I would like you to say more about this. It seems plausible to me that training rationality is orders of magnitude more impactful for the longrun, so this is an objection to counter.
Yes, there’s a lot to say on this.
Comparing rationality training programs (e.g. CFAR, e.g. Paradigm Academy) to psychedelic trips is tricky. It’s hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison, because the interventions are operating on very different levels of abstraction.
The rationality training programs I know of operate almost entirely on the conceptual level (though I believe Paradigm uses some bodywork modalities also). The basic structure of conceptual rationality training is something like:
Instructor says some words about a rationality topic
Trainee hears these words & tries to internalize the topic
Trainee practices their internalized version of the rationality topic (by themselves, with other trainees, or with the instructor)
Instructor provides feedback to trainee to improve the trainee’s internalized model of the topic
I think this structure can work really well for information & technique transfer, especially when the trainee is engaged & the instructor is skillful.
The basic structure of a psychedelic trip is very different:
Tripper thinks about and articulates the intentions & expectations they have about their upcoming psychedelic experience (to themselves, or to a facilitator)
Tripper ingests a psychedelic (by themselves, or with a sober facilitator present)
Tripper has a psychedelic experience. A wide range of subjective experiences can happen:
Old memories can come up and/or become salient
New perspectives about friends, family, one’s immediate environment can be adopted
Emotions can be felt very intensely, especially emotions about salient people & topics in the tripper’s life
Insights (or more skeptically, “insights”) can be had about the tripper’s psychology, social assumptions, epistemic assumptions, and metaphysical assumptions
New personal narratives (“this is the story of my life; this is what my life’s about”) can be adopted
Once sober, tripper integrates the experience (by themselves, or in dialogue a facilitator)
How did the actual trip match up to your expectations about the trip?
What came up? What was interesting? What was trivial, or silly?
Did anything come up that’s worth incorporating into your everyday life?
I think this structure can be very helpful for surfacing emotional blocks (e.g. akratic feelings), as well as for resolving known emotional blocks.
The psychedelic experience can also help change one’s assumptions + internal monologue + personal narrative, usually in ways that are considered helpful. (Note that it doesn’t do this automatically, it can just help “loosen you up.” You still have to opt in to making changes about these things.)
So, to the extent that we’re limited by information & technique transfer, I’d expect conceptual rationality training to be more leveraged.
And to the extent that we’re limited by emotional blocks & unhelpful personal narratives, I’d expect the psychedelic experience to be more leveraged.
(I’m not claiming that the psychedelic experience is the only thing that helps with emotional blocks, etc. Many other techniques can also help, though the other techniques I know of tend to take much longer to bear fruit.)
I agree this is plausible, but I think you would accept that this is conjecture and still quite a long way from what we want, which I assume is some sort of quantified, evidence-based, comparative analysis.
For sure. This is a just a theoretical comparison – some kind of quantified comparative analysis would be great, though as far as I know nothing like that exists at present.
Edit: Also note that there aren’t many analyses that compare across EA cause areas. (e.g. comparing animal welfare interventions to global poverty interventions, e.g. comparing x-risk interventions to animal welfare interventions.)
Michael Dickens’ cause prioritization app attempts this, though as far as I know it hasn’t been used to drive much decision-making.
Yes, there’s a lot to say on this.
Comparing rationality training programs (e.g. CFAR, e.g. Paradigm Academy) to psychedelic trips is tricky. It’s hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison, because the interventions are operating on very different levels of abstraction.
The rationality training programs I know of operate almost entirely on the conceptual level (though I believe Paradigm uses some bodywork modalities also). The basic structure of conceptual rationality training is something like:
Instructor says some words about a rationality topic
Trainee hears these words & tries to internalize the topic
Trainee practices their internalized version of the rationality topic (by themselves, with other trainees, or with the instructor)
Instructor provides feedback to trainee to improve the trainee’s internalized model of the topic
I think this structure can work really well for information & technique transfer, especially when the trainee is engaged & the instructor is skillful.
The basic structure of a psychedelic trip is very different:
Tripper thinks about and articulates the intentions & expectations they have about their upcoming psychedelic experience (to themselves, or to a facilitator)
Tripper ingests a psychedelic (by themselves, or with a sober facilitator present)
Tripper has a psychedelic experience. A wide range of subjective experiences can happen:
Old memories can come up and/or become salient
New perspectives about friends, family, one’s immediate environment can be adopted
Emotions can be felt very intensely, especially emotions about salient people & topics in the tripper’s life
Insights (or more skeptically, “insights”) can be had about the tripper’s psychology, social assumptions, epistemic assumptions, and metaphysical assumptions
New personal narratives (“this is the story of my life; this is what my life’s about”) can be adopted
Once sober, tripper integrates the experience (by themselves, or in dialogue a facilitator)
How did the actual trip match up to your expectations about the trip?
What came up? What was interesting? What was trivial, or silly?
Did anything come up that’s worth incorporating into your everyday life?
I think this structure can be very helpful for surfacing emotional blocks (e.g. akratic feelings), as well as for resolving known emotional blocks.
The psychedelic experience can also help change one’s assumptions + internal monologue + personal narrative, usually in ways that are considered helpful. (Note that it doesn’t do this automatically, it can just help “loosen you up.” You still have to opt in to making changes about these things.)
So, to the extent that we’re limited by information & technique transfer, I’d expect conceptual rationality training to be more leveraged.
And to the extent that we’re limited by emotional blocks & unhelpful personal narratives, I’d expect the psychedelic experience to be more leveraged.
(I’m not claiming that the psychedelic experience is the only thing that helps with emotional blocks, etc. Many other techniques can also help, though the other techniques I know of tend to take much longer to bear fruit.)
I agree this is plausible, but I think you would accept that this is conjecture and still quite a long way from what we want, which I assume is some sort of quantified, evidence-based, comparative analysis.
For sure. This is a just a theoretical comparison – some kind of quantified comparative analysis would be great, though as far as I know nothing like that exists at present.
Edit: Also note that there aren’t many analyses that compare across EA cause areas. (e.g. comparing animal welfare interventions to global poverty interventions, e.g. comparing x-risk interventions to animal welfare interventions.)
Michael Dickens’ cause prioritization app attempts this, though as far as I know it hasn’t been used to drive much decision-making.