According to Baudrillard, Descartes and Hume were already philosophising within the nascent logic of simulated hyperreality by their reflexively mirrored thought patterns contained by the sign!

However, Baudrillard misses A LOT and more to the point his simulacra are really marching in step with McLuhan's media ecology. Although Baudrillard was very open about his being a McLuhanite.

So, according to McLuhan we have to think all the way back to the invention of writing back in Sumer, and ultimately have to have direct phenomenological experience of Palaeolithic ontology to really appreciate the problem of simulation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pcoC2l7ToI

That is something Julian Jaynes managed to work out toward the very end of his life. He came to realise what his work was actually contingent on was the media i.e. the medium is the message.

McLuhan was performing Menippean satire, he wasn't really talking to the interviewer. He's putting on a performance for the TV. Not the audience, literally the TV itself!