55 réponses à ce sujet

[Taboo]

I'm sorry too. I should read things better.

[JShepppp]

It was ambiguous, so forget it lol.

[memorysquid]

Taboo-XX wrote...

 I do. That's how much I hate idealism in philosophy. I hate Nietzsche, but at least he was grounded in reality somewhat before he went batty and hugged that horse.

Marx was so full of **** it's not even funny. He believed it was an eventuality. A scientific likeihood. He was wrong.

I get it; like the Catalyst.  But a writer can fiat that Marx or the Catalyst is right and for the context of making choices within an interactive story, they are!  Then you should be critiquing the work of art itself and not the ethical choice informed by the background of the work of art.

Idealism in philosophy is for fools. You cannot change the way people are. Time and time again I hear friends speaking of the forthcoming revolution, in Greece, in France, in the UK. It isn't coming and it never has been. People are animals first and foremost, this is a fact. You cannot change BASE functions of that.

Communism? Cool idea. But it requires everyone to be honest. It requires people to accept others as equals. If Synthesis does this, all you've done is achieve what Mao and Stalin could not. You may not have killed anyone physically, but that forced acceptance is wrong.

It requires people to derive reward from giving up what they value and people who receive the most value are the least capable.  It makes need the unit of moral consideration, but contradictory to itself, only the need of others counts, personal need is disregarded - a big contradiction.  It is a de facto system for producing mediocrity and discouraging effort.  In short, not a cool idea. 

Not sure how this applies to synthesis in ME3 though as economics are a minor side note and largely free market enterprise in ME.  Synthesis is focusing on organic/synthetic interplay not market failure and the dictatorship of the proletariat.  If there's a theme in ME, it is that technology shapes society and can warp it if society is not ready for it.  I truly don't get the economic theme, no matter who Hegel's big fans are at BW.

This is what I so vehemently oppose. Under no circumstances do you have any right to force that upon every living life form in the Galaxy. You were asked to do ONE thing, stop the Reapers. Any interference past that is unethical. Yes, you commit genocide. That is a terrible, unforgivable crime, but given the alternative I think the Galaxy will go on.

That's another issue with Synthesis. You wish to make people understand because Organics fear them. Well no **** they fear them. They are told to be afraid of the Geth, of AI. That kind of thing poisons minds. It should come as no suprise that people are hostile to them.

And sometimes they first strike and sometimes they are total victims and nice to boot, like the Geth.  The Quarians try to disavow responsibility for the life they created by claiming it was unintentional.  Makes me think of a real life political quandry that would get this thread on lock down quick.

Shrugging off genocide is not so cool.  Would all organics be cool with a synthetic Shepard, like Legion, choosing to wipe all organic life to prevent the Reapers from winning?  Not likely.  Not even if synth Shep said "I am willing to live with this choice."

And what of Synthetics as equals? Is it not better to sacrifice one species to save the rest if you have no alternative? I would say no, but I only have permission to stop the Reapers, nothing more. Destroy serves that function.

Permission?  That's a total cop out.  Not one is permitting you anything.  You haven't polled humanity much less the synthetics you are proposing it is less problematic to destroy utterly.  You have to choose based on your ethics.  You don't get to take the easy road of "just following orders." 

It makes me a monster. The very thing I hate. The thing I despise most. But I cannot bring myself to focus on the idealism that so poisons minds. Peace will either come or it won't. If we are to die twenty thousand years down the road then so be it. If we are to discover our own form of Synthesis before then, then so be it.

It isn't up to Sheapard to interfere past stopping the Reapers. Any blowback from that will fall directly upon his very living body. I plan on facing the reality of situation in my choice. The Id. The Major Tom. The whatever you wish to call it.

As a matter of galactic permission, it isn't up to Shepard to interfere even to stop the Reapers; he has no galactic consensus hall pass to be out and about.  He is acting because he can and no one else can manage it; who gives two ****s what Hackett has told him his job is?  What Shepard has is will to power.  The ethical implications are stunning and ludicrously unlikely.  Lifeboat ethics are always weird and rarely applicable to anything anyone will ever encounter.  That is what makes these dilemmas so compelling and so prone to evoking strong emotion. 
The thing is that whatever Synthesis would mean practically for the ME universe [at this point nothing because it is handwaving magical nonsense embodied in glowy eyes and circuit imprints] I don't understand it to mean some kind of crypto-Communist idealism, specifically because that wasn't a theme I found in the story.  I take it to mean a step forward into the unknown of evolution.  I do so, 1) because whether they cribbed from Bain or got it straight from the source, I know Hegelian dialectic when it is thrown in my face - so I know the right response in context and 2) whatever roboDNA entails, it is less odious to me than genocide or the risk in control, founded in every single attempt at controlling AI with the possible exception of the Reapers and the Catalyst, being a massive failure, even up to and including the rewrite of the Geth heretics.

