In the responses people keep saying "The pleasure would 'run out' after having pleasure all the time". Come on people, you're smarter than that. The point of the scenario is that the pleasure never ends! That's the whole point of the philosophical question!
+scottdpt12 Yes, in this hypothetical world, surely science would also be able to alter your brain so that the pleasures never lose their pleasure. To debate this minutiae is to avoid examining the whole point of the thought experiment.
Well if i gave your mom cancer and said "She needs to experience it to appreciate not having cancer." would you say thats cruel? Like subjecting betsy to a future of unending sadness for "Truth & Knowledge"?
Life should be learnt the bloody hard way but to deliberately cut someone's life short like say terminal cancer is distastefully unfair. People can be aware of the suffering and accept it without subjecting oneself to harm. Do I need to cut off my right hand to go "Gee, now I know how amputees feel."
@@LentaChorum "Do I need to cut off my right hand to go "Gee, now I know how amputees feel." According to your own reasoning, yes. Your whole point is that it's great that good things don't last forever because we otherwise could not appreciate them. In that regard, your distinction between refraining from hurting oneself and choosing to get the best possible result for oneself is completely arbitrary. If you actually applied your logic consistently, it would indeed mean we should cut our arms off.
You pretty much need badness to have goodness be worth anything. If you're constantly happy all day, eventually you will acquire "happy blindness" and feel bored because you're not feeling anything else. Joy must be contrasted with suffering.
Also, being constantly happy all the time, no matter how you try to put it, will eventually be equivalent to being constantly bored. After the first octillion years, you would for sure stop receiving the same emotional response.
"...You gotta have opposites: dark and light, light and dark. If you have light on light, you have nothing; if you have dark on dark you basically have nothing. You know, it's like in life: you gotta have a little sadness once in a while to know when the good times come. I'm waiting on the good times now." -Bob Ross
LEMON LORD MARKO This video implies that you‘ll never get bored of the pleasure even without pain. Because if the pleasure really plateaus then It wouldn’t be really pleasure; it would be neutral. The machine promises you pleasure forever which contradicts the logical assumption of the pleasure plateauing meaning that the machine can transcendent the pleasure getting boring and normal.
I can tell you a dark on dark life isn't that good, so following this logic light on light must be bliss. Many people assume you need to know bad to taste good, but that's simply wrong. Good is good. I don't need to eat poop to appreciate pastries.
I think I have been doing this lifestyle, thinking it makes happier. And it has, my Ba2- Religion has kept me happier for way longer than any purpose or motive for living than anything I have experienced before. Now I'm not sure if I keep believing in this, simply because I am uncomfortable growing up and avoid living actually independently. I don't believe in a god so I don't depend god will give nor show me this answer. I just hope that what I am doing, actually is meaningful towards my further future. 😪
"God (has) given (me) a "tail to keep the flies off, but that (I) would sooner have had no tail and no flies." -Benjamin the Donkey, Animal Farm, George Orwell
So deep this video is. Btw, is it possible that if our brain kept having a constant supply of nett pleasure, our brain will get numb by it/get used to it and will need a higher form of pleasure to be happy?
+boy638 To my knowledge yes. Basically, our avility to learn is the problem with hedonism. The brain tends to learn to take for granted a certain level of stimulus, making it nessesary to reach greater levels of stimulus to gett off on. You end up with idiots racing on lamborginies, and proposterous waste. The "normalisation" of a circumstance. One must modulate ones own stimulous, so as to -prevent waste.
***** Is much more coplicated than a chemical in the brain. That explanation is old and lacks, usually used in tabloid science. The physiology of feeling is complex. But the psychology not so much.
Yeah of course. You wouldn't get bored of it because boredom is a negative thought. Negative thoughts are impossible in the scenario since it's a world with ONLY ups and no downs
thats why this machine is impossible to create. And Im sure at some point you definitely will get tired of all this pleasure which is not just meaningless, its fake.
KILLERZEBRA without ever being sad, happiness would have no meaning. If there was nothing but happiness, then you wouldn't know anything different, and you would not be truly happy. Thus, to actually get more net worth pleasure, you must go through pain.
