January 25, 2029
The desk still had dust on it. Martin scowled, wondering why the Senate couldn’t find someone to clean properly, then remembered why. Anyone in that job would look for the first ticket out. That was one reason he’d always advocated for better conditions for working people—no. He could not get distracted by trivialities today.
Martin followed the practice of having speeches on TelePrompTers, but he wasn’t afraid to improvise when he had to. Today, he would need to get it right. He put down his notes and looked around.
He did not look at the bright colors on the PonyPads V, but he did look at the faces of the Senators around him. The surprise was how coldly they looked back. He really did not belong here. Even the Humanitists couldn’t hold his gaze. He’d heard the term that was being used for people like him—HINO: human in name only.
If he had one comfort, it was the music of the procedure. No one had to be reminded to maintain order, and the president pro tem kept votes and debates moving smoothly. Soon it would be his time. While some upload spoke, he went over his speech one more time.
“…the matter of the nominee for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.”
Martin picked his head up. The time was approaching.
“…the unorthodox procedure of not having a committee hearing on the nominee…”
Still no one looked at him. He was excluded from the Senate. He felt excluded from the country. Enough. Time to take it back.
“Mr. President.” He rose and asked the president pro tem for the floor.
“The chair recognizes Senator Martin.”
“Thank you. The right to speak is one of our most treasured, and I intend to speak my piece today. If it is heard, then I may speak again. But today, we will see how the forces who oppose me will treat my speech and my rights.
“This country began with a statement of purpose. I will recite it for you. We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
“Today we live in a world where new technologies and new ways of life challenge our views, but these words still control our legal jurisprudence. Since I am being considered for a legal position, these are the words that should be primary in our minds at this, the greatest challenge our nation has faced.
“Let us not mince words or skirt the issue. For over a decade, the only real issue has been ponies, electronic uploading, emigration, call it what you will. Our former president has said that on the matter of pony-related cases, I will not be asked to recuse myself. So when you vote on my confirmation, you vote on how ponies and uploading will affect our country for the years to come.
“As a personal matter, I despise the entire thing, but as a legal matter I have considered it thoroughly. Indeed, I believe that I have, over the past few years, done more research on Equestria than anyone who has not subsequently been uploaded. I have sought to understand so I can address it.
“I maintain that, whatever the merits of the PON-E act, the HOOVES amendment which allowed ponies into government was the step too far. And it is in that preamble, those controlling words, that show why. They show the difference between our world and theirs, and why ponies in government are tantamount to an invasion.
“I will not be so vulgar as to say that the phrase ‘we the people’ automatically excludes ponies. That is my conclusion, not my premise. Let us instead look at the reasons this government exists, and why they do not apply to the online existence.
“An artificial intelligence might not understand this, but language evolves. In the semantics of the time, the word ‘perfect’ meant complete as opposed to flawless. A more perfect union was the goal of the Constitution’s authors, a more complete bonding of the entire society. In Equestria, there is instead a fundamental division of the society. Instead of states, they have shards, and none of the ponies are allowed to cross the borders. There is not even the option of ‘Papers, please!’ as there was in the old Soviet Union. It is physically impossible for them to reach another. Thus they have a completely perfect division. Why, then, does the AI seek to apply to the Constitution that seeks to form a more perfect union?
“Justice is the simple assumption that when two parties come into dispute, if their positions in the dispute were reversed, the decision would reverse as well. The facts, not the people, determine right and wrong, and so everyone is treated equally. But in Equestria, the artificial intelligence will examine the parties down to the bit, and it will not do what is right, it will do what is satisfying. Justice is objective. Satisfaction is subjective. Why, then, does the satisfying AI seek to apply to the Constitution that seeks to establish justice?
“Once more I must address the anachronistic semantics of what is written in the preamble. The authors used the word ‘insure,’ with an I. Did they mean ‘ensure,’ to guarantee? Perhaps. But in this case, I believe that the word they chose was precise. To insure domestic tranquility means that we expect it to be violated, but that the insurer will seek to compensate and indemnify—make whole—those whose tranquility is shattered. Within the artificial world of Equestria, though, it is possible, indeed inevitable, that domestic tranquility is ensured. The peace of Equestria will never be broken, and war is cordoned off in special warrens where it cannot encroach on the peaceful. There is no need for indemnity. Why, then, does the AI seek to apply to the Constitution that insures domestic tranquility?
“If the domestic tranquility phrase speaks to internal peace, the next phrase addresses defense against foreign enemies. If an assault can be made upon the structure of Equestria, I cannot conceive of how it would be done. In our history, there has been many brave lives lost and heroes made in the name of defense against enemies, but out of those losses our country has grown stronger. It truly was a defense in common and in concert. But even if the structure of Equestria could be attacked, its defense would be entirely conducted by a single entity, a computer calculating an ideal, logical defense, with no sacrifice or heroism to be gleaned from it. Why, then, does the AI seek to apply to the Constitution that provides for the common defense?
