136 réponses à ce sujet

[remydat]

MegaSovereign wrote...

Your orginal rebuttal stated that life can be pointless if you decide that it is. We are essentially agreeing. I said that life is pointless, but we give ourselves purpose to remedy that.

Taking my choice of words and playing mental gymnastics with their meanings is pretty semantical. I don't think you are a douche but I do think you are trying to give me a hard time .

Right but then I said you had decided it wasn't because you gave yourself a purpose.  I was saying the act of defining that purpose in and of itself creates meaning because purpose involves you providing a reason for something.

And sure I was being semantical with the term romantic but not with the above point.  And yes part of this was also me giving you a hard time but leaving that bit of it aside, I do really believe that giving yourself a purpose is in fact creating meaning to life.

[Indy_S]

Auld Wulf wrote...

Ecrulis wrote...

Then the question you should ask is does one post redeem a lifetime of board trolling?

Honestly? A "troll" in this context, by its very merit, is someone who disagrees with you passionately and won't step down.

I don't believe you grasp why Ecrulis is calling you a troll, Wulfie, to reach that conclusion. Routinely being insulting, derogative, arrogant, condescending and oblivious to all counter-points makes you a troll. An inability to recognise your mistakes makes you a troll.  Utilising flamebait makes you a troll. Just looking at this thread, people don't respect you. When a wise man like you speaks and nobody listens, do not blame everybody else.

[Yestare7]

This:

[quote]Indy_S wrote...

[quote]Auld Wulf wrote...

[quote]Ecrulis wrote...

Then the question you should ask is does one post redeem a lifetime of board trolling?[/quote]
Honestly? A "troll" in this context, by its very merit, is someone who disagrees with you passionately and won't step down.
[/quote]
I don't believe you grasp why Ecrulis is calling you a troll, Wulfie, to reach that conclusion. Routinely being insulting, derogative, arrogant, condescending and oblivious to all counter-points makes you a troll. An inability to recognise your mistakes makes you a troll.  Utilising flamebait makes you a troll. Just looking at this thread, people don't respect you. When a wise man like you speaks and nobody listens, do not blame everybody else.[/quote]

And this:

[quote]Yestare7 wrote...

Insulting people for months on end, using Hitler comparisons and hinting at racism are most definately trolling.

You give me a good apology, stop insulting people, and I might take you serious again.

Your move.

Modifié par Yestare7, 16 mai 2013 - 08:50 .

[Nightwriter]

Zazzerka wrote...

Jesus Christ, can you tl;dr that for the anti-intellectuals among us?

A condensed version of what I took from it would probably be:

"Progress is a battle against nature. Most of that which causes human suffering (disease, war) is of primal origin. Ethics/empathy tell us that these things are undesirable and wrong, while curiosity drives us to ask questions like 'why are things this way?' and 'how do we improve or fix them?'

From such questions science arises -- a tool of curiosity and ethics which allows us to illuminate our world as much as gain power over it. Science and nature are thus enemies, and as we progress we move more and more toward science and more and more away from the tyranny of nature.

Synthesis represents the complete triumph of science over nature, of the desirable over the undesirable, of the ethical over the unethical, and of control over helplessness. It instantly achieves the goal we have been trying to progress toward all along."

Modifié par Nightwriter, 16 mai 2013 - 08:26 .

[jstme]

Synthesis in ME3 is NOT a singularity.
Synthesis in ME3 (almost simultaneously,in some sort of galaxy-wide magic wave) forcefully rewrites genetic information - the very essence of species and individual alike - of EVERY ORGANIC LIFE FORM,and turns those into some sort of cyborg.
Be it a tree, an amoeba ,Vorcha or wulf - it is no longer remains as such. As a result ,there is no organic life in ME galaxy after green wave hits.
What this mess has to do with singularity? Oak is not known for its superb curiosity, medicine or friends with noble dreams. It is cyborg after synthesis. Why? Because lolintelligence decided so?

[M Hedonist]

Oh Auld... no matter how large, a block of text is not gonna make those who know you're a troll think of you any differently. Shoo! Don't you have more gullible people to troll?

[NeonFlux117]

Wulf you're a very, very talented troll. I'll give you that.

