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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)
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?