556 réponses à ce sujet

[robertthebard]

Sion1138 wrote... 

You can not *believe* something that you have absolutely no proof of yourself. In fact, your own experience seems to indicate the contrary. 

This happens every day in our very own world, unless you can show proof positive that one religion is more valid than another.  Believing in something w/out proof is the very definition of faith.

[RShara]

Actually, if you ask many who have strong faith, they see proof of their divinity every day.

[Jayleia]

Cypher_CS wrote...

Jayleia wrote...

Because for an inevitable cycle that results in the permanent destruction of organic life, the Catalyst would have to have evidence of this observing.  If it had observed this occuring we wouldn't exist, because only synthetics would exist.

This ENTIRE topic, ENTIRE post, deals with validity of the logical, prudentially correct, argument that the Catalyst throws at us.
You just go "it has no evidence" and think you just prove it wrong?

It has evidence to support the Prudential argument.
Yes, there is a problem in the fact that you can't actually prove this Prudential argument wrong with actually occurances that you've witnessed. But that fact doesn't make it wrong. It is, structurally, logically and prudentially sound.
It can be outdone by debunking it's various components, NOT by any occuring evidence or lack there of.

No, I'm not saying "you have shown no evidence, THEREFORE you are wrong", I'm saying "no valid evidence has been presented at any point in time, therefore your claim is unproven".  He has to prove that he's right, not just tell me he's right, and then us prove him wrong.

Otherwise we're back to Homer's Tiger Repellent Rock.

[robertthebard]

RShara wrote...

Actually, if you ask many who have strong faith, they see proof of their divinity every day.

But if they could show that proof undeniably to everybody else, then there would only be the one religion, right?  I have all the proof I need for my faith, as I'm sure everyone else does, but I can't provide that proof to the world and have them willingly convert.  That's the thing about faith, it reduces the burden of proof to hear say, instead of beyond a reasonable doubt.  Although interesting, this does get away from the purpose of this board, however.

[RShara]

What we're looking at here is basically anecdotal evidence vs personal experience. Whichever one wins out for you determines whether the "evidence" is sufficient or not.

[vitae-vixi]

As a fellow postgraduate student embarking on my final research year, I think I'll have to disagree with you. If you think that research is opinion and personal experience free, you are wrong, a fool and should probably apologize to your poor students.

Oh wait, you're one of THOSE historians. One of those guys that tell me my opinions are invalid because I study history from literature. That feeling has nothing to do with fact.

We must argue from Shepards point of view and we must take Shepard's perspective and perception as fact unless we are given another. In this case we must also take our own perceptions and experiences into account since we are the third party. There are three people in the interactions with the catalyst: Shepard, the Catalyst & the player (ourselves).

EDIT: Which actually makes us a source when you think about it...

The Catalyst's logic is flawed and it has been repeatedly been pointed out that what it says is fundamentally untrue. Even if we believed every thing the catalyst said the fact that it cannot make a decision finally because of "new variables" and that it now has to rely on Shepard for an answer makes it fallible. Even it's many cycles have not given it the information it requires.

As a personal retort against the OP - you sound like you've been swallowing the words of another lecturer and just regurgitating. It's wrong to beat down your students like that, sometimes the most intuitive insights come from personal experience.

The Catalyst's thesis is anything but peer reviewed, it may have had time to research, but it's only had one perspective and it's ideals belong in the last cycle in a dusty old tome that gets referenced by undergraduates who have used the first piece of information they've found not realizing it's out of date and research has moved on.

Shepard however is a new, brilliant and intuitive phd student who is rocking the boat with a totally new angle that the aged researchers cannot argue against.

I don't expect any glowing insights coming from your research any time soon.

Modifié par vitae-vixi, 13 juillet 2012 - 06:33 .

[DriftingMustang]

I agree with this one hundred percent.

[DriftingMustang]

Vixi. I also agree with you as well because circumstances changed in that cycle and that moment but the deductions of the catalyst are sound assuming you seen 9 of 10 cycles establish this pattern. Yes im saying both sides are corrrect because the world is gray.

