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From The Atlantic:
It is a good question, but I was a little surprised to see it as the title of a research paper in a medical journal: “How Happy Is Too Happy?”
Yet there it was in a publication from 2012. The article was grappling with the issue of how we should deal with the possibility of manipulating people’s moods and feelings of happiness through brain stimulation. If you have direct access to the reward system and can turn the feeling of euphoria up or down, who decides what the level should be? The doctors or the person whose brain is on the line?
The authors were asking this question because of a patient who wanted to decide the matter for himself: a 33-year-old German man who had been suffering for many years from severe OCD and generalized anxiety syndrome. A few years earlier, his doctors had implanted electrodes in a central part of his brain’s reward system—namely, the nucleus accumbens. Electrically stimulating the patient’s brain had worked rather well on his symptoms, but now it was time to change the stimulator battery.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday April 28 2018, @02:58AM (13 children)
Shouldn't the question be, if you can control it, who would want to be sad? Is there some benefit to being sad? That said it might be really creepy if everyone walked around with some Joker-type face expression all the time cause they are just so (chemically) happy. But then you would probably be happy to so you might not care or notice.
I guess the future might really be like the old WEG RPG Paranoia after all. A dystopian technological nightmare where everyone is happy all the time, or faking it, and friend computer makes sure you take all your happy pills and that there are no deviants, mutants or commies around.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @03:48AM (7 children)
Unhappiness can be motivational.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Saturday April 28 2018, @05:30AM (6 children)
This. I'm sure heroin is lovely, but I've never let my brain experience it. Life is full of tradeoffs between ephemeral experiences and longterm goals. I sometimes choose ephemeral experiences, but there is a limit as to what I'm comfortable comforting myself with. I don't want to foist my personal preferences on others. Given enough time wherein people have access to easy happiness, I think evolution can sort out what a useful balance is. We've changed our conditions radically over a short time span, and we're continuing to do so. There might be ways to use artificial happiness quite effectively, as a reward system that values things evolution hasn't implicitly recognized as useful yet.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Virindi on Saturday April 28 2018, @09:37AM (3 children)
Yeah...why is everyone not on heroin? The answer is that human culture is self-regulating to this kind of threat. People are able to see the long-term effect it has on others and make a rational choice not to use it. The same would apply to some kind of "happy button", assuming everyone didn't try it all at once and that people were actually given the choice whether to use it.
A good analogy would be attacking a colony of bacteria. Killing off a few at a time will be ineffective, but if you can hit them all in one blow you can be successful.
Luckily, enough of the population seems to view new "wonder" technology with skepticism that, as long as we maintain the nominal ability to choose what we use, we are probably safe as a population.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Vocal Minority on Saturday April 28 2018, @10:26AM (1 child)
I think the two of you have a drunk some War on (Some) Drugs Kool Aid at some point. I'm assume at some point in your life you have had opioid pain killers? Heroin is like that, just a little more so.
Oh, and with a lot more barf.
(Score: 2) by Virindi on Saturday April 28 2018, @11:54AM
How so? I said society as a WHOLE is self-regulating, not that it doesn't destroy individuals. Or that all individuals couldn't deal with it. I said nothing about individuals :)
I think some individuals are capable of self-control of this kind of thing and others are not. But that is unrelated to my previous point; I was merely assuming the worst case scenario and saying even in that case it would be okay.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday April 28 2018, @10:56PM
No, the answer is that heroin doesn't just make you happy. It makes you unhealthy, prone to severe legal trouble, and broke — all of which tend to you make you very unhappy.
The reasons for all that are well worth discussing; some are primary effects - the direct result of the drug - and some are social - taking away the liberty to make choices for yourself for whatever justification might be fielded.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday April 28 2018, @01:02PM
Obligatory: https://youtube.com/watch?v=WrhzX3dRRiI
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday April 28 2018, @04:50PM
The reports I've heard sort of disagree. "It's like being dead." This sort of tells you what his life was like the rest of the time. It's an interesting question of why didn't he just kill himself, but perhaps that's a separate instinct.
So what it sounds like is that it's really like Novocaine for the mind. Not something I'd describe as lovely. And this means that the addictive process involves amping up whatever is unpleasant that gets suppressed by the drug. Well, this would explain both why it's a pain killer, and why it's a bad way to handle chronic pain.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @04:04AM (1 child)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday April 28 2018, @05:08AM
You lost, Obama, We won. Deal with it.
You may assassinate me, but my compatriots won. Come and get it, Hillary.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday April 28 2018, @04:52AM
Niggers, Jews,
Bad News.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @05:25AM
My father, for one. He did the typical mid-life crisis thing, got divorced when I was 16, remarried a medicated woman 10 years younger than himself... after awhile he decided to go on the meds himself, and he was "happier" nothing bothered him minute-to-minute, but on the long horizon he was hating the decisions he was making, spending themselves deep into debt buying pretty things that weren't really necessary and were ultimately hurting their long-term comfort and control of their lives. After a couple of years on the benzodiazipemes he made the decision to wean down and eventually quit them, it wasn't easy for him. We haven't talked about it in years, but I think his wife is still on the Lithium.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday April 28 2018, @11:55AM
Yup. Same as pain. It makes you want to avoid the cause in the future.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.