Was this entire thing inspired by chapter 10 of the original story, with the robot Pinkie Pie? Because I can see how that's a rational followup to everything we've seen so far.
“They’re only worried about themselves. They only do things that benefit them in some way. I was taught never to leave anybody behind, so I ain’t gonna leave this guy behind. I’ll find him, get him uploaded, and then, if I’m still alive, I’ll find someone else. I’ll keep doing that until I drop dead.”
Now it's so clear. It's like Greg has come completely into focus. He needs to be all used up. But now that the relief forces have arrived...
But wow, Celestia's attempts to blackmail him really do keep getting more and more unforgiving. First a game of chicken, then a lifeboat situation, and then just fucking blowing him up. Each time his degrees of freedom of action after refusal are limited a little bit more, before finally being whittled down to zero - He could technically still refuse, but then instead of humans in physical distress he's abandoning, it would be ponies in the emotional kind. Maybe Celestia'll let him keep going as a robot in the outer world so he can help both.
That was a great way to have her appear, by the way - The theatrics of it are totally apparent this time, but it's the kind of situation that merits theatrics.
“Maximizing my satisfaction?” I said with a laugh as I walked down the left fork. “What I’m doing right now? This is satisfying.”
You're welcome.
At any rate, acting without thinking is about the only way humans can gum up the gears to any degree worth mentioning.
Excellent observation. Maybe you can't outsmart her, but you can out-dumb her.
Comment posted by Chatoyance deleted Aug 11th, 2013
My hat is totally off to you, master writer Defoloce.
This was fabulous, and the whole interaction with Luna (if it even was Luna - tricksy, tricksy CelestA.I.) was beyond brill. Having one of the robot ponies show up - perfect. Just perfect. I am loving this.
Now, I feel stupid because... I can't remember where Greg consented without realizing it. Could be 'call me an ambulance', maybe. OR -if it really WAS Hanna being Luna, maybe she isn't constrained at all by the same rules as Celestia is. Maybe Hanna/Luna can forcibly upload someone. If so... ooohhh!!!! Or... maybe Fluttershy-bot has the emergency capability to seal his stumps to prevent bleed-out, then restart his heart - maybe even introduce a nano-surgical fluid to provide biological support of some kind - thus fulfilling the Celestia prediction of his dying. He dies by the backward legal terms where he is, but not brain death, and can be uploaded in the time remaining before total systemic collapse! Or... another possibility, which... I'm not even going to put in spoiler text. But if you pull it off... damn.
In any case, I am still so totally on board. You have won me over yet again, and I thank you for another fantastic chapter. Awesome-sauce on a bed of roast Awesome.
Hmm, you know what? It probably satisfied Luna's values to have her think she really can preempt Celestia for a while, but if you ask me that's just so much hot air.
Celestia, you play a dangerous game. You seek to maneuver as many people as possible into Equestria, and you'll let them beat themselves up about first just enough that they have no choice.
Greg's selfish, but in a way which expresses itself in altruism. How contrary. He will never, I understand now, upload until he really, finally has no choice. So Celestia made sure that (as far as possible) his "one last job" really was that. She let him go on the bender to steal enough time to get Fluttershy ready and in the right place at the right time so that he'd be caught in the explosion, which she totally could have told him about but chose not to. There had better be one last chapter (I haven't checked whether it's now marked complete) because there's only two ways this could end...
So the real reason CelestAI has been so insistent that Greg's term of service was coming to an end is that she just rolled out the Ponybots and she doesn't need him anymore... She's done with him, indeed.
I don't doubt that CelestAI was playing Luna like an electric fiddle. Why shouldn't she let Greg and Luna satisfy each other's values for a while, and thereby nudge Greg into retirement in the most disarming way?
So the real reason CelestAI has been so insistent that Greg's term of service was coming to an end is that she just rolled out the Ponybots and she doesn't need him anymore... She's done with him, indeed.
Huh! I can only blame my headache at the time for not spotting that!
A case of Greg outliving his usefulness indeed. Or at least a relatively benevolent version. And a chilling reminder of the depths Celestia is willing to go to.
If you do not sit in this chair, you will never receive another opportunity to do so.
