Your argument has been "the ends justify the means". You have posited only hypothetical "ends" which were proven to be unnecessary. Even the concrete "end" in the game, which is whatever TIM is doing to Shepard and Anderson, is not only unnecessary to defeating the Reapers, but it was used against the one who defeats them.
That's all we can do: posit hypothetical ends. Whether or not you accept the use of them (for the Reapers and other foes, as I like to have every advantage I can get, and believe it or not, what you gain, the end from Sanctuary, is an advantage) is your business. That said, they do increase power, influence, and the capability of humanity as a whole. Over the Reapers, and beyond. It's redundant against the Reapers, but what about other species? What about acquiring and using the power for the intent to increase power and influence for humanity? We're treading dangerously close to a discussion on political philosophy that isn't necessarily prevalent to these forums.
Based on what?
My own worldview? Context please.
In the first game they are just a rogue alliance group that murdered at least two groups of Marines and ultimately an Admiral. While a Specter, Shepard still serves the Alliance, so opposition to Cerberus is natural, especially when Shepard could be a survivor of one of those two attacks. What is the supposed benefit to humanity there, or with the experiments done to Toombs? As you point out in your last paragraph of this quote, they weren't meant to be anything but mad scientists for you to foil.
This is why the transformation in ME2, and subsequently the explosion into a massive paramilitary force in ME3, bothered a lot of people.. The new Cerberus wasn't introduced properly and it really wouldn't have been that hard. All they needed was a little exposition on how the Alliance group was just one cell and talk about those experiments. Instead Shepard mentions breaking them up and they never really come up again.
Supporting their goals is fine but supporting their actions makes no sense without showing how those action are achieving those stated goals, especially when they appear to do the opposite.
Shepard can also outright denounce the alliance in ME1, going so far as to blatantly tell an alliance Admiral to screw off. Which I do. Otherwise, with no information on Cerberus beyond 'rogue alliance black ops group', I don't have much more information (RP'ing as Shepard) to base a judgment off of them. They had to get oversight from somewhere, and the alliance Admiral they kill, Kahoku, makes it clear that he's been getting stonewalled at higher levels of authority than his own. I'm going to speculate that the alliance knew what was going on: I know it's speculation with no actual basis, but due to lack of definition here in the action here, we have a lot of room for interpretation, which is essentially what I've been doing this entire time: interpreting a cause, a justification, and something plausible, that, while not truthful entirely (and it frankly is impossible to know either way since there is no definition), they are rationally possible.
The supposed benefit on the Thresher Maw attacks? My explanation (which, as I say, is not canon, but you also cannot claim that it is not what Cerberus was doing, as we do not know what Cerberus was doing): Cerberus was testing the utility of Thresher Maws as potential vectors for weaponization, testing their effectiveness against human habitation (and possibly researching ways to improve human colonial infrastructure to better equip them from Thresher infestations), testing the effectiveness of armed human military responses (and possibly working on doctrinal SOP for military forces to deal with Thresher infestations), testing the effects of Thresher venom on the human body in the case of Corporal Toombs (and possibly searching for ways to weaponize the venom and use it effectively in deployment operations), and to generally gain an understanding of how Thresher Maws behave and how humans react to them.
It's rather tactical and clinical. It's not compassionate, and it's not pretty. It doesn't need to be. And I know that Cerberus wasn't meant to be more than "mad scientists", and it irritates me. I personally disagree wholeheartedly with the message behind "mad science" and its label on Cerberus.
On the narrative issue, I have no comment: I disagree with that assessment and have since ME2 was released, but I have nothing to say in response, since its more of an issue with the writing.
As for their goals, yes I do support their goals: we aren't given any positive context on their goals, but we aren't given any negative context on them either. Each experiment that we intervened with is categorically inconclusive. We don't have any explanation at all on what the end state of each experiment was, or what Cerberus intended with each goal. I'm not going to judge a means just because it looks like something bad happened. I want to know exactly what was going on before I cast out my judgement.
And that is where you're just a Cerberus propagandist. In no way do the games ever show us that Cerberus is good for humanity. Pretty much all it does is kill humans in it's experiments. Where are the benefits? Cerberus is good for humanity just because TIM says so? My claim is based on TIM and his behavior. He infiltrates and undermines the Alliance and seeks power. Of course TIM doesn't ever tell Shepard he wants to be at the top. He is manipulating Shepard and wants Shepard to trust him. In the end, you're just making TIM realize he's Indoctrinated and he commits suicide as an escape/act of defiance. It's not like you changed his pre-Indoctrination mindset.
In a sterile, academic sense, you are correct about dictatorship. Unfortunately for your view, we are dealing with fallible human beings. We have dictatorships all over the world and none of them are doing what you describe.
