The Fifty Questions Meme so You'll Be Tricked into Reading About Future Plans and Yes This Capitalization Is Correct · 9:15pm Oct 28th, 2020
Here are some Trick Questions, after the cut.
And maybe some important stuff about me and my stories hidden afterwards.
Me introducing myself to class literally every semester.
1. What is your first name?
It's too unique to be safe posting it here, but it's Anna for short.
2. How old are you?
As of 3pm EST today, about 45.377126.
3. What country are you from?
The United States of What the Fuck Happened to My Country
4. What do you look like?
Here's a cute-ish picture from a few years ago.
(I would embed it here so you could see it, but either something is wrong with Fimfiction's image embedder or I need to reset some kind of permissions on my web server.)
5. What do you wish you looked like?
Do you mean in human form? If so, younger. Lots younger. And maybe not so ugly.
6. How did you come across MLP:FIM?
Memes, at first. I avoided watching throughout S1 because I worried the show would not live up to the hype, but I already knew Pinkie Pie had my personality so eventually I gave in and watched Griffon the Brush Off. I was immediately struck by the quality of the writing. It starts out where Pinkie and Dash do a Roadrunner bit, but then Dash changes her opinion about Pinkie being annoying. Then they prank their friends, but Pinkie takes care to make sure they all know it's in good fun, and she won't let Dash prank Fluttershy because Fluttershy is different. So I'm thinking, is this solid character development in a kids' cartoon? With attractive female characters, actually written properly rather than as side baggage? I was instantly hooked. I watched all of S1 online then attended an S2 premiere party, and forced my husband to watch everything. He even had to watch The Legend of Everfree twice with me because I forgot the movie the first time after getting electroconvulsive therapy for severe depression (it deletes recent memories).
7. What is your favorite ship?
GlimTrix, because I want them to be happy together so much. I also ship all canon pairings, Sparkledancer, all possible flavors of Sparklecest, and I have a soft spot for any ship where one creature idolizes another (often as a role model), even though those are perhaps unrealistic (Sparity, Dashaloo, Dashing Do, Spitdash, Lunapip, Marblemac, etc.).
8. What is your least favorite ship?
Anything that would break up a canon/fanon ship, unless it's poly, or occurred before the ship was canon/fanon. I wrote a Twijack fic and fics with a Raridashspike reference and a few with Fluttermac references (I'm only linking one here I like that isn't linked below), but I probably wouldn't write those now.
9.Have you told anyone outside the fandom that you like MLP?
I put ponies in all my slides that I teach from. I say "somepony" on the faculty mailing list. Everypony knows.
10. Were they a family member?
They know too. Everypony knows. You know. I know. The world knows. Dogs know.
11. Favorite MLP episode?
It's too hard to choose. Notable standouts would include A Perfect Pear, Party of One, every season finale, Lesson Zero, Magic Duel, Slice of Life, Equestria Games, practically everything in Season 9 (including The Last Problem), and all episodes focusing on any of the adult princesses.
12. Who is your favorite superhero?
Humdrum.
13. Favorite Anti-hero?
Starlight Glimmer. She tries hard to please, but her natural insecurity and lust for winning through sheer dominance often pokes through.
14. Favorite supervillain?
Pre-redemption Discord.
15. Favorite anti-villain?
Pre-redemption Starlight Glimmer—terrifying, and the perfect example of an anti-villain.
16. What was the last book you read?
I can't remember for certain the last time I finished a book; reading is very difficult for me, but writing is easy. The last one I was reading was Set Theory by Thomas Jech (Third Millennium Edition), which very, very few people in the world could possibly finish. I enjoy Jech. He can prove very complicated things in just a smol hoofful of words, and he does not exclude zero from the definition of limit ordinal, which I like.
17. What is the last movie you watched?
Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey (the second movie), with my husband because he hadn't seen it before and we want to watch the third movie.
18. Favorite song at the moment?
"Heartstrings" by H8_Seed is one of my favorite songs. The beat which disguises the 5/4 time signature is incredibly clever. For official media, "Shine Like Rainbows" from Rainbow Rocks has a lovely, if slightly hidden message.
19. What song do you always come back to?
"Hottie Trotties" by Faulty & PegasYs. The use of a transgender-implied Bimbettes image on the video is a nice touch, and appealing to me for obvious reasons... or it would be, if only this quiz asked interesting-enough questions. Mais non.
