An annotation for Gretchen Rubin’s Are You “Addicted” to Something? Addiction is a Subject Related to Habits After reading the article written by Gretchen Rubin, I rather think that addiction is a subject related to habit. In the article, Rubin mentioned a list of factors which was put forth by Mark Griffiths. Apart from the question of “what’s a true addiction?”, the list provides a way to think about whether a certain habit is making it harder to live a life that reflects our values and contributes to our long-term happiness. According to this definition, a behavioral addiction is marked by salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal symptoms, conflicts and relapse. However, the assay would not be clear enough if it isn’t represent with an example, so I would discuss the six aspect along with my mother’s habit on playing app games. My mother brought herself an Iphone during summer vacation, and that is also when she started to gain the habits of playing app games such as candy crush. This behavior had become the important activity in her daily life (salience), for she spent thirty minutes to an hour on playing games after having breakfast, lunch and dinner, sometimes even before going to sleep as if she is following a prescription given by the doctor. Basically, I think the most interesting part during the observation of mom is that it is pretty easy to predict whether she is winning or losing in the game, for the behavior of playing game changes her mood by providing a rush of excitement or sense of calm or a shout of remorse (mood modification). None the less, since the difficulties of the game advanced eventually level by level, it is quite hard to go on to the next level as easy as turning one’s hand over on level one when you had the same limitation of life chance, which is five lives per chance. So mom began to purchase “life “ in the online store, and that represents the stage when more and more behavior is needed t get the mood boost (tolerance). However, what happens when she fail to pass the level even with the purchase of extra lives? Well, mom would be depressed and put down her phone to take a break, but after finishing all of the housework, she would return once again back to her wonderland, and that is how the behavior returns after being given up (relapse) There are still two aspect I had not talked about, which is withdrawal symptoms – a person feels lousy or irritable when unable to engage in the behavior, and conflict – the behavior causes conflicts with other people, interferes with other activities, or causes a person to feel a loss of control. Though this list might seemed a little too underestimate the problems of addiction, I think with our self-knowledge, and being in control of ourselves, addiction would not need to be seemed as a matter so seriously.
An annotation for Eliana Dockterman's "Candy Crush Saga: The Science Behind Our Addiction" Candy Crush---Game Addiction Happiness
According to the article published in TIME Magazine's technology and media section, which was written by Eliana Dockterman, it simply analyze the players' addiction within the game into several different aspect of discussion. On the one hand, from the interview with Tommy Palm, who is one of the game's designers, Dockterman then realized what tactics King (the creator company of Candy Crush) used. While on the other hand, Dockterman also called a few psychology experts and players to understand the back-story on why Kings' tactics worked so well to make Candy Crush so irresistible.
"Perhaps the most genius element of Candy Crush is its ability to make you long for it."(Dockterman) Since you can only get five chances, or say, lives at a time, thus, when you run out of lives, you will have to wait for another thirty-minute increment to continue the play. Owning to the fact that the game actually constrains its players from getting more lives, it urges its player even more to yearn after it. And also, that effortless constraint test the humanity of which people have a stronger desire to thing they aren't able to get in reach. Another reason that deals with humanity is that human are suckers for sweet talks. Even though we all know the truth, which “Good advice jars on the ear.”, and "Bitter pills may have wholesome effects." But still, we tend to be hoodwink by the flattering speech. For example, once you made more than one matches of the candy role in one move, words will pop up on your screen accompanied by a voice that says, "Sweet" or either "Delicious" consider how many combos you complete. Dr. Kimberly Young, a pioneering expert on internet and gaming addiction, called this a "Positive reward". In addition, she believed that it is an essential feedback for player immersion, for that people will feel better about himself or herself.
Besides, for the humanity part King deals with their tactics, there is also psychology factors they managed to affect. For example, many people might questioned," Why choosing candy instead of other symbols, such as biscuit, fruit, or even cute animals?" or questions like, "While there is so many similar games available, why Candy Crush?" Palm gave a direct response to those questions, "Many people have had a very positive feeling about Candy since they were kids." Thanks to the happy memories with candy during childhood, players therefore coincidentally tied the positive association and pleasures derive from eating into the game, and moreover, it lead out their inner child. With Psalm later on continued, "And it (candy) makes for a real nice visual game board with a lot of color and interesting shapes." For the homepage seemed like a traditional Candy Land Board, and with the game pieces designed as candies, players incline to believe they are transported into an entire Candy Land experience, which is far away from reality.
Reference:
Dockterman, Eliana. "Candy Crush Saga: The Science Behind Our Addiction"TIME.
