This is the post that first spelled out how Simulacra levels worked in a way that seemed fully comprehensive, which I understood.
I really like the different archetypes (i.e. Oracle, Trickster, Sage, Lawyer, etc). They showcased how the different levels blend together, while still having distinct properties that made sense to reason about separately. Each archetype felt very natural to me, like I could imagine people operating in that way.
The description Level 4 here still feels a bit inarticulate/confused. This post is mostly compatible with the 2x2 grid version, but it makes the additional claim that Level 4 don’t know how to make plans, and are ‘particularly hard to grok.’ It bundles in some worldview from Immoral Mazes / Raoian Sociopaths.
For me, a big outstanding question re: Simulacra is “does it actually make sense to bundle the Kafkaesque sociopath who can’t make plans as an explicit part of Level 4?”
I think this is a kinda empirical question. An example of the sort of evidence that’d persuade me are “among politicians or middle managers who spend most of their time optimizing for power, interacting with facts and tribal affiliations as a game, what proportion of them actually lose their ability to make plans, or otherwise become more… lovecraftian or whatever?” Is it more like “70%”, “50%”, “10%”?. It’s plausible to me that there’s a relatively small number of actors who stand out as particularly extreme (and then get focused on for toxoplasma of rage reasons)
Or, rather: if I simply describe Primarily Level 4 people as “holding social-signaling as object”, am I actually missing anything? Do they tend to have any attributes? What?
...
I do this post is among the best intro to the Simulacra Levels concept, and think it’s worth polishing up slightly. I assume Zvi has thought a bit more about Level 4 by now. If it still seems like there’s something Importantly, Confusingly Up With Them, I’m hoping that can be spelled out a bit more. (I think my favorite version of the Level 4 section would include explicitly the “holding social reality as object” thing, since I think that part’s relatively straightforward, and then go on to say what else is going on with them)
...
[Addenda]
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.
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.
This is the post that first spelled out how Simulacra levels worked in a way that seemed fully comprehensive, which I understood.
I really like the different archetypes (i.e. Oracle, Trickster, Sage, Lawyer, etc). They showcased how the different levels blend together, while still having distinct properties that made sense to reason about separately. Each archetype felt very natural to me, like I could imagine people operating in that way.
The description Level 4 here still feels a bit inarticulate/confused. This post is mostly compatible with the 2x2 grid version, but it makes the additional claim that Level 4 don’t know how to make plans, and are ‘particularly hard to grok.’ It bundles in some worldview from Immoral Mazes / Raoian Sociopaths.
For me, a big outstanding question re: Simulacra is “does it actually make sense to bundle the Kafkaesque sociopath who can’t make plans as an explicit part of Level 4?”
I think this is a kinda empirical question. An example of the sort of evidence that’d persuade me are “among politicians or middle managers who spend most of their time optimizing for power, interacting with facts and tribal affiliations as a game, what proportion of them actually lose their ability to make plans, or otherwise become more… lovecraftian or whatever?” Is it more like “70%”, “50%”, “10%”?. It’s plausible to me that there’s a relatively small number of actors who stand out as particularly extreme (and then get focused on for toxoplasma of rage reasons)
Or, rather: if I simply describe Primarily Level 4 people as “holding social-signaling as object”, am I actually missing anything? Do they tend to have any attributes? What?
...
I do this post is among the best intro to the Simulacra Levels concept, and think it’s worth polishing up slightly. I assume Zvi has thought a bit more about Level 4 by now. If it still seems like there’s something Importantly, Confusingly Up With Them, I’m hoping that can be spelled out a bit more. (I think my favorite version of the Level 4 section would include explicitly the “holding social reality as object” thing, since I think that part’s relatively straightforward, and then go on to say what else is going on with them)
...
[Addenda]
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.
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.