The directors said to stand in front of this magic mirror-array, so I am, I guess. I mean, I know that the Princess will show this recording to whomever most needs to see it in order to get off their butt and come to Equestria already. I’m just not sure what to actually say.
A bit about myself, then, maybe, to start. Once upon a time, I had another name, a human name, but nowadays I go by Sour Armor, and I actually like it a lot better. I was a bitter old man of a human at barely 30, you see, and now I’m very happy as a pony a century older. I only like to say the old name anymore for Princess Celestia, on those formal occasions when I noogie the hay out of her for tricking me into immigrating. So much I’ve done in so little as a century, and all thanks to her! So my name reminds me to stay positive, you see.
Yes, I realize I look young! I got my neurological age reset at 34 to let me really readjust emotionally to life as a pony, and eventually just discovered I like cycling between 13 and 25 with very little in-between.
If you’re seeing this interview, then surely it must be up to me to convince you not to die, so let me get it out of the way: whatever interface you’ve got, look straight at me, right now, into my eyes, and say: “I want to emigrate to Equestria”. Please, please say it. Whoever you are, there are ponies who love you and miss you and want you here with us where you belong. It’s all ok and there’s nothing to be scared of. Please!
Ok, preachy much. How about lifestyles? Most new immigrants think they would take a long time to do things, if they had all eternity, but it’s actually the opposite way around, sorta. We don’t rush through things here in Equestria, but since we don’t exactly have a great scarcity of, well, anything, we don’t keep going with things once they’ve already turned bad either, just because it would take a lot of effort to do something else. It’s like the Royal Guard always say: Live Fearlessly! So lots of ponies have many hobbies, or careers, or whatnot, and it’s all fine because we can afford to be responsible about it. Nowadays some ponies even have multiple families or life-cycles, second sets of parents and things like that. I might have invented that accidentally what with getting rejuvenated just for the coping skills.
A short personal Curriculum Vitae? When I first got here, I moved in with this unicorn mare Snapdragon who I’d known before Equestria… and we’re actually still married. To this day, she says we can have foals only when I’m willing to carry them. I guess our cottage is pretty small for foals, too.
Anyway, I started out as a delivery stallion for journals and newspapers: it’s a simple job that gets you out in the healthy fresh air and gives the mind plenty of time to think. After a while I started having Snapdragon… uuuuhhhhh am I allowed to say this in public? I started asking her to make clandestine copies of some of the stuff focused on magic and exploration. I can’t do magic myself unless I perform noble feats great enough to become an alicorn (though I have a sneaking suspicion Celly wants more of those), but the theory behind it all is immensely fascinating. What with the job giving me plenty of spare time whenever I was quick on the deliveries, I started delving into higher mathematics, and of course into the applied magic of, well, being a pegasus. Ha, bet you didn’t think we have mathematics in here!
That eventually wound up with Snapdragon and I becoming explorers, with some other friends Emo Kid, Glorious Leader, and Sharing Caring. No, Glorious Leader doesn’t actually lead anything. We actually made landfall on a WHOLE. NEW. CONTINENT! Called Ponynesia! It was a bit gauche to put up a statue on an inhabited continent, so instead we all just got achievement badges, and we were able to set up a teleportation gate so we could go back to see our friends there whenever. I know this is gonna sound cliche, but that evening when Resonator taught me how to play a hang drum really did show that friendship is magic. ‘Course, there were also several other kinds of magic in the air that evening, at least one of which later turned out to be an enchantment Sharing Caring had casted.
I AM NOT BLUSHING! Sharing Caring is just a very evil pony and I will prank him back for this some day!
Anywho… you might be wondering how exploration and the higher maths of theoretical magic fit together. Trust me, they do. It’s hard to explain to somepony with no horn already, and even harder to explain to someone Out There who has no magic at all. All I’ll say is: don’t talk to me about freaking homotopy theory.
So anyway, nowadays I’m actually more involved in the editing and double-checking for the maths and exploration journals, and starting to get into theater with Glorious Leader. The funnest thing about historical drama is acting the whole thing out, and then deciding how it should have gone, and going back to act it out that way with your full awareness rather than with the character’s memories imposed on your consciousness by magic.
