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[Han Shot First]

Indeed.

 

The Leviathan DLC revealed the Catalyst to be nothing more than a failed A.I., misinterpreting its mandate thanks to the flawed programming of its creators. It is no more clairvoyant than Miss Cleo.

 

You can disregard nearly everything it says about the inevitability of conflict between organic and synthetic or the apocalyptic doom assumed to follow . That is the programming of the Leviathans speaking, and it possesses no crystal ball capable of gazing into the future. The Catalyst is Mass Effect's Harold Camping.

 

Shoot the tube.

[SwobyJ]

Indeed.

 

The Leviathan DLC revealed the Catalyst to be nothing more than a failed A.I., misinterpreting its mandate thanks to the flawed programming of its creators. It is no more clairvoyant than Miss Cleo.

 

You can disregard nearly everything it says about the inevitability of conflict between organic and synthetic or the apocalyptic doom assumed to follow . That is the programming of the Leviathans speaking, and it possesses no crystal ball capable of gazing into the future. The Catalyst is Mass Effect's Harold Camping.

 

Shoot the tube.

 

It just says the chaos will come back.

 

Chaos being organics making/developing AI and being in conflict with them.

 

Shooting the tube, for Shepard himself, isn't going 'that'll never happen'. Its him going 'we'll deal with it regardless, without you'.

 

Bringing peace with Quarians and Geth only allows immediate unification for a war.. against other machines. It is a good sign though. One that even a Destroyer can use, in their hope for a better future.

 

That's what it is about. Hope. Or the lack of it. You don't need it, to do your job.

 

Catalyst is no Harold Camping. He/It acts on predictive models, obviously. Models based on history. The Prothians, for example (if we are to believe Javik's tales at all) fought the Metacon War against machines. Okay, they won. Awesome.

But how many Prothians died in the process? Thousands? Millions? Billions? More?

Organics die, and never return. Chaos. Conflicts like this could have been averted. In fact, this is the kind of thing that Paragon Shepards often live for. To safeguard others. To ensure that they have a chance, that isn't cut short by great conflict beyond their own control.

 

Catalyst never says "You're all gonna die when the robots come back!". No. It just says 'chaos' and 'conflict'. All of that is gonna happen at some point. Without Reapers to police it, it'll happen even worse than otherwise, for sure. With Reapers to police it, you take the chance that the Reapers won't go out of control. Either is a risk. With Destroy, you are gambling lives for the sake of greater freedom of those lives. With Control, you are gaming the galaxy and allowing the Reapers to fix their mistakes, but someone else better not take the controller from you!

[KaiserShep]

I like the idea that chaos is an inextricable part of the universe, and that no amount of glowing techno-prophets will ever change that.

[themikefest]

Leviathan had the big head. They were so powerful that whatever they said or did was right no matter what the consequences would be. Till one day they created "Leviathan Junior" or what I like to call the thing "Leviathan Turd". They loaded it up with windows Levaithan, a faulty software from the get go and the Turd has been running on that faulty software for the last billion years. All it needs is a software upgrade to fix the fault. Along comes the giant microphone. It changes the Turd and tells us about 3 options to choose from. Shooting the tube gets rid of its toys and the turd for good.

[Han Shot First]

 

 

Catalyst never says "You're all gonna die when the robots come back!". No. It just says 'chaos' and 'conflict'. All of that is gonna happen at some point. Without Reapers to police it, it'll happen even worse than otherwise, for sure. With Reapers to police it, you take the chance that the Reapers won't go out of control. Either is a risk. With Destroy, you are gambling lives for the sake of greater freedom of those lives. With Control, you are gaming the galaxy and allowing the Reapers to fix their mistakes, but someone else better not take the controller from you!

 

And in Synthesis you're destroying the very essence of what makes us human. You also deny the right of free will to billions of sapient beings. And all for a 'maybe.'

 

The Catalyst's argument just isn't very compelling. 

[KaiserShep]

The gambling inherent with freedom is part of the fun.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

And in Synthesis you're destroying the very essence of what makes us human. You also deny the right of free will to billions of sapient beings. And all for a 'maybe.'

 

The Catalyst's argument just isn't very compelling. 

 

Personally, I dismiss that argument.

 

There are other, much better arguments than that against synthesis. 

