This thread will sink. But we have achieved Hyperreality. Trump, shootings, Climate Denial, etc.

[JanMichael]

Basically when a new created reality is masking that there is no reality. This has been going on since the start of the Industrial Revolution (copies of art or crafts that eventually diverged from the original becoming their own art) and now hyper accelerated by Covid (Ie. Zooming to death. We now know people we will never meet. They may be taller, or older, or younger, or shorter, or nicer, or meaner, and totally different in real life but that is not our reality). Jean Baudrillard wasn't the first to come up with this idea but he did write extensively on it.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kianbakhtiari/2021/12/30/welcome-to-hyperreality-where-the-physical-and-virtual-worlds-converge/?sh=2c9d9e365028

"Baudrillard believed that society had become so saturated with these simulacra and our lives so saturated with the constructs of society that all meaning was becoming meaningless by being infinitely mutable; he called this phenomenon the "precession of simulacra"."

Fake news. Think of the Truman Show. Or the Matrix but Baudrillard didn't like that comparison. I can't explain why but it is what it is.

We shape our tools then our tools shape us....

https://mcluhangalaxy.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/we-shape-our-tools-and-thereafter-our-tools-shape-us/

So if you repeat a message online and in the media enough times and it can become reality. Keep it short and tell a plausible story people will see it as their reality. It may be 100% made up like MAGA. When was this MAGA time? It never existed. But a huge number of people fell for a media creation that created the idea.

Think of Birds Aren't Real. We KNOW it isn't reality. But if that obviously made up, to mock fake news purveyors, statement keeps going it will become reality for some people.

Some researchers have used Apocalypse Now as an example. It is a great movie. It tells a compelling story (based on the Heart of Darkness) and has literally become the Vietnam War experience for millions of people.

And there are AI "musicians" who are gaining popularity online. From the Forbes article:

"At the final level, we enter hyperreality, a state where the physical and virtual worlds converge. Where we can no longer distinguish between the two realities. But more importantly, the distinction wouldn’t matter because people derive equal meaning and value from the simulated world. Early examples include virtual influencer Lil Miquela who has 2.9 million followers on Instagram. AI-powered Soundcloud rapper Fnmeka with 8 million followers on TikTok. And Genies, an avatar company that believes every human will need an avatar to represent themselves."

The fucK?

https://www.virtualhumans.org/human/fn-meka

Now I will say this. If you have felt a sense of how you perceive the world around you as a little off; or just wonder what the hell is going on around me; or just feel out of place...you would be right. You are not crazy. Meaning and value are being created from nothing and is now something. Think Dogecoin.

This is the most disturbing comment.

"But more importantly, the distinction wouldn’t matter because people derive equal meaning and value from the simulated world."

It's true.

[blm]

1. 😢

[Thomas Hurt]

2. Its called fascist selective populism

Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view – one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. To have a good instance of qualitative populism we no longer need the Piazza Venezia in Rome or the Nuremberg Stadium. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.

Essay on Ur-Fascism (1995)
Umberto Eco

[JanMichael]

4. That's a subset of the hyperreality but Eco is awesome.

[ancianita]

10. Why not link the whole essay? A lot of it is also relevant, don't you think?

https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf

[2 Meow Momma]

3. K&R

[Baked Potato]

5. When everybody is inside the metaverse flogging their virtual logs,

a whole new reality will be available for those daring enough to venture out.

The “meaning and value” revolves around the hierarchy of needs.

[usonian]

6. I'm going to bookmark and reply when (and if) I can wrap my mind around this and reply intelligently

Short answer is that while what we call "ordinary" reality is in fact constructed (from physics and Buddhism), it's a hell of a lot better than

• Deliberate delusions by people who wish to take advantage of others. (society's false tales of "happiness&quot that prey upon our boatload of cognitive biases ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases ) and

• Warped reality we see through screens, and lately, contact lenses.

These are almost entirely manipulative, money-grubbing magic shows. No inherently, but through the distorted, psychopathic and even sociopathic "visions" of their founders. Dorsey, Zuckerberg, Page and Brin, Musk ...

"Good" uses, such as navigation, helping the blind see and so on LOSE OUT to the call of money, money, money.

I always envisioned that a Google self-driving car would not just take you to your shopping destination, but Christine-Like, lock the doors and take you to the one that Google gets the highest bid on. (Sure, I'm paranoid)

Anyway, human nature is behind the "You must choose wisely" and given the low or no moral compass in society, that rarely ends up being good. But it can be improved.

More at 11
Ciao!

[Kid Berwyn]

7. Let them eat photons.

Thank you for a great read, JanMichael.

Regarding our reality, in Apocalypse Now, Coppola reveals Col. Kurtz read “The Golden Bough,” an early survey of the world’s religions, mythologies and beliefs written by James George Frazer. The 1890 work was on his nightstand in the jungle.

Going from memory: Frazer found a commonality between non-Abrahamic peoples, where the shamanic high priests led society. The power was handed to successors through combat or inheritance. The parallel for the film was the young captain killing Kurtz to gain power.

The parallel for the wars in Vietnam, I believe, was that the people who believed they each could contain that power, even if they weren’t at the top of the society, or even if they knew they would die in battle for their country. They would achieve their dream state. The French and the Americans had no clue.

We are what we think. Let us share our world — and our best ideas.

[calimary]

12. Indeed, Kid Berwyn. We are what we think.

[harumph]

8. That may be, but nature bats last.

Excessive heat - no crops
Excessive drought - no water
No food - no people

The situation you describe will be resolved one way or another.

[oioioi]

11. Yes. Climate change is/will likely be the catalyst

Everything else is noise, relatively speaking.

[UTUSN]

9. It will sink against my effort!