I.
Seen on the subreddit: You Seek Serotonin, But Dopamine Can’t Deliver. Commenters correctly ripped apart its neuroscience; for one thing, there’s no evidence people actually “seek serotonin”, or that serotonin is involved in good mood at all. Sure, it seems to have some antidepressant effects, but these are weak and probably far downstream; even though SSRIs increase serotonin within hours, they take weeks to improve mood. Maxing out serotonin levels mostly seems to cause a blunted state where patients can’t feel anything at all.
In contrast, the popular conception of dopamine isn’t that far off. It does seem to play some kind of role in drive/reinforcement/craving, although it also does many, many other things. And something like the article’s point - going after dopamine is easy but ultimately unsatisfying - is something I’ve been thinking about a lot.
Any neuroscience article will tell you that the “reward center” of the brain - the nucleus accumbens - monitors actual reward minus predicted reward. Or to be even more finicky, currently predicted reward minus previously predicted reward. Imagine that on January 1, you hear that you won $1 billion in the lottery. It’s a reputable lottery, they’re definitely not joking, and they always pay up. They tell you that it’ll take a month for them to get the money in your account, and you should expect it February 1. You’re going to be really busy the whole month of February, so you decide not to start spending until March 1. What happens?
My guess is: January 1, when you first hear you won, is the best day of your life. February 1, when the money arrives in your account, is nice but not anywhere near as good. March 1, when you start spending the money, is pretty great because you go do lots of fun things.
However good you predicted your life would be last year, you make a big update January 1 when you hear you won the lottery. Nothing good has happened yet: you don’t have money and you’re not buying fancy things. But your predictions about your future levels of those things shoot way up, which corresponds to happiness and excitement. In contrast, on February 1 you have $1 billion more than on January 31, but because you predicted it would happen, it’s not that big a mood boost.
What about March 1? Suppose you do a few specific things - you buy a Ferrari, drive it around, and eat dinner in the fanciest restaurant in town. Do you enjoy these things? Presumably yes. Why? You knew all throughout February that you were planning to get a Ferrari and a fancy dinner today. And you knew that Ferraris and fancy dinners were pleasant; otherwise you wouldn’t have gotten them. So how come predicting you would get the money mostly cancels out the goodness of getting the money, but predicting you would get the Ferrari/dinner doesn’t cancel out the goodness of the Ferrari/dinner?
Or: suppose that every year I ate cake on my birthday. This is very predictable. But I would expect to still enjoy the cake. Why?
It seems like maybe there are two types of happiness: happiness that is cancelled out by predictability, and happiness that isn’t.
by Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten | Read more:
[ed. Further:
"Here’s some advice for aspiring psychiatrists: never tell your patient “yeah, seems like you’re cursed to be perpetually unhappy”.
The closest I’ve ever come to violating that advice was with a patient who came in for trouble with (I’m randomizing their gender; it landed on male) his girlfriend.
He described his girlfriend in a way that made it clear she was abusive, emotionally manipulative, and had a bunch of completely-untreated psychiatric issues. He was well aware of all of this. He had tried breaking up with her a few times. Each time, all of his own issues went away, and his life was great. Then, each time, he got back together with her. So we did some therapy together for a while, tried to figure out why, and all I could ever get out of him was that she was more “exciting”. It was something about knowing that on any given day, she might either adore him or try to kill him. With every other partner he’d tried, it was either one or the other. With her it was some kind of perverse exactly-50-50 probability, and he was addicted to it."
The closest I’ve ever come to violating that advice was with a patient who came in for trouble with (I’m randomizing their gender; it landed on male) his girlfriend.
He described his girlfriend in a way that made it clear she was abusive, emotionally manipulative, and had a bunch of completely-untreated psychiatric issues. He was well aware of all of this. He had tried breaking up with her a few times. Each time, all of his own issues went away, and his life was great. Then, each time, he got back together with her. So we did some therapy together for a while, tried to figure out why, and all I could ever get out of him was that she was more “exciting”. It was something about knowing that on any given day, she might either adore him or try to kill him. With every other partner he’d tried, it was either one or the other. With her it was some kind of perverse exactly-50-50 probability, and he was addicted to it."
[ed. Damn... I can relate to that].
