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In my own experience, every engineer that I have worked with who regularly uses psychedelics has substandard problem-solving abilities. Note that I'm not "knoc

In my own experience, every engineer that I have worked with who regularly uses psychedelics has substandard problem-solving abilities. Note that I'm not "knocking" psychedelics per se. I've never personally tried them and I don't know enough to comment on their effects or risks. I'm just providing an anecdotal counterpoint to yours. There are a lot of general comments in this thread about people's minds being usefully expanded by drug use. I'm not disputing these, but could someone perhaps provide a specific example about a problem they were stuck on which they then managed to solve with the assistance of drugs?

delluminatus 12y ago
No way man, that's such a square question, it's not about specifics, it's about generalities. Ahem. That was a joke. But in seriousness, I've also never heard a specific example of a programming problem solved during a trip, but I can say that I've found tripping to be very beneficial in some unexpected areas: 1. Holistic understanding feels easier. E.g. understanding other people on a much deeper holistic level. I'm usually not very great at group socializing in parties or whatnot but tripping actually helps with that a lot. This is, in my mind, the same kind of "systems understanding" that could be applied to programming. You can intuitively understand a complex system of subtle interactions, on a deeper level than just what's being said. 2. Visualization. Almost anything can be visualized, even if it doesn't really make sense. And the visualizations feel real, which makes them easier to move and comprehend. Sometimes you can literally see them, like in the patterns of the veins on your hand, or the stitching in your clothes. 3. Unexpected mutation. During a trip, things can often move in a weird way, including things that don't normally move, like concepts or diagrams (or walls -- just try not to stare at them too long). It's notoriously challenging to rotate, skew, or otherwise transform your mental visuals. Tripping can make this trivial. 4. Perceived reality. The difference between real and virtual completely fades. Video games feel real (which is awesome when it's not terrifying). Have you ever played an FPS where you are literally afraid to die? It actually makes you a lot better! This same perceptive shift collapses the difference between real/virtual, digital/analog (in the nontechnical sense), practical/theoretical. It collapses inside/outside as well. You are not separate from what you are doing or thinking about; you're part of the system, like you're literally contained within the conceptual structure. This kind of dichotomy-destroying mindset opens up some very interesting new perspectives.
Tossrock 12y ago
Here is an account of an early programmer who designed the architecture for his compiler while on LSD: http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v18n1/v18n1-MAPS_24.pdf http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v18n1/v18n1-MAPS_24.pdf Compilers are generally considered very complex programs, and the "mind expanding" properties of psychedelics helped him for laying out the high level design (he did not do the actual coding while under the influence).
fapjacks 12y ago
I regularly consume MDMA with my best friend (two or three or four times a year) and during these day-long trips, we discuss a wide range of problems we're having with our personal programming projects. Not every problem is solved in these times, but there certainly is some ground gained on a few of them. Sometimes it might as well be NP-hard to solve concrete problems after enough MDMA, but I am confident that the effects of MDMA establish a channel of communication between us that we don't normally get to enjoy, and that channel can be very useful for solving specific problems. And the things we talk about range very widely to a huge number of subjects. I'd say most of our core beliefs about the universe are affected by our use of psychedelics. Personally, I also use mushrooms for sort of directed trips to explore my life situation, and again, it's pretty hard to do any coding while high, but conceptually, there is absolutely no way I would have had some of the ideas I've had without psychedelics.
abollaert 12y ago
The invention of the PCR technique for duplicating DNA sequences is at least partially attributed to the use of LSD. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis) Francis Crick is also known to have experimented with LSD when discovering the double helix structure of DNA. (http://www.intuition.org/txt/crick2.htm http://www.intuition.org/txt/crick2.htm)

delluminatus 12y ago

No way man, that's such a square question, it's not about specifics, it's about generalities. Ahem. That was a joke. But in seriousness, I've also never heard a specific example of a programming problem solved during a trip, but I can say that I've found tripping to be very beneficial in some unexpected areas: 1. Holistic understanding feels easier. E.g. understanding other people on a much deeper holistic level. I'm usually not very great at group socializing in parties or whatnot but tripping actually helps with that a lot. This is, in my mind, the same kind of "systems understanding" that could be applied to programming. You can intuitively understand a complex system of subtle interactions, on a deeper level than just what's being said. 2. Visualization. Almost anything can be visualized, even if it doesn't really make sense. And the visualizations feel real, which makes them easier to move and comprehend. Sometimes you can literally see them, like in the patterns of the veins on your hand, or the stitching in your clothes. 3. Unexpected mutation. During a trip, things can often move in a weird way, including things that don't normally move, like concepts or diagrams (or walls -- just try not to stare at them too long). It's notoriously challenging to rotate, skew, or otherwise transform your mental visuals. Tripping can make this trivial. 4. Perceived reality. The difference between real and virtual completely fades. Video games feel real (which is awesome when it's not terrifying). Have you ever played an FPS where you are literally afraid to die? It actually makes you a lot better! This same perceptive shift collapses the difference between real/virtual, digital/analog (in the nontechnical sense), practical/theoretical. It collapses inside/outside as well. You are not separate from what you are doing or thinking about; you're part of the system, like you're literally contained within the conceptual structure. This kind of dichotomy-destroying mindset opens up some very interesting new perspectives.

Tossrock 12y ago

Here is an account of an early programmer who designed the architecture for his compiler while on LSD: http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v18n1/v18n1-MAPS_24.pdf http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v18n1/v18n1-MAPS_24.pdf Compilers are generally considered very complex programs, and the "mind expanding" properties of psychedelics helped him for laying out the high level design (he did not do the actual coding while under the influence).

fapjacks 12y ago

I regularly consume MDMA with my best friend (two or three or four times a year) and during these day-long trips, we discuss a wide range of problems we're having with our personal programming projects. Not every problem is solved in these times, but there certainly is some ground gained on a few of them. Sometimes it might as well be NP-hard to solve concrete problems after enough MDMA, but I am confident that the effects of MDMA establish a channel of communication between us that we don't normally get to enjoy, and that channel can be very useful for solving specific problems. And the things we talk about range very widely to a huge number of subjects. I'd say most of our core beliefs about the universe are affected by our use of psychedelics. Personally, I also use mushrooms for sort of directed trips to explore my life situation, and again, it's pretty hard to do any coding while high, but conceptually, there is absolutely no way I would have had some of the ideas I've had without psychedelics.

abollaert 12y ago

The invention of the PCR technique for duplicating DNA sequences is at least partially attributed to the use of LSD. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis) Francis Crick is also known to have experimented with LSD when discovering the double helix structure of DNA. (http://www.intuition.org/txt/crick2.htm http://www.intuition.org/txt/crick2.htm)