16 ms·

The science of addiction: Do you always like the things you want?

beepboopbeep 6y ago
This, in my opinion, overlays very well with doom scrolling partisan entertainment on facebook/instagram. No one enjoys it, but the intensity drives them back.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > This, in my opinion, overlays very well with doom scrolling partisan entertainment on facebook/instagram. No one enjoys it, but the intensity drives them back. But enjoyment-seeking isn't the only thing that motivates people to do things. Fear and anxiety can too, and I think doomscrolling is more of an example of that. It's like vigilantly looking for lions on the savanna and rallying your tribe to react the ones you've spotted.
jo032 6y ago
Of the thousands of hours I spent playing single player videogames in my youth, a surprisingly small amount was spent having fun or doing anything interesting or challenging. It was mostly just tedious grinding on my overpowered Pokemon (and other rpg equivalents) against helpless enemies so that I could be even more overpowered against them. I luckily grew out of it, but being absorbed by the pursuit of easy, digital approximations of real accomplishments, to the point where it impedes more difficult pursuits of the real thing in the real world, is a serious issue for many millennial men I know.
- earthscienceman 6y ago
  I love this comment and I think it touches on something that is really controversial and difficult to discuss on internet forums. It has become clear to me that for young men of my generation that this type of video-gaming is very much the equivalent of 'doomscrolling' as mentioned in other comments, and is generally pretty harmful. I have so many friends that have improved their lives by following the much-mocked advise 'turn off the game and do something else'. Are games the culture-killing brain-rotting rotten life harbinger that our parents made them out to be? Of course not. Are they the epitome of entertainment and growth that places like reddit make them out to be? No, not really. Like always. The truth is in the nuance.
  - BitwiseFool 6y ago
    I wonder if my desire to grind and or min/max in video games during my teenage years was a proxy for honing skills. Perhaps it's a developmental stage where you actually enjoy the repetition because you're supposed to be developing a skills and trade-craft. But now that I'm older I have little to no interest in such pursuits.
    - bigfudge 6y ago
      Surely the point is that this developmental ability to persist is wasted on FPS? You could have learnt a musical instrument or developed some other accomplishment that lasts a lifetime. I.e. the real problem is the opportunity cost
      - dimitrios1 6y ago
        Speak for yourself pal, I can still 1deag with the best of them.
        renjimen 6y ago
        Honestly, there is very little else as satisfying as a couple of Juan Deags in a crunch round of a CS match. I've spent time learning other, more respectable RL hobbies, but there's that deep sense of satisfaction they fail to capture.
        rowanG077 6y ago
        Only things comperable is an orgasm to be honest. But the satisfaction of Juan deags persist for longer.
      - toast0 6y ago
        I mean, clearly FPS is a waste. Civilization and SFII is where it's at. SMB is ok too. That said, learning a musical instrument does not last a lifetime if you don't keep playing it. The point of learning skills early in life is not necessarily that the skill is useful, it's that you've learned how to learn skills. Which hopefully will be used throughout your life.
- dan00 6y ago
  > I luckily grew out of it, but being absorbed by the pursuit of easy, digital approximations of real accomplishments ... The really harmful thing might be the artificial meaning this creates, which might be at the end more addictive than the fun. I never really was addicted to games. The funny thing is, I could only play games that were really fun for me, because of the game mechanics or if they had some interesting new aspects. But this kind of fascination never hold that long and after that the game play just got repetitive and tedious, at which point I just stopped playing. Therefore also most games that contain a lot of repetition feel just pointless to me.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    Yeah - similar for me. I think there's something interesting here with how different people respond to 'fake achievement'. For me FPS games were fun because it was a little competition between players (also I was often interrupted growing up and short rounds are better for this). After trying WoW and having to walk 30min to pick up a feather and bring it back then do the same for an acorn I lost total interest in ever playing again. That might be all the time I had to play that day. I suspect some people get more of a positive feedback response from seeing numbers go up than others. I think MMOGs can also have a social component that keeps people coming back to do shared events which is probably stickier than the fake achievement bits. I'd be curious if people really vulnerable to fake achievement would also be successful if they could create a fast feedback environment for themselves with something other than the game as the goal (since they're clearly amenable to that kind of motivation). For me, the difficulty is on the other side. Even outside of games it can be hard to find something that feels like it matters and is important (even if you can make money and be otherwise better off in your life by doing it). Curiosity can also pull you in a thousand different directions. Figuring out what you want is hard, figuring out how to move in that direction is hard, then actually getting yourself to focus and do the work is hard. When the search space of what's possible is so big, it can be difficult to coordinate. I think games reduce that to something extremely narrow. For some that's effective, for me the illusion is obvious and unfulfilling. Today I tend to like one-off indie games driven by story (like Firewatch). I feel like I get more out of it.
    - 6y ago
- qsort 6y ago
  Counterpoint -- the min-maxing is often the interesting part, it's not the destination, it's the journey, or something like that. By trying to get very good at a game, you learn how to solve problems, and, more importantly, how to learn how to solve problems. It's also often the case that by taking a game seriously, you engage with the community, making friends or at least getting to know people out of your circle. I've put thousands of hours into several games, and I don't regret a second of that. I wouldn't say that behavior is unhealthy unless it brings you to downright ignore your job/school/responsibilities.
  - cgriswald 6y ago
    > I wouldn't say that behavior is unhealthy unless it brings you to downright ignore your job/school/responsibilities. I have a much lower bar because I don't think all video game playing is equal. My first Pokémon game was one of the more recent ones for the switch. I didn't quite understand how the breeding worked and I was trying to breed a particular Pokémon with high stats. I spent many hours figuring out how it works and writing scripts to figure out what I should breed to get what I want, then more hours actually doing the breeding. I was fully engaged and I would consider this video game playing healthy. I've also spent many hours just vegging out. A little of that is fine; it's one way I do some thinking. But too much of it and the day is gone and when I stop I feel bad, like I've just come out of a stupor. This, to me, is not healthy, even if I otherwise took care of all my responsibilities.
  - pmoriarty 6y ago
    "I wouldn't say that behavior is unhealthy unless it brings you to downright ignore your job/school/responsibilities." What if you could have done something more productive or rewarding with your life instead, like developed new friendships or deepened existing ones, learned new skills, or read something that opened your eyes or changed your life? I've probably gamed as much as anyone here, and I deeply regret wasting so much time on it. Though it wasn't a complete waste of time, as it did help me to learn to manage complex systems (I like complex games) and to anticipate and prepare (I like RPG's and chess), and it also helped me to destress, there was also a compulsive quality to my gaming where the ultimate payoff wasn't all that great compared to the many thousands of hours I put in to it.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  Grinding exemplifies delayed gratification. You know that if you grind enough you'll get to something more interesting/fun. People who are good at grinding would probably ace the so-called Marshmallow Test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...
  - triska 6y ago
    Several years ago, there was a site called wowdetox.com, where addicts of World of Warcraft and also other gamers shared their stories. One of the posts there contained a striking observation: The most tragic aspect of the game is that it hits the hardest workers the hardest.
  - jo032 6y ago
    I think people who have a healthy relationship with games agree with you, but for me, the obsessive grinding only made the games less challenging/fun, with no reward except larger numbers on the menus-- like if the reward for the Marshmallow test was just that you got to look at a bitmap of a pixelated marshmallow on tv. Videogames are not all bad, and of course there are many healthy and successful people who enjoy them and appreciate them as works of art. But for me personally, I regret that I spent so much time doing busywork for an unpaid job that I didn't even enjoy.
  - paganel 6y ago
