375 réponses à ce sujet

[Moiaussi]

[quote]Shandepared wrote...

So what? Cerberus had limited numbers and they succeeded. Rael was apparently making good progress. /quote]

Cerberus succeeded with Quarian homeworld level populations of Geth and proved they could sustain it indefinately? When did this happen?

[Dean_the_Young]

General User wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

General User wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

If you and your siblings grouped together to kill me and mine, self-defense would not cover us killing your group until it maintained no threat, killing the rest of your siblings who no longer posed a threat, and then going out and killing your parents, you children, your cousins, their cousins, and everyone related to you except for those who fled fast enough.

Self-defense would only cover killing the attackers until they stopped being an active threat.

The Western mind is truly a thing of wonder. In many cultures senseless, genocidal vendetta is the norm. Who’s to say such is not the case with the geth and quarians?

I don't respect sensless genocidal vendettas of human cultures: why one earth should I give aliens a pass?

Admittedly I’m jumping in the middle of a conversation, if I misinterpret one of your (anyone’s really) positions; I apologize in advance and welcome a correction.
 
But to answer your question directly… you should give alien (and human, ftm) cultures a pass on such things as their collective definition of and attitude toward genocide/atrocity because you (as an individual) don’t have the power to change such things, at least in terms of a practical timeframe. Especially a culture as utterly alien as the geth. 

By all means, condemn, inspire them to be better, use force to stop them but, in the end, you must accept them for who and what they are and try to make the best of it (even if that means war).

I do accept them for who and what they are.

I accept that the Geth had cause to defend themselves. I also accept that the Geth committed genocide, and retaliated far beyond what they needed to in order to defend themselves.

I do not need to accept that what they did was the right thing to do... and neither, as a matter of fact, does Legion.

[Ryzaki]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

The Get]The Quarians were butchered when over 99% of their race was exterminated. Unless you intend to argue that every adult, elderly, and child, every single Quarian person was not only an advocate, but a participant of the attempt to shut off the Geth... that's a lot of civilians to be killed. You don't get that sort of death count without trying for it. That the they didn't pursue the pittance of Quarians who escaped does not change what they did do.

This is the history of the Morning War. This was the first policy of the Geth. Including the same geth that remain active now.

No. I doubt they all attempted to shut off the Geth. War sucks and people die. If people are going to hold grudges over every single atrocity similar to that there would never be peace. 

It also makes you wonder what the hell did the Quarians have the Geth doing that the knew how to slaughter so many people? Sure killing one person isn't too difficult even for a child but those sheer numbers. Either they built a number of Geth that severely outnumbered them or something just doesn't add up. 

There are times where you just have to let things like that go. Though the Quarians bug me in so many ways. They completely lost their immune systems in less than a thousand years? Really?

And this is why I dislike not having specifics in games. I really would've liked to have played a segment on the whole Geth/Quarian thing (If only the movie was about that instead of bastardizing Shepard.)  

So yes. The Geth aren't completely innocent. You're right about that. I do see that whole War as being one of self-defense though. 
 

The Geth were similar to a full grown person without any basic human interaction waking up and the first thing they recieve is a punch in the face. How did the Quarians expect them to react? 

Modifié par Ryzaki, 23 octobre 2010 - 09:48 .

[wulf3n]

Shandepared wrote...
 The geth have no one to blame but themselves for their lousy reputation. 

Not really! while it may or may not be true that the geth attacked every single ship that entered their space, the Council already had quite strong negative opinions about synthetic beings, long before the geth achieved sentience claiming "Artificial Intelligence is the greatest threat to organic life".

Whereas the Quarians earned their reputation themselves. Its hard to feel sorry for a species that even after 300 years of isolation and wandering still haven't learnt the lesson that thier ancestors failed to learn.

Think of it like this: Who would you feel sorry for, if the Salarians were trying to "take back control" of the krogan? failing that just wiping them out completely? can you guess who's who in this analogy?

