First of all, thanks for running this—I think prizes are a great idea—and congratulations to the winners!
I somewhat disagree with your take here however:
I was surprised by the rapidity of submitted arguments – four hours after announcing the prize, there were six submitted arguments (including the winning argument).
None of these engaged with the pro-psychedelic arguments I made in the main post, instead they appeared to be arguing generally against psychedelics being a promising area.
I’m chalking this up to a “cached arguments” dynamic – people seem to have quick takes about topics stored somewhere in memory, and when asked about a topic, the immediate impulse is to deliver the pre-stored quick take (rather than engaging with the new material being presented).
If this is true, it’s a hurdle on the road to good discourse. To have a productive disagreement, both parties need to “clear out their cache” before they can actually hear what the counterparty is saying.
You asked for the best arguments against psychedelics, not for counter-arguments to your specific arguments in favour, so this doesn’t seem that surprising. Probably if you had specifically asked for counter-arguments, as opposed to merely saying they were there to ‘seed discussion’, people would have interacted with them more.
I also came to note that the request was for ‘the best arguments against psychedelics, not for counter-arguments to your specific arguments in favour’.
None of these engaged with the pro-psychedelic arguments I made in the main post
The majority of my response explicitly discusses the weakness of the argumentation in the main post for the asserted effect on the long-term future. To highlight a single sentence which seems to make this clear, I say:
I don’t see the information in 3(a) or 3(b) telling me much about how leveraged any particular intervention is.
I also referred to arguments made by Michael Plant, which in my amateur understanding appeared to be stronger than those in the post. To me, it seems good that others engaged primarily with arguments such as Michael’s, because engaging with stronger arguments tends to lead to more learning. When I drafted my submission, I considered whether it was unhealthy to primarily respond to what I saw as weaker arguments from the post itself. Yet, contra the debrief post, I did in fact do so.
Huh. The winning response, one of the six early responses, also engages explicitly with the arguments in the main post in its section 1.2 and section 2. This one discussed things mentioned in the post without explicitly referring to the post. This one summarises the long-term-focused arguments in the post and then argues against them.
I worry I’m missing something here. Dismissing these responses as ‘cached arguments’ seemed stretched already, but the factual claim made to back that decision up, that ‘None of these engaged with the pro-psychedelic arguments I made in the main post’, seems straightforwardly incorrect.
Thanks, I think I overstated this in the OP (added a disclaimer noting this). I still think there’s a thing here but probably not to the degree I was holding.
In particular it felt strange that there wasn’t much engagement with the trauma argument or the moral uncertainty / moral hedging argument (“psychedelics are plausibly promising under both longtermist & short-termist views, so the case for psychedelics is more robust overall.”)
There was also basically no engagement with the studies I pointed to.
All of this felt strange (and still feels strange), though I now think I was too strong in the OP.
You asked for the best arguments against psychedelics, not for counter-arguments to your specific arguments in favour, so this doesn’t seem that surprising.
Fair enough. I think I felt surprised because I’ve spent a long time thinking about this & tried to give the best case I could in support, and then submissions for “best case against” didn’t seem to engage heavily with my “best case for.”
First of all, thanks for running this—I think prizes are a great idea—and congratulations to the winners!
I somewhat disagree with your take here however:
You asked for the best arguments against psychedelics, not for counter-arguments to your specific arguments in favour, so this doesn’t seem that surprising. Probably if you had specifically asked for counter-arguments, as opposed to merely saying they were there to ‘seed discussion’, people would have interacted with them more.
I also came to note that the request was for ‘the best arguments against psychedelics, not for counter-arguments to your specific arguments in favour’.
However, I also wrote one of the six responses referred to, and I contest the claim that
The majority of my response explicitly discusses the weakness of the argumentation in the main post for the asserted effect on the long-term future. To highlight a single sentence which seems to make this clear, I say:
I also referred to arguments made by Michael Plant, which in my amateur understanding appeared to be stronger than those in the post. To me, it seems good that others engaged primarily with arguments such as Michael’s, because engaging with stronger arguments tends to lead to more learning. When I drafted my submission, I considered whether it was unhealthy to primarily respond to what I saw as weaker arguments from the post itself. Yet, contra the debrief post, I did in fact do so.
Huh. The winning response, one of the six early responses, also engages explicitly with the arguments in the main post in its section 1.2 and section 2. This one discussed things mentioned in the post without explicitly referring to the post. This one summarises the long-term-focused arguments in the post and then argues against them.
I worry I’m missing something here. Dismissing these responses as ‘cached arguments’ seemed stretched already, but the factual claim made to back that decision up, that ‘None of these engaged with the pro-psychedelic arguments I made in the main post’, seems straightforwardly incorrect.
Thanks, I think I overstated this in the OP (added a disclaimer noting this). I still think there’s a thing here but probably not to the degree I was holding.
In particular it felt strange that there wasn’t much engagement with the trauma argument or the moral uncertainty / moral hedging argument (“psychedelics are plausibly promising under both longtermist & short-termist views, so the case for psychedelics is more robust overall.”)
There was also basically no engagement with the studies I pointed to.
All of this felt strange (and still feels strange), though I now think I was too strong in the OP.
Fair enough. I think I felt surprised because I’ve spent a long time thinking about this & tried to give the best case I could in support, and then submissions for “best case against” didn’t seem to engage heavily with my “best case for.”