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pleeppleep comments on Friendship is Optimal: A My Little Pony fanfic about an optimization process - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (145)
I wouldn't exactly say this has a "happy ending".
What? What happier ending could there possibly be? One where everyone is constantly orgasming?
When I say that a story has a happy ending, I don't mean that the characters are happy. I mean that the ending is positive; that it leaves me with a feeling of satisfaction knowing that things ended how they should.
I imagine that the notion of an inhuman semi-friendly A.I. eating the universe and destroying countless races of non-human aliens to create a simulated world designed to satisfy the human characters' urges on the most superficial level hardly sounds "happy" to most readers (although this could just be the typical mind fallacy talking). The author seems to specifically call attention to how creepy this sounds from a certain angle, so the story itself implies that this ending isn't necessarily happy.
Of course, realistically, this is probably one of the very best possible outcomes to the development of self-modifying A.I. and is without a doubt a pleasant experience to all those inside the story, but the way it's portrayed just screams, "this is not right!" to any reader, so the ending is pretty ambiguous.
Isn't that too strong? (I guess it's far from the most superficial, which is what, smiley-face tiling?) But the point holds.
This. I love how it came out: a happy ending but creepy at the same time, and to top it, if you start to think about the realistic alternatives, it turns out this is one of the very best possible outcomes one could hope for, which adds to the creepy.
You're probably right about the "most superficial" point. I guess it would have been better to say that the chosen solution for human desires came across as somewhat shallow and superficial.
Also, I didn't say the ending was bad. I think the ending was amazing, but my point was that the intentional feeling of "wrongness" to it means that it can't truly be called happy regardless of how the characters feel because the criteria for a happy ending is relative to the reader and the writer but not the characters.
Agreed.
The question I'm asking myself now is:
In other words, what part of the wrongness or creepiness of this story is owing to this particular story itself, apart from the fact that this is a SL4 story? (I suspect I am still not used to SL4)
I think a good deal of the creepiness comes from some combination the artificial determinism of the utopia, and the uncanny valley
What does uncanny valley refer to here?
Yes, what's uncanny here?
I don't see it. Satisfying every human's values (even with the specifications "through friendship and ponies") strikes me as about as deep as it can get. Some humans are more shallow than others, and wouldn't find satisfaction in something deep unless their personalities were forcibly modified.
I misspoke in the first comment and was trying to correct myself. It wasn't really shallow, but it feels shallow the way its described, and that adds to the impression that the story doesn't end happily from the reader's perspective.
I think it's just the author trying to appear " neutral" and not an out and out enthusiastic supporter of the idea. Notice that the misgivings we may feel about stuff in the story are purely emotional, and, faced with Celestia, we can't even argue for them properly.
Imagine if the Borgs or the T'au had been like her, instead of being the strawmen we were faced with?