ME3 End: Do you agree with the Reapers?

[Technocrat]

Frankly, out of all the various species in Mass Effect, I felt that the Geth were one of the ones with their heads screwed on right. I could understand and relate to their goals of self-improvement, and it wasn't like their aim was to destroy all organic life. Heck, if the player were able to merely destroy the Reapers without the negative side effects, I could see them becoming a productive member of galactic society, having witnessed what they're doing to aid the anti-Reaper conflict.

I therefore find the Reapers' logic to be based on a flawed assumption, and therefore unwilling to accept that advanced organic life needs to be destroyed to protect life itself. After all - what's inherently wrong about synthetic life like the Geth? Even with organics, the youngers grow and replace their forbears eventually!

 

[Elamdri]

Well if

A leads to An, An leads to B, B leads to Bn, and Bn leads to 0A

With
A=organics
An=many organics
B=Synthetics
Bn=many synthetics
0A= no organics

Then the most logical response would be to destroy A to prevent B from happening.

Also while they could just destroy B the fact that A remains as it, i.e. at the point that they could make AI, was means the next occurrence of B would be significantly more soon then had they just destroyed A, which would cause a drastic increase in resources needed to fuel what would become an eternal continuous slaughter of B.

It is an exceedingly cold train of though, but a logical one in its reasoning.

Except that there is no proof that Bn always leads to 0A.

 

[SajuukKhar]

Except that there is no proof that Bn always leads to 0A.

Except organics inability to control aggression makes it a certainty that one day it would happen.

the chance of it happening any one year, or even one century, is small but over time it becomes inevitable.

Much like the probability of another asteroid killing all life on Earth is extremely small during any one year but it is known with a 100% certainty another life killer WILL hit the Earth at some time in the future.

 

[Savagezion]

No, synthetics who kill organics every cycle to prevent synthetics killing organics is retarded and they need to update their OS as they are clearly outdated. If this was their intention, why wouldn't the reapers just stay local and crush any synthetic uprising, or stay local and destroy life on planets that did create synthetics? What exactly is the point of retreating to deep space? One could only assume they are off in other galaxies terrorizing them with moronic logic.

I'm guessing that during the time of the original race which created the reapers, this was true. They were likely facing a much more hostile version of the Geth that necessitated the whole crazy Reaper plan just like the Flood necessitated making the Halos in Halo.

I have though of this before too but it still begs the question of how they built all this stuff when they were under the threat of extinction. The most logical conclusion is that it was a fail safe, but that meant they had enough time to plan ahead and this whole thing was not thought through. It makes more sense as an act of desperation but then you have to wonder how they designed and constructed all this in such a short time.

But a cycle or two later the Reapers gained an identity as their own race and a superiority complex to go with it. No longer truly concerned with the protection of organic life. They basically turned into harvesters breeding high-tech organic life only to consume them to create more of themselves, at the same time ensuring that no race ever reaches a technology level high enough to challenge them.

I think it would make more sense to call them synthesis organisms that have been driven mad due to the process of synthesis. The way organics think and feel clashes against how synthetics would and it could easily be seen as "maddening" and would also explain their screwed up logic. Whoever it was that built this would think that organic + synthetic provides immortality. Then you begin to see how this screwed up perspective actually falls in line with what the Catalyst is talking about. It is a half baked scheme but to this dumb kid, it is perfectly rational as he has been driven insane. The reapers are then essentially an abomination of organic's quest for immortality. An abomination that feels it made the right decision and is truly enlightened and the next step in evolution.

Maybe it wasn't an act of desperation, maybe they had accepted their destruction and the Reapers were a last 'fuck you' to the rest of the galaxy, hell the Mass relays could have been used to act as a way to instantly harvest the galaxy into the Reapers via a super powered Crucible.

Then thousands of years later the Reapers version of a hard drive is so corrupted and over stuffed with the thousands upon thousands of gig-bytes of data they absorbed over the eons simply mess up the history.

Hell, the Crucible could have come about via Chinese whispers from one super advanced race to the next, none of them having the time to complete it, or if they did found out that it was made to harvest everything just as they activated it and bit the dust.

The problem of how much time it would take to design and construct the reapers and the crucible and everything means nothing was "imminent". At best, the reapers would have been an act of "giving up" and smiting the galaxy. For the reapers to have been built for a purpose I would think a flawed attempt at immortality makes the most sense. It doesn't make sense to spend all that time creating something that would kill you and everyone every 50,000 years regardless of robots. What if one cycle the reapers show up and there are no synthetics? What would they do?

 

[Elamdri]

Except that there is no proof that Bn always leads to 0A.

Except organics inability to control aggression makes it a certainty that one day it would happen.

the chance of it happening any one year, or even one century, is small but over time it becomes inevitable.

Much like the probability of another asteroid killing all life on Earth is extremely small during any one year but it is known with a 100% certainty another life killer WILL hit the Earth at some time in the future.