[Morlath]

NeonFlux117 wrote...

Wulf you're a very, very talented troll. I'll give you that.

Since this thread doesn't actually seem to be going anywhere, I want to ask...

Does the troll make the man or is it the man that makes the troll?

[Ieldra]

I commend you, OP. A passionate and eloquent essay against the sacred nature intuition we should all strive to overcome. I also subscribe to the idea that with knowledge - about other humans in particular - comes wisdom, even though I don't think this will solve all our problems.

Here's a compatible viewpoint on this: overcoming our physical nature lies within our nature, so we actually do what we are built for when we try to improve ourselves with technology. The fallacy, in my view, lies in the idea that nature is something separate from us, the definition of nature as that which remains untouched by human artifice. Artifice, however, is an inextricable part of us, an inevitable result of the answers we provide ourselves to some of the questions we ask.

I think many people here would agree with this. The problem with ME's Synthesis does not lie here - not for the more discerning Synthesis detractors anyway - but in the fact that much of the story up to the ending appears to support the sacred nature intuition and to present the Reapers as "unnatural abominations", so that their claims on themes that also appear in the Synthesis exposition turn the idea of Synthesis, which is basically a very good one, into something we aren't supposed to follow. Or do they?

The questions I ask, as a player who perceives many conflicting themes in the story, are these:

(1) Am I supposed to follow the emotional trigger that leads me to reject the Reapers as unnatural abominations and consequently, the Synthesis as something connected to them? Or am I supposed to question that emotional trigger and use the rather well-hidden and intentionally obfuscated information about their nature and what good the Synthesis can bring?

(2) Am I supposed to see Shepard as Synthesis' avatar because he was resurrected using "biosynthetic fusion", or am I to follow ME3's assertion that he's "fully organic" based on a rather wilful redefinition of what a "transhuman" might be.

The ME team made its scenes with a view on the emotional response. They said that often. "How does the ending feel" appears as a question in the Final Days app. That they miscalculated drastically in this case has no bearing on the fact that they look more to emotional response than to intellectual response when they make their scenes. So, if I discard my own emotional reaction to some of the presentation choices because I do not trust them, am I doing something the writers didn't want me to do? Or did they expect some of us to react that way?

I do not know, and ultimately it doesn't matter. My choices and my opinions are a result of my interaction with the story. Every one of us puts much of themselves into their experience of the story. The writers intentions have no bearing on how I experience the story if they're not visible in their work. There is no writer, there is only the work. If the work does not provide me with answers to the above questions, then I will continue to give my own answers.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 16 mai 2013 - 10:57 .

[Indy_S]

Ieldra2 wrote...

I also subscribe to the idea that with knowledge - about other humans in particular - comes wisdom, even though I don't think this will solve all our problems.

I believe there is a step between knowledge and wisdom. With knowledge comes power and it is from the application of power that we gain wisdom. I too don't believe wisdom will solve everything, though.

[Ruadh]

Auld Wulf is not nearly as clever as he thinks he is. Actually posting a few paragraphs of what some consider a coherent argument, does nothing to dismiss the crap he's spewed previously.

At least Seival threads are funny.

[Nightwriter]

Ieldra2 wrote...

I think many people here would agree with this. The problem with ME's Synthesis does not lie here - not for the more discerning Synthesis detractors anyway - but in the fact that much of the story up to the ending appears to support the sacred nature intuition and to present the Reapers as "unnatural abominations", so that their claims on themes that also appear in the Synthesis exposition turn the idea of Synthesis, which is basically a very good one, into something we aren't supposed to follow. Or do they?

The questions I ask, as a player who perceives many conflicting themes in the story, are these:

(1) Am I supposed to follow the emotional trigger that leads me to reject the Reapers as unnatural abominations and consequently, the Synthesis as something connected to them? Or am I supposed to question that emotional trigger and use the rather well-hidden and intentionally obfuscated information about their nature and what good the Synthesis can bring?

(2) Am I supposed to see Shepard as Synthesis' avatar because he was resurrected using "biosynthetic fusion", or am I to follow ME3's assertion that he's "fully organic" based on a rather wilful redefinition of what a "transhuman" might be.

