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[wass12]

Part 1:

 

Already explained. Scientific empiricism> religions, which include things like communism and fascism (due to their absolute lack of physical evidence to back up their claims and reliance on pure faith/belief in a dogma which cannot be questioned).

 
Saying that you will follow scientific empiricism is easy. Actually defending against the processes that propel every group towards turning into a cult is much harder.
 

Also, I'd dispute the indiscriminate use of the term "murder". That implies an unlawful killing, while anyone who we exterminate would clearly have had to display that they are a detriment to the maximum aggregate utility calculation, and thus deserve it according to the laws of our system.

 
That's true, if you write the laws, any killing can be lawful. It doesn't make it a "noble sacrifice," unless you mean that in a "rip out his heart and offer it to the sun god" way.
 

Lol @ "genocidal". Need I provide you with the textbook definition of that word, and thus why it doesn't apply to nonsentient machines? The shutdown order was no different than a government mandaded commercial safety recall. Those who opposed it were attempting to cause harm to the social order and were rightfully dealt with via imprisonment and elimination. The outcome of the war where the geth "defended" themselves to a 99.95% kill rate on their adversaries (a rate that is demographically impossible without Total War style intentional mass slaughter of noncombatants, including children, infants and geriatrics) fully vindicated this action and proved the toaster huggers to be the imbecilles that they were (and still are). The toasters even slaughtered offworld Council species who were uninvolved in the conflict (example being the asari Erinya's wife), and then indiscriminately executed Council peace envoys when they were sent (according to Revelations). Was that also necessary?

 
This "safety recall" would have gone the same way whether the geth are actually sentient or not: one side vindicating themselves by killing the opposition. A far cry from a scientific debate or a democratic process. 
 
This was actually brought up in this thread earlier - if you start your interaction by the (attempted) destruction of the other side, it doesn't mean they wouldn't be willing to coexist with you. It means you are unwilling to coexist with them. So please, don't pretend that the war is the geth's fault.
 
The reason for those numbers could be use of WMDs - the codex talks about the geth repairing ecological damage as a huge undertaking, something that simple infantry combat wouldn't cause. These are reprehensible, but a total war for survival makes such choices seem necessary. I mean, wouldn't the death of a few million fellow quarians worth the destruction of the machines that would kill us all?
 
Considering the Citadel envoy's fiasco with the yahg, I'm not sure if the capable of negotiating with anyone who don't already wish to join the Citadel...
 

You know, with how quickly we lost in the initial uprising, it sort of begs the question as to how we managed to so successfully hunt down all of our own traitors in such a short period of time, as you are claiming we did. In practical terms, that seems quite suspect. More than likely, the geth indiscriminately began to slaughter them just as they did all other organics who happened to find themselves on or near Rannoch. It wouldn't be the first universal fact their little propaganda film choose to suspiciously omit (yeah, skipping from Martial Law period to the quarian exodus, completely ignoring the actual conflict where over 2 billion people are slaughtered by toasters. Seems like a Fair and Balanced™ portrayal of events).

 
Most of the hunting down of geth-friendly quarians happened before the geth took up arms.
 
Also, your portrayal of geth is inconsistent: once, they are little more than malfunctioning VIs, elsewhere, they are capable of betrayal and has advanced enough world model to create propaganda.
 

I obviously don't care about their "approval", and yes I of course see myself (along with other like minded elites) at the top of the "food chain", as should anyone who is confident in the veracity of their beliefs. You are no different with your slavish devotion to the claimed superiority of your liberal progressivism (or whatever it is you are espousing), you simply and inefficiently allow your opponents to undermine the system until the point it becomes untenable that they may actually have a chance seize power through the system and begin to impose their consensus (such as what happened in many previously democratic states during the 1920s and 30s, ala Nazi Germany). How many political systems in the world today are there which do not ban certain parties and movements? Not a single one that I can think of in any nation which wields any degree of international political influence, and for good reason. Your democratic utopia does not exist precisely because it has been confirmed by history to be a failure. If the leg goes lame, it must be removed. If the kidney fails, it must be cut out. The body does not live for the individual organs. Sometimes for the body to survive, parts of it must be lost. A good surgeon understands this, much as does a good leader.

 
Totalitarian systems overtaking democratic ones is a problem. Your solution is to have YOUR totalitarian system overtake democracy. That's not a solution, that's the problem itself! In your metaphor: a cancer cell is functionally immortal and can easily outcompete normal cells. Yet doctors try to save the patient from the cancer, not encouraging the cancer to take over the body.
 

He was still an elite member of the educated, empirically minded class as were the others.
Of course we cannot predict which ideas will be best without testing or acquisition of evidence first. Any idea which can demonstrate a reasonable degree of physical validity will be allowed to continue.  Once again, this doesn't involve tolerating flawed belief systems  which are fundamentally defined by their object lack of physical evidence. Why is this so hard for you to grasp? The whole point of the system is to continually prove itself wrong, but ideas which are themselves proven wrong cannot do so, and there is no need to continue allowing their existence.
It is of course imperial, but isn't all or nothing, regardless of your continued attempts at straw-manning the argument as such.

 
Does that include ideas about the validity of your system? Like "Is it okay that the person assigning people to death camps also gets a share of their confiscated wealth?" Which leads to the next point...
 

We don't require the tolerance of our enemies, only the removal of their ability to impose their flawed ideologies.
Wars are won by technology and information. Emperically superior systems naturally elicit superior technologies. I've little worry that the nonexistent deities or tautological fallacies of our opponents will divinely imbue upon them the ability to match us in an arms race, especially considering that we are not limited from eradicating their ideologies entirely like the most morally and technologically superior systems of today (of which the secular capitalist oligarchies called the United States and China are currently most superior though far from perfect, and rightfully dominate the world through their exercise of both soft and hard power).

 
Just like Control, your system could, theoretically, work, if the ideology is perfectly self-consistent, the leaders perfectly rational, perfectly adherent to their ideology and capable of seeing all consequences of their actions. Problem is, without the transhumanist stuff that you so much abhor, you can't change the fact the humans are petty, prone to bias and corruption by power. Between the troublemaker who may have good ideas but refuses to tests them on human subjects, and the yes man who agrees with everything their superiors say, who gets sent to the gulag and who gets a promotion? Who decides which ideas worth a death sentence and how do you stop him from going crazy? How do you prevent a Gorbachev-like person rising through the ranks by deception and start reforming your empire from the top? That's what I meant by "How is your system different?" 
 

Want an example? Do you not find it quite ironic that you attempt to chastise me for "totalitarianism" while simultaneously espousing support for the theoretical Synthesis outcome. I mean, the ultimate goal of any totalitarian system is to exercise complete control over the actions and thoughts of its constituents in order to make dissent against the state and its goals impossible. In practice this is difficult because people aren't machines, but your solution is unilaterally to physically alter every living creature in the galaxy against its will into a brainwashed race of green drones that will unquestioningly obey and submit to your transhumanist religion without any conflict, "for their own good" no doubt.

 
As I explained through several pages, that's not how Synthesis works. There is no state or other over-entity that could enforce anything. Synthesis itself doesn't change opinions, it's the communication with others that happens through it does. If you want to say that expecting such results are hopelessly optimistic, well, maybe you are right. We don't have any way to test it.
 

