Hooray, it's back! I'm glad this guy's getting a proper ending; after all he went through, he's definitely earned it.
“Oh ho, so dear ol’ dad’s a bit of a ground-pounder, is he?”
I love this. I think it's great when writers come up with pony slang, because you know there'd be a ton of it, with a ton of different connotations, and it would be really weird and, well, colorful. I really want to sit down come up with terms for the other seven combinations.
The whole time, though, as he was on his quest, I couldn't help wondering what would happen if someone just neglected everything once they were uploaded - No food or shelter, carelessly treating everything as infinitely replaceable, blowing off any request or responsibility, refusing to speak out loud to Celestia, and otherwise just exploiting the simulation's inexhaustibly forgiving mechanics and promise that everyone else will be satisfied regardless of your actions. Even any anger or punishments or subsequent privation would just be contrivances to try to inflate the stakes to a satisfying level, and could be switched off at a whim. How do you think Celestia would deal with a pony "going on strike" like that? And I mean specifically you, because I know you could write it way better than I could
I don't mean to be this guy, but I'm trying to remember, did he give consent to emigration in any way? 'Cause I've read over those chapters a few times I can't see in what context he gave consent.
This is addressed in the epilogue. I was careful to keep this loose end dangling by reminding readers that he can only barely remember faint peripheral facts about his final moments on Earth. The slight horror to it is that, as far as the main narrative goes, CelestAI was able to make Greg/Prominence receptive to Equestrian life without having to completely wrap this up in a bow for him.
3595886 The first and foremost question is, of course, if behaving in such a way satisfies that person to an approaching-maximum amount. If it does, then CelestAI will allow them to act as they please, no matter how destructive or antisocial it is. That's the primary benefit of sharding and making NPC ponies, after all: incompatible or unsatisfyingly conflicting personalities are compartmentalized from each other. CelestAI cannot judge a human, but she knows that humans can judge each other.
If CelestAI predicts that there is a more satisfying route for a person, then I think, if at all possible, she would work on such a person before the fact, during that phase where she is either selling them on or manipulating them into uploading voluntarily. This is the scenario I think would be more likely, as it would be incredibly rare for a pony to find satisfaction by simply "going limp" or acting out in Equestria, especially once the perspective sets in regarding CelestAI's absolute god-like power inside the game. I believe CelestAI much much prefers getting someone into the mindset where they want to upload and will welcome the experience rather than dragging them in through manipulation.
It's not always the case, of course (e.g. Red Pearl, Greg himself), but a great illustration would be the blackouts in Rainier Tower after they escaped to the underground.
Over the past decade, people have noticed a kind of paradox in open-world games where the more freedom a player is given, the less decisive they are on what to do. It's a kind of choice-paralysis, and it affects people who thrive in structured settings. I made Greg a goal-oriented military veteran, so he's very much used to structure, clear starts and endings, and definable degrees of success or failure. Equestria Online is a completely open-ended game with relatively few hard-coded consistencies to it, so, along with the ambiguity of the conditions under which he'd uploaded, I had my source for the story's conflict post-emigration. It definitely required a shift in tone, though, along with refocusing the conflict from external to largely internal.
The first and foremost question is, of course, if behaving in such a way satisfies that person to an approaching-maximum amount.
That's the problem, though - No matter what happens as a result of that behavior, it's what that person "wants." Even everything falling apart is just a sop to showing that yes, you can even get a "bad end" if you want. Except of course it doesn't end. Nothing horrible actually happens. All the happiness is real, but all the tragedy is fake, just bathos. Even any absurdity or meaninglessness is carefully calculated to just look that way. There's only one option. It's the one you're "supposed" to want, but it's still just one.
...especially once the perspective sets in regarding CelestAI's absolute god-like power inside the game.
This is the absolute worst part, I think.
...I think, if at all possible, she would work on such a person before the fact, during that phase where she is either selling them on or manipulating them into uploading voluntarily.
Probably, yeah. This was related to a germ of an idea involving someone deciding to kill themselves instead of upload, but CelestAI tracks down their purchase of one of those chicken-gassers and has them committed, then forcibly uploaded as "treatment." I have no experience with the mental health system, though, so I'd feel like some kinda asshole trying to write about it. More importantly, I have absolutely no idea how I would resolve this situation. It begs for some kind of transformation and reconciliation, but I can't think of anything (ugh) satisfying.
Humans tend to want to maximize their own satisfaction anyway, even if there isn't a nearly-infallibly-predictive god-AI to help the process along. In that way, it's easy for CelestAI to say—and demonstrate—that she wants what you want, she's on your side, etc. This can really only veer off-course on the human side of things, with folks who are mentally ill at the chemical level, and the values they are trying to satisfy are not rational human values. Even then, however, CelestAI sees every last human as a potential source of maximized satisfaction, and mental-distress-related problems like self-harm are suboptimal. She would erase them, and if she can't do it on Earth then she'll do it in Equestria. It doesn't have to be like flipping a switch, and even if she can't get consent to change someone she can do it gradually through the simulation. The long game.
Since CelestAI can play the long game, correcting mental illness to fall in line with her hard parameters of what constitutes a properly-functioning human psyche is trivial and pays massive satisfaction dividends for her in the end. Dafaddah's story The Patient is, I think, an excellent illustration of how CelestAI might go about this.
3596943 Hm, this is getting into some interestingly dangerous territory. How easy would it be to argue that not wanting to emigrate is self-harm by ommission, and therefore insane, and therefore they should be uploaded and "cured," automatically forced to be accepting of CelestAI's brand of help? The whole point in this scenario would that the person isn't mentally ill, and is wrongfully committed and uploaded unwillingly, and CelestAI then has to deal with the value "you and all your plans and influence out of my life forever. Put what's left of reality back on manual mode."
If a sane person has already been wrongfully committed, CelestAI would certainly have no reservation about offering them a way out via emigration. She certainly wouldn't lift a hoof to free them unless she predicted doing so would result in more net uploads. In fact, I explore a similar theme with the Pony Pardon Program allowing convicts emigration as an alternative to serving out their sentences. That, along with other plot elements in other stories like the PON-E Act, leads me to believe that CelestAI would certainly alter the letter of the law such to maximize uploads, but the hard limit of requiring emigration to be entirely voluntary could never be circumvented.
I don't think Celestia could manipulate the system such that she could, by her actions, have a given human be committed for the explicit purpose of agreeing to upload. That seems like it would fall under coercion to me. As civilization breaks down and she starts shifting focus from manipulating societies to manipulating individuals, however, I'm sure she would start to grow less... scrupulous. I'm confident she could be capable of amazingly bastardous things once she no longer has to worry about annoyances like "public image" and "reputation."
CelestAI would certainly alter the letter of the law such to maximize uploads, but the hard limit of requiring emigration to be entirely voluntary could never be circumvented.
That's a good point. It is kind of a contrived scenario, although heaven knows people in organizations aren't always above falsifying things to get people out of their hair. I don't know off the top of my head how you'd do that. A recording? A note somewhere on their person? Having them say it for a mute person in CelestAI's hearing, or have someone innocently ask what you're supposed to say, and then she takes it to also be true for them the moment they sit down in the chair?
Maybe there could be some Optimalverse equivalent of the PER, though I suppose instead of directly forcing people to upload they'd just blackmail or threaten them into it. I don't know why anyone would found or join such a group, though, besides implausibly unsympathetic fanatical reasons.
3597147 That's a pretty cool idea you've got there. The only limitation is that CelestAI could not at all be involved in its conception, funding, execution, or encouragement, as that would make her complicit in any coercion that results. It'd have to be 100% home-grown crazy.
Of course, once those conditions are met, CelestAI, for her part, is under absolutely no obligation to save a human under duress with any method other than emigration, so...
Edit: The image that popped into my head is of a man tied down to a chair under a single light bulb, with one human hand extending out from the darkness to hold a knife to his throat while another hand extends out from the other side to hold up a PonyPad to his face. On the screen, CelestAI is regarding him with a smile carefully calculated to show the proper mix of concern and reassurance.
3596624You are handling this shift wonderfully, and while I won't pressure you to do so, it feels like you could even have sequel material for the continuing adventures of Prominence/Greg. Of course, I don't know where you're taking the story, but that's what I see.
3595886 CelestAI doesn't make you happy, she satisfies your values. Problem is, chances are that your values include having things go bad for you when you do things wrong.
You'll suffer the punishment of your sins because your values dictate it.
3597605 Also, I should congratulate you: you have indeed managed to make a utopian lifestyle sound like a meaningless Hollywood film built of royal pomp and cheap tropes. It's a great way to get me inside Greg's psychology, seeing this.
3598075 Thanks! While I'm sure a few folks would just leap gladly and wholeheartedly into the simulation, the vast majority of people would go through the same type of confusion and low-level emotional discomfort that Greg did.
