I’m in no way meaning to dismiss your concerns, but this all seems a bit much to me. Something like “person identified with their conception of themself seeks to remain identified with themself in circumstances where disidentification happens”. Or if you like, comparable to trying to get drunk without actually being drunk or to engage in exposure therapy without actually being exposed to anything.
I’m not saying we can’t optimize for better and more useful experiences, only that something seems off to me about your approach here where you’re trying to have your cake and eat it, too.
On reflection, the method I described seems very cautious, perhaps overly cautious in its approach. Honestly, I think putting aside what I wrote above, my experiences with other (legal) mind-influencing substances has been much more in the style of charging forward, and just experiencing the effect a normal-sized dosage provides and only later, when I’m sober, reflecting on the effect the substance has on me.
So, the exact procedure I describe above may very well not be the way I’d approach psychedelics, although I think perhaps some part or another may provide useful inspiration in engineering a better experience
I’m also not sure how much of a problem “psychedelic woo” may be for someone already well rooted with epistemic defenses- perhaps the things that lead people astray can be untangled by a sufficiently careful thinker experiencing them, especially if psilocybin / peyote is used, as opposed to LSD, which supposedly has stronger negative effects on the mind. But I’m also pessimistic about the average LWer’s epistemic defenses- simply reading The Sequences, without doing any exercises based on the ideas presented therein, won’t give people the skills needed to successfully navigate the challenge of properly making sense of a psychedelic experience. It is a well known phenomenon in learning, that simply reading isn’t enough. One needs to interact with the ideas, be rewarded for demonstrating understanding, and having their lack of understanding highlighted where it’s missing. That’s how people form strong connections to their ideas (Anki would be sufficient for this, based on my own experiences with Anki, although there may be even better ways of accomplishing this, at the cost of higher effort needed in implementation).
I think the version of my presented idea, which I still endorse, is that before experiencing psychedelics, if one wishes to gain the benefits, while avoiding well-known long-term pitfalls, one should strive to have a robust understanding of epistemic defenses—to have actually interacted with the ideas, felt the ideas push back against them, not just have read about them. This is not to (as my post above suggests) prevent irrational thought during the trip itself, but rather to ensure that one is properly prepared, once sober, to reflect critically about their experiences, and avoid common epistemic mistakes people make post-psychedelics
This is not to (as my post above suggests) prevent irrational thought during the trip itself, but rather to ensure that one is properly prepared, once sober, to reflect critically about their experiences, and avoid common epistemic mistakes people make post-psychedelics
This seems like the right place to intervene. Psychedelic trips are somewhat similar to mystical experiences, and there the problem tends to be taking what was experienced and trying to turn it into something like a universal truth. So, it quickly jumps from “I felt warm and connected” to “I was in the presence of God” or whatever else is ready at hand in the person’s mind. Stated otherwise, you mostly have to watch out for overfitting the data to a pattern you want to be true.
I’m trying to think of the right tag for this post- It seems that it’d be mildly relevant for there to be a tag for psychedelics and other mind-altering substances, but I’m not sure what the right name for the tag would be. “Drugs” feels too broad, “Psychedelics” is too narrow, since there are substances which are technically not psychedelics, that can serve similar functions of having short-term effects on the brain’s biology, but long-term (positive or net-neutral) effects on the brain’s nature and structure. “Mind-altering substances” seems right, but I’m not sure that there isn’t a better way to put it
I don’t think Nootropics is the right tag for the concept I want to index- if I were ever to go to the Nootropics tags, I’d expect to find conversation about substances I could generally expect to take on a regular basis to improve my cognition. While I think the case can be made for microdosing being nootropic, microdosing is only mentioned here in the context of having a pseudo-trip experience, which is different in intent from nootropic microdosing.
The concept I’m looking to index is substances that create short-term experiences which lead to long-term influences on one’s life, which is an overall different concept from nootropics
I understand that this may be well outside the scope of your writing, but still—any chance you could actually post some epistemic defense decks for Anki? Or are there any good ones already available?
(Apologies if the question is stupid, I’m somewhat new to LW)
It’s a good idea. I’m not familiar with any existing decks, but a search on AnkiWeb shows a few LW-influenced decks: https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/Rationality. One of them looks like what I would be inclined to design as an “Epistemic Defenses Deck”, although I may (or may not) approach it differently. If I do anything along those lines, I’ll let you know.
I suspect there’s some underlying factor which effects how much psychedelics impact your identity/cognition. Since even on doses of LSD so high that the visuals make me legally blind, I don’t experience any amount of ego dissolution and can function fairly well on many tasks.
