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Silicon Valley is on drugs
- qup 3y agohttps://archive.is/gMG3e https://archive.is/gMG3e
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aschearer 3y agoWhat are the odds that two articles about Silicon Valley and drugs are published on the same day?
- boeingUH60 3y agoThis piece from Matt Levine was just a reference to that other WSJ article.
- HDThoreaun 3y agoThis is an opinion piece about the other one.
- addisonl 3y agoThis is the weirdest article, spends half the time talking about microdosing (would be a heavy hitting story 10+ years ago) then the 2nd half is something completed unrelated? Granted I only skimmed the article.
- zelias 3y agoIt's from a daily newsletter that covers a range of topics in law and high finance. Highly recommend, it's generally a great read.
- nitwit005 3y agoHas the feel of an AI that wandered off topic, after the article length went over some limit of how much history it retains. I suspect they just couldn't find enough quotes about drugs and needed to fill space.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoThis is the format of Matt Levine's newsletter. It's not a "single article", it's his musings on important topics of the day, and for example the "Private Credit" section is separate/unrelated to the psychedelics section.
- Applejinx 3y agoKet is for horses, Elon! >:C https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSTx31dxmgA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSTx31dxmgA
- RajT88 3y ago[flagged]
- di456 3y agoThey have the sum of the same cognitive biases of the input. It's the classic copy-of-a-copy problem. It's lossy. And not a hallucination any more than any other human spouting off irrelevant or non-factual words.
- RajT88 3y agoI can see that nobody appreciated the joke: "High coders write high software"
- di456 3y agoI got the joke but don't see the humor because it perpetuates outdated thinking about the war on drugs. There's a lot of good science and research coming back around for psychedelics and it'd be a shame for that to get politicized again like it did in the 60's and 70's. It took a long time to undo the harm from that era and it's still somewhat fragile. Basically all research was halted and 50 years of progress was lost because of politics.
- cwkoss 3y agoFrankly a pretty dumb article. The effects of psychedelics are fundamentally different from the narcotics most people associate with people being "on drugs". Taking psychedelics occasionally has an effect on the user closer to attending psychotherapy than the hedonistic escapism of opiates or stimulants. It puts users in touch with subconscious feelings they were not previously able to articulate. In 30 years, people taking LSD or psilocybin once a quarter to get in touch with their feelings will probably be entirely unremarkable. We're just in a bit of a chaotic period while we shake off the silly propaganda of the 70s war machine that feared that hippies were going to cut off their money spigot. The way it has panned out, it is now blatantly clear that psychedelic use is not a threat to capital: SV capital has embraced psychedelic use and is just as greedy and selfish as their east coast cocaine-and-alcohol using counterparts on wall street. Psychedelics don't make people more moral: they just get them in touch with themselves - it looked threatening to the economic order when only communists and free love hippies took them, because in the 70s squares were too afraid to try psychedelics. But now that the squares have started taking psychedelics, its pretty clear (and possibly unfortunate, IMO) they don't turn into communists as a result.
- H8crilA 3y agoYes I definitely want my CEO to be on psychedelics while signing major sales contracts. Same goes for doctors (especially surgeons) and special forces operators. Many of the things that are popular among tech circles are actually researched. For example Ketamine is available in Switzerland for treatment of depression, and there's a lot of know-how on the topic. I reckon you could fly here for treatment if you can afford to live in the area for a while. Spoiler: it's not a silver bullet. It's a bit like when crypto bros slowly rediscover every single widely accepted idea for regulating finance, securities, disclosure, trading, ...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ng12 3y agoHonestly I probably want all those people to be comfortably enjoying psychedelics, just not while on the clock.
- dbforyourtrash 3y agoAfter moving to NY, I see more and more that the zero-sum minded entities of NY are trying to put Silicon Valley down in any way they can to compete rather than innovate.
- di456 3y agoAn opinion piece written by someone at a NY company doesn't mean everyone in NY shares their opinion. Tribalism is the real problem you are describing.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- corry 3y agoAuthor is missing the forest for the trees. Risk-takers, innovators, short-cut-seekers, I'm-smarter-than-you's, I-can-out-hustle-you's, I-need-adventure-not-safey's, drop-out-of-school-to-code's etc are all going to be more likely to experiment with mind-expanding substances than the general population. They are also more likely to start companies, perhaps with wild ambitions. VCs are the pattern-matching mimics of the ecosystem, so who cares what they do - they are clearly just following the trend that is set out by the founders. How is it surprising, then, that startup hotspots have higher use of psychedelics (especially against the backdrop of a giant revival of psychedelic use)? Isn't it exactly what one would suspect?
- redleggedfrog 3y ago"Risk-takers, innovators, short-cut-seekers, I'm-smarter-than-you's, I-can-out-hustle-you's, I-need-adventure-not-safey's, drop-out-of-school-to-code's etc are all going to be more likely to experiment with mind-expanding substances than the general population." You forgot criminals, which those in the list above often become.
