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ChristianKl comments on Rationality, Transhumanism, and Mental Health - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (129)
Lesswrong isn't a place where you would tell someone directly: "Go buy illegal drugs." It's a public forum in which you participate with your real name. Saying "this is not a recommendation" is likely be read be some adventurous people as: "I don't want to held accountable in any way for the recommendation I'm making, but in case you are interested..."
I can certainly see that, but I would also hope that if someone is, as the OP claims to be, wanting to be truly rational, possibly the very first point in a list of 'how to be rational' rules would be "Don't buy illegal brain-altering chemicals based solely on a remark made by a total stranger on the internet."
Were someone to not be following that rule already, I suspect any other advice any of us could give them would be useless.
(Incidentally, I'm not one of the people who downvoted that comment. It seems reasonable to at least raise the issue.)
The existence of gwern, of Crazy Meds, and of the subset of the trans community unable to get treatment through official channels suggests that this rule isn't actually all that good.
I don't know about that. After all it seems like they are the kind of person to take the advice of strangers on the internet...
"Drug restored damaged synaptic connections" -> "Drug is good" is a quite seductive argument that bears the danger of being accepted by smart people. The person might focus his fact check whether the claim about restoring damaged synaptic connections is true.
Given the failure of antidepressants in which companies invested a lot of money, it's rational to choose the prior "a new antidepressent isn't likely to create big positive effects" when evaluating a new candidate. Picking the right reference class is valuable.