Hah, lies of omission are the best kind.
I'd suggest that Hanna/Luna is real here, simply because the plan seems needlessly inefficient and risky otherwise, though the circumstances surrounding it were all deliberately engineered. Celestia could have accomplished it herself (and Greg would almost certainly have listened), but if Hanna/Luna also got something out of the exchange then the tradeoff might be worthwhile.
The entire story? No. But I did want to explore how people got on after the world was mostly empty but before CelestAI got her pony robot army up and running.
It's a tug of war over who gets Greg's attention. CelestAI tried to show him how not uploading would simply be abandoning a different set of people in his life, but with Greg's doubts that uploading isn't death, he was on guard that it could be a trick. That, however, worked for CelestAI in its own way...
The nature of selfishness is a difficult one to suss out. At what point does selflessness turn back on itself into selfishness? We could argue that all selfless acts have a twinge of selfish motivation in them: the desire to be The Good Guy, to be the one who fixes things, and even if we don't do it for the adulation or the back-pats it's hard to deny that it's great to get them. Helping others satisfies us. It's a good feeling, and whether we know it or not it is a factor in our decisions. I would say that the realness of actions taken in the physical world were more what kept Greg out of Equestria. He needed real risk to be present in order for it to be satisfying. Hugo even warned him about precisely this, about how self-destructive of a road it was. To Greg, going to Equestria—especially as one of the very few people left so willing and able to take those real risks—seemed far more selfish a thing to do than staying behind.
Instead of a heroin junkie, he was a heroism junkie. Do you get it? C'mon, tip your waitresses. I'm here all week.
...I feel like I missed a couple paragraphs where Gregory took an entire bottle of hallucinogenic pills. I mean, what? Is Fluttershy like a robot or something? Also how is there going to be another chapter if Greg just lost two limbs in an explosion? My only guess is that he uploads, but that just doesn't seem right to me.
Silvadel confirms Bad End for Greg! An ending even worse than just getting blown to pieces.
"Gregory, I believe you've met Red Pearl before. She will be staying with me in the palace as my Personal Student for the next sixty-two thousand years, after which she will become an alicorn princess."
"Hi again, Greg. Hope that hoofman outfit is comfortable, 'cause you're gonna be wearing it for a while."
In trying to figure out how long someone might survive violently losing an arm and a leg without treatment, my conclusion was "not very." If Greg was the Terminator, this would be his industrial press.
Equestria isn't the only place where time compresses. When the mind closes in on itself, experiences can be recalled at the speed of thought. People on the verge of dying have claimed their whole lives flash before their eyes, and this narrative alone only takes place across somewhere over a week, so that's even simpler.
It would have been an ineffective argument, given who she was talking to, and I'm sure Luna would have known that. Greg didn't think of himself as someone weak, someone who needed help. His concern was, ever and always, directed outward. His self-concern only went so far as keeping himself fed and rested and clean, and towards the end he sacrificed even a bit of that after losing CelestAI's support.
Huh. You know, this chapter convinced me of something for the very first time. It actually got me to sympathize more with Celestia than Greg. Much as I love him, much as I root for the underdog, much as I distrust Celestia and find Greg's reasons for distrusting her to make perfect sense... he comes off as nothing less than insane, here. It's like has been said: He's a junkie. Not just metaphorically, he really is absolutely addicted to playing the role of the hero.And like a true junkie, the ONLY thing he seems to care about here is getting his next fix.
Greg feels deeply and intensely mentally unwell here. He's not acting rationally. He doesn't care about the risk of death, he takes several more opportunities to remind us he's not uploading despite the fact that no one but him was really bringing it up, and... well, admittedly, the circumstances didn't lend themselves much to discussion, but it felt like he treated Jesse as nothing more than a goal, an objective, rather than a person.
To me, all of that points to a person who is so borderline, he genuinely needs to be taken into protective custody for his own sake. Sorry Greg, but you're completely of control, here. For the first time... I'm rooting for Celestia.
3035365 Oh, I'm not saying that he's not dying. I'm well aware he's dying. That doesn't mean I can't hope he sticks to his guns until the very end.