An annotation for Eliana Dockterman's "Candy Crush Saga: The Science Behind Our Addiction" Candy Crush---Game Addiction Happiness
According to the article published in TIME
Magazine's technology and media section, which was written by Eliana Dockterman,
it simply analyze the players' addiction within the game into several different
aspect of discussion. On the one hand, from the interview with Tommy Palm, who
is one of the game's designers, Dockterman then realized what tactics King (the
creator company of Candy Crush) used. While on the other hand, Dockterman also
called a few psychology experts and players to understand the back-story on why
Kings' tactics worked so well to make Candy Crush so irresistible.
"Perhaps the most genius element of
Candy Crush is its ability to make you long for it."(Dockterman) Since you
can only get five chances, or say, lives at a time, thus, when you run out of
lives, you will have to wait for another thirty-minute increment to continue
the play. Owning to the fact that the game actually constrains its players from
getting more lives, it urges its player even more to yearn after it. And also,
that effortless constraint test the humanity of which people have a stronger
desire to thing they aren't able to get in reach. Another reason that deals
with humanity is that human are suckers for sweet talks. Even though we all
know the truth, which “Good advice jars on the ear.”, and "Bitter pills
may have wholesome effects." But still, we tend to be hoodwink by the
flattering speech. For example, once you made more than one matches of the
candy role in one move, words will pop up on your screen accompanied by a voice
that says, "Sweet" or either "Delicious" consider how many
combos you complete. Dr. Kimberly Young, a pioneering expert on internet and
gaming addiction, called this a "Positive reward". In addition, she
believed that it is an essential feedback for player immersion, for that people
will feel better about himself or herself.
Besides, for the humanity part King deals
with their tactics, there is also psychology factors they managed to affect. For
example, many people might questioned," Why choosing candy instead of
other symbols, such as biscuit, fruit, or even cute animals?" or questions
like, "While there is so many similar games available, why Candy
Crush?" Palm gave a direct response to those questions, "Many people
have had a very positive feeling about Candy since they were kids." Thanks
to the happy memories with candy during childhood, players therefore
coincidentally tied the positive association and pleasures derive from eating
into the game, and moreover, it lead out their inner child. With Psalm later on
continued, "And it (candy) makes for a real nice visual game board with a
lot of color and interesting shapes." For the homepage seemed like a
traditional Candy Land Board, and with the game pieces designed as candies,
players incline to believe they are transported into an entire Candy Land
experience, which is far away from reality.
Reference:
Dockterman, Eliana. "Candy Crush Saga: The Science Behind Our Addiction"TIME.
Honestly, before the teacher and student
conference, I was not pretty sure about my topic for the issue paper. On the
one hand, the first topic I wrote as first draft was ”The relationship of
happiness and the society”, which mainly discussed about what happiness means
to each one of us in our daily life. However, the later on theory researches I
did on the field of “happiness” show more consideration between the individual
matters with happiness, rather than the whole society. Thus, it seemed that I
am leading the ship off course. On the other hand, after noticing the fact that
to discuss happiness in the philosophy way was not what I want, I got the idea
of changing topic.
However, after so many weeks of writing
about ”happiness”, and the discussion whether with classmates during classes or
with teacher in the meeting, the problems I mentioned above previously did not
seem so unsolvable.
Firstly, I thought I was writing something
too far away from my original issue. Yet, the truth is, by skimming through the
research I had done, there is actually a pattern, which could be follow. I said
that my annotation focus more on individual relation with happiness, but from
the division of different aspect of happiness, which was quoted from Aristotle,
the first and second annotation mentioned qualified explanation on pleasure. By
the examples given in each work, there is also a clear notice that I talked
about pleasureness more on the concerns of virtual reality and sensations. Then,
why not write about game addictions?
If we look at game addictions, there is
actually various situations for us to probe into. For example, why does a
person get addicted to video games? Why does winning maters so much in games? Why
sensation will people get? How long will the sensation last? Questions involves
in all kinds of field are revealed in this simple incident “game addiction”.
Therefore, after the conference, despite of
solving my problems in writing the issue paper, I also realized my own defect. I
had to be more curious. Though observing others from a distance will not need
to undertake or add so much personal feelings. Sometimes it seemed a bit
disconnected from the world and others (for instance, my behavior in the
interview with foreign student). But I am glad that I have the chance to notice
this problem of myself whether during the expository writing course or the
presentation and communication course.
