Ginger Mint

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Take for example the theory that life has existed on Mars at one point or another.

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I have been noticing some consternation here and there about the purpose of the locomotive in Over a Barrel. Why have a locomotive engine when the train is being pulled by ponies? A fair question to be sure. However, when I think about the other forms of travel we've seen so far, it might make a bit more sense.

Most of the other vehicles we've seen (with the exception of the hot air balloon) have been pulled by pegasai and seemed a little bit too big to be carried by their drivers alone. Fluttershy remarks at one point that she's not used to carrying anything heavier than a bunny or two, but is later seen hauling a cart full of frogs (a cart that is being suspended 90º behind her no less) I can't calculate the exact force of torque in that situation, but I assume that those flying carts have some kind of magic in them that helps them stay suspended, perhaps like a magical flywheel.

Given that the train cars were modular in design in the same way that the cargo in the various flying vehicles would have been, it is my interpretation that ponies use some kind of kinetic assist magic/technology/stuff that gives them a sort of mechanical advantage. In other words, once they get up to speed, they don't need to work quite as hard.

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I cant speak for anyone but myself, but my reservations about the end of the episode mostly stemmed from the fact that it tackles one of the biggest issues we face today and it is not the easy answer that I would have liked... but it is an good answer.

To paraphrase Hal Clement: "As long as there is an attitude that one's own rights are as important as anyone else's this will be a problem. Not more important. As important. I'm not saying that it is immoral, but whatever the specifics are, it inevitably means that someone will believe they have the right to something that another possesses."

So really, it does require sharing and enough caring to deal in good faith. Sure, the world's problems aren't going to be solved with Pie, but according to Miller, Rozin, Fiske (1998), sharing food does have worldwide significance in establishing and maintaining social ties.

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I just figured it was because she was referring to the buffalo as well, who weren't ponies.

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Yes, ponies don't eat jewels, but Rainbow Dash wouldn't touch the slop, it was visually unappealing (complete with stink lines and everything) and nobody seemed to care whether they liked it or not. Pinkie Pie is a special case who eats cupcakes with hot sauce, the fact that she liked it almost counts against it.

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I think I've figured it out! ...the element that I was missing I mean. They foreshadowed the resolution way in advance when Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash were brought to the buffalo camp.

Spike says that the buffalo respect dragons, but ponies not so much when he is given a delicious bowl of turquoise and the other two are given mushy slop. So in the context of this episode, giving good food is a sign of genuine respect. So it is no coincidence that giving good food is part of the solution, because it is a way for the settler ponies to show that they genuinely respect their neighbors.

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I would like to point out the correspondence principle. It essentially states that any new theory must give the same answers as the old theory where the old theory has been confirmed by experiment. So it isn't quite that something comes along to prove it otherwise, but you can add special cases that couldn't previously be confirmed by experiment.

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The part about Fluttershy being a tree was absolutely hysterical!

As for Pinkie Pie's song not working, I wonder if it was part of a hidden moral that; when people aren't listening, you need more than words. I feel like there was something else to this episode that just keeps slipping from my grasp.

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So I keep hearing every now and again people complaining about the episode Feeling Pinky Keen, because it supposedly is an attack on science. This confused me a little bit at first, because I am a very science oriented person myself and it is the episode that got me interested in MLP in the first place.

Feeling Pinkie Keen bugged me, but that is more because my personal rationalist, secular views. The idea that some things just need to be taken on faith rather bugged me. It is technically true that there can be phenomenon that cannot be explain that is true, but I always view such things as cannot be explained yet, not that there is no possible explanation.

I suppose I can understand why the moral is a little bit hard to accept on account of Twilight's poor scientific method, but that wasn't what the episode was really about. There are two morals to the story that are both very pro-science. The whole "choose to believe," bit at the end was particularly subversive because the unexplainable phenomenon was actually very scientific.

Moral One: Accepting Law Without Theory (Primarily For Kids)

This is a big one that a lot of science oriented folks get wrong all the time and it drives me nuts. A scientific Law and a scientific Theory are two totally separate things that are never interchangeable. Laws are descriptions of observed phenomenon, while Theories are explanations of how the mechanics of observable phenomenon work. Theories don't ever become Laws with enough gathered evidence, and there is no Law that was ever a Theory. Ever.

So in Feeling Pinkie Keen we have an observable phenomenon that has a very reliable outcome. A Theory for how it works is NOT necessary for the descriptive observations to be accurate.

This is especially important for children because they will not initially have the mathematical skills necessary to understand the proofs of various Theories themselves and must necessarily take them for granted, with the only evidence being the ability of said theory to predict future events.

Predicting future events is the fundamental purpose of science. Those predictions may require a solid understanding, but it is the accuracy of predictions that ultimately decides the validity of any scientific Theory. I find it no coincidence that Pinkie Pie's power was in fact predicting things. It was almost too on the nose.

In the episode, Pinkie Pie says "You don't believe because you don't understand." This is a critical moment in analyzing the moral of the story. It is important to note that Pinkie Pike doesn't say "You don't understand because you don't believe," nor can you infer that statement -that would be the logical fallacy of denying the antecedent. The point is, the moral is about understanding. At the end, Twilight concedes that she believes the phenomenon is real. She does not concede that can not possibly be explained, rather that its truth is not dependent on understanding.

I don't know the mathematics behind quantum mechanics, nor do I think I ever will. I didn't even make it to calculus when I was in school, however, I can still use quantum mechanics in my daily life because its effects are observable and predictable. I rely on friendly scientist types to help me out with the hard mathematics, but I don't think that there is any scientist out there that fully understands everything their colleagues do. In my experience everyone has an area of expertise.

