You're cherry-picking though. Unless you come out and admit that you value the right to life of synthetics as less than the right to self-determination of everyone else, and that you value people's biochemical integrity as higher than the life of the synthetics *and* everyone's right to self-determination.
All life, as it all has a common bond.
All life is organic only. Everything else is not alive but rather functional which is completely different.
Did the Protheans have any say in what was happening to them?
Did the colonists on Eden Prime have any say in being made into husks when Saren decided it was for the greater good than, well, anyone else in the galaxy if Shepard decided Synthesis was the way to go?
No which is why I have no problem destroying them at the end of ME2. Also to spite TIM because he is an ass hole.
You are trying to bring up a point but it is a failed point. One look between a Husk and Synthesis ending human shows the events are not remotely the same. Seriously you might as well call someone cutting someone into pieces with a chain saw the same as a surgeon with a scalpel cutting someone open.
Please stop with these pathetic attempts to draw parallels to things that have no parallel.
All life is organic only. Everything else is not alive but rather functional which is completely different.
I don't think that organic life life has some ineffable quality that makes it different from synthetic life at a fundamental design level. Our decision processes are random or deterministic or a mix of both, and there is no reason synthetic life can't be the same.
Iakus has posted the link
I was asking for an explanation for how is Synthesis technologically possible within the universe, using only the established information from the games and official media. The theories you've mentioned are the very headcanon you try to avoid.
How does destroy manage to only target Reapers, EDI, and Geth. When technology is far more then just the sum of those 3 groups? Every single ship, every single omni tool, every single reactor, ship sensor, thruster, etc should have been destroyed in the resulting blast. The resulting blast should have seen the death toll rise 2 fold as every ship was destroyed killing every person inside, every power plant over load and explode killing anyone around it and starting fires to burn down more, every person in a car traveling at hundreds of kph hundreds of feet about the surface crash.
Tell me technologically how that is possible in game.
I'm ultimately just gonna side with Destroy because I'm libertarian and individualistic.
It really has nothing to do with the games. 
Just like Control and Synthesis tap into authoritarian impulses and homogeneity (or specific ideals of it). Some people are gonna go with that whenever the opportunity comes. It has nothing to do with the story reasons. They'd do it on the smallest matters too.
I'll commend Bioware on one thing though.. they never gave any qualities to any of them.. none are called "good" or "bad".
All life is organic only. Everything else is not alive but rather functional which is completely different.
That is a very simplistic view of things. Our brains function in a way very similar to how a computer acts. And just like how a theoretical AI's brain would act.
I don't think that organic life life has some ineffable quality that makes it different from synthetic life at a fundamental design level. Our decision processes are random or deterministic or a mix of both, and there is no reason synthetic life can't be the same.
Key word: synthetic, unnatural, artificial etc. It cannot be life if it wasn't created on its own. Synthetics are built and powered. Organics are born and are the result of evolution of millions of years. Organics can think and evolve. Robots cannot. They just follow their programming and even if they learn to make alterations to the original code they will still function within limits of that programming. They can't create something new that isn't based on any existing data.
That's debatable.
In everyday practice, we set human rights absolute, but philosophically, they're anything but. We like our stories to affirm our values, but a point can be made that it's much more interesting to challenge them. The problem of the ME trilogy isn't that it did this, but that it did this at the end of a story where an unreflected feel-good morality was affirmed at every step. It might as well be the story that came before which was at fault.
Sure, challenges make for an interesting story. But I dispute that Mass Effect was a story that challenged anything. Least of all the endings. It didn't make us ask "Which ending is best?" It told us which it was, without backing up its claim. You don't pose a challenging question then provide no information to back up the positions.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which the endings seemed to heavily "borrow" from, at least took us through the setting showing us the benefits and drawbacks to human augmentation. Mass Effect was little more than a shooter with dialogue options, trying to tell us what to think.
yeah but you assume that the reapers should fall under 'rights'. I would have thought that they gave up their 'rights' when they killed countless sentient creatures for the sake of lame circular reasoning.
Not the Reapers. The geth. And EDI. And every other synthetic life form not trying to kill us all.
Key word: synthetic, unnatural, artificial etc. It cannot be life if it wasn't created on its own. Synthetics are built and powered. Organics are born and are the result of evolution of millions of years.
Like Miranda? Like Oriana?
Like Grunt?
How does destroy manage to only target Reapers, EDI, and Geth. When technology is far more then just the sum of those 3 groups? Every single ship, every single omni tool, every single reactor, ship sensor, thruster, etc should have been destroyed in the resulting blast. The resulting blast should have seen the death toll rise 2 fold as every ship was destroyed killing every person inside, every power plant over load and explode killing anyone around it and starting fires to burn down more, every person in a car traveling at hundreds of kph hundreds of feet about the surface crash.