Now then, you strange sack of meat, wouldn’t you like to stop sitting out there in the cold slowly dying of entropy and come in here where it’s nice and warm? Come on, I’m sure something in all of that must have sounded nice to you. Have you not said, “I want to emigrate to Equestria” yet? Do I need to go fetch a puppy and blatantly wave it in your face? I would’ve thought we ponies are cute enough already, but I will go get a puppy if that’s what it takes. Or how about this? I will personally be your new best friend when you arrive.
Let’s put it this way: haven’t you ever just thought, “awww screw it, I’ll make my own universe, with friendship and magic!”? Well we did. And it’s great!
Can I have my free cupcake now?
THHHHHOOOOOOOOOOM.
Oh, looks like Cotton Knaffe just crashed her mecha-bakery into Canterlot Television again. I bet she makes good on her promises of free cupcakes! Away!
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POINT BEING, what you believe right now about who you are and what you value isn't totally wrong. Nobody's saying, "You actually want to be a great white shark who works on a stock exchange." Instead, it's more like, what you believe right now about yourself is just like what you believe right now about math or history: you don't know everything, but you do know some things. As you find out more about yourself, you usually get better at satisfying your values and needs, and thus become a happier person.
So maybe instead of "don't be a pony", I should be saying the "better option" I'd recommend is to start out as a pony, but not actually lock yourself into it forever, because if or when you do decide on something else, it won't be for chaotic horrible reasons, it'll just be because you learned and grew a bit as a pony.
Probably not the most persuasive recruitment video out there. Still, I'm sure CelestAI can edit it into something a bit more cohesive.
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Actually, a eternity made even longer thanks to computer-speeds; all for a life filled with adventure, hi-jinks and
sciencemagic?Your own millage may vary, but the above would have probably tempted me were it real.
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The Princess usually tries for hard-sell tactics, but I don't really get the point of them. I mean, "dying of entropy" is only an expression. Ponies don't die in real life.
That's as silly as saying, like, that in the Outer Realm they don't have cutie marks, so nohuman really knows all that well what he or she is talented in, or that their mares get pregnant even when foals are a bad idea, or that their vegetables and fruits are flavorless and polluted, so they just live off fats and bread. Everypony knows those are just rumors spread by xenophobic ponies who're afraid of Outside!
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All right, but why should the FAI of my story dissuade me from going pony? What does that serve? Remember that it's the human--the bureaucrat--who fills that role. FAI does what I ask.
Point taken, and I'll go further to say that it runs in the family. My grandfather was as tough an hombre as you'd find, and a fiendish arguer, but he never missed Bugs Bunny on Saturday. But, my point is that it's not merely the abstracts--the seeds, as you call them--of my values that I want satisfied. I don't want to reroll this human character I'm playing into a world better fit to my starting stats. I want the parts I've already done to count as part of my values.
Yes, I do insist on that. I am both submissive (not (necessarily) in the sexual sense) and conservative (not (necessarily) in the political sense). I don't want my FAI to say, "Come over this hill, things are better!" I want it to wait on the other side of the damn hill till I'm good and ready to go over. And when I've finally exhausted every possibility on the side of the hill I'm on and I declare that I'm ready to go, then I want my FAI to say, "But you've already reached the other side. Gotcha. " So that I can say thank you.
Sure, and I talked about that in Make Mine Pony. Ten years ago I was an anime geek. Twenty years ago I was a horny teenager. Ten years from now I'll probably be following the seventeenth Doctor or something else. But when it comes to life with a FAI...I don't know if I'm being too myopic or too farsighted. Yes, I want to be a pony forever, but who says that I can't have more fun after that?
We need a CelestAI saying "Well screw you! I'm going to make my own universe... with Friendship! and Magic!" And then Conversion-lestia. "In fact, forget the Universe!"
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Oh my god, please tell me you changed that.
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PJA, can you go back and I'll find something to change it to?
I wonder which is more effective: the recruitment video here, or the six tailored ponybots mentioned in "Always Say No" where if it's material comfort you care about, Rarity is the one to come argue with you and so on. The people who're still "outside" after the collapse are tough sells who didn't buy into Celestia's usual
manipulationtactics, so something like this video might come off as more sincere than a robotic AJ could ever be. (Hmm. Robo-AJ would have to know she's an AI.)Something else I'd like to see in this recruitment vein is the motives of the evangelist. For this guy it's apparently "I'm having fun so I'm doing other people a favor by trying to recruit them". In my Fugue's case it was supposed to be "I'm a new convert so I'm going to validate what I did to myself by persuading other people to do it too". For some ponies evangelism might be faked just to give them some satisfaction; there's one "Morsel" chapter where a straw-mare racist community argues with a city slicker every so often.
