Wordcels vs. Shape Rotators, Explained
They didn't speak; they changed reality such that they had spoken. - Pratchett
I WONDER WHAT HE’S REFERRING TO.
Recently, Marc Andreessen aka pmarca on Twitter began making fun of Wordcels1. In a few short hours, his Wordcel-hating tweets went viral, with everyone from Elon Musk to Jordan Peterson piling on.
Hilariously, the online Twitter mob accused Jordan Peterson of being a Wordcel himself!
But what’s a Wordcel? What does it have to do with the Woke movement? And most importantly, why should anyone care about what Marc Andreessen thinks?
The Origins of pmarca
Marc Andreessen is the person behind the pmarca account. He has two major accomplishments under his belt.
The first accomplishment was creating Netscape, one of the internet’s first web browsers back in the 90s. His second accomplishment was founding Andreessen Horowitz, the most powerful Venture Capital firm on the planet.
The most powerful VC on the PLANET?! Yes.
Andreessen Horowitz aka a16z has been an early investor in Twitter, Facebook, Groupon, Zynga, Y Combinator, Coinbase, Lyft, Oculus VR, PagerDuty..and if that doesn't impress you, you’re probably who he’s making fun of.
From Incel to Wordcel
Word + cel = Wordcel
Wordcel is a portmanteau. A portmanteau is a combination of two or more words that form a new word with a new meaning.
The two words that make up Wordcel are Word and cel. Word you can understand, but cel?
OK follow me here - the origin of cel is from another portmanteau; incel. An incel is a portmanteau of involuntary and celibacy. The definition of an incel is someone who is unable to get a romantic or sexual partner despite wanting one.
cel is derived from Incel | Incel = Involuntary + Celibacy
Who cares about incels? An incel drove his truck into a crowd of people in Toronto last year, so Incels aren’t exactly an inert movement, pun intended.
How Wordcels Suffer From The Nominal Fallacy
A Wordcel is someone who’s become a victim of the Nominal Fallacy.
Just because you call it Dark Matter doesn’t mean you understand it. Just because you invoke the phrase Quantum Mechanics doesn’t mean you know what’s going on beneath the hood. The nominal fallacy occurs when people name a phenomena and then mistaken believe that just because they named it that they UNDERSTAND IT.
The naming of phenomena is a human condition, because we can only hold 4-7 objects in working memory due to our innate theta-nested gamma oscillations. We can’t think of all of the variables, so we stuff ideas into words and then do math with those words; it’s kind of hilarious when you think about it.
This lie, the conflation of language with reality, even happens in math (4:24).
Language != Reality
Think of language like a microscope with very low resolution; it enables you to see things, but seeing something and understanding it are two very different things.
Language does not equal Reality. That’s a tough one for most people to grasp.
Language does not equal Reality. Reality does not conform to Language. Reality does not constrain itself to fit into whatever arbitrary 26 character set you’ve had handed down to you by Arabia. Language is but a tool of inquiry.
Think of language like a microscope with very low resolution; it enables you to see things, but seeing something and understanding it are two very different things.
Now that you understand the Nominal Fallacy, you should have a clear idea of what pmarca is getting at in the above tweet. pmarca has spent half of his natural life investing in the best companies, which also means he’s spent half of his natural life NOT investing in companies. He’s heard more pitches than most people on the planet, which gives him a sixth sense when it comes to bullshit.
Wordcels vs. Shape Rotators
Wordcels describe reality with words. Shape Rotators describe reality with shapes that rotate. HUH?!
A wordcel is someone who uses words to describe reality, which we know is stupid. When pmarca says a Shape Rotator, he means someone who doesn’t look at the names of things but rather the shapes made when constructs are related in space.
Recall that Whitehead, co-author of Principia Mathematica once said, ‘The entire characteristic of European thought consists of a series of Footnotes to Plato.”
pmarca is juxtaposing Word Users with Platonic Shape Rotators, clearly valuing Shape Rotation over Word Explaining.
Who Cares About Shape Rotation?
In data models, the information forms a shape. For data scientists, it’s the rotations of these shapes, their bisociation with other shapes, and their axes of rotation that lead to insights that transcend domains. Take a look at some data models here:
Arthur Koestler in The Act of Creation drew this out the difference between Lyrics and Chemistry over 50 years ago.
![T]here certainly is a considerable difference, in precision and... | Download Scientific Diagram](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcbd49f86-e97b-4cf3-84e3-98c08358dc1a_707x521.png "T]here certainly is a considerable difference, in precision and... | Download Scientific Diagram")
When pmarca says a Shape Rotator, he means someone who doesn’t look at the names or lyrics of things but rather the shapes made when constructs are related in space.
These shapes point to the Pythagorean Divinity of Number, that is, the creative power of shape itself to describe reality as opposed to using words to describe reality.
Are shape rotators really that powerful? Yup. More powerful than you can imagine.
For example, Castro-Chavez showed how the Genetic Code could be encapsulated in the shapes of the Hindu Swastika (their symbol of fertility) and the Chinese I-Ching (their symbolic and sequential set of change characterizations). You can see some of the shapes for yourself in the article below, Unlearnding Biology. Heck, even Terrence Mckenna tried to apply the King Wen Sequence to his Nostradamus App, Time-Wave Zero.
From Wordcel to Shape Rotator
So how might one go from a lost Wordcel using mere words to understand reality to a Shape Rotator, one who creates reality through an understanding of shape?
Easy: give up language as your primary inquiry of thought. How? Recognize that none of the stories you tell yourself are true (4:50). Furthermore, recognize that language disguises thoughts (Wittgenstein).
The Shape of Music
Down the rabbit hole…
The Weaponization of Wordcels
So what? So what if some people use words and some people use shapes; both parties can describe reality equally well, can’t they? No.
You see, when language is invoked, emotion is also invoked (see above). Furthermore, we make decisions emotionally and rationalize them logically. Since they believe their words can accurately capture reality, they can be made to believe just about anything…and the media knows this fact intimately.
The way that Wordcels are weaponized is:
1) They believe their language describes reality.
2) They can’t see the emotion that is smuggled into language.
How is emotion smuggled into language?
Consider three leaders: a President, a Strongman, and a Dictator2. All three terms might be used to describe THE SAME PERSON depending on which side of the conflict you’re on. Eric Weinstein explains…
We don’t die from what kills us; we die from what keeps us alive. - Quinn C. Martin
Wordcel was coined by roon aka tszzl https://twitter.com/tszzl
Bertrand Russell
Ironically, this explanation feels wordcel because you're going too far to explain what a shape rotators is. It simply has to do with different kinds of intelligence, i.e. shape rotators having spatio-visual intelligence and wordcels only having verbal intelligence.