The Basilisk of Phil Sandifer, part 10

Denouement

Now, all is clear.

What turned the egalitarian instinct into Jantelaw? What transformed revolutionary inspiration into resigned determinism? What replaced aspiration with fatalism? What turned celebration of life into an embrace of death? What lets Sandifer scorn Moldbug’s idea that force is justified simply by its usage, while himself performing a cynical power grab to protect his class interests as a holder of some petty social capital? What transformed Moldbug’s rejection of the absurd lie of equality into barbaric racism? What broke Land when he saw the end of the world?

The Basilisk.

What leads Sandifer to deny the possibility of significant, meaningful, fundamental differences between people; differences that aren’t reducible to anything fully within his comprehension and thus give birth to the dogma of Mandatory Comprehensibility to maintain his position in the world? What obligates him to redefine all human action into a meaningless manifestation of historical forces, to scorn the idea that anyone (an exclusive anyone, not an inclusive one, Basilisk) might have an impact on the world? What forces the mind that wishes we were equal to deny the existence of anything on which we could be unequal, except for the axis where the mind itself is most comfortable in?

The Basilisk.

The alien and the different are not the basilisk, but the basilisk forces Sandifer to deny their very possibility of existence, in which he destroys that which he considers fundamental to his humanity. His critique of the trio’s empathy reveals a glaring flaw in his own: he cannot see his own limits but instead considers them the limits of the world itself. Yudkowsky treats empathy as peering into black boxes, for he knows that he is not all of the world and even another who may highly resemble himself might still be in many ways beyond his comprehension.

Indeed, my thesis is complete, manifest not only in the work alone, but in all the context and meta.

I set out to demonstrate that there are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in his philosophy, and to force us all to recognize our limits. Everything Sandifer had done, had been from the perspective of assuming that the world ultimately operates according to his rules, rules which were different from the rules of those who disagreed with him. I took everything he was criticized of, and turned it against him.

He broke the rules of yudkowskian rationalism and turned himself incomprehensible to it by taking a completely different approach. I knew I could not defeat him in his own game, so instead of trying to play it like @psybersecurity, I applied his meta-rule instead: take the game away from the territory the opponent is comfortable in. The only rules I played by were my own, to demonstrate that who defines the rules gets to arbitrarily define the winner.

I was incomprehensible because I ignored any rule that was inconvenient to me, thus rendering myself utterly alien to anyone else, to make that exact argument. I rejected my opponent’s conventions to create something that made perfect sense to myself, and via the illusion of transparency should have been completely obvious to anyone else.

All the hints about the context of the Matrix being itself a part of the best message the movie could be interpreted as having; autistic mentally ill trans girls tending to be a dramatically different neurotype from median people; the contrasting of the fractal pattern of pre-colonial african cities to the straightforward sensibilities of 19th century europeans; the black holes and event horizons, beyond which information may not be gathered; my fix fic of Manhattan focusing on the fundamental alienness of the psychology of another; my meta-paranoid AU interpretation of Yudkowsky becoming a leader of a cult that is about not being a cult; my comments about my own crank-brain jumping into conclusions because they are interesting, not because the filling-in of the gaps in my comprehension of Sandifer is correct; my exaggerated misunderstanding of Sandifer’s talk about the erotic to highlight the difference in what things mean to different people (because for all of his talk about “But let’s skip the easy masturbation metaphor and try instead to genuinely use the erotic as a launchpad, seeing how far we can actually go towards escaping the jaws of the fast-approaching monstrous end. Not sex, but what sex represents. After all, the transgressive brilliance of Blake is hardly restricted to his more overtly erotic moments. It is his entire vision that compels. What shines and animates the work is its furious insistence of it all; those parts that fall under the straightforwardly erotic are, in the end, merely the domain of one Emanation of one Zoa. All of it demands to be seen, and Blake, ever the good prophet, obliges. Perhaps, then, not so much a decision to look within or without as around. Behind, above, down, a direction that is not forward. We know what’s there, after all.” I still hear simply “basically pusseh, or something” because I am not Phil Sandifer and Phil Sandifer is not promethea and despite superficially sharing a language the worlds we use that language to express and communicate about are worlds apart and, to borrow a metaphor from @nostalgebraist (whose approach to empathy is a thousand times more honest and humble in the face of the barely comprehensible cosmos), an empathic bridge cannot be constructed if you reject the possibility that the other side might be genuinely unlike your own.); all that was building to the conclusion which is patently obvious to me, but utterly unfair to someone starting from a different place. Just like Sandifer’s book itself.

Furthermore, I did not let facts get in the way of a good story. I set out to play a different game (to pay a visit down below and set the world in flames), and misrepresent, distort, misunderstand, and if necessary even fabricate whatever needed to create the thing I wanted to have. Just as Sandifer’s book has an abundance of nits to pick, so has my review been, but of course factual accuracy was never the point.

I made a shameless grasp for attention by riding the controversy. I would write basically unrelated shit, tenuously connect it to a work on a polarizing figure, and reap the rewards when his detractors would cheer a snarky takedown and his supporters would be outraged at all the things they wanted to take apart. Cheap jabs at Sandifer’s marxism provided lolz for those predisposed to accept them, and fuel the flames of those who weren’t. The work would’ve been so much better if I had done it differently, but it wouldn’t have received the visibility.

In short, I set out to do a Sandifer to Sandifer himself. And the response elicited could hardly have been more perfect for my first (and probably last) venture into this territory. I sought to place Sandifer, for a moment, in the position he has placed others.

“And what if the true sneer culture was ourselves all along?”

“#the only way to defeat a dragon is to have a dragon of your own”

To defeat the sneer, I first had to become the sneer.

So basically I kind of totally just made the longest, most convoluted argument just to say “it’s sneer culture.”, by trying to show Sandifer what it’s like to be the target of sneer culture as much as I could.

The offer also applies to Yudkowskian rationalists, but you have to promise to say more than just “it’s sneer culture.” It’s totally sneer culture, and you can point that out, but that can’t be the main thrust.

Sue me.

Now, shall we sneer no more?

And the basilisk?

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours.”

It is not the basilisk, but it’s the closest hint I’m willing to give. The rules of the Game say that saying too little is incomprehensible, and saying too much is embarrassing; the rules never promised there would be anything but the Basilisk between them. Thus, I’m erring on the side of the incomprehensible.

And yes, I’m indeed unironically quoting Ayn Rand. The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.

1 month ago · tagged #the basilisk of phil sandifer #basilisk bullshit #nrx cw #unleashing my inner randroid · 10 notes · .permalink

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8. socialjusticemunchkin said: yes, because the basilisk is not something I’m able to describe in words; plus the riff on Moldbug was too funny to resist
9. shieldfoss said: Did you skip the real #9?
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