EXCERPT Upon reflecting on the meaning of simulation, it struck me that it is possible to distinguish between two distinct, if perhaps complementary, significations. There is a first signification that refers back to an older understanding of simulation and is a more etymologically faithful meaning of simulation in terms of deception, in terms of pretence, illusion, and false appearance, and which refers us back to the classical idea of the simulacrum as formulated by Plato. This conception of simulation invokes the notion of surface resemblance—a simulation is something that appears to be what in fact it is not…