revised and edited, final love course response
I believe that a person inside the machine would be happy because they are fed the experiences that envoke bliss, however, I do not believe I would enter the experience machine. The machine would dilude a person's brain into believing they were happy, but any and all emotions the person feels are fake even if they don't seem that way. The same is true for any experiences a person would have in the machine. Know matter how real events may feel, they are not part of reality. A person inside the machine would not actually be in love or making contributions to humanity, and it is for this reason i don't believe I would enter the machine. I would not want to give up any possibility of actually having a positive impact on the world for engineered bliss, know matter how realistic it may seem. I don't believe that my life would have been a worthwhile one if I did not leave the world a better place than it was when I arrived. Know matter how small or seemingly insignificant, I want to have made an impact on the world in the end of my time. I would never get to do this if I were trapped inside the machine, even if I believed that I was. I would never give up the chance to make an actual difference in the world for a life trapped inside a machine with know hope of ever being able to fulfill my goals.
The concept of being trapped inside the machine would also be a compelling reason not to enter it. Even though I may believe I was blissfully happy, simply knowing that it was know longer in my power to decide if I could ever leave would be extremely distressing to me. I would not want to trap myself inside the machine for the rest of my life, regardless of how the device could make me feel. I don't believe I could bring myself to completely give up control of my life or resign myself to the fact that everything I felt or did in the machine would be fake, I would never have a real experience again. I also believe that I would not be the only person to have this reaction to the idea of the experience machine. I believe that the negative reaction to knowing any emotion would be fake, even if it felt real, and the idea of being trapped reveals that humans want to be able to control their destiny and potential happiness for better or for worse.
The concept of being trapped inside the machine would also be a compelling reason not to enter it. Even though I may believe I was blissfully happy, simply knowing that it was know longer in my power to decide if I could ever leave would be extremely distressing to me. I would not want to trap myself inside the machine for the rest of my life, regardless of how the device could make me feel. I don't believe I could bring myself to completely give up control of my life or resign myself to the fact that everything I felt or did in the machine would be fake, I would never have a real experience again. I also believe that I would not be the only person to have this reaction to the idea of the experience machine. I believe that the negative reaction to knowing any emotion would be fake, even if it felt real, and the idea of being trapped reveals that humans want to be able to control their destiny and potential happiness for better or for worse.
Grade: A-) Why would not being in control of life detract from your happiness? What is it about this? Robert Nozick who first proposed the proposition of the “Experience Machine” in 1974 to test whether there was more to life, than feeling happy. Nozick’s answer about plugging into the machine for life is a resounding “NO!” Far more matters to us as human beings, he argues than what we experience, no matter how pleasant. First of all, we want to DO certain things, not just believe we are doing them. Second, “we want to BE a certain way, to be a certain sort of person. Someone floating in a tank is an indeterminate blob. “One of the distressing things about the experience machine, as described,” Nozick ads, “is that you are alone in your particular illusion.” What use is it to feel happy about oneself, one’s artistic genius, ones love life or one’s service to humanity if its all imaginary? “What we want, in short,” Nozick says, “is a self that happiness is a fitting response to-and then to give it that response.”
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