Especially in communities. For ease, people lump things such as social media and gaming in with "addiction". I'm sure 100 years from now in many cases the "social media addicts" will have a subset that leans toward success beyond their local community, and the gamers have a longer life expectancy than many in their community. I'd rather my kid game than go outside even in our middle-class neighborhood. I'd rather have my kid keep in touch with friends via social media than having them all in my kitchen when I'm not home.
There're tradeoffs, pros and cons to social media and gaming, but framing it in an addiction narrative isn't helping matters. This is what led many Chinese people to put their kids in "camps" that used Electro Convulsive Therapy to "fix their internet addiction". This is born of ignorance, and the addiction narrative.
I think elements can be intuited, and more studies done, but when you're bashing the cheapest forms of entertainment and social contact, and safest to boot, as addictions... that's just ignorant.
> I'd rather my kid game than go outside even in our middle-class neighborhood. I'd rather have my kid keep in touch with friends via social media than having them all in my kitchen when I'm not home.
What?
You don’t allow your kid to go outside or hang out with friends face to face? You prefer his/her social interactions are all intermediated by a computer network? This seems like a very strange and dystopian preference.
Do you actually have a kid or is this hypothetical?
I also have very different ideas about what I'd want for my hypothetical kids than the OP, but preferring one thing isn't the same as disallowing the other.
You're arguing gamers would have a longer life expectancy than others, and that you'd rather have your child game than go outside. Do you disagree with the widely accepted fact that exercise is beneficial to health, and thus a longer life?
Work is work. If young, or have a parachute, go for it. If, like me, needing a leg up, go for it too. Slave work that enables you to network and learn is valuable. Alternatives -- status quo engineering, or if in my boat -- shit jobs because I don't have a degree, certs or recent experience. When starting a business (I've helped start several), find a model that others use, and copy it. Go for broke, and take risks once you have the ability to. I've met far too many people unwilling to fund their business, goal or dream by copying models and learning by the example of others. Figuring others' models out is a skillset in and of itself.
At this point if you ignore all the evidence that these people have anxiety, or were in otherwise shitty environments and states in the first place, whether genetic nature or nurture you might want to just say we're collating and correlating rather than finding causes. Conscious decision my ass.
I've smoked heavily since 12 years old. I function, and it's helped me with arthritis and PTSD at this point. Sometimes addressing problems with common drugs helps. It definitely changes amygdala response and cerebral blood flow patterns. I think it in general makes people question things, and be better people. I also know it affects motivation, which can be great to quell response to pain, but is detrimental to getting up and out.
Much of it is also habits, related or not. If you aren't taking vitamins, exercising, eating well and isolated from people and things that are detrimental you're obviously not going to have things go smoothly. My family are monsters.
It's helped me through it. Or if you're handicapped by mental issues or the like.
I don't buy the psychosis thing, except maybe from edibles. And I absolutely hate to see people stating that it "makes them creative" or other repeated things that they've read or heard somewhere. Oversimplification and lack of education about it is common. Some people just don't handle it well, or are nudged into craziness. Too many people I know didn't read up on what they were getting into with cannabis and psychedelics and want to be into it to be cool, or fit in. I used to smoke to get high. Now I smoke for pain relief.
Yeah, but we're talking a new work by a prolific author with more than 8,000 articles of writing known. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and reading about the empiricists (berkeley, hume, locke) shook my world as a teenager. The works and letters of his contemporary philosophers and brilliant people made me a better person, giving things a great deal more of critical thinking. I love how in some of this he's saying that if tolerating catholics helps the prince and commonwealth then he's for tolerating catholics. That's ridiculously apt and healthy.
"incredibly serious allegations" -- Sexual advances (flirting, being assertive) are nothing to be ashamed of. It's when you go with the "grab 'em by the pussy" mentality that it seems to get rapey. Make the dude out to be Cosby for views, though, Pando. Keep on pandorin'.