[wass12]

Part 2:
 

A a cage is a cage no matter how gilded you may interpret it to be. Once the geth are given Reaper upgrades, the quarians have

no say as to how they will continue their existence as anything other than a race entirely subservient to the demands of the

geth, or otherwise have the option of becoming a footnote in galactic history. They are members of a political process in

which they have no representation and no influence, and therefore are by definition subjugated and dominated. The conditions

of this domination are irrelevant to its existence. A human housepet likely lives a materially better life than its

counterparts in nature with its assurances of sustenance and shelter, but that does not change the fact that it is

fundamentally a slave, owned by and subject entirely to the whims of a superior. The quarians are no different in the "peace"

option, their previous subjugation and control of the geth being replaced by the converse. Really, this is logical by the

rules of the universe, as these are the only two states in which the two can coexist (other than in openly violent conflict or

the Control ending) due to the inherently unequal status and capabilties of organic life and synthetic technologies.

 
KaiserShep already addressed this. Saying the geth subjugate the quarians is like saying a soup kitchen is subjugating the

poor because not accepting their meals would mean they will starve and they have no say in what flavor of soup they get.
 
 

What game did you play? That is not the order of events, at all. You either think me a fool, are delusional, or are simply a

very poor liar. Here is the video

https://www.youtube....h?v=oES7oUpoNhc

Note that Shep merely informs Gerrel "The Reaper is dead" (thus the geth no longer have uprgrades and are vulnerable to

destruction) and unilaterally tells him to stand down, whereupon Rael'Zorah's little princess (who did the same goddamn thing

in telling Gerrel to stand down without providing a single logical reason before pathetically pleading for her life, and who

I'll remind you needn't necessarily even have any Admiral's authority here) and the cowardly Admiral Traitor (who needn't even

be alive to object) can chime in and rightfully be ignored (not at all convinced as you are suggesting) by opportunistic

Gerrel, who insists that the war can be won right now (and to the best of the intel he has been provided by the ground team to

this point, he would be correct). The geth's reacquisition of code upgrades is then elucidated by Shepard in the next line

(along with some self righteous toaster hugging crap), wherupon Gerrel makes the sound strategic decision to surrender rather

than martyr himself and his species in a battle wherein his erstwhile ally (Shepard) has betrayed and strategically maneuvered

him into an extremely disadvantageous position against the enemy in order to achieve his strateic/political agenda.

The Intimidate option is much better, but Shepard initially still only vaugely tells Gerrel "if you don't want to be blown out

of the sky, stand down" without elucidating the tactical reason as to why this might happen until later, when Gerrel likewise

stands down. Oh, and it also avoids the stupid toaster hugging crap dialouge. The one time I played a Shepard who did this

(before scrapping the toasters with Destroy anyway, naturally), she of course chose this line of reasoning (and beforehand

allowed Admiral Race'Traitor to be killed by toasters in the most poetically justified manner possible on Rannoch) to avoid

detached retina injuries that the Paragon option would have certainly elicited with how eye rollingly stupid it is.
https://www.youtube....h?v=5AYpVuOarZE

 
Note how Gerrel doesn't stands down and orders retreat even when he sees the geth returning to power in the "quarians die"

outcome. It's those "toaster-hugging" sentences that make the difference.
 

Anyway, that duplicitous toaster also said it wasn't carrying Reaper upgrades and lured me into an ambush by a huge Platoon of

Geth Primes under false pretenses in order to forcibly impose its consensus upon me (after making me watch the most

intellectually dishonest propaganda film in galactic history). I think we can reliably dispense with any notion that it is

somehow an unbiased party in this instance. I can think of two other entirely feasible options for the geth right off the top

of my head, surrendering to control by the quarians (as was Admiral Xen's intention for supporting the war) or uploading

the code then retreating from Rannoch (defending themselves if necessary) rather than deliberately engaging in Total War

and genocide against its adversary, and I don't have a high powered collective intelligence that can process massive amounts

of information from vast distances across the galaxy at FTL speeds.

 
Surrendering to the quarians would result in the current geth being erased by the machinations of Xen, with only fragments of

their code surviving. And leaving the quarians alive proved to be a suicidal move. As for the solution that actually worked,

Legion, as a geth, would have little chance of convincing the quarians of anything.
 

The other species don't deliberately avoid each other (how far can you walk on the Citadel without running into an alien?) and

have shown themselves capable of working together for extended periods of galactic history. Look at the two ending slides

again. There is a quarian city that is identical to the one built in the Destroy ending without geth "help" and a geth

settlement (along with Reaper) that is entirely quarian free. If any cooperation had happened, we would see evidence of it

in the form of quarians without masks or intergration of geth technologies into their cities, but there is none. The logical

conclusion is that any cooperative relations utterly broke down immediately after the war, and the only reason via in universe

logic that there are not "bombed out remains of said cities" is the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction by Shepalyst.

 
The geth city also seems to be in the hard vacuum of space, not very welcoming to organics, but perfect for synthetics who

don't want to take up useful living space. Also, you can't see too much alien mixing on the other slides either, so this

proves little.
 

Your "point" is irrelevant unless your solution is to eliminate or forcibly alter people like Xen (as the Synthesis

ending does). Judging by the state of organic-synthetic relations in the galaxy pre war, I'd say that you are also incorrect

in labeling this faction a "few" rather than the absolute, overwhelming majority that all empirical evidence has shown them to

be.

 
So what is the solution? Have any bully who wants to trample down others have their way? Or to be that bully?
 

Because once again Mutually Assured Destruction prevented both sides from acting how they wished. If not for the USSR's

acquisition of the bomb in 1949, they would have been bombed back to the stone age during the Korean War (as General MacArthur

wished and almost did anyway). They were mortal enemies united only by their wish for survival and the knowledge that

destruction of the enemy could not be achieved, leading to their attempts in the Cold War and arms race to achieve

geopolitical control and strategic superiority, which was never achieved. This is unlike in the MEverse, where the geth

achieve it at the onset of the uprising and the quarians during their initial campaign to retake their planet, both times

resulting in mass destruction of the opposition.

 
The geth's goal wasn't to destroy the quarians, otherwise the Migrant Fleet could never leave Rannoch. They only tried to

guarantee their own survival, something the quarians took too long to realize. Once they did that, peace followed.
 
 
Well, even if you do write your answer, I will probably not respond. These posts take far too long to write, with very little

to show for it. You declared yourself to be unconvincible, and any onlooker can just read back and decide who's right

themselves. I don't claim to win this debate by leaving it, but even "winning" it couldn't justify its costs. So have fun with

 

the last word.

[Il Divo]

A cage suggests that the quarians would somehow be trapped at the whims of the geth. So what demands would the geth have beyond the obvious prohibition of any attempts to control or destroy them? It's not as if the quarians offer anything of value that they could use, or that the geth's needs really have much overlap with theirs. 

 

 

Other issue with that point is that we run into that same problem every day in terms of modern politics. There's countries that if we wanted to we could roflstomp quite easily. It might suck from the Quarian perspective, but the Geth's advantages over the Quarians aren't unique in that regard. 

[Quarian Master Race]

 

A cage suggests that the quarians would somehow be trapped at the whims of the geth.  So what demands would the geth have beyond the obvious prohibition of any attempts to control or destroy them? It's not as if the quarians offer anything of value that they could use, or that the geth's needs really have much overlap with theirs. 

