Smoking Pot Lowers IQ

[TFinnegan]

So what is it that's lacking in people's lives for them to try and seek it, whatever 'it' may be, by sinking into a red-eyed coma?

Comfort? A distraction? If your life requires those things to be generated externally, then you're already in a pretty bad state socially anyway.

See there ya go again, Joe, giving me something to disagree with.
:P
You just described the human condition.

Unless you're a sufi or a monk, it's very nearly impossible to achieve these things internally.
Thats why sex, drugs of one kind or another, fear/adrenal rush seeking, and any multitude of things meant to stimulate us externally can be found in every society, everywhere.

We have eyes, ears, nose, mouth, skin, all to experience external stimuli.
All of it.
We haven't developed an inner third eye (or pineal gland) yet, because humans are externally motivated creatures.

I get what you're saying, metaphorically, but scientifically, its incorrect.

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[Jihadjoe]

Yeah, fair enough Finnegan. Not being affected by our external situation is impossble for most of us. Hell, I gain happiness from all sorts of external stuff. I'm not gonna lie about that. But I was refering to the heavy use (abuse) of substances, rather than what would be considered normal recreational use.

The difference between enjoying a whisky now and again, and rampant alcoholism.

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[TFinnegan]

I concur wholeheartedly, Joe.

Thing is, my own physician tells me that because I drink a six-pack every 7 or 8 days, I'm actually an alcoholic.
One beer with dinner, most nights, nothing more, and I'm considered to have addictive disorder.

Abuse is subjective

Which, in one form or another is kind of my entire point in this thread.

OP study is subjective and non-inclusive, IQ is testable, verifiable, but also in the end, subjective.

I'll allow the master to elucidate:
“You cannot see what I see because you see what you see. You cannot know what I know because you know what you know. What I see and what I know cannot be added to what you see and what you know because they are not of the same kind. Neither can it replace what you see and what you know, because that would be to replace you yourself."
"Hang on, can I write this down?" said Arthur, excitedly fumbling in his pocket for a pencil.”
-Douglas Adams

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[OllO]

hmm....yeap..sadly

[Timbuktu]

You know, people who say "those scientists they didtnt know what they was doing man listen to me lower IQ is correlated with with pot smoking cause most pot smokers they do other stuff that makes you dumb too"...

If you read the thing says, you'd see that the people who made the study also said that this is a possible cause that couldnt be excluded by them, but it doesnt change the fact that there is still a clear correlation between pot smoking in teen years and having lower (lower... not low) IQ as an adult than those who didnt.

Also, notice the difference between "it lowers" the IQ, and "it gives you low IQ". The second could make you go from superdumb to just standard dumb. The first can make you go from dumb to dumber, from smart to dumb, or from supersmart to a little less supersmart but no one will know the difference cause they're still dumber than you so they'll just thing your supersmart cause you smoke.

If weed made lowered people's IQ we'd not have many of the technologies we have today. Most of your brilliant people are 'pot smokers.'

Weed is illegal in the US merely because it would be hard for the government to tax its sale and thus profit from it being legal like they do tobacco and booze (both of which cause more deaths than weed).

Oh and no, I don't smoke it

"Most brilliant people are pot smokers"

Really?

By "brilliant" do you mean Mozart, Beethoven, Einstein, Darwin, Martin Luther King, Watt, Keppler, Newton?

Or do you mean Cheech, Chong, and Jimi Hendrix?

Don't get me wrong, I think the last three are brilliant too, but in different ways.

I'd maybe agree that someone's somewhat weed-altered perseption makes them do things that are brilliantly funny because actually they're brilliantly stupid, and that it may help you do brilliantly "different" and thereore brilliantly "interesting" music, but I would not agree that smoking pot will help you invent the steem engine and formulate the theory of gravity.

My personal opinion being based on my own experience with pot, and having talked about it with people who smoked a lot more than me, I came to the conlclusion that smoking pot makes you think that a lot of things that you are thinking/experiencing while you are high are unbelievably clever and brilliant.

But the sad reality is that's not because you are really temporarily more clever and brilliant, but because it affects your brain in a way that makes you believe something very simple, which you think is true, is unbelievably clever simply because you happen to think its true at that moment.

In my opinion that's kinda where the whole stoner propaganda that weed makes you cool and brilliant comes from.

Sadly, believing that the next best random thing that came to your mind while you were smoking pot it totally genius doesn't exactly help you with training your deduction and reasoning skills.

Fortunately, I never really got reliant on pot to make me feel clever about myself, so I never got addicted to it, in contrast to some of my less fortunate friends.

What does it for me is constantly seeing that no matter how much people thought that what I was saying was totally outlandish and ridiculous, it always turns out that I was right in the end.

[Madvillain]

I am proud to be brilliantly stupid.

Part from that , yes ,
I am a weed user but the whole stoner propaganda thing gets on my nerves too now and then.
Weed is not a magical substance that makes everyone cool.
Weed is a drug, though not as strong as Alcohol , or not as addictive as tobacco,
we shouldn't forget that weed -is- a drug , and it's not for kids to toy around with.

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Baila Morena | Toilet Trouble | Elder Presidente[TBH] | The Titan Combat Manual | Confession
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[Champ]

Finnegan's last post prompts me to ask, could we all concede and agree this just isn't a very good study and peacefully leave it at that? I'm happy to provide papers for those who really do want to find out and make a decision, and to provide discussion of those articles thereafter, but the effort to gain ratio here is improbable to be anything significant.

i.e. I'm not that fazed about what you all believe and I'm not too driven to change you :lol: Yet another case where it matters, but at the same time in a way that we're all removed from each other, doesn't.

Downedit: Actually Enoch, we can assume that the average IQ of participants is 100 (because that's the average IQ). So, if you reduce that by 8 points, they will, on average have an IQ of 92 - which is much closer to 70, the line at which they believe you should be institutionalised, than they were previously.

Downdownedit: The link to the actual paper and not a summary article, for those who want to make a comment on the methodology or science: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/08/...820109.abstract Note that you need a subscription or paid access.

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[Enoch]

The worst part about this study is that it shows that people and scientists still believe that IQ is a relevant tool to measure an adult's intelligence.

The study tries to show that smoking pot in your adolescence may lower your IQ, not that it makes you dumb. You'd have to be dumb to believe that an IQ lowered by 8 points makes you dumb.

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[Timbuktu]

I think the worst part, and also my favorite part of this thread, is that people dont actually notice that although the thread title says "Pot Lowers IQ", the 10-something senteces article says quite neutrally that statistical analysis has shown that smoking pot at teenage years lowered IQ at later age, while smoking pot at 20+age does not show a colleration such as such. S'cuse my chinese slash japanese.

So according to those 10-somethin sentences, both the statements "pot lowers IQ" and "pot does not lower IQ" are bothe re-inforced, at different ages.

Still, 90% of people here didnt understant anything of anything this stuff said, but still felt they had to tell everyone that they are more smarter than these alleged scientists.

Conclusion is that pot can make you stupid and it may jsut as well not, but the hypothesis that discovery is 90% more stupid (carefull! more misleading numbers!) than the average population deserves further investigations. Or not.

[Madvillain]

Timbuktu, you are a sir.

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