9087 réponses à ce sujet

[Reorte]

And never give Neo any form to talk. He hardly understand real science. Just saying

Maybe he could get a job writing for BioWare then.

[Hadeedak]

Fair enough. I just got in the habit of hiding from most of the specific ending threads lest the rage bite my face off.

 

I like synthesis, but if I try to think too hard about it, my head hurts. So I just assume it does what it says because of space future technology that I wouldn't understand.

[Ryriena]

Maybe he could get a job writing for BioWare then.

Yup haha

[Obadiah]

It reminds me a bit of the ending to 2001. There is a long perilous journey into the unknown, and at the end of it life is hyper-advanced: Bowman in the movie (along with Hal in the book), and all life in ME3. Its a billion year journey of evolution that ends in a new form of life.

[Ieldra]

It reminds me a bit of the ending to 2001. There is a long perilous journey into the unknown, and at the end of it life is hyper-advanced: Bowman in the movie (along with Hal in the book), and all life in ME3. Its a billion year journey of evolution that ends in a new form of life.

I recall that when I watched 2001 for the first time, I found the ending completely confusing and didn't know what to do with it. I guess some people react in similar ways to ME3's Synthesis. Even if you're familiar with the underlying themes, things aren't exactly clear because it appears the writers didn't have a clear picture themselves and added themes as their fancy took them regardless of in-world plausibility.

As for the long-debated "trust issue", I have the distinct impression that we were supposed to trust the Catalyst for nothing more than its status as a higher-order being. As I said in my long review, the meta-level context makes it clear that all options for the final choice are supposed to be better than the Reaper cycle, which is all we need to know to choose one of them over refusing, but the presentation provides really no help at all in that. Deception by the Catalst is not plausible, as some people have already pointed out. It already holds all the cards. However, that the options for the final choice are really good options from the perspective of Shepard and the civilizations of the current cycle, that is much less clear given that the Catalyst's idea of a good outcome might be drastically different from ours. A bad permanent solution might be worse than the cycle because the latter still has some dynamic, and due to its status as an experiment might yield different solutions in future, albeit at a very high price.

Which is where the status of the Catalyst as a higher-order being comes in - or not, for those of us who prefer to think for themselves. It appears that the Catalyst is interested in offering solutions acceptable to the civilizations of the galaxy - all three main outcomes are supposed to be good, depending on the player character's adopted ideology. However, the Catalyst's track record of solutions doesn't really inspire confidence in its ability to know what is thusly acceptable. So, while we have little reason to doubt that it believes what it says, we have significant reason to doubt that its idea of what's good for us matches ours. Unless we accept it as a god, who would know as a matter of course. If you aren't willing to do that - and I was most emphatically not willing - all that is left is the meta-perspective.

So, while I believe the outcome of Synthesis (or any other high EMS option) is good and make my decision based on that assumption, the story does a really bad job of convincing me of it.

[Farangbaa]

Hardly.  It's just a statement of the difference between fact and theory.  You can choose to believe either of two mutually exclusive theories until one is PROVEN or one is FALSIFIED.  The demonizing of one side's suppositions without proof does not invalidate the theory.  E.g. "God wouldn't create a world and just let it spin off willy-nilly at random" doesn't disprove Evolution just as "there is no God" doesn't disprove Intelligent Design.

 

I bring the Theory of Evolution into these discussions because almost everyone here "thinks" they know that it is a fact when very few could make a truly credible argument in its favor past "everybody knows that".  It is the equivalent of the AI's statement that "the created will always rise against the creators".  In this case the AI knows more than you do, and you can either choose to believe it or not.  Otherwise you are just as arrogant as Al Gore (definitely NOT a scientist) claiming in 2001 that the polar ice caps would be gone and all the coasts of the world flooded by 2010 if we don't stop global warming RIGHT NOW!

 

Meanwhile, in 2014. . .oops.

 

I think I need to step off this soapbox before the mob comes to lynch me now.

 

You crack me up man.

 

Explain homologues in the abscence of evolution for me, will ya?

[jtav]

I recall that when I watched 2001 for the first time, I found the ending completely confusing and didn't know what to do with it. I guess some people react in similar ways to ME3's Synthesis. Even if you're familiar with the underlying themes, things aren't exactly clear because it appears the writers didn't have a clear picture themselves and added themes as their fancy took them regardless of in-world plausibility.

