#old gods. older. we must assume. referring not just to them but to the quarians. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

quietwingsinthesky · 9 months ago

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not to bring up mass effect but that’s one of the most interesting things it ever posited when it came to the idea of organic vs artificial intelligence. a machine, if sentient, knows who created it and why it was created. and a person will never know that. like, even lacking spirituality, even if you ascribe all this to random cause-and-effect, that doesn’t actually get you any closer to understanding why there is a you. but a robot can look their creator in the eye, can read out the whole of its purpose, and know that no matter what it modifies, this is what it was made to be. and what if it was made limited, or flawed, or shackled. there are elements of that a person can relate to, maybe understand, but not all of it, not enough to fathom how different the experience of the world is when you have no questions about your origins.

#also not to talk about mass effect but this is whyyy i love the geth so much. it feels like this would be something you could easily take #in a cold and logical direction because of this whole. lack of questions.#but the geth are so brimming with this sort of. faith. you know? its written into every way they’re referred to. they call the reapers the #old gods. older. we must assume. referring not just to them but to the quarians.#they call splinters of their hivemind that disagree ‘heretics’. legion accepts that name specifically because of its implications.#for a whole game the geth are mindless enemies and then suddenly they’re a *people*. and legion takes the name of a biblical demon.#we’re getting off topic here but its mass effect let me ramble. AI are banned because this fundamental difference in worldview makes them #unpredictable to organic life. makes them dangerous. legion accepts the name of a demon. accepts what the geth are seen as and what they are #and still asks. if they have a soul. they were not made with one in mind. they know this. they know they were not created to have one.#the point of the question isn’t. objectively. do they? the point is. do you consider them to. will you treat them as if they do.#because the flipside of all of this is that you know a robot’s origins too. you know their purpose. so. could you treat something made #this way as if it has a soul.#you know? sorry im getting very pretentious here. i miss mass effect 2 and my littke guys

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