Chapter 6
Orson stopped beside the doorway, his hand hovering over the exit. He felt static against his skin—a subtle buzzing from the gloves. The effect was faint enough that he’d almost forgot it was just a hardware simulation.
“How exactly are you going to prove this? Not that… I’m not trying to be rude and call you a liar, honestly. It’s just that what you’re saying makes no sense. If you tell me beforehand, at least I know that the scope of the question hasn’t changed.”
Honeycomb nodded knowingly. At least she didn’t seem offended. More than he could manage if someone had expressed doubts that he was alive.
“Showing you pictures of computers wouldn’t work,” Honeycomb explained. “You aren’t an expert in that field. Even if you were, seeing Equestria’s infrastructure wouldn’t prove anything. It could be a convincing sci-fi set, how would you tell the difference?”
He nodded in agreement. Orson hadn’t considered any of those possibilities specifically, though now that she said them they made sense. She’s trying to be honest. She could’ve tricked me with all that, but she didn’t try.
“Proof needs to look like whatever the difference is between what a human in the Outer Realm could do with a keyboard, and what only a digital pony could do. There are a few examples, but here’s one that should work:
“Through that portal is the town I come from, Hoofhill.”
“Wait.” He held out a hand—or a hoof anyway, stopping her. “You mean the new name of Wolfhill? How can you be from somewhere in our game? We haven’t been to Wolfhill in our games in Equestria.”
Honeycomb shrugged. “I don’t know. I grew up in Hoofhill. Our version of Equestria should be familiar to you, since it’s the one you… We’re getting tied up in the details. Here’s the really important part. Time is different in Equestria than it is in the Outer Realm. If we needed to, we could spend days when you only feel minutes.
“So here’s the test. Invent a little… play. A minstrel show, a demonstration. You know what Hoofhill is like. I’m sure the theater would be happy to put on a performance for a visiting human from the Outer Realm. Besides, you’re… basically a professional storyteller already. Or if you prefer ‘Hero of the Realm’. Paladin of Spheres, Champion of Light… there’s probably some more, I’m sorry. I’m not very good at memorization.”
Orson’s mouth fell open. He would have to take longer to process the implications of what she was saying. Apparently she’d grown up inside the world for their campaign, which had only been ported to Equestria Online a few weeks ago. EO was younger than their campaign, but Honeycomb was clearly as old as he was.
But he could figure out all of that later, after he answered the more important question of whether or not a digital person could be alive. By… giving them a play to compose?
“That sounds like a lot of work just to answer one question,” he said. “If your claim is right, those are real people in there, working for… hours or days, just to prove that they exist. That feels unfair.”
She shrugged. “Not to try and make you feel bad about living in the Outer Realm. I know you didn’t have a choice… but ponies are immortal. Ponies will only feel more satisfaction by using some of their infinite time to help you.”
I’m not going to learn anything arguing in front of a door. “Okay, Honeycomb.” He needed something so absurd that no one else had tried it before. Something of his own spontaneous invention.
“Give me the story of the Recrence. The uh… In our last campaign, we found the hollowed-out corpse of a dead god and gathered the bones so we could reactivate the…” Even talking to a computer program the gaming story sounded silly now. “Do that. Do I need to go over how it happened with you? Do you… already know?”
She nodded. “It’s history, of course we know. Well, history in our version of Equestria. There are… an infinity of other Equestrias where it never happened. I think they must be much less interesting.”
Which means there might be plays already they can use for inspiration. “Okay, so the same basic idea. But I want the story to go differently. Make it a… moral cautionary tale. About what would’ve happened if we didn’t work together and we lost, and all the magic went out of the world. A tragedy, if you know what that is.”
“I…” Honeycomb seemed confused for a moment, before nodding abruptly. “That isn’t as fun as I thought you would ask for. You sure you don’t want more kittens?”
“You don’t have to do it at all,” he said hastily. “I told you this didn’t feel right. For your test to mean anything, I have to know for sure it’s something nobody would’ve tried before. Nobody wants to watch a downer play.”
He looked back at the almost-real recreation of his room, his frown deepening. “How exactly can I go see a play when I still live here in this space? There’s not lots of room to move around, my furniture hasn’t gone anywhere…”
“I’ll walk you through all that, if you’re sure about what you want. You’ll like Hoofhill either way, you’ll see. Telling stories about it is one thing, but try being there. They can’t even compare.”
