Stats for nerds
3recommend
3mentions
3people
2021–2026years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- "The Molecule of More" by Daniel Z. Lieberman and Michael E. Long.
A bit naive but fascinating narrative about how dopamine controls our feelings, addictions, and, basically, happiness.
- > I'm simply incapable of doing things I've set out to do. Simple things. Everything is difficult.
“Independent discharges of dopamine neurons (tonic or pacemaker firing) determine the motivation to respond to such cues. As a result of habitual intake of addictive drugs, dopamine receptors expressed in the brain are decreased, thereby reducing interest in activities not already stamped in by habitual rewards.”
From: Dopamine and Addiction | Annual Review of Psychology — https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-psych-...
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Edit:
I'd like to add a couple more ideas, because what you're describing in your article is spot on, and I believe can be generalized past your own experience.
> Another angle that makes this ever more distressing is that my memory is very, very fallible ... I can confidently say that I've done nothing I said I would do there.”
Herbert Simon says: “In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention”.
As an information-addict myself, I've been meditating a lot about this topic. During the past two years I've been researching it from a psychological perspective (And for that, I'm grateful to @ericd for this HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24581016). I'll throw in some resources that I've came across during this journey, in case anyone finds them useful:
- Dr Gabor Mate: Addiction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-APGWvYupU
- Dr. Anna Lembke: Understanding & Treating Addiction | Huberman Lab Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3JLaF_4Tz8
- The book “The Molecule of More” by by Daniel Z. Lieberman and Michael E. Long.
- The book “The Shallows” by Nicholas Carr.
- > a definite change in the clarity and volume of my inner voice and mental imagery
It's normal that these things varies, depending on the state you're in. Any kind of dopamine rush (thinking positively about future endeavours, thinking about something you would like to have, etc.) will make your inner voice louder and faster and you'll be imagining things more easily. I guess cannabis is somehow doing this for you, but you can also learn to do this without it (The Molecule of More by Daniel Z. Lieberman is great if you want to understand how one can do this).
