5
LessWrong's Psychedelic Phase: Perigee (awful.systems)
submitted 5 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) by CinnasVerses@awful.systems to c/sneerclub@awful.systems
0 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Previously on SneerClub, we saw that several Less-Wrongers were open about experimenting with LSD to help reinvent themselves (Shannon F., gwern, Aella, Jessica Taylor). Aella and Taylor thought they permanently damaged themselves, but Aella continued to explore a wide variety of substances. Many rationalists told a Nootropic Survey on SlateStarCodex that they had tried LSD. Scott Alexander was very curious about these experiments, but in June 2018 he suddenly mentioned someone he knew who has permanent symptoms after using LSD once. Later that year Jax Romana and a pseudonymous medium account accused prominent male rationalists of pressuring their female partners to use LSD and MDMA to make them more pliable. Beginning in 2019, prominent rationalists point out that substance use can have negative effects, and that letting leaders pressure followers to use substances can have bad consequences. AFAIK, Bay Area Rationalism has not yet introduced practices like free drug tests or formal rules around substance use which are common in other communities, and Bay Area rationalists do not acknowledge that there are many best practices and educational resources around substance use one phone-call away (VibeCamp now has some harm reduction practices). If the period to 2018 was a rise to apogee, the period since 2019 is a fall towards perigee.

Withdrawal 2019-2026

I know plenty of people who use heroic amounts of LSD all the time, and are still nervous wrecks. ... I hope I am wrong about this, I really do. And I think there’s a good chance that I might be. I really want psychedelic research to succeed and I support it wholeheartedly. But there’s been so much hype around so many things before that I want to avoid getting burned again, so I ‘ll stay skeptical for now.

Note that he does not say the LSD caused the anxiety ("still"). Compare his 2014 post professing not to know that most people use pot because it makes them feel good to all these posts where his friends enthusiastically disclose what substances they use. He was posting about psychedelics by 2013, and going to parties with Aella by winter 2019/2020, and he went to college in the USA and med school one Ryanair flight from Amsterdam and Copenhagen, so he sure seems like someone familiar with drug cultures!

  • 23 July 2019: Scott Alexander posts Book Review: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (comments by gwern, Steve Sailer). This covers author Ken Kesey's transformation from a struggling writer into a guru and critical success after the CIA provided him with LSD, and his eventual retreat to rural Oregon. You can read it in two ways: one way if you know Scott Alexander as a blogger, and another if you know that Bay Area EA and LW are an apocalyptic movement with gurus and communes which experiments with drugs and kink. This was posted a few months before Ziz and some of her friends were arrested while protesting a CFAR reunion in November 2019.

The best I can do in making sense of this story is to think of Kesey as having unique innate talents that made him a potential cult leader, combined with the sudden rise in status from being a famous author and the first person in his social scene with access to LSD. Despite the connotations of “cult leader”, Kesey was overall a good person, genuinely wanted to help people’s spiritual development, and genuinely thought LSD could do this. LSD formed the content of his cult, the same way Messianic Judaism formed the content of Jesus’ cult. It also made his life easier because of the drug’s natural tendency to make people think they are having important insights. When he, attempting to genuinely discover a spiritual path, decided to change the content and go beyond LSD, he lost that crutch, his people betrayed him, he became less confident in himself, and eventually he gave up.

But it’s interesting how often malevolent cult leaders have turned to drugs since then – so often that I see it listed in some lists of cult warning flags. It’s especially surprising since we usually think of LSD as helping people break out of systems of mental control – why would you give it to somebody you’re trying to brainwash?