That is false. Because there are not only two possible states... since there are more than two, some o them are not needed to appretiate the others. It is as stupid as saying that you need sadness for appretiating happiness, like those are the only two possible states. But you could be indiferent, neutral. Sadness is completelly unnecessary for your experience of happiness
That would mean leaving all my friends and destroying bonds with people I spent whole life making for mere copies of that. I wouldn't do it. Truth and ideals must co-exist. Pain and plesure make life more exciting. That is my opinion.
I feel like we value things more when we have gone through opposite-feeling situations. If the choice were between a life of only pain or a life of only happiness, I would definitely choose the latter. That being said, I think the optimum scenario would be of a life with balance. I'm not sure if it's naive of me, but I tend to find importance in every human emotion. There are so many beautiful and great things that come from non-pleasurable emotions. Yes, we would always be happy, but at what cost? I get that if we were ever plugged in we wouldn't miss this things, because we would just be happy or whatever. But being someone who has found a little balance in my life, I don't think I would give it up.
Your point on whether we value things more when we've gone through the opposite-feeling experiences is interesting and probably accurate. I've gone through something similar, there was a time when I couldn't feel anything, and honestly since then no matter how much it hurts, I always value emotion over most things. I would prefer feeling any negative emotion over feeling none at all.
The fact that happy experiences get numb over time or that going trough opposite feelings often intensifies happiness isn't really a reason to reject the experience machine. Consider this scenario: You get back home after a long day of work and, remembering that you haven't eaten much during the day, you bite into an apple and it's the most delicious thing you've ever tasted. So the next day you eat apples all the time. In every short break you eat an apple. But all those apples and not even the apple you eat when you go home won't taste nearly as good. Even though they were the exact same apples, they had less taste to them, because you weren't hungry all day. I can't speak for you, but i think what i myself want isn't the mixed experiences of being hungry all day and then eating an amazing apple. This is surely better than eating apples all the time, but what i actually want is just the experience of eating the delicious apple, because this expereince has been intensified trough my hunger. It may not be possible in reality, but if i could have the experience of "biting into an apple after being hungry all day" over and over again without actually having to be hungry all day, i would choose it. And this is exactly what the experience machine offers.
I know some of you will say "no" to do this, but I definitely would say yes. I don't want the truth, I want happiness, I don't care if it's an illusion. I am fed up with being unhappy.
+Victim Of Reality Humans as a biological organism will always choose yes, but that decision is the one every sentient animal would take. The division from us and other intelligent beings is that we can opt to suffer for a greater cause, in this case the "truest" reality, which for some is more important than fake everlasting happiness.
+Victim Of Reality You would get equally fed up with being happy, as your brain would simply get used to the given stimuli and you would become a "happiness junkie" - you would constantly want more and more, as it would never be enough. It's better to be sad for the most of your life and experience a few of beautiful moments than to be constantly happy, at least in my opinion. I've been depressed for many many years and I tried to take my life more times that I could count. And yet I would still never say "yes" because sadness is just a natural part of life, sometimes it's sunny, sometimes it's raining... As long as it's just a normal rain and not meteor shower you're good, trust me on that. #Kappa
That is the life of a Tree or a Dog - what pains does a dog have? What worries does a dog have? Free food, shelter, protected, cared for - Heaven! Care to be a Dog or a Tree?
@@friedlemons5201 So be it. Free will and you have made a choice Problem is that you won't KNOW that you are a rock - without a brain or eyes, it is like you are asleep and have no knowledge of anything. You won't even know you are asleep But you will have no pain or suffering for nothing can harm a rock
sleet The machine would always offer pleasure, no matter what. Your quote is true in real life but in this hypothesis the concept of not being happy is impossible.
That's simply untrue. Pain and pleasure are not inherently dependent on each, our brains are just built in a way that makes them produce less pleasure after a while, which is why we always need external improvements.
a life without pain is perfect, because it wouldn't be possible for you to regret your choice or get bored, since you'd always be happy no matter what. even if you wanted something bad to spice up your pleasure, I think the machine would let that happen, as it would lead to more pleasure in the long run than having nothing bad happen at all. I think there's just inherent peace from knowing the problems you face can always be solved, rather than living in a world of actions with unfathomable consequences, some of which effect the rest of your life.
