Comment by frereubu

5 years ago

This, and the current “sober” posts on r/ExperiencedDevs, makes me think of Herodotus describing the way the Persians made important decisions - once sober, once drunk, and if the drunk and sober decisions were the same they knew it was a good one.

20 comments

frereubu

Reply
gautamnarula  5 years ago

Reminds me of Hemingway's "Write drunk, edit sober."

TwelveNights  5 years ago

The Persians also have an expression for "drunkenness and truthfulness", masti o rasti. مستی و راستی

  • dhosek  5 years ago

    There’s also Pliny the Elder, in vino veritas (in wine there's truth, for the non-classicists in the audience).

wiml  5 years ago

I think Tacitus had a similar anecdote about the Germans.

(Even without getting drunk, I've always found it useful to consider a hard decision once analytically and once intuitively, and if I don't agree with myself, think about it some more.)

rcpt  5 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vino_veritas Is the phrase. Useful if you want to appear cultured at a company party.

  • frereubu  5 years ago

    This is right for the drunken dev thoughts, but not for the Herodotus example. "In vino veritas" - in wine there is truth - means that people expose their true thoughts when they're drunk rather than the filtered version they might present when sober, but the story of the Persians is more about the fact that there's value in considering both drunk and sober reactions, particularly when they tally.

  • Demeno  5 years ago

    In Hebrew we have "נכנס יין - יצא סוד", loosely translates to "Wine entered - secret came out".