If you like it, does it matter if it's real?

Hello everybody!

First of all, thank you very much Thomas for inviting me to write in the blog. I would like to tell you all about one of my recent studies. As you may know, in his 1974 book Anarchy, State and Utopia Robert Nozick introduced one of the most infamous thought experiments in contemporary philosophy: the so-called “experience machine”. Nozick wanted us to imagine that scientists have created a wonderful virtual reality machine capable of providing us with any pleasurable experience we may desire. Then he asked us to think whether we would like to plug in or not. His idea was that, in general, people would feel very little inclination to plug in because, in addition to pleasurable experiences, we also care about living “in contact with reality” (Nozick 1974, 45).

By and large, people have accepted Nozick’s line as a good argument against psychological hedonism. What about his explanation? He suggested that people may be reluctant to plug in because they prefer to be in contact with reality, as though reality per se—or real experiences, if you want—have some value that virtual experiences don’t. Well, in order to figure out whether people prefer a real life over a virtual life, I conducted a study in which I asked participants to imagine that they were already in a virtual reality machine, in a sort of Matrix, and then I asked them whether they would be willing to unplug and go back to reality, or if they rather wanted to remain connected. The results were quite interesting: in general (although see the paper) people preferred to remain connected. In my paper, I suggest a psychological model derived from what behavioral economists call “the status quo bias” in order to account for these results. To all of those who will be commenting on this piece, thank you very much in advance!

Best,

Felipe De Brigard

Download if_you_like_it.doc

PS. There is a longer version of this paper which includes another study using Nozick's description of the experience machine in itself. I presented this  version at the Workshop on "Subjective Measures of Well-Being and the Science of Happiness",  organized by Erik Angner at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, last February.

Comments

[Brian Mulligan]

Your experiment seems to confirm the content of Daniel Gilbert's book, "Stumbling on Happiness", which shows that people are extremely bad at predicting what will make them happy. This seems to arise from the evolutionary psychology idea that our basic urges are not to do what will make us happy, but what will maximise our chances of replication. It seems that happiness and replication of the species are at odds with each other. I'm not well read on philosophy but it would seem to me that this is a significant philosophical idea emerging from a relatively new area of science.

[Felipe De Brigard]

I think you are right. As a matter of fact, it was after a conversation with Dan that I decided to go ahead and carry out the experiments. I think my results are totally consistent with his view. As for the evolutionary explanation, I remain agnostic. The psychological phenomenon, on the other hand, seems quite robust.

[Anibal]

It is interesting to note and trace the historical origins of Nozick´s fatal gedanke machine, and its relation to the famous "skinner´s box" and the electrophysiological experiments performed on rats in the 70´s. In those experiments rats have implanted a microelectrode in its brain´s reward systems that stimulate it, and when rats know that pressing a lever alone stimulate that very zone, they prefer a continuos pressing and therefore stimulation, instead of foraging and find food for themseleves.
But the reward system of rats or the reward system of humans does not create "value" from scratch, values are not "innate entities" encoding everything we could estimate, they have to be created in relation to the world in dual interaction of mind-world/world-mind.
I believe natural motivation and value construction is a case of reinforment learning in interaction with the world.

[Bruce Wallace]

I've just listened online to the Philosophy Talk wine episode, and emailed in the following comments...their site had a link to your site, where I found your blog entry here on the same topic as my comment...

With regard to the discussion about whether perfect copies of
a wine (or the Mona Lisa) should be valued the same as the original, certain aspects of the wine/painting were brought up which seem to me to be the same "properties" that a souvenir has...
Those cheap little chotchkies made by the truckload are identical, but are of great value to the person who attaches memories and dreams to it, and not to the person who receives the same one randomly in the mail.

The "romance" attached to the bottle/painting that was personally touched by some famous painter/vintner, and missing from the laboratory copy, is really in the mind of the beholder such that, if they didn't know they had the "copy", could they tell that the romance was missing? If I secretly switch
your souvenir Eiffel Tower Candle with another identical one would you know, but if I told you I switched it wouldn't you protest?

What's the official name for this sort of "romantic attachment" to a thing?

P.S. Corollary, If an Asian factory makes the identical shirt for Hugo Boss and KMart, and a South American factory makes labels for all the major designers (including Hugo Boss), is it counterfeiting to buy Hugo Boss labels from the factory (which sells them all online anyway), and stick them on the KMart shirts, and resell them?
(Copyright infringement yes, but counterfeiting?) :-)

[Matthew Pianalto]

Thanks for these interesting studies! I have several comments, which you can find here: http://vaindesires.blogspot.com/2008/05/experience-machine-and-status-quo.html