However psychedelics don’t seem likely to be a particularly effective long term intervention at the moment.
Curious for your thoughts on the long-termist argument I made in the OP?
Trying to legalize psychedelics or improve research for the long term impacts seems quite implausible as an effective intervention.
I’m not really sure what you mean by “improve research for the long term impacts.”
Could you say a bit more about why liberalizing psychedelic access and conducting more academic research on psychedelics seem implausible as effective interventions?
Interventions that increase the set of well-intentioned + capable people also seem quite robust to cluelessness, because they allow for more error correction at each timestep on the way to the far future.
The psychedelic experience also seems like a plausible lever on increasing capability (via reducing negative self-talk & other mental blocks) and improving intentions (via ego dissolution changing one’s metaphysical assumptions).
I view this as a weak argument. I think one could make this sort of argument for a large number of interventions: reading great literature, yoga, a huge number of productivity systems, participating in healthy communities, quantified self, volunteering for local charities like working at a soup kitchen, etc. Some of these interventions focus more on the increasing capability aspect (productivity systems, productivity systems) and some focus more on improving intentions (participating in healthy communities, volunteering). Some focus on both to some degree.
The reason it seems like a weak argument to me is because:
(a) the average effects of psychedelics on increasing capability seem unlikely to be strong. They may be high for a small percentage of people, but I’m not aware of any particularly strong reason to think that the average effects are large.
They may be large for people with mental health issues, but then it’s not really an intervention for increasing capability in general, it’s a mental health intervention. These are distinct, and as I said above, psychedelics could plausibly be a top intervention for mental health.
(b) The improving intentions aspect looks to be on even shakier grounds. What is the evidence that taking psychedelics is an effective treatment for improving intentions in a manner relevant to working on the long term? I’ve never heard of any psychedelic or spiritual community being focused on long termism in an EA relevant manner. Some people report ego dissolution, but I’m not even aware of any anecdotal reports that ego dissolution led to non-EAs thinking and working on long term things. It sounds like you know some cases where it may have been helpful, but I’m skeptical that a high quality study would report something amazing.
These are distinct, and as I said above, psychedelics could plausibly be a top intervention for mental health.
A crux here is probably that I’m modeling “mental health disorders like depression & anxiety” as on the far end of a continuous spectrum of unendorsed behavior patterns (and the unendorsed behavior patterns of “healthy-typed” people are also on this spectrum), and it seems like you are modeling “mental health disorders” as being in a separate conceptual bucket from the unendorsed behavior patterns of healthy-typed people.
Because I’m modeling all of these patterns on a continuous spectrum, I expect treatments that help with the pathologized cases (e.g. diagnosed depression) will also help with not-pathologized cases (e.g. bad-feeling thought patterns in people without a diagnosis).
Also I do want to say that I appreciate you trying hard to engage with skeptical people and try to figure out independently new promising areas! That’s valuable work for the community, even if this particular intervention doesn’t pan out.
Thanks for the clarification. I also share your model of mental health disorders being on the far end of a continuous spectrum of unendorsed behavior patterns. The crux for me here is more what the effect of psychedelics is on people not at the far end of the spectrum. I agree that it might be positive, it might even be likely to be positive, but I’m not aware of any compelling empirical evidence or other reason to think that it is strong.
I have essentially a mathematical objection, in that I think the math is unlikely to work out, but I don’t have a problem with the idea in principle (putting aside PR risks).
Thanks for linking your thread with Kit in your other reply. I think my objection is very similar to Kit’s. Consider:
Total benefit = effect from boosting efficacy of current long-termist labor (1) + effect from increasing the amount of long-termist labor (2) + effect from short-termist benefits (3)
I expect (1) to be extremely not worth it given the costs of making any substantial improvement in the availability of psychedelics, and (2) to be speculative and to almost certainly not be worth it. By (3), do you mean the mental health benefits for people in general?
I also share your model of mental health disorders being on the far end of a continuous spectrum of unendorsed behavior patterns.
Got it. I’m happy we clarified this!
I agree that it might be positive, it might even be likely to be positive, but I’m not aware of any compelling empirical evidence or other reason to think that it is strong.
Griffiths et al. 2008 & Griffiths et al. 2017 found highly positive effects for psychedelics in healthy-typed people. (Both studies are RCTs & quite well done, as far as I can tell.)
By (3), do you mean the mental health benefits for people in general?
Yes. Because Kit doesn’t include short-termist considerations in his moral calculus (he’s not moved by parliamentary theories of moral uncertainty), we discounted short-termist considerations to 0 in our discussion.
Personally, I include short-termist considerations in my moral calculus.
Part of the reason I’m bullish on psychedelic interventions is that there’s both a plausible long-termist story & a plausible short-termist story (which seems somewhat additive, when aggregating).
I expect (1) to be extremely not worth it given the costs of making any substantial improvement in the availability of psychedelics,
Right, as Kit & I hashed out, I think it makes sense to discount (1) to 0.
