What if the drugs just make us... better? As in happier, less stressed, and more suited to what modern life requires from us.

Happiness isn't necessary to pass on your genes. Most animals, especially prey animals, spend much of their lives scared, because death is inevitable otherwise. We've now created a safe and pleasant environment our ancestors could only dream of, yet many of us are still unhappy. There's no real evidence we were broadly happier in the distant past either, we're just a different kind of unhappy now.

Seems to me we've developed a tool that makes people feel better and function better, perhaps by blunting some of the vestigial leftover emotions we needed when every tree might have had a sabre-tooth tiger hiding behind it.

> far too high for a social good

Not sure what you're basing this on -- hopefully not just your impression after reading things online.

I am also shocked that every time an article about guitar playing is posted the sheer number of posters who play guitar themselves. I mean what are the chances?

Most of us have no idea how many non-commenting readers w/o first-hand experience are just reading, and so no ability to draw any conclusions about the number of ones who comment with first-hand experience. 100 people out of a 1000, and 100 people out of a million, are very different things.

An HN post like this will gather like what, at most two dozens of anecdotes from a highly self selected user pool of maybe a million top? Is this how you base your "sheer number" on? Is this how you judge what is good or bad for your definition of social good?

I got some other news for you, buddy. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49444514

Wait til you hear about microplastics!