I mean articulate a plausible consistent alternative, or partial alternative and we can talk about achieving those ends. If all that was at work here was a disagreement over what constitutes fundamental value then it wouldn’t be tragic, merely a disagreement. However, the issue is that no one is reasonably pursuing any alternative either. Instead they are just going around and fixing those things that happen to bug them even though deviates from any reasonable plan to achieve any coherent set of ends those people might endorse.

(Less importantly, I don’t think your interpretation of the happiness literature is entirely accurate. There’s still pretty significant room for hedonic improvement even within our ordinary biological constraints. Though you’re probably right that even greater results could be achieved artificially — say by plugging in to Nozick’s experience machine. Increasing our ordinary ‘happiness baseline’ sounds like a much more appealing intervention, precisely because it doesn’t interfere with all the other things we value. No mere ‘crumbs’, they.)