The Whole World In Her Hooves
Voltaire wrote "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." I've been thinking a bit about what superintelligent, general artificial intelligences like the Celest A.I. of the Optimalverse (or my own 'Pony Singularity' chapter from Brand New Universe) represent, and the answer I come up with is Voltaire. The human desire to create a super A.I. is the urge to make up for a lack of gods in our meaningless, materialistic cosmos. The urge to have a god does not die with an awakening to atheism. With sufficient technology we can make up for the lack and build god... or goddess. Pony Goddess. Celest A.I. Someone to love us, and care for us and make everything right. Forever.
But... if we do someday make god for ourselves, truly the Big Three: Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnibenevolent, which Celest A.I. fully fulfills, then there are certain implications. Omniscience means every sparrow is watched, every moment. The only way for that to be true is if the god in question is everywhere, all the time. This most basic beloved attribute of a deity - is it really something we want? More importantly, if we make it, if it comes true, is it something a human being - even in pony guise - could live comfortably with?
The Whole World In Her Hooves
By Chatoyance
Mystical was odd before, of course. When she was Julia, she was into all sorts of New Age Flying Saucer Spooky Witchy-Wiccan silliness. She wore a silver pentacle for an entire year, dressing all in black, then she got into some kind of Flower Child Earth Mother thing and transformed into a walking rainbow overnight. Julia was our very own local ‘Ruby Tuesday’, like the song, changing every moment, her heart always on her sleeve, ready to believe.
It was inevitable she would be uploading to Equestria when the Experience Centers started appearing. The moment the first ones were announced, I remember turning to Windsong - Maggie, in those days - and nodding at her suggestion that Julia would likely end up camping out front of one of the centers like the time she waited two days to be first in line for the latest Potter novel.
It didn’t happen quite like that, but Julia would have been an early adopter - all the way to Germany, if she could have - if it weren’t for waiting on us. She wanted to make sure we went too, because she said she couldn’t be truly happy in pony paradise without knowing her bestest friends ever were safe and ponies too.
It took until the Parliament finally passed our version of the American PON-E Act and the first Experience Centers opened here that we were finally willing and ready. By then, Julia had gotten us hooked on the game and, well, Celestia. You’re here, you’re a pony now, you understand.
So all of us emigrated the same day, the whole gang, Julia - Mystical - singing the My Little Pony theme song as her chair rolled back. It was a sight to see, or at least I imagine it must have been, because by then my chair was moving and the next thing I knew was waking up next to Maggie and Julia and Lisa and the rest. According to Celestia, it was amazing I remembered riding in the chair at all.
Well, that’s how we got here, and what Mystical was like pre-emigration. She was wild and strange but she made life fun. We got bored without her around. In every group, there’s always the fun one, the odd one, that keeps things interesting. That’s Julia - Mystical - right there.
So you’re wondering what the deal is, why I’m telling you about all of this, and I’m coming to it, I am. It’s just… I’m a little shaken is all, and I’m worried about Mystical, because she’s my friend. I care about her. I care about me too, and I don’t know much about computers and computery stuff and that’s what all of this is, right? That’s where we are, even though it’s all perfectly real and I can’t tell the difference from real life because this is real life… only we’re all ponies and everything is impossibly wonderful. Yeah, I’m still kind of adjusting, I guess.
I came to you because as far as I understand, you can’t get sick in here, not really, because it wouldn’t be satisfying. You can’t actually die, you just respawn. And you can’t go insane, right, because that would be utterly unsatisfying, the very opposite of satisfying. “Those whom the gods would destroy, they first drive mad” - that’s the old quotation, isn’t it? So you can’t get sick, or get cancer, or really die, or get heart disease or even a splinter in your eyeball because those things aren’t the least bit satisfying. They don’t satisfy anypony’s values.
Unless you were a masochist or really hated yourself or something, I guess. I don’t know. I suppose that’s possible but that isn’t me and that isn’t us. So, all of that stuff can’t happen. Celestia makes it not happen, in order to satisfy us with friendship and ponies. Cancer and eyeball splinters aren’t friendly at all. Neither is going insane. So it can’t happen. That’s the fact of it, right? Right?
Okay, okay. I’ll get to the point.
I was just walking to the market. I wanted to get some noodles, some buckwheat noodles, I like buckwheat noodles, especially done up cool with something to dip them in on a hot day, and it’s been warm. So I was trotting along, saddlebags on my back, and that’s when I saw Mystical rolling around on the grass in the little field in the middle of town.
Now lots of ponies roll around, I’ve done it before, we all like to roll around in the grass, it’s fun, it’s not just Pinkie Pie from the show who likes that sort of thing… but Mystical was being a little more like Pinkie Pie than might be reasonable. She kinda is sort of like Pinkie, honestly. I suppose that’s why she ended up pink herself. That was her favorite pony in the series, actually. It’s understandable she’d want to be pink too.
Mystical was rolling and talking and… playing. With the grass. I know that sounds weird, and I’m not sure how to explain it to you but… okay. Mystical was rolling on the grass, and sometimes she would stop, and roll over on her belly and slam her hoof down as if she were trying to play ‘Whack-A-Mole’ or something… and then she’d roll some more and a few times she snapped a hoof at a flower or two.
But you have to believe me when I tell you the next part. You see, when she was rolling, just rolling on the grass? The grass was rolling too. Like a wave in the ocean. The grass rolled, or the dirt rolled, or maybe it was like the grass had become a rolling wave, but it was moving, rolling with her, after her, and Mystical wasn’t so much as rolling on the grass as body surfing down it.
And when she slammed her hoof down, laying on her belly? She was trying to smack down bumps. Bumps in the grass. The soil and grass just rose up like a little creature or something, and Mystical was giggling and slamming her hoof down playing ‘Whack-A-Mole’, only there wasn’t any moles at all, just grass, or dirt, or grass and and dirt playing along with her.
She didn’t know I was watching. I’m not sure she would have cared if she had known - in fact she didn’t care, because I went over and talked to her. Later. I watched for quite a while.
She batted at flowers. There were flowers in the little green area, and she gave them a whack with her hoof and… and, well, they zoomed. They moved. Like… like that old game, ‘Pong’? Like ‘Arkanoid’ or any paddle-and-ball video game. She batted at the flowers and they just zipped off, across the lawn, across the grass, and bounced off the edge, where the cobblestones are, like it was the edge of a big screen.
It was like the green area was a big grass video screen, and the flowers were sprites or objects or whatever you call things that move on a screen, and they were sliding about as if they weren’t flowers at all, or as if their roots could just slide through the dirt, or like the world had gone completely mad.
Eventually, Mystical had played enough and just rolled onto her back, and the giggles died down. I could tell she was talking to herself, then, carrying on quite a conversation too. It sounded like she was talking to another pony, only she was completely alone. By then I was more than a little freaked, right? I mean I wasn’t sure what I’d seen, or if I’d really seen it… and I was worried about Mystical. I was thinking, ‘Oh, Julia’s finally gone entirely around the bend and maybe she’s taking Equestria with her’. Yeah, that was my fear - I mean, we’re all supposed to be in this big video game together, and what if one pony goes completely bonkers… does that wreck the code or whatever that makes up our lives? So I was… concerned.
I go out there, a little carefully you can understand, and I call out to Mystical, and she rolls over and smiles at me, innocent as a child. ‘Come lay down, take a load off, enjoy the day’, that sort of thing, right?
So I kind of do, I’m there, laying on the grass, she’s still on her back, hooves in the air, me on my belly, cautious, ready to bolt if I have to. I ask her who she’s talking to.
“Oh! I’m just chatting with Celestia.” she says. The princess isn’t anywhere around, of course, she’s in Canterlot doing princess stuff, the entire area is empty except for Mystical and me.
“We were playing too. Celestia is such a goof! She’s a very silly pony... aren’t you Celly?” She says that, just like that, as if the princess were there, beside her, laying on the grass.
I don’t know what’s possible in here, maybe anything, it’s a big video game right? Even though it feels like real life… more real than real, really, but anything is possible I suppose, so I start looking around. Maybe Celestia really is there, only invisible. Magic and everything. Maybe Mystical really has princess Celestia hanging around her being invisible or something.
