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gwern comments on Friendship is Optimal: A My Little Pony fanfic about an optimization process - Less Wrong Discussion

63 Post author: iceman 08 September 2012 06:16AM

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Comment author: iceman 09 September 2012 03:34:51AM 2 points [-]

From a throwaway line in the ending, I assume we're supposed to find her embittered and flawed with smoking as a prop. But it doesn't really work.

You are correct that this was my intention. In an earlier version, the final scene had her smoking, because if she valued smoking, Princess Celestia wouldn't have copied the negative health effects. The paragraph didn't really help the scene so I cut it. Since you're the second person to find the smoking a turn off, I'll consider cutting it.

Can you suggest a nervous, compulsive tick? Tea doesn't strike me as a compulsion.

It's pretty good but somehow I feel a certain lack of narrative drive from chapter to chapter aside from the question of 'what will Celestia do next?'

This is probably an artifact of how it was written. Most of the chapters were disconnected scenes that I wrote, without much planning. Only early this year did I start taking the individual scenes and stitched them into a whole piece. (If I write another piece of medium to long form fiction, I'll make sure to not repeat this process; I'm not entirely happy with said process.)

Comment author: gwern 09 September 2012 03:48:19AM *  7 points [-]

Can you suggest a nervous, compulsive tic? Tea doesn't strike me as a compulsion.

Besides beverage consumption, nail-biting, hair-tugging/pull/curling, knuckle-cracking, foot jiggling, pen manipulation, or coin flipping, all come to mind.

Comment author: iceman 07 October 2012 10:56:42PM 1 point [-]

I started by rewriting all instances of smoking to pen chewing, but then found that I was disgusted with Hanna's new habit.

After thinking about it, I've tried changing Hanna's smoking to a sort of confidence factor. New text below is italicized:

Lars angrily followed Hanna out the door. Hanna confidently moved down the hallway, and lit up the second she was through the door to her private office. She breathed in, held it, and slowly exhaled.

“Dammit Hanna! Would it kill you to not light up for half-a-fucking-hour? A lot of Americans kind of have a thing against smoking.”

Still standing, she took another pull. “Nicotine is a performance enhancing stimulant. It boosts reaction time, IQ scores and general memory performance.” She gave a small cough. “Too bad about the increased incidence of lung cancer, though. Besides, what do you care? It sounds like you’re strongly against making a My Little Pony video game.”

“I can’t believe you’re seriously considering this,” Lars stated.

and

And I was told point blank that my research would be used for military applications...and then told who exactly had been funding my research. Lying to me wasn’t in their best interest, so it’s likely the truth.”

“But they still could have lied to you, and you could be wrong about how dangerous AI is.”

“I started taking...” she stopped and contemplated the burning cigarette in her hand. “...performance enhancing drugs with long term health consequences because I think it’s more likely that I’ll be around in twenty years if I do take them. Shouldn’t that be certainty enough for you?”

She knocked ash off her cigarette into the ash tray. “We don’t have perfect information. We can’t wait for perfect information.

Given that only you and Alicorn reacted this way (or were the only people to write that you reacted this way) while most people seem to not have minded, I'm wondering if removing the smoking is something I should do. I've gotten a few PM asking me to not remove it. I think the above changes move it from a prop to a piece of character development.

Comment author: gwern 07 October 2012 11:24:19PM 2 points [-]

Sorry, I can't help: I'm contaminated by the earlier version. I do like the justification, but that might just be because of my own nicotine gum use. Maybe you could embed a poll at the end? Looking in google, apparently Google Docs supports embedded polls.

Comment author: Ritalin 29 October 2012 11:10:19PM 0 points [-]

It's probably okay like this.

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