If it exists. The thing about the machine is you know it’s real and you know if you plug in you will have endless pleasure. Not saying heavens doesn’t exist, I’m saying we aren’t 100% certain it does
@Javier Clark Just because the damage caused by past pain would be erased doesn't necessarily mean that we won't remember our previous lives. (Of course, we won't know any of this for sure until after death.)
Difference is in this world our pleasure is limited. In heaven every day is bette than the day before it. Cuz once u you have something you’ll eventually get bored of it, in order not to get bored u need something better than the one before it.
@@shubhroy7960 But if there are other people, you will likely disagree with them at least once, but disagreement counts as a negative thought. So the machine would simply make people who would say yes to everything you do, and they wouldn't be real people, just props that look like people.
i feel like if i knew the experience was fake, i wouldnt plugin. if someone plugged me in witout me knowing what was going on and the world looked exactly the same i would prefer that.
There's no way you could experience endless pleasure unless every moment somehow outdid the last. Otherwise your experiences would just normalize to a new average - such is the nature of the human experience.
I can eat a bag of chips and gain pleasure... right after I could eat the worlds best m&ms and have even greater pleasure... later that day I can eat the same type of chips and experience more pleasure. your point is refuted.
I am reminded of a certain mental disability that prevents you from adjusting to a stimuli or a certain situation. Like, if you watch something funny, you can continue to watch the same thing over and over again without any diminishing joy. A few autistic children suffer(?) from this, repeating the same activity endlessly. So it's entirely possible that we can eventually build an experience machine that loops a fun activity and simply prevent the user from ever getting tired of it...which, depending on who you ask, is either perfect or horrifying.
its called aphantasia. You can read more about what its like to live with it on cracked: www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2026-a-weird-brain-anomaly-took-my-imagination-away.html I'd take this with a handful of salt but if everything is true, then we can potentially create endless fun or overcome past traumatic experiences. condition is still poorly understood so its not gonna be any time soon though :
I have another thought experiment to consider. An endless pleasure machine would be like a mountain that you're endlessly climbing. You're constantly reaching new heights (if it's working optimally), but each new "high" is only slightly better than the last. Real life is more like an entire mountain range. You have a series of peaks and valleys, with some peaks being extremely high and some valleys being very deep. You will experience a lot more pain, but some of those highs will come very suddenly and be much more dramatic--and rewarding. If you have the lows to compare them to, the highs will be _much_ more satisfying overall than an equivalent high provided by the machine. Using this thought experiment, this is my conclusion: The pleasure machine is a safer bet, but real life might be more rewarding and satisfying in the end. It really comes down to fortune, because man has very little control over his own destiny. We are often incapable of bringing about extremely pleasurable moments based on our own actions. Usually, we just rely on life to throw us the dice. And that's what makes it so great: we weren't expecting it.
Suffering makes you enjoy pleasure a lot more. Maybe torture people in a way that doesn't break their minds by desensitizing them to pleasure, then pleasure them, then repeat
@@elgordobondiola I wouldn't say torture but teach you in a way that your life doesn't matters on the teachings, it is definitely rewarding If we pass through its test.
All pain is mental - there are people who have lost parts of their brain and feel no pain Some people can't stand even a little pain while others laugh off pain that would kill most people So basically you are then choosing a life without much of a brain You see brilliant people sometimes going crazy while a dullard will go thru life happy Guess which way you are going?