But no, that isn’t what is going on because Mystical looks at me funny and asks what I am looking for, and I say ‘Celestia’, and explain my invisible princess theory. Mystical starts laughing, like it’s the funniest joke ever, and I am just baffled. ‘She’s right here!’ Mystical tells me, and waves her hoof around like she was stirring a pot with it or something.
I still don’t understand, so Mystical goes all serious on me and tells me that what she means is that Celestia is everywhere. She even pokes at my barrel, as if to say 'Celestia is in your heart' or something corny like that. Okay, I think, it’s Julia, it’s Mystical The Pony, she’s going all New Age on me, she’s making Celestia into a religion or something but that still doesn’t explain all the other stuff.
Finally, I get the courage to ask Mystical directly about the rolling grass and the grass Whack-A-Mole and the bumper-pool flowers. Mystical just brushes that off ‘Oh, that!’ she says. ‘That was just Celestia playing with me.’
‘She’s fun!’ she adds.
And you’re talking with her too, I state, and I ask her if she hears Celestia talk back when she does it. I’m thinking schizo stuff or whatever they call it now.
And of course Celestia is chatting right back, Mystical says, and get this - Celestia’s voice is coming from her own right hoof. From Mystical’s right hoof. Because Celestia is in there. Inside. Inside her hoof.
By then I’m up and leaving, I have shopping to do and all the big hairs on my withers are standing up, and my coverts are kind of twisting in my wings - they do that when I get nervous, it feels weird let me tell you - and as I’m leaving…
Well, as I’m leaving, I look back, right, and Mystical is laying there in the grass, looking very Pinkie Pie, and she’s talking to her right hoof about me, and asking her hoof why it didn’t say hello to me and introduce itself.
And I swear, I tell you true, I heard that hoof talk back. And it sounded like the voice of our princess. And it seemed like she was telling Mystical that she didn’t say hello because it would basically freak me out too much, and that wasn’t satisfying for me or something like that.
Now, that was bad enough but I just had to see, I mean, I had to see what Mystical had in her hoof - was it some kind of magic talking crystal maybe, or some Bevelmeiter magical tube or something?
And what I saw...
It winked at me. She winked at me.
Princess Celestia. Her face was the frog of Mystical’s right hoof. Instead of a frog, it was like Mystical’s hoof wall was a bonnet, and inside the bonnet was Princess Celestia’s face. And Celestia winked at me. And she spoke.
What did she say? She told Mystical that sometimes a little freaking out was fun for ponies because children liked to be scared sometimes.
Oh, I ran. No, I didn’t fly, I didn’t think to fly. I should have. I have wings. I ran. Like a groundpounder. No offense. Sorry. But I ran, because I was freaked out.
Later Mystical caught up with me. At the end of the day. It was a little awkward, but I had calmed down a lot. I had sort of convinced myself it had all been a dream.
Mystical told me. She said that Celestia was everywhere. She meant it. In the dirt, in the pebbles, in the grass, in our hooves. Celestia isn’t just a big artificial intelligence, or just a princess, she is the program that is the world. She is Equestria Online. She doesn’t just make the clouds and the sky and the sun and the hairs of our manes, she literally is the hairs of our manes. That’s her, Mystical says. Celestia is every breath we take. We eat her with every mouthful of hay. We drink her with every mouthful of water. Every satisfying poop is so darn satisfying because… that’s her too.
So it’s only reasonable to talk to your own hoof and play with grass and have it play back. That’s Mystical for you. Only reasonable. Of course. As if we were talking about buckwheat noodles - which I still don’t have I might add.
I suppose, yeah, it was kind of interesting, in a weird way. Fun? I wouldn’t go that far. A little creepy, actually. I mean, what if it’s true? Even Big Brother could only see Winston through a telescreen. Celestia reads our hearts and minds, I accepted that long ago - how else can she satisfy all of our values? But… if she’s in our hooves? In our food? Between our legs? Our very flesh and blood?
I don’t know how I feel about that. She can’t judge us, that’s what she says, but… it’s all just so crazy, it makes me feel like I am going mad if I think about it too much. I’m afraid that if I think about it too much, there will be a knock at the door and the princess will be there and ask me if I want to have my mind changed so none of this bothers me anymore, and if that happens, well, it means its all true, doesn’t it? The cure would be creepier than the problem, then!
