March 15
Today started out like a normal Tuesday. I slept a bit late, 'cause of the stupid Daylight Saving Time change, but not too late. Got a good flight in—enough to relax me and unstress me the rest of the way. Although the beer and pizza last night had really helped a lot, too.
I was thinking about Kant as I flew. Turning over his thoughts in my head.
I think the part I liked the most was his idea that if you couldn't prove that something existed, you ought to try and prove that it did not. If you could prove neither, then you had to decide whether it was in your best interest to believe in it or not.
There was just something poetic about that. Maybe that was why I liked it.
I couldn't prove that I liked it because it was poetic, and I couldn't prove that it wasn't poetic, so I guess that means that I had to decide for myself whether it was in my best interest to believe it was poetic or not.
But how he built upon that to understand how the mind made sense of the world around it, and that the world existed regardless and behaved the same regardless of if anypony was watching it or writing down observations about it, well, that was pretty obvious. This world had existed before I even knew about it, and unless all my professors and friends were lying, there were things like clouds and rain and snow before the first pegasus set hoof on Earth. And they behaved sorta the same here as they did in Equestria.
I landed on the field in front of Trowbridge, setting my hooves into the snow which was very much like Equestrian snow. Then I stuck my muzzle in it and blew a cloud of flakes away from me, watching as they danced in the little wind I'd just made.
When I got out of the shower, I sat down at my desk and went back to work on my essay. When I read over what I'd written, I had second thoughts. I wasn't sure I was completely clear on what a priori and a posteriori were, although I was pretty certain that they were before and after. Miss Chestnut ought to have told us that we'd need a Latin dictionary too, as much as the humans loved using Latin.
His ideas on morals were the most important, and that's what I was focusing on. I think that was something that some of the newer philosophers had forgotten. They were too busy trying to figure out if the world existed at all, or why it was such a horrible place for them, but Kant was more positive.
I finished writing what I thought his formulations meant and then just sat staring at the paper while I tried to figure out a way to wrap it all up.
That's the hardest part of writing stuff. I get these ideas in my head and then I write them down and read back and they sound dumb, or I get to a point where I can't figure out what to say next.
I finally came up with a kind of rambly conclusion that I could probably form into shape when I got a second look at it, and started the tedious process of writing the whole thing again for the computer. The professor said that she wasn't going to accept any handwritten essays, and she probably also meant mouthwritten, too. But once it was on the computer, I could show it to some students in the English Department who were helping people with essays. I had an appointment for tomorrow morning, which was cutting it really close but would hopefully keep me from making any really dumb English mistakes.
I had most of it done when it was lunchtime. I could finish that up after the poetry final exam, and then make some changes on the computer (which was a lot neater than crossing stuff out in my notebook) and have it ready before I went to bed.
When I sat down in Conrad's class, I wasn't sure what to expect. The final for climate science and philosophy were both pretty obvious; I didn't know what he was going to do.
He came into the room and opened his desk and placed two jars on the table, one of them containing yellow slips of paper and one of them with white. Then he took a stack of papers out of his desk and set them beside the jar.
He had each one of us take a piece of white paper out of the jar, which had a number on it. Mine was 19. Then when we all had our numbers and were back in our seats, he told us that he liked to do things a little bit differently than the other professors did. He reached into the jar with the yellow slips and pulled out the number five.
That was Melissa's number, and she went forward and he handed her a poem with the number five written on the back.
He had her read it aloud, and then asked her what she thought about it. He asked if she could guess who had written it, and a few other questions like that, and then he had her draw the next number.
It took a while for my number to come, and I listened intently to all the poems which we hadn't read in class and I tried to guess who'd written them. Sometimes I was right and sometimes I was wrong.
Then Trevor picked the number nineteen and I almost flew out of my seat and got my page.
I knew as soon as I saw it that it was e e cummings. Nobody else wrote poems like that.
It was called O Sweet Spontaneous, and I smiled when I got to the end—it was all I could do to keep from laughing. Conrad asked me what I thought about it, and there was a mischievous twinkle in his eye.
I told him that the world was an amazing place, and no matter how many scientists tried to explain it or how many philosophers tried to understand it, it would keep on being what it was. I told him that even Earth ponies who know all about plants have a happy joyous song for when the first spring flower bloom, and we sometimes sit on our outposts and watch the clouds playing over the ocean.
Then I drew the number twelve out of the jar and Miro who I didn't know very well got his poem and began reading it.
I felt a lot better about everything after class, because I asked Conrad if I could keep the poem, and he said I could, and then he said that I would be welcome in his next poetry class.
