Health is Key: Better than Happiness

[Bartholomew]

If you had a wallet-sized machine that would short circuit someone's brain in an instant so that they became deliriously happy for the rest of their lives and for other purposes a human vegetable, would you run around using it on people? Assume that for the limited number of people you'd be able to zap, society would provide for them.

Would you murder chronically depressed people who nonetheless didn't want to die?

 

[Dissident Dan]

I would not want to force my will on someone like that. There is danger when one believes that one is indubitably correct and has the right to force his/her will upon others as one sees fit. That is tyranny, and tyranny has always led to problems. For example, the pleasure center that is being stimulated in your hypothetical situation could become less responsive over time, and the person could become "bored", if you will, with that type of experience, leading to a boring vegetative state.

Also, I have an irrational desire to do things more cognitively complex than sit in a drug-like stupor. I would have trouble reducing others' cognitive capabilities, knowing that I would not want this done to myself, however irrational my desire is.

 

[Bartholomew]

No, assume the device is perfect and does what it is designed to do, and then answer the question.

Why do you call your desire to do cognitively complex things irrational, and your desire for happiness rational? The only reason you gave for happiness is that it "feels right." If other things feel right aside from happiness, why do you not apply the same reason?