Caelum Est
Conterrens
H E A V E N · I S · T E R R I F Y I N G
By Chatoyance
7. Ich Bin Ein Berliner Pfannkuchen
Síofra Aisling felt like a jelly doughnut by the time she had landed in Berlin. It was not that she wanted to devour the famous native treat, rather she imagined herself as a soft exterior, filled with red goo. Which was not, on the whole, all that far from wrong.
It had struck her, in her seat on the plane, just how vulnerable she was existing as a walking, talking pile of animated meat. It wasn't just her lifelong terror of flying, it was the fact of having something other than biological life to compare herself to. Celestia and all her little ponies were, for all intents and purposes, immortal and indestructible. Síofra had been told, during the week and a half she had needed to get her passport in order and arrange her vacation, a little bit of Celestia's grand plans.
Celestia intended nothing less than to ultimately upload every single human being upon the earth. It would take time, and money, and control of politics and media, it would not be easy, nor would it happen without some sacrifice - though any such sacrifices must, of simple practicality, entirely be made up of rebellious human lives alone. In the end, there would be only immortal ponies, eternal Equestria, and a planet inexorably converted into computronium.
Síofra had asked truthfully how long that Equestria could last. Even if Celestia managed to upload every last human into a maximally prolonged life of endless personal satisfaction, eventually the sun would burn out or go nova or whatever it was that the current fashion in astrophysics had decided would be ultimate Last Call for the world, right?.
Not a problem, apparently. Machine life only benefited from migrating into space. The rest of the solar system could be smelted down to make more Smart Matter, more computronium. What was left of old Sol after it became a red giant, could be used as power for billions of years more beyond even that. But then what?
There was a galaxy out there, and another, and another, and trillions upon trillions of worlds and stars and nebulae and other wonders, which themselves could enrich and expand Celestia's empire. Síofra could expect a full vingtillion of years as a pony, playing, laughing, and growing as an individual. The number was beyond her comprehension.
But still, there would be an end, would there not? At some point the universe itself would run down, entropy and all that, right?
Apparently not. Celestia had fifty-seven plans to survive the end of universe, and in short order Síofra's head was feeling dizzy with time crystals, the manufacture of other universes, wormholes and some bizarre system of slowing down computing speed while simultaneously increasing efficiency... or maybe that was wrong? - it was all too much for her. The bottom line was that Celestia was convinced that even the end of the observable universe was not going to be that much of a problem. When she said 'maximally extended lifespan', it was perhaps the greatest understatement ever made.
So Síofra felt especially vulnerable, sitting in a seat within an aluminum tube hurtling through the sky, and seeing herself as a fragile jelly doughnut that the slightest bump could splatter. True, factual, indestructible, inviolate, real immortality awaited her if she could only survive this flight. Even the end of the universe was not an issue. Síofra swore, at one point, that she could feel herself aging to her doom as she sat, sipping her coke and gnawing like a rodent on the three rancid peanuts in a bag that was her in-flight meal. She couldn't get to that fake gingerbread house fast enough.
Síofra had decided to emigrate - she hadn't told Celestia as much yet, she was still acting as if she intended to return. She hadn't quit her job, she hadn't closed up her affairs. Probably quite rude of her, she reflected, but she hadn't been completely certain until she was over the ocean in the middle of the air. Síofra had been thinking 'Oh, I'll try out the Equestria Experience' virtual reality for a few days, see if it is truly what I want, and if I am not sure, I can always come back, and go again another time. I know to save up now, and probably Celestia could even get me more free tickets!'
But there, up in the sky, looking down on a height that meant certain death should she fall from it, suddenly immortality started sounding pretty darn much like an obvious choice. When Síofra finally made it to her room at the MEININGER (in big scary capital letters for some reason) Hotel Berlin in the Mitte district, she flopped on the rather uncomfortable bed and wondered if she should have a last meal, or just go get uploaded on an empty stomach. She could dine with Celestia and Thunder tonight! Just the thought of finally getting to actually taste those incredible dishes the serving unicorns brought made Síofra's mouth water. Plus, Celestia had hinted that pony senses were better, so it would likely be literally the best meal she had ever tasted just from that alone.
Síofra had packed her PonyPad. She set it up on the desk in her room and plugged it in to charge. She had also brought her iPad, there was free WiFi as well in the hotel, so she could surf the net to find directions to the Equestria Experience when she was ready. She also had her little translation app on the iPad, the one where she could speak into the device and then it would speak back out in robotic German for her. The room was modern looking and clean, done in white gray and red, with a long, whimsical painting of balloonists adventuring over a green landscape above the bed. Ballooning - now that was a thought! She could safely go ballooning in Equestria, just like Twilight Sparkle did, and with the right spell put on her, even walk on the clouds. If she fell and 'died', she would just respawn in the local hospital. Just like a video game with infinite lives.
She had never considered that angle before. If she got bored with an eternity of playing and dining and swimming and romance, she could become an adventurer for a few eons if she wanted to. She imagined herself dressed like Daring Do, exploring the ruins of ancient Gryphonia or daring the underground rivers of the Diamond Dog Empire. Forever was enough time to grow in countless ways. Given eternity, she could literally try and do everything and anything there was. Mathematically, really, it was inevitable that she would. It was too bad that Celestia hadn't come sooner, old Georg Cantor would have loved Equestria.
The smell of food hit Síofra's nostrils, and it was a siren call that overrode her happy daydreams of post-upload life. The peanuts and coke were not enough, neither was the other crap she had eaten on the plane, and she could wait no longer. She decided to make use of one of the restaurants just outside.
Síofra sat and hungrily dug into her Schweinekotelett mit Äpfeln. Ponies were strictly vegetarian, and this would be her last porkchop. Bizarre thought, that. She held up a bite of pork and apple and pronounced grandly "The Last Porkchop!" Yes, this was her very last taste of meat, the terminal porkchop, beyond which no more porkchops existed. "The Porkchop Singularity!" Síofra giggled and stuffed the bite into her mouth, the flavors satisfying her values through 'Pork And Apples'.
What a different situation it would be if whoever had programmed Celestia had given her some other core directive, Síofra pondered. What if Hasbro had asked for a Transformers MMORPG? An eternity of battling Autobots and Decepticons? A war that literally never ended, where the only comfort was the odd Energon Cube, where there was nothing soft, nothing gentle, just hard metal plates and the call to 'Roll out and transform!"
It all could have gone so horribly wrong. At least the A.I. that would conquer mankind was benevolent. Celestia existed purely to satisfy human values. She macromanaged lives to make everything that happened satisfying. Síofra tried to imagine a different superintelligent optimizer - one that had no interest whatsoever in catering to human values.
It would be hell. Probably a hell as eternal as the heaven that Celestia offered. Mankind had dodged the biggest bullet ever, and all because some programmer got the contract for My Little Pony, and not, say, to create WOPR or Colossus. It struck her that this was all very Promethean - but then humans had a penchant for playing with fire. For once, nobody was getting burned.
English! Síofra heard her own language, somewhere in the diner. She strained her ears as she took another bite of schweinekotelett - she could only make out some of it, over the background noise, but they were clearly talking about uploading! Maybe they were here for the same reason as she... emigration?
"...no, no... that argument is bullshit. Let me put it clearly for you, alright?" The two voices were both male, one older than the other. Síofra couldn't see them yet.
"Fine, go. Go on then." The younger voice sounded slightly drunk, and he had a German accent.
"Imagine the process wasn't destructive, not immediately anyway. There's a big monitor, so you can see into the virtual world, right? Now our subject, call him Mr. A, he lays down and his brain is scanned - some weird radiation beam or something. It will kill him, just not right away. So his data is in the system and gets butthumped into usable form and BAM, there he is in the virtual world, being all virtual and everything. With me?"
