TEDx New York, 2058

Dr. Herman Madison, Head of Cognitive Advancement at the Steinhart Directive

On the Perfection of Human Experience

‘Welcome, Ladies and Gentleman. I’d like to thank you for taking the time to join me here today, and to indulge an old professor’s egotistical need to receive applause for his work.’

The audience laughed in unison. Not the begrudging chuckle Madison had feared, but an almost robotic chorus of laughter. Wiping his sweaty palms once against his ill-fitting suit, Madison summoned a breath and plunged into his notes.

‘My initial research into what I, with the help of countless others, would ultimately come to refer to as post-cognitive culture began with my matriculation into Princeton’s anthropology department as a wide-eyed freshman. Under the late professor Dr. Richard Steinhart, my interest in the scientific perspective on human development and culture was seamlessly parlayed into an associative researcher job on his own work: The Perfectionist Project.

As I’m sure all of you know, save for the few of you who have spent the last half century under a rock, the PP was developed to perform the most extensive inquiry into human experience in all recorded history. Spurred by the ever-increasing malleability of human experience and the enormous shifts that culture underwent constantly in the age of information, the project functioned initially as a research-based thought experiment to complement our changing world. That’s a mouthful, but simply put its investigative question was: What is the perfect life? Following the initial success of our data analysis we comfortably expanded the question to encompass the larger, and infinitely more challenging issue: What is the perfect society?

The data collection and analysis itself was 40 long years of incredibly intensive research, of which I won’t spend the entirety of my time discussing, but I ought to illuminate the most basic parts of the process. Plans for investigation were meant to begin with a look at recorded history, understanding the societies which had prospered the most and analyzing the power structures, social forces, political systems, and even geographical features which aided their growth. We hit a brick wall almost immediately.

Our investigation begged the question: What is a prosperous society? What criteria determines if a society is ‘prosperous’, let alone ‘good’ or ‘bad’? I owe much of my career to the contentious debate that broke out as we attempted to answer such an unanswerable question, considering the fact that it fractured the group and allowed me to propel myself to the position of Senior Researcher, and ultimately Steinhart’s partner. I suppose without such an indignant group I’d still be driving my PT Cruiser.’

Again, laughter. It echoed off the walls of the auditorium symmetrically. 30,000 faces smiled exactly the same way. Madison’s foot twitched nervously, but slowed as he surveyed the sea of beaming faces.

‘Most members of the group advocated a simple utilitarian good - a good world must do good, therefore the best world does the most good for the most people in it. Of course, this only begs the question even further: what is good? More importantly, how do we deal with the complicated interplay of countless nations, cities, even people, who have mutually exclusive needs? What if one decision helps two people but hurts another? In response, others focused on a deontological moral society. That is to say, a world in which no decision could be made that harmed another.

Imagine this. You stand in front of a train track. The whistle of a train sounds behind you, and the ground begins to shake. The train is quickly approaching. Tied to the tracks are three people. You can not untie them, you can not alert the conductor. The only thing you can do is to throw the switch that stands beside you. The tracks will shift and the train will continue on a slighted altered path. The three people will live. But, the train will pass over a single person tied to the alternate path.

Do you throw the switch to ensure that more people live than die? Do you refuse to throw the switch to avoid the murder of an innocent person? Do we prioritize how many people we help, or the fact that we should never do harm? On and on it goes.

Needless to say, years were spent debating what exactly ‘good’ means. Ultimately the choice was made that the consideration of mortality was both too vague and too small minded in the long term. Similarly, notions of liberty, safety, and the like were deemed too abstract to be sufficient. After endless research, deliberation, and expert analysis from leading philosophers, politicians, and think tanks we chose to make William of Ockham proud. Our simplest answer was our best: happiness.’

The audience murmured. Some nodded their approval while others fidgeted in their seats, eager to disagree. Finally, and with dry palms, Madison took a quick breath and began again.

‘To do good for a person is to make them happy. Happiness exists in the briefest of moments and is remembered for the longest of lifetimes. It is the simplest and, perhaps for that reason, the most elusive and indescribable emotion. It is the most neurologically pure criteria, the most universal comfort, and the most intellectually concrete goal upon which a society can be founded.

