Anders Sandberg, for lo it is he, gets quoted on the emerging debate on smart drugs and their impact upon the education system in the future. Critics have a dangerous vision of self-medicating nerds plotting to ace their exams and pull ahead of their rivals rather than working out occult symbols, raising D'hoffryn, and attempting to end the world.
“Cod liver oil is taken as a
cognitive enhancer,” says Dr Anders Sandberg, a neuroscientist at
Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute, which investigates
how technology will affect the human race.
“Even something as
simple as eating a biscuit at the right moment can improve your
performance, yet no one would complain about that except your dentist.
It doesn’t matter how you bring about change. What matters is the
result.
“Surely, anything that improves the ability to learn is a good thing,” says Dr Sandberg.
Smart drugs are an emergent tool and the Times Educational Supplement acknowledges that there are forty in production. Modafinil and ritalin are known quantities but "brain botox" sounds really scary. I have this vision that the drug erases all neural wrinkles and a race of golden haired cuckoos reduce their school to ash and then mingle menacingly round the local offy, destroying the effects of the drugs with a liberal dose of cider.
Amusement aside, there is a report expected from government in the next month on the rules that could govern 'smart drugs'. This will be one of the strongest tests yet, of how the government plans to resolve the tension between the right to self-medicate and their horror of self-improvement. People who abolish grammars will not promote cognitive enhancement: they are unlikely to abandon mediocrity after it has taken them so many decades to achieve.