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Why? Humans have been experimenting with drugs like alcohol for tens of thousands of years. Many argue that civilization, language, art, etc would be impossible without these substances. What makes it so viscerally disgusting to you?
Not to pull a No True Scotsman, but do you really think that one bad actor makes all of rationality/EA/utlitiarianism bad? If that's the case wouldn't virtue ethics or deontology be bad 10,000x times over by all the bad actors those ethical systems have produced over the centuries?
Seems to me as if you're just ranting based on feelings here, which is fine, but you literally admit to drinking caffeine and alcohol daily. Seems to me like this is not really a rational position, just you hating on your outgroup because they do different substances than you.
No, but I'm not convinced that this is an issue of "one bad actor". This is rationality/utlitiarianism going wrong in exactly the way it's critics keep predicting it will, and not for the first time. This is the "uncharitable strawman" of the EA movement as a bunch of drug-addled sociopaths and grifters selling secular indulgences to their drug-addled tech-bro friends being revealed as not a strawman at all.
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Yeah, drug use was surprinsgly common in the 18-20th century America, such as opiates. Medicine was quite rudimentary and to ease pain of untreated chronic conditions and pass the time, drugs were often used, which would be considered illicit today
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I don't know. My intention was to speak frankly about something that I'm still trying to parse. As noted, I'm not a pure abstainer, but I am a skeptic of synthetic pharmacology. I cannot presently articulate the moral difference, but I have a very strong feeling that coffee and beer are quite different from whatever the SBF crew was doing.
I don't and that's what I was trying to get at in my last sentence.
Do you feel like regular use of Tylenol is wrong?
I suspect that people transpose a dislike for the medical system onto the things the system controls. If you had to cajole an ethanol prescription from your PCP every 3 months your relationship to booze would seem craven and desperate, even holding the quantity and quality constant. If you could pick up amphetamines at your local gas station, would it still feel so gross?
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Got it! Maybe I didn't see some of the nuance. I'm also against the idea of medicating away any issues with your life, but I think modern society errs too far in the other direction at the moment.
Part of the reason that so many have issues with drug use, imo, is that we aren't free enough to experiment with them. So there's a sort of allure to illicit drugs.
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