Or at the very least, that’s what we decided.’

He’d been talking too fast in his excitement during what he prided himself on as a foolproof explanation, so Madison straightened his back and paused for dramatic effect.

‘Having survived the debate that ravaged our group, we were set to take our next steps. I ought to mention that at this point in our project we have attracted such powerful and notable minds of our generation that we had also generated considerable traction in both the political and commercial worlds. What started as a thought experiment began to be heralded as one of the most practically important questions of our time. With that small burden on our shoulders, we forged ahead.

The next steps were clear. First, how can we create a functional definition of happiness? We had to continue research to try to understand what it is that makes people happy. Second, how do we actually create this happiness? Largely a result of our growing popularity, we were determined to turn our ideas into reality. Surely, we thought, there had to be a way to give people the utopian experience we were well on our way to discovering. As you all know, we both reached and far superceded th- I’m getting ahead of myself though, aren’t I?

Years of intense neurological mapping under countless complex stimuli helped us answer our first question. The three most rewarding types of human experience are as follows: challenge and accomplishment, failure and redemption, and infantile joy. We exhausted many possible general experiences and found these three to be the most balanced causes of the release of dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. Of course, there were some other tests that made subjects… more excited. And for those, I’d again like to extend my deepest gratitude to the good men and women at Playboy Enterprises.’

Madison shifted his weight from foot to foot, tentatively, before failing to hide his smile and bursting out in a grin.

‘As rewarding as those experiences can be we understood that it’s a more subtle experience that created lasting happiness in our subjects. At this point, finished with the most research intensive part of our project, we turned to the ultimate question we faced: How do we turn years of theoretical understanding into reality?

Our team had grown considerably, and our partnerships with numerous mega corporations made the final steps of the Perfect Project relatively easy. Google handled most of the simulation creation, Oculus the brunt of the hardware work, Apple Inc. the software development, while UnitedHealth Group facilitated the medical work. With governments worldwide increasingly concerned with overpopulation and a dangerously low food supply, the necessary infrastructure was quickly created in over 600 major cities across the globe.’

Every member of the audience seemed to lean forward in unison, eager for Madison to continue. Sensing both the hold he had over the room, and the uncharacteristic parchedness of his hands, Madison could hardly suppress his smile as he launched into his conclusion.

‘In less than two decades after the completion of our research team’s work, over 80% of the the world’s population was able to experience the fruits of our labor.’

Sensing the coming conclusion, the audience began to break out in applause.

‘All day.’

The applause grew, vibrating the room, ringing Madison’s ears.

‘Every day.’

The room erupted in a thunderous standing ovation. The ground shook and the walls swayed. Madison surveyed the room - no - the cathedral that he built on the back of his years upon years of research, filled to the brim with his devotees there to celebrate him. His genius. His accomplishment. From his perch atop the stage, Madison was king. Elation would be an understatement, but he wasn’t done quite yet. Ready for the room to perhaps literally explode with excitement, Madison opened his arms to his kingdom and declared,

‘Humans are finally able to live perf-’

ERROR: POWER FAILURE.

His eyes creaked open like the gates to a kingdom that had long been forgotten. White light blinded him momentarily before his eyes adjusted and Madison’s surroundings appeared to him. The bones jutting out of his pale shoulders brushed lightly against the sterile walls on either side of him as he attempted to shift his weight. A pathetic attempt to roll on his side burst multiple bed sores on his back and Madison laid back down, resigned to waiting out the minutes it would take for him to regain full use of his body. Staring at the ceiling, only a few feet from his head, Madison could watch the IV bags twirl above him. It reminded him of the mobile that used to spin above his carriage when he was a young boy. He pondered. Back then he wasn’t smart, he wasn’t successful, he wasn’t a creator of worlds, and he wasn’t a destroyer of one. And he wasn’t always happy, he thought.

