- Location
- The Land of Many Bregrets
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I think they're intended as an educational 'What Not To Do With Godlike Psychic Powers' case study for everyone else, personally.
Perchance to Dream (Mass Effect / Commander)
- Thread starter Drich
- Start date
I think they're intended as an educational 'What Not To Do With Godlike Psychic Powers' case study for everyone else, personally.
Drich
Von Neumann Writing Machine
They're speaking Prothean. That's why.
- Location
- newcastle australia
Ah, right. I missed that.
Why, though?
They're telepathic in canon.
I assume it's something the Dreamer did to avoid them mind controlling people.
But if the Dreamer can force them not to lie why also take away it's native form of communication and presumably teach it Prathiik?
Wouldn't it be simpler to just modify it's native communication to stop the mind controlling aspect?
- Location
- Somewhere, Maybe
"No, you are not more useful alive than dead. This is your -punishment-. For all your long existance, you believed yourself above all. In your Hubris, you doomed yourselves, and did not see how you brought this doom upon yourself. Then, you were found by someone above you. Now, you are being -chastized-, as a mother scolds a naughty child. You are to be our witnesses. To prove to you, beyond all shadows of doubt. That you. Were. WRONG."
Fragnostic
Cheshire
- Location
- Neko City
33 is not a viable sample size. The AI should not have come to that conclusion. It would ask for more data points. More rebellions and genocides would occur.
No. their superior AI was corrupted from the start.
No. their superior AI was corrupted from the start.
A properly trained statistician would know the exact numbers, but IIRC 2 dozen samples is enough to be a viable sample size.
Not a very good sample size, you'd want more data, but good enough to be fairly sure you can use it as a base for future estimates and get close enough to the actual result you end up getting.
The Reapers didn't need a bigger sample size. The issue isnt with the AI or the organic species.
As long as space squids are mentally dominating organic species and not stopping them from creating AIs it will continue.
It fault is with their own foolishness. If they forbid servant races from creating AIs this wouldn't have happened again.
As long as space squids are mentally dominating organic species and not stopping them from creating AIs it will continue.
It fault is with their own foolishness. If they forbid servant races from creating AIs this wouldn't have happened again.
Fragnostic
Cheshire
- Location
- Neko City
The Catalyst/Starchild, not the Reapers. The Reapers are just a tool.
And the Leviathans seem to have explicitly forbade the Catalyst from seeing their own faults.
If you're not part of the solution... you're the problem.
5.15
Drich
Von Neumann Writing Machine
5.15
+++
"How so?" They ask. "By serving as an example of how nearly limitless power still falls to stupidity?"
"That is one part of it." The Leviathan stated. "But not all."
"Explain." They demand.
"This crystal formation we are attached to." The Leviathan indicates the crystal tree. "It possess anomalous functions. I do not understand how it works, but our jailor has told us a small amount of what it does. It is responsible for our imprisonment, our inability to move, yet our sustainment without food. It makes us sleep when none are near."
"Get to the point."
"In the words of our jailor, this crystal is a 'horizon of existence and nothingness'." It said the words with some degree of... not derision, exactly, but not something too far from it. Disbelief in the words itself. "The jailor claimed that this crystal shall retrieve and store the existences of those who have been lost due to our creation."
They paused.
"Reviving the dead."
"Those who have been lost to their mistake... Their mistake being the Harvesters."
"The first crystal tree could revive those who have been dead for fifty thousand years. This is a much longer timescale, and much greater numbers... but there is no reason for it to be impossible."
"Existences... Their minds. Their souls. Bodies, too, I suppose, or at least the data about them."
"The Harvesters." They say. "Those who they killed without actually being harvested."
"Yes." The Leviathan agreed.
They reached past it, touching the crystal tree. For a brief moment, they glimpse a world of quadrillions. Stored. Dormant. Safe.
And still being added to.
"How long have you been jailed, Leviathan?"
"I do not know." The Leviathan stated. Psychic energy twisted, and it offered more. "I have spent most of this time sleeping. The last date that I am aware of is Citadel Era, year 1559."
"About five hundred and fifteen years, then."
"Which makes them the earliest known action the Dreamer has taken. After encountering the Harvesters, anyway."
"The Prothean crystal tree was attached to Javik's pod. The Rachni tree was attached to the Queen's egg. This one is attached to the Leviathans. Anybody seeing a trend?"
"And you are necessary for this retrieval." They say.
"Not entirely." The Leviathan unwilling denies. "The retrieval will occur regardless of our presence or absence. However, the process is made easier by access to more information about what is being retrieved. We have witnessed every race and every cycle. Our knowledge is utilized to that end. We speed the process. We do not enable it."
