104 réponses à ce sujet

[lovgreno]

Cerberus is a inefficent and clumsy organisation that will destroy themselves. Whatever good things may have come from their actions will be ruined when the truth of what it took to get it leaks out. Wich has already started in ME1. The Salarians vastly superior skill in gathering information will easily penetrate Cerberus obviously bad attempts to hide. Then their Asari allies will use their skills in diplomacy and media to turn the galaxys opinion against Cerberus. The threat of the Turian fleet will force any human with a self preservation to abandon Cerberus. Their very agenda makes them enemies with the Council wich consists of three strongly allied races that each are much stronger than the whole human alliance. That is plainly foolish. Not even Shepard can afford to stay with Cerberus as he needs a unified galaxy with him against the Reapers.
And even if they could actualy do what they aspire to they would not last long. Organisations based on fear and lies never do.
And besides all these things: The end doesn't justify the means.

Modifié par lovgreno, 15 mai 2010 - 05:08 .

[AntiChri5]

^^^^^^^



How the hell can i follow that?

[Dean_the_Young]

Cerberus's continued existence as a in-universe recognized effective organization is the strongest defense against those who insist on it's incompetence. Failed Cerberus projects are like red shirts from Star Trek: re-occurring story-telling tools that don't reflect on the in-universe lore.



Saying the Salarians will easily penetrate Cerberus ignores the fact that they have been unable to and that Cerberus's intelligence network is compared to the Shadow Broker's own. Saying the Turian fleets will crush Cerberus ignores that no one has been able to do so no matter how many cells are busted: Cerberus has no single home base to find and destroy. Saying that all their operations fail ignores that they continue to exist as a widely-regarded potent force, which could not happen if they uniformly failed.



You can not deem Cerberus weak and helpless when the universe lore tells us otherwise unless you also deem the Alliance and Council even more helpless and incompetent for not being able to stop them.



Keeping the Collector Base would give Humanity the ability to outmatch the Turians and the rest of the galaxy if it did come to that, which it wouldn't. Why would the Krogan, Geth, Quarians, and Rachni go to war over Human strength? Moreover, why would the Turians when they wouldn't over Humanity forming an all-Human council?



If the Collector base has value, then you wouldn't need the Turians if they were stupid enough not to join the fight for survival. If it doesn't, then the Turians wouldn't have reason to refuse to join in.

[AntiChri5]

Yes.......and both of those biotics hate Cerberus, Jack with an obsessive passion.

[Apophis2412]

Shandepared wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Torturing children, however, serves no good purpose. But Jack's cell was rogue to Cerberus even as Cerberus was still part of the Alliance.

Their methods were a success however. Jack is pretty damned lethal, at least in the cinematics. She also has a bioitic ability to compete with Samara and Morinth. The same with Gillian too.

Just because an immoral act produced results, does not make it acceptable. What is important is that gaining these results was absolutely neccesary and that they could not have been gained through normal means.

[Dean_the_Young]

Shandepared wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Torturing children, however, serves no good purpose. But Jack's cell was rogue to Cerberus even as Cerberus was still part of the Alliance.

Their methods were a success however. Jack is pretty damned lethal, at least in the cinematics. She also has a bioitic ability to compete with Samara and Morinth. The same with Gillian too.

Gillian just proves my point: you don't need to resort to torturing children to produce strong biotics.The Ascension project produces biotics well enough without beating or traumatizing them. Shepard is another example of a powerful biotic who came out without Jack's treatment. Children and adults aren't tools that can take any abuse and still be useful with cosmetic repairs: they have mental and emotional needs to be effective functional adults.

That Jack's conditioning succeded in producing a powerful biotic does not mean that it could not have been done in a more humane but equally effective way, similar to how Mordin never had to resort to live experiments in his genetic research about the genophage while his student Maleon jumped right into it.

