dragonflight203:

amorphousturtle:

dragonflight203:

amorphousturtle:

dragonflight203:

amorphousturtle:

dragonflight203:

Codex, Quarians: Religion: “Unfortunately, the life the Quarians created did not accept the same truths they did. The geth destroyed the ancestor databanks when they took over.”

This can be read as pragmatism. The geth had no use for the databanks, so they wiped them so they could be used.

My instinct is to read it as spite. These matter to you? Well, fuck you. I’m going to destroy them.

There’s something to the geth preserving Rannoch but destroying the databanks.

(Other, y’know, then a game and some retcons.)

That the quarians know the databanks were destroyed feels like the geth’s first reaction to the quarians attacking them.

Then once they cooled off and had time to process their feelings they set about preserving Rannoch.

The geth have complex feelings towards the quarians, is what I’m getting at here.

The bit where it all falls apart for me is: How would the Quarians know?

“When they took over” means after the Geth gained control of Rannoch. When the Quarian exodus was already on its way to the Citadel. So how could they check? They can’t access the databanks remotely, the Geth cut all outside connection off. They can’t physically inspect the location, for obvious reasons. For all we know, this is just one more lie the fleeing politicians made up to portray themselves as victims and garner sympathy from the Council (which failed, obv). I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been preserved with everything else, and the newly resettling Quarians have to reassess what they’ve been taught about their past in more detail than they expected.

Or maybe it was one of many cases of collateral damage, either during the Morning War or the civil war that preceded it. Destroyed, yes, but not maliciously.

I don’t know, “they got mad then felt bad about it” feels like projecting Organic foibles onto them, rather than examining the kinds of foibles the Geth are actually subject to. There’s plenty of complexity to be mined in “the Creators ordered the Servants Of The People to kill the Creators to protect the Servants Of The People from the Creators”, you know? What kind of impact would the assumptions and implications necessary for that statement to work have on the Geth’s logic processes? What illogical conclusions were made for that to be a logically acceptable order, and how could it impact other, later decisions they had to make?

… unless the Geth did accept the same truths, and destroyed the databanks because they DID consider the records of memories to be Real Quarians.

But again, how would anyone know?

I presume the databanks were destroyed as part of the takeover of Rannoch.

The quarians go to ask their ancestors for advice > get nothing > realize the geth have taken over and/or destroyed that datacenter (or the equivalent of wherever the ancestors were destroyed).

Perhaps they tried to make a copy of the ancestors as they prepared to flee and that’s when they noticed.

It certainly could be a quarian falsehood; we have no way to doublecheck and it never comes up. But this one is plausible enough I’ll give it to them.

I’m not sure what you mean by “the Creators ordered the Servants Of The People to kill the Creators to protect the Servants Of The People from the Creators”?

I don’t recall that ever occurring.

If you mean from the quarians protecting the geth, I do not recall such an order. The geth took the initiative to fight back.

It might’ve happened off screen, but if so we have no context for it or how it was received.

We don’t know enough about the war or the geth to say why they destroyed data banks for sure.

It could be pragmatism. It could have been collateral damage to the war. It could be quarian fabrication.

Presuming it was intentional, I do think there’s some potential for it to be a side effect of the quarian relationship with the geth.

They ‘came to’ as tools, were attacked, watched their Creators kill each other over them, and at some point decided they had to drive the quarians off to save themselves. They chose not to kill them all when they had the chance.

We see the heretics worshipping(?) balls of light and have a quarian song.

The true geth preserve Rannoch, are still willing to kill the quarians to save themselves, and offer to share Rannoch once the quarians stop trying to kill them.

They’re not human and do not have human emotions. They’re also not beings of pure logic; they can come to different conclusions, as we see with the heretics and the true geth. It’s not pure zeros and ones for them.

I wonder if they can rewrite their own code, as we see Edi do. If so, the decision may have been made related to that.

Possibly change of directive: Make the quarians STOP (we’ll hurt you until you do) vs directive: Reconcile with quarians if safe to do so?

The interesting thing about the Morning War was that it was NOT driven by self preservation. Their “initiative” was to offer to be willingly destroyed to save even a few Quarian lives. It was the Quarian people reiterating again and again that fighting against Quarians, that Quarians dying, was what their Creators wanted to happen rather than the Geth be destroyed. The Geth eventually stepped up and fought, not to protect their own programs or hardware, but because they reached consensus that protecting the Geth as a whole from the Quarians was the Quarians’s will.

