I don't think you've shown this. It's more plausible to me that Xrisk is a top tier intervention and rationality and the 'mindset-changingness' of psychedelics are in the lower tiers. This would still make them potentially very interesting from a long-termist perspective...

Being in the same tier as rationality interventions is basically what I meant by "being in the same ballpark," though my language wasn't very precise.

Also I'll note that "x-risk intervention" is a pretty loose category:

• Doing agent foundations research at MIRI? Definitely an x-risk intervention.
• Doing AI safety work at OpenAI? Definitely an x-risk intervention.
• Doing AI development work at OpenAI? Maybe that's an x-risk intervention, though not totally clear how doing AI dev at OpenAI is different from doing AI dev at a FANG company.
• Doing AI policy work at CSET? Sure, that's probably an x-risk intervention, though really what CSET is trying to do is influence policymakers' opinions about AI (which seems pretty similar to CFAR's mission, though the target market is different).
• Leading rationality workshops at CFAR? In the taxonomy you gave, CFAR is outside the category of "x-risk interventions," though it's plausibly doing stuff aimed at x-risk reduction in the same way that e.g. CSET is doing stuff aimed at x-risk reduction.

I would like you to say more about this. It seems plausible to me that training rationality is orders of magnitude more impactful for the longrun, so this is an objection to counter.

Yes, there's a lot to say on this.

Comparing rationality training programs (e.g. CFAR, e.g. Paradigm Academy) to psychedelic trips is tricky. It's hard to make an apples-to-apples comparison, because the interventions are operating on very different levels of abstraction.

The rationality training programs I know of operate almost entirely on the conceptual level (though I believe Paradigm uses some bodywork modalities also). The basic structure of conceptual rationality training is something like:

• Instructor says some words about a rationality topic
• Trainee hears these words & tries to internalize the topic
• Trainee practices their internalized version of the rationality topic (by themselves, with other trainees, or with the instructor)
• Instructor provides feedback to trainee to improve the trainee's internalized model of the topic

I think this structure can work really well for information & technique transfer, especially when the trainee is engaged & the instructor is skillful.

The basic structure of a psychedelic trip is very different:

• Tripper thinks about and articulates the intentions & expectations they have about their upcoming psychedelic experience (to themselves, or to a facilitator)
• Tripper ingests a psychedelic (by themselves, or with a sober facilitator present)
• Tripper has a psychedelic experience. A wide range of subjective experiences can happen:
• Old memories can come up and/or become salient
• New perspectives about friends, family, one's immediate environment can be adopted
• Emotions can be felt very intensely, especially emotions about salient people & topics in the tripper's life
• Insights (or more skeptically, "insights") can be had about the tripper's psychology, social assumptions, epistemic assumptions, and metaphysical assumptions
• New personal narratives ("this is the story of my life; this is what my life's about") can be adopted
• Once sober, tripper integrates the experience (by themselves, or in dialogue a facilitator)
• How did the actual trip match up to your expectations about the trip?
• What came up? What was interesting? What was trivial, or silly?
• Did anything come up that's worth incorporating into your everyday life?

I think this structure can be very helpful for surfacing emotional blocks (e.g. akratic feelings), as well as for resolving known emotional blocks.

The psychedelic experience can also help change one's assumptions + internal monologue + personal narrative, usually in ways that are considered helpful. (Note that it doesn't do this automatically, it can just help "loosen you up." You still have to opt in to making changes about these things.)

So, to the extent that we're limited by information & technique transfer, I'd expect conceptual rationality training to be more leveraged.

And to the extent that we're limited by emotional blocks & unhelpful personal narratives, I'd expect the psychedelic experience to be more leveraged.

(I'm not claiming that the psychedelic experience is the only thing that helps with emotional blocks, etc. Many other techniques can also help, though the other techniques I know of tend to take much longer to bear fruit.)

... I think a better set up would have been: 'psychedelics look good whether you just value the near-term or the long-term'

Good point – I agree that the near-term / long-term distinction is better for this.

I can see where you're coming from, but I think there's a lot of missing info here, and this will make the post confusing to most readers. Some* of the other posts you link to also ask things of their readers, but they also present a case for why that ask is a particularly exceptional use of resources.

I happen to know of some topics which psychedelics might be relevant to, some of which are mentioned in the post and in your later comment, e.g.

• Potentially strong treatment for depression
• Drug liberalisation could reduce unnecessary incarceration
• Very speculative things like maybe psychedelics make you a better or more effective person (or increases your risk of psychosis), or maybe psychedelics could help us study sentience

but it's pretty unclear how EAs going on a psychedelic retreat is an effective way to make progress in these fields. i.e. even with what I guess is an above-median amount of context on the subject, I don't know what the case is. Given that, I think Khorton's reaction is very reasonable.

Maybe I'm missing the point and the post is just saying that there's a cool thing you can do with other EAs, not trying to claim that it's an effectively altruistic use of resources. In that case, the difference between the posts appears to be simple.

A disclosure of my own: I previously worked for CEA. Of course, these are my opinions only.

*Giving What We Can is still growing at a surprisingly good pace doesn't justify an ask, but it doesn't have an ask either.

That's correct (not a deliberate omission). $1700 for 4 days is roughly on par with other, similar retreats. We're planning to add low-income/sliding scale options once we've launched and are holding regular retreats.

Thanks for the link to the Enthea paper, I'll check it out.

(Also FYI, the findings from the 2011 paper SSC references haven't been replicated.)

Here's more on one failure to replicate the Openness result: https://www.enthea.net/griffiths-2017-2.html

(More research needed, as always.)

I don't see this as a risk for EA/rationalist types though, and would argue that pretty strongly.

+1

I'm very bullish on more big-five openness in the rationality & EA communities, personally.

Thanks! Seems like having it in this post would also be wise, as a way to save the time of people who are going to make this decision largely based on affordability.