I was taught marijuana MAY lead to heroin use. Even at that age, I was thinking logically enough to realize just because the people I see around me do not APPEAR to adhere to that model doesn't mean the model (may, not will) isn't true? I don't understand the logic behind the idea that once you find out what you were taught was not entirely correct that means you should ditch all of it. I don't believe everything I was told. I was decidely atheist at a very young age. But I didn't then think "everyone was lying so the opposite of everything they say is the truth". That's just stupid, even for kids.
No. You are stupid because you just admitted that most people use drugs,
You're amazingly stupid for not realizing I never claimed otherwise in the first place.
still can't see how it is absurd to claim that choosing to use drugs is the cause of addiction.
You're also stupid for trying to make this a legitimate reason for addiction. Bowing to peer pressure is also a choice. If you think ruining your life because you don't want to lose "friends" who would ditch you for not getting addicted with them is a good decision, then you're stupid.
... and you are stupid for openly admitting that you have no experience with the subject matter, but are willing to hold yourself up as some kind of expert anyway. You are doubly stupid for continuing to paint me as the ignorant one after blatantly and openly exposing your ignorance.
So for someone to be not stupid on this issue, they have to have experience in ruining their life? How about the fact that I avoided any chance of ruining my life as a legitimate experience? Not only not ruining, but having a pretty good life as experience that it is absolutely okay not to use drugs just because other people do.
What are these lies? I see people dying from hardcore drugs. I see people on marijuana who can't think coherently. I suspect many of them are doing the rounds on Slashdot right now because they put up really stupid arguments.
Strange of you to make that political connection. Historically it's been libertarians who are pushing to decriminalize all drugs and let people live by their choices. I'm quite the lefty. I support welfare and universal healthcare and pro-choice and marriage equality and stuff like that.
I love that people get offended when people tell them they can do the right thing. I don't do it JUST to lord it over people, even though that is an added bonus. I'm here to tell people that it's OKAY to not follow the crowd, and yes even godless atheists can decide to not take drugs despite there being no divine command to do so.
I suspect it's more psychosomatic. AND I get distracted even without drinking coffee. I haven't done a double blind test to be sure that I am affected by coffee. It could just as well be the sugar.
You are stuid because you sit at a table at a restaraunt and read the menu, look around you and see bars and night clubs, probably drinking yourself from time to time in some of those establishments, and think it isn't a social norm to use drugs.
I'm stupid because I don't follow the crowd? Gotcha. You must be very intelligent.
In other words, you most likely use drugs yourself.
You're grasping at straws, mate. The closest I came to drugs was when my mother made beer chicken. I tasted awful. It's kind of sad that you try to make yourself feel better by trying to implicate me into your bad habits. Not going to work. Squeaky clean.
unless of course you smoke cigarettes, in which case you are an addict.
I even hold my breath when walking behind a smoker.
Furthermore just because someone made a bad decision doesn't mean we simply abandon them. Maybe you are the one person who has never made a bad choice in life but I doubt it. Sometimes people make bad choices and a civilized society tries to a reasonable degree to help them through it. We're going to pay for it one way or another anyway so why not do the humane thing and help those who are willing to be helped?
I'm all for helping people who are addicted. Just don't expect me to help them AND feel sympathy. I can perfectly help people and still feel no sympathy for them. I feel sympathy, even empathy, for those who don't get themselves into trouble but find themselves there.
If you take drugs and get addicted, that's your responsibility. Not anyone else's.
You really think that a wounded veteran who gets unintentionally addicted to opiates while trying to control pain is solely responsible for his situation? If so you are a very cold hearted person.
If they're in great pain and they down painkillers, it's not really addiction, because they're in pain, or PTSD. If they somehow manage to mentally and physically heal and no longer require painkillers but continue to do so, then it's a choice.
Boy it feels so stupid to finish university on schedule, get a job right out of university, take up guitar and fencing, and buy a house while resisting the bank's push for me to get a bigger loan than I was comfortable with.
But GOOD ON YOU for fighting back against me for making you feel stupid for your stupid life choices. You're right. You should always be made to feel like a special snowflake because it's not your fault you decided to take drugs against all advice.
I am a middle child, but I'm the only one of my siblings who graduated "on schedule" and got a job right out of university. I never claimed to be the most sensible person, but I can look at my life from an outside perspective and realize I'm doing pretty fucking well even on a modicum of sensibility.
It's heartless because it implies that addicts sat down at the kitchen table, made a Pro-Con list of addiction, and came to a reasoned decision to become an addict.
They didn't need to. They get given plenty of pros and cons for the matter to be already decided.
They think that one time won't hurt - look at all the teachers who smoke or drink alcohol. Look at all the successful celebrities who do drugs.
