The Front

[luka]

i don't mean to say that how we think about these things is unimportant and has no consequences, just that they can't and won't ever be answered conclusively, and certainly not by science.

 

[luka]

why do people do things we think are stupid and bad. why do they read the wrong newspapers and watch the wrong television channels. why do they vote for the wrong political party? are they tricked into it? are they evil? are they stupid? who knows.

 

[luka]

why do people eat so much sugar their teeth fall out? why do they eat so many burgers they get too fat to get out the door? why do people gamble away their childrens grocery money? why do people buy farts in a jar? dunno. no idea.

 

[luka]

does the Devil exist? is there an Enemy? i really don't know

 

[luka]

what you can do is um and ah about the ramifications of any of these beliefs but even then im not sure it matters a great deal.
if someone feels they are spending too much time on facebook, obsessing about it too much, then their task is the same no matter
how they understand the source of that compulsion, they have to stop, they have to free themselves

 

[luka]

if you think its engineered by an evil genius i guess you might call for government intervention, or you might assasinate zuckerberg,
but the immediate task would be to stop using it

 

[luka]

the same goes for the magic chemicals in mcdonalds that force you to eat cheeseburgers

 

[luka]

but most of us wont stop because we cant stop. becasue there arent better options. becasue everything is boring.

 

[luka]

life is full of traps and snares and the bait is always the same
pleasure, greed, lust
drugs, get rich quick schemes, grow your dick pills

 

[luka]

and we are particularly suscpetible to these traps becasue we can't think of anything to do. we havent found any higher purpose, me, you, us lot here, society in general

 

[luka]

you can tune in to the higher level teaching machine and it can guide you, but you can also lose the neurolink and be lost and alone again

 

[luka]

and untethering yourself from the need for rewards is incredibly difficult. why am i being good if im not getting any prizes?

 

[luka]

why am i walking the Righteous Path if no one is going to pat me on the head and give me a biscuit?

 

[wild greens]

You can really see the difference between generations when it comes to the internet algorithm spectres over the last couple of pages. The young American's argument is certainly lucid and erudite enough but if you're mid-twenties now you've never known a life without the internet have you

Personally looking at current lifestyles i can certainly see all kinds of addiction spectres on the social media platforms, it's quite evident really, but then when you spend late teens & early twenties wrapped up in the coke shit you do notice a lot of this behaviour quite easily i think

"what's dopamine" that was funny tbf

 

[luka]

i dont think hes saying the behaviour is not compulsive, hes just calling the addiction model into question and asking whether all repeated behaviours are usefully characterised as addiction and whether the dopamine model gives you any real understanding of the process over and above already existing models of reward/pleasure

 

[wild greens]

The dopamine "model" certainly doesn't, no- and its not a simple as dopamine either is it.

I reckon the social media concept is more related to the gradual disintegration of the local community and going pub/church etc as opposed to individual addiction, but for the sub-sector of people who do become proper pub alkys or incredibly devout god-botherers, the internet addiction can supplant that and has

If you look at someone like Ian Dunt he is clearly completely addicted to twitter and the self satisfied feedback loop that gives him

 

[luka]

yeah well this is it, this is what im saying, we've got nothing better to do

 

[luka]

what are you going to do? make something out of pipe cleaners?

 

[luka]

anything that can successfully and painlessly kill a few hours of your time youre going to latch on to becasue life fundamentally is about killing time

 

[shiels]

And also it seems like the "function" of a given neurotransmitter is made all the less clear in light of how some of its receptions activate excitatory signals and some activate inhibitory signals. Thus the function of a given neurotransmitter is partially exogenous to its chemical structure, if I understand correctly.

This is all to say, the dopamine argument as it is often employed seems facile and almost pseudoscientific to me, if even incidentally accurate in many cases.

it’s like that ludicrously basic chat about Depression / any mental health issue as chemical imbalance. Without the social context it’s meaningless