As a graduate student I regularly give lectures to undergraduate classes on basic research skills which culminates in a position paper and class discussion/debate to go along with it. One of the most infuriating things I encounter amongst most students and what I try to beat out of them is clinging to that natural human predisposition to hold on to anecdotes and exceptions as "proof" against an established idea. People here are falling into the same trap vis-à-vis the Catalyst and his supposedly faulty logic.
Research does not prove an assertion without exception so do not take my use of right in the title or proof above or below as something which is infallibly true. Research suggests things with differing degrees of correlation or backing. This is true in science, this is true in public policy, and true in the liberal arts. I'm not talking of statements of opinion on the quality of Shakespeare or Faulkner or the story of Mass Effect 3--those are not research questions. The Catalyst may have been a crappy plot device, but the logic is entirely a different story.
I'm a political and social historian and, as such, many of the topics I often assign fit in with political debates ongoing today so people tend to have deep-seated beliefs when it comes time for the debate. Inevitably the argument spirals out of control as students begin citing personal experiences or experiences of people they know in their immediate circle of acquaintances as “evidence” against other students who have well researched papers with a number of sources and studies backing them up. These students get a big red “R” for rewrite and have to conference with me.
Arguing anything from Shepard's point-of-view against the Catalyst is committing the type of academic sin that should get you an “R” from any self-respecting professor or instructor. The Catalyst has been at this for 20,000+ cycles for at or above 1 billions years. His sample size and sources are so enormously vast beyond any cycle's experience that Shepard's indication of the Geth or EDI are of no consequence. You are holding up an exception to the aggregate, and also an exception with no guarantees of continuity.
As I said earlier, research does not prove something infallibly—it suggests. This is something which the Catalyst understands and why he admits that his solutions are and have been imperfect. He is a number crunching machine, however, and his research indicates and suggests that organics will create hostile synthetics with enough certainty that action is warranted. It may not be 100% certainty, he does not need to be a “god” and be omniscient, but he is a machine that has calculated extremely long odds and cannot afford to gamble. He may have been standing up much less firm ground at the very beginning, with only maybe a few thousands of years of experience, but since then he has amassed a very impressive set of case studies.
In short, the Catalyst is that guy that has an extremely awesome thesis paper backed up by years of research, dozens of sources, and a number of statistically reliable studies while you are the slacker with an eight page paper you wrote overnight that sources Wikipedia and a few three page articles. You're paper may not be any less “true”, but your one dubious study that disagrees with the Catalyst's two dozen peer-reviewed and reliable studies does not stake a competent position.
Edit: Formatting.
Modifié par bgroberts, 12 juillet 2012 - 10:28 .
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