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[JasonShepard]

Nerevar-as wrote...

HYR 2.0 wrote...

If preachy messages on black-and-white good/evils meant anything to us, this would be a Destroy support thread.


Try again.

I won´t.

That´s among the most scary things I´ve read lately, BTW.

The real world isn't black and white. There's no ultimate evil, just as there's no ultimate good. There's just various shades of grey. And... yes, I suppose that is scary.

But phrases like "You have to die for what you've done" terrify me, because, ultimately, the past is nowhere near as important as the future. What someone was is less important than what they will be.
And that's the sentiment that makes me reluctant to justify killing the Reapers 'because they're just evil'. No matter how many cycles of genocide they've performed.

Now, if you ask me to justify it as "they're too dangerous and too powerful to be kept around", that's a justification I can understand. That's still grey - you're still killing something purely because it might be a threat to you - but considering the size of the threat, it makes sense. (Of course, asking me to sacrifice the Geth as well is what ultimately still pushes me away from Destroy, but that's another topic.)

[Sir DeLoria]

JasonShepard wrote...
But phrases like "You have to die for what you've done" terrify me, because, ultimately, the past is nowhere near as important as the future. What someone was is less important than what they will be.
And that's the sentiment that makes me reluctant to justify killing the Reapers 'because they're just evil'. No matter how many cycles of genocide they've performed.

I disagree. The past is very important and no deed should go unnoticed. The Reapers are a menace and while I oppose capital punishment in most cases, the crimes of the Reapers are incomprehensibly bad. They also can't ever be trusted.

[JasonShepard]

Necanor wrote...

JasonShepard wrote...
But phrases like "You have to die for what you've done" terrify me, because, ultimately, the past is nowhere near as important as the future. What someone was is less important than what they will be.
And that's the sentiment that makes me reluctant to justify killing the Reapers 'because they're just evil'. No matter how many cycles of genocide they've performed.

I disagree. The past is very important and no deed should go unnoticed. The Reapers are a menace and while I oppose capital punishment in most cases, the crimes of the Reapers are incomprehensibly bad. They also can't ever be trusted.

Let me put it this way:

If I somehow knew that the Reapers would be unable to harm anyone ever again, I would be happy to let them live. In that sense, it doesn't matter that they've wiped out civilisations in the past.

I can't change the past. My aim is to remove the threat for the future, to ensure it doesn't happen again. Punishment for punishment's sake is meaningless - punishment in order to discourage, on the other hand, makes sense.

Say the Crucible has a single button. Press it to destroy the Reapers. Leave it alone, the Crucible doesn't fire.

In that context, I would press the button. I would destroy the Reapers. But I wouldn't be doing it as a punishment for what they've done in the past.
I would destroy them as a way to contain the threat they represent; I'd do it because of what they might do in the future - which is wipe us all out.

[teh DRUMPf!!]

Nerevar-as wrote...

HYR 2.0 wrote...

If preachy messages on black-and-white good/evils meant anything to us, this would be a Destroy support thread.


Try again.

I won´t.

That´s among the most scary things I´ve read lately, BTW.

How sheltered are you, exactly?

If treating morality as subjective is scary to you, I'd pay money to have you sit in a think-tank of government national security/defense analysts. You might just have a nervous-breakdown at their utter disregard for numerous moral concerns.

[teh DRUMPf!!]

Necanor wrote...


I disagree. The past is very important and no deed should go unnoticed. The Reapers are a menace and while I oppose capital punishment in most cases, the crimes of the Reapers are incomprehensibly bad. They also can't ever be trusted.

Yet that happens all the time, and always will.

Justice is an admirable virtue until it stands in the way of what benefits people most. Then, IMO, it needs to take a backseat to the "greater-good" (which is the case here, if you ask me). Humans should be flexible, not bound to rigid constructs.

Modifié par HYR 2.0, 21 décembre 2013 - 03:01 .

[MassivelyEffective0730]

As a destroyer, I feel the need to state my belief that good vs. evil does not exist.

There is no ultimate good and there is no ultimate evil. It's subjective.

Moral Nihilism folks. Morality is about as absolute as water is dry.

[KaiserShep]

Necanor wrote...

JasonShepard wrote...
But phrases like "You have to die for what you've done" terrify me, because, ultimately, the past is nowhere near as important as the future. What someone was is less important than what they will be.
And that's the sentiment that makes me reluctant to justify killing the Reapers 'because they're just evil'. No matter how many cycles of genocide they've performed.

I disagree. The past is very important and no deed should go unnoticed. The Reapers are a menace and while I oppose capital punishment in most cases, the crimes of the Reapers are incomprehensibly bad. They also can't ever be trusted.

