384 réponses à ce sujet

[KotorEffect3]

nelly21 wrote...

KotorEffect3 wrote...

Though I hate Qwib Qwib (mainly because he is a douchebag during Tali's trial), he is also correct about trying to find a peaceful solution with the Geth. So I guess it could be said I don't like the guy personaly but I agree with his position politically.

I don't see how he is "correct". He wishes to move on and find another planet to settle on. Wonderful in theory, but lacking in practice. Who will grant them a new colony world? The Citadel has expressed no interest in doing so. At this point, the galaxy has been explored. most habitable worlds are colonized. Most of the worlds that have not been colonized have remained so due to any number of undesirable conditions. Colonizing these worlds would force the entire race to physically adapt to the new conditions, in effect rewriting millions of years of genetic code. As it is, the quarians would have to readapt to conditions on their home planet and they have only been removed from there for three centuries.

So no, Qwib Qwib's solution is far from being "correct".

Who said anything about finding a new world if they can peacefuly negotiate a return to their homeworld with the geth?

Besides the geth don't even reside on the planet anyway.

[nelly21]

Nyoka wrote...

The debate about the geth takes al the fun out of the question. If they're only computer programs, then they have no rights, so destroy them all and conquer that damn homeworld. There's nothing to talk about in this case.

Now, if they are sentient and should be trated as so, then... and here's where the interesting talking begin. To have an fun thread, maybe you should assume this is the case.

The geth are open to negotiations. Will the quarians be able to control their genocidal impulses and actually have a little chat with the geth?

 at "genocidal".

Tell me. Am I commiting murder when I fire up the Sims and kill them? They exhibit as much sentience as the geth do (individualism, self preservation, etc...).

[Dean_the_Young]

mrsph wrote...

Nyoka wrote...
The geth are open to negotiations. Will the quarians be able to control their genocidal impulses and actually have a little chat with the geth?

It would help if the geth actually bother to communicate with...well...anyone not named Shepard.

It would also help if the Geth didn't have hundreds of years of history of killing anyone and everyone who would try and make contact with them to talk, and then tried to raze Council Space out of the blue.

[Dean_the_Young]

If they were logical fellows, why did they kill all attempts at contact for hundreds of years?

[Cerberus Operative Ashley Williams]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

mrsph wrote...

Nyoka wrote...
The geth are open to negotiations. Will the quarians be able to control their genocidal impulses and actually have a little chat with the geth?

It would help if the geth actually bother to communicate with...well...anyone not named Shepard.

It would also help if the Geth didn't have hundreds of years of history of killing anyone and everyone who would try and make contact with them to talk, and then tried to raze Council Space out of the blue.

But Deeeeeean, this one random Geth that was stalking me this one time told me that the Geth are mostly nice.

[Drachasor]

[quote]Silrian wrote...
[quote]Drachasor wrote...
[quote]Silrian wrote...
@Drachasor
If Human's are simply organic machines, they are the result of an accumulating chemical process in what we would usually call "lifeless matter". There is then no pointable boundary between lifeless and living matter leading to conclude that ALL matter, no 'matter' how complex, is at the core lifeless.[/quote]
Not true at all.  Stuff that is  alive is a lot more organized (a well-defined term) than non-living  stuff.  It also works to maintain its organization againsts forces in  the environment that would otherwise damage its order.

In more simple terms, living stuff is organized matter that behaves differently than non-living stuff.[/quote]

That may well be true, but there is no INTRINSIC difference between the two, just how and by what powers they are (re)structured. It is eventually unmaintainable to that the state in which something is in is part of their material identity. The simple fact that one can become the other  to such an extent that one is completely composed out of the other  (living composed of lifeless) means that separate IDENTICAL properties  can't be maintained. Thus I remain of the opinion that any form of  'materialism' in this way leads to ANY ethical judgment being (sometimes indirectly) completely arbitrary. To say it a bit less 'academical'  (though obscuring the argumentation unfortunatly) materialism leads to  the conclusion that any form of ethics is nothing more then an agreement (which could be the actual case, if materialism is indeed true).[/quote]

The intrinsic difference is IN the organization of the matter.  An organization that is wrecked if you kill someone, for  instance.  Sure, the same atoms might be there, but it is the particular order they are in that makes them have value.  By ignoring this fact,  you ignore what makes living things alive, so yeah, if you ignore the  essential difference between what is alive and what isn't, then you  can't have a decent ethic system.  However, the problem you have isn't  that such a thing is impossible, but because you are ignoring salient  facts.

