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Comment by leadingthenet | Hacker News Reader

What cost?! If all you have is anecdata, then here's mine: Psychedelics have been the catalyst to some of the most profoundly positive experiences in my life, and any changes that I've experienced afterwards were wholly positive. Same with my group of friends who did the same. There.

You won't take my anecdotes seriously, just as I won't take your anecdotes seriously, so I hope you see now why this kind of hyperbole is worth nothing if not backed up by peer-reviewed science.

Are you seriously suggesting I'm brainwashed because I asked for sources? Jesus man, you're very far gone.

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Not suggesting brainwashed, just that its very common for people on hacker news and elsewhere on the internet to argue against being able to extrapolate truth from subjective experiences. It's common that we are told that what we see have seen cannot be the full truth because we "don't have enough data". "But thats a topic for another time

The thing is that it maybe true that your definition of "positive experience" fits my definition of what I have seen as the before and after. Many of these people who have become more hippy like would also describe that as a positive thing. But like I was saying, what I have seen has been that psychedelic effects on peoples brains are often deterministic, many people who have taken too many end up with very similar psychological profiles and dispositions. Clearly there is something going on there.

In some ways, part of the angst in my post arises from all of these different news articles popping up that talk about the positives of psychedelics, when neither the people writing the articles, nor those reading them probably know very many people with any experience.

Well, the problem with anecdotal evidence is that it is unreliable and often subject to bias. It is just not very useful to a reader because they are missing both the context of the experience and the political predisposition of the writer.

If you already have a certain mindset you are going to dismiss evidence to the contrary, too. You may just be confirming your opinion by only acknowledging positive samples. For example, you may not even know about the subset about psychedelic users who are perfectly normal and "un-hippy" because they do not tell you about their drug use. Likely, if you observe habitual and open drug-use you may also encounter a specific personality type.

>when neither the people writing the articles, nor those reading them probably know very many people with any experience.

I also would dispute that, drug use in the US is not that uncommon, especially under millenials and university graduates. So it is quite likely that both readers and authors are familiar with psychedelics.

I would rephrase your statement "the problem with anecdotal evidence..." to "a common problem with anecdotal evidence...". As I see it, and increasingly see it, people are told that their anecdotal experience carries little value. I think that in reality an intelligent individual can extract huge swaths of truth from anecdotal evidence. The backlash against that kind of thinking is really a form of thought suppression and brainwashing. We are told that speaking in generalities, stereotypes, etc is dangerous and flawed. This type of thinking falls under, in some ways, a political effort to people stop from coming to their own conclusions about why people act the way they do. Its along the same line of forcing politically correct speech.

The caveat here is that real hard science needs real hard data, not anecdotal evidence.

But you can come to your own conclusions about virtually anything including conspiracy theories if you are relying on subjective observations and your own interpretations. You should be free to do so but it should come with a strong disclaimer so others don’t take it as truth. That’s the value of cited research. It lets you assume some credibility and objectivity in the claim.

People on the internet probably have a better background in statistics than you since you're suggesting your hypothesis using one qualitative sample based entirely on your memory with no variance or power calculations can be used to infer anything about the general population. You're just stating an opinion which leads to pointless rebuttals. Psychadellics allow you to revalue things, if you use that opportunity to group think with a subculture instead of finding your own better values then that is more of an issue with the user than the psychadellics effects in general.

I work as a machine learning engineer, and have a masters degree in applied math, I know statistics. Thanks for the subtle you must not be smart cheap shot though

I think the dosage is important. Ask someone in a psych ward in a hospital how often they get patients with psychosis from weed alone. Yes, there are more deadly drugs, but it is naive to believe there aren't any significant risks and repercussions.

Seriously? This is first I hear of something like this. Any sources you can share on the subject?

Here is what I found through searching. [0] Another author did also warn against the assumption that increased THC smoking -> increased psychosis chance. [1] It needs to be studied more, but so far we have found some possible links.

[0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...

Weed well known to be linked to psychosis

Of course it only happens to some subset of users and the link is far from clear

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/03/19/7049482...

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