My benchmark for thinking about the experience machine: imagine a universe where only one person and the stuff they interact with exist (with any other “people” they interact with being non-sapient simulations) and said person lives a fulfilling life. I maintain that such a universe has notable positive value, and that a person in an experience machine is in a similarly valuable situation to the above person (both being sole-moral-patients in a universe not causally impacting any other moral patients).
This does not preclude the possibility of improving on that life by e.g. interacting with actual sapient others. This view is fully compatible with non-experience-machine lives having much more value than experience-machine ones, but it’s a far cry from the experience-machine lives having zero value.
My benchmark for thinking about the experience machine: imagine a universe where only one person and the stuff they interact with exist (with any other “people” they interact with being non-sapient simulations) and said person lives a fulfilling life. I maintain that such a universe has notable positive value, and that a person in an experience machine is in a similarly valuable situation to the above person (both being sole-moral-patients in a universe not causally impacting any other moral patients).
This does not preclude the possibility of improving on that life by e.g. interacting with actual sapient others. This view is fully compatible with non-experience-machine lives having much more value than experience-machine ones, but it’s a far cry from the experience-machine lives having zero value.