While Jack's conditioning may or may not have been necessary, the brutal way that the rouge cell went about it was not. Brutality as a necessity is one thing: brutality as the immediate choice is not. Even an amateur psychologist could have pointed out that giving Jack some sort of connection would have been an ideal way of controlling her and pushing her further, and giving her a mentally healthy escape that would stabilize her as a useful person. (One point to remember is that when Kaiden was at BaaT, his strongest display of biotics wasn't when he was hurt, but when someone dear to him was.)

Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 15 mai 2010 - 06:16 .

[Dean_the_Young]

We do have much to suggest that little to nothing was. Ascension was a genuine Alliance program set up as a counter to the military-industrial BaaT, and went from secretive brutality-training to an actual school with public monitoring and access to raise mentally well-adjusted biotics: torture (which was the means in of itself to boost ability) would not carry over, nor would the drug conditioning they did to Jack. That Ascension had to be infiltrated in the first place also suggests it wasn't something Cerberus had control over.



Biotics as a whole were something that were rushed into, and for understandable reasons, but Teltin ran without foresight or even oversight to judge whether what they were doing was the best path available.

[Dean_the_Young]

They're just like ****s!



Except without the genocide.

Or the racial superiority complex.

Or the bizaar belief in mythological ancestry and genetic magic.

Or the police state.

Or the overwhelming presence in personal and public affairs.

Or the tendency to invade neighboring peoples (and kill/enslave them) for more living space.

[DPSSOC]

lovgreno wrote...

Cerberus is a inefficent and clumsy organisation that will destroy themselves.

 
Yeah probably but that has nothing to do with being inefficient or clumsy.  If you look at the long list of Great Empires throughout history most of them ended up destroying themselves, it's the nature of the universe that nothing lasts forever.

lovgreno wrote...
Whatever good things may have come from their actions will be ruined when the truth of what it took to get it leaks out.

 
We are clearly not dealing with the same people here.  Not once have I seen someone intent on buying a product stop after being informed it was made with sweat shop labour.  If it's useful/enjoyable enough people will ignore who it was made.

lovgreno wrote...
The Salarians vastly superior skill in gathering information will easily penetrate Cerberus obviously bad attempts to hide. Then their Asari allies will use their skills in diplomacy and media to turn the galaxys opinion against Cerberus. The threat of the Turian fleet will force any human with a self preservation to abandon Cerberus. Their very agenda makes them enemies with the Council wich consists of three strongly allied races that each are much stronger than the whole human alliance.

 
#1 If they could pull this off they'd have done it by now.
#2 Everyone who knows about Cerberus (most definitely the Council race governments) who is not tied to the organization already despises them.  This isn't like Robin Hood where the people work to hide him from the law nobody who's aware of, but not associated with, Cerberus likes them.
#3 Yes the Turians could crush Cerberus in a straight up fight, but the beauty of guerilla warfare is it allows a smaller force to hold out and even triumph over a much larger, better equipped force.

lovgreno wrote...
And besides all these things: The end doesn't justify the means.

Not always certainly, but often.

[Dean_the_Young]

Shandepared wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

torture (which was the means in of itself to boost ability) would not carry over, nor would the drug conditioning they did to Jack. That Ascension had to be infiltrated in the first place also suggests it wasn't something Cerberus had control over.

No, the main portion of Ascension was not Cerberus and it produced mostly run of the mil biotics. However, bar Shepard, none of Ascension's biotics are capable of matching the really powerful asari. What I mean was that Cerberus may have tried some techniques that they learned with Jack on Gillian. You're assuming way too much without having any concrete information either way. The fact is Jack was a success up to a point. With Gillian they were clearly moving much more slowly, albeit part of that likely had to do with her autism.

Without being told that they did those techniques on Gillian, we can't assume they did them either, so it evens out. Some species are naturally stronger in certain areas, which won't change with strong individuals.

