
Why We Should Say Yes to Drugs - pmoriarty
https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/05/andrew-sullivan-why-we-should-say-yes-to-drugs.html
======
abhiminator
I'm totally on-board with opposition to the pointless 'War on Drugs,' but what
I'm not cool with is when pundits and other public figures on the other side
of the spectrum PUSH for its wide-adoption and integration into everyday
lifestyle akin to alcohol -- like the article's author is doing here -- which
I feel is equally detrimental because there have been many well documented
cases of people succumbing to the spell of psychedelics and similar
substances. [0][1]

[0] [http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/only-a-
handful...](http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/only-a-handful-of-
people-in-history-have-ever-overdosed-on-lsd-this-is-what-happened-to-them/)

[1] [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ppm59z/smoking-weed-
can-b...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ppm59z/smoking-weed-can-be-a-lot-
of-fun-but-lets-not-pretend-it-doesnt-fuck-you-up)

~~~
jdietrich
There's a rather worrying trend of psychedelics being "sold" as a safe
panacea. If you believe the cheerleaders, psychedelics are powerful enough to
rapidly cure mental illness and facilitate profoundly positive personality
changes, but have only trivial side-effects. That doesn't seem particularly
plausible to me - there aren't many medicines that are both very potent and
very safe.

The stereotype of the burned-out hippie exists for a reason. I personally know
people who took way too much acid and never quite came back to earth; some are
diagnosed schizophrenics, while others are just a bit eccentric and vague.
There are a lot of really harrowing reports in the Erowid archive. HPPD is
almost certainly a real disorder. I'm not advocating for DARE-style
scaremongering, but I think that any honest conversation has to give serious
consideration to potential risks as well as potential benefits.

~~~
throwaway98371
I grew up in a really conservative, deeply religious (Protestant Christian)
family. My parents loved me and did their best to raise me according to their
beliefs, but their beliefs were both absurdly strict and also ridiculously
unsupportable by the scientific evidence that, as a book- and science-obsessed
teenager, I was absorbing at a rapid pace.

Given that I was quickly disbelieving everything I had been raised to believe,
and given that I was also doing teenager things like partying with friends and
experimenting with various substances, there was an incredible amount of
tension and arguing taking place in my home. My relationship with my parents
was appalling. We fought constantly. I hated their beliefs. I hated my
upbringing. They had no idea how to deal with a son who had always really been
a good kid - a fun companion for my dad and a really loving child with my mom
(who is still one of the most adorable, kind, caring and wonderful people I've
ever known).

One night, when I was perhaps 16 years old, I came home quite late. I was high
on LSD - probably the latter part of the trip. I was walking around the side
of my house to get to the back door, and I paused. I started thinking about my
parents. And suddenly it all became clear to me - the reasons for why they
were they way they were, and the centrality of love to it all. The fact that
their strictness was rooted in their deeply felt fear that I could end up
doomed to spend eternity in hell. That, and a dozen other insights about them
and our relationship washed over me.

This moment completely transformed our relationship. It was like a fever had
broken. I still utterly disbelieved in their Christian faith - but I no longer
raged against it, or felt the need to argue with them about it. I accepted
them. I realized they had grown up in an environment similar to mine, but had
never been able to break free of it. Instead of anger at them for this, I felt
compassion for them.

I recognized that I loved them, and they loved me.

I know I could have gotten there without the acid trip, but I firmly believe
that it would have taken several more years at least. That moment of insight
when I was 15 or 16 years old was the kind that sometimes doesn't dawn on
people until they're 30. Sometimes it never does.

Incidentally, this is just one of many moments of change that are rooted in
some of the experiences I've had with psychedelics. I also, for example, shed
my existentialist fear of death. But that's a different story. ;)

~~~
lotsofpulp
I didn’t excuse my parents behavior just because it came from “love”. They
didn’t know any better, but they also refused my attempts to educate them
multiple times. To me, that says their ego and need to assume things about
their “afterlife” was more important than pursuing valid data and analysis,
not a good trait in my opinion.

