Addicted to Information?

SiMac writes "According to this New York Times article, two Harvard faculty members say that information causes a "dopamine squirt" in humans, a rush similar to that given by narcotics. Just as narcotics are addictive, information is as well. They've given the disorder of information addiction the name 'pseudo-ADD' because it tends to cause somewhat ADD-like symptoms."

Comments

The only mistake is to refer to it as a "disorder"

[LiberalApplication]

...because it has been a long-standing tradition in the study of anything, all things, in any field, to give every uniquely discernable (and not necessarily even reproducible) set of circumstances a name and a place in an ever-broadening taxonomical heirarchy of "things we gave names to".

This is simply how we study things. We now know that there are groups of people who react "differently" to certain sets of stimuli, and we have studied the phenomenon enough to have come to a general, but highly contested decision to treat such people with stimulants of various sorts. w00t. What now? Well, while certain researchers delve into the biochemical, genetic, physiological details of this condition, others will subspecialize in particular demographic slices of the group.

That's what grad school is for, isn't it? "Oh, oh, find something that noone else has really put too much time into and go write up a really long paper and come back in a few years so we can yell at you for a few hours".

Even outside of academia, the mentality is pervasive. This is why there's an aisle in stores for "cleaners". There are cleaning products for every imaginable material, for variants of materials. For vinyl, acrylic, plastics, laminates, polished surfaces, glass, concrete, stainless steel, silver, marble, stained wood, unstained wood, painted surfaces, etc... if we really didn't think that way, all we'd have is soap and water.

In any case, I'm glad we do these things. Of course, I am currently being strongly swayed by the prescribed afternoon dose of methylphenidate which is just now (aaah) breaking the blood-brain-barrier. Without people digging frantically into statistical data concerning behavior patterns, I wouldn't have my Ritalin.