Hacker News Reader

Comment by icey | Hacker News Reader

Okay, so I don't get it. What does giving pot to a kid have to do with hacking or startups?

Nothing. Some people here have an odd fascination with drugs. Every so often a story on drugs (Usually about legalizing them) gets voted up high.

At least it isn't as bad as reddit where it's nearly everyday that an article about drugs gets upvoted. It could be worse, and at least this article is an interesting read namely due to the fact that they're not claiming it's a miracle or a cure, it just helps.

It's on Slate, not some hemp advocacy site, and it was interesting. Hence, submitted. I don't think I have an odd fascination with drugs (I actually think expirimenting with cannabis on a disabled school-age boy is ethically repugnant).

Here I might add, for no particular reason except human interest, that I have never in my life consumed marijuana.

Sorry I was referring to the people voting it up, not you specifically ;)

The fact it shot to #1 and then dropped to #28 in less than an hour though surely points to it being a niche interest within hacker news.

It points to a moderator specifically changing how the sorting algorithm is applied to this story. Vote weighting. Or maybe it's a new change to automatically vote weight stories where there are more comments than points.

Oh interesting, didn't know that went on.

Do any of the moderators want to comment on this?

I didn't do anything specific to this story, and there is still no vote weighting yet.

I changed the frontpage ranking algorithm slightly yesterday, and I tweaked it again today. The reason it seemed to take effect suddenly is that I had pasted the new version yesterday into the server repl, and news had restarted since then. When I pasted the tweaked version into the repl 2 hours ago, it visibly changed rankings.

There's nothing odd about being fascinated by drugs and/or altered states of consciousness. The fact that our laws, culture, art, and religions are seemingly inseparable from their influence is intellectually interesting, to say the least.

I'm not saying that everyone should do drugs, certainly not, but if you don't at least take the time to learn about this stuff then you're cheating yourself out of a big piece of the human experience.

I suggest it may also have, possibly, more reason to do with the autism, which is an interesting topic of mind which has a lot of interest at Hacker News. Also, there are lots of cases of autism in and around silicon valley which raises consciousness of the topic in the minds of many hackers.

It may not have to do with hacking but it has the hacking attitude. I mean who would think to give their kid pot to try to cure autism?

It is a daring move that I'm sure will bring much criticism from less liberal members of society. That by definition makes it something that I as a hacker would be interested in. I upvoted it for that reason.

>> "much criticism from less liberal members of society. That by definition makes it something that I as a hacker would be interested in."

Are you saying all hackers are liberals?

Are you saying all hackers are liberals?

Obviously not. My point is that I as a hacker am a person interested in people who do things in a nonstandard way. Giving a kid pot to treat autism is nonstandard, therefore I am interested in it and in other people's responses to it whether they be liberal or conservative.

Thanks, I was confusing liberal with Liberal. :/

Having said that I'd still prefer hacker news had a sort of programming/startup/tech focus. Articles like this are always on Reddit for those who want to see them.

No, because he is not using the word 'liberal' to denote a Liberal, but rather to denote someone that doesn't let (social) conventions get in the way of what he deems possible and worthy of following through. That sounds like the hacker spirit to me.

Irresponsible parents would give their children illegal drugs as an attempt to "cure" an ailment, I suppose. I still don't see how that has to do with hacking or startups.

> give their kid pot to try to cure autism?

It didn't work. It drugged him to be more passive, but had no effect on the actual autism.

Seemed like a plus to the parents though, and from what they write the kid was happier. But it was not a cure at all.

Next we'll hear about ADHD being treated this way.

Drugs to cure every ill.

It resolved a serious problem with pica, which was putting the kid in constant physical distress. It didn't just make him more passive.

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups."

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Right. I would place this under "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity," thus it is on-topic. That said I'm interested in some intellectual discussion on the article now that we have pretty much concluded that it is on-topic.

Here is a nice reddit thread for you:

http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/8jwno/why_i_am_g...

No, I don't think I'll be visiting Reddit today, but thanks for letting me know it's being talked about in the fever swamps too.

I read it:

It's probably better than the other shit that doctors would put him on.

That's why I use HN not Reddit.

Icey, you've been here for over 900 days, and you're arguing with the second sentence of the first graf of the site guidelines:

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Come on.

I can't ask a question regarding why this is hacker news? Because I really don't see how it is.

I didn't say it's not hacker news. I said I don't see what it's got to do with a site ostensibly titled "Hacker News". I think that's a fair question, isn't it?

It's right there in the paragraph that I quoted for you. I'm sorry the story didn't gratify your intellectual curiousity. It did mine. Autism is also a hotbutton issue among hackers.

I'm afraid we'll just have to agree to disagree.

I do want to say that I think you're really overreacting though. I was asking why this was hacker news because I was trying to give you (and by extension all of the upvoters) the benefit of the doubt. Ordinarily I'd just flag something like this and move on, but since you usually have pretty insightful things to say about a wide variety of topics, I admitted that I didn't get it and asked for clarification. I think it's unfortunate that you took it as some kind of attack on your person or on your taste, or whatever. I know what the guidelines are on this site, I spend more time here than I spend with my wife; so I don't really need them quoted back at me.

I also get that autism is a big deal, I have 2 family members who work with autistic children every day; and I can tell you that they aren't going to start telling people to get their kids high because it worked for one person who had the idea to toss a pot brownie junior's way.

I think there's a small amount of overlap between hacker culture and drug culture. From the Jargon File:

Limited use of non-addictive psychedelic drugs, such as cannabis, LSD, psilocybin, nitrous oxide, etc., used to be relatively common and is still regarded with more tolerance than in the mainstream culture. Use of `downers' and opiates, on the other hand, appears to be particularly rare; hackers seem in general to dislike drugs that make them stupid. On the third hand, many hackers regularly wire up on caffeine and/or sugar for all-night hacking runs.

http://plumeria.vmth.ucdavis.edu/~saintly/bio/portrait.html#...

I was also surprised, but explained it to myself like this: Autism (and Asperger's, which is something like high-functioning autism) have a certain natural affinity with hackers. If there's something that works for autism, we might collectively be curious if it translates to asperger's as well.

Here's an old wired article on the asperger's/hacker affinity: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html

1. Autism is more common among children of engineers.

2. If a computer receives unexpected input, it may exhibit abnormal behavior. When it is given such input intentionally, we call that either hacking or taking drugs, depending on the computer.

a very liberal definition of the word 'hack'.

anecdotal evidence that marijuana is an autism hack I guess

We've already got Reddit. My vote is for this site not to turn into another one.

> If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)

Come back in 300 days, you might have a valid point by then!

Noted, thanks. I will point out, though, that quite a few comments above mention the same thing.

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