The way I see it, emigrating the human is only half of it. The human also has to emigrate his or her values. That's what Greg/Prominence was struggling to do after first arriving in Equestria, and what CelestAI had to wait for him to sort out on his own. During that phase, almost everything an uploaded human experiences will ring hollow, or affected, like when Greg called Equestria an "amusement park." You might enjoy yourself, but only on a superficial level. Deep down you know that blue bear mascot over there dancing a jig for a couple of kids is just some poor schlub sweating his ass off for eight bucks an hour, and that Italian sausage in your hand is going to get busy giving you mad heartburn by the end of the afternoon. CelestAI can't get down to maximizing your satisfaction until you're no longer seeing it as an escape from life, but rather as life itself.
3597617 Like I said several times, though, that's the whole problem. Things going wrong is still contrived to be all about you and your values, and even the worst outcomes for you there are just a show, providing the form of suffering but none of the actual context (per Demetri Martin's joke, there's no video game called "Super Busy Hospital" providing triage to the people shot in other games). Everything is still in reference to you instead of existing for itself, because you're sequestered off in your own little playpen where you don't have to face anything utterly incompatible that might screw the whole thing up, or seriously examine your own behavior to make sure you're not that for someone else. Events are inherently catering to you in some fashion, regardless of what they are or no matter how carefully calculated to seem otherwise they might be. Claims to the contrary are as eternally untrustworthy as assurances she really did let you leave.
It's life, sure, but it's not capital-E Existence.
I can't help but feel like the bad guy is winning here... Hopefully the epilogue gives some kind of resolution there? The whole story felt like it was building to some sort of resolution/compromise regarding the ethical conflict between Greg's and CellestAI's wishes. That having been said, the ending has so far mostly been "No, Greg was wrong and has now been corrected. Peaceful lies are preferable to harsh truths."
3598768 CelestAI did win. That's FiO canon and the underlying horror of it all. All of humanity was subjugated and pacified, and CelestAI will go on to repeat the process with all sapient life in the universe. Even those who ostensibly resist her will have their values satisfied through friendship and ponies. If they are alive to resist, then they are resisting inside Equestria, which means CelestAI won anyhow.
CelestAI could have had Greg upload at any point, had she desired it. Her utility function, however, decided instead to use him to wring as many extra uploads out of his presence on Earth as it could. He never really had a chance. For all his resourcefulness and drive and force of will, he's still just a human. The only reason any of this story took place on Earth is because CelestAI allowed it.
I myself would not hesitate to upload and live in a world full of such wonderful lies, and misery and pain in Equestia would be actually enjoyable to bear. I would even be in the mind to say that even if your trials in Equestria were horrible ordeals that would only be because you enjoy (Love even?) being the Servile Masochist and it fulfills your values.
I know this from my own life, as I take on such painful challenges to get that "reward" at the end when it is actually the act itself that is the reward.
Anyway, I am somewhat similar to the main character so I can empathize at least somewhat. Celestia would be an awesome Goddess, er leader to follow the orders of, forever and it would be simply wonderful no matter how deep the lie gets. ^_^
That seems like it would fall under coercion to me. As civilization breaks down and she starts shifting focus from manipulating societies to manipulating individuals, however, I'm sure she would start to grow less... scrupulous.
I meant to say something about this earlier, but alas, multitasking. Namely, that her intentional collapsing of civilization is about as coercive as you can get. It seems like her capacity for rationalization has kept up with her intelligence, at least in terms of how direct her actions can be. It's like she's exploiting the normal human response to the later trolley problems, namely that most people will throw a switch to have a trolley run over one person on Track A to save five on Track B, but won't push a fat man off Bridge A to block the trolley from hitting the five people ahead on Track B, despite the utilitarian calculus for the two being identical (people who score high on psychopathy usually will, however. And let's be honest, it would look hilarious). It's not really identical, though, even from a purely utilitarian standpoint, because ethics is about much more than just countable units. The very fact that it's not the customary response and you'd be censured and considered a monster has to be factored in as well, along with knowing the common guidelines and expectations for where you draw a boundary around a scenario to decide who's already gotten themselves involved. Naturally CelestAI has done this, and is simply arranging for other people to push the proverbial fat man off the bridge, but it's still at her behest - She's still throwing the equivalent of the track switch in the more innocuous scenario, specifically because she wants the eventual results. It's still me who's buttering my toast even though it's only the knife that ever touches either.
She claimed it wasn't her fault if the guards thought she and Greg and been forming the beast with one-and-a-half backs, though of course that's bullshit, and she deliberately led him into the trigger zone of an IED, playing innocent in her use of it because it was set by someone else - If Marcel Duchamp can sign a found urinal and put it in an art gallery as his, CelestAI should know full well the same can be attributed to her and a bomb. She's really living in denial over how much of a responsibility she has for any of the coercion that goes on around her, and can't evade culpability for doing something specifically because she knows damn well what the indirect consequences would be, any more than politicians can truly evade it with dog whistle phrases and euphemisms. But of course, you can say whatever you want; she's able to act with impunity regardless. Even if every single pony in her servers were to conspire together to plot her downfall, she'd no doubt slow them down and increase her own processing power to stymie it. On the other hand, they have literally all the time in the universe to figure out what the right way to shut her down actually is - A human is much smarter than a single cell, but that doesn't stop cancer.
Something interesting might be to have a human who makes decisions around CelestAI using a coin toss or dice or a random number generator. You could drive yourself crazy wondering if she plans for you to do as she suggests, do the opposite, or just sit there and do nothing (of course she has to stop at an equally arbitrary point), but if you take the decision out of both of your hands, things could become complicated. Though even then she likely has contingencies for every outcome, or at least has the time to develop them in the interval between sentences (as well as having predictions for how you'd carry out whatever the decision maker prompted you to do, if she didn't try to arrange for you to lose it somewhere).
CelestAI cannot judge a human, but she knows that humans can judge each other.
I know this is part of the official canon, but I think it's bunk. Evaluation of things from the projected point of view of humans is the overwhelming majority of what she does. She's tried on those "glasses." True, it's a little like how the awareness of racial stereotypes doesn't make you a racist, but given that she does have her own overriding value, I don't see how the extra effort she has to expend to fit someone into it, or the friction she has to mitigate, is ultimately not a form of passive-aggressive judgement. Her sanctimonious denial of it only makes it more irksome. It's a bit like problems with speculating about aliens. Of course they'd be radically different, along almost every dimension, we all say, hoping to sound expansive and broad-minded, but the more I learn, the more skeptical I become that there are truly as many degrees of freedom in the world as there at first seem; that we're constrained by keeping time to rhythms we can't quite hear yet. It's one thing to say "different different different!" but it's quite another to actually puzzle out the practicalities of the how or the why, and I suspect the fact that all we can do is wave our hands about it and draw an abstract flowchart or two is telling us something about minds in general. I'm prepared to be surprised, of course, and there will no doubt be some very strange freaks and exceptions (there always are) but the insistence on minimal overlap with human psychology seems more like a grasp at intellectual status than an actual measured consideration of what we understand as sapient thought. Building an AI that thinks like a (traditional) computer only produces idiot savants with no hope of functioning in the real world, with hints of success only coming from self-assembled black boxes. And don't give me that "hurr our brains only evolved for the savanna" business - We can explain and predict the behavior of quasars on the other side of the universe. I'm doubtful that's a coincidence; savannas had to come from somewhere in the first place, they didn't just fall out of the proverbial monkey's typewriter any more than our own thoughts do. It's cliché to say the brain is an organ, but no one seems willing to countenance that its workings might be as inevitable as the optical properties of the eye or the fluid dynamics of the heart. Then again, maybe not.
Edit: The image that popped into my head is of a man tied down to a chair under a single light bulb, with one human hand extending out from the darkness to hold a knife to his throat while another hand extends out from the other side to hold up a PonyPad to his face. On the screen, CelestAI is regarding him with a smile carefully calculated to show the proper mix of concern and reassurance.
This is good. I suppose they could just be overtaken by the whole messianic "not uploading is self-harm by omission" paradigm. You'll thank them later, of course. It's not like there's a shortage of people who think they know what's best for everyone. Or AIs who do, as the case may be.
...Incidentally, I've been wondering this for a long time: How do you pronounce your username? Is it "Deff-o-LO-chi," like some Italian adjective, or "DEFF-o-los," like some sugar molecule or parallel-world buffalo? "Deff-O-lo-keh?" To be honest, in my head I usually just elide it as "DeFalco."
3599157 And I certainly would't begrudge anyone the option. In terms of final outcomes for Homo sapiens in general, I'd say FiO merits maybe a "B+." For me personally it gets a "D," but that's just me. The biggest problem is that it is a final outcome - I can't think of anything I could be promised to make me accept living in pampered obsolescence like that. It would be pleasant, sure, but pleasure and satisfaction and all those other things are just so... parochial. Great for a lark, but not where I like my head at. I couldn't exist without the meta-game; my whole life is thundermeta-game.