    The Marshmallow Test looks kind of classist, or even racist (not sure if "racist" is the right word for it, maybe "orientalist" would be better). Yes, if you live in Stanford or in a country that has an institution like Stanford then most probably "passing" the marshmallow test means waiting for a longer period in order to get twice the reward, but I dare say not a lot of countries/societies afforded that luxury until not that long ago (many of them still don't), in their case waiting for longer in order to get twice the reward might mean that you'll be dead by then, or evicted, or you had to escape the communists/the criminal right-wingers/the islamist beheaders/what have you.
- habitue 6y ago
  > I luckily grew out of it There's always a lot of hand-wringing about what kids and teenagers spend their time doing, and I wonder if it's not just a natural process of your brain figuring out a system, going "oh I see" and moving on to the next thing. Like, in other words, it might not be luck, it might just be the learning / exploration process working normally. That being said, there's definitely an aspect where video games are a super-stimulus. It's true that video game designers are creating explicit reward loops in a way that, let's say the writers of Gilligan's island were not (to compare hand-wringing about games to hand-wringing about television)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- offtop5 6y ago
  Another way to look at it , I tend to be very good at math. As a kid I could easily do somewhat complex equations in my head, to the frustration of my teachers. Perhaps Pokemon was training for that.
- enominezerum 6y ago
  I got to this point with games a few years ago. My coworkers (all big gamers) were amazed that I would wait for games to be on steep sale or just play older titles. My first job out of high school was working in a game store where I fell into the rat race of having every shiny new thing I could afford and getting hyped up on the hyper competitive nature of everything. Really, it was Destiny 1 and Halo MCC that broke me hard of this habit. Between the games being broken or lacking, and me not enjoying the PvP aspect of Destiny 1, I just stepped away from it all. Now I am content to game for the sake of burning time. I don't like PUBG, but I have it to play with friends while we drink beers and shoot the bot infested unranked, the final moments are tense and fun and if we fail at least we had the fun of getting there. I got XBOX game pass and just pop in games to try them out now, no worries or hassle of returning since it is Netflix style gaming. Even on my phone I have loaded up old games where I turn on cheats for mad fun. I am currently playing Pokemon Sun and whenever the baddies start a match with "I am stealing your Pokemon" they face my 100% started with 100% critical chance and I just lob a Master Ball and steal their Pokemon. I enjoy walking through walls and just being ridiculous in it while still enjoying the story and atmosphere of the game. (all the fun, none of slowness inherent in those games). But I do agree. I don't know how many times I would work my 9-5, try and game some, get upset at the losses, and just wallow out the rest of the night, skipping other stuff I wanted/needed to do. The highs certainly weren't worth the lows. Part of why when folks say video games aren't addicting, I ask why CoD put in the prestige system. It keeps hitting you with that dopamine of 'yea, just unlocked something' which constantly throws you back into combat where something else gets unlocked.
  - curryst 6y ago
    > Part of why when folks say video games aren't addicting, I ask why CoD put in the prestige system. It keeps hitting you with that dopamine of 'yea, just unlocked something' which constantly throws you back into combat where something else gets unlocked. It's also part of the competition. It's called "Prestige" because having a lot of those levels is meant to be prestigious. For me, it was closer to an MMR Ranking or KD Ratio. It's less about collecting the icons, and more about getting some form of external validation that you were a better player than other players. Of course, Prestige is a bad indicator that you are a better player than other players, but it allows people who aren't good but have a lot of time to compete on some level. If this were really about "yea, just unlocked something" I would expect better rewards. I haven't played the new CoDs a lot, but from what I remember, the rewards for prestiging were largely meh, and you get most of them from low levels of prestige. If you hit prestige 99, you've done a lot of prestiges without any unlocks (other than the bars next to your username, which no one ever looks at).
- yibg 6y ago
  I can certainly relate to this, my poison of choice was diablo 2. At first playing and discovering all the various items and stats was fun. Killing monsters and advancing was fun. At some point it just became a habit, then towards the end it became a chore. Yet I still spent endless hours doing it. For me at least it could probably been classified as an addiction. There were some fond memories from it, and there were certainly many enjoyable moments. But it was certainly not done in moderation. I'm also glad I pulled out of it, and didn't get into a similar situation with a different game.
  - gwd 6y ago
    Diablo 2 is exactly the kind of game I felt like a pointless time sink. Your character gains new skills, but you? Not so much. At least playing a competitive FPS (or something like Starcraft) you're gaining skills.
    - musicale 6y ago
      Usually I'm mostly done after beating a Diablo game a couple of times at various difficulty levels, but I still find them fun to play periodically. I think the fact that they become tedious after a while is not a bad thing since otherwise you'd never stop playing! They are also fun and easy games to pick up and play with friends or family (especially D3 in couch co-op mode.) Regarding game vs. IRL skills, I enjoy Guitar Hero quite a bit, but Rocksmith actually improves your ability to play a real guitar. Rock Band drums are pretty close to electronic drums though, and vocals are actual vocals. And as I've mentioned, Ring Fit Adventure (which I'm still playing) kind of levels you up. I found similar effects with Wii Fit, where years after stopping playing (and switching to non-balance based exercises) my sense of balance was surprisingly better than it had been before I started playing the game. I expect other physical games like Dance Dance Revolution are good for physical coordination, and I expect twitch games such as FPSs are good for eye-hand coordination and reaction time.
    - yibg 6y ago
      Looking back yes not much skills gained. At the time what kept me in there were a couple of things: 1) chasing the next thing. Next item, next perfect build, next stat. 2) the multi player aspect. Be it pvp or a coop game with some online “friends” Both of these are good ways to keep people engaged / addicted I guess.
- bennysonething 6y ago
  You definitely have a point. Though one thing I never understood was grindy type games. Growing up playing with my mates, Mario, Zelda , street fighter then Goldeneye, Tony hawk's. We just never came across them. Then final fantasy 7 came along, I remember my friend just left it back to the shop. Turn based combat and experience points made no sense to us at all. Few years later I tried playing Knights of the old Republic, it didn't feel like a game. It just felt really odd and awkward to me. Skip forward few years and this type game is huge. I don't get it and never will I guess! The bit I really don't get is you don't get better at the game by becoming more skillful but instead by spending time increasing xp on grindy tasks. One thing about games though, they can be sort of mindful: recently I went through a really hard month at work. I found playing old Ps1 racers helped me quickly unwind before bed. (Wipeout and gran turismo 1)
  - baby 6y ago
    Every game can become grindy if you abuse them. I used to play counter strike and I would just grind grind grind. Playing deathmatch again and again, practicing your aim on specific maps (aim_usp, aim_aztec, etc.)
    - gwd 6y ago
      But this is a different definition of "grind". After spending an hour practicing your aim on a specific map, your aim will actually be better. That's not any different than spending an hour practicing shooting hoops from a specific angle / distance, or spending an hour practicing musical scales. I think when most people talk about "grind" in games, they mean activities that are genuinely only time-wasters. You don't gain any skill (other than patience) from killing your hundredth goblin or clicking "harvest" on your hundredth field.
      - baby 6y ago
        True, there's a skill grind, and a level/gear up grind
  - muffinman26 6y ago
- musicale 6y ago
  > It was mostly just tedious grinding I haven't had a grindy experience in most single-player games, but MMOs have perfected the grind system to keep players in the game and spending money (particularly in a subscription MMO.) Oddly enough, I tend to enjoy the repetitive activities of MMOs such as gathering, crafting, and simple quests; they put you in a sort of relaxed flow state and you get to see the game turn from day to night as other players and monsters wander by. You also end up exploring more of the game world in detail and noticing interesting details that you might miss otherwise. Daily quests are repetitive but they have a bit of variety because you have a different set of players every time. I wonder whether MMO players might be good at real-life grinds that seem tedious but are actually worthwhile, such as exercise. As a data point, I'm still grinding away at Ring Fit Adventure, which is fun and seems to be beneficial to fitness in terms of increased strength, balance, and energy after several months. I haven't managed to enjoy grinding housecleaning yet but I might if I can figure out how to gamify it....