An annotation for Roger Crisp’s “Well-Being” How do The Three theories
define well-being? The three theories of well-being, which mentioned in the published
article, are successively the Hedonism, the Desire Theory, and the Objective
List Theory. Since, if we are to get better understanding and discussion about
well-beings, it is indispensable to be aware of these three major theories. Firstly, the author talked about the Hedonism. From Jeremy Bentham’s
view, who is one of the most well-known of the more recent hedonist, he began
his writing An Introduction to the
Principle of Moral and Legislation thus, “Nature has placed mankind under
the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them
alone to point out what we ought to do.” As under most considerations, human
beings always acted in pursuit of what they believe will give them the greatest
balance of pleasure over pain. Hedonism therefore supposed that the greatest
balance of pleasure over pain is what well-being consists in. Likewise, what
makes pleasure good and pain bad is simply the pleasantness of pleasure and the
painfulness of pain in the view of hedonist. Yet, how are we to measure the
value of the two experiences? That is pleasure and pain in this situation. Once
again, according to Bentham, the duration and intensity seem as a kind of
sensation that decides the value. However, problems rose against this kind of
hedonism cognition. For example, “There does not appear to be a single common
strand of pleasantness running through all the different experience people
enjoy.” To explain this problem more practical is to ask one-self, how is it
possible to compare the pleasure one get from eating a great meal with their
families in a restaurant to reading Shakespeare alone in a quiet corner of the
library? There is obvious different aspect of pleasure one can gain from these two
incidents. Therefore, other scholar argued that Bentham seemed to be placing
all pleasure on a par, and further ignore the distinctions between. Yet, in
reality, it certainly does not work in that way. What about the Desire Theory, can it be more precise in defining
well-being to human beings? Therefore, Roger Crisp, the author, brought up suppose
which is known as the experience machine to explain how Desire Theory works in
individual behavior. By planning a lifetime of experience before hand, one can
later on plug in and live out their life in a virtual reality machine. In such
case, one can go through whatever experience they think might possibly bring
out the most enjoyment and pleasantness. Thus for, question arise. Is it the
experience that people seeks for or the result of it people look forward to? If
we discuss this doubt under the consideration of Desire Theory, we can
eventually figure out that the central define to which is that people yearn
more for the result rather than going through experiences. Therefore, due to
the state of desire-satisfaction, Aristotle commented, “Desire is consequent on
opinion, rather than opinion on desire.” To simplify this contention an example
might be well enough. That is, for instinct, nowadays teenagers seemed to be
pursuit eagerly of fame and wealth. However, did they ever consider the
difficulties they had to encounter through the pursuance? To reach their own
desire-satisfaction, they skipped over tough process and dreamed of the outcome
impracticable. By doing so, they be satisfied by the desire of fame and wealth,
for they think of fame and wealth as independently goods beforehand. The
third theory, which is the Objective List Theory surmise that list item-constituting
well-being consists neither merely in the pleasurable experience hedonism
believed, not in desire-satisfaction as Desire Theory suggested. Other items,
such as knowledge and friendships considered in the constitution of well-being,
for that it is important that all kinds of good should be included even for
those thing people will not enjoy or do not even want. As we learned about the three theories, we
may figure out that each of them considered well-being by their own perspective
and explanation. Yet, there is no definably right or wrong in each theory.
Since, similarly in reality, we face situations with two sides to it, too. Like
while one let go of something, they are gaining other things at the same time
even they may not be aware of. Even in the slangs, people used to say a
blessing in disguise.
References:
Crisp, Roger, "Well-Being", The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/well-being/>.
An annotation for Aristotle’s NicomacheanEthic’S Book I, chapter 1 to 5
Is happiness the highest aim or the intermediate aimof all good?
The defining of happiness and the aim of the ethics, which is the main steam of discussion starts in chapter 1 of Book I, as Aristotle wrote down, “Every art and inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.”It is from his believing that everything should all aim at some good and later on he also pointed out that many aims are merely intermediate aims, and are desired only because they make the achievement of higher aims possible.
In chapter 2, it started like this, “If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Aristotle talked about the chief good in our life, and owing to his opinion, he thinks that the one and highest aim we should seek for throughout our whole life should have the qualities same as politics, since “though it isworthwhile to attain the end merely for one man, it is finer and more godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-state.”
Yet, while in chapter 4, Aristotle questioned about“what is it that we say political science aims at and what is the highest of all good achievable by action?” and he shortly answered the question later, “for both the general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness, and identify living well and doing well with being happy; but with regard to what happiness is, they differ, and many do not give the same account as wise.”For the former, which is the general run of men, they consider happiness as some plain and obvious thing like pleasure, wealth or honor. However, they differ from one another – and often, even the same man identifies it with different things, such as identifying happiness with health when he is ill, and with wealth when he is poor.
