Experience Apps
for providing actionable insights
What is an experience app?
An experience app is a cognitive application that measures and matches valences, or emotional states, of participants to those of other participants. Three states – ambient (no emotion), happy, and surprised are used.
Why use an experience app?
An experience app greatly reduces the time it takes to match individuals based upon emotional valence for various purposes including but not limited to: dating, movie casting, diplomacy, gaming, marketing, and advertising.
Need convincing?
Here are three thought experiments.
1. The Experience Machine
There are also substantial puzzles when we ask what matters other than how people’s experiences feel ‘from the inside.’ Suppose there were an experience machine that would give you any experience you desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain. Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life’s experiences?
Source: Nozick, Robert (1974). Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Basic Books. p. 42-43
2. The Inverted Experience Machine
For this new thought experiment, suppose that you are simply going about your life as normal when you are approached one day by a man who tells you a surprising new fact. This whole life you thought you were experiencing is, in fact, an illusion. All of the events you thought were occurring over these past decades, and even all of the people who seemed to be most close to you, have really just been part of a very elaborate computer program. The truth is that you are actually a millionaire from Monaco who one day decided to plug into an experience machine. But now you are being given an opportunity to leave the machine and return to your real life. Would you choose to unplug?
Source: Research by Felipe De Brigard, 2009.
3. The Love at First Sight Experience:
70% of people go throughout their whole lives without experiencing love-at-first-sight*. If you could be matched with somebody that affected you in this way would you take the opportunity to interact with them on a video call for five minutes? The call could be tomorrow or it could be a year from now. The call could be at any time including the middle of the night. Would you take this opportunity? If so, join today!
*Source: Fisher, Helen (2004). Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. St. Martin’s Press. p. 42.
phirstsight™ Date – An automated experience app that uses affective comparisons to match users
phirstsight™ Star – An automated casting app that uses affective comparisons to match actors
phirstsight™ Watch – An automated diplomacy app that uses affective comparisons to match envoys
Learn more about the underlying scientific principles of the cognitive technology through our blog post series here.
