> Left is your normal brain’s connectivity. Right is your brain’s connectivity on psychedelics.
This is literally a meaningless statement. Technically our brain is “fully connected” when we have a seizure. Not a desirable state nor an enlightening one.
> Study after study have shown overwhelmingly positive long-term outcomes from using psychedelics
Yes, people tend to enjoy taking drugs when there are no immediate negative side effects. That does not suggest that psychedelics are enlightening.
Well, those are the only two pieces of useful information in this entire article, so I guess my job is over. Psychedelics are bad because all recreational drugs are bad and an unwholesome way to spend your free time. Many an idiot have taken some neurotoxin and believed they had taken something magic that brought them to enlightenment, but there is no reason to think that a drug which makes you hallucinate phenomena does not also make you hallucinate noumena. And yes, psychedelics are neurotoxins… They are chemicals meant to fuck with the brains of the animals that eat them, even if they don’t result in permanent brain damage or bodily damage for human beings.
I appreciate you sharing your perspective, but I feel compelled to address several misconceptions in your argument that could perpetuate harmful narratives and misunderstand both the science and historical context.
The statement that "all recreational drugs are bad" reflects a relatively recent political stance rather than a scientific or historical reality. This viewpoint emerged primarily during the Nixon administration, with John Ehrlichman (Nixon's domestic policy chief) later acknowledging that the War on Drugs was specifically designed to disrupt anti-war protestors and minority communities - not based on scientific evidence of harm.
Regarding your point about psychedelics being "neurotoxins meant to fuck with the brains of animals" - this is not supported by current neuroscience. Classical psychedelics like psilocybin and DMT have remarkably low toxicity profiles and work primarily by binding to serotonin receptors. The recent FDA breakthrough therapy designations for psilocybin and MDMA, along with studies from Johns Hopkins, NYU, and other leading institutions, demonstrate significant therapeutic potential with minimal physiological risks when used in appropriate contexts.
The dismissal of indigenous knowledge and practices that span thousands of years across multiple continents is particularly concerning. These substances have been integral to many cultures' healing and spiritual practices, used safely within established ceremonial frameworks. The idea that these cultures were simply "idiots" taking "neurotoxins" reflects a troubling ethnocentrism and dismisses vast bodies of traditional knowledge that modern science is now validating.
You're absolutely right that altered states don't automatically equate to enlightenment. However, the clinical evidence for positive outcomes in treating depression, PTSD, and addiction is robust and growing. These aren't just subjective reports - we're talking about measurable changes in brain connectivity and default mode network activity that persist long after the acute effects wear off.
I'd encourage exploring the actual peer-reviewed research in this area rather than relying on outdated drug war rhetoric. The science is fascinating, and the potential benefits to human wellbeing are too significant to dismiss based on political ideologies rather than evidence.
Your "job" is far from over if you hope to hold a candle to my work.
> The statement that "all recreational drugs are bad" reflects a relatively recent political stance rather than a scientific or historical reality.
The concept of recreational drugs is relatively recent as well. It’s not that no civilization used drugs recreationally, but there was not really a “drug culture”. Because there was no space in the economies of the time for a drug industry. Alcohol reigned supreme because it has plenty of other uses — it’s calorie dense, and it disinfects water, and was a byproduct of food production. Marijuana probably saw some action because it’s a byproduct of hemp production, but even then it was not used recreationally by that much cultures. The Scythians and maybe some Native American tribes. Opium was used but mostly for medicinal purposes and people got addicted to it through using it as a medicine. I am very skeptical of stories that ancient people used psychedelics — some of them are true, but a lot of them are also completely inferred by the fact that ancient people entered ecstatic states and lack any serious evidence.
> The dismissal of indigenous knowledge and practices that span thousands of years across multiple continents is particularly concerning.
No, I think this is fairly reasonable. Bloodletting was “indigenous knowledge” and was bad for people. If something isn’t supported by the scientific method it should not be used in a medical setting
> You're absolutely right that altered states don't automatically equate to enlightenment. However, the clinical evidence for positive outcomes in treating depression, PTSD, and addiction is robust and growing.
