Imagine That You Are Placed into a Machine That Stimulates

question 29

Essay

Imagine that you are placed into a machine that stimulates your brain, making you think that your life is going wonderfully well, while all the time you are simply attached to an "Experience Machine" in a basement. Given that you could not tell that your life was illusory, would you choose to enter this machine, or not? Would it make a difference to you in answering this question if you learned that Berkeley's idealism was correct? Why, or why not?

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Definitions:

End-of-Year Payments

Financial disbursements made at the conclusion of a calendar or fiscal year, often related to dividends, bonuses, or debt settlements.

Annual Interest Rate

The percentage increase in money owed or invested over a year, due to interest.

Amortize

The process of gradually paying off a debt or spreading the cost of an intangible asset over its useful life for accounting and tax purposes.

Equal End-of-Year

A term referring to payments or allocations that are made uniformly at the end of each year.