gwern comments on A rationalist My Little Pony fanfic - Less Wrong

12 Post author: DataPacRat 10 August 2012 08:53PM

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Comment author: DataPacRat 10 August 2012 10:47:30PM 2 points [-]

I freely admit that, looking back at the first chapters, I wince at how clunky and clumsy I was when trying to present certain ideas. I think I managed to improve at that some, and I am trying to do better still.

I do continue using the protagonist's udder as a plot point in future chapters.

The site is, unfortunately, nicknamed '502fiction' for a reason. I'm now wondering if I should cross-post the story to another site, such as FanFiction.net.

Comment author: gwern 11 August 2012 02:46:51AM *  12 points [-]

Ch2-7:

  • ruminating on the downsides of being a female cow would seem to be a good lesson in empathy for human females, but the point seems to be lost on her.
  • the Queen gives in quite quickly. Even in Equestria, surely there are many scammers and leeches and deluded people that a simple Pascal's wager wouldn't work.
  • Stealing from MoR? really? Most of the passage too?! Again, jumping to those specific bits are not what a non-LWer rationalist would do; instead, they'd point out something about perpetual motion or bombs. Don't bring up time travel unless your character can actually say clearly how it would lead to time travel! (Grr, it's not deducing if the character can't even explain it, as I bet you can't.) I note with disapproval the blatant theft in chapter 13 as well.
  • Would the character really expect the queen to know a word like 'sapience'? I expect even most LWers would get it wrong and confuse it with 'sentience'.
  • Hilarious udder joke. But I'm surprised any cow would be that flexible...
  • 'consultat'
  • 'Luna looked pained, and looked away from us both, which was answer enough', isn't this obviously an answer to her previous question about where she is in the timeline?
  • 'the deliberate act of some powerful being' and where did this all of a sudden come from? Did perhaps the queens just listen to her story and were all like 'oh yeah, I know what explains this, a powerful magical being!' and she wasn't all 'that's stupid and as bad an explanation as "magic" on a blank map'?
  • Enjoyed the rhyming, although I have no idea what that was all about.

Ch15:

  • "... I ripped the tag off of a mattress. How about you?" You know that it's perfectly legal for the end-consumer to do that, right? Or is that the joke?

Not sure if I'm interested enough to keep reading, but at least it's not a terrible fic.

Comment author: DataPacRat 11 August 2012 03:53:42AM 6 points [-] 
the Queen gives in quite quickly. Even in Equestria, surely there are many

scammers and leeches and deluded people that a simple Pascal's wager wouldn't work.

The royals in this setting have been shown in other stories to be, generally, about as practical as characters in a cartoon aimed at children tend to be - eg, holding onto letters from a pirate until a bunch have been collected, to read them all at once, instead of as they come in. That said, they are also known to have powerful magic - including, as a significant factor in this story, several forms of honesty-detection.

Stealing from MoR? really?

I'll admit that most of that wasn't the best choice I could have made. If I ever do a rewrite, that bit will be one of the most thoroughly rewritten bits.

Don't bring up time travel unless your character can actually say clearly how it would lead to time travel! (Grr, it's not deducing if the character can't even explain it, as I bet you can't.)

I note with disapproval the blatant theft in chapter 13 as well.

The character in question was plucked from Earth from early April, 2012. Another note for a future rewrite might be to more explicitly mention that she's drawing ideas from certain pieces of rationalist fiction.

Hilarious udder joke. But I'm surprised any cow would be that flexible...

I checked. They can indeed do so - it can cause a significant degradation of output, so dairies sometimes have to train cows to not do so.

'Luna looked pained, and looked away from us both, which was answer enough', isn't this obviously an answer to her previous question about where she is in the timeline?

I'm not quite sure what you mean. If it helps - in the cartoon, Luna was banished for a thousand years, after becoming a monster who tried to place the land under eternal night, her return and rehabilitation forming the plot of the first episode.

'the deliberate act of some powerful being' and where did this all of a sudden come from?