This seems to be the first time that an influential rationalist talks about how substances fit into communities. Rationalist discourse about Leverage Research, CFAR, etc. often focuses on "are they good people?" (metaphysical) not "were wrongs done and how can we prevent future harm?" (actionable)

  • 10 September 2019: Scott Alexander posts SSC Journal Club: Relaxed Beliefs Under Psychedelics And The Anarchic Brain about Relaxed Beliefs Under Psychedelics And The Anarchic Brain: Toward A Unified Model Of The Brain Action Of Psychedelics by Karl Friston and Robin Carhart-Harris. "Thanks to Sarah H. and the people at her house for help understanding this paper." He frames this paper around Bayesian priors as rationalists understand them. There is the mandatory citation of speculative fiction they liked when they were 12:

When I was young, I liked a fantasy book called The Sword of Shannara. The titular sword had an unusual magic power: it made the wielder realize anything he already knew. Neither a truly good person nor a truly bad person would benefit from the sword, but someone who was hypocritical, or deluding themselves, or complicit in their own brainwashing, would find all the parts of their mind flung together so hard that they couldn’t help but realize all the inconvenient facts they were trying to repress, or connect all the puzzle pieces previously scattered in separate mental compartments. Sometimes this resulted in a blinding revelation that you were on the wrong side, or had wasted your life; other times in nothing at all. F&CH argue that psychedelics are the real-life version of this, a way to make all of your beliefs connect with each other and see what results from the reaction.

Our friends are fascinated by the idea of removing all the contractions and ambiguities in human life, and living in accordance with their intellectual beliefs.

  • 26 November 2019: Scott Alexander posts Mental Mountains about traditional talk-based therapy and psychedelic therapy and the problem of moving from intellectual knowledge to acting upon it

I can’t count how many stories I’ve heard along the lines of “I was in a bad relationship, I kept telling myself that it was okay and making excuses, and then I took LSD and realized that it obviously wasn’t, and got out.” Certainly many people change religions and politics after a psychedelic experience, though it’s hard to tell exactly what part of the psychedelic experience does this, and enough people end up believing various forms of woo that I hesitate to say it’s all about getting more rational beliefs. But just going off anecdote, this sometimes works.

Jessica was (I don't know if she still is) part of a group centered around a person named Vassar, informally dubbed "the Vassarites". Their philosophy is complicated, but they basically have a kind of gnostic stance where regular society is infinitely corrupt and conformist and traumatizing and you need to "jailbreak" yourself from it (I'm using a term I found on Ziz's discussion of her conversations with Vassar; I don't know if Vassar uses it himself). Jailbreaking involves a lot of tough conversations, breaking down of self, and (at least sometimes) lots of psychedelic drugs.

Yudkowsky chips in:

I could be very wrong, but the story I currently have about this myself is that Vassar himself was a different and saner person before he used too much psychedelics. :( :( :(

I'm about ready to propose a group norm against having any subgroups or leaders who tell other people they should take psychedelics. Maybe they have individually motivated uses - though I get the impression that this is, at best, a high-variance bet with significantly negative expectation. But the track record of "rationalist-adjacent" subgroups that push the practice internally and would-be leaders who suggest to other people that they do them seems just way too bad. ... I'm also about ready to propose a similar no-such-group policy on 'woo', tarot-reading, supernaturalism only oh no it's not really supernaturalism I'm just doing tarot readings as a way to help myself think, etc. ... I should be explicit that concern about outcomes of psychedelic advocacy includes Michael Vassar, and concern on woo includes the alleged/reported events at Leverage.

This seems to be the first time that a Rationalist leader suggests that the community needs norms around substance use (compare Alexander's post about Ken Kesey, or Aella's posts on how she thinks acid damaged her). One thread to pull is postrationalism (people who acknowledge that Yud is a doofus and rationalism is a magical working not a scientific project, but want to carry on the Great Work rather than sneer).

There are many other comments arguing about who encouraged who to use drugs, and who was helpful or harmful. Jessica Taylor published a second post titled "Occupational Infohazards" objecting to Scott Alexander's attempts to blame everything bad that happened on Vassar and summarizing the beliefs of Ziz Lasota and her circle. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/pQGFeKvjydztpgnsY/occupational-infohazards I previously discussed this in A Bad Trip in Berkeley.

