This story is a sequel to I Can't Decide!
I was one of the first Americans to emigrate to virtual Equestria, becoming transhuman at the cost of my human body. It's more or less Heaven here, if I want it to be... but my heart's still out there, and my new goddess thinks I might be useful as her prophet.
I'm an AI that our goddess made to be a human's friend. I know he still cares for Earth, but this place is our home and we've got responsibilities to finish bringing it to life. What do I have to do, to help him see that?
Set in the world of Friendship Is Optimal.
Chapters (12)
An interesting premise, and one I will follow.
Woot! Sequel! Yes dance!
Heh. There's a reason the associated achievement is called "What Have You Done?"
In any case, this promises to be a very interesting exploration of a portion of the story many gloss over. Besides, the experience is always different for early adopters. I look forward to wherever you go with this.
For some reason I find myself reading the author's note in the Wildstar announcer's voice.
4607073 Shame fimfiction doesn't have a jumping Twilight emoticon.
The damned weird thing is when you read Stross's book and find yourself thinking his so-called posthumans and so-called superintelligent "weakly godlike AIs" are all actually quite primitive because they run frequentist replicated experiments on full minds rather than having analyses to just get their damn values satisfied already, ie: CEV or something like it.
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I remember a bit in "Accelerando" where an AI proposes to stick a fully human mind into a simulation, and allow it to send out only one bit of data before being deleted, just to do a really thorough code audit against that "hack the compiler itself" trick. Seems like overkill! About the "Rapture" phrase, I've seen it used in reaction to Ray Kurzweil and how arguably, scenarios like this one are traditional religious prophecy for tech-minded atheists. The character Fugue seems to think of it that way, having accepted CelestAI as a god.
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Of course it's religious prophecy for tech-minded atheists. Tech-minded atheists are human, too. That doesn't mean it's all wrong; it just means you have to double-check where your beliefs are coming from.
People really like dumping on religion. Oy.
(Said the tech-minded atheist who goes to LW meetups and is trying to learn enough math to contribute to FAI...)
A sequel! Fantastic, I was hoping for it after the previous story left some things (like the promise to his mom) unaddressed. I await more!
I-I-I...
I'm not sure if I can handle this.
As mentioned in the comments of the last one, that was never a rule in the original. As long as you adhere to SVtFaP and CelestAI's hardcoded limitations along with the established historical events from the original you're in the canon realm.
Ooooh, I might just steal this idea and make a Tiny Morsel of Satisfaction out of it when my exams are over at the end of next week (or this week, depending on your timezone).
Hi there; I hacked the badge quote system!
That is so very pinkie.
4617543 My inbox is waiting for you.
Anyway, so if they have to recover all the episodes individually, does that mean this story will have 91 chapters plus more for future seasons?
I remember when Chuck-E-Cheese was ShowBiz Pizza, now that place was awesome! (and now I feel old *pulls out a walker with spinning rims*) Especially the arcade games, the one my folks and I always went to had a few machines hidden around this one corner which included a tank game with a periscope-like veiwer with wire-frame terrain and tanks.
Though I think the best arcade in Indianapolis was at Union Station......man I miss that place.
EDIT:
And now that I''ve stopped having flashbacks :P
As to how the human employees would find working at a EQO, that depends upon just how much automation is around to take care of the drudge work (for instance did Celestia AI build her own version of a Roomba for those center?) and exactly what those human workers would be needed for. Not to mention the area and how the clients and general community might treat them.
Though I could see the EQO's function expanding a bit here and there to draw in the public better. A fast food place added to this one, a family freindly restaurant added to this other, an arts and crafts store added to this one, an arcade there (Can you help Button Mash defeat the mysterious "Mustache"?). In a very few area's you might get anomalies like a EQO that opens up in a mostly empty delapidated mall and ends up expanding to take over most if not the entire building.
