5 ms·

What comes to mind is Paul Erdos being jacked up on Benzedrine and Ritalin nearly every day for the last 25 years of his life and undoubtedly contributing a mas

What comes to mind is Paul Erdos being jacked up on Benzedrine and Ritalin nearly every day for the last 25 years of his life and undoubtedly contributing a massive amount to modern mathematics. (There was a life hacker in every possible sense.)

mahmud 16y ago
Of course, you're ignoring the contributions of thousands of equally impactful mathematicians who weren't "jacked up" on pills.
- mdwrigh2 16y ago
  But no one, not a single person in history, has published more papers in mathematics than Erdos. Only a single person can have claimed to have published more pages than he, and that's Euler. I think its worth recognizing that his regiment of drugs likely increased, at the very least, the volume of his output.
  - jeffcoat 16y ago
    [Wikipedia quote] His colleague Alfréd Rényi said, "a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems", and Erdős drank copious quantities. (This quotation is often attributed incorrectly to Erdős himself.)[7] After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month.[8] Erdős won the bet, but complained during his abstinence that mathematics had been set back by a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine habit. [/quote] (I remember the story from his biography, but Wikipedia has the copy-and-paste advantage.)
  - Confusion 16y ago
    However, one may wonder about the average quality of the papers. If he had laid of the drugs, he might have produced just the top 10% of the papers that he wrote under influence. One could argue that would actually have been a better result.
    - fragmede 16y ago
      That depends on your opinion of his work. Did the bottom 10% of his papers (under the influence) move the field of mathematics forwards? Perhaps. Did the bottom 90% of his papers move math forwards? I'd argue yes.
      - WilliamLP 16y ago
        If productivity is measured by Erdos number, they moved math forward immensely.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
  - dkersten 16y ago
    What if without the drugs he would have produced more and/or higher quality results? His contribution to mathematics might have been greater still. We don't know that he did as well as he did because of the drugs instead of in spite of the drugs.
    - volodia 16y ago
      after he stopped using them, he reportedly had difficulty coming up with 'new mathematical ideas' (see comments in 1st thread for the full quote)
      - dkersten 16y ago
        Yes, but from what I read, he only stopped for a month. After using drugs for a long time, there is a significant come-down period and a month seems much much too short a time to be able to accurately compare. Its to be expected that everything feels duller or slower and that you feel less excited, less creative, less motivated and less focused after coming off drugs. So it makes sense that he would have had difficulty coming up with new mathematical ideas when he stopped. Id like to know if this would still be the case after six months or a year of not taking drugs.
- WilliamLP 16y ago
  Aside from the claim that there have thousands of equally impactful mathematicians (have there been 100?) that doesn't invalidate the claim that illegal drug use has had a positive effect on mathematical knowledge, even if Erdos has been the only human in history to benefit.
  - Confusion 16y ago
    Nothing can invalidate that claim if you're not seriously considering the implicit alternative explanation that mahmud offers, which is that Erdos would have been just as productive without the drugs. Using Erdos as a 'plausible example' of the positive effects of drug use is fallacious, because it's a statistic with N = 1. Especially given the fact that a side effect of these drugs seems to be that it reduces creativity, we may just as well suppose that Erdos was impaired by them and would have been even more brilliant if he had realized he could do it without the chemicals.
    - eru 16y ago
      Erdős went off drugs for a month or so, and complained that he could not work as well as with the drugs. (Of course, you could still argue that the real alternative isn't one month off drugs, but no drugs at all. But that's a slightly weaker argument.) Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s) says: > After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month. Erdős won the bet, but complained during his abstinence that mathematics had been set back by a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine habit.
      - usaar333 16y ago
        Actually a much stronger argument. Anyone who has been taking drugs for that long is going to have serious withdrawal issues. This is analogous to a heavy coffee drinker complaining he is exhausted and has a headache because he missed his daily dose of caffeine; it isn't so much that people can't operate sans caffeine, it is that his brain has become wired to expect the daily stimulant.
kwamenum86 16y ago
"You shouldn't have mentioned the stuff about Benzedrine. It's not that you got it wrong. It's just that I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." Paul Erdos, re: a 1987 Atlantic Monthly article profiling his work
- andreyf 16y ago
  Isn't that quote a bit hypocritical?
  - stingraycharles 16y ago
    It's like telling your kids you don't have to smoke to be cool, while smoking daily yourself. It's not very convincing, but not hypocritical either.
  - VMG 16y ago
    He started taking it it because of his depression, not because he wanted to boost his productivity - he was devastated after his mother died.
    - gcanyon 16y ago
      At some point he was bet that he couldn't go without it; he did, but then said that doing so had set back mathematics for as long as he had been off the drugs. So I'd say he thought it boosted his productivity.
- bitwize 16y ago
  Uppers : mathematics :: steroids : baseball. We can give moralistic lip service to "Winners Don't Use Drugs" but at the cutting edge of today's best of the best, when performance actually counts you'll find that the real winners actually do have chemical help...
rimantas 16y ago
How do we know what the result would be without drugs?

