
Simulacra and Simulation - vermilingua
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation
======
trts
At the time I read this I mostly understood his themes through the lens of
mass production and product/lifestyle marketing, to some degree an extension
of Veblen's _Theory of the Leisure Class_ and conspicuous consumption as class
identity.

Lately I have begun thinking about this book again particularly in the context
of Covid and the 2020 U.S. election, where the pandemic has made apparent the
inability of our institutions to serve their functions (e.g. for the CDC to
prepare and stockpile supplies in the event of a rare mass pandemic) or for
either party to offer any authenticity behind their expressed purposes
("draining the swamp" by intensifying the culture of corruption in D.C. or
helping Main Street through massive Wall Street bailouts). These institutions
and parties are essentially emulating the familiar principles of the past
while operating by the power structures that have captured them. We seem to
take it for granted.

~~~
claudeganon
Baudrillard’s point was beyond this - that Capitalist media technologies
create a hyperreal blanket over everything such that these institutions are
fully consumed by movement within its symbolic exchange that they lose what we
would commonly think of as their “use value.”

~~~
westoncb
Is it not possible to express these ideas in ordinary language?

For instance, is anything lost by instead saying:

Capitalist media companies powered by modern technology are incentivized by
profit motive to distort their portrayal of reality.

Specifically, their portrayals will paint a picture of reality more enticing
than the real thing; this is self-evident since their revenue is tied directly
to 'enticement'.

Once this fictional portrayal has been established and enough people believe
in it, later fictional events of the fictional world may become as significant
as actual events.

So, institutions affected by capitalist media portrayal will adjust their
valuation of potential actions to take this into account. As a result, their
behavior will deviate from its traditional role in the context of our real
society when it can benefit more by playing a role in the fictional media-
created portrayal of the world.

\-------

Of course the original version is shorter and sounds cooler, but it's also far
more vague and will only be comprehensible to a much smaller subset of the
audience here.

What bothers me especially is the original expression's framing in terms of an
alternate reality. What does that add? It can't just be fiction but has to be
'hyperreal'? I get it, it's a particular type of fiction so it's more specific
than that. The intention is probably like the sense in which a cartoon avatar
of a woman with exaggerated curves might be called 'hyperreal'.

And I realize I'm revealing my own philosophical commitments here by
suggesting there is a single shared reality to begin with, and I realize the
author does not share this stance—but I mean... this is not a community of
philosophers: why _implicitly_ adopt a stance which won't be shared 99% of
readers as the base framing if there is any legitimate interesting in
communication here? I could understand if it were actually necessary to
communicate the core idea, but it does not appear to be so.

~~~
alexpetralia
This was a breath of fresh air. Thanks.

------
cykablyatebat
The channel "Cuck Philosophy" on YT has a great explanation of both The Matrix
and American Psycho using Baudrillard's theories found in "Simulacra and
Simulation".

The Matrix:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf9J35yzM3E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf9J35yzM3E)
American Psycho:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJfurfb5_kw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJfurfb5_kw)

~~~
suyash
Rumor is that the Directors of Martix were so influenced by this book that
every Cast member was supposed to read it.

~~~
idolaspecus
If I’m not mistaken, the hollowed out book in which Neo keeps his illegal
floppy disk is _Simulacra and Simulation_.

~~~
alias_neo
It is, however, they were Mini Disc not floppies.

I really wished for some years Mini Disc took off, I loved it as a format;
compact, rewritable, protected, storage capacity of a CD.

------
Tade0
This concept was introduced to me and explained in simple terms by a car
review out of all things:

[https://youtu.be/PA23qLvl79k](https://youtu.be/PA23qLvl79k)

There's more where this came from because the duo behind this channel are both
English majors.

~~~
centimeter
Hahaha! When you said "car review" I was like "what car is a simulacra... FJ
cruiser?". Called it! It's like a confused Japanese clone of something that
never existed and no one wanted. Like a horrible mashup of TLC + Jeep + Hummer
+ Subaru

~~~
Tade0
Truly it's the movie subtitles translated via Google Translate of cars.

------
intrepidhero
I notice two things about this:

1\. The language contains so many obscure words that the intent is unclear. I
personally think that if you cannot convey your ideas in simple language you
have failed at communication. That goes for philosophers, mathematicians and
engineers (of which I am one).

2\. There seems to be an unstated assumption the reality we construct,
examples including culture and society, are somehow less meaningful or less
real than... the real world. But he does not clearly define what this "real
world" is. And he's using the term "real" in odd enough ways, that I'm not
sure what was meant. Perhaps the exploration of this assumption is what the
book is driving at. I would find that a fascinating discussing, if it wasn't
couched in such mystical sounding language.

