Cogito ergo sum

by TwiwnB

Rating: everyone
Tags: Pinkie Pie, Slice of Life, Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 3826

Twilight tries to teach the concept of logic to Pinkie Pie. She fails.

"Cogito ergo sum" - I think therefore I am (Descartes)

Some things are simple and obvious when you are a rational and smart pony like Twilight Sparkle. But when you try to make a crazy mare like Pinkie Pie obey the rules of logic, you should expect at least some challenge.

But that's not a story about logic. It was supposed to be, but it isn't. Or at least not anymore. I think it's just a story about two friends spending some time together...

Published 2016-08-13 23:20:01 UTC
Last updated 2016-08-13 23:20:01 UTC

Let's talk logic and stuff...

« Today, Pinkie Pie, today you are going to learn how to make sense ! »

Twilight’s victorious smile was made both of benevolence and, dare we say it, of a pinch of selfish satisfaction. Of course, after all that time, Twilight had gotten used to Pinkie’s antics, of her curly mane, of her cotton candy scent or her high pitch spontaneous laughter. But even so, there was still a little something that was bothering her.

She quickly straightened a rebel lock of her own mane back into its rightful position where it logically belonged, next to the other locks, into the perfect geometrical configuration. She went to the bookshelf on the wall, took out an old book and blew the dust away. Surprised, she coughed, blushed out of embarrassment but hid her discomfort the best she could with a stoic and professional expression. The one she had seen all of her teachers use back in the days.

“I thought you said you would show me what you do for fun…” Pinkie Pie complained.

Her head was already half of the way in merging with her school desk. Her right hoof was nonchalantly balancing in the air, beating out the rhythm of her life, using all the raw energy her body was producing and she wasn’t allowed to use otherwise like a motor that cannot stop completely.

Twilight went to the class board and reassured her friend:

“Oh but this will be a lot of fun. Today, I’ll teach you about the greatest tool at a pony’s disposal.”

And she grabbed a piece of chalk with her magic to write one simple word on the board:

“Logic”

“Logic?” Pinkie asked. “Hey, I know about that! It’s like the thing you say you’re using and we lack when you talk and we cannot understand you.”

“Hum… yes.” Twilight admitted. “But it’s actually a bit more complicated. Let me give you a very basic example of how logic works.”

She put her book on Pinkie’s desk, opened it at page forty-two on which only one sentence was written, which made it super easy for Pinkie to read:
“Cogito ergo sum…”

Pinkie looked around to see if anything had happened, but the castle’s room was still the same.

“Aren’t spells supposed to make stuff happen?” She asked, a bit disappointed by the lack of magical explosion,

“It’s not a spell.” Twilight corrected. “It means “I think therefore I am”. It’s a prime example of deductive argument. Because of the fact that you think, you can deduce that you exist.”

You could have lit the whole world with Twilight’s smile, and then some more. And you could have powered a whole town with the electricity in the air. The sweat on Twilight’s front, however, wouldn’t have filled more than a thimble, even if it was getting quite warm and noisy also from a fast yet incredibly regular beat. More than anything, Twilight’s eyes were fixated on Pinkie Pie’s face as the mare was trying to figure out the meaning of the weird words she had just heard.

Was it trust? Hope? Wishful thinking or blind faith? The argument can be made that it was very irrational from a mare like Twilight to think a mare like Pinkie would immediately get it.

And she didn’t.

“I don’t get it.” Pinkie complained while putting her hoof on her head to make the twirling stop before she would get nauseous.

A city got unpowered and the world went back to darkness as Twilight loudly sighed, but not without a little laugh. That was just how Pinkie was, she would just have to try harder. She remembered her training in pedagogy and decided to explore the cognitive conflict by finding out what knowledge Pinkie was missing to solve it and bring her zone of proximal development to an appropriate status.

In other words, she asked Pinkie Pie to describe what she didn’t understand about the problem.

“Is it because you put the premise of the deduction into doubt?” Twilight asked. “Because you cannot doubt without thinking. Therefore, the fact that you doubt means you think and therefore you are.”

Twilight was a powerful mare, because of her position as a princess, because of her link to the element of magic, the huge magical abilities that came with it and her friends. But never would she feel as powerful as moments like that one, just after she would have finished a statement like the one she had just made.

Statements that were true. Statements that were so simple they were obvious and yet hidden from the untrained eye. Statements that made sense.

“But it doesn’t make sense.” Pinkie said. “I mean, I don’t know about that deductive thing you’re talking about, but it simply can’t be true.”
Twilight felt the overwhelming weight of reality crashing down onto her, knocking her back into humility and into the simple little pony she was and had always been.

