5 ms·

This is such an obvious problem to anyone who is above the age of 25. All of my friends who were real big into weed in high school are all pretty bad at rememb

• LoganDark 2y ago
  > Out of all of them, only one is successful, and It's because he bought BTC in 2014 and still has around 20 of them. Holy lucky. Bet just about everyone on HN would wish this were them.
• EdwardDiego 2y ago
  My anecdote can beat up yours :D
  • liontwist 2y ago
    As opposed to data? What data? Imagine how hard this is to study: - can we identify groups who regularly use and don’t use - and isolate other lifestyle factors - and follow them for years of the life - and get them to accurately report data - and determine which life outcomes can be attributed to cannabis use No study like that is going to be compelling. The anecdote is going to be just as useful in your personal life. It’s how humans learn.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • EdwardDiego 2y ago
      Sure, I very much agree. My anecdotes contradict the previous anecdotes. Is it QED? No, the best that can be hoped for is, "Hmm, that's interesting".
• JohnMakin 2y ago
  dang what about other people outside your sample size that did smoke under 18 and then became successful? what was your control group also?
  • bsder 2y ago
    It would be more shocking if cannabis didn't do this. Most adolescents who get heavily into any drug generally have issues--this includes alcohol and nicotine, as well.
    • JohnMakin 2y ago
      Yea but what’s the cause here? maybe seeking substances is a symptom itself, and not a cause for the issues. teen drug use is trending downward and i think thats a good thing so stuff being posted like this just sounds weird to me - as a teen “drug user” that now has a computer science degree, I’d say the kids maybe need a huff of something, they dont seem ok to me. of course thats just my anecdotal opinion, dont do drugs, of course.
  • frogpelt 2y ago
    If you’re looking controlled study results you could refer to the post. If you want to provide your own anecdotal evidence to refute the parent comment, fire away.
    • OnlineGladiator 2y ago
      Well, the vibe I'm getting from these comments is people reacting emotionally, and assuming the study concludes that smoking cannabis causes memory problems. But the article itself says: > The study has limitations. It was an uncontrolled, cross-sectional study, so the association seen between cannabis and brain function can’t be considered causal. So even this study doesn't say it's causal, and admits to many other limitations. I agree with your point about evidence and science though, but this is hardly a smoking gun that cannabis makes you dumber.
    • JohnMakin 2y ago
• throwaway314155 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • op00to 2y ago
    We don’t do personal attacks here, please.
    • throwaway314155 2y ago
      [flagged]
    • amrocha 2y ago
      The original comment implies their “friends” are failures, which i don’t know about you but I wouldn’t say that about any of my friends, and wouldn’t expect any of my friends to say that about me. Pointing that out is not a personal insult.
      • throwaway314155 2y ago
        Thanks for being the only person to understand that I was legitimately trying to discourage toxic behavior, not condone it. This site sometimes...
• legitster 2y ago
  It's quite reminiscent of how long it took people to associate smoking with emphysema and lung disease. In hindsight it seems so obvious! But building evidence for even obvious conclusions can be surprisingly hard.
  • bsder 2y ago
    > It's quite reminiscent of how long it took people to associate smoking with emphysema and lung disease. It was obvious even back then. The difference was that the crap you breathed in from air pollution as well as the garbage you were breathing in from working the mills and mines was likely to kill you before the bad effects of smoking kicked in. Once we had the EPA and got rid of the other garbage, suddenly smoking actually mattered to your mortality.
    • readthenotes1 2y ago
      The EPA came years after the dangers of cigarette smoking were known, and months after the ban on cigarette ads was made in the USA. Big Tobacco was really good at pushing/buying counter narratives (including but not limited to "think of all the poor tobacco farmers"). Why is marijuana considered so wonderful? Seems more like a grass roots movement ignoring the casualties along the way. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco-surgeon-general-reports/about/history.html https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco-surgeon-general-reports/about/hi...