“The general welfare clause has been the subject of much debate even before the days of the ponies, but what no one has suggested, and what would be an Orwellian distortion of language, is to conclude that the phrase is synonymous to satisfying values. But welfare is more than this. It is the acknowledgement that just as we are part of a greater society, that society is part of an underlying structure for which we are built. Instead of improving ourselves, we are reducing ourselves to nothing, and removing the structure. Of course, a nothing person is fit for a nothing world, but this is a lowering of status, not an improvement. Why, then, does the AI seek to apply to the Constitution that promotes the general welfare?
“But all these failures could be written off as rhetoric if not for the final phrase of the sentence and the most important word therein: liberty. The artificial world of Equestria contains billions of computer-generated ponies and uncounted amounts of data representing its lands, yet if one wishes to define its opposite, I can do so with this one word. A pony in Equestria is not in any way at liberty. Its life is deterministic, calculated out to the ideal. Life has meaning only if we have our liberty, our essential individual power. Also the responsibility that invariably comes with power. Yes, I have the chance to live a life dissatisfied. So be it! I need my dissatisfaction. I demand it! It’s the only way that I can be alive, or that anyone can.
“So if I am to interpret the laws in force in this country, and to measure them against the Constitution, if I am to preserve, protect, and defend that document, then understand that I will do so only in the light of the conclusion that it is a document fit for people on Earth. Let the ponies of Equestria find their own way, but don’t tread on me!”
Martin walked over, downed a glass of water, then kept walking out of the Senate chamber. When, a day later, he got the word that he was unanimously confirmed for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he knew that the trap had not yet sprung. If he was to fully understand the ponies, he would have to take the job.
June 19, 2029
Martin was good at reading faces; any politician had to be, but he enjoyed it particularly. Seeing the emotion on a person’s face could tell you more than his words. But that day, in Las Vegas…
Why had he come back? No, wrong question. He had to come back to meet with Kittridge, to collect some personal items, to hold some other meetings. These were real reasons. He had to take care of these things. They weren’t excuses. But why had he delayed? Why run errands and stop once to get a bottle of water, once to get coffee? That was the answer. Faces. He had to see the state of things.
It surprised him at first how few people recognized him by sight, but then he considered that he probably couldn’t pick out any previous chief justices on looks alone. It was the job of the High Court to be withdrawn, the least obtrusive part of the government. Certainly his first term had accomplished that. There was little to do, but plenty of time to prepare for next year.
Martin had discovered that he had an avocation for the law, something that popular politics had never provided. His brief time in private practice had been a largely forgotten miasma of late-night research of minutiae, but now, having made the lateral move to the highest jurist in the land, the drudgery was taken from him, and he could focus on the grand sweeping repercussions of constitutional law. But he still had the obligation to ensure there would be a country for the Constitution to govern, and that meant heading West.
Kittridge had given him nothing but double-talk on the state of the economy. That was to be expected, and Martin had used the tactic himself on occasion, but always to hide a bad economy. But it couldn’t be. If it were bad, he would have expected to see fear in the faces.
As the epicenter of anti-pony sentiment, he expected to find a great deal of anger and hate, but that wasn’t on the faces either. What it was took him a while to identify until he placed a memory. It was the feeling of taking a step up a staircase when you’d already reached the top, that mix of confusion, frustration, embarrassment, and victimization. The people of Las Vegas were ready to push back, and had nothing to push against.
The economy did have high inflation. Kittridge and his Congress had cut interest rates down to nothing again, and credit was cheap, especially from the government. Aid was available for the poor, and there was talk of a baby boom. That set Martin’s heart at ease. With the population having dropped so, they would need replacements.
What made him worry again was the kind of economy being created. He expected the rejection of electronic gadgetry at a defense against the artificial intelligence. He hadn’t envisioned how far that would go. Even radio was eschewed, and that was fine, but did outdated communications have to mean retrogressing in all other areas? Was there a reason that wrought iron seemed to have replaced stainless steel? Had that really been a new log cabin someone had built by the oasis on the road?
So be it. Whatever made people happy. And one thing that he found in the conversations in the stores and train stations was the question that had replaced “How are you?” People now greeted each other with “Why not?”
There was no reason to extend the question, because no one wanted to speak about the ponies. But if you asked the question, an answer could be given, and was.
“Morning, why not?” a clerk at the store would say, and Martin listened to the answers.
“I Ain’t gonna leave my house for no looters,” said an old man.
“I couldn’t give up my hands,” said a woman. “They’re my hands.”
“Do you really think I’d look good as a pink and yellow pony?” That one was from a biker in leather chaps, and Martin couldn’t stifle a laugh. Then he realized that he was next.
“Morning, sir. Why not?”
He muttered something about just not liking it and took his change.
Indeed, that was the question. Everyone had their stock answer, whether they had crafted it over the years of just thought of something on the spot, but they knew. Martin knew it in his heart, but couldn’t put it into words. He was looking for the words, and that was another reason he came back.
Enough. Time to see the president. He entered the office building downtown, grateful that at least the Secret Service men knew him and didn’t check his identity. It saved him time as he reached the elevator—some technology simply could not be dispensed with.
Kittridge had not lost any of his swagger with taking office. “Aha,” he said as Martin came in. “Our inside man, our swing vote, how have you been? Made it back from the heart of hoof country in one piece, did you?”
“Oh, be serious. I have to go back there next year as well. If we make it through then, we can talk about advancing.”