The ME team made its scenes with a view on the emotional response. They said that often. "How does the ending feel" appears as a question in the Final Days app. That they miscalculated drastically in this case has no bearing on the fact that they look more to emotional response than to intellectual response when they make their scenes. So, if I discard my own emotional reaction to some of the presentation choices because I do not trust them, am I doing something the writers didn't want me to do? Or did they expect some of us to react that way?

I never subscribed to the sacred nature intuition theme, yet I still found myself unable to embrace the Catalyst's way of thinking. My reasons did not include a prejudice against technology or an aversion to the unnatural. While there were many instances where technology did lead to catastrophe in the series, there were also cases where technology (even Reaper technology) yielded positive results.

[Ieldra]

@Nightwriter:
I don't think it's necessary to embrace the Catalyst's way of thinking to find the Synthesis desirable.

Nonetheless, I'll ask the question: what exactly is the "Catalyst's way of thinking" you reject, and why do you reject it? The Catalyst says many things, and some of them have more merit than others in my eyes.

[Nightwriter]

Yeah that is just a habit of mine that proves hard to break -- I find it difficult to separate Synthesis from the Catalyst. In fact I would say the Catalyst represents my biggest gripe with the choice.

My problem does not lie with the idea so much as the source. While, yes, I'd be pretty uneasy to transform the world I was fighting for beyond recognition under any circumstances, doing it at the enemy's suggestion makes me uneasier still. The Reapers are a horrible mouthpiece to use for virtually any positive cause. The issue is not that they are "unnatural abominations," but rather that everything they do is drenched in ethics violations on a massive scale, and until the ending their attitudes toward us were colored with contempt and malevolence.

If ever there was a bad face to put on the concept of progress, it's the Reapers. They make it seem sinister, violative, and amoral. They make you want to throw their definition of progress down a well and chuck a grenade in after it, and then replace it with your own idea of progress and start rebuilding the galaxy according to that. And that's what Synthesis feels like to me: the Reapers' idea of progress. This is in many ways unfair, since it means I'm not looking at Synthesis on its own merits (as I said, I find it difficult to separate the Reapers from it).

To answer your question, to me the Catalyst's "way of thinking" comprises several points:

• We cannot break the vicious cycle on our own through self-improvement.
• The Reapers are medicinal in nature.
• The culling cycle was a valid solution to the original problem and served the greater good.
• The Reapers' new plan (Synthesis) is the ultimate solution to Life, the Universe, and Everything. (Given its last "solution" I am hesitant to buy in.)

[Kel Riever]

Sorry, Auld, you've done too much damage around here instead of keeping it about the game and its producers for me to be bothered with this. I appreciate your attempt at putting it all together in a way that explains your point, but the majority of your posts are about insulting players. So, as you can tell, your probably not getting a ton of useful responses. That also is a bit of an indicator not of this post, I think, but of your past. Good luck with those you can engage with. I'm going to need to see a bit more of a turnaround. And that has nothing to do with you liking Synthesis, or Mass Effect 3. It has to do with thinking attacks on those things are attacks on you personally.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

Nightwriter wrote...

Yeah that is just a habit of mine that proves hard to break -- I find it difficult to separate Synthesis from the Catalyst. In fact I would say the Catalyst represents my biggest gripe with the choice.

My problem does not lie with the idea so much as the source. While, yes, I'd be pretty uneasy to transform the world I was fighting for beyond recognition under any circumstances, doing it at the enemy's suggestion makes me uneasier still. The Reapers are a horrible mouthpiece to use for virtually any positive cause. The issue is not that they are "unnatural abominations," but rather that everything they do is drenched in ethics violations on a massive scale, and until the ending their attitudes toward us were colored with contempt and malevolence.

If ever there was a bad face to put on the concept of progress, it's the Reapers. They make it seem sinister, violative, and amoral. They make you want to throw their definition of progress down a well and chuck a grenade in after it, and then replace it with your own idea of progress and start rebuilding the galaxy according to that. And that's what Synthesis feels like to me: the Reapers' idea of progress. This is in many ways unfair, since it means I'm not looking at Synthesis on its own merits (as I said, I find it difficult to separate the Reapers from it).

