1:1 – Drawn to Scale

This talk explores scale and simulation. In the scientific context, simulations are often epistemic tools that can be larger or smaller or faster or slower than the target of study. But in cases where the thing of interest is that which is remote or inaccessible, the scale is simply 1:1. How ought we think about simulations that are drawn to scale; simulations that claim to be a faithful replication of the real thing? Lisa Messeri draws on three examples of simulation from her research as an anthropologist of science and technology: a landscape on Earth meant to simulate a landscape on Mars, a virtual reality experience meant to simulate being in a different body, a large language model meant to simulate being in conversation with another human. While simulations are generally accepted as intentional fabrications of the real, there is something tricky about the 1:1 scale. Those fabricating and experiencing this scale often desire to forget that the simulation is meant to be ‘like’ something else, wondering if it might simply ‘be’ that other thing. Each of the cases teases out a different hazard of these 1:1 simulations, as well as the pleasures that come from engaging with things at scale.

Lisa Messeri is an associate professor at Yale University, specializing in the anthropology of science and technology. Her research focuses on the norms, aspirations, and consequences of work done by expert communities as they forge new fields of knowledge and invention. She is the author of Placing Outer Space: An Earthly Ethnography of Other Worlds(Duke University Press, 2016) as well as In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles (Duke University Press, 2024). Her research has been covered in numerous outlets, including The New York Times, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, Wired, Forbes, Scientific American. She is currently researching the epistemic risks that AI holds for the scientific enterprise.