Good points!
It looks like it’s already available in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland.
FWIW depending on how long these have been available, this makes me think it’s less useful to pursue, since that would make it less neglected (albeit more tractable) and make me think that other countries are probably going to start adopting it soon anyway.
Thanks for the comment!
I agree with this strongly—I initially put at the end of this post that I think most of this work should be done outside of EA spaces for the sake of the movement’s reputation but deleted that part for reasons I can’t fully remember.
I also agree with this—I think if I were to pursue this as a project it would be a matter of going after low(er)-hanging fruits in the more liberal countries of Europe to normalize it a bit and then bringing it to bigger/more difficult countries. Similar to the approach that is currently being taken for approval voting, drug legalization, etc. I’m not sure if it would ever pass in the US, at least not in my lifetime, though if it were available to non-citizens elsewhere (also a big lift) that could be a way around that.
I think more research is needed on this, absolutely. One thing I also didn’t mention is that we discussed this in an ethics class I took for my master’s degree and I believe some author had speculated that the added bureaucracy of going through this sort of approval process might actually force people to reflect on their life in a way that they wouldn’t if they resorted to more accessible means. And there may be other psychological impacts of it that we don’t fully understand, e.g. it could also be opening up the conversation/gateway to more intensive treatment methods that people might otherwise be afraid to access for fear of being locked up in a psych ward.