Recreational Marijuana Use is WRONG – Tim Hsiao vs Britlandt Abney
In this live dicussion, Tim Hsiao and Britlandt Abney discuss whether recreational marijuana use is morally acceptable. Tim argues no, Britlandt argues yes.
Even if Marijuana usage is "wrong" that doesn't mean it should be illegal.
The fact that Tim didn't mention that marijuana is considered pharmakeia was really disappointing. 😔
Never smoked in my life and probably never will but Tims argument seems very weak to me. The line he draws distinguishing alcohol consumption and weed smoking is rather arbitrary.
tim's point seems to be it makes you think not clearly.. in my opinion, that's subjective……. and, there's so many factors involved, how can one conclude that the negatives outweigh the positives… let's say it makes you think less clearly, granted.. however, if it increases your compassion, as brit suggested.. who's to say you do (edit: don't do) one kind gesture for someone you wouldn't normally have done, and, that creates a new friendship, of which now you can reap many new benefits in the future you never would have had before just going along with your non-high mindstate……. there are too many factors involved to make a conclusion is my point
Up Next: Recreational shrooms are WRONG. 🍄
You can tell this channel is American-low-church-Protestant leaning given all these “muh weed” comments. Stop being degenerates.
I used to work for the biggest manufacturing company of hydroponic nutrients used for growing (medical) marijuana by public and private entities. I'd read a tone of articles while marketing these products to growers. I'm also a Christian. But let me make one important distinction: the term 'marijuana' cannot be used to describe the effects of all kinds of cannabis strains. And there are hundreds, if not thousands of cannabis strains out there in the market. There are cannabis strains which are less harmful to a person's psychological well being but there are also cannabis strains which can cause hallucinations, etc. and can push a person with weak psychic off the cliff. It all depends on the cannabis strain a person is smoking and what his/her mental health condition is. I believe this also applies to drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, etc.
two things: abney smokes much more than he says he does, and he is too prepared for this debate
I smoked pot for fifteen years, I quit when I got saved, and don’t intend to again. That said, I think the community is ignorant and prejudice without cause toward those whom make the decision to smoke for their own reasons, and I would be very careful of shunning any and all people who may find it helpful for unclassified reasons. Agenda may be clouding both sides of the debate.
FOR THE EMPEROR!
I think the biggest problem with Tim's POV on self-harm is one that Britland points out: if you hold the position that marijuana should be illegal due to potential cognitive harm, it leads to absurd conclusions based on consistency. To be consistent: boxing, parkour, any extreme sports, any dangerous careers like underwater welders, driving motorcycles, wasting one's life doing nothing (and therefore lowering IQ) should all therefore be illegal because they could potentially lead to an equal amount or greater amount of cognitive harm as marijuana. It isn't a 'right' as a natural right might be defined, to allow people the right to do such activities, but it is a right in that a society based on disallowing such activities results in lower human flourishing. The consequence of a consistent application of Tim's view of cognitive harm results in lower human flourishing than if we allowed all of these 'rights' to people. This is just my perspective, as obviously there's no way to definitively prove this, but i think people value autonomy, on average, greater than they would value a society that severely limits autonomy in order to preserve cognitive functionality from potentially harmful activities.
All of these activities can be regulated in ways that don't produce enough harmful results to merit prohibition or making illegal. While i don't think they need to be, because I don't see a problem with people making choices that are potentially self-harmful, regulation is what makes these extreme sports worth allowing, extreme careers worth allowing etc.
And a question Tim answered leaves a lot of questions to be answered. Tim says that intentionally impairing one's cognitive functionality, rather than altering one's state of mind, is immoral. So, is this a universal rule of immorality? Meaning, if we find that certain psychedelics like psilocybin drastically improve one's cognitive functionality and overall well-being, despite "Impairing" one's cognitive functionality for a brief few hours, would that still be immoral? I would wager that Tim would still say it's immoral, which is why I think his position is flawed. Since his moral framework is based on proper functionality instead of well-being, it results in labeling things that would increase well-being and human flourishing immoral so long as they go against his definition of proper functionality.
