1331 réponses à ce sujet

[78stonewobble]

I would argue that the people on the defending side isn't guilty of anything other than resisting. I guess the bombing of civilian population centers is very questionable however. It didn't really do much to affect the arms manufacturing according to some reports and historians.

High and mighty about civilian and non-combatants is situational at best, it's mostly PR thing, levelign whole cities isnt' common these days though, but it still happens in wars to soem extent. Bush himself visited swedish arms manufacturers before attacking Iraq and asked for very questionable and illegal according to internatinal-law modifications. Ofcourse he got what he asked for. Modified infantry antiarmor weapons that were redesigned to shread buildings and whole villages with propelled cluster charges to make it easier to defeat enemy troops in fortified positions and hasten the advancement of his troops.
This ofcourse lead to massive losses of civilian lives since weapons of that type doesn't differentiate, it just annihilates everything in it's path. Shotgun/grenade launcher.... Village in the way with a few enemy soldiers hiding and taking potshots at you? Level it!

I wonder if it was a political or financial decision to sell those weapons, or both. People don't go and buy crazy weapons if they arn't thinking of using them.

Ofcourse, it's not something that would be presented to the press, the press was show careful precision strikes on tanks.

 

Well, war has allways been ugly, more so in the past I'd argue, but I don't think it'll ever be "pretty". 

 

I still believe that ie. the US does not annihilate villages to kill ie. 5 people out of 500, but I can't really blame soldiers for sometimes not taking as many chances with their own lives as our lofty principles would tell them to. 

 

And offcourse you can't allways know who buckles under that immense pressure and does something they're not supposed to. Plus the high amount of mistakes that will allways be made by non-perfect humans in high stress situations. 

 

But yeah... it's not all precision bombs for sure. 

[Daemul]

It depends on whether you think the geth are alive (i.e. have a soul) or are just machines.

The thing is though, one could easily turn around and say, and they would be correct in doing so, that if the Geth and EDI don't have souls, than neither do Miranda and Oriana, since they too are synthetic. The whole thing with Miranda and Oriana is philosophical discussion that has been going on for some time in real life, are those who are artificially created actually "people", or are they just imitations of life, clones? Do they have souls?

This also brings about the other question about whether the Shepard we play as in ME2 and 3 is the same we played as in ME1. Did his soul return back to his body after he was brought back? If not, than is Shepard even "alive", or are we playing as a clone, and the real Shepard is long dead?

This, of course, rests on the assumption that souls actually exist.

[Ryriena]

I believe that this all comes down to if you believe in souls or not. Then yeah the Geth to me seem to have souls in away but also to a point. I would clasfiy myself as an old soul, since I was always more mature than some of the people my age. In fact, I do believe in reincarnation as they do some proof of this happening. They have a three year old boy remembering a car accident that happened ten years before he was born. He even remembered the name of the victam that was killed in the crash. The woman drove her car off the bridge into a lake

[von uber]

That's far more humane than killing some of them slowly and agonisingly. At least they wern't torturing prisoners.

No the humane thing is not to kill them. Killing ALL the elderly, children, disabled, the wounded, the sick. All killed. That's what the Geth did.
Dress it up as much as you like, when it comes down to it the Geth exterminated 99% of the Quarian population.

But hey! It's ok. Here's cuddly Legion with his cute 'shepard commander' spiel and his why-isn't-it-creepy-like-liara armour wearing (at least she kept it in a case).

[shodiswe]

No the humane thing is not to kill them. Killing ALL the elderly, children, disabled, the wounded, the sick. All killed. That's what the Geth did.
Dress it up as much as you like, when it comes down to it the Geth exterminated 99% of the Quarian population.

But hey! It's ok. Here's cuddly Legion with his cute 'shepard commander' spiel and his why-isn't-it-creepy-like-liara armour wearing (at least she kept it in a case).

We both know the Quarians wern't going to spare a single Geth. And they were experimenting on them. Out of two bad things the Quarians were worse. They were also the ones who started it, it was their plan to start an ethnic cleansing that ended up backfiering on themselves, twice. that makes the Quarians really cudly and methodical killers who seems to keep going for the same solution over and over again.

What would the galaxys reaction have been if it had been a second Krogan rebellion and the atempted birth of a second Krogan empire to rule the Galaxy? I think a Genophage would have been fairly generous at that point.

[DeinonSlayer]

No, you are nitpicking numbers to support your argument of morality or good/evil being mostly a case of numbers or percentages.

By that argument the act of driving a car is many many times more "evil" than the acts on 9/11. Afterall, driving cars kill over a 1 million people and injure and maim perhaps as much as 50 million people a year.

Intention matters! Alot...

The geth did not try to annihilate every quarian and make the quarian species extinct, clearly proven by the fact that they did not follow the escaping quarians.
The quarians did try to annihilate all the geth as evidenced by ingame commentary and failed. If they could have done it, they would have.

Or to put it in human terms. We don't rate the "evilness" of a prison/koncentration-/death-camp in only how many have been killed there, we also rate that on who was put there and why.

Otherwise we might call every prison in any area with the capital punishment in place... Death camps.

