4 ms·

Simulacra and Simulation

87 points by soupspaces 2mo ago

david927 2mo ago
Suddenly, wildly, pertinent to today's world.
- _def 2mo ago
  Or the complete opposite ;-)
soupspaces 2mo ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15324818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15324818 (2017) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23154141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23154141 (2020)
euroderf 2mo ago
I always liked his observation that Disneyland was created in order to make the rest of America seem real.
- SanjayMehta 2mo ago
  Fun fact: one of the lawyers who helped buy land for Disney was ex-CIA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Helliwell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Helliwell
  - Der_Einzige 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - thin_carapace 2mo ago
      going to respond to your other comment here since it got killed: i think a lot of art could be described as fashionable nonsense, and hyperreality is an artistic philosophy. it's interesting to contemplate the root concept of a map overflowing its territory, however consuming long tracts of resulting thought is questionably useful. i didnt mind reading some of baudrillard's cool thoughts books, application of hyperreality was well translated via small vignettes of thinking. but i couldnt finish the book discussed here, it's still sitting somewhere bookmarked. re this comment: it's clear that the powers that be will use any tool to maximise power. that's the point i gleaned from this comment because i dont identify as left or right. this is a left leaning forum, attacking the left as a whole is inevitably going to result in personal offense to left identifiers. therefore your point probably won't get translated, reducing the usefulness of these words to baudrillard levels.
      - ahf8Aithaex7Nai 2mo ago
        (This is a reply to Der_Einzige.) Way too sweeping for my taste. There’s obviously some truth to that. On the other hand, it’s way too easy and convenient to dismiss things as PSYOPs. To my grandfather, every LGBTQ Pride event is a PSYOP or a consequence of one. I was sitting in the audience at a political event last year. When the topic turned to union work, a young woman started rolling her eyes and rambling on about old white men. With this shift away from class solidarity toward identity-based division, I also find it hard not to see PSYOPs at work in the background. Postcolonial studies according to Said, Spivak, Chakrabarty, etc., are a case in point for me: critiques of universalism, critiques of power in “white” knowledge production, and decolonization debates. All of this comes from the Foucault school of thought and contains the same contradictions. But there are no better tools for undermining widespread, international solidarity and political organization. It’s not enough to simply dismiss these things as PSYOPs. First, because the intended division still works. People influenced by these schools of thought won’t be easily convinced by an “Ackchyually” meme. Real, substantive persuasion is required here. Second, the fact that a thinker has been favored in some way does not invalidate their thinking. It’s worth taking a closer look to determine where criticism is warranted and where their ideas are useful and worth building upon.
    - oldsklgdfth 2mo ago
      My mind tingles when I heard about three letters and subverting the public. Reminds me of the CIA make Jackson Pollack and modern art popular. The idea I come back to is that history has its own momentum. You may be able to nudge it in the right direction and accelerate things. But it’s hard to push against momentum. Examples of this are “industry plants” where an industry will try to create the next great hit, but reads the room wrong. But if you work at the CIA you gotta believe you can subvert the public. “You can’t tell people what to think, but you can tell them what to think about”
    - bad_haircut72 2mo ago
      Bro - Chomsky was an academic who wrote books, not an actual leader of the left, a group which is more than used to purging its ranks of the unpure anyway. It took Bluesky about 2 seconds to forget Chomsky as a person (though not all of his works) existed. Meanwhile the actual commander in chief of the armed forces right now was also, how you say, "deeply embedded" with Epstein too
- dgllghr 2mo ago
  Yes! That quote has always stuck with me. It’s haunting. Once you see it it’s impossible to unsee.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
ycombinete 2mo ago
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.
- viccis 2mo ago
  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.
- imrehg 2mo ago
  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...
Der_Einzige 2mo ago
[flagged]
TacticalCoder 2mo ago
[dead]
csb6 2mo ago
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.
conmod278 2mo ago
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.
omoikane 2mo ago
I like Existential Comic's explanation of the simulacrum concept, using football/soccer injuries as an example: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/476 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/476
- platesmead 2mo ago
  > 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.
sph 2mo ago
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.
- wolvesechoes 2mo ago
  > 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.
- zvrba 2mo ago
  Tried to read it, gave up.
- nicholascarolan 2mo ago
  "readable and accessible" are some of the last words I would use to describe the book.
- plastic-enjoyer 2mo ago
  > 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?
  - sph 2mo ago
    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.
- kusokurae 2mo ago
  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)
viccis 2mo ago
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-baudrillard-with-pumpkin-spice-lattes/ 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.
ultrasounder 2mo ago
I Just finished listening to this episode of Philosophize This podcast https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/simulacra-and-simulation 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.
- mjfisher 2mo ago
  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.
Tade0 2mo ago
My favourite explanation of this is a review of the Toyota FJ Cruiser: https://youtu.be/PA23qLvl79k?is=nkWS0Tbgcm65RCQS https://youtu.be/PA23qLvl79k?is=nkWS0Tbgcm65RCQS The Simulation and Simulacra part starts around 4:00.
DiscourseFan 2mo ago
https://youtube.com/shorts/fDFkc4BJfb4?si=PFyX0fWFqZSP_115 https://youtube.com/shorts/fDFkc4BJfb4?si=PFyX0fWFqZSP_115

87 points by soupspaces 2mo ago

david927 2mo ago

Suddenly, wildly, pertinent to today's world.

