Increasing openness does not seem uniformly good, e.g. SSC wrote a speculative blog post that psychedelic use may make one “open” to pseudoscience, conspiracy theories etc. I’m curious if you have thoughts on this?
I agree that openness doesn’t seem uniformly good, despite being obviously good in some ways (i.e. all creativity loads onto openness).
I agree it seems possible that psychedelic use could lead to pseudoscientific or unscientific thinking. This is pretty widespread in the psychedelic community, which might suggest a connection, although it’s hard to know which direction the causality is going (perhaps both). I don’t see this as a risk for EA/rationalist types though, and would argue that pretty strongly.
(Also FYI, the findings from the 2011 paper SSC references haven’t been replicated.)
I don’t see this as a risk for EA/rationalist types though, and would argue that pretty strongly.
Would you be willing to supply this argument? I am very curious to hear more about your thinking on this, as it is something I have wondered about. (For the sake of transparency, I should mention that my own take is that there is a significant risk even for EAs and rationalists to be overtaken by unscientific thinking after strong psychedelic experiences, and that it takes unusually solid worldviews and/or some sort of personality trait that is hard-to-describe in order to resist this influence.)
My take is that it only takes a strong enough worldview to resist this influence, and that most EAs/rationalists have one. I think this mostly just comes down to intuitions about 1) how strong of an influence a psychedelic experience can have on someone’s worldview and 2) how strong of a worldview does the average EA/rationalist have. I don’t think a strong psychedelic experience alone is enough to create bad epistemology, and that it probably also takes some environmental factors pushing in this direction, which EAs/rationalists generally aren’t exposed to.
It seems like our intuitions probably differ on this, so I’m wondering what your take is based on? Also wondering if you can provide more details on the hard-to-describe personality trait, as I’m not sure what you mean there.
My impression agrees with Issa’s: in EA, psychedelic use seems to go along with a cluster of bad epistemic practice (e.g. pseudoscience, neurobabble, ‘enlightenment’, obscurantism).
This trend is a weak one, with many exceptions; I also don’t know about direction of causation. Yet this is enough to make me recommend that taking psychedelics to ‘make one a better EA’ is very ill-advised.
People probably won’t give those examples here, for civility reasons. The SSC post linked above covers some practices Greg probably means, using historical examples.
Thanks. The Slate Star Codex post is definitely interesting, though it’s easy to construct a set of countervailing examples – people who use psychedelics & seem pretty sensible (e.g. Steve Jobs, Eric Weinstein, Tim Ferriss, off the top of my head).
edit: Sam Harris, Elon Musk, Aldous Huxley are also in the “use psychedelics & seem pretty sensible” category.
Also, Gregory was noting a correlation within EA specifically; none of these examples speak to that.
This trend is a weak one, with many exceptions; I also don’t know about direction of causation. Yet this is enough to make me recommend that taking psychedelics to ‘make one a better EA’ is very ill-advised.
Given the weakness of the trend & uncertainty about how the causation runs, “very ill-advised” seems too strong.
Also your view doesn’t account for the potential upsides of psychedelic use.
Increasing openness does not seem uniformly good, e.g. SSC wrote a speculative blog post that psychedelic use may make one “open” to pseudoscience, conspiracy theories etc. I’m curious if you have thoughts on this?
I agree that openness doesn’t seem uniformly good, despite being obviously good in some ways (i.e. all creativity loads onto openness).
I agree it seems possible that psychedelic use could lead to pseudoscientific or unscientific thinking. This is pretty widespread in the psychedelic community, which might suggest a connection, although it’s hard to know which direction the causality is going (perhaps both). I don’t see this as a risk for EA/rationalist types though, and would argue that pretty strongly.
(Also FYI, the findings from the 2011 paper SSC references haven’t been replicated.)
Would you be willing to supply this argument? I am very curious to hear more about your thinking on this, as it is something I have wondered about. (For the sake of transparency, I should mention that my own take is that there is a significant risk even for EAs and rationalists to be overtaken by unscientific thinking after strong psychedelic experiences, and that it takes unusually solid worldviews and/or some sort of personality trait that is hard-to-describe in order to resist this influence.)
My take is that it only takes a strong enough worldview to resist this influence, and that most EAs/rationalists have one. I think this mostly just comes down to intuitions about 1) how strong of an influence a psychedelic experience can have on someone’s worldview and 2) how strong of a worldview does the average EA/rationalist have. I don’t think a strong psychedelic experience alone is enough to create bad epistemology, and that it probably also takes some environmental factors pushing in this direction, which EAs/rationalists generally aren’t exposed to.
It seems like our intuitions probably differ on this, so I’m wondering what your take is based on? Also wondering if you can provide more details on the hard-to-describe personality trait, as I’m not sure what you mean there.
My impression agrees with Issa’s: in EA, psychedelic use seems to go along with a cluster of bad epistemic practice (e.g. pseudoscience, neurobabble, ‘enlightenment’, obscurantism).
This trend is a weak one, with many exceptions; I also don’t know about direction of causation. Yet this is enough to make me recommend that taking psychedelics to ‘make one a better EA’ is very ill-advised.
Could you link to some public-facing examples of the bad epistemic practice you have in mind?
(I don’t share your intuition so would like to get a better idea of what’s generating it.)
People probably won’t give those examples here, for civility reasons. The SSC post linked above covers some practices Greg probably means, using historical examples.
Thanks. The Slate Star Codex post is definitely interesting, though it’s easy to construct a set of countervailing examples – people who use psychedelics & seem pretty sensible (e.g. Steve Jobs, Eric Weinstein, Tim Ferriss, off the top of my head).
edit: Sam Harris, Elon Musk, Aldous Huxley are also in the “use psychedelics & seem pretty sensible” category.
Also, Gregory was noting a correlation within EA specifically; none of these examples speak to that.
Also note that the Openness result Scott talks about hasn’t replicated: https://www.enthea.net/griffiths-2017-2.html
(More research needed, as always.)
Given the weakness of the trend & uncertainty about how the causation runs, “very ill-advised” seems too strong.
Also your view doesn’t account for the potential upsides of psychedelic use.
Thanks for the link to the Enthea paper, I’ll check it out.
Here’s more on one failure to replicate the Openness result: https://www.enthea.net/griffiths-2017-2.html
(More research needed, as always.)
+1
I’m very bullish on more big-five openness in the rationality & EA communities, personally.