Slashdot Mirror
M.I.T. Explains Why Bad Habits Are Hard to Break
Ant writes "CNET News.com says habitual activity (e.g., smoking, eating fatty foods, gambling, etc.) changes neural activity patterns in a specific region of the brain when habits are formed. These neural patterns created by habit can be changed or altered. But when a stimulus from the old days returns, the dormant pattern can reassert itself, according to a new study from the M.I.T., putting an individual in a neural state akin to being on autopilot... The neural patterns get established in the basal ganglia, a brain region critical to habits, addiction and procedural learning."
So removing the Slashdot button from my bookmark bar might not be sufficient?
an explanation of why I reload slashdot every 5 minutes and couldn't get rid of this bad habbit in any way.
I have a bad habit of missing the first post.
Every time I see a dupe on slashdot I have the urge to yell out "FRIST PSOT!!!!"
A day is lacking without the 7 S's:
1. Shower
2. Seminate (Sex or self)
3. Smoke
4. Shave
5. Starbucks
6. Shit
7. Slashdot
Note that the primes are all habits. Now permanently locked in my brain.
See, this is why I like a little variety in my addictions: alcohol for a couple weeks, smoking the next, Starcraft after that, keeps me from getting pinned down to a single addiction for very long.
Drinking isn't on that list. I guess I don't have any bad habits!
Civilisation comes out, people obsessively play till 5am regularly so they can 'build this last final World Wonder'. This syndrome continues until the 5 1/4" disks wear out, the mouse cable is frayed, and the EGA monitor has CRT burn in.
People recover, move on with their lives...then the syndrome re-occurs when Civilization II comes out -- on CDROM!!! Most people feel grunge music was a cultural phenomonen driven by the recession, but oh no -- college kids obsessed with Civ quit their summer jobs and could only afford second hand flannel, sinking 10 hrs a day into a 486 game.
Advance a few years... Civilisation III late 2000. Dot-com crash late 2000. In this case correlation DOES mean causation.
And now... Civilisation IV. Fortunately due to MIT's intense investigations into this phenomenon, hopefully a cure is available for addiction. The economy can't take another Enron/Worldcom/Pets.com.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
...... The need for Zonk to post dupes.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
I recently started vomitting again on a regular basis after seeing actual COBOL and FORTRAN code.
This still doesn't explain that 'dirty feeling' I get when I post here.
Now I have to go shower.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
This probably explains why you were about to flame me when you saw the title. Its just habbit, anything pro-ms, FLAME!
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
Definitely worth looking into . . .
I am not a crackpot.
This one is so fundamental that you could actually define "home" as the place where you feel most comfortable taking a dump...
me likey the way you refuse to use paragraphs. it's the perfect method to disguise the insightful things you say in your post.
That should do the trick.
Or some last drastic variation that just kills the connections.