I’ve spent probably 200 hours trying to understand stuff near here, in various ways, across the last 15 years. I don’t have a lack of curiosity about it.
(Partly this is because for awhile, many people across the greater rationalist community who seemed a bit psychotic or manic, or more rarely full-blown psychotic/manic, were people who someone would reach out to me about. Partly it’s because CFAR had an early experience with a CFAR participant who had a full-blown manic episode after coming to a workshop, and I and we as a staff responded to this by trying to up our game at noticing warning signs of such. Partly it’s because I’ve somehow been curious about what’s up with psychosis since I was a teen, after a friend’s experience with psychosis and psychiatry.)
People who run all kinds of psychological workshops or meditation retreats tell me that their workshops can occasionally trigger manic or psychotic states in folks with a predisposition in that direction. (Eg Landmark, several different kinds of meditation, some person I talked to at a conference who did random self-help stuff). My high school friend was told by her psychiatrist not to read philosophy books, because allegedly philosophy books are a common psychosis trigger. Sudden major life changes, particularly negative ones but sometimes also positive ones, can trigger mania or psychosis. Psychedelics, including cannabis, can also trigger mania and psychosis. I suspect there’s a common thread running through all of this, where mania/psychosis often happens when the mind tries to reorganize, plus or minus some other factors I don’t understand well.
People also tell me autistic spectrum folks have psychotic episodes more often. Autistic spectrum seems common in the rationalist community.
In terms of how risky CFAR workshops in particular are (I’m sharing data here, not trying to argue that they are or aren’t): about 1800 people have attended 4.5-day or longer events with us. From this set, I am aware of two full-blown manic or psychotic episodes happening at or shortly after a workshop: one from the early participant I mentioned above, and one from someone in ~2018-ish. The later person tried cannabis during “comfort zone exploration,” which they got from another participant without us knowing, which seemed to set off the episode. If I take as a “control group” people who had already been accepted to a CFAR workshop, and had committed to attending but had not yet actually attended: there was one manic or psychotic episode I know of in that group (a person who canceled their participation and told us this was because of mania/psychosis). The early participant had a previous milder psychosis-like episode after reading the Sequences, a couple years before he attended CFAR; the later participant had a previous milder maybe-episode in response to life stresses. I do think we should try to exercise care here.
(In terms of why I’m talking about “mania or psychosis” together, instead of separating these out: it turns out I’m fairly accurate at predicting when a psychiatrist will say that a person has either mania or psychosis, but am no better than chance at predicting which of these things a psychiatrist will say a given person has. Also most of the first aid seems similar: if you have mild signs of mania or psychosis, maybe: avoid recreational drugs, including alcohol and coffee; get sleep if at all possible; do normal grounding things such as gardening or the dishes, rather than “heady” or agitating things such as math or philosophy or politics; remember that now is not the only time to ever solve the thing one is currently upset about; don’t drive cars or make major decisions; maybe see a psychiatrist; maybe reach out to loved ones and dial back the complexities of life for a little bit. So I use the courser-grained concept “mania/psychosis.”)
I’ve spent probably 200 hours trying to understand stuff near here, in various ways, across the last 15 years. I don’t have a lack of curiosity about it.
That’s good to hear. Any insights?
People who run all kinds of psychological workshops or meditation retreats tell me that their workshops can occasionally trigger manic or psychotic states in folks with a predisposition in that direction. (Eg Landmark, several different kinds of meditation, some person I talked to at a conference who did random self-help stuff). My high school friend was told by her psychiatrist not to read philosophy books, because allegedly philosophy books are a common psychosis trigger. Psychedelics, including cannabis, can also trigger mania and psychosis. I suspect there’s a common thread running through all of this.
Yeah, there’s something fucked up about meditation communities too. And let’s not forget Vassar/Vassarites.
I think the through-line has to do with drastic modification of self-image, which helps explain the AI cases too (or higher rate in trans). It seems to be a lot worse if this modification was pushed on them to any degree.
