[HN Gopher] Please stop calling dopamine an addictive rewarding ...
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Please stop calling dopamine an addictive rewarding neurochemical
(2017)
Author : kloch
Score : 162 points
Date : 2021-10-13 14:15 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.psychologytoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.psychologytoday.com)
| [deleted]
| bryan0 wrote:
| Posted January 6, 2017
| zackbloom wrote:
| The absolute best review of what dopamine really does (mediate
| attention) and how that relates to the brain's function is this
| [1] writeup from Astral Star Codex on Predictive Coding.
| Predictive Coding is a theory of the mind which does a better job
| of explaining Serotonin and Dopamine's function than the more
| primitive ways railed against in this post.
|
| [1] - https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-
| un...
| cblconfederate wrote:
| I read some of it... what's the point here? Addiction is not yet
| deciphered in the brain, but it's definitely in the brain.
| Whether people call it serotonin or catecholamine it doesnt
| matter, addictive behavior does exist and there is a physical
| substrate for it, whatever you call it. Dopamine won't be
| offended for calling her that.
| zwkrt wrote:
| The problem with talking about behaviors' physical substrate is
| that we can't talk about cause/effect across the physical and
| social realms. Neurotransmitters don't have causal effects on
| the "mind" any more than the wake of a ship has causal effects
| on its plotted course. Sure, dopamine levels change in response
| to addictive behavior, but they don't cause it, and talking
| about causes in this realm is probably not as helpful or
| expedient as talking about cause I'd the personal/social realm.
| Reducing behaviors to neurotransmitters discards all the more
| complicated things we do during addiction like experiencing
| shame, changing lifestyle, eating, or sleeping habits, or even
| the higher level frameworks through which we rationalize and
| put value on things in the world.
|
| Case in point: how can we possibly describe quitting cold
| turkey in a chemical framework? People do it all the time, yet
| it seems to be more of an act of moral courage than of basic,
| biologically driven behavior.
|
| An insidious side effect of brain chemical teleology is that it
| victimizes us in an unnecessarily deterministic manner. "You
| can hardly help yourself, see, your brain is literally working
| against you by producing evil chemicals in
| insufficient/inappropriate quantities. Take $x mi drug to
| correct yourself!"
|
| Instead of simplified and erroneous medical speak we might as
| well talk of the cold-turkey-quitter as having cast off a demon
| from their soul. At least in that framework the individual
| retains agency.
| warent wrote:
| Big appreciation to the doctor doing this work. Though not sure
| where this becomes pedantry.
|
| Sure, perhaps some people use it to manipulate and sound
| credible. I've personally never taken "dopamine hit" to be
| interpreted literally, it's kind of a figure of speech or
| catchphrase to point to the complex interactions of various
| chemicals and hormones the doctor is referring to.
|
| For example he noted one group saying "dopamine squirt", I doubt
| they think the brain is literally "squirting" anything.
| kloch wrote:
| The issue is, and the reason I submitted this article is
| dopamine is being grossly misrepresented as the tangible
| enjoyable feeling from an activity ex: "dopamine squirt" in so
| many articles these days.
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| I don't think the article touched on it, but an interesting
| point is that dopamine is not just the reward but also the
| anticipation / prediction of reward. And there's some
| interesting literature basically showing that the reward
| system of the brain is a prediction network of sorts and that
| the magnitude of error in its prediction correlates with how
| rewarding something is; that is to say, that how rewarding
| something is is as much a function of the expectations going
| into it as it is of the activity itself. (I don't mean
| expectation in the sense of the high-level ego's expectation
| of an event but rather of the lower level reward processing
| system's expectation)
|
| Here's a reference on dopamine wrt reward prediction error: h
| ttps://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.0024..
| .
|
| And here's one that kind of builds on that theory and
| proposes a sensory prediction error. Haven't read this paper
| yet: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2018
| .164...
