Beyond the flawed logic of the Catalyst, why was this never explained?

Previous things I've read from him said we should fear AI - and other articles I read discuss aggressive AI (that is, they're aggressive if it's the best route to their goal but will cooperate if that's what works best).  Anyway, I just like to throw in stuff I read about into these discussions.  I'm already pretty much anti-Synthesis but I like to see what else is out there that can weigh in.  I should mention that I might favor Synthesis as a personal goal (though from a transhumanist perspective I'd favor genetic engineering) but not as a requirement for all.

Agree.
The transhumanist movement is intriguing, but scary as fuck. Upload your brain to a machine. Okay, but then if the machine breaks? Until we develop much, MUCH better hardware/software it is inferior to the organic brain.

Genetics holds much more potential without the very real risk of literally losing our humanity.

This is an excellent point.
"Uh oh! Power's running low. Let me kill a bunch of people instead of seeing if they can't do something about it."
Sounds like faulty logic to me. Or really short sighted programming if Vigil was just "following orders."

Smarty pants.   No, but he was clearly programmed not to wake anyone up until after the danger had passed... and that's the flaw.

And what about if the tactics involve removing you the creator from the picture permanently?  Particularly because they help perpetuate the very problem they are looking to solve just on a different level. Because the general treatment of organic life has towards synthetic life is the same kind that Leviathan has toward fellow organic life. All it would take is one race or races figuring out a way to block their telepathic capabilities and to develop their technology on par with them and a revolution would be inevitable.

I don't think you understand what you are trying to say by minimize the impact. We are talking about an evolutionary arms race that Synthetic life has the advantage in. Who don't need to sleep, eat, who can be mass produced in factories. Who can communicate, process data and react at rates that an organic body would be incapable of. Minimizing at the best case senerie would be the Batarians, Volus, Elcor, Vorcha, Quarians and Krogan are killed off. Mean while the Asari, Salarian, Turian and Human focusing all their capability to prevent the Syntheic race(s) from advancing any farther. For the eventual destruction that waits them.

You seem to be treating in your my Synthteic life the same as any organic life. Capable of the same limitations all life has. The fact is they are not the same. Do you know what Moore's Law is? Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. Which basically means every 2 years technology gets faster and smaller.  It isn't an infinite growth because of system we are using has it's limitations. But AI's by their very nature are not standardized integrated circuits. They are a quantum computer (least how they are described in game) and are vastly different. Those have much higher limitations and their capabilities are only limited to their hardware they are currently using.   EDI is best example of this because by every measurable definition the body she stole is far better then any organic body. Won't need years of training to be able to shoot with sniper like accuracy. All she needs is the right targeting software and boom instant head shot every time. And every time their technology advances so to will the bodies they are able to create and control.

Your right eventually the sun will explode or expand and wipe out all life on this planet. So why should anyone care what happens then? Lets just say fuck all this and get a purge started.



Destroy targets the Reapers. The Citadel is just a byproduct of the explosion. They are also the product of the Catalyst and agree with the the Catalyst. Leaving them alone wouldn't solve anything as long as the problem still exists.

I remember a thread talking about that a few years ago.

If that was possible, the catalyst could download itself into one of the reapers and continue what its doing.

I would be curious how long it would take to destroy the Citadel completely. Would the reapers give the fleets time to do that? The Citadel does have engines. Just have Shepard get in the drivers seat and drive it into the sun. Though doing that doesn't guarantee the reapers will stop. But its an option.

The other thing is, what about all the people on the Citadel? If there was enough time before the reapers move the Citadel to save the people....Of course how long would it take to evacuate those millions. It would also mean Shepard learned that the thing was part of the Citadel. 

Would destroying the Citadel effect the relays?

Well that is kind of the point. When the problem is based off fundamental aspects of each respective group. Suggesting changes won't be capable of minimizing anything.

