So, readers have discussed across several platforms the fantastic assumption laid out in the previous post, its consequences, and their own personal lines of behavior.
Here are the main ideas.
- Humanity already consists of both fanatical overachievers and those living “half-heartedly.” If the contrast becomes slightly stronger—well, that’s great. Overachievers will achieve even greater success, burning with their ideas, while others will enjoy the results in a comfortable mode for themselves (as a separate opinion, some believe that those dabbling in the stimulant will be spatially separated from those who don’t, or conversely, communities of advocates for naturalness will appear).
- The first thing people under the stimulant will do is develop a second version of the stimulant, devoid of the side effects of the first version, and then we’ll all live well.
Many also noted that the value of a conditional Harvard lies not in knowledge, but in networking; this is a long-term task, and the stimulant does not solve it. Nor does it solve many other tasks, such as finding a long-term marriage partner, raising children, selecting new varieties of baobab, and so on.
It’s funny how the question of a life-accelerating stimulant echoes another question I answered not so long ago—about the consequences of the appearance of immortality technology for the chosen few. Let me introduce additional constraints here as well. Let the production of the stimulant be a cheap and easily replicable technology that is practically impossible to ban. Also, let this technology provide no shortcuts allowing it to be tweaked in a relatively short time to remove the key unpleasant side effect. Otherwise, it’s not interesting.
How could this stimulant appear? Most likely—during developments in the field of traumatology or something of that sort. They struggled for a long time with animals, could not overcome the effect of premature aging, and finally released it for use in first-aid kits as a last resort, initially for the military. If you don’t use it—you die in half an hour; if you do—you live some number of years less. Then, a recovering person, out of boredom, picks up a higher mathematics textbook, or, say, a manual on repairing HIMARS in field conditions—and discovers with surprise that the material is absorbed perfectly. That’s it, the genie is out of the bottle.
It is also quite obvious that cancer patients of any age will use the stimulant. Additionally, it is a more than justified remedy for Alzheimer’s. In short, there will be a significant number of people for whom the use of the stimulant will provide a double plus—both the extension (or serious alleviation) of life and the enhancement of abilities. Instead of living for twenty years as a demented person, a paralytic, or undergoing surgery every six months, a person would quite easily prefer ten years of more comfortable aging coupled with a flowering of cognitive functions.
It is more than likely that the stimulant will be used in poor, large families. Why send a daughter into prostitution or a son to a hazardous production site if there is a way to lift the whole family out of poverty with far lower costs, even regarding the reduction of expected life expectancy. In other words, the stimulant will accelerate social elevators. For those who have acceptable starting conditions, there are fewer incentives to use the drug. Thus, the stimulant will contribute to increasing equality, which leftists love to prattle on about.
As for a truly mass transition to the stimulant—this seems unlikely to me. After all—so we know that methamphetamine is actively used in North Korea to increase labor productivity—and so what? Perhaps students before exams sometimes follow this example, but it is not the case that consumers of this stimulant are directly displacing those who shun it from the labor market. Again, modern left-wing governments are far more concerned with unemployment than with labor productivity. If some maniacs are ready to replace entire creative teams—then for those who have dropped out of the competitive race, even more bullshit jobs will simply be invented.
And under ancap? I see no serious difference; this technology is not key to the formation of society. Except that bullshit jobs under ancap would be substantially fewer, which means those not using the stimulant would have a less stable income, but would be able to enjoy lower prices. However, those using the stimulant wouldn’t become models of stability either, since the stimulant is more about extreme effort than about a constant increase in efficiency. So, the niche for the workhorses will remain wide enough for a long time.