One blunt causes far more inebriation than one beer. If the person is sharing maybe but that’s just a wild statement
Small anecdote:
I had an undiagnosed Bi Polar when I started smoking. It does level me out in the acute episodes of mania or depression.
I ended up using LSD and super abused it for about a year. The damage I did with LSD (roughly 2 years of complications after quitting) was exacerbated by my weed usage, which I was also abusing.
I'm on medication for the Bi Polar and haven't used LSD in about 6 months, but I'm having a hard time quitting weed due to some physiological dependence.
I'm all for recreational use. I'm in a small portion of the population that shouldn't use regularly. In the same sense, I shouldn't own a gun (history of suicidal ideation), but I dont care if others have them (within reason…no one needs a fully automatic).
I don't smoke weed nor do I care about it. But when it comes to weed I think it can be a parallel to alcohol. It's not good to get drunk like an asshole but some people have severe life problems so if they need a drink or two it should be legal for them to have that as an option. Same with weed. So by this logic weed should be legal, but then it opens the possibility to argue the same for cocaine or heroin. So all in all I'm 50/50 on this debate. Anyone care to add something for or against?
Weed should be legal recreationally. I don't need people telling me what I can and can't do. Less govt please
9:33: When your guest wants to focus on the legal aspect of marijuana usage but you already put the title up as a moral debate so you don't know what to do and just take a drink.
Tim says "mere pleasure". Why is pleasure "mere"? Perhaps that's why he has his debased position on cannabis. He has a debased point of view of pleasure. Perhaps the real debate should be about pleasure. Is pleasure highly valuable, or is it minor?
38:18 Oh my god! This makes so much sense. Tim demonizes, or is demoralized by mistakes. He might be some sort of urber perfectionist. No wonder he's on the hate train over pleasure. Pleasure leads to a lot of mistakes, or small errors. Poor fellow. He's so risk averse he forgot how to live.
If you applied Tims reasoning to gun ownership… How would he support owning a gun when people are more likely to harm themselves or their family than an intruder or attacker?
Would he takes Brits position on the banning is worse than the problem? Or agree that abuse is the problem but recreational gun use can be done responsibly?
Seems like he isn't consistent with his views there.
20 minutes in, and I have to say that this is a totally uninteresting debate, owing to the fact that Tim has no idea whatsoever what the behaviour of marijuana smokers is like.
Every time Professor Hsiao debates, the comment section is filled with misunderstanding and guilty-minded people. Try to actually understand what he's saying or at least be open to the figures he's drawing on rather than instinctively clinging to your sinful practices and pre-conceptions.
I guess you could ask, would Jesus be okay with locking people in cages, taking away there freedoms and kids, and ruining there life for using a beneficial plant put here by god? My guess would be no. It’s really that simple. Most things on earth can be bad for you if you abuse it. From a moral and civil rights standpoint it should be illegal to ever arrest someone for marijuana. It was made illegal for racist reasons to persecute minorities. Exactly what Jesus stood against!
Virtually No one is in federal prison for possession of marijuana. Systemic racism in America doesn’t exist. Get this SJW out of here.
Tim, are you prepared to criminalize pornography viewing and creating? If so, will you confess any pornography usage and turn yourself in if you violate this theoretical law?
'Is RECREATIONAL marijuana-use PROHIBITED by god?': Don't know; not sure. Should marijuana-use be decriminalized?: I'm inclined to say, 'YES.' I'd say 'yes' because I'm not aware that it would be any more harmful to society than alcohol; there seems to be a HUGE market/demand for it; a HUGE quantity of money is being used to combat marijuana cultivation and sales; a lot of people are being fined/imprisoned/stuck-with-criminal-records because of their involvement in the illicit trade of it; and, we tried prohibition of alcohol once, and look how THAT turned-out.
Tim seems to have a very selective approach to empirical evidence, and very limited ability to assess the studies he invokes.
