Psychedelics could bring many benefits, but the EA community needs to be careful not to become associated with flaky New Age beliefs. I think we can do this best by being very specific about how psychedelics could help with certain ‘intention setting’, e.g.
1) expanding the moral circle: promoting empathy, turning abstract recognition of others beings’ sentience into a more gut-level connection to their suffering;
2) career re-sets: helping people step back from their daily routines and aspirations to consider alternative careers, lifestyles, and communities; 80k hours applications;
3) far-future goal setting: getting more motivated to reduce X-risk by envisioning far-future possibilities more vividly, as in Bostrom’s ‘Letter from Utopia’
4) recalibrating utility ceilings: becoming more familiar with states of extreme elation and contentment can remind EAs that we’re fighting for trillions of future beings to be able to experience those states whenever they want.
I’ve been working on drug policy reform for the last couple of months and have just put up the 1st of a series of posts on the topic on this forum. I’d be delighted to get your input on this, although the potential recreational benefits of drugs are not really what we’re leading with.
What do you mean by ‘super-medicinal’? I mean ‘recreational’ as opposed to ‘medicinal’, where it’s taken to solve a particularly health problem like depression.
I’m sadly not at EA global; reckoned it was too expensive to come from the UK.
In Europe the European Court of Human right ruled in 2014 that substances that are used recreationally aren’t drugs and thus not forbidden under drug regulation.
As a result, there’s currently 1P LSD which is legal in Germany and does roughly the same thing as LSD.
Psychedelics could bring many benefits, but the EA community needs to be careful not to become associated with flaky New Age beliefs. I think we can do this best by being very specific about how psychedelics could help with certain ‘intention setting’, e.g. 1) expanding the moral circle: promoting empathy, turning abstract recognition of others beings’ sentience into a more gut-level connection to their suffering; 2) career re-sets: helping people step back from their daily routines and aspirations to consider alternative careers, lifestyles, and communities; 80k hours applications; 3) far-future goal setting: getting more motivated to reduce X-risk by envisioning far-future possibilities more vividly, as in Bostrom’s ‘Letter from Utopia’ 4) recalibrating utility ceilings: becoming more familiar with states of extreme elation and contentment can remind EAs that we’re fighting for trillions of future beings to be able to experience those states whenever they want.
I’ve been working on drug policy reform for the last couple of months and have just put up the 1st of a series of posts on the topic on this forum. I’d be delighted to get your input on this, although the potential recreational benefits of drugs are not really what we’re leading with.
What do you mean by ‘super-medicinal’? I mean ‘recreational’ as opposed to ‘medicinal’, where it’s taken to solve a particularly health problem like depression.
I’m sadly not at EA global; reckoned it was too expensive to come from the UK.
Just messaged you via the facebook.
In Europe the European Court of Human right ruled in 2014 that substances that are used recreationally aren’t drugs and thus not forbidden under drug regulation.
As a result, there’s currently 1P LSD which is legal in Germany and does roughly the same thing as LSD.
This doesn’t sound right… Surely all recreational drugs would be legal Europe-wide in that case?
This blogpost seems relevant. Admittedly it’s labelled ‘speculative’ by the author, but I find the concerns plausible.
This is great. I haven’t done a deep dive into the lit, but from what little I do know, this seems like a great course of action!
Seems interesting, how can one stay updated?
Best of luck! I’m skeptical of the neglectedness/tractability aspect of this – after all, there’s a long history of groups trying to legalise psychedelics of various kinds – but tide seems slowly to be turning (in the US at least) [http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/how-ecstasy-dance-drug-mdma-one-step-away-being-licensed-us-1636822].