(I’m copying this into my original review comment so it’s easily viewable on the /reviewVoting page, but posting here since it’s a new set of thoughts)
A followup question I found myself thinking is: “What do Simulacrum levels actually add to the conversation?” We knew that sometimes people lie. We already knew about Beliefs as Attire, Belief-in-Belief, Professing and Cheering, etc. We knew that social reality was pervasive and politics make us go funny in the head. Do Simulacra add anything?
After thinking a bit, here are my answers:
First, Baudrillard-style simulacrum levels point at a particular progression/mechanism that’s interesting You have object level truth that becomes distorted, then masking, then uncoupled completely from reality. This seems relevant to some subsets of Social Reality Woes (the original example of “Vice President of Drudgery” seemed to capture a real phenomenon of a thing that happened to business titles), but it’s not obvious to me that this is usually what’s going on. Zvi argues that the Baudrillard definition is still fairly intertwined with the Lion definition, but I didn’t personally find it that persuasive. (I also don’t find it cruxy for anything other than ‘should we still call these simulacrum levels?’ so I’m not that worried about it).
Second, Simulacrum Level 4 exists. This is mabe vaguely alluded to in the original LW sequences and HPMOR, but I don’t think it’s really been spelled out. “Belief in Belief” covers Level 3, but it doesn’t really address the sort the level of cynicism that goes into someone who is dishonest about their beliefs-in-belief, and what that dishonesty feels like from the inside. This increases my desire to hear Zvi, Benquo or others weigh in about how they think about level 4 these days.
(I’m copying this into my original review comment so it’s easily viewable on the /reviewVoting page, but posting here since it’s a new set of thoughts)
A followup question I found myself thinking is: “What do Simulacrum levels actually add to the conversation?” We knew that sometimes people lie. We already knew about Beliefs as Attire, Belief-in-Belief, Professing and Cheering, etc. We knew that social reality was pervasive and politics make us go funny in the head. Do Simulacra add anything?
After thinking a bit, here are my answers:
First, Baudrillard-style simulacrum levels point at a particular progression/mechanism that’s interesting You have object level truth that becomes distorted, then masking, then uncoupled completely from reality. This seems relevant to some subsets of Social Reality Woes (the original example of “Vice President of Drudgery” seemed to capture a real phenomenon of a thing that happened to business titles), but it’s not obvious to me that this is usually what’s going on. Zvi argues that the Baudrillard definition is still fairly intertwined with the Lion definition, but I didn’t personally find it that persuasive. (I also don’t find it cruxy for anything other than ‘should we still call these simulacrum levels?’ so I’m not that worried about it).
Second, Simulacrum Level 4 exists. This is mabe vaguely alluded to in the original LW sequences and HPMOR, but I don’t think it’s really been spelled out. “Belief in Belief” covers Level 3, but it doesn’t really address the sort the level of cynicism that goes into someone who is dishonest about their beliefs-in-belief, and what that dishonesty feels like from the inside. This increases my desire to hear Zvi, Benquo or others weigh in about how they think about level 4 these days.