[danans]

> My point is that a life of comfort is not the ideal to which we should aspire

You are equating a life of comfort with happiness. A lot of people have a more nuanced ways of evaluating their lives, where they value facing challenging and meaningful problems while also seeking stability and comfort.

It's why we have better adjectives to describe a good life than "happiness", i.e "fulfillment".

> humanity's accomplishments have not come from people who didn't want to bother exerting themselves.

Many of humanity's greatest breakthroughs came from people who were specifically insulated from the uncertainties of daily survival. From aristocrats experimenting with physics, to lifetime tenured monks (and later academics) who were given the day to day security to pursue lines of thought that otherwise wouldn't be considered.

Despite the oft-repeated cliche, necessity is more often the enemy of invention. Necessity serves as a pruning mechanism to select the best hypothesis of the many that were created when resources were plentiful.