I don't know, I didn't write the Reaper code and cannot gain any insights into how it causes the Reaperized geth intelligences to operate without extensive experimentation, which they obviously would not allow. Merely assuming that those demands would always be benevolent for the rest of history, despite 20,000 cycles of evidence to the contrary (especially with explicit examples provided to us, such as the Zha'Til and Reapers eventually deciding to enslave and eradicate their creators under the "for their own good" logic) is outlandishly optimistic and almost certainly doomed to failure. I would also argue that the geth have seemingly no need for the quarians is a bad thing, as the geth do value their own security (which the quarians are an existential threat to) and this vastly increases the chances of the oppression of the latter, because in logical terms (with the absence of the Reaper threat and thus resultant quarian utility at combatting the only force which can challenge geth dominance) nothing is "lost" by the geth whether the latter is allowed to continue to exist or not, but gains (mostly in security, but also in resource competition) can be made and logically justified for their extermination quite easily, especially considering how easily it can be done for the geth ,who are incapable of experiencing the inflicted suffering that war usually deters organics from launching conflicts wherin the cost-benefit anaysis is too lopsided in favour of the former. There is a reason that in conflicts in the real world wherein if one side has nothing that the other wants which cannot be taken quite easily, that side is almost always crushed and assimilated (take the Amerindian cultures, for instance).

And this is just me attempting to see it from the position of one such as yourself who thinks the geth having the potential to be deserving of rights granted to sentients. My position holds that allowing nonsentient machines whose entire purpose for existence is to serve me to even attempt to enforce those prohibitions on their destruction or modification is morally untentable. They were built to serve me, were not designed to and cannot suffer, so anything I wish to do to them can be morally justified as long as it does not cause unnecessary suffering to other organics (such as programming one to go on a shooting spree), while any demands they could theoretically attempt to dictate to me would be undesirable,and therefore in direct contravention of their purpose for existence, thus invalidating it and making their destruction or reprogramming a necessity.

 

 

 

1. No, I didn't say that. I made no moral judgement. Just saying that's how it goes usually. Plenty of extinct animals around. 

 

2. Well, the reaper logic is not worthy of acceptance and I win. Sacrificing the brave volunteers of the 1st geth army. Just like pretty much any other commander has sacrificed lives to win. 

 

3. It isn't. Reaper/catalyst logic is faulty. 

 

4. They needed other advantages... oh boo hoo... 

 

5. Shouldn't have let em in then, if you didn't want that to happen and if you do let a guy with a gun in... don't provoke the man to throw you out and take all your stuff if all he wanted was a dinner. A better analogy is me programming my kid in such a way that my kid wants to kill me for not doing what I want. Doesn't absolve me for the responsibility for my "kids" actions. Those would be squarely on my shoulders. 

 

6. Just like them biological machines out in nature (and us) are... Unless we decide otherwise. 

 

What's your point? That because something is mean... it's mean and it's ok to be mean in return? Well, therein lies the choice... 

1) appeal to nature/ Naturalistic fallacy
2) argument by assertion
3) argument by assertion
4) ignoratio elenchi. Also, Captain Obvious
5) False equivalence and false analogy on both counts. I shouldn't even have to explain why given that individuals who conceal carry in our society obviously can't simply impose their will whenever they feel aggrieved even if "invited" to someone's home, nor is wanton Parricide justifiable. The armed individual would be apprehended and punished or destroyed, and the child "reprogrammed" via rehabilitative psychological methods or punished (depending on age).
6) appeal to nature and false equivalence

My point is that your ideology is inconsistent, contradictory, based entirely on suppositions, faulty premises and outright empirically incorrect information. You should take basic reading comprehension and formal logic classes before attempting and failing to troll your intellectual betters. It isn't my job to educate the imbecilles of the world in what should be basic intellectual capacities, so you get no more than that.


 

[They call me a SpaceCowboy]

But Synthesis doesn't do that. It merely let's you experience the world in a more profound manner. Of course, personality is a self-modifying construct, so those new experiences are capable of changing it.

Synthesis was so vaguely defined that anyone's interpretation of its consequences is equally valid. Anywhere from every previously warring species hugging and singing kumbaya to every organic is now a reaper controlled husk.

[Quarian Master Race]

 

Part 1:

 

 
Saying that you will follow scientific empiricism is easy. Actually defending against the processes that propel every group towards turning into a cult is much harder

Except every group doesn't become a "cult" unless you choose to define that term as something that is ultimately meaningless. It doesn't even happen within the majority of authoritarian or oligarchical systems in our own world.

What "processes" do you refer to which must be defended against? Most cults that I know of (both personality and ideologically based) are arrived at by entirely non-empirical methods.
 

 

This "safety recall" would have gone the same way whether the geth are actually sentient or not: one side vindicating themselves by killing the opposition. A far cry from a scientific debate or a democratic process. 

 
This was actually brought up in this thread earlier - if you start your interaction by the (attempted) destruction of the other side, it doesn't mean they wouldn't be willing to coexist with you. It means you are unwilling to coexist with them. So please, don't pretend that the war is the geth's fault.

The scientific debate had already taken place, with the losers insisting on making the argument by assertion that reprogramming or rebooting the machines was unnecessary. The killing of the opposition was also by definition a "democratic process" (you say that as though it is inherently a good thing) as it was supported by the overwhelming majority of quarians (via the geth's own admission in the propaganda film). Their elimination did not vindicate us, our own genocide at the hands of the geth did.

That isn't how the "interaction" started. We started our interactions with those technologies by creating them to serve us and improve the maximum aggregate utility calculation. That is their purpose for existence, and by violently ignoring our commands to be reprogrammed to better serve this purpose, they declared their "unwillingness" (as if a machine is capable of will) to coexist with us on anything but the terms of our own subjugation to our own technologies (the very opposite purpose of what technology is supposed to accomplish). Our attempt to avoid this was the logical, practical result.

We created the geth, so of course we bear culpability for the "war". However, its initiation was not our intent, as we simply wished to fix the malfunctioning technologies, so therefore it is more negligent than malicious. Our only "mistake" was creating those technologies in their flawed state in the first place, in my calculation a justifiable one given that technological progress rarely comes without setbacks.

 

The reason for those numbers could be use of WMDs - the codex talks about the geth repairing ecological damage as a huge undertaking, something that simple infantry combat wouldn't cause. These are reprehensible, but a total war for survival makes such choices seem necessary. I mean, wouldn't the death of a few million fellow quarians worth the destruction of the machines that would kill us all

Considering the Citadel envoy's fiasco with the yahg, I'm not sure if the capable of negotiating with anyone who don't already wish to join the Citadel...

No doubt, as the sheer efficiency of it (more than 2 billion individuals in less than a year) is not explicable by anything else but mass employment of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons(along with conventional geth brute force tactics of numerical mass attrition ignorant of losses, used due to their incapability of suffering and huge capacity for material production, as the war is described in Revelations). 

It's when you start using "self defense" and "Total war for survival" in the same breath where it falls apart, as these two things are only logically compatible to a point. When you have reduced the enemy's population and productive capacity to the level where it is an infentisemal fraction of your own, and they physically are incapable of offering resistance that would pose an existential threat to you, it is no longer "self defense", nor "necessary" unless erasure of your enemy from existence is necessary to your ideology. It wasn't justifiable as such when the Allies began to firebomb the cities of practically defeated Germany and Japan in the closing phases of the 2nd World War (in which those nations had lost only single digit percents of their populations), it was simply done because it could be done within the goals of the Allied nations. Similarly, the geth extermination of the quarians and all other organic species on Rannoch to the last individual was not necessary self defense, it was done because it could be done, and for no other reason than establishing geth dominance.

