In the short term, ingesting sugar will boost your capacity for handling complexity.
“I doubt a psychedelic experience can help me optimize my current utility function better than my sober self. How can I be more rational from a drug?”
WTF, dude? Not everything in life is about improving your rationality. Do you expect to become more rational after eating a hot dog? How about a peach?
The entire point of being rational is to maximize your expected life value.
If taking psilocybin increases your expected life value by construction you would be irrational not to take it… unless you place a high value on passing up “at least a moderate increase in well-being or life satisfaction”.
WTF, dude? Not everything in life is about improving your rationality. Do you expect to become more rational after eating a hot dog? How about a peach?
I think you’re being a bit too skeptical here. Yes, I usually eat peaches because I like them and they’re good for my health. But I would, in fact, expect to become more rational after eating—especially if I was about to enter a supermarket to do my grocery shopping!
There is a difference between rationality (optimal decision making based on the known facts and a set of value-weightings of possible futures) and the value-weightings themselves. It strikes me that eating the peach would quite probably alter how much you would value particular possible worlds, but I find it much more difficult to believe that it would alter your ability to deal with complexity (predict the future).
“The entire point of being rational is to maximize your expected life value.”
That may be your purpose of being rational, but I don’t see how that follows necessarily. The purpose of being rational is to consciously know what you’re arguing and why. There are many potential reasons why that could be a useful strategy.
Here are better primary sources:
The Johns Hopkins Study: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2006/GriffithsPsilocybin.pdf Commentary: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2006/GriffithsCommentaries.pdf
“How can I be more rational from a drug?”
In the short term, ingesting sugar will boost your capacity for handling complexity.
“I doubt a psychedelic experience can help me optimize my current utility function better than my sober self. How can I be more rational from a drug?”
WTF, dude? Not everything in life is about improving your rationality. Do you expect to become more rational after eating a hot dog? How about a peach?
The entire point of being rational is to maximize your expected life value.
If taking psilocybin increases your expected life value by construction you would be irrational not to take it… unless you place a high value on passing up “at least a moderate increase in well-being or life satisfaction”.
I think you’re being a bit too skeptical here. Yes, I usually eat peaches because I like them and they’re good for my health. But I would, in fact, expect to become more rational after eating—especially if I was about to enter a supermarket to do my grocery shopping!
There is a difference between rationality (optimal decision making based on the known facts and a set of value-weightings of possible futures) and the value-weightings themselves. It strikes me that eating the peach would quite probably alter how much you would value particular possible worlds, but I find it much more difficult to believe that it would alter your ability to deal with complexity (predict the future).
“The entire point of being rational is to maximize your expected life value.”
That may be your purpose of being rational, but I don’t see how that follows necessarily. The purpose of being rational is to consciously know what you’re arguing and why. There are many potential reasons why that could be a useful strategy.