To answer your question, to me the Catalyst's "way of thinking" comprises several points:

• We cannot break the vicious cycle on our own through self-improvement.
• The Reapers are medicinal in nature.
• The culling cycle was a valid solution to the original problem and served the greater good.
• The Reapers' new plan (Synthesis) is the ultimate solution to Life, the Universe, and Everything. (Given its last "solution" I am hesitant to buy in.)

Here's another thing I'd like to add about the Catalyst to your idea:

We are never given an accurate detail of the method it used to come to it's conclusion. Without a means of understanding how it came to view the problem, or how to solve it, why are we even bothering with trying to understand it?

Also, do we know what the Catalyst's idea of synthesis is? It might be very different from what you think it is. I support transhumanism. But I don't support this method that is being used to acheive it. It sounds like a terrible farce really. After listening to the Catalyst on it, I have alarms blaring off in my head telling me that Synthesis is not the way to go.

And going back to the Catalysts idea of what synthesis is, do you know if it's the same as yours? I believe his idea of a perfect solution is to turn all life in the galaxy (and all life to come) into a Reaper machination. A husk. It's "perfect" to the Catalyst. There can be no more conflict. The Catalyst will have a perfect understanding of life as they are all now a part of him. And the organics are "perfected" because they are now on the Reapers scale as life. And we've seen the tremendous ego of the Reapers.

And lastly, I'm dead. It requires my death. How do I know the Catalyst will even bother to keep up his end of the bargain? What does jumping into the green beam do besides vaporize me? How is my "organic essence" (which doesn't even exist) supposed to make synthesis work?

I don't trust the Catalyst that far at all. Just enough to believe that he's a program that isn't really all that intelligence, that binds the Reapers to his will. I do believe the Reapers themselves are autonomous and intelligent. They simply have a program that keeps them on the Catalysts leash.

Modifié par MassivelyEffective0730, 16 mai 2013 - 03:24 .

[KaiserShep]

I simply found the catalyst to be full of s***. I only went along with it insofar as to believe that each option would do precisely what it says they will do, but I wouldn't go any further than that, because I believe that it failed to make its case entirely. Aside from that, its opinions on what's ideal seem invalidated by its actions. Oh, so synthesis is the ideal solution to you? Well so was liquefying people into reaper shells, holo-boy, so no thanks. Couldn't you, you know, try to reach out and appeal to our better nature? No, your forces hide in dark space for eons, break out your can of genocide, then wipe evidence of your existence clean for the next culling. And now I'm supposed to understand you? As the Batarian mad prophet would say: "You are a blight."

I find the idea of "perfecting" life to be repugnant, because perfection is an abstract that doesn't really exist in nature. It's just a concept. It's a personal idea of something to strive for so you can overcome limitations, but not something you can actually achieve. This is why I think the Catalyst is full of it, and needs to be erased along with its buddies. 

Modifié par KaiserShep, 16 mai 2013 - 03:36 .

[Liamv2]

Liamv2 wrote...

 

 
Boy was i right 

[Ieldra]

Nightwriter wrote...
My problem does not lie with the idea so much as the source.

Yeah, all right, that's really the biggest flaw in the ending scenario. I wonder if Bioware expected us all to buy the Catalyst's pronouncements just because it comes with pretensions to the divine. Personally, I find the presentation rather galling, as if I was to forget that this entity was responsible for the cycle. However, I see the Synthesis as a function of the Crucible rather than the Catalyst, and that separates it from the Catalyst, even though I still have to take the Catalyst's words for having been changed by the Crucible.

We cannot break the vicious cycle on our own through self-improvement.

Do I want to believe this? No. Is it possible that it is nonetheless true? Yes. The question here is: can we break away from our nature as determined by our evolutionary history? Can we really do anything, or does our nature constrain us in ways we cannot overcome with our own ingenuity? The answer is not at all obvious. It could be true.
However, I agree with you insofar that the Catalyst's original problem is not supported by the story. It is an assumption made in empty space, without hooks to anywhere else, especially if you make peace between the quarians and the geth. That doesn't exactly disprove the Catalyst, but it is a matter that had to be addressed were we to believe in the problem. It wasn't.

