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[defenestrated]

Mixorz wrote...

defenestrated wrote...

Mixorz wrote...

Wrong. 

Created will rebel against creators. Whether it was the Quarians fault or not, the Geth began killing the Quarians. EDI started out as a rogue AI. The catalyst wasn't wrong.

You've got that backwards. Quarians started killing Geth, Geth defended themselves. They didn't want to kill Quarians. We learn in ME3 they even still honor the Quarians who defended them during the first war.

And they certainly weren't out to kill all organic life in the galaxy.

Your argument fails because the reapers have stated, they kill advanced organic life BEFORE they create an all powerful synthetic. The fact that the reapers allowed the Geth to be built shows they never viewed the Geth as the life ending synthetic.

"The created will always rebel against their creators."

"Without us to stop it, synthetics would destroy all organics."

The ending does not put qualifications on this.

[Tleining]

Penumbra80 wrote...

As sympathetic as I was towards EDI and the Geth, these are just two cases in a billion year long history of galactic civilization.  Recall Javik's account of the Metacon war and the zha'til, and it's evident that it seems the clash between AI and organics always plays out in one form or another.  The Pattern that Vendetta referred to on Thessia and it's Pandora's Box the reapers want to stay shut.  It's forced husbandry, cultivating and preserving an organic civilization and preventing it from creating an irreversible mistake.

except the Protheans were about to win the Metacon War. They were about to restore Order, then the Reapers came, wiped them out, and the chaos of organic-evolution could start again/continue.

[Penumbra80]

Tleining wrote...

except the Protheans were about to win the Metacon War. They were about to restore Order, then the Reapers came, wiped them out, and the chaos of organic-evolution could start again/continue.

The Protheans also had to conquer client races in order to achieve that as well, which is pretty telling about how severe of a threat they faced.  Now if you're a reaper and you're witnessing this play out, what would you think?  Chaos right?    

[TheBandit554]

Well, there's a point. I mean we can't have those Salarians creating Reapers or the Krogans making mechanical Thresher Maws no can we? XD

[IronVanguard]

The real question is why protect organic life?
Synthetic life is way cooler.


I, for one, welcome our robot overlords.

[Tleining]

Penumbra80 wrote...

The Protheans also had to conquer client races in order to achieve that as well, which is pretty telling about how severe of a threat they faced.  Now if you're a reaper and you're witnessing this play out, what would you think?  Chaos right?    

no idea. We don't know what kind of government they had before the Metacon War. From the Stories about the Species that found a way to eternal happiness it sounds a lot like what the current cycle had. Different Species living together. Than the Zha'til wiped out the Zha and the other Species formed the Protheans.

The Volus are a Client Race of the Turians. We don't know how different the Prothean-Approach was.

Also: I don't think the Reapers do much thinking. They are waiting for some kind of sign/signal and then start their harvest. If we assume that the Reapers were responsible for the Rachni Wars, that was a good 1800 years before the creation of the Geth.

Modifié par Tleining, 22 mars 2012 - 07:07 .

[Amorl]

I just wanted to point out that the reapers are not killing advanced civilizations but "uplifiting/ascending" them to the reapers own level. Thus allowing the less advanced civs room to develop. The Protheans already had plans on how to assimilate the Asari, Humans, and Turians into the Empire. Without the reapers the current civ would never have a chance to develop the way it did. No Shepard, Garrus, or Liara. No citadel council, genophage, Earth alliance anything. They do kill some but they are trying to create specific types of growth in terms of species evolution and civiliztion evolution. As evidenced by soverign.

It's not just Synthetics destroying life but life destroying life. All the civilizations that have been reaped are still there. Their histories, peoples(in goo form but apparently that's enough), evolution and mindset still exist because of the reapers. The same can not be said of Shepard as he has destroyed millions of years of evolution of life by killing the reapers.

