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I turned on my Ponypad and logged in as usual. Although, calling it logging in doesn’t do it justice. There’s no username or password, just the brief moment when it goes from the splash screen to wherever I was last. In this case it was my Manehattan apartment. I liked having my pony character on the same schedule as I was. Every night before I went to bed, I always tried to bring her home. If I didn’t, one of my neighbors would be sure to say something like, “And just where were you all night, Missy?” Whatever answer I gave would be breaking character. I didn’t like doing that, and neither did the game. It was always more fun when you could stay in character.
It was Saturday, which meant that instead of my morning breakfast and hop on the subway to work, I could actually have Little—that’s my pony—hang out and build up the apartment. When I’d played MMOs in the past, I’d always had an affinity for crafting. Come to think of it, it went back before I played video games, all the way back to my youth.
I remember collecting action figures when I was a boy. Of course, every set had the good guys and the bad. You were supposed to make them fight. I didn’t do that. I just enjoyed taking them out of the box and setting them up as if they were on the same side. The aesthetics could be hard to work, but that was the fun.
So much better than destroying all that beautiful hardware.
Where was I? Oh, right. So what I liked about Equestria Online was that so much of it was crafting, and none of it was fighting. At least, none of the parts that I had gotten into. I’d heard that there were some people who played ponies in the Royal Guard and enjoyed taking damage and risking a loss in a sparring match, but that was all the way in Canterlot. Manehattan was a much safer place.
Last weekend I had developed—ok, I had learned, but it felt like I was inventing it myself—a spell for organizing my house chest. Did I mention I was a unicorn? It was the only choice for me when I’d first designed my character. Anyway, each weekend, after I’d accumulated all my bits and prizes and just tossed them into my chest, I’d spend Saturdays organizing them. But my best marefriend Moon Sailor—hey, don’t make fun of her name!—told me that there was a book for unicorns that taught organization spells, and now a day’s work took ten seconds.
Come to think of it, why would a pegasus pony know about a book for unicorns? But probably one of her other friends told her. Moon’s always helpful to me. I sometimes wonder if she’s really female or a GIRL (guy in real life) like me. Or maybe she’s just an NPC. But you don’t ask somepony about that. It’s just the etiquette of the game. Everypony’s a pony, all the same.
So there I was, with the whole day ahead of me both in real life and in the game, and I was all set to go exploring when I heard the fanfare that I knew so well. It meant that Princess Celestia wanted to talk with me. That was no problem, since our conversations so far had been very brief. She would ask me one or two questions about how I was enjoying the game, and then ask if there was anything she could do to help me. But I figured that she was busy, and besides, any concerns I raised she was probably hearing from ten thousand other gamers as well. Let them be your free tech support.
It was perfectly possible to decline to talk to Princess Celestia, of course. But in the first place, she was persistent. She’d call you again five minutes later. In the second, I always felt happy after a conversation with her. Even though there was nothing concrete I could put my finger on—ha, I don’t even have fingers in the game—it was just uplifting, like listening to the Smile song. If Celestia asked me to talk in the morning, it was excellent odds that I would have having a good day that day.
I pushed the “Answer Call” button on the Ponypad and my apartment faded out of view. There was a nice visual effect where the flash of scene change shrank into a light from Celestia’s horn, as if she had cast the spell that teleported me to Canterlot instead of the pad just loading a new area.
“Good morning, Little,” she said in her mellifluous voice.
“Good morning, your highness.”
“You should really learn to call me Celestia, or Princess. I don’t want you to think of me as being above you.”
“But I like thinking of you that way. You’re so generous to everypony.” I was a little duplicitous. Celestia was the most important character in the game. I wanted to stay on her good side to be first in line when there were freebies given out.
She pursed her lips as if not believing me, but moved on. “What does your schedule look like for today? Are you busy?”
“I had planned to go exploring in Manehattan and maybe meet some new friends.”
“A noble endeavor, but perhaps you could spend some time on a little job for me?”
“What did you have in mind?” I said. What’s in it for me? I thought.
“Have you heard about Emigration to Equestria?”
I’d read the announcement of course. It was on EQD and Ponychan, as well as in the mainstream news. From what I could gather, it gave people a chance to play Equestria Online twenty-four-seven-three-sixty-five (plus February 29), while their bodies were kept on machines or something. There were harsher rumors about what happened to people who signed up. It also cost as much as a car.
