Imagine being told that your 50-year-old brain surgeon is returning from to a year-long psychedelic sabbatical just prior to your surgery. LSD, ayahuasca, psilo

Imagine being told that your 50-year-old brain surgeon is returning from to a year-long psychedelic sabbatical just prior to your surgery. LSD, ayahuasca, psilocybin, frogs, everything. They tell you that this has completely changed everything about what they think and know. There is an inconsistency between the ability to “change your mind”, and the right to hold a lifetime credential, or more broadly, an identity or reputation. In the other direction, a person with a new brain may find themselves trapped by an old identity, reputation, or criminal record. Either way, there’s no good way to assess whether someone’s capabilities or behavior has changed to become inconsistent with past labels. This is also true for the sober passage of time and experience, but massively more so with the use of drugs (including alcohol). The main difference with psychedelics is that they affect a broader range of higher-order brain systems, whereas most other abused substances mainly affect the dopamine system, which is also disastrous, but probably takes longer to affect skill and knowledge. Imagine all of this research results in wonderful outcomes for happiness and positive affect and sociality etc. Everybody wants the treatment. Then we discover that all we’re doing is making people dumber, and dumb people are happier. And they’re also more confident, extroverted, and relatable, even creative, as they are no longer bound to their former knowledge, reasoning, or expertise, so the perception is that they are even smarter. It’s perfect for the individual, but a potential disaster for society. And of course, a proper screed today wouldn’t be complete without prognosticating about AI. It’s possible that some form of machine learning could and maybe should replace most forms of crystallized intelligence and skill, such that the only thing left for humans is exactly this type of “dumb genius” that we seem to find so beguiling in the majority of famous people. https://youtu.be/GtBhclCigH0 https://youtu.be/GtBhclCigH0