(Probably almost all of the benefit of increasing capabilities of current researchers can be captured without further liberalizing psychedelics, as most current researchers live in enclaves where de facto psychedelic access is quite liberal (though illicit)).
and (2) to be speculative and to almost certainly not be worth it.
I agree that (2) is speculative, but the possible benefit here is large enough that further research seems justified.
(If the psychedelic experience in a certain context can reliably boost altruism without incurring costs that nullify the effect, that seems like a really big deal that’d be worth knowing about. It would be straightforward to design & execute a study on this, if someone were willing to fund it.)
Curious for your thoughts on the long-termist argument I made in the OP?
I’m not really sure what you mean by “improve research for the long term impacts.”
Could you say a bit more about why liberalizing psychedelic access and conducting more academic research on psychedelics seem implausible as effective interventions?
Argument in OP:
I view this as a weak argument. I think one could make this sort of argument for a large number of interventions: reading great literature, yoga, a huge number of productivity systems, participating in healthy communities, quantified self, volunteering for local charities like working at a soup kitchen, etc. Some of these interventions focus more on the increasing capability aspect (productivity systems, productivity systems) and some focus more on improving intentions (participating in healthy communities, volunteering). Some focus on both to some degree.
The reason it seems like a weak argument to me is because:
(a) the average effects of psychedelics on increasing capability seem unlikely to be strong. They may be high for a small percentage of people, but I’m not aware of any particularly strong reason to think that the average effects are large.
They may be large for people with mental health issues, but then it’s not really an intervention for increasing capability in general, it’s a mental health intervention. These are distinct, and as I said above, psychedelics could plausibly be a top intervention for mental health.
(b) The improving intentions aspect looks to be on even shakier grounds. What is the evidence that taking psychedelics is an effective treatment for improving intentions in a manner relevant to working on the long term? I’ve never heard of any psychedelic or spiritual community being focused on long termism in an EA relevant manner. Some people report ego dissolution, but I’m not even aware of any anecdotal reports that ego dissolution led to non-EAs thinking and working on long term things. It sounds like you know some cases where it may have been helpful, but I’m skeptical that a high quality study would report something amazing.
Some discussion about this in this thread.
A crux here is probably that I’m modeling “mental health disorders like depression & anxiety” as on the far end of a continuous spectrum of unendorsed behavior patterns (and the unendorsed behavior patterns of “healthy-typed” people are also on this spectrum), and it seems like you are modeling “mental health disorders” as being in a separate conceptual bucket from the unendorsed behavior patterns of healthy-typed people.
Because I’m modeling all of these patterns on a continuous spectrum, I expect treatments that help with the pathologized cases (e.g. diagnosed depression) will also help with not-pathologized cases (e.g. bad-feeling thought patterns in people without a diagnosis).
Also I do want to say that I appreciate you trying hard to engage with skeptical people and try to figure out independently new promising areas! That’s valuable work for the community, even if this particular intervention doesn’t pan out.
Thank you :-)
Thanks for the clarification. I also share your model of mental health disorders being on the far end of a continuous spectrum of unendorsed behavior patterns. The crux for me here is more what the effect of psychedelics is on people not at the far end of the spectrum. I agree that it might be positive, it might even be likely to be positive, but I’m not aware of any compelling empirical evidence or other reason to think that it is strong.
I have essentially a mathematical objection, in that I think the math is unlikely to work out, but I don’t have a problem with the idea in principle (putting aside PR risks).
Thanks for linking your thread with Kit in your other reply. I think my objection is very similar to Kit’s. Consider:
Total benefit = effect from boosting efficacy of current long-termist labor (1) + effect from increasing the amount of long-termist labor (2) + effect from short-termist benefits (3)
I expect (1) to be extremely not worth it given the costs of making any substantial improvement in the availability of psychedelics, and (2) to be speculative and to almost certainly not be worth it. By (3), do you mean the mental health benefits for people in general?
Got it. I’m happy we clarified this!
Griffiths et al. 2008 & Griffiths et al. 2017 found highly positive effects for psychedelics in healthy-typed people. (Both studies are RCTs & quite well done, as far as I can tell.)
Here’s some commentary on the studies.
Yes. Because Kit doesn’t include short-termist considerations in his moral calculus (he’s not moved by parliamentary theories of moral uncertainty), we discounted short-termist considerations to 0 in our discussion.
Personally, I include short-termist considerations in my moral calculus.
Part of the reason I’m bullish on psychedelic interventions is that there’s both a plausible long-termist story & a plausible short-termist story (which seems somewhat additive, when aggregating).
Right, as Kit & I hashed out, I think it makes sense to discount (1) to 0.
(Probably almost all of the benefit of increasing capabilities of current researchers can be captured without further liberalizing psychedelics, as most current researchers live in enclaves where de facto psychedelic access is quite liberal (though illicit)).
I agree that (2) is speculative, but the possible benefit here is large enough that further research seems justified.
(If the psychedelic experience in a certain context can reliably boost altruism without incurring costs that nullify the effect, that seems like a really big deal that’d be worth knowing about. It would be straightforward to design & execute a study on this, if someone were willing to fund it.)