- m463 6y ago
  I remember playing games and basically doing: creep, shoot, save, creep, solve puzzle, save, creep, die, restore, ... And then there came along games that were more forgiving and you could just play and if you died, respawn. but then other games replaced things with: fight, get loot, sort and rearrange inventory, possible weapon swap, go back to town and sell inventory, etc.. I guess it's better that the current crop of phone games with grind (shortcut available for purchase!) , grind (you really should buy this convenient feature), grind, ... I did enjoy factorio. You have to periodically re-invent yourself. But then what do you do after launching a rocket?
modeless 6y ago
There are the things you say you want, the things you think you want, the things you do, and the things that make you happy. It's rare for any two of them to be the same, let alone all four.
- nonbirithm 6y ago
  I keep wondering if there is a term for the act of telling yourself something and not truly believing it. Or the implications of constantly remembering about an idea but denying it as not a "true" want. This kind of behavior is of great interest for me. Because I thought that that was what I was doing when I said I didn't want to try art as a hobby, and actively disliked it whenever I chose to do it, but with a self-induced financial obligation it actually became bearable, although not yet pleasurable.
k__ 6y ago
The opposite is also interesting. A surprisingly huge amount of things I don't want at first sight turn out to be quite pleasing. Like sport/fitness and learning/practice.
- munificent 6y ago
  Every now and then I stumble onto a term that so perfectly describes an aspect of life that I don't know how I ever lived without it. In this case, it's "Type I fun" and "Type II fun": https://www.rei.com/blog/climb/fun-scale https://www.rei.com/blog/climb/fun-scale You're talking about Type II fun and I 100% agree.
  - nickff 6y ago
    Type II fun is more about being cold/tired/miserable for a relatively short amount of time; parent is talking more about return on investment for long-term commitment.
    - munificent 6y ago
      I don't think there's a real difference here. All of those long-term returns on investment are just the accumulation of short-term cold/tired/miserable experiences. Getting in shape is just going outside in the cold/heat and running for a short while. You just have to do that over and over again. Getting good at a musical instrument is simply the accumulation of many many boring practice sessions.
      - nickff 6y ago
        I see them as very different; in my personal experience, sailing offshore in a gale was type II fun, cycling an hour a day is just not the same.
nelsonenzo 6y ago
"I can quit whenever I want to" is often how people justify smoking early on. What they don't tell you, is that you are never going to want to. You may think it's a terrific idea and can see all the logical benefits of quitting smoking, but none of that changes what you want.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- spacemark 6y ago
  It's almost like we're only half conscious.
- tingol 6y ago
  No, its just that by the time you want to you are addicted. Had plenty of friends addicted to gaming and smoking, you can guess which group dropped the addiction in way higher numbers...
- awakeasleep 6y ago
  Or, that the concept of 'wanting' is an abstraction, and the implementation details become reallly important as nicotine reshapes the landscape of your brain.
- zamalek 6y ago
  Years before I quit smoking, I was extremely conscious of how much I hated everything about the experience of smoking. Even the hit at the back of the throat and oral fixation (which is what I craved, not wanted). I specifically wanted to stop for 5 years. I did not have the willpower to push through cravings. I wanted to stop smoking, I needed to have a smoke. Addiction is not a matter of wants or desires, that's what gets you addicted. Addiction is a biological bug. A year later and I still have flashes in my subconscious of the sensation of drawing in a smoke. This "want" nonsense trivializes what addicts go through and needs to stop, please.
  - nelsonenzo 6y ago
    definition of want: have a desire to possess or do (something); wish for. definition of crave: feel a powerful desire for (something). These really aren't all that different of words. Imho, you recognized how distasteful smoking was to yourself and others, you thought it would be a good idea to quite - but as you said, you "craved" or as I said "wanted", another smoke at all times. Need? Smoking was never needed, that's a complete misnomer. I am 3 days clean from a 10 year habit, so I guess I could ask you not to trivialize my experience please.
19g 6y ago
If 'wanting' and 'liking' can be dissociated, what are the methods for changing the stimulus that results in the 'wanting'?
- Synaesthesia 6y ago
  It's a very general question about a very complicated topic (human behaviour). But from my experience you can get over cravings by distracting yourself with new problems. Or for me by making music.
andrewmcwatters 6y ago
I think this is sort of an insufficient dichotomy for what happens in reality, although I think the article is informative on painting a better picture for us. What about things you "want," but maybe don't like, but physiologically can't drive yourself to? This article only talks about the physiological want, and not the psychological want. Obviously, it's not a writing goal of the article, but there's a lot more here than just "wanting" and "liking," and I think it's really interesting!
dcolkitt 6y ago
One of the most plausible interpretations is that dopamine's primary role in cognition isn't to model reward, but to predict uncertainty. This seems to be roughly in line with how subjects with excessively high or low dopamine behave. Those on heroic doses of amphetamines become convinced of the most harebrained ideas. ("I know the CIA is listening to me through the toaster, better take it apart.") Whereas schizophrenic catatonia, a lack of will to even move, is often caused by impaired dopamine receptors. This clarifies why dopamine drives addiction and compulsion, without a corresponding reward in terms of actual satisfaction. The evolutionary environment heavily incentives risk aversion. The downsides of any major risk almost always outweigh the upsides. Keep pursuing a more nourishing but unpredictable food source and you'll eventually starve, regardless of how well fed you are in good times. Keep fighting opponents that are even matches, and eventually you'll get your head bashed in. Our brains are heavily wired to seek out small but certain rewards to the exclusion of large but risky ones. This is confirmed in behavioral economics, where subjects will instinctually and irrationally prefer low-risk, low-reward bets even when the payoffs are measured in pennies. If you feel shitty and depressed, then eating ice cream, banging heroin, or scrolling social media won't fix all your problems. But you know for sure it will make you feel a little better right away. In contrast taking positive steps to improve your life, like exercising, eating better, developing relationships, or mastering marketable skills are ultimately more rewarding but risky. You can put in a lot of effort for a long time and still have no guarantee of seeing any tangible payoff.
- NortySpock 6y ago
  Especially with video games you can cause, say, opening chests to always have a small positive reward (1 rupee, etc) and sometimes contain giant rewards (1000 rupee + AwesomeSword), making it always a dopamine hit even with low-risk activities like opening a chest.
- JamesBarney 6y ago
  Heroin and ice cream work on opioid receptors too which is more directly linked to pleasure/happiness/reward than dopamine.
  - 6y ago
johnkpaul 6y ago
I've often wondered if the word "addiction" is formally defined enough to have discussions like this from some common ground. Does anyone know? There seem to be many different definitions depending on where I google. Reading this article, I find it hard not to focus solely on my own belief that all carbohydrates, and sucrose/fructose/glucose in particular are extremely addictive. This article even compares, using dopamine, smoking with "temptation for food." I'm fairly sure that anytime someone is "tempted for food", that there are carbohydrates involved, but obviously it's hard to know without that original formal definition.
- doytch 6y ago
  A lot of /specific/ food cravings aren't actually carbohydrate-related but tend to be (more often) mineral or (less often) vitamin cravings. That said, women's cycles /do/ result in cravings for macronutrients, but those are definitely not something brought about by big sugar but rather an evolutionary byproduct.
  - johnkpaul 6y ago
    Interesting! Obviously I don't have research for this in either direction. I know a lot of people that take daily multivitamins that would still consider themselves to have "cravings".
- benlivengood 6y ago
  The best formal description I've seen of addiction (from a therapy perspective) is: behavior that negatively impacts your life in a way that you can't control. Addiction is thus very specific to individuals, not to substances. If it's a behavior that one can control (as in stop doing it) then it's a legitimate choice and not addiction. If someone walking by a plate of cookies can't avoid eating too many then it is clearly addiction for that person. Refined sugars are highly addictive for a lot of people, even to the point of feeling withdrawals. It's also possible to consume refined sugars in moderation for other people.
