Simulacra and Simulation

(en.wikipedia.org)

44 points | by soupspaces 7 days ago

10 comments

  • euroderf 3 hours ago
    I always liked his observation that Disneyland was created in order to make the rest of America seem real.
    • SanjayMehta 3 hours ago
      Fun fact: one of the lawyers who helped buy land for Disney was ex-CIA.

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

      • Der_Einzige 2 hours ago
        [flagged]
        • bad_haircut72 1 hour 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
        • thin_carapace 2 hours 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.

        • oldsklgdfth 2 hours 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”

  • omoikane 1 hour ago
    I like Existential Comic's explanation of the simulacrum concept, using football/soccer injuries as an example:

    https://existentialcomics.com/comic/476

  • ycombinete 2 hours 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.
  • csb6 2 hours 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 1 hour 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.
  • soupspaces 7 days ago
  • david927 7 days ago
    Suddenly, wildly, pertinent to today's world.
    • _def 3 hours ago
      Or the complete opposite ;-)
  • TacticalCoder 2 hours ago
    [dead]
  • Der_Einzige 2 hours ago
    [flagged]