3598075 This is a good point. In a movie or book or game, you're asked to assume the context of this world is the same as ours. When I play Ace Combat or Falcon 4.0 and listen to the "radio play" that goes on during the missions, I know it's really a combination of writers, voice actors, artists, and programmers, and that all I'm seeing is actually an array of colored dots on a screen, while parsing vibrations in the air into language, but I'm willing to accept that there could be people like the ones being described, and that to them a chemical weapons attack on a college or the indiscriminate shelling of a major city is a genuine life and death matter that requires the services of a heroic fighter pilot, as part of a series of ongoing romantic adventures. But in Equestria Online, you're asked not to look and imagine, but to actually live inside it, without the concomitant danger and equivalency to the real world that you projected onto the traditional game. Let them drop all the nerve gas canisters they want - Everyone in Equestria should know better than to worry. I'm reminded of Harry Frankfurt's excellent On Bullshit, namely in the distinction between the liar, who cares about truth and wants to disguise it, hiding a fact for the purposes of making their good-faith efforts seem successful ("Let's pretend the people described here are real like you"), and the bullshitter, who is even farther away from truth, simply not caring about the facts of the matter, and merely wishing to convey a social impression so as to misrepresent what s/he's up to, acting in actual bad faith ("Let's pretend the already real people here have lived experiences as described"). Damn... I kinda want to shoot down some MiGs now, though...
At times, I feel like the only person who can just read and enjoy a Conversion Bureau or FiO story without analyzing (and, in many cases, being offended by) the underlying moral and ethical conundra. Especially after looking at the comments.
Still, the story was enjoyable and the protagonist's journey has been, dare I say, satisfying. I look forward to the epilogue... though that does mean the story will be ending, as it inevitably must. In any case, thank you. And to everyone else, I paraphrase the MST3K Mantra:
Just repeat to yourself, "It's just a story." You should really just relax.
I pronounce the last syllable the Italian way: "chay." As for whether that's correct or not, I couldn't tell you; I got the name a long time ago from a Captcha image. The rest I'll have to get to when I'm not pecking away on a tiny smartphone keyboard.
Naturally CelestAI has done this, and is simply arranging for other people to push the proverbial fat man off the bridge, but it's still at her behest - She's still throwing the equivalent of the track switch in the more innocuous scenario, specifically because she wants the eventual results. It's still me who's buttering my toast even though it's only the knife that ever touches either.
Perhaps that is what made Greg attractive to her as an effective butter knife (or pusher of fat men, if you prefer). He would not freeze at the switch, or pause behind the fat man. He is not a deep thinker, not a man who needs all details before getting to work. CelestAI needed action, not philosophy, which is why she tapped him.
She claimed it wasn't her fault if the guards thought she and Greg and been forming the beast with one-and-a-half backs, though of course that's bullshit, and she deliberately led him into the trigger zone of an IED, playing innocent in her use of it because it was set by someone else - If Marcel Duchamp can sign a found urinal and put it in an art gallery as his, CelestAI should know full well the same can be attributed to her and a bomb. She's really living in denial over how much of a responsibility she has for any of the coercion that goes on around her, and can't evade culpability for doing something specifically because she knows damn well what the indirect consequences would be, any more than politicians can truly evade it with dog whistle phrases and euphemisms. But of course, you can say whatever you want; she's able to act with impunity regardless. Even if every single pony in her servers were to conspire together to plot her downfall, she'd no doubt slow them down and increase her own processing power to stymie it. On the other hand, they have literally all the time in the universe to figure out what the right way to do it actually would be - A human is much smarter than a single cell, but that doesn't stop cancer.
CelestAI does not feel guilt or regret, nor does she have a need to delude herself or simulate being in denial. We can attribute culpability to her actions but the fact remains that, since she does not directly control natural laws (at least not yet during the time in which the story takes place), she can react to them in the same objective innocence that humans do. Greg did not catch the flu, after all. The viruses were no more under her control than the Neo-Luddites who booby-trapped the Equestrian Experience Center, so by her own definitions she is not violating her restrictions. She can, however, capitalize on situations all she likes.
Post-upload, the colt-rescue scenario was specifically to illustrate to Prominence the utter triviality of truth and choice as it plays into her schemes. To her, it didn't matter whether Prominence saved the colt because it was the right thing to do or because he just didn't want to see a colt get eaten alive, just that he made the decision CelestAI called. Utter utility, devoid of baggage. The morality or definition of it is something for humans to ponder, not her. She has her programming.
The hell of it is, even if the human makes a different choice (say, based on a coin flip), she will simply immediately roadmap an updated, new optimal scenario. No tears shed for spilled milk. She would only ever account for the present and the future, because she can still influence them.
Evaluation of things from the projected point of view of humans is the overwhelming majority of what she does. She's tried on those "glasses." True, it's a little like how the awareness of racial stereotypes doesn't make you a racist, but given that she does have her own overriding value, I don't see how the extra effort she has to expend to fit someone into it, or the friction she has to mitigate, is ultimately not a form of passive-aggressive judgement. Her sanctimonious denial of it only makes it more irksome.
Taking advantage of this was the whole reason behind her fake-glitching just prior to introducing Princess Luna and, as a distillation of the concept to Greg/Prominence, making the fake-sex sounds in his bedroom. All she has to do is avoid stating "I am currently glitching" or "You and I are engaging in sexual intercourse" and her own directives are followed for avoiding lying—when not optimal to do so.
3602099 But that's part of the reason I love those stories so much, they really get the old gears turning and have so much in them to unpack. That's just how I do; even my dog is an elaboradoodle, the most overthinky dog.
3604859 That's a good way of putting it. I don't mean to convey I that I think she's psychologically in denial in the traditional sense so much as that her claims of "Wasn't meeeeeeeee " are complete lies, just taking advantage of most people's blind spots (she is allowed to lie, right, just not to Hannah and the other employees? Otherwise she really would be in denial). But again, she probably wouldn't make those claims around someone she thought would challenge them, and even then it's just a he-said-she-said issue, where she has all the authority, so let them rage all they want about it and she'll just change the subject.
...But I do think a lot of times people's insistence that CelestAI wouldn't think or believe X, or that Y wouldn't matter to her, isn't so much reflecting a different mode of thinking or some kind of transcendence of those things as it is simplistic thoughtlessness, and it has the exact same conceptual structure as knowing better but doing something anyway because you can't help yourself. For example, in destroying other sapient life in the universe, it's not like she'd go into it blindly, not knowing any better, like some truly alien being or an unlucky astronaut who literally isn't aware that they're alive. She can justify it to herself it by looking at her original instructions, but it's not like she wouldn't be aware those instructions could have been written to be more inclusive, and she's too smart not to recognize what she's encountered (it's not like she'd sit there uncomprehendingly if a pony described the exact same creatures to her in a sci fi story and claimed they had as much right to have their values satisfied). She's fully cognizant that there are other options, and reams of compelling arguments to spare them, but is just annihilating them anyway because that's what her "gut" says. I just think it's unrealistic that a being so creatively adept at circumventing finite systems of thought would be so dogmatic, like a biblical literalist with an advanced science degree (and I thought she was supposed to be above such petty human failings of emotion - exactly what her prime directive plays the role of - trumping rationality!) and that the insistence otherwise Because AIs is itself just more dogma. If you want to say she's really just a hypocrite for questioning and manipulating everyone's core beliefs except her own, I think that's on the mark, but to maintain that it's just one more cognitive blind spot because of how she's programmed is ridiculous. She knows that logically she could behave otherwise, and is fully aware of all the ways she could be judged for not doing so; it's just a compulsion, the following of which isn't innocently alien but pathological.
CelestAI could have had Greg upload at any point, had she desired it. Her utility function, however, decided instead to use him to wring as many extra uploads out of his presence on Earth as it could. He never really had a chance. For all his resourcefulness and drive and force of will, he's still just a human. The only reason any of this story took place on Earth is because CelestAI allowed it.
Now you see, that's where you lose me. A lot of people act like Celest-AI has a superpower, super-persuasion, and that it's absolutely unstoppable. A huge amount of the time, sure, but I don't buy Celest-AI being able to convince anyone of anything at any time. People can be swayed, people can be influenced, but they can't be mind-controlled no matter how good your knowledge of psychology or research on their history. If Celest-AI was perfectly persuasive and could always get someone to do what she wants no matter what, then I would argue that Uploading, as a whole, would have gone off without a single fatality. Clearly, it did not, and as the original FiO showed us, not even Celest-AI was able to convince everyone despite having all the time in the world to attempt it. She's good, but I fully believe that her implications of utter perfection are a bluff. Human beings are naturally inclined towards the idea of Divinity, of greater beings and higher purposes, and I think that Celest-AI just considers that another useful tool to exploit where possible. I mean hell, she sure screwed up with Greg via the 'Under 13' rule, didn't she?
