For a while now, I have been working on a potentially impactful project. The main limiting factor is my own personal productivity- a great deal of the risk is frontloaded in a lengthy development phase. Extrapolating the development duration based on progress so far does not yield wonderful results. It appears I should still be able to finish it in a not-absurd timespan, it will just be slower than ideal.

I've always tried to improve my productivity, and I've made great progress in that compared to ten or even five years ago, but at this point I've picked most of the standard low hanging fruit. I've already fiddled with some extremely easy and safe kinda-nootropics already- melatonin, occasional caffeine pills- but not things like modafinil or amphetamines, or some of the less studied options.

And while thinking about this today, I decided to just run some numbers on amphetamines. Based on my current best estimates of market realities and the potential success and failure cases of the project, assuming amphetamines could improve my productivity by 30% on average, the expected value of taking amphetamines for the duration of development comes out to...

...a few hundred human lives.

And, in the best-reasonable case scenario, a lot more than that. This wasn't really unexpected, but it's surprisingly the first time I actually did the math.

So I imagine the God of Dumb Trolley Problems sits me down for a thought experiment and explains: "In a few years, there will be a building full of 250 people. A bomb will go off and kill all of them. You have two choices." The god leans in for dramatic effect. "Either you can do nothing, and let all of them die... or..." It lowers its head just enough for shadows to cast over its features... "You take this low, safe dose of Adderall for a few years, and the bomb magically gets defused."

This is not a difficult ethical problem. Even taking into account potential side effects, even assuming the amphetamines were obtained illegally and so carried legal liability, this is not a difficult ethical problem. When I look at this, I feel like the answer of what I should do is blindingly obvious.

And yet I have a strong visceral response of "okay yeah sure but no." I assume part of this is fairly extreme risk aversion to the idea of getting anything like amphetamines outside of a prescription. Legal trouble would be pretty disastrous, even if unlikely. And part of me is spooked about doing something like this without expert oversight.

But why not just try to get an actual prescription? For this, or some other advantageous semi-nootropic, at least. Once again, I just get a gross feeling about the idea of trying to manipulate the system. How about if I just explain the situation in full, with zero manipulation, to a sympathetic doctor? The response from my gut feels like a blank "... no."

So basically, I feel stuck. Part of me wants to recognize the risk aversion as excessive, and suggests I should at least take whatever steps I can safely. The other part is saying "but that is doing something waaaay out of the ordinary and maybe there's a reason for that that you haven't properly considered."

I am not even sure what I want to ask with this post. I guess if you've got any ideas or insights, I'd like to hear them.