Reverse Experience Machine

Everyone remember the Experience Machine? It is used as a rebuttal of pure-hedonism in value theory, or to evaluate the pleasure principle as a primary drive in a person. The weak form (what minimum conditions must be met to plug in) is becoming increasingly interesting to me. It shows what values you hold to be important, other than pleasure and reality.

I have been thinking a lot about inverses lately, and when you invert the Experience Machine, you get a rebuttal of pure-truthism. In its' weaker form, you get to see how people gamble as well ^.~

The Reverse Experience Machine (weak form):

1. You are given indisputable proof that you are living in a simulated reality
• Yes, sort of like "The Matrix"
2. Everyone else is a computer simulation, including all the people you know
3. You have always lived in this virtual reality
4. You can get "unplugged" and live in reality, but you can never plug back in if you do
5. You are not told what unplugged reality is like

So far, many people seem willing to take this chance. You might wake up burning to death, you could wake up as a church mouse, or you could wake up in a fantastic utopia. You don't know, you'd just have to risk it.

Several questions are raised by the weak formulation:

• Do you value your lived experiences as authentic?
• Could continue to do so?
• Do you value all that you have invested in the virtual reality?
• Relationships
• Education
• Way of life
• To what degree is actual reality valued?
• This directly correlates to the probability that someone would unplug
• How motivated are you by curiosity? (yes, this one is common)
• How much of a gambler are you?
• 49.999% chance it's better, 49.999% chance it's worse, 0.002% chance it's the same

The Reverse Experience Machine (strong form):

1. You are given indisputable proof that you are living in a simulated reality
• Yes, sort of like "The Matrix"
2. Everyone else is a computer simulation, including all the people you know
3. You have always lived in this virtual reality
4. You can get "unplugged" and live in reality, but you can never plug back in if you do
5. You are given indisputable proof that unplugged reality is dystopian

Most people probably use mixed values and strategies, so the weak forms of the thought experiment actually tell you more about an individual, whereas the strong forms are clear enough to make a point.

The bias that both of these reveal about the original and reverse Experience Machine is that people many simply choose what is familiar. You're already used to the reality/unreality that you know, and "if it's not broken, don't fix it."

I'm interested in what people would do in both formulations of the Reverse Experience Machine. Please tell me what you'd do in the comments section if you are so inclined!

Checksum Values

One argument that keeps coming up against me in conversation against my line of thought is that we have some biological imperative. To address this, I'm going to respond directly to hundun's comments on one of my posts.

The argument summarizes thus:

• The mammalian brain is imperfect due to the lack of refinement form evolution
• Our minds are "like a crapware-saddled virus-ridden Vista-running laptop brought back in time to 1973"
• Human cognition is fundamentally irrational
• Biological drives (survival, reproduction, etc) constitute our basic impulses
• The human mind is not unified
• We are no different from other mammals

Okay, great, I agree with all of this except for the irrational part (to some degree). But I would argue that this model is incomplete. While I am a determinist, I still think that we have the illusion of free will (the experience of the processors chugging away). We have biological drives, but we also effectively (though not actually) have choice. In the words of Sartre, "[people] are condemned to be free." I can choose to rebel against all of my biological drives, stop eating, isolate myself, or commit suicide. I can die for a cause, or make huge sacrifices for the sake of an idea.

Yes, we absolutely have irrational biological drives, but we also have a rational cogito. Our mind is divided, hence why we can feel so divided. The pull of all these parts determines action, as if on a voting system. Your Freudian superego was installed (experimentally and by accident via evolution) to make you a social animal, but went haywire and now you can possess values that are counterproductive to evolutionary reproduction.

You do have choices over your biological drives. You can madly lust after someone, yet never act on your desire, even if given the opportunity to get away with it. Yet another person would take advantage of the situation. Why is that? The cogito portion of the democracy that is your mind can have a pretty strong say in your actions. Often these cogito functions are programmed by the indoctrination of children by their caregivers. This tends to lend itself to the realm of ethics on a social scale. However, as individuals, how can we justify wanting this or that, or valuing what we've learned through authority. Taking authority at face-value can be a very dangerous thing.

My existential crisis was born out of a number of factors that led me to recognize the value nihilism of nature: that existence precedes essence. My body gives me biological rewards by making me feel pleasure when I do certain things that I am programmed biologically to do. But is feeling good the point? Are we mere slaves to our passions? Clearly not, or at least not all of us.

Values essentially sweep through as a diagnostic of our actions. "Is this right?" is what our drives are always asking. It performs a checksum on each part of our being. But when you turn the diagnostic against itself, it can't checksum because it has nothing to check against. All the other people have different values. Our OS was installed without the ability to check if our diagnostic tool is functioning, and everyone is running different plug-ins, so we can't compare to each other.

I think there's a good chance that Douglas Adams was right, and the checksum is 42.

Do as I Say, Not as I Do

I'm going to start by saying that I have no background on political science, so if someone does and finds a problem with what I say, please educate me on it.

Kaitlin over at Equality Kitten made a post about Stephen Harper's condemnation of an American church threatening to burn some Qur'ans on September 11th. I think her post is great, but I have to point out a smaller problem that may not have resolution:

"...I am a big fan of freedom of religion, and thus allow Harper his own beliefs..."

Yes, Harper can have his own beliefs, but only within a limit. We can extract a key position from this statement: freedom of thought and religion.

Freedom on religion only exists in the private sphere in Canada. But the private has the potential for becoming public. That's what a democratic society is. A group of people expressing their beliefs on a particular topic. Religion (or any belief system, theistic or otherwise) shapes a person's views.

One theory (and a good one in my opinion) is that ethics and morality are codes used to promote the functioning of a society. If someone's belief system runs contrary to what would help the individuals in a society function bot in isolation and as a community, or impede them in any way from feeling fulfillment, then their belief or action is by definition unethical, immoral, or both. For example, opposing gay marriage is unethical because it oppresses a group of individuals who constitute a part of society, and limits their ability to cultivate their happiness at the expense of no one else. Same with denying women to be clergy (if they choose not to be that is their prerogative.)

As mentioned above, Canadian law is established such that a person can follow their personal code of conduct in the private sphere, but

We also have two contradictory positions at play:

1. Freedom of expression of personal beliefs (including religion)
2. Separation of church and state

See the inconsistency? These two rules allow for the possibility of a Cardinal to become Prime Minister. A Cardinal holds many unethical beliefs... that is to say, beliefs that would limit the cultivation of growth and happiness of many individuals in a society. This is a problem.

So what is the solution? Make it unambiguous and specific what the goal of government is: the smooth running of a society that promotes the well being and positive growth of each citizen as best it can provide. Hold whatever views you like Harper, just don't bring them all with you to work.

We approach this unambiguity more in the judicial branch of government, which is built on a series of axioms in the form of documents (Constitution, Charter of Rights and Freedoms &c) and the doctrine of precedent, in a (hypothetically) purely logical fashion. Of course this can fail too, but typically only on the failing to adhere to unbiased logic, or the lack of an axiom that needs to be there (which will fix itself as time goes on and law is refined.)