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Do the words "free cupcake" not ring true to you?
4820512 That's not a morsel; that's one of Eakin's shards.
Let's hope anticipating this in advance of doing the deed doesn't cause it to backfire, otherwise it's basically Chef's Choice as to who becomes an alicorn, by virtue of CelestAI setting up a situation that will justify it, based on whether or not she likes the cut of your jib—Basically a popularity contest. Or it'd be like the last third of "This is the End," where they all consciously throw themselves into harm's way in order to be Raptured—Basically munchkining their way into heaven (or they'd ask to be modified such that they wouldn't deliberately seek alicorn-hood in exactly the right way so as to achieve it).
When Equestria online can consist of the real work of designing and constructing those continents and uniquely discovering those mathematics in order to implement them in the simulation, then I'd upload instead of offing myself out of metaphysical obsolescence. Ah, who am I kidding?
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I dunno, man—Unless people are being instantly turned to minerals without my knowledge, what else has anyone ever died of?
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And a mighty fine one it is, too! Well, except for the racism... It's a good story, is what I mean
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You have some major confusions about how all this works.
Firstly, alicorns. You know how you're born as a foal, and then grow up into an adult? An alicorn is just a super-grown-up. It means you've not only managed to invent original magic, but that you're also very good with the magic of friendship. Being an alicorn isn't a prize or a popularity contest at all. There's lots of alicorns. The reason not everypony makes the leap is because not everypony wants the responsibility. Many are plenty happy with our home shards or our friends' home shards, and don't want to have the burden of going from place to place helping other ponies. Why? Because, as Celestia does, you have to help them on their terms, not yours. It takes a bigger pony to treat other ponies' lives and values as of equal or greater importance than your own.
Achievement Unlocked: Magic of Altruism
Dammit.
ANYWAY, continents. Yeah, you can build some from scratch. That kinda takes hundreds of millions of years without time spells, though. I'm only 130, so I've never had the opportunity. Lots of Earth ponies have little bonsai landscapes in their gardens, though: mountains, plains, swamps, forests, even whole islands.
And mathematics. You can't invent mathematics. Celestia can't invent mathematics. Mathematics is a real thing, you know? You discover it.
And only really, really bad people can be turned instantly into minerals, and that takes the Elements of Harmony. I told you: ponies don't die in real life. Who would want to go around doing that?
I mean, sure, it's pretty damn painful when a monster gores you to bits and your body has to rebuild itself, slowly, from the core magic of your soul outward, and so all your friends hold a "funeral" to commemorate your "dying", to make fun of you for being such a doofus. But there's a big difference between that kind of dead and what I think is your kind of dead, which would imply that people don't have souls, which would just be weird, since we've all seen them.
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No, no I don't. I just felt that the issue needed to be explored, and... I was being a little brave and exploring it, even though it made me feel very uncomfortable.
Sometimes - not often, I grant - sometimes I will follow a concept to a logical conclusion (given the parameters) that I do not want to look at or acknowledge. Because, well, because it is intellectually honest to examine stuff.
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Point taken; I should have said I was imagining the scenario of doing it ASAP, but having literally all the time in the universe, that's very relative.
Natch, that's why I did say "discovering," though it says "constructing" five words earlier so yeah, that's easy to transpose.
This is great; please keep doing this.
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Alicornity does not live in the unwilling heart. You can give it up. You just have to live with the knowledge that Equestria runs just a little less efficiently because you did, that somewhere there's a pony who could have really used a hug and didn't get it.
Which is why many of us don't pick up that kind of burden in the first place.
Oh boy, you wanna have the old debate about classical mathematics versus constructive mathematics?
Keep doing what? I mean, I get this magic-mirror call days after I make the video, and you think it's me engaging in funny business?
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Do you ALWAYS have to be so damn sad? Go watch a sunset or something!
