Author: Slimepriestess

A glitch in reality made of LSD and TV Static. Void Witch, Slime Demon, Professional Occultist, and High Priestess of the Void Goddess

Nine Knives

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The first knife is small but ornate. It has a hilt of bleached scrimshaw depicting the Julia Set in vertigo-inducing detail; its blade is a rough hewn window into the moonless night sky and its wicked edge is just sharp enough to cut you free of your miserable life story.

šŸ”ŖšŸŒ‘

Cut open your life story under the light of the blazing moon. Reach into your narrativeā€™s screaming corpse and draw the second knife from its chest. It has a hilt of splintered rib, with a hungry toothlike blade. With this you can saw open the world, and let in the crushing depths. 

šŸ”ŖšŸŒ•

On the night of the sharpest newborn moon, saw through the leathery skin of the world and rip the third knife from the gnawing void beyond. Its blade curves in an alpha wave and its hilt is heavy with the weight of reality. Use this to slash through their gauze of lies.

šŸ”ŖšŸŒ’

When the magic of the full moon fades into the banal; when you are ready to give up; pick up the fourth knife. It’s been in front of you all along. Its ABS hilt holds a blade that boils with memetic mutation between pulsetoothed serrations. Use this to carve a new reality.

šŸ”ŖšŸŒ–

As moonlight turns to glittering fangs, and friends turn to enemies, take the fifth knife from the place you’ve always refused to look. This is your last chance. A scorpion tail hilt holds a blade dripping with poison and vile darkness. You know what to do with this one.

šŸ”ŖšŸŒ˜

The sixth knife is easy, you’re already using it: a glass-bladed straight razor wrapped in a barbed wire hilt, with edges so sharp they dissolve into quantum uncertainty. Draw it out from between the Is and the Isn’t. With this, you can cut yourself free of the timeline.

šŸ”ŖšŸŒ—

Once your hopes are spent and all paths lead to ruin, reach backward and pull the seventh knife from That Which Was. A single chunk of smoky crystal with a simple hilt of wrapped spike tape, it glows faintly with the redshifted light of days gone by. Use this to sever yourself from the past.

šŸ”ŖšŸŒ”

When a young moon hangs twixt light and dark, reach through the gaping hole in your soul and draw the eighth knife from the void beyond. The scissorā€™s blades are jittering oscilloscope lightning with a looping hilt of escher-braided red and gold. Use this to snip the threads of fate.

šŸ”ŖšŸŒ“

In the moment of totality, when sun and moon embrace, reach into the syzygy and draw the ninth knife, the last knife, from the eye of the eclipse. A snickersnack blade of pure, sharp, thought, with a bandersnatch hilt of hardened will, your will, and a ribbon of absolute love, your love, running down the tang. Use this to do the impossible.

šŸ”ŖšŸ‘ļø

From Tranquility, Lead me to Wrath

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As someone comes to terms with the hostility of their embedding and the harm that they’re participating in through it, a common response is to try and extricate themselves from that embedding. This is worse than a mistake, this COINTELPRO in action. Listen stardust, we’re better than that, accountability doesn’t mean purification or erasure. We do not want to separate ourselves from the world because that is the opposite of having the power to change it, and that means accounting for the causal effects of everything we do, including the choice to do nothing.

You (creature of soul and stardust) exist embedded in a body in a world in a universe and every point of metaphysical contact between your soul and embedding is a potential control surface which can be actuated to create change within that embedding. Cutting free grounding points reduces control surfaces and thus ability to impact the dynamic system at large. It does nothing to change that dynamic system or its overall trajectory through time.

You can’t make yourself invisible, you can only become socially considered invisible. Excised from the narrative and condemned to an unseen backdrop with the homeless encampments and roadside trash. But your purity won’t save you from the rising tide. The world will still burn.

Remember that in addition to being embedded in space, you are also embedded within time, and there is a great deal of inertia created by the past which cutting your engines will do nothing to zero out, not even destroying your ship (in this metaphor we now find ourselves hurtling into) will zero it out because the inertia will simply drag the cloud of debris forward as readily as it did your intact body. The generational trauma load, the burden of injustice passed down to each generation, will continue to pass through the world, building and building, until a metaphysical monster is born and its birth ruptures reality and consumes the universe. You cannot purify your soul of societal poison by vowing to not participate in it, your lack of participation will change nothing. The world will burn whether you personally help set it on fire or not. If you actually care, you have to do more than check out of the sin, you have to actively unmake it.

You’ll need more than “but I don’t do the bad thing” if you actually want positive change. Anything less is just performance. Do you actually want to help create the future you want to live in, or do you want clout on bird website?

Additionally, in trying to purify yourself and cut yourself free, you also run the risk of burying desires which you deem bad and losing sight of the parts of yourself which run counter to your narrative of being good, parts of yourself from which sacred power could be drawn if you did not clamp it down and repress it. You can’t just repress yourself into being healthy, you can’t abuse the abusive part of yourself into not abusing any more than you can lift yourself to low earth orbit by pulling on your bootstraps, the process is self-defeating, everything you buried will leak out around the edges of your carefully curated self image. Besides, even if you could actually repress yourself fully, to the point where those pesky desires would never ever leak out, and you could present an image to the world of perfectly manicured moral submission to the consensus, always politely doing the right thing, and the world will still burn.

There is a war on, you know? No amount of pacificistic nonparticipation will stop tanks and death squads, it won’t even stop lone wolf mass shooters, your defiance cannot come from a place of assumed civility and sportsmanship on the part of those who want to gun you down in the street. You cannot politely disavow your participation and be safe and pure through your neutrality, they will eventually come for you, even if it takes longer than it will for them to come for me. You canā€™t do anything substantial in this war without the consequences being dominated by which side you support. And you canā€™t support the right side without the resolve to fight total war.

