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ikr, would do that as a kid and kill a bunch of mobs but then get bored. Later when I got older you felt much better if you had full enchanted diamond armor and stacks of enchanted apples *because* you worked hard for it over weeks of playing beforehand makes going on a mob killing rampage feel much better- ha ha die stupid zombie! take that skeleton, payback for killing me in the mine earlier making me drop my first diamonds into the lava!
It sounds cheesy, but it's actually an amazing way to explain this. When you do that, sure, scientifically you get the same benefits as if you got it in survival. You can easily kill mobs and do whatever you want. But you didn't *work* for that diamond armor. You didn't go through dungeons after dungeons to get those gapples. Instead of climbing the epic mountain, you teleported straight to the top.
The biggest challenge is to recognise the pleasure cube in the real world. Those who build them are obviously not going to make them look the way they are depicted in that comic strip. There are already many pleasure cubes on my phone's home screen, and I am currently typing a comment on a video within a pleasure cube.
Your phone, or any of its apps, are not pleasure cubes. It only makes you produce dopamine, and only at low levels. A true pleasure cube would also produce serotonin and oxytocin (necessary for longer lasting satisfaction and happiness from social bonding), and all three at much higher quantities. The only thing that probably comes near a pleasure-cube is a high dose of heroin, and that only lasts for a very short time.
@@Nathan-pq7xei think op meant that not in the sense of dopamine but in the sense of only being able to experience the experiences of others and not *be* in the content on said app
Freedom is wastly over valued and I don't mean that in any authoritarian way. If you had a set mission that brought you joy and fulfillment, freedom would be less valuable.
>”this scenario is one where you’ll never experience bad side effects or a reduction in pleasure” >”yeah but it would give like bad side effects and the pleasure would be reduced over time so no” The inability to understand conditional hypotheticals is in disturbingly short supply
I’ve always seen it in the way that if you were in a perfect world you would have those little challenges, love, pleasure, and everything good with nothing bad. No deep pits in life you couldn’t escape and hurt to look back on, but still accomplishments and challenges just within your capabilities to overcome.
I don't crave pleasure exactly, I want to experience the full life a human can have. If that means pain, that's fine, not that I don't need pleasure. I need to feel reality. Dreams are enough to scratch that simulation itch.
A subject like this is very complex and deep and overall has a lot of nuance than what I want to think about before going to sleep, but despite all that he did a very good job of explaining this philosophical moral dilemma in detail from just a short comic strip. While there are many things to be learned from this I think a very basic, boiled down, message to take away from all this is that ironically the struggle to achieve happiness will make you happier than the actual happiness achieved.
The Matrix stated it pretty well. The Utopian Version of the Matrix didn't work because the people experiencing it, rejected it. There should be something to be said since we humans evolved to our current state because of Environmental Pressures, not Environmental Pleasures.
I'd use the transformation cube. As much as enduring the medical system for years might be an honourable pursuit I'd rather just get my body right first time.
I mean the obvious answer here is that the “utilitarian” point of view that happiness should be maximized is wrong. The point of life evolutionarily is to procreate so our DNA can continue on, that’s why the pleasure cube is unsettling and bad, and why we don’t want the transformation cube either. We want to have kids so we can continue on in the future.
Literally opposite. Now we can evaluate our ability to raise children and deny this point of life, because we literally have no place nor resources for living
Your comic made me unironically go to the Barber’s to get a new cut and stop eating pizza. If that’s my wake-up call, then I thank you for it, sir or ma’am, or omnivoid serpent of the distant planet of Feelgoodland.
"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization. " -Agent smith
Yeah. Considering what was happening before people were plugged in, and these were the survivors of the war, I too would have been tearing at the walls to get out of that "perfect existence." But really that's what we do, we define our lives off misery and the more happy and carefree it is the more our subconscious says it's wrong.
I love how people take lines from a movie and then ascribe them to real life. Not calling anyone specific out here, but I've been noticing this trend lately, and I don't know about you all, but I certainly don't define my life off of misery.
@@SolarFlareAmerica well I chose this quote as I remembered this scene from the film and the explanation from Brit quite matched the one from smith, life would be meaningless with no suffering and pain, life would become boring, there would be no work no meaning, so the "suffering" smith refers to is daily inconveniences and loss tragedy and all that stuff, as those feelings in some way connect us make us feel, well alive, it's sort of like using hacks in GTA V, you get everything you are at the top, and from there, what can you do? You have everything and nothing to do, there was no work, that's why I quit the game, with everything on hand it just made the game have no purpose, now imagine that with your life, you do nothing all day, all that could be done has been done so you just sit at the top with no feelings and no emotions. so smith referred to the 20th century as the "peak of civilization" it was a time (in the films universe) where there were wars, loss, mundane activities, work, relationships because in the Animatrix film it is shown that humans do nothing all day, it is all done by machines.
@@tubaraofeio1053 bold of you to suggest that life would have meaning without pain and suffering. I agree that they're very noteworthy parts of life, but no meaning? Life already has no meaning other than what we ascribe to it. In a fictional universe without it, New meaning could still be found by those who experienced it. Would it be strange, perhaps even unnerving and alien? Probably. Living makes you feel alive. All the additional layers simply add to that experience, or take away from it. I can easily imagine a world in which I didn't have the additional stress of knowing my family will die one day, and I'd certainly sleep better in it. My little brother discovered cheats for GTA V and thinks they're the best part of the experience. He constantly attempts to break the game using them. He discovered an enjoyment for an alternative form of play, even with all the original game purpose being rendered meaningless as you describe. Except, it's not. The game was made to be enjoyed, and the cheats ARE a part of that. If that's not your cup of tea that's ok too. Loved the animatrix. I loved the suggestion that peace WAS possible, right up until humanity clouded the skies in a self-destructive fervor. Of course, this whole thing is about a comic about a drugged up dystopia, one I too shun. While the line blurs immensely between digital and physical reality, the one through line is we enjoy having the freedom to experience life on our own terms. If such a system was devised, it would need to be as if not more complex as irl to stimulate the human beings within it as well as allowing them to intermingle.
