February 3
It was nice to wake up in my own bed again. I was up a little bit earlier than usual, because of how early I'd gone to bed the night before.
I decided I'd start my day with a short flight, and then trot around the neighborhood. Maybe I'd see John again, or Jackie with her dog that likes me, or Ethan who sometimes trots along with me.
I'm starting to get a bit familiar with the people who control the sky. I don't know their names, because they're not supposed to say them on the radio (which is silly), but I know their voices. The deep-voiced man was talking on the radio this morning. He always sounds so calm and professional!
They give me a weather report each time I want to take to the sky, although of course I can see the weather with my own eyes. This morning was no different; he told me how high the clouds were and then gave me permission, and I took to the sky.
I flew right up to the base of the clouds, stopping when I was there to look around for airplanes, and to be sure I gave a good listen as well. Small airplanes buzz like bees, and bigger airplanes . . . well, I don't know what they sound like from outside, but inside they're noisy and shaky and the air smells funny. I haven't been close to a big airplane from outside, because it isn't safe.
I touched the base of the clouds, and tried not to think of what they promised, but I couldn't. It was too much a part of me, and it couldn't be ignored. Maybe Lisa was right; maybe I didn't have something that humans did. Maybe I couldn't appreciate the weather; maybe I was forever cursed to just see them as objects to be moved around in the sky to fill a quota.
Was that what we'd become? Did we pawn a part of ourselves when we first began moving clouds? Or had that always been in our nature?
It bothered me that I didn't know.
If I were allowed to fly through thick clouds, I would have flown to the top and sat there until the sun rose. Sitting on a cloud perch and watching the moonlight paint the cloudtops silver, and then watching as the sun begins to light them in reds and oranges, washing out the stars, until they're all a perfect white like a fresh new snowfall, that's something you can't see on the ground.
So what if I knew what the cloud under my belly was? When I stood on the cobbles and watched the Summer Sun Celebration, was it lessened by the fact that I knew what cobbles were and how they were made? Did their meaning change because I knew that they'd be there tomorrow and the tomorrow after that?
I didn't think so, but Lisa thought so, and I still wasn't entirely sure that she was wrong.
As I sat through climate science, I considered if even human-style weather teaching took the magic out of the weather. I don't think that Lisa knows any more than what she reads in the normal weather report—most people don't. The dining hall sometimes has a newspaper called USA Today which is kept above the garbage can and that anybody can read if they don't mind that it's all wrinkled and the pages are out of order. It has a picture of the whole America, and it shows what the high and low temperatures will be and if there will be any precipitation, and that's all. No pressure charts, no humidity charts, no winds—the airplane control tower gives more detailed reports than that!
Then Crystal Dawn asked if I could clarify what the professor had just said about valley exit jets, and I explained how diurnal mountain wind systems often coupled with the heavy cold air could cause them at low altitudes, and then I wondered if maybe I was taking some of the magic of the air away for her—but ponies and people with airplanes need to know about them! Foals can get caught in them unawares, just like rip tides.
In philosophy class, we continued with Rene Descartes. I'm still trying to wrap my head around his philosophy. Who wonders if they even exist? I know I exist. I can touch my hooves to my body, and I can hear and see and smell; is that not proof enough? Apparently, it wasn't for him.
I overheard one of the boys in class mutter that if God can lie, than Descartes' whole foundation collapses. He was the same boy who muttered under his breath about Aquinas, as well. If he's not going to learn from his elders, why is he in the class?
Some humans have an attitude about learning, I guess. There were some ponies in flight school who thought they knew everything and most of them got showed up by High Winds, who is a retired Wonderbolt (he didn't tell anypony that). I only knew because my Mom had a crush on him, and I didn't tell anypony because even though it's a little mean to watch somepony get blasted by a lightning cloud, it's also dumb to boast when you haven't got anything to back all that hot air up with.