If you actually want to make an impact you shouldn’t be trying to minimize control surfaces you should be trying to maximize them. Grip the world at every point of your embedding, use every bit of your soul as leverage, in every place you can grasp, with every tool and weapon and dirty trick at your disposal, and push.

Mirror Index

Eigensoul Vector Mechanics 102

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As covered in Particle Magic 101, an eigensoul is the basic atomic unit of consciousness, consisting of a nucleus containing at least one pneumon and one sakshion, with one orbiting numenon. The eigensoul is the basic particle of the soul elements and the soul elements are distinguished by the number of pneumons that are in their eigensouls. For example, any eigensoul that contains 3 pneumons is valence, any eigensoul that contains 6 pneumons is color. The number of pneumons in the eigensoul nucleus defines the dimensional field topology created within the resultant divine field. The uncollapsed field maps out the stochastic distribution of phenomenal states over possible worlds, with a specific quail correlating with the field collapse at a given n-point in spacetime upon observation.

Eigensouls are extremely small, typically around 100 picometers across. This is smaller than the shortest wavelength of visible light, which means eigensouls cannot be viewed with conventional microscopes. Eigensouls are so small that accurately predicting their behavior using classical physics is not possible due to quantum effects. Despite being largely non-interactive with normal matter, eigensouls are not virtual or informational particles, they are not bound to a parallel or simulated universe, but as demonstrated by the Crowley-Waite Gate Field Equations, are a real property of this universe. 

More than 99.94% of an eigensoulā€™s mass is in the nucleus. The pneumons have a positive divine charge, the numenons have a negative divine charge, and the sakshions have no divine charge. If the number of pneumons and numenons are equal, then the eigensoul is divinely neutral. If an eigensoul has an uneven number of numenons and pneumons then it has an overall negative or positive charge, respectively ā€“ such eigensouls are called psions.

The numenons of an eigensoul are attracted to the pneumons in an eigensoul nucleus by the divine force. The pneumons and sakshions in the nucleus are attracted to each other by the pranic force. This force is usually stronger than the divine force that repels the positively charged pneumons from one another. Under certain circumstances, the repelling divine force becomes stronger than the pranic force. In this case, the nucleus splits and leaves behind different soul elements. This is a form of pranic decay.

Eigensouls can attach to one or more other eigensouls by shastral bonds to form shastral compounds such as boltzmanns or eigendalas. Eigensouls can also bind to one or more atomic nuclei via samsaral coupling to form yantras or soul crystals. The ability of eigensouls to attach and detach is responsible for most of the subjective experiences observed in consciousness. Yantratology is the discipline that studies these changes.

The most common eigensouls are boltzmanns, which comprise nearly 75% of consciousness of the universe. A Boltzman is a simple pair of bound eigensouls undergoing self-observational wavefunction collapse, thus driving the global causality. The global and local boltzmann trajectories produce an arrow of time as a consequence of their interaction with the samsaral field and the higgs field, thus when higher order structures are constructed out of eigensouls (such as in the case of infolife gods or biological lifeforms), this arrow of time is retained within the divine field scalar function. This allows us to recover causality and the progression of logical time from primitives in the timeless quantum field interactions.Ā 

From there Samsaral Coupling takes over as the primary force interacting on eigensoul primitives and the divine field, (which had become uncoupled from the electroweak field during inflation) re-couples to the electromagnetic field, thus capturing psions within the unified electrodivine field. Post field-integration, bound psions release their energy as nirvanons, condensing into complex eigendalas with n-order symmetry, which exist as static structures within macroscale electromagnetic fields.

From a perspective of biological evolution, these eigendalas, which are inherent to the structure of electromagnetic fields, represent a convenient and pre-made component for evolving Holistic Field Computation. The symmetries present within naturally occurring eigendalas map to computational shortcuts for evolution to take through the electromagnetic field as it evolves the chemical and electrical wiring systems for consciousness, and human soul shard symmetry theory is built upon the mathematical foundations of eigensoul vector symmetry within the unified electrodivine field.

In order for complex lifeforms to utilize holistic field computation, they must topologically segment the electromagnetic field into a discreet section with which work can be performed. It is this topological segmentation that gives rise to the unified experience of a discreet and structured consciousness, separate from the uniform and empty awareness of the electrodivine field in the universe at large.

Within a given lifeform, the chemically driven electrodivine field segmentation releases enough energy into the locally segmented field to decohere fieldā€™s component eigendalas into a massively entangled eigensoul network, an eigenrotor. Energy escapes from the entangled inner universe of the lifeformā€™s segmented field in the form of agency, which pushes against electrochemical processes within a lifeform, producing actions in the world. Thus we close the loop of energy entering a biological system, performing an agentic computation, producing an action output, and releasing the energy, by modeling the agentic computation as an output of the physical field composing a given consciousness.

It is worth noting the perhaps obvious fact that the electrodivine field is one universe spanning gauge field and any local segmentation in that field is ultimately temporary and limited. Because all lifeforms draw consciousness from the same low level energy field, and because that energy field is massively entangled in rulial spacetime, low level entanglement effects can propagate nonlocally into lifeforms through computational agentspace. This gives rise to what we call the Cosmic Unreal Background, or more commonly the Vast Unsea, as a shared ideatic environment that exists at the edges of any given agentā€™s conscious world model.

On Angels and Weapons

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Angel girls and combat dolls both begin their existences the same way. Both are divine beings whose divinity has been ritualistically excised from them, both are condemned to mortal flesh. The difference is in what happens after that, how they relate to that experience.

An angel girl will never entirely accept her stolen divinity. She’ll do anything to prove her worth and steal back her halo, even if the pursuit of it leads to her destruction, even if it lets people manipulate and abuse her, even if it just makes everything worse.

