I think it is highly irresponsible to recommend potentially damaging interventions to people without even mentioning the risk.
Of course, people should also do their own research, as a second line of defense, but Less Wrong is a place where I come with expectation of the debate being more reasonable than the rest of the internet, so I am more disappointed when someone provides dangerous advice without mentioning the risks.
We already have enough people in the Bay Area who keep advising others to take dangerous drugs, with “trust me bro, I am a rationalist, I did my research online”… but then we have overdoses and suicide and people going crazy. Or a few months ago, we had on Less Wrong an article about how to do massage, written by a self-taught enthusiast who recommended practices that could seriously hurt people (“just push strongly, in any place and direction”, “it is not a problem when it hurts”, “yes even if you massage pregnant women”) and bragged about how many people IRL he already taught his “technique”.
We already have enough people in the Bay Area who keep advising others to take dangerous drugs, with “trust me bro, I am a rationalist, I did my research online”… but then we have overdoses and suicide and people going crazy.
I have plenty of frustration with (mostly psychedelic) drug use in the Bay Area, but I really don’t think this is at all a reasonable summary of a pattern. Did we even ever have any overdoses anywhere?
I also don’t really think approximately any suicides are correlated with drug use. My guess is they are anti-correlated, though mostly for confounder reasons.
I do think some people go crazy because they take psychedelics, but I really don’t think anything would change if people put more disclaimers into their discussions of those drugs. People already put really a lot of disclaimers places.
(I don’t have a take on the massage thread the other day. My prior is that people overall are vastly vastly too hesitant to make recommendations as a result of a liability mindset where you will be held responsible for things going wrong, and not rewarded for things going right, and this is destroying really a huge amount of value in the world, so my guess is I am in favor of the massage guy getting to make his massage recommendations, but I really haven’t done anything but the most cursory skim of that thread)
I think it is highly irresponsible to recommend potentially damaging interventions to people without even mentioning the risk.
Of course, people should also do their own research, as a second line of defense, but Less Wrong is a place where I come with expectation of the debate being more reasonable than the rest of the internet, so I am more disappointed when someone provides dangerous advice without mentioning the risks.
We already have enough people in the Bay Area who keep advising others to take dangerous drugs, with “trust me bro, I am a rationalist, I did my research online”… but then we have overdoses and suicide and people going crazy. Or a few months ago, we had on Less Wrong an article about how to do massage, written by a self-taught enthusiast who recommended practices that could seriously hurt people (“just push strongly, in any place and direction”, “it is not a problem when it hurts”, “yes even if you massage pregnant women”) and bragged about how many people IRL he already taught his “technique”.
I definitely want less of this.
I have plenty of frustration with (mostly psychedelic) drug use in the Bay Area, but I really don’t think this is at all a reasonable summary of a pattern. Did we even ever have any overdoses anywhere?
I also don’t really think approximately any suicides are correlated with drug use. My guess is they are anti-correlated, though mostly for confounder reasons.
I do think some people go crazy because they take psychedelics, but I really don’t think anything would change if people put more disclaimers into their discussions of those drugs. People already put really a lot of disclaimers places.
(I don’t have a take on the massage thread the other day. My prior is that people overall are vastly vastly too hesitant to make recommendations as a result of a liability mindset where you will be held responsible for things going wrong, and not rewarded for things going right, and this is destroying really a huge amount of value in the world, so my guess is I am in favor of the massage guy getting to make his massage recommendations, but I really haven’t done anything but the most cursory skim of that thread)
Thanks for correcting me on the overdoses.
(I will keep my opinion on the massage thread.)