Actually, I don’t think oxygen tanks are that expensive relative to the potential gain. Assuming that the first result I found for a refillable oxygen tank system is a reasonable price, and conservatively assuming that it completely breaks down after 5 years, that’s only $550 a year, which puts it within the range of “probably worthwhile for any office worker in the US” (assuming an average salary of $43k) if it confers a performance benefit greater than around 1.2% on average.
These tanks supposedly hold 90% pure oxygen, and are designed to be used with a little breathing lasso thing that ends up with you breathing around 30% oxygen (depending on the flow rate of course).
Oh, that is interesting. I was sort of assuming that you would have to pay for each refill and that a recharger wouldn’t be just <$3k.
Also, interesting links. Connecting psychometric tasks to actual monetary value is always tricky, but those studies certainly suggest there might be meaningful benefit (but the benefit will be weaker at 30% oxygen—the links seem to all be at 40%).
One big problem there is that $3k is a lot to pay up front. But on the upside, if you can change the flow rate, I suspect it wouldn’t be too hard to blind the oxygen content...
Actually, I don’t think oxygen tanks are that expensive relative to the potential gain. Assuming that the first result I found for a refillable oxygen tank system is a reasonable price, and conservatively assuming that it completely breaks down after 5 years, that’s only $550 a year, which puts it within the range of “probably worthwhile for any office worker in the US” (assuming an average salary of $43k) if it confers a performance benefit greater than around 1.2% on average.
These tanks supposedly hold 90% pure oxygen, and are designed to be used with a little breathing lasso thing that ends up with you breathing around 30% oxygen (depending on the flow rate of course).
Since 30-40% oxygen concentrations seem to increase word recall by a factor of 30-50% and reduce reaction time by ~30%, improve 2-back performance by ~15%, and improve mental arithmetic accuracy by ~20% for 3-digit numbers, it seems pretty likely that the overall benefit of oxygen supplementation while working could be greater than breakeven.
Oh, that is interesting. I was sort of assuming that you would have to pay for each refill and that a recharger wouldn’t be just <$3k.
Also, interesting links. Connecting psychometric tasks to actual monetary value is always tricky, but those studies certainly suggest there might be meaningful benefit (but the benefit will be weaker at 30% oxygen—the links seem to all be at 40%).
One big problem there is that $3k is a lot to pay up front. But on the upside, if you can change the flow rate, I suspect it wouldn’t be too hard to blind the oxygen content...