Off Topic 
Cognitive Chaos
1 
Offline
You see, I actually experimented with them. Recording the effects they had on productivity, writing notes, and so on. I was not introduced to them by a friend, and I also never broke the law by taking them. How so? This is my story:
If you haven't guessed by now, the drugs were prescribed to me. I have ADHD, you see, and I have been taking prescriptions for ~4 years now. However, the first two years aren't of importance here. The last two years were when I started making breakthroughs. It began with a Wikipedia article I had read. It was about the medication I was taking at the time (I don't remember what it was back then, but I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole that day). After my interest in the effects of medication on the brain grew, I dedicated more time to reading articles about receptors, RNA signaling, neurotransmitters, the functions of different areas of the brain, etcetera. It wasn't the research I did, in and of itself, that caused the breakthroughs, but it set the conditions in order for them to even be possible in the first place, thanks to the knowledge I had gained as well as my increased interest in the subject. First, over a year ago, I had a theory that everyone had their own balance of neurotransmitters in their brain, thanks to their genetics, and it would be possible to experience the state of mind of different people temporarily if you took medication that caused your brain activity to mimic their brain activity. This theory, after extensive research, has held ground to this day even after I had done much more research and gained expertise, but it was only the first. It was more recent developments that led me to the theory I find so important today - that of cognitive chaos. This was when I was still in school. I was taking both dexedrine and sertraline, and I had, towards the end of the school day, been getting nervous and restless, unable to get school work done. I had suspected it was because dexedrine, which consists of dextroamphetamine, which itself is a substitute for phenethylamine, a naturally occurring neurotransmitter, increased my norepinephrine (functionally identical to adrenaline) levels for longer than my dopamine levels, so when the dopamine levels fell I still had high norepinephrine levels, causing me to lose feelings of motivation or fulfillment even as my mind was still quite simulated, causing a feeling similar to that of panic. Because of this problem, I researched drugs that blocked norepinephrine, and found one of which I could be prescribed. It was called propranolol, and on the Wikipedia article dedicated to it, it was stated that it helped with things like stage fright during performances as well as improving performance in tasks requiring high accuracy. When I first took it, it worked perfectly. Further on I started realizing effects between it and my other meds, and was intrigued. That was when I began experimenting. A bit farther into the experiments, I was drawing. However, I never expected anything even remotely as good as the drawing I had produced. It was after I had taken some propranolol, not too long after taking dexedrine, and the medications, combined, seemed to have an effect on my drawing that was beyond anything I had experienced. I had tried this combination of medication before in other circumstances, but I had never before tried drawing afterwards. In previous trials, I just noticed that it made me really good at saying things in a manner such that I could always get an uproar of laughter. I could always say the dumbest, most absurd, unexpected, out-of-pocket things at the perfect moment and in the perfect manner, which took people off guard and got them howling with laughter, which was great fun. Experiences like this, as well as the knowledge of the massive effect these could have cognitive functioning made me even more interested. I also came up with my best, most creative ideas when I was taking both, usually after I had taken propranolol to calm down during times of overstimulation (too much norepinephrine). More recently, while I was driving home from work, I was thinking about how my neurotransmitter levels influenced my perception of sound, and my thoughts snowballed into an idea, for which I thought of a name that seemed appropriate - Cognitive Chaos Theory. It was based on the premise that Chaos Theory can be applied to the brain. Just like patterns of weather arise based on initial conditions, such as temperature, humidity, and etc., patterns of thought can arise based on the initial conditions of the mind, like neurotransmitter balance. This has serious implications, especially as I have been able to exploit the way this works to increase productivity at work, accelerate progress on Stranded II Enhanced, and increase performance in countless other tasks. I also realized that intelligence is not so cut-and-dry*. For example, when I would take my dexedrine in the morning, but had not gotten quite stimulated enough to need propranolol, I was intelligent in an aggressive, decisive, relentless characteristic. I was efficient. I could get things done quick. I could not, however, come up with very creative ideas. I was very much in 'business mode'. This helps for getting stuff done, but not for making compromises or stopping anything I had already started. I even remember thinking "so this is how it feels to be a hard-liner" because I did. I felt powerful, efficient, and relentless. My ears start aching because of all the vasoconstriction going on in my veins, I had to take deeper breaths, and I hard-lined my way to objective complete (I feel like I can understand the psychology of dictators better than ever before due to experiences like these). However, it was harder to do simple and intuitive tasks with that mentality, or creative ones for that matter. I think being overstimulated diminishes my ability to switch tasks, due to the neural connections becoming too entrenched in their current states, meaning at some point intelligence starts going down instead of up due to the lack of function in the domain of task switching. It is a useful state of mind for repetitive or physical tasks, but it probably takes up a lot of energy to keep the brain that stimulated. When taking propranolol, confidence decreases but fluid intelligence increases significantly. I get remarkable ideas that will come to me from nowhere, and without me putting in any effort. In those cases, it feels almost like cheating, because I didn't even consciously think of the idea, it just comes out of thin air. It's witchcraft, really. Also, creative and intuitive tasks become much easier. I have vastly different sets of skills in different states of mind, and I can choose when I want to be in those states of mind, which is really convenient. I just wonder, if I can do this much with basic medications prescribed to me, what would we be capable of with things like Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and the host of emerging technology in related fields?
