The greatest challenge is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.

Thursday, January 14, 2016

Just hit tab: why Silicon Valley techies are dropping LSD at work


According to its fans in California, taking ‘microdoses’ of the hallucinogen enhances energy and creativity. Just watch out for the multicoloured fish swimming out of your monitor …
Spot the blazingly obvious coding error … Photograph: Albert Klein/Getty Images


Sunday 29 November 2015 17.00 GMT Last modified on Thursday 10 December 2015 14.43 GMT



Just hit tab: why Silicon Valley techies are dropping LSD at work


Full name: Lysergic acid diethylamide.

Age: First synthesised by Dr Albert Hoffman in Switzerland in 1938.

Appearance: Small squares of paper with pretty pictures on them.

Indications: When you want to laugh continuously for no reason for several hours while the walls melt and the carpet turns into almost like a sea of microscopic creatures. Also, when you have a tricky day ahead at work.

I don’t think my square colleagues will approve of that. They’re all, “Ooh, let’s make a profit.” “Let’s fulfil our contractual obligations.” “Please vomit somewhere else.” That’s quite common, but this is Californian business practice so the rest of the world will soon catch up.


 
 

Seriously? Taking acid at work? Yes. According to reports, LSD microdosing is now widespread in Silicon Valley offices.

Isn’t it quite hard to debug software when your monitor is the mouth of a giant fish and all the code is just strands of flesh and seaweed caught in its teeth? Yes, that would be challenging, but this is microdosing – taking such a small amount of acid, or mushrooms, that the effect is only just noticeable and never becomes a full-blown trip. It’s said to enhance energy and creativity, and LSD lacks the addictiveness and physical side effects of traditional performance-enhancing drugs such as speed or Ritalin.

Yeah. Traditional performance-enhancing drugs are so lame. CNN quotes a Cisco employee called Kevin Herbert. “There was a case where I had been working on a problem for over a month,” Herbert said. “And I took LSD, and I just realised: ‘Wait, the problem is in the hardware. It’s not a software issue at all.’”

Far out. You may scoff, but quite a few computing pioneers were psychedelic drug users. Steve Jobs reportedly considered it one of the most important things he’d ever done.

I thought he was a massive control freak? Maybe the acid smoothed him out.

Do say: “Turn off, tune in. Turn on again.”

Don’t say: “By clicking ‘Agree’, you agree that you have read the terms and conditions and that everything in the universe is part of everything else on a level that human consciousness can’t reach.”


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Drugs (Science)
Silicon Valley
Drugs (Society




Link: http://www.theguardian.com/science/shortcuts/2015/nov/29/silicon-valley-techies-dropping-lsd-at-work



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