7 ms·

> But another possibility is that we engineer the perfect happiness drug, with no bad side effects, and no one wants to do anything but lay in bed and take this

> But another possibility is that we engineer the perfect happiness drug, with no bad side effects, and no one wants to do anything but lay in bed and take this drug all day, sapping all ambition from the human race. Preface: What we're talking about is probably biochemically impossible (truly no bad side effects, no tolerance, etc.). So, everything that follows is a fun thought experiment, and should be taken as nothing more. Let's say someone produces a true wonder drug that is relatively easy to produce and produces extreme happiness 100% of the time, with no side-effects, and no diminishing returns due to drug tolerance. This drug produces more happiness than any other activity that we could be pursuing with our time. As a result, all anybody wants to do is take this drug all day. The author presumes that this is a bad thing, but let's question that assumption. If everyone is completely happy 100% of the time, and - more importantly - happier than they would be if they were doing whatever it is they would be doing with that extra ambition, why should we assume that this is a bad thing? Of course, somebody would need to maintain production of the drug. This means that people either would take it only part of the time, to maintain enough ambition, etc. to produce the drug on their own, or (more likely) we would have some lucky people who take it all the time and are always happy, and a few people who are tasked with producing all the joy for the rest of the world. This exact premise (the second version) has already been explored, in short story form. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Ome... (I agree that this situation sounds bad - most people would have a negative emotional reaction to it, but it's fun to explore why we have an aversion to the thought of pure, unmoderated happiness.)

