1895 réponses à ce sujet

[CronoDragoon]

Fxnris wrote...


Synthesis seems to solve the whole problem of the reapers in the first place, the whole synthetics rebel etc, well everyone's partly synthetic now.

How does this stop synthetics from being created again?

[NeoNight1986]

finally... some answers that make sense... THIS guy needs a raise. a large one.

[Allan Schumacher]

CronoDragoon wrote...

Fxnris wrote...


Synthesis seems to solve the whole problem of the reapers in the first place, the whole synthetics rebel etc, well everyone's partly synthetic now.

How does this stop synthetics from being created again?

I've been giving this some thought since I saw it asked yesterday.  I briefly touched on it in a different thread, but here are my thoughts on it again.

When determining why people create "AI" my best explanation is to use it as a tool.  I think that this is actually alluded to in discussions about the Quarian and the Geth, and why the Geth were created.  If the need to create the tools is gone as a result of the synthesis, then there's no reason for synthetics to be created.  Part of the problem with endings involving a form of transcendence is trying to understand what exactly that transcendence means.  I'm still human, so imagining I'm now something beyond is unfathomable.

An alternative might be that, by being part synthetic, there's some sort of connection there with future synthetics.  Or that due to this outcome it's actually impossible to create purely synthetic (or organic) life.  Quite the out there idea though.

[CronoDragoon]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

CronoDragoon wrote...

Fxnris wrote...


Synthesis seems to solve the whole problem of the reapers in the first place, the whole synthetics rebel etc, well everyone's partly synthetic now.

How does this stop synthetics from being created again?

I've been giving this some thought since I saw it asked yesterday.  I briefly touched on it in a different thread, but here are my thoughts on it again.

When determining why people create "AI" my best explanation is to use it as a tool.  I think that this is actually alluded to in discussions about the Quarian and the Geth, and why the Geth were created.  If the need to create the tools is gone as a result of the synthesis, then there's no reason for synthetics to be created.  Part of the problem with endings involving a form of transcendence is trying to understand what exactly that transcendence means.  I'm still human, so imagining I'm now something beyond is unfathomable.

An alternative might be that, by being part synthetic, there's some sort of connection there with future synthetics.  Or that due to this outcome it's actually impossible to create purely synthetic (or organic) life.  Quite the out there idea though.

I completely agree that synthetics are created as tools, which is why I have trouble believing the new hybrids won't need them. As far as we know, synthesis does just that: merges synthetics with organics. I am given no reason to believe everyone is now a miniature god that does not need food, can teleport anywhere it wants, etc etc.

[Dartbeast54q]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

CronoDragoon wrote...

Fxnris wrote...


Synthesis seems to solve the whole problem of the reapers in the first place, the whole synthetics rebel etc, well everyone's partly synthetic now.

How does this stop synthetics from being created again?

I've been giving this some thought since I saw it asked yesterday.  I briefly touched on it in a different thread, but here are my thoughts on it again.

When determining why people create "AI" my best explanation is to use it as a tool.  I think that this is actually alluded to in discussions about the Quarian and the Geth, and why the Geth were created.  If the need to create the tools is gone as a result of the synthesis, then there's no reason for synthetics to be created.  Part of the problem with endings involving a form of transcendence is trying to understand what exactly that transcendence means.  I'm still human, so imagining I'm now something beyond is unfathomable.

An alternative might be that, by being part synthetic, there's some sort of connection there with future synthetics.  Or that due to this outcome it's actually impossible to create purely synthetic (or organic) life.  Quite the out there idea though.

Thing about that was Geth were not originally intended to be AI. Tali says in ME1 that Geth were originally meant to be VI's that would perform dangerious tasks like mining and such that most people who had free will were unable or unwilling to do.  If you merged Synthetics and Organics, I can only imagine, since there is no as of yet clarification of what synthasis actually does, that people with free will still would be unwilling to do dirty and dangerious jobs like there, or are unable to do because of the fact that they still have some organic parts of them.

