treating it, he has been an engineer at Intel, for most of his career (not that I envy him, right now).
You have to realize that ADD meds are meant only for people with ADD, not healthy people at the prime of their life. Excess neurochemicals can have the opposite effect.
Their benefits when used as intended are solidly documented in research literature.
Research on _13_ people, that's a very important caveat when evaluating something like adderal.
It’s interesting how science can become closer to pseudoscience than proper research through paper-milling.
It seems like that with such small groups and effects you could run the same “study” again and again until you get the result that you initially desired.
So it should be easy to find studies that prove that non-ADHD people that take it, have dramatically improved productivity.
It's very easy to find studies that prove that Adderall (etc.) improve non-ADHD people's cognition ability. And it's equally easy to find studies that prove otherwise. The parent comment is very spot on. You can find evidence supporting anything nowadays.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3489818/table/tbl1/
I’m quite sure that there’s a ton more research on it. The drug’s been around for decades. Lots of time for plenty of studies.
If legitimate research had found it to be drastically better, that study would definitely have been published in a big way.
Unscientifically, I personally know quite a number of folks that sincerely believed that they couldn’t function without it, but have since learned that they do far better on their own. I haven’t met a single one that actually had their productivity decline (after an adjustment period, of course), after giving up Adderall. In fact, I know several, that have had their careers really take off, after giving it up.
My point is that micro-studies like that on a tiny random (or even counter-indicated, "healthy") selection of the general population don't tell you much for drugs that do specific things.
"Antibiotics don't improve your life, but can damage your health" would likely be the outcome on 13 randomly selected healthy individuals. But do the same study on 13 people with a bacterial infection susceptible to antibiotics and your results will be vastly different.
I don't think that it matters, in this context, as a lot of folks here, have their minds made up, already, and won't let anything interfere.
They'll need to learn, the same way I see lots of people learn.
It's been around long enough, though, that all the Adderall-eating people should have established a Gattaca-like "elite," with all us "undermen," scrabbling around at their feet.
Not sure why that never happened...
As someone with diagnosed ADHD, and prescribed something similar:
It's not that they make you superhuman - I don't think I'm any "smarter" on them. It's just that without them, my "productive" bursts would be at really random times (11PM or 2AM), and make it very hard to fit into a "normal" schedule with the rest of society (I would frequently fall asleep in classes or meetings).
So it's more that it allows you to "rearrange" the same (or slightly larger) amount of work but into a more reasonable, traditional schedule. And for certain things, helps more than that. But it's not a miracle drug by any means.
Ironically the METR study n=20
Note that the study is just n=13 and on subjects without ADHD.
That’s the deal.
People without ADHD take it, believing that it makes them “super[wo]men.”
I had a problem client that I ended up firing and giving money back to about 15 years ago. Lot of red flags, but the breaking point was when they offered me adderall so I could "work faster".
That said, I'll leave the conclusions about whether it's valuable for those with ADHD to the mental health professionals.
Thanks again, diarrhea
I suppose you've never used Adderall during coding sessions before (and assuming you don't have a prescription for ADHD).
I used it when it was called Ritalin. It interacts with alcohol, too. Interesting stuff (not exactly the same stuff, but damn similar).
A lot of it. Other stuff, too, that makes it look like a cup of weak tea, but it’s been 45 years.
I’m pretty familiar with the illusion of productivity.
Adderall is not Ritalin. They may both be stimulants, but they are different. They have different active ingredients, mechanisms of action, durations of action. Not really that similar in my experience. Ritalin is kind of weak, honestly.
>I’m pretty familiar with the illusion of productivity
II do not have ADHD and I'm familiar with successfully using Aderrall for actual productivity. YMMV. Turns out not everyone's brain chemistry is the same.
Eh. Not worth arguing over. I know the drill.
I just make sure there's a place to go, if the wheels fall off.
Cheers.