~~~
Matticus_Rex
So who had a better experience? You or the guy who learned about acceptance
and transcendence?

~~~
NikolaeVarius
Can't really compare them. How do you compare which experience is better given
they are both personal?

~~~
Matticus_Rex
Would you rather have peace about something or not? Seems pretty clear to me
(which is why I'm a proponent of Stoic practice and CBT).

------
toomanybeersies
I've taken my fair share of drugs of all sorts, and maybe I'm just a grumpy
bastard, but I've never felt like the author describes. I've never seen God or
the afterlife. I've always been fully aware than even deep into a trip or a
roll or in the depths of a k hole, it's just the drugs that are making me
weird.

I'm all for taking recreational drugs to have fun and I'm all for
"recreational drugs" used in a clinical setting, like ketamine for treating
depression and addiction, LSD for addiction and end of life care, or MDMA for
PTSD. But I don't think we'd see social benefits and an improved society from
dosing everyone up on LSD and MDMA. I don't think that psychedelic experiences
are profoundly religious or spiritual. I don't go around recommending that
everyone takes a bunch of drugs. People will if they want to, but I'd never
pressure someone into doing them.

I'm not necessarily saying that the author falls into this camp, but I think
that a lot of the time people try and make up medical or spiritual reasons for
why they should legalise drugs, when they just want to take them
recreationally. Just admit you want to take a bunch of drugs and get weird,
there's nothing wrong with that!

And one last thing: I'm not sure about shrooms, but pissing on LSD is a
terrible experience. Every little detail of the toilet is magnified and in
perfect clarity, and the toilet either feels like it's 6 inches away or 6 feet
away.

~~~
V-2
This reminds me of the famous Leary vs. Lettvin debate (1967):
[https://youtu.be/Gq3Fp-xp0l0](https://youtu.be/Gq3Fp-xp0l0)

For the brochure version: [http://www.swt.org/oshare/Lettvin-Leary/Lettvin-
Leary-LSD-De...](http://www.swt.org/oshare/Lettvin-Leary/Lettvin-Leary-LSD-
Debate-Merged-OCR.pdf)

Leary's sitting in the lotus position was always a red flag to me ;) I don't
advocate a prohibition at all, but I think there's something wrong with
attempting to conceive some sort of an ideology to back up the drug use.

Lettvin's point - _" but the problem is whether the navel really replaces TV"_
\- still stands ;)

~~~
toomanybeersies
Speaking of Leary, this quote from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas [1]
basically sums up my opinion and sentiment above:

> All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace
> and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours,
> too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-
> style that he helped to create...

> ...a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood
> the essential old mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate
> assumption that somebody-or at least some force-is tending the Light at the
> end of the tunnel...

> ... This is the same cruel and paradoxically benevolent bullshit has kept
> the Catholic Church going for so many centuries.

I think that HST had the right idea. He was under no illusion that drugs were
just a bunch of fun and that life was a carnival. Of course, the man killed
himself at 67, so I don't know if he's a great role model. In fact, he's no
better than Leary, he just went over the deep end of hedonism instead.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/453917-we-are-all-wired-
int...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/453917-we-are-all-wired-into-a-
survival-trip-now-no)

~~~
robotbikes
But LSD was also used heavily by people who went on to become the visionaries
of the computer revolution that we are all utilizing to discuss this topic.
Steve Jobs being one of the most notable but there were others documented in
the book what the domouse said
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/725789.What_the_Dormouse...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/725789.What_the_Dormouse_Said)

------
headsoup
Drugs should not be criminalised. They should be regulated.

There's no fundamental reason that drugs are any worse than alcohol except
social stigma and manipulation.

A most bizarre example imo is Portugal. It is a fine-able offense to carry
drugs (up to 10 days), but not criminal. Yet it is criminal to produce or
distribute drugs. How does that work if consumption of the end product is not
criminal.

It's like it must be illegal on principle because drug cartels (or whatever),
but we understand the end effect is not something criminal. Weird..

