I'm trying my hardest to understand this, but I'm not seeing the logical 'meat' here. As the article states the vast majority of people are quite happy. And eve

I'm trying my hardest to understand this, but I'm not seeing the logical 'meat' here. As the article states the vast majority of people are quite happy. And even those in the worst of conditions on this Earth are not all that dissatisfied with their lives. The philosopher's retort against this is essentially, 'No, you're not happy!' Who is he to say? But then the argument he follows his 'no you're not' with what seems to be a surprisingly shallow bit of logic. He claims that various discomforts such as hunger/cold/tiredness/etc are a major and never ending source of discomfort. Let's consider comfort for a minute -- actually let's consider discomfort. Imagine there was a universe that somehow, absolutely no discomfort existed. Would this be a world where people living there felt or experienced their lives to be ones of constant comfort? No, it would be experienced as a world where the very notion of comfort and discomfort simply do not exist. It would be like considering vision in a world where there was no such thing. His argument also sidesteps the point of progression. Claiming we keep repeating the same mistake is myopic at best. The vast majority of people are freer and more able to pursue their lives as they see fit than most any time in history. And this positive forward progression is a never ending theme. The further back you go, the worse things become. Unless he wants to claim existence was more pleasant thousands of years ago, it's tough to deny this directionality of progression. And to deny the innumerable masses of people that may be able to live in ever greater comfort in the future their existence, because you're upset about some petty discomforts in the present -- that seems, at the minimum, supremely greedy and certainly far away from any sort of vague appeal to utilitarianism that he seems to try to make at times.