I just finished reading "Simulations." Took me a decade and it was the only thing I read during that time. AMA

I just finished reading "Simulations." Took me a decade and it was the only thing I read during that time. AMA

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elaborate

author

Oh fuck, my bad. Pretty renown work. "Simulacres et simulation" by Jean Baudrillard.

"Simulations" (1983) is just the first chapter of "Simulation and Simulacra" (1981) and the second chapter of "Symbolic Exchange and Death" (1976) published together. Unless you read both original texts, you are missing a lot. How do you feel about this?

I think I own the Traverses journal and the hardcover.

16 pages a year?
Is it very informationally dense, like a higher math text, or why did it take you so long?

I have an exceptional inability to pay attention to paper pages.

Oh I see, you read simulation and Simulacra not simulations

Symbolic Exchange and Death is foundational to Baudrillard's later work, you'll want to read that too.

How did you like it? What did you think? Where do you see it playing out in the world around you?

well, what pearls did you glean? Sounds pretty highfalutin, which is great if you're an intellectual for intellectualism's sake...any actual useful modes of thought you got out of it? Or do you have to go down the long rabbit hole to get it, so it's useless to try and explain?

Also more like I read 60 once, then another 60 once, then the last 30 or so the past few days.

No, I was supplying non sequitur. I read "Simulations" (1983), I will have to read traverses in French some day, and definitely add symbolic exchange and death to my list. My next reading is a signed copy of his Pataphysics printing. After that, I have to read "Digitize And Punish" by Brian Jefferson and then Baudrillard's "Political Economy Of The Sign."

I heavily enjoyed it. It's the second book I've read for pleasure. The first was Plato's "Sophist." I think too many things to list at once. I read it hoping to find alternate explanations to things going on around me. It actually ended up only reinforcing my beliefs. Loosely and simultaneously both ineterpreting and reinterpreting many sections, I was almost shocked to see how things I've thought before written before I existed. The sections on duopoly and the extinction of the Real in place of the dreamlike schizophrenic vertigo were immense.

Oh yes absolutely. I am an intellectual, not a pseud. Thank God. It's certainly mostly reinforced modes of thought I already had, so my quest for knowledge continues. I'm considering writing at this point since this was my best hope at finding explanation for observation. The author explicitly cites all major influences so the rabbit hole isn't too long. It's definitely possible to explain the orders of simulation, but Wikipedia will be infinitely more concise. You miss a lot of his cool verbage though, which is half the fun. I laughed out loud so many times.

I'm also a huge Borges fan, so this was a treat.

I'm also completely convinced that the section on the Twin Towers is what made Osama bin Laden select them as a target. Osama wrote poetry and Charles de Gaulle was one of his favorite authors, not a far leap imo.

have you read Escher Godel Bach? Did you find the treatment of symbols to be in a similar vein?

>Escher Godel Bach
I have not, but breifly browsing the Wiki entry, I can see immediate similarity between the MU puzzle and the distinction between reasoning within or about a system and Baudrillard's Real/Hyperreal.

One of the elements of Baudrillard that's interesting is the concept of sacrifice that he takes from Maus and expands on. As signifiers in post-social society move through the orders of simulation they become a sacrifice of what they signify (money as sacrifice of value, politics as sacrifice of representation, law as sacrifice of justice, etc.) As the real is beaten to death by mutually reinforcing autonomous cybernetic systems, the system gradually moves towards sacrifice of life itself. The Debord connection is key here - he defines the Spectacle as "the autonomous movement of non-life." Baudrillard is describing some of the mechanics and consequences of that autonomous movement, which culminates in the sacrifice of life itself - stochastically, through mass shootings, privatized healthcare, industrial accidents, pollution, etc. and directly through economic subjugation (money as actualization of death), postmodern wars, etc.

Post-2000 Russian domestic politics (if you can even call them that) are a great case study of what Baudrillard's thought looks like put into practice. United Russia effectively created a post-political state by astroturfing a wide variety of opposing civil society groups then telling everyone they were doing it. This meant that whoever wants to politically oppose them has to spend so much time and energy even figuring out what is real that they can never seize the initiative. This strategy has been adopted by elements of the American political system as well.

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cool

Can you give me like a list of stuff to read or something? Who else do you find interesting? I'd really appreciate.

Do you read anything about physics or other realms as well? I'm meaning to read J.W. Dunne's "An Experiment With Time" as his serialism is closer to what I've seen.

Something Baud builds from but rarely if ever specifically name checks is The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. His later work (like the Ecstasy of Communication (87), which pretty much calls what social media will be like) has strong resonances with McLuhan (the Medium is the Massage, Understanding Media, War and Peace in a Global Village, etc). A lot of Baud's work is reacting to Foucault; post-Foucault figures like Giorgio Agamben and Achille Mbembe have a lot to offer, particularly about the relationship between power and death. 90s-2005ish early British acc stuff builds off of Baudrillard's ideas and his theory-fictional format - Mark Fisher's dissertation Flatline Constructs attempts to synthesize Deleuze and Baudrillard via William Gibson and Lovecraft, the collected CCRU is a wild ride, and imo Negerastani's Cyclonopedia looks at similar processes to what Baud describes (autonomous movement of inorganic life). Donna Haraway is a good companion to this.

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