Let me guess edw519, you probably drink, both coffee and alcohol, you probably also consume your fair amount of sugar and possibly (although unlikely) smoke cigarettes. Why is it that smoking weed (to help you work/play) makes you winy and a pothead but it's ok to be a raging asshole if you miss your morning coffee/cig?

You guess wrong, josefresco. But it doesn't really matter anyway because I never "advertised" my habits to the world. This guy did.

Just slightly ignorant as I pointed out above.

Ignorant I can live with. But this was also irresponsible.

This is hacker news, where people post and learn and share together about doing difficult and exciting work. I realize that OP had no idea where his essay would end up, but it ended up here (at #1 no less) so that's where it warranted a response.

I really don't care what anyone's personal habits are, but as soon as you write about how you use drugs to take the easy way out, and that post ends up on a site where people bust their butts to do good work and add value to other people's lives, you're fair game.

You've never had a cup of coffee or tea, or a soda? Yeah right.

I'm more concerned with my Coca Cola (sugar/acid) intake than THC. I, unlike many Americans don't compartmentalize these substances and don't prescribe to the drugs=bad (unless Pfizer prescribes them) thinking.

A friend of mine has the opposite situation - she can't have any caffeine after noon or she will be up all night.

Anyways...I enjoy consuming all 4. I suppose my vice is tasty liquids.

Your rant about graduate school versus a "real job" also seems like mostly a non sequitur.

You're probably right. If this hadn't made it to #1 so quickly (no fault of OP of course), I may not have even responded at all. But it did, so I did, and I didn't hold any punches.

I just found it ironic that many of us who do good work 80 to 100 hours per week and come here for a break among our peers find a student who needs to resort to drugs to cope (or whatever) with his difficulties at #1.

Without even entering a debate about the pros and cons of drugs in general, I found the essay wimpy and irresponsible. Since I can't vote it down, I shouted it down. No apologies.

You found it "ironic", did you?

and come here for a break among our peers find a student who needs to resort to drugs to cope (or whatever) with his difficulties at #1.

I don't see any evidence in the article that the student "needs" to "resort to drugs" to "cope with his difficulties" -- that seems entirely to be an interpretation you're reading into the article. He chooses to smoke pot, and apparently that annoys you -- fair enough, but your reaction doesn't appear to have much relevance to the substance of the article.

Then why did he write it?

What he did not do is "whine" about why he "needs to resort" to smoking pot to "cope with his difficulties" -- the whole "whiny and irresponsible" theme seems absent from the article and is just something you've dreamed up on your own, as far as I can see.

I thought it was funny -- reminded me of a cranky old guy saying "Dang kids today! Toking up and killing brain cells"

Note I'm a libertarian and don't think that government has any business with what I choose to ingest. But heck, if you want to post an article on how good it is to toke up for your schoolwork, you gotta expect to hear some people who disagree for various reasons, right? What do you guys want, to be able to smoke it up and not have anybody say "what a waste -- can't you succeed without all the partying?" The reaction seems very mob-like.

There's all kinds of cool subtopics to this - the role of self-medication, the differences between pot and alcohol cutlures, the various moral implications of ingesting various substances, the stereotypical toked-up college liberal going to school for life, etc. Fun stuff to kick around, in my opinion.

he just questioned the morality of pot as an aide in student studies

No I didn't.

I challenged the appropriateness of a #1 hn post from a student who uses drugs to get by and then brags about it.

The reaction seems very mob-like.

I didn't know what to expect, but this was no surprise. Since "net" scores are the only thing that show, I'm curious how many up votes and down votes there were. Even though the net is negative, I wonder how many people agreed.

It would have been more meaningful if he was a physics or science PhD. A pot smoking liberal arts PhD is... eh. Not news.

Right. Until some voted it up to #1 here.

I voted you up just based on all the crowd-voting going on.

Sorry about misrepresenting your post. It had been a while since you posted it, and it's gone now.

I do agree this article was a poorly conceived article though.

And, you'd have to post whiny comments here trying to get people to Follow Your Path to make yourself feel like you made the right choice.

Instead, most of the site already agrees with your choices ;)

You still get your name published, regardless of "chemical help" or not. Who are you again?

Get out of cocoon, er I mean school, get a real job, get married. have a couple of kids, get a mortgage and a couple of car payments, raise those kids without worrying too much about the evils around them, visit Mom in her nursing home, do things for others in need, and, if you have time, have a nice life too. But don't drop a single egg while you're juggling.

Why should he make the choices you did? From the tone of your comment, it looks like these choices are making your life miserable. Why should he do what you say?

And don't you dare miss a day of work, no matter how mind numbingly boring or lame it is, or how sleepy or depressed you feel.

Why not? Why is going to work every day so important?

The only thing worse than the whining of a student is the whining of a pothead student. Grow up.

Actually, what's worse is a whining adult. Nobody actually cares about your car payments or kids.

So what?

Why should he make the choices you did?

I never claimed that I made those choices. But lots of people have. And they're not blogging about how they need drugs to get through their day.

Why is going to work every day so important?

Never started a business before, huh?

what's worse is a whining adult. Nobody actually cares about your car payments or kids.

