5 ms·

I don’t really get this article… it seems to make a good argument that dopamine is not the be all end all of addiction. Yet then it goes on to show that it is

by kmnc 5y ago

I don’t really get this article… it seems to make a good argument that dopamine is not the be all end all of addiction. Yet then it goes on to show that it is indeed a component of addiction, yet one of which is complex and still not well understood. So in essence, all this article is doing is complaining about pop science and how we often reduce complex behaviours to singular explanations. But isn’t that just a part of being human? The article argues that people are more complex and we need to look at addiction in a more complex way. However, nowhere does this article speak about the efficacy of this pop science reduction. Perhaps it is human nature to try to solve complex issues by reducing the problem to something that can be explained to a lay person, even if such explanations are incorrect. Personally, as someone who struggles with gambling addiction, thinking about dopamine in this “incorrect” pop science way has been incredibly useful as a tool to help me understand irrational decision making, even if such explanations are far more complex. While we do need to guard against pop science reducing complex behaviours to singular causes, I am far more interested in whether it works or not. From listening to many personal addiction stories and hearing from clinicians, this simplified understanding of dopamine seems to be of major help to many recovering addicts.

elif 5y ago
Not to mention that this pop science article does plenty of essentializing on its own... Particularly when it laughs off the entire concept of individuals feeling their own dopamine levels before describing a series of commonly prescribed drugs to inhibit or encourage it... The author can't imagine people noticing the effects of their own psychs?
- SamBam 5y ago
  > Particularly when it laughs off the entire concept of individuals feeling their own dopamine levels I agree the article wasn't great, but that line was clearly saying that the subjective experience of "feeling a dopamine rush" isn't at all evidence of a dopamine rush, since we have no idea what the individual neurotransmitters feel like in our brain (unless we've been somehow trained to recognize them, perhaps, through very controlled experiments with dopamine inhibitors). Saying "oh I know dopamine must be important because I can feel it" is, indeed, absurd. We can feel a rush. We can feel desire. We can feel satiation. And perhaps we have been told that these things relate to dopamine. So now we say we can feel dopamine. This doesn't add more evidence that it is dopamine.
  - the_other 5y ago
    We say all the same things about adrenaline, caffeine, sugar, tryptamines and phenetholamines: no-one seems to mind. Why can't we say the same about dopamine?
    - clairity 5y ago
      yah, i have two little 'dopamine vending machines' in the form of a dog and a cat. it doesn't really matter if it's literally (and only) dopamine, but that the term grounds a repeatable and consistent sensation related to a dopamine cascade (otherwise we would use a more closely related term instead).
    - warent 5y ago
      Maybe it's just the people I surround myself with but I've never once heard someone say they're feeling a tryptamine or phenetholamine rush. As far as the other three things (caffeine, sugar, adrenaline) I think the argument is we have a better understanding and direct experience of those vs. dopamine. You can drink a cup of coffee and feel obviously caffeinated day-and-night difference from pre-coffee, but you cannot drink a cup of XYZ and feel obviously dopamined.
      - shawnz 5y ago
        Anecdotally I think I do have an idea of how a "serotonin rush" feels. There's a particular feeling I get most noticeably when seeing the sunshine outdoors on an early morning that's pretty similar to certain feelings I've had from psychedelic drugs. There is a known connection between sunlight exposure and serotonin release so it seems like a reasonable explanation to me. There are definitely some obvious commonalities among the feelings produced by dopaminergic drugs as well which are similar to the feelings I naturally experience when working on a big project.
        svachalek 5y ago
        I think I tend to run a little low on seratonin and I know the exact feeling you're talking about. It's a gentle, pleasant sense that everything is going to be ok, that somehow still feels oddly artificial. Usually happens in bright sunlight, but rarely in other situations where it's really hard to figure out what triggered it. Adrenaline is one that is more common for me, and impossible to mistake. I can literally taste it.
wongarsu 5y ago
Dopamine, dopamine rush, etc are incredibly useful concepts that previously didn't exist in the English language. As you describe it's a useful mental model to explain your own and other's behavior, and as the person quoted in the article describes a so called dopamine rush is a palpable feeling. The fact that the concept "dopamine" shares a name with a neurotransmitter is imho not that relevant and will over time just turn into an etymological curiosity. It would be better if it was named less confusingly, but that's not how language works.
- buu700 5y ago
  If the neurotransmitter dopamine is just part of the story, I would even suggest that conceptual "dopamine" is perfectly valid so long as it's understood as synecdoche rather than a literal complete description of the mechanisms in play.
  - devilduck 5y ago
    Maybe choose a different word then since it's obviously creating confusion and misconception about what dopamine does
    - 0des 5y ago
      Hey just a heads up, your account is shadow banned.
      - farrarstan 5y ago
        Aren’t we all
      - CogitoCogito 5y ago