mahmud 16y ago

Of course, you're ignoring the contributions of thousands of equally impactful mathematicians who weren't "jacked up" on pills.

mdwrigh2 16y ago
But no one, not a single person in history, has published more papers in mathematics than Erdos. Only a single person can have claimed to have published more pages than he, and that's Euler. I think its worth recognizing that his regiment of drugs likely increased, at the very least, the volume of his output.
- jeffcoat 16y ago
  [Wikipedia quote] His colleague Alfréd Rényi said, "a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems", and Erdős drank copious quantities. (This quotation is often attributed incorrectly to Erdős himself.)[7] After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month.[8] Erdős won the bet, but complained during his abstinence that mathematics had been set back by a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine habit. [/quote] (I remember the story from his biography, but Wikipedia has the copy-and-paste advantage.)
- Confusion 16y ago
  However, one may wonder about the average quality of the papers. If he had laid of the drugs, he might have produced just the top 10% of the papers that he wrote under influence. One could argue that would actually have been a better result.
  - fragmede 16y ago
    That depends on your opinion of his work. Did the bottom 10% of his papers (under the influence) move the field of mathematics forwards? Perhaps. Did the bottom 90% of his papers move math forwards? I'd argue yes.
    - WilliamLP 16y ago
      If productivity is measured by Erdos number, they moved math forward immensely.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- dkersten 16y ago
  What if without the drugs he would have produced more and/or higher quality results? His contribution to mathematics might have been greater still. We don't know that he did as well as he did because of the drugs instead of in spite of the drugs.
  - volodia 16y ago
    after he stopped using them, he reportedly had difficulty coming up with 'new mathematical ideas' (see comments in 1st thread for the full quote)
    - dkersten 16y ago
      Yes, but from what I read, he only stopped for a month. After using drugs for a long time, there is a significant come-down period and a month seems much much too short a time to be able to accurately compare. Its to be expected that everything feels duller or slower and that you feel less excited, less creative, less motivated and less focused after coming off drugs. So it makes sense that he would have had difficulty coming up with new mathematical ideas when he stopped. Id like to know if this would still be the case after six months or a year of not taking drugs.
WilliamLP 16y ago
Aside from the claim that there have thousands of equally impactful mathematicians (have there been 100?) that doesn't invalidate the claim that illegal drug use has had a positive effect on mathematical knowledge, even if Erdos has been the only human in history to benefit.
- Confusion 16y ago
  Nothing can invalidate that claim if you're not seriously considering the implicit alternative explanation that mahmud offers, which is that Erdos would have been just as productive without the drugs. Using Erdos as a 'plausible example' of the positive effects of drug use is fallacious, because it's a statistic with N = 1. Especially given the fact that a side effect of these drugs seems to be that it reduces creativity, we may just as well suppose that Erdos was impaired by them and would have been even more brilliant if he had realized he could do it without the chemicals.
  - eru 16y ago
    Erdős went off drugs for a month or so, and complained that he could not work as well as with the drugs. (Of course, you could still argue that the real alternative isn't one month off drugs, but no drugs at all. But that's a slightly weaker argument.) Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s) says: > After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month. Erdős won the bet, but complained during his abstinence that mathematics had been set back by a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine habit.
    - usaar333 16y ago
      Actually a much stronger argument. Anyone who has been taking drugs for that long is going to have serious withdrawal issues. This is analogous to a heavy coffee drinker complaining he is exhausted and has a headache because he missed his daily dose of caffeine; it isn't so much that people can't operate sans caffeine, it is that his brain has become wired to expect the daily stimulant.

kwamenum86 16y ago

"You shouldn't have mentioned the stuff about Benzedrine. It's not that you got it wrong. It's just that I don't want kids who are thinking about going into mathematics to think that they have to take drugs to succeed." Paul Erdos, re: a 1987 Atlantic Monthly article profiling his work

andreyf 16y ago
Isn't that quote a bit hypocritical?
- stingraycharles 16y ago
  It's like telling your kids you don't have to smoke to be cool, while smoking daily yourself. It's not very convincing, but not hypocritical either.
- VMG 16y ago
  He started taking it it because of his depression, not because he wanted to boost his productivity - he was devastated after his mother died.
  - gcanyon 16y ago
    At some point he was bet that he couldn't go without it; he did, but then said that doing so had set back mathematics for as long as he had been off the drugs. So I'd say he thought it boosted his productivity.
bitwize 16y ago
Uppers : mathematics :: steroids : baseball. We can give moralistic lip service to "Winners Don't Use Drugs" but at the cutting edge of today's best of the best, when performance actually counts you'll find that the real winners actually do have chemical help...

rimantas 16y ago

How do we know what the result would be without drugs?