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Ruthless|12.3.04 @ 12:18PM|#
This Banzhaf character is helping Jacob Sullum hoist the Drug War on its own petard.
Addictions and their causes are studies in complexity--like automobile traffic patterns--ill served by government intervention such as traffic signals and the DEA.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/index.html
"Traffic Controls: An Exercise in Self Defeat"
And perhaps the saddest point about Major League Baseball and drugs, is that players are making poorly informed decisions thanks to government and the Baseball Commissioner.
|12.3.04 @ 12:29PM|#
The problem isn't the desire to explain addiction at a biochemical level, but rather the poor interpretations that are being made based on this data.
Consider the fact that eating a donut, getting high, and watching porn cause different kinds of feelings; no doubt, they have different instantiations in the brain, even if they all employ dopamine.
|12.3.04 @ 12:46PM|#
eating a donut, getting high, and watching porn cause different kinds of feelings
Try all three at once. Really. Try it. First time is on me.
|12.3.04 @ 1:07PM|#
"Try all three at once. Really. Try it. First time is on me."
Consolidate items one and two into a brownie, and I've at least seen the feat performed ...
|12.3.04 @ 1:21PM|#
I bought Jacob's book "For Your Own Good" and got "Saying Yes" for free! (Okay maybe for a donation.)
Why aren't we suing the fat people? I can eat just as much as they do, but I don't get fat. Look at the costs they impose on society. You know they create more greenhouse gasses than we do.
Addiction use to mean "fun." It certainly didn't mean chemical dependence, nor robotic control of one's body to make us do things we don't want to. We're all addicted to food. But most of us have it under control.
Mike H.|12.3.04 @ 1:25PM|#
"Try all three at once. Really. Try it. First time is on me."
Consolidate items one and two into a brownie, and I've at least seen the feat performed ...
Trust me, none of you have lived if you haven't done this. ...And pay no attention to that dude to the right dry humping the carpet.
Warren|12.3.04 @ 1:33PM|#
About fifteen years ago I found that trying to convince people that we should legalize drugs because, among other things, 'heroine is no more addictive than donuts', to be utterly futile. Everybody KNEW that the first time you clamped eyes on smack, your downhill spiral to the gutter and the morgue was carved in stone(d).
Now the idea is gaining traction. But instead of relaxing drug laws, we want to classify tasty foods as narcotics. And any day now the SCOTUS is going to reaffirm the right of Congress to oppress the American people for any reason they care to.
Christ this is depressing... I'm cooking up.
|12.3.04 @ 2:19PM|#
I wonder, does that Brownback dude get erotoxins from praying to his Jesus in the sky? Maybe an investigation is in order.
|12.3.04 @ 2:29PM|#
Actually (and of course I can't remember my source) brain scan studies of various religions various, non-drug induced practices showed significant diferences in brain activity. Some effects included the shutting-down of brain areas in charge of differentiating onself from outside objects, leading to a perception of oneness with reality. I proposed during an English class discussion that this indicated that religious experiences were similar to narcotics. The idea was highly unpalpable to many in the discussion.
|12.3.04 @ 2:31PM|#
I wonder, does that Brownback dude get erotoxins from praying to his Jesus in the sky?
Well they say prayer causes faster healing. I would guess it ought to be categorized as a schedule III steroid.
|12.3.04 @ 3:03PM|#
Speaking of complexity and addiction, here's a starting point from my favorite place for complexity studies, the Santa Fe Institute.
http://www.santafe.edu/events/abstract/157
gaw3|12.3.04 @ 3:09PM|#
Sorry to sneeze on everybody's lines, but Rikurzhen has it right-- activation of the brain's dopaminergic system is achieved by a variety of stimuli, including just plain old voluntary movement.
Doesn't mean the War on Drugs makes any sense though.
|12.3.04 @ 3:17PM|#
Here's some more verbiage I got by searching at the Santa Fe Institute site. Comment gaw3?
"Western science has trouble with mutual causation, and so do many people in western societies - consider the rampant problems with addiction, everything from caffeine and refined sugar to crack, tranquilizers and marijuana. Eastern traditions tend to be more cognizant of mutual causation. Buddha had the idea of "dependent arising" (part of Right View, the first fold of his eightfold path), which says everything in the world is jointly caused by everything else, and so all causation is mutual. In addition, he taught that we could find a point in a causal cycle where our interventions are likely to have the best effect."
|12.3.04 @ 3:17PM|#
Sorry to sneeze on everybody's lines, but Rikurzhen has it right-- activation of the brain's dopaminergic system is achieved by a variety of stimuli, including just plain old voluntary movement.