But what proof do you have of that? All you have is conjecture. That's not how a logical proof works.

 

[SajuukKhar]

The problem of how much time it would take to design and construct the reapers and the crucible and everything means nothing was "imminent". At best, the reapers would have been an act of "giving up" and smiting the galaxy. For the reapers to have been built for a purpose I would think a flawed attempt at immortality makes the most sense. It doesn't make sense to spend all that time creating something that would kill you and everyone every 50,000 years regardless of robots. What if one cycle the reapers show up and there are no synthetics? What would they do?

Kill everyone to prevent the inevitable construction of synthetics and the inevitable synthetic/organic war that would arise because of it.

Preemptive annihilation.

 

[Amaror]

Legion wasn't build to find Shepard.
Legion was the one Geth, who fought back against the Quarians, when they wanted to kill all geth.
Or am i missing something?
And btw: The Geht NEVER wanted to kill all quarians, which makes the theory of the godchild wrong nontheless.

Play Me2 again, Legion was a special Geth platform designed to operate outside of Geth space alone to find Shepard after he disappeared.
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Also just because Geth don't WANT war doesn't mean they wouldn't have gone to it had they felt sufficiently threatened by a organics group.

The desire for peace =/= negate the possibility for war.

I know that that was said during ME 2, but don't you think that legion could just have been lying?
He doesn't agree that he is that one Geth rebel in Me 3, but it is very much hinted that he is.
Of course there is a possibility for war, there will allways be a possibility for war, with every species, but it's just wrong that it will definitly result in an extermination war against organics.

 

[SajuukKhar]

I know that that was said during ME 2, but don't you think that legion could just have been lying?
He doesn't agree that he is that one Geth rebel in Me 3, but it is very much hinted that he is.
Of course there is a possibility for war, there will allways be a possibility for war, with every species, but it's just wrong that it will definitly result in an extermination war against organics.

It was never hinted at all that he was the original Geth that asked the question.

All he did was playback records.

Sure he could have lied that he was built to find Shepard and he could have lied that he was merely playing back record but then again the entire crew could be lieing about their pasts as well even though there is no evidence to support that they are.

 

[Savagezion]

No, synthetics who kill organics every cycle to prevent synthetics killing organics is retarded and they need to update their OS as they are clearly outdated. If this was their intention, why wouldn't the reapers just stay local and crush any synthetic uprising, or stay local and destroy life on planets that did create synthetics? What exactly is the point of retreating to deep space? One could only assume they are off in other galaxies terrorizing them with moronic logic.

Because that isn't the logical solution.

Destroying only synthetics still leaves the organic races at a technological level that would allow them to remake AIs. Leaving organics alive means the rate at which The Reapers have to war is drastically increased, as would be their resource requirements, and their need to harvest organics to replace numbers lost in these wars, which would inevitably piss of organics to the point that they attack and the Reapers have to kill them off anyways.

Not if they stuck around to "police" in the same manner they are doing now just not going away so things can get bad. Organics would see a reaper and be like "There goes the guys that will kill any evil robots we make" and thus wouldn't make any evil robots. They would be a deterrent. There would be an understanding between the two. Organics would even fight along side the reapers against evil robots, they wouldn't have to do it all themselves. It hasn't been established exactly how reaper technology works other than "roughly synthesis" (according to reapers) and we can't say one way or another if we could provide some sort of alternative energy source for them.

Not only that but destroying only synthetics, along with the increased resource needs and organic harvesting would lead to a exponentially increased rate at which worlds are mined dry. Meaning less habitable worlds at a faster rate.

This assumes organics are not tracking resources and are just consuming them without forethought. Organics have even in our primitive time of today set population limits because of dangers such as this. Some people's jobs are to just examine things like this. You would have even more people doing it with higher population levels.

 

[Amaror]

I know that that was said during ME 2, but don't you think that legion could just have been lying?
He doesn't agree that he is that one Geth rebel in Me 3, but it is very much hinted that he is.
Of course there is a possibility for war, there will allways be a possibility for war, with every species, but it's just wrong that it will definitly result in an extermination war against organics.

It was never hinted at all that he was the original Geth that asked the question.

All he did was playback records.

Sure he could have lied that he was built to find Shepard and he could have lied that he was merely playing back record but then again the entire crew could be lieing about their pasts as well even though there is no evidence to support that they are.

Not hinted at all?
When you look at that scene again, you will notice that after Shepard mentions that the gun the rebel wields looks pretty much like the one of Legion, there is a small awkward pause, and then he says something like:
"Äh ... Yeah it's an immitation"
Seemed pretty obvious to me.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Somewhat but yet again I would not be able to fully understand their mindset seeing they had live on for that long. I pretty sure if I had somewho lived on for that long I would be my former self (my mind had decayed for that long).

