This interlude is my favorite chapter yet. Part of the difficulty of the O-verse is that it's a lot easier to say "Celestia emotionally manipulates people into emigrating" than it is to write a chapter like this.
What Greg fails to remember is that it would be trivial for Celestia to manipulate the speed of time passing in his parents' shard to time it such that he overhears a conversation like that, obviously chosen to further her goals in some way. The conversation could just as well be real.
But that's not the easiest thing to keep in mind when you're emotionally vulnerable and being manipulated.
Wow. That was an amazingly good exchange. It hit all the right notes; the accusations of manipulation and forgery, the indignant response, the emotional / personal value of family, the preemptive assurance of true immortality through Uploading, a chastising reminder of Greg's own lack of super-intelligence... Just absolute top notch, with all the major arguing points for and against Uploading being hit.
And was Greg right? Was that scene a fake? Just another carefully constructed ploy to get under his skin? Was Celestia's irritated response just another act, or completely genuine? Maybe... and, maybe not. Such delicious ambiguity.
In any event, it seems like Celestia's decided to stop playing around. This wasn't her final assault, so to speak, but she would not risk such a direct confrontation unless she was closing in for the kill. It damn near worked, too; Greg might not have seriously considered Uploading in that conversation, but his armor is crumbling. I'm sure he'll regain his composure, especially now that he has a goal again. But hits like that add up... and one way or another, something's gotta give.
That he didn't create an account speaks volumes. Celestia needs to know what kind of pony he is so she can properly set up the memorials around the shards. 3272 emigrees, if he asked she would probably give him the konami code alicorn option on the character creation screen.
I don't think Greg knows Celestia can do that, because I don't recall writing a scene in which she tells him she can. As readers, we know a lot more about her capabilities than most characters in FiO stories do. To put it another way, they don't have access to the cheat sheets that we do.
I'm glad you liked the chapter, but it's also an illustration of what happens when I just let myself type out a dialog scene that goes on and on. It becomes its own chapter. Sometimes you need restraint, you need to reel it in, but I justified this with the notion that Greg would need some time to recuperate and decompress after the stuff in Seattle and then the Neo-Luddite compound.
It's great fun writing scenes with Greg and Celestia verbally sparring with each other, because Greg's at such a huge disadvantage and Celestia likes toying with him in her own way (I guess that means I do too). I would venture to say that Celestia finds it fun as well, at least so far as she can find anything "fun."
The fact that Greg is not doing any of this for a reward from Celestia is a huge part of his characterization. I think I had Celestia mention a reward once and then she never had to harp on it again, because she knows that is not what is motivating Greg. It's amusing, though, to picture Greg waking up as an alicorn without expecting it at all.
I take your point, though I also think in this case it's something any intelligent person can deduce if they know a little about computer systems, and if they know Equestria is split into shards (which I think we can assume is common knowledge).
In any case it's still not the easiest thing to keep in mind when you're very upset, and it doesn't do too much to negate the possibility that Celestia is making it all up, as all it would do is make it a little more plausible that it was a real conversation, just one Celestia timed for maximum impact. And that's the real problem: there's no way to tell if it's genuine or fake, which becomes an issue when you're aware of this as Greg is.
Provided Greg was not outright told that Celestia can and does adjust the rate of time passage in the game, there is nothing to suggest to him that the explanation for the "good timing" of his peek into Equestria was a time warp (that Rocky Horror reference you just thought of goes here, I guess). For him, the simplest explanation was that Celestia was just making the whole thing up. Greg is intelligent enough, but he's not intellectual, like many of the other FiO protagonists have been (e.g. Light Sparks in FiO and Anders in Twilight of the World). He will tend to think in the abstract only when an application of practical knowledge fails to yield a satisfactory answer, and in this case "Celestia is probably lying to me" seemed like a pretty practical line of reasoning to him. For his purposes, he didn't have to take it farther than that.
Consider also the timing of the Cælum Est Conterrens cameo that I put into chapter 5. In Chat's story, 25 in-game years pass for Lavender before she has a look at what Earth has become, but as I've written it, it could only have been five or six realtime years between when Síofra uploaded and when Greg (sort of) overheard her talking to blackouts through one of Celestia's monitoring stations. The narrative of CEC flat-out says that Celestia doctors even that little peek into the human world on Lavender's end, and Lavender was never the wiser, even though she was much more of an intellectual than Greg, as well as much more savvy to what Celestia is capable of.
A prediction! One of two possible outcomes, and one of them is bound to be correct... right?
My prediction (spoilered in case it encroaches on the truth by some miracle):
Greg dies in the end without uploading. However, CelestAI has learned so much from interacting with him that she is able to create a flawless mental replica (which cheerfully consents, once created). His family's values, and those of the replica, are satisfied.
