And here all this time I thought I was an American because I lived in the US. Turns out I'm just part of the white dominating force that has conquered the US from the natives.
The only reason compulsive handwashing isn't an addiction is because the actor does not receive pleasure from it. Obsessive-compulsive actions are done to relieve anxiety, not gain pleasure.
Also, if your video game playing is habitual to the point where there are consistent negative consequences that outweigh its normal benefits, then you are addicted. I think the definition you quoted was a little lax in that it does not take into account that every action has negative consequences on some level (and you indirectly pointed out this failing in the definition with your response to it).
Addiction is when you can't stop doing what you're doing to do anything else.
Then only the worst cases are actually addiction? What if I have to smoke at least a pack of cigs a day? That's not an addiction, because it only takes an hour out of my day?
I'm not trying to be smart; I just don't understand what this has to do with whether someone is addicted or not.
Define, please, what you think an addiction is. If I distract myself with gambling, is that an addiction? What about if I distract myself with heroin? Cocaine?
If you bought cars all the time, to the point where it harms you greatly but continue to do it, then you're probably addicted. If you use the telephone and rack up the bill to the point where you cannot pay your mortgage, but continue to use the telephone more and more, then you might be addicted. Paying your bills probably has nothign to do with addiction, because I can't see how it would be activating your reward pathway (unless you are stressed while you have unpaid bills looming, but you do not have a large enough source of bills for you to develop an addiction to bills themselves). You get the point.
What makes you think that cognitive processing ability is 'finite' and attention to task A must harm task B? Would you be interested to know that a distracting task can IMPROVE performance in certain circumstances?
This is not true with marijuana. Cannabinoid receptors are the most numerous in the brain, and the THC in marijuana directly activates these receptors. Overactivation of these receptors will cause receptor downregulation. It is not as simple as just looking at the reward pathway.
That said, parent is still wrong in just about every sentence of his/her comment, so thanks for correcting.
In order to adequately grasp how widespread something is you have to sample randomly from the general population and see how many people are affected in a real way
Actually, no. Random sampling would be a horrible idea unless your sample is huge. Otherwise, you would almost certainly get skewed results due to chanced grouping and a huge sampling error range. Scientists who do this sort of thing typically will use something like stratified sampling.
Re:constructive and nonconstructive
on
Hooked On The Web
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· Score: 1
pornography and gambling is one thing, instant messaging and blogging is another. one enriches your life, one destroys it.
Amen to that. I've IMed and blogged so much that I can no longer talk to a woman face-to-face. Instant messaging has ruined my sex life.
Every failing that a person has is now some addiction or other problem that is beyond their control.
Well, I don't know about the "beyond their control" part, but just because you have problems understanding addictions that don't have a physical dependency doesn't mean they don't exist. What addictions are okay with you? Chemical? Sexual? Gambling?
There's only one general reward pathway. If you accept that addictions exist, then what logic are you using that disallows other rewarding actions from creating addiction?
That said, I've never known a psychologist (and I assume you really mean 'clinical psychologist') to just throw up their hands and say "sorry, you're addicted and no one can do anything about it. that will be $90 for the hour. have a nice day."
The way I took the "implies probability" comment was that the implied probability is probability of predictability. In other words, if A occurs, I can say with x probability that B occurs. From my vantage point, you inserted the "of causality". Obviously, I cannot speak to what the comment was really talking about, since it didn't specify the object of the probability.
Large % of those in love owned cars (implying cars cause love)
What? No. It does not say that cars cause love. In fact, parent specifically said he was talking about probability. Your example implies that cars and love are related. It doesn't imply that love causes one to have a car, nor the other way around. It could very well be that both love and ownership of a car is caused by a third variable, like wealth.
# Small percentage of those in love owned telescopes (implying telescopes make falling in love unlikely)
# Large % of those in love had eaten at McDonalds (implying McDonalds causes love)
Again, you have a misunderstanding of what a correlation is. None of those has anything to do with causation, necessarily. Nor does correlation suggest causation.
That's why negative samples, control groups that isolate the issue under test, repeatability and more are much more significant than correlation.
Well of course. If someone prefers correlation over clear causal relationship, they're likely to be mad (now that's a correlation!). But clear causal relationships are difficult to determine, and those who do "determine" them are often found to be WRONG only 5 or 10 years later.
repeat after me, "Correlation does not imply causality".
