Well, I don’t like it. Lol.

Adding something like monads to Go as some first-order kind of thing really feels to me like it would be a big bag on the side. (I mean, I feel like all the functional stuff in Java like lambdas and streams and stuff is a bag on the side in the same way. Java fanboys back in the day touted Java’s proceduralness as a strength. Now I have to wonder whether those fanboys have left Java for other languages and the Java fanboys we have now are a new crop of lambda-positive Java fanboys or whether the old Java fanboys changed their tunes and decided functional programming was a good thing for Java after all.) It’d make Go kindof not Go any more, making it “just another language that adds features willy-nilly”.

Plus, changing the standard library to use monads instead of multiple return values for errors would be a huge backwards-incompatible thing. Not to say backwards-incompatible changes shouldn’t be made. (I have great respect for Python’s 3.0 rework, for instance. And I think Java is extremely overdue for something similar.) But I don’t see adding monads as a benefit at all, let alone worth the effort of migrating.

I’m sure part of the reason why most of the previous proposals haven’t been accepted is because it would create tons of interactions with existing Go functionality and/or confusing edge cases, each of which would have to be considered.

I just googled (DuckDuckGo’d, actually) and ran across this proposal. I’m not sure I hate… something roughly like it (yet). But it’s not as if it doesn’t have any costs.

My thoughts on it:

• I will say I strongly oppose creating variables with magically-decided names (for which I’m pretty sure there’s no precedent in Go), so I’d want the “Declaring the err variable” version mentioned in the proposal that would require the variable name to be explicit: count := strconv.Atoi(input) ? err { return err } (rather than count := strconv.Atoi(input) ? { return err }.) (I’d probably be ok with omitting that variable name after the ? rather than requiring an underscore if that value wasn’t used in the body of the block… if I convince myself I’m ok with even the basic premise, that is.)
• I also don’t think there’s any precedent for any syntactical elements requiring a variable to be “of interface type that implements the built-in error type”, so I’d rather the ? construct assign the positionally-last return value to the more locally-scoped variable (whose name is after the ?) than requiring that variable to be of any particular type.
• One open question would be “would count be visible within that block”? Usually a variable is not defined until after the statement that declares it, but this new block would be… part of the statement that declares it, which makes it kindof weird for that variable to be visible inside the block. I concede it would be useful to be visible inside the block, but it still makes scoping confusing, which isn’t an insignificant cost.
• If hypothetically I did convince myself I was ok with a proposal like this, I might want use of the ? expanded to other situations. Like func bob() (int, error) { ... } ; func(i int) { ... }(bob()?) to silently suppress the error that bob returns. But one major cost of that would be that there’s no rule that “if you return an error, the other return values must be the zero value of the associated type”. It’s a common convention, but not so common as to be inviolable. If, say, a library did return something specific rather than the zero value when returning an error, it would probably have to devote a lot of extra documentation to that situation because that’s a pretty confusing corner case. (Like, maybe a function returns a coefficient to be multiplied by something, but does a return 1, fmt.Errorf("...") if something fails because you’re more likely to want a 1 in an error condition where you’re multiplying that value by something than a 0. (Or maybe that case would be better with a 0.))
• I don’t think I’d ever use such a construct with a block on one line. I’d probably make it look more like the following, which honestly makes it harder to see the benefit relative to the existing if err := bob(); err != nil { ... } convention:

count := strconv.Atoi(input) ? err {
  return err
}

Honestly, the more I think about it just while writing out my thoughts above, the more I think it isn’t worth it. There is one poposal for error handling that I can say I “like” without reservations, though. (And it seems the core Go team is, roughly, planning to take that route.)

If I had to pick a biggest frustration with how Go is, it would probably be nil. I kindof wish it didn’t have that or anything like it. Not to say I’ve thought it through. There may be really good reasons why nil has to exist. But maybe it would be fine for the zero value of a function to be a function that does nothing but panic. And the zero value of a map to be an empty map. And the zero value of a pointer to be a pointer to a zero value of the pointed-to type. Etc. I don’t think it’s worth changing that at this point, though. I’d rather just use Go as it is than have Go embark on such a drastic change.

Honestly, I kinda like if err != nil {. It forces me to think more carefully about how I want errors handled than something like throw does.

I don’t feel like I have experience with that many different languages. Maybe there’s another language that does it in a way I’d like better. But I prefer Go’s model over the way, say, Java, JavaScript, or Python does things.

Why is everybody talking about PHP lately? Am I out of the loop?

PHP is dead, learn Brainfuck

Wikipedia has a known set of ideological bias

If “holotropic breathwork can be dangerous” is bias, then everyone else seems “biased” as well.