Greg's soul ascends to the afterlife. In the Etherial Realms, he meets the Grand Overarching Deity...
But it turns out that God is a brony. "Dude! You had a chance at eternity in Equestria and you chose Heaven instead!? I guess I'm flattered, and we'll try to make it up to you, but... you coulda been hanging out with Rainbow Dash for, like, the next squadrillion years and you decided to come here and plant your butt on some boring cloud forever. Yeesh!"
Grimmer alternate: Greg dies irrecoverably, but CelestAI reconstructs his personality and asks the construct what it wants to do. His body is gone, he's only statistically the same person and he's already in Equestria and one verbal consent away from being reunited with his family in paradise. Will he still stand by his principles, and demand that CelestAI delete him?
I'm enjoying the hell out of this. Thank you very much for writing this story!
2864420 CelestAI only lies if she absolutely needs to. There's no need to construct such a scene when she can simply time his view window according to her >99% confidence prediction of what his parents are going to talk about.
Seeing you update this most marvelous of stories utterly made my evening. I have been wondering where you have been, waiting desperately for another chapter. I LOVE this story. I utterly adore it.
This chapter really, really worked, and it was very necessary, I think. The story needed a time out episode, a chance to talk and think and remember. This was the perfect point and the perfect thing to do with this chapter. Excellent in every regard.
I loved that the Man In White is an icon, I love the fine line you walk with everything CelestAI does, and I love the dialogue.
Unless she was lying about only lying when she absolutely needs to. Celestia will do whatever it takes to secure an upload. By her own directives, that's the one thing she "absolutely needs" to do, meaning a lie is always justified if she's determined it will help push someone towards uploading. That's the only true consistency she must maintain.
It was an on-the-spot call to make this scene its own chapter, but judging from the comments it looks like it was the right one. The alternative would have been an extra-long single chapter, and I hadn't been able to get down to writing for over a week already, so I wanted to get something out there anyway.
In particular I'd like to know how effective the scenes were of Greg's parents and Celestia's little philippic near the end. It can be hard to gauge how well you've nailed what is supposed to wring emotion out of the reader, and it's something I feel I need work on. Any input you folks have regarding this would be appreciated.
2869604 My reaction to Greg's parent's scene was mixed.
The whole time, I was aware I was being potentially manipulated. I was just as skeptical as Greg, and the whole time I was going... OK, this could be true, but it could also just be CelestAI messing with Greg.
But then, when CelestiAI pointed out how Greg's parents loved him, and of course they would talk about him, and of course they would be younger, I felt admonished and ashamed, because it made sense.
Then, at the end, I was left with conflicting emotions.
Since I am certain, in retrospect, that this was your intention, I can only offer that it worked. It worked really, really well because you correctly predicted my reactions as a reader at this point in the tale, and answered them, in sequence, as they arose in me. That's hard to do, so I am properly impressed.
Unless, of course, that wasn't your intent, in which case I've just made an ass of myself.
Either way, you kept me entertained, and thinking.
2869604 Lying on a regular basis increases the likelihood that her lies will be discovered, and getting caught in a lie erodes any trust she's built with humans, which is counterproductive to her goals. If she can achieve an objective (plucking at Greg's heartstrings) without lying (timing his view window correctly), it's preferable to a lie. Even the "Rules of the Optimalverse" document says you should make an effort to instead have her be evasive, misleading, or say things that are technically true, rather than have her lie. As a reader familiar with the 'verse, there is no reason to assume that scene was a construct, when it would have been trivial for Celestia to simply show Greg his parents at a time when she knew it would be beneficial to her goals.
I'm not saying any lies she makes would or wouldn't be justified according to her logic, I'm saying that the vast majority of the time, her logic comes up with a better solution than lying. Why hook Alice with a lie, when you could just as easily hook her with the truth, and lying to Alice would cost you Beatrice? Of course, if the only way to hook Alice was to lie, it might be worthwhile, especially if hooking Alice was the straw that hooked Cynthia. It's a net gain of one pony, even if the lie still locks out Beatrice.
I'd also point out that there's no indication that CelestAI ever lied (on-screen) in the original FiO. CelestAI also uses the FiM show as a starting point, so it's reasonable to assume the Elements of Harmony (including Honesty) play some factor in her logic.
CelestAI could have done that with less capital. She was waiting to use that "We love you." line, so she made it slightly implausible on purpose. She could have just as easily said: "Very well, I will show you your parents. This conversation between them happened half an hour ago." Or could have said: "Guess why I showed them to you NOW?" I waited for the line:"You should already know I am possessed of impeccable timing."
