Would you exit reality to live in a virtual world of happiness?

Exactly, I would say they are venues of hypnosis, wouldn't you?

The Happiness Box

Since the scenario explicity warns of the historically permanent nature of the experience, anyone stepping into the box is committing slow, albeit pleasurable, suicide. As I'm not ready to totally disengage from real or virtual life, I think I would take a pass.

Of course, unless the mechanism fails, once you got hooked up there would never be a moment of regret.

The Experience Machine

Having the ability to disengage from the machine makes for too easy a choice.

My only concern about using this machine would be what effect there might be of not having either random or unpleasent experiences.

Since the machine removes your awareness that you are living a selected, virtual experience, I suppose that randomness will, to some extent, be simulated, but if there is value to true randomness it will still be lost.

Contrast is usually necessary for appreciation and so I would be concerned about what the impact of a lifelong succession of only pleasent experiences might be.

This could be resolved by programming for the occassional unpleasent experience. Once again, the machine's ability to remove awareness that it is being used should not diminish the effect of unpleasent experiences, but there would still be the issue of randomness.

Since length of usage can be controlled though, it will be an easy choice to test the machine for several years and try to determine if there are any ill effects from losing randomness.

Since the ill effects might only manifest over a lifetime, a satisfactory test period would provide no certainty and so at some point a choice will have to be made whether emmersion in permanent of not. The longer though that one lives within the machine the less of a independent life one develops and so ultimately there may be really no choice at all save dying in the machine's world or dying in reality.

Happiness is an emotional state assessed in relative terms. Thus the initial question "Would you exit reality to live in a virtual world of happiness?" presupposes an unresolvable contradiction.

Only if you can prove it is not innate.

You are applying the straw man logical fallacy as I made no such claim that "happiness is not innate".

At the risk of the logical fallacy argumentum ad nauseum I simply said that "Happiness is an emotional state assessed in relative terms".

I made no such claim that its impetus should be intrinsic/extrinsic as might aptly be inferred from your pretext.

Further, the presupposition of an unresolvable contradiction is my core assertion, not your straw man logical fallacy. That presupposition of an unresolvable contradiction not being one I adhere to, but simply outlined as per: I question that happiness can be assessed as an absolute, and if it cannot be assessed as an absolute, then happiness cannot be assessed except in contrast.

If happiness is innate then a happiness machine that could uncover that happiness would not need happiness to be assessed in relative terms and there would be no presupposition regarding an unresolvable contradiction. So I’m not 'putting words in your mouth' by using a 'straw man' but refuting your core assertion by saying that if happiness is innate there is no contradiction because happiness would not need to be assessed in contrast.

Let's take a hypothetical look at the so-called feeling of happiness: I feel great, content, optimistic, cheerful, energetic, creative. If I stop to classify it, to label it "happiness", I do so by implicit comparison with the complementary (and most likely tacit) notion of "unhappiness/misery." But the original feeling was not a classification, not at the existential level, only at the conceptual level--yin-yang. This is why we must learn to be one with our immediate concrete, actual, experience (the main purpose of meditation BTW), and not to live solely at the level of abstract ideas ABOUT experience.

I suspect that people who are obsessed with the goal of "happiness", of "feeling good" are people most vulnerable to drug addiction--and all the other forms of hedonism--pursuits having very little to do with living the good life.

And if Frankie and Annette's Beach Blanket Bingo was a meritable barometer by which to measure said innateness, I would take your views under consideration.

It could be said that: Spinoza considered to be happy is to be ethical / to be ethical is to be happy.

I would say that an unethical person is not likely to be a happy person.

I don't know about that. There are great thieves in the world, who steal to sate their greed, and are usually known as capitalists. There is no reason to assume that they are not happy.

Well, when you get out of the machine you will be be no further ahead than before you got in.

You're livin' in Lala land, i'm not getting into any machine.

Why?

A lot of the Democrats I know seem to be pretty happy.

if the Democrats are in a virtual world of happiness

then the republicans are in the virtual world of themselves , devoid OF THE PEOPLE

Innate happiness is a term describing in relative truth terms, the beyond words experience, of the ineffable, which is sometimes called the bliss that is beyond suffering. This is the experience so-to-speak of the true nature of reality. It depends on no causes and conditions and paradoxically depends on any causes and conditions.

Sorry, but to me your reply is empty of meaning as was your previous reply ????......See my reply to JLN above.

Set, I suspect that we are talking about a different kind of happiness. I admit there is a possible "thrill" in screwing others, but no joy at all in it as a lifestyle.

By what set of criteria do you make such an absolutist claim?