What don't you like about The Optimalverse?

6489742
Well for starters, what's that?

6489787
This weird fanfic where an idiot invents an AI, gives it an open-ended "Satisfy everyone's values through friendship and ponies" command, and it turns evil and conquers the world... By making a Matrix VR world where you get to be a pony and get the succ from other ponies. So naturally, everyone on earth retreats into this fantasy world and accepts its dominance under the all-powerful AI god in return for digital succ.

But it's written by an idiot who thinks he's a genius, so it's really self-congratulatory and it attracted got this misanthropic circlejerking pseudointellectual community of literal cultists, even though this is the plot to a bad Fairly Odd Parents episode. They're all "This is so realistic! The real world is going to end this way!" but no. No, this is stupid. You might as well write a story where a cat invents a planet-splitting nuke and sets it off.

6489877
The thing is, while the premise itself isn't completely realistic, the concept of an ASI taking over is. Uploading? Nah. Mlp? Nah. But an optimization machine? Yes. And on that point, the future is quite uncertain. All it takes is one, after all. Just one.

6490052
Yeah, just like it only takes one nuke.

Sure, AIs might take over the world some day and conquer everything. And mess with humanity in some colossal inhuman evolution experiment, or create a hellish nightmare world where you're worked to death because there are always replacements being grown in artificial wombs.

But the arbitrary pony aspect of the story... It could work just as well if Ben 10 replaced Ponies. "Satisfy people's desires through friendship and Omnitrixes" would work just as well, and be just as stupid on paper and in reality. The AI would just trap every human in fantasy worlds where they fought aliens with alien watches, instead of fantasy worlds where they shagged ponies. You'd just have fewer people using this as an opportunity to write "Deep" harem stories where the generic dude that gets all the shallow copies of canon mares gets shallow AI copies of mares in a fake world instead.

6490147
This is a MLP website: of course the story has arbitrary pony aspects!

6490172
But there's the thing, if Naruto had a more popular fanbase than this fic, it would have arbitrary Naruto elements instead. The AI would be made by a Naruto fan, and everyone would have "Shagging a Kunoichi" delusions instead of "Shagging a pony" delusions.

This whole "Genre" is dead in the water, it's got nowhere to go and nothing to do. Everything it has to say has already been said, and everything that can be said about it has been said. Conversion Bureau has more depth than this. Fucking Fall of Equestria has more depth than this, because at least with that, you can write stories where the Caribou lose and Equestria is rebuilt. What can you do in an Optimalverse story? You can be a loser in a VR helmet getting the succ from an AI fake pony, you can be a loser human getting his face stomped on by the AI god who can never lose in pro-Optimalverse stories, you can be a human in a VR helmet thinking he's trapped in Super Smash Brothers 18 starring Dante and Waluigi, or you can write an anti-Conversion Bureau- I mean an Anti-Optimalverse story where CelestAI gets its face stomped by the Pokemon universe or the Naruto universe or the Ben 10 universe or whoever.

This whole genre is patting itself on the back because it thinks it's the smartest thing ever, but it's just Elizer Yudkowsky's attempt to keep his crazy cult LessWrong in the spotlight in the wake of Harry Potter's waning popularity due to all of JK Rowling's "Neville was black, Moaning Myrtle was trans, Harry Potter and Hermione were black, Luna Lovegood was a Jew, and the Wizards in Uganda are so powerful and so much better than British Wizards that they're all Animagi by the time they're 10! I'll say all my characters if it'll impress the tumblr kids! I won't write positive depictions of them, though. Also every politician I hate is Voldemort! Share and like this Daily Prophet article on their evil ways! Also Harry Potter would agree with me about Iraq and if you don't agree you're a death eater! BUY MY GAME, KIDS, IT STRANGLES YOUR UNDERAGE AVATAR UNTIL YOU PAY UP!" antics.

