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CHAPTER 1
Cypher's Choices
The Variety and Reality of Virtual Experiences
Peter Ludlow
In Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick offered a thought experiment involving an "experience machine" — a machine that can constantly simulate experiences that are pleasurable. Given the opportunity, would we permanently plug ourselves into such a machine? And if not, why would we refrain from doing so?
In some respects, the opportunity to plug into the experience machine presents a choice like that offered to the character Cypher in the movie The Matrix (1999). For those who never saw The Matrix (or who have forgotten the plot), the movie involves a group of hackers who have come to know that most of humanity is plugged into a vast simulation, known as The Matrix. Cypher is one of the hackers who has become aware of this fact and has been unplugged from The Matrix, but he later betrays his comrades. As his reward for selling out the others, he chooses to be reenvatted. He has seen enough of the real world; he prefers the simulation.
Nozick, however, predicts that most of us would not choose the path taken by the evil traitor Cypher — we would reject the simulation in favor of a life embedded in so-called real life (hereafter RL). Based on this presumed choice, Nozick draws several conclusions. One is that the reason we would reject the simulation is because we cannot genuinely act when we are in the simulation. A second conclusion Nozick draws is that we would reject the simulation because it does not afford us contact with a deeper reality. It only affords us a kind of superficial reality. Finally, Nozick claims that the thought experiment shows us that there is something wrong with the doctrine of hedonism, as ordinarily construed. Even if being embedded in a simulation could afford us a life of pleasure we would reject it — presumably because we value the ability to act in the world and be in contact with basic reality more than we value pleasure itself.
Since Nozick's publication, the idea of an experience machine has become less of a thought experiment and more of an ongoing empirical research program, with virtual worlds like Second Life (hereafter SL)and other synthetic worlds providing laboratories in which these questions can be explored. Even though such synthetic worlds do not exhaust the conceptual space of possible experience machines, including Nozick's core example, they have been around long enough that we can extract some important insights into Nozick's questions. The study of virtual worlds can help unglue us from unexamined assumptions about the nature of Nozick's experience machine.
Using what we know about existing virtual worlds I argue that it would be wrong to think that actions in virtual worlds are not genuine actions, and wrong to think that virtual experiences do not afford contact with deeper reality. On the other hand, when people choose to participate in virtual worlds, they typically choose those activities that are fraught with risk — including the risk of causing themselves pain in interpersonal relationships, and engaging in activities, plans, and goals that often yield genuine disappointment. I then argue that this holds true even for the solipsistic experience machine envisioned by Nozick. We would insist on experiences that afford us at least the illusion of agency, action, and risk. Virtual worlds show that given the choice of any virtual experience, we do not choose the hedonistic experience path, but we rather chose virtual lives that have importance and nobility. In effect, Nozick is right, but for the wrong reasons.
1.0 HEDONISM
Because part of Nozick's claim is that the experience machine thought experiment refutes hedonism, we need to get clear on what hedonism is. A standard definition goes something like this: Hedonism is the doctrine that we should act so as to maximize pleasure and minimize pain to the greatest extent possible.
There are several further choice points here. First, we have to decide whether we ought to maximize pleasure for everyone or just for ourselves. For purposes of discussion I'm going to assume the latter, since if Nozick's experience machine thought experiment doesn't refute individual-level hedonism it won't refute the group-level hedonism either.
There are other decisions to be made. There is a kind of hedonist who would say that we should always opt for the best possible experience in the moment — we should live in the moment and opt for the greatest pleasure (and least pain) in that moment. This version is too easy a target, I think. Hedonists since Jeremy Bentham have stressed that future pleasure and pain are important considerations as well.
I'm going to assume a less in-the-moment version of hedonism — one like Bentham's hedonistic calculus in which we are concerned with matters like the future effects of our actions (indigestion and hangovers, for example), the duration of the pleasures received, and so forth.
