Member-only story
Why Happiness Can’t Be Faked
The Experience Machine thought experiment
Every so often I find myself imagining that everything in my life is going perfectly to plan. My relationships are bouyant, my social life is all dinner parties and wine evenings, and my work is winning the best accolades around.
My imagination can do this. It can conjure effects that don’t match reality. But all this is just in my head. I can imagine whatever I like; it’s what happens in reality that counts, isn’t it?
There is a thought experiment put forward by the philosopher Robert Nozick known as the Experience Machine.
The ideas is that the Experience Machine is a device that can give you all the experiences you most desire. You create the perfect life. You just tell the engineers what you want to happen to you and they code it into the machine.
The catch is that the experiences are not real but simulated through electrodes to your brain; your body is floating in a tank whilst your ideal-life is projected onto your consciousness by a very powerful computer. It’s like a perfectly rendered virtual-reality machine.
Every two years or so, Nozick explains, you awake from your suspension and for a few hours, select the experiences you want for the next two years of your life. Then, whilst you’re in…