      • triceratops 2y ago
        > Why is marijuana considered so wonderful? It isn't considered "wonderful". It's just not worth putting people into prison over. It's still a vice, like tobacco, alcohol, or gambling. There are also some important differences between it and cigarettes. 1. Way less actual smoking needed. Or not needed at all because edibles exist. 2. It isn't chemically addictive or habit-forming for most people. 3. There are legitimate medical applications for pain or nausea relief. Again, without smoking.
        • 2y ago
• kazinator 2y ago
  > pretty bad at remembering things, most work dead end jobs and are generally unmotivated So, like, stoners?
  • Gigachad 2y ago
    This has been a stereotype for forever. Would be more surprising if they found weed usage didn't correlate with these things.
• seattle_spring 2y ago
  All of my friends, including myself, smoked constantly from 16 to 25. We're all now college graduates with a range of successful careers, including staff software eng (me), ER doc, and 2 lawyers. Ironically, some of the most anti-weed people I knew growing up are either hard drug addicts now, or deeply hateful fundamentalists.
• bogwog 2y ago
  I didn't review the study (wouldn't even know how to do that), but I did read the article and it doesn't say anything about permanent effects. In fact, the participants were aged 22-36, so definitely past high school age. The title makes it sound like smoking weed causes permanent brain damage, but I don't think that's what they found at all > The researchers found that both recent and heavy lifetime cannabis use was associated with a statistically significant reduction in brain activity only during the working memory task. So they observed reduced memory function during a memory task for people who smoked recently or were "heavy" smokers, but not in any of the other tests. Maybe the heavy smokers have permanent brain damage, but the OP at least don't mention any findings like that.
  • readthenotes1 2y ago
    They did find trouble with long-term heavy use "The researchers found that both recent and heavy lifetime cannabis use was associated with a statistically significant reduction in brain activity only during the working memory task." They theorized that abstention may help long term users, but that wasn't in write-up
    • Guthur 2y ago
      Also this is not necessarily a universally bad thing. For example if I need to work through something from first principles as opposed to instant recall I may develop a more novel understanding. Anecdotally I have found a number of individuals that are great a remembering and therefore excel in some academic situations are the quite intellectual rigid and unable to think beyond what they are told. But as a disclaimer I'm not advocating marijuana use as it can have detrimental affects on motivation for example.
      • dgacmu 2y ago
        You are misunderstanding the meaning of working memory. Working memory is very short-term and small; it's what you use when you read the second half of an equation and still remember what the first half said. A reduction in working memory is a direct reduction in cognitive capability for some/many tasks.
• Hashemm 2y ago
  [dead]
• bawolff 2y ago
  Maybe, but i also think that the type of people who smoke all day as teenagers probably also have factors that will hurt them later in life unrelated to the smoking. Its good to have actual data.
  • readthenotes1 2y ago
    The age-old complaint about smoking weed was that it halted people's maturation -- they did not face those factors that will continue to hurt them. Or "Reality is for people who can't handle drugs"
• dottjt 2y ago
  As someone who was once a young weed smoker, I get the sense that this is more correlation than causation. I know as many failures as I do successes from this position. Those who have been failures were going to be failures anyway irrespective of whether they smoked weed or not, as was the case for those who ended up successful. With that said, I don't deny that weed smoking at a young age would likely affect your brain negatively. But I don't think it determines what your outcome will be.
  • math_dandy 2y ago
    The article does not claim that smoking determines outcomes for any individual. It gives statistical evidence that outcomes (measured brain activity while performing certain tasks) for weed smokers are worse than for non-smokers __on average__, and that this pattern persists in various subpopulations determined by demographic and lifestyle factors.
    • dottjt 2y ago
      Thank you for clarifying, but I was responding to the commenter. Not the article
• jMyles 2y ago
  This comment is so strange. You've clearly described a group prone to confounding factors, identified a viable case study outlier, and then just concluded that the dependent variable is causally impactful anyway. Don't you think it's more likely that the cannabis use in this group is highly correlated with other risk factors?
• m3kw9 2y ago
  Snoop dogg smokes it, not that I’m endorsing it
• ghfhghg 2y ago
  Some of the smartest programmers I know smoke marijuana quite regularly. I don't know if they all smoked at an earlier age but I know that 2 of them did.
