LSD and other psychedelics are popular in LessWrong and there are hints that many of them have had bad experiences or have been abused while they were under the influence. While I am still working on a longer post, it looks like the critical period was 2016-2018.
Some of this post may appear in that future longer post with fuller links.
Early Days
Before that, Shannon F. (who dated Yudkowsky and lived with the founder of the New York City chapter of LessWrong), gwern, Scott Alexander, and Aella posted positive to cautious views of psychedelics. Scott Alexander was interested in their medical uses, gwern self-medicated, Aella and Shannon F. had a less clinical approach. SlateStarCodex helpfully polled readers about their substance use, and 17% of respondents said they had used LSD in 2020. About 12% of Americans said they have tried psychedelics in 2023 so the response at SlateStar is quite high.
Looking Back in 2021
Jessica Taylor says that she both got a job with MIRI/CFAR and self-medicated with psychedelics in 2017. She told the story in 2021 as follows:
the psychotic break was in October 2017, and involved psychedelic use (as part of trying to “fix” multiple deep mental problems at once, which was, empirically, overly ambitious); although people around me to some degree tried to help me, this “treatment” mostly made the problem worse, so I was placed in 1-2 weeks of intensive psychiatric hospitalization, followed by 2 weeks in a halfway house. This was followed by severe depression lasting months, and less severe depression from then on, which I still haven’t fully recovered from. I had PTSD symptoms after the event and am still recovering. ("My experience at and around MIRI and CFAR (inspired by Zoe Curzi’s writeup of experiences at Leverage)")
Taylor does not say where she got the idea to self-medicate with these substances, or that anyone encouraged her to do so, but the idea of self-medicating with psychedelics was certainly part of LessWrong online culture by 2018 and people tend to be more willing to talk about illegal activities than post about them. 2016-2018 was the period when CFAR switched to focus on AI risk and was run by people close to Brent Dill. Many other people in the community chip in about their own experiences:
humantoo: During my psychotic break, I believed that someone associated with Vassar had administered LSD to me. Although I no longer hold this belief, I cannot entirely dismiss it.
jessicata: I remember someone who lived in Berkeley in 2016-2017, who wasn’t a CFAR employee but was definitely talking extensively with CFAR people (collaborating on rationality techniques/instruction?) and had gone to a CFAR workshop, telling me something along the lines of “CFAR can’t legally recommend that people try LSD, but...”; I don’t remember what followed the “but”, I don’t think the specific wording was even intended to be remembered (to preserve plausible deniability?), but it gave me the impression that CFAR people may have recommended it if it were legal to do so, as implied by the “but”. This was before I was talking with Michael Vassar extensively. This is some amount of Bayesian evidence for the above.
Eliezer Yudkowsky: @Marie La I disagree and think the woo has proven in empirical practice to be sufficiently destructive to people who can’t see the destruction, to reach a level where it should not be tolerated by this group as a future subgroup norm, same as LSD use shouldn’t be tolerated by us as a subgroup norm.
Aella: @Eliezer Yudkowsky On phone so thumb words but I notice I have a belief that this is predictable, and thus not dangerous? or rather, it’s something like if you’re religious and noticed some ppl have been drinking alcohol and then eventually losing their faith, you might be right to be wary of alcohol, but if you know that it’s actually the doubt of their faith that causes the alcohol drinking, then you wouldn’t be concerned if someone drinks alcohol but also isn’t doubting their faith.
Eliezer Yudkowsky: My sense of “this seems to be ending very poorly on average” is much stronger for situations in which there’s a Leader or a Discernible Subgroup has formed, that are going up to others and saying “why, you really should try some psychedelics / woo”. Or where they wander up to individuals trying that, and put their arm around their shoulders all friendly-like.
It goes on, if you are interested in psychedelics please ask harm-reduction experts where you live not our friends!
A deleted comment by PhoenixFriend contained the following:
I’m a present or past CFAR employee commenting anonymously to avoid retribution. I believe that the dynamics of the organization grew to be significantly more cult-like than the OP and readers realize. I say all this with the hope that future-CFAR will emerge like a phoenix, leaving these issues in the ashes. ... Psychedelic use was common among the leadership of CFAR and spread through imitation, if not actual institutional encouragement, to the rank-and-file. This makes it highly distressing that Michael (probably Michael Vassar) is being singled out for his drug advocacy by people defending CFAR.
The description of Scientology auditing and Maoist self-criticism at CFAR continues, reader beware. Duncan Sabien objects to PhoenixFriend's characterization of what happened at CFAR.
Jax Romana accused Yudkowsky of dosing two women with psychedelics to control them in 2018. To the best of my knowledge these allegations have not been made by anyone else and have not been independently confirmed.
A Hypothesis
Could a period of heavy experimentation at CFAR and in MIchael Vassar's circle in 2016-2018 have given other rationalists cold feet? The comments on the thread by Jessica Taylor are the oldest post I can find where a prominent rationalist suggests creating community norms to limit psychedelic use. Something must have really scared Yudkowsky if he is willing to tell his followers "Please seriously consider not doing drugs." He is very reluctant to tell people what to do except give his organizations money.
There are many people in SoCal who could have told them that the ways they wanted to use drugs, kink, and reprogramming techniques were very dangerous. I picked up the gist just from reading fannish publications.