112 réponses à ce sujet

[Sovereign330]

if by come back you mean a hologram that looks and sounds like your shep...i guess

[Megaton_Hope]

SurfaceBeneath wrote...

At its core, all our brain is is an advanced computer. Our memories, feelings, and thoughts are all just complicated arrangements of nerves and neurons that create protiens that define these faculties. If you 100% recreate these and you basically recreate the person as they will be in all functional ways identical to the original subject. The Catalyst's wording implies that this is pretty much the same thing that was done to upload Shepard into the Reaper hive mind or whatever it was. 

'Cept, dead nerves aren't going to store anything, you might as well try to read Shepard's mind off a sausage.

Particularly nerves that have been suffering hypoxia for over a year. In a living person, those cells are kept oxygenated and fed by a fresh supply of glucose constantly. In a dead person floating in outer space, the blood plasma crystallizes in the veins and digs chunks out of the neural tissue randomly.

If they wanted to do a dramatic revival, planned cryostasis where Shepard's body was in one way or another prepared for freezing would have been much, much better. (Maybe a feature of those life pods; couldn't carry much in the way of supplies or long-range beacons.)

[Unschuld]

Phatose wrote...

No it doesn't.

"You will control us". Not "You'll merge with us". And the extended cut voice-over makes clear that the entity speak self-identifies as Shepard, and is in control of the Reapers.

You're entitled to your headcanon I suppose, but that's not to ignore the actual canon.

Please explain how you can control something when you're dead. Shepard-lyst's monologue being interpreted as metaphorical is a consideration, but the constant referral to "Shepard" in third person, along with lines that talk about creation, Shepard's death and the Shepard-lyst's birth suggest a different entity.  The monologue gives the feeling of complete detatchment from Shepard, identifying itself as a completely different entity, so I don't know where you got any sense of self-identification as Shepard, rather than a different consciousness.

"Through my birth, his thoughts were freed. They guide me now, give me reason, direction."

That suggests that, as I said before, Shepard is reduced to nothing but a variable in the vast program of the reaper hive-mind (which yes, the Catalyst himself IS the collective reaper intelligence, and basically says Shepard's imprint will replace his programming). Regardless of the way you see it, it is  merging, both in control and synthesis, just a different format.

SurfaceBeneath wrote...No, at the beginning of ME2, Shepard died. Not lost consciousness. Shepard's "brain" was reconstructed just like the rest of her body. You might cry "psudeoscience!" at that, but it's really not. Hell in the world of Element Zero and Biotics, reconstructing the neurons and protiens in someone's brain to create an exact copy of them is closer to reality than most of what's in Mass Effect. This is something that is actually theoretically possible within 50 years or so. 

At its core, all our brain is is an advanced computer. Our memories, feelings, and thoughts are all just complicated arrangements of nerves and neurons that create protiens that define these faculties. If you 100% recreate these and you basically recreate the person as they will be in all functional ways identical to the original subject. The Catalyst's wording implies that this is pretty much the same thing that was done to upload Shepard into the Reaper hive mind or whatever it was. 

I don't think you're understanding the type of consciousness I'm referring to, in which Shepard was "not there" but the physical materials that make up his structure were still laying around. Of course he was still dead, but at least there was a frozen corpse left. Regardless, what you're suggesting, that recreating an exact copy of a dead person from nothing is not only possible but "easy" as building a supercomputer, is laughable.

[xAmilli0n]

An interesting idea, but the Shepalyst isn't Shep. We could potentially create a body, maybe even transfer memories, but will it really be Shep? I'd argue no. Just like Shepalyst or the clone isn't Shep, I don't think this will truly be Shep either.

[Phatose]

Unschuld wrote...

Phatose wrote...

No it doesn't.

"You will control us". Not "You'll merge with us". And the extended cut voice-over makes clear that the entity speak self-identifies as Shepard, and is in control of the Reapers.

You're entitled to your headcanon I suppose, but that's not to ignore the actual canon.

Please explain how you can control something when you're dead. Shepard-lyst's monologue being interpreted as metaphorical is a consideration, but the constant referral to "Shepard" in third person, along with lines that talk about creation, Shepard's death and the Shepard-lyst's birth suggest a different entity.  The monologue gives the feeling of complete detatchment from Shepard, identifying itself as a completely different entity, so I don't know where you got any sense of self-identification as Shepard, rather than a different consciousness.

"Through my birth, his thoughts were freed. They guide me now, give me reason, direction."

