[quote]Smeelia wrote...
[quote]Dean_the_Young wrote...
...
we fought a baby Reaper, and Collectors, in their own base, where they produce Reapers and Collectors and all their technology. There is technology, well in advance of our own, inside the base. We've just spent the last game trying to fight it, and kill it. It exists: we've seen it, and fought it.[/quote]
That doesn't prove that it could be made useable, doesn't prove that it's safe and doesn't prove that it's worth the risk. It's just a possibility. [/quote]Our past usage and re-purposing of Reaper technology proves we can make use of it. We use Grunt. We use EDI. We use the Thannix. We use the Collector Particle weaponry. We use the Reaper IFF. We use mass effect technology at all.
We have numerous, specific, integral points in which we've taken, utilized, and ultimately benefited from Reaper technology. It is not indecipherable, nor have you given valid reasons for why, at this point, we shouldn't be able to.
The risks associated with them are a matter of cost, not of catastrophic failure. You lose a Cerberus team or two... that's it. They aren't going to be able to resume the Collector goal. They aren't going to build a new human reaper. They aren't in a valid position or ability to undermine galactic defense. The potential gains from even 'limited' benefits (say, the ten-year jump of Collector technology, which we're more or less going to hit anyway given a natural ten years of development), however, do have galactic-defense scale benefits.
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It also doesn't disprove that there could be further security and
research prevention systems, Harbinger can communicate with the base
somehow and not destroying the equipment could allow him to continue to
do so and activate a self-destruct or some other system we're unaware of
(I'm not sure why they don't have a self-destruct anyway, they could
just overload the reactor themselves).[/quote]He communicated with the base via the Collector General.
If he self-destructs the base later... that's not much of a loss, and after we've had a period to salvage intact technology. You're neutering your own concern: if Harbinger did destroy the base, then the base is no longer a threat to be managed.
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The point is, what you believe isn't necessarily a proven truth.[/quote]I can point to a good half dozen examples, in Mass Effect 2 alone, in which we have gained from researching and outright copied Reaper and Collector technology, both proving (a) the possibility and (
the benefit from doing so.
That's generally considered proof by most standards.
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If we're going to be researching it anyway and you're sure the research efforts will succeed (even though there's no guarantee of that) then why not blow it up? At least if there is a trap or any security it's less likely to be intact, the destroyed Sovereign that was in pieces provided much better research results than the mostly intact derelict Reaper and many other intact installations, for example.[/quote]Gee, I wonder why it might be faster, easier, and more beneficial to study intact technology, and the facilities to produce and maintain it, rather than study scraps and spend far more time and effort trying to reverse the damage we've done, before trying to study it without knowing what's missing/damaged/destroyed that might be key to understanding the system.
Well, I suppose it's not like there's any difference. I mean, why would eating a meal set on a table be better than a scavenging the scraps left over after dropping a bomb on the house? Food is food, right? It's perfectly equivalent!
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The other three races combined (or even individually) could still destroy humanity, you're making assumptions about the council's motivations that can't be proven. [/quote]So what that they could destroy humanity? That's not the important thing in intergalactic relations: what is important is humanity is strong enough to raze a good portion of the galaxy in defeat. It's not who will win, but how much the loser can do, that's most important in balance of power arrangements like the Council. Humanity's military too big to ignore, unlike the Volus, the Hanar, the Drell, or the Batarians.
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Their motivations aren't even relevant, Cerberus could fail to push the human agenda, cause others to turn against humanity and ultimately weaken humanity in the long run. There's no guarantee either way.[/quote]Which is why we go with the more likely, beneficial one that will leave a galaxy that Cerberus could screw up and then the rest of us fix.
Simply because the future is unknown doesn't mean all actions are equally smart. False equivalency.
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For example, you could blow up the base to mitigate the dangers that it could pose.[/quote]And I could kill all children to prevent the growth of a serial killer.
Doesn't make it a measured, or practical, solution to solving the problem, even though it does solve the problem.
There is no 'we must destroy the base OR not take any sort of precaution at all.'
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That's not accurate, [/quote]It pretty much is.
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I'm saying what could happen and that we don't know for sure either way. It doesn't matter what does happen because the point is that we can't predict it. [/quote]Of course we can. We can look at the Reaper's capabilities. We can look at the Collector's capabilities. We can look at the circumstances and environment. And we can judge accordingly. If we're right, we win big. If we're wrong, we lose a little, still win overall (strategic benefits outweighing individual losses), and
still come out better in preparation for the Reapers because we've better defined and learned their capabilities.
Which is damn valuable, even if we didn't know that the Collector Base holds advanced particle weaponry, AI warfare, and other valuable weaponry technologies.
This is how all risk management occurs. Information awareness is always limited, and there's never been perfect predictive capability. You are establishing a standard so high that
nothone goes by, and so claiming an utterly meaningless standard.
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I'm not saying destroying the base is right, just that it can't be proven that either option is right with the information available at the time. You're trying to say that destroying the collector base is absolutely wrong and there's just not enough evidence of that. There is evidence in favour of both options and you just have to choose the one that seems most reasonable to you.[/quote]And a large part of why it's more reasonable to me is because those like myself recognize that risk isn't unmanageable, while most opponents act as if it's an end-all-be-all and refuse to accept that their own concerns are either not as serious as they claim, or can't be mitigated.
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You're letting the fact that you've made your decision get in the way of the fact that it was a choice with two valid options.[/quote]Now that's a damn stupid position to make.
Just because there are options doesn't mean they are all valid, or logical.