~~~
toomanybeersies
It's not really bizarre at all.

Portugal have made the decision that although drugs are bad (in their
opinion), the users of drugs are not bad people, but rather the victims of bad
people (the dealers).

~~~
pmoriarty
_" the users of drugs are not bad people, but rather the victims of bad people
(the dealers)"_

Why need a user of drug be a victim of anyone?

There's a difference between drug use (which can be constructive, or at least
not harmful) and drug abuse. We should not equate the two.

Drugs (especially psychedelics, but also cannabis) could be hugely beneficial
to people when used constructively. When people benefit from such constructive
drug use, they should be thanking those who provide them those drugs, and not
putting those people in jail or demonizing them as "bad people".

~~~
toomanybeersies
> Drugs could be hugely beneficial to people when used constructively

I don't disagree with you. I'm just saying that the viewpoint of the
Portuguese government is that any use of drugs (outside the legal ones) is
abuse, and that the abusers are the victims.

They're saying that it is still inherently bad for people to be taking drugs,
but that drug users are not bad people.

------
tranchms
“LSD comes from bacteria.”

This is wrong.

LSD is synthesized from ergot, a fungus that grows on rye.

An oversight like this throws the authors entire credibility into question.
Know your subject matter.

~~~
merinowool
I wonder if all media participate in such disinformation on purpose...

~~~
tdb7893
Most of the mistakes are pretty simple errors and with how many news articles
are printed each day it would be weird not to have errors like this (also it's
essentially impossible hundreds of journalists could be communicating with
each other in some grand conspiracy, that would unravel insanely fast). It's
the same as most software bugs are legitimate errors, there have been
purposeful ones but most aren't.

~~~
merinowool
In some countries media are licensed, so they can't publish things against
guidelines. They risk losing their license also it is easy to label such leak
as conspiracy theory (term coined by the CIA by the way)

------
dvcrn
the crazy war on drugs and stigma is something I never really understood. Why
do I when I take for example mdma, a drug that just makes me feel happy and
loved, become a criminal and can go to prison? This just seems so weird. And
then we have alcohol and cigarettes which are even more damaging to your body
than a lot of things, and it’s completely fine.

I’d say it should be up choice. If you want to take substance x over alcohol,
take it.

Controlling and encouraging safe usage is the way to go. People that want to
take drugs will find and take them anyway.

~~~
merinowool
I hope one day those who push war on drugs are recognised for the damage they
have caused and all the deception that is going on will be exposed and heads
will roll.

~~~
nine_k
Did any heads roll when The Prohibition was finally considered a failure?

~~~
merinowool
Sadly, no

------
josefresco
_I take what I blasphemously call my annual “Jesus Day” alone in the dunes at
the end of Cape Cod_

Fun story: I live and went to school in Provincetown which is the "end of Cape
Cod" to which the author is referring. One of my good friends worked for the
"rescue squad" (Fire/EMT). He told me that more than once they've had to
"rescue" someone wondering the dunes, high on ...something who was having
medical trouble. Probably not related as Ptown is sort of an artists/spiritual
place for many put please remember this before taking those shrooms - bring a
sober buddy.

------
JackCh
Weed was cool until The Man started _wanting_ me to smoke it.

~~~
notahacker
Isn't think pretty much what happened in the Netherlands?

~~~
dzhiurgis
Kinda (I'm not a local) - the shops are quiet dodgy, usually attracting lower
status people. Only sells weed or hash or pre-rolled joints with tobacco.

