This is going to be a long post guilty of the verbosity Srid has mentioned…so sorry, feel free to skip it lol.
I am glad that Srid knocked down Zulip. I wasn’t surprised because I knew he wasn’t free. If somebody claiming AF had carried this out then that would have been more of a difficult discrepancy to take and may have damaged my validity of AF or of the PCE being possible as a permanent state.
I gleaned some other stuff from it too, again there is always something to cast a light into one’s inner workings.
I had communicated a few times in discussions with ‘Srid’ and in my mind I thought of us like beginning of potentially new friends, we had a lot of common interest points. I knew he was a way superior developer to me too, so I looked up to him in a way I noticed that I am prone to as regards people of exceptional intelligence or great skill at some other discipline (that could be a sport or something too not just realms of learning as I see myself already impressed hearing about @Kub933 being a BJJ teacher). I am constantly going to Srid’s programming pages and trying to learn Haskell and play with the stuff he has done.
His total disregard for this safe place I had benefited from and zero intention of communicating with me made me realise there was no ‘relationship’…at all. As I had never had any problem with his posts, as I had mentioned before on the forum before things escalated, they didn’t bother me I was no enemy to him. I thought he would have been comfortable reaching out to me or communicating to me what had happened, as he must of had my email address on the app but he never did. He didn’t even see me as an individual as some ally either.
I didn’t agree with the majority of stuff he posted but it was not a problem, I thought the solution was going to be something like people have more granular control over what they receive updates for. I had been busy that week and I came back and the app wasn’t working and I had no idea what the hell was going on, luckily I was able to reason out where else the group might have regathered.
It helped me identify my needing to feel connected and sort of worshipping of a superior intellect ties into my own identities of exceptionalism. I thought because he is smarter than me he is then automatically a better human than me. I know there are no relationships in actuality though, I can recall this from my longest PCE. However, for somebody on the actualist path I thought maybe they would have cultivated some form of fellowship regard for me. I don’t see any evidence of fellowship regard in action but this could be my misinterpretation.
I am pretty certain that like myself Srid has these same identifications relating to intellectual exceptionalism. Would he ever openly admit it? I don’t know. I think the fundamental difference between us though is that I intend to attack more internally than externally, I am not as defensive as Srid, I am more prone to attack myself than others. Also that I am not as goal orientated.
Notice the use of unofficial denotes that there is no validity to what we are doing here. Seems quite an unusual word to have to add.
I almost imagine Srid has a Kanban or Agile project backlog clearly defining the goals and on there is have a PCE, become free, etc in the way one would have outstanding development tasks. In a very goal orientated perspective. The code is not complete it doesn’t compile, the work in-between of some non-compiling code has no value if it doesn’t do what the original goal set out to do. He seems to have quite a strong discernment as to the value of things. I wonder if he had grown up in a council estate like me full of people of such varying intellect and skill, would he have seen no value to these people, as though there was nothing else they could know that he doesn’t or that they have no other skills they might have that he doesn’t, an undetected intellectual arrogance.
So, as none of us have reached the end goal of being AF then none of the work in-between has any value or any validity, I am like this non-compiling code (sorry if the analogy doesn’t fit quite right).
The thing I have noticed about exceptionally intelligent people (inc. my friend who introduced me to AF and taught me to program etc) is that they seem to have a strong sense of certainty in their worldview and the decisions they make. Even my friend once he decided AF wasn’t valid that was it. He was right, nobody else could have a say. He has decided that anti-natalism is more valid, case closed nothing can refute his superior intellectual choice.
I am curious as to whether Srid has ever experienced self-doubt and if he has or hasn’t would he ever be comfortable enough to just openly talk about it. I am pretty sure he would flip back to the “end goal” and make some excuse nothing in-between is of importance because it hasn’t resulted in that “end goal”. It is like nothing else can have any help or value. A closed off system that can’t see tangible benefits in the spaces in-between because he can’t measure and intellectually know our subjective benefits gained from interacting on this forum and our own application of the method, it is not easily empirically measurable to him. Maybe if we had Neuralink and there was some data dump that showed our subjective benefits he would be stoked and interested.
In my profession I have worked with a lot of people on the Autistic Spectrum and I have sometimes wondered if Srid is possibly autistic.
I can personally say this forum has been of great benefit as was the Zulip one before, and whether they were censored or not made not one iota of difference to me. I too prefer no censoring but I don’t hide behind it as an excuse not to genuinely, honestly and openly interact with the rest of you.
I can relate to his concerns regarding a public of private forum too. My sensitivity to ever be found out as intellectually wrong or conceptually misunderstanding some part of AF, or even misreading an individual’s post and making some kind of mistake made me not even interact with any of the forums for years. I was on the Topica forum and Yahoo forums too when Richard was around and I could have asked so many questions and benefited in other ways but I was to proud and defensive to do, so this behaviour extended for a very long time. I am not afraid any more to be out in the open as regards what I think, feel or have experienced. I have nothing to hide anymore, it is liberating.
My eldest brother was a pathological liar and would often steal from me etc. At the beginning I was too afraid to ever confront him, there was a 10 year age gap, so he was quite threatening and a big difference. As I got older though I got braver in this regard and began to confront him when I had evidence proving he had taken something, even seeing my things at his place. Even still he would deny the evidence and not in anyway apologise. He would flip it onto you like it was your problem. It’s like me beating somebody to death or raping them and saying well it’s your problem, what are you complaining for, an AF person wouldn’t mind getting beaten or raped, are you triggered? One time my brother even said “Let bygones be bygones” and I retorted with “Only the victim has the authority to say that not the perpetrator.”
I don’t think there is anything we can do or say that will have any validity to Srid but you know what that is fine, it has no significance in our own internal journeys. I wish him all the best and that is that.