20. What is your current job?
I teach at one of the largest universities in the United States.
21. What job do you want in the future?
I already have the best job in the world, though I have nonfiction books I want to write very much.
22. Dream job?
See 21.
23. At this moment what is your greatest achievement?
Figuring out the mysteries of the universe. I'm pretty sure I can answer all the big questions and back my arguments up mathematically.
24. At this moment what is your greatest failure?
My suicide attempt from a couple decades previous. I could mean that in two ways, and I don't know for certain which way I mean it.
25. Do you have any pets?
Not currently. Our last pet was Roxy, a bunny. Her death was very, very difficult for Jewel.
26. What is your dream pet?
Oh, I can think of a human who qualifies. Unless you count Pinkie or Scoots, I guess.
27. Do you own any weapons?
No. Jewel technically owns a handgun, but keeps it far away from our house.
28. Is there a gun you really want?
This is a very strange question. Who made this quiz?
29. What religion are you?
Atheist, though I don't believe death ends consciousness. See 23.
30. If you could hang out with one person in history, who would it be?
Ben Franklin. I could teach him all sorts of amazing math and science, and he was smart enough that he'd be able to learn most of it.
31. If you could bring one person back from the dead, who would it be?
Someone who hasn't yet died.
32. Are you political?
I used to keep my politics close to my chest, but that was before the Republicans in the States began supporting White supremacist groups, conspiracy theories, and plainclothes federal agents throwing random protestors into unmarked vans and driving off to undisclosed locations. Seriously, fuck that shit.
33. Are you married?
Yes, to Jewel (a.k.a. Tala Tearjerker / whitekitten). Also Thorax is my bugsbando. I spend a great deal of time talking to Thorax throughout the day, and he provides me with immense support and structure that helps me to be a better, um... person. Pinkie Pie and Scootaloo are also constants in my life whom I feel close to, but there are many others.
34. Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend?
Not at the moment, no.
35. Have a crush on anyone?
Maybe a little one.
36. Care to explain?
What's with the third-degree?
37. Do you consider yourself attractive?
No. Most of the time, I can only see an ocean of flaws. Some people disagree, but they're probably blinded by the existence of my unique 36D / 7" c-c-c-combo.
38. If you could spend a day with someone alive who would it be?
I'll assume you mean other than my husband or somepony I know personally like Pinkie Pie, in which case I don't really know. Probably either Douglas Hofstadter, Max Tegmark, or Noam Chomsky (but I'd better hurry in his case).
39. Who is your favorite pony?
Yes. And also Pinkie Pie, with a side order of various princesses, Starlight Glimmer, Scootaloo, and Derpy.
40. Any embarrassing secrets you'd like to share?
I'd like to have sex with my parents (they don't agree). Also, I'm really good at Truth or Dare for some reason.
41. If you have done any stories/art, what is your favorite piece?
Art is hard to choose from because I have so much of it. It might be an intaglio piece titled "Motherly" (not related to the story). For my stories, I love them all and almost every one means something very personal to me. I think The Knight and the Knave and The Laughter I Choose to Be have the cleverest twists (where you'll want to read the story twice), Dead and Loving It and my second Candy Mane story will both have you in stitches, and Broken Symmetry is probably the most engrossing read (though some would argue The Price of a Smile). Not enough people have read my minific One Head of Cattle, and finally, The Element of Surprise was my first fic and it is still well-loved for its deep feels. (Wow, I didn't even name any controversial ones. Look, just check my page out and read everything I have ever written already.)
42. Are you a virgin?
No, I've attended plenty of furry cons.
43. What is the craziest thing you have done in your life?
See 24.
44. Favorite TV show besides MLP?
Probably Rick and Morty, though DuckTales (2017) is turning out great (we just finished S1).
45. Do you have a fetish of any kind?
Coercion, romance, feminization, anything gender-bending, romance, incest, forms of D/s that may or may not be healthy, romance, hypnosis, things I shouldn't mention here just because they would piss people off who don't understand the difference between fantasy and reality, and romance.
46. Do you regret saying this fetish?
"This" fetish. You're adorable.