_def 2mo ago
Or the complete opposite ;-)

soupspaces 2mo ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15324818 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15324818 (2017) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23154141 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23154141 (2020)

euroderf 2mo ago

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

SanjayMehta 2mo ago
Fun fact: one of the lawyers who helped buy land for Disney was ex-CIA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Helliwell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Helliwell
- Der_Einzige 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - thin_carapace 2mo ago
    going to respond to your other comment here since it got killed: i think a lot of art could be described as fashionable nonsense, and hyperreality is an artistic philosophy. it's interesting to contemplate the root concept of a map overflowing its territory, however consuming long tracts of resulting thought is questionably useful. i didnt mind reading some of baudrillard's cool thoughts books, application of hyperreality was well translated via small vignettes of thinking. but i couldnt finish the book discussed here, it's still sitting somewhere bookmarked. re this comment: it's clear that the powers that be will use any tool to maximise power. that's the point i gleaned from this comment because i dont identify as left or right. this is a left leaning forum, attacking the left as a whole is inevitably going to result in personal offense to left identifiers. therefore your point probably won't get translated, reducing the usefulness of these words to baudrillard levels.
    - ahf8Aithaex7Nai 2mo ago
      (This is a reply to Der_Einzige.) Way too sweeping for my taste. There’s obviously some truth to that. On the other hand, it’s way too easy and convenient to dismiss things as PSYOPs. To my grandfather, every LGBTQ Pride event is a PSYOP or a consequence of one. I was sitting in the audience at a political event last year. When the topic turned to union work, a young woman started rolling her eyes and rambling on about old white men. With this shift away from class solidarity toward identity-based division, I also find it hard not to see PSYOPs at work in the background. Postcolonial studies according to Said, Spivak, Chakrabarty, etc., are a case in point for me: critiques of universalism, critiques of power in “white” knowledge production, and decolonization debates. All of this comes from the Foucault school of thought and contains the same contradictions. But there are no better tools for undermining widespread, international solidarity and political organization. It’s not enough to simply dismiss these things as PSYOPs. First, because the intended division still works. People influenced by these schools of thought won’t be easily convinced by an “Ackchyually” meme. Real, substantive persuasion is required here. Second, the fact that a thinker has been favored in some way does not invalidate their thinking. It’s worth taking a closer look to determine where criticism is warranted and where their ideas are useful and worth building upon.
  - oldsklgdfth 2mo ago
    My mind tingles when I heard about three letters and subverting the public. Reminds me of the CIA make Jackson Pollack and modern art popular. The idea I come back to is that history has its own momentum. You may be able to nudge it in the right direction and accelerate things. But it’s hard to push against momentum. Examples of this are “industry plants” where an industry will try to create the next great hit, but reads the room wrong. But if you work at the CIA you gotta believe you can subvert the public. “You can’t tell people what to think, but you can tell them what to think about”
  - bad_haircut72 2mo ago
    Bro - Chomsky was an academic who wrote books, not an actual leader of the left, a group which is more than used to purging its ranks of the unpure anyway. It took Bluesky about 2 seconds to forget Chomsky as a person (though not all of his works) existed. Meanwhile the actual commander in chief of the armed forces right now was also, how you say, "deeply embedded" with Epstein too
dgllghr 2mo ago
Yes! That quote has always stuck with me. It’s haunting. Once you see it it’s impossible to unsee.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

ycombinete 2mo ago

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.

viccis 2mo ago
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.
imrehg 2mo ago
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...

Der_Einzige 2mo ago

[flagged]

TacticalCoder 2mo ago

[dead]

csb6 2mo ago

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.

conmod278 2mo ago

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.

omoikane 2mo ago

I like Existential Comic's explanation of the simulacrum concept, using football/soccer injuries as an example: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/476 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/476

platesmead 2mo ago
> 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.

sph 2mo ago

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.

wolvesechoes 2mo ago
> 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.
zvrba 2mo ago
Tried to read it, gave up.
nicholascarolan 2mo ago
"readable and accessible" are some of the last words I would use to describe the book.
plastic-enjoyer 2mo ago
> 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?
- sph 2mo ago
  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.
kusokurae 2mo ago
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)

viccis 2mo ago

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-baudrillard-with-pumpkin-spice-lattes/ 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.

ultrasounder 2mo ago

I Just finished listening to this episode of Philosophize This podcast https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/simulacra-and-simulation 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.

mjfisher 2mo ago
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.

Tade0 2mo ago

My favourite explanation of this is a review of the Toyota FJ Cruiser: https://youtu.be/PA23qLvl79k?is=nkWS0Tbgcm65RCQS https://youtu.be/PA23qLvl79k?is=nkWS0Tbgcm65RCQS The Simulation and Simulacra part starts around 4:00.

DiscourseFan 2mo ago

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