When I got back to our dorm room, I hung the poem on the wall next to my computer. I thought about how much I’d been struggling sometimes in philosophy class and a little bit in climate science, and e e cummings had said in so few words what I should have known all along: that the world was gonna keep being the same no matter how many scientists poked and prodded at it trying to get its secrets out.
I ran into Meghan and her friends at dinner and decided to sit with them. Meghan asked if I was still going to be able to go to the salon tomorrow—there hadn't been any free blocks on Monday after all—and I said that I would. It was going to be refreshing after my exam was over. Then Thursday I was going to meet Mister Salvatore and Miss Cherilyn for lunch and then we'd drive to Michigan State University where I could spend time with Aquamarine before we went on Spring Break. They were going to get a hotel room nearby, until it was time to go on our trip.
I wasn't sure of all the details; they were going to tell me on Thursday. But I was looking forward to it.
I finished up my essay, and Peggy was kind enough to help me edit some of it. She said that she wasn't all that good at editing, so I ought to still let the English student at it, but she still picked out some pretty obvious mistakes, and had me explain a couple of things better that she didn't really understand from reading my essay.
I really like this story, you make the chapters feel like real journal entries. And I will NOT say it!
I find that understanding the mechanisms behind spring only makes it more beautiful, but that's me. Still, very nice way to do an exam for a poetry class.
Someone tell Silver Glow about the double-slit experiment.
How do trees know to put their leaves out? I've always wondered that.
is that also how you feel as author of this book?
except quantum physics, the fluttershy of science.
Take that Lisa!
7203314 I I remember well, it is a combinaison of dayligth, temperature and some sort of biological clock.
7203314 heat budgets, I think. We calculate degree days to figure life cycles for integrated pest management, to thwack fungi and bugs before they can get up to no good. Also, to guide when seeds should go into the ground for the field crops.
But the plants in the wild are just better at judging their own local conditions than even the most discrete, well-modeled, and distributed of measurements can detect. Think of a plant as a massively over engineered sensor suite married to a microfactory, a billion years in development.
7203365
Sure, but how does the tree know?
7203399 These things I mentionned create a crystallized sap cap at the root of the leaves.
This damned adorable technicolor magic horse is better at writing essays than I am.
7203303
That would be pretty interesting.
... Is it wrong that I read that E.E. Cummings poem as if I were William Shatner? Because... it works.
Oh dear. Well it isn't college if you don't get at least one failing grade. Maybe the teacher will take pity on the poor pony on account of the language barrier.
I keep forgetting that she's not a native speaker. I wonder what a pony accent sounds like.
I'm not so sure about the former, but I'm pretty sure "a posteriori" refers to the whole tail region of your body. Okay, somewhat sure. Maybe a bit sure...
Alright, I might just be talking out of my a posteriori.
P.S. It was sooooooo hard to get my phone to not auto-correct that Latin.
Good poetry and good coffee plus a good story. Great start to my day.
7200932
...and make them able to 3D re-orientate or rearrange themselves as needed. Apart from being Equestria's first supercomputer, Cloudsdale would be quite the spectacular sight against the night sky. Given the typical miniaturization process in hardware (dampware?), a few decades down the air currents they should arrive at the ability to do that with single droplets.
Need some totally awesome computing power for your project? We have the solution!
The Cumulus VII - now with reinless 3-Tribe interfacing, the revolution in accessibility.
Cumulus VII thermal inside.
7203916 What if it happened by accident? All of those chemicals and electrical events at the Weather Factory for so many years, soaking into the cloud layer that makes up Cloudsdale until one day, a spark ignites a thought.
What am I?
7203399 The earth ponies come along and lay a smackdown on the bark, which breaks the sap caps on the branches and the leaves pop out. Really, it's not that hard. Twilight even has it on her Winter Wrap-Up Checklist.
If she visits Earth friends over break she might go to Mexico or Florida. Or, she might go home with them. Hard to tell what is bigger shock. If she goes to church on Easter and takes communion it will be a shock. There was an episode on South Park about it.
7203314
The pixies send them honey scented letters tied up with spider silk, telling them Pan has awoken once again.
Another enjoyable chapter, though I'm sad that Silver has so little regard for scientists. It's so common now to just lump anyone who tries to figure things out as soulless and unfeeling machines. Everyone just assumes now that no scientist looks at the world in awe and wonder and because of that they, more than the poets and artists, dive deep into it to see the beauty underneath.
