My impression agrees with Issaâs: in EA, psychedelic use seems to go along with a cluster of bad epistemic practice (e.g. pseudoscience, neurobabble, âenlightenmentâ, obscurantism).
This trend is a weak one, with many exceptions; I also donât know about direction of causation. Yet this is enough to make me recommend that taking psychedelics to âmake one a better EAâ is very ill-advised.
⊠in EA, psychedelic use seems to go along with a cluster of bad epistemic practice (e.g. pseudoscience, neurobabble, âenlightenmentâ, obscurantism).
Could you link to some public-facing examples of the bad epistemic practice you have in mind?
(I donât share your intuition so would like to get a better idea of whatâs generating it.)
People probably wonât 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 itâs easy to construct a set of countervailing examples â 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 âuse psychedelics & seem pretty sensibleâ 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 donât know about direction of causation. Yet this is enough to make me recommend that taking psychedelics to âmake one a better EAâ is very ill-advised.
Given the weakness of the trend & uncertainty about how the causation runs, âvery ill-advisedâ seems too strong.
Also your view doesnât account for the potential upsides of psychedelic use.
My impression agrees with Issaâs: in EA, psychedelic use seems to go along with a cluster of bad epistemic practice (e.g. pseudoscience, neurobabble, âenlightenmentâ, obscurantism).
This trend is a weak one, with many exceptions; I also donât know about direction of causation. Yet this is enough to make me recommend that taking psychedelics to âmake one a better EAâ is very ill-advised.
Could you link to some public-facing examples of the bad epistemic practice you have in mind?
(I donât share your intuition so would like to get a better idea of whatâs generating it.)
People probably wonât 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 itâs easy to construct a set of countervailing examples â 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 âuse psychedelics & seem pretty sensibleâ 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 hasnât replicated: https://ââwww.enthea.net/ââgriffiths-2017-2.html
(More research needed, as always.)
Given the weakness of the trend & uncertainty about how the causation runs, âvery ill-advisedâ seems too strong.
Also your view doesnât account for the potential upsides of psychedelic use.