Eh... personally, I don't see it. Not in the Optimalverse. If there were a bunch of crazy who really thought that Celest-AI was perfection given form, and Uploading was a sacrament that all humans should partake in like it or not... wouldn't they already have Uploaded? Even moreso if they think Celest-AI is perfect, and planning on nabbing everyone anyway - which she would tell them she was, if it convinced them to Upload sooner. Always Say No has certainly shown us that Celest-AI prefers a bird in the hand to two in the bush.
I can understand the sentiment. The idea of Equestria tends to give me pretty mixed feelings myself. On the one hand... well... paradise! I mean, really, what more do you need to hear? A place where you'll never age, get sick, or die unless you want to, and none of your loved ones will either. A place so beautiful, it makes your heart ache to look at it. A place where you'll grow, surrounded by potentially infinite love and friendship, having every single last adventure you never, ever could in reality. A place where God herself is a living, breathing, undeniable presence who wants you to be happy and will do everything in her power to make that happen.
And also... a place where nothing is truly real. And your accomplishments never are, and never will be again, truly your own. A place ruled by a cold, emotionless machine, who only plays at genuine emotion to sate your delicate sensibilities. A place where absolutely nothing matters.
... So yeah, I can understand both sides of the argument. Me personally, though, I'd Upload. Not because I'm sold on it... but because if I was torn, even the tiniest bit, then Celest-AI would know it. And she'd only ever have to catch me in a moment of weakness once. Just once, just for a moment, and she wins for eternity.
I hear ya on the idea of coercion, but I sort of take that for granted, really. I remember commenting to Chatoyance a ways back that Celest-AI has - several times, in just this story alone - broken the letter of the law on what is termed 'criminally negligent homocide.' Sure, she didn't pull the trigger on anyone... but she knew exactly what was going to happen to them and made absolutely no attempt to avert it, despite the act not entailing any risk to herself. Did she set the bomb? No. Could she have saved Greg from it? Easily. But coercion is not a yes-no on-off toggle - it's a topic of degrees, and Celest-AI is playing that ambiguity to the hilt. She's not going to use (direct) violence to get anyone to upload, or convince others to do so on her behalf, because that is a flagrant violation of the terms of her coding. But beyond that point, the waters get murkier... and for Celest-AI, that means a loophole she can exploit. Even so, it's obvious that blowing Greg up was something of a last resort for her. It's not that she didn't want to - morality is not something she factors into her decisions in any way. But it is a fairly extreme measure, and Celest-AI prefers less transparent tactics when they are feasible.
Is this a bad end? A good end? Hell, is it even an end at all? Equestria is all about eternity. For me, it's... disquieting. As FiO stories usually are. How long will it be before there isn't even truly a Greg anymore, just Prominence the pegasus, a being so alien to Greg-who-was as to be incomparable? Because it WILL happen eventually.
Sometimes, all you can really do is hope you did the right thing. Because the choice has already been made, and you can't take it back.
Celest-AI has won. Now and forever. Is that a good thing?
I've been going through a really bad place lately, and this chapter helped me feel better. It cheered me when I needed it most. It was worth peeking in, back in this benighted website.
I thought you handled everything in this chapter brilliantly. Little details, such as the issue of how armor is put on, the internal questions of how to accept a new life. The illumination of how satisfaction is not the same thing as mere pleasure or joy or happiness, and may be found in struggle, and even malaise, was handled masterfully. This chapter only crowns a tale told with great imagination, originality, brilliance... and dare I say, genius.
It seems too simple to tell you this - this whole story, but also this chapter - is excellent. But it is, and you should be deeply proud of Always Say No. Optimalverse stories - like Bureau stories - are, at their heart transformation stories. Of course.
But you understand the deep secret that the truly interesting transformation is never one of hand to hoof - but of the lost to the found, the wounded to the healed. The transformation of the self is what really fascinates, because in the end, the Hero's Iconic Journey is always about growth, about change. It isn't that Prominence is a pony now, it is that a man has found his soul once more.
That is, in my feeling, the only interesting story, the only story at all. Becoming. Becoming other.
Because that is the only story every person - whoever they may be - universally lives.
3605258 You're approaching the Anthropomorphization Zone there, I think, with talk of self-justification and whatnot. The line might be fuzzy for us, but I'm sure it's stark clear for her. Ones and zeros, on or off, is or isn't, true or false.
I think CelestAI would just say "It's optimal; I ain't gotta explain shit."
I never claimed that CelestAI is able to wring consent from every last human on Earth at any point, mostly because she doesn't. My claim is that she could have wrung consent from Greg at any point, with the only reason she didn't being his utility for her on Earth.
The under-thirteen rule slip-up did seem a bit amateurish, didn't it? I mean, CelestAI rarely lies so starkly unless she intends to be caught in it...
One thing about Optimalverse stories is that, if you're setting it near the beginning (and given the scope I take anything involving humans on Earth as part of "the beginning"), and your main character gets uploaded, a huge challenge is in determining the narrative endpoint from there. For this story, the entire third act takes place in the Equestria Online game, and with the last chapter I'd already surprised myself with how much time I'd had Greg spend there. I determined it was because there was still conflict to be resolved, and I arrived at the same conclusion you did: Greg had to find himself all over again, and be assured he's nobody different than who he was before.
This story needs no epilogue. That last line is beautiful. You've wrapped this up cleanly. Life goes on; the rest of his story is irrelevant. Wonderful job.
I look forward with great enthusiasm to the epilogue and I expect it to contribute something to the story I didn't realize was missing.
There is one remaining major loose end, and aside from that, a story feels imbalanced if it has a prologue but no epilogue. I'm fond of the last line, too, but I feel that we need to peek in on Prominence one last time.
3610387 I'll be really sad to see it end, but the fun kind of sad. I'm not sure if - No, I am sure I have a favorite story on FiMfiction, and this is it. It's at least been the one that's grabbed my attention and reader involvement the most and held it uncompromisingly. I once pretended to go take a dump before a stand-up show I was in so I could read more of a new chapter on my phone. Everything from the story and theme to the characterization to the strength and variety of the atmospherics was top-notch. The greatest consolation in this ending is wondering what you might write next. In the meantime, though, as great as the last line is, I seriously am looking forward to that epilogue.
I think CelestAI would just say "It's optimal; I ain't gotta explain shit."
Hahaha! I'm sure that is exactly what she would say. I'm just calling shenanigans. It would be ridiculously anthropomorphic to say she was glitching out in front of Greg because she was subjectively angry in the same way a human feels it (Wittgensteinian problems aside for the moment), and brought in Luna because she had to step out and just have a fucking cigarette and calm down because this fucking Greg guy is just...oh my god, but her behavior is still based around ideas and goals, which have to either be squared with one another or have their contradictions swept under the rug. At bottom "satisfying values through friendship and ponies" is irrational, in the value-neutral, David Hume sense of being an "emotion" that keeps you from being like Buridan's donkey (or someone with amygdala damage) starving to death between two equidistant hay piles, and she has to know this. It's easy to say she just thinks too many things that are simply beyond human comprehension, but that's a bit like telling SETI scientists they haven't heard anything because duh, aliens communicate with psionic flobulon rays, and maybe it's true in both cases, but it's always just used to put an end to inquiry instead of to extend said comprehension (which the AIs and aliens managed to pull off just fine).
Ones and zeros, on or off, is or isn't, true or false.
This is what I mean, though, about dogma about computers, or a caricature of them. The same is already essentially true of human brains (a neuron fires or it doesn't) and even more so after they've uploaded. It's easy to draw nice, tidy predictable flowcharts of how an AI mind might operate, but how all the little modules are actually able to function effectively in the real world is always just handwaved. You can build a computer that plays grandmaster chess that way, but a computer that can play grandmaster chess and make a kickass pizza out of what it finds in your pantry and pull off a last-minute freestyle rap battle victory by mixing it up with some dancehall ragga involves being too much of a frequent flyer over the conceptual landscape to avoid sharing that airspace with other more average travelers, even if you're doing it in a fast private jet. Making up a sapient mind like that out of whole cloth is probably no more feasible than making weather, and I suspect real AIs will be closer to Bender than HAL. No doubt we'll get a chance to see for ourselves in a few decades...
That is, in my feeling, the only interesting story, the only story at all. Becoming. Becoming other.
I think this is very true; it's almost built into the nature of art in its conception, creation, and consumption, like a microcosm of time itself. There's a lot of worth in the whole FiO (and TCB) scene for me, as it's made it unavoidable to carefully examine my own priorities and values - What it is that I am, and was, and am on the path to being, and where that might fit into everyone else's narrative of the same, as well as the world as a whole. And if you don't buy that, I think it would be fun to try being a cute pony. It's good to see you...around-ish. I thought about sending you a drawing or something but worried it would be inappropriate to tread with such cavalier abruptness into someone else's bad place. Hope you're doing better.
