Students and Teachers

A guy in NA used to say, "There's students and there's teachers.", meaning, "some people watch others and learn from their mistakes, while some people make mistakes which other people learn from."

Well, if I could only learn from my own mistakes, I'd be doin' good. I wonder if there is any real understanding, out there, of our tendency to make certain mistakes over and over again. Let's see...

- Here's a fairly comprehensive recital of the pragmatic issues, as a tutorial on addiction.

- A fairly cursory overview of the physiological issues, ca. 1999, of addiction.

- A slightly more comprehensive physiological overview of addiction, ca 2000.

- A more recent psychiatric investigation into the mechanisms of addiction and learning. Now we're getting a clue.

In the background visual, the formation of hydrogen bonds is shown explicitly. However, the repulsive forces between the electronegative oxygen poles are just as important. It is the continual conflict between the two that produces the oscillation. Both attractive and repulsive forces function to maintain the oscillatory system. The longevity of the oscillatory system is dependent on the balance of these two opposing forces. The better the balance, the greater the longevity of the system.

However, it should be noted that a maximally static system, exhibiting only mild activity, would still be oscillatory, although the oscillations would be infinitesimally small. The potential influence of additional external forces, applied in a chaotic way, are also worth consideration. I still think it's a great model.