Also, related to this topic, is savant syndrome. It is an example of a cognitive ability that would be quite convenient to be able to invoke short-term, which has actually been achieved with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savant_syndrome
Eidetic Memory would be useful in some cases as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory
The brain is complex and acts in interesting ways. I think that people keep focusing too much on things like 'the singularity' (where AI would becomes so effective it would be able to program even more capable versions of itself) and are not focused enough on the fact that we could actually improve our own intelligence, which could lead to faster innovation in the field, which leads to improved intelligence. While we (at least currently) only have the ability to improve intelligence in specific domains at one time, the potential of that can not be understated. For example, if you could solve some of science's biggest problems by essentially disabling your social skills temporarily to enable uninhibited understanding of subjects studied, that is entirely worth it (just make sure to be your room with your door closed while you do it, and hope nobody stops to say hi
), as would disabling your complex logic abilities in order to be able to complete a whole day's worth of accounting into half an hour. In fact, there are a decent amount of instinctive functions that aren't even needed nowadays at all that could be temporarily paused in order to make complex tasks less stressful and much easier, and with a controlled enough environment you could push the concept much further. It would be useful in modern times especially, as so many jobs are specialized.Anyway, if you would like to see how the ongoing experiment has affected my drawing abilities, see here, for evidence of how it has effected my reasoning and explanation abilities just see my most recent online posts, and for how it effects idea formation, it is evident in my recent online posts as well.
*Somehow I forgot to mention earlier in the post. I think the brain operates on a network of continuous algorithms, the overall output determined by the conditions of the brain, like neurotransmitter levels, that would influence the workings of these algorithms, as well as the priority they are given in decisions. This means that our intelligence is probably even harder to measure or compare than the performance of a bunch of computers with bunch of different architectures (which is hard enough, trust me). For example, I am far more skilled at measurable metrics of intelligence when taking dexedrine, like math, logic, organization, and anything that requires active attention (especially goal-oriented activities), but if I take dexedrine and then propranolol afterwards I am able to come up with creative concepts easier, I draw in a more creative and elegant manner, I tell less 'dad jokes' as my humor is less predictable and more unexpected/unhinged, I tend to be more satisfied with life and more patient as a whole, far better at communication - both listening and talking, but yet in most goal-oriented activities I would fall short: my typing accuracy decreases, my math and logic fall short, confidence is decreased, my IQ would probably go down, etcetera. That means that not only are measures of intelligence not easy to translate to other fields, but that some measures may negatively correlate with other measures of intelligence. This has some... ahh... implications.
Congratulations if you read this entire post - you officially have a longer attention span than me... well, except sometimes when I get my med timing and dosage just right. Anyway, feel free to give your opinion on how much potential you see in these ideas, provide your own ideas on the subject, mention if you wish you had the ability to do this (and what you would use the ability for), or comment about anything else pertaining to the subject. Thanks.
edited 3×, last 31.01.23 08:03:00 am