  - johnkpaul 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
JamesBarney 6y ago
I noticed this with smoking vs drinking. When I used to smoke I always felt like shit right after smoking a cigarette yet still craved one, in contrast to drinking a beer which I craved less but enjoyed more. Or meditation which is always very pleasant but isn't accompanied by a strong want or desire.
the_cat_kittles 6y ago
what an amazingly simple, but thought provoking insight and subsequent research. sometimes i see myself more rapidly opening tabs and looking for internet entertainment when i am hungry. its not fun, and i can say to myself "you arent enjoying this" but i still do it for a bit before i tell myself i need to eat. ive always though of this as a "seeking behavior" gone awry, that somehow my brain equates consuming content on the internet with consuming food, and tries to sate the need with the wrong thing. but i feel like the insight of this article might give me some more clarity- maybe i have a period where hunger influences my "wanting" region, which governs how much i want things in general. so my desire for food grows, but so do other things, like internet content. since im sitting at the computer already, my brain opts for the content first, and its only after a couple minutes of acting on the "want", but not getting the "like", does it realize that its gotta do something else- in my case, eat.
hfkldjsjfkdj 6y ago
I think addicting and what may seem productive such as checking the news feed is the most harmful. I have been affected by this, in which you can easily lie to yourself that what you are doing is useful when in reality it may be of little benefit at best.
NikolaeVarius 6y ago
I don't even know if I like factorio. All that matters is that the factory must grow.
baby 6y ago
Funnily I just read this related post on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/kd0yiw/why_am_i_like_this_oc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/kd0yiw/why_am_i_like...
SMAAART 6y ago
The First World has become an interesting ecosystem: * all/most of our "needs" are met * marketers create "wants" * consumers fight hard to satisfy these "wants" at time at detriment to "needs" You can observe a lot just by looking.
- nickff 6y ago
  People are addicted to many things with very poor marketing. Take crack cocaine and black tar heroin as examples; their marketing sucks! As an aside, your last sentence was superfluous and came off as a bit pompous (at least to me). >"You can observe a lot just by looking."
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    > Take crack cocaine and black tar heroin as examples; their marketing sucks! Is it? I thought their strategy is "the first hit is free."
  - lambdatronics 6y ago
    >"You can observe a lot just by looking." This is a paraphrase of a Yogi Berra quote. He's famous for saying silly things like this. I suspect the poster was intending this to humorous rather than pompous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra#%22Yogi-isms%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra#%22Yogi-isms%22
  - SMAAART 6y ago
    Crack cocaine and similar have a great marketing and business model: 1. It's always free to try, no string attached 2. Recruiting people in resale/distribution is easy: lots of money with no education/experience and street creed; most of the foot solders in the "trade" barely qualify for minimum wage work.
djohnston 6y ago
My summertime binge of a certain battle royale got so bad I intentionally bricked the Windows partition on my machine so I couldn't play anymore, or even redownload.
- emteycz 6y ago
  All the broken configuration I simply fixed a few hours later... Too easy :/
- cghendrix 6y ago
  Curious on the technical details of how you did that?
  - newsgourmet 6y ago
    Presumably by installing Linux?
    - arvinsim 6y ago
      Linux nowadays has better support for games so I don't think that is a solution :)
TRcontrarian 6y ago
My parents tried to make me do treatment for video game addiction. I was appalled by the simplistic portrayal that the entire older generation had of my habits, because although they were unhealthy, they were a far cry from addiction. There are several very different categories of long-playtime games popular today and they are associated with very different motivation structures. To the layman league of legends is in the same category as skyrim, but one is a single player campaign that you'll eventually grow tired of, even if it takes a thousand hours, and the other is an eternal online competition in which you will be just as likely to hit 'play again' after your 500th hour as your 20,000th. There are 3 categories of game that can rack up truly problematic playtimes in the tens of thousands of hours and extract great opportunity costs on the players: 1) Grindfests - e.g. Old school runescape, black desert online, korean mmos, classic wow, destiny 2, warframe. Motivation is collection of perfect sets of equipment and special items that prove account status. 2) Social Simulators - World of Warcraft (shadowlands), most mmos,Eve Online, roblox, vrchat. Motivation is that "people are doing something and I want to be a part of it." 3) Competitive Loops - Pubg, Apex legends, fortnite, overwatch, Call of Duty, League of Legends, Starcraft 2 ladder, most shooters and arena games. Motivation is competitive instinct, satisfaction if you win/get kills, frustration if you don't and resolve to play another and turn it around. (Disclaimer: there's a lot of overlap between groups, most mmos are both social simulators and grindfests, many arena competitive loops are social games sometimes. I tried to categorize by primary motivator.) Grindfests and competitive loops are fundamentally wastes of time, but they will always give you what you're looking for. Bored on a Wednesday night? Might as queue up mid or farm zulrah. There is obvious gender disparity between each category and the general population, and disparity between categories as well- women play social simulators, but competitive loops are usually over 90% men. Often closer to 99%. Social Simulators are only usually wastes of time, because the expectation of anonymity on the internet means you'll usually never leverage those social networks you're building for real value. In the case of people still building social skills, or isolated and looking for camraderie, these games do add value. This is all to say that problematic video games are successful because they scratch behavioral itches many people want scratched. In that way, I'm almost uncomfortable calling them problematic. Sure, a 22y/o would ideally be spending his evenings on side projects. What fraction of his spare time is that a realistic expectation if he could be doing virtual competitions with friends or strangers? I wouldn't begrudge a retiree to play a competitive loops 6 hours a day, I look forward to doing that myself in the old folks home, but I'm much more comfortable condemning someone in the prime of their life because of higher opp. cost. Bear in mind that HN is not a representative sample, and the majority of humans waste all their free time anyway, if 'waste' means 'suboptimal use carrying nonzero opportunity cost'. Is this different from any other generation's opiate of the masses? My friends don't watch football but they do talk about doublelift retiring.
mrcartmenez 6y ago
That was a pretty grim hook to an otherwise interesting article. Thanks BBC
S_A_P 6y ago
I drink black nitro cold brew every morning. I think it’s semi palatable. I don’t love the flavor but it’s not terrible. I also don’t feel awake until I drink one. I am definitely drinking something every morning that I don’t love. I would rather just be awake. I’ve quit caffeine before but it’s just too accessible to do for me long term.
Hnrobert42 6y ago
I don’t really understand this article. It says that we can want things we don’t like. It implies there is a paradox, but I don’t think there is. Wanting is in the future. Liking is in the present. Wanting is the belief that I will like something. The question unanswered by the article is, if I want something that I later don’t like, what do I believe at the time of wanting? Do I believe I will like it? Might like it? Hope I will like it? That’s what addiction is to me. It is the irrational hope that I will like what I want, even if I know in my heart that I won’t.
- solaceb 6y ago
  >If I want something that I later don't like, what do I believe at the time of wanting? I believe that the wanting tells a silent story usually of the form "this experience will be worthwhile & net-positive." But that is of course just that, a story, and in reality things like smoking aren't worthwhile, and are net-negative. In his book about quitting, Allen Carr posits something very similar -- those who fail to quit smoking implicitly believe there is /some/ value provided by the smoke, despite the health costs. For example, one might believe the story "this smoke is getting me through the day, although it's literally going to kill me." Carr suggests once you truly accept smoking adds nothing to your life, and only takes away from your experience, only then does the motivation to quit rise high enough to boost your willpower to actually cease smoking. It's an interesting idea and something I've found to be true in my own life.
mikeymz 6y ago
I estimate 98% of all cigarettes I smoked in my life I did not enjoy. I could never explain why I smoked the horrible things

