Ask HN: Your thoughts on 'digital drugs'? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Your thoughts on 'digital drugs'?

12 pointsinstakill15 comments

There's been a lot of talk about the teenagers in Oklahoma listening to 'digital drug' mp3's to get high. Personally I believe it to be a crock of pseudo-science. Wired magazine has written a mock-article about the hysteria http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/digital-drugs/

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Placebo.

I found this article on the subject to be interesting: Digital Drugs Do Not Cure Stupidity by Steve Novella http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=2132

This opening is quite amusing:

I have never been a fan of the local news, where journalistic standards are often annoying. Often the local news is an exercise in insulting the intelligence of the viewer. But at least the local news was local. With the internet, however, local news reports are increasingly being picked up by larger national outlets and amplified manyfold. So now I get to be subjected to the worst of local news reporting from all over the country.

It's a gateway drug to the heavy stuff, 100% of people using other drugs have been shown to have previously been users of music.

The thing I find most disturbing about this is the lack of cultural awareness that people have been searching for sounds that act on the body for years.

From Hawkwind trying to get the audience to crap themselves:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRw_rvrXQiQ&feature=playe...

To Coil and their Time machines:

http://brainwashed.com/common/htdocs/discog/eskaton10.php?si...

The Hafler trios experiments (Andrew Mackenzie seems determined to erase himself from history so can't find a relevant link)

and many many more - there is probably at least one book in mankinds search for music that alters the mind - that I can't be bothered researching for this comment.

And of course - if any of this actually worked don't you think it would have been around and available for a very long time?

( and its not just sound either - Gysin was playing wih light - perhaps a more promising line of investigation given epilepsy can be triggered with light:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamachine)

And why are you adding to the hysteria by asking our opinions on this?

And are you aware that the Wired article was making fun of the whole report?

Regarding your second question, I didn't see the "ridiculous" tag. The OP has been edited accordingly.

It is a virtue to keep the signal-to-noise ratio of top-level submissions high. It is a virtue to keep the signal-to-noise ratio of comments in threads discussing interesting content high. Behaviour here is undefined. There is another website that handles it better. We all read it anyways. Keep HN beautiful.

It's quite funny because of the cliche of calling youth music satanic or otherwise immoral.

There is a kernel of truth to its drug-like nature. After all, music is cherished for its power to alter our mood, typically for the happier. If music didn't get us high, there would be no reason to listen.

There was literally a flood of those in Russia about a year ago, whole Russian Internet was filled with ads about those. It's nothing, seriously, it might affect in some way some of more impressionable people with self-induced hypnosis ("this is a drug, so it has to work"), but other than that - no one here have seen any state of "being high" due to any mp3 (and there were hundreds upon hundreds of them advertised)

Clickable http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/digital-drugs/

Ask the submitter: do you know what Reddit is?

This sounds like snake oil, or maybe it's just a placebo effect.

"Is the iPod the bong of the future?"

Apple is behind this. I KNEW IT.

It's just like hypnosis, it works if you want it to. I wouldn't call it placebo, but I can see why some people would.

I confess. I'm an addict. I read HN religiously with a good glass of wine.

As someone who has logged a lot of time meditating, I can state pretty confidently there is something more than pure placebo going on here.

Many years ago (7ish) I tried using a program that generated these sounds/music with different touted effects like 'sleepy time' or 'morning coffee' .. whatever. Didn't make as grand of statements as maybe are being made now, but the idea was the same.

Observably, your brain pulses EM waves at certain frequency ranges depending on your state of mind, pretty much the calmer your mind, the slower your waves.

Now, if you've meditated with any type of success, you will recognize that semi-deep meditation is definitely similar in some ways to being on drugs.. the way marijuana treats some people, and I think even closer to how opiates treat people; a very relaxed, accepting feeling that is distinct from normal beta-wave activity.

Disclaimer, I have not read the wired article nor listened to any of these 'digital drug' mp3s; but.. I am pretty confident our brains can be strongly encouraged to enter the different brain-wave states based off the pulsations of sound at the intended interval.

That is, by overloading our senses into a pulsation at a certain frequency, our brains have inertia to pulsate at that frequency, thus putting our selves in the different states of mind associated with the different brain states.

My guess is that is what is happening with these 'digital drugs' and the ones that are supposedly 'the best' will have overwhelming rhythms matching probably alpha/delta wave frequency.

You should read the articles. The behavior they're describing really doesn't fit with your assumptions. I'd be willing to admit that there is more to meditation than placebo, but meditation is not what's being referenced on these articles (and corresponding youtube videos).

Not to suggest that there are real narcotic effects. My vote would absolutely be "Placebo Effect" with a helping dose of "kids can be weird".

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