Comment · Mon, March 11, 2013 · Ceretropic
The Mastermind Effect: How Placebos Can Boost General Intelligence
What they were answering
hbeingbeing · 5 points
The placebo effect is clearly extremely pronounced with nootropics... in many ways they're the perfect placebo... I suppose I'm like a lot of people here, I unfortunately tend to alternative/oscillate between good behavior and bad behavior in my life, in my own particular case I've had several vices that get the best of me, namely smoking weed, lapsing on exercise regimes, lack of diligence towards what I'm eating, also in the past I've had periods of experimenting too much with various recreational/research drugs, perhaps due to depression or whatever, but generally not looking after myself... then after a while, I tend to come to a realization and/or breakdown... eg: the last time I recall, was when I developed IBS from weed edibles (I stopped vaping, started edibles and they still fucked me) and compounded that when I caught a side reflection of myself in the shower, noticed my gut was getting ridiculous... then I decided to start excising and cut out all my vices, for a time I stopped all drugs, dairy, and even coffee... at that same time I resumed a noot regime... besides the perceived effects of potentially receiving positive effects as placebos, the very fact that I had decided at that moment to take care of myself with supplements, says something about my will to improve, and even if the noots did nothing I would notice improvements due to good health/looking after mys…
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Ceretropic
Those with higher intelligence are not going to see the same results as those with more room to improve. That being said, it's all up to you to either embrace the substance and use it to your advantage, or waste it by being passive. Do nootropics increase my intelligence? No, I don't think they do. Can they teach me specifics about my neurological mechanisms, consequently leading to an increase in efficiency of my ability to learn? Yes they can.
For me, motivation and mood are the prime mediators of the path my brain takes. My intelligence is there, but I sometimes let it take the back burner. Other times I let anxiety or depressed feelings slow down it's ability. What nootropics can do is to help keep my brain from falling into those shortcomings. They can provide me with an altered enough state to keep me on my toes. They can also increase specific parts of my cognition, like memory. It's not increasing my intelligence, but it is allowing me to parse and store information faster, which can be used in a more efficient manner.