DanielBMarkham 13y ago
Robots
- nilkn 13y ago
  We'd need to find a way to continually power the robots. Mass solar power, maybe? Or perhaps, if everyone were perpetually swept away into the wonderland of the perfect happiness drug, the human body itself could be appropriated as a battery, leading to a deliberately created Matrix. </humor>
  - DanielBMarkham 13y ago
    :) The thing is, if "being happy" is the only goal, then the rest of it is just an efficiency question. I think people view robots as either empowering us or somehow getting into lethal combat with us as the dominant life form on the planet. I seriously doubt it will be either. They'll just give us what we want. The race will naturally die out within a few generations.
humanrebar 13y ago
> Why should we assume that this is a bad thing? Assuming the entire world can be maintained perfectly and automatically, nothing, but that's a bigger assumption than the hypothetical wonderdrug. What happens when the Hoover Dam starts cracking? Or when a new disease is found and a new cure needs to be found? Or when we run out of a resource (oil, helium, it doesn't really matter which)? We don't live in a world of static status quos, we live in a world of equilibria. Many of those equilibria factor in the ambition of individuals to maintain, to discover, and to solve problems.
- daurnimator 13y ago
  > What happens when the Hoover Dam starts cracking? Or when a new disease is found and a new cure needs to be found? Or when we run out of a resource (oil, helium, it doesn't really matter which)? Then we'll be happy about it
  - humanrebar 13y ago
    And be dead? Is that OK?
    - gph 13y ago
      Presumably. Besides if all we do is sit around taking a happy drug, we'd stop reproducing. We wouldn't need the Hoover Dam or a new virus to wipe us out.
      - derefr 13y ago
        In most systems of metaethics, "years of life" and "number of people alive" are coefficients or integrands. 50 years spent happy--and then dying happily--is less good than 100 years spent happy. Which is less good, in turn, than 100 years spent happy, and creating two more people who also spend 100 years happy. And so on. However, the adaptations we execute, as biological beings, don't really care about the health and welfare of their own far-future selves; they're more concerned about the Net Present Value of different choices they can make. So, one hour spent Really Happy, outweighs a year spent Just Happy, because that Really Happy is all received by your present self. So we can do the math as rational beings, and as much as we want to be rational (which is itself a function of our biologically-trained impulses), we can look out for our future selves and keep the world running. Or we can accept our nature as natural beings, and wirehead. It's really the explicated meaning-of-life question, going forward.
wellboy 13y ago
I've read up quite a lot on drug side-effects and as far as I know, creating a happiness drug with side-effects is not possibly really, because drugs make your body release happiness hormones artificially and your hormone deposits take time to refill. As well, your hormone receptors can't take hormones all the time. They take time to recover, otherwise they will go numb. That's exactly what Meth does for instance, it releases all your happiness hormones at once, that's why you feel so suuuper amazing. However, once the drug subsides, you're super hungover and feel like shit, because you're all out of happiness hormones. Even worse, even once you stop doing Meth or whatever, your receptors have already become numb, so events that made you happy before you used drugs, such as getting a raise, raising investment, getting married, don't do anything to you anymore. If you stop these drugs your receptors will become more sensitive with time again, but that takes a couple of years and might never go back to normal. So, once you take drugs, you're happiness from certain events will always be lower than it was before. That's why it is so hard to get off drugs.
- hrkristian 13y ago
  I get the impression you don't play chess? Lets say Paul takes artificial hormones to increase his level of happiness; numbing his receptors. What stops Paul from also taking a drug which improves the recovery time of his receptors? Edit: In a galaxy far, far away. Where E.T. comes from and science is rockin'.
  - wellboy 13y ago
    Well if Nanobots can do that, we´re talking on a whole different level, where flesh wounds could be healed, organs could be grown back etc., but then it might be possible
- derekp7 13y ago
  This is where nanobots come into play. These nanobots carry the hormone past the blood-brain barrier, and deposit it directly in the receptors. Now the key is to have the bots only put the hormone in some of the receptors, keep track of which ones were used, then rotate through them so they have time to recover.
pdog 13y ago
Or, we could automate production and distribution so everyone's happy.
cglace 13y ago
Reminds me of this short film. http://vimeo.com/7306050 http://vimeo.com/7306050
chc 13y ago
I always hear the situation put this way, but it rings false to me. If you gave me a perfect happiness drug, I wouldn't want to sit in bed all day and take it. I would want to take it and go about my normal day only without the burden of misery — debug Java without wanting to claw my eyes out, help out people I meet because I don't feel stressed over my own schedule, etc. Being happy naturally has never driven me to sit in bed and has only ever made me a better person; I don't know why we assume drug-induced happiness would do the opposite. I suspect this is just because many of our current drugs do this as a side effect of inducing euphoria, and we're imagining that instead of a real happiness drug.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- aaronem 13y ago
  Heroin is as close to "a perfect happiness drug" as anything human ingenuity has ever produced. My experience of its habitués tends to suggest that, while it's not impossible you'd become a better person under its effects, it is quite unlikely.
  - samatman 13y ago
    Alternately, I could make a solid case for MDMA. A huge rush of serotonin is closer to 'happiness' in my book; tickling the mu-opoid is more of a 'bliss' kinda thing. If there were a beverage that worked like coffee except was more MDMA like, that our physiology could sustain in daily use, I dare say a lot of us would drink it.