|
| ---
|
| Anyway as far as the article itself, the point that dopamine
| is oversimplified is very important but I felt the author did
| a frankly _terrible_ job making that point. And they tied in
| a bunch of irrelevant stuff ( "dopamine is a
| vasoconstrictor"...true but it's a bit of an implicit
| strawman to act as if the people talking about dopamine
| addiction think that its ONLY purpose is as a reward
| chemical)
| YeGoblynQueenne wrote:
| >> Mr. Sinek is not a neuroscientist, and has not studied or
| researched the complexity of this aspect of our brain. But, he
| knows something you don't: mentioning neuroscience is a great way
| to convince people you are more knowledgeable about something,
| and to make your arguments more convincing. This effect was
| recently demonstrated by researchers from the University of
| Pennsylvania, who showed that use of irrelevant references to
| brain science was an effective way to lure people into thinking
| that complex phenomena are simple, and easily explained by, well,
| the brain.
|
| Er. So. Like artificial neural nets for example?
| bondarchuk wrote:
| > _So please, let's start talking about people, rather than
| irrelevant neurochemicals._
|
| Strange way to conclude an article that has quite successfully
| argued the relevance of dopamine in addiction. It's good to point
| out how reductive the dopamine narrative is, but overly reductive
| is not the same as completely false.
|
| I also disagree with the idea that pinpointing a neurological
| mechanism for a problem amounts to externalizing the problem.
| Maybe because the author is a psychologist, and not a
| neurologist, that they cling to this mind/body divide...
| Barrin92 wrote:
| No what the author is simply describing is that some mechanical
| process in the brain should not be taken as causative for some
| process at the level of behavior.
|
| _All behavioral processes manifest biochemically in the brain_
| , regardless of the complexity of the cause. It would be
| magical if it didn't. If the local lead company pours lead into
| the drinking water every single affected person has extreme
| levels of lead in the brain. Yet, the correct conclusion is not
| to blame 'lead-brains' but the ultimate cause of the pollution.
|
| The same thing is true for dopamine and Facebook. Even if the
| entire explanation was as simple as 'dopamine turns you into a
| facebook zombie', dopamine is not actual root cause at the
| level of behavior (that would be the incentive design of the
| social platform), dopamine is just a proximate agent.
|
| people who buy into these simplistic explanations are actually
| the ones who engage in a body / mind fallacy. Anything that
| impacts behavior, regardless of how remote in nature, manifests
| in the brain, precisely _because_ you are your brain, not
| despite of it.
| scoutt wrote:
| > pinpointing a neurological mechanism for a problem amounts to
| externalizing the problem
|
| I read it as "pinpointing a simpler reason to explain an often
| more complicated problem". It's easier to say "it's a dopamine
| rush" than "I'm on Facebook all day because I'm an insecure
| person and it's makes me feel bad and I don't know what else to
| do about it" (to mention a non-personal example).
|
| An addiction has for sure its chemical reasons, but limiting to
| only that when dealing with it, it's reductive (my wife is a
| Psycologist and I heard arguments like these many times
| already....).
| ljm wrote:
| It's just that even with self-awareness, you're not going to
| dive into existential torment and intimate communication at
| every opportunity when "it takes the edge off" is a
| functional equivalent, even if you wade further into a swamp
| of denial with every utterance of it. The dopamine rush is
| just the latest iteration of taking the edge off, getting
| comfort in something that gives you some feelings short-term
| but is hugely unhealthy in the long-term.
|
| Beyond that, an excuse is an excuse. "I doomscroll on FB all
| day because I'm insecure and I was abused as a child" (to use
| a personal example) can become just as much of an excuse as
| "I get a dopamine hit from connecting with my friends on FB."
| Sounds awkward when you first hear that, but then you keep
| hearing it, and it becomes normal.
| scoutt wrote:
| I don't think the article is about _excuses_ but about
| finding _reasons_. Of course a reason can be used as an
| excuse, but I don't think is the primary goal of
| attributing the causes to the dopamine rush.
| dnilasor wrote:
| > An addiction has for sure its chemical reasons, but
| limiting to only that when dealing with it, it's reductive
|
| Right, the point I got from this, particularly from all the
| examples pulled from pop science, is that folks are focusing
| on a reduced/mischaracterized biological mechanism instead of
| on the associated social behaviors. The social behaviors are
| the things we can (theoretically at least) actually change.