And I have no sympathy for anyone who thinks so stupidly. As a kid, I didn't know about logical fallacies. But I knew enough to know "because everyone else does it" is not a good reason. In fact, kids are taught that all the time.
It's heartless because most of us have made a bad decision while intoxicated, to the point where we'll disown that decision.
You argue against yourself. Getting intoxicated in the first place is a decision.
addiction ought to evoke some fucking sympathy.
Someone who deliberately cuts off their own legs with a chainsaw don't get sympathy. So why should addicts?
Maybe you assume I drink coffee because I'm on Slashdot and chances are I work in IT, if not a programmer and all IT/programmers drink coffee to be productive? Well I don't. I'm less productive on coffee because I'm easily distractable.
One of my best friends growing up was an Aborigine, against the advice of my parents. I got suspended from school a few times. Maybe being poor and Chinese helped me? No one more sensible than a poor Chinese with poor Chinese parents.
Do I drink coffee? No, actually. At least, not regularly enough to be called a "coffee drinker". I certainly don't drink it for the caffeine - I'm not sure I've ever felt the effects of it. I drink it for the bitter-sweet-milk taste. Otherwise, I mostly drink tea.
Well, one problem is that the teachers lie through their teeth, demonizing marijuana along with heroin.
As they should. I don't agree with the libertarian obsession with marijuana. I don't consider those teachers to have lied at all.
But then you get to high school, and your friends are smoking weed, having fun, and they look fine.
Then you're a fucking stupid kid who can't tell the difference between people looking fine and people being fine.
Your teachers lied to you, and now you know it.
No, because I look at all the kids who started marijuana very young and most of them do nothing of their lives except to look for the next high, the teachers were right that it could ruin your life. I have never felt life required mind altering drugs to be enjoyable. And I wasn't anywhere near those "popular" kids at school - I was an outsider and I made peace with that fact instead.
And the irony is that the most dangerous, most addictive, most popular drugs (alcohol and tobacco), well, these the ones your teachers tell you to use in "moderation." They imply that there's relative safety in these drugs, which is another lie.?
My teachers told us NOT to smoke at all. Some of them even said not to drink at all. And this was in a public school, not a private religious one. In health class, they also regularly showed videos about alcohol and tobacco. It doesn't take a genius to extrapolate that taking those substances at all might become worse.
So how should you know about the dangers of addiction from heroin or methamphetamines, when your teachers are demonstrably lying to you about drugs?
Because you should have learnt not to be a fucking nuisance and try to get along with the teachers. Me, an unsocial nerd all through life, had enough empathy to realize that my teachers weren't there to torment me. I even got suspended a few times, but still I understood from their perspectives the kids were just fucking arseholes.
Do teachers tell their students to take drugs? That's a pretty fucking clear message. They even tell kids not to believe in movies. Even as a kid I knew to listen to them. What excuse do other kids have? That they didn't want to be teacher's pets?
My parents never did drugs. My father escaped communism in China and my mother's family were poor. They buckled down and got out of poverty and avoided all addictions, even gambling. It isn't hard to not do something that isn't necessary.
By bringing up economic status in the comments for an article about Silicon Valley workers, YOU. Otherwise, your comment was irrelevant. One or the other. Incorrect or irrelevant.
Note you're the one bring the war on drugs into this. I'm merely addressing the CHOICE people make to start taking drugs in the first place. Why? Taking drugs is not "being different". You're not born taking drugs. In fact you have to go out of your way to do those things. Taking those substances is one of the very few things you are not forced to do in advanced society. Even if there were no war on drugs, people still get addicted and ruin their lives, or die, for something completely unnecessary.
How is that heartless? Addicted people get themselves into it. When I was in primary school, I was taught by all teachers to not take any drugs, smoke or drink excessively, even painkillers. I weighed up the consequences and decided not to do any of those things and not to hang around people who do those things. How hard is it to not do something, especially when almost everyone tells you not to?
What about Russia and all those really new former Soviet satellites? Like Ukraine? Out of all of them, only South Korea and Taiwan has experienced rapid economic growth to catch up, and that was AFTER a few decades of autocracy if not outright dictatorship to set things up properly. And Singapore is still for all intents and purposes an autocracy even after Lee Kuan Yew.
And really, the Western powers have no right to expect and force others to democratize when all the Western powers grew their power under heavily restricted democracy before opening things up.
Slashdot Mirror
I was taught marijuana MAY lead to heroin use. Even at that age, I was thinking logically enough to realize just because the people I see around me do not APPEAR to adhere to that model doesn't mean the model (may, not will) isn't true? I don't understand the logic behind the idea that once you find out what you were taught was not entirely correct that means you should ditch all of it. I don't believe everything I was told. I was decidely atheist at a very young age. But I didn't then think "everyone was lying so the opposite of everything they say is the truth". That's just stupid, even for kids.