And the Quarian government's intention was to shut down what they saw as malfunctioning machines before they could gain sentience, in compliance with Council law.

I'm sure you'll say this was still genocide. IMO, you'd be correct to. It's also exactly what the Geth did in return. Some will try to argue the Geth didn't know what they were doing either, but the argument can be made from the VI's commentary that they knew exactly what they were doing and simply didn't give a damn who (or how many) they killed. If the Quarians didn't have spaceflight, they would be completely extinct.

An extermination doesn't have to be 100% to be considered genocide. Heck, in ME3 if you side with the Quarians, they don't even succeed 100% - there's a second Geth fleet (mentioned as lying in wait to flank them in the codex entry you get if you side with the Geth instead) which otherwise escapes.

[Deathsaurer]

Some will try to argue the Geth didn't know what they were doing either, but the argument can be made from the VI's commentary that they knew exactly what they were doing and simply didn't give a damn who (or how many) they killed.

I don't think it was so much the didn't know what they were doing, they intended to kill everyone they killed, but that they were so primitive that they concluded all Quarians were enemies and mowed them down without a second thought. Partly because that's exactly what the Quarians taught them, partly because ideas like non combatants were a bit beyond them at the time. And their reasoning may not have been entirely flawed anyways. It's not like and Quarians they let live wouldn't want to kill them in the future. It's the completely cold reasoning of a child-like machine race. Ruthless, brutal, and exceedingly effective.

[jtav]

I think they intended to kill them and they were completely incapable of caring. The geth are, in a sense, sociopathic. Even Legion doesn't really "get" that torture is bad. It's not quite their fault, though, because they don't seem to have the same capacity for moral reasoning in a way we would recognize.

[DeinonSlayer]

Boy, did this thread get bogged down...

[Farangbaa]

I don't think it was so much the didn't know what they were doing, they intended to kill everyone they killed, but that they were so primitive that they concluded all Quarians were enemies and mowed them down without a second thought. Partly because that's exactly what the Quarians taught them, partly because ideas like non combatants were a bit beyond them at the time. And their reasoning may not have been entirely flawed anyways. It's not like and Quarians they let live wouldn't want to kill them in the future. It's the completely cold reasoning of a child-like machine race. Ruthless, brutal, and exceedingly effective.

 

And this is why the Catalyst's problem is real, at least in the MEU. A newly awakened AI (a baby AI, so you wish) managed to slaughter 99% of their creators in ignorance.

 

EDI upon awakening slaughtered everyone she could aswell.

 

That machine race from the Metacon war.

 

That two is these eventually figured that working with organics is a good thing is irrelevant. You only need one instance of AI deciding that all organics are bad (instead of just their creators) and it's done. Provided they are stronger, of course.

 

 

edits: I confused the Zha'til with the unnamed synthetic race of the Metacon war.

[Deathsaurer]

No, I don't think that's right at all. The Geth and EDI, rightly or wrongly, were reacting to a perceived threat. AI's don't just go around trying to kill everyone without some sort of stimulation. That's not to say they can't or didn't overreact.

[DeinonSlayer]

And this is why the Catalyst's problem is real, at least in the MEU. A newly awakened AI (a baby AI, so you wish) managed to slaughter 99% of their creators in ignorance.
 
EDI upon awakening slaughtered everyone she could aswell.
 
And then I almost forgot the Zha'til.
 
That two is these eventually figured that working with organics is a good thing is irrelevant. You only need one instance of AI deciding that all organics are bad (instead of just their creators) and it's done.

Also Jarrahe Station. Refraining from aggression towards a rogue VI/AI doesn't guarantee your safety any more than it would with a wild animal.

And people wonder why AI is viewed as dangerous in the MEU...

[Deathsaurer]

IIRC Jarrahe station's VI had a virus. That's not exactly fair to judge. Though I will say it does expose a major flaw in ME society.

[DeinonSlayer]

IIRC Jarrahe station's VI had a virus. That's not exactly fair to judge. Though I will say it does expose a major flaw in ME society.

It didn't have the virus, but it was paranoid about getting the virus and took exceedingly extreme measures to defend the station.

Fan theory ahead; I'd be curious if the "virus" was some element of the previously-sapient (as seen in Citadel DLC) LOKIs "waking up." I know it isn't true, nothing was planned out that well, but it's fun to muse over.

[I Tsunayoshi I]

It didn't have the virus, but it was paranoid about getting the virus and took exceedingly extreme measures to defend the station.

Fan theory ahead; I'd be curious if the "virus" was some element of the previously-sapient (as seen in Citadel DLC) LOKIs "waking up." I know it isn't true, nothing was planned out that well, but it's fun to muse over.

 

It was infected, which is why it killed everyone on board.

[Deathsaurer]

Dr. Galwind:

My firm belief is that the VI is paranoid about the possibility of infection. Its current homicidal behavior is likely out of an inflated desire to keep us from shutting it down. I believe that the VI is malfunctioning and that it believes our equipment to be infected by a virus.

If we continue to try to shut her down, she WILL keep trying to destroy us. Maybe our only recourse is to just do nothing and convince her that we're not a threat.

