Hello!

I'm working on a First Contact fic in which the human race have discovered how to travel to other universes through black holes. They eventually find the MLP universe and a short while later (relatively of course) they find Equus (or w/e other name you prefer, I'ts not set in stone yet). They send specialized First Contact AI over, á la Darwin IV (which is the documetary that sparked the idea for this fic). First Contact Shenanigans ensues, especially since I want to have a language barrier and want to explore some of the other races on Equus; some of which, are not so intelligent .

What I want from you here in this fine group, is help with the technical details and with idea churning. While I consider myself a moderately knowledgeable and intelligent young man , I still feel that there are soo many people out there that know things better than me. I don't want to skimp the details on this fic, I want it as beliavable and "scientific" as possible.
And more to the point of this group, I want to make a fic that is thought inspiring and interesting to read, and again, I feel that while I can accomplish that on my own if I try hard, I feel it would become even better if I got help from others that are more accomplished than me.

And if anyones up for editing and such that would be nice too, but for that there are better groups (if they aren't too busy ).

Anyways, here's a link to my outlines or what you want to call them (I don't even have one chapter finished yet.. ). Any critisism is welcome, good or bad .

Excuse my rambling up there, but there's no preview for new threads apparently, so if there are any errors or things that need clarification, just tell me and I'll fix it .

Well you have no link to your outlines

Would be nice to think about what parameters Darwin IV is operating under; e.g. what the AI can do, what it is allowed to do (think different AI settings for different levels of hostility), even how the programming of the AI would influence its actions (e.g. logic-based AI is generally not very good at moral issues).

Another idea to think about is what information the AI is giving back to its handlers, and how that information influences first contact (e.g. what does the information leave out that is important? Does the AI's presentation of the information influence its handler's choices?)

That's one way of making your fic different from the 234829890853485 first-contact fics out there.

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Damn...

You know, I had an idea just like this one quite a while ago.

It was way back when I was just becoming a brony, before I'd even discovered FiMFiction.

Damn, I feel kind of nostalgic.

2620896 Fixed! (I got stuck editing some )

The AI's I were thinking of where the probes sent to Darwin IV .
The documentary is about an expedition to the planet Darwin IV, a fictional planet that scientist designed to simulate these kind of scenarios. You should watch the documentary if you got the time, it's a bit old, and oozes pop-sciency stuff, but it's pretty interesting what they've come up with.
The AI's in the documentary have the intelligence equvalent of five-year olds, and the two surviving (of three), have two complimentary "personalities": one curious, and one cautious.

I've unfortunately not come far in specifying the specs of my AI's, but I imagine human like robots at least.
They will have tech focused on finding interesting things. In my outlines I have them notice things like jewelry as a sign of Intelligence and culture. They mark these interesting things in their sensory feed and then send it on, for further analysis by humans (transhumans), and more advanced AI's.
And maybe I'll have it so there are different AI's for different tasks, one that is focused on taking in as much as possible, while others focus on interesting things; some that hang back in dangerous situations and some that are almost brash in their actions (not without serious computing of risks beforehand, but that's a whole 'nother story )

Hmm, A thought just hit me.. I've set the humans to be highly advanced in this setting, as to justify the whole "jumping through black holes" thing, but maybe that will be a bit hard to write? It will at least be hard to make sure the humans aren't completely OP...

Gah, I'm so happy I did this, I'm already sprouting ideas again (I've been in a bit of a stand still..) .

EDIT:

234829890853485 first-contact fics

Where? I've only seen like Lone Ranger and one other. Oh and Twilight makes First contact too

Oh, another thing: I hope it's alright that I include your suggestions in my notes, so I have them all collected. I would even credit you if that's alright.

2620915 Indeed, I've had the idea of a First Contact story in my head a loong time, since I've always liked world building, and that documentary fascinates me every time I watch it (at least three times so far ).
Then it just so happened that I read the Lone ranger fic and then the Darwin documentary came up on the radar at the same time somehow.. It just went *click* in my head: "I need to make a First Contact fimfic ).

Ah, damn I should've edited that instead of double posted... oh well .

2620953 No need to even credit man, it's just exchange of ideas.

Well in my view every human in equestria'/'pony in earth' fic is a first contact fic (first contact doesn't actually have to start with humans dropping down in spaceships). But even if not... hell, there's a first contact fic on the feature box right now (the Neil Armstrong one).

It's nice to see you trying to differentiate the AIs. It's nice to see the AIs will act differently; but I think it's better to have the AIs think differently, both against each other and against their handlers. What an AI considers interesting should not be the same thing as what a human finds interesting, and it would be nice to see some conflict with regards to that. Similarly, what an AI stresses as important should not be the same thing as what a human finds important.

I don't see why advanced humans would be harder to write compared with anything else.

Good luck in your planning/writing!

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I see what you mean, I just kind of differentiate between HiE, and First Contact; but the distinction I guess is more "random appearance of human" vs "deliberate advances towards meeting a new culture/race". Not to mention that most of those are pretty unrealistic in terms of culture clash, language barriers and so on.

I will definitely think about having the AI's thinking differently than humans, though I'm not entirely sure how... Keep in mind that their AI would be specifically programmed to highlight interesting things, which would include things that humans would find interesting; it does not exclude things that seem uninteresting at first for humans however, but there would need to be a good explanation why the AI would focus on that specific thing.

As for humans, the most prominent thing I'm afraid of is hand waving things as "too technologically advanced as to even consider explaining" and the humans just being much too OP in that they have tech that can do a whole lot of "impossible things" and seemingly infinate resources.
I mean, as I envision them, if the Equusians make too much fuss, they could just envelop the entire planet and crush it, they are very pacifistic, so they wouldn't, but the possiblilty of something similar is there though...

