

Dopamine Makes Us Addicted To Seeking Information - charliepark
http://www.whatmakesthemclick.net/2009/11/07/100-things-you-should-know-about-people-8-dopamine-makes-us-addicted-to-seeking-information/

======
tlb
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.

~~~
david
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".

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sidsavara
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:

Dopamine, rewards, pleasure center of the brain ->
[http://sidsavara.com/personal-development/personal-
developme...](http://sidsavara.com/personal-development/personal-development-
roadblocks-pushing-pleasure-buttons)

Willpower research -> [http://sidsavara.com/personal-development/will-power-
how-to-...](http://sidsavara.com/personal-development/will-power-how-to-
improve-your-personal-self-discipline)

~~~
tyn
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?

~~~
chipsy
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.

~~~
sidsavara
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 =)

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marcell
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.

------
drinian
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?

~~~
GeneralMaximus
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.

~~~
paulbaumgart
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.

~~~
ippisl
RescueTime looks good. is there something similar(esp. distracting sites block
option) , but free ?

~~~
paulbaumgart
It is free for the basic account. I'm pretty sure that includes the site
blocking option.

------
bingaman
Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the
manifestations.