Reapers are medicinal in nature.

If you see "all life in the galaxy" as the body as the Catalyst does, this actually makes sense - if the previous assumption is true. Cut out a part to save the whole.

The culling cycle was a valid solution to the original problem and served the greater good.

The Catalyst's notion of "valid" is different from ours. Would we have accepted a different solution easier? Such as the Reapers (or whatever might have taken their place) acting as a police force which prevented synthetics that can surpass their creators from being built? We might have, but we would still have fought tooth and nails against anyone who constrained our advancement that way. Also, the Catalyst was experimenting with civilizations, Cerberus-style: let civilization after civilization arise to see if things work out differently in one cycle or the next. The thing is: that we came along and built the Crucible proves the Catalyst right: our cycle was different, and our cycle could effect a new solution. Ironically, that also casts doubts on the Catalyst's original problem: it could not extrapolate the path to the new solutions by itself, so why could it extrapolate the eternal recurrence of the "created rebel against their creators" scenario? Still, from its own viewpoint, the Catalyst did what it could. That this was amoral from our point of view is - I can't repeat this often enough - completely beside the point.

Reapers' new plan (Synthesis) is the ultimate solution to Life, the Universe, and Everything. (Given its last "solution" I am hesitant to buy in.)[/list]

Synthesis isn't the Reapers' plan. That was always the forced uploading. Synthesis is the plan of the Crucible designers. However, I agree that the way this is presented is off-putting. I never bought the "Synthesis is an utopia" scenario. There's altogether too much eschatological imagery in the Synthesis. That's *my* personal beef with this  option. Also, to echo MassivelyEffective730's point, forcing this solution on the whole galaxy rather defeats the spirit of the idea of transhumanism that appears to be part of it. As a transhumanist I actually feel somewhat soiled by this solution because it spits in the face of the individual empowerment that lies at the core of transhumanism. Even so, I still consider it better than the alternatives.   

Modifié par Ieldra2, 16 mai 2013 - 07:57 .

[dgsf78]

And once again great master wulf tries to enlighten us with is wise words of synthesis(Damn man, you keep spawning these threads at an insane rate lately!) One word on that: Natural Selection.

Furthermore Yestare, I don't believe that master wulf is a troll. He is selfish, arrogant, incapable to see the poin of view of other people and above all believe that his reasoning is indisputable. Of course this is bullocks as everyone should be allowed to have and share his or her opinion on each subject. In this case the endings and which you choose.
People like wulfie here don't understand what freedom of speech is for and obviously do not know it's meaning. I'll tepl you this: it means that I can say that I like destroy above all else and no one call tell me that I am wrong or cqn change my opinion in any way. There is only one thing: I do value wulf's opinion in this matter or anyone that doesn't share mine. Wulfie went to far of course and it's time that someone says something about it.

Wulf whatever argument you throw at pro-destroyers it will not change their pov just as talimancers cannot be convinced that Liara is the better LI(which she is in my opinion but that's not the point.) Talimancers are equally right than the people who say that they are wrong just as you are to us. but please do not try to change us you won't. 

[teh DRUMPf!!]

 That a good read, Wulf.

[teh DRUMPf!!]

GeneralMoskvin_2.0 wrote...

"Synthesis is stoopid. I have a gun. I like to shoot this gun. Is all I need to know."

In case one's intelligence moves in the spheres of TF2's heavy, of course that is one's viewpoint.

LOL! Good one. TF2's Soldier actually reminds me of Destroy/Refuse deception-theorists for his antics in "Meet The Spy."

[jstme]

No, galaxy-wide wave of green awesomeness that instantly changes DNA of every vastly different organic creature (even those whose genetic information is not stored in deoxyribonucleic acid mollecules) without killing those and makes everyone cyborgs with skin that glows green - this is,like, smart and stuff.
Cause it is ,like, artistic and extreme. Cyborgs are cool.

[Hurbster]

Yeah, IMO synthesis is unworkable, ripped off from Deus Ex and the worst choice ending for a sequel. Blow them to hell and give the dead some rest.

[teh DRUMPf!!]

I have to admit, I'm a bit jealous. Where are all the eager responses when *I* post a thread??