EDIT: Thanks btw . I get more inspired to write from comments like yours!

I really like this idea - There aren't nearly enough good first contact stories that creatively examine what it would be like to encounter Equestria if it really were a real place.
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Given what we understand of the requirements for energy use and mastery over spacetime and quantum gravity for traversing rotating Kerr black holes like that, any civilization that could do it would be extremely OP. They would be Kardashev III "Star Men" by that point, as per this painting I'm working on:

Not that they would necessarily be totally unrecognizable as (having been) human, but they'd be much better off as shadowy forces in the background.
If you wanted normal humans in the story, you could make up new physics that lets you "borrow" energy from other natural processes (these discoveries happen, after all) and transduce it into, say, antigravity to keep you from getting ripped apart by the tides or the firewall before you can slip through the ring singularity, or into negative matter to hold open more ordinary wormholes, or have humans encounter another, more advanced civilization whose technology is simply on loan.

Some other, possibly more interesting takes might be to have the AIs be an independent strain of Von Neumann machines who have just been let free to explore on their own, and the post-humans will collect all their findings through some kind of conservation-of-information shenanigans at the literal End of Time, or something. Like they sent through a little seed that unpacks into a receiver, and then a stream of signals for a one-time pad that program it with the knowledge it needs to reproduce into an exploration fleet (the closest thing we know to a white hole - a black hole portal exit - is the Big Bang, so the seed might have to be dormant for quite some time...Maybe it has to extract the signals out of the microwave background radiation or something, with them stretched out by the expansion such that it's only able to awaken when the universe is primed in general for other, similarly complex objects like civilizations to also compress that much information in one local area).
The story could be about both the discovery of Equestria, and the self-discovery of the AIs as they meet a civilization similar to what their own used to be like, and come to understand their own origins better, especially as they notice all the parallels between the two worlds. Because the AIs would have been left free to reproduce and develop on their own, in concert with the environment they draw resources from, their thinking and behavior would probably be very "organic" and not like how people (inaccurately) stereotype machines at all.

I think most of the fun, though, would be in getting creative later on with how a quadrupedal society would develop. We take a lot of things for granted in our own world, but if you step back and think about them, they're really contingent on the kind of planet we live on and the kind of creatures we are. I often like to imagine I'm explaining what I'm doing or where I'm going to a hypothetical alien or caveman, and it's a really good way to stay mindful of how things came to be and how they're all dependent on one another.

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One thing kinda confuses me. Wouldn't the AI have the ability to call home whenever a problem rises? In the simulated documentary, the Darwin AI was light years away from the closest humans, meaning contact with the home base meant waiting years.

In your scenario that does not seem to be the case. I can see why they would send an AI first, but they wouldn't let it act on its own.

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There aren't nearly enough good first contact stories that creatively examine what it would be like to encounter Equestria if it really were a real place.

Exactly, that was what I felt as well. Unfortunately I feel I don't have enough experience and confidence yet to do it properly. That's why I'm looking for help though . Speaking of which, I've seen many of your posts here in the group, and this comment of course . You would probably be an awesome pre-reader/idea giver w/e you want to call it..
What I'm getting at is: Would you like to help more on this? As in, in contact pretty often and reading through new additions (not proof reading if you don't want to) and coming up with new ideas and so on).

This is open for everyone too, I want more help, and I like collaborating on things, so if you want in to collaborate on this story, tell me .

Some other, possibly more interesting takes might be to have the AIs be an independent strain of Von Neumann machines who have just been let free to explore on their own

Hmm, maybe the trip through is so intense, that they only pack Von Neumann's and maybe a couple of heavily modded humans that can whitstand the trip. The humans would be extremely intelligent, and would be the ones that "lead" the expedition, and the AI's would have about our magnitude of intelligence (albeit with less biases and such ofc). Some worldbuilding could maybe be that AI's are "supressed" so that they won't have the same intelligence as humans regardless of technology. Or maybe "humans" are an amalgamation of humans and AI, and "regular" AI does not have a human to increase it's intelligence.

I think most of the fun, though, would be in getting creative later on with how a quadrupedal society would develop.

Yes, this is what I'm trying to focus on. What I think I will do, is to be somewhat vague about how they got through the Black hole, and just tell it off as them having better knowledge on black holes then we do.

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Keep in mind, the AI's would be very intelligent, along the lines of todays humans or perhaps better, and that humans are even more intelligent through genemodification, cybernetic enchancement and so on. This is a civilization that can get through black holes after all .
I used the Darwin AI's as more of an example, sorry for any confusion.

2628376
I was kinda under the impression the notion here was a story with a limited AI and the ways it would interact with the ponies, the problems it will face and creative ways to get around its own limitations.

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Ah nope, sorry .
I might want to make a story like that though, I'm not entirely sure where I want to go with it.
As Balthasar said though, what I really want, regardless of the setting and background story, is to have a

good first contact [story] that creatively examine what it would be like to encounter Equestria if it really were a real place.

(best way to say it )

2620826 I've been waiting for this for ages!

2628612 I couldn't wait, so I took it into my own hands .
I can't promise it will be good or even if I'm gonna finish it, but hopefully, with some help, I can make something awesome

2628376
Sure, I'd be willing to help brainstorm. This kind of esoteric stuff occupies like 90% of my waking thoughts to begin with (the rest is jokes). I'm pretty busy with freelancing almost all the time so wouldn't be able to genuinely proofread, but I'd be more than happy to let the gears turn and just ramble on regarding possible ideas.

Yes, this is what I'm trying to focus on.

I'm writing (when I can) a story with some similar themes, and you might want to check out the first and second interlude chapters for some attempts at representing a more realistic, detailed Equestria.