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by hollerith 170 days ago
And cheap paperback novels, movies, TV, pornography and video games. The amount of stimulation or positive reward available through these things with only a small effort and a small risk and a short waiting time are much greater than anything available in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness with a similar degree of effort, risk and waiting time.
1 comments
lawlessone 170 days ago
Not sure if that was an attempt to reduce my argument to an absurdity.. but now we can see many of those things evolve and adapt in real time with lots of testing to reach their maximum potential.
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hollerith 169 days ago
>an attempt to reduce my argument to an absurdity

Definitely not. I am being sincere.

There is a lot of individual variation in susceptibility to a vice. For example, I never had any significant amount of trouble avoiding any food I believed was bad for me. It just never required much willpower, but it is so easy for me to fall into a habit of overconsumption of video entertainment that I haven't owned a television set in decades (and lichess.org is blocked 3 times in my /etc/hosts: near the top, again near the middle and again near the end of the file).

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lawlessone 169 days ago
>Definitely not. I am being sincere.

haha no worries, i may be insecure and seeing the flaws in my own argument there..

Similar in some ways i've tried things in my 20's that should have got me hooked but never felt the urge to do or seek out those things. Can't watch TV either but computer games on the other hand... absolutely hooked.

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