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The Acceleration of Addictiveness

paulgraham.com

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Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#261

Post by cousin_it »

cabalamat wrote: post #240
cousin_it wrote: post #207

Alcohol is a dangerous drug, but I'd rather live in a world with wine than one without. I don't believe PG has properly thought this statement through. It's extremely, unbelievably selfish. I like wine myself, but alcohol brings so much misery to the world! If I were offered a reliable method to make our Earth a world without alcohol (say, by tweaking the machinery of the human brain ever-so-subtly so that alcohol no…

> It's extremely, unbelievably selfish. I like wine myself, but alcohol brings so much misery to the world! And so much happiness! I'm more of a beer man myself, but drinking alcohol in good company is something millions (billions?) of people get pleasure out of. Only a small proportion of alcohol users harm themselves or others through it.

Oh, I'm completely on board with the happiness! Sometime ago I quoted "loud music, alcohol and girls" as the closest thing to "eternal values" or "meaning of life" that I have :-) But I live in Russia and can see the misery of others, because I'm not blind. Alcoholism is a huge problem here.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#262

Post by mtraven »

drewcrawford wrote: post #165
pg wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I defined bad as things you don't want to want. E.g. because while they give you initial pleasure, they might give you net less pleasure in the long run. Though that isn't the only reason you might not want to want something. For example, you might dislike the environmental cost, or the thing might conflict with some principle you held. I don't think there's a sharp distinction between "real" addiction and other type…

I don't think the phrase "don't want to want" has any semantic meaning if you try to break it down. Here's a silly contrived example: I am addicted to air. A suffocating person has no air. They are very well aware of their addiction. They wish they did not need air. They "don't want to want" air. The whole of NASA probably wishes humans could get along fine without air. But none of this means that dependance on air i…

It does, because people's preferences do not obey the rules of rationality. They differ inconsistently across different time-scales, so that it's very common (eg) to have a very strong desire for something immediately gratifying (a cigarette, more ice cream, whatever) and a weaker desire to not want them. This is a fairly well-studied phenomenon; you can [start here](http://picoeconomics.org/breakdown.htm) with the work of George Ainslie.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#263

Post by godDLL »

fleaflicker wrote: post #155
drewcrawford wrote: post #48

Let me play devil's advocate for a minute. Why is this "new" addiction wrong ? What does it mean to say it is bad ? pg is taking great pains to distance himself from real addiction, like crystal meth. Yet he never explicitly explains anywhere why the new "addiction" is actually bad , other than trying to loosely associate it with alcohol. I don't think that the "addictiveness" of a thing alone is enough to call it ba…

Dr Drew always says the hallmark of addiction is progressive use in the face of adverse consequence (effects on school or work, health, finance, legal, relationships).

Who's Dr. Drew?

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#264

Post by domador »

I'm glad Paul Graham doesn't write new essays very often. Constantly checking his website for new ones is a bad enough addiction as it is. Reading and discussing a new one every day would keep me from getting much work done. So far, though, it's been a very helpful "addiction". Keep the essays coming (but not too quickly)!

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#265

Post by alexro »

cousin_it wrote: post #219
Loy wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd kill a random person in the street for a world without alcohol, and you think PG statement is "extremely, unbelievably selfish". Why the idea of sacrifying yourself instead didn't come first ?

Yep, I'd sacrifice myself if that was what was asked instead. The reason I mentioned "killing a random person on the street" is that it's more informative - it sets a higher bar for the required world improvement. My morals say that killing someone else without reason is strictly worse than killing myself, so there exist possible world improvements for which I'd agree to kill myself, but refuse to kill a random perso…

Your decision is not fully weighted as you don't know if in the world without wine people won't invent another much more dangerous thing that will ruin the lives of even more people and which will be even more harder to consume casually.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#266

Post by lotharbot »

godDLL wrote: post #263
fleaflicker wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dr Drew always says the hallmark of addiction is progressive use in the face of adverse consequence (effects on school or work, health, finance, legal, relationships).

Who's Dr. Drew?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Dr.+Drew

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#267

Post by dmoney »

pg wrote: post #145
drewcrawford wrote: post #48

Let me play devil's advocate for a minute. Why is this "new" addiction wrong ? What does it mean to say it is bad ? pg is taking great pains to distance himself from real addiction, like crystal meth. Yet he never explicitly explains anywhere why the new "addiction" is actually bad , other than trying to loosely associate it with alcohol. I don't think that the "addictiveness" of a thing alone is enough to call it ba…

I defined bad as things you don't want to want. E.g. because while they give you initial pleasure, they might give you net less pleasure in the long run. Though that isn't the only reason you might not want to want something. For example, you might dislike the environmental cost, or the thing might conflict with some principle you held. I don't think there's a sharp distinction between "real" addiction and other type…

I'd say that I'm addicted to the Internet, but I do want to want it. I just don't want to want it as much.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#268

Post by xiaoma »

tremendo wrote: post #215
xiaoma wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Paleolithic diet is one of the dumbest ideas I've encountered in my entire life. Its followers tend to discount vast piles of medical research in favor of tiny experiments that suggest what they hope to be true. This kind of behavior is common for adherents of any fringe diet, but paleo goes a step further. Even its concept is flawed. Some things it discards, such as wheat are barely changed from what our ancesto…