I prefer James Madison from Federalist 51.
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."
There was another philosopher I read once, and I apologize for forgetting who, that wrote that a dictatorship would indeed be the best form of government if a righteous, perfect person could be found. However he also said that no such person exists.
It leaves a message of implication, one that I don't share. In a few instances, the games do outright state how something is bad or terrible, and again, I almost categorically disagree with something as we are only ever presented with implications for negativity, no overt statements of how or why: The game's, especially in ME3, take a much more moral view that what is being done isn't wrong because it doesn't work, but is inherently wrong because it goes against the moral outlook posited by the game.
And I generally disagree with that. It comes down to my complete lack of belief in the paragon/renegade system (which was too much abused by the writers as a basic good/evil meter). I know, from the get-go (as does my Shepard), what TIM is trying to do, and how TIM is trying to manipulate my Shepard, and that is unnecessary because my Shepard fundamentally agrees with him on that approach.
But here's where we have the crux of our disagreement: I don't think killing humans and benefitting humanity is mutually exclusive. The benefits that we see are never shown, true. I have to speculate on them. But I agree with the mindset of what Cerberus does as well. I agree with the need to perform actions the way they do. I think Cerberus is good for humanity, because they represent my own ideas on where we should be at as a society in regards to technology and science. I want to see the alliance undermined because I think they're inefficient, incompetent, and generally impotent. I want to see a harder, harsher approach taken by humanity, and that includes towards its own members as well, especially the average, everyday people. I don't want to see order and efficiency undermined by individualism and mediocrity. But as I've said, we're delving closer and closer to the line of political discussion, and I'd rather not face a ban: suffice to say I disagree with James Madison and his writings in the Federalist Papers. I don't agree that any human is categorically unfit for such a position of absolute sovereignty. I don't believe that democracy or the whims of the collective mediocrity of the people are what we as a society need to focus on. And I don't believe that that sovereign leader necessarily be entirely benevolent so much as he is effective at accomplishing an end-state that I will leave unopened. I really, really don't want to get into that argument here: suffice to say, we completely disagree.
No, they didn't provide "humanity" with any of that. They figured it out and TIM used it on Shepard and Anderson somehow. Why it affected only their bodies and not their minds, I have no idea. More ME3 nonsense, I suppose. And again, this knowledge was not used to benefit humanity in any way, Instead it was used to help the Reapers, who want to wipe out humanity.
Bioware didn't provide any ambiguity because they decided to make them the primary antagonists for ME3. Also the writers are bad.
Here is where I get confused by your statements: Are you saying Cerberus is bad regardless, or they're bad because the writers lacked nuance and complex narrative structure? And if it's the latter, I think we may have a point where I concede that we've been talking past each other: I, despite what the writing (which is often full or errors in logic, plot holes, coherence, and even contradictory to itself) says about Cerberus, appreciate the general idea of them and what they bring to the table. Due to lack of definition of them (and most other parties introduced in the games for that matter), I'm able to come up with a liberal interpretation of what they do, why they do it, and what they hope to achieve by doing what they do. In a sense, I'm defending the concept of Cerberus, not necessarily the outright depiction.
If you're saying that the writing has a lot of problems, you'll get nothing but agreement from me. There are indeed a lot of issues.
I never said you believe they were correct in everything; I said they would agree with you and use your arguments in their own defense. They had the same core worldview. Again, some "benefit" doesn't mean the action was appropriate or moral. Otherwise nobody would ever do a cost-benefit analysis of anything. They would simply guess if there might be some possible benefit to an action and do it.
I won't say everything they did if only because, since you like tropes, Hitler at sugar. You pick two bad examples though. Environmentalism, at least it's modern form, and single payer health care are destructive failures. The government is also generally terrible at economics, technology, and science. All those things are better handled by interested people in the private sector. Obviously sometimes the government can fund certain important initiatives and we have good things come out of that, but those should be very rare and very specific to the government's Constitutionally defined roles.
Probably, and in which case I feel they'd have a modicum of justification for some actions. Hell, the USAF and NASA feel Mengele did some good work with his experiments and research on the effects of depressurization on the human body, using his research as a stepping stone to developing pressure suits for astronauts and high altitude pilots. And then there's Unit 731, the Japanese military research company located in Manchuria during the Second World War that did things that would make even the Nazi's cringe: Post-war, all surviving members of the unit were given full, unconditional pardons by General Douglas MacArthur to take their research to the United States and provide their expertise on the American biological/chemical warfare units. And you know something? I agree with that. We obviously felt that their research was useful enough to warrant their continued existence and utility, even at the cost of the human lives involved. There's evidence to suggest that Mengele was even targeted for detainment and recruitment from the CIA, who wanted to find him before the Israeli Mossad could get their hands on him (and send him to probable execution). Shoot, Operation Paperclip was all about this: take as many high-ranking Nazi scientists and researchers as possible and press them into service of the United States (with Congressmen and military authorities outright saying that it was a shame that the methods used by such people were banned since they had proven to be so insightful into their respective fields of research.)
