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Vladimir_Nesov comments on Is it rational to take psilocybin? - Less Wrong
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There are reasons to expect human mind to be fragile, and little understanding of effects of various substances on cognition. So, the prior belief that it's dangerous to randomly modify your mind (especially permanently!) should outweigh even a study that shows that a number of controlled parameters improve as a result of taking the substance, since you don't have the data for other parameters that current science doesn't understand.
The same goes for positive accounts of affected people: it might be a mild version of wireheading, in which case positive accounts is exactly what you'd expect. Also, people can't accurately see their own values, in particular because they are too many, so the assertions that values haven't changed count for little where you expect them to change sufficiently less than to the smash-the-head-with-a-hammer degree.
Does psilocybin get classified as a "random modification of your mind" any more than a trip to India does? Surely both could be dangerous?
Self-reported values are all we we have, really - if you want better evidence, you might have to wait for quite a while.
A trip to India isn't optimized for messing with your mind, it isn't expected to impose significantly more change on your cognition than commuting to work and watching a new movie. Better than self-reported values, we have status quo as the guiding principle: if you don't know how to hack a system, leave it alone until you do. Don't rely on the temperature of processor to debug the new superb modification you invented for your program.
If I visited India, I would expect it to result in significantly greater changes to my cognition than commuting to work or watching a new movie.
People take coffee to stimulate themselves, and alcohol for social lubrication. Is that "hacking" too? We know a lot about the effects of many drugs. For many people, the knowledge that we already have is enough for them to decide.