The Value of Choice/Freedom

[Defiant47]

B. If you have few choices but you're kept alive, then you're being treated like a pet or prisoner. A well taken care of prisoner is still a prisoner.

So you would rather break out of a prison that gives you the time of your life (figuratively) into a world of darkness and despair? (to be extreme)

 

[Ayatollah So]

It depends how notable "notable" is, obviously. I value freedom sufficiently that I would sacrifice other things that make me happy to attain a certain level of freedom.

NB:
1) The implication is that freedom also makes me happy. If in Scenario B, when you use the word "happiness", you have already taken into account the fact that freedom makes me happy, and that level of happiness still falls lower than in Scenario A, then obviously I would choose A. But I took "happiness" to exclude the part of happiness that is derived from being free.

I had some similar thoughts, but I decided to take some hints we had been given about "notable". Remembering that making the best choices in scenario B leaves us "notably" less happy, and that I rarely make the best choices available for me, I took option A. I think the value of choice-making is mostly (but not wholly) extrinsic: it's about what the choices can get you, more than choice-making itself. Although that does have some importance in its own right.

Now if you said in scenario A that I would be deprived of all action, and that everything would be provided for me but I could do nothing for myself - then I'd choose B. There's more to freedom than choice

I think different readers are taking the word "happiness" to mean different things, and this explains some different votes. I take "happiness" to be a state of feeling - joy and/or pleasure, absence of worry, etc. I don't take happiness to be defined as "whatever is most beneficial to the person."