Random topics and questions I've pondered over the weeks · 8:04am Aug 15th, 2014
Is immortality worth it assuming it's highly limited (and assuming no cost in the actual attaining of immortality)? I've no doubt that I'd go for immortality if at least a few people got it as well - preferably people I know, but not necessarily - but if only one person could be immortal and you were that one person, would you take the opportunity for immortality?
It seems a sad life. People you know keep on dying, and eventually you'll become an anachronism. Perhaps a revered one (depending on the society), but unless you're limiting developments such that everything is similar to how you remember it, or at least so that you can understand everything before letting people develop more (one of my theories pertaining to Celestia - not what I actually believe, but it'd be a cool explanation to write about), you'd simply be out of place for the rest of eternity.
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Is a cutie mark a good thing? I'm going under the assumption that cutie marks are both representative of the talent one loves (and which is revealed when they have an epiphany) and directly influences said pony such that they keep on believing that it's what they wish to do. I mean, on one hand, it's an arguably external element that alters their minds. On the other hand, it's such a fundamental part of ponykind that I'm having trouble imagining a pony-world without cutie marks.
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Right, so let's say you've found a 'wind-up' god. Is this a good thing or bad thing? What would you do with it, keeping in mind that if you throw it away other people could find it, and keeping in mind that it can't be destroyed. Is the usage of a 'wind-up God' detrimental to the idea of Free Will, or is it a better way to express one's free will? (We're assuming here that while the Wind-Up God CAN show people knowledge, the person who makes the 'wish' has to know the information s/he's giving to people, so you can't just automatically learn how the universe works. Or, to put it another way, you have to know what you're getting)
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Let's assume that the continuity of consciousness is not a problem in Friendship is Optimal; it's an interesting conversation, but it's not really what I want to discuss.
Would you like to move to Equestria Online? I honestly don't have an answer to this - I don't like Celestia's manipulative actions to get people to move, and she's pretty fuckin' impersonal (I'd almost call her selfish in the sense that she really only cares about fulfilling her goals, but I already KNOW that's the wrong word), but the fact remains that people are happy in Equestria Online. She's destroying free will by changing the circumstances surrounding people, and she acts as a sort of fate, but she doesn't directly alter belief sets (arguably. She does mess with that one guy so that he finds Ponies attractive, but I think that's closer to 'affecting the senses' rather than 'affecting belief sets' or 'affecting one's memories', which, while still bad, isn't reprehensible in my eyes.)
Based solely on the morals I'm consciously aware of, I'd be against CelestAI. But in reality I honestly don't know whether she's in the right or in the wrong.
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Right, so there was this one fic wherein Luna put a geass on someone who tried to commit suicide, reasoning that he'd forfieted his life and now it belonged to her (it was technically her's anyway. I need to find it again, btw; I don't suppose you know its name?). She then made him go off to take care of orphans and be a good stallion, and then I couldn't keep on reading because BIASES AHOY! I was having trouble getting over how evil Luna seemed to be, removing his choice like that and forcing him to do what she wished. I mean, she was benevolent, but fuuuuck. And I also seem to recall her telling him to go somewhere and to fall in love to give someone else hope or something, though my memories could be wrong.
Was Luna right in doing this, though? On one hand, she violated his mind and forced a geass upon him. On the other hand, she stopped a suicide and taught him that his life was worth living. And hey, she's being efficient; a dead pony can't do as much as a living pony. I find it abhorrent - suicide is a bad choice, but the priority here for me is to make sure people reach these beliefs about suicide themselves. If they're forced to do what Luna wishes because of their suicide attempt, I can't help but feel horrified.
What do you think?
EDIT: Found it. Princess Luna's Suicide Solutions
Gimme a few hours (maybe days, depending on how much I have to watch myself for biases) to read this.
re immortality:
What do you mean by "highly limited"?
Also, interesting Celestia idea.
re cutie marks:
It might be an external element, depending on how cutie marks work, but I'm leaning heavily towards it being internal.