This refers to the initial few lines of the first chapter, when the protagonist was punted by a mysterious stranger into Equestria; and is more thoroughly dealt with in a later chapter.

Enjoyed the rhyming, although I have no idea what that was all about.

The zebra in question is a character from the cartoon, who has the quirk of speaking in rhymes.

Ch15: "... I ripped the tag off of a mattress. How about you?" You know that it's perfectly legal for the end-consumer to do that, right? Or is that the joke?

Yes, that was the intended joke there. After all the protagonist was jailed for the crime of 'littering', after doing carefully undescribed things to the unicorns who attacked her.

Not sure if I'm interested enough to keep reading, but at least it's not a terrible fic.

Given the differences between the audience here and the standard audience at FimFiction.net - a response like that was the best I aimed for.

Comment author: gwern 11 August 2012 06:56:20PM 4 points [-]

The character in question was plucked from Earth from early April, 2012. Another note for a future rewrite might be to more explicitly mention that she's drawing ideas from certain pieces of rationalist fiction.

Eh. You can make up in-universe reasons, but it still comes off as sloppy... a good idea should be independently inventable or findable.

I checked. They can indeed do so - it can cause a significant degradation of output, so dairies sometimes have to train cows to not do so.

Wow. I guess I have learned something from this fic.

This refers to the initial few lines of the first chapter, when the protagonist was punted by a mysterious stranger into Equestria; and is more thoroughly dealt with in a later chapter.

So we're supposed to infer that that was part of what she told the queens and they in turn immediately zeroed in on it as the best explanation? Still feels like a hole.

More notes:

  • ch34: use of Laplace's law painfully didactic. It's perfectly valid to use it in those circumstances, but it could have been explained so much better. For example: "Why should I go in? Half the times I've visited before, they've tried to kill me. Why should I expect that to be different now?"

    And then you can have her ruminate something like "that was actually a valid bit of reasoning; it was called Laplace's Law on Earth, where Laplace asked if something had happened 1 out of, say, 10 times, and that was all you knew, how much should you expect it to happen again? 2 / 12; half the time you'll be too high and half too low, which is the best you can hope to do."

    I bet you can come up with an even clearer explanation. You're the fic writer, after all.

Comment author: DataPacRat 12 August 2012 03:55:53AM *  2 points [-]

a good idea should be independently inventable or findable.

I'm only aiming to write my protagonist as being an aspiring Bayesian rationalist, not a Yudkowsky-level or HJPEV-level one. In a later chapter, while her emotions are being artificially manipulated, her inner monologue reads:

I'm so jealous of... of... the people who are actually smart. I'm well aware that I'm not nearly as smart as I like to think I am. All my seeming cleverness - it's all just tricks, things that anyone can do if they knew. I can't do anything that requires real intelligence, like come up with a truly new theory - the best I've been able to do is come up with 'new' insights that others have come up with so many times before. What I wouldn't give to develop an actual new idea, think a thought that hasn't been thought before - to be the first one to understand something...

... which, I hope, describes what I've been aiming for reasonably well.

Still feels like a hole.

Then it quite probably is one.

ch34: use of Laplace's law painfully didactic.

Well, at least I know I was able to get across the idea that she was being painfully didactic. What I seem to have failed at is explaining that it was the didactness she was going for at that point, and Laplace's law was simply one of many possible topics for her to natter about.

Comment author: gwern 12 August 2012 03:42:06PM 4 points [-]

Well, at least I know I was able to get across the idea that she was being painfully didactic. What I seem to have failed at is explaining that it was the didactness she was going for at that point, and Laplace's law was simply one of many possible topics for her to natter about.

They're ponies; they know nothing about statistics. You say many have barely a gradeschool education, and this is a guard pony to boot. Any statistics will confuse them and be painfully didactic, but by making it simply unclear and assuming all sorts of stuff without justification, you waste a chance for the reader to actually understand the material and learn from it.

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