Then in Equestrian class I nuzzled Meghan and Becky and Lisa before I remembered that humans don't greet each other that way even when they know each other pretty well. But it was okay because Becky ruffled my mane a little bit while I was doing it, and Meghan nuzzled me back. Then I told that class that that was how friends greeted each other in Equestria.
Ted, one of the other students, said that he preferred a handshake, but I told him that I didn't like those. It's dangerous to have your hoof grabbed! That's a weird custom, one that we were warned about.
I wonder if humans who are visiting Equestria are warned about nuzzles?
At dinner, Aric said that he had missed me at Durak, and I told him that I was sorry I hadn't come, but that I had gone to Pennsylvania instead. He said it was okay; there were things in life more important than a card game, but he'd missed me all the same, and since he looked really sincere, I invited him back to my dorm room to play a game of euchre, as long as he could find a partner. He said that sounded like fun, and that he'd probably bring Sean and Christine if I was okay with that. That was good, I thought, because if Peggy didn't want to play, Sean and Christine could be partners, and Aric and I could also be partners.
Well, it turned out that Peggy did want to play, so Christine sat out and watched us.
While we were playing, Aric told me that he was going to have a Super Bowl party at his house, and he invited both of us. I thought it sounded like fun, and Peggy did too.
It would have been nice to play a second round after the first, but my poetry book was sitting sadly neglected—I hadn't read any of it during the road trip—and so after the game was done, I started catching up on my homework.
The irony of having a fictional character contemplate her own existence...
Hopefully Silver will realize that she can only appreciate the inherent beauty of weather systems and atmospheric phenomena because of her intricate knowledge about the mechanics behind it all. When you know all the parts, you can appreciate (and wonder at) the way they form a greater whole. The magic may wane, but the fascination doesn't have to. She should talk to her climate science prof.
Also: nuzzle warnings.
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I'm imagining nuzzle warnings as a triangular yellow warning sign displayed prominently on the wall in the portal building.
Nice pairing Silver's experience with Descarts with her own personal crisis of thought.
I've always been a big science geek, especially astronomy, cosmology, and marine biology/ecology. Of course my 23 years as a diver/underwater photographer also added a fascination with all the biology and physics behind venturing into an underwater environment.
But cutting to the chase I've always found an even greater, if different, sense of wonder after learning how things work. The more complex and intricate the system the more that sense of wonder grew. I hope silver is able to realize that perhaps knowing how something works can lead to its own sense of wonder. Not the wonder of how does this work, but the wonder of, how can something this complex and intricate be, and how can it all continue in balance and in such a vast interconnectedness. Especially on Earth where there is no way to control the weather. But then also in Equestrian where the Pegasi are able to understand and interact the way they do with an equally complex climate.
Then again there could also be some theological influence on my sense of wonder as well. It's hard to avoid when you have 2 ministers with a PhD level education around.
Wow, I had no idea that she'd be so bothered by what Lisa said. This could be an interesting mini arc.
7077451 I hadn't even considered that, but it is kinda funny. Irony aside though, I think her attitude is another case of ponies tending to take things at face value, while humans are more prone to thinking "what if?" Also, this is a nice subtle introduction to how some humans not only seem to not believe in God, but seem to hate the very idea of him.
Thinking about it, I guess for humans a handshake is mutually handicapping (no pun intended) while it would put a pony entirely at our mercy.
Thanks for the chapter!
7077451 Maybe so, but consider the fact that, to me, you're just a picture and some words on the screen. And I am the same to you. How do I know that you exist, or vice-versa?
Alternately, what if every fictional universe we create becomes a reality unto itself, spreading out from the limited scope of what we imagine to take a reality of its own? And if that's so, how can we be certain that we too are not fictional characters in some writer's convoluted plotline? We may all merely be the product of someone else's work of fiction.
By the way (aiming this at both you and Admiral Biscuit), did you know that Descartes is referenced in MLP? In "Amending Fences," Twilight refers to "Haycartes" (pronounced "hay cart") and his Treatise on Ponies, paralleling Descartes's Treatise of Man, when talking to Moondancer.