This reminds me of this last summer. I bought a gaming pc and played skyrim all day. At first it was very rewarding but as weeks passed i started feeling strange at the end of each day i felt like I had wasted my day and it felt like every single day was exactly the same, eventually i got tired of playing and decided to read some books. After summer i started college and i only could play on weekends. That changed everything, now when weekends arrived i wanted to play videogames after studying the whole day, and it actually felt good. Recently i started going to the gym and my well being just increased even more. All this has made me realise one thing its responsibility and hard work what gives sense to our lives, its resting after a long day of work and seeing the results of our work what makes our lifes truly worth living.
I think people are turned off by the pleasure cube because its hard to imagine it not getting boring. It would be sort of like just eating granulated sugar instead of anything sweet that has sugar in it. We like to eat sweet things generally, but we also like the other flavours that come with eating sweet things, whether it's cake, chocolate, fruit, gummy bears, etc. There probably is a version of the pleasure cube that more accurately replicates the subtler "high" pleasures associated with things like achievement, but it's hard to conceive of that for most people. Instead it just sounds like you end up pumped full of drugs that keep you dopey but technically happy.
I was thinking about the "pleasure cube" as kind of a better simulation of this world, but even if it's pumping drugs into your brain: I don't think you know how that would feel in reality. The experience you're describing isn't great, but that's the thing: it's not great. The whole hypothetical question is "would you rather make your life a whole lot better, but also make it meaningless?"
Merryweathery is just as intellectually shallow as you'd think he is. He is extremely unfunny, untalented, banal, and panders to the lowest common denominator. His argument instantly falls apart as soon as it occurs to you that the experiences themselves have *inherent* meaning and value value, and it's not the dopamine behind them that gives them value.
@@huuuuuuh2057what experiences? the comic doesnt say what experiences are experienced in the cube, it just says that your brain gets fed seretonin and dopamine.
@@primo4915 yeah. Seratonin and dopamine do not have the inherent value that experiences have, therefore it would be moronic to get in the cube instead of continuing life as an adventurer
@@huuuuuuh2057 isn't that Merryweathers whole argument lol, the MC does the pleasure cube cuz she believes it'll give her more happiness but obviously it doesn't turn out that way
I think you kind of dodged the question by assuming the cube wouldn't be that good. If a certain amount of pain/hardship turns out to be optimal for maximum feelings of well being, then why wouldn't the cube provide that? Assuming the cube would just provide momentary superficial pleasurable things at every second is to assume the cube doesn't do a great job to begin with, since pleasurable things at every second is probably not the best way to maximize pleasure. The moment you become bored with pleasure, or dissatisfied with its lack of meaning, that's not pleasure anymore and therefore the cube isn't fulfilling its purpose. I think I saw something once about people who had some condition where they couldn't stop orgasming non stop and of course that wasn't in any way pleasureful for them. Instead of assuming the cube would overwhelm you with supposedly good things you should assume the cube does a perfect job of ensuring maximum well being even if that doesn't mean an infinite feeling of orgasm. Then the real question is why are people afraid of that on the sole basis that the feelings are virtually induced. The real issue is not that the cube wouldn't produce maximum well being, it's that people believe induced well being is not worth it. And then you could go on about how our feelings in the real world are still induced in some way, how our perception of reality is still fabricated in our brains and only exists there anyway, etc. You could probably tie it with the dread people feel from the simulation theory, which makes them feel like all of their lives could go from meaningful to meaningless based solely on whether the experience of their lives is virtually induced and not on whether the simulation is optimal. I liked the video but I would've taken it in a different direction.
Yeah I had the same thought. In my opinion the cube would lead objectively to the most happiness, people misunderstand it by thinking it would just be a drug induced stupor but honestly why shouldn't it also simulate an ideal life, with hard moments included. Honestly the reason someone would reject it, imo is pretty much purely dogmatic, which I do
The cube is a metaphor for addiction and the decay of society. The constant seeking of pleasure and avoidance of pain. The sacrifice of long term well-being for an immediate fix. While attractive at first, it is in fact suffering, as you get stuck in a loop where you have to keep feeding the beast. The longer you go on with it, the more it imprisons you. You become isolated, alienated, your life deprived of meaning, as you sit in your cube, all day every day. Stop now and the emptiness will hit you harder than ever, as there's nothing left for you outside of the cube. Nothing worthwhile to live for. You've become a slave of the cube. Even an increasingly sophisticated and convincing virtual world is still just a representation. It's not alive, it's bits and bytes on a computer. None of it is real. As the color example in the video illustrates, nothing new can come out of the cube other than what's been put there by the outside world. The cube is a lie, an illusion. The dystopian part comes from a society whose social bonds and moral values have eroded. Where more and more people no longer engage in meaningful human interaction and instead withdraw into cubes. Where you're unscrupulously being offered the cube at every turn, because it's good business. Meaning is lost, only hedonism and money worship remain. We already have cubes. Internet addiction, video games (or the classic substance abuse). People looking for an escape and opting out of society altogether. But a real sense of happines and accomplishment can only come from leading a fulfilling life. If you don't, you'll find life slipping through your fingers and in the end are left with nothing. Choose life.