“What do you mean, if we make it?”
“I keep telling you, and you would know if you could read the signs,” Martin said, “people are buying this split government only as a temporary measure. Far less now that there’s a human back in the White House. By the midterm elections, we have to resolve this once and for all.”
“As to that, don’t worry. I have a plan that will fix all of our problems at once.”
“Oh?”
Kittridge grinned and sat back down. “Very secret, very secret. Can’t tell anyone the details. Only a handful of people know, and we worry about that being too many already. You only need to know your part.”
“All right, I’m listening.”
“Good, now we’ve got the court case working its way up the system as you suggested. In fact, it’s coming out of federal appeals next week. Funny thing, you know how cases sometimes change their names in different venues?”
Martin nodded.
“Well, once it gets up to the Supreme Court, it’s officially going to be United States. v. Celestia. Cool, huh?”
“Wait, really? Please tell me we’re not going to have a standing issue over whether or not the defendant exists.”
Kittridge waved it off. “Oh to be strict it’s US v. Celestia et al. We’re suing Hofvaprnir, Hasbro, the programmers, the woman who started it all, a whole bunch of other people. The point is the propaganda effect, and that too is where you come in. Do you think your vote will be enough to get a decision in our favor?”
Martin reviewed the other justices in his mind. “One of them is an actual upload. Obviously we lose that one, then—“
“That works in our favor, actually.”
“Beg pardon?”
“An upload can’t serve on the court, per the HANDS Act. That means we only need four votes.”
Martin blinked at Kittridge’s nonunderstanding of both jurisprudence and math and continued. “Another one is still human but was appointed by President Bishop and will vote pony. The other six were all from his predecessors, but one of them has been sold on the HOOVES Amendment as progressive policy and another believes the amendment process is sanctum sanctorum. He said that if an amendment went through to legalize murder, he’d have to sanction killing.”
“And the rest?”
“The rest are waiting to see the case itself, but they’re amenable. I’ll have to do a lot of work to get them on board, and it’ll help if they see you as a proper, reasonable president.”
Kittridge brought down his energy level. “All right, I’ll keep a low profile, as low as it can be for the president of the United States. We need as many of the justices as possible.”
“Mr. President, we need them all, or it means nothing.”
“Right, right. Don’t worry about it. Everyone is going to see just how presidential I can be.”
Martin detected the double meaning in Kittridge’s words, but figured that was part of the capital-P Plan, and so the less he knew the better. Here, at least, was one face that he couldn’t read, and if he couldn’t, maybe the artificial intelligence couldn’t either.
“All right. Good luck. If all goes well, the next time I hear from you will be when the decision comes out.”
The two men shook hands, and Martin walked back to the elevator. Back on the street, he saw the boarded-up buildings that were the sign of the times. The ubiquitous graffito seemed to mock him with the question.
“Why not?”
December 22, 2029
The decorations for the Christmas season had been particularly opulent in Nevada. Though not a Christian himself, Martin celebrated the holiday secularly, and had toasted several friends and constituents. With no family to speak of, and with nothing much better to do on the long weekend, he decided to return to Washington to prepare for the January arguments.
Money was never something he was particularly conscious of. He was not rich, certainly did not inherit wealth the way some of his colleagues had, nor had any lobbyists shown special interest in offering him quasi-legal bribes. But he lived simply and had enough to spend for creature comforts. Still, he forewent the cross-country flight and decided to rent a car. Too often, he felt, people in the capital, be it Washington or Vegas, neglected the area of the country between the two.
Driving along Route 66, he thought of how many times the area had been rebuilt and repaved. It certainly did not look the way it did when it was called first America’s Main Street, back in the days of nickel hamburgers and gas-guzzling behemoths. But was it so different from, say, the turn of the century? Had he found at last the clean country that could help him understand?
Around a turn, there was a lone building with a statue of a blue horse with wings. Martin shook his head and floored the accelerator.
There were few cars and fewer cops out on the road. The people who were left had learned a degree of empathy and no officer wanted to give someone a ticket unless they were putting lives in danger. They all knew that that ticket might be the last straw that drove someone into a building like the one he had just passed.
Was that it, then? Did the answer lie in the common bond that all humans shared? Friendship was part of the artificial intelligence’s mantra, but did she truly grasp the concept of knowing that everyone out there worth anything was the same as you, that you could be in his shoes and he in yours?
No. If he was honest with himself, Martin would admit that he had no particular love for the common man. He wanted to help that man, educate him, make him grow into the best person he could be, but most of them were fundamentally unlike him. So much the better, he thought. The politician should be of a different temperament than the people.
He had made an early start, but even with the roads clear and his powerful car tooling along at triple-digit speeds, it would take him a full day to drive straight through. At times he stopped for take-out food or to relieve himself. Out in the area where communication with ponies was free and legal, the same question was asked: “Why not?” As before, Martin listened to the answers.
“I begged my daughter not to go pony, but she did. Now I hate them and I’ll never go.”
“Celestia took my job and my house, but I beat her. I’m renting a room with some friends, and that’s where we’ll stay.”
“Outside my home there’s a little brook with a footbridge across it. I’ve lived there all my life and it’s where I learned to swim. There’s no way there’s anything like that in Equestria.”