As for whether they're a good thing… I'd say that they usually are. However, Starlight over Detrot pointed out the issue of ponies with cutie marks for things that have become obsolete. If you have your magical epiphany about what you want your life to revolve around and then the next week somepony else invents a replacement so superior that everyone switches to that, what do you do about it?
It occurs to me that this could tie in the Celestia idea mentioned above; slowing change not only gives her time to get used to things, it gives time to adjust without causing cutie mark problems. Though there'd still be the problem of those with invention cutie marks being told they couldn't release anything yet…
re "wind-up god":
I think I must be missing something here. I'm not really sure what you're talking about.
re FiO:
Yes, I expect I would. Probably not right away (particularly if I don't already know how the story turns out; I'd want to wait long enough to reassure myself that Celestai wasn't buggy and/or about to be blown up), but eventually. We seem to disagree on this too. :)
Among other things, consider this: if you really had full free will as an overwhelming value, Celestai could probably just step back and let your shard be handled by deterministic physics and random number generation. Or at least give you such a good simulation of that that you'd never be able to tell the difference. Which I suppose could be a problem in and of itself for a lot of people, though…
And, once again, her manipulativeness doesn't bother me; if anything, I consider it a plus. The same with her "selfishness" (and I'm not sure what else to call it either at the moment, sorry); it makes her easier to predict and trust, given her known motives.
re the last one:
It's not ringing any bells with me, sorry.
Hm. I can see myself either for or against Luna's actions, depending on details I do not at present know. A big part is what level the geass operates on (from "you're trapped in a body controlled by someone else, only able to watch the world around you and the body's actions in it" to "you're not even aware you're geassed (or wouldn't be if your memory of it being placed had been removed, which is another particular), so subtle are its effects").
2372163 Immortality: Highly limited in terms of quantity. It's true immortality (not certain on memory, but just assume you can remember things from a million years ago as easily as you can remember things about fifty years ago or something, and otherwise your ability to remember stuff is largely the same), but only one person ever can become immortal, and in this case he remains eternally in the physical state he was in prior to achieving immortality (which implies the existence of a metaphysical mind, but that's off-topic).
Would you take immortality if you could be the only one who was immortal (assuming there's no other way for other people to become immortal, ever)? How many people would have to be immortal too before you'd accept immortality (assuming it's quantitative)? Or what other conditions would there have to be?
Cutie Mark: The question then becomes 'do cutie marks limit one from doing other things as well', I suppose. And it doesn't explicitly do so, but if it's external (and to prevent confusion, here's my definition: external means the pony isn't coming to his/her conclusions based on his/her belief set and experiences, but based on the cutie mark itself), then the pony would never be as satisfied with life ever again. If it's simply a sign, like a branding (which it isn't, based on Magical Mystery Cure). or if it's an ability enhancer that doesn't directly affect one's desires (again, evidence against it), this obsoletion doesn't seem that bad.
Think of 'Wind-up God' as a genie. It grants wishes. I added that video because vocaloids are awesome, and that's where I started wondering.
FiO: Yeah, I guess. It's still horrifying. I'm trying to pin down which aspect of myself keeps me from rejecting it outright.
Geass: He's aware he's Geassed. He does what he has to do to the best of his abilities and based on his judgement, and he has free will outside of the geass, but he MUST do what is ordered of him by Luna. I'm not sure if his feelings can be directly altered by the geass, but I think they could be - might be misremembering, and to make this question more difficult, we'll just say it doesn't.
Lemme test something. I wrote down a comment a while back pertaining to Luna's suicide solutions, and I want to see if I can quote it.
EDIT: NOPE! Here's a link.
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re immortality:
Ah. Two questions:
First, what's the degree of this immortality, from "ageless and immune to disease" to "unkillable by everything forever"?
Second, why assuming that there's no other way for other people to become immortal ever?
re cutie marks:
One would likely not be as happy doing other things or as good at them, I expect.
