[lit-ideas] Re: Decisions, decisions

  • From: Ursula Stange <Ursula@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 09:08:17 -0400

Part of the skit with the 'happiness box' is that you can go in and come 
out at will, but....no one who has gone in has ever come out.  For the 
most part, my students answer that they wouldn't go in because it 
wouldn't be right -- life is supposed to be about struggle and pain and 
facing up to things.   I suspect, though, that the real reason most of 
us wouldn't go in is that we don't believe thoroughly enough that our 
lives are an interior thing.  We can't help thinking that we'd miss the 
sunshine on our faces or the smell of apple crisp.   We don't really 
believe that a computer wired experience is just like a real one.   My 
personal answer has to do with Andy's last sentence below -- the 
philosophical journey part.  I wouldn't trust anyone, not even myself, 
to choose a life that's interesting enough for a lifetime.   I don't 
know myself well enough to program my life.  And I certainly wouldn't 
trust anyone else to do it.   Any life that I'd program could only be a 
life that I already know.  And where's the fun in that?
Ursula
in North Bay   

Andy Amago (answering MC) wrote:

>....by the thought experiment described in Robert Nozick's=20
>Anarchy, State, and Utopia. The Experience Machine lets us plug our=20
>brain into a computer programmed to make us think we are living=20
>whatever we take to be the best possible life. When plugged in, the=20
>life we think we are living is a computer-induced dream. Nozick asks=20
>(p. 43) : "Would you plug in? What else can matter to us, other than=20
>how our lives feel from the inside=A0?" 
>
>
>
>A.A. This can also apply to taking drugs.  When high, the life we think we are 
>living is a drug-induced dream.  Nothing matters to drug addicts other than 
>how their lives feel from the inside.  I would argue that even without drugs, 
>we don't need to be plugged into a computer to care about how our lives feel 
>from the inside.  As regular, non-drug taking people we all manipulate our 
>external life to soothe our internal life.  Without internal homeostasis, 
>there is nothing.  Just the act of living life is a philosophical journey.
>
>
>Andy Amago
>
>  
>

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