I can't attend, so I'll drop my main thoughts here. Alcohol is a hard drug. What sets it apart from other hard drugs is that it's perceived as normative in society where other hard drugs aren't. This means that society tends to be more lenient on alcohol abuse because it's so entrenched. 

I could list statistics of crimes caused by methamphetamine abuse, or cartel-related activities, and they would strike a very different vein. "Oh, but drugs are bad," the belief-fixed-by-authority normie would retort. That fails to see the point. Alcohol is a hard drug.

ALL detrimental behavior resulting from drug misuse is a consequence of the user's psychology, not the substance itself. The only empirically sound approach I know of that actually makes this strikingly clear is harm reduction. Harm reduction, as exemplified by ANKORS in BC Canada (http://www.ankorsvolunteer.com/) takes a no-nonsense approach about the potential detriments of substance use and abuse. Their entire philosophy revolves around getting people informed about which substances affect their physiology and psychology, for better and for worth, in a neutral way. They leave the ethical choice of whether to consume or not for the user to decide.

With this in mind, the claim that alcohol consumption somehow causes violent tendencies among certain individuals seems to me laughably false. People predisposed to violence are predisposed to violence because of personality disorders, conditioning, and past trauma. Blaming it on substance use---any substance use---is scapegoating and passing the buck. I believe the Rat Park experiments were very clear about this (https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/rat-park/)

Overall, I find the article really naive. Should still make fun for good polemic.

 

Great read. I think that symbiosis in ecology is yet another lens through which we can recognize how misguided framing alignment as an analytical problem with an exact solution is. Given the artificial selection with which we currently create LLMs, this is an important point not to miss.