        I can read his posts logged in or not...
        0des 5y ago
        Because I vouched
xg15 5y ago
> So in essence, all this article is doing is complaining about pop science and how we often reduce complex behaviours to singular explanations. Not a neuroscientist - but I think what irks me about the common pop-science explanations is that they use those terms to establish a boundary between desirable and undesirable behaviours - but do so in a way that feels sort of arbitrary and dishonest. I think when describing desirable behaviours or activities, we tend to use a more "cognitive" vocabulary that emphasizes a person as a thinking individual, capable of freely making decisions: Thoughts, feelings, memories, motivations, the self, etc. Whereas when describing unwanted or unhealthy behaviours, we use biological or neurological vocabulary: Hormones, neurotransmitters, neural pathways, dopamine, opioids, the brain etc. [1] This can create an impression as if those two sets of concepts belonged to completely separate worlds - where one is strongly associated with desirable effects and the other with undesirable ones. This seems very odd as both are simply different perspectives on the same thing after all. It's sort of as if some highly nontechnical person was really fond of their car - as a magical device that lets them travel quickly and impress others - but believed we'd all be better off without batteries, fuel pumps or catalytic converters as those seem to cause nothing but trouble. [1] The two big exceptions I can think of are advertising (where unhealthy behaviours are described using the cognitive vocabulary) and research on animals (where any kind of animal behaviour is described using the biological vocabulary).
- hnfong 5y ago
  Seems like some form of modern dualism -- humanity has always had the habit of attributing positive decisions to the non-physical "soul", "spirit", while looking down upon the physical body as tainted, corruptible or weak...
asdfman123 5y ago
The author addresses that in the last two paragraphs: > Why does this matter? Can’t this just be chalked up to lack of media sophistication, and pop psychology misunderstanding the nuance? In fact, when people such as Simon Sinek, the author and consultant whose viral video blames dopamine for millennial's problems bring up neuroscience, they are using a clever strategy to manipulate us. Mr. Sinek is not a neuroscientist, and has not studied or researched the complexity of this aspect of our brain. But, he knows something you don’t: mentioning neuroscience is a great way to convince people you are more knowledgeable about something, and to make your arguments more convincing. This effect was recently demonstrated by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, who showed that use of irrelevant references to brain science was an effective way to lure people into thinking that complex phenomena are simple, and easily explained by, well, the brain. > People’s problems are never simple. And when a person does a thing over and over, even when the behavior is causing problems, there are a great many complex reasons behind that behavior. When we offer the reductively simple answer of “because dopamine,” it distracts us from the person. It is the person who learns, and dopamine is merely a factor, one factor among many, in the learning. When we encourage people who are watching too much porn, using the cell phone while driving, or looking at Facebook every two minutes, to blame their problems on dopamine, we teach them to externalize the problem, and blame it on dopamine. Instead, if we focus on the learning, and the salience aspects of these process, it helps us to draw people’s attention back to their own behaviors, their own motivations, and the meaning that they (and their religious or social background) have given to this behavior or experience. It helps us to put people back in the driver’s seat of their life. So please, let’s start talking about people, rather than irrelevant neurochemicals.
bobthechef 5y ago
> So in essence, all this article is doing is complaining about pop science and how we often reduce complex behaviours to singular explanations. But isn’t that just a part of being human? You may be confusing theory with practical considerations. Human beings desire to know the truth, at least by nature. What you're describing is an inaccurate, even false belief that happens to make it easier to cope with something by making something an easy scapegoat. It allows you to blame something perceived as external and impersonal which allows you to put some distance between you and the urge. There's nothing special about calling this thing "dopamine". Classically, the passions are bodily urges that could be out of whack in some way (either excessive or insufficient or inappropriate), often through habituation or lack thereof, but possibly also made more likely through temperament. Failing to satisfy an excessive or inappropriate urge won't kill you (satisfaction might), and knowing that already grants you power over it because its urgency is now seen as a kind of bluff. > Perhaps it is human nature to try to solve complex issues by reducing the problem to something that can be explained to a lay person, even if such explanations are incorrect. Reductionism destroys the truth by eliminating everything it cannot explain and by representing what remains in terms of some desired language. It is a rationalization through preconception rather than explanation.
zepto 5y ago
How does the incorrect way of thinking about dopamine help you as a gambling addict? I can imagine that remembering that your brain chemistry is part of what causes the compulsion is helpful because it takes some pressure off seeing the addiction as a character flaw. But beyond just being a synonym for ‘brain chemistry’, can you say what the concept of ‘dopamine’ is doing for you?

