There’s Nothing Magic About Magic Mushrooms
22nd November 2022
Over the last decade Scott Alexander, America’s best psychiatrist blogger, a hero of the rationalist movement, has examined the claims made for psychedelic therapy and repeatedly pointed out that it’s very unlikely to be any sort of panacea. Between 10 percent and 50 percent of Americans have tried psychedelics, he said — if they did anything miraculous we would know about it. More to the point, says Alexander, what use is the feeling of revelation anyway? “In my model of psychedelics, they artificially stimulate your insight system the same way heroin artificially stimulates your happiness system. This leads to all those stories where people feel like they discovered the secret of the universe, but when they recover their faculties, they find it was only some inane triviality.”