926 réponses à ce sujet

[TheRealJayDee]

"Turning people into goo isn't killing them, it's actually something positive" -> always the first thing to come to my mind 

[PerhapsDeadMaybeNot]

Is synthesis the best solution to the perceived inevitable conflict between organics and synthetics?

I have heard many arguements that suggest that it is, that under synthesis, organics and synthetics live in a utopian society with few to no problems whatsover...at least that is what the cutscenes suggest. I have also heard the arguements that it is best that the reapers live, as we have access to the collective memories of every civilization, and that being harvested does not really kill you, (as suggeste by Seival).

People are more than the sum of their parts, each has their own likes, dislikes, beliefs, and behaviors that make each person unique, but they all have a common denominator, a thing that makes them truly alive, we call it the soul, when a body dies, the soul dies with it...and reapers always destroy a body in order to harvest it.

The problem with synthesis, is that, while it is a response to a perceived problem, it also ignores the potential objections of every individual, and that by doing so, you take away everyone's right to make a choice...It makes everyone the same, when they have every right to be different if they choose to be

In essence, though, every choice in the ending is screwed up, I am forced to choose the least evil option: syntheses=homognization, control=does not solve the perceived problem, and destroy allows everthing to be the same, but without the geth and other synthetics (and that is genocide).

I dont like any of these choices, I dont like the fact that I cant makes things normal, and a little brighter.

In the end though, Id rather have a free society that doesnt have reapers, or another catalyst, even though the synthetics are sacrificed in having it that way....because it is like shepard said

"The defining characteristic of life is self-determination, make your own choices. you take that away, and we might as well be machines, just like you."

[IceHawk-181]

Yeah, because menacing and taunting Shepard for an entire Game totally demonstrates that Harbinger is a detached entity of pure purpose...

[AresKeith]

StreetMagic wrote...

hpjay wrote...

StreetMagic wrote...

The Reapers aren't evil. Or good. You're ascribing organic motivations to them. Like I said, they're just cosmic janitors. You can choose to evolve them or embue them with Sheperd's morals. Destroying them is a missed opportunity however.

Good and evil aren't  "organic" motivations.  The ideas of good and evil are entirely orthogonal to the ideas of organic/synthetic.

In any case, I don't see them thinking on any kind of ethical principle (be it "good" or "evil"). They're not malicious per se. They only address the issue of order and chaos (which isn't necessarily an ethical concern). Like I said, janitors. A cleanup crew for order and chaos. They might appear like devils to the average person, but they are not devils. They're far too removed for that.

Harbinger and Sovereign's view and attitude says otherwise tbh

[essarr71]

IceHawk-181 wrote...

Auld Wulf wrote...

huntrrz wrote...

Without being able to have an impact on the universe, the preserved memories of a culture are irrelevant. They effectively no longer exist.

This shows how incredibly limited the understand of some is. See, some people used to think the world was flat. It's an old dream to "recreate the Universe in one's image," but that discounts everyone else in the Universe. Which leads to either subjugating or destroying other species, as the Catalyst points out. Us humans already have a history of that, how bad do you think it's going to be when we're in space?

By trying to imprint physicality we remove the ability for others to do the same, but keeping our imprinting to ethereal things, we can express ourselves without limiting others from doing the same. We can still create art, as we always have, and we can continue to grow and develop, but at the same time we wouldn't stop others from growing and developing. This is exactly the problem that the Catalyst solves.

You are a part of the problem due to your limited understanding, due to a limited world view and perspective. You want to impact upon the Universe but you don't realise the harm you would do by doing it. Your understanding is smaller, limited to this world, and present day. My understanding is much further reaching than that, and it takes into account other life and that the Universe doesn't exist just for us humans.

By existing in a virtual sense, we continue to have advancement, growth, and art. We continue to exist. And we don't stop others from existing. This is a wisdom that your children's children's children's children's children will understand. But you won't. It's disappointing, but that's the reality of today.

Actually, this demonstrates that you think that one can derive the essence of humanity from a pinkish slime that represents the left-overs of genetic material after an individual is violently and horrifically pulled apart by nano-machines.
 
It also indicates to me that you, for the lack of a better phrase, are an irrational sophist who simply likes to pretend he is an intellectual. Which is strange, considering we are arguing about the ending to a SciFi Video Game...

It's not an argument unless he responds to you.  He hasn't, over a number of threads, today.

