Recently, this comic has made the rounds on the internet again and it has left many people
disturbed even though they can’t explain why.
It shows a time traveller arriving in the far future, only to find that humanity has
locked itself away in machines that hack the brain and give them complete unending bliss
forever and ever.
Why is this bad?
Why does this seem like a bad ending for the human race?
It’s commonly accepted that the whole point of life is to enjoy it as much as possible
– the Utilitarian Argument.
But if we achieve a point where life is nothing but enjoyment...this feels wrong to us.
In the world of this comic, there is no need for hobbies, art, music, family, friendships,
or any other activities at all.
The results are the same – we obtain the happiness chemicals of dopamine and serotonin
– but instantaneous, forever, and with zero effort.
You may find a world without aesthetic beauty to be horrifying, but ultimately, beauty is
just a visual input that produces serotonin in the brain.
Both of these activities can do that, but one of them faster and in bigger quantities.
Logically, if you believe in maximising your own happiness, you would agree to give up
your entire life and step into the pleasure cube, because it will guarantee that you will
be more happy, forever.
But would you?
Why not?
There have been several attempts to answer this question.
Philosopher John Stewart Mill separated “pleasure” into two orders; Higher Pleasure, things like
the Opera, Paintings, Literature, and Lower Pleasure; alcohol, sex, food.
Both of these sets of activities produce serotonin and one of them more than the other.
So why doesn’t everyone just get drunk constantly, eat rubbish all the time, and jack off all
day?
They both produce the same type of chemical at the end of the day.
Scientifically there is no boundary.
So to prove that this boundary existed, Mill pointed out that if you ask someone who has
experienced both sets of Pleasure which one is best, they’ll usually say the Higher
Pleasures; something that is more effort for less reward.
In short, Mill suggested that it was better to be an unhappy philosopher than a happy
pig – but obviously if a supermodel bangs on your door begging you to sleep with her
then it’s time to put down the classical literature.
Logically this makes no sense if we believe the purpose of life is to maximise happiness.
Something else must be at play here if we’re so apprehensive to enter the pleasure cube.
In his book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Robert Nozick describes a similar concept of a machine
that allows the user to escape into a perfect simulated world.
He suggests three reasons as to why people would mostly not want to “plug in” to
this machine.
Firstly, “We want to do certain things, not just have the experience of doing them”.
When people climb a mountain, they don’t do it just to see the view at the top.
The journey and the experience that comes with it is more important to them than the
end.
I didn’t make this video just because I want people to watch it – I enjoy the problem
solving involved with editing a video.
If I had a robot who made my videos for me in a way that was indistinguishable from videos
I made, then the views and lovely comments would mean nothing to me.
In April 2020, a man in England climbed his staircase over 3,000 times to simulate climbing
the height of Mount Everest, and while he technically has the experience and health
benefits of climbing 8,848 meters on a steep incline, you cannot say this is as good as
climbing Mount Everest for real.
Of course, this is different to a hyper-realistic simulation where you can do whatever you want,
but it demonstrates that doing things is not the same as having the experience of doing
them.
Although, exactly Why we want to do rather than just experience is a question for psychology.
Secondly, “We want to be a certain sort of person”.
In the cube, you are nobody to anybody.
You have no personality, no sense of humour, no interests, you don’t love, you don’t
hate, you aren’t anything.
Maybe if we could see the sort of simulations you run we could get some understanding, but
people’s actions in a video game rarely reflect what they are like in real life.
If the Pleasure Cube isn’t a simulation and is just eternal bliss, then by all metrics
you become a vegetable... and how many people in the audience would choose to become a vegetable?
If you could upgrade the Pleasure Cube to be a Transformation Cube which allows you
to be anyone you want, I imagine most people wouldn’t want to use that either.
If you can be anyone, if you can be a muscular firefighter who has saved an infinite number
of people from a burning building, if you can just simply be a grandmaster who can beat
anyone at chess, then what is there left to do?
For this reason, some theologists place God outside the realm of time because otherwise,
how did he spend the infinite days before he created the universe if he could be anyone
or do anything?
How would he fill the days?
In short, gah, these fffff-...kids outside my window are making so much noise.
In short, Who we are is just as important to a human as how we spend our time, and we
spend our time working towards becoming someone who we want to be.
Thirdly; “It limits us to a man-made reality”.
Assuming the pleasure cube is a simulation of a utopian world and not just unconscious
happiness then the only limit to the world is the creator’s imagination.
In theory this could mean you can do as you like, but realistically you can only design
this world based on things you’ve already seen.
Suppose one day the people outside the pleasure cube discover a new spectrum of colours and
it unleashes a new golden age of paintings and design and beauty all across the world.
Try as you might, you will never be able to design that from within the simulation.
Still think stacking blocks would be better?
If the person you want to be is someone who changes the world for the better, and the
thing you want to experience is to do that, then no matter how many trees you plant, or
diseases you cure, they will never actually impact the real world.
You will only think that you have done them.
For religious viewers, there is also the argument that it cuts the user off from a deeper spiritual
connection with the universe.
There’s no God in a Minecraft Church.
While not quite the same thing as a Pleasure Cube, English writer Aldous Huxley wrote in
his novel Brave New World about a hypothetical future of humanity with a similar premise
as Nozick’s simulation.
In a post-nation world, a group of bureaucrats called the World Controllers operate a society
where people are born in test tubes and can live a life of complete pleasure with minimal
work.
Group sex, unlimited entertainment, no illnesses, and if you’re still feeling bored or unhappy
you can take some free drugs in pill form to mellow you out.
Even the slave class of the intellectually stunted have had their brain chemistry rewired
to intensely enjoy the menial tasks that keep society running for everyone else.