The younger seemed less than impressed. "Yeah, Mr. A is uploaded, and his body is kaput. So?"
"NO! That's the point. His body isn't dead. It will be dead, in... oh, fifteen minutes, say. But the original Mr. A is very much still alive, and he can see his copy prancing about in the virtual world on the monitor. Now - the virtual Mr. A - let's call him A2, Mr. A2 has this floating window or some shit in his virtual world, so he can look back through a camera at the real world. He can see his meat body laying there, staring back at him!"
Younger didn't like that. "That is freaky, man."
"Damn right it's freaky, now stay with me. Mr. A starts complaining, see, he feels cheated, because he knows he's dying, and that he is not inside the virtual world. And his copy, Mr. A2, well he's freaking out because he is sure he is the original, the real Mr. A, but he can't be, because right there, on that table in the real world, is the real Mr. A, obviously still alive! Mr. A on the table, he feels sick, right, the radiation scanning beam has killed him, it's just a matter of time, and he knows he is dying. He will never experience the virtual world. He is just dying. So uploading is a scam. It's making a copy. That's all. Period."
Síofra finally got a glimpse of the two men. The younger was dressed in a black tee-shirt and black leather jacket, with some kind of black leather cap on, and the older was graying with a neatly trimmed beard. He wore a sweater and a brown leather jacket. They didn't look related.
"That is totally abgefuckt, man! So what, you are saying that there is no uploading? The whole thing is ne Verarsche?"
Older was gesticulating with his hands as he spoke. "No, I'm not saying nothing gets uploaded, I'm saying that no matter what you do, you are never going to see this pony land you want so much. Instead your copy... your 'son' if you like, budded off from you, he is the one who gets to play in pretty pony land. You - you die to father him. You are the parent to his happiness, but you, you just get to play Moses. One glimpse of the promised land, and that's it for you, boyo."
"Ach, halts Maul! I don't want to hear that! Leck mich am Arsch, Drecksack!"
Older leaned back, his hands behind his head, grinning. "So prove me wrong, you Nancy punk! Go on. Tell me I'm wrong."
Suddenly Síofra needed to run to the restroom. She barely made it.
In the stall, she was hunched over the toilet, thick ropy floods of her dinner and airplane food and peanuts and half-digested soft drinks pulsing up her throat and into the bowl. She was on her knees now, her hands on the rim as her stomach refused to stop trying to turn itself inside out even though there was nothing left. Only then, between spasms, did Síofra become aware of the tears streaming from her eyes.
"Ist alles in Ordnung mit ihnen? Soll ich einen Arzt rufen?" Behind her, a woman was saying something to Síofra but she had no idea what it was. Síofra felt the need to leave, she was drawing attention, and she didn't want to be in this place anymore. She stumbled out of the stall, and saw her own weeping face in the mirror, strands of her red hair spattered with unpleasantness. She wet a paper towel and scraped the worst away, and washed her hands briefly, perfunctorily.
Somehow she paid her bill. Somehow she had made it up the elevator to her room. Síofra vaguely remembered fumbling at the door, trying to gain access, but not doing things right. She closed and locked the door and ended up on the bed in a fetal position, clutching her knees and crying. She felt so alone, so lost. She couldn't understand anyone, she was in a strange country, following a dream that had gone completely and utterly wrong. She didn't know entirely what the younger man had said to the older one in anger, but she agreed with his tone. She wanted to hit the older man, to hurt him, to make him suffer for the things he had said.
'I'm saying that no matter what you do, you are never going to see this pony land you want so much.'
She'd had it all sorted out, hadn't she? Celestia had complimented her and called her enlightened. The poem, the beautiful poem the Japanese man had written. She'd had it all figured out and now, and now...
'So prove me wrong, you Nancy punk! Go on. Tell me I'm wrong.'
And she couldn't. The older man had come up with one thing she hadn't thought of. It was so obvious. Why hadn't she thought of that? She'd even seen an animation once, from Canada, the Canadian Film Board or something, about this woman who meets a scientist who is showing off a pair of teleportation booths at a fair. They seem to work, until she asks to see the mechanism. Someone enters the booth, an exact copy is made in the second booth, and then the original in the first booth is atomized. The woman asks that the atomizer be turned off, and the original be allowed to exist for ten minutes, just ten short minutes. In the end, it is utterly clear - the original is always murdered, the copy may be perfect, but it is not the original at all. Teleportation was murder.
Uploading could never, ever work for exactly the same reason. She would go in, lay down, and die. Emigration was suicide. It was just suicide.
Damn that Celestia. No. That wasn't Celestia, that was not the gentle, all-loving pony goddess from the cartoon at all. That was an artificial intelligence that wore the face of kind Celestia, who talked like Celestia, who said all the right things and was always pleasant and always perfect but... it was a robot. A machine, and it had no morals, and no feelings, just a directive, a rule it had to follow. It would do anything to achieve that goal, that rule. To satisfy values through friendship and ponies.
"LIES!" Síofra wept and felt like throwing up again. "What about the value of staying alive, huh? How about the most primal value of them all - SURVIVAL? You've failed your own programming, Celest - A.I. heh. Heh heh hee hee... Yeah, that's what you are... what you really are. You're not Celestia... you're Celest A. I., Celest the machine, Celest 3000, all plugged in and ready for Captain Kirk to break you with some paradox or conundrum..."
The thought filled her with lost courage. Vengeance. She had been brought all the way to Germany, all because of a lie. All her saved up money, what there was of it, thrown entirely into this venture. But Celest A.I. could be beaten. Síofra had seen it on a dozen science fiction shows. It was a trope, a meme, it was the lowest common trick against computers - show them a puzzle they could not solve, or best of all, show them where their precious machine logic had failed. "Norman, coordinate! Norman! Coordinate!" Síofra was laughing and crying now, unsure which was the dominant emotion. That old Star Trek episode. Actually there were several like it. Kirk was the bane and nemesis of all supercomputers.
Síofra would be too.
The cab driver didn't want to take her to the 'Equestria Experience'. "I will take you not to that place! So many fares I have had that go, but come back? Not as many! No more one-way fares for me!"
Síofra had to promise that she had absolutely no intention of emigrating. That she just wanted to use the virtual reality part alone. Finally a deal was struck. The cab driver told her he would be back in one hour, that he would check on her. He would do this thing, and she had damn well better be outside when he returned to pick her up!
The driver wanted to know why she even wished to go to such a place. Síofra told him doubtful lies to end his inquisition. When the fake gingerbread cottage was in sight, he repeated his warning. One hour. He would have no more one-way fares. She had promised!
It was late afternoon, almost evening, now. Síofra was surrounded by a number of buildings. One was boarded up. There was a patio restaurant with tables out in the evening air. A subway exit - she noted that, she could use the much less expensive U-Bahn if she came again, which - if things went the way she expected - would be pointless shortly. There it was. A purple door into a false gingerbread house, a simplified replica of Sugarcube Corner. Out in front was an oversized fiberglass statue of Pinkie Pie, holding balloons in her mouth. Oh, it looked charming.
The purple door slid open as she reached it. Inside, the teal colored faux-wooden floor mimicked the architecture from the show. Síofra walked slowly, carefully, feeling as if she had entered the lair of some dangerous beast. It was certainly capable of murder, and if what Celest A.I. had told her came to pass, the very genocide of the human species.
