> Only reason they're pushing this brain-melting stuff is because they can make a buck
Citations sorely needed. The only paper I’ve seen make neurotoxicity claims was retracted long ago[1].
414 karma · joined February 6, 2019
Citations sorely needed. The only paper I’ve seen make neurotoxicity claims was retracted long ago[1].
Additionally there are health benefits to cannabis (and psychedelics) as well. Whether it’s stress, anxiety (ironically), depression, etc. so the comparison remains apt.
We don’t need gatekeepers to prescribe these things only when a legitimate medical use demands it. There are countless examples in society where we allow people do things that are dangerous purely for the fun of it. Just because these are drugs we don’t need to justify their use as medicines.
Instead let’s inform the public and have them make their own choice. The regulation should be in proportion to the extent of the harm. In both cannabis use and running, it’s restricted to the individual (and temporary), so we should regulate minimally.
> the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but lives already.
I’d argue the opposite. It’s exactly aligned with his stated philosophy. Particularly in how this was influenced by an early LSD experience:
> It reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.
I don’t think that suggests hedonism or short term pleasure by any means.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sobering (no pun intended) look at just how detrimental cannabis can be to the brain. Covers everything from grey matter volume reductions, to tonal shifts in speech and memory loss.
I would have liked to have seen more coverage of CBD, as all signs point to it being a buffer against THC’s negative effects, but the recent science paints a fairly grim portrait of THC’s affect on cognition.
That said, I don’t think you’re wrong:
> Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightening to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.
- Chuck Close
> Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to see it as a soap bubble?
> In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.
For instance, you push someone in front of a trolley to save 5 lives, but the trolley isn’t stopped and you end up with 6 dead.
Collins has a notion called the "Hedgehog Concept". Which is the same as you're noting, but a bit more concise.
- What you love to do
- What you are encoded for (not just good at)
- What you can be paid to do
I think the reframing of the 2nd bullet is important. There's a difference being good at something and being encoded for something. You can be good at math, but relative to someone encoded for math, you're going to face significantly more friction.
This is a hard question and requires a high degree of self-honesty, but I believe it is the crucial differentiator in identifying your "purpose".
0. https://tim.blog/2019/02/20/the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts...
I’m not saying some personal time shouldn’t be dedicated to learning, but if the vast majority of your week is spent on a dead end, the time you have left to keep your skills sharp pales in comparison.
And even if harder, wouldn’t it still be a productive means towards the end of moving into that field?
Relevant snippet from Brand:
> Eventually, the rest of that story is that woolly mammoths could be part of the revival of what used to be called the Mammoth Steppe, which is the grasslands of the far north, which was once the largest biome on Earth … what [Mammoths] are good at is knocking down trees. Knocking down trees is good because it turns a closed-canopy forest into mosaic, and a mosaic is a much richer ecological environment for all kinds of species.
1. https://tim.blog/2018/02/03/the-tim-ferriss-show-transcripts...
In a max drought scenario (Lake Mead surface elevation <1,025 feet) it looks like delivery requirements would be reduced by 125,000 acre-feet, with different delivery thresholds above that range.
1. https://www.ibwc.gov/Files/Minutes/Min319_Env_Fact_Sheet.pdf
Which I believe was drafted during the wettest decade in the Southwest’s history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_geometry?wprov=sfti1