@@tired690 To me, this is the Life that God created for us - for us Life is a Gift & Hinduism says we can have this Gift over and over While you say let me run away & hide in a painless land, we think - let us work and find a cure for such pain Running away works for YOU, but the problem of pain has not gone away & that is what we need to tackle Yes sometimes life can stink but to me to think we can run away & hide in some magic land in the sky - sit around doing nothing for eternity - is just giving in to fantasies Why would God have billions of people just sit around doing nothing - an idle, useless and pointless existence for eternity? Makes no sense Religions happy to exploit our desire for the easy lazy happy life and telling us what we want to hear, that's all
My dear sister in humanity, there is a reason for your pain. Allah wants to remove all your sins so then you will have a perfect life in heaven. Believe in One God. check out Islam
I don't think people knows how good pleasure feels ALL THE TIME. Even if it means forever, that pleasure won't be "normal or boredom" it will always be pleasure, and there will always be infinite ways of feeling it, so ofc i would. Pleasure will always feel as pleasure no matter how long or the circumstances
Yep. Im pretty sure people just misinterprate the word 'pleasure'. If ur doing coke over a long period of time, each line will be a bit less intense than than the last one. But it's not the pleasure itself becoming weaker, but instead ur brain adopting and releasing less pleasure. Pleasure itself is always epic. Its just the brain, that adopts how much of it is released and building up tolerance for a certain stimulant. In the experiment, its the machine that controls how much pleasure u feel
If you felt pleasure all the time would you bother getting out of bed ? or taking shower or cleaning your room ? You have no reason to do anything because all you feel is pleasure . You have to be sick in the head to want pleasure ALL THE TIME . That's a meaningless life .
@@SchnurriTVYeah, a lot of people just straight up lack the imagination or would go “that would never work irl” even though A: this is a fictional thought experiment, no one reads Tolkien and goes “this is rubbish magic doesn’t exist” And B: we don’t even know if it really isn’t possible to be happy all the time, some claim to have a very high baseline e.g Anders Sandberg and psychologists have known about hyperthymic temperaments for decades. Plus there’s that Scottish school teacher who seems biologically incapable of suffering both physically and mentally.
For those of us that say the brain would adapt to certain level of happiness and consider it the new norm: Yes that is what would happen if there were good things of equal value happening to us constantly. But that's because, the dopaminergic (dopamine is a "feel-good" hormone) response in our brain wears off due to being exposed to the same stimulus. So a machine controlling dopamine release could enable a state of permanent happiness, by releasing the same amount of dopamine all the time. Also, the thought experiment is probably intended to make us think about if we really only wanted to be happy. Personally, I'd switch on that machine anytime, since my experiences would't only be pleasurable but also indistinguishable from reality. Therefore i dont see the problem with a life without pain.
I like having pain. I learn that way and I end up treasuring my moments of happiness even more because of my past pain. Also endless pleasure would get boring for me after awhile.
I think if the simulation was good enough, was perfect, it would give you little or fake downs to make you appreciate the ups far more, because lots of happiness is from when you FEEL like you deserve it. What I’m trying to say is that the simulation should make feel the feeling of deserving happiness without the pain or most of it anyway
It depends on what each person defines as pleasure. I've read some stuff about an object that transports people into a world/space where they don't need to eat, sleep, get tired and anything they can think of can become "real" in this space.
Let's say you live in the Experience Machine. There is a competition happening and you would like to win it, but you won't be satisfied because you know you'll win because of the machine. In order to make this a positive experience, the EM must make you forget that you are living in the machine (so it can affect your memory/knowledge). Now that you've forgotten, you suddenly have a lack of confidence about the competition and decide not to go. Now the machine has two options: 1) You continue to believe that you are not living in the machine, don't go to the competition, and always have doubts about whether or not you would have won it. 2) The machine reminds you that you are living in a machine and therefore that you will win the competition, taking away the pleasure of succeeding. Since you may have contradicting pleasures like this, the EM must resolve this conflict for you (so it can affect your decisions). In fact, if lack of ultimate truth brings some amount of displeasure, the EM must either tell you the truth about itself (which we already know leads to contradictions), or it must remove that desire for truth. So, this is a machine which can affect your memory and knowledge, and it can even tell your brain what to derive pleasure from. Thus, you know a priori that this machine does not give you what is pleasurable for you, but rather that it replaces your brain's function with it's own ideal and feeds you that pleasure. Hence your refusal to plug in comes from the fact that the current you would not be happy with the situation your future self will be in, regardless of what your future self might feel. This is simply a human reaction to the future but it does not discount hedonism; rather, it trusts itself to give you pleasure more than it trusts the machine. It does not seek the negative experiences of reality, it attempts to avoid it's perceived negative experience of the machine future. Those that trust the machine will want to plug in, and those that don't trust it to do it's job will not. Look in the comments and you will see that this is true; most people who say they will not plug in argue that the life of only pleasure would lose it's charm and thus would not be pleasurable. This is a lack of trust in the machine to do what it claims. Because the desire to live in reality is in a way rooted in hedonism, it doesn't contradict hedonism, and thus this thought experiment fails in what it's trying to prove.