Jack was a success upto certain definitions (Pure power? Weaponization?), but past pure power that broader success (saving humanity) was not an accomplishments of the project itself but of happenings after. That Teltin made Jack powerful doesn't mean that the same results couldn't have been achieved in more humane (or simply less inhumane) ways, and there's certainly a lot to suggest that they didn't even try things which would have made Jack more than a qualified success.

[Dean_the_Young]

Shandepared wrote...

AwesomeEffect2 wrote...

I don't think that the end justifies the means. Here is a quote from Legion: "the process is important as the end result"

Think about it.

He's wrong. The result is what matters, the process not so much. It is victors who write the history.

Even victors change their mind about whether the ends were worth the means, about how sure things were mmistakes, and look back at more ideal could have beens. The needless internment of Japanese during WW2 has been one:  it wouldn't have made a difference had we not, and a great deal of why we did was more corrupt than we like to admit. Breaking so many treaties with the native americans was another.

Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 15 mai 2010 - 06:48 .

[Meshakhad2]

No. Many of Cerberus' actions are outright evil. That said, Cerberus is not beyond redemption. Their efforts in fighting the Collectors should be rewarded.

If my Shep has a choice, she would forcibly place Cerberus under direct Council authority, while purging the more unpleasant cells. The Illusive Man would have an office on the Presidium, with an unwritten agreement that he would not leave the Citadel until the Reapers were defeated.

[Dean_the_Young]

Why under Council authority rather than Alliance?

[Dean_the_Young]

Why under Council authority rather than Alliance, when the other races have their own? I'd fully support Cerberus being brought to heel under the representative of the race it champions.

Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 15 mai 2010 - 07:09 .

[mosor]

AwesomeEffect2 wrote...

Shandepared wrote...

AwesomeEffect2 wrote...

I don't think that the end justifies the means. Here is a quote from Legion: "the process is important as the end result"

Think about it.

He's wrong. The result is what matters, the process not so much. It is victors who write the history.

Here is a simple example – I win 5 Olympic gold medals thanks to steroids. Nobody else used them, instead they were training for years and years doing extraordinary hard work but I owned them all because I played dirty. I trained much less than they did, I didn't deserve the rewards but hey I got them. Is the process important or does the end just matter? And if only the end matters then why the hell does the IOC ban the use of drugs?

You ends are to be rich and famous. You won your medals, you got your endorsements. Even if you get caught later in your life, you still made a lot of money. Athletes that don't cheat almost never win. If they are motivated by running 20 miles a day and that makes them happy great, then the process is definitely worth it. If they are motivated by money and fame, then they are out of luck.

Almost every olympic athlete cheats despite the ban. Thats what these people are motivated by. Money and glory. The paralell to olympic athelticism is sports science creating better masking agents for their drugs.

[mosor]

double post

Modifié par mosor, 15 mai 2010 - 07:16 .

[DPSSOC]

AwesomeEffect2 wrote...

Shandepared wrote...

AwesomeEffect2 wrote...

I don't think that the end justifies the means. Here is a quote from Legion: "the process is important as the end result"

Think about it.

He's wrong. The result is what matters, the process not so much. It is victors who write the history.

Here is a simple example – I win 5 Olympic gold medals thanks to steroids. Nobody else used them, instead they were training for years and years doing extraordinary hard work but I owned them all because I played dirty. I trained much less than they did, I didn't deserve the rewards but hey I got them. Is the process important or does the end just matter? And if only the end matters then why the hell does the IOC ban the use of drugs?

Because they're in a position to dictate that the ends don't matter.  If I have authourity over a group of people I can dictate that it is the means and not necessarily the end that I will judge, I can also dictate that I will judge solely by the end.  I have that power and excercise it at my own discretion but just because I have decided that the means are more important than the end result does not make it a universal truth or vice versa.

Look at it from a position of 0 power.  You're an olympic athlete and have been told that you will get paid based on how many medals you win, if you don't win any you get nothing.  Now in that scenario would the use of performance enhancing drugs be justified to ensure your livelihood.