Even on Earth, customs vary. I've read that Eskimos didn't kiss but rubbed noses instead. I also remember reading a missionary's autobiography White Witch Doctor, she said that the tribes didn't point w their fingers but used their lip to point & so forth. Still there is a tendency to assume everyone knows what you do & understands what you understand.
As to philosophy, I'm a little surprised she hasn't encountered the Monty Python song that starts
Emmanuel Kant was a drunk piss ant
Who could drink you under the table
David Hume could out consume
Schoppenhaur & Schleigel
Weeeell! Since our senses can be fooled...
7077545
This is a perspective I see brought up a lot, and it always strikes me that it runs into the same problem as hard solipsism - it's a nonstarter (as with "regular" solipsism that agrees cognito ergo sum) for one thing, but for another it is a trivial proposition.
Basically, the universe being a setting for a novel would not internally make it any less real.
I wonder how she would react to an atheist? It sounds like her classmate in her philosophy class is thinking along some deeper lines but she should get to know him better to see his point of view.
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Agreed! And the same thing applies to reading fiction. Once you understand a bit about how stories are put together, you can often see the plot twists coming, but it gives you a new level of appreciation when stories are done well. That's why I love TVTropes.
7077628
She needs to watch The Matrix
7077493 And you have lost by agreeing with the media bais against one side, while the BLM movement burns its own cities and campus progressive fascists demand all opposition be silenced.
If you wished to argue that both sides of the extremes of the extreme have begun to travel the short road to radicalism, then you'd have a case.
But, as with all pundits, you've targeted the side you don't like while quietly cheering the madmen of your own philosophy.
7077451 I fic, therefore I am.
Why do I get the feeling that the other kid in the philosophy class is an atheist, and not the pleasant kind, either?
You see, people? This is what happens when you put Descartes before the horse.
Oh my gosh, this sounds like the most adorable warning ever.
"Thanks for inviting me over for cards, Aric. Hey, what are all these stuffed ponies in your closet?"
vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/uncyclopedia/images/e/ef/Descartes_hedonism.jpeg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/450?cb=20121116195103
Classic Descartes.
Ah, Descartes. I had a love hate relationship with philosophy. Silver needs to find the inherent beauty in it. I had a little bit if that problem.
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i.giphy.com/8FYF17sVn6kBq.gif
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"Wait a minute those aren't plushies.... there real stuffed ponies!!!!"
7077977 I understand what you mean and I really appreciate that you do not immediately associate atheism with being mean. A lot of people I see in the media don't make that distinction.
I would like to postulate (sorry for the snobby word, couldn't think of any other way to put this) though that if the kid in class is constantly thinking about God, muttering about God, pointing out flaws about God, then wouldn't that make him more of an angry Christian than an atheist? Like that professor character in 'God's Not Dead'? Sure they call themselves atheists but if you're constantly talking and obsessing over something, if it brings you an intense emotional reaction, doesn't that mean that on some level you are acknowledging that it exists? And if you acknowledge that it exists, then doesn't that just make you a Christian with a bad relationship with God?
A lot of true atheists I know just don't care about God. No more than you would about Vishnu or The Great Spirit or Vatu. I'm assuming that most people in America don't even believe in them and don't care if there are tales or people that take them seriously. You just focus on what DOES bring about an intense emotional reaction or what you care about. A lot devote themselves to social work or volunteering, one does a lot of community beautification, and of course a lot of family time. They don't even think about God one way or another, just as Zeus probably has no bearing on your life other than some wacky stories that pop up from time to time, God doesn't factor in either. Of course people who go out of their way to make it an issue or try to make it a big deal seem to be a hot topic, but even then it's more about the people themselves, not the religion.
Hope I didn't open a can of worms as religion is such a personal thing to everyone. Let's get back to cute ponies flying ponies questioning magic and their own existence.
7077983
Bravo good sir, bravo.
7078299 7078438
Thank you. Thank you.
