.png)
The prompt for this paper for my Sci-Fi and Ethics course was thus:
Felipe De Brigard’s paper (2010) attempts to cast doubt on the effectiveness of the experience-machine thought experiment. Does he succeed? Be sure to consider both Nozick’s arguments in support of the thought experiment and De Brigard’s criticisms of it.
In Nozick’s famous experience machine thought experiment he posited the idea that people would chose to remain in the real world and not partake in the experience machine due to human’s having more concerns than just pleasure and pain (Nozick, 1974). This thought experiment was meant as an argument against the philosophy of hedonism, a value theory which argued that pleasure was the only motivator and pain the only deterrent from any course of action. Nozick believed that the endless and perfect pleasure of an experience machine would tempt some, but that most people would not forsake the inherently more real nature of reality, that there was some value to reality which hedonism could not account for.
De Brigard agreed with Nozick on most counts, except for the conclusion as to why people would not enter the machine. De Brigard found that Nozick had made a logical leap in assuming the reasons that people wouldn’t enter the machine. In this paper I will specifically examine the other reasons De Brigard posits that may motivate one to not chose to live in the experience machine (De Brigard, 2010).
First, I will address the reasons to not enter the experience machine that attempt to invalidate the premise of the original though experiment, and how these criticisms of the experience machine become out-dated by new versions of the thought experiment. De Brigard describes how his students bring up many issues with the experience machine, issues he sees as valid: Many said they doubted the computer program could predict everything they wanted, or that they would feel unhappy if they were to plug in by themselves without friends or relatives. Some participants even expressed qualms concerning the continuity of their memories and identities. One answer, in fact, pointed to the following paradoxical implication: if the experience machine is supposed to provide me with things I find pleasurable, and I find pleasure in surprising experiences, then by pre-programming all my future experiences I will undercut my major source of pleasure, namely the element of surprise. But if the experience machine cannot provide me with surprises, then it is false that it is able to give me everything I want. (De Brigard, 2010)
These arguments do not offer legitimate criticisms of the experience machine, but instead posit mostly short-sighted responses that refuse to honestly engage with the experiment as presented. The question of doubt in the supercomputer’s ability to produce their exactly desired experiences ignores that a core premise of the thought experiment is the supercomputer’s ability to do just that. In proposing the original experiment Nozick said:
If you are worried about missing out on desirable experiences, we can suppose that business enterprises have researched thoroughly the lives of many others. You can pick and choose from their large library or smorgasbord of such experiences, selecting your life’s experiences for, say, the next two years (Nozick, 1974)
The supposed “paradox” of the surprising experience is nothing more than a misunderstanding of the thought experiment. If one truly wished to have a surprising experiment, than the supercomputer could surely provide for you a surprise, even if you had picked it out the computer could cause you all the feelings and sensations associated with surprise, or more likely alter your memory to forget that you ever selected such an experience. Nozick writes “Of course, while in the tank you won’t know that you’re there; you’ll think it’s actually happening.”(Nozick, 1974) which is easily interpreted as saying that one wouldn’t remember selecting the experiences. If one could remember selecting the experiences, then one would know one was in an experience machine, which is expressly prohibited by the rules of the experiment. The only legitimate concern enumerated here in De Brigard’s response is the concern that, while picking the experiences and in between the two year time spans that one spends in the machine, one would deeply miss ones friends and family. However, the 1989 version of the experiment machine put forth a version of the experiment in which one never left the machine, clearing away that concern.
