experience-2
Explanation
This comic explores the classic philosophical thought experiment about experience machines (originally proposed by Robert Nozick in 1974).
In the first panel, a character proposes: "Suppose you could get into an experience machine where you would experience a life of conscious joy and pleasure, and it would be false, would you do it?" The other character says "No."
In the second panel, the first character pushes further: "But it would be really happy — complete full-spectrum happiness!" The second character explains: "It's just that I'd be filtered, altered. Always a part of me that's comfortable. Like I said, I'd have made the comfortable choice. I'd have made the comfortable choice."
In the third panel, they reframe the question: "So, consider: you want an ideal life experience, but also zero regret about your choices?" The second character responds: "Yes, yes! But it'd have to be the real thing!"
The joke is that the character who refuses the experience machine on principled grounds — insisting on authenticity over simulated happiness — is essentially describing the exact same thing. They want perfect happiness AND the feeling that they earned it through real choices, which is itself just a more elaborate version of the experience machine. Their "authentic" preference is just a request for a better-designed simulation that also simulates the feeling of not being in a simulation.
The comic skewers the common philosophical intuition against experience machines by showing that the "authentic life" people prefer is really just an experience machine with extra steps — you still want to feel good, you just also want to feel good about feeling good. The title "Experience" (with "-2" for the second comic with this name) nods directly to Nozick's thought experiment.