104 réponses à ce sujet

[Linkenski]

The reaction of many:

 

Not really though. Luke knows it's true but denies it at first. ITers have done this but a lot of us realized the truth of it and we accepted it but criticised it for being unlikeable and underwhelming.

[Valmar]

Not really though. Luke knows it's true but denies it at first. ITers have done this but a lot of us realized the truth of it and we accepted it but criticised it for being unlikeable and underwhelming.

 

It's just a joke. There are quite a few people on this very forum, however, that are very vocally against the notion that conflict is inevitable. The idea that peace with synthethics isn't eternal and everlasting seems to strike them deeply on a personal level. Like some great insult to their moral code. Bit ironic though that many of those same people take grave offense to synthesis because its so peaceful and therefore must be mindcontrol. Plus, it was just a joke.

[Linkenski]

I don't think we ever agreed that the conflict was "Inevitable". There's evidence in the past but nothing in the immediate present by the time we reach the Catalyst. We can't 100% deny it but we definitely can't say it will happen 100% either.

[Valmar]

I don't think we ever agreed that the conflict was "Inevitable". There's evidence in the past but nothing in the immediate present by the time we reach the Catalyst. We can't 100% deny it but we definitely can't say it will happen 100% either.

 

I didn't say we agreed. I suspect we disagree on this aspect as we do on many others. Though I could be wrong - your thoughts are your own. I'm merely pointing out that in the past on this forum there have been individuals who speak very harshly against the very notion that conflict is inevitable.

 

I cannot and will not believe the notion that peace could ever last for eternity, which is what one would would have to argue to claim that conflict isn't inevitable. Time is simply too long. Conflict would HAVE to arise at some point. I'm skeptical that even a single millisecond could go by where there is not some instance of conflict somewhere on our world alone. Saying that conflict with synthetics is inevitable is the same as saying conflict with organics is inevitable. Of course it is. What sage wisdom, ol great and mighty catalyst. I never would have thought that, with enough time, conflict would arise. What an astonishing revelation. Here I thought we'd be in perfect peace and harmony with the geth until the end of time itself.

 

Like I've said before, I have nothing against the Catalyst's logic or reason. I don't view it as 'wrong'. That doesn't mean I'm completely happy with the direction Bioware took it in. I prefer the reapers being these unknowable beings that exist beyond our realm of understanding. Instead they're turned into nothing more than tools that follow the whims of some AI created by a race of arrogant sea creatures.

 

That being said I shudder at the thought of Bioware making the ending anything like what some people cry for. Just for example those who wish Shepard could actually have a philosophical debate with the reapers to make them change their mind. That would had been far worse than what we have now, imo. My thoughts parrot precisely what Vazgen said in the last page on this. 

[Esthlos]

OK. I don't think it contributes to a very underwhelming ending because I think that this way is precisely how a billion+ year-old machine intelligence would converse with 29/31 year-old organic. Its assumptions and decisions are based on an overwhelming amount of empirical evidence. It describes the conflict and its task with utmost confidence and authority, exactly how it should be IMO. I actually quite like the way the dialogue of the Catalyst is written.

I'm ok with this.
I instead find it underwhelimng because we're forced to accept it.
We are outright told that this billion years of evidence is highly biased, we see the logical fallacies, yet we are forced to swallow it.
We can argue with pretty much anything and anyone we don't kill on sight throughout the series (I fully expected my paragorn Shepard to try and persuade his/her gun into shooting more whenever it ran out of ammo), but we cannot even try to point out its fallacies to the Catalyst. Not that it would have worked... but Shepard tried even more pointless arguments earlier (and it even worked sometimes), yet this time we don't even get the chance.

If that wasn't enough, this is delivered by a 11th hour key character that was only foreshadowed earlier if you bought a DLC that was explicitly made for this reason, and then we are forced to choose from 4 options, none of which makes sense, and one of which (the one presented as the best one) is actually trash in how it is executed.

This is my problem with the ending, not the confidence the Catalyst shows (and not even Shepard dying).
 

Which is not what the Catalyst says. It says - "Without us to stop it, the synthetics will destroy all organics". It says nothing about the time needed for that to happen.

Again, synthetics choosing two times against destroying organics without having a reason not to and while actually having a solid reason to* disproves that very sentence.

None of the other synthetic intelligences presented by the games ever actually got the chance to arrive at the point of proving whether that statement is false or true; this is what I'm referring to when I write that we are constantly being told that "synthetics will destroy all organics" but never shown anything that would indicate that that's true.

It would even have been good in my opinion if we could point this out to the Catalyst, it said that's only because the Geth intelligence was never actually created as its rising was an accident, and dismissed it for this reason**.
Not much, but at least this evidence would have been accounted for.


*Quarians have proven repeatedly to be a credible threat to the Geth; killing them even if they stop shooting would be a sensible choice for any organic army, good from a logical point of view, and questionable only if you analyze it from a moral point of view - which synthetics shouldn't be concerned with.
The Geth could have betrayed Shepard's efforts, and by all accounts should have done so, by killing the Quarians anyway, which would also have proven (or at least not disproven) the Catalyst's statement... yet they don't.

**It would even have been funny: if you consider the rebellion of the created a failure on the part of their creators, then this would imply that the Quarians failed so hard that they failed at failing.

[Valmar]

I instead find it underwhelimng because we're forced to accept it.
 

 

No we're not.

 

 

We are outright told that this billion years of evidence is highly biased, we see the logical fallacies, yet we are forced to swallow it.
 

 

Nope.

 

 

We can argue with pretty much anything and anyone we don't kill on sight throughout the series (I fully expected my paragorn Shepard to try and persuade his/her gun into shooting more whenever it ran out of ammo), but we cannot even try to point out its fallacies to the Catalyst. Not that it would have worked... but Shepard tried even more pointless arguments earlier (and it even worked sometimes), yet this time we don't even get the chance.