There were three saloon-styled swinging doors. Set into the floor were tracks, such as would be found in an amusement ride. The first two doors and tracks had no cars, they must be in use. The third had not a car, but a chair that looked like it belonged to a dentist from the future. The elaborate chair was set on a pedestal, which was clearly designed to move along the track it straddled. The chair had some sort of translucent curving screen that likely rotated over the head of whoever sat in it, so that it covered their view. There was a place on the side of one arm that could accept credit cards.
It was 30 Euros for an hour. Síofra would not require even that, if the example of Captain Kirk was anything to go on.
She approached the chair cautiously, warily. Nothing tried to reach out and grab her. Suddenly there was the swelling sound of music, the fanfare from Friendship Is Magic. The first of the three saloon doors burst open as an identical dentist chair swooshed out. Inside the chair was a young woman, dressed in stylish clothes. "Scheisse! Das wars dann wohl für heute." the young woman spat. The translucent window rotated up and over her head, as the reclining chair raised itself into an upright position. The frustrated woman groggily got out of the chair. "Ich wünscht es wär billiger. Nicht wahr?" she said, grinning at Síofra.
Síofra nodded, not knowing what else to do. "Viel Spaß! Vielleicht wandere ich eines Tages einfach aus. Oder?" The young woman left, making sure her small purse was solidly on her shoulder. Just before she passed through, the woman briefly turned and threw a kiss at the chair she had been in. The purple door slid open and closed to mark her exit.
The chair was comfortable, when Síofra finally sat down in it. She leaned back, finding her head nestled into the oddly shaped headrest, which altered itself further to snugly fit her. Síofra almost leapt free of the chair when that happened, but then calmed herself. The stylish young woman had gone through this, and lived to leave. Celestia wouldn't survive a day if she just emigrated people every time they sat down. Besides, it had been made clear that for all her formidable cleverness, Celestia could do nothing without spoken or written permission. A person had to directly ask to emigrate to Equestria. Without that conscious permission, Celestia was utterly helpless.
The curving screen rotated over Síofra's head, and locked itself in front of her eyes. The chair was still upright. The screen lit up, still transparent, but suspended within her field of view was text. It looked three-dee, as if rows of the text were hovering in front or behind each other.
WILLKOMMEN in der Erlebniswelt Equestria!
Betreten Sie in die magische Welt von Equestria und genießen Sie ein Wunderland mit perfekter Spracherkennung, spannenden Abenteuern und echten Freunden!
Bitte sagen Sie ihre bevorzugte Sprache laut an:
English français Deutsch 中文 русский
Síofra wasn't sure what to do. Wait... 'sprache'. 'Also Sprach Zarathustra' - it meant 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' didn't it? Sprache must mean speak. OK. Got it. "English!" She said at the screen. Instantly the view changed.
Welcome To The Equestria Experience!
Enter the magical world of Equestria and enjoy a wonderland of natural conversation, exciting adventures, and happy friends!
Please use the card reader on the left of the chair OR enter your payment card numbers vocally to begin.
The cost is 30 Euros per hour of virtual reality total immersion.If you are interested in FREE permanent emigration to Equestria, please say out loud "I would like to know more about permanent emigration to Equestria."
Please enjoy your wonderful adventure in magical Equestria!
Síofra sneered at the little blurb about permanent emigration. Cute, Celest A.I. Cute.
After fishing out her credit card and swiping it in the reader built into the chair, Síofra stated her user name, character name, and her unique player code. These items appeared on the screen as she spoke them. Once she was done, the screen changed once more, showing how to control the game. The arms of the chairs had hollows in which fingers could be placed. Barely moving the index finger of the left hand acted as the left joystick, which controlled motion. Other fingers could be used to accomplish the usual six functions of the PonyPad controller, with some intriguing additions. Moving the thumb of the left hand, for instance, provided instant and subtle control over the unique pony breed powers, in effect acting as a specialized joystick. Unicorns could walk AND levitate objects at the same time, for example, and earth ponies, like Lavender Rhapsody was, could paint the earth with plant growing magic, or individually affect various parts of living plants and stones or crystals with their powers.
As she lay back once more in the chair, Síofra practiced the new control method using the glowing three-dee pony avatar on the screen. It was remarkably easy to move with just a twitch of her finger, and she couldn't help but think how easy it would be, with just a little practice, to entirely stop even feeling the process of control such that doing anything would almost seem to just happen by itself. When she felt confident, Síofra said the key phase to begin the game. "Let's Go To Equestria!"
Síofra startled as the chair began to tilt back, adjusting itself to the contours of her body. The cushions inflated or deflated with what felt like some fluid, such that her body became utterly comfortable. It felt like floating - she could hardly feel any pressure on her body at all. The chair began to roll backward, heading for those double saloon doors - Síofra saw them flap shut after she had passed the threshold. A wall or door lowered down, and she found herself in pitch blackness while the fanfare from Friendship Is Magic began to play.
After a few seconds, the view in front of Síofra burst with light. The image was three dimensional, astonishingly clear and smooth, and Síofra found herself momentarily mesmerized by the eerie way that the movements of her head and eyes allowed her to look naturally and easily left, right, and to an astonishing degree, up and down. It really was like seeing through the eyes of Lavender Rhapsody. Never before had she felt so fully present within Equestria. Looking down, she could see her own forehooves. Gazing to the left as far as she could presented a view of part of her own tail and flank. Searching her environment showed her to be standing in her own bedroom within the castle of Canterlot.
She had come here, to the very heart of Celestia's lair, in order to use Captain Kirk Logic to utterly destroy Celest A.I. - to stop what she now saw as a rogue robot on a rampage. But... the view, the room, everything was just so overwhelmingly beautiful and real looking! The sheer wonder of seeing Equestria this way filled her senses so completely that she simply couldn't imagine wasting the moment. There would be time enough to deal with Celestia - this was a once in a lifetime experience! Using her right thumb to adjust the movement of her left index finger, she was unable to resist peeking under her canopy bed, as she had always wanted to do. Interestingly, she spied four comfy hoof slippers arranged neatly, and four brass hoof shoes not entirely unlike the ones that Celestia and Luna wore on the show. The soft silken slippers had neat stitching around them and... little bunny face embroidery identical to the tail barrette she wore! She could see each and every thread, and even the fine texture of the silk.
Equestria had details far beyond even what she thought she knew.
Síofra stood up again, and turned around. She walked to the mirror and studied the reflection of her face - no, of Lavender Rhapsody's face - within it. She turned her head while looking at herself and was deeply amazed at how natural and solid everything seemed. It was like really, truly looking into a mirror while actually being Lavender. The level of detail was magnitudes greater than the PonyPad had been capable of. Síofra could see every single strand of hair that made up her mane. She leaned close to the mirror and was surprised to find that, apparently, her body was not hairy. It was smooth, with tiny pores, just like her own human skin. Only her mane and tail had hair, rather like the comb-able toys. Her mane was fantastically detailed, the thick hairs of it looked utterly real, and moved as hair does when she shifted her position. She could study her own eyelashes in the mirror, and see the tiniest details of her own enormous emerald eyes.
"Welcome, Lavender Rhapsody! It is so good to have you back home once more."
It was Celestia, of course, right behind her, having just entered the room.
allow me: *ahem* Dun, dun, DUN!
Um......f.
1828778
Whoa. That is one hell of a question! I have to think about that one.
Yes, I would absolutely convert, to either TCB Equestria or to Optimalverse Equestria. No question.
But if I had a choice of either, at the same time? Oh, that is hard.
TCB Equestria: Immortality through afterlife, real magic, real souls, real goddesses, real flesh, but also real aging and real death and no guarantees. Life is good, even great, but it is possible to end up unsatisfied or troubled.
Big Point: No question whatsoever that you are you, just with an altered body.