- slt2021 3y ago> criminals You misspelled "Forbes 30 Under 30" https://www.bu.edu/rbfl/2023/05/17/30-under-30-pipeline-to-prison/ https://www.bu.edu/rbfl/2023/05/17/30-under-30-pipeline-to-p...
- mantas 3y agoWhy not both startup founders and criminals? There're plenty examples...
- corry 3y agoSure, it's the same general personality motif - lack of risk-aversion and perhaps lack of respect for authority. Or are you making the more subtle point that, currently, any use of psychedelics outside of an approved study makes one "a criminal"?
- michaelt 3y ago> How is it surprising, then, that startup hotspots have higher use of psychedelics Well, some people think programming is a profession dominated by 'geeks' and that 'geeks' are uptight squares who don't much like to party. Or to the extent they do party, it's conservative stuff like playing video games until 2am while drinking beer. In college, the people putting on rager parties with open drug use, noise complaints and people jumping over a spontaneously started bonfire? All organised by people studying things like film.
- nullc 3y agoI suspect use of psychedelics is probably a lot less interesting than large amounts of people taking prescription amphetamines, some of whom exhibit irrational, obsessive tunnel-vision/aggressive behavior and mania as a result.
- vl 3y agoMoreover, if you have meetings with the same people regularly, you can tell when they have taken their drugs and when not. One week they will be manic and concentrate on some minor detail and drill into it, other week they are chill and not really concentrating or carrying about any details - ok, executive Xxx is off their pills again.
- operatingthetan 3y agoSounds like someone who is doubling up their dose, and then runs out early. Doctors will consider that abuse, and that's why their behavior is so polarizing as well.
- francesca 3y agoThe connection of psychedelics to capital efficiency and growth is wild to me - I do love Matt Levine's newsletter and I feel that part of this commentary was satirical in order to make a point. I feel like Silicon Valley's psychedelic era is like a strain "tech bro" wellness culture (often referred to as "biohacking"). And just like wellness culture it's really hard to distinguish something that is helpful in small doses vs. something that becomes a gratuitous lifestyle (like drinking charcoal or putting jade eggs somewhere you shouldn't).
- operatingthetan 3y ago>Silicon Valley's psychedelic era The Bay Area's psychedelic interest well predated tech capital.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoThere is usually a difference between when people talk about "The Bay Area" (i.e., the geographic location) vs. "Silicon Valley" (i.e. a metonym for the tech industry in the bay area). Psychedelics obviously were a big feature of SF and the bay area for a long time, but that's very different than saying they are an accepted part of the corporate tech world there.
- operatingthetan 3y agoAt least we have a long list of cliches about Steve jobs and others tripping and starting companies dating back to the 70's and 80s! I don't think it's wrong to suggest both the Bay Area and SV's interest in those drugs started around the same time.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoYeah, very fair point, thanks for bringing that up, made me think about it differently.
- mcshicks 3y agoJohn Markoff wrote about this in his 2005 book "what the dormouse said". More than just psychedelic drugs but the whole connection to the 60s counter culture. I found it a pretty interesting read at the time.
- darth_avocado 3y agoI can absolutely confirm a lot of people in SV are on drugs. It’s unfair because if you’re not on them, your output can be lower than others and suddenly you’re the problem. You get put on performance plans, go through extreme stress of losing your employment and a means to feed your family. Companies turn a blind eye because they benefit from it. It’s a shame. Sad that SV became what the Wall Street in some sense. Edit: This was purely in the context of amphetamines (and other stimulants), not psychedelics. There are long term consequences like many pointed out, but that is exactly why I refuse to participate. I’ve mentored so many young engineers who seem to be getting pulled in with the promise of career growth based on performance and it just breaks my heart.
- operatingthetan 3y agoThere is a big health cost. Not sleeping causes premature aging. Stimulants also have negative cardiovascular impacts, can cause psychosis, seem to affect the personality long term, and a lot more.
- htss2013 3y agoIt's not that simple. You have to look at net cost and benefit. There are plenty of stimulant free paths in life that also cause cardiovascular damage, lack of sleep and 50 other problems. The issue with living in a society where money so closely correlates with health is that anything bad for your money tends to also be bad for health.
- operatingthetan 3y ago>There are plenty of stimulant free paths in life that also cause cardiovascular damage, lack of sleep and 50 other problems. You're pretty close to whataboutism here... I suppose we could all shrug and go "everything does everything" and get lost in over-generalization, but that doesn't lead to any sort of productive conversational outcome.
- htss2013 3y ago
- comboy 3y agoThey should have seen it 60 years ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jiveturkey42 3y agoPaywalled. Is this about the generation of people on adderall?
- fmajid 3y agoMatt Levine covers Wall Street, which is full of people who take recreational drugs like cocaine that don’t have even a plausible performance-boosting argument. I’ve never taken drugs (unless you consider theobromine from chocolate to be one), but Steve Jobs attributed his insights to having done LSD, so I wouldn’t dismiss the theory out of hand. Then again he also believed herbal rinses would cure his cancer, so YMMV.