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GroaningGreyAgony


And all your friends will be there with smiles on their faces.

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Jul
22nd
2015

Sorry about the hiccup... · 7:57am Jul 22nd, 2015

I prematurely posted a draft chapter last week and had to yank it down again because it hadn't cooked enough. I'm finished and it's back up now:

http://www.fimfiction.net/story/132387/4/friendship-is-optimal-mismatching-wits/principia-discordai-part-2

This concludes the April Fools interlude; the story will continue soon on its previous track. Here's another teaser:


“Hey, Pen!” they called out to him from the grass.

“Yes?” he replied, dragging his snout out of his book.

“We’re trying to make a pile of snuggly ponies and we don’t have enough,” Snowflash said. “Can you help?”

“Well, you know, I’m not sure that I can.” Pen made a show of musing. “If you have a group of items, and it isn’t a pile yet, is adding one unit suddenly going to make it a pile...?”

“Oh, get over here, already!” laughed Iron Croupiere.

Pen joined them, and got vigorously snuggled, and everything was nice, very nice indeed.

“I always thought the Sorites paradox was overrated,” said Pen, as he nuzzled and cuddled his friends. “It's not even a paradox. Terms such as pile or heap are supposed to be imprecise; you can use them for groups of unknown number or composition. So trying to play the game of ‘exactly how many items constitute a heap’ defeats the purpose. All it seems to do in practice is generate lots of hot air.”

Snow rubbed her chin on Pen’s chest. “You don’t think there’s such a thing as a minimal heap? How about four items? You can make a pyramid shape out of them...”

“Couldn’t you make a heap out of three items? Or even two?” asked Iron as he nuzzled the back of Pen’s neck.

“No, wait,” said Snow. “Two would be a stack, don’t you think?”

“One,” said Pen. “One is the minimal number of items for a heap...”

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