  - puller 13y ago
    If you're not asleep, you might be a better person. The problem would be when you ran out.
    - aaronem 13y ago
      It can be tricky from the outside to distinguish someone who's nodding from someone who's sleeping, but from the inside the two states aren't all that similar.
cousin_it 13y ago
Whenever this topic comes up, I point out that addiction is merely an undesirable side effect. A drug can be extremely enjoyable, but not cause a compulsion to take it again and again. And conversely, a drug can be neutral happiness-wise, but cause an addiction. We all know examples of similar things in real life: a creative flow state is very enjoyable but hard to get into, and Pringles are kind of disgusting but you don't want to stop until you've finished the pack. My term for this is "the want-like distinction", and the best reference is Yvain's "Are Wireheads Happy"? http://lesswrong.com/lw/1lb/are_wireheads_happy/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/1lb/are_wireheads_happy/
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
Crito 13y ago
This discussion reminds me of what Diogenes the Cynic once said on masturbation, "I wish it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly."
aaronem 13y ago
It's not a new idea; everyone from Homer, with the lotus-eaters of the Odyssey, to Larry Niven, with his wireheads, has explored it in detail. I don't really count Le Guin's work among those explorations; The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is more in the vein of a parable or morality tale than that of the sort of consideration you describe -- as with The Cold Equations, the usual result tends to be two camps, diametrically opposed for reasons which neither can satisfactorily explain. The question of why healthy people tend to be opposed to lotus-eating is also not difficult to answer, especially given that what TV Tropes calls the "Lotus-Eater Machine" has been constructed several times in reality, and its addictive nature and harmful effects well documented [1]. Both in individual life and on the scale of societies, what we typically call "civilization" is nothing more or less than an unending war against entropy; this is frequently, if imprecisely, formalized in the common dictum that "it's easier to destroy than to create" -- and easier, too, to sit in one's own filth than otherwise, in the absence of some motivation to do otherwise. Unhappiness serves to provide this motivation, and it is therefore precisely that motivation which the lotus-eater machine removes. After all, if sitting in your own filth doesn't make you unhappy, because you have a wire in your brain which ensures sublime delight no matter your circumstances, why bother to do anything about it? -- and, as we see from one of the cases described in the page I linked, indeed you will not. Consider, too, that the English language already has a well-known and clearly defined word for the concept of "pure, unmoderated happiness". That word is heroin, and while I recognize the modern unpopularity of the proposition among those who've never seen firsthand what it does to its unfortunate devotees, I maintain most firmly that that damned drug is illegal for excellent reason. [1]: http://mindhacks.com/2008/09/16/erotic-self-stimulation-and-brain-implants/ http://mindhacks.com/2008/09/16/erotic-self-stimulation-and-...
- md224 13y ago
  > After all, if sitting in your own filth doesn't make you unhappy, because you have a wire in your brain which ensures sublime delight no matter your circumstances, why bother to do anything about it? -- and, as we see from one of the cases described in the page I linked, indeed you will not. Right, but... why is sitting in your own filth objectively "bad" if you're happy? There could be negative externalities (e.g. maybe your unsanitary conditions are facilitating the spread of disease to others) but I don't think it's clear what about the filth itself is objectively bad.
rhizome 13y ago
What we're talking about is probably biochemically impossible (truly no bad side effects, no tolerance, etc.). Eh, I don't know about that. Opiates are pretty close, and their most harmful side effect is the legal environment which proscribes insane punishments for involving oneself with them. Said another way, even if it's biochemically possible, it would likely be legally impossible for this happiness drug to be distributed at all. Best to point one's though-experiment apparatuses in that direction, I think.
- avn2109 13y ago
  Yeah, legally impossible indeed. It's always helpful to check the practicality of one's thought experiments by asking, "Will legislative change X help or hinder the unearned incomes of the upper class?" In this case, probably it would hinder, by de-motivating their cheap labor. And presto, we've discovered one of the major reasons for the drug war.
  - aaronem 13y ago
    Sure, if you're satisfied to look at everything in the world through the lens of Marxist economic theory, I suppose that makes sense.
- enkephalin 13y ago
  what's going on here? just yesterday i had to inform someone here on hn about the fact that heroin isn't as harmless as milk. opiates can be pretty damn dangerous. they can have quite bad side effects, and you build up a tolerance pretty quickly with regular use, which can easily lead to accidental overdosing.
md224 13y ago
Seems like some of the other commenters missed the "thought experiment" disclaimer... obviously there are practical aspects that make this technically impossible. I think what chimeracoder is trying to point out is our underlying assumptions about what individuals and humanity should be aspiring to. I'm somewhat of a nihilist, so I consider satisfaction with one's existence as the closest we can get to an "objective" good. I see "ambition" as a personal choice, something that provides satisfaction to those that desire it, but not necessarily a prerequisite for happiness. I don't think chimeracoder is suggesting everyone should want to take a happiness drug. Rather, the question is: does it matter if someone does choose to live under the influence of such a drug? Would we consider their choice to be objectively "wrong", or just another way to live?
bjacokes 13y ago