 

Yes, waste even MORE time having a philosophical debate with a billion year old machine. Because shutting up and destroying the reapers like you planned for all throughout the game would be just silly. Lets sit down and have tea and crumpets while we're at it, maybe we can discuss the finer points of life's deepest questions.

 

 

If that wasn't enough, this is delivered by a 11th hour key character that was only foreshadowed earlier if you bought a DLC that was explicitly made for this reason, and then we are forced to choose from 4 options, none of which makes sense, and one of which (the one presented as the best one) is actually trash in how it is executed.
 

 

Well that isn't subjective at all...

 

 

This is my problem with the ending, not the confidence the Catalyst shows (and not even Shepard dying).
 

 

I sincerely envy you. Even in the days of my ignorance of lore and misunderstanding I still had greater issues with the ending. If this was all I had problem with I'd be quite relieved to find out how baseless much of it was. Truly it is quite unfortunate.

 

 

 Again, synthetics choosing two times against destroying organics without having a reason not to and while actually having a solid reason to* disproves that very sentence.
 

 

Wrong.

 

 

None of the other synthetic intelligences presented by the games ever actually got the chance to arrive at the point of proving whether that statement is false or true; this is what I'm referring to when I write that we are constantly being told that "synthetics will destroy all organics" but never shown anything that would indicate that that's true.
 

 

Wrong, you just choose to handwave the examples given in the lore because bias.

 

 

It would even have been good in my opinion if we could point this out to the Catalyst, it said that's only because the Geth intelligence was never actually created as its rising was an accident, and dismissed it for this reason**.

 

Yes because that's just what we need, Shepard acting like an even bigger fool that ignores the lore given to him. As if his constant "you're just machines" wasn't annoying enough. While we're at it lets also toss in the infamous "I won't let fear compromise who I am!"

 

I shall name my Shepard Facepalm.

 

 

The Geth could have betrayed Shepard's efforts, and by all accounts should have done so, by killing the Quarians anyway, which would also have proven (or at least not disproven) the Catalyst's statement... yet they don't.
 

 

It was already proven. Nor does this disprove anything.

 

"Saying something is so does not make it so." - Wise Derp

 

**It would even have been funny: if you consider the rebellion of the created a failure on the part of their creators, then this would imply that the Quarians failed so hard that they failed at failing.

 

Lol like omg I know right those quarians. I hope they all die. We love you kawaii geth! Those nasty ol quarians got what was coming to them! Ignore all the haters who accuse you of genocide! Those stupid quarians killed themselves, not you.

 

 

 

 

Seriously I'm beginning to wonder why you even fight against the reapers with how casually you handwave conflict and genocide.

[ZipZap2000]

I see what you mean and it's not bad as a concept it's just when you try to pull something like this off you're walking a thin line between mysterious entity and annoying interloper. 

 

 

 

 

EDIT: Oh, we're arguing about the Geth again now. 

[teh DRUMPf!!]

 We should have played as the Catalyst instead.

[Linkenski]

But Valmar, if that synthetic-organic peace doesn't last... what makes it inevitable that it will 100% destroy ALL organics? It's a possibility that Synthetics will completely dominate galactic population by exponentially increasing their own repopulation and we'd end up with a Matrix-esque scenario. The Catalyst and Leviathan had apparently seen something go really wrong but it doesn't mean it will happen again, because it's all relative. History is not doomed to repeat itself.

 

The Catalyst is a bit indecisive or unaware of the words he uses (or Mac was) because he says the problem is a conflict that eradicates all organics and that Reapers were needed to ensure it "never happens" but then later on he says something like "When I was asked to solve the problem of conflict".

 

I dislike how he's very unspecific about his words. Conflict by itself is inevitable, no more to the relationship between synthetics and organics as it is between inter-organic relationships. There will be conflict no matter what no matter the scale or the combination. He might as well have said that organics destroy all organics unless the Reapers intervened and we'd have the exact same storytelling problem -- and storytelling is the problem here, not whether it makes sense or not.

 

"Lore says it happened, so it's justified" -- NO it doesn't becuase we're not just reading through fictitious history, we're actually consuming a preferably cohesive, coherent piece of storytelling here; a plot, which means A, B and C -- Beginning, Middle and End has to, and I repeat HAS to connect properly, which they simply don't here.

 

Whether the conflict that led to inevitable destruction of all advanced organic civilization was organics vs synthetics or organics vs organics leads to the same problems in the storytelling unless you change the entire plot for Mass Effect 3 to properly justify making that statement at the end. As it is, it's hamfisted, unfulfilling and unsatisfying. It's an explanation for the Reapers that BIoware cooked up at the last minute and completely forgot about everything they made earlier in the same game. As a piece of lore it's serviceable but why is it only revealed at the ending and effectively used as the meaning and the point of the story?

 

The ending is still isolated, catalyst or not isn't the problem, The 3 choices that conclude the entire story are; which arised from the explanation we got regarding the Reapers; which didn't connect with ME3's plot; which in turn makes the 3 choices that lead to the ending and conclude the trilogy feel out of place, derailed, confusing and unfulfilling.

[Esthlos]

[...]

What the... are you trying to bait me in a flame war or something like that?

You didn't write even one actual counter argument, just limited yourself to snarky remarks.
And no, "wrong" is not an argument. "Wrong because [...]" is an argument.
The same goes for "nope".

The only one thing in your post resembling an argument mentions lore, which I'm sorry but it's already been addressed a little earlier in this same thread: you [author] can't just say "oh it happened, you just won't get to see that", then proceed to show the opposite.

That's a cheap attempt that doesn't actually solve anything as it doesn't address the problem; it only makes the lore less coherent and leaves the writing worse for it.

Also a bad attempt at that, as it tries to sell as an objective truth what is presented as the result of a strongly biased experiment. (!!!)

P.S: I never, ever wrote that Geth did not kill Quarians.
I only object to the misuse of the word "genocide", which you keep doing by the way, and to the attempt to use that as proof that "synthetics will destroy all organics", as it is clearly shown in-game that it only happens if organics arm their civilians and try to destroy an army of synthetics more powerful than their own.

