1.1) There’s some weak wisdom of nature prior that blasting one of your neurotransmitter pathways for a short period is unlikely to be helpful.
I think that the wisdom of nature prior would say that we shouldn’t expect blasting a neurotransmitter pathway to be evolutionarily adaptive on average. If we know why something wouldn’t be adaptive, then it seems like it doesn’t apply. This prior would argue against claims like “X increases human capital”, but not claims like “X increases altruism”, since there’s a clear mechanism whereby being much more altruistic than normal is bad for inclusive genetic fitness.
1.2) I get more sceptical as the number of (fairly independent) ‘upsides’ of a proposed intervention increases. The OP notes psychedelics could help with anxiety and depression and OCD and addiction and PTSD, which looks remarkably wide-ranging and gives suspicion of a ‘cure looking for a disease’.
I would worry about this more if the OP were referring to a specific intervention rather than a class of interventions. I think that the concern about being good on longterm and shortterm perspectives is reasonable, though there is a proposed mechanism (healing emotional blocks) that is related to both.
1.4) Thus my impression is that although I wouldn’t be shocked if psychedelics are somewhat beneficial, I’d expect them to regress at least as far down to efficicacies observed in existing psychopharmacology, probably worse, and plausibly to zero
Normal drug discovery seems to be based off of coming up with hypotheses, then testing many chemicals to find statistically significant effects. In contrast, these trials are investigating chemicals that people are already taking for their effects. Running many trials then continuing the investigations that find significance is a good way to generate false positives, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here, and I would be surprised to find zero effect (as opposed to shorter or different effects) if it were investigated more thoroughly.
2) On the ‘longtermism’ side of the argument, I agree it would be good—and good enough to be an important ‘cause’ - if there were ways of further enhancing human capital.
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My impression is most of the story for ‘how do some people perform so well?’ will be a mix of traits/‘unmodifiable’ factors (e.g. intelligence, personality dispositions, propitious upbringing); very boring advice (e.g. ‘Sleep enough’, ‘exercise regularly’); and happenstance/good fortune. I’d guess there will be some residual variance left on the table after these have taken the lion’s share, and these scraps would be important to take. Yet I suspect a lot of this will be pretty idiographic/reducible to boring advice.
I also think that improving human capital is important, and am not convinced that this is a clear and unambiguous winner for that goal. I’m curious about what evidence would make you more optimistic about the possibility of large improvements to human capital.
I think that the wisdom of nature prior would say that we shouldn’t expect blasting a neurotransmitter pathway to be evolutionarily adaptive on average. If we know why something wouldn’t be adaptive, then it seems like it doesn’t apply. This prior would argue against claims like “X increases human capital”, but not claims like “X increases altruism”, since there’s a clear mechanism whereby being much more altruistic than normal is bad for inclusive genetic fitness.
I would worry about this more if the OP were referring to a specific intervention rather than a class of interventions. I think that the concern about being good on longterm and shortterm perspectives is reasonable, though there is a proposed mechanism (healing emotional blocks) that is related to both.
Normal drug discovery seems to be based off of coming up with hypotheses, then testing many chemicals to find statistically significant effects. In contrast, these trials are investigating chemicals that people are already taking for their effects. Running many trials then continuing the investigations that find significance is a good way to generate false positives, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here, and I would be surprised to find zero effect (as opposed to shorter or different effects) if it were investigated more thoroughly.
I also think that improving human capital is important, and am not convinced that this is a clear and unambiguous winner for that goal. I’m curious about what evidence would make you more optimistic about the possibility of large improvements to human capital.