My understanding of the intent behind the phrase is "the first step of fixing a problem is realizing that it exists, so we should make people aware of the problem so that they can do something to fix it". I don't think in simulacrum levels much so maybe I'm misapplying them, but I would think of this as being on level 1 - an object-level problem with a concrete approach towards solving it?

Of course, like any other phrase, it can also be co-opted by the higher levels, and it definitely also does get used in the sense of all the higher ones.

I'm not convinced that your new "levels" are actual levels.

The structure of levels 1-4 is: 1 is base reality, 2 is when you see how people react to 1 and try to manipulate it, 3 is when everyone sees people doing 2 and adjusts, 4 is when you see how people react to 3 and try to manipulate it. (Kinda; level 4 is a bit nebulous.)

But your level 5 (news / saying "X" means "X is interesting") doesn't seem like it's built on top of 4 in the same way as 2,3,4 are built on 1,2,3. Exactly what it's built on will vary from story to story, which suggests to me that news/media isn't a separate "level" at all, it's just one more way in which people say things which can operate at whatever level they operate at.

For instance, suppose a newspaper headline says "Covid-19 infections in New York are way up". That could be level 1 (people are interested because they want to know whether they can safely go to New York, or because they're in New York and want to know whether they're going to die soon, etc.). It could be level 2, though in this case I think it probably isn't. (More likely level 2 in the news: a partisan newspaper publishing "Politician X does Awful Thing Y" is maybe level 2: the editors or owners of the paper want people to vote against X, which would (maybe) be a rational response if X actually did Y, so they say he did to make people vote against him.) Anyway, the Covid-19 headline could be level 2 if e.g. the owners of the paper want people to think Covid-19 is a big deal and act accordingly. Then it could be level 3 if what the owners of the paper want is to show that they are Serious People who are trying to warn everyone about the dangers of the plague. Level 4 might be where political posturing has made Team Blue want to look like Serious People and Team Red want to look as if they're too strong to care what the Serious People think, and the paper is trying to be popular with members of Team Blue.

Those can all be categorized as "Covid-19 is interesting". At level 1 it's interesting because we want not to get it. We buy the paper to learn how to keep safe. At level 2 it's interesting because we want other people to try not to get it (perhaps because then we're less likely to get it). We buy the paper so we can wave the article at people we think are being too careless. At level 3 it's interesting because we want to show that we too are Serious People. We buy the paper so that we can be seen reading something that says Covid-19 is a big deal. At level 4 it's interesting because we want to show our political allegiances; we're still buying the paper so we can be seen reading it, but now the conclusions we want others to draw are "that guy is on my team" rather than "that guy is taking the plague seriously".

I don't see how "Covid-19 is interesting" is helpfully considered as a level above these.

That doesn't mean there are no higher levels of abstraction or insincerity. (Maybe a newspaper article about how different political parties are responding to Covid-19 is one level above my example of level 4, though I think the original intention is that all these higher levels get lumped together in level 4 because they're all treating people's allegiances and strategems and whatnot as objects of attention, in preference to anything on the ground.) But "news" isn't, so far as I can see, a level of its own.

I share your unease with the "raising awareness" mode of activism. I'm not really sold on these extra simulacra levels as an explanation of that unease. Especially levels 9 and 10, an evolutionary explanation just isn't interchangeable with an explanation of a biological mechanism. Similarly, a memetic explanation just isn't interchangeable with a simulacra explanation, a memetic explanation just isn't an explanation of what psychological process causes a person to utter a sentence, it is an explanation of why certain sentences are uttered given a psychological environment.

For me at least, I think the uneasiness with "raising awareness" is more that it is transparently ineffective altruism. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people "raising awareness" of x type of cancer or of sexual assault or whatever, as though there was anyone on the planet who didn't know that these things exist. And it seems wildly implausible to me that wearing a ribbon or whatever is actually going to cause anybody to think of a new solution or implement an existing solution more effectively. "Raising awareness" comes off as very transparent pure signaling, simulacra level 3 or 4, and often rather expensive signaling, and I don't like that.

Most of these extra simulacra levels are redundant or orthogonal to the originals. I don't think they carve reality well.

• L5 overlaps heavily with L1. Interestingness is a quality of most L1 statements that are worth communicating!
• L7 is L2. "There's a lion across the river" = I want you to buy X. It's direct manipulation of reality.
• L8 is L3 or L4 (in your example), although propaganda can also be at L2.
• L10 overlaps heavily with L3. "We should raise awareness of X" = I'm part of the group that believes "X".

The only one that is salvageable is L6 (which is similar to L9), which I might call a True Level 5:

"There's a lion across the river." = Listen to me! I say things worth hearing! (from the speaker's perspective)

There's actually a lot of communication that falls within this bucket, characterized by the content of the statement having no instrumental value for the speaker. The speaker just wants your attention.

The meme is trying to mind control you so it can replicate.

Ever since reading the book "Virus of the Mind" (Brodie, 1996), I've been wary of holding any opinion I don't fully endorse or otherwise remember why I started believing in the first place. (This hasn't been true of my opinion about politics in general until I typed that sentence, full disclosure.) I've been especially wary of using someone else's phrasing to spread really sticky ideas. I guess I've got a good memetic immune system?

I think we should raise awareness of the concept of a memetic immune system.

Upvoted for levels 5, 6, and 7, which I didn't expect to buy, but totally buy.

"We should raise awareness of lions on the other side of the river." = I prefer a world where I'm regarded as someone who prefers to make other people spread the meme "There's a lion across the river.".

I'm not sure I buy this.  In many uses, "raise awareness about X" is just a shorthand (or euphemism, since talking about status is low-status) for "increase the status of addressing X".  

You can certainly argue that addressing X directly is more effective than indirectly in this way.  Or that X is appropriately-statused already and you shouldn't try to change it.  But I don't think it's a separate class of epistemic or equilibrium mistake.

Level 10's more ground-level explanation should be something like "If I say "There's not a lion across the river." I'm getting downvoted and if I say "There's a lion across the river" I'm getting upvoted?"

I'm trying to not use the expression "trying to mind control you". But stated this way it's not that different from lvl 3. Maybe lvl 10 is lvl 3 + an explicit selection mechanism such as upvotes or downvotes. But one could argue that such incentives exist regardless of how explicit they are.