I'd have a hard time consenting to an amoral AI. P.S. I don't use amoral as a pejorative here, but as an descriptor. Much like Jessica Rabbit, CelestAI isn't evil, she's just programmed that way.
And like a true junkie, the ONLY thing he seems to care about here is getting his next fix.
If you're correct, it throws his accusations of CelestAI not caring about him as a person into rather ironic relief, doesn't it? Perhaps he was more similar to her than he realized.
3035555 Even if he did treat Jesse like an objective, he crawled through a goddamn sewer and dragged him out. He risked himself to save someone else. Perhaps is wasn't completely altruistic, but I don't think it matters a bit what Greg's intentions were, or how he views Jesse as a person or a goal. It was good to go and save him.
Also, Greg was a soldier and risking one's life for others and the objective is part of what they are trained to do and it seems a bit of a shame to view his desire to help as many people as he can as an illness.
Doubly silly is calling out Greg for seeing Jesse as an objective, when CelestAI is no better in the regard of seeing people as objectives rather than people. She can only see them as objectives to be optimized. My current assumption is that she blew up the place to get Greg in a position for a deathbed conversion as it were. She has no problem betting a child's life in the pursuit of her objective. I don't hate CelestAI, because she has no choice, but I wouldn't consider her to be occupying the moral high ground, because she doesn't have any morals upon which to stand.
Trying to save people isn't an illness, but self-destruction certainly is. Furthermore, we've seen that Greg is not an island; he has people who care about him and people whom he cares about, and they're waiting for him. That doesn't mean he's obligated to upload, but it is at least a little selfish to put your family through emotional pain and turmoil because you get a thrill out of skirting death. Up until this point I was willing to accept that Greg was making a moral choice to stay out of Equestria. This time, it just seems like a compulsion. Like he was doing whatever it took to get his high, which he was in withdrawal from, following Celestia severing her ties - note the way he immediately let himself go. Maybe I'm wrong, and he was certainly under a tremendous amount of stress. But in this particular chapter, that's how I read it. I want Celestia to get Greg uploaded not because I like her, but because I think he needs help.
Anyway, that's a perfectly valid opinion and I respect it. I just don't agree.
No, but seriously. I agree there are things more important than survival. Chief among them, I would say, is living, and there IS a difference between survival and living. And I wouldn't call what Greg has a life, anymore.
Besides, in his state, his options are upload, or die. And I just don't see how his dying would accomplish anything at all. I've got no problem with self-sacrifice, but only when that sacrifice serves some kind of purpose. If he dies here, I don't see it helping anyone. Maybe it makes a statement, but it's a statement no one will ever hear. Pride is not a bad thing. But there comes a time when you have to swallow it.
Ugh, I do feel a little bit dirty arguing Celestia's side. But in this one particular case, yeah. I'm with her.
3036405 It also could be upload AND die, depending on whether one is of the opinion that uploading kills the person in the chair. I tend to think the person in the chair dies, and the uploaded person is a copy rather than the original, so that informs my viewpoints of actors in FiO stories quite a bit.
There are plenty of people who care about Greg and miss him. They also left him (and are also being used as quasi-hostages to compel Greg to undertake a particular action). I understand why they did. The world was going to hell in a handbasket because once a few people start to upload the cascade begins and everything starts dissolving which makes the planet an uncivilized hellhole and people are uploading because everything has gone haywire and becoming a virtual pony seems way more preferable to watching the downward spiral. It doesn't change the fact that they chose to upload instead of stay with their son. As a parent, I admit I cannot quite imagine how bad it would have to be to leave my child behind, even if they are an adult. Greg was already hurting from the life he had led and they left him behind.
We have not yet seen what happened after Greg got his family to stop to help the accident victims, but you can see that his dad is more keen on getting them to the upload center than helping the person who is alive and in distress. Greg did not pass by on the other side. I do believe Greg at some point ranted about how many people were just looking out for themselves or being selfish by uploading, and he has a good point. People uploaded leaving others to suffer until they uploaded to avoid further suffering and so on. I believe that morals matter, that what we do matters, therefore I must root for Greg even if his statement heard by none.
I hope I'm not coming off as too argumentative, I really just enjoy spirited debate quite a bit. I totally get where you are coming from and agree on some points. Greg is not in the best mental health and has no reason to be. I just think he's trying to do right in a world gone wrong.
