This blog is overrated.

This Nature article seems to be missing the point on brain-enhancing drugs:

And we are all aware of the abilities to enhance our brains with adequate exercise, nutrition and sleep. The drugs just reviewed, along with newer technologies such as brain stimulation and prosthetic brain chips, should be viewed in the same general category as education, good health habits, and information technology — ways that our uniquely innovative species tries to improve itself.

Of course, no two enhancements are equivalent in every way, and some of the differences have moral relevance. For example, the benefits of education require some effort at self-improvement whereas the benefits of sleep do not. Enhancing by nutrition involves changing what we ingest and is therefore invasive in a way that reading is not. The opportunity to benefit from Internet access is less equitably distributed than the opportunity to benefit from exercise.

They’re discussing these enhancements in pretty neutral terms here, as if the only things that mattered when evaluating something like drugs or sleep or nutrition were cost, time and effectiveness. But what about moral superiority? Healthy eating and exercise are clearly morally superior activities. Sleep is basically fine, although a little suspect because people actually like to sleep. Information technology is probably making us stupid and creating a society of narcissists, but it also allows Michael Pollan to pontificate to a larger audience about farmers’ markets and how it takes him only 20 minutes to cook dinner, so it’s more or less a wash.

Anything else is dangerous, destructive to one’s sense of self, or only helpful with rote, meaningless tasks while utterly disastrous for creativity or some other ineffable (and unstudyable) quality. It just has to be. It wouldn’t be fair if there was no punishment for taking a technological shortcut.