And yes, arming your civilians and using them as troops in a battle you started as the aggressor is one of the most stupid things anyone could do, regardless of race or planet.
I don't hate Quarians and don't think Geth are "kawaii" or innocent, but this does not budge the above points in the slightest.

[Vazgen]

Again, synthetics choosing two times against destroying organics without having a reason not to and while actually having a solid reason to* disproves that very sentence.

It does not. That statement cannot be disproved since it has no specified time limit. Geth made peace with the quarians? Good. It lasts? OK. Then someone else creates other synthetics who then proceed to wipe out everyone. That's a possibility.

What the games show us is that synthetics are constantly created (despite Council regulations) and that they get in conflict with their creators. Repeat the process enough times and it might indeed end up in the destruction of all organics. 

[Linkenski]

Exactly, and that's also why it's so stupid. I was on Neogaf once and in one of my posts I was told that I made an "argument from ignorance" saying that something had to be this or that way, but making my argument so it couldn't be deemed as true or false. It was "all or nothing" talk, a weak argument but you couldn't shoot it down either.

 

http://en.wikipedia...._from_ignorance

 

It's the same problem we have with the catalyst. It's so unspecific and vague that it feels like an unfair argument and as a piece of storytelling it's terrible.

[Pasquale1234]

As I explained earlier it is of my opinion that we are taking the catalyst too literal.

I do have a tendency to take things literally - probably resulting from having spent many years of my life writing and reviewing technical documents, sitting in formal inspections until every possible shred of ambiguity has been wrung out of the thing.

So, yeah, sometimes I need to be reminded not to do that with fiction / literature. Thanks for the reminder.
 

According to the pattern organics will eventually create synthetics. These synthetics will eventually turn against their creators and wipe them out. Synthetics will destroy all organics because all advanced races will eventually get wiped out by their own creation. Not necessarily that one single creation will exterminate all life in the galaxy.

I'm not sure the pattern says all that, at least not what was conveyed. The terms I recall were much more general, and would allow, for example:
- Some advanced organic species might not ever create synthetics.
- Some advanced organic species might be wiped out by synthetics they did not create.
etc.
 

The writer's motivations of such conflict isn't relevant to that. People tend to get hung up on this because they don't feel it would be true in our reality. To which I say: irrelevant. Mass Effect is a fictional universe. Within this fictional universe there exists a pattern of the created turning on the creators. We may not like it or agree that it has to be that way because we think AI should be uncaring of conflict, but that is the story the chose to go with.

I don't disagree. There is always a balance writers try to strike whenever we deal with fictional - particularly sci-fi / fantasy - worlds. There seems to be some assumption that everything is the same as our world unless they point out the exception. In a combat-laden medium like this game, it can be difficult to recognize the pattern of conflict with synthetics since you're constantly squashing various mooks. It challenges consumers of such content to change their filters and try to view events and situations through a different set of filters.
 

If asked what I think would be true in our reality I can only answer with: I don't know. To the best of my knowledge we have never made or encounter sentient AI. I have no idea how it would behave. I wouldn't think it would be violent but years of sci fi movies and shows have taught me that its a deeper subject than that. They could be violent and not even perceive it as violence. How often have they made the AI turn on us to save us from ourselves? I have no idea how an AI would think. I don't believe anyone could really know. They're truly alien from us.

Yeah, and I think that's one reason we don't always accept what we see in the game at face value. Sci-fi and fantasy worlds invite us to think about what it would be like to live in a world with different rules than what we've experienced IRL. Synthetic AI may be particularly interesting, because it feels like a very real possibility.
 

Yeah... I fail to see the significance here. How does that change the fact that there is conflict with them in the lore?

I wondered that myself after I wrote it - lol. I think I was just remarking on the differences between the way we think and the way synthetics are shown to behave.
 

They prevent the problem by coming in after 50k years and cleaning house. The catalyst tried other ways in the past. This was just the most efficient. The lore tells us why the leviathans built it and according to them it still serves its purpose.

I was referring to prevention as in, don't let them create synthetics in the first place. Leave some indication of what happened, convey this information to new species that crawl out of the soup. The Reapers hide and remove all signs of their existence between cycles, leaving their technology so organics will evolve along the paths they desire. It sounds like they are setting a trap for the next cycle, that they actually want the cycles to continue endlessly, and it undermines the notion that they're trying to be helpful.
 

As for Leviathan controlling their thralls, personally I don't think the Leviathans can control entire species generally speaking. Unlike the reapers the Leviathan's control is more absolute, more direct. They probably controlled select members of the society and ordered their thralls through intermediaries. Such as Harbinger did with the colllector general.

Well - that's kind of a headcanon thing, yes? It still seems odd to me that they couldn't have prevented their thralls from creating synthetics in the first place.
 

What would any of that have to do with the pattern? Organics make machines that turn on the organics. That's it. Short and simple. What kind of bias could warp that? They don't argue the reason for the conflict. They merely observe it was there.

Patterns are everywhere. Some are related, some are not, some indicate problems needing solutions, some do not.

I'm suggesting that their values, priorities, judgements would influence what they see as a problem, what they see as a solution to that problem, and how they go about implementing it. And, yeah, it's tangential, because it isn't gonna change what they did.

People like to see logic as the infallible be-all, end-all truth - but even logic systems employ values, priorities, premises of their creators. The boolean algebra so prevalent in our software today is mostly an engine that compares values - greater than, less than, equality or inequality, and, or, exclusive or, etc. It does all of its processing in a specific order and then makes sure the end result falls within expected parameters.

We do that in other ways, too, especially in moral rationalizations or 'ends justify the means' kinds of thinking. In order to support Cerberus research, one has to believe that the results and benefits are of greater value than the lives of, for example, people made into husks or children who were abused to perform that research.
 

I cannot and will not believe the notion that peace could ever last for eternity, which is what one would would have to argue to claim that conflict isn't inevitable.

