How fake is the world and our perception of it...

How fake is the world and our perception of it? Inposted on Veeky Forums hoping they would be self aware enough to see their own retardation but no one has responded yet.

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youtube.com/watch?v=301acFz0a_A
gnosis.org/library/hermet.htm#CH
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Either the world is illusory or our perception is. Can't be both simultaneously.

Nobody knows. The only thing that we can know with absolute certainty is that our consciousness exists. Everything that we sense is compiled into a format that we can comprehend using our man made concepts. (I read Immanuel Kant btw so im basically a genius)

Baudrillard thread, fuck yes. It's been a while since I read him but I've been thinking about his work a lot recently.

So isn't the idea that B basically takes the illusory nature of the world as a basic axiom? That is, that all you can know about it is that you can't really know it, since it's always being mediated by an ever-changing play of signs? The network or system of signs itself can be theorized, consumption has a logic, but the idea of there being something 'really real' beneath this logic is what he is rejecting; it is in fact the idea that for him there is *nothing* 'underneath' these signs which gives them their reason for being.

He seems to basically be taking consumer culture as metaphysics, and once any alternative to capitalism becomes impossible for him he subsequently takes this as a fact, that the image itself supplies its own recursive centre of gravity, and the subject accordingly has to just kind of sit back and watch. Capital produces this fake world that eventually becomes more real than the real
one.

And yet, which is what is cool about him, he's not being a meme ironist about it. Basically, he's going to take any notion of there being a real as banal.

In his later works I kind of feel like his aim is actually to redpill Marxists by trying to show them how much more complicated consumption is than the labor theory of value. He won't *valorize* the system of consumption itself (because he knows that it is empty) but he doesn't take cheap pot-shots at it either (because he doesn't feel that there is an alternative to it). So he adopts this Nietzschean stance instead, this aristocratic attitude of seduction, which is sort of like writing a Fatalist's Survival Guide, a survival guide which doesn't actually help you to survive but only to avoid dying for one of a billion possible banal reasons.

The other thing here, which may or may not be interesting, is that to me at least Baudrillard should fall well outside the Petersonian critique, that all these guys were hostile to life and so on. It would be better to say that about Baudrillard that his thought would only be hostile to a mode of life *competely mediated by passive consumption,* but not life itself in what I think would have been for B the most important aspect: the aristocratic-critic.

>tfw you feel called upon to defend dead French guys against an angry Jungian freight-train
>actually kind of fun

There isn't some ultimate reality of truth behind the veil, stop looking.

You've been bamboozled. There is no external measuring rod against which you can place your perceptions and say "this is true" and "this is not." There is only perception and more perception.

Thanks user, you did good.

nah, the burden of proof still lies with Baudrillard to demonstrate that there was a 'real' world to begin with

this
the concepts of realness and falseness are pure dog shit

i think it is an entirely fair assumption that there is. the (theoretical) problem is that it is the veil itself that not merely mediates but also allows our cognition of ultimate (i.e. subject independent) reality. it is especially the latter fact that turns any search for ultimate truth futile

then why manufacture the idea of a noumenal universe in the first place if it is entirely remote from human cognition?

>tfw you'd rather shitpost about baudrillard than study

I don't know about this. I mean, besides Marx he takes a pretty hard look at systems of exchange in primitive societies, via Mauss and Bataille and so on. Are those societies any more 'real' than modern capitalism? Not really, right? They have a different mode of exchange, but I don't think Baudrillard is going to ever say that there ever was a 'real' world anywhere.

I can perhaps anticipate one criticism, if this is it: how is that Baudrillard can be lamenting the disappearance of the real if he can't actually prove or demonstrate that there ever was a real in the first place? If that is the case, I think the answer would be that *there never really was a real,* but *there was a time when we believed that that was the case,* and that *that nostalgic sentiment for a reality principle continues to inform the way we think today.* In feudalism, for example, the relative stability of the feudal system depends on a close set of controlled signs: there's only one Emperor, one Pope, and putting a pair of sunglasses on an image of the Madonna will get you burned with actual fire (much as, as he suggests in Simulations, robbing a bank with a fake gun will still get you shot with real bullets). So *death* will be real, but the rest of it will be so much semiology. People don't have to understand how things work in order to enforce or regulate symbolic exchange; tradition will be sufficient. And modern societies can be just as traditional as primitive ones.

