I find Nozick’s experience machine thought experiment to be so funny. it reminds me of a lot of Christian anti-atheist arguments that go like:

“this concept I just came up with makes me - a reactionary - uncomfortable. therefore it also makes you uncomfortable. your discomfort (which I’m projecting onto you) is inconsistent with your stated values. therefore your entire worldview is inconsistent. checkmate atheists”

but like, you can really tell that Nozick wrote this thought experiment in an era before video games and the modern internet. and also that he lived his whole life in privilege and can’t imagine being disempowered in any real way, or why someone would seek any substantial form of escapism

Plugging into an experience machine limits us to a man-made reality (it limits us to what we can make).

*gestures at the screen that I’m reading this on and the keyboard that I’m typing this on*

*gestures vaguely at the four human-made walls around me and literally everything in my room*

*gestures out the window far into the horizon as the suburban sprawl continues long into the distance, with not a scrap of un-manicured nature in sight in any direction*

We want to do certain things, and not just have the experience of doing them.

this was definitely written by a white cishet man who can just, Decide to Do Things and not face any systemic obstacles. the concept of being completely disempowered and wanting to live in a simulation where you can experience having agency and choice in your life probably never occurred to this guy

“lol why would these filthy proles want to experience a simulation of skiing in the Swiss Alps when you can just have daddy buy you plane tickets”

We want to be a certain sort of person.

(with the implication that you are no one if you’re in a simulation)

lol. lmao. roflcopters.

anyway yeah this whole argument is such bioconservative reactionary bullshit. 1970’s white men really needed to get some perspective