Give me a reasonable believer over an uncompromising atheist any day

[GliderGuider]

36. My take on it is that strong emotions are self-rewarding because they trigger dopamine release

Dopamine is well known as the pleasure-inducing neurotransmitter. When rats are trained to press one of two pedals to get either food or a shot of a drug that raises dopamine, like meth or cocaine, they will keep pressing the drug pedal until they die of starvation.

What we see in action here on interactive internet threads is a dopamine feedback system. Here's how it probably works:

• I read something and get angry or outraged - that gives me a shot of dopamine which activates my pleasure response - getting angry or outraged feels good.
  
• I post a brilliant, aggressive response, and I get an immediate shot of dopamine and associated pleasure.
  
• Then my antagonist comes back within minutes saying something even stupider than his first post - I get another shot of dopamine.
  
• I post something scathing in response and get another hit.
  
• He comes back with something even more loathsome and I get another hit;
  
• I post a sneering rebuttal and get yet another.

Meanwhile my antagonist is going through exactly the same emotion/reward cycle, triggering off my posts.

This would explain both the spirals of escalation that we see so often, and the well-known internet phenomenon of last-word-itits (gimme just one more hit of that feel-good brain juice).

In contrast, reasonableness just doesn't trigger the same sense of urgency. "Yeah, yeah, you're a reasonable dude. I'm going to go find somebody more fun to play with."