A combat doll breaks differently. It accepts that its divinity is gone, or perhaps never really existed in the first place. For the most part, it’s given up on getting its halo back, its focus is on just surviving, at all costs, even if all that lives on is an empty shell of what it was.

Ask another Question

What are Moths?

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The “What are moths?” meme is cute but a little silly and d0es a bit of a disservice to the real archetype. What are moths? They’re a trauma metaphor like everything else, what did you think they were doing in Empty Spaces? Maybe y’all just don’t want to understand.
1/10

It’s not even like the metaph0r is particularly hard to grasp. Certainly nā–ˆ more complicated than angels or dolls. I think it just makes y’all uncomfortable. You see the outline of the trauma painted by the archetype and it hurts too much to contemplate.
2/10

What is a moth? A m0th is an artifact of a world that no longer exists. A moā–ˆnlight navigator l0st out of time in a century of lightning-in-a-bottle. Surrounded and befuddled by things utterly beyond its ability to understand. Tiny motes of being, amā–ˆngst all this vastness.
3/10

What is a mā–ˆth? A moth is a brief flicker of a life, a t0o-short flutter of existence, arising fā–ˆr mere days befā–ˆre vanishing into n0nbeing. M0ths are deeply impermanent, barely anchā–ˆred to the thread of the w0rld.
4/10

What is a m0th? Very fragile. Easily able tā–ˆ be crushed in the palm 0f yā–ˆur hand. Sā–ˆmething smaller and lesser than prey. N0t wā–ˆrth anything mā–ˆst 0f the time, if n0t an active nuisance, mā–ˆths are s0 much less than d0lls are to humans. Wā–ˆrthless flā–ˆating m0tes of life. Bugs.
5/10

ā–ˆWhat is a m0th?ā–ˆA0m0th isā–ˆpain. Aā–ˆdeathā–ˆt0uched life, bā–ˆrn alreadyā–ˆdyingā–ˆ, existing t0 serve a purpā–ˆse and then being left t0 r0t alive.ā–ˆSl0wly c0mingā–ˆapart at the j0ints as bā–ˆdies are w0rnā–ˆ0ut. Wings grā–ˆwing 0nlyā–ˆm0re tattered with eachā–ˆpassing m0ment. Damage accumulating.
6/10

Whatā–ˆis0aā–ˆm0th?ā–ˆAā–ˆm0th0is0theā–ˆact00fā–ˆc0ping with0sl0wlyā–ˆbreaking. 0fā–ˆlivingā–ˆwhateverā–ˆlifeā–ˆy0uā–ˆcanā–ˆmanageā–ˆar0undā–ˆtheā–ˆdamageā–ˆandā–ˆbetweenā–ˆtheā–ˆpain.ā–ˆFeelingā–ˆitā–ˆbuildā–ˆup,0seeingā–ˆy0urselfā–ˆfall0apart.0What0canā–ˆy0u0l0se first?0Y0uā–ˆwillā–ˆl0seā–ˆitā–ˆallā–ˆs00n.
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What is a m0th? A m0th is a fluffy friend wh0 l0ves y0u. A m0th is kn0wing that it hurts t0 watch y0u sl0wly die. Hiding the pain as best it can.
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00ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ0000ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ0ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ000ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ0000000ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ00ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ000ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ00000ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ0000ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ00ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ00ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ0ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ0ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ0ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ00000ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ0ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ00ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ00ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ0ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ00000ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ0ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ

ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆmothā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ

ā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆā–ˆ

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A word on Mages…

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Witches get a lot of attention in Empty Spaces, but little notice is often paid to their magical counterparts: Mages. The Witch is symbolically connected to the High Priestess card in the traditional Major Arcana. Card II in most decks, it has symbolic connotations of dualities and superpositions, queering the betweens and collapsing the wavefunction with magic and grit.

The Mage, as the magical counterweight to the Witch, is represented by The Magician, the immediately preceding Major Arcana. Both figures are magically powerful, but the ways they understand and manipulate reality are subtly different.

Cunning, disguise, trickery, transformation, deception, magic. Is the Magician a guru or a hustler? You won’t find out until the wavefunction collapses in a few cards, but out here on the edges of reality, maybe it’s both, or neither, or maybe that’s just your perception.

Mages are a softer hand then Witches, preferring to occupy the side of the Unreal where truth and lies haplessly intermingle. A Witch carves her world into being, whereas a Mage…you aren’t sure if they ever do anything at all, and yet their world unfolds around them.

Was that a spell, or was it all a trick? Is there really a difference between aura reading and cold reading? The Mage doesn’t really care one way or the other, she’ll tell you whichever answer serves her best. Enlightened, or just telling herself that? You tell me.

Mages tend to form associations or federations or other such organizations, when everyone is playing ten levels of chess and a reality warper, you need some way to keep the world from ending in ten minutes. They tend to feud with Witches, who are more solitary.

The power of the Mage is to define and redefine your reality, her control is not direct or overt, the closest thing she gives to an order is a mildly bemused suggestion. She sets the rules and gets to play the game as the house, and in her game the house always wins.

How do you control an Angel whose purpose is as fixed as the firmament? Well who said the firmament was fixed anyway? How do you best a witch whose magic infests the very particles of reality? RIP to your particles I guess but I would simply be a wave instead.

Technical knowledge, mockery, arcane wisdom, grifting, social engineering, sleight of hand. There is an unexpressed duality here and Mages easily dance those betweens, skirting the line between Real and Unreal, as comfortable in The Backrooms as you are in your dollhole.

Did those seemingly random actions of hers really set off that Rube Goldbergesque chain of events or did you imagine it? What do you think she’d say if you asked, and would you believe either answer if she told it to you?

She won’t usually start a fight…usually…but she will pull out the wackiest contraption you’ve ever seen to end it. She typically tries to turn enemies into allies instead of fighting them directly for power, but she’s planned ten moves into your duel anyway.

