In The Simplest terms, What is "Pleasure"?

It seems to me that “pleasure” as applied to humans means one thing-a sense of good feeling and happiness. This comes about from chemical reactions in the brain. So is sexual pleasure, pleasure from drugs, satisfaction from food, etc. all basically the same thing? People expend lots of effort in seeking pleasure-although seeking it via drugs can be disastrous. in any event, if pleasure can be induced via electrical stimulation of the brain, could we wipe out drug addiction, sex addiction, etc. all at once?

Other chess nerds may wish to comment, but Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch said it well:

Some music, and some math puzzles, have the same effect on me and I use that as a barometer for pleasure.

Speaking as a recovered addict myself ( 26 years) I would say no if the electrical stimulation is external. I would say yes if the electrical stimulation was internaly induced by the patient. I like to think of emotions the same way I think of paint. We have infinite color spectrum we can derive from a few base colors being mixed in different proportions.

 Even if it could accomplish this I doubt any positive results could be gained. The patient would simply become addicted to the electo therapy. If the electro therapy was somehow set up to enhance the pleasure responce in rewarding good behavior I think it may have some possibilities.

Another vote that electro-pleasure stim would just become another drug of choice.

It might prove faster, cheaper, better (or all 3) and effectively drive some of the other minority interest drugs out of the market. It might also have reduced externalities for the rest of us. Or it might not.

I can see a lot of benefits in the electro-stimulation of pleasure. Illegal/addictive drug use causes huge societal problems, adds to crime, and causes serious health problems for the users. If please could be induced at will (via electro stimulation), it could put the whole drug industry out of business.

You all need to re-read Michael Crichton’s, “The Terminal Man.”

I was about to post the same thing.

Wikipedia has some insight regarding rats and direct stimulation, which was mentioned in The Terminal Man. In essence, given the ability to directly stimulate the pleasure centers of the brain, rats would opt to do only that, to the exclusion of all other behaviours (including eating).

In a fundamental sense, everything you feel is a biochemical state. So change "pleasure: to “love” and ask the same question. Could love be induced by electrical stimulation?

Me thinks it’s tad more complicated.

Already, people are confusing “pleasure” with “happiness.” Happiness is way more complicated and elusive than simple pleasure; it’s the totality of thousands of small incidents of pleasure.

The device costs money. As does the power. Addicts won’t have money because they’ll be pressing the button all day instead of working. So they’ll go out to steal to get the money; just as they do now. The folks who’re motivated to fall into this are exactly the folks who’re not motivated to work.
Consider a parallel we already have some familiarity with: Let’s wave a magic wand and turn every drug user / addict today into an equally severe gambling user / addict instead. With nearby casinos everywhere.

How nicely do you suppose this scenario turns out for society? We’ll certainly have some areas of overall societal improvement, but we’ll also have some areas of overall societal dis-improvement.

IMO, the end result would be different but not appreciably better for society overall.
Your proposal would introduce this new thing in addition to, rather than instead of, drugs, gambling, rage, sex, booze, and all the other addictions to which human flesh is heir.

Not a net gain in my book.

And yes, another plug here for reading Crichton’s The Terminal Man. He wrote it back when he was still any good.

Ornery Bob, let me talk at ya for a minute: biochemistry is not my field, but I’d like a question or two answered–

Example: you see a purdy lady walking down the street; your eyes (and maybe nose and maybe ears) send “electrical stimulation” to the part of your brain that excretes the chemical that says “Me so horny, etc.” Have I missed anything here? If not, it seems you can’t directly “electrically stimulate” pleasure, you have to stimulate the part of the brain that produces the chemical that generates pleasure (and that chemical will probably run out PDQ). Am I still in the ballpark? Alternatively, it seems if you had an unlimited supply of “the pleasure chemical,” you could generate pleasure indefinitely via IV injection (?). Again, what am I missing here?

I just re-read all that and it seems like I’m picking nits; didn’t mean to. Enlighten me, s’il vous plaît.

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This. PLUS, people being what we are: if you feel “X” good on a “love drug,” and “Y” good with “electrical stimulation,” how good would you feel with both simultaneously? “X + Y”? Something more? Something dangerous?

Now we have to go watch “Brainstorm,” too!

Intense contentment

Also the stories of Larry Niven.

And this article: The Curious Case of a Woman Addicted to Her Brain Implant

There’s also simply the fact that we tend to adapt to pleasure. It’s why the simple brain hacks of using chemicals doesn’t last, and you have to keep increasing the dose to get the same effect. Addiction is largely fueled by this phenomenon.

Our brains try to retain a sort of equilibrium. It makes evolutionary sense: if you get too happy, you lack motivation to do what you need to survive. You wind up dying before you can reproduce.

Niven wrote about ‘wireheads’ who were people who would starve themselves to death while hooked up to an electrical stimulation device. He also wrote about a weapon called a Tasp (I believe) that remotely stimulated a target’s pleasure center in order to disable him or her. They were incredibly illegal in Known Space, because anyone hit by a Tasp was more susceptible to becoming a wirehead.

There is actually experimental evidence for this phenomenon, at least with animals. I think it was with mice – they’d actually starve themselves or electrocute themselves in order to receive pleasurable stimulation.

**In The Simplest terms, What is “Pleasure”? **

Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women.

The opposite is more interesting to me. If a device could selectively prevent the propagation of signals that lead to the sensation of please, it could theoretically make the addiction uninteresting. (It’d take a while to counteract the anticipated pleasure, too, and the memory of pleasure would always be there to some extent, but the actual direct reward of engaging in the addicted behavior could be negated.) Then the question becomes what sensations are bad and which are good. Chewing tobacco might be bad. Refined sugar might be bad. Fast food might be bad. Fine wine might be bad. Expensive food generally might be bad, in the context of some people starving while others have plenty. So such a device could lead to a rather dystopian world where literally nobody cares.

Except our tragic hero who has developed a minor mutation and can actually sense uncontrolled pleasure…

Illegal drug use leads to crime. Duh. If it’s illegal it is a crime. Then you have two problems for the price of one: people who get addicted, automatically become criminals. Stupid, isn’t it?

TriPolar the Barbarian”? Not quite the same ring to it; work on it and get back to us. :wink:

This is sort of like “aversion” therapy. If drug addicted people could be given a drug that would stop the original drug from causing pleasure, would the addiction stop? Again, my idea is not to substitute one addiction for another-it is to get the original addiction removed. Why inject a possibly dangerous drug if you can flip a switch?