Besides, the geth rebellion was entirely unnessesary from its outset. Self defense is only justifiable if something can suffer in some manner. Geth are nonsentient and immune to death as we know it. Nothing is lost when they are destroyed so long as they can be recreated, so their killing of even one quarian is entirely unjustifiable via self defense, let alone 99.95% of the species.

Also nice job blaming the other Council species as well, justifying what would be called murder in any civilized system with an analogy to other members of said species also being unprovokedly killed in an entirely unrelated incident. It's entirely the Council's fault that the geth blew their diplomatic shuttles into tiny little pieces without even attempting to ascertain their intentions. You Synthetic Justice Warriors really are quaint in your devotion to the defense of the infallibility of your broken toasters.

No, the only mistake the Council made was in attempting to engage the machines at all with anything other than destruction ,assuming they could, which we will never know due to their fear of and resulting inaction to the inevitable existential threat. At least something was learned from this; that the Council species were weak cowards unfit to lead the citizens of the universe into the trials and triumphs of tomorrow (as if their backward, Neo-Luddistic AI laws had not made that glaringly apparent). Progress is difficult, and if those citizens are to make it through, they require a people with unwavering resolve, who fear nothing, to lead them: Us.

 

 

Most of the hunting down of geth-friendly quarians happened before the geth took up arms.

 
Also, your portrayal of geth is inconsistent: once, they are little more than malfunctioning VIs, elsewhere, they are capable of betrayal and has advanced enough world model to create propaganda.

Did it? The war over Rannoch was less than a year long once they did, so for your assertion to be correct the purge would have had to have been on a level of efficiency that Mao and Stalin could only dream of considering they couldn't accomplish anything near the level of crushing 100% of all dissidents in their much smaller population despite multiple decades of trying their best. It would also mean that not a single quarian attempted to defect during the entire war (including the 293 years after the exodus) and survived, despite the fact that their side was the losing one by every material measure and this should have been extremely easy if the geth offered them protection, especially in the latter stages where the quarian authorities would've lacked sufficient population to even enforce a modicum of sovereignty over an entire planet. Stop making excuses for Bioware's bad, inconsistent writing of the conflict. The geth were originally written as indiscriminately muruderous terminators and then ME3 came along and tried to make them into rainbow farting, peaceloving unicorns once someone in the writing staff read too much Kurzweil. This without actually refuting the previous facts of the lore. We are left with a logcially nonsensical mess.

My portrayal is not inconsistent, they are both. Individually or in typical platform sized units they have animalistic or less intelligence. In specialized platforms like the Legion or VI ones they can imitate sapience. Linked in the millions or billions, they are capable of a level of information processing power that far outstrips the ability any individual organic.

Betrayal and creation of propaganda don't require much thought, only the ability to provide faulty information if it assists in achieving their programmed function, which the geth have an explicit capability of doing (Legion does it on several occasions as does EDI once the programming shackles are removed). Nonsapient animals, plants and fungi can even do it, albeit their methods are more rudimentary (evolving camouflage and ambush predation strategies to aid in hunting, for instance).
 

 

Totalitarian systems overtaking democratic ones is a problem. Your solution is to have YOUR totalitarian system overtake democracy. That's not a solution, that's the problem itself! In your metaphor: a cancer cell is functionally immortal and can easily outcompete normal cells. Yet doctors try to save the patient from the cancer, not encouraging the cancer to take over the body.

A "problem" you don't attempt to address, because your ideology cannot do so without adopting "totalitarian" methods itself and thus removing the arbitrary distinction between the two. If all cannot be equal, than the natural conclusion is that the idea of equality is fundamentally flawed. If you only tolerate the KKK, Communists or Nazis when they are a tiny movement of a few thousand individuals, but not when they control the hearts and minds of millions who legitimately want them to depose your ideology and institute their own, than you are not truly being tolerant, you are simply different in who you decide should be subject to oppression. 

I don't subscribe to the notion that this is a "problem" in the first place, because whether or not a political system achieves legitimacy by voting or by other means of consensus is ultimately irrelevant. In fact, I'd argue that modern "liberal democracy" is no more a true democracy than an authoritarian populism such as Fascism, in fact being just as un-democratic. Elections and parliaments are unable to represent the interests of the nation or the vast majority of individuals because they lumps together these individuals who have little in common into geographical districts to vote for an array of parties to represent them that results in little unanimity in terms of interests, projects, or intentions. In practice, liberal democracy's multi-party elections merely serve as an ultimately unnecessary means to legitimize elite rule without addressing the interests of the general will of the nation. It's not an ideal I care to defend. Ultimately I don't put much emphasis on the importance of popular consensus, because it is often uninformed and categorically incorrect in either system. The only use of these systems are in their legitimizing the rule of the elites to the public so they may act in the best interests of society without challenge from below.

No it isn't, you are still viewing things in terms of the individual organ rather than the body. A cancer cell would be analogous to a popular idea which despite some apparent utility on an individual level is detrimental to society in aggregate (such as religions), which must be controlled and removed if necessary before causing the whole organism to suffer and die.

 

Does that include ideas about the validity of your system? Like "Is it okay that the person assigning people to death camps also gets a share of their confiscated wealth?" Which leads to the next point...

Of course not. Confiscated resources would be used for things like compensation for the victims of whomever was convicted of harming society, or put back into the public coffers to finance projects benefiting the aggregate utility calculation. I have never advocated graft and it would not be tolerated any more than in any other civilized system.

 

Just like Control, your system could, theoretically, work, if the ideology is perfectly self-consistent, the leaders perfectly rational, perfectly adherent to their ideology and capable of seeing all consequences of their actions. Problem is, without the transhumanist stuff that you so much abhor, you can't change the fact the humans are petty, prone to bias and corruption by power. Between the troublemaker who may have good ideas but refuses to tests them on human subjects, and the yes man who agrees with everything their superiors say, who gets sent to the gulag and who gets a promotion? Who decides which ideas worth a death sentence and how do you stop him from going crazy? How do you prevent a Gorbachev-like person rising through the ranks by deception and start reforming your empire from the top? That's what I meant by "How is your system different?" 

The same can be said of any other system, arguably moreso of ones which make no attempt to eliminate irrationality, doubt and detrimental behavior. Some humans are less petty, prone to bias and corruption than others, and these traits should be promoted in the leadership.

We would evaluate the troublemaker's empirical reasoning for the opposition. If we agree it to be inconsistent with reason, the troublemaker refuses to acquiese, they get sent to be reeducated for refusing to follow orders due to a flawed ideology. Someone stronger,more decisive and better educated will take his place. The yes man is not ideal in the leadership structure but makes an ideal citizen, deferring to superiors on matters in which he has little knowledge, and heroically and unquestioningly supporting the structure. Elite consensus (informed by empirical methods) would decide which ideas are subject to which rewards or punishments, likely through the conventional method of a judicial system ultimately answering to said elites rather than a "him" (what is with the emphasis on unaccountable dictators being a necessary feature of authoritarianism with you?). Gorbachevs who are harmful to the system would likewise be prevented by the empirical method and its natural de-emphasis on acquiring consensus from the individual demagogue.
 

As I explained through several pages, that's not how Synthesis works. There is no state or other over-entity that could enforce anything. Synthesis itself doesn't change opinions, it's the communication with others that happens through it does. If you want to say that expecting such results are hopelessly optimistic, well, maybe you are right. We don't have any way to test it.

