Hacker News Reader

Comment by sanderjd | Hacker News Reader

The last section of this article struck me as being full of non sequiturs. It's not clear where the "write code" portion of the title comes from at all. The word "code" doesn't appear until the final word in the article. I remain confused what the connection is with the picture and brief discussion of Joe Rogan. What does he have to do with "write code"?

Very confusing article... Maybe the author was partaking in psychedelics while writing it?

View on HN

The article talks about the resurgence of interest in psychedelics in silicon valley, references how the history of silicon valley culter has its roots in the 60s culture that embraced psychedelics, and talks about how the current approach empasizes microdosing to increasr productivity. "Write code" is glib, but referrences a narrative that the article pretty clearly established.

To me, that "clearly established" narrative is an exercise in "begging the question". Starting from the "common knowledge" assumption that there is a through line between "write code", silicon valley / "tech bro" hustle culture, Joe Rogan, and psychedelics, the article's narrative is clear. But if you don't already have all those lines drawn in your mind coming into the article, then in my view, the article does a very poor job of drawing them itself.

Perhaps I'm being overly critical, but part of it is that I think there is an interesting story here, and I was disappointed not to find it in this article. I can easily imagine an article, like the kind they publish in the New Yorker for instance, that really does tease out all these connections, along with teasing out the places where the "common knowledge" is a distortion of reality, providing real insight. But this just wasn't that article, for me.

This is a book review, not a general article. The book the review is about covers the history of drug use, not current trends, which is why that is majority of the article talks about that. The final section does provide a reasonable about of links and arguments for a book review. While it isn't a anthropological study on that topic, that hardly justifies saying the author was tripping.

Yes, fair enough. I thought the book review portion was illuminating (and it sounds like an interesting book), but then the final section isn't about the book at all and, in my view, makes an argument that isn't well supported. And I think it does all that in service to being able to include this "write code" bit of cleverness in the headline, which is the only reason we're discussing an otherwise run-of-the-mill book review. So I think it's fair to point out that the section that brought this to our attention is pretty weak...

The final section setups up a contrast between the and now that is meant to help motivate you to read the book.

I don't see the section as particularly weak, it does exactly what it supposed to and it's argument is sufficiently strong for that purpose.

I would note that while you complained about the argument being weak, you didn't actually make any effort to edispute any of it.

If you found the topic interesting and wanted a deeper study of the topic, then thats great go do some research, I doubt nobody else has researched or written about it. Complaining that a book review isn't a scholarly article or a full essay isn't actually gonna get you any deeper understanding of the topic.

If you look Geoff Shullenberger other writings on that site, they are just some hack that writes about whatever hot political bullshit take there is to have at that time.

We are just drowning in stupid news opinion that is begging for clicks and not irrelevance.

I learned absolutely nothing from this article. Just a total waste of time to read.

I didn't browse any other articles by this author, but yeah, that's what this article had the ring of to me. "If I write an article that states the assumptions a bunch of people already have, those people will click on it!"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com