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Random thought on opioid addiction, no offense meant to people actually dealing with addiction, but I wonder if this might be useful: I read that opioid withdrawal makes people feel pain because the brain gets accustomed to extreme levels of pain suppression and without opioids their pain tolerance is so low that everything itches and hurts. This makes me wonder if this effect is kind of similar to autistic sensory sensitivities, just turned up to 9000. Could it be that withdrawal doesn't create pain, but simply amplifies and turns attention to small pains and discomforts that are already there, but normal people just don't notice or get used to ignoring? If so, opioid addiction may be like a canary in the coal mine, where people get used to being in pain and lack healthy tools to deal with it. If opioid addiction is largely because of painful withdrawal rather than just pleasure, could techniques to avoid pain be helpful in dealing with opioid addiction? Autistic people often need various coping strategies, like ear plugs to avoid noise or special clothing to decrease everyday friction that normies take for granted, and they can be more sensitive to internal bodily signals like pains that most people just don't think are a big deal. Could the same coping skills and additional treatment for mild chronic pain etc be used to help treat addiction? If teaching physical and emotional pain avoidance/management skills to addicts when they are going through withdrawal is impractical, why not also teach them to non-addicts who might be at risk or just people in general, before they have a chance to become addicted? Less pain to begin with means fewer reasons to escape pain using drugs, and more chances to learn. Maybe everyone can benefit from taking small pains and discomforts and unhappiness more seriously as a society. And I don't mean purely mental skills - we probably shouldn't treat addicts or people at risk of becoming addicts the same way we treat normies. When people are really sensitized or in crisis, mental tolerance, mindfulness and reframing probably isn't very helpful. We also need more physical ways to remove causes of pain, like widely available comfortable, itch-free clothing, ergonomic beds and chairs, quality air and quiet areas, treatment and prevention of minor chronic issues like inflammation and joint damage with age, etc. Instead of telling people to tough it up, treat minor pain and unhappiness as early warnings, and normalize healthy comfort-seeking before being in crisis. Also normalize and invest in treatment and prevention of low-grade health issues that people don't typically go to the doctor for. These may seem like luxuries but are cheaper than long-term addiction and prison.
I knew closely several opiod addicted people and had myself addicted to nicotine. Physical withdrawal symptoms is only a small part of the problem in both cases. Although I tend to agree with you on this part:
withdrawal doesn't create pain, but simply amplifies and turns attention to small pains and discomforts that are already there, but normal people just don't notice or get used to ignoring
You really can thoughen up and endure days to weeks of the physical withdraval, but then you have to deal with the months to years of the psychological addiction.
Opiod addiction is like a short circuit in motivation: Normally, when some problem bothers you, you are motivated to solve it. Opioids give an illusion of all problems disappearing, and teach people this flawed behavioral pattern: Instead of solving the actual problem, just take a dose. And this becomes a vicious cycle: addicted person spends all money on drugs, it produces more problems and more urge to solve them with taking more drugs. Planning horizon reduces to hours. Some prefer to steal money to get a doze even knowing that they will be caught the same day.
1Thanks for the input! If addiction is more because of psychological pain ("problems that bother you") than direct physical pain, could the same approach work but with mental pleasures/distractions from pain instead, like games, toys or organized social activities?
Edit: And coping methods to avoid/decrease mental and social discomfort, which can include but are not limited to just therapy or communication, but could be things like new job/friends or prioritizing things in life differently. I read that some people trying to fight addiction get overwhelmed by having to get everything together at once, or being expected to just quit and function like normal immediately. If they were supported to have fun/play and feel better first in healthier ways, could it be more helpful?
Of course. And this is what many good rehabilitation programs do.
But the mere distraction is again, only a temporary solution. Patients need to relearn healthy behavioral patterns, otherwise they may fall back eventually.
Games are good in that sense that they provide a quick feedback loop. You had a problem and quickly solved it without a drug.
Many people worry about a rogue AI with maybe self-replicating robots taking over the world, sometimes from a hypothetical basement, but I wonder how much of it is a straightforward intelligence or engineering problem that we know are solvable, and how much depends on sci-fi level technologies that we don't know whether they are feasible even with superhuman general problem-solving algorithms, for an AI starting with realistic amounts of knowledge and compute. I think arguing whether AI can realistically achieve the sci-fi feats of real-life engineering (or whether they are even physically possible, as with grey goo type nanobots) isn't very productive. Instead, as a tangible warning argument or upper bound if nothing else, it can be helpful to try and estimate what would an AI need initially to be able to survive and expand, and how conspicuous it would be, assuming it only has access to current science and technology (and slightly superhuman but not magical levels of engineering and problem-solving). For example, in the form of a game where people can play the role of a rogue AI.
Imagine a LARP where a team of experts in the role of a rogue AI can actually try to survive, get resources and build self-sustaining industries with the help of current AIs and realistic robotics, and volunteers can play the role of some robots if advanced robots are not available. The team of humans can meet in a workshop or other dedicated site, with modest starting resources, playing as an AI and its robot fleet, and can do whatever an AI might do that does not involve technologies or experimental results we are not sure of (that require some unknown real-world empirical questions working out a certain way, and don't just depend on better general intelligence and faster processing). For example, making robots with human level general tool manipulation but higher precision and speed of real robotic hardware, or hacking/persuading some lab to synthesize some known virus (simulated), are fair game (volunteers can play these roles), but 99% efficient solar panels or hypothetical nanobots capable of wiping out humans silently are not. They may use current AIs and any available machines, simulate "hacking" systems (with owner's permission), earn money and buy items online, and pretend to scavenge electronics, parts, materials etc (buy or get free used items). There can be scenarios with various difficulties: from an automated warehouse with plenty of of electronics, solar panels and supplies and its own data center, to a basement with nothing but a computer, some maker's tools and a few hobbyist-grade robots.
What's the endgame of technological or intelligent progress like? Not just for humans as we know it, but for all possible beings/civilizations in this universe, at least before it runs out of usable matter/energy? Would they invariably self-modify beyond their equivalent of humanness? Settle into some physical/cultural stable state? Keep getting better tech to compete within themselves if nothing else? Reach an end of technology or even intelligence beyond which advancement is no longer beneficial for survival? Spread as far as possible or concentrate resources? Accept the limited fate of the universe and live to the fullest or try to change it? If they could change the laws of the universe, how would they?
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