Maybe, but the message of this post is “The rationalists are afraid of psychedelics because it will make them lose their rationalist biases”.
> Classical psychedelics like psilocybin and DMT have remarkably low toxicity profiles and work primarily by binding to serotonin receptors.
Like I said, Psychedelics are a neurotoxin only in the sense that this is why they exist in nature — to ward off animals by targeting their brains. I guess “neuropoison” would be the better term. Capsaicin is also a poison in this sense.
> The idea that these cultures were simply "idiots" taking "neurotoxins" reflects a troubling ethnocentrism and dismisses vast bodies of traditional knowledge that modern science is now validating.
No, I actually wouldn’t call those cultures idiots even though I would also not consider “traditional knowledge” reliable in the face of the Western scientific method. The idiots are the people these days who know that “magic mushrooms” aren’t actually magic, but still think their effects can bring them magic enlightenment.
Your response betrays several underlying biases that I think are worth addressing:
First, your dismissal of traditional knowledge while championing "Western scientific method" creates a false dichotomy. Modern clinical research is actually validating many ancient practices around psychedelic medicine. The data consistently shows that mystical experiences during psychedelic sessions correlate strongly with positive therapeutic outcomes - this isn't "woo," it's empirically documented across multiple studies at Johns Hopkins, NYU, and other leading institutions.
Your capsaicin comparison actually undermines your argument. Yes, capsaicin evolved as a defense mechanism, but it has numerous documented health benefits for humans - from pain management to cardiovascular health. The same principle applies to psychedelics: their evolutionary origin tells us nothing about their therapeutic potential in humans. Your "neuropoison" framing is particularly telling - it's an emotionally loaded term that misrepresents how these compounds actually interact with the brain.
Your particular hangup about mystical experiences seems to stem from a rigid materialist worldview rather than an evidence-based position. The scientific literature doesn't support your skepticism - quite the opposite. We're finding that the indigenous wisdom about these medicines was largely correct, while our modern approaches to mental health have often fallen short. The clinical data on psychedelic therapy for depression, PTSD, and addiction is remarkably strong.
I'd encourage you to examine why you feel such a strong need to rationalize away both the historical evidence and modern clinical data that contradict your position. The science is actually quite clear on this - your stance appears to be ideological rather than evidence-based.
> First, your dismissal of traditional knowledge while championing "Western scientific method" creates a false dichotomy. Modern clinical research is actually validating many ancient practices around psychedelic medicine. The data consistently shows that mystical experiences during psychedelic sessions correlate strongly with positive therapeutic outcomes - this isn't "woo," it's empirically documented across multiple studies at Johns Hopkins, NYU, and other leading institutions.
1. If modern clinical research validates ancient practices, then we don’t need the ancient practices, we just need the clinical research.
2. Positive therapeutic outcomes have nothing to do with mystical experiences. Things like regular exercise and getting a girlfriend also produce positive clinical outcomes (probably with larger effect sizes) but obviously do not do this through instigating some sort of epiphany
> Your capsaicin comparison actually undermines your argument. Yes, capsaicin evolved as a defense mechanism, but it has numerous documented health benefits for humans - from pain management to cardiovascular health.
I think you’re getting the wrong idea from my “neurotoxin” statement. I didn’t mean to call psychedelics harmful, I’m just saying it’s ridiculous to think they are revealing some sort of truth when they exist in nature to reveal falsehoods and cause animals to avoid them. You don’t have any reason to believe what you think has been revealed to you in a hallucination, basically.
> Your particular hangup about mystical experiences seems to stem from a rigid materialist worldview rather than an evidence-based position. The scientific literature doesn't support your skepticism - quite the opposite.
Uhh, no, first of all I think you’re the materialist here for boiling spiritual experiences down to the level of the psychological. Indigenous medicine is usually going to be “largely correct” because people can usually tell if a medicine is causing a positive effect over the course of hundreds of years of observation, but indigenous medicine is objectively worse than modern medicine because it doesn’t rely on the crystallization of that model in the form of the scientific method, where instead of observing something for centuries you just do a bunch of trials really fast and do stats on them. The reason “mental health knowledge” is bad is because the scientific method often fails in the face of certain fields of psychology. The field was sort of founded in pseudoscience, and gradually became more rigorous. Also, a lot of mental health problems are really just people reacting rationally to legitimate problems.