| Perhaps the author means to express that we should focus on
| whatever human behavior we think it problematic instead of
| "blaming" a component of the mechanism.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| I loathe the conflation as the resurrection of the stupidest bits
| of puritanism, the kinds that caused people to say they want
| kings back. It is always used to immediately pathologicalize
| anything remotely enjoyable to draw a straight line between
| "feels good" and "addictive" to justify controling others. It
| plays the same paternalistic game self-proclaimed leftists love
| to play to manufacture consensus via slight of hand. Either the
| people you are "helping" either agree with you or their
| objections may all be patronizingly dismissed as being controlled
| by noxious external influnces.
| magwa101 wrote:
| Pointing out vacuous nature of Simon Sinek, +1.
| dnilasor wrote:
| > mentioning neuroscience is a great way to convince people you
| are more knowledgeable about something, and to make your
| arguments more convincing.
|
| Eek, I have totally done this at a tech conference. But I try to
| do my hw first...
| bloqs wrote:
| Yes, popular movements get the terminology wrong, but the
| intention is correct. Dopamine is obviously a critical part of
| neurochemistry that isn't nearly as populist-simplified as "high
| or low".
|
| But these movements and discussion groups get the intention and
| method right - much of modern economies is encouraging compulsive
| habits in one group of people by another for economic gain. Much
| of human progress is around getting us the things we want as
| easily and as without-resistance as possible. This is
| catastrophic for our sense of individual purpose and direction,
| but policy isn't set by something so unempirical
| tclancy wrote:
| Exactly. It's a shorthand/ synecdoche to be used instead of
| rehashing the whole underlying discussion every single time.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| Meanwhile, earlier today.
|
| "Dopamine, Smartphones and You: A battle for your time"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28850169
| angryGhost wrote:
| was searching for this comment
| ghola2k5 wrote:
| Since this article we're commenting on is from 2017, I think
| that the article you're linking (which hit the front page) is
| the reason this is posted.
| [deleted]
| motohagiography wrote:
| I get the criticism, but in culture we use "dopamine" as a magic
| feather for separating our self from our experiences so we can
| reflect on them, and this article is like a bird saying, "that's
| not how feathers work!"
|
| They're right, but who needs to know that their magic feather is
| just a metaphor? Most of them are.
| kmnc wrote:
| I don't really get this article... it seems to make a good
| argument that dopamine is not the be all end all of addiction.
| Yet then it goes on to show that it is indeed a component of
| addiction, yet one of which is complex and still not well
| understood. So in essence, all this article is doing is
| complaining about pop science and how we often reduce complex
| behaviours to singular explanations. But isn't that just a part
| of being human? The article argues that people are more complex
| and we need to look at addiction in a more complex way.
|
| However, nowhere does this article speak about the efficacy of
| this pop science reduction. Perhaps it is human nature to try to
| solve complex issues by reducing the problem to something that
| can be explained to a lay person, even if such explanations are
| incorrect.
|
| Personally, as someone who struggles with gambling addiction,
| thinking about dopamine in this "incorrect" pop science way has
| been incredibly useful as a tool to help me understand irrational
| decision making, even if such explanations are far more complex.
|
| While we do need to guard against pop science reducing complex
| behaviours to singular causes, I am far more interested in
| whether it works or not. From listening to many personal
| addiction stories and hearing from clinicians, this simplified
| understanding of dopamine seems to be of major help to many
| recovering addicts.
| zepto wrote:
| How does the incorrect way of thinking about dopamine help you
| as a gambling addict?
|
| I can imagine that remembering that your brain chemistry is
| part of what causes the compulsion is helpful because it takes
| some pressure off seeing the addiction as a character flaw.
|
| But beyond just being a synonym for 'brain chemistry', can you
| say what the concept of 'dopamine' is doing for you?
| elif wrote:
| Not to mention that this pop science article does plenty of
| essentializing on its own...