I agree. I think the cube giving us the equivalent of a candy all the time will just increase our tolerance to dopamine and serotonin. Instead, a *better* pleasure cube would be something like the *fake* good place from the show **the good place**. Our world is sad and insufferable because of the unfairness, the injustice, the class segregation, etc. so many factors of your life are decided before you are even born. The wealth of your parents, the country you were born in, the disability you may be born with. Life is so unfair and that's what makes the world sad and miserable. In my opinion, The ideal pleasure cube would be a world where everything is fair and everyone is born equal. Their actions will have concequences and they will have pain for the bad concequences. But that's what brings the higher pleasure that is different from the pleasure you get from eating a candybar
Okay, but seriously, the pleasure cube seems hellishly addicting. Just as Morty freaked out when Summer pulled him off of the "true level" platform, the inhabitants of these pleasure cubes, including the time traveler, would too. Becoming accustomed to intense, constant pleasure would have them perceive anything less as the greatest pain and suffering they have ever experienced in their lives, even as Hell itself.
This reminds me a lot about a a spongebob episode where Squidward moves into a place where everything he wants is there, mainly the annoyance of Spongebob and Patrick; later in the episode Squidward seems to be depressed, tired of doing the same thing over and over again. Some time later he obtains a vacuum cleaner, and starts terrorizing other citizens; (Pretty sure Spongebob and Patrick show up some time around this point but don't remember.) Anyways, Squidward realizes that Spongebob and Patrick are the only things keeping him going, as when you have done everything, life is dull, there is nothing left to do. Or as you put it "When people climb a mountain, they don't do it just to see the view at the top, the preparation, journey, and experience that comes with it is more important to them than the end." Note: Went off of memory, don't remember a lot from the episode.
@@p3el_ Well lets says the pleasure doesn't end. Endless pleasure mean zero pain, zero pain means no gain. Sadness is beautiful, they exist to make happiness more happier. If we become god and can be and do everything we ever wanted, what's the point? there's no story there's no struggle, there's no conflict nor climax, if that doesn't exist then there will be nothing to love.
Huxley himself summed it up quite nicely: “But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
Contradict himself when he says he wants God. That’s means he does want comfort. The comfort of believing that there’s something out there. That we are more meaningful than everything else. To be more free is to realize we are not special, and God isn’t real.
so much lore in a fucking anime drawing, what a time to live also in a way, soma from brave new world is the pleasure cube in pill form, huxley was ahead of his time
@@Coppergasm not all of them. And also they were not "ahead of time" they actually made very predictable things, things like that always happened since reach pleasure and comfort was and still is the main goal of technological advancement which may leads to these consequences. It's not like he was writing for future generations, if he predicted a thing that happens today it's just a natural coincidence.
@@phantomwarrior8686 our species figured out that we should wash our hands after taking care of a corpse before delivering a baby like 200 years ago (im probably being generous). I think its fair to applaud scifi writers for coming up with concepts like vr in the 50s
@@Coppergasm this is nothing special to be honest. We always had hygiene even though we did not use it in 200 years ago. So, it's still not special to supposedly "predict" future in sci-fi books, because being honest, they didn't predict anything.
@@esterhammerficThe latter can’t because a perfect adventure has to have a degree of challenge and struggle, which, even if you enjoy the activity, don’t produce bliss. A person who loves climbing mountains will struggle and suffer from the pain of the climb, but will still do it because the reward makes it worth it, nobody climbs a mountain with a big smile all the way up.
For me, the thing that would actually turn me away from the pleasure cube is how everything would feel after I got out. There won't be anything in the world that would compare to what I experienced in the cube, and that might send me into a depression or worse.
Even if you were to stay there for your whole life, something still could go wrong, like the power failing or a natural disaster. And all that time you are out of the cube for short matinence would feel like the worst experience of your life ever, because there's nothing else to compare it to.
Tiktok has been one of the closest things to a pleasure cube imo. I've experienced going through the app and then when I become disinterested, I snap back into reality half an hour later. Watching other people doing the same looks disturbing, kind of like that comic shown in the video. Every video is like a hit of dopamine, so when there's a boring video, the user subconsciously swipes away to find a better one.
SAME. i deleted the app because it was messing with my attention span. i went from being able to watch 45 minute long videos to barely making it past a minute before switching to tiktok. it got so bad that after i deleted the app, my fingers still twitched whenever i was bored back to where the app was subconsciously. I've been clean for 9 months now and I'm still going strong.
Modern society focuses far too much on raw pleasure and on isolating ourselves from harm as much as possible. In the technological advancement and comfort that we find ourselves now, we've fundamentally lost touch with a crucial part of our humanity. An excellent video as always my man, you're making some of the most creative and original content on this platform.
That's the issue with Liberalism, it is too much about individualism and atomisation if favour of capitalism and consumer wants rather than societal advancements. The happiness cube is the natural end result of hyperindividualism.
That isn't liberalism. That's Randian libertarianism. There's individualism and then there's radical individualism. One of them is the basis of a free society, the other is the downfall of a free society. I, for example, am a liberal.
