889 réponses à ce sujet

[chemiclord]

But see, this argument right here is kinda why it's so hard for me to completely buy what Legion and the geth were trying to sell.

Both sides admit that it wasn't exactly the "does this unit have a soul" line that was the flashpoint. Something ELSE happened between the snippets of information that we were given in the geth archive that led from questions to trying to force a shutdown.

I could understand why the quarians wouldn't remember what that event was... but the geth would remember (they remember everything else after all). Along with knowing that Legion is more than adept at... withholding... bits of crucial information; my suspicion is that Legion didn't share that flashpoint intentionally, because it was afraid it would reflect poorly on the geth.

[Ranger Jack Walker]

If I try to shut down my computer but it refuses to shut down and instead asks questions like "Why did I do wrong?" and I still shut it down by pulling ththe cable, I don't think I have any right to claim moral superiority.

[chemiclord]

Ranger Jack Walker wrote...

If I try to shut down my computer but it refuses to shut down and instead asks questions like "Why did I do wrong?" and I still shut it down by pulling ththe cable, I don't think I have any right to claim moral superiority.

That's rather my point.  I'm not sure there is any moral superiority here.

There's this sentiment that the geth have given unfiltered truth to the story, and I'm not exactly sure why anyone could make that claim KNOWING that the geth have been MORE than willing to commit lies of omission for their own benefit before.

[sH0tgUn jUliA]

The situation on Rannoch was and where the Quarians panicked was that they were losing control. The details we have are way too sketchy. Trying to fill them in gets into fan fiction. Even Tali doesn't fill in all the details. I mean it's like two or three paragraphs of text at most. Legion fills in about two pages of a comic book.

In reality if we were to go aboard one of the Quarian live ships and access the data base, or access the database on the Citadel about the Morning War (forget the Codex) and make a study about it, we'd find books about it with all the gory details including first hand reports from the survivors. I would guess there would also be books about those who felt the same way Admiral Koris did and why they did prior to the start of the morning war. The bottom line being that we would have a much more balanced view than what we have. All I'm seeing is hysteria from both sides of the aisle.

All we can do is anthropomorphize the entire situation as to what MIGHT happen here.

I think the Quarians panicked because they felt they were losing control of their world. Humans would do this.

The problem here on earth is that I fear AI tech would not be used to benefit us in a quality of life sense, but would be used more by militaries for war. We have enough of that. We really don't need to turn our nuclear weapons arsenals over to AIs, and then have some crazy human hack them and reprogram them.

If we are going to ever do any deep space exploration, we will need AIs, though, to operate the ship while the humans cryosleep.

I think humans need to grow up a lot more before we're ready for AI technology. We can't even treat our own kind decently. How can we be expected to treat AIs decently? Fortunately a true AI is a very long way off. Virtual Intelligence? Not that far off.

[chemiclord]

sH0tgUn jUliA wrote...

The situation on Rannoch was and where the Quarians panicked was that they were losing control. The details we have are way too sketchy. Trying to fill them in gets into fan fiction. Even Tali doesn't fill in all the details. I mean it's like two or three paragraphs of text at most. Legion fills in about two pages of a comic book.

So very much this.

Making any determined statement based on what we were given (even if you go with the expanded universe content) would be akin to reading 10 pages of War and Peace at random, then trying to write a thesis on the book.

[Phatose]

chemiclord wrote...

Ranger Jack Walker wrote...

If I try to shut down my computer but it refuses to shut down and instead asks questions like "Why did I do wrong?" and I still shut it down by pulling ththe cable, I don't think I have any right to claim moral superiority.

That's rather my point.  I'm not sure there is any moral superiority here.

There's this sentiment that the geth have given unfiltered truth to the story, and I'm not exactly sure why anyone could make that claim KNOWING that the geth have been MORE than willing to commit lies of omission for their own benefit before.

The Quarians have shown they're equally willing to commit lies of omission for their own benefit. 

What they have not shown is that they're willing to commit lies of omission to their own detriment.  The Quarian's silence on these matters comes across as a de facto admission of the truth of the Geth's claims.  They are not protesting that these are lies, and their talking points are largely limited to "We've suffered enough for our mistakes" and "It's a toaster".

[shodiswe]

DeinonSlayer wrote...

remydat wrote...

DS,

The difference is there is no proof the Geth were a threat. The Quarians simply decided they were. The Geth had 100% proof the Quarians were a threat because the Quarians were actually trying to kill them. Further, even when the Quarians proved they were a threat, the Geth did not attack immediately. They kept asking the Quarians why.