If you believe (as the reapers do) that their form is where a civilizations evolution will eventually lead ( they might have personal experience of it) then their goal does make sense. to harvest/uplift advanced civs before they destroy themselves while leaving room for the new generation to grow. Like a farmer practicing crop rotations to leave the ground fertile for future crops. The best anology I can think of is the dust storms in the U.S. in the 30's caused by bad farming practicies.

What I don't understand at all is how the crucible changes this fundamental concept, or why the starchild would allow Shepard to take the reins, merging all synth/organic dna achieves any of this.

[Tom Lehrer]

The Reapers are a very bad way to keep the harvested races 'alive' considering how many get destroyed each cycle.

The Turians and Asari took out a bunch of Sovereign sized reapers using surprise attacks, hit and run, and suicide bombing the ones on the ground.

[Darvins]

It's not that the Reapers Goal dosn't make sense, to them, or that even it's logic is flawed within the narrow definition presented by them, it's that it's flat out evil. Lets be clear, it's contradicted multiple times in game, you can potentially bring evidence of the situation they present as a Must happen not happening to the fight, and such evidence is not mentioned. (Despite Rannoch the Downed Reaper trying to use the same situation as evidence saying 'Look at Rannoch' They then ignore when Rannoch can actually show co-operation and peace being possible) It even presents the theory that it's a war the Synthetics Must Win when during the last Reaper incursion the Synthetics the Reapers conned into working for them, where wiped out by the Organics by an adittatadly drastic action of blowing up a star but in the last cycle, while the Reapers where harvesting the Organics and destroying entire Prothean fleets isolating them and pretty much turning the Prohean military into so much dust, during all this...

The Organics managed to defeat their Synthetic creations utterly. Thats a flat out dis-crediting of the theory again. So in the last two cycles the Problem the Reapers are there to solve has been proven false right before their eyes, and yet...

shepard never once points this out to the Genocidal God-Machine instead they accept their disproven flawed logic as if it where proven fact, un-arguable against. When the very events of the game prove it to be so much higwash. The Reapers and the God-Child are welcome to hold that theory, but shepard has evidence that in two directly connected Cycles it was disproven, and never once points it out?

the Reapers are trying to solve a problem that the Galaxy keeps showing them does not exist, and in the process of which they murder a number closing in on infinity.

Here through is a simple rule 'If a Genocidal being takes the form of a small child you are suffering feelings of guilt over, shoot it'

Also the civilisations do not still exist. They are now slaves to the God machine, Paragon interupt on Rannoch Shepard was right when the Reaper dies. 'You destroyed and murdered those people, and now they can rest in peace' The Reapers may think they are uplifting people, or rather the God Machine controling them may think that but it order to do it, they don't make a peaceful offer to people of freewill saying 'Join us and be immortal' They murder and destroy, rip familes apart, stick people on spikes and drain them of their fluids. They fdon't even try the peaceful way first, because they know, no one would say yes.

If you know no one will say yes to your plan to save them... perhaps it's a bad plan.

Modifié par Skelron, 22 mars 2012 - 08:24 .

[Amorl]

corpselover wrote...

There is absolutely no evidence that this is the Reapers intent at all.  You are also making massive assumptions about the longevity of the prothean empire (cause all empires last forever right?). And you also seem to think that assimilation into the prothean empire means the erradication of the species. What are you basing that on?

And really what is the point of allowing a civ to develop if you are going to destroy them anyway? (forced evolution into a Reaper is the destruction of the species)

In the end what the reapers are doing solves nothing. It doesn't gaurantee the survival of any species, but it does ensure the destruction of all life, synthetic or organic, at one point or another.  Or rather all life that is not a Reaper.

The prothean idea is from the Ashes DLC.  The new squad member makes it quite clear where things would've stood had the prothean empire continued.

As for the the reapers allowing a civ to develop the turn into a reaper the Soverign quotes about each being a nation/legion gives rise to the idea that the civ is not gone just transformed.  A civ/species must prove worthy to continue to the ultimate apex and join in the galactic brotherhood of species that is the reapers.  My analogy for this idea would be the American admiral who forced fuedal Japan into the modern times.  The U.S. would not allow them to continue to exist as an insulated isolated nation but to join the world community.   This destroyed alot of fuedal culture of Japan, and laid some of the Groundwork for the current Japan that we see today.

