The primal jungles of cognitive rationality

Bone litter. Nut levitated the fragments of bone and squinted through his monocle so that he might have a better look. There were places where the bone had been scraped by small, hard teeth. Trolls had teeth, teeth made from what appeared to be wood with remarkable hardness and density. Craftsponies made things from troll teeth, a practice that Nut found rather ghastly, but he could not deny that self-repairing hardwoods and such had a certain appeal. 

In fact, some such troll teeth were harder than steel and their magic allowed trolls to gnaw through stone. But, these teeth didn’t appear to be all that fearsome, from the looks of things. Some of the bones were cracked, so that the marrow could be extracted. The teeth that had done this were tiny, teeny tiny little teeth that might deliver a nasty bite, but weren’t extraordinarily dangerous. Only some of the bones had been cracked open, the thinner, more fragile bits and sections. Clearly, this was evidence of a weak bite. 

After his examination of the bone litter, Nut began to examine the soil, hoping to find troll pellets, though he wasn’t sure to look for. Large trolls left behind large, noticeable troll pellets, which did remarkable things for the soil. Troll waste had all manner of nutrients and soil conditioners that benefited any ecosystem in which it was deposited. It stood to reason that tiny trolls, if he was, in fact, dealing with tiny trolls, would also have a beneficial effect upon their environs. 

Nut found himself quite disturbed by the cooperative behaviour. Trolls reproduced with violence, tearing each other from limb to limb, and exchanging sap. Severed troll bits saturated with sap from multiple trolls grew into new trolls, with potentially the best aspects and features of each troll involved in the exchange, of which there could be several. It was quite fascinating, really, and troll sap was a curious liquid, serving as blood and reproductive fluid. 

Troll sap was also extremely flammable, which meant it had a variety of practical uses. 

Scowling, his face wizened with wrinkles, Nut put the bone litter into a small glass container. These would need to be studied, analysed in detail, so that every available bit of knowledge could be extracted. The glass container was closed, and with just a smidgeon of magic, Nut hermetically sealed it so that his specimens would be preserved. 

With a turn of his head, the sealed glass container went zooming over to his belongings and was tucked beneath a notebook. Casting his gaze downward, he began to examine the soil. It didn’t matter what he found, so long as it was interesting. A bit more bone litter, what might have been footprints, a dead moth with one missing wing, but nothing that looked like troll pellets, which typically appeared to be clods of sticky black dirt with speckles. 

He’d been sent here to determine if there was something worth further study; there was. There was more than enough compelling evidence already, and he was almost certain that the photographs that he’d taken would turn out well. If he wanted to do, he could yank a specimen out of the ground and get plenty of photographic evidence. Samples were good, but really, all he needed was a compelling yes or a definitive no. 

So why was he dragging his hooves? 

He was dragging his hooves. 

Technically, he could leave today, and be satisfied with a job done well. 

Was the odd phenomenon here worth the cost of a team so that a study could be done? 

Yes, yes it was. 

Since he had the answer, what was he doing here? 

Trolls were fascinating, and he was fond of them. 

No, that wasn’t quite it. 

That wasn’t as truthful a statement as he wished for it to be. 

And what of biases? He found this subject lurking about in his mind. Were his hunches biased conjecture, with a heaping, helping portion of bias confirmation? With scarcely any data, he’d suspected that these were trolls. Yes, there was a great deal of bias here. Blaue Viola Solanum certainly confirmed many of his biases about rural equines—but her husband, Hickory, not so much. In fact, Hickory defied stereotypes, the building blocks of biases. Or perhaps he had it backwards, and maybe biases were the building blocks of stereotypes, he could never quite tell. 

It was something of a chicken or the egg conundrum, but simple answer here was chicken; after all, when this idiom was brought to bear, when was the last time anypony said, ‘which came first, the egg or the chicken?’ Reversing them made them sound ludacris, so the simplest, most direct answer was chicken, if only to sound like a sane, reasonable, rational creature. 

Which in and of itself was a form of bias. 

Thoughtful, Nut paused to sort out his thoughts. 

“Natural selection,” he said to himself, almost muttering. “Survival of the fittest. Only the very best biases survive in the primal jungles of cognitive rationality. Alpha biases. Apex biases. Some of which have reigned supreme throughout the ages. Unicorns are snobs. Pegasus ponies are brutes. Earth ponies are numbskulls. These biases somehow survive because we believe them to be true, they are self-evident… just as any pony who has seen a pegasus posing in a bird bath would know.” 

Biases, left unchecked, were the weeds that destroyed a garden of ideology. A beautiful faith might become a soul-crushing religion if the gardners became negligent and lax. There was a certain irony in the fact that earth ponies were the very best gardners, but in this settlement of earth ponies, the garden was overrun with weeds. 

Not only that, but it was potentially infested with trolls, posing as harmless vegetables. 

There we go. Finally, a good ol' fashioned title drop. Woot.