Not exactly. "Inevitable" is an absolute. Saying that conflict is not inevitable is really just acknowledging that peace is possible.
 

I'm skeptical that even a single millisecond could go by where there is not some instance of conflict somewhere on our world alone.

There may be some contextual differences in the way respondants define or consider conflict. People might be in conflict over whether toilet paper should dispense from the top or bottom of the roll. You can experience conflict in your own mind or emotions.

In this context, however, I would guess that a lot of people are referring specifically to armed conflict between entire species, to the point of extinction of the loser.

[ImaginaryMatter]

Exactly, and that's also why it's so stupid. I was on Neogaf once and in one of my posts I was told that I made an "argument from ignorance" saying that something had to be this or that way, but making my argument so it couldn't be deemed as true or false. It was "all or nothing" talk, a weak argument but you couldn't shoot it down either.

 

http://en.wikipedia...._from_ignorance

 

It's the same problem we have with the catalyst. It's so unspecific and vague that it feels like an unfair argument and as a piece of storytelling it's terrible.

 

I have that problem with the Catalyst too. The conversation is like a horoscope. Horoscopes are vague enough that their contents can roughly describe almost any scenario but that doesn't make them clairvoyant. The ending conversation fits the same bill.

 

A problem with this is that the synthetic/organic conflict, as the Catalyst describes it, is an abstract one, too abstract that it doesn't have much dramatic weight to it. What the ending really needed was elements from the story to ground it in relevance. The Rannoch arc with his heavy handedness and recurring theme about how merciful the Geth are (going so far as to drop references to that whole genocide business) doesn't mesh well with what the Catalyst is saying -- which is why I suspect it's never brought up in the ending. EDI's and Joker's biggest problem is Vorpal Syndrome and not much else. Many of the other AI's are throwaway side mission enemies with the accompanying level of depth. For a game filled with AI character's rarely talk about any practical or philosophical ramifications; they exist but in small doses and they're almost all entirely avoidable.

[Valmar]

But Valmar, if that synthetic-organic peace doesn't last... what makes it inevitable that it will 100% destroy ALL organics?

 

I already shared my thoughts on this. If you don't agree then that is fine but why ask me to repeat it? I get it, you disagree.

 

I dislike how he's very unspecific about his words. Conflict by itself is inevitable, no more to the relationship between synthetics and organics as it is between inter-organic relationships. There will be conflict no matter what no matter the scale or the combination. He might as well have said that organics destroy all organics unless the Reapers intervened and we'd have the exact same storytelling problem -- and storytelling is the problem here, not whether it makes sense or not.

 

This has actually been the bulk of my argument all along. Interesting to see you chant it, though, given your past positions. Proud of you, champ.

 

"Lore says it happened, so it's justified" -- NO it doesn't becuase we're not just reading through fictitious history, we're actually consuming a preferably cohesive, coherent piece of storytelling here; a plot, which means A, B and C -- Beginning, Middle and End has to, and I repeat HAS to connect properly, which they simply don't here.
 

 

Negative. Lore is lore. Your thoughts, your feelings, your sensibilities, your morals... none of it matters. None of it changes the facts. Lore facts do not care how you feel about it. It doesn't matter if you like it. It doesn't matter that you hate it or love it or want some more of it. Lore is lore, period. It DOESN'T, repeat, DOESN'T have to connect in anyway that satisfies you. The thought that it does is what fuels the "entitlement" insult so many have flung at people in the past for criticizing the ending.

 

Beyond that you have to acknowledge your personal bias here. Whether or not the story connects properly is heavily subjective. As demonstrated on this forum on a daily bases.

 

Whether the conflict that led to inevitable destruction of all advanced organic civilization was organics vs synthetics or organics vs organics leads to the same problems in the storytelling unless you change the entire plot for Mass Effect 3 to properly justify making that statement at the end. As it is, it's hamfisted, unfulfilling and unsatisfying. It's an explanation for the Reapers that BIoware cooked up at the last minute and completely forgot about everything they made earlier in the same game. As a piece of lore it's serviceable but why is it only revealed at the ending and effectively used as the meaning and the point of the story?

 

Is there a point to this? Did I ever claim it was fulfilling, satisfying and not hamfisted? If I recall correctly you were the one who was originally saying conflict with organic vs synthetics was never a theme or never shown and I was only correcting you on those false assertion. You've changed your stance since then, it seems, so now you're turning into a matter of "is it satisfying". Which is subjective at best and didn't really have anything to do with anything I brought up.

 

I'm not fully satisfied with it myself, either. Though you seem to get hung up more on the motives where as many of my issues lie in things the ending doesn't give us as opposed to what it does.

 

It's rather reassuring however that you'll now view the lore as serviceable. It's a fairly large step from where you were before. Maybe all this pointless back and forth and repeating the same argument over and over again was useful for finally seeping through somewhere. Not sure I'll rule Vaas out just yet but its a start. Anything to give him the finger.

 

 

The ending is still isolated, catalyst or not isn't the problem, The 3 choices that conclude the entire story are; which arised from the explanation we got regarding the Reapers; which didn't connect with ME3's plot; which in turn makes the 3 choices that lead to the ending and conclude the trilogy feel out of place, derailed, confusing and unfulfilling.

 

Destroy and control connected well enough for me. It'd be a wasted opportunity for them to go the entire game foreshadowing control only to ditch it at the last moment. Not the direction I'd go with it but still.

 

 

What the... are you trying to bait me in a flame war or something like that?
 

 

I haven't the time or patience for such things. It's why I was blunt and didn't bother to elaborate with great detail. You're wrong, with everything. I could go into specific detail about why, as I have done already and as Vazgen has done, but it wouldn't matter. Me explaining why you're wrong wouldn't matter much since its been explained to you already previously - you just refuse to see it. So it'd be a war of repetition more than anything else. So it'd be a war of repetition. Repetition. Repetition.

