Slashdot Mirror
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."
Damn this is interesting! I must know more about it! More! More! And for some strange reason I want some twinkies.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
This article essentially states that 'being connected' is distracting and shortens attention spans, and that it's also pleasurable. So far so good- but putting a new medical label on it seems akin to creating a 'eating cookies is pleasurable disorder' or 'loud sounds and flashing lights harm one's ability to focus disorder'. It's common sense. Medical science nowadays gets excited when they reinvent the wheel.
for playing online at work? Americans with Disabilities Act protects us, eh? Kickass.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Just wait until information is added to the list of forbidden substances, and included in the War on Drugs.
The article doesn't say you get a shot of dopamine when you connect, it just quotes some psycologist saying it's *like* a dopamine squirt. Nowhere do they site research backing up that claim.
The whole article is really just a set of case studies of people who do many things at once all the time, and who find that makes them unhappy for one reason or another. Throw in a few off the cuff, baseless statements by shrinks, and the NYT has made a roll-your-own disorder: pseudo-ADD. It's not even it's own disorder, just a fake version of another hotly debated syndrome.
When I see real scientific data showing that A) there is an actual neurochemical response to data that can lead to addiction, B) that this addiction can and has happened in real people, and C) that it has caused these people's quality of life to be reduced, I'll believe it's a disorder. Right now, though, all we've got is some unhappy businessmen and a few shrinks looking to make a name for themselves.
Narrative
Seriously, though, to whatever extent this can be meaningfully described as an addiction, I think it might be better compared to over-eating disorders (bingeing) than to drug addictions, at least in terms of treatment.
With drug addictions, the idea is to minimize the dosage, hopefully to zero or at least to some very low "maintenance level". But with over-eating disorders, it's not just a matter of avoiding food, but eating healthy amounts of healthy food, and giving your body time to digest it properly. The analogy to treating a compulsive information disorder seems obvious. (Ob:IANAD.)
One could also make obvious comparisons to the ubiquity of unhealthy food in much of society and the ubiquity of bad information. Not just incorrect information, but badly prepared information from bad "ingredients", presented in ways that can't be meaningfully "digested".
Also, I bet there's an information-access disorder analogous to anorexia -- people who avoid as much information as they can.
No, the article is about being addicted to information. People who regularly read Slashdot are addicted to misinformation.
You're kidding, right? So it's more productive for me to track down that one last news story on an obscure subject then it would be to leave early and get more billable hours?
"The more information the better?"
Really?
Opportunity cost, my anonymous friend, opportunity cost.
Speaking as somebody with the email tag of "data omnivore", (used to be "Mycroft") I can assure you that while more information can be good, making money, dating, exercising, and a dozen other things, can be better.
"Hello everybody. My name is Rustin and I'm a dataholic."
Yeah, when you have an idle moment in the airport and you start reading the ingredient list on the granola bar because suddenly you care, then you know that the pursuit of data has passed beyond the rational and entered the, yes, that's right, addictive.
Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
Presuming you're asking "Why do I hate school?":
It's because the information isn't coming at the rate you'd like, and you feel like you're wasting your time doing B.S. tasks (exams, papers, projects, etc.) which really mean nothing in a 'real world' context.
Sure, it sucks. I barely scraped by myself, but I kept at it because it's the only game in town and I knew that if I dropped out I'd be stuck flipping burgers for the rest of my life.
Hang in there. Once you're done, you can learn things at a rate you can only dream of now.
The articles analogy to "ADD" and many references to it within the slashdot article reminds me of a joke I heard recently I'd like to share.
Q: How many kids with ADD does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: Hey! Wanna go ride bikes?!?
Beware blue cats moving at
I loved to buy a few magazines and sit in a cafe and read them and write in my journal or sketch someone. People talked to people that they didn't know in public places. Now I choose my cafes according to the speed and expense of their WiFi connections and the top floor of my favorite cafe in Seattle resembles a computer lab. I don't often buy magazines as I usually already read the content online.
The last time I tried to spend an afternoon in a cafe without my laptop and a good book by an author I enjoyed, I found myself quickly getting very bored and cut the afternoon short. You can't go back I guess.
Slashdot itself is a perfect example of pseudo-attention deficit disorder. As I often post comments to stories late in the life of the story, I rarely think that many people read what I have to write as their focus has already passed on to the newer story. You can see it in how quickly people scramble to post their half-formed thoughts... which often get modded up higher than they deserve by virtue of being there first.
That's not a dig... just an observation.
"Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me."
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.