I did a DDG search for “holotropic breathwork” and looked at the first 5 (actually 6 because one wouldn’t load) links for references to hand and face cramping and to any dangerous effects:

• “If not done carefully, holotropic breathing can cause reduced carbon dioxide and other alterations in blood chemistry that can lead to dizziness, fainting, weakness, spasms of the hands and feet, and even seizures.” “For anyone considering trying holotropic breathing, it is a good idea to discuss possible risks with your healthcare provider before embarking on this alternative practice, especially if you have any of the following conditions: [long list that I’ll omit]”. The “if not done carefully” if taken out of context seems at first perhaps to support your take that it’s only dangerous if done wrong. But the second quote I gave makes it clear that even “doing it right” if you have, say, seizures or heart disease is in fact “doing it wrong”. I.e. it’s dangerous for some individuals. (Such as Michael Pollan who has a history of heart disease.)
• <page wouldn’t load for me>
• “Talk to your doctor before attending if you have: [list omitted]”
• “The physiological effects—tingling, temporary muscle cramping—resolve when normal breathing resumes. Certain conditions (cardiovascular disease, seizure history, pregnancy, among others) require medical consultation first.”
• “This practice is not recommended for individuals with: Heart conditions… Neurological disorders… Severe mental health conditions… Pregnancy” Doesn’t mention hand/face cramping.
• “You’ll want to avoid this type of breathwork if you have a history of: Cardiovascular issues, high blood pressure…”. Also doesn’t mention hand/face cramping.

If your take is that it’s always safe for everyone “if done correctly”, then your take is the outlier, not mine.

…holotropic breathwork specifically as uniquely dangerous as compared to any other kind of breathwork…

I never said anything about whether other kinds of breathwork are or aren’t (sometimes, comparatively) dangerous.

…don’t single out one narrow practice…

If I said “boxing carries a risk of concussion”, would you say I was “singling it out” from among other sports that also carry a risk of concussion? (MMA, American football, etc.) I’m not singling anything out. I said nothing about whether ther other forms of breathwork carry risks or not. I’m only “singling out” doing holotropic breathwork from (all else being equal) not doing holotropic breathwork.

…based on one experience you had…

Read more carefully. I never said I believed holotropic breathwork to be dangerous in some cases from my own experience. I said quite the opposite. My own experience didn’t harm me. Taken in isolation, my own experience supports your assertion that it’s safe (though taken in isolation, it’s only an anecdote, so hardly conclusive proof that it’s safe for everyone). I believed holotropic breathwork to be potentially dangerous in some cases before my own experiment and before reading How to Change Your Mind. Neither of those were what convinced me. The preponderance of writings I’d found on the topic did and continue to.

Speaking of which, you’ll notice that Michael Pollin says that it’s CO2 levels in the blood, not holotropic breathwork specifically…

Michael Pollan (whose name you keep misspelling) did specifically call the practice he’d been led in “holotropic breathwork” in the passage I quoted.

And so does Ketoacidosis - the keto diet…

The keto diet causing ketoacidosis is not typical. The keto diet (purposefully) causes “ketosis”, but that’s distinct from ketoacidosis. Ketosis doesn’t alter blood pH. Wikipedia: “While ketosis refers to any elevation of blood ketones, ketoacidosis is a specific pathologic condition that results in changes in blood pH and requires medical attention.”.

…so had his experiment been about the keto diet, he would have had the same results.

If he had risk factors for the keto diet putting him in ketoacidosis, maybe. The keto diet can be dangerous in some cases. “Doing it right” is only safe if “doing it right” includes taking into account any risk factors one might have and being open to abstaining if the risk is too high. (And even then, the risk would never be zero.) Which is exactly what I’ve been saying about holotropic breathwork. Michael Pollan had exactly some of the risk factors which could make holotropic breathwork dangerous for him. Whether he has additional risk factors that would contraindicate the keto diet for him, I don’t know, nor do I know if his heart condition would specifically contraindicate the keto diet absent other conditions.

But if you’re running into negative experiences…

Again, you’re reading what I said and making up your own interpretation exactly contrary to what I said. I never said I had a negative experience beyond being “scared” and “weirded out” enough to end the experiment. (Mind you, I knew to expect the hand/face cramping as it had been mentioned in a lot of material that I had read on the topic.) I didn’t have any of the sort of “theraputic” effects that are the reason why people who seek holotropic breathwork seek it. But again, nothing negative came of the experience.

…what was the difference between what you did and the people that have a lovely time?

Again, my best guess is “I might have gotten into more of that territory had I kept going longer”.

And you can’t really call a guy that wrote This if Your Mind on Plants and takes mescaline and goes off caffeine as not willing to try anything.

Sure. I’ll concede the point. I’m not sure what that has to do with the rest of the conversation, though.