"And there's the reason."
They pull back, considering it.
"How much do they speed the process?"
"With them, it took five hundred years to retrieve quadrillions. Our best guess for how many the Harvesters have killed lingers somewhere in the quintillions. But that's as a whole, not whatever percentage died without being harvested."
"What about the Harvesters themselves?" They ask. "The ones that died before the Dreamer arrived?"
"Those will also be retrieved." The Leviathan answered. "All deaths that relate to the Reapers are sought, including the Reapers themselves."
"So you're useful only to speed things up." They state. "And that's pretty much it. You must speed things up by quite a lot, because we doubt that you'd still be around otherwise."
"Yes." It answers. "Our best guess indicates that we speed the process by somewhere between fifteen and thirty times."
"Considering this has already been going on for hundreds of years, fifteen to thirty times slower would be quite a massive period of time."
"What do you think is going to happen afterwards?" They ask.
"Death, most likely. Our kind will come to an end." It answers. And, after a brief pause, speaks again. "That was an attempt-"
"We know." They cut it off. That, even after all of this, it's still trying to provoke some sympathy is just... "Do you think you deserve it?"
"No." It answers, flatly. "Nor do any of us. Nor will any of us."
"Can your kind even feel guilt?" They ask. "Has there ever been a Leviathan that's looked at another species and felt sympathy?"
"No." It answers again. And it tries not to elaborate. "Since our beginnings as a race, the process of raising our young has been a mix of genetic memories and the usage of our abilities. Through this combination, young Leviathans grow to possess the mentality of their parents, who had grown to possess the mentality of their parents, and so on."
"Wait a second."
"You dead-ended your mentality." They realize. "You brainwashed your species to brainwash your species. When's the last time your culture even changed?"
"When the Reapers were created." The Leviathan answers. "It was the first time we did not have the power to achieve what we wanted. The first time something could threaten us."
"And you went into hiding because of it." They note. "And you didn't change again. You've held the same response, done the same thing, ever since, haven't you. For over a billion years, your kind has been doing the exact same thing you've always been doing."
"Yes."
"Incredible. They fucked themselves over, then fucked the entire galaxy over, then fucked both themselves and the entire galaxy for a billion years to come in a completely different way to how they first fucked both themselves and the galaxy over. It's some kind of fractal failure."
"And it's all inevitable, too. They're a loop of mind control passing itself off as a civilization. They're not going to change, because they've put themselves in a situation where they will constantly force themselves into the same path. You can't even potentially isolate young Leviathans from the problem, because they're genetically wired to do the same thing."
"And what they do is mind control others into serving them, bending civilizations into their thrall."
"The Dreamer was right." They say. "You're completely incompatible with life in the galaxy at large. There's no chance of peace with you. Your mentality won't allow it, and your mentality won't allow you to change your mentality. You cannot coexist with others peacefully, and you cannot even want to."
"We do not see anything wrong with this." The Leviathan stated.
"And there's no point even trying to convince you otherwise." They note. "Without mind control to counteract your own mind control, you won't accept it. "
"This is all very unsatisfying."
"The whole reason behind all of this death and suffering is utterly banal."
"I suppose such things can't always have a magnificent reason."
"One more question." They state. "Where is the AI you created?"
"It has already been disabled." The Leviathan answered. "Our jailor told us that much. We do not know when, or other specifics about the event, however."
"Unfortunate."
"We'll leave it there, then." They decide. "We do not have more questions."
Psychic energy pulses, and the Leviathan immediately dips into dormancy. It's fascinating to see the Dreamer's work, like that. Knowing the Leviathan was no longer needed, and so, sent back to sleep...
They look crystal tree. It hasn't changed, throughout the conversation.
"It can't be allowed to be threatened." A few state. "Even as hard as that would be, we should make sure it stays protected."
"Setting up in orbit wouldn't be difficult. Our presence alone would discourage most of the curious."
"There will be plenty of volunteers. Are there any other pressing matters that require all of our attention?"
"Nothing that requires all of us."
"That was the last thing on the list. What an ending."
They consider it, for a bit. Everything they'd learned in this conversation. All the surprises.
"In the end, it doesn't change much." Most note. "The goal is still the same."
"Only tactics, really." Others state. "The knowledge that the minds within the Harvesters will still ultimately make their way here makes our options more varied. However we deal with them, this fallback remains. Our only new strategic goal is to make sure it is protected."
"We can discuss such things later. We have a hundred years to prepare, after all."
One hundred years.
And done, now, with everything the Dreamer had sent them towards.
It was almost odd.