No. You are stupid because you just admitted that most people use drugs,
You're amazingly stupid for not realizing I never claimed otherwise in the first place.
still can't see how it is absurd to claim that choosing to use drugs is the cause of addiction.
You're also stupid for trying to make this a legitimate reason for addiction. Bowing to peer pressure is also a choice. If you think ruining your life because you don't want to lose "friends" who would ditch you for not getting addicted with them is a good decision, then you're stupid.
... and you are stupid for openly admitting that you have no experience with the subject matter, but are willing to hold yourself up as some kind of expert anyway. You are doubly stupid for continuing to paint me as the ignorant one after blatantly and openly exposing your ignorance.
So for someone to be not stupid on this issue, they have to have experience in ruining their life? How about the fact that I avoided any chance of ruining my life as a legitimate experience? Not only not ruining, but having a pretty good life as experience that it is absolutely okay not to use drugs just because other people do.
What are these lies? I see people dying from hardcore drugs. I see people on marijuana who can't think coherently. I suspect many of them are doing the rounds on Slashdot right now because they put up really stupid arguments.
Strange of you to make that political connection. Historically it's been libertarians who are pushing to decriminalize all drugs and let people live by their choices. I'm quite the lefty. I support welfare and universal healthcare and pro-choice and marriage equality and stuff like that.
I love that people get offended when people tell them they can do the right thing. I don't do it JUST to lord it over people, even though that is an added bonus. I'm here to tell people that it's OKAY to not follow the crowd, and yes even godless atheists can decide to not take drugs despite there being no divine command to do so.
I suspect it's more psychosomatic. AND I get distracted even without drinking coffee. I haven't done a double blind test to be sure that I am affected by coffee. It could just as well be the sugar.
You are stuid because you sit at a table at a restaraunt and read the menu, look around you and see bars and night clubs, probably drinking yourself from time to time in some of those establishments, and think it isn't a social norm to use drugs.
I'm stupid because I don't follow the crowd? Gotcha. You must be very intelligent.
In other words, you most likely use drugs yourself.
You're grasping at straws, mate. The closest I came to drugs was when my mother made beer chicken. I tasted awful. It's kind of sad that you try to make yourself feel better by trying to implicate me into your bad habits. Not going to work. Squeaky clean.
unless of course you smoke cigarettes, in which case you are an addict.
I even hold my breath when walking behind a smoker.
Furthermore just because someone made a bad decision doesn't mean we simply abandon them. Maybe you are the one person who has never made a bad choice in life but I doubt it. Sometimes people make bad choices and a civilized society tries to a reasonable degree to help them through it. We're going to pay for it one way or another anyway so why not do the humane thing and help those who are willing to be helped?
I'm all for helping people who are addicted. Just don't expect me to help them AND feel sympathy. I can perfectly help people and still feel no sympathy for them. I feel sympathy, even empathy, for those who don't get themselves into trouble but find themselves there.
If you take drugs and get addicted, that's your responsibility. Not anyone else's.
You really think that a wounded veteran who gets unintentionally addicted to opiates while trying to control pain is solely responsible for his situation? If so you are a very cold hearted person.
If they're in great pain and they down painkillers, it's not really addiction, because they're in pain, or PTSD. If they somehow manage to mentally and physically heal and no longer require painkillers but continue to do so, then it's a choice.
My ignorance and stupidity?
Boy it feels so stupid to finish university on schedule, get a job right out of university, take up guitar and fencing, and buy a house while resisting the bank's push for me to get a bigger loan than I was comfortable with.
But GOOD ON YOU for fighting back against me for making you feel stupid for your stupid life choices. You're right. You should always be made to feel like a special snowflake because it's not your fault you decided to take drugs against all advice.
There are millions more who smoke marijuana and DON'T. Your logical fallacy is beyond stupid.
I am a middle child, but I'm the only one of my siblings who graduated "on schedule" and got a job right out of university. I never claimed to be the most sensible person, but I can look at my life from an outside perspective and realize I'm doing pretty fucking well even on a modicum of sensibility.
It's heartless because it implies that addicts sat down at the kitchen table, made a Pro-Con list of addiction, and came to a reasoned decision to become an addict.
They didn't need to. They get given plenty of pros and cons for the matter to be already decided.
They think that one time won't hurt - look at all the teachers who smoke or drink alcohol. Look at all the successful celebrities who do drugs.
