pfkurtz

We have 2 options for dangerous things: 1) Regulate. 2) Criminalize.

If lots of people do it, (1) is better, even though it normalizes the danger, because we get seat belts and pharmaceutical controls and the ability to innovate and discuss changes in public.

If the people involved can be cast as lower moral status / other, then it becomes a problem of "Dealing with THEM", and we get (2). This is correct if the primary activity is a real, moral crime (theft, extortion rackets), which changing consciousness and numbing pain aren't. This is almost NEVER correct in the case of voluntary economic transactions (for which the societal benefits of regulation have proven to be enormous), unless those interactions are inherently theftlike/extortionate/exploitative-involuntary, because it creates a spiral of violence.

So the questions are: Should pain numbing / consciousness altering be the province of organized crime? Should we devote substantial societal resources to a failed project of stopping people from altering consciousness and numbing pain, or change to make that fact less damaging? Should one part of society get to impose the violence-filled option on everyone else?

Isn't the suggestion that if there were not police/criminals as an interface to getting high, there would be a) the ability to know whether the drug one is purchasing contains a Fentanyl OD (labeled contents from auditable sources) b) more access to resources for dealing with addiction, less dangerous circumstances, etc

What has drug prohibition done to help the problem of addiction and violence in the United States?

It's because Iran is currently undergoing a large rebellion that might topple their human rights abusing government, and those other countries aren't.

If I were mostly mobile I would buy one of those 2-way screen extenders that attaches to the back of the laptop and gives you 3 monitors, and/or a large vertical touchscreen to use alongside.

Trackballs are nice to have in addition to mice.

Very disappointed by this. I've got mounted vertical monitors surrounding an extra wide curved monitor on a desk that has 3 distinct surfaces at different heights and a hidden shelf beneath, with a pull-out Kinesis keyboard and both a mouse and a trackball, with a large drafting desk running along one side, with a shelf above it for technical books.

There's a wide range of symptom-clusters called "depression" and other mental health issues that pair nicely with feeling terrible.

If it's not that bad, and/or if you have sufficient willpower or support you can change your life. But I wouldn't describe it as powering through. More like finding the capacity to grow and change; depression is neither monolith nor destiny.

Other people NEED modern pharmaceuticals to live full, functional lives.

**

Interesting that people seem to focus on the hallucination claim, not the deepening of interpersonal relationships claim, which is the much more important result, from my perspective, and the part really not replicable with a pill, because it requires an intense shared experience.

LSD:

Multiple times I did it with others and profoundly deepened my relationship with those individuals.

Another time I did it by myself and saw the face of evil and I've never been so terrified, but I survived and wouldn't change a thing.

I don't think any of that can be captured by whatever neuro-binding effect is being mimicked by these designed molecules.

I also took antidepressants for awhile once and it was diet and exercise and commitment to changing my life and talking to a therapist that was what helped; but I know others who need to take pills every day or things go bad. I wish there was a short treatment for people who need that.

Frege is all over analaytic philosophy, as I experienced it as an undergraduate in a top department. Many of the most important papers and books (Dummett, Kripke, Evans, etc) in philosophy of language, logic, mathematics take various of his positions as starting points.

I would describe Frege as the philosopher I had never heard of before showing up at a philosophy department whom I then heard the most about.

His insights were "forgotten" for a time, but have been central to discussions for several decades.

That he took a walk everyday is somewhat informative, given how much of his philosophy is centered on normativity, but I prefer the anecdote about how he was a billiards hustler as a student, because even more pointedly, Kant's philosophy is about making space for human freedom in a world of Newtonian mechanical determination.

Great love for Wittgenstein, Russell, Frege, the Vienna Circle—their philosophical and logical writings—and I do feel alienated when I encounter their popular treatments, because it makes my ego feel special having read their most important works, but I bet the Wittgenstein-Russell fame was good for lots of people getting exposed to the path: I heard about them in a Time Magazine special edition retrospective on artists and thinkers of the 20th Century 22 years ago.

To unite our points, I might be thinking of something like: the immensity of sensory and cognitive data that pass through (sub)consciousness during the learning task are sifted and sorted in the unconscious while not learning; one might call the sifting "forgetting" and the sorting "figuring out".

That's sometimes true but I think my point still stands.

When I'm studying a foreign language, I learn some words and they stick, but I'm exposed to a bunch more that I don't remember next time. I forget those meanings, but the ones that stuck are now vivid and with me, brighter.

When I'm studying Kubernetes, I end up reading a ton of information that's irrelevant to the task at hand, and lots of it doesn't make that much sense because I'm new to it. The next day, when I come back, the things that I actually understood remain, ready to be the foundation for new learning, which they couldn't have been when they were mere data points in an overwhelmed brain. I don't remember the parts I was confused about yesterday, just this stuff that now makes sense.

Learning is as much forgetting as remembering.