Javik's debate with EDI is, I feel, a straight up insight into what the writers felt was the core of the dilemma in ME3.

Modifié par memorysquid, 24 juin 2012 - 03:37 .

[cavs25]

Ethics?
75 perfect scores guyz...75

[memorysquid]

JShepppp wrote...

Very good read, OP. Never thought of it that way. Implicitly, I thought the non-paragon/renegade-ness of the "best" ending was due to a kind of transcendence of the ME choice scheme, but I never explicitly thought if it like you wrote. I never heard of this dialectic thingy and while I think the synthesis name may just be coincidence, I like how it ties in, esp with the inevitable conflict, the paragon/renegade and stuff, and more.

I don't subscribe to favoring a particular philosophy over another because I'm sure everything has its flaws, but this was a fresh take that I haven't seen before. I like it. As for the haters [Taboo and others] warned about, everyone's entitled to their own opinion, and if the haters don't realize that, then it's their loss because they'll only ever see things one way.

Thanks!  If you care to, do a quick wiki search on Hegelian dialectic, specifically the thesis/antithesis/synthesis analysis and see how close a fit to the ME ethical framework you think it is.  Hegel actually used different terms, but that is how the theory has been popularized, especially by Marxians.

[Bill Casey]

memorysquid wrote...

Throughout, the conflict of synthetics and organics is presented as occurring frequently.

Not really...
Mostly we've been fighting a forced combination of the two...
By the end, Organics and Synthetics are working together against a homogenizing force...

Modifié par Bill Casey, 24 juin 2012 - 05:58 .

[memorysquid]

Bill Casey wrote...

memorysquid wrote...

Throughout, the conflict of synthetics and organics is presented as occurring frequently.

Not really...
Mostly we've been fighting a forced combination of the two...
By the end, Organics and Synthetics are working together against a homogenizing force...

By the end, sure, though the Reapers aren't a homogenizing force [as the synthesis wave is] so much as a triage style sausage grinder of a life preserver.  However throughout the game how many times are you called upon to down a rogue VI/AI?  Dawn War?  Metacon War - a galaxy wide conflict with the Protheans?  The conflict is presented as a very common occurrence.

[zovoes]

memorysquid wrote... However throughout the game how many times are you called upon to down a rogue VI/AI?

three times, thats it. there was one VI that went nuts, one AI that had a legitimate reason to hate people, and one VI that had been so sooped up it started thinking and had the misfortune of being a target dumy and not being able to talk to people to get them to stop shooting.
 

Dawn War? 

not started by the geth and they didn't want to fight it at any point, they always stayed true to their programming of wanting to help their makers. it was the quarians who had the problem.

Metacon War - a galaxy wide conflict with the Protheans?

you mean the cyborg people that got attacked by the jingoistic social darwinist  imperialists and then got turned into husks by the reapers? yeah they soooooooo are the bad guys here.  

The conflict is presented as a very common occurrence.

about as common as any other kind of war is. hell there has been more org vs. org themes going on in the game then there have been synth vs. org and the synth vs. org stuff has for the most part NOT BEEN PART OF THE MAIN STORY. if this was what they were going for then they should have put it in the main story that synths are bad and tech is bad. bla. bla. bla from the get go not in the last 5-10 min of the game.


edit: format

Modifié par zovoes, 24 juin 2012 - 04:03 .

[Tigerman123]

I don't think this is too abstruse for people who work at Bioware, a lot of them should have university level maths, that's far more difficult to grasp than this is

[v0rt3x22]

I love how people who didn't like the ending - keep throwing around things like "its way too smart for BioWare".

How can we take people who say that seriously and have an educated discussion about it??

