Your argument was effectively "it must do something bad! It's a stim! They make your heart asplode!", so I shot the specific. You've reduced it to, "Well it must hurt SOMEHOW," which is the same fallacy as the trade-off concept.

The trade-off concept is the familiar idea that you can't improve something by making it worse in every way. I usually address this by smashing a beverage vessel such that it no longer holds a beverage, and is perhaps laden with dangerous jagged edges, and deformed so as to take up more storage space. It is obviously possible to adjust something to be worse in every way, up to and including creatively destroying the object's entire useful purpose while making it a burden and a danger.

I did suggest that scientific studies were minimal, and that they gave a good risk outline with empirical evidence but did not give a complete and high-quality scientific image. The problems caused by amphetamines, methylphenedate, and caffeine are obvious, and stand out strikingly; we have enough empirical evidence to show that phenotropil carries none of the negative consequences of these drugs, and nothing notable on its own (upset stomach, for example, can happen--that can also happen with Rolaids, cough syrup, or Diet Coke). We've also seen no notable long-term consequences, despite there being obvious long-term public users--which gives a low but existent measure of confidence.

I am, in fact, quantifying within reason, using a number of data sources of varying quality. I do the same with prescription drugs believed to be safe; hell, I do the same with the belief that fat and salt are bad for you, and now science is reflecting what I've been actively considering for years: that the science behind the original claims was weak and, in some cases, totally invalid (saturated fat dietary concerns were based on cherry-picked data). I don't have 100% confidence in anything, but I do have enough confidence in various measures and observations to scale them against one another.

Phenotropil is specifically noted for its affect on neurotransmitters, without increasing heart rate or blood pressure. It is part of the racetemic group of compounds, which are the codifying compounds for nootropics; the pharmacological definition of a nootropic excludes things like gingko and vinpocetine (which are often claimed as nootropics), because it explicitly excludes anything that raises blood flow to the brain (blood pressure and heart rate increases would do this). It is specifically notable among nootropics for being a stimulant, and specifically notable among stimulants for not raising blood pressure or heart rate, as well as for not producing withdrawal or other forms of dependency.

If you want a cruder definition of "safe", I'll simply say that it's a shitton less bad than caffeine.

Was that Paul?

I've been on and off SAM-e; but it triggers hypomania, and I've been stable for a while. Ridiculously stable. After over a year, it's still an alien feeling. I spent almost 30 years continuously depressed, and then triggered a hypomanic (and a manic!) episode, and realized I was bipolar (and in the lucky 7% that can drug-modify it with SAM-e). A year later, it just kind of leveled out, and I became... normal. Ish. It just feels weird to be dead-center.

The problem is I'm unmotivated dead-center. I noticed that when I started experimenting: I work well when I'm depressed, and I work great when I'm hypomanic; mania is horrible (feels too good, don't like it, hard to think), and being baseline is ... I don't do anything. I zone out watching twitch videos. I type nothing on a keyboard and listen to the keys click. There are things I want to do, but I just... feel fine.

I've been trying to rewrite habits, but that's not working well. I'll take up cardiovascular physical activity next--that's been delayed due to a vendor dispute which is ending in a chargeback this week.

Tell your supervisor to have fun with that and call you when he needs the collapsing infrastructure put back together in a weekend.

Get good, scrub.

Come on. Staying up 100+ hours? Yeah, you need good drugs for that, and you're going to regret it. Passing a test? Learning is not hard; it's effort, but it's solved effort. If any single person can get a perfect score on the SAT without funny drugs, your kid can.

Yeah, but what about people like me, who cause this when under a baseline drug state? I don't even take caffeine; I used to take phenotropil, but it didn't help my work (I can see how it would, and it did help other things; having a more stable awake state is great).

I read everything that happens, constantly. I assemble all kinds of information in all kinds of ways. In effect, the human mind is a tool, and it's use requires skilled technique: geniuses don't have super brains, but rather have procedural skills for using a typical human brain. My set of tools and techniques includes methods of thinking which rapidly and effectively solve problems in the short and long term; I also tend to pile up technical information related to my job, so I can usually solve problems *while they're being explained to me*.