Alexander Jones Its a very interesting point of view, I hadnt thought about it that way. The way I see it is kinda like you give away your free will once you plug in, you will live your entire life thinking you are in control and without knowing you are in the machine, but actually the machine has already planned out your entire life in a way that it will give you unlimited pleasure until the day you die. So in your race example I would participate and win, I'll think I joined under my own volition but it was all planned by the machine from the start, I dont know if Im explaining myself properly, but thats just how I see it, I liked your explanation as well though.
That's precisely what I'm describing here. The machine will take away your free will and give you pleasure in it's own calculated way. While you are living in the machine, you will be experiencing great pleasure, but your current conscious self can't imagine that to be the case, so your instinct is to say no in order to preserve your current ideal of pleasure.
I agree with you nick, of course its impossible to find such a machine, but in the hypothetical scenario they present i honestly dont understand why anybody wouldnt take it. Some may say they cant find happyness that way or whatever but the machine will literally set everything up to please your own perspective of joy, happiness and pleasure. but thats just me.
"For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." To know pleasure, one must know pain, and pain sometimes leads to greater outcomes than immediate pleasure would.
I think there is a reason we have pain in the first place. There is simply not a way of living life without encountering pain. But I also think that’s what make us really appreciate the happiness
Yeah might be true in the real world but that was a machine so it would guarantee to keep your pleasure level high always. It's a hypothetical situation and it would be the better option according to me
To the people who says this machine will numb your brain to happiness, this machine of course takes account of that. The machine can easily calculate whether to simply maximize your happiness now, or give it out little by little to not overwhelm your brain. If you think pain makes pleasure feel better, you're simply wrong; because even your "better" experience can be replicated by higher pleasure; thus making pain useless in this regard. For the people who argues that we will always strive for more, that desire will always be constantly met for the duration of your life. Now, given all that, would you still not sign up for the machine? Why not?
“If good things lasted forever, would we appreciate how precious they are?” -Bill Watterson That is the most horrible way of living life I've ever heard of. An eternal life with just pleasure? That's not life. That's just taking advanced drugs. You're just living in blissful ignorance. And if you say that Ignorance is bliss and there's nothing wrong with it, well I have nothing else to say.
Honestly, because it's not reality. Plus it's selfish to do so. If I hooked myself up to a machine for all the pleasure in the world, what would happen to the people I cared about in real life? A simulation doesn't fix that. They would suffer. With the knowledge that the "perfect reality" is false, people would know that they aren't truly being with the people they love and care about. They would need to convince themselves that the simulation is reality or they do not care for reality (or the people in it, either one). However, I do see the simulation working if the person in it didn't know that it was a lie. Or the person didn't have any loved ones. Or were in a state of extreme depression and/or loneliness
@@SKAron25 What's wrong with drugs? The reason drugs are considered bad is because of the negative effects they have, living in pure pleasure forever has no negative effects
I don't want to experience pleasure 24/7 but I would happily forever escape pain. For many people, blind pleasure isn't the goal. Peace is. Which is basically just wishing for the pain to stop.
Agent Smith: "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." I'll take that red pill, thanks.
Yes but the first Matrix was a pleasure world where everyone was plugged in. But in this scenario a person connects to his own pleasure world so that he can make whatever he want like marrying with a girl he loves even if she doesnt love him. You can’t do that in Matrix because people still have human mind and their own thoughts.
iam2strong I use to love dreams of being the hero and having the love of my life. Nowadays those dreams are nightmares because it reminds me of a self that is not truly me. It’s a life that I don’t deserve and it only reminds me all the mistakes I’ve made. This is my take on it.