Nope, impossible. Movies and media tell us otherwise.
They don't look at the heavens and while others saw a sphere surrounding everyone with the Earth in the center they saw infinity and other worlds that to this day they send signals to so they can meet new friends.
Nope, joyless bastards who want to take the wonder away from everything. My parents said so.
They are not human beings as well who struggle, feel joy and elation at each new wonder discovered and are fueled by their dreams.
Nope. Scientists have no dreams. My priest said so.
Nope, they just ruin EVERYTHING and the world would be such a happier place if they would just stop trying to solve things. Those assholes.
Sorry to rant but just getting real tired of seeing them being made the bad guy for trying to help. Silver herself went to the weather center where they showed how they were able to predict a tornado and warn a town 20 or so minutes in advance. Jerks, took the joy and wonder of a spontaneous natural phenomenon away from all those town people. Damn kill joys completely ruined the surprise because they put human life over the town peoples right to experience first hand the majesty of a tornado. How dare they?
And those damn doctors always poking around sick people. And those astronomers trying to make contact with alien worlds rather than just shooting missiles in the name of security. And chemists and biologist, and historians and their stupid facts, and engineers and everyone else. Instead of telling girls they're just as good as boys in math and science we should just tell boys to drop science as well. It just ruins it for everyone.
Again, just REALLY tired of seeing good people, and yes they are good people, not soulless monsters, be portrayed yet again as somehow ruining the beauty of the world for everyone else.
I really do like this story, and I look forward to reading it everyday, and it's not Silver's fault at all. But given how she comes from another world, I guess I was hoping that somehow the American mindset to just casually assume that scientists are uncaring like it's an obvious fact wouldn't be part of her mindset yet as well. I guess some things are just universal.
Still a great story and looking forward to reading it every morning.
By the way, any guess as to when Onto the Pony Planet may be updated?
I would have hated to have that poetry final. go in front of the class and talk about a subject I hate and suck at? No thanks.
7204057 I think it is the opposite, earlier, she got told by a friend (LIsa) that she had lost her sense of wonder beacause she knew well the science behind the weather.
I think that she interpredted the poem as «no matter how much I know about the world, it doesn't change, it is still beautiful».
7203399
Dormant plants have buds on their branches, small and covered in scales that protects it more or less from the winter. When spring comes photorecepting proteins such as those of the phytochrome or cryptochrome families in the plant's buds activates. In such cases, the light interacts with the protein causing it to under go a conformation change in structure, which either directly or indirectly starts influencing the cell's transcription of various genes leading to new gene products and so forth.
Spring break aught to be quite interesting.
7204057 Scientist here, and I just wanted to thank you for that. I'll add that for us (for me, anyway), knowing more about the world actually makes it more beautiful and wonderful. The universe is more vast, and contains phenomena of more awesome power and more subtle intricacy than our unaided senses can detect. Sometimes it moves me to tears.
My primary pony OC is even named in Latin.
7204057
I'm pretty sure that you misinterpreted Silver's thoughts, but have an upvote anyway. It's not particularly relevant to this chapter, but it's the sort of thing that needs to be said more often.
7205063
7204057
Agreed. The more I learn about the universe, the more it blows my mind. I resent the implication that trying to explain or understand the world detracts from one's experience of it. All those scientists "poking and prodding," trying to get its secrets out? They're trying to give us the tools we need to make it a better place. Because of them, there are many things in the world that won't "keep being the same."
7205936
https://xkcd.com/877/
7203284
7203294
I generally do as well, but there are still some things that I like to have a little mystery about.
7203303
Is that the one where light gets to be a wave when it wants to be and a particle when it wants to be?
7203327
Yes, it is. Sometimes.
One day, no doubt, we'll completely understand quantum physics, and more likely than not discover another mystery even deeper down.
7203344
7203394
That's something Silver Glow also probably knows about (and which I don't . . . yet).
Yeah, no kidding. Can you imagine the array of equipment we'd need to build a fake tree that worked like a real one?
7203409
Hmm, that's not as romantic as 7204036's theory. Although also damned cool.
7203424
7203558
Shatner and e e cummings might just be made for each other.
7203669
Well, in some very broad sense they're sort of before and after. As long as her thesis isn't based around that misunderstanding, she ought to do okay.
I think teachers sometimes do--and of course it depends on how the class is graded. I failed every one of my Latin tests (my highest test score was in the mid fifties), but I passed the class because I did all the homework and participated in every class, and that was like 70% of the overall grade.
7203686
Probably has lots of whinnys and nickers and snorts tossed into it.
