Robert Nozick

And so it's an invitation for people to – I use the language of – and it's kind of overused, but the red pill versus the blue pill.

It's like you can either continue to live in this artificial simulated reality, which in fact, if I can go back to something, in the introduction of the book, I talk about the author Robert Nozick.

And he devised this thought experiment in the 1970s called the experience machine.

And he proposed this idea that if you could basically sit down in a pod and be administered pleasure through an IV drip, where you had simulated experiences of delight and pleasure and happiness and fulfillment, Would you sit in the experience machine or do you take the chance of living a real, organic, authentic life knowing that there can be challenges to it, but the purpose of being human is to be an embodied person? But it's real.

But the value of persistence not only permeates popular culture, it has also prompted moral philosophers to stress the virtues of grit, Philosophers have recently been animated by the challenge of grasping the nature and rationality of persistence.

One important thinker about persistence was the American philosopher Robert Nozick, who held that honouring our past efforts builds a commitment that helps us overcome the temptation to quit and may push us to achieve long-term goals.

In a similar line of thought, Jennifer Morton and Sarah Paul invite readers to always start long-term projects with the strong belief that they will succeed, despite evidence to the contrary, which in favourable circumstances can overcome deadening inertia.

Others, like Elizabeth Jackson, underline hope as fundamental for rationalising the pursuit of long-term goals despite evidence of failure and temptations to give up – Philosophers thus contribute to a culture of perseverance.

The world was telling me that an academic life was nothing more than a teenage dream.

My lifelong goal of becoming a professional philosopher appeared to founder on the shoals of academia.

It was time to decide whether it made sense to continue pursuing what the world told me was an unachievable project.

But how does one decide when it's time to give up? In theory, there is a tidy formula to know when to abandon a goal, when the expected utility of quitting becomes greater than the expected utility of pursuing it.

Losers and quitters are insults in a society that prizes those who never give up.

But the value of persistence not only permeates popular culture.

It has also prompted moral philosophers to stress the virtues of grit.

Philosophers have recently been animated by the challenge of grasping the nature and rationality of persistence.

But the either or is between whether you should believe a thing simply because it is true, no matter what else you may know about it or not.

The philosopher Robert Nozick has a famous thought experiment.

He said, suppose this was before chat GPT and IA.

Suppose there was a machine that you could plug into your brain and it would give you unmitigated happiness with no bad side effects.

But there's no way of knowing that because we are already stuck historically knowing the knowledge of how phones were created.

The experience machine is a thought experiment proposed by philosopher Robert Nozick to challenge the idea that pleasure and happiness are the only things that matter in life.

In this scenario, imagine a machine that can provide you with any experience you desire.

You could feel immense joy, love, success, or any other pleasurable sensation.

all while being completely unaware that these experiences are simulated.

Nozick asks whether you would choose to plug into this machine for the rest of your life.

Many people intuitively reject the idea of living in the experience machine, preferring real life with its struggles and hardships over an artificial existence filled with pleasure.

Well, and then that's more artificial existence based on pleasure would be more attuned to like a drug addict because you're artificially pumping your brain with serotonin and other things that make you happy.

For libertarians, redistribution via taxation is equivalent to theft and inherently tyrannical.

Philosopher Robert Nozick argues that inequality is morally justified because it arises from free and voluntary exchanges between informed adults.

Maybe this was what Jeff Bezos was thinking at his first spaceflight when he thanked every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because, and I quote, you guys paid for all this.

But even if you accept the proposition that selling your labor to the union-banning Amazon is a completely free exchange, this again ignores the fact that Bezos' business success is enabled by public investment and collective goods.

Now you've got to fight for control of the public education system, or the media, or whatever, to prevent your neighbors from being radicalized against you.

The option that many people, Robert Nozick might have been the first, proposed was a peaceful archipelago of different communities with exit rights.

The people who want Dubai can found Dubai over there.

The people who want Brooklyn can found Brooklyn over here.

Then came the idea of truth-tracking.

Robert Nozick suggested that for a belief to count as knowledge, it must change if the truth changes.

If the fact were false, the belief wouldn't hold.

It adds a layer of complexity, focusing on how closely belief aligns with truth.