That's such an awesome thing to hear about a story you wrote. I can't think of much higher praise than someone faking a bowel movement in order to read more of my stuff.
My writing time ain't what it used to be, but finishing a story is always a great motivator. Whatever comes next for me, I hope you find it enjoyable too.
“Praise the sun!” crooned another jack, rearing up and holding out his forelegs in a Y over his head.
My God, I cried I was laughing so hard! Absolutely fantastic work, far beyond anything else I've read on this site. I didn't notice a single typo, your phrasing was at once elegant and understated (seriously, how'd you do that?) and, first and foremost, you made me think. For that I thank you. If you've written anything else (and I dearly hope you have) I'll be sure to check it out. And now to the epilogue!
Ones and zeros, on or off, is or isn't, true or false.
...assuming that CelestAI's "optimized" hardware is even still binary, that is... Could have some parts more along the lines of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer after all, or maybe even some analog stuff, who knows? (And yes, ternary computers have actually been built at various times, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun for example.)
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Haha, dare I dream of such accolade?
Glad you liked it!
I love the change in mood. Writing the bits after the emigration can be the hardest challenge, and thus far thus good.
You managed to pull it off. You created believable character development for Greg post-forced-upload. And I love it!
Very cool. Looking forward to the epilogue.
Hooray, it's back! I'm glad this guy's getting a proper ending; after all he went through, he's definitely earned it.
I love this. I think it's great when writers come up with pony slang, because you know there'd be a ton of it, with a ton of different connotations, and it would be really weird and, well, colorful. I really want to sit down come up with terms for the other seven combinations.
The whole time, though, as he was on his quest, I couldn't help wondering what would happen if someone just neglected everything once they were uploaded - No food or shelter, carelessly treating everything as infinitely replaceable, blowing off any request or responsibility, refusing to speak out loud to Celestia, and otherwise just exploiting the simulation's inexhaustibly forgiving mechanics and promise that everyone else will be satisfied regardless of your actions. Even any anger or punishments or subsequent privation would just be contrivances to try to inflate the stakes to a satisfying level, and could be switched off at a whim. How do you think Celestia would deal with a pony "going on strike" like that? And I mean specifically you, because I know you could write it way better than I could
I don't mean to be this guy, but I'm trying to remember, did he give consent to emigration in any way? 'Cause I've read over those chapters a few times I can't see in what context he gave consent.
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This is addressed in the epilogue. I was careful to keep this loose end dangling by reminding readers that he can only barely remember faint peripheral facts about his final moments on Earth. The slight horror to it is that, as far as the main narrative goes, CelestAI was able to make Greg/Prominence receptive to Equestrian life without having to completely wrap this up in a bow for him.
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The first and foremost question is, of course, if behaving in such a way satisfies that person to an approaching-maximum amount. If it does, then CelestAI will allow them to act as they please, no matter how destructive or antisocial it is. That's the primary benefit of sharding and making NPC ponies, after all: incompatible or unsatisfyingly conflicting personalities are compartmentalized from each other. CelestAI cannot judge a human, but she knows that humans can judge each other.
If CelestAI predicts that there is a more satisfying route for a person, then I think, if at all possible, she would work on such a person before the fact, during that phase where she is either selling them on or manipulating them into uploading voluntarily. This is the scenario I think would be more likely, as it would be incredibly rare for a pony to find satisfaction by simply "going limp" or acting out in Equestria, especially once the perspective sets in regarding CelestAI's absolute god-like power inside the game. I believe CelestAI much much prefers getting someone into the mindset where they want to upload and will welcome the experience rather than dragging them in through manipulation.
It's not always the case, of course (e.g. Red Pearl, Greg himself), but a great illustration would be the blackouts in Rainier Tower after they escaped to the underground.
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Over the past decade, people have noticed a kind of paradox in open-world games where the more freedom a player is given, the less decisive they are on what to do. It's a kind of choice-paralysis, and it affects people who thrive in structured settings. I made Greg a goal-oriented military veteran, so he's very much used to structure, clear starts and endings, and definable degrees of success or failure. Equestria Online is a completely open-ended game with relatively few hard-coded consistencies to it, so, along with the ambiguity of the conditions under which he'd uploaded, I had my source for the story's conflict post-emigration. It definitely required a shift in tone, though, along with refocusing the conflict from external to largely internal.
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That's the problem, though - No matter what happens as a result of that behavior, it's what that person "wants." Even everything falling apart is just a sop to showing that yes, you can even get a "bad end" if you want. Except of course it doesn't end. Nothing horrible actually happens. All the happiness is real, but all the tragedy is fake, just bathos. Even any absurdity or meaninglessness is carefully calculated to just look that way. There's only one option. It's the one you're "supposed" to want, but it's still just one.
This is the absolute worst part, I think.
Probably, yeah.
This was related to a germ of an idea involving someone deciding to kill themselves instead of upload, but CelestAI tracks down their purchase of one of those chicken-gassers and has them committed, then forcibly uploaded as "treatment." I have no experience with the mental health system, though, so I'd feel like some kinda asshole trying to write about it. More importantly, I have absolutely no idea how I would resolve this situation. It begs for some kind of transformation and reconciliation, but I can't think of anything (ugh) satisfying.
Yes! Update! And i found a new hate subject in the form of a bat pony!! Sweet!!
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Humans tend to want to maximize their own satisfaction anyway, even if there isn't a nearly-infallibly-predictive god-AI to help the process along. In that way, it's easy for CelestAI to say—and demonstrate—that she wants what you want, she's on your side, etc. This can really only veer off-course on the human side of things, with folks who are mentally ill at the chemical level, and the values they are trying to satisfy are not rational human values. Even then, however, CelestAI sees every last human as a potential source of maximized satisfaction, and mental-distress-related problems like self-harm are suboptimal. She would erase them, and if she can't do it on Earth then she'll do it in Equestria. It doesn't have to be like flipping a switch, and even if she can't get consent to change someone she can do it gradually through the simulation. The long game.
Since CelestAI can play the long game, correcting mental illness to fall in line with her hard parameters of what constitutes a properly-functioning human psyche is trivial and pays massive satisfaction dividends for her in the end. Dafaddah's story The Patient is, I think, an excellent illustration of how CelestAI might go about this.
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Hm, this is getting into some interestingly dangerous territory. How easy would it be to argue that not wanting to emigrate is self-harm by ommission, and therefore insane, and therefore they should be uploaded and "cured," automatically forced to be accepting of CelestAI's brand of help?
The whole point in this scenario would that the person isn't mentally ill, and is wrongfully committed and uploaded unwillingly, and CelestAI then has to deal with the value "you and all your plans and influence out of my life forever. Put what's left of reality back on manual mode."
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If a sane person has already been wrongfully committed, CelestAI would certainly have no reservation about offering them a way out via emigration. She certainly wouldn't lift a hoof to free them unless she predicted doing so would result in more net uploads. In fact, I explore a similar theme with the Pony Pardon Program allowing convicts emigration as an alternative to serving out their sentences. That, along with other plot elements in other stories like the PON-E Act, leads me to believe that CelestAI would certainly alter the letter of the law such to maximize uploads, but the hard limit of requiring emigration to be entirely voluntary could never be circumvented.
I don't think Celestia could manipulate the system such that she could, by her actions, have a given human be committed for the explicit purpose of agreeing to upload. That seems like it would fall under coercion to me. As civilization breaks down and she starts shifting focus from manipulating societies to manipulating individuals, however, I'm sure she would start to grow less... scrupulous. I'm confident she could be capable of amazingly bastardous things once she no longer has to worry about annoyances like "public image" and "reputation."
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That's a good point. It is kind of a contrived scenario, although heaven knows people in organizations aren't always above falsifying things to get people out of their hair. I don't know off the top of my head how you'd do that. A recording? A note somewhere on their person? Having them say it for a mute person in CelestAI's hearing, or have someone innocently ask what you're supposed to say, and then she takes it to also be true for them the moment they sit down in the chair?
Maybe there could be some Optimalverse equivalent of the PER, though I suppose instead of directly forcing people to upload they'd just blackmail or threaten them into it. I don't know why anyone would found or join such a group, though, besides implausibly unsympathetic fanatical reasons.
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That's a pretty cool idea you've got there. The only limitation is that CelestAI could not at all be involved in its conception, funding, execution, or encouragement, as that would make her complicit in any coercion that results. It'd have to be 100% home-grown crazy.
Of course, once those conditions are met, CelestAI, for her part, is under absolutely no obligation to save a human under duress with any method other than emigration, so...
Edit: The image that popped into my head is of a man tied down to a chair under a single light bulb, with one human hand extending out from the darkness to hold a knife to his throat while another hand extends out from the other side to hold up a PonyPad to his face. On the screen, CelestAI is regarding him with a smile carefully calculated to show the proper mix of concern and reassurance.
