The Experience Machine is a thought experiment proposed by Robert Nozick which asks us to imagine a virtual reality machine that can replicate any experience for the person who plugs themselves in. It can make you feel as though you are a rockstar, or an award winning author or a wealthy aristocrat who gets to bang chicks all day. Anything you can want in life, it can make you think it has become reality. While plugged in the machine, you believe that it is reality and you don’t know that you are living in a virtual world. Robert Nozick used this thought experiment to argue against Hedonism which is a theory of welfare which claims that one’s welfare is solely determined by the amount of pleasure and suffering in one’s life. Because most people would prefer their current life over the EM life, Nozick argued that hedonism is likely false.

There is another popular theory of welfare called Preference Satisfaction theory which argues that one’s level of welfare is determined by whether or not they live the kind of life that they would prefer to live. The PS theory is liked by many because of its seemingly impartial nature. On the surface, it appears that a supporter of the PS theory should think that the EM life is good for those who prefer the EM life and bad for those who don’t want the EM life.

I would argue that the PS theory believer should think that the EM life is good for everyone. This is because preferences are experiences and the EM has the ability to alter everyone’s experiences. Thus, the EM can alter one’s preferences. If the EM can alter one’s preferences then it can make every person prefer the EM life over their current life. If PS theory is true, then it would be rational for each person to use the EM to change their preferences about the EM and then spend their lives living in the EM. This way they can always live the kind of life they would most prefer to live. This would imply that the PS theory also has the implication of supporting the EM existence over the typical human existence and it would imply that one should either accept the EM implication or argue that there are certain external facts about a person’s life which can objectively improve the welfare of that person.