Tim Ferriss's 4-Hour Workweek and Lifestyle Design Blog. Tim is an author of 5 #1 NYT/WSJ bestsellers, investor (FB, Uber, Twitter, 50+ more), and host of The Tim Ferriss Show podcast (400M+ downloads)
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The Episode of Everything: Balaji on Bitcoin and Ethereum, Media Self-Defense, Drone Warfare, Crypto Oracles, India as Dark Horse, The Pseudonymous Economy, Beautiful Trouble, Ramanujan, Life Extension, and More (#506)
He was named to the MIT Technology Review’s “Innovators Under 35,” won a Wall Street Journal Innovation Award, and holds a BS/MS/PhD in Electrical Engineering and an MS in Chemical Engineering, all from Stanford University. Balaji also teaches the occasional class at Stanford, including an online MOOC in 2013, which reached 250,000+ students worldwide.
To learn more about Balaji’s most recent project, sign up at 1729.com, a newsletter that pays you. They’re giving out $1,000 in BTC each day for completing tasks and tutorials. Subscribers also receive chapters from Balaji’s new (free) book, The Network State.
Brought to you by Wealthfront automated investing, Athletic Greens all-in-one nutritional supplement, and Helix Sleep premium mattresses. More on all three below.
#506: The Episode of Everything: Balaji on Bitcoin and Ethereum, Media Self-Defense, Drone Warfare, Crypto Oracles, India as Dark Horse, The Pseudonymous Economy, Beautiful Trouble, Ramanujan, Life Extension, and More
This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront! Wealthfront pioneered the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as ‘robo-advising,’ and they currently oversee $20 billion of assets for their clients. It takes about three minutes to sign up, and then Wealthfront will build you a globally diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite and manage it for you at an incredibly low cost.
This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep! Helix was selected as the #1 best overall mattress of 2020 by GQ magazine, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others. With Helix, there’s a specific mattress to meet each and every body’s unique comfort needs. Just take their quiz—only two minutes to complete—that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk free. They’ll even pick it up from you if you don’t love it. And now, to my dear listeners, Helix is offering up to 200 dollars off all mattress orders plus two free pillows at HelixSleep.com/Tim.
This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, “If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually Athletic Greens, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system.
Right now, Athletic Greens is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and five free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
“We really began to be tired of ourselves teaching this technology of inner awakening to the same people over and over. It’s like, how many times do you have to wake up in the morning? You’re awake. Do something.”
— Elizabeth Lesser
Elizabeth Lesser (@ElizabethLesser) is a bestselling author and the co-founder of Omega Institute, the renowned conference and retreat center located in Rhinebeck, New York. Elizabeth’s first book, The Seeker’s Guide, chronicles her years at Omega and distills lessons learned into a potent guide for growth and healing. Her New York Times bestselling book, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow, has sold almost 500,000 copies and has been translated into 20 languages. Her third book, Marrow, chronicles the journey Elizabeth and her younger sister went through when Elizabeth was the donor for her sister’s bone marrow transplant. Her newest book, Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes, reveals how humanity has outgrown its origin tales and hero myths. Elizabeth has given two popular TED talks and is one of Oprah Winfrey’s Supersoul 100, a collection of a hundred leaders who are using their voices and talent to elevate humanity.
She co-founded Omega Institute in 1977—a time when a variety of fresh ideas were sprouting in American culture. Since then, the Institute has been at the forefront of holistic education, offering workshops and conferences in integrative medicine, meditation and yoga, cross-cultural arts and creativity, ecumenical spirituality, and social change. Each year close to 30,000 people participate in Omega’s programs on its campus, and more than a million people visit its website for online learning.
#505: Elizabeth Lesser on Building Omega Institute, Intentional Communities, ADD (Authenticity Deficit Disorder), The Value of Grief, and The Emotion of Illumination
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This episode is brought to you by Tonal! Tonal is the world’s most intelligent home gym and personal trainer. It is precision engineered and designed to be the world’s most advanced strength studio. Tonal uses breakthrough technology—like adaptive digital weights and A.I. learning—together with the best experts in resistance training so you get stronger, faster. Every program is personalized to your body using A.I., and smart features check your form in real time, just like a personal trainer.
Try Tonal, the world’s smartest home gym, for 30 days in your home, and if you don’t love it, you can return it for a full refund. Visit Tonal.com for $100 off their smart accessories when you use promo code TIM21 at checkout.
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What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
“We wanted digital nations but we got digital nationalism.”