Compare it with US - some shops in SF look like fancy hotel lobbies, sales
people incredibly knowledgeable, lots of options (candy, vapes, shatter, wax,
oils, etc). Can't smoke there tho.

~~~
merinowool
It is illegal in Netherlands and sales or possession is only "tolerated". Shop
still have to source they assortment from illegal sources.

------
thefounder
What a load of BS! Why does the author assume that all the people want "deep"
experiences to "feel" Jesus and other crap until they forget and are afraid of
the world they are actually living in?

------
anonytrary
I've noticed that weed from legal shops is dressed up and made to look great.
More than half the time, I'm disappointed. Sometimes it'll be rock hard or it
will look great and taste like garbage. I really miss the black-market stuff I
used to get in college. Back then, if it looked good, it was good and if it
looked like crap, it was crap. No gimmicks.

I still remember when I could touch and sniff weed before I bought it. Weed's
hyper-marketing and strict regulations are making it much less appealing to
me. I'd rather get weed directly from people who grow it, or just grow it
myself. This is a rare case where a peer-to-peer service actually makes a lot
of sense to me. When weed is entirely legal, I would not be surprised if there
really was an Uber for weed, even though "Uber for X" is kind of joke these
days.

~~~
eternauta3k
Looks like you want more of a greengrocer type of store rather than a
pharmacy.

~~~
anonytrary
Weed is closer to grocery than it is to pharmacy, it's just a plant; one could
call it an herb. I don't buy rosemary or thyme at the pharmacy, and I would
never want to, because I need to touch and smell herbs to gauge their quality
before I buy them. Pharmacies are for raw chemicals and pills, stuff that has
approximately no variance.

------
Noos
You should say yes to history instead. I can think of another drug that was
also lionized among the intelligentsia of their time, both for its medicinal
uses and its spiritual or creative benefits. That drug was opium.

"But I took it—and in an hour—oh, heavens! what a revulsion! what an
upheaving, from its lowest depths, of inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the
world within me! That my pains had vanished was now a trifle in my eyes: this
negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects
which had opened before me—in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly
revealed. Here was a panacea, a [Greek text] for all human woes; here was the
secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages,
at once discovered: happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in
the waistcoat pocket; portable ecstacies might be had corked up in a pint
bottle, and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach."

-Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, John De Quincey.

It sounds eerily a lot like the current push for psychedlica, and it
originally started with upperclass knowledge workers then, too. But as the
dangers of the drug became widely known, and it filtered downwards, it became
regarded as a horror, and prohibition came not because the government was a
killjoy and wanted to ruin people's recreational fun, but because the human
toll was high and as it filtered down the criminal element took control.

The addict or user always glorifies the damn thing in the honeymoon phase, its
after when the effects become known and widespread do we get the pushback.
It's always the answer to everything that ails you till it isn't.

------
stephenSinniah
I've only got anecdotal evidence but my hunch is that frequent long term use
of psychedelic substances will have a negative affect on you. One of my
favourite quotes on psychedelic usage is "Once you get the message, hang up."
It's a great experience especially when you have roadblocks in life, but I
think once you reach the state of realisation necessary you should take a step
back.

------
alexandercrohde
I'm not sure why anybody would publish something like this, it is
irresponsible.

It's an important question of how drugs affect people. And there is only 1 way
to answer that: rigorous scientific study.

Why we need controlled studies:

NOT self-reporting. You cannot take a substance that by definition disconnects
you from reality, then take the hallucinating person's account of improvement
as evidence. That is laughable.

NOT anecdotes.

MUST BE ANONYMOUS. This writer has a financial incentive to overhype to get
more clicks.

No SELECTION BIAS. I want to hear accounts from the people who never recovered
from acid too.

\--

I largely think the drug war is absurd. But any magazine running a piece like
this is absurd.

------
Fnoord
Disclaimer: I'm a former recreative drug user who particularly experimented
with various psychedelics throughout my early '20s. Most of these were legal
or decriminalised at that time, in my country. I've found out at the age of 35
that I have autism, and wish I knew this earlier in my life. I recommend every
human being to, instead of self experiment, follow the conventional scientific
method instead, and solely (although, yes, this can be expensive and long road
and a matter of finding the right therapist/diagnosis).

"Above all: God forbade it."

Says who? In medieval Europe (and to this very day) monastaries were growing
hop (arguably a drug) brewing beer (arguably a drug). Pharmacies are arguably
selling drugs. There is evidence of drug usage throughout our history,
especially a.muscaria (fly agaric).

"This, it immediately impressed upon me, was an intimation of godness; it
opened my heart to the divine; this was a sacrament, a fusing of the material
with the ineffable. Pollan tells the story of a woman called Mary who ate two
or three spoonfuls of mushrooms one day and, she told him, “had the most
profound experience of being with God. I was God and God was me.”

This is supported by the works of John Marco Allegro and some of his, eh,
followers. [1] [2] [3]

"And the word “drug,” like “psychedelic,” is horribly loaded. Like the
miraculous weed, psilocybin comes from the earth. LSD comes from bacteria.
They are not addictive; yes, they can be abused, but very few who have had a
psychedelic experience want to have it again and again."

Its dangerous to throw all psychedelic drugs on one pile. Psilocybin cannot be
used effectively in tandem (e.g. multiple times a week) however LSD can. LSD
is actually an oddball, pharmacologically, though I'm not an expert at this
field, see Wikipedia [4]

Also, LSA comes from bacteria (ergot and the like). [5] LSD is made via
chemistry of human interaction (synthesised).

Now we come to my actual point: we have the scientific ability to diagnose
people. We have the scientific ability to figure which medicine/cure works on
them. We have the scientific ability to standardise drug dosages. Recreational
drug / "natural" drug usage uses practically none of these abilities. Its
experimenting often done irresponsibly. I'm all for experimenting, but it
should be done in controlled settings, following the scientific method. There
are scientists who are proponents of that, but articles like these are not
going to win them grants because they resonate with the
experimental/recreational drug use culture only. The general public is against
that.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cross)

[2] [https://logosmedia.com/the-holy-mushroom-evidence-of-
mushroo...](https://logosmedia.com/the-holy-mushroom-evidence-of-mushrooms-in-
judeo-christianity/)

[3]
[https://logosmedia.com/SecretHistoryMagicMushroomsProject](https://logosmedia.com/SecretHistoryMagicMushroomsProject)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide#Pha...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide#Pharmacology)

[5] [https://azarius.net/smartshop/lsa-
seeds/](https://azarius.net/smartshop/lsa-seeds/)