[bgroberts]

 

vitae-vixi wrote...


As a fellow postgraduate student embarking on my final research year, I think I'll have to disagree with you. If you think that research is opinion and personal experience free, you are wrong, a fool and should probably apologize to your poor students. 

Oh wait, you're one of THOSE historians. One of those guys that tell me my opinions are invalid because I study history from literature. That feeling has nothing to do with fact.

We must argue from Shepards point of view and we must take Shepard's perspective and perception as fact unless we are given another. In this case we must also take our own perceptions and experiences into account since we are the third party. There are three people in the interactions with the catalyst: Shepard, the Catalyst & the player (ourselves).

EDIT: Which actually makes us a source when you think about it...

The Catalyst's logic is flawed and it has been repeatedly been pointed out that what it says is fundamentally untrue. Even if we believed every thing the catalyst said the fact that it cannot make a decision finally because of "new variables" and that it now has to rely on Shepard for an answer makes it fallible. Even it's many cycles have not given it the information it requires.

As a personal retort against the OP - you sound like you've been swallowing the words of another lecturer and just regurgitating. It's wrong to beat down your students like that, sometimes the most intuitive insights come from personal experience.

The Catalyst's thesis is anything but peer reviewed, it may have had time to research, but it's only had one perspective and it's ideals belong in the last cycle in a dusty old tome that gets referenced by undergraduates who have used the first piece of information they've found not realizing it's out of date and research has moved on.

Shepard however is a new, brilliant and intuitive phd student who is rocking the boat with a totally new angle that the aged researchers cannot argue against.

I don't expect any glowing insights coming from your research any time soon.

 

Im done arguing about the Catalyst, but I'll have to respond to this since it's on a personal note.

I'm not going to get into a measuring contest with you, but I assure you my lectures are not without departmental consent and approval from senior faculty. I'm not tormenting the undergraduates, I'm teaching them the proper rigors of university research. The old saying is that opinions are like noses--everyone has them. And everyone has this uncle or that cousin that seems to buck research trends. The exception to the rule does not override the aggregate. It may be no less true in that instance, but it does not stake an equally competent claim to more substantial sources.

Research is never without opinion, I never stated that it was. In fact, if you look back you'll see that the paper I ask of them is a position paper. They stake a position and back it up, very basic. I don't grade on their opinion even if I disagree, I grade on the relevance and value of the research done to back it up. But if someone starts arguing that welfare should be abolished because they know of someone their uncle knows who abuses it whereas their opponent uses peer-reviewed research and studies guess who is going to win and who ist going to get the rewrite? I'm not some normative tyrant when it comes to opinions, but anecdotes and individual stories rarely make valuable contributions to content in my subject except as starting points for inspiration.

Pertaining to the Catalyst, my argument was that I believe the Catalyst is a reliable source of information and thus in relaying to Shepard its thesis that it is doing so from a more substantial position of data and information. The Geth and EDI only represent an anecdote from Shepard's narrow view and while being no less true it is less substantial against a greater sum of samples and sources. 

What field are you in where opinion counts above the ability to formulate an opinion backed by reliable evidence? If you are the literature type that is different, and I indicated that I don't apply these ideas to pure arts. If your a historian who studies history through literature, then right on. You're still not interpreting history as a reader would interpret a metaphor in a poem--you're just using the literary items as historical documents to study. They are your backing and support. I don't get where you put me into such a close-minded box from, I never indicated any hate of opinion. I indicated a dislike for free-floating opinions or opinions with flimsy evidence being put on par with works of greater substance.

Edit: Phone hard to format with.

Modifié par bgroberts, 13 juillet 2012 - 08:16 .

[memorysquid]

iSousek wrote...

memorysquid wrote...

Why would an alliance made in the face of mutual extinction necessarily be understood as one that will endure indefinitely?  Further, who says the writers just weren't inconsistent?

