I really don't relate to the externalization people use about "lotus-eating", like, "Facebook is making me addicted, even though I want to be productive." Implicitly that means the "real" me is into "good" meaningful stuff. And that's not how it feels. It feels like I have very strong drives towards the bad stuff (like "contacting exes to annoy them") and Facebook is just a tool that enables me to do what I want, which is why I deleted my account a year ago, because some of my wants harm other people. But the wanting is mine.

In fact, sometimes I feel like "I want to do something cravey but I don't have anything cravey to do!" That comes up pretty often, tbh: food is only cravey when I'm hungry, videogames and shopping do nothing for me, I quit social media, etc.

I thought I'd add a few quick notes as the author.

As I reread this, a few things jump out for me:

• I enjoy its writing style. Its clarity is probably part of why it was nominated.
• I'd now say this post is making a couple of distinct claims:
• External forces can shape what we want to do. (I.e., there are lotuses.)
• It's possible to notice this in real time. (I.e., you can notice the taste of lotuses.)
• It's good to do so. Otherwise we find our wanting aligned with others' goals regardless of how they relate to our own.
• If you notice this, you'll find yourself wanting to spit out lotuses that you can tell pull you away from your goals.
• I still basically agree with the content.
• I think the emotional undertone is a little confused, says the version of me about 19 months later.

That last point is probably the most interesting to meta-reviewers, so I'll say a little about that here.

The basic emotional backdrop I brought in writing this was something like, "Look out, you could get hijacked! Better watch out!" And then luckily there's this thing you can be aware of, to defend yourself against one more form of psychic/emotional attack. Right?

I think this... (read more)

I was surprised that this post ever seemed surprising, which either means it wasn't revolutionary, or was *very* revolutionary. Since it has 229 karma, seems like it was the latter. I feel like the same post today would have been written with more explicit references to reinforcement learning, reward, addiction, and dopamine. The overall thesis seems to be that you can get a felt sense for these things, which would be surprising - isn't it the same kind of reward-seeking all the way down, including on things that are genuinely valuable? Not sure how to model this.

This is a good post.

One thing I would add is that susceptibility to “lotuses” (a.k.a. Skinner boxes, in the context of games) seems to vary interpersonally quite a bit.

For example, I:

• don’t have a Facebook account
• don’t own a smartphone
• don’t play Zynga-esque games
• don’t browse Youtube
• am actively turned off by “collectible” games, and never play them

The increasingly complete conversion of World of Warcraft from a glorified IRC server with pretty pictures into a series of elaborate Skinner boxes is what made me stop playing.

Now, I could claim that this is because I’m very good at noticing these things, and also have a heroic amount of willpower, but that ain’t so; I just find these things naturally repellent (a website having “achievements” or any other sort of “gamification” is one of the best ways to ensure that I will close the window within moments).

I don’t know to what extent this is “innate”. Part of it may be my field of study / work (knowing “how the sausage is made”, so to speak). Whether that’s causal, or downstream, I can’t say.

But, clearly, there’s considerable variation.

Update, five years later: I’ve been asked whether I still endorse the recommendations in commen... (read more)

There's an awesome fictional metaphor of this that's really off-color. The online sex humor comic Oglaf has a two-page bit where the poor teased apprentice ends up so very much wanting a pinecone that he does some NSFW things he clearly would rather not have to do. I'll make you do a bit of work to find it though so you can only blame yourself if you don't like what you see there: oglaf dot com slash pinecone

I find this gets easier if you give yourself permission to eat lotuses if you want to. Then I don’t have to lie to myself about whether I am or not. I can just play Alto’s Adventure, or clear out my email, or whatever, and it’s fine. I just pay attention to the actual consequences — including the impact on what I later find myself wanting to do.

I examined this sentence for awhile, because it confused me. Then I noticed the difference in our experience:

It gets easier for you when you give yourself permission to do it when you want to, because you're ... (read more)

Is delicious food also a lotus? Clearly, it doesn't make your life better after you've eaten it, and that seem to be the criteria you use. But on the other hand, nobody says "I'm quitting delicious food", the same way they often say "I'm quitting facebook".

My point is that there is nothing inherently wrong with arbitrary pleasures that don't improve your life. The problem is when you develop compulsions. There seems to be a difference between simple desire and compulsive desire.

In the past, I've run into a problem where if I start giving up on lotuses in general, I start losing motivation to do anything at all.

Also, mediocre video games suddenly become a lot more appealing when I have work to avoid. :)

On a meta note, this LW-specific habit of introducing new names/labels for things that already have clear, well-established terminology is particularly bothering. Especially when the name is completely unrelated to the concept (i.e. lotus leaves). (OTOH, the social forces that drive this habit are easy to intuit).

(On topic, like most if not all of us have dealt with the intricacies of the dopaminergic system, perhaps I will at one point write my experiences on my blog).

What does it look like to be genre savvy about insights becoming cheaper/more numerous over time?