We might be tempted toward a Millian version of hedonism — one that incorporates the quality of a pleasure. I'm going to avoid that version for purposes of this argument, since it is unclear to me how that doctrine could ever be refuted given a broad enough understanding of "quality" of pleasure. For example, you might stipulate that a pleasure is qualitatively better if it involves a real object. That would undermine Nozick's argument against hedonism pretty quickly, but not in a very interesting way.
Ultimately then, the target doctrine is this version of hedonism: One ought to act to maximize the greatest quantity of pleasure (and/or least pain) over the rest of your life, for yourself.
In the context of Nozick's thought experiment this understanding of hedonism leads to a three-part question. First, would we opt for a virtual life if it allowed us (individually) significantly more pleasure for the rest of our lives? (I've added the term significantly because we want this to be a clear choice. Entering the experience machine is not an enterprise to be taken lightly.) Second, does this choice reflect whether we ought to opt for such virtual lives? Third, assuming Nozick is correct about what our choice would be, is his diagnosis of why we would make that choice correct? Is it correct that we would reject the experience machine because we would be unable to act in that virtual world and because such a virtual experience would fail to provide us contact with a deeper reality?
2.0 THE THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
Here is how the thought experiment works, as set out in Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia.
Suppose there was 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 experiences? [...] Of course, while in the tank you won't know that you're there; you'll think that it's all actually happening. [...] Would you plug in? (Nozick 1974, 44–45)
The thought experiment serves the argument against hedonism in the following way. The choice we make reflects certain norms that we share — for example, the norm that there is more value to acting in RL. The thought experiment is supposed to make such norms salient by illustrating that we would choose a world in which we are grounded in reality and free to act in that reality rather than one in which we are streamed happy experiences (in Nozick's version, the life experiences are "preprogrammed").
Like most thought experiments, judgments can break in different directions. For the fictional character Cypher, at least, the choice was to live in the virtual world of The Matrix. Of course, in the context of the movie, this is just evidence that Cypher is a vile, evil traitor. The thought experiment is only supposed to work for agents that are not normatively defective. There is, of course, some danger of circularity in this — the thought experiment is supposed to provide evidence for certain norms, but when the participant's judgment breaks the wrong way we say that is because the participant is normatively defective. Let's give Nozick the benefit of the doubt here and say that we have independent reasons for thinking Cypher was normatively defective (the fact that he killed his comrades, for example).
There is also an is-ought issue here. Even if it is true that nondefective persons reject the vat, why does it follow that they ought to do so? The original hedonists were well aware that people have trouble picking the path that maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain (particularly so the latter). A clever hedonist might say "of course everyone rejects The Matrix; you have to learn to be a hedonist."
For purposes of discussion I'm going to assume that these judgments of whether to enter the experience machine are illuminating of normative facts. My point is that even if they are not evidence for norms, Nozick has misdiagnosed the reason people choose to reject the experience machine.
3.0 FIVE GRADES OF VIRTUAL WITHDRAWAL
Nozick has a very specific version of the experience machine in mind, but we will find it useful to consider a broader array of such possible machines. For example, I'll be drawing on virtual worlds like Second Life to illustrate some key points vis-à-vis Nozick's core argument.
Is it fair to consider these other classes of examples? Surely yes, because we may find that there are classes of experience machines in which people are less dramatically removed from the real world but which are sufficient to support or refute Nozick's principal claims.
More specifically, there may be classes of experience machines where agents clearly act and they clearly are connected with aspects of the real world but in which they refuse options of more pleasurable lives. This outcome would support my view that Nozick was right, but for the wrong reasons.
To keep the differences clear, I suggest we distinguish five different grades of withdrawal from so-called real life.
1. RL-connected multiuser virtual environments
2. Isolated multiuser virtual environments
3. Single-user virtual environments that afford agency, risk, and harm
4. Single-user virtual environments that afford agency without risk and harm
5. Single-user virtual environments that afford no agency, risk, or harm
As we will see, some of these levels of disengagement present distinct sets of problems. Some of the levels may collapse into each other.