  • userbinator 2y ago
    I know a few smokers (tobacco only) who lived into their 90s, and some of them were exposed to much worse in their daily lives when they were young (leaded gasoline, solvents, etc.), but I suspect those may be genetic outliers.
    • ghfhghg 2y ago
      Definitely. Conversely I know someone who died young of lung cancer but never smoked.
      • AngryData 2y ago
        To be fair lung cancer as the biggest concern to smoking was just the advertising boogeyman to convince people to stop smoking, the vast majority of smokers die from heart attack and stroke, not lung cancer. But telling some 14 year old kid that they might just drop dead at 55 of a heart attack isn't exactly convincing, to them that is old as fuck and just dropping dead from a heart attack sounds like one of the best ways to go at the time.
        • ghfhghg 2y ago
          I did not realize that at all. Thanks for the info!
  • iforgot22 2y ago
    I knew some top students in college who started smoking weed then and continued. They're still programmers or scientists now, which isn't surprising given their education and talent, but something's wrong every time I talk to them. They seem scatterbrained and unable to remember what either of us said a minute ago. Edit: Forgot to specify, they're in their late 20s now.
• ldjkfkdsjnv 2y ago
  I smoked a lot as a teenager and it had bad long term effects. There is no doubt. Most friends I had, who were upper middle class, did not make it through college.
• nradov 2y ago
  I could never understand why parents would allow able-bodied adult children to live with them (regardless of marijuana use or whatever). It's not doing them any favors. Some people need a little tough love to get launched in life. Drag them down to the Army recruiting office or something.
  • ziddoap 2y ago
    >I could never understand why parents would allow able-bodied adult children to live with them Agreed, just kick your kids out onto the street and let them fend for themselves. I got mine, they can get theirs. Right? Why don't they just go buy a house or something?
  • grigri907 2y ago
    As an able-bodied adult child who lived with his parents for 2 years, it absolutely did me favors in that I was able to save a small down payment for a home. Some people do need tough love, and others don't. It's a case by case basis.
  • iforgot22 2y ago
    Because a single person doesn't need a separate house. In many countries, the default is for children to stay home until they're married. Now, if that person is like 30 and doesn't appear to be going anywhere, maybe that's a problem.
  • zen928 2y ago
    Hopefully, it's to help enable their success and wellbeing in such a way that it gives them steps towards becoming self-sufficient. Your tone is slightly crass, but you're not wrong that enabling bad behavior in your children is in opposition to your goals as a parent. If you can reason that your nourishment of resources gives them opportunity without becoming a direct dependence and the cost to yourself isn't too high, I don't see it being a problem. Essentially, it varies on how you see your role as a parent and your relationship with your child.
• ziddoap 2y ago
  I have plenty of anecdotes in the other direction. Perhaps there are other factors involved. Weed isn't going to give you a leg up in life, but it's not a guarantee that you're going to end up in a dead end job and live with your parents forever either. Painting it as such reminds me of D.A.R.E.
  • iforgot22 2y ago
    D.A.R.E. was right
    • ziddoap 2y ago
      >In 1998, a grant from the National Institute of Justice to the University of Maryland resulted in a report to the NIJ, which among other statements, concluded that "D.A.R.E. does not work to reduce substance use." [...] The evidence suggested that, by exposing young impressionable children to drugs, the program was, in fact, encouraging and nurturing drug use. >A ten-year study was completed by Donald R. Lynam and colleagues in 2006 involving one thousand D.A.R.E. graduates in an attempt to measure the effects of the program. After the ten-year period, no measurable effects were noted. >In 2001, the Surgeon General of the United States, David Satcher, placed the D.A.R.E. program in the category of "Ineffective Primary Prevention Programs". >In March 2007, the D.A.R.E. program was placed on a list of treatments that have the potential to cause harm in clients in the APS journal, Perspectives on Psychological Science. It was, at best, ineffective. At worst it was harmful.
      • iforgot22 2y ago
        Kids didn't listen to it, but it was right. It painted weed and harder drugs as pointless and dangerous, which they are.
