As Svyatoslav suggests, the most effective way to approach this is to jointly explore with your son what is actually true about various drugs and their benefits and costs, and why they’re treated the way they are. These are not necessarily easy questions to answer and could take some effortful research to actually get to the bottom of things. (I particularly like the advice here.) I doubt 3hr is enough.
To speculate, your son might currently be very excited by the discovery that yes, as it often might have seemed, the broader world has advice and rules that don’t make sense and people can’t give you good explanations for – and that by doing your own thinking, you can achieve better outcomes. This is true, but it’s definitely not foolproof advice.
First things first, Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence, just because broader society is overly afraid of drugs, does not mean that all drugs taken in all ways offer only benefits and no risks. That seems crazy. The reason you take psychoactive drugs is because they do things to your mind, so I have a high prior for negative effects too.
I’d also caution against rationalization and disregarding Chesterton’s fences. The whole topic has many degrees of freedom such that it seems easy to rationalize your desired conclusion. If he’s starting out from wanting the conclusion to be that he can take drugs, it’s not a hard conclusion to reach, which makes it dangerous. Also Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided, it would just be very surprising if there were no downsides.
I’m going off your quotes, so if they’re inaccurate or misrepresent him, he might not find these replies convincing. But the argument goes in the other direction – maybe one ought to be a lot more careful around alcohol and caffeine consumption too (I would bet that millions of people are harmed by those drugs too via addiction and sleep-cycle disruption too).
My current understanding is that humanity actually has a fairly poor understanding of the mechanisms of action of most drugs, or how even small differences of composition alter effect. Not confident here, but I suspect looking at chemical composition isn’t enough.
I think it also matters who you are. I have [exceptionally well-managed] bipolar. I often take small amount of nicotine as a substitute for caffeine. I never do (or have done) highly psychoactive drugs like LSD because I think the risk is too high for me, my brain equilibrium are relatively fragile. I’d worry that being 15 is also a fragile state (something something PFC maturity only in mid-20s) and be pretty careful about what I do to my mind. Here someone in the rationalist community reports real changes due to LSD, granted due to large quantities, but effects in large quantities can (not necessarily) mean smaller effects from small quantities.
And you have to ask, what are the benefits? How much risk is worth how much fun?
There’s something real in your son’s viewpoints. Broader society has a messed up relationship with drugs, things that are fine are illegal, things that are legal can fuck you up, people are excessively cautious and not cautious enough, there ends up being a “purity” attitude around drugs, magical weird distinctions between legal and illegal drugs that aren’t real in reality (they are both drugs), etc. The LessWrong worldview says that you can do better by thinking and researching for yourself, and I think that’s true, I also think it’s possible to do worse.
It’s about achieving the right level of appropriate caution so that you don’t forego valuable opportunities but also don’t shoot yourself in foot.
I’m the team lead for LessWrong and run/build/moderate the site.
I’m flagging this as concerning to have been considered relevant in this context (for generalized authority halo effect reasons; so it’s about this coming to mind at all, not about having been mentioned in the comment).
Good flag. I was hesitant to include it but narrowly decided it was worth putting some credibility behind “I understand LW ideas quite well and this is my position which may or may not differ from yours.”
As Svyatoslav suggests, the most effective way to approach this is to jointly explore with your son what is actually true about various drugs and their benefits and costs, and why they’re treated the way they are. These are not necessarily easy questions to answer and could take some effortful research to actually get to the bottom of things. (I particularly like the advice here.) I doubt 3hr is enough.
I think one of the problems with his argument is that the anecdata he’s collected from blogs and forums is weighted too highly in comparison to actual studies. He says he skimmed some papers that came up in Elicit searches but I don’t know if that’s enough, as they don’t seem to have left him with a sufficient idea of the risks (or he’s just really risk tolerant, as teenagers tend to be).
He also argues that everyone is different and the only way to find out if certain drugs will be beneficial or harmful is by experimenting on yourself, so “why keep reading studies” past a point, but this seems flawed especially without a concrete idea of the possible benefits.
He’s probably seen this post by now, and I’m sure it’ll result in a conversation that leads to a stronger conclusion, so I appreciate the contributions from everyone!
This is essentially a problem of prediction and forecasting, and you might both benefit from looking into the literature on super forecasting. Phillip Tetlock is the go-to, and I’d also look into Nicholas Nassim Taleb.
Basically, your son is right that when you take drugs, you’re placing a bet on the outcome, and the only way to find out for sure what your outcome will be is to take the drug.
However, he seems to be neglecting the critical point that any smart forecaster works very hard to establish the base rate before they make their prediction. That is what you read the research studies for. Of course if he’s just looking for ammunition to justify taking drugs, there really isn’t much of a point in doing more research. But if he’s at least giving lip service to the idea of making smart, well-thought-out choices without getting stuck in analysis paralysis, there are ways to go about the reasoning under uncertainty aspect of the problem. I’d recommend starting with Superforecasting and maybe The Black Swan, and then circle back.
Minor point: Having fun is not the only motivation one can have. One could end up doing a drug, even if they expect to have a bad time, but think it is worth it in the long run. I am talking especially about psychedelics.
