Addiction as Entrenchment
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With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas.My Conjecture
Conjecture: addiction is the result of the entrenchment of a conflict between two or more preferences in a mind.
Picture someone who wants to give up social media but also really enjoys social media. Those preferences conflict.
If the conflict is entrenched, then both preferences get to live on indefinitely. The entrenchment will not let that person give up social media. He will become addicted.
As I write in #4624, curing addiction involves finding a common preference between the conflicting parts of the addict’s mind: something both parts prefer to their initial positions. In addition, it may involve Randian ideas around introspection and getting one’s reason and emotions in the proper order.
I don’t know whether my explanation applies to physical addictions. For example, I understand severe alcoholics run the risk of death if they quit cold turkey, so for them, it can’t be only about preferences. There’s clearly a physical component as well. So I’m limiting my thoughts on addiction to what we might call ‘addictions of the mind.’ Note, though, that addictions could come in pairs: an alcoholic could have both a physical and a mental addiction to alcohol.
Also, I don’t claim that entrenchment always causes addiction, or that every addiction is the result of entrenchment. I claim that entrenchment is a cause – maybe a common cause – of addiction.
Elaboration:
The conflict in addiction is between short-term and long-term solutions.
The preference for short-term in addiction is caused by uncertainty/an inability to make predictions based on explanations.
This uncertainty can be real (e.g. increased heroin addiction during the Vietnam War) or learned from insecurity during one's early years.
Interesting. Do you think the conflict is always between short vs long-term preferences, or could there be addictive conflicts between two short-term preferences or even two long-term preferences?
Always, because of the underlying uncertainty about the future. Please criticise!
If we view addiction as entrenchment of ideas (in the broad sense), why can't you have conflict between implicit and explicit preferences, which are both short-term preferences? Something in your body is addicted to a substance, but you could simultaneously, consciously, not want to take the substance because you don't like how it feels.
Hmm could you give examples of such addictions between implicit and explicit short-term preferences?