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An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication

arxiv.org

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Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication

#91

Post by colechristensen »

dylan604 wrote: post #58
cfr2023 wrote: post #24

It does seem that people would wrongly associate the artificial influx of positive/warm feelings coming from a cannabis with increased task performance. Not unlike how people overestimate their own strength when drinking alcohol etc. However, if it decreases their performance but improves their feelings towards the work, might that still be a net positive? In other words, if you are going to be a little more pokey an…

My coding under the influence is for shit. Most times after trying this, I’ve had to redo what was done as it no longer makes sense and rarely worked. It was the epitome of the phrase “were you high?” The opposite happens though for the more creative computer usage like video/photo editing, graphic design etc. there have been some severely boring projects that kept me procrastinating, but made tolerable with an influ…

My college programming homework under the influence of alcohol always worked but the result was usually strange and horrible and had to be redone.

Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication

#92

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

hyperadvanced wrote: post #87
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harm mitigation isn't about sanctioning anything, it's just about recognizing that sometimes prohibition doesn't work and not making things worse in those cases. It's about not wrecking somebody's teeth by confiscating their pacifier while they're rolling. It's about not causing overdoses by limiting access to milligram scales (because trying to use a kitchen scale to measure a dose is dangerous). It's about creating…

I think you’re projecting a lot of things that onto me based on the one or two sentences I posted above. To clarify - I do drugs regularly (though I’m avoiding anything powdered until this fentanyl thing blows over), I have lost friends to drug overdoses, I have had friends choose to hide or open up about their problems to me (for whatever reason, people like to keep things a secret when it’s not going well, drugs or…

You're right, I apologize for being needlessly aggressive about it. I'm just watching my family make my cousin into a pariah over drug use that isn't even happening (not yet at least). They just need to have an enemy at all times... and maybe I pointed some of that frustration at you.

Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication

#93

Post by oskarkk »

Etheryte wrote: post #14

Can't recall where I read this off the top of my head, but wasn't a similar idea tested with musicians? If memory serves correct, the results were that while high, the musicians thought what they were making was great, but when they later revisited it when sober, they thought it was rubbish.

In my experience, being high enhances my musical (and I think generally creative) abilities. Music appreciation and analysis is especially better (maybe because it's the lowest effort thing). Many times when I was high I was listening to a song that I knew very well, but when high I was noticing more sounds in that song, like paying greater attention to guitars or bass in the background, that I wasn't paying attention to while sober. And since that "revelation", my appreciation of that song while sober was better, more detailed - I payed more attention to things that I first noticed while high. I'm also writing my own songs and often while high, the lyrics or melodies just spontaneously come to my mind, like when I'm not even trying to think about creating anything. Improvising music while high is great. But I can also say that there were cases when I created something that sounded bad when sober (but I think is rather an exception). But I'm rather not a neurotypical person so YMMV.

There are many examples of musicians that were making great music while high, such like of course the Beatles, and from the 60's I especially like Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, but he's also an example of a guy that went "crazy" because of too much drugs (rather combined with preexisting mental issues). Large part of his best music is not well known because he became a victim of his perfectionism (couldn't finish what he was doing) and generally his ambitious work wasn't selling well - the Beach Boys were at the start a very non-ambitious pop/rock band, just like the Beatles, so going in more ambitious direction meant losing sales, and the rest of the band didn't like it. I think weed enhances curiosity, so it's helping in doing something that's not typical, experimenting with things and seeking new sounds - and that was something that Brian Wilson excelled at in the time when he was high all the time, the "Pet Sounds" album is a highly regarded classic that shows what I'm talking about. And unlike the Beatles, he was the producer of his own music (Beatles' ideas were "filtered" and realized by amazing George Martin who was well-educated and wasn't high, I think).

Coding while high on weed is not very good for me, it's hard to concentrate, thoughts flow in too many directions. So I think that in art weed can be a positive, but in other things that need precision and strictly logical thinking, it's negative.

Overall weed makes me more lazy. I think that most of the time when high, I'm just browsing internet (that's still not exactly negative because I usually learn many interesting things, but that's not what I would want to spend many hours of my time on). Recently I had a period of smoking too much, and then I was actually doing less music - after that, when I was sober in my free time, I started practicing guitar more, because I was more focused on my goals and more organized in what I was doing. But I'm generally a very chaotic person with a very chaotic life, so I think my experiences can't prove anything, even for me.

Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication

#94

Post by hyperadvanced »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #92
hyperadvanced wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re projecting a lot of things that onto me based on the one or two sentences I posted above. To clarify - I do drugs regularly (though I’m avoiding anything powdered until this fentanyl thing blows over), I have lost friends to drug overdoses, I have had friends choose to hide or open up about their problems to me (for whatever reason, people like to keep things a secret when it’s not going well, drugs or…

You're right, I apologize for being needlessly aggressive about it. I'm just watching my family make my cousin into a pariah over drug use that isn't even happening (not yet at least). They just need to have an enemy at all times... and maybe I pointed some of that frustration at you.

It’s ok, it’s easy to imagine who you’re talking to online in the worst light, or to externalize your frustrations with others beliefs onto other people.

I have a lot in common with your cousin: I had long hair, I skated, I had “out there” beliefs that my family encouraged or at least tolerated. My community typecast me as a pot smoker or a punk or a hippie, when the time came to it, I was like “hell yeah I’m gonna get high, everyone already thinks that I do anyway!” Unfortunately that set me down a bad path, and I’ve been insanely lucky and dodged a lot of bullets that could have severely fucked my life up.

For what it’s worth, my parents did a great job of saying “we will absolutely not tolerate you doing drugs, but we will give you the freedom to do your thing, and when you fuck up, we will ground your ass into oblivion.” I think that having that as a threat gave younger me a lot of good reasons to think about what I was doing and to do it in a more responsible way than some of my friends whose parents were more hands off with things.

Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication

#95

Post by Etheryte »

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #18
Etheryte wrote: post #14

Can't recall where I read this off the top of my head, but wasn't a similar idea tested with musicians? If memory serves correct, the results were that while high, the musicians thought what they were making was great, but when they later revisited it when sober, they thought it was rubbish.

It was some study about usage of cocaine. That's why using drugs is really stupid, they don't enhance your capabilities, they simply give you an illusion of that.

Multiple different drugs that are illegal to consume recreationally are being used with great results in therapy for depression, PTSD, etc. I don't think it's even remotely as clear cut as you try and make it out to be.

Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication

#96

Post by DonHopkins »

Stratoscope wrote: post #76
mistrial9 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

captain crunch would say "execute a nine-N instruction".. ask Woz! also the frat guy coders at Apple would openly hate on Andy Hertzfeld, who insufficiently hid his affection for an occasional toke in Palo Alto

I was friends with John Draper (Captain Crunch) in the 1970s. But never as close a friend as he wanted me to be! (Anyone who knew John or the stories about him may know what I am referring to.) He usually had some decent pot, so when I ran out, I would sometimes visit him at his Berkeley apartment and we would smoke and do some Forth hacking. I never heard about the "nine-N instruction" though. I ran into John again…

You and I discussed this before -- the phrase Draper used was "Let's execute some 1802 instructions". And yes he creepily and obnoxiously insisted on back exercises with me too. Yech! Beware.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair

Back in the days of the SFRaves scene, I and others would always keep some tobacco on us a "John Draper Repellent" in case he saddled up and tried to schmooze some weed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26040778

Stratoscope on Feb 5, 2021 | parent | context | favorite | on: Dunfield 6809 Portable

> Sign extension (SEX instruction!)

We were definitely into SEX in those days.

In the late 1970s I was working at Tymshare, and one of my tasks was maintaining the assembler and linker. (I think this was on the PDP-10 but it could have been another machine.)

We wanted a "weak external" feature, somewhat akin to a "weak reference" in modern languages: instead of failing to build if the external symbol was not defined in another object file, it would link OK but leave a null value that you would check at runtime.

The assembly directive for a regular external was EXTERN. I thought of calling the weak external WEXTERN but that looked silly. So I decided to call them Secondary Externals, with the directive being SEXTERN.

And as far as I know, no one complained!

cjak on Feb 6, 2021 | next [–]

I just finished a project that introduced features for both signal injection and signal extraction. So now we can enjoy both SIN and SEX, sometimes at the same time.

DonHopkins on Feb 6, 2021 | prev [–]

The 1802 had a SET X REGISTER (SEX) instruction, as well as a GET HIGH (GHI) instruction.

https://www.atarimagazines.com/computeii/issue3/page52.php

John Draper (Cap'n Crunch) once creepily invited a friend of mine (who was a strapping young lad at the time) into the back of a van to "execute some 1802 instructions".