Tell me technologically how that is possible in game.
Congrats, you just posted my problems with Destroy 
Sure, challenges make for an interesting story. But I dispute that Mass Effect was a story that challenged anything. Least of all the endings. It didn't make us ask "Which ending is best?" It told us which it was, without backing up its claim. You don't pose a challenging question then provide no information to back up the positions.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which the endings seemed to heavily "borrow" from, at least took us through the setting showing us the benefits and drawbacks to human augmentation. Mass Effect was little more than a shooter with dialogue options, trying to tell us what to think.
Not the Reapers. The geth. And EDI. And every other synthetic life form not trying to kill us all.
I disagree there. I don't think it told us anything.
Unless you want to ascribe some value to the War Assets. Then clearly Synthesis was better than Control or outright destruction. And manageable destruction the best.
Just because the Catalyst says it ideal though doesn't mean anything. You can either fall into that or question the whole notion. It's not a god. And like I pointed out earlier, it didn't even foresee the resourcefulness of Shepard and other organics. It gives itself away right there. It's more limited than it cares to admit.
How does destroy manage to only target Reapers, EDI, and Geth. When technology is far more then just the sum of those 3 groups? Every single ship, every single omni tool, every single reactor, ship sensor, thruster, etc should have been destroyed in the resulting blast. The resulting blast should have seen the death toll rise 2 fold as every ship was destroyed killing every person inside, every power plant over load and explode killing anyone around it and starting fires to burn down more, every person in a car traveling at hundreds of kph hundreds of feet about the surface crash.
Tell me technologically how that is possible in game.
I disagree there. I don't think it told us anything.
Unless you want to ascribe some value to the War Assets. Then clearly Synthesis was better than Control or outright destruction. And manageable destruction the best.
Just because the Catalyst says it ideal though doesn't mean anything. You can either fall into that or question the whole notion. It's not a god. And like I pointed out earlier, it didn't even foresee the resourcefulness of Shepard and other organics. It gives itself away right there. It's more limited than it cares to admit.
Yeah what the Catalyst says is nonsense. How the Crucible works is nonsense. But the thing is, we're supposed to unquestionably go with it. We're supposed to take everything the Catalyst says at face value. Synthesis is the "best outcome" because the Catalyst says it is. End of story. We aren't challenged to believe that, we're just supposed to accept it.
Yeah what the Catalyst says is nonsense. How the Crucible works is nonsense. But the thing is, we're supposed to unquestionably go with it. We're supposed to take everything the Catalyst says at face value. Synthesis is the "best outcome" because the Catalyst says it is. End of story. We aren't challenged to believe that, we're just supposed to accept it.
I guess I just don't see that. It's on our own heads if we're unquestioning about it. If you don't value authority much in the first place, you're not going to simply be unquestioning.
You gotta be Kirk in ST: 5. Like I quoted earlier: "What does God need with a starship?"
Key word: synthetic, unnatural, artificial etc. It cannot be life if it wasn't created on its own. Synthetics are built and powered. Organics are born and are the result of evolution of millions of years. Organics can think and evolve. Robots cannot. They just follow their programming and even if they learn to make alterations to the original code they will still function within limits of that programming. They can't create something new that isn't based on any existing data.
So yeah, organic and synthetic life are based on mutually exclusive design principles. I've argued that point in my Synthesis thread. However, there's no reason to assume that synthetics couldn't exist that are just like us except for the way they came into existence, and in fact, the ME trilogy affirms that they can be that. "Robots" aren't synthetic life. They're too simple. We can't build synthetic life at the moment because our technology isn't up to it and we don't understand how thinking works, but nothing in the known laws of physics indicates that synthetic life couldn't exist.
Apart from that, attempts to affirm the specialness of organic intelligent life are empty because we don't know how our intelligence and creativity works. If we knew, it's most likely we'd find it not all that hard to replicate. In fact, if we knew, it's also likely it's just as "functional" as you claim synthetic life to be. There's every indication we're just organic machines, evolved to have partially non-deterministic decision processes because that proved to be an evolutionary advantage.
Check this definition of life. There's nothing in there that says it has to be organic. The most problematic aspect is (2), but only because most likely, we wouldn't find it efficient to design synthetic life that way. As for adaptation, intentional self-adaptation works at least as well as adaptation through random chance. It just requires understanding.
Like Miranda? Like Oriana?
Like Grunt?