[quote]nelly21 wrote...
[quote]Drachasor wrote...

Emotion is indicated about the armor, about the Morning War, and about the Creators in general.  [/quote]
How are any of these examples indicative of emotion? [/quote]

Legion claims he doesn't have emotions.  Therefore he can't say why he patched himself with a sentimental item (Shepherd's Armor).  He expresses that the Geth in general regret the Morning War and are also are confused by
it.  The Geth also seem to hold respect for the Creators and are even  maintaining Quarian's former planets for them.  There are other things  that place them above simple machines like a toaster or VI, such as  their ability for abstract though, sense of values (self-determination), desire to surive, etc.  Some of those are strongly related to  emotions/feelings.

[quote]Dean_the_Young wrote...
[quote]lolwut666 wrote...
[quote]Dean_the_Young wrote...
No, programs writing programs is entirely programmable. Infact, it's the  established basis of the Geth development: even before the Geth  considered themselves as having achieved sentienced, they were  self-modifying and improving themselves. Because they were programmed to do just that.

If you program a machine to make a decision when  various inputs are present, the decision making process is still  pre-programed. The output may not have been intended, but the machine's  processes for coming to its output are a result of its internal  processes, and there's no way around that.[/quote]

Right. That's just how the brain works, except that it's made of a different material.

Humans have ideas in the same way geth write a new program. Not literally in  the same way, but the result is the same.[/quote]
Not all people, not even all scientists, agree with that.

Moreover, even if we accept it's true, that in and of itself opens up entire new aspects of  morality to questioning. If we are all deterministic reactions, organic free will is an illusion. Machines don't have it, and neither does chemistry: that calls almost everything of our cultures and ideas into question, from the matter of 'justice' (What is the logical basis of hurting someone for something they had not choice but to obey their  programming?) to basic morality (If our choices are chemical reactions,  then our moralities are also just the product of chemical processes and  stimuli, and have no underlying truth behind them).[/quote]

I agree Free Will is an illusion in a deterministic (+ quantum effects) universe, and I think that's the universe we live in.  And a proper justice system is there to fix people that are behaving poorly (or worse-case, keep them from harming others).  Lack of free will doesn't really invalidate much.  We still make decisions (that doesn't require free will), and there's still things that are true and false (2+2=5 is false, for instance).  Eschewing the concept of Free Will doesn't change much, really.  It doesn't undercut the value of happiness, the joy of being a parent or falling in love, the valuing of art, creativity, science, etc.

[quote]Dean_the_Young wrote...
[quote]Drachasor wrote...
There's never been a program designed that can consistently pass the Turing  Test.  While it is true that in a very limited time frame with  particualr conditions (say 5 minutes, via texting) human can fail,  that's not the same thing is saying there exists even 1 human who can't  consistently pass it.[/quote]

Programming has also only existed for the better part of a human lifetime, and much of that has been in times in which the physical capacity for programming was incredibly limited. Complexity of programs has grown exponentially over the decades, just like the computers that allow them to run. Arguing that because programs to date have inconsistent in their ability to fool repeated applications of the Turing Test misses the point that our programs this day and age are, still, incredibly basic. Complexity is a difficulty, not an impossiblity, and with each year the ability for more complex, capable programs go.

You might as well argue that because a child doesn't reach a certain test score repeatedly, that test score is sufficient. Children, and programming, grow in ability and complexity. Once you get a program that can fool the Turing Test, it doesn't mean the Program is sentient: only that the Turing Test is insufficient.

