Bulk Up for that SAT, Bobby
Yesterday, I wrote (a too lengthy post) about Sam Anderson's "The Benefits of Distraction." This was one of the more interesting passages from the article, but I couldn't fit it into my post:
A quintessentially Western solution to the attention problem–one that neatly circumvents the issue of willpower–is to simply dope our brains into focus. We've done so, over the centuries, with substances ranging from tea to tobacco to NoDoz to Benzedrine, and these days the tradition seems to be approaching some kind of zenith with the rise of neuroenhancers: drugs designed to treat ADHD (Ritalin, Adderall), Alzheimer's (Aricept), and narcolepsy (Provigil) that can produce, in healthy people, superhuman states of attention. A grad-school friend tells me that Adderall allowed him to squeeze his mind “like a muscle.” Joshua Foer, writing in Slate after a weeklong experiment with Adderall, said the drug made him feel like he'd “been bitten by a radioactive spider”–he beat his unbeatable brother at Ping-Pong, solved anagrams, devoured dense books. “The part of my brain that makes me curious about whether I have new e-mails in my in-box apparently shut down,” he wrote.
Although neuroenhancers are currently illegal to use without a prescription, they're popular among college students (on some campuses, up to 25 percent of students admitted to taking them) and–if endless anecdotes can be believed–among a wide spectrum of other professional focusers: journalists on deadline, doctors performing high-stakes surgeries, competitors in poker tournaments, researchers suffering through the grind of grant-writing. There has been controversy in the chess world recently about drug testing at tournaments.
In December, a group of scientists published a paper in Nature that argued for the legalization and mainstream acceptance of neuroenhancers, suggesting that the drugs are really no different from more traditional “cognitive enhancers” such as laptops, exercise, nutrition, private tutoring, reading, and sleep. It's not quite that simple, of course. Adderall users frequently complain that the drug stifles their creativity–that it's best for doing ultrarational, structured tasks. (As Foer put it, “I had a nagging suspicion that I was thinking with blinders on.”) One risk the scientists do acknowledge is the fascinating, horrifying prospect of “raising cognitive abilities beyond their species-typical upper bound.” Ultimately, one might argue, neuroenhancers spring from the same source as the problem they're designed to correct: our lust for achievement in defiance of natural constraints. It's easy to imagine an endless attentional arms race in which new technologies colonize ever-bigger zones of our attention, new drugs expand the limits of that attention, and so on.
Coffee is merely an early stop on the continuum to today's neuroenhancers? I don't think so. That's like saying muskets were an early stop on the continuum to today's hydrogen bomb. Sure, they're "in kind" similar, but so different in degree to make the in kind similarity irrelevant.
The idea of people using performance enhancers doesn't bother me. Heck, I'm 43. By the time they start passing me up, I'll be ready to be passed up. It bothers me for my kids' sake, though. Are they expected to compete with freaks like that? As far as I'm concerned, it's not much different than expecting amateur athletes to compete against steroid users: both are using an unnatural substance whose long-term effects are unknown or scary. Do we want our classrooms to resemble, on the intellectual plane, the WWF?
Problem is, I remember reading awhile back that half of parents surveyed said they'd give their children performance enhancers, if it'd give them an edge . . . in the classroom, on the soccer field, or during a piano recital. Sick stuff that, but they're probably the same parents who are pro-choice and embrace other grotesqueries. You can't reason with them. You can merely scoff and walk away.
And head straight to church. In a corrupt society, our children may have to live like Plato's virtuous man in a cave during a snowstorm. Fortunately, our children can try to take refuge in their local sanctuaries. In the long run, it's a decent refuge, as generations of monks discovered during the Dark Ages.
Kinda Embarrassing, Hey Timmy?
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Monday reassured the Chinese government that its huge holdings of dollar assets are safe and reaffirmed his faith in a strong U.S. currency. . . .
China is the biggest foreign owner of U.S. Treasury bonds. U.S. data shows that it held $768 billion in Treasuries as of March, but some analysts believe China's total U.S. dollar-denominated investments could be twice as high.
"Chinese assets are very safe," Geithner said in response to a question after a speech at Peking University, where he studied Chinese as a student in the 1980s.
His answer drew loud laughter from his student audience, reflecting scepticism in China about the wisdom of a developing country accumulating a vast stockpile of foreign reserves instead of spending the money to raise living standards at home. Link.
What comes after laughing? Dumping. You find our your girlfriend has two-timed you, she asks you to take her back, you laugh at her, and then you dump her. Okay, the analogy is far from perfect, but I fear there's going to be a lot of heartbreak before this one is done.
But Not as Embarrassing at This
As a toddler, he was put on a throne and worshipped as by monks who treated him like a god. But the boy chosen by the Dalai Lama as a reincarnation of a spiritual leader has caused consternation ”“ and some embarrassment ”“ for Tibetan Buddhists by turning his back on the order that had such high hopes for him.
Instead of leading a monastic life, Osel Hita Torres now sports baggy trousers and long hair, and is more likely to quote Jimi Hendrix than Buddha. Link.
But hey, he's probably great at multitasking.
