It was historically a direct relationship, but afaik hasn’t been very close in years.
Edit: Also, if the “Vassarites” are the type of group with “official stances”, this is the first I’ve heard of it.
AprilSR
Karma: 981
Not on LSD, I’ve done some emotional processing with others on MDMA but I don’t know if I’d describe it as “targeted work to change beliefs”, it was more stuff like “talk about my relationship with my family more openly than I’m usually able to.”
I was introduced to belief reporting, but I didn’t do very much of it and wasn’t on drugs at the time.
I agree I am “more schizophrenic”, that’s obvious. (Edit: Though I’d argue I’m less paranoid, and beforehand was somewhat in denial about how much paranoia I did have.) I very clearly do not fit the diagnosis criteria. Even if you set aside the six months requirement, the only symptom I even arguably have is delusions and you need multiple.
Yeah, I’m not meaning to actively suggest taking psychedelics with any of them.
Some discussion of coverups can be found at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pQGFeKvjydztpgnsY/occupational-infohazards.
I’d appreciate a rain check to think about the best way to approach things. I agree it’s probably better for more details here to be common knowledge but I’m worried about it turning into just like, another unnuanced accusation? Vague worries about Vassarites being culty and bad did not help me, a grounded analysis of the precise details might have.
That’s plausible. It was like a week and a half.
Edit: I do think the LSD was a contributing factor, but it’s hard to separate effects of the drug from effects of the LSD making it easier for me to question ontological assumptions.
I don’t love ranking people in terms of harmfulness but if you are going to do that instead of forming some more specific model then yeah I think there are very good reasons to hold this view. (Mostly because I think there’s little reason to worry
at allunusually much about anyone else Vassar-associated, though there could possibly be things I’m not aware of.)
No, I did not.
I have had LSD. I’ve taken like, 100μg maybe once, 50-75 a couple times, 25ish once or twice. No lasting consequences that I would personally consider severe, though other people would disagree I think? Like, from my perspective I have a couple weird long-shot hypotheses bouncing around my head that I haven’t firmly disproven but which mostly have no impact on my behavior other than making me act slightly superstitious at times.
I had a serious psychotic episode, like, once, which didn’t involve any actual attempts to induce it but did involve a moment where I was like “okay trying to hold myself fully to normality here isn’t really important, let’s just actually think about the crazy hypotheses.” I think I had 10mg cannabis a few days before that, and it’d been
like a montharound a week and a half since I’d had any LSD. That was in late August.Edit: Actually, for the sake of being frank here, I should make it clear that I’m not particularly anti-psychosis in all cases? Like, personally I think I’ve been sorta paranoid for my entire life and like… attempting to actually explicitly model things instead of just having vague uncomfortable feelings might’ve been good, even if they were crazy… I dunno how accurate this is but it’s possible to tell a story where I had some crazy things compartmentalized which I needed to process. How much that generalizes to other people is very much arguable, but I don’t personally feel “stay as far away as you possibly can from any mental states that might be considered sorta psychotic-adjacent” would be universally good advice.
But like, no, I was not at any point trying to induce psychosis, that’s just my perspective on it in retrospect.
(I am happy to answer questions I just don’t want to get into an argument.)
I don’t actually want to litigate the details here, but I think describing me as “literally schizophrenic” is taking things a bit far.
In case it’s a helpful data point: lines of reasoning sorta similar to the ones around the infohazard warning seemed to have interesting and intense psychological effects on me one time. It’s hard to separate out from other factors, though, and I think it had something to do with the fact that lately I’ve been spending a lot of time learning to take ideas seriously on an emotional level instead of only an abstract one.
I mostly think it’s too loose a heuristic and that you should dig into more details
Some of the probability questions (many worlds, simulation) are like… ontologically weird enough that I’m not entirely certain it makes sense to assign probabilities to them? It doesn’t really feel like they pay rent in anticipated experience?
I’m not sure “speaking the truth even when it’s uncomfortable” is the kind of skill it makes sense to describe yourself as “comfortable” with.
I think it’s pretty good to keep it in mind that heliocentrism is literally speaking just a change in what coordinate system you use, but it is legitimately a much more convenient coordinate system.
Switch to neuroscience. I think we have an innate “sense of sociality” in our brainstem (or maybe hypothalamus), analogous to how (I claim) fear-of-heights is triggered by an innate brainstem “sense” that we’re standing over a precipice.
I think lately I’ve noticed how much written text triggers this for me varying a bit over time?
...Does that hold together as a potential explanation for why our universe is so young? Huh.
I think my ideal is to lean into weirdness in a way that doesn’t rely on ignorance of normal conventions
For a while I ended up spending a lot of time thinking about specifically the versions of the idea where I couldn’t easily tell how true they were… which I suppose I do think is the correct place to be paying attention to?
...Yeah I’m well aware but probably useful context