So there's some correspondence here with Zizek, for example; ideology is there precisely when you think it isn't. Now, if that sounds like continental pomo hocus-pocus to you, that's understandable. But Baudrillard's critique actually doesn't require a psychoanalytic dimension to function (and he was, IIRC, rather disdainful of analysis). The point is that, just as with Lacan/Z, there is no *really real* reality out there, which is why it can't be demonstrated or proven. The burden of proof lies with those who wish to say that there *is* an absolute reality (more in a political or cultural sense than a quantum physics one), because how are they going to do this? By deploying ideology, signs, capital, and so on.

So to me, Baudrillard isn't the guy who has to demonstrate that reality exists; rather, it's the opposite. He's saying, 'So, you've got reality? You're being sincere this time? Prove it to me. Go ahead.' And of course, this can't be done. It's the same thing as Lacan and the steak: 'Enjoy.' Figuratively speaking, he's castrating the reality-guys. Sure, this can become hyperbolic: the Gulf War *did* happen. Just not in the neatly packaged media envelope that allows for 1:1 media consumption.

>I can perhaps anticipate one criticism, if this is it: how is that Baudrillard can be lamenting the disappearance of the real if he can't actually prove or demonstrate that there ever was a real in the first place? If that is the case, I think the answer would be that *there never really was a real,* but *there was a time when we believed that that was the case,* and that *that nostalgic sentiment for a reality principle continues to inform the way we think today.*

But this is your invention, not Baudrillard's. In S&S in his description of the layers of process unto pure simulation he begins with the real object in itself.

True, and this is a good point. So I should add something to this. user said,

>the burden of proof still lies with Baudrillard to demonstrate that there was a 'real' world to begin with

So what I was getting at - and feel free to correct me - was that even in the first order of simulation there is an essentially religious component at the bottom: it's going to be a question of fidelity and cultural practice, not empiricism...yes? The representation works within a closed system and is offered in good faith, and so in a cultural sense is perhaps indistinguishable from the thing in itself, but the thingness of the thing is always going to derive its character from the other semiotic objects in that system and how that system regulates and mediates them.

In other words, Baudrillard is going to decline the (impossible) responsibility of proving or demonstrating the realness of the real world by arguing that it's all symbolically mediated (and always has been, and perhaps always will be). It's the art critic's view of cultural history, and it's not a crazy perspective to take. He sees in primitive cultures an alternative to meme-heavy postmodern ironic ones, but they don't have any more of a claim on absolute reality than we do (and maybe, as exhausted as late cultures are, they can attain to an even more insightful view of things from the end of history perspective). But a first-order simulation is still a simulation.

>can't shitpost about baudrillard w/out a good blade runner gif, it's unbecoming

You have no access to reality. Even things as fundamental as the way shapes organize themselves are constructed by your brain according to lessons it's learned.

Pic related doesn't work on people who don't live in houses with corners. The illusion is a product of our brain's attempt to organize information based on its understanding of reality.

You have never seen the real world, you've only seen your brain's best attempt at interpreting incoming neural impulses.

Ok I see what you're saying, yes it would make sense if we were starting from a bedrock of fidelity to the transpositional image. With that, we can take 'a girl (le replicant, but I digress lol) who is smoking a cigarette' and morph it into an image of mystique and sophistication by appealing to 20th century cinematic traditions, which have created in the public consciousness the notion that smoking, eye shadow, and 1940's coiffes are attractive, mysterious, and cool, so we now free-associate seemingly innocuous symbols and create a gestalt image simply from looking at something. There is no reason to associate 'smoking a cigarette' with disaffected attractiveness in a purely representational framework, but the entire cinematic image depends on it.

My issue is that I don't believe primitive societies ever behaved or thought in this way monolithically. Maybe in the lower echelons of cognitive ability, they thought that mythic tradition was literal, just as nowadays you still find literalist interpretations of scripture and susceptibility to advertising messages, but there's significant evidence to suggest that at least in some respects mankind has always had a semiotic component and had the capability to think in abstract. I also don't think that most people see a pumpkin and think that it is an object that remains static in mental estimation throughout contextual change (I believe the problem here is that our vocabulary is necessarily representational for convenience, and despite the fact that people may understand the reflexive nature of one's perception of the world, we are not equipped with a lexicon that can express that. But that's just my opinion). I think what happens in the modern era of infinite replication is more that media and advertising companies have found sophisticated ways of manipulating the credulity of the literal-minded and replaced seemingly representational images with metaphorical ones. It's a metaphysics of trickery

what can philosophy do in the face of neuroscience?

its dead jim

The experiment itself was predicated on the philosophical idea that individuals with different living circumstances of living may perceive their surroundings in disparate ways. Without that idea, there would have been no test

>the philosophical idea that individuals with different living circumstances of living may perceive their surroundings in disparate ways

that philosophical idea sounds quite empirical to me. Also you dont need to even test it theres thousands of papers on this

>that philosophical idea sounds quite empirical to me

Phenomenology came before neuroscience

>Also you dont need to even test it theres thousands of papers on this

And where did they get their data to support their findings?