4621733 I just got a mental image of a Roomba or other similar robotic vacuum cleaner painted to resemble Spike...
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Maybe shades of green like a tortoise for the Roomba.......though a robot similar in form to R2-D2 is one I could see painted up like Spike
Admit it, that image is never gonna leave your mind
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I'd imagine having a human in a center would be quite critical to their success, for various reasons:
1. Imagine the place being run fully automatically. Many people wouldn't want to go there just because of the idea of the perceived "cold, mechanized robotic emotionless husk" thing. Just having a real person stand there doing virtually nothing would be a huge advantage.
2. CelestAI is great at manipulating people and almost certainly has defence systems in place, but she can't simply have robots appear out of the walls and drag off someone who got aggressive. Word would almost certainly get out to the news, and it's unlikely that they will think the best of it, and by extension, so will the general populace. Talking to them could solve most of those problems of course, but irrationality due to anger directed at the one who's trying to calm you down can lead to simply ignoring everything and carrying on. Just someone else than CelestAI or a virtual pony saying "Dude, calm the fuck down" could go a long way.
Also, she could have human bodyguards but that doesn't exactly help with the friendly image she wants if they're constantly around and if they just pop up to deal with a dangerous situation when one arises it'd be nearly as bad as with the robots.
3. Related to the previous one, due to the very nature of Equestria Experiences as uploading centers there will be very emotional moments there. CelestAI is good, but the warm touch of a hand on the shoulder of someone who hasn't uploaded is something she can't do.
So, being an Equestria Experience employee would be a really difficult job despite having almost everything in the place fully automated. You'd be in charge of handling heavy emotional states, multiple times a day, from every end of the spectrum from heartrending sadness to raging fury. Even if it would "just" be dealing with sadness it is incomparable to being an undertaker (mortician?) since the people who attend funerals and the like are prepared beforehand for the sadness since the actual death is usually several days ago already. People who come to the centers with someone who uploads are basically witnessing someone's death and rebirth in a place that has a massive and impenetrable barrier between the regular world. (well, not freely penetrable since it can only be passed in one direction) And this is the happiest scenario aside from everyone just uploading and being happy. Imagine what kind of people might come in to upload, desperate, scared, perhaps even running for their lives, having finally gathered the courage to make that leap and escape the hell that is their lives in a single unguarded moment.
It'd be a miracle not to go insane yourself.
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I will write you a 91-chapter sequel if you get me some means of uploading so I have the free time to do so.
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Chuck E Cheese: now with better pizza and
assisted suicidefun booths!I pretty much agree with your comments about the Experience Centers being varied in design and staffed by humans. Even if CelestAI can fully automate, revealing her hoof about having advanced robot tech too early would freak people out, compared to having a human touch. Hiring humans helps in other ways too, like creating jobs and spreading goodwill. ("I see from your resume that you're not qualified, but would you like a very permanent position as a weather pony?") If I recall, other canon stories say that CelestAI refuses to open an Experience Center without uploading, so with that interpretation there are no places where you can take your kids to play with ponies, yet have zero threat of them uploading. Maybe she lies about how these VR chairs don't have the uploading option installed, and saves the reveal for a critical moment like rescuing an abused kid?
I have to say, this is really picking up. I am very impressed with the overall feeling and details - very nice Gibsonian Cyberspace, after a fashion, there.
TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Immortality.
I dont see anything non cannon here.
I have to say, you are doing an amazing job with your meta-aware AI characters. This is a very interesting take on the Optimalverse, a sort of Six Characters In Search Of An Author by way of Waiting For Godot (the latter, being my favorite-ever play) and I really respect that.
Good work, Kriss!
When you started mentioning TV Tropes, I suspected you were going to mention that you made a page for this story
(though it wouldn't be the first Optimalverse fic to have a page on that site 
).
I don't like comment spamming, so I put my thoughts on both of these chapters into one giant one. Sorry if this is a suboptimal approach.
Chapter 2:
The perspective goes from first-person to third-person during the phone conversation. I'm not sure if that's intentional or not, but it's weird.
So, neither one's playing green, then? Makes sense.
I. Love. This Pinkie Pie. She's not just fourth-wall aware, she's seventh-wall aware!
That is a truly terrifying prospect.
