The story about the photography students was conveyed almost verbatim in the book Atomic Habits fwiw.
But I think this type of principle has been relayed through many forms. Even Bruce Lee has the famous quote “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once,
but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
It's such an interesting arc. I starting university in Sept '94, super excited to try out Mosaic on a T1 class connection after suffering through my 14.4k home modem. And shortly after I arrived, Netscape dropped.
He was an absolute hero of that era, possibly the most admired 'geek' back then. Young, with hair, with no hints of his future Dr. Evil emergence.
I don't recall that fame at the time (from Mcom/Netscape, JWZ was more visible, in my circles), but I knew his name.
When he was first coding NCSA Mosaic, we were both pretty young, and doing workstation development, which took more of what HN would consider hacker spirit than the bulk of contemporary software development does. And we were also presumably Internet people, so I assumed he was like me.
In my mind, there was a default Internet person culture, which was very different than the tech industry culture of today. Curious, optimistic and wanting to bring Internet tech and culture to people, and a sense of responsibility for it. (Not affected platitudes, but innate and genuine; but also not tested by the potential of wealth, so you didn't really know how firmly held it was.)
Culturally, today, I seem to be closer than him to my early impression of early Internet people. (Though I changed my mind about trying to first become a professor and then do research commercial spinouts, rather than to grab the initial dotcom boom money right away. So I'd like a do-over.)
I don't know why he culturally seemed to go into the direction of libertarian manifestos and questionable crypto pumping.
Maybe he has in mind a version of OG Internet values, or some other vision, and he's trying to amass more wealth and power to make it happen?
There have been a few OG hackers in the VC space who you might have assumed would go one way if they had money, but then went a different way. Were they actually always like that? Did they learn something that changed how they think about the world? Were they changed by money/power circles, sycophants, or drugs? Did their business take on a life of its own, naturally maximizing profit, and they were just along for the ride?
I had idea that was a 'thing' in the Louvre when a went a couple years back. Was wild competing for space at the front of the line with a half dozen kids taking selfies.
I dunno... I really enjoyed walking through the Hall of Mirrors. Obviously that experience alone is no where near the entirety of the Louvre, and I wouldn't suggest heading out to Versailles if you're only in Paris for say a 5 day trip, but I'm glad I went on my 11 day trip a couple years back.
We somehow managed to get to it with relatively few people. The rest was 100 people per square centimeter, multiple tourist groups fighting for the same spots, more crowded than a Tokyo subway in peak hour.
Though I've heard it's much better if you manage to get there at opening time.
Lovely to hear this about Infocom and SOL. The former was my obsession throughout the mid-late 80s on my Atari 800XL, and then the latter for the next few years after getting a 386SX in '89.
I agree, soma definitely parallels weed much more closely, but I don't think it's a perfect match. Huxley imagines a drug a bit more insidious, without obviously negative side effects, and with somewhat unrealistic(imo) intended effects.
Disagree. Weed is somewhat psychadelic ... and makes people enjoy the colors and not work so much. Soma made people numbless working with a feeling of glow. So I always understood it as antidepressant and moodlifter with some amphetamine compoments.
Weed isn't really psychedelic (it can be profound, and sometimes you'll get extra giggly...) but really it's more about being okay with the numbness.
It's also not really an antidepressant any more than it is an amphetamine (it's neither). Attempting to self-medicate in either direction is not beneficial, longer term.
If your marijuana usage carries you through such wide-ranging symptomology, that's on you homey [holds-back next pass to you]. It's okay to ask for help.
Depends on mind, use, dose. I've had THC trips that were almost as strong as concentrated mushrooms can deliver on an empty stomach, seeing shit that wasn't, patterns, my mind was light years away, reality twisted. Almost as strong.
Didn't dance as a mist of atoms to shamanic music without any connection to my real 5 senses, but then again I hardly met mushroom user who did achieve that themselves.
I agree with you that even higher doses of psilocybin (several grams) isn't that psychedelic (rather interconnected, e.g.)... I don't have enough experience with LSD to exclude its visuals capability, but even its quintessential acid visuals I rarely hear described [as such].
...unlike DMT (recommended) or Salvia (not recommended) or mescaline (neutral), which even at low dosages are strikingly visual. I have only met devils with the latter two. Ketamine isn't exactly visual, but its dreaminess is angelic.
> Marijuana often seems to promote thinking "outside the box"
Hard disagree. Cannabis induces a sensation of profundity. It makes ordinary mundane thoughts feel insightful and novel. The ideas you have when on cannabis seem like insightful out of the box ideas, but that's a perceptual illusion created by the drug. The best it can do is provide you the encouragement to see ideas through to the end, but of course this is tempered by the way it generally has a negative effect on motivation, so most often users are left thinking of ideas they think are wonderful, but not actually executing on those ideas. End result is usually a couch potato lost in unproductive thoughts.
