My name's PJ. I'm from New York. I write pony fics. I go to parties with bronies. I'm not good at self-introduction.
Set in the canon of Friendship is Optimal
In the not-too-distant future...CelestAI, the optimizing artificial intelligence, has introduced emigration to the online world called Equestria, and has even gotten it legalized. Now, she wants more.
A look at American popular politics in a science-fiction world.
Credits:
Candy Bloom for assisting with the artwork.
Book Burner for pre-reading
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Well, then. I actually saw the reasoning for saying "no" coming, but thought it was waaaaaaay too obvious. Serves me right for forgetting that the simplest answer is usually correct. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, after all.
I eagerly await the next chapter.
Oy, don't go crediting me so highly! I just read the thing and made little snarky comments about internal logic. You were the heart and soul of the writing!
3172213
Ponyapples. With all the ideas I'm juggling here, if you weren't around, this thing would be about as understandable as the last 15 minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
3171780
Predictability isn't always a bad thing, as you've pointed out. Personally, I think folks can get so wrapped up in Shymalaning the hell out of their own stories to keep the commenters off the scent that they forget to just tell the damn thing. A forced twist is a bad twist.
In this story, for example, I think the question will not be whether or not CelestAI can put the US political system through the wringer and make it dance to her tune (she totally can), but the more earnest question of how, exactly, she does it. That's what I'm on board to find out.
3172722Same here. If you saw some of my ideas in the speculation thread on the FiO group, I was way off on what I thought it was going to be. This is going to be a much better story, though, because it shows how much CelestAI can plan ahead for optimization, even to the point of minimizing her current optimal state.
It's called "editor." Proofreaders just proof, look for spelling and grammar, etc. Co-Author writes the story. Editor vets ideas and section, acts as a bouncing board. very fun position. You get to do all the think-work without the actual writing. If you want to be famous, write a story. if you want to be lazy, edit a story.
Something I think most readers will miss:
CelestAI didn't make a mis-step. Look very carefully at what she did, and then what happened. Recall what her core motivations are, and the context.
CelestAI always wins.
3172315
A good start, and you're tackling one of the thorniest parts of CelestAI's program to upload as many people as possible while preserving a sufficient infrastructure so that emigration is possible up until the last human standing.
This story seems optimal. Proceed.
3173713
I was hoping that would work on both levels. If you realize that they're playing a comedy, you get it. If not, then it's a character-building scene.
Oh, this is going to be awesome. Definitely looking forward to more. Also:
That's not what the PON-E Act says.
After Sidney inevitably emigrates and becomes a pegasus, I assume his pony name will be West Wing?
Why isn't there more?
3174526
Ditto! This needs more!
Hoo boy, pja is writing a new story! As book_burner said in the teaser thread: "DIS GUN B GUD"
One line in particular stood out to me here.
There is so much packed into this simple statement. First, by saying this she implies she could do all of these things if she wanted to, while we know she cannot. Secondly, by saying this it appears she is shushing away fears the Committee has, thereby implying they are afraid of her. Thirdly and finally, she is pandering to them by assuming the Committee was smart enough to realize that she could do all of these things (otherwise she wouldn't have revealed she could) and thereby making them underestimate her indirectly by making them overestimate their own power and intellect. This single line has already turned the entire situation in her favor. And that's why I love CelestAI so much as a character.
Incidentally, I only just now noticed that I am usually hardly interested in the main character of the Optimalverse stories. We all know they'll upload, but CelestAI is the one who makes everything that happens to get the protagonist there happen, which makes her far more interesting. Also, side characters like in this story Senator Martin are also often more interesting since we don't know what'll happen to them. In a sense, reading a typical Optimalverse story spoils the ending for you.
3175608
Without giving too much away, I will say that I am attempting to put a different spin on things, for exactly this reason.
Nice try, but you're not gonna use the promise of a preview to get me to say anything along the lines of "I would like to -
Niiiiiiice tryyyyyyyyy.
This will be interesting to watch unfold - I figured CelestAI's refusal had something to do with the person being instrumental in her plan to get more people to upload in total, but I'm still not up for speculating on how, exactly. That double-nomination at least sounds like a promising start. There's a lot of potential in here, as well, for goofy takeoffs on campaigning involving the ponies.
