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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.

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.

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.

If you're not asleep, you might be a better person. The problem would be when you ran out.

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.

Great point.

> 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

I've been reading some meditation related books lately, and this was one of the ideas they were trying to get across. That meditating for a sense of fulfillment doesn't replace your desire to go about and do good work, it merely changes your perspective on how you feel while doing those things. Additionally, it (allegedly, convincingly argued) enhances your ability to do the things you like well, and to make better choices in general.

> 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.

A useful way to contrast that is with uppers. I took my friends aderall a few times in College - in addition to staying awake, I felt profoundly happy - yet I didn't give up my goals (study all night) - I merely had a good time doing them.

I know there's some science around parts of that - far too lazy atm to search and link it (sorry!). But perhaps it is a bit counter-intuitive that feeling deeply happy and satisfied could also drive a person to do more meaningful work at the same time.

"Sit in bed all day" maybe isn't the best way to describe the problem with such a drug. "Never change anything in your life" might be better. People don't like change, and they generally only make serious life changes when they're unhappy with the way their lives are going currently. If you're never unhappy, you'll never change anything.

The negative consequence there is that often times we don't learn about ourselves until we attempt to make such a change. If you hate debugging Java, and you can take a pill that makes you not mind it, you might never discover that you could actually be a much better Ruby programmer than you ever were a Java programmer -- or that you really were never cut out to be a programmer at all and should pursue something totally different. You'd just chug along debugging Java your whole life and never realizing your full potential.

> 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.

Reason is a poor way of estimating behavior, in special, your own.

But this isn't reason divorced from reality — it's my experience that happiness does not have the effects postulated here. As I said, I have been happy on numerous occasions before. The result was not that I sat in bed all day with zero productivity.

The thought experiment is proposing a drug that promotes sustained, unconditional high levels of happiness, with zero drawbacks.

This doesn't compare with anything a normal person experiences during life. There's no rational expectation to be had of how anyone's behavior would be if such a drug existed.

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.

What is a meaningful life?

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.

> "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.

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.

I'm not really talking about doing something for society. I'm finding it difficult to put into words what I'm thinking.

Pursuing pleasure as an end goal rarely leads to pleasure. A lot of addictions seem to stem from the pursuit of pleasure as an end. We treat people for doing something that makes them "happy" to the exception of all else (whether that be gambling, alcohol, drugs, etc.). I honestly think if there was a happiness pill we would consider treating people for taking it.

When I talk about doing something, I'm talking about what you do with what life throws at you. Everyone has different circumstances, but what is common is the ability to choose how we respond to those circumstances. Whether we make something (whatever that means to us) of what we are given or not.

Taking a happiness drug and checking out from the rest of life is deciding to do exactly nothing with what life has given us. And I honestly don't think most people would want that.

I'll end with a quote from Viktor Frankl's excellent book Man's Search For Meaning:

"By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic "the self-transcendence of human existence." It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself--be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence."

I am sure I have butchered my own thoughts, but hopefully this helps make some sense of what I'm trying to say.

I believe I understand what you're saying, and in my gut I feel the same. But I wonder if that is something learned, something relative to the present condition of humanity. Civilization seems to hold itself together by a thread. But I think as long as resources are limited this is necessary, because the engine of evolution pushes individuals to be as efficient as possible with resource consumption and competition. In the struggle to survive, this is tempered only by the personal value of a civil society (e.g. less threat of violent death). So we live in constant tension between satisfying ourselves and making sure just enough is done to keep the whole race from self-destructing.

There are of course many who don't subscribe to these traits (at least not consciously). I believe most of them are subject to cultural belief systems that promote social cohesion and cooperation: the nobility (and intellectualism) of altruism, the teachings of compassion by many religions, the promise of a release from guilt by donating to charity.

But if society were certainly stable, then what is there for one to actualize toward? Perhaps it would be that other engine that propels us: Curiosity. But isn't the pursuit of one's curiosities primarily selfish?

Even if we just look at things that benefit society, stable is a long way from perfect. We would still need people dedicated to curing disease, improving education, etc.

Beyond that, there is creating art, raising children, forging and strengthening romantic bonds (it's very difficult to phrase the pursuit of love in way that emphasizes its potential other-centeredness), making people laugh, advancing knowledge in some field. All these things still have meaning in a stable society.

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/

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-...

> 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.

Society deems it "unproductive", in the sense that society is a team-sport at a high level. Not being productive implies being a net-sense of entropy (neutral is not really an option, as society views you as under its umbrella of resource expenditure).[edit: put forth only as devil's advocate position]

The other and perhaps different explanation, is that Philosophically, man is happy only when exercising his facilities. This has been said as either his 'reason' or his 'power' depending on your taste in philosophers. But in either case the notion of perfecting some craft-work. In particular, this should further some functional inter-relationship with the outside world (not to mention family/informla political skills). The idea one could be both 'vegetative' and 'happy' simultaneously tends to imply 'ok, but that's not a human life...that is a vegetable one', or something similar.

These are good arguments, in many ways. Enough so that the burden of proof should be on those putting for completely contrary ideas, eg: "why is sitting in your own filth objectively "bad" if you're happy."

IMHO, Its not the filth, or the sitting, but the lack of anything evidently positive. Sitting in filth might be, after all, a corralary to "getting shit done" with limited resources. For instance, sitting is rest from other work; and 'filth' is just debris that has yet to be cleared away or moved away from (the latter being imminent).