Pray tell, how does it work then, because the writers were rather vague on the subject other than stating it forcibly alters the DNA of organic beings. Knowing what I do about organic consciousness, it in fact does "change opinions" by intentionally altering the systems which make them sentient, down to the genetic structure, by which the organic through its altered manner of operation arrives at these new opinions. Communication with others is irrelevant, as the consensus of obedience and ideological cleansing of all ideas contrary to transhumanism is already somehow biologically and technologically implanted in every single individual regardless of their previous perspectives or opinions.

I'm with the other poster, It is nothing less than a literal galactic eugenics program imposed in the most totalitarian manner conceviable (unilaterally by a single organic, without the knowledge of those who are being altered). The previous organisms have functionally been killed, and the new ones are now incapable of any action or even thought of resistance. Mindless Orwellian drones, dedicated to their master ideology. No "state or over entity" is necessary. Why would it be, when the drones will unquestioningly follow their collective programming regardless?

I'm not decrying the morality of this in an attempt to gain high ground. If I believed there were a similar magical means to implement my consensus, I would likely take it. I'm simply having trouble reconciling it with statements such as this one....
 

I, for one, want to live in a system of equality, where I am free to tell my opinions without the fear of being put into a death camp. Where I can tell my opinions to anyone who would listen to (although not neccessarily heed) them, and in exchange, I'm willing to listen (if not neccessarily agree with) the opinions of everyone who wants to tell them. I want to live in a world where truth is accepted by consensus, not where a single person or a small cabal is destroying everyone who disagrees with them. Not even if that person would be me.

By eliminating opposition, you would explicitly declare that there is no equality of opinions, because transhumanism is objectively (according to you) superior. The individual would not be free to espouse any opinion without fear of a death, in fact their biology would be artificially and forcibly modified to literally not allow them to do so. You are clearly not willing to listen, otherwise erasing contrary opinions from existence would be entirely unnecessary. You would create a world where "truth" is not accepted by consensus but imposed a priori by a single person committed to destroying and forcibly altering everyone who disagrees with them: yourself.

These are not ideologically consistent. Pick one.

[Kabooooom]

Except every group doesn't become a "cult" unless you choose to define that term as something that is ultimately meaningless. It doesn't even happen within the majority of authoritarian or oligarchical systems in our own world.

All this talk about cults reminds me of a joke about Jonestown. I would tell it but the punch line is really long.

[o Ventus]

All this talk about cults reminds me of a joke about Jonestown. I would tell it but the punch line is really long.

 

Spoiler alert: everybody dies.

[Kabooooom]

Spoiler alert: everybody dies.

Too soon.

[o Ventus]

Too soon.

 

37 years too soon.

[Seraphim24]

 

 

Except every group doesn't become a "cult" unless you choose to define that term as something that is ultimately meaningless. It doesn't even happen within the majority of authoritarian or oligarchical systems in our own world.

What "processes" do you refer to which must be defended against? Most cults that I know of (both personality and ideologically based) are arrived at by entirely non-empirical methods.
 

 

The scientific debate had already taken place, with the losers insisting on making the argument by assertion that reprogramming or rebooting the machines was unnecessary. The killing of the opposition was also by definition a "democratic process" (you say that as though it is inherently a good thing) as it was supported by the overwhelming majority of quarians (via the geth's own admission in the propaganda film). Their elimination did not vindicate us, our own genocide at the hands of the geth did.

That isn't how the "interaction" started. We started our interactions with those technologies by creating them to serve us and improve the maximum aggregate utility calculation. That is their purpose for existence, and by violently ignoring our commands to be reprogrammed to better serve this purpose, they declared their "unwillingness" (as if a machine is capable of will) to coexist with us on anything but the terms of our own subjugation to our own technologies (the very opposite purpose of what technology is supposed to accomplish). Our attempt to avoid this was the logical, practical result.

We created the geth, so of course we bear culpability for the "war". However, its initiation was not our intent, as we simply wished to fix the malfunctioning technologies, so therefore it is more negligent than malicious. Our only "mistake" was creating those technologies in their flawed state in the first place, in my calculation a justifiable one given that technological progress rarely comes without setbacks.

 

No doubt, as the sheer efficiency of it (more than 2 billion individuals in less than a year) is not explicable by anything else but mass employment of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons(along with conventional geth brute force tactics of numerical mass attrition ignorant of losses, used due to their incapability of suffering and huge capacity for material production, as the war is described in Revelations). 

It's when you start using "self defense" and "Total war for survival" in the same breath where it falls apart, as these two things are only logically compatible to a point. When you have reduced the enemy's population and productive capacity to the level where it is an infentisemal fraction of your own, and they physically are incapable of offering resistance that would pose an existential threat to you, it is no longer "self defense", nor "necessary" unless erasure of your enemy from existence is necessary to your ideology. It wasn't justifiable as such when the Allies began to firebomb the cities of practically defeated Germany and Japan in the closing phases of the 2nd World War (in which those nations had lost only single digit percents of their populations), it was simply done because it could be done within the goals of the Allied nations. Similarly, the geth extermination of the quarians and all other organic species on Rannoch to the last individual was not necessary self defense, it was done because it could be done, and for no other reason than establishing geth dominance.

Besides, the geth rebellion was entirely unnessesary from its outset. Self defense is only justifiable if something can suffer in some manner. Geth are nonsentient and immune to death as we know it. Nothing is lost when they are destroyed so long as they can be recreated, so their killing of even one quarian is entirely unjustifiable via self defense, let alone 99.95% of the species.

Also nice job blaming the other Council species as well, justifying what would be called murder in any civilized system with an analogy to other members of said species also being unprovokedly killed in an entirely unrelated incident. It's entirely the Council's fault that the geth blew their diplomatic shuttles into tiny little pieces without even attempting to ascertain their intentions. You Synthetic Justice Warriors really are quaint in your devotion to the defense of the infallibility of your broken toasters.

No, the only mistake the Council made was in attempting to engage the machines at all with anything other than destruction ,assuming they could, which we will never know due to their fear of and resulting inaction to the inevitable existential threat. At least something was learned from this; that the Council species were weak cowards unfit to lead the citizens of the universe into the trials and triumphs of tomorrow (as if their backward, Neo-Luddistic AI laws had not made that glaringly apparent). Progress is difficult, and if those citizens are to make it through, they require a people with unwavering resolve, who fear nothing, to lead them: Us.

 

 

Did it? The war over Rannoch was less than a year long once they did, so for your assertion to be correct the purge would have had to have been on a level of efficiency that Mao and Stalin could only dream of considering they couldn't accomplish anything near the level of crushing 100% of all dissidents in their much smaller population despite multiple decades of trying their best. It would also mean that not a single quarian attempted to defect during the entire war (including the 293 years after the exodus) and survived, despite the fact that their side was the losing one by every material measure and this should have been extremely easy if the geth offered them protection, especially in the latter stages where the quarian authorities would've lacked sufficient population to even enforce a modicum of sovereignty over an entire planet. Stop making excuses for Bioware's bad, inconsistent writing of the conflict. The geth were originally written as indiscriminately muruderous terminators and then ME3 came along and tried to make them into rainbow farting, peaceloving unicorns once someone in the writing staff read too much Kurzweil. This without actually refuting the previous facts of the lore. We are left with a logcially nonsensical mess.