I think we can all agree though that at the moment, all we can do is toss ideas up in the air about what the ramifications are, which might be good for some, but to me to end a triligy like that isnt a very well played move.

[generalleo03]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

CronoDragoon wrote...

Fxnris wrote...


Synthesis seems to solve the whole problem of the reapers in the first place, the whole synthetics rebel etc, well everyone's partly synthetic now.

How does this stop synthetics from being created again?

I've been giving this some thought since I saw it asked yesterday.  I briefly touched on it in a different thread, but here are my thoughts on it again.

When determining why people create "AI" my best explanation is to use it as a tool.  I think that this is actually alluded to in discussions about the Quarian and the Geth, and why the Geth were created.  If the need to create the tools is gone as a result of the synthesis, then there's no reason for synthetics to be created.  Part of the problem with endings involving a form of transcendence is trying to understand what exactly that transcendence means.  I'm still human, so imagining I'm now something beyond is unfathomable.

An alternative might be that, by being part synthetic, there's some sort of connection there with future synthetics.  Or that due to this outcome it's actually impossible to create purely synthetic (or organic) life.  Quite the out there idea though.

Hmm, I'm not sure I totally agree with this.  This suggests that the source of conflict is that the desire for tools creates conflict?  I'm not sure I buy that, and I don't think it has been discussed anywhere within the narrative of Mass Effect.  In fact I think that Mass Effect describes the source of conflict as diversity, or the fear of diversity.  There was a great literary analysis of this that described it better than me.

[Warp92]

@ Allan That is what I thought too, when presented with synthesis I thought about how we could still possibly create sythentic machines to save us time it's pretty much a endless cycle

[Terror_K]

It's pretty damn clear from this "interview" from Patrick that the Mass Effect trilogy was doomed from the start, our choices were never going to really matter, that ME3's priorities were messed up as a whole and that the fans were outright lied to multiple times throughout the production of the trilogy.

So... thanks for 6-7 years of lies and me wasting my life with a series that could have been fantastic, but failed utterly because your whole philosophy was completely counter to what you were claiming to pull off. And thanks for a completely shallow and linear third part that never really allowed me to roleplay at all thanks to autodialogue and a complete lack of dialogue choices and charm/intimidate options, not to mention turning the squad on the Normandy into Zaeed and Kasumi all over again 80% of the time despite the fact this was the biggest complaint about ME2's DLC companions.

Modifié par Terror_K, 09 avril 2012 - 04:47 .

[Crocmon]

Allan Schumacher wrote...
*snip*

I always thought that the biosynthesis created lifeforms like the BIOs from Tron: Legacy. They'd be able to just pull up some kind of interface and create patches to fix diseases, code in improvements, but still be 'Organic' in body and mind to whatever extent is necessary.

I was also under the impression that Synthesis wiped the galaxy clean of all life and started anew with biosynthetic proteins that would evolve all over again, so I'm probably assuming way too much in my analysis of Starchild's schlop.

[Allan Schumacher]

generalleo03 wrote...

Hmm, I'm not sure I totally agree with this.  This suggests that the source of conflict is that the desire for tools creates conflict?  I'm not sure I buy that, and I don't think it has been discussed anywhere within the narrative of Mass Effect.  In fact I think that Mass Effect describes the source of conflict as diversity, or the fear of diversity.  There was a great literary analysis of this that described it better than me.

I think it's more of an issue that "the need for tools to make our lives easier eventually results in an AI being made."  Once that AI is actually made, then things get... messy.

I completely agree that synthetics are created as tools, which is why I
have trouble believing the new hybrids won't need them. As far as we
know, synthesis does just that: merges synthetics with organics. I am
given no reason to believe everyone is now a miniature god that does not
need food, can teleport anywhere it wants, etc etc.

I don't think it's as much an issue as to whether or not we'd "need" them, but more whether we'd "desire" them.  It's all part of the confusion that transcendence gives me.  If we're in the next stage of evolution, does that mean that many of faults (laziness, stuff like that) no longer exist?  Just thinking out loud mostly.

