[strlen]

Unfortunately I am not in a university, so I no longer have access to JSTOR and the like. I did dig around PubMed/Google and what I've been able to find were studies of impaired individuals. Citations would be useful -- for studies on healthy (or like you said, "naturally" unhealthy -- due to age, environment, lifestyle, etc...) adults.

[Pongo_the_Great]

Well, do a simple bit of logic there (sorry; the study I had in mind is locked). From the age of 20 > 30, there's a quantifiable degradation of DNA replication, or as we call it "ageing". We can all agree that ageing seems to impair certain functions, and if these types of drugs improve "impaired" individuals, then... ?

As stated: the greater the impairment, the greater the effect. Now, you might not want to spend $x on a mere 5% improvement, but we do it all the time in reality ~ tinfoil hats off, but why do we fluoridate water supplies or make sure children have nutritious meals? [in the old model of society that seems to have fallen away].

Note: I advise strongly against over-dosing or using the stronger types without some knowledge of what's going on in your brain. Although, most people fuck around with their brain chemistry happily enough on pleasure receptors anyhow, so it's better than even the legal abuses you can get up to [pain killers, alcohol, nicotine-purely-to-lungs].

Bottom line: it ain't going to kill you like other stuff, and there's no evidence it can actually damage you either [barring affective behaviours which will subside as the drug is removed[1]]. Try it, be sensible, and then whatever.

The entire theatre of this thread, set by the idiot who made the 1st post is ridiculous. Learn some science, maybe?

[1]You might get some slight mania etc depending on your base chemistry, but it's not going to be permanent.

[strlen]

It's fine if the paper is behind a paywall: can you at least give a citation (from a peer-reviewed journal) and an abstract?

Additionally, please see tokenadult's posts: tokenadult is anything _but_ an idiot and has contributed much valuable insight to this community (often times with concrete citations). It's important to learn to disagree respectfully.

[Pongo_the_Great]

Reading the forum rules here, I'm at a loss why a user has gone through my posts on this thread and flagged each one, without a reason.. especially since the first rude post was the one that deserved nuking, not my responses, and <i>didn't</i> get one. Nuke the rude abrasive one, not the ones offering more, unless you've a reason?

The thread I responded to is still lacking in quality, esp. references ~ but I learnt down-thread s/he's a known poster, so I guess the rules don't apply.

Charming. ZZzzz.

[Edit: I'm having trouble finding the paper on this, for reference below, it's from a Welsh University ~ it might have been removed and/or hijacked for use for something else]

[xanados]

Tone is important on Hacker News and you can get downvoted for that alone. Your tone throughout this conversation was dismissive and exaggerated, and HN generally rewards people who are clear and staid in their writing. If you offered evidence for your positions and argued clearly and convincingly for them, and without defensiveness, insult and exaggeration you could probably get many people to agree with you.

People who have been on the site a long time (note: not me) can downvote you, which is what happened to your posts, rather than them being flagged. If you are flagged it just goes to the admins and they delete it if it's counterproductive. Also, you don't seem to know how to use the formatting here, and you don't care enough to figure it out and fix your old posts, which some could take to be as disrespectful to a new community.