184 réponses à ce sujet

[Dean_the_Young]

AlexMBrennan wrote...

What you seek is revenge, not justice.

This I agree with...

I'd argue that synthesis implies that you admit that the reapers' actions were necessary, and thus acceptable, much like killing an intruder in self defence: If the reapers hadn't loving,y murdered all those billions of people then they would have made synthetics that would have killed enem AND all life in the galaxy.
If you disagree with that, you shouldn't have picked synthesis to begin with.

And this I don't. You're linking a viewpoint and a conclusion that don't lead to eachother, let alone need to be held at all. You can hold that the Reapers goal was necessary without supporting their actions.  You can hold that other means should have been pursued as an alternative to their process (which, to be frank, was needlessly cruel on many levels). You can also support synthesis for reasons entirely oppossed to fear of the synthetic singularity.

You can certainly argue that someone holds a viewpoint when they choose synthesis, but if you were to do so towards me you'd be embarassingly wrong.

Further, synthesis is basically a truce - you can't exactly start dragging reapers to a trial when the only reason you are still alive is their goodwill.

Well, you can once you recover enough and bridge the tech gap. It might be deferred, but you can still do it.

[Dean_the_Young]

Obadiah wrote...

Ieldra2...
...
Apart from that, I find it inappropriate to apply human ideas of justice to entities so clearly non-human, so clearly not made as a social species. According to Legion in ME2, this is racist...

This is ridiculous. Being an alien does not make the Reapers unaccountable for their actions or beyond judgement. It just makes their motives alien. It is not racist to judge and alien species that is committing a crime against you, especially one that understands us enough to know that we would think that what it is doing is a gross violation of ourselves and a crime.

I think you missed the 'mind controlled slaves' part.

But sure, let's play the moral absolutism. Why is your morality the standard for it? Are you a murderer for killing ants, even though behavioral analysis can show that ants do not appreciate being killed?

[Obadiah]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Obadiah wrote...

Ieldra2...
...
Apart from that, I find it inappropriate to apply human ideas of justice to entities so clearly non-human, so clearly not made as a social species. According to Legion in ME2, this is racist...

This is ridiculous. Being an alien does not make the Reapers unaccountable for their actions or beyond judgement. It just makes their motives alien. It is not racist to judge and alien species that is committing a crime against you, especially one that understands us enough to know that we would think that what it is doing is a gross violation of ourselves and a crime.

I think you missed the 'mind controlled slaves' part.

But sure, let's play the moral absolutism. Why is your morality the standard for it? Are you a murderer for killing ants, even though behavioral analysis can show that ants do not appreciate being killed?

If there is a moral code by which the Reaper cycles were a moral action, are you bound by that and restricted from making a judgement simply because it exists?

Modifié par Obadiah, 15 janvier 2014 - 02:39 .

[marcelo caldas]

Synthesis doesn't exist


...therefore never happened

Modifié par caldas, 15 janvier 2014 - 02:49 .

[MattFini]

Destroy is the only thing that obliterates the cycle entirely - the reapers, their technology and the Leviathan's damned "solution."

Sure, the others stop the cycle too... in different ways that don't work for me.

I choose destroy because, yes, maybe the peace doesn't last, but it's up to the galaxy to decide that without the shadow of the reapers hovering over it.

[Comrade Wakizashi]

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Obadiah wrote...

Ieldra2...
...
Apart from that, I find it inappropriate to apply human ideas of justice to entities so clearly non-human, so clearly not made as a social species. According to Legion in ME2, this is racist...

This is ridiculous. Being an alien does not make the Reapers unaccountable for their actions or beyond judgement. It just makes their motives alien. It is not racist to judge and alien species that is committing a crime against you, especially one that understands us enough to know that we would think that what it is doing is a gross violation of ourselves and a crime.

I think you missed the 'mind controlled slaves' part.

But sure, let's play the moral absolutism. Why is your morality the standard for it? Are you a murderer for killing ants, even though behavioral analysis can show that ants do not appreciate being killed?

Are you a murderer for killing ants, you ask. In fact, according to the definition of murder, you actually are.
The fact that the Reapers keep doing their genocidal work and will never stop by themselves makes it even worse. Wether or not they have free will doesn't matter. They are built and created for destruction, and the threat persists as long as they exist. The only logical solution for when you want to be sure is total destruction.

[Vigilant111]

@OP: Been reading a few posts above and I will say this (and this is coming from a destroyer's point of view): it does not matter which set of morals reapers and others subscribe to.

