[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.
First: For the formal release, I hope you're planning to follow the show and HPMoR in serializing it and posting just one chapter a week at an identical time. You could lock the Google Docs copy.
Posting some early and/or superficial thoughts. TW for sarcasm and ableism.
Is the title negotiable? I like the ring of "AI Ponies: Magic is Optimization".
The summary seems important, since you have to stand out in an ocean of bad fics (even featured ones) and pull a prospective reader from zero to nonzero involvement.
Doesn't a CEO merit a surname?
Why are they called Hofvarpnir if they had nothing to do with ponies before?
Be Hanna. Singlehandedly create world-destroying technology while grunts are busy making licensed crap for corporate overlords. Give technology to military contractor. Crap, you just gave world-destroying technology to a military contractor! What do? Hasbro awards MMO contract. Yes! With this MMO contract you can save the world!
I know it has to be concise, but it seems a little disjointed. Also, how does "AI technology" differ from an AI itself just waiting to be run? What kind of weapons do you develop from that?
So disregard the last sentence, the race is already won?
Her values are to satisfy values?
Is Hanna an autistic savant of some kind?
I'm glad other people have talked about punching up the prologue; it was quite the slow start when I looked at it earlier. I may or may not comment more later.
Does it increase readership?
Is it some sort of SEO trick? Because it doesn't sound like a better name otherwise.
I don't get why.
Hófvarpnir is from Norse mythology, which makes sense in the context of their first project and kind of foreshadowing of their next one. I like how it turned out, and I learned a bit about Norse myt... (read more)