If the argument is one-sided because one side is obviously right, you could change the facts. Invent some downside to alicorns.
For example, maybe being an alicorn gives you access to offensive magic much stronger than the defensive magic it gives you so that any alicorn has the power to kill everyone, even if everyone is an alicorn. Maybe any alicorn has the power to bring the sun crashing down on Equestria? (I’ve always imagined the Equestrian sun as being much smaller than the real sun, but still big enough to cause terrible, terrible damage).
But that might be too strong, because assuming you can’t spread alicorns throughout space or something (and not have too many of them in one place to be hit by a celestial body), I think that would actually win the argument for mortality.
You could make it uncertain whether this will happen, but you don’t want the whole debate to be speculation about how likely it is and how much risk is acceptable.
Maybe any rogue alicorn could still cause destruction, but on a smaller scale? Something like real-life mass shootings. Maybe make Celestia swayed by the availability heuristic and news reports of occasional mass-murders? Twilight could argue that ponies who would go on killing sprees weren’t really that common, and old age was killing way more people. There are rationality lessons to be told here about shutting up and multiplying.
If there are less ponies who would go on killing sprees than humans, increase the number of alicorns that alicorn magic could kill before they were brought under control accordingly.
You’d have to explain why Luna hadn’t killed everyone when she became Nightmare Moon, but that shouldn’t be too hard. Maybe, like Sauron, she wanted to rule the world, not destroy it? You could make it so she killed thousands before Celestia imprisoned her, if you go with the “Alicorns can kill lots of people but not everyone” idea.
That’s an excellent backup plan. Fortunately, with all the other replies in this thread, I’m unlikely to need a backup plan. That said, for the purposes of strengthening both sides, I’m likely to look for arguments to strengthen alicornism at some stage, and if that makes alicornism too powerful, I shall consider your idea as a way to bring parity back to the sides.
If the argument is one-sided because one side is obviously right, you could change the facts. Invent some downside to alicorns.
For example, maybe being an alicorn gives you access to offensive magic much stronger than the defensive magic it gives you so that any alicorn has the power to kill everyone, even if everyone is an alicorn. Maybe any alicorn has the power to bring the sun crashing down on Equestria? (I’ve always imagined the Equestrian sun as being much smaller than the real sun, but still big enough to cause terrible, terrible damage).
But that might be too strong, because assuming you can’t spread alicorns throughout space or something (and not have too many of them in one place to be hit by a celestial body), I think that would actually win the argument for mortality.
You could make it uncertain whether this will happen, but you don’t want the whole debate to be speculation about how likely it is and how much risk is acceptable.
Maybe any rogue alicorn could still cause destruction, but on a smaller scale? Something like real-life mass shootings. Maybe make Celestia swayed by the availability heuristic and news reports of occasional mass-murders? Twilight could argue that ponies who would go on killing sprees weren’t really that common, and old age was killing way more people. There are rationality lessons to be told here about shutting up and multiplying.
If there are less ponies who would go on killing sprees than humans, increase the number of alicorns that alicorn magic could kill before they were brought under control accordingly.
You’d have to explain why Luna hadn’t killed everyone when she became Nightmare Moon, but that shouldn’t be too hard. Maybe, like Sauron, she wanted to rule the world, not destroy it? You could make it so she killed thousands before Celestia imprisoned her, if you go with the “Alicorns can kill lots of people but not everyone” idea.
That’s an excellent backup plan. Fortunately, with all the other replies in this thread, I’m unlikely to need a backup plan. That said, for the purposes of strengthening both sides, I’m likely to look for arguments to strengthen alicornism at some stage, and if that makes alicornism too powerful, I shall consider your idea as a way to bring parity back to the sides.
A world without a sun will die. It may take some time, however.
True, but Luna might not have been thinking straight, and might not have considered that.
I can imagine Nightmare Moon thinking “The idea that sunlight is better for plants than moonlight is one of Celestia’s wicked lies.”