@@ArkenTheAmerikan I would dissagree, classical liberalism and the enlightenment are the forefathers of Both libertarianism and Marxism, all three say the highest good in a society is the individual, rather than a greater goal, like the Nation or God.
Which period of older society do you think would be better to aim for then? (Not rhetorical, genuine question) I really cannot think of a period where most people were less focused on those aspects, more than we were generally just worse at securing pleasure or the ability to live without reliance on others at those times. I mean I guess there are periods where some great zeitgeist such as a religious or political movement seizes the reigns, but those tend to be either impermenent or get pretty bad over time. To blame technological advancement is also a bit questionable, as technology clearly has the ability to make it easier to interact with and maintain bonds that wouldn't be possible otherwise. I do think that the current implementation of many pieces of technology have more nefarious motives than helping people interact, but that shouldn't be mistaken for the actual technology itself.
@@Vurglesplat I think you have an odd hatred off meaning in one's life. The truth is, any civilisation that didn't posses a central goal for its existance, may it be a Religion, the Nation, ect, will collapse into fragmentation and mass immorality. Our society is the exception, in such a regard and thats why its heading towards collapse day by the day. You might consider all of society working for a same goal as ''authoritarian'', because to do so you must give away some of your indiviudal freedom, but may I ask, what is the purpose of such a freedom if it restricts you from working to something thats far greater than yourself, alongside hurting in most circmustanses your personal life as well?
Could not a virtual reality simulator like the cube aid with developing new experiences and better understanding of ourselves? I would never have been able to slay dragons in real life but I can in Skyrim. I could never design a city but I can in city skylines. I could never be a star ship captain in my own space opera, but I can in mass effect. I could never guide a species from cell to interstellar empire but I can in Spore. Even though these experiences aren't real I still feel a sense satisfaction and pride in my virtual achievements from winning an impossible battle in medieval total war or completing a round on papers please without any mistakes. Imagine using the cube to explore a perfect replication of renaissance Florence, renact battles during the English civil war, LARP as a vampire or fly like a bird. Or indeed eating a 400g steak fillet surf and turf without the cost to you or the climate. Indeed, it's understandable why some might prefer the virtual to the real.
He makes the argument that simulating an experience is not the same as the actual experience, but what if that's the point? Tons of people like killing zombies in video games, but no one in there right mind would actually want to experience a zombie apocalypse.
Thomas makes a good point, the only reason any of those experiences seem cool to you, is that you know you are in a simulation, you can leave at any time, and are out of harms way, if they were to make you think you truly were in the Middle Ages, or in Skyrim, I doubt you’d be quite as adventurous
@@potatoboy6094. But nobody can actually be in Skyrim or time travel back to the middle ages. Reality imposes limitations on us the virtual can liberate us from.
@@williamfrancis5367 Im not doubting that, I’m saying that if the virtual reality was so immersive that you truly felt like you were there and weren’t just in a simulation, or if the simulation makes you forget that it’s not real, you might be less likely to be as ballsy as you would be by knowing that none of it really matters
I'm genuinely very happy that I found a channel that has a similar sense of humor to mine, cherishes the same video games as I do (minecraft, I liked your jokes involving it too lol), while also producing really thought-invoking, highly highly produced content on issues I consider on a somewhat frequent basis. From your videos on climate change, to policy, to this one on philosophy, I appreciate your interest and good insight on science, the social sciences, and parts of the humanities. Your content is illuminating and inspiring. Be proud of yourself and know that you have made me happy from just the few videos I have watched so far! The topic this video deals with really resonates with me and has kinda been a fundamental question to my identity and drive, especially as a person who struggles with depression, and I'm glad it resonates with someone else as well. I feel a lot less alone :D
Assuming this hypothetical future had solved death by aging, I think the pleasure cube would be a good alternative to suicide if you got tired of living.
"When you play chess, you don't want to throw the opponent's queen out the window, you want to win following the rules and without cheating, the same happens with life" - Abraham Lincoln, probably
yeah because you get a bigger seratonin release when you beat the game following the rules. All our experiences are the products of electrical signals and chemicals, a sufficiently advanced machine could replicate the feeling of satisfaction indefinatly and simply disable our ability to be bored.
@@ExternalDialogue I find amazing that a set of electrical charges and chemical reaccions ocurring in the brain can create a sensation of conciusness, and males us feel and understand this world.
@@ExternalDialogue that’s great. But if you can hook up to a machine, why bother living at all? At that point you only exist to die. You may as well take the option that will always be cheaper. The rope, the stool, and a well tied knot.
back then at school, i read that the thing is humans not only seek happiness or pleasure. they seek meaning in existence and/or understanding of it. kinda just like huxley said in the twin stories of brave new world/the island. this idea is also presented in Maslow's Hierarchy of needs where things like self-actualization or esteem are present as things that people search after they solve more basic needs.
@@imnotabird1118 no. They seek meaning for bliss. Bliss is the thing we all are searching for. Pleasure or happiness is a short simulation of a bliss "light" version. We are trying to find bliss by doing alot of things which give us pleasure or we try to maximize happiness to finally find bliss. So a happy cube wouls never worj because bliss comes from turning off aroganz. Then you will accept truth and stop forcing yourself to live your lie and try to see it as truth. The truth our heart is seeking. It's seeking for the connection with our creator. The one who made everything. Who made the universe, time.. everything Once someone turns off their arrogance its more clear than glas Not IQ, Money or yeas of studying is needed to understand reality and be in bliss It's a pure heart. So every human is abel to achive it by giving up their arrogance and ignorance La ilaha ill Allah
@@soeih8864 What about all the poor people who where born before his coming? Why will they never be able to experience this? Or those who were never exposed to his message? And if everything needs a creator, who created the creator?