That suggests that, as I said before, Shepard is reduced to nothing but a variable in the vast program of the reaper hive-mind (which yes, the Catalyst himself IS the collective reaper intelligence, and basically says Shepard's imprint will replace his programming). Regardless of the way you see it, it is  merging, both in control and synthesis, just a different format.

Funny thing.  He never actually refers to Shepard in the third person.  It's always "he" or "she", and that refers back, in every instance, to the metaphorical "Man I was" from the very first sentence.

He - "the man I was" did die on his Ascenscion.

"The man I was used these words, but only now do I truly understand them."
"The man I was knew he could only achieve this by becoming something greater."
Ergo, the entity speaking was Shepard.  It is a continuation of the same entity. 

Every use of "he" and "I" in that entire monologue refers to the metaphorical "man I was" versus "entity I am now".

That's all. 

[Dorrieb]

There are any number of ways to bring Shepard back from Control, or Destroy, or Synthesis, if you really want to. The question is, would you really want to? I know Shepard didn't exactly get the best exit, but what is left for her to do except take a bow? I wouldn't want the character to hang around in sequel after sequel just for the sake of it, becoming a caricature of her former self and slowly sapping away all the affection that I have for her so that I only follow her adventures out of habit, until I realise that there is no longer any point and stop caring, my memories of her original adventures forever soured by what she eventually turned into. Would you want that? Better to go out on a high, I think.

[byarru]

Do people even remember Virtual Aliens? It is canon that organic life can become AI and still be oneself. Learn lore, people, learn lore. It is a game, it doesn't have to be 100% realistic

Modifié par byarru, 25 mars 2013 - 06:29 .

[Lparsons7641]

I always looked at the control ending as...........bad. I wanted to like it but something about that ending music and monologue.

"I got a bad feeling about this."

[CerberusN61]

By choosing the control ending you are passing from organic to synthetic. And from what I can tell from EDI and the geth an AI's "mind" works somewhat like an organic one. Synthetic Deity Shepard should be able to create a body that is both Organic and Synthetic like the reapers, and like EDI Shepard could be present as a Body and as the Catalyst, this way Shepard may even appear in ME4, and be able to return to his love interest and they can take that depressing name plate off the wall. and everyone can be safe in the knowledge that Shepard is acting as a guardian for All life. As well as taking advantage of being Immortal.

[shodiswe]

A perfect clone with a perfect memorytransfer would be as much like the person like someone who's body has aged 7 years.

All your cells are replaced over time so, the body never stays the same.
Slowly lettign the body clone new cells or clone them all enmass, there isn't that mcuh of a difference. What really matters is how much of your memories and who you were transfers, your values.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

Why the hell do new posters always necro threads?

[Kabooooom]

A perfect clone with a perfect memorytransfer would be as much like the person like someone who's body has aged 7 years.

All your cells are replaced over time so, the body never stays the same.
Slowly lettign the body clone new cells or clone them all enmass, there isn't that mcuh of a difference. What really matters is how much of your memories and who you were transfers, your values.

Not only that, but the connections between neurons are constantly changing throughout life as well. In every physical way, you are NOT the same conscious entity that you were at birth - the continuity is purely illusory.

Every single facet of information that we have from modern neuroscience suggests that IF you could recreate the mind of an individual perfectly whether biologically or synthetically, they would be identical in every meaningful way to the original conscious individual. And yet, this is paradoxical.

The problem becomes clear when one envisions the Star Trek transporter scenario mentioned above. What if instead of the original copy being destroyed, you now have two perfect copies of the same individual co-existing? Clearly, then, they are separate conscious entities. And yet, there is no reason to think that if one were to be destroyed, and the other created at a later date, that it would not be like simply "waking up" in a new location for the individual undergoing the transport.

Clearly such a scenario is hypothetical, but it uses real understanding from modern neuroscience. We view the brain as deterministic and mechanical, because this model is highly successful at explaining the way the brain works. Most, including myself, believe that this is the entirety of how the brain works and there is zero, nada, zilch, NO metaphysical components to consciousness whatsoever....no matter how much we would like to believe there are.

But if that's the case, then the transporter thought experiment illustrates a problem with our understanding of consciousness as a purely classical construct. So either we are wrong (unlikely), or we have to change our perspective of what it means to be a conscious individual (much more likely). The latter concept has reared it's ugly head in neuroscience many times - a notable example being how we interpret split-brain syndrome.

It's also worth noting that it does not take a full "theory of consciousness" to tease out these problems with our understanding of it, since the problems arise at a much more fundamental level than such a model would address. And although my research area in neuroscience is different from researching the neural correlates of consciousness, it is still the most fascinating aspect of the field to me. But we are a long ways off from fully understanding it.