Imagine watching a friend cry over a breakup. You recall what heartbreak feels like. You picture yourself in her shoes. You feel the weight in your own chest, and in that moment—you understand her.
This is simulationism at work: the idea that we understand others not by theorizing about their minds, but by simulating their experiences inside our own. It’s a beautiful, intuitive account of empathy, and a powerful answer to the question of how we read minds.
But what happens when simulation fails?
Though simulation theory captures something real and valuable about how we relate to one another, it isn’t the whole story. Like any theory of mind-reading, it has limits—cases where it struggles to explain how we actually understand others (or why we sometimes don’t).
In this post, we’ll explore some of the core problems with simulationism, and why understanding its boundaries is just as important as recognizing its strengths.
1. The Problem of Dissimilarity
Simulation relies on projecting ourselves into someone else’s situation. But what happens when we’re too different from the other person—culturally, emotionally, neurologically, or morally?
For example:
- Can a privileged person simulate the lived experience of someone facing poverty or systemic discrimination?
- Can an adult accurately simulate the mental world of a child, or a neurotypical person the mind of someone on the autism spectrum?
- Can we simulate someone with very different values, beliefs, or traumas?
When the gap between minds is too great, simulation can become distorted or even misleading. We may project ourselves onto the other, rather than seeing them as they truly are. Empathy becomes assumption.
Simulationism struggles here because it assumes a shared cognitive architecture—a continuity between minds that doesn’t always exist.
2. The Problem of Cold Cognition
Simulation works well in emotionally charged, personal situations, but less so in cases that require abstract reasoning or detached judgment.
Imagine trying to understand:
- Why a scientist supports a specific theory.
- Why a chess player makes a particular move.
- Why a judge ruled a certain way on a legal case.
These decisions may involve beliefs, principles, or layers of reasoning that can’t easily be felt or mirrored. You may not have the knowledge or experience to simulate the thought process. And even if you did, simulating the feeling doesn’t guarantee you capture the logic.
In these situations, we often rely on explicit inference, not empathic resonance. We reason about what the person knows, what their goals are, and what rules they’re following.
This is where theory-theory—a model based on inference and rules—often outperforms simulationism.
3. The Problem of False Attribution
Simulation often feels real. But feeling like we understand someone doesn’t mean we actually do.
Consider:
- Misinterpreting someone’s silence as anger when it’s actually anxiety.
- Assuming a friend is hurt by something you said when they didn’t even notice.
- Believing someone is being deceptive because that’s how you would act in their position.
Simulation can lead to projection, where we substitute our mental state for theirs. The result can be overconfidence, miscommunication, or even moral misunderstanding. We may feel like we know what someone is thinking—but our own biases are doing the talking.
Simulation doesn’t have a built-in mechanism for checking accuracy. Without some form of correction, it can become a mirror, not a window.
4. The Problem of Learning
Simulationism offers little explanation for how we come to understand people whose experiences we’ve never had.
For example:
- How does a child learn to understand that other people can believe things that are false?
- How do we come to grasp jealousy, manipulation, or irony before we’ve experienced them ourselves?
- How do we build new concepts—like “belief” or “intention”—if we’ve never felt them in exactly the same way?
These developmental and conceptual leaps suggest we need more than just imaginative projection. We need a framework—a kind of “theory of minds”—that we can refine as we grow. This is one of the key insights behind theory-theory: that understanding others is not just a passive reflection, but an active construction.
5. The Problem of Overload
Imagine being a nurse in a hospital, a therapist hearing trauma every day, or a teacher absorbing the emotions of dozens of children. If simulation were the primary mode of mind-reading, constant empathy would be overwhelming.
In fact, too much simulation can lead to compassion fatigue, emotional burnout, or blurred boundaries. Professionals in caring roles often rely on a more analytical understanding of others’ emotions—one that allows for care without collapse.
The ability to stand alongside someone in their suffering—not inside it—is a crucial skill. And simulation theory doesn’t clearly explain how we make that shift.
Why These Problems Matter
These limitations don’t mean simulation is wrong. On the contrary, it’s a vital part of how we understand others. But acknowledging its limits helps us:
- Avoid projection and emotional overreach.
- Appreciate the value of reasoned inference and learning.
- Respect the difference between feeling with someone and knowing about their mind.
- Cultivate intellectual humility, especially when facing lives very different from our own.
Final Thoughts: Beyond Mirror Minds
Simulation reminds us that understanding others is, at its best, an act of closeness. It lets us feel our way into someone’s world, bridging the gap with empathy and imagination. But the mind is not always a mirror. Sometimes, to know another person, we need more than resemblance. We need curiosity, reasoning, and the courage to admit we don’t fully know.
Mind-reading is not one thing—it’s a blend of feeling and thought, resonance and analysis, projection and perception. Simulation is part of that blend. But it works best when it is tempered by theory, and guided by awareness of its limits.
Because to truly understand someone else is not just to feel what they feel.
It is to recognize when we cannot—and to listen more deeply because of it.