{"id":141,"date":"2020-08-26T19:45:26","date_gmt":"2020-08-26T19:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linas.org\/blog\/?p=141"},"modified":"2020-08-26T19:45:26","modified_gmt":"2020-08-26T19:45:26","slug":"addicted-to-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linas.org\/blog\/2020\/08\/addicted-to-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Addicted to reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you are imprisoned by reality, is it wrong to suffer from the Stockholm syndrome?\u00a0 I read this quote: \u201cPeople who are addicted to Twitter,\u201d Lanier said<\/a>, \u201care like all addicts\u2014on the one hand miserable, and on the other hand very defensive about it and unwilling to blame Twitter.\u201d Another word for this is doomscrolling — you keep scrolling down, looking for one more post…<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Doomscrolling<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Wait, how is this different than, I dunno, club-hopping (or bar-hopping?) Sure, the idea is to dance\/get drunk, but along the way, you hope to find one more really great club\/bar.\u00a0 At the end you’re exhausted or drunk or both.\u00a0 Is this addictive behavior?<\/p>\n

Before there were clubs, before there were cities or towns, there were villages and hikes in the forest, and if you wanted to get so far out that you could never return, you could hike clear across some continent. Were such hikes pleasant, or did they end in misery? Both. Hiking is (physically) healthy: it triggers anabolic growth of muscles and assorted other positive physical changes. You feel pleasantly tired at the end of the day, because assorted endorphins are released, as well. \u00a0 This is reality. This is the physical world the human animal\u00a0 was born into, evolved into.<\/p>\n

\"\"
World’s first nightclub<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We’ve taken aspects of that physical world, and concentrated it, distilled it, enhanced it, and tried to make it even better. Clubbing is like … hiking in a forest … with friends …\u00a0 finding a visually, spatially, architecturally stunning clearing … taking a rest, but then getting excited enough to dance.\u00a0 Such clearings are rare.. but we can build them. Perhaps Stonehenge was the first nightclub ever. (OK, so the dolmen in Gaudalperal<\/a>, Spain are maybe 2,000 years older… but you get the idea.)<\/p>\n

Unlike a hike in the forest, clubbing is easier to get to. It’s safer: without wild animals to attack you, or poison ivy to roll around in, you can enjoy some intoxicants.\u00a0 Sure, dancing can make you sweat, but you don’t even have to dance, if you don’t feel like it. And then there is the sexual tension… and, for some reason, its always hot, and the air is always bad. Why is that?\u00a0 This is where things skew sideways. We’ve distilled the awesomeness of a hike, made it even better, but in some ways worse.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Hang on, let me change my outfit<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Every human activity began as wild animals living in nature. We’ve taken everything to an extreme: The hike in the forest has become the life-threatening hike across the Arctic, or the top of Mt. Everest. The clubbing scene can turn into living for (the Brazilian) Carnival (so, cosplay, before cosplay was invented). Quiet moments reflecting becomes published mathematics. Cracking a joke has become a vast entertainment industry. All small things can be, are plumbed to their most extreme depths.\u00a0\u00a0 Is this reality, or is this hyper-reality?<\/p>\n

\"\"
Walt Disney knew a thing or two about paperclip maximization<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What’s the driver for extreme behavior? What pushes? Addictive neural circuitry pushes.\u00a0 Sometimes the results are flawed: nicotine addiction, gambling addiction. The utility of any action is always in question: are the right-wingers correct in decrying this or that activity, or are the liberals correct in saying its harmless? Clearly, planting crops (or any overtly economic activity) is beneficial: it provides you with the food, the energy, the money to pursue extreme behaviors.\u00a0 This is the basic premise of “capitalism”: it creates wealth, and without wealth, once cannot pursue extreme activities. We applaud STEM because it lies along an indirect path to wealth. Not so clear about music and Hollywood, even thought there’s much money there. But drug dealers also have a lot of money, so being profitable is not a clear-cut signal of social good.\u00a0 Addiction feels good, at least for a while, at least in certain ways, but it’s a kind of sophisticated paper-clip maximizer:\u00a0 we’re maximizing the utility function for … something, but was it really “good for you”?<\/p>\n

\"\"
If I’m weird, is it because I’ve developed Stockholm syndrome from reality?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our neural circuitry enables the relentless exploration of extreme situations.\u00a0 Sometimes it fails, and we paper-clip-maximize useless addictive behavior. Sometimes it works, when we’ve harnessed\u00a0 it the achieve great new feats.\u00a0 Ever notice how some (many?) of the driven over-achievers,\u00a0 the burning hot, live-wires have a crazed look in their eye? They need to go farther, push harder, do more, be more, and there’s an obsessive quality to it.\u00a0 Doom-scrolling for greatness. Stellar star-dom or bust.\u00a0 What\u00a0 exactly, is going on here, and why must I compulsively write about it?<\/p>\n

\"\"
You, too, can be a winner by exploring the truth<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you are imprisoned by reality, is it wrong to suffer from the Stockholm syndrome?\u00a0 I read this quote: \u201cPeople who are addicted to Twitter,\u201d Lanier said, \u201care like all addicts\u2014on the one hand miserable, and on the other hand very defensive about it and unwilling to blame Twitter.\u201d Another word for this is doomscrolling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linas.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linas.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linas.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linas.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linas.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/linas.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150,"href":"https:\/\/linas.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linas.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linas.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linas.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}