Poll: The Experience Machine.

[Arakasi]

Assume there is a machine capable of being plugged directly into your brain. This machine can simulate for you the most happy life possible. All the luxuries life can offer experienced exactly the same as if you were actually there.

Do you plug into the machine? I know I would.

Edit: Oh, and you can never unplug. Assume you are a brain floating in a tank, also assume that you'll live for as long as your brain can provide you happiness.

Edit 2: For those of you who are effecively saying 'I wouldn't be happy in the experience machine', you are wrong. You absolutely would be happy in the experience machine, otherwise it wouldn't be the experience machine discussed in this example.

 

[madwarper]

No. In fact, I'm sure anyone who found themselves in such a machine would fight to get out. Batman did [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchance_to_Dream_%28Batman:_The_Animated_Series%29].

 

[Arakasi]

No. In fact, I'm sure anyone who found themselves in such a machine would fight to get out. Batman did [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perchance_to_Dream_%28Batman:_The_Animated_Series%29].

The machine Batman was hooked up to is not a true experience machine in the sense of the hypothetical. He would feel total happiness if it were.

 

[madwarper]

The machine Batman was hooked up to is not a true experience machine in the sense of the hypothetical. He would feel total happiness if it were.

Oh, really?

This machine can simulate for you the most happy life possible. All the luxuries life can offer experienced exactly the same as if you were actually there.

Spoiler

In this episode, Bruce Wayne awakes in a seemingly idyllic dream world in which his parents are still alive and he never became Batman.
[...]
The Hatter breaks down, saying that Batman has ruined his life (in the episode "Mad as a Hatter") and that he would give him everything that he wanted, just to have him out of his life. Disgusted, Batman turns the Hatter over to the police and leaves, facing reality once again.

Bruce had his parents. He had Selina Kyle. He had a normal (well, about as normal a billionaire can have) life. He rejected it.

To truly experience life, you must experience pain. Else, you might as well be dead.

 

[Arakasi]

The machine Batman was hooked up to is not a true experience machine in the sense of the hypothetical. He would feel total happiness if it were.

Oh, really?

This machine can simulate for you the most happy life possible. All the luxuries life can offer experienced exactly the same as if you were actually there.

Spoiler

In this episode, Bruce Wayne awakes in a seemingly idyllic dream world in which his parents are still alive and he never became Batman.
[...]
The Hatter breaks down, saying that Batman has ruined his life (in the episode "Mad as a Hatter") and that he would give him everything that he wanted, just to have him out of his life. Disgusted, Batman turns the Hatter over to the police and leaves, facing reality once again.

Batman had his parents. He had Selina Kyle. He had a normal (well, about as normal a billionaire can have) life. He rejected it.

To truly experience life, you must experience pain. Else, you might as well be dead.

That was everything he thought he wanted. The machine does not take into account what you think you want, it takes only into account what will make you maximally happy.
The reasson he was discontent with his existence in the machine is that:
1. He knew he was in the machine because he was simply tossed in without it making any sense to him.
2. It didn't make him happy.
3. What makes him happy is being Batman, the simulation didn't even try to take that into account.

 

[madwarper]

That was everything he thought he wanted. The machine does not take into account what you think you want, it takes only into account what will make you maximally happy.

How? How can it give you what would make you happy, when you don't know what would make you happy?

3. What makes him happy is being Batman, the simulation didn't even try to take that into account.

I'd disagree. While just speculation, being Batman doesn't seem like a source of happiness for Wayne, more like just a compulsion. Much like Dexter's "dark passenger".

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

Hmm, can you pick and choose with it? Or is it a 'for life' kind of thing? I'd love to experience sex with some celebrities or whatever with this machine, but many other things, such as video games or whatever, I'd much rather just do in real life. If that makes sense.

 

[Arakasi]

That was everything he thought he wanted. The machine does not take into account what you think you want, it takes only into account what will make you maximally happy.

How? How can it give you what would make you happy, when you don't know what would make you happy?

Science, magic, it doesn't matter. It's a hypothetical.

3. What makes him happy is being Batman, the simulation didn't even try to take that into account.

I'd disagree. While just speculation, being Batman doesn't seem like a source of happiness for Wayne, more like just a compulsion. Much like Dexter's "dark passenger".

The compulsion was not adequately taken care of, leading to unhappiness. So it is a failure of the machine.

 

[Arakasi]

Hmm, can you pick and choose with it? Or is it a 'for life' kind of thing? I'd love to experience sex with some celebrities or whatever with this machine, but many other things, such as video games or whatever, I'd much rather just do in real life. If that makes sense.

That makes sense, but yes it is a for life thing.

 

[piinyouri]

The problem with this is I think most people have been conditioned to believe there is no such thing as a perfect reality.
If you woke one day where there was no war, no conflict, everyone was nice ect what would be your gut impulse?

