Silicon Valley is on drugs
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Risk-takers, innovators, short-cut-seekers, I'm-smarter-than-you's, I-can-out-hustle-you's, I-need-adventure-not-safey's, drop-out-of-school-to-code's etc are all going to be more likely to experiment with mind-expanding substances than the general population.
They are also more likely to start companies, perhaps with wild ambitions.
VCs are the pattern-matching mimics of the ecosystem, so who cares what they do - they are clearly just following the trend that is set out by the founders.
How is it surprising, then, that startup hotspots have higher use of psychedelics (especially against the backdrop of a giant revival of psychedelic use)?
Isn't it exactly what one would suspect?
1. "Openness" is the personality trait of the 5 factor model most closely associated with drug use. Openness also most closely correlates to intelligence amount the 5 factors. Those are coincidental factors not suggesting more intelligent people favor drug use disproportionately.
2. Risk taking behavior, or more precisely actions benefiting from exceptionally low neuroticism, is not a personality facet. Its a result of faster than normal gamma-globulin uptake in the amygdala. Such people do not associate a fear response to stimulus associated decision criteria and as such prioritize things differently. These people tend to have a very low incidence of drug use because they are less capable of feeling thrills and fears.
So your entire reply is super interesting first off. Wouldn't this be somewhat moot as the same people would also be the type of people looking for an edge, not a thrill?
Instead those people simply lack a certain form of emotionally regulated fear as a stress response. That difference can occur from extensive training and conditioning, but in more extreme yet casual cases its something a person is born with. Their bodies still tense up, they still produce adrenaline, and their pulse still shoots up like everybody else so they are reacting to stress with a stress response like normal people. The difference is that their inhibition due to that fear is more rapidly eliminated by a neurotransmitter. That allows two things that normal people don't realize occurs:
1) The high risk behavior is primarily a means of learning to interface with the world in a new way.
2) The resulting high risk action is often the result of a rational risk calculation in a snap moment, similar but opposite of panic.
The edge, if any, comes from proving something or eliminating a consequence other people aren't willing to attempt. The consequence though, is that even if such people are able to realize and prove this edge most people will not be willing to accept it.
Are you talking about dark triad style psychopaths? This is the only personality type I've ever known to be both risk seeking and averse to drug use. Every other risk seeker I've ever known applied the same risk seeking attitude to drug use.
People with a natural ability to process naturally through high fear stimulus still feel fear. Unlike psychopaths these high risk people still exhibit all the same physical symptoms of a stress/fear response. The difference is that they lack just the emotional inhibition associated with that fear response. In normal people a fear stimulus drives us to halt, pause, and evaluate our options. This processing takes time and when it becomes crippling its called anxiety.
People capable of processing through extremely high risk are not so inhibited. Either they are powering through the risky scenarios intentionally as a means of learning something new or because they have weighed their options and found the high risk approach to support an outcome with value that exceeds that severity and and incidence of associated risk.
Here is an example. Imagine deploying as a military service member to Afghanistan at the height of that conflict knowing rockets and bombs land on bases that hurt people. This sounds high risk, because you certainly don't encounter this ever driving to work in the US. Evidence will indicate, though, at that time a person was 10x more likely to die from a traffic accident driving to work or from being shot by police in the US than they were to die from any reason while serving in Afghanistan. Most people are not capable or appreciating that. Now apply that same line of critical thinking to modifications of your daily routine. A for a high risk person this is common and boring while for everybody else its extremely challenging and quite stressful. These are not the kind of people tempted to explore drug use.
If you're going to be hyper logical about it, there are some drugs that give you rewards that outweigh the risks, at least if done in judicious way.
Eg, some stimulant drugs can give you an edge in any number of endeavors with very low risk. Other types of drugs can give you an edge if you need to endure physical pain. Even plain alcohol makes you less logical and less controlled and could give you an edge in the same way poker players benefit from using a "crazy man" strategy.
If absolutely nothing else, you'd think this type of person would at least experiment. If they can mitigate risk, which is very possible, then it makes perfect risk/reward sense to find out if any drugs could be useful tools you keep in your back pocket.
You forgot criminals, which those in the list above often become.
You misspelled "Forbes 30 Under 30" https://www.bu.edu/rbfl/2023/05/17/30-under-30-pipeline-to-p...
Or are you making the more subtle point that, currently, any use of psychedelics outside of an approved study makes one "a criminal"?
Well, some people think programming is a profession dominated by 'geeks' and that 'geeks' are uptight squares who don't much like to party. Or to the extent they do party, it's conservative stuff like playing video games until 2am while drinking beer.
In college, the people putting on rager parties with open drug use, noise complaints and people jumping over a spontaneously started bonfire? All organised by people studying things like film.
