The Partially Examined Life
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2020–2024
48:03 · 403K views · Jan 25, 2012
Rick Roderick's 1993 lecture on Baudrillard, the last in his series The Self Under Siege. It covers hyperreality, simulation and what Baudrillard calls fatal strategies.
Recommended as a much easier way into Baudrillard's ideas than reading his own writing.
4 comments from Hacker News
Author talks of text as abstraction compared to "edited" version of reality of visual media. But videos, movies, TV shows are also abstractions, possibly worse in that they more easily trick our subconscious into perceiving them as more real than words on a page while still being constructions of a "reality" based on the creator's point of view. So people think they have an understanding of the world based on fictionalized entertainment and tropes they've experienced thousands of times from screens. Think of any time someone makes a political argument, or comments on a particular aspect of human nature by referencing something they saw in a movie. I think this is odd, at least if over done, as if the constructed media representation is somehow evidence of anything true. As if people don't have to have real lived experience of some phenomena as long as they watched something about it in a show or whatever. Reminds me of Baudrillard's "hyperreality" [0] concept, where constructed media becomes "more real than real", here's an excellent presentation summarizing the idea [1] [0] [LINK] [1] this video
A bit longer but here's another video that covers some of Baudrillard's concepts, in more of a lecture form but much easier to digest than Baudrillard's writing: this video
> You're not supposed to adopt it as your real, actual ideology lol. Is this a joke? It's called "fatal strategies". See philosopher Rick Roderick [0,1] or read the less accessible original from Jean Baudrillard [2,3] Example (Roderick's): Coordinate to conspicuously not protest or vote on something that is objectively outrageous. The tyrants will be forced to stuff ballots with fake opposition so as not to make corruption obvious. For example 100% election victory by North Korean dictator etc. Another example: Gay, queer culture adopting those words with pride and wearing them as a "weaponised" badge of honour. Embracing being a Luddite is a way to defuse and neutralise the term. It's a bit of a "verbal judo" move. If you call me a "Luddite" (I'm a rationally sceptical computer scientist who thinks worship of technology is cultist) then I can either: - take the offence and get into a protracted argument about how the Luddites were really this or that... - say "Sure I am a Luddite". So what...? The latter does a lot more subtle work against the known disingenuous interlocutor. It reveals absurdity. It subtracts power from the term. It asks the opponent to show she actually _knows_ what a Luddite is. [0] this video [1] [LINK] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK]
It was more like about 10 years before that? The narrative was inspired by Jean Baudrillard. The guy who also inspired The Matrix.[1] 10 years before that game he was talking about the Hyper Reality of the Gulf War; that what “really” happened was dictated by CNN.[2] But it’s not like those games give credit to all contributors equally. [1] Or his ideas [2] this video