Squashed flat!

In case it wasn’t obvious from my comment, I’m pretty much in concurrence with JJM and wsfhwu. Faith in the unknown is not a virtue.

@Background Pony #1E68  
Oh wow. This thread’s a blast from the past. I guess I do sound super po-faced in it. In my defence though it’s hard not to when talking about this stuff.
 
@JJMDude made good points. The evidence presented to Twi in the episode is in overwhelming favour of something not being right with Twilight’s model of the world, that’s what I meant. It’s contradictory evidence. As you say, the evidence could just as easily support the idea that Pinkie telekineticly brains Twilight with flower pots every so often when feeling challenged. Kinda disturbing really, the sort of thing you’d want to rule out if your friendship forms part of the defence of the realm.
 
Yeah, on reflection, the moral is pretty poisonous. Especially so when you see it in a show targeted at young girls, who (across the population and in comparison to boys) already get enough shitty unhelpful feedback telling them to shut up, conform, and never inquire or challenge throughout their upbringing.
 
^{_{Troll must think me an awful egalitarian, feminist and Humanist (sorry, “SJW feminazi”) now. That delights me.}}
 
I think this thread started before Leap of Faith aired in S4. That was a pretty damn good episode IMO, and a great antidote to the problematic stuff in the episode the comic references. Good old Applejack!
 
@Background Pony Number 17  
Scary, scary Purplesmart (again).

ITT Atheists getting butthurt about an episode based vaguely about belief.
 
Stay euphoric tips fedora

@when she felt her wings unfold
 
Overwhelming evidence?
 
Problem is, I don’t think so. The audience is led to think that, but how often does shit fall? It’s the ol’ “correlation =/= causation deal.
 
I agree at Twilight’s lack of rationalism, because I think she COULD have logically concluded and proven Pinkie Sense empirically if she had followed anything resembling the scientific process.
 
Instead she goes out with the express intent on proving Pinkie wrong, which is to lead the evidence.
 
Then Pinkie’s “doozie” ends up being Twilight believing her (because, again, I guess it’s easier than putting in the actual work) and the Universe conspires to save her for NO reason because she takes a flying “leap of faith” (according to Pinkie).
 
If the episode had ended on Twilight learning to act more reasonable and employ less “hubris” as was mentioned before, and was still trying to figure it out Pinkie Sense with a positive attitude this time, it would have been fine.
 
But instead, the lesson says, “people believe crazy shit, and if you disbelieve them you’re wrong, and should always defer to the acceptance of others than think for yourself.”
 
It’s the single most poisonous and infuriating “moral” in the show, bar fucking NONE, because it teaches children NOT to employ critical thinking, and worst, makes it the butt of the joke in the eyes of the child.

@when she felt her wings unfold  
Twilight using others as “test subjects” is not unusual–we see her using Spike as a guinea pig fairly often.
 
Twilight is actually rather cold-blooded, bordering on ruthless, about her use of magic. In Winter Wrap Up she possessed a songbird to use it as a signal-whistle. And in A Bird in the Hoof she came close to using her magic to force-feed Philomena. So, yeah. Despite what we saw in Boast Busters, Twilight is really pretty damn arrogant about her powers when she chooses to be.

@JJMDude, @Background Pony Number 17  
Twilight’s fairly un-sceptical in the episode, since shown presented with overwhelming evidence she doesn’t change her mind. It’s quite a lapse of rationalism; she’s bright enough to come up with new hypotheses in the face of contradictory evidence, so why doesn’t she?
 
Writer making a point of course. Well OK I guess, writers do that, but it was quite an anvilly way to drive the point home, and I’m not sure her other, ethical, lapse (don’t go treating other ponies like test subjects without their consent) really warranted that level of retributive violence. But I’m not a huge slapstick fan; I prefer to watch ponies having tea parties and sleepovers and doing each other’s manes, with the occasional epic quest or hot air balloon action movie stuff. An episode of pure slapstick is a Bit Trying for me.
 
Don’t suppose anyone else got big sniffs of colonialism from that pith helmet business while we’re on the subject of hubris, dismissiveness, and bigotry?

@JJMDude  
I figured the episode was about hubris, with an EXTREMELY subtle hint of bigotry. Twilight Sparkle’s chief complaint about “Pinkie Sense” was that there appeared to be no mechanism behind it, nor was it reproduceable under controlled conditions. To her, it wasn’t “magic”.
 
Twilight’s looking at this from the POV of an extremely learned and gifted Unicorn. Unicorn magic is controllable, reproduceable, and as she says, “something you study and practice”. “Pinkie sense” though, is Earth Pony magic. Like their talent for growing things, it’s not something an Earth Pony sets out to do; it’s just something that’s part of their nature.
 
Twilight is basically dismissing Earth Pony magic like “Pinkie sense” as being unreal because it doesn’t fit with her understanding of how magic works.

@JJMDude
 
I pretty much rewrote that episode in my head into “Twilight Sparkle Teaches Statistical Significance and Hypothesis Testing.”
 
“No Spike, we need two separate data sets, one of Pinkie’s tail twitches and the other of falling things. We’re trying to see if there’s a correlation…”

Ugh… sorry, but fuck this episode’s “moral” and fuck it hard.
 
Twilight tries to prove a negative instead of just being skeptical, and then when the hand of fucking God intervenes with Twilight’s fate for no logical reason she just gives up and accepts the as yet unproven hypothesis, because apparently it’s easier to just accept whatever idiocy your friends might claim.
 
Seriously, I love Pinkie Sense, and the lines and slapstick are classic, but it’s far and away the WORST episode of the entire series.

Thanks Derpy. Now Twilight can only count to potato!