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Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

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Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#201

Post by ThrustVectoring »

Bartweiss wrote: post #185
thebiglebrewski wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds kind of in line with the theory that drugs are kind of a zero-sum game. You got a lot of speed earlier on and achieved a ton, but then paid for it later on. Kind of like a, "no such thing as a free lunch" economic theory, but for drugs! Not to knock you or your methods, just an observation.

> a no such thing as a free lunch theory, but for drugs There's some reason to believe this is literally true - and true in the same sense as the economic rule! In this context, it's been nicknamed the Algernon argument. Gwern (of course) has the canonical writeup.[1] The short version is: "if some chemical change could make us smarter, why wouldn't it already been in place?" Or, framed differently, "why would the br…

One of the obvious ones is consuming excessive amounts of nutrients scarce in the ancestral environment. Like, you evolved in a place where you can't just buy Choline supplements, so "you're smarter but run out of Choline" isn't a thing that comes about.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#202

Post by raphlinus »

I'll add a data point, though it's almost entirely negative. I've been at Google over 10 years and have yet to come across a person using illegal hard drugs. I can think of three people with serious drinking problems. There's been a drinking culture (many offices have beer on tap), but I see that changing, as people are more conscious of the negative effects. A bunch of people use marijuana, but off-hours.

I haven't seen people seriously discussing stimulants (such as Adderall and modafinil) as performance enhancers; I've come across a number of people using these, but all in the context of diagnosed ADHD. I've also not seen anyone experimenting with microdosing LSD.

There's a surprising amount of openness and support for talking about mental health issues in general. I think this is a really good thing. The stigmatization we see in broader society is not actually helpful.

Obviously this is all my personal observation, but I think I would know; I definitely saw some serious drug use when I was in grad school at Berkeley.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#203

Post by ojno »

Bartweiss wrote: post #185
thebiglebrewski wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds kind of in line with the theory that drugs are kind of a zero-sum game. You got a lot of speed earlier on and achieved a ton, but then paid for it later on. Kind of like a, "no such thing as a free lunch" economic theory, but for drugs! Not to knock you or your methods, just an observation.

> a no such thing as a free lunch theory, but for drugs There's some reason to believe this is literally true - and true in the same sense as the economic rule! In this context, it's been nicknamed the Algernon argument. Gwern (of course) has the canonical writeup.[1] The short version is: "if some chemical change could make us smarter, why wouldn't it already been in place?" Or, framed differently, "why would the br…

This is a fallacy. There are many things we can accomplish through medicine, or technology more generally, that evolution never could. There are reasons other than it being a net disadvantage that evolution may not have produced something; for example, a particular chemical may not have an easy and cost-effective way to be created in the body (particularly when food was much harder to come by), but be easy enough for us now to synthesise.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#204

Post by Blahah »

IntronExon wrote: post #88
tjansen wrote: post #59

Wow, this discussion is mindblowing. Working in software dev for 20 years, in Germany, and I have never seen any developer taking any stimulants. But maybe this is because only my first job was at a young startup, and I quickly learned that working 24/7 just isn't for me and I need a more stable environment. Today, the way whalesalad and others describe the effect of Adderall sounds interesting to me, but I would nev…

I would apply a grain of salt to the claims of people who are avid drug users, as to the popularity of drugs. There is an incredibly strong “birds of a feather flock together,” effect at play. The social circles of people who think they need drugs to do their job are going to only minimally overlap with people who find that notion crazy and dangerous.

As one of those people, I completely agree. My entire social circle uses drugs in some way. But that means I don't see outside it. And I very often connect with people, adding them to my circle, because we subtly realise we both share that experience. So definitely don't assume my experiences are a random sample of the population :)

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#205

Post by whalesalad »

woah wrote: post #84

I would be careful of overestimating the amount of stimulant use based on comments and emails here. People who use a lot of stimulants tend to love talking about themselves and often have a belief that anyone successful must be taking stimulants secretly. It plays into the motivation of most stimulant users which is that the stimulants have given them a special cheat code in life. I worked in construction in my young…

I can totally see where you are coming from, but I hope you aren't directing your comments towards what I said above.

I actually felt pretty vulnerable submitting my comment (as opposed to being someone who loves to talk about myself) It seems to be resonating with others now, so that feeling has warn off, but initially I was a little concerned to open up and be so candid in a public forum.

Also, I did not intend to downplay those who are incredibly successful without drugs. I've just witnessed time and time again the scenario where person A is completely awe-struck by person B and their accomplishments and doesn't realize it 's because they have a literal advantage due to performance enhancing drugs.

Then someone says, "oh yeah, so and so takes a ton of adderall, didn't you know?" and everything begins to make more sense.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#206

Post by PedroBatista »

jfv wrote: post #200

Drug abuse is not a big issue in SV in general. There are a few general themes: 1) Some startups have a heavy-drinking bro-y environment. 2) Weed is common outside of work (in all of SF) 3) As part of the burning man culture a lot of people will occasionally let loose all weekend with molly, LSD, shrooms, and anything else you’d expect at BM 4) Some people will use adderall/modanfil to stay productive during work. 5)…

After all that.. "not big issue in SV"

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#208

Post by matte_black »

I’m not convinced that productivity is a virtue for software engineers.

I have production code running untouched for over 8 years that was produced in the laziest straight forward way as possible, simply because I didn’t feel like working so hard. Indeed, I delayed writing any code until I came up with an idea of the minimum amount of code I could get away with, then I minimized that some more. I’ve eliminated entire features by simply procrastinating them until people realized they didn’t actually need them.

Would a crackhead engineer stop and reflect on the best use of their personal time on this Earth? Probably not, they’d probably just bull through and slave away to “get things done” at the altar of productivity.

Re: Ask HN: I'm writing a book about white-collar drug use, including tech sector

#209

Post by d--b »

Developer in finance here.

Honestly I've seen zero drug use in the engineering world. Work hours aren't crazy (the max I did was 13hr/day - usual is 9/10), so you don't really need the stimulants like cocaine.

Social alcoolism is common, so is recreational marijuana, but it doesn't seem related to work.

Finance-wise, I think things are a lot less 'sex and drugs and rock n roll' than people believe. The finance guys are more like what you see in The Big Short: serious geeks.

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