So sure you can say they were both wrong but ending there is incredibly misleading. The Quarians attacked before the perceived threat ever proved they were a threat. The Geth attacked after the thrwat became 100% real and even then only after being denied a reason as to why the attack occurred.

The Geth wiped them out in a year.

That tells us the Geth were capable of doing so, and the Quarians would have been capable of recognizing that. A computer system capable of, say shutting off power to a hospital, dropping ten thousand air-cars from the sky all at once, or comandeering military hardware is rightfully going to be perceived as a threat. Look at our reaction to Y2K.

Again, think of Skynet. What do you honestly expect people to do when a computer system tied to that kind of hardware starts deviating from its programming in any way?

You are saying that any "force" or Group that has the pwoer to cause Death and destruction must be seen as a threath to be dealth with?

Like for example nations who own nuclear weapons? Be cause they are a possible threat. People owning licencsed guns, because they are a possible threat. People owning pitching forks, because they could be a threat?

Anything that could ever possibly become a threat needs to be dealth a premptive strike and annihilation/Death?

There is a lot of crazy people even nations that coudl cause a lot of harm. that would make them everyones enemies because a possible threat shoudl be dealt with as an actual and immediate threat?

Modifié par shodiswe, 03 mai 2013 - 10:15 .

[remydat]

DS

The problem with this logic is that if the Geth are babies then you can't then blame them for killing billions because a baby doesn't know better.

Further, the Quarians did not try and take the gun away. They tried to shut down the Geth PERMANENTLY. Tali says this. If my baby has gun, my solution is not to put a bullet in its head.

[remydat]

I guess not telling Shep or the Council they were about to attack the Geth in violation of Council Laws and add another enemy that organics now have to fight was not a massive lie of ommission that would have cost the galaxy their lives if not for Shep. Nope no problem their. I guess Victus not telking Shep the bomb on Tuchanka was Turian was not a lie of ommission. I guess the Asari neglecting to tell the galaxy about their beacon was not anlienof ommission. Organics lie guys. Sorry if you missed it in the game or real life.

[chemiclord]

Phatose wrote...

The Quarians have shown they're equally willing to commit lies of omission for their own benefit. 

What they have not shown is that they're willing to commit lies of omission to their own detriment.  The Quarian's silence on these matters comes across as a de facto admission of the truth of the Geth's claims.  They are not protesting that these are lies, and their talking points are largely limited to "We've suffered enough for our mistakes" and "It's a toaster".

Indeed they have.  Then again, I'm not claiming quarian moral superiority either.

And the quarian silence on those matters could be as simple of a matter as they don't know what the hell exactly happened.  Of those that managed to escape, what are the chances that they'd have a reliable account of the events that led to the Morning War?  I'd say that would be pretty slim.

[SeptimusMagistos]

DeinonSlayer wrote...

If a baby gets its hands on a gun, you take it away.

I take away the gun. I don't shoot the baby. Terra Firma got a lot wrong, but this is one thing they got right.

[Leonardo the Magnificent]

remydat wrote...

DS

The problem with this logic is that if the Geth are babies then you can't then blame them for killing billions because a baby doesn't know better.

Further, the Quarians did not try and take the gun away. They tried to shut down the Geth PERMANENTLY. Tali says this. If my baby has gun, my solution is not to put a bullet in its head.

The Geth were the gun. They served as military equipment, domestic servants, labor, and who knows what else. How would you separate them from these positions without deactivating them?

[SeptimusMagistos]

Leonardo the Magnificent wrote...

remydat wrote...

DS

The problem with this logic is that if the Geth are babies then you can't then blame them for killing billions because a baby doesn't know better.

Further, the Quarians did not try and take the gun away. They tried to shut down the Geth PERMANENTLY. Tali says this. If my baby has gun, my solution is not to put a bullet in its head.

The Geth were the gun. They served as military equipment, domestic servants, labor, and who knows what else. How would you separate them from these positions without deactivating them?

If a baby has a gun I try to take the gun away. If a baby has a gun for a hand I still don't shoot the baby.

[DeinonSlayer]

remydat wrote...

DS

The problem with this logic is that if the Geth are babies then you can't then blame them for killing billions because a baby doesn't know better.

Further, the Quarians did not try and take the gun away. They tried to shut down the Geth PERMANENTLY. Tali says this. If my baby has gun, my solution is not to put a bullet in its head.

