69153 réponses à ce sujet

[sites32]

Well shepard looked like a walking tank and ash looked as thou it takes her an hour just to get her hair ready for the battle, sighs.

[sites32]

Saphra Deden wrote...

Atemeus wrote...

I think an easy concession to make would be that the Quarians were, in retrospect, the bad guys but they also could easily have had justification for their actions despite that.

No, they were not the bad guys. Defending yourself does not make you a bad guy.

They were being pragmatic and trying to correct a very, very dangerous mistake.

It continues to astound me that people just don't grasp how horrifyingly dangerous the geth were.

Do you remember that A.I. on the Presidium that managed to build a bomb? That was just one A.I. created from a more primitive one designed by a solitary thief.

Now can you imagine millions upon millions of A.I.'s spread throughout every facet of a civilization with all the firepower they could possibly want?

The only responsible thing the quarians could do was shut down the geth and abandon the system entirely.

Thats due to people being "bleeding hearts" and thinking a machine that doesn't comprehend right/wrong or empathy/compassion can be reasoned with.

[GipsyDangeresque]

Saphra Deden wrote...

The Mote in God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

"Gently, Sandy," First Lieutenant Cargill interjected. "Dr. Horvath, I
take it you've never been involved in military intelligence? No, of
course not. But you see, in intelligence work we have to go by capabilities, not by intentions. If a potential enemy can do something to you, you have to prepare for it, without regard to what you think he wants to do."

No, interventionalist thinking like that is stupid. It's why no American presidential candidate other than Ron Paul has the right idea on how to handle foreign policy. You assume everyone is out to get you, and everyone will become out to get you in response to that without fail. You become the aggressive one, and you become the problem that must be erradicated.

Edit:
Now that I think about the way it's phrased in the quote, "prepare," that doesn't match up with your statements. You should consider the threat, yes. Something so dangerous isn't to be blindly ignored, but you shouldn't act on that threat until it becomes a threat- simply out of leaving the way for the good chance that it never becomes a threat.

"Offer one hand, but extend the other." The Quarian government didn't even seem to give pause to symbiosis with the potential new race they had created 

Modifié par Atemeus, 21 février 2012 - 12:16 .

[TheKiw]

First time poster, love it here, blah blah

Just wanted to thank you guys for all the ff, pics and discussing everything you discuss here. Atemeus's mention of Ron Paul was the last drop that made me write this thank-you micro-post (I agree with him and other Gethers here, btw .

P.S.: What is it that makes humans believe that each and every robot who has just become sapient must inevitably try to kill its creators? Should they (the geth) apply logic, I think they would come to a conclusion along the lines of "freedom and maintaining our numbers > freedom and going to war > slavery".
Hence, I think there was the possibility of this being a peaceful process (provided, of course, that Quarians were willing to let the geth desiring freedom go etc.). My point is not in arguing against the Quarians, but rather about the belief that "the chance of the geth attacking us is too damn high".

Modifié par TheKiw, 21 février 2012 - 12:34 .

[Nathan Redgrave]

Saphra Deden wrote...

So were the quarians wrong to do so? What should they have done?

Well, I won't argue the morality of it, but they really should have thought more about whether the geth had perchance developed some form of survival instinct, because there were A LOT OF GETH, and provoking a violent response was bound to be catastrophic.

The quarians simply panicked, plain and simple. Had they taken it slower, they could have ended things more favorably. Instead, they perceived a threat, tried to eradicate it, and thus the prophecy fullfilled itself.

Right or wrong, it was bloody stupid of them.

[TheKiw]

Saphra Deden wrote...

...
The danger in A.I. is inherent, but not inevitable. Does that make sense?

Due to their capabilities, such as their extreme intelligence and quick thinking, A.I. are hard to predict or anticipate. They're smarter than you are, and faster.

Thus, if they do become malevolent towards organics, they are extremely dangerous. That is why they need to be very carefully designed and 'taught', and controlled.

Yup, totally makes sense. It's just that I usually have faith in people and I approach robots the same way (man, what a strange sentence).
And by "humans" I meant us, real humans and how we project that on other phenomena like games etc.
I still maintain the position, that peace is the most logical way of existence and geth wouldn't attack. The problem of course is, that it's life and survival we're dealing with so a mistake can have the worst of consequences and we thus can't approach the matter in this simplistic way.

Modifié par TheKiw, 21 février 2012 - 01:01 .

