The Experience Machine

Imagine a machine that offers you every pleasure you can imagine. If you choose enter the Experience Machine, you’ll live what seems like your perfect life. You won't even know it isn't real, as your memories of entering the machine will be conveniently erased. If you take the deal, there’s no going back. You will live a long and happy life inside the Experience Machine, but you’ll leave the real world behind forever.

The Experience Machine is a thought experiment designed by Robert Nozick, first presented in his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Nozick intends it as a challenge to hedonism, the view that what is good in life simply is what is pleasurable.

According to Nozick, the reluctance many of us feel to enter the Experience Machine reveals that hedonism cannot be the whole story. We don’t just want to live pleasurable lives, but also authentic ones, full of actual relationships and genuine accomplishments.

Before being presented with the activity, the learner sho