Cognitive enhancement vs hedonism

A British medical ethicist argues that adults should be free to take the popular stimulant drug Ritalin for cognitive enhancement.

Professor John Harris, of the University of Manchester, says many adult students are already taking the the drug which is illegal in the UK without a prescription. He says that if it is safe for children with ADHD to take Ritalin over an extended period for a non-life threatening condition, there was there is reason to prevent healthy adults using it to.

The problem with making stimulant drugs more freely available though, is the likelihood that a large segment of the population will prefer to use them for getting high instead of performing smarter.

In the first half of the 20th Century, stimulant drugs were quite widely used among professionals and the military for cognitive enhancement. Even the original Coca-Cola was advertised as a red-bull-style pick-me-up which contained a small amount of cocaine.

However, the fallout from hedonistic sixties in which the use of pharmaceutical drugs for recreational purposes was widely popularised for the first time, has done considerable damage to the cause of those wishing to promote stimulant drugs for improving mental performance.

The image of stimulant drugs was further damaged  in the 1970s when dextroamphetamine was used in large concentrations as a sliming aid for women, with the result that a number of prominent female celebrities suffered from stimulant-induced heart failure.

Since then authorities in most developed countries authorities have been severely cracking down on the use of stimulant drugs, which are now are now primarily abused by the underclass. Ritalin for example, is often taken from children to which it's been subscribed and ground down and smoked or snorted for a quick rush (slow-release versions have been developed to get around this problem, but not without significantly increasing the cost).

The demise of smoking though, has created a large gap in the market for a relatively safe stimulant, that's only been partially filled by the renaissance in ground coffee products.

Over the next few decades it's going to be interesting to see whether the needs of the middle class for increased cognitive enhancement options will win out over the needs of the therapeutic state to contain the pathologies of the underclass.

At this stage my money's still on the therapeutic state.

Double standards from TVNZ

Over the last few weeks the popular UK documentary series Ross Kemp on Gangs has been screening on New Zealand TV and I've found it quite eye opening.

For example, I knew Jamaica had quite a high crime rate, but I had no idea that the nation's capital, Kingston is arguably the most violent city in the world (for the size of its population).

Unfortunately though, the episode on gangs and football violence in Poland, was a bit disappointing. In the show Kemp interviews a neo-Nazi skinhead, who doesn't speak any English, about his about his political views and reasons for engaging in soccer violence. Naturally, the youth doesn't have many intelligent things to say, and Kemp looks suitably disgusted by his predictable opinions about Jews and other races. Kemp also fails to ask the most obvious question, and the first one I would have asked - "why do you like a guy like Hitler, who killed so many Polish people? "

Anyway, Kemp then turns up at a football match where a neo-Nazi gang is clashing with a rival non-Nazi nationalist gang, and very briefly interviews an English-speaking non- Nazi nationalist whose face is concealed by a bandana. The young gang member, who appears more intelligent that the neo-Nazi interviewed earlier, then states that the two groups often fight each other after matches, but have significantly different ideologies

Now to my mind, it would have been interesting to interview one of these non-Nazi nationalist gang members, and find out what their views were, and why they disliked the neo-Nazi skinheads, particularly since the former appeared more typical of the average Polish gang member. Unfortunately though, the programme appears to be more about creating shock value than looking into the attitudes and habits of the typical gang member and what makes them tick.

Certainly one episode of the series has been viewed a little too shocking for local audiences by Television New Zealand. On Radio Live this week Michael Laws said TVNZ has decided not to play an episode about the New Zealand Mongrel Mob.

It seems it's ok to look at other country's gang problems in a slightly sensationalised way, but politically correct TVNZ isn't keen on the same treatment for New Zealand's indigenous underclass.

Liberal illusions

One of the things which left-liberals and libertarians have a hard time grasping is the fact most people don't think like they do. I don't just mean that they don't share their ideologies, but that their thinking is influenced by a whole different set of priorities and limitations.

Most libertarians tend to be young educated, males of an introverted disposition, who believe that most people desire maximum autonomy and are capable of handling such freedom. However, contrary to right-liberal assumptions, most people tend to be extroverts who are more influenced by the world around them then their own thoughts and feelings. In other words, if other people are doing stupid things, many of them will too.

An example of this is the world of advertising. As an introvert I tend to think of advertising as a largely irrational waste of money, but it must work on some people or companies wouldn't spend so much money on it. Subsequently advertising tends to directed advertising at extroverts, particularly the status seeking, high IQ extroverts who dominate the world of business.

While intelligent extroverts are usually able to channel their impulsivity into constructive activity, underclass extroverts cannot manage their own lives without societal help.In most cases, low IQ extroverts are well aware of their poor impulse control and the fact they can be easily influenced, but are unable to control their own behaviour unless distracted by other activities and responsibilities.

Recently, I was watching a story on television about teenage pregnancy in the UK, in which a young mother was asked about her reason for having a child which she was unable to support without state help. The answer was very revealing, if a little obvious to some. She said that having a baby gave her a sense of responsibility, and that without it she would probably be out on the streets committing petty crime. According to her logic, it was cheaper for the state to pay her to stay at home and look after a baby, than have her skip school and get into trouble with the law.

Libertarians believe that such negative behaviours can be controlled through limited government. If there are no incentives for teenagers to have children, then they will rationally decide not to have children until they can afford to support them. But if members of the underclass are genuinely unable to control their impulses, then punitive punishments, which occur after the event, are unlikely to deter them. The absence of a welfare state doesn't stop millions of woman in poor countries from having children they are unable to support.

This is why it is important that social norms must take account of human nature.

If teenage mothers who had children out of wedlock were socially ostracized, as they were in the 1950s, they would have a much stronger incentive to delay having children. Nobody likes being socially ostracized, and this is especially true of those who are most strongly influenced by those around them.

Among modern liberals there also is a belief that, within the law, they should be able to do as they please, without regard to how their actions influence other sections of society. For example, if middle-class liberal woman believe solo motherhood is acceptable, and show off the fact they are capable of rising children on their own, then less capable, less intelligent women will try unsuccessfully to copy them.

One of the most ironic things about today's age of liberal individualism is that it is only differences in human preferences which are recognised. Differences in human abilities and dispositions are ignored, leaving society at large to clean up the mess created by giving too much freedom to those who are unable to handle it.