Comment by escherplex

Sad, but essentially this article is about benign warehousing of individuals with senile dementia in their waning years with a description of bland distraction methodologies employed by institutions. A question arises as to whether the possibility of coupling individually tailored AI with VR headsets or even OLED panels in rooms could be utilized to provide suitable stimulation for these individuals in this state. Reverence was made to Nozick's 1974 thought experiment called the experience machine (his intent then was to refute thesis of hedonism) which was to provide an individual any experiences the person chose, for the rest of their life but one of his arguments against its use was We want to do certain things, and not just have the experience of doing them but as medical ethicist Schermer points out When there is only pain and no capacity left to deal with that pain, to really understand or come to grips with it, nor even to remember it for very long, then the truth cannot contribute to a good life So I see no reason why an individually tailored interactive VR environment couldn't be used to provide these entities with some degree of stimulation to alleviate their sense of depression and frustration.