(I’m not saying that modification of self-image is categorically bad. It’s necessary as your actual self changes, and most people probably have false beliefs here (maybe even all conscious experience according to some). But be careful. Please!)
I’m not really swayed by arguments that our rough neurotype is just more prone to this (almost certainly true), since the inciting incident—when it’s not just drugs—usually seems to be some sort of rationality content or technique. People are prone to dying, but we don’t just shrug and say “damn that’s crazy” when something causes someone to die. There should be a post-mortem analysis, and sign-post warnings. Maybe you’ve been diligent about this, but the community-at-large seems to have a missing mood here. More public boggling would have been nice.
In terms of how risky CFAR workshops in particular are (I’m sharing data here, not trying to argue that they are or aren’t): about 1800 people have attended 4.5-day or longer events with us. From this set, I am aware of two full-blown manic or psychotic episodes happening at or shortly after a workshop: one from the early participant I mentioned above, and one from someone in ~2018-ish. The later person tried cannabis during “comfort zone exploration,” which they got from another participant without us knowing, which seemed to set off the episode. If I take as a “control group” people who had already been accepted to a CFAR workshop, and had committed to attending but had not yet actually attended: there was one manic or psychotic episode I know of in that group (a person who canceled their participation and told us this was because of mania/psychosis). The early participant had a previous milder psychosis-like episode after reading the Sequences, a couple years before he attended CFAR; the later participant had a previous milder maybe-episode in response to life stresses. I do think we should try to exercise care here.
Thanks for sharing the data. It’s plausible to me that CFAR isn’t particularly bad here, but the prevalence in the community seems extremely high compared to say, my childhood Mormon ward (one case that I know of, did psychedelics which is a no-no). This is something that’s been bothering me about the community in general for years, and your post was the unlucky one that inspired me to say something[1] because the psychosis part had the feeling of the missing mood I’m trying to point at.
Why not earlier? For better-or-worse (worse), having a model I’m happy with seems to be a prerequisite to taking action for me. That only happened about a month ago, while researching the AI psychosis stuff.
I agree more community interest would be good here; and I appreciate you writing about it; although I also feel grudging because I don’t want this to take up all the attention under my post about new pilot CFAR workshops. Any chance you’d be up for heading with me to your shortform or to open thread or [making a top-level post yourself as a locus for discussion] or something? I’ll follow and discuss there. And we can link to it here.
I would off the top of my head guess the Mormons are unusually good at avoiding psychotic episodes, in addition to the rationality community being unusually bad for this; and I agree each situation deserves a postmortem etc.
Edited to add: Adele and I are now talking on Adele’s shortform if anyone would like to join there.
If anyone later wants to post brief take-aways or points they’re particularly interested in back here, I don’t object to that, I just don’t want there to be a large amount of long-winded discussion on it here.
I’ve spent probably 200 hours trying to understand stuff near here, in various ways, across the last 15 years. I don’t have a lack of curiosity about it.
(Partly this is because for awhile, many people across the greater rationalist community who seemed a bit psychotic or manic, or more rarely full-blown psychotic/manic, were people who someone would reach out to me about. Partly it’s because CFAR had an early experience with a CFAR participant who had a full-blown manic episode after coming to a workshop, and I and we as a staff responded to this by trying to up our game at noticing warning signs of such. Partly it’s because I’ve somehow been curious about what’s up with psychosis since I was a teen, after a friend’s experience with psychosis and psychiatry.)
People who run all kinds of psychological workshops or meditation retreats tell me that their workshops can occasionally trigger manic or psychotic states in folks with a predisposition in that direction. (Eg Landmark, several different kinds of meditation, some person I talked to at a conference who did random self-help stuff). My high school friend was told by her psychiatrist not to read philosophy books, because allegedly philosophy books are a common psychosis trigger. Sudden major life changes, particularly negative ones but sometimes also positive ones, can trigger mania or psychosis. Psychedelics, including cannabis, can also trigger mania and psychosis. I suspect there’s a common thread running through all of this, where mania/psychosis often happens when the mind tries to reorganize, plus or minus some other factors I don’t understand well.
