To address your point, I think the reason more EAs don’t pay attention to psychedelics is a combination of EAs not thinking mental health is an important problem (something I’ve also written about) and because psychedelics are weird and unfamiliar. Regarding mental health’s importance, I think EAs are increasingly interested in the longterm (this would also explain a relative lack of interest in poverty and animal welfare) or they are focused on poverty but don’t believe mental health treatments are comparably cost-effective with anti-poverty ones. I think mental health treatments are comparably cost-effective—at least in the same ballpark although it’s unclear which is better on current evidence—when we use self-reported happiness scores to judge effectiveness. You might then doubt we can sensibly measure happiness, which I argue we can in this forum post.
Thanks for putting this all on my radar! I will be catching up on your posts and talk. Glad to see that you have already presented a lot of this in an EA context :)
To add to the chorus: I included a couple paragraphs on psychedelics (broadly construed) to Chapter 3 of the Global Happiness and Wellbeing Policy Report. http://www.happinesscouncil.org/
I’m not sure I should have said that the drugs are unpatentable. While strictly true, the delivery mechanisms and other aspects of treatment can be and have been patented, with the potential for raising costs and restricting availability.
Hello and welcome! If I can be forgiven for tooting my own horn, I (with Lee Sharkey) wrote a detailed series of forum posts “High Time For Drug Policy Reform” back in August 2017, which primarily focused on the potential of psychedelics as a treatment for mental health. I also mentioned it a promising area in an EAGlobal talk in 2018.
To address your point, I think the reason more EAs don’t pay attention to psychedelics is a combination of EAs not thinking mental health is an important problem (something I’ve also written about) and because psychedelics are weird and unfamiliar. Regarding mental health’s importance, I think EAs are increasingly interested in the longterm (this would also explain a relative lack of interest in poverty and animal welfare) or they are focused on poverty but don’t believe mental health treatments are comparably cost-effective with anti-poverty ones. I think mental health treatments are comparably cost-effective—at least in the same ballpark although it’s unclear which is better on current evidence—when we use self-reported happiness scores to judge effectiveness. You might then doubt we can sensibly measure happiness, which I argue we can in this forum post.
Thanks for putting this all on my radar! I will be catching up on your posts and talk. Glad to see that you have already presented a lot of this in an EA context :)
To add to the chorus: I included a couple paragraphs on psychedelics (broadly construed) to Chapter 3 of the Global Happiness and Wellbeing Policy Report. http://www.happinesscouncil.org/
I’m not sure I should have said that the drugs are unpatentable. While strictly true, the delivery mechanisms and other aspects of treatment can be and have been patented, with the potential for raising costs and restricting availability.
https://qz.com/1454785/a-millionaire-couple-is-threatening-to-create-a-magic-mushroom-monopoly/