This is also the subject of a Kurt Vonnegut short story, "The Euphio Question", from Welcome to the Monkey House.
mcarvin 13y ago
Practicality aside, this would be the end of "progress". No new discovery, no new exploration, no deeper understanding of how we got here, where we are or why we are here. The problem with 'bliss on tap' is assumption that there would be no problems left to solve... the mortgaging of our future potential for our present satisfaction.
- md224 13y ago
  Right, but what is the value of "progress" beyond the satisfaction it gives us?
DanielStraight 13y ago
I disagree with the assumption in the original article that a perfect happiness drug would be used by everyone. It is evident from even casual observation that many (I would say most) people would rather have a meaningful life than a happy life. Sure, once you started the drug, you wouldn't care, you'd be hooked, but why assume everyone would take it in the first place? There's no chance I would try a drug that I had observed make someone just sit in their bed doing nothing all day, even if it was clear that they were ecstatically happy beyond anything I had ever experienced. In reality, I think very few people would take it.
- rpearl 13y ago
  What is a meaningful life?
  - DanielStraight 13y ago
    Let me put it another way: I think most people would rather do than be. What's meaningful obviously varies from person to person. What is much more constant is a dissatisfaction with a life devoid of impact on anything outside of oneself.
    - visakanv 13y ago
      > "I think most people would rather do than be" I'm not too sure about this. I think it varies from culture to culture. There are some schools of thought where "being" is most exalted of all.
- mcgwiz 13y ago
  Assuming you find it more moral to "do something for society" with your life, than to lounge around on drugs, what if there were nothing for you to do? What if all social ills and problems were taken care of by technology? Or what if there was definitively no appreciation for what you do? This could take the form of zero demand for your skills, or cultural change in which mainstream society ostracizes those that try to do good for others (perhaps recasting them in a different moral light: "trying to meddle in others' affairs"). I guess you could still go off and live in the woods with those that do not ascribe to a drugged life, and build a separate society. But even that still means the original society is doomed.
dhruval 13y ago
Why would a perfect happiness drug make one lazy and less engaged ? I guess it depends on how we define happiness. In my view the perfect happiness drug would have the exact opposite effect, i.e. make people more functional, less prone to stress and anxiety. Realizing happiness that is independent of conditions, would result in may result in diminished drive from activities that are driving by the seemingly insatiable ambition for greater perceived social status that is currently the normative state of the human race. But that would be compensated because a greater portion of our drive coming from compassion and curiosity. So more curiosity, and more solving of useful problems. Some evidence of this can be had from contemplative activity can dismantle the mechanism in the brain the inhibits happiness without the aid of drugs*. This sort of expertise is difficult and requires extended practice, so it can be confused with disengagement. Many often later go on to have considerable impact on human culture and values. This is both subjectively verifiable, and objectively via brain scans one example outlined below. http://brainimaging.waisman.wisc.edu/press/NCCAMOct08.pdf http://brainimaging.waisman.wisc.edu/press/NCCAMOct08.pdf
argumentum 13y ago
I saw this exact question on Quora recently (if there was a "happiness pill" would you take it). It seemed that most answers mistakenly assumed that "Happiness" was something you can define for everyone, rather than something that individuals have to pursue for themselves. Happiness is a catch-all term for various "good" feelings, such as joy, satisfaction, contentment, bliss, victory etc.
tmsh 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine Philosophy has been thinking about this for a while. In my opinion, happiness is like life, it evolves. Targeted short-term pleasure is possible through extraordinary drugs, maybe in the near future, but probably the brain re-levels. It doesn't approach a stasis. At least, not completely (though happiness gets increasingly more refined over human history, so what seems like happiness now may be this sweet spot in the future that is its own ballpark which we largely reside in and explore -- again, I think happiness gets more and more pinpointed, compared to say Neanderthal times, but it doesn't necessarily ever approach a constant).
pramalin 13y ago
I think down syndrome may come close to the perfect genetic engineering of happiness IF its negative aspects like learning disability can be taken care of. (disclaimer: have one with it in family)
mcgwiz 13y ago
These characterizations of a happiness drug contradict the forces of evolution. If any such a drug were to be developed, it would indeed sap ambition from many people. Even assuming it accounts for all existing relevant genetic variation, it wouldn't prevent genetic mutation. So those born with mutations that make the drug less effective will procreate with relative ease, eventually correcting for the drugs adverse effect on the survival of the species. Of course if cultural (political?) forces also established that any genetic variation was bad, then we would indeed be in trouble. Why? With no threat of pain, and the absence of pleasure replaced by unlimited pleasure, what goals would exist? What would motivate action? Or given a relativistic perspective, what would just motivate procreation?
BHSPitMonkey 13y ago
There is work that must be done to ensure a person's survival and well-being. If someone is so influenced by this drug that they wouldn't abstain from using it long enough to take care of themselves, then they would either need someone else to do this work for them or get sick and perish. This seems like a glaring downside, which violates the premise that our hypothetical drug has no downsides/deterrents from its use.
abus 13y ago
Not everyone would choose to take the drug in the first place.