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No, it's just a possibility. It is one that can't be absolutely disproved and there is evidence to support it but it can't be absolutely proven either.[/quote]And there's far more concrete evidence to argue against it. Such as most of the Collector actions throughout the entire game, and the acts and situations we had to perform in order to get to the base in the first place.
If you want to rest on an argument that it was their intent, that argument needs to be sustained in the face of criticism. What actions of the Collectors support that they intended to let Shepard get to a position in which he could, in fact, capture the base?
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All those things led to where we are now and we haven't defeated the Reapers yet. [/quote]We have, however, defeated a number of direct Reaper intents that they did not intend to fail in.
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Their plan could easily be just that elaborate.[/quote]Not really. People are ascribing 'Xanatos Gambit' to things that were only decided by chance and reaction.
[quote]They left us with technology to travel the galaxy and have great destructive power so it's no leap to imagine they may have predicted a number of possible outcomes in the long time they've had to prepare and practice. The best argument against it is their arrogance but that's not enitrely reliable. We already have a significant dependence on Reaper technology, maybe that's exactly what they're counting on (they almost say as much) and we're still within their predicted parameters. Once again, it can't be proven or disproven either way with the information we have.[/quote]It can, however, be incredibly deligitimized by our knowledge of Reaper actions and intents.
The best argument is that the Reapers got caught off guard by the Protheans sabatoging of their trap, which was a variable that set off a chain of events beyond their control that allowed Shepard and the galaxy to thwart them on multiple occassions. Since this is exactly what all of the evidence so far suggests and supports, it is by far the dominant argument.
Whereas the support that the Reapers intended for the Rachni to fail, for Sovereign to be destroyed, for Shepard to come back to life, for the Heretic Geth to be foiled in reprogramming all geth, for the Collector Vessel trap to fail, for the Omega 4 relay to be breached, for the Collector Cruiser to be destroyed, for the Human Reaper to be slain, and for the base to be captured as opposed to destroyed is... generally, the argument that they're just very clever and that every failure was a secret success.
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Valid in that there are arguments for both and not enough to make either a certainty. Yes, one will most likely have a better outcome but we can't be sure which that one is with the available information.[/quote]Certainty is never possible outside of math, and even then even economists can't predict the stock market better than everyone else. Decision making processes, however, work to inform our judgements, despite uncertainty.
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Uncertainty itself is no defense for illogic: if I buy a lottery ticket, I don't know if I'll win anything. I may, I may not. If I win the grand prize, I'll win big. But I don't need to know what that next lottery ticket is in order to know that the lottery, and gambling in general, is a losing strategy. If I chose to gamble to raise funds to buy a house, I'd be doing a very stupid course of action, even if I did luck out and succede.[quote]
That could apply to both options, destroying the base removes an enemy resource that could have had additional problems down the line if we tried to use it while keeping it gives us a potential resource that could end up costing more and making things harder in the long run. We don't know what will happen and when we find out later the hindsight will be useless because it's too late to change things either way.[/quote]If it's in our hands and out of ours, it isn't the enemy's resource, it's ours.
Defend your own argument that you raise: how is investing Cerberus's resources in the Collector Base, with its known and proven advanced technologies, more liable to cost us more than not? Is Cerberus more likely to match or surpass Collector-level technology gains in the next five years if the resources it would spend reverse-engineering the Collector technology were spent on 'pure' development?
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Fair enough, the point is that working against diversity by promoting one agenda could cause all those diverse techs to work against us. Showing that we're willing to work combined with other races gives us access to those technologies (the Normandy is a product of Turian and Human co-operation, for example). Perhaps the Reapers aren't prepared for such a diverse mix of technologies produced by co-operation and that will be more important than merely having one race with high powered technology along a similar line.[/quote]We aren't working against diversity. What Cerberus researches is what Cerberus researches regardless. It in no way stops the ability of the major races to work together, nor, unless we assume the aliens are very stupid and racist, does it give them reason to not work with the Alliance.
The Collector Base has no basis for being an either-or endeavor. It's an additive resource (increasing what Cerberus will bring to the table regardless), not a zero-sum resource.
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I'd say Cerberus could easily be part of the stupid we'd need to filter out, it's very unlikely they'd share results unless they felt it was absolutely essential to the survival of humanity and other races aren't likely to trust anything they give out anyway.[/quote]Any results they share would be for the net benefit of all the galaxy against the Reapers. If a man receives a hundred dollars, and only offers to give you ten, it's illogical to refuse the ten and hold out for an even split. However, even if he only gives you ten and keeps ninety for himself, together everyone is still a hundred dollars richer, and you yourself are ten dollars richer than you would be. It doesn't matter if the entire group would be even better off if you had the ninety and he had the ten: it's still better than neither of you having anything at all.
All that changes is relative power, and relative power evens over time. 'Human advantage' from the Collector Base will only last as long as the Collector Base technology remains ahead: as species will try to copy and gain the advantages themselves, it's always going to be a limited time boost, especially after everyone is salvaging scrap from the Reapers themselves.
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Keeping the base still doesn't guarantee that we'll get useable tech [/quote]Yeah, it does. It has the production facilities for the tech we're already scavanging and using but don't understand. It's a production facility.
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or that there wont be significant problems.[/quote]It doesn't need to do this. Significant problems can be dealt with in other ways even when keeping the base.
[quote]There are alternatives [/quote]What alternative sources of advanced technology?
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The point is that keeping the base is an option but it's not our only option and it's by no means guaranteed to give positive results (and neither are the alternatives).[/quote]We also have the option of killing ourselves. That doesn't make it a smart option.
The world doesn't work in guarantees. It does work on smart principals of decision making that we can apply.
Modifié par Dean_the_Young, 03 mars 2011 - 06:34 .
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