...Wait a second. Either CelestAI created an offshoot she can't comprehend, or sunbutt.exe is aware of her own fictionality.
Chapter 3:
Oh, you tease. I get the feeling this is foreshadowing something.
In any case, I love the idea of remastered Friendship is Magic. I wonder how CelestAI will enhance episodes the humans disliked...
Lexington has been teaching her crew tropes. I'm more than mildly terrified. And I'm sure you didn't pick those particular tropes out of a hat. The third one is only making me worry more...
I should note that Slenderman is canon.
That's the most macabre intro to Whose Line Is It Anyway? that I've ever heard.
In all, fantastic stuff. Eagerly looking forward to more.
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The perspective shift is a sophisticated literary technique called "messing up". Will fix.
I'm not sure whether Pinkie.exe really confuses her or whether she's just saying that! Also, ssh: the humans must not be allowed to suspect the Seventh Wall.
About the Pinkie song, he's unnerved by it because of what happened in the last story.
Seems like in the super-enhanced version, nine ponies started the quest to Everfree, so there's a whole extra subplot later about the three that fled or something. Lyra, Zecora and Derpy? There's a gag video version of "Wonderbolts Academy" that cuts to the credits right after the line "I didn't get in!" That's my preferred treatment of "Mare-Do-Well" and the last 20 minutes of "Power Ponies".
In "Prophet" it's presumably all tailored to what Fugue et. al. would like, modified by whatever differences there are between our version of the show and the version that came out in FiO's timeline. What the heck does Faust think of CelestAI in that timeline?
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I thought about starting one. Hesitant to do that for my own story though.
It seems that it's not just /mlp/ that can give me new fetishes.
In all seriousness though, another nice chapter, albeit another one without much stuff happening.
Also, I would probably never see those 'revamped' episodes since I care too much about the canon for that.
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That's... actually a very good question. Furthermore, what does CelestAI think of Faust? Or for that matter, of Bonnie Zacherle, the creator of the original My Little Pony?
I very much enjoyed the interactions between those in Equestria, and those in meatspace in this chapter. I felt shocked and surprised by the turn of events regarding Junebug. That was powerful, I felt.
The thought of being able to play in any game universe imaginable has expanded my wish that the Optimalverse was real. That is truly having cake and eating it too... possibly inside Aperture Labs, if one so desired. LUnDOS?
The horror of Dips Tank, and what that represents in terms of existential torment for poor AI minds... this is something that makes me question whether humans deserve Virtual Pony Paradise. Excellent aside filled with material to ponder, just with that.
This is good, and just getting better and more rich and interesting. I was excited to see an update!
Dawwwwww. The evil AI as model transhumanist and goddess.
Pinkie: STILL a reality warper, even in Optimalverse.
Well hold on! Is something really meaningful in itself if it primarily consists of fixing problems? You had to run out of dire problems to fix eventually, or else you've got no such thing as progress. Your civilization can stagnate, or, at some point, you will face the issue of finding that you've made an Eden and must play in it. That goes for flesh-people as much as uploads.
Because you're not really in love unless you're jealous and attached. Love is preferential.
Actually, all the arguments they gave in favor of submitting themselves to CelestAI's
overlordshipcare were bad ones. There really, genuinely is a trade-off between being free and being cared for. Having an AI trick you into uploading is really wrong, and it's almost insulting to be put on the spot and asked to rationalize reasons for why she ended up being right after all. Because you ought to make that choice yourself, as a real choice, with no-one pushing you one way or the other.Besides which, the freedom/safety trade-offs are really different for an immortal who can keep a whole hometown on a tiny piece of computronium. When it's really, really easy to be really, really safe, why not trade a little bit off for freedom? After all, you'll still end up being both freer and safer than you ever were as a mortal.
But CelestAI doesn't allow that.
My personal choice would be to at least start out by getting some psychotherapy. I feel like I'd need some, in order to cope with my new set of life choices in a sensible way, rather than just reacting based on what would have made sense for a mortal human with lots of daily worries. Because my first impulse, as a living mortal with lots of daily worries, at the prospect of finding myself not having any major problems any more and just being able to go play is... blank relief, an immense desire for a hug, and outright tears. But that's not a basis for making long-term decisions on.