~~~
isoprophlex
A nipick:

The ergot fungi are that, not bacteria!

Also LSA is lysergic acid; ergot infected rye contains more complex
biomolecules fused to LSA or ergoline. So little pure LSA in these plants!

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergot)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergoline#Peptide_alkaloids](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergoline#Peptide_alkaloids)

------
lwhalen
To answer the author's question, "why do these molecules promote boundless
love", it is selection bias. There's surely molecules that produce abject,
existential, pants-filling terror, but those molecules dont get shared around
in a communal setting, if they get shared at all.

------
fithisux
Now that corporates cannot sell more TVs, food, travels, loans, phones, they
have turned to the good old business model of turning their customers into
junkies.

Sustainable business model, extremely profitable and extremely anti-
competitive, .... but rules are for fools. As time permits doctors and
psychologists will have their share of the spoils like tobacco.

Personally I would turn the tide and put cigarettes on par with heroin
legally. 1 packet of cigarettes, six months to jail. Their profits were made
by devastating our healthcare system and made people ill.

Why not try this again? This time they will sell drugs legally.

The crisis was never financial, we as humans went bancrupt.

~~~
DirtyDan
So then you are okay with putting otherwise law abiding citizens in a cage and
ruining their chances of getting a decent job? Maybe even exposing them to a
group of people who do harder drugs? How would you propose we handle the
massive new influx of prisoners?

------
ben0x539
I'm gonna need someone to post a convincing "why we should say yes to cookies"
opinion piece before I can read the article, apparently.

