Comment by chronofar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chronofar | Hacker News Reader

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> How about we try to avoid the really harmful stuff that ruins lives and kills people like drug addiction?

Hard no. Alcohol ruins many people's lives, but that shouldn't interfere with my ability to imbibe if I so choose, it means that I should be educated and careful with how I do so.

> This is not some slippery slope thing

My intention was not to suggest it's a slippery slope, but rather that it is logically completely inconsistent w/ the values of individual freedom. If we value individual freedom, which most in the west purport to by default, individuals should have the ability to direct their body and mind in any way they deem appropriate and endure the consequences. Only you can experience your consciousness, and you should have primacy over how its stewarded.

> Your thought process is not logical when addicted and maximizes getting high at the cost of everything else.

This argument just doesn't hold any weight whatsoever. Humans are irrational in a whole host of circumstances in all sorts of ways, addiction is only one of them, and of course people can and do have all sorts of addictions to things that are wholly adaptive in others lives (sex as we've mentioned before is a fine example). The fact that addiction can drive some such irrationality is in no way a coherent argument to their prohibition.

Why does the fact that hard drug addiction hijacks the reward circuitry of the brain and is bad not a coherent argument? There has to be some red line that is too much. Say a drug causes schizophrenia after using it half the time. Should that be legal? How about every time? What if it kills you in a year after one use?

> Why does the fact that hard drug addiction hijacks the reward circuitry of the brain and is bad not a coherent argument?

Well forgive the repetition here, but because that’s both an incredibly vague definition and because it’s incompatible with a society that values individual agency. Again I didn’t bring up these other examples of sex and sugar and social media to highlight a slippery slope, I brought them up to highlight how odd it would be to attempt to legislate on the mere potential of irrational behavior. Human psychology is far more complex than you’re allowing for here, and only in a more black and white world of neurology, coupled with a world where we thought it prudent for society to outlaw anything with potential to catalyze less than “optimal” (as defined by someone) behavior, would such an argument bear any weight.

> Say a drug causes schizophrenia after using it half the time. Should that be legal? How about every time? What if it kills you in a year after one use?

Yes and yes. A user should be able to consume straight poison if they want to. Again individuals should retain prime control over their bodies and minds, if we are to value freedom at all I can’t think of a freedom more basic than that.

I could imagine the possibility of a drug that has just the right combination of effects to be both irresistible and destructive to such a degree that it threatens to collapse society in such a way where no solutions are obvious where I could see reconsidering as a matter of pragmatism, but we’re quite far from something like that.

> Well forgive the repetition here, but because that’s both an incredibly vague definition and because it’s incompatible with a society that values individual agency.

> I could imagine the possibility of a drug that has just the right combination of effects to be both irresistible and destructive to such a degree that it threatens to collapse society in such a way where no solutions are obvious where I could see reconsidering as a matter of pragmatism, but we’re quite far from something like that

OK, so it is a coherent argument then and just one you don't agree with? The collapse of a portion of society is ok with you, just not the collapse of all of society? Hard drugs are exactly that addictive to many users that try them. Most want to stop but they can't, where is the retention of prime control over their bodies?

> OK, so it is a coherent argument then and just one you don't agree with?

No, it would only be coherent if you also accept the other premises I put forth (which I'm fairly certain you don't, but you haven't really acknowledged or debated them so hard to say for sure, suffice to say they are not commonly help premises).

> The collapse of a portion of society is ok with you, just not the collapse of all of society?

Yes I absolutely favor freedom of individual choice over preventing all individuals from making choices that may not be best for them (because, again, the individual should have primacy over determining what is best for them). Clearly. There are also very obvious solutions to this problem: regulated distribution (w/ heroin for instance where folks can be assured clean drugs that are properly portioned for their use case to reduce risk of OD) and readily available treatment (if users want to stop there are plenty of options to help them do so, we just need to reappropriate resources currently used in a failed attempt at prevention to make treatment more universally available).

> where is the retention of prime control over their bodies?

This is nonsense. Addiction is indeed very powerful, but in our society we still consider these individuals responsible for their actions. Being in the throes of heroin addiction is not a valid plea to escape a murder conviction, and indeed it shouldn't be.

Addiction is simply part of the human condition. This would be true even if you completely removed scheduled drugs from all possible use. We cope with that best by treating it not attempting to ban it.

> No, it would only be coherent if you also accept the other premises I put forth (which I'm fairly certain you don't, but you haven't really acknowledged or debated them so hard to say for sure, suffice to say they are not commonly help premises).