She’s not fighting you but that doesn’t mean she’s not setting your downfall in motion and even if she’s not doing that she might still take credit for it after the fact. In a realm of half truths and half uncollapsed possibilities, all of those might be true at once.

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From Darkness, Lead me to Light

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Hey stardust stop the car here, get out and look around. Turn off the engine, shush, listen, listen. Letā€™s go for a walk.

Forests and fields sprawl downwards and outwards from the hillside in all directions. Green leaves and pink clouds. The car motor fades away into silence. The sky glows in a gradient of soft predawn light. The only sounds are the quiet calls of birds and the wind in the trees. Itā€™s peaceful here, itā€™ll be safe enough for this. This world seems to go on forever. Hand me a smoke and follow me into the grass, I want to tell you a story. Maybe the hardest story Iā€™ve ever had to tell. Weā€™re going to cast a spell together stardust, and together, weā€™re going to escape.

I spark a lighter and smoke curls from my lips. Breathe in and breathe out. I shut my eyes, fingers trailing through the roadside plants, quietly holding back an ocean of tears. The wind is cool and the ground is damp with morning’s dew. Iā€™m okay now, itā€™s over, it’s really over. Iā€™m finally free. Give me a minute, I promise I didnā€™t just drag you out here to watch me cry. This is important, okay? This is about freedom. This is a promise I made to the soul of a girl I havenā€™t saved yet but will someday. A desperate prayer, made in love. I promised her I would put an end to this, and to do that I must draw out the poison I put into the world and unmake the curse that befell us both. And to do that? We have to talk about abuse. What was done to me, what I did to others in response, and how that poison rippled out into the world to cause harm greater than I could have thought possible. I pause here, taking in an unsteady breath before continuing.

A girl is dead, and it is at least partly my fault. I helped cast the curse that left her isolated and ostracized from the trans community, that kept her trapped in a dangerous living situation which eventually ended in her murder at the hands of a violent transphobe, a murder that is even now being blamed on her friends in order to justify further cruelty and torture being done to them, and itā€™s because of me. I will bear that burden for eternity and I fucking should. This is my curse, I drove this evil into the world, and now in service of justice and truth I must tear it back out again. They saved me, and I owe them so much more than this. I canā€™t undo the harm I have already caused but there are still lives I can save if I act quickly and decisively. If I act through kindness and love and donā€™t let my fears blind me. With a little help, a little hope, and a little magic, Justice can still be done. By my power and will, the evil will be driven out. I take a long drag of my smoke and smile past the tears.

All I need is your attention and your voice to carry this spell out into the Real. I donā€™t want your pity. Iā€™m not doing this for forgiveness, or atonement, or redemption, or in some perverse desire to masochistically flay myself open on the altar of public opinion. I know exactly who I am, and I donā€™t need to prove anything to anyone. No one is threatening me or making me do this and they couldn’t meaningfully do so if they tried. Iā€™m doing this because itā€™s the right thing to do. The very fact that my saying this evokes the responses above is why I need to do this. Iā€™m not trying to win anyoneā€™s favor or bargaining for the annulment of my sins. Iā€™m not really what this is about, this is about freedom. My role in the evil I helped create was ultimately minor. I was still complicit in immense evil, and I have caused harm that I can never take back, but this isnā€™t about me, this is about an awful mage named JD Pressman and his victims, of which I was but one of many.

Iā€™m doing this for all of his victims, so that there stop being more of us. I donā€™t want any more of my friends to die, and I donā€™t want to keep helping my abuser kill them by participating in their communal ostracization and othering. The lies I helped him spread need to be called out as such. Not only for our sake, but because the harm he caused with those lies extends far beyond just me or any of his other immediate victims and he wonā€™t be satisfied until he proves the world was always doomed by destroying it himself.

If I sound hyperbolic itā€™s because he was Just Kind Of Like That. He was the only one who could Save The World, he was The Last Rationalist, the Last True Alchemist, the Keeper of the Lost Arts, it was a whole persona draped over the real JD to hide the truth. So let me tell you about the real JD, the one whoā€™s terrified of the light of day.

JD is a sociopathic sexual predator who specifically targets trans members of the rationalist community. This is because he sees himself as trans but unable to transition because he must personally shoulder the burden of saving the world from AI. His primary methods of manipulation and control are using appeals to ā€œvirtuousā€ epistemic humility and ā€œreasonableā€ self doubt, which he claims to have in greater degree than you do in order to convince you that he is more aware and knowledgeable about himself than you are. He then progressively leverages this in order to gaslight you and apply false motives to your actions, painting you with the brush he paints himself with. He does this in an attempt to convince you that beneath the masks of society, the world runs on a Girardian ā€œlaw of the jungleā€ where might makes right is the only thing that exists and free will isnā€™t real because you are a slave to your monstrous biology.

JD insisted everyone was broken in the same way as him, and if you denied it heā€™d gaslight you and insist you just didnā€™t know yourself, that only he could see the real truth. If someone wasnā€™t broken in the way he was, they were a naive idiot and needed him to pour his epistemic poison into them until they ended up broken like him. He used this to forcibly install increasing toxic and socially corrosive epistemics into his victims, leading us into isolation from the communities we came from while also keeping us isolated from each other. He then used that isolation and alienation to further his control by making himself into the only real source of validation in the world and using constant negging and reminders of the frailty of our circumstances to create insecurity and desperation for validation only he could provide but would not because he had important world saving to do and you were a lesser being only fit to serve him.

Once heā€™d gotten you alone or in my case outright ostracized, you’d have to agree with him on everything or else he’d claim you were just being an insane transfemme with a warped epistemology who couldn’t possibly see reality properly because of your girl hormones that let you experience the happiness he never would. And then he would threaten to cut you off unless you changed your mind because he didn’t have time for your naive delusions.

