

Stoned Insights (Carl Sagan) - CSAG

I&#x27;m curious to know what HN stoners (or light smokers) think of &#x27;stoned insights&#x27;.<p>Sometimes when I smoke pot while coding, I get these product ideas that seam magical and are &#x27;guaranteed to disrupt&#x27;. I&#x27;ve always dismissed them as fairy tale thinking, but after reading what Carl Sagan had to say about this, I&#x27;m starting to reconsider.<p>“There is a myth about such highs: the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved when high are real insights; the main problem is putting these insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we’re down the next day.” -Carl Sagan<p>“I can remember on one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidity of racism in terms of Gaussian distribution curves. (…) One idea led to another, and at the end of about an hour of extremely hard work I found I had written eleven short essays on a wide rage of social, political, philosophical, and human biological topics. I can’t go into the details of those essays, but from all external signs, they seem to contain valid insights. I have used them in university commencement addresses, public lectures, and in my books.” -Carl Sagan<p>additionally, a well written piece to the topic:
http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sebastianmarincolo.wordpress.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;02&#x2F;15&#x2F;marijuana-insights-myth-or-reality&#x2F;
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nirnira
I always enjoyed it, but I never found I could deliver on the promise of my
insights. They always seemed to lead to the need for some massive project, and
I just don't have the time for a new grand project every week. The comedown
would always leave me feeling deflated so in the end I decided it was just an
unhealthy way to live. I ended up quitting, but I haven't quit thinking big, I
just want to do it the hard way, without shortcuts.