Yep. We agree. Also, good post.

In terms of what primitive, ancient or feudal cultures thought, of course, we really have no way of knowing what they 'really' thought (except through art) but I'm with you, it's uncharitable to assume they were somehow more shallow than us. There surely were a lot of geniuses back then (and no small number of boneheads today).

>I believe the problem here is that our vocabulary is necessarily representational for convenience, and despite the fact that people may understand the reflexive nature of one's perception of the world, we are not equipped with a lexicon that can express that. But that's just my opinion.
I've had similar intimations myself, the things we can do with our box of 26 letters as opposed to, for example, Chinese characters.

>I think what happens in the modern era of infinite replication is more that media and advertising companies have found sophisticated ways of manipulating the credulity of the literal-minded and replaced seemingly representational images with metaphorical ones.
This is fun to think about, when advertising takes over responsibility for the moral instruction of people ('Just Do It,' virtually every Lexus ad...or really just any advertisement at all, given that they are all predicated on enjoyment and enflamed desire).

>I think what happens in the modern era of infinite replication is more that media and advertising companies have found sophisticated ways of manipulating the credulity of the literal-minded and replaced seemingly representational images with metaphorical ones.
Yep.

>It's a metaphysics of trickery.
Yep. But I prefer to be Baudrillardian about it and call it seduction instead.

I feel this ultimately comes down to semantics. People fundamentally regard that as more real which pervades and exists for longer. What lasts longest? Nothing.

Everything which exists decays.
Everything which decays transmutes into something else.
Therefore existence is fleeting, like sand through fingers.
No thing lasts forever, however Nothing lasts forever.
Nonexistence abides. Existence fades.

Therefore cultures differ on whether they regard "nonexistence" as more or less real than "existence."

It's a tricky puzzle if you are able to disassociate "realness" from "existence" as you have been trained to and instead associate it with "staying power" the way eastern cultures do.

Paradoxically, nothing lasts forever.
Every culture has a variation on the realization "nothing lasts forever."

How they syntactically decode that statement in their mind is what varies.

Some cultures regard "nothing" as a thing unto itself. After all, this is how it is able to be treated as the subject of a sentence.

However, others would argue that nothing can ever be a subject unto itself, only the idea of it.

It's tricky.

*enframed, not enflamed (although I guess that works too)

TL;DR existence is the ripple in the pond. Disturbing the clarity.

Nonexistence is the pond itself.

>Phenomenology came before neuroscience
agreed?
>And where did they get their data
Real world testing
The only way to get out of this is to start arguing about the meaning of words (what is real etc). Might as well argue we are living in a simulation if youre going to go full retard

>advertising
does not teach people morality. It teaches them how to want

>How fake is the world
0%
>How fake is the world as other humans present it to us
quite some
>How fake is our perception of it
perception is imperfect and involves interpretation and interpretive computation on preconscious and conscious levels. Perception is based on memory and memory is imperfect. Senses have limits of fidelity and there are things that exist that they cannot detect (eg radiation)

There you go, answered with science.

>People fundamentally regard that as more real which pervades and exists for longer
do you have a single bit of evidence to back that up?

A dream or an experience can last seconds in an entire lifetime, and can be more real than anything else.

Its wrong and you're wrong. You're also stupid for presenting falsifiable information without evidence to back it up.

how would you know?

I wouldn't, it's my opinion. But it's a negating opinion, not an affirmative one. The onus is on the one that claims its existence to prove it

That's a good point. I'm following from Zizek here, that enjoyment is the morality of consumption but not, as you are indicating, of morality itself. Teaching people how to want always involves these other injunctions or suggestions about how to live, all of which function to make the commodity more than what it actually is.

