2014-07-21
Explanation
The Joke
Someone poses a classic thought experiment: "If there were a machine you could step in, which gave you a constant but false sense of pleasure for the rest of your life, would you do it?" The other person says "Absolutely not! It's always better to experience real life as it is." The questioner then asks: "Okay, suppose you could take your nemesis, Jenny, and put her in the machine. Would you do it?" The response: "No way! I would put my enemy in a pleasure machine!" The questioner points out the contradiction: "Because you said real life was necessarily preferable to the machine. By your logic, putting her in the machine causes her harm." Then someone asks "Can we put poison oak in the pleasure machine?" and the final panel has a woman saying "Not if you want to be philosophically consistent! I contain multitudes."
The Humor
The comic is a riff on Robert Nozick's famous "Experience Machine" thought experiment from his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Nozick argued that most people would reject permanent simulated pleasure, suggesting we value authentic experience over mere hedonic sensation. The comic exposes the logical inconsistency in this position: if you reject the machine for yourself because "real life is better," then putting your enemy in the machine should count as punishment, not reward. But people intuitively feel that trapping an enemy in permanent pleasure would be doing them a favor, revealing that they don't actually believe their own philosophical position. The "I contain multitudes" line (quoting Walt Whitman) is used as a humorous dodge for holding contradictory beliefs.
References
The Experience Machine is a thought experiment by philosopher Robert Nozick, introduced in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), used to argue against hedonistic utilitarianism. "I contain multitudes" is from Walt Whitman's poem "Song of Myself" (1855).