Damascene Philosophy

Thought ExperimentsXVIII

Would you plug into the experience machine?

A machine can give you any experiences you want, indistinguishable from reality, for the rest of your life. Would you plug in?

Reading time
4 min
Difficulty
Introductory
Branch
Ethics
First posed
Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, 1974
you, plugged inthe machinea perfect life, none of it real
A machine that gives you any experiences you like, indistinguishable from real life. Would you plug in for good?

The setup

Imagine that neuroscientists have built a machine that can give you any experience you desire. Want to write a great novel, fall in love, climb Everest, or win the World Cup? The machine will stimulate your brain so that you feel exactly as if you were doing it. While plugged in, you will not know you are in a tank; it will all seem completely real.

You can programme the next two years of experiences in advance, then come out briefly to choose the next two. You can choose a life of continuous, varied happiness, with more joy, achievement and love than you could ever have in reality.

Robert Nozick, who described the machine in 1974, asked: should you plug in for life? And if you would not, what does that tell you about what you value?

Why it matters

The experience machine is the classic objection to hedonism, the theory that the only thing good for a person is pleasure, or positive experience. If pleasure were all that mattered, you should plug in without hesitation. Most people say they would not.

It is also increasingly practical. Virtual worlds, immersive games, and future brain-computer interfaces raise the question of how much of a life can be lived in simulation before something important is lost.

Key terms

  • HedonismIn ethics, the view that pleasure is the only thing good in itself and pain the only thing bad in itself.
  • WellbeingWhat makes a life go well for the person living it. The main theories are hedonism, desire-satisfaction theory and objective list theories.
  • Objective list theoryThe theory that some things, such as knowledge, friendship and achievement, make a life go better whether or not the person wants or enjoys them.
  • Status quo biasA tendency to prefer the current state of affairs simply because it is current.
  • Desire-satisfaction theoryThe theory that a person's life goes well to the extent that their desires, or the desires they would have if fully informed, are fulfilled.

The positions

Position I

Do not plug in: reality matters

Most people would refuse, which shows that we value more than experiences. We want to actually do things, be a certain kind of person, and be in contact with reality.

Position II

Status quo bias

Our refusal reflects a bias toward whatever we already have, not a deep value of reality.

Position III

Plug in

If the machine really provides a better life as experienced, plugging in is the rational choice. Hedonism survives.

Arguments and objections

Do not plug in: reality matters

Best argument
Nozick gave three reasons. We want to actually do things, not just have the experience of doing them. We want to be a certain way: brave, kind, intelligent, not an indeterminate blob floating in a tank. And we want contact with a deeper reality, not a world limited to what people can construct. If anything matters besides how our lives feel from the inside, hedonism is false.
Strongest objection
Our reluctance may come from fear of the unknown, distrust of the technology, or concern for those we leave behind, not from a genuine valuing of reality. Change the thought experiment and intuitions shift.

Status quo bias

Best argument
Felipe De Brigard ran a revealing variation: imagine you learn that you are already plugged in, and you can choose to unplug and return to your real life, which is much less pleasant. Many people say they would stay plugged in. If we really valued contact with reality, we should choose to unplug. The asymmetry suggests status quo bias is driving our intuitions.
Strongest objection
The variation changes more than the starting point. Unplugging means abandoning all the people and projects in your current life, which matters to you, even if they are simulated.

Plug in

Best argument
What else could make a life go well for the person living it, except how it feels to them? The things we think we value for their own sake, like achievement and relationships, we value because of the experiences they bring. If you could have the experiences without the real things, nothing would be missing from your point of view, and your point of view is what your wellbeing is.
Strongest objection
Most people believe that a person who is deceived, for instance someone whose spouse is secretly unfaithful, is worse off than they think, even if they never find out. That suggests wellbeing is not purely a matter of experience.

Who argued what

Where you stand

Would you plug in for life?

Choose one to see how people answer.

Variations

Already plugged in

A technician tells you that you have been in an experience machine all along. Your real life is ordinary and somewhat lonely. You can unplug now. Do you? If you would stay, why would you not have plugged in to begin with?

The partial machine

Would you plug in for a week? A year? Would you take a pill that made your real life feel more meaningful than it is? Many people's answers change at different durations, which suggests the original intuition is less simple than it looks.

Cypher's choice

In The Matrix, the character Cypher betrays his friends for a chance to be reinserted into the simulation with his memory erased, saying that ignorance is bliss. The film presents his choice as villainy. Is that fair?

Go deeper

Three theories of wellbeing

Philosophers distinguish three main theories of what makes a life go well for the person living it. Hedonism says only pleasure and the absence of pain. Desire-satisfaction theories say having your desires actually fulfilled, which the machine fails to do if you desire real achievement. Objective list theories say certain things are good for you whether or not you want them: knowledge, friendship, achievement, health. The experience machine is a test that hedonism seems to fail and the other two seem to pass.

Schools of thought: Epicureanism, Utilitarianism

Related ideas

Question

Does life have meaning without being given one?

If no one designed us for a purpose, is a human life meaningful anyway, or do we have to make meaning ourselves, or is the search itself the problem?

Thought experiment

Are you a brain in a vat?

A brain kept alive in a vat, wired to a computer that feeds it a perfect simulation of life. From the inside, it would seem exactly like your life.

Thought experiment

Are we living in a simulation?

If advanced civilisations can run vast numbers of simulated worlds, simulated minds would vastly outnumber real ones. So which are you more likely to be?

Question

What makes an action right?

Three great traditions give three different answers: the results it brings, the rules it follows, or the kind of person it expresses.

Thought experiment

Plato's cave

Prisoners chained in a cave see only shadows on a wall and take them for reality. What happens when one of them is freed and sees the sun?

Question

Should you only care about what you control?

The Stoics divided the world into what is up to you and what is not, and argued that peace comes from caring only about the first.

Further reading and sources

Open questions

  • If you never found out, would it matter that your life was not real?
  • What do you want that you could not get from the machine?
  • Is a happy illusion better than an unhappy truth?

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