And after a while all of these commodities come to take their place in a system of consumption which is never-ending and self-regulating; the real lift-off happens when you don't have to teach people why to want, but only what and how to want, and to keep things in in motion in that way (and also, you get rid of those boring old rituals of sacrifice and the symbolic destruction of wealth). This is maybe where one can veer into Nick Land territory as well, which is that the system of consumption requires human beings to continue it but ultimately those objects are secondary to the system itself. Of course, this is there in Marx as well, but without Baudrillard's semiological critique or Land's accelerationist voodoo.

Teaching people how to desire is what it's all about. It's why guys like Baudrillard (or Barthes) are so interesting; they were absolute geniuses in being able to articulate in text exactly what the object was implying as a *sign.* Baudrillard could describe a mod kitchen like no one else, the way he had this knack for completely understanding what it was that a ceramic tabletop or a grandfather clock was suggesting in this way, how objects create their own little packaged reality around the consumer, who only has to show up and be seduced by the arrangement, who can wear all of this like a kind of a clothing. He was a fucking wizard with theory, as was Barthes.

>Real world testing
>you literally said in your previous post that 'you don't need to test it because theres thousands of papers'
>but they did Real-world testing

Did you forget what you said?

just to let you knowthis isn't me.

was me, and I am in full agreement with

Good thread boys

Have been reading a bit of Baudrillard and Eco in response to what's happening technologically atm. Have read guys like debord and Marcuse and they're helpful, but they're coming at the problem from more of a 'social' background

Basically is there a writer who tackles hyperreality from a purely aesthetic perspective? McLuhan is the obvious one but he's a bit old (the technologies he talks about at least). Ideally someone who talks about the transition from analog to digital

I've been painting for a few years and have noticed that digital images lack a lot of the tactility of film. Not even just tactility but all the sense modalities. It's as if the image has become purely visual and wrenched out of synchronisation with other perceptive streams. the image doesn't even match the 'real' object visually - it's keyed up - an exaggeration and occasionally a parody. You get the impression that you're looking at something, rather than into something (screen as opposed to window). I think digital technologies will have a pretty profound effect on how we see things and I'm curious if anyone has written about this

All good my man.

You do know all these guys are just communists trying to revive the revolutionary movement, right? That their writings are nothing more than tactical instruments in a power struggle, not analysis or critique of anything which actually existed.

This is true awareness. Realizing that intellectuals are a caste locked in a eternal struggle for absolute power and every single line they write is done for the purpose of achieving just that.

>Basically is there a writer who tackles hyperreality from a purely aesthetic perspective?

I mean for me Baudrillard is *the* guy in that regard, so my feeling is that rather than recommending some other writer you might just go back and read JB again. No doubt there are others but I think he's the guy for that line of thought.

Other people that come to mind: Deleuze maybe. John Berger. In terms of the switch from analog to digital it's not like Heidegger comes immediately to mind, but if you haven't read his essays on art you're in for a treat. Walter Benjamin too, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.' The old big ones. None of them are really about the digital world itself but more about technology and perception and so on. So you might find some new ideas thinking about the digital after digesting some of those guys. If I think of anybody else I'll post them.

fucking best video game soundtrack ever

*high-five*


youtube.com/watch?v=301acFz0a_A

Cool, will definitely have a look at. Thanks a lot

fuck off to tv pretendnigger

Fake all the way through. Both in terms of it being secondary to the internal world and in terms of it being antagonistic to it. Quality versus Quantity, Noumena versus Phenomena, Mind versus Matter, Word versus Number, Subject versus Object, Immanence versus Emergence, Life versus Death, contemplation versus exertion, etc.etc.etc. Take a step back and see for yourself.

The realization of its fundamental illusory nature being the only way in which our perception of it qualifies as real.

...

So many threads end when the Demiurge is named.

He can't keep getting away with this

ive been 404ing threads with scathing demiurge critique

the world isn't fake this is bullshit pseudo-metaphysics

I always thought the Demiurge was a fascinating concept. it really works as a solution to the problem of evil.

Give me reading.

gnosis.org/library/hermet.htm#CH

>But to the Mind-less ones, the wicked and depraved, the envious and covetous, and those who murder do and love impiety, I am far off, yielding my place to the Avenging Daimon, who sharpening the fire, tormenteth him and addeth fire to fire upon him, and rusheth on him through his senses, thus rendering him the readier for transgressions of the law, so that he meets with greater torment; nor doth he ever cease to have desire for appetites inordinate, insatiately striving in the dark.