Given the existence of trolls, organic spammers, and simply the young and/or stupid, there are plenty of people online who, from the observor, can be separated from a script engine or not. That person may not be trying to pass the test... but they don't need to. It's everyone else's evaluations that matter to whether they recognize the person or not.[/quote]

It is my contention that any program that consistently pass the Turing Test over a very extended duration (years) and in close contact to a person throughout that time would be sentient.  I might be wrong there however.

It's a rather moot poot.  Legion can do more than pass that Turing Test within the ME universe.

[quote]Dean_the_Young wrote...
[quote]Silrian wrote...
Oh and for argument's sake, I think it's best to stop comparing technology from our present day to ME's universe (because believe me, mass effect violates a LOT of laws of physics) and just assume that the Quarians are unfathomable programmers. BTW does anybody know what the status of a Virtual Intelligence is compared to an A.I.? Because that could have a major impact on what computers are able to do in the ME universe and therefor also on our perspective of the Geth, being, possibly, mere computers.[/quote]

A VI is roughly equivalent to one Geth program. (Source: Legion.) The Geth are fundamentally a lot of non-disputed 'dumb' programs that are made to interact with eachother in more complex patterns.[/quote]

The comparison is very rough, imho.  A VI in the ME universe can't be creative or do a lot of the things the Geth can do.  Based on what is said, while it might have started with the Geth being a VI, the Quarians kepts adding bells and whistles to the VI interface until it wasn't really a VI anymore.  The individual Geth programs are capable of having opinions on moral dilemmas among other things, something no VI we have seen is capable of.

[quote]Dean_the_Young wrote...
[quote]eye basher wrote...
there's no proof that says the geth are sentient and no one should really take anything they say as true because for all we know some quarian built some programing into them to make them think they are sentient.[/quote]It doesn't even have to be as basic as that. It can be an example of self-categorization gone amuck: the Geth (for various pre-designed influences) consider 'sentience' to mean one thing, whether or not anyone else shares the same interpretation, and conclude that they meet the requirements for it.

Concluding that they do, however, doesn't mean they are: I remember a demonstration lecture in college about how you could program a computer to recognize animals by identifying parameters (number of legs, proportions of heads, etc.). The ability to identify was only as accurate as the quality of the programming, however, as was demonstrated when a picture of a t-rex was classified as a kangaroo: by the parameters of the computer's programming, the t-rex best fit the classification for kangaroo as opposed to other animals (two legs, tail, small forearms, etc.). Did that mean the t-rex was a kangaroo? No. But that computer thought it was... because it was programmed to make that sort of wrong conclusion.[/quote]

Except the Geth were smart enough to out-think and out-fight the entire Quarian civilizations.  They are smart enough to develop new technology and decide upon goals for their species.  They are smart enough to come up with novel ways to solve problems (Legion).  They can dislike entities (Sovereign), and like entities (Shepherd).  They can have mixed feeling about other entities (their Creators).  Pretending they are just a simple computer program is really rather silly given the wide range of activities they are capable of.  Might as well say the same thing of any other intelligent race in the game, including humans.

Modifié par Drachasor, 09 mai 2011 - 10:05 .

[lolwut666]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

If they were logical fellows, why did they kill all attempts at contact for hundreds of years?

Because the quarians didn't give them a good first impression of organics, and they were (still are) inexperienced at social interaction with organics.

[AK404]

The one assumption that the quarians make is that they have to fight in the first place.

From what Legion's said about the geth, they've preserved the homeworld exactly as it was when the quarians left. The geth don't have emotions, they don't hold grudges, they don't know the meaning of fear (and any good student of sci-fi knows what fear leads to), and they continue to address the quarians with respect.

Hell, if the quarians play their cards right, all they have to do is ask to go back home.

[Drachasor]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

mrsph wrote...

Nyoka wrote...
The geth are open to negotiations. Will the quarians be able to control their genocidal impulses and actually have a little chat with the geth?