@@雷-t3j Before the coming of prophet mohammed they where other prophets Some we know like Jesu, Moses with a huge impact but also alot of prophets to a small group of people like a village or maybe even less. Every human had the chance to accept or denie the truth when it was glas clear to them. IF they did not have the chance then there will be another just test for them maybe in the hearafter. We dont know how but we know that Allah will be testing everyone and no one will be in hellfire or die as disbeliver without knowing of the truth and denying it. The Allmighty is absolut Just and it will be proven to everyone their guild. There will be no one who says im unjustly in hellfire. The only thing they will say is beg their Creator to give them another Chances. They will not get another chance bcs they will die just the same they did again and again. Also the last question is paradox because the name says it. THE CREATOR is not a creation so the CREATOR is not CREATED because he is the CREATOR. The Creator is outside of Space and Time. Absolut Perfect and unimaginable for our brains. One of the biggest gifts to us is that we will be abel to see our Creator in Heaven.
Andrew Solomon is quoted as saying "The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality." or as I understand it, the ability and regularity to experience the full spectrum of emotions, all of its euphoric highs and grieving lows. Also another note: in the modern world, cleaving the pleasures in two between higher and lower is less helpful by the day. Take modern music for example. One of my favorite bands, Queens of the Stone Age, released an album, Songs for the Deaf, that is fantastic in a way that I would say is conducive to "higher pleasure", but just simply, unequivocally, would not exist without drugs. Many of the "higher pleasures" we may enjoy today, from music, to film, to literature, are creative expressions that simply couldn't exist in the form they do without the lower pleasures- alcohol, sex, drugs. I'm not really sure where else to go on this, as my concern as a human being just is being any amount of happy at all, but I leave with 2 questions: 1.) Did John Stuart Mill have an answer for the prompt I just gave above, or is this more of a product of the modern era, and 2.) Is dopamine that leads to creative expression inherently more valuable than dopamine for its own sake, like you would get in the pleasure cube?
Yes, "pleasure" can mean many different things, it may be too broad a word. There are several areas we need to examine further. Firstly, we would have to examine the make up of 'simple' (like sex, drugs etc) and 'higher' (music, art) pleasures to determine if they are just social and environmental programming/conditioning. At the very basic level, they seem (more externally) sensory based. In contrast, some monks claim meditation (internal process) allows them to reach higher pleasure than world experiences provide. Yet, after a while they come out of meditation to preform their duties and serve the world. This may negate the 'pleasure box' idea as being a prolonged scenario. Then we have to examine what is the purpose of the pleasure, eg is it a healing mechanism for the brain /body? Does it counter act pain and trauma? Does it actually heal the 'hardware' of the brain/body? When things are healed up enough, will the person naturally seek less pleasure? Finally, we would look at what happens to people without enough pleasure in their life. For example, currently the medical community says that "anti social personality disorders" like psychopathy and sociopathy is partially due to the brains inability to produce enough serotonin in certain brain regions. Serotonin is considered as major contributor to people feeling happy. These types of people apparently have less empathy and take more (socially unacceptable) risks, and dont care if they hurt others. The theory is they dont have enough serotonin in certain brain areas that would allow them to act socially acceptable or limit their bad behaviors ; and they developed this way due to trauma or other factors with no way to easily go back. Its a large topic. For some people it maybe something pleasureable to look into. 🤣
1:04 "Beauty is just the visual input that produces serotonin in the brain" Gonna have to say that's a definite NOPE not true. The common idea that serotonin or dopamine are purely responsible for feelings of "goodness" or to stretch it even further the appreciation of aesthetics is absolutely not a proven concept. These neurotransmitters are found throughout the body and perform many different functions (particularly digestion and movement). They play a role in emotion regulation and behaviour but so do many other neurotransmitters. Saying serotonin=happy isn't even an oversimplification it's just wrong. Love the video though this is just a pet peeve of mine.
This is the central flaw of this video. Thinking that pure happiness would just be one simple process. If it was that easy we could probably already jam pure Serotonin into our brain.
Plus, art isnt necessarily what makes us happy. It is something whose effort we can appreciate, whose painters emotions, thoughts, goals and views are projected onto. Good art can range from what makes us the happiest, to what gives us the deepest thoughts, insights and existential questions.
There is something unsettling similar about the pleasure cube and mobile phones/TV. I don’t care if I sound like a boomer when I say this but people, including myself, spend too much time on screens.
Agreed, maybe the addictions talking, but I mostly use it as a distraction of the mundane and boring reality we’re forced to live and work in, most people have to work all the time just to stay alive, I’m sure many people would love to travel, and work out, and eat good food and feel love and pleasure naturally, but most of us can only afford a few hours of staring at a screen and hallucinating that it’s moving or that we’re anywhere except where we are, so unfortunately, we’d need to change a lot to be able to break out of where we are
Easy dopamine hit you are definitely right and it's not just a boomer thing. Obviously the technology itself isn't bad tho, for example you can use a smartphone to read books and talk with relatives on the other side of the world
There’s something to be said about just watching content (watching someone climb a mountain) as opposed to playing a game with its own set of challenges and earned rewards (a game like Celeste)
@@miguelpereira9859 yeah the technology is great, but most people’s smarter than average monkey brains aren’t well suited to using them only a reasonable amount
i get nervous thinking about romance because I'm gay but i have a very conservative-ish belief of waiting until marriage and dating with the intent to marry. with apps like grindr and the subculture that being gay has with partying and sexual liberation, it feels like people are entitled to have sex with others whether they like it or not. :((
@@coagulatedsalts4711 well according to Christianity marriage is the union between a man and a woman, so you will never actually marry according to it so unless you wanna die virgin you shouldn't think about that
This is very idealisitic. I feel as if a lot more people would step into the cube than you'd think. If someone no longer has any attatchment to their character, honesty, or the material world, they would step into the cube and stay there forever, no questions asked. Sadly, I feel as if this is the majority of society as of now.