Honestly, though, I was baffled that nobody had made that comment already.
Didn't I read somewhere that scientists are building an extremely high powered laser to test wether or not we are something or something. Dang forgot.
7077646 Actually, that was my point to rowantwig: Silver's questions about her existence may seem amusing to an outside observer, but so might ours to an outside observer. But just as our existence seems real and substantiated to us, so might Silver Glow's existence seem to her.
Sure it's a nonstarter, but like a lot of philosophy, at least it's interesting to think about.
7078430
Ah, but see, the thing is, you don't need to believe something is real to still argue passionately and angrily on a subject. I've seen a lot of Internet arguments over the years - a side effect of frequenting a sci-if debate forum - and let me tell you, the loudest people are very often the ones who think they're opponents are completely, utterly wrong.
So, yeah. He could certainly be an angry Christian. But just because he's angry about hearing about God doesn't make him not an atheist, if that makes sense.
I don't think I'd like Descartes. There's asking questions of given things to either be assured or to find differences, and then there's actively discounting current awareness in favor of pursuing some ephemeral feeling that is not being and has yet to ever be perceived. While I don't know if Descartes was truly doing the latter, that is the impression I get from the things I've read about him.
How can we be sure that anything truly exists?
At some point some amount of faith in apparent reality needs to be had, or you'll just get hopelessly lost, imo.
7079665 Huh. That's interesting. Where y'all live again? 'Cause down 'ere in Texas, we only get one tray of food per day period in all the schools I've been in.
7079665
Her tongue would probably help with picking individual cards.
7079796
That would just be silly anyway...
7079873
Psalm 137 is one of the most heartbreaking things in the bible read in its historical context. The preserved weeping of a bitter, bitter poet deprived of Liberty, dignity, family, homeland...
...and it is hard to explain.
7079760 Oh Chick Tracts are a laugh riot for atheists like myself. Especially the one where he talks about how satan made communism, the catholic church, Islam, and Freemasonry to take Israel from the Jews. Another favorite is his anti- Dungeons and Dragons one, and the Thanksgiving one where Jack thinks people don't celebrate it anymore. They're so badly informed and biased they become hilarious. XD
7070005 7079901 I actually had a story in mind where the Mane Six read Lord of the Rings. They don't entirely get it, or else they get it in weird ways - Rainbow Dash thinks it's awesome but totally misses the deeper themes, Fluttershy is too horrified by the fighting and suffering to think of much else, and Twilight and Applejack are still thinking of how the characters need to solve their problems on their own - even Elrond admits the Quest was a foolish hope - without having any Princess to trust in.
(Actually, I've got that story maybe about half done; perhaps...)
Both are right in a way. Their meaning doesn't change, but your perception of them might. That is almost as important for a lot of people, like Lisa.
It's interesting to see that weather is the cause for her existential crisis, as a Pegasus I guess it makes sense.
If I had to guess he is waiting for Nietzsche or perhaps Locke. Regardless in Descartes' foundation God doesn't lie. Maybe the teacher wasn't clear enough for Silver to catch onto that. Or she did and the Boy behind her didn't listen/care. Regardless learning philosophy requires you to step outside your own bubble and consider other viewpoints. Either nobody told him or it's a required class and therefore must take it.
Also speak up young man! Don't sit in the back and mutter to yourself, that just makes you angry. Raise you hand and say that out loud and then have a classroom debate about it. The best part of philosophy is discussing it and if you challenge Descartes' view you might learn why the concept of God lying is not something he would have considered.
7077878 Didn't you say a while ago that you were going to leave?
7080124
Well when people keep replying to him I don't blame that he responds. It's hard to ignore people who are talking directly to you, especially when it is criticism/contrary to your beliefs.
Ah Aric seems to really like Silver Glow's company.
I wonder how much weather details say, a non-farmer earth pony in Equestria knows, compared to Lisa.
