The old me is dead.

Ok, I think I've come around to @KatjaGrace's suggestion below. I should avoid anything that's addictive, might cause me to make bad decisions, give me bad memories, or make me less happy in my normal life by comparison, but minor short-term alterations are not a risk, and long-term alterations are also fine as long as they're done through a pathway that I'm highly confident is safe, like our built-in capacity to learn. I'm still going to avoid anything like LSD or marijuana, since we don't have a great understanding of them yet. Not sure how I feel about nootropics, or even just large quantities of caffeine. (People who drink coffee; could you easily stop doing so?)

I've taken mushrooms and LSD (at different times). For me, psychedelics actually confirmed some theories I already had about reality. The expectation that my mind and perception are a complex of interwoven policies not unlike a video game's graphics engine and settings, consisting of factors such as "afterimage delay", "color heat", and "fractal prerendering". It was entertaining in the moment, satisfying in hindsight, and (for the acid) had the added bonus of a fun social context. We all watched Jodorowsky's Dune!

Now, these are more "serious" substances than what you're considering, but I actually ended up affirming Big Picture Superego Panfilo's worldview. Almost all psychoactive substances are quite fleeting in how deeply they effect one's sense of self, and indeed that brevity is a large driver of reliance or even addiction for many people. If you say "I will have chocolate on this upcoming holiday as a self-designed ritual to feel a certain way", it would (from my PoV) be an extension of Big Picture Superego Isaac's intent, not a transformation into a different person. At least, not any more than folks have already pointed out re: the passage of time and experience.

(All that said, I did not take any narrative psychedelics that make you meet robot elves. Those might actually make you a different guy in some more messy sense.) @IsaacKing

Think this should be higher. I'm coming around to the view that mathematically-perfect and self-consistent value systems are just not possible to square with human intuition, and since all value systems are arbitrary, there's no particular reason to try to force myself into the most elegant one. Just avoid getting dutch-booked/money-pumped and otherwise I should do whatever I feel like doing. This has been my position on moral philosophy for a while, and I don't see why it shouldn't also apply to personal identity.

@IsaacKing I strongly disagree with your claim about value systems, but for personal identity it makes sense. Your personal identity keeps changing throughout your life anyways. The person you were a year before is not who you are today. Preferring your current personal identity over what you might evolve into just means being stuck up and not open-minded. However, I think there are certain reasons to prefer your current identity over what you might become if you do psychedelics. If you are happy with who you are, you might not want to take the risk that it will change you for the worse. That's generally been my attitude towards psychedelics. As long as I am reasonably happy with my psyche, I think the risks outweight the benefits.

Anyways, if you do end up doing psychedelics, make sure to do so in a safe, supportive environment. Ideally with someone who experienced it before.

I strongly disagree with your claim about value systems, but for personal identity it makes sense. Your personal identity keeps changing throughout your life anyways. The person you were a year before is not who you are today.

This also applies to ethical systems, doesn't it? The exact people and things you value tends to change over time.

@IsaacKing No, not really? Tbh, I think I wasn't explaining this part well enough. I think that in both cases you do have certain reasons to prefer certain personal identities/value systems over others, but that change is not necessarily bad, and I think that categorically rejecting a change isn't justified, which it seems like what your original position was (could be wrong though). But I think that the reasons you might prefer certain value systems or personal identities can be quite different. You can prefer a certain value system simply because you think the one you hold right now is correct. I don't think the same argument can apply to personal identity. There is no "correct" personal identity. You could prefer a certain personal identity because you think it will make you happier, but I don't think the same reasoning is valid for value systems.

Maybe Twitter will change my mind?

https://twitter.com/IsaacKing314/status/1731599596365684908

Pretty sure you ingested sugar in non-negligible amounts.

How does this resolve if someone slips you something psychoactive without your knowledge?

@LachlanMunro That doesn't seem very willing.

I had a dream a few nights ago where I ate a bunch of chocolate before remembering I wasn't supposed to do that.

@IsaacKing Could chocolate be a metaphor for something else?

@firstuserhere Of course. Sufficiently English-major people are able to frame anything as a metaphor for anything else.

What if these substances allow you to become more truly yourself than you are now?

@4mur1c4 What does that mean?

@IsaacKing There’s one way to find out.

@4mur1c4 This is not a very convincing argument. I have a similar policy (slightly weaker; I'm okay with painkillers (I mostly care about high-level cognitive functions) and chocolate (it is probably weak enough that I don't care)) for slightly different reasons. Your possibly-compromised mental state afterward won't accurately determine what you originally wanted or should have wanted - retroactive consent is not good enough. Also, your original statement doesn't clearly point to something actually meaningful and valid and you haven't clarified.

@osmarks It was meant to be provocative, not convincing. My point was that if you haven’t explored your own consciousness, it’s hard to know exactly who you are. That could be accomplished through long term meditation, but is most often done through the use of psychoactive drugs. Those who haven’t done that work like to think they know, when there’s more depth to discover than they could possibly imagine.

For what it’s worth, I was in your camp for most of my life. What I’m describing can make you a better person, a better partner, and much more creative at work. I suggest that you start by reading How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan.

@4mur1c4 That's not even a coherent concept. There's no one canonical true "you" built into the fabric of the universe.

@IsaacKing

I think @4mur1c4 actually has a good point, even if you don’t buy the notion of any fundamental Self-ness (which I also think is actually plausible. See also Dick Schwartz & IFS theory.)

Put differently, why focus on staying the same person when you could instead become a “better” person?

(I’d also argue that whether or not you choose to consume psychoactive material, your life experiences will change you anyway. So why fight that change when you could instead direct your intentions toward becoming the best person you could become?)

Put differently, why focus on staying the same person when you could instead become a “better” person?

Take the best person you know. Would you willingly choose to kill yourself in order to summon another copy of that person into the world?

@IsaacKing

No. And I don’t at all understand what you’re trying to illustrate with that question or its relevance to the above dialogue.

@snazzlePop How is turning into a better person different from killing yourself and creating a better person?

@IsaacKing I think you could reasonably argue that you cannot not change in some way and should care about something like continuity instead, or that it would be more valuable to have someone closer to you but better exist than an identical copy of some existing good person. I am sympathetic to this sort of argument but believe that psychoactive drugs do not actually make you materially "better".

@IsaacKing

I agree with @osmarks point: I don’t think anyone cannot not change over the course of their life.

My point is to always strive towards changing in the direction of improvement since we’re all changing anyways.

I also think there’s much greater value in a diverse population than having a bunch of homogeneous clones running around. And I believe suicide typically leaves considerable suffering in its wake too..

@IsaacKing

I should add that I don’t think people are born deterministically “good”, “better”, or “bad.”

I think people are born with certain predispositions and then life experience occurs and people dynamically shift.