695 réponses à ce sujet

[emperoralku]

There is also a massive assumption there that synthetics will kill non threatening life.
If the created turn on the creators then the synthetics will kill only advanced organics. Making them the same as the reapers...........

[Kreid]

Even if the purpose is to avoid a technological singularity that would in the end ensure no organic life evolves in the Galaxy, there are two serious problems with it's "solution":

a) There are simply much better methods to stop synthetic life to overthrown organic life.
What he does makes no sense, he's effectively stopping evolution at the same point over and over again and thus perpetuating a Galaxy-wide cycle of stagnation which only serves to add another toy to his collection each time, instead of educating emerging civilizations and helping the couse of life to go on.

[Tocquevillain]

Cosmar wrote...

If the Starchild were to offer up proof that he was right, maybe I'd be somewhat more ok with that. But as it is he just says it bluntly, when, so far, in this cycle, nothing has happened to prove him right.

The geth NEVER wanted to go to war with anyone *until* Sovereign started messing with them.

Without proof that his unfair blanket statement is correct, I just couldn't swallow it.

You know how Sovereign says you'll never understand the Reapers? That's cause your puny brain (Shepard's) can't get over the fact they have millions of years of observation under their belts and that this is best way forward as they see it, until you brought the catalyst online.

Just because he didn't tell you all the history of the millions of years that have already gone by as proof, doesn't mean it didn't exist in some way. That's the part where Bioware is counting on their audience: to accept that the Reapers were acting in a (to them) logical manner, and then to accept that they are logical enough to also know that once the Catalyst was made, they were wrong, and were willing to give up control. It seems that by and large Bioware's intent was not understood by the audience. 

[Cazlee]

The Angry One wrote...

It *is* circular logic, that the Reapers don't exterminate all organic life themselves is irrelevant, especially since *no synthetic ever has*.

Maybe not in this galaxy.  You don't know what the catalyst knows, it has billions of years of experience on us.

The logic in itself is not circular. It may not be correct, or right, but it is not circular.

Modifié par Cazlee, 26 mars 2012 - 02:05 .

[RedChannels]

2484Stryker wrote...

You're right. Although I could make the argument that all life capable of developing civilizations do end up being killed by the Reapers. It's just a matter of time. Obviously the Catalyst is also speaking of lower lifeforms...yes?

Nope. Humans were around the last time the Reapers did their thing... we were just dwelling in caves, so they left us alone.

[zarnk567]

Cazlee wrote...

The Angry One wrote...

It *is* circular logic, that the Reapers don't exterminate all organic life themselves is irrelevant, especially since *no synthetic ever has*.

Maybe not in this galaxy.  You don't know what the catalyst knows, it has billions of years of experience on us.

.......And there is the problem WE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THE CATALYST....... but Shepard takes his word like it's the Ultimate truth.....

[txmn1016]

If the catalyst comes from some civilization that noticed this cycle (that organics always create synthetics, which in turn always rebel, and always inevitably wipe out organic life), doesn't it necessarily follow that organics always come back?

[Aznable Char]

The pruning analogy doesn't work . IN fact it's being used in reverse .

When you prune it's so that the best nutrients go to SOME of the fruit so that it's tastier and more competitive on the market .

That would be as if the reapers came in and killed the turians salarians and asari so that humanity can reap the benefits of the entire galaxy .

If we were to use the prune analogy it would be the same as saying that you cut off the tastiest juiciest grapes so that the crappy grapes grow into juicy grapes which you're just going to cut anyway .

[CaptainZaysh]

Unit-Alpha wrote...

But why not just take out synthetic life?

It's easier: computer viruses and such.
Fewer possible problematic outcomes: synthetics are easier to predict.
Cleaner
Etc.

The problem is that once the organics reach a certain tech level, it may well become impossible to police their AI research properly.  Some lunatic in a secret lab somewhere could create a singularity event, and given a few generations the geth create supergeth which could destroy the Reapers in a straight-up fight.

Less risky just to stop the organics before they reach that tech level.

[Athro]

Actually it still is circular logic.

Synthetics destroy advanced civilisations (organic and synthetic alike) before they create synthetic life that will destroy all organics. However the Reapers have set the universe up with the Citadel and Mass Relays so as to guide civilisations into developing in a cyclical pattern. So this then becomes a case of their solution being to a problem they created themselves. Rather than leave civilisations alone, they are guiding them to follow the same patterns and mistakes over and over again.

Except, of course, that there is no evidence that a war between organic and synthetic is inevitable even within their own cyclical trap that they have built.

Then you have the question of - The Reapers are synthetic life forms. So by the Starchild's logic they will inevitably wipe out all organic life anyway. He never offers an explanation that makes them exempt from this premise.