I'm not saying the Geth are babies. They were far more developed than that at the time of the Morning War. Having observed the Geth VI's sociopathic personality, I would classify them as what Septimos termed as "unsocialized." See again what EDI said about AI with individual personalities versus collective entities, and their judgement of the value of organic life. To a collective entity, the individual is next to meaningless. Neither side understood the other in the beginning: the Quarians thought they were still dealing with machinery, the Geth devalued the lives of individual Quarians and ceased to discriminate who they targeted. Both were intelligent, they simply did not recognize each other. That's not to say they can't learn, though.

What I'm saying with the baby thing is this: whether Skynet pushes the launch button through malice or lack of understanding is ultimately meaningless. Either way, we're just as dead: thus, Skynet poses a threat to our existence. The question from there is how to react. Things get vague even in the Terminator universe. Did DoD try to deactivate it, or simply disconnect it from the system it was made to control? Would that disconnection alone be perceived by Skynet as a hostile action, prompting a hostile response? We don't know. All we know is that it killed a sh*tload of people in a very short period of time.

Modifié par DeinonSlayer, 03 mai 2013 - 10:48 .

[Goneaviking]

IanPolaris wrote...

Goneaviking wrote...

The only evidence that we are presented with that they were willing to allow the quarians to survive is that after successfully destroying their society they opted not to give chase to the minsicule number of survivors that were able to escape from the charnel worlds.

That is all the evidence we need.  Both the Quarians and Geth fully admit that had the Geth wanted to exterminate all the Quarians then and there, they could have done so.  The Geth chose not do.  That choice makes all the difference.

We aren't presented any evidence that the geth either attempted to initiate, or were willing to entertain, dialogues to end the war with a mutually survivable settlement. Nor does any geth ever make that claim.

So what?  The question was whether the Geth were guilty of genocide.  They are not.  Yes they fought a brutal war with the Quarians and they (and the Quarians) fought dirty.  The Quarians believed (and still believe at the start of Mass Effect) that it's either them or the Geth and nothing in between.

You are not obligated to talk to an enemy for it not to be genocide.

-Polaris

"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group"


The quarians went from a population of billions to a population of a few million, they were spread out over multiple homeworlds and then they didn't have any.

The "but they decided not to kill them all at the last minute" argument that what the geth did doesn't constitute genocide as it's recognised by today's United Nations doesn't hold water because they specifically included the "... or in part" section to shut up people who were inevitably going to say that it isn't genocide because they weren't going for total extermination.

The geth began the war in a position of self-defence, but when they achieved the upper hand they were no longer entitled morally to do whatever it takes to win. The "whatever it takes" or "at any cost" position is a controversial one in any case, but it only holds any credibility while the situation remains dire.

There is absolutely no way the quarians would have abandoned all there homeworlds if they believed they had any chance to survive if they remained. The fact there are no surviving quarians beyond the veil prior to the invasion in ME3 is sufficient evidence of the geths genocidal actions because the notion that they could have gotten all the survivors onto ships while fighting an encroaching enemy is such a stretch that it beggars suspension of disbelief.

[remydat]

It is not Genocide if the enemy keeps coming and you are forced to keep killing them. We have no proof the Quarians stopped attacking and the Geth continued.

[Phatose]

How do you know that they achieved the upper hand before widespread use of chemical weapons? Given the time scale involved and the results, the possibility that this was one single widespread attack can't be ruled out.

If these attacks were not made after their situation was no longer dire - if this was a single attack made not after they gained the upper hand, but the attack that gained them that upper hand - does your argument still hold?

That's what I mean about not casting judgement without all the information.  As far as we know, the Quarians started on a war of Genocide, were winning and only stopped after the Geth resorted to the drastic measures of chemical warfare.  The devil is in the details.

Furthermore, the fact that the Quarians would not abandon their colony worlds does not actually prove anything by itself. Had they remained and surrendered, then perhaps it would, but I don't recall anything on the subject of the Quarians actually surrendering. If they did, or at least tried to, then you're right. If they didn't then they were a hostile force, and that's no longer proof od genocidal intent.

Mind you, I do in fact believe the Geth were bent on genocide by that point - but that's supposition, not fact.

Modifié par Phatose, 03 mai 2013 - 11:15 .

[Argolas]

remydat wrote...