Usually I don't have to reduce my threshold so low to find this comment. It's always there. Anytime science is performed that deals in correlation, someone has to make this comment.
Unfortunately, to me it just makes me feel like you don't understand what correlation is. Of course it doesn't show causality. So it's useless? Give me an area of science that doesn't use correlation ever, and I'll show you an area of science that's so obvious it's not interesting.
I really have never understood the mentality that anything which cannot be directly observed should be ignored. Science is a game of inches (despite the media's best efforts) and "breakthroughs" are rare, as they fundamentally require something that is both fully observable (maybe indirectly by a new technology) and something which was previously not understood at all.
What's wrong with a study that finds that there is a relationship between X and Y and should be studied further? If this is useless, the government is paying for a lot of pointless research in Inferential Statistics.
This logic is the reason anyone is even doing this kind of research. So, yes, you're absolutely right. It makes sense. The government doesn't fund research that doesn't make sense (mod me +1, Funny if you deem appropriate, but I'm being serious).
Um, simple. Not everyone has a computer. Worse, those who don't have a computer are likely to be poor. So, the poor are paying more taxes with no benefit.
Wait, I know what you're going to say: not everyone has a car, either. Right, but effective transportation does DIRECTLY lower the cost of consumption for everyone.
I'm having trouble making a similar argument for free wi-fi.
Excerpt pokes at the perception that there is something wrong with introverts, but furthers the perception that somehow more brain activity as better. A lot of brain activity has to do with inhibiting other nervous system activity. The brain isn't a processor where cycles per second have some significance. If anything, the morphology of the brain circuitry would have a much bigger impact than any measure of global activity.
Slashdot Mirror
And here all this time I thought I was an American because I lived in the US. Turns out I'm just part of the white dominating force that has conquered the US from the natives.
The only reason compulsive handwashing isn't an addiction is because the actor does not receive pleasure from it. Obsessive-compulsive actions are done to relieve anxiety, not gain pleasure.
Also, if your video game playing is habitual to the point where there are consistent negative consequences that outweigh its normal benefits, then you are addicted. I think the definition you quoted was a little lax in that it does not take into account that every action has negative consequences on some level (and you indirectly pointed out this failing in the definition with your response to it).
EVERYTHING someone does chemically changes one's mind. Also, sports can be very addictive. See: exercise bulimia.
Addiction is when you can't stop doing what you're doing to do anything else.
Then only the worst cases are actually addiction? What if I have to smoke at least a pack of cigs a day? That's not an addiction, because it only takes an hour out of my day?
I'm not trying to be smart; I just don't understand what this has to do with whether someone is addicted or not.
Define, please, what you think an addiction is. If I distract myself with gambling, is that an addiction? What about if I distract myself with heroin? Cocaine?
If you bought cars all the time, to the point where it harms you greatly but continue to do it, then you're probably addicted. If you use the telephone and rack up the bill to the point where you cannot pay your mortgage, but continue to use the telephone more and more, then you might be addicted. Paying your bills probably has nothign to do with addiction, because I can't see how it would be activating your reward pathway (unless you are stressed while you have unpaid bills looming, but you do not have a large enough source of bills for you to develop an addiction to bills themselves). You get the point.
What makes you think that cognitive processing ability is 'finite' and attention to task A must harm task B? Would you be interested to know that a distracting task can IMPROVE performance in certain circumstances?
This is not true with marijuana. Cannabinoid receptors are the most numerous in the brain, and the THC in marijuana directly activates these receptors. Overactivation of these receptors will cause receptor downregulation. It is not as simple as just looking at the reward pathway.
That said, parent is still wrong in just about every sentence of his/her comment, so thanks for correcting.
I was a little overly-broad in what I said.
And I was being picky. But, hey, this is slashdot.
In order to adequately grasp how widespread something is you have to sample randomly from the general population and see how many people are affected in a real way
Actually, no. Random sampling would be a horrible idea unless your sample is huge. Otherwise, you would almost certainly get skewed results due to chanced grouping and a huge sampling error range. Scientists who do this sort of thing typically will use something like stratified sampling.
pornography and gambling is one thing, instant messaging and blogging is another. one enriches your life, one destroys it.
Amen to that. I've IMed and blogged so much that I can no longer talk to a woman face-to-face. Instant messaging has ruined my sex life.
