I admit to this being my first time here, and my first reading of a lot of this stuff. Very interesting and food for thought. I would like to point out though, regardless of how the superhappy people do it, pain, in all its myriad forms is helpful, needful and a survival issue for HomoSapiens. Pain is the body's way of letting us know that our carrier is having an issue, whether it is the mild pain of a rash, or the severe pain of a burn. It is our mechanism to tell us there is an issue that needs attention. Emotional pain is a bit more complicated, however I submit that this too is a survival trait, remorse, sadness, pain at the loss of a companion or a loved one, all provide feedback to behaviour modification. It is our pain that defines and measures our pleasure. Our brains, and our bodies are all wired with symmetry... the symmetry of opposites... What is beauty without ugliness? What is sweet without sour... while I think that these things might be able to stand on their own, I absolutely believe that one would loose some of their intrinsic quality without their opposite to compare them to....

To quote a quote... the difference between bad and worse is far more evident than that between good and better....

As for the premise that there is a difference between being forced or being altered to like something... I am sorry but I have to disagree... If one does not voluntarily submit to the modification, then it is merely force of a differently nature... one of the reasons brainwashing is banned.... If I tell you that I can create a prosthetic limb, that you can use just like your natural one, save that it is 5x superior and you elect to make the change that is one thing... but for me to make the replacement regardless of your personal desire, then alter you to LIKE it... that is FORCE, in fact that is the ultimate force... I enforce my will on you even to the point of you liking it...

And, I further submit... such a fundamental change in our metabolism, dna, and brain wiring would effectively be the same as genocide... as the human race would simply cease to exist...

On another note... As for the comment that we as a species will never meet aliens... I would like to say a couple of things... first of all, I distrust absolutes... At 52, I found found that absolutes are far too malleable... I remember when protons, neutrons and electrons were the smallest of matter... absolutely... not so much any more... Further I would submit that, IF there is a god (or race of beings that kick started life here, or some architect that had a hand in it) I cannot see that entity being satisfied with a single experiment. That entity would either being doing it from hubris, or from curiosity, or perhaps simply because it could. Having done it once for any of those reasons simply means that it would be done many times... And creature/race/or intelligence that is capable of engineering something as complex as homo sapien, would be able to create a ton of different viable life forms... and would. If it is all random chance that we are here(which I find hard to swallow) then the same argument applies.. the cosmos is a HUGE place, so huge that we simply cannot comprehend how huge it is.... we can come close with some serious analogies like a muon on the ocean floor would represent our corner of just our galaxy out of millions of galaxies and .... oops there we go again... incomprehensible... So given even random chance... and the size of everything and the amount of matter out there... I would say that statistically even infitessimal possibilities become a certainty given the size of the pool... 1/10 of 1/10 of one percent of 10^666666666666666666 is a huge number all in it self... LOL