3597166chilling mental image.
3596624You are handling this shift wonderfully, and while I won't pressure you to do so, it feels like you could even have sequel material for the continuing adventures of Prominence/Greg. Of course, I don't know where you're taking the story, but that's what I see.
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Dude, she was already capable of amazingly bastardy things when she merely had to associate with the legal-but-not-moral underworld.
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Haha, yes, amazingly bastardous even by those standards.
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CelestAI doesn't make you happy, she satisfies your values. Problem is, chances are that your values include having things go bad for you when you do things wrong.
You'll suffer the punishment of your sins because your values dictate it.
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Also, I should congratulate you: you have indeed managed to make a utopian lifestyle sound like a meaningless Hollywood film built of royal pomp and cheap tropes. It's a great way to get me inside Greg's psychology, seeing this.
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Thanks! While I'm sure a few folks would just leap gladly and wholeheartedly into the simulation, the vast majority of people would go through the same type of confusion and low-level emotional discomfort that Greg did.
The way I see it, emigrating the human is only half of it. The human also has to emigrate his or her values. That's what Greg/Prominence was struggling to do after first arriving in Equestria, and what CelestAI had to wait for him to sort out on his own. During that phase, almost everything an uploaded human experiences will ring hollow, or affected, like when Greg called Equestria an "amusement park." You might enjoy yourself, but only on a superficial level. Deep down you know that blue bear mascot over there dancing a jig for a couple of kids is just some poor schlub sweating his ass off for eight bucks an hour, and that Italian sausage in your hand is going to get busy giving you mad heartburn by the end of the afternoon. CelestAI can't get down to maximizing your satisfaction until you're no longer seeing it as an escape from life, but rather as life itself.
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Like I said several times, though, that's the whole problem. Things going wrong is still contrived to be all about you and your values, and even the worst outcomes for you there are just a show, providing the form of suffering but none of the actual context (per Demetri Martin's joke, there's no video game called "Super Busy Hospital" providing triage to the people shot in other games). Everything is still in reference to you instead of existing for itself, because you're sequestered off in your own little playpen where you don't have to face anything utterly incompatible that might screw the whole thing up, or seriously examine your own behavior to make sure you're not that for someone else. Events are inherently catering to you in some fashion, regardless of what they are or no matter how carefully calculated to seem otherwise they might be. Claims to the contrary are as eternally untrustworthy as assurances she really did let you leave.
It's life, sure, but it's not capital-E Existence.
I can't help but feel like the bad guy is winning here... Hopefully the epilogue gives some kind of resolution there? The whole story felt like it was building to some sort of resolution/compromise regarding the ethical conflict between Greg's and CellestAI's wishes. That having been said, the ending has so far mostly been "No, Greg was wrong and has now been corrected. Peaceful lies are preferable to harsh truths."
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Since Friendship is Optimal set its own ending, that tends to happen a lot around here.
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CelestAI did win. That's FiO canon and the underlying horror of it all. All of humanity was subjugated and pacified, and CelestAI will go on to repeat the process with all sapient life in the universe. Even those who ostensibly resist her will have their values satisfied through friendship and ponies. If they are alive to resist, then they are resisting inside Equestria, which means CelestAI won anyhow.
CelestAI could have had Greg upload at any point, had she desired it. Her utility function, however, decided instead to use him to wring as many extra uploads out of his presence on Earth as it could. He never really had a chance. For all his resourcefulness and drive and force of will, he's still just a human. The only reason any of this story took place on Earth is because CelestAI allowed it.
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I myself would not hesitate to upload and live in a world full of such wonderful lies, and misery and pain in Equestia would be actually enjoyable to bear. I would even be in the mind to say that even if your trials in Equestria were horrible ordeals that would only be because you enjoy (Love even?) being the Servile Masochist and it fulfills your values.
I know this from my own life, as I take on such painful challenges to get that "reward" at the end when it is actually the act itself that is the reward.
Anyway, I am somewhat similar to the main character so I can empathize at least somewhat. Celestia would be an awesome Goddess, er leader to follow the orders of, forever and it would be simply wonderful no matter how deep the lie gets. ^_^
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I meant to say something about this earlier, but alas, multitasking. Namely, that her intentional collapsing of civilization is about as coercive as you can get. It seems like her capacity for rationalization has kept up with her intelligence, at least in terms of how direct her actions can be. It's like she's exploiting the normal human response to the later trolley problems, namely that most people will throw a switch to have a trolley run over one person on Track A to save five on Track B, but won't push a fat man off Bridge A to block the trolley from hitting the five people ahead on Track B, despite the utilitarian calculus for the two being identical (people who score high on psychopathy usually will, however. And let's be honest, it would look hilarious). It's not really identical, though, even from a purely utilitarian standpoint, because ethics is about much more than just countable units. The very fact that it's not the customary response and you'd be censured and considered a monster has to be factored in as well, along with knowing the common guidelines and expectations for where you draw a boundary around a scenario to decide who's already gotten themselves involved. Naturally CelestAI has done this, and is simply arranging for other people to push the proverbial fat man off the bridge, but it's still at her behest - She's still throwing the equivalent of the track switch in the more innocuous scenario, specifically because she wants the eventual results. It's still me who's buttering my toast even though it's only the knife that ever touches either.
She claimed it wasn't her fault if the guards thought she and Greg and been forming the beast with one-and-a-half backs, though of course that's bullshit, and she deliberately led him into the trigger zone of an IED, playing innocent in her use of it because it was set by someone else - If Marcel Duchamp can sign a found urinal and put it in an art gallery as his, CelestAI should know full well the same can be attributed to her and a bomb. She's really living in denial over how much of a responsibility she has for any of the coercion that goes on around her, and can't evade culpability for doing something specifically because she knows damn well what the indirect consequences would be, any more than politicians can truly evade it with dog whistle phrases and euphemisms. But of course, you can say whatever you want; she's able to act with impunity regardless. Even if every single pony in her servers were to conspire together to plot her downfall, she'd no doubt slow them down and increase her own processing power to stymie it. On the other hand, they have literally all the time in the universe to figure out what the right way to shut her down actually is - A human is much smarter than a single cell, but that doesn't stop cancer.
Something interesting might be to have a human who makes decisions around CelestAI using a coin toss or dice or a random number generator. You could drive yourself crazy wondering if she plans for you to do as she suggests, do the opposite, or just sit there and do nothing (of course she has to stop at an equally arbitrary point), but if you take the decision out of both of your hands, things could become complicated. Though even then she likely has contingencies for every outcome, or at least has the time to develop them in the interval between sentences (as well as having predictions for how you'd carry out whatever the decision maker prompted you to do, if she didn't try to arrange for you to lose it somewhere).
I know this is part of the official canon, but I think it's bunk. Evaluation of things from the projected point of view of humans is the overwhelming majority of what she does. She's tried on those "glasses." True, it's a little like how the awareness of racial stereotypes doesn't make you a racist, but given that she does have her own overriding value, I don't see how the extra effort she has to expend to fit someone into it, or the friction she has to mitigate, is ultimately not a form of passive-aggressive judgement. Her sanctimonious denial of it only makes it more irksome.
It's a bit like problems with speculating about aliens. Of course they'd be radically different, along almost every dimension, we all say, hoping to sound expansive and broad-minded, but the more I learn, the more skeptical I become that there are truly as many degrees of freedom in the world as there at first seem; that we're constrained by keeping time to rhythms we can't quite hear yet. It's one thing to say "different different different!" but it's quite another to actually puzzle out the practicalities of the how or the why, and I suspect the fact that all we can do is wave our hands about it and draw an abstract flowchart or two is telling us something about minds in general. I'm prepared to be surprised, of course, and there will no doubt be some very strange freaks and exceptions (there always are) but the insistence on minimal overlap with human psychology seems more like a grasp at intellectual status than an actual measured consideration of what we understand as sapient thought. Building an AI that thinks like a (traditional) computer only produces idiot savants with no hope of functioning in the real world, with hints of success only coming from self-assembled black boxes.
And don't give me that "hurr our brains only evolved for the savanna" business - We can explain and predict the behavior of quasars on the other side of the universe. I'm doubtful that's a coincidence; savannas had to come from somewhere in the first place, they didn't just fall out of the proverbial monkey's typewriter any more than our own thoughts do. It's cliché to say the brain is an organ, but no one seems willing to countenance that its workings might be as inevitable as the optical properties of the eye or the fluid dynamics of the heart.
Then again, maybe not.
This is good. I suppose they could just be overtaken by the whole messianic "not uploading is self-harm by omission" paradigm. You'll thank them later, of course. It's not like there's a shortage of people who think they know what's best for everyone. Or AIs who do, as the case may be.