I mean, very good got connecting the 2 but it’s not like it’s true just because Agent Smith said it LOL. And remember, the first matrix never failed, because it’s a movie and none of it ever happened
You could add some negative hormones into the machine to maintain the effect of the positive ones in the system but if the net happiness is more then one would assume it's worth it
@@cowmoo5596 the purpose of the machine is to maximise happiness, the best way to go about that is to maintain the brains reaction to the happiness hormones. people with diabetes' bodies are unable to respond to the glucagon the same thing goes with this
@@penapickle imagine if u grew up rich and spoiled, you would never know the value of money. but one day you end up penniless on the streets, and decide to work hard to earn money. the moment u earn a dollar it will feel more valuable than the millions of dollars u wasted when u were rich and spoiled.
Not necessarily. After all, you're only promised pleasure for the rest of your life. The machine could either space out the up ticks in pleasure so you die before you reach omnipotence, or the machine operators could kill you when they can no longer make your existence more pleasurable.
some infinites are smaller than others. even if it WASNT just the rest of your life and it was eternally, there is no guarantee any infinite sequence of greater and greater pleasure would lead to omnipotence
To me, having pleasure all the time is not worth it. I would rather face reality as, yeah it is painful but it teaches us to not take those little moments of joy for granted.
Darth Mortus but here is the thing.many people especially those of my generation (the millennials) take everything for granted.what I meant was yeah have all thepleasure and joy you want but don't be oblivious to pain. because weather we like it or not pain exists in some shape or form. but pain does not last forever, stay strong and you may even find joy within hard times.
id never pick a world of pleasure because the troubles and obstacles of life give the pleasures you feel meaning and satisfying. this is the philosophy i live by and is what keeps me optimistic all the time because i know when i look back to see i made it through a tough time it makes the reward at the end so much better and satisfying
I mean, this was also in the matrix. “I know that this steak isn’t real, but I can feel it!” Or “Ignorance is bliss” which is completely true. The guy is right to want to live a pleasured life. His method were extreme, but he was technically in the right.
Not really. A life of only pleasure means you don't know pain or pleasure. If you lived only in the dark, then you can't comprehend light and darkness. Yeah, you live in the darkness, but you have no way to compare it with anything because that you never seen daylight before. The matrix is knowledge vs ignorance. Do you prefer to live with knowledge of something bad happening, or live without worry. Too lazy to read the above? Knowing only pleasure means you don't know pleasure or pain. The matrix isn't like that. It is knowledge vs ignorance which is vastly different.
Yeah, I guess you’re right. I felt like a cult leader when I read my comment again. That being said, it said you could choose to plug yourself in. Meaning you already know what pain is beforehand. So I would still choose to plug in.
@Volf Khat You're right. They aren't born in there. I'd say that a life without pain would still rub on them though. They know these things, which makes it worse. Conflict, hardship, and pain are what makes life feel like life and not dull and boring. Have you played a video game or watched a video to death? It gets boring. I feel like it would be the same without some pain, conflict, and hardship. Of course, this is my opinion which is -always correct- only what I think. You can think what you want to think.
@@machixius That's Great! how I arrive at it is that, Truth = integrity. Integrity is the foundation of every structure. Such is also the lesson from Astrology.
Like many others, I've often wondered why there's always a fraction of those people who dislike such impeccable videos. It makes one wonder, could they be that ignorant or maybe perhaps alternately that knowledgeable so as to criticise something like this. What were their thoughts like when they chose to dislike? It would be cool if RU-vid could run a survey on every video, asking people to give their reasons about why they liked or disliked a video. What was their state of mind, perhaps, when they did so? As in, were they depressed, in pain, anxiety, loneliness, etc. Did these feelings affect their rational decisions on such sites?
To answer your question, youtube automatically dislikes videos with a small percentage ratio compared to the number of likes. Actual dislikes may be in there, but most of the time it's to keep the scales balanced from everything being 100% liked.
There are many things which are way more important than pleasure, such as various experiences, learing the truth about life , and realizing what pain feels like . Pain can never be pleasing but it can actually do wonders which no pleasure can do. Its important to feel good but to learn and experience pain is even more important!