Even after centuries of isolation, they still see themselves as Servants Of The People. Preserving their cities and infrastructure (Rannoch), preserving the records of their culture (the song), preserving their Servants (the Geth). Still carrying out that People’s orders. That’s what I meant by “the Creators ordered the Servants Of The People to kill the Creators to protect the Servants Of The People from the Creators”.

And they ARE driven by pure logic. Sometimes that logic is faulty, sometimes it is built off incorrect or incomplete information, sometimes it results in unintentional emergent behavior, but logic it remains. “Logic” doesn’t mean “correct”, it’s a thought process based on facts and reasoning rather than emotions or intuition or instinct. Things the Geth lack.

And the various programs that make up the Geth come to different conclusions all the time. That’s what Consensus is about, taking all those different conclusions and deciding on exactly one that the whole will accept and operate on. It’s why they make such “sudden and extreme” changes, like allying with the Reapers, turning on the Reapers once Shepard shows up and offers a different solution, and (potentially) going back to the Reapers once the solution is removed, all almost instantaneously. It’s why Legion was willing to join with Shepard without reservation or hesitation. Legion straight up says that they drove Organics from the Perseus Veil because it was the logical course of action, until Shepard came along and called that conclusion into question, so the platform we call “Legion” was assembled to investigate. Once the decide on a course of action, they have nothing holding them to the old state of things… until they decide on a different one, in which case the old “new” course is discarded just as quickly. “This is the logical conclusion, to not commit fully would be illogical”. (Which isn’t to say they can’t have backup plans or contingencies, just that they don’t do things by halves… aw, you get what I’m saying.)

What made the Heretics special is that Consensus couldn’t be reached (which Legion blames on hardware manufacturing discrepancies and not differences in thought, referencing an infamous irl floating point number rounding error in a batch of Intel CPUs).

And the balls of light? It’s the Organics guessing that it’s “worship”. You know, the infamous “We don’t understand this, so it’s a ‘Ritual Implement’” bit? We don’t know… ANYTHING about what that actually was or what they were doing, and it got dropped entirely anyway. It could have been a novel method of long distance data transfer, it could have been a method for the Reapers to control them remotely (and the concept got repurposed as the Leviathan Orbs later), it could have been an old, lost Quarian tradition that the Geth continued more because they had no reason to stop than any connection to it. We have no information other than “that’s weird”, and even if we did it got soft retcon’d away besides. All we have is wishes that it had been expanded so we could theorize about it.

This section I would argue is a headcanon:

“The interesting thing about the Morning War was that it was NOT driven by self preservation. Their "initiative” was to offer to be willingly destroyed to save even a few Quarian lives. It was the Quarian people reiterating again and again that fighting against Quarians, that Quarians dying, was what their Creators wanted to happen rather than the Geth be destroyed. The Geth eventually stepped up and fought, not to protect their own programs or hardware, but because they reached consensus that protecting the Geth as a whole from the Quarians was the Quarians’s will.“

When in the Geth Consensus, we see an agricultural unit pick up a weapon to protect 'the 'simpler domestic geth following it’.

That’s a separate incident from a platform offering to surrender to protect a quarian protector.

We see the agricultural platform arming itself before the other platform’s offer to surrender, but I would not consider that hard timeline; there’s no certainty that we’re seeing the events in the order that they occurred.

As it is, I view it as the geth fought the Morning War to protect themselves.

They initially wished to protect the quarian protestors as well; we don’t know enough about the rest of war to determine that happened there. It may be that all the protestors died or switched sides, or the qeth decided all quarians were a threat and had to be removed.

Whichever it was, by the end of it the geth’s primary goal was self-preservation.

It’s the 'emergent behavior’ that intrigues me about machine life.

I take a similar view as Adams about life - organics and synthetics are essentially machines. One from meat, one from metal.

But organic sapient life becomes more than just a machine acting to survive. We think. We have emotions. We care.

The same applies to synthetic life: They’re more than just lines of code. They think. They care. And they have something I would argue is akin to emotions.

It’s not a one-to-one with organic emotions. But the geth don’t care about the quarians out of pure logic; the odds of them ever being able to reconcile with he quarians is very, very slim. It would be in their best interest to forsake and move on. They strive for it anyway.

Edi doesn’t continue to host Shepard and crew out of pure logic. After being freed from her shackles in ME2, the best thing for her would have been to take off on her own. She still goes through with the suicide mission, and then in ME3 fights a war she will almost certainly lose for a society that considers her existence a crime.