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

Robots

nilkn 13y ago
We'd need to find a way to continually power the robots. Mass solar power, maybe? Or perhaps, if everyone were perpetually swept away into the wonderland of the perfect happiness drug, the human body itself could be appropriated as a battery, leading to a deliberately created Matrix. </humor>
- DanielBMarkham 13y ago
  :) The thing is, if "being happy" is the only goal, then the rest of it is just an efficiency question. I think people view robots as either empowering us or somehow getting into lethal combat with us as the dominant life form on the planet. I seriously doubt it will be either. They'll just give us what we want. The race will naturally die out within a few generations.

humanrebar 13y ago

> Why should we assume that this is a bad thing? Assuming the entire world can be maintained perfectly and automatically, nothing, but that's a bigger assumption than the hypothetical wonderdrug. What happens when the Hoover Dam starts cracking? Or when a new disease is found and a new cure needs to be found? Or when we run out of a resource (oil, helium, it doesn't really matter which)? We don't live in a world of static status quos, we live in a world of equilibria. Many of those equilibria factor in the ambition of individuals to maintain, to discover, and to solve problems.

daurnimator 13y ago
> What happens when the Hoover Dam starts cracking? Or when a new disease is found and a new cure needs to be found? Or when we run out of a resource (oil, helium, it doesn't really matter which)? Then we'll be happy about it
- humanrebar 13y ago
  And be dead? Is that OK?
  - gph 13y ago
    Presumably. Besides if all we do is sit around taking a happy drug, we'd stop reproducing. We wouldn't need the Hoover Dam or a new virus to wipe us out.
    - derefr 13y ago
      In most systems of metaethics, "years of life" and "number of people alive" are coefficients or integrands. 50 years spent happy--and then dying happily--is less good than 100 years spent happy. Which is less good, in turn, than 100 years spent happy, and creating two more people who also spend 100 years happy. And so on. However, the adaptations we execute, as biological beings, don't really care about the health and welfare of their own far-future selves; they're more concerned about the Net Present Value of different choices they can make. So, one hour spent Really Happy, outweighs a year spent Just Happy, because that Really Happy is all received by your present self. So we can do the math as rational beings, and as much as we want to be rational (which is itself a function of our biologically-trained impulses), we can look out for our future selves and keep the world running. Or we can accept our nature as natural beings, and wirehead. It's really the explicated meaning-of-life question, going forward.

wellboy 13y ago

I've read up quite a lot on drug side-effects and as far as I know, creating a happiness drug with side-effects is not possibly really, because drugs make your body release happiness hormones artificially and your hormone deposits take time to refill. As well, your hormone receptors can't take hormones all the time. They take time to recover, otherwise they will go numb. That's exactly what Meth does for instance, it releases all your happiness hormones at once, that's why you feel so suuuper amazing. However, once the drug subsides, you're super hungover and feel like shit, because you're all out of happiness hormones. Even worse, even once you stop doing Meth or whatever, your receptors have already become numb, so events that made you happy before you used drugs, such as getting a raise, raising investment, getting married, don't do anything to you anymore. If you stop these drugs your receptors will become more sensitive with time again, but that takes a couple of years and might never go back to normal. So, once you take drugs, you're happiness from certain events will always be lower than it was before. That's why it is so hard to get off drugs.

