To anyone who stays abreast of wide social trends, it’s increasingly obvious that the world is rapidly becoming worse for those of lower and average intelligence.
The extinction of jobs comprised of rote, repetitive, and unsophisticated tasks is a dire inevitability thanks to the aggressive innovation that our economy fundamentally relies on. In the past, those of low or average intelligence were practically guaranteed an unremarkable life of labor in a factory or a field, fast forward to the very near future and nothing is guaranteed. The only hope is to stay well ahead of the curve of automation. It’s time to invest in your own cognitive capital.
Update: The red pill formula is the differentiating feature of the smart drug that I created, Caballo. It's now EXCLUSIVELY AVAILABLE to clients of our flagship transformational program, Anakainōsis. However, you can enhance your cognitive capital by using the Nootropics and biohacking protocol described here.
What is Cognitive Capital?
Competitive firms are increasingly considering the impact on their bottom line of that which cannot be automated or outsourced; the cognitive abilities of their organization’s members.
Professor Jerry Muller, the author of The Mind and the Market, articulated it best:
“…a period of growing equality of access to education and increasing stratification of marketplace rewards, both of which have increased the importance of human capital. One element of human capital is cognitive ability: quickness of mind, the ability to infer and apply patterns drawn from experience, and the ability to deal with mental complexity. Another is character and social skills: self-discipline, persistence, responsibility. And a third is actual knowledge. All of these are becoming increasingly crucial for success in the post-industrial marketplace.” (March 2013, Foreign Affairs)
Abilities heightened in those who are rich in Cognitive Capital...
Working memory
Rapid access to episodic memory
Problem-solving ability
Pattern recognition
Mathematics proficiency
Geo-spatial awareness
Fluid intelligence
Decision making
Accuracy of semantic memory
The red pill
The ingredients of the Red Pill are selected for the advantage they imbue in cognitively demanding work, making it ideal for...
Fixing a programming error in a block of RoR code
Preparing a risk assessment for a client
Studying for the MCAT exam
Clarifying the quantitative analysis of a stock's trading patterns
Engineering a widget
Performing a backlink audit
Making sense of sloppy accounting records
Designing a really intuitive app or website
The Red Pill Formula is comprised of these pharmaceutical-grade Nootropics...
Oxiracetam
An Ampakine that modulates the AMPA Receptor and promotes long-term potentiation (LTP) according to a paper published in the British Journal of Pharmacology. Long-term potentiation is the foundation of memory, it’s the process of signal enhancement on a microscopic level between neurons. We rely on it for personal development, learning new skill sets, and much more.
The racetam is reported anecdotally all over the Internet to aid logic, mathematic, or spatial intelligence-intensive tasks. To quote an insightful review of the smart drug:
“Sometimes ideas and concepts will come to mind seemingly void of emotion, meaning it is (apparently) easier to get to the point of the matter. This is a difficult concept to articulate. I can see a potential advantage in those cases in where emotional bias might otherwise cloud one’s logical reasoning process.”
In the second part of Professor Muller’s statement, he lists self-discipline as an important factor in human capital, I’ve often called Oxiracetam the discipline molecule, because when I’m on it I just do a hundred percent of what I know I should be doing. It’s one of the most effective biohacks for self-control.
Pramiracetam
A University of Modena study of 35 men compared and contrasted the effects of memory training and Pramiracetam, it concluded:
Results showed that objective memory gains of the two groups receiving pramiracetam were significantly larger than that of the [memory training] and [control] groups… In the [drug therapy] group, the level of depression, negatively interfered with metamemory but not with actual memory performance.
From a 2010 review:
[Pramiracetam] significantly improved some memory activities, especially delayed recall (30–50%) during 18 months of therapy and 1 month of follow- up.
Alpha-GPC
The third factor of human capital is technical skill sets and abilities. Neuroplasticity is the capacity of our minds to adapt to novelty — learning Portuguese, studying philosophy, or starting a martial art — and thrive. Personal development of any significance requires that the gears of the mechanisms of Neuroplasticity are well-greased.
