this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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My god.
Duke University
Texan Rick Roderick, Professor
"And sure enough I found someone in Durham who had been… you know, a lot of North Carolina people go to the war, I found a young pilot and he said oh, that no, it was very exciting and then he went on to explain to me how the sights that they used in order to, you know, fire their smart bombs were just like the games in the arcade that he grew up with. He said, you know, no way in the world could he have had better practice than he got in those arcades to fire smart bombs. I mean, it had passed him by that the real had happened even though he was really there.
I talked to a woman who had been on the ground, in a jeep for most of it. And she went “Oh the desert is so big and the sand…”, she said, “…but I really didn’t get a feel for until I got home and saw what my husband had taped”. Why? Because the little individual actors sink into insignificance compared to the damn spectacle of the thing. The spectacle of it. ... https://youtu.be/z0MUurcsVLs?t=1339 ... I mean, when humans were less important than God we could understand because he built everything. When we are less important than a Nintendo we get confused. That’s when we start thinking that we are under siege. It’s when Billy says “Oh yes, you can kill mum and dad but leave the Nintendo”, then we are rightfully upset.
The postmodern trajectory leaves us in a situation where drawing the line between the real and the unreal is no longer merely philosophical but a practical day-to-day issue. See, this is what I want to drive home. We are not off in some fairy land, this is a practical day-to-day issue of figuring out what’s a simulation and what’s not. Is this guy really an insurance salesman or is he here to rob me? You know, I mean… this is no longer Cartesian doubt that one has to conjure up in a meditation. This is a wide radical doubt about the very ground beneath our feet and the nature of whether it’s real or not."
Rick Roderick was one of the greats. The Self Under Siege and Master of Suspicion are like the greatest philosophy podcasts of all time, 15-20 years before podcasts were invented. Such a wonderful mind and tragic life.