Additionally, he misrepresents John Pfaffs work on the prison population. Pfaff makes it clear that his thesis is not necessarily opposed to the “New Jim Crow” thesis. The prison population at any given time is largely constituted of violent offenders, but that’s partially due to shorter sentences for drug offenses. The sheer number of people who come into contact with the criminal justice system due to drug offenses is much greater than Tim let’s on. Those people may not be incarcerated continually, but the impact on their lives is by no means negligible.
Full disclosure: I’m something of a skeptic, though formerly evangelical, but I enjoy so many of the discussions on this channel. But as an economist in training, and as someone who cares about and works with empirical methods, I find Tim’s content infuriating. There’s little acknowledgement of the varying quality of empirical work. One thing you learn when you live in the world of the social sciences is that there are a lot of poor studies out there. Just running a search for “marijuana causes crime” in Google scholar and saying “this random study back up my point” really misses the mark. This isn’t how to do research or hold an academic debate…
Weed ruined my life. I hate it passionately.
Cars cause harm e.g injury, death etc. Therefore, cars are evil and should not be used….Tim, your logic is just not sound man.
I wish they focused on the actual title, which is whether the use is immoral or not. I think it's immoral, but I don't think it should be illegal, so my position isn't really considered.
Tim has such a Micky Mouse opinion of what happens when you smoke weed.
Marijuana doesn’t affect me to a higher extent than coffee. I don’t think it has any impairment on my ability to think rationally. For me, it just puts me in a more relaxed state, and I tend to be more willing to share the gospel and engage in civil discussion when under the influence of marijuana. I am also better at forming arguments because I never get heated. When not under the influence, I have a tendency to get a bit of anxiety when discussing opposing opinions, however, when I am, I am able to think more clearly because I don’t have that anxiety.
I'm glad brit brought up alchohol
I bet Tim's never smoked a joint in his life. Poor arguments, littered with logical fallacies.
My mother had schizophrenia. There is a poorly understood link between marijuana use and schizophrenia. It is not understood it is causes it or just unlocks it sooner, but it evidence is that there is a link. It happened to my cousin after he tried marijuana. If you have schizophrenia in your family, I would avoid it.
My brother in law used to be a very normal and healthy kid. In his late teens, he became a heavy marijuana user. In his mid 20's he became a paranoid schizophrenic. It turns out that especially for young people, if there is a generic tendency in that direction, marijuana dramatically increases the likelihood of it actually happening. Now he's a permanent dependent for the rest of his life.
It’s unfortunate that so much of the debate focused on legality instead of the debate question. The shift seemed to happen within the first few moments of Britlandt’s opening when he simply called out what he wanted to focus on, which was not the debate question.
As someone who has both drank plenty and smoked plenty in my past, I see one huge difference no one has pointed out. I no longer do either and have not in over 5 years but here’s the difference; marijuana (getting high) is clearly mind alternating in that it distorts your perception of reality. Getting drunk is not mind altering in the sense of distorting your perception of reality and this is a huge difference. Alcohol can and will lead to bad behavior if abused but it does not have a lasting impact on your perception of life. Again neither are good and should be used in my estimation but I think it’s clear marijuana is worse. Those of you who are going to say well the Bible does allow alcohol consumption need to understand the difference between alcohol then and now. There is good historical evidence to support the idea that what we call wine today would be equivalent to what they called strong drink then. What we call strong drink today (liquor) wasn’t even a thing back then and would have been severely spoken against. I’ll leave you with a question to ponder honestly. Is there any person on the planet who becomes a better version of themselves when intoxicated by either substance? My experience, which is a lot, tells me that answer is a resounding no.
You are opening yourself up to demons getting high.
So Tim is basically arguing that the Bible goes against natural law or at least allows immorality by allowing consumption of alcohol. He's also erroneous in say that the point of marijuana consumption is impairment of faculties.
Lmao this Britlandt fellow is the person who says 'good for her' for women who abort their babies. Why… is this clown even thought of as worthy of going against an academic philosopher.