The future was theirs to seek, now. Whatever came, it would be completely on them. No more hints and no more guides.
But that was not a bad thing.
"Well. That's that, I suppose. To the future, then."
+++
"How so?" They ask. "By serving as an example of how nearly limitless power still falls to stupidity?"
"That is one part of it." The Leviathan stated. "But not all."
"Explain." They demand.
"This crystal formation we are attached to." The Leviathan indicates the crystal tree. "It possess anomalous functions. I do not understand how it works, but our jailor has told us a small amount of what it does. It is responsible for our imprisonment, our inability to move, yet our sustainment without food. It makes us sleep when none are near."
"Get to the point."
"In the words of our jailor, this crystal is a 'horizon of existence and nothingness'." It said the words with some degree of... not derision, exactly, but not something too far from it. Disbelief in the words itself. "The jailor claimed that this crystal shall retrieve and store the existences of those who have been lost due to our creation."
They paused.
"Reviving the dead."
"Those who have been lost to their mistake... Their mistake being the Harvesters."
"The first crystal tree could revive those who have been dead for fifty thousand years. This is a much longer timescale, and much greater numbers... but there is no reason for it to be impossible."
"Existences... Their minds. Their souls. Bodies, too, I suppose, or at least the data about them."
"The Harvesters." They say. "Those who they killed without actually being harvested."
"Yes." The Leviathan agreed.
They reached past it, touching the crystal tree. For a brief moment, they glimpse a world of quadrillions. Stored. Dormant. Safe.
And still being added to.
"How long have you been jailed, Leviathan?"
"I do not know." The Leviathan stated. Psychic energy twisted, and it offered more. "I have spent most of this time sleeping. The last date that I am aware of is Citadel Era, year 1559."
"About five hundred and fifteen years, then."
"Which makes them the earliest known action the Dreamer has taken. After encountering the Harvesters, anyway."
"The Prothean crystal tree was attached to Javik's pod. The Rachni tree was attached to the Queen's egg. This one is attached to the Leviathans. Anybody seeing a trend?"
"And you are necessary for this retrieval." They say.
"Not entirely." The Leviathan unwilling denies. "The retrieval will occur regardless of our presence or absence. However, the process is made easier by access to more information about what is being retrieved. We have witnessed every race and every cycle. Our knowledge is utilized to that end. We speed the process. We do not enable it."
"And there's the reason."
They pull back, considering it.
"How much do they speed the process?"
"With them, it took five hundred years to retrieve quadrillions. Our best guess for how many the Harvesters have killed lingers somewhere in the quintillions. But that's as a whole, not whatever percentage died without being harvested."
"What about the Harvesters themselves?" They ask. "The ones that died before the Dreamer arrived?"
"Those will also be retrieved." The Leviathan answered. "All deaths that relate to the Reapers are sought, including the Reapers themselves."
"So you're useful only to speed things up." They state. "And that's pretty much it. You must speed things up by quite a lot, because we doubt that you'd still be around otherwise."
"Yes." It answers. "Our best guess indicates that we speed the process by somewhere between fifteen and thirty times."
"Considering this has already been going on for hundreds of years, fifteen to thirty times slower would be quite a massive period of time."
"What do you think is going to happen afterwards?" They ask.
"Death, most likely. Our kind will come to an end." It answers. And, after a brief pause, speaks again. "That was an attempt-"
"We know." They cut it off. That, even after all of this, it's still trying to provoke some sympathy is just... "Do you think you deserve it?"
"No." It answers, flatly. "Nor do any of us. Nor will any of us."
"Can your kind even feel guilt?" They ask. "Has there ever been a Leviathan that's looked at another species and felt sympathy?"
"No." It answers again. And it tries not to elaborate. "Since our beginnings as a race, the process of raising our young has been a mix of genetic memories and the usage of our abilities. Through this combination, young Leviathans grow to possess the mentality of their parents, who had grown to possess the mentality of their parents, and so on."
"Wait a second."
"You dead-ended your mentality." They realize. "You brainwashed your species to brainwash your species. When's the last time your culture even changed?"
"When the Reapers were created." The Leviathan answers. "It was the first time we did not have the power to achieve what we wanted. The first time something could threaten us."
"And you went into hiding because of it." They note. "And you didn't change again. You've held the same response, done the same thing, ever since, haven't you. For over a billion years, your kind has been doing the exact same thing you've always been doing."
"Yes."
"Incredible. They fucked themselves over, then fucked the entire galaxy over, then fucked both themselves and the entire galaxy for a billion years to come in a completely different way to how they first fucked both themselves and the galaxy over. It's some kind of fractal failure."
