I know several rationalists who have taken psychedelics, and the description does seem to match them reasonably well.
There’s a selection bias in that the people who use psychedelics the least responsibly and go the most crazy are also the ones most likely to be noticed. Whereas the people who are appropriately cautious—caution which commonly also involves not talking about drug use in public—and avoid any adverse effects go unnoticed, even if they form a substantial majority.
Unless it is a survivor bias, where among people who use drugs with approximately the same level of caution some get lucky and some get unlucky, and then we say “eh, those unlucky ones probably did something wrong, that would never happen to me”.
Or maybe the causality is the other way round, and some people become irresponsible as a consequence of becoming addicted.
The selection effect exists, I don’t doubt that. The question is how strong it is.
The phenomenon of people in the rationalist community taking psychedelics and becoming manifestly crazier as a result is common enough that in order for the ranks of such victims to be outnumbered substantially by “functional” psychedelic users, it would have to be the case that use of such drugs is, among rationalists, extremely common.
For avoidance of doubt, could you clarify whether you mean this comment to refer to “rationalist” communities specifically (or some particular such community?), or more broadly?
(One additional clarification: the common version of psychedelic use is infrequent, low dose and with a trusted sober friend present. Among people I know to use psychedelics often, as in >10x/year, the outcomes are dismal.)
I don’t want to make a claim either way, since I don’t know exactly how common the public thing you’re referring to is. I know there’s been some talk about this kind of thing happening, but I know neither exactly how many people we’ve talking about, nor with what reliability the cause can be specifically identified as being the psychedelics.
I know several rationalists who have taken psychedelics, and the description does seem to match them reasonably well.
There’s a selection bias in that the people who use psychedelics the least responsibly and go the most crazy are also the ones most likely to be noticed. Whereas the people who are appropriately cautious—caution which commonly also involves not talking about drug use in public—and avoid any adverse effects go unnoticed, even if they form a substantial majority.
Unless it is a survivor bias, where among people who use drugs with approximately the same level of caution some get lucky and some get unlucky, and then we say “eh, those unlucky ones probably did something wrong, that would never happen to me”.
Or maybe the causality is the other way round, and some people become irresponsible as a consequence of becoming addicted.
The selection effect exists, I don’t doubt that. The question is how strong it is.
The phenomenon of people in the rationalist community taking psychedelics and becoming manifestly crazier as a result is common enough that in order for the ranks of such victims to be outnumbered substantially by “functional” psychedelic users, it would have to be the case that use of such drugs is, among rationalists, extremely common.
Do you claim that this is the case?
It is, in fact, extremely common, including among sane stable people who don’t talk about it.
For avoidance of doubt, could you clarify whether you mean this comment to refer to “rationalist” communities specifically (or some particular such community?), or more broadly?
Both.
(One additional clarification: the common version of psychedelic use is infrequent, low dose and with a trusted sober friend present. Among people I know to use psychedelics often, as in >10x/year, the outcomes are dismal.)
Understood, thanks.
I don’t want to make a claim either way, since I don’t know exactly how common the public thing you’re referring to is. I know there’s been some talk about this kind of thing happening, but I know neither exactly how many people we’ve talking about, nor with what reliability the cause can be specifically identified as being the psychedelics.