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Let's file all the, "But pot ruined my father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate's life!" stories under this thread, rather than cluttering the discu

by rosser 12y ago

Let's file all the, "But pot ruined my father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate's life!" stories under this thread, rather than cluttering the discussion with countless top-level threads that all offer variations on the same kind of N=1 anecdata.

gone35 12y ago
Let's not. In medicine, N=1 is no joke: the reason being that, when (i) there are so many unknowns, (ii) there is so little experimental data, and (iii) the consequences are so potentially severe, from a decision-theoretical point of view it makes no sense to ignore data at all, no matter how biased. You would be surprised how many of the 'black-box' warnings in common pharmaceuticals come from on N=1 individual reports. Hell, papers are written on individual medical cases... Now you might even argue that hearsay is not 'data', but in fact it is: for instance, there is quite a bit of NLP literature on trying to identify unreported side effects of medications from 'informal' channels like social media. Even if it's a second or third or fourth report, it is a report nonetheless, and should be taken seriously. So let's not be gratuitiously negative [1] about people's negative reports about marihuana, no matter how biased you might think they might be. This is one of the most dramatic public health changes since the Prohibition we're talking about, so what is at stake is the health of millions of people for possibly many generations --so even very small effects otherwise considered too rare to matter might have an outsize impact on large segments of society. [1] http://blog.ycombinator.com/new-hacker-news-guideline http://blog.ycombinator.com/new-hacker-news-guideline
igl 12y ago
I feel discussing weed vs alcohol really tiresome too. I never had "paranoia" smoking weed and I never started bar fights or stole cars while drunk. It's a personal thing. If you smoke weed and jump out of windows or smash people faces because you got drunk, you are probably already bent in some way. These are soft drugs and should be legal simply for drying out the black market. And have them available in a controlled manner.
salemh 12y ago
It's interesting to me how alcohol-centric our(US. But is it any diferent in a developed country?) culture is. I can take a breather with my entire team to a beer bar, brats and beer, but I can't go to some "bar" and take two puffs off of a joint. Many things in social circumstance seem to depend on booze: >lets get a drink >lets hang out at _x_ house, bring a six pack >lets get drunk and watch __ The same doesn't work for marijuana at least in lots of verbal contexts (being over heard by your superiors.).
- symlinkk 12y ago
  Because it's illegal. Once it's legalized in the majority of the country I'm sure that will change.

by rosser 12y ago

gone35 12y ago

Let's not. In medicine, N=1 is no joke: the reason being that, when (i) there are so many unknowns, (ii) there is so little experimental data, and (iii) the consequences are so potentially severe, from a decision-theoretical point of view it makes no sense to ignore data at all, no matter how biased. You would be surprised how many of the 'black-box' warnings in common pharmaceuticals come from on N=1 individual reports. Hell, papers are written on individual medical cases... Now you might even argue that hearsay is not 'data', but in fact it is: for instance, there is quite a bit of NLP literature on trying to identify unreported side effects of medications from 'informal' channels like social media. Even if it's a second or third or fourth report, it is a report nonetheless, and should be taken seriously. So let's not be gratuitiously negative [1] about people's negative reports about marihuana, no matter how biased you might think they might be. This is one of the most dramatic public health changes since the Prohibition we're talking about, so what is at stake is the health of millions of people for possibly many generations --so even very small effects otherwise considered too rare to matter might have an outsize impact on large segments of society. [1] http://blog.ycombinator.com/new-hacker-news-guideline http://blog.ycombinator.com/new-hacker-news-guideline

igl 12y ago

I feel discussing weed vs alcohol really tiresome too. I never had "paranoia" smoking weed and I never started bar fights or stole cars while drunk. It's a personal thing. If you smoke weed and jump out of windows or smash people faces because you got drunk, you are probably already bent in some way. These are soft drugs and should be legal simply for drying out the black market. And have them available in a controlled manner.

salemh 12y ago

It's interesting to me how alcohol-centric our(US. But is it any diferent in a developed country?) culture is. I can take a breather with my entire team to a beer bar, brats and beer, but I can't go to some "bar" and take two puffs off of a joint. Many things in social circumstance seem to depend on booze: >lets get a drink >lets hang out at _x_ house, bring a six pack >lets get drunk and watch __ The same doesn't work for marijuana at least in lots of verbal contexts (being over heard by your superiors.).

symlinkk 12y ago
Because it's illegal. Once it's legalized in the majority of the country I'm sure that will change.