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I’m not a fan of the overuse of terms like “dopamine” and “oxycotin”. They are often innapropriately technical and specific—the common intuition is that pleasu
by avgcorrection 5y ago
I’m not a fan of the overuse of terms like “dopamine” and “oxycotin”. They are often innapropriately technical and specific—the common intuition is that pleasurable things can be addictive,[1] and that is all that 99% of people mean when they dismissively refer to something as giving a “dopamine hit”.
We can just call things “pleasurable” instead of posing as if we know anything about neurotransmitters. (Not to offend the inevitable handful of actual neuroscientists that happen to be browsing this thread on Hacker News—carry on.)
[1] I have nothing to say about whether this is close to the truth or not.
- avgcorrection 5y agoCase in point: > Dopamine is connected to rewarding experiences, but not in that it makes you feel good. On Twitter recently, a man challenged me saying that pornography “gives me a palpable dopamine rush after he abstains for a few days.” I replied that this was fascinating, and he must be a thoroughly unique and superhuman person, to be able to detect and discriminate the experience of different neurochemicals.
- watwut 5y agoIt is OK to use different words for different kinds of positive feelings. What people call pleasurable and what they call dopamine hit are to large extend quote different experiences. There is some overlap, but that is it. We can call everything pleasurable, but then out language will loose expressivity people apparently want.