No, by "sitting in one's own filth", I meant "sitting in one's own filth", i.e., neglecting hygiene in a particularly revolting fashion, but not bothering to do anything about it because one's ability to experience revulsion has been artificially suppressed. Such inaction also, of course, will if protracted enough certainly lead to various skin conditions, verminous infestations, &c. -- but our notional lotus eater won't be bothered by those, either, any more than by the conditions which produce them.

> Philosophically, man is happy only when exercising his facilities

> But in either case the notion of perfecting some craft-work. In particular, this should further some functional inter-relationship with the outside world

> These are good arguments, in many ways. Enough so that the burden of proof should be on those putting for completely contrary ideas

I respectfully disagree. My instinct is to question your premise that "man is happy only when exercising his facilities." I'm assuming that this has roots in ancient Greek philosophy, and I'm not well versed enough in that area to refute the reasoning that leads to that premise, but I will say that I'm hesitant to accept it at face value. Even if scientific studies indicated that man is happy only when exercising his facilities, it would only indicate that exercising your facilities has instrumental value in providing us with satisfaction, not intrinsic value.

To me, this idea that productivity is an objective Good seems like a statement of personal values rather than anything fundamental to the Universe. Of course, personal values matter; I'm just trying to draw a line here between productivity as a means to an end vs. productivity as intrinsically necessary. If someone is able to achieve happiness without "exercising his facilities," I don't think we can assume that their happiness must be impoverished compared to those pursuing more mainstream paths, even if our gut instinct tells us otherwise.

And to reiterate: this is ignoring, for the sake of argument, the topic of negative externalities. Obviously, if unproductive behavior has a detrimental effect on others, the issue becomes far more complicated.

Simply sitting in your own filth while being unconditionally happy will kill you from dehydration or infection unless someone else (who is not 'happily sitting') helps you.

The 'negative' emotions are very important for the functioning of any animal or mind - they are the drivers that motivate us to do stuff instead of happily dying.

I could write a long essay on how pain, fear, frustration, boredom and burnout are totally neccessary to implement even for a simple non-human artificial autonomous agent, in order to prevent it to be stuck on 'broken' loops forever - TL;DR is pain is needed to ensure that the 'mind' avoids damage; fear is needed to ensure that the 'mind' avoids serious risk of damage; frustration is needed to ensure that the brain doesn't try the same thing over and over again if it doesn't achieve the goal; boredom is needed to ensure that the brain isn't stuck in repetitive loops unless they bring great rewards; and burnout is needed to ensure that the brain at least tries takes a chance at escaping poor conditions, instead of happily suffering through them to death.

Put a brain in unconditional happiness - and it will be so useless and vulnerable, that you'll soon find out why evolution (or designer, if you so fancy) implemented the conditions on happiness.

Skin breakdown/decubitus ulcers, fungal infections, fecal-oral auto-transmission, attraction of parasite-carrying organisms, etc.

Yeah, you can argue these as points in the sense that they may lead to a decreased life span, which means less time enjoying your state of bliss. There's a possible utilitarian angle here.

I wonder whether the field of philosophy has a term of valence equivalent to that of "architecture astronaut".

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

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.

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'.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

Sure, if you're satisfied to look at everything in the world through the lens of Marxist economic theory, I suppose that makes sense.

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.

Reminds me of this short film.

http://vimeo.com/7306050

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.

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

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?

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).

> 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.

> 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

And be dead? Is that OK?

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.

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.

>So, one hour spent Really Happy, outweighs a year spent Just Happy, because that Really Happy is all received by your present self.

I find making decisions that end up along lines of this really, really difficult. The rational part of my brain knows very well which one should I choose, but it has really, really hard time arguing with that more... I don't know, primal? part of me.

I think it's really fascinating, how relatively weak our conscious self is in arguments with our short term desires.

There's something even more fascinating you can learn if you introspect on this topic during an experience with a dopaminergic compound (e.g. cocaine, Adderall.)

Exerting exactly this type of willpower (setting long-term goals before short-term rewards) is what "spends" dopamine in the brain. The more dopamine you have available, the longer-term you tend to plan. And when you run dry, you feel "restless" and want to do things "on a whim."

---

In the face of this, it's really quite fascinating how meaningless a term like "willpower" becomes. Doing what you want-to-want to do basically comes down to:

A. having enough dopamine in the first place (children should really get checked for ADD/ADHD at about the same time get checked for nearsightedness),

and B. making pre-commitments with strong consequences for reneging (e.g., losing money you've bet; or making you look low-status to people you care about.)

There's nothing else to it.

Evolution meats nihilism!

There is a reason we appear to be physicaly unable to experiment that kind of happiness this thread is talking about. The only question is what we'll choose once we are able to change our own brains to make it possible, but then, that's a completely unkown context, so we'll probably choose some option that we can't even imagine today.

But the answer we give now to the question of what will we do tells us something about us, regardless of whether we're actually right or not. Which, in addition, is what good science fiction does; paraphrasing Ursula Le Guin, it invents lies to tell the truth about who we are, right now.

That'd be for the better of 99% of the other living species on Earth.

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.

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.

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

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

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)

Robots

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>

:)

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.

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