I can’t believe I didn’t read this until just now. You are attacking unstated assumption of the philanthropy community writ large, but which includes EA. One is that better psychology is an area for philanthropy and altruism minded people to care about. Most people in our society put the needs of the body far higher than psychological/”spiritual” needs (and neglect taking care of the psychological distress of others as a work of charity). I think this argument would actually have to be won in order for the psychedelics argument to work as a promising new subset of that line, which I can buy that it may be. The metaphysical assumption that the mind matters as a separate issue from the needs of the body and that there are big gains to having better psychological tools for making the mind better or at least to not suffer. Once again, however, I suspect that most people have a hard time believing that better psychological states for people like them would have better visible real-world effects. They don’t believe in a tight coupling of greater psychological health and real-world improvement for people who are already doing fairly well on both fronts.
I can’t believe I didn’t read this until just now. You are attacking unstated assumption of the philanthropy community writ large, but which includes EA. One is that better psychology is an area for philanthropy and altruism minded people to care about. Most people in our society put the needs of the body far higher than psychological/”spiritual” needs (and neglect taking care of the psychological distress of others as a work of charity). I think this argument would actually have to be won in order for the psychedelics argument to work as a promising new subset of that line, which I can buy that it may be. The metaphysical assumption that the mind matters as a separate issue from the needs of the body and that there are big gains to having better psychological tools for making the mind better or at least to not suffer. Once again, however, I suspect that most people have a hard time believing that better psychological states for people like them would have better visible real-world effects. They don’t believe in a tight coupling of greater psychological health and real-world improvement for people who are already doing fairly well on both fronts.