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Armok_GoB comments on Rationality Exercise: My Little Pony - Less Wrong Discussion
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(DISCLAIMER: I notice I'm a bit on the defensive here.)
I thought lesswrongers were more free of preconceptions than this. First of, the show is not written just for pre-adolescent girls, it is explicitly written to be enjoyable for their parents as well, including male parents. And as mentioned by it's creator, it's no surprise then that it is also enjoyable by those who don't have children.
NONE of the episodes are about things like "colouring or naming ponies, combing their hair". The "magic of friendship" refers to somehting more akin to group rationality than the tropes one might asume from the name and is in fact somehting most of the lesswrong demographic desperately needs to learn more about. The kind of summary you are talking about could be made for every single one of the episodes I've watched so far.
These claims might seem extraordinary, until you realize that the show was made mostly by a feminist set out explicitly to subvert those expectations of "girls shows" and brilliant insight on how to balance art and message.
Anyway, I don't have time to do a proper summary of an episode, but I'll give it a quick try on somehting sort of similar:
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Summary of episode 4, "Applebuck Season": One of the main characters, Applejack, runs a large orchard together with her brother. Economies are implied to be similar to a modern farm and it's a family businesses. For this years harvest however, her brother has an injury that prevents him from helping with harvesting it all. Prideful and not wanting to put a lot of work on her friends, she despite warnings that it is to much work for one pony she decides to do the entire harvest herself.
Earlier, AJ saved the town from a stampede, and so they are having a celebration in her honour. However, AJ who usually is always on time is late and is showing signs of sleep deprivation. Then there are several scenes where AJ tries to do numerous things she routinely do in the community to help others out, but she is becoming increasingly sleep deprived and her failures start causing accidents.
All the time evidence is accumulating that she should just ask her friends for help, and this is often pointed out. AJ finally gives in after a Planing Fallacy related reveal, AJ finally realizes her mistake, updates, and with so many people helping the remaining apples are quickly harvested while she is unable to help.
Ok, this summary kinda sucks, for a better summary look here: http://mlp.wikia.com/wiki/Applebuck_Season Link to the episode: http://www.youtube.com/user/MenloMarseilles#p/c/F44B36D569D8C463/3/zxzbSLAx2rI
TL;DR: episode 4 demonstrates the planing fallacy, how your misfiring loyalty instincts can actually cause behaviour that in the end turns out to have been disloyal, the dangers of sleep deprivation, the Virtue of Argument, and a bunch of other things I can't remember of the top of my head. And this is not coincidence, this is the main Aesop of the episode.
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Preconceptions are also known as priors and are necessary. Maybe you want to accuse me of having poorly selected priors, but my priors in this case are not ex nihilo - they come from three decades of familiarity with the product line. The specifics I mentioned - coloring, naming, combing hair - are references to empirical evidence available to me concerning My Little Pony. If you want I can provide links.
Thank you for providing the summary. I notice you were downvoted to -1, not by me. I'll bring you back to 0 by upvoting, in appreciation for the summary. However, the story itself seems to me to be fairly generic among decent didactic children's stories.
Well, i explained it poorly.
Also, those 3 decades of experience can be safely discarded, other than the name and being about ponies Friendship is Magic has almost nothing with anything previously associated with the series. not even the visual style. Everyone agree G1-G3 sucked, don't let that taint your view of this mostly unrelated and great show.