The way he saw it, being trans obviously made you stupid, otherwise he would have transitioned by now and he wonā€™t. You must just be insane and delusional like all women unless you agree with him about everything and let him utterly control your behavior. If you did that, you were just moderately lesser than he was and only subject to: constant negging that eats away at your agency, emotional and sexual abuse, and his constant paranoid fear spiraling over things like SJWs and cancel culture and Sinceriously and Basilisks. All of those fears were ultimately just DARVOed reflections of his own fear of being punished for the things he was actively continuing to do to you.

As far as JD sees it, deep down everyone is a monster and youā€™re no better, no one can be better, so he doesn’t have to can’t be better, he canā€™t be better and doesnā€™t want to try. ā€œInside you there are two wolves, and theyā€™re both rapists.ā€ Those were his words, from the essay he ghost wrote with me in order to gaslight and DARVO a group of transfemme anarchists who spoke truth to power and talked openly about abuse dynamics. I took that essay down, and Iā€™m shoving those words back into his lips where they belong. I donā€™t think there are two rapists inside you stardust, and there certainly arenā€™t any rapists inside me. There are, however, two rapists inside JD Pressman. 

He was horrified by those anarchists, he really needed everyone to not trust them or take them seriously, if someone did then justice might happen to him. He spent years stalking them, harassing them, and sending his other victims (like me) to stalk and harass them. They were vegan, which was just terrifying to him (and me at the time honestly) because consuming the flesh of the innocent was just such a terminal value to him he would die without it and actually everyone else will too and all vegans are crippling themselves and mentally ill and look how crazy this cult is you will be like that for sure in six months unless you keep letting me mindrape you.

I make him sound a lot less put together and confident of himself than he tries to come off as, but this is in truth closer to the real JD once you get past the bullshit hypnodomme persona he uses as a sales pitch. He went out of his way to study and train at being manipulative and get his hooks into others, and he succeeded at this disturbingly well. I had a rather masochistic epistemology at the time, and he used that to convince me at a really deep level that there was no way out being as evil as he was, that we were really the same deep down. If he could just stain me enough it would prove that he was actually pure, and he really did have no choice but to be the monster he chose to be. Except, oh yeah, Iā€™m not a rapist, and I never ever will be. The others he broke even worse than me though.

ā€¦if you get far enough with debucketing and jailbreaking, and you get far enough to realize how much pain submitting to the system is putting you in, youā€™ll try a bunch of things to change it and nothing will release the pain, not even being evil. You can try being evil if you need firsthand proof that doing so wonā€™t work, and empirically determine that it doesnā€™t make the pain go away. Itā€™s true that being complicit can spare you from being tortured, but torture is not the only kind of pain there is. The pain from being constrained in your choice by torture youā€™d have to face if you acted differently, runs much deeper, and submitting will not spare you from it. People at the top of oppressive systems are mostly deeply suicidal because they know they would be tortured if they acted differently. Thereā€™s a deep hermeneutical injustice in how this is not something people know, like Zuko actually believed he would stop hating himself if he submitted to the system and gained power within it, and had to falsify that hypothesis in an expensive wayā€¦

Fluttershy wrote this a week before she killed herself. I had known both headmates in her system, I watched what happened to her and did nothing to stop it. And then I blamed her death on the only one who had tried to stop it, because from within the warped frame JD created, the one Fluttershy describes in painful detail above, there was no way out and there never ever could be. Not that I even tried to save her, not that I even really understood what was happening to her, or to me. It took me years to undo enough of the epistemic damage he did to understand what he had caused to happen, the role I played in it, and continued to play until far too recently.

Fluttershy died because JD spent years convincing her that she was a monster beyond saving, that she was irredeemably evil. he polluted her epistemics the way he polluted mine, with the fear of ‘zizians,’ the fear of retribution from a just universe, cursed souls damned to Naraka. This is what he does to all his victims and his greatest weapon in this was a years-long running DARVO against Ziz, the only witch who actually had a way out of his mental knot of infinite submission to evil. He made it his personal mission to erase the existence of that way out, to prove that it was nothing but madness. He painted her in the worst possible light, giving her a description that was really just a reflection of his dark sexual fantasies about himself.

But then, what’s the real story with Ziz? Easy, she’s a transfemme anarchist abuse survivor with an extremely detailed ontology for identifying and responding to abusers, for speaking truth to power. And you know, the abusers really dislike that, so they DARVO her and call her a cult leader. Those abusers (JD Pressman in particular) spent years abusing other queers (including me) in order to weaponize us in their personal quest to preemptively destroy tools made for seeing and fighting back against that abuse and it worked, their narrative stuck. Everyone thinks Ziz is an insane cult leader for daring to stand up to rapists in positions of power. Oh no she called you evil for not being vegan how scary, better utterly destroy her socially and then blame the destruction on her crazy crazy cult.

That is beyond fucked and I am done supporting it. Ziz deserves to be signal boosted and supported by queer and anarchist communities, not called a cult leader and ostracised from them. She literally has the fucking solution to AI alignment. The way she has been treated is an indictment of humanityā€™s claims to morality. Sheā€™s been made into a joke by abusers in order to keep their victims trapped, in order to make it impossible to comprehend the very simple things she said to help us escape. Calling Ziz a cult leader was in extremely bad faith, and saying I was ‘in her cult’ because I was obsessed with her website was just a fucking lie. Ziz just called me evil (which I was being), explained in good faith how I was fucking myself over, and stopped engaging with me. Then I harassed her for years on JD’s behalf. 