The premise that psychedelics usually permanently impair your long-term epistemic ability seems dubious.
I’ll caution other readers that fighting a trip is how good trips turn bad.
Strong upvoted. That’s an important warning to keep in mind
I’m in no way meaning to dismiss your concerns, but this all seems a bit much to me. Something like “person identified with their conception of themself seeks to remain identified with themself in circumstances where disidentification happens”. Or if you like, comparable to trying to get drunk without actually being drunk or to engage in exposure therapy without actually being exposed to anything.
I’m not saying we can’t optimize for better and more useful experiences, only that something seems off to me about your approach here where you’re trying to have your cake and eat it, too.
On reflection, the method I described seems very cautious, perhaps overly cautious in its approach. Honestly, I think putting aside what I wrote above, my experiences with other (legal) mind-influencing substances has been much more in the style of charging forward, and just experiencing the effect a normal-sized dosage provides and only later, when I’m sober, reflecting on the effect the substance has on me.
So, the exact procedure I describe above may very well not be the way I’d approach psychedelics, although I think perhaps some part or another may provide useful inspiration in engineering a better experience
I’m also not sure how much of a problem “psychedelic woo” may be for someone already well rooted with epistemic defenses- perhaps the things that lead people astray can be untangled by a sufficiently careful thinker experiencing them, especially if psilocybin / peyote is used, as opposed to LSD, which supposedly has stronger negative effects on the mind. But I’m also pessimistic about the average LWer’s epistemic defenses- simply reading The Sequences, without doing any exercises based on the ideas presented therein, won’t give people the skills needed to successfully navigate the challenge of properly making sense of a psychedelic experience. It is a well known phenomenon in learning, that simply reading isn’t enough. One needs to interact with the ideas, be rewarded for demonstrating understanding, and having their lack of understanding highlighted where it’s missing. That’s how people form strong connections to their ideas (Anki would be sufficient for this, based on my own experiences with Anki, although there may be even better ways of accomplishing this, at the cost of higher effort needed in implementation).
I think the version of my presented idea, which I still endorse, is that before experiencing psychedelics, if one wishes to gain the benefits, while avoiding well-known long-term pitfalls, one should strive to have a robust understanding of epistemic defenses—to have actually interacted with the ideas, felt the ideas push back against them, not just have read about them. This is not to (as my post above suggests) prevent irrational thought during the trip itself, but rather to ensure that one is properly prepared, once sober, to reflect critically about their experiences, and avoid common epistemic mistakes people make post-psychedelics
This seems like the right place to intervene. Psychedelic trips are somewhat similar to mystical experiences, and there the problem tends to be taking what was experienced and trying to turn it into something like a universal truth. So, it quickly jumps from “I felt warm and connected” to “I was in the presence of God” or whatever else is ready at hand in the person’s mind. Stated otherwise, you mostly have to watch out for overfitting the data to a pattern you want to be true.
I’m trying to think of the right tag for this post- It seems that it’d be mildly relevant for there to be a tag for psychedelics and other mind-altering substances, but I’m not sure what the right name for the tag would be. “Drugs” feels too broad, “Psychedelics” is too narrow, since there are substances which are technically not psychedelics, that can serve similar functions of having short-term effects on the brain’s biology, but long-term (positive or net-neutral) effects on the brain’s nature and structure. “Mind-altering substances” seems right, but I’m not sure that there isn’t a better way to put it
I added ‘Nootropics’, based on https://www.gwern.net/LSD-microdosing
I don’t think Nootropics is the right tag for the concept I want to index- if I were ever to go to the Nootropics tags, I’d expect to find conversation about substances I could generally expect to take on a regular basis to improve my cognition. While I think the case can be made for microdosing being nootropic, microdosing is only mentioned here in the context of having a pseudo-trip experience, which is different in intent from nootropic microdosing.
The concept I’m looking to index is substances that create short-term experiences which lead to long-term influences on one’s life, which is an overall different concept from nootropics
I understand that this may be well outside the scope of your writing, but still—any chance you could actually post some epistemic defense decks for Anki? Or are there any good ones already available?
(Apologies if the question is stupid, I’m somewhat new to LW)
It’s a good idea. I’m not familiar with any existing decks, but a search on AnkiWeb shows a few LW-influenced decks: https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/Rationality. One of them looks like what I would be inclined to design as an “Epistemic Defenses Deck”, although I may (or may not) approach it differently. If I do anything along those lines, I’ll let you know.
I suspect there’s some underlying factor which effects how much psychedelics impact your identity/cognition. Since even on doses of LSD so high that the visuals make me legally blind, I don’t experience any amount of ego dissolution and can function fairly well on many tasks.