It's telling, and - like most of his posts - juvenille, sophmoric, and cowardly.

Modifié par essarr71, 07 juin 2013 - 01:32 .

[AresKeith]

StreetMagic wrote...

IceHawk-181 wrote...

Yeah, because menacing and taunting Shepard for an entire Game totally demonstrates that Harbinger is a detached entity of pure purpose...

Is that what he's doing, taunting him? I think he just states things in a matter-of-fact/overconfident way. Harbinger sees himself as a sign of things to come, as his name suggests. "Salvation through destruction.." It's evil to his victims, but I don't think his motivations are. Not in the same way it'd be for an organic to relentlessly hunt someone like that. An actual organic would have to be truly f'ed in the head to have that kind of purpose. A machine is a bit different.

Cerberus turned an entire colony into Husks, Batarian pirates, Exo Geni is guilty of this to an extent

[IceHawk-181]

StreetMagic wrote...

IceHawk-181 wrote...

Yeah, because menacing and taunting Shepard for an entire Game totally demonstrates that Harbinger is a detached entity of pure purpose...

Is that what he's doing, taunting him? I think he just states things in a matter-of-fact/overconfident way. Harbinger sees himself as a sign of things to come, as his name suggests. "Salvation through destruction.." It's evil to his victims, but I don't think his motivations are. Not in the same way it'd be for an organic to relentlessly hunt someone like that. An actual organic would have to be truly f'ed in the head to have that kind of purpose. A machine is a bit different.

You know, you are right.
 
Harbinger denouncing me and all life as bacteria and vermin while lording his power over Shepard makes perfect sense for a detached entity...

[GreyLycanTrope]

TheRealJayDee wrote...

"Turning people into goo isn't killing them, it's actually something positive" -> always the first thing to come to my mind 

And how

[MassivelyEffective0730]

StreetMagic wrote...

IceHawk-181 wrote...

Yeah, because menacing and taunting Shepard for an entire Game totally demonstrates that Harbinger is a detached entity of pure purpose...

Is that what he's doing, taunting him? I think he just states things in a matter-of-fact/overconfident way. Harbinger sees himself as a sign of things to come, as his name suggests. "Salvation through destruction.." It's evil to his victims, but I don't think his motivations are. Not in the same way it'd be for an organic to relentless hunt someone like that.

Ever hear Sovereign's speech? Seems pretty intense. And it seems that he intends to wipe out all organic races, and that the Reapers are disgusted by the existence of lesser beings.

Supermac and Hudson really didn't think the ending through at all. They went with the concept they wanted to explore, and did the minimum of what they could think of as a concept. The themes they used were telling of something that they didn't really try on. Here are the themes they could have used to a better degree.

Don't kid yourself into thinking the ending is intelligent and well-thought out. It's not. I've pretty much written a better ending concept than BW did.

[IceHawk-181]

essarr71 wrote...

It's not an argument unless he responds to you.  He hasn't, over a number of threads, today.

It's telling, and - like most of his posts - juvenille, sophmoric, and cowardly.

Honestly, as best as I can tell Auld Wulf is likely a late-teens/early-twenties college undergrad who seems to think trolling people in these threads with what amounts to diatribes dripping with logical fallacies and false premises because he passed his sophomore philosophy class with a B+ amounts to something...

  

Modifié par IceHawk-181, 07 juin 2013 - 01:39 .

[MassivelyEffective0730]

StreetMagic wrote...

... And Cerberus are bastards. I hold them to a different standard.
 

Looks like you and I are not going to see eye-to-eye on a lot of things

[hpjay]

StreetMagic wrote...

hpjay wrote...

StreetMagic wrote...

The Reapers aren't evil. Or good. You're ascribing organic motivations to them. Like I said, they're just cosmic janitors. You can choose to evolve them or embue them with Sheperd's morals. Destroying them is a missed opportunity however.

Good and evil aren't  "organic" motivations.  The ideas of good and evil are entirely orthogonal to the ideas of organic/synthetic.

In any case, I don't see them thinking on any kind of ethical principle (be it "good" or "evil"). They're not malicious per se. They only address the issue of order and chaos (which isn't necessarily an ethical concern). Like I said, janitors. A cleanup crew for order and chaos. They might appear like devils to the average person, but they are not devils. They're far too removed for that.

 

"Organic life is nothing but a genetic mutation, an accident. Your lives are measured in years and decades. You wither and die. We are eternal, the pinnacle of evolution and existence. Before us, you are nothing. Your extinction is inevitable. We are the end of everything.

