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Simulacra and Simulation

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31–40 of 41 posts

Re: Simulacra and Simulation

#31

I Just finished listening to this episode of Philosophize This podcast https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/simulacra-and-simul... . Whole-heartedly recommend this podcast episode the entire podcast to anyone who is remotely interested in learning the "modern western canon" in Layman's terms.

Second that recommendation, and I think that podcast would particularly as appeal to a lot of the HN crowd. I listened from the beginning until the early/mid 20th century philosophers and understood so much more about my own perspective on the world as a result.

Re: Simulacra and Simulation

#33
post #19

How readable and accessible is this book? I am always attracted to philosophy and culture theory books, but more often than not they are extremely dry and academic, and sadly I require more excitement to hold my squirrel attention. It is no wonder much more people have read the “Industrial Society and its Future” than anything by Jacques Ellul.

Someone with the same squirrel attention who starts a lot of books a rarely finishes one. I think for a philosophy book, it is quite accessible in the sense that it builds on common knowledge and known cultural phenomenon, not that much on prior theory you must have read. Regarding the language it is not that accessible, Baudrillard (in the culture of french intellectuals of the time) has a very dense, complex language. But it is not a dry philosophy lecture, its more like hackerman punk-rock philosophy.

The book consists of a set of loosely related essays, and the first essay "the precession of simulacra" is just roughly 40 pages. If you read that, squirrel brain is happy and you got most of the books content. The rest is just explaining this concept on modern (slightly outdated now, but culturally still relevant), cultural phenomenon. Once you understand his concepts of "simulacrum" and "image" it is very readable. Later he uses his concepts of "economic and symbolic exchange" which come from his earlier book Symbolic Exchange and Death. The concept is quite easy to grasp, the book is good but you don't have to have read it. The rest of the book builds on these concepts. So the key to making this book accessible is understanding these concepts, which for me took some thinking and time to actually understand deeply.

But, and that's important, once you worked through the book, it is a phenomenal tool to understand modern culture. So is it accessible: theoretically yes, linguistically not, but its worth it.

Re: Simulacra and Simulation

#35
post #19

How readable and accessible is this book? I am always attracted to philosophy and culture theory books, but more often than not they are extremely dry and academic, and sadly I require more excitement to hold my squirrel attention. It is no wonder much more people have read the “Industrial Society and its Future” than anything by Jacques Ellul.

Someone with the same squirrel attention who starts a lot of books a rarely finishes one. I think for a philosophy book, it is quite accessible in the sense that it builds on common knowledge and known cultural phenomenon, not that much on prior theory you must have read. Regarding the language it is not that accessible, Baudrillard (in the culture of french intellectuals of the time) has a very dense, complex langua…

> hackerman punk-rock philosophy

Not sure I get your point, as I wish we had more punk rock philosophy aimed at the masses and not at academia.

If your philosophy isn't targeting your average person with their average existential crisis, you have failed your mission. Philosophers have completely failed their mission since the Greeks. They had the Christian Church pick up their slack during the Middle Ages, and now that we've shed religion, we're utterly lost and people that seek to cure their existential dread have to navigate through utter drudgery to find a path towards the Good Life. /rant

Re: Simulacra and Simulation

#36
post #19

How readable and accessible is this book? I am always attracted to philosophy and culture theory books, but more often than not they are extremely dry and academic, and sadly I require more excitement to hold my squirrel attention. It is no wonder much more people have read the “Industrial Society and its Future” than anything by Jacques Ellul.

> It is no wonder much more people have read the “Industrial Society and its Future” than anything by Jacques Ellul. Do you think it is because Ellul is hard to read or because Kaczynski is just more well-known for obvious reasons?

A bit of both. If so inclined, it's difficult to read Kaczynski and not go "hell yeah." It's just more accessible, even if the arguments are a bit egregious.

Re: Simulacra and Simulation

#37
post #19

How readable and accessible is this book? I am always attracted to philosophy and culture theory books, but more often than not they are extremely dry and academic, and sadly I require more excitement to hold my squirrel attention. It is no wonder much more people have read the “Industrial Society and its Future” than anything by Jacques Ellul.

Its not great. I suggest reading Villem Flusser instead.

I've read both, but Baudrillard is more lucid and insightful in his writing. I would suggest reading Symbollic Exchange and Death (his magnum opus) instead of Simulacra and Simulation first though.

Re: Simulacra and Simulation

#39

I like Existential Comic's explanation of the simulacrum concept, using football/soccer injuries as an example: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/476

> This is because they aren't trying to display pain, even if it is real, they are trying to show the referee that a foul has a occurred, so they perform the act of "footballer in pain" even as they are actually in pain, and in fact are often in a weird way even masking their genuine natural reaction to the pain to do so.

Wow, I hadn't considered that final point.

Re: Simulacra and Simulation

#40
post #19

How readable and accessible is this book? I am always attracted to philosophy and culture theory books, but more often than not they are extremely dry and academic, and sadly I require more excitement to hold my squirrel attention. It is no wonder much more people have read the “Industrial Society and its Future” than anything by Jacques Ellul.

> How readable and accessible is this book?

It took me about 20-30 re-reads of the first page to understand it.

The rest of the chapter was then a bit easier. I gave up after that.

But it really is a great idea in the first few pages.

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