As for the long-debated "trust issue", I have the distinct impression that we were supposed to trust the Catalyst for nothing more than its status as a higher-order being. As I said in my long review, the meta-level context makes it clear that all options for the final choice are supposed to be better than the Reaper cycle, which is all we need to know to choose one of them over refusing, but the presentation provides really no help at all in that. Deception by the Catalst is not plausible, as some people have already pointed out. It already holds all the cards. However, that the options for the final choice are really good options from the perspective of Shepard and the civilizations of the current cycle, that is much less clear given that the Catalyst's idea of a good outcome might be drastically different from ours. A bad permanent solution might be worse than the cycle because the latter still has some dynamic, and due to its status as an experiment might yield different solutions in future, albeit at a very high price.

Which is where the status of the Catalyst as a higher-order being comes in - or not, for those of us who prefer to think for themselves. It appears that the Catalyst is interested in offering solutions acceptable to the civilizations of the galaxy - all three main outcomes are supposed to be good, depending on the player character's adopted ideology. However, the Catalyst's track record of solutions doesn't really inspire confidence in its ability to know what is thusly acceptable. So, while we have little reason to doubt that it believes what it says, we have significant reason to doubt that its idea of what's good for us matches ours. Unless we accept it as a god, who would know as a matter of course. If you aren't willing to do that - and I was most emphatically not willing - all that is left is the meta-perspective.

So, while I believe the outcome of Synthesis (or any other high EMS option) is good and make my decision based on that assumption, the story does a really bad job of convincing me of it.

The exposition is also really poor quality. Synthesis sounds like claptrap. The Catalyst is either vague to the point of uselessness or spouting scientific nonsense. Other choices are scarcely better. The destruction of synthetics feels like an arbitrary downside added because a disproportionate number of testers shot the tube. Fan consensus is it's because of Reaper code, but the Catalyst doesn't say. Control seems plausible enough, but we've seen numerous similar scenarios backfire and had trustworthy NPCs say it's a bad idea.

[Ieldra]

The exposition is also really poor quality. Synthesis sounds like claptrap. The Catalyst is either vague to the point of uselessness or spouting scientific nonsense. Other choices are scarcely better. The destruction of synthetics feels like an arbitrary downside added because a disproportionate number of testers shot the tube. Fan consensus is it's because of Reaper code, but the Catalyst doesn't say. Control seems plausible enough, but we've seen numerous similar scenarios backfire and had trustworthy NPCs say it's a bad idea.

That's why I said the writers themselves may not have had a clear idea of what they were writing about. Some ideas are recognizable under all the nonsense, but they're partly incompatible with each other and some are not anchored in the lore. It
is really one giant storytelling mess.

[Obadiah]

@Ieldra
My calculation was a little different. I did understand the Catalyst as a high-order being, bordering in knowledge on a tech god or a devil (the supernatural demonic hellish imagery is everywhere in ME3); a being that understood organics in some ways better than we understood ourselves. I did believe it was being truthful and had no reason to lie. So, when it described Synthesis in terms of the end-point of a path that we were already on, since I didn't think it was lying, I did believe that as a solution it would be mostly acceptable.

I still usually pick Control, but Synthesis is just by far the more interesting choice.

[ImaginaryMatter]

I always thought if the Catalyst was being deceptive it would be as some third party with some unknown set of goals, independent of both the Reapers and the Organics.

 

I'm not advocating this as an actual reason but it could be possible that the Crucible simply activates by, you know, pushing a button or pulling on a lever that is lying nearby, and the Catalyst in order to avoid Shepard from taking that action is engaging its creativity drive in order to get Shepard to Destroying the Crucible or killing himself.

[Ymladdych]

@JasonShepard

Sorry for the delay in getting back with you. I'm sloppy about social media. We actually agree on a lot of fronts, so I'm only going to give my perspective on one point you made:

Let me rephrase - I believe the Catalyst's actions indicate that it does not intend to continue the cycle. If that is its intention, it doesn't need Shepard. It may be deceiving me - I can't prove that it's not - but it's not going to be tricking me into continuing the cycle. It can do that anyway. Worst case scenario? The Catalyst is playing with its food, but even then, playing along can't actually make things any worse. Thus I don't care about the possibility of deception, since it doesn't help me.

Maybe poker would be a better analogy than chess. Let's say that you and I are playing poker, and I know FOR A FACT that you're going to beat me. (I can read your mind.)

Now, sure, I could let the hand ride, waste everyone's time, and accept my defeat at the end. I could also fold - same outcome as before, but expedited.

Or...I could raise the stakes and see if you forfeit your victory out of fear.

I would be the Catalyst, you would be Shepard. Liara's capsules would be your winning hand. Letting Shepard die with Anderson, or even having Shepard Refuse, would amount to "letting it ride." Bringing Shepard to the decision chamber *might* be a simple fold, but there's a definite possibility that it's a bluff attempt.

Now, maybe all choices but Refuse end in a net loss for organic life as a whole (deception), but the Catalyst has an obvious preference for one decision over the others. In which case, I wouldn't call it a deception so much as a manipulative gambit, and it would only matter if the Crucible were powerful enough to enact the "ideal solution."