“But no… it does make sense you see. The fact you doubt it makes it objectively true…” She tried to explain.

“I’m not speaking about the whole thinking part of your spelly thing. I’m talking about the being and existing part.” Pinkie replied.

Twilight stood still for a long second. One of those seconds that can stretch to the very end of the eternity, touch the edge and then come back to be nothing more than a mere second. One of those seconds that are supposed to let you enough time to think but you waste just wondering why things aren’t going the way they were supposed to as you’ve just been faced with an unexpected development.

“The being and existing part…” Twilight thought out loud. “What about it?”

“You don’t exist.” Pinkie Pie replied. “So there must be something wrong with that logic of yours.”

She was being serious. Twilight could tell because Pinkie was using her serious face, even if she was licking the book at that very moment. She knew it was what Pinkie considered “analyzing” it. Same thing with how she was now eating a piece of a page and very seriously savoring every single flavor of it.

Now Pinkie was being serious because she had put glasses on, and a second pair of glasses in front of the first to be more smart and the sunglasses on top of it to look super cool nonetheless. She was very seriously coloring the text of the book, first by filling all the “o” and the “p”, then by drawing stuff between the words, around the words, within the words and over the words. She was quite good. She had made a little cartoon with a purple mare that was eating ice cream and having fun under the sun and the moon too, so basically in a daynight so that nopony would feel left out. And she had drawn lots and lots of friends everywhere and they were all singing and playing and everything was perfect.

Then Pinkie pie raised her look to Twilight, gasped and quickly corrected her drawing by adding a lot of red on the purple mare. And also a frown. And lightning all around.

“What do you mean we don’t exist!?” Twilight exploded.

Pinkie Pie smiled, which was her way of sighing. Maybe it had been trust, hope, wishful thinking or blind faith, but Pinkie had thought Twilight would have immediately gotten it. The argument could have been made that it had been too rational an expectation from a mare like Pinkie Pie. Yet she would have made that argument invalid by her simple existence. Or, in this case, nonexistence.

“Oh, silly, silly Twilight.” Pinkie laughed while hugging her friend. “You shouldn’t care about things like that. It doesn’t matter.”

The hug was warm. The pressure of Pinkie’s hooves on her back was comforting. Feeling another pony’s heart’s beat than her own was a feeling she could never have enough of. It was like colliding with another world entirely and for the time it would last, everything was different. Better. Brighter. Simpler.

Twilight rejected it all.

“You won’t get away with just a hug. I say we exist, or at least I exist because even if I were to doubt my existence, it means I can doubt, and therefore think, and therefore I have to exist to be thinking, so I exist.”

“But you don’t exist Twilight. I don’t exist. We don’t exist. Those aren’t your thoughts. They may have been, once, long ago maybe, but they aren’t yours anymore. I mean come on, have you never considered that possibility?”

No, Twilight had not. Because it was stupid. And it didn’t make any sense.

“How could my thoughts be another’s?” Twilight rhetorically asked with a grin of satisfaction. “I am the one controlling my thoughts. I decide what I want to think about. I make the decisions. I exist.”

Pinkie Pie backed a few steps away. Her smile disappeared and she sat on the floor.

“You really… I mean…” Pinkie said first.

And the more she was trying to talk, the more she was shrinking down and her mane was losing its curves.

“…Is it really that important for you to actually exist?” Pinkie asked.

Twilight hesitated. Was it really important? She had never even considered it until that moment. She had always taken as granted that she did.

“Yes, I think it is. I’m not sure.” She answered. “But I can’t understand how I could not exist.”

Pinkie approached and explained:
“You can see us like just memories brought back to life by another entity. You know how life is just like a big book written by destiny. It’s kind of like that. Everything we did, everything we do and everything we are going to do has been written for us. We are just doing and thinking what has been written. And we will do it again, and again and all over again as many times as there is an entity to read the words that constitute us and go through the memory.”

Some things ponies understand easily, like the sun going up in the morning and down before night. Some things ponies struggle to understand, like quantum physic or the intricacy of a doughnut. Some things, ponies cannot understand.

It wasn’t clear whether Twilight was struggling to understand Pinkie’s words, or was just unable to understand them, or if there was anything to understand to begin with.

“But I can choose…” Twilight replied.

“No you can’t.” Pinkie said. “The choices you will make have been written for you. They have been written for me too. That’s a good thing because I wouldn’t have chosen to tell you we don’t exist if I could have chosen.”