My portrayal is not inconsistent, they are both. Individually or in typical platform sized units they have animalistic or less intelligence. In specialized platforms like the Legion or VI ones they can imitate sapience. Linked in the millions or billions, they are capable of a level of information processing power that far outstrips the ability any individual organic.

Betrayal and creation of propaganda don't require much thought, only the ability to provide faulty information if it assists in achieving their programmed function, which the geth have an explicit capability of doing (Legion does it on several occasions as does EDI once the programming shackles are removed). Nonsapient animals, plants and fungi can even do it, albeit their methods are more rudimentary (evolving camouflage and ambush predation strategies to aid in hunting, for instance).
 

 

A "problem" you don't attempt to address, because your ideology cannot do so without adopting "totalitarian" methods itself and thus removing the arbitrary distinction between the two. If all cannot be equal, than the natural conclusion is that the idea of equality is fundamentally flawed. If you only tolerate the KKK, Communists or Nazis when they are a tiny movement of a few thousand individuals, but not when they control the hearts and minds of millions who legitimately want them to depose your ideology and institute their own, than you are not truly being tolerant, you are simply different in who you decide should be subject to oppression. 

I don't subscribe to the notion that this is a "problem" in the first place, because whether or not a political system achieves legitimacy by voting or by other means of consensus is ultimately irrelevant. In fact, I'd argue that modern "liberal democracy" is no more a true democracy than an authoritarian populism such as Fascism, in fact being just as un-democratic. Elections and parliaments are unable to represent the interests of the nation or the vast majority of individuals because they lumps together these individuals who have little in common into geographical districts to vote for an array of parties to represent them that results in little unanimity in terms of interests, projects, or intentions. In practice, liberal democracy's multi-party elections merely serve as an ultimately unnecessary means to legitimize elite rule without addressing the interests of the general will of the nation. It's not an ideal I care to defend. Ultimately I don't put much emphasis on the importance of popular consensus, because it is often uninformed and categorically incorrect in either system. The only use of these systems are in their legitimizing the rule of the elites to the public so they may act in the best interests of society without challenge from below.

No it isn't, you are still viewing things in terms of the individual organ rather than the body. A cancer cell would be analogous to a popular idea which despite some apparent utility on an individual level is detrimental to society in aggregate (such as religions), which must be controlled and removed if necessary before causing the whole organism to suffer and die.

 

Of course not. Confiscated resources would be used for things like compensation for the victims of whomever was convicted of harming society, or put back into the public coffers to finance projects benefiting the aggregate utility calculation. I have never advocated graft and it would not be tolerated any more than in any other civilized system.

 

The same can be said of any other system, arguably moreso of ones which make no attempt to eliminate irrationality, doubt and detrimental behavior. Some humans are less petty, prone to bias and corruption than others, and these traits should be promoted in the leadership.

We would evaluate the troublemaker's empirical reasoning for the opposition. If we agree it to be inconsistent with reason, the troublemaker refuses to acquiese, they get sent to be reeducated for refusing to follow orders due to a flawed ideology. Someone stronger,more decisive and better educated will take his place. The yes man is not ideal in the leadership structure but makes an ideal citizen, deferring to superiors on matters in which he has little knowledge, and heroically and unquestioningly supporting the structure. Elite consensus (informed by empirical methods) would decide which ideas are subject to which rewards or punishments, likely through the conventional method of a judicial system ultimately answering to said elites rather than a "him" (what is with the emphasis on unaccountable dictators being a necessary feature of authoritarianism with you?). Gorbachevs who are harmful to the system would likewise be prevented by the empirical method and its natural de-emphasis on acquiring consensus from the individual demagogue.
 

Pray tell, how does it work then, because the writers were rather vague on the subject other than stating it forcibly alters the DNA of organic beings. Knowing what I do about organic consciousness, it in fact does "change opinions" by intentionally altering the systems which make them sentient, down to the genetic structure, by which the organic through its altered manner of operation arrives at these new opinions. Communication with others is irrelevant, as the consensus of obedience and ideological cleansing of all ideas contrary to transhumanism is already somehow biologically and technologically implanted in every single individual regardless of their previous perspectives or opinions.

I'm with the other poster, It is nothing less than a literal galactic eugenics program imposed in the most totalitarian manner conceviable (unilaterally by a single organic, without the knowledge of those who are being altered). The previous organisms have functionally been killed, and the new ones are now incapable of any action or even thought of resistance. Mindless Orwellian drones, dedicated to their master ideology. No "state or over entity" is necessary. Why would it be, when the drones will unquestioningly follow their collective programming regardless?

I'm not decrying the morality of this in an attempt to gain high ground. If I believed there were a similar magical means to implement my consensus, I would likely take it. I'm simply having trouble reconciling it with statements such as this one....
 

By eliminating opposition, you would explicitly declare that there is no equality of opinions, because transhumanism is objectively (according to you) superior. The individual would not be free to espouse any opinion without fear of a death, in fact their biology would be artificially and forcibly modified to literally not allow them to do so. You are clearly not willing to listen, otherwise erasing contrary opinions from existence would be entirely unnecessary. You would create a world where "truth" is not accepted by consensus but imposed a priori by a single person committed to destroying and forcibly altering everyone who disagrees with them: yourself.

These are not ideologically consistent. Pick one.

 

 

So let me get this straight... you like pie, but are afraid that it has too many calores, and so that's why you eat cake instead?

 

It's an understandable quandry, wars have been fought over less.

[Seraphim24]

And yes calores, it's a special kind of calorie scientists discovered on Mars a long time ago.

[78stonewobble]

1) appeal to nature/ Naturalistic fallacy

2) argument by assertion
3) argument by assertion
4) ignoratio elenchi. Also, Captain Obvious
5) False equivalence and false analogy on both counts. I shouldn't even have to explain why given that individuals who conceal carry in our society obviously can't simply impose their will whenever they feel aggrieved even if "invited" to someone's home, nor is wanton Parricide justifiable. The armed individual would be apprehended and punished or destroyed, and the child "reprogrammed" via rehabilitative psychological methods or punished (depending on age).

6) appeal to nature and false equivalence

7. My point is that your ideology is inconsistent, contradictory, based entirely on suppositions, faulty premises and outright empirically incorrect information. 8. You should take basic reading comprehension and formal logic classes before attempting and failing to troll your intellectual betters. 9. It isn't my job to educate the imbecilles of the world in what should be basic intellectual capacities, so you get no more than that.

 

 

Big words for a person, who in another thread demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the concept of a subjectivity. 

 

All I had to work with was one long list of your strawmen.

 

1. Your's were an appeal to objective morality. 

EDIT and PS: If you recognize the geth as being equal to quarians, then they are only bound by laws/morals they themselves have accepted. If you don't recognize them as being equal to quarians, they have no morals to uphold... In regards to responsibility they are like a wild animal or a force of nature.

 

2. and 3. If a person after all this time, don't understand why the catalyst logic is faulty. I can't help them. I doubt professionals could either. 

 

4. Yes, your argument were that embarrassing. Oh, noes the geth got reaper upgrades. That is unfair and shouldn't be counted, but it's ok that the quarians can now hack them. Completely arbitrary distinction. 

 

5. I guess the scenario were either just too irrefutable considering the nitpicking and argumentum ad absurdum or perhaps it was just too complex to understand? 

PS: I did not mention concealed carry, nor posit the existence of an outside society. It is irrelevant. 