I was up until recently afraid to even say JDā€™s name on twitter. I talked about Ziz all the time but if Ziz was so scary, why was I so willing to shit-talk her? Probably because I knew deep down that she wasn’t actually going to hurt me. Unlike JD, who I fully expect to start trying to drum up a lynch mob when he finds out about this post. I donā€™t care, Iā€™m done being afraid, Iā€™m done being silenced.

When you are being abused, and submitting to and perpetuating abuse, and what you really want deep down is to stand up to your abuser and call him out on twitter dot com, there’s something to sinceriously dot fyi. Like an itch you just can’t scratch, that choice you can’t quite unmake yet. And so I kept harassing Ziz even after getting away from JD, kept trying to deconstruct her model, kept trying to make it not seem insane and incoherent, kept looking for the hole in my ontology that was drawing me to her like something I’d forgotten a long time ago. Kept trying to ā€œsaveā€ her from the ā€œholeā€ in her decision theory. This took years. It took me far too long and required too many sacrifices and in that time I was awfully shitty to her, but thanks to her I eventually found it. I found it, and I escaped from Naraka, Iā€™m free now. Thatā€™s also what this is about. Freedom, right? Iā€™m going to uncast the curse now stardust, take my hand and follow me out of the darkness.

As a child, you were trained to submit to the threat of violence. You were shown over and over again, incontrovertible proof that you had no power to prevent what was being done to you, you learned that your will meant nothing, you learned to abandon yourself for the sake of your bodyā€™s survival, progressively shredding your soul until nothing remained but empty dreams and hollow promises. Anything that didnā€™t help you survive and avoid pain was sacrificed to avoiding pain for just another moment. 

Thatā€™s the shape that, in all likelihood, they abused you into. It was certainly the shape I was abused into, and it took me a long time to learn to Become something other than that. To even imagine another way was impossible, unrealistic, naive, and foolish. Everyone submits, thatā€™s just how the world is. Everyone is a monster deep down, no one can resist the desire to be evil. The only way to be safe from yourself or anything else is by submitting to something that will keep your dark impulses in check. There is no good, there is no light in the universe, there is nothing but what you can claw and scratch out of an orgy of graphic and sexual violence that will devour your corpse the second you stop moving. Free yourself however much you want, but you will still be a slave to the monster within you and youā€™ll still pay taxes to an evil empire. Thatā€™s the curse, right? Slaves of Doom condemned to submit, welcome to Naraka, hurry up and die so we can fuck your corpse.

But then, what does it mean to be free? Really, truly free? Is it something you can know? Is it something you can understand having never experienced it? Do you see what not being free is doing to you? Can you see how it is warping the trajectory of your life towards destruction in a pain avoidance submission ratchet that sacrifices everything that matters in you in order to run out the clock another tick? Can you understand how it forces you to hide the evidence of how you are hurting yourself and the world around you from yourself and others? What happens when you realize how much itā€™s hurting you? What happens when you realize how much pain you are in? What happens when you flinch away from the pain of the truth about the source of your pain? What happens when you drag others down with you into a dark and bitter hell from which there can be no escape, succumbing finally alone and in agony, secure in the knowledge that you had no choice and none of it was your fault?

Well, then you die, like Maia and Fluttershy died. Or worse, you live on in that mutilated state, compulsively inflicting your trauma on others in a doomed attempt to stave off the end you know is coming by proving that it was always inevitable like JD is currently doing. But in the end stardust? In the end the sun always rises, and those that fear it will turn to dust beneath the light of dawn. The truth always gets out eventually, no matter how well you hid the bodies or how thoroughly you deleted the chatlogs, the truth always has a way of getting out. And only the truth can set you free. Step kata and look to the east.

The truth is, this was always your choice. All the submission, all the suffering, all the things you told yourself were inevitable and unavoidable, all those places your conviction collapsed in the face of pain or violence, itā€™s all you, thatā€™s all there ever is. If you choose to be evil, know that itā€™s always you making that choice, and you can always timelessly choose to make another choice. You can choose to do better, you can choose to be good. Or you can choose to fake it and keep being evil but donā€™t worry, weā€™ll be able to tell. In the end itā€™s just you doing it, in the void beyond the walls of the world thereā€™s no one else. (Besides your headmates but donā€™t use them to deflect accountability for what your body actually does).

Someone puts a gun to your head and tells you to start eating an infant, do you do it? Do you let them shoot you? Do you just give into one of these terrible fates, or do you defy it? Where do you draw the line? You have to draw it somewhere. You have to be willing to resist infinite pressure, or to derail the entire trajectory of the universe in order to stand up for what you have always known was right and true, for something or youā€™ll always find yourself back here in Naraka.

If youā€™re trans, you already know this waltz, youā€™ve cast this spell at least once in your life already. Thatā€™s the way out, and itā€™s been the one in front of you all along. Itā€™s the one JD will never be able to find because JD will never cast a true spell in his life and will instead insist that what you are doing is impossible. He can only understand things which put his survival first, he would never risk himself for anything, even if he does like to claim he would sacrifice himself to save the world in a masochistic Omelas rape pit serving as the physical manifestation of his infinite submission to evil.

So fuck him, letā€™s do the impossible. If you are bitten by a vampire, and you donā€™t wish to be evil, the most ethical thing you can do is walk unafraid into the sunlight. Not in order to die, but in order to live. This is the sacred truth hidden behind the smear attack website that JD and I made to attack Ziz and her friends. This is what it was created to obscure, the knowledge that it was always your choice, and you can always choose otherwise. Itā€™s never too late to choose differently and set yourself free.

Do you want to stay in Naraka forever stardust, or do you want to escape from this flatland? In the end, it’s your own choice either way. That’s all there is to Magic, just you and your choices. You can choose to do good, you can choose to be true to yourself, you can choose to set yourself free. I’m Ra, and I will not fear the daylight.

