Hello again and welcome back to Happy Hour. Today we have in our studio TJ again, welcome back TJ.

Hi.

So what are we going to talk about today?

Today I want to do an experiment with you, what we call a thought's experiment. I want to imagine in the future, there is a machine that can give you any experience that you want, could be 5 years or 10 years, but you have the opportunity to use this machine and you can fly to Mars or you can go back to the Tang Dynasty and be their emperors on the throne in Chang An.

Can I just stop you there for a minute? When you say there is a machine, do you mean like a virtual reality? Is that what you mean?

I think it could be virtual reality. It's just anything that would be able to make you have experiences of another world, whether they use a computer to do it, or whether it's aliens with their brains and telepathic powers. But anyone that can make you experience something completely different to what you would normally experience and you can choose, so you can go forward in time backward in time. Anything that you can imagine can become real. Do you think you would want to use that machine?

Oh, of course! I'll leap at that opportunity to use that machine, to get to experience all the ages in time to experience things that I would otherwise not have an opportunity to experience, of course. So what's the experiment?

The experiment is called the thought machine, or the pleasure machine. And it's a famous experiment by a philosophy called Robert Nozick in 1974. And this has inspired a lot of TV shows and a lot of books, and a lot of thought about what we should do with this machine if we have one, and especially as technology advances, this machine gets closer and closer. In 1974, it felt like this kind of machine was very, very far away. But now it's starting to feel like, maybe, in some ways it's already here, I think.

Virtual reality, those VR experience centers, I think to some extent, they actually provide that kind of experience, don't they?

Right. They do. They give you the visual sight. And what for Nozick, the thought machine would give you everything else, too. So it would be completely like the real world, right.You would smell, touch and hear everything, just like the real world. And you would control everything.

But it's not actually doing it though. It's not like a time machine that I can actually bring you back to these times.

Right. And that is why it's very important, because Nozick has this difference between experiences and reality. And he really emphasizes this difference.

So why is this important? It just sounds like one of those dreams people have. Why is it so important in philosophy?

When Nozick was writing,a lot of philosophers were hedonist and that means that they think the only good thing in the world is pleasure. Pleasure is good, pain is bad. And that's how you solve any kind of moral problem.

Hedonist. That actually is a bit of a surprise to me, I have to admit. I used to think that philosophers are people almost like religious folks, like monks. They're trying to seek profound meaning in life. Is it not true?

I think that philosophers just find different things pleasurable to a lot of people. So maybe some people like to go out party. But the philosophers, we find reading books pleasurable. Even if you look at monks, if you look at like 弥勒佛, he is very happy, right? He has a pleasurable life, but just a different kind of pleasure than what we normally think of when we...

To each's own, you have your own pleasures.

Right.But Nozick wanted to show that it's not only pleasure that matters, that there are other things in life that are important. And he thinks that we shouldn't use the pleasure machine. He has a few reasons. The first one being is that we actually want to do things. We don't just want to experience things. So something like we actually want to climb the mountain. We don't just want to have the experience of it. If you choose to do that, it's because you think it's important. The same thing as maybe having wife and children. We actually want real wives and husbands and children.

You're saying the difference between actually doing things versus having the experience of it. But if you experience certain things to that level, as you are saying, all the senses he could feel, you could smell, you could listen, all your senses 都能感知到真实, then how is that not real? What's the difference between then just experience it using this machine and actually doing it in life.

That's a really complicated question. Right, for Nozick, I think he would say the differences in real life, you're just a blob. You're just this thing in a machine. That's what's really happening. Whereas if you actually have a wife, you're not a blob in a machine, you're a real person with a wife. So he thinks it's very clear. Anybody knows that having an experience by watching a movie or virtual reality is very, very different to actually doing it.

Do you you what it reminds me of, this is like nowadays you have a lot of games, especially those role playing games, online or mobile games, that allows you to be this character, this hero. And many people get hooked. They can be a hero in this game, in this virtual space. But that doesn't really change the fact that in real life, they are just sitting in front of a computer, not doing much.

Exactly, that's exactly what Nozick is saying. No matter how good the video game is, even if it is just the same as real life, you're just still somebody in a basement sat and not doing anything really important or really special.

So those are two reasons that we want to actually do the things, not just having the experience of it. And we don't wanna be a blob. We wanna be living human being. We want to actually perhaps make a difference. What else?

Part of making a difference is also having the world be different than you expect it to be. So when we're in a video game, we can just save, or maybe we can change things in the video game, we are in control of what happens. So Nozick's experience machine, we would choose what we want， maybe to be a famous writer, or maybe even to come and meet you, Lulu, whatever they want, they can have. But in reality...

So there are no surprises?

Right? Reality is full of surprises, we can have some surprises. But if we control the games too much and Nozick thinks with the experience machines, ultimately we can decide what we get. And that doesn't challenge us, it doesn't make us grow. It just makes us very boring, I think Nozick would say.

The predictability of the game perhaps is what makes it boring. You need surprises, you need to feel out of control,you need to have challenges in life. I guess that's what you were saying.

I think maybe you've experienced this when you came to the UK for the first time. Was it exactly like you expected it to be in your dream?

Definitely, I've travelled to many different places and I have to admit to you, I don't think any place in this world is exactly like I expected to be, as I how I pictured it to be. And sometimes sort of imagination of the place is completely different from the reality. That's partially what makes traveling fun.

Exactly. That's what makes you grow. That's what makes you become a new person. And I think both of us can say that we're very, very different than we were 10 years ago.

Definitely. Actually, I was thinking about if this machine is allowing us to have experiences of our dreams. One simple example would be, say, when I was 20 years old or even 18 years old, the type of people I liked back then completely different from the type of people that I like right now.

Right!

Because I have grown,I have changed.

Yeah. And I think that's a powerful argument.

In today's episode, TJ has given us this thought experiment about the experience machine or pleasure machine and why the philosopher thought that we shouldn't use it. Very interesting topic. We will continue with the topic in the next episode. Meanwhile, what would you do? Would you want to try this machine? Why and why not? Leave us comment in the comment section and stay tuned for our next episode. See you next time. Bye.

Bye.

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