The Machine That Feels Like Life
Written by Studio AM.
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In 1974 the philosopher Robert Nozick described a machine that could give you any experience you wanted. You would float in a tank with your brain wired to it, and you would feel yourself writing a novel, earning a friend's trust, climbing a mountain, each experience as vivid as reality, with its artificial source not detectable from within. You could program a lifetime in advance. Nozick asked whether you would choose to plug in.
Consider a refusal. That answer creates a challenge for any theory that treats pleasant experience as the only thing that finally matters, if we assume the machine offers more pleasure than life outside. On that theory, choosing the less pleasant life would need an explanation.
Nozick suggests one explanation: we want to do certain things, not merely to have the experience of doing them, and we want to be a certain kind of person, a concern not settled by simulated achievements. The thought experiment does not prove this. It makes a possible commitment explicit: real action and contact with the world may matter to us beyond how pleasant they feel.
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Questions
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Question 1 of 4
What does the experience machine test?
The answer is D: Whether pleasant experience is the only thing people finally care about.
The refusal is used to question whether pleasant experience alone captures everything a person values.
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Question 2 of 4
According to the passage, what is true of experiences inside the machine?
The answer is A: They feel vivid, and their artificial source cannot be detected from within.
The setup says the simulated experiences feel vivid and their artificial origin is not detectable from within them.
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Question 3 of 4
Why would choosing life outside challenge the theory described?
The answer is B: It would choose less pleasure even though the theory treats pleasure as the only final value.
Given the stated assumption that the machine provides more pleasure, the refusal suggests another value may matter.
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Question 4 of 4
What does “detectable” mean in this passage?
The answer is C: able to be noticed.
The word refers to whether the experiences' artificial source could be noticed, not whether the experiences themselves are felt.
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