Analgesia

I was doing an exercise today that involved goal factoring, where you attempt to break down a complex motivation into much simpler sub-motivations. For example, you like to read books, but why? Maybe you enjoy the quiet and relaxation of reading, or you just like knowing things, or you enjoy the identity of being someone who reads. Depending on those sub-motvations, you might find better, more targeted ways to achieve them.

The specific question in this case was to goal-factor my time sinks: things I put a lot of time into without much reward. Obviously there's some sub-motivations there that are actually valid, becuase it's not very common to choose to do something that doesn't appeal to you in any way. So I thought about a few of the beneficial factors of social news sites like Reddit or Hacker News, things like being a constant source of novelty, information and new ideas. But I also realised there's another important effect that you get, not just from social news but from all entertainment: analgesia.

I've noticed that the times when entertainment is most appealing to me are when I'm experiencing some kind of psychological discomfort. If I've been thinking too hard and my brain's tired, boom, Reddit. If I'm trying to avoid thinking about something, TV lets me avoid it for hours. If I'm in a bad mood, if I'm frustrated at some problem, if I'm tired and irritable, the internet is there, waiting with open arms to take me away from my worries by bombarding me with constant novelty.

Viewed from that light, it's easy to see one way that entertainment becomes pathological, much the same way as any other painkiller. It gives you relief from discomfort, but unfortunately doesn't address the discomfort's source; that's still there waiting for you when you're done, giving you every reason to continue avoiding it with more entertainment. Not only that, but over time you can become accustomed to using entertainment to avoid problems, making it difficult to deal with them any other way.

That's not to say that entertainment is necessarily unhealthy, or that analgesia is the only value it has, but it's worth considering that at some point it turns from recreational into pathological. And the real danger is that it feels good the whole time.