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As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

nytimes.com

481–490 of 686 posts

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#481
post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is focusing on whether being content with working at Taco Bell is sufficient in life, but I think the more interesting question is whether they truly are content. That's not for me to answer, but if the South Park quote has any truth (and I think it has more than a little), in 50 years' time, they themselves might not be happy with how things went in retrospect. In that case, it's possible they weren't reall…

People who ruined their lives with hard work and stress to make a billionaire richer while buying a useless polluting fancy car and big house, also have regrets.

Absolutely! And if we can identify factors which lead to us behaving in ways that make us feel such regrets, then this can help us lead better lives. Obviously weed isn't the only culprit.

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the way that South Park put it (in the voice of Randy Marsh) many years ago was just about perfect: “Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and ...it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorists, but... Well son, pot makes you feel fine with being bored and... It's when you're bored that you should be learning some new skill or discovering some new science or... being creat…

Moderation is key here, I believe. If you’re looking at successful people who get high all the time , it’s safe to assume they increased their marijuana (or any other substance) intake after having a skill they’re really good at. Most don’t and that’s why we see a correlation with drugs and being not good at much.

Do we see that correlation? Until recently, anyone over 40 was underground about marijuana usage. It turned out, tons of people use cannabis, many executives, plenty of people that we view as successful. One problem with black markets, it's very difficult to get good data, hence - do we really see a correlation? Or do we just perceive a correlation (ie: confirmation bias)

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is largely the problem with mobile phones as well. Like you probably aren't going to go mad or get rectangular eyes or whatever, but you can just sort of sedate that sensation of boredom with scrolling reddit or facebook or whatever, which does all of bupkis for making us happy in the long term.

agreed. I started bookmarking a specific open source repo and automechanic wiki and I’m slowly conditioning myself to read those if I want to waste time on my phone. I enjoy reading them anyway as much (or a lot more) than Reddit or w/e, just needed to make it habitual bc I didn’t think about going to those as a first stop to get lost in. Def helps and returns the joy of having internet access, lot of cool stuff to l…

Got a link to that wiki? Sounds useful

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#484
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, a life that is in content and has meaning trumps all those whatever higher trajectory means. I mean.. isn’t achieving those higher trajectories the goal of being content and having achieve the meaning if it exits at all?

Watching your child being content to work at Taco Bell for the next 50 years is not something to be proud of. Regardless of contentment.

It's this kind of motivation that fuels the efforts to make sure low-level jobs stay unpleasant, unsafe, and uncompensated. It's the "starter job" philosophy, where some jobs are only fit for an inferior class of people who should have no pride, although they produce and distribute almost everything material that we use. Children, immigrants, foreigners...

I'm reminded every day that my decision to never work with my hands again was a good one. Nobody respects people who provide for you, that's slave's work, mother's work(, teacher's work, nurse's work.) The ultimate CEO-guru would lie on a cushion all day, being washed and shaved by his VPs, periodically emitting syllables in an unknown language that would be interpreted by other VPs as commands to direct the people who actually do the work.

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#485
post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the way that South Park put it (in the voice of Randy Marsh) many years ago was just about perfect: “Well, Stan, the truth is marijuana probably isn't gonna make you kill people, and ...it most likely isn't gonna fund terrorists, but... Well son, pot makes you feel fine with being bored and... It's when you're bored that you should be learning some new skill or discovering some new science or... being creat…

South Park also put it well when they understood that total abstinence is not the only way to deal with the situation. Maybe all it takes is a little discipline. After all, there's a passive danger in many things we do or neglect to do.

It all depends on who you are & your physiology, right? I was super addicted to nicotine (I can say that nicotine is perhaps 500x more addictive than weed, and about 10,000x more addictive than coffee, and about 50x more addictive than alcohol - all of which I have been addicted to at varying times in my life).

I've known people that were fine smoking a cigarette every 3rd day. I'm not one and that would put me on a path of relapse in a hurry.

I'll agree that avoiding addiction takes discipline, but once addicted, it depends to what, and who you are whether you need to focus on recurring abstinence or if more moderation is the ticket.

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users of weed do more to keep it illegal by their off-putting rhetoric than any Refer Madness propaganda does. I've been in favor of legalization for decades but really dislike discussing it with users because of their often lack of self-awareness and tendency to be just as dishonest as those against it.

"Pot smokers are aggravating" is, frankly, a very stupid reason for anybody to support criminalization.

[deleted]

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#487
post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agreed. I started bookmarking a specific open source repo and automechanic wiki and I’m slowly conditioning myself to read those if I want to waste time on my phone. I enjoy reading them anyway as much (or a lot more) than Reddit or w/e, just needed to make it habitual bc I didn’t think about going to those as a first stop to get lost in. Def helps and returns the joy of having internet access, lot of cool stuff to l…

Got a link to that wiki? Sounds useful

Indeed!

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#488
post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, a life that is in content and has meaning trumps all those whatever higher trajectory means. I mean.. isn’t achieving those higher trajectories the goal of being content and having achieve the meaning if it exits at all?

Watching your child being content to work at Taco Bell for the next 50 years is not something to be proud of. Regardless of contentment.

not sure what stereotype you have in mind but I don't see why this should be something keeping a parent from being proud. it's simple, yet honest work and that's about it. so what? not everybody wants or has to be a surgeon ffs

Re: As weed gets more potent, teens are getting sick

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say marathons and computer games (except the clickers) should not be on this list due to the difference between active vs passive participation.

Clickers are better than people give credit. Thinking about growth curves is an uncommon challenge. Pretty much nothing else commonly involves things expanding faster than exponentially. You don’t actually just click mindlessly. You typically need an understanding of the system otherwise you’re just waiting for infeasible amounts of time.

As far as I'm concerned, the clicker genre reached its zenith, its purest expression, in Universal Paperclips. In no other game has the "automate exponential growth" mechanic been used to tell a story more poignantly, or make philosophical points so eloquently. Other clicker games use flashy graphics and sound effects to disguise their essential emptiness; not Universal Paperclips. Its austere plaintext webpage offers only hints and fragments of the world the numbers are meant to represent, its minimalism a baleful commentary on the subject matter itself.

I played it twice, and do not regret it.

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