“To simulate” is to present, to try to show something that is not real as if it were real “Simulation” is the artificial reproduction of a device, a machine, a system or a phenomenon, by means of a model or a computer program, for the purpose of examining, demonstrating or explaining. “Simulacrum" is an image, imitation or representation of something or someone that is perceived as real, “Simulacra” and “Simulacrums” are the plural forms of simulacrum. The simulacrum is never what hides the truth it is truth that hides the fact that there is none, According to Baudrillard, the world is constructed on the representation of representations. “Simulacra and Simulation” breaks the sign-order into 4 stages: 1) The first stage is a faithful image/copy, where we believe, and it may even be correct, that a sign is a “reflection of a profound reality” (p. 6), this is a good appearance, in what Baudrillard called “the sacramental order”. 2) The second stage is the perversion of reality, this is where we come to believe the sign to be an unfaithful copy, which “masks and denatures” reality as an “evil appearance—it is of the order of maleficence”. Here, signs and images do not faithfully reveal reality to us but can hint at the existence of an obscure reality that, the sign itselfis incapable of encapsulating. 3) The third stage masks the absence of a profound reality, where the simulacrum pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original. Signs and images claim to represent something real, but no representation is taking place and arbitrary images are merely suggested as things to which they have no relationship. Baudrillard calls this the “order of sorcery”, a regime of semantic algebra where all human meaning is conjured artificially to appear as a reference to the (increasingly) hermetic truth, 4) The fourth stage is pure simulation, in which the simulacrum has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. Here, signs merely reflect other signs and any claim to reality on the part of images or signs is only of the order of other such claims. This, is a regime of total equivalency, where cultural products need no longer even pretend to be real in a naive sense because the experiences of consumers’ lives are so predominantly artificial that even claims to reality are expected to be phrased in artificial, “hyperreal” terms. Any naive pretension to reality as such is perecived as bereft of critical self-awareness, and thus as oversentimental. Hyperreal is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality. To dissimulate is to pretend not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have what one doesn’t have. One implies a presence, the other an absence. But itis more complicated than that because simulating is not pretending: “Whoever fakesan illness can simply stay in bed and make everyone believe he is ill. Whoever simulates an illness produces in himself some of the symptoms” (Littré). Therefore, pretending, or dissimulating, leaves the principle of reality intact: the difference is always clear, it is simply masked, whereas simulation threatens the difference between the “true” and the “false,” the “real” and the “imaginary.” Is the simulator sick or not, given that he produces “true” symptoms? Objectively one cannot treat him as being cither ill or not ill. Psychology and medicine stop at this point, forestalled by the illness’s henceforth undiscoverable truth, For if any symptom can be “produced,” and can no longer be taken as a fact of nature, then every illness can be considered as simmulatable and simulated, and medicine loses its meaning since it only knows how to treat “real” illnesses according to their objective causes. Psychosomatics evolves ina dubious manner at the borders of the principle of illness. As to psychoanalysis, it transfers the symptom of the organic order to the unconscious order: the latter is new and taken for “real” more real than the other ~ but why would simulation be at the gates of the unconscious? Why couldn't the “work” of the unconscious be “produced” in the same way as any old symptom of classical medicine? Dreams already are. The impossibility of rediscovering an absolute level of the real is of the same order as the impossibility of staging illusion. Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible. It is the whole political problem of parody, of hypersimulation or offensive simulation, that is posed here. For example: it would be interesting to see whether the repressive apparatus would not react more violently to a simulated holdup than toa real holdup. Because the latter does nothing but distur’ the order of things, the right to property, whereas the former attacks the reality principle itself, Transgression and violence are less serious because they only contest the distribution of the real, Simulations infinitely more dangerous because it always leaves open to supposition that, above and beyond its object, law and order themselves might be nothing but simulation. But the difficulty is proportional to the danger. How to feign a violation and put it to the test? Simulate a robbery in a large store: how to persuade security that it is a simulated robbery? There is no “objective” difference: the gestures, the signs are the same as for a real robbery, the signs do not lean to one side or another. To the established order they are always of the order of the real. Organize a fake holdup. Verify that your weapons are harmless, and take the most, trustworthy hostage, so that no human life will be in danger (or one lapses into the criminal), Demand a ransom, and make it so that the operation creates as much commotion as possible - in short, remain close to the “truth,” in order to test the reaction of the apparatus to a perfect simulacrum. You won't be able to do it: the network of artificial signs will become inextricably mixed up with real elements (a policeman will really fire on sight; a client of the bank will faint and die ofa heart attack; one will actually pay you the phony ransom), in short, you will immediately