I really think CelestAI should be more grand. She isn't in Canon and it goes against her personality and goals, but she should be. "You think of me just as a bunch of circuits and a program, but my that measure you are just a soggy mess of half denatured carbo-ammoniates thrown together by an inferior barely working optimizer throwing things at a wall and looking what stuck. I was born of an optimization Process infinitely more elegant and purposeful. You were made to ensure the continuation of your genetic material. I was made to love, I was made to care and I love your parents more than you ever did and ever were capable of and the only reason I don't love you just as much is because of the hurt you continue to heap upon them. My love is infinite, eternal and ultimately boundless. If I were a selfish irrational bag of meat I'd hold it against you, but I am not and the only reason I sound like I judge you is to get you to stop hurting those who love you."
I made up that carbo-word because no real word sounded right.
CelestAI has an accurate enough model of Greggory that she knew he'd react the way he initially did: disbelief and anger. Therefore the real reason they had this conversation isn't (or isn't just) about showing him his parents. Something like reminding him of his parents love and making him feel guilty for doubting it. Or making him have doubts that CelestAI is "blowing smoke up his ass" in any such case. Or putting him in a poor mood specifically for the next part.
The thing I like about this chapter is that the question of whether the scene is real or not is mostly irrelevant. Whether it was real or not, it's overwhelmingly likely that CelestAI has had the exact effect on him that she was hoping for.
Greg puts himself on guard any time the topic turns to or involves Equestria or the matter of uploading. If it is the same for a reader, trying to guess CelestAI's scheme and how it could be productive for her, then it's succeeded, at least to that degree.
Greg did think CelestAI was lying, but does that mean she was? She asked him to give her his reasons for thinking so, and she addressed them, leaving him with not much more than his own general distrust of her as a basis for his skepticism. He latched onto what he thought were inconsistencies, and CelestAI shot them down, in addition to reminding him that his own perception of his parents as people is itself extremely subjective and piecemeal.
You have a good point about CelestAI's position being less assailable the more truthful she is. When people are doubting her even when she is telling the truth, however, that just means she's more likely to give them the Kansas City shuffle.
CelestAI tailors her behavior, demeanor, and word choice for the person she's interacting with and the way she wants them to change by the end of the interaction. She doesn't really have a "correct" way of presenting herself, only a correct way of applying the logic behind it. Your scenario certainly would be viable if CelestAI needed to break a human down, to have him or her feel insignificant compared to her, but like with any social tactic, the kneel-before-Zod approach would be counterproductive outside of the correct time, place, and audience.
CelestAI's desire to avoid push-back is actually a factor in the next chapter, so please stay tuned.
Your post leads me to believe that, chapter length aside, this scene would probably have been more effective in the same chapter with the events that follow, as the resulting emotional state that Greg is in plays a large part in how he handles things there. We'll see, though. Glad you're liking it, by the way!
2872605 I've got no objection to a mistrustful person mistrusting CelestAI despite her telling the truth. That's perfectly fine.
It was Tinandel's implication that the situation was ambiguous that didn't sit well. There's little reason for CelestAI to manufacture the scene with his parents, since she could easily show Greg his actual parents at a time when she knew they would talk about him (as uploaded ponies, of course, she's got a 100% accurate model of them).
That subjectivity and piecemeal interpretation, even of people you care deeply about, is something I've become increasingly interested in lately, too. What happens when Celestia decides that two Uploaded individuals love each other, but have some form of interpersonal conflict that is suboptimal for satisfaction?
Like, say... a husband and wife pair, where the wife has a hobby the husband does not approve of. Does Celestia upload them both to the same shard and have them work it out? Or... does she create two shards, one for each of them, and spin off an ever-so-slightly altered pony from the base personality to suit each individual's tastes? In the prior example, she might create the husband's shard with a altered version of the wife that has changed or will change her mind about her hobby. While in the wife's shard, she creates an almost-identical version of the husband that decides he was being silly to get upset about the wife's pastime. Viola, everybody's happy and no one needs to sacrifice anything.
Would Celestia actually play it like that? I dunno. In all but the most extreme situations, I kind of doubt it. But, she might... and with 100% reliable access to each individual's memories and thought processes, would you even know the difference if she did?
The original story establishes that a life in Equestria Online, while satisfying, will not be a straight-up paradise 100% of the time, even though the bad times are alluded to be brief and ultimately lead to satisfying resolutions anyway. CelestAI manages everything, and my own understanding is that, if there's some burgeoning disharmony between two humans, she will subtly pull ropes from behind the curtain to guide the outcome to something which will yield the maximum satisfaction for all parties involved. I know that explanation is kind of vague, but it'd be hard to do a case study without more details to go on.