Thing about that was Geth were not originally intended to be AI. Tali
says in ME1 that Geth were originally meant to be VI's that would
perform dangerious tasks like mining and such that most people who had
free will were unable or unwilling to do.  If you merged Synthetics and
Organics, I can only imagine, since there is no as of yet clarification
of what synthasis actually does, that people with free will still would
be unwilling to do dirty and dangerious jobs like there, or are unable
to do because of the fact that they still have some organic parts of
them.

Sorry, I wasn't clear what I meant with AI.  Given the ME context I used it incorrectly and should have used VI.  I was originally thinking AI as we real people use it hehe.

As for the results of synthesis, I agree.  It's a tough concept to wrap my head around.

[ichik]

Michael Gamble wrote...

By the way, Patrick, John, Reid myself - we were all ready to answer those kinds of questions in dialogue just like the original OP. It was the whole reason we came to PAX. In fact, a lot of people may have gotten a bit *too* much out of me

Meh, this is way too-conspiracy-much, don't you think?

[Blindspy]

Some faith restored >.>

It'd be really cool if we could do a reddit-style Q&A where the community votes on the top 10 questions we'd like to ask Bioware.

Modifié par Blindspy, 09 avril 2012 - 05:01 .

[Sharn01]

I call foul on the whole "making everyone synthetic solves all the problems" bull crap. Humans war with humans, turians war with turians, geth war with geth, krogan war with krogan, etc, etc, and they all war with each other. Taking away diversity and forcing them to homogenize isnt going to solve this problem. They will still be different, and where disagreements exists wars will eventually ensue, unless we take their free will away completely.

Diversity has always been a strength as well, without diversity things stagnate, some of the greatest strides in our history is when a new culture gains access to something from another culture and comes up with new uses for it that the original culture never thought of.

Modifié par Sharn01, 09 avril 2012 - 05:03 .

[generalleo03]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

I think it's more of an issue that "the need for tools to make our lives easier eventually results in an AI being made."  Once that AI is actually made, then things get... messy.

Hmm.  You know, I don't mind that topic at all.  It sounds interesting and cool.  I just don't think it's part of Mass Effect.  To be done properly, the story needs to reflect how making lives easier is an important part.  It really creates a disjointed effort.  I can definately see the logical flow of what you are saying, but it is not really clear from the series of Mass Effect.  There is little to no exposition about making tools to try and make our lives easier.  There is a lot more evidence to suggest that AI are a threat because they are an unknown, especially with the Council outlawing it for this very reason.  I'm not saying it couldn't work, just that it would require a lot more explanation to make it in the Mass Effect series.

I actually like your idea a lot, I just don't think it is part of the narrative of Mass Effect.

I also dislike the technological singularity, or rather, the common interpretation of it.  I will break it down into the two categories I think about.

1. Optimizational Singularity.
This is the more fun of the two.  The basic concept is an AI was created to do a particular thing.  During this process it went a bit crazy and decided to kill everything.
For example, lets say I made an AI that makes widgets.  I tell it to make widgets as fast as it can.  It decides "hey, if I took over the car factory next door, I could make widgets faster".  So it attacks and takes control of it.  Eventually killing everything off.  Its pretty interesting and fun because it's completely unintended and we can follow the logic.  

However, I would argue it's not actually a technological singularity.  This hypothetical AI is dumb.  It never gains the ability to question its own motives or determine the reason it is making widgets.  It is a programatical human error.  The problem was not bounded correctly and the AI went nuts with it.  For instance, I could completely solve this widget AI by bounding its program.  Instead of "make widgets as fast as you can" I tell it "make widgets as fast as you can with the materials given to you and no more than the total number of widgets used by humanity on a daily basis".  This will stop the ai from doing just about everything wrong.  It is about properly defining the problem, which is why programming can be hard (i'm a programmer just FYI).  An improperly defined problem can have undefined results, like infinite loops, resource thrashing, etc.  I would argue this is not at all related to the technological singularity, its just fun

I, Robot, the movie is a great adaptation of what I mean here. The 3 laws were not properly defined and the AI goes nuts.  Defining the 3 laws more completely should solve the issue.