U choose to destroy the reapers because you CAN theoretically, rather than because you should morally. Maybe it matters to you that human justice must be served but it matters none to the reapers what you feel is morally just. The reapers will not repent, they are not remorseful and they will never realize they are morally wrong by human standards, despite having all those lovely organic minds inside them and there is always someone else to blame, pass it up the chain...whatever it is they say they are or do

[Obadiah]

First, this isn't meant to be a pro-Destroy thread, and I wouldn't pick any ending solely to "enact justice" since there are other issues at stake. My original post was really meant to be about one aspect of the choice - justice for the acts committed during the Reaper cycles, and the apparent lack of it in Synthesis.

Second, it looks like there is an argument that what the Reapers have done is not a crime (or beyond judgement), and does not require any kind of apology, punishment, or restitution. What about "truth and reconciliation"? Do you think some kind of Reaper confession of facts behind the cycles, and understanding by this cycle's population took place in Synthesis?

@HYR 2.0 and Ieldra2
I don't believe that the Reapers are merely puppets or completely controlled, and I think that perspective is a hard stretch given the conversations with Sovereign, Harbinger, and the Rannoch Destroyer.

However, even if the Reapers were acting on some initially given purpose by the Catalyst and Leviathan, they've been in existence for millions of years. In that time they have certainly had an opportunity to change and didn't. If the Reapers were merely acting as part of the Catalyst whole, or so completely mind controlled that they did not realize that they were mind controlled, this does not put their actions beyond judgement. The Catalyst, or the Catalyst/Reaper being's actions as a whole, could be judged and some restitution/justice sought. None appears to be in Synthesis.

We can speculate on what level of control the Reapers were under, but the bottom line is that even in the EC epilogue, we never hear of the Reapers acknowledging any wrongdoing for their purpose or actions, which indicates some willingness, righteousness, and therefore "guilt" on their part.

Modifié par Obadiah, 15 janvier 2014 - 03:25 .

[jtav]

The Reapers aren't mind controlled in the sense we understand it, but rather created from the ground up to be and think as they are. They cannot question the cycle or stop it. So in a real sense, they don't have the capacity for moral reasoning. The notion of retributive justice is as relevant here as when dealing with the legally insane. Or even a natural disaster.

[General TSAR]

Their destruction removes a clear and present danger and that's good enough.

[Br3admax]

Comrade Wakizashi wrote...

Dean_the_Young wrote...

Obadiah wrote...

Ieldra2...
...
Apart from that, I find it inappropriate to apply human ideas of justice to entities so clearly non-human, so clearly not made as a social species. According to Legion in ME2, this is racist...

This is ridiculous. Being an alien does not make the Reapers unaccountable for their actions or beyond judgement. It just makes their motives alien. It is not racist to judge and alien species that is committing a crime against you, especially one that understands us enough to know that we would think that what it is doing is a gross violation of ourselves and a crime.

I think you missed the 'mind controlled slaves' part.

But sure, let's play the moral absolutism. Why is your morality the standard for it? Are you a murderer for killing ants, even though behavioral analysis can show that ants do not appreciate being killed?

Are you a murderer for killing ants, you ask. In fact, according to the definition of murder, you actually are.
The fact that the Reapers keep doing their genocidal work and will never stop by themselves makes it even worse. Wether or not they have free will doesn't matter. They are built and created for destruction, and the threat persists as long as they exist. The only logical solution for when you want to be sure is total destruction.

I agree with most of this, but that's not the definition of murder.
noun

• 1.the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.

The verb is the act of doing this. 

[Oni Changas]

See, you don't bring reapers to court. The very concept of that is... stupid. >_>

Some war criminals should just die off.

[wright1978]

MattFini wrote...

I choose destroy because, yes, maybe the peace doesn't last, but it's up to the galaxy to decide that without the shadow of the reapers hovering over it.

Yeah having them hovering over as puppets or gaining domination as demi-gods isn't of interest to me. I view their death as more akin to putting down a dangerous animal that has learn from aeons to savage at its masters command. There's an element of late justice there too in ending the abomination that sentient lifeforms were turned into against their will and yeah vengeance plays its part too.

[jamesp81]

Ieldra2 wrote...

@OP:
Since when are mind-controlled slaves responsible for their actions? That they are mind-controlled isn't just speculation, it is (a) told you by the Catalyst (though the exact nature of this control isn't specified) and ( a very plausible conclusion from the fact that Reapers made from so many different species, containing billions of uploaded minds, work for a single purpose. And - as some claim - if they're not valid remnants of the species of old cycles, then they're built for a single purpose: to perpetuate the cycle. In either case, they never had the freedom of choice.

For the post-Synthesis future, it is important to note that they won't be bound to a single purpose anymore. If they are really valid remnants of old cycles' species, then some of them will be horrified by what they've done - possibly that's one reason why Reapers help in rebuilding civilization. Some of them will not care, of course, and others might even be actively hostile, but since they're not bound to a single purpose anymore they won't present such a potential hazard.

Relevant thread (since everything here has bee said before):

On the nature of the Catalyst and the Reapers....

