My first thought when I heard this was, “No, I wouldn’t do it.” I thought about the real world going on all around me while I lay unconscious in a vat forever, missing everything. But Nozick thinks most people wouldn’t do it, and to him, this proves that there are things humans value more than their own pleasure, and that pleasure for the sake of pleasure leaves us lacking something important. If hedonism is legit, said Nozick, then everyone would immediately elect to plug into the experience machine. Hedonism suggests that the only thing that matters is human pleasure, and that the only goal should be to maximize pleasure. This is a thought experiment proposed by philosopher Robert Nozick in order to refute the philosophy of ethical hedonism. The question is: If the experience machine were available to you and guaranteed to work flawlessly, would you do it? If not, why not? You’ll never again wake up to experience the actual world or interact with actual people, but you won’t know that, and you’ll feel like you did. You will experience your perfect life in its entirety, exactly as if it really happened-but in reality, none of it is real and you’re actually floating in a vat of fluid in a pitch black room. You’ll experience everything you said you dreamed of, for the duration of your life (or what can feel like a lot longer if you choose), and you’ll have no memory of going into the experience machine or knowledge that your world is only a simulation. ![]() Once you’re in the tank, the simulation begins. ![]() They put your unconscious body into a tank of fluid in a pitch black room and cover your head with electrodes. Then they induce you into a coma that you’ll never emerge from. You go into the lab and sit down with the staff and talk to them about everything you’ve ever wanted to do in life-you describe your perfect, most ideal, most pleasurable, most joyous, most satisfying possible life. ![]() Imagine scientists have come up with an amazing new technology called the Experience Machine.
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