2. Intellectual Singularity.

This is where and AI actually gains the ability to think and question its own motives.  At this point I would argue that if an intelligence got so large it would view us like we view ants. Ants are annoying. They get in things they shouldn't and go places they don't belong. But we don't go all genocidal rampage on them. I'm pretty sure if humanity was dedicated to it we could exterminate them all, but what would be the point? That's a lot of effort to go through. And in the case of Mass Effect the machines could just.. you know... LEAVE. Infinitely large and ever expanding universe and all that. 

I've always likened this situation to Dr. Manhatten from Watchmen. He's an ethical nihilist (IMO). Already knowing pretty much everything that's pertinent. He never acts of his own accord because whats the point? What happens will happen. He has to be instigated to action. It's always why he seems so alien to me.  

I kinda think that super intelligent machines would be like that. They would concern themselves only with things they care about directly, probably beyond what we would think, but could be instigated to doing something by organics that learned to communicate with them. I never thought they would consider one kind of life (organic/synthetic/something i'm too stupid to know) "better" than another. 

Related directly to Mass Effect, its clear to me that EDI, the Geth, and the Reapers are closer to the 2nd kind than the first.  However, they have chosen to take on motives of becomming more organic/human than the rest.  I could expand on this point, but.. the wall! its too big already, captain!

[Taleroth]

I hope they do give this the due thought it deserves when creating epilogues for closure. It'll be easy enough to say "everyone finds new FTL and is happy."

But going beyond that, how long does it take? Who flies the Krogan back? Is there anything holding Tuchanka together  for all that time? The Krogan with a stranded Wrex won't be pursuing agriculture. What will they eat? Each other? They can't trade.

What about the Quarian fleets? They need constant repairs. How will they do that while crossing massive distances between planets that would have parts? They can't just send a different ship through a Relay to the nearest location with parts and have it bring them back. They have to leave that ship, for years, if not forever, to just die.

Modifié par Taleroth, 09 avril 2012 - 05:16 .

[Terror_K]

Blindspy wrote...

Some faith restored >.>

It'd be really cool if we could do a reddit-style Q&A where the community votes on the top 10 questions we'd like to ask Bioware.

You mean such as, "why did three of the most popular side characters (Shiala, Gianna Parasini and Kal-Reegar) get completely shafted in ME3?"

and

"Why was the main plot so completely linear?"

"Why are Cerberus a Mary-Sue group with unlimited resources and men, and the best equipment, while also being better at everything than every other species and faction in the game?"

"Why did proper conversation take a massive back-seat in ME3, especially after this was the biggest complaint about ME2 DLC squaddies?"

"Why no planet exploration and why were sidequests nothing but the same Citadel fetch-quests in different clothing?"

"Why did BioWare claim our choices would matter so often when they knew they wouldn't given their overall philosophy that's completely counter to that?"

"Why all the autodialogue and only two choices 90% of the time?"

"Why were there more Charm/Intimidate options on Noveria in ME1 than there were in the entirety of ME3?

"Why was the final game the most linear, shallow and choice-free of the trilogy when this was the one where you guys could apparently 'go nuts!' and there was nowhere to import from from here?"

"Why was every quest completely linear, with even less choices than in ME1 and ME2 as to how to go about it?"

[Allan Schumacher]

Hmm. You know, I don't mind that topic at all. It sounds interesting and cool. I just don't think it's part of Mass Effect. To be done properly, the story needs to reflect how making lives easier is an important part. It really creates a disjointed effort. I can definately see the logical flow of what you are saying, but it is not really clear from the series of Mass Effect. There is little to no exposition about making tools to try and make our lives easier. There is a lot more evidence to suggest that AI are a threat because they are an unknown, especially with the Council outlawing it for this very reason. I'm not saying it couldn't work, just that it would require a lot more explanation to make it in the Mass Effect series.