When I study something, I go for awhile, but eventually it becomes difficult, confusing, hard to see the forest for the trees. Particularly with technical information and skills like programming (or natural) languages.

When I come back a little bit later, I find that I only remember the things that made sense; my confusions are forgotten, and there is fresh mental space and energy to master a bit more of the terrain before I need another break.

Really, I have little piles everywhere around the house I tend to park for any length of time; I've never been able to do flashcards since my mom made me do them a ton when I was little, one of the ways I just do not learn.

I'm studying Programming Rust (O'Reilly, 2nd edition one year old, 800+pp) and I think it's fantastic. I am a better programmer for it.

4.6 stars wtih 200+ reviews on Amazon, for what it's worth.

(owner of Knuth and TLPI)

Leaving technical books in the bathroom is a crucial hack for lifelong adult learning.

The people who are unwelcoming on HN and the people who post interesting/challenging responses... do not seem to overlap.

Those are not places I suggested leaving books, because I'm not stupid. I suggested: by the toilet. So you can learn something every time you poop. Then there's these other things called shelves... I own a few.

There's an obvious example in programming: one might read a lot about machine learning, without becoming a practitioner. Without actually doing some work, one's opinions about building AIs wouldn't be worth much.

What breaks down is thinking this dichotomy captures the state of play wrt knowing lots of things. One of course has to practice knowledge, if that knowledge involves practicable skills, if one wants mastery.

If one wants to know history, or philosophy, or... many of the actual large bodies of knowledge that exist... one needs to get comfortable very regularly opening books. That doesn't mean it's all that's required!

What the heck are you even talking about? I gotta say, Hacker News is probably one of the least welcoming communities on the internet.

Not even close.

If you triple majored in 3 technical subjects, I submit that your aim was not what I am talking about.

I am talking about how you fit in learning the real knowledge of our collective culture over a lifetime, no matter what else you do.

Lol. Read my first line.

I'm a software engineer posting on Hacker news. I know how to learn a skill.

This is something else, that you can have, if you read lots of books and learn more languages.

Becoming smart is, in part, about being exposed to lots of others thoughts, and lots of facts, and discussing those things and thinking through them yourself.

A lot of people here are going to talk negatives and prioritization and purpose, but I personally also want to be practically omniscient, and you should strive for it too. You need strategies if you want to know a lot. Certainly focused things like classes and intensive study are necessary from time to time (and especially early in life), but we can't do that our whole lives, nor do we want to.

What we need is to develop habits of constant learning.

Here is one essential thing you can do to start learning a lot:

Fill your home with dual-language books, and keep opening them. Put a stack on your toilet.

By dual-language books, I mean books with the original language on one side, and your native language on the other. You'll find that the entirely of the classical pantheon, as well as much great literature and philosophy from many cultures is available in this form.

Spreading math books around your house helps too, of course, along with those on the other topics you want to master.

Keep opening them. Life is long, each day you can learn a bit more.

"Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves."

Thank you for this recommendation, I'm on a DynamoDB contract job and... really learning to think hard about key structure and designing for efficient querying, rather than efficient storage.

The opinions on this thread...

I keep a few math books and a variety of dual-language paperbacks in the bathroom. It's become a really important part of my intellectual diet.

Hi! I have no idea, just a lone guy on the internet. Rust seems cool. Thanks for the tool I use every day.

No she isn't, and if you're going to come out with specific accusations: fucking prove it.

8 arrests. Wow. Looks like they burned your whole town down. Except that didn't happen, and the police won. The Democrats did this to you? No. Far left activists in masks.

Seems like Brendan Eich had a raw experience. He also seems like he's doing fine. "Extra-legal"? Nonsense word.

Maybe too many people are losing their jobs due to accidentally saying mean things about gay people; maybe this is politically lopsided; if so, quantify it.

Again, if you think it's anything like the equivalent of the laws listed in those prior links, you're simply refusing to reckon with what I'm saying.

I think I'm finished. Wish HN allowed for account deletion.

The tiny minority of black bloc protesters aren't anyone American politicians constituents, and you're attempt to associate them with anything I've said just shows your bad faith in taking the rest of my words seriously at all.

One side is making laws banning speech and criminalizing identity, yet every single article about this talks first and foremost about some nebulous threat to free speech, and when questioned for real examples, real measure of the phenomenon, are only met with dissembling.

I absolutely do question liberal politicians; their failures are extremely frustrating. Far left antics don't touch them at all; as for The Squad, they're some of the most responsible politicians in this country. Those are my judgments. What I don't countenance is that anything like the problems with liberal and left-wing politics measures up against the systemic assault on human freedom being waged around the world by right wing political parties, making actual policy.

If you had an example of a liberal or even left-wing law that suppresses speech I feel like you would have supplied it. Some things are not balanced. Some things are not true. Some things are not right.

And there was a silence in Heaven about the space of an hour...