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Comment by ghfhghg | Hacker News Reader

Some of the smartest programmers I know smoke marijuana quite regularly. I don't know if they all smoked at an earlier age but I know that 2 of them did.

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I knew some top students in college who started smoking weed then and continued. They're still programmers or scientists now, which isn't surprising given their education and talent, but something's wrong every time I talk to them. They seem scatterbrained and unable to remember what either of us said a minute ago.

Edit: Forgot to specify, they're in their late 20s now.

> They seem scatterbrained and unable to remember what either of us said a minute ago.

I've never used weed and definitely have moments like this from time to time. I think I'm old. And that having 3000 Slack channels piping content into your brain 8 hours a day isn't real good either.

That said, I kind of understand the effect this thread is talking about. My youngest brother was doing a lot of smoking in high school and I definitely wonder about the long term effects.

Some of this is definitely social media use and short-form content consumption. My working memory improved significantly when I limited social media consumption and started reading instead. I personally haven't smoked weed in over 5 years.

Sure but I know plenty of people who are dead sober who exhibit the same behavior.

I behave like that occasionally when I have too many unrelated tasks at once and am a little stressed. I hope people don't think it's because I was high.

We are all like this some of the time. If anyone is like this consistently, then something is wrong.

Ok, and I know programmers and scientists that used to smoke in college and are just as sharp as ever.

Yep, the effects aren’t permanent. It seems people choose to be scatterbrained for some reason or another. I do smoke ocasionally and that is very little as I don’t like getting the anxiety/paranoia effects and weed is very potent these days. I only do it to zone off creatively, gives me the childhood magic which dampens the day to day stress. All in all it is a very positive experience. I do see kids these days overdoing it but hey, in my day kids were drinking more than today so these habits change over time

Mix with CBD only strains, a 10% THC/90% CBD ratio is vastly different and doesn't give that anxiety/paranoia, in my experience.

I know a few smokers (tobacco only) who lived into their 90s, and some of them were exposed to much worse in their daily lives when they were young (leaded gasoline, solvents, etc.), but I suspect those may be genetic outliers.

Definitely. Conversely I know someone who died young of lung cancer but never smoked.

To be fair lung cancer as the biggest concern to smoking was just the advertising boogeyman to convince people to stop smoking, the vast majority of smokers die from heart attack and stroke, not lung cancer. But telling some 14 year old kid that they might just drop dead at 55 of a heart attack isn't exactly convincing, to them that is old as fuck and just dropping dead from a heart attack sounds like one of the best ways to go at the time.

I did not realize that at all. Thanks for the info!

Agreed- in fact, I think for the ones I know, it is a performance enhancer. For me, if I have an incredibly boring job to do, smoking weed enables me to keep going many many hours beyond what I could do without it. As I've gotten older, I've gotten used to boredom, so it's not necessary anymore, but still makes it much more fun

Did you ever think you’re just really dumb and think they are smart?

Not at all because they are all tech directors or high level programmers who have been paid well to do it for decades.

Yeah, that's not a true measure of intelligence.

I don't disagree but they also don't display any of the symptoms laid out in the original post you are replying to.

Also I was replying to a person who signed up specifically to make a single troll post so I replied in kind.

Probably don't do that then.

You did though

Ah I guess this is one of those "do what I say don't do what I do" situations

Noted

Don't respond to trolls.

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