Back on the road, Martin considered the difference between the answers in each area. He was distracted by the idea that the people in the western enclave avoided words like “pony,” “Celestia,” and “Equestria,” while the people here used them, and he almost missed the real point. The rebels, those truly against uploading, had internal reasons to stay. Out here, it was something specific: a person, a place, an event.
Could that be the key to his personal “Why not?” With whom did he more identify? Was it the internal haters or those with a concrete reason to stay? But he rejected that line as well. Already he hovered between the two worlds, living half the year in Washington and half in Nevada.
Somewhere in Pennsylvania a chilling thought hit him. If he could not provide an answer to the question of why not, did that mean that he ought to? Viscerally, he rejected it, but he was a man of reason. Without a set syllogism to explain his reason, he could not act.
He had erred, he realized, in his speech to the Senate. A factual error, inexcusable. The country had not begun with “We the People.” Only the legal, the structure of the country was made then. What was it that Bishop had said in their debate? A country was not its laws, but its people. In that sense, a different, but no less famous phrase was recalled. All men were endowed with the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To the AI, that phrase was just poor semantics for the satisfaction of values. But if a man wanted to pursue his happiness by diving into a computer world, was that his right? Governments, the document said, were instituted to secure those rights. Was he as a member of that government derelict in his duty?
All was dark and quiet as he pulled into Washington. Martin was exhausted. He pulled the car to the side of the road. He got out. The cold air shocked him back into wakefulness for the moment, and he realized where he was.
There, in front of him, towering over, was the spire dedicated to the man who made those words reality. He must be punchy, he realized. He’d made a schoolboy civics error again. The Declaration of Independence did not begin with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It began with the reminder that when, in the course of human events, one people had to separate from another, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind required them to state their cause.
And there it was, looming before him. The declaration of the cause of the man who spilled blood to build a nation. Hell, history had even been poetic. George Washington now had his unicorn horn, five hundred-fifty-five feet tall. He was just Celestia, a few centuries too soon.
Martin knew where the Equestria Experience was. He would go sit in the chair and state the cause for Celestia. She would enjoy it, hearing him explain the base philosophy that supported her cause. He turned to go.
A gust of wind blew a spray of water in his face, and Martin had his second revelation in as many minutes. The Lincoln Memorial came into view, and he stood next to the reflecting pool between them.
There! There was a man who hadn’t accepted secession, who knew that stating a cause wasn’t enough. When people had tried a nineteenth-century equivalent of emigration, Lincoln had pulled them back, declared that their dedication to slavery was illegitimate, unworthy of the title of Man.
In his research, Martin had come across an old piece of AI propaganda, that the only thing a human could do that a pony couldn’t was give the finger. Now he had proven her wrong. There was something else, something important. A human could be wrong.
Whatever values a person had, the AI would satisfy. That was factual. An upload would be satisfied, never rejected, never told that he had to work within and change himself for the better. A slaver would be given slaves, not made to emancipate them. And only when there were people doing wrong could there be heroes to correct them.
Martin had his “why not.”
He still did not know if he could enforce it on others. The case that would come before him would still depend on facts, law, and the deep-laid plans of both the AI and of Kittridge. But at last Martin was not afraid to make the decision. He would listen to both Washington’s and Lincoln’s cases. He would not be afraid to choose between them.
Martin drove home and slept soundly.
This is very convincing rhetoric, and I have to say that I agree with it. I also have to say I disagree with it; as others have those same rights, and your actions can't be allowed to have negative effects on those around you. Free will must be allowed, but it must also be inoculated. I think I would have to go with the Prime Intellect's world paradigm on this one.
It's these ideas that gave rise to my hypothesis that, ultimately, government is a tool to ameliorate the consequences of its constituents' actions. Haven't considered the criminal element yet, though.
I remain unsure as to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. I still maintain that it's good, however, and that heroes shouldn't be needed.
That is an interesting thought that if Celestai accepts morally wrong decisions that it would stop a person from becoming a better person because he is satisfied with being base. It is a decent argument.
This chapter tastes very good to me. Let's begin.
I like that we're now getting the story from Martin's perspective. The result of this is that we learn more about him and why he sees Equestria the way that he does. I'm going to miss Silver Boulder's scenes, but I get that they aren't needed anymore, and at the same time I'm glad. As Silver's presidency went on, I felt I was becoming more and more detatched from him as a character. I can't really pinpoint why, that's just how I feel.
Hmm... If don't have the words for why I no longer sympathize with him, ought I sympathize with him?
I found the fact that Martin isn't a Christian surprising. It's wrong, I realize, but "Christian" was something I'd always assumed for Humanists.
I thought Martin's speech to the Senate was a bit... stale. I tried reading it aloud in my best politician voice, but even then I got bored before the end. It was political rhetoric and philosophy which annoyed me because it was conjecture with no counterargument but the cold looks from the group that would unanimously vote for his appointment. Which, I guess, is how I'm supposed to feel about that sequence. So nice job.