— Vitalik Buterin
Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin) is the creator of Ethereum. He first discovered blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies through Bitcoin in 2011 and was immediately excited by the technology and its potential. He co-founded Bitcoin Magazine in September 2011, and after two and a half years of looking at what the existing blockchain technology and applications had to offer, wrote the Ethereum white paper in November of 2013. He now leads Ethereum’s research team, working on future versions of the Ethereum protocol. In 2014, Vitalik was a recipient of the two-year Thiel Fellowship, tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s project that awards $100,000 to 20 promising innovators under 20 so they can pursue their inventions in lieu of a post-secondary institution path. You can find his website at Vitalik.ca.
Naval Ravikant (@naval) is the co-founder and chairman of AngelList. He is an angel investor and has invested in more than 100 companies, including many mega-successes, such as Twitter, Uber, Notion, Opendoor, Postmates, and Wish. You can subscribe to Naval, his podcast on wealth and happiness, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find his blog at nav.al.
Brought to you by Wealthfront automated investing, Pique‘s Daily Immune (Vitamin C optimized for absorption), and Theragun percussive muscle therapy devices.More on all three below.
#504: Vitalik Buterin, Creator of Ethereum, on Understanding Ethereum, ETH vs. BTC, ETH2, Scaling Plans and Timelines, NFTs, Future Considerations, Life Extension, and More (Featuring Naval Ravikant)
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This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront! Wealthfront pioneered the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as ‘robo-advising,’ and they currently oversee $20 billion of assets for their clients. It takes about three minutes to sign up, and then Wealthfront will build you a globally diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite and manage it for you at an incredibly low cost.
This week has been a fascinating firestorm for me.
Part of the excitement came after a series of tweets I published about some of the concerns I have as psychedelic medicine makes the leap from research to for-profit startups and companies. Here is what I wrote:
“I am very concerned by the patent land grab warming up in the for-profit psychedelic world. Is anyone working on an IP Defense Fund—or coalition of pro-bono lawyers—of some type to file USPTO objections/comments, etc. when companies attempt to secure broad patents that could hinder scientific research, reasonable competition (i.e., for “scale” and wide accessibility, we need competition to help drive costs down), and so on? Who are the smartest people thinking about this? cc @michaelpollan, @Drug_Researcher, @RickDoblin, @RCarhartHarris”
In this post, I’ll describe a few noteworthy tweets, then I’ll focus on one particular response I received, as it helps us unpack a lot.
First, Rick Doblin of The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) replied with the below, which offers great food for thought. It demonstrates how non-profits and drug development can coexist with innovative business models. It also demonstrates how a profit-first model is NOT always necessary for attracting excellent talent to work on tough problems:
@tferriss: @MAPS has recently engaged patent attorneys to assist in strengthening our anti-patent strategy for uses of MDMA, and to prepare easily accessible information for patent examiners so patents will not be issued in the first place. pic.twitter.com/ndcAELkDi4
Several responses endorsed the Usona Institute — a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to both research and production of psilocybin, 5-MeO-DMT, and other psychedelic medicines — which has made commitments to Open Science. I have many friends who have supported Usona after due diligence.
And now to the tweet that will be our jumping-off point for many topics…
One response that got quite a bit of attention was from Christian Angermeyer, who has co-funded and co-founded two notable for-profit companies in the space, Compass Pathways and ATAI Life Sciences, respectively.
Before we go further, I want to note that I like Christian and have also moderated panels involving him (e.g., the psychedelic science panel at Milken Institute Global Conference 2019, which I think is the best 101 overview I’ve ever been a part of), where I’ve always found his perspectives valuable.
He is sincere in his goal to help millions with access to psychedelics, and here is his response to my thread (in case easier, screenshot is here):
— Christian Angermayer (@C_Angermayer) March 3, 2021
I planned on responding on Twitter, but it got long and Twitter wouldn’t let me. I also realized that the points, problems, and questions are relevant to nearly anyone starting or working for a for-profit company in the psychedelic space.
For those reasons and more, I decided to turn my response into a blog post.
Here it is…
###
Thank you for the response, Christian. I agree with nearly everything in your response and appreciate the dialogue.
That said, I don’t think it directly addresses my concerns. To further the conversation, please allow me to highlight and clarify a few things:
1. I’m not anti-profit. I’m an early investor or advisor in 50+ companies that have created hundreds of billions of dollars of market cap (e.g., Shopify, Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Alibaba) and raised tens of billions of dollars in funding. I understand how important intellectual property (IP) can be and how critical it is to have financially sustainable models for scaling. 100% agreed there. For-profit structures, and markets in general, are excellent mechanisms for innovation and solving challenging problems.