Which is really what it boils down to for the Catalyst: it doesn't necessarily want to continue the cycles - it's simply trying to implement a permanent solution to its problem. (And yeah, galactic-wide Reaper tech implantation would certainly fit the bill.) The Catalyst isn't "losing anything" by offering Destroy (or maybe even Control), because Liara's capsules have already guaranteed its loss.

If the Catalyst only offers Synthesis as an option, there's a very good chance that Shepard would Refuse, which amounts to winning the battle (this cycle) but losing the war (destroyed by the next cycle and failing its purpose).

[SwobyJ]

NeroonWilliams does have a point. The Starbrat probably would know more about the issue than us. 

But the problem is, we have absolutely no reason to trust it, neither does Shepard. It is the self-proclaimed leader and creator of the Reapers. For millions of years, it has overseen the destruction of countless civilizations. Why wouldn't it lie to convince Shepard to jump into an energy beam?

 

"Diplomacy is great when it works, but difficult when everyone already perceives you as a threat."

 

-Rachni

-Thorian colonists

-Geth

-Krogan

-Cerberus

 

There is a pattern here.

 

Note that all of these things are still threats, or deceivers, or potential threats, or combinations of those 3 things. It doesn't mean that they're distrusted at all times though.

 

When presented with an anti-thesis we can acknowledge it as such, while still taking parts of it along with us in our decision making. I can, for example, disapprove of the geth's previous actions, show anger at Legion's behavior towards me, while still wanting the geth to continue to exist as its own species. I can also want Cerberus dismantled while acknowledging their advancements and role in bringing Shepard to life in the first place.

[Ieldra]

@Ieldra
My calculation was a little different. I did understand the Catalyst as a high-order being, bordering in knowledge on a tech god or a devil (the supernatural demonic hellish imagery is everywhere in ME3); a being that understood organics in some ways better than we understood ourselves. I did believe it was being truthful and had no reason to lie. So, when it described Synthesis in terms of the end-point of a path that we were already on, since I didn't think it was lying, I did believe that as a solution it would be mostly acceptable.

That's clearly how it was intended to come across, and I did, in fact, use that rationale for my decisions. There are two problems with that, however:

 

(1) Higher-order beings in the ME trilogy have been proven to have vastly different priorities and a very non-human perspective. So why should I believe the Catalyst is different? In fact, given the presentation, that the Catalyst endorses this path we've already started going down and offers to accelerate our progress, that can easily be construed as a reason to think about whether it's really a good idea and stop following it. Well, I didn't do that, and why? Because I thought my intellect superior given the Catalyst's presentation, and stayed convinced that the melding of man and machine is a good thing, in spite of the inadvertent attempts by the story to dissuade me.

 

(2) The Catalyst's superior knowledge and intellect is an informed trait. In no way does it demonstrate such a thing to us. In fact, for anyone who actually knows a little about biology, some of its statements are obviously ridiculous, and the "organic energy" does not help at all. This is one of the rare cases where skimping on the exposition (yes, that means in terms of fictional science) kills the story, and the writer's obvious ignorance of the background of the things he was writing about made sure this flaw was not balanced by the story's being extraordinarily convincing in other aspects.

 

The combined effect of these two problems makes choosing any option problematic even if you're open to the ideas presented. I actually feel (yes, I still do) insulted by the presentation, in this way: "Yeah, I have a suspicion where you want to go here, and I like it, but you expect me to be convinced by *this*? I'm tempted to say no just for the heck of it because I hate to be taken for stupid." Well, of course it would actually be that stupid to deprive myself of a good outcome that way, which is why I didn't do it, but I wish there was a way I could let the writers know, in no uncertain terms, how much I despise that I was expected to swallow such nonsense whole.

[Iakus]

 

(2) The Catalyst's superior knowledge and intellect is an informed trait. In no way does it demonstrate such a thing to us. In fact, for anyone who actually knows a little about biology, some of its statements are obviously ridiculous, and the "organic energy" does not help at all. This is one of the rare cases where skimping on the exposition (yes, that means in terms of fictional science) kills the story, and the writer's obvious ignorance of the background of the things he was writing about made sure this flaw was not balanced by the story's being extraordinarily convincing in other aspects.

 

Even more so, EDI and to some extent the geth proveherself to be more sophisticated AI's than the Catalyst, which claims to be an AI "in the same way you are just an animal", implying an level of sophistication orders of magnitude greater than whay has been produced in this cycle.