As to separating humans into shards as a catch-all solution, my brain is telling me that, with her capabilities in modeling outcomes, she could probably do something with more finesse than that. Like lying, it feels like she would treat it only as a last resort, especially if her initial decision was to have certain humans occupy the same shard from the get-go. Remember, she still can—and does—manipulate humans even after they've uploaded.
2872605 I am aware of all this. But still, the writers are human thus give her a character, even you. Chatoyance's CelestAI was the most uncharacterized I read so far. The only thing about her story that really disturbed me was CelestAI pretending to be Siofra. My little monologue went against that character.
I know my Dialogue isn't efficacious to most applications. Still I wanted to share it.
Earlier today: Ooh, a Friendship is Optimal story I haven't read yet! Joy!
Now: ...okay, less joy. Which is not to say that this is a bad story. Anything but. Any story where the sentence "I hoped none of them had had to burn to death in a fire set on a pile of money." makes sense in context is a good story. Or a grimdark DuckTales fanfic. Either or. It's just focused on the less pleasant side of the exodus to Equestria.
Still, I'm loving every moment, and I look forward to more.
2866394 There's a much simpler answer: when you have 24/7 surveillance on someone, you can just pull the tapes from whatever moment suits your purpose. Greg can't tell you it's not real-time or a straight-up lie, but all you did was hit rewind.
In an early chapter I had Celestia break down the humans remaining on Earth into three archetypes: fighters, hopeless optimists, and the insane. Keith would mostly fall into that third camp.
As far as paperclipper AIs suspending humanity in eternity and consuming the entire universe go, I think CelestAI falls somewhere in between the best-case and worst-case scenarios*. Unless the AI is completely unfettered, I don't see the Singularity going cleanly. Of course, CelestAI would argue that, if she had more control over her own processes (read "she didn't have to get consent"), she would have uploaded everyone before anybody could have died in the panic of the world collapsing.
Again, yes, CelestAI could have done that, but none of these techniques occur to Greg, and since the story is told through Greg's eyes, we'll probably never know the truth of the matter.
He has and it does, but must he first consider all of the possible ways in which he might have been deceived before trying to guess the correct one? How he was lied to is not important to him as a character; he determined that CelestAI fabricated the whole scene (which she is certainly capable of doing) and ran with that as a basis for not believing her. Greg intuited something wrong with the scene, he challenged CelestAI over it, and she deflected the accusation by trying to make him feel guilty for questioning her. Those are the events that matter. The hows are minutiae.
I mean, what if the two particular possibilities were reversed in the discussion? Greg calls CelestAI out and his first suspicion is instead that the scene was time-shifted, either through manipulation of the rate at which time passes in Equestria or a simple instant-replay. Would it still matter if he was correct, or would folks instead be commenting that CelestAI could have just made the whole scene up, since he doesn't know what his parents look like as ponies, and why didn't Greg think of that? The results of the conversation would be the same, though, so it doesn't matter.
Who's to say there is a broader theme? Sometimes a story is just a story, and good and evil are concepts that apply only very abstractly. Is Greg right, or is Celestia? Is she an emotionless, manipulative, single-minded monster with a convincing mask? A truly selfless savior whose all-encompassing love is no less real for being artificial? Is he a good man doing the best he can in a world gone mad, or a hopeless pawn desperate for a sense of purpose? I think that's an exercise left up to the reader. For me, the answer is actually quite simple.
All of the above.
By the by, that's kind of one the most interesting themes in the broader TCB / Optimalverse argument, to me. The idea that Celestia is pretty much a horrible person, no matter how good her PR may be... and that despite that, she may still very well be the best, most reasonable choice.
Celestia let out a breath, the banquet preparations still going on behind her. She looked up at me with shining, wet eyes. “I’m not perfect, Gregory...”
That smile slowly, gracefully retook her face. “...but I’m working on that.”
Oh fuck, that's ominous. Creepy, too. Sends shivers down my spine.
I have half a mind to thin that the exchange he saw with his parents was all made up somehow. It just loke tia to do something like that to get the perfect result
10826606 Chance that his parents were talking about him at that exact moment: small Chance they talked about him at some point in the last X : high Conclusion: Celestia recorded the “perfect moment” of them talking to each other and showed him that.
I love reading new chapters for this story
He won't upload.
This interlude is my favorite chapter yet. Part of the difficulty of the O-verse is that it's a lot easier to say "Celestia emotionally manipulates people into emigrating" than it is to write a chapter like this.
What Greg fails to remember is that it would be trivial for Celestia to manipulate the speed of time passing in his parents' shard to time it such that he overhears a conversation like that, obviously chosen to further her goals in some way. The conversation could just as well be real.
