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After reading lots of research and many book excerpts, I learned that Foundations of Neuroeconomic Analysis (2010) was the best overview available on how the brain encodes value and makes decisions. But I couldn't find it for free.
Here's another place to look: I downloaded "Foundations of Neuroeconomic Analysis" from library.nu for free just now, as a 488 page PDF file. If you don't create an account, you can search for books and find pictures of the covers, but if you create an account they'll show you links that let you have files for the books. The format varies: usually PDF, sometimes mobi or djvu.
For a rationalist approach to sex, I agree that "do scholarship, and just try stuff, recording the results in whatever way interferes least" will get you a long way. I've known of two instances where the following tidbits would have been useful in addition:
Sometimes, but not always, make an honest attempt to figure out what your partner wants and do it. You'll probably want to limit that to activities that fit your own risk-taking preferences about pregnancy, disease, injury, legal problems, and so forth, but be sure to distinguish pragmatic limits from your habitual comfort zone and try to go outside the latter.
Set up your living arrangements so sex is convenient. If you have roommates and feel inhibited around them, that's a problem.
Target Focus Training is definitely awesome. They did not pay me to say that. It's an odd, quiet type of awesome that has negative value for status-signaling, hence the throwaway account.
I took one of their classes and am looking for a reaction partner in Silicon Valley for practice. If you are in a similar situation, please drop me a note. I won't out you, and I'm pretty good at not hurting people accidentally when practicing this sort of thing. ETA: As of 4 May 2011, I'm logging into this throwaway account for the last time. If you're looking for a reaction partner in Silicon Valley, post an ad, either here or in a comment on the TFT blog somewhere. Messages to fdzf will not be read.
Also, if anyone else knows of other obviously awesome things that don't get posted about because they are poor for status-signaling, please post about them anonymously.