So in chapter 5, Aristotle then distinguished three distinct ways of life which different people associate with happiness. First of all, the slavish way of pleasurethat refers to how most people thinks of happiness; second, the refined and active way of politics that aims at honor, and the third, the way of contemplation life which ultimately aims at wisdom. Each of these three happy ways to involve in life represents a specific target that people aim at for their own sake.
I think happiness should truly be the ultimate goal or end of action of every human, instead of the intermediate aim of all good. Since what will there left when some day we had to face the end of our life? Is it honor, wealth, or fame?Surly none of these will made any difference to us when facing the end of our life, yet whatabout happiness; the memories, our families and friends, the pleasure moments in life? And Ilike the idea of how Aristotle said about Priam, “many changes occur in life, and all manner of changes and the most prosperous may fail into great misfortunes in old age, as in told of Priamin the Trojan Cycle.” Happiness must be consider over a whole life time, and a truly happy person in life is he who will bear what misfortune brings most beautifully and in complete harmony in every instance, because even in this circumstances, something beautiful shine through.
Should the fast food produced system be
accepted? Nowadays, people seemed to equate eating food produced by big
enterprises to be much healthier. Yet, there is a huge blind spot which most of
us might lack of notice, that is how was the food produced? In the film Food, Inc. (2008) presented by Robert
Kenner, it firstly talked about fast food, a term that can not be even familiar
to our generation, and he gave it an interesting title, “Fast Food for All Food”.
To, be honest, I was pretty much confused about what might the relationship of
fast food and other food be? Since in my cognition, fast food had always been an
unhealthy term that is consist of cheesy burgers and pizzas, fatty French fries
and chickens, and also, don’t forget the large size soda drink. Though
unhealthy and high-calorie, younger generations tend to go to fast food
restaurants whether for small gatherings after school or for celebrations of
all kinds of reason, and it had almost turned in to some sort of normality.
However, even it had become normal, how was it related to other food? After
watching the first of the six parts of Food,
Inc. on YouTube, it seemed more obvious to me of why did Robert Kenner
titled it“Fast Food for All Food”.
McDonald’s,
as the first multinational fast food restaurant in America and also the biggest
leading chain restaurant over the world today, it was primarily opened in 1940.
The McDonald brothers basically ran the restaurant following the new-raised
form for restaurants which called the drive-in in the 1930’s. Fortunately, they
had a very successful drive-in, however eight years later, they decided to cut
cost and simplify the form of their restaurant. So they eventually created a
revolutionary idea of how to run a restaurant by simply brining in the factory
system to back up the restaurant kitchen. They trained each workers to just do
one thing again and again and again, for that by having workers who only have
to do one thing, they can pay them with much less wages, and moreover, it is
easier to find someone else to replace them. “That mentality of uninformative
conformity and cheapness applied widely and on a large scale has all kinds of
unattended consequences.” (Eric Scholsser) Shortly after their success,
McDonald’s became the biggest purchaser of beef in America, and due to their
ideas of having their hamburgers to taste exactly the same no matter where it
is made, they changed the way how beef is produced. Also, being the biggest
purchase port of not only for beef but also pork, chicken, potato, tomato,
lettuce and even apple, the chain restaurant had to find bid suppliers and so consequently,
our food system fell into the hands of a few companies.
In the
1970, though, the top five beef producer only controlled about twenty-five percentage
of the market, however, to 2008, the top four controlled more than eighty
percentage of the market. So clearly it is not just about whether we eat in
fast food restaurants or not, because even if we are not, we still might be
eating the meats produced by this system. (And we should notice that even if
the labels of the meat package tells you which farm they were produced in, in
reality, it is really the big companies behind them that controlled the whole process)
For example, in the film it talked about Tyson, which is one of the biggest
meat processing plants in the world, changed the entire way of how chicken is
raised. Normally, it took about three month to raise a chicken, but due to the
chicken farmers, who signed contracts with Tyson, it only took them forty-nine
days to raise the chicken. And in order to cater the costumers need, it is not
only about having the chicken doubled, What’s more? Due to what people like to
eat most, Tyson redesigned the chicken to have larger breast. And besides
changing the way chicken is raised for the profit for the customers, they also
changed to the right of the chicken farmers for the company’s’ profit. Chicken
farmer now are only responsible for raising the chicken, but a big company like
Tyson owns the chicken from the day they dropped off till the day they are
slaughtered. On account of Tyson’s success in meat producing industry, more and
more meat processing plants around the world are following the same pattern.