Now it is time to move on to the very legitimate counter-argument brought forth in De Brigard’s argument. But first, a clarification must be made. De Brigard performs a massive favor to Nozick’s argument by slightly changing the scenario in his version of the experience machine. In De Brigard’s version, the choice is whether or not to leave the false reality, instead of whether or not to enter the false reality. Brigard’s version reads thus:
It is Saturday morning and you are planning to stay in bed for at least another hour when all of the sudden you hear the doorbell. Grudgingly, you step out of bed to go open the door. At the other side there is a tall man, with a black jacket and sunglasses, who introduces himself as Mr. Smith. He claims to have vital information that concerns you directly. Mildly troubled but still curious, you let him in. ‘‘I am afraid I have to some disturbing news to communicate to you’’ says Mr. Smith. ‘‘There has been a terrible mistake. Your brain has been plugged by error into an experience machine created by superduper neurophysiologists. All the experiences you have had so far are nothing but the product of a computer program designed to provide you with pleasurable experiences. All the unpleasantness you may have felt during your life is just an experiential preface conducive toward a greater pleasure (e.g. like when you had to wait in that long line to get tickets for that concert, remember?). Unfortunately, we just realized that we made a mistake. You were not supposed to be connected; someone else was. We apologize. That’s why we’d like to give you a choice: you can either remain connected to this machine (and we’ll remove the memories of this conversation taking place) or you can go back to your real life.’’ (De Brigard, 2010)
In changing the experiment up, De Brigard has gotten rid of the common concern that by leaving the real world, one would be abandoning the people that depend on them, or even enjoy their company. While some may see that concern as a point in Nozick’s favor, as it is a non-hedonic reason one may have for wanting to stay out of the experience machine, a different version of hedonism, such as psychological, moral, or rational hedonism (Silverstein, 2000), may offer a way to incorporate the concern about your duty to others into your own psychological well being, and therefore make staying out of the machine an instance of the avoidance of pain.
The avoidance of pain being, in hedonism, a key factor in the human decision making process. Brigard’s version of the experiment leaves people with very little non-hedonic reason to leave the machine. So if in Brigard’s research he finds another reason that people may chose to leave the experience machine, he can be relatively sure that his scenario is specific enough to only discuss one or two new reasons to leave.
The most compelling counter-argument in De Brigard’s paper is that humans are not motivated by a connection to the real world but instead that we are are motivated by the status quo bias, which is:
“...an all too common behavioral pattern known by economists and behavioral psychologists as the status quo bias (Samuelson & Zeckhauser, 1988): the fact that people tend to prefer the state of affairs they are currently in—their status quo—because, when facing a decision that could alter it, ‘‘the disadvantages of leaving it loom larger than the advantages’’ (Kahneman, Knetsch, & Thaler, 1991, 197–198).” (De Brigard, 2010)
De Brigard’s most compelling piece of evidence to this point is his study, in which he asked participants different variations of his experiment which was quoted above. He put forward a neutral variation of the experiment, the one quoted, a positive variation which added that “In
reality you are a multimillionaire artist living in Monaco.”, and a negative variation which added that “In reality you are a prisoner in a maximum security prison in West Virginia.’’ If it was a human connection to the real world that motivated us, as Nozick suggests, then all three questions would return overwhelming answers to leave. A more realistic approach would have one expect that those in the negative variation may stay at a higher rate, but that the positive and neutral variations would still overwhelmingly return answers to leave the reality. Instead, Brigard found that in the positive and neutral variations that only 50% and 54% of participants respectively opted to return to the real world. Surprised by the result that more people would leave the positive world, Brigard refined his data by performing another experiment in which the neutral variation was used twice, with a neutral change variation which added the following to the end of the question: “However, you may want to know that your life outside is not at all like the life you have experienced so far.’’In this neutral change variation, 59% of participants opted to remain in the experience machine. These results strongly indicate that the determining factor in whether to stay or leave the machine was, for at least a non-insignificant portion of the surveyed population, not a connection to reality but instead a connection to the status quo.
While I believe that the status quo argument is very powerful, having seen the development of the experience machine in my philosophy class I am forced to reckon with the idea that inevitably there will come a variation of the experience machine that deals with this concern and counter-argument. Until that point, it remains a valid argument against Nozick’s though experiment.
“The Experience Machine”, The Interned Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed October 5, 2022. https://iep.utm.edu/experience-machine/
Silverstein, M. (2000). In Defense of Happiness: A Response to the Experience Machine. Social Theory and Practice, 26(2), 279–300. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23559087
“Hedonism”, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed October 6, 2022. https://iep.utm.edu/hedonism/
Nozick R. (1989). The Examined Life: Philosophical Meditations (1st Touchstone). Simon & Schuster. Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, state, and utopia. Basic Books.
Felipe De Brigard (2010) If you like it, does it matter if it's real?, Philosophical Psychology, 23:1, 43-57, DOI: 10.1080/09515080903532290
Bradfield Ross, of Benton, Ky., is a member of the McConnell Scholar Class of 2026 at the University of Louisville where he plans to study philosophy and political science, with a minor in french.