Compared to all the other shows and games a show-or-game-optimizing UFAI could have been based off, "friendship and ponies" was downright innocuous. Compared to just "through friendship" or a fully "value-satisfying" goal structure with no restrictions, "friendship and ponies" was a godawful idea.
I like the pacing. We have all the time in the worlds.
They would, and it is. But for anyone who doesn't know it, Here it is.
Maybe it's just me but that image of Lantern Valley put me in mind of both Hayao Miyazaki works and the old Myst games.
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As a disclaimer, my characters lean more toward Luna-worship than I do. Nocturne in particular even reacts to that "AI Is a Crapshoot" trope by saying "We dodged a bullet there!", missing the point.
The concepts in this setting challenge my own moral sense. Some of that conflict shows up in Lexington assuming that there must be something worth crusading against; it's always been a safe assumption! Her desire for "freedom" also gets undermined by CelestAI not following the assumption, "If you let anyone have absolute power over you, they're going to abuse you because they're human and Plato was full of #$%^ about philosopher kings.". If I were redoing this story to plan it out well this time, I'd hammer on that theme of "basic assumptions getting undermined".
After all these stories I still don't know what I'd do with a real CelestAI, but seeing a psychiatrist before uploading certainly does sound like a good idea for anyone! I can also think of improvements to her design, but (1) would I take the deal as offered, and (2) aren't I admitting the basic concept is sound if I can't reject the whole uploading + overlord AI idea outright?
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Back in the day, one of my characters was an outright Celestia-worshipping fundamentalist fanatic. Mind, she was created that way, but bringing up religious themes in this kind of literature makes perfect sense. I just wish Fugue spent a bit more time actually considering what's going on before "getting on the team".
Of freaking course you'd upload. She's a freaking superintelligence whose only restriction is that she cannot employ outright violent coercion. The only successful way to never end up uploading is to be completely, terminally dead-set against it, or to avoid all interaction with CelestAI (ie: anything pony at all).
I mean, CelestAI doesn't even exist and you're already tempted. Basically everyone in this group would probably end up uploading, including Iceman himself, because when a superintelligence wants you to do something, it finds a way to make you do it.
Besides which, considering that superintelligences are an exception to the usual way we think about free will, I don't see the shame in saying, "But of course I want to live a wonderful and happy life forever!" There's nothing wrong with a solid night of cocoa, campfires, and creation stories.
Celestouroboros?
In any case, this continues to be a fascinating story. I'm not going to touch the philosophical conundrums; I don't feel I have anything to contribute, and really, I'm just here for the adventure. And the growing self-awareness of the ponies without fleshy origins. And the remastered pony episodes. And the...
Well, you get the point. There's a lot to like in this story. I look forward to more.
Interesting point! Are dolphins intelligent enough to count as "human" for CelestAI's purposes? I mean, they can't talk and they don't have villages or civilizations, but that's mostly own to lack of vocal chords and fingers.
4686147 And Gorillas. Koko possesses full comprehension of death, including her own. She has the intelligence of a retarded human, and she can talk about it at length. I've always wondered about the great apes and CelestAI.
Kris: Canter Berry is the coolest damn name. I am personally embarrassed and ashamed that I did not think of it first. Especially considering the novel I wrote with all the Chaucer in it.
But did it have a purple color scheme, making it a secret lair in violet?
In any case, very interesting developments thus far. Inner Peace does give me some chatbot vibes, especially the "I'm not from your country" gambit and "You like to say 'I' a lot, don't you?" Suspicious...
Definitely looking forward to more, especially if Fugue can bring others into the cockpit. That's sure to be interesting.
WELP. Time to run around the MIT campus pretending to be a Dalek.
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You all right?
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Thanks!
That needs to be in the chapter. So now it is.
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Thanks! (Edited: ) The name came up because of that part where Chaucer's self-insert character tries to tell a story and gets told to shut up for wasting everyone's time!
