The experience machine is a device which can perfectly simulate any experience. It hooks up directly to your brain, so as far as you can tell anything you experience within is real. You can have any experience you want. Especially experiences you couldn't otherwise afford or even experience otherwise. Like drinking a $2.1m bottle of wine or being an octopus.
The latest experience that has been added to the machine is climbing Mount Everest. Unfortunately, this is causing a backlash from people who have climbed Mount Everest outside the machine. The people who have experienced it in the machine feel they have earned themselves the same accomplishment as the people who earned it outside the machine. They felt the exact same hardships to climb the mountain. Yet the people who did it outside the machine feel that even though the machine simulated the experience perfectly, including the difficult parts, that the people who experienced it there have not earned bragging rights in the way people who experienced it outside the machine.
Which side do you think is right? And why?
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It doesn't count if you don't do it in real life in my opinion. The experience machine won't let you fail so there is no risk involved in something like that.
ReplyDeleteDoing something like becoming an octopus for a day would be cool but you couldn't say you killed a shark in real life if you killed one as an octopus in the machine.
This isn't the holodeck from star trek. It replicates things perfectly inside your mind. So if you die in the machine you die in real life.
ReplyDeleteAnother problem that comes up is because it simulates events perfectly how can you tell if an experience WAS real in the first place? You can say there is a fact of the matter, but it is a fact you don't have access to. Think The Matrix before Neo took the pill. No clue he was naked in a tub of goo with his bits showing. No clue at all.
The difference there is that you volunteer to go on this virtual experience instead of doing it for 'real'.
ReplyDeleteThe experience in the machine may feel real but you did not physically go up the mountain in reality.
To keep with The Matrix comparison it would be like if you jacked in and climbed Mt. Everest while one of your crew from the Nebakanezer climbed it in real life dodging the machines the whole way up.
They both cover the same terrain but not they are not the same thing.
Star Ocean vibes. . . Anyway, it seems like for the experience machine users to claim the same bragging rights you'd almost have to redefine what 'reality' is considered to be. However, in this world you're proposing it seems to be understood that the experience machine is not reality and the users have a choice in the matter like Melkore has said.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with the idea of tangibility equaling reality in this example. Based on the Matrix argument though, I guess what I'd like to ask is if these people can choose to live their lives inside of the machine, with some sort of life support system? Or if some people don't get the choice and essentially start out living in this other reality. If this is possible then you might be able argue the authenticity of both realities since it introduces the concept of only knowing one 'reality'.
I don't fully agree with the Mt. Everest climbers because they're just being whiny elitists; however, their experience is the more real one. mostly.
ReplyDeleteWhile the experience machine is capable of flat lining you if you decide to take a cozy snow nap, outside of the machine it can't cut your knee if you fall or give you frostbite. It especially can't give you a rock from Everest that the physical climbers could easily procure if they wished.
For the experience machine to be as "real" as real(wha...) you would have to stay jacked into it's systems for the rest of your life. It would be the only way you could show off that rock or the scar on your knee.
Of course, at this point we could all go into goofy Matrix philosophy about the Everest climbers also being jacked in, but...meh! meh.
Choosing the way you access the experience doesn't change the experience itself. What is it that makes the experience fundamentally different? Especially if you have no access to the knowledge of whether or not you are in the machine. To other people the experience may seem different. But how is it different for you?
ReplyDeleteKoro brings up some interesting points. The Mt. Everest example may have been better than I thought. Let's go as far to say as the machine can replicate the experience completely on your body. So your body gets the same physical experience without having to move in the "real" world. The machine can also alter your memories so that you think you really went to Mt Everest vs you went to Experience Machine Inc for a vacation.
ReplyDeleteMost people would still want to say there is a difference, but at this point it seems that the difference is just a relativity issue more than anything else.