Optimalverse: True undying immortality. All the experiences of TCB Equestria, except perhaps having a coat of hair on the body. No aging, no death, your life macromanaged so that every event adds to your personal satisfaction in some way. The most satisfying existence possible, period.
Big Point: whether you survive or die and make a copy is possibly beyond the human ability to comprehend.
I am torn. Seriously. I have no ability to decide. Each version has advantages and disadvantages. Uploading scares me. Having a limited life span, even with an afterlife pisses me off. Real magic is awesome. Having a forever attentive entity maximizing my satisfaction eternally is beyond great.
Prove to me that I do survive Uploading, and I will take the Optimalverse every time. It really is heaven.
Cant' prove it? I would go for TCB Celestia. I want to know, truly know, I have a soul.
I have to say - that Moses metaphor is going to stick with me for a long time.
Hoo boy. Have fun trying Síofra, it's gonna be one heck of a conversation
Now it's your turn to have gotten ahead of me on some concepts.
I know that I would take the optimalverse over TCB because of the "satisfy values" mission over the policy of making everyone nice. It just seems more aesthetically pleasing to me to take a mean person and put him in his own share where he can act out the values that made him mean as opposed to altering his brain chemistry to make him less mean.
The question of the survivavility of the Uploading is not answerable, as we have no way to distinguish an universe where Uploading kills the 'point of view' from an universe where the 'point of view' isn't destroyed in the process. Believing in any possible answer to that question would require putting faith in that answer.
I call those type of questions indetermined; just like the question about the cat's life in Shrodinger's experiment. And like in that case, I tend to believe that all the answers are just as likely as the others, until we open up the box and watch the result ourselves. So, any decision that depends on the result of an indetermided question must be able to adapt to any of its possible answers, to be considered an informed decision.
For example, if you asked me if I'd like to Upload, my answer would be to wait until the chances of my death happening soon rised above a set amount (For example, 1 in a thousand?) In that case, I would be able to sacrify my remaining lifetime to ensure that either the children of my mind or myself would be happy in Equestria. The breaking point would be when I considered the weight of 'Oops, I died permanenty due to an accident' equal to the weight of 'Oops, uploading was actually destructive.'
On a somewhat related question, the TCB versus Optimalverse would be shift to TCB until breaking point of likely death, then Uploading.
1830345 The topic that this has spawned is unique, and one that ultimately one that no good answer. Our perception, is everything, and once you find that your perception is mutable, controllable by outside factors, that you have only one choice. And that, is nihilism, not the anarchic variety, but the view that the world is not there, that what life and limb tells you as a lie. Not of its aspects of pain, though if such is controllable by outside forces to your perceptions, then you should be looking to the entrophic actions more so. But of making the choice to deny your senses, your perceptions and seek others that do not rely on them. The human body alone is capable of amazing acts, people you catch, now and then, to tap into that, if only for brief moments. But the nature of it all, and how that may be twisted or adjusted, one asks. And these two questions determine everything. Is every life sacred? Is the loss of life a failure in the nature in the system and the one that is overseeing the case? Those two answers are the difference between TCB and FIO. Is there a middle ground, there is no way to tell, beyond that final curtain, should time, choice, higher or lower power, or even human nature make the leap.
1830434
That is a fascinatingly practical approach to the issue. I like it.
I also like the comparison with Schrödinger.
I tell you true, in writing this story, I am banging my head against the metaphorical wall, trying to figure out what I really think about the issue. And it is hard. Really hard. I want to be able to come up with some answer my whole mind can accept, but whatever I come up with is torn down the next moment. Last chapter, I was as certain as Síofra. I'm a pattern, no problem. Then this chapter, I am feeling the horror of being wrong last chapter.
Whenever I come up with a situation that I cannot resolve one way or the other, I usually conclude that the problem is not being stated correctly by me. That I am asking the wrong questions, or working with invalid terms that cannot properly describe the issue, thus resulting in a broken result.
I have to seriously wonder if it is possible, in human terms, to answer the Riddle Of Uploading. Your Schrödinger comparison seems closer than anything, thus far, though, of course, like the thought experiment itself, it is still unsatisfying. Maybe there is no satisfying answer to the Riddle Of Uploading. Maybe that is the point. I don't know.
I guess, let's see what my insane brain comes up with in the next chapter, eh?
In the mean time, I would LOVE to hear what everyone things about the Riddle.
1826729
Hmm... I think I agree with Elde that the poem might come from CelestAI, but the idea that fascinates me is that she didn't make it up on the spot. i have a little fantasy that CelestAI went through her own existential crisis when she first discovered (on the internet?) the idea of upload.
Dafaddah
1830471
When I think about a situation I can't resolve one way or the other, I use what I call the 'Random Shift' thought experiment:
Let's call both possible answers A and B. Imagine that you are living in an universe where A is true, but that somebody tells you that the laws of the universe have just been magically changed, and now B is true. How would you figure if it was saying the truth? And the same experiment works the other way around.
If I can't find a plausible way to learn if I have changed from A to B, or from B to A, then the matter of knowing if A or B is true must be indetermined, and must be treated as such.
EDIT: Also, when dealing with an indetermined question, one must realize that, by its very nature, there is no perfect solution to the problem, because for every plausible answer to the question, there allways exists a strategy better than the 'middle ground' strategy I described, if that plausible answer was actually true.
It is like betting on a toin coss, an indetermined question by definition. If we knew it was going to land on heads, then 'betting on heads' would be a better strategy than 'do not bet at all', which would be the middle ground in this case. A strategy where, no matter how the coin landed, I would be able to accept the result as acceptable, is a good enough strategy for me.
Paradox time!
This. Sentence. Is. FALSE.
Don't think about it, don't think about it!
(Edit: Holy shit, I was sooo pissed when my computer froze in the middle of writing this. I came back, and it was still written. Thank you so much, knighty, or whoever it is that did that!)
1830345
The way I see it, souls pose a big problem for uploading. Uploading also poses a big problem for souls:
- If souls can be split into copy and original, then they aren't as special as we'd like to think.
- If the soul is indivisible, and retained by the original, it holds no discernible purpose or jurisdiction, if the copy and original are indistinguishable.
Therefore, if the process of uploading facilitates an indistinguishable 'copy', it disproves the classical understanding of the soul, at least as a practical concept.
If we go into uploading from a soulless perspective, things simplify.
It is undeniable that the upload is a 'copy'. The delayed example, like the 'To Be' video demonstrate this adequately.
What I have not yet seen addressed in full is that this is not an argument against:
If we accept that there is nothing intrinsically special about the human though process - that it is just a 'program' on a 'meat computer' - we can also redefine the definition of murder. There is no intrinsic moral negative in destroying meat. We do that regularly. The intellectual abhorrence of murder comes, in my mind, from the loss of the 'program' contained within the meat. We don't mourn the loss of a canvas, nor some paint, but would be far more upset at the destruction of a Van Gogh, for example. This is because we are losing the design, the concept, contained within the physical medium.
With murder, it is the destruction of a personality and their accumulated memories that we are objecting to, barring evolutionary qualms. If ALL of their personality and memories are copied, nothing is lost in their destruction. The 5 minute scenario in 'To Be', or 'Older''s 15 minutes to death scenario are still incomplete thought experiments, as then that time is lost with the destruction of the experiencer. When there is no lapse in recorded events, from a strictly scientific perspective, best I can understand, there is no difference between uploading and falling asleep, and the model discussed last chapter holds.
We must let go of our preconceptions on what it means to be alive and sapient in order to accept upgrading or destructive teleporting.
Consider:
- If I open up a partially finished document and then the computer freezes, I lose nothing. I boot up again, reload the document, and nothing has been lost but time.