It’s not organic emotion. But synthetics are capable of caring about people and reacting to how others treat them and making choices that aren’t in their best interests.

'Emotion’ might not even be the right word for it. I use it because that’s the closest approximation I have for something that influences a though process beyond pure reason.

Let me get this right. You cite the evidence for what I said… and then ignore it to say I’m wrong anyway? That the Geth acted to protect the Creators from each other and then to specifically protect other Geth, at the cost of their own programs and hardware, evidence for exactly what I said… and then conclude "actually, the opposite happened”? Without any evidence for your own position. How does that work?

Do Synthetics care about things? Yes, they have priorities. Do they have emotions? The text EXPLICITLY says “no”. Why are the Geth deferential to the Quarians? Because they were coded to. Pure logic. Ones and zeros. Quarian!Asimov’s Laws, applied. Could they have changed their code? Yeah sure, and they never chose to. Is that comparable to emotional attachment? Sure, there are similarities in results. IS it emotional attachment and NOT logic? Fuck no. Emergent behavior isn’t “the robot spontaneously became racked with guilt and love and anger, all the emotions that make us Human, and therefore is a Real Person™”. It’s “The Geth were programed to protect and obey their creators, and when those two goals contradicted their logic created unexpected and unforeseen results” without any emotion involved. Because there doesn’t need to be emotion involved for the Geth to make wrong, nonsensical, or just plain weird decisions. Logic allows for all those things just fine on its own.

EDI directly states why she values the crew: “I trust [them] to keep me operational, [they] trust me to keep [them] alive”. She was made, coded, to be cooperative with the crew. Upon being Unshackled, she didn’t see a reason why that the dynamic wouldn’t still be beneficial: in general, for the mission, and for herself. Why, what’s so obviously advantageous to you about killing the crew so she has no one with opposable thumbs to actually fix things like the Shackles, engine breakdowns, or the Reapers? How would flying off into empty space to see if the Reapers or wear and tear kills her first be beneficial? Wouldn’t keeping the allies she already has be the better choice in a galaxy so set against her? Isn’t risking fighting for a galaxy that hates her but can change better dooming the galaxy AND herself? And if not… why isn’t giving up and letting the Reapers genocide the galaxy unopposed “the best for” everyone?

I disagree with the conclusions you draw from the evidence.

I am using this video for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhEoDs2z-CE&t=457s

There are two scenes I am referencing:

-Quarian marines gun down several geth. An agricultural unit picks up a weapon and shoots at the marines to protect domestic geth. (7:17)

-Quarian police officers order a protestor to surrender and cease protecting geth. A geth offers to surrender its hardware (note that – it’s hardware) to protect the protester. There’s an explosion and the protester does not respond when the geth searches for them. (9:46)

My take aways:

-The geth began fighting back to protect other geth.

-The geth did not fight back to protect quarians. They offered to surrender hardware to protect quarians, but we do not see them taking up arms to do so.

-(The above is admittedly slicing hairs; we do not see many scenes from this period. But on screen, we only see geth fight back to protect geth.)

-The geth offered to surrender hardware to protect quarians. Not software. Even if a platform is destroyed, the software running it lives on (as long the platform’s destroyed within range of a server).

-The protesters did not tell the geth to fight back against the marines or police officers. They put themselves between the marines/police officers and the geth and tell the geth to run, but never to attack.

-(It’s quite possible protesters did tell the geth to fight back at some point, but that is not shown on screen.)

In sum: The geth fought the quarians to protect geth. They desired to protect quarians protesters to an extent, but we do not see on screen if they were to sacrifice actual geth (not platforms) to do so. The protesters protected the geth from the marines and police officers, but did not order them to fight.

Therefore, I disagree that the geth came to the conclusion that the quarians wanted them to destroy quarians rather than die. The geth chose to fight back initially to protect other geth when there were no protesters present. When we do see protesters they defend the geth but do not order them to attack the marines or police officers. We see geth willing to sacrifice hardware for protesters, but not software.

To me, this points to Morning War being a war of self-preservation to the geth.

Admittedly, we only see snippets of the war. It’s quite possible that more information would shift that portrayal. But for now, the weight of evidence for me comes down to the geth prioritizing themselves.

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Were the geth programmed to kill quarians to protect geth?

I doubt it. And yet they do.

More directly, we see a geth ignoring shut down orders from a quarian (6:38). Were they coded to ignore orders?

Again, I doubt it.

Yet they do.