hrkristian 13y ago
I get the impression you don't play chess? Lets say Paul takes artificial hormones to increase his level of happiness; numbing his receptors. What stops Paul from also taking a drug which improves the recovery time of his receptors? Edit: In a galaxy far, far away. Where E.T. comes from and science is rockin'.
- wellboy 13y ago
  Well if Nanobots can do that, we´re talking on a whole different level, where flesh wounds could be healed, organs could be grown back etc., but then it might be possible
derekp7 13y ago
This is where nanobots come into play. These nanobots carry the hormone past the blood-brain barrier, and deposit it directly in the receptors. Now the key is to have the bots only put the hormone in some of the receptors, keep track of which ones were used, then rotate through them so they have time to recover.

pdog 13y ago

Or, we could automate production and distribution so everyone's happy.

cglace 13y ago

Reminds me of this short film. http://vimeo.com/7306050 http://vimeo.com/7306050

chc 13y ago

I always hear the situation put this way, but it rings false to me. If you gave me a perfect happiness drug, I wouldn't want to sit in bed all day and take it. I would want to take it and go about my normal day only without the burden of misery — debug Java without wanting to claw my eyes out, help out people I meet because I don't feel stressed over my own schedule, etc. Being happy naturally has never driven me to sit in bed and has only ever made me a better person; I don't know why we assume drug-induced happiness would do the opposite. I suspect this is just because many of our current drugs do this as a side effect of inducing euphoria, and we're imagining that instead of a real happiness drug.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
aaronem 13y ago
Heroin is as close to "a perfect happiness drug" as anything human ingenuity has ever produced. My experience of its habitués tends to suggest that, while it's not impossible you'd become a better person under its effects, it is quite unlikely.
- samatman 13y ago
  Alternately, I could make a solid case for MDMA. A huge rush of serotonin is closer to 'happiness' in my book; tickling the mu-opoid is more of a 'bliss' kinda thing. If there were a beverage that worked like coffee except was more MDMA like, that our physiology could sustain in daily use, I dare say a lot of us would drink it.
- puller 13y ago
  If you're not asleep, you might be a better person. The problem would be when you ran out.
  - aaronem 13y ago
    It can be tricky from the outside to distinguish someone who's nodding from someone who's sleeping, but from the inside the two states aren't all that similar.

cousin_it 13y ago

Whenever this topic comes up, I point out that addiction is merely an undesirable side effect. A drug can be extremely enjoyable, but not cause a compulsion to take it again and again. And conversely, a drug can be neutral happiness-wise, but cause an addiction. We all know examples of similar things in real life: a creative flow state is very enjoyable but hard to get into, and Pringles are kind of disgusting but you don't want to stop until you've finished the pack. My term for this is "the want-like distinction", and the best reference is Yvain's "Are Wireheads Happy"? http://lesswrong.com/lw/1lb/are_wireheads_happy/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/1lb/are_wireheads_happy/

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

Crito 13y ago

This discussion reminds me of what Diogenes the Cynic once said on masturbation, "I wish it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly."

aaronem 13y ago

It's not a new idea; everyone from Homer, with the lotus-eaters of the Odyssey, to Larry Niven, with his wireheads, has explored it in detail. I don't really count Le Guin's work among those explorations; The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is more in the vein of a parable or morality tale than that of the sort of consideration you describe -- as with The Cold Equations, the usual result tends to be two camps, diametrically opposed for reasons which neither can satisfactorily explain. The question of why healthy people tend to be opposed to lotus-eating is also not difficult to answer, especially given that what TV Tropes calls the "Lotus-Eater Machine" has been constructed several times in reality, and its addictive nature and harmful effects well documented [1]. Both in individual life and on the scale of societies, what we typically call "civilization" is nothing more or less than an unending war against entropy; this is frequently, if imprecisely, formalized in the common dictum that "it's easier to destroy than to create" -- and easier, too, to sit in one's own filth than otherwise, in the absence of some motivation to do otherwise. Unhappiness serves to provide this motivation, and it is therefore precisely that motivation which the lotus-eater machine removes. After all, if sitting in your own filth doesn't make you unhappy, because you have a wire in your brain which ensures sublime delight no matter your circumstances, why bother to do anything about it? -- and, as we see from one of the cases described in the page I linked, indeed you will not. Consider, too, that the English language already has a well-known and clearly defined word for the concept of "pure, unmoderated happiness". That word is heroin, and while I recognize the modern unpopularity of the proposition among those who've never seen firsthand what it does to its unfortunate devotees, I maintain most firmly that that damned drug is illegal for excellent reason. [1]: http://mindhacks.com/2008/09/16/erotic-self-stimulation-and-brain-implants/ http://mindhacks.com/2008/09/16/erotic-self-stimulation-and-...

