Hacker News Reader

Comment by ngai_aku | Hacker News Reader

> they were excited to go to some convention in Minneapolis that was all about mushrooms and psychedelics. What struck me was how excited they were, how into that community they were. I couldn't relate. I thought to myself, isn't there anything in your life more exciting than this?

Are you always this judgmental of others’ interests? Do you have these feelings towards someone excited about e.g. a new video game or a programming conference?

View on HN

Actually, no. Had he been drawn to a programming conference, I wouldn’t have been able to draw a line between the dangers he’d been near and those interests. But when you see someone in a situation, and see them drawn to the wrong things for the wrong reasons, yes of course it triggers at least concern. I wish a lot I had been wrong.

I don't think it's fair to conflate mushrooms and psychedelics with Fentanyl.

On the one hand, you're absolutely correct.

On the other hand, there is some overlap in classification here: experience-altering substances.

OP's intuition is, "this person's entire mental interest pool is consumed by some form of escapism."

There's some fallacy in this equating, but the heuristic isn't way off.

Also a note of caution... You could easily fall prey to confirmation bias on this one. Their interest in shrooms or psychedelics isn't necessarily a straight line to fentanyl. Plenty of people have one without the other.

I have a lot of interest in psychedelics (haven't tried it myself). How would you know if my interest is "for the wrong reasons"? And, what level of judgment clarity is required to know if the reasons are wrong, right, or neither?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com