While I wouldn’t rule out family pressure, Scott went to med school in Ireland only after he couldn’t figure out how to do anything else. He only barely achieved a residency by asking his dad to pull strings (after sneering himself for ages about the classes he was taking, the arrogant asshole). His Livejournal is a whole fucking read.
Its really common that someone bums around for a few years after undergrad working service and odd jobs then gets a professional certification, and I think he picked M.D. and survived his scatterbrain tendencies to complete residency because of family pressure.
So given the Vibecamp’s safety team current stance on handling incidents ie leaking private DM’s I feel it’s appropriate to disclose how things were handled circa Vibecamp 2.
Someone OD’s (took to much not died) on GHB and was eventually carted to the teahouse, one of the Vibecamp org team was there and suggested that medical services shouldn’t be called because it might force the answering of uncomfortable questions around drug use (Maryland is a ‘good samaritan’ state wrt reporting OD’s for both the victim and person reporting so this was a bad call, I should probably have been more pro-active here and found that out / advised them).
My overall impression of Vibecamp’s ethos is that one of their primary concerns is the event / community / etc public image and they will do questionable things to protect it that I don’t think a reasonable person would consider as justified. I think this extends to Rationalism as a whole, ie Aella often frames things in the ‘outsiders vs us’ hierarchy.
the tl;dr is I wouldn’t place any faith in Vibecamp’s staff if I was to attend again for harm reduction or safety. They’ve repeatedly shown those things take second place to the image of the event.
Thank you for sharing your experience! I have been struggling how to write about this since some bad things have clearly happened but the details are not all public. If a lot of people are going to use substances at your event, you need an overdose policy (and ideally trained medics and free substance tests) in advance.
I corrected the post with Kimbal Musk’s departure from the Burning Man board.
I can’t say conclusively, but evidence is that Scott’s bad at his job. Like, his old blog, which I’m not going to comb, has a post where he bemoans that he has never had a big breakthrough with a client. They never get up and dance and shout that they’ve got a new lease on life, etc. I have to admit a bias here: it would be gut-bustingly funny if Scott were just straight-up lacking the empathy required to engage with ordinary people.
Several of his immediate family are MDs and it seems like they nudged him into the profession. Unfortunately, med school made him retreat to his room and read more racist blogs, not take up jogging and meet a cute English major from Vietnam.
It’s enduringly odd to me that Scott Alexander is a psychiatrist. I don’t really have any insights about this; I just think it’s kind of funny. All the psychiatrists I’ve seen have been mildly-eccentric-but-it-doesn’t-seem-to-really-matter, so I wonder if he is just a normal doctor who turns around and taps out a fucking Astral Codex Ten post. I wonder what posts my own damn psychiatrist is making
It’s a minor tell, but when people claim to address global problems, I’m always alert to when those same people cite calendar time with “summer 2026” and the like, as though the northern hemisphere is the only one that matters. Revealing they actually don’t give any thought to the world outside their local province.
Yeah I agree it isn’t about the legal risk, but going to a dispensary is different than ordering it from silk road, might talk to actual people that know a little bit about safer consumption or appropriate doses. hopefully.
I would love to hear more about what getting MDMA or LSD or psiolcybin as a middle-class white person in California is like. When Stross met Yarvin 20 or 30 years ago he was synthesizing drugs in his apartment, but that does not seem like our friends’ usual style. They like words and code not electronics and chemistry and mushroom farming, and they don’t like raves or other scenes where they would meet people with a more hands-on orientation.
It might be worth searching the SlateStar archives for psilocybin or 'shrooms. I get the impression that the substances they use are unlikely to send a middle-class Californian to jail unless someone wants to make an example of them. They don’t connect their desire to experiment with wider communities though, probably because those communities have lefties and working-class people.
Yud tweets and writes in Libertarian magazines about decriminalization, but I don’t think he re-tweets anti-drug-war groups or sex-workers’ groups.
While I wouldn’t rule out family pressure, Scott went to med school in Ireland only after he couldn’t figure out how to do anything else. He only barely achieved a residency by asking his dad to pull strings (after sneering himself for ages about the classes he was taking, the arrogant asshole). His Livejournal is a whole fucking read.
