[EDIT, Nov 14th: And it's posted. New discussion about release. Link to Friendship is Optimal.]
[EDIT, Nov 13th: I've submitted to FIMFiction, and will update with a link to its permanent home if it passes moderation. I have also removed the docs link and will make the document private once it goes live.]
Over the last year, I’ve spent a lot of my free time writing a semi-rationalist My Little Pony fanfic. Whenever I’ve mentioned this side project, I’ve received requests to alpha the story.
I present, as an open beta: Friendship is Optimal. Please do not spread that link outside of LessWrong; Google Docs is not its permanent home. I intend to put it up on fanfiction.net and submit it to Equestria Daily after incorporating any feedback. The story is complete, and I believe I've caught the majority of typographical and grammatical problems. (Though if you find some, comments are open on the doc itself.) Given the subject matter, I’m asking for the LessWrong community’s help in spotting any major logical flaws or other storytelling problems.
Cover jacket text:
Hanna, the CEO of Hofvarpnir Studios, just won the contract to write the official My Little Pony MMO. She had better hurry; a US military contractor is developing weapons based on her artificial intelligence technology, which just may destroy the world. Hana has built an A.I. Princess Celestia and given her one basic drive: to satisfy values through friendship and ponies. What will Princess Celestia do when she’s let loose upon the world, following the drives Hanna has given her?
Special thanks to my roommate (who did extensive editing and was invaluable in noticing attempts by me to anthropomorphize an AI), and to Vaniver, who along with my roommate, convinced me to delete what was just a flat out bad chapter.
I intend for this to be more targeted towards the brony community than LW. I've gotten mixed feedback here. I've gotten reactions from "equally accessible to the brony off the street as the LWer," your suspicion that bronies would find the singularity jarring (which I interpret as a request to make singularity concepts more explicit), and a comment in this thread that I need to make the LW references more subtle.
As accessibility is my intention, what do you think I should do here?
Agreed with FiftyTwo, which is why I had to say "suspect" regarding whether or not people with no interest in MLP would be interested in the story.
Honestly, I don't think it's inaccessible to your average brony. You're pretty explicit, and I found it easy to read. But this isn't a "Singularity in the MLP universe" it is a "Singularity which ends up looking like the MLP universe from the inside." So it falls a little outside of typical My Little Pony fanfic, the same way that a fanfic about a rationalist who reads Harry Potter ... (read more)