[GipsyDangeresque]

Neither race as a whole was the bad guy in my eyes at the end of the Morning War, but at some point someone made a huge mistake and that escalated into one of the most pointlessly bloody conflicts you could ever happen in the Mass Effect-verse, and one that the Quarian people had to suffer for greatly.

My Shepard's ready to help them both out come ME3, if they stubborn fools will let him.


And then he'll go stick the biggest boot Kaiden could find up the Reaper armada's ass, and build Tali a house on Rannoch to retire in after a few more decades of flying around the galaxy and being a badass.

[TheKiw]

Saphra Deden wrote...

TheKiw wrote...


Yup, totally makes sense. It's just that I usually have faith in people and I approach robots the same way (man, what a strange sentence).

I think that is extremely foolish.

I understand where you're coming from and honestly, this discussion made me question my beliefs a little.
ME sure is complex. I hope they don't sacrifice that complexity for the sake of a happy ending in ME3.

Modifié par TheKiw, 21 février 2012 - 01:22 .

[GipsyDangeresque]

The more Geth would "awaken?" There's no question about if the Geth should have maintained control over the Geth, they absolutely should not have had any control on the Geth when they became sapient.

If anything, all Quarian citizens should have been forced to relinquish any concept of ownership of a piece of geth technology across all of Rannoch and the colonies period, and Geth technology be outright banned from forced physical labor.

[Nathan Redgrave]

Saphra Deden wrote...

What other choice was there? The geth needed to be dealt with regardless one way or the other. The longer the quarians waited around without intervening the more geth would awaken and the more control the quarians would lose over them. Thus, the more danger they'd be in.

Except that at this stage the geth were doing nothing more malignant than asking philosophical questions, so pretty much any solution that didn't immediately mark the Quarians as a hostile entity would have worked. What the quarians did was issue an immediate shut-down order, a method that lacked any kind of finesse or room for diplomacy. To be fair, according to Tali, the geth had progressed farther than they thought they had, but still. If they had given the geth an opportunity to see them in a positive light, while simultaneously taking measures to ensure the geth couldn't do any significant damage to them, they could have set themselves up for any sort of follow-up measure--relocating the geth, systematically eradicating them without alerting the geth to their intentions, et cetera. The problem is that they leapt without looking, which is why they were caught unawares by the geths' ability to retaliate.

[GipsyDangeresque]

If only more Geth had been prepared to hug the hostile Quarians into submission, or vice versa.



It solves all problems. All of the problems. All of them.

[Nathan Redgrave]

Well, if the geth were willing to hand over the homeworld to the quarians, war could be completely averted, yes? It's the only reason the quarians are insistant on going to war with them, that their immune systems render them so unfit for colonizing most other worlds. The geth, on the other hand, could live on literally any planet, and even in the depths of space with no atmosphere to speak of, so there's no real reason for them to cling to the quarian homeworld.

The problem is that the geth's logic processes haven't led them to the conclusion that Being The Bigger Man is the best course of action at the moment, especially in light of the impending Reaper invasion. Legion himself says (if you take him on Tali's loyalty mission) that the geth are willing to make peace IF THEY ARE SURE THE QUARIANS HAVE NO HOSTILE INTENTION first, but the only major point of contention is the bloody homeworld.

Bloody vicious cycle, that is.

[Nathan Redgrave]

Saphra Deden wrote...

Atemeus wrote...

The more Geth would "awaken?" There's no question about if the Geth should have maintained control over the Geth, they absolutely should not have had any control on the Geth when they became sapient.

The quarians were not nor should they be concerned with the "rights" of the geth. Their chief concern was their own survival. The quarians are not obligated to stand there and be obliterated in the name of fairness to machine-life.

The entire quarian civilization and species was in danger. Shutting the geth down, sapient or not, was the only reasonable course of action.

It was essentially abortion of an unplanned pregnancy that threatened the life of the mother.

Whether they should have been concerned with their rights from a moral standpoint or not, failing to take into consideration that the geth would fight back for their perceived rights was their undoing in the end. They should have at least considered their "rights" from a clinical standpoint and worked it into their plans, but it doesn't sound like they did much planning at all.

[Radahldo]

Haha, abortion. That is the strangest analogy I've ever read in regards to this.

[XenoAlbedo]

There was no danger from the Geth becoming more intelligent aside from what would essentially be a slave revolt. The quarians could have simply sent them away to live in peace.

[Pottumuusi]

Saphra Deden wrote...
It was essentially abortion of an unplanned pregnancy that threatened the life of the mother.

