If happiness consisted of personal self-realization, accomplishment and a sense of moral connectedness, and a machine could provide an interactive virtual world—or an artistic medium within which one could achieve these things, of course I would. Imagine a world without drudgery where the potential for artistic collaboration, and the liberation of the human imagination could create elaborate live-in architectures, game worlds, economies and social systems that would otherwise be physically or practically impossible.
But, on second thought, its inevitable that whenever there is a reliable pleasure in this world, there will always be those who feel it their God-appointed duty to take it away from you. In their view, any form of pleasure that competes with their notions of “God’s Plan” will be regarded as a temptation, a vice, and a sinful lifestyle that can not be allowed.
Human versions of paradise can never be allowed to compete with the believer’s heaven, much less be actualized or regarded as a legitimate personal choice. So, religious killjoys can be counted upon to demonize the enterprise and make it illegal, ensuring that, at some point, you will be ripped from your pleasure machine, no doubt after you have grown long accustomed and adapted to it. And, of course they will feel the need to punish you for placing your own value choices above theirs, no doubt subjecting you to the unimaginable and pointless privations of prison, the way they do now with drug offenders.
But then again, after being radicalized by such an experience, one could take great pleasure in making sure that what goes around comes around. After all, if a machine can create great pleasure, it can also create inescapable prisons of unrelenting misery.