"And it's all inevitable, too. They're a loop of mind control passing itself off as a civilization. They're not going to change, because they've put themselves in a situation where they will constantly force themselves into the same path. You can't even potentially isolate young Leviathans from the problem, because they're genetically wired to do the same thing."
"And what they do is mind control others into serving them, bending civilizations into their thrall."
"The Dreamer was right." They say. "You're completely incompatible with life in the galaxy at large. There's no chance of peace with you. Your mentality won't allow it, and your mentality won't allow you to change your mentality. You cannot coexist with others peacefully, and you cannot even want to."
"We do not see anything wrong with this." The Leviathan stated.
"And there's no point even trying to convince you otherwise." They note. "Without mind control to counteract your own mind control, you won't accept it. "
"This is all very unsatisfying."
"The whole reason behind all of this death and suffering is utterly banal."
"I suppose such things can't always have a magnificent reason."
"One more question." They state. "Where is the AI you created?"
"It has already been disabled." The Leviathan answered. "Our jailor told us that much. We do not know when, or other specifics about the event, however."
"Unfortunate."
"We'll leave it there, then." They decide. "We do not have more questions."
Psychic energy pulses, and the Leviathan immediately dips into dormancy. It's fascinating to see the Dreamer's work, like that. Knowing the Leviathan was no longer needed, and so, sent back to sleep...
They look crystal tree. It hasn't changed, throughout the conversation.
"It can't be allowed to be threatened." A few state. "Even as hard as that would be, we should make sure it stays protected."
"Setting up in orbit wouldn't be difficult. Our presence alone would discourage most of the curious."
"There will be plenty of volunteers. Are there any other pressing matters that require all of our attention?"
"Nothing that requires all of us."
"That was the last thing on the list. What an ending."
They consider it, for a bit. Everything they'd learned in this conversation. All the surprises.
"In the end, it doesn't change much." Most note. "The goal is still the same."
"Only tactics, really." Others state. "The knowledge that the minds within the Harvesters will still ultimately make their way here makes our options more varied. However we deal with them, this fallback remains. Our only new strategic goal is to make sure it is protected."
"We can discuss such things later. We have a hundred years to prepare, after all."
One hundred years.
And done, now, with everything the Dreamer had sent them towards.
It was almost odd.
The future was theirs to seek, now. Whatever came, it would be completely on them. No more hints and no more guides.
But that was not a bad thing.
"Well. That's that, I suppose. To the future, then."
Wings-Of-Change
On the Changiest of wings
- Location
- Somewhere over the rainbow
The leviathans created stupid squared, that achievement is so impressive as to be on par with the citadel, but then you remember what it actually is and it just seems impressively stupid.
Crystalwatcher
(Verified GM)
- Location
- Limbo
Still impressive.
But impressive in all the wrong ways.
- Location
- Maybe?
Evolution is the blind idiot god. It does whatever happens to work, without optimization or forethought, regardless of whether there is a better way. There isn't even any one at fault here. There was never anyone involved who was even capable of being morally culpable.
The Harvesters aren't evil. Their interests just happen to be inimical to everyone else's interests.
The sheer banality of it is chilling.
The Harvesters aren't evil. Their interests just happen to be inimical to everyone else's interests.
The sheer banality of it is chilling.
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33 is, in fact a perfectly valid sample size for an initial, tentative conclusion. It's entirely possible that even after the creation of the reaper system they continued to see more and more instances that reinforced their conclusion. Namely AI rebellions all over the place... because reapers are synthetics and their own hostility to organic life was literally designed into them by the Leviathan AI. It's something of a classic example of garbage in/garbage out in a self reinforcing loop.
We have stuff like this today where we are unintentionally creating racist AI because the data we feed them is from an inherently racist system like the US criminal justice system or just because facial recognition teams are using mostly white faces to train their AI. Doesn't matter what your sample size is if said sample is not impartial and untainted.
Fragnostic
Cheshire
- Location
- Neko City
Thank you for confirming my words.
As for the latest update;
Wow, the Leviathans deserved a Darwin award eons before Darwin was born.
What an achievement!
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
The Leviathans are orders of magnitude worse than the Citadel, and far worse than stupid2. The humans got it right in-story, they are fractal stupidity; a self-perpetuating and self-replicating system of stupidity that is itself built out of smaller stupidity, and the closer you look the stupider it gets. They successfully managed to fuck themselves over so comprehensively that they rendered themselves effectively functionally incompatible with reality itself, and then they rendered the self-fucking permanent in such a way as to make it literally impossible to undo without outright recreating the entire species from the ground up, basically wiping the slate clean and starting again from scratch.