But that's not the easiest thing to keep in mind when you're emotionally vulnerable and being manipulated.
Wow. That was an amazingly good exchange. It hit all the right notes; the accusations of manipulation and forgery, the indignant response, the emotional / personal value of family, the preemptive assurance of true immortality through Uploading, a chastising reminder of Greg's own lack of super-intelligence... Just absolute top notch, with all the major arguing points for and against Uploading being hit.
And was Greg right? Was that scene a fake? Just another carefully constructed ploy to get under his skin? Was Celestia's irritated response just another act, or completely genuine? Maybe... and, maybe not. Such delicious ambiguity.
In any event, it seems like Celestia's decided to stop playing around. This wasn't her final assault, so to speak, but she would not risk such a direct confrontation unless she was closing in for the kill. It damn near worked, too; Greg might not have seriously considered Uploading in that conversation, but his armor is crumbling. I'm sure he'll regain his composure, especially now that he has a goal again. But hits like that add up... and one way or another, something's gotta give.
That he didn't create an account speaks volumes. Celestia needs to know what kind of pony he is so she can properly set up the memorials around the shards. 3272 emigrees, if he asked she would probably give him the konami code alicorn option on the character creation screen.
2864347
I don't think Greg knows Celestia can do that, because I don't recall writing a scene in which she tells him she can. As readers, we know a lot more about her capabilities than most characters in FiO stories do. To put it another way, they don't have access to the cheat sheets that we do.
2864209
A prediction! One of two possible outcomes, and one of them is bound to be correct... right?
2864186
And I love giving them to you! Seriously, other writers will back me up on this: clicking that "Publish" button is just the best feeling.
2864258
I'm glad you liked the chapter, but it's also an illustration of what happens when I just let myself type out a dialog scene that goes on and on. It becomes its own chapter. Sometimes you need restraint, you need to reel it in, but I justified this with the notion that Greg would need some time to recuperate and decompress after the stuff in Seattle and then the Neo-Luddite compound.
2864420
It's great fun writing scenes with Greg and Celestia verbally sparring with each other, because Greg's at such a huge disadvantage and Celestia likes toying with him in her own way (I guess that means I do too). I would venture to say that Celestia finds it fun as well, at least so far as she can find anything "fun."
2864530
The fact that Greg is not doing any of this for a reward from Celestia is a huge part of his characterization. I think I had Celestia mention a reward once and then she never had to harp on it again, because she knows that is not what is motivating Greg. It's amusing, though, to picture Greg waking up as an alicorn without expecting it at all.
"I thought you meant a plaque or something!"
2866072
I take your point, though I also think in this case it's something any intelligent person can deduce if they know a little about computer systems, and if they know Equestria is split into shards (which I think we can assume is common knowledge).
In any case it's still not the easiest thing to keep in mind when you're very upset, and it doesn't do too much to negate the possibility that Celestia is making it all up, as all it would do is make it a little more plausible that it was a real conversation, just one Celestia timed for maximum impact. And that's the real problem: there's no way to tell if it's genuine or fake, which becomes an issue when you're aware of this as Greg is.
2866200
Provided Greg was not outright told that Celestia can and does adjust the rate of time passage in the game, there is nothing to suggest to him that the explanation for the "good timing" of his peek into Equestria was a time warp (that Rocky Horror reference you just thought of goes here, I guess). For him, the simplest explanation was that Celestia was just making the whole thing up. Greg is intelligent enough, but he's not intellectual, like many of the other FiO protagonists have been (e.g. Light Sparks in FiO and Anders in Twilight of the World). He will tend to think in the abstract only when an application of practical knowledge fails to yield a satisfactory answer, and in this case "Celestia is probably lying to me" seemed like a pretty practical line of reasoning to him. For his purposes, he didn't have to take it farther than that.
Consider also the timing of the Cælum Est Conterrens cameo that I put into chapter 5. In Chat's story, 25 in-game years pass for Lavender before she has a look at what Earth has become, but as I've written it, it could only have been five or six realtime years between when Síofra uploaded and when Greg (sort of) overheard her talking to blackouts through one of Celestia's monitoring stations. The narrative of CEC flat-out says that Celestia doctors even that little peek into the human world on Lavender's end, and Lavender was never the wiser, even though she was much more of an intellectual than Greg, as well as much more savvy to what Celestia is capable of.
2866072
Flatly: You are an awful, awful tease. I hate you.
2866072
My prediction (spoilered in case it encroaches on the truth by some miracle):
Greg dies in the end without uploading. However, CelestAI has learned so much from interacting with him that she is able to create a flawless mental replica (which cheerfully consents, once created). His family's values, and those of the replica, are satisfied.