I don't even remember how many billions of dollars have been spent searching for the Higgs Boson, and it might not even exist, but the assumption of its existence still provides good predictions.

Moral Two: Confirmation Bias (Primarily for Adults)

Confirmation bias is one of the most common and problematic biases people have to overcome, and that is the moral that Twilight's obstinate behavior exposes. Twilight spends all of her time looking for ways to prove her theory when she ought to have been looking for ways to disprove it. Anti-science folks frequently try to pull this trick, and to my dismay, it often trips people up who ought to know better. A Scientific Theory that cannot possibly be disproven is not a good Theory, a Theory is typically not a good scientific theory unless it is falsifiable. If you cannot conceive of a condition that your theory might be disproven, then chances are your theory is a Tautology -a type of circular logic that is necessarily true.

It is true that when testing a hypothesis, you have to establish some assumptions which may not be true in order to test it. ((I think the Large Hadron Collider might the result of the most financially expensive assumption ever.)) But when we're dealing with the unknown, it would be a huge mistake to discount results that do not fit the your expectations.

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OhmygoshohmygoshohmyGOSH!

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The light blue made a nice triadic color scheme with Fluttershy's light yellow and pink, while the white base muted the simultaneous contrast of the different colors while emphasizing each one.

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Does anyone else think that Rarity's rejected outfit was actually kinda neat? (the white suit with blue bits)

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Oh... I get it! Green with envy... *facehoof*

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I had a friend that used to drive two and a half hours each weekend to watch other people roleplay/hang out, but she never wanted to actually join in herself, she was just content to watch and converse. That is just the kind of vibe I got anyway. Have you ever known someone who just wants to watch but never actually joins in? I've also seen it with sports and video games too.

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I didn't get the impression that Fluttershy thought the treatments were unnecessary. I got the impression that it was just her inherent timidness to not go all out with the full spa treatment. I know some timid friends who don't particularly like trying new things and will order the most unadventurous meal when we go to eat at a new place, etc.

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"Foreverrrr!!!" I am going to have to start working that into my daily speech.

Keeping a friend's secret is important, but I've learned that sometimes you have to press your friends to come clean on their own.

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The question I have is what kind of gameplay would such a game have. Friendship doesn't have a lot to do with fighting, so a lot of the easy genres aren't really applicable. However, there are some concepts out there that I could see working.

• A cloud clearing sim for Rainbow Dash. There's a huge gap in flight games between non-goal oriented flight sims and shoot em up combat games. I'm a huge fan of flying and I love the feeling of freedom that it brings, but most flying games have elements that inhibit that effect. Usually they try to have you follow a set course, like a racing game, but that just ends up making it feel too restricted. A game where you clear out cloud formations that appear randomly would allow you to chart your own course through the sky and have a goal as well as the feeling of freedom.

• An RPG with primarily conversation based conflict system might be super hard to make, but the results would be spectacular. There are lots of writers out there though, and I've seen lots of neat conversation based games out there -usually involving dialogue trees. But it could be set up as a puzzler, where you unravel the truth of some mystery through investigation and talking to different people about what they know.

• A platformer is probably the simplest route to take, and Twilight does have this thing about falling off cliffs... If anyone has ever played the original "lost vikings," I could see a puzzle based platform where each pony's special ability is required to get through a level.

• The biggest, most grandiose, most improbable idea would be a social based MMO based on Equestria. It would have to discard the standard paradigm that MMOs have of "fight monsters, get loot." It could be reversed, however, into something that involves cooperation. I remember my good friend telling me about the "good old days of ultima online," where people built their own towns, practically from scratch. That got me thinking: if you could have some kind of social apparatus (kind of like facebook or something) where everypony could join however many different groups as they want, you could use those groups to resolve issues of how to delegate in game space and remove griefers from the equation ((who are so prevalent in other community building games like minecraft multiplayer)). So essentially, you would do tasks to keep your town running smoothly, and in turn you would be rewarded reputation as a contributing member, which would open up more options for you to take on different quests.

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A friend suggested that the lack of background music was specifically for DJs and the like so they could mix it into their music.

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Every time I see Candy Mane / Bacon and Eggs in the background, her unique cut always draws my eye.

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I mean, when all that random stuff falls on Twilight all at once, it isn't a plant or animal or even alive.

I wonder if her ability to know where Rainbow Dash is running and arrive there ahead of time is related.

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I was watching Feeling Pinky Keen again and I suddenly had a revelation. I recall hearing somewhere that Earth Ponies were supposed to have a strong connection with the earth, plants, animals and living things in general, in the same way that pegasai have a connection with the sky and unicorns have a connection with magic.

But if you can believe that all life has an energy to it, an energy that surrounds us and binds us. Suddenly Pinkie Pie's ability to predict the future makes perfect sense. She's actually some kind of jedi master... One wonders what else she might be capable of.

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Oh my gosh! I made the exact same mistake once. I bet she was thinking of acceleration due to gravity while near the Earth's surface.

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Maybe Rainbow Dash is keeping an eye out for any future competition?

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I liked the episode. I know a lot of people are going to say the moral is "whine and get whatever you want," but I think they are completely missing the point that Rarity was kidnapped! There was nothing trivial about her situation or complaints, unless you think kidnapping anypony is an ok practice. It is also a well known fact -which was demonstrated for the viewer with the dog whistle- that dogs have sensitive hearing, which is what Rarity deliberately used to her advantage.

History is replete with examples of successful nonviolent resistance. So I'd like to counter any complaints that the moral was "whine to get whatever you want," with the suggestion that the real moral was "you don't need violence to get whatever you want." Especially since almost all of the other pony's attempts at muscling through didn't work very well.

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Thank you most sincerely. The background wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't gotten halfway done and then decided to start over from scratch.