it’s a relevantly different problem from that of under-prescription in the developing world
Seems like it could potentially be pretty relevant if “optimal” levels of prescription tend to slide towards heroin epidemics, or something like that.
this is already a huge document
That’s fair. I guess I mainly wanted to ensure that you spent some time thinking about this before actually working on DPR.
[Rant incoming]
I am generally frustrated with EAs for not brainstorming how their projects might backfire. In my view, the sign of a given intervention is much more important than the tractability/cost-effectiveness, and it seems like you devoted more space to the second two. Sign uncertainty should be high by default.
I am also frustrated by the fact that I feel like in this particular case, the ‘EA way’ of thinking about things is actually worse than the way the average American voter thinks about them. Like, if I proposed to an average American voter that we should legalize all drugs, they would probably immediately say something like “well what about the heroin epidemic”, and this seems like a completely valid point to bring up! I’m frustrated that EA has somehow caused us to focus on issues like tractability, cost-effectiveness, and neglectedness instead of addressing the issue of whether we should do the darn thing in the first place. And this is a mistake that the average American voter does not make.
This is also related to another thought pattern I see in EA where it seems like people consider EA to be some kind of magical fairy dust that creates effective interventions. Like, I’m sure many gallons of ink have been spent writing about the optimal drug policy and I don’t see you making a serious attempt to either summarize the existing literature or contribute something new (e.g. “here is why drugs were made illegal, here’s why the thinking is flawed”—cc Chesterton’s Fence—”here’s a new drug policy that gets us the benefits of the old policy without the costs”). And even if you were doing either of those things, that still doesn’t necessarily constitute a basis for action. I might as well randomly choose one of the many memos that have been written over the years and implement the drug policy suggested by that memo. There’s no magical fairy dust in the EA forum that makes your memo better than all the other memos that have been written.
That said, you should not take this objection personally because like I said, it is a beef I have with EA culture in general. This series is fine as a pointer to the topic, and you probably just meant to indicate “hey, EAs should be paying more attention to this”, so my rant is probably unjustified.
In part 3 I note it’s an open question as to whether decriminalisation, legalisation (or even the status quo) is the right response to heroine.
Could you point to the specific passage you’re referring to?
As a final pragmatic note, I think if you actually wanted to work on DPR, solving the heroin epidemic could be a good first step to doing that, because that would create room to maneuver politically for legalization reforms.
Thanks for the comment, although I largely feel you’re accusing me/us of things I’m not guilty of. (note: Lee wrote the pain section but we both did editing, so I’m unsure whether to use ‘I’ or ‘we’ here)
What I see this series of post as doing is suggesting DPR to the EA world as a cause worth taking seriously. I don’t insist on particular policy suggestions. I haven’t made my mind up and others are free to draw their own conclusions.
One issue we highlight is the lack of pain medication in part A of the world, whilst noting there is too much in part B, but that we wont talk about B. That doesn’t seem unreasonable to do in an essay limited in scope, unless it’s obvious changing the situation in A would obviously lead to it becoming like B. It’s not obvious (although we can argue about it) so we left it out. Indeed, given the use of psychedelics to treat addiciton (see footnote 27), you might think that part of DPR is important because you worry about the opiate crisis.
Further, as I claim in part 1, there are multiple arguments for different types of DPR. So it’s not sufficient to claim one part would backfire to say we shouldn’t be interested in any of it. There are lots of ways we could do DPR, and you could change everything else whilst leaving opiates unchanged. By analogy, seems that I’m saying something like “X will reduce crimes apart from murders” and you’re replying “but you should think about stopping murders” which strikes me as irrelevant.
Here’s the quote where I mentioned this in part 3:
Perhaps we should legalise all those drugs up to and including cannabis on the graph of harms I used earlier, but no further. This would mean legalising everything apart from amphetamines, cocaine and heroin (and presumably keeping tobacco and alcohol legal too) [note: graph now added; must have been lost in transmission]
I’m slightly unsure how to response to your point about original analysis, which feels unhelpfully personal. In section 2.1 above I say why drugs have been made illegal, but I didn’t want to get stuck into that because I took the real objective to be explaining why DPR might do good. I also suggest a range of policies (in part 3) and how they each solve different parts of the problems. I’m not claiming to be the first to write about DPR. What I thought was missing was an analysis that brings all the different arguments together, as I also discuss in part 3, and, further, brings it to the attention to EA. If you already know lots about DPR the argumentative pay-off only comes in part 4 where I explain why this might be more cost-effective that causes EAs already support. If I’d just written part 4 you (or others) would be justified in complaining I hadn’t made the case!
Finally, FWIW, I think the largest ammount of value from DPR would come from tackling mental health with new methods, and that doesn’t have the obvious backfire worries. I’m not really sure how to think about the heroin epidemic, nor do I see it as necessary for me to provide an answer. If you happen to have a solution to the opiate crisis and can give me a cost-effectiveness model, then I can build that in to what I do have. I’m not expecting you to have a solution, nor I think I need one to be able to deal with other parts of the topic.