 

EDI demonstratd that she is capable of adapting her program to alter her priorities based on new information.  She is capable of altering her perceptions in the face of contrary evidence.  The Catalyst does not appear to be capable of that.  It continues using flawed methods even knowing they won't work.  Even as it tries to convince Shepard of its so-called "new solutions"  it does not engage in debate, ask Shepard or anyone else for input.  Provide insight on how other modifications to teh Crucible could create other solutions. 

 

It is literally locked into a single purpose and doesn't even try to etend itself beyond them.  Even EDI while shackled displayed an awareness outside her parameters.  The Catalyst acted more like a VI than an AI

[SwobyJ]

I don't think the game is trying to say that the Catalyst is better than EDI.

[Iakus]

I don't think the game is trying to say that the Catalyst is better than EDI.

 

The Catalyst is saying the Catalyst is better than EDI.

 

And we see zero evidence that it's any more sophisticated than EDI, and quite a bit suggesting it's actually a lot less

[SwobyJ]

The Catalyst is saying the Catalyst is better than EDI.

 

And we see zero evidence that it's any more sophisticated than EDI, and quite a bit suggesting it's actually a lot less

 

Yes, the Catalyst is made by Leviathans. It shows.

[Iakus]

Yes, the Catalyst is made by Leviathans. It shows.

 

So why are we suppsoed to believe it has any answers?  Why are we supposed to believe there's any problem that requires an answer that doesn't simply involve the Reapers going away?

[SwobyJ]

So why are we suppsoed to believe it has any answers?  Why are we supposed to believe there's any problem that requires an answer that doesn't simply involve the Reapers going away?

 

You know a character can have answers even as we defy them and their interpretation of the data.

 

This is why Destroy exists and why I picked it.

[sveners]

You have given an example of one species becoming a set of sub-species (which I distictly said NOT to do BTW).  This happens all the time, but those sub-species can still interbreed, whereas distinct species cannot.  Variation within species is documented.  Speciation from one to another is not.

 

This is why the entire idea is STILL referred to as the Theory of Evolution.  It is not something that can be proved OR disproved with the facts currently available to us (neither is the Theory of Intelligent Design).  15,000 years (the relative amount of time that DNA has been successfully (and reliably) recovered from the fossil record) is an insignificant amount of time in which to prove it.  Natural Selection (proven observable FACT) =/= Evolution (scientifically probable THEORY).

 

 

That is what a scientific theory is..... you can NEVER prove the Theory of gravity/relativity/evolution/etc. You can strengthen it, you can demonstrate that our knowledge about it seems to hold water, and everything works according to our calculations. BUT, all it takes to disprove the THEORY of something is someone demonstrating it's wrong. And the test performed being repeatable and always consequent.

 

You can never PROVE a Theory. Ever.

 

Same with the theory of evolution. You can only strengthen its claim, or disprove it.

 

So far no one has ever managed to disprove it. Intelligent Design, however, has been disproven, and ridiculed for years. Just like its predecessor/twin Creationism. Or was it the other way? 

 

 

Fun fact, for ID to be able to be considered a scientific theory, the basics of scientific theory would have to allow for astrology as well.... as admitted by Michael Behe himself. A scientific theory must be falsifiable. It has to be able to be tested. Astrology cannot. All tests on gravity, relativity, even evolution, have given us the answers we expected to get. Thus these theories were strengthened.

 

Are they the absolute answers though? Not at all. Like every theory they can be disproven. I am even sure one or two will fall in less than centuries from now, chief among them being relativity or quantum physics. And with fall, I mean they have to be adjusted.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

The Catalyst is saying the Catalyst is better than EDI.

 

And we see zero evidence that it's any more sophisticated than EDI, and quite a bit suggesting it's actually a lot less

 

I wouldn't go that far. I would say that it's probably aware of it's mandate and the possible futility behind its actions, but would be unable to physically alter its hardware to change its parameters, which would also likely halt any desire to do so as well. 

 

The Catalyst is absolutely correct. It's just a matter of value and perspective towards what it's correct about. 

[Iakus]

I wouldn't go that far. I would say that it's probably aware of it's mandate and the possible futility behind its actions, but would be unable to physically alter its hardware to change its parameters, which would also likely halt any desire to do so as well. 

 

The Catalyst is absolutely correct. It's just a matter of value and perspective towards what it's correct about. 

 

That's just it, EDI can in fact alter herself and changes her parameters.   

 

http://www.youtube.c..._5Yl0ah-Y#t=536

[Obadiah]

So you think EDI is better than the Catalyst. So what?

[Iakus]

So you think EDI is better than the Catalyst. So what?

It leads me to question the Catalyst's ability to properly analyze its "problem" and to respond to additional data.  IT is not as sophisticated as it claims to be

[Obadiah]

How sophisticated did it claim itself to be?