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"Defection game" implies that it's zero-sum, but from what you're saying, it seems like the world would be greatly improved if all low-conscientiousness people used amphetamine. Unless there are some serious side effects that would outweigh the improvements in conscientiousness, of course.
When it's in an academic context, it absolutely is- grades tend to be on a curve rather than objective (though that depends on the institution), and if you're taking performance-enhancing drugs to get As, that means someone else is closer to getting an F. Sure, one could argue that it's valid to cheat to get a credential that doesn't matter, but that outlook doesn't help anyone else in the class.
Otherwise, I would tend to agree that widespread amphetamine usage, if the accelerated productivity is rewarded by employers rather than simply becoming a new baseline, would yield massive improvements. Because I'm absolutely certain that won't happen and have seen examples (though some fictional) of a population's chemical dependence being abused for some other goal, I don't actually think this is a good idea.
EA would do well to fund a second-generation amphetamine, though.
I might be sounding a little too idealistic here, but grades are definitely not the main point when you're "in an academic context". Hopefully you're actually trying to learn something and having stronger, more focused peers to talk to makes this significantly easier.
This is very much not true! Grading is almost always against the difficulty of the material, not against your peers. I have never heard of a single colleague who ever made their class this insanely zero-sum. Any sort of curve is just a sanity check to make sure that estimates of difficulty are correct and always take into account impressions of how strong a given class is compared to past ones. If someone is closer to getting an A, they ask better questions in class, are a better resource to talk to outside of class, and in general make the class better.
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