> I always hear the situation put this way, but it rings false to me. If you gave me a perfect happiness drug, I wouldn't want to sit in bed all day and take it.
Reason is a poor way of estimating behavior, in special, your own.
But this isn't reason divorced from reality — it's my experience that happiness does not have the effects postulated here. As I said, I have been happy on numerous occasions before. The result was not that I sat in bed all day with zero productivity.
The thought experiment is proposing a drug that promotes sustained, unconditional high levels of happiness, with zero drawbacks.
This doesn't compare with anything a normal person experiences during life. There's no rational expectation to be had of how anyone's behavior would be if such a drug existed.
Reason is a poor way of estimating behavior, in special, your own.