[Taboo]

 I have been polled. Stop the Reapers. Not Synthesize me. Not Control them. The Geth are dead in my playthrough. The Reapers will be stopped. I apply a Universal Principle here. To save billions, I will stop thousands. This is stated time and time again in the game.

This is no different than the United States stepping in in World War II. It is foolish to believe that without it's intervention an Allied Victory was certain. Those who died in that conflict saved countless others. To deny this would to allow genocide amongst many other things.

And those conflicts you keep speaking of? Not the Synthetics fault. All lead into a very glaring storytelling fault. The fact that people question Synthesis in such a manner tells you have a problem. No one is going to choose it because they refuse to believe in such a foolish ideal. Proper education is more viable than Synthesis, because people can suscribe to it by their own volition.

This is not a "What God Wants" scenario. This is realism. There is no political solution and there never has been. I would sooner leave people to their own devices than Synthesize them and force them into something I wanted.

You also assume I don't feel what I'm doing. I do. Understand that. Destroy makes me a terrible person, but I will not compromise an ideal founded by others to partake in whatever fantasy land the writers envisioned here.

[Bill Casey]

memorysquid wrote...

though the Reapers aren't a homogenizing force

They make everything into Reapers...



They are a representation of uniformity...

[memorysquid]

zovoes wrote...

memorysquid wrote... However throughout the game how many times are you called upon to down a rogue VI/AI?

three times, thats it. there was one VI that went nuts, one AI that had a legitimate reason to hate people, and one VI that had been so sooped up it started thinking and had the misfortune of being a target dumy and not being able to talk to people to get them to stop shooting.

You're overlooking Overlord at least, but say for argument's sake only 3.  That's three over a 3 year span of time, about 2 years of which Shepard spent dead.  Unlike the many organic conflicts you encounter when AI goes rogue they tend to start a big fracas. 

Dawn War?  not started by the geth and they didn't want to fight it at any point, they always stayed true to their programming of wanting to help their makers. it was the quarians who had the problem.

It doesn't matter who started it or whose fault it was.  If the conflict is inevitable, it is inevitable; it will happen at some time for some reason.  What they wrote is how their universe works.

Metacon War - a galaxy wide conflict with the Protheans?

you mean the cyborg people that got attacked by the jingoistic social darwinist  imperialists and then got turned into husks by the reapers? yeah they soooooooo are the bad guys here.

No I mean, according to the game, the people who used AIs to augment their intelligence and then the AIs took them over and changed their DNA at the deepest levels.  Javik is the product of a desperate race in a total war; how Prothean culture was prior to the Reaper invasion is not even something Javik can tell you about.  He does tell you the AI in the zha went bad first and then threatened everyone which led the Protheans to "unite" all organics under their banner.  Perhaps their militarism was almost entirely the product of the Reaper conflict.  Javik tells you straight off he is an avatar of vengeance; it's no surprise he is hostile.

The conflict is presented as a very common occurrence.

about as common as any other kind of war is. hell there has been more org vs. org themes going on in the game then there have been synth vs. org and the synth vs. org stuff has for the most part NOT BEEN PART OF THE MAIN STORY. if this was what they were going for then they should have put it in the main story that synths are bad and tech is bad. bla. bla. bla from the get go not in the last 5-10 min of the game.

They mention several times that tech warps society in unanticipated ways and gets away from their creators, as in the Quarian case.  Javik's discussion with Shep re: Legion is pretty plain.  In Overlord, the rogue VI could literally infect all machinery.  The Geth come in and wreck most of the Terminus systems.  The Metacon war spanned a galaxy.  In scope, the conflicts with synthetics in the game tend to be encompassing, not some minor raid.

[memorysquid]

Taboo-XX wrote...

 I have been polled. Stop the Reapers. Not Synthesize me. Not Control them. The Geth are dead in my playthrough. The Reapers will be stopped. I apply a Universal Principle here. To save billions, I will stop thousands. This is stated time and time again in the game.

This is no different than the United States stepping in in World War II. It is foolish to believe that without it's intervention an Allied Victory was certain. Those who died in that conflict saved countless others. To deny this would to allow genocide amongst many other things.

And those conflicts you keep speaking of? Not the Synthetics fault. All lead into a very glaring storytelling fault. The fact that people question Synthesis in such a manner tells you have a problem. No one is going to choose it because they refuse to believe in such a foolish ideal. Proper education is more viable than Synthesis, because people can suscribe to it by their own volition.

