WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 2025
The Experience Machine
Published on May 18, 2025
By EMN
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- “The deep problem of acceleration is transcendental. It describes an absolute horizon—and one that is closing in. Thinking takes time, and accelerationism suggests we’re running out of time to think that through, if we haven’t already” (Nick Land, A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to Accelerationism)
- Robert Nozick, an American philosopher in his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia mentioned about a thought experiment which he called The Experience Machine. The thought experiment poses the question that if humans were to plug into a machine that can produce any type of desirable pleasure, though through fake impetus, will humans plug into it? Nozick believed that most of us won’t because humans prioritise other things such as the value of doing things and forming genuine connections with other people more than the mere experience of pleasure. Social media today functions as a real-world incarnation of Nozick’s experience machine where the pleasures derived from a simulated source are prioritised over actual reality.
- People doom scroll over reels to have a pleasurable time but the thing to consider is how much pleasure is too much? Another thing to consider alongside pleasure is the normalisation of lies on such platforms. For instance, when we are watching a stand-up comedy show, we don't concern ourselves with the factual truth when the comedian is narrating a funny story, rather we are concerned with its content which could be a lie. In the same way, people enjoy watching wholesome, funny or prank reels which could be just a performance created with the intention of making attention-grabbing content in anticipation of virality. Similar thing with brain-rot trends where people can have a laugh over such memes, however, the algorithm has the tendency of sensationalising and overdoing such trends that eventually even our mind blurs the line between simulation-driven information and reality, the simulation takes over our personal world which is marked by Hyperstition (fictions that make themselves real). In that sense, we are not only being fed, we are being overfed to the point that we find comfort in such augmented existence, creating an illusion of need.
- Though social media can sensitise people over issues, and give instant news about the happenings of the world, the issue with this aspect is not just the distribution of misinformation but the distribution of partial information that can hamper holistic narratives. Moreover, social media opens the path for new ways of doing things, extending the horizon of what’s possible. The trend of Italian brain-rot memes and AI generated Ghibli art could be considered a type of innovation through digital medium paving way for a new aesthetic language, though it may sound controversial but what it simply reflects is a post-modern, post-human creativity emphasising on pastiche which I would like to compare it to Warhol’s 1961-62 art Campbell’s Soup Cans. Critics would object over digital AI creativity cause of its absence of intentionality and tendency to merely replicate pre-existing ideas and existing references, but music sampling, postmodern art and even photography to some extent have been doing the same. However, it is in fact alarming to the point that the death of the author as expressed by Roland Barthes in 1967 stands very much true today.
- Concerning this present era, there is high plausibility to be swayed by digital mimesis. Mimesis refers to how a person voluntarily or involuntarily imitates his environment or mimes it. I would classify mimesis into two types - the mimesis of character and the mimesis of image. For instance, attributing someone to be a gentleman could denote two aspects - one might only mime the exterior image of a gentleman and emphasis only on presenting himself as one to others, thus creating the perception that he is a gentleman despite of having an ungentle character, and on the other hand, a person lives and practices his life just like a gentleman would, emphasising more on character over image. Now both could be the case for a person but the mimesis of the image seems to be a rapidly growing trend that could be observed in the current world especially through social media, where the youths can internalise and embody personas from internet whispers, reels, memes and tweets, and then present themselves as authentic but what they might essentially be doing is status-signalling. Deeper issue of social media content creation, especially in Instagram is that it poses the danger of the commodification of the self with its emphasis on branding over genuineness which also influence the minds of the viewer/observer, leading to the prioritisation of the spectacle over the real.
- There is an urgent need for a reformation of the mind especially among the youths where simulated reality overpowers the actual reality as we can observe that there is an apparent crisis of critical thinking and questioning. I’ve come across numerous self-assuring Bible verse reels on Instagram that misrepresent the actual scriptures. Despite this, I’ve seen people reposting them without fact-checking. Because of the deficiency in attention span shaped by the phones, it has somehow disallowed people from critically deconstructing the information they consume. The current world demands hyper-vigilance from individuals so to not be passively swayed by the sensitive triggers of the experience machine.
- So, are you in control of the plug?
- Imjongsunep, Nepali Basti, Dimapur
Nagaland Districts
