The shift in perception of alcohol is certainly a good sign. Even outside of the health benefits, a night out at the bar is expensive now (at least on the East Coast) and honestly speaking other drugs are simply more cost-effective. I still have the occasional cocktail when going out with friends but now that I'm focused more on my overall fitness I find less of a reason to drink now. Still love the vibe of bars and pubs though.

Anecdotally knowing that club drugs like ketamine and 2c-b are gaining popularity, I wonder whether young people may be turning onto substances like those now or if in general Gen-Z prefers to abstain entirely.

Solo everything is definitely happening. People are getting priced out, and the third place (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place) has pretty much disappeared everywhere.

Gen Z is considered the loneliest generation, and its easy to see why. COVID messed things up too, and there's a lot of kids and young adults that have not been properly socialized.

And since you have to spend, increasingly large amounts, of money just to go out with friends, people will just stay home instead. Maybe that looks like chatting on discord while playing a game together, but increasingly its looking like solo activities.

Alcohol is still cheaper than pretty much all the substances that are replacing it and you don’t need to go to a bar to have it. You can get 30 rack for about $20 and hang out in a park with your buddies to finish it.

A hit of acid costs $10 and lasts for 12 hours. A 5-10mg THC edible costs around $5, maybe a bit less, and lasts for 4-6 hours. A small dose of mushrooms (500mg-1g), about the same as the edible. Little to no hangover from all of the above unless you go really hard.

(Ketamine is an exception here, unless you keep your use infrequent the steep tolerance curve will cause your costs to blow up quickly.)

Meanwhile, a pint in a major US city costs like $10 with tax + tip and lasts for what, an hour? Wine or a decent cocktail cost even more.

Seems like other substances offer the better deal here if you're looking at pure cost per hour of active effects. If you consider health effects, they win out on that score too, assuming no underlying mental health diagnoses.

That’s a feature, not a bug. When I want a drink or two, I like to know that I’ll be pretty much sober in 1-2 hours and can drive or do whatever.

Setting aside 4-12 hours of time for recreational drug use is a commitment. You’re basically setting aside somewhere between a whole evening to a half day. If you time it wrong, you’re not even sober by morning.

For reference, that will get you and your friends absolutely blasted for way more than a single evening.

I'm not advocating for more alcohol consumption, coming from a Eastern European country I've seen my fair share of what alcoholism can do to people.

However, it feels like there are 2 trends, none of which is good from my perspective. First one is what you mention - replacing social activities with solo ones. Second one is overprotecting kids, young adults and everybody in general. Kids in many modern countries are glued to phones and screens in part because their parents or schools don't let them to just go find something to do outside. Let them play on their own - yes it can be dangerous, but if they break an arm or a leg, so be it. They will be fine within a month.

Why has that stopped being an option? Is it because people's parents are too scared to let them do it when they are young (we were taking public busses to downtown Santa Cruz in junior high but we were latch key 80s/90s kids with zero oversite) and so they don't realize it's an option when they are older or?

Gen X really ruined their kids in the name of safety. I don't blame Gen Z one bit, they really never had a chance at a healthy social life.

that'll be the reason in most cases.

Mountain hiking/biking trails started from the outskirts of town. Parks within town. A downtown with parks and a lake front park with swimming, volleyball, basketball, lakefront trails, small food concessions. A city skate/bike park. City tennis courts. City basketball courts. A walking/biking trail that runs from one edge of town to another, ending in a mountain biking/hiking trail system.

All of these things are way way under utilized compared to 10 years ago even though the youth population has grown. They used to be packed. Only thing busy is the library, I suspect because it has wifi/computers/gaming computers/air conditioning but it's still only like 20-30 people.

I rarely see anyone under 40 on the mountain hiking/biking trails. Ski mountain/biking has 20 somethings but most cars are from out of town. Parks are practically empty. Mainly moms and young children. I don't go to the waterfront park so no idea, but downtown I hardly see people heading down there/coming back where before it was a constant stream. Skate park is a few parents with young kids. Tennis courts are mainly 50+. Basketball courts are empty. Bike path is mainly 40+. Town seems deserted at this point, it's wild.

We have a used bike shop with basically 'donation' bikes that are $50 and have new tires, brakes, tuned up ready to go, so I don't think it's accessibility.

I guess most of these things are aged out things, where the group that did them is now 40+, but younger groups complaining about no third spaces there are a ton they just aren't used.

with public spaces and resources, then.

Where I am, people raised holy hell about e.g. a skatepark being built.

So as far as I can tell, people (especially the young) stopped going out, and then third places started going away.

It’s not surprising a large chunk of Gen Z are choosing to stay at home when it costs that much to go out. I'm starting to think we as a society need to start subsidising social spaces. Local council owned/run bouldering gyms, meetup spaces, etc. Charging a bellow market rate fee just to get people out of the house.