That was sort of the impression I got from why the Geth were created. Wasn't Legion originally an agricultural unit? Tali refers to them as tools, but once they became sentient they were now slaves.

[Neko Hibiki]

Here.

[Richard 060]

Sharn01 wrote...

I call foul on the whole "making everyone synthetic solves all the problems" bull crap. Humans war with humans, turians war with turians, geth war with geth, krogan war with krogan, etc, etc, and they all war with each other. Taking away diversity and forcing them to homogenize isnt going to solve this problem. They will still be different, and where disagreements exists wars will eventually ensue, unless we take their free will away completely.

Diversity has always been a strength as well, without diversity things stagnate, some of the greatest strides in our history is when a new culture gains access to something from another culture and comes up with new uses for it that the original culture never thought of.

Exactly.

That's why the Catalyst's motives are absurd - organics do a perfectly good job of killing themselves without the need for synthetics to do so, thank-you-very-much.

Makes one wonder why Casey/Mac thought it was a good idea to come up with that, when the original motive for the Reapers from ME1 made much more sense:

In the Reapers' opinion, organics, organic evolution and the like are inherently random and 'chaotic', so to implement control, the Reapers created the Relays/Citadel as a way of channelling organic civilisations' development along 'acceptable' lines. Once they reach a point the Reapers deem an appropriate 'peak', they are harvested for posterity, and the cycle begins anew.


It's machine 'logic' at it's most ruthless and destructive, with more than a hint of megalomania - perfect antagonist material, and a great 'unstoppable force' for Shepard to try and rail against. Nothing more was needed.

Instead? We get something that muddies the waters, needlessly complicating things, and rendering the 'big reveal' of ME1 down to nothing more than a lie - undermining the original game's plot.

And if there's one thing that's generally agreed as 'bad writing', it's a last-minute twist that only works by invalidating things presented as fact in the original story.

[generalleo03]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

That was sort of the impression I got from why the Geth were created. Wasn't Legion originally an agricultural unit? Tali refers to them as tools, but once they became sentient they were now slaves.

That's a good point.  I didn't doubt that you could find some references to support your idea.  I can find evidence to support a lot of themes in Mass Effect.  It's a truly emersive and large work.  Which is why it's so awesome.  The problem is, that point was not really emphasized by the direct plot.  It's a secondary point that was not mentioned again.  If this was supposed to be a giant point at the end, I would expect it to be reiterated throughout the entire series.  With more than just one example off to the side in some dialog that can be skipped?  I guess it could be, but I still would argue it doesn't fit right.  

If this were going to be one of the three options at the end of the trilogy, I don't think its unreasonable to expect multiple examples with different points, all that lead to multiple AI's being developed, all of which end up trying to attack the creators, etc.  

I still like your idea though!

[UrgentArchengel]

Sharn01 wrote...

I call foul on the whole "making everyone synthetic solves all the problems" bull crap. Humans war with humans, turians war with turians, geth war with geth, krogan war with krogan, etc, etc, and they all war with each other. Taking away diversity and forcing them to homogenize isnt going to solve this problem. They will still be different, and where disagreements exists wars will eventually ensue, unless we take their free will away completely.

Diversity has always been a strength as well, without diversity things stagnate, some of the greatest strides in our history is when a new culture gains access to something from another culture and comes up with new uses for it that the original culture never thought of.

This is exactly the point of the Reapers.  and yeah, while I like the idea of the "peace" synthesis creates, it is really illogical and pointless.  Better to tell the catalyst to f*** off instead, it still provides the same idea with out screwing up everyone genetically.

[Richard 060]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

That was sort of the impression I got from why the Geth were created. Wasn't Legion originally an agricultural unit? Tali refers to them as tools, but once they became sentient they were now slaves.