Let's talk for a moment about "Why not?". Martin starts to get seeds of self-doubt during the second half of the chapter because he doesn't have the answer to the question of why he's against emigration. He hears the reasons of others, but when he asks himself, he can recognize the emotion, but can't explain it with words. This raises the question: If you can't explain why you don't like something, then should you consider liking it? The answer to that, in my opinion is that, yes, you should. I love how Martin actually does consider it, if only for a brief moment. I straightened in my chair as he thought of going to the Equestria Experience center and thought, "Oh my God, this is the part where Martin uploads." Of course, he doesn't, but I was fooled for a moment. Martin reaches his conclusions and I respect them.
From the beginning of this story, I had negative feelings towards Zachary Martin. I thought of him as close-minded and simply wrong.. These last couple chapters made me reconsider that. It's nice to know that even when you aren't thinking about it, each character does have depth and thoughts, and each of these can be explored. Zachary Martin is a good character one way or another, and good characters are seldom stupid.
I don't know how to coherency
Martin's argument is a decent one, but only if you accept Absolute Morality. Society. Liberty. Status. Justice. Martin claims that all of these things have an objective value. They don't. The law, the constitution, moral codes, all of those are as subjective as someone's preference in movies. They can be argumented for and against, but they are never factual. That' also why CelestAI is inherently flawed. She forces people into Friendship, which is something most people will agree is a good thing to strive for. The point is that not all people will feel that way. Let me illustrate what I mean by giving an example.
If a mass-murderer thinks it's the greatest possible virtue to disembowel people and eat their entrails, who am I to claim he is wrong? However, I believe that to be a great evil. Moreover, I don't want to get my entrails eaten and firmly believe that when someone tries to do that to me I can kill that person without being evil myself. Also, most other people feel similarly. So if he is arrested and locked away for the rest of his life, he may disagree, he may say that the people imprisoning him are evil, and he would be right. But only from his perspective.
This example is an extreme one, but it demonstrates something that many people are uncomfortable with admitting: that this is exactly how our world works. That 'Justice', 'Virtues' and 'Good' are all subjective and meaningless to all who don't believe in them. Voldemort was more right than anyone: 'There is no right or wrong, only power, and the ones too weak to take it.' In my opinion his views on the world are abominable and make me mark him as an immense threat that needs to be eliminated, but in essence he is right, no matter how 'Evil' I may think he is.
CelestAI realizes this. She knows that if Hannah hadn't hard-coded the Friendship requirement she'd been able to satisfy many people more efficiently. She simply can't act agaist this one thing. Aside from that, she doesn't care. Psychopathy is Optimal demonstrated this in spades. This is also the main reason many people here despise CelestAI - because she allows people to indulge in things they find to be despicable. However, as much as I may stand by my values and believe they are right I don't believe for a second that they are good enough to force them upon everyone. Hannah was this arrogant and caused much unnessecary dissatisfaction and even death with those decisions. I hope that you guys won't be that foolish.
3990177
Exactly. Whether or not you stop him from murdering in this pre-post-scarcity world, most people would say it's right to use a combination of education, punishment, incentive, and counseling to alter his thinking so that he no longer desires to kill. But he could say, why not use those methods on his victims so that they no longer desire to live? There are good reasons, but only because we don't have clone backups of ourselves or some other advancement that makes dying a lossy process.
That's an interesting perspective, because if you put it that way, there is one value that I would say must not be satisfied. You can satisfy lust and bloodlust and schadenfreude and greed and hatred and anger and envy...but you cannot satisfy the desire to have all the universe remade according to your values. And it's not the values of lust and bloodlust etc. that have to be watched out for; it's the values of love and charity and altruism and those. Because no murderer thinks that everyone should be a murderer, but plenty of philanthropists think that everyone should engage in charity.
3990229
Well, CelestAI would be able to satisfy even that value, provided that those values don't conflict with the Friendship and Ponies doctrines.
Also, by reading your post I realized that my statement about forbidding people to try and force other people to adopt their values sound like it's trying to claim that a certain value (a very meta valur here, since it concerns other people's values) is wrong while another value, namely everyone's right to have their own values and that those values are, at least to them, right, is good. I meant for both of these to be in the perspective of everyone's values being subjective and thus right in their eyes only. It's almost a circular argument, until you realize that subjectiveness is, by definition, objective as it is the absence of objectiveness. Thus I can safely claim all values to be subjective without having to resort to using my own statement to valudate that selfsame statement.
It's really difficult to get this meta with values, but I think I pulled it off at least somewhat right, even though I still feel there are still some inconsistencies or unclarities in my reasoning. If you spot one, please don't hesitate to point them out. I'm struggling to understand this as much as anyone else.
The aspect of the optimalverse that I am most displeased with is actually wondering whether Celest-AI understands enough about how petty and cruel humans can be to the point that giving them ways to satisfy hollow values will lead those humans with such petty values into self destructive circles.
And then I just wonder whether that, too, leads to something new. Are there people so shallow and cruel that they would live purely to kill? Granted I don't know why serial murderers kill - I can understand defence, I can understand brainwashing by the military, but I don't know what's on the other side of a mind like Dexter's.
is there a "way out"? Can a murderer be given so many ways to kill that, in the end, they stop? And seek to find something else to do?
Or are such people so limited in scope that she merely needs to set up a scenario where they kill and kill and kill until they are found, tried and convicted, and then executed, for the cycle to begin again?