“Then why did you choose to tell me?” Twilight asked.

“I didn’t. It’s how the story goes. And we were to replay the story all over again, it is how the story would go again. Because that’s how it was written. I guess there wouldn’t have been a story if I hadn’t told you anything. It would have been boring don’t you think? But sometimes boring is good too, so that’s okay in my book.”

Twilight noticed how dry her mouth had become. And how soaked her fur was. She tried to move to go get a glass of water, but as soon as her head had moved by an inch, the whole room started spinning and spinning without end. She closed her eyes to avoid the feeling of sickness but it made her aware of her internal tension. Her fur was trembling, her stomach was compressing and her legs… her legs weren’t feeling the ground anymore. She was just floating in the middle of nothing, all alone with her train of thoughts. It was just like a dream and yet, even so far away from reality, she felt like a complete living being. She felt it was real. She felt real.

And then a hoof entered her dream like world and grabbed her.

“Are you feeling okay Twilight?” Pinkie asked. “We should stop fooling around now. Wouldn’t you rather have a nice game of chess instead? Or we could go bake cupcakes together!”

“I’m okay.” Twilight replied. “I just…”

Her mouth was still dry. At that moment, all she truly needed was a drink.

“Nope!” Pinkie replied. “Bad idea. Let me get you some water, that’s better.”

Pinkie brought Twilight to a sofa and then brought a glass of water that she put on a table near Twilight on the sofa.

“Alright…” the latter said. “It still all doesn’t make sense. I can prove it to you. I can choose to drink that glass of water or not to drink that glass of water and go get something else to drink. That choice is mine alone to make and nopony can predict what choice I’ll be making.”

“You really are into extreme games, aren’t you?” Pinkie asked with a laugh. “You are right, that logic stuff of yours can be fun to play with.”

“Just answer the question: is it not true that I get to choose whether or not I’ll drink that glass of water and that there is no way to know if I will or not?”

“No, it’s not true. It has already been written.”

“But if it has already been written, then there should be a way to read it in advance and then, once coming back to this point in time, I could change my decision and go against what has been written.”

Pinkie Pie jumped in excitement. She wasn’t used to playing such a weird game, if it could be called a game. She wasn’t certain what the rules were, and if there was a way to win or if a pony could lose, but she was talking with Twilight and she was feeling closer to her friend than she had ever been before.

“Then let’s do it!” Pinkie Pie joyfully shouted. “Let’s just skip a few paragraphs of your story. Let’s go directly to where you make your choice, and then let’s come back here, when you still haven’t made it and then let’s live through your choice again to see if we can change it.”

“I… what? You mean you are going to tell me what choice I’m going to make? Or you are going to make us travel through time? This is crazy!”

“Of course it’s crazy silly.” Pinkie replied. “We can’t go to your decision because we don’t exist. But it doesn’t mean nopony can. I can tell you this: the decision will be made in five paragraphs from now in the story that was written. So just skip four paragraphs.”

Twilight tried to make sense of Pinkie’s words, but obviously couldn’t. The reasoning was obviously broken. Just thinking about it was making her head hurt and her mouth was still incredibly dry. She looked at the glass of water and thought of drinking it. It was so close to her she could almost fall into it and at that very moment, the idea of the taste of water on her tong was sounding like kisses pouring in her throat.

But she couldn’t drink it. Well, she could technically speaking, but there was the question of her choice. If she were to drink it, would it be because it had been written that she would drink it, or because she had decided to drink it on her own free will? She was thirsty, but it was making her drinking the glass of water too foreseeable. On the other hoof, given that she was challenged to make a decision about drinking it or not, and that she wanted to prove her existence by proving she could make a choice out of her reasoning or her free will, it would have been pretty logical to foresee her not drinking the glass of water. To make things even better, she heard the thunder outside and rain began pouring onto the castle’s roof.

She wondered how many paragraphs had passed already, or if a paragraph had passed at all. But that implied there were paragraphs for her to wait and therefore a story written in which all of her choices had already been written. It implied she didn’t exist. It also made obvious that she should have made her choice as soon as she had heard Pinkie Pie talk about waiting to know what her choice would be. After all, if she had drunk the glass of water at that very moment, then she would have beaten the odds and made sure to have put her decision before the delay Pinkie had set. But it was probably too late for that already, or maybe not, or maybe yes. She couldn’t know. Maybe it was part of the conspiracy to make her make her choice at the exact moment that she was required to.

