I’m writing a similar fic*. My solution to this problem: if the debate between mortality and immortality doesn’t provide a deep enough conflict, then use something else. (In Mortal, the core conflict is that Twilight is forced to choose between Celestia and Rainbow Dash.) Less centrally, I set my story in a world in which immortality is irreversible, and made it clear that Celestia’s first attempt at spreading immortality led to that “eternal night” thing.
Other arguments I used for Celestia:
Argument: If they don’t die, older generations will accumulate power and status at the expense of younger generations.
Response: Even if true, this is less bad than death.
Argument: What if there’s an afterlife?
Response: There isn’t.
Is the argument for deathism really that weak?
If immortality became provably achievable tomorrow, do you think arguments for deathism would sway anyone? I guess people who believe in immortality via afterlife might still be persuaded, but that’s about it.
*That draft is somewhat outdated, but the canon-compliant version isn’t publishable yet.
If that’s established, why would you even use that argument?
The obvious couterargument would be: what if there isn’t?
The more sophisticated version is that if there is an afterlife, there’s no reason to believe it’s better, but if there isn’t one you should really avoid dying, it’s highly unlikely that there is one, and if it really was worth dying to get to, Celestia should be ensuring her little ponies get there faster.
If that’s established, why would you even use that argument?
In the setting I’m using (and in the show itself, so far), the ponies have the same information about an afterlife that we have in reality. Many people in reality think there is an afterlife, and they are wrong. The story doesn’t get into the details of that debate because it would be a digression from what I’m trying to do; while I’d have no problem with writing an anti-death polemic that happens to contain ponies, this isn’t that story. Rather, it’s a melodrama that happens to be anti-death. For what I’m doing, it’s enough that Twilight believes there’s no afterlife and Fluttershy believes in reincarnation and Celestia is explicitly agnostic on the issue.
For what Salivanth is trying to do, developing the details of this argument is probably a lot more useful. It could be valuable to delve into how magic works, what destiny is, and what, if anything, that says about the existence of souls/afterlife.
Interestingly, the destiny thing has been something I’d thought about in the past. I thought about an idea for a short fanfiction designed to teach some of the basics of rationality, wherein Twilight was totally clueless about how to fix Starswirl’s spell in the Season 3 finale. Twilight would be forced to learn the basics of rationality in some fashion, specifically the portion about mysterious answers, noticing that “destiny” didn’t actually ANSWER anything, forcing her to clarify her true answers. By working on that, she discovers the true nature of Starswirl’s spell, and is thus able to counter it and restore her friends back to normal. (Not sure what it would have been, but I was thinking it would be based on mind magic. Cutie marks would be based on belief, and the spell tricked them into believing that their destinies were something else, which caused their cutie marks to change: Cutie marks aren’t caused by destiny, belief in destiny causes cutie marks.) In this case, Celestia and Luna actually know the score, but unlike mortal ponies, they WERE created for a purpose (By a being that remains unknown, being outside the scale of the fanfiction.) and they DO have raising the sun and moon as their destinies. So their beliefs that make their cutie marks appear as what they are are actually correct.
Then I came up with this transhumanist idea, and decided it was better than my other idea for a rationality-based fanfic.
I’m writing a similar fic*. My solution to this problem: if the debate between mortality and immortality doesn’t provide a deep enough conflict, then use something else. (In Mortal, the core conflict is that Twilight is forced to choose between Celestia and Rainbow Dash.) Less centrally, I set my story in a world in which immortality is irreversible, and made it clear that Celestia’s first attempt at spreading immortality led to that “eternal night” thing.
Other arguments I used for Celestia:
Argument: If they don’t die, older generations will accumulate power and status at the expense of younger generations.
Response: Even if true, this is less bad than death.
Argument: What if there’s an afterlife?
Response: There isn’t.
If immortality became provably achievable tomorrow, do you think arguments for deathism would sway anyone? I guess people who believe in immortality via afterlife might still be persuaded, but that’s about it.
*That draft is somewhat outdated, but the canon-compliant version isn’t publishable yet.
If that’s established, why would you even use that argument?
The obvious couterargument would be: what if there isn’t?
The more sophisticated version is that if there is an afterlife, there’s no reason to believe it’s better, but if there isn’t one you should really avoid dying, it’s highly unlikely that there is one, and if it really was worth dying to get to, Celestia should be ensuring her little ponies get there faster.
In the setting I’m using (and in the show itself, so far), the ponies have the same information about an afterlife that we have in reality. Many people in reality think there is an afterlife, and they are wrong. The story doesn’t get into the details of that debate because it would be a digression from what I’m trying to do; while I’d have no problem with writing an anti-death polemic that happens to contain ponies, this isn’t that story. Rather, it’s a melodrama that happens to be anti-death. For what I’m doing, it’s enough that Twilight believes there’s no afterlife and Fluttershy believes in reincarnation and Celestia is explicitly agnostic on the issue.
For what Salivanth is trying to do, developing the details of this argument is probably a lot more useful. It could be valuable to delve into how magic works, what destiny is, and what, if anything, that says about the existence of souls/afterlife.
Interestingly, the destiny thing has been something I’d thought about in the past. I thought about an idea for a short fanfiction designed to teach some of the basics of rationality, wherein Twilight was totally clueless about how to fix Starswirl’s spell in the Season 3 finale. Twilight would be forced to learn the basics of rationality in some fashion, specifically the portion about mysterious answers, noticing that “destiny” didn’t actually ANSWER anything, forcing her to clarify her true answers. By working on that, she discovers the true nature of Starswirl’s spell, and is thus able to counter it and restore her friends back to normal. (Not sure what it would have been, but I was thinking it would be based on mind magic. Cutie marks would be based on belief, and the spell tricked them into believing that their destinies were something else, which caused their cutie marks to change: Cutie marks aren’t caused by destiny, belief in destiny causes cutie marks.) In this case, Celestia and Luna actually know the score, but unlike mortal ponies, they WERE created for a purpose (By a being that remains unknown, being outside the scale of the fanfiction.) and they DO have raising the sun and moon as their destinies. So their beliefs that make their cutie marks appear as what they are are actually correct.
Then I came up with this transhumanist idea, and decided it was better than my other idea for a rationality-based fanfic.