This also completely ignores questions such as "why do the Reapers need to torture and violate the minds of these civilisations in the process." Or "why do the Reapers commit such heinous atrocities?"

Because it's not sufficient to say "they are alien." Intelligence can get broader in scale, but empathy is still possible further up the chain. The Reapers are so unempathetic and psychopathic in their means that it stretches credibility that they are just an alien intelligence that doesn't get it. They *know* exactly what they are doing, and that is not the sign of a stable or benevolent race. They are willfully psychopathic and evil.

So again, the logic is full of fallacies. The Starchild doesn't just resort to circular logic - although part of his argument is indeed circular - he also commits fallacies of appeals to authority (I'm so ancient, I just know what I'm talking about so shut up), Slippery Slope (Synthetics and Organics are so different that eventually they will wipe out all organic life in the universe despite this having *never* happened yet because there is still organic life in the universe...) along with some just absurd claims "synthetic organic hybrids are the final point of evolution."

Um... yeah, I'm not even diving into that one right now.

Suffice to say - there are so many fallacies in the Starchild's logic that it is implausible that a millennia old AI would actually come up with it without being hideously hideously wrong about its conclusions. And frankly, such a computer would be so unreliable it would be incapable of honestly telling you what 1+1 equals.

[Militarized]

I think a more accurate "yo, dawg" like would be this

"yo dawg, I heard you didn't want to be killed by synthetics so I turned organics into synthetics to kill organics so you're not killed by synthetics that want to kill organics".

Asinine, pppuurreee stupidity.

I also won't get into the full retard mode of the tech singularity theory and the technophobia that it is derived from. I've said it to much, writers who think tech singularities are "deep" and cool, need to do some more deep thinking.. preferably in a corner where it doesn't effect one of the greatest sci-fi IP's created. 

Modifié par Militarized, 26 mars 2012 - 02:09 .

[lomifeh]

SnakeStrike8 wrote...

Lugaidster wrote...

The best analogy I can come up with is prunning trees. When the trees are growing, sometimes the best way to ensure proper growing is by pruning it (ie, killing some branches) instead of leaving the tree to die because some branches take all the food killing all the otherones. (This does happen in some fruit trees and you have to prune it to ensure that all fruits are good).

This would hold up ordinarily, but the Reapers aren't killing 'some' humans or 'some' turians. They're killing all humans and all turians, and they do this so that the geth won't kill us first. In essence, the Reapers are racing to Reap us all before the 'other' synthetics slot us.
To use your own analogy, the situation is akin to a gardener coming up on a lawn of grass that has rose bushes growing on it. The gardener decides that because the roses have thorns, they have the capacity to threaten the growth of the grass. So he decides to torch the entire lawn with white phosphorous and napalm and hope that some seeds survive to grow later.
Instead of, y'know, just removing the rose bushes.

Didn't think of it this way.  But they know at around 50k years the civilizations can start creating Synthetics with the power to kill organic life.  Repaers needs organic life for various reasons.  That would make what Starkid says accurate then in it's logic.  Note it doesn't say it wants to prevent organic life from dying out, just that it wants synthetics that it creates to do so.

[Draconis6666]

Tocquevillain wrote...

Cosmar wrote...

If the Starchild were to offer up proof that he was right, maybe I'd be somewhat more ok with that. But as it is he just says it bluntly, when, so far, in this cycle, nothing has happened to prove him right.

The geth NEVER wanted to go to war with anyone *until* Sovereign started messing with them.

Without proof that his unfair blanket statement is correct, I just couldn't swallow it.

You know how Sovereign says you'll never understand the Reapers? That's cause your puny brain (Shepard's) can't get over the fact they have millions of years of observation under their belts and that this is best way forward as they see it, until you brought the catalyst online.

Just because he didn't tell you all the history of the millions of years that have already gone by as proof, doesn't mean it didn't exist in some way. That's the part where Bioware is counting on their audience: to accept that the Reapers were acting in a (to them) logical manner, and then to accept that they are logical enough to also know that once the Catalyst was made, they were wrong, and were willing to give up control. It seems that by and large Bioware's intent was not understood by the audience. 

Soverign doesnt say you wont understand them he says that their motivations are completely beyond comprehension by Organic minds, that implies that there is no way you will ever even understand why they do what they do... which is not the case, agree with it or not you clearly are easily able to understand why they do what they do, its laid out to you in a single sentance. Agreeing with it or seeing their point of view does not change the fact that you can easily comprehend their purpose.

Any way you look at it everything the reapers have said throughout the series is totaly undermined by the ending. The intent is understood the problem is that expecting anyone to logicaly come to that conclusion based on the evidence (there is none) on the basis of a few sentances of dialgoue from a completely brand new character is rediculous and the epitomy of bad writing.