Maybe some of the people would think of this as a profit chasing game
for the meat industry, yet Richard Labb, who worked in the National Chicken
Council, explained that in their way, they are rather producing chicken than
food, since it is all highly merchandized so all the birds coming off those
contract farms have to be almost exactly the same size. He also pointed out
that the achievement of intensive production is to take advantage of small unit
of land and create considerable amount of food for the market so the prize can
be affordable for everyone. At the end of the interview, he asked “Can somebody
explain to me what’s wrong with that?” However, little does the chicken farmer
dared to go against their contract company and tell the truth of what illegal
doings the company had really done. According to Carole Morison, one of the
contract chicken farmers with Purdue, she said that in seven weeks a chicken
would grow into a five pound chicken, yet their bones and their internal organs
can’t keep up with the rapid growth. So a lot of these chickens in the farms
tends to flopped down after a few steps of walk for they can hardly hold on
with all the weight they are carrying. That is truly a damage to the health of
the chicken, not to mention that he antibiotics add in the feed, and that is
one problem. Other conflicts that deals with human rights in this incident is
first of all why can companies like Tyson and Purdue kept the farmers under
their thumbs? From what Carole later on points out in the film, we can infer
that it’s mainly because of the debts the chicken farmers had. Usually, to
build one henhouse can be anywhere from two hundred eighty thousand dollars to
thirty thousand dollars, and once you made your initial investment, the
companies will constantly come back with newly upgraded equipment to improve the
function of the henhouse, and yet usually the chicken farmers had no choice or
else they will be threatened of contract. So the debt will just keep rolling on
under such circumstances. “It’s like being the slave to the company.” (Carole
Morison). The workers which the company hired to deliver chicken to processing
plants is as well an important segment to the market, for the workers are
mostly illegal workers or Latinos that have no guarantee and rights, so apparently
they would not dare to risk to expose the truth and bad doings of the companies
to the crowd.
Therefore, I think the fast food produce
system truly has a lot issue that should be carefully discussed. However, the discussion
is never as simple as simple as whether we are putting our health under risk
anymore. When talking about the produce system, and by sequently analyze how
each instinct mentioned above might affect one and another in different aspect
we can have a clear understanding of it is not just about what we are eating
but what we were allowed to know and what we are allowed to say which really
matters. That is when fast food chain restaurant asked for great amounts of
meats, the most processing plant will seek for ways, no matter how unhealthy to
human beings or how illegal it might be, to provide the right amount for
restaurant. Not to mention it is of course under the premise of pursuing their own
profits. So under such premise, it is not only the costumers’ rights being at
risk but also the workers behind those restaurants or meat processing plant. Consequently,
I don’t believe the fast food produce system should be accepted.
The relationship of happiness and the
society To be honest, this is truly a great topic
to me which I am not sure if I could handle, since even for myself, I am not quite
sure about what happiness exactly stand or represents for. Besides the uncertainty
of me to the word “happiness”, people define the concept of happiness in
different ways owing to their very own experience in life. For example, It may probably
differ from one stage of life to another, it may be effected by our system of
values, it may be taught in our traditional cultural, and so on. But there must
be one most important and basic understanding toward the word “happiness” which
therefore built out the concept we define it by.
During the
history class this morning, the professor began the class by asking “How many
of you heard of the Harvard Open Course of Positive Psychology?” and later on
he talked about the some ideas professor TalBen-Shahar talked in his course.A person
with happiness must have a specific goal which brings along joyousness and
importance before pursuing it. A truly happy person will live in the way they
feel most meaningful and enjoy every moment of it. Nowadays,
since we lived in such utilitarianism society, we can try to measure happiness
as a profit-seeking business, if that will be easier for most of the people to
understand. By the definition professor TalBen-Shahar suggested what a truly
happy person should be like, and if happiness is the only standard to measure
life, then that would be the ultimate goal for each of us to pursue. It works
in the same way when people measure the success of business, the only standard
is money, that is whatever is not related with finance will not be considered. However,
when dealing with finance problems, profits and loss are the two issues we
could not ignore. So, if compare measuring happiness to measuring the success
of business, how come there in no gain and loss in happiness?
To
say it more specifically, when looking at our life, we can take the negative emotions
as the loss and while the positive emotions as the gain. So when our positive
emotions are more than negative emotions, we eventually feel more profit in
happiness. When the world country profits more in happiness than in business,
will there be much less crimes or social issue among us? Of course, in
different stage of life, we would encounter struggles and frustrations, for
example losing the ones we loved or go through failures, but time eventually
heals all of the sorrows. Moreover, we cannot immerse in the same sadness for
too long, cause once you did it, then you are not living your life, you are
just simple wasting it unwisely. There is never a thing we cannot overcome; the
only thing we could not fight through is mostly ourselves. So, why making life
even harder for yourself when there is much more meaningful thing waiting for you
to accomplish?