It would help if the geth actually bother to communicate with...well...anyone not named Shepard.

It would also help if the Geth didn't have hundreds of years of history of killing anyone and everyone who would try and make contact with them to talk, and then tried to raze Council Space out of the blue.

It's not at all clear this is the case.  They do live in a dangerous area of space, so it is possible other people killed those people.

It's also possible that all happened very early on while they were still developing and weren't experienced enough to tell the difference between friendlies, neutrals, and hostiles.  Remember the Quarians would ALWAYS attack the Geth if they thought they could win....that's bound to make the Geth suspicious of outsiders, and they are new to sentience.

[Cerberus Operative Ashley Williams]

Nyoka wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

If they were logical fellows, why did they kill all attempts at contact for hundreds of years?

You see, that's the kind of questions organics ask. That doesn't lead us anywhere. It's simply finger pointing. You! Bad! Bad Geth, you! Listen, they are open to negotiations. Are the quarians? Let's leave the little old grudges aside for just a second. It will pay off!

Although, now that I think of it, what if Legion is lying? When Shepard asked why do they keep the quarian homeworld, he just made up some bull answer ("maybe we do it for them?" Come on!) The geth need to prove they are willing to do what Legion says first. What should they do to prove that?

They could not try to kill organics on sight in EVERY single interaction they've ever had with organics ever. Makes diplomacy kind of hard, ya know. Just a thought.

The only non-violent interaction with organics the Geth have had are teaming with Sovereign's combined forces, and Legion.

Modifié par Cerberus Operative Ashley Williams, 09 mai 2011 - 10:14 .

[Drachasor]

Nyoka wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

If they were logical fellows, why did they kill all attempts at contact for hundreds of years?

You see, that's the kind of questions organics ask. That doesn't lead us anywhere. It's simply finger pointing. You! Bad! Bad Geth, you! Listen, they are open to negotiations. Are the quarians? Let's leave the little old grudges aside for just a second. It will pay off!

Although, now that I think of it, what if Legion is lying? When Shepard asked why do they keep the quarian homeworld, he just made up some bull answer ("maybe we do it for them?" Come on!) The geth need to prove they are willing to do what Legion says first. What should they do to prove that?

Caution is prudent, there's a lot of distrust on both sides and many, many years of hatred.  Still, peace and cooperation is worth pursuing, imho.  Legion certainly showed the Geth don't hate all organics and dislike the Reapers, unless the Geth are playing a very deep game indeed (which seems kind of crazy with the Reapers on their way and counter-productive if Legion's Geth are with the Reapers).

If we were going to distruct races, the Quarians would be fairly high on the list, since they were the ones that struck first and decided to wipe out the Geth because they asked about souls.  That's pretty harsh.

[Gabey5]

the qurians and the geth will be my fodder for the reaper war

[Drachasor]

mrsph wrote...

People say the quarians should just open negotiations with the geth, but it isn't that simple. Because, as said before, the geth never bother to communicate with anyone. They never respond to any communications sent to the Perseus Veil, and never even bother to give out warning when they shoot down anything in their territory.

Legion coming out of nowhere and going, "lol u shoulda asked!" just sorta...comes out of nowhere.

One should remember they are a very, very young species.  Far, far younger than any of the others in the game.  Literally the beginning of their civilization is just about 300 years ago, game time.  And what happened in the beginning?  A huge war with the people who created them over them asking a simple question.  The Quarians did everything they could to try to wipe out the Geth and have continued trying to kill them at every turn.

How did the rest of the galaxy respond to this?  By saying "AI is bad, don't trust machines!  The Geth are evil!"  I think their extremist isolationist stance is understandable, if regretable, given that history.

It seems to me that galactic events are causing the Geth to reevaluate their previous attitudes, or perhaps it is just because they are getting older and wiser as a species.  Either way, it seems they don't really hold any ill will towards others, and that they hate the Reapers and those are items worth pursuing.