|
| Particularly when it laughs off the entire concept of
| individuals feeling their own dopamine levels before describing
| a series of commonly prescribed drugs to inhibit or encourage
| it... The author can't imagine people noticing the effects of
| their own psychs?
| SamBam wrote:
| > Particularly when it laughs off the entire concept of
| individuals feeling their own dopamine levels
|
| I agree the article wasn't great, but that line was clearly
| saying that the subjective experience of "feeling a dopamine
| rush" isn't at all _evidence_ of a dopamine rush, since we
| have no idea what the individual neurotransmitters feel like
| in our brain (unless we 've been somehow trained to recognize
| them, perhaps, through _very controlled_ experiments with
| dopamine inhibitors).
|
| Saying "oh I know dopamine must be important because I can
| feel it" is, indeed, absurd.
|
| We can feel a rush. We can feel desire. We can feel
| satiation. And perhaps we have been told that these things
| relate to dopamine. So now we say we can feel dopamine. This
| doesn't add more evidence that it _is_ dopamine.
| the_other wrote:
| We say all the same things about adrenaline, caffeine,
| sugar, tryptamines and phenetholamines: no-one seems to
| mind. Why can't we say the same about dopamine?
| clairity wrote:
| yah, i have two little 'dopamine vending machines' in the
| form of a dog and a cat. it doesn't really matter if it's
| literally (and only) dopamine, but that the term grounds
| a repeatable and consistent sensation related to a
| dopamine cascade (otherwise we would use a more closely
| related term instead).
| warent wrote:
| Maybe it's just the people I surround myself with but
| I've never once heard someone say they're feeling a
| tryptamine or phenetholamine rush.
|
| As far as the other three things (caffeine, sugar,
| adrenaline) I think the argument is we have a better
| understanding and direct experience of those vs.
| dopamine. You can drink a cup of coffee and feel
| obviously caffeinated day-and-night difference from pre-
| coffee, but you cannot drink a cup of XYZ and feel
| obviously dopamined.
| shawnz wrote:
| Anecdotally I think I do have an idea of how a "serotonin
| rush" feels. There's a particular feeling I get most
| noticeably when seeing the sunshine outdoors on an early
| morning that's pretty similar to certain feelings I've
| had from psychedelic drugs. There is a known connection
| between sunlight exposure and serotonin release so it
| seems like a reasonable explanation to me.
|
| There are definitely some obvious commonalities among the
| feelings produced by dopaminergic drugs as well which are
| similar to the feelings I naturally experience when
| working on a big project.
| SamBam wrote:
| > There is a known connection between sunlight exposure
| and serotonin release so it seems like a reasonable
| explanation to me.
|
| Indeed, but I guess what I'm saying is that the feeling
| you experience isn't _further evidence_ that it 's
| serotonin.
|
| Your connection between the feeling and it being
| serotonin is purely based on the studies that have been
| done. _Those_ studies are the evidence. The qualitative
| feeling we get doesn 't add to the body of evidence.
|
| _That_ is what the original author was arguing against.
| People arguing with her online saying "I _feel_ a
| dopamine rush, _therefore_ it 's dopamine that I'm
| experiencing. You can't tell me it's some other
| neurotransmitter."
| wincy wrote:
| Taking 20mg of Adderall if you haven't before is quite
| the rush of something, and I wouldn't want to say "I'm
| having an amphetamine rush right now" because everyone
| would act like you're on meth. Which I mean, you kind of
| are but still it's perception.
| shawnz wrote:
| It's not just based on the studies though, mainly I
| formed that opinion by correlating the feeling with drug
| experiences. I don't think it takes that much exploration
| before you begin to see the commonalities between them.