        • amrocha 2y ago
          It literally encouraged drug use through exposure
        • 2y ago
• stanislavb 2y ago
  "only one is successful, and It's because he bought BTC in 2014 and still has around 20 of them" - I'd say that's luck and not success :)
  • calimariae 2y ago
    The success part is holding them for 10 years through all the ups and downs
• kardianos 2y ago
  This so much. I grew up in Oregon when it was legal for "medical" purposes. You could tell who smoked pot; they were not chill, they were dumb.
• dkarl 2y ago
  I observe the same thing, but I think in a lot of towns and schools, like yours and mine, the kids who chose to smoke weed were the ones who saw themselves as unmotivated losers and screwups. The connection could have been a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think there are enough places like that to skew any study that doesn't somehow control for it. It would be interesting to see if the result holds for kids who didn't see themselves that way, kids who are bright and ambitious or even just average, or if it only holds for kids who already saw themselves as underachievers before they started getting high.
• milkshakes 2y ago
  I believe that your perspective is harmful. I'm an accomplished staff engineer who has worked at multiple megacorps and valley darling companies including MANGAFANGA or whatever you call it and am highly goal oriented and passionate contributor. I started smoking weed at 13. I own multiple homes and live a well adjusted life with my wife. I support my parents and sisters. Without weed, I can get tunnel vision, or looped, trapped in the many contradictions and highly irrational layer 8 issues that permeate high stakes corporate decision making surrounding my technical efforts. Weed helps this all bother me less. I vape every day. Often on balconies at work. I'm afraid of schizophrenia, but besides that, weed has been a miracle drug for me. I have a psychiatrist, I've had pharmaceuticals, but really the plant has been the best thing for me and I wouldn't have gotten nearly as far as I have without it.
  • jimmygrapes 2y ago
    Yeah well I started smoking weed when I was 16 and I'm a poor man approaching retirement with no family or friends or assets and a tenuous job predicated in my ability to perform manual labor. Now what.
    • milkshakes 2y ago
      Weed is a drug. Drugs are tools. Weed makes things bother you less. It's obviously possible to take it too far.
      • chris_wot 2y ago
        Weed is a drug. Drugs affect people differently. The question is: do you want to roll the dice?
        • milkshakes 2y ago
          This is true for all drugs, legal or not.
          • 2y ago
• hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  This whole thread is pretty funny to me, because from a group that generally prides themselves on being logical/rational and valuing the scientific method, it just highlights why anecdotes are generally useless in topics like this. Sure, this is just a forum, and it's not like many folks are performing experiments with statistical analysis on this topic. I just think it's funny how the language that people using imply that they are so sure that their anecdote is the right one: "This is such an obvious problem", "Your position is harmful", "Some of the smartest programmers I know", etc. I mean, the whole reason statistics was invented was to actually bring rigor to observational analysis. At a previous company I worked at, the server from where we shared A/B test results was named, as an ironic joke, "Obviously". It was done to deliberately highlight the point that it was pretty easy to come to any conclusion (right or wrong) and use language like "obviously" to kind of imply that the experiment wasn't necessary. I think there were even some example where this kind of language was used to argue the exact opposite possible outcomes to highlight why statistical analysis is so important.
  • ghfhghg 2y ago
    You do realize that the comments in replies quoting with counter anecdotes is specifically to point out that anecdotal evidence is just that and nothing more? I think you might have missed out on some subtleness.
• cwalv 2y ago
  I agree that short term memory loss being a side effect of heavy use is common knowledge to anyone who is or knows a heavy user. But I think you shouldn't be so confident that smoking when young is a huge problem long term. I would have been in the 'heavy user' category by the time I was 17, and I've had the odd experience of persistent short term memory loss (e.g., having multiple people tell me 'you just asked me that' with a bewildered look). I also quit smoking when I was 17, and haven't had any noticable symptoms since I was 20 (> 20 years ago). I doubt if anyone who knows me would say I'm not 'successful.' Not recommending heavy use, to be sure. Just saying that it's not necessarily a permanent, long-term effect.
• kylebenzle 2y ago
  Interesting your only metirc of success is how much money someone has.
• interludead 2y ago
  And it’s not just about memory... It’s the whole motivation thing