Now that it isn't 3am any more, perhaps I can shed some light on what I was going about answering you, Taboo and frylock:
There are two claims:
(1) That the Catalyst's dialogue as written makes no sense, and
(2) That its claims are demonstrably false, usually in the form of "X cannot work".
These are not identical statements.
(1) claims that there is no logic in the Catalyst's statements as written, that the Catalyst makes no conclusions but just asserts an shaky grounds that synthetics will destroy organics unless prevented, ignoring evidence to the contrary in the game. That's a storytelling failure, but it also means that there might be a hidden logic behind it and it is theoretically possible that with additional information and or differently phrased, it will make sense.
(2) is a much stronger claim. It would mean that it's simply wrong and no amount of additional data will ever be able to turn this into something that makes sense. You cannot show that because we don't have enough data for it, and because the formal context you would need to prove this conclusively does not exist in the dialogue. The dialogue was never meant to withstand this kind of scrutiny, thus it was phrased in the kind of ambiguous language we use every day.
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All right, now let's get back to the Synthesis. I would still like to see more alternative interpretations. Currently we have three scenarios:
(1) Siduri's transhuman future from the Unofficial Epilogue Slides, linked in the OP
(2) My transhuman future, almost identical to Siduri's but with more explanations, described in the OP.
(3) Heeden's galactic superorganism, described in section V. of the OP.
There has been one more IMO I don't recall, possibly by Motherlander (if you're here, can you be bothered to describe it?). Anything else?
Also, I've recently come across a blog entry by ardensia which I find very compelling. Here's an excerpt:
As you play through Mass Effect, you run into synthetic life forms that basically want to become more organic. EDI is constantly trying to figure out humor, among other things. Legion gives his life so the geth can make decisions as individuals. Even that rather explodey and argumentative AI you ran into back in ME1 desired not so much destroying organics, but a body so it wouldn't be chained to machines and systems, but would be free to walk about as it pleased. Sure, not all synthetics feel this way, and even those that do are picking and choosing which traits they would like. But the point is that some are looking at organic life and seeing value in its approach to certain things, even if they don't fully understand it.
Likewise, organics have added quite a bit of synthetics into their being. Ever read the codex entry on how all the technicians interact with those holographic panels that control... well, everything? They have synthetic sensors put in their hands. How about biotic implants? Quarian environmental suits? The point is, organics have definitely seen and embraced some aspects of synthetic living. I'm sure there are some crazy people living somewhere in the ME universe that refuse to use omitools, but in the setting of this world, they'd be viewed as just that: crazy people.
And that's not even getting into Shepard's synthetics, which are so extensive that throughout ME3, Shepherd has several opportunities to question whether or not she still counts as human, or even organic. She's obviously stronger and tougher than anyone who isn't krogan.
So, my Shepard takes away everyone's current existence and gives them a whole new one that's somewhere in between where both sides were heading in the first place. And with no genocide necessary. Will there be people, and perhaps whole races, who curse her name for all eternity? Probably. But that doesn't change the fact that they are still alive now. They have their past experiences, whatever they may have been. They have their memories, their reasons for existing, their tasty food. And they still have their individual choices. They can hate away, but they weren't going to get all those things with any of the other choices. Or, at least, not all the people would.
I highly recommend reading
the whole blog entry. ardensia is approaching this with a "storytelling mind" which I find so regrettably absent in most of the detractors, ignoring the flaws in the phrasing and trying to get into the spirit of this ending. Yes, I know the phrasing doesn't make that exactly easy because it makes you feel like you're following an idiot's logic, but that's all the more reason to not take it seriously and draw on the underlying themes.
Modifié par Ieldra2, 08 juin 2012 - 07:35 .
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