Apart from that, I find it inappropriate to apply human ideas of justice to entities so clearly non-human, so clearly not made as a social species. According to Legion in ME2, this is racist...

Legion doesn't know everything.

Even if you assume that the Reapers are not willingly part of the cycle, it doesn't matter.  Destroy destroys the Catalyst, the brains behind the entire operation.  The price is worth it to get rid of that thing.

[Zso_Zso]

Since the catalyst is an AI, i.e. software that needs a hardware to run on and obviously that hardware is part of the citadel, wouldn't it be enough to blow up / destroy / vaporize the citadel o get rid of the catalyst ?

That would free up the reapers from their controlling "master", then they would get back their free will.

Only then we would be able to see whether or not they are innocent tools / puppets or willing participants in the genocide.

[General TSAR]

Would you want the Reapers to have free will?

What prevents the newly freed Reapers from violently subjugating the Galaxy and establishing their own little Totalitarian rule?

Regardless, all Reapers are responsible for the genocide of Trillions. 

Modifié par General TSAR, 15 janvier 2014 - 04:28 .

[NeonFlux117]

I believe the "Reapers" have free will. Well, to exact. I believe one Reaper has free will. I don't know about the rest of it's minions.

But according to the OG Reaper- "We are each a nation". But Nazara said a lot of things. So.. Yeah.

[Ieldra]

Obadiah wrote...
@HYR 2.0 and Ieldra2
I don't believe that the Reapers are merely puppets or completely controlled, and I think that perspective is a hard stretch given the conversations with Sovereign, Harbinger, and the Rannoch Destroyer.

However, even if the Reapers were acting on some initially given purpose by the Catalyst and Leviathan, they've been in existence for millions of years. In that time they have certainly had an opportunity to change and didn't. If the Reapers were merely acting as part of the Catalyst whole, or so completely mind controlled that they did not realize that they were mind controlled, this does not put their actions beyond judgement. The Catalyst, or the Catalyst/Reaper being's actions as a whole, could be judged and some restitution/justice sought. None appears to be in Synthesis.

We can speculate on what level of control the Reapers were under, but the bottom line is that even in the EC epilogue, we never hear of the Reapers acknowledging any wrongdoing for their purpose or actions, which indicates some willingness, righteousness, and therefore "guilt" on their part.

Of course they don't. Morality is a matter of perspective, and from their perspective, which was built into them and which they couldn't change, what they were doing was actually the right thing, until Shepard "changed the variables".

As for mind-control: if you realize you're controlled, your mind isn't controlled, only your body. The term mind-control, as control *of* a mind (this often gets mixed up with control *by* a mind), implies that you are unaware unless your master wants you to be aware. You can't be aware otherwise because your will is subverted and you're thinking what your master allows you to think. The insidious thing is that you can still have an independent personality while mind-controlled, if the mind-control does nothing more than maintain a single truth in your mind: "The cycle is necessary. You are what you were always destined to be and you're doing what needs to be done for the good of all organic life."

If you absolutely must judge someone, judge the Catalyst, but even that is problematic because the Catalyst has a perspective you can't encompass. It is far from impossible that the Catalyst was actually right and that if it had not intervened, anything like the current galactic civilization would have long ceased to exist. There is no contextless morality. You can't ask "what is good" without asking "good for what", and then this becomes a question of justifying goals and the methods to reach them. Yes, I would judge the methods of the cycle as unnecessarily cruel, but I - speaking as one of my Shepards - would not judge the cycle itself without taking the bigger picture into account, and the fact that I am of a civilization which owes its existence to it. 

Just as given the Catalyst's nature, it couldn't act in a different way than it did, and given human nature, we couldn't act in any other way than doing our utmost to stop it. It's not a question of morality any more but of fate. Once the leviathans set the Intelligence on its path, the course of galactic history was more or less predetermined, and the only open question was which cycle would be the one to change the variables.

As a sidenote: given that there is no contextless morality, you could ask: so synthetics will eventually surpass and destroy organics. So what? They're clearly superior and deserve to inherit the galaxy. Why go to such lengths to prevent it? Within the context of the story, of course the reason is the leviathan's self-interest. Yet again, it's not a matter of morality but of survival. As I see it, ME's story is truly beyond good and evil. Not that the writers intended it that way - the story goes out of its way to present the human viewpoint as the absolute. But those heavy-handed attempts (see Arrival) only serve to show how ridiculous this is.

Modifié par Ieldra2, 15 janvier 2014 - 04:49 .

[FlyingSquirrel]

As I've argued elsewhere, the Leviathans are the ones who really committed the "crime" here. The Catalyst instigated the cycles, and the Reapers were its tools. You don't have to accept the Catalyst's cockamamie logic that the cycles were ever "necessary" to think that the Catalyst and the Reapers don't bear the same culpability for the cycles as, say, an individual criminal who committs mass murder.

