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Are We Living in the Experience Machine that Nozick Designed?

In his book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), Nozick developed a thought experiment in order for us to contemplate what is intrinsically important to us in our lives. In doing so, he attempts to refute Hedonism and its followers (Epicurus, Mill, etc.), whom popularly argued that happiness as an end is all that matters to us. The experiment is rather simple: imagine there was such a thing as an Experience Machine, in which scientists could attach electrodes to your brain and you could be given the opportunity to experience all of your dreams coming true. You could experience anything from being the world’s greatest novelist, the most accomplished quarterback in professional football, to simply fame and fortune. Also, others could join you in the Machine as well, such as family and friends, so you need not worry about their absence throughout these experiences — you would be given the opportunity to experience them with anyone you wish, so long as they, too, plug into the Machine. 

How many of us do you think would desert reality and plug in? Nozick believed that not many of us actually would, if scientists were to ever make it possible to do so. His argument consists of 3 primary claims about our desires: (1) we strive to do certain things in order to enjoy the experiences that follow, (2) we want to be a certain type of person, and plugging into the Machine would not allow us to be that type of person, and (3) the Machine would limit us to a mere fabrication of reality. All three of these points possess strong arguments, insofar as they ask of us to investigate even further into the meaning of happiness. Nozick argued that even if the Machine could allow us to experience being a certain way, or mimicking the experiences of the pursuit of happiness, we still would not plug in, given that even being a certain type of person is not all that matters to us intrinsically. Ultimately, he argues that, no matter how many scenarios the Machine could fabricate, it would come short of satisfying us, given that the struggle of life, in the real world, is what satisfies us — the process, if you will. Therefore, even when our choices do not leave us satisfied, we are nonetheless more satisfied with our autonomy than we are experiencing undeserved happiness. 

But why is this so? Nozick himself argued that if one cannot find anything that matters more to him than experiences (those which even animals share with us), than he has no rational argument against plugging into the Machine. Is he right? I have pondered about this experiment and have arrived to the same conclusions as Nozick did, however there is more to say about it in this day and age. When we look at our lives today, most of us would agree (with the proper evidence) that they are rather superficial, in a sense. We are programmed to strive for short-term satisfaction rather than pursuing that which would shape a better future, and too often disregard the pursuit of happiness, insofar as achieving our end goals, and aim for that which possesses the least amount of time to achieve, in order to temporarily satisfy us. In other words, we strangely tend to stray from that which we are concerned with the most more often than not. So, I would ask: do the lives many of us are living today, in actual reality, resemble the problems that Nozick found with the Experience Machine, when the lives we would live there would be outside of reality?  

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