The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
But with each subsequent time that you encounter that thing that you pursue, the chocolate that you pursue the lover each time, the experience of dopamine release and pleasure is diminished a little bit. And the diabolical thing is that the pain response is increased a little bit
Every Sunday: the week’s new conflicts and verdict changes — and nothing else.
Native comments, Twitter mentions, and Reddit threads about this claim — surfaced together so the conversation isn't fragmented across platforms.
Bookmarking — the dossier-vs-overview split is the right call. Most of the time I want overview; sometimes I want receipts.
Would love a "what would change this verdict" RSS feed. Sign me up if it exists.
And I've heard you say before that the pain mechanism has some competitive advantages over the pleasure mechanisms, such that it doesn't just bring the scale back to level. It actually brings pain higher than pleasure.
Now, after a certain point or threshold, we call that addiction.
But very shortly thereafter and beneath our conscious awareness, there is a tilt of the pleasure pain balance in the brain, literally a shift in the neural circuits that underlie pleasure and pain, such that every bit of pleasure or pleasure seeking that causes release of dopamine will be balanced out by a little bit of pain.
The crucial thing to understand is that if we remain in constant pursuit of pleasure, the pain side of the balance tips so that each time we are in pursuit of that pleasureful thing, activity, or substance, we are going to experience, we literally achieve less dopamine release each subsequent time.