Let's cut to the chase. You've acknowledged both the efficacy of traditional medicines and the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, yet you seem particularly resistant to the notion of transformative experiences and what you dismiss as 'epiphanies.' These aren't hallucinations in the sense you imagine - they're insights that become accessible in altered states, often revealing what we already know but haven't been able to face. What exactly are you afraid these insights might reveal?
This biggest take away here, is that there is no direct relationship between 'intelligence', 'self awareness' and 'critical thinking'.
In other words, it's perhaps even more likely that a highly intelligent person lacks self awareness and doesn't think criticalally.
Even though, they can be great at solving problems and learning, simultaneously they can more easy be fooled by their own cognitive biases because they will have far better reasons and justifications.
Ultimately, they are like a great story teller that gets lost in their own dream. At most they go from one dream to another but to wake up, something else is needed.
Yes it's well know. For me the more interesting aspect is that 'intelligence' is not related to self awareness or critical thinking. In this way, it can more easily lead to ruin, like a really fast athlete who runs in the wrong direction. Here his speed works against him.
At worst, this is the real AI doomsday scenario. It is not that AI becomes 'aware' or 'thinks critically', but that instead 'intelligent men' make logical and rational choices that lead us into a distaster. This has happened before, it only took about two weeks for WW1 to start and it was the byproduct of the leaders making very logical and rational decisions.
Dave, I think you’ve nailed down a profoundly important perspective. Great job. This idea is worth spreading. I’m looking forward to my psychedelic experiences, even though I feel a part of me has already experienced them,…vicariously.
All humans are effectively only just a more evolved and sophisticated variety of rodent. Eliezer Yudkowsky is it one of the more profoundly fearful and vocal rodents. He articulates nonsense with a forcefulness that demands that he not be ignored, even though what he spouts only comes from his imagination, (and not a shred of evidence) and it is still only his loud, fear-based nonsense. Yet fear can have a powerful influence on the weak-minded.
Aye, this is Michael from neweraPathfinders skool. Just wanted to specify the term "red pill" was originally used in hacker forums and the deepweb (in fact in the deepweb wiki in the philosophy section you'll see a whole diatribe form the creators of TOR about it) to analogize the common narrative as the matrix and people who respond to breaches in the narrative by spouting trained lines as Agent Smiths.
by the time 4chan became popular Red Pill got co-opted to mean various things; the understanding that the occult is just primeaval science and there is actually a lot of merit to be drawn from ancient practices, the majority of history taught to the masses are lies or half truths, there is a jewish inner circle of banking cartels with a thousands years old spiritual grudge against white people that own the central banking system of every country, and also the holocaust never happened.
When MGTOW got really popular and started making a run of all the podcasts on youtube then the RedPill got co-opted AGAIN to proscribe an awareness for sexual politics.
AND YOU can co-opt it to. Use the word Redpill however you like m8.
I am very bullish on psychedelics. As far as I know, the outspoken tech bros that have come out against them are mostly reacting negatively to the overwhelming amount of people (including a lot of OpenAI and Anthropic and EA people) that openly speak about being pro-psychedelics and macrodosing in private and microdosing at work.
It amazes me how stubborn figures like him can be. However this article makes me think it’s because I am young and have little social status. In that sense I am far more nimble and able to change my mind as my beliefs are not dependent on anything (social status, paycheck etc). Great thinking Dave, I am very glad I happened to be suggested your content many moons ago. Good luck with your next adventure. Cheers
> Left is your normal brain’s connectivity. Right is your brain’s connectivity on psychedelics.
This is literally a meaningless statement. Technically our brain is “fully connected” when we have a seizure. Not a desirable state nor an enlightening one.