Hi concerned_dad,
As Svyatoslav suggests, the most effective way to approach this is to jointly explore with your son what is actually true about various drugs and their benefits and costs, and why they’re treated the way they are. These are not necessarily easy questions to answer and could take some effortful research to actually get to the bottom of things. (I particularly like the advice here.) I doubt 3hr is enough.
To speculate, your son might currently be very excited by the discovery that yes, as it often might have seemed, the broader world has advice and rules that don’t make sense and people can’t give you good explanations for – and that by doing your own thinking, you can achieve better outcomes. This is true, but it’s definitely not foolproof advice.
First things first, Reversed Stupidity Is Not Intelligence, just because broader society is overly afraid of drugs, does not mean that all drugs taken in all ways offer only benefits and no risks. That seems crazy. The reason you take psychoactive drugs is because they do things to your mind, so I have a high prior for negative effects too.
I’d also caution against rationalization and disregarding Chesterton’s fences. The whole topic has many degrees of freedom such that it seems easy to rationalize your desired conclusion. If he’s starting out from wanting the conclusion to be that he can take drugs, it’s not a hard conclusion to reach, which makes it dangerous. Also Policy Debates Should Not Appear One-Sided, it would just be very surprising if there were no downsides.
I’m going off your quotes, so if they’re inaccurate or misrepresent him, he might not find these replies convincing. But the argument goes in the other direction – maybe one ought to be a lot more careful around alcohol and caffeine consumption too (I would bet that millions of people are harmed by those drugs too via addiction and sleep-cycle disruption too).
My current understanding is that humanity actually has a fairly poor understanding of the mechanisms of action of most drugs, or how even small differences of composition alter effect. Not confident here, but I suspect looking at chemical composition isn’t enough.
I think it also matters who you are. I have [exceptionally well-managed] bipolar. I often take small amount of nicotine as a substitute for caffeine. I never do (or have done) highly psychoactive drugs like LSD because I think the risk is too high for me, my brain equilibrium are relatively fragile. I’d worry that being 15 is also a fragile state (something something PFC maturity only in mid-20s) and be pretty careful about what I do to my mind. Here someone in the rationalist community reports real changes due to LSD, granted due to large quantities, but effects in large quantities can (not necessarily) mean smaller effects from small quantities.
And you have to ask, what are the benefits? How much risk is worth how much fun?
There’s something real in your son’s viewpoints. Broader society has a messed up relationship with drugs, things that are fine are illegal, things that are legal can fuck you up, people are excessively cautious and not cautious enough, there ends up being a “purity” attitude around drugs, magical weird distinctions between legal and illegal drugs that aren’t real in reality (they are both drugs), etc. The LessWrong worldview says that you can do better by thinking and researching for yourself, and I think that’s true, I also think it’s possible to do worse.
It’s about achieving the right level of appropriate caution so that you don’t forego valuable opportunities but also don’t shoot yourself in foot.
I’m flagging this as concerning to have been considered relevant in this context (for generalized authority halo effect reasons; so it’s about this coming to mind at all, not about having been mentioned in the comment).
Good flag. I was hesitant to include it but narrowly decided it was worth putting some credibility behind “I understand LW ideas quite well and this is my position which may or may not differ from yours.”
I’ve since removed it.
I also second the advice others are giving that having the right kind of attitude to and relationship with your son is important.
Thanks!
I think one of the problems with his argument is that the anecdata he’s collected from blogs and forums is weighted too highly in comparison to actual studies. He says he skimmed some papers that came up in Elicit searches but I don’t know if that’s enough, as they don’t seem to have left him with a sufficient idea of the risks (or he’s just really risk tolerant, as teenagers tend to be).
He also argues that everyone is different and the only way to find out if certain drugs will be beneficial or harmful is by experimenting on yourself, so “why keep reading studies” past a point, but this seems flawed especially without a concrete idea of the possible benefits.
He’s probably seen this post by now, and I’m sure it’ll result in a conversation that leads to a stronger conclusion, so I appreciate the contributions from everyone!
This is essentially a problem of prediction and forecasting, and you might both benefit from looking into the literature on super forecasting. Phillip Tetlock is the go-to, and I’d also look into Nicholas Nassim Taleb.
Basically, your son is right that when you take drugs, you’re placing a bet on the outcome, and the only way to find out for sure what your outcome will be is to take the drug.
However, he seems to be neglecting the critical point that any smart forecaster works very hard to establish the base rate before they make their prediction. That is what you read the research studies for. Of course if he’s just looking for ammunition to justify taking drugs, there really isn’t much of a point in doing more research. But if he’s at least giving lip service to the idea of making smart, well-thought-out choices without getting stuck in analysis paralysis, there are ways to go about the reasoning under uncertainty aspect of the problem. I’d recommend starting with Superforecasting and maybe The Black Swan, and then circle back.
Minor point: Having fun is not the only motivation one can have. One could end up doing a drug, even if they expect to have a bad time, but think it is worth it in the long run. I am talking especially about psychedelics.