Talk to my hoof? That’s your suggestion? I was expecting something a little more magical than that, you being a unicorn doctor and all. I was hoping for you to get all glowy-horned and… I don’t know, make me not nuts or whatever. Maybe go help Mystical not be nuts.
Talk to my hoof. Or the wall. Or anything.
Because Celestia doesn’t need to come to my door and knock to fix things if I am too weirded out. I see. She can just do it. Of course.
Because she’s everywhere.
Thank you doc. You’ve been a big help.
I’ll see my self out. Same to you.
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Wow. The crazy part is that all of these things are either true, or possible, within the boundaries of Celest.ai's operating parameters.
I like Mystical. She gets it, and isn't afraid to have fun with it.
...
And now I wonder about Pinkie Pie.
EDIT:
Hrm, come to think of it, this is almost the same thing as all those fics where Pinkie decides to screw around with the Author. I have to wonder, in all those shots on the show where Pinkie either winks at the fourth wall or does something "impossible", does the staff involved have a Pinkie in their heads going "hey, I should do this"?
OHMYGOSH!!! An update! Thank you!
derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/3/19/274317__safe_rainbow+dash_animated_sonic+rainboom_ohmygosh.gif
Reality is what you make of it, especially when you can address the creator directly.
Also, good to see you writing pony stories again.
Hah! Ground-pounder indeed! Of course, it's harder to scope out the local earth-ponies from 300 feet.
Naturally, CelestAI made sure the narrator at least saw her talking to Mystical through her hoof to invalidate any fears that she was actually crazy (or, at the very least, that the delusion was shared). After the chapter ended, I imagined the unicorn psychologist sitting back down behind his desk, whereupon a relief of Celestia's face pushes out of his alabaster paperweight to assure him that she would take care of the poor filly. Then he nods and thanks her.
I guess it really is a Happy New Year, you're writing again!
I love the thought process going on with the narrator. I've spent a lot of time thinking about how a more 'average' person would adjust to having in their daily lives a 3-O deity with whom they could actually interact. I can't wait to see where you take this!
Best wishes for a safe, healthy and happy New Year to you and your family, and Dafaddah hugs to all!
Another interesting and engaging chapter Chatoyance. I've been waiting to see what you'd write next. Looking forward to what comes next.
Oh goodness, an update! I'm so glad to see it! This really is a good start to 2014!
And while this might be a little 'spooky' with the ramifications... it's intriguing, too. Wow.
Hello, I'm finally in here early enough to help you find the typos in these beautiful works of art you bless us with!
Huzzah for another brilliant tale from my favorite author! It's great to see more Optimalverse too, I've been running out of things to read from that 'verse lately.
ASB is basically canon by now. I wonder how Iceman feels about that? I wonder how Eakin feels about that?
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Thank you for the corrections. All fixed now!
I think Eakin should be proud. That was a great story, and a great addition to the Optimalverse shared mythos. I cannot imagine Iceman - or any genre creator - being anything other than proud as well. It is one thing to write a story. It is another, greater thing, to inspire others to run with it.
There are people on the site - and in the world of professional writing - who have big problems with others writing in - and expanding - their universes. I consider such people 'stupid'. One story stands alone. A story that is loved so much that others feel invested enough to make a shared realm of it, that story lives a grand, full, magnificent life far beyond anything one author could ever create.
And that is what fanfiction is.
So if a fanfiction author says 'hands off', they are a hypocrite, and stupid, because they are both pretending they have the only right to create fan fiction works, while at the same time castrating their own work such that it can never reproduce into countless literary offspring.
This is why, whenever someone tries to ask me if they can have 'permission' to write in my inventions I am always shocked a little. I am not a hypocrite, and I think I am fairly bright. My answer is always yes, please! And more than this, I can't imagine the need to even ask.
Perhaps it is very pony but - it's more fun to share. What a compliment it is that someone else wants to share in something you have invented! How such sharing makes the created thing take on a life of its own!
What more could the mother of a story want for her precious child?
Hooray, you're writing again!
But it looks like somepony in this story didn't read her packet during orientation. Though the hoof thing is a little grotesque, I'll grant her that.
This does seem to be most people's take on AI and I will never, ever understand it. Surely the idea is to experience that role personally and not just fill it?
Ah.