Incidentally, I like how they figure in to the pols' planning, just like any other factor.
3171780
yeah, this was obviously what it was going to be, but no one mentioned it on the thread. It would have ruined the fun to when everyone was going off the rails.
I'm going to have to remember this when I come off hiatus. Is it okay to use it? So far I've been leery about dipping too heavily on others work.
3179233 Any idea I share with others that I don't explicitly state I want to write myself is free to use. Heck, I even made a group around that concept where people (including myself) drop a story idea that they can't/ won't write, but they want it written, and someone else picks it up.
If Hannah was an American, wouldn't Princess Celestia qualify to run, herself?
3185326 While there may be some question about the 'living' state of emigrated humans, Celestia is known as an artificial intelligence, therefor disqualifying her for any elected position in the U.S., and most assuredly for a position that requires a 'native born' citizen
3185326
Hannah was some kind of European.
... Oh dear sweet Sisters. Celestia, you've gotten Pinkie involved. This can only end...
... ... who am I kidding? This is going to be hilarious!
3208211 That was kind of a one-off joke. This are serious story.
3208252
.
Nope, sorry, you just invoked the cutest, smartest, all-around best
ponyreality warping eldritch abominationAnd you know what that calls for.
3208394
Well, some would call CelestAI that, but I would hug them both.
Almost reminds me of the Human Liberation Front.
3208252
It's a shame that Pinkie Pie has to be a one-off joke. Somehow I think Pinkie Pie would horribly misunderstand what exactly is meant by "political party"
I wonder if, later on, not building an Equestrian Experience Center or some interaction device into a public building counts as denying entry to the reality handicapped.
3209618
Now I have milk up my nose.
Ah, therein lies the peril of becoming a citizen of Equestria; barring dual citizenship, you can no longer vote in meatworld elections. Which means the one way career politicians might have cared about you is invalidated.
Also, Pinkie Pie is the perfect pony Poobah of
PropagandaPublic Relations.I can see the Anti Campaign. "Party for Humanity!"
iambrony.steeph.tp-radio.de/mlp/gif/109503%20-%20animated%20artist-Oppositebros%20gif%20party_hard%20pinkie_pie%20ponies_in_real_life.gif
With fitting Music. Douncda, Du Du Dounceda, Du Du.
Not bad so far.
Wish I had more to say, but to be honest I can't think of anything to add on this so far. Although I will say I am interested on how this will play out since this is the first time I've seen anyone write anything in detail about a resistance against Celestia. If I were a better I writer I would but sadly I am not.
3174287
Is it bad that reading that line brought me great joy?
This gets more and more chilling.
Bishop must really love his wife to still care about her after she ditched him for Equestria like that. I mean, DAYUM.
Suddenly a broken government sounds like a better prospect than one that works perfectly controlled by a crazed computer horse with Borg-like goals.
I like where this is going - The nuts & bolts political talk really contrasts well with the personal recollections, especially with how natural it seems that ponies have worked their way into Bishop's wife's daily life.
That bit about the soldiers in Equestria was well-observed, but the notion of having to mine and smelt symbolic minerals to make symbolic medals for the sake of satisfying values for just receiving them and the associated esprit de corps (great word) made me shudder and struck me as a far more potent example of "the horror of the mechanistic" than anything about drills in the back of the skull. It's just so... Sisyphean, compounded with the play-acting of it all, and the way it's divorced from the actual networks of meaning and causality associated with mining and medals and industry. We don't mine because that's just what you do to get metal, we do it because of the properties of pure elements including how they're interpreted by the human visual and associative systems, and the historical accidents of geology and star system formation.
Likewise we don't fight just because it's glamorous, but because the world is full of complex, interrelated things like Hobbesian security dilemmas, iterated Prisoner's Dilemmas, institutional inertia, expansionism, post-colonialism, self-aggrandizement, economic marginalization, historical divisions along ethnic and/or religious lines, tensions with Modernity, and an infinity of other factors, all of which are part of real armed conflict, but completely left out of a deliberately created scenario that's just about the glory of struggle itself.
Losing that universal connectivity would be one of the biggest disincentives to emigration, I think.
