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since been made more convincing by De Brigard’s (2010) empirical study of reversed
experience machine thought experiments and Weijers’ (forthcoming) explanation
of how our judgments about the experience machine can be easily mislead by status
quo bias.

3. A Taxonomy of Problems with Experience Machine Scenarios

Since the main goal of this paper is to create a relatively bias-free experience machine
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scenario, it is worth pausing to take stock of some key ways in which our intuitions
about the experience machine might be misleading.
Many philosophers have noted that some of the features of Nozick’s scenario might
deter readers from connecting to an experience machine because they seem to engender
considerable imaginative resistance. People can be said to suffer from imaginative
resistance if they consciously, or unconsciously, reject any of the stipulations
(or implied features) of a thought experiment.
Of the aspects of Nozick’s experience machine thought experiment that have been
identified as possible sources of imaginative resistance, nearly all involve unintuitive
stipulations about how experience machines are supposed to work. Kolber (1994, pp.
13–14), Sumner (1996, p. 216), and many others have raised concerns that thinking
about connecting to an experience machine in Nozick’s scenario causes us to worry
whether the machine will live up to our expectations or crash and wreak havoc on our
lives. It has also been argued that worries about machine failure and underperformance
might affect our judgments via our intuitive cognition, meaning that we may not even be
aware of the cause of our imaginative resistance (Weijers, forthcoming). Nozick’s
experience machine sounds like it is a very complicated computerized machine. Based on
the ubiquity of experiences of computers crashing, Weijers argued that that most of us
will find it very hard to consciously and subconsciously accept that a complex
computerized machine could safely look after us (in the manner promised) for the rest of
our lives (Weijers, forthcoming).
It also seems as though the participants are likely to imaginatively resist Nozick’s
(1974, p. 43) insistence that we need not worry about our loved ones because they
too can plug into an experience machine. Surely many people would find it hard to
disregard their responsibilities to their loved ones, especially given the justification
that they could simply be coerced into a major life-changing decision to suit us
(Weijers, forthcoming).
Still other factors of Nozick’s thought experiment might affect our judgment about
the value of a life connected to an experience machine because of their tendency to
trigger what might be loosely described as the opposite of imaginative resistance—
overactive imagination. People can be said to suffer from overactive imagination if
they accept the premises of the thought experiment, but make their judgment based
on irrationally overblown responses to one or more of those premises. As Kolber
suggests, Nozick’s description of a tank, electrodes, and having to plug in is
reminiscent of “science fiction horror stories” (Kolber, 1994, p. 14) and likely horrifies
people with even mild technophobia.