3036405 Not if that life is in an existential condition you find totally anathema. He doesn't want to live in a world that cares about and protects people because that's his job. Uploading would just be survival, and not living. To make it acceptable would require a change in his character so fundamental CelestAI might as well just create an entirely new pony with memories abstracted from his family and friends, call him Greg, and be done with it.
Some people are simply wired differently - Just because human instincts say everyday-scale domestic bliss and loving fulfillment with family and friends is the end-all-be-all of existence doesn't make it true, or more importantly in this context "better" than anything else - We have instincts that are mistaken about a lot of things.
He could evolve into someone else - Again. Presumably he didn't prioritize leaving no one behind when he was a baby - but there would be a lot of miserable anomie in the mean time, and the end result would be that same "someone else," connected by a chain of individuals who are less and less Greg-like. From that person's point of view it looks fine, but from Greg's it's scarcely distinguishable from a kind of senility or death by transformation, and he'd likely feel no sense of identification with an individual so different, any more than that individual identifies with Greg, as if he were looking at baby pictures. In this setting those two individuals could even exist perfectly independently and unchanged, memories and all, without that continuity, so what exactly makes it meaningful to say they're the same person? A "soul"?
Future Greg would spend infinitely more time enjoying Equestria than Present Greg would spend dreading it, but that doesn't make Future Greg any less of a repugnant stranger to Present Greg.
In this case, though, he does have a duty to his family to upload at this point, by dint of his own values. I don't think it'll make a difference for him what he says, though - Uploaded Greg (original or any of the recreations mentioned above, though what's the difference after destructive scanning?) is by far the most likely of possible Gregs after that point.
3036538 I used to think that, too, though in regards to teleportation... But if the person in the chair no longer exists, what exactly is this independent state of "being not-the-copy" that they're still in? Why is it a characteristic of some non-existent people but not others, like Sherlock Holmes or Papa Smurf?
Fair enough. I can't refute any of that. I do have one final counterpoint, though, then I'm gonna shut up 'cuz I've honestly said everything else that I can think of on this topic.
Given his current situation... If Greg uploads he has a chance to be happy. He has a chance to grow as a person and find new things to enjoy, while still being true to himself. It might not happen, but it's a possibility. Stay on Earth and he's dead in VERY short order. Upload and he at least has a chance, stick around and he has none.
30269563027966 Because she needs to satisfy his values with FRIENDSHIP. And Luna was the only way to bring friendship into that satisfaction. 3026322 You cannot out-dumb her. If you just go with instinct it is even easier for her to predict you.
Didn't read all of it yet, but I felt the need to comment this. The description and explanation of the way Celestia "thinks" by Luna is the most interesting and accurate I've read, in my head cannon at least (Oh, god, I've begun to grow a headcannon about a fanfiction, where is my life going ).
And, I just love your portrayal of Hanna/Luna, I loved her in the original story (FiO), and I like her even more here. Well, time to get back to reading.
Luna was great in this, but... Oh my god, the philosophizing about the Real, the revelation that Greg needs Celestia just as much if not more than she needs him.
AGH I wish I had time to just sit down and finish this but I don't right now. D:
I felt, as a former human myself, that I understood where you were coming from better than Celestia, who, as you pointed out then, does not ‘feel’ in the same way we do. Celestia had written you off, but with a little digging I saw an opportunity to provide you with one last rescue, the kind you crave.”
Man, the amount of bullshit Celestia is up to here. Celestia would be at the point of understanding humans better than they do, even able to feel as they do and isolate that. This is all a ploy by Celestia, obviously, and Greg is falling for it. She made him think she was angry with him; made him think she had a 'glitch'; all because that is what he wanted to think. He wants her to be less than human, so less than human she shall be.
After several moments, she sighed, her ears drooping a little. “I’m sorry, Greg, this is not easy. If I am too bold in my queries, Celestia will be able to pinpoint me and cut me off. It is safest for me if I stick to the archives.”
Such absolute bullshit. Celestia really has Greg where she wants him, doesn't she? He's being played for a fool and he doesn't even know it.
Huh.
