Well, I'm still waiting for the fellowship of LSD-fueled Übermenschen to emerge. Until then I'll just try to eat well, exercise more and get enough sleep. That seems to be the key for most elite developers I've encountered.
But it bothers me a little bit when you seem put it as if LSD fails at being some kind of neo-caffeine that makes people smarter, more productive, etc.
It really does fail to do that. But that's not how it helps. It's not necessarily that it gives you the answers to the questions you're asking -- it's more like it helps you get perspective and perhaps realize you could be asking better questions.
To me it's as if we typically get kind of tunnel vision of the mind. Imagine if, for a few hours, you could zoom out from your current vantage point, see it compressed, as if from a great height, or maybe at high speed, and suddenly it's much easier to see structures that were much too big/subtle/slow to appreciate before. Or you at least get an inkling that such things exist and that you might want to look for them.
It's very frustrating to evangelize LSD sometimes because it probably will not help you in the ways you care about right now. But it very well may help you in ways you literally cannot understand right now.
But I suspect from your tone that I could give a thousand examples and you wouldn't change your mind. C'est la vie.
It is absolutely vital to remember that the corporate computer industry (E.g., IBM, DEC, even the LispMs) were (i) alive (ii) vital, and (iii) doing things that were not to be replicated in PCs until the late 90s & early 2000s. So it'd be a bit interesting to consider the counterfactual "what if no Jobs hasn't been the marketer he was? what if Gates hadn't hustled the way he did?"
Personally I run on sleep and quietness, but I think I would be able to put cannabis to good use when it becomes legal where I live. I have found that small quantities allow for a greater concentration on the condition that you refrain smoking to much and not drink any alcohol.
This is the definition of survivorship bias.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide#Pote...
'Survivorship bias' is a misleading term for what you intend to imply, because those who have had a bad LSD experience are no less capable of sharing their intense experience except in the most extreme cases (i.e. when they didn't, in fact, survive). Personally, if I had such an intensely bad experience I'd be quite willing to share it so that others can avoid it. That is just not reflected the balance of stories I read though.