So there are lots of ways to answer this question. But my favorite way to think about this, and I know you’re going to be familiar with this, is a famous thought experiment by the philosopher Robert Nozick, who imagines an experience machine, which now everyone knows as the Matrix. They plug you in, and you’re in paradise. You have immediately lost your memory that you’re plugged in. So, you think you’re living your real life, but you are living a life of immense satisfaction, and challenge, and accomplishment, and carnal joy, and deep respect and everything; the best life possible.
But you’re on a table hooked up to some wires, and that’s you for the rest of your life. And then the question is, would you want to be strapped into the machine? And I’ve asked a lot of people this question in teaching moral psych courses and so on. Some people rank pleasure pretty highly and say, “Yeah, sure. Strap me in.” And certainly if I was in a prison or something, or had a sort of desperate situation, I’d much rather this life of pure pleasure than the life I’m living.
A lot of people say no, however, including Nozick, and me, and maybe you. Because I don’t just want to have experiences, I want to do things. Because I have people I love who I want to be with, and I want to take care of them, not just think I’m with them and take care of them. I’d be abandoning all sorts of friends and family. And yes, while I’m in the machine, I won’t know I’m abandoning them, but I’m abandoning them nonetheless, and that’s wrong. And so, all sorts of other non-hedonistic motivations lead me to say, “I’m going to take my real life.”
Paul Bloom
A college roommate asked me this thought experiment (or rather, a more crass version of it) one drunken night. Something felt wrong about taking the blue pill, but I couldn’t articulate why and I have intermittently thought about it throughout the years. This question along with the broader question of what constitutes a good life and if hedonism is right. I never bothered to seek out the thoughts of better thinkers on the thought experiment itself, but I found the above persuasive. Not that life wouldn’t be “good” or “happy” in a shallow sense in the infinite pleasure machine. It would be. But it would also be wrong.