> What is wrong with this? If people are voluntarily engaging in these activities, is that not a good thing? Well, if people genuinely enjoy those activities, then maybe so. And sometimes that is what happens. But often, my experience at least is quite different...
That's an important point which is often lost on proponents of "revealed preferences". It's explored in more detail in Yvain's essay on the want/like distinction: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1lb/are_wireheads_happy/. Here's a quote:
> A University of Michigan study analyzed the brains of rats eating a favorite food. They found separate circuits for "wanting" and "liking", and were able to knock out either circuit without affecting the other... When they knocked out the "liking" system, the rats would eat exactly as much of the food without making any of the satisifed lip-licking expression, and areas of the brain thought to be correlated with pleasure wouldn't show up in the MRI. Knock out "wanting", and the rats seem to enjoy the food as much when they get it but not be especially motivated to seek it out.
Right now it's 1.30 AM where I'm living (a studio apartment in a crowded building) and I can hear my neighbor hitting the concrete wall that stands between me and him and screaming at his girlfriend "Just leave me alone! I can't even finish a quest! Leave me alone!". Apparently he's playing WoW.
He's been doing this (screaming in the middle of the night and hitting the wall) regularly since they've moved next door approximately two months ago, all of it caused by his "deaths" that happen in an online game. The first time when I heard him I thought this was just your casual "mad guy who gets upset when drinking too much", but seems like I was wrong. The only thing which I can't still understand is how come said girlfriend is still standing by him, I can hear her from time to time asking him "please be a little quieter".
I was confounded and disturbed when I started seeing mobile games advertising "addictive" as a positive trait. Most addictive game ever? Why on Earth would I want to play that? But somehow it's become a badge of honor for games, with people not even realizing they're being told that they're being manipulated.
Of course this is not at all limited to games -- the article speaks to many industries, most of which are more insidious about this -- but it's the one that comes to mind most readily, because it illustrates an appalling lack of consumer awareness.
> I was confounded and disturbed when I started seeing mobile games advertising "addictive" as a positive trait
I wouldn't worry too much about that. Board games have been advertised that way for years. It might just show that folks who worked in advertising on board games have moved or the new folks are reading the old folks copy.
The food industry has been carefully maximizing the addictiveness of its products for decades now. The software world has its equivalent in vendor lock-in, which may not tap into the same psychology, but is nonetheless rooted in fostering habits and dependence.
It's a problem of perverse incentives inherent in capitalism (and democracy also); the fact that a consumer's rational judgment holds so much power means that providers tend to be rewarded for distorting and subverting that rational judgment, which is easier than it would seem when done on a mass scale. It's a wicked problem, to be sure.
i think you miss the point of advertising something as addictive. it can have a positive spin. addiction can be understood as something so enjoyable you would want to continue to do it as a regular activity. if that thing isn't bad for you, then it's a good thing that it's addictive.
if i told you excercise was addictive as a selling point, would you say that people shouldn't exercise because it is addictive? i think it's clear that addictive activities aren't necessarily bad just cause they are addictive.
people should focus on the positive impact an activity has. if it's strongly positive, then addiction to it isn't bad at all.
Obligatory link to an essay I posted on HN a few years ago and received lots of commentary from the community. This is a very serious problem. I've yet to see much headway being made.
That was a very good read. Kind of scary to think about. I waste a lot of time online, so I'm not immune, but I don't play addictive games anymore. I can get addicted to them. If I start playing a game I might end up playing it nonstop for a week. But I don't try new games. It doesn't seem fun. Just like I wouldn't start using addictive drugs.
The same is true of websites. If I just stop going to those websites I'm addicted to for a week, it breaks the addiction and I won't go back. I have like 20 messages on reddit that I never get around to replying to, and bunch of Facebook posts that feel like more work to read than it's worth. My RSS feed overfilled and I haven't checked my email in months.
The point is, unlike drugs, games don't stay fun forever. You get bored and quit. And if you quit you lose the temptation to go back to them.
>the same process also makes it possible to create drugs, games, and services that are ever more addictive than before.
Not necessarily. There very well may be a limit to the propensity of the brain toward addiction, unless we delve into deep sci-fi territory of complete reward structure take over. Opiates have passed their 200th birthday and we certainly can't conclusively say that we have found anything more addictive than heroin (150 years old).
There very well may be a limit to the propensity of the brain toward addiction, unless we delve into deep sci-fi territory of complete reward structure take over.
What makes you think that doesn't happen? We know the brain is plastic. More frequently used neural pathways get reinforced, unused ones get destroyed. After a long period of addiction, the brain is physically altered to require that addiction. The presence of the addiction becomes the new baseline for feeling "normal." There's a limit to this for physical addictions, because there's a point where the heroin will kill you. Psychological addictions don't have that restriction.
Psychological addictions can be just as deadly as physiological ones. Death from overwork[1], death from playing video games[2], death from avoidable STD's all of these could be classed as deaths resulting from psychological addictions.
But could we just "take" heroin and alter it to create a bit different substance with different properties? If so, could one property be "addictiveness" and could it exceed that of heroin?
Sadly, the hedonic treadmill only protects you from excessive enjoyment, not from excessive urge to do something. (See my above comment on the want/like distinction.)
That's an important point which is often lost on proponents of "revealed preferences". It's explored in more detail in Yvain's essay on the want/like distinction: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1lb/are_wireheads_happy/. Here's a quote:
> A University of Michigan study analyzed the brains of rats eating a favorite food. They found separate circuits for "wanting" and "liking", and were able to knock out either circuit without affecting the other... When they knocked out the "liking" system, the rats would eat exactly as much of the food without making any of the satisifed lip-licking expression, and areas of the brain thought to be correlated with pleasure wouldn't show up in the MRI. Knock out "wanting", and the rats seem to enjoy the food as much when they get it but not be especially motivated to seek it out.