#experience machine

When Ignorance Truly Isn’t Bliss

When Ignorance Truly Isn’t Bliss Lessons from We Happy Few By Brandon Packard

  We’ve heard it a million times, “Ignorance is Bliss.” It’s a phrase that has echoed through time, but where did it start? The phrase dates back to 1742 and a poem in which Thomas Gray states, “Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.” In other words, ignorance of certain issues makes you happy, and what’s the…

From “Funlosophy”, a series of articles for a newsletter.

Sitting around in lockdown, staring at the same ten walls (or however many interior walls your house has), escapism can be a very appealing pursuit. There are many forms of escapism, but here we’ll be looking at a theoretical, sitting-in-one-place, ultimate method of escaping the humdrum or suffering of life in this world.

In the Homeric epic the Odyssey, Odysseus and his intrepid chums stumble across a land populated by the ‘lotus-eaters’. These guys do nothing more than sitting around eating from the Lotus plants that grow there, which puts them in a continual blissful state where the problems and cares of the world melt away into total insignificance. Odysseus was a stick-in-the-mud and stopped his men from partaking in the local culture, whisking them away to the next land, where they would be eaten by a cyclops.

Imbibing narcotics as a form of escapism is clearly something people have been enjoying for thousands of years, but the idea of ‘lotus-eating’ has been applied to philosophical discussion: to what extent would people choose to escape real life?

Robert Nozick put forward the idea of a lotus-eater machine, which he termed the ‘Experience machine’, a device that people could plug into that would simulate a perfect and happy existence. He was using the thought experiment to refute the philosophical concept of hedonism, especially in classical utilitarianism, but we’re going to focus on the aspect of escapism. The concept didn’t originate with Nozick, of course; the idea of an experience machine that simulates a better existence to real life has been the topic of science fiction at least as far back as the 1920s, and the conclusions drawn are often reflective of society at the time.

The main thrust of the thought experiment is, would you choose to plug in?

Our lotus-eater machine will perfectly simulate a blissful and wonderful life, with enough realism that you won’t be aware of its artificiality while you’re plugged in. Life will be exactly what you want it to be – the lotus-eater machine will be programmed to precisely your desires, and you will be ‘pulled out’ at ten-year intervals to check you’re still happy with the program. Each time you are plugged back in, you will have no memory of these checks, or indeed the outside world at all. The simulated life will be a perfect and fulfilling existence, free from regret or real-world-homesickness at least while you’re plugged in. You won’t see your friends or family, or interact with anything that actually exists, but the facsimiles in the simulation will be completely believable, quite possibly improved.

So, by indulging our escapism, exchanging the harsh realities of life for an ideal existence, are we losing anything? The world within is simulated, but as real to our minds as the actual world. Since the only thing we can be sure of in this life is our own experience, would this life actually be any less ‘real’, despite its artificial beginnings?

Consider whether you would choose to plug in. Would your choice be different if you were aware it was a simulation, and that the real world waited outside? If you object to the idea of living in a false reality, can you pinpoint what exactly you would be missing? If it’s “real interactions” or “real struggle and achievements”, are you sure this would matter if your mind was convinced all experiences in the machine were real?

A Way To Self-understanding and Enjoyment

On the path of life we walk, stagger, jog or roll—as animated organisms: 99% oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus (who may or may not enjoy the song “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”)—we are called upon to take action or not to take action.

We must make yes and nodecisions the results of which determine how we live, think, feel and behave individually and collectively as a…

Mary’s room 

The prisoner’s dilemma

The experience machine

The beetle in the box