We don't see what happens to the Leviathans in any of the epilogues, so the question of whether "justice" is served to them is left up in the air. I would think that at the very least, there would be a general directive to the galaxy to destroy their enthrallment spheres wherever they turn up and that the survivors of the war will keep a very close eye on 2181 Despoina. Past that, is it clear if any of the Leviathans who originally created and unleashed the Catalyst are even still alive? And would they be granted some sort of amnesty for agreeing to help in the war? Hard to say - I imagine they could be confined to that planet if they proved uncooperative, as long as they can't use their spheres.

Modifié par FlyingSquirrel, 15 janvier 2014 - 04:51 .

[NeonFlux117]

FlyingSquirrel wrote...

As I've argued elsewhere, the Leviathans are the ones who really committed the "crime" here. The Catalyst instigated the cycles, and the Reapers were its tools. You don't have to accept the Catalyst's cockamamie logic that the cycles were ever "necessary" to think that the Catalyst and the Reapers don't bear the same culpability for the cycles as, say, an individual criminal who committs mass murder.

We don't see what happens to the Leviathans in any of the epilogues, so the question of whether "justice" is served to them is left up in the air. I would think that at the very least, there would be a general directive to the galaxy to destroy their enthrallment spheres wherever they turn up and that the survivors of the war will keep a very close eye on 2181 Despoina. Past that, is it clear if any of the Leviathans who originally created and unleashed the Catalyst are even still alive? And would they be granted some sort of amnesty for agreeing to help in the war? Hard to say - I imagine they could be confined to that planet if they proved uncooperative, as long as they can't use their spheres.

Yeah. The Leviathan are a bunch of d-bag's to the utmost degree. 

[FlyingSquirrel]

General TSAR wrote...

Would you want the Reapers to have free will?

What prevents the newly freed Reapers from violently subjugating the Galaxy and establishing their own little Totalitarian rule?

Why *would* they do that? AI-Shepard isn't going to allow it in Control, and in Synthesis they seem to be cooperating with other species.

*Could* they do it? Yes, but living beings theoretically *could* do all sorts of horrible things that they don't, in fact, end up doing.

[Invisible Man]

If you could somehow put the reapers on trial, how would you do it? as I can’t think of a venue that would grant them a fare one? unless you simply plan to skip the trial and start executing them, well assuming you could kill them effectively.

after all is said and done, we still don’t really know how the reapers function. So, we can’t really decide how culpable they are for their actions. If they are merely the catalyst’s tools, with no free will… you can’t drag a smart bomb to court and charge it for destroying a school, well assuming you could put the pieces back together and make it functional again. or are we going to punish the counsel for doing nothing before the invasion, even though they knew or suspected that the reapers are out there? those civilians kidnapped by cerberus and brainwashed/implanted, you going to charge them with crimes, assuming those optical flashbangs don’t kill them all?

[AlanC9]

Ieldra2 wrote...
As for mind-control: if you realize you're controlled, your mind isn't controlled, only your body. The term mind-control, as control *of* a mind (this often gets mixed up with control *by* a mind), implies that you are unaware unless your master wants you to be aware. You can't be aware otherwise because your will is subverted and you're thinking what your master allows you to think. The insidious thing is that you can still have an independent personality while mind-controlled, if the mind-control does nothing more than maintain a single truth in your mind: "The cycle is necessary. You are what you were always destined to be and you're doing what needs to be done for the good of all organic life."

Note that Bio seems to have mixed this up a bit themselves. Benezia sometimes talks like Saren installed an alternate personality in her brain and put it in charge, and sometimes talks like Saren changed her existing personality.

Modifié par AlanC9, 15 janvier 2014 - 05:10 .

[AlanC9]

FlyingSquirrel wrote...

General TSAR wrote...

Would you want the Reapers to have free will?

What prevents the newly freed Reapers from violently subjugating the Galaxy and establishing their own little Totalitarian rule?

Why *would* they do that? AI-Shepard isn't going to allow it in Control, and in Synthesis they seem to be cooperating with other species.

*Could* they do it? Yes, but living beings theoretically *could* do all sorts of horrible things that they don't, in fact, end up doing.

He's got a point, though, considering the way Reaoers reproduce. Though it's not at all clear they would have a reproductive instinct the way naturally-evolving species do.

[ImaginaryMatter]

I think the question, unfortunately, doesn't have an answer. Throughout the series the exact nature of the Reapers seems to change around every other time someone talks about them, so much so that I do not think there is a single cohesive concept that includes all the little bits of revelations, interactions, speculations, etc. This is kind of a lame answer, but I think the only reasonable conclusion is to just handwave their nature as being too incomprehensible and concepts like culpability and justice just don't apply to them because of that.