 

I too think it's bad, but not for these reasons.

[Iakus]

Hold on a second. I'd sooner promote cloning an army of Illusive Men before I promote that crackpot theory. I'm simply talking about the Catalyst's assertions and predictions of the future.

I can reject the Catalyst's assertions all I want.  But every choice I make is a "solution" for its "problem"

 

The problem doesn't exist, but the fallout for "solving" the problem is still there.

 

I simply can't get behind having to deal with real consequences for a pretend problem.  Thus why I wish I could back IT, where it's all a dream anyway.

[Iakus]

Its like it still a machine or something.

 

Wait, you're wanting *more* space magic? To get the happiest ending you can think of?

 

if the answer to the problem is "Space Magic" then they might as well use enough to actually solve the problem.  Not dribble out however much Bioware thinks we 'deserve"

 

Ideally, things would have been set up where gains and losses would have been based on, you know, the state of the galaxy itself, not on how well they can build the giant wand and yell "Crucio!" "Imperio!" or "Avada Kadavra!"

[dreamgazer]

I simply can't get behind having to deal with real consequences for a pretend problem.

 

It's not a pretend problem, though. A debatable one, sure, that you can reject in two different ways, but not pretend.

 

But yes, there are repercussions to overloading all Reaper life signatures in the galaxy.

[KaiserShep]

Destroy in no way addresses the Catalyst's problem, per its own words that the conflict will one day return. I see it simply as a rejection of its assertions without feebly posturing with some kind of spiel about freedom while doing nothing but idling on the platform, waiting for the war to grind to a halt after the reapers win.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

I can reject the Catalyst's assertions all I want.  But every choice I make is a "solution" for its "problem"

 

The problem doesn't exist, but the fallout for "solving" the problem is still there.

 

I simply can't get behind having to deal with real consequences for a pretend problem.  Thus why I wish I could back IT, where it's all a dream anyway.

 

It's not a pretend problem. It's a very real problem, and the solutions for it are very real. 

 

You pretending the problem doesn't exist doesn't make it less so of a problem. It seems to me that you just can't deal with bad consequences for such a problem, and it being a no-win scenario. 

 

The bigger issue is what the relevance to the problem is in the end-game and how it affects your decision making process. And of course, there are a lot more problems to it than just whether the problem is real or not. The consequences are themselves fueled by actions of 'space magic'.

[Iakus]

It's not a pretend problem, though. A debatable one, sure, that you can reject in two different ways, but not pretend.

 

But yes, there are repercussions to overloading all Reaper life signatures in the galaxy.

 

You mean all synthetic life

Destroy in no way addresses the Catalyst's problem, per its own words that the conflict will one day return. I see it simply as a rejection of its assertions without feebly posturing with some kind of spiel about freedom while doing nothing but idling on the platform, waiting for the war to grind to a halt after the reapers win.

It's a short-term solution.  For a time at least, the only life in the galaxy will be organic.

[Iakus]

It's not a pretend problem. It's a very real problem, and the solutions for it are very real. 

 

You pretending the problem doesn't exist doesn't make it less so of a problem. It seems to me that you just can't deal with bad consequences for such a problem, and it being a no-win scenario. 

 

The bigger issue is what the relevance to the problem is in the end-game and how it affects your decision making process. 

They have not made the case that the problem is real, let alone immediate.  Therefore, the "problem" is irrelevant to me

[KaiserShep]

It's a short-term solution.  For a time at least, the only life in the galaxy will be organic.

 

Short-term is relative. This solution could last for hundreds if not thousands of years before anything particularly serious comes about, but in that time, there's really no telling what could happen and how society will develop, because this would be the first cycle that actually survived the reaper extinction, and has a lot of history to work with. As Mordin would say, there are just too many variables.

[dreamgazer]

You mean all synthetic life

 

I mean there are repercussions to overloading all Reaper life signatures in the galaxy. 

[MassivelyEffective0730]

You mean all synthetic life

It's a short-term solution.  For a time at least, the only life in the galaxy will be organic.

 

Yes, that is the cost. Not an insignificant one, but depending on your values, a worthwhile one.

 

It can be a long-term solution. Why do you even need to have Sapient Synthetic Life anyway? We won't repeat the mistake before by simply not making any new artificial forms of life that can be intelligent.