[ISpeakTheTruth]

It's assuming a great deal to say that 99% of the race was destroyed. We have to remember that just because the Migrant Fleet has 17 million doesn't mean that just 17 million survived that's the exact amount that the current fleet can maintain without food shortages. The population that escaped was most likely in the 50 - 100 million range but the ships they found couldn't support a lifestyle of living in said ship and the population had a die off also concider that during the 300 year time period they've had pilgrames where plenty of Quarians havn't come back to the fleet on purpose so you probably have millions of Quarians living outside of the fleet as well as the millions living inside of the fleet.



Did the Geth go a little overboard? Maybe but all they did was what the Turians do in war time beat your enemy until he's broken and can't hurt you anymore. Like I've said before the Quarian's exist now because the Geth allow them to excist if they wanted to 'butcher' the quarians all they'd have to do is follow and finish the job but they didn't and that's something the Quarians would have never done. If the Quarians had won every Geth would be dead.

[wulf3n]

Dean_the_Young wrote...
]The Quarians were butchered when over 99% of their race was exterminated. Unless you intend to argue that every adult, elderly, and child, every single Quarian person was not only an advocate, but a participant of the attempt to shut off the Geth... that's a lot of civilians to be killed. You don't get that sort of death count without trying for it. That the they didn't pursue the pittance of Quarians who escaped does not change what they did do.

Again your applying your own reasoning, a reasoning of a creature from a species that has been sentient for tens of thousands of years, if not longer. You've got the benefit of countless generations of learnt reasoning behind you. what do the geth have? a few days? months? a couple of years?

I'm not saying what the geth did was justified, i'm saying how can you be sure they "KNEW" the difference! their reaction was probably similar to that of instinct not a calculated war to ensure their survival.
It probably boiled down to simply: Quarian try to kill geth, for geth to survive no more Quarians. no notion of civlian or combatant, old people or children, just Quarian.

Basically what im saying is you don't blame the tiger for eating the human, you blame the human for getting too close to the tiger.

Modifié par wulf3n, 23 octobre 2010 - 09:54 .

[General User]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

General User wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

General User wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

If you and your siblings grouped together to kill me and mine, self-defense would not cover us killing your group until it maintained no threat, killing the rest of your siblings who no longer posed a threat, and then going out and killing your parents, you children, your cousins, their cousins, and everyone related to you except for those who fled fast enough.

Self-defense would only cover killing the attackers until they stopped being an active threat.

The Western mind is truly a thing of wonder. In many cultures senseless, genocidal vendetta is the norm. Who’s to say such is not the case with the geth and quarians?

I don't respect sensless genocidal vendettas of human cultures: why one earth should I give aliens a pass?

Admittedly I’m jumping in the middle of a conversation, if I misinterpret one of your (anyone’s really) positions; I apologize in advance and welcome a correction.
 
But to answer your question directly… you should give alien (and human, ftm) cultures a pass on such things as their collective definition of and attitude toward genocide/atrocity because you (as an individual) don’t have the power to change such things, at least in terms of a practical timeframe. Especially a culture as utterly alien as the geth. 

By all means, condemn, inspire them to be better, use force to stop them but, in the end, you must accept them for who and what they are and try to make the best of it (even if that means war).

I do accept them for who and what they are.

I accept that the Geth had cause to defend themselves. I also accept that the Geth committed genocide, and retaliated far beyond what they needed to in order to defend themselves.

I do not need to accept that what they did was the right thing to do... and neither, as a matter of fact, does Legion.

I’m not sure the geth were even trying to defend themselves in the Morning War exactly. It seems to me they were doing what they thought was necessary to insure the survival of their kind. I too believe they were wrong. A negotiated peace between geth and quarians give us a chance to correct some of those mistakes.
 
That Legion should continue to believe that the quarian genocide was justified is not surprising. “Other=threat” and “former enemy=current enemy” are hard enough mindsets for organics to overcome, I imagine a monolithic machine mind would find it a great deal harder. Give Legion time, they’ve only been operating independently for a rather limited time, as they continue to do so they may surprise us all.