But the more i think about it, the more it feels like a solution, too many people that are dispossed and discontented with the system and drowning in apathy and envy, why not give them paradise already, they will consume less resources.
Alan Watts: "Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time. Or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each, you would say "Well, that was pretty great." But now let's have a surprise. Let's have a dream which isn't under control. Where something is gonna happen to me that I don't know what it's going to be. And you would dig that and come out of that and say "Wow, that was a close shave, wasn't it?" And then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would make further and further out gambles as to what you would dream. And finally, you would dream ... where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today."
VR is impossible to evolve until this point. Just a silly thought you have. Not even in 100 years using virtual reality it will be able to imitate reality. Also technology is limited, it has issues such as feeling dizzy when playing VR or the necessity of better graphs and interaction. We won't evolve to Player number 1, be sure.
@@phantomwarrior8686 Of course it won't look like reality, and it can't do everything. But the effect is the same to someone who just wants to be in VR all day. You can do more than you think you can judging by the way you talk. I would say you aren't someone who has tried VR for extended periods of time. On VRchat alone I have found VR to be improving by the month, even if the hardware is slow to change.
If you're still aware that you're inside of the cube then it's not worth it. But if you're also experiencing a permanent lucid dream or simulation where you can live the life you want to live and have what you desire, I would absolutely go for it.
Steven Stalenhag made a book called ‘the electric state’ which describes a world where people are attached to VR like machines that put them in a perfect world (its illustrated, and i still think of it as the most horrifying book ive read)
I feel like Evangelion itself is a really good counter-argument with the entire escapism and exploiting pleasure=bad sort of thing, the cube gives me major instrumentality vibes
Now that you point it out the similarities are crystal clear for me. I think the part where Shinji chooses to accept the existence of pain and suffering in life rather than choosing this instrumentality BS is just so powerful to me, and I didn't have a clear idea until your comment.
It's my fear of "the pleasure cube" that makes me such a proponent of Augmented Reality (AR). Technologies like Virtual Reality falsely simulate the pleasure and experiences that you described in the video; however, Augmented Reality can combine the speed and power of those virtual worlds but with human empathy and connection. This is because AR does not shut you into an entirely virtual world and therefore allows you to experience things more organically. I think in the future, use of the ominous (false) pleasure cube will hopefully die out and more organic, psychologically healthier technologies like AR will replace it.
i want this but what i also want is a real world that is filled with art and beautiful buildings ect... so when you switch it off beauty can still be found :)))
I think both have there place. For crafted expirences VR is amazing and I would want everyone to try it. However AR is already being used as a therapy tool for stuff like PTSD. The problem is over reliance of either and a disassociation from the real world
I think the only thing that would hinders me from entering the pleasure cube is if it don’t have a clear way out. I would love. And I MEAN LOVE to be able to go into the pleasure cube for a certain hours per day.
if you were in the cube you probably wouldn't could get out. Even if you physically could get out, the amount of happiness you would get in that cube would make it near impossible for you to want to get out of the cube
You'd get addicted very quickly, pleasure is addictive, once you receive everything you want in any form, and have the experience of experience everything possible and impossible, your brain will get overestimulated very quickly and after some days discouraged.
I cannot stop watching your "The Rise and Fall of New Labour", I just turn it on once a week and watch it again. I don't recall ever finding such an interesting video on a transformation of a political party. Your videos are awesome, the stop being a climate nihilist and the anti car one are very well made, but the labour one is just peak content. The part from 8:16 10:05 is just so well made, the music out of this world. I never cared about British politics, but now I literally ask all british people I know what they think of Tony Blair's laws. And I was also wondering whether you could make a video on Thatcher. Why for some she is an iron lady and for some a gender neutral bathroom .Love your content, you're the only channel where I have the subscription bell actually activated for every video.
If the pleasure cube can simulate a world that feels real to us how would someone even know the difference when they're plugged in? Similar to dreaming, sometimes we dream and we think it is the real world. If this is the case there is no difference logically.
Ngl, I kinda disagree with your arguments. Living in a world that is the exact same, just slightly nicer, atleast to me seems like the objectively better option (that's why people try to do good things). Then if you crank up the nice-ness meter, when do draw the line and say "this is too much"? And if there is an uncrossable line, just go under that line, and live in a slightly better version of the world. Also I have to say, in things like the Truman show or brave new world there always is some imperfect part, in the Truman show all the bugs and in brave new world the lack of basically everything. Those differences are what makes playing Stardew Valley not the same (or a better version of) becoming a farmer. Also regarding the "fakeness" part - you live in the exact same world, maybe even with the exact same people - maybe you can even directly communicate with them through the "simulation". I don't think there's anything that makes that world any less real than this one.
That's a pretty good point. The framing of the pleasure cube in an almost ridiculous extreme is kind of strawmanning the argument. A more moderate example of it's use could be for vegans. When it's time for dinner, go into the pleasure cube to eat that delicious steak without the environmental impact of factory farms or the moral quandry of eating a living creature.