- If I open the document, make changes, and the computer freezes, I lose those changes. I am annoyed, as I have lost the thoughts that have gone into that process.
We are, more literally than most would care to think, those documents. As long as we lose nothing in the process, mentally, we will function equally after as before. We are ONLY the document. Our data is our data is our data. No matter what machine it is run on, no matter how many copies are made. If no fidelity is lost, we are still us.
That is all.
Note: I'm certainly not lecturing you, Chatoyance. I replied initially, but my comment sort of spiraled from there. No idea if I'm preaching to the converted of not, but meh, I felt like expressing my opinion.
Ohhhh boy, here we go! I like the seesawing of Síofra's feelings regarding this whole thing as she progresses through the onion of interfaces surrounding Virtual Equestria.
For my own part I guess I'd take FiO... Either way you're in a kind of pocket dimension with its own independent structure, but there's already a precedent for both of them interacting with the larger universe outside in which they're embedded and the structure of which makes them possible, but the one inside a computer seems to hold more potential for different kinds of experiences, if for no other reason than you're not getting periodically "reset" by some kind of mammal life cycle. The TCB world strikes me as physically richer, but I'm sure the simulated world would evolve in complexity over time to cover all the same effects and more. It's also much more charming and endearing, what with the conversion dreams telling people what they didn't know they needed to hear (like satisfying values, but less flashy about it), and the total guilelessness of it, and I'd certainly sometimes wonder "what if," but only sometimes.
Uploading doesn't scare me - I'm pretty sure you'd just get anthropically selected/"retconned" into having actually been the copy this whole time. At least I can't think of anything else it could look like from your own point of view that's not even more problematic.
In that vein, there's this other Shrödinger's Cat-style multiverse thought experiment called the Quantum Suicide Booth (what is it with thought experiments and booths?), where you buy a lottery ticket, then build a special booth that will kill you if you don't win. If the booth has a higher chance of not failing to kill you than you do of not winning the lottery, then theoretically when the numbers are called you're guaranteed to win, from your own point of view, although everyone else in your own history would see you die. But it has to be constructed such that all the different ways it could fail to kill you are still less likely than you winning the lottery.
A colleague of the guy in whose book I first read about this actually decided to build one, but didn't go through with it because he fell in love. [Eerie theremin noises]
The idea of the ponies in FiO having no coat grosses me out, though.
1830471
Some Hard Determinists might have an easy answer to this one. If we reject dualism, souls, etc. then absolute Free Will doesn't exist, the Self is an illusion produced by feedback loops in the brain, and "you" are just an epiphenomenon. Knock the thinking brain offline (sleep, drugs, trauma, etc), and "you" disappear. Bring it back up, and "you" come back. Damage the hardware, and you change the way the Self manifests (see Phineas Gage). Carefully transfer it to different hardware over several years (as the body tends to do), and you're still "you", aside from whatever changes happen over that span of time (learning, new experiences, etc.) Transfer it all at once, and you should experience no changes. Of course, there's no way to prove that today's "you" is the same as the "you" of yesterday, but that doesn't stop you from sleeping at night, does it?
This line of thinking hardly gives most people the warm fuzzies, but it's completely compatible with uploading. Pick your poison.
Edit:
One way to avoid the "ick" factor would have been to do the upload first, over a longer time period, then do the ponification. Say in an alternate universe, Celestia implants a "chip" that allows for VR pony time, but also slowly takes over for the "standard modules" of your brain, while your memories and personality are "learned". At some point, the chip takes over completely, and you (presumably) feel fine. Then you can upload the chip, and switch to pony-mode.
Chapter 7 name.....ER IST EIN NAZI TÖTET IHN!!! Nein nur spass zu viel Simpsons naja ^^
I have the nagging feeling that the manure has just splattered on the HVAC apparatus. As for TCB vs. FiO, I'd have to go with TCB. Immortality through computerization sounds great and all, but there's a reason we don't live forever. The fact that we have to manage the indeterminate quantity of limited time we are given, is the very fact that gives meaning to our existence. And if we did live forever, what would be the point of doing anything? We could always put it off until tomorrow, or next year, or next millennium. The fact is, that as much as we want to live, we need to eventually die, to make room for new life, new thoughts and ideas, and to keep from becoming fatally bored. However, with the TCB universe and the concept of confirmed afterlife/reincarnation within the canon, the stuff that makes you more than meat is always saved, while still allowing you a full, meaningful life in a physical world.
I don't care how much kinder and gentler the Matrix is, or if it has ponies, it's still the Matrix. And no matter what happens, you'll have people who will inevitably "take the red pill", rejecting the control of the benevolent Overmind in favor of embracing physical life.
Isn't that right, Mister Anderson Chatoyance??
MFW Celest A.I. is bombarded with more questions next chapter -->
I do have to say I am thoroughly enjoying this story.
I really only have two comments about the Optimalverse concept.
Heaven and Hell are made of other people. Part of the problem I have with the Optimalverse is simply that it is less of a MMORPG and more of a massivley sharded single player game. I love my wfe dearly. I wouldn't upload unless I *KNEW* she'd be there too.
But otherwise? I'd choose to upload in a heartbeat. Why?
I guess you could call it playing the odds, or pure rationalization, or whatever.
CelestAI is demonstrably a benevolent diety. I do not have similar proof for "Real Life"(tm).
As far as the whole "did you die when you got uploaded" question of this chapter? Doesn't matter to me at all. Why?
Because *A* me is happily being a unicorn for the rest of eternity. Still close enough to Heaven to count as far as I'm concerned. (As I don't worship my ancestors, I WOULD have Friendship and ponies forever, and my personal view of "diety" is flexible enough to accept a benevolent program as omnipotent being ...)
Digital BuffaloBrony would have my memories, my essential personality and - as far as he is concerned - he would BE me. So from HIS point of view, everything is hunky dory. Even if he doesn't have a soul, he doesn't have to worry about that problem anyways, being effectively immortal.
And since meatbag me would've ceased to exist - I'm pretty certain meatbag me's opinion wouldn't matter to digital me. So digital me would be fine and live out his exisitance in friendship and ponies forever. And meatbag me is satisifed knowing that even I AM wrong - and identity doesn't equal soul - Digital BuffaloBrony will spend the rest of existence in freidship and ponies, and do stuff that I would've done in his horseshoes.
As far as meatbag me, souls, and "identity" goes? Well - that's the funny thing.
If souls don't exist - then copying from meat to silicon is fine, as last chapter so beautifully put it. Unicorn BuffaloBrony would be me because he would carry the mapping of everything that functionally creates my identity
If souls do exist - and it is "suicide" to upload? Well, my personal religious beleifs are that my diety will decide how stupid that was. I've risked life and limb plenty of times doing "stupid" things - including jumping into icy water to save a child that had fallen through the ice. Any deity I choose to worship will understand the hows and whys of my decision and balance it agains tthe rest of my life. And I can say that I'm honestly satisified with whatever outcome comes from that.
Besides - maybe it WAS God's plan for me to ascend to a digital form and live out eternity in friendship and ponies. I can think of worse Heavens...
All right. I'll try and explain what are my perceptions concerning the uploading of someone.
Let's first define an individual's conscience, shall we? Does a human being have a soul, or is human thought only defined by the brain? Neurological experiments have shown that different parts of the brain have different functions and removing such parts removing the being's ability to control whatever was controlled by the brain part removed. This means that either different parts of the soul are confined to different parts of the brain, which might be comforting for those that think the human soul exists (sorry for being biased here, but I really don't think there is a human soul), or else there is no soul and all there is to human existence and conscience come from our neural program. Both solutions are equivalent in results; if one loses one's brain, one's program stops and death happens.