Modifié par Amorl, 22 mars 2012 - 08:30 .

[SimKoning]

So let’s consider the Catalyst’s argument:

The created always rebel against their creators.

This claim is demonstrably false. The Reapers were created by the Catalyst, yet they obey him. Synthetic life can only reproduce by creating new synthetic life. Consequently, if created life always rebels against its creators, then synthetic civilization would be impossible. Now keep in mind, the Catalyst didn’t say maybe, or some of the time, he said always. He made an absolute claim that is demonstrated to be false in the very same game.

To stop synthetics from killing all organics, he creates synthetics to destroy entire sapient species, while at the same time laying waste to the ecosystems of entire planets that they happen to be on. What I don't get is why synthetic life is so bad. What if silicon based life, or ammonia based life spread through the galaxy destroying any carbon based life forms? What if levo amino acid life destroyed all dextro amino acid based life? Why wouldn't that be just as bad?


New species cause the extinction of older species all the time! 99% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct. Why didn't the Reapers care when the dinosaurs were destroyed and (with the exception of birds) completely replaced by mammals? Does the Catalyst get upset when the evolution of the first bacteria causes the mass extinction of their protobiont ancestors? His whole argument is laughable to anyone who has decent understanding of how evolution works.

His method is a bit strange coming from a being that seems to be so concerned about biodiversity. To begin with, space flight is not a prerequisite for developing AI. There could be many species that have no access to FTL technology all over the galaxy that still invent quantum computers. For example, in real life we may have strong AI long before we have interstellar travel.


It is quite conceivable that AI could develop on a planet and replace its parent population with a race of machines, without anyone even setting foot on another planet. From there they could send out micro probes to the nearest gas giant and use its magnetosphere to accelerate self replicating nanomachines to the nearest stars at relativistic speeds. These probes could then self replicate like a virus and spread to more and more star systems. Within a few millions years, every single system in the galaxy would be inhabited by synthetic life forms.

So clearly, the Reapers coming into the galaxy to wipe out the few species that have come into contact with the mass relays wouldn’t be much of a solution. If one species came out of the caves right after they left, and say after 10,000 years they created strong AI, that AI would have another 40,000 years to spread through the galaxy via self replicators. Things would go even faster if they discovered FTL. Consequently the galaxy would probably be dominated by various species of machines long before the Reapers even made it back.

A far simpler, and much less destructive solution for the Reapers, would be to build listening posts in every planetary system capable of sustaining complex life. Once sapient life emerges, they could simply keep an eye on them. If they develop AI, All the Reapers would have to do is come down to their planet and tell them to stop. If they don’t listen, then they could cause a massive EMP in their atmosphere that would cripple their technology. No mass extinctions needed, and the species is legitimately preserved, rather than melted into soup or turned into space zombies; there would be no serious threat to the biosphere as well.
If they are worried about these species getting mass effect technology, well then maybe, just maybe, the Reapers shouldn’t… you know, give it to them?


If I was one of the writers at Bioware, I would have tried to keep the Reapers purpose a mystery. Failing that, maybe they are just huge ***holes that only allow species to evolve to certain point so that they can assimilate them for their own selfish, and predatory, reasons. Perhaps they wait in darkspace to reduce the rate of decoherence caused by cosmic rays hitting their quantum computers, and they only enter the galaxy for a few centuries to prevent the evolution of any potential rival civilizations, synthetic, organic or cybernetic. Maybe this whole synthetics versus organics thing is just BS that the Reapers tell organics to convince them that they are on our side? Anything but the star kid....

Let's hope this all turns out to be an indoctrination attempt.

[Lost Cipher]

Their is nothing in human history that proves sentient development leads to creation of Artificial Life. Until the Human Species has contact with actually alien life anything we conjecture is just that... conjecture.