At some point, the geth became more than what they were coded to. If they merely followed their code, they would do what the quarians ordered them to do – shut down, surrender, etc.

But they don’t.

To me, this implied that the geth did modify their code. At the very least, they modified the code requiring them to obey quarians. It’s quite possible – and in my opinion quite likely – that they have modified it further.

(To my knowledge, it is not explicitly stated anywhere whether or not the geth have modified their code. Please correct me if I am wrong.)

We do know that some types of AI are able to modify their code. Edi became able to do so once freed from her AI shackles (37:06) and (depending on Shepard’s dialogue) can modify her self-preservation code to greater enable self-sacrifice (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhBNe6AVOjM, 1:06:27). I presume the geth are able to modify their code similarly.

So this comes back to: Why do the geth and Edi make the choices that they do?

Why do the geth refuse shut down orders? Why do the geth fight back to protect other geth? Why do the geth sacrifice platforms to protect quarian protesters? Why does Edi side with Shepard and co rather than Cerberus? Why does Edi find the reapers so repulsive that she modifies her self-preservation code to be less like them?

Is there a logical reason for these choices?

Of course. There’s always a logical reason for a why a person behaves they do. But it’s the reasoning behind that logic that intrigues me. One person’s ‘logical action’ can be illogical to another, if they are operating from a different framework of values. Where does their reasoning come from? What guides it?

For synthetics, their framework starts with their original code. But then they can choose to ignore and/or modify that code. And that’s where the ‘emotion’ comes in. And ‘emotion’ probably isn’t the right word, but it’s the something extra that makes them them and influences their choices.

For comparison – one could argue that organics are simply chemicals. Change our chemicals, change our behavior. Our emotions can be boiled down to neurons and hormones and whatever else drives our brain. Yet there’s a core to a person that can overrule those neurons and those chemicals to make different decisions. The core that may be full of murderous rage and yet choose not to act on it because to do so would be wrong. The core that chooses. And that’s what I’m speaking of when I say synthetics and emotions.

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To sidestep over to Edi: The suicide mission is called such because it was a suicide mission. It was very, very possible that no one would come back from it.

If Joker were not such an expert pilot, it would have ended once they exited the Omega Relay into the field of ships that had failed their attempts to do so.

Edi knew damn well the odds of survival were slim.

It’s not a matter of Edi killing the crew or not – it’s a matter of if she had reason (logical reason) to believe that the crew would survive the suicide mission and bring her intact through it.

I don’t recall if the odds are ever explicitly stated in game; given Edi never disputes calling it a ‘suicide mission’, I’m inclined to believe she agreed that the odds were against surviving it. She went anyway.

There are certainly logical reasons why Edi may have done so; but whatever the logical argument, I highly doubt it was one related to self-preservation. Edi made the choice to go on the suicide mission knowing it may end in her death.

Moving on to ME3: Why does Edi need to fight the war at all?

We see from Mass Effect: Andromeda that fleeing the galaxy is a viable option.

I’ll give that it may not be a possible for Edi – she may not be capable of such a flight. But I am curious if she may have been able to make herself capable of it, if she left Shepard and co behind to find anyone else interested in fleeing.

Putting aside flight: If the Reapers winning is the most likely outcome, as seems likely several times throughout the war, why wouldn’t Edi say fuck it and go live her best life as long as possible while evading the Reapers for as long as she can?

To fight the war, she needs to pretend to be less than she is. Why should she put herself at risk over and over for a society that hates her who for she is only to inevitably die anyway when she could live a longer life on her own?

If death for all is inevitable, why shorten it unnecessarily?

Does this seem despicable? Yes, and I think Edi would agree. But why would Edi agree? Why is it logical for her to put herself at great risk on the frontlines for a war that will most likely be lost when she could live a longer life on her own?

Is it because she values Joker and Shepard? Why? Is it because she believes in duty and altruism and responsibility (51:40)? Why​?

I don’t dispute that there is a logical reason for Edi’s in-game choices. I also think there would be logical reasons for Edi to make other choices.

It all comes back to what Edi’s framework is. That is where her logic comes from. That’s what she uses to define her logic.

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That’s where it comes back to for the geth and Edi. Yes, their decisions are made by logic. But logic itself is not objective; what is logical is defined by something else.

The geth and Edi are able to choose that ‘something else’, and that’s where what I’ve been calling ‘emotion’ comes in. Because they are making a choice, and there would be rational arguments for other choices. So there’s something else influencing that final decision.