What would be really crazy is getting warlike when they've made the first indications that peace is possible.

[Silrian]

@Drachasor I am not ignoring the fact which you brought up, I simply do not agree with you that because something is structurally different, it dictates a different ethical treatment. I think ethics should be based on something that transcends any contingent (perhaps material) status, because if it doesn't, how can we prevent this from falling into arbitrary will-bound judgements? I simply do not see how one can appeal to any logical form of ethics when one supposes the form of materialism we have just discussed, without, eventually, falling into arbitrary judgements.

I agree with you regarding free will and its overrated impact on this discussion. I simply side against any ethical foundation for what to do regarding the Quarian-Geth debacle (cause let's face it, this whole thing is one MASSIVE fail, mostly on the Quarian's side), because I am still not convinced ethical arguments hold up in regard to the Geth (based on things Legion has said as well as a balancing of multiple possible acounts regarding the Geth's nature and their features).

Therefore I still think the Quarians should aim to be allies with the Geth, prefferably through voluntary means on their part (because I ams till in doubt wether the Geth are to be treated of moral worth), or if no other choice presents itself, by retaking and reprogramming them. In both scenario's the aim is at the very least soldiers against the Reapers, which I think they should become wether they like it or not.

Is there ANYBODY on here that feels like "Let's shoot some Geth."? If not, then I guess Legion is one effing charmer.

[lolwut666]

You forget that, for centuries, the geth killed everyone who tried to make contact, but they never went out of their way to attack organics until the events of ME1.

Space is huge. If the geth don't want to give diplomacy a shot, then leave them beyond the Veil. The geth are just one species. The Council has the salarians, asari, turians, etc. If the geth attack organics, they'll face some tough resistance.

I say leave them. Organics don't need the entire galaxy. One less nebula makes no difference.

Rather than send a bunch of people to die in a fight against a species who is not actively seeking war, just go do something more useful, like discovering new areas of space and colonizing new planets.

No point to warmongering.

Modifié par lolwut666, 09 mai 2011 - 10:25 .

[Cerberus Operative Ashley Williams]

Silrian wrote...

Is there ANYBODY on here that feels like "Let's shoot some Geth."? If not, then I guess Legion is one effing charmer.

*Raises hand* *Grabs gun with free hand*

[Dean_the_Young]

Drachasor wrote...

I agree Free Will is an illusion in a deterministic (+ quantum effects) universe, and I think that's the universe we live in.  And a proper justice system is there to fix people that are behaving poorly (or worse-case, keep them from harming others).  Lack of free will doesn't really invalidate much.  We still make decisions (that doesn't require free will), and there's still things that are true and false (2+2=5 is false, for instance).  Eschewing the concept of Free Will doesn't change much, really.  It doesn't undercut the value of happiness, the joy of being a parent or falling in love, the valuing of art, creativity, science, etc.

Making decisions does require free will because the freedom to choose A OR B is required. Determinism removes that factor, as everything becomes a false choice based only on the variables. If you repeated a choice five times, the only reason you would not choose the same thing five times would be because of the variable of repeating the choice.

When you start punishing people for deterministic choices that they can't help, you yourself become morally repugnant for harming those without choice... except in so much that you yourself harming others is in and of itself not something you can help, because whether you do or not is a matter of you biological programming.

There is no choice, and there is no voluntary enjoyment: there is only predictable chemical/neurological reactions from stimuli.

It is my contention that any program that consistently pass the Turing Test over a very extended duration (years) and in close contact to a person throughout that time would be sentient.  I might be wrong there however.

Why?

It's a rather moot poot.  Legion can do more than pass that Turing Test within the ME universe.

Highly debatable. Legion has yet to do anything a sufficiently complicated 'dumb' machine in the context of the Mass Effect universe can't do: interpretation-response, self-identification, and an inability to answer questions are not proofs of intelligence.