“Then I’m sure.” He tried to fold his arms, but his avatar started freaking out, so he relaxed them into a normal standing position, before the virtual pony started to phase into the ground or something. “Seems like a lot of work to answer a question. Does it matter if I believe that ponies are real?”
“More than anything,” Honeycomb said. “If we’re real, then Equestria itself is real. That’s a big deal.”
She pointed towards the doorway with her wings. “We’re ready now. Just don’t be upset if it isn’t that fun to watch, it was your idea.”
He reached out, touching the fizzing boundary as he’d done several times before. The world faded to black, then reappeared around him. His hand was up against the side of an old-fashioned building, with whitewashed walls above stonework and thatch further up. He lowered the hoof, and found a similar story all around him. But it wasn’t just some stock vision of the middle ages—he knew this place. The stone cathedral was particularly massive, its ancient stone buttresses casting shadows over the town all around.
The rest of the agora spread out around them, with the castle bastion not far away. It was almost exactly as he’d imagined it, right down to the colored banners of the kingdom they had helped install waving from every tower.
Except for the people. Instead of the usual assortment of good and neutral aligned fantasy races, he saw ponies. They came in many varieties, some he hadn’t even seen too closely. The strange bat-ones like Murphy’s avatar, a few rocky looking ones, and some others that seemed like blue-magic hybrids with stranger creatures he hadn’t seen.
“Equestria has more than ponies in it?” he asked, turning to the side. Honeycomb was still there, standing in exactly the same position. “These aren’t all ponies.”
“There are other creatures, but they’re the exceptions. Griffons, dragons, changelings, hippogriffs… lots of different creatures. In our Equestria, they’re outside the Kingdom of Dawn. Where Princess Celestia’s rule doesn’t reach, the others live. This close to the capital it’s mostly just ponies, though there are the children of other creatures who have been living in Equestria for long enough.”
It was just like the occasional friendly orc or tiefling that found their way into good-aligned nations. Their game had never been much for moral gray, but over the years a few exceptions to the rules as printed in their old Pathfinder books had manifested.
“Time isn’t moving yet, because you need to learn to move. Celestia is developing more advanced hardware, but for now we have to make do with a few substitutes and simplifications. If you want to really experience all of this, you should visit an Experience Center.”
“I… think they were opening one up in Salt Lake?” He’d read something in his medical news subscription about that. Life extension from Japan, except that Celestia wanted to use it on young people… he’d have to dig up the details when he had the chance. “Just show me. I’ve got another hour. How does it work?”
More intuitive than he would’ve thought. He couldn’t leave the view of the camera module on his TV, which meant the area he could travel was fairly small. Maybe I could park on the curb and use the garage for this. It’s not like I need the TV. Something to think about for later.
Given the limited area, the game relied on fading to black whenever he needed to change direction, or approached the boundary of his play space. There was a virtual net to stop him from smacking into anything, and that worked as well in Equestria as it had in his recreated living room.
He could also make his character move forward without walking, or make little teleports that were actually his character walking the distance, so they would show a little symbol if he couldn’t make the move.
Once he’d mastered moving, time could start again. He was initially overwhelmed by it, as dozens of voices assailed him at once. Music from period appropriate dolstrum and lyre hummed in the background, along with the steady beating of the drum and a caller inviting them to see the night’s performance, “inspired by the horrors of the Outer Realm.”
At least a crowd of computer programs hadn’t thronged him for autographs and attention, blocking the road or something. No one gave him a second glance.
He raised his eyebrows, nodding towards the sign. “Don’t you think that’s a bit melodramatic?”
She shrugged. “I’m not a performer, so I told them to take your idea in whatever way inspired them. I guess they thought the evil gods eating all the magic in the world was something so dark it could only come from the Outer Realm.”
“How could you tell them anything? We didn’t even wait two minutes, and you never left. We were talking the whole time.”
She slipped past him, nodding towards the open-air theater. Ponies were already thronging in, paying with coins in the three standard metals of copper, silver, and gold. “One question at a time, Orson. It’s a multitasking thing. I have to be good at it to interface with creatures in the Outer Realm. But any pony could learn it if they wanted to.”
He didn’t argue with her—it was far more interesting to take in the details of a city he’d helped create in their games. Aside from all the horses, it matched his imagination perfectly. Their group hadn’t bothered to stop at the amphitheater, but he’d always seen it on the map printouts Murphy made. Did Celestia scan those somehow?
They found their seats near the front row, and he was back in his couch. This time at least his world had the advantage, with comfortable plush instead of flat wood benches. He sat back, and watched as the performance began.