She sighed. It was all way too crazy. She was getting all messed up over a simple glass of water. All because Pinkie Pie had said another weird and ridiculous thing like she always did. Given Pinkie’s personality in fact, it might have all been just an elaborated prank to make her lose her mind. And she really was thirsty and the glass of water was still there, full of its delicious content. Full of comfort and delight. All she had to do was reach out to it with her hoof.

So she did indeed reach out with her hoof for the glass of water in order to bring it to her mouth, but as she was grabbing it she inadvertently pushed it. The glass went to the border of the little table, stood there in equilibrium for a few seconds and finally fell down. The glass didn’t break, but all the water poured on the floor.

Both mares looked at the glass and the water, then at each other, then back at the water and at each other again. They couldn’t really read each other’s look. They couldn’t even really tell what had just happened. But Twilight saw a little corner of Pinkie’s mouth go up. And Pinkie saw a little sparkle in Twilight’s eye. And both felt the warmth and comfort of each other’s presence and both suddenly burst out laughing.
Pinkie Pie rolled on the floor and Twilight fell from her sofa and still both couldn’t stop laughing. It was just one of those surreal yet so great moments life cooks up for us out of pure madness and simple joy.

“Did you see that?” Pinkie asked, almost chocking from the laughter.

Twilight laughed in return. That’s all there was to do: laugh. And yet her mouth was still dry, so her laughter had to end eventually.

When it did, she stood there, in silence, contemplating how weirdly curvy her ceiling actually was and losing herself in the sound of the rain outside.

She could have stayed there for the rest of her life.

“So… now what?” Twilight asked.

“Well, if it’s not done yet, we should go back to when there was only five paragraphs left for you to make your decision.” Pinkie replied.

“How do we do that?” Twilight asked, not even resisting the idea anymore as there was no reason to under the rain on the roof above her head. “Want me to cast a time spell?”

“No silly.” Pinkie replied. “What is written cannot be rewritten. Not by us anyway. We cannot go back because we don’t exist. I wasn’t talking about us. I wasn’t talking to you.” She explained. “I was talking to you.” She added while watching over Twilight's shoulder.

Twilight thought about trying to make sense out of it all, but she decided there was no point. It was just Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie. She would never be as rational as Twilight herself. Some ponies just couldn’t understand.

She decided to simply enjoy the rain.

In a way, even if she, Twilight, were to actually not exist, she was certain the rain was real. She couldn’t prove it, but there was a certain beauty, a certain simplicity to the rain that made a world without it inconceivable. Not even the rain itself, but the sound of the rain, and the smell of the rain, and the tranquility of the rain. At least Twilight wouldn’t have wanted to live in world without those.

“Say, Pinkie…” Twilight asked.

“Yes Twilight?” Pinkie replied, while also laying on the floor and listening to the rain, eating her popcorn.

“You said we are just like memories brought back to life by another entity. But that’s where your idea can’t be true.”

“How so?” Pinkie asked.

“Just consider this moment. Nothing is happening, nothing has changed. It’s just a day like any other. It’s way too boring to be a story. Nopony would ever waste her time writing such a day and even if somepony were to, there is no way somepony would waste her time to read it.”

Pinkie Pie smiled. She was just happy to exist. She was enjoying the feeling of the floor under her back, even if it hurt a bit because it was very hard. She was enjoying the lollipop in her mouth. She was enjoying the sound of the rain on the roof and more than anything, she was thankful to be offered the opportunity to live that moment at her friend’s side once again.

“I guess you are right.” Pinkie replied, being done playing. “It’s presompteu…. Promptus… I mean we aren’t important enough so that some silly entity would take some time to allow that moment to exist.”

“Can you imagine somepony that would?” Twilight said laughing. “What a weird creature that would need to be. How bored would such a creature have to be? How could it not have anything better to do?”

They both laughed at the ridiculous idea of an entity wasting time on their dull little moment together.

“I do exist.” Twilight thought. “I’m not thinking just because some entity is reading words of me thinking. I do exist!”

She turned her head to Pinkie Pie who had fallen asleep and was drooling and purring.

“But even if I didn’t exist, would it really matter?” Twilight asked herself.

She never got to answer that question, because she too felt tired. She let her eyes close and her mind wander away in dreams that would exist only in her head, until the next day when she would wake up and live another dull boring day.

With her friends.

And Twilight fell to sleep with a smile.

[THE END]

Author's Note

"I write ponies stories, therefore I exist"...
Okay, time to go to bed or to finally go watch this week's episode now that I'm done writing my silly little story.

That story may not look like it, but it is very experimental for me.