[EdgarVerona]

Ultimately, much of this argument feels pedantic. Yes, people are giving oversimplified descriptions of what's going on when they say dopamine is "addictive." That's because it's easier to describe than incentive salience - but ultimately, the end result is what they care about. It's the behavioral conditioning that people are upset about, which is experimentally proven to be both effective and intentionally leveraged by many industries with great "success."

I do agree with his statement that we need to talk more about the complex reasons for that behavior on top of behavioral conditioning, and that people caught in those cycles can and should leverage the means that we have at our disposal to undo that conditioning when it is harmful to them (with professional help as needed). But I think it is absolutely valid to talk about how behavioral conditioning is intentionally leveraged in the design of many products we use, in casinos, etc. And that it is not something that people can or do consciously notice.

Before people can help themselves, they need to even realize there is a problem in the first place, and that is one of the dangerous things about behavioral conditioning. Conditioning is the very mechanism by which we learn new behaviors that become integrated into our life: and as such, it is very easy for a person to fall prey to operant conditioning and for it to just feel like "life as normal," even when the patterns in your life have actually changed dramatically.

In particular, I think it's important for us to be aware of behavioral conditioning as an intentional design choice of the products we use and the entertainment we engage in. The more we are consciously aware of it, the more we can develop the sort of meta-cognition that allows us to notice when we fall into patterns of conditioning that are harming us more than helping us. (note that you can also be conditioned to engage in behaviors that are helpful too! So being aware of what you are conditioning yourself for is as important as whether/when you are being conditioned)