Coffee and Cigarettes

Rating: 4/10 (14 July 2016)

Something very close to NZT was discovered log ago: coffee and cigarettes. This dynamic combination has been demonstrated to improve cognitive ability--though many, perhaps rightly, don't like the delivery mechanism.
The movie is not all that interesting. The main way it ropes in the viewer is to make him ask--over and over again--gee, what if I could do that! Otherwise, the tale is high-tech version of Faust except that Mephistopheles has been replaced by a drug. Our hero goes for the money and the babes.
Given that the mechanism by which intellect is associated with the brain has not been established (it is not necessarily a sole consequence of neural complexity) I don't know how anyone can say that "we use only about 20% of our brain." For those who are curious, there are many good arguments out there for why the mind is not a matter of brain mechanics but something all together different--transcendent, you might say. Start with the writings of Hubert Dreyfus, Roger Penrose and Stanley Jaki.