It doesn't have to be anything complicated. For myself, I consider them a blight, and nothing, not even the prospect of injecting them with the protagonist's memories, would ever guarantee that they won't be in the future. 

[Sir DeLoria]

HYR 2.0 wrote...

Necanor wrote...


I disagree. The past is very important and no deed should go unnoticed. The Reapers are a menace and while I oppose capital punishment in most cases, the crimes of the Reapers are incomprehensibly bad. They also can't ever be trusted.

Yet that happens all the time, and always will.

Justice is an admirable virtue until it stands in the way of what benefits people most. Then, IMO, it needs to take a backseat to the "greater-good" (which is the case here, if you ask me). Humans should be flexible, not bound to rigid constructs.

That's very pragmatic. I disagree to an extent, but it's pointless to argue about personal beliefs.

[Ieldra]

HYR 2.0 wrote...

Necanor wrote...

I disagree. The past is very important and no deed should go unnoticed. The Reapers are a menace and while I oppose capital punishment in most cases, the crimes of the Reapers are incomprehensibly bad. They also can't ever be trusted.

Yet that happens all the time, and always will.

Justice is an admirable virtue until it stands in the way of what benefits people most. Then, IMO, it needs to take a backseat to the "greater-good" (which is the case here, if you ask me). Humans should be flexible, not bound to rigid constructs.

If I may post one of my favorite quotes which is very relevant here:

"The measure of [mental] health is flexibility, the freedom to learn through experience, the freedom to change with changing internal and external circumstances, to be influenced by reasonable argument, admonitions, exhortation, and the appeal to emotions; the freedom to respond appropriately to the stimulus of reward and punishment, and especially the freedom to cease when sated. The essence of normality is flexibility in all these vital ways. The essence of illness is the freezing of behavior into unalterable and insatiable patterns." -- Lawrence S Kubie: Neurotic Distortion of the Creative Process, 1961, p20-21.

In this case, the most important consideration is the future of galactic civilization. It is possible and not unreasonable to argue that a future without the Reapers - or whatever they'd call themselves after having been transformed by the Synthesis - is a better one. That depends on every Shepard's priorities when making the decision. Every ending represents a future where a specific principle becomes dominant at some expense to the others:

Destroy: freedom
Control: order
Synthesis: advancement

All these are positive principles, and none of those futures is objectively better or worse than the others They're only better or worse than others dependent on the comparative importance any player places on their dominant principles. We should be flexible enough to see the merit in the options we do not take. That's why I've always argued that given a reasonably high EMS, the three main endings are all good endings.

Justice is important for any civilization, but in this case it's a secondary principle. Furthermore, you can argue that the Reapers have been mind-controlled by the Catalyst, so justifying Destroy with justice comes across as blaming another victim of the cycle, while in a post-Synthesis future, there is the chance that the remnants of the harvested civilizations regain some of the future they've been robbed of. That, too, is justice.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 27 décembre 2013 - 08:55 .

[CosmicGnosis]

I suppose that I must decide which principle matters most to me. When framed in this way, I care about freedom more than order. But do I care about freedom more than advancement? I'll have to think about this.

Kind of reminds me of the Bhelen vs. Harrowmont choice. Bhelen is not the comfortable choice, but he is ultimately the progressive choice that brings great change to dwarven society.

[Nightwriter]

Oh lawdy I couldn't stand the way that choice was executed.

[Farangbaa]

I think it's pretty damn strange that technoly and organisms haven't merged in the MEU by the time ME takes place.

We can already control robotic-prosthetic arms by having them read the electrical pulses our muscles/nerves send through our body. Internet on/through your nervous system has been under research for a while. Chips can be implanted in your brain to defeat deafness. And this list goes on and on and on.

Chances are we'll likely have 'full' transhumans well before we design an AI.

Yet in the MEU there's only genetic engineering, nothing even remotely transhuman besides Shepard and the Reaper tools, and full blown AI's.

[Ieldra]

Nightwriter wrote...

Oh lawdy I couldn't stand the way that choice was executed.

Neither could I, if you're talking about how it was brought about and rationalized. But in the end, I like that hyper-advanced future too much to let the horrible execution get in the way.

[Ieldra]

Psychevore wrote...
I think it's pretty damn strange that technoly and organisms haven't merged in the MEU by the time ME takes place.

We can already control robotic-prosthetic arms by having them read the electrical pulses our muscles/nerves send through our body. Internet on/through your nervous system has been under research for a while. Chips can be implanted in your brain to defeat deafness. And this list goes on and on and on.

Chances are we'll likely have 'full' transhumans well before we design an AI.