On the issues behind political ideology here for the topics discussed, I completely, categorically, and unequivocally disagree with you, but this isn't the place for it. You're a "common-sense Conservative/Libertarian/Constitutionalist/Whatever". I'd love to debate with you on these issues (and government's role in society, which we entirely disagree with going by your response), but this is not the website or forum for it.
Sanctuary worked to do what? And what was the ultimate benefit of that? How is humanity advanced?
Sanctuaty worked to undermine, replicate, and control indoctrination. Hackett says this. Shepard says this (in a conversation with Joker post-mission). The benefit? Understanding. Knowledge. The ability to use this information to our advantage in the war. You're missing a crucial aspect of RP'ing and substituting it for meta-gaming. As well, that information will probably be quite useful in bringing about the order I wish to impose upon the galaxy post-war.
Yeah, David is so useful that Shepard has to come in and stop him from taking over computers across the whole galaxy. And who are you or Gavin or TIM to make that determination? Oh that's right, you've arbitrarily decided you're the important people.
Why not? You play into "what if" scenarios to justify Cerberus' actions.
No, seeing what was done to David and hearing him beg for it to stop is certainly enough for me to take him away when I am given zero reason for why the experiment is supposedly necessary. Considering this choice comes after the fight, how would killing them be self defense and why is that the appropriate action?
The technical marriage between organic and synthetic was actually monumental. David is unique in that regard, and his ability to interface with technology is even more unique. In the game, should you keep David under Cerberus control, it's made clear that Cerberus has tighter controls over him, and prevents him from harming more people. David is able to be calmed, and Dr. Archer mentions in ME3 that his research in fact yielded stellar results (no elaboration, but the game acknowledges that the project was ultimately successful), though David eventually succumbed.
Who am I to make that distinction? I'm the man with a plan. The man with the capability and drive and will to see us, as humans succeed, either because of common people, or in spite of them. I don't have the right: I'm taking it. I don't care who I am to do what I do so long as my goal is achieved. I'm in charge because, through carrot or stick, I put myself at the top of the heap. I was going to say something based on what I believe, but that goes against my goal here of not turning this into an overt political debate.
My what-if scenario answers your question. I don't believe I need to elaborate any further.
I personally keep David hooked into the machine. I believe the benefits from the data outweigh the costs to David's psychology and happiness. I'm fine with denying him happiness if it ensures that, in the words of Dr. Archer, "a million mothers don't have to mourn the loss of a million sons". That is worth the emotional cost of leaving a poor, emotionally handicapped man to suffer. One life doesn't balance millions, especially for the future. It's an investment, and it applies to Cerberus ideology: sacrifice a few, many, or even most of humanity now, to ensure prosperity, advancement, and domination for all humanity in the future.
Going by your scenario, I would have killed David simply because he was trying to kill me. I'd kill Archer since he put me in that situation intentionally without providing any information or context whatsoever, to the point where I would conclude he was intentionally trying to have me killed.
Your ideas are hypothetical because you have to keep saying "if humanity benefits" and can't point to how humanity benefited from the actions we are discussing. True, those tactics make sense with your utilitarian mindset.
That is not why my ideas are hypothetical. They are hypothetical because there is no information given about any of the experiments or methods. I can provide a rationale for how the methods could (hypothetically, since we seem to adore that word) be useful. I can't altogether prove how they are or aren't. There is no information to make such an assured conclusion, either way (positive or negative).
It's quite literally my word vs. your word at this point.
They do indeed, though in many ways I'd hesitate to label my position as totally utilitarian, and more of that as a consequentialist.
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More than 90% of humanity´s population is on Earth with the Reapers killing quite a lot in the first assault, nuking cities like Adelaide and starvation and diseases from the ruined infrastructure. Then the harvest of course throwing 1.8 million people into the mixer every day and the last battle where the Reaper forces positioned themselves in front of Earth. I surely hope that every gunner internalized the lesson from this sergeant in the Zakera docking bay in ME 2, because every shot from a dreadnought gun is the equivalent to a nuke. Oh and refugee haven number one, the Citadel got sacked, too. And there are the Cerberus troops. If you blow them up, they are probably destroyed, they live in synthesis, even husks do and control no clue. 
