I've been contemplating on the meaning of happiness, especially the idea that happiness is a matter of having pleasurable sensations or experiences, Is it practical for human beings to eventually live within Virtual reality environments? You may be asking... what the heck is he talking about? But let me give you 2 scenarios, you'll understand better. You can choose to give your opinion and thoughts on scenario 1, scenario 2.... or even both if you'd like, it's up to you
Scenario 1: The happiness box
A machine has been developed and is essentially a box containing some electrodes and a life-support system: this machine may be called the Happiness Box. If you enter this box, you will experience a powerfully pleasant sensation which will continue indefinitely with just enough variation to keep you from getting too accustomed to it. You are invited to try it. If you elect to do so, then you can get out of the box whenever you wish, however, you should be aware that anyone who has entered the Happiness Box has never wanted to leave it. After ten hours or so, the life-support system is hooked up, and the person inside remains there for life. Now granted, such people inside the machine never do anything else, so their bodies tend to atrophy after a few years due to lack of exercise, but this never seems to bother them. So, the decision is up to you: would you like to step into the Happiness Box? Why or why not?
Scenario 2: The Experience Machine
Imagine a machine that could give you any experience (or sequence of experiences) you might desire. When connected to what may be called this Experience Machine, you could have the experience of writing a great poem, bringing about world peace, being a renowned celebrity or athlete, or loving someone and being loved in return. You could even experience the felt pleasures of such things, or how they feel from the inside. Your experiences can be programmed for tomorrow, or this week, or this year, or even for the rest of your life. If your imagination is stumped, then you can use the library of suggestions extracted from biographies and enhanced by novelists and psychologists. You can live your wildest dreams as if you really experienced them subjectively. Upon entering, you will not remember having done so, which means that no pleasures will be ruined because you realize that they are artificially produced. Would you choose to live like this for the rest of your life? If not, why not? The really serious question, then, is not whether to try the Experience Machine temporarily, but whether to enter it forever. What do you think?
Again, i am just looking for your opinion on this, it's something i've been really keen on finding out
Thank you for reading this and giving your time to comment.
I've been happy while having unpleasurable experiences or sensations, so I don't equate merely having pleasure with happiness. For me, happiness hasn't really depended on my circumstances, but what I make of them.
No, I wouldn't go in the box for that reason. I'd be missing out too much on real life.
Same for the experience box. I want to live my life, not someone elses. Also it sounds like sensory overload, which I wouldn't want at all.
0 Replies
roger
3
Mon 10 Oct, 2011 07:17 pm
@RvP10,
RvP10 wrote:
Is it practical for human beings to eventually live within Virtual reality environments?
How do you know you're not already in a virtual reality environment?
You don't have to overexplain virtual reality. It's been around as a popular subject of science fiction for a very long time.
Tron (1982) and Tron Legacy (2010);
Lawnmower Man (1992);
Strange Days (1995);
eXistenz (1999);
The Matrix trilogy (1999, et al);
Not to mention the cyberpunk novels of the 1990's. And a few thousand science fiction novels of the past decade.
So, is this a college level homework assignment (either psychology or philosophy) or some kind of market research/anecdotal research for a novel/script you're writing?
I am studying Philosophy at University right now, It was a College (grade 12) level assignment I had last year, and i was going through my papers and stumbled upon it, i'm just interested in knowing what you guys think is all
0 Replies
JLNobody
2
Mon 10 Oct, 2011 08:11 pm
@RvP10,
In a sense we already do live in "virtual reality" environments. Consider the role of culture in our lives.
0 Replies
wayne
1
Mon 10 Oct, 2011 08:30 pm
The problem is that our feelings of pleasure are produced by chemical interactions. The pleasurable experience is merely the catalyst for chemical release. Any real happiness depends on a balance between good and bad experiences and feelings. We often feel greatest happiness when we've survived the storm.
Cocaine is the virtual reality happiness machine of our age, it's pretty well understood how that ends up working out for rats and people alike.
You say, Wayne that the "The problem is that our feelings of pleasure are produced by chemical interactions. The pleasurable experience is merely the catalyst for chemical release." That's true, but only part of the truth. If a georgeous woman approached you and threw her arms around you and kissed you, that would set off chemical reactions, but it is the fallacy of reductionism to ignore the phenomenon of the hug and kiss. It is, at the level of meaning, indispensible for that particular experience of pleasure. At the chemical level it is also indispensible. I wish we could maintain a kind of stereoscopic (if not simultaneous) focus on both levels.
I guess I'm suggesting a marriage between a physicalist materialism and a mentalistic idealism.
...even so you are assuming all those experiences, the woman, the kiss, and what you fell in reaction to it, are not reducible to chemicals working in the brain, but it is the case concerning perception and cognition, whether real or not real, that all those experiences that you have are translated in some rich chemistry operating inside your mind...
0 Replies
Lustig Andrei
3
Tue 11 Oct, 2011 12:54 am
@RvP10,
RvP10 wrote:
Would you exit reality to live in a virtual world of happiness?
I strongly suspect that if I exited "reality" (however you define that), it would lead to real unhappiness for me at best or a total sense of disorientation at worst. I have long been aware that if I decide to be happy, nobody can stop me.
0 Replies
wayne
1
Tue 11 Oct, 2011 05:17 am
@JLNobody,
I think that we do in fact have this sort of marriage, our consciousness lives in the mind, the feelings reside in the body. The marriage of the 2 is the human being.
Meditation is a method of overriding this marriage, accomplishing a true meditative state means divorce from the body.
Can this state be termed happiness, when we no longer have a dog in the fight?
I don't believe so, I think we become objective, which is something different than happiness.
0 Replies
Setanta
1
Tue 11 Oct, 2011 05:21 am
They made up their minds
And they started packing
They left before the sun came up that day
The exit to eternal summer slacking
But where were they going
Without ever knowing the way
in the early days of nintendo's gameboy, they had an ad campaign which read "wherever you are, be somewhere else", i've lived my life by this credo ever since
I'm glad to see that you have a deep and abiding faith . . .
0 Replies
igm
1
Tue 11 Oct, 2011 07:07 am
@RvP10,
Not interested... it's a natural high... or low... for me. Dependent experience is impermanent. Cut the bonds of conceptualization... and enter into everyday life!
0 Replies
Procrustes
2
Tue 11 Oct, 2011 07:15 am
The trend seems to be that as computing power increases so does the 'life like nature' of the constructs we continually try to build for ourselves. I think no one is truly happy unless they 'wake up' to find what is truly real.
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