It’s a hedonist’s dream and should be the end goal if we think maximising happiness
is the only thing worth obtaining.
I think it’s a lot easier for us to explain why Brave New World is a dystopia than it
is to explain the Pleasure Cube, and many of the criticisms of Brave New World’s New
World applies over to the Cube too.
Although the utilitarian position ranks happiness as the most important value, this does not
mean it overrules all the other values humans hold dear, like love, identity, and freedom.
When the book’s protagonist, Bernard, falls in love with his co-worker Lenina, they have
to stop seeing each other completely because monogamous relationships are considered selfish
– families and having natural children are outlawed, while “dating” is reduced to
a fancy dinner followed by a one night stand.
While love and pleasure are similar in terms of neuroscience, they are not the same and
so this society limits the complete spectrum of positive human emotions.
Meanwhile, the agency and freedom of the world’s citizens is stripped away; they cannot decide
what they do with their lives because they are conditioned from birth to only seek pleasure
and remove pain with drugs the moment unhappiness arises.
Thinking philosophically and rationally is a threat to the stability of society and so
non-conformists are banished to a remote island.
Artistic works, too, are hard to create, as one character finds out when he has no stories
to write about because nearly all stories require conflict and struggle.
There is no “Right To Be Unhappy”.
The World Controllers assume that all pleasure is good and all pain is bad, when there are
many real-world examples where the inverse is true; exercising, or dental work is painful.
But they’re good things.
Just like drugs and fast food are enjoyable but bad things.
Surely you should be allowed to choose what kinds of good and bad things you consume?
These is quite similar to the issues that arise with the Pleasure cube.
The cube abolishes all other values that we hold dear in favour of the most important
one.
It strips away our freedom to do what we want because we are trapped as a vegetable until
someone unplugs you – there’s no going back.
With no conflict or hard work, you will never be able to produce higher pleasures.
And if you rig the pleasure machine to allow you strife and unhappiness to let you to obtain
this goal, then what was the point of the pleasure machine?
Well done, you’ve trapped yourself in VRChat.
“DO YOU KNO DE WEY?”
[Screaming]
In his final book, Island, Huxley outlined his personal view of a real Utopia, in contrast
to the fake Utopia of Brave New World.
A world somewhere in between mindless euphoria and primitive unhappiness.
On the island of Pala lives a race of largely un-contacted natives – in the 19th century,
a Scottish medical doctor discovered the island and brought with him many western political
and scientific ideas.
As a result, their society is decentralised and based on the principles of Henry George
and Kropotkin.
Modernisation is selective by the Palanese, making it a hybrid of the modern world with
all our creature comforts, and primitive tribal society.
Most importantly, for the Palanese, the search for happiness is superseded by one thing only;
the search to understand the universe and humanity’s cosmic purpose.
Instead of asking “How does this make the most people happy”, citizens ask “How
does this advance the spiritual goal of the most people?”
Science and Technology are seen as an intrinsic part of the universe to help humans understand
their place in it; not tools invented by man himself to do as he pleases with.
Drugs are therefore treated as part of this cosmic toolkit; they are used to understand
consciousness and improve social bonding – not pacification and euphoria like in Brave New
World.
For Huxley, simply giving up and living in constant bliss is a coward’s way out.
There’s a whole universe out there, and it just doesn’t seem right to believe that
the only thing worth doing is sitting in a box producing a lovely chemical in your head.
So what’s the point of all this?
Why discuss the ethics involved with a hypothetical eternal happiness machine?
Well the invention of the pleasure cube or something like it might not be as far away
as you’d think.
In his book Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari presents a similar two-stage idea of pleasure as Mill
did; there’s Pleasure; sex, drugs, skydiving, whatever, and Freedom from Pain – which
I imagine is similar to sitting at home with a nice cup of tea and a good movie on.
It’s not exhilarating, it’s not a swashbuckling adventure.
It’s just nice.
The key to happiness is neither the race nor the gold medal, but rather combining the right
doses of excitement and tranquillity.
But Harari also points out that no matter what monks in their Himalayan caves or philosophers
in their ivory towers say, for the capitalist juggernaut, happiness is pleasure.
Period.
It’s a lot easier to convince people that they want this instead of this.
Harari predicts that over the course of the 21st century, something similar to the Pleasure
Cube might be invented– at the very least, we could hack our brains to give us dopamine
whenever we want.
In 2015, scientists in Israel successfully treated a person’s depression, instantly
and indefinitely, by implanting a small chip into his brain that regulated dopamine levels.
When he complained a few months later that his depression returned, doctors found that
the battery in the chip has simply run out.
A new one was put in, and his depression vanished again.
The US military, too, are working on hacking the human brain’s attention and enjoyment
functions.
In 2011, New Scientist writer Sally Adee entered a VR simulation used by the army to simulate
a realistic battlefield; she did terribly, until she was hooked up to a device that artificially
stimulated her focus and attention.
This time around, she not only killed the enemies quicker and with more ease, but she
ended up enjoying it and when the simulation was over, she didn’t believe it had already
been twenty minutes.
It seems like the Pleasure Cube is coming soon and we can’t really be sure what the
reaction will be.
Will people take to it?
Or will people treat it like a drug and stay away?
Returning to the original comic, many people agreed that on face value the argument put
forward made sense, which is why it’s so disturbing.
I worry that if the cube is invented, some people might plug in, even if they don’t
want to, because they think it’s logically the right thing to do.
Hopefully this video could explain why it is in fact a bad idea to enter the cube, and
if you’re watching this in the far future with your cube invitation letter right in
your hand, I strongly advise you to do the right thing, the human thing... and just play
Roblox or Minecraft instead they’re both just as good, I promise you.