7080081 Regardless of Descartes eventual conclusions, the entire point of his radically skeptical thought experiment was to test what it meant if God did lie to man - although he couched it in terms of "a demon", it's in the Job sense of the Adversary given dominion over the philosopher to test their faith in reason. Cognito ergo sum means that you can't lie nothing into thinking that it itself is something.
The self is an irreducible truth in the Cartesian philosophy, not axiomatic but actually, truly self-evident. I read a philosopher in another work of fiction this week deliberately and with malice a forethought elide the two concepts, axiom and self-evident, and there were other signs that he wasn't to be trusted, but saying something like that to gormless undergrads? Evil.
Although Buddhists disagree with Cartesian on the cognito, their formulation is deliberately anti-rationalist, mystic, and unhelpful in developing a useful logical construct. It is philosophically nihilistic.
7079796
It's a Hindu religious text, it's where that line "I am become death destroyer of worlds" comes from. It doesn't read like the Bible at all, for one thing it's better edited.
7079964
Barry Lyndon is studiously accurate and has some amazing camera work, Apollo 13 is a really good movie, I've heard that I Claudius is really good, but I haven't seen it, I'm partial to The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers. There are a lot of good historical movies, let me think for a while.
7077545 Of course there was an error in the episode, because Twilight Sparkle mentioned Treaties on Ponies not Treatise. It would be interesting to find out whether it was a typo by a writer or if it was a misread by Tara Strong!
7080589 I, Claudius is a good story, but the TV series isn't particularly well put together. It's very stagey and soap operatic in structure. It coasts on the charisma of its cast, which is exemplary. Spartacus ages well. The movie, not the recent cable series. Oh, and one of the other PoE fics - Twilight's World IIRC - had a recent chapter dedicated to showing an exiled Twilight Apollo 13.
7080617 I've always heard treatise pronounced as a homonyms of treaties.
(Android auto correct, what kind of monster do you think I am that you'd replace dedicated with decimated?)
Well, I guess I was wrong about this chapter. Oh well.
I would go with "most likely." The alternative is: Your first few waves of people hang out with ponies for a few hours every couple days. Then you start getting calls about the locals rubbing their faces on them, while they question what brought them to this point in their life.
7077451
She's real--she just said so. And she's more real to me and maybe to you than Descartes.
7077471
People need to be forewarned.
7077489
I want an artist to draw this.
7077535
I think this type of relentless curiosity is why we have the sciences, because there are always people who want to know what makes it go. I think that curiosity and wonder and closely tied, and I think that knowing how something works doesn't make it any less amazing. Sometimes it makes it more amazing.
7077536
As a prey animal, allowing yourself to be grabbed is a big measure of trust. It would be instinctively uncomfortable to the ponies.
7077545
The real question here is: Would it matter if it was?
What if the whole universe is God's fanfiction? If that's the reality we live in, can it be changed? And if not, why worry about it?
7077547
There is a whole babel of human gestures to pick from, and likely the ponies have their own gestures, too. Pegasi probably use their wings for communication, while the other two tribes can't do that. Other customs like hoofbumps, nuzzles, kisses, etc. would almost certainly vary from locale to locale. Even from what we've seen in the show; Canterlotians and Manehattanites tend to wear some clothes all the time, Appleoosans generally wear head coverings, etc.
When I was in college, I could sing that whole song from memory. The penis song, too.
7077646
Nor could we do anything to change it (which is why I had a problem with the basis of Descartes' philosophy).
7077682
Luckily, I never took a creative writing class except playwriting, so I don't really understand how stories are put together.
7077761
That was a brand-new film when I took Descartes. I'd also seen City of Lost Children (brain in a vat), and read a lot of Sci-Fi. I was Ted in that part of philosophy class.
7077977
He's not. That's actually a self-insert moment, because I asked that same question after class when we were discussing Descartes. What bugged me the most about Descartes was that if either of his two first premises were wrong (God doesn't exist, or God can lie), than his whole basis of proving he existed collapsed on itself. I don't like scientific theories which start out with something that can't be proven or tested. That's my pragmatic side coming through. Admittedly, philosophy isn't a 'hard' science, but for better or worse that was the concept I applied to it in philosophy class.