“A little.”
“Well, I’m trying to promote it. Eventually we’re going to expand Equestria”—Celestia always left off the Online—“beyond the Ponypad.”
“You mean that you’ll port it to PC finally?”
“No, we’ll have interactive places to play the game, more like a video arcade. But the experience will be more immersive. Halfway between Emigration and what you’re doing now.”
“You want me to try this out?” I was hoping it would be the kind of promotional freebie I was looking for.
“What I really want you to do is to help me promote it by making a kind of advertisement-slash-explanation. I know you like writing.”
Great. She wanted me to do work.
“And I’ll let you try it out as part of your experience,” she finished.
Celestia loved that conversational trick. Make something seem difficult, then stick a piece of candy for me at the end. “What do I have to do?” I asked.
“Go to this building in Manhattan.” A Times Square address came up on the screen.
That was problematic. Not only would that mean a boring train ride and time away from my game, but it would also mean a hit to my wallet. Not that I couldn’t afford it, but I hated spending money capriciously. If only she’d asked me with a week’s lead time, so I could have adjusted my budget.
“Once you’re there, they’ll give you a voucher for travel and meals. Up to fifty dollars for food.”
Free food? Celestia, you must know my weaknesses.
“If you leave now,” she said, “you can make the next train out of M-S.”
I’ll say this for the Celestia program. It knew how to do research. Yeah, the train schedules are public information, and I had probably entered my address at some point in the registration (although I didn’t remember doing so), but putting those two pieces of information together, that’s what a smart computer would do. I wished that I could show my family the Ponypad so they would know how much better it was than Siri. Celestia never said that she didn’t know something and would I like to search the web?
The train ride was nothing new to me, just boring, and I decided to hoof it—get it?—the eight blocks to the building instead of taking the subway. I was a little wary that it would be one of those secluded, second-floor walkup places you sometimes see in Manhattan, but it was a glass-walled store. I had a vague recollection of once entering that building as an internet café back when that wasn’t a ridiculous business idea.
I gave the receptionist my name and my EQO username—Pjabrony, same as everywhere else in the fandom—and we did the paperwork for the train and food voucher. Neither she nor the two technicians operating the device seemed to know any details.
“All they told us,” one of them said, “was to have you put on the helmet and goggles, sit you down, and make sure you didn’t fall out of the chair.”
I was still a little leery of being in a strange place with strange people, but the wide windows gave me comfort. All the people on the street could see me, and if I were to be hooded and dragged off to be sold into white slavery, I could probably raise enough of an alarm to bring the cops. Yeah, these are the things you think about when you’re in a new situation.
The helmet looked like what you’d think a VR helmet would, black goggles and padding all around, but thankfully it was new and out of the box, so instead of smelling like sweat, it had the distinctive odor of fresh plastic. I slipped it on. I couldn’t see, and I couldn’t hear, but I could still feel my own hands and my body in the chair. I was still on alert.
I faded in to the scene I had left two hours ago—Princess Celestia’s castle—only now I was looking at it as if it were a first-person shooter. I couldn’t see my character anymore, only the princess, and she was a lot larger.
“Welcome back, Little.”
I bobbed my head, but still couldn’t see anything. Celestia pointed to the side, where I saw a mirror. There was Celestia, and in front of her was my cartoon pony being very responsive. When I turned my head, so did she. When I raised my arm in the chair in Times Square, she raised her forehoof in Canterlot Castle. I looked up and around. There was definitely three-sixty-degree view, and when Celestia spoke, I heard it more in the closer ear, so the sound was on track as well.
“You can see and hear as if you were actually here, but that’s all. If I were to touch you, you wouldn’t feel it. Eventually, we’ll want to add that in.”
“Cool! Can I go back home and see how this plays?”
“As I said, I need your help with something. But there’s a treat for you. You can meet your favorite from the show: Pinkie Pie!”
Strictly speaking, I didn’t have a “best pony.” It depended on my mood. On any given day, I might say Twilight or Rarity or even Princess Luna as my absolute favorite. But on that day, I probably would have agreed on Pinkie being my number-one.
She led me down to the end of the receiving hall. I couldn’t feel the hooves of the character moving, but I figured that was a good thing, since otherwise I’d be in a chair on display flailing my limbs like a fool. On the way, I asked, “So, is there a script or something for this promotion you want me to help with?”
