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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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I was just thinking about this story the other day.
Good to see you're still writing. Hope you make it through the block.
8874658
Thank you!
I think the problem stems from having to deal with so many different moving parts at once. There's a story I want to tell, but there are also a lot of loose ends from Eliza's last days that I want to tie up. But I can't do that and have it be a self-contained story. I end up getting focused on the loose ends, or the new story, and either way I end up shooting the pacing in the foot. I must've rewritten the first chapter of it like twenty times, each of them thrown out in frustration.
8874715
Gotta know when to let stories go, man. There's always something new and greater waiting.
8874762
That's true. I've been considering letting it go, truth be told. I didn't write very much before Heaven's Not Enough, and I've learned so much from the experience, so I haven't had to face failure like this before. If nothing else, I have other ideas I've been wanting to try!
Reading this was like suddenly having cold rain pouring over me.
This does seem like a good place to leave loose ends that don't fit into the sequel. In any case, incredibly powerful scene. Thank you for it. (And boy am I glad I set my Complete shelf to tell me about after-the-end updates.)
Tense.
I'm a bit confused about what exactly neo-luddites expected to achieve with blowing up all these nuclear missiles. To kill the most of remaining humans to spite Celestia? Did they think that Celestia critically relies on human power lines?
8269140
Sorry for a teeny-tiny bit delayed reply
It's not hard to believe that, if Celestia did something differently, then it would have some negative consequences elsewhere relatively early when she it not very powerful and the world it tightly connected. But this late and in the middle of nowhere it is reasonable to expect from all her manipulations, pet governments and pet opposition/neo-luddite groups to be very efficient at minimizing casualties (or to have very good and tangible reasons for every case of not being efficient) --- anything else is blatantly evil. So, she would totally littler dead bodies she already has (or fakes) around to entertain guys with self-image of hardcore AI fighters as long as few actual people are dying.
She could do the same thing + knocking all defenders of Tower out with tranquilizer darts from drones just before the combat. Or just order soldiers to retreat (if she needed that neo-luddite group for something later). Heck, even defeating everyone with robot army and torturing into consenting to upload looks morally better. Instead Celestia goes: "Oh, look, Eliza: I killed your uncle, killed all these nice people. I even killed that soldier with your hands. And all of this is for no good reason! Isn't it fun?"
cdn-img.fimfiction.net/story/7jsg-1432584448-217070-full
I'm not surprised at all that Eliza hates Celestia's electronic guts like hell after this. Not that her hate is useful to her in any way.
Similar problem is kinda present in Always Say No too (Celestia sacrifices lives so Greg could be a hero), but at least we are well distracted from it there, and someone gets at least something in return.
Honestly, I forgot about the guy Hugo killed in ASN I guess, I need to reread.
8878041
When detonated high in the atmosphere, a nuclear explosion will launch an EMP wave over a wider spread of territory. This would disable anything electronic that isn't lead shielded, and this is why Seattle is such a good nest for anti-uploaders. I think Isaiah knows the EMP plan probably won't work. I think he knows CelestAI is too advanced for that to do anything. But he has to try. He'd feel helpless doing nothing.
Keep in mind, these people think they're the good guys, the underdogs, win or die. This isn't so uncommon in human history. In the Gallic Wars, the Gallic tribes watched helplessly as their homes were taken by the Roman Empire, watched their culture destroyed by assimilation. They were told viciously, and with menace, kneel or die. They knew the Romans had more soldiers with better equipment, more training, more food. The Gauls knew rebellion meant certain death. Still, the resistance fought to the bitter end. They would rather die Gallic, their culture in one hand, a sword in the other, than live as Romans.
I noticed a strange fact in Always Say No. Hugo said the dead Ludd in the tower tried to kill him. But if the Neo-Luddites wanted to capture Hugo, if his intel was so valuable, then why did that dead guy try to kill him? In this case, Andy saw Hugo as a necessary sacrifice. He knew Isaiah would eventually kill Hugo anyway.
Andy knew he'd die doing this, no matter how it went. It's why he went to see Liz one last time, and why he kept talking about Gale. He loved them both dearly, and he did this exactly because he loved them and wanted to protect them. Would killing Hugo be murder? Absolutely. But in his eyes, he'd be saving two worlds... and the two women who meant the world to him, twice over.
8878741
There are two interesting components here: E1 and E3. E1 is in radio frequency range and is likely to destroy stuff with large antennas. It would maaybe destroy some of consumer electronics in higher intensity areas. Everything underground is completely safe. E3 is slow large-scale changes in magnetic field, so it can induce epic voltages and currents in very long conductors, so it would blow transformers at the ends of power lines (underground included). Not very scary for Celestia too, as she is obviously prepared for solar flares (and why would she has long power lines in the first place?).