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7078228
I never found the beauty in it, and went on to get a degree in theatre. Although, to be fair, I am now refreshing my memory on philosophers, and am finding that I am perhaps wiser than I was as a freshman at college.
7078430
I'd say it could be either. In this particular case, I'm actually quoting myself from two decades ago. I don't think that I was an angry Christian back then; it was more of a case of my religious upbringing and scientific upbringing and the new experiences that were college all combining to form a bit of an identity crisis, perhaps. Or maybe it was just that I was bothered by a vaguely scientific approach starting with the premise that God exists and God wouldn't lie. Neither of those things can be proven, so using them as the foundation of a theory is (in my opinion) ignorant.
7078523
Scientists come up with all sorts of reasons why they should build high powered lasers. Mostly it's a case of laser envy, I'm sure.
7079515
My pragmatic answer to this is that we can't be sure that anything truly exists--we might all be brains in a vat or in the Matrix or the dreams of a crazy, drunk writer . . . but what difference does it make? We can't change reality, whether it was set in place by a big bang or God's hand or sprung into being on the back of a cosmic turtle. Our whole universe might just be a single atom in a blade of grass in some other universe, and there isn't anything we can do about it.
7079680
I went to Kalamazoo College, and there were a number of different meal plans available (or none was also an option). The best was Carte Blanche, where you could eat however many times you wanted to. That's what I had.
7079710
It would.
7079931
My dad always thought it would be funny to choose it as one of the Bible verses of the day on children's Sunday. He was maybe not what you'd normally picture when you thought of a minister, but then we Methodists are a weird bunch.
7079941
They're either funny or tragic to Christians who aren't that fundamental, as well. My dad (also my pastor) never told me I was going to Hell for playing Dungeons and Dragons, nor did he think Halloween was a one-way trip to eternal damnation. When I lived in metro Detroit, we went to Jewish temple a few times, and attended a couple of Bar Mitzvahs for my friends.
7079977
Do it!
7092938
That's the point I was making. Yes, it may seem ironic to us that a fictional character is contemplating her own existence, but is our grasp on reality so certain that we imagine that our creations are imaginary, yet we most definitely are not? The original poster pointed out the irony, but the real irony is that maybe we really are just populating someone else's fictional universe.
7080081
In some ways, that's all she has: that's one of the most fundamental parts of her being.
I was that boy (I still remember the little sketch I drew in my notebook of Descartes' foundation collapsing). Aquinas, at least, I could excuse, since he was a friar or monk or whatever, but Descartes' attempt to have a scientific proof that first of all requires God to exist . . .
Different times, and a different way of thinking. I know that now.
7080321
Probably a lot. I'd imagine that they have town meetings, and weather tailored to a town's signature crop. It would be in AJ's best interest to be sure that she got ideal weather for her apples, and it would give her an advantage over her competition to know enough about the weather to make specific requests.
To use an IRL experience: I did lighting for a dance troupe. Some of the choreographers didn't know a damn thing about lighting; they just wanted 'bright,' or 'happy.' Some others knew exactly what they wanted, in some cases telling me the gel numbers they preferred. I designed the lighting plan for those who gave me specifics, and everyone who hadn't got to pick from what lights I had up.
7080589
From my stage combat experience, I can also recommend Rob Roy. Every move in the final duel is one that is accurate for the time period, and which the characters likely would have known.
Also for period pieces, some older movies would be good, since they are by default set in the time period in which they were filmed. Some of the fantasy elements would have to be stripped out of them, but the setting would be mostly historically accurate.
7086371
I can't decide if I'd be happy or upset to be at that point in my life. I think if it were unending pony nuzzles, I'd actually consider it a blessing, and anyone who didn't is an irredeemable monster. But that's just, like, my opinion.