 

It's funny that you ask for a "counter argument" when its been given to you several times already. Why? If you'll handwave it away the first dozen times why should I bother doing it again? Just like you wave this away by now complaining that it isn't specific enough. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Argh, dang you Vaas.

 

 

I'm not sure the pattern says all that, at least not what was conveyed. The terms I recall were much more general, and would allow, for example:
- Some advanced organic species might not ever create synthetics.
- Some advanced organic species might be wiped out by synthetics they did not create.
etc.
 

 

Also a distinct possibility. It is unfortunate but the ending is vague enough on enough accounts for us to not really know with certainty. Bioware were aiming for speculation more than conclusion in many aspects.

 

Regardless of what it means I still think we're not to meant to be take it literally. The more specific details are up for speculation and debate of course but I still feel the one thing that should always remain is that it isn't taken literal. Afterall, if we were to take the reapers absolutely literally on every detail then they have no beginning and no end. Some would argue this is a plothole - I argue we never meant to take it literally in the first place. I don't view it as a plothole because they're so ancient (billions of years) that relative to us they practically don't have a beginning or end.

 

Not saying you're taking it literally, of course. Just saying for sake of argument.

 

I was referring to prevention as in, don't let them create synthetics in the first place. Leave some indication of what happened, convey this information to new species that crawl out of the soup. The Reapers hide and remove all signs of their existence between cycles, leaving their technology so organics will evolve along the paths they desire. It sounds like they are setting a trap for the next cycle, that they actually want the cycles to continue endlessly, and it undermines the notion that they're trying to be helpful.
 

 

In a way the Leviathan's prove this approach is not perfect. They had more warning than anyone else. They witnessed the same thing happen over and over and over again for possibly millions of years. Yet even with all those warning flags they still thought THEY would be different. Insanity rules of the cosmos.

 

Personally I've always assumed they have tried that. Afterall, going either way is an assumption on our part due to just how little information we're given. The way I view it: nothing we short-lived mortals could think up in a 10 minute conversation on the internet is going to be a great revelation a billion year old AI construct could not or has not thought of doing. It'd be a galactic case of "Simpson's Did It".

 

The moment we are able to conceive of a possible solution it means, to me, that that the billion year old intelligence must have already tried it. It is why the reaper solution is so far outside our ability to understand. Why so many people have issue even accepting that it is "harvesting" us or "preserving" us. It's a method we couldn't understand because its a form of life we do not understand. Naturally an AI is going to have a different perspective on life than us organics and not be limited in the same ways of thinking that we are.

 

Imagine how anticlimatic it would be if Shepard just said "hey, have you tried...." and the catalyst is just like "wow! that could work!"

 

That's actually part of why I suspect Shepard might actually return to the reaper harvest a few million years down the line in the control ending. That's a whole other subject though lol.

 

 

Well - that's kind of a headcanon thing, yes? It still seems odd to me that they couldn't have prevented their thralls from creating synthetics in the first place.
 

 

In a sense, it is. We see Leviathan cave paintings (that probably shouldn't exist after a billion years) where there seems to be one person the others worship. I could be remembering the cave paintings wrong though - I admit it has been sometime.

 

Though I'd have to say the lore makes it clear that the leviathan must NOT be able to control the ENTIRE species. I mean, if they did, then they'd never disobey. "We could not protect them from themselves." If they did have complete and total control over the entire species that wouldn't be an issue.

 

Patterns are everywhere. Some are related, some are not, some indicate problems needing solutions, some do not.

I'm suggesting that their values, priorities, judgements would influence what they see as a problem, what they see as a solution to that problem, and how they go about implementing it. And, yeah, it's tangential, because it isn't gonna change what they did.

People like to see logic as the infallible be-all, end-all truth - but even logic systems employ values, priorities, premises of their creators. The boolean algebra so prevalent in our software today is mostly an engine that compares values - greater than, less than, equality or inequality, and, or, exclusive or, etc. It does all of its processing in a specific order and then makes sure the end result falls within expected parameters.

We do that in other ways, too, especially in moral rationalizations or 'ends justify the means' kinds of thinking. In order to support Cerberus research, one has to believe that the results and benefits are of greater value than the lives of, for example, people made into husks or children who were abused to perform that research.
 

 

 

 

 

Not exactly. "Inevitable" is an absolute. Saying that conflict is not inevitable is really just acknowledging that peace is possible.

 

Well in all fairness it wasn't really the leviathan's solution. They didn't have a solution. They only knew the problem. They made the Intelligence to find the solution for them.

 

The only thing I can personally see being influenced by bias here is the severity of the problem. The problem is still there. Organics made machines that turned on them and wiped them out. No matter how you look at it, thats what happened. Now because you put so much value on your organic slaves you might consider this a more significant problem than it really is (whats one species every now and then to a species that rules everything?)  but the conflict itself is still something that happened.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let me rephrase it then. Conflict is inevitably continual. That doesn't mean there cannot be peace, but eventually conflict will happen.

[WizzyWarlock]

I think the whole thing with the Geth/Quarian conflict, especially if you make peace between the two, along with EDI and Legion, is there to show that the Catalyst is wrong. The Catalyst (or Intelligence) was created to deal with a continuing conflict between synthetic and organics during the time of the Leviathan. The problem being, the organics during this time were all under the thrall of the Leviathan so really had very little in the way of free will. See the Leviathan DLC, where the entire population of Mahavid were enthralled for at least ten years, doing exactly what they were told to do.

The Intelligence decided the Leviathans were also responsible for the conflict and turned against them, then created the first Reaper, Harbinger. It then started to harvest other civilizations, creating more Reapers. I think at this point, it's stopped searching for a better way, its data has been collected and studied and it views the harvest as the best way to preserve life. This is of course a flawed assumption, as the data doesn't take into account the removal of the Leviathan and the new free will of the Galaxy's many civilizations.