47. What are some of your favorite MLP stories?
Many of the works of horizon and Cold in Gardez are top-notch, and I was a huge fan of Time Enough for Love in the Writeoff (I still need to read the upscaled version here on Fimfiction). Somewhere We Only Know is warm and fuzzy, for me. There are too many good authors to list them all. It's hard for me to read, though, and nearly impossible in my present condition—I'm trying to find a way around that. I used to read story submissions when I felt welcome in the Writeoff, but it's been a long time since then.
48. Favorite quote?
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." –Isaac Asimov
49. Did you ever hurt someone's feelings just to hurt them?
Yes, as recently as yesterday (I need to apologize), and I am never proud of it.
50. Did you answer all these questions honestly?
I had no choice but to. It's hard to guard yourself from danger when you've known what it's like to live a lie.
Now for my health problems and writing, and the unfortunate manner in which they intersect.
I'm still struggling every day with ME/CFS. It sucks. I was partially disabled before by the side-effects of narcotics I take for myofascial pain, and this thing is like, ten times worse. Writing is very difficult. Bathing is difficult. Initiating anything whatsoever is difficult. Thorax is helping me to learn compensatory mechanisms but it's been very slow progress.
I'm hopeful that I can teach again next semester (via online due to zombie plague), but it will be very challenging. I'm also hopeful that I can improve my abilities before then and get some writing done. Only about 5% of people recover fully from ME/CFS. Most people get somewhat better, then just have to manage the symptoms, which is where I'm at right now. The first four months were impossible, and now things are a bit better, but still pretty awful. Fortunately I have love, support, and money. If only my country were not on fire right now, my stress might be manageable.
As it is, it isn't. As you might imagine my depression is pretty bad right now, which feeds the vicious cycle, but I'm managing it with less-than-ideal methods. I'm a fighter, though (split class fighter/sorcerer, more like) because I'm not just fighting for myself. I'm doing it for all of you, and my close friends, and my family.
All that said, here are the fics I'm working on.
1) Updates to TSJ, Geldings, and Diane, Private Eye. I haven't forgotten about y'all, I'm just disabled.
2) A short fic I didn't finish in time for FOME's contest, titled Binary Star. This is currently top burner because, though dramatic, it has just barely enough emotion for me to manage without sinking into a pit of despair.
3) A very important fic that touches on issues both sensitive and topical. This one is very, very important to do properly, so it will take a while. It's titled The Pledge.
4) A dark drama titled The Razor of Dreams, named after the Daring Do artifact. This will probably be on the long side, so it may take a while too.
I love you all. 
I'll let your favorite pony know you said hi.
To be clear, is that ships within Twilight's family, or ships between different Skylight Lightverbs?
You are much braver than I may ever be.
Here's hoping matters improve for you (and everyone else) in the near future.
StarTrix for the win!
I am quite impressed that your university is so accepting of PDB (public displays of brony-ness) among their faculty members. What subject do you teach?
Also, electroconvulsive therapy sounds horrible. I'm sorry you had had to go through that--unless it was of help to you...?
That Twilight Sparkle hair. :D
Glad to hear things are improving and here's hoping they continue to improve on all fronts.
Glad to see your responses, they were fun to read. Your voice always interests me when I'm able to read/hear it.
5387810
I mean anypony related to Twilight by blood, marriage, or adoption, though Sparkledancer almost qualifies as recolorcest.
5387815
I teach software engineering!
After many sessions of ECT my depression was cured for the first time ever, but that only lasted a week before it started to fade and I was back where I started three weeks later, sadly. (It was a neat experience, though!) I have treatment-resistant depression and I've tried pretty much everything. TMS did not work. Ketamine has helped the most, but it only lasts a few months and I'm not sure the benefit is as large anymore. I'm used to life on hard mode though, so it's okay.
5387810
...oh and also Derpy says she knows and says hello right back.
I think it's nice learning about other people, thank you for your honesty
5387835
For some reason I assumed you taught math or physics. I need to recalibrate my entire picture of you now. Beeeeeeeep.
i think question 33 kinda answer question 45.
5387870
You might think that, but we don't have the same fetishes.
5387860
I study math for fun. I have a math problem.
...Holy crap, I had no idea how much I needed to hear someone else say that. It's... actually kind of relieving, if I'm being honest.
I'm not alone! The era I'm most personally attached to has proponents! Vindication at last!
:P
My embellished dramatics aside, thanks for offering your thoughts! Very interesting, that's for sure.