[The Angry One]

Cazlee wrote...

Maybe not in this galaxy.  You don't know what the catalyst knows, it has billions of years of experience on us.

All I know is that all the evidence in the game contradicts him.
Look at Rannoch. No, don't even bother with the Quarians. The Geth had total supremacy over Rannoch for 3 centuries and... there are still birds in the sky.

The Geth literally wouldn't harm a fly.

[Admiral H. Cain]

Athro wrote...

Actually it still is circular logic.

Synthetics destroy advanced civilisations (organic and synthetic alike) before they create synthetic life that will destroy all organics. However the Reapers have set the universe up with the Citadel and Mass Relays so as to guide civilisations into developing in a cyclical pattern. So this then becomes a case of their solution being to a problem they created themselves. Rather than leave civilisations alone, they are guiding them to follow the same patterns and mistakes over and over again.

Except, of course, that there is no evidence that a war between organic and synthetic is inevitable even within their own cyclical trap that they have built.

Then you have the question of - The Reapers are synthetic life forms. So by the Starchild's logic they will inevitably wipe out all organic life anyway. He never offers an explanation that makes them exempt from this premise.

This also completely ignores questions such as "why do the Reapers need to torture and violate the minds of these civilisations in the process." Or "why do the Reapers commit such heinous atrocities?"

Because it's not sufficient to say "they are alien." Intelligence can get broader in scale, but empathy is still possible further up the chain. The Reapers are so unempathetic and psychopathic in their means that it stretches credibility that they are just an alien intelligence that doesn't get it. They *know* exactly what they are doing, and that is not the sign of a stable or benevolent race. They are willfully psychopathic and evil.

So again, the logic is full of fallacies. The Starchild doesn't just resort to circular logic - although part of his argument is indeed circular - he also commits fallacies of appeals to authority (I'm so ancient, I just know what I'm talking about so shut up), Slippery Slope (Synthetics and Organics are so different that eventually they will wipe out all organic life in the universe despite this having *never* happened yet because there is still organic life in the universe...) along with some just absurd claims "synthetic organic hybrids are the final point of evolution."

Um... yeah, I'm not even diving into that one right now.

Suffice to say - there are so many fallacies in the Starchild's logic that it is implausible that a millennia old AI would actually come up with it without being hideously hideously wrong about its conclusions. And frankly, such a computer would be so unreliable it would be incapable of honestly telling you what 1+1 equals.

Excellent post. 

[Ownedbacon]

There is much more wrong with the Catalyst than that.

http://jmstevenson.w...-mass-effect-3/

This link is a well written article about what is wrong with the ending. The paragraphs below are from the article a few that show what is wrong with the Catalyst.

1. Introduction of New Elements and Characters
Imagine Frodo, dangling the One Ring, over the fiery chasm of Mt. Doom. He turns, and says, “The Ring is Mine!” and slips the One Ring onto his finger.Suddenly he’s whisked into a universe contained inside the One Ring,
an entire world trapped in the essence of the ring. He meets the Keeper of the Ring, an ethereal spirit who has dwelled within the ring since its creation and now Frodo must make the ultimate sacrifice. He has to become the ring, in order to destroy it. How many people in the theater, watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy, would have stood up and said: “What the &@$% is this @!$%?” All of them, that’s how many, and do you know why? Because it introduces a new element that, by its very existence, shatters everything we, the audience, have come to understand about the world of Middle-Earth. If the Ring possesses a consciousness, why didn’t it destroy Sauron? Why is the Keeper of the Ring only now showing up when Frodo has put the Ring on before? Why does Frodo have to die to destroy it?

See throughout all three movies of Lord of the Rings we came to understand the universe, and how it worked; the rules and limits the characters were forced to work under. The Ring was a corrupting influence but could make the wearer invisible, it could only be destroyed in the fires of Mt. Doom, and Sauron created it. Suddenly introducing a new element, right at the end of the story, puts everything the audience knows into doubt including everything they
enjoyed about the movie before the horrible ending came. That is exactly what happened with Mass Effect 3.

This is the Catalyst. Now throughout Mass Effect 3 there are plenty of mentions about the Catalyst, it’s the whole focus of the game, but never, never, was it foreshadowed as being some all-powerful Super AI. And even if Bioware had spent the entire game foreshadowing that fact, it still wouldn’t make up for the fact that the appearance of this character completely screws the rest of the preceding Mass Effect games by opening up plot holes so huge that they could be classified as quantum singularities. For instance, the Catalyst claims that the Reapers are his solution. So then why, in Mass Effect 1, did the Catalyst not simply call the Reapers himself? Why did Sovereign need to do it himself? In fact why was Sovereign even still in the Milky Way when the Catalyst could simply have monitored organic life himself and summoned the Reapers. Why did the Catalyst allow the
Protheans to reprogram the Keepers?"