~~~
Pete_D
Workaround: [https://archive.is/xVmHC](https://archive.is/xVmHC)

------
mirimir
I'd settle for "It's your choice".

------
JUDAS
Non protestant, non Zionist Christians should find these YT links specifically
useful, you can skip the wall of text.

I might get something wrong from the sources here, and by the way don't mean
to negate the potential of the classical psychedelics, ineffable and larger
than life as they present themselves in their first hand manifestation, but
one can't pretend to live in a political and historical vacuum and hope to get
away unscathed, much like not choosing is a still a choice. The sad thing is
that this will simply be used as a vehicle to push a highly destructive
political agenda.

If history is of any indication: once Illicit substances such as classical
psychedelics and marijuana are pushed by the mainstream, you can be sure it
won't be out of any heartfelt compassion, although this will be the rhetoric.
But in attempt to create an apolitical docile population. This is nothing new,
as seen in the opium wars, and continues to this day in a sense when
underground lab chemists flip a molecule and off it goes to the west.

The Sadist Foucault's Death-Valley-LSD-experience-inspired "pact with the
devil" (his words) ("If you give us unlimited sexual liberation, we won't
criticize your economic system".) and the formation of the new left as defined
him and by Freudian Marxist Wilhelm Reich, the father of sexual revolution,
(tool of subversion throughout history which gained in popularity particularly
by way of the degenerate "grandfather" of it Marquis de Sade) of the currently
non existent (corrupted and subverted) Christian/Western culture, whose book
was used as a weapon, thrown at police.

"Sade is best known for his erotic works, which combined philosophical
discourse with pornography, depicting sexual fantasies with an emphasis on
violence, criminality, and blasphemy against Christianity. He was a proponent
of extreme freedom, unrestrained by morality, religion, or law. The words
sadism and sadist are derived from his name." -Everipedia

People aren't aware to what degree the CIA has weaponized and used
pornography, like Israel did to the Palestinians to make them turn inwards,
useful stooges like Leary "tune in, turn on, drop out", to subvert Christian
values and the organized political activism by the public in the form of anti
war movements etc. such as the one which got subverted during the 60s.

This also delves into how it ties into the narcissistic, sexually transient
start up culture of the day, "We're poor but we're sexy" lifestyle and "go to
the gay disco and forget your problems" instead resisting to the abolition of
decent wages and good jobs.

Crucially predictive and insightful is Yuri Bezmenov's lectures on political
subversion and deception. The promotion of eastern philosophy and meditation
along with the cultural revolution of the 60's as a way to make people turn
inwards and tune out of the issues in society, particularly encroachment on
their human rights, economic activity, and abuses of power in domestic and
international, by means of misappropriating resources, sanctions and war. etc.

