985 réponses à ce sujet

[Unschuld]

Of course they were innocent. No one was ever tried for war crimes in a place called Nuremburg.

[CronoDragoon]

BatmanTurian wrote...

jtav wrote...

Not following orders. Brainwashed. We treat such people differently.p And I reject in the strongest possible terms that Destroy frees them. If you can make them true moral agents again, you don't know what they would prefer. Simply assuming that they are not worthy of life because of what they are--rather than killing them in self-defense--is dangerous.

Well, Germans under Hitler were brain-washed and many of them committed atrocities we shouldn't be able to imagine. So are they innocent too?

That depends what this "brainwashing" is. Were they hypnotized against their will into doing atrocities? If so, then they are innocent.

Let me ask you something: Say you are driving and another car hits you. You careen into the sidewalk and kill a little girl. Surely by your own reasoning you should be put in bars for life.

[teh DRUMPf!!]

Steelcan wrote...

If the reapers are indeed just tools of the catalyst, then they are beyond hope.

Not really.



It's simple. We kill the catalyst.

Modifié par HYR 2.0, 25 octobre 2012 - 08:33 .

[Xilizhra]

Kabooooom wrote...

jtav wrote...

 In an easily missed conversation, Legion explains the Reapers are "uploaded and cojoined minds, each a nation." The people who were pulped to create the Reapers still exist in a twisted form, or at least their minds do. I

Yes, they are innocent. But read what you wrote right here. They exist in a horrid, torturous state. The people that were used to make the Reapers did not wish it. It preserves the essence of their species but not the true species. I bet if you were to ask them, they would ask for a merciful death. And the mentally ill comparison is a false equivalency logical fallacy.

So, in light of that, Destroy is the most moral choice for me. Control subverts the Reapers further, in Synthesis they are still imprisoned within Reaper bodies - Destroy frees them.

All species go extinct with time, including our own. It is inevitable. It is the natural order of things. There comes a time when all of us have to fade from the universal stage. The Reapers are no different, and saving them - in my opinion - is naive and immoral.

If the Reapers want to die, let them choose it themselves. If they desire to exist in their current state, let them do that. I personally will never choose Destroy, and I shall stand by jtav here.

[Kabooooom]

It is not for you to say if another's life is worth living. You're arguing forced euthanasia here, in case you haven't noticed. I find this kind of reasoning abhorrent.

Refer to my previous post on pg 2 or 3 were I argued against the perceived (but erroneous) moral relevance of this concept.

That depends. In my opinion the Reapers' opinion is irrelevant. It is a matter of whether the race from which they were born would have consented to living thus. If you Destroy the Reapers, you are saying the answer is no.

^This. The Reapers are not the races that compose them. They are something else entirely.

If the Reapers want
to die, let them choose it themselves. If they desire to exist in their
current state, let them do that. I personally will never choose Destroy,
and I shall stand by jtav here.

And that's fine, but you are choosing it at the cost of the free will of every organic being in the galaxy to choose their fate. You have arbitrarily placed more value on the lives of the Reapers than that. That's totally fine, and what bioware intended by making the endings controversial. But if you missed that point then you missed the point of the endings entirely.

Modifié par Kabooooom, 25 octobre 2012 - 08:37 .

[BatmanTurian]

CronoDragoon wrote...

BatmanTurian wrote...

jtav wrote...

Not following orders. Brainwashed. We treat such people differently.p And I reject in the strongest possible terms that Destroy frees them. If you can make them true moral agents again, you don't know what they would prefer. Simply assuming that they are not worthy of life because of what they are--rather than killing them in self-defense--is dangerous.

Well, Germans under Hitler were brain-washed and many of them committed atrocities we shouldn't be able to imagine. So are they innocent too?

That depends what this "brainwashing" is. Were they hypnotized against their will into doing atrocities? If so, then they are innocent.

Let me ask you something: Say you are driving and another car hits you. You careen into the sidewalk and kill a little girl. Surely by your own reasoning you should be put in bars for life.

false equivalence. Not even the same. I was not brainwashed into killing the girl. Try harder.

[Unschuld]

Wow.... just..... wow....

[Ieldra]

CronoDragoon wrote...

Ieldra2 wrote...

It is not for you to say if another's life is worth living. You're arguing forced euthanasia here, in case you haven't noticed. I find this kind of reasoning abhorrent.

That depends. In my opinion the Reapers' opinion is irrelevant. It is a matter of whether the race from which they were born would have consented to living thus. If you Destroy the Reapers, you are saying the answer is no.

No, it is not. The origin of a life form has no bearing on its validity. The Reapers should never have been created, but now that they exist they're as valid as any other life form. There are no abominations. The mere concept is based on normative notions of what's natural, infusing nature with a human sense of aesthetics.

it's forced euthanasia in the same sense that killing vampires, evil or not, is forced euthanasia.

And I wouldn't kill vampires just for being vampires either. If they can stop their killing ways, I have no problem with them.

@Kabooom:
Synthesis doesn't destroy anyone's free will. The one-millionth repetition of this myth won't make it any more true.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 25 octobre 2012 - 08:42 .