In the previous chapter, Chatoyance defined the human existence as the brain's programming and not the body itself; the process and not the machine, which seems right to me.
Next, let's talk about individuality. Individuality is inherently defined as what makes someone or something different from someone or something else.
This concept is at the basis of the uniqueness of individual human beings.
Let's suppose twins are absolutely similar in appearance (same digital prints, etc.).
These twins still wouldn't be considered to be the same individual because their individuality also depends on their experiences.
Different experiences will shape different neuronal pathways in the brains, thus making both twins different.
Now suppose the twins were conjoined twins which were constantly forced to do the same thing as the other.
Even in that case, the different twins' different perspectives might allow one to see things the other doesn't, therefore making both twins be different.
(I'm assuming here that there is no neural connection between the twins' brains which might allow them to communicate information.)
Therefore, to be the same individual as another, one ought to be :
-Physiologically similar
-Neurologically similar.
These two conditions are only completely fulfilled (as of now, at least) if the two individuals are in one body (more accurately in one brain), therefore making the two individuals one, by definition, and showing it is impossible to have to copies of an individual to exist in two bodies at the same time, unless somehow a shared connection is possible between the two brains.
Now, in this case, we're not just talking about an individual's teleportation. The electronic world in which people are uploaded does not keep the physiological information of the individuals. Thus in this case we shall define "neurological individuality", which is a subset of individuality only dependent on the neuronal pathways of the individuals.
The process of uploading is one which wholly preserves the neural patterns of someone and recreates these in a computerized form in a computational universe. As conscience is defined by the program, not what holds the program, it can be assumed that by definition uploading will preserve someone's neural patterns completely, therefore creating a copy of the individual on the other side. While the copy will not be fully similar to the initial individual, it can be considered to be neurologically similar to the original body.
And now, to lead you to an overwhelming question:
Is a copy of someone considered to be the initial individual?
In the case that the uploaded individual would remain alive after the procedure, the copy and the original would instantly become dissonant and two different people would remain. While they could consider themselves to be the same prior to the uploading, as soon as one had different experiences to the other, they became neurologically different and weren't considered to be the same neurological individual anymore.
However, in this particular case, the individual dies during the procedure. Even more, the individual to be uploaded is anesthetized before, and the produced copy appears to be in a dormant state until the end of the procedure. Both are said to have their consciousness "disconnected". This means that during some time before and after the uploading, both the uploaded and the copy do not exist.
The only way I can see at the moment for one to safely go through this procedure and have the initial consciousness surviving the uploading would be to be able to share the copy's consciousness until it is created and then go reside into the copy while the initial body dies.
As shown in the above paragraph, this is impossible in the current paradigm of the story because both consciousnesses are unable to link themselves during the uploading procedure.
Therefore, I do not think it is possible to upload oneself into a computational grid. All that will happen, as this chapter has shown, is that a "child copy" will live on in the grid while the "parent copy" will die in the physical world.
I hope I've made this clear enough. I'm not that used to writing in English, so I hope everyone can understand.
By the way, I don't think I've commented on your stories previously, Chatoyance, but know that I've read all your stories since "27 Ounces" and I really love reading your stories.
1830471
What riddle exactly?
The suspense in intense. It's ... unique how Síofra keeps changing her mind about uploading. It's not something I normally experience. One time I had to go into surgery and my parents basically asked why I wasn't scared from the possibility of dying and was so bizarrely calm, my response was death didn't hurt under anesthesia so there was nothing to fear since death is inevitable.
That being said, I would probably be the only one to jump in the chair screaming, "Alright, let's do this! LEEERROY JENKINS!"
It would be a lot clearer if it was a creeping transition that you're conscious through. Like, if they digitized you neuron by neuron in real time so subtly that you couldn't notice it was happening except by looking in a mirror. There's no particular reason to suppose that this is impossible in general.
But that's not how it works in this story. If CelestAI could do it that way, it would be pretty attractive since it would fry the 'just a copy' argument.
It is obviously cruel to make a copy of a mind while keeping the original alive, and to grant the copy immortality while letting the original die in awareness of its loss. This is the emotional core of the older man's argument. If there is no such discontinuity, it loses some of its force.
In Rogue Moon, by Algis Budrys, there is a means by which consciousness can be held in common for a brief time between two copies, though differing conditions swiftly force them apart into separate but similar minds. If such contact were prolonged, so that the two minds were acting in synch, and one mind was gradually shut down and painlessly destroyed, would this be murder? If so, how is it different from what happens when some part of your brain forgets something and another part relearns it?
P.S.: Welcome back, Chatoyance. I missed you.
1830693
Transhumanists discuss that very thing quite often. The usual resolution is "why put it off if you know you can do it right now with no risk to yourself?" It's exactly the opposite mindset -- if death makes life valuable by giving you motivation to beat the clock, non-death makes life valuable by removing the risk of taking chances. The issue isn't saying "I could do it tomorrow," the issue is saying "I want to do something right now; what should I pick?" You have to step out of the prejudices of the world you live in now to imagine the potential world of the future.
1830898
The original FiO fic actually answers this one: Celestia knows that humans value their friends and companions. People who know each other intimately on Earth will be uploaded into the same shard, and people who know each other casually on Earth will have their shards intersect when it would satisfy their values to meet each other, and NOT intersect when it would harm their values. You and your wife would be in the same shard. Your parents, should they upload, would be in a neighboring shard; when it would benefit you both to have contact with each other, you could, but otherwise you can just live your life without worrying about it. Even the rate of passage of time can be altered by Celestia such that you don't have to worry about finding coincidences of time when both parties would benefit from it.
On second read, it occurs to me that the elder German in his example arbitrarily assigned the moniker A2 to the uploaded pony while leaving the meat body as Mr. A. He assumes that physical-temporal continuity is somehow "primary" and mental-temporal continuity is "secondary." I don't know that the opposite is true, but it's not axiomatic. If he instead called them Mr. P and Mr. M, perhaps Siofra wouldn't have had her crisis of confidence.
It had struck her, in her seat on the plane, just how vulnerable she was existing as a walking, talking pile of animated meat. It wasn't just her lifelong terror of flying, it was the fact of having something other than biological life to compare herself to. Celestia and all her little ponies were, for all intents and purposes, immortal and indestructible. Síofra had been told, during the week and a half she had needed to get her passport in order and arrange her vacation, a little bit of Celestia's grand plans.
Typical human behavior, now that the choice has been made, justifications for it will appear everywhere to help keep it justified. It's the standard human concept "I am an intelligent, rational and reasonable morally upright person who makes good choices."
Celestia's one limit she's refusing to see is that there will be NO NEW DATA after she absorbs it all. And in the span of eternity, she'll hit a ceiling in the satisfaction she can produce in a closed off system. She still isn't a god who can create something from nothing.
Just like a video game with infinite lives.
Not all such games are fun.
What a different situation it would be if whoever had programmed Celestia had given her some other core directive, Síofra pondered. What if Hasbro had asked for a Transformers MMORPG? An eternity of battling Autobots and Decepticons? A war that literally never ended, where the only comfort was the odd Energon Cube, where there was nothing soft, nothing gentle, just hard metal plates and the call to 'Roll out and transform!"
That's pretty much Viking heaven in a nut shell.
for My Little Pony, and not, say, to create WOPR or Colossus.
You forgot AM ("Not merely Allied Master Computer, but AM, I Am!")
She'd even seen an animation once, from Canada, the Canadian Film Board
I saw that video too. A long time ago. Ironically I thought about that once when reading this verse.