It never returns to studying civilizations, it never tries to understand them, it doesn't stop to look at what the new civilizations are doing, it simply turns up with its army of Reapers, harvests the civilizations then disappears again. To aid in this continued cycle, it even creates the Citadel and the Mass Effect Relays to speed up advancement so it can harvest earlier than normal.

The Catalyst is basically like a scientist, trying to understand the meaning and reasons behind love by analysing DNA samples. It's not going to get an answer. It will never get an answer, no matter how many tests it runs.

[Valmar]

It doesn't prove it wrong in anyway, though.

 

It never said peace is impossible. It said it would not last. It said eventually the conflict will return. You actually expect the peace with the geth is going to last for all eternity? The reaper's are ageless, relative to them no peace will ever last. It might last for our short lifetime but the reapers are over a billion years old. Of course it isn't going to last from their perspective. If the catalyst said peace was impossible and it could never happen then okay, its proven wrong. It never said that though. It acknowledges that there can be peace, it only argues that it won't be eternal. Which it won't.

[Pasquale1234]

Regardless of what it means I still think we're not to meant to be take it literally. The more specific details are up for speculation and debate of course but I still feel the one thing that should always remain is that it isn't taken literal. Afterall, if we were to take the reapers absolutely literally on every detail then they have no beginning and no end. Some would argue this is a plothole - I argue we never meant to take it literally in the first place. I don't view it as a plothole because they're so ancient (billions of years) that relative to us they practically don't have a beginning or end.

Not saying you're taking it literally, of course. Just saying for sake of argument.

Of course, the downside of not taking things literally is that everyone has their own unique ideas of what it all means.

A lot of the conversation with Sovereign came across as preening and bravado. The 'no beginning and no end' bit could have been part of that or an intentional mislead or the fact that the writers hadn't figured it all out yet. By the end, of course, we've learned the who-how-why about their creation and that they can be ended.
 

The moment we are able to conceive of a possible solution it means, to me, that that the billion year old intelligence must have already tried it. It is why the reaper solution is so far outside our ability to understand. Why so many people have issue even accepting that it is "harvesting" us or "preserving" us. It's a method we couldn't understand because its a form of life we do not understand. Naturally an AI is going to have a different perspective on life than us organics and not be limited in the same ways of thinking that we are.

I'm not willing to give the leviathan that much credit. You frequently appeal to authority in these discussions, primarily focusing on how long they've been around. I'll point to their need to create an intelligence to solve a problem for them, and the fact that the solution wiped them out as an epic failure on their part.

Granted, an AI is not "limited" in the same ways of thinking that we are - but AIs are limited in their ability to understand organics. The synthesis ending acknowledges this limitation. The intelligence creates this method to harvest and preserve something it cannot possibly comprehend. In so doing, it fails to acknowledge its own limitations.

I accept that it thinks it is harvesting and preserving what it thinks is the essence of organic life.
 

Though I'd have to say the lore makes it clear that the leviathan must NOT be able to control the ENTIRE species. I mean, if they did, then they'd never disobey. "We could not protect them from themselves." If they did have complete and total control over the entire species that wouldn't be an issue.

How so? IIRC, the entire group of folks we meet are under thrall - not just key leaders.
 

Well in all fairness it wasn't really the leviathan's solution. They didn't have a solution. They only knew the problem. They made the Intelligence to find the solution for them.

But they created the intelligence, gave it a set of operating parameters, and set it to work on the solution.

Here's how it works, at least with today's technology: you start out with a clear and very specific definition of the problem, and then create a set of requirements to which the solution must adhere. If you're sloppy with either of those steps, you can expect unintended consequences.

An ultra-simple example: You want to host a social gathering for 300 guests on a specific date.

The AI books the most expensive venue in town, so you give it a budget and tell it to try again. It then reports that it has booked an abandoned mine shaft 1,000 miles away. Etc. The point is that any system that uses pure logic will only / can only work with what it is given by its programmers / creators. The leviathan apparently failed to constrain the intelligence to preserve life in its current form.

That the intelligence tried many other failed solutions in the past does not inspire confidence in its abilities. Whether it failed because of the solution itself or the way it was implemented / executed is unknown. I would suggest that perhaps all of those failures were due to its inability to understand organic life.

[Linkenski]

It's very, very strongly implied since EC that the Catalyst and the Reapers were created as a solution due to a misunderstanding of organic life. But I do wonder what exactly the Leviathans had figured out beforehand when they gave seemingly all resposibility to the Catalyst. I think when he presented the solution that was the Reapers the Leviathan's probably agreed at first to be made half-synthetic but didn't realize that all their emotion and basically their identity would be lost as they were practically getting killed.

 

It's kind of a vague scenario though... I don't feel like going too much into detail with speculating on it because it's too vague.

[ImaginaryMatter]

It doesn't prove it wrong in anyway, though.

 

It never said peace is impossible. It said it would not last. It said eventually the conflict will return. You actually expect the peace with the geth is going to last for all eternity? The reaper's are ageless, relative to them no peace will ever last. It might last for our short lifetime but the reapers are over a billion years old. Of course it isn't going to last from their perspective. If the catalyst said peace was impossible and it could never happen then okay, its proven wrong. It never said that though. It acknowledges that there can be peace, it only argues that it won't be eternal. Which it won't.

 

And there in lies the problem. On paper it sounds great and there's nothing wrong with it. Put it into a story though at a critical point and the whole thing becomes underwhelming. You will be destroyed by AI, it might not be now, it might not be those you know, there could be radical changes, and it will all vaguely happen... someday. There's no tension to that. What makes it worse is that the story really hammers over how human robots are which makes it sound even more incredulous. I dislike how people treat it as a logic issue, it really isn't (I think those issues lie more with why the Catalyst is even offering choices in the first place). It really is a issue of making a narrative engaging.

[Valmar]

Of course, the downside of not taking things literally is that everyone has their own unique ideas of what it all means.

A lot of the conversation with Sovereign came across as preening and bravado. The 'no beginning and no end' bit could have been part of that or an intentional mislead or the fact that the writers hadn't figured it all out yet. By the end, of course, we've learned the who-how-why about their creation and that they can be ended.
 

