what else could addiction be motivated by but pleasure?
Wanting is not the same thing as pleasure. The experiments that created the popular conception of wireheading were not actually stimulating the rats’ pleasure center, only the anticipation center.
Consider that there are probably many things you enjoy doing when you do them, but which you are not normally motivated to do. (Classic example: I live in Florida, but almost never go to the beach.)
Clearly, pleasure in the sense of enjoying something is not addictive. If you stimulated the part of my brain that enjoys the beach, it would not result in me perpetually pushing the button in order to continue having the pleasure.
Frankly, I suspect that if somebody invented a way to use TMS or ultrasonics to actually stimulate the pleasure center of the brain, most people would either use them once or twice and put them on the shelf, or else just use them to relax a bit after work.
Weirdly enough, most true pleasures aren’t really addictive, because you need some sort of challenge to seize the interest of your dopamine reward system. Chaotic relationships, skill development (incl. videogames), gambling… these things are addictive precisely because they’re not purely pleasurable, and this stimulates the same parts of the brain that get hit by wireheading and some drugs.
To put it another way, the rats kept pushing the button not because it gave them pleasure, but simply because it stimulated the part of their brain that made them want to push the button more. The rats probably died feeling like they were “just about to” get to the next level in a video game, or finally get back with their estranged spouse, or some other just-out-of-reach goal, rather than in orgasmic bliss.
Wanting is not the same thing as pleasure. The experiments that created the popular conception of wireheading were not actually stimulating the rats’ pleasure center, only the anticipation center.
Consider that there are probably many things you enjoy doing when you do them, but which you are not normally motivated to do. (Classic example: I live in Florida, but almost never go to the beach.)
Clearly, pleasure in the sense of enjoying something is not addictive. If you stimulated the part of my brain that enjoys the beach, it would not result in me perpetually pushing the button in order to continue having the pleasure.
Frankly, I suspect that if somebody invented a way to use TMS or ultrasonics to actually stimulate the pleasure center of the brain, most people would either use them once or twice and put them on the shelf, or else just use them to relax a bit after work.
Weirdly enough, most true pleasures aren’t really addictive, because you need some sort of challenge to seize the interest of your dopamine reward system. Chaotic relationships, skill development (incl. videogames), gambling… these things are addictive precisely because they’re not purely pleasurable, and this stimulates the same parts of the brain that get hit by wireheading and some drugs.
To put it another way, the rats kept pushing the button not because it gave them pleasure, but simply because it stimulated the part of their brain that made them want to push the button more. The rats probably died feeling like they were “just about to” get to the next level in a video game, or finally get back with their estranged spouse, or some other just-out-of-reach goal, rather than in orgasmic bliss.