And I have no sympathy for anyone who thinks so stupidly. As a kid, I didn't know about logical fallacies. But I knew enough to know "because everyone else does it" is not a good reason. In fact, kids are taught that all the time.
It's heartless because most of us have made a bad decision while intoxicated, to the point where we'll disown that decision.
You argue against yourself. Getting intoxicated in the first place is a decision.
addiction ought to evoke some fucking sympathy.
Someone who deliberately cuts off their own legs with a chainsaw don't get sympathy. So why should addicts?
To add:
Maybe you assume I drink coffee because I'm on Slashdot and chances are I work in IT, if not a programmer and all IT/programmers drink coffee to be productive? Well I don't. I'm less productive on coffee because I'm easily distractable.
One of my best friends growing up was an Aborigine, against the advice of my parents. I got suspended from school a few times. Maybe being poor and Chinese helped me? No one more sensible than a poor Chinese with poor Chinese parents.
Do I drink coffee? No, actually. At least, not regularly enough to be called a "coffee drinker". I certainly don't drink it for the caffeine - I'm not sure I've ever felt the effects of it. I drink it for the bitter-sweet-milk taste. Otherwise, I mostly drink tea.
The summary brought up people working in Silicon Valley. You brought up poor people. Irrelevant.
Well, one problem is that the teachers lie through their teeth, demonizing marijuana along with heroin.
As they should. I don't agree with the libertarian obsession with marijuana. I don't consider those teachers to have lied at all.
But then you get to high school, and your friends are smoking weed, having fun, and they look fine.
Then you're a fucking stupid kid who can't tell the difference between people looking fine and people being fine.
Your teachers lied to you, and now you know it.
No, because I look at all the kids who started marijuana very young and most of them do nothing of their lives except to look for the next high, the teachers were right that it could ruin your life. I have never felt life required mind altering drugs to be enjoyable. And I wasn't anywhere near those "popular" kids at school - I was an outsider and I made peace with that fact instead.
And the irony is that the most dangerous, most addictive, most popular drugs (alcohol and tobacco), well, these the ones your teachers tell you to use in "moderation." They imply that there's relative safety in these drugs, which is another lie.?
My teachers told us NOT to smoke at all. Some of them even said not to drink at all. And this was in a public school, not a private religious one. In health class, they also regularly showed videos about alcohol and tobacco. It doesn't take a genius to extrapolate that taking those substances at all might become worse.
So how should you know about the dangers of addiction from heroin or methamphetamines, when your teachers are demonstrably lying to you about drugs?
Because you should have learnt not to be a fucking nuisance and try to get along with the teachers. Me, an unsocial nerd all through life, had enough empathy to realize that my teachers weren't there to torment me. I even got suspended a few times, but still I understood from their perspectives the kids were just fucking arseholes.
Do teachers tell their students to take drugs? That's a pretty fucking clear message. They even tell kids not to believe in movies. Even as a kid I knew to listen to them. What excuse do other kids have? That they didn't want to be teacher's pets?
My parents never did drugs. My father escaped communism in China and my mother's family were poor. They buckled down and got out of poverty and avoided all addictions, even gambling. It isn't hard to not do something that isn't necessary.
By bringing up economic status in the comments for an article about Silicon Valley workers, YOU. Otherwise, your comment was irrelevant. One or the other. Incorrect or irrelevant.
The people working at silicon valley don't sound poor to me.
Why did they "have" to start taking drugs in the first place? If you take drugs and get addicted, that's your responsibility. Not anyone else's.
Note you're the one bring the war on drugs into this. I'm merely addressing the CHOICE people make to start taking drugs in the first place. Why? Taking drugs is not "being different". You're not born taking drugs. In fact you have to go out of your way to do those things. Taking those substances is one of the very few things you are not forced to do in advanced society. Even if there were no war on drugs, people still get addicted and ruin their lives, or die, for something completely unnecessary.
How is that heartless? Addicted people get themselves into it. When I was in primary school, I was taught by all teachers to not take any drugs, smoke or drink excessively, even painkillers. I weighed up the consequences and decided not to do any of those things and not to hang around people who do those things. How hard is it to not do something, especially when almost everyone tells you not to?
Why should they get sympathy? No one told them they had to get addicted. In fact they're constantly warned by society not to take them.
What about Russia and all those really new former Soviet satellites? Like Ukraine? Out of all of them, only South Korea and Taiwan has experienced rapid economic growth to catch up, and that was AFTER a few decades of autocracy if not outright dictatorship to set things up properly. And Singapore is still for all intents and purposes an autocracy even after Lee Kuan Yew.
And really, the Western powers have no right to expect and force others to democratize when all the Western powers grew their power under heavily restricted democracy before opening things up.