Reddit Reddit reviews The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good

We found 9 Reddit comments about The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good
Penguin Books
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9 Reddit comments about The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good:

u/Mooshaq · 5 pointsr/TheRedPill

Yes, there are lots of studies about the addiction patterns in the brains of video game players. I don't think he is implying that massive amounts of video gaming is healthy either. But 303030... is right. It is an addiction that affects a lot of things about you. If you want to read a layman's explanation by great neuroscientists, read The Brain That Changes Itself (there's a section specifically about porn) or The Compass of Pleasure (touches on masturbation, orgasm and I think porn).

u/blackmoon88 · 4 pointsr/stopdrinking

I had a counselor once tell me that I had an addictive personality and it only occurs in about 10% of people. It was before I was a drinker, but she mentioned alcoholics are like this and oddly enough warned me because both my mother (recovered) and father (still binges) have problems. She then said on the bright side, lots of successful people like CEOs and entrepreneurs have addictive personalities. In the end it’s about training your brain. Not exactly about addictive personalities, but still a good book is The Compass of Pleasure by David J. Linden -> https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0143120751/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_0143120751

u/MonsieurJongleur · 2 pointsr/AskWomenOver30

Hoow. Well, I'm in the middle of re-reading The E-Myth, since it's a good refresher and I find myself having to scale up one of my businesses.

I'm looking at (re)reading Deep Survival next week because I'm going on retreat. I have saved it for a close reading and copious notes because I think there's something similar in the people who survive dangerous situations and the people who survive and thrive in starting small businesses.

I'm in the middle of The Social Animal, by David Brooks, which I adore. I think I'm going to keep it. (That's saying something, since I read voraciously, but I have only one shelf of books I felt was worth revisiting.) The way he's tackled the book is very interesting and it's incredibly deftly done.

I have Republic of Thieves out from the library, the newest in the Gentleman Bastards series. I don't know when I'm going to get to it. When I start a fiction book I tend to read it straight through, and nothing else gets done, so I'm loathe to start one.

I also have TapDancing to Work the new Warren Buffet autobiography, The Compass of Pleasure (which has been on my wishlist so long I've forgotten what I wanted it for) and Medieval Mercenaries a book about the history of mercenaries. I've always been very interested in mercenaries. I don't know why.

Today a friend recommended The Small Business Life Cycle which I already own, so it will be moving up on the list. I really admire the author, a US Army veteran and philosopher.

u/Jaja1990 · 2 pointsr/Meditation

Here's the issue: we seek pleasure, it's literally what makes life worth living.

How to overcome the need of dopamine? Well…we can't and we shouldn't: it's the main drive that made our race survive till now! But we can control and deviate our addiction, by satisfying our brain with selected kind of pleasure.

Try to engage yourself in activities that you enjoy really much, but also lead you to something "more".

Examples:

  • Exercice -> you get fit
  • Read -> you learn something and/or develop creativity
  • Find an hobby -> you develop skills
  • Make love -> you develop skills, do physical exercise, you strengthen the connection with your partner
  • Hang out with friends (maybe new ones) -> you develop social skills, you learn more about yourself
  • Meditate: you gain insight
  • Eat (healthy): you strengthen your body

    In other words you have to avoid pleasure as an end in itself; hopefully you'll defeat your addiction (mostly a matter of habits, for what I see) and maybe even become a better person. Good luck!
u/VekeltheMan · 2 pointsr/bestof

http://www.amazon.com/The-Compass-Pleasure-Marijuana-Generosity/dp/0143120751

Here's a good read on how our behavior is influenced by our biology more than we might want to believe.

I like to write a "review" whenever I finish a book here's what I had to say after reading "The Compass of Pleasure":

Having finished The Compass of Pleasure there is one thing that strikes me more than anything else. It shows me a picture in which free will seems to play an extremely small part in our lives, if at all. By the time we factor in biological dispositions, parenting, socioeconomic status, race, country/ culture of origin, available opportunities, and the thousand other external pressures in conjunction with the way pleasure actively conditions our behavior; Free will seems to be an illusion and we are much more like jelly fish afloat on the currents of factors external of our individual consciousness. A haunting conclusion that if embraced on a societal scale would have tremendous implications.

EDIT
Few more things I pulled from that book:

1There is a neural unity of virtue and vice - Pleasure is our compass, no matter the path we take. What makes pleasure so compelling is that, through the interconnection of the pleasure circuit with other brain regions, we adorn it with memory, with associations and emotions and social meaning, with sights, sounds, and smells.

2To explain some of the irrational behavior involving gambling: Activation of win-related regions by near-miss outcomes is somehow pleasurable and is more pleasurable when the subject has personal control.
Near miss and total miss outcomes should evoke the same response in a rational world.

3We know from Schult’s Monkey experiments that rapid associative learning can transform a pleasure signal into a reward prediction error signal that can guide learning to maximize future pleasure. It is likely that this same process is what enables humans to feel pleasure from arbitrary rewards like monetary gain (or even near misses in monetary gain) or winning at a video game.

4“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, Pain and Pleasure... They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it.”
-Jeremy Bentham
He was half right, pleasure does indeed guide us. However, we now have reason to believe that they are not to opposite ends of the same spectrum. The opposite of pleasure isn’t pain; rather, just as the opposite of love is not hate but indifference, the opposite of pleasure is not pain but ennui- a lack of interest in sensation and experience. Both pleasure and pain indicate salience, that is, experience that is deserving of attention. Emotion is the currency of salience, and both positive emotions like euphoria and love and negative emotions like fear, anger, and disgust signal events that we must not ignore.

5Emotional pain isn’t just a metaphor: In terms of brain activation, it particularly overlaps with physical pain.

6We can say for certain that: We evaluate our own economic circumstances and and prospects not on some absolute scale, but rather in comparison to those of people around us. We seem to be hardwired to compare our own experiences and circumstances to those around us.

u/hookdump · 1 pointr/zen
u/SuckaWhat · 0 pointsr/changemyview

A great introduction to the subject is "The Compass of Pleasure" David Linden. It actually discusses many different things that act on the brains reward circuitry. It has a whole chapter dedicated to Obesity, which is pretty interesting. It's very readable for the lay person:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Compass-Pleasure-Marijuana-Generosity/dp/0143120751/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1368478289&sr=8-1

Here's a quick breakdown on Leptin though (note: I only skimmed this to see if it would be an appropriate source that I could actually directly link you to; I haven't read the whole thing):

http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/the-facts-on-leptin-faq

Here's a decent breakdown of some of the science from the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-fat-trap.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&

Here's some studies that show that almost everybody who loses more than 15 pounds gains it all back:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1580453

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579.full


If I have time later, I'll try to get you more. I have a friend waiting on me. But, if you want more academic articles, just go on JSTOR or Google Scholar and search "leptin" and "obesity."

edit: sorry, I don't have time tonight. I'll try to remember to get you some more info tomorrow.

u/Gorthaur111 · 0 pointsr/Nootropics

Long-term amphetamine usage causes the growth of countless dendrites on dopaminergic neurons. This is true for any powerful dopamine releaser. All these extra dendrites act as releasing sites for dopamine, so that the same supply of dopamine is spread out over a larger area. This is one of the major mechanisms behind progressive drug addiction and tolerance. These dendrites cannot be removed, they can only grow, and fixing this problem directly is at least as difficult as curing cancer.

Source: The Compass of Pleasure