alt Hacker News> It's just to replicate the ritual of ordering food and give you the dopamine that the real process gives you.
I’m confused. How does the food-ordering process give you dopamine? It generally just gives me anxiety due to the uncertainties involved, until the food arrives in good condition, which here it won’t.
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Well the context is that it was posted to a subreddit for people who struggle with binge eating. So I guess you can think of it as the equivalent of sucking on a lollipop when you're craving a cigarette.
There’s a thing with dopamine where it’s not actually about receiving the reward, it’s about doing the things that lead to the reward.
As weird as it sounds, going through the ordering process is all you need.
Do you get anxious when you order at a restaurant? There is the same exact uncertainty there compared to ordering ahead by 10 minutes while you are on the way there.
think window shopping
which upon writing I realized may not even be something folks born after 2010 have even heard of...
The link is to the BingeEatingDisorder subreddit. From the link,
> I know that at least for me, the actual process of ordering food delivery is part of the addiction