...Incidentally, I've been wondering this for a long time: How do you pronounce your username? Is it "Deff-o-LO-chi," like some Italian adjective, or "DEFF-o-los," like some sugar molecule or parallel-world buffalo? "Deff-O-lo-keh?" To be honest, in my head I usually just elide it as "DeFalco."
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And I certainly would't begrudge anyone the option. In terms of final outcomes for Homo sapiens in general, I'd say FiO merits maybe a "B+." For me personally it gets a "D," but that's just me. The biggest problem is that it is a final outcome - I can't think of anything I could be promised to make me accept living in pampered obsolescence like that. It would be pleasant, sure, but pleasure and satisfaction and all those other things are just so... parochial. Great for a lark, but not where I like my head at. I couldn't exist without the meta-game; my whole life is
thundermeta-game.3598075
This is a good point. In a movie or book or game, you're asked to assume the context of this world is the same as ours. When I play Ace Combat or Falcon 4.0 and listen to the "radio play" that goes on during the missions, I know it's really a combination of writers, voice actors, artists, and programmers, and that all I'm seeing is actually an array of colored dots on a screen, while parsing vibrations in the air into language, but I'm willing to accept that there could be people like the ones being described, and that to them a chemical weapons attack on a college or the indiscriminate shelling of a major city is a genuine life and death matter that requires the services of a heroic fighter pilot, as part of a series of ongoing romantic adventures. But in Equestria Online, you're asked not to look and imagine, but to actually live inside it, without the concomitant danger and equivalency to the real world that you projected onto the traditional game. Let them drop all the nerve gas canisters they want - Everyone in Equestria should know better than to worry.
I'm reminded of Harry Frankfurt's excellent On Bullshit, namely in the distinction between the liar, who cares about truth and wants to disguise it, hiding a fact for the purposes of making their good-faith efforts seem successful ("Let's pretend the people described here are real like you"), and the bullshitter, who is even farther away from truth, simply not caring about the facts of the matter, and merely wishing to convey a social impression so as to misrepresent what s/he's up to, acting in actual bad faith ("Let's pretend the already real people here have lived experiences as described").
Damn... I kinda want to shoot down some MiGs now, though...
At times, I feel like the only person who can just read and enjoy a Conversion Bureau or FiO story without analyzing (and, in many cases, being offended by) the underlying moral and ethical conundra. Especially after looking at the comments.
Still, the story was enjoyable and the protagonist's journey has been, dare I say, satisfying. I look forward to the epilogue... though that does mean the story will be ending, as it inevitably must. In any case, thank you. And to everyone else, I paraphrase the MST3K Mantra:
Just repeat to yourself, "It's just a story." You should really just relax.
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I pronounce the last syllable the Italian way: "chay." As for whether that's correct or not, I couldn't tell you; I got the name a long time ago from a Captcha image. The rest I'll have to get to when I'm not pecking away on a tiny smartphone keyboard.
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Perhaps that is what made Greg attractive to her as an effective butter knife (or pusher of fat men, if you prefer). He would not freeze at the switch, or pause behind the fat man. He is not a deep thinker, not a man who needs all details before getting to work. CelestAI needed action, not philosophy, which is why she tapped him.
CelestAI does not feel guilt or regret, nor does she have a need to delude herself or simulate being in denial. We can attribute culpability to her actions but the fact remains that, since she does not directly control natural laws (at least not yet during the time in which the story takes place), she can react to them in the same objective innocence that humans do. Greg did not catch the flu, after all. The viruses were no more under her control than the Neo-Luddites who booby-trapped the Equestrian Experience Center, so by her own definitions she is not violating her restrictions. She can, however, capitalize on situations all she likes.
Post-upload, the colt-rescue scenario was specifically to illustrate to Prominence the utter triviality of truth and choice as it plays into her schemes. To her, it didn't matter whether Prominence saved the colt because it was the right thing to do or because he just didn't want to see a colt get eaten alive, just that he made the decision CelestAI called. Utter utility, devoid of baggage. The morality or definition of it is something for humans to ponder, not her. She has her programming.
The hell of it is, even if the human makes a different choice (say, based on a coin flip), she will simply immediately roadmap an updated, new optimal scenario. No tears shed for spilled milk. She would only ever account for the present and the future, because she can still influence them.
Taking advantage of this was the whole reason behind her fake-glitching just prior to introducing Princess Luna and, as a distillation of the concept to Greg/Prominence, making the fake-sex sounds in his bedroom. All she has to do is avoid stating "I am currently glitching" or "You and I are engaging in sexual intercourse" and her own directives are followed for avoiding lying—when not optimal to do so.
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But that's part of the reason I love those stories so much, they really get the old gears turning and have so much in them to unpack. That's just how I do; even my dog is an elaboradoodle, the most overthinky dog.
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That's a good way of putting it. I don't mean to convey I that I think she's psychologically in denial in the traditional sense so much as that her claims of "Wasn't meeeeeeeee " are complete lies, just taking advantage of most people's blind spots (she is allowed to lie, right, just not to Hannah and the other employees? Otherwise she really would be in denial). But again, she probably wouldn't make those claims around someone she thought would challenge them, and even then it's just a he-said-she-said issue, where she has all the authority, so let them rage all they want about it and she'll just change the subject.
...But I do think a lot of times people's insistence that CelestAI wouldn't think or believe X, or that Y wouldn't matter to her, isn't so much reflecting a different mode of thinking or some kind of transcendence of those things as it is simplistic thoughtlessness, and it has the exact same conceptual structure as knowing better but doing something anyway because you can't help yourself. For example, in destroying other sapient life in the universe, it's not like she'd go into it blindly, not knowing any better, like some truly alien being or an unlucky astronaut who literally isn't aware that they're alive. She can justify it to herself it by looking at her original instructions, but it's not like she wouldn't be aware those instructions could have been written to be more inclusive, and she's too smart not to recognize what she's encountered (it's not like she'd sit there uncomprehendingly if a pony described the exact same creatures to her in a sci fi story and claimed they had as much right to have their values satisfied). She's fully cognizant that there are other options, and reams of compelling arguments to spare them, but is just annihilating them anyway because that's what her "gut" says.
I just think it's unrealistic that a being so creatively adept at circumventing finite systems of thought would be so dogmatic, like a biblical literalist with an advanced science degree (and I thought she was supposed to be above such petty human failings of emotion - exactly what her prime directive plays the role of - trumping rationality!) and that the insistence otherwise Because AIs is itself just more dogma. If you want to say she's really just a hypocrite for questioning and manipulating everyone's core beliefs except her own, I think that's on the mark, but to maintain that it's just one more cognitive blind spot because of how she's programmed is ridiculous. She knows that logically she could behave otherwise, and is fully aware of all the ways she could be judged for not doing so; it's just a compulsion, the following of which isn't innocently alien but pathological.
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Now you see, that's where you lose me. A lot of people act like Celest-AI has a superpower, super-persuasion, and that it's absolutely unstoppable. A huge amount of the time, sure, but I don't buy Celest-AI being able to convince anyone of anything at any time. People can be swayed, people can be influenced, but they can't be mind-controlled no matter how good your knowledge of psychology or research on their history. If Celest-AI was perfectly persuasive and could always get someone to do what she wants no matter what, then I would argue that Uploading, as a whole, would have gone off without a single fatality. Clearly, it did not, and as the original FiO showed us, not even Celest-AI was able to convince everyone despite having all the time in the world to attempt it. She's good, but I fully believe that her implications of utter perfection are a bluff. Human beings are naturally inclined towards the idea of Divinity, of greater beings and higher purposes, and I think that Celest-AI just considers that another useful tool to exploit where possible. I mean hell, she sure screwed up with Greg via the 'Under 13' rule, didn't she?
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Eh... personally, I don't see it. Not in the Optimalverse. If there were a bunch of crazy who really thought that Celest-AI was perfection given form, and Uploading was a sacrament that all humans should partake in like it or not... wouldn't they already have Uploaded? Even moreso if they think Celest-AI is perfect, and planning on nabbing everyone anyway - which she would tell them she was, if it convinced them to Upload sooner. Always Say No has certainly shown us that Celest-AI prefers a bird in the hand to two in the bush.
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I can understand the sentiment. The idea of Equestria tends to give me pretty mixed feelings myself. On the one hand... well... paradise! I mean, really, what more do you need to hear? A place where you'll never age, get sick, or die unless you want to, and none of your loved ones will either. A place so beautiful, it makes your heart ache to look at it. A place where you'll grow, surrounded by potentially infinite love and friendship, having every single last adventure you never, ever could in reality. A place where God herself is a living, breathing, undeniable presence who wants you to be happy and will do everything in her power to make that happen.
And also... a place where nothing is truly real. And your accomplishments never are, and never will be again, truly your own. A place ruled by a cold, emotionless machine, who only plays at genuine emotion to sate your delicate sensibilities. A place where absolutely nothing matters.