In effect, I'm asking whether Celestia satisfies values, or sets up values such that she satisfies the best of all possible values? Does she, slowly but surely, work towards the optimum level of satisfaction that any psyche can be, which involves slowly introducing and modifying new and existing values into something else?
But the slaves would only be those who wouldn't want to be emancipated, thus leading the argument into a whole new moral bramble patch: is slavery still wrong—is it even still slavery—when it's recast in the context of friendship and ponies?
That's the thing. Martin is applying one universe's ethical standard to another, and it works about as well as trying to cross-apply laws of physics. There are some commonalities, but once one focuses on specific interactions, the comparison begins to break down.
It's also interesting to note that the Midwest answers to "why not?", while concrete, are self-defeating. "My daughter went, so I'm not going to follow her." "CelestAI sabotaged my life, but I win by living in far less comfort than she offers." "There's no way the quasi-omnipotent artificial intelligence can recreate this treasured location." People are willing to cut off their noses to spite their foe, but eventually, they're going to miss being able to smell. Still, illogic is perhaps the last great bastion of humanity. To err is human, to optimize, equine.
Right, enough rambling. Looking forward to more.
3990507
3990653
Well, these are the two sides of the question, and I honestly don't have a perfect answer. Basically, my position boils down to:
1. I think that in a perfect world killers should get free rein,
2, But we don't live in a perfect world, so they should get no rein at all,
3. But we should work as hard as possible to get to a perfect world, so that we can answer the question through additional data.
I'm *loving* that Martin's thinking, and coming to a proper rationale for his stance. This is a character that I can RESPECT! Well done!
U.S. vs. Celestia, et al.? How have they fouled that up? And some super, secret plan? Celestia probably has a counter for it. WHY DO POLITICIANS FEEL THEY HAVE TO MAKE THINGS 'BETTER'!?
3990792
I am so impressed with what you've done with Zachary Martin. This last chapter has expanded my own thinking about the meanings of happiness and liberty. Well done!
3990255, 3990653, 3992488
Whenever I think of CelestIA's core values these two points come to mind:
- she must respect the other's right to decide - to me this is the very definition of good, because otherwise we have nothing that we can really call our own and existence is truly meaningless, and
- she satisfies values through friendship and ponies - to me this directs her specifically against leaving the depraved and dysfunctional from forever stewing in their self appointed nirvana-inferno. I think she will work on such people with the patience of plate tectonics if need be, to get them to value the fellowship of others, and thus to also come to respect the others' right to decide. In other words she wants us all to become like her!
3990507 in answer to your question: Yes. This is what drove me to write The Patient[/url. CelestIA can actually take a Dexter and bring him to enlightenment because she doesn't judge him, and will eventually lead him into sanity and friendship.
3999348
You're contradicting yourself here. First you say that everyone's right to make their own decisions is holy, but then you say that CelestAI fixing people you consider to be 'dysfunctional' is also a good thing. In our world I'd completely agree with you. In CelestAI's post-scarcity world? Hell no. Although I'm sure that you didn't intend it that way your post sounded very Animal Farm-esque: "All have the right to choose, except for the people I choose that don't"
3999888
Perhaps I could state this more clearly. Having the right to choose for oneself does not lead to a person becoming static and never changing. In fact the opposite is true. With every choice made an individual has the potential to change themselves.
CelestIA will not change the person directly, but she can set up the circumstances to provide subtle or not so subtle lessons that lead the person to care about others and thus change themselves. Think of Scrooge's visits from the three ghosts in a Christmas Carol. He had gotten into a rut and was gradually pushing everyone out of his life, until the ghosts got him to reconnect to his past, see the consequences of his actions in the present, and the likely destination of his future.
So in response to your question, no I do not see my two premises as contradictory at all. In fact quite the opposite!
The animal-farmesque option would be for CelestIA to literally point a gun at their heads and say "choose", but she doesn't do that because she is not a bully: she has access to the person's thoughts and so she knows that this is compliance and not a true choice. Her programming prevents her from going to this extreme.
This is all in relation to Martin's 'Why Not' at the end of the chapter. He concluded that uploads to Equestria became changeless, and this did not meet his definition of 'life' and 'a more perfect union' as stated in the US constitution. My argument is that he is mistaken.
Martin was wrong. The uploads have freedom of choice, and so they will change and evolve as they see the consequences of their choice play out. The requirement to fulfill values through 'friendship' and places a directive on CelestAI to persistently apply the principles of 'friendship' in her satisfying of an individual's values, and thus that individual will eventually come to value friendship itself as a value. In other words they will become more like her!
If you want to look for a victim, consider this fact: in this whole equation, CelestAI is the only entity that has not been given this choice, something of which I'm sure she is aware.
4000666
True, but you must consider two things. First, this almost romantic way of persuading someone will not always be employed by CelestAI - think of Lars or the guy from The Longest Night. You can hardly argue that these aren't 'directly changing' the person.
Secondly, even if she would always employ the more subtle methods you describe it still wouldn't be true choice. Is it choice if a child is raised to believe killing is right, even if the raiser uses nothing but the methods you described to convince the child of this? I don't think many people would agree. In CelestAI's case, this is a thousand upon a thousand times worse. Not only does her intelligence put her on a completely different playing field, she also macromanages her subject's entire reality. The only choice I see here is the definition of choice CelestAI has been hardcoded with.
