<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>Me:</div><blockquote type="cite"><div><blockquote type="cite"> if you could open the "preferences"<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">panel in your mind it would take an iron will not to move the happiness<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">slide switch just a little further to the right, and then a little more, and<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">then a bit more [...] I hope not but drug abuse could be the explanation for<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">the Fermi Paradox. Why go to all the trouble of actually accomplishing<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">something when you can get the same agreeable feeling of pride and<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">fulfillment without all the bother?<br></blockquote></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div> Stathis Papaioannou:</div><div><br></div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>If it would take an "iron will" to resist the temptation to do this<br>and you think resisting the temptation would be a good idea then you<br>could just give yourself the requisite iron will.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div>Easier said than done. I don't believe it would be viable for a mind's happiness to be forever fixed at one point regardless of whatever good or bad things happened around it, there would be no motivation to do anything if your satisfaction can never increase or decrease as a result of it; and even worse, rigidly fixed rules of whatever sort leave a mind vulnerable to getting stuck in infinite loops. So you're going to have to come up with a scheme for moving that pleasure point, one that depends on circumstances and does so in a way that you think is responsible. But whatever security you set up protecting that vital process will certainly be able to be subverted, especially when you become far more intelligent and powerful than you were when you dreamed up the scheme and the security arrangements so many nanoseconds ago. </div><div><br></div><div>And besides, even if you could overcome all these huge obstacles and forever limit your happiness, would you?</div><div><br></div><div> John K Clark</div><br></body></html>