[MassivelyEffective0730]

They have not made the case that the problem is real, let alone immediate.  Therefore, the "problem" is irrelevant to me

 

Then that's your own problem to deal with when the problem inevitably comes to a head. 

[KaiserShep]

The wildcards would be the people using AI for their shenanigans. Case in point: the guy that made the credit scam program on the Citadel. Why he needed to actually create an AI to do this is anyone's guess. It's like Michael Bolton creating Skynet to steal fractions of cents in Office Space.

[SwobyJ]

I like the idea that chaos is an inextricable part of the universe, and that no amount of glowing techno-prophets will ever change that.

 

Pretty sure every character believes this.

 

They just disagree with how to deal with it.

 

One may love freedom and free will all they want, until a murderer tries to stab you in the street without repercussion. Then you'll want 'order', 'laws', 'justice', and 'protection', so that the risk of it happening again is lowered. Or not. But many will. Especially if they have children that they want to ensure live happy, long lives - not cut short by someone else's 'free will'.

[Han Shot First]

Short-term is relative. This solution could last for hundreds if not thousands of years before anything particularly serious comes about, but in that time, there's really no telling what could happen and how society will develop, because this would be the first cycle that actually survived the reaper extinction, and has a lot of history to work with. As Mordin would say, there are just too many variables.

 

Agreed.

 

Also right now we live in the possibility that our species may one day destroy itself, either through destruction of the natural environment or through nuclear war. Would anyone seriously consider turning our species into cyborgs as a preemptive solution to either of those possibilities?

 

Obviously the answer to that, at least for sane and rational people, is 'no.' So why should Shepard give any thought to Synthesis?

[SwobyJ]

And in Synthesis you're destroying the very essence of what makes us human. You also deny the right of free will to billions of sapient beings. And all for a 'maybe.'

 

The Catalyst's argument just isn't very compelling. 

 

Is 'human' our bodies and gooey brains?

 

Many would, and do, disagree with that. There are many, many 'humans' (by what you're defining in comparing Synthesis) that are absolute scum, not worthy of being alive by our opinions.

 

If or when people are able to create copies of their brains and their signals in synthetic form, will you be one to declare that the beings that arise from this are not human?

 

Right now, this is a safe thing to say "No" to. In the future decades and more surely centuries, maybe not. Maybe it'll be seen as arrogant hatred, denying entities the right to their lives, via natural or artificial creation.

 

~~~

 

This 'maybe' is calculated by an entity with possibly trillions of years of data to work with. Whatever this cycle experienced is a flash compared to what this Catalyst has.

 

I chose Destroy anyway. I propose the questions - but I already decided that my answer is 'We'll figure it out ourselves regardless'.

[SwobyJ]

The gambling inherent with freedom is part of the fun.

 

Until you go broke and stumble alone in the streets.

 

[SwobyJ]

if the answer to the problem is "Space Magic" then they might as well use enough to actually solve the problem.  Not dribble out however much Bioware thinks we 'deserve"

 

Ideally, things would have been set up where gains and losses would have been based on, you know, the state of the galaxy itself, not on how well they can build the giant wand and yell "Crucio!" "Imperio!" or "Avada Kadavra!"

Meh. It's a dream, nightmare, reality, illusion, whatever you decide it is.

 

I'm more interested in what Bioware decides to do with it, then then ending itself at this point. I know you don't want ANYTHING, but I want something. So there.

 

I can't help shake the feeling that by using a giant (kinda sorta) Deux Ex Machina, Bioware is going "HEY GUYS, WE'RE USING SOMETHING REALLY OBVIOUS AND SILLY HERE. MAYBE THAT MEANS SOMETHING.", instead of them really wanting us to take it as seriously as so many here do.

[SwobyJ]

Destroy in no way addresses the Catalyst's problem, per its own words that the conflict will one day return. I see it simply as a rejection of its assertions without feebly posturing with some kind of spiel about freedom while doing nothing but idling on the platform, waiting for the war to grind to a halt after the reapers win.

 

Completely agree.

 

It is accepting that the Reapers are here, a threat, the enemy, and that you'll use whatever you can as a direct weapon against them, without taking on anything of their beliefs, motivations, or inhuman (by your definition) technologies.

 

A big gun - that is very human. Very familiar.