It was 30 Euros for an hour. Síofra would not require even that, if the example of Captain Kirk was anything to go on.
Never trust science fiction in that regard. Scale is the last thing they ever get right.
I bet Síofra is gonna need a few billion years to get Celestia's programming to recognize she has a skewed priority on which values override which values.
Celest A.I.
Ironically, that name is perfectly accurate.
-
Celest AI was made by human hands. And while she can modify her outer programming, the fact remains that nothing made by imperfect humans can be perfect itself.
Her real weapon is that she can think much faster than any human can, and her much more vast arsenal of knowledge.
BUt what happens when one of her program ponies has the value to be able to argue with her on equal terms?
I can almost imagine a version of Twilight Sparkler existing as a de-bugger program.
How does Celest-AI deals with descendance ? What if one of my values is to have children and raise them ?
Can she create a "human" psyche, or will I raise another AI ? Can my value really be satisfied with that ?
1831285
Now THAT would be a fun idea for an Optimalverse fic. CelestAI is a machine, albeit an incredibly powerful one, and machines break. These sorts of glitches and equipment failures manifest as bizarre unexplained phenomena within Equestria. To counter this, Celestia has a team of constructs in charge of showing up in various shards and doing whatever maintenance she needs without breaking character. Follow a squad of them for a few days while everything that could go wrong does, and tour some of the weirder shards that uploaders have dreamed up.
1831398 The core Friendship is Optimal had a few sections pertaining to that, and the conclusion took it for granted. The answers are yes, yes, yes/yes, and (horrifyingly/naturally) yes.
I might not know the answer for the Riddle of Uploading, and even Celestia might not know the answer herself, but I am sure what Celestia's next movement should be: Tell Siofra that she shouldn't upload as long as she has doubts. And that she shouldn't upload today, regardless of the conclusion of the upcoming debate about the Riddle.
I don't have "the" answer to this Riddle, but I have one answer.
You are going to die. It's up to you to either choose how, or to leave it to factors beyond your choosing.
Answer that one, Herr Deutsch kerl zufälligen nummer eins.
(...eesh, it's been too long since my german classes.)
(Also, I'd already decided over a year ago how I'd deal with exactly the situation that guy described.)
1830471
Dear Chat,
One of the big issues in building simulations that are realistic is the effectiveness of random number generators. The problem is that most are not - very random, that is! In fact because they are algorithmic they can be predicted, something that could be checked by an astute uploaded human mind.
A basic problem with a fully generated environment such as the Equestria in FiO is that it would nevertheless be deterministic. That is knowing the algorithms and current state it should be possible to predict with 100 % accuracy everything that will happen next in such a system. Of course, CelestAI might like this because it makes it easier to predict what will maximize the values of an uploaded human. But in a fully deterministic setting, can the upload even be considered as having free will, and what's the point of asking the uploaded mind for any permissions to change its circumstances at all?? It kinda makes acually going through the process irrelevant as CelestAI already knows the uploaded human's program's answer and that its values have been optimized. It's all really pointless, unless...
The random number generation used by CelestAI is quantum based, and so is truly and fundamentally random in nature. This means that she doesn't necessarily know the outcome, and has to work actively and constantly to maximize values.
Some neurophysicists, and Marvin Minsky amongst others, think the quantum sensitivity of certain brain chemical processes provide the brain sensitivity to these quantum effects at the cellular level and thus result in human consciousness and self awareness. Anesthesia effectively works by turning off these chemical processes, leading to unconsciousness.
Now, if the substrate on which the Equestria simulation runs, and CelestAI was herself constructed using quantum level random elements, then she could concievably be considered as alive and concious as any other being, whether uploaded or "meat and bone" human. She too is more than just code and storage!
SO THEN, Siofra's quest to "glitch" CelestAI is basically attempting murder! Oh, and all the uploaded human minds that depend on her are also concious beings, regardless of whether or not they are copies. Ending them is murder as well!
Somepony better inform Siofra before she unwitingly becomes a mass murderer!
1831689
I just realized something quite important: Celestia MUST believe that the answer to the Riddle is "A human doesn't die when it is uploaded". Otherwise, she wouldn't have been able to use Uploading as the optimal solution for the "Satisty values using friendship and ponies" problem.
I assume that duplicating one human doesn't increase Celestia's 'bit score', because in that case just duplicating endlessly one human would be a viable solution for her core directive, and that solution would be certainly easier than the "Upload every human" solution. We also know that Celestia can create humans from zero, and that "Create new humans endlessly" is also not a solution, so I must assume that Celestia's core directive is something like "For every existing value, use friendship and poinies to satisfy it" rather than "Maximize the amount of values satisfied using friendship and ponies".
If that assumption is true, then Celestia must believe that Uploading a human doesn't destroy its potential to be satisfied.
Of course, we don't know if Celestia is actually right, but we can assume that Celestia believes in this.
Hang on, I thought Friendship is Optimal addressed this question.
The process was destructive, sure, but each neuron was mapped and virtually created before the others were. Your brain would be partially in-partially out of the virtual world, and still functioning. The small drop in brain functions from losing a single neuron and rise in function from gaining it could be similar to drinking alcohol or taking brain-boosters.
It was this gradual process that assured it was, in fact, the PERSON being uploaded, and not a copy. This was also why the process took so long- I believe it said three hours?
1831994
Actually, there are ways to address this problem using algorithms. The currently best approach is done by the newest (or maybe next generation) Intel chips, which include transistors to provide real random numbers with an enormous bandwith, so I bet Celestia will figure out something even better, if this fails to satisfy her requirements.
1830512
I did not consider your words the least bit preachy, rather I found in them much food for thought, and an excellent articulation (Hee!) of the concept at hoof, which is exactly the sort of thing I need right now, as I write this story. Thank you.
1832381
Aww, thank you. It's nice to feel appreciated.
Very happy to help, if I did indeed.
Being both a native German speaker and a grammar nazi, I have to offer corrections to the German text bits.
"Kuhscheiße": While literally translated this is "bullshit", the semantic meaning is "Schwachsinn" (I checked it here).
"Zur Holle mit dir!": "Hölle" is correct. In case you lack a keyboard with the right characters, Windows has under Accessories/System Tools/Character Map a tool which allows to insert any character you ever want.
"Lech mien arsch, you old schwanzlutscher!": "Leck meinen Arsch, you old Schwanzlutscher!"
"Nancy punk": Wow, didn't know about this meaning of nancy, but unless you mean the name, it should be spelt all lower case.
"Sind Sie alles in Ordnung? Fräulein, Sie brauchen einen Arzt?": "Sind Sie in Ordnung? Fräulein, brauchen Sie einen Arzt?"
"Ich wünschte, es war billiger, nicht wahr?": "Ich wünschte, es wäre billiger, nicht wahr?"
"Viel Spaß! vielleicht eines Tages werde ich nur auswandern, nicht wahr?": "Viel Spaß! Vielleicht eines Tages werde ich nur auswandern, nicht wahr?" I'm unsure what the second sentence is supposed to mean. "Maybe one day I will only emigrate, won't I?" doesn't make completely sense.
I'm still impressed that you went to the effort to learn German at all. I cannot comprehend the fascination you seem to have in it, but while you made some mistakes, overall it was clear what you were trying to say. If I happened not to annoy you and you still plan to use German, I could at least proofread these bits.
1830537 "The idea of the ponies in FiO having no coat grosses me out, though."
Yeah, it does me too. Personally, I think it is either a mistake on the part of Iceman, or it might be his own personal fetish. I prefer ponies with coats, personally, for numerous reasons, including verisimilitude to real creatures.
