name is Salim Haider and this would be
my second year doing a TEDx event here
at Valencia high school and I just want
to say you guys have been an amazing
amazing audience thus far and very
patient so with that being in mind I
would love to get into my TEDx talk
about a philosophical concept known as
the experience machine and the
experience machine was invented by
American philosopher Robert Nozick who
is a professor at Harvard University and
he taught at Harvard for teaching
philosophy or for about 20 years and he
taught about a stuff ranging from
political science all the way to
existentialist ideas and he even went on
to win the Joseph Pellegrino
professorship award at Harvard and
lastly he was also president of the
American philosopher Association and
he’s also very well-known in the
philosophical community for his
celebrity counterpart George Clooney and
if you look at the resemblance I mean
not to go on a tangent but the facial
structure and the way the fixture the
photo was taken I mean it’s the same
pose it’s too much to be a coincidence
but moving on from that let’s go about
his idea the experience machine and the
experience machine starts with there
were some neuropsychologist or actually
I’m gonna quote Amir from his actual
thesis he used the word super duper
neuropsychologist so this being said
these super duper neuropsychologists
created a sort of system and the system
was was there’s a person and that would
be you and you would be in this sort of
fluid and this machine would connect to
your brain and it would through
electrodes and it would fire the
synapses in your brain and put you in a
sort of simulated reality and this is
really interesting because in this
simulated reality what the experience
machine entails is he would be able to
make you the happiest person you could
be you would literally have a world
tailored to your own perfection you
would be able to accomplish any goals
you’ve ever wanted and fulfill any
desires we’ve ever had it you would
literally be the happiest person in the
world and going into this the best way I
can think of the experience machine is
through the movie The Matrix I don’t
know if anybody has ever watched The
Matrix probably it’s a pretty good movie
it was in the nineteen nineteen 90s and
it had four and a half stars and I’m
actually going to talk about some
spoilers so if you want to tune out this
you can and I’ll give you a warning
later on so it featured these really
cool archetypal bad guys the Smiths
and what they did was they would try to
prevent humans from going in and out of
the matrix
and then they regulated the sort of
control because the point of the matrix
was to control the humans but featuring
this specific characters cipher in the
movie what cypher did was let’s go back
here what cypher did was there’s a scene
and I’ll try and reenact it here for you
but my acting is pretty bad so he took a
stick a piece of steak on a fork and he
looked at it and he said I know the
steak isn’t real and I know now when I
pour in my mouth it’s the matrix is
telling me that it’s juicy and delicious
but it’s not really real and you know
what I realized
ignorance is bliss this character sighs
oh yeah and seeing this character cipher
when he realizes that his real life was
pretty miserable he was on a spaceship
on the run from the bad guys de Smiths
and he was doing this because he didn’t
want or because the actual he was so
scared of being in a simulated reality
but what he realized was the steak you
derived pleasure from it that it was
like a real steak you tasted it it
tasted delicious
so why would he want to be shoveling
protein in his mouth on a spaceship
running from bad guys when he could be
totally oblivious and in this sort of
simulated reality eating steaks and he
is the sort of bridge into something
else that I want to talk about and it’s
the concept of hedonism and hedonism is
the belief that happiness and maximum
pleasure are the aims of human life and
this being said I want to take the
concept of hedonism and take the concept
of the experience machine and merge them
together into something called Fermi’s
paradox and what Fermi’s paradox is is
let’s take it step by step what it
entails is that theoretically they are a
huge amount of stars in the galaxy let’s
say that there’s quadrillions of stars
in the galaxy and of these quadrillions
of stars trillions of them have to be
like the Sun that we have here in our
solar system and this being said there
has to be an absurd amount of planets
that are just like the earth that we
live on and this is an example this is
kepler 186f and it’s a planet that has
an atmosphere like Earth it has clouds
it has oceans it has land and it’s very
similar to the earth and size but this
being said let’s go back to the Fermi’s
what Fermi’s paradox asked the question
of if the universe is infinitely big and
it’s ever-growing theoretically there
should be an earth that’s in every stage
of the timeline there should be
life-forms that are like the ones that
we live in now or there should be live
firms that were like earth a thousand
years ago or a thousand years in the
future so we send out sonar pings all
across the galaxy to try to communicate
or find other life-forms but we’ve never
received any in return so why is this
being so why hasn’t any life-form trying
to reach out to us and a sort of there’s
many and it’s a paradox so there’s not a
definite answer to this but a quick