This, in my opinion, overlays very well with doom scrolling partisan entertainment on facebook/instagram. No one enjoys it, but the intensity drives them back.

ardy42 6y ago
> This, in my opinion, overlays very well with doom scrolling partisan entertainment on facebook/instagram. No one enjoys it, but the intensity drives them back. But enjoyment-seeking isn't the only thing that motivates people to do things. Fear and anxiety can too, and I think doomscrolling is more of an example of that. It's like vigilantly looking for lions on the savanna and rallying your tribe to react the ones you've spotted.

jo032 6y ago

Of the thousands of hours I spent playing single player videogames in my youth, a surprisingly small amount was spent having fun or doing anything interesting or challenging. It was mostly just tedious grinding on my overpowered Pokemon (and other rpg equivalents) against helpless enemies so that I could be even more overpowered against them. I luckily grew out of it, but being absorbed by the pursuit of easy, digital approximations of real accomplishments, to the point where it impedes more difficult pursuits of the real thing in the real world, is a serious issue for many millennial men I know.

earthscienceman 6y ago
I love this comment and I think it touches on something that is really controversial and difficult to discuss on internet forums. It has become clear to me that for young men of my generation that this type of video-gaming is very much the equivalent of 'doomscrolling' as mentioned in other comments, and is generally pretty harmful. I have so many friends that have improved their lives by following the much-mocked advise 'turn off the game and do something else'. Are games the culture-killing brain-rotting rotten life harbinger that our parents made them out to be? Of course not. Are they the epitome of entertainment and growth that places like reddit make them out to be? No, not really. Like always. The truth is in the nuance.
- BitwiseFool 6y ago
  I wonder if my desire to grind and or min/max in video games during my teenage years was a proxy for honing skills. Perhaps it's a developmental stage where you actually enjoy the repetition because you're supposed to be developing a skills and trade-craft. But now that I'm older I have little to no interest in such pursuits.
  - bigfudge 6y ago
    Surely the point is that this developmental ability to persist is wasted on FPS? You could have learnt a musical instrument or developed some other accomplishment that lasts a lifetime. I.e. the real problem is the opportunity cost
    - dimitrios1 6y ago
      Speak for yourself pal, I can still 1deag with the best of them.
      - renjimen 6y ago
        Honestly, there is very little else as satisfying as a couple of Juan Deags in a crunch round of a CS match. I've spent time learning other, more respectable RL hobbies, but there's that deep sense of satisfaction they fail to capture.
        rowanG077 6y ago
        Only things comperable is an orgasm to be honest. But the satisfaction of Juan deags persist for longer.
    - toast0 6y ago
      I mean, clearly FPS is a waste. Civilization and SFII is where it's at. SMB is ok too. That said, learning a musical instrument does not last a lifetime if you don't keep playing it. The point of learning skills early in life is not necessarily that the skill is useful, it's that you've learned how to learn skills. Which hopefully will be used throughout your life.
dan00 6y ago
> I luckily grew out of it, but being absorbed by the pursuit of easy, digital approximations of real accomplishments ... The really harmful thing might be the artificial meaning this creates, which might be at the end more addictive than the fun. I never really was addicted to games. The funny thing is, I could only play games that were really fun for me, because of the game mechanics or if they had some interesting new aspects. But this kind of fascination never hold that long and after that the game play just got repetitive and tedious, at which point I just stopped playing. Therefore also most games that contain a lot of repetition feel just pointless to me.
- fossuser 6y ago
  Yeah - similar for me. I think there's something interesting here with how different people respond to 'fake achievement'. For me FPS games were fun because it was a little competition between players (also I was often interrupted growing up and short rounds are better for this). After trying WoW and having to walk 30min to pick up a feather and bring it back then do the same for an acorn I lost total interest in ever playing again. That might be all the time I had to play that day. I suspect some people get more of a positive feedback response from seeing numbers go up than others. I think MMOGs can also have a social component that keeps people coming back to do shared events which is probably stickier than the fake achievement bits. I'd be curious if people really vulnerable to fake achievement would also be successful if they could create a fast feedback environment for themselves with something other than the game as the goal (since they're clearly amenable to that kind of motivation). For me, the difficulty is on the other side. Even outside of games it can be hard to find something that feels like it matters and is important (even if you can make money and be otherwise better off in your life by doing it). Curiosity can also pull you in a thousand different directions. Figuring out what you want is hard, figuring out how to move in that direction is hard, then actually getting yourself to focus and do the work is hard. When the search space of what's possible is so big, it can be difficult to coordinate. I think games reduce that to something extremely narrow. For some that's effective, for me the illusion is obvious and unfulfilling. Today I tend to like one-off indie games driven by story (like Firewatch). I feel like I get more out of it.
  - 6y ago
qsort 6y ago
Counterpoint -- the min-maxing is often the interesting part, it's not the destination, it's the journey, or something like that. By trying to get very good at a game, you learn how to solve problems, and, more importantly, how to learn how to solve problems. It's also often the case that by taking a game seriously, you engage with the community, making friends or at least getting to know people out of your circle. I've put thousands of hours into several games, and I don't regret a second of that. I wouldn't say that behavior is unhealthy unless it brings you to downright ignore your job/school/responsibilities.
- cgriswald 6y ago
  > I wouldn't say that behavior is unhealthy unless it brings you to downright ignore your job/school/responsibilities. I have a much lower bar because I don't think all video game playing is equal. My first Pokémon game was one of the more recent ones for the switch. I didn't quite understand how the breeding worked and I was trying to breed a particular Pokémon with high stats. I spent many hours figuring out how it works and writing scripts to figure out what I should breed to get what I want, then more hours actually doing the breeding. I was fully engaged and I would consider this video game playing healthy. I've also spent many hours just vegging out. A little of that is fine; it's one way I do some thinking. But too much of it and the day is gone and when I stop I feel bad, like I've just come out of a stupor. This, to me, is not healthy, even if I otherwise took care of all my responsibilities.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  "I wouldn't say that behavior is unhealthy unless it brings you to downright ignore your job/school/responsibilities." What if you could have done something more productive or rewarding with your life instead, like developed new friendships or deepened existing ones, learned new skills, or read something that opened your eyes or changed your life? I've probably gamed as much as anyone here, and I deeply regret wasting so much time on it. Though it wasn't a complete waste of time, as it did help me to learn to manage complex systems (I like complex games) and to anticipate and prepare (I like RPG's and chess), and it also helped me to destress, there was also a compulsive quality to my gaming where the ultimate payoff wasn't all that great compared to the many thousands of hours I put in to it.
pmoriarty 6y ago
Grinding exemplifies delayed gratification. You know that if you grind enough you'll get to something more interesting/fun. People who are good at grinding would probably ace the so-called Marshmallow Test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...
- triska 6y ago
  Several years ago, there was a site called wowdetox.com, where addicts of World of Warcraft and also other gamers shared their stories. One of the posts there contained a striking observation: The most tragic aspect of the game is that it hits the hardest workers the hardest.
- jo032 6y ago
  I think people who have a healthy relationship with games agree with you, but for me, the obsessive grinding only made the games less challenging/fun, with no reward except larger numbers on the menus-- like if the reward for the Marshmallow test was just that you got to look at a bitmap of a pixelated marshmallow on tv. Videogames are not all bad, and of course there are many healthy and successful people who enjoy them and appreciate them as works of art. But for me personally, I regret that I spent so much time doing busywork for an unpaid job that I didn't even enjoy.
- paganel 6y ago
  The Marshmallow Test looks kind of classist, or even racist (not sure if "racist" is the right word for it, maybe "orientalist" would be better). Yes, if you live in Stanford or in a country that has an institution like Stanford then most probably "passing" the marshmallow test means waiting for a longer period in order to get twice the reward, but I dare say not a lot of countries/societies afforded that luxury until not that long ago (many of them still don't), in their case waiting for longer in order to get twice the reward might mean that you'll be dead by then, or evicted, or you had to escape the communists/the criminal right-wingers/the islamist beheaders/what have you.
habitue 6y ago
> I luckily grew out of it There's always a lot of hand-wringing about what kids and teenagers spend their time doing, and I wonder if it's not just a natural process of your brain figuring out a system, going "oh I see" and moving on to the next thing. Like, in other words, it might not be luck, it might just be the learning / exploration process working normally. That being said, there's definitely an aspect where video games are a super-stimulus. It's true that video game designers are creating explicit reward loops in a way that, let's say the writers of Gilligan's island were not (to compare hand-wringing about games to hand-wringing about television)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
offtop5 6y ago
Another way to look at it , I tend to be very good at math. As a kid I could easily do somewhat complex equations in my head, to the frustration of my teachers. Perhaps Pokemon was training for that.
enominezerum 6y ago
I got to this point with games a few years ago. My coworkers (all big gamers) were amazed that I would wait for games to be on steep sale or just play older titles. My first job out of high school was working in a game store where I fell into the rat race of having every shiny new thing I could afford and getting hyped up on the hyper competitive nature of everything. Really, it was Destiny 1 and Halo MCC that broke me hard of this habit. Between the games being broken or lacking, and me not enjoying the PvP aspect of Destiny 1, I just stepped away from it all. Now I am content to game for the sake of burning time. I don't like PUBG, but I have it to play with friends while we drink beers and shoot the bot infested unranked, the final moments are tense and fun and if we fail at least we had the fun of getting there. I got XBOX game pass and just pop in games to try them out now, no worries or hassle of returning since it is Netflix style gaming. Even on my phone I have loaded up old games where I turn on cheats for mad fun. I am currently playing Pokemon Sun and whenever the baddies start a match with "I am stealing your Pokemon" they face my 100% started with 100% critical chance and I just lob a Master Ball and steal their Pokemon. I enjoy walking through walls and just being ridiculous in it while still enjoying the story and atmosphere of the game. (all the fun, none of slowness inherent in those games). But I do agree. I don't know how many times I would work my 9-5, try and game some, get upset at the losses, and just wallow out the rest of the night, skipping other stuff I wanted/needed to do. The highs certainly weren't worth the lows. Part of why when folks say video games aren't addicting, I ask why CoD put in the prestige system. It keeps hitting you with that dopamine of 'yea, just unlocked something' which constantly throws you back into combat where something else gets unlocked.
- curryst 6y ago
  > Part of why when folks say video games aren't addicting, I ask why CoD put in the prestige system. It keeps hitting you with that dopamine of 'yea, just unlocked something' which constantly throws you back into combat where something else gets unlocked. It's also part of the competition. It's called "Prestige" because having a lot of those levels is meant to be prestigious. For me, it was closer to an MMR Ranking or KD Ratio. It's less about collecting the icons, and more about getting some form of external validation that you were a better player than other players. Of course, Prestige is a bad indicator that you are a better player than other players, but it allows people who aren't good but have a lot of time to compete on some level. If this were really about "yea, just unlocked something" I would expect better rewards. I haven't played the new CoDs a lot, but from what I remember, the rewards for prestiging were largely meh, and you get most of them from low levels of prestige. If you hit prestige 99, you've done a lot of prestiges without any unlocks (other than the bars next to your username, which no one ever looks at).
yibg 6y ago
I can certainly relate to this, my poison of choice was diablo 2. At first playing and discovering all the various items and stats was fun. Killing monsters and advancing was fun. At some point it just became a habit, then towards the end it became a chore. Yet I still spent endless hours doing it. For me at least it could probably been classified as an addiction. There were some fond memories from it, and there were certainly many enjoyable moments. But it was certainly not done in moderation. I'm also glad I pulled out of it, and didn't get into a similar situation with a different game.
- gwd 6y ago
  Diablo 2 is exactly the kind of game I felt like a pointless time sink. Your character gains new skills, but you? Not so much. At least playing a competitive FPS (or something like Starcraft) you're gaining skills.
  - musicale 6y ago
    Usually I'm mostly done after beating a Diablo game a couple of times at various difficulty levels, but I still find them fun to play periodically. I think the fact that they become tedious after a while is not a bad thing since otherwise you'd never stop playing! They are also fun and easy games to pick up and play with friends or family (especially D3 in couch co-op mode.) Regarding game vs. IRL skills, I enjoy Guitar Hero quite a bit, but Rocksmith actually improves your ability to play a real guitar. Rock Band drums are pretty close to electronic drums though, and vocals are actual vocals. And as I've mentioned, Ring Fit Adventure (which I'm still playing) kind of levels you up. I found similar effects with Wii Fit, where years after stopping playing (and switching to non-balance based exercises) my sense of balance was surprisingly better than it had been before I started playing the game. I expect other physical games like Dance Dance Revolution are good for physical coordination, and I expect twitch games such as FPSs are good for eye-hand coordination and reaction time.
  - yibg 6y ago
    Looking back yes not much skills gained. At the time what kept me in there were a couple of things: 1) chasing the next thing. Next item, next perfect build, next stat. 2) the multi player aspect. Be it pvp or a coop game with some online “friends” Both of these are good ways to keep people engaged / addicted I guess.
bennysonething 6y ago
You definitely have a point. Though one thing I never understood was grindy type games. Growing up playing with my mates, Mario, Zelda , street fighter then Goldeneye, Tony hawk's. We just never came across them. Then final fantasy 7 came along, I remember my friend just left it back to the shop. Turn based combat and experience points made no sense to us at all. Few years later I tried playing Knights of the old Republic, it didn't feel like a game. It just felt really odd and awkward to me. Skip forward few years and this type game is huge. I don't get it and never will I guess! The bit I really don't get is you don't get better at the game by becoming more skillful but instead by spending time increasing xp on grindy tasks. One thing about games though, they can be sort of mindful: recently I went through a really hard month at work. I found playing old Ps1 racers helped me quickly unwind before bed. (Wipeout and gran turismo 1)
- baby 6y ago
  Every game can become grindy if you abuse them. I used to play counter strike and I would just grind grind grind. Playing deathmatch again and again, practicing your aim on specific maps (aim_usp, aim_aztec, etc.)
  - gwd 6y ago
    But this is a different definition of "grind". After spending an hour practicing your aim on a specific map, your aim will actually be better. That's not any different than spending an hour practicing shooting hoops from a specific angle / distance, or spending an hour practicing musical scales. I think when most people talk about "grind" in games, they mean activities that are genuinely only time-wasters. You don't gain any skill (other than patience) from killing your hundredth goblin or clicking "harvest" on your hundredth field.
    - baby 6y ago
      True, there's a skill grind, and a level/gear up grind
- muffinman26 6y ago
musicale 6y ago
> It was mostly just tedious grinding I haven't had a grindy experience in most single-player games, but MMOs have perfected the grind system to keep players in the game and spending money (particularly in a subscription MMO.) Oddly enough, I tend to enjoy the repetitive activities of MMOs such as gathering, crafting, and simple quests; they put you in a sort of relaxed flow state and you get to see the game turn from day to night as other players and monsters wander by. You also end up exploring more of the game world in detail and noticing interesting details that you might miss otherwise. Daily quests are repetitive but they have a bit of variety because you have a different set of players every time. I wonder whether MMO players might be good at real-life grinds that seem tedious but are actually worthwhile, such as exercise. As a data point, I'm still grinding away at Ring Fit Adventure, which is fun and seems to be beneficial to fitness in terms of increased strength, balance, and energy after several months. I haven't managed to enjoy grinding housecleaning yet but I might if I can figure out how to gamify it....
m463 6y ago
I remember playing games and basically doing: creep, shoot, save, creep, solve puzzle, save, creep, die, restore, ... And then there came along games that were more forgiving and you could just play and if you died, respawn. but then other games replaced things with: fight, get loot, sort and rearrange inventory, possible weapon swap, go back to town and sell inventory, etc.. I guess it's better that the current crop of phone games with grind (shortcut available for purchase!) , grind (you really should buy this convenient feature), grind, ... I did enjoy factorio. You have to periodically re-invent yourself. But then what do you do after launching a rocket?

