 The experience machine is one motivation for the adoption of a desire theory (for a good introduction to the view, see Heathwood 2016; 2019). When you are on the machine, many of your central desires are likely to remain unfilled. Take your desire to write a great novel. You may believe that this is what you are doing, but in fact it is just a hallucination. And what you want, the argument goes, is to write a great novel, not the experience of writing a great novel.