231–240 of 267 posts
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I've thankfully never had to quit cigarettes or heroin, but in my experience quitting coffee is awful . 3-5 days of migraine-level headaches and nausea. And the whole time you're thinking, "all this could go away with just one little cup of coffee, which all the studies say has health benefits even. Just one little cup"
I've known 2 people who were previously addicted to heroin but had been able to quit. Both of them were still dependent on nicotine.
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> At least cigarettes made people skinny and hot. Until you lean in for a kiss, or even a hug.
See also: The $4 billion gum industry has gone into freefall, with sales down 11% and volume down 20% in the past five years. https://www.fastcompany.com/3033451/why-nobody-likes-to-chew...
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I always laugh when governments express surprise when companies exploit loopholes in the law. Here we have an amoral entity whose only purpose and incentive is to find ways to make money, and you're surprised that they hire a bunch of staff to figure out all the loopholes and how to make money against the spirit of the law but while sticking exactly to the letter of the law? You weren't "duped." You wrote a law witho…
Personally, I find it deeply troubling that we've come so far along the "free-trade" axis that companies are presumed immoral by default. There is no way to have a high-functioning society when one large part is actively undermining the social contract of society. That the general public sees this as fait-accompli and seems to be cheering it on is not funny, it's tragic.
I tend to agree with that. Moralizing corporate entities will not bring us the outcomes we desire because humans are great at creating internal structures to diffuse accountability. Strongly enforced well-defined legislation _is_ the social contract, might as well throw our weight behind that instead of presuming companies will fall in line out of the goodness of their hearts.
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I don’t see the problem with being addicted to pure nicotine. It’s completely safe, causes next to no health issues, is not carcinogenic, actually has health benefits for acuity and long term memory. Addiction in itself is not a bad thing.
Nicotine use without smoking raises heart rate, constricts blood vessels, raises blood pressure, and remodels the cardiovascular system and individual cells. Those cardiovascular changes are associated with stroke and dementia. It stimulates the mesolimbic dopamine system which causes downregulation of dopamine receptors, addiction, and feeling less good when you aren't ingesting nicotine. Here is an overview: https:…
Here’s a pretty comprehensive list of the benefits of nicotine and the lack of significant side effects.
https://gwern.net/nicotine#benefits
Here’s the conclusion he came up with after significant perusal of the research
“Nicotine is pretty much harmless, the studies are clear, the relevant areas & studies comprehensible with not too much work, and I feel I can discuss it with a clean conscience. Really, about the worst you can say about pure nicotine use is that it might be a gateway to tobacco or that one’s blood pressure might increase, which are issues that can be easily addressed empirically via additional studies/surveys or by eg. measuring one’s own blood pressure after taking nicotine, respectively.”
I'm blown away by how vaping took over. I was a senior in high school once Juul started to get popular. We'd joke about our peers that willingly took on an addiction when our generation was mostly in the clear from being addicted to cigarettes. Then some of my friends who'd joke about it started vaping. I don't even know how they started, but they did. Let me be clear - it's not nearly as annoying or destructive for…
> The thing that gets me is that we were so close to not having any casual nicotine in my generation A couple people have claimed this so far in this thread. Is there any data to support this hypothesis? My feeling is the percentage addicted to nicotine wouldn't have been significantly lower without vaping.
The data here [0] seems to support this. I grabbed this really quick, so I'm open to it not being excellent data. You're right that I based on comment on anecdotal data.
[0] https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco...
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I don’t see the problem with being addicted to pure nicotine. It’s completely safe, causes next to no health issues, is not carcinogenic, actually has health benefits for acuity and long term memory. Addiction in itself is not a bad thing.
Nicotine use without smoking raises heart rate, constricts blood vessels, raises blood pressure, and remodels the cardiovascular system and individual cells. Those cardiovascular changes are associated with stroke and dementia. It stimulates the mesolimbic dopamine system which causes downregulation of dopamine receptors, addiction, and feeling less good when you aren't ingesting nicotine. Here is an overview: https:…
For all the other things, the same can be said about coffee. Are we banning coffee?
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Personally, I find it deeply troubling that we've come so far along the "free-trade" axis that companies are presumed immoral by default. There is no way to have a high-functioning society when one large part is actively undermining the social contract of society. That the general public sees this as fait-accompli and seems to be cheering it on is not funny, it's tragic.
GP said amoral not immoral. I think their intent is more along the lines of companies are not human, hence they are immune to discussions of morality. I tend to agree with that. Moralizing corporate entities will not bring us the outcomes we desire because humans are great at creating internal structures to diffuse accountability. Strongly enforced well-defined legislation _is_ the social contract, might as well thro…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
GP said amoral not immoral. I think their intent is more along the lines of companies are not human, hence they are immune to discussions of morality. I tend to agree with that. Moralizing corporate entities will not bring us the outcomes we desire because humans are great at creating internal structures to diffuse accountability. Strongly enforced well-defined legislation _is_ the social contract, might as well thro…
Yes, I deliberately used the word amoral. We need to stop anthropomorphizing companies (not just true for Oracle[1]). They aren't moral or immoral. They are simply unfeeling lawnmowers that chew up anything in their way and produce money. They neither like nor dislike you--they don't even think about you. They just robotically do whatever they can do to make money. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886728
That's a useful model, but it isn't the whole story. It certainly often feels like that. However, the 10% of the time where the model doesn't hold really matters. Companies are made up of humans, and humans aren't just money-robots. Groups of humans don't automatically turn into unfeeling profit-maximizers either.
The moments when humans at companies make decisions that aren't purely motivated by short-term profit are significant and can have a large positive impact. It would definitely be nice to see it happen more often and more effectively.
(To anyone who caught me in the act, sorry for all of the edits :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally, I find it deeply troubling that we've come so far along the "free-trade" axis that companies are presumed immoral by default. There is no way to have a high-functioning society when one large part is actively undermining the social contract of society. That the general public sees this as fait-accompli and seems to be cheering it on is not funny, it's tragic.
GP said amoral not immoral. I think their intent is more along the lines of companies are not human, hence they are immune to discussions of morality. I tend to agree with that. Moralizing corporate entities will not bring us the outcomes we desire because humans are great at creating internal structures to diffuse accountability. Strongly enforced well-defined legislation _is_ the social contract, might as well thro…