Seems like it could potentially be pretty relevant if “optimal” levels of prescription tend to slide towards heroin epidemics, or something like that.
That’s fair. I guess I mainly wanted to ensure that you spent some time thinking about this before actually working on DPR.
[Rant incoming]
I am generally frustrated with EAs for not brainstorming how their projects might backfire. In my view, the sign of a given intervention is much more important than the tractability/cost-effectiveness, and it seems like you devoted more space to the second two. Sign uncertainty should be high by default.
I am also frustrated by the fact that I feel like in this particular case, the ‘EA way’ of thinking about things is actually worse than the way the average American voter thinks about them. Like, if I proposed to an average American voter that we should legalize all drugs, they would probably immediately say something like “well what about the heroin epidemic”, and this seems like a completely valid point to bring up! I’m frustrated that EA has somehow caused us to focus on issues like tractability, cost-effectiveness, and neglectedness instead of addressing the issue of whether we should do the darn thing in the first place. And this is a mistake that the average American voter does not make.
This is also related to another thought pattern I see in EA where it seems like people consider EA to be some kind of magical fairy dust that creates effective interventions. Like, I’m sure many gallons of ink have been spent writing about the optimal drug policy and I don’t see you making a serious attempt to either summarize the existing literature or contribute something new (e.g. “here is why drugs were made illegal, here’s why the thinking is flawed”—cc Chesterton’s Fence—”here’s a new drug policy that gets us the benefits of the old policy without the costs”). And even if you were doing either of those things, that still doesn’t necessarily constitute a basis for action. I might as well randomly choose one of the many memos that have been written over the years and implement the drug policy suggested by that memo. There’s no magical fairy dust in the EA forum that makes your memo better than all the other memos that have been written.
That said, you should not take this objection personally because like I said, it is a beef I have with EA culture in general. This series is fine as a pointer to the topic, and you probably just meant to indicate “hey, EAs should be paying more attention to this”, so my rant is probably unjustified.
Could you point to the specific passage you’re referring to?
As a final pragmatic note, I think if you actually wanted to work on DPR, solving the heroin epidemic could be a good first step to doing that, because that would create room to maneuver politically for legalization reforms.
Thanks for the comment, although I largely feel you’re accusing me/us of things I’m not guilty of. (note: Lee wrote the pain section but we both did editing, so I’m unsure whether to use ‘I’ or ‘we’ here)
What I see this series of post as doing is suggesting DPR to the EA world as a cause worth taking seriously. I don’t insist on particular policy suggestions. I haven’t made my mind up and others are free to draw their own conclusions.
One issue we highlight is the lack of pain medication in part A of the world, whilst noting there is too much in part B, but that we wont talk about B. That doesn’t seem unreasonable to do in an essay limited in scope, unless it’s obvious changing the situation in A would obviously lead to it becoming like B. It’s not obvious (although we can argue about it) so we left it out. Indeed, given the use of psychedelics to treat addiciton (see footnote 27), you might think that part of DPR is important because you worry about the opiate crisis.
Further, as I claim in part 1, there are multiple arguments for different types of DPR. So it’s not sufficient to claim one part would backfire to say we shouldn’t be interested in any of it. There are lots of ways we could do DPR, and you could change everything else whilst leaving opiates unchanged. By analogy, seems that I’m saying something like “X will reduce crimes apart from murders” and you’re replying “but you should think about stopping murders” which strikes me as irrelevant.
Here’s the quote where I mentioned this in part 3:
I’m slightly unsure how to response to your point about original analysis, which feels unhelpfully personal. In section 2.1 above I say why drugs have been made illegal, but I didn’t want to get stuck into that because I took the real objective to be explaining why DPR might do good. I also suggest a range of policies (in part 3) and how they each solve different parts of the problems. I’m not claiming to be the first to write about DPR. What I thought was missing was an analysis that brings all the different arguments together, as I also discuss in part 3, and, further, brings it to the attention to EA. If you already know lots about DPR the argumentative pay-off only comes in part 4 where I explain why this might be more cost-effective that causes EAs already support. If I’d just written part 4 you (or others) would be justified in complaining I hadn’t made the case!
Finally, FWIW, I think the largest ammount of value from DPR would come from tackling mental health with new methods, and that doesn’t have the obvious backfire worries. I’m not really sure how to think about the heroin epidemic, nor do I see it as necessary for me to provide an answer. If you happen to have a solution to the opiate crisis and can give me a cost-effectiveness model, then I can build that in to what I do have. I’m not expecting you to have a solution, nor I think I need one to be able to deal with other parts of the topic.
Fair points. I’m sorry.
I align myself Michael’s comment.