spontaneously seems fairly difficult to me to think about the downstream effects of marginally increasing and liberalizing psychedelics usage or drug use in general :D
also without a robust theory of change it seems unlikely to have a significant effect compared to where it’s clearer?
I’d be interested in hearing more from people who think broadly affecting human cultures is a good bet for improving the chances of long-term human flourishing / reducing x-risks
e.g. I think psychedelics can have large effects on individual minds, and that those changes plausibly have longterm positive effects (increase cosmopolitanism, increase inward-focus/caring about moment-to-moment experience, decreasing aggression/increased peacefulness, increasing general mental health),
but also can plausibly have negative effects (undermine important cultural features, ambition?, maybe decrease overall functionality of more liberal cultures over authoritarian ones?)
for an ambitious push it would probably be especially interesting to go through cultures and movements with more liberal drug norms and look at their features and maybe what changed with liberalization
hippie movement maybe had relatively bad epistemics, naive versions of pacifism, exploitability through sociopaths
did it have noticeable effects on innovation, economic productivity?
Adding to MaxRas brainbreeze list of possible positive effects (“increase cosmopolitanism, increase inward-focus/caring about moment-to-moment experience, decreasing aggression/increased peacefulness, increasing general mental health”): creativity/pursue of new lines of ideation, less addictions, moral circle expansion, increase in nature relatedness, and gaining WISDOM.
Talking about a longtermist perspective I would like to cite Toby Ords introduction to his book “The Precipice”, where he talks about the importance of WISDOM for longterm security: “Fuelled by technological progress, our power has grown so great that for the first time in humanitys long history, we have the capacity to destroy ourselves—severing our entire future and everything we could become. Yet humanitys WISDOM has grown only falteringly, if at all, and lags dangerously behind (...) As the gap between our power and our WISDOM grows, our future is subject to an ever-increasing level of risk.”
Interesting question… some random brainbreezes:
spontaneously seems fairly difficult to me to think about the downstream effects of marginally increasing and liberalizing psychedelics usage or drug use in general :D
also without a robust theory of change it seems unlikely to have a significant effect compared to where it’s clearer?
I’d be interested in hearing more from people who think broadly affecting human cultures is a good bet for improving the chances of long-term human flourishing / reducing x-risks
e.g. I think psychedelics can have large effects on individual minds, and that those changes plausibly have longterm positive effects (increase cosmopolitanism, increase inward-focus/caring about moment-to-moment experience, decreasing aggression/increased peacefulness, increasing general mental health),
but also can plausibly have negative effects (undermine important cultural features, ambition?, maybe decrease overall functionality of more liberal cultures over authoritarian ones?)
for an ambitious push it would probably be especially interesting to go through cultures and movements with more liberal drug norms and look at their features and maybe what changed with liberalization
hippie movement maybe had relatively bad epistemics, naive versions of pacifism, exploitability through sociopaths
did it have noticeable effects on innovation, economic productivity?
Adding to MaxRas brainbreeze list of possible positive effects (“increase cosmopolitanism, increase inward-focus/caring about moment-to-moment experience, decreasing aggression/increased peacefulness, increasing general mental health”): creativity/pursue of new lines of ideation, less addictions, moral circle expansion, increase in nature relatedness, and gaining WISDOM.
Talking about a longtermist perspective I would like to cite Toby Ords introduction to his book “The Precipice”, where he talks about the importance of WISDOM for longterm security: “Fuelled by technological progress, our power has grown so great that for the first time in humanitys long history, we have the capacity to destroy ourselves—severing our entire future and everything we could become. Yet humanitys WISDOM has grown only falteringly, if at all, and lags dangerously behind (...) As the gap between our power and our WISDOM grows, our future is subject to an ever-increasing level of risk.”