A 2009 paper Alternative medicine review stated: [Alpha GPC] is neuroprotective and supports neuroplasticity via nerve growth factor receptors. ACh plays an especially important role in the formation of new long-term memories; a 2007 German study of 12 healthy human subjects, includes some great insights, Cholinergic neuromodulation is pivotal for arousal, attention, and cognitive processes… The German study went on to say that…
…it has been hypothesized that ACh enhances the signal-to-noise ratio of input processing… These findings are in line with a cholinergic focusing effect that optimizes the detection of relevant signals during information processing in humans.
This finding is great news for overwhelmed lifehackers, entrepreneurs, professionals, and students, who face the continual challenge of distraction. The healthy Germans in the study got better at focusing on the important information due to the long-term excitability that ACh facilitates. It’s well said that we live finite lives in an age of infinite distraction; the screens that are rarely further than an arm’s reach away from us are constantly socially engineering us to ignore our actual goals and instead get stuck in the quicksand of digital amusement. Nootropics like this are a potent tool for getting unstuck.
Noopept
There are two proposed mechanisms of action of Noopept...
Sensitizing effect on acetylcholine processes — Noopept has a synergistic ‘cholinosensitizing’ effect with the Alpha-GPC in Caballo, wherein acetylcholine delivery to the neuron is improved.
Induction of neurotrophin production — according to a 2008 study which found that it calibrated Brain-derived neurotrophic factor. To quote the study: Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that neurotrophin synthesis in the hippocampus determines cognitive function, particularly in consolidation and delayed memory retrieval…
TyrosineY and MagnesiumX
The proprietary nutraceutical ingredients of Caballo, our secret cognition sauce.
Caballo is a tool for biohacking Cognitive Capital in the long and short term.
In the short term, it imbues an appreciable cognitive advantage within 4–6 hours of dosing. If you’ve followed the Caballo Protocol, the data will reveal a statistically significant uptick in your brain training scores while you are on Caballo for geospatial tasks, math ability, reaction times, and working memory. Which will manifest in professional performance improvements in…
Taking second and third doses of Caballo, I’ve maintained a persistent focus on difficult web development and SEO tasks for up to 12 hours.
Caballo’s long-term positive effects correlate to the second half of Professor Muller’s statement...
“…Another is character and social skills: self-discipline, persistence, responsibility. And a third is actual knowledge. All of these are becoming increasingly crucial for success in the post-industrial marketplace.”
Smart drugs are the gateway drug to genuine personal development, which is a lot of grueling, hard work with limited immediate payoff. When people first experience the near-instantaneous upgrade of focus, memory, motivation, and cognition resulting from smart drugs they begin to ask what else they can do that will make them more productive and happy in the long term which leads them down the rabbit hole of personal development. Smart drugs provide the motivational fuel to follow through on meaningful personal development work which will yield a return on investment. How many people do you know that are at least a little bitter about life? This is largely because they underestimated the amount of motivational fuel they would need to accomplish their goals.
While you are on the discipline molecule you will cement long-term productive habits (especially if you are gamifying your lifestyle with the Coach.me app).
The Neuroplasticity that the Alpha-GPC and Noopept sparks is key to high-leverage skillset acquisition which serves as the foundation for a truly dynamic career.
Cognitive decline in our aging population is described here as an impending tsunami with the potential to wreak our healthcare system and drain significant cognitive capital from the market. This is bad news for society at large but it’s good news for individuals, like yourself who are (hopefully) wise enough to invest in building and maintaining their cognitive capital now. If you search the ingredients of Caballo on Pubmed, you’ll find that the strongest scientific research demonstrates the anti-aging and cognitive decline-preventing effects of these smart drugs.
The black pill
So a lot of this article has focused on how smart drugs can be beneficial to those in geeky, technical professions. The Black Pill (Piracetam) may yield a greater ROI for professions that rely more on pure motivation, energy, and verbal intelligence.
Especially if your work depends upon you having a silver tongue, a golden mouthpiece, or being a perpetually persuasive pontificator — if your compensation depends upon your verbal abilities — I encourage you to A/B test (on Piracetam/off Piracetam) the verbal intelligence portion of the Caballo Protocol...
A self-quantification protocol you can use to determine the effect of smart drugs on your neurobiology - the next step to upgrading your cognitive capital.
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The Red Pill Formula for Biohacking Cognitive Capital