explanation is something called the a
starvation hypothesis and this is where
the experience machine and hidden and
hedonism really come in what the a
sturbation hypothesis entails is that a
society that’s already been developed
with the technology that’s able to reach
us no longer wants to they’ve discovered
away from womb to tomb to be able to
live the happiest life they could ever
want from womb they’re put in this
experience machine and they have a world
tailored to their perfection as I
mentioned earlier and they have no need
to explore and jeopardize that system
that they have in place they are quite
literally the happiest people that they
could ever be and that’s what the
concept of hedonism is is that we are
motivated to do happy things and that’s
not necessarily a bad thing I can say
that I’m motivated to do things that
help others because it makes me feel
good I don’t do things that
intentionally make me feel bad it just
doesn’t make sense
but this is just a hypothesis as its
said in the name and it’s not a definite
answer and going back to the definition
of hedonism the belief that happiness
and maximum pleasure are the aims of
human life it doesn’t necessarily mean
it’s the aims of alien life who’s saying
that aliens feel emotion and they aren’t
just purely extincted that are motivated
by stuff that literally keeps them alive
who’s to say that they’re not like
General Zod from Superman or they don’t
feel any emotions they don’t have
empathy for others and they just do
things because they can well moving on
how does this relate to the theme in
power that’s why I’m standing here
talking to you guys today because I want
to talk about stuff that empowers us so
I pose to ask the question what makes
you tick what are the things that
motivate you to wake up in the morning
and go through your lives I can say that
when I wake up in the morning usually
surround six o’clock to go to school and
then I come home and do my homework and
go to bed and rinse and repeat it’s a
lot more than that I don’t just go
through the motions and there’s a lot
more that makes me tick and a great
allusion to this is a clock when I think
of a clock what a clock does is a clocks
hand it takes little by little and it
records the time but if a clock stops
ticking does that mean the time stops no
the clock just simply passes through
time it’s sort of like a person that if
the person is not really being immersed
into his own life and merely going
through the actions does his life stop
going no he’s just going through the
motions he’s not really being take
there’s nothing driving him so what
makes you tick what makes you drive and
for me I’ll give a few examples for me
what makes me tick is a bunch of things
like my family
I really am motivated by my family I
love to do things that make my family
proud and that I can provide for my
family and being a good person so my
family enjoys that I’m a good person all
those things that’s what makes me happy
that’s what makes me wake up in the
morning and go to school and be a good
student and learn so many new things and
speaking of learning that is a photo I
took a couple months ago when I visited
Stanford and I was just on the campus
touring and when I was at Stanford the
atmosphere and the aura that you get
there is just amazing there are so many
different people that are excited to
learn and that there’s so much knowledge
in the air that’s either undiscovered or
you can just grasp it that there’s a
certain you just feel like there’s so
much to learn when you’re at Stanford
and that really motivates me knowing
that there’s so much that I don’t know
in the universe and that there’s so much
that’s left to be discovered that’s
something that really makes me tick and
then the third thing not the final thing
but the third thing is this is a photo I
took of the Grand Canyon when I visited
a couple months ago and I was sitting on
the cliff again the Grand Canyon and I
was looking down and I realized wow I am
very small and I’m the first thing that
popped in my mind is a photo of the Carl
Sagan took awhile ago called the big the
little blue speck sorry and what it was
is that there was a satellite and it was
exiting the Milky Way galaxy and it
turned around and it took a photo of the
entire galaxy and in the upper left
corner a little bit down a little bit to
the left and showed a little blue
that can had it big circle and that
little blue speck was earth and and I
realized wow I’m not only am I very
small that on earth countries fight wars
are waged there’s such huge conflicts
and then I have conflicts with other
people and within myself but they’re so
insignificant and now I might actually
sound pretty depressing but know what I
realized was that I have this small
little amount of real estate and in this
mountain real estate I can use it and
make the most out of it I can utilize it
and I can make it awesome and not only
can I make it awesome I can also affect
the other real estate the people in the
audience you guys and I can make a
positive influence on people and make
them a dream for big things and be able
to accomplish things but moving on all
of this this is just me and I’m sure
every person has many different things
that make them take them drive them to
be immersed in their own lives so I want
to ask you the questions I want to ask
you this is just me not thee and I want
to ask you guys to think about what
makes you tick thank you very much [Applause]