That is completely irrelevant, You cant know if the peace will or won't last, what matters is that this is the empirical evidence that destroys his main theory.

If A then B, if there is no B or something opposite of B occurs then A is nulified
Karl Popper - Logic of Scientific Discovery

You know just enough about Popper and some kind of simple sentence logic to be dangerous. 

An alliance doesn't disprove the claim that conflict is inevitable.  Synthetics start allied at the onset.  The failure of synthetic/organic alliance is a GIVEN of the problem.  If you think you can quantify the problem, and disprove this, then have at.

[Taboo]

It doesn't mean it will happen either.

It is an unknown.

[RShara]

memorysquid wrote...

iSousek wrote...

memorysquid wrote...

Why would an alliance made in the face of mutual extinction necessarily be understood as one that will endure indefinitely?  Further, who says the writers just weren't inconsistent?

That is completely irrelevant, You cant know if the peace will or won't last, what matters is that this is the empirical evidence that destroys his main theory.

If A then B, if there is no B or something opposite of B occurs then A is nulified
Karl Popper - Logic of Scientific Discovery

You know just enough about Popper and some kind of simple sentence logic to be dangerous. 

An alliance doesn't disprove the claim that conflict is inevitable.  Synthetics start allied at the onset.  The failure of synthetic/organic alliance is a GIVEN of the problem.  If you think you can quantify the problem, and disprove this, then have at.

It's not a given.  It's an unproven assertion.

[memorysquid]

RShara wrote...

memorysquid wrote...

iSousek wrote...

memorysquid wrote...

Why would an alliance made in the face of mutual extinction necessarily be understood as one that will endure indefinitely?  Further, who says the writers just weren't inconsistent?

That is completely irrelevant, You cant know if the peace will or won't last, what matters is that this is the empirical evidence that destroys his main theory.

If A then B, if there is no B or something opposite of B occurs then A is nulified
Karl Popper - Logic of Scientific Discovery

You know just enough about Popper and some kind of simple sentence logic to be dangerous. 

An alliance doesn't disprove the claim that conflict is inevitable.  Synthetics start allied at the onset.  The failure of synthetic/organic alliance is a GIVEN of the problem.  If you think you can quantify the problem, and disprove this, then have at.

It's not a given.  It's an unproven assertion.

It would be if this weren't a fictional universe; furthermore a universe in which another AI offers prescient prediction with 100% certainty, and in which the authors make a plain error in simple formal logic.  If you've touched the mind of God [Hudson/Walters] then prove me wrong.  Otherwise, your theory is underdetermined by fact, at best, and contradicted by the evidence at worst.

[Psychlonus]

The catalyst asserts that synthetics wiping out organics is inevitable and that this is self-evident. But it can also be asserted that a grand cyclic scheme to prevent this will inevitably fail given enough cycles. This is evidenced by 3 things we see in the saga: 1) the mass accelerator weapon/derelict reaper, 2) the Protheans, and 3) Shepard. At some point there would be enough consecutive civilizations that would gain early knowledge of the reaper cycle. In the case of Mass Effect there were only 2 such consecutive civilizations (and the second was not the entire civilization but only a small cadre) and this was all it took to force a re-evaluation of the entire sceme by the catalyst. Chaos theory kills the catalyst logic.

[RShara]

memorysquid wrote...

RShara wrote...

memorysquid wrote...

iSousek wrote...

memorysquid wrote...

Why would an alliance made in the face of mutual extinction necessarily be understood as one that will endure indefinitely?  Further, who says the writers just weren't inconsistent?

That is completely irrelevant, You cant know if the peace will or won't last, what matters is that this is the empirical evidence that destroys his main theory.

If A then B, if there is no B or something opposite of B occurs then A is nulified
Karl Popper - Logic of Scientific Discovery

You know just enough about Popper and some kind of simple sentence logic to be dangerous. 