…you should say just “some breathwork has potential dangers.”

That’s exactly what I’ve been saying across three comments now.

If you jump in a pool and to pranayama and breath retention and pass out, you can drown. Which was in Scott Carney’s book about Wim Hof. Not ideal, right? Yet, not holotropic, either. Second, eating a sandwich can lead to choking and death. Eating shellfish can lead to negative reactions and death. Eating too many eggs can lead to death.

Just in: things that aren’t holotropic breathwork can be dangerous in some cases, ergo holotropic breathwork isn’t.

I’m asking you to be specific and look at what you’re calling dangerous and why. Take a step back and be objective and specific.

I have been. You just don’t seem to comprehend written English.

Probably best to keep in mind: wanting companionship when you’re sad is not universal. Know the person well enough to know whether you’re doing them good or harm before you do something like this.

I mean, Wikipedia seems to contradict a lot of what you’re telling me. Not to say Wikipedia can’t be wrong, but it’s not like anything I said about holotropic breathwork came out of nowhere.

Wikipedia specifically calls out the face and hand cramping thing. It also mentions a potential risk of seizure based on a 1993 report which may well be outdated at this point. Wikipedia also says “it should not be attempted alone” which seems to contradict your take that “A trip sitter seems unnecessary, IMO”. So at very least even if your take is more correct, it doesn’t sound like it’s uncontroversial.

I’ve never heard Michael Pollan called an “I’ll try anything” author, but also you’ll note from my comment that I didn’t get from him the idea that holotropic breathwork was associated with some risks to your health. I already had that understanding before reading his book. (I read his book not knowing that holotropic breathwork would come up.) And I’m not sure what you mean by “projecting” in that context. Here’s a quote from How to Change Your Mind talking about his experience with holotropic breathwork:

Then something frightening happened. Fritz had gone up to the house to prepare our dinner, leaving me to make some notes about the experience on my laptop, when all at once I felt my heart surge and then begin to dance madly in my chest. I immediately recognized the sensation of turbulence as AFib, and when I took my pulse, it was chaotic. A panicky bird was trapped in my rib cage, throwing itself against the bars in an attempt to get out. And here I was, a dozen miles off the grid smack in the middle of nowhere.

It went on like that for two hours, straight through a subdued and anxious dinner. Fritz seemed concerned; in all the hundreds of breathwork sessions he had led or witnessed, he had never seen such a reaction. (He had mentioned earlier a single fatality attributed to holotropic breathwork: a man who had an aneurism.) Now I was worried about tomorrow, and I think he was too. Thought he also wondered if perhaps what I was feeling in my heart might reflect some psychic shift or “heart opening.” I resisted the implied metaphor, holding firm to the plane of physiology: the heart is a pump and this one is malfunctioning.

And a footnote:

I subsequently learned that hyperventilation, which plays a role in breathwork, changes the CO2 levels in the blood, which in turn can alter the rhythms of the heart in some people. What I assumed was a physiologically benign alternative to MDMA turns out to be nothing of the kind; even without a drug, it is possible to change one’s blood chemistry in ways that can affect heart rhythms.

What am I “projecting onto” Michael Pollan exactly?

Tell you what. I’ll edit “seems dangerous” to “seems potentially dangerous”.

So, based on this, evidence suggests you might have simply not done it right.

If your reasoning is that the fact that I didn’t have “some sort of interesting experience” means I wasn’t doing it right, I basically admitted to that in my previous comment. “I might have gotten into more of that territory had I kept going longer”.

If your reasoning is that the had hand and face cramping is evidence that I was doing it wrong, that’s in fact the usual effect of “doing it right”. I don’t have any reason to think the cramping effect in particular was dangerous, nor did I say it was.

If he mentions driving a car, do you also groan and think “Don’t do it!”?

If he’d previously mentioned specific reasons why he couldn’t possibly drive safely, of course I’d have had concerns with him driving. He’d mentioned previously in the book that he had a history of heart issues and so I thought it concerning that he’d do something like holotropic breathwork. (Also, I never said anything about “groaning”.)

That’s the joke. It’s implying the doctor is an LLM and trying to kill Janeway was an hallucination.

This article…

Which article is that exactly?

Breathwork alone can easily get you to a weird, fun place.

Oh yeah. I’ve heard lots of wild stuff about some of the holotropic kind of breathwork. I even did it once, but I don’t really trust it. Seems potentially dangerous. Plus, I read How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan a while ago and he had a real scare of a near-medical-emergency from that. (To be fair, he’s got heart issues, so that definitely contributed.) I remember reading that part of the book hearing the bit leading up to the holotropic breathwork and thinking “oh, god, don’t do it Michael; you’ll regre-… oh god he did it.” Lol. He had a choice between MDMA and breathwork and because his doctor told him to avoid amphetamines because of his heart, he opted for the breathwork, and I knew that might not really be that much safer. It doesn’t seem he had any long-lasting negative effects. Just a spell of irregular heartbeat or something (I don’t remember more specifically than “or something”). But yeah.