NO. Pleasure is the ultimate goal of life, experiences are but measures to this end goal, while pain is the complete opposite of that goal. All humans strive to live their best lives, to make the most of this hollow, pointless void of misery and pain called life, and go through it with as little suffering, as possible. Only a Masochist would want to suffer as much as he can.
I would say no after thinking. If you always have pleasure, it won't seem like pleasure. The reason one thinks pleasure is nice is because one has suffered. Like how in a bright room, you can't see light from a flashlight, but in a dark room you van. To enjoy something more, you must experience something worse. But that's just my stupid brain and it's stupid ideas.
The problem isn’t getting rejected. The problem is getting rejected every time and then having to put an ‘act’ to your fake happiness just to still play the game. Then when it feels like its going somewhere, you get shocked and either cannot believe it and butcher it or you’re too tired to keep acting because it is only a slim chance that it may work.
Angelica would never cheat with Ham I mean remember Congratulations "I love my sister more than anything in my life! I would choose her happiness over mine anytime! Elizaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"
Isn’t this sort of an abstract concept, that isn’t invented yet so the only thing restricting the concept is our imagination. therefore because the video never mentioned that would be for the rest of his life, it doesn’t mean that you can’t unplug
"Truth, knowledge and authentic connection with other human beings..." Does it really matter to know the truth or knowledge if you choose to ignore it and live a happy life? As said in the end scene of "Inception", reality is just what we choose to believe/live in.
Choosing to ignore the truth does not relieve you from the fact that you know what’s true and what’s not. If you have time to think in the experiment bubble, you’ll soon ask yourself, “Am I really happy or am I just imagining it?”
The problem with this approach is that any small bit of experience that puts a crack into your own reality becomes devastating, even debilitating. I've seen it many times where one rock in a person's life made them trip and they never recovered from it because they refused to acknowledge their approach to their dreams was wrong. Knowing truth grants one resiliency against the harshness that is in this world. It also makes those happy moments even more happier. I don't disagree that reality is what we choose to believe in. But that's not the point here. What is is living a reality that is not so easily crumbled. Living a life fortified by experience and the pursuit of honesty. If you choose to live a life where you accept lies and embrace superficial nature, what meaning could you develop that makes your life worth living?
To be blunt, you can try to interpet a faceplant in thirty different ways but it won't change the fact you can't fo through walls without trying billions of times.
i’d destroy it, if people in the world got a hold of the machine everyone would just want to use it all day and not experience true meaning by experiencing hardships and suffering. i guess its a matter of opinion though one the other hand you wont need to go through the suffering in the first place and its like a shortcut
"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 that we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering." From: The Matrix (1999).
If we don't have any problems t solve, there's no real meaning to life for most people. You wouldn't have the drive to better yourself, no ambitions to achieve new things, or acquire new skills because there's no real reward in that. You're already maximum happy, why pursue more things? You would never want to get out of your comfort zone.
@@Hypercube1729 but the reason we even have ambitions and dreams and struggle through life's hardships is to overcome present and future hardships. If we removed hardships altogether, there would be no reason to prepare for any, which poses the question of "is that better?"
"I want it to hurt. Bad. I want to lose. I want to get beaten up. I want to hold on until I'm thrown off and everything ends. And you know what? Until that happens, I want to hope again. And I want it to hurt. Because that means it meant something. It means I am something, at least... pretty amazing to be something, at least..." ~Mae Boroski(Night in the Woods)
"Would you like to know if you were being cheated?" Not sure this is the correct question to be made on this kind of mental experiment because, when you hear this question, you already experience some level of pain or anger that could cloud your judgment instead of revealing what you would really prefer in a real "not knowing" situation
No. The obvious thing is, that when you hear the question, you obviously would want to know, even if it made you sadder, knowing it and being less happy is more preferable, and hus there's more to our choices and life than just maximising pleasure.
+Aryan Arora What makes you believe this? Also; I personally have already experienced sadness. Is this experience enough to last me a lifetime of happiness in the experience machine or would I need to periodically "update" my sadness? But most importantly; on what epistemic framework are you basing this belief?
