USH'S MATRIX GAME 2006 FOURTH ASSIGNMENT (PHILOSOPHY)- 'The Door'

Gah, Sirin can't decide which bandwagon she wants to jump on, mostly because she's not very good at expressing her reasonings.

(which is to say that I'M not very good at expressing it...)

The way that Berserker and Melkor are going seems more appealing to her, simply because she feels that non-combatants and the potential free minds shouldn't have to pay for a war they don't even know about.

As Ush mentioned, there IS a difference between killing the SWAT and policemen that chase after us than all the billions of civilians in the Matrix. Civilian casualties always happen in war, but billions of civilian casualties? That's insane!

And pro-Virus actually really does sound exactly like Sennacherib. He believed that Humanity should have been ended, executed, exterminated. As long as a few Machines survived, it was victory. That could be said of Zion, if we exterminated the Matrix in this way. It's too much like Sennacherib for Sirin to be comfortable agreeing with it.

Well, it isn`t like Sirin has to choose a