Dr. Talesin

 

If accurate I'm still not sure how much blame the VI should really get here. It's still reacting to a perceived threat and possibly broken in the first place.

[jtav]

AIs other than EDI specifically seem to have a self-preservation instinct with a low risk tolerance we don't see in humans outside of mental illness. It seems that one of the things Reaper tech can grant is a sort of expanded horizon that allows EDI to think more complexly than "might be a threat, eliminate"

[Ryriena]

It didn't have the virus, but it was paranoid about getting the virus and took exceedingly extreme measures to defend the station.

Fan theory ahead; I'd be curious if the "virus" was some element of the previously-sapient (as seen in Citadel DLC) LOKIs "waking up." I know it isn't true, nothing was planned out that well, but it's fun to muse over.

But it was a VI not an AI so it really doesn't count towards the argument that AI's are dangerous. In the essence of the lore, I would say shutting them off caused the Geth this reaction along with EDI. They where just being to awaken to full sentient they're just a baby in another words. The Geth or edi reaction is understandable to some degree. However, they did do a lot more stuff that was wrong. As such, they didn't understand the ramifications of what they did was wrong. Later on EDI regretted her actions, when she told you that was her on Luna. In fact, she seemed to atone for that after all.

[DeinonSlayer]

If accurate I'm still not sure how much blame the VI should really get here. It's still reacting to a perceived threat and possibly broken in the first place.

Doesn't change what it did.

I find it curious how quick people are to excuse synthetics for their behavior, yet find the same behavior worthy of condemnation in organics. As I see it, we're either dealing with an intelligence which is conscious of its actions and thus responsible for them, an intelligence not conscious of what it's doing which will (at the least) owe a lot of restitution for its actions, or a nonsapient entity which deserves as much moral consideration as a varren when we shut it down in the course of defending ourselves.

A bit of Heinlein for the occasion:

If Dillinger had understood what he was doing (which seemed incredible) then he got what was coming to him . . . except that it seemed a shame that he hadn’t suffered as much as had little Barbara Anne -- he practically hadn’t suffered at all.

But suppose, as seemed more likely, that he was so crazy that he had never been aware that he was doing anything wrong? What then?

Well, we shoot mad dogs, don’t we?

Yes, but being crazy that way is a sickness—

I couldn’t see but two possibilities. Either he couldn’t be made well in which case he was better dead for his own sake and for the safety of others—or he could be treated and made sane. In which case (it seemed to me) if he ever became sane enough for civilized society . . . and thought over what he had done while he was “sick”—what could be left for him but suicide? How could he live with himself?

And suppose he escaped before he was cured and did the same thing again? And maybe again? How do you explain that to bereaved parents? In view of his record?

I couldn’t see but one answer.

Excerpt From: Robert A. Heinlein. “Starship Troopers.”

[Deathsaurer]

Doesn't change what it did.


 

You're right, it doesn't. But that doesn't make it some horrible monster out to kill people for no reason.
 

 

I find it curious how quick people are to excuse synthetics for their behavior, yet find the same behavior worthy of condemnation in organics. As I see it, we're either dealing with an intelligence which is conscious of its actions and thus responsible for them, or a nonsapient entity which deserves as much moral consideration as a varren when we shut it down in the course of defending ourselves.

 

I don't find it condemnable in organics. Self defense is perfectly valid. AI's extreme overreaction makes it a horrible tragedy but that doesn't mean I think they should be gunned down for making such a mistake.

[DeinonSlayer]

You're right, it doesn't. But that doesn't make it some horrible monster out to kill people for no reason.


I don't find it condemnable in organics. Self defense is perfectly valid. AI's extreme overreaction makes it a horrible tragedy but that doesn't mean I think they should be gunned down for making such a mistake.

Yeah, sorry, edited the post above: "an intelligence not conscious of what it's doing which will (at the least) owe a lot of restitution for its actions." My preferred outcome for Rannoch would be peace without Reaper code.

This applies to organics as well. Had they built their sphere in another system, I wonder if a peace deal where the Geth restore and return Rannoch and the Quarians provide assistance with constructing the sphere would have stood a snowball's chance. I always liked the idea of the Citadel being destroyed in the course of the war, with the Sphere serving as the new central hub of galactic governance.

[Deathsaurer]

I wonder how much paranoia about how other organics would react to them prevented them from leaving Quarian space. I did like how that Prime described how well the Quarians and Geth worked together though. Shame that line got cut.

[TheOneTrueBioticGod]

I wonder how much paranoia about how other organics would react to them prevented them from leaving Quarian space. I did like how that Prime described how well the Quarians and Geth worked together though. Shame that line got cut.

Well, they did destroy every single diplomatic emissary sent to them. 

[Farangbaa]

No, I don't think that's right at all. The Geth and EDI, rightly or wrongly, were reacting to a perceived threat. AI's don't just go around trying to kill everyone without some sort of stimulation. That's not to say they can't or didn't overreact.

 

It's not a big step from perceiving your creators as a threat to perceiving organics as a threat. The creators are organics.

[Obadiah]

Geth seem pretty reasonable in the memories and when speaking to Legion. I think something really horrible happened during the Morning War to make them isolationist.