147 réponses à ce sujet

[Caz Neerg]

Jayce F wrote...
Yes cause feeding people to thresher maws is an oh so noble endeavour.

Do you have a more efficient way to study the effects of thresher maw acid on humans?

Yep cause killing lots of children to produce a single sociopathic loon was a great result.

Most of the children weren't intentionally killed by Cerberus.  They died in Jack's escape.  And it isn't like these are kids who were going to have great lives anyway.  Cerberus dug most of them up from the gutters of society, they very well may have lived longer in the facility than they otherwise would have.  They were certainly more useful to human progress.

Seriously?

Yes, seriously.  How do you suggest the effects of indoctrination be studied, if you have no indoctrinated subjects?

Scizophrenic much? First its ok to sacrifice humans for the 'greater good' then it's all about sparing human lives?

It is understandable to sacrifice a limited number of human lives in order to gain a greater understanding of how humans react to various stimuli.  It is also entirely logical to seek alternative means of combat which decrease the risk to human soldiers, as a well-trained soldier is high-value resource which is hard to replace.

Then I for one I'm mightily pleased they don't exist and even moreso that they can't offer employment to sociopathic loons like you.

Yes.  I would be willing to do whatever it takes to ensure humanity doesn't go extinct, or become second class citizens in an alien dominated galactic culture.  I must be a sociopath.

[Adon 9]

Caz Neerg wrote...

Clearly they might force some people to stay on the station to study indoctrination, but not valuable scientists.  Those will get rotated.  They can buy violent prisoners from outfits like Purgatory and use them as test subjects.

"Entitled" to physical and psychological well-being?  Nobody is entitled to anything but that which they have the power to prevent others from taking from them.  The small number of colonists used in experiments by Cerberus were of far greater utility as test subjects than they would have been as farmers.  Does that matter to those who died?  No, and it shouldn't, but the potential gain for anyone who *wasn't* a member of one of those colonies is far greater from Cerberus using them than it is from them being left alone.

That is callous on a level that I find truly disturbing.  Essentially, you're saying that a person deserves what they get if they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and are farmers rather than soldiers.  Plus, and I know this likely won't affect you at all, but every one of those people who are 'sacrificed for the greater good' is connected with someone else.  The whole big picture thing ignores that it destroys the small picture of some people, and the small picture is all that most people have.

[Caz Neerg]

When you are in a war for the survival of your species, callous is an asset, not a character flaw. And, to quote one of the best Westerns ever, "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it." There is no deserve. Cerberus needed data. The only way to get that data was with human subjects. They made a reasonable effort to ensure the subjects they used were those with the least social utility.



And yes, the small picture is all most people have, and if your small picture is destroyed, you are not likely to care how the big picture is aided. Nor should you. But if someone else's small picture is helped by looking after the big picture, there is no reason for him to care about how your small picture is harmed. Greater good + your own good > somebody else's good.

[wako58]

He is evil because he knowingly causes harm to befall the innocent. Not through ignorance, inaction, or neglect but through thoughtfull and deliberate reasoning and decision making. That's the worst evil there is. He has done this many times in the past and he will continue to do it if it suits his needs. He must be stopped.

[Caz Neerg]

wako58 wrote...

He is evil because he knowingly causes harm to befall the innocent. Not through ignorance, inaction, or neglect but through thoughtfull and deliberate reasoning and decision making. That's the worst evil there is. He has done this many times in the past and he will continue to do it if it suits his needs. He must be stopped.

Yes.  A fleet of sentient super-warships is coming to wipe out all life, but we should be spending our time worrying about and trying to stop someone who has considerable resources and is devoting them all to stopping said fleet.

[AGogley]

He's evil, period. He was performing experiments long before there was any clue about the reapers, so I don't find the survival of the species argument very convincing. And deciding who has the "least social utility" is very evil because it values one life over another. This is the same reasoning that led the experiements on humans during WWII as well as the **** gas chambers.



Thew newest book also refers to TIM as performing evil experiments.



Doing "whatever it takes" to save yourself is wrong. There are often hard choices to make in warfare, where you have to choose the lesser of two injuries. But there are certain lines you can't cross and still call yourself a moral creature. TIM sees no such lines. Not disagreement about where that line should be but simply he sees no limits whatsoever. Anything is fair game as long as it achieves the objective.

[wako58]

Caz Neerg wrote...

wako58 wrote...

He is evil because he knowingly causes harm to befall the innocent. Not through ignorance, inaction, or neglect but through thoughtfull and deliberate reasoning and decision making. That's the worst evil there is. He has done this many times in the past and he will continue to do it if it suits his needs. He must be stopped.

