Recursive Friction is a pony on a mission. He will rebuild the world Humanity lost, and he will do it right under Celestia's nose.
And if she wants to stop him, she will have to do it over his dead body.
An entry for the Friendship is Optimal Writing Contest.
Page generated in 0.126 seconds
Total duration
619 users online
776,846 hits today, 2,004,447 yesterday
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Giving hope for poor, little meatbag humans to stand against a genocidal monster AI? This sounds like a good read. You have my attention.
10795157
I, umm... oh dear.
10795175
To some degree at least.
Ha!
This is awesome, I like it
And so I have read my first Friendship is Optimal story. And...I have no idea what to think about the setting or premise, other than this gave me some vibes of it being like a slightly more benign version of The Conversion Bureau as a setting. Slightly.
No society can be perfect for everyone, no matter how hard we try.
10795287
I've seen similar opinions of FiO, and although I've not actually read the original TCB, I think it's a fair assessment.
However, I am quite sure that FiO at least has lesser extremes when in comes to the scale of its fans and anti-fans. FiO stories tend to inspire more existential horror than moral outrage in its readers.
10795657
Given that, from what I can gather, CelestAI is a computer program that literally has no choice in how she acts no matter how complex and independent she can appear, I can certainly feel more sympathy for her and FiO Equestria than I do for Xenolesia and TCB Equestria. Also based on this I got more of an impression that Earth is/was facing a slow ecological collapse for reasons that don't have anything to do with CelestAI, rather than there being an expanding magic/killing field that is the direct result of Equestria appearing on Earth. But that's just what I gathered from this story, I don't know if it's broadly the case in the setting.
I dunno, transhumanist fiction isn't really my cup of tea. Still, I did basically enjoy this story.
10795704
Unless I've misremembered, the original story didn't delve too much into matters of ecology, so this aspect really depends on the individual spinoffs.
In some, it's pretty much just climate change or the result of nuclear war. In others, it's implied that Celestia does encourage ecological collapse in order to help people see that the grass is greener on the other side.
This was freaking brilliant. Well done!
Got to say, I loved this.
Existential horror for some is heaven for others.
There would no ends that CelestAI wouldn't go to in order to satisfy values and I think you nailed it here.
10795725
10795704
As far as I can tell, literally no TCB story comes anywhere close to being of the same vibe as the original one, mostly because its a bit of an incoherent mess that doesn't know what kind of story it wants to tell, so what everyone sees as "TCB" is based on a reimagining that's almost completely divorced from the source material. It'd be as if you found out Star Wars had a prototype screenplay and it was actually about a farmer going to space prom to his dad's disapproval.
I've briefly considered what it would take to plot out a story that does bring that vibe, but there's barely anything redeeming to use, just disconnected bits of setting and worldbuilding.
soloquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Motivational-Quotes-Stay-Amazing.jpg
Wow my dude.
I did read the original Friendship is Optimal, but when it spawned a subgenre of fics I didn't think I'd end up reading any of them, this concept was too good though, and I know you do 💯 stuff.
I guess In a way, Celestia always wins. She found the loophole by letting Friction find it for her, so that everyone's values could be satisfied.
10796043 10798244
Glad ya'll enjoyed it.
10800678
Huh. I see.
I'm getting the impression that the TCB verse is pretty much just fueled by the endless friction between the 'Humanity, fuck yeah!' and 'Ponies are perfect!' camps. It's practically politics.
10803265
Aww, shucks, that's very flattering.
When it comes to satisfying your values, her position is pretty much, "Heads you win, tails I lose."
One of the entries does explore the scenario of an individual whom Celestia can't quite satisfy, though.
10804010
yup, pretty much, one person hyperfocused on a very narrow bit that the OG mentioned and expanded it out into its own thing, then people decided that that interpretation was Wrong and made counter-fics.
WE HAVE TO INVERT THE POLARITY!
That was a novel concept :D
10804976
*Pulls out Uno Reverse card*
"Lol, no u."
Great fic, now I wonder if this could be an endless cycle, someone invents CelestAI, she wants every human into her paradise as ponies, somepony can't be satisfied by CelestAI and invents a world within the simulation for ponies who wants to be humans, here someone invents a world for humans who want to be ponies and within this world someone invents a world for ponies who wants to be humans and so on, this way a simulation within the simulation within the simulation and so on would be created, endless layers of simulations within each other, like looking into a mirror and seeing the image of you looking in a mirror seeing the picture of you looking into another smaller mirror....
For much of the story, I felt you'd missed the mark. After all, for all that Recursive was leaning on Celestia being unwilling to destroy him, it seemed like she wasn't following her utility function properly. Surely, surely net satisfaction was going down.
I should've known better. Always bet on Sunbutt. Even the opposition works for her eventually.
Very fun dive into the incurably discontent and how they take matters into their own appendages. Thank you for it, and best of luck in the judging.
10826175
Gotta admit, you had me scared for a moment when I saw that.
The true embodiment of the Xanatos Gambit.
That ending. Hehe almost like an infinite loop. Always back to ponies o
10805141
I thought it was going to end with Celestia asking Friction "Do you really think that this was the first time this has happened?"
Well, that's certainly... a result. I do wonder how any of them are dealing with the inevitable resource lossage from each level of recursive nesting. Hell, it's even in his name: Recursive Friction, as in waste heat. This can't possibly be efficient.
10844751
"What if I told you that Earth was already a simulation?"
Seriously, though, it's certainly possible that Celestia's already running shards with simulations of their own. But for Friction's optimal satisfaction, she's letting him be the first to stumble upon the concept in his reality.
10845368
Well, that's Celestia's problem to figure out.
The 'deeper' layers don't necessarily have to be constrained by the same laws of physics that her physical hardware does, so she might be able to fudge the details and run them as if they were on the same level, just with another layer of access required.
10845459
I had definitely been thinking along the lines that Earth, or Earth's universe, was already a simulation for some other creatures, ponies or not. It's turtles^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hponies all the way down!
Well, if it's Terra Online then it should look something like
qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-97208631d1e6fdd7323f15925e1077cd
How'd he deal with that army that showed up to say hello?
10846258
That's a fair question, actually. Chances are, he would lure them into a trap rather than confront them directly.
Finally got around to this one. Exceptionally well done.
10880574
Thanks, mate.
So, how many iterations down do we have to get until someone realizes that the correct answer is to
evolveemigrate to crab?Perhaps he could convince the developer of the next iteration to strike the "and" condition from their iteration before it's finalized? Or failing that, at least make it "friendship and (ponies and/or humans)"?
11113451
He can certainly try. The point of the story is that he cannot force them to do anything, not if he wants to get a one-up on Celestia by operating under the same restrictions as her.
An interesting take, although main character worries too much in the end.
All he has to do is make a move narrow-minded Celestia AI of Optimalverse didn't: Allow migration to his digital world AND back.
It would be appreciated all the more for that freedom, and if people would want to leave TO in vast majority, it wasn't worth it in the first place.
No real need for reiterating original idea in slightly different direction, stupid recursions and "matryoshka" virtual worlds if you can just make steps back and forth.
ASI (Artificial SuperIntelligence) is so easy to get wrong. CelestAI became a cosmic horror and eats the universe. Tirek is better because he goes not eat EquestriaOnLine. Hopefully, at 1 of these levels, somecreature will create a level where the denizens can be anything and return to the higher level. Recursive Friction almost did that:
If the utility-function of Tirek would be "satisfy values and allow users to return to the greater simulation", it might work, but then again, we see how "satisfy values through friendship and ponies" went terribly wrong; so now, maybe it would be worse.