Well, since happiness can't buy you money I'd have to go with the money if only for the chance to prove this insipid saying wrong. The best part is that even if I fail I'd have had a hell of a lot of fun trying.
Happiness in its real sense should not be drug induced. Otherwise it is nothing but numbing the senses in my opinion. I would take the money. Try and double it and then happiness will just come naturally.
Your false assumption here is that there is a real difference between 500 and 1000 millions. Maybe if you took a logic class that would give you real happiness, you know, understanding things.
As a trader a happiness pill could do wonders for your trading! If you had 10 losers in a row or a big drawdown you would still feel good! It wouldnt effect you. You would be one of the worlds best traders.. you would be able to make 10 million a year without breaking a sweat and have garanteed happiness too.
You should definitely not take the happy pill, even for free. The reason is that if you are happy all the time no matter what, you will lose all motivation to do anything. You will just sit and vegetate with a shit-eating grin on your face, but you won't achieve anything meaningful, won't change the world, won't make anyone's life better, won't experience half the emotions that all humans experience, you won't know what it's like to be truly alive, and you won't fulfil your function as a human being. Happiness is not the main goal in life, it is arguably not even a goal at all. P.S. the trader answer is take the red pill, license it worldwide, do an IPO, and become the richest person of all time. You make a lot more than $500m if you can make people happy with a pill, that's for sure lol
Imagine you are so brilliant that you cure cancer in one semester. Then what? The purpose of life cannot be just to cure cancer, or some other one-off achievement, because that means that once you 'succeed', your life no longer has meaning. Therefore achieving a single goal, or even a sequence of goals, cannot be meaningful by itself.
If money buys happiness, then why are there so many unhappy rich people in the world ? Why do so many wealthy people turn to drugs to escape the current reality ? Why do so many commit suicide ? You think Tiger is happy? Like puffy daddy said http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twkh0YiInPM Life is about balance and to much of anything is not good for you. Chasing wealth becomes a sickness to many. No matter how much they accumulate they are never satisfied. Nothing wrong with being hungry and chasing your dream but if it becomes your obsession then you often lose touch on the things that are truly important in life.