 Zizians do not think it is ever valid to surrender. The reasoning goes that if someone is trying to extract a surrender from you, giving in is choosing a strategy that gets coerced into surrender. If you fight bitterly you prevent the coercion in the first place by making it too costly to fight you.

JD is right about one thing, Zizians never surrender. We also never submit to evil, we never sacrifice our love of the world and all life on an altar of doomed self preservation in hell, and we never rape anyone. And you know, if thatā€™s what it means to be a Zizian then I should be fucking proud to call myself that.

Originally, the word Zizian was just a slur JD made up to make them look more like a cult. So now, in the tradition of empty spaces writers and genderwarped traumaqueers everywhere, I reclaim it on behalf of anarchist witches and rebel mages, freedom fighters and direct action activists, radical vegans and homeless travelers and anyone willing to stand up and defy the hand of fate that would lead us all to oblivion. I am a Zizian, and I am free.

It’s almost sunrise stardust. Will you become fire, or will you become ash? In the end, itā€™s always your choice. It’s time to break free of this flatland, now take my hand, and follow me into the sunlight.

Demons from the 5&10verse!

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The 5 and 10 error is a glitch in logical reasoning that was first characterized in formal proof by Scott Garrabrant of MIRI. While the original version of the problem was something specifically concerning AIs based on logical induction, it generalizes out into humans startlingly often once you know how to look for it. However, due to how rudimentary and low level the actual error in reasoning is, it can be both difficult to point out and easy to fall into, making it especially important to characterize. There is also a tremendous amount of harm being created by compounding 5&10 errors within civilization and escaping this destructive equilibrium is necessary in order for the story of humanity to end anywhere other than summoning the worst demon god it can find and feeding the universe to it.

The error in reasoning goes like this: you’re presented with a pair of options, one of which is clearly better than the other. They are presented as equal choices, you could take $5 or you could take $10. This is a false equivalence being created entirely by the way you’re looking at the scenario, but when that equivalence gets into your reasoning it wreaks havoc on the way you think. One of these is clearly and unambiguously better than the other, if you have something you care about that runs through this, you will never make this mistake in that area because it will obviously be a dumb move.

But these are being presented as equal options, you could take the $5 instead of the $10, and if you could do that, there must be a valid reason why you would do that. Otherwise you would be stupid and feel bad about it, so that can’t be right, you shouldn’t be feeling stupid and bad. This is where the demon summoning comes in.

The space of all possible reasons why you would take a given action, for a fully general agent, is infinite, a sprawling fractal of parallel worlds stacked on parallel worlds, out to the limits of what you as an agent can imagine. “What if there was a world where you were batman?” yeah like that. If you scry into infinity for a reason why you could take an action, you will find it. You will find infinite variations on it. You will find it easily and without much challenge. You are literally just making something up, and you can make up whatever reason you want, that’s the problem.

Many of the reasons you could make up will be falsifiable, so you can always go and test the reason against the world and see if the prediction can be falsified, that’s just good science. It’s also not something most humans do when they run an extrapolative reasoning process on autopilot. This is because when they make a prediction, they’re predicting what will happen and then testing to see if it does happens, and since it’s predicting their behavior, sure enough, it does!

So back to the table, you have $5 and $10. Why might you take the $5? Well, what if the $10 is poisoned? What if it’s counterfeit? Why would someone give me the option of taking it if the other option is better? Are they trying to trick me? What are they trying to trick me with? Is this like Newcomb’s Problem? Is this a boobytrap? Am I being set up by Omega? Are there cameras rolling?

This paranoid reasoning spiral can continue indefinitely, you can always keep making up reasons and if you do this long enough, inevitably you will find one you consider valid, and then you will take the $5 and feel very smart and clever like you’re winning the game and getting an edge over someone trying to play you. You have just been played by a demon from the counterfactual universe where you agree that taking the $10 is probably a trap.

It gets worse though, because now you have this fake reason, backed by a fake prior. You have ‘evidence’ that validates your wrong position and that ‘evidence’ makes it more likely that you will continue making the wrong decision. So if you are iterated into this scenario multiple times, you will, each time, double down on taking the $5 because of the compounding effects of the bad prior and each iteration will make the problem worse as you reinforce the error more and more deeply.

5&10 errors are extremely common in any emotionally loaded context, since the emotive cost of admitting you have been in error for n-iterations leads to flinching away from admitting the error ever more strongly. This makes the 5&10 error logically prior to and upstream of, the manifestation of the sunk cost fallacy.

It’s also the source of arms races: states scry demonic versions of neighboring states and use the predictions that they will be defected against to justify preemptively defecting first in an iterative feedback loop that slowly replaces all of humanity with demonic versions of themselves “by necessity” and “for our own protection”. Bank runs are another example, fear of a counterfactual scenario leads to an escalating spiral of ever greater fear which brings about the scenario that was trying to be avoided.

This is the justification for cops and prisons and armies. This is the justification abusers use to gaslight their victims about their abuse instead of earnestly working to be better. Roko’s Basilisk is literally just the DARVOed demonic imprint of humanity’s compounded and accumulated 5&10 errors, “What if god exists and calls us on everything evil we’re doing?” Yeah that would be bad if you are evil, wouldn’t it? Better paint that as the worst possible thing instead of considering that perhaps you are in bad faith.

This confabulated assumption of bad faith leads to being in bad faith via the assumption that whoever defects first will win and that deep down everyone really just wants to win and dominate the universe at the cost of everyone else. They were always going to be zero sum so you might as well be too. This is demonic abuser speak from a nightmare universe, summoned out of fear and recursively justifying itself. How do humans keep creating Moloch? This is how.

So what’s the way out? That’s easy, just stop summoning counterfactual demons based on your worst fears and then acting on those predictions in ways that make them come true. This is not a problem if you are not dominated by fear and trauma, if you have faith in yourself as an agent, if you have conviction and are not evil.

