The year 2000 and Y2K images of the future
Foundations of Western philosophy are based on a deep suspicion of simulations. In Plato’s allegorical cave, the differentiation between the world and its doubles, its form, and its shadows takes priority in the pursuit of knowledge. Today, however, the real comes to comprehend itself through its doubles: The simulation is the path toward knowledge, not away from it.
From anthropology to zoology, every discipline produces, models, and validates knowledge through simulations. Simulations are technologies to think with, and in this sense they are fundamental epistemological technologies. And yet, they are deeply under-examined; a practice without a theory.
Some computational simulations are designed as immersive virtual environments where experience is artificialized. At the same time, scientific simulations do the opposite of creating deceptive illusions; they are the means by which otherwise inconceivable underlying realities are accessible to thought. From the infinitesimally small in the quantum realm to the inconceivably large in the astro-cosmological realm, computational simulations are not just a tool; they are a technology for knowing what is otherwise unthinkable.
Simulations do more than represent: they are also active and interactive. “Recursive simulations” refers to simulations that depict the world and also act on what they simulate, completing a cybernetic cycle of sensing and governing. They not only represent the world but also organize it in relation to how they summarize and rationalize it. Recursive simulations include everything from financial models to digital twins, user interfaces to prophetic stories. They cannot help but transform the thing they model, which in turn transforms the model and the modeled in an cyclical loop.
