About book How Pleasure Works: The New Science Of Why We Like What We Like (2010)
How Pleasure Works is an accessibly written book which mentions some theories and interesting experiments, without really delivering on the promise of "science" that explains "why we like what we like". Mostly, what Bloom has to offer are theories and interpretations: well presented and interesting, but judging from various reviews, not conclusive enough for people who want hard and fast answers. Luckily, I wasn't really expecting any, although I was hoping for a bit more science. I'm still left thinking the answer to "why do we like what we like" is "because we're bloody minded and irrational".I took Paul Bloom's Coursera course, Moralities of Everyday Life, and recommend both that and this book as a relatively mild introduction to the psychology surrounding these topics. I expected this to be a breakdown on mental state of pleasure, but rather it was study in the quirkiness of the way human's place value on things.Arguable, you can extrapolate that people get pleasure on high value, high status things.. But to me that speaks more to culturally induced values.That being said, this book has some really great narratives about how bottled water is a farce, wine's price influences taste and people pay more for celebrity owned clothes if they are unwashed.Worth a read, if for nothing else except to save you money by realising your own "conspicuous consumption" traits.
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At times weird and unnerving, but overall very interesting!
—Thomas
