1 introduction

1.1 transformative experience

An experience is transformative iff it is both epistemically transformative and personally transformative.

• An experience is epistemically transformative if it teaches you something you could not have learned without going through that type of experience (example: seeing color or the first time)
• An experience is personally transformative if it changes you fundamentally including by impacting your core preferences (example: taking a philosophy class)

Example: all your friends are vampires. They tell you it is great. You need to decide whether you want to become one. This is a transformative choice situation.

The problem has two dimensions:

• the experiential knowledge gap complicates the evaluation of your options
• A conflict between the core preferences of your human self and those of your vampire friends is likely. Therefore, the testimony of your vampire friends might not be relevant to you.

Link between personal transformative experience and value:

1. the close connection between preferences and values
2. the plausible connection between identity of selves and values

Link between epistemic transformative experience and emotion:

1. the experiential dimensions of both epistemic transformative experience and emotions
2. possibly the emotions relevant to transformative experience which you may have felt

1.2 philosophy

Philosophy is the armchair discipline

• hyper-ambitious
• self-doubting

Just like math, philosophy uses a priori knowledge (operates on an abstract world) rather than a posteriori (concludes from observations and experiments).

1.3 reality+

The thesis is that virtual reality is genuine reality.

• virtual worlds are not illusions (reality claim, metaphysical)
• you can lead a meaningful life (value claim, ethics)
• we might be living in a virtual reality (knowledge claim, epistemology)

1.4 value

What makes for a good life? What makes one life better than another?

• political values
• social values
• moral values
• epistemic values
• hedonic values
• religious values
• aesthetic values
• health values

1.4.1 experience machine

Suppose there was an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Super-duper neuro-psychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, pre-programming your life experiences?

Issues:

• disconnection from reality
• disconnection from non-artificial reality
• agreeing to self-deception
• no personal development possible

1.4.2 well-being

• hedonism: well-being as involving more pleasure than pain
  • challenged by the thought experiment of the pleasure machine
• experientialism: well-being as involving positive experiences
  • challenged by the thought experiment of the experience machine
• desire-satisfactory theory: well-being as involving satisfaction of desires.
  • challenged by pathological desires and odd desires
• objective list theory: well-being as involving specific goods, such as human connection, the enjoyment of beauty, knowledge, etc.

1.4.3 goodness

• values as abstractions
• values as attitudes
• values as quasi-quantities

Quantitative criterion of value: A property F (such as liberty or compassion) is a positive value if the more our world contains of it, the better our world is. Conversely, a property F' (such as alienation or a pleasure in someone’s else’s suffering) is a negative value if the more our world contains of it, the worse our world is.