Certain things make people happy, and people repeat behaviors that made them happy in the past. The fact that happiness is communicated throughout the brain by dopamine concentrations has no predictive value in figuring out what new thing might also make people happy.
s/dopamine/happy juice/ and the article has exactly the same information content. People like to throw around names of neurotransmitters in order to sound scientific. But to then claim a special connection between dopamine and 140 character messages is pseudoscience.
Right, if someone were trying to use this information to, say, cut down on their news.yc surfing, they'd probably be better off not worrying about dopamine and just focusing on the actual net-addiction behaviors and feelings they are actually experiencing.
Thinking "I should do X, because the dopamine levels in my brain are changing" is probably going to be less effective and more ambiguous to you compared to thinking "When I click a link on news.yc I feel X, when I tell myself maybe I should stop ycing and work on something else I feel y, so maybe I could try z".
"s/dopamine/happy juice/ and the article has exactly the same information content."
That is the opposite of what the article states, which is that behavioral reinforcement is distinct from pleasure. The point being that habit formation is strongly driven by processes other than euphoria [1], and that those processes can be characterized and understood.
[1] Novelty is important, especially the variable timing of repetition.
I wrote an article regarding dopamine as well, I saw a couple recently on HN on the subjects of dopamine and self discipline, if you guys are interested. Much more in depth than the articles I've seen make it onto HN - but I didn't really think this was the appropriate place for them, that's why I never submitted them. Kind of off topic IMO, but for readers who like it here they are:
Very good article, Sid. An out of subject note, though: You say "High fat, high sugar foods were not a part of our natural environment". I keep reading statements like this and always make me wonder: was it really so difficult for our ancestors to find ripe bananas?
Bananas don't have very many calories for their volume - somewhere between 80 and 200 depending on who you source for nutrition data. Same for grapes, apples, etc. There are only a few fruits that are really concentrated without processing.
Similarly, most meats in the wild are fit and lean, and you don't get concentrated fats(butter, cheese, cooking oils, etc.) either, leaving nuts as the largest likely fat source.
That doesn't mean that our new food sources are invalid, but one has to be aware that they're recent inventions, evolutionarily speaking, and deserve "occasional" use vs. "staple" status. Which is unfortunate considering that almost everything manufactured involves a concentration - "vegetable oil" (mostly soy and corn) appears all over, processed grain products are commonplace, and most of the items not using the first two are dosed with some combination of dairy fat, salt, and sugar. Between just those few ingredients, you can find the stimulating factors of almost everything on the market.
Thanks chipsy, I think you answered the question perfectly =)
To expand, bananas may be relatively high sugar/energy compared to other natural foods (green vegetables), but they cannot compare with the super concentrated foods we have created such as Twinkies =)
The dopamine loop has been well described in a number of articles, and many start ups and websites are taking advantage of it. I can feel it affecting the way I think, and I feel like it's damaging. I wish startups would try to address this problem rather than using the dopamine loop to their own advantage.
PS. Is this article meant to be a case-in-point? It's written in bite-sized paragraphs with catchy subject sentences.
Personal experience tells me that information addiction is very real. So, the question is, how do we turn this to our advantage, rather than becoming information burnouts?
I have no idea about that, but recently I've started using LeechBlock to block out all websites that lead me into "dopamine loops". On my blocklist are Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and news.YC, among others.
The problem with LeechBlock is that it only works with Firefox, and only if I choose to install it. I'm seeking out a system that I can install on my router so that I can block time-sinks on all my computers at once. My router runs Linux, so there must be a way.
I'm a big fan of RescueTime's "Get Focused" mode. It has a large, pre-populated (but configurable) list of "distracting" sites, so it's amazingly effective (probably > 95% accurate in my experience) at blocking the productivity leeches while letting useful stuff (like reference websites) through.
OpenDNS can filter all your internet traffic to block out any websites you choose. You can choose preset block lists such as phishing or scams as well as select specific domains to block.
The D-Link DIR-655 can do this (and I'd imagine other D-Link routers). You can set it up for specific IPs, ranges, or all computers. I've never taken advantage of it, personally, except to mess with people by blocking sites like Facebook.
I'd imagine some of the other firmwares out there can do it as well. Guess it comes down to what kind of router you have.
s/dopamine/happy juice/ and the article has exactly the same information content. People like to throw around names of neurotransmitters in order to sound scientific. But to then claim a special connection between dopamine and 140 character messages is pseudoscience.