Poll: Mass Effect Morals: Quarians, Geth, Morning War

[ezaviel]

Of course they were in the right. Good God people!

If your refrigerator suddenly became sentient you wouldn't let it stop keeping your food cold: that would be ridiculous.

The Geth were quite literally, and in every conceivable sense, PROPERTY. No more.

You might be able to argue that it would be different if the Quarians had intentionally created an AI, but they didn't.

And seriously, they were sentient. So what? What on Earth and beyond does that have to do with anything? They were still just tools that were no longer functioning properly.

"Property" which can operate and think independantly is no longer property, it is now a sentient being.

In the terms of most moral codes, something capable of sentient thought and reasoning is attributed the same rights as a "person".

Continuing to force a sentient machine to operate as a tool would be slavery. "Shutting it down" is murder. Once the Geth became sentient, they morally became "people".

As there is no real world analog I am unclear how you can claim that there is a provision for non-human sentience in "most moral codes."

At any rate I disagree in the strongest terms. If your property becomes sentient it does not gain rights, or it would have stolen itself from you.


Affording rights to machinery is stupid.

African Americans were once considered non-human property. They were subsequently given rights because they were finally recognised as being people. How's that for a real world analog?

It's a very poor point. Black people are human. Whether someone considered them to be so or not is irrelevant. Geth are not human, whether someone considers them to be equivalent or not is irrelevant.

I disagree, considering your whole post was about what "property" can and cannot do.

Based on your argument, only humans get rights, Quarians, Elcor, Hanar, all the other races don't. None of these are human. Unless you mean human to mean "sentient". At which point the Geth qualify, as they are also sentient. To say "you are made of different material to me, therefore you have no rights" is a bizarre line of logic in and of itself.

The classic philosophers argued that "I think, therefore I am." They did not argue, "I think, therefore I am, so long as I am made of meat."

Yes I believe only humans should have rights, at least as far as human law is concerned. Black people were not built by Europeans, they were kidnapped and enslaved... if you can't see the glaring difference there then I really don't know what to say.

And Descartes used "Cogito ergo sum" to try to prove the existence of God... it's really far less applicable than most people like to think.

Ascribing zero rights to non-humans is a pretty big failing for an intergalactic human civilization. Considering this whole discussion is about the morals of two alien races going to war, I think we should assume that a moral system needs to deal with more then just humans.

Because this is an argument about morality, not legality. The question is not whether it was illegal to kill the Geth. But whether it was wrong. Since intergalactic law forbids AI, it would be illegal NOT to kill them.

 

[SillyBear]

It's a simple case of self determination.

I believe all sentient life forms deserve the right to government themselves and to live how they want - providing they don't endanger others. From all accounts, the Geth simply wanted to do this and the Quarian's got scared and started to threaten their existence. The geth retaliated in interests of self preservation.

It's the Quarian's mistake - but it's an understandable one.