BakaSmurf said:
Of course the Geth kicked the Quarians off of their worlds, they tried to wipe the Geth out when they started showing signs of true intelligence, even though the Geth hadn't made a single hostile move towards the Quarians at any point in time before they were defending themselves, and yet, the Geth are more than willing to make peace with the Quarians even after the Quarians attempted to genocide them, they're so willing to make peace, that the Geth are literally only on any of the Quarian's planets at this point in order to ensure that the Quarians will still be capable of living there when they stop acting like a bunch of ignorant children, make peace with them, and return.
It's possible to 'rewrite' organic minds to submit to the will of another without question, it's called brainwashing, by your logic, since it's possible to make organic creatures like Humans and Krogan mindless killing machines by simply torturing them until they stop thinking normally, they should too be wiped out.
Actually, Legion does refer to itself as 'I' on a few isolated incidents after Shepard speaks with it for a while, showing that they're capable of learing to think in a manner similar to organic beings given enough exposure to said organic beings.
Do you know how Human bodies work? It's a metric fuckton of individual cells working in unison to ensure survival and reproduction, do you know how the Geth work? They're a metirc fuckton of individual programs and systems working together to ensure... Care to take a guess? Survival and reproduction. The Geth and organic beings aren't all that different from each other when you actually put some thought into it, the only real difference between them is that the Geth are assembled, rather than grown.
Besides, all that aside, were the Quarians to actually be fucking retarded enough to try and go to war with the Geth at this point, they'd be wiped the fuck out within weeks, they couldn't defeat the Geth at the height of their power, when the Geth were only just reaching true sapiance, and now the Quarians are at their absolute weakest in the history of their existance, barely managing to scrape together enough to survive as a species, while the Geth were not just a few years ago, considered to be the single largest threat to all galactic life in existance.
Bah, they are toasters ... the Quarians merely recognised the threat of a collective AI, unfortunately recognised it too late. If I were to build a super 'smart' (as in pseudo-AI) robot to do my chores for me, and then I noticed that it decided to stack the cupboards tumblers first instead of schooners like I had programmed it, I too would incapacitate it.
You're talking about a machine that is pure a posteriori cognition. No categorical imperative, no noncognitivist moral stances, no moral perscriptivisms. It's just as likely to take a liberal action on how it stores the cups, cutlery and crockery as it is to forecefeed them to me because it would be 'more efficient'.
As represented by how easy it was to corrupt them in the first place ... "Destroy organic life... or don't des^&$^*$&%(*^%&$R(^(^* Error-error ... Destroy organic life!!"
Toasters shouldn't think, they should do ... they aren't alive, they are circuits. They don't live, they measure and build.
And no, brainwashing does not negate one's survival instincts. And as Pavlov shows, conditioning only works if there is a constant measure of reward/punishment attached to stimuli. Once you remove the reward/punishment, it doesn't take very long for the conditioner to wear off and the receiver to return to a state by which is almost exactly like the state they first entered the conditioning to begin with.
You can't just zap people whenever they do something and then expect them to remain that-particularly-something-free when you remove the thing that zaps them. After awhile the mind's internal measures will return operational parameters to a state reminiscent before they underwent the procedure.
In other words, just like Pavlov's dogs, the body takes care of itself given enough time and there is sufficient ability to heal oneself. For example ... you know what the best cure for a stressful job? Rest and quiet.
Humans weren't meant to look at computer screens for 12 hours a day (edit: Obviously some people's jobs are different than others) and have to discuss politics, business and other naturally divergent aspects of life beyond the hunt, seeking shelter and tribal movement.
The best way to remedy this is with peace and quiet. Why is that? Despite all the conditioning there is (Get up at 7:30, have breakfast, brush teeth, shower, put on suit and tie, get to work by 8:30, work till 6:30, 6 days a week without fail) and no matter (almost) the individual the cure to this condition is merely a week or two holiday.
Where you get to almost completely break this cycle and let loose on the world as nature probably intended for us.
Not saying paleolithic living was easy, but it was certainly less structured than our current existence.
'Brainwashing' as you call it, isn't like in the films ... it's very easy to break for the majority of us... as long as you dedicate yourself to restoration and recuperation.
It's not the same as programming a machine. It's code for a machine, as normal as any other code. For flesh and blood, 'recoding' is something alien in most aspects.
It's not even specist.