An alliance doesn't disprove the claim that conflict is inevitable.  Synthetics start allied at the onset.  The failure of synthetic/organic alliance is a GIVEN of the problem.  If you think you can quantify the problem, and disprove this, then have at.

It's not a given.  It's an unproven assertion.

It would be if this weren't a fictional universe; furthermore a universe in which another AI offers prescient prediction with 100% certainty, and in which the authors make a plain error in simple formal logic.  If you've touched the mind of God [Hudson/Walters] then prove me wrong.  Otherwise, your theory is underdetermined by fact, at best, and contradicted by the evidence at worst.

I'm not sure who you're responding to so I'll just pretend it's me.

It's not a given, because it has never happened, therefore it is an unproven assertion in the context of the game.  If it were a proven assertion, then there would be no organics at all to confront him.  It has never happened so he cannot say that it WILL happen nor that it is INEVITABLE. 

We haven't brought metagaming into this at all so I'm not sure why you'd bring this up now.  Obviously Walters/Hudson meant it to be a a fact, but the entire point of this debate is whether or not the Catalyst by itself is using logic.

[The Edge]

Doesn't change the fact that the Star-Child was terribly implimented (IMO) and ignored the previous games.

[Mazebook]

Psychlonus wrote...

The catalyst asserts that synthetics wiping out organics is inevitable and that this is self-evident. But it can also be asserted that a grand cyclic scheme to prevent this will inevitably fail given enough cycles.
This is evidenced by 3 things we see in the saga:

1) the mass accelerator weapon/derelict reaper,
2) the Protheans, and
3) Shepard.

At some point there would be enough consecutive civilizations that would gain early knowledge of the reaper cycle. In the case of Mass Effect there were only 2 such consecutive civilizations (and the second was not the entire civilization but only a small cadre) and this was all it took to force a re-evaluation of the entire sceme
by the catalyst.

Chaos theory kills the catalyst logic.

The best reply I have read in a while...fully agree.

[NightHawkIL]

No. You can have access to all the data in the world, but if you are looking at it with a preconceived purpose any result can be read entirely wrong.

In this case, the Catalyst has been around for perhaps hundreds of thousands of cycles, but only in the cycle started in ME1 has it been delayed after the initial launch. At that time, the Geth were hostile, as was Edi. If the Reapers had arrived as intended the Catalyst would have been able to sit back in his space chair and say to himself, "Looks like I was right again".

All it took was two additional years of peace between when the Reapers were supposed to arrive and when they actually did for a majority of synthetics to resolve their conflict with organics.

In all likelihood the Catalyst has only witnessed a small number of cases where synthetics have destroyed a large number of organics, and ever since then he has stepped in before it has gotten that far. Even in the cases where that struggle has occurred, he has obviously never let it play out to completion or there would be no organics in the universe today. So, it is obvious that the Catalyst, even after thousands of cycles, has absolutely no data on what would occur if organics and synthetics were permitted to battle to completion. It is a huge assumption that the conflict could never be resolved, based on thousands of studies that were shut down before they were even half way completed.

If you home brewed beer and tossed it after two days because it didn't taste like beer, you could repeat the process thousands of times and never have any idea that the same brew would be great if it was allowed to sit for the proper amount of time.

Modifié par NightHawkIL, 13 juillet 2012 - 10:30 .

[RShara]

NightHawkIL wrote...

No. You can have access to all the data in the world, but if you are looking at it with a preconceived purpose any result can be read entirely wrong.

In this case, the Catalyst has been around for perhaps hundreds of thousands of cycles, but only in the cycle started in ME1 has it been delayed after the initial launch. At that time, the Geth were hostile, as was Edi. If the Reapers had arrived as intended the Catalyst would have been able to sit back in his space chair and say to himself, "Looks like I was right again".

All it took was two additional years of peace between when the Reapers were supposed to arrive and when they actually did for a majority of synthetics to resolve their conflict with organics.