This is something anyone can do, but it takes effort. This is how rock star programmers work. This is how genius engineers work. They aren't born that way; they're made that way. How do you deal with the creep of people who just have more motivation and interest in their job, and so do a better job than you?

Methinks it's the obvious: 99% of people hate their job, and the remaining 1% have figured out that there is *a* job out there that's awesome, and so they quit and went and found *that* job. Those are your rock stars. They're often the people who show up when the company is a mess, fix a bunch of problems, then walk off. They're the programmers who get hired when you need to build a new system, then quit when that system goes into maintenance mode and the company stops making new things. They're the nurses and doctors who take jobs that interest them, the niche scientists doing archaeology, even global salesmen who travel all over the place to negotiate big contracts with international companies.

The rest of you need to figure out why you hate your job, what you would actually want from a job, and then go find that job. If that job burns out, find another one that satisfies you. No purple pills will take the place of that.

Methylphenedate and adderall (dextroamphetamine) are dangerous: they cause psychosis (well-known). Caffeine causes withdrawal effects, and normalizes (you're not more productive on caffeine after you've become addicted). Phenotropil is the only safe stimulant I've found, but it's easy to build a tolerance--no negative effects, just it stops working. This is a matter of dosing: the normal dose is 100mg multiple times each day, and my analysis of the molecules (molecular weight, number of phenyl groups) tells me 16mg-24mg 1-3 times per day would be more correct for a 150lb adult male. The white elephant in the room is really the response: 100mg of phenotropil produces a noticeable stimulant effect; the normal prescribed doses of Methylphenedate and Dex only produce a cognitive benefit (they treat ADHD without making you hyperactive). People, of course, keep reving the engine until they feel it working, subtle effect be damned.

The same goes for modafinil. Modafinil will effectively let you sleep 8 hours for every 56 awake, no toxicity and no side effects; the new Armodafinil is less safe, but more profitable. Adrafinil metabolizes in the liver into modafinil; this puts strain on the liver, and can cause damage in the long term.

People are popping armodafinil, dex, and other dangerous crap all the damn time. The stuff that's safe has been backed by a few studies, but is either well-studied and scheduled tightly (modafinil--safe, not legal) or studied reasonably-well (i.e. not concrete, so not as certain, but toxicology is at least explored) and OTC legal. This leads to people mostly getting dangerous prescription drugs illegally (Modafinil aside) and abusing them, or getting understood-safe non-prescription drugs legally and having no good guidance on how to use them because their medical application hasn't actually been well-explored.

Of course, you also have the issue of drug interactions, long-term use, and so forth. Phenotropil is known pretty safe, but what are its drug interactions? What kind of effects will you get with high, long-term use, like some people do with 400mg per day doses for years? Will you start to develop psychosis after months or years, like with the other stims? We know it's absolutely safe at 100mg doses for months on end, but we don't know about 500mg doses for weeks or months or years on end; we're not even sure about 20mg doses for years on end. Even assuming drug safety, we don't know if it can chronically treat any condition or provide any benefit.

Then you have stuff like noopept that just jacks up your BNF and BDNF--which is great, but 10 minutes on a bicycle will do that. Not kidding. This is the most powerful cognitive enhancer on the market, and it's equivalent to a short jog.

So you're telling me gcc inlines functions from libqt when you compile a program against qt's headers?

Binding is still done at run-time, and is still a matter of setting a pointer somewhere. It's functionally similar to a page fault: if it happens and it's satisfied, the computer just calls as normal; if it happens and isn't satisfied, the computer does some work first. All you're changing is the point in time the work is done, not the number of times.

I have never gone to a dealer for brakes. I did go to the Mazda dealer for a brand new windshield, new engine mount (broken), oil change, tire rotation, and a diagnostic of why my check engine light was on (faulty part), at a total cost of $328. The exhaust had broken off the manifold, and they repaired that as well.

I've been quoted $676 for two wheels at a Goodyear-Gemini mechanic; $550 at a Mr. Tire; and over $800 at an independent mechanic down the street.