> The Paleolithic diet is one of the dumbest ideas I've encountered in my entire life. Its followers tend to discount vast piles of medical research in favor of tiny experiments that suggest what they hope to be true. This kind of behavior is common for adherents of any fringe diet, but paleo goes a step further While there is indeed a paleo re-enactment fringe that tries to live as they understand our ancient ancest…

I find that there's actually a good bit of research-based and evidence-based thinking going over these "vast piles of medical research" you mention and finding that they don't really support the current accepted dogma of nutritional recommendations, and that indeed this research is pretty flimsy itself, if you were to believe Taubes, Lustig, Cordain, Eades, others, and tellingly now there is an alarming increase in obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases as an apparently direct result of the public by-and-large complying with common-wisdom "healthy" recommendations.

I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say "current nutritional dogma". What I was talking about was the fact that the longest lived people in the world eat rice as a primary nutritional staple, or a combination of rice and wheat. All of the countries with the worst obesity and life-style disease epidemics are countries which consume far more protein than necessary and a great deal of meat in general. Not only that, but the proportion is linear-- the US and Mexico consume the most animal products and have the worst rates of lifestyle diseases, with Canada and the UK slightly behind that, and so on all the way to the leanest and least "paleo" countries in eastern Asia.

Even in the healthiest of countries, i.e. Japan, S. Korea, etc, those people who have adopted higher-protein western style diets are the same people starting to manifest some of the same lifestyle diseases westerners have had for decades. Those eating more traditional, mostly plant-based diets are not.

As someone who has lived in Asia for the most of my life it sickens me to see fat people who eat too much meat grasp and Atkins, paleo and other fad diets that involve eating even more of what made them sick in the first place. I know a lot of people who eat rice or noodles every single meal and not a single one are as fat as the average person I see when I go back to visit the US.

The avoidance of highly processed food is sound, but the overall diet is anything but.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#269

Post by xiaoma »

queensnake wrote: post #174
xiaoma wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Paleolithic diet is one of the dumbest ideas I've encountered in my entire life. Its followers tend to discount vast piles of medical research in favor of tiny experiments that suggest what they hope to be true. This kind of behavior is common for adherents of any fringe diet, but paleo goes a step further. Even its concept is flawed. Some things it discards, such as wheat are barely changed from what our ancesto…

Re: wheat being the same as it ever was: http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/in-search-of-wheat... > What we call wheat today is quite different from the wheat of Biblical times. Emmer and einkorn wheat were the original grains harvested from wild growths, then cultivated. Triticum aestivum, the natural hybrid of emmer and goatgrass, also entered the picture, gradually replacing emmer and einkorn. > The 25,000+…

I can't read blogspot from here in China, and I'm not generally interested in bloggers when it comes to highly controversial issues such as nutrition.

but I do realize wheat has changed in some ways, primarily in that it sprouts every season now. Try subjecting popular "paleo" foods to the same scrutiny you just subjected wheat to-- most currently popular fruits weren't eaten at all until the past few hundred years, walnut trees had to be grafted in order to be cultivated and most almonds killed people who ate them! Similarly, big game on each continent was hunted to extinction, especially in Australia and the Americas. Domesticated animals have been bred to be far different than anything our ancestors encountered.

Wheat has changed little by comparison.

Re: The Acceleration of Addictiveness

#270

Post by xiaoma »

warpwoof wrote: post #160
xiaoma wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Paleolithic diet is one of the dumbest ideas I've encountered in my entire life. Its followers tend to discount vast piles of medical research in favor of tiny experiments that suggest what they hope to be true. This kind of behavior is common for adherents of any fringe diet, but paleo goes a step further. Even its concept is flawed. Some things it discards, such as wheat are barely changed from what our ancesto…

I'd like to respond and not leave your assertions unchallenged, but I think your post is a bit too charged and absolutistic to engage with..pretty clear there is little room for debate. I'll just say that since switching to a diet that contains whole foods consisting of meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds, I've never felt better or been in better shape. I've seen the same results in many friends. If I have a bi…

I've never really tried to "diet", but I have experimented for sports. 15 years ago, when I was a competitive runner. At my healthiest point, I was eating about 70% of my calories from carbohydrates, had a resting pulse of 48 and could run a 10k in under 35 minutes. I did try experimenting with more meat and fewer complex carbohydrates. The result was, my performance suffered greatly and my sweat started to stink. I've also tried being entirely vegan, which also lead to worse results. Once I went back to eating mostly grains, vegetables and fruit with a modest amount of animal products, I started feeling and doing better. Every single good runner, swimmer or cyclist I've known has eaten a relatively similar diet. The only exception I can think of is some of the most extreme ultra guys, who seem to need the absolute most calorie dense junk food they can find.

Since then I've become more sedentary, but have still maintained lower cholesterol and blood pressure than the majority of people in their 20's. I started eating richer foods several years ago in Taiwan and put on some weight, but found it disappears quickly after returning to a more normal (Chinese) rice and vegetable based diet.

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