2. Regarding my donations of “a few million dollars,” which seemed to be considered trivial—I think it’s worth noting that I began funding studies in psychedelic science circa late 2015, and I was a founding funder of the first dedicated research center in the world (Imperial College) and the first in the US (Johns Hopkins). I believe these and other “seed investments” have had large compounding effects, including cultural and institutional domino effects on an international scale. I judge my investments and philanthropy based on outcomes, not the size of my inputs. Little amounts can do a lot when put in early. Of course, I completely agree that large amounts of capital are helpful for scaling access.
Related to science — would you be willing to allow scientists who have signed deals with Compass or ATAI to share their agreements publicly (i.e., waive confidentiality clauses)? I believe that would quell some of the concerns among psychedelic advocates. If not, why not?
Of course, I realize that this would be unusual and not without challenges, but it might be a creative example of how companies can reassure the public that they are, net-net, contributing to, and not detracting from or disabling, the ecosystem.
3.You wrote that I’m “wrong” and “incredibly misguided” on the topic of IP. Can you please help me understand how I’m wrong and misguided? I’m always game to learn, but I could use more specifics.
As I stated in my initial tweet thread, I think it’s worth examining—and possibly pushing back on—“broad patents that could hinder scientific research, reasonable competition (i.e., for ‘scale’ and wide accessibility, we need competition to help drive costs down), and so on.” This also applies to anything in the public domain that should remain in the public domain. Please note that I didn’t mention specific companies, but since you engaged…
Do you disagree? Do you think a monopoly/duopoly of any type (Compass or ATAI or otherwise), patents on basic elements of the psychedelic experience, or patents covering dozens of possible conditions that might be treatable (some of which are being treated/researched at universities) would be good for the ecosystem, for innovation, or for ensuring affordable pricing?
I ask these things AS A CHEERLEADER. I WANT Compass and ATAI to succeed in helping many millions of people! I’ve met you, as well as the founders of Compass, and I believe you all to be good people. I really mean it. I believe that you all want to change the world for the better, and this field needs well-capitalized teams who can execute.
Compass and other for-profit companies have the potential to do a ton of good in the world. I also think that the nature and incentives of capitalism can breed strategies that are very bad for innovation, and we need individuals, groups, and third-party organizations to watch for them and mitigate them. Even the best of intentions can warp when they collide with the harsh realities of business.
None of this is Compass- or ATAI-specific. It applies to every startup and company in the space.
For-profit ventures have a critical role to play in the expansion of psychedelic medicine, but for-profit ventures don’t get a free pass. They can also cause harm, and they often do. There will be compelling temptations to make unethical decisions, pursue unfair anti-competitive practices (e.g., patenting “inventions” that aren’t inventions), generate revenue without adding value (e.g., IP trolling), charge as much as possible (e.g., NYT – “Drug Goes From $13.50 a Tablet to $750, Overnight“), and treat the psychedelic landscape as a winner-take-all or zero-sum game. “Disruption” can be white hat or black hat; “scaling” can be done with net-gain or net-loss to an ecosystem.
There are bad actors and mercenaries in every industry. But here’s the part that people forget: even if the founders of a company rival Mother Theresa in their moral character and strength, that isn’t enough. Leadership changes, incentives change, power dynamics change, and all situations change (Suggested reading: We Will Call It Pala). That’s why both internal guardrails and external watchdogs are important. Once again, even the purest of intentions can warp when they collide with the harsh realities of business. I’ve seen it.
In the end, the people who would most suffer as a result of the possible problems I’ve outlined are the millions of people who most need psychedelic medicine. That is why I’m taking the time to write and publish my concerns.
Once again, thank you for the dialogue, Christian. I greatly appreciate it, and I greatly appreciate your mission to help as many people as possible. I look forward to your thoughts.
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This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep!Eight Sleep’s Pod Pro Cover is the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced (and user-friendly) solution on the market. Simply add the Pod Pro Cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature.
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What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
It seems to me that the purpose of life is to find a mode of being that is so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant.
— Jordan Peterson
Jordan B. Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) has taught mythology to lawyers, doctors, and business people, consulted for the UN secretary-general, helped his clinical clients manage depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, and schizophrenia, served as an adviser to senior partners of major Canadian law firms, and lectured extensively in North America and Europe.
