@Background Pony #36FD  
Well, no need to imagine.
 

 
 
We already have dogs.
 

 
 
Of course, dogs aren’t as intelligent as people, or as these pony pets would be, but that doesn’t seem to be what makes one feel more acceptable to people than the other. It’d still deeply disturb people to see a person pet if they were designed to be as dumb as an animal.
 
Bred to love us. And they do love us! Don’t hesitate to shower them with affection if they want it… but if you’re buying puppies from a breeder, what are you supporting?
 
 
Some things feel acceptable not because they’re moral, but because they’re accepted by everyone around you.

I find this idea similar to the concept of “wireheading”; how is making a being solely to love you any different from repeatedly stimulating the pleasure center of your brain?  
Neither have the actual benefit that the desired sensation was designed to accompany.  
Similarly, being a self-aware entity for whom “essence precedes existence” seems like a peaceful life, but a stagnant one. It takes away any drive or curiosity - why ask questions when you’re already satisfied? - and seems like it would a) make it hard to relate to such an entity or b) make it hard to relate to other people who are prone to existential quandaries, if you get used to such an entity’s  
company.  
I pro so hard (thanks, autocorrect, for the unexpected humor :P) probably haven’t stated anything new, but this is a legitimately interesting scenario to consider!

@Background Pony #36FD
 
yeah I mean, normally when someone starts brutally whipping someone to death for disobedience, people get pretty upset about that, but once slavery becomes entrenched in their culture, suddenly they’re cheering the guy on. people go from great to horrible, and they don’t even realize what’s happening to them.
 
really it happens with anything where your survival depends on a lie being true. slavery, religion, nationalism, commercial marketing, when people are forced to defend something that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, they get angry, scared, violent and closed-minded. even if it’s a sweet lie. like soon as we start telling each other that family is better than what it is, we start seeing domestic violence, and we start seeing people look the other way.

@redweasel  
One of the philosophical objections to the institution of slavery as far back as Roman times was that it did not merely render human beings into chattel, like sheep or cattle or furniture, which was from a moral perspective already profoundly disturbing. That it did not merely lead to the owners viewing their slaves as something less than human. It was that this relationship also damaged the masters as well–that being surrounded by people one did not–could not–view as people was corrosive to their sanity, that to dehumanize others is to dehumanize oneself as well. That human beings instinctively have empathy for one another, but in the relationship between master and slave, the master must make the conscious choice to push away his instinctive empathy and so make himself less able to deal appropriately with others who are not slaves, which made him, in a way, less human.

I think these stories forget what this does to the guy who owns her. I don’t feel bad for twilight here, but him? he isn’t even allowed to mourn, because she won’t let him accept he did anything wrong. all her brilliant intellect will be focused on twisting him into a psychopathic monster, because there is no horror he can commit that she will not rationalize to be for the greater good.

Oh dear lord.
 
Having read this and the other “Hassenfeld Pony” greentext post, I–well, people more articulate than I have said a great deal about the matter.
 
I find the idea viscerally revolting, and I say that as someone who would like to have a pony waifu–or wife. But growing one in a vat, something as intelligent as I am, and biologically hard-wiring her to imprint on me instinctively, to have Stockholm Syndrome as a built-in instinct, seems a horrifying violation, and not something that would be appropriate to do to someone I love. I am trying to articulate why. I’m not good at philosophy.
 
I think the crux of the matter, for me, is that it is natural and normal to desire love. I think that most people, if you asked them, would say they wanted to love and be loved. That they desired someone who would be happy to see them, who cared about them and wanted the best for them, and felt desire for them as well (I’m sure someone else has gone into the distinctions between agape, eros, philos, and storge). But inherent in this is that if love, for any of those definitions, is to be real and meaningful, it must be chosen. I want to love and be loved by a partner who chooses me of her own free will. If this meat-machine comes out of the box and loves me because I am the first thing she sees, is that really love? Is “love” really the right word for something synthetic, artificial, engineered, compelled?
 
If I open the box and this, this hideous mockery of a lovable character comes out, a robot made of meat designed to imprint on and desire the first human it sees, that’s sickening. That she would be sentient anyway, possibly more intelligent than I am, yet bound in chains of neurotransmitters and pre-written instincts to be subject to a form of built-in Stockholm Syndrome and take pleasure in anything I choose to do to her, even horrifying things–that sickens me, viscerally, instinctively. I find myself unable to articulate fully why, except that it seems to me very much like abusing a helpless slave–the repugnance has that same sort of emotional connotation for me. To create a living being, as intelligent as you or I, and then shackle her mind so that I might harm her in gruesome ways and yet she would not even be able to object, not even in the sanctity of her own mind, that she would be compelled to love me and find it pleasurable regardless–that is the stuff of nightmares. To create such a being, intelligent, with, presumably, a cheerful and kind personality based on the original, as consumer goods, to be bought and sold as a disposable living sex-toy, not even able to form the desire to object, seems to me to be a profoundly evil deed. Abducting, enslaving, and abusing a human being is bad enough.
 
Creating an intelligent living creature, a creature with a mind, to be a disposable chattel possession like a carton of frozen pork chops, unable even to find her own abuse objectionable, seems to me to be so evil as to constitute a mockery of all humanity’s hopes and dreams. And yes, I hear someone in the background saying–the ability to do such a thing is what a number of people hope for and dream of, God help us all. If someone were to create such things tomorrow–whether as ponies, or, if it makes it easier to think about my point, as disposable supermodels–the manufacturer would set new all-time records for profits, I have no doubt.
 
Is that misanthropic? is it misanthropic to think that this would become normal, that human beings would line up with cash in hand to buy their own disposable living sex-toys to abuse? misanthropic to think it horrifying that these products would be designed to find happiness in slavery, unable even to want to escape, or go mad? misanthropic to note that a civilization that chose to create a new class of intelligent beings, and put them in a place of powerlessness and vulnerability, even to create them in a way that made it impossible for them to want to be anything other than powerless and vulnerable, then chose to treat them in such a manner, might possibly be judged a bit harshly by history?
 
tl;dr I want mai waifu. But not like this. I think the anonymous writer wanted to provoke thought, and succeeded.