The litmus test

Can you point me to synthetic life that is not filled with Reaper tech by the time the Crucible is fired?  All we've got are the geth and EDI, both of whom have Reaper tech.  Anything else we encountered (rogue VI, which sort of became EDI after it was combined with Reaper tech) and that VI on the Citadel that was siphoning credits so it could be transported to geth territory, were already gone long before the ending of ME3.

I would agree that the geth are a bit of a conundrum in all this, however, they are not just in the ending but in the lore of the ME universe in general. In the ME1 codex (before it was established in ME2 that the geth are in fact "just code"), it was established that any form of A.I. in the ME universe needs some very specific hardware, namely a quantum bluebox, which is apparently some form of quantum computer.
If all AI in the ME universe were indeed dependent on such a piece of hardware, one could imagine the red beam damaging this hardware specifically (or at least more severely than other hardware*.
However, if the geth are really "just code" I also would have trouble seeing how the beam could effect them, unless it had some form of dual function, where it damages hardware on one hand but also introduces some form of a software wipe as well.

Otherwise, I agree with dmc1001. It's hard to draw any real world analogies that specifically and to 100% would resemble anything in the ME universe. Therefore, we really can't rule anything out.


*) Putting this in spoilers since it's not really on tpic:

OK, I see the distinction.  And, yes, I now recall the Catalyst saying that (I mod him away in general so remembering that can be an issue) about synthetic life and claiming that Shepard was also partly synthetic.  Of course, that means that the Catalyst has a very wide idea of what constitutes "synthetic life" if Shepard having certain synthetic replacements for organs or whatever counts.  Or it was lying since, well, Shepard could have survived.

I guess I bound it all up together because the relays are also destroyed.  Or they were in the original cut (which I've only seen in clips).  Not clear that happened in the EC.  I guess, then, that rather than attacking Reaper tech, Destroy attacks Reaper code.  Or maybe it just does things we don't really comprehend.

Needing like 4 Dreadnoughts attacking at once to be a threat hardly counts as in harms way.  And 3 confirmed losses makes the Reaper the safest being in the galaxy. More people will die due to airline crashes in a year then the Reapers lost in millions of years.

kalreegar: I think this is basically how I saw the Catalyst. It was doing its best to convince you not to utterly destroy it and the Reapers but instead join together in peace and harmony. Problem I always had was that the Reapers categorically cannot be trusted by organics (or even synthetics, since they had nothing but disdain for the geth who worshiped them - per Saren in ME1). War isn't going away just because we're now all techno-organic whatevers, and there's no reason why the Reapers couldn't decide to go ahead and massacre everyone for "reasons" that we can't comprehend. Furthermore, Sovereign's claim that the Reapers have no beginning and no end already has them thinking themselves gods or, tbh, they'll just lie when it serves their purpose.

I also tend to agree that the organic/synthetic war isn't necessarily inevitable. In any case, given that the Intelligence/Catalyst had the power to take on the Leviathan ON ITS OWN (because it was that attack that led to the creation of the first Reaper, Harbinger), it surely could stop any war between organics and synthetics without resorting to mass genocide. I just don't buy into anything it has to say. It's not the neutral party it pretends to be. It has an agenda, it definitely doesn't want to cease to exist, and it will say or do whatever it can to prevent that from happening. As you say, it had lost and knew it, or else it would never have even allowed the Destroy option. Even Control is sketchy for it since it ceases to exist as a thinking entity.

The events of Rannoch are very decisive because they are a repeat. The Quarians started a genocidal war with the Geth resulting in their population being dropped to a fraction of it's original amount. Then a few hundred years later when they think they have the advantage again the Quarians start another genocidal war.  EDI and Legion both have to pretend to be nothing more then simplistic VI's simply to not be killed. For legion the entire joke when you take him to the Citadel is the desk lady not recognizing a Geth when they entire security upgrades were created to counter the Geth.  AI research it outlawed and the few that are capable of it are heavily restricted in how it is done. The Council rounded up peaceful AI and wiped them out after the Morning War. The first AI we are introduced into the game has a healthy does of fear from organics.


Your argument is also a bit counter productive from your stance. Because if the events of Rannoch which support the Catalyst's claims is simply an insignificant fragment based on faith. Then so is all the aspects that disprove the Catalyst's claims as they are equally insignificant fragments based on faith. Your argument is self defeating because put in the argument for or against it and both come out as a matter of  faith with no real proof to support it.