3.1 RL-Connected Multiuser Virtual Environments
In The Matrix, the simulated world that Cypher chooses to return to is only minimally connected with RL. For the most part such connections are forbidden; the movement between worlds is clandestine and dangerous. It is, however, possible to imagine a version of The Matrix in which people are allowed to come and go freely and in which exchanges of information and virtual content between The Matrix and RL are permitted. We can imagine a scenario in which Cypher merely wanted to spend part of his time plugged in to The Matrix, and in which his visits to The Matrix were less perilous and more entertaining.
Such a choice would deliver an experience much like the multiuser virtual worlds that exist today, most notably, Second Life. For those who aren't familiar with Second Life, it is a first-person graphical virtual world. Users participate and act in Second Life using "avatars" — graphical representations of themselves that they construct using in-world tools. They also have the opportunity to "skin" their avatars, animate them and clothe them using in-world virtual products.
The most interesting features of Second Life are the tools provided to users to create content — content ranging from clothing, to furniture, to scripted objects of nontrivial computational complexity. People in Second Life can use other tools to form groups and corporations, sell services ranging from security to design, and hold concerts and other virtual events.
Second Life is persistent, in that the underlying game engine is running even when we are away from the world, and the objects we create and possess in Second Life are there when we are offline. People can visit our homes when we are offline, for example.
While it is common for people to be dismissive of people's Second Lives, for the most part it is hard to see this as being much more than a kind of bigotry. While the experience of participating in Second Life events may not be as robust as it is for RL events, such experiences are, for all that, clearly substantive. For many persons who are differently abled, or who are caretakers, or who, for many other reasons, do not have the luxury of nights out, SL concerts and events can be rewarding and fun activities. But Second Life also affords the opportunity to engage in collaborative actions and activities that are fraught with opportunity and risk.
For example, in Second Life one conducts transactions in Linden Dollars — a virtual currency that has a fairly stable exchange rate relative to the U.S. dollar. There are currency exchanges in which Linden Dollars can be exchanged for U.S. currency. There are businesses created within Second Life and, in some cases, people's principal sources of income come from Second Life activities (e.g., making clothing, or terraforming land and building virtual homes). My Second Life friend Anshe Chung (Ailin Graef in RL) built up a substantial business developing and managing virtual properties, acquiring a valuation of over U.S. $1 million at one point (see Saenz 2011).
Nozick claimed that "acting" in the experience machine would not be genuine acting, but if we think of Second Life as being a version of the experience machine, then this conclusion is hasty. If you run a virtual corporation and are earning a living from doing so, it hardly seems fair to say that you are not acting in some interesting sense. The decisions you are making and the data structures being created are certainly real things that, for what it is worth, have quantifiable values in RL.
This is not unique to Second Life. Once a virtual world has multiple players, then social relations and social objects can be created that are easily ported out of the world. A good example of this is the fact that in multiuser worlds, world-external markets naturally come into existence. This can be driven by the fact that some people invest time in virtual worlds creating virtual products and avatars, and other people with money wish to circumvent that time expenditure. And perhaps unsurprisingly, the market in virtual goods for all virtual platforms (including multiplayer video games) had, already a decade ago, reached U.S. $1.8 billion annually (see Dibbell 2007).
My point here is that activities in multiplayer worlds create things of value that can be transferred to other agents outside of the world of origin. Given that objects (whatever their ontological status) can be created and transferred and assigned dollar value by global markets, it hardly makes sense to say that there is no action or agency in virtual worlds.
Of course, with the creation of value in virtual worlds comes quantifiable risk and harm. If you have assets of a certain value in a virtual world you can (depending on the virtual world) lose them in combat, or be scammed out of them, or have them taken by the platform owner, or simply misplace them.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Experience Machines"
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Copyright © 2017 Mark Silcox.
Excerpted by permission of Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd..
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