A great episode of Stargate SG1 pointed out this fact. In it the Asgard had to deal with the replicators, yet their weapons were ineffective because they were energy based and technologically advanced. So they needed a more primitive species to create a solution. They needed gunpowder.

The only thing humanity can assume about alien life is that it exists. And if its anything like "us", it could be hostile.

[Fliprot]

 

Sorry, but taking the previous games into consideration, the Reapers' goal (assuming that is the only goal, of course) is nonsense. Even if the Reapers could state with 99.999999999% certainity that the technological singularity would lead to the annihilation of all organic life everywhere, if they actually cared about preventing it, they wouldn't deliberately leave behind technology that literally catapults the organic races towards it. They'd have a far easier time staying in the Milky Way and intimidating primitive races into remaining pre-spaceflight.

This. It would be easier for reapers to play god and scare planets into non technology. or even enforce anti-technology commandments from the sky. And then if necessary, just destroy those who go on advancing technology against the reapers will. Easier than letting the galaxy go wild developing everything for 50k years and then having to come around to clean up the mess. 

Another factor of the cycle that ive never seen disscussed is also the fact that each time the reapers clean up the galaxy, more and more remains of advance technology are left behind. In time, wouldnt 50K years be too much time to leave us alone? Keep in mind as more cycles learn about previous cycles, they would leave help behind for the next cycle. Sooner or later a cycle would be so prepared that they would beat the reapers. I think they would see this coming.

Modifié par Fliprot, 22 mars 2012 - 08:47 .

[Mixorz]

Again, it's not a matter of you think it's a good reason. It makes sense.

Plans it's not their job to stop natural evolution. Assuming the dinosaurs died by a meteor, it's not the reapers job to stop things like that. Now if the dinosaurs started making AI, or a synthetic race that MIT get the reapers attention.

Modifié par Mixorz, 22 mars 2012 - 09:38 .

[tiger-tron]

You know the Reapers remind me of the League of Shadows in Batman Begins. Remember Neeson's speech in the mansion?

Modifié par tiger-tron, 22 mars 2012 - 09:42 .

[piemanz]

Computron2000 wrote...

piemanz wrote...
My point is that even here, one single planet not everyone agrees, and will actually go as far as to kill eachother en mass for their dissagreements. The chances that everyone will just agree to stop doing something on a galactic scale is absolute zero.

Oh its not that difficult. The council already controls a vast amount of space. There are some areas outside of their control but mostly they are the main movers. Simply beam a full explaination, collected data on how this conclusion was reached and an ultimatum that if the Council ever allows new synthetics (or all synthetics depending on the goal) to exist, the Reapers will be back. The Council already outlaws AIs anyway.

An axe hanging over your head gets things moving very quickly and makes them clamp down hard when they would normally close an eye to something.

Remember its not asking the organics to give up something they already have. Its telling them to not create a certain thing. There's no real cost other than an opportunity cost

We're talking about policing that for thousands maybe even millions of years. Not to mention the fact that knowing the Reapers exist at all may have the complete opposite effect. The organic races may double down and actively try to covertly create synthetics and/or weapons that are specificly designed at killing Reapers.. It think it's a little more nuanced than them just coming in and telling us to stop, and the problem will just dissapear.

Modifié par piemanz, 22 mars 2012 - 10:44 .

[Penumbra80]

SimKoning wrote...

So let’s consider the Catalyst’s argument:

The created always rebel against their creators.

This claim is demonstrably false. The Reapers were created by the Catalyst, yet they obey him. Synthetic life can only reproduce by creating new synthetic life. Consequently, if created life always rebels against its creators, then synthetic civilization would be impossible. Now keep in mind, the Catalyst didn’t say maybe, or some of the time, he said always. He made an absolute claim that is demonstrated to be false in the very same game.

