C1 – Advanced
The idea of happiness is too vague that it has always been a bone of contention. Can happiness always be equated with experiences that bring us pleasure? Do these experiences need to always be realistic?
Let’s watch the video and find out more about life’s pleasure and pain.
Discussion Questions:
- Explain Robert Nozick’s “experience machine”.
- Imagine a life without pain. How would it be like?
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of living a life of limitless pleasure?
- Do you agree that in life, there should be a balance between happiness and pain? Support your stand.
- Would you rather be left in the dark than to know a harsh truth? Explain your opinion.
8 replies on “Would You Opt for a Life with No Pain?”
Discussion Questions:
1. Explain Robert Nozick’s “experience machine”.
It is a virtual machine, or hypothetical machine that plug-in into it, would offer you a blissness life, without any kind of pain for ever, but in a virtual life, not in the real one. A kind of Matrix-life. He creates this conceptual machine in order to test if the hedonism principle (looking for happiness) is true and if it is true for all the people… Basically the question would be: If this scenario exists, do you sing-in for it for the rest of your life?
2. Imagine a life without pain. How would it be like?
Simply perfect, I am talking not about some pain and some pain sometimes, I am talking about suffer a lot of pain, physically and mental pain… In this world there are millions of people that are living a very painfully situation and for years, and their future is also grey. No hope for the future for them. I’m sure all of them sign-in right away if they could to plug in this kind of machine.
3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of living a life of limitless pleasure?
If the pleasures have not side-effects, if the pleasures don’t harm other people, I only can see upsides, not any kind of drawbacks.
4. Do you agree that in life, there should be a balance between happiness and pain? Support your stand.
Not at all, human avoid suffer, pain, etc… so if you can life without pain; good for you! Pain, suffer is bad everybody knows that. The matter is that in life there are painful situations: illness, economical problem, natural disasters, etc… And you, like human being try to avoid them or adapt to them… only because there is no way out, there is no other possibilities…
5. Would you rather be left in the dark than to know a harsh truth? Explain your opinion.
If I am living the real world, I prefer to know the truth always, because maybe you are right without knowing it, but it’s a matter of time… you, for sure, will realise later… so, the sooner you know, the better… Knowing the truth you can react, you can adapt to the situation, to deal with the problem and maybe find a better scenario.
Good to read your thoughts about this topic.
Here is a few sentences you can write better. In addition, please take note of how to properly punctuate them:
Enjoy your writing practice.
1. Explain Robert Nozick’s “experience machine”.
The thought experiment invites the espectator to imagine a world in which scientists have developed a machine that makes the user experience a world without pain. Then, he ask us if we would voluntarily connect to this machine or not.
2. Imagine a life without pain. How would it be like?
Probably boring. For me, pain is a consecuence of the need for action: without pain noone would have the need to do anything.
Humans, and any living organism whatsoever, prefer to spend as little energy as possible, as this can be useful for survival. The problem is then, how to motivate someone to do stuff, even if it’s not immediately necessary? The answer is disconfort and pain.
Feeling that something is not right is what makes us act and planify our lives and, without that, it would not be long before living becomes extremely boring. In fact, that’s, in my opinion, a very common reason why people in developed countries have feelings of meaninglessness and depression: our societies have removed many of the previously existing sources of pain and, as a result, many people lives have become lazy and dull. It takes lots of effort, vision and planification to escape from that.
3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of living a life of limitless pleasure?
As I’ve said in my previous answer the main disadvantage would be an everlasting laziness that would consume many people.
On the other side, it could be, at least for some time, an oportunity for more dilligent people to create new and fascinating things, as they would not have the need to spend time on the day-to-day tasks that were previously holding them back. Nontheless, that wouldn’t be the general case, and most people would find their lives completely devoid of meaning.
4. Do you agree that in life, there should be a balance between happiness and pain? Support your stand.
Absolutely, as I have stated in my previous answers. Wrapping up, pain represents lifes difficulties and happiness represents the reward for overcoming them. The two of them, combined, put living organisms into motion and give meaning to life.
5. Would you rather be left in the dark than to know a harsh truth? Explain your opinion.
I would rather know the harsh truth, as this can help me know what to expect from my surroundings. In real life, to disregard an uncomfortable truth can easily lead to a bigger and even unsolvable problem.
It’s not always possible to know in advance which events will affect your life and which won’t and, therefore, it’s better to adquire as much knowledge of your context as possible, only prioritizing the information most likely to be relevant.
Impressive job staying consistent with your writing practice and striving to write good answers.
Here is how this response can still be improved:
Keep up the good work!
Explain Robert Nozick’s “experience machine”.
If I understood it right, this machine causes to the person attached the endless pleasure experience with no downs, only ups. This concept is been made to prove a concept called hedonism that constantly seeks for maximum net pleasure.
Imagine a life without pain. How would it be like?
At first, one could think that life should be marvelous but pain and happiness are two sides of the same coin, one needs the other to exist. In fact, if pain did not exist, we would asociate minor happiness facts as a sort of pain in order to have this reference, although it would be an altered concept aside from the original.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of living a life of limitless pleasure?
I see no advantages in that assumption because if life would be a matter of endless pleasure we would be accostumed rapidly to it and we would want more, it would be like increasing morfine dose, thus turning ourselves into pleasure junkies which, by the way, it’s an scenario that is already happening nowadays with acceptance in social networks, but I’m afraid that this is another subject to be treated on another post.
Do you agree that in life, there should be a balance between happiness and pain? Support your stand.
I’m totally agree with this statement because without pain we wouldn’t enjoy as much as we actually do our happy moments. However, it would be great to have more happy than painful moments, it’s better that having 50/50 of each.
Would you rather be left in the dark than to know a harsh truth? Explain your opinion.
It depends on the truth, for example, I’d rather know that I’m suffering from a deadly illness than not knowing it, but also I prefer not knowing that someone’s deceiving me in other matters. There’s a saying that states ignorance is the true happiness.
Good to have you on the PE blog again. You keep impressing us with your well-thought of answers.
Note how the following sentences were properly ended. Remember to start your sentence with transition words such as “thus”. End the previous sentence with a period, then begin with your transition word plus a comma (,).
Thank you for the every ounce of effort you put into your work!
I think good and bad things in life make the person you are. To be plugged to a machine that simulates just happy situations wouldn’t avoid your mind thinking that your are living a lie and even the relationships you are “enjoying” are not totally true.
For me to be left in the dark so I don’t know a harsh truth is not an option.
Thank you for taking time in answering this lesson’s discussion questions. Well done.
Here is how you can revise this sentence to make it a bit better:
Another way to structure this is: