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3 posted:DEFCON. Nuclear annihilation is inevitable, diplomacy is guaranteed to break down, and the game even uses the phrase "you just have to make sure you lose the least" in the marketing blurb. Clearly you aren't familiar with the joys of Christmas DEFCON.
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Nov 24, 2017 17:49
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I think wiping his memories is a fine option because he literally asks you to do it as his first request, and then 'kill me if that doesn't work'. There's lots to be said about ethics but at the end of the day if he wants a certain thing, deciding to do another thing because you think it's morally more right than the alternative is a little sketchy! But, well, that's nier for ya.
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Nov 24, 2017 18:19
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exploded mummy posted:Look at it this way Oh, my sweet summer child.
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Nov 24, 2017 18:37
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I didn't hesitate to wipe his memories, Pascal's too good to die or be abandonned (and die anyway in that case). That moment of the game always hits me like a drat bullet train in the stomach :/ Back when I first played, I knew something bad (read: horrible) would eventually happen to the peacebots but... not that.
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Nov 24, 2017 18:44
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For like 90 percent of the game I was convinced that Pascal would somehow betray me or turn evil or something. He was just way too nice. Then I got to this part and immediately felt terrible for ever doubting him. Pascal you were too good for this world.
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Nov 24, 2017 20:17
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Mega64 posted:This entire conversation about the moral ramifications of how to handle Pascal's request is one of the reasons why Yoko Taro's games are so drat special. They really take advantage of the medium and force you to confront things in a way no other medium is really capable of. This. Yoko Taro likes pushing the boundaries of what a game can do as a storytelling medium, and here is one of the places where it really pays off. Battling the machine horde is overwhelming, then there's that epic moment of HOLY poo poo where you get to control an Engels and wreck the gently caress out of your enemies. It's awesome, it's fun, and by the way you've just helped one of the kindest characters in the game abandon everything he believes in to protect his family and ultimately fail. The game doesn't let you off the hook for that. It's not just a cutscene you can watch and be sad about. You have to take some kind of action. Whatever happens to Pascal is now your decision, and it's interesting to see how different people go about making it.
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Nov 25, 2017 00:04
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I'm honestly having a hard time feeling that bad about all this but since I know what you get with a Yoko Taro game I guess I never make an effort in caring about any of the characters since I know they all die or get broken horribly by the end of the plot.
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Nov 25, 2017 00:09
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Sylphosaurus posted:I'm honestly having a hard time feeling that bad about all this but since I know what you get with a Yoko Taro game I guess I never make an effort in caring about any of the characters since I know they all die or get broken horribly by the end of the plot. "I do not feel anything because I consciously refused to engage with the narrative from the start." Yeah, real indictment of the game there.
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Nov 25, 2017 00:17
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I just wonder what the hell Pascal taught these kids about fear that would make suicide the first response. There's a running theme in the game about machines and suicide, so maybe it's just part of their programming, but I don't know why, thematically.
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Nov 25, 2017 01:37
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I'm guessing they just weren't equipped or handle fear, at least not of that magnitude.
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Nov 25, 2017 01:40
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Well, it's not like the machines we've seen so far, on or off the network, have been particularly, uhm, stable. They tend to latch on to something and take it a bit too far.
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Nov 25, 2017 01:42
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Echo Cian posted:I just wonder what the hell Pascal taught these kids about fear that would make suicide the first response. The game is about purpose. Suicide is, in some ways, the ultimate declaration of the absence of purpose. If life has no value, why continue it? If you question the value in persisting, then showing the alternative is an important part of balancing the narrative.
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Nov 25, 2017 01:46
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Mr. Flunchy posted:That is total bullshit. Memories are an important component of personhood but by no means the be all and end all. Ever spent much time around a person with dementia? Thought not. Yes, I had an uncle with dementia. He would often repeat the same story every five minutes. But at least he remembered the story. His memory was not completely gone. He was still himself, to a degree. Someone who has their memories completely wiped and someone who has dementia are not comparable in any way at all. You've set up a faulty analogy, and an extremely repugnant one at that. Edit: And you don't know me yet you feel comfortable making assumptions about my life and my associations with mentally disabled people. You might want to think twice before doing that to other people in the future. ...! fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Nov 25, 2017 |
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Nov 25, 2017 02:39
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Granted, the correct comparison is an anterograde amnesiac for "someone who seriously is someone who isn't likely to remember anything remotely close to anything in the present day, depending on onset". And he's still fundamentally right on the point that personality is not memory in that regard. Of course comparing a "hack someone's brain memory wipe" with anything may not be possible. Real life people have had a railroad tie through their head and kept memories, because memories are apparently holographically stored and we mostly seem to lose the keys to reach them with, if anything.
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Nov 25, 2017 02:44
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Having the same personality isn't the same thing as being the exact same person. Wiping someone's memories completely is the exact same thing as killing them. Their body will still be walking around but it's a new person inside that body. The old person is gone. So no, he's completely wrong.
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Nov 25, 2017 02:47
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There's always a bit of circular logic in that one, that assumes that memory is personality. There's literally no way to prove or disprove it at the current state of neurosurgery, which makes the moral question weird, and you can run it either way based on different amnesia cases-and like I said, amnesia is... probably not full decay of the neurons anyways. I suppose the most vague arrow I'd shoot at it is that it vaguely sounds like a nature/nurture question-what part of your personality is based on your intrinsic tendancies and what is based on what you grew up in. Last I checked the consensus is "it's based on both". Now would you have the exact same person... no, but you don't have that after extremely traumatic events either. Brain's fluid. Look up neuroplasticity and be uncomfortable if you like the idea of a nice, solid you. Edit: Though, rereading you again... it sounds like you may be saying that it's entirely the memory? Not personality? Like I said, anterograde amnesia strongly belies that. There are people dealing with the fact that they die every five minutes effectively, for years, if that's so. That seems like a hard disorder to mesh with your viewpoint. By all reports they're not necessarily unhappy people. SageAcrin fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Nov 25, 2017 |
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Nov 25, 2017 02:53
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SageAcrin posted:There's always a bit of circular logic in that one, that assumes that memory is personality. It also assumes the non-existence of the soul, which is its own kettle of fish. Especially in a setting where humans, at minimum, have been scientifically proven to have the things. Beyond that, "Wiping someone's memories completely is the exact same thing as killing them." is pretty evidently bullshit. Even if it is killing them, it's a different decision in that you left someone kicking around in their old shoes. Killing Pascal is killing all Pascals, past, present, and future. Wiping Pascal might be killing the current Pascal, but it leaves a new Pascal in the world, for good or for ill.
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Nov 25, 2017 03:06
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quote:It also assumes the non-existence of the soul, which is its own kettle of fish. Especially in a setting where humans, at minimum, have been scientifically proven to have the things. I mean this is really a better point than any I made, honestly, especially given A: the game has shown an extreme tendency to compare data transfers with spirituality and B: The fact that no one ever explained ANYTHING about how Replicants started being intelligent on their own in NieR so who knows maybe you grow souls at a certain level of complexity. I mean one set of "robots" already went all philosophical and weird on us for some reason, now another is...
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Nov 25, 2017 03:11
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If you reduced Pascal to scrap and melted him down, then built an entirely new robot out of his remains, what's the difference in that and wiping his memories? You can even inform the new robot his name is Pascal, and tell him something about the old Pascal, if you like. For that robot, is there any meaningful difference between having formerly been Pascal, and having a body built out of dead Pascal? Zoe fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Nov 25, 2017 |
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Nov 25, 2017 04:11
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That depends on what's in that core. A robot would be a bundle of computer programs and accumulated data. If we deleted the data, but left the programs, then some aspects of Pascal's personality would remain intact; if he encountered similar stimuli, he would come to similar conclusions and develop into a similar person. A new robot made of Pascal's old scrap metal wouldn't necessarily do that.
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Nov 25, 2017 04:24
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Zoe posted:If you reduced Pascal to scrap and melted him down, then built an entirely new robot out of his remains, what's the difference in that and wiping his memories? It's a whole ship of theseus deal but the main thing that would be missing has got to be that gentle Pascal voice. It's like the auditory version of a cinnamon roll.