With his students and colleagues at Harvard and the University of Toronto, Dr. Peterson has published more than one hundred scientific papers, transforming the modern understanding of personality, as his book Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief revolutionized the psychology of religion.
Brought to you by Wealthfront automated investing, Helix Sleep premium mattresses, and Athletic Greens all-in-one nutritional supplement. More on all three below.
This episode is brought to you by Helix Sleep! Helix was selected as the #1 best overall mattress of 2020 by GQ magazine, Wired, Apartment Therapy, and many others. With Helix, there’s a specific mattress to meet each and every body’s unique comfort needs. Just take their quiz—only two minutes to complete—that matches your body type and sleep preferences to the perfect mattress for you. They have a 10-year warranty, and you get to try it out for a hundred nights, risk free. They’ll even pick it up from you if you don’t love it. And now, to my dear listeners, Helix is offering up to 200 dollars off all mattress orders plus two free pillows at HelixSleep.com/Tim.
This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, “If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually Athletic Greens, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system.
Right now, Athletic Greens is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and five free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product.
This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront! Wealthfront pioneered the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as ‘robo-advising,’ and they currently oversee $20 billion of assets for their clients. It takes about three minutes to sign up, and then Wealthfront will build you a globally diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite and manage it for you at an incredibly low cost.
“Resistance with a capital R, that force of self-sabotage, will try to stop you as a writer or an artist or anybody from achieving your best work, from following your calling, will try to distract you, undermine your self-confidence, make you procrastinate, make you quit, make you give into fear, or, on the other hand, make you such a perfectionist that you spend all day on one paragraph and you accomplish nothing. The concept of little successes, or of a routine, is to help you overcome that Resistance.”
— Steven Pressfield
Steven Pressfield (@SPressfield), a former Marine and graduate of Duke University, became an overnight success as a writer after 30 years of abject failure. Identifying the omnipresence of “Resistance,” the interior force of self-sabotage he described in The War of Art, has saved his own artistic life and has helped many others struggling to find their creative calling. Steven’s novels of the ancient world, including the nonfiction The Warrior Ethos, are required reading at West Point, Annapolis, and in the Marine Corps. He lives in Los Angeles.
His new book is A Man at Arms, an epic saga about a reluctant hero, the Roman Empire, and the rise of a new faith.
Brought to you by Tonal smart home gym; LinkedIn Sales Navigator, the best version of LinkedIn for sales professionals; and Athletic Greens all-in-one nutritional supplement. More on all three below.
This episode is brought to you by Tonal! Tonal is the world’s most intelligent home gym and personal trainer. It is precision engineered and designed to be the world’s most advanced strength studio. Tonal uses breakthrough technology—like adaptive digital weights and A.I. learning—together with the best experts in resistance training so you get stronger, faster. Every program is personalized to your body using A.I., and smart features check your form in real time, just like a personal trainer.
Try Tonal, the world’s smartest home gym, for 30 days in your home, and if you don’t love it, you can return it for a full refund. Visit Tonal.com for $100 off their smart accessories when you use promo code TIM21 at checkout.
This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, “If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually Athletic Greens, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system.
Right now, Athletic Greens is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and five free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product.
This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Navigator! LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the best version of LinkedIn for sales professionals. Tap into the power of LinkedIn’s 700 million+ member network. LinkedIn Sales Navigator gives you 20 monthly InMail messages, Lead Recommendations, Unlimited Searches, Actionable Insights and News, and access to free courses on LinkedIn Learning. Target the right prospects and decision-makers, unlocking 15% more pipeline from sourced opportunities, a 17% lift when saving leads on Sales Navigator, and 42% larger deal sizes.
Kevin Rose (@KevinRose)—technologist, serial entrepreneur, world-class investor, self-experimenter, and all-around wild and crazy guy—was the first guest on the podcast nearly seven years ago. We were in San Francisco, sitting at this huge wooden table, and I remember being very nervous. I didn’t know what to expect, but if people liked the idea, I promised to do at least six total episodes.
600M+ downloads and hundreds of guests later, Kevin is taking the reins and interviewing me for episode #500!
Hard to believe it all started off as a lark. It’s arguably the biggest thing I’ve ever done, and without you all—my dear listeners—it wouldn’t be possible.
Thank you for allowing me to do this work. I love it. 🙏
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This episode is brought to you by Literati Kids, a try-before-you-buy subscription book club! Great children’s books open up new worlds for discovery. With Literati Kids, your child can explore uncharted places every month with spellbinding stories handpicked by experts.