I feel like Silicon Valley's psychedelic era is like a strain "tech bro" wellness culture (often referred to as "biohacking"). And just like wellness culture it's really hard to distinguish something that is helpful in small doses vs. something that becomes a gratuitous lifestyle (like drinking charcoal or putting jade eggs somewhere you shouldn't).
The Bay Area's psychedelic interest well predated tech capital.
Psychedelics obviously were a big feature of SF and the bay area for a long time, but that's very different than saying they are an accepted part of the corporate tech world there.
Edit: This was purely in the context of amphetamines (and other stimulants), not psychedelics. There are long term consequences like many pointed out, but that is exactly why I refuse to participate. I’ve mentored so many young engineers who seem to be getting pulled in with the promise of career growth based on performance and it just breaks my heart.
The issue with living in a society where money so closely correlates with health is that anything bad for your money tends to also be bad for health.
You're pretty close to whataboutism here...
I suppose we could all shrug and go "everything does everything" and get lost in over-generalization, but that doesn't lead to any sort of productive conversational outcome.
I dont mean that in the "everything causes cancer" big unknown sense. I mean that in quantifiable sense that allows you to weigh net benefits.
Eg, prolonged stress is bad for your cardiovascular system and lowers life expectancy by quantifiable amounts. Lack of money causes prolonged stress. So if a stimulant is what allows you to be productive enough to have ample money, you're arguably better off, because of that and the multitude of other health benefits from having money.
Well, except caffeine which is an acceptable stimulant drug. And alcohol for recreation.
Unfortunately I’m past the point of joining in and am content with not climbing the ladder, but it’s unfortunate that this culture is rampant. I’ve seen plenty of young engineers get pulled into it because of the pressure to perform and like many others said, there are long term consequences.
if you dont believe me, try these drugs yourself and find out for yourself.
there is no free lunch, health consequences are severe with frequent use of drugs even in small doses
I suspect they just couldn't find enough quotes about drugs and needed to fill space.
Taking psychedelics occasionally has an effect on the user closer to attending psychotherapy than the hedonistic escapism of opiates or stimulants. It puts users in touch with subconscious feelings they were not previously able to articulate.
In 30 years, people taking LSD or psilocybin once a quarter to get in touch with their feelings will probably be entirely unremarkable. We're just in a bit of a chaotic period while we shake off the silly propaganda of the 70s war machine that feared that hippies were going to cut off their money spigot.
The way it has panned out, it is now blatantly clear that psychedelic use is not a threat to capital: SV capital has embraced psychedelic use and is just as greedy and selfish as their east coast cocaine-and-alcohol using counterparts on wall street. Psychedelics don't make people more moral: they just get them in touch with themselves - it looked threatening to the economic order when only communists and free love hippies took them, because in the 70s squares were too afraid to try psychedelics. But now that the squares have started taking psychedelics, its pretty clear (and possibly unfortunate, IMO) they don't turn into communists as a result.
I don't mean to provide yet another example of "all Internet arguments are about semantics", but as someone who used to do various drugs, including shrooms and ecstasy, I think you have an uncommon definition of "being on drugs". I most certainly considered myself as being on drugs when I was tripping. And while yes, I think it's helpful to differentiate between drugs that can be strongly physically addicting (cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, opiods, etc.) vs. other drugs that tend not to be physically addicting, I find it amusing how psychedelics are now commonly thought as completely benign, as just "getting in touch with your feelings." To be clear, I pretty much agree, but I'm also not going to deny that I (and many others) could get, for lack of a more scientific term, "completely fucked up" on psychedelics.
I actually thought this was a great article (but I admit it's rare for me to find a Matt Levine piece I don't like). It didn't really appear to be "taking sides" on the issue, just informing what's going on, and I enjoyed the style of writing.
Many of the things that are popular among tech circles are actually researched. For example Ketamine is available in Switzerland for treatment of depression, and there's a lot of know-how on the topic. I reckon you could fly here for treatment if you can afford to live in the area for a while. Spoiler: it's not a silver bullet.
It's a bit like when crypto bros slowly rediscover every single widely accepted idea for regulating finance, securities, disclosure, trading, ...
This is a good point. Doing a drug once means you’re doing it constantly until you die. This is why every person to ever take LSD is currently in a jam band and why all of those people that did cocaine in the 80s are long dead from sleep deprivation.
There is almost no circumstance where “you know … right?” makes you worthwhile, pleasurable, or persuasive to talk to, particularly when it’s on a rhythm. It just makes you annoying, and usually confrontational and dismissive (as here), and it goes a long way to demonstrating how you feel about yourself compared to others (hint: not a good look if your goal is to persuade).
