That would make sense for me: I see no fundamental difference in the "high" I get when solving math problems and the "high" I get when conquering a hard game.
The difference between what we call addictive and the rest (e.g. sports vs drugs) imo is the impact on your health and your long term ability/disposition to perform other activities: intellectual pursuit can propel your career, improve your ability to solve problems, and directly reward you monetarily. If drugs had this side effect they wouldn't be labelled as such.
This statement is a sign of intellectual naiveté. An addiction to intellectual pursuits does not offer the same high as injecting yourself with heroin. The sense and intensity of euphoria are dramatically different.
The nature of the addiction is also different. Being addicted to a drug is entirely different from being addicted to doing math. You don't get the shakes, or feel intense pain or suffer from withdrawal when you don't do math for a couple months.
This article only offers intellectual stimulus as potential treatment for addiction, not a drug replacement. Are people really so smug as to delude themselves into thinking that they're of the nature that solving a math problem is like doing a line of coke? Lets be real.
A fair point, but I was being more specific. I meant if you even look at the active principles of most drugs, they stimulate hormonal responses and perhaps directly things we call "satisfying". So it's not a question of naiveness or not, it's the technical question on what distinguishes satisfaction generated by a drug, by a sport or by intellectual pursuit. For example, sports practice directly releases endorphins, which as the name says, is an endogenous morphin.
If they can't be fundamentally distinguished from a stimulatory point of view (my hypothesis), I'd say what distinguishes a drug to some activity we don't regard as addictive is simply that one is sustainable, leads to long term benefits while the other is unsustainable.
You're misunderstanding the magnitude of difference that exogenous opioids have to endorphins. They're on a completely different level, and comparing them is futile other than in the abstract.
I agree completely, I get a huge high from solving interesting programming problems or engineering problems. I think it is why so many engineers and programmers will work on open source projects, not just the love of the technology but the fun of solving cool problems, it is addictive in it's own way (but I think far less harmful than other types of addictions related to chemicals or other unhealthy things). But all things in moderation I suppose.
Not sure why you are being downvoted. Maybe the jab at node etc. but this is quite similar to what the op alludes to. The engagement; the need to solve the problem can have quite intense experiencial results--along the lines of chemical intradiction in other circumstances.
I once met a guy who encountered major emotional pain when his wife left him, and had to go to therapy because of a running addiction. It was also causing physical health problems like purple swollen feet. Anything can be addictive "compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli, despite adverse consequences" is the definition. Lots of people have used drugs to propel their career and avoided addiction. For example, Steve Jobs said taking LSD was one of the most important things he had ever done in his life.... Although I've never heard of an LSD addiction, there's lots of profound people who used cannabis habitually.
The difference between what we call addictive and the rest (e.g. sports vs drugs) imo is the impact on your health and your long term ability/disposition to perform other activities: intellectual pursuit can propel your career, improve your ability to solve problems, and directly reward you monetarily. If drugs had this side effect they wouldn't be labelled as such.