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| Sunlight exposure causes nitric oxide release (which
| itself will have downstream effects on
| neurotransmitters). That's probably what you're feeling
| if I had to guess.
|
| FWIW the best way to get a feeling for what serotonin
| feels like is doing MDMA since it dumps massive amounts
| of serotonin out. It dumps plenty of dopamine too - it
| wouldn't be nearly as fun without that - but the unique
| "rolly" feeling is very attributable to serotonin.
|
| Not advising people take MDMA just to figure out what
| serotonin feels like, but for those who have it's very
| helpful to sort of "recognize" what different
| neurotransmitters feel like
| svachalek wrote:
| I think I tend to run a little low on seratonin and I
| know the exact feeling you're talking about. It's a
| gentle, pleasant sense that everything is going to be ok,
| that somehow still feels oddly artificial. Usually
| happens in bright sunlight, but rarely in other
| situations where it's really hard to figure out what
| triggered it.
|
| Adrenaline is one that is more common for me, and
| impossible to mistake. I can literally taste it.
| bobthechef wrote:
| > We say all the same things about adrenaline
|
| The distinction here I think is that adrenaline is
| equivocal and really is just synonymous with "rush"
| _because_ we 've attributed the rush to adrenaline. But
| it could be another example of the same error and thus
| something we ought not, strictly speaking, say if our aim
| is to be accurate.
|
| I also don't think the way "dopamine" is used is quite
| the same as "adrenaline". The former feels like it's
| being used in a more technical and explanatory way.
| wincy wrote:
| I guess for me as someone who takes Adderall it feels less
| weird to say "dopamine rush" than "amphetamine rush". I've
| said that once or twice and people laugh, but in the way
| like you're an insane person.
| asdfman123 wrote:
| The author addresses that in the last two paragraphs:
|
| > Why does this matter? Can't this just be chalked up to lack
| of media sophistication, and pop psychology misunderstanding
| the nuance? In fact, when people such as Simon Sinek, the
| author and consultant whose viral video blames dopamine for
| millennial's problems bring up neuroscience, they are using a
| clever strategy to manipulate us. Mr. Sinek is not a
| neuroscientist, and has not studied or researched the
| complexity of this aspect of our brain. But, he knows something
| you don't: mentioning neuroscience is a great way to convince
| people you are more knowledgeable about something, and to make
| your arguments more convincing. This effect was recently
| demonstrated by researchers from the University of
| Pennsylvania, who showed that use of irrelevant references to
| brain science was an effective way to lure people into thinking
| that complex phenomena are simple, and easily explained by,
| well, the brain.
|
| > People's problems are never simple. And when a person does a
| thing over and over, even when the behavior is causing
| problems, there are a great many complex reasons behind that
| behavior. When we offer the reductively simple answer of
| "because dopamine," it distracts us from the person. It is the
| person who learns, and dopamine is merely a factor, one factor
| among many, in the learning. When we encourage people who are
| watching too much porn, using the cell phone while driving, or
| looking at Facebook every two minutes, to blame their problems
| on dopamine, we teach them to externalize the problem, and
| blame it on dopamine. Instead, if we focus on the learning, and
| the salience aspects of these process, it helps us to draw
| people's attention back to their own behaviors, their own
| motivations, and the meaning that they (and their religious or
| social background) have given to this behavior or experience.
| It helps us to put people back in the driver's seat of their
| life. So please, let's start talking about people, rather than
| irrelevant neurochemicals.
| bobthechef wrote:
| > So in essence, all this article is doing is complaining about
| pop science and how we often reduce complex behaviours to
| singular explanations. But isn't that just a part of being
| human?
|
| You may be confusing theory with practical considerations.
|
| Human beings desire to know the truth, at least by nature. What
| you're describing is an inaccurate, even false belief that
| happens to make it easier to cope with something by making
| something an easy scapegoat. It allows you to blame something
| perceived as external and impersonal which allows you to put
| some distance between you and the urge.
|
| There's nothing special about calling this thing "dopamine".
| Classically, the passions are bodily urges that could be out of
| whack in some way (either excessive or insufficient or
| inappropriate), often through habituation or lack thereof, but
| possibly also made more likely through temperament. Failing to
| satisfy an excessive or inappropriate urge won't kill you
| (satisfaction might), and knowing that already grants you power
| over it because its urgency is now seen as a kind of bluff.
|
| > Perhaps it is human nature to try to solve complex issues by
| reducing the problem to something that can be explained to a
| lay person, even if such explanations are incorrect.
