I was listening intently as my dad talks to me about how god is always there in your mind.
What’s on earth belongs on earth and when we die, we go to heaven, we loose everything we have on earth. etcetera etcetera. The devil on the other hand is mindfucking you into doing/thinking things we’re not supposed to. I don’t know but dad’s really good at telling stories like these. Whatever it is, he made me remember about the “Brain in a Vat” concept and relate them.

  Basically, I’ve had this thought for quite some time.. So, when I told Eliyy, it was a bad idea cause she had thought about it before too.. Thing is, I never told anyone about my brain in a vat concept cause well, it wasn’t very much. Eliyy gave me the most nonchalant look of all. The philosophy of “Brain in a Vat” is basically like…

  What if what you see now is just your imagination? What if all this while, you’re in a huge coma or you only exist as a brain? But you’re given an image that you’re human. You have eyes and everything. What if what you see is all caused my electromagnetic waves passing through your brain, affecting the nerves that causes you to see these real-life images. That itch you have at the back of your ear could just be a glitch in the system since it’s been taking care of you for a long time. What if what you see is really what you want to see? You know when people die? Maybe, what they’re experiencing is a system failure. A point where you see that years had passed and this person is getting older cause it’s in sync with that person’s electronic system and that system’s deteriorating. Or a point where you WANT to experience such grief. The perfect life. It has to be complete. All you are, is a brain. Just that. I mean, you can never look at your own brain can you? Everything in front of you is a 3D mirage. Images you feel and touch. or so it seems.

  There’s another concept. The experience machine. Lets say, you have reality and there’s these scientists who want to put you into a deep sleep and place you in a SIMULATED reality. The simulated reality is triggered by all the things you want and you want to see or experience. The pleasures. The perfect life. It’s not like a dream but it feels real. You can smell it, you can touch it. You can have feeling when you’re in that dream. Honestly, EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO HAPPEN WOULD HAPPEN. That boy you wanted to date, you’d date him. You want to dump him, you dump him. You want everything to be okay after that dump, everything’s back to normal. The man of your dreams, how you’d meet him, you meet him. That car you’ve ever wanted, you get it. And I don’t mean, fictionally, it appears out of nowhere. I mean, it happens on a real-life basis. Like, you earn your dream job for it. Out of nowhere, your singing becomes the most amazing thing anyone had ever heard and you’re instantly famous. Your mom allows you to be who you are. The world is greener, cleaner. There’s no war. Everything really feels like real life. Quite like inception but more, based on what you want.

  So, would you pull the plug of your machine or would you prefer to stay in that simulated dream?

The argument is along these lines:

• P1: Experiencing as much pleasure as we can is all that matters to us
• P2: If we will experience more pleasure by doing x than by doing y, then we have reason to do x.
• P3: We will experience more pleasure if we plug into the experience machine than if we do not plug into the experience machine.
• C1: If all that matters to us is that we experience as much pleasure as we can then we have reason to plug into the experience machine.
• P4: We have reason not plug into the experience machine.
• C2: Experiencing as much pleasure as we can is not all that matters to us.

So, how?