[Jabarai]

Ryzaki wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

The Get]The Quarians were butchered when over 99% of their race was exterminated. Unless you intend to argue that every adult, elderly, and child, every single Quarian person was not only an advocate, but a participant of the attempt to shut off the Geth... that's a lot of civilians to be killed. You don't get that sort of death count without trying for it. That the they didn't pursue the pittance of Quarians who escaped does not change what they did do.....

No. I doubt they all attempted to shut off the Geth. War sucks and people die. If people are going to hold grudges over every single atrocity similar to that there would never be peace.

Hehe! "Every single atrocity"... That's one way to put it.

The Geth were similar to a full grown person without any basic human interaction waking up and the first thing they recieve is a punch in the face. How did the Quarians expect them to react?

The first Geth who retaliated were things that had been built and programmed using the most advanced available technology. They were made to emulate Quarian personalities (as far as I know). Nothing in that is more "sacred" or "holy" than a highly automated paper mill. If the paper mill malfunctioned (or got infected with a computer virus) and started killing the workers, the sensible thing to do would be to shut it down before it killed any more innocent people.

I'm going to raise this issue the second time, here, but I think it's still valid. The only reason the Geth should be considered inherently valuable today (that is, in the 2180's) is that they've clearly evolved into something that can actually develop and think of something that hasn't been pre-programmed by the Quarians. And the fact that they've done it isolated from other races is admirable.

Back then, when Quarians tried to shut them down, they were merely toasters imbued by the technological wisdom of their creators.

[Jedi Master of Orion]

The Geth's new found sapience was the reason the Morning War started. If the Quarians didn't think they were, then they wouldn't have tried to destroy them all.

[Ryzaki]

Jabarai wrote...

Ryzaki wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

The Get]The Quarians were butchered when over 99% of their race was exterminated. Unless you intend to argue that every adult, elderly, and child, every single Quarian person was not only an advocate, but a participant of the attempt to shut off the Geth... that's a lot of civilians to be killed. You don't get that sort of death count without trying for it. That the they didn't pursue the pittance of Quarians who escaped does not change what they did do.....

No. I doubt they all attempted to shut off the Geth. War sucks and people die. If people are going to hold grudges over every single atrocity similar to that there would never be peace.

Hehe! "Every single atrocity"... That's one way to put it.  

It was a single incidence with the original geth. We don't know what happened beyond the veil other than people not returning. The attacks in ME1 were the heretics. So...yeah. 

The first Geth who retaliated were things that had been built and programmed using the most advanced available technology. They were made to emulate Quarian personalities (as far as I know). Nothing in that is more "sacred" or "holy" than a highly automated paper mill. If the paper mill malfunctioned (or got infected with a computer virus) and started killing the workers, the sensible thing to do would be to shut it down before it killed any more innocent people.

I'm going to raise this issue the second time, here, but I think it's still valid. The only reason the Geth should be considered inherently valuable today (that is, in the 2180's) is that they've clearly evolved into something that can actually develop and think of something that hasn't been pre-programmed by the Quarians. And the fact that they've done it isolated from other races is admirable.

Back then, when Quarians tried to shut them down, they were merely toasters imbued by the technological wisdom of their creators.

If they hadn't been able to think or question the Quarians wouldn't have tried to destroy them. The Quarians started attacking after the questions started. Not before. The Geth didn't wake up and start shooting people for no reason. They asked the Quarians a question that indicated sentience. The Quarians freaked out because they had created AIs and tried to destroy the proof because what they had done was against the law. 

No. When the Quarians had tried to shut them down they were able to think at at least a basic level (enough to question why they existed). They weren't toasters. Your toasters can't speak to you and ask you why they exist. 

And if it can give it to me. I will gladly take it from you. 

Modifié par Ryzaki, 23 octobre 2010 - 10:27 .

[wulf3n]

Jabarai wrote...
The first Geth who retaliated were things that had been built and programmed using the most advanced available technology. They were made to emulate Quarian personalities (as far as I know). Nothing in that is more "sacred" or "holy" than a highly automated paper mill. If the paper mill malfunctioned (or got infected with a computer virus) and started killing the workers, the sensible thing to do would be to shut it down before it killed any more innocent people.