The comparison is very rough, imho.  A VI in the ME universe can't be creative or do a lot of the things the Geth can do.  Based on what is said, while it might have started with the Geth being a VI, the Quarians kepts adding bells and whistles to the VI interface until it wasn't really a VI anymore.  The individual Geth programs are capable of having opinions on moral dilemmas among other things, something no VI we have seen is capable of.

Individual Geth can't be creative either: this is Legion's own words. Even groups of Geth below a threshold aren't sentient: they are not a democracy of a thousand individual minds, but a bunch of dumb factors each suggesting an aspect. Moreover, their 'creative' is often a matter of projection of organic views onto the Geth, whether that is their interpretation or not.

Except the Geth were smart enough to out-think and out-fight the entire Quarian civilizations.

And if you program the enemy well enough, the foes in Mass Effect can outfight you. All that outfighting requires is good enough programming to account for enough factors, not intelligence. If you lose to a video game... that doesn't mean the video game is sentient. It just means the video game's controls and behavorial programs are better than you.

A calculator easily outperforms you in math. A spectrometer outdoes you in measurements. An industrial forklift outdoes you in strength. A computer outdoes you in processing speed. None of these superiority factors make them intelligent.

There was no 'Geth vs. entire Quarian civilization, ready, fight': the Geth were Quarian civilization's ways and means on every level from military (the means to fight) to industrial (the means of production) to civil (a geth in every home). The Geth were in nearly every piece of hardware the Quarians used, and so when the Geth rebelled so did all the hardware Quarian civilization would normally bring to bare.

They are smart enough to develop new technology and decide upon goals for their species.

A lot of research these days is automated, and allowing machines to increasingly direct the research is an advancing field of purely 'dumb' computers. The Gether were programmed to be able to do such things... so it's no surprise when they can do it.

They are smart enough to come up with novel ways to solve problems (Legion).

Nothing Legion has done is particularly novel or beyond the scope of a program made to solve problems. It's advanced, but simply complex.

They can dislike entities (Sovereign), and like entities (Shepherd). 

Mechanical-basied IFF interpretation and response has been around for years.

They can have mixed feeling about other entities (their Creators).

They do not understand their creators, but Legion will be the first to remind you that Geth do not have emotions... and that even 'benign' anthromorphization is racist.

Pretending they are just a simple computer program is really rather silly given the wide range of activities they are capable of.  Might as well say the same thing of any other intelligent race in the game, including humans.

Or I might not, on account of a position that one group does advanced activities because they are not simple but very complicated and advanced computer programs that none the less do what their programming allows and dictates, while the other is a group of free-will individuals that can make choice without biological determinism.

[Drachasor]

Silrian wrote...

@Drachasor I am not ignoring the fact which you brought up, I simply do not agree with you that because something is structurally different, it dictates a different ethical treatment. I think ethics should be based on something that transcends any contingent (perhaps material) status, because if it doesn't, how can we prevent this from falling into arbitrary will-bound judgements? I simply do not see how one can appeal to any logical form of ethics when one supposes the form of materialism we have just discussed, without, eventually, falling into arbitrary judgements.

Well, if you ignore the differences we can actually see...you know the stuff that's part of the observable universe.  Then you can't even say humans have this mystical stuff in them, let alone anything else.  Heck, you couldn't even prove that a rock DIDN'T have the life-ghost-stuff in it.  How is that a useful way to go?  Seems like it is a heck of a lot more arbitrary than materialism (which is, imho, the opposite of arbitrary, since it is saying you can measure such things in principle at least).

Modifié par Drachasor, 09 mai 2011 - 10:26 .

[Dean_the_Young]

lolwut666 wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

If they were logical fellows, why did they kill all attempts at contact for hundreds of years?

Because the quarians didn't give them a good first impression of organics, and they were (still are) inexperienced at social interaction with organics.

That doesn't sound very intelligent or logical to me, considering the ease of interpreting 'we come in peace' and the plentiful avenues to decipher the meanings of such quests... and to go out and make contact, years later, rather than standing by and say nothing while other Geth allegedly split and go out to genocide everyone.