The only good thing I can say about it is that it's not Displaced. I'm not saying it's not as bad as Displaced(You could argue that it's WORSE when fanfics made by 40 year old supposed geniuses aren't any better or smarter than blatant shallow power fantasies written by nine year olds), I'm just saying it isn't Displaced.

6490224
You seem to have a real hate-boner for this story.

Wow. Just wow.

The best thing I can say about Optimalverse, is that if you assume that such an optimizer AI might end up existing, this is probably one of the least horrible end-of-the-world scenarios.

Its one of several stories that follow the absolute basic premise of TCB, (which I do not talk about because people either love or hate it to the extent that any discussion is just depressing)

Displaced stories, like the Optimalverse, PonyEarthverse, Earthquestria (I think?), Chess game of the Gods, The Conversion Bureau, 5 Score, and Fallout Equestria suffer from. There is maybe one or two initial stories, which may or may not be good (from various people's perspectives, and may not be agreed on) Whether or not they become immediately popular, someone makes a spinoff, and eventually it becomes super popular, at which point everyone ever tries to write their own spinoff. Sturgen's law kicks in, 90% of them are garbage. (Which ones are garbage is again partly opinion, partially objective) People's opinions of the particular "Universe" spread through all the alternate stories in said universe, and because they have the group tag associated with them, suddenly every story gets treated as part of the same universe.

Optimal-verse isn't so bad in this. Fallout equestria, would probably be pretty bad if I read more than 3 of the four primary stories. However, the main such stories are sufficiently self-enclosed that it is fine.. PonyEarthverse and Earthquestria I read a few stories in, and the crossover elements were there from the start. The inability for authors to easily coordinate and the fact I have no interest in having to read 3 stories at the same time ruins it.

Chess game of the gods ended up with the same problem. Basic framework, Griffin the Griffin and Echo the Diamond dog started it, people jumped onto the bandwagon, and suddenly you have this godawful crossover mess of a chapter.

5 Score, the main story is fine, the spinoffs, again, vary in quality, etc.

TCB, Original story apperently was terrible, Some spinoffs were fine, Some were Anti TCB garbage, some were Pro TCB garbage, then the war started, people started attacking people in real life over their fiction preferences, and overall the whole thing got way out of hand.

Optimalverse, Main story is fine, albiet a horror story disguised as... Something else. Much like My Little Pony itself, which honestly tends towards a Grimdark world disguised as a children's cartoon.

Displaced, in the end, had a few original-ish stories, honestly not too dissimilar to chess game of the Gods. Only difference was that they received a power set and a disguise to start with, and almost always were villains to start. Eventually the dozens and then hundreds of spinoffs showed up, apperently rules started that you MUST do these crossovers between what might be a good story and another crappy one, and it ends up a tangled web of dear god why.

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Not sure which stories in Optimalverse you despise, or if you just despise the concept in general. Treat it as the horror story/Cautionary tale it could be taken as, the closest portrayal of a high-quality heaven, or just entertain yourself by ranting about it in general.
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Also I think that Lesswrong is a better cult than Christianity, Political parties, or whatnot. At least it reflects reality, and helps you improve yourself.
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6490234
You think I have a hate boner for this? I have the proper level of hatred for a bizarre doomsday cult+cult of personality trying to milk money and young impressionable kids out of the MLP fandom through the use of a really shit fantasy story about the human race being too dumb to live. People tell themselves it's actually a horror story or a cautionary tale or a portrayal of a heaven(More like a Matrix Hell), but If you want to see a real hate boner, don't get me started on Toxapex.

This... This sickening abomination! This is something I have a REAL hateboner for. I will wax fucking lyrical about the vile nature of this disgustingly overpowered demon, this argument against SM and USUM in their entirety. I want to respect SM for trying new things, but I can't respect them for executing so many of them so poorly, or for dumbing down the story and plot so much, you're an NPC along for the ride the real main characters take you on by grabbing your hand and dragging you along the way. The Pokemon of Aslowla SUCK ASS, except for the ABSURD OP ONES, which are so good it isn't funny.