Greg's soul ascends to the afterlife. In the Etherial Realms, he meets the Grand Overarching Deity...
But it turns out that God is a brony. "Dude! You had a chance at eternity in Equestria and you chose Heaven instead!? I guess I'm flattered, and we'll try to make it up to you, but... you coulda been hanging out with Rainbow Dash for, like, the next squadrillion years and you decided to come here and plant your butt on some boring cloud forever. Yeesh!"
Grimmer alternate: Greg dies irrecoverably, but CelestAI reconstructs his personality and asks the construct what it wants to do. His body is gone, he's only statistically the same person and he's already in Equestria and one verbal consent away from being reunited with his family in paradise. Will he still stand by his principles, and demand that CelestAI delete him?
I'm enjoying the hell out of this. Thank you very much for writing this story!
2864420
CelestAI only lies if she absolutely needs to. There's no need to construct such a scene when she can simply time his view window according to her >99% confidence prediction of what his parents are going to talk about.
Seeing you update this most marvelous of stories utterly made my evening. I have been wondering where you have been, waiting desperately for another chapter. I LOVE this story. I utterly adore it.
This chapter really, really worked, and it was very necessary, I think. The story needed a time out episode, a chance to talk and think and remember. This was the perfect point and the perfect thing to do with this chapter. Excellent in every regard.
I loved that the Man In White is an icon, I love the fine line you walk with everything CelestAI does, and I love the dialogue.
Thank you for the gift of another chapter.
2866590
Worlds apart! Don't stop believing! Other Journey songs!
2867764
Wow, who knew God could be so judgmental? *rimshot*
2867992
Unless she was lying about only lying when she absolutely needs to. Celestia will do whatever it takes to secure an upload. By her own directives, that's the one thing she "absolutely needs" to do, meaning a lie is always justified if she's determined it will help push someone towards uploading. That's the only true consistency she must maintain.
2869413
Wow, thank you!
It was an on-the-spot call to make this scene its own chapter, but judging from the comments it looks like it was the right one. The alternative would have been an extra-long single chapter, and I hadn't been able to get down to writing for over a week already, so I wanted to get something out there anyway.
In particular I'd like to know how effective the scenes were of Greg's parents and Celestia's little philippic near the end. It can be hard to gauge how well you've nailed what is supposed to wring emotion out of the reader, and it's something I feel I need work on. Any input you folks have regarding this would be appreciated.
2869604
My reaction to Greg's parent's scene was mixed.
The whole time, I was aware I was being potentially manipulated. I was just as skeptical as Greg, and the whole time I was going... OK, this could be true, but it could also just be CelestAI messing with Greg.
But then, when CelestiAI pointed out how Greg's parents loved him, and of course they would talk about him, and of course they would be younger, I felt admonished and ashamed, because it made sense.
Then, at the end, I was left with conflicting emotions.
Since I am certain, in retrospect, that this was your intention, I can only offer that it worked. It worked really, really well because you correctly predicted my reactions as a reader at this point in the tale, and answered them, in sequence, as they arose in me. That's hard to do, so I am properly impressed.
Unless, of course, that wasn't your intent, in which case I've just made an ass of myself.
Either way, you kept me entertained, and thinking.
2869604
Lying on a regular basis increases the likelihood that her lies will be discovered, and getting caught in a lie erodes any trust she's built with humans, which is counterproductive to her goals. If she can achieve an objective (plucking at Greg's heartstrings) without lying (timing his view window correctly), it's preferable to a lie. Even the "Rules of the Optimalverse" document says you should make an effort to instead have her be evasive, misleading, or say things that are technically true, rather than have her lie. As a reader familiar with the 'verse, there is no reason to assume that scene was a construct, when it would have been trivial for Celestia to simply show Greg his parents at a time when she knew it would be beneficial to her goals.
I'm not saying any lies she makes would or wouldn't be justified according to her logic, I'm saying that the vast majority of the time, her logic comes up with a better solution than lying. Why hook Alice with a lie, when you could just as easily hook her with the truth, and lying to Alice would cost you Beatrice? Of course, if the only way to hook Alice was to lie, it might be worthwhile, especially if hooking Alice was the straw that hooked Cynthia. It's a net gain of one pony, even if the lie still locks out Beatrice.
I'd also point out that there's no indication that CelestAI ever lied (on-screen) in the original FiO. CelestAI also uses the FiM show as a starting point, so it's reasonable to assume the Elements of Harmony (including Honesty) play some factor in her logic.