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This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront! Wealthfront pioneered the automated investing movement, sometimes referred to as ‘robo-advising,’ and they currently oversee $20 billion of assets for their clients. It takes about three minutes to sign up, and then Wealthfront will build you a globally diversified portfolio of ETFs based on your risk appetite and manage it for you at an incredibly low cost.
This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, “If you could only use one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually Athletic Greens, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system.
Right now, Athletic Greens is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and five free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments.
This is a blog post I wish I didn’t need to write.
I have personally invested years and millions of dollars into nonprofit psychedelic research around the world (one example in the UK, one in the US, and one in NZ) because (A) I believe it has the potential to revolutionize the treatment of mental health and addiction, which the results of studies seem to thus far confirm, and (B) I’m a case study. Psychedelics have saved my life several times over, including helping me to heal from childhood abuse.
So, it’s with a very heavy heart that I’ve come to accept several sad truths.
Chief among them is this: Most natural sources of psychedelics simply cannot withstand ever-increasing global demand. Many plant and animal species are already endangered or near extinction.
To have a hope of stemming the tide, we need to revise our psychedelic “menu,” and that’s what this post is about. It aims to offer options that are eco-friendly instead of eco-destructive and ethical instead of inadvertently abusive. If enough people make a few simple switches, I believe we can mitigate and possibly reverse the trend of ecological damage.
Given the slope of popularity growth, if we don’t reconsider our sources, I’d wager that we extinguish at least a handful of critical species within the next 3–5 years. There are also questions of animal abuse, and while some practices are ethically justifiable for small indigenous populations, they are catastrophic if expanded to even tens of thousands of people. It is inviting disaster to copy and paste from a tribe in the Amazon—as just one example—to NYC, LA, London, Sydney, or any other large city. It’s very easy to go from taking one tree to taking a forest or to go from grabbing one toad to extirpating an entire species.
So let’s make some changes.
Over the last decade, I’ve acquired enough familiarity with these medicines, and spent enough time (i.e., many hundreds of hours, if not thousands) with both scientists and indigenous practitioners to feel that I can speak with decent confidence to their therapeutic applications and interchangeability (or lack thereof).
That said, I am by no means the world’s top expert. Even though drafts of this piece were proofread by biochemists, ethnobotanists, and guides/facilitators with hundreds of sessions with different compounds, this post will no doubt contain typos and mistakes. Those are mine alone, as I also made final edits after receiving revisions. I will aim to improve this post over time as I get feedback.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: These plants and compounds are illegal in many countries, and even possession can carry severe criminal penalties. None of this post constitutes medical advice or should be construed as a recommendation to use psychedelics. There are serious legal, psychological, and physical risks. Psychedelics are not for everyone—they can exacerbate certain emotional problems and there have been, in very rare cases, fatalities. This article is simply an attempt at harm-reduction through education, as I know many people will use psychedelics, regardless.
AND ONE MORE NOTE: Please don’t make the all-too-common mistake of assuming that “all-natural” means safer; the deadly poisons strychnine and hemlock are derived from plants, and some psychedelic plants (e.g., datura, brugmansia) and animals are well-respected among indigenous peoples for their ability to kill. Similarly, don’t assume that synthetic psychoactive agents are automatically less effective or therapeutic than natural products. Many of us—present company included—wouldn’t have survived childbirth or childhood without synthetics. There are pros and cons to both, places for both, and responsible and irresponsible ways to use both.
Katie Haun (@katie_haun) is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. Previously, she spent a decade as a federal prosecutor with the US Department of Justice, where she focused on fraud, cybercrime, and corporate crime, alongside agencies including the SEC, FBI, and Treasury. She created the government’s first cryptocurrency task force and led investigations into the Mt. Gox hack and the corrupt agents on the Silk Road task force.
While serving as a federal prosecutor with the US Department of Justice, she also prosecuted RICO murders, organized crime, public corruption, gangs, and money laundering. She held senior positions at Justice Department headquarters in both the National Security Division and attorney general’s office, where her portfolio included antitrust, tax, and national security. Katie has testified before both houses of Congress on the intersection of technology and regulation.
Katie serves on the board of Coinbase, where she chairs its audit and risk committees, and HackerOne. She also advises numerous technology companies and has invested in a range of companies from seed to Series C stage. She teaches a class on cryptocurrencies at Stanford Business School and previously taught cybercrime at Stanford Law School.
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