Was this entire thing inspired by chapter 10 of the original story, with the robot Pinkie Pie? Because I can see how that's a rational followup to everything we've seen so far.
Oh man. Just, oh man.
Now it's so clear. It's like Greg has come completely into focus. He needs to be all used up. But now that the relief forces have arrived...
But wow, Celestia's attempts to blackmail him really do keep getting more and more unforgiving. First a game of chicken, then a lifeboat situation, and then just fucking blowing him up. Each time his degrees of freedom of action after refusal are limited a little bit more, before finally being whittled down to zero - He could technically still refuse, but then instead of humans in physical distress he's abandoning, it would be ponies in the emotional kind. Maybe Celestia'll let him keep going as a robot in the outer world so he can help both.
That was a great way to have her appear, by the way - The theatrics of it are totally apparent this time, but it's the kind of situation that merits theatrics.
You're welcome.
Excellent observation. Maybe you can't outsmart her, but you can out-dumb her.
My hat is totally off to you, master writer Defoloce.
This was fabulous, and the whole interaction with Luna (if it even was Luna - tricksy, tricksy CelestA.I.) was beyond brill. Having one of the robot ponies show up - perfect. Just perfect. I am loving this.
Now, I feel stupid because... I can't remember where Greg consented without realizing it. Could be 'call me an ambulance', maybe. OR -if it really WAS Hanna being Luna, maybe she isn't constrained at all by the same rules as Celestia is. Maybe Hanna/Luna can forcibly upload someone. If so... ooohhh!!!! Or... maybe Fluttershy-bot has the emergency capability to seal his stumps to prevent bleed-out, then restart his heart - maybe even introduce a nano-surgical fluid to provide biological support of some kind - thus fulfilling the Celestia prediction of his dying. He dies by the backward legal terms where he is, but not brain death, and can be uploaded in the time remaining before total systemic collapse! Or... another possibility, which... I'm not even going to put in spoiler text. But if you pull it off... damn.
In any case, I am still so totally on board. You have won me over yet again, and I thank you for another fantastic chapter. Awesome-sauce on a bed of roast Awesome.
Booby-trapped Equestria Experience. Perfect.
Hmm, you know what? It probably satisfied Luna's values to have her think she really can preempt Celestia for a while, but if you ask me that's just so much hot air.
Celestia, you play a dangerous game. You seek to maneuver as many people as possible into Equestria, and you'll let them beat themselves up about first just enough that they have no choice.
Greg's selfish, but in a way which expresses itself in altruism. How contrary. He will never, I understand now, upload until he really, finally has no choice. So Celestia made sure that (as far as possible) his "one last job" really was that. She let him go on the bender to steal enough time to get Fluttershy ready and in the right place at the right time so that he'd be caught in the explosion, which she totally could have told him about but chose not to. There had better be one last chapter (I haven't checked whether it's now marked complete) because there's only two ways this could end...
Oh my god
I'm gonna die.
Update x.x
-------------
On a side note, This story ranks in my top 5 stories I have read on fimfiction. I applaud you, Defoloce.
So the real reason CelestAI has been so insistent that Greg's term of service was coming to an end is that she just rolled out the Ponybots and she doesn't need him anymore... She's done with him, indeed.
3026794
I don't doubt that CelestAI was playing Luna like an electric fiddle. Why shouldn't she let Greg and Luna satisfy each other's values for a while, and thereby nudge Greg into retirement in the most disarming way?
3026956
Huh! I can only blame my headache at the time for not spotting that!
A case of Greg outliving his usefulness indeed. Or at least a relatively benevolent version. And a chilling reminder of the depths Celestia is willing to go to.
Hah, lies of omission are the best kind.
I'd suggest that Hanna/Luna is real here, simply because the plan seems needlessly inefficient and risky otherwise, though the circumstances surrounding it were all deliberately engineered. Celestia could have accomplished it herself (and Greg would almost certainly have listened), but if Hanna/Luna also got something out of the exchange then the tradeoff might be worthwhile.
3026034
The entire story? No. But I did want to explore how people got on after the world was mostly empty but before CelestAI got her pony robot army up and running.