Disclaimer: I have not read the book, only the article.

~~~
depr
>I personally think that if you cannot convey your ideas in simple language
you have failed at communication

Not everything can be explained using simple language. Try explaining monads
in simple language, or ontology.

This video explains some of Baudrillard's concepts in a pretty clear way:
[https://youtu.be/9zEtalr5pEA](https://youtu.be/9zEtalr5pEA)

>Perhaps the exploration of this assumption is what the book is driving at. I
would find that a fascinating discussing

Alas it is not

~~~
isoskeles
A bit longer but here's another video that covers some of Baudrillard's
concepts, in more of a lecture form but much easier to digest than
Baudrillard's writing:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U9WMftV40c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U9WMftV40c)

------
yarrel
It's a great book, although some of it is very much of its time in terms of
political references.

The basic idea is very simple - our society is being organized economically,
politically and socially according to models, and the effects of those models
are being measured by those implementing them through polling and other
indirect methods.

This means that what we experience in everyday life is structured according to
models that have drifted away from whatever they were meant to model
originally over time. And that these groundless illusions are where what looks
like politics is taking place.

There's more but that's the gist of it.

~~~
Nbox9
I think you miss the scale of the topic. He’s not just talking about politics,
but our entire culture.

------
ipnon
An instance of the main concepts presented by Baudrillard: The incessant
coverage of the Gulf War by cable news. One could watch 24/7 coverage of
fighter jets dodging anti-air and imperial palaces exploding. The key point is
that the immersion was total. From the comfort of your couch, how could you
claim that this is not essentially war? And yet its absolutism misses the mark
completely, obfuscating the true reality that is more horrible and generally
incomprehensible.

~~~
thinkingemote
I wonder when people will be allowed to draw the same parallels with
Coronavirus.

~~~
claudeganon
Is it not already happening with our “Reopening the Economy” triumphalism
after demonstrating ourselves to be a failed state by most measures?
Healthcare workers dying for lack of basic equipment, in the richest country
in the world, while our leaders project supreme control of the situation
across the airwaves.

The Pandemic Never Happened.

------
thanatropism
There are two opposite mindsets you can take to a book like this.

One is to approach it like the book owed you something concrete. Like a
calculus 101 textbook or worse yet, "Javascript the good parts". But if you
approach anything sufficiently interesting (take a more advanced math book --
the "Baby Rudin" analysis textbook) like this you're going to be frustrated.

This is also the mindset of people who look at drip or color field paintings
and think (or worse, say out loud!) that their toddler niece could have done
this! Without even trying to see the painting.

There's also the narcissistic variation of this: the book apparently says some
things that don't agree with your fundamental engineering-ly view of reality
therefore _what a charlatan_. Imagine being a serious Christian who is this
intolerant of eg. Buddhist literature.

The alternate mindset is that of an open mind willing to engage with the open-
ended. It's very well possible that your pragmatic engineer worldviews are
naïve to countless aspects you're even unable to think about right now. This
doesn't mean you have to trade away your identity as a whatever you think you
are to engage with different ideas.

------
lcam84
Another podcast about this subject. He points that social networks can be
described as a simulations. Two persons can be physically at the same place
looking to their phones into totally different realities.
[https://philosophizethis.org/simulacra-and-
simulation/](https://philosophizethis.org/simulacra-and-simulation/)

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
Which is why “fake news” or conspiracies are a big thing now. People are
already detached from reality, where facts don’t matter, everything is
narrative.

~~~
admiral33
I think that crying "fake news" and theorizing about conspiracies are a
desperate attempt to call out and see past the simulacra. An example of
simulacra would be Keeping up With the Kardashians - a representation of
someone else's life that is not their actual life (there is no possible way
that it could be their actual life, even if it was a 24 hour livestream,
simply because of the fact that it is being delivered through a screen), same
thing with social media. A conspiracy theory about the show could be "this is
only being shown to me to make me want to buy makeup". The conspiracy theory
is just an attempt to discover some aspect - however small - of the simulation
that is based in reality, rather than just buying into the simulation at face
value. Of course, conspiracy theories are usually spread through the same
medium (a screen) so they are just as simulated as the other simulated
content.

I don't think we should be discouraging people from trying to unveil the
simulacra regardless. Imagine a world where everyone believed every piece of
news as absolutely true. We'd still have a geocentric model of our solar
system. As long as I can hear vocal disagreement about what is true, I can
sleep at night knowing that some progress is being made.

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
Yeah, but the solution is to be skeptical, not get lost in your own conspiracy
theories. If you’re not skeptical you get manipulated any direction.