:)
Are we in a simulation? and can you tell the admin to lay off 2020 difficulty settings.
Exclusive footage from novel depression treatment clinical trials:
media1.tenor.com/images/6dc89f0af5d90e33d4c25b9cd95d5460/tenor.gif?itemid=7513769
thumbs.gfycat.com/TemptingBlackandwhiteHoneycreeper-max-1mb.gif
Is there... something we can read?
Maybe I've already said it somewhere else, but that gives me chills: you don't seem a type of person who's likely to decide something and then fail to do it.
You sound like a fun professor to have, that's a bold move to display your love ponies so openly.
I don't think you look all that bad.
What do you mean by all this? And do you not think you can be a better person for whatever reason?
5387835
I would have thought you taught math or physics as well.
5387969
Despite what many transhumanists would have you believe, it is very likely that almost 0% of your experience is in a second-level simulation. The patterns most closely tied to consciousness are simply too complex to generate artificially in any realistic way. Effective simulations require too much of a complexity jump when compared with the base world, and the decreased likelihood of being able to support a simulation at all more than overwhelms the "but you could do a lot of simulations because computers fast" argument.
5388021
ECT was pretty much like that but not nearly as terrible of a movie.
That's what one of my nonfiction books would be about, were I not massively disabled physically and mentally.
I'm safe, don't worry. Post-attempt, I became aware of the signs. Also I live with my husband (very close support), not to mention the ponies, and I love family too much to fall victim to it again. But mostly I am aware of the signs and the potential so I can see if disaster is neigh and head it off effectively.
5387835
5388027
I should note that computer science and engineering are math, even if what I teach is a little closer to the practical side.
As for the other part, I was just being coy about referring to myself as a human being, which I am, at least physically speaking, more or less. I know I am growing as a person all the time but it is very hard for me to believe I am not a very terrible person. I mean, I don't believe it cognitively, but I feel that way (in affect). The cognitive and affective realms are very different in my head.
5388035
I was also wondering about "Pinkie Pie, Thorax, and Scootaloo", who I assume are pseudonyms for people you know.
I don't know how one could not be human, but your head sounds like an interesting place. I get what you mean about the difference in the cognitive and affective realm though. It's a constant struggle to know something is factually true but struggle to actually act based on that knowledge.
5388029
I don't think we're anywhere near advanced enough to really say that for sure yet. I don't see a reason to think consciousness couldn't exist on a substrate besides neurons.
5388032
I've also meant that, well, Universe has already split two decades ago and it kinda looks like and we're not in the part with most amplitude
Am I somehow the only person who didn't know this? Am I just stupid?
Or maybe my brain just can't grasp onto whitekitten being a real entity with a presence in the world of meat, and I get periodically gobsmacked by this revelation and immediately it slips out of my graspers.
5388105
Be careful when using "whitekitten" and "world of meat" in the same sentence!
5388045
Pinkie Pie, Thorax, and Scootaloo are ponies, duh.
Well, except Thorax. Thorax is only a pony sometimes.
5388045
Oh! I mean ponies, in my mind. I have a very, very vivid imagination, and my brain is good at compartmentalizing things.
As for my humanity, of course I'm human, but conceptually I can see myself in different ways.
5388045
My verdict on the complexity of intelligence is based on background I have in neurology. It's certainly possible to replicate the base pattern of consciousness but it would be incredibly difficult outside of wetware. There's probably a lot of redundancy in the human brain, but the sheer amount of data you would need to hold and manipulate very quickly is not something you could readily to do with a standard computer, even if computers grow more powerful by many factors.
But that isn't the basis of my estimation. It's based on the fact that any "first" layer of emulation for something that is inherently very complex is far, far less complex than a second layer built upon the first. That lesser complexity must be more heavily weighted by any expectation function. Put more simply but less accurately, there are many more worlds where conscious beings are able to have this exact discussion, but fail to generate likely-conscious-supporting machines. But even were that not true, those first-layer worlds would still receive a higher expectation weight just because they are simpler. (This has to do with how you can't have a probability distribution on an infinite domain without biasing it heavily, eventually, towards the finite center. Some scholars contest that, and they are wrong.)