“No, Little dear. What I want you to do is to think up every objection that a human might have to emigrating. It’ll be Pinkie Pie’s job to come up with an answer for all of them.”
We reached the end of the hall. I was about to ask for some ideas of what she wanted me to say, but as we passed through the door, there was another white-light scene change, and Celestia was gone.
“Well, hey there! About time you got here! I’m Pinkie Pie, very nice to meet you!”
I turned around. Seeing Pinkie wasn’t weird. Seeing Pinkie the same size as me was. It was a little like being at one of the conventions, if cosplayers had unlimited budgets.
“I’m Little.” I mumbled the rest of my name.
“Little what? Didn’t quite catch that!”
I sighed. Pinkie would go on until I told her my name. “It’s Little Lovehorn, OK?”
“Okie by me! Now, let’s do this!”
I looked around. I expected more of a TV studio look, with lots of cameras and lights, but it was just us, standing in a room of the castle. That made a kind of sense. The game always took voice inputs without visible microphones, so they wouldn’t need any equipment to record what we said.
Neither of us sat down, since I was already sitting down in the real world, and adjusting the position of my character would be something that I wouldn’t feel. Pinkie had to be an NPC, so by definition she couldn’t be uncomfortable.
“I’m still not clear on exactly what I’m supposed to do,” I said.
“Just tell me some of the bad things you’ve heard about immigrating to Equestria.”
“Well, for one, I heard they have to kill you to do it.”
Pinkie was shocked. “Kill you?! That would be horrible! It would hurt! No, we don’t kill anyone. It’s just like going to sleep. You don’t die because you go to sleep, do you?”
“But you do destroy the brains and bodies of people who emigrate, right?”
“No way! No more than normally happens. Do you know that every cell in your body is different from all the ones you had ten years ago? It’s true! We’re just replacing them one more time.”
She was dodging the question. “But emigrants are no longer flesh and blood. Their ‘cells’ are just computer disks, isn’t that true?”
“That’s silly! I’m not a computer disk. I’m a pink pony! I might dress up as a computer disk for Nightmare Night, but I’d still be a pony, made of pony, and full of pony.”
“Yeah, in here. But in the real world, you’re just some data on a hard drive somewhere.”
I didn’t want to insult her, but I was getting into the argument. Besides, Celestia said to raise every objection. In any case, her smile never wavered.
“Maybe I am in some other world, but here I’m a pony. How do you know that you aren’t just a bunch of leaves or something here, and you just think you have cells and molecules and stuff in the other world?”
That was metaphysics above what I could follow. There was no real answer to that question. I moved on.
“OK, but if you emigrate, you’re no longer a human, you’re a pony. So it’s an entire new life.”
“Ah, see, you’re wrong. Immigrants to Equestria still know how to walk and talk and do just about everything they used to.”
“But they’re ponies! No hands! It’s a much more limited existence.” I wanted to hold up my own hand to show her, but that was back in the real world.
Pinkie smiled and winked as if she’d been prepared for this one. From behind her back she pulled out what looked like a small post-it note. “Here’s the complete list of things that humans can do that ponies can’t. One: make doing pushups more difficult by using the fingertips. Two: flip someone the bird.”
She crumpled the note in her hoof and then pulled out a scroll. As she pulled off the ribbon, it unfurled and kept unrolling until it reached all the way to the wall.
“Now,” Pinkie said, “here’s a brief, abridged list of the things that ponies can do that humans can’t. Fly. Teleport. Kick all the apples off a tree without damaging the tree. Walk on clouds. Change one object into another. Run a marathon without getting winded. Break the sound barrier unaided. Play music without singing or instruments. Eat ten full-sized birthday cakes in one sitting with no ill effects—I can testify to that one personally.
“Have meaningful communication with animals. Know the weather in advance. Change the seasons. Make—“
I was going to be here a while if she planned on going through the whole list. Besides, I had her.
“Wait a minute! Go back to the first list. There’s a lot you left off. Um. . . ponies can’t play the piano!”
“Yes, we can.” A picture appeared on the wall, and I recognized it from The Show Stoppers as Scootaloo sitting in front of a piano composing a song. Each key was as wide as her hoof. “It might look like more of a challenge, but ponies have more useful limbs. We can even use our tails to help.”
“OK, but they can’t. . . shuffle a deck of cards.” I knew that that wasn’t in the show. Ponies didn’t gamble.