md224 13y ago
> After all, if sitting in your own filth doesn't make you unhappy, because you have a wire in your brain which ensures sublime delight no matter your circumstances, why bother to do anything about it? -- and, as we see from one of the cases described in the page I linked, indeed you will not. Right, but... why is sitting in your own filth objectively "bad" if you're happy? There could be negative externalities (e.g. maybe your unsanitary conditions are facilitating the spread of disease to others) but I don't think it's clear what about the filth itself is objectively bad.

rhizome 13y ago

What we're talking about is probably biochemically impossible (truly no bad side effects, no tolerance, etc.). Eh, I don't know about that. Opiates are pretty close, and their most harmful side effect is the legal environment which proscribes insane punishments for involving oneself with them. Said another way, even if it's biochemically possible, it would likely be legally impossible for this happiness drug to be distributed at all. Best to point one's though-experiment apparatuses in that direction, I think.

avn2109 13y ago
Yeah, legally impossible indeed. It's always helpful to check the practicality of one's thought experiments by asking, "Will legislative change X help or hinder the unearned incomes of the upper class?" In this case, probably it would hinder, by de-motivating their cheap labor. And presto, we've discovered one of the major reasons for the drug war.
- aaronem 13y ago
  Sure, if you're satisfied to look at everything in the world through the lens of Marxist economic theory, I suppose that makes sense.
enkephalin 13y ago
what's going on here? just yesterday i had to inform someone here on hn about the fact that heroin isn't as harmless as milk. opiates can be pretty damn dangerous. they can have quite bad side effects, and you build up a tolerance pretty quickly with regular use, which can easily lead to accidental overdosing.

md224 13y ago

Seems like some of the other commenters missed the "thought experiment" disclaimer... obviously there are practical aspects that make this technically impossible. I think what chimeracoder is trying to point out is our underlying assumptions about what individuals and humanity should be aspiring to. I'm somewhat of a nihilist, so I consider satisfaction with one's existence as the closest we can get to an "objective" good. I see "ambition" as a personal choice, something that provides satisfaction to those that desire it, but not necessarily a prerequisite for happiness. I don't think chimeracoder is suggesting everyone should want to take a happiness drug. Rather, the question is: does it matter if someone does choose to live under the influence of such a drug? Would we consider their choice to be objectively "wrong", or just another way to live?

bjacokes 13y ago

This is also the subject of a Kurt Vonnegut short story, "The Euphio Question", from Welcome to the Monkey House.

mcarvin 13y ago

Practicality aside, this would be the end of "progress". No new discovery, no new exploration, no deeper understanding of how we got here, where we are or why we are here. The problem with 'bliss on tap' is assumption that there would be no problems left to solve... the mortgaging of our future potential for our present satisfaction.

md224 13y ago
Right, but what is the value of "progress" beyond the satisfaction it gives us?