|
| Reductionism destroys the truth by eliminating everything it
| cannot explain and by representing what remains in terms of
| some desired language. It is a rationalization through
| preconception rather than explanation.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Dopamine, dopamine rush, etc are incredibly useful concepts
| that previously didn't exist in the English language. As you
| describe it's a useful mental model to explain your own and
| other's behavior, and as the person quoted in the article
| describes a so called dopamine rush is a palpable feeling.
|
| The fact that the concept "dopamine" shares a name with a
| neurotransmitter is imho not that relevant and will over time
| just turn into an etymological curiosity. It would be better if
| it was named less confusingly, but that's not how language
| works.
| buu700 wrote:
| If the neurotransmitter dopamine is just part of the story, I
| would even suggest that conceptual "dopamine" is perfectly
| valid so long as it's understood as synecdoche rather than a
| literal complete description of the mechanisms in play.
| devilduck wrote:
| Maybe choose a different word then since it's obviously
| creating confusion and misconception about what dopamine
| does
| xg15 wrote:
| > _So in essence, all this article is doing is complaining
| about pop science and how we often reduce complex behaviours to
| singular explanations._
|
| Not a neuroscientist - but I think what irks me about the
| common pop-science explanations is that they use those terms to
| establish a boundary between desirable and undesirable
| behaviours - but do so in a way that feels sort of arbitrary
| and dishonest.
|
| I think when describing desirable behaviours or activities, we
| tend to use a more "cognitive" vocabulary that emphasizes a
| person as a thinking individual, capable of freely making
| decisions: Thoughts, feelings, memories, motivations, the self,
| etc.
|
| Whereas when describing unwanted or unhealthy behaviours, we
| use biological or neurological vocabulary: Hormones,
| neurotransmitters, neural pathways, dopamine, opioids, the
| brain etc. [1]
|
| This can create an impression as if those two sets of concepts
| belonged to completely separate worlds - where one is strongly
| associated with desirable effects and the other with
| undesirable ones. This seems very odd as both are simply
| different perspectives on the same thing after all.
|
| It's sort of as if some highly nontechnical person was really
| fond of their car - as a magical device that lets them travel
| quickly and impress others - but believed we'd all be better
| off without batteries, fuel pumps or catalytic converters as
| those seem to cause nothing but trouble.
|
| [1] The two big exceptions I can think of are advertising
| (where unhealthy behaviours are described using the cognitive
| vocabulary) and research on animals (where any kind of animal
| behaviour is described using the biological vocabulary).
| avgcorrection wrote:
| I'm not a fan of the overuse of terms like "dopamine" and
| "oxycotin". They are often innapropriately technical and specific
| --the common intuition is that pleasurable things can be
| addictive,[1] and that is all that 99% of people mean when they
| dismissively refer to something as giving a "dopamine hit".
|
| We can just call things "pleasurable" instead of posing as if we
| know anything about neurotransmitters. (Not to offend the
| inevitable handful of actual neuroscientists that happen to be
| browsing this thread on Hacker News--carry on.)
|
| [1] I have nothing to say about whether this is close to the
| truth or not.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Case in point:
|
| > Dopamine is connected to rewarding experiences, but not in
| that it makes you feel good. On Twitter recently, a man
| challenged me saying that pornography "gives me a palpable
| dopamine rush after he abstains for a few days." I replied that
| this was fascinating, and he must be a thoroughly unique and
| superhuman person, to be able to detect and discriminate the
| experience of different neurochemicals.
| watwut wrote:
| It is OK to use different words for different kinds of positive
| feelings. What people call pleasurable and what they call
| dopamine hit are to large extend quote different experiences.
| There is some overlap, but that is it.
|
| We can call everything pleasurable, but then out language will
| loose expressivity people apparently want.
| beebmam wrote:
| Dopamine is commonly used in patients in ICUs in ways that are
| totally unrelated to the addictive reward mechanism.
|
| It can function as a vasopressor in hypertensive patients, but
| needs very close monitoring (which is why it is usually
| administered in the ICU only)
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
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