384 réponses à ce sujet

[Dean_the_Young]

Drachasor wrote...

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.

Since it's in the Geth codex in ME1 by the Council's records, it rather is clear that the Geth have killed contact teams. No source or Geth has ever suggested otherwise, and the rather specific mention is about as credibly refuted by you as if I claimed that TIM hired the Collectors to kill Shepard. Is there anything refuting it directly? No. Is there anything at all to support such a important difference in the established story? No.

The Geth had 300 years, and an entire genocidal war by other Geth, to realize their mistake and make open contact once they 'knew better', if that's the argument you wish to make.

[lolwut666]

@Dean_the_Young

They had no reason to trust organics after an organic race almost committed the genocide of their species.

And the geth never left space to "make contact" with organics. Legion was only looking for Shepard because they share a common problem.

Edit: Fixed some grammar.

Modifié par lolwut666, 09 mai 2011 - 10:37 .

[Dean_the_Young]

Nyoka wrote...

Although, now that I think of it, what if Legion is lying?

Legion is probably telling the truth, but this can only be relied upon for meta-gaming reasons and the reliance on Bioware's largely honest nature in the Mass Effect narrative: the only dishonest narrotors are explicitly and clearly identified later.

Without metagaming, however, there's nothing Legion tells us that can be verified by any other source, from the Geth-Heretic split to the nature of the Heretic Virus to the Geth willingness for peace.

[Dean_the_Young]

lolwut666 wrote...

@Dean_the_Young

They had no reason to trust organics after an organic race almost tried to commit the genocide of their species.

That's an illogical position on account of the logical fallacy (fallacy of composition) that constructs it.

And the geth never left space to "make contact" with organics. Legion was only looking for Shepard because they share a common problem.

They don't need to leave their space: they can even make open contact via long-distance communication... an ability they've proven by their infiltration of the extranet.

[lolwut666]

@Dean_the_Young

The quarians did try to wipe them out.

[Dean_the_Young]

lolwut666 wrote...

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.

That's a pretty big 'except'.

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.

Via Mass Relays and FTL technology, space is pretty small in terms of how close people are to eachother.

No point to warmongering.

Sure. Just garrison the mass relays surrounding them with enough forces to crush them incase another split later down the road decides that was is the proper response all of a sudden after some new stimuli.

[Silrian]

lolwut666 wrote...

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.

I'd generally agree with your Ghandi-esque attitude, but we can't ignore what happened in ME1. And ME2 adds to that impact. We have seen in ME1 what the Geth are capable of in terms of disturbing, destroying and killing organic life. Add to that the ME2 knowledge that they were rogue Geth (which means Geth can change their peace loving attitudes at one point or another, no matter the cause) and they were also a SMALL portion, about 5% as I have come to understand. The result is that the Geth have the potential to become a tremendous threat when amassed together. This justifies the inquiry as to how to deal with the Geth. They can go to war, they're in great numbers and they're technology advances rapidly. Of course, this goes for any intelligent race, be it organic or synthetic. The difference is, one virus can't easily cause the Asari or Humans or whatever to go to war. International/galactic safety is a so called prisoner's delima, only mutual trust can lead to the best outcome. This trust can't easily be established, especially if we let the Geth retreat beyond the veil and never/barely communicate with them again. They could very well become a cold-war era Russia, where a power vaccuum arises after having defeated the common enemy. So I think the Geth can only be tolerated if they agree to at a certain point align with our galactic society and vice versa allow organic life in their own society. Otherwise the incalculable threat is in my view simply too large (who knows how the Reapers came to be for example, maybe they started out similarly to the Geth?). So no, we can't simply let the Geth be, just like we can't simply let the Krogan's be. They societies have to, to some extent, merge.

[Dean_the_Young]

lolwut666 wrote...

@Dean_the_Young

The quarians did try to wipe them out.

Never disputed. The logical fallacy of equating all organics to the Quarians remains.

[Splinter Cell 108]

I support Zaal' Koris. He's the one who's got the right idea. The Quarians should look for another world and try avoid war with the Geth as much as possible.

[Dean_the_Young]

mrsph wrote...

Though it would be a nice twist if Legion was lying.

He has a line on his loyalty mission that mentions how the geth have studied the art of lying afterall.

And his class is a geth infiltraitor, after all. Even though he said Geth don't infiltrate.

(Yes, the pun is intentional.)


I'd be pleasantly amazed if Legion is lying.

[lolwut666]

@Silrian

The Citadel races were owned in the first game because the stupid Council understimated the threat they posed.

If all species fought the geth at once, I doubt the geth could win.

And the krogan were hostile. They tried to take over the galaxy, and then the Council species dealt with them.

The geth didn't do anything besides defend their territory.

@Dean_the_Young

It can't be helped if that's how the geth thought at the time. I doubt they knew how to distinguish one organic species from another. They probably lacked the interest to learn about them until not long ago.

Modifié par lolwut666, 09 mai 2011 - 10:47 .

[Dean_the_Young]

Nyoka wrote...

Folks, you can't hope to make the peace with that attitude. You gotta be constructive and look to the future.