Stratoscope on Feb 6, 2021 | parent [–]

Ah yes, I knew John well in those days. Not nearly as well as he wanted to know me!

We used to drive around in his VW microbus finding interesting payphones. Then when he was learning to program, I visited him once in a while at his place in Berkeley to help him with his code.

My motivation was that he usually had some decent weed. Then one time he asked if I wanted to "work out". That lasted about two minutes until I found out what he really meant.

Many years later, I ran into John at the Homebrew Reunion. He didn't recognize me at first, so I reintroduced myself and mentioned how we used to hang out and write code.

His eyes lit up and he asked, "did we work out?"

https://www.flickr.com/photos/geary/10861963196/

Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication

#97

Post by drewbug01 »

xk_id wrote: post #88
drewbug01 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the short term, for the individual: yes, it could be better to medicate. However in the long run, it ends up giving license to shitty employers to continue being shitty, and perhaps to become even worse. Such employers need to feel the negative consequences of their behavior. Their business needs to suffer from high turnover and poor quality work, and if they don’t change then they need to fold. Businesses are, at…

This is a thinly veiled marxist-style call for collective class action. Aka unionising. I think it’s more dignifying to assume that ppl are capable of judging for themselves whether the solution to a shitty job is getting high, or quitting- without the socialist indoctrination, which is designed to benefit the political leaders who try to galvanise revolutions. Those revolutions typically devolve into unhinged violen…

If I wanted to make a marxist-style call for collective action, there’d be nothing “thinly veiled” about it.

What I was actually suggesting is that people should, in fact, decide for themselves; and that employers should reap the consequences of those decisions.

It sounds like you’ve mistaken me for someone you’ve been arguing with elsewhere. Maybe my comment vaguely resembles a fight you’ve been having before, but you’re reaching some conclusions that just aren’t supported by what I said.

Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication

#98

Post by drewbug01 »

binary132 wrote: post #85
drewbug01 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the short term, for the individual: yes, it could be better to medicate. However in the long run, it ends up giving license to shitty employers to continue being shitty, and perhaps to become even worse. Such employers need to feel the negative consequences of their behavior. Their business needs to suffer from high turnover and poor quality work, and if they don’t change then they need to fold. Businesses are, at…

I'm the farthest thing from a pot advocate there is, but if you imagine saying this about antidepressants it sounds kinda silly.

Well; I’m inclined to agree that my comment would indeed sound silly if you simply substituted antidepressants for pot. But in my mind that’s because it’s comparing apples to oranges. I just don’t see how they are comparable.

Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication

#99

Post by mistrial9 »

mistrial9 wrote: post #70
Stratoscope wrote: post #45

Back in the day, maybe 30-40 years ago, when possession of any amount of cannabis could get you thrown in jail, we needed a code phrase to use when we called a friend to ask if they had any. So we would ask: "Do you have any programmer's fuel?" Also related, the phrase "fire an event" is a cannabis reference: https://retool.com/visual-basic

captain crunch would say "execute a nine-N instruction".. ask Woz! also the frat guy coders at Apple would openly hate on Andy Hertzfeld, who insufficiently hid his affection for an occasional toke in Palo Alto

as linked below, 1802 instruction set, "GET HIGH BYTE OF Register N" binary encoding had a "nine" as the first byte of the binary opcode, so the phrase was "Get 9N" or "Get High (byte)" instruction.. "execute a 9N instruction" was "get high" ..

no info on that other stuff mentioned (!)

Re: An observational study of programming and cannabis intoxication

#100

Post by ivansavz »

I'm wondering to what extend the positive productivity that people report when working high are due to the momentary mental relief from psychological pain (anxiety, depression, negative self thoughts) and the general mood enhancement.

Such positive effects could outweigh the decline in cognitive performance observed in this paper. For example, let's say that being high has a -0.2 effect on cognitive performance, but a +0.5 effect on alleviating psychological pain, then the user is still +0.3 overall.

Too bad treating psychological issues through substance use is not a winning strategy in the long term (due to habituation), but maybe temporary and occasional substance use can be a helpful stepping stone toward finding more sustainable alternative strategies, although the dangers of addiction are a big risk too, so it could go either way.

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