This is not a "What God Wants" scenario. This is realism. There is no political solution and there never has been. I would sooner leave people to their own devices than Synthesize them and force them into something I wanted.

You also assume I don't feel what I'm doing. I do. Understand that. Destroy makes me a terrible person, but I will not compromise an ideal founded by others to partake in whatever fantasy land the writers envisioned here.

Paragon Shep always looks for the way that doesn't kill the minority to save the majority; for reasons, not the least of which, include the protection of minority rights.  It's not better for the Geth for you to exterminate them.  If it is a necessary sacrifice, then they can choose to make it or not - again you can't decide for them if you're worried about rights.  But it isn't a necessary choice to kill them or let the Reapers finish and this is a lifeboat ethics problem where you can't wait to gather consensus. 

There are three alternatives to letting the Reapers finish the cycle, not one.  If you find causing genocide to be preferable to risking the Reapers coming back or unilaterally implementing roboDNA on everything living, that's your decision.  No one can grant you permission to perform any of the three.  It is simply an ethical choice that you have to make based on your preferences and what you know; each choice is unilateral and has benefits and drawbacks relative to the other.

However, I believe I am aware of the ethics that informs this particular decision, so I know what the writers prefer and what will grant the most aesthetically pleasing ending, which for me will coincidentally always includes not intentionally killing billions of individuals and wiping out the stored galaxies worth of people in the Reapers, unless there is no less displeasing alternative.  Even the risks inherent in control are better than destroy.  At least the Catalyst has controlled the Reapers for a looong time, so the chances of this time turning out better than the other attempts you see in ME are decent.  Personally I'd force everyone to have green eyes plus ??? whatever synthesis is supposed to be in a heart beat, if my other choices involved killing billions of people or risking another go round of wiping out billions to prevent the complete annihilation of organic life, which are the choices presented by ME3.  Do I think they are rational choices, reflecting even the logical consequences of the game's reasoning?  No.  But they are choices with consequences in the game universe, and much like the real one, the consequences are beyond my control.  I can only pick from limited choices and their necessary outcomes.  Recognizing anything less is simply deluding myself.

[memorysquid]

Bill Casey wrote...

memorysquid wrote...

though the Reapers aren't a homogenizing force

They make everything into Reapers...They are a representation of uniformity...

You know not much specific about the internal status of a Reaper, but I don't think it is uniform or homogenous.  When they say each is a nation, independent, coupled with the revelation about DNA goop and what DNA does, I tend to think they are simply being literal.  They are a force of statsis not homogeneity.

[Bill Casey]

"independent" contradicts the Child...

[memorysquid]

Bill Casey wrote...

"independent" contradicts the Child...

You're absolutely correct.  I think we as viewers are supposed to conclude that the Reapers are unaware of their master.

[CosmicGnosis]

I'm resurrecting this thread for two reasons:

1. It's underrated, and didn't receive enough attention during its time.
2. It perfectly illustrates my own internal conflict about the ending.

I don't know if BioWare intended for a symbolic interpretation, or a literal interpretation. I like Synthesis when I view it through the lens of symbolism and philosophy, but I hate it otherwise. Abstraction vs. Reality, in other words. Synthesis could either be the greatest thing that ever happened, or the greatest crime ever committed. Or could it be both? Heh...

I have never felt comfortable settling for an interpretation of the ending that is strictly symbolic or strictly literal. Neither one works. Symbolically, Synthesis is the best one. Literally, they all suck, and although Destroy might be the "best", it still disregards the inherent symbolism of the choices. I have little doubt that Destroy is intended to be the organic choice, that Control is the synthetic choice, and that Synthesis is the unifying choice. But like I just said, we can't rely on pure symbolism because Synthesis, from a literal perspective, is an atrocity.

So if we can't rely on pure symbolism or pure literalism, then what is our "synthesis" solution? How do we combine these two perspectives to form a coherent interpretation of the ending? It may be impossible...

Modifié par CosmicGnosis, 31 janvier 2014 - 12:25 .

[AlanC9]

How'd you stumble across this thread?

Modifié par AlanC9, 31 janvier 2014 - 12:46 .

[General TSAR]

The mods frown on Necromancy.

[CosmicGnosis]

AlanC9 wrote...