Every failing that a person has is now some addiction or other problem that is beyond their control.
Well, I don't know about the "beyond their control" part, but just because you have problems understanding addictions that don't have a physical dependency doesn't mean they don't exist. What addictions are okay with you? Chemical? Sexual? Gambling?
There's only one general reward pathway. If you accept that addictions exist, then what logic are you using that disallows other rewarding actions from creating addiction?
That said, I've never known a psychologist (and I assume you really mean 'clinical psychologist') to just throw up their hands and say "sorry, you're addicted and no one can do anything about it. that will be $90 for the hour. have a nice day."
Accepting code in email is like having casual unprotected sex
My friend, as someone who has done both, I must wholeheartedly disagree.
In Microsoft Internet Explorer, porn finds YOU!
The way I took the "implies probability" comment was that the implied probability is probability of predictability. In other words, if A occurs, I can say with x probability that B occurs. From my vantage point, you inserted the "of causality". Obviously, I cannot speak to what the comment was really talking about, since it didn't specify the object of the probability.
You preceded your examples with an argument "No, it doesn't" to parent's point. I did read for content.
No. It doesn't:
Um, yes it does.
Large % of those in love owned cars (implying cars cause love)
What? No. It does not say that cars cause love. In fact, parent specifically said he was talking about probability. Your example implies that cars and love are related. It doesn't imply that love causes one to have a car, nor the other way around. It could very well be that both love and ownership of a car is caused by a third variable, like wealth.
# Small percentage of those in love owned telescopes (implying telescopes make falling in love unlikely)
# Large % of those in love had eaten at McDonalds (implying McDonalds causes love)
Again, you have a misunderstanding of what a correlation is. None of those has anything to do with causation, necessarily. Nor does correlation suggest causation.
That's why negative samples, control groups that isolate the issue under test, repeatability and more are much more significant than correlation.
Well of course. If someone prefers correlation over clear causal relationship, they're likely to be mad (now that's a correlation!). But clear causal relationships are difficult to determine, and those who do "determine" them are often found to be WRONG only 5 or 10 years later.
You insensitive clods! I thought my relationship was meaningful and deep now its just some chemical that will be gone after a year!
Eh, so what. Before, your love was powered by alcohol; now it's powered by NGF. BFD.
love bomb
I believe that's called Tequila.
repeat after me, "Correlation does not imply causality".
Usually I don't have to reduce my threshold so low to find this comment. It's always there. Anytime science is performed that deals in correlation, someone has to make this comment.
Unfortunately, to me it just makes me feel like you don't understand what correlation is. Of course it doesn't show causality. So it's useless? Give me an area of science that doesn't use correlation ever, and I'll show you an area of science that's so obvious it's not interesting.
I really have never understood the mentality that anything which cannot be directly observed should be ignored. Science is a game of inches (despite the media's best efforts) and "breakthroughs" are rare, as they fundamentally require something that is both fully observable (maybe indirectly by a new technology) and something which was previously not understood at all.
What's wrong with a study that finds that there is a relationship between X and Y and should be studied further? If this is useless, the government is paying for a lot of pointless research in Inferential Statistics.
This logic is the reason anyone is even doing this kind of research. So, yes, you're absolutely right. It makes sense. The government doesn't fund research that doesn't make sense (mod me +1, Funny if you deem appropriate, but I'm being serious).
Reports are that it works quite well, but some older people can hear it too. He found the prefect irritating sound by experimenting on his children.
Wait, so you're saying most adults can't hear Fran Drescher?
Um, simple. Not everyone has a computer. Worse, those who don't have a computer are likely to be poor. So, the poor are paying more taxes with no benefit.
Wait, I know what you're going to say: not everyone has a car, either. Right, but effective transportation does DIRECTLY lower the cost of consumption for everyone.
I'm having trouble making a similar argument for free wi-fi.
Excerpt pokes at the perception that there is something wrong with introverts, but furthers the perception that somehow more brain activity as better. A lot of brain activity has to do with inhibiting other nervous system activity. The brain isn't a processor where cycles per second have some significance. If anything, the morphology of the brain circuitry would have a much bigger impact than any measure of global activity.
From what I can tell, it ended up being a volunteer who was impersonating a secret service agent who kicked them out of the town hall meeting. See their blog: http://www.denverthree.org./modules/news/index.php ?storytopic=4