by kmnc 5y ago

elif 5y ago

Not to mention that this pop science article does plenty of essentializing on its own... Particularly when it laughs off the entire concept of individuals feeling their own dopamine levels before describing a series of commonly prescribed drugs to inhibit or encourage it... The author can't imagine people noticing the effects of their own psychs?

SamBam 5y ago
> Particularly when it laughs off the entire concept of individuals feeling their own dopamine levels I agree the article wasn't great, but that line was clearly saying that the subjective experience of "feeling a dopamine rush" isn't at all evidence of a dopamine rush, since we have no idea what the individual neurotransmitters feel like in our brain (unless we've been somehow trained to recognize them, perhaps, through very controlled experiments with dopamine inhibitors). Saying "oh I know dopamine must be important because I can feel it" is, indeed, absurd. We can feel a rush. We can feel desire. We can feel satiation. And perhaps we have been told that these things relate to dopamine. So now we say we can feel dopamine. This doesn't add more evidence that it is dopamine.
- the_other 5y ago
  We say all the same things about adrenaline, caffeine, sugar, tryptamines and phenetholamines: no-one seems to mind. Why can't we say the same about dopamine?
  - clairity 5y ago
    yah, i have two little 'dopamine vending machines' in the form of a dog and a cat. it doesn't really matter if it's literally (and only) dopamine, but that the term grounds a repeatable and consistent sensation related to a dopamine cascade (otherwise we would use a more closely related term instead).
  - warent 5y ago
    Maybe it's just the people I surround myself with but I've never once heard someone say they're feeling a tryptamine or phenetholamine rush. As far as the other three things (caffeine, sugar, adrenaline) I think the argument is we have a better understanding and direct experience of those vs. dopamine. You can drink a cup of coffee and feel obviously caffeinated day-and-night difference from pre-coffee, but you cannot drink a cup of XYZ and feel obviously dopamined.
    - shawnz 5y ago
      Anecdotally I think I do have an idea of how a "serotonin rush" feels. There's a particular feeling I get most noticeably when seeing the sunshine outdoors on an early morning that's pretty similar to certain feelings I've had from psychedelic drugs. There is a known connection between sunlight exposure and serotonin release so it seems like a reasonable explanation to me. There are definitely some obvious commonalities among the feelings produced by dopaminergic drugs as well which are similar to the feelings I naturally experience when working on a big project.
      - svachalek 5y ago
        I think I tend to run a little low on seratonin and I know the exact feeling you're talking about. It's a gentle, pleasant sense that everything is going to be ok, that somehow still feels oddly artificial. Usually happens in bright sunlight, but rarely in other situations where it's really hard to figure out what triggered it. Adrenaline is one that is more common for me, and impossible to mistake. I can literally taste it.

wongarsu 5y ago

Dopamine, dopamine rush, etc are incredibly useful concepts that previously didn't exist in the English language. As you describe it's a useful mental model to explain your own and other's behavior, and as the person quoted in the article describes a so called dopamine rush is a palpable feeling. The fact that the concept "dopamine" shares a name with a neurotransmitter is imho not that relevant and will over time just turn into an etymological curiosity. It would be better if it was named less confusingly, but that's not how language works.