Impairs cognitive faculties. Well so does sleep, so you can't just appeal to it impairing you anymore than we shouldn't sleep ever, because people fall asleep at the wheel.
Even if Marijuana usage is "wrong" that doesn't mean it should be illegal.
The fact that Tim didn't mention that marijuana is considered pharmakeia was really disappointing. 😔
Never smoked in my life and probably never will but Tims argument seems very weak to me. The line he draws distinguishing alcohol consumption and weed smoking is rather arbitrary.
tim's point seems to be it makes you think not clearly.. in my opinion, that's subjective……. and, there's so many factors involved, how can one conclude that the negatives outweigh the positives… let's say it makes you think less clearly, granted.. however, if it increases your compassion, as brit suggested.. who's to say you do (edit: don't do) one kind gesture for someone you wouldn't normally have done, and, that creates a new friendship, of which now you can reap many new benefits in the future you never would have had before just going along with your non-high mindstate……. there are too many factors involved to make a conclusion is my point
Up Next: Recreational shrooms are WRONG. 🍄
You can tell this channel is American-low-church-Protestant leaning given all these “muh weed” comments. Stop being degenerates.
I used to work for the biggest manufacturing company of hydroponic nutrients used for growing (medical) marijuana by public and private entities. I'd read a tone of articles while marketing these products to growers. I'm also a Christian. But let me make one important distinction: the term 'marijuana' cannot be used to describe the effects of all kinds of cannabis strains. And there are hundreds, if not thousands of cannabis strains out there in the market. There are cannabis strains which are less harmful to a person's psychological well being but there are also cannabis strains which can cause hallucinations, etc. and can push a person with weak psychic off the cliff. It all depends on the cannabis strain a person is smoking and what his/her mental health condition is. I believe this also applies to drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, etc.
two things: abney smokes much more than he says he does, and he is too prepared for this debate
I smoked pot for fifteen years, I quit when I got saved, and don’t intend to again. That said, I think the community is ignorant and prejudice without cause toward those whom make the decision to smoke for their own reasons, and I would be very careful of shunning any and all people who may find it helpful for unclassified reasons. Agenda may be clouding both sides of the debate.
FOR THE EMPEROR!
I think the biggest problem with Tim's POV on self-harm is one that Britland points out: if you hold the position that marijuana should be illegal due to potential cognitive harm, it leads to absurd conclusions based on consistency. To be consistent: boxing, parkour, any extreme sports, any dangerous careers like underwater welders, driving motorcycles, wasting one's life doing nothing (and therefore lowering IQ) should all therefore be illegal because they could potentially lead to an equal amount or greater amount of cognitive harm as marijuana. It isn't a 'right' as a natural right might be defined, to allow people the right to do such activities, but it is a right in that a society based on disallowing such activities results in lower human flourishing. The consequence of a consistent application of Tim's view of cognitive harm results in lower human flourishing than if we allowed all of these 'rights' to people. This is just my perspective, as obviously there's no way to definitively prove this, but i think people value autonomy, on average, greater than they would value a society that severely limits autonomy in order to preserve cognitive functionality from potentially harmful activities.
All of these activities can be regulated in ways that don't produce enough harmful results to merit prohibition or making illegal. While i don't think they need to be, because I don't see a problem with people making choices that are potentially self-harmful, regulation is what makes these extreme sports worth allowing, extreme careers worth allowing etc.
And a question Tim answered leaves a lot of questions to be answered. Tim says that intentionally impairing one's cognitive functionality, rather than altering one's state of mind, is immoral. So, is this a universal rule of immorality? Meaning, if we find that certain psychedelics like psilocybin drastically improve one's cognitive functionality and overall well-being, despite "Impairing" one's cognitive functionality for a brief few hours, would that still be immoral? I would wager that Tim would still say it's immoral, which is why I think his position is flawed. Since his moral framework is based on proper functionality instead of well-being, it results in labeling things that would increase well-being and human flourishing immoral so long as they go against his definition of proper functionality.
