No, not at any cost. I talked about that in my original post.
>> If you tweak it to give no increase in experience and happiness, and focus only on survivability, you'll have no incentive to survive (no reason to live, because we've defined the goal of life to increase experience and happiness).
I explain that "surviving at any cost" is not an optimal solution either, because we as humans would no longer have an incentive to survive.
The fact is our happiness and willingness to keep going is as much a factor of evolution as our physical survivability... so it's NOT wrong to base it on what evolution "settled on."
Perhaps we may not die from predators, but there are other things. Here's a thought experiment:
Consider an impending asteroid heading for Earth. Which nations or peoples do you think will have the highest chance of surviving? The technologically backwards but harmonious communists, the technologically advanced capitalists, the crack addicts, or the non-crack addicts?
You'll probably conclude that technology matters, not spending every waking moment appreciating the beauty in trees matter, and not feeling high all the time for no reason also matters. We need proper reward-response pathways in order to maximize our survival. Introducing artificially stimulating drugs disrupts it. It sends a false signal, which, according to Paul Graham, can be one of the most crippling things if we don't think it's bad.
http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html
"The most dangerous way to lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to spend it doing fake work."
Getting the dopamine reward from a stimulant drug is like doing fake work, because you're being rewarded like if you actually did the work. Keep in mind, I'm talking about simulants, so LSD doesn't apply here, but there is probably a reason we weren't born fascinated with trees and every little thing.