Yet in the MEU there's only genetic engineering, nothing even remotely transhuman besides Shepard and the Reaper tools, and full blown AI's.

Biotics count as transhuman, as of ME1. Biotic abilities need an amplifying implant to function at useful levels, and they're abilities a normal, unenhanced human can't ever get. Shepard is obviously transhuman in ME2.

Unfortunately, that was all swept under the rug since someone on the ME team - I blame Casey Hudson - wanted a luddite and reactionary ideology to be dominant in the ME trilogy, so that the thrice-damned dark age of the original endings would come across as something good, to the point that Shepard's obvious transhuman qualities - just watch Shepard on Eden Prime in ME3 - were retconned by redefining the term to avoid any association. To add insult to injury, scenes and Codex entries which referenced transhuman themes were cut and replaced by imagery evocative of religion and vitalism.

I can understand why they didn't make a more transhuman human civilization to start with. It's incredibly hard to create one (in terms of worldbuilding) and not easy to relate to for those unfamiliar with idea. It may be odd, but there are worse "oddities" in the timeline. However, that they did their best to discredit the idea is not something I will forget, even though it was more or less a side effect of the more general thematic message "technological advancement is evil". One does wonder whether the Synthesis' hyper-advanced future had to be pushed through against the resistance of the project lead.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 27 décembre 2013 - 12:10 .

[David7204]

That's nonsense, Ieldra. You should know good and well you won't be able to argue any of that.

Modifié par David7204, 27 décembre 2013 - 12:04 .

[Daemul]

Ieldra, your post has just reminded me of EDI's stupid definition of Transhuman in ME3. According to her, every inch of your body can be robotic but as long as your brain is organic you don't count as a Transhuman. Which writer in the Bioware team came up with that crap? It's like they were pushing an agenda.

Modifié par Daemul, 27 décembre 2013 - 12:09 .

[Farangbaa]

Ieldra2 wrote...

Psychevore wrote...
I think it's pretty damn strange that technoly and organisms haven't merged in the MEU by the time ME takes place.

We can already control robotic-prosthetic arms by having them read the electrical pulses our muscles/nerves send through our body. Internet on/through your nervous system has been under research for a while. Chips can be implanted in your brain to defeat deafness. And this list goes on and on and on.

Chances are we'll likely have 'full' transhumans well before we design an AI.

Yet in the MEU there's only genetic engineering, nothing even remotely transhuman besides Shepard and the Reaper tools, and full blown AI's.

Biotics count as transhuman, as of ME1. Biotic abilities need an amplifying implant to function at useful levels, and they're abilities a normal, unenhanced human can't ever get. Shepard is obviously transhuman in ME2.

Unfortunately, that was all swept under the rug since someone on the ME team - I blame Casey Hudson - wanted a luddite and reactionary ideology to be dominant in the ME trilogy, so that the thrice-damned dark age of the original endings would come across as something good, to the point that Shepard's obvious transhuman qualities - just watch Shepard on Eden Prime in ME3 - were retconned by redefining the term to avoid any association. To add insult to injury, scenes and Codex entries which referenced transhuman themes were cut and replaced by imagery evocative of religion and vitalism.

Regardless, the extent of transhumanism in the MEU is well below what you'd expect considering the state of transhumanism right now, in real life.

Yet AI's and FTL are fully developed. It's.. peculiar, at the very, very least.

I'll gladly concede I forgot about Biotics having an implant, doesn't do any damage to the point I'm making anyway. It's a minimal version of transhumanism compared to real life and the time that has passed in the MEU.

Modifié par Psychevore, 27 décembre 2013 - 12:11 .

[David7204]

First of all, what exactly is the 'state of transhumanism right now, in real life?' and what exactly is it supposedly indicative of?

Secondly, what transhumanism is supposedly missing from Mass Effect that is "peculiar"?

Modifié par David7204, 27 décembre 2013 - 12:12 .

[Daemul]

Psychevore wrote...

Ieldra2 wrote...

Psychevore wrote...
I think it's pretty damn strange that technoly and organisms haven't merged in the MEU by the time ME takes place.

We can already control robotic-prosthetic arms by having them read the electrical pulses our muscles/nerves send through our body. Internet on/through your nervous system has been under research for a while. Chips can be implanted in your brain to defeat deafness. And this list goes on and on and on.

Chances are we'll likely have 'full' transhumans well before we design an AI.

Yet in the MEU there's only genetic engineering, nothing even remotely transhuman besides Shepard and the Reaper tools, and full blown AI's.

Biotics count as transhuman, as of ME1. Biotic abilities need an amplifying implant to function at useful levels, and they're abilities a normal, unenhanced human can't ever get. Shepard is obviously transhuman in ME2.