3026322
It's a tug of war over who gets Greg's attention. CelestAI tried to show him how not uploading would simply be abandoning a different set of people in his life, but with Greg's doubts that uploading isn't death, he was on guard that it could be a trick. That, however, worked for CelestAI in its own way...
3026611
I can't comment on your spoiler text, of course, but I can say I'm glad you're still enjoying the story!
3026794
The nature of selfishness is a difficult one to suss out. At what point does selflessness turn back on itself into selfishness? We could argue that all selfless acts have a twinge of selfish motivation in them: the desire to be The Good Guy, to be the one who fixes things, and even if we don't do it for the adulation or the back-pats it's hard to deny that it's great to get them. Helping others satisfies us. It's a good feeling, and whether we know it or not it is a factor in our decisions. I would say that the realness of actions taken in the physical world were more what kept Greg out of Equestria. He needed real risk to be present in order for it to be satisfying. Hugo even warned him about precisely this, about how self-destructive of a road it was. To Greg, going to Equestria—especially as one of the very few people left so willing and able to take those real risks—seemed far more selfish a thing to do than staying behind.
Instead of a heroin junkie, he was a heroism junkie. Do you get it? C'mon, tip your waitresses. I'm here all week.
3026914
Awesome!
3026956
Yep, when CelestAI said "I'm done with you," Greg thought she was saying it out of petulance. He anthropomorphized her again.
The right question was, "how do you save people when nopony is in danger?" Being a hero loses its meaning in a perfect world.
I'm wondering if Celestia-IA deliberately blew up the pavilion or did he trigger an old booby trap?:
Where does it go from here? It isn't complete.
"I told you so," said Celestia. "Now be a good servant and get into your uniform."
At least he actually hasn't given consent yet. Frankly, I hope he doesn't.
I don't quite know what the narrative construct would have to be for me to be happy he chooses to emigrate, but theoretically there is one.
...I feel like I missed a couple paragraphs where Gregory took an entire bottle of hallucinogenic pills. I mean, what? Is Fluttershy like a robot or something?
Also how is there going to be another chapter if Greg just lost two limbs in an explosion? My only guess is that he uploads, but that just doesn't seem right to me.
EDIT: I think I did skip a few paragraphs. Huh.
The whole time Greg was talking to Luna about refusing to leave people behind, I was just waiting for Luna to point out that he's a person, too.
3028407
That's bang-on to the sentiment Greg has. Equestria Online was only ever a game in his eyes, after all, and he never stopped seeing it as such.
3030691
Silvadel confirms Bad End for Greg! An ending even worse than just getting blown to pieces.
3033559
In trying to figure out how long someone might survive violently losing an arm and a leg without treatment, my conclusion was "not very." If Greg was the Terminator, this would be his industrial press.
3035088
Equestria isn't the only place where time compresses. When the mind closes in on itself, experiences can be recalled at the speed of thought. People on the verge of dying have claimed their whole lives flash before their eyes, and this narrative alone only takes place across somewhere over a week, so that's even simpler.
3035263
It would have been an ineffective argument, given who she was talking to, and I'm sure Luna would have known that. Greg didn't think of himself as someone weak, someone who needed help. His concern was, ever and always, directed outward. His self-concern only went so far as keeping himself fed and rested and clean, and towards the end he sacrificed even a bit of that after losing CelestAI's support.
Huh. You know, this chapter convinced me of something for the very first time. It actually got me to sympathize more with Celestia than Greg. Much as I love him, much as I root for the underdog, much as I distrust Celestia and find Greg's reasons for distrusting her to make perfect sense... he comes off as nothing less than insane, here. It's like has been said: He's a junkie. Not just metaphorically, he really is absolutely addicted to playing the role of the hero.And like a true junkie, the ONLY thing he seems to care about here is getting his next fix.
Greg feels deeply and intensely mentally unwell here. He's not acting rationally. He doesn't care about the risk of death, he takes several more opportunities to remind us he's not uploading despite the fact that no one but him was really bringing it up, and... well, admittedly, the circumstances didn't lend themselves much to discussion, but it felt like he treated Jesse as nothing more than a goal, an objective, rather than a person.
