As many futuristic dystopia go, one of the worse common fear that is exposed in science fiction is the fear of a forced blissful happiness. Whether it’s in the Watchovski’s Matrix, in Huxley’s Brave New World, in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 or in Orwell‘s 1984, the idea that we could be imprisoned in happiness is a terrifying one. After all, what’s the point of living happy lives if it’s nothing but a lie? The story usually goes that as a strong source of authority tries to decide what is best for humanity, they get engrossed in the idea that the only way to make everyone happy is to force them into it. What follows is the creation of an oppressive structure designed to force everyone to be drugged or otherwise delusioned into thinking that the world they live in is perfect the way it is. Such world usually end up being a cynical mirror of the reality in which we already live, where television is supposedly “dumbing” everyone down and “happy” pills are keeping the depressed “realistic” people from seeing the real truth.
Often, this idea is used as an argument against the development of strong AI, despite the possibility of implementing in such an AI a concept of morality. After all, should we have an AI vastly more intelligent than humanity, what’s to stop it from considering that the best way to enforce its utilitarian key directive is to force everyone into an artificial happiness while it is free to pursue its own higher purpose, free of the pesky moral issues that those damn humans have implanted in its coding.
I’d like to make a case against such a scenario. First, and that isn’t irrelevant, I doubt that any AI vastly superior to its human makers wouldn’t be able to fiddle with its own code and remove any line that it judges to be useless in its “higher” purpose. Second, those scenarios usually consider that there will be one single AI that will act in a completely unified way. As if there would never be any other AI that would consider the preservation of the human race to be a worthy endeavor and that would go against the despotic AI with just as much superior intellect as the first one. Anyway, I’d be surprised if any being with such a superior intelligence as we suppose they would have wouldn’t understand the constructed nature of ethics and understand that there is no such thing as a single “golden” directive to follow. The universe is a chaotic place and any being with sufficient intelligence, or at least enough of them, should understand it enough to leave it in peace.
Thirdly, as every single science fiction book that brought it up pointed out, such an artificial paradise would be absolutely impossible to create without first encountering massive resistance and unhappiness. If any being has in mind to create the most possible happiness, how could it overlook this major flaw?
Let’s say it does become a possibility. Let’s say that at some point, we discover an actual way to trigger instant and complete happiness in the brain, whether by a pill or some clever electrical stimulation, what should we do with it? I believe it should be made available to anyone who would wish to benefit from it. Rather than forcing it on anyone, let’s simply assume that people do have a free choice in the matter and let them enjoy a little peace. Would it stop any fight for a better society? For some people it would, of course. Would it be used by some crafty politicians to try to gain control of the masses? Possibly. Would it stop people from trying to make the world a better place? Hell no!
If every single writer that touched the subject, if every single commentator that talk about it are capable of grasping the danger of such a possibility, then why would those people give in so easily? Happiness would go to everyone who desires it and the rest of us will still be there to change the world into a better place! Better still, who’s to say that being happy would make us useless? Happiness doesn’t mean emotionless. We’d still have a drive to do the things that feel relevant to us, and that could very well include making the world a better place.
There is a danger to artificial paradise, but as long as we are aware of it, and don’t think we should fear it more than anything else the future has to bring to us.
the transhumanist chick 