> Not long before I arrived in the Bay Area, I’d been involved in a minor but intense dispute with the rationalist community over a piece of fiction I’d written that I’d failed to properly label as fiction

Anyone familiar with what work this is referring to?

This one IIRC: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/the-law-that-can-be-named-is... He writes about it here, a little: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/against-truth

In general long meandering semi-factual pieces like this, with odd historical excursions, are one of his things and I don't know anyone else that does it quite the same. (Hmm... oddly enough Scott Alexander, who he cites here, also does some similarly Borgesian stuff, but with a different bent.) One of my favorite writers and I recommend pretty much everything he's done since the early 2010s.

I think it's this one: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/the-law-that-can-be-named-is...

But in general, Sam Kriss tends to weave fiction and nonfiction together in his writing.

Probably the burning man essay, which is one of the best things I've ever read online.

https://open.substack.com/pub/samkriss/p/numb-at-burning-man

Sounds self-referencial