It is not Genocide if the enemy keeps coming and you are forced to keep killing them. We have no proof the Quarians stopped attacking and the Geth continued.

Argolas wrote...

- The Quarians, as every species, had countless people who were unarmed, too young, too old or otherwise unable or simply unwilling to fight.

[Phatose]

Argolas wrote...

remydat wrote...


It is not Genocide if the enemy keeps coming and you are forced to keep killing them. We have no proof the Quarians stopped attacking and the Geth continued.

Argolas wrote...

- The Quarians, as every species, had countless people who were unarmed, too young, too old or otherwise unable or simply unwilling to fight.

And if we had any evidence that they were actually surrendering, and not simply hiding in military bases, voluntarily or otherwise that might matter.  But we don't.  We don't have any of the details.

[Argolas]

Phatose wrote...

Argolas wrote...

remydat wrote...


It is not Genocide if the enemy keeps coming and you are forced to keep killing them. We have no proof the Quarians stopped attacking and the Geth continued.

Argolas wrote...

- The Quarians, as every species, had countless people who were unarmed, too young, too old or otherwise unable or simply unwilling to fight.

And if we had any evidence that they were actually surrendering, and not simply hiding in military bases, voluntarily or otherwise that might matter.  But we don't.  We don't have any of the details.

What the hell? We are talking about civillians here. 99% being killed and the rest barely making it out alive on whatever spaceship that happened to be close enough can not be justified. The Quarians commited genocide on the Geth, yes, but the Geth did nothing less in return. Both sides are guilty.

[Phatose]

Under what circumstances though? We know how and why the Quarians started their genocide. Not so much about the Geth.

It's a terrible thing either way, but lets be honest here: Genocide against an entire species who are currently trying to exterminate you is evil. Genocide against an entire species who is trying to do your laundry? More evil.

[remydat]

DS,

The Geth VI shows the same gung ho personality as Gherel. Gherel has no qualms killing fleeing Geth as he does in the no peace option. Does any Quarian express sadness over the Geth being exterminated? I suppose Koris would.

EDI's theory is flawed. The Geth cared about Creator Megara and surrendered itself to protect him. That instinct was killed out of them.

And perception is not reality. Again I expect leaders to investigate and talk to the AI before risking provoking it and putting my life in danger as a result.

[Argolas]

Phatose wrote...

Under what circumstances though? We know how and why the Quarians started their genocide. Not so much about the Geth.

It's a terrible thing either way, but lets be honest here: Genocide against an entire species who are currently trying to exterminate you is evil. Genocide against an entire species who is trying to do your laundry? More evil.

Of course we don't see how it happened. Legion would have been stupid to show Shepard these records. Legion showed Shepard anything that speaks in the Geth's favor.

And the only reason why the Quarians were worse is because they attacked first while the Geth were still peaceful. I acknowledge that. However, I blame the Geth for their reaction.

Yes, I know there is the "they did not know what they were doing" argument, but let's be fair, that applies to both sides. The Geth didn't value Quarian lives appropriately and the Quarians didn't value Geth lives appropriately. If you want to let that argument count, both sides are innocent. If you don't, both sides are guilty.

[Phatose]

Oh, they're both Guilty. They're both evil. I just don't think both are equally evil.

[IanPolaris]

Goneaviking wrote...

There is absolutely no way the quarians would have abandoned all there homeworlds if they believed they had any chance to survive if they remained. The fact there are no surviving quarians beyond the veil prior to the invasion in ME3 is sufficient evidence of the geths genocidal actions because the notion that they could have gotten all the survivors onto ships while fighting an encroaching enemy is such a stretch that it beggars suspension of disbelief.

[Citation Needed]

The available information we have (from both Geth and Quarian sources) is that the Quarians attack the Geth 100% of the time whenever victory was thought to be possible and we KNOW that the Quarians do not recognize civilians as non-combatants in the same way we do (and given that the Geth were programmed by the Quarians, there is no reason why the Geth should either).

Given that, the Geth are not morally obligated to allow the Quarians to kill them and once the Quarians have demonstrated that co-existance is impossible, the Geth are not morally obligated to attempt it anyway.  If the Quarians kept fighting and it caused the destruction of 99% of the Quarian people (and that seems to be the case) then it is NOT genocide.  There is no evidence that the Geth ever deliberately targeted the Quarians for destruction either in whole or in part and their actions at the end of the morning war are strong evidence to the contrary.

By contrast the Quarians are guilty of genocide right down the line.

-Polaris