Let’s say there’s a drug that gives people 20% more energy (or just cognitive energy). My intuition is that if I gave it to 100 people, I would not end up with 120 people’s worth of work. Why?
Possibilities:
the energy gets soaked up by activities other than the ones I am measuring. e.g. you become better at cleaning your house, or socializing, or spend more time on your hobby.
The benefits accrue to other people- you have more energy which means you lose chore-chicken with your partner, who now has slightly more energy for their stuff.
Energy wasn’t the only limiting reagent on your work. Energy improvements after a certain point are wasted because you need something else.
the drug might make you worse at those other things. E.g. adderall gives some people more energy and focus but less creativity and collaboration. Made more confusing because the drug can have opposite effects in different people
The scenarios you described sound plausible, but it could also be the other way round:
if there is a constant amount of work to do at house, you can do it 20% faster, so not only you have more energy for the remaining work but also more time;
you could spend some of the extra energy on figuring out how to capture the benefits of your work;
you could spend some of the extra energy on fixing things that were slowing you down;
the drug might make you better at other things, or at least having more energy could create a halo effect.
So I guess the answer is “it depends”, specifically it depends on whether you were bottlenecked by energy.
I don’t know what “cognitive energy” nor “worth of work” means, in any precise way that would let me understand why you’d expect a 100% linear relationship between them, or why you’d feel the need to point out that you don’t expect that.
If I did have such measures, I’d START by measuring variance across days for a given person, to determine the relationship, then variance across time for groups, and various across groups.
Only after measuring some natural variances would I hypothesize about the effect of a pill (and generally, pills aren’t that “clean” in their effect anyway).
edit (because I can’t reply further): Deep apologies. I will stop commenting on your shortforms, and attempt to moderate my presentation on posts as well. Thanks for the feedback.
This is the 5th comment you’ve left on my shortform, most of which feel uncollaborative and butterfly-squashing. I think your comments are in the harsh-side-of-fine zone for real posts, but are harsher than I want to deal with on shortform, so I ask that you stop.
Let’s say there’s a drug that gives people 20% more energy (or just cognitive energy). My intuition is that if I gave it to 100 people, I would not end up with 120 people’s worth of work. Why?
Possibilities:
the energy gets soaked up by activities other than the ones I am measuring. e.g. you become better at cleaning your house, or socializing, or spend more time on your hobby.
The benefits accrue to other people- you have more energy which means you lose chore-chicken with your partner, who now has slightly more energy for their stuff.
Energy wasn’t the only limiting reagent on your work. Energy improvements after a certain point are wasted because you need something else.
the drug might make you worse at those other things. E.g. adderall gives some people more energy and focus but less creativity and collaboration. Made more confusing because the drug can have opposite effects in different people
The scenarios you described sound plausible, but it could also be the other way round:
if there is a constant amount of work to do at house, you can do it 20% faster, so not only you have more energy for the remaining work but also more time;
you could spend some of the extra energy on figuring out how to capture the benefits of your work;
you could spend some of the extra energy on fixing things that were slowing you down;
the drug might make you better at other things, or at least having more energy could create a halo effect.
So I guess the answer is “it depends”, specifically it depends on whether you were bottlenecked by energy.
I don’t know what “cognitive energy” nor “worth of work” means, in any precise way that would let me understand why you’d expect a 100% linear relationship between them, or why you’d feel the need to point out that you don’t expect that.
If I did have such measures, I’d START by measuring variance across days for a given person, to determine the relationship, then variance across time for groups, and various across groups.
Only after measuring some natural variances would I hypothesize about the effect of a pill (and generally, pills aren’t that “clean” in their effect anyway).
edit (because I can’t reply further): Deep apologies. I will stop commenting on your shortforms, and attempt to moderate my presentation on posts as well. Thanks for the feedback.
This is the 5th comment you’ve left on my shortform, most of which feel uncollaborative and butterfly-squashing. I think your comments are in the harsh-side-of-fine zone for real posts, but are harsher than I want to deal with on shortform, so I ask that you stop.