I am okay with many arguments for Destroy, but playing the "mercy" card is not one of them.
Disregard everything leading up to the creation of the Reaper, because none of that matters. All that matters in an appeal to mercy is whether or not the target actually wants to be mercy-killed. In this case, you have no way of knowing that. That many were probably forced, unwillingly, to create the Reaper is irrelevant because it doesn't follow that the harvested would reject the prospect of continued existence in these circumstances.
Can we lend credence to the notion that some preserved civilizations would wish for continued existence? Yes, we can.
http://masseffect.wi...i/Virtual_Alien
ME Wikia wrote...
The virtual aliens are a race of some one billion individuals who downloaded their minds into a virtual world aboard a starship long ago to avoid the destruction of their civilization. As of 2185 CE, the virtual aliens have established diplomatic contact with the Citadel Council in order to secure a new power source for the systems that maintain their virtual world...
About 8,000 years ago, the virtual aliens faced an imminent crisis: their homeworld's star was about to go supernova. To survive, the virtual aliens built a starship equipped with a network of supercomputers. One billion virtual aliens transferred their consciousnesses into the supercomputers, which contained an entire virtual world for them to inhabit for the duration of the crisis.
Now take a peek at my (conservative) "Estimate on Reaper Numbers" linked in my sig. Among likely tens (if not hundreds) of thousands, there have got to be a significant number that would willingly choose continued existence.
And let me respond pre-emptively to...
"But HYR they're too dangerous to keep intact because (...)" I'll defer to one's own opinion on the "danger" argument. I'm not concerned with that here, 'only concerned with killing this "mercy"-nonsense (& should I claim mercy to justify myself??)
** 3/28 Edit #1 **
I just wanted to compile some decent arguments from both sides... (subject to some snippan)
Dissenting Arguments
Megaton_Hope wrote...
Either way, the person they used to be is finished, over. That person wasn't linked to millions of other minds inside a giant robot cuttlefish. Wasn't even capable of being. This thing that is, it's got different goals and different beliefs, arrived at from who knows what process of intra-cuttlefish logic and cuttlefish-based perceptions.
CronoDragoon wrote...
How you feel about this can be compared to the Frankenstein's monster myth if Dr. Frankenstein had actually killed people in order to obtain the body parts he needed. Would you kill Frankenstein's monster because his existence is predicated on theft and injustice? Or does he, the innocent, deserve to live?
Note that for this example the consciousness of the people killed does not transfer over to the monster, which I believe is the case with the Reapers. I do not believe that the Reapers are really an amalgamation of organic minds. If you do, the analogy is slightly different.
Still, the critical point persists in the example. I would kill Frankenstein's monster and you would probably not.
Alocormin wrote...
It could be mercy. We don't actually know. I don't think that argument can really be 'distilled' from all the others though, it needs context to make sense.
If a Reaper's existence is anything like what we saw happening between the people of the cerberus research base near that brown giant, it would indeed be a confusing existence. To us anyway. Maybe it would be alright for a reaper. I suspect it records the suffering and confusion of its component people until the end, along with all the other things.
However, with the other endings it appears that the reapers have the possibility of volition beyond terror and war - it just requires reprogramming. So I don't think 'mercy-killing' is a sufficient argument to support the destruction ending over all others.
Up until Shepard's choice though, the destroy ending could be considered a mercy. If the Reapers didn't want an end to the cycle their component races surely would have.
Concuring Argumets
Dean_the_Young wrote...
Depression, injury, torture... there are a lot of horrific experiences and times we can go through which can make us wish for any release from the pain, even death, without that desire lasting forever forward. We overcome depression. The injury heals, or we accept it and move on. The torture ends, and we are liberated.
Pain is transitory. Not only isn't it forever, but pain can often be a gateway sensation preceeding something better. Having a dislocated shoulder forced back in hurts like the dickens, but ends the previous discomfort. The enjoyment of sex for women comes after losing their virginity.
Well, that last one might be a bit off as far as comparisons go, but the point remains: it would be the current state, after the horrific joining, that would be measured against. If the Reapers don't believe themselves to be in infinite pain or suffering, why should you?
Dean_the_Young wrote...
Are the minds in the Reaper gestalt even the same minds that were processed? If so, wouldn't their souls remain to their current state and beliefs? If not, aren't those souls already passed and the current minds worth their own souls, if Geth can also be considered to have souls?
This screams of being an arbitrary interpretation of an abstract, potentially fictional, construct.
JShepppp wrote...
1. We know nothing of what it's like to "be" a Reaper. We only know the process of BECOMING a Reaper is horrible; we know nothing of how it is after the process is over.
2. We know that human desires are so diverse that it is POSSIBLE that some humans may want to continue living for fear of death.
3. Aliens have completely DIFFERENT desires from humans and completely different societies. For example, the Quarians are focused 100% on the collective and not the individual. The Geth are similar but for different reasons.
4. Synthetics ALSO get turned into Reapers - we know NOTHING of how the process of becoming a Reaper is like for them, and nothing of how life as a Reaper is for them, and nothing about whether or not any of those steps are different from organics'.
5. It is HIGHLY LIKELY that aliens with DIFFERENT VALUES and DESIRES would want to continue living for reasons that are NOTHING like we have considered; they think differently because they are alien.
Emotional reasoning does not play a role because of the differences between aliens. Because we don't know about everyone, we cannot say it is a mercy killing.
jtav wrote...
You don't get to say for any variety of life that there's no way the person/entity would want to keep living. There are those who would consider my life not worth living, but that's not their call, and it's not my call with a Reaper. There are reasons to choose Destroy, but don't pretend you're doing Reapers a favor.
Modifié par HYR 2.0, 29 mars 2013 - 03:51 .
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