I don't think the Catalyst is a literal creator or master of the Reapers.  It's one of those things that obviously should have been explained in more depth, but I get the sense  that the Catalyst is a framework for the reapers, indicating who and what they can cultivate and whom they cannot.  It ensures they don't deviate from their established  parameters (only advanced spacefaring civilizations).

To stop synthetics from killing all organics, he creates synthetics to destroy entire sapient species, while at the same time laying waste to the ecosystems of entire planets that they happen to be on. What I don't get is why synthetic life is so bad. What if silicon based life, or ammonia based life spread through the galaxy destroying any carbon based life forms? What if levo amino acid life destroyed all dextro amino acid based life? Why wouldn't that be just as bad?

Reapers are not true synthetics like the Geth or the AI in the citadel during the signal tracking mission in ME1.  All they are is a starship chassis with the essence of billions of minds contained within.

New species cause the extinction of older species all the time! 99% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct. Why didn't the Reapers care when the dinosaurs were destroyed and (with the exception of birds) completely replaced by mammals? Does the Catalyst get upset when the evolution of the first bacteria causes the mass extinction of their protobiont ancestors? His whole argument is laughable to anyone who has decent understanding of how evolution works.

Dinosaurs and bacteria are not sentient or spacefaring organisms and that's the key distinction. 

His method is a bit strange coming from a being that seems to be so concerned about biodiversity. 

Biodiversity isn't the goal, but making sure that the genie in the bottle (technological singularity) remains firmly in the bottle is. 

It is quite conceivable that AI could develop on a planet and replace its parent population with a race of machines, without anyone even setting foot on another planet. From there they could send out micro probes to the nearest gas giant and use its magnetosphere to accelerate self replicating nanomachines to the nearest stars at relativistic speeds. These probes could then self replicate like a virus and spread to more and more star systems. Within a few millions years, every single system in the galaxy would be inhabited by synthetic life forms.

In which case you might be looking at a grey goo scenario and possible ecophagy, a problem that gets compounded when interstellar travel is factored in.

So clearly, the Reapers coming into the galaxy to wipe out the few species that have come into contact with the mass relays wouldn’t be much of a solution. If one species came out of the caves right after they left, and say after 10,000 years they created strong AI, that AI would have another 40,000 years to spread through the galaxy via self replicators. Things would go even faster if they discovered FTL. Consequently the galaxy would probably be dominated by various species of machines long before the Reapers even made it back.

But civilizations don't really advance rapidly, if you're taking humans as a benchmark for example.  It took over 40000 years alone for humans to transition from hunter gatherers to agriculturalists and then another 7000 years before the first true civilizations took root.  Also, technological progress isn't a linear path upwards as there are periods of stagnation as well.  So I think the 50000 watermark is a generous projection on the part of the Reapers to ascertain when the next cycle should come around. 

A far simpler, and much less destructive solution for the Reapers, would be to build listening posts in every planetary system capable of sustaining complex life. Once sapient life emerges, they could simply keep an eye on them. If they develop AI, All the Reapers would have to do is come down to their planet and tell them to stop. If they don’t listen, then they could cause a massive EMP in their atmosphere that would cripple their technology.

But what would that accomplish really?  It's like kicking over anthills, not to mention a waste of resources.  Humans, and I'm extrapolating for aliens here, are not ones to step aside and not do something just because some authority figure tells us not to do it.  We love poking around where we shouldn't be poking around, and you just know that someone, somewhere is messing around with forbidden lines of thought.  Citadel space had strict prohibitions against AI research, yet that hasn't stopped individuals from experimenting with it.  No, the reapers believe it is better to cut down a civilization in its prime before it gets into any more mischief than they can handle.

[geckosentme]

Mixorz wrote...

They are killing ADVANCED organic races so that those races don't create synthetics that will kill ALL life. 

Now a common question is why they just don't kill synthetics. Well in the long run, that doesn't really solve the problem. What's to stop the organics from creating new ones? They have the knowledge. It would be like if a dog is digging a hole in your yard. You cover up the hole and two days later the dog dug another hole. Now let's say a dog dug a hole and you killed it, now you don't have to worry about a dog digging holes until the neighbors puppy gets big enough to dig an annoying hole.

