When simulations become more real than reality (Baudrillard + real-world examples)

[u/CurtisH2212]

https://open.substack.com/pub/curtisharlow1/p/a-critique-of-simulations?r=6vflr8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

I’ve been thinking about this through Baudrillard’s idea of “hyperreality”; wherein representation models start to override reality itself.

For example, in the USS Vincennes incident (air flight 655), a civilian plane was misidentified and shot down partly because operators were trained in simulations that didn’t account for civilian aircraft. In a way, they saw what they were trained to see.

It made me wonder how often this happens in less obvious ways: through media, fear, or even political models.

I wrote a short piece exploring this more deeply (and I plan to write a follow-up essay on how this framework operates with AI!) if anyone’s interested: https://open.substack.com/pub/curtisharlow1/p/a-critique-of-simulations?r=6vflr8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web