One blunt causes far more inebriation than one beer. If the person is sharing maybe but that’s just a wild statement
Small anecdote:
I had an undiagnosed Bi Polar when I started smoking. It does level me out in the acute episodes of mania or depression.
I ended up using LSD and super abused it for about a year. The damage I did with LSD (roughly 2 years of complications after quitting) was exacerbated by my weed usage, which I was also abusing.
I'm on medication for the Bi Polar and haven't used LSD in about 6 months, but I'm having a hard time quitting weed due to some physiological dependence.
I'm all for recreational use. I'm in a small portion of the population that shouldn't use regularly. In the same sense, I shouldn't own a gun (history of suicidal ideation), but I dont care if others have them (within reason…no one needs a fully automatic).
I don't smoke weed nor do I care about it. But when it comes to weed I think it can be a parallel to alcohol. It's not good to get drunk like an asshole but some people have severe life problems so if they need a drink or two it should be legal for them to have that as an option. Same with weed. So by this logic weed should be legal, but then it opens the possibility to argue the same for cocaine or heroin. So all in all I'm 50/50 on this debate. Anyone care to add something for or against?
Weed should be legal recreationally. I don't need people telling me what I can and can't do. Less govt please
9:33: When your guest wants to focus on the legal aspect of marijuana usage but you already put the title up as a moral debate so you don't know what to do and just take a drink.
Tim says "mere pleasure". Why is pleasure "mere"? Perhaps that's why he has his debased position on cannabis. He has a debased point of view of pleasure. Perhaps the real debate should be about pleasure. Is pleasure highly valuable, or is it minor?
38:18 Oh my god! This makes so much sense. Tim demonizes, or is demoralized by mistakes. He might be some sort of urber perfectionist. No wonder he's on the hate train over pleasure. Pleasure leads to a lot of mistakes, or small errors. Poor fellow. He's so risk averse he forgot how to live.
If you applied Tims reasoning to gun ownership… How would he support owning a gun when people are more likely to harm themselves or their family than an intruder or attacker?
Would he takes Brits position on the banning is worse than the problem? Or agree that abuse is the problem but recreational gun use can be done responsibly?
Seems like he isn't consistent with his views there.
20 minutes in, and I have to say that this is a totally uninteresting debate, owing to the fact that Tim has no idea whatsoever what the behaviour of marijuana smokers is like.
Every time Professor Hsiao debates, the comment section is filled with misunderstanding and guilty-minded people. Try to actually understand what he's saying or at least be open to the figures he's drawing on rather than instinctively clinging to your sinful practices and pre-conceptions.
I guess you could ask, would Jesus be okay with locking people in cages, taking away there freedoms and kids, and ruining there life for using a beneficial plant put here by god? My guess would be no. It’s really that simple. Most things on earth can be bad for you if you abuse it. From a moral and civil rights standpoint it should be illegal to ever arrest someone for marijuana. It was made illegal for racist reasons to persecute minorities. Exactly what Jesus stood against!
Virtually No one is in federal prison for possession of marijuana. Systemic racism in America doesn’t exist. Get this SJW out of here.
Tim, are you prepared to criminalize pornography viewing and creating? If so, will you confess any pornography usage and turn yourself in if you violate this theoretical law?
'Is RECREATIONAL marijuana-use PROHIBITED by god?': Don't know; not sure. Should marijuana-use be decriminalized?: I'm inclined to say, 'YES.' I'd say 'yes' because I'm not aware that it would be any more harmful to society than alcohol; there seems to be a HUGE market/demand for it; a HUGE quantity of money is being used to combat marijuana cultivation and sales; a lot of people are being fined/imprisoned/stuck-with-criminal-records because of their involvement in the illicit trade of it; and, we tried prohibition of alcohol once, and look how THAT turned-out.
Tim seems to have a very selective approach to empirical evidence, and very limited ability to assess the studies he invokes.
