Simulacra and Simulation | Hacker News Reader

Simulacra and Simulation

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I Just finished listening to this episode of Philosophize This podcast https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/simulacra-and-simul.... Whole-heartedly recommend this podcast episode the entire podcast to anyone who is remotely interested in learning the "modern western canon" in Layman's terms.

Second that recommendation, and I think that podcast would particularly as appeal to a lot of the HN crowd. I listened from the beginning until the early/mid 20th century philosophers and understood so much more about my own perspective on the world as a result.

I always liked his observation that Disneyland was created in order to make the rest of America seem real.

Yes! That quote has always stuck with me. It’s haunting. Once you see it it’s impossible to unsee.

Fun fact: one of the lawyers who helped buy land for Disney was ex-CIA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Helliwell

I always enjoy the moment in The Matrix where Neo flops a hollowed out copy of this book open, to fish out some illicit mini-disc he’s storing in it.

I like that he had a very accurate criticism of their use of his influences in the first film (that the simulacra he describes wouldn't be so clearly differentiated from the real), and they ended up doing a better job in later films, as the Matrix's clear delineation from the real world was intended to lure the people into thinking their simulation was more real. The Matrix was the simulacrum after all.

Recently re-watching the Matrix after reading this book, I had to exclaim - "Ha, that's not the real one, the actual book extremely thin compared to that codex!"

And it's just funny for what details the brain is unable to suspend disbelief...

I like Existential Comic's explanation of the simulacrum concept, using football/soccer injuries as an example:

https://existentialcomics.com/comic/476

> This is because they aren't trying to display pain, even if it is real, they are trying to show the referee that a foul has a occurred, so they perform the act of "footballer in pain" even as they are actually in pain, and in fact are often in a weird way even masking their genuine natural reaction to the pain to do so.

Wow, I hadn't considered that final point.

How readable and accessible is this book?

I am always attracted to philosophy and culture theory books, but more often than not they are extremely dry and academic, and sadly I require more excitement to hold my squirrel attention.

It is no wonder much more people have read the “Industrial Society and its Future” than anything by Jacques Ellul.

Someone with the same squirrel attention who starts a lot of books a rarely finishes one. I think for a philosophy book, it is quite accessible in the sense that it builds on common knowledge and known cultural phenomenon, not that much on prior theory you must have read. Regarding the language it is not that accessible, Baudrillard (in the culture of french intellectuals of the time) has a very dense, complex language. But it is not a dry philosophy lecture, its more like hackerman punk-rock philosophy.

The book consists of a set of loosely related essays, and the first essay "the precession of simulacra" is just roughly 40 pages. If you read that, squirrel brain is happy and you got most of the books content. The rest is just explaining this concept on modern (slightly outdated now, but culturally still relevant), cultural phenomenon. Once you understand his concepts of "simulacrum" and "image" it is very readable. Later he uses his concepts of "economic and symbolic exchange" which come from his earlier book Symbolic Exchange and Death. The concept is quite easy to grasp, the book is good but you don't have to have read it. The rest of the book builds on these concepts. So the key to making this book accessible is understanding these concepts, which for me took some thinking and time to actually understand deeply.

But, and that's important, once you worked through the book, it is a phenomenal tool to understand modern culture. So is it accessible: theoretically yes, linguistically not, but its worth it.

> hackerman punk-rock philosophy

Not sure I get your point, as I wish we had more punk rock philosophy aimed at the masses and not at academia.

If your philosophy isn't targeting your average person with their average existential crisis, you have failed your mission. Philosophers have completely failed their mission since the Greeks. They had the Christian Church pick up their slack during the Middle Ages, and now that we've shed religion, we're utterly lost and people that seek to cure their existential dread have to navigate through utter drudgery to find a path towards the Good Life. /rant

I meant "punk rock" in a "refusal of rules" or (in combination with "hackerman") "creative use of tools/methods". To elaborate further, when you read him you often feel like he claims his Simulacra Theory is universal, and he further makes quite bold claims like the Gulf war did not happen, reality is not real and is produced by culture/media. Those are not scientifically rigorous claims. But he makes those (at first reading outlandish) claims, not to craft theory, but to invite exchange with his theories, to challenge reality, not to make scientific theories.

A little disclaimer he was a very serious academic. I just think in his later works he kind of "defected" knowingly from the scientific method.

About your second part: > If your philosophy isn't targeting your average person with their average existential crisis, you have failed your mission.

Debord has a long paragraph about this in "society of spectacle", that the way forward is to make the worker a dialectician.

You claiming that "Philosophers have completely failed their mission since the greeks" is understandable, but I think empirically false. Quite often, ideas shape in culture, get picked up in philosophy, get reshaped, refined and influence culture which is targeting the average person. A good example to show that is Existentialism and Nihilism. Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Camus and Sartre worked out the kinks, then it returned back in modern culture e.g. as Rick and Morty which is translation of academic ideas to the average person. I do agree though that the transmission rate of this process could be better. This very discussion is a hint on that, most non-academia people know Baudrillard through the Matrix-Franchise, which, ironically, Baudrillard hated and in my opinion did not translate his ideas at all.

