In simulation, models precede and engender facts rather than describing them.

Evidence

Is any given bombing in Italy the work of leftist extremists, or extreme-right provocation, or a centrist mise-en-scène to discredit all extreme terrorists and to shore up its own failing power, or again, is it a police-inspired scenario and a form of blackmail to public security? All of this is simultaneously true, and the search for proof, indeed the objectivity of the facts does not put an end to this vertigo of interpretation. That is, we are in a logic of simulation, which no longer has anything to do with a logic of facts and an order of reason. Simulation is characterized by a precession of the model, of all the models based on the merest fact - the models come first, their circulation, orbital like that of the bomb, constitutes the genuine magnetic field of the event. The facts no longer have a specific trajectory, they are born at the intersection of models, a single fact can be engendered by all the models at once. This anticipation, this precession, this short circuit, this confusion of the fact with its model (no more divergence of meaning, no more dialectical polarity, no more negative electricity, implosion of antagonistic poles), is what allows each time for all possible interpretations, even the most contradictory - all true, in the sense that their truth is to be exchanged, in the image of the models from which they derive, in a generalized cycle. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 62

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives the precise meaning of ‘precession of the model’ and ‘precession of simulacra’ — the core term of the book.
• XREF: Plugs directly into Jameson’s ‘Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism’ and its account of the waning of the referent; also anticipates Baudrillard’s own four-order schema later in the book. — connects to: Simulation substitutes signs of the real for the real itself — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 9; In the simulation order, reality has become the alibi of the model. — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 400; Simulation produces real symptoms and threatens the true-false distinction — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 10 (+8 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: This is the load-bearing definitional/systems passage of the entire work — the claim that facts are born at model intersections and all interpretations are simultaneously true.

Broader Connections

• Simulation substitutes signs of the real for the real itself #corroborates (0.85) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 9
• In the simulation order, reality has become the alibi of the model. #corroborates (0.85) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 400
• Models anticipate and immanently structure the real, leaving no space for fiction. #corroborates (0.85) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 397
• Facts must be discovered through observation rather than logical deduction alone. #contradicts (0.80) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2114
• Computational modelling is erasing the boundary between theory and experiment #expands (0.80)
• Facts only become meaningful through pre-existing conceptual criteria of choice #expands (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1637
• Facts are only selected for enquiry against a pre-existing conceptual criterion #expands (0.75)
• Simulation produces real symptoms and threatens the true-false distinction #expands (0.70) — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 10