Hi Yash, I have tried to make that point a few times. However, people will see their happiness as a sine curve, where y axis is happiness and x axis is time. On the other hand, they will see the buddhist ones as a flat zero across time. Actually this I cannot refute so strongly. We will no longer be able to feel the happiness of a gold medal as much as olympic winners do, as you said, there is no longer/ not much vexation. Even when they understand that the pleasure is actually mind made and the release of vexation, pleasure is still pleasure, so what if it is mind made? And also with the Usain Bolt example, if people could, they would just find the next peak of the sine wave. To them, it would be better than experiencing a flat 0. “Nothing worth having comes easy” is the mentality that we all have.
The only point I can make is that the sine curve has more downs than ups for lay people, and perhaps buddhists will not be at flat 0 but progressively go higher with feelings of “well being”. Even this may be hard to get across, they would think it is a “placebo effect”. Another possible way of explaining is that buddhist can experience the highs without the lows. But I think that is not possible, to feel that much of pleasure you must have that much of vexation.