OP isn't an adult? I don't have a car payment or kids. And if I did, I certainly wouldn't blog about how I used drugs to deal with them.

You could make a (calm!) argument that the author has chosen a poor coping method, but this? No, this comment of yours says a lot more about you than it does about the article.

Thank you

But this sounds to me like the textbook definition of "kneejerk reaction."

Actually, it was anything but. I thought long and hard about my post and was curious what kind of reaction it would elicit. I guess I found out.

You could make a (calm!) argument that the author has chosen a poor coping method, but this?

I considered that, but obviously didn't. Let me explain...

I love this community. It's my virtual home. That's why I responded like I did.

In order to glean the signal from the noise, we put up with a lot here. Posts like "not hacker news", posts giving advice learned from a book somewhere, submissions about politics and religion, and unnecessary profanity. I have read most of them and usually chuckled and moved on. Not this time.

Lots of people come here, many young and impressionable, looking for all kinds of things. So what is the first thing they saw today? A post from someone who hasn't really accomplished anything important to hackers (as far as I could tell) and who chooses to resort to drugs to get through his day. And then brags about it.

I wanted to make it clear in no uncertain terms that there are people who disagree with him and this post has no business here at hn. I could have said the lame "not hacker news", but that hardly would have gotten my point across.

We are achievers. We work hard and find a way to produce value for other people, often taking the difficult road instead of the easy way out. This guy's post was IMHO the precise opposite of what I believe and what I hope others believe too. Making it through school using drugs is a smack in the face of those of us who work hard in the real world and assemble here to share it.

I simply don't care how anyone wants to live their life. If you want to get high, get drunk, jump out of airplanes, or just sit in front of the TV, go to it.

But if you come into my virtual home, I will respond just like I would in my physical home and say, "Take your drugs and get out."

I wanted to get people's attention. Do you think it worked?

No, this comment of yours says a lot more about you than it does about the article.

What does it say about me that my other 2,873 comments don't?

But this right here? Sounds like you just snapped. What do you care if people smoke up in their spare time? Why is it bad if it helps them cope with stress? I'm sure exercise would be better, but doing nothing about stress is probably worse.

Agree: whining about how hard being a student is does make you a pussy. Adding pot doesn't change the equation. =)

Sounds like you just snapped.

Not at all. This was planned. I won't beat it up, but like I've responded already, I just don't want to see any more about drugs, sex, religion, politics, profanity, and certainly not the stream of conciousness bloggings of liberal arts students. I can get all that at a thousand other places (but I don't). I just didn't think that the usual "not hacker news" would have much impact here.

I pushed the envelope and learned a little more about our community. Lots of people disagree with me on more than just a few issues. No surprise.

Sorry if I disappointed you. Hopefully I'll be able to earn respect in future discussions.

Now let's get back to hacker news.

Agreed! People seem to forget that there was a previous generation that did some of the things they're doing. It's a bunch of rediscovery and it's boring. Find something new you damned kids (and get off my lawn)!

(Except the doing things for others in need.)

I think this is an intersting prologue to how debates regarding mind-enhancing drugs will take place.

I also note that your reaction was highly...emotional? Your reasoning seems specious. Using marijuana doesn't mean that this person lives in a cocoon or is incapible of hard work or creating value somewhere.

Looking back, I can't imagine I would ever talk like that to anyone here, and certainly anyone in person. But since I was responding to a pseudonym from a passing blog, I took a few liberties.

Everyone should be allowed one pass. I guess this one was mine.

You remind me of a slightly more evolved version of those 90 year olds who hate anyone who isn't as repressed and miserable then they are. So you made choices according to the conventional wisdom of your time, your life sucks as a result, and you're getting more and more trapped in your shitty, repeating cycle as the time to get out gets smaller and smaller. You're going to die (tick tock, tick tock), and instead of doing all the unimagined cool stuff you would of dreamed up while using drugs responsibly, you're going to waste all of this beautiful gift that is our fleeting life doing stuff you hate. Each day, you feel it coming, and go through it anyway.

And, to top it off, when you die, you'll think your ascending into heaven, and God, a black woman, will meet you at the gate with dreads and a gold and green cap, and a blunt with 4 grams of hydro in a swisher sweet wrapper, and say "I put all those drugs all over the planet so you could use them to help you be creative enough to invent the future, and you failed to do your part because you were too distracted from the perpetual cycle of maintaining illusions. Fuck you, mon, I'm sending you back as a cockroach. You don't need more then a brainstem, because you never use it anyway. If living as a thoughtless drone in a hivemind was good enough for you this time, that's all you get the next time around." Then, the gates will slam shut, and you'll see God and Sagan and Erdos and Steve Jobs, all taking hits of that blunt, planning the evolution of humanity, and bumping some new Radiohead, while your consciousness gets shunted into the body of a cockroach so you can relive life in a more metaphoric expression of the way you chose to live in your human form.

Sounds less like a problem with people who use drugs and more like a problem with how your choices have sucked, and continue to suck at very deep levels of reality.

Your massive inellect and talent is wasted here at hn. Looking forward to seeing you on Dr. Phil.