I put a lot of effort into this post. Many longstanding members thought it was intellectually interesting. I was trying to contribute, in good spirit. In short, this sucks.
I'll do a few drawings for you anyway. What's your email? Or send me a note at palish at gmail dot com.
It may have been killed for the drug-specific talk, or maybe because it was considered 'off-topic' in some way. But the site has been designed to be as transparent as possible, which means many of us have 'show-dead' on so that we can see past the editors.
The discussion lives. Good luck, and be safe.
Fortunately, there has been good discussion anyways and anyone that already commented will continue to see the story. I wouldn't worry about the killing too much.
I can't believe this has never been submitted... I checked with and without the www. subdomain. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581050
Just because Steve Jobs tried it, doesn't make it useful. I'm sure some entrepreneurs have killed people or been tried for fraud. Undoubtedly those actions altered them as people, and perhaps even led to their eventual success. But it'd be a mistake to start copying them.
There's obviously a lot of people who are 'pro drugs', and we've already had more than enough marijuana stories.
In terms of actual interestingness, I'm sure anyone who is curious can search on google for first hand accounts of what being on drugs does/feels like.
I also find it quite morbid. In the same way I would had the OP had expressed a curiosity to know how it feels to cut off his leg.
(I'm not offended, and I don't think most people who flagged it are. I just don't think it's a good post for a site like this).
Once again though, be useful to see on each article how many people flagged it.
Also, taking LSD is not like "cutting off your leg", no matter how much you may believe it to be. If you really want to talk about limbs, then taking LSD is more like growing an extra arm for a few hours. Wouldn't you like to try that in a risk-free manner?
I don't think there's been all that many stories about acid. If those became a common occurence, then I'd start flagging them too. As far as I can see, there's only one of these here now.
Anyway, apparently even PG thinks that sometimes driving a lot of people away from HN may not necessarily such a bad thing, as evidenced by the Erlang incident. I'm not pro drugs, by the way. I am against addictive and destructive drugs, having seen at first hand what it can do to people. However, I do try to keep an open mind about experimenting if it's just the one time and if it won't cause lasting damage.
Lastly:
In terms of actual interestingness, I'm sure anyone who is curious can search on google for first hand accounts of what being on drugs does/feels like.
The OP did ask us for experiments to try, and there were a lot of interesting suggestions, of which I think not all could have been found on google. That made it interesting for me, on a "I wonder if we could do X while tripping" level, and isn't that sort of mentality what hacking is about?
[Citation needed]. If a lot of low-quality "stories" like this stay about, then maybe. But the greater danger is attracting trolls / low-caliber people, not losing the current people. The current people are here to stay.
There's obviously a lot of people who are 'pro drugs', and we've already had more than enough marijuana stories.
This is neither. I was specifically trying to be scientific about this. Just because I am dropping acid once does not make me pro-drug. I have seen the harm that uncontrolled use of recreational drugs can cause. I am also agnostic to the whole debate surrounding drug use. All I care about is the experience. Also, thoughtless labels like "pro-drug" and "anti-drug" simply hinder progress. The world is not black or white.
In terms of actual interestingness, I'm sure anyone who is curious can search on google for first hand accounts of what being on drugs does/feels like.
That was not what my post was about, which you would know had you actually read and understood it. This was supposed to be an opportunity for people to have an interactive experience. Sure, if they had a specific question for me, I could answer it thoroughly. But more importantly, if they had something they wanted me to do, I could probably just do it and report back to them what it was like.
I also find it quite morbid. In the same way I would had the OP had expressed a curiosity to know how it feels to cut off his leg.
First off, one definition of morbid is, "ghoulish: suggesting the horror of death and decay; 'morbid details'". Taking one dose of acid once is certainly not going to cause long-term detrimental effects along the lines of death or decay!
(I'm not offended, and I don't think most people who flagged it are. I just don't think it's a good post for a site like this).
Once again though, be useful to see on each article how many people flagged it.
Why don't you feel that this was a decently creative, intellectually interesting post? Because isn't that what this site is about, to be intellectually satisfying? As I have mentioned, I put a good amount of effort into this, so a comment such as "well, my personal opinion is that I don't think this is very good" is totally not useful in any way. Provide reasons, man.
Lastly, on a personal note, why did you have to keep trying to destroy the one thing I thought I could contribute in the last couple months? Judging by the negative karma count of most of your comments in this thread, your views are not shared among your peers. What you are doing is generating noise. You are basically acting trollish. Simply stating your opinions is rather useless, don't you think? Perhaps you don't back up what you say because you can't, because it's my own body on the line, not yours. As far as I can tell, you have nothing more substantial than a "drugs are bad" attitude. Which is basically a witch-hunt attitude.
If you have any shred of respect for me or for my contributions to the site over the years, you'll just stop talking about this, because at this point, the damn thread is dead already, so anything further you have to say on the topic would just be an emotional act, whether that be to insult me personally or to just "get something off your chest", shall we say. It saddens me that you put so little effort into communicating your thoughts, even when I put so much effort into communicating mine. I would expect that kind of thing from a new member, but the worst part is that you've been here since the beginning. Maybe you're just having a bad day. Who knows.
And no, we don't need to see how many people have flagged an article, because that would cause people to focus on the 'meta' aspect of the site; that is, instead of aggregating cool content, people would be whining about why the current content doesn't satisfy their oh-so-high standards. Which is what you are doing. Which I specifically asked you not to do in the second paragraph of this thread. "Please don't make a meta-comment, just use the flag feature, and if it gets killed, then that's the end of it." But no, you had something important to say. Just had to keep saying all of those important things, even after they kept getting downmodded, right? Whatever. I just wish you hadn't let your personal vendetta against something you don't agree with contribute to ruining my one recent act of creativity here.
I wouldn't bet on that.
>> "This was supposed to be an opportunity for people to have an interactive experience"
Yeah I don't really want to take part in drug experiments. I'm busy coding.
>> "Lastly, on a personal note, why do you have to keep trying to destroy the one thing I thought I could contribute in the last couple months?"
Because you are trying to destroy a useful community. If you win, I'll stop reading hacker news. That's why I kept re-iterating my views, without a care for the downmods. I like hacker news. I want to keep liking it.
>> "Lastly, on a personal note, why did you have to keep trying to destroy the one thing I thought I could contribute in the last couple months?"
I didn't kill it... whoever did, thankfully agrees that it's not a good post for HN.