[CronoDragoon]

BatmanTurian wrote...

false equivalence. Not even the same. I was not brainwashed into killing the girl. Try harder.

You are trying to avoid the obvious checkmate I'm setting for you. Do you or do you not believe that you should be put away for life for accidentally killing the girl?

If you think so, then I can only say you have a rare viewpoint not shared by any lawmakers.

If you don't think so, then explain why. Your answer will probably be "because it was an accident."

The question then becomes why accidents are treated differently by law and morally. The answer is because 1. the intent do do wrong does not exist 2. control of one's actions is not present. The exception to this legal paradigm is punishment for negligence, but even this is explained by the lack of proper preparation to prevent wrongdoing, which is in someone's control.

Now that we have established that persons are not responsible for actions outside of their own control, we can see the equivalence to brainwashing. They both fall under the same umbrella; the umbrella of events transpiring outside of one's control.

[BatmanTurian]

Congratulations, Bioware. You've made real live people, players of your games, believe that your antagonists are innocent angels. You are brainwashing geniuses. Bravo.

[dreamgazer]

So, uh, what do these "innocent", infinitely more powerful Reapers do with free will once they've been released from the Catalyst's thralldom?

[Han Shot First]

jtav wrote...

 In an easily missed conversation, Legion explains the Reapers are "uploaded and cojoined minds, each a nation." The people who were pulped to create the Reapers still exist in a twisted form, or at least their minds do. It is highly, highly improbable that every single Reaper would choose to continue the cycle because they are its victims. E.g. the Reaperization process imparts some form of mind control. They obey the Catalyst. They obey AI!Shep. These are not the heretics, who freely chose their path. Killing them "because they deserve it" is misguided and wrong. We don't execute the mentally ill. The deserving one is the Catalyst, and I'm not sure it has a concept of punishment. If the Reapers can be freed, they ought to be. They should never have been created, but they are here now and Shepard should make their fate part of his calculus for the decision.

If the Reapers truly are the collective conciousness of the victims used to create them, and not just an A.I. copy, than killing them is an act of mercy that frees the organic minds trapped within. In that case Shepard is freeing them from their indoctrination and enslavement. Death is freedom from the abomination they were forced to become.

Destroy is still the best ending in the game, no matter how you look at it, and the only one where Shepard is truly victorious.

Modifié par Han Shot First, 25 octobre 2012 - 08:43 .

[BatmanTurian]

CronoDragoon wrote...

BatmanTurian wrote...

false equivalence. Not even the same. I was not brainwashed into killing the girl. Try harder.

You are trying to avoid the obvious checkmate I'm setting for you. Do you or do you not believe that you should be put away for life for accidentally killing the girl?

If you think so, then I can only say you have a rare viewpoint not shared by any lawmakers.

If you don't think so, then explain why. Your answer will probably be "because it was an accident."

The question then becomes why accidents are treated differently by law and morally. The answer is because 1. the intent do do wrong does not exist 2. control of one's actions is not present. The exception to this legal paradigm is punishment for negligence, but even this is explained by the lack of proper preparation to prevent wrongdoing, which is in someone's control.

Now that we have established that persons are not responsible for actions outside of their own control, we can see the equivalence to brainwashing. They both fall under the same umbrella; the umbrella of events transpiring outside of one's control.

You are using a false equivalence argument, a strawman. So again, I ask you to try something else because it's not even the same.

[Ieldra]

@BatmanTurian:
The evidence is in the games. You just don't want to see it. If the Reapers are the uploaded and conjoined minds of  some organic species, then the conclusion that they're mind-controlled is inescapable.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 25 octobre 2012 - 08:45 .

[Kabooooom]

No, it is not. The origins of a life form have no bearing on its validity. The Reapers should never have been created, but now that they exist they're as a valid as any other life form. There are no abominations. The mere concept is based on normative notions of what's natural, infusing nature with a human sense of aesthetics.

Right, a perfectly viable moral argument. Except that the ONLY option available to you to truly free the Reapers and allow them to choose their own fate (like suicide by flying into a sun) also involves NOT allowing the rest of the galaxy to choose their own fate.

It's a moral trade off. Arguing about which one is better is completely fallacious and pointless. Some will prefer Synthesis, some will prefer Destroy.

@Kabooom:
Synthesis doesn't destroy anyone's free will. The one-millionth repetition of this myth won't make it any more true.

Did you deliberately misquote me, or did you just misunderstand because of not reading properly?

I said synthesis forces the process of synthesis, which is presumably ultimately inevitable, upon every organic being in the galaxy. It is a violation of choice. If people want to become synthetic, let them choose it.

This is EXACTLY THE SAME ARGUMENT that you are using with respect to the Reapers. Do you not see the irony of that?

Seriously, lolz.

Modifié par Kabooooom, 25 octobre 2012 - 08:52 .

[CronoDragoon]

Ieldra2 wrote...
No, it is not.

I think it is.

The origin of a life form has no bearing on its validity.

Too general a statement for me to agree or disagree with. I will say that in certain specific situations, the origins do matter.

