Would You Plug In? - Issue 77 - 3rd September
There’s a famous philosophical thought experiment imagined by Robert Nozick in the 1970s called The Experince Machine. The idea is that if there was a time in which it was possible for us to plug into a machine, fall unconscious but feel the experience of anything we want, would we plug in? Our bodies wouldn’t move, we would objectively be unconscious but we would feel the feelings of any experience. “When connected to this experience machine, you can have the experience of writing a great poem or bringing about world peace or loving someone and being loved in return” (2).