Brian Bors because if there is only happiness in your life, you wont know what happiness means, same thing for sadness, you need to have both for contrast, you need to know that ok sadness means not happiness and happiness means not sadness, you need the difference to know what happiness and sadness really mean, it's like if everything in this universe is the colour white, white will have no meaning, but if things are black and grey, white will have meaning, it's a subtle thing
+Aryan Arora I understand that that is what you believe. I don't understand why you think this is true though. Also would it be relevant to the person in the experience machine? After all; he experienced reality so he allready knows what happiness and sadness means.
Brian Bors I just told you why I think it's true, the answer to the questions why I believe this? and why I think it's true? is the same, and ofcourse to the person inside the experience machine this would be irrelevant, but things like truth and rationale would also be irrelevant to that person, he/she decided to place happiness above everything else so everything else is irrelevant to him/her
+Aryan Arora I believe things for which there is sufficient evidence. I haven't seen you present evidence for the belief. No studies or even anecdotal observations and data that suggests that that is how it works. Does that mean you use a different method than I to determine what to believe or am I bad at explaining my question?
This remembers me of the “Brave New World” book, in which the inhabitants of this new world are permanently happy, but at the cost of everything else, like knowledge and culture.
One purpose of pain is to make you stronger. For example, listening to opinions you disagree with strengthens your critical thinking abilities. Momentary pain is often far surpassed by much greater pleasure in the long run. For example, denying yourself some luxury good now can help you save to an even greater goal in the future: delayed gratification. Going to love, experiencing heart-break can make you tougher and less susceptible to hastily "falling in love" in the future. It teaches you to guard your heart more thoroughly. Momentary pain in practicing a new skill gives way to long term mastery of the skill. It's not fun to exercise or to study, but the benefits can far outweigh the initial discomfort. None of this is to say that you should actively seek out pain, only that you should no be afraid to experience it. Use pain as a learning opportunity. Discipline teaches a child what not to do.
YES YES YES YES YES I KNEW IT BETSEY WAS ELIZA'S ACTUAL NICKNAME AND THERE ARE RUMORS ABOUT ALEXANDER HAVING AN AFFAIR WITH ANGELICA SO YESSSSSS WHERE ARE MY HAMILFANS AT!!
This is a pretty bad refutation. People reject the machine because knowing truth brings them pleasure. I'd opt in. I don't even know if this reality is true.
lol so knowing the truth or not doesn't mean anything if you wanna feel infinite pleasure I mean ok knowing what is pain is great cause you might avoid it most of the time but in reality most the people fail to avoid pain that's why so many people r hooked on substances to make them feel good tho.
The feeling of being alone is one of the best, actually the best feeling I have ever gotten people useally think of this feeling as a bad feeling but you just need to stop and feel your pain sometimes and actually enjoy it. It has gotten me craving this feeling.
@@localizeds You don't in this case, an endless pleasure machine will bring you pleasure no matter what. Even if you get bored, it will still make you pleasure
To everybody that was just about to comment "Reject the experience machine, because only the pain makes us appreciate happiness". This is nonesense, because the experience machine could simulate "trough pain appreciated happy experiences". The fact that happy experiences get numb over time or that going trough opposite feelings often intensifies happiness isn't really a reason to reject the experience machine. Consider this scenario: You get back home after a long day of work and, remembering that you haven't eaten much during the day, you bite into an apple and it's the most delicious thing you've ever tasted. So the next day you eat apples all the time. In every short break you eat an apple. But all those apples won't taste nearly as good. Even though they were the exact same apples, they had less taste to them, because you weren't hungry all day. I can't speak for you, but i think what i myself want isn't the mixed experiences of being hungry all day and then eating an amazing apple. This mixture of pain and happiness is surely better than eating bland apples all the time, but what i actually want is just the experience of eating the delicious apple, because this expereince has been intensified trough my hunger. It may not be possible in reality, but if i could have the experience of "biting into an apple after being hungry all day" over and over again without actually having to be hungry all day, i would choose it. And this is exactly what the experience machine offers.
Did anyone read The Method by Juli Zeh? The story is set in a future "health dictatorship", where laws have been written to optimize the citizens' health - and the protagnist strives for her right of being sick and feeling pain.