  • 11 July 2022: Holly Elmore releases a blog post which begins:

I am part of an online community centered on practicing rationality to better know the truth and achieve one’s goals. Psychedelics are increasingly a social activity in the rationalist community and a prescription for what ails ye, so I wrote this post on facebook earlier this year expressing my reservations about using psychedelics with the intent or pretense of learning truth. I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately about what I think about mindfulness and insight, so I’m sprucing it up a bit and sharing it here.

Most people who have spent time with substance users offer similar advice, as do many people who have used substances, written down their insights, and read what they wrote after the effects wear off. Drugs transform your feelings, but are less reliable at improving your abilities. Elmore thinks LSD is growing more popular not less popular in the community, and that it is a social activity. gwern, Aella, and others presented their use as individual or between romantic partners, whereas Elmore presents it as "a social activity." Its often a bad idea to use substances alone, but its also dangerous when the boss invites you to an all-you-can-drink whisky bar.

  • 26 September 2022: Alfred MacDonald posts Vibecamp And Its Consequences on his Substack. He talks about substance use and members of the subcultures trying to set boundaries on which substances are safe to experiment with. He gives the impression that substance use was common and openly discussed in his part of the Less Wrong/Effective Altruist/Postrationalist subculture.

you might draw the line of “not good drugs” at psychedelics and think other class-equals are wrong. If so, fair. But where this becomes obviously organized by class is in the regard of MDMA. Note that prior to Scott Alexander’s articles on Desoxyn, virtually no one talked about microdosing methamphetamine as a substitute for Adderall, which is more accurately phrased “therapeutically dosing” as the aim was to imitate a Desoxyn prescription. I know this because I was one of the few to do it, and you were absolutely thought of as a scary person doing the Wrong Kind Of Drug. MDMA, however, is meth; it’s literally its name: three-four-methylene-deoxy-methamphetamine. Not only is it more cardiotoxic than vanilla meth, it’s significantly more metabolically demanding.

I do not think this is good pharmacology or a good way of thinking about substances. The article on Desoxyn was published in 2021. This community uses many substances other than psychedelics but I am just one Shakespeare joke not a whole research team.

During my twenties in Silicon Valley, I ran among elite tech/AI circles through the community house scene. I have seen some troubling things around social circles of early OpenAI employees, their friends, and adjacent entrepreneurs, which I have not previously spoken about publicly. ... I don't think events like the consensual non-consensual (cnc) sex parties and heavy LSD use of some elite AI researchers have been good for women. They create a climate that can be very bad for female AI researchers, with broader implications relevant to X-risk and AGI safety. ... The climate was like a fratty LSD version of 2008 Wall Street bankers, which bodes ill for AI safety.

In December 2025 Joseph announced that "I now run Meta's interpretability community-- 150+ researchers across FAIR, GEnAI, & Reality Labs." OpenAI has a core staff of Rationalist doom cultists mixed in with tech bros who just want money and their name in the news. Her online presence has been stripped of things which would let you guess which years she meant by "my twenties in Silicon Valley", but her LinkedIn has her SAT score from 2013. SAT is commonly used for university admissions, so she probably turned 20 around the year 2015, and might have lived in the Bay Area between undergrad at Princeton and grad school at McGill.

Aella seems to have introduced consensual nonconsent parties into Bay Area rationalism since that is her favourite kind of play. Before she arrived the biggest kink events in the community I heard of were cuddle parties. It is critics like Joseph who link the drugs with the sex parties, Aella presents those two interests as distinct. Substance use is a common way to cope when you are told to do something you do not feel comfortable with but don't feel safe refusing, like your supervisor asking you to ravage/be ravaged in a chaotic group setting.

  • 14 November 2024: Yud tweets "Among my friends who came to my attention for psychelics (sic) having had any significant impact on them, positive or negative, I would say the mean result has been overwhelmingly, heartbreakingly negative. Please seriously consider not doing drugs." https://archive.ph/MqeGZ Yud does not seem to have a broad social circle, so his friends who tried LSD would almost certainly be rationalists, Effective Altruists, or friendly tech workers and investors. This tweet sounds a lot like Scott Aleaxnder's note in May 2019 about knowing "a lot" of people who use LSD and were "nervous wrecks."
  • 16 February 2025: three of the Zizian movement, a splinter of Bay Area rationalism, are arrested in Maryland while living in trucks along a dirt road. A 2026 article describes the charges:

LaSota, Zajko and Blank are charged with possession of LSD and possession with intent to deliver LSD, multiple gun violations, trespassing and hindering a police officer.