"DEA! FREEZE!"
|12.3.04 @ 3:24PM|#
Threadkiller.
|12.3.04 @ 4:51PM|#
I thought for sure that joe would post in this thread.
I interviewed for a postdoc position recently doing brain imaging. Still waiting to hear back. We wouldn't be studying addition, however. We'd be studying the way that the cerebral cortex's sensory receptors change in response to stimuli (plasticity, basically). Although I'm a physicist, the new techniques being developed utilize visible and infrared light, so they need somebody with background studying light that travels through strongly scattering media (e.g. brain tissue).
I promise that if I get my brain imaging techniques to work I won't use it to get donuts banned!
|12.3.04 @ 4:55PM|#
CORRECTION:
We wouldn't be studying addiction...
The relationship between cookies and addition is already well understood: Eat enough cookies and you add a few pounds to your weight. The relationship (if any) between cookies and addiction is still being elucidated.
|12.3.04 @ 5:58PM|#
Erotoxins? You have got to be kidding!
"Addiction to pornography is addiction to what I dub erotoxins."
Give it a name, and it comes alive!
|12.3.04 @ 6:11PM|#
RandyAyn,
Pseudo-science sells!
:)
|12.3.04 @ 6:13PM|#
"The condition of cow's spontaneously combusting which I dub "smeallyofiction" is a threat to American agriculture and I propose a $4b initiative to end it's deliterious effects."
-Ann Venemen
|12.3.04 @ 8:49PM|#
thoreau,
Thanks for offering yourself up for embedding with the scientific community/commune and, presumably, reporting back to we stiffs here.
Will you check out the Santa Fe Institute before making this career choice?
|12.4.04 @ 12:37PM|#
"In Reisman's telling, the conscious mind plays no role in people's reactions to pornography. She called the effects of sexually explicit material 'brain sabotage,' warning that 'pornographic visual images imprint and alter the brain, triggering an instant, involuntary, but lasting, biochemical memory trail, arguably subverting the First Amendment by overriding the cognitive speech process.'"
By that rationale, any sex act should be addictive since you usually get to see what you and your partner/s are doing with each other. Does this mean we have to be blind-folded when we get it on?
Besides, if we are to follow word of "tha lawd" and to be "fruitful and multiply," shouldn't sex be "addictive?" Oh yeah, I forgot; breeding good, pleasure sinful. Stinking Bible-beaters.
|12.4.04 @ 9:14PM|#
"Addiction to pornography is addiction to what I dub erotoxins."
"Dub" is in the magic fingers of the bedubber.
Rubba... three men in a tubba.
|12.5.04 @ 2:22AM|#
Writing of things one might eat or imbibe, had a bottle of Duboeuf's beaujolais nouveau today; it was great. Apparently they are selling 2.5 million bottles of that stuff per state per month these days; must be the displays. :) Anyway, so much for the French wine boycott.
|12.5.04 @ 9:17AM|#
Speaking of psuedoscience.
Fifteen years ago or so, I was a finalist for an editors job for a high priced newsletter about indoor air quality.
There was a guy from Norway or Sweden who proposed naming a unit of measure for odor after himself. The "Olf" would be the odor of ten people in a closed room of a certain size who had all bathed within the last 48 hours, or some such nonsence.
The finalists for the job had to read a bunch of background material and write a sample article about this clown.
After reading all the drivel provided and seeing how ridiculous the "science" being reported on was, I wrote about his role in a made up NGO called "FART". Can't remember what the acronym was supposed to stand for.
Figured if they didn't have a sense of humor and didn't want to help seperate crap from science, I didn't want to work there.
Needless to say, I didn't get the job.
|12.5.04 @ 12:25PM|#
any sex act should be addictive since you usually get to see what you and your partner/s are doing with each other. Does this mean we have to be blind-folded when we get it on?
A heavenous voice from behind the wall intoned, "The Glory Hole shall set you free!"
|12.5.04 @ 9:07PM|#
How far down the wrong road has Western Society come to think Eros' cute little accupuncture arrows were dipped in South American tree frog tea?
Rugby's Great Heroes and Enter|12.13.04 @ 3:21AM|#
An interesting read! I'll consider what you said over my christmas holidays. I want Rugby's Great Heroes and Entertainers for Christmas!