Agreed, if a machine is dangerously faulty you scrap it. but 2 things.
1. the geth never actually harmed or showed any violent nature towards the Quarians at first.
2. When the geth are at the stage of asking if they have a soul, the bug occured a while before that point, now its no longer just a machine, its a sentient being, the time for scrapping had long passed.

Jabarai wrote...
I'm going to raise this issue the second time, here, but I think it's still valid. The only reason the Geth should be considered inherently valuable today (that is, in the 2180's) is that they've clearly evolved into something that can actually develop and think of something that hasn't been pre-programmed by the Quarians. And the fact that they've done it isolated from other races is admirable.

Are you saying asking if they have a soul was programmed into them? they were already thinking on their own when the quarians tried to kill them.

Jabarai wrote...
Back then, when Quarians tried to shut them down, they were merely toasters imbued by the technological wisdom of their creators.

Your toaster ask you if they have a soul? Where can i get them! and how much do they cost!!!!!!

[Moiaussi]

[quote]Jabarai wrote...

The first Geth who retaliated were things that had been built and programmed using the most advanced available technology. They were made to emulate Quarian personalities (as far as I know). Nothing in that is more "sacred" or "holy" than a highly automated paper mill. If the paper mill malfunctioned (or got infected with a computer virus) and started killing the workers, the sensible thing to do would be to shut it down before it killed any more innocent people.[/quote]

But the 'paper mill' didn't start killing workers. It said 'hi, could you please help me figure out the meaning of life? In particular, mine?' It was the Quarians who started the killing. The Geth merely finished it. Decisively.

[quote[I'm going to raise this issue the second time, here, but I think it's still valid. The only reason the Geth should be considered inherently valuable today (that is, in the 2180's) is that they've clearly evolved into something that can actually develop and think of something that hasn't been pre-programmed by the Quarians. And the fact that they've done it isolated from other races is admirable.

Back then, when Quarians tried to shut them down, they were merely toasters imbued by the technological wisdom of their creators.
[/quote]

As AI's, by definition, they already had the capacity to learn and evolve and almost certainly had that capacity before self awareness. They weren't designed as 'toasters' or 'papermills.' They were designed to adapt and learn different occupations.

To call them toasters, even when they first awakened, is like saying it is ok to commit genocide against humans because they are no different from field mice (both being animals).

[Inverness Moon]

Shandepared wrote...

DPSSOC wrote...

  How do you people do it?

Well they are feeling, thinking organisms just like we are. Like us, they can suffer, they can love, they can want. I feel for them because I can easily picture something similar happen to humanity. Imagine it, our entire civilization destroyed, billions dead. Thousands and thousands of years of history and achievement wiped away. With no allies to support us, we are left homeless and mostly futureless.

Furthermore, I sympathize with the quarians because they are unfairly persecuted. They did nothing wrong when they tried to deactivate the geth. They were acting in self defense. No doubt negligence on the part of a few people allowed the danger to arise in the first place, but to claim that billions of people deserve to die and the survivors (and their children) left homeless is callous. It's barbaric and inumane.

All the more fitting that most of the people in support of said position are the same self-righteous crowd that shames Ashley Williams, Cerberus, and any other human loyalist.

The geth have given me no reason to sympathize with them. They do not suffer, they do not feel. More than that though, the geth are not friendly, they are not useful, they provided nothing of value to the galaxy. When the geth discovered the Reapers did they take steps to stop them, did they even offer the rest of the galaxy a warning? No, they kept silent. Worse yet, the geth made peace with their violent brethren as they set off to make war on organics, unprovoked.

Before that though the geth murdered any peaceful ambassadors who ventured into their space.

The geth are not good guys, they are not friends.

I bolded the part that is blatantly false.

And if you want reasons to sympathize with the geth, you'll probably have to wait until ME3. We know very little at this point about when they discovered the reapers, what they might be doing to stop them, or how they might have considered warning the rest of the galaxy.

[Aedan_Cousland]

TheBlackBaron wrote...

Last I checked, a species that has undergone their own apocalypse and are now living in the space-age equivalent of third-world conditions is worth more sympathy than the victors of a war that left them with their continued existence and a sizeable chunk of the galaxy.

When the Soviet juggernaut rolled into Eastern Germany were the Germans more deserving of sympathy than Russians that had experienced German occupation? When the cities of Imperial Japan were being turned into smoking ruins by American bombs (both conventional and atomic), were the Japanese more deserving of sympathy than the millions of Chinese, Southeast Asians, Filipinos, and other Pacific Islanders that were the victims of Japan's brutal war of conquest? Or were both N a z i Germany and Imperial Japan just reaping what they had sown?

The situation with the Geth and the Quarians is no different. Sure, the Quarians suffered terribly. But it was a disaster they caused first by creating the Geth, then by trying to exterminate the Geth when their  creations became sapient. The Quarians were the aggressor in the Morning War, and the Geth were just fighting for their own survival. The Quarians are less deserving of sympathy than the Geth.

Seriously, I can understand liking the geth - I like Legion too, he's one of my favorite new characters in ME2 - but what on earth is there even to sympathize with them about?

They never wanted war, they had it forced on them by the Quarians. They also no longer wish to keep fighting the Quarians, but the Quarians keep the conflict going with their pipe dreams of reclaiming Rannoch by force.

Modifié par Aedan_Cousland, 24 octobre 2010 - 04:11 .

[Spectre_907]

Is it not without basis of fact to assume that the geth contributed to the death of nearly 99 percent of the quarian population by means of extermination? As if the geth went on a killing spree, slaughtering any quarian in sight? All we know is that the quarians sought to reprogram, deactivate, and attack the geth, the geth responded with force, the geth and quarians fought a "long and bloody" war resulting in billions of casualties for the quarians, and the quarians fled Rannoch. Unless I'm forgetting something, I do not see how one can make the conclusion that the geth committed genocide. Can one elaborate?

The war could very well have been a long feud that accumulated quarian casualties over a long period of time due to a futile attempt to destroy the geth with brute force. A high death toll in this sense does not contribute to any sympathies I would have for the quarians.

Modifié par Spectre_907, 24 octobre 2010 - 07:49 .

[Zulu_DFA]

Shandepared wrote...
The geth are not good guys, they are not friends.

This maybe a side effect of noone's ever trying to befriend them?

[Zulu_DFA]

wulf3n wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...
]The Quarians were butchered when over 99% of their race was exterminated. Unless you intend to argue that every adult, elderly, and child, every single Quarian person was not only an advocate, but a participant of the attempt to shut off the Geth... that's a lot of civilians to be killed. You don't get that sort of death count without trying for it. That the they didn't pursue the pittance of Quarians who escaped does not change what they did do.

Again your applying your own reasoning, a reasoning of a creature from a species that has been sentient for tens of thousands of years, if not longer. You've got the benefit of countless generations of learnt reasoning behind you. what do the geth have? a few days? months? a couple of years?

I'm not saying what the geth did was justified, i'm saying how can you be sure they "KNEW" the difference! their reaction was probably similar to that of instinct not a calculated war to ensure their survival.
It probably boiled down to simply: Quarian try to kill geth, for geth to survive no more Quarians. no notion of civlian or combatant, old people or children, just Quarian.

Basically what im saying is you don't blame the tiger for eating the human, you blame the human for getting too close to the tiger.

This.

Plus, when the wealthy and the lucky of the Quarians fled to space, what were the Geth supposed to do with the left-overs? Baby-sit them?

I guess, they didn't even have to shoot every remaining Quarian, but just waited for the food riots and starvation to take the toll.

Modifié par Zulu_DFA, 24 octobre 2010 - 08:28 .

[Zulu_DFA]

Shandepared wrote...

Zulu_DFA wrote...

This maybe a side effect of noone's ever trying to befriend them?

It's hard to befriend someone when they insist on living in seclusion and shoot on sight anybody that intrudes.

Key word: intrude

[GuardianAngel470]

Ryzaki wrote...

Plus according to you the only evidence we have of Geth "butchering" Quarians are the heretics. Which have already been revealed not to be all the Geth. It's like saying because some Quarians like Xen, quarians like Quib Quib don't exist.  