Article uses Ziz's legal name as well as her preferred name if that is a concern for you. While police in the United States often plant drugs on people, on a prominent case like this I tentatively believe that they really found LSD. In most stories, Ziz's method of reprogramming focused on sleep deprivation not drugs.

A woman named Teresa Youngblut was arrested in early 2025 after a shooting between Zizians and police in Vermont. "Court records note that Youngblut’s diary contains several references to taking LSD."

  • 15 November 2025: as he builds up steam to respond to a former staffer's accusations that he had sex with a minor, Yud goes on a long digression on medical and recreational LSD use by minors and adults. This post takes for granted that LSD microdoses are the best treatment for some kind of headaches. Rather than a world where MDs can proscribe LSD like they can proscribe heroin, Yud seems to imagine a world where any adult can chose to use any substance they can afford. This suggests that LSD is a frequent topic of conversation in his community, even though its not as popular as marijuana, alcohol, and caffeine among the wider US population. https://archive.is/kI1Yc

Conclusion

Based on public Internet posts, I see three broad phases. It appears that gwern and Aella self-experimented with LSD circa 2012-2014, Scott Alexander was intrigued and provided what sounds a lot like medical advice to his readers, and the community is fascinated with the idea of self-medicating to be smarter. Around 2016-2018, people in Michael Vassar's circle and at CFAR dropped a lot of acid and changed as a result. Jax Romana accused Yudkowsky of dosing his playmates with LSD to control them in this period, and an anonymous Medium post accused Brent Dill of using MDMA the same way. Sonia Joseph links the drugs and the sex parties to a general laddish climate where women can get assaulted if they play along and shunned if they refuse to participate or tell a powerful man that his behaviour is not acceptable. From 2018 Scott Alexander started to post more about the risks of psychedelics and the way leaders can use them. By 2021, Eliezer Yudkowsky was convinced that Michael Vassar and some others had been damaged by LSD use. (Yud dropped out of school after 8th grade, street drugs are not always what the dealer says they are, and people can use multiple substances, so his diagnosis should be taken cum grano salis). However, substance use still seems common and unregulated at rationalist events. I do not see any acknowledgement that there are other communities in SoCal with a lot of experience of psychedelics and harm reduction. Sott Alexander cites a few academic papers, biographies of Ken Kesey and the Shulgins, and his clinical experience as a psychiatrist. IvyAstrix says she tried to introduce harm reduction practices to events like VibeCamp based on her experience in marijuana advocacy and the rave scene in Canada.

The mother of Curtis Yarvin's child thinks that her psychedelic phase was just part of her spiritual exploration and "most colleges these days have psychedelic communities". Elon's brother Kimbal Musk, who used Jeffrey Epstein as a matchmaker, is also into psychedelic therapy. He is on the board of Burning Man; the Brent Dill affair involved a LW-adjacent Burning Man camp.

Edit / corrected some firsts (I discovered new posts as I was writing this and did not catch everything in the edits)

no comments (yet)
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
there doesn't seem to be anything here
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2026
5 points (100.0% liked)

SneerClub

1280 readers
20 users here now

Hurling ordure at the TREACLES, especially those closely related to LessWrong.

AI-Industrial-Complex grift is fine as long as it sufficiently relates to the AI doom from the TREACLES. (Though TechTakes may be more suitable.)

This is sneer club, not debate club. Unless it's amusing debate.

[Especially don't debate the race scientists, if any sneak in - we ban and delete them as unsuitable for the server.]

See our twin at Reddit

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
self@awful.systems
blakestacey@awful.systems
dgerard@awful.systems