Its really common that someone bums around for a few years after undergrad working service and odd jobs then gets a professional certification, and I think he picked M.D. and survived his scatterbrain tendencies to complete residency because of family pressure.
One correction, Kimbal is no longer on the board.
So given the Vibecamp’s safety team current stance on handling incidents ie leaking private DM’s I feel it’s appropriate to disclose how things were handled circa Vibecamp 2.
Someone OD’s (took to much not died) on GHB and was eventually carted to the teahouse, one of the Vibecamp org team was there and suggested that medical services shouldn’t be called because it might force the answering of uncomfortable questions around drug use (Maryland is a ‘good samaritan’ state wrt reporting OD’s for both the victim and person reporting so this was a bad call, I should probably have been more pro-active here and found that out / advised them).
My overall impression of Vibecamp’s ethos is that one of their primary concerns is the event / community / etc public image and they will do questionable things to protect it that I don’t think a reasonable person would consider as justified. I think this extends to Rationalism as a whole, ie Aella often frames things in the ‘outsiders vs us’ hierarchy.
the tl;dr is I wouldn’t place any faith in Vibecamp’s staff if I was to attend again for harm reduction or safety. They’ve repeatedly shown those things take second place to the image of the event.
Thank you for sharing your experience! I have been struggling how to write about this since some bad things have clearly happened but the details are not all public. If a lot of people are going to use substances at your event, you need an overdose policy (and ideally trained medics and free substance tests) in advance.
I corrected the post with Kimbal Musk’s departure from the Burning Man board.
Per erika milktea, Aella was in a documentary on her LSD use called Sweet Nothing (2018) https://vimeo.com/280213292 I am not watching that.
I can’t say conclusively, but evidence is that Scott’s bad at his job. Like, his old blog, which I’m not going to comb, has a post where he bemoans that he has never had a big breakthrough with a client. They never get up and dance and shout that they’ve got a new lease on life, etc. I have to admit a bias here: it would be gut-bustingly funny if Scott were just straight-up lacking the empathy required to engage with ordinary people.
thank you for sharing the garbage
They should try doing the Harlem Shake next
Several of his immediate family are MDs and it seems like they nudged him into the profession. Unfortunately, med school made him retreat to his room and read more racist blogs, not take up jogging and meet a cute English major from Vietnam.
It’s enduringly odd to me that Scott Alexander is a psychiatrist. I don’t really have any insights about this; I just think it’s kind of funny. All the psychiatrists I’ve seen have been mildly-eccentric-but-it-doesn’t-seem-to-really-matter, so I wonder if he is just a normal doctor who turns around and taps out a fucking Astral Codex Ten post. I wonder what posts my own damn psychiatrist is making
It’s a minor tell, but when people claim to address global problems, I’m always alert to when those same people cite calendar time with “summer 2026” and the like, as though the northern hemisphere is the only one that matters. Revealing they actually don’t give any thought to the world outside their local province.
awaiting their painfully contorted version of Purple Rain
Why are they trapped in 2014 making parody music videos
@lurker
The overwhelming Jesus Is Coming Back! The Rapture Is On Its Way! energy
Yeah I agree it isn’t about the legal risk, but going to a dispensary is different than ordering it from silk road, might talk to actual people that know a little bit about safer consumption or appropriate doses. hopefully.
Believe it or not this is meant to spread their message and make people take them seriously
I would love to hear more about what getting MDMA or LSD or psiolcybin as a middle-class white person in California is like. When Stross met Yarvin 20 or 30 years ago he was synthesizing drugs in his apartment, but that does not seem like our friends’ usual style. They like words and code not electronics and chemistry and mushroom farming, and they don’t like raves or other scenes where they would meet people with a more hands-on orientation.
You got that cute English major’s number? Sounds like they’re still single
It might be worth searching the SlateStar archives for psilocybin or 'shrooms. I get the impression that the substances they use are unlikely to send a middle-class Californian to jail unless someone wants to make an example of them. They don’t connect their desire to experiment with wider communities though, probably because those communities have lefties and working-class people.
Yud tweets and writes in Libertarian magazines about decriminalization, but I don’t think he re-tweets anti-drug-war groups or sex-workers’ groups.
BTW psilocybin was decriminalized there in the middle of all this, not sure if that has made a difference or not.