That's one uncomfortable truth, and there's also the paranoia that so often happens in stories like this. Machine gains self-awareness, and the first thought that comes to the minds of the creators?

"What if this thing turns on us?"

Cue a pre-emptive attempt to destroy the 'potential threat', which usually backfires...

In the case of the Quarians and Geth, it's amazing to see just how tolerant and non-aggressive the Geth were to begin with - it was only when push came to shove that they responded in force. And even then, they let the defeated Quarians live, and retreated out of sight of organic civilisation - they figured that logically, it would serve neither them nor their creators if they destroyed the latter.


That's something the Catalyst could do with more of - LOGIC. Because applying just a little would tear some pretty big holes in his assumptions...

[greggm2000]

Allan Schumacher wrote...

Hmm. You know, I don't mind that topic at all. It sounds interesting and cool. I just don't think it's part of Mass Effect. To be done properly, the story needs to reflect how making lives easier is an important part. It really creates a disjointed effort. I can definately see the logical flow of what you are saying, but it is not really clear from the series of Mass Effect. There is little to no exposition about making tools to try and make our lives easier. There is a lot more evidence to suggest that AI are a threat because they are an unknown, especially with the Council outlawing it for this very reason. I'm not saying it couldn't work, just that it would require a lot more explanation to make it in the Mass Effect series.

That was sort of the impression I got from why the Geth were created. Wasn't Legion originally an agricultural unit? Tali refers to them as tools, but once they became sentient they were now slaves.

My bet would be that intelligence is an emergent property of computational complexity... throw enough neurons at it (biological or synthetic) and eventually intelligence and self-awareness ("people" or AIs).

If the motivation to create synthetics is as a labor-saving device, and if as a biological-synthetic hybrid you can shard parts of your mind into a chassis, such that it's like an internal organ or something doing it's thing (ie: non-sentient, but with some intelligence), then, no need to create the synthetics that would eventually try and take over

That's how I look at it.

[nevar00]

Richard 060 wrote...

And if there's one thing that's generally agreed as 'bad writing', it's a last-minute twist that only works by invalidating things presented as fact in the original story.

Don't forget a main antagonist switch at the last moment.  And even worse, one that damages the reputations of the preceding antagonists: the Reapers go from super powerful race of sentient star ships to tools with apparently no free will.

[Blindspy]

Terror_K wrote...

Blindspy wrote...

Some faith restored >.>

It'd be really cool if we could do a reddit-style Q&A where the community votes on the top 10 questions we'd like to ask Bioware.

You mean such as, "why did three of the most popular side characters (Shiala, Gianna Parasini and Kal-Reegar) get completely shafted in ME3?"

and

"Why was the main plot so completely linear?"

"Why are Cerberus a Mary-Sue group with unlimited resources and men, and the best equipment, while also being better at everything than every other species and faction in the game?"

"Why did proper conversation take a massive back-seat in ME3, especially after this was the biggest complaint about ME2 DLC squaddies?"

"Why no planet exploration and why were sidequests nothing but the same Citadel fetch-quests in different clothing?"

"Why did BioWare claim our choices would matter so often when they knew they wouldn't given their overall philosophy that's completely counter to that?"

"Why all the autodialogue and only two choices 90% of the time?"

"Why were there more Charm/Intimidate options on Noveria in ME1 than there were in the entirety of ME3?

"Why was the final game the most linear, shallow and choice-free of the trilogy when this was the one where you guys could apparently 'go nuts!' and there was nowhere to import from from here?"

"Why was every quest completely linear, with even less choices than in ME1 and ME2 as to how to go about it?"

Nah, the sort of questions that an intellegent, collective community votes on tend to be more geared to the kind of stuff posted in the OP - informal questions designed get a feel for what goes on behind closed doors, with a bit of humor mixed in.  Sometimes there are the hard questions, but it's more of a Q&A session, not a QQ&A session.

Modifié par Blindspy, 09 avril 2012 - 05:48 .