Experience Machine

Also known as: Nozick’s Experience Machine

Overview

The Experience Machine is a philosophical thought experiment proposed by Robert Nozick in 1974. It imagines a machine that can simulate any experience you desire—perfectly and indistinguishably from reality. Once connected, you would not know it's a simulation. You could live a life of constant pleasure and success.

Nozick asks: Would you plug in?

Purpose:

To challenge hedonism—the idea that pleasure is the highest good. Nozick argued that most people would refuse the machine, suggesting we value things beyond pleasure, such as authenticity, personal achievement, or contact with reality.

Source:
Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, State, and Utopia.

Also see

Linked from

Happiness

The Happy Pill and the Experience Machine challenge the intuition that happiness is what we all want, and most people refuse the pill. I take that as evidence that we want our happiness to be about something, which is a point against hedon…

Hedonism

The standard objections are the Experience Machine and The Happy Pill: most people would not plug in, which suggests they value contact with reality, achievement, and relationships for their own sake and not merely for the pleasure they br…

Robert Nozick

Robert Nozick (1938–2002), American philosopher and author of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, the libertarian reply to John Rawls: justice is about how holdings were acquired, not how they are distributed, and taxation of earnings is on a par…

The Happy Pill

Not tied to a single author, but widely used in contemporary moral philosophy and psychology; similar in spirit to Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine.