adam_grif wrote...
No amount of scientific advancement can make things happen that don't make sense. If I told you the Reapers were deploying a new weapon in ME3 that killed people by "draining the round-ness out of them", thus turning them into giant fleshy cubes, would you also defend this ridiculous notion? How about if the Reaper ground forces employed the highly effective military tactic of walking on their hands, without wearing armor, and marching in straight line formations at machine gun fire. And the game told us that this was a brilliant military tactic and that the Alliance has to adopt it if it wants a chance to fight them off. Would it be sufficient for you to say "oh well the Reapers are sufficiently advanced tacticians, we can't question this"?
Believe it or not, yes your notion is defendable. It's certainly ridiculous, but that has nothing to do with it 'making sense' from a scientific perspective. The point of Clarke's Third Law is that once we reach a certain level of technology, it is the equivalent of 'magic', which is to say that it can be used to justify anything. The Reapers fall well within the boundaries of Clarke's Third Law. the science employed in Mass Effect is already questionable, and yet the Reapers are regarded as a civilization with technology far beyond our own. The size of Sovereign's Mass Effect Core, Indoctrination, Husks, the insectoid Collectors, all these are also contained within Clarke's Third Law because they are sufficiently advanced.
Trying to argue that 'human goo' as it's been called doesn't make sense scientifically is a waste of time anymore than arguing that Husks don't make sense. Instead, these elements are accepted based on how well they are integrated into the setting, their setup, ultimately the presentation. But through Clarke's Third Law (which justifies anything as magic), indoctrination is no different than your 'draining the roundness' example.
Because the idea of "human essence" being a key component in the construction of a starship is equally foolish. There is no such thing as human essence, Vitalism is nonsense. A mushed up human is no more useful than the elemental composition of humans that could easily be mass produced without the stupid reaper cycle of destruction and harvest. If they want to upload minds, then why do they need humans? Why does the Asari population breeding with other species make them "weak and unsuitable" for harvest? Surely a species whose individuals live to a thousand would contain much knowledge and wisdom and make them ideal, especially given that the Asari population is much larger than humans given their long history of space travel and colonization. Why do Salarians being "genetically fragile" make them unsuitable? Oh, so genes are used, not minds! The Reapers are interested in genetics.
We don't know what the full extent of Reaper reproduction involves. Now this is where the Reapers being 'beyond our comprehension' comes into play, particularly with the bolded. What the Reapers do and why they do it are alien to us because they exist in a form that we can't possibly understand, a reference to Lovecraftian Horror. Go back to Mass Effect 1 where Sovereign tells us that we cannot possibly comprehend its existence. How the Reapers go about picking their targets is irrelevant. All that matters is they have chosen us, and we need to stop them.
As far as it being an issue of genes or minds, I think it is a combination of the two. The Reapers seem to be looking for specific races in allowing 'Ascension'. Clearly, genes are important as the Protheans proved unable to adapt to a human Reaper. But according to the presentation of Mass Effect, the nature of a particular civilization is just as important in the choosing. It doesn't seem to be the case that the Reapers simply find a compatible host, but are seeking out races 'worthy'. Until we learn more on the nature of the Reaper conscience, we really can't say.
Part of the intrigue of the Reapers is that they were foreign, unknown. We had only our imaginations to think up all kinds of fantastic possibilities for why they purged the galaxy of all life. It was inevitable that once an explanation was given, no matter how well it was handled, is going to upset someone because that intrigue is now gone.
Well, we're back to square one, where somehow a bunch of human DNA constructs human shaped robots (lol), and that this is how they breed, by kidnapping people and building stuff out of their mush. Never mind the fact that DNA is useless on its own and contains no intrinsic properties at all, cat DNA would be just as useless as human DNA. Never mind that DNA is only meaningful in the context of biology where it provides a recipe for your your body to form, somehow this is useful for building giant death robots. Sufficiently advanced, lol!
And this is all covered by Clarke's Third Law. How we understand DNA today does not equal how DNA actually functions in Mass Effect, going back to 'magic'. What that 'human goo' ultimately is we cannot say and it really doesn't matter. It's simply part of the building material in the construction of a Reaper. As others have pointed out, EDI's term 'essence' does not do a great job of narrowing down just what is contained in that human slurry. It could be merely philosophical, scientific, symbolic, etc. But it's not necessary to understanding the threat any more than understanding a Husk's creation is necessary to know that it needs to die.
Modifié par Il Divo, 06 janvier 2011 - 04:59 .
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