Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction • Hacker News Board

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#161

Post by TremendousJudge » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #140

Cougher wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very skeptical of this. A common claim that's long been floated around the medical community, most recently in the "evidence-based" medical community, is that if there isn't a hard test for a condition, then it's psychosomatic. It's an arrogant and abusive conclusion that's also ironic: we don't have a diagnostic test to prove it, so the cause is something that also doesn't have a diagnostic test.

It does sound a bit like archaeology and ascribing religious purpose to any structure or artifact we cannot identify as something else.

You can also call it "Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions"[0] -- if the matter seems a mystery, well, then the answer surely must be a mystery as well! I cannot be something simple and comprehensible

[0] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6i3zToomS86oj9bS6/mysterious...

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#162

Post by Cougher » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 3:02 PM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #152

Cougher wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This presents an interesting diversion: the phenomenon of anesthesiologists who are addicted to drugs. I worked with one who lost his position as chief because he was caught buying street drugs . . . on a city street. If people who are so well-educated about the effects of recreational drug use can still succumb to it, it's unreasonable to expect that the average person should be "smart enough" to be immune to the ri…

I think it obvious personally - you would find it difficult to find an anaestiologist who fears the drugs. Also notably the reason you heard about it was because the hammer of the state, not because the drugs itself ruined his life.

I generally agree about the hammer of the state angle, but another angle here is that if medical people are addicted to drugs and they have access to patients' drugs, they can potentially skim some of the drugs that they're supposed to be giving their patients.

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#163

Post by dawg- » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 3:20 PM UTC

decebalus1 wrote: post #32

I will probably go against the grain here but my inner tinfoil hat is telling me that the recent marijuana legalization is actually secretly run by the military industrial complex in order to silence dissent. Kind of the 'lithium in the water supply' thing.

Eh, I would doubt it seeing as how pot was the drug of choice for all the hippies during the biggest anti-war movement in our country's history

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#164

Post by thedaemon » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 3:28 PM UTC

mozey wrote: post #144

elil17 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While caffeine is technically a drug, it's just very different than alcohol and other drugs. People can go to work, spend time with family, and even make important life decisions without caffeine getting in the way. The same is not true for alcohol, cocaine, meth, etc. (Nicotine is similar, I imagine, though I've never actually used it)

> People can go to work, spend time with family, and even make important life decisions without caffeine getting in the way Caffeine is my drug of choice for working, but I've found it sometimes affects me badly. As a rule, I only drink coffee in the morning, and try to avoid it in the afternoon. I know of better substances for spending time with family and making important life decisions. Saying alcohol, cocaine, me…

Commenting on "lumping all drugs together", I believe this is due in large part to ignorance of each drug. You'd have to have personal experiences with them to understand the differences, hence people lump them together because they are labeled as a "drug."

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#165

Post by mindfulgeek » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 3:53 PM UTC

smilbandit wrote: post #159

Aldous's pill popping from Brave New World isn't as interesting as what he said in his interview with Mike Wallace, https://youtu.be/alasBxZsb40

Thanks for sharing that link. What he’s saying here is very relevant today.

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#166

Post by decebalus1 » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

dawg- wrote: post #163

decebalus1 wrote: post #32

I will probably go against the grain here but my inner tinfoil hat is telling me that the recent marijuana legalization is actually secretly run by the military industrial complex in order to silence dissent. Kind of the 'lithium in the water supply' thing.

Eh, I would doubt it seeing as how pot was the drug of choice for all the hippies during the biggest anti-war movement in our country's history

we've reached a point where we can wage war with way WAY less people and way more taxpayer money so the number of folks who want to go to war or who support war doesn't really matter. The draft is an outdated concept. You'll always have people who want to go into the army for the welfare.

Also, weed is much stronger today than it was in the '70s and now you have regular folks walking around secretly addicted to pot [0]. That was definitely not the case in the '70.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/06/opinion/sunday/marijuana-...

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#167

Post by jerf » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 4:34 PM UTC

filoeleven wrote: post #156

jerf wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Contraception and abortifacients have existed for millennia." Yes, but not reliably (for contraception) or safely (for abortifacients), and by their nature, 80% reliable contraception is of dubious utility.

Birth control pills have a 9% failure rate, and anyone who’s taken it will tell you that the experience is far from “without consequence.”

I didn't say "without consequence". I said "safe". And by "safe" I didn't mean "literally no-one ever will ever have a problem with it in any way", but something more like a normal meaning of the term.

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#168

Post by jerf » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 4:39 PM UTC

oska wrote: post #153

jerf wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Contraception and abortifacients have existed for millennia." Yes, but not reliably (for contraception) or safely (for abortifacients), and by their nature, 80% reliable contraception is of dubious utility.

> 80% reliable contraception is of dubious utility. You realise the quoted reliability rates are per year, not per act? For example, the withdrawal method (available to everyone, for all time) has a reliability rate of 78% for typical use and 96% for perfect use. [1] Obviously, even at 78% reliability over a year, that is of a great deal of utility. 78% of the time a woman whose partner practises withdrawal will not…

It is observably a fact that the "sexual revolution" was a qualitative change and not just a quantitative change. Presumably something changed for that to happen. A student of history will note many, many times in the past that cultures would have been willing to make that change, but couldn't for some reason, so "it's just because we moderns are so uniquely awesome and wise and wonderful" doesn't strike me as a likely answer.

I suppose it could conceivably just be the ability to treat STDs, but I don't think that's enough, personally. YMMV. (Plus I'm not sure that the time works out correctly.)

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#169

Post by flatline » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #25

flatline wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ridiculously high. A quick search reveals that: > After about ten years on the market, Valium had been prescribed to 59.3 million patients [0] The US population in 1970 was about 200 million. A significant portion of the adult US population took valium at some point during the 60s/70s. [0] https://www.valiumaddiction.com/history-of-v.htm

Interesting. The NYT says 59.3 million prescriptions, not patients. [0] If so the number of patients would presumably be significantly lower, since it is in fact addictive. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/1976/02/01/archives/article-16-no-ti...

Interesting that the numbers are the same, I think it’s just coincidence, they are measuring different things on different time scales. It peaked in 1978 with several billion pills being dispensed in a single year. I had a psych professor that said that 70% of US adults were on Valium at some point during the 70s. Anecdotal but I think it’s in the right ballpark.

Re: Aldous Huxley Foresaw America’s Pill-Popping Addiction

#170

Post by afarrell » Tue, Dec 03, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #150

afarrell wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tolkien's Lord of the Rings...literary reactions to that time period It was also a response to WWI. Tolkein's childhood friends were killed and shattered by that war...and why? Because in 1831, Britain agreed to be a guarantor of Belgian neutrality. So when Gondor calls for aid... when Isildur calls the Men of the White Mountains to war... when Minas Tirith is besieged... what ought elves and men do but honour thei…

Tolkein apparently furiously denied allegory - although there are preexisting tropes that predate even his influence (decline of the mythic past Götterdämmerungn Atlantis) is hard to not see. Which I suppose probably owes itself both to decline of youthful myths like "parents and ancestors as infalliable" and the distant mutated memories of the Bronze Age collapse where the greatest empires indeed did fall from lofty…

What I'm pointing to isn't allegory though. Allegory would be if the Rohirrim at Helms Deep represented the Belgians and the elves led by Haldir represented the British Expeditionary Force. They don't.

But stories are still about (among other things) the choices people make, the way we see those choices, and the things we think about our own choices.