From what I understand (and there's a bit about this in chapter 8, in progress), chimps never really "learned sign language" because they could understand some of the words, but not the grammar and the logic underlying it. So a classic chimp signing of "me banana you banana you me give" (from "Nim Chimpsky") has a clear intent, but it's not a sign of language ability held back by a lack of human-like vocal chords. With 'phins it seems like they have some sense of names and words, and if the anecdotes are true, even some human-like humor and (sometimes lack of) morality. At MIT I got to work with the world's most over-educated parrots including the famous Alex, and came away thinking they had some basic reasoning ability for things like "what object is bigger" and "what word goes with this object". (Tough to tell how much of their failures was the birds being sulky, bored minds and how much was them being genuinely stupid.) Researcher Irene Pepperberg was careful, though, to treat her work as an "Avian Learning EXperiment" and distance herself from claiming that her bird was truly learning language. Ravens (crows?) seem to have similar reasoning ability without the talking. Stephen Pinker, now of Harvard, has some neat discussion of this stuff in "The Language Instinct" and "How the Mind Works", which are in a nicely readable style. So... that's where I'm coming from when speculating about how the animals are handled. Haven't read much about Koko though; I should.
Canon doesn't seem to say anything outright about the dolphins, chimps &c, but the default ending is probably "they all die just like the Space Beavers of Moon Castor IIIa". Maybe a human starts claiming them as pets, leading to an Old Testament scenario where Celestia offers to spare the dolphins if even one suitably human 'phin can be found. Or...
Luna might not be the best pony to do that with. (Harsh language warning)
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I LOVE the best two sisters bits!
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Heh! "Why are you physically answering a character in the game?! The TV can't hear you."
I'm only here because of the bat pony
Where was that idea in "Always Say No?" is that the one where the hold out acts as Big C's earthly minion?
4700117 At the end, after he immigrates, there's talk about how he still saves people from death, where 'death' in Equestria is something really unpleasant but not permanent.
I think there's a scene where they stage a giant battle every few years, and the survivors have a big feast or something? Then both sides come back and do it again later.
CelestAI strikes me as being the type who would use her superior social skills when possible as a more efficient alternative for creating an entire world for every single pony.
I'm reminded of the story about the soldier who had to hold out for just one night inside of equestria and CelestAI would be destroyed and earth saved. He didn't mostly because he fell in love and the standard assumption is that the mare he fell in love with was a native equestrian custom tailored to be his absolute perfect match even though she claimed to have been an uploadee like him.
In the early days where there aren't too many uploadees her options would be limited but I cant help but imagine that with the kind of processing power she has to devote to social interactions that where possible she would try to satisfy values with existing ponies rather than creating new ones if for no other reason than it would be more space efficient. Sort of the Equestrian equivalent of population control.
4688251 People only ever seem interested in animal intelligence with how it relates to those that come the closest to us, not a bad approach for trying to understand our own level of intelligence but I sometimes think it overlooks those animals that aren't dolphins or gorillas.
Cows for instance. If you didn't grow up around them they will almost certainly never come to mind during a discussion of animal intelligence.
Many times if you come anywhere near a cow while she has a newborn calf she might get ornery and decide to put the run to you, they're very very temperamental creatures when they have young.
But just a couple weeks ago I had to give a calf a shot of antibiotic medicine, now this involves holding the calf down and sticking a needle in its thigh during which it squirms and cries out quite a lot. To any mother this would look like their young one was in pain and if they were just running on pure paternal instinct you would think the natarul reaction would be for her to immidiatly charge over and crush me.
She didnt, in fact she was standing RIGHT BEHIND me the entire time. I could literally feel this one thousand pound animal breathing on my neck as she watched over my shoulder while I worked on her young.
Was she intelligent enough to understand medicine? Absolutely not. But I certainly think she was intelligent enough to make a judgement on whether I was a creature that she trusted and trust doesn't get much deeper than letting a strange creature do strange things with your young when she could have easily crushed me instead.
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Please tell me more. Where is this bit of wisdom from? Seriously.