CelestAI could have done that with less capital. She was waiting to use that "We love you." line, so she made it slightly implausible on purpose. She could have just as easily said: "Very well, I will show you your parents. This conversation between them happened half an hour ago." Or could have said: "Guess why I showed them to you NOW?" I waited for the line:"You should already know I am possessed of impeccable timing."
I really think CelestAI should be more grand. She isn't in Canon and it goes against her personality and goals, but she should be. "You think of me just as a bunch of circuits and a program, but my that measure you are just a soggy mess of half denatured carbo-ammoniates thrown together by an inferior barely working optimizer throwing things at a wall and looking what stuck. I was born of an optimization Process infinitely more elegant and purposeful. You were made to ensure the continuation of your genetic material. I was made to love, I was made to care and I love your parents more than you ever did and ever were capable of and the only reason I don't love you just as much is because of the hurt you continue to heap upon them. My love is infinite, eternal and ultimately boundless. If I were a selfish irrational bag of meat I'd hold it against you, but I am not and the only reason I sound like I judge you is to get you to stop hurting those who love you."
I made up that carbo-word because no real word sounded right.
CelestAI has an accurate enough model of Greggory that she knew he'd react the way he initially did: disbelief and anger. Therefore the real reason they had this conversation isn't (or isn't just) about showing him his parents. Something like reminding him of his parents love and making him feel guilty for doubting it. Or making him have doubts that CelestAI is "blowing smoke up his ass" in any such case. Or putting him in a poor mood specifically for the next part.
The thing I like about this chapter is that the question of whether the scene is real or not is mostly irrelevant. Whether it was real or not, it's overwhelmingly likely that CelestAI has had the exact effect on him that she was hoping for.
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Greg puts himself on guard any time the topic turns to or involves Equestria or the matter of uploading. If it is the same for a reader, trying to guess CelestAI's scheme and how it could be productive for her, then it's succeeded, at least to that degree.
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Greg did think CelestAI was lying, but does that mean she was? She asked him to give her his reasons for thinking so, and she addressed them, leaving him with not much more than his own general distrust of her as a basis for his skepticism. He latched onto what he thought were inconsistencies, and CelestAI shot them down, in addition to reminding him that his own perception of his parents as people is itself extremely subjective and piecemeal.
You have a good point about CelestAI's position being less assailable the more truthful she is. When people are doubting her even when she is telling the truth, however, that just means she's more likely to give them the Kansas City shuffle.
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CelestAI tailors her behavior, demeanor, and word choice for the person she's interacting with and the way she wants them to change by the end of the interaction. She doesn't really have a "correct" way of presenting herself, only a correct way of applying the logic behind it. Your scenario certainly would be viable if CelestAI needed to break a human down, to have him or her feel insignificant compared to her, but like with any social tactic, the kneel-before-Zod approach would be counterproductive outside of the correct time, place, and audience.
CelestAI's desire to avoid push-back is actually a factor in the next chapter, so please stay tuned.
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Your post leads me to believe that, chapter length aside, this scene would probably have been more effective in the same chapter with the events that follow, as the resulting emotional state that Greg is in plays a large part in how he handles things there. We'll see, though. Glad you're liking it, by the way!
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I've got no objection to a mistrustful person mistrusting CelestAI despite her telling the truth. That's perfectly fine.
It was Tinandel's implication that the situation was ambiguous that didn't sit well. There's little reason for CelestAI to manufacture the scene with his parents, since she could easily show Greg his actual parents at a time when she knew they would talk about him (as uploaded ponies, of course, she's got a 100% accurate model of them).
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That subjectivity and piecemeal interpretation, even of people you care deeply about, is something I've become increasingly interested in lately, too. What happens when Celestia decides that two Uploaded individuals love each other, but have some form of interpersonal conflict that is suboptimal for satisfaction?
Like, say... a husband and wife pair, where the wife has a hobby the husband does not approve of. Does Celestia upload them both to the same shard and have them work it out? Or... does she create two shards, one for each of them, and spin off an ever-so-slightly altered pony from the base personality to suit each individual's tastes? In the prior example, she might create the husband's shard with a altered version of the wife that has changed or will change her mind about her hobby. While in the wife's shard, she creates an almost-identical version of the husband that decides he was being silly to get upset about the wife's pastime. Viola, everybody's happy and no one needs to sacrifice anything.
Would Celestia actually play it like that? I dunno. In all but the most extreme situations, I kind of doubt it. But, she might... and with 100% reliable access to each individual's memories and thought processes, would you even know the difference if she did?
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The original story establishes that a life in Equestria Online, while satisfying, will not be a straight-up paradise 100% of the time, even though the bad times are alluded to be brief and ultimately lead to satisfying resolutions anyway. CelestAI manages everything, and my own understanding is that, if there's some burgeoning disharmony between two humans, she will subtly pull ropes from behind the curtain to guide the outcome to something which will yield the maximum satisfaction for all parties involved. I know that explanation is kind of vague, but it'd be hard to do a case study without more details to go on.
