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why does ADHD medication āhelpā with procrastination? is it because it *suppresses* your feelings (including all resistance)?
@ChrisChipMonk I think you'd need to separate people with ADHD from those without here for those without (e.g. me) it makes anything you think of doing seem euphoric/powerful and exactly the right thing to be doing. other feelings are suppressed this means:
@ChrisChipMonk This is definitely overreach of the framework. Maybe the effect of amphetamines has some fraction of the net effect routing through that in a way thatās clear but this framework is just not the right thing for the job here. Also empirically it does not do uniform suppression š¤·
@KanizsaBoundary oh fair https://t.co/xJWDVRPxpS
@ChrisChipMonk @rgblong That seems at best incomplete; it seems some of those feelings are boosted vs other suppressed. I rather think it modulates the salience, instead of having 10 things with intensity "1", now one or two have more intensity (or the others less) and so its easier to just do things
@ChrisChipMonk I think in general drugs operate by inducing really low-level changes that are hard to explain precisely in natural English, but some fraction of the effect makes it to semantically-easy stuff, and thatās what we mainly report on. The āactualā effects are probably much moreā¦
@ChrisChipMonk My own experience with stimulants is largely limited to tyrosine, which feels to me like waking up and having more energy to do things, and they feel more positive/less aversive. I would expect ADHD stimulants to be similar, and that your confusion is due to nominalization.
@ChrisChipMonk i.e. "procrastination" is not just one thing! Avoidance is one kind. Effort/reward ratio is another. When you are low energy or have low reward expectation, it's harder to do things, irrespective of avoidance. ADHD also has task-switching penalties, so greater inertia
@ChrisChipMonk E/R ratio is often downstream of avoidance, but not always. Sometimes it's miscalibrated expectations or prospect-theory baseline. (And those can also be downstream of avoidance or anxiety.) Psych talks about "typical" and "atypical" procrast., which behave differently, too!
@ChrisChipMonk this aligns w/my experience. i eventually realized i am way too sensitive to stims to be taking them, but when i did i remember a distinct sensation of narrowing(of what i would now refer to as my awareness). felt like how focusing a camera lens looks
@ChrisChipMonk Dopamine is more or less the āsuccessā signal in this context. By stimulating the system a lot, everything feels like success a little bit. This flattens out activitiesā¦everything feels more similarly rewarding. As a result youāre more willing to do boring or aversive tasks.
@ChrisChipMonk @eshear yeah, neurotransmitter explanations are always kind of suspicious; people don't describe the methods that led to the conclusion, just the conclusion (e.g. dopamine does Y) if the study / inference was good, why not describe the methods and let people judge for themselves?
@mold_time @ChrisChipMonk @eshear I think activation energy is likely the context here - much like coffee motivates many people. but not clear (to me) mechanical what is going on in case of meds Dopamine (and neurotransmitters generally produced naturally) seem like a trailing indicator.
@ChrisChipMonk @eshear not trying to imply that people explaining things in terms of neurotransmitters are trying to be deceptive, it's more that neurotransmitter explanations often seem unsatisfying because they are (for some reason) presented as conclusions rather than inferences from evidence
@ChrisChipMonk This is exactly how I described ADHD medication to friends. It felt less like it upped focus, and more like it made my emotions stop getting in the way uncontrollably, so I could *choose* what to put attention on, vs an attention war between the conscious and subconscious
@ChrisChipMonk Makes stuff more rewarding so you are emotionally less picky about what feels worth doing. I think Amphetamines etc also reduce negative emotions but I don't think they do that overall to feelings.
@ChrisChipMonk The way I think of it- the task at hand is ācostlyā to do; it induces negative feelings along the way of accomplishing it. If one feels crappy enough to begin with, they cant tolerate that additionally negative state. But ADHDmeds make u feel better, letting u tolerate the āpainā
@ChrisChipMonk Paying attention is a decision, albeit perhaps an unconscious one that is based to some extent on how much one has been pushed to use that mental āmuscleā over their life. But itās still a decision, and can be thought of as a cost-benefit trade off (eg shenhav, Andrew westbrook)
@ChrisChipMonk For me ADHD meds seem to do two things: 1) reduce my constant negative emotions and thoughts, often replacing them with more calmness, motivation and a sense of capability 2) narrow my attention somewhat (I guess this is a kind of suppression)
@ChrisChipMonk quite literally Evil to take those drugs oh, so every fibre of my being says resist? but I'm too cowardly to die for my beliefs? let me just take drugs to destroy my self so others will make use of me no, fuck that BURN EVERY PART OF CIVILIZATION THAT IS EVIL!