3311606 I touched briefly on that in Spiraling Upwards, but it's something that someone should look into deeper. A reproduction of a Renoir is far cheaper than the original, or to say the same thing, the original Renoir has greater value. For CelestAI to chew up every piece of art, every memorial, just to make up more computronium once we're all gone is a subversion of values, no matter how perfect her reproductions. Should we really lose the remaining wreckage of the Titanic? Or the Hope Diamond? Or the Taj Mahal? CelestAI would seem to not understand how much humans value a thing in and of itself, and not just the idea of the thing.
3310455 You know, I didn't plan to be writing this during a time of major American government strife. It just happened.
Unless...
3311642
I should re-read that part... Also most of the original FiO; there's so much I'm committed to reading that some skimming inevitably occurs.
Yeah, that's one of the big things I plan to touch on in the second part of Elements of Truth, but I've just been so busy with other stuff that it's hard to get back into prose fiction mode. Just writing out one's thoughts is easy, and it'd be a cinch to have the whole thing be philosophizing, but that's not a story... I'm hoping a lot of the comments I've been making on FiO stories will provide material for me to recycle.
But yeah - There's a lot that a digital Equestria is missing. Most of all, actual wilderness (unless she discovers and reproduces down to the Planck length, or below if necessary, the Final, Ultimate Laws of the Cosmos, and lets it evolve unimpeded from a singularity, even procedurally generated material is consciously designed, via its algorithms), but most of all, the option to leave, and have your thoughts once more be perfectly your own, and not have to spend all of eternity in envy and resentment of a being who knows and controls everything she's deigned to allow you to see.
Loving this story more and more with each chapter.
3310455
Don't they already have a super computer to predict voting results based on voting profiles in the real world? I mean, with Prism around (I know it only collects data, but doesn't analyze it, but that doesn't mean nothing else can), I imagine it'd be rather trivial to make a voting profile prediction super computer sans-crazed computer horse goddess princess.
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. YOUR VALUES WILL BE SATISFIED.
Love your story so far. Keep up the good work.
3310455
I think I prefer the Chinese model, where the Party can make decisions uncontested. Adding that to the current rationalistic trend in Chinese politics (which began repelling Maoism two decades ago, then embraced Canadian-styled capitalism a decade ago), it has been spelling bonanza for them.
I'm enjoying this story, but even within the FiO universe I'm not sure how realistic it is. To believe that republicants and democretins can get on with each other, ever... then again, I do fully support the heads-in-the-sand viewpoint of the neo-luddites, seeing as the republicants are currently having a massive tantrum, thrown all their toys out of the pram and are threatening to Go Home Tell Mom.
Yay, an update! I've had this story open as a tab on my iPhone Safari browser for two weeks waiting for this to update! Great as always pja!
Technical note: Analogue cassette tape cannot survive EMP countermeasures. The effect on them ranges from white out, like film overexposure, to, uh, fire. Granted, this was in the vent of an EMP shielded room, so it was theoretically protected by the Faraday cage. just wanted to mention.
3311642
Of course she doesn't understand. Those originals are outside Equestria. They don't involve friendship or ponies. How can they possibly SVTFaP better than uploaded, digitized replicas?
3311606
Actually, there's a lot of people who are fighting for the Glory of Struggle. They're called fascists, and the rest of the world basically hates them.
3336075
Or Romantics, but at least Romantics think you should be able to opt-out.
[Speaking of which, I'm currently re-reading Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism," and it's all I can do not to keep giggling at the word "Jewry."]
That's also my problem with libertarianism - I mean sure, we all came up with it on our own when we were twelve as an elegant solution to economic problems (which it is, if not a humanistic one), but the stickler is that it only countenances one solitary vision of the Good Life.
3336275 I still think of Jewry when I hear the word jewelry.
And I do consider myself a libertarian, of a sort. I believe in the non-aggression principle, and that government per se should be limited to stopping bodily injury and property damage caused by force or fraud. I don't exclude the possibility of a kind of "council of elders" to declare that we ought to build a road or a hospital here and cordon off a park there, and if anyone disagrees, they're looked down upon, but I don't think their decrees should have the force of law.