And the Quarians didn't intent for the Geth to develop self awareness and the ability to learn beyond their basic programing. What would stop that from happening again?

Which isn't an answer. And is also the equivalent of building a house in Alaska without several layers of foam insulation under it to protect the permafrost.  Yea it isn't an issue now but when the heat of your house melts the permafrost and your house collapses into a soggy mess. It isn't a matter of if it is a matter of when.

The events of rannoch prove that a truce between organics and geth is possibile.
A truce, not a forever lasting peace. And a truce betwenn organics and a specific kind of synth, the geth.

The fact that a truce can be made between organics and some specific kind of AI doesn't prove o disprove that sooner or later a conflict will arise between organics and another kind of synthetics that will be created in the future.

really, it's like trying to refute the (questionable) statement "sooner or later a conflict will always arise between superpowers, because since 3000 a.c.; that's always been the empirical rule" by saying "the last 70 years of peace proves otherwise". Meh. The last 70 years of peace can last forever or cease tomorrow with WW3. Who knows. It's a matter of faith and trust (or distrust) in mankind.

If I add "sooner of later a conflict between superpowers will arise, and the more technologically advanced these superpowers are, the higher is the risk of extincion for our species and maybe for life on our planet", would you call me a nonsensical illogical stupid idiot?

I don't think so. It's a plausible way to interpret history and predict the future. Not the absolute truth
, of course. A  respectable and debatable belief, nothing more, nothing less.

I am firmly convinced that the answer to most problems with the ending is "the writers did not think of it or considered it not relevant enough to change anything in order to avoid it". In other words, the reason exists on the storytelling level, and can be named ignorance and incompetence on the part of Mac "The Hack" Walters and Casey Hudson, and a willingness to damage the integrity of their fictional universe in order to showcase certain themes and bring certain messages across.

It is not all that uncommon among writers. "I want this theme therein, whatever the cost" is an attitude I've seen before. It's just that most writers are planning their stuff in advance well enough that there actually isn't so much of a cost, and whatever inconsistencies are introduced because of it are minor and easily overlooked. At the very least, they usually know what they want the overarching story to be about when they start, so that this shoehorning of themes we see in the MET doesn't happen.

So, looking for reasons why things are as they are in the MET, I'd say *the* one reason, that at whose feet most problems can be laid in the end, is lack of advance planning. Had they known, when they made ME1, which themes and messages should be at the core of the trilogy's ending if it ever came to exist as a trilogy, they would've written quite a few things very differently, both in ME1 and ME2, and while it's not guaranteed we'd now have an ending setup we like, at least we'd have one that made sense. 

The Catalyst may not be in control of the big picture (anymore), but it controls the situation you are in - as Shepard - completely. You are closed off of any other information sources at the time, and since the Catalyst is still continuing with the harvesting while conversing with you, it's clearly still the enemy. Which means that everything it tells you is suspect, and everything else I said in the quoted post follows from there.



With the way we experience stories, what happens at Rannoch is significant evidence. Had peace not been possible at Rannoch, we still might not have believed the Catalyst, but we would have to consider the possibility that it might have a point. With peace being made, the story doesn't just make no point in favor of the Catalyst's assertions anymore, the complete storyline around the geth is now tailor-made to oppose it. Our natural predisposition towards an enemy who is killing our civilization is that it's wrong, so in order to give *any* weight to its assertions, there needed to be positive evidence. 



I was using the term "god" in the sense of "a being with power and cognitive ability far in excess of what's possible with human-level intelligence". I contend that no other kind of "real" deity can logically exist and that it's not possible for any entity to "own" the final truth of anything.

I've written about the "winning" or its absence in my other post.

Not if the reason that it's badly written is that certain things make no sense. As I said, I can see the intent so I see the sense it's supposed to make as a whole. However, as I see it, the mental effort at interpretation of certain story elements required to take it at face value as a whole in the end is nothing else but stupendous.

It's a contest in theory of mind against a billion-year-old AI with a processing capacity encompassing several thousand entities, each of which with processing capability beyond anything Citadel civilization ever made. By any reasonable measure, you can only lose.

Of course, Shepard is The Determinator so he's more or less immune to reasonableness.