Excerpts...

...of the last report, which inspired frenetic mental spasms I don't normally encounter. Because I didn't finish it until 3 hours before it was due. Perhaps only WOB really understands what that means...

On Theory
Both personal belief systems and theory – in a sense, one and the same – are under attack. If every individual has his/her own personal belief system, what truth-value could any single system possess? It seems that theories are nothing more than simulations, their conclusions simply contributions to a growing body of hyperreality. If we think logically about an experiment from beginning to end, it entails mimicking the ‘real’ conditions of phenomena and then observing, as variables are added or taken away. It is not reality per se; it is a simulated real, engendered to discover the ‘truth’ behind phenomena. However, the resulting ‘truth’ is hyperreal because it is evoked by simulation.


On Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Despite this disenchantment with simulation (itself, ultimately a reflection of the sad state of society), the conclusion is that it is not easy nor desirable to separate simulacra from the real. At the end of the novel, after a violent day that shakes Deckard’s core, he finds a toad, the living being most sacred to Mercer. His joy is real and fulfilling, but when his wife reveals that it is a simulacrum, he is ‘crestfallen’ (Dick, 207). This reaction is extremely unnerving because maintenance of the sovereign difference destroys his joy, but that joy was not fake simply because the toad was fake. If the simulated is so real that we take it for real, and the simulated gives us the same pleasure that the real provides us, then there is no point in making the separation for it only breeds disenchantment.