/lit/ - Literature

>>4586692
What world are we talking about? Is this in a sci-fi book? Title please.

>>4586701
god I hope you're joking....

>>4586692
Pleasure doesn't necessarily equate to happiness.

>>4586701
The title of the book is "Brave New World."

>>4586746
Fuck off. Yes it does

>>4586764
No, it doesn't. Prove it does.

>>4586779
>>4586764
>>4586746
In does in the theoretical world of brave new world, where the controllers can program human beings to only care about pleasure.

>>4586821
What's to say they're even human if they've been reprogrammed so thoroughly?

Why not just drug everyone until we peacefully die off at that point?

>>4586764
so imagine you sleep with a hooker whilst in the middle of sex you feel like the condom is too tight and fucking up with sensation so you rip it off and oh man does it feel good you cum inside her within seconds of taking it off so she leaves and in a week your dick starts getting ichy and starts to develop warts you go to the doctor and you have a std that will never go away you wont die but you will never be able to find a woman who is willing to sleep with you, then in a year someone knocks on your door its the hooker and she has a baby in her arms its yours
now tell me did that one moment of pleasure bring you happiness in the end ?

>>4586828
yeah
why fucking not
that's the dilemma this thread is proposing

if brave new world's system was flawless and able to program humans to be perfectly happy forever, it would be a utopia

the only thing that makes BNW a dystopia is the existence of mistakes that want stuff outside of what the system can provide.

it's a problem of logistics, not philosophy.

>>4586692
So is this like /lit/'s equivalent of /sci/'s "0.999... is not equal to 1" ?

>>4586915
I'm saying, why do they continue to reproduce? If you're going to do what BNW does, why not just fuck everyone up on soma until they die happy and let humanity cease?

>>4586919
Fuck you, yes it is.

>>4586884

3deep5me

>>4586925
they don't reproduce. at least they shouldn't.

children are produced in factories.

if you're saying /why do they do that/ then it's because the World Controllers want happy laborers and happy participants of a robust economy

and also because the world is so perfect and happy it'd be a sin not to bring people into it so they can experience this pleasure

>>4586751
Thank you.

>>4586711
Oh yes. You see, "brave new world" is a sentence

>>4586692
The author was a deeply troubled man.
Controlled happiness doesn't sound like a good idea though.
>>4586779
Ethical hedonism is good. What else necessitates happiness?

>>4586941
>You see, "brave new world" is a sentence
you're the dumbest pseudointellectual i've ever seen

Class distinctions would make me unhappy. Also, handicapping a person mentally doesn't lead to happiness. There's complex happiness and simple happiness. The happiness of food and sex is not the same as the joussance derived from cerebral activities, and it is not a worthwhile trade, even if you "don't know what you're missing".

>>4586940
>and also because the world is so perfect and happy it'd be a sin not to bring people into it so they can experience this pleasure
That's stupid. Hypothetical people do not exist. They have no moral status whatsoever. It's not a sin not to make people just because those people would probably be happy. They aren't any worse off if you don't make them because they "aren't" in the more general sense of the word, as in, "to be." They do not "be" and thus don't matter.
>>4586941
You can't just say "what else is happiness if not pleasure?" as an argument that happiness is pleasure. You have to actually back up the assertion that they are the same thing.

>>4586956
that was more of a joke. please excuse me

>>4586964
Fair enough.

I was almost hoping you'd defend the right of entirely hypothetical people to be brought into existence.

>>4586946
That wasn't intellectualizing, that was spelling-nazism.
>>4586956
It was a simple challenge to whoever to come up with what else there is to make things good. Are you postulating that there's no such thing as good?

>>4586995
I'm suggesting that, if you can't actually show that pleasure is equivalent to happiness, then you shouldn't be asserting so confidently that it is.

Whether there is no such thing as happiness or it's derived from something else is irrelevant.

>>4587020
So where does it come from? Some other adjective? Multiple adjectives? This is like arguing that milk doesn't come from udders.

>>4586992
The rights of the hypothetical are best defended by ensuring a better future world.
Uphill battle.

>>4586701
>What world are we talking about? Is this in a sci-fi book? Title please.
>>4586941
>Oh yes. You see, "brave new world" is a sentence

butterlips are you high

>>4586952
>yfw there is a high pleasure than what you consider complex, but you don't know what you're missing

>>4586952
but thats the thing, they're conditioned to be happy with what they are. to think they're better. a delta minus thinks himself superior to a an alpha plus plus plus world controller, no matter what. and they can't think otherwise because no information is provided to them that would say otherwise

>>4587050
Stop. Stop with the "where does it come from?"

I'm not saying it comes from somewhere else. I'm saying, you, the one who is asserting you know what happiness is, have to show that it is what you say it is.

"You can't prove it's something else" is not an argument. I'm not trying to prove it's something else. I'm trying to get you to support your claim with something more than throwing the focus off yourself.

>>4587078
Happiness coms from us. It is our perceptions of...
And here is where you have me stop. Is it not from within us? Is it anything to you?

>I'm not trying to prove it's something else. I'm trying to get you to support your claim with something more than throwing the focus off yourself.
I support it by not knowing anything else but my own pleasures. To see others happy brings me more happiness, but its not an exchange system, it's still just from me like every other emotion.

>>4587059
Honestly have never had any drugs.

>>4587066
Yes,so? I am still missing something. If I'm asexual I don't know I'm missing sex, but I'd still be missing it.

>>4587077
Yes, not having information is the loss of a complex happiness.

>I would still be unhappy because x even if I had unlimited pleasure stimulation
No you wouldn't, you can't understand this because you have a faulty brain. You probably think your depression is caused by you being so much smarter than everyone around you and seeing the world for what it really is, right? Sorry, a doctor could put an electrode in your brain and you would sit their drooling in absolute pleasure until you died of starvation. It's been proven through much experimentation. You would know this if you were actually smarter than everyone and not just an insufferable bipolar social outcast dealing with new hormones in your body.

>>4587195
What? I don't think I'm smarter than everyone else, neither am I depressed.

If you were being authentic, you'd forgo reading altogether and just spend all your money on heroin.

>>4587208
I take a legal drug called kratom and I don't read books (dead serious)

Euporhia != contentment

Being miserable with other miserable people is a good consolation I guess. But the reality is that people have no free will, human intimacy (having sex with everyone is as good as having sex with no one) no introspection , worthwhile art or any scientific and technological progress in that world.

They are just animals forced to be happy.

>>4587217
Okay, that's your own issue. Burroughs was a fucking off the handle junkies (said he didn't shower or change his clothes for a year straight), and he still sought life experiences and wrote quite a bit.

>>4587257
>(having sex with everyone is as good as having sex with no one)
Is loving everyone, then, as good as loving no one?

>>4587257
I think this is the closest you guys have come to explaining why it isnt an utopia, I read the book a long time ago, they really didnt have any technological or scientific advancement? The society had no advancement?

>>4587257
>They are just animals forced to be happy.

Then...they're all happy. It doesn't matter the way they got there.

Maybe you don't understand the full implications of being able to control what people want, and what makes them happy. Terms like "fulfillment", "progress", "contentment"...those are all meaningless and judged by /our/ standards. They don't have value as descriptors or goals in a world where they are variables that can be cultivated, changed, and forced on people.

A universe were everyone eats shit all the time would be the perfect utopia if the inhabitants were made to love nothing more than eating shit 24/7

>>4587477
exactly it sucks that the gov wont let them have old books and hold back scientific progression but they really dont need it they dont get sick and dont care about what they are missing i see this as an ideal society tbh