buu700 5y ago
If the neurotransmitter dopamine is just part of the story, I would even suggest that conceptual "dopamine" is perfectly valid so long as it's understood as synecdoche rather than a literal complete description of the mechanisms in play.
- devilduck 5y ago
  Maybe choose a different word then since it's obviously creating confusion and misconception about what dopamine does
  - 0des 5y ago
    Hey just a heads up, your account is shadow banned.
    - farrarstan 5y ago
      Aren’t we all
    - CogitoCogito 5y ago
      I can read his posts logged in or not...
      - 0des 5y ago
        Because I vouched

xg15 5y ago

> So in essence, all this article is doing is complaining about pop science and how we often reduce complex behaviours to singular explanations. Not a neuroscientist - but I think what irks me about the common pop-science explanations is that they use those terms to establish a boundary between desirable and undesirable behaviours - but do so in a way that feels sort of arbitrary and dishonest. I think when describing desirable behaviours or activities, we tend to use a more "cognitive" vocabulary that emphasizes a person as a thinking individual, capable of freely making decisions: Thoughts, feelings, memories, motivations, the self, etc. Whereas when describing unwanted or unhealthy behaviours, we use biological or neurological vocabulary: Hormones, neurotransmitters, neural pathways, dopamine, opioids, the brain etc. [1] This can create an impression as if those two sets of concepts belonged to completely separate worlds - where one is strongly associated with desirable effects and the other with undesirable ones. This seems very odd as both are simply different perspectives on the same thing after all. It's sort of as if some highly nontechnical person was really fond of their car - as a magical device that lets them travel quickly and impress others - but believed we'd all be better off without batteries, fuel pumps or catalytic converters as those seem to cause nothing but trouble. [1] The two big exceptions I can think of are advertising (where unhealthy behaviours are described using the cognitive vocabulary) and research on animals (where any kind of animal behaviour is described using the biological vocabulary).

hnfong 5y ago
Seems like some form of modern dualism -- humanity has always had the habit of attributing positive decisions to the non-physical "soul", "spirit", while looking down upon the physical body as tainted, corruptible or weak...

asdfman123 5y ago

The author addresses that in the last two paragraphs: > Why does this matter? Can’t this just be chalked up to lack of media sophistication, and pop psychology misunderstanding the nuance? In fact, when people such as Simon Sinek, the author and consultant whose viral video blames dopamine for millennial's problems bring up neuroscience, they are using a clever strategy to manipulate us. Mr. Sinek is not a neuroscientist, and has not studied or researched the complexity of this aspect of our brain. But, he knows something you don’t: mentioning neuroscience is a great way to convince people you are more knowledgeable about something, and to make your arguments more convincing. This effect was recently demonstrated by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, who showed that use of irrelevant references to brain science was an effective way to lure people into thinking that complex phenomena are simple, and easily explained by, well, the brain. > People’s problems are never simple. And when a person does a thing over and over, even when the behavior is causing problems, there are a great many complex reasons behind that behavior. When we offer the reductively simple answer of “because dopamine,” it distracts us from the person. It is the person who learns, and dopamine is merely a factor, one factor among many, in the learning. When we encourage people who are watching too much porn, using the cell phone while driving, or looking at Facebook every two minutes, to blame their problems on dopamine, we teach them to externalize the problem, and blame it on dopamine. Instead, if we focus on the learning, and the salience aspects of these process, it helps us to draw people’s attention back to their own behaviors, their own motivations, and the meaning that they (and their religious or social background) have given to this behavior or experience. It helps us to put people back in the driver’s seat of their life. So please, let’s start talking about people, rather than irrelevant neurochemicals.

bobthechef 5y ago

> So in essence, all this article is doing is complaining about pop science and how we often reduce complex behaviours to singular explanations. But isn’t that just a part of being human? You may be confusing theory with practical considerations. Human beings desire to know the truth, at least by nature. What you're describing is an inaccurate, even false belief that happens to make it easier to cope with something by making something an easy scapegoat. It allows you to blame something perceived as external and impersonal which allows you to put some distance between you and the urge. There's nothing special about calling this thing "dopamine". Classically, the passions are bodily urges that could be out of whack in some way (either excessive or insufficient or inappropriate), often through habituation or lack thereof, but possibly also made more likely through temperament. Failing to satisfy an excessive or inappropriate urge won't kill you (satisfaction might), and knowing that already grants you power over it because its urgency is now seen as a kind of bluff. > Perhaps it is human nature to try to solve complex issues by reducing the problem to something that can be explained to a lay person, even if such explanations are incorrect. Reductionism destroys the truth by eliminating everything it cannot explain and by representing what remains in terms of some desired language. It is a rationalization through preconception rather than explanation.

zepto 5y ago

How does the incorrect way of thinking about dopamine help you as a gambling addict? I can imagine that remembering that your brain chemistry is part of what causes the compulsion is helpful because it takes some pressure off seeing the addiction as a character flaw. But beyond just being a synonym for ‘brain chemistry’, can you say what the concept of ‘dopamine’ is doing for you?