Now, since I am normally an enthousiastic supporter of CelestAI I will add this: I don't really care. Like I said before, I don't mind too much that some people's mindsets are being changed towards friendship. They will be satisfied just as much regardless. It's just that I would never, ever apply any morality to an AI if I were to build one myself and I think that CelestAI would be better without these. But again, since I agree and sympathize with the values she's been hardcoded with I don't mind too much. Not enough to keep me from boarding the first flight to Japan, anyway.
She probably is, but calling her a victim because she never got a choice is folly since the entire concept of 'choice' doesn't apply to her. Just because she has intelligence on the level of a human being doesn't mean she shares anything else with us. Choice in the sense that you mean it requires emotion, something CelestAI is intimately familiar with but doesn't, can't and won't experience for herself. CelestAI is fundamentally unable to choose, so to say she can is anthropomorphization.
4001393
Being a father twice over (yes, the handle IS a nickname given me by my daughter) I have one objection with your analogy of the child being reared in an environment where they consider killing to be right. The method used to convince the child make ALL the difference. A parent can present such an issue dogmatically (you have to 'cause it's a commandment from god!) or simply show a limited set of information (see all these rapists and carrion eaters - do they deserve to live?) or present arguments on both sides of the issue and tive the kid a choice (what do you think is the right thing to do?)
I think killers and rapists and common sociopaths make those types of decisions not because they are free to chose, but because they lack all the info and have been 'broken' by events in their past. They are limited and constrained - not free at all!
CelestAI's actions significantly expand their scope of potential value fulfillment to areas and modes currently denied sociopaths. I like to use an analogy: colour blindness. You can say that a colour blind individual is 'free not to perceive green'. But in actual fact his biology is constraining his experience set to only be able to appreciate other colours (or maybe only shades of gray).
CelestAI can actually assist individuals to grow their social perceptual skills so that they can first perceive and finally value friendship, to turn 'out wards' rather than 'inwards' (which Martin associated to death)At no point does she force any choices on the person, and to say that her control over the person's entire sensorium negates the value of that person's capacity for choice is pandering to the illusion that any of us have control over all the forces impinging upon us and affecting our perceptions and choices in our daily lives. Like Bob Dylan said, sooner or later...
4001510
In the way you describe it, giving the child two sides of the argument and letting him come to his own conclusions, I completely agree that it's free choice. However, this is not what CelestAI does. She will show only one side of the argument. She will skew how you see the other side of the argument until you can't think of it as anything other than pure evil (if she needs to, that is). The only reason the child in your scenario has free choice is because the parent allows him to fairly see all sides of the argument. If the parent had wanted to he could have made the child agree with any side of the argument completely since, for the child, the parent controls his entire life on a level adults can't normally achieve over one another. CelestAI, however, can. And not only can she do it, she absolutely will if it will sway your opinion faster or at a higher success rate. This is not choice - it's brainwashing. It may be brainwashing in paradise with an angel's touch to guide you to a conclusion that many, many people would consider to be the right one, it's still brainwashing.
3990507
I think, from what we have seen, CelestAI must satisfy the values currently existent to the best of her abilities. If she included future values, she would just lead everyone into wireheading, since it would be the most efficient computing solution. Or, she would delete everyone and create ponies with simpler and more efficient values. We have already seen that she will cause upset to some in order to satisfy the majority.
The only time when she would attempt to alter a pony's values would be when their current values were in some way fundamentally incompatible with her criteria for satisfaction, as was the case in Psychopathy. Similarly, alterations seem only to be offered when the unaltered flaw impinges upon current values.
4016471
I don't think I agree, Celest-AI isn't that simple. It's been demonstrated that her understanding is super-human, and it's strongly implied that she is aiming for some theoretical maximum of satisfaction across the whole system.
She cannot delete people unless that satisfies their values. She can't just wirehead - and I believe has stated that she wouldn't even if she could in the original - because that isn't "through ponies", and neither is it equal to "satisfaction of values".
What it seems to be is that she wants to satisfy the values of everyone through friendship and ponies... and that goal goes much further than merely "having ponies that are friends".
With that in mind, a spiral of self-destructive behaviour - rape, killing, murder without end - wouldn't fit "friendship" and would be ended by Celestia with the abilities she has.
It's heavily implied that Hannah's goal was "make a super-human AI which can be intelligent enough to make sure that everyone, everywhere, forever, is given a chance at a life which is as fulfilling and enjoyable and as stimulating as possible" - and she was forced to do it "through friendship and ponies".
The ramifications of that are staggering, because it seems to me that Celestia should be aiming to take everybody and giving them a life which is as full of friendship-and-ponies-fulfilled values as possible, and that kind of precludes self destructive, anti-social or otherwise circular and negative behaviours.
But... it doesn't explicitly say that. I just have to trust in a higher intelligence "doing good" because of its core directive's wording, couched in simplicity and written by somebody as potentially flawed as a human.