Unfortunately, that was all swept under the rug since someone on the ME team - I blame Casey Hudson - wanted a luddite and reactionary ideology to be dominant in the ME trilogy, so that the thrice-damned dark age of the original endings would come across as something good, to the point that Shepard's obvious transhuman qualities - just watch Shepard on Eden Prime in ME3 - were retconned by redefining the term to avoid any association. To add insult to injury, scenes and Codex entries which referenced transhuman themes were cut and replaced by imagery evocative of religion and vitalism.

Regardless, the extent of transhumanism in the MEU is well below what you'd expect considering the state of transhumanism right now, in real life.

Yet AI's and FTL are fully developed. It's.. peculiar, at the very, very least.

Yeah, that's very true. It's very likely that everyone on BSN, within an acceptable age range, will be alive when full Transhumans are walking around. 

[David7204]

And a third. So, why don't you explain what exactly you think a 'transhuman' is, what technology the process entails, and what benefits it would provide.

[Ieldra]

Daemul wrote...
Ieldra, your post has just reminded me of EDI's stupid definition of Transhuman in ME3. According to her, every inch of your body can be robotic but as long as your brain is organic you don't count as a Transhuman. Which writer in the Bioware team came up with that crap? It's like they were pushing an agenda.

I see I'm not the only one who suspects that.

@David:
I can, I did, and I will continue to argue that, with the only caveat that of course I can't know what went on in the minds of the lead writer and the project director.

@Psychevore:
I don't think you can argue that transhuman technology exists right now. For that, the capabilities it bestows would have to exceed normal human parameters. We are becoming good with prosthetics, to the point that a runner was recently disqualified from the Paralympics because his artificial leg was too good, but we're not at transhuman levels yet, and if I'm any judge of the matter, won't be for several decades more. Brain augmentations (i.e things that go beyond replacing normal capabilities) are even further away.

[David7204]

Not to me.

Ieldra, the fact that the Extended Cut significantly and quickly altered the tone of the endings to basically handwave the destruction should be a massive clue to how very silly it is to think there was somehow an series-wide agenda to justify the original tone. It's ridiculous on so many levels. You somehow believe that Hudson is hell-bent on wanting all technology gone to the point of supposedly filling the series with Luddism and yet practically removes all those themes from the ending because fans whined? (While not addressing many of the other issues fans were and are angry with.)

Absurd.

Modifié par David7204, 27 décembre 2013 - 12:22 .

[Farangbaa]

Ieldra2 wrote...

Daemul wrote...
Ieldra, your post has just reminded me of EDI's stupid definition of Transhuman in ME3. According to her, every inch of your body can be robotic but as long as your brain is organic you don't count as a Transhuman. Which writer in the Bioware team came up with that crap? It's like they were pushing an agenda.

I see I'm not the only one who suspects that.

@David:
I can, I did, and I will continue to argue that, with the only caveat that of course I can't know what went on in the minds of the lead writer and the project director.

@Psychevore:
I don't think you can argue that transhuman technology exists right now. For that, the capabilities it bestows would have to exceed normal human parameters. We are becoming good with prosthetics, to the point that a runner was recently disqualified from the Paralympics because his artificial leg was too good, but we're not at transhuman levels yet, and if I'm any judge of the matter, won't be for several decades more. Brain augmentations (i.e things that go beyond replacing normal capabilities) are even further away.

http://documentaryad...ocumentary.html

For the transhumanism part, you can skip to the last 10 minutes orso.

Though any ME fan should watch the entire thing, it's very interesting.

[Ieldra]

David7204 wrote...
Not to me.

Ieldra, the fact that the Extended Cut significantly and quickly altered the tone of the endings to basically handwave the destruction should be a massive clue to how very silly it is to think there was somehow an series-wide agenda to justify the original tone. It's ridiculous on so many levels. You somehow believe that Hudson is hell-bent on wanting all technology gone to the point of supposedly filling the series with Luddism and yet practically removes all those themes from the ending because fans whined? (While not addressing many of the other issues fans were and are angry with.)

Absurd.

I am arguing that someone influential on the team wanted to avoid any association with transhuman themes. Why else would Codex entries and scenes with references to those themes be cut and replaced with religious ones? I am also arguing that the ME trilogy had an increasingly traditionalist vibe, starting with the end of ME2. I think that's pretty obvious. Also, please note that the Synthesis had its religious aspect strengthened by the EC, not weakened, even while it backed away from the luddism.

As for the reasons, I can only speculate.

[David7204]

Which codex entries and scenes are those, precisely?