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Comment by newt0311 | Hacker News Reader

False analogy: Heroin does not have significant positive side-effects (at least not in a monetary sense). Ie. it cannot make you more productive. Technology on the other hand does.

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In the article, he mentions examples of positive effects of opiates, particularly surgical anesthesia (via morphine, although ether and nitrous oxide were initially used). Heroin was also used as an antitussive, etc. Other solutions with less serious side-effects were later found, of course, but at the time, they really saved lives. Major surgery without anesthesia was a terrifying ordeal, and, before antibiotics, many conditions meant surgery or death.

Some technology makes me more productive (refrigerators, text editors, bicycles, vaccines), and some makes me less (Flash games, irc, hacker news). Others have a mixed effect (cell phones, books). Technology takes many forms, and it's hard to generalize about them all in any sound way.

Does Hacker News absolutely make you less productive? Yeah, you're not getting work done right now, but you're debating people, you're teaching yourself to write out good arguments, and you're reading a ton of articles, some of which are bound to fascinate or teach you.

I actually would have put it in the mixed column, but I added that later and didn't move it. I run across some interesting things on the side, but at the same time, I have many, many books I've been meaning to read, etc., and I also know all too well where this comic is coming from: http://xkcd.com/386/

Yet, the basic point holds. On the whole, the Internet makes people and organizations vastly more productive. Furthermore, morphine and opiates are regularly used when the benefits outweigh the costs (like for anesthesia) so thats not a very effective counterexample.

If one wants to start regulating parts of technology, they must ask the question of whether the expected gains from said regulation would outweigh the costs. With narcotics, its easy: addiction is very expensive, especially for the addicts and productive and non-productive uses are generally easy to tell apart (medical use of morphine v. junkies for example). OTOH, technology is difficult to separate and the side-effects from flash games, irc, et al. are not that significant.

I think we're talking past each other. You argued that heroin/opiates do not have a significant positive side-effect, and technology does. I disagree, because (in the historical period the article discusses) many people would have died without opiates, and while technology* can be a positive force, it too is a decidedly mixed one, and one whose side-effects we still don't fully understand.

My filter for what made me more or less productive (or an unclear mix) was whether it tended to distract me / take up my time. Spending time on irc when I meant to be working on my programming projects doesn't give me the shakes, but it's still burns up the finite amount of time I have.

Also, I was never suggesting regulation. I don't know where that came from...

* By which the author seems to mean computers and the Internet, specifically. Dyed fabric is a product of technology. So is bookbinding.

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