> the evidence that a bad trip can potentially cause permanent damage is useful and relevant.
I would argue that this is not true in isolation! I guess it's not technically wrong, in that a new article is not 0 information, but without an attached probability there isn't much to learn. Frankly, some of the symptoms the author experienced are typical of HPPD, and some are not. Correlation isn't causation, and one datapoint absolutely does not show so much as correlation.
You almost certainly partake in activities with a chance to go far more wrong every day! In fact, if the mere possibility of something going wrong is enough to dissuade you, then you shouldn't have needed the article in the first place- there's always a chance things could go horribly wrong!
To be clear, I'm not saying LSD has no risks. The author got very unlucky, but not as unlucky as others who have been documented in the literature. My pitch is not even that those risks are mostly worth it- for many they probably aren't. What I'm saying is that the author's experience is every bit as useless as the people who constantly hype LSD up. The conclusion is "Fuck you, Jobs"- can you say with a straight face that the author wouldn't have concluded the same way even if no one else in the world had ever had a bad experience on LSD?
I would argue that this is not true in isolation! I guess it's not technically wrong, in that a new article is not 0 information, but without an attached probability there isn't much to learn. Frankly, some of the symptoms the author experienced are typical of HPPD, and some are not. Correlation isn't causation, and one datapoint absolutely does not show so much as correlation.
You almost certainly partake in activities with a chance to go far more wrong every day! In fact, if the mere possibility of something going wrong is enough to dissuade you, then you shouldn't have needed the article in the first place- there's always a chance things could go horribly wrong!
To be clear, I'm not saying LSD has no risks. The author got very unlucky, but not as unlucky as others who have been documented in the literature. My pitch is not even that those risks are mostly worth it- for many they probably aren't. What I'm saying is that the author's experience is every bit as useless as the people who constantly hype LSD up. The conclusion is "Fuck you, Jobs"- can you say with a straight face that the author wouldn't have concluded the same way even if no one else in the world had ever had a bad experience on LSD?