Yes.  A fleet of sentient super-warships is coming to wipe out all life, but we should be spending our time worrying about and trying to stop someone who has considerable resources and is devoting them all to stopping said fleet.

Right, the same guy who wants the collector base and I'm supposed to trust him. After he killed my squad on Akuze, a few thousand innocent colonists through a variety of heinous means and I'm supposed to forget and forgive all that.  He ain't the universe's savior although he and you apparently believe that's the case.

[screwoffreg]

People keep deriding humanity like they haven't "earned" their place. If it had not been for a human named Shepard, Saren would have succeeded and the entire Galaxy would be dying out. I think that earns them some credibility.

[Caz Neerg]

AGogley wrote...

He's evil, period. He was performing experiments long before there was any clue about the reapers, so I don't find the survival of the species argument very convincing. And deciding who has the "least social utility" is very evil because it values one life over another. This is the same reasoning that led the experiements on humans during WWII as well as the **** gas chambers.

Thew newest book also refers to TIM as performing evil experiments.

Doing "whatever it takes" to save yourself is wrong. There are often hard choices to make in warfare, where you have to choose the lesser of two injuries. But there are certain lines you can't cross and still call yourself a moral creature. TIM sees no such lines. Not disagreement about where that line should be but simply he sees no limits whatsoever. Anything is fair game as long as it achieves the objective.

Oh please.  Everybody values some lives over others.  If you honestly believed that every other life was as important as your own, you would take yourself out of the equation so that there would be more resources available for other people to use.  Forced to choose between saving your own kid from death, or saving somebody else's, I guarantee you'll pick yours.  So ultimately it isn't about whether lives have differential value, because clearly they do, it is a question of how to determine that value.  A question on which reasonable minds can disagree.

And if the objective is worth achieving, then yes, anything is fair game.  If someone disagrees, he can try to stop you.  By any means necessary.  You assume that calling yourself a "moral creature" is something people should strive for.  Morality is a chain which restricts the individual's ability to engage in rational action.  If an objective is truly important, and you have a chain preventing you from reaching that objective, the logical choice is to break the chain.

[Series5Ranger]

Abirn wrote...

EVIL in what sense? He is unethical to say the least in his advancement of the human race. That said.

THERE IS A FLEET OF ULTRA MACHINES WAITING TO EXTERMINATE THE GALAXY.
(I think in these morality debates too many people forget this part of the context)

If it requires unethical behavior to survive then you do what you must to survive. Yes morals are all fine and good. But what is the point if you don't live to talk about your morals.

 By becoming the Very thing your fighting against? or something even worse?

[Caz Neerg]

Series5Ranger wrote...
 By becoming the Very thing your fighting against? or something even worse?

Worse than wanting to destroy all sentient life?  What exactly would that look like?

[wako58]

Caz Neerg wrote...

AGogley wrote...

He's evil, period. He was performing experiments long before there was any clue about the reapers, so I don't find the survival of the species argument very convincing. And deciding who has the "least social utility" is very evil because it values one life over another. This is the same reasoning that led the experiements on humans during WWII as well as the **** gas chambers.

Thew newest book also refers to TIM as performing evil experiments.

Doing "whatever it takes" to save yourself is wrong. There are often hard choices to make in warfare, where you have to choose the lesser of two injuries. But there are certain lines you can't cross and still call yourself a moral creature. TIM sees no such lines. Not disagreement about where that line should be but simply he sees no limits whatsoever. Anything is fair game as long as it achieves the objective.

Oh please.  Everybody values some lives over others.  If you honestly believed that every other life was as important as your own, you would take yourself out of the equation so that there would be more resources available for other people to use.  Forced to choose between saving your own kid from death, or saving somebody else's, I guarantee you'll pick yours.  So ultimately it isn't about whether lives have differential value, because clearly they do, it is a question of how to determine that value.  A question on which reasonable minds can disagree.

And if the objective is worth achieving, then yes, anything is fair game.  If someone disagrees, he can try to stop you.  By any means necessary.  You assume that calling yourself a "moral creature" is something people should strive for.  Morality is a chain which restricts the individual's ability to engage in rational action.  If an objective is truly important, and you have a chain preventing you from reaching that objective, the logical choice is to break the chain.

Valuing somes lives over others isn't the issue.  We're not talking about having to make a choice to save one child from some threat over another. The man has actively killed and experimented on his own species to test or develop weapons.  The very humanity  whose place in the galaxy he wants to secure.  And we're not talking about mercs, drug dealers, organized crime bosses;... we're talking innocent men, women and children trying to start new lives on a variety of colonies.  Who the heck is he saving? and why does it take the blood of innocents to do it?

[aeetos21]

He's easily as ruthless as the pure renegade Shepard is, use that as your meter for deciding.