And if the geth fail to keep their word and do something spectacularly stupid like attacking, then, by all means, to hell with all of them. After all they're just walking desk lamps.

You know the saying: fail to prepare for war, get utterly annihalated by machine AI with omnigenocidal tendencies.

[Dean_the_Young]

lolwut666 wrote...

@Dean_the_Young

It can't be helped if that's how the geth thought at the time. I doubt they knew how to distinguish one organic species from another. They probably lacked the interest to learn about them until not long ago.

If the Geth at the time thought like illogical beings, they were illogical beings. Whether it can't be helped or not doesn't matter. Continuing that stance even through the modern times of ME2 only compounds the error, it does not mitigate it.

[Dean_the_Young]

Nyoka wrote...

No problem. Send Shepard. She eats geth for breakfast.

The last time that happened, Shepard ate space and was brought back by Cerberus.

[Silrian]

Drachasor wrote...

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).

A valid point, though I never said materialism was arbitrary. Any form of ethics within the confounds of a materialistic world view is in my opinion arbitrary. The rock-bottom 'but then we can't say anything' conclusion is I think correct, which results in the discussion we have now where one defends the position he/she finds more agreeable to some other who finds another one agreeable. This discussion can't be solved because if it could, the discussion itself would be irrelevant. I personally do not adhere to materialism, but that is a completely unscientific point of view. Ironically, the opposite is also unscientific (because neither has been proven scientifically). We can then, I hope, agree to disagree on as many occasions as possible, this being one of them. This proposed agreement however is going a bit far off the game-topic.

In regards to the current topic, I still remain of the opinion that logically materialism yields to any ethical theory being arbitrary. Therefore in my opinion the ethical dilemma at hand only arises when the Geth are assumed to be more than just machines (as was, I think, stated before by someone else). I simply assume, in light of the evidence presented thus far, that they are not, and though I completely acknowledge this to be possibly a wrong judgement, I, with that in mind, would hope for a peaceful solution, but would accept an enslaving one as well, for the sake of organic life and I think the altter holds more priority than the former, which is why I would still side with vas Normeh.

[Drachasor]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

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.

But time you repeat it you STILL are making a decision.  You are still analyizing the situation, variables, emotions, etc, and reaching a conclusion in your mental processess.  That's the important stuff in decision-making.

Dean_the_Young wrote...
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.

If you give someone that is psychotic anti-psychotics so they can function in the world, that's hardly repugnant.  If someone can't help but murder people, then getting them treatment so they DON'T murder people is hardly repugnant.  If someone can't help but steal and there's a way to treat that, then treating it is hardly repugnant.  If such people CANNOT be helped, then keeping them from harming others is not repugnant either.  There's no need for spiteful penal system here.

What would be repugnant is letting people hurt others without stopping them.

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

Without Free Will there are still choices; those choices are just bound up in the fact we live in a world made of matter, governed by physical forces.  There is still coersion as well, as an individual can still force another to act in a way they would not choose to and do not want to.  Desires and feeling still exist.  In fact, I challenge you to explicitly define what is lost.

You'll find "free will" is a rather odd concept to nail down in a coherent and sensible way.

<deleted a whole bunch of stuff I responded to>

Dean_the_Young wrote...

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.

This is the real heart of the matter, I think.  To prove your thesis, you have to prove that people can make choices without biological determinism.  So go ahead and do that first to show people are different from machines.  If you can't do that, then you can't show that humans in mass effect are fundamentally different from the geth as far as what they are capable of goes (nor that humans in real life have any inherent advantage of any AI we create).

Modifié par Drachasor, 09 mai 2011 - 10:51 .

[marksman100]

Qwib Qwib.

[lolwut666]

@Dean_the_Young

They were illogical then and now they're not. Remember that the geth were primitive when the quarians tried to destroy them. Their intelligence hadn't fully developed yet. As time went by, they became more complex and knowlegeable.

Would you like it if people condemned you now for something you did during your babyhood?

And I'm not saying they're innocent. They did some bad stuff, but now that's the past. We can either get people killed fighting them, or we can leave them where they are.

[Silrian]

[quote]lolwut666 wrote...

@Silrian

The Citadel races were owned in the first game because the stupid Council understimated the threat they posed.

If all species fought the geth at once, I doubt the geth could win.

And the krogan were hostile. They tried to take over the galaxy, and then the Council species dealt with them.

The geth didn't do anything besides defend their territory./[quote]



The rogue Geth attacked human colonies among other things and I have, come to think of it, heard Legion saying that they accepted the Rogue Geth in their choice to follow the old machines. The Geth only revised this acceptance when their own existence became threatened (via the old machines). This seems to me a 'with us or against us' situation. The Geth did not do ANYTHING to prevent their rogue brethren attacking and killing other races. This in my opinion is bordering on a warcrime. The Geth are NOT as innocent as they seem to a lot of people. In this case their passiveness, apathy, is indirect acceptance of murder and the Geth in its entirety are in my opinion guilty of that, seeing as there are no individuals to point out (Legion literally states this) and the only devision known are the Geth and the Rogue Geth. Wether they're 'alive' or not, the Geth are not in the proverbial 'innocent-zone',