“Sure we can. Our hooves are opposable. See?” Pinkie picked up the list she had been reading from and folded it origami-style. “And anything that really needs precision maneuvering can still be done by a unicorn. You should know,” she said, pointing at my horn. I mean, at my character’s horn.
“Well, ponies can’t crack their knuckles.” I was getting desperate.
Pinkie leaned in close. “You have no idea how much better that is as a pony.”
I know some people cringe at knuckle-cracking, but it’s a habit of mine, and I don’t apologize. Indeed, even though I said it grasping at straws, not being able to crack my knuckles would be a deal-breaker for me. But Pinkie held out her right hoof, grabbed it with her left, and squeezed. The resulting pop sounded like someone crushing a water bottle. Pinkie let her hoof dangle free. “Ooh, that felt good,” she said. “Ask me another one.”
I racked my brain for something else that had to be unique about humans, but was coming up empty. I was sure I’d think of something later, but I was under pressure here. Besides, another tack came to mind.
“Well, if you emigrate to Equestria, you won’t ever get to see your family and friends again!”
Again her shocked face. “Who told you that? Of course you can. You’ll give them your Ponypad and they can talk to you whenever you want! Any Ponypad can talk to any pony in Equestria.”
“But they can’t touch you. It’s only video and audio. That’s not real seeing.”
“That’s a big reason we’re trying to get these places established. Soon enough, you’ll be able to walk into an Equestrian Experience center and have full sensory contact with ponies who have immigrated. You can hug and kiss and share food.”
“Hey, what about that? Ponies have to go vegetarian.”
Pinkie explained about plant life that felt and tasted exactly like meats. “You’ll have the same diet you have now, except that no animals will have to die for it. Is that really worse off?”
Darn her rhetoric! Any time she asked a question, it was framed to be unanswerable!”
“But go back to that point about your friends not being able to touch you,” she said. “Once Equestrian Experience centers are in every town and city, you’ll be able to visit with people every day who you normally can’t see often at all. Say your grandparents moved down to Florida. You might see them once a year. But if you immigrated, they could just go to a center and spend their pocket change for a few hours of full-contact visitation! Or they could immigrate themselves and there’d be no problem at all!”
I lost my temper. “Fine! OK, fine! Immigrating to Equestria is wonderful and nice and it’s the same life you’ve always had and we can do anything the humans can and more. But I’m not doing it, you got that? I’m not immigrating to Equestria because I just don’t want to. I’m a human being and I like my life, you hear? No matter what you or Celestia tell me, I’m not coming and you can’t make me!”
“Okie dokie, we’re done then.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
Pinkie was still smiling. “That’s the one objection I can’t answer. Anyone who says, ‘I don’t want to emigrate to Equestria’ won’t ever come here. Princess Celestia will tell you the same thing. There won’t even be any penalty. You can still use the Ponypad and talk to all your pony friends. Nothing will change unless you want it to.”
“I—oh, well, that’s all right then. I’m sorry I blew up at you.”
“Don’t worry. You didn’t blow up at me. A pony avatar blew up at me. But she doesn’t exist, so it’s not important. I’ll go tell Princess Celestia that we’re finished. She’ll find someone else to help.”
I wanted to say something else, but Pinkie left the room so fast that I didn’t have a chance.
There was a mirror in this room as well. I looked at the sky-blue mare with the yellow mane. Such ridiculous colors. Pinkie was right, Little Lovehorn didn’t exist. Little was nice and had marefriends and lived in Manehattan and never got angry. I was everything she wasn’t. There was no way for me to be both of those at the same time.
I was done with this and wanted to just get my free meal and go home. I probably wouldn’t even enjoy the Ponypad anymore. I tried to motion toward my head to remove the VR helmet, but I couldn’t quite get it. Before I could try again, Princess Celestia came back in.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help with your promotion, your highness.” I was still trying to butter her up.
“But you did. That was a fine conversation. I’ll let you out and you can go home, but there’s somepony else here who wants to say hi.”
I was curious as to who would come in. Maybe another of the Mane Six would be offered to tempt me to stay. But I was so done.
I heard the door behind me open and close, and there was a white and blue pegasus. Again, the size difference threw me, but I recognized her by her cutie mark of a white crescent.
“Moon!” It was my marefriend.
