I replied in a different comment with a similar view. I think the issues are more substance-specific with other alternatives being available to consider. 

GHB is fantastic in terms of it's very limited negative health effects but it's dosing can cause some issues as you mentioned. Those mentioned risks make it ideal for high-trust, safe situations but less ideal for broad replacement of the usage contexts of alcohol. I think there are other options that can and should be explored though. 

In my opinion, there are far more effective psychotropic alternatives that have less negatives and even more pronounced anxiolytic and pro-social effects.^[1] 

My personal experiences with these alternatives have led me to agree that there are very real societal benefits from cultural acceptance and norms regarding substance usage and that humans have had a relationship with psychotropic compounds for a very, very long time. I think that we have not been evaluating societal norms dictating which substances we can engage with. Alcohol, Tobacco (Nicotine), and Caffeine have maintained the largest acceptance area within the "Substance Use Overton Window [SU-OW]"^[2] for hundreds if not thousands of years. This dominance within our cultural norms have made it difficult to adopt potentially better alternatives due to them residing outside the SU-OW. 

Some options that I have hundreds of experiences with that have all been better or more effective than alcohol: 

- Gabapentin
- Lyrica
- Phenibut/F-Phenibut
- L-Theanine
- GHB/BDO
- Kava
- Kratom
- Tianeptine

Some of the above options are also GABAergics, like alcohol, which avoid the toxic effects of alcohol. Not all of them are created equally and they each have their own matrices of considerations/dangers but I find them all to be better than alcohol. 

I think there are many good reasons for us to evaluate our relationship with Alcohol but I am unique in that I am in favor of ethical, intelligent, moderate substance use where others combine the health impact of alcohol with a broader philosophical decision of engaging with substances at all. There are REAL health impacts of alcohol but my values lead me to think we should be evaluating other replacement candidates rather than promoting full sobriety. 

1. ^{^}

   I must caveat this by saying that concept of critical, moderate, intelligent substance usage is a very complicated idea with real consequences to consider. It's not an activity that everyone can or should engage in, but I've been able to manage moderated substance usage for 15 years now and I have experimented with 100+ Research Chemicals, Nootropics, Peptides, Supplements and other chemical compounds with psychotropic effects. 

2. ^{^}

   I've just made this up but I may need to write a post about how there is a specific Overton Window regarding accepted substance abuse with unique features and dynamics affecting it. 

One of my favorite time's of the month! Thank you for producing as much great content as you do! 

Also I am considering renaming the tiers from 1-5 to S/A/B/C/F as per custom

Can I ask for a short overview of the attributes for each Tier and your overall grading process? If you have discussed it elsewhere, a link would be very appreciated. 

Thank you for the great content, as always.  

This was incredibly informative. I really appreciate you all taking the time to share. I'm going to be using a lot of the information here immediately! I'd love to read any additional insights on slide design or thoughts you all have on other communication styles as well. 

Just returning to this -- Thank you for your comment. I think I need to do a bit more epistemological legwork before I can truly give you a response. Suffice it to say for now that I'm not really torn up about the issue and asked more out of boredom/general curiosity, but I see now that my question was asked lazily. 

Perhaps one day soon I'll comment on this with the relevant context/information. 

His view on AI alignment risk is infuriating simplistic. To just call certain doomsday scenarios objectively "false" is a level of epistemic arrogance that borders on obscene. 

I feel like he could at least acknowledge the existence of possible scenarios and express a need to invest in avoiding those scenarios instead of just negating an entire argument.