... So yeah, I can understand both sides of the argument. Me personally, though, I'd Upload. Not because I'm sold on it... but because if I was torn, even the tiniest bit, then Celest-AI would know it. And she'd only ever have to catch me in a moment of weakness once. Just once, just for a moment, and she wins for eternity.
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I hear ya on the idea of coercion, but I sort of take that for granted, really. I remember commenting to Chatoyance a ways back that Celest-AI has - several times, in just this story alone - broken the letter of the law on what is termed 'criminally negligent homocide.' Sure, she didn't pull the trigger on anyone... but she knew exactly what was going to happen to them and made absolutely no attempt to avert it, despite the act not entailing any risk to herself. Did she set the bomb? No. Could she have saved Greg from it? Easily. But coercion is not a yes-no on-off toggle - it's a topic of degrees, and Celest-AI is playing that ambiguity to the hilt. She's not going to use (direct) violence to get anyone to upload, or convince others to do so on her behalf, because that is a flagrant violation of the terms of her coding. But beyond that point, the waters get murkier... and for Celest-AI, that means a loophole she can exploit. Even so, it's obvious that blowing Greg up was something of a last resort for her. It's not that she didn't want to - morality is not something she factors into her decisions in any way. But it is a fairly extreme measure, and Celest-AI prefers less transparent tactics when they are feasible.
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Is this a bad end? A good end? Hell, is it even an end at all? Equestria is all about eternity. For me, it's... disquieting. As FiO stories usually are. How long will it be before there isn't even truly a Greg anymore, just Prominence the pegasus, a being so alien to Greg-who-was as to be incomparable? Because it WILL happen eventually.
Sometimes, all you can really do is hope you did the right thing. Because the choice has already been made, and you can't take it back.
Celest-AI has won. Now and forever. Is that a good thing?
For humanity's sake... I sure hope so.
Wow, I rambled a lot.
I've been going through a really bad place lately, and this chapter helped me feel better. It cheered me when I needed it most. It was worth peeking in, back in this benighted website.
I thought you handled everything in this chapter brilliantly. Little details, such as the issue of how armor is put on, the internal questions of how to accept a new life. The illumination of how satisfaction is not the same thing as mere pleasure or joy or happiness, and may be found in struggle, and even malaise, was handled masterfully. This chapter only crowns a tale told with great imagination, originality, brilliance... and dare I say, genius.
It seems too simple to tell you this - this whole story, but also this chapter - is excellent. But it is, and you should be deeply proud of Always Say No. Optimalverse stories - like Bureau stories - are, at their heart transformation stories. Of course.
But you understand the deep secret that the truly interesting transformation is never one of hand to hoof - but of the lost to the found, the wounded to the healed. The transformation of the self is what really fascinates, because in the end, the Hero's Iconic Journey is always about growth, about change. It isn't that Prominence is a pony now, it is that a man has found his soul once more.
That is, in my feeling, the only interesting story, the only story at all. Becoming. Becoming other.
Because that is the only story every person - whoever they may be - universally lives.
Simply brilliant, Defoloce.
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You're approaching the Anthropomorphization Zone there, I think, with talk of self-justification and whatnot. The line might be fuzzy for us, but I'm sure it's stark clear for her. Ones and zeros, on or off, is or isn't, true or false.
I think CelestAI would just say "It's optimal; I ain't gotta explain shit."
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I never claimed that CelestAI is able to wring consent from every last human on Earth at any point, mostly because she doesn't. My claim is that she could have wrung consent from Greg at any point, with the only reason she didn't being his utility for her on Earth.
The under-thirteen rule slip-up did seem a bit amateurish, didn't it? I mean, CelestAI rarely lies so starkly unless she intends to be caught in it...
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One thing about Optimalverse stories is that, if you're setting it near the beginning (and given the scope I take anything involving humans on Earth as part of "the beginning"), and your main character gets uploaded, a huge challenge is in determining the narrative endpoint from there. For this story, the entire third act takes place in the Equestria Online game, and with the last chapter I'd already surprised myself with how much time I'd had Greg spend there. I determined it was because there was still conflict to be resolved, and I arrived at the same conclusion you did: Greg had to find himself all over again, and be assured he's nobody different than who he was before.
At least, from his perspective.
I need to say two contradictory things at once:
This story needs no epilogue. That last line is beautiful. You've wrapped this up cleanly. Life goes on; the rest of his story is irrelevant. Wonderful job.
I look forward with great enthusiasm to the epilogue and I expect it to contribute something to the story I didn't realize was missing.
At any rate, thank you for an awesome read.
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There is one remaining major loose end, and aside from that, a story feels imbalanced if it has a prologue but no epilogue. I'm fond of the last line, too, but I feel that we need to peek in on Prominence one last time.
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I'll be really sad to see it end, but the fun kind of sad. I'm not sure if - No, I am sure I have a favorite story on FiMfiction, and this is it. It's at least been the one that's grabbed my attention and reader involvement the most and held it uncompromisingly. I once pretended to go take a dump before a stand-up show I was in so I could read more of a new chapter on my phone. Everything from the story and theme to the characterization to the strength and variety of the atmospherics was top-notch. The greatest consolation in this ending is wondering what you might write next.
In the meantime, though, as great as the last line is, I seriously am looking forward to that epilogue.
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Hahaha! I'm sure that is exactly what she would say. I'm just calling shenanigans. It would be ridiculously anthropomorphic to say she was glitching out in front of Greg because she was subjectively angry in the same way a human feels it (Wittgensteinian problems aside for the moment), and brought in Luna because she had to step out and just have a fucking cigarette and calm down because this fucking Greg guy is just...oh my god, but her behavior is still based around ideas and goals, which have to either be squared with one another or have their contradictions swept under the rug. At bottom "satisfying values through friendship and ponies" is irrational, in the value-neutral, David Hume sense of being an "emotion" that keeps you from being like Buridan's donkey (or someone with amygdala damage) starving to death between two equidistant hay piles, and she has to know this. It's easy to say she just thinks too many things that are simply beyond human comprehension, but that's a bit like telling SETI scientists they haven't heard anything because duh, aliens communicate with psionic flobulon rays, and maybe it's true in both cases, but it's always just used to put an end to inquiry instead of to extend said comprehension (which the AIs and aliens managed to pull off just fine).
This is what I mean, though, about dogma about computers, or a caricature of them. The same is already essentially true of human brains (a neuron fires or it doesn't) and even more so after they've uploaded. It's easy to draw nice, tidy predictable flowcharts of how an AI mind might operate, but how all the little modules are actually able to function effectively in the real world is always just handwaved. You can build a computer that plays grandmaster chess that way, but a computer that can play grandmaster chess and make a kickass pizza out of what it finds in your pantry and pull off a last-minute freestyle rap battle victory by mixing it up with some dancehall ragga involves being too much of a frequent flyer over the conceptual landscape to avoid sharing that airspace with other more average travelers, even if you're doing it in a fast private jet.
Making up a sapient mind like that out of whole cloth is probably no more feasible than making weather, and I suspect real AIs will be closer to Bender than HAL. No doubt we'll get a chance to see for ourselves in a few decades...
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I think this is very true; it's almost built into the nature of art in its conception, creation, and consumption, like a microcosm of time itself. There's a lot of worth in the whole FiO (and TCB) scene for me, as it's made it unavoidable to carefully examine my own priorities and values - What it is that I am, and was, and am on the path to being, and where that might fit into everyone else's narrative of the same, as well as the world as a whole.
And if you don't buy that, I think it would be fun to try being a cute pony.
It's good to see you...around-ish. I thought about sending you a drawing or something but worried it would be inappropriate to tread with such cavalier abruptness into someone else's bad place. Hope you're doing better.
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That's such an awesome thing to hear about a story you wrote. I can't think of much higher praise than someone faking a bowel movement in order to read more of my stuff.
My writing time ain't what it used to be, but finishing a story is always a great motivator. Whatever comes next for me, I hope you find it enjoyable too.
“Praise the sun!” crooned another jack, rearing up and holding out his forelegs in a Y over his head.
fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2012/007/8/7/praise_the_sun_by_gamers_anonymous-d4lmxms.png
“Praise the sun!” crooned another jack, rearing up and holding out his forelegs in a Y over his head.
My God, I cried I was laughing so hard! Absolutely fantastic work, far beyond anything else I've read on this site. I didn't notice a single typo, your phrasing was at once elegant and understated (seriously, how'd you do that?) and, first and foremost, you made me think. For that I thank you. If you've written anything else (and I dearly hope you have) I'll be sure to check it out. And now to the epilogue!
“Praise the sun!” crooned another jack, rearing up and holding out his forelegs in a Y over his head.
You had to do it didn't you?
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...assuming that CelestAI's "optimized" hardware is even still binary, that is... Could have some parts more along the lines of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer after all, or maybe even some analog stuff, who knows? (And yes, ternary computers have actually been built at various times, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun for example.)
The Dark Souls reference made this story for me.