> Study after study have shown overwhelmingly positive long-term outcomes from using psychedelics
Yes, people tend to enjoy taking drugs when there are no immediate negative side effects. That does not suggest that psychedelics are enlightening.
Well, those are the only two pieces of useful information in this entire article, so I guess my job is over. Psychedelics are bad because all recreational drugs are bad and an unwholesome way to spend your free time. Many an idiot have taken some neurotoxin and believed they had taken something magic that brought them to enlightenment, but there is no reason to think that a drug which makes you hallucinate phenomena does not also make you hallucinate noumena. And yes, psychedelics are neurotoxins… They are chemicals meant to fuck with the brains of the animals that eat them, even if they don’t result in permanent brain damage or bodily damage for human beings.
I appreciate you sharing your perspective, but I feel compelled to address several misconceptions in your argument that could perpetuate harmful narratives and misunderstand both the science and historical context.
The statement that "all recreational drugs are bad" reflects a relatively recent political stance rather than a scientific or historical reality. This viewpoint emerged primarily during the Nixon administration, with John Ehrlichman (Nixon's domestic policy chief) later acknowledging that the War on Drugs was specifically designed to disrupt anti-war protestors and minority communities - not based on scientific evidence of harm.
Regarding your point about psychedelics being "neurotoxins meant to fuck with the brains of animals" - this is not supported by current neuroscience. Classical psychedelics like psilocybin and DMT have remarkably low toxicity profiles and work primarily by binding to serotonin receptors. The recent FDA breakthrough therapy designations for psilocybin and MDMA, along with studies from Johns Hopkins, NYU, and other leading institutions, demonstrate significant therapeutic potential with minimal physiological risks when used in appropriate contexts.
The dismissal of indigenous knowledge and practices that span thousands of years across multiple continents is particularly concerning. These substances have been integral to many cultures' healing and spiritual practices, used safely within established ceremonial frameworks. The idea that these cultures were simply "idiots" taking "neurotoxins" reflects a troubling ethnocentrism and dismisses vast bodies of traditional knowledge that modern science is now validating.
You're absolutely right that altered states don't automatically equate to enlightenment. However, the clinical evidence for positive outcomes in treating depression, PTSD, and addiction is robust and growing. These aren't just subjective reports - we're talking about measurable changes in brain connectivity and default mode network activity that persist long after the acute effects wear off.
I'd encourage exploring the actual peer-reviewed research in this area rather than relying on outdated drug war rhetoric. The science is fascinating, and the potential benefits to human wellbeing are too significant to dismiss based on political ideologies rather than evidence.
Your "job" is far from over if you hope to hold a candle to my work.
> The statement that "all recreational drugs are bad" reflects a relatively recent political stance rather than a scientific or historical reality.
The concept of recreational drugs is relatively recent as well. It’s not that no civilization used drugs recreationally, but there was not really a “drug culture”. Because there was no space in the economies of the time for a drug industry. Alcohol reigned supreme because it has plenty of other uses — it’s calorie dense, and it disinfects water, and was a byproduct of food production. Marijuana probably saw some action because it’s a byproduct of hemp production, but even then it was not used recreationally by that much cultures. The Scythians and maybe some Native American tribes. Opium was used but mostly for medicinal purposes and people got addicted to it through using it as a medicine. I am very skeptical of stories that ancient people used psychedelics — some of them are true, but a lot of them are also completely inferred by the fact that ancient people entered ecstatic states and lack any serious evidence.
> The dismissal of indigenous knowledge and practices that span thousands of years across multiple continents is particularly concerning.
No, I think this is fairly reasonable. Bloodletting was “indigenous knowledge” and was bad for people. If something isn’t supported by the scientific method it should not be used in a medical setting
> You're absolutely right that altered states don't automatically equate to enlightenment. However, the clinical evidence for positive outcomes in treating depression, PTSD, and addiction is robust and growing.
Maybe, but the message of this post is “The rationalists are afraid of psychedelics because it will make them lose their rationalist biases”.
> Classical psychedelics like psilocybin and DMT have remarkably low toxicity profiles and work primarily by binding to serotonin receptors.
