My takeaway was that awareness of all levels is necessary if you want to reliably remain on level 1 (make sure that you don’t trigger responses for levels 2-4 by crafting statements that have no salient interpretations at levels 2-4). So both the problem and the solution involve reading statements at multiple levels.
(The innovation is in how this heuristic is more principled/general than things like “don’t talk about politics or religion”. You might even manage to talk about politics and religion without triggering levels 2-4.)
The simulacra levels are not mutually exclusive, a given statement should be interpreted at all four levels simultaneously:
Level 1 (facts): What does the statement claim about the world?
Level 2 (deception): What actions does belief in the statement’s truth incite?
Level 3 (identity): Which groups does uttering this statement serve as evidence for belonging to?
Level 4 (consequences): What goals does uttering this statement serve?
Yes, and I think this is largely missing or distorted in the sequence.
I think the post that gets closest to really truly recognizing this is “Simulacra levels and their interactions”
My takeaway was that awareness of all levels is necessary if you want to reliably remain on level 1 (make sure that you don’t trigger responses for levels 2-4 by crafting statements that have no salient interpretations at levels 2-4). So both the problem and the solution involve reading statements at multiple levels.
(The innovation is in how this heuristic is more principled/general than things like “don’t talk about politics or religion”. You might even manage to talk about politics and religion without triggering levels 2-4.)