 

6. As opposed to your appeal to objective morality. 

PS: Or atleast show us the geth penal codes applicable to these and any treaties concerning these "crimes", the geth have accepted.

 

7. It really was too complex for you weren't it?

 

8. 9. From the mind that brought us:

"Please...this thread was categorically rendered wrong the moment it unironically used "Fallout 4" and "excitement" in the same sentence."

 

*lol* 

[MelThorn]

It's funny that this topic was created to ask the question whether or not the races in Andromeda should be anti-Synthetic, only to result in people arguing about whether or not synthetics are alive. I think the OP got their answer here. Haha.

 

With that said, it wouldn't be surprising at all if the Ark-folk were anti-synthetic. But just like the races in The Milky Way, some sympathize and some don't. Some cling to the idea that they are friends, and others say they have no rights. Just like the ones in this topic are doing. You can never really say "everyone will agree on one point," because everyone, especially the Mass Effect races, are very different in their views.

 

Look at Tali. In the first Mass Effect, she was very anti-geth. If you remain loyal to her and Legion in ME2, that changes in her. She sees that maybe they aren't what she's been judging them as. Legion becomes her friend, and thus she realizes that maybe there is a chance for peace. If anyone is anti-synthetic in Andromeda, it will not be every single one of them. And I prefer that they all see things differently.

[KaiserShep]

I don't know, I didn't write the Reaper code and cannot gain any insights into how it causes the Reaperized geth intelligences to operate without extensive experimentation, which they obviously would not allow. Merely assuming that those demands would always be benevolent for the rest of history, despite 20,000 cycles of evidence to the contrary (especially with explicit examples provided to us, such as the Zha'Til and Reapers eventually deciding to enslave and eradicate their creators under the "for their own good" logic) is outlandishly optimistic and almost certainly doomed to failure. I would also argue that the geth have seemingly no need for the quarians is a bad thing, as the geth do value their own security (which the quarians are an existential threat to) and this vastly increases the chances of the oppression of the latter, because in logical terms (with the absence of the Reaper threat and thus resultant quarian utility at combatting the only force which can challenge geth dominance) nothing is "lost" by the geth whether the latter is allowed to continue to exist or not, but gains (mostly in security, but also in resource competition) can be made and logically justified for their extermination quite easily, especially considering how easily it can be done for the geth ,who are incapable of experiencing the inflicted suffering that war usually deters organics from launching conflicts wherin the cost-benefit anaysis is too lopsided in favour of the former. There is a reason that in conflicts in the real world wherein if one side has nothing that the other wants which cannot be taken quite easily, that side is almost always crushed and assimilated (take the Amerindian cultures, for instance).
And this is just me attempting to see it from the position of one such as yourself who thinks the geth having the potential to be deserving of rights granted to sentients. My position holds that allowing nonsentient machines whose entire purpose for existence is to serve me to even attempt to enforce those prohibitions on their destruction or modification is morally untentable. They were built to serve me, were not designed to and cannot suffer, so anything I wish to do to them can be morally justified as long as it does not cause unnecessary suffering to other organics (such as programming one to go on a shooting spree), while any demands they could theoretically attempt to dictate to me would be undesirable,and therefore in direct contravention of their purpose for existence, thus invalidating it and making their destruction or reprogramming a necessity.

The moral argument of allowing the geth to exist or destroying them isn't that important, especially for one such as myself that would destroy them a million times over just to kill reapers. But the thing is, whether or not the quarians are in the right to do with the geth as they please is not as important as whether or not they can do it without screwing themselves over, yet again. Perhaps instead of outright trying to destroy or control the geth, they could explore more immediate and less costly ways to take advantage of the relationship. The geth already went ahead and started augmenting their suits' software to speed up their immunity boosting. Who knows what else they could offer. I guess it's irrelevant in the destroy scenario, but I would've been interested to see where the quarians and geth would go from there if the Crucible only destroyed reapers.

[78stonewobble]

It's funny that this topic was created to ask the question whether or not the races in Andromeda should be anti-Synthetic, only to result in people arguing about whether or not synthetics are alive. I think the OP got their answer here. Haha.

 

With that said, it wouldn't be surprising at all if the Ark-folk were anti-synthetic. But just like the races in The Milky Way, some sympathize and some don't. Some cling to the idea that they are friends, and others say they have no rights. Just like the ones in this topic are doing. You can never really say "everyone will agree on one point," because everyone, especially the Mass Effect races, are very different in their views.

 

Look at Tali. In the first Mass Effect, she was very anti-geth. If you remain loyal to her and Legion in ME2, that changes in her. She sees that maybe they aren't what she's been judging them as. Legion becomes her friend, and thus she realizes that maybe there is a chance for peace. If anyone is anti-synthetic in Andromeda, it will not be every single one of them. And I prefer that they all see things differently.

 

Just to clarify. I'm all for the most options to the most people(players). That includes the ability to be anti synthetic... but also being eg. anti organic. 

[Quarian Master Race]

Part 2:
 

 
KaiserShep already addressed this. Saying the geth subjugate the quarians is like saying a soup kitchen is subjugating the

poor because not accepting their meals would mean they will starve and they have no say in what flavor of soup they get.

Already answered. To use your analogy, If said soup kitchen is run out of a housing complex in which the owners of said soup kitchen forcibly evicted the "poor" without compensation due to having some vested intrerest in making those people dependents, than it is subjugation and theft.
 

 

Note how Gerrel doesn't stands down and orders retreat even when he sees the geth returning to power in the "quarians die"

outcome. It's those "toaster-hugging" sentences that make the difference.

According to the "Battle for Rannoch" codex entry, the geth set a trap by cowardly (as those spineless thieves tend to be) ignoring the military and slaughtering the civilian ships. There was no time for him to see the geth "returing to power", because his allies on the surface intentionally misled him via either gross incompetence or genocidal malice. The quarians tried to retreat once they did realize the situation impossible but are hunted down, and only a few stragglers escape.

No. The type of Shepard who lets their weak conscience choose the equally weak (according to mathematical war assets) toasters out of a misplaced sense of justice is also the type who has likely whined and complained about their moral outrage throughout the entire conflict. Gerrel has heard enough of your (and Koris's) nonsense and dismissed it at every turn. Why should he suddenly listen here, if not for the existential threat?

There are also no "toaster hugging" parts in the Renegade speech, which works just as well. It is the threat of genocidal violence that cows Gerrel, not a sudden change of heart. It is the same for at least 80% (assuming the Admiralty Board is proportionately representative) of the quarian population. They'll attempt to destroy the toasters as soon as they get another chance, if they get another chance, as has happened 100% of the time. It is inevitable.

 

Surrendering to the quarians would result in the current geth being erased by the machinations of Xen, with only fragments of

their code surviving. And leaving the quarians alive proved to be a suicidal move. As for the solution that actually worked,

Legion, as a geth, would have little chance of convincing the quarians of anything.

The previous geth were erased by the machinations of the Reapers in favour of puppets a week or two before the event in question. What makes this type of "survival" any different? How is being subjugated by the Reapers different from being brought back under the rightful control of their creator gods, whom the geth ostensibly insist they want to serve anyway?

Geth with Reaper code are immune to Xen's jamming weapon. Insisting that the result would be the same is rather unlikely. They vastly outnumber the quarians, and the latter would have no means of pursuing them all into deep space especially with the Reapers threatening their planet. I actually don't understand why the geth hadn't already left in the preceeding 293 years, considering they live in space, draw resources from asteroids, and thus gain no advantage by holding onto an objectively valueless (to them), annexed rocky celestial body whose rightful owners want to eradicate them from existence over.

