Marcus Hutchins: "A while back I encountered several studies researching the effects of Adderall on neurotypicals. Both people with and without ADHD tend to report a significant increase in productivity resulting from taking Adderall. It’s well establish that Adderall boosts productivity in people with ADHD, likely by correcting counteracting their brain’s natural deficit of dopamine and norepinephrine.
With neurotypicals on the other hand, the results were very different. One study showed that neurotypicals felt more productive when taking Adderall vs a placebo. But their objective productivity remained unchanged or even declined while under its effects. Another study showed that Adderall use led to a noticeable decline in objective productivity.
Since most people without ADHD don’t have deficits in dopamine or norepinephrine, the Adderall increases neurotransmitter levels above normal, producing a high. Since dopamine and norepinephrine play a significant role in feelings of confidence, satisfaction, and gratification; it’s not really unexpected that a surplus would skew judgement.
Having ADHD myself, and having on many occasions accidentally double dosed my Adderall, I’ve personally experienced both sides of this. The genuine productivity boost from using a much-needed medication, and the overstimulated overconfident word soup, which I look back on at a later date with dismay."
similarly: "What’s interesting is studies attempting to measure productivity increase due to use of LLMs are actually finding the opposite. Everyone feels more productive, but the data is showing a notable decrease in objective productivity among LLM users. My very un-scientific hypothesis is that many LLM users are simply just completely cracked out on dopamine. The euphoria resulting from their perceived now limitless abilities is clouding their judgement."
"[W]hat if we replicated the Adderall study with LLMs? Would we find similar results that LLM use does boost productivity for people with ADHD by increasing dopamine and reducing heavy lifting? Or is any increase in productivity negated by the fact that low-quality output is inherent to the LLM, and not purely tied the mental state of the user?
Either way [...[ I think people are simply overestimating their productivity and abilities as the result of a dopamine high produced by their instant gratification machine."