For you non-techies who'd like to be titillated, here's a second bleg about some very speculative and fringey ideas I've been pondering:

What do you think the connection between motivation & sex/masturbation is?

Here's my thought: it's something of a mystery to me why homosexuals seem to be so well represented among the eminent geniuses of Europe & America. The suggestion I like best is that they're not intrinsically more creative thanks to 'female genes' or whatever, but that they can't/won't participate in the usual mating rat-race and so in a Freudian manner channel their extra time into their art or science.

But then I did some googling looking for research on this, and though I didn't turn up much (it's a strangely hard area to search), I ran into some interesting pages on the links between motivation & dopamine, and dopamine & sex:

• http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/02/dopamine_and_orgasm.php
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine#Motivation_and_pleasure
• http://www.reuniting.info/science/articles/acute_dopamine_depletion_causes_psychological_distress
• http://www.dailystrength.org/c/Sex_Pornography_Addiction/forum/3803510-sa-compulsive-masturbation-biochemical-effects

Which suggest to me an entirely different mechanism: it's not that they have more time, it's that they are having much less sex (even if only with their hand), and this depletes dopamine less & leaving motivation strong to do other things they'd like to do. (Cryptonomicon readers might also be familiar with this theory from one memorable section with Randy.)

So: does anyone know any research testing this? As I said, I couldn't find much.