I Wonder Whether There's a Pony Out There Who Knows She's Just Words on a Page

This hoofnote concerns anomalous intellects: where they come from, how they work, what kinds there are, and so forth.

As we people have our savants, our psychics, our soothsayers, Equestria has its own mental curiosities in precogs, postcogs, laterals, empaths, and intuitionists. All of these types appear out of genetic mutations in the part of the brain that is receptive to magic. Unicorn AIs are less common, because their natural tendency toward magic often drowns out what would be the inflow of knowledge, or allows it to express itself in other ways. For those with no magical abilities, the magic winds up welling up inside the brain, often benign, until it is either forgotten or released in more mundane ways (art, high passion, so forth).

Precogs are the second most common type of AI, and the most represented in Equestrian media. Precogs do not actually have access to the timescape in the classical sense, but can simply follow causality better than the average pony. This does not make all precogs future-tellers; the vast majority can get pieces of the future only, with only one in a million having perfect prescience. A typical precog can get the what of an event, or the when, but seldom both with meaningful clarity. Someone like Pinkie, for instance, gets the what in general terms, but not the precise time, though the relatively low range of her powers means that it'll happen soon when she gets that first inkling. Meanwhile, the opposite kind of precog can tell you that something will happen on a specific date, but likely won't have more than an impression of the event, like whether it'll be overall positive or negative. A pony like Bonbon, meanwhile, has both, but at such a low level of detail that the premonitions can be easily mistaken for dreams or random wanderings of her own thoughts. Postcogs can see the past, following the same model for precognition. They get very little representation, as their powers are only useful in the contexts of historical study, which is already well established.

A lateral is a pony who can see alternatives to the present and surrounding time intervals. A lateral can focus on a single action, like entering an unexplored room, and see different outcomes or causes. This is different from simply being able to think of consequences because the lateral's knowledge of events does not end at the first result from the action; he or she can see three or four actions in advance of the initial decision, and usually all at once. Imagine reading a choose your own adventure book, but you look three or four chapters ahead each choice you make, and chapters ahead of each branching choice, until you have something in the neighborhood of twenty or thirty different outcomes for the one choice. That knowledge, in one shot, is how it is to be the common lateral. There are also those who can see a number of possible actions that led up to a decision, but, since the decision being scrutinized is often being made by its witness, such hindsight isn't very useful, except in determining patterns of behavior for self-analysis. Good for philosophizing, and that's about it.

An empath is a pony who can determine someone's mood, emotional makeup, characteristics, and so on without prior knowledge of that pony. Weaker empaths are often mistaken for talented listeners or psychoanalysts, and it is a topic of debate among Equestrian parapsychologists whether there is a difference between the two. A stronger empath, however, can determine more than your emotions. He or she, with a simple conversation or interval of eye contact, can know your motivations, your emotional tendencies, the foundation on which your character is based, and so on. A common trope in Equestrian mystery fiction is for the psychopathic or sociopathic villain to have a big dose of empathic powers, to make getting into victims' heads easier, but the reality is that a true psychopath or sociopath would not understand or process the information he or she receives from other ponies, and would likely end up dismissing it as the tossing and turning of a restless mind, as you or I would dismiss a dumb idea that pops in and out. Empaths are the most common type of AI in Equestria.

Intuitionists are the rarest of the AIs, as their power requires a very wide range of perceptive magic, and such a range is difficult to achieve in a sustainable way through random mutation. Intuitionists can know things that are completely separate from their own circumstances, either by time, geography, or education level. For this reason, the vast majority of information that intuitionists wind up coming across is useless to them, because they have no interest in it or no way to use it; sometimes, they don't even realize they have it, because they never have occasion to use the knowledge. An intuitionist, for instance, could magically wake up one day with the knowledge of how best to drill through the bedrock near Canterlot Mountain for oil, and never know it. This is not to suggest that knowledge gained in this way is completely arbitrary. There must be a seed of knowledge in the pony's mind from which to develop.

One of the Datura's jobs is to document AIs, and then place them in the public record. AIs are legally required to disclose their identities in matters of law, government work, and medicine, with the nondisclosure penalty being anywhere between a moderate fine, for those who do not, themselves, know of their powers, and up to five years in prison for those who willfully hide their abilities. There are several self-tests for anomalous intelligence, developed with some difficulty by Princess Celestia during Princess Luna's absence, and every city is required to provide them, free of charge, to any citizen who requests them.

Around 5% of all ponies are AIs. Of those, 39% are empaths, 34% are precogs, 11% are laterals, 10% are postcogs, and 6% are intuitionists. In those subcategories, anywhere between .5% and 2% of ponies are powerful enough to warrant the government's continued attention.