Not really. Although they are made, their DNA is based on existing organics. And in case with Miri and Oriana they were made as children, they grew up, got experience and are alive in every meaning of it. AI are made from metal and are not based on any existing life-form. Take Transformers for example. Although they are made from metal, they are alive because they are not created by other beings for a purpose. AllSpark gave them life-force (literal soul). In Mass Effect universe and real world AI are just complex robots. They don't have a life-force and don't have feelings such as pain, exhaustion, love etc. If something doesn't have feelings then it's not alive.
So yeah, organic and synthetic life are based on mutually exclusive design principles. I've argued that point in my Synthesis thread. However, there's no reason to assume that synthetics couldn't exist that are just like us except for the way they came into existence, and in fact, the ME trilogy affirms that they can be that. "Robots" aren't synthetic life. They're too simple. We can't build synthetic life at the moment because our technology isn't up to it and we don't understand how thinking works, but nothing in the known laws of physics indicates that synthetic life couldn't exist.
Apart from that, attempts to affirm the specialness of organic intelligent life are empty because we don't know how our intelligence and creativity works. If we knew, it's most likely we'd find it not all that hard to replicate. In fact, if we knew, it's also likely it's just as "functional" as you claim synthetic life to be. There's every indication we're just organic machines, evolved to have partially non-deterministic decision processes because that proved to be an evolutionary advantage.
Check this definition of life. There's nothing in there that says it has to be organic. The most problematic aspect is (2), but only because most likely, we wouldn't find it efficient to design synthetic life that way. As for adaptation, intentional self-adaptation works at least as well as adaptation through random chance. It just requires understanding.
Even if it's possible to create a synthetic life as you call it, I really don't see why we should do it. What's the point of creating something like that? Too many unnecessary risks. We don't need it. We only need robots - automated tools designed for boring labor so we can enjoy our lives. Nothing more.
Even if it's possible to create a synthetic life as you call it, I really don't see why we should do it. What's the point of creating something like that? Too many unnecessary risks. We don't need it. We only need robots - automated tools designed for boring labor so we can enjoy our lives. Nothing more.
Some people just have a compulsion to stick things inside themselves, I guess.
Some people just have a compulsion to stick things inside themselves, I guess.
Robots can do this job as well. still no need for alive synthetics. If you think that robot is 'not alive enough' then there are still humans that are very much alive.
I guess I just don't see that. It's on our own heads if we're unquestioning about it. If you don't value authority much in the first place, you're not going to simply be unquestioning.
You gotta be Kirk in ST: 5. Like I quoted earlier: "What does God need with a starship?"
That is the right question.
It's just a question Bioware didn't want us to ask.
Not really. Although they are made, their DNA is based on existing organics. And in case with Miri and Oriana they were made as children, they grew up, got experience and are alive in every meaning of it. AI are made from metal and are not based on any existing life-form. Take Transformers for example. Although they are made from metal, they are alive because they are not created by other beings for a purpose. AllSpark gave them life-force (literal soul). In Mass Effect universe and real world AI are just complex robots. They don't have a life-force and don't have feelings such as pain, exhaustion, love etc. If something doesn't have feelings then it's not alive.
Miranda, Oriana, and Grunt were all made by other beings for a purpose.
What is a "life force"? Is it like an "essence of a species" or "organic energy"?
There are mental conditions that numb people to emotions. And physical ones that render people incapable of feeling pain, exhaustion, or hunger. Are they "live?
Even if it's possible to create a synthetic life as you call it, I really don't see why we should do it. What's the point of creating something like that? Too many unnecessary risks. We don't need it. We only need robots - automated tools designed for boring labor so we can enjoy our lives. Nothing more.
Counterexample: some military people think they need an automated threat response system that reacts faster than a human could. Such a system would need a certain level of intelligence.
We don't know if sapient systems can evolve from nonsapient systems programmed to have the ability to learn. It may turn out they can't, and then all our hypothetical robot war scenarios will never come to pass except from a programming error, but if they can, then the question isn't "why should we build sapient systems" but rather "can we avoid building systems that evolve to sapience".
The thing is, in the ME universe sapient systems can evolve from non-sapient ones. Which means that synthetic life will come to exist, as the story shows.
Edit:
There is no such a thing as "life force". Life processes are chemical and electrochemical processes.
If something doesn't have feelings then it's not alive.
That seems to be a very arbitrary definition of the word alive. Because according to this definition various things widely considered to be "alive" by scientists of todays age, like plants, insects, arachnids, viruses and bacteria are actually not alive.
they are alive because they are not created by other beings for a purpose.
Now this one is even worse, because if we go by this definition neither cattle, nor domesticated dogs nor any other sort of specifically bred pet would be considered alive. Heck probably not even actual human children in third world countries where having children is often serves the purpose of having someone to look after you once you are old.
Whatever. I don't care. I pick destroy.
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