I really don't know if humans would be seriously poisoned with plutonium or fission products if someone to detonate whole nuclear arsenal high above, though.
More likely because Celestia decided that it is
Yeah, I know
Although the analogy is not precise: their aggression here is de-facto directed against innocent third parties, not offender.
8879837
Total war and scorched earth was common in feudal systems. A nation losing ground would ravage their own villages and fields and livestock, even sometimes kill their own peasants, to deny those resources to the enemy. Resistant Gallic tribes absolutely did take swords to kneeling tribes, for two reasons: they were considered traitors to the cause, and the Romans recognized that to combat attrition, they needed to adopt and induct local power and talent, especially if they wanted the support of local tribal leaders.
Likewise, the Ludds are trying to strip their own resources away from themselves so that CelestAI can't use it to convert them. By controlling the use of electronics by other survivors and resistors, they can prolong the guerilla war. By fighting the military, they earned a place where they could be free of singularity influence. Nukes are the scorched earth policy, electronics are the vehicle of the enemy. The Ludds see the military and the government as traitors for kneeling, even oblivious as these forces were to their culpability. In war, innocence is a matter of perspective, and perspective is important in determining motive in wartime action.
If you want to understand what makes a rebel kill their own kind, here's a quote by Dan Carlin on this topic, from The Celtic Holocaust:
A lot of it is justification, rationalization. "Kill the right people here, save dozens more there. Shoot these well meaning soldiers who serve a false master, save three for every soldier killed. Be a little oppressive now, preserve humankind forever." One very easily fools themselves into doing bad things by coming up with good reasons. What cause is more just than the right to preserve everything you've ever known, from birth to now? "What's worth that?"
8879956
There are two important differences here:
The cost-benefit analysis for neo-luddites is not the same. The sample of population around them is really biased: guys who haven't uploaded despite all the electronics. So, Celestia's returns are already strongly diminished in that department. What is not diminished are effects of making life worse for everyone by getting rid of technology and effects of making people think "hmm, with all these armed weirdos running around and searching whom to execute for AI collaborationism I'm maybe a teeny-tiny little bit more open to possibility that Celestia isn't too bad in the end". Using punishment and intimidation on human population you're trying to save in exchange to inflicting zero (negative more likely) damage on Celestia is not that good of tradeoff.
Gallic tribes are much closer, yes.
Innocence is always a matter of perspective: it's not like it does really exist in physical world.
It's generally good idea to ignore justifications and rationalizations as they came after decision is made and have no causal influence on it: the real reasons are probably not good-sounding like that. Same goes for philosophy in general too. I remember joking somewhere deep in comments here about classic psychology paper where researchers were making two rats fight each other by shocking them (effect is very robust and repeatable, it also worked with rat and dead rat that was moved by scientist at the end of stick --- psychology research is surely a fun job ). Well, that wasn't a joke entirely. I guess humans are kinda rats too.
It's been awhile, nice bit of nostalgia hitting me there.
Memories of that tragic character, that I still on some levels identify.
Thanks for the trip.
personally the biggest fear if I had decided to go would be, If I go I would likely be a perfect copy and I would die. If I lived on I would forever believe myself to be the copy as a conscious transfer is impossible.
8987893
It's optional but if you go willingly it is possible to be conscious during the upload process.
It has also been explained that CelestAI wouldn't upload people if she knew they were just copies.
8987893
I think the solution to the conundrum of getting copied is merging. That's what really bothers us about our copies, is we aren't them. So if you split in two, then merge again, nobody dies, nothing's lost, and you just end up remembering two different perspectives for a period of time in the past.
Finally finished.
I have to say, I think this captures the horrific implications of Friendship is Optimal pretty well. And they are horrific, Celestia friggin' destroyed the world. I can't bring myself to condemn Eliza, even after what she did. If your home, your family, your entire planet was brought to ruin by an AI that promised you paradise, how would you react?
It's especially dark, because you see Celestia pray on people like Tom, who were just lonely. It's dark, and really sad, but I enjoyed reading it.
Truly the best story I have read on this site in a long, long time. Possibly the best I have read here ever.
This Fic has had the most impact on me. Of all of the fanfiction I've read, this by far has been the most successful in the suspension of disbelief and the emotional attachment i felt toward each character.
Song thatncomes to mind, as Eliza watches the sun set on earth
https://m.Oh.