You're Guaranteed Happiness. The Catch? It's Not Real.

An exploration of Robert Nozick's 'Experience Machine' and its implications on our search for happiness, fulfilment, and meaning.

Imagine this; you have the opportunity to live your ideal life. You could be a billionaire, a famous rockstar, an explorer of deep-space, or anything else. You could quite literally experience anything that you desire, and it could happen at the click of a button. To put it simply; you could live a life of complete happiness and pleasure. Do you think you’d truly be happy and fulfilled? According to Robert Nozick, the answer is no.

Today, we’ll be wrapping up our 3-part series on happiness. This post will be dedicated to exploring a few ideas from Robert Nozick, an American philosopher who made significant contributions to the sub-fields of metaphysics, epistemology, and more.

Let’s dive in.

Robert Nozick

Robert Nozick, just like Nietzsche, wanted to demonstrate that pleasure and happiness isn’t our sole goal in life. He demonstrated his ideas through a thought experiment known as The Experience Machine, which primarily attacked hedonism (a philosophy that prioritizes pleasure over everything else) and went on to become quite well-known within academic circles at the time. Although The Experience Machine primarily highlights the fact that pleasure isn’t the only thing we desire and pursue in life, I do believe that Nozick’s thought experiment can also be used to argue against the Aristotelian view that happiness is our sole goal in life.

The Experience Machine

Through his thought experiment, Nozick demonstrates that happiness and pleasure is not the ‘end goal’ within all of our lives. His thought experiment is essentially the following;

Imagine that science has become extremely advanced, and scientists have developed a machine that allows you to experience anything that you want. Through an advanced machine, your brain can be stimulated in certain ways, allowing you to experience virtually anything, and these experiences would be indistinguishable from reality. You could basically live out your ideal life - you could live the life of a famous rockstar, you could be an astronaut or a billionaire, and you wouldn’t even be able to tell nor would you realize that it’s a simulated experience. You have the option to plug into this machine for the rest of your life. Whilst you’re using the machine, you’d be floating in a tank with electrodes attached to your brain.

Would you connect to the experience machine?

Most people, including myself, probably wouldn’t want to be plugged into the ‘experience machine’ for their entire lives. Personally, there’s something about it, even if I can’t exactly pinpoint what it is, that just feels incomplete, unfulfilling, and inauthentic. Even though my experience would be indistinguishable from reality, and I wouldn’t know I’m using the machine, there would still be something missing.

Nozick’s Experience Machine demonstrates that there’s more to a meaningful and fulfilled human life than solely pursuing happiness and pleasure. We literally have the option to live a life of maximized happiness and pleasure right in front of us, yet we still feel some sort of hesitation towards saying ‘yes’. It could be argued that if happiness was the sole goal of our lives, we’d all be jumping to get in line for the machine, but this isn’t the case. If happiness was our only goal with intrinsic value - that was valuable without relying on another, external goal (as claimed by Aristotle) - then we wouldn’t feel a sense of hesitation towards Nozick’s machine, but this isn’t the case.

I know some of you may be thinking the following; ‘if I was hooked up to the machine, it wouldn’t be a real experience, and that’s why it wouldn’t provide me with happiness’. I’d like to remind you that you wouldn’t be able to tell that your experience is being simulated, nor would you know that you’re in the experience machine itself, therefore the happiness and pleasure experienced would be indistinguishable from experiencing it in the ‘real world’. With this in mind however, you do have a point. Allow me to explain.

Nozick claims that there’s a variety of reasons as to why we have a hesitation towards being plugged in, and I’ve found that most of his reasons have a recurring theme of wanting to be connected to reality.

For example, Nozick argues that we actually want to do certain things, and not merely have the experience of doing them.

"In the case of certain experiences, it is only because first we want to do the actions that we want the experiences of doing them or thinking we’ve done them." - Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia

He also states that we place value on our true selves and our true character partaking in life, rather than our bodies floating in a tank and us merely ‘experiencing’ things;

"Someone floating in a tank is an indeterminate blob...Is he courageous, kind, intelligent, witty, loving? It’s not merely that it’s difficult to tell; there’s no way he is. Plugging into the machine is a kind of suicide." - Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia

While reading Nozick’s remarks, it made me wonder if there’s an element of reality and of agency that’s required in order for us to be able to live a life of fulfillment and meaning. Yes, of course we want to be happy, but I don’t think that happiness is the only thing we pursue in our lives. I feel as though an element of reality, of agency, and of ‘realness’ is required in order for us to truly be fulfilled and feel as though we have any sense of meaning. This could perhaps also explain why anything artificial within society often causes quite a lot of harm. Video games and simulated experiences, social media, artificial foods, and things with artificial value all cause us harm because they remove an element of reality and of agency within our lives. These things aren’t truly ‘real’ - therefore, they add a layer between us, our true selves, and life itself. This extra layer between us and life results in unhappiness and harm because it attacks the very same thing that Nozick’s Experience Machine attacks - a genuine, authentic experience of life.

In the spirit of continuing my philosophical rambling here, I also find Nozick’s Experience Machine to be interesting because it’s eerily similar to Nietzsche’s Last Man example. Nietzsche’s ‘Last Men’ were people who lived a life of maximized pleasure, happiness, comfort, and safety, yet this resulted in their lives being mundane, dull, boring, and ultimately meaningless. The same could be said for a life spent inside the Experience Machine. To draw from Nietzsche’s ideas, perhaps an additional element which makes us feel hesitation towards the experience machine is the fact that there’s no pain and suffering. We might not want to admit it, or we may not even be aware of it, but perhaps the fact that there’s no pain or hardship within Nozick’s machine is the very reason as to why it creates a life devoid of meaning and is therefore unappealing to us. This is a powerful thought because it demonstrates the importance of pain and suffering, and perhaps indicates that it’s the key to true happiness and ultimately a fulfilled and meaningful life.

All in all, happiness is valued and experienced differently by all of us. A fan of Aristotle may argue that Nietzsche’s Last Man example and Nozick’s Experience Machine don’t grant us true, authentic happiness, and that’s why they both sound so unappealing. Individuals who side more with Nietzsche and Nozick may argue that we don’t find the examples appealing because happiness isn’t our ‘main goal’ in the first place. Regardless of which philosophy you feel more drawn to, I think one thing is clear; the very concept of a ‘meaningful’ life is quite subjective, and therefore you must figure out for yourself what this means. I think all three of these philosophers would probably agree with the notion that you have to get out into the world and pursue meaning, fulfillment, and even ‘happiness’ yourself, and so that’s what I’d urge you to do as well.

As Jason Mraz once said - “Life doesn’t come at you. It comes from you.”

Stay tuned, as I’ve got something special planned for my next post. See you next week!