Why One Should Enter The Experience Machine

The Experience Machine is a brain-in-a-vat thought experiment introduced by philosopher Robert Nozick in his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. All of the arguments made in this paper mostly apply to before one has entered the Machine. Once one has entered, they lose all memory of the life they had before. They forget ever making the conscious decision to go into the Machine. It no longer is important to them and the fake reality created inside the Experience Machine is now their new actual reality. The point of the experiment is whether or not one should enter the machine or not. Having the option of living a life that is only filled with good experiences is an attractive offer. But, if one wants to enter the machine, they would need to leave
Before going into the machine, one much choose between a variety of different experiences that would last about two years inside the machine. When the two years are up, the person wakes up and chooses the next two years of experiences (Nozick, 1974). Once inside the machine, Nozick implicates that “people hooked up to the experience machine will not be able to exercise their agency—they become the passive recipients of pre-programmed experiences” (Grau, 2005). In the case of the Experience Machine, it allows the brain to basically live a life that is only filled with good experiences. There is no such thing as a bad experience within the Machine because whatever people inside the Machine desire to experience, it will become so. In the words of Christopher Grau, “ I don’t just want to have the experience of being a decent person, I want to actually be a decent person” (Grau,
Human’s tend to value authenticity because achieving something through hard work and struggle is much more satisfying. It is very similar to cheating in a video game. Maybe some people do not mind cheating to get the best items or to get the most money but finishing a game entirely through the means of cheating is no where near as satisfying as finishing the game through nothing but hard work. It may take longer than it would with the use of cheats but because there was so much struggle involved, the end goal is much more satisfying. The same could be said about Minecraft’s Creative mode. Minecraft’s Creative mode allows someone to build anything they want within the the game environment. It allows the player to have an unlimited amount of any block in the game, grants invincibility to the player, and gives the player the ability to fly around so that it is easier to place blocks in tall areas. Many people build remarkable things in Creative Mode, but because everything is given to you, whatever created in that mode is no where near as satisfying as creating the same structure in Survival mode. Having to break and collect every block needed to build that massive structure is always more satisfying than being given everything in the palm of your hand. In the case of the Experience Machine, it is much more satisfying to work