The Reapers should never have been created, but now that they exist they're as valid as any other life form. There are no abominations. The mere concept is based on normative notions of what's natural, infusing nature with a human sense of aesthetics.

It has nothing to do with what's natural. The compelling factor is the mindset of the original victims. If they willingly chose to become Reapers as a race, then they shouldn't be killed. If they did not, then the Reapers have no right to their own minds and genetic material, as it was stolen from previously autonomous races.

Synthesis doesn't destroy anyone's free will. The one-millionth repetition of this myth won't make it any more true.

Destroy no. But the act itself disregards it, and the consequence of this dismissal is permanent in the new genetic make-up.

[jtav]

How many times do I have to say it? Killing them isn't an act of mercy. It's euthanasia, forced at that.

[clennon8]

Save the Reapers!

*sigh*

The sheer, utter, colossal nincompoopery to which people will resort in an effort to be contrarian. Destroy is for plebes! I'm better than that! I'm going to preserve the billion year old death machines responsible for killing trillions of sapient beings and squishing them into goo to use for building more death machines. Because the Reaper overlord suggested it! Yeah! He's totally on the up and up! Because reasons! Go me!

[CronoDragoon]

BatmanTurian wrote...

You are using a false equivalence argument, a strawman. So again, I ask you to try something else because it's not even the same.

I just explained how it is the same, so now you have to explain why it is not. Simply saying something is the case does not make it true.

[FlyingSquirrel]

Kabooooom wrote...
This is the crux of the argument. The initial transformation into a Reaper was a violation - no organic ever wanted that. Destroy releases them from that fate. It doesn't matter that you don't know whether or not the Reapers wish to continue existing as Reapers. In fact, I'm sure they do - because all beings have a self-preservation instinct and EDI even mentions that the Reapers likely do too. Doesn't matter. What you do know is that the initial transformation was against their will.

Of course it was. But simply undoing the transformation doesn't seem to be an option, and the individual identities and personalities of the people who were harvested are probably long gone, dissolved into some sort of collective intelligence. So what you have is a new being that may have never been allowed to think or act on its own until now. The original act of creating that being was monstrous, of course, but it can't now be undone and the being itself was not responsible for it.

A human Reaper is not a human. It is a collection of human minds in Reaper form. It is the Reaper equivalent of humanity. It is not humanity, but something else. No organic ever wanted to become a Reaper, except those that were indoctrinated. Thus, whether they enjoy being a Reaper once they ARE a Reaper is a rather moot point. 

I guess I had always assumed that the individuals harvested to create a Reaper were in fact killed. Some remnants of their thoughts and memories may be preserved, but they themselves died a long time ago. (I'm also of the opinion that AI-Shepard in the Control ending is a separate entity from the character we play throughout the 3 games.)

Maybe this will help illustrate my perspective: let's say a spaceship crashes on a planet somewhere and the entire crew is killed, but the chemical reactions caused by the explosion set off a chain of events that leads to evolution of a new intelligent species centuries later. The crew did not want to die. If they could have avoided it, they would have. But they're dead, and nothing is going to bring them back. And it clearly would not be remotely justifiable to go and wipe out this new species because the unwanted suffering and death of the crew led to their eventual evolution.

[BatmanTurian]

Ieldra2 wrote...

@BatmanTurian:
The evidence is in the games. You just don't want to see it. If the Reapers are the uploaded and conjoined minds of  some organic species, then the conclusion that they're mind-controlled is inescapable.

Then if they are mind-controlled, then in control, you are enslaving them and in synthesis you are allowing them to continue a life they did not initially choose. No organic chooses to be melted down and smushed together and shoved into a metal jelly jar that walks, talks, kills, and reaps. But even if they are mind-controlled, they are still commiting aggressive, disgusting acts. Just because someone is forcing you to do something does not change the fact that you choose to do it and intended the effects that your action causes.

[Kabooooom]

Killing them isn't an act of mercy. It's euthanasia, forced at that.

Euthanasia - greek "a good death" - definition:

The act of killing to relieve suffering, an act of mercy.


Not to troll or anything, but as someone who has actually had to make the decision to euthanize other living beings literally hundreds of times, it really annoys the hell out of me when people don't know what the definition of euthanasia is. Pet peeve.

Modifié par Kabooooom, 25 octobre 2012 - 08:54 .

[BatmanTurian]

jtav wrote...

How many times do I have to say it? Killing them isn't an act of mercy. It's euthanasia, forced at that.

So... you would disagree with killing zombies? Which is what Reapers are on a gigantic scale actually....

[CronoDragoon]

BatmanTurian wrote...
Just because someone is forcing you to do something does not change the fact that you choose to do it and intended the effects that your action causes.

Legal systems disagree with you. The act of brainwashing itself removes the capability to choose: that is the entire point of brainwashing.

Modifié par CronoDragoon, 25 octobre 2012 - 08:54 .

[AresKeith]

jtav wrote...

How many times do I have to say it? Killing them isn't an act of mercy. It's euthanasia, forced at that.

If the Reapers really are inncocent then its an act of mercy, if there not innocent then its karma and justice