Um, are you forgetting the fact that there are only 17 million quarians left? There are military casualties, and then there's population devastation. The latter seems to be the case.

That said, I have a fairly solid theory as to why the geth acted the way they did, and it is my opinion that they acted based on a lack of intelligence as well as understanding. From Legion's recording of the geth's question about souls, I believe that the geth, at the time of the quarians' attempt to deactivate them,were rudimentary intelligences. Akin to a 3 year old with a gun. They saw a threat, and determined that there were two options for them: Kill or be killed.

From that, and their apparent lack of understanding of how organics work, it would be logical to assume that the geth believed the quarians functioned like them, networked and based on building concensus. They acted to remove the threat, which meant killing all quarians.

Now, as all wars do, i believe the geth's technology advanced very rapidly, and they gained the ability to reason out a third option: Hide. They may or may not have found that the quarians didn't function like them and decided that their judgement to eradicate the whole species was in error, but regardless, they chose to seclude themselves, allowing the quarian species to limp away.

They were sentient, but of very limited cognitive ability, much like a child. You wouldn't expect a child to understand the concept of detente.

[Ryzaki]

GuardianAngel470 wrote...

Ryzaki wrote...

Plus according to you the only evidence we have of Geth "butchering" Quarians are the heretics. Which have already been revealed not to be all the Geth. It's like saying because some Quarians like Xen, quarians like Quib Quib don't exist.  

Um, are you forgetting the fact that there are only 17 million quarians left? There are military casualties, and then there's population devastation. The latter seems to be the case.

That said, I have a fairly solid theory as to why the geth acted the way they did, and it is my opinion that they acted based on a lack of intelligence as well as understanding. From Legion's recording of the geth's question about souls, I believe that the geth, at the time of the quarians' attempt to deactivate them,were rudimentary intelligences. Akin to a 3 year old with a gun. They saw a threat, and determined that there were two options for them: Kill or be killed.

From that, and their apparent lack of understanding of how organics work, it would be logical to assume that the geth believed the quarians functioned like them, networked and based on building concensus. They acted to remove the threat, which meant killing all quarians.

Now, as all wars do, i believe the geth's technology advanced very rapidly, and they gained the ability to reason out a third option: Hide. They may or may not have found that the quarians didn't function like them and decided that their judgement to eradicate the whole species was in error, but regardless, they chose to seclude themselves, allowing the quarian species to limp away.

They were sentient, but of very limited cognitive ability, much like a child. You wouldn't expect a child to understand the concept of detente.

Uh...I kind of said that already. 

[Christmas Ape]

Zulu_DFA wrote...
Key word: intrude

It's not like we're constantly landing on geth worlds and poking around in their stuff. They live in nearly cold stations in the depths of interstellar space. We could wander the space behind the Veil with the entire Alliance Fleet for a thousand years and never once find the slightest hint of geth if they didn't decide to find us. But that's not happening; they're hunting down lone merchant freighters and scout ships and destroying them because they crossed an arbitrary border and they're just a few organics.

[achwas]

Ryzaki wrote...

^ Agreed.
The Geth would have no reason to attack someone unless it was in self-defense. They've gotten along all this time by themselves. 

Right, the internal shism doesn't count. attacking "organics" when they meet them doesn't seem to count, either. And as aptly demonstrated by Legion on the loyalty mission, the Geth, however mind-linked they are, do not really/absolutely know themselves ( "Why do they spy on us ?"). Plus the logical routines can vary from ID-programm to ID programm

One can call that active self-defense, and a (possibly justifiable) high degree of distrust against organics, but the Geth in the firewalker missions and on Haelstrom seemed to have a "shoot first, bury the organics later" attitude even in ME-2

As for no reasons : expansion and acquisition of resources, maintaining their network, securing their tactical and strategic position in expectation of an inevitable quarian counter-attack are "no reasons", right ?
The Geth - and I really like them, and their evoultion beyond being  the universal enemy in ME-1 - are neither innocent, naive or hampered by pacifist morals.