------
LargoLasskhyfv
Similar and older conceptual framework:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(illusion)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_\(illusion\))

with links to many other similar and older concepts of the same...

edit: now playing Imagination - Just an Illusion (1982)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnfHdZrmMAw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnfHdZrmMAw)
(4min4sec)

~~~
kordlessagain
> In Vedas, Puranas and Tamil classics

> The term māyā occurs 70 times in Rigveda and around 27 times in the
> Atharvaveda; and in all these places Yaska, Sayana, Dayananda Saraswati
> agree the term means Prajñā, jnana-vishesha (specific knowledge). The term
> Asuri-Maya in the Yajurveda at one place was translated by Uvvat as the
> "knowledge of the vital air". With regard to the usage of the word Maya in
> the Rigveda, Radhakrishnan opines it was only used to signify might and
> power. Maya as the cause of illusion or as the sense of Avidya (lack of
> knowledge) has never been used in the Vedas. According to Monier Williams,
> Maya meant wisdom and extraordinary power in an earlier language, but later
> the word came to mean illusion and magic.

So, depending, "Maya" can mean "illusion" or "mirage", but the original
meaning might be closer to Prajñā, which means "non-discriminating knowledge"
or "intuitive apprehension". According to Chan and most Zen lines, those
"states" of consciousness are obtained by practicing non-clinging
discrimination in a given moment. Maybe one way of thinking about this is not
adding to the observation of something that has been discriminated already.

Chan texts mention holding vexation and the polar observations of the vexation
(good vs. evil or light vs. darkness as examples) without "adding" to the
metaphor. The "adding" is the part that can be considered important (to not
do). Consider the highly polarized topics that result from unfettered
discourse on the Internet:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)

"Sitting with the rock is wet" without wondering how much longer it is going
to rain.

Or, observing an imagined (in mind) scenario without "adding to it" in the
moment that it is being perceived.

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
[https://dict.leo.org/german-english/Klar](https://dict.leo.org/german-
english/Klar)

~~~
kordlessagain
Yes, and maybe
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia)

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
_That_ is not clear to me, since i can't imagine that :)

edit: by that i mean having that "neuroarchitecture" which just percieves, but
can't imagine anything(visually). Reminds me of the relatively recent (6
months to a year ago?) discussions about not having an internal voice while
thinking, which was obviously new to a large set of people, while my whole
state of mind revolves around thinking without vocalizing. Alas, i digress...

~~~
kordlessagain
Hardly a digression when discussing the path to cessation of suffering.

Liberation of vibration (sound) must occur before liberation of form (images).
Nobel effort spans lifetimes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skandha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skandha)

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
I think i wrongly described what i meant with _while my whole state of mind
revolves around thinking without vocalizing._ and you thereby understood it as
i'd try to achieve that. That isn't the case. I simply don't have it! While i
have that whole "Palace of the Mind/Method of Loci" thing, that's not the
whole thing either. I'd say it is on a lower level, and even below that is the
language, and whenever i need to write or speak, there happens to be some sort
of hyperdimensonal self-solving Tetris in fast-forward mode which gives me the
words in the languages i happen to know in an instant, readily formed to write
or speak. But without an inner voice speaking them first. I can't do it any
different. That would be exhausting.

------
cameron_b
^is the book turned into a book safe in The Matrix. Early in the movie, Neo
pulls a mini-disk out of it to sell to his Mescaline-referencing friends, one
of whom has the white rabbit tattoo.

~~~
danbolt
I'm not an expert on this sort of thing, but it's funny how in the film The
Matrix is kind of like Plato's cave rather than Baudrillard's idea. The Matrix
"not real" and can be overcome by the protagonists, but I feel like
Baudrillard would suggest that the protagonists wouldn't be able to tell what
was and what wasn't.

~~~
Barrin92
Baudrillard himself was even more dismissive. He argued that 'the matrix' was
the kind of film that the matrix would make, and that the film deeply
misunderstood his ideas by drawing such a sharp distinction between the real
and the representation.

~~~
chongli
This was solved in the sequels. The _real world_ in the first movie turns out
to be just another layer of the matrix. You can try to peel back these layers
but you can never know when you’ve reached the centre of the onion. Thus the
real and the representation have been blurred together completely.

------
mossity
I thought the book "Philosophy and Simulation" by Manuel de Landa did a really
great job of tying together some threads around simulation and it's connection
to reality. I haven't read Simulacra but it seems like Baudrillard has gone
too far in the direction that French philosophy loves to go by claiming we
have cannot have any connection "the real". While an amusing idea it just
doesn't match up to our lived experience.

~~~
brighton36
Have you ever shot a firearm? Have you ever played a video game where you shot
a firearm? Given some assumptions of your demographic, based on your being
here, this example should illustrate the issue Baudrillard foresaw in
comprehending 'the real' in modernity.

------
Der_Einzige
A truly terrible book through and through. The best chapter is his review of
JG Ballards "Crash".

Jean Baudrillard is the worst kind of intellectual charlatan and I am
surprised to see folks around here who don't see that.

Actually Baudrillard, the gulf war DID happen. The phenomenon that he
identifies in books like this (Tv news tries to show you an illusion instead
of the truth) don't need post-modernist mystical explanations.