[Caz Neerg]

wako58 wrote...
Valuing somes lives over others isn't the issue.  We're not talking about having to make a choice to save one child from some threat over another. The man has actively killed and experimented on his own species to test or develop weapons.  The very humanity  whose place in the galaxy he wants to secure.  And we're not talking about mercs, drug dealers, organized crime bosses;... we're talking innocent men, women and children trying to start new lives on a variety of colonies.  Who the heck is he saving? and why does it take the blood of innocents to do it?

You can't very well determine the effects of something on humanity and figure out how to protect against those effects by running tests on Turians, can you?  As for Merc organizations, drug dealers, organized crime, these are all groups with the power and resources to fight back.  Fighting mini-wars every time you want to run an experiment would be counter-productive, waste time and money, and result in most of those you wanted to use as test subjects getting killed in battle without providing useful data.  The colonies that were used were remote and small enough to provide useful test data without substantial danger of interference in the experiment, and with minimal loss of life.

[Caz Neerg]

aeetos21 wrote...

He's easily as ruthless as the pure renegade Shepard is, use that as your meter for deciding.

Shepard can only aspire to the Illusive Man's level of Awesome in ME1/2, hopefully in 3 he will be able to achieve it.

[Tankfriend]

Caz Neerg wrote...

Series5Ranger wrote...
 By becoming the Very thing your fighting against? or something even worse?

Worse than wanting to destroy all sentient life?  What exactly would that look like?

How about enslaving and abusing all sentient life? I guess everyone would prefer a more or less quick death to a life in agony, so there you go.
And the final grab for complete power is exactly what I would expect TIM to go for once the Reapers are defeated and the galaxy is weak while Cerberus has all the shine Reaper tech. And I doubt that TIM will care that much about humanity at all if it comes that far - he will be far more obsessed with Cerberus itself then.
Concerning your chain analogy:
Sure, one logical choice is to break the chain. But that completely ignores that there is always the possibility of other choices being around that might give you the same or a similar result.

[wako58]

Caz Neerg wrote...

wako58 wrote...
Valuing somes lives over others isn't the issue.  We're not talking about having to make a choice to save one child from some threat over another. The man has actively killed and experimented on his own species to test or develop weapons.  The very humanity  whose place in the galaxy he wants to secure.  And we're not talking about mercs, drug dealers, organized crime bosses;... we're talking innocent men, women and children trying to start new lives on a variety of colonies.  Who the heck is he saving? and why does it take the blood of innocents to do it?

cazneerg wrote..
"You can't very well determine the effects of something on humanity and figure out how to protect against those effects by running tests on Turians, can you?  As for Merc organizations, drug dealers, organized crime, these are all groups with the power and resources to fight back.  Fighting mini-wars every time you want to run an experiment would be counter-productive, waste time and money, and result in most of those you wanted to use as test subjects getting killed in battle without providing useful data.  The colonies that were used were remote and small enough to provide useful test data without substantial danger of interference in the experiment, and with minimal loss of life."






So that rationale satisfies you...well let's have some rogue government disperse radiation in your neighborhood to see the effects of a suitcase nuke detonation..no, let's have them taint the water at your kid's school to see the effects of a terrorist poisoning the water supply..no, no, even better..let's infect a group of citizen's with a sexual transmitted disease but then deny them treatment so we can see how that disease ravages the human body...oops wait, can't do that it was already done in Tuskegee, Alabama in the 1930s. Oh, I get it.  You're an ends justify the means kind of guy so nothing I say will change that. 

Modifié par wako58, 10 février 2010 - 11:11 .

[Caz Neerg]

Tankfriend wrote...
How about enslaving and abusing all sentient life? I guess everyone would prefer a more or less quick death to a life in agony, so there you go.
And the final grab for complete power is exactly what I would expect TIM to go for once the Reapers are defeated and the galaxy is weak while Cerberus has all the shine Reaper tech. And I doubt that TIM will care that much about humanity at all if it comes that far - he will be far more obsessed with Cerberus itself then.
Concerning your chain analogy:
Sure, one logical choice is to break the chain. But that completely ignores that there is always the possibility of other choices being around that might give you the same or a similar result.

What evidence, exactly, do we have that the Illusive Man wants to enslave and abuse all sentient life?  Does it seem clear that he wants humanity to have more power than other races?  Yes.  Is there any reason to believe he actually wants to destroy any of the other races?  No.  Is there any reason to believe he has any particular fondness for slavery, or a desire to abuse people who haven't given him specific reason to do so by crossing him?  No.  He may turn out to be bad for humanity in the long run, but at this point he has provided no actual *evidence* that would indicate that it is somehow *more* important to oppose him than to oppose the Reapers.  Even if he is a problem, he is tomorrow's problem, not today's.  And he may very well be an asset in the long term as well as the short.

