Hi everyone,
This is my first post on the EA Forum!
I'm one of the board members of Harvard College Effective Altruism. I also recently co-founded the Harvard Science of Psychedelics Club.
I'm curious why psychedelics aren't talked about more on the EA Forum and also why they aren't talked about very frequently as a potential EA cause area. I know Aaron Nesmith-Beck has made a powerpoint suggesting psychedelic research as an EA cause area. Yet, it seems like there are still only whispers and murmurs in the EA community about psychedelics.
There's a lot of promising research that shows how psychedelic drugs may benefit those with treatment-resistant depression, alcohol and tobacco addiction, and anxiety and mood disorders. Also, MDMA is beginning Phase 3 trials for the treatment of PTSD. And there generally seems to be a lot of low-hanging fruit in the field of psychedelics! Both within and outside of scientific research. Clarity Health Fund, which funds projects in the psychedelic space, actually has a list of projects they'd like to fund!
Although there seems to be a reawakening of psychedelics in the past 5 years, especially with the release of Michael Pollan's novel, How to Change Your Mind, I think there is still a lot of taboo around the subject.
Because of that, one of my small goals at the moment is to help normalize public conversation around psychedelics. And while I have avoided using the Harvard brand online in the past, I recently decided to make a YouTube video with the goal of using it to help normalize the discussion of psychedelics. You can watch the video here if you'd like.
Consider this post a gentle push for more discussion about the intersection of Effective Altruism and psychedelics.
And if you are also interested in exploring psychedelics as an EA cause area, shoot me a message! Even better, if you'll be at EAGx Boston this coming weekend, feel free to find me there to chat as well :)
Peter Singer is not competitive with Usain Bolt when it comes to running.
He's faster than he looks...
But more seriously, now I understand your point, I think it's plausible psychedelics could beat AMF (assuming we count the value of AMF the standard way, looking just at the self-regarding effects of saving lives, i.e. the value to the saved person) and more research would be useful to think through this. I had a go at comparing AMF to drug policy reform for psychedelics nearly 2 years ago. I think my model is not out of date but it's at least indicative. The main problem isn't the potential of psychedelics to be impactful, as that's clear - the idea is psychedelics could be much better treatments for mental health, which is huge in scale, and changing the law would improve treatments for huge numbers of people - but about what the mostly counterfactual things (for EAs) to do are. It's not obvious what the best leverage points for money/time are and I haven't been able to justify the time to look (I'm trying to finish a PhD in philosophy and this is not a philosophy topic).