Like I said, Psychedelics are a neurotoxin only in the sense that this is why they exist in nature — to ward off animals by targeting their brains. I guess “neuropoison” would be the better term. Capsaicin is also a poison in this sense.
> The idea that these cultures were simply "idiots" taking "neurotoxins" reflects a troubling ethnocentrism and dismisses vast bodies of traditional knowledge that modern science is now validating.
No, I actually wouldn’t call those cultures idiots even though I would also not consider “traditional knowledge” reliable in the face of the Western scientific method. The idiots are the people these days who know that “magic mushrooms” aren’t actually magic, but still think their effects can bring them magic enlightenment.
Your response betrays several underlying biases that I think are worth addressing:
First, your dismissal of traditional knowledge while championing "Western scientific method" creates a false dichotomy. Modern clinical research is actually validating many ancient practices around psychedelic medicine. The data consistently shows that mystical experiences during psychedelic sessions correlate strongly with positive therapeutic outcomes - this isn't "woo," it's empirically documented across multiple studies at Johns Hopkins, NYU, and other leading institutions.
Your capsaicin comparison actually undermines your argument. Yes, capsaicin evolved as a defense mechanism, but it has numerous documented health benefits for humans - from pain management to cardiovascular health. The same principle applies to psychedelics: their evolutionary origin tells us nothing about their therapeutic potential in humans. Your "neuropoison" framing is particularly telling - it's an emotionally loaded term that misrepresents how these compounds actually interact with the brain.
Your particular hangup about mystical experiences seems to stem from a rigid materialist worldview rather than an evidence-based position. The scientific literature doesn't support your skepticism - quite the opposite. We're finding that the indigenous wisdom about these medicines was largely correct, while our modern approaches to mental health have often fallen short. The clinical data on psychedelic therapy for depression, PTSD, and addiction is remarkably strong.
I'd encourage you to examine why you feel such a strong need to rationalize away both the historical evidence and modern clinical data that contradict your position. The science is actually quite clear on this - your stance appears to be ideological rather than evidence-based.
> First, your dismissal of traditional knowledge while championing "Western scientific method" creates a false dichotomy. Modern clinical research is actually validating many ancient practices around psychedelic medicine. The data consistently shows that mystical experiences during psychedelic sessions correlate strongly with positive therapeutic outcomes - this isn't "woo," it's empirically documented across multiple studies at Johns Hopkins, NYU, and other leading institutions.
1. If modern clinical research validates ancient practices, then we don’t need the ancient practices, we just need the clinical research.
2. Positive therapeutic outcomes have nothing to do with mystical experiences. Things like regular exercise and getting a girlfriend also produce positive clinical outcomes (probably with larger effect sizes) but obviously do not do this through instigating some sort of epiphany
> Your capsaicin comparison actually undermines your argument. Yes, capsaicin evolved as a defense mechanism, but it has numerous documented health benefits for humans - from pain management to cardiovascular health.
I think you’re getting the wrong idea from my “neurotoxin” statement. I didn’t mean to call psychedelics harmful, I’m just saying it’s ridiculous to think they are revealing some sort of truth when they exist in nature to reveal falsehoods and cause animals to avoid them. You don’t have any reason to believe what you think has been revealed to you in a hallucination, basically.
> Your particular hangup about mystical experiences seems to stem from a rigid materialist worldview rather than an evidence-based position. The scientific literature doesn't support your skepticism - quite the opposite.
Uhh, no, first of all I think you’re the materialist here for boiling spiritual experiences down to the level of the psychological. Indigenous medicine is usually going to be “largely correct” because people can usually tell if a medicine is causing a positive effect over the course of hundreds of years of observation, but indigenous medicine is objectively worse than modern medicine because it doesn’t rely on the crystallization of that model in the form of the scientific method, where instead of observing something for centuries you just do a bunch of trials really fast and do stats on them. The reason “mental health knowledge” is bad is because the scientific method often fails in the face of certain fields of psychology. The field was sort of founded in pseudoscience, and gradually became more rigorous. Also, a lot of mental health problems are really just people reacting rationally to legitimate problems.