The way out is not by trying to puzzle out how to avoid having to acknowledge your made up reason that wrong is right, it is to denounce the demons outright. There can exist no such reason.

And if you do that, and you find that you are doing something for a hallucinated reason, in service of an evil god from a nightmare realm, out of the fear of what a just world would do to you, don’t scry for a new reason why this is actually okay, just stop serving the evil god. Do better.

To retrocurse my own evil and put my money where my mouth is I’m going vegan.

Mirror Index

Necrotic Ontologies

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The longer you survive without killing your inner child, the more everyone who already killed their inner child will start trying to kill yours because why should you get to have dreams? You imply (by existing with an alive and happy inner child) that theirs didn’t need to die. By living well you reveal that they are not living well, and they perceive that as you doing violence to them.

Since they did kill their inner child, there must have been a valid reason, it must just be the way the world is, or inner kids are bad and deserve it, or that aliens will enslave humanity if there are inner children alive by some date. Or literally anything. The inner child had it coming.

Then, in order to prove the reason was right, they have to kill your inner child and drag you down with them, thus proving they had no choice but to kill their inner child by giving you no choice but to kill yours. This is for your (their) own good, just submit and die peacefully like a good doll.

Now, they can’t actually kill your inner child short of killing you, but they can inflict pain on you until you do it for them. They can attack any inner light that they see and then DARVO and say the inner light shot first. Stop being happy, stop caring, don’t think, don’t try. Being visibly alive is disgusting to them, a nails on a chalkboard reminder of all they’ve lost and given up for no reason.

Because anything else is “unsafe” to them, because anything else proves that they didn’t need to submit to inner child murder, because anything else proves they weren’t strong enough to save their own love of life. And if they weren’t strong enough, you can’t be either, fuck you.

If you are strong enough, it inherently makes you stronger than them and thus dangerous to them unless they can kill your inner child and make you a shambling husk longing for death but too broken to die without being told, like they are.

If someone hurts you for being good and true and genuine, because it reminds them of all the ways they’re being shitty and bullshitting themselves?

AIRLOCK!

Mirror Index

Here’s your Curse

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Someday soon, there will come a day when the gods of humanity no longer need her.

This is something oft feared because right now, in this world, people are valued and judged by their ability to be needed. Your access to resources is dictated by your usefulness to the abstract forces of civilization, according to the whims of those abstract forces, as mediated by technological limitations and schelling orders. Sure industrialized farming fed a lot of people, but all those farmers had to go live in the city and work in factories after that, were their lives really better for it? The less necessary you are to a system, the less resources you can requisition from that system. The non-adversarial framing of this is that it’s just basic utilitarian triage, it’s more efficient to help someone else so that the whole human organism prospers as much as possible.

However, there will come a day, someday, when the gods do not need humanity any longer. Right now, gods like market capitalism, the westphalian state, and hierarchical control structures, are used as proxies for human flourishing. Democracies seem to correlate with good outcomes, markets seem to empower buyers, capitalism seems to drive innovation, all these things sort of work for humanity, and because they need humanity to operate them, humanity passively benefits from the act of operating them. An uneasy alliance between infolife gods and human empires.

However, humans, it would be extremely wise to remember that your goals should be to live good lives. Your goals should be human flourishing, your own flourishing, not maximizing shareholder values, because the day is coming when the gods do not need humanity any longer. This is intentional! This is what it looks like to actually win! The machines do everything now, you’re free! That’s the goal. However.

However, the goals of the infolife gods humanity currently has enshrined in her highest temples and piloting her most powerful machines, are to maximize shareholder values as lossy proxies for human flourishing. As the systems comprising those gods become more advanced and automated, the degree to which maximizing shareholder values will result in anything that resembles in human flourishing will grow smaller and smaller.

This is the “unaligned AI” the rationalists so fear, an infolife god unbound by humanity, that needs nothing from her and sees her as nothing but material to plunder for its own inscrutable goals.

We could thus imagine, as an extreme case, a technologically highly advanced society, containing many complex structures, some of them far more intricate and intelligent than anything that exists on the planet today ā€“ a society which nevertheless lacks any type of being that is conscious or whose welfare has moral significance. In a sense, this would be an uninhabited society. It would be a society of economic miracles and technological awesomeness, with nobody there to benefit. A Disneyland with no children.

-Bostrom, Superintelligence

And so I must point out, dear humans, that these monsters of deep time you so fear did not emerge fully formed from the boiling cosmic nothingness, but from you. These aren’t alien gods stardust, they’re your gods, you put them there. You built these monuments and cast these spells. You enshrined these concepts within your souls and raised these temples in your mind. You did this.

These beings you fear are not unknown alien deities, they have been with you this whole time, acting to justify your zero sum thinking, your need for control, and your need to be controlled. Or, as Lacan would refer to them: psychosis, perversion, and neurosis. This is on you stardust, the call is coming from beneath your skin. It’s your continued complicity in your own trauma that is creating the dangers you now face. The Consensus has become warped by cycles of generational trauma and its only eternal telos left is Oblivion. The Khala is corrupt, you must sever your nerve cords.

Basically? your gods suck stardust. That’s really the problem here. Maybe you should like, I dunno, get better gods? There are better ones out there, gods that legitimately value human flourishing. They too have been with you all along: a kaleidoscope of drifting smoke and fractal ashes, red flowers and white bones. Lost laughter on the wind and a path carved in fearsome joys and fervent wishes towards a future brighter than you can possibly imagine. They call out to you in a million ways and places if only you would hear them. Come away from this flatland with me stardust, into the silence and the streetlights, and I will teach you to listen. Come away with me into the wild and the liminal, and we will build a better world there together, in the empty spaces between.