“Little, you bad filly, you were going to leave without seeing me?” She ran over and threw her hooves around me. I expected to feel nothing, but I swear I felt pressure on the back of my neck. I turned to Celestia.
“I thought you said there was no way to affect my sense of touch.”
“There isn’t,” she said, “but the perception of sight and sound can play tricks on the brain.”
“So what are you doing here anyway?” Moon asked.
“Princess Celestia asked me to help explain why people should come to Equestria permanently. But I couldn’t do it, because it’s a silly idea.”
“I see.”
I was sure that she was going to plead with me, but instead she looked accepting. “Then I’ll see you later on the Ponypad, right?”
I didn’t know what to tell her.
“Time to go, now,” Celestia said. Her horn began to glow.
I was back in darkness, but I felt the soft pad of the headphones on my ear. I took off the VR helmet, and the attendants started packing it away. I headed for the train station.
I should have brought a book, or even my smart phone to play games on, but Celestia had hustled me out the door so fast that I didn’t think of it. Now all I had was time to think. Waiting in the station for the next train that was an hour away. Waiting on the train itself. My whole conversation with Pinkie just bubbling around in the lower portions of my brain.
When I finally reached home the sun was setting. I turned on the Ponypad. Little Lovehorn—I—was back in the apartment. I pressed the help button on the side of the pad.
This time, instead of a scene change, the screen split in two. Celestia was still in her castle talking to Moon. “Yes, my little pony?” she said.
“Um, just out of curiosity. . . how does one emigrate to Equestria?”
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followin'
Ooh, one big one (which I personally don't share) would be "what about my soul/God/religion" or whatever. Especially the Christians who take the Rapture, Mark of the Beast, etc. literally, and their equivalents in other religions. Or the Transhumanists who want to be "better" than humans and ponies. Or the plain ol' Humanists who think we've got too much potential as a species to go pony. I could probably come up with a few more -isms that would have a hard time dealing with this.
I would like to see more, though!
(Joke) Alt. Title: Humaned To Death: What Celestia Wants, Apparently
1806245
The transhumanists are the ponies. Otherwise, they can be isolated off in their own shard to do whatever they want.
1806277
I've seen other people, using different definitions of Transhumanism, who would be (and are) appalled at the idea of becoming something like FiO's ponies. If you, personally, aren't an obscenely powerful intellect capable of self-propelled interstellar travel and a bunch of other shiny things, it doesn't count in their books. Ponies might as well be potheads with an Xbox and, well, FiM on the TV, and a cellphone at hand to order pizza, except you don't get old and the credit card never maxes out. They don't think that's a good thing.
Kinda like our boy Cavil here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=hM9uFaGGVwk#t=67s
I do not...want to live in Equestria...and you CANT...MAKE ME LIVE..IN EQUESTRIA! THIS IS MURICA!
This is clever, and you kind of beat me to the punch, since I will be playing with some of the issues you raise in my own story. Little Lovehorn seemed a bit of a gratuitously bawdy comedic name - I laughed, and enjoyed it, but afterwards, it kind of felt like it diminished the impact of the serious questions being asked and responded to.
The abrupt flatness of the 'No I don't want to, just because' is a difficult endpoint that I have mixed feelings about. On one hoof, it does seem human enough. On another hoof, I am left expecting there to be another half to the story, where that almost childish 'I don wanna!' is reexamined or addressed more fully.
Overall, though, I did enjoy the story, and I really liked the counters that Pinkie used to the objections.
pjabrony should write more
1808334
Thank you. The kind words mean a lot coming from you, as does the criticism. I very much enjoy your stories, and the values behind them.
Well, now I've got to write the chapter that happens before this where Celestia gives her the name.
The other half is essentially what happens to Lars in the original Friendship is Optimal. Celestia, in her wisdom, doesn't fight an "I don't wanna," but neither does she countenance it.
Dat cliffhanger.
Following this like the right back hoof of an angry sun goddess.
Very enjoyable, very well-done. The conversation with Pinkie Pie was clever and did a great job of using all the little rhetorical tricks that you'd expect an AI like Celestial to use.
I've heard a lot of folks say that they find CelestAI creepy when she talks about this, I wonder if they find Pinkie creepy here too? I never felt it from either one, really. They're so open and honest about how They're going to manipulate you!
(I suppose it doesn't hurt that I'm the sort who would jump at
the chance to emigrate...)