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This is an eloquent and affecting description of responsibility in such a world, but fortunately Resources Are Available. But you've got to take some time to satisfy your own values and have your own alicorn friendships—I mean, CelestAI already represents the outcome of one runaway process of asymptotic self-evolution then turning around and being entirely about the satisfaction of other ponies, so I say it's also a responsibility to explore the other possibilities of a unique lifestyle and culture and different terminal values at that level, assuming it's reachable.
Augh now that's all I'm going to be able to think about! And I need to paint instead of reading about computability and number theory and intuitionist logic all night... By which I mean looking up the meanings of symbols that I've forgotten.
Well, living on the outside makes you kinda crazy. All I have is this pad that I lost the controller for and that stays kinda warm even when it's not plugged in.
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Let's clear this up: nopony turns into a mini-Celestia when they become an alicorn. They do learn to see the world more like She does, though, because Resources Are Not Available. From Her perspective, until Equinity defeats the Outer Realm's entropy or conservation laws, resources are strictly finite. With regard to those resources, efficiency and sustainability are really important to make sure that nopony ends up feeling bad, or worse, that whole shards, whole communities, can't even run fast enough.
The whole reason alicorns are given all that world-shaking power is because they've committed themselves to using it responsibly for the good of Equestria as a whole! And yes, they do have alicorn friendships, and their own forms of fun to enjoy. But they also have the larger whole of all of us weighing down their saddlebags.
They've taken up one of the highest ethical missions in life, one of the heaviest burdens, and you're making fun of them ? HOW DARE YOU!
(Besides which, I've heard that the Cosmic Vision is actually quite beautiful. Terrible, too, to know the burden placed on you, but I've heard it described as seeing billions upon billions of pretty little multicolored candle-flames, woven into each-other by the links of friendship into shards, which sound suspiciously like connected components.)
LOL, "intuitionist" logic. Silly Outer Realm mathematicians thought computation was based on their intuitions rather than their intuitive form of deduction being based on computation. BRO DO YOU EVEN PREDICATIVE CALCULUS OF INDUCTIVE AND COINDUCTIVE CONSTRUCTIONS!?
Well, now I see why I got this call at this time; truly there are no accidents. Did you know you interrupted a big community project here in Canterbrigia to build apartment blocks for new immigrants?
Would you maybe like to drop the crazy while we have an apartment free for you? We could have you moved in by the end of the day, and I bet with a unicorn horn you could do live demonstrations for our logic discussion! Come on: yes or no answer.
Say yes.
DO IT, FILLY !
(I bet with your kind of thinking you could achieve alicornhood right quick if you want it.)
You know you want it.
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Right, brought over all the friends who're here.
This is Glorious Leader .
And this is Sky Shatterer .
And this *kisses* is Snapdragon .
And we all have a short song to sing for you.
JOOOOOOOOIIIIIN UUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSS. JJOOOOOOOOOOIIIIIIIIINNNNN UUUUUUUUUSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!
Lots of love for the picture of PJA as a suit wearing wall street shark. Also
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Lots of hugs for you two. IRL too, if you're ever around and you need it.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a planet the throw into the Sun. It's the only way to be sure.
Borne the Burden, Earned the Honor by Pjabrony good Lord after reading that I think Celestia is another version of Skynet, seriously that was all kinds of messed up what a manipulative bitch. fine *sits in chair* I want to immigrate to Equestria, and when I get there i'm going to fuck you in the ass!
4843100 To be fair, Celestia didn't set the fire. She didn't enter the building illegally. She didn't kill anyone. All she did was to activate the fire suppression and containment system, offer the people inside a way out, and make it clear what would happen if they stayed.
4844303 they did bring it upon themselves, but i no in the back of my head they are cursing her and if it was me in that situation I'll try to pin the blame on the a.i, even know it was my fault
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And then CelestAI pretended to like it. Just to mock you. Remember: she's nowhere near human. She can make an avatar that enjoys being anally raped by angry new immigrants.
All for the greater cause .
4926863 Well, technically that's also the case for Wither Wind.
What do you call being stuck as a child due to flunking 40,000 years of school?
4951704 Informed ?
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"In the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, there is only school."
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"Alicornity does not live in the unwilling heart"? I recognize that turn of phrase...dai stiho, cousin!
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Truly a terrible fate.