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Home | Personal Development | Robert Nozick's Experience Machine

Robert Nozick's Experience Machine

Joys and Sorrows of Reality

BY: T. Franklin Murphy | May 31,  2019 (edited March 29, 2022)
Human head connected to electrodes, representing Robert Nozick's thought experiment of an experience machine
Adobe Stock Images
In 1974, Robert Nozick posed a question. Would you plug into an experience machine that provided all the feelings of desired experience without the struggles of reality? 
Early in my research and writing, I stumbled upon a brief article that introduced me to the experience machine. The idea left an impact, burning the concept in my mind for over a decade. The author, who I have long forgotten, related the experience machine a concept originally presented by Robert Nozick. (1974, pp 42-45)

What is Robert Nozick's Experience Machine?

​Nozick directs readers to conduct an experiment by imagining a machine that could give you any experience you desired by simply plugging into it and allowing the machine to implant the feeling of experience.
 
“Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Super duper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain.” (p. 42)
Nozick directs readers to conduct an experiment by imagining a machine that could give you any experience you desired by simply plugging into it.
Nozick follows the supposition with the rhetorical question, "would you plug in?" We could plug into this virtual reality machine (something far from reality in 1974) and experience feelings of wonderful accomplishments. We could skip the pain and bathe in the beauties without ever leaving the lab.
 
The idea struck me as preposterous, even silly.
 
Nozick answers his own question, arguing we wouldn’t exchange true experience for these mutants of reality. He explained, “first, we want to do certain things, and not just have the experience of doing them. In the case of certain experiences, it is only because first we want to do the actions that we want the experiences of doing them or thinking we've done them.” (p. 43)
 
When I first read about the "experience machine", I was in the middle of a divorce, losing a lifetime of equity through the collapse of the housing market, and being sued by a major bank over for my second mortgage. Life was failing on all fronts. But the idea of plugging into a machine to experience financial and marital success didn’t appeal to me. I wanted the real thing, not a counterfeit, even if the feelings were identical.
 
Fast forward to 2019. I stumbled through the years. Regained financial security and found relationship security. The path was difficult. I worked more hours than I thought humanly possible. The dating game, the second time around, was fraught with frustrations and disappointments, far from the idealistic joys I dreamed single life would bring. Yet, I made it, eventually achieving what I would have wished for back then—without the machine.

Key Concept:

Life presents problems, hurdles to jump over. Only through the process of living do we develop.

The Experience of Being

The experience wasn’t pristine. The path not straight. Sorrows accompanied the joys. Frustrations spoiled some of the hope. Yet this path is the experience of being, living fully engaged in experience with the freedom to choose and adjust each step along the dusty road.
Erich Fromm considers a similar choice in his book To Have or To Be. “Faith in having mode is a crutch for those who want to be certain, those who want an answer to life without daring to search for it themselves.” (2013, p.31)

Fromm describes the Being mode as:
​
  • The mode of being has its prerequisites independence, freedom, and the process of critical reason. Its fundamental characteristic is that of being active, not in the sense of outward activity, of busyness, but of inner activity, the productive use of our human powers. To be active means to give expression to one’s faculties, talents, to the wealth of human gifts with which—though in varying degrees—every human being is endowed. It means to renew oneself, to grow, to flow out, to love, to transcend the prison of one’s isolated ego, to be interested, to “list”, to give. Yet none of these experiences can be fully expressed in words. The words are vessels that are filled with experience that overflows the vessels. The words point to an experience; they are not the experience. (p. 76)
 
While such a machine has yet to be invented, there are substitutes to the reality of experience. Some narcotics alter brain functioning to provide peace when turmoil should prevail. Defense mechanisms convince with deception, claiming success when in reality one has failed. Many are lured to chase fast answers to life’s tough questions, using the crutch of 'having' instead of the stability of 'being'.
 
So, I ask, do you plug in?
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T. Franklin Murphy
T. Franklin Murphy
Wellness. Writer. Researcher.
​T. Franklin Murphy has a degree in psychology. He tirelessly researches scientific findings that contribute to wellness. In 2010, he began publishing these findings.

Resources:

Fromm, E. (2013) To Have or To Be? Bloomsbury Academic; Reprint edition

Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Basic Books

Index:

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Psychology of Wellness
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Health and Fitness
Research
About Flourishing Life
Flourishing Life Society Link to research articles
Link to an alphabetical listing of Flourishing Life Society article topics
Psychology of Wellness Banner link to Flourishing Life Society articles
Psychology Definitions Data Base Link
Internal Link: Flagship article. Ten Beacons of Light. Improving our lives isn't from following items on a simple list. Science, however, has provided some helpful clues to our pursuit of wellness. These ten beacons of light provide direction, lights that illuminate a path to growth.
Wellness Links
External Link: Where Despair and Hope Touch
External Link: The Benefits of Being Uncomfortable
External Link: Tame Reactive Emotions by Naming Them
External Link: How to Achieve Your Goals by Creating an Enemy
External Link: A Simple Formula for Changing Our Behavior

​Other Flourishing Life Society articles of interest on this topic:

FLS Link. Experiencing Awe: Experiences of awe promote pro-social behavior and invite psychological development. The wise find awe in the awesomeness of life.
FLS internal link. Courage to Become: We need to courage to reach past comfort zones and encourage personal growth.
Faulty Symbols of Success. A Flourishing Life Society article link
Life is governed by laws. Many actions involve several laws competing fro dominance.
A Flourishing Life Article link. A Quiet Life of Desperation
A Flourishing Life Society article link. Fear of Failure
FLS link. Neuroplasticity and Learning. The Brain and new habits
Life has many emotions. All pleasure is limiting, flowing and then gone. Too much pleasure and it loses its appeal.
Shortcuts to happiness may escape pain; but the temporary relief often has a high cost of  long-term trouble.
Flourishing Life Society Link. Sunshine and Mental Health
Seizing the day is a joyful acceptance and a timeless honoring of the preciousness of life. Seizing the day creates a joyful connection to living.
We, like the acorn, have great potential. We, unlike the acorn, are empowered beyond our environments. We can create environments that gives more of the nutrients and protection that we need.

Flourishing Life Society Article Collections:

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FLS Link. The Experience Machine: In 1974, Robert Nozick posed a question. Would you plug into an experience machine that provided all the feelings of desired experience without the struggles of reality?
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