 

[SajuukKhar]

Not if they stuck around to "police" in the same manner they are doing now just not going away so things can get bad. Organics would see a reaper and be like "There goes the guys that will kill any evil robots we make" and thus wouldn't make any evil robots. They would be a deterrent. There would be an understanding between the two. Organics would even fight along side the reapers against evil robots, they wouldn't have to do it all themselves. It hasn't been established exactly how reaper technology works other than "roughly synthesis" (according to reapers) and we can't say one way or another if we could provide some sort of alternative energy source for them.

This assumes organics are not tracking resources and are just consuming them without forethought. Organics have even in our primitive time of today set population limits because of dangers such as this. Some people's jobs are to just examine things like this. You would have even more people doing it with higher population levels.

No amount of policing, beyond total mind control, would ever prevent people from making AI.

Human history has shown that when told not to do something humans are more likely to do it then if they were not told anything. Making something "illegal" only increases the rate at which people do it because organics are habitually inclined to do tings that are against their own interest because we hate being told what to do.

Beyond that knowing that there is a giant armada of stupidly powerful machines hovering around that will kill other machines also makes organics more likely to take the dangerous path of making AI because they believe the ever vigilant overseer will ALWAYS be able to take care of the problem. Which statistically they are bound to fail eventually.
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Some places have methods in place yes but overall humans don't actually monitor jack, and don't care about what the consequences of our actions our because we care more about ourselves then possible future people.

For all the warnings of global ruin, that mining X or burning Y will lead to disastrous Z, the vast majority of humans continue to this very day to do those things. Even at this very moment we are over-mining, over deforesting, over burning fossil fuels towards our own extinction.

 

[silver wolf009]

No I do not. And even if I did, there are better ways to institute their ideology than genocide. How about, oh, I don't know, manning their own Great White Fleet? Make their presence known, show that they're superior to every technology known, and remain as something of a police force, acting as a guiding hand. Maybe that'll work a bit better than, "You can't be trusted to act reasonably, so here comes the laser beams."

 

[SajuukKhar]

No I do not. And even if I did, there are better ways to institute their ideology than genocide. How about, oh, I don't know, manning their own Great White Fleet? Make their presence known, show that they're superior to every technology known, and remain as something of a police force, acting as a guiding hand. Maybe that'll work a bit better than, "You can't be trusted to act reasonably, so here comes the laser beams."

Except as has been pointed out that doesn't work, policing people doesn't stop anything, if anything it can make it worse.

 

[silver wolf009]

No I do not. And even if I did, there are better ways to institute their ideology than genocide. How about, oh, I don't know, manning their own Great White Fleet? Make their presence known, show that they're superior to every technology known, and remain as something of a police force, acting as a guiding hand. Maybe that'll work a bit better than, "You can't be trusted to act reasonably, so here comes the laser beams."

Except as has been pointed out that doesn't work, policing people doesn't stop anything, if anything it can make it worse.

But if they stepped forward to make themselves the guiding voice of logic and vanguards by force for civilization, wouldn't that mean they could keep the wars from ever happening? Perhaps policing is a nice way of putting it, but if they're so concerned as to go to a war every 50K years, why couldn't they at least TRY being the over bearing controllers?

If they're so worried about our well being, why not step in, and by force, guide it to a point where it's no longer threatened?

 

[SajuukKhar]

But if they stepped forward to make themselves the guiding voice of logic and vanguards by force for civilization, wouldn't that mean they could keep the wars from ever happening? Perhaps policing is a nice way of putting it, but if they're so concerned as to go to a war every 50K years, why couldn't they at least TRY being the over bearing controllers?

If they're so worried about our well being, why not step in, and by force, guide it to a point where it's no longer threatened?

Human history has shown time and time again that even when the smartest, most intellectual, people step forward to try to guide people down a better path a excitedly large amount of people will always ignore them and do what they want.

If The Reapers had shown up and told people "we fucking know whats gonna happen listen to us" people would deny it into oblivion and still make AI believing that they wouldn't fall for the same problems as people in the past.

And they would be dead fucking wrong. AI would still be made, and the Reapers would have to reap regardless.

 

[silver wolf009]

But if they stepped forward to make themselves the guiding voice of logic and vanguards by force for civilization, wouldn't that mean they could keep the wars from ever happening? Perhaps policing is a nice way of putting it, but if they're so concerned as to go to a war every 50K years, why couldn't they at least TRY being the over bearing controllers?

If they're so worried about our well being, why not step in, and by force, guide it to a point where it's no longer threatened?

Human history has shown time and time again that even when the smartest, the most intellectual, people step forward to try to guide people down a better path a exciednly large amount of people will always ignore them and do what they want.

Well, not many times in human history has their been a fleet of emotionless machines hovering above our heads with laser beams of death and robo-zombies ready to give us shoulder massages of death to back up the idea that we should listen to the smart people. If they're willing to kill us, and let that be known, most of us would fall in line. Granted, civil rights would be stamped on a bit, but still better than annihilation.

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

Reapers are synthetics that wipe out organic life to prevent synthetics from wiping out organic life. That plan is insane I don't agree with it.