But the reason the Catalyst did what it did wasn't because a few suggestions would change anything. Leviathan isn't the only one to blame. Remember Leviathan created the Catalyst to deal with the problem their thrall races were having. But Leviathan held the same mentality towards fellow organic races as organic races tend to have towards synthetics. That they are subservient and exist to serve them.

Even if Leviathan forced change on their Thralls the second the Thrall races figure out a way to break Leviathan's hold over them the destructive cycle will start again. And the very nature of how Leviathan controls the Thralls means a revolution against them will happen eventually.

Then your trying to create your own argument that has no basis of events or possible events taking place in the game world. Your final example at the end shows you aren't on the same page as events or possible events and their outcomes happening in the game world. The Catalyst isn't trying to stop a single ant from killing another single ant in an ant farm. It is trying to stop a single ant species from killing off all other ant species in the world.  Or to put it another way humans wiping out all life on earth besides humans. Possibly going beyond that and make it so only one specific human race (color/ethnicity/religious views, etc) exists on the planet as the only living being more complex then bacteria.

Leviathan is responsible for the Reapers only so far as they created the Catalyst to solve the problem it saw. Everything else they aren't directly responsible for because they didn't ask it to create the Reapers. And the Catalyst is an AI. Meaning it is a fully function being capable of forming and creating it's own thoughts. Claiming Leviathan is responsible for all their actions is a lot like claiming it is all Dylann Roof's parent's fault that he walked into a black church in Charleston and shot several black church goes because he is a racist fuck head. Yes they did create him but they didn't tell him to grow up to be a racist fuck waffle and to go to a historically black church and have him shoot several black worshipers.

You also ignore that the Catalyst directly states that they tried several attempts to solve the problem. Reaper solution wasn't their first responds. It was the final responds after several tried and failed attempts. Including created short term peace that still ultimately failed in the long run. Which could be anywhere from a couple of years to 1,000 years before it failed and the fighting started again. The time frame is never directly addressed but it is made clear peace is never long term.  So boom come the Reapers for the only possible long term solution by preventing the conflict from reaching the start up point to start with. While preserving and archiving the races and societies that developed during each cycle.

To be honest, an organic could have stood where Shepard, Anderson and TIM stood but not in the RGB place.  Absolutely anything is possible.  Hell, someone like TIM could have made it up there but only had the Destroy option because Control would be out (indoctrination) and Synthesis doesn't seem to be a thing in most, if not all except one, cycles.  We just don't know.  Evidence suggests that that Crucible has never before worked.  If I were to take a stab at it, I'd say the point of the Catalyst is two-fold: 1) it can generate enormous power and 2) being a mass relay (alpha, maybe?), it can send the Crucible waves to all of the other relays.  Without both of those factors, the Crucible might work but not on the scale necessary to defeat the Reapers.

The above is a reason why I think the Catalyst was never intended to include the Intelligence by the races who contributed to building the Crucible.  For that to be true, the Intelligence would have to be the primary motivator of the Crucible in order to facilitate some endgame of its own devising.  I assume prior races did not know of the Intelligence, or that it was an intrinsic part of the Citadel.  Calling the Intelligence the "Catalyst" is a mistake.  Either the Intelligence generated the whole Crucible idea or it took it over for its own purposes.  

So... an intelligent person cannot be a catalyst for change?  I have no problem with it being called both an intelligence and a catalyst.  I also believe that a certain sequence of events can also be described as being a catalyst for change.  Shepard himself/herself is actually a catalyst by virtue of the fact that it is he/she who "altered the variables."

The term "crucible" also plays into this overarching idea of causing change:  "a place or situation in which concentrated forces interact to cause or influence change or development" (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crucible).

What evidence do you have that a synthetic (say a geth) could not have activated it had they been the one standing there instead of Shepard.  We know the Catalyst cannot act on it's own, but it doesn't say a different synthetic could never act... and he only says that Shepard is the first organic to ever stand there.  He never says that a different synthetic has never stood there before.  If a synthetic were standing in the same spot as Shepard (say Legion), with the exact same choices being posed to them... what would they have chosen?