I think that the notion ofSimulacra Levels is both useful and important, especially when we incorporate Harry Frankfurt’s idea of Bullshit.
Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit seems relevant here. I think its worth trying to incorporate Frankfurt’s definition as well, as it is quite widely known, see e.g. this video—If you were to do so, I think you would say that on Frankfurt’s definition, Level 1 tells the truth, Level 2 lies, Level 3 bullshits about physical facts but will lie or tell the truth about things in the social realm (e.g. others motives, your own affiliation), and Level 4 always bullshits.
How do we distinguish lying from bullshit? I worry that there is a tendency to adopt self-justifying signalling explanations, where an internally complicated signalling explanation that’s hard to distinguish from a simpler ‘lying’ explanation, gets accepted, not because it’s a better explanation overall but just because it has a ready answer to any objections. If ‘Social cognition has been the main focus of Rationality’ is true, then we need to be careful to avoid overusing such explanations. Stefan Schubert explains how this can end up happening:
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It seems to me that it’s pretty common that signalling explanations are unsatisfactory. They’re often logically complex, and it’s tricky to identify exactly what evidence is needed to demonstrate them.
And yet even unsatisfactory signalling explanations are often popular, especially with a certain crowd. It feels like you’re removing the scales from our eyes; like you’re letting us see our true selves, warts and all. And I worry that this feels a bit too good to some: that they forget about checking the details of how the signalling explanations are supposed to work. Thus they devise just-so stories, or fall for them.
This sort of signalling paradigm also has an in-built self-defence, in that critics are suspected of hypocrisy or naïveté. They lack the intellectual honesty that you need to see the world for what it really is, the thinking goes
I think that the notion of Simulacra Levels is both useful and important, especially when we incorporate Harry Frankfurt’s idea of Bullshit.
How do we distinguish lying from bullshit? I worry that there is a tendency to adopt self-justifying signalling explanations, where an internally complicated signalling explanation that’s hard to distinguish from a simpler ‘lying’ explanation, gets accepted, not because it’s a better explanation overall but just because it has a ready answer to any objections. If ‘Social cognition has been the main focus of Rationality’ is true, then we need to be careful to avoid overusing such explanations. Stefan Schubert explains how this can end up happening: