Well the no free lunch theory is I think wrong, we are vastly better off with modern medicines. We are already getting free lunches of longer and heather lives.
My experience, obviously not scientific, with modafinil is mild mania, grumpiness/quick to anger (What I think is the tiredness coming through), increase concentration and attentiveness to a task. My intelligence goes down. Mixed with alcohol it can cause blackouts (It has a long half life so this can be a day or so later). Hard to sleep on. Euphoric enough to take recreationally.
Listening to other people they have different effects.
For me I'm not sure it's a effective drug. Because it's said long term you can build up tolerance I've always only done it one pill per week for small projects, so maybe doing it on a regular schedule it might stop some of the above negatives.
The "free lunches of longer and healthier lives" are due mostly to clean water and covered sewers, with the rest of medical science not mattering to the vast majority of people who don't suffer from life-limiting medical problems.
Along with clean water and covered sewers we have improved working conditions (which medical science has contributed to without making everyone take medication), and a range of other quality-of-life changes that have occurred in society.
You're missing his point, which is a reasonable one. If the human body truly functioned better with modafinil, then evolution would have given us humans that naturally produced modafinil. That isn't the case, so the assumption is there is some downside to the drug, and one that actually outweighs the positives. However, the article makes modafinil seems like an obviously positive thing and that taking the pill fixes some bug in natural human behavior.
Given that our brains have been under heavy evolution, there's no particular reason to think we're at a local optimum.
The environment we've evolved for is not the one we are currently in. What was adaptive 1,000, 10,000, or 100,000 years ago may not be what we need today.
Your definition of "optimum" and your genes' may differ wildly. For example your genes build disposable bodies for the same reason humans build disposable cars: there's no sense in working ever harder to keep the old model going when making a new one is easier.
On the other hand, I've got a similar sentiment from a different perspective: it is surprisingly easy to to FUBAR an evolved system. We're still trying to figure out what effects electric light has on humans. [1] Anybody who thinks they've figured out all the subtle effects of a drug like this is fooling themselves.
Evolution doesn't work that way. It isn't a directed force. It's a trial-and-error system that can produce more durable life-forms by killing off many of the less-durable versions.
Humans have already stepped outside the boundaries of natural evolution. We make casts and hardware for broken limbs; form societies and specialized communities; use drugs to resolve medical issues in individuals that evolution would've killed off. Although as a species we probably rose to dominance by being long-distance runners, most of us can't run a marathon today, because we no longer need to.
Likewise, evolution didn't make humans naturally better at living in cubicles focusing on a tiny device for many hours a day over the course of the last 50 years. The natural wiring for human neurology is still geared towards being aware of our environment, distracted by sounds and sights and things going on, because that's how you survive sneak attacks from predators or spot camouflaged prey.
It's smart to be skeptical of anything claiming to be a miracle cure, but not on the basis of some kind of spooky evolutionary action. Rather, we haven't yet gotten a great track record of coming up with chemicals that can do only one thing to our brains without upsetting some other aspect of our neurochemistry, and that's largely because the brain is wickedly complex and only recently are we starting to make some progress in understanding how it works. I have no doubt that one day we'll be able to fine-tune our own neurochemistry with few side-effects, but today might not be that day.
Evolution is just randomness that causes a rough trend in a direction. Many species have gone extinct under it's rules.
Even if it was a thing, it has your species interests at heart, not you.
There is a lot to the article and you should take heed it's the future, like it or not.
But if you want a warning sign on Modafinil as per the article the drug came out in 1998, it has been and is still is fairly easy to get, why is it not bigger than it is?
These drugs are still just rough tools, the new batch are coming soon, but Modafinil is not "Limitless"
My experience, obviously not scientific, with modafinil is mild mania, grumpiness/quick to anger (What I think is the tiredness coming through), increase concentration and attentiveness to a task. My intelligence goes down. Mixed with alcohol it can cause blackouts (It has a long half life so this can be a day or so later). Hard to sleep on. Euphoric enough to take recreationally.
Listening to other people they have different effects.
For me I'm not sure it's a effective drug. Because it's said long term you can build up tolerance I've always only done it one pill per week for small projects, so maybe doing it on a regular schedule it might stop some of the above negatives.