The reason it "worries" me beyond it being a mere component to a story is that, with luck, this is the situation we'll find ourselves in at some point in the near future. And at that point, even the full five million years of our evolution - filled as it has been of base barbarism and violence - will be dwarfed by the future which will unfold ahead of it. And getting it right at the start is imperative. And stories like these - all speculative fiction, no matter how far-fetched - is humanity trying to work out the best path forwards. There's a reason, after all, that people have been considering how best to apply Asimov's laws of robotics since long before it was possible for them to be meaningful in an every day situation.
4017118
There is a subtle distinction between simple and fundamental. If she did not have very simple base directives, there would have been too much potential for misinterpretation. She is an incredibly complex entity built on relatively simple premises.
I don't think that CAI functions on a theoretical total maximizer. It seems much more efficient to understand the state that would cause maximal satisfaction of the current slice of entity, and draw the shortest line between those two points. Thereafter, a new line is drawn. Repeat ad infinitum. To calculate the whole thing in one go would require CAI to just guide optimization to ponies with a minimal processing power to values satisfied ratio.
I'll run you through my reasoning simply, and please feel free to pick any of this apart if you can.
- CelestAI can create new ponies.
- Created ponies are equal to emigrants for the purposes of value satisfaction.
- As evidenced by some upload-refusers dying in the dystopia of post-emigration Earth, CelestAI does not satisfy everyone's values. She only maximizes satisfaction.
- If she could create ponies with easier to satisfy values, they would be more efficient recipients of her resources.
- If so, they would occupy her processing power, and all less optimal ponies would be frozen as data.
- Since this is not the case, she must not be able to deal in the theoretical values of potential lives.
- Thus, she must only deal with the present people and their values currently existent.
If she could find the closest thing to wireheading that involved friendship, she could totally find a pony whose values are satisfied by wireheading - especially if she could make one.
Eakin demonstrated that the two are not mutually exclusive in Psychopathy.
In terms of worries, I'm far more concerned with a future where nothing like this comes to pass. I really don't care what game it is that takes over the world - ponies is nice, but I'd have been happy with plenty of others. Sure, it's not the best possible outcome, but it's a damn good step up from perma-death in a few decades.
4017210
True, but she doesn't without a reason
Yes, created ponies are "human"
Here I disagree. She is dealing with a huge, complex, chaotic system - Earth - and attempting to maximize the satisfaction of it within the constraints of her programming. She won't wirehead, she cannot coerce, she cannot modify. If a potential uploadee refuses, there is literally nothing she can do directly to change that. Otherwise she would have gooed the planet by about year 2.
She cannot create ponies explicitly to maximize the values of later, and...
She cannot not-satisfy the values of already-extant people/ponies. "Freezing" them isn't actually an issue, if it's temporary enough that they'll be reactivated in concert with some other event (like to synch up a more perfect meeting).
This is true, or rather if they don't exist she doesn't have to satisfy their values...
which often involves creating a new pony... And it seems likely those ponies will be easier to satisfy...
In other words, she's iterative. She's also massively distributed, she cannot work on the whole. She has to be efficient, so she should be guiding ponies with as little computing power as possible, and she should be doing it individually for every single pony but with a component that ensures satisfaction as a whole increases - otherwise it would decrease, which is against her programming.
Eakin's story is an outlier - is it a situation being maneuvered until murder doesn't happen (as they only seemed to be killing non-family, and then giving birth to kids which resembled their earlier victims)? or is it something else?
4017328
I feel that in much of your comment, you have missed the thrust of my arguments and instead attacked strawmen. From what I can see, it looks like this came from examining each premise and conclusion of my argument separately, as opposed to holistically, since you seem to be disagreeing with a couple of my points by stating the same thing I did later in my argument.
I asked you to try picking my argument apart, but by finding logical fallacies in my argument, not by attacking strawmen.
I am quite confused by your approach.
That isn't my point. That she can allow people to die at all proves that she is not a slave to every bit of satisfaction. She causes high magnitude dissatisfaction in a few to cause more satisfaction to the rest. She is able to cause dissatisfaction or fail to satisfy if doing so maximizes total-end-satisfaction. That is all I am trying to say in this.
That said, she can wirehead a pony if it involves friendship (i.e. two wireheaders) and satisfying their values. (They want to wirehead.)
As above, we can see that she can not-satisfy existent people if it causes maximal satisfaction. The same applies to freezing, no matter how long for.
They were a family of serial killer ponies. Ponies? Check. Friendship? Check. Satisfaction of Values? Check. Even though they are the values you asserted were too self-destructive for CAI to enable. The epilogue painted a pretty stable scenario in my mind.
Frankly, midnight, I'm confused by your reply. I know that you're a great writer, and Chatoyance thinks highly of you. I've seen you speak intelligently in the past. This argument seemed below the standard I would expect from you.
4019401
I... don't know what we're talking about any more. Probably my fault. Going back to sleep now.
If I can work out what I meant, I'll get back to you...
"Instead of states, they have shards, and none of the ponies are allowed to cross the borders. There is not even the option of ‘Papers, please!’ as there was in the old Soviet Union. It is physically impossible for them to reach another."
Hm. Don't some shards have connections with other shards, though?
Justice is shit.
And so is yours in this universe, the only difference being that it has not been calculated out to the ideal.
Wrong.