Doesn't sound very removed.  Sounds rather full of itself actually.  There not coming in to clinically fix a problem, there are arrogantly imposing thier vision of the order on lesser beings.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

StreetMagic wrote...

Seems like you guys respect the Reaper's sentience more than I do. To ascribe evil gives them more personhood than I'm willing to. I think they're incomplete machines, created by a race that had already saw others as lesser species to begin with (Leviathan). Reaper ethics, if they have them at all, is shoddy code.

It is. In that case, they're machines that really have no purpose but to do what they've been doing for the past billion years. Destroying them isn't a problem since it's a machine.

If they are sentient, then my interactions with them and their attitude tell me that, control or no, they believe themselves justified in committing genocide of intelligent life in the galaxy and that they are being helpful. That tells me that their perspective is fundamentally incompatible with ours, and that any species inside them no longer exists past a small stock of their collective genetic code. There's nothing left of the species that make up the Reapers. Whatever they were, they're just Reapers now. And I have no qualms destroying them if it means freedom from their cycle and influence forever.

[AresKeith]

StreetMagic wrote...

If I believed they were evil, I couldn't play ME3 at all, I think. I'd be a lot more afraid of them. Evil is terrifying. Reapers on the other hand are destructive idiots.

You couldn't play a game because the enemies are evil?

StreetMagic wrote...

I still have a slight problem with Destroy though, because it doesn't offer the longterm way out. I could destroy the Reapers for their stupidity, but more machines could come to the same conclusion, and make equally stupid "ethical" choices. The idea of updating their understanding on a primal level is appealing more. It makes that whole era of AI obsolete. Perhaps I'm just as indoctrinated as Saren was though. lol

The current "machines" in our cycle are against what Reapers were doing

Modifié par AresKeith, 07 juin 2013 - 01:50 .

[MassivelyEffective0730]

StreetMagic wrote...

I still have a slight problem with Destroy though, because it doesn't offer the longterm way out. I could destroy the Reapers for their stupidity, but more machines could come to the same conclusion, and make equally stupid "ethical" choices. The idea of updating their understanding on a primal level is appealing more. It makes that whole era of AI obsolete. Perhaps I'm just as indoctrinated as Saren was though. lol

I have yet to recieve an answer from just about anybody on this:

How does synthesis make a synthetic "understand" organics? What causes it? Why can't it be done without synthesis? Why do the synthetics need to understand organics now anyway? How is synthesis permanent on synthetic beings that don't even exist yet?

That was a change that was made in ME3. They completely changed the Geth and EDI for this idea of understanding. Chris L'Etoile is probably still pissed about what the goons did to the Geth and EDI.

Modifié par MassivelyEffective0730, 07 juin 2013 - 01:54 .

[AresKeith]

StreetMagic wrote...

MassivelyEffective0730 wrote...

StreetMagic wrote...

I still have a slight problem with Destroy though, because it doesn't offer the longterm way out. I could destroy the Reapers for their stupidity, but more machines could come to the same conclusion, and make equally stupid "ethical" choices. The idea of updating their understanding on a primal level is appealing more. It makes that whole era of AI obsolete. Perhaps I'm just as indoctrinated as Saren was though. lol

I have yet to recieve an answer from just about anybody on this:

How does synthesis make a synthetic "understand" organics? What causes it? Why can't it be done without synthesis? Why do the synthetics need to understand organics now anyway? 

That was a change that was made in ME3. They completely changed the Geth and EDI for this idea of understanding. Chris L'Etoile is probably still pissed about what the goons did to the Geth and EDI.

The Synthesis mechanism pure magic mumbo jumbo. I wouldn't bother trying to find an explanation. I'm just looking purely at the results, and think.. "OK, that looks like a good way out." It also had a warm fuzzy Edi narration at the end. Glad that happened.

One of the key issues people have with Synthesis besides the version Bioware came up with being unneeded

[Dextro Milk]

Synthesis... Hmm...

Nah, I don't like nanites in my milk.

On topic...

"To be harvested by the Reapers is not to be killed."

Are you serious?

[AresKeith]

Dextro Milk wrote...

Synthesis... Hmm...

Nah, I don't like nanites in my milk.

On topic...

"To be harvested by the Reapers is not to be killed."

Are you serious?

Never ask Seival that question