All that happened the time I tried it myself was a bit of tingling and a lot of hand and face… I dunno. Cramping? Spasming? Like, my muscles seized up and I couldn’t relax them. Not enough to be painful. Just enough to be weirded out. No psychedelic-y sort of effects or anything like that for me personally. I might have gotten into more of that territory had I kept going longer, but who knows. I didn’t have any guide or trip sitter or whatever, so I got scared and aborted when something weird happened. I don’t remember how long those effects lasted, really, but it wasn’t all day or anything.

Especially in the early days of the recent Kratom “boom”, I definitely heard a lot of people call it “not a drug”. I think kindof in the same way as there are lots of psychoactive substances that people don’t consider “drugs”. (Chamomile that I listed in my OP, for instance. People feed that shit to their little kids and don’t think of it even slightly like they think of alcohol or hard drugs or whatever. But that shit’s a GABA agonist just like alcohol, GHB, and benzos. There’s definitely a sense of the word “drug” in which chamomile is super duper for sure yes a drug.) I think mostly those folks were in deep denial. It’s not just a drug, but a pretty concerning one for its addiction potential if nothing else. But still, I’ve heard people say it’s “not a drug”. So, yeah. I think it counts for purposes of this thread.

Good call, but the chamomile I do is just bulk “Egyptian chamomile”. Not any kind of a “sleepy-time tea” or anything like that.

In the past I’ve done Celestial Seasonings Sleeptytime Vanilla. Love the taste. It doesn’t have any Valerian either, though.

I have done Cup of Calm by Traditional Medicinals which is a mix (it doesn’t have any Valerian, though) but it’s honestly a little stronger than I’d like. It’d be fine on a once-in-a-while basis, but I wouldn’t want to do it daily.

I honestly don’t know that I’ve ever consumed Valerian now that you mention it. 🤔 Maybe I’ll try some sometime.

Oh my gosh. I get violently ill and can’t stay out of the bathroom when I eat sugar. (I’ve told people, “yeah, sugar makes me sick so I don’t eat it”. And they’re like “oh yeah, me too, the sugar crash in the afternoon always makes me feel so blah.” And I’m like “listen…”.) I basically haven’t eaten anything sweeter than a tomato in 20 years because it’s super not worth it. I’d never heard of SIBO, and I don’t have any letters after my name, but this SIBO thing sounds very much like my experience.

Not that having a name for my symptoms would really change much to speak of. It doesn’t seem like there’s much of a treatment for SIBO aside from eating in ways that don’t trigger it. But hell. At this point, if there was a cure, I don’t think I’d take it. I’ve only had one cavity in the last 20 years (and I suspect that actually wasn’t a cavity but rather a resorption). Keeping my weight in a healthy range is way easier without sugar in my diet. My taste buds have adapted a lot and things that wouldn’t taste remotely sweet to anyone else taste super sweet to me, so I don’t feel deprived in that way. I have a lot more appreciation for more complex and stronger flavors like bitter, sour, spicy, etc. And I appreciate having that “biofeedback mechanism” that tells me (and not subtly) “hey, that’s bad for you; cut it out”.

(I cut gluten out of my diet the same time I cut sugar out of my diet and my symptoms abated. I’ve had a couple of times when I’ve had sources of sugar – granny smith apples and bing cherries specifically – and my symptoms came back. But I haven’t had occasion to experiment with gluten to see if having gluten would give me symptoms again. I just haven’t tried it, so I don’t know if I’m sensitive to gluten or not. I don’t make restaurants break out the gluten-free deep fryer or anything. I just ask them to leave the bun off my hamburger or whatever. But gluten is another thing that I just don’t feel deprived for lack of and don’t see how my life would improve any by putting gluten back in my diet. Maybe some day I’ll have enough bread to figure out whether it affects me the same way, but I don’t have any plan to do such an experiment any time soon.)

And, yeah. I can attest to your point that cutting sugar out of your diet is entirely doable. I virtually never miss it, and in the very rare cases when I do, it’s more of a mild nostalgia than anything you might call a “craving”.

Buns of Thanos.

Take your slop elsewhere.

While most of Missouri is Midwestern, the southern part is definitely southern.

🤔 What about the southern part makes southern Missouri southern?

Darmak and Jalad at Ibiza.

You just didn’t wait long enough. One lemmy.ml user (emphasis on “ml”) posted in this thread just a few minutes ago.