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Nov 25, 2017 04:25
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FisheyStix posted:It's a whole ship of theseus deal but the main thing that would be missing has got to be that gentle Pascal voice. It's like the auditory version of a cinnamon roll. The term "cinnamon roll" should probably sink back to the depths it was dredged up from. Also, people, you're not going to solve "what makes a person a person? What makes them a specific person? What am I?" in an LP thread if 350 years of philosophy from Locke onwards hasn't done it.
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Nov 25, 2017 04:31
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Again we come to the existential dread. To recap: existentialism is the assertion (or the realization, as existentialists would tell it) that existence precedes essence. We can know that we are, but not what we are. Which then, begets the question, what are we, anyway? It turns out people don't like contemplating this very much. None of the offered approaches to Pascal's proposal are wholly right. If Pascal is his memories, we dare not tamper with him directly, yet all other choices will lead to their loss anyway. If he is some as yet undefined spark that might be snuffed out, we might at least say that wiping him isn't as bad as murdering him but then we're explaining magic by reference to magic and we have no reason to believe any of it. Or we can hold that Pascal is not alive after all, and just a machine, and of no consequence, but then what of A2, and what of us for that matter? All of these arguments ultimately rest on blind assertions of what Pascal is, assertions we cannot even begin to prove to anyone's satisfaction. All of our options seem monstrous, in different ways. All of them are murder, from some perspective. All of them make someone angry (see: responses in this thread to this choice thus far). If you're sufficiently philosophical, all of them make you angry. All judgements of this hinge upon what we are, and no honest contemplation of what we are leads anywhere pleasant - that's why they call it dread, folks - because there's no way to logic through this (you might recall that the last occupant of the abandoned factory was named after an existentialist philosopher who advocated for taking what became known as a "leap of faith", because that is pretty much the only available recourse to arrive at anything resembling an answer to any of this). It's no wonder that some players choose to walk away, not as any active assertion that it's a good answer, but simply out of resignation.
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Nov 25, 2017 04:32
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We should put Pascal on some train tracks, and then put five robot kids on the other branch of the track.
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Nov 25, 2017 04:36
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GeneX posted:Also, people, you're not going to solve "what makes a person a person? What makes them a specific person? What am I?" in an LP thread if 350 years of philosophy from Locke onwards hasn't done it. Naw man, we're gonna do it. We're gonna figure out which choice is Paragon, Renegade and Neutral.
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Nov 25, 2017 04:40
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RareAcumen posted:Naw man, we're gonna do it. We're gonna figure out which choice is Paragon, Renegade and Neutral. The only difference between those is the machines' eye color, though.
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Nov 25, 2017 04:44
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Really Pants posted:We should put Pascal on some train tracks, and then put five robot kids on the other branch of the track. Oh, this one's easy. They covered it in the first day of my ethics class. You go for the five, and then you stick a polearm, like a naginata or a halberd, out the window to pick up the spare. Really, I don't know why so much time is spent on solved problems like this.
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Nov 25, 2017 04:52
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Really Pants posted:We should put Pascal on some train tracks, and then put five robot kids on the other branch of the track. 
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Nov 25, 2017 04:53
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not an emptyquote
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Nov 25, 2017 04:56
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Nov 25, 2017 05:02
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 Trolley Problem?Problem Solved.
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Nov 25, 2017 05:08
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Nov 25, 2017 05:08
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Needs a picture of YT in his Emil outfit looking thoughtful in the middle. EDIT: I missed him on the train. 
Sindai fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Nov 25, 2017 |
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Nov 25, 2017 05:19
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This is art.
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Nov 25, 2017 05:20
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Nov 25, 2017 05:46
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 e: poo poo, someone beat me to it. 
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Nov 25, 2017 05:53
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Christ.
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Nov 25, 2017 06:34
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Nov 25, 2017 06:58
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Nov 25, 2017 07:00
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someone tweet that to him
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Nov 25, 2017 07:49
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