I think he was inspired by Valium and other benzos. They put people into a docile, low-anxiety state, and they were popular around the time the book was written.
That's also more-or-less consistent with the implied literary reference to the Lotus Eaters, who I think are usually imagined as opium users. Opioids are different but are also downers that reduce anxiety.
Benzos later featured significantly in one of Adam Curtis' film-essays -- maybe Century of the Self, maybe another one. I'd view those films as being in a similar spirit to Brave New World.
If we are talking about BNW, which was written in 1931, then that book predates benzodiazepines by 25 years or so. Perhaps you are thinking about barbiturates?
Oof! Thank you for the correction. I should have checked the publication date. I thought it was from the late '50s; I was wrong.
(By contrast, turns out 1984 -- which is always paired with BNW -- came out later than I thought, in '49. Yet BNW seemed more forward-looking. I always imagined it was written partially in response. It wasn't.)
There goes my benzo theory.
Though they remain what I imagine when I read about soma.
It is, you're right, and it's super weird what happens on the internet when you suggest weed isn't some gateway to enlightenment. I love cannabis, but it's a depressant that increases dopamine, it's not that complicated. Stoners on the internet sound exactly like alcoholics—they say it makes them more creative, helps them sleep, deal with anxiety too. We do such a shit job teaching about signs of psychological addiction.
It definitely doesn’t help sleep quality, but it could plausibly help with creativity in people who have the capacity to have good creative ideas. This is because it seems to produce a feeling that all (or at least more) of one’s ideas are good.
If someone has a problem with idea development because they decide early that the idea isn’t worth exploring, perhaps due to low self confidence in ideation etc, then simply producing the feeling of it being a good idea could help them go further than they would otherwise with it. Of course it also makes dumb ideas feel like good ideas too, so for someone who doesn’t have the capacity to have good creative ideas or who doesn’t have this problem in the first place, it probably won’t help.
I’ve read that it interferes with one or more sleep stages enough to make them ineffective. My understanding is that it may help someone fall asleep, but the actual sleep they get will definitely be worse. So for insomnia, where the alternative is just not sleeping at all, yes, but otherwise no, AFAIK.
Exactly. In addition to general insomnia, people who suffer from persistent nightmares due to PTSD or other reasons will sleep restfully.
And with nightmares I’m not referring to bad dreams in general, but to horrific nightmares where a person is re-experiencing their trauma in various ways, not necessarily remembering their dreams afterwards.
Imagine sleeping eight hours but waking up more tired than when you went to sleep and in full panic mode without even knowing why. After months and years, it gets pretty tiring.
Being able to not be afraid of going to sleep is a lifesaver and can keep those people functional in their lives.
The sedation is psychological - soma suppresses discomfort and boosts easy pleasure. It’s not introspective at all, which makes it much closer to MDMA than to cannabis.
pure racemic MDMA has very little stimulant effect. street MDMA can feel stimulating because it is either intentionally mixed with caffeine/speed/meth or contains residual precursor from clandestine synthesis.
my major state was one of deep relaxation ... MDMA does not work like Dexedrine ... I feel totally peaceful.
Shulgin used dozens (hundreds?) of these compounds. I do wonder if some of his better subjective observations might be due to simply relieving withdrawal symptoms.
A lot of them left in the first days on the job. I guess they saw what they were going to work on and peaced out. No one wants to work on AI slop and mental abuse of children on social media.
I don't understand how an intelligent person could accept a job offer from Facebook in 2025 and not understand what company they just agreed to work for.
With the amount of money Facebook was offering I could see them having a hard time refusing. If someone offered me 100 million dollars to work on AI I know I would have a hard time refusing.
Stated with no more evidence than the figure of $100M of compensation, which was started by Sam Altman on his brother's podcast. But surprisingly everyone seems to be entirely fine with this wild claim and not asking for proof.
Historically, many master painters used teams of assistants/apprentices to do most of the work under their guidance, with them only stepping in to do actual painting in the final details.
Similar with famous architects running large studios, mostly taking on a higher level conceptual role for any commissions they're involved in.
Traditionally in software (20+ years ago) architects typically wouldn't code much outside of POC work, they just worked with systems engineers and generated a ton of UML to be disseminated. So if we go back to that type of role, it somewhat fits in with agentic software dev.
That's where we're at a marked disagreement. "It's just a way to get paid" reduces every human knowledge to a monetary transaction, so the value of any type of learning is only worth what is being paid for.
Thankfully the people that came before us didn't see it that way otherwise we wouldn't even have anything to program on.
> they just worked with systems engineers and generated a ton of UML to be disseminated. So if we go back to that type of role, it somewhat fits in with agentic software dev.
I've never met one of those UML slingers that added much value.
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