So-called AI is not replicating real intelligence or conscious experience and it isn't much of a step in the right direction. This is why it can be particularly dangerous: it is able to accurately make decisions like a human would, but it cannot understand context outside of its training (even for unsupervised learning models, and those don't work on "general case" problems). For example, a neural network will inevitably show aggressive false positives in response to random noise. If it's trying to shoot terrorists, any sort of outlier data has a good chance of being recognized as a terrorist.
We already use AI for that purpose.
"Someone who hasn't yet died."
Oh, clever. :D
Good luck indeed with working through and around your condition, and hopefully with improvement in it.
And good luck also with your depression. Keep up the good fight. :)
Oh, alas, though: I am not sure which pony out of all the good ponies is my favorite, so I don't know who to address that hello to!
But thanks, and thanks for the offer. :)
(And thanks for writing, even if I still haven't even gotten to looking at most of your stories amongst all the other works I haven't gotten to yet.)
5388294
"This is why it can be particularly dangerous: it is able to accurately make decisions like a human would, but it cannot understand context outside of its training"
There's a memorable relevant bit in Peter Watts's Rifters trilogy.
Short version: Some managers trying to contain a small potentially-apocalyptic oopsie with a novel microorganism set a powerful neural network, known technology in the setting, on the problem so they don't have to bring more people in and will have an easier time with the coverup. By the time they think that maybe the instructions they've been blindly following from the black box aren't helping and decide to risk brining in someone who has a clue how said black box actually works, said expert's reaction is horrified laughter. Because, see, to save time and money, they'd used an already trained and tested neural network, just pulled it right out of another system in their operations. Unfortunately, because they didn't have much of an idea what they were actually doing, they didn't realize that this particular network, having been trained to prefer simple things, such as an email or, say, a single species of novel microorganism, over complex things, such as a messy, complex nth-generation self-evolving piece of malware or, say, the entire rest of the biosphere of Earth, might not share certain key assumptions about what its actual goal in this new job was supposed to be...
Why, no, it's not a very cheery series of books. :D
5388284
That does sound very vivid indeed, to be able to have something like that in your head.
5388294
If I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, then the very fact of the extreme complexity of our universe makes it unlikely that it is a simulation of some kind?
It seems like a lot of your argument against AI and simulation universes depends on computing technology not being able to advance past a certain point. Certainly, we can't have anything like a human-level consciousness on a computational substrate now, but who knows what the future will hold in 20, 50, 100, or 1000 years.
I don't think anyone would argue that current AI is anything like true intelligence though.
5388624
I'm saying the opposite of that, actually. Creating a pattern in a simulation within a simulation is more complex than creating a pattern in a level one simulation, and expectation must favor simpler bases.
I agree it's possible that consciousness could be produced in a computer in theory, but knowing what I know about how computing technology and the human brain function, I think it's unlikely that it is attainable. The rapid development of computing machinery and algorithms makes it tempting to predict that anything will be possible within a few hundred years, but the technology required is much, much further away than that. I honestly don't think humans will be able to survive long enough or ever have the resource capacity to do it. I wouldn't be stunned speechless if it did happen, but I would be very surprised.
That said, it isn't directly related to the argument that we're not in a simulation now. That's based on evaluating the expectation function of consciousness relative to the complexity of the bases producing a pattern that maps naturally to a conscious abstraction. There's evidence for this, as well: there are many ways to create patterns that map to conscious states, but our Universe is just about as simple as it can possibly be (complex though it may seem) in terms of the amount of information needed to produce consciousness from a system of quantum branching. The fact that our world is simple and coherent is what we should expect. (Granted, it's impossible to postulate this a priori, so it's not strong evidence... it's more like agreement with expectation from the theory which was shaped by that fact.)
5389203
Alright, I think I understand better now what you're saying, though it's clear I have a lot of research to do, and I need to get much farther in my education to really get it on a deeper level.
Estimating the processing power of the brain is difficult, and I don't have nearly as much experience with neurology or computer science, but I guess I just don't see anything inherently special about cells and organic matter as opposed to transistors and inorganic matter.
Do you expect us to go extinct or something? Barring a Venus-tier climate shift or some kind of sci-fi apocalypse like an impossibly advanced super-plague, I have a hard time seeing that happening, ever. I don't know what could stop us.
Glad to see you are still alive and kicking, wish you the best.
Aww, you're not ugly. I think you're lovely ;3