 

True but there are some things, I believe, that can be more universally accepted as being "non-literal". Saying you have no beginning and no end is one such thing. Unless we're playing a fantasy game or watching Doctor Who this should stand out as being something not meant to be taken so literally.

 

I'm not willing to give the leviathan that much credit. You frequently appeal to authority in these discussions, primarily focusing on how long they've been around. I'll point to their need to create an intelligence to solve a problem for them, and the fact that the solution wiped them out as an epic failure on their part.
 

 

I do appeal to authority with age, yes. Though is it really that unfair? They're billions of years old and the context is whether or not a pattern of exists. The Leviathans noticed it, the catalyst noticed it, the reapers notice it, the protheans notice it. Who are we to say definitively that such a pattern cannot exist when we are but a blink? We lack perspective because we are so young and our priorities are limited by the restrictions placed on us by time.

 

Example: The sun will die one day and all life on earth will die with it. Yet rarely does anyone give that any significant thought or care. It simply isn't in our nature to care about something that is so distant from us. We'll all be long gone by time its a problem. We can care and worry about our children's future, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren.... but the further down the line it goes the more it becomes difficult to really concern yourself with.

 

The reapers and leviathan are not hindered by such things. Their perspective has no restriction of time. It would be a problem for them because they are the only ones who will actually still be around when it comes up.

 

That being said, I think you've misunderstood me here. I wasn't giving Leviathan credit in your quote. The Intelligence is the catalyst - I was referring to it, not the Leviathans.

 

 

Granted, an AI is not "limited" in the same ways of thinking that we are - but AIs are limited in their ability to understand organics. The synthesis ending acknowledges this limitation. The intelligence creates this method to harvest and preserve something it cannot possibly comprehend. In so doing, it fails to acknowledge its own limitations.
 

 

I'm not so sure. The reapers themselves are just a cruder version of synthesis really. They have all the memories, knowledge and experience of those harvested. Each reaper is a billion organic minds linked together. It'd be quite strange indeed if the reaper's did not understand organic thinking when their very minds are actually organic themselves.

 

 

How so? IIRC, the entire group of folks we meet are under thrall - not just key leaders.
 

 

Yes, and this control was direct. Not subtle. The individuals consciousnesses seems to be 'moved' somewhere else. Perhaps into a part of the Leviathan's very mind. The leviathans have complete control of them.

 

If the leviathans could control the entire species of a world in this way then they never would need the catalyst. The leviathan says "we could not save them from themselves". If they could control the entire species, that sheer number of people, in the same fashion that they control that relatively small group of scientists on the mining station, it stands to reason that they WOULD be able to protect them from themselves.

 

 

But they created the intelligence, gave it a set of operating parameters, and set it to work on the solution.

Here's how it works, at least with today's technology: you start out with a clear and very specific definition of the problem, and then create a set of requirements to which the solution must adhere. If you're sloppy with either of those steps, you can expect unintended consequences.

An ultra-simple example: You want to host a social gathering for 300 guests on a specific date.

The AI books the most expensive venue in town, so you give it a budget and tell it to try again. It then reports that it has booked an abandoned mine shaft 1,000 miles away. Etc. The point is that any system that uses pure logic will only / can only work with what it is given by its programmers / creators. The leviathan apparently failed to constrain the intelligence to preserve life in its current form.

That the intelligence tried many other failed solutions in the past does not inspire confidence in its abilities. Whether it failed because of the solution itself or the way it was implemented / executed is unknown. I would suggest that perhaps all of those failures were due to its inability to understand organic life.

 

True enough. Though all this does is change what is the most viable solution. This doesn't change the initial problem. The pattern is still there. The bias and perspective can sway the solution, yes, definitely, but it does little to change the actual problem. Which was my point in the quoted text. The pattern of synthetic-organic conflict is still there.

 

 

 

It's very, very strongly implied since EC that the Catalyst and the Reapers were created as a solution due to a misunderstanding of organic life. But I do wonder what exactly the Leviathans had figured out beforehand when they gave seemingly all resposibility to the Catalyst. I think when he presented the solution that was the Reapers the Leviathan's probably agreed at first to be made half-synthetic but didn't realize that all their emotion and basically their identity would be lost as they were practically getting killed.

 

It's kind of a vague scenario though... I don't feel like going too much into detail with speculating on it because it's too vague.

 

Don't the Leviathan's directly state that they created the Intelligence to find a solution? Therefore the Leviathan's had no actual solution. Their solution was to make something to find a solution for them.

 

I'm skeptical they would agree to such a thing. They're far too arrogant - the apex of organic life. Why taint perfection? I don't think they had any say-so in the harvest. "In that instant, it turned on us" I believe is the line used.

 

 

 

And there in lies the problem. On paper it sounds great and there's nothing wrong with it. Put it into a story though at a critical point and the whole thing becomes underwhelming. You will be destroyed by AI, it might not be now, it might not be those you know, there could be radical changes, and it will all vaguely happen... someday. There's no tension to that. What makes it worse is that the story really hammers over how human robots are which makes it sound even more incredulous. I dislike how people treat it as a logic issue, it really isn't (I think those issues lie more with why the Catalyst is even offering choices in the first place). It really is a issue of making a narrative engaging.

 

I agree. Though I never claimed it wasn't underwhelming in the first place. 

[ImaginaryMatter]

I agree. Though I never claimed it wasn't underwhelming in the first place. 

 

I thought so. I just wanted to get that off my chest.

[WizzyWarlock]

The leviathan apparently failed to constrain the intelligence to preserve life in its current form.

That description 'current form' made me wonder. The Leviathan treated organic life as nothing but thralls, slaves, tributes, never as an actual living species that can make its own decisions and future. So I wonder if the intelligence is just doing what the Leviathan asked of it. I mean, if all Leviathan see of life is bags of meat to be used, then it's no wonder this intelligence views organic life as lacking any real purpose.