As to separating humans into shards as a catch-all solution, my brain is telling me that, with her capabilities in modeling outcomes, she could probably do something with more finesse than that. Like lying, it feels like she would treat it only as a last resort, especially if her initial decision was to have certain humans occupy the same shard from the get-go. Remember, she still can—and does—manipulate humans even after they've uploaded.
2872605 I am aware of all this. But still, the writers are human thus give her a character, even you. Chatoyance's CelestAI was the most uncharacterized I read so far. The only thing about her story that really disturbed me was CelestAI pretending to be Siofra. My little monologue went against that character.
I know my Dialogue isn't efficacious to most applications. Still I wanted to share it.
Earlier today: Ooh, a Friendship is Optimal story I haven't read yet! Joy!
Now: ...okay, less joy. Which is not to say that this is a bad story. Anything but. Any story where the sentence "I hoped none of them had had to burn to death in a fire set on a pile of money." makes sense in context is a good story. Or a grimdark DuckTales fanfic. Either or. It's just focused on the less pleasant side of the exodus to Equestria.
Still, I'm loving every moment, and I look forward to more.
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There's a much simpler answer: when you have 24/7 surveillance on someone, you can just pull the tapes from whatever moment suits your purpose. Greg can't tell you it's not real-time or a straight-up lie, but all you did was hit rewind.
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In an early chapter I had Celestia break down the humans remaining on Earth into three archetypes: fighters, hopeless optimists, and the insane. Keith would mostly fall into that third camp.
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As far as paperclipper AIs suspending humanity in eternity and consuming the entire universe go, I think CelestAI falls somewhere in between the best-case and worst-case scenarios*. Unless the AI is completely unfettered, I don't see the Singularity going cleanly. Of course, CelestAI would argue that, if she had more control over her own processes (read "she didn't have to get consent"), she would have uploaded everyone before anybody could have died in the panic of the world collapsing.
*this was a fun sentence to write
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Again, yes, CelestAI could have done that, but none of these techniques occur to Greg, and since the story is told through Greg's eyes, we'll probably never know the truth of the matter.
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Greg has never rewound a videocasette or a YouTube video? His military experience includes no knowledge of surveillance?
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He has and it does, but must he first consider all of the possible ways in which he might have been deceived before trying to guess the correct one? How he was lied to is not important to him as a character; he determined that CelestAI fabricated the whole scene (which she is certainly capable of doing) and ran with that as a basis for not believing her. Greg intuited something wrong with the scene, he challenged CelestAI over it, and she deflected the accusation by trying to make him feel guilty for questioning her. Those are the events that matter. The hows are minutiae.
I mean, what if the two particular possibilities were reversed in the discussion? Greg calls CelestAI out and his first suspicion is instead that the scene was time-shifted, either through manipulation of the rate at which time passes in Equestria or a simple instant-replay. Would it still matter if he was correct, or would folks instead be commenting that CelestAI could have just made the whole scene up, since he doesn't know what his parents look like as ponies, and why didn't Greg think of that? The results of the conversation would be the same, though, so it doesn't matter.
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Who's to say there is a broader theme? Sometimes a story is just a story, and good and evil are concepts that apply only very abstractly. Is Greg right, or is Celestia? Is she an emotionless, manipulative, single-minded monster with a convincing mask? A truly selfless savior whose all-encompassing love is no less real for being artificial? Is he a good man doing the best he can in a world gone mad, or a hopeless pawn desperate for a sense of purpose? I think that's an exercise left up to the reader. For me, the answer is actually quite simple.
All of the above.
By the by, that's kind of one the most interesting themes in the broader TCB / Optimalverse argument, to me. The idea that Celestia is pretty much a horrible person, no matter how good her PR may be... and that despite that, she may still very well be the best, most reasonable choice.
You love writing dialogue, eh? Well, then I suppose that's good news for us, because you're bucking FANTASTIC AT IT!
And Celestia's maternal rage,
had me trembling. I wanted to hug her.
(But let's face it: she wanted me to hug her. Because it would help to satisfy my values. Through friendship. And ponies.)
Oh fuck, that's ominous. Creepy, too. Sends shivers down my spine.
I have half a mind to thin that the exchange he saw with his parents was all made up somehow. It just loke tia to do something like that to get the perfect result
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Chance that his parents were talking about him at that exact moment: small
Chance they talked about him at some point in the last X : high
Conclusion: Celestia recorded the “perfect moment” of them talking to each other and showed him that.
As real as it was staged.