~~~
brighton36
Who decides whether the gulf war happened?

~~~
tomrod
International coverage, soldiers in the war, etc.

------
steveads
Not an easy book to read, but very interesting ideas. I've put it down twice
after trying to get through it, but do plan on eventually finishing it.

There is a Philosophize This! episode which is quite a good introduction to
Baudrillard's ideas:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCgoKIT0Ufc&t=109s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCgoKIT0Ufc&t=109s)

------
owenshen24
A useful overview of the subject which amde much more sense to me:
[https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/fEX7G2N7CtmZQ3eB5/simulac...](https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/fEX7G2N7CtmZQ3eB5/simulacra-
and-subjectivity)

------
lykahb
The article has a much clearer explanation of the ideas than the book itself.
It was too hard to finish reading. What stood out even more than the ideas,
were the method of thinking and the writing style. Diving into the original
text even for several pages gives a different perspective.

------
stx
Another book I heard about from the Matrix behind the scenes was Out of
Control by Kevin Kelly. It was pretty interesting to read especially in the
context of machine learning now days. Its hard to believe that it was written
in 1994. I was only in high school at the time but I could hardly put it down.
I still would like to find more books that interested me that much. The
reference to bees on the cover is that a simple bee has little intelligence
but the a hive mind has much more.

I read Simulacra and Simulation after hearing about it related to the Matrix.
It was a bit hard to follow and I lost interest.

~~~
partomniscient
Out of Control was the right book in the right place at the right time. Time
has moved on, and the book is kind of stuck there, which in a way is a good
thing in that it allows us to go back and see all the 'possibility' of the
future in the book from where we have ended up.

How much control did/do we have anyway, and how much did we have back then?

------
Qision
Actually Pewdiepie made a video about this book and its relation to Matrix,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBwJF75wZnw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBwJF75wZnw)

------
JRKrause
I attempted to read this book some years ago, the writing is very nearly
incomprehensible.

------
xondono
It's fun to see that most of the people here know only about the book because
it appears in the Matrix (myself included).

Whenever I read philosophers like Baudrillard or that share similar ideas, I
can't help it but to see their thesis for very complex, very elaborate and
very ornate systems of epicycles around the concept of value.

A lot of them don't even acknowledge the assumption that there's intrinsic
value, and just run with it, with expected results. From Marxism multipliers
of labor to simulacra, to me it just sounds like constructions to avoid the
idea of value being an emergent property.

------
madmaniak
No one linked yet?
[https://coronavirusstatistics.org](https://coronavirusstatistics.org)

------
ckastner
It's not mentioned expressly in the article (there's just a link to the
movie), but the book is briefly to be seen in _The Matrix_. Neo uses it to
stash cash and warez.

I remember reading about this, and being just astonished how many significant
details the Wachovskis hid in those movies, even if they were only visible for
a second or two.

~~~
dmos62
I really enjoy all Matrix movies. I recently rewatched them and in parallel
read and watched all the essays by v/bloggers I could find. Here's a few take-
aways:

1) According to mainstream (I disagree), the sequels dropped the ball. It's
somewhat popular to make fun of the Matrix movies that are not the first.

2) There's a lot of symbolism in the movies, and it's not less important than
the superficial layer. You could say it makes up a second-layer in the movies,
and if you don't get it you're missing part of the content.

3) The first movie referenced Baudrillard a lot, but it didn't (fully) follow
Baudrillard's philosophy, as Baudrillard himself has said. To be more specific
(but simplistic), Baudrillard's work that was referenced represented a
supplantation of Plato's allegory of the cave, but The Matrix in many ways is
an illustration of Plato's allegory, reaching Plato's conclusions, not
Baudrillard's. Baudrillard was approached to work on the sequels, but rejected
it.

4) The badly-received Matrix sequels examined non-western philosophies (which
are hardly familiar to mainstream audiences). The well-received first The
Matrix movie examined the ever-so-familiar Plato's allegory and Christian
themes. The sequels broached a lot of new ground and required intellectual
effort; the first movie by comparison was easy watching.

5) Some people think that The Matrix has badly aged CGI (not me).

~~~
yarrel
Regarding 4, the dialog and plotting of the sequels seemed to build only on
the flaws of the original. That some of that dialog was monolog about
different philosophical themes was a problem, but the problem was the monolog
not the philosophy.

~~~
dmos62
I took it that the monologues were a problem because they were confusing to
people. They serve as a major bridge between what I called the superficial and
symbolic layers. For example the dialogue/monologue with the architect was
great. I found it very stimulating, but most bloggers made fun of it.

------
nmeofthestate
Congratulations to anyone for whom this makes the slightest bit of sense. I'm
sadly missing whatever part of the brain is needed to understand what
philosophers are going on about.