In all likelihood the Catalyst has only witnessed a small number of cases where synthetics have destroyed a large number of organics, and ever since then he has stepped in before it has gotten that far. Even in the cases where that struggle has occurred, he has obviously never let it play out to completion or there would be no organics in the universe today. So, it is obvious that the Catalyst, even after thousands of cycles, has absolutely no data on what would occur if organics and synthetics were permitted to battle to completion. It is a huge assumption that the conflict could never be resolved, based on thousands of studies that were shut down before they were even half way completed.

If you home brewed beer and tossed it after two days because it didn't taste like beer, you could repeat the process thousands of times and never have any idea that the same brew would be great if it was allowed to sit for the proper amount of time.

Been trying to get that through people's heads for pages now

[Uncle Jo]

@OP

[/quote]Wow, the half of your OP is dedicated to your personal CV. I might be wrong but you're quite trying to appeal to your authority as teacher and historian to give weight to your arguments.

"I'm a teacher and historian, I give lectures, I debate with politicians, I have experience, I know better than you who forgot to pay attention during the classes"... It reminds me of the Starbrat.

The only real experience of the brat is what happened before he went berserk and created the Reapers, i.e. before the 20,000 cycles. His conclusions are only valid for this period of time and we don't know how long it was.

What happened after that is just the same endlessely repeating story, because the races evolved along the path designed by the brat, without any access to the knowledge or the past of the previous victims and were ultimately wiped out. Zero risk politic. Preemptive strikes. Insane logic.

He based his solution on the postulate "synthetics will always wipe out organics...". Based on his flawed assumption, countless genocides and destructions were committed by the Reapers.

There is no absolute, unless the brat could read in the future (which he obviously can't). Possibility yes, but in no way a certainty. That makes the difference.

For their great work during the past billions of years and as a proof of my infinite gratitude, I sent them to hell.

Modifié par Uncle Jo, 14 juillet 2012 - 03:30 .

[robertthebard]

Psychlonus wrote...

The catalyst asserts that synthetics wiping out organics is inevitable and that this is self-evident. But it can also be asserted that a grand cyclic scheme to prevent this will inevitably fail given enough cycles. This is evidenced by 3 things we see in the saga: 1) the mass accelerator weapon/derelict reaper, 2) the Protheans, and 3) Shepard. At some point there would be enough consecutive civilizations that would gain early knowledge of the reaper cycle. In the case of Mass Effect there were only 2 such consecutive civilizations (and the second was not the entire civilization but only a small cadre) and this was all it took to force a re-evaluation of the entire sceme by the catalyst. Chaos theory kills the catalyst logic.

I'm intriqued, but curious:

1.  Who built the Mass Accelerator Weapon, and when?  All that we know is that it's ancient.  All that I can see with the given information is that somebody else figured out how to hurt a Reaper, but it cost 'em, since the weapon went down with the Reaper.

2.  I'm not sure what the Protheans prove, except that they were on the verge of having the oppurtunity to do what we did, if only they hadn't lost the Citadel first thing.  So if that's supposed to mean early knowledge, it was early a bit late.  What they did do, just as Liara did, was set up a way to warn the next cycle, and attempted to set it up so that they could reestablish their empire, to be prepared for the current cycle.  This also failed, though, leaving only one Prothean left.

[Spirit Keeper]

Logic aside, the Catalyst has done things so terrible (same as the Reapers) that they deserve destruction.

Anyway

An Ai created synthetics to wipe out organics so that synthetics didn't wipe..them...out....

And really the Catalyst seems to be wiping out organic races on the chance that they will be destoryed by their creations but it does this before the organics even have much chance.

I will use the Geth and EDI. The Geth acted in self defence and didn't follow the Quarians after. EDI has never tried anything funny.

But let's take the Geth, it seems the Reapers and therefore the Catalyst believe that they are evidence that synthetics will destroy organics, the Rannoch Reaper states as much.

We know this is false so how many other cycles have had their 'Geth' and the Catalyst saw that as the evience it needed.