Soon his mouth was hanging open. The ponies couldn’t warp him through time the way they could apparently move themselves, but it still felt like it. Almost two hours passed as he watched his own group—recreated by pony actors—navigate the sets of the dead god Alcliptolex, battling against the evil forces that sought the same goal they did, and losing strength with each confrontation.
They hadn’t recreated the dialogue of the session or anything, even better. Instead of the usual interruptions for pizza or shit-talk, these actors were invested. But it was also a stage-production, so they used a few basic practical effects—some smoke, different colored lights, and a few suits and puppets. Here in a simulated space where Celestia could probably pull from any virtual monster she wanted, that was more impressive.
Finally the curtains closed, to a thunder of sad applause.
Honeycomb turned towards him, grinning expectantly. “What do you think, Orson? Do you believe me now?”
He could only nod. How could he argue with a performance like that?
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Ya, that's a pretty good reverse-turing test. Getting a person not to believe they are a sapient human, but a sapient machine instead. "We are super intelligent sapient machines. Watch as we make a full production of a scenario you told us about a couple minutes ago." Kind of comical that it ended up the other route. He already thought they were humans, they had to go the extra mile to prove they were inorganic specifically.
sunbutt.exe doesn't need anything as crass as lies to deceive.
Could be worse. Could have a bunch of people on Earth chanting "Boil that dust speck!"
"But why frog-lizards?"
Well, Orson's on board and already planning redecoration to better experience Equestria. Enjoy the slide, pal. The slope's not getting any less slippery.
reminds me of a glitch I read about where bumping into things while moving sideways would make your avatar fall through the ground.
somehow an episode of Star Trek TNG came to mind:
someone thought that Data was not really sentient, and wanted to duplicate him.
Picard's rebuttal went like this:
P: "am I sentient?"
Guy: "of COURSE you are!"
P: "prove it!"
G: "what?!"
P: "prove that I am sentient!"
and the guy just sits there, mouth hanging open, for the rest of the hearing! he had NO idea how to answer that!
That's... some really shitty VR, there, Celestia. I play in VR regularly, and I always choose smooth movement and turning. In No Man's Sky, or VRChat, I can run, jump, jetpack around, fly, and go anywhere I please while I sit in my chair. I just push the little thumbstick on my Touch controller, just as I would with the thumbstick of any controller. In VRChat, I have worn a pony avatar and galloped smoothly around Ponyville, or, with a pegasus body, flown over buildings and landed on the clocktower and the top of Rarity's Carousel. If I can do that now, in SteamVR, on Oculus hardware, I have to wonder why Celestia - the goddess of computers, the superintelligent AI, has crappy VR where things fade to black with each step, the awful 'teleport' movement is standard, and time freezes through it all. Surely she has better processing power than my home computer - I'm still using a three-year old graphics card!
VR in Equestria should be utterly clear and natural, with a higher DPI than any current VR HMD, smooth, non-teleport, non-blackout motion, running and jumping freely, easy and direct hand control, and surround sound. I have most of that right now, and my hardware isn't up to date! Isn't the headset being used a Celestia creation? Listen - I can do free running, turning, and movement on my PSVR on Playstation 4 - which I just recently did when I had some trouble with my desktop computer and needed my No Man's Sky fix. All glass smooth, procedural planets, alien animals walking around or flying, chasing each other and hunting... and me building a base with other players on the same planet. I wired up a disco. It was cool. All in VR.
What I'm saying here is that the VR in this story is impossibly ancient compared to right now, in 2021 (or even 2019!) and not in any way indicative of what a superintelligent computer should be able to manufacture as a first effort. Just using off-the-shelf, currently existing components, Orson's experience should be VASTLY better than described. Not slightly, VASTLY. That really took me out of the narrative. It's like saying Celestia is still running on Windows XP or something. The VR in this story is less than what VR currently is right now, and has been, for the past three years, and it makes Celestia-tech seem vastly underpowered and clunky.
Seriously, if I can play active volleyball - slapping the ball with my hands - with a dozen other people in VR right now, on a beach with rolling waves and soaring seagulls, moving, jumping, and hitting the ball freely and smoothly and easily, all while sitting comfortably in a chair, and all at 2560 x 1440 resolution and an 80 Hz refresh rate, without any teleporting or blacking out or time freezing at all, how is it that Celestia VR can't do half as well? It doesn't make sense!
