A number of great composers were fond of the bottle, but can you hear it? | Hacker News Reader

A number of great composers were fond of the bottle, but can you hear it?

spectator.co.uk

31 pointstintinnabula16 comments

The price you pay for original thought is isolation.

When they can't surround themselves with other original thinkers, or develop a saintly patience for the plugged-in, the only option left is substance abuse.

Judging from "Behind the Music," substance abuse is the path of least resistance.

Alcohol has always been popular. Go figure.

It's not only great composers that are fond of the bottle et al. Many great modern musicians have struggled with alcohol and drug abuse.

It's a detour but isn't "many people have struggled with alcohol and drug abuse" the generalization? Not much greatness to be found there. The ones like Erdos are the outliers by much greater margin than among the non-abusers imho

I'd be curious to see the rates of abuse amongst the general population versus the music industry.

Would be interesting to see some kind of statistical analysis on this one.

There's also the conundrum of writers using amphetamine, like Hunter S. Thompson did. Tho he (ab)used more than just that.

There are a lot of factors (including luck, temperament, motivation, perseverance, creativity, education, etc) that go in to making someone being perceived as "great" by others.

Whether one uses a particular drug is clearly not the only thing that determines "greatness". But some drugs could help increase one's creativity, or to "loosen up", shed inhibitions, see the world in a different light, or appreciate things you otherwise wouldn't. There's often a cost to this, sometimes it is a great cost, but it's a mistake to believe drugs are an unmitigated evil without any benefits.

The real problem is that most people aren't taking drugs for constructive reasons, like to enhance their creativity, but either for frivolous or self-destructive reasons. Of course, even constructive uses can get out of hand. That's where education, discipline, and support come in. Unfortunately, modern societies do a pretty poor job of helping with any of these things, and focus primarily on stigmatizing and criminalizing drugs and drug users.

> But some drugs could help increase one's creativity, or to "loosen up", shed inhibitions, see the world in a different light, or appreciate things you otherwise wouldn't.

They can also act as temporary solutions to permanent problems - many people self-medicate with alcohol or other drugs.

Awesome. Survival bias rears its head again.

Please explain!

He, I misread your statement. I actually understood the opposite of what you actually said. Never mind.

Banach (mathematician) also drank heavily.

I hear he once drank himself to pieces, and when he woke up in the morning and pulled himself together, he had inadvertently made a copy of himself.

The Banach-Tarski paradox:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach%E2%80%93Tarski_paradox

Quickly, you must tell me: What vile monster cut him up into 5 pieces while he was unconscious? The mathematical community needs to know, for their own safety.

I see some of us are in good company!

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