How'd you stumble across this thread?

I found it through a Google search about Hegel and Mass Effect 3. I was familiar with this interpretation, but I didn't know about this thread.

[General TSAR]

CosmicGnosis wrote...

I'm resurrecting this thread for two reasons:

1. It's underrated, and didn't receive enough attention during its time.
2. It perfectly illustrates my own internal conflict about the ending.

I don't know if BioWare intended for a symbolic interpretation, or a literal interpretation. I like Synthesis when I view it through the lens of symbolism and philosophy, but I hate it otherwise. Abstraction vs. Reality, in other words. Synthesis could either be the greatest thing that ever happened, or the greatest crime ever committed. Or could it be both? Heh...

I have never felt comfortable settling for an interpretation of the ending that is strictly symbolic or strictly literal. Neither one works. Symbolically, Synthesis is the best one. Literally, they all suck, and although Destroy might be the "best", it still disregards the inherent symbolism of the choices. I have little doubt that Destroy is intended to be the organic choice, that Control is the synthetic choice, and that Synthesis is the unifying choice. But like I just said, we can't rely on pure symbolism because Synthesis, from a literal perspective, is an atrocity.

So if we can't rely on pure symbolism or pure literalism, then what is our "synthesis" solution? How do we combine these two perspectives to form a coherent interpretation of the ending? It may be impossible...

I know the answer: bad writing. 

[Obadiah]

Well first, the main post doesn't really seem to be about "ethics" per se, but is more an explanation of the structure of the ending, which I agree with. The Synthesis is supposed to be formed from the best parts of the thesis and anti-thesis (and is not just a mixture of the two), so that is why is it supposed to be "good".

Didn't know about the red and blue colors so that was interesting.

Another interpretation metaphorically in your face, chemistry:
Experiment (from Leviathan) + Crucible (Container able to withstand extreme heat) + Catalyst + Energy/Essence + Chain Reaction = Synthesis

Only missing reagents for that one.

[CosmicGnosis]

Obadiah wrote...

Another interpretation metaphorically in your face, chemistry:
Experiment (from Leviathan) + Crucible (Container able to withstand extreme heat) + Catalyst + Energy/Essence + Chain Reaction = Synthesis

And here we have another interesting interpretation of Synthesis. But, as usual, it's more about the symbolism. Which is not your fault, of course. BioWare sacrificed in-world logic for their symbolism.

[jamesp81]

memorysquid wrote...

Taboo-XX wrote...

Do not bring Hegel into this unless you're ready to get into some deep ****. It's nice to see you don't like him though.

None of the choices are Renegade. None of them are Paragon. That's the ****ing point. If Casey Hudson had any idea on how to apply philosophy he would have added the EC in before the release. He did not.

All of the endings have terrible ethical undertones. This is going to get VERY ugly if you continue.

Just keeping it real.  Bring on the ugly.

I already Twitted to Merizan; let's see if she will verify!  All I want to know is, do you think I am right about where they dug this nonsense up from?  Hegel is deep, wrote a ton of long-winded nonsense but is practically enshrined by many philosophy students who are fans of idealism and Marxism.  Is the framework for ME ethical choices a great fit for Hegelian dialectic or what?  I simply have no doubt that is where they are coming from, wanted to see if anyone could think of valid counter-arguments.

I know some of your problems with the endings; I don't share them all because I feel if the writers intend for some ending to be sunshine and lollipops, well then they can just write it that way, and I will be charitable in interpreting what they wrote towards that intention.  Then you critique the writing and philosophy undergirding the story, not the choices made within it.  If for instance, they implicitly favor gun control, then you choosing to support the guy who wants to sell Citadel citizens guns in the face of imminent Reaper attack, makes you lose EMS score.  You can't argue with that in game, because you just lose it.  You can think the arguments are specious [I do.]  You can think the results are contrary to reality [I do.]  You just can't say the ME universe doesn't work that way, because it's fiction and well, yes it does.

Funny you mention that, I always favor the turian guy who wants to sell weapons, despite the EMS hit simply because I believe the devs are seriously wrong on that one.

For that matter, if I were king for a day on the Citadel, we would arm every man and woman on the station and conduct basic small unit training.  I would make damned sure that the Citadel was no longer a soft target for Cerberus or anyone else who got any ideas.