Essay Writing

In his 1974 book, Anarchy, State and Utopia, Robert Nozick raises the following thought experiment:“Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired.  Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book.  All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain.  Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life’s experiences?  If you are worried about missing out on desirable experiences, we can suppose that business enterprises have researched thoroughly the lives of many others.  You can pick and choose from their large library or smorgasbord of such experiences, selecting your life’s experiences for, say, the next two years.  After two years have passed, you will have ten minutes or ten hours out of the tank, to select the experiences for your next two years.   Of course, while in the tank you won’t know that you’re there; you’ll think it’s all actually happening.  Others can also plug in to have the experiences they want, so there’s no need to stay unplugged to serve them.  (Ignore problems such as who will service the machines if everyone plugs in.)  Would you plug in?  What else can matter to us, other than how our lives feel from the inside?”