Nozick also believes that if pleasure were the only intrinsic value, people would have an overriding reason to be hooked up to an "experience machine", which would produce favorable sensations.
If a reader feels differently about this version of the story compared to the form that Nozick offers, according to Greene, this is due to status quo bias.
Of those told they were rich inhabitants of Monaco, half chose to disconnect, comparable to the proportion given no information about their "real" life.
He argues that someone's decision not to step into the machine has more to do with wanting the status quo than with preference of the current life over the simulated one.
[10] Before it became a philosophical thought experiment in the mid-seventies, the pleasurable but simulated experience versus reality dilemma had been a staple of science fiction; for example in the short story "The Chamber of Life" by Green Peyton Wertenbaker [fr], published in the magazine Amazing Stories in October 1929.
The 1996 novel Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace involves a similar formulation of the experience machine.
[13] Agent Smith's account of the early history of the Matrix includes the idea that humans reject a virtual reality that offers them paradise; however, later his informant Cypher is willing to betray his colleagues because he would prefer to be reinserted into an (admittedly less perfect) Matrix as a wealthy and successful man than continue to live in the harsh realities outside the simulation.
While this later version of the Matrix is not a paradise-like reality in the literal sense, it may be argued that it is a lot like a pleasure-inducing experience machine, since Cypher is given the opportunity to have a prominent position of power and wealth in this new simulation.
"[14]Another example of Nozick's experience machine would be the PASIV Device presented within Christopher Nolan's Inception.
The majority of the film's future population are the hedonists of the experiment: 'Connected', that is having chosen a virtual existence over their real one.
The experiences are customized into 'verses with themes much like modern video games (fantasy questing, first person shooting), but upgraded via a brain-computer interface to send data to all five senses and to block out true reality.