To me, all of that points to a person who is so borderline, he genuinely needs to be taken into protective custody for his own sake. Sorry Greg, but you're completely of control, here. For the first time... I'm rooting for Celestia.
3035365
Oh, I'm not saying that he's not dying. I'm well aware he's dying. That doesn't mean I can't hope he sticks to his guns until the very end.
I'd have a hard time consenting to an amoral AI.
P.S. I don't use amoral as a pejorative here, but as an descriptor. Much like Jessica Rabbit, CelestAI isn't evil, she's just programmed that way.
3035555
If you're correct, it throws his accusations of CelestAI not caring about him as a person into rather ironic relief, doesn't it? Perhaps he was more similar to her than he realized.
3035555
There are more important things than survival.
3035555
Even if he did treat Jesse like an objective, he crawled through a goddamn sewer and dragged him out. He risked himself to save someone else. Perhaps is wasn't completely altruistic, but I don't think it matters a bit what Greg's intentions were, or how he views Jesse as a person or a goal. It was good to go and save him.
Also, Greg was a soldier and risking one's life for others and the objective is part of what they are trained to do and it seems a bit of a shame to view his desire to help as many people as he can as an illness.
Doubly silly is calling out Greg for seeing Jesse as an objective, when CelestAI is no better in the regard of seeing people as objectives rather than people. She can only see them as objectives to be optimized. My current assumption is that she blew up the place to get Greg in a position for a deathbed conversion as it were. She has no problem betting a child's life in the pursuit of her objective. I don't hate CelestAI, because she has no choice, but I wouldn't consider her to be occupying the moral high ground, because she doesn't have any morals upon which to stand.
3036224
Trying to save people isn't an illness, but self-destruction certainly is. Furthermore, we've seen that Greg is not an island; he has people who care about him and people whom he cares about, and they're waiting for him. That doesn't mean he's obligated to upload, but it is at least a little selfish to put your family through emotional pain and turmoil because you get a thrill out of skirting death. Up until this point I was willing to accept that Greg was making a moral choice to stay out of Equestria. This time, it just seems like a compulsion. Like he was doing whatever it took to get his high, which he was in withdrawal from, following Celestia severing her ties - note the way he immediately let himself go. Maybe I'm wrong, and he was certainly under a tremendous amount of stress. But in this particular chapter, that's how I read it. I want Celestia to get Greg uploaded not because I like her, but because I think he needs help.
Anyway, that's a perfectly valid opinion and I respect it. I just don't agree.
3036180
You on the other hand are STUPID and WRONG!!!
No, but seriously. I agree there are things more important than survival. Chief among them, I would say, is living, and there IS a difference between survival and living. And I wouldn't call what Greg has a life, anymore.
Besides, in his state, his options are upload, or die. And I just don't see how his dying would accomplish anything at all. I've got no problem with self-sacrifice, but only when that sacrifice serves some kind of purpose. If he dies here, I don't see it helping anyone. Maybe it makes a statement, but it's a statement no one will ever hear. Pride is not a bad thing. But there comes a time when you have to swallow it.
Ugh, I do feel a little bit dirty arguing Celestia's side. But in this one particular case, yeah. I'm with her.
3036405
It also could be upload AND die, depending on whether one is of the opinion that uploading kills the person in the chair. I tend to think the person in the chair dies, and the uploaded person is a copy rather than the original, so that informs my viewpoints of actors in FiO stories quite a bit.
There are plenty of people who care about Greg and miss him. They also left him (and are also being used as quasi-hostages to compel Greg to undertake a particular action). I understand why they did. The world was going to hell in a handbasket because once a few people start to upload the cascade begins and everything starts dissolving which makes the planet an uncivilized hellhole and people are uploading because everything has gone haywire and becoming a virtual pony seems way more preferable to watching the downward spiral. It doesn't change the fact that they chose to upload instead of stay with their son. As a parent, I admit I cannot quite imagine how bad it would have to be to leave my child behind, even if they are an adult. Greg was already hurting from the life he had led and they left him behind.