@@fellinuxvi3541 I don't think you understood what I meant, for instance say you're a vegan and you'd like to eat a burger but you don't want to hurt animals - you can go to your simulation for lunch and eat a burger there instead of in the real world, and then I said you can take that to the extreme.
I'm pretty sure people underestimate the pleasure cube. If it really triggers seretonin and all pleasure chemicals, then we probably don't have any idea how good and consistent this must feel. I'd be ready to bet most people (probably including me) would get hooked on the thing instantly and never regret going into it.
The age of deconstruction which produced the people who would be fine with such a fate is to be maligned by those with any soul left to speak of. I was happier as a child but I'd not want to go back to that since I'm a better person now. To be the happiest person is not my goal to be the best person I can be is. Please reasses what it is you people want in life and if it truly is this then heroin is there for you. It'll end you but you will have achieved your pleaaure cube if only for a short time.
@@SomeGuy-so3kk You would be a fool if you thought people from an ancient time would be impervious to the pleasure cube. People in the past only had less access to pleasure, but they sought after it in the same exact way. They had a harder time being alive, because life was harder, but put them in a pleasure cube and they would stay in it. There is no such thing as a deconstruction age, what happened is just machines are doing all our chores for us, but every human being would fall victim to the pleasure cube.
@@pulsarhappy7514 I never said that ancient people would be impervious nor that people in the recent past would. Simply that an attitude which would facilitate the use of this and not turn their head up at the concept is a symptom of this very real age of deconstruction. Everything down to the very concepts of men and women existing is being deconstructed and its quite sad to witness at times. And of course no one would leave the pleasure cube. Hardly anyone every really quits heroin. The mark of ones character is whether or not they'd choose to enter such a damned thing in the first place. I don't fault the heroin addict for being unable to quit I fault him for his choice to begin the use of such a thing in the first place.
i hate our modern hedonistic society. everyone just thinks that pleasure = happiness. but its not true. sure, it feels good. but take a deep look into yourself. are you happy?
The pleasure cube wouldn't even work. We become adjusted to larger doses of these happy chemicals as we take more of them, requiring larger doses to get the same happiness, and becoming reliant on the amount we've received so far just to not be miserable. You would be happy in the pleasure cube until it could no longer provide enough dope and serotonin to keep you happy as you adjust to the amount you've been getting. It would have to keep giving you more and more until it can't supply any more. If it somehow had an infinite supply then you'd probably die long before the point that the amount it needs to give you to make you happy equals your body weight. It would be unsustainable to keep someone happy in a box forever and if they were kicked out they would become incapable of living a normal life because they would be so dependent on the chemicals they're no longer receiving. People kicked out of the pleasure box would become the most depressed people in the world. Edit: I’m very aware it’s “like a drug” and my entire argument revolves around that fact.
@M T I don’t get it. That’s what I said over and over in my comment. Dope is a drug. And our bodies adapt to them. If you were to inject a shit ton of dope it would make you really happy. If you did it every single day for the rest of your life the happiness you would get from it would diminish with each day until you no longer feel happy when you inject this shit ton of dope. But then if you just suddenly _stop_ taking the drugs then you will feel extremely depressed until you start taking them again and will need the shit ton of drugs just to feel normal. This is why antidepressants can start to show diminishing effects until you’re depressed again. But you can’t just stop taking them because that would make things worse.
this is kinda what i was thinking, you would eventually reach a point that you can no longer receive enough dopamine to make you satisfied anymore - you would get bored of the pleasure cube, somehow?
I sometimes wonder if we have already stepped into the pleasure cube, and that the reason we find the higher pleasures good is because the pleasure cube has made it so.
The cube hijacks the brain, theres no way you can say the cube is bad once you get plugged in. Its a perfect dream that you would never get bored of. If you want love or identity then the cube will simulate that, if you want hard work to achieve higher pleasure then why not, but unlike the real world the cube will make sure you achieve happiness.
I might be in the minority in saying that this pleasure cube doesn't seem so horrifying? Most worries about the cube will fade away when you experience the cube.
Yeah, as much as I say I'd hate it, as much as anyone would say that they'd hate it, we will love it. Upon the altar of eternal bliss any qualms or worries will be left behind. It's similar to heaven, something that most people aren't afraid of.
When you understand how dopamine work, you'll understand why people can't quit drug, alcohol or smoking. This cube will convince you to be part of it. When the cube is broken, you will be in the state of confused and fear. You will crave for that high dopamine the cube is giving. It's sad that in life we have tons of bullshit. But like everyone else in the comments have already said. The happiness is like the light. When there is too much like, you can't see shit. Sometimes we just need a shade of dark, like sadness, to see where the light is appreciate at. About heaven, I personally think heaven represents your resting after finishing a task, in particular, you finish all the good deeds in life. This is how dopamine work. You are rewarded after completing a task. Heaven is the reward after you do a good deed to yourself and mankind. You still experience your life from start to finish. You still have identity of who you are to justify why should you be in heaven.
