“I’m curious why psychedelics aren’t talked about more...”
I see psychedelics as a depression or addiction treatment as interesting, but not competitive with, say, bednets. You’re welcome to try to change my view.
I’m unsure what you mean by ‘not competitive with’. Aren’t all causes competitive with each other in the sense that one unit of resources (i.e. money or time) you spend on one isn’t one unit you can spend on another cause?
Peter Singer is not competitive with Usain Bolt when it comes to running.
He’s faster than he looks...
But more seriously, now I understand your point, I think it’s plausible psychedelics could beat AMF (assuming we count the value of AMF the standard way, looking just at the self-regarding effects of saving lives, i.e. the value to the saved person) and more research would be useful to think through this. I had a go at comparing AMF to drug policy reform for psychedelics nearly 2 years ago. I think my model is not out of date but it’s at least indicative. The main problem isn’t the potential of psychedelics to be impactful, as that’s clear—the idea is psychedelics could be much better treatments for mental health, which is huge in scale, and changing the law would improve treatments for huge numbers of people—but about what the mostly counterfactual things (for EAs) to do are. It’s not obvious what the best leverage points for money/time are and I haven’t been able to justify the time to look (I’m trying to finish a PhD in philosophy and this is not a philosophy topic).
“I’m curious why psychedelics aren’t talked about more...” I see psychedelics as a depression or addiction treatment as interesting, but not competitive with, say, bednets. You’re welcome to try to change my view.
I’m unsure what you mean by ‘not competitive with’. Aren’t all causes competitive with each other in the sense that one unit of resources (i.e. money or time) you spend on one isn’t one unit you can spend on another cause?
I mean ‘not competitive with’ in the sense of ‘can’t beat’. For example, Peter Singer is not competitive with Usain Bolt when it comes to running.
Peter Singer is not competitive with Usain Bolt when it comes to running.
He’s faster than he looks...
But more seriously, now I understand your point, I think it’s plausible psychedelics could beat AMF (assuming we count the value of AMF the standard way, looking just at the self-regarding effects of saving lives, i.e. the value to the saved person) and more research would be useful to think through this. I had a go at comparing AMF to drug policy reform for psychedelics nearly 2 years ago. I think my model is not out of date but it’s at least indicative. The main problem isn’t the potential of psychedelics to be impactful, as that’s clear—the idea is psychedelics could be much better treatments for mental health, which is huge in scale, and changing the law would improve treatments for huge numbers of people—but about what the mostly counterfactual things (for EAs) to do are. It’s not obvious what the best leverage points for money/time are and I haven’t been able to justify the time to look (I’m trying to finish a PhD in philosophy and this is not a philosophy topic).
I’ve spent a bunch of time thinking about this.
Here are some leverage points:
Create opportunities for mainstream politicians to support psychedelics without risking their seats (pushes on the Overton window)
Build infrastructure to help the rollout of MDMA & psilocybin go as well as possible after FDA approval
FDA is likely to approve MDMA therapy for PTSD by 2021, and psilocybin therapy for depression by 2023
Academic research into the effects, mechanisms, and applications of psychedelics (especially cog sci, neuroscience, and psychology)
I recently gave a talk at Harvard about this; I’ll share notes from that talk with anyone who shoots me an email requesting them.