@RenegadeDoppelganger said:
@Brodehouse said:
@RenegadeDoppelgangerMaybe I totally missed the logic here but
Why was The Catalyst's solution to the task preserve all life to have the reapers wipe a good chunk of it out every cycle?
He was built with an order, a compunction, to ensure the continuation of organic life in the galaxy; not any specific race or species. His logic says that another AI created by these organics may not share his orders. Some may be peaceful (the geth), but some may not (every other killer AI). Even if there's a 1% probability a killer AI grows powerful enough to overtake the galaxy, that's a meaningful enough probability to act first (especially to a being that can live forever). Consider it this way, a tree growing near power lines. If you let it grow, it might hit the power lines and burn the entire thing down, never to grow again. If you prune the tallest leaves and branches, it can regrow. This is what the Intelligence is thinking. There's also the aspect that he feels he's 'preserving' those species 'in Reaper form'. Tantamount to building a house or furniture out of lumber cut from that tree.
Thanks, that makes it a little clearer. My initial thought was closer to your second point; that it was trying to preserve life by converting it to a more resilient, more evolved form (a reaper) although this brings up the debate of whether the reapers are technically a form of life and how broad one's definition of "alive" is. It also brings up the possibility of a slight misinterpretation or extrapolation of the order to "preserve".
I guess it's just weird (or perhaps really convenient) that The Leviathan -a practically omni-potent super species- thought it prudent to give an AI with limitless resources a one line mission without even the slightest catch (like, say, don't do anything that would jeopardize the universe). At the very least you'd think they could have foreseen seen the potential conflict of interest their admittedly disruptive way of going about things in the universe poses to The Catalyst's directive.
Also why was the "synthesis" option provided to the player in the ending never considered by the AI as a preferable option to clear- cut all of civilization every couple thousand years? If The Catalyst had control of the reapers this whole time, surely one would think it would have had ample resources and time research and construct The Crucible (or a device like it).
I know the answer to most of the above (because videogames) but it's fun to think about.
Yeah, the whole thing with the Intelligence is the thing any synthetic villain does; take the thing you told it and misinterpret it in the most horrifying way possible. Fulfill its orders to the most horrifying degree possible. I think a big problem people had with the Intelligence is that, for some reason, they expected to meet up with the mother brain of the Reapers and thought it would have a perfectly cromulent reason for the most massive, million year spanning genocidal campaign.
The Leviathans thought it was a good idea for the same reason that all the species they watched destroy themselves did; 'if we build this we will be even more powerful, and it could never harm us'. Hubris. The same reason why we built Skynet, or the Large Hadron Collider, or any other wonderfully dangerous and hubristic thing; our own perceived invincibility. The Leviathans rightly saw themselves as the living gods of the galaxy; what could ever destroy them?
Don't ask me anything about synthesis though... I will defend the Control and Destroy endings, I will defend the entire modus operandi of the Intelligence, but... the Synthesis option is the most baffling thing about anything that happens in the Mass Effect fiction.
The reason why I think it even gives Shepard the option is because it realizes that this could easily happen again. "My solution won't work anymore." It's technically still fighting for its life, it's actively destroying the Crucible and the Alliance Fleet while talking to Shepard, but it's also realized that if this could happen once, it could happen twice, a million more times. This time is no more special than next time, it might as well inform Shepard of the ramifications of his/her actions. If not Shepard, it will be someone else in 50 thousand years, or maybe 50 million years. What's the difference to an ancient being?
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