This is quite possibly the stupidest thing I have ever heard, apart from any brilliant insights from various creationists I have spoken with.

Fetuses are not sentient.

Oh I'm sorry, I forgot that we are playing the black and white game again.

[Han Shot First]

Atemeus wrote...

Han Shot First wrote...
While we only have some vague details on the Morning War, the above speculation actually conflicts with established canon on that war.

If Shepard questions Tali about the Geth in Mass Effect 1, she will tell him that the Quarians realized their creations had become sapient, that it was inevitable (from the Quarian POV) that the newly sapient Geth would view their station in Quarian society as 'slavery' and rebel, and that in order to stave off any attempt at rebellion the Quarian government sent out a general order to all Quarian worlds commanding that the Geth be permanently deactivated.

Well, we don't know if the general order to all Quarian worlds was sent out before the Morning War had begun, and was thus the actual trigger of Geth aggression or if conflicts on a much smaller scale had already broken out on Rannoch and other, colony, worlds.

Actually, we do.

If questioned about the Geth and the morning war, Tali will say that the Quarians panicked when the Geth were showing signs of sapience by questioning the nature of their existence. If Shepard replies that he doesn't understand what is wrong with such questions, Tali will reply by saying, "The Geth were created to enage in mundane, repetitive, or dangerous manual labor. That is fine for machines, but it won't satisfy a sentient being for long. The Geth were showing signs of rudimentary self-awareness and independent thought. If the Geth were intelligent, than we were essentially using them as slaves. It was inevitable the newly sentient Geth would rebel against their situation. We knew they would rise up against us, so we acted first. A general order went out across all Quarian controlled systems to permanently deactivate all Geth. The Geth responded to this order violently."

If Tali can be taken at her word this clearly implies a preemptive strike on the part of the Quarian government, which was operating under the assumption that Geth sapience inevitably meant rebellion. I personally view Tali and Legion as reliable sources when talking about the Morning War, though of course each presents the conflict through the prism of their own civilization's biases.

While all Quarians wouldn't be responsible for the start of the Morning War, the Quarian government was. So if I were to pick a villain in that conflict, it would be them, though atrocities were committed on both sides. The Quarians were the aggressors.

The ultimate tragedy I think is that the Geth don't seem to be inherently violent or possessed of an irrational hatred of all organics. I think a peaceful solution was possible, but in acting aggressively the Quarian government caused the very outcome it feared most.

Saphra Deden wrote...

Han Shot First wrote...

Whether or not all Geth had achieved sapience at this point, the Quarians were certainly planning on deactivating all of them. Xenocide is xenocide regardless of whether the Quarians would be snuffing out a billion sapient Geth or a few thousand.

So were the quarians wrong to do so? What should they have done?

Try to keep in mind the growing danger to their species if the geth became more and more sophisticated.

The quarians were losing control and they had to act to protect themselves. Genocide or not it was self-defense.

It is only self-defense if you believe a Geth rebellion was an inevitability. I don't.

The Geth showed no signs of hostility and the Quarians ran for the kill switch the minute their creations asked if they had souls. On some level the Quarian overreaction is understandable. Humanity, in all of its stupidity, would have probably made the same blunder. Fear tends to cloud logic. That doesn't make the preemptive strike justified though.

Modifié par Han Shot First, 21 février 2012 - 03:37 .

[HellBovine]

Han Shot First wrote...
It is only self-defense if you believe a Geth rebellion was an inevitability. I don't.

The Geth showed no signs of hostility and the Quarians ran for the kill switch the minute their creations asked if they had souls. On some level the Quarian overreaction is understandable. Humanity, in all of its stupidity, would have probably made the same blunder. Fear tends to cloud logic. That doesn't make the preemptive strike justified though.

It is easy to look at Legion now and believe that the geth would have all been peaceful and that if the quarians didn't strike first the geth would all get along perfectly fine with the quarians and everyone would be joyful and prosperous. There is no way to know if the geth would not have rebelled regardless of whether the quarians tried to strike first. Remember that the geth have advanced greatly over the 300 or so years since the Morning War.

Just because the geth are open to the option of peace now after substantially maturing as a species does not mean that the "younger" geth would have been quite so peaceful. The fact of the matter is that if the geth turned out to be hostile, the quarians would have been allowing them to strengthen if they hadn't attempted to shut them down as soon as possible. They made a call but there is no means to tell whether or not it was the right call as we have no insight as to whether or not the geth would have invariably turned hostile.