{"id":666,"date":"2012-11-25T05:00:57","date_gmt":"2012-11-25T13:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/?p=666"},"modified":"2012-11-24T15:58:46","modified_gmt":"2012-11-24T23:58:46","slug":"speaking-of-addiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2012\/11\/speaking-of-addiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaking of Addiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2012\/11\/things-that-are-hard-to-quit-non-exhaustive-list\/\"><em>Speaking<\/em> of addiction<\/a>, I suspect that relinquishing ideologically-induced moral outrage is actually harder than getting over many chemical dependencies (although I don't have any experience with the latter). At least with a drug, it's simple enough to draw a bright line around actions you're not supposed to do anymore; you can try pouring the contents of the liquor cabinet down the drain, or signing a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stickk.com\/\">commitment contract<\/a> to not buy or borrow any more cigarettes.<\/p>\n<p>But when one of your most strongly-held beliefs (<em>strongly-held<\/em> in the sense of emotional relevance, not actual probability; I'm very confident in the <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2012\/11\/two-views-of-the-monotone-sequence-theorem\/\">monotone sequence theorem<\/a>, but the truth of its negation wouldn't be a blow to <em>who I am<\/em>) turns out to be false\u2014or if it still seems true, but it turns out that being continually angry at a Society that disagrees isn't a good allocation of cognitive resources\u2014what do you do then? Turning your life around from that isn't anything as straightforward as preventing specific chemicals from entering your body; you have to <em>change the way you think<\/em>, which is to say <em>excise a part of your soul<\/em>. Oh, it grows back\u2014that's the point, really; you want to stop thinking non-useful thoughts in order to replace them with something better\u2014but can you blame me for having a self-preservation instinct, even if my currently-existing self isn't something that ought to be preserved?<\/p>\n<p>But then, <em>blame<\/em> or the lack thereof isn't the point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaking of addiction, I suspect that relinquishing ideologically-induced moral outrage is actually harder than getting over many chemical dependencies (although I don't have any experience with the latter). At least with a drug, it's simple enough to draw a bright &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/2012\/11\/speaking-of-addiction\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[30,27],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=666"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":670,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/666\/revisions\/670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zackmdavis.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}