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Comment by mynameishere | Hacker News Reader

A hallmark of conservativism is to recognize that 90 percent of our behavior is much the same as occurred 2000 years ago, but many, many innovations came and went in between (Heroin: Cure for morphine addiction). What happened to them? They were tried, and they were discarded by the credible professions.

Maybe these drugs are good. "Maybe". Most drug tests occur over a matter of months, rather than a lifetime. Caffeine has been tried over centuries, and that fact has value, because within those centuries are lifetimes and generations. Every new drug is roulette, and you know it.

modafinil have almost zero side-effects in comparison,

See, bullshit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil#Side-effects

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If I understand correctly, that page says that 34% of modafinil takers reported headaches, compared to 23% of non-modafinil takers, 11% reported nausea (vs. 3%), 7% reported nervousness (vs. 3%), and 5% reported insomnia (vs. 1%). What do you think the numbers for caffeine would be? Caffeine withdrawal is a major cause of headaches, and caffeine is a major cause of nervousness, insomnia, tachycardia, hypertension, dizziness, etc.

I'm not saying caffeine is some kind of dangerous drug; I'm just saying that "almost zero side effects in comparison" is at least plausible given the Wikipedia page.

Caffeine has this other advantage: That certain beverages that contain it are culinarily exquisite. Same with ethanol (praise god).

Modafinil is effective in small enough doses that you could put it into just about any beverage you like, just like amphetamine, piracetam, and so on, and unlike ethanol. You may enjoy quaffing toxic organic solvents like ethanol, but I don't particularly fancy the idea myself.

You can't really put piracetam in "just about any beverage", both because of the taste and the sheer quantity. That would be like trying to hide a tablespoon of ground-up mothballs in your orange juice. (Aniracetam or oxiracetam, maybe.)

Oops! I was speaking from ignorance. Thank you for the correction!

Once upon a time I bought a large can of piracetam powder from a random Internet site, wondering why the pills were so much more expensive than the powder. I found out with my first drink -- dear god, the bitterness! I drank a few gulps, gave up, and haven't tried it since.

Excuse me, but I am compelled to call your bullshit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#Overuse

The only difference is, modafinil is classified as a drug and so the negative effects are termed "side effects" while caffeine is classified as food and so the same exact negative effects are termed "overuse". It's an emotional/connotative difference. The list itself is almost identical: nervousness, headaches, insomnia, dry mouth, rapid heartbeat etc. In fact, I don't see caffeine's potential dangers of mania, depression and psychosis on the modafinil list. How's that for conservative?

I guess that's why I'm not a conservative; I certainly don't agree with that statement. But it's not something you could prove or disprove factually, so let's just call it a difference of opinion.

What you linked to is actually a pretty mild side effect profile, although I take back "almost zero side effects." The maximum increase compared to placebo is 11% (for headaches), whereas the majority of people have caffeine-related headaches at some point.

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