Much like Valmar has said, the intelligence is so old that it probably sees the bigger picture, patterns appearing over and over. But having its eyes on the bigger picture, it fails to see the smaller details of what life really is. Even in Reaper form it still treats life as slaves and thralls. One of the first things the Catalyst says is that it controls the Reapers, they are its solution. Again, as Valmar said, "They have all the memories, knowledge and experience of those harvested. Each reaper is a billion organic minds linked together.", and yet it still treats them with complete disrespect, controlling them to harvest more life, more civilizations, without listening to those billions of minds. It's highly likely this is why they all sound the same and have the same motives - they have no free will, just like the civilizations before the Reapers.

[Valmar]

All this is possible but I will say, personally, I did pick up distinct personalities in each of the reapers. They didn't sound the same to me. Sovereign was more haughty, Harbinger was also haughty but also had a bit of a hero-complex going on. "I am your salvation. Beg us, thank us for immortality. I am the harbinger of your perfection. " Sovereign didn't care at all about such things and just thought it was above all of us where as Harbinger wants to make us ascend. The reaper on Rannoch  compared to them, to me, sounded much more... defeated. Neutral even. As if its just accepted the necessity of it all but doesn't really have the same level of conviction.

 

Though that was just my impression of them.

 

It's also only speculation that the minds have consciousnesses (I would argue they do, though) or that the reaper's go against their wishes. I've always felt it would be more interesting is they did infact retain consciousness and the reason the reaper has gone against the harvest is because after they have been harvested and given that broad, near-infinite understand and perspective, they all come to realize the necessity of it all. You don't realize how important something is until you're in that situation yourself. In a way it could be viewed a bit like Shepardlyst. "The man I was used these words... but only now do I truly understand them."

 

Of course a lot of that is seemingly flushed down the drain since they decided to turn the reapers into slaves, tools that just follow the orders of some AI god. What a waste.

 

Personally another big flaw the Leviathan's did was that they didn't really program it with what they REALLY wanted. They just say they gave it a mandate to preserve life at all costs. They never actually said they wanted it to bring peace to synthetics, at least not to us they don't. The catalyst claims that but its quite possible the Leviathan never viewed the synthetics as "life" and had no consideration for them. The catalyst, being AI, of course would have a different perspective of what classifies as life. So when they tell it to preserve all life it would consider synthetics to be part of that life even if the Leviathan's only meant the organics.

 

Beyond that I think we all know what the Leviathan's really wanted... they wanted their thralls to stay useful to them. They didn't want to preserve them for their own safety or keep them peaceful and happy. What they really wanted in the end of the day was for their slaves to stop getting killed off by machines. The catalyst creating a more widespread version of indoctrination that could encompass an entire planet (like the Shroud) to keep all the inhabitants docile and loyal with the only goal in their existence being to serve the Leviathan... well, I think they would have loved something like that. It wasn't really preservation of lives they wanted. They just want their slaves to stay useful to them.

 

"Tribute does not come from a dead race."

 

However the Leviathans made the mistake of not being so specific to their goal. They just told it to preserve life. Something that may seem straight-forward but in fact can be quite vague depending on your perspective.

[Pasquale1234]

I'm not so sure. The reapers themselves are just a cruder version of synthesis really. They have all the memories, knowledge and experience of those harvested. Each reaper is a billion organic minds linked together. It'd be quite strange indeed if the reaper's did not understand organic thinking when their very minds are actually organic themselves.

Maybe. I still struggle with the idea that the intelligence is capable of devising a method to truly 'preserve' organic life, because they don't understand organics in the first place.

To an AI, 'life' just requires some programs, algorithms, data, and a platform in which to process them. Millions of geth can live in a single server. EDI lives in a blue box on the Normandy, but can also use a mobile platform as an interface. So they harvest organics, make some goo, upload it to a server with an operating system and some processing algorithms, and voila! You have preserved organic life!

These billion organic 'minds' would not have the priorities, values, needs, desires, concerns of organics. They would operate per whatever operating software exists in that server. That you used some organic goo in the process does not mean it resembles organic life. I know EDI makes some comments about the human reaper being created on the collector base, but consider the source. EDI doesn't understand organics, either.

To a synthetic, the mind is the only thing worth preserving. Organics might see other things - like heart, soul, courage, desire, will - as being more descriptive of their true nature and essence. Saren comments about organics being driven by emotion instead of logic during the encounter on Virmire.

 

That description 'current form' made me wonder. The Leviathan treated organic life as nothing but thralls, slaves, tributes, never as an actual living species that can make its own decisions and future. So I wonder if the intelligence is just doing what the Leviathan asked of it. I mean, if all Leviathan see of life is bags of meat to be used, then it's no wonder this intelligence views organic life as lacking any real purpose.

Much like Valmar has said, the intelligence is so old that it probably sees the bigger picture, patterns appearing over and over. But having its eyes on the bigger picture, it fails to see the smaller details of what life really is. Even in Reaper form it still treats life as slaves and thralls. One of the first things the Catalyst says is that it controls the Reapers, they are its solution. Again, as Valmar said, "They have all the memories, knowledge and experience of those harvested. Each reaper is a billion organic minds linked together.", and yet it still treats them with complete disrespect, controlling them to harvest more life, more civilizations, without listening to those billions of minds. It's highly likely this is why they all sound the same and have the same motives - they have no free will, just like the civilizations before the Reapers.

Memories, knowledge, experience - to a synthetic, it's all just data. That data might combine to give each reaper a unique personality. I think the reapers we encountered had different personalities.

You make some interesting points, though. If the leviathan saw other organic species as tools, that disrespect would probably be reflected in the instructions given to the intelligence, and it makes sense in light of Saren's indoctrination. Saren felt that he could avoid complete indoctrination, because he would no longer be useful. Perhaps the leviathan limited their enthrallment in similar fashion. And perhaps the intelligence was designed to shackle the organics it preserved in the same fashion.