---
title: "The experience machine · Library · Simulation Hypothesis"
url: https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/experience-machine
description: "The experience machine is Robert Nozick’s 1974 thought experiment about a machine that gives you any experiences you pick, indistinguishable from reality."
license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
credit: "Ross Allan Dahl, Simulation Hypothesis (simulation-hypothesis.com)"
---

## Ethics & metaphysics

# The experience machine

Definition

The experience machine is Robert Nozick’s 1974 thought experiment about a machine that gives you any experiences you pick, indistinguishable from reality. Most people say they wouldn’t plug in. That suggests we value more than just experience.

On this site

The Afterlife preset, which is cheaper to run than an ordinary day.

Role in the model

The Afterlife preset is Nozick’s machine, built and measured. Paradise turns out cheaper than an ordinary day. No suffering means no stakes, and no stakes means little to compute. Three of the four schools object. One doesn’t.

Related

[Utilitarianism](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/utilitarianism)[Virtue ethics](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/virtue-ethics)[Qualia](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/library/qualia)

In the trees

[The experience machine · Ethics](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/trees/ethics?n=x-machine)

## The people behind the terms

14 short pages, one per thinker, each with its matching dial. See also the [reading list](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/reading).

[Plato’s cave](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/plato)[Zhuangzi’s butterfly](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/zhuangzi)[Vasubandhu’s dream](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/vasubandhu)[Shankara’s māyā](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/shankara)[al-Ghazali’s doubt](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/ghazali)[Ibn Arabi’s imagination](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/ibn-arabi)[Calderón’s life is a dream](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/calderon)[Descartes’ demon](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/descartes)[Berkeley’s perceiver](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/berkeley)[Borges’ circular ruins](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/borges)[Nozick’s experience machine](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/nozick)[Putnam’s brain in a vat](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/putnam)[Bostrom’s trilemma](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/bostrom)[Chalmers: virtual worlds are real](https://simulation-hypothesis.com/thinkers/chalmers)