I would create an immortal who saw so many of her friends die that she didn’t care about anything anymore, or some other specific example of a pony who should not have been made immortal. I would try to make the attempted discussion with the insane alicorn disturbing to the reader. I would also have some mortal ponies explicitly choose death now rather than risk that specific fate in the future.
Hmm. I think it’s dubious that someone would go insane and not care about anything anymore after watching their friends die. That might or might not be altering the facts of the situation, and therefore providing evidence that isn’t part of the deathist position either in real life or in the story.
But witnessing death driving people insane doesn’t seem like an argument in favor of death to me.
Ponies knowing about the big rip wouldn’t make sense, also I don’t think the author intended for it to be a part of the universe. So to the extent that this is supposed to be a fair treatment of a position in universe, it’s kind of wrong to bring the big rip into it. To the extent that this is supposed to be a fair treatment of a position in real life, it also doesn’t make sense to bring endless torture because of the big rip into it, because in real life there couldn’t be any indestructible immortals.
It’s not necessary that it be likely, only that is has happened once. The argument would be that immortality given to ponies who do not deserve it causes insanity.
But the reader would think about how likely it was in terms of the availability heuristic. So it would be changing what the reader believed about the facts, not just arguing in a particularly coherent way about the implications of the reader’s current beliefs, or about the “facts” in the story, or pointing out implications of those beliefs or facts that they hadn’t seen before, which is what I would call steelmanning.
It makes no sense to attribute potential future insanity to potential future insanity, because the choice Twilight is making is essentially “will most people be immortal, or will most people die.” People she makes immortal, if she chooses mass-alicornification, should not expect to see a lot of people die.
“Deserve” is a strange word to use. Is “capable of handling it” more what you’re thinking? Or are you saying you deserve to die if you can’t stand to watch people too many times?
I’m saying that I though that Celestia used those concepts in that manner. The counter-argument to ‘seeing death won’t cause insanity if ponies no longer die’ could be ‘some will still choose natural life, for whatever reason, and watching it will be enough to drive the weakest alicorn mad’.
I can’t convince myself, but I think that the arguments that Celestia presents to her position should believably convince her.
I can believe that they would convince her. But steel manning her argument should go no further than having her point out what you just said, and should not include adding unrealistic or unusual evidence to the story.
And that’s if it is indeed a strong thing to point out, but even if some ponies will still choose death, alicorns can easily avoid watching them. There’s nothing to say an alicorn has to hang out with non-alicorns. (The most deaths an alicorn might see in waiting for their non-alicorn friends and family to die off is probably less than the amount a particularly long-lived human might see, and I’ve never heard of an centenarian who stopped caring about everything because of witnessing deaths.) If non-alicorns were still choosing death all throughout the future, their deaths could be mere faceless numbers to alicorns that didn’t want to think about it. Much like the millions of humans dying today in real life, and the billions who have died throughout history don’t emotionally traumatize me.
Actually, I can respond to the biggest reason why I wanted to introduce someone broken by immortality inherently: “There are no such people, because I have carefully avoided creating them. It would be the most irresponsible thing imaginable to cause someone to suffer such a fate!”
I would create an immortal who saw so many of her friends die that she didn’t care about anything anymore, or some other specific example of a pony who should not have been made immortal. I would try to make the attempted discussion with the insane alicorn disturbing to the reader. I would also have some mortal ponies explicitly choose death now rather than risk that specific fate in the future.
Hmm. I think it’s dubious that someone would go insane and not care about anything anymore after watching their friends die. That might or might not be altering the facts of the situation, and therefore providing evidence that isn’t part of the deathist position either in real life or in the story.
But witnessing death driving people insane doesn’t seem like an argument in favor of death to me.
Ponies knowing about the big rip wouldn’t make sense, also I don’t think the author intended for it to be a part of the universe. So to the extent that this is supposed to be a fair treatment of a position in universe, it’s kind of wrong to bring the big rip into it. To the extent that this is supposed to be a fair treatment of a position in real life, it also doesn’t make sense to bring endless torture because of the big rip into it, because in real life there couldn’t be any indestructible immortals.
It’s not necessary that it be likely, only that is has happened once. The argument would be that immortality given to ponies who do not deserve it causes insanity.
But the reader would think about how likely it was in terms of the availability heuristic. So it would be changing what the reader believed about the facts, not just arguing in a particularly coherent way about the implications of the reader’s current beliefs, or about the “facts” in the story, or pointing out implications of those beliefs or facts that they hadn’t seen before, which is what I would call steelmanning.
It makes no sense to attribute potential future insanity to potential future insanity, because the choice Twilight is making is essentially “will most people be immortal, or will most people die.” People she makes immortal, if she chooses mass-alicornification, should not expect to see a lot of people die.
“Deserve” is a strange word to use. Is “capable of handling it” more what you’re thinking? Or are you saying you deserve to die if you can’t stand to watch people too many times?
I’m saying that I though that Celestia used those concepts in that manner. The counter-argument to ‘seeing death won’t cause insanity if ponies no longer die’ could be ‘some will still choose natural life, for whatever reason, and watching it will be enough to drive the weakest alicorn mad’.
I can’t convince myself, but I think that the arguments that Celestia presents to her position should believably convince her.
I can believe that they would convince her. But steel manning her argument should go no further than having her point out what you just said, and should not include adding unrealistic or unusual evidence to the story.
And that’s if it is indeed a strong thing to point out, but even if some ponies will still choose death, alicorns can easily avoid watching them. There’s nothing to say an alicorn has to hang out with non-alicorns. (The most deaths an alicorn might see in waiting for their non-alicorn friends and family to die off is probably less than the amount a particularly long-lived human might see, and I’ve never heard of an centenarian who stopped caring about everything because of witnessing deaths.) If non-alicorns were still choosing death all throughout the future, their deaths could be mere faceless numbers to alicorns that didn’t want to think about it. Much like the millions of humans dying today in real life, and the billions who have died throughout history don’t emotionally traumatize me.
Actually, I can respond to the biggest reason why I wanted to introduce someone broken by immortality inherently: “There are no such people, because I have carefully avoided creating them. It would be the most irresponsible thing imaginable to cause someone to suffer such a fate!”