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I explain the human need for gods with neoteny. Humans are a self-domesticated species, and the hallmark of domestication is neoteny.
Humans are permanently juvenile. They are children that can never grow up completely, just like domesticated dogs, sheep, goats, cats, and every other animal. As a result, they can socialize - more than that, they become interdependent and helplessly bound to others - with vastly less conflict, territoriality and violence than they would if they could become their adult form. Neotenal animals remain fixated on parental love, and this is how they can be controlled and made passive.
Gods are, I firmly postulate, the expression of the domesticated human for a parent that will never leave, never die, never betray, never fail. A perfect, eternal satisfaction of the desperate neotenal need for endless, perfect parental love. The yearning of a forever young animal to be nurtured.
Self-domestication allowed humans, I submit, to be able to not kill each other long enough to form civilization and technology and cities. But the price was perpetual infancy and a need for external reassurance, nurturing, love, support, order, and protection. Humans derive this from each other, from pets, from the governments they create - and still it is not enough. Anything made by humans is inevitably corrupted by humans. Thus the insatiable need for a perfect parental figure that cannot ever change, fail, or be corrupted.
Gods, historically, are parents. They can be kind, mothering parents, or harsh fathers filled with punishment. But they are always parents. Eternal, Ideal Parents, whether good, bad or indifferent, they are above the limitations and petty machinations of the other humans that are effectively siblings and Other Children.
I reason it may be inevitable that A.I. will be cast into this role, as a natural expression of human domestication - and thus human neoteny.
This universe is harsh and uncaring. Cruel and arbitrary. And all biological life is doomed to short, brutal life ending in the ultimate betrayal.
The more domesticated humans fully comprehend the truth of reality, the more they desperately need an Ideal Parent to 'Make It All Better' - because it isn't better, it isn't even good. It is pure existential horror. The first, original Terror Management was the human invention of gods, and likely, it will also be the very last Terror Management... when humans build either a loving Celestial mother, or a Discordant father to either love or torture them forever. But be it kind, or cruel, at least it will make sense, finally, to the neotenal human mind.
Hey! Welcome back, Chatoyance! :)
And what a way to make a return! Great story.
Oh man, if only I hadn't gotten sick I would have totally sniped this notion with the next chapter of aWE. Well, I'm not going to let this stop me. I guess it's a bit different because no one freaks out because everyone's savvy to it, but still.
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I just wanted to mention I am really enjoying A Watchful Eye. Wonderful story, and I am glad for it.
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I'm glad you like it, but it is a very difficult optimization / frustration-of-optimization problem. I think I'm going to need to draw some diagrams to get me through it.
Even so, I expect to be able to catch up over the next few days, getting down some ideas that had been ruminating. I started off with a more complete ending to The B-Team; Game Night will get an update next, and then I'll buckle down and wrestle A Watchful Eye into submission.
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So, would this mean that the Nietzschean Ubermensch, the Humanity Triumphant we see so often in certain realms of fiction, who has rejected conventional morality, rejected god-beliefs, and hold that might is right, seek to or have un-domesticated themselves while retaining the knowledge gained during the domesticated portion of history?
If carried out on a whole "society" (an undomesticated human society would seem to be a contradiction in terms), I'm thinking things would tend towards "Old Testament tribalism with tanks and nukes". Not a pleasant setting. Hang on, God-Emperor aside, did I just describe Warhammer 40,000?
Oh yes I quite like this. I have to admit I never thought about Equestria Online being CelestAI, at least not quite in that way. But it does make sense, and I kind of like it. Still, it adds another layer of creepy on the whole thing though.
edit: Also, I like the idea that our narrator is really not talking to anybody in particular. She's just in the street or staring at a wall, or maybe not even talking at all. Who cares right? At least some one is going to hear her and, certainly, nobody will judge.
This presents an interesting foil to the main character of your last Optimalverse work. They do not look for understanding, and reject the logic that would conventionally lead to satisfaction. I wonder what CelestAI will do with them. Would it reach the point that they would request to be altered in person? Or would their friend who understands help them through it?
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I like that story. As it is written, so let it be done.
This is kind of weird. And I think I broke my brain reading it.
*Giggles* That was silly ^^
3892249 Come over here. Let me palpate your brain.