I think that before you write strongly-worded comments accusing people of being idiots for privileging anecdotes more heavily than statistics, you should first establish that the side you’re taking is actually the one supported by statistics and that it’s the other side which is relying on anecdotes, and not vice versa.
My read is that for meditation and psychedelics, the actual research tends to show that they are generally low-risk/beneficial (even to the point of their mental health benefits starting to gradually overcome the stigma against psychedelics among academic researchers) [e.g. 1, 2, 3 for psychedelics] and it’s actually the bad cases that are the unrepresentative anecdotes.
it’s actually the bad cases that are the unrepresentative anecdotes.
How unrepresentative? What probability of becoming the “bad case” would you consider acceptable?
If there is a hypothetical number of bad cases that would make you change your mind if all those bad cases happened inside the rationality community, how big approximately would that number be?
What probability of becoming the “bad case” would you consider acceptable?
Acceptable for writing highly derisive comments about people who try psychedelics? I’m not really a fan of that approach in any case, tbh.
Acceptable for psychedelics being worth trying? I don’t know, that seems like it would depend on the person’s risk tolerance and what they’re hoping to get out of it. I don’t consider it my business to decide e.g. what level of risk is unacceptable if someone wants to try extreme sports, nor do I consider it my business to tell people at what risk level they are allowed to try out psychedelics.
I’m more in favor of talking about the possible risks honestly and openly but without exaggeration, and also talking about responsible use, how to ameliorate the risks, and what the possible risk factors are.
The point of Kaj Sotala’s comment is that there is a selection bias that is severe enough that your comments need to have major caveats to them (deepthoughtlife made a similar error.) I won’t determine your risk tolerance for medicine, but what I can say is that we should update in the opposite direction: That psychedelics are safe and maybe useful for the vast majority of people, and the ones that were truly harmed are paraded as anecdotes, showing massive selection biases, and not representing the median person in the world.
Suppose you start taking LSD. Not as a part of a scientific experiment where the dosage was reviewed and approved by a research ethics board, but based on a recommendation of your friend and an internet research you did yourself, using doses as big as your friend/research recommends, repeating as often as your friend/research considers safe.
(Maybe, let’s also include the risk of self-modification, e.g. the probability that once you overcome the taboo and find the results of the experiment appealing, you may be tempted to try a greater dose the next time, or increase the frequency. I am mentioning this, because—yes, anecdotally—people experimenting with psychoactive substances sometimes do exactly this.)
Are you saying that the probability of serious and irreversible harm to your brain is smaller than 1%?
Or are you saying that the potential benefits are so large, that the 1% chance of seriously and irreversibly harming your brain is totally worth it?
I think that at least one of these two statements needs to be true, in order to make experimenting with LSD worth it. I just don’t know which one (or possibly both?) are you making.
Note that the 1% probability of hurting your brain (heck, even 40% probability) is still hypothetically compatible with the statement that for a median person the experiment is a net benefit.
I think that before you write strongly-worded comments accusing people of being idiots for privileging anecdotes more heavily than statistics, you should first establish that the side you’re taking is actually the one supported by statistics and that it’s the other side which is relying on anecdotes, and not vice versa.
My read is that for meditation and psychedelics, the actual research tends to show that they are generally low-risk/beneficial (even to the point of their mental health benefits starting to gradually overcome the stigma against psychedelics among academic researchers) [e.g. 1, 2, 3 for psychedelics] and it’s actually the bad cases that are the unrepresentative anecdotes.
How unrepresentative? What probability of becoming the “bad case” would you consider acceptable?
If there is a hypothetical number of bad cases that would make you change your mind if all those bad cases happened inside the rationality community, how big approximately would that number be?
Acceptable for writing highly derisive comments about people who try psychedelics? I’m not really a fan of that approach in any case, tbh.
Acceptable for psychedelics being worth trying? I don’t know, that seems like it would depend on the person’s risk tolerance and what they’re hoping to get out of it. I don’t consider it my business to decide e.g. what level of risk is unacceptable if someone wants to try extreme sports, nor do I consider it my business to tell people at what risk level they are allowed to try out psychedelics.
I’m more in favor of talking about the possible risks honestly and openly but without exaggeration, and also talking about responsible use, how to ameliorate the risks, and what the possible risk factors are.
The point of Kaj Sotala’s comment is that there is a selection bias that is severe enough that your comments need to have major caveats to them (deepthoughtlife made a similar error.) I won’t determine your risk tolerance for medicine, but what I can say is that we should update in the opposite direction: That psychedelics are safe and maybe useful for the vast majority of people, and the ones that were truly harmed are paraded as anecdotes, showing massive selection biases, and not representing the median person in the world.
Suppose you start taking LSD. Not as a part of a scientific experiment where the dosage was reviewed and approved by a research ethics board, but based on a recommendation of your friend and an internet research you did yourself, using doses as big as your friend/research recommends, repeating as often as your friend/research considers safe.
(Maybe, let’s also include the risk of self-modification, e.g. the probability that once you overcome the taboo and find the results of the experiment appealing, you may be tempted to try a greater dose the next time, or increase the frequency. I am mentioning this, because—yes, anecdotally—people experimenting with psychoactive substances sometimes do exactly this.)
Are you saying that the probability of serious and irreversible harm to your brain is smaller than 1%?
Or are you saying that the potential benefits are so large, that the 1% chance of seriously and irreversibly harming your brain is totally worth it?
I think that at least one of these two statements needs to be true, in order to make experimenting with LSD worth it. I just don’t know which one (or possibly both?) are you making.
Note that the 1% probability of hurting your brain (heck, even 40% probability) is still hypothetically compatible with the statement that for a median person the experiment is a net benefit.