Of course it will feel great, it’s hijacking our brains to feel good, abusing our chemistry for eternal bliss, that’s not the point, the same point about it: “feeling good once you’re in it” could literally be said about anything, ever heard of Stockholm syndrome? Just cuz it feels good doesn’t mean it is, you might feel like heaven, but you’re really just rotting away in a claustrophobic cube, if you’re really willing to throw your chance to experince things, to do something only a few could ever claim to have done, for some cheap and quick chemically induced happiness, I recommend ecstasy, not that I’ve ever tried it myself, but it’s apparently what you’re looking for, but I realized a long time ago that the destination is not why it’s worth living, but the journey to get there that makes things fulfilling, and of course I don’t know you and your life and this might not be your actual viewpoint, but from where I’m standing, anybody who is willing to take being in a simulation for their whole life over true experience(or true as far as anyone can prove), must not be doing so hot in the life they were given
This will likely never be seen by ya, but I just want to mention that your channel is basically the musings of philosophy. That makes you a philosopher :) congrats
Imagine a hypothetical pleasure machine that hooks directly into your brain. The pleasure machine looks exactly like reality, but you can be whoever you want, with whatever abilities you want. I feel like most people would plug into the pleasure machine. Imagine living your life just as it is in real life, but you can fly.
I think I would do that, but never really use the abilities. I thought about the hypothetical scenario of essentially getting god mode and being able to mold reality to your liking, but I think the best way of using that would be to just live an eternal but ordinary life where you achieve things through your own work, getting everything you want with minimal effort would get boring pretty quickly
botchad Mill's argument m8, if you believe Mill, the "higher pleasures" would support that VR pleasuredome is a 'lower pleasure' (low effort low reward) versus adventure (high effort high reward)
inb4 the vr pleasuredome perfectly covers mankind's higher and lower pleasures due to being plagued by incredibly strange tech problems the real world rush of normal dopamine achieved after months of design engineering and prototype work to get your vr skyrim sex mod to work correctly with the new update to the left hand bone trackers
the "higher pleasure" stuff is just classist nonsense. going to watch a theatre production isn't high effort at all, it's just something that the poors couldn't afford to do. I don't think the theory has any redeeming features honestly
Part of being human is feeling emotion. Good and bad. Feeling constant pleasure reduces you to nothing. It doesn't matter if it's a vegetizer or a simulation. Humans, in order to be human, need negative emotions.
As someone who's struggled with depression for most of my life the pleasure cube is functionally equivalent to suicide. I disappear from the outside world in both situations and in one I'm forever happy while the other I'm forever nothing.
The idea of a life devoid of any meaning sounds terrifying. For as much as I wonder now what I am to do with myself for another 4-8 decades, at least I know that when it ends, it will have been real. At least I have the *chance* to do something with it that isn't useless.
Whatever type of happiness concoction your brain can come up with, the pleasure cube can do better. A machine specifically designed to make you "feel good" I assume should be able to simulate any form of happiness. So the same feeling of "happiness of life / not taking happiness for granted / cherishing happiness" can also be simulated in the pleasure cube which is funny, but not surprising if you think about it.
Honestly, I think the main thing I took away from this was the Moderation and Freedom is Key. You can hate what I say, but you have to admit, sometimes we all just have to leave the tedium of everyday life. Not to say I want the pleasure cube, I hope that concept is set on fire and have it's ashes sent to the sun. No, what I'm personally aiming for is specifically a balanced form of "Rebirth Escapism", where one can willingly spend a defined (aka limited) period of time as a new person starting from the ground up with what they know in real life. I know that this concept still has many drawbacks, as this will most likely lead to self-inflicted heavy isolation on introverst who don't put value on their real life. But I am at least hoping that a community of open social interation would form around this idea.
There was an experiment done on mice where they attached electrodes to the pleasure centre of the brain and connected it to a button and the other button was the one that dropped food for the mouse as it had been. The mouse slowly started pressing the food button less and less and the pleasure button more and more and eventually starved to death......
I think one of the biggest objections to pleasure cube is that people simply like the illusion of choice and choices having meaning. Though i think huxley makes a good point about a true utopia not being eternal pleasure, his techno spiritual society can be its own type of dystopia. I think the story of the game rain world is a good example. I think if the pleasure cube is created, we will all destroy it before anyone plugs in. The aversion to it is too primal and deep. To have the illusion of choice destroyed is to die.
I already knew the meaning of Life before even watching this video Life isn't about Enjoying It as much as Possible Life is about Suffering and Overcoming it
This is self-delusion. Why do you enjoy the struggle? Only because it gives you happiness or you think it will give you happiness. Why is Exercise and Dental Care good and drugs and Fast food bad? Because in the first case the prevention of more future pain or the potential for more future happiness is better than the Pain those things give you. The second is bad because the Happiness you get is offset by much more Pain later. I think Epicurus had it right. Everyone is striving for the absence or the reduction of pain and for the increase of pleasure/happiness whether they know it or not.
Pleasure =\= focus The zone mentioned in the US army study is akin to the meditative state. It's not pure pleasure, it's a right balance of pleasure, discomfort, curiosity, stimulus and reward.
Eternal pleasure is essentially identical to death. To have one unchanging experience is to have no experience and therefore to have no consciousness and to be dead
See, the problem is that we are assuming that pleasure itself is what we strive for in life. Rather, pleasure, and also pain are simply tools that our brain uses to encourage us to do things that are productive and meaningful. You don't go to an art museum for the pleasure you get, you go for the art. The pleasure is simply the method your brain uses to drive you to it. That's why this feels so wrong, because this machine makes it so your only encouragement is doing nothing, forever, which is a task without purpose, meaning, and especially not productive to any higher goals you have.
If you could get drunk and eat junk and not feel sick or damage your body then more people would. The reason the lower pleasures are less preferable are because of their side effects.