“Me alone she bade to listen to their voice; but do ye bind me with grievous bonds, that I may abide fast where I am, upright in the step of the mast, and let the ropes be made fast at the ends to the mast itself; and if I implore and bid you to loose me, then do ye tie me fast with yet more bonds”
This scene in the Odyssey is perhaps the earliest depiction of men’s fight against addiction. To resist the temptation of the sirens, Odysseus tied himself to the mast of the ship. Interestingly, this story illustrates the concept of addiction in Nudge.
Initially, I chose this chapter about addiction because I struggle daily to fight against the urge to waste time on meaningless video games and dome scrolling. As a result of my procrastination and easy distraction, I have short attention span and weak willpower. I just had a feeling that this chapter could provide insights into alleviation of my addiction.
The chapter opens with an explanation of the “hot-cold empathy gap.” This is where the story of Odysseus connects. Before Odysseus meets the serine, he is in “the cold state”, where the planner mode takes control and makes him aware of the larger goal of going home. When he sees the siren, he is in “the hot state”, where he experiences enormous desires and cannot control them. There is an empathy gap between these two states because he underestimates the power of temptation when he is in the cold state. If not tied to the mast, he could have easily lost himself and swam straight to the sirens in the hot state. The cause of the empathy gap is his tendency to use current emotional states as the anchoring point for our expectations of future behaviors. An example closer to life would be eating fast food. If I just had a cheat day and consumed two high-calorie burgers, I would likely regret doing so and promise myself that I would never eat fast food again. I only think this way because I am no longer facing the temptation of fast food in a state of hunger. This is also the reason people make highly ambitious plans that are impossible to accomplish.
So how do we fight back? One strategy in the book involves informal bets. Friends can make bets to each other to lose weight, by promising to give up a large sum of money if one fails his goal in a period. The strategy works because people have a deep fear of foreseeable loss in the short term. Even though the intrinsic long-term benefit of accomplishing the goal might be greater than the bet, the long-term goal is too distant for one to care deeply about.
This strategy inspires me to make similar bets to my friends to get rid of my video game addiction. I can bet to give my friend 500 dollars if I play a game for more than one hour a day. This sum of money means a lot to me since I can use it to buy meals and clothes. In particular, its value exceeds that of playing video games so I have to limit video games.
The book’s example of governmental help is also inspirational. I saw that the government can put anyone on a list of people banned from casinos if they volunteer to be on the list. This strategy would be extremely effective because gamblers can put themselves on the list when they are in the cold state, forcing themselves to give up gambling when they are in the hot state. One method I can use is to turn my phone into an irreversible no-gaming mode so that I cannot play games no matter how much I want to.
Perhaps the best way to combat addiction is by using external forces like this. Just like the epic story of Odysseus suggests, we should find a rope that could tie us up in the hot state to avoid letting addiction take control.
Work Cited:
- Homer. The Odyssey. London: New York: W. Heinemann; G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1919.
- Thaler, Richard H., Sustain, Cass R., Nudge. New York: Penguin Books, 2008.
- Why do we mispredict how much our emotions influence our behavior? The Empathy Gap Explained, The Decision Lab.