After a few minutes of painfully testing the limits of his mobility, Madison found himself able to roll out of his housing compartment and navigate to the central hallway of Building A89, NYC. The hallway seemed to stretch beyond him forever, each side lined with “doors”, four feet tall and seven feet long. He remembered that it had been his idea to call them doors; in truth, they were little more than oversized drawers to house the bodies - now nearly useless artifacts of the human experience. Madison vomited. He moved to clean it up, before realizing how silly that would be. The responsibility to reset the power in A89 when too many users were placed in Challenge and Accomplishment simulations, the most electronically draining simulation, fell only to him.

Remembering how many thousands of users were currently sitting in the void, a place without the joy of unending bliss, prompted him to jog towards the main control panel. Even worse, he realized, some might have accidentally slipped back into reality. He ran.

Madison reset the power station without interruption and soon found himself crouched in front of his door, Unit #2054. He had the privilege of being able to select his unit and as such had selected the unit number to match the year of the completion of his project. The day of my greatest accomplishment, he thought to himself. The laughter that involuntarily burst out of his mouth reverberated throughout the hallway eerily. For a second Madison sensed that he wasn’t alone, then realized how silly it would be for a single soul to share this hallway with him.

The realization that, in fact, hundreds of bodies laid right beside him felt like a punch in the gut. His eyes cramped and his belly twisted. The pain he felt all over his body confused Madison. It felt like being hot, cramped, lost, alone. It felt like being crushed. It felt alien. Oh. Madison flicked himself for being so stupid. Sadness. The emotion felt strange to him, yet he was almost nostalgic for it. Almost. Only a moment later the feeling overcame him and Madison rushed to crawl back into his cubicle. He scraped his arms as he rolled onto the padded floor and the red shone starkly against his colorless skin. The explosion of pain on his back reminded him of just exactly where he was. He screamed in agony, but the scream bounced right back at him. Madison heard his own voice as the shriek of a terrified girl and was suddenly reminded that real women still existed. The Playboy simulation was a cruel joke, an ironic stab at the fact that Madison hadn’t felt the touch of another human being in years.

Quickly, the torment began to grow. Every part of Madison ached with pain and the turmoil of finding himself in a box, living his life with a visor wrapped around his constantly decaying face twisted his stomach even tighter. Madison remembered the way he used to glare at the sun on a hot day, the pain of stubbing his toe, the hurt of watching a woman leave him, the torment of never being good enough. Whether the tears rolling down his cheeks were because of how much he missed his misery or at the memory of a life so capable of sorrow, he wasn’t sure. Before he could even attempt to answer his own question he felt himself throwing the needles back under his skin, the sensors over his feeble body, the visor over his crusting eyes.

As one of the architects of his prison, Madison also had the ability to select any simulation he pleased from millions upon millions of options rather than the PP choosing the simulation most necessary to regulate the proper balance of his neurotransmitters. He scrolled furiously, desperate for a scenario that could make him happy. Surely, there had to be something. Somewhere to run, somewhere to hide. Each and every world at the tips of his fingers offered only bliss, but each appeared to him as another corner to hide his face in a room of torture. For the first time, he was acutely aware of his own physical body - feeling the twitch of his finger as he searched madly for his escape. He imagined what he must look like: a pale, rotten old man convulsing as he indulged in a fairy tale world to which he had doomed not only himself but the entirety of the human race, to suffer eternal bliss.

He finger slowed as he reached the end of his list. Madison had never told a soul, but he had afforded himself another privilege, a final simulation. The file name was simply “TERMINATION,” and it did just that.

Madison felt himself both in the world of his own creation and the world which had driven him there. Neither felt like home. His artificial body felt spry and young at the same time as he felt his physical form inching closer and closer to death. He couldn’t tell quite which finger it was that selected the file, but as the program loaded he preferred to imagine it had been his God-given hand. He hoped, maybe, that this was his apology. A silent whisper to the world telling them just how sorry he was that he had perfected it. The program initiated, overloading his brain with endorphins, stimulating it with bliss to the point of total failure. Had obituaries still existed, Madison imagined that his might have read: “Dr. Herman Madison. Age 271. Died from too much happiness.”