- You can't fake happiness without paying for it, either in the future or in terms of risk of an equal or greater loss.
This is something I'm pretty much prepared to take on faith. Not that it shouldn't be tested. Keep at it BLTC, but I'm betting you won't succeed.
I won't define happiness, you already know what it is, and besides, I can't.
Seems to me this is the core of most religions. In fact, most seem to follow a stricter (and I think incorrect) version:
- You can't fake happiness without paying for it in the future.
For those who believe in karma, you pay in future lives. For the people of the book, you pay by being denied heaven. Adding a probabilistic component (risk) removes the need for such silliness, while retaining some sense of a just universe -- not a universe that is always just, but a universe that is just on the average.