It's hard but if you read it once for the vibes and then pay closer attention the next time you go through it's not too hard. Baudrillard is a Zizek-level philosopher in the sense that his own celebrity is kind of at the centre of most of his work (this doesn't mean it's simple, dumb or low-quality, it's pretty interesting, it's just also kinda sci-fi/fanciful as opposed to hardcore logic-chopping or idk complex historiography like some of his contemporaries)

"readable and accessible" are some of the last words I would use to describe the book.

Depends on your proficiency. As a former philosophy student I find it one of the more readable books. It still is probably hard to wrap your head around as a layperson not used to this kind of theoretical thinking.

But what it is not: Some authors use word plays, complexity and semantics to make their ideas appear more sophisticated than they are. This is not that.

Tried to read it, gave up.

> It is no wonder much more people have read the “Industrial Society and its Future” than anything by Jacques Ellul.

Do you think it is because Ellul is hard to read or because Kaczynski is just more well-known for obvious reasons?

A bit of both. If so inclined, it's difficult to read Kaczynski and not go "hell yeah." It's just more accessible, even if the arguments are a bit egregious.

> How readable and accessible is this book?

It took me about 20-30 re-reads of the first page to understand it.

The rest of the chapter was then a bit easier. I gave up after that.

But it really is a great idea in the first few pages.

Its not great. I suggest reading Villem Flusser instead.

I've read both, but Baudrillard is more lucid and insightful in his writing. I would suggest reading Symbollic Exchange and Death (his magnum opus) instead of Simulacra and Simulation first though.

> How readable and accessible is this book?

As with most works of cultural theory you need to read it few times, and also check other works of his. Otherwise you may end up reducing concepts from this book to social media or AI slop.

Moreover, books like this usually are just phrases in a long dialectical process. For example, it is useful to read Debord first, and then move to Baudrillard.

Great book, though it requires a bit of experience sifting through florid 20th century French philosophical prose. I would strongly encourage people not to get fixated too heavily on the "simulation" aspect in terms of what we think of these days when we hear "simulation". When it comes to Baudrillard, it's always important to focus on the semiotic aspect. What something is referring to, and whether there even is a thing for it to refer to.

As we approach the fall season, I'd recommend this little blog post to make it more clear: http://www.critical-theory.com/understanding-jean-baudrillar...

It discusses how the fact that we associate pumpkin spice lattes with fall, despite pumpkin not really needing to be harvested only in fall anymore and despite there not even being any pumpkin in the drink to necessitate even the tenuous seasonal connection. To quote the main arguments here:

>The fact that we welcome the return of pumpkin season, save for those who demand they buy these pumpkins from an ethically sourced gluten free farm just masks the fact that there are no seasons. We could probably ship pumpkins from all around the world to get our pumpkin fix year-round. But even then, it’s only the third order of that list above. It’s not quite at that next level pure simulacra shit.

>Did I mention that there’s no pumpkin in your pumpkin spice latte? It’s nutmeg (and a few other spices). In other words, that delicious sip of fall you just imbibed is actually a pure simulacrum, of that fourth order. Pumpkin spice doesn’t conceal the fact that there are no longer seasons, pumpkin spice has no referent in reality, it exists for its own sake. The only thing “pumpkin spice”refers to is itself– like the distinct difference between “cherry flavored” items and “red flavored” candy that claims to be cherry-flavored.

>Those who bake will quickly note that “pumpkin spice” derives from the mixtures of spices (nutmeg, allspice, etc) that go into a pumpkin pie. But that’s exactly the point: it doesn’t matter whether “pumpkin spice” actually has any correlation to reality. Ads for pumpkin spice items tout pumpkins and other fall fare, as if there’s a biological imperative to shove “things that go well with pumpkin” into our collectively fat faces when the leaves start to turn. Nutmeg and allspice are also available year-round, as is canned pumpkin, meaning we could clearly sate our desires at any time.

My favourite explanation of this is a review of the Toyota FJ Cruiser:

https://youtu.be/PA23qLvl79k?is=nkWS0Tbgcm65RCQS

The Simulation and Simulacra part starts around 4:00.

The idea of a copy with no original is even more relevant than when the book was first published as it has become possible to use AI to generate fake images. (e.g. the million "Look what they took from you" slop accounts on Twitter that post nostalgic images of "traditional values" with clear anachronisms or inaccuracies)

Current events have also been increasingly defined by fake images or videos that can be made very realistic-looking at first glance. There doesn't seem to be any effective mechanism to stop these kinds of lies from spreading. Social media incentivizes this content and whatever fact checking or correction that comes after is too slow to reverse the effects of the misinformation.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15324818 (2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23154141 (2020)

Suddenly, wildly, pertinent to today's world.

Or the complete opposite ;-)

I think most of these issues are symptoms of the fact that "People are forced to take decisions in limited time, based on limited information and possible misinformation". It has nothing to do with the fact that general public are dumb or ignorant. How do you expect me to make informed decisions about the world if I am forced to work a day job and raise a family while taking out time for personal entertainment and recharging. To remove the constraints, one must imagine an alternative universe where a person can stop time, read and reason as much as he wants. In such a universe, these theories would fall apart.

https://youtube.com/shorts/fDFkc4BJfb4?si=PFyX0fWFqZSP_115

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