Mine would be that something is wrong here.

It's like Agent Smith said in The Matrix movie, the first version of the matrix was a perfect construct, free of violence, disease and strife, but humans or the human brain just couldn't accept it.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

That makes sense, but yes it is a for life thing.

Then I choose no. While it would be fun to feel the pleasure of all my fantasies, I'd feel much better in the knowledge that the pleasure I'm receiving are from real actions I am really performing/taking part in.

 

[Arakasi]

That makes sense, but yes it is a for life thing.

Then I choose no. While it would be fun to feel the pleasure of all my fantasies, I'd feel much better in the knowledge that the pleasure I'm receiving are from real actions I am really performing/taking part in.

If you would feel better for it, the machine would make you think that they are real.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

If you would feel better for it, the machine would make you think that they are real.

Perhaps, but it would ultimately be deceiving me, I'd be living a lie. That doesn't sit comfortably with me, at all. No matter how great the feeling of said celebrity sex would be.

 

[Arakasi]

If you would feel better for it, the machine would make you think that they are real.

Perhaps, but it would ultimately be deceiving me, I'd be living a lie. That doesn't sit comfortably with me, at all. No matter how great the feeling of said celebrity sex would be.

So you're saying that you wouldn't sacrifice your comfort now for a lifetime of happiness?


Okay. Let me ask you this then.
Hypothetical:
This current world isn't real, there is a world beyond this one, this is just a simulation like The Matrix. Outside this simulation lies a much worse life, you will die young, it will be painful, dirty and lonely.
Would you want to know that? Would you choose to leave the current life you have? Would it invalidate all you've worked for?

 

[Yuno Gasai]

This actually reminds me of a concept from the Red Dwarf universe, a videogame called Better Than Life [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Than_Life] which basically gave you everything you wanted.

People got so addicted to the videogame that their physical bodies decayed while playing it. They refused to stop playing even to sustain themselves, preferring instead to remain submerged in the alternate reality. Most of them died, unsurprisingly (despite their families' best efforts to keep them alive).

I wouldn't plug into the machine because I imagine something like that would be highly addictive. Also, surely all the challenge/sense of achievement is taken out of it if you're handed everything you want on a silver platter?

Mind you, it'd make an excellent morale boost for people who are in palliative care.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

snip

To be honest, this is starting to get a little silly, and feels like you're taking your own thread off the rails. What I said, is I'd rather live a real life than a lie. So to answer your first question, yes, I wouldn't sacrifice my current, real comfort for a lifetime of falsely-acquired happiness, no matter how real it felt.

As for the weird question. I can't answer that. You're saying this very life we're living is a lie, so everything I've ever done is a lie. How can I possibly answer that with any semblance of accuracy or sanity?

 

[R4ptur3]

No because I actually like my life and like madwarper said If you experience pain only then can you experience true happiness /lamequote

 

[Arakasi]

snip

To be honest, this is starting to get a little silly, and feels like you're taking your own thread off the rails. What I said, is I'd rather live a real life than a lie. So to answer your first question, yes, I wouldn't sacrifice my current, real comfort for a lifetime of falsely-acquired happiness, no matter how real it felt.

Okay then. It is hardly off the rails though.

As for the weird question. I can't answer that. You're saying this very life we're living is a lie, so everything I've ever done is a lie. How can I possibly answer that with any semblance of accuracy or sanity?

Well that's the thing isn't it. If you were in the happiness machine that's what it would feel like if someone told you that you were living a lie. It doesn't seem like it could be possible, it seems stupid, and you'd have to wonder why you'd even try to escape it, especailly if it is worse.

 

[Arakasi]

No because I actually like my life and like madwarper said If you experience pain only then can you experience true happiness /lamequote

If that were true, the machine would incorperate the least amount of pain nessecary to get the most amount of happiness.

 

[Arakasi]

This actually reminds me of a concept from the Red Dwarf universe, a videogame called Better Than Life [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Than_Life] which basically gave you everything you wanted.

People got so addicted to the videogame that their physical bodies decayed while playing it. They refused to stop playing even to sustain themselves, preferring instead to remain submerged in the alternate reality. Most of them died, unsurprisingly (despite their families' best efforts to keep them alive).

I wouldn't plug into the machine because I imagine something like that would be highly addictive. Also, surely all the challenge/sense of achievement is taken out of it if you're handed everything you want on a silver platter?

Mind you, it'd make an excellent morale boost for people who are in palliative care.

That reminds me of the experiment with rats, where they hooked up the pleasure centres of the brains of rats to a button, so they could push it and experience maximum pleasure, they also provided food for the rats.
The rats pushed the button until they died of starvation, with the food next to them.

After reading this I made sure to clarify in the OP that you cannot unhook from this, but keep in mind that the sustinance of your brain would be provided for, and you would live a relatively long life.