Would you plug into the experience machine?

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The experience machine is a thought experiment. From Wikipedia:
Nozick asks us to imagine a machine that could give us whatever desirable or pleasurable experiences we could want. Psychologists have figured out a way to stimulate a person's brain to induce pleasurable experiences that the subject could not distinguish from those he would have apart from the machine. He then asks, if given the choice, would we prefer the machine to real life?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine

Would you plug into the experience machine?

I certainly would! F**k reality! In reality you move physical matter (your body) around so that you can have certain experiences. However, it is quite difficult to maximize pleasure. In the experience machine you don?t have to make any effort and you have a happy fulfilled life. How can anyone choose to have a hard life, working 9 hours a day, dealing with many difficulties, when they can have everything they ever wanted at the push of a button? As people with AS our life is especially difficult but even most NTs have difficult lives with little pleasure. I think I would plug into the experience machine without much further consideration.

Last edited by hyena on 06 Jun 2014, 11:52 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'm right there with you. Plug me in

Reminds me of the "orgasmatron" from Woody Allen's "Sleeper."

As the saying goes, "Reality is overrated."

This is actually a somewhat dangerous proposition. We have a company building orgasmotrons, they're called Occulus, their orgasmotron the Occulus 'Rift'. Facebook owns them, the CIA owns Facebook (Google In-Q-Tel), given the proper orgasmotronics there's no telling what powers of manipulation might be developed by individuals seeking status and influence. Facebook just put fourth ~$100,000,000USD towards using these virtual reality goggles in network attack simulations, effectively aligning the weaponization of technology with a velcro strap directly with the human mind.

I'm an ethical hacker and all bets are off for me. I need to buy someone lunch with NO SCREENS in the middle.

First thing that crossed my mind is Total Recall, and 2nd thing was Neo in the Matrix, when he learns different skills.

Edited: That's pretty funny, after I wrote my message and got back to this page I had an advertisement (for car insurance) Matrix style, black and green, with numbers falling down like in the screen in the Matrix lol. Maybe they picked up on the word Matrix.

Ah, but we aren't talking about the matrix just yet. Compared to a charge-coupled spike lodged in cerebral tissue, everything we do in these interests today can be considered 'outpatient'. I'm habitually accustomed to the cascading green text on black, having even matched some wallpapers and settings with it, although I retain my need to access simplified, ordinary technology in a pinch.

Idea for misanthropic transhumanists; GET A NOKIA. Just do it for everyone else in your life. Windows phone or pre-owned, it sounds like folks here need to remember to drink some tea with their pseudo-populist angst.

Actually sounds like the movie "Brainstorm" which was scarier than an orgasmatron.

I wouldn't plug into it like this but perhaps I would if it wasn't giving only pleasure experiences. There is nothing funny about getting what you want without working for it if it happens all the time. The greatest pleasure is when you try your best about something you consider hard and then you success. "You can't be happy with the light if you never seen the darkness - because you won't even realize the light is there."

This is true when you have a relatively easily life. Some troubles or obstacles along the way, but on average, an enjoyable one. That's when difficulties make the easy parts feel more enjoyable. But remember: most aspies, and especially aspie men, have very difficult lives! When the easy parts do happen, it feels like a lucky accident or even "something that's not supposed to happen". So a machine like this would be a godsend for a aspie whose life is a never-ending stream of difficulties. It may be the only source of pleasure in an aspie's life.

Hell yeah, just as long as it doesn't cost me money and keeps me alive in some way. Life sucks, and being able to live out my wildest dreams would be amazing. The only thing I'd be worried about is that I spend so much time in this machine that my family and friends would hate me for it. In that case, I'd wish for them to be able to have access to experience machines as well. Even if that weren't the case, I'd probably enjoy it so much I'd stop giving a s**t.

I've always thought it would be kinda cool to be one of those lab rats who has a lever wired to the pleasure center of their brains. This is sort of like a more sophisticated version of that, only you could experience new and different things rather than just frying your brain with the same stimulation over and over.

Last edited by mr_bigmouth_502 on 07 Jun 2014, 2:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

Like Lt. Barclay on the holodeck. It becomes more important and more real than "real" life.

What, as entertainment? I guess I'd try it. But considering that I prefer books to TV and enjoy most of all books that force me to do a lot of the thinking, I can conclude I don't really like stories and experiences spoon-fed to me. I think I wouldn't really enjoy it that much.

The "experience machine", as described, would result in your having those experiences, but knowing that they had absolutely no relevance, no importance to anything other than yourself. It would be an empty, useless life--if trapped within such an environment, most people would probably become suicidally depressed within a few months, simply due to lack of purpose--no matter how much pleasure the machine offered them.

Realistically, if it were available it would be a source of entertainment--something people would do to relax, temporarily. Then they would take those experiences, and their feelings and thoughts about them, and connect those to the rest of the world. Functionally, it would be like watching TV or reading fiction.

But being trapped in an "experience machine" would just be a dead end--no meaning, no purpose. Of course, if you weren't the only one trapped in it--if there were other people you could interact with--then it would simply become a virtual world, as relevant and meaningful as interacting on the Internet (by the way: The Internet is real, m'kay? The person on the other end of the computer is a real person; the ideas are real; the interaction is real. Just because it's not face-to-face, doesn't mean it's irrelevant.)

You learn this when you have enough free time and use it just to entertain yourself, playing video games or reading books: After a while, if that's all you can do, you would go stir-crazy. That's because when we read stories or play games, we do it because it's a way of understanding the world--and if we were cut off from the world, all of those stories would lose their purpose. They would stop being satisfying or entertaining at all. Eventually, you would just want to go to sleep, and never wake up.

A person can survive without many things that you'd think were necessary for happiness--but never without meaning.

medicate me I'd be first in line.

I can think of a VERY good purpose for this machine. Have all of the NT people especially in the medical field, social services, and governmental services that deal with us have to experience what it is to be like US for 24 hours!! ! Perhaps then things might be a bit different and we might not have as hard a time getting help and understanding from these people.

Plus another part of me would love nothing better then to see them struggle if just for a day like we do our whole lives!!

That's a great idea! Man you could get people in medical school to live through all kinds of patient traumas for a little while. You are a genius.

Me, I don't want any machine, I just want to be lest awkward. I'd miss my life if I had a fake life.

I wouldn't want hooked up to it either. But I am just twisted and evil enough to wish it on some of these people especially the very unhelpful ones.