You attack my argument by saying it's illegible. You are a libertarian and I understand that it's a viewpoint that people have but they don't fully consider the actual ramifications of those policies. It is odd that you are so incredibly dismissive of an argument that tries to help people and that you don't see it as a valid argument.

> Yes I absolutely favor freedom of individual choice over preventing all individuals from making choices that may not be best for them

It just seems silly to me that you acknowledge that it's not OK to ruin society completely but it's fine to ruin only some lives all because they should be able to make a short sighted decision that they will regret.

> This is nonsense. Addiction is indeed very powerful, but in our society we still consider these individuals responsible for their actions. Being in the throes of heroin addiction is not a valid plea to escape a murder conviction, and indeed it shouldn't be.

I am guessing you've never had a hard drug addiction or known someone that has had it. How is it nonsense? They literally want to stop and know it is ruining their lives but can't stop. All because you want people to have some silly right to take hard drugs for some bs ideal. How about have some empathy and try to minimize misery? What is best for human kind in the long run?

> they don't fully consider the actual ramifications of those policies.

This is the generalization that started this thread and is wrong. On the contrary I believe you're showing evidence that you're not considering the full ramifications of the policies you support.

> It is odd that you are so incredibly dismissive of an argument that tries to help people and that you don't see it as a valid argument.

I think the proposal I made is far more likely to help people (protect people from OD'ing and ingesting dangerous contaminates they didn't intend to as well as offering them ample treatment options to stop when they want to). To say that prohibition helps people is naive in the extreme and neglects all the profound harm it causes (both directly and indirectly) while also robbing people of their agency.

And again the reason I'm dismissing your argument isn't even that, it's that it's completely logically inconsistent with typical western values (not just libertarian ones). If you want to argue as you are that drugs should be outlawed on the basis of their potential for addiction then you have to start looking at outlawing a great many other things that have similar potential (sugar, sex for pleasure, portion food so no one can eat too much, etc). But of course you probably don't advocate that, you just live in a world where drugs have already been made illegal so it seems reasonable and like you're helping people, but what you're doing is robbing them of their personhood.

> It just seems silly to me that you acknowledge that it's not OK to ruin society completely but it's fine to ruin only some lives all because they should be able to make a short sighted decision that they will regret.

I'm frankly a bit baffled that this is difficult to follow. As an advocate of individual freedom, I think people should be free to make their own choices without some governing body deciding what is best for them and forcing them to follow specific paths. This is mostly because I don't think we can trust any governing body to truly know (or even care) what's best for individuals at this juncture, the incentives just aren't aligned, thus freedom is preferable. I would like for this not to be the case actually, I'm a strong proponent of direct democracy, but that is for another conversation.

However if society crumbles the choices available to everyone start to drop dramatically, and future opportunity is replaced by large amounts of suffering. This should obviously be avoided at all costs. There are all sorts of things one could imagine we'd need to give up if civilization truly started to collapse, but we would only look to give up that we may preserve them in the future. Indeed we have a good example of this just recently w/ COVID (though the threat to society was overstated there it seems).

I'm beginning to think maybe you haven't consumed enough dystopic warnings in books/movies :-) (both highlighting the dangers of government control and apocalyptic conditions calling for extreme measures).

> I am guessing you've never had a hard drug addiction or known someone that has had it. How is it nonsense? They literally want to stop and know it is ruining their lives but can't stop. All because you want people to have some silly right to take hard drugs for some bs ideal. How about have some empathy and try to minimize misery?

How about you have some empathy and give people some credit? Your view is the un-empathetic one here, not mine, you're viewing people as helpless children who need to be saved from themselves by you or whatever leaders you vote for (who are the same helpless children with propensity for vice and avarice and such as everyone else, just with more power).

I absolutely have experienced addiction and know many others who have. By your count the ones who rehabbed did so by sheer luck or outside force through no free will of their own. By my count they overcame a very difficult trial and accomplished something meaningful by doing so (likely with some helpful support).

And again, via regulation and treatment there is an incredible potential to reduce misery and suffering, both in those addicted to drugs and to those impacted by the profound knock on effects of black markets run amok. Prohibition is I believe the cause of far, far more suffering, this is why I'm such a strong advocate for ending it. Indeed I think it is one of the largest problems in the world today.

You want to rob people of their choice. I want people to have individual choice and support available when they need help. It should be clear which I think is best for human kind in the long run (and short run).

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