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Palantir and other tech companies are stocking offices with tobacco products

fortune.com

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Re: Palantir and other tech companies are stocking offices with tobacco products

#111

Post by D-Machine »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #88
D-Machine wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it is actually all that clear that pure nicotine products really are so addictive as people believe. E.g. most studies claiming such addictiveness may simply be because those that get addicted to patches / gum were already addicted to cigarettes (or other classic tobacco product) prior. See e.g. Gwern's notes on the topic. https://gwern.net/nicotine#habit-formation https://gwern.net/nicotine#dependence

Both of these links go to self-reported data about how addicted people feel themselves to be, which I don't think is credible at all. It's very common for addicts to falsely believe that they're not addicted and could quit whenever they want.

> Both of these links go to self-reported data about how addicted people feel themselves to be

This is an incredible and outright lie.

Actually try reading the page I linked, there are plenty of links to scientific studies, scientific reviews, and high-quality resources, as well as lots of careful notes about serious confounds in the usual studies. This includes in exactly the sections I linked.

By all means still be cautious and not careless about using the stuff, that is a perfectly sane position. But I think it is very clear that e.g. patches and gum are highly unlikely to have anything even approaching the risk profile of classic tobacco products.

Re: Palantir and other tech companies are stocking offices with tobacco products

#112

Post by nobodyandproud »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #95
nobodyandproud wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m taking a low dose (and spread out beyond 1 week) of mounjaro. I realize the risk as GLP long term use is untested, but in my case it’s that; or deal with inevitable health problems from high BP and being only moderately overweight. I don’t see a good reason for nicotine products.

I didn't mean to say don't take novel but mainstream medications you have a health reason for and are under the guidance of a doctor about. I'm saying nicotine pouches are the tobacco industry's successor to vapes in the way vapes were their successor to cigarettes and some conservatism is warranted in light of that. Or like how every 10-15 years the evidence of health effects of some ubiquitous plastic grows too hea…

Right. I’m just saying the nicotine pouches have no real reason for being, other than the industry itself pushing it.

Re: Palantir and other tech companies are stocking offices with tobacco products

#113

Post by zingababba »

gethly wrote: post #69
Georgelemental wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nicotine is addictive, much more so than coffee

bullshit. i've been smoking cigars for 5 years now. sometimes 2 or 3 a day and have zero issues stopping or going without a smoke for months. i was surprised as i was never smoker, but it is what it is. nicotine addiction is not nicotine addiction but cigarette addiction. cigars are pure tobacco. nothing else. cigarettes have over thousand ingredients in them. cigars also have higher nicotine dose than cigarettes and…

It is bullshit. Stopping nicotine is like 2 days of mild discomfort. Stopping caffeine is absolute hell.

Re: Palantir and other tech companies are stocking offices with tobacco products

#114

Post by gethly »

zingababba wrote: post #113
gethly wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bullshit. i've been smoking cigars for 5 years now. sometimes 2 or 3 a day and have zero issues stopping or going without a smoke for months. i was surprised as i was never smoker, but it is what it is. nicotine addiction is not nicotine addiction but cigarette addiction. cigars are pure tobacco. nothing else. cigarettes have over thousand ingredients in them. cigars also have higher nicotine dose than cigarettes and…

It is bullshit. Stopping nicotine is like 2 days of mild discomfort. Stopping caffeine is absolute hell.

as i said, nictoine is a non-factor. as for caffeine, i quit multiple times. once the headaches are gone, which takes a week or two, followed by another week, or few, of feeling lethargic, it is back to normal(ie. give it a month altogether). so it's not too bad. it might be also easier to wean off slowly by decreasing caffeine consumption over longer period than quitting cold turkey to avoid the negative effects altogether.

Re: Palantir and other tech companies are stocking offices with tobacco products

#115

Post by duxup »

aduffy wrote: post #18

It's even funnier actually. Yes, Palantir does have free Zyn vending machines in every office, but the Zyn is only for visiting customers. Employees are explicitly prohibited from using the machines. Just vice signaling all the way down.

Why are these guys so fucking weird?

Like being a selfish prick of a CEO is whatever, wrong but money I get it. But this other stuff like signaling with tobacco? What social media rabbit hole makes tobacco seem like something to spend money on??? Are all these guys actively “twitter poisoned”, like they’re really into this weird shit like excessively worrying about other people’s genitalia or anti christ shit?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/opinion/trump-musk-kanye-...

Re: Palantir and other tech companies are stocking offices with tobacco products

#116

Post by robocat »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #78
D-Machine wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not the case for some modern pure nicotine products (gum, patches). Vaping is harder to say due to lack of data and clear cases of addiction in young people, but pure nicotine is definitely a different animal than the classical delivery forms. See my response to GP.

I wonder if the issue with vapes isn't the sweeteners they put in them. I sometimes vape a specific liquid, which has never given me any cravings. I'll just stop after my bottle is done for multiple months until I remember to buy some more. I never carry my vape with me when I leave home (not to the office, not for multi-week holidays, nothing). It's not difficult to go without, I don't even think about it when I don…

> which has never given me any cravings

I've seen multiple friends that could give up an addiction: until after a while and then they couldn't.

For many people, addictions are not that addictive until they are.

Be careful generalizing from your own experiences. Try and learn from the mistakes your (often older) peers have been taught the hardest way.

I've seen it with drinking, vaping, smoking, meth, bad partner, gambling; my friends that weren't hooked, could take it or leave it, and then one day they find they are hooked.

Take care.

Re: Palantir and other tech companies are stocking offices with tobacco products

#117

Post by padjo »

D-Machine wrote: post #43

Seems a good time to link to Gwern's well-researched notes on why nicotine, when consumed in purer forms (e.g. patches, gum), may be pretty useful and not really as harmful nor as addictive as one might think. https://gwern.net/nicotine

Habitually taking vasoconstrictors is almost certainly a bad idea.

Re: Palantir and other tech companies are stocking offices with tobacco products

#119

Post by yepguy »

D-Machine wrote: post #53
Georgelemental wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nicotine is addictive, much more so than coffee

It is really not so clear at all this is the case for pure nicotine products. See https://gwern.net/nicotine#habit-formation , and https://gwern.net/nicotine#dependence for a starter / some brief counter-evidence.

Anecdotally, I found I developed a dependence on nicotine pouches very quickly. It was also very easy to exceed the nicotine equivalent of a pack of cigarettes daily without even noticing.

But it was also easy to quit by substituting nicotine-free pouches, and withdrawal symptoms only lasted like 3 days.

Re: Palantir and other tech companies are stocking offices with tobacco products

#120

Post by Georgelemental »

46493168 wrote: post #89
D-Machine wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty clear from the responses to OP that most people are quite unaware there is almost two decades of decent research on pure nicotine now, and that, outside of vaping (where hard evidence is mostly lacking, due to the novelty), the purer stuff probably really isn't all that addictive, in the grand scheme of things. In many cases it is hard to even say it is much different than caffeine.

It's a reasonable mistake, I'd say. We spent those decades conflating "nicotine" with "smoking" and, through herculean efforts, managed to get the smoking rate down to 12-14% (in Germany it's still 22.7%!). Now, tobacco companies have come through with genuinely less harmful, genuinely less addictive products, but because of their previous wild duplicity, nobody really "believes" it. They think that nicotine must cau…

Whether nicotine is addictive is a completely different question than whether it causes cancer
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