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Comment by bjt2n3904 | Hacker News Reader

What you're witnessing is a radical restructuring of what is socially acceptable, or seen as good.

This statement about what is "good for society" can't be evaluated by statistics or metrics. It has to be believed, taken on faith.

Oh, they'll cite studies about miraculous results with overcoming addiction and depression. Pardon me for being skeptical about the massive amount of junk science that has over promised, under delivered, or been outright unrepeatable.

This is no different than the "AI" algorithms that are quickly making their way into decision making in society. It's a black box that worked great in the lab, so let's ship it to everyone. Surely it will be good for us!

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no one is going to force you to take psychedelics. I understand and support skepticism, but I have yet to hear a cogent argument backed by evidence for why these substances should be so harshly criminalize. The overwhelming consensus among experts is that these drugs are at the very least much safer than alcohol and many prescription drugs like adderall

People don't make decisions in a vacuum. I'm personally less worried about myself and more about children who don't know any better and fall for all the reddit-tier bullshitting with respect to these substances

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children

> This statement about what is "good for society" can't be evaluated by statistics or metrics

I'd beg to differ. One can think up any number of metrics that would be inarguably good for society. Reduction in suicide would be a huge one. Reduced crime rate. Reduced addiction rate. Increase in lifespan. Increase in standard of living. Reduction of domestic violence. There are many more dimensions you could measure, establishing direct causation is the tricky part but it is certainly possible to establish if the state of society in general is improving.

No, you've missed my point completely. You are talking about the ends. I'm talking about the means.

Yes, a society with less suicide is a better thing. We can achieve that in many ways -- however, some ways come with significant or unpredictable side effects.

I think you might be missing all the first hand experiences where it was a powerful good. Or maybe not, those have to be taken on faith after all.

Not that being skeptical about this is bad, frankly its good, but probably best when it is specific and focused into criticism.

Don’t remove fences unless you are damn sure why they were put up in the first place.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings will return as they always do.

It's not as though this is some thousand-year-old fence; psychadelics were illegalized under Nixon. If there was a reason other than 'they are drugs', it has not been made public, and all research at the time suggested that they should not have been illegalized. I'm open to being told I'm wrong, but 3 pages of google results did not push me in that direction.

These drugs have been illegal for a lifetime. It's hard to get people to accept even overwhelmingly beneficial technology into the main fold of society. I'm not optimistic anything beyond weed is gonna get legalized federally in our lifetime.

As cannabis (and now psilocybin) have demonstrated, we don't really need federal legalization to make significant strides at the state level. If anything, it's a positive pushback against nearly a century of dramatic overreach by a federal government granted far too much power. At some point, the federal government will have to face the awkward situation that 100% of the desirable to live in states are in open contempt to federal law, and they have to play catch-up.

Generically (not always true) red states have that for gun stuff (decriminalized unregistered / federally illegal NFA items) and blue states have that for pot and maybe even something else. It's hard for me to imagine the government will eventually catch up to freedom-leaning on either side, but I agree improvements at the state level is far better than nothing.

If you do the slightest bit of research into the criminalization of drugs in the US you will find that the people putting up those fences were laughably far from protectors of society. They were demonstrably more motivated by racism and classism than by a desire to safeguard social progress.

I think we're better off with a rich, mixed, and multicultural society but it may actually be true that a more homogenous society that tosses fringe races into the shredder or whatever is actually a safer place for the "right" people. Maybe they were protectors in their own racist way.

US laws are not the fence.

Well-functioning societies have steered clear of intoxication. A

A Clear-headed, rational, and objective view of reality is the goal.

There’s nothing new about messing with your perception of reality.

Wise men steer clear of it. Wise men counsel against intoxication of any kind. Fools don’t ask why.

Spending a tiny fraction of your life intoxicated allows you to make rational decisions despite occasional enjoying altered consciousness. There may be some level of brain damage but depending on the substance and how often it's used I question whether it's necessarily going to be the limiting factor in the aging body.

There is much new speculation by historians and archeologists that psychedelics are widely responsible for giant leaps in civilization and "society." Your take is a puritanical, modern view without regard to history or nuance.

Can you give a few examples of such well-functioning societies?

I think maybe there is no "clear headed and rational view" of reality in truth.

There is only perspective, which somehow relates to a thing we like to call "reality" but the relationship is tenuous at best and doesn't always directly correspond.

Understanding the role of perspective I believe can be valuable. Sometimes maybe a shakeup helps to understand perspective is just that, or otherwise produce a different way of looking at things.

Your comment is sensible and, apparently, roundly rejected.

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