Pondering "Real" Reality
A question we once pondered as a thought experiment is now moving beyond the realm of the purely hypothetical. Our focus piece (click: Encounters With Reality) makes reference to that famous “experience machine” thought experiment we addressed in an earlier session (MM 3/4/24 The (Pleasure) Experience Machine) as it frames the issue in terms of whether and, if so, why we prefer real-life experience over that served up by means of “mediating technologies.”
The matter becomes more and more relevant as underlying technology becomes advanced to the point that reality and its simulation becomes increasingly indistinguishable. While we are not (yet) at the stage of that direct neuralink brain implant to shortcut experiential input, the technology is rapidly advancing to the point it can augment, enhance, or otherwise replicate the sensory perception e.g. the Google Art Project can now serves as an art gallery that is now far and away superior to anything available to the everyday humanoid.
The time is nearing that the attainment of pleasure may be had as a virtual experience. If so, would you avail yourself of it? Enter the so-called Experience Machine, a means by which you could enter a world of your absolute choosing — think in terms of your looks, your talents, your achievements, your loving partner. Anything. Best of all, you wouldn’t even comprehend that it was a simulation.
In the psychology camp, we are told, happiness is entirely subjective such that life being made up of a series of moments we might call good or bad, what we regard as the “good life” is one in which these moments are more good than bad. If so, bring it on, cheap thrills or otherwise.
Hold on, say the philosophers, there is a reason to think reality is fundamentally good. We learn from the Platonic metaphysicians that everything that exists comes from a chain of causality, deriving at some point from an uncaused cause. Perhaps enter the theologians. Another term for the overflowing of all this causality is structured reality.
Enter Aristotle to add the reason to remain in reality is in the definition of a good person through one’s activities i.e. a good person is someone who reliably does good things. Stated differently, life is not a spectator sport and entry into a simulation curtails one’s freedom to act. The Stoics would nod vigorously with the notion that the freedom to act outside of some other’s fabrication is an essential part of being human.
We might share instances of “living” what is essentially a curated life. Examples abound, from the frictionless world of a cruise ship “experience” to the mediated world of the internet. Time to get out more.
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