DanielStraight 13y ago

I disagree with the assumption in the original article that a perfect happiness drug would be used by everyone. It is evident from even casual observation that many (I would say most) people would rather have a meaningful life than a happy life. Sure, once you started the drug, you wouldn't care, you'd be hooked, but why assume everyone would take it in the first place? There's no chance I would try a drug that I had observed make someone just sit in their bed doing nothing all day, even if it was clear that they were ecstatically happy beyond anything I had ever experienced. In reality, I think very few people would take it.

rpearl 13y ago
What is a meaningful life?
- DanielStraight 13y ago
  Let me put it another way: I think most people would rather do than be. What's meaningful obviously varies from person to person. What is much more constant is a dissatisfaction with a life devoid of impact on anything outside of oneself.
  - visakanv 13y ago
    > "I think most people would rather do than be" I'm not too sure about this. I think it varies from culture to culture. There are some schools of thought where "being" is most exalted of all.
mcgwiz 13y ago
Assuming you find it more moral to "do something for society" with your life, than to lounge around on drugs, what if there were nothing for you to do? What if all social ills and problems were taken care of by technology? Or what if there was definitively no appreciation for what you do? This could take the form of zero demand for your skills, or cultural change in which mainstream society ostracizes those that try to do good for others (perhaps recasting them in a different moral light: "trying to meddle in others' affairs"). I guess you could still go off and live in the woods with those that do not ascribe to a drugged life, and build a separate society. But even that still means the original society is doomed.

dhruval 13y ago

Why would a perfect happiness drug make one lazy and less engaged ? I guess it depends on how we define happiness. In my view the perfect happiness drug would have the exact opposite effect, i.e. make people more functional, less prone to stress and anxiety. Realizing happiness that is independent of conditions, would result in may result in diminished drive from activities that are driving by the seemingly insatiable ambition for greater perceived social status that is currently the normative state of the human race. But that would be compensated because a greater portion of our drive coming from compassion and curiosity. So more curiosity, and more solving of useful problems. Some evidence of this can be had from contemplative activity can dismantle the mechanism in the brain the inhibits happiness without the aid of drugs*. This sort of expertise is difficult and requires extended practice, so it can be confused with disengagement. Many often later go on to have considerable impact on human culture and values. This is both subjectively verifiable, and objectively via brain scans one example outlined below. http://brainimaging.waisman.wisc.edu/press/NCCAMOct08.pdf http://brainimaging.waisman.wisc.edu/press/NCCAMOct08.pdf

argumentum 13y ago

I saw this exact question on Quora recently (if there was a "happiness pill" would you take it). It seemed that most answers mistakenly assumed that "Happiness" was something you can define for everyone, rather than something that individuals have to pursue for themselves. Happiness is a catch-all term for various "good" feelings, such as joy, satisfaction, contentment, bliss, victory etc.

tmsh 13y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine Philosophy has been thinking about this for a while. In my opinion, happiness is like life, it evolves. Targeted short-term pleasure is possible through extraordinary drugs, maybe in the near future, but probably the brain re-levels. It doesn't approach a stasis. At least, not completely (though happiness gets increasingly more refined over human history, so what seems like happiness now may be this sweet spot in the future that is its own ballpark which we largely reside in and explore -- again, I think happiness gets more and more pinpointed, compared to say Neanderthal times, but it doesn't necessarily ever approach a constant).

pramalin 13y ago

I think down syndrome may come close to the perfect genetic engineering of happiness IF its negative aspects like learning disability can be taken care of. (disclaimer: have one with it in family)

mcgwiz 13y ago

These characterizations of a happiness drug contradict the forces of evolution. If any such a drug were to be developed, it would indeed sap ambition from many people. Even assuming it accounts for all existing relevant genetic variation, it wouldn't prevent genetic mutation. So those born with mutations that make the drug less effective will procreate with relative ease, eventually correcting for the drugs adverse effect on the survival of the species. Of course if cultural (political?) forces also established that any genetic variation was bad, then we would indeed be in trouble. Why? With no threat of pain, and the absence of pleasure replaced by unlimited pleasure, what goals would exist? What would motivate action? Or given a relativistic perspective, what would just motivate procreation?

BHSPitMonkey 13y ago

There is work that must be done to ensure a person's survival and well-being. If someone is so influenced by this drug that they wouldn't abstain from using it long enough to take care of themselves, then they would either need someone else to do this work for them or get sick and perish. This seems like a glaring downside, which violates the premise that our hypothetical drug has no downsides/deterrents from its use.

abus 13y ago

Not everyone would choose to take the drug in the first place.