Half-OT: I never understood this.
To me it seems random actions cause dopamin production.
Like, how does the body know that it should release more dopamin when I scroll HN than when I learn Rust, or ride my bike?
To me it seems random actions cause dopamin production.
Like, how does the body know that it should release more dopamin when I scroll HN than when I learn Rust, or ride my bike?
That is, it is the habit drug. It helps you remember the precise nature of recurrent rewards, and presumably is "intended" to help you get better are arriving at the reward.
Makes much more sense now, thanks!
This is what's broken in ADHD and why people affected profit from increasing dopamine with some stimulants.
I've seen some dreck on PsychologyToday. After the author used a weak metaphor as an excuse to lead the article with Kim Kardashian's bust, and slammed other opinions as "kindergarten brain science", I didn't bother to see if there was anything subtle or worthwhile here. It's not the fault of readers if most of them were alienated quickly and bailed out. It's the fault of poor writing and editing that were indicative of time being wasted.
Is this why activities associated with bad 'dopamine habits' are so strongly correlated with said the bad habits that involved dopamine?
After having quit smoking, I find myself desperately wanting to do the 'break thing' whereby you stop what you're doing, take 5 minutes to just stand, relax and and enjoy the moment for a second while ignoring the stress.
I honestly don't even think I want the cigarette, just everything else about that experience.
Parallel universe you (possibly with a goatee) that did the "break thing" but never smoked during a break will want to take a break but has no association with cigarettes or smoking. Their desire for a break remains, maybe with the same strength, but with no desire for a cigarette.
(In hindsight I probably shouldn't have been encouraging a harmful drug addiction, but it was more tongue-in-cheek than anything.)
On Hacker News? Not likely. Everyone's a well informed 10xer who doesn't just go shooting his mouth off with the first thought that pops into his mind.
I think dopamine is not "reward", but "anticipation of reward". It's how long your brain can wait untill it evaluates the success of an action. Upon success you gain more dopamine, which enables you to do new tasks.
So dopamine is essential in executive functions like planning and focus.
The problem arises from the evolutionary adaptations we carry, like finding scarce cheap energy like easy carbs (pre agricultural world had nothing sweeter than a carrot), which gives us dopamine from eating sweets today. Your brain also likes new information, which does not leave your model of reality in shambles. There are probably other mundane "self-efficacy" experiences rewarded, like voting and commenting.
I assume there is some feedback loop which will make the pleasant feeling of actual reward greater, the less "anticipation of reward" dopamine was spend. This is basically a scarcity adapted self-improvement algorithm, which is defunct in modern abundance.
Any basic psychology course or textbook will provide the context to understand this. You could look at it as operant conditioning, and there are probably much more nuanced and data driven explanations that I'm ignorant of.
Learning Rust, while stimulating, does not has that tight reward loop, so you are not addicted to learning Rust but to scrolling HN as your easy dopamin dispenser. You need to invest a lot of effort into learning something complex as Rust (or painting, or whatever which require a good amount of knowledge and practice.) before getting that dopamin reward.
The cognitive effort required to "learn Rust" is much greater than scrolling social media, watching YouTube, etc. and doesn't provide the same reward/stimulation. The brain will always crave the easier sources of dopamine and prefers to be on auto-pilot.
In my opinion having done a few of them, a dopamine detox is likely a waste of time, although disconnecting from electronics can be a nice break if you need/want that.
You will never want to start learning Rust because there's always easier sources of dopamine for your brain to indulge in. The key is starting anyways. Open the Rust docs and start trying. I only require myself to do 10 minutes of coding per day. Usually, after the 10 minutes my brain is already engaged and I continue for multiple hours on that momentum. Occasionally I'm having an off day and can't get myself to focus/engage properly for whatever reason and after the 10 minutes or the one small change I wanted to make is over I stop.
Even just the 10 minutes each day is infinitely more than continuing to do nothing.
That's a pseudoscientific narrative. It's not literally based on the science of dopamine. It's based on the pop-science dopamine metaphor.
It's nowhere near scientifically accurate. Don't read too much into it.
Do you know of anything that elucidates the oversimplifications of dopamine popscience?
Edit: This does a good job: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/feb/03/dopamine-the...