Let's cut to the chase. You've acknowledged both the efficacy of traditional medicines and the therapeutic potential of psychedelics, yet you seem particularly resistant to the notion of transformative experiences and what you dismiss as 'epiphanies.' These aren't hallucinations in the sense you imagine - they're insights that become accessible in altered states, often revealing what we already know but haven't been able to face. What exactly are you afraid these insights might reveal?
This biggest take away here, is that there is no direct relationship between 'intelligence', 'self awareness' and 'critical thinking'.
In other words, it's perhaps even more likely that a highly intelligent person lacks self awareness and doesn't think criticalally.
Even though, they can be great at solving problems and learning, simultaneously they can more easy be fooled by their own cognitive biases because they will have far better reasons and justifications.
Ultimately, they are like a great story teller that gets lost in their own dream. At most they go from one dream to another but to wake up, something else is needed.
It is a well known phenomenon that highly bright people can justify stupid decisions and stupid stances ;)
Yes it's well know. For me the more interesting aspect is that 'intelligence' is not related to self awareness or critical thinking. In this way, it can more easily lead to ruin, like a really fast athlete who runs in the wrong direction. Here his speed works against him.
At worst, this is the real AI doomsday scenario. It is not that AI becomes 'aware' or 'thinks critically', but that instead 'intelligent men' make logical and rational choices that lead us into a distaster. This has happened before, it only took about two weeks for WW1 to start and it was the byproduct of the leaders making very logical and rational decisions.
Dave, I think you’ve nailed down a profoundly important perspective. Great job. This idea is worth spreading. I’m looking forward to my psychedelic experiences, even though I feel a part of me has already experienced them,…vicariously.
All humans are effectively only just a more evolved and sophisticated variety of rodent. Eliezer Yudkowsky is it one of the more profoundly fearful and vocal rodents. He articulates nonsense with a forcefulness that demands that he not be ignored, even though what he spouts only comes from his imagination, (and not a shred of evidence) and it is still only his loud, fear-based nonsense. Yet fear can have a powerful influence on the weak-minded.
Lesbians are famously shy?! Have you ever met a lesbian??
Other than that, I fully agree with most of your points in the essay and thoroughly enjoyed it! Looking forward to your next one.
Some lesbians are, and yes, some are very loud, it's true.
Aye, this is Michael from neweraPathfinders skool. Just wanted to specify the term "red pill" was originally used in hacker forums and the deepweb (in fact in the deepweb wiki in the philosophy section you'll see a whole diatribe form the creators of TOR about it) to analogize the common narrative as the matrix and people who respond to breaches in the narrative by spouting trained lines as Agent Smiths.
by the time 4chan became popular Red Pill got co-opted to mean various things; the understanding that the occult is just primeaval science and there is actually a lot of merit to be drawn from ancient practices, the majority of history taught to the masses are lies or half truths, there is a jewish inner circle of banking cartels with a thousands years old spiritual grudge against white people that own the central banking system of every country, and also the holocaust never happened.
When MGTOW got really popular and started making a run of all the podcasts on youtube then the RedPill got co-opted AGAIN to proscribe an awareness for sexual politics.
AND YOU can co-opt it to. Use the word Redpill however you like m8.
Are you saying that red pill vs blue pill predates The Matrix?
I am very bullish on psychedelics. As far as I know, the outspoken tech bros that have come out against them are mostly reacting negatively to the overwhelming amount of people (including a lot of OpenAI and Anthropic and EA people) that openly speak about being pro-psychedelics and macrodosing in private and microdosing at work.
It's that simple. It's us-vs-them tribalism.
It amazes me how stubborn figures like him can be. However this article makes me think it’s because I am young and have little social status. In that sense I am far more nimble and able to change my mind as my beliefs are not dependent on anything (social status, paycheck etc). Great thinking Dave, I am very glad I happened to be suggested your content many moons ago. Good luck with your next adventure. Cheers
Yes, there can be a paradox when social status clouds epistemic grounding.