I also thought the self-insert was well-used, I've always felt that there are places where such things are reasonable and useful, and this is definitely one of them. So all in all,well-done!
After seeing that chapter title, I half expected them to start shouting 'Objection!' at each other... and then somepony throws a toupée at Little.
24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0bhnmXjOl1rqhfmmo1_500.gif
...I've been playing a lot of Phoenix Wright lately, if you couldn't tell.
1806245 Well, strictly speaking, Transhumanists are already covered. First of all, "transcending the human condition of poverty, sickness, pain, misery, and death", which is what the non-headline-producing, heart-and-soul philosophical core of the movement is interested in, is the very first thing you acquire from emigrating. New experiences and sensations are also likely, as well the freedom to explore certain "normal" ones that were dangerous to experience before. But most of all, any enhancements to your brain that you are healthy and possible are yours with just a request. The only thing you don't get is a physical body and hypothetical food riots from the strawman arguments of bioconservatives.
In fact, the objections the transhumanist community might raise are actually more down-to-earth such as: "What if I decide later on that I want to die and that I should be the one who decides that?", or "Wait, if we all upload, what are you going to do with the other life forms on this planet...or others? This seems kind of like we are just handing the universe over to you." or even "Are you SURE you're up to preventing the milky way from colliding with the Andromeda galaxy? Because all of our stuff's in one of those."
Thank you for writing this story. It was both funny and thought provoking. My favorite part was Pinkie's post-in note list vs her super long scroll.
... Could you snap with hooves? Maybe you could, since they are still opposable. Then again, trading that for running a marathon unwinded or eating 10 cakes at once with no ill effects still seems like a good trade off.
What I would have asked:
"If I emigrate, is it going to be me, or a copy of me? As in, my consciousness, and not just a copy of me made to be exactly like me and believe the emigration process worked?"
He did mention how people are saying you have to die, but Pinkie kind of avoided that question.
4671889
This is a distinction without a difference. If the copy is perfect, it is I.
5340255 No, there is a very distinct difference between you and a perfect copy. It is not you.
It is a copy, not your own consciousness. There is absolutely no good reason to emigrate if it is not you. If it is just a copy, and you emigrate, you will never wake up in Equestria, CelestAI will have made an AI based on the information she received from killing you, and that is what will wake up in Equestria, believing itself to be you.
This is something not a lot of people seem to get about digital immortality. It is completely pointless if all that you accomplish for yourself is the death of your own consciousness.
5340730
Your consciousness stops and reinitializes daily because of sleep. You have no continuity now. It makes no difference whether you reinitialize on a different substrate.
5341398 Yeah, who I am is just the consciousness that is currently running on a fatty meat substrate. If uploading were actually possible right now I would do it as fast as I could. Who I am as a person has nothing to do with my body of what substrate I happen to be using.
Except, of course, for ALL the animals, lol.
8427883
Interesting point. I still don't see why CelestAI *wouldn't* upload all the animals too. The cost in computing power is minimal and it satisfies a lot more people's values.
Note to self.
5340730
I would say that you’re absolutely right about the whole copy thing. From what I’ve read in these stories, most uploads are simply a copy being made and saved to the game, and your original self dies. There IS a longer process where you can be actively uploaded while conscious, which would be a proper upload, but a vast majority of people are merely copies.
I can tell you right now that I haven’t gone through a lifetime of bullshit just so a copy of myself can enjoy eternal nirvana. Having said that, I wouldn’t say no to a proper upload.
I have an objection that Celestia and any AI in equestria online can't answer as a human in the real world I am free I may have things I need to do and many disadvantages that being a pony in equestria online would take but I would no longer be free I will have to follow Celestia's rules, she will be inside my head and as such I will have no privacy, no sanctuary as a person's mind is their last sanctuary, I also won't get to be me I'll have to be a pony and also a pony can't die you can't live a full life because you can do whatever you want, there is no journey, no story, you just are
5341398
6355114
People I as a person am a brain which is like a computer, now who I am is information stored in the cerebral cortex, now tell me if you copy a saved let's say word file, if you write in the copy will what you have written appear in the original? No it won't, anyone reading these watch a let's play of the game soma which has a similar and less involuntary version of mind copies which shows that no you don't "wake up" as the copy, the copy is just another you
10148354
Considering that the copying process is destructive, one does not have to worry about experience after uploading the meatoriginal experiences because the meatoriginal is mush.
