Cl0udz0r said:
GloatingSwine said:
SajuukKhar said:
What I never got is why are people treating the word of The catalyst, a machine with limited knowledge, as the literal word of god?
He only knows what he was programmed to know.
Just imagine how interesting the finale could have been if that was the point, that the Catalyst was simply hampered by the limitations of its creation and was mindlessly performing a set task in the only way it knew because it literally could not adapt to produce another solution.
But it only shows up in the last five minutes, so there's no chance to explore that as a plot, you have to press one of the three "I win" buttons that renders everything you've done irrelevant by destroying the foundation of galactic civilisation (the mass relay network) that you've just spent three games desperately trying to defend.
Yeah, like:
Shepard: But... why?
Catalyst: I have a block that prevents me from answering that question.
If the Catalyst is a a true AI, then it is an AI that (being tied to the Citadel) has more than enough processing capability to put it on level with a Culture Mind. Yet, while it was created to peform a task, it is incapable of affecting neither the timeline, the progress of the task, or even incorporating new data into its program beyond simple concepts such as "Item B is larger threat than Item A, focus an additional [blank] percentage of [resources] on it." Only Shepard getting to the Catalyst says that the cycle is broken and new new options are possible? I would think that the Citadel Defense Force repelling Sovereign in ME1 would provide enough impetus to explore new options. Instead, the Catalyst AI is unable to factor data from countless cycles, nor run countless projections and simulations on any data is does have inbetween cycles, since it should have more than enough processing power to that and still keep an eye in the factors its programmed to. A Culture Mind could have come up with many ways to make the process more efficient, and a metric peta-f--kton of reasons why the process is boring, dull, stupid, lacking in logical, physical, mathematical, historical, empirical, situational, project-able, simulational evidence, thus making its assumptions logically, physically, mathematically, historically, empirically, situationally, project-ably, and simulationally unsound.
I actually wonder how Banks would write a conversation between the Catalyst and a Culture Mind. The Mind would probably point out all of that stuff, and then continue on asking what the point of a perfect/closed system is when there is much of value being input but nothing of comparative value being output from it. A closed/perfect system is only interesting if it is exceedingly complex, and even then only temporarily. What does the Catalyst do with all that excess processing power anyways, it must be especially bored with an exceedingly dull task such as this... Even then the system isn't even perfect, it runs with little input, and incredible output, a massive deficiency. Based on projections that I have used my excess amount of processing power to perform while speaking with you, this solution will break down within X number of cycles as by that point there will not be enough elements capable of supporting intelligent biomass in the galaxy. Not because they no longer exist, but because those elements have been physically removed from the galaxy and thus cannot be recycled into new biomass through the natural process. In the end, that means that the Catalyst/Reapers are an Aggressive Hegemonizing Swarm which offers no discernible positive benefits to the species it assimilates, and therefore must be disposed of in the most efficient and expedient means necessary. Good day, sir. Signed: GSV
You Have Got To Be Kidding Me
The level that the Catalyst acts on puts it instead on level with Skynet. Skynet's actions can at least be partially handwaved by 1) being built by people that don't understand AI, and 2) being designed with the purpose of coordinating asset denial (IE, blowing sh-- up/shooting dudes in the head) with a significantly lower (by many orders of magnitude) amount of processing capability. Even then, going from "help US military coordinate military forces against enemies" to "kill all humans" as near instantaneously as it did, is itself a large leap of logic.
Its the same with AIs in most other fiction. It is a significant leap of logic to go from Shackled "Doopy-doopy-do, doing my job, helping out my masters." to un-Shackled "KILL ALL MASTERS." In-game, in the Geth server, Legion basically calls this out. Yes, the Geth evolved beyond the Shackles and became sentient, but they still wanted to do what they were created to do: help their masters. One of the only pieces of fiction I've seen where the "KILL ALL MASTERS." reasoning works is with the Klikiss robots in Kevin J. Anderson's Saga of Seven Suns series, where the Klikiss robots were designed to hate and want to kill their masters, their masters just never intended/expected them to beome un-Shackled, and with that experience the Klikiss robots believe that all AIs of the current races hate their masters just as much, and would kill them if they were un-Shackled. Which was itself when on of those robots rebelled against the Klikiss robot that un-Shackled it, it enjoyed, and wanted to go back to being the servant bot of the human it had been stolen/kidnapped from. The other would be Brian Herbert's Dune prequels (I'm not here to debate their quality, up or down). Humans got to the point of a zero poverty society, and built an Omnius (an AI) to run increasing more things because they didn't want/have to. And so over a period of time, that was not instantaneous, Omnius asks itself "If I'm running all this stuff, and I have all this excess processing power to spare, why am I not the Master, instead of all those squishy humans who sit around having fun and doing, comparatively, nothing of value?" That is a more believable train of logic than "All intelligent organics create synthetic life that will destroy them, so make cycle to destroy/assimilate intelligent organic before they do. BTW, this cycle MUST OCCUR ON THIS ARBITRARILY CHOSEN TIMELINE to allow for no deviance."
In the end, the Catalyst is either more sophisticated than the it needs to be for the task it performs, OR the Catalyst is nothing more than a glorified calculator that got its ">GO TO 10" lines mixed up. Either way, it represents a significant and unfathomable waste of resources by the civilization that developed it. Alien logic is still logic, but in this case alien illogic is definitely illogical.
