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Comment by kgonza | Hacker News Reader

Not...

Ah, in your experience. I missed that, initially.

I meant to write "Not khat," which gives me the best inspiration ever (and a crash that lasts days when I get off of it).

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But you wouldn’t know if you were boring to other people would you?

Ridiculous, anyone would find my meticulous collection of geological specimens fascinating!

What part of the world are you in where khat is a thing?

Presumably middle east or north/eastern africa.

Then again I'm sure there are plenty of SV hipster types who might be big on it. "forget microdosing, khat is the new path to rockstar programming flow states"

Lol, do you have to be a hipster to try exotic drugs?

Is anyone afraid that microdosing might become the next must, if you want to be competitive in the programming fields of industry?

Microdosing is mostly hype. I know many people who've tried microdosing. Does it give you a 5% edge? Maybe... but sometimes it distracts and subtracts 5%.

It is not NZT from the movie Limitless, despite media hype.

As a productivity drug, amphetamines far outclass psychedelics.

> As a productivity drug, amphetamines far outclass psychedelics.

They're not mutually exclusive, I'm sure there's significant overlap between the adderall and microdosing crowds.

If you mean the substituted amphetamines which have serotonergic activity (DOB and such) then sure, amphetamines and psychedelics aren't mutually exclusive, but those are very rare drugs especially in the modern day.

No, because any benefits it might have are not big enough to be dealbreakers.

Programming, unlike sport, isn't about one winner taking all. At least not on the level of individual programming skill.

For something to be a must, it has to have a real constant effect for the majority of people. Thankfully microdosing doesn't fall into that category.

No, I think it's a bit ridiculous to assume that everyone would be microdosing or that it provides such a massive competitive edge such that the drawbacks of microdosing are outweighed.

What are the drawbacks? Nobody seems to talk about drawbacks.

Too much personal introspection and autobiographical thinking. Tangential thoughts not relevant to the task at hand. Lack of linear focus. That kind of thing.

does not sound like 'micro' dosing to me

I bet people are just a little more weird microdosing psychedelics. Like, come on if it impacts your ability to create novel things, then you are going to create novel conversation topics and some of those are going to be fucking weird. I love acid for personal development but I am not sure if I could handle this reality.

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