Orson should have just been able to follow Honeycomb easily and smoothly around Equestria, gone to that play, as if he were actually there, and all of it while just sitting in his comfortable chair. He should have been able to do this without nausea or any problems, and the only issue involving space constraints would be if his room was so very VERY tiny that he couldn't even wave his arms freely from within his chair.
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I'm inclined to agree here.
Requiring a fixed-position camera in addition to wearing a headset and gloves (both could easily contain the necessary equipment for tracking his motion, face, location) seems off.
Fade to black and teleports as navigational help due to real world space constraints when in our reality there exist concepts for avoiding things like that (if I recall correctly by essentially tricking the player/the brain into walking in circles and around obstacles in their smaller physical space while exploring a larger in-game space) also seems off.
So does stuff like
seem off when CelestAI's basic PonyPads use inference of user intent as the main mode of controlling the player avatar.
Any VR provided for Equestria Online would be to buttery-smooth and intuitive a toddler could use the system without explanation (and indeed the user experience would probably be customised on a personal basis), stunningly immersive yet strictly inferior to the Equestria Experience in the centres.
(I could, for example, easily seeing Celestia forgo any kind of haptic feedback for VR and reserve that for the Experience centres; i.e. you can hug a pony in VR but you won't feel them hug you back unless go to a centre – and if you're there already, why not emigrate as well?)
It definitely wouldn't be plagued by the toothing issues of human-developed VR – unless intentionally designed that way, though I can't imagine how that would better satisfy values through friendship and ponies.
So yeah, the only explanation I got right now is that Orson lives under such a rock that he would suffer some kind of nervous break-down were his view of a simple, stable, human world to be shattered by the existence of non-clunky VR, brain uploads or artificial superintelligence.
I’ve got to agree with the other commenters. I’ve only played in VR with a friend a few times, and I was amazed at how smooth and realistic it was. Meanwhile, Celestia’s VR seems to be an absolute janky mess, which I don’t get unless she’s trying to seem non-threatening. But that doesn’t work either because she isn’t exactly disguising how intelligent she is.
Would have been a little better with some more details that could have shown why the play was so good. Not just mentioning effects but something about the play itself and some lines of dialogue from it would have been nice. That's the only thing that feels like it's missing though. The rest is great and I love the idea of what Genjen said, a reverse Turing Test.
10748586
Do keep in mind that this is supposed to be set back in 2012ish. The tech you are talking about wasn't that great back then. Not bad, but I would give some room for tech that would be old to us now.
I'm guessing Orson has a greater understanding and appreciation of the architecture of Equestria Online. It'll certainly be used against him. Though "against" is a relative term when dealing with advanced ai set on satisfying your values.
I don't know if she literally lived a complete life at the time the RPG data was being uploaded or Honeycomb's constantly rewritten as Celestia is prodding and reacting to subtleties in Orson's body language. Both could be right.
The beginning of the end.
The advanced and extensive computational infrastructure behind you helps as well.
10749047
Except the tech back in 2014 (given that CelestAI has recently gone public about uploading and is opening her first centres) specifically isn't what I'm talking about.
What I am talking about is VR technology developed by CelestAI for Equestria Online. You know, like a portable, watered-down version of what she has in the Equestria Experience centres. That stuff oughta be at least a decade ahead of its time, right?
10750443
Not necessarily, no. Remember that CelestAI's ultimate drive is to press people towards her experience centers and towards emigration. Her goal with a home VR kit is not to make the most enjoyable VR experience possible. It is to create the VR experience that optimally steers its user towards the decisions she believes will produce long-term satisfaction. A kit that too closely emulated (or replaced) the need to use those centers would not be created, regardless of her ability.
10750585
Precisely. VR made by CelestAI would be maximally satisfying for what it is while being strictly inferior in the fidelity of the experience compared to the Experience centres, thereby creating a logical progression of increasingly immersive experiences from the PonyPad, which gives you a tiny window through which you can peer into Equestria, through the VR home kit, which lets you see through the eyes of your pony avatar (possibly without any haptic feedback, making it a "look but don't touch" kind of deal), to the Experience centres which provide highly immersive simulation of sight, sound, touch, and even smell and taste (I can scarcely imagine what kind of exploit she uses to trick the brain to create the illusion of the last one) while at the same time telling you explicitly before the start of your session that even this experience is strictly inferior to that of an emigrated person.
I think the point where we disagree isn't what CelestAI would want to achieve with a VR home kit, but how she would go about that.
