The answer is quite patently that, in this brave new world, people with noticeable writing skill will face that false cry on a regular basis from the literary lowest-common-denominator.
I think that highlights one of the reasons why, in this case, hardware has not been hard. (besides the fact that you are very clever)
The value you have created is actually more in the App than in the hardware.
As a maker of small devices (mostly open source) including MIDI - and putting aside commercial aspects like injection molding - I could recreate the hardware side of this project without much issue. The necessary components are likely already in this room with me. (I won't - I'm not in the business of copying things that people don't want copied)
But I'm not a software engineer, and therefore could not produce software of the scope and quality that you have, which is where the unique functionality of your device sits high above the relatively simple "receive MIDI data from MIDI devices" principle of the hardware by itself.
While using GPTs to explore my own bias, I liked the re-phrasing "the chemical opens a window so that the profoundly human experience of care, safety, and novel emotion can finally get through to a brain that had walled itself off".
Highlighting how the human experience is an intrinsic part of the benefit seen, but not the only part.
(and I totally agree with you, alcohol is one of the strongest and also one of the less pleasant - both in withdrawal and in long term health impact, not to mention social harm - recreational things that I or people-that-I-know-well have ever tried)
It may simply be that the intense disruption of a 5 hour long experience of chemically-induced novel pleasures - in people who'd long forgotten any form of enjoyment at all - while also being under special attention from caring professionals, is Very Nice Indeed. And that very nice experiences are the most direct salve that exists, when it comes to ameliorating a lifetime of unpleasant ones.
"I can say wth certainty that I became a very different person at some point in those early to mid twenties" - not to discount that, but I do suspect many developing adults (LSD or not) might make similar claims about distinct periods of mental change as they work their way into early adulthood.
It doesn't change the overarching sentiment that guns are a subject that attracts considerably larger attention in the USA than in any other 'developed' nation.
Pick any number of metrics - frequency of incidents, size and power of advocacy groups, political debate, ownership levels, media coverage, constitutional significance - and that pattern is clear.
So my [here refined] point remains : there is no (developed nation) where guns are a greater part of public discourse than the USA. Therefore, when we find ourselves questioning "why are some USA citizens quite passionate about the debate?" (especially where their children are concerned), I don't think we need to look too far for the answer.
>It was a good discussion topic about why adults get so bothered by things that look like guns.
I think that's because parent-child is the strongest bond known to humanity, so anything symbolic of (or against) child safety evokes the strongest emotional responses we can ever have.
Guns, when loaded, are one of the extremely few consumer objects capable of being held in a child's hand and, with a physical ease similar to changing TV channel with a remote, destroy or end a life. (and, of course, one of the first rules of guns is "always assume it's loaded")
And so - especially in a country like the USA where guns are a prominent part of culture, and thus talked and thought about a lot - the conflation of the above means that for a significant cohort of parents, guns are one iconic symbol of their ultimate nightmare : losing their child somehow.
This task has what I'd call asymmetrical reciprocity.
That is, it's probably easier for the development professional to code a pretend version of chopping wood, than it is for the professional axeman to chop out a pretend version of a computer.
As an interesting (and yes, a bit sad) twist on that notion - and, if I may say so, coincidentally a bit of a bridge between my comment-fellow SubiculumCode's two different areas of research - my personal empirical experience was that between ages 6-13 I had a stepfather who routinely dispensed physical punishment/discipline.
One of the harshest applications was around academic performance. If I had any bad marks, or a teacher reported sluggish work or improper behaviour, it wasn't good.
And whether as result of personal talent (ha!), or simply through being beaten and fear-driven into learned intensity, you'd better believe I was the top of my class or close to it most of the time.
But the stress part-destroyed my social abilities and integration (as opposed to academic learning), and along with other unusual childhood stressors and instability I suffered, is the biggest reason why later I spent most of my adulthood walking my own path - to the extent of being considered autistic.
I held the role of (land) surveying draftsman, during the early 2000s years when the surveying profession was partway through the transition between manual drawings and digital processes.
Being a young man then, I was our offices champion of new technology, but years of legacy projects still being tied off meant I had no choice but to learn and practice many of the manual skills.
So my job was a weird mix of pushing everybody into the cutting edge of tech, then having to go and do some 50-100+ year old processes using special pens and papers and even chemicals.
For example, the look up the 'diazo machine' -style of copier. Then imagine going into a small room with an armful of 30 x A1-sized engineering plans, and standing next to this machine for 2 hours slowly feeding in each page while surrounded by ammonia fumes. These days, the Wikipedia page says : "When making multiple copies of an original no more than four or five copies can typically be made at a time, due to the build-up of ammonia fumes, even with ventilation fans in the duplication room", but back then the working reality was more like "Junior staff member! I need four copies of these! <hands over armful of A1>".
Much cooler was the Houston Instruments pen plotter. A machine whose vacuum bed (think of air hockey) held the paper down while rollers ratcheted it back and forth at high speed, and a robotic pen arm 'printed' out a plan by physically drawing it with pens. It automatically changes to different pens when it needs different line thicknesses (or even colours). All done at such a whirlwind of organised precision, it was a joy to watch.
Another aspect of the manual age was the notion of Originals, or Master Copies. That is, for important documents, there'd be a master copy printed out on high grade stock - often archival grade, multi-layered Mylar or similar, for stability and durability. It could be hard work when a project made a late change, because at worst you might find yourself having to (e.g.) manually remove and extremely-carefully redraw an entire table of figures on a master plan. Sometimes just because row 1 of that table had changed such that the rest had to be moved down. The removal involved caaarrrefully buffing the ink off the page using a rotating electric eraser. If you put a hole in the plan by rubbing too hard on one spot, god help you. Doing that, then having to get 5 different signatures from high people in various offices redone on a new master copy, while a large project could be held up for weeks while delays and interest and costs accrue, would be considered a fairly notable faux pas.
One truth I've observed from decades of keen hobbyist involvement in guitar music and playing is that a lifetime of music is largely an individual journey.
The fact that some players learn by transcribing, while others learn by jamming, and yet others learn by rote theoretical study, or 10-hour practice sessions, etc, is a big part of the variety which results in the wonderfully varied tapestry of music styles and approaches that humanity creates and enjoys.
Not to take away from the age-old, valid advice in the link about the value of ear-to-fretboard work.
Not to suggest that analogies solve anything, but perhaps it adds large-scale context to mention that throughout history various (and frequent!) events of technological disruption have had similar effect upon particular fields of work.
I used to work in land surveying, entering that field around the turn of the millennium just as digitalisation was hitting the industry in a big way. A common feeling among existing journeymen was one of confusion. Fear and dislike of these threatening changes, which seemed to neutralise all the hard-won professional skills. Expertise with the old equipment. Understanding of how to do things closer to first-principles. Ability to draw plans by hand. To assemble the datasets in the complex and particular old ways. And of course, to mentor juniors in the same.
Suddenly, some juniors coming in were young computer whizzes. Speeding past their seniors in these new ways. But still only juniors, for all that - still green, no matter what the tech. With years and decades yet, to earn their stripes, their professionalism in all it's myriad aspects. And for the seniors, their human aptitudes (which got them there in the first place) didn't vanish. They absorbed the changes, stuck with their smart peers, and evolved to match the environment. Would they have rathered that everything in the world had stayed the same as before? Of course. But is that a valid choice, professionally speaking? or in life itself? Not really.
Likewise, a lot of what we learn at school or university is superceded by new knowledge or technology (who needs arithmetic, when we all have a calculator in our pocket??), but having an intimate knowledge of those building blocks is still key to having a deeper and more valuable aptitude in your field.