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Michaelos comments on Open thread, September 16-22, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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http://sub.garrytan.com/its-not-the-morphine-its-the-size-of-the-cage-rat-park-experiment-upturns-conventional-wisdom-about-addiction is an article about a change in perspective about how rats act when given access to a morphine drip.
Basic concept: When given a larger cage with more space and potential things and other rats to interact with, rats are much less likely to only use a morphine drip, as compared to when they are given a small standard lab cage.
Edit per NancyLebovitz: This is evidence that offers a different perspective on the experiments that I had heard about and it seemed worth sharing. It is not novel though, since apparently it was done in the late 70's and published in 1980. See wikipedia link at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
I agree that the information is important, but the "rat park" research was done in the '70s. It's not novel, and I suggest it's something people didn't want to hear.
I wonder why addiction is common among celebrities-- they aren't living in a deprived environment.
Are you sure this is true?
I'm guessing you had this in mind already, but to clarify anyway, there's a pretty major availability bias since anything celebrities are involved in is much more likely to be reported on, leading to a proliferation of news stories about celebrities with addiction problems.
On the other hand though, celebrities are a lot more likely than most people to simply be given drugs for free, since drug dealers can make extra money if their customers are enticed by the prospect of being able to do drugs with celebrities. And of course that's aside from the fact that the drug dealers themselves can be enticed by the star power and want to work their way into their circles.
No real statistics, just claims.
This article uses the model that a fair number of people are just vulnerable to addiction (about 1 in 12), and celebrity doesn't affect the risk except that celebrities have more access to drugs.
Second thought: What's implied is that either humans are less resistant to addiction than rats, or there's something about civilization in general which makes people less resistant to addiction.
There are more addictive things for humans produced, and it is easier for humans to get them.
Human mind can create the "small cage" effect even without physical constraints. Sometimes people feel 'trapped' metaphorically.
I'm not so sure that's true. Being scrutinised 24/7 sounds like one hell of a constraint on my possible actions to me.
It could also make the environment feel non-genuine or unreal.
Oops. Upon review, I fell victim to a classic blunder. "Someone shared something on Facebook that I have not heard of before? It must be novel. I should share it with other people because I was unaware of it and it caused me to update my worldview."
Thanks. I'll edit the original post to reflect this.
You call this a "different perspective", but the perspective you're linking to is the only one I'd heard before. I thought Rat Park was the conventional wisdom. So I was initially confused about what the new, different perspective was.
My previous information was basically just "Morphine=Addicted rats." Which was really, really out of date and simplistic.
Rat Park's idea "The size/interactivity of the cage significantly changes addiction rates." makes sense, but I was unaware of it until recently.
So if Rat Park was the conventional wisdom, I was behind the conventional wisdom and was just catching up to it when I posted.