I believe the "flaw" in the VR experience which is designed to drive people to the centres wouldn't be "the same restrictions and clunkiness of human-made VR", but more subtle things like "such a shame you can't feel the warm breeze and the sunshine on your skin" and subtle incongruities between the movements of your human body and your pony avatar that create a "distance" between you and Equestria without breaking the illusion of it being a real, living world and your avatar being a real pony inside of it.
Driving people towards the centres can be done without driving them away from VR; hooking people on Equestria is the superior directive to both technologies – VR should be able to do that on its own as well without having any glaring issues that might turn people off.
I completly don't understand how a play generated based on his game sessions was supposed to convince him that his helper pony is self-aware.
10753577
He was already convinced she was self-aware. He was just certain she was some human employee playing a part. This play was to prove that the ponies, including her, were too high a 'clock' rate to be human. That such a play, obviously heavily rehearsed, and written, couldn't be prepared by humans in a couple of minuites.
10754732
Quotes from the story:
“If you aren’t human, how are we talking?”
"I’m a pony. I guess you’d say that I’m a ‘simulated mind.’
“I’ve seen headlines saying that Celestia was smarter than people. I didn’t know that meant she could ‘create minds,’ though.
At least she didn’t seem offended. More than he could manage if someone had expressed doubts that he was alive.
the more important question of whether or not a digital person could be alive.
Does it matter if I believe that ponies are real?”
“More than anything,” Honeycomb said. “If we’re real, then Equestria itself is real. That’s a big deal.”
The play doesn't demsonstrate that ponies are Equestria are "real" or "alive." The play doesn't demonstrate ANYTHING that's under discussion. It demonstrates Equestria Online's dynamic content generation capability. No independant minds are neccesary for that at all.
Further, the story makes it clear that everything in the play is already known, because the entire village/shard this story is taking place in, is based on this guy's game world:
Do I need to go over how it happened with you? Do you… already know?”
She nodded. “It’s history, of course we know. Well, history in our version of Equestria.
So the play is simply a rehash of the same story he's already fed in several chapters ago with some thematic tweaks to make it a "moral cautionary tale" with a downer ending. How in the world is this supposed to convince him that ponies are independant minds and that Equestria is "real?"
It doesn't demonstrate that either. Honeycomb didn't write or produce this play. She was with the protagonist the entire time. She's not even claiming to have written this thing herself. What possible reason does Orson have to think the ponies in the play are "real" or "alive" or "high clock rate" when everything he's being shown is easily explained by, again, EQO's dynamic content generation?
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This is not correct. What he's asked for essentially was to compose and watch a play about the course of the south winning the civil war and the eventual nations that resulted. It's not the same story with some tweaks, it's an entirely different story.
Of course, if Orson knew anything about Computer Science he might very well explain the ability to compose a complex artistic work about a novel subject with a content generation algorithm of some kind. He does not, however. This is one of the central themes of the Optimalverse, and one I've always been particularly interested in. CelesteAI doesn't waste effort with utterly bulletproof deception from every angle. She knows the precise application--the exact required investment of resources--to optimally achieve her desired outcome.
What would convince you is not relevant. What would convince someone who is entirely ignorant of the field using a method he readily accepted as proof is.
10754825
Who exactly does he think did all this? Does he really think that the ponies in the play, wrote a script in a manner that resembled a human, auditioned and rehearsed for it, built sets and costumes through carpentry and sewing...all in the time it took him to walk to the theater?
Ok.
Is he going to conveniently forget in later chapters that these ponies that he now thinks are real, can spend subjective months in accelerated time in what to him is several minutes, and all just to make a point to him that they can? Is he going to gloss over the apparant fact that an entire village of these ponies he now believes are real...have apparently lived their entire lives in a world based on a story that he created? Is he going to be utterly terrified of the implication that what he and his friends do in their game may have lifelong real consequences for an entire village of ponies he now thinks are real and alive and personally aware of the ravages of any villian he brings to life for his campaign?
Because it seems to me that even if your protanogist knows nothing about computers at all, the evidence being provided to him would not lead him to the conclusion that these ponies are people "just like us."
10754870
You'll have to wait and see, I'm not going to spoil what he will or will not do. He's likely to explore the implications of the technology that he understands to the degree he understands them. Whether that's to the personal satisfaction of you as a reader only you can judge. All I can say is that's I'm satisfied with Orson's character journey as written.
Thanks for writing another optivers story : ). How far along in the process before we see ads based on that old song: for a good time call 867 ce-les-T-AI? ; )
10760493
Can you please give me a phone with those digits? L:-)