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When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

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Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#421

Post by simion314 »

moate wrote: post #406
simion314 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a smoker so I do not know the details but isn't electronic cigarettes better because they have no smoke, the smoke is the main bad part? I may be wrong and tabacoo causes cancer even without the smoke? If pot is legalized it should have same packaging as cigarettes that tells clear that smoke causes cancer, and also should tell all the side effects (because I see here on HN how good weed is, especially for c…

Vaporizing is better than smoking because it creates fewer carbon particles. Also there's fewer carcinogens (we're pretty sure on this one, but people like to argue about it) in pot than in tobacco. Another point is that you don't need to inhale at all, you could ingest since THC is alcohol and fat soluble. Many people find this to be a good way to imbibe because it's a more controlled dosage (if I use 1 LB of the sa…

I am fine with it becoming legal in the world with the condition there are not financial interest to increase the consumption. In the past smoking was not considered cool until advertising made it appear cool, especially for women.

Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#422

Post by 3pt14159 »

cowpewter wrote: post #385
thecatspaw wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neurotypicals can hyperfocus as well, and personally for me (ADHD-PI) I hyperfocus very few times at work, but more frequently at home. I would argue that hyperfocus vs inattention is a net-loss for my employee

Also ADHD-PI, and yeah, hyperfocus is great for coding, but you have to be working on something "interesting enough" to trigger it. Not all the work you will do at work will be interesting, so without treatment you swing wildly between being super productive and massively unproductive, which might be okay in a small startup but fails to mesh with larger companies that expect any sort of consistency in your output. So…

I'm just going to combine these responses because they're related.

> Neurotypicals can hyperfocus as well, and personally for me (ADHD-PI) I hyperfocus very few times at work, but more frequently at home.

Yes, neurotypicals can hyperfocus as well, but I've found that ADHD coders are way more likely to hyperfocus. The key is setting up the environment around them. I'm also ADHD-PI if it matters, though my specific situation is more complicated so it went undiagnosed for decades.

> So it's not just the loss of productivity from inattention that's a problem for most jobs, but the lack of consistency in your output.

Agree here too; especially for the unmedicated.

That said, very few neurotypicals hit the performance I see from high functioning ADHD coders (~2000-3000 commits a year and completely ridiculous learning rate with new technology).

Neurotypicals are also less pissed off with minor annoyances than ADHDers and ASDers, so they don't code up solutions to little problems that cost them 5 seconds a day, when in the long run that it is worth it to do so.[0]

But you're right that the bigger the team, the worse they do. Especially if the project is a tarball of uninterestingness and wrought with pointless, unscheduled meetings and other interruptions.

[0] https://xkcd.com/1205/

Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#423

Post by 5trokerac3 »

vokep wrote: post #282
fhood wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abstract mathematics, and finding bugs, are not terribly closely related skills.

They are in that they both require abstract thinking, working in rigid systems.

I totally disagree. Good bug fixing hinges on the ability to mentally organize multiple potential, interrelated points of failure. It's being able to have a working sense of the architecture and chain of logic without having to go back to the source too often.

The difference between abstract thinking and bug fixing is literally left vs. right brain.

Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#424

Post by simplify »

eternalban wrote: post #407
adventured wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a big supporter of legalization, because I think prohibition is dramatically worse than any negatives from people smoking pot (similar to alcohol, etc). That said, the two friends of mine that were the heaviest smokers, saw dramatic improvements in their lives in the few years immediately following giving up smoking pot. Both in terms of health and professional success. They were recreational smokers, rather than…

> I think prohibition is dramatically worse than any negatives from people smoking pot (similar to alcohol, etc). Alcohol has been an integral part of Western civilization for quite a while now. Prohibition on alcohol is in no way comparable to prohibition on pot [in terms of its impact]. Why do you think its prohibition is "dramatically" worse than making this mind altering substance generally available? [secret han…

It's dramatically worse becouse it imputes innocent people as criminals and puts them in jail.

Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#425

Post by JamesBarney »

warent wrote: post #198
ngngngng wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are the kind of honest explanations for drugs that we need more of. Most people that do heroin don't become prostitutes to fund the habit. But once you've done it, no matter what happens in your life, it's not as good as that time you did heroin in your friends basement. And that's really sad. edit: I'm being rightfully called out. I haven't done heroin and didn't mean to authoritatively say that there is only…

I don't buy that. I'm not sure where that information came from, but it's not the case for all users. Heroin feels amazing, but there's a ton of things in life that past users can find even better--even more rewarding. Russell Brand has a good book about this, it's called "Recovery"

Throughout highschool and college I knew a decent amount of people who experimented with drugs. But only a few who injected heroin, and all of them expressed that they weren't sure they were ever going to be happy again without heroin. And now most(maybe all) of them are dead.

I'm sure that's not true of every user, but enough of them that I really think heroin(and strong opioids in general) is a different beast.

Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#426

Post by joshstrange »

magicnubs wrote: post #185
kaybe wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes it sound as if we should let people that only have a few days to live take all the heroin they want, actually. Maybe we should.

To a lesser extent, that's part of what hospice / palliative care is. Not to the extent that it's purely recreational, but often involve continued use of opiods for pain management. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palliative_care#Physical_pain

If I get to choose the way I die it will be with an unlimited morphine drip slamming on the button repetitively. I had morphine back as a kid for a ruptured appendix and damn that stuff was good. I'll never forget the day they came in and I was expecting to get my daily shot and they told me I was being switched over to Tylenol lest I become addicted. I was 8, and I still remember thinking of saying "Oh I'm not becoming addicted but can we do it for 1 more day" haha...

Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#427

Post by dubya23 »

adventured wrote: post #388
zahrc wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a lot of people who tried out marijuana as a medication for depression. (well, illegal / no prescription) It helped in the beginning, but most of them just became addicted, paranoid and incredible slow thinkers and figuratively numb. Depression is hell, but it's not worth giving up your sanity and intellect.

I'm a big supporter of legalization, because I think prohibition is dramatically worse than any negatives from people smoking pot (similar to alcohol, etc). That said, the two friends of mine that were the heaviest smokers, saw dramatic improvements in their lives in the few years immediately following giving up smoking pot. Both in terms of health and professional success. They were recreational smokers, rather than…

Why is it that on this topic specifically HN users, who are largely analytical logic driven people, consistently rely on Anecdotes?

Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#428

Post by mysticlabs »

Meh what this study doesn't take into consideration is dependent memory states or differential memory states. If you learn something while high, then you often need to get high again to be able to remember it. This happens with everything from antidepressants to alcohol. Why this is always overlooked for cannabis I don't know.

For example, if someone where to study high, then get high before taking their test they might perform equally to the sober group or possibly even have improved performance. I know there have been many times when cannabis actually improved my cognition like this in certain circumstances.

Anyone who uses cannabis regularly will experience this, so of course if you stop using it completely the testing metrics they use to measure cognition will improve as the sober group becomes more sober their ability to remember what they've learned while sober will improve since they're no longer oscillating between different memory states. What would be really interesting is to take a control group who continues to use cannabis and see how they compare to the kids who you make stop using it. If their cognition remains stable and on par with the sober group with continued use then does this study really mean what they think it means?

This study is also limited to THC, which means they're only studying 1 cannabinoid and not the whole plant and how it works with CBD and other cannabinoids. From experience I can tell you that CBD counters many of the negative side effects of THC, as it functions as a neuro-protectant and anti-inflammatory. Had they tested against a variety of cannabinoids and measured which cannabinoids had what effects and then studied the using groups vs. the sober group and how they performed then you could come to a more conclusive argument.

Re: When Adolescents Give Up Pot, Their Cognition Quickly Improves

#430

Post by jhwang5 »

dsnuh wrote: post #368
macspoofing wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Therefore it's natural to experiment with heroin?

Well, that's quite a leap from saying that human beings are naturally curious about changing their consciousness, which is what I am saying. I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

weed is the gateway drug. let that sink in.
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