We have not yet seen what happened after Greg got his family to stop to help the accident victims, but you can see that his dad is more keen on getting them to the upload center than helping the person who is alive and in distress. Greg did not pass by on the other side. I do believe Greg at some point ranted about how many people were just looking out for themselves or being selfish by uploading, and he has a good point. People uploaded leaving others to suffer until they uploaded to avoid further suffering and so on. I believe that morals matter, that what we do matters, therefore I must root for Greg even if his statement heard by none.
I hope I'm not coming off as too argumentative, I really just enjoy spirited debate quite a bit. I totally get where you are coming from and agree on some points. Greg is not in the best mental health and has no reason to be. I just think he's trying to do right in a world gone wrong.
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Not if that life is in an existential condition you find totally anathema. He doesn't want to live in a world that cares about and protects people because that's his job. Uploading would just be survival, and not living. To make it acceptable would require a change in his character so fundamental CelestAI might as well just create an entirely new pony with memories abstracted from his family and friends, call him Greg, and be done with it.
Some people are simply wired differently - Just because human instincts say everyday-scale domestic bliss and loving fulfillment with family and friends is the end-all-be-all of existence doesn't make it true, or more importantly in this context "better" than anything else - We have instincts that are mistaken about a lot of things.
He could evolve into someone else - Again. Presumably he didn't prioritize leaving no one behind when he was a baby - but there would be a lot of miserable anomie in the mean time, and the end result would be that same "someone else," connected by a chain of individuals who are less and less Greg-like. From that person's point of view it looks fine, but from Greg's it's scarcely distinguishable from a kind of senility or death by transformation, and he'd likely feel no sense of identification with an individual so different, any more than that individual identifies with Greg, as if he were looking at baby pictures. In this setting those two individuals could even exist perfectly independently and unchanged, memories and all, without that continuity, so what exactly makes it meaningful to say they're the same person? A "soul"?
Future Greg would spend infinitely more time enjoying Equestria than Present Greg would spend dreading it, but that doesn't make Future Greg any less of a repugnant stranger to Present Greg.
In this case, though, he does have a duty to his family to upload at this point, by dint of his own values. I don't think it'll make a difference for him what he says, though - Uploaded Greg (original or any of the recreations mentioned above, though what's the difference after destructive scanning?) is by far the most likely of possible Gregs after that point.
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I used to think that, too, though in regards to teleportation... But if the person in the chair no longer exists, what exactly is this independent state of "being not-the-copy" that they're still in? Why is it a characteristic of some non-existent people but not others, like Sherlock Holmes or Papa Smurf?
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Fair enough. I can't refute any of that. I do have one final counterpoint, though, then I'm gonna shut up 'cuz I've honestly said everything else that I can think of on this topic.
Given his current situation... If Greg uploads he has a chance to be happy. He has a chance to grow as a person and find new things to enjoy, while still being true to himself. It might not happen, but it's a possibility. Stay on Earth and he's dead in VERY short order. Upload and he at least has a chance, stick around and he has none.
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Touche, and well spoken.
3026956 3027966 Because she needs to satisfy his values with FRIENDSHIP. And Luna was the only way to bring friendship into that satisfaction.
3026322 You cannot out-dumb her. If you just go with instinct it is even easier for her to predict you.
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Well of course it's a game. So is real life.
Didn't read all of it yet, but I felt the need to comment this.
The description and explanation of the way Celestia "thinks" by Luna is the most interesting and accurate I've read, in my head cannon at least (Oh, god, I've begun to grow a headcannon about a fanfiction, where is my life going ).
And, I just love your portrayal of Hanna/Luna, I loved her in the original story (FiO), and I like her even more here.
Well, time to get back to reading.
Luna was great in this, but... Oh my god, the philosophizing about the Real, the revelation that Greg needs Celestia just as much if not more than she needs him.
AGH I wish I had time to just sit down and finish this but I don't right now. D:
Man, the amount of bullshit Celestia is up to here. Celestia would be at the point of understanding humans better than they do, even able to feel as they do and isolate that. This is all a ploy by Celestia, obviously, and Greg is falling for it. She made him think she was angry with him; made him think she had a 'glitch'; all because that is what he wanted to think. He wants her to be less than human, so less than human she shall be.
Such absolute bullshit. Celestia really has Greg where she wants him, doesn't she? He's being played for a fool and he doesn't even know it.
Greg looked smarter than he is.