it’s especially egregious when you apply this “salvage epistemology” approach to, say, taking drugs
I’m not so certain of that? Of the two extreme strategies “Just Say No” and “do whatever you want man, it feels goooooood”, Just Say No is the clear winner. But when I’ve interacted with reasonable-seeming people who’ve also done some drugs, it looks like “here’s the specific drug we chose and here’s our safety protocol and here’s everything that’s known to science about effects and as you can see the dangers are non-zero but low and we think the benefits are also non-zero and are outweighing those dangers”. And (anecdotally of course) they and all their friends who act similarly appear to be leading very functional lives; no one they know has gotten into any trouble worse than the occasional bad trip or exposure to societal disapproval (neither of which was ultimately a big deal, and both of which were clearly listed in their dangers column).
Now it is quite possible they’re still ultimately definitively wrong—maybe there are serious long-term effects that no one has figured out yet; maybe it turns out that the “everyone they know turns out ok” heuristic is masking the fact that they’re all getting really lucky and/or the availability bias since the ones who don’t turn out ok disappear from view; etc. And you can certainly optimize for safety by responding to all this with “Just Say No”. But humans quite reasonably don’t optimize purely for safety, and it is not at all clear to me that what these ones have chosen is crazy.
What you say sounds like it could easily be very reasonable, and yet it has almost nothing in common, results-wise, with what we actually observe among rationalists who take 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.
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.
Who is “we”? This is more or less what I’ve observed from 100% of my (admittedly small sample size of) rationalist acquaintances who have taken psychedelics.
I’m not so certain of that? Of the two extreme strategies “Just Say No” and “do whatever you want man, it feels goooooood”, Just Say No is the clear winner. But when I’ve interacted with reasonable-seeming people who’ve also done some drugs, it looks like “here’s the specific drug we chose and here’s our safety protocol and here’s everything that’s known to science about effects and as you can see the dangers are non-zero but low and we think the benefits are also non-zero and are outweighing those dangers”. And (anecdotally of course) they and all their friends who act similarly appear to be leading very functional lives; no one they know has gotten into any trouble worse than the occasional bad trip or exposure to societal disapproval (neither of which was ultimately a big deal, and both of which were clearly listed in their dangers column).
Now it is quite possible they’re still ultimately definitively wrong—maybe there are serious long-term effects that no one has figured out yet; maybe it turns out that the “everyone they know turns out ok” heuristic is masking the fact that they’re all getting really lucky and/or the availability bias since the ones who don’t turn out ok disappear from view; etc. And you can certainly optimize for safety by responding to all this with “Just Say No”. But humans quite reasonably don’t optimize purely for safety, and it is not at all clear to me that what these ones have chosen is crazy.
What you say sounds like it could easily be very reasonable, and yet it has almost nothing in common, results-wise, with what we actually observe among rationalists who take 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.
Who is “we”? This is more or less what I’ve observed from 100% of my (admittedly small sample size of) rationalist acquaintances who have taken psychedelics.
“We” is “we on Less Wrong, talking about things we observe”. Of course I can’t speak for your private experience.