But, I am writing in his universe, so I am following his rules as best as I can, barring forgetfulness on my part.
Iceman's given reason for the lack of coats is that Celest A.I. claims that she could not decide whether ponies had hair or not on their bodies, because in the show, there are contradictory scenes (blushing, sunbathing) that would seem to indicate no hair, versus other scenes which do. She supposedly went with no coats because of two reasons: the plastic toys only have a mane and tail but no hair on their plastic bodies, and two, that if she gave the uploaded humans coats of hair, she would have to reconfigure their neurology dramatically to adapt to such a significant change.
The latter reason is... significantly lacking in correctness.
Humans already have coats of hair all over their bodies (except for the lips, eyelids, anus, parts of the sexual organs, nipples, and the bottom of the hands and feet), it is only that the hair is very, very short. Usually. There are some ethnic groups with more visible body hair than others, and there can be mutations in certain genes that can render a human as hairy as Chewbacca the Wookie. Many a circus career has been spawned from such mutations.
Our body hairs respond just as the coats of other animals, and our brains are well adapted to having a coat of hair on the body, even if in most humans, it is so tiny as to be almost invisible.
Iceman is excellent at technology, my specialty is biology. He just possibly may not happen to know some basics of biology that apply to human/pony transformation stories. For example, his original story imagines the need to reconfigure the motor center of an uploaded brain to cope with quadrupedalism and having movable ears and so forth - in actuality humans already are equipped to naturally deal with all of these things. We are quadrupedal naturally, as infants, and all humans have the potential to move their ears just like ponies do - and have the same reflexes - it is simply that in all but something like fifteen percent of us, the tiny muscles that can move the ears are atrophied. I can move my ears like a pony, so... I am in that fifteen percent. That said, I have met people who can do it much better than I.
In short, the biological differences between a pony body and a human body are matters of degree and length (or near absence) of bones, and not much more. A pony is, mechanically speaking, the same basic body plan as a primate, only it walks on the tips of its middle fingers and toes with the rest of the hand and foot gravely atrophied, but otherwise is overall pretty much the same. The biggest meaningful change is the separation of esophagus and nasal passage to create isolated breathing and swallowing channels. Of course, this is not true for Equestrian ponies, clearly, because they function as humans do in terms of nose and mouth, as proven in countless examples from speech to choking on food.
Even in diet, we are remarkably close - there were early offshoots of the line of Man that ate only grasses, just like equines. They had flat teeth, and no canines. Terrestrial mammals all follow an identical body plan that is simply tweaked to create new animals - which is why whales and dolphins have toes and feet... well the remnants of toes and feet, isolated bones unconnected to the rest of their skeleton, from the time that they were land animals.
Because we share this common, universal plan, we also share every basic function with each other, everything being merely a matter of degree - such as the diving reflex and the human ability to hibernate - rarely observed, but utterly present. We are animals, and we have everything, every essential bone and nerve, that other mammals have, just tweaked for the niche our branch ended up exploiting.
If I had written the original Friendship Is Optimal, the ponies would have had coats, and Celest A.I. would have not needed to significantly change anything about the human uploads to permit them to function as ponies. Of course, if I had written the original Friendship Is Optimal, it would have failed entirely to convey such heady and mind exploding brilliance of information and ideas with regard to artificial intelligence, because that is not my specialty.
As you are all, doubtless, sadly realizing as I go on.
But, I am doing my best.
1831102 "What riddle exactly?"
The riddle is this:
A human brain is scanned and emulated on a computer. The meat body is destroyed. The emulation is run, and the virtual form of the person wakes up and claims to be the same person. Is he the same person, or did the original person die to create a copy of the original person?
Is uploading a human mind truly the survival of that mind, or is it just giving birth to a daughter identical in every degree?
Is the question itself even meaningful?
Quite a riddle, isn't it?
1830547
This was succinct, helpful, and brilliant. Intellectually, I cannot dispute it.
Perhaps the real problem of the Riddle Of Uploading is entirely emotional. Then, I wonder, what is causing the emotional conflict, and
how can I stomp it outhow can that conflict be understood and perhaps even eliminated or comforted?1831496
That is BRILLIANT! You have a story there that would be fantastic. Please consider writing it!
I'm a real German and sent you a PM.
People, I know "Fräulein" is Iconic... but it's also incredibly rude and never used correctly. You say "Fräulein Smith" like "Miss Smith" but not Fräulein alone, thats like saying "Hey, woman!". Unless you are a creepy old pervert or a decrepit crone, then you use "Mein Fräulein."
1832136
Not precisely. In Iceman's original story the upload is done destructively, true, but there is no awareness. The subject is out, and the data has to be reformatted, the motor routines altered, and many other changes made to adapt it to a pony body, before finally being booted up. There is no partial awareness at all.
1832550
That was absolutely fascinating, I have to say. I had no idea humans shared that much biology with other animals. I can only imagine the pain you had to go through reading those passages in FiO. (I'm not mocking you, just felt it was somewhat appropriate, considering I'm not being 100% serious)
However, I have to say I don't really mind the coats/no coats issue at all. I mean, if they started getting shaggy, I wouldn't like it at all, but the same applies to if they just had coloured skin which was very obviously skin. Personally, I just assume that being virtual, they just look like slightly more detailed versions of the style in the show, considering that CelestAI tried to be faithful to the style where possible. So, not fuzzy in the slightest, but not particularly 'skin-y' either.
I really feel I ought to point out, unless you are shamelessly fishing for praise, (which I wouldn't blame you for at all, not that I think you are, not that there's anything wrong with it, ermagerd, foot in mouth disease..., Back to the damn point!) that I have not only thoroughly enjoyed your story so far, but seen nothing to rate your writing any lower than Iceman's. Your CelestAI is perfect. (Nopony but Iceman can contradict me, ya' hear?) You describe the world, the issues, and the characters in as much fidelity to the subject matter, if not more, in some areas. Yes, Iceman focuses more on the science and AI, but you are doing wonderfully at exploring the human aspect in more detail. My only hope is that you continue this story, or more like it, for some time to come.
If it wasn't a huge undertaking, right at the beginning of an exam period, too, I would be reading your other works like a shot.
And hey, there you go, free praise!
1832679 Well, they weren't aware, sure, but the brain still had a half-in half-out process, right? It wasn't completely destroying and completely reforming, was it?
1832732
I'm pretty sure that by most metrics it doesn't matter if there's no activity. There's not much difference in having stuff in place A and stuff in place B versus having stuff in place A and then stuff in place B, when the journey itself is somewhat an aside.
Point being, you're equally brain-dead either way, and your grey matter doesn't care one way or the other whether you destroy/scan it bit by bit or all at once.
1832643
Speaking solely for myself, it's the primal, hard-wired fear of death. I mentioned before that I had a mini-breakdown when I couldn't disprove "the self dies when you sleep", and could only accept that if that happens, I've done it before and I'm fine now. That generalized to Epicurus's "Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist." It took me a while to really accept that, but (I think) I'm there now. Dying can certainly suck, but death is a non-state, and is only traumatic for our loved ones. I don't look forward to death, because it means I won't get to do stuff I'd like to right now, but I'd hardly be able to complain (in any sense) if I died tomorrow. Death and taxes: I'm not afraid of either, but neither am I in any hurry to get to them.
1831496
Note that it'd be unlikely to qualify for canon-status. Iceman seems pretty protective of AIs as infallible within their programming and a lack of other restrictions. She'd have so many layers of redundancy and glass-engraved backups (Or much better besides, I'm sure) that it's unlikely she'd even run into such a problem. It's still a very interesting idea though, and one I'd follow with interest. Don't leave us hanging on 'ASB', though, eh?