[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/03/berlin-
poor...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jan/03/berlin-poor-sexy-
silicon-valley-microsoft-google)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z_DQSV9kIo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z_DQSV9kIo)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3qkf3bajd4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3qkf3bajd4)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzeHpf3OYQY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzeHpf3OYQY)

~~~
dang
Would you please stop using HN for religious and ideological battle? That's
not what this site is for, and we ban accounts that do it.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
JUDAS
I don't think I'm "supposed" to give a response but I kinda did.

Well, hot dang. HN seems to be about sharing information and discussion, I
merely did the former, also, an ideology is a belief system, religions are
basically a set of values.

If you read the text you should see it's just snippets of facts (historical in
nature, and yes those two people have their agendas for the interview as far
as illumination and answering questions go you can get a sense of it from
watching them, arguably nothing malicious whatsoever for the masses, quite the
contrary.) mostly from the links with quotes. The links themselves are fact
dense from experts in their fields. Writer/scholar/researcher, and KGB
defector.

"Eugene Michael Jones is an American writer, former professor, media
commentator and the current editor of Culture Wars magazine. Jones is known
for his writings from a perspective which defends the Catholic Church in
American society and overviews the decline of the Catholic communities which
were assimilated into the secular American mainstream after the 1950s."

"Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov (Russian: Ю́рий Алекса́ндрович Безме́нов; 1939 –
1993), known by the alias Tomas David Schuman, was a Soviet journalist for RIA
Novosti and a former PGU KGB informant who defected to Canada."

-W

I'd say the one who flagged the posts is the real problem, no idea what the
hair up his ass was, problems with certain facts I guess. Looking at your
posts, there seems to be a systematic problem with how the site works,
wouldn't it be better if there wasn't this proclivity to censorship and knee-
jerk flag/downvoting. It seems to lead to an echo-chamber effect. From whoever
is arguing, this ideological battle thing though doesn't seem to have much of
an argument regardless, 1-2/7 posts he would feebly at best as I don't see an
argument, accuse me for it, weak stuff.

The point about how ideological "battle" destroying curiosity, I don't
understand frankly, people interested in the truth wouldn't be hands off,
rather they would engage, those who want to of course, when "ideologies" clash
I think there's a "the axe sharpens the sword" effect and ultimately the more
useful or truthful argument prevails, people with weak beliefs surely tend not
to seek confrontation, not that I was or wasn't doing that.

Not sure If I get it, I'm not an ideologue in general, I'm not sure what that
would even mean, everyone has ideals and values, changing as they may be, sure
I have "I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees
of certainty about different things." But that doesn't say much, as surely the
same applies to you and most people, ugh guess there's no escaping the echo
chamber of acceptable ideas in this format, as long as it has centralized
authorities. Subjectivity rules.

~~~
dang
HN is not the place for this. I've banned this account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and
give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

------
grosjona
Drugs desensitise people to life's "regular highs" which makes them seek out
stronger, more stimulating experiences in their lives, which makes them want
more money (since these experiences tend to be expensive), which makes people
more competitive in the workplace/marketplace (and more likely to be dishonest
and prioritise short term gains)... This makes it harder for non-drug-users to
compete in the workplace/marketplace.

Legalising drugs would essentially force everyone to use drugs. That's the
same reason why drugs are banned in professional sport.

From my experience, drugs make people less altruistic. Although it does also
make them more social (but social != altruism).

~~~
ppseafield
> Drugs desensitise people to life's "regular highs" which makes them seek out
> stronger, more stimulating experiences in their lives, which makes them want
> more money (since these experiences tend to be expensive), which makes
> people more competitive in the workplace/marketplace (and more likely to be
> dishonest and prioritise short term gains)... This makes it harder for non-
> drug-users to compete in the workplace/marketplace.

Perhaps not everyone's goal is to compete in the workplace/marketplace?

> Legalising drugs would essentially force everyone to use drugs.

Just like legalizing alcohol means everyone is forced to drink alcohol? In the
US prohibition brought us a surge of organized crime. Our current demand for
illegal drugs creates a very, very successful business model for drug cartels
in Mezo- and South America. I don't see how that's better.

> That's the same reason why drugs are banned in professional sport.

How's that going? The rules are regularly broken anyways, and all the doping
happens in secret. Tons of professional and amateur athletes are doping in
spite of the bans.

~~~
thefounder
>> Just like legalizing alcohol means everyone is forced to drink alcohol?

Well the fact is that most people drink alcohol, even kids causing more or
less harm to others and to themselves. The regulation story is not really that
pretty once once you see the effects on poor people/families! Now replace
alcohol with cocaine or heroine and see some ugly effects.

I would allow alcohol and drugs only if I could enforce a minimum age of 22-23
and proper education though and this only because I believe people should be
allowed to control their life.

~~~
ppseafield
> Well the fact is that most people drink alcohol

Most people drink alcohol =/= people are forced to drink alcohol. You've moved
the goalpost.

> minimum age of 22-23 and proper education

Teens keep finding ways to drink and smoke, even though there are laws about
selling to 18-21 year olds. The laws make it slightly harder, but in no way
make it impossible.

> I would allow... I believe people should be allowed to control their life.

These two things are not compatible.