What's to say you couldn't create a race of synthetics that wipes out all life in the galaxy in less than the 50,000 year cycle the reapers are on?  .  Especially as the Mass Relays give your synthetics easy quick access to all parts of the galaxy almost instantaneously.

If that goal made sense the Reapers would just hang around monitoring. 
And in fact wouldn't that be easier and more secure.  Destroy anybody
who tried to create synthetics leave others alone lay down the law and allow use of the mass relay.

Sorry but there is no way to deconstruct the explanation given by the Catalyst such that it will make any kind of sense.

You don't create synthetics to kill organics to prevent organics from being killed by synthetics.  Foolishness.

[Darvins]

the truth is, the Godkid means this when he says what the problem is.
'During our civilisation we kept building AI's that turned on us. So we made the assumption that this was the inevitable fate of the universe, and the Galaxy, and that because of this, we decided to build the ultimate death machine, arn't we kind.'

[Computron2000]

piemanz wrote...

Computron2000 wrote...

piemanz wrote...
My point is that even here, one single planet not everyone agrees, and will actually go as far as to kill eachother en mass for their dissagreements. The chances that everyone will just agree to stop doing something on a galactic scale is absolute zero.

Oh its not that difficult. The council already controls a vast amount of space. There are some areas outside of their control but mostly they are the main movers. Simply beam a full explaination, collected data on how this conclusion was reached and an ultimatum that if the Council ever allows new synthetics (or all synthetics depending on the goal) to exist, the Reapers will be back. The Council already outlaws AIs anyway.

An axe hanging over your head gets things moving very quickly and makes them clamp down hard when they would normally close an eye to something.

Remember its not asking the organics to give up something they already have. Its telling them to not create a certain thing. There's no real cost other than an opportunity cost

We're talking about policing that for thousands maybe even millions of years. Not to mention the fact that knowing the Reapers exist at all may have the complete opposite effect. The organic races may double down and actively try to covertly create synthetics and/or weapons that are specificly designed at killing Reapers.. It think it's a little more nuanced than them just coming in and telling us to stop, and the problem will just dissapear.

2 things here

You're too focused on the problem being stopped at the 100% level. As i compared to murder, you cannot have 0% murderers with the individuality of organics (unless every organic reaches some stage of enlightenment). However, murders are kept low, depending on the effectiveness of the policing. If you can have 95% of the population NOT be murderers, your adversaries are only 5% of the population. Additionally, that 95% of people will actually help you by informing you (because it might lead to galactic annihilation if they don't <- always a great incentive).

The second thing is that you forget that creating a powerful enough AI is not done in a day. Every incremental step and procuring the equipment can be exposed. Lets say the criminal needs 5 steps to make an AI and policing is very poor. His chance of NOT getting caught is 70%. This means he has a total of 16% chance of not getting caught. If the policing makes the chance 50%, he has a total of 3% to finish his work.

Lets say the crimninal succeeds. He now have a basic AI. Is this AI going to be a galactic danger right away? Can its actions be detected? Even if an AI takes over a mech factory ala ME2, it will still be unable to be ranked as a real danger when faced with a council fleet. Contrast the Geth. They won because they acheived sentience suddenly and they already existed in extremely large numbers.

On the galactic races covertly create synthetics, you should note 3 things.
The reason why the Council banned AI was the geth/quarian war. Unless you want to risk the inital war again, the council has no reason to lift the ban.

Secondly the Reapers are themselves synthetics (or mostly synthetic). Making a AI to fight other AIs is the equivalent of humans getting a wolf to fight a wolf pack. The wolf might just decide to join its own species

Lastly, i pointed out it should beam its data that it used to reach its conclusion. As an AI, it most likely has reached the conclusion given a generous data set. Some of the population will think its fake. Others will point out the Reapers have no reason to fake it since they are winning by a mile. The final conclusion will be that it is real.