Seeking knowledge.

Bettering oneself.

Arguing on the internet.

All of those things bring you some kind of pleasure. Or are used as a tool to gain pleasure in the long run.

Aye, the beauty of humanity. In order to feel happiness, being sad once is needed. Like a good kind of pain.

The problem is that, if this computer were to rip away your humanity and essentially make you a plant, you wouldn't desire happiness anymore. You wouldn't desire anything anymore. You'd just sit there doing nothing forever. You could replace the happiness with misery, anger, or any other emotion and it wouldn't matter, because you're a plant and you can't tell the difference. What's the point of infinite happiness if you can't enjoy it?

What does anything living want?

• to survive
  
• to procreate
  
• to help others of its kind survive
  
• to help others of its kind procreate

In that order, usually, for humans.

Happiness is incidental to all that. It's just a carrot.

Saying happiness is the purpose of life is like saying bowel movements are the purpose of eating. I'd use a more palatable anology, but I can't think of one at the moment.

happiness is not a purpose it is a goal and a derective of personal interest. the base purpose for life forms is to survive, procreate, and die.

regarding happiness and being uploaded into a computer thing (basicly a super eternal fun zone is the jist of what i surmise) the issue of self loathing minds would become a problem. to some people that kind of situation would be their worst nightmare because there are people who become more miserable and angry the happier they become because they cant stand to see themselves do any thing but suffer.

Wheres the heart?

I came here expecting to see super happy mega stories of people's lives, I was disappointed, and now this thread has been tainted with the shadow of misery.
On top of this shadow of misery there was a wall of text! A wall of text involves reading, reading involves time, time is best spent elsewhere, that elsewhere is not here, here I have become further saddened!
Then there was the quoted paragraph, I dislike the idea of being "killed" if this process was to occur it'd make me deeply depressed and anxious before it brought happiness, then to achieve this happiness it will then destroy everything in my mind that made my previous life happy, it will do this by erasing all those memories and people I hold dear, and then put me in a world were I am stuck on a default setting with no way to boost of decrease my state of happiness. But that's ok I guess sine the alternative is a dose of heroin or meth and in a world were I can still be depressed.

I'd rather just die than sit in a state like a vegatable - the one thing I will never let myself become, though I'd rather not die, I would take that option and remain free and happy than sit forever in a bed "dead" and happy
I actually find happiness in knowing my time will come, and knowing that increases the amount of happiness I get from spending with my friends and doing the stuff I like.

DAMN!! THE SHADOW OF MISERY HAS svckED THIS PUPPY DRY AND FED IT TO THE ABYSS OF THE DEAD!!!!

You know, I wouldn't have minded the OP so much if it was presented more soberly. As it stands, it's batting its long eyelashes and baby eyes at me from its coccoon of naivity, while insisting that its opinion is correct. While I would normally not be worked up over something like this I find the manipulation (intended or not) going on here a bit distasteful. It's such a sweet, happy-go-lucky OP that you don't want to counter it. But you (I, anyway) feel you must, and so you end up feeling badly for correcting someone's misconceptions. That is what got me a bit riled up. Why should I feel badly for disillusioning someone?

Because they were happy...wait they can't be happy because they aren't in that machine, or are them, hmmmm.

What it reminded me of was the Vault experiemtn in Fallout 3 conducted by Prof.Braun, who had created a simulation that would allow the minds of the Vault Dwellers to live on, long after their bodies have died - the people in the simulation were over 200yrs old, some never even knew they were in a simulation and now of it was real, apart from one old lady who wanted to my help to kill them all and release them all from Braun's sick experiment, http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Tranquility_Lane#Summary.

I didn't get that far, but it sounds like a spin on The Matrix and Pluto's Plato's (why did I write Pluto? ) shadows against a cave wall... I forget the name of the writing.

Except that those people all still have a sense of who they are. If you remove everything that makes you, you, then you aren't you anymore. You're nothing. Let's say the rest of the OP does make sense. What would be the point of making nothing happy? You're not making people happy; people have memories and desires and aches and pains... You're making nothing happy. Seems a pointless endeavour to me.

And that's assuming you could keep something constantly happy. What is happiness level 7 to one person (X) is happiness level 3 to another (Y). If Y is exposed long enough to X's level -- that's level 7 -- then that would become Y's baseline -- level 0. You'd have to constantly crank up the happiness metre. I think at one point you'd just end up making everyone crazy. Not that there's any everyone to make crazy. Remember, we're making nothing happy.

Totally pointless, from whatever angle you look at it.

and here was me trying to eat my morning banana and keep a simple clear mind until deciding whats for lunch.

Sorry. And to the OP. It's just... wrong.

You completely missed the point I was trying to make. I don't enjoy being sad, angry or in pain. When I was 7, I ended up with a case of Steven-Johnson Syndrome (I looked a lot like http://skinipedia.org/images/photos/erythema3.jpg for nearly eight weeks). I can't even begin to describe how painful that was, and I didn't enjoy a single moment of it. The point is, if don't experience bad things, you won't be able to appreciate good things.

4 reasons that come to my head to counter your argument. I'm sure I could think of more if I put my mind to it, but these are intially apparent.

- Until that machine exists, it's pretty useless discussing it, since the premises that you provide have no ultimate definition, only speculation and hypotheses that are far to wide to leave us with any actual fact.
- I also don't believe that everyone in the world necassarily seeks happiness. I'd far rather survive and live an unhappy life than die happy. Perhaps some wouldn't, but I'm making the point that it's not 100% of the population that seek happiness as an end product.
- Happiness without sadness is pointless. Since there is no comparison, happiness becomes nothing, it ceases to exist.
- The grass is always greener. I don't think that it is possible to have ultimate happiness, nobody can ever be completely contempt, there is always something more we seek, or desire. Human's are greedy by nature, it's part of survival. I don't agree that there is a point where any human can stop and say I want no more from life. What's to say that there wont be a better machine that comes along, that can give us more happiness and so on.

If anyone disagree's and can counter these points. Feel free. I'll listen with an open mind.

Addressing your points:

1) You are right. But that's not important because this is a clearly hypothetical discussion.

2) Whatever people seek, they have a reason for seeking. Whatever this reason is, it is based on some kind of human urge or desire. When you intentionally do any action, you do it with some sort of reason. Unless you're doing an irrational action (such as acting out of anger), your perform that action based on its results, and, more importantly, how those results will affect you or others. Suppose that you're right, and that happiness isn't the most important thing for everyone.

Then why do these people make the decisions that they make? Do they make decisions out of pure randomness? Of course not. They're still doing things because it will make themselves or someone else feel "better," even if it's not necessarily happiness. What could a person possibly be motivated by, other than a change in the way someone feels?

Simply ask yourself this question: is there anything worse than suffering/pain/sadness (any negative feelings)? Of course not. Things only matter because they change the way we feel. A child stepping on a rock and inflicting negligible pain is still infinitely worse than an entire vacant galaxy being destroyed. So if we only do things to affect our feelings, why not just change our feelings directly to get 1000x better results?

3) True. For humans. That's kind of the point of this machine in the first place, though. The human brain is limited as to how happy it can be and for how long. This machine is intended to break such limits to allow true eternal happiness, which is not possible as a human being.

4) True, again. For humans. A human will never be truly happy because our brains will take away the "happy chemicals" if we've had too much. As with my previous point, the machine is intended to extend beyond such limitations.