Well, I'm not the author, so it isn't me who you should ask, but I guess, again, that that's entirely the point: there is no such a "why not". Except that you are saying that as if it's something you can actually do. But in reality you have neither the supply of all the necessary drugs to make you feel what you are trying to feel, much less the "some stimulation device" to make this all happen.

Otherwise, that's precisely what you'd do, despite you saying the contrary.

> But in reality you have neither the supply of all the necessary drugs to make you feel what you are trying to feel

Plenty of people find and use drugs to improve what they're feeling, and they're reasonably successful at it, from the inside, from their own perspective.

> Otherwise, that's precisely what you'd do, despite you saying the contrary.

No, it's not, and it's not what most people would do, for reasons too long to get into here. Like I said, there's a lot of literature here. Most people have pretty strong beliefs that they would rather suffer in a real world than have a satisfied fake life with managed feelings. It's only when the pain is too much that they fall back to alternatives.

> Most people have pretty strong beliefs that they would rather suffer in a real world than have a satisfied fake life with managed feelings. It's only when the pain is too much that they fall back to alternatives.

Right, but you're still just trying to achieve some mental state. It's just that that mental state is impossible to reach through drugs/simulation alone.

One point here beeing that to reach a mental state you might have to not trying to be reaching that mental state but trying for the actual activity.