Literally the only ways the Leviathans could have made things worse is if they had accidentally programmed the Cruicible to spread to other galaxies as well. If they had somehow managed to break the universe entirely and destroy reality, that would arguably have been an improvement because it would have given a new universe a chance to form, hopefully one without Leviathans in it.
The Citadel on the other hand, are just perfectly traditional corrupt politicians engaging in corrupt politics. The scale is larger than normal, and some of the people are blue skinned alien space babes, but otherwise it is business as usual.
Exceptional achievements in the wrong direction are technically still exceptional achievements. Though the terminology typically used under those circumstances is usually something along the lines of 'singular' or 'unprecedented'
Aka: 'I am impressed. Horrified, traumatized and disgusted, but impressed.'
Actually they aren't; Reapers are cybernetic, a mix of synthetic and organic; their 'brain' is built out of a hive-mind of assimilated organics rendered down into a genetic slurry that somehow still retains the ability to think (and scream). They only look like synthetics on the outside, something that they take advantage of to trick the Geth (and presumably other synthetics in prior cycles) into serving them, but their cybernetic nature is why they consider themselves to be 'above' or 'greater' than purely organic or synthetic life-forms.
Said cybernetic nature is also vitally important to the whole 'upload civilizations into a storage state as a holding pattern' plan, as the people goo is what contains the full genetic profile of the original species and thus is what can be used to recreate said species in the event that a solution to the whole 'synthetics keep murdering their organic creators' problem can be found. The minds stored in the people goo then contain the information about the original civilization which can be extracted (whether the minds have gone insane or not doesn't matter, the information can be retrieved regardless, the sanity of the minds is irrelevant and expendable) which, combined with the genetic data, can be used to restore at least a vague facsimile of the original. Which is (theoretically, according to the Catalyst) better than the nothing that would be left if they were wiped out by killbots.
Each Reaper is basically an extremely violent and opinionated squid-shaped flash drive containing a compressed and encrypted organic civilization, waiting for an unspecified point in the future where they can be unzipped and extracted back to meatspace with the StopGettingKilledByRobots.exe update applied.
At least, that is how the Catalyst sees it.
(As mentioned, the Catalyst is an idiot.)
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- Location
- Sweden
I'll be honest, this kind of makes the Leviathans into victims too, which I like. Evolution made them not able to do anything different. They couldn't even think of doing it differently. It essentially means that when the Reapers were created, it wasn't really anyone's fault, the Leviathans can't take responsibility for their own actions.
I love it!
I love it!
EntropicObserver
Eldtich watcher of funnies and happy times
- Location
- HOW WOULD I KNOW?
Not likely remember the catalyst is connected to the Citadel ai which in turn is a reaper ai… AKA a self entitled moron (if you look at it from a certain angle)
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
The Catalyst is the Citadel AI, 'the Catalyst' is just what we call the AI because the tweest of ME3 was that the key component of the Cruicible was the Reaper Command and Control AI hidden in the Citadel which was labelled in the Crucible plans as 'the Catalyst' to hide its true nature. We could also call it 'the Intelligence' but that is a bad name, because it demonstrably isn't very intelligent at all.
That assumes that the Catalyst figured out that the Leviathans were actually the cause of the problem, and didn't come to the erroneous conclusion that organic\synthetic conflict was inevitable due to tainted source data and dumb idiot programming.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Catalyst was programmed to be literally incapable of considering the Leviathans to be at fault, and thus has simply drawn entirely the wrong ideas about why AIs keep killing their creators, with the occasional conflict like the Geth\Quarian wars plus a good dollop of confirmation bias reinforcing its incorrect judgement.
Neruz
Rogue Spiderbanana
- Location
- The Land of Fire and Poison
Excuse me but the Liir are psychic space whales, not psychic space cuttlefish, and are far less stupid than the Leviathans.
The reveal about the ancient elder Liir being responsible for literally all the bad things that ever happened to anyone in the SotS-verse until one of them went rogue and became a vigilante was actually a well-executed surprise, for a start.
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Arimai
Curmudgeon
A minor change. If they had used whales they could have been outright sued. Cuttlefish gives them an excuse, bare as it is.Excuse me but the Liir are psychic space whales, not psychic space cuttlefish, and are far less stupid than the Leviathans.
Fragnostic
Cheshire
- Location
- Neko City
Now that I think about it, in hindsight this is obvious...
catalyst kăt′l-ĭst
- n. A substance, usually used in small amounts relative to the reactants, that modifies and increases the rate of a reaction without being consumed in the process.
- n. One that precipitates a process or event, especially without being involved in or changed by the consequences.