Let's not forget that apparently the 'cycle' was the only possible solution.......except, ooops I guess 3 more just showed up right now. I guess the 'cycle' was not the only solution.

The stargazer at the end of Destory (I think all other endings too) and refusal both seem content and at peace, no mention of war at all or sythetics and it would seem tha the next cycle in the Refusal ending choose to destroy the Reapers, (which only appear when the Catalyst deems the organics are about to be wiped out by synthetics. So that the next cycle destoyed them and are still breathing) it would seem the Catalyst needs to rethink it's plans.



Kings Quest 3's backstory has an evil Wizard Mananan kidnap children to become his slaves. He caught the first slave practicing magic and so Manana killed the boy, the boy was 16.

So Manana took a new slave and this one was less trouble but still juuuussst in case, he killed the boy on his 16th birthday and so began a cycle where he kidnapped children and on their 16th birthday killed them. Not because they were actually being difficult or learning magic like the first but instead killing them on the off chance they might possible at some point practice magic.

Just like the Catalyst, they are assuming the worst possible outcome and therefore performing an action which only was some evidence to back it up. It seems more like the Catalyst has conviced itself of something.

Modifié par SovereignSRV, 14 juillet 2012 - 12:52 .

[iHorizons]

o Ventus wrote...

His entire premise is based on a logical fallacy. He is, by definition, wrong.

The Catalyst makes an infinite claim, "the created will ALWAYS rebel against their creators." To support an infinite claim you need infinite evidence.

YOLO

[memorysquid]

RShara wrote...

memorysquid wrote...

RShara wrote...

memorysquid wrote...

iSousek wrote...

memorysquid wrote...

Why would an alliance made in the face of mutual extinction necessarily be understood as one that will endure indefinitely?  Further, who says the writers just weren't inconsistent?

That is completely irrelevant, You cant know if the peace will or won't last, what matters is that this is the empirical evidence that destroys his main theory.

If A then B, if there is no B or something opposite of B occurs then A is nulified
Karl Popper - Logic of Scientific Discovery

You know just enough about Popper and some kind of simple sentence logic to be dangerous. 

An alliance doesn't disprove the claim that conflict is inevitable.  Synthetics start allied at the onset.  The failure of synthetic/organic alliance is a GIVEN of the problem.  If you think you can quantify the problem, and disprove this, then have at.

It's not a given.  It's an unproven assertion.

It would be if this weren't a fictional universe; furthermore a universe in which another AI offers prescient prediction with 100% certainty, and in which the authors make a plain error in simple formal logic.  If you've touched the mind of God [Hudson/Walters] then prove me wrong.  Otherwise, your theory is underdetermined by fact, at best, and contradicted by the evidence at worst.

I'm not sure who you're responding to so I'll just pretend it's me.

It's not a given, because it has never happened, therefore it is an unproven assertion in the context of the game.  If it were a proven assertion, then there would be no organics at all to confront him.  It has never happened so he cannot say that it WILL happen nor that it is INEVITABLE. 

We haven't brought metagaming into this at all so I'm not sure why you'd bring this up now.  Obviously Walters/Hudson meant it to be a a fact, but the entire point of this debate is whether or not the Catalyst by itself is using logic.

You didn't have to pretend.

If the writers claim it is using logic, then it is.  That fact is irrelevant to whether or not his 'logic' is valid or invalid.  The problem then becomes poor writing and not an insane Catalyst.

What I am saying is that in the context of the game, they are asserting [so I think, probably due to their lack of familiarity with epistemology] that certain knowledge of the future is possible.  The Citadel finance AI pipes up with "Probability of detection: 100%."  That means he is claiming to know, for a fact, he will be discovered at some point in time after his observation.  That really flies in the face of modern philosophy of science.  But there it is. 

I just think the writers are asserting the Catalyst is right and didn't anticipate a bunch of Popper fans popping up and denying certainty as valid.

P.S. In Legion's speech in ME2 they equate 1<2<3 with 1.33382 = 1.33383.  These guys weren't logic or math majors.