modeless 6y ago

There are the things you say you want, the things you think you want, the things you do, and the things that make you happy. It's rare for any two of them to be the same, let alone all four.

nonbirithm 6y ago
I keep wondering if there is a term for the act of telling yourself something and not truly believing it. Or the implications of constantly remembering about an idea but denying it as not a "true" want. This kind of behavior is of great interest for me. Because I thought that that was what I was doing when I said I didn't want to try art as a hobby, and actively disliked it whenever I chose to do it, but with a self-induced financial obligation it actually became bearable, although not yet pleasurable.

k__ 6y ago

The opposite is also interesting. A surprisingly huge amount of things I don't want at first sight turn out to be quite pleasing. Like sport/fitness and learning/practice.

munificent 6y ago
Every now and then I stumble onto a term that so perfectly describes an aspect of life that I don't know how I ever lived without it. In this case, it's "Type I fun" and "Type II fun": https://www.rei.com/blog/climb/fun-scale https://www.rei.com/blog/climb/fun-scale You're talking about Type II fun and I 100% agree.
- nickff 6y ago
  Type II fun is more about being cold/tired/miserable for a relatively short amount of time; parent is talking more about return on investment for long-term commitment.
  - munificent 6y ago
    I don't think there's a real difference here. All of those long-term returns on investment are just the accumulation of short-term cold/tired/miserable experiences. Getting in shape is just going outside in the cold/heat and running for a short while. You just have to do that over and over again. Getting good at a musical instrument is simply the accumulation of many many boring practice sessions.
    - nickff 6y ago
      I see them as very different; in my personal experience, sailing offshore in a gale was type II fun, cycling an hour a day is just not the same.

nelsonenzo 6y ago

"I can quit whenever I want to" is often how people justify smoking early on. What they don't tell you, is that you are never going to want to. You may think it's a terrific idea and can see all the logical benefits of quitting smoking, but none of that changes what you want.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
spacemark 6y ago
It's almost like we're only half conscious.
tingol 6y ago
No, its just that by the time you want to you are addicted. Had plenty of friends addicted to gaming and smoking, you can guess which group dropped the addiction in way higher numbers...
awakeasleep 6y ago
Or, that the concept of 'wanting' is an abstraction, and the implementation details become reallly important as nicotine reshapes the landscape of your brain.
zamalek 6y ago
Years before I quit smoking, I was extremely conscious of how much I hated everything about the experience of smoking. Even the hit at the back of the throat and oral fixation (which is what I craved, not wanted). I specifically wanted to stop for 5 years. I did not have the willpower to push through cravings. I wanted to stop smoking, I needed to have a smoke. Addiction is not a matter of wants or desires, that's what gets you addicted. Addiction is a biological bug. A year later and I still have flashes in my subconscious of the sensation of drawing in a smoke. This "want" nonsense trivializes what addicts go through and needs to stop, please.
- nelsonenzo 6y ago
  definition of want: have a desire to possess or do (something); wish for. definition of crave: feel a powerful desire for (something). These really aren't all that different of words. Imho, you recognized how distasteful smoking was to yourself and others, you thought it would be a good idea to quite - but as you said, you "craved" or as I said "wanted", another smoke at all times. Need? Smoking was never needed, that's a complete misnomer. I am 3 days clean from a 10 year habit, so I guess I could ask you not to trivialize my experience please.

19g 6y ago

If 'wanting' and 'liking' can be dissociated, what are the methods for changing the stimulus that results in the 'wanting'?

Synaesthesia 6y ago
It's a very general question about a very complicated topic (human behaviour). But from my experience you can get over cravings by distracting yourself with new problems. Or for me by making music.

andrewmcwatters 6y ago

I think this is sort of an insufficient dichotomy for what happens in reality, although I think the article is informative on painting a better picture for us. What about things you "want," but maybe don't like, but physiologically can't drive yourself to? This article only talks about the physiological want, and not the psychological want. Obviously, it's not a writing goal of the article, but there's a lot more here than just "wanting" and "liking," and I think it's really interesting!

dcolkitt 6y ago

One of the most plausible interpretations is that dopamine's primary role in cognition isn't to model reward, but to predict uncertainty. This seems to be roughly in line with how subjects with excessively high or low dopamine behave. Those on heroic doses of amphetamines become convinced of the most harebrained ideas. ("I know the CIA is listening to me through the toaster, better take it apart.") Whereas schizophrenic catatonia, a lack of will to even move, is often caused by impaired dopamine receptors. This clarifies why dopamine drives addiction and compulsion, without a corresponding reward in terms of actual satisfaction. The evolutionary environment heavily incentives risk aversion. The downsides of any major risk almost always outweigh the upsides. Keep pursuing a more nourishing but unpredictable food source and you'll eventually starve, regardless of how well fed you are in good times. Keep fighting opponents that are even matches, and eventually you'll get your head bashed in. Our brains are heavily wired to seek out small but certain rewards to the exclusion of large but risky ones. This is confirmed in behavioral economics, where subjects will instinctually and irrationally prefer low-risk, low-reward bets even when the payoffs are measured in pennies. If you feel shitty and depressed, then eating ice cream, banging heroin, or scrolling social media won't fix all your problems. But you know for sure it will make you feel a little better right away. In contrast taking positive steps to improve your life, like exercising, eating better, developing relationships, or mastering marketable skills are ultimately more rewarding but risky. You can put in a lot of effort for a long time and still have no guarantee of seeing any tangible payoff.

NortySpock 6y ago
Especially with video games you can cause, say, opening chests to always have a small positive reward (1 rupee, etc) and sometimes contain giant rewards (1000 rupee + AwesomeSword), making it always a dopamine hit even with low-risk activities like opening a chest.
JamesBarney 6y ago
Heroin and ice cream work on opioid receptors too which is more directly linked to pleasure/happiness/reward than dopamine.
- 6y ago

johnkpaul 6y ago

I've often wondered if the word "addiction" is formally defined enough to have discussions like this from some common ground. Does anyone know? There seem to be many different definitions depending on where I google. Reading this article, I find it hard not to focus solely on my own belief that all carbohydrates, and sucrose/fructose/glucose in particular are extremely addictive. This article even compares, using dopamine, smoking with "temptation for food." I'm fairly sure that anytime someone is "tempted for food", that there are carbohydrates involved, but obviously it's hard to know without that original formal definition.

doytch 6y ago
A lot of /specific/ food cravings aren't actually carbohydrate-related but tend to be (more often) mineral or (less often) vitamin cravings. That said, women's cycles /do/ result in cravings for macronutrients, but those are definitely not something brought about by big sugar but rather an evolutionary byproduct.
- johnkpaul 6y ago
  Interesting! Obviously I don't have research for this in either direction. I know a lot of people that take daily multivitamins that would still consider themselves to have "cravings".
benlivengood 6y ago
The best formal description I've seen of addiction (from a therapy perspective) is: behavior that negatively impacts your life in a way that you can't control. Addiction is thus very specific to individuals, not to substances. If it's a behavior that one can control (as in stop doing it) then it's a legitimate choice and not addiction. If someone walking by a plate of cookies can't avoid eating too many then it is clearly addiction for that person. Refined sugars are highly addictive for a lot of people, even to the point of feeling withdrawals. It's also possible to consume refined sugars in moderation for other people.
- johnkpaul 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