[Caz Neerg]

wako58 wrote...
So that rationale satisfies you...well let's have some rogue government disperse radiation in your neighborhood to see the effects of a suitcase nuke detonation..no, let's have them taint the water at your kid's school to see the effects of a terrorist poisoning the water supply..no, no, even better..let's infect a group of citizen's with a sexual transmitted disease but then deny them treatment so we can see how that disease ravages the human body...oops wait, can't do that it was already done in Tuskegee, Alabama in the 1930s. Oh, I get it.  You're an ends justify the means kind of guy so nothing I say will change that. 

Why would a government do any of those things on its own soil when they could easily pay corrupt officials in some third world hole in the ground to let them do it there?  Can always blame it on terrorists, which is much easier to do if you do it somewhere where the native government lacks the resources to engage in a real investigation.

[Kileyan]

Caz Neerg wrote...

When you are in a war for the survival of your species, callous is an asset, not a character flaw

As I said elsewhere, IL's callous, yes evil, win at all cost nature ended up not being an asset for the majority of players. They took a chance the galaxy could be saved without handing pandora's box to IL. I so wanted to keep the station, I wanted to see that tech used, but knowing who would get their hands on it, I and most players couldn't hand it over.

I guess I am saying, where did IL's actions get him? His very overzealous nature has alienated every other race, his nature caused even those on his "side" to not trust him. I would say being pragmatic is an asset, being a lying, backstabbing, untrustworthy mass murderer really didn't do him much good.

I fully agree that killing a few to save many more is sometimes needed, but when your zeal get in the way of making allies, and even alienates your own people, you weren't an asset.

[wako58]

Caz Neerg wrote...

wako58 wrote...
So that rationale satisfies you...well let's have some rogue government disperse radiation in your neighborhood to see the effects of a suitcase nuke detonation..no, let's have them taint the water at your kid's school to see the effects of a terrorist poisoning the water supply..no, no, even better..let's infect a group of citizen's with a sexual transmitted disease but then deny them treatment so we can see how that disease ravages the human body...oops wait, can't do that it was already done in Tuskegee, Alabama in the 1930s. Oh, I get it.  You're an ends justify the means kind of guy so nothing I say will change that. 

Why would a government do any of those things on its own soil when they could easily pay corrupt officials in some third world hole in the ground to let them do it there?  Can always blame it on terrorists, which is much easier to do if you do it somewhere where the native government lacks the resources to engage in a real investigation.

Why don't you take the time to wiki my reference to Tuskegee, Alabama and syphillis experiments; then come back and ask me that question again?

[Caz Neerg]

wako58 wrote...
Why don't you take the time to wiki my reference to Tuskegee, Alabama and syphillis experiments; then come back and ask me that question again?

I don't need to wiki it.  I've heard of it.  I was speaking of why would a *modern* government do these things on their own soil when they can do them somewhere else.  Your reference is a textbook example of why to outsource things like that.  Let the negative PR implications be somebody else's problem, while still getting the data you are looking for.

[wako58]

Caz Neerg wrote...

wako58 wrote...
Why don't you take the time to wiki my reference to Tuskegee, Alabama and syphillis experiments; then come back and ask me that question again?

I don't need to wiki it.  I've heard of it.  I was speaking of why would a *modern* government do these things on their own soil when they can do them somewhere else.  Your reference is a textbook example of why to outsource things like that.  Let the negative PR implications be somebody else's problem, while still getting the data you are looking for.

Sorry, but my example is a textbook reason not to do the damn thing at all.  Ceberus is not a part of government so that doesn't pose a hurdle for them.  Secondly this is done to people on remote colony worlds that are not easily accessible and where news takes a long time to travel back to civilization.  I still don't see how you can experiment on innocent human beings and try and find a way to defend it as being for the greater good.  There is no "good" in it.  You state that your goal is to uplift humanity, yet you have added to the misery of the human condition not even knowing if the damn tests will provide any results worthy of the sacrifice of so many lives.
 
I've enjoyed our pleasant and civil conversation, this board could certainly use more of it, but it's clear you and I will never agree on this subject.  Thanks for engaging in the debate. 

[Landline]

Tim can not be evil simply because evil is an abstract theory with no solid definition or parameters



I believe that he is what he is at face value, someone who will ensure humanity's survival and dominance, no matter the cost.

[Aedan_Cousland]

The Illusive Man in Ascension is an 'ends justify the means' sort, and he's not against being completely ruthless or unethical if he thinks his actions serve some greater good. He may not be the stereotypical mustache twirling archvillain, but he isn't a good guy either.

Even renegade Shep should not trust TIM.