People also tell me autistic spectrum folks have psychotic episodes more often. Autistic spectrum seems common in the rationalist community.
In terms of how risky CFAR workshops in particular are (I’m sharing data here, not trying to argue that they are or aren’t): about 1800 people have attended 4.5-day or longer events with us. From this set, I am aware of two full-blown manic or psychotic episodes happening at or shortly after a workshop: one from the early participant I mentioned above, and one from someone in ~2018-ish. The later person tried cannabis during “comfort zone exploration,” which they got from another participant without us knowing, which seemed to set off the episode. If I take as a “control group” people who had already been accepted to a CFAR workshop, and had committed to attending but had not yet actually attended: there was one manic or psychotic episode I know of in that group (a person who canceled their participation and told us this was because of mania/psychosis). The early participant had a previous milder psychosis-like episode after reading the Sequences, a couple years before he attended CFAR; the later participant had a previous milder maybe-episode in response to life stresses. I do think we should try to exercise care here.
(In terms of why I’m talking about “mania or psychosis” together, instead of separating these out: it turns out I’m fairly accurate at predicting when a psychiatrist will say that a person has either mania or psychosis, but am no better than chance at predicting which of these things a psychiatrist will say a given person has. Also most of the first aid seems similar: if you have mild signs of mania or psychosis, maybe: avoid recreational drugs, including alcohol and coffee; get sleep if at all possible; do normal grounding things such as gardening or the dishes, rather than “heady” or agitating things such as math or philosophy or politics; remember that now is not the only time to ever solve the thing one is currently upset about; don’t drive cars or make major decisions; maybe see a psychiatrist; maybe reach out to loved ones and dial back the complexities of life for a little bit. So I use the courser-grained concept “mania/psychosis.”)
That’s good to hear. Any insights?
Yeah, there’s something fucked up about meditation communities too. And let’s not forget Vassar/Vassarites.
I think the through-line has to do with drastic modification of self-image, which helps explain the AI cases too (or higher rate in trans). It seems to be a lot worse if this modification was pushed on them to any degree.
(I’m not saying that modification of self-image is categorically bad. It’s necessary as your actual self changes, and most people probably have false beliefs here (maybe even all conscious experience according to some). But be careful. Please!)
I’m not really swayed by arguments that our rough neurotype is just more prone to this (almost certainly true), since the inciting incident—when it’s not just drugs—usually seems to be some sort of rationality content or technique. People are prone to dying, but we don’t just shrug and say “damn that’s crazy” when something causes someone to die. There should be a post-mortem analysis, and sign-post warnings. Maybe you’ve been diligent about this, but the community-at-large seems to have a missing mood here. More public boggling would have been nice.
Thanks for sharing the data. It’s plausible to me that CFAR isn’t particularly bad here, but the prevalence in the community seems extremely high compared to say, my childhood Mormon ward (one case that I know of, did psychedelics which is a no-no). This is something that’s been bothering me about the community in general for years, and your post was the unlucky one that inspired me to say something[1] because the psychosis part had the feeling of the missing mood I’m trying to point at.
And fair point re. mania/psychosis.
Why not earlier? For better-or-worse (worse), having a model I’m happy with seems to be a prerequisite to taking action for me. That only happened about a month ago, while researching the AI psychosis stuff.
I agree more community interest would be good here; and I appreciate you writing about it; although I also feel grudging because I don’t want this to take up all the attention under my post about new pilot CFAR workshops. Any chance you’d be up for heading with me to your shortform or to open thread or [making a top-level post yourself as a locus for discussion] or something? I’ll follow and discuss there. And we can link to it here.
I would off the top of my head guess the Mormons are unusually good at avoiding psychotic episodes, in addition to the rationality community being unusually bad for this; and I agree each situation deserves a postmortem etc.
Edited to add: Adele and I are now talking on Adele’s shortform if anyone would like to join there.
If anyone later wants to post brief take-aways or points they’re particularly interested in back here, I don’t object to that, I just don’t want there to be a large amount of long-winded discussion on it here.