I watched a clip on Sky News last night in which the wide-eyed tech pundit told us that the AI behemoth known as Anthropic had its own philosopher on staff. Its own philosopher! This was supposed to shock the viewer. A company the size of Coca-Cola has its own philosopher on staff! But what shocked me was the fact that Anthropic did not have DOZENS of philosophers on staff -- or that it did not subject the implicit philosophical point of view of its algorithms to multiple critiques from the general public. If such companies are going to leverage Big Data to give us the apparent final word on everything, then it is hugely important upon which philosophies their answers are based, and that philosophy should not be invented by one single company-appointed philosopher. Sure, 2 + 2 is always going to be equal to 4 in abstract mathematics regardless of unspoken assumptions about the world, but the AI answers to questions about the propriety of drug use are going to depend entirely on the philosophies assumed, knowingly or not, by the AI algorithms.
Suppose that the algorithms are written under the assumption that all the "real" answers about things like drug use will come from science. Then the AI answers that the algorithms provide about drugs will serve to demonize drugs and emphasize their negative uses, since this is what science is paid to do these days in the west: to demonize psychoactive medicines by focusing only on misuse and worst-case scenarios, meanwhile never mentioning positive use, both extant and clearly possible with the use of a little psychological common sense. Indeed, the bylaws of the aptly named National Institute on Drug Abuse forbids the organization's employees from advocating for the legalization of any outlawed substance. Their real jobs are thus political in nature, not scientific. Unless AI "understands" these largely unspoken facts and takes them into account, its answers about drugs will always serve to support the many modern prejudices which are based on this government demonization campaign.
A fair algorithm would consider the fact that westerners have been shielded by media censorship from all positive talk about drug use since their childhood. Even should algorithms glean that fact from its use of inherently conservative Big Data, the weight that the algorithms assign to that fact will be based on assumptions, explicit or implicit, in those algorithms.
In other words, the question about the propriety of drug use raises a host of questions about which most people never consciously think. And we can be sure that AI will manifest the prejudices of the majority. And this, of course, is the nightmare of AI in general. It is innocent enough in telling us the scientific name of the leopard, but when it purports to give us final answers on subjects of human mind and mood, we can only expect blather in the age of the War on Drugs.
Garbage in, garbage out.
Author's Follow-up:
March 14, 2026
It makes common psychological sense that cocaine could be beneficial for many people. Common psychological sense. And yet when one searches online for "depression and cocaine," one sees endless papers by academics speculating on how cocaine could actually CAUSE depression. This is how unscientific science has become under the gun of the Drug Warrior. Scientists know that their research dollars depend on them demonizing drugs like cocaine, and they are happy to oblige.
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against the hateful war on US
There are hundreds of things that we should outlaw before drugs (like horseback riding) if, as claimed, we are targeting dangerous activities. Besides, drugs are only dangerous BECAUSE of prohibition, which compromises product purity and refuses to teach safe use.
Researchers insult our intelligence when they tell us that drugs like MDMA and opium and laughing gas have not been proven to work. Everyone knows they work. That's precisely why drug warriors hate them.
Today's Washington Post reports that "opioid pills shipped" DROPPED 45% between 2011 and 2019..... while fatal overdoses ROSE TO RECORD LEVELS! Prohibition is PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE.
The best harm reduction strategy would be to re-legalize opium and cocaine. We would thereby end depression in America and free Americans from their abject reliance on the healthcare industry, meanwhile ending gang violence and restoring the rule of law in Latin America.
Drug War propaganda is all about convincing us that we will never be able to use drugs wisely. But the drug warriors are not taking any chances: they're doing all they can to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Let's arrest drug warriors, confiscate their houses, and deny them jobs in America -- until such time as they renounce their belief in the demonstrably ruinous policy of substance prohibition.
Ketamine is like any other drug. It has good uses for certain people in certain situations. Nowadays, people insist that a drug be okay in every situation for everybody (especially American teens) before they will say that it's okay. That's crazy and anti-scientific.
We need a scheduling system for psychoactive drugs as much as we need a scheduling system for sports activities: i.e. NOT AT ALL. Some sports are VERY dangerous, but we do not outlaw them because we know that there are benefits both to sports and to freedom in general.
The front page of every mycology club page should feature a protest of drug laws that make the study of mycology illegal in the case of certain shrooms. But no one protests. Their silence makes them drug war collaborators because it serves to normalize prohibition.
John Halpern wrote a book about opium, subtitled "the ancient flower that poisoned our world." What nonsense! Bad laws and ignorance poison our world, NOT FLOWERS!
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