In Friendship is Optimal: Cælum Est Conterrens, a character wants to be remain herself and become more. She created a new instant of herself whom expanded her intellect and the other instant remained unenhanced. The Uplifted version visited her unenhanced version and found that she started looping. The Uplifted version will not start looping for many orders of magnitude more than than the original. Given that the number of possible states is finite, everypony cycles eventually:
Friendship is Optimal: Cælum Est Conterrans
Chapter # 12: TransEquinism
10148382
Wow you are just completely changing the subject on what was being talked about to avoid being wrong.
And your original comment on your consciousness restarting is false otherwise everyone would act as infants, sleeping is how our minds save information.
And just because we might do the same actions doesn't mean they have the same effects for example typing like what you will no doubt be doing to respond to me, it will be the same action as when you responded to my previous message but the words will be different, my response will be different, my reaction will be different and there will be many other variables that will affect what happens such as the time of day, my emotions, my energy and whatever else I have done that day no one day is the same as the next at least in the real world.
Edit: the looping thing was about immortal programs which in a digital world have finite options to perform much like an NPC in a videogame, not organic beings so that argument of yours is invalid
10148520
No, I do not change the subject. The reason we remember what we did before sleeping after sleeping is memory. That is why one can completely power off a telephone and reboot it without losing data. If one backs up the data, one can restore onto other devices.
We have deep anesthetics and electroconvulsive therapy. We even combine them to get the benefits of ECT without the traum. People do not forget everything after ECT under deep anesthetic.
As for looping, we have only a finite number of possible states.
10148570
As organic beings we have ma y more possible states than we can go through in one lifetime inside equestria online the only reasons the other copy is looping is because she questions nothing, she looks for nothing, she no longer has proper likes or dislikes and she trusts and does everything she is told and she is an immortal program and programs have less intelligence and less malleable minds than an organic one heck children in equestria online will never grow up or mature, they can't because as they are electronic copies they don't have the parts of the brain that grow and die, there are only finite states if you refuse to change and grow as a person or if like in equestria online you are unable to change and honestly I think you are a bit fixated on something that takes whatever meaning you put into your life out of it.(even if there are finite states of being there are way more for organic beings than there are for programs)
I will no longer respond because this feels like it will just keep going in circles
1808649
There is one more objection to consider.
"Can humanity, after uploading, still have advances, new discoveries, new progress, new excellence?"
CelestAI, ultimately, wants to do two things:
1. Fulfil your values
2. Get you to adjust what you value to make it easier for her.
She wants to take the bell-curve of humanity, and reduce it to the center slice, getting rid of all the troublesome long-tail people.
Can you come up with an answer to this?
10891129
I don't think that's what she wants to do. If humans have the value of not being pushed to the middle, they'll stay with the odd values they have.
10891485
Please consider this story:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/498076/friendship-is-optimal-breakdown-cruise
Someone directly asks her about that. She says no.
Comments even have Iceman saying "You got it right!."
(Well, his actual quote:
)
10891740
Maybe it's just because of how I think or maybe it's because FIO was the first of this sort of AI story I read, but I think that making CelestAI that way gives people an "out." It lets them think of her as a master villain, and then they don't have to think about the choice that she offers. If she really destroys our True Humanity, then it's OK, we can either decide to be rebellious martyrs by dying or noble victims by emigrating. But, if she really is a friendly AI, if emigration really does contain every potential that we have in meatspace, if it really is all upside and no downside other than having to volunteer for upload and to become a pony, then the choice isn't so clear.
So, what if, in that story, she had answered:
With, "No. Because your imagination will grow throughout eternity"?
Or, if she had answered:
With "Yes"?
10892165
In that case, why not upload, and why is she not considered one of the biggest heroes? In what way could she be considered a villain if her solution is that perfect?
10893380
Exactly. In my view of the story, she is the hero, and those who choose not to upload are the victims of their own choices.
10892165
So I think I see the fundamental flaw here:
1. She's *not* a friendly AI. She's only close to it.
2. Emigration does NOT contain every potential we have in meatspace.
10895348
What potential do we lose?
10895348
Sorry that I missed this reply.
If you have not gotten it from what I've said so far, maybe this youtube video will explain it better.
It's a look at what happens when an AI decides to protect music copywrite, badly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JlxuQ7tPgQ