For the record, I've never microdosed, but I do have the courtesy to inform myself at a basic level before jumping into threads to shit on other people who do.
You can't bring nothing to the table and expect other people to hold your hand gently coaching you through a basic google search. Fuck that.
On a forum I would expect someone participating in a thread making an assertive comment to do a few seconds of due diligence. They don't have to have perfect information, or even be correct after they do search, but its pretty obvious when you just come in with 0 information at all. Normally that doesn't even bother me, but when an uninformed comment is used to belittle people or take an undeserved moral position, then yeah, I get pretty pissed.
I’m confused about your usage of the “You know… right?” pattern here. If you’re strongly of the opinion that it is an objectively bad way of communicating, surely you could have expressed that another way.
The pattern obviously doesn’t bother the person you are responding to, so was that just the best way to get your point across?
When people get their grouchiness back that usually prods them to be angry, which (a) gives you an opportunity to immediately fix it with a better way, demonstrating good faith and avoiding an escalation and (b) it shows more self-aware people how others take their exact behaviors by introducing it in them.
Note I’m using soft language to get across that I don’t think anybody was in bad faith here, you’re just asking me to explain in great detail.
So you found the rhetorical aesthetic of the “You know… right?” pattern to be satisfying and useful in this conversation!
>…a good tactic to make this point without escalating, I’ve found.
That makes sense I suppose, but I think we can agree that your next sentence:
> There is almost no circumstance where “you know … right?” makes you worthwhile, pleasurable, or persuasive to talk to
Was very much an escalation. It looks like you would’ve been more effective if you’d stuck with your explicitly favored strategy of using the “You know… right?” pattern.
You know you’ve made a compelling argument in favor of speaking in this manner, right?
I know how I sounded but this entire post is filled with people moralizing without having any understanding of what they're talking about, and I, without any ambiguity, hate people like that.
Like hate in the actual sense of the word and not a hyperbolic dramatization of a milder emotion like annoyance. My intent wasn't to persuade or educate, but perhaps I should be better at not taking the bait and just not commenting.
- Ketamine is also available for depression treatment in America.
- I don't get the analogy. Do you just dislike fads?
SWIM can confirm pretty unremarkable here in regards to psychedelics. They're a senior eng working in a big co. SWIM doesn't use them anymore but they did have a permanent effect on reducing anger so that was nice.
SWIM = someone who isn't me
Baffling conclusion. Even mild doses over prescription levels will lead to a dark, primal, obsessive state.
For the sake of argument, hypothetically, if I had a lot of experience here, I'd probably say no one I know using them to work more effectively takes them in a way that matches your response.
The fact is, that amphetamines are hedonistic drugs, and you can clearly see descriptions of such behavior on any thread that discusses the negative state of west coast cities.
Throw in SBF and his coworkers openly admitting to abusing adderall on twitter, it's not shocking abuse is common and leads to negative business outcomes.
In fact I'd argue you're uncomfortable that people can use substances and be still be high achievers.
Look I won't mince words, drugs aren't a magic bullet. They have downsides that need to be carefully considered, but many people are smart and capable of doing just that.
Ok? I looked you up and you're overselling yourself. I'd suggest you just not next time.
>In fact I'd argue you're uncomfortable that people can use substances and be still be high achievers.
Not at all, if people want to get on speed every day and make millions of dollars, good for them.
>normal circumstances.
Lots of people 'normally' get high on meth, I'm not sure what your point is. That doesn't change the fact that those drugs are hedonistic at various doses. You seem to be confused about what a generalization is, and are taking issue with one being made. Just say that next time instead of trying to police the boundaries of the conversation like this.
You referred to me as a kid, which is just generally insulting.
> Just say that next time instead of trying to police the boundaries of the conversation like this.
Go read the first line of my first comment you responded to and not just the half sentence you cherry picked in your first reply.
Here I grabbed it for you:
"I don't think I'd put stimulants in the hedonistic escapism bin, at least not for people who may be frequenters of this site. If anything the people using them are trying to escape less.
I set the bounds I'm applying to their generalization in my first comment. Yes I disagree with the generalization as applied to the hacker news crowd, known to be industrious, innovative and business focused.
You chose to reply about the generalization, I continued to reply guided by my initial comment and the bounds I set. I've been consistent in my argument and bounds, you chose to ignore it and reply to the generalization.
I've been entirely consistent and I even said it upfront.
I did?
"You assuming that your friends are being good kids"
The effects of the drug don't change because of the "crowd" someone identifies with. This is just a veiled attempt to be like "I'm not like those other drug users!" You're all on the same speed. Not sure there is much else here.
Guess we'll leave it here if that's fine with you? I don't think there's going to be anything productive with continued discussion.
Have you ever actually done opiates or stimulants or psychedelics?