That would actually be interesting for someone with a good scientific background to ponder.
7203726
That sounds pretty reasonable. And a priori is the stuff before that
7203797
7203916
That would be awesome! At least on the big model, you'd be able to see it work! And the computer engineers would be pegasi with buckets of lightning bolts to pour into the clouds. . . .
7203965
I'll buy that explanation.
Oh there are so many wonderful ways that could go.
7204018
She's taking an Amtrak tour of the US, which will give her time to see a lot of the country (at least in passing) so that she's got some frame of reference for where she might want to go for summer break.
7204036
I like this explanation.
7204114
And yet, for Silver, it was her favorite final.
7204200
Pixies. Of all the explanations in the thread, pixies are what I choose to believe.
(Seriously, though, that's really cool how that works. I had a biologist friend explain to me once how grapevines wrap around stuff, and that was really neat too.)
7205552
How do ponies even know Latin?
Related, since there's so much Greek mythology in MLP, I want to see a language barrier HiE (or PoE) where it turns out all the ponies are speaking some form of classical Greek.
7210427
It's "Old Roaman".
Another OC is named in Greek.
(P.S.: If you're curious, the aforementioned OCs are here and here.)
7210506
Been there, done that.
7210427
The fun part is, the photorecepting proteins are turned on by certain wavelengths of light, and turned off by others: experiments have been done where different flashes of light start then stop the germination of plants, it's all very interesting.
I'm always picturing Professor Hillberry as Robin Williams' Keating from DPS.
Funny you should mention that SG, because quantum physics begs to differ. The act of observation changes the outcome, seemingly through time itself.
7583920
As I recall, the Greek philosophers weren't up on their quantum physics.
7203916
Thus, Skynet was born!
7584364
It turns out the physcists who came up with quantum mechanics weren't too up on it, either.
Oh, they were on the right track...they just had a hard time understanding it.
7669716
If the ponies ever built a literal, cloud computing system, then there's no other name they could call it.
Wasn't there some famous saying about quantum mechanics along the lines of 'if you think you understand quantum physics than you don't understand quantum physics?' Because the deeper down the rabbit-hole you go the weirder it gets.
7679968
What about CloudBank? Or StormNet?
Or maybe the unicorns get to it first and form Marecrosoft Stables.
Edit: Though most Equestrian government will opt for Apple Jack as their preferred OS.
7679968
In response to the quantum physics.
God was drunk and had smoked waaay too much kush the day He said; "hey, check this shit out"
7841594
Or maybe we're just not clever enough to have figured out the explanation yet. Perhaps once we understand Dark Energy, it will all make sense.
Heck, I've often thought that the reason that ponies can do magic is because they have a better understanding of advanced and theoretical physics than we do.
And time for her the test in her best class. Now..... how do you even test this stuff?
This helps. True.
Well, you can't prove something does not exist conclusively, but in the amount that she would consider, it works.
I can buy that. Especially from her.
Cannot fault the pony logic.
Do have to agree with her points, very direct and makes a lot of sense. Pony straightforwardness is often like that.
SQUUEEEE!!!!!!
HEH, Good point. And yeah, kind of does pop up a lot. Though most are easy to figure out what they mean from context and what else they sound like.
Hint: Maybe your attitude had something to do with it guys.
Me thinks the author slipped some thoughts in.
But that's rather normal for people overall.
Yes, and don't think playing rules lawyer will work. Not in this type of class. They just aren't used to having to be so specific with ponies around.
"You but 'neigh' in place of 'no' in every case."
"Oops."
Very much so.
I'm with you, how do you really grade that type of class?
How'd she get it out of the jar?
Judge their ability to gain insight from a poem and what it means, just going by means to them type logic, and see if they can notice particular styles of famous poets... makes sense.
Always nice to get one with a very obvious style.
Yup, she is MUCH better off taking more poetry classes then useless Comp stuff.
Again.... how?
Well of course, like that was ever in doubt.
Ohhhh trip?
Surprise Pony Trip? Ohhh this is going to be fun.
Ask a quantum physicist about the influence of observation on a system. You'll be surprised
Wooo! Success!
That might be a nice end to your philosophy essay, ha. An E. E. Cummings quote.
Remarks and corrections:
> If you could prove neither, than you had to decide
"[then] you had to decide"
10757942
To quote Professor Farnsworth from Futurama “No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it.”
Conrad loves poet pony.
It really would be. Philosophers think they’re hot stuff, but a poet’ll put them in their place.
Correction made; thank you!