Leo Gura

@Scholar Humans have been seperating themsleves into classes since the beginning of civilization. Nothing new there. Of course improving society overall will address the root of addiction. Although even in a great society or community there are addicts.

No, I just respect myself too much to drink.

Of course there will still be plenty of addicts. There will be addicts regardless.

I think that issue can be solved by prohibiting any marketing of these chemicals. It could also be solved by having government manufacture it as a cheap generic.

Because to improve society requires taking power away from people who have hoarded it. Which requires upsetting the current order. Progress always threatens the existing order. Conservatives tend to be those who benefit the most from the existing order.

I have been contemplating this issue some more and wanted to say that it's unclear what the net effect of selling cocaine and heroin at the pharmacy would be. It might be a net negative. This would need to be trialed and tested to measure its impact on communities. This is a complex issue with no easy answers.

Your current experience is Absolute Truth. You are over-complicating it. Truth does not mean you have to experience everything. Whatever your experience happens to be, that's Truth.

I have done all my clubbing and partying without a drink of alcohol. It's exactly the same, the only difference is you never drink.

The contradiction would be hesitating.

If you have good health it is entirely because of your genetics. If one bit of your DNA was off, you'd be dead. You just take all this for granted. And you will continue to do so until you lose your health for reasons you cannot control.

As I said, conservative policy tends to serve those in power, which leads to stuff like deregulation which then leads to collapses. In practice conservatives have little integrity and are not principled. All their morals and discipline files out of the window once they gain power. It just becomes one big self-dealing exercise. But of course liberals are also guilty of this, just less so. Being a conservative with actual integrity is a very rare thing. And such people get drowned out by all the fake conservative posers like Trump. Being a high-integrity conservative is very difficult.

Of course we have many environmental issues that require tackling.

@How to be wise How do you explain the good results Portugal has been having with their policy?

He has become a caricature of himself.

The biggest problem is that higher temp causes water levels to rise which then dislocates millions of people. Desertification also dislocates millions of people. This then causes mass immigration which leads to geopolitical problems and wars. That's the biggest danger with climate change. It's a geopolitical problem more than an envirnomental problem.

Whenever you feel like it.

The planet can certainly handle massively higher levels of CO2 and temperature. The Earth was thriving at temperates 10 degrees above today and CO2 levels 3x higher. That was the dinosaur era. The only problem is that the transitions are very distruptive and cause lots of short-term death. And not ideal for humans. What's good for the Earth vs what's good for humans are very different things. Also the problem is that humans operate on too short of a timeframe relative to the Earth. There is no danger of humans destroying life on Earth. The only danger is temporary suffering, largely to ourselves.

I get it. It went through it. You just gotta focus on the growth and the adventure of it rather than the rejection. I stopped caring about rejection at all at some point. It doesn't even register in my mind if some girl ignores or rejects me. I will laugh at her. It was extremely difficult for me too. But that challenge is what makes it so rewarding once you conquer it. So just learn to be more optimistic. You must drop that competiton framing. I never think about flirting with girls as a competition. Rather it's about molding yourself into a more extroverted, humorous, fun guy. You're not in a battle with other men, you're in a battle with yourself to build social skill. Also, social status and value can be built. For example, you can build a cool circle of friends. Or you can build up a career that also gives you some social status. You can design these things. For example, you can host parties. You can become a leader of your social circle. These things are within your control. You gotta stop fixating on getting the girl and focus more on building skill and enjoying your time out. If you go out and have 3hrs of fun and you improve your skill by 1% that's a win. The girl is truly irrelevant in this.

Sounds like you're just overthinking it. You gotta learn to take the early stages of datings less seriously. Treat it as an adventure and exploration. Don't think too far ahead in this domain.

Fentanyl would not be sold. No one will want fentanyl if they can get pure heroin or coke. Fentanyl is an inferior substitute. But yes, more people would try drugs, however the drugs would be safer and there wouldn't be a stigma around it. Yes, there is a cost to legalization. It's not 100% upside. But the biggest win is ending the drug war permanently. This ends a lot of crime. Weed legalization is a good case study. We already did it in Vegas. Now more people use weed but the system makes more sense, it's more humane. Of course weed addiction is still a problem but ultimately people have to take responsibility for their consumption habits. That's how freedom works.

Addiction is largely a function of an improperly lived life and bad environment. The real solution to addiction is to improve people's environments so they have no motivation to escape it via drugs.

@Hardkill You need to stop consuming toxic online manosphere content. That's fueling your self-deceptive mind. Only consume content that motivates you to go out and socialize. Cut out all the other crap.

I'm not even sure what's in that deal at this point. It would help but this is a global problem so it would still be a minor acheivement.

In this case I think the biggest barrier is technological, not political. The politics of it cannot work if the technology is not advanced enough. And advanced enough means affordable, reliable, and scalable enough. We just don't have that yet. But in 50 years we will. At which point the politics will be on board. The political roadblock is really an economic one, which boils down to tech. For example, in 50 years all the cars produced will be electric and we will have enough mined materials for all those batteries. But we can't have that today.

For now we are taking baby steps. The first step is to decriminalize across the country. Then we can move onto more robust programs. The core issue is the lack of political will and the stigma. Which requires slow cultural evolution, similar to gay rights. I don't know the details of Portugal's system. That requires reaearch, but it's really an empirical matter. We need to look at the social science of what works best. Basically the politicians need to say: "Here's a blank check, implement whatever system reduces harm and addiction the most according to the science."