[yojo]

Is it just me that worries about a race to the bottom with brain hacking? Assume some combination of nootropics/transcranial stimulation/etc gives you a short-term edge for unknown (or known) long term risk.

If you're a profit-maximizing employer, would you rather hire the person who performs better today, or the person who is looking out for their own long-term safety? Or if you're a startup founder competing against a bunch of doped up super-brains, how strong must the incentive be to join the dark side?

I see similarities with professional sports, where athletic associations are always playing Whac-A-Mole with performance enhancing drugs, and top earning athletes routinely get chastised for doping. Should we expect outcomes in knowledge work to be different if brain hacking proves as effective?