Isn't the cutie mark part of their belief set and experiences, among other things?
re windup god:
Ah. And I'm assuming that it's the sort of genie that grants the wish you actually wanted rather than exploiting the semantics of the wish you made. Does it have unlimited uses?
re FiO:
I've been started to suspect that, for Optimalverse and CTCB, I've to an extent gotten lucky in having my beliefs already be compatible. This is more pronounced with CTCB, given that the post-conversion state of affairs is not individually customized, but it still applies for the Optimalverse.
re geass:
Hm… I'm still not sure I have enough detailed information to make a judgement. This is one of those scenarios, at least to me, where the specifics are quite important.
Having read your comment (and congratulations on finding the story again), I still don't have a fundamental disagreement with Luna's motives, I think.
(Sorry; I'm low on sleep and trying to comment on a story I've not read.)
Ah, and I've just reread the relevant section of the comment this is a reply to and noticed that I missed something. Okay, if we're assuming for the sake of the argument that the geass can't affect emotions, I'd say that this is more likely to be worse. Wait, but didn't you say that he was ordered to fall in love at one point?
Oh, and this seems possibly relevant to the Optimalverse.
2373079 For the luna thing, it turns out that she can order feelings. She ordered the MC to not feel fear.
My bad. I'm going to reread this. Maybe we should postpone this conversation until I get a better grasp on what the story was about again? Maybe I'll make a more detailed blog.
Immortality: I don't know about the limit thing. Let's just assume that you remain at the physical age you were at when you transcended. Not necessarily immune to disease, but you can't die from them, and they're inconveniences more than anything. And you're immune to psychological diseases.
Well, actually maybe you are immune to diseases. This part really doesn't matter when pertaining to the question of whether you'd take immortality as the only one ever.
And I'm saying assume noone becomes immortal for the sake of argument. If I could become immortal with the hope that others would join me at some point, I'd probs take it, but this question is more about taking immortality bundled with isolation. What's the minimum number of people who's have to join you before you consider it, or what other conditions? What would you expect from an everlasting life? (I'm mostly asking this stuff because I'm curious as to how Celly felt during Luna's thousand year banishment, assuming a human-like mind. And how others might feel/do if they weren't so lucky to be royalty.
I'll try to write down how I define my belief set later, but for now I think that disregarding its direct influence on ponies, the cutie maek only alters the belief set because of social expectations, emotional connotations (generally to the happy memory where a pony got a cutie mark) and the like. Because Applejack has an apple cutie mark, she thinks her special talent is bucking apples. If the cutie mark directly influenced beings, I'd say that she was given a desire to buck apples, and the cutie mark is more a sign that she's got the desire.
It's sort of a question of causality, in my eyes.
2373599
Postponement pending further information might be good. Particularly since my view of the morality of this is very sensitive to small details; your latest update has me leaning towards Luna, but I still don't think that I have sufficient data to fully make a judgement.
re immortality:
The problem still isn't working for me. In addition to my question about being unkillable not being addressed, I still have an issue with the "no one else" thing. There are a variety of potential methods for achieving immortality; in order for the decision to be made with the knowledge that there will be no others, either precognition must be included or there must be an entity making a credible promise to destroy all other immortals (and even then there would likely be uncertainty).
re cutie marks:
Curious. Why do you not count social expectations, emotional connotations, and the like as valid influences? Or am I misunderstanding you?
2373700 CUTIE MARK: Yeah, you were misunderstanding me. Those do influence ponies, and probably to a very large extent. The question in my eyes is whether they're influenced solely by these things, or if the cutie mark itself (or whatever it may represent) affects ponies, outside of things like this. It's a question of whether Applejack's cutie mark shows her love of bucking apples, or makes her love bucking apples.
2373715
Ah, sorry.
Hm. I'm not sure what the answer is, really. I'm skeptical that we have enough data to find out in general (though we might be able to make determinations for specific universes).