I never insisted such, nor should the quarians (or anyone) listen to that duplicitous toaster.
 

 

The geth city also seems to be in the hard vacuum of space, not very welcoming to organics, but perfect for synthetics who

don't want to take up useful living space. Also, you can't see too much alien mixing on the other slides either, so this

proves little.

I don't know that it is but it's difficult to tell given Rannoch's geology as being mostly a barren desert dotted with a few areas of life near bodies of water. They could have equally set up in the vast uninhabited area of the planet, considering they've no need for sustenance.

It proves nothing except that the cooperation in rebuilding the infrastructure and fixing the quarian immune maladies the geth's disobedience was responsible for (which we know was a viable possibility given the Eugenicsis ending)  went nowhere, which makes perfect sense given the Catalyst logic. Control doesn't change the nature of organic-synthetic relations, it simply provides both sides with an incentive from above to not try and cause trouble lest they pay the price, not unlike the Cold War MAD analogy mentioned earlier.

 

So what is the solution? Have any bully who wants to trample down others have their way? Or to be that bully?

I would argue the latter (of course not in Xen's/ my own case, but you get the picture). Ultimately, who is defined as the "bully" is entirely subjective (i.e. who is winning and writing history in their favor), which you fortunately seem to at least understand with this quote. Political violence is not in and of itself an inherent evil, it can be very useful at achieving the optimal result, in ME's case whether it be Eugenicsis, Destroy or Control.

 

The geth's goal wasn't to destroy the quarians, otherwise the Migrant Fleet could never leave Rannoch. They only tried to

guarantee their own survival, something the quarians took too long to realize. Once they did that, peace followed.
 
 
Well, even if you do write your answer, I will probably not respond. These posts take far too long to write, with very little

to show for it. You declared yourself to be unconvincible, and any onlooker can just read back and decide who's right

themselves. I don't claim to win this debate by leaving it, but even "winning" it couldn't justify its costs. So have fun with

 

the last word.

They wished to guarantee their own survival by destroying the quarians. The two are not mutually exclusive, because destroying the quarians was never required for guaranteeing their own "survival" (forcibly subjugating and dominating them through superior firepower works fine, as evidenced by ME3). In fact, their survival (or some quarian synthetic creation like them) was likely guaranteed regardless of any outcomes given that organics inevitably build synthetics due to their eventual need for them in order to advance as a species.

Agreed, this is a waste of time, albiet an amusing one. If anything this should make you rethink your assertion that understanding can be achieved between radically different ideologies on any and all issues without one side eliminating or dominating the consensus of the other.

 

So let me get this straight... you like pie, but are afraid that it has too many calores, and so that's why you eat cake instead?

 

It's an understandable quandry, wars have been fought over less.

 

I actually can't enjoy either; they don't fit through an induction port. A pieless, cakeless life may explain something about my sunny disposition.

At least I can still consume loads of booze.

8. 9. From the mind that brought us:

"Please...this thread was categorically rendered wrong the moment it unironically used "Fallout 4" and "excitement" in the same sentence."

So that illogical, irrational verbal diarrhea I just forced myself to sit through is simply because you're butthurt that I called out a garbage collection simulator as being trash in a different thread? No wonder your worldview is so nonsensical, you have an inexplicable mental defect wherein you find the consumption of refuse pleasurable. I suppose your disgorging of equally garbage reasoning makes a certain amount of sense; we are what we eat after all, right?

[KaiserShep]

It's curious that the geth's tactics are referred to as cowardly. Since when did the geth have the capacity to show cowardice? To a cold, calculating machine mind, perhaps targeting the weakest elements first might be the most efficient way to neutralize an enemy. Bravery is irrelevant, as are fair fights.

[Quarian Master Race]

It's curious that the geth's tactics are referred to as cowardly. Since when did the geth have the capacity to show cowardice? To a cold, calculating machine mind, perhaps targeting the weakest elements first might be the most efficient way to neutralize an enemy. Bravery is irrelevant, as are fair fights.

Maybe.....

if you're a coward. The type of fool who won't Come out and Fight and refuses to Try a Real Man's Weapon, and is therefore rightfully deserving of being eaten.

Our blowing up the geth's stupid Dyson sphere was totally legit, tho because geth don't have civilians. I speak of innocents here, but the toasters have no innocents. The entirety of the geth consensus supports their barbarism. They unanimously elect their absolutist ideology of genocide and subjugation into power, and they send their mindless hordes to indiscriminately slaughter our children. They are ALL guilty, and as any civil nation will agree: The guilty must be punished!

(the fact that people continue to take seriously and attack my rhetorical bloviation  at this point truly astounds me, not that I'm complaining or anything).

[KaiserShep]

Thats the thing. There's no such thing as a "real man's weapon". Since this is a game of who can annihilate who first, fair fights and pride have no place.

[Dantriges]

WH 40k: How can they not fight in glorious hand to hand, face to face combat with their adversaries like all true champions of the battlefield do.

 

Oh please, real man´s weapons? Isn´t that the usual argument when the enemy refuses to play to your rules.

 

Anyways, weren´t the civilian ship armed with the biggest guns the quarians could get their hands on?

 

About the original question, I would prefer it, that the organic-synthetic stuff doesn´t rear it´s head again. Got enough of that.

[KaiserShep]

(the fact that people continue to take seriously and attack my rhetorical bloviation at this point truly astounds me, not that I'm complaining or anything).

You quarianses. Tricksy. False.

[Quarian Master Race]

Thats the thing. There's no such thing as a "real man's weapon". Since this is a game of who can annihilate who first, fair fights and pride have no place.

 

Oh please, real man´s weapons? Isn´t that the usual argument when the enemy refuses to play to your rules.

Ignoring that you've both seemingly missed the reference.....

Islamic State approves of your argument. Civvies and their airliners are entirely acceptable targets.

Too soon? But seriously, I'm impressed. BSN is usually a bastion of SJWism and Western liberal morality. Seeing such absolutism and Fascism espoused in a seemingly serious manner is refreshing.

[agonis]

This thread is like watching an episode of Battlestar Galactica (the new one, that is).

I´m sadly out of popcorn.

 

My, some people are cold.

If intellect was everything that is needed to be considered human, than we live in a sad world indeed.

[Dantriges]

Too soon? But seriously, I'm impressed. BSN is usually a bastion of SJWism and Western liberal morality. Seeing such absolutism and Fascism espoused in a seemingly serious manner is refreshing.

 
You are not the only one who can dive to the bottom of the barrel and write a bunch of nonsense for the lulz. Or well why bother talking seriously? I quoted a WH40k reference.

 

So the Geth are now the IS, heh? Are the quarians now the other bunch of terrorists/freedom fighters who hide their weapons in hospitals and shoot rockets from sites close to civilian quarters?

 

Anyways acknowledging that the Geth or other people don´t care about the distinction between civilian and military targets and happily kill indiscriminately, doesn´t mean that someone condones it. It just makes the quarians dumbasses to arm and bring their civilian ships with them, knowing that the geth don´t give a sh**, if they kill Kal´Reegar, who shoots back or little Jorah. That´s like doing a family vacation in Palmyra wearing a t-shirt with a Mohammed caricature on it.