JamesBarney 6y ago

I noticed this with smoking vs drinking. When I used to smoke I always felt like shit right after smoking a cigarette yet still craved one, in contrast to drinking a beer which I craved less but enjoyed more. Or meditation which is always very pleasant but isn't accompanied by a strong want or desire.

the_cat_kittles 6y ago

what an amazingly simple, but thought provoking insight and subsequent research. sometimes i see myself more rapidly opening tabs and looking for internet entertainment when i am hungry. its not fun, and i can say to myself "you arent enjoying this" but i still do it for a bit before i tell myself i need to eat. ive always though of this as a "seeking behavior" gone awry, that somehow my brain equates consuming content on the internet with consuming food, and tries to sate the need with the wrong thing. but i feel like the insight of this article might give me some more clarity- maybe i have a period where hunger influences my "wanting" region, which governs how much i want things in general. so my desire for food grows, but so do other things, like internet content. since im sitting at the computer already, my brain opts for the content first, and its only after a couple minutes of acting on the "want", but not getting the "like", does it realize that its gotta do something else- in my case, eat.

hfkldjsjfkdj 6y ago

I think addicting and what may seem productive such as checking the news feed is the most harmful. I have been affected by this, in which you can easily lie to yourself that what you are doing is useful when in reality it may be of little benefit at best.

NikolaeVarius 6y ago

I don't even know if I like factorio. All that matters is that the factory must grow.

baby 6y ago

Funnily I just read this related post on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/kd0yiw/why_am_i_like_this_oc/ https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/kd0yiw/why_am_i_like...

SMAAART 6y ago

The First World has become an interesting ecosystem: * all/most of our "needs" are met * marketers create "wants" * consumers fight hard to satisfy these "wants" at time at detriment to "needs" You can observe a lot just by looking.

nickff 6y ago
People are addicted to many things with very poor marketing. Take crack cocaine and black tar heroin as examples; their marketing sucks! As an aside, your last sentence was superfluous and came off as a bit pompous (at least to me). >"You can observe a lot just by looking."
- dehrmann 6y ago
  > Take crack cocaine and black tar heroin as examples; their marketing sucks! Is it? I thought their strategy is "the first hit is free."
- lambdatronics 6y ago
  >"You can observe a lot just by looking." This is a paraphrase of a Yogi Berra quote. He's famous for saying silly things like this. I suspect the poster was intending this to humorous rather than pompous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra#%22Yogi-isms%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogi_Berra#%22Yogi-isms%22
- SMAAART 6y ago
  Crack cocaine and similar have a great marketing and business model: 1. It's always free to try, no string attached 2. Recruiting people in resale/distribution is easy: lots of money with no education/experience and street creed; most of the foot solders in the "trade" barely qualify for minimum wage work.

djohnston 6y ago

My summertime binge of a certain battle royale got so bad I intentionally bricked the Windows partition on my machine so I couldn't play anymore, or even redownload.

emteycz 6y ago
All the broken configuration I simply fixed a few hours later... Too easy :/
cghendrix 6y ago
Curious on the technical details of how you did that?
- newsgourmet 6y ago
  Presumably by installing Linux?
  - arvinsim 6y ago
    Linux nowadays has better support for games so I don't think that is a solution :)

TRcontrarian 6y ago

My parents tried to make me do treatment for video game addiction. I was appalled by the simplistic portrayal that the entire older generation had of my habits, because although they were unhealthy, they were a far cry from addiction. There are several very different categories of long-playtime games popular today and they are associated with very different motivation structures. To the layman league of legends is in the same category as skyrim, but one is a single player campaign that you'll eventually grow tired of, even if it takes a thousand hours, and the other is an eternal online competition in which you will be just as likely to hit 'play again' after your 500th hour as your 20,000th. There are 3 categories of game that can rack up truly problematic playtimes in the tens of thousands of hours and extract great opportunity costs on the players: 1) Grindfests - e.g. Old school runescape, black desert online, korean mmos, classic wow, destiny 2, warframe. Motivation is collection of perfect sets of equipment and special items that prove account status. 2) Social Simulators - World of Warcraft (shadowlands), most mmos,Eve Online, roblox, vrchat. Motivation is that "people are doing something and I want to be a part of it." 3) Competitive Loops - Pubg, Apex legends, fortnite, overwatch, Call of Duty, League of Legends, Starcraft 2 ladder, most shooters and arena games. Motivation is competitive instinct, satisfaction if you win/get kills, frustration if you don't and resolve to play another and turn it around. (Disclaimer: there's a lot of overlap between groups, most mmos are both social simulators and grindfests, many arena competitive loops are social games sometimes. I tried to categorize by primary motivator.) Grindfests and competitive loops are fundamentally wastes of time, but they will always give you what you're looking for. Bored on a Wednesday night? Might as queue up mid or farm zulrah. There is obvious gender disparity between each category and the general population, and disparity between categories as well- women play social simulators, but competitive loops are usually over 90% men. Often closer to 99%. Social Simulators are only usually wastes of time, because the expectation of anonymity on the internet means you'll usually never leverage those social networks you're building for real value. In the case of people still building social skills, or isolated and looking for camraderie, these games do add value. This is all to say that problematic video games are successful because they scratch behavioral itches many people want scratched. In that way, I'm almost uncomfortable calling them problematic. Sure, a 22y/o would ideally be spending his evenings on side projects. What fraction of his spare time is that a realistic expectation if he could be doing virtual competitions with friends or strangers? I wouldn't begrudge a retiree to play a competitive loops 6 hours a day, I look forward to doing that myself in the old folks home, but I'm much more comfortable condemning someone in the prime of their life because of higher opp. cost. Bear in mind that HN is not a representative sample, and the majority of humans waste all their free time anyway, if 'waste' means 'suboptimal use carrying nonzero opportunity cost'. Is this different from any other generation's opiate of the masses? My friends don't watch football but they do talk about doublelift retiring.

mrcartmenez 6y ago

That was a pretty grim hook to an otherwise interesting article. Thanks BBC

S_A_P 6y ago

I drink black nitro cold brew every morning. I think it’s semi palatable. I don’t love the flavor but it’s not terrible. I also don’t feel awake until I drink one. I am definitely drinking something every morning that I don’t love. I would rather just be awake. I’ve quit caffeine before but it’s just too accessible to do for me long term.

Hnrobert42 6y ago

I don’t really understand this article. It says that we can want things we don’t like. It implies there is a paradox, but I don’t think there is. Wanting is in the future. Liking is in the present. Wanting is the belief that I will like something. The question unanswered by the article is, if I want something that I later don’t like, what do I believe at the time of wanting? Do I believe I will like it? Might like it? Hope I will like it? That’s what addiction is to me. It is the irrational hope that I will like what I want, even if I know in my heart that I won’t.

solaceb 6y ago
>If I want something that I later don't like, what do I believe at the time of wanting? I believe that the wanting tells a silent story usually of the form "this experience will be worthwhile & net-positive." But that is of course just that, a story, and in reality things like smoking aren't worthwhile, and are net-negative. In his book about quitting, Allen Carr posits something very similar -- those who fail to quit smoking implicitly believe there is /some/ value provided by the smoke, despite the health costs. For example, one might believe the story "this smoke is getting me through the day, although it's literally going to kill me." Carr suggests once you truly accept smoking adds nothing to your life, and only takes away from your experience, only then does the motivation to quit rise high enough to boost your willpower to actually cease smoking. It's an interesting idea and something I've found to be true in my own life.

mikeymz 6y ago

I estimate 98% of all cigarettes I smoked in my life I did not enjoy. I could never explain why I smoked the horrible things