You see, the existence of this Catalyst renders not only the entire ending of the game as pointless and confusing, but retroactively does the same thing to everything that’s come before. And I remind you, that this is in the final few moments of the game, on the Dramatic Arc I showed you, this is the Resolution. Bioware was supposed to be tying up loose ends here, resolving plot points and character arcs, not creating all new ones in the final few seconds. I’ve never seen a good story that managed to incorporate a last minute change like this and still be good. Even stories with twist endings, like The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense all foreshadow the twist in subtle ways so that when the twist comes we can look back and say “Oh yeah, now it all makes sense” rather than “that was such b*******”. Just ask M Night Shyamalan what happens when you use twist endings without any previous foreshadowing.

I think the absolute worst part of the Catalyst is that it completely destroys the menace of the Reapers.

Modifié par Ownedbacon, 26 mars 2012 - 02:09 .

[CaptainZaysh]

Creid-X wrote...

Even if the purpose is to avoid a technological singularity that would in the end ensure no organic life evolves in the Galaxy, there are two serious problems with it's "solution":

a) There are simply much better methods to stop synthetic life to overthrown organic life.
What he does makes no sense, he's effectively stopping evolution at the same point over and over again and thus perpetuating a Galaxy-wide cycle of stagnation which only serves to add another toy to his collection each time, instead of educating emerging civilizations and helping the couse of life to go on.

a) What are the better methods?
If the Catalyst assigns (or was programmed to assign) no value to a specific society's continued evolution, it makes perfect sense.

[TheJiveDJ]

Well there's also the possibility of organics going to war with one another which they pretty much always do, and end up wiping each other out. So let's get some reapers out there to harvest organics so that organics don't end up killing other organics. That makes just about as much sense as the Catalyst does.

[Unit-Alpha]

CaptainZaysh wrote...

Unit-Alpha wrote...

But why not just take out synthetic life?

It's easier: computer viruses and such.
Fewer possible problematic outcomes: synthetics are easier to predict.
Cleaner
Etc.

The problem is that once the organics reach a certain tech level, it may well become impossible to police their AI research properly.  Some lunatic in a secret lab somewhere could create a singularity event, and given a few generations the geth create supergeth which could destroy the Reapers in a straight-up fight.

Less risky just to stop the organics before they reach that tech level.

Except what's the point? I mean, what's the motivation behind the Reapers themselves? They have no personal stake in any of this. For all they care, they could sit out in dark space, drinking margaritas. Besides, by giving organics many of the keys to create these "deadly" synthetics, they are just shooting themselves in the metaphorical foot.

And if the AI god child is controlling them, then why would we accept the logic of a synthetic, which is gonna seek to preserve its kind?

Modifié par Unit-Alpha, 26 mars 2012 - 02:13 .

[ShepGrimr]

god child or star child should not even be included in the ending peroid made no sense what so ever  to put him there.

[Hexxys]

The logic isn't exactly circular, but it walks a fine line. The only difference between the reapers and the synthetics they allude to is that the reapers stop their campaign after they "ascend" ONLY the advanced civilizations. They insinuate that other synthetics would not stop at advanced civilizations, and would instead decimate ALL organic life.  Right down to single-cell life.

From the perspective of the races being harvested, however, the difference is irrelevant. Reapers are synthetics killing organics to prevent the organics from creating synthetics that will kill organics.

It's all perspective.

Btw, these endings are truly craptastic.

Modifié par Hexxys, 26 mars 2012 - 02:14 .

[WilliamDracul88]

The Angry One wrote...

Look at Rannoch. No, don't even bother with the Quarians. The Geth had total supremacy over Rannoch for 3 centuries and... there are still birds in the sky.

The Geth literally wouldn't harm a fly.

Very good one...

[The Angry One]

Yeah really, who the hell knows how long it'd take organics to develop AIs without the mass relays and such to give them a massive head start.
Again, spacebrat creates his own problems then blames the organics. He is offensively stupid.

[Voods07]

Having the Reapers' purpose to be "kill all synthetic life" wold be a logical anomaly since the Reapers themselves are synthetic.

So...to protect organics they would have to kill all synthetics, then themselves..thus ensuring that synthetics would just eventually kill organics anyways.

Like "sistersafetypin" said: no matter how you slice it, it just doesn't make sense.

[Sainta117]

[quote]Tocquevillain wrote...

[quote]Cosmar wrote...
(snip)

It seems that by and large Bioware's intent was not understood by the audience. 

[/quote]

And how do you know that *you* understand it correctly? The majority of people appear to stand on the other side (as do I). Unless you're just that smart, what makes you think that you have the direct pipeline to Bioware's collective brain while the rest of us wallow in ignorance?