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.)
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.)