I think that the main thing that confuses me is the nuance of SL4, and I also think that’s the main place where the rationalist communities understanding/use of simulacra levels breaks down on the abstract level.
One of the original posts bringing simulacra to LessWrong explicitly described the effort to disentangle simulacra from Marxist European philosophers. I think that this was entirely successful, and intuitive for the first 3 levels, but I think that the fourth simulacra level is significantly more challenging to disentangle from the ideological theses advanced by said philosophers, and I’m not sure that I’ve seen a non-object level description that doesn’t use highly loaded phrases (symbol, signifier) that come with nuanced and essential connotations from Baudrillard and others. I worry that this leads to the inaccurate analogy of 1:2=3:4, and the loss of a legitimately helpful concept.
I define SL4 in terms of a description I heard once of a summary of Baudrillard’s work: a simulacrum is when a simulation breaks off and becomes its own thing, but still connected to the original. And whether or not that’s how Baudrillard thought of SL4, it’s a useful concept on its own. (My simulacrum of “simulacrum” as it were.)
For example, a smartphone is a miniature computer and video game console that also has telephone capabilities; it’s a simulacrum of Bell’s talk-over-telegraph-wires device.
The iPod Video is an almost identical piece of hardware and software minus the telephony, and even that can be simulated with the right VOIP app. I can imagine someone saying, “Well, it’s still essentially a smartphone.” But we don’t say the same of a laptop computer using a VOIP app, or even a jailbroken Nintendo Switch or DSi. We’ve reached the edge of the simulacrum.
I think that the main thing that confuses me is the nuance of SL4, and I also think that’s the main place where the rationalist communities understanding/use of simulacra levels breaks down on the abstract level.
One of the original posts bringing simulacra to LessWrong explicitly described the effort to disentangle simulacra from Marxist European philosophers. I think that this was entirely successful, and intuitive for the first 3 levels, but I think that the fourth simulacra level is significantly more challenging to disentangle from the ideological theses advanced by said philosophers, and I’m not sure that I’ve seen a non-object level description that doesn’t use highly loaded phrases (symbol, signifier) that come with nuanced and essential connotations from Baudrillard and others. I worry that this leads to the inaccurate analogy of 1:2=3:4, and the loss of a legitimately helpful concept.
I define SL4 in terms of a description I heard once of a summary of Baudrillard’s work: a simulacrum is when a simulation breaks off and becomes its own thing, but still connected to the original. And whether or not that’s how Baudrillard thought of SL4, it’s a useful concept on its own. (My simulacrum of “simulacrum” as it were.)
For example, a smartphone is a miniature computer and video game console that also has telephone capabilities; it’s a simulacrum of Bell’s talk-over-telegraph-wires device.
The iPod Video is an almost identical piece of hardware and software minus the telephony, and even that can be simulated with the right VOIP app. I can imagine someone saying, “Well, it’s still essentially a smartphone.” But we don’t say the same of a laptop computer using a VOIP app, or even a jailbroken Nintendo Switch or DSi. We’ve reached the edge of the simulacrum.