Maybe you mean for single adults? That's definitely more true, but if you are a single adult you're living in the suburbs for cost reasons, right? Zooming out to see how things would've worked for Gen Z, then yes I could agree that the suburbs were "isolating" during covid. But so were the cities, in fact way more so.

Anyway, loved the suburbs when I was a kid. They're still great today.

I blame the internet. There just isn't much demand for couples to leave the house anymore with the world's entertainment at their fingertips. When the rest of society stays home, it becomes more expensive for those young, single people to support public spaces.

The problem today is the nanny states don't allow a 16-year-old to transport other kids in their car until many hoops are cleared. We collectively decided that such social/transportation kneecapping was riskier than having our kids be lame during their sophomore/junior year of high school in the suburbs.

This is what corporations want. Lonely people are constant eyeballs . But this can't be good for society as a whole.

Also, as it makes me tired, it also makes me less incline to go out and meet people.

Those, and other reasons generally push me against consuming it more than few times an year.

I love a good novel paired with a whisky for an solo evening in, pints with 'da boyz at the pub, and food & winery tours with couples and friends.

So it's meaningless in this regard, but the stat might still be useful in showing just how fucked the economy truly is.

My understanding is that the evidence suggests that light social drinkers tend to be healthier and live longer than people who drink not at all.

If you went out to all those same events and just drank non alcoholic drinks you’d be healthier.

It's not any new research. Just a simple conclusion from the entirety of research in this field. All research shows that there's no safe dose of alcohol. That starting to drink never improved anyone's health. So if there's correlation between health and moderate use any causation that might be there can't go from alcohol to improved health. So it most likely goes the other way around. Or both things are a result of other factor. For example affluence. It is known that more affluent people drink more and at the same time more affluent people have better health. "moderately" is just roughly the level where damage from alcohol balances out the health surplus of whatever caused them to drink more.

caffeine (cafes)

Alcohol's primary purpose in our society is as a social lubricant. It both lowers inhibitions, and in the expectation of its doing so creates spaces with freer acceptable behavior. Cannabis doesn't currently fill that niche, because there aren't really spaces dedicated to its consumption.

I feel like you're missing the point. The bar a necessary part of the equation because alcohol has a social monopoly on physical locations.

"They" will make it cheaper. If you look at the cost of alcohol in developing countries, it can be way WAY cheaper. The profit and tax margins are currently colossal, both of which can be changed by big booze.

Making alcohol is not hard. It's not technically complicated, it's not dangerous, it's not capital intensive, it's not laborious, and the inputs are all cheap commodity goods.

If you went and bought a big barrel and some other equipment, you could make alcohol for literally pennies per can.

You can still go out with friends and enjoy festivities while "blending in". People are often more caged if they're drinking and you're not and that subtle camouflage can help alleviate that social awkwardness.

Is it? That same video, in the last 2-3 mins, mentioned all the positives of alcohol and ton of possibly related fallout from social drinking going down. People being lonely and depressed instead of socializing.

If I had to choose between living an extra few years but being lonely and depressed vs living a few less years but enjoying them a bunch more I'd choose the enjoyment.

I get that *maybe* that can happen without the alcohol but it's not happening and my experience is that alcohol is a net positive at the moment, until some substitute appears.

Also, different cultures have different associations with alcohol. My opinions on alcohol changed over my life:

As a child my parents offered me a sip of wine/beer/etc and it tasted horrible so I had no interest.

As a teen I happened to get interested in a religion that said "no alcohol" and so I saw it as a bad thing.

As a 20-25 I gave up the religion but it was "designated driver" time and I was happy to be that and so alcohol had this negative "drunk drivers" association.

Around 26-30 I got in a relationship with some who liked to drink socially. I tried it, nothing tasted good and it gave me a headache so after a few months I went back to not drinking as i got nothing positive out of it.

As 30 something I moved to Japan where (1) I no longer had to drive so no worries about drunk driving (2) my friends/co-workers/classmates introduced me to izakaya culture - being with friends for 2-6 hours, drinking and snacking and talking. And sometimes going to 2nd, 3rd, or 4th outings. Now, love that experience and I wouldn't give it up for almost anything. I love being with my friends, and, as the video pointed out, the alcohol works. The experience is different than without alcohol, and in a positive way. Remove it and it's influences and I think the experience would die out. I certainly don't like the negative health effects but I'm not going to give up hanging out with friends and the drinking, for me, is a positive part of that experience.

Here's a talk about how alcohol helped civilization

https://longnow.org/talks/02022-slingerland/

I feel that Japan is a place where you can really enjoy yourself at night. You don't have to worry about your phone being stolen, being ripped off or drugged, or having to pay for an extortionate taxi ride as long as you can wait long enough for the first train. London nightlife is worse in every way besides nightclubs.

There must be something I'm not understanding about "izakaya culture", because that just sounds like hanging with friends without a specific activity planned so you just talk shit, have a drink and eat (whether at home or different places around town), maybe someone breaks out a pack of cards?

Someone's house might not be clean, they have to plan ahead. Someone's house might not have snacks. They either have to get some or else do potluck but potluck requires everyone to plan ahead. Someone's house likely doesn't have as much variety so people have to settle for what's available. Someone's house doesn't have a waiter and cooking staff so people can be stuck in the kitchen. I guess you can order doordash/pizza to solve some of that. Though if you want something else it's not going to arrive in 3-5 mins like an izakaya. It will be 20-40mins. Someone's house might not seat as many people (regularly had 25-30 people show up). Someone's house you might need to keep quiet (like an apartment). Someone's house might have pets (so people with pet allergies can't come).

Yea, I know you didn't say "someone's house" but I don't know where else I could break out a deck of cards. Most restaurants/bars won't allow it AFAIK so that's what made me think of people's homes.

What you describe sounds very similar to going to a pub in Britain, a tapas bar in Spain or a beer hall in Germany. (Presumably some traditional American equivalent, but I don't know the name.)

"And sometimes going to 2nd, 3rd, or 4th outings" is called a pub crawl or bar crawl in English.

In the USA you also generally have to drive which limits the drinking. I don't know about Germany/Spain/Britain in general but certainly places like Berlin/Barcelona/London it's easy to go out drinking without having to drive.

I mean, I understand the economics of it. Rent, wages, pricing, supply and demand, etc.

But, like, how messed up are things that hooch is too expensive. Like, it literally grows on trees (if you leave it there a bit). Booze is the thing where sales go up when things get worse (lipstick too, right?).

I'm not saying this is a bad thing that we're not drinking as much, but I am saying that not drinking as much is a sign of really bad things.

In my country, it is now taxed very heavily, and that tax increases every year. I would be insane to choose alcohol as opposed to literally any other drug on a cost basis. I assure you, Cannabis has not raised in price every year.

But it might be very interesting for another reason: it might be confirming the perception of the economy is at an all time low as well.

Some people obsess over what's beyond and fall to despair or cling to religion when there's no definite answer, not that any of us know anyway. Death is probably easier to deal with if you're alone and have nothing, but that in itself makes life much more bland. Bergman probably agreed, at least that's the way I understand it now -- keeping yourself busy with community and the pure things that make life sweeter like strawberries, like family and friends, is how humanity 'ought' to face the realization that life is short. Sure, you'll be scared when the time comes but at least it was a life with meaning.

There are also source-to-source translation tools like Nuitka that translate Python to C, which can then be compiled to a PE. Nuitka is less reliable than PyInstaller, but harder to reverse engineer for predictable reasons.

Still immensely useful, but it does have it’s limits.

Moreover, it's likely to fail in any sort of adversarial scenario. If you show it a function with some loops that XORs an input against 0xEDB88320, for example, it would probably confidently identify that function as CRC32, even if it's actually something else which happens to use the same constant.

If you have a good enough model with a large enough token window to grasp the entire binary, it will see all of those relations easily. GPT-4 already demonstrates ability in reverse engineering, and GPT-5 is underway which if it as powerful of a generational jump as 3 to 4 will advance these abilities tremendously.

Haven't played with GPT4 yet. Need to try that as well as larger LLaMA models on a rented cloud GPU box sometime. I have a full battery of tests covering writing malware, identifying vulnerabilities a la static analysis, fixing those vulnerabilities, exploiting those vulnerabilities, in a variety of languages, as well as a few generic / assorted technical tasks.

Some other things GPT 3.5 sucks at, in addition to implementing cryptography and obfuscating code:

- Writing ASCII Art

- Writing HTML, CSS with any kind of graphical instructions, even very simple ones like "draw a car using HTML5 and CSS" or "draw the Facebook logo in HTML and CSS"

- Incomplete solutions. Example: when asked to find all of the vulnerabilities in a block of code that contains three or four, it'll confidently list one and say that's the only vulnerability. If you argue with it and insist that there's more, it'll find another, and then insist it found all of them and apologize for missing it the first time. Then you will ask again and it'll say "nope, there are no more vulnerabilies in this code".

- False negatives until told explicitly. Example, you can show it a code block containing a more low-level or exotic vulnerability (e.g. TOCTOU) than your ordinary SQL injection or XSS, ask it if there are any vulnerabilities, and it'll confidently say none over and over. Then you ask if it's vulnerable to a TOCTOU attack and it can finally then realize, oh yeah, the variable X retrieves this value for this comparison on line Y but then retrieves the value again when it passes it to this other function on line Z and if the value changes during that time, it could pass the bounds check on line Y but be invalid when checked again on line Z... which is great that it gets it, right until you realize that you basically have to ask it over and over again for every specific type of vulnerability, and even then, some it'll still miss altogether.

At the level of work expected in big tech companies, I can see GPT 3.5 augmenting or supplementing some outsourced junior consultants, but it's not even adequate to replace them outright, to say nothing of seniors, principals, and true domain experts, at least in security.