Additionally, he misrepresents John Pfaffs work on the prison population. Pfaff makes it clear that his thesis is not necessarily opposed to the “New Jim Crow” thesis. The prison population at any given time is largely constituted of violent offenders, but that’s partially due to shorter sentences for drug offenses. The sheer number of people who come into contact with the criminal justice system due to drug offenses is much greater than Tim let’s on. Those people may not be incarcerated continually, but the impact on their lives is by no means negligible.
Full disclosure: I’m something of a skeptic, though formerly evangelical, but I enjoy so many of the discussions on this channel. But as an economist in training, and as someone who cares about and works with empirical methods, I find Tim’s content infuriating. There’s little acknowledgement of the varying quality of empirical work. One thing you learn when you live in the world of the social sciences is that there are a lot of poor studies out there. Just running a search for “marijuana causes crime” in Google scholar and saying “this random study back up my point” really misses the mark. This isn’t how to do research or hold an academic debate…
Weed ruined my life. I hate it passionately.
Cars cause harm e.g injury, death etc. Therefore, cars are evil and should not be used….Tim, your logic is just not sound man.
I wish they focused on the actual title, which is whether the use is immoral or not. I think it's immoral, but I don't think it should be illegal, so my position isn't really considered.
Tim has such a Micky Mouse opinion of what happens when you smoke weed.
Marijuana doesn’t affect me to a higher extent than coffee. I don’t think it has any impairment on my ability to think rationally. For me, it just puts me in a more relaxed state, and I tend to be more willing to share the gospel and engage in civil discussion when under the influence of marijuana. I am also better at forming arguments because I never get heated. When not under the influence, I have a tendency to get a bit of anxiety when discussing opposing opinions, however, when I am, I am able to think more clearly because I don’t have that anxiety.
I'm glad brit brought up alchohol
I bet Tim's never smoked a joint in his life. Poor arguments, littered with logical fallacies.
My mother had schizophrenia. There is a poorly understood link between marijuana use and schizophrenia. It is not understood it is causes it or just unlocks it sooner, but it evidence is that there is a link. It happened to my cousin after he tried marijuana. If you have schizophrenia in your family, I would avoid it.
My brother in law used to be a very normal and healthy kid. In his late teens, he became a heavy marijuana user. In his mid 20's he became a paranoid schizophrenic. It turns out that especially for young people, if there is a generic tendency in that direction, marijuana dramatically increases the likelihood of it actually happening. Now he's a permanent dependent for the rest of his life.
It’s unfortunate that so much of the debate focused on legality instead of the debate question. The shift seemed to happen within the first few moments of Britlandt’s opening when he simply called out what he wanted to focus on, which was not the debate question.
As someone who has both drank plenty and smoked plenty in my past, I see one huge difference no one has pointed out. I no longer do either and have not in over 5 years but here’s the difference; marijuana (getting high) is clearly mind alternating in that it distorts your perception of reality. Getting drunk is not mind altering in the sense of distorting your perception of reality and this is a huge difference. Alcohol can and will lead to bad behavior if abused but it does not have a lasting impact on your perception of life. Again neither are good and should be used in my estimation but I think it’s clear marijuana is worse. Those of you who are going to say well the Bible does allow alcohol consumption need to understand the difference between alcohol then and now. There is good historical evidence to support the idea that what we call wine today would be equivalent to what they called strong drink then. What we call strong drink today (liquor) wasn’t even a thing back then and would have been severely spoken against. I’ll leave you with a question to ponder honestly. Is there any person on the planet who becomes a better version of themselves when intoxicated by either substance? My experience, which is a lot, tells me that answer is a resounding no.
You are opening yourself up to demons getting high.
So Tim is basically arguing that the Bible goes against natural law or at least allows immorality by allowing consumption of alcohol. He's also erroneous in say that the point of marijuana consumption is impairment of faculties.
Lmao this Britlandt fellow is the person who says 'good for her' for women who abort their babies. Why… is this clown even thought of as worthy of going against an academic philosopher.
Impairs cognitive faculties. Well so does sleep, so you can't just appeal to it impairing you anymore than we shouldn't sleep ever, because people fall asleep at the wheel.