[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.
Spelling: zeebra (more tk depending on how I like it)
Some painful over explaining; most of Hanna's opening scene is maid-and-butler dialogue.
"The box was white with a detailed charcoal sketch of Fluttershy being cute." - no way. The box looks exactly like the show, because it's on store shelves and they have a strong visual brand.
"less likely than the probability of" is redundant.
ROFL (in a good way) at the scene between David and Celestia.
"brok"
"fillet mignon" should be "filet mignon" (also, that's not the right cut for stew).
Celestia is a bit repetitive with the "friendship and ponies" thing; she should only say it when her interlocutor is at least a bit confused.
"Ligth"
ROFL (again in a good way) at the badges.
"Space was a set of cells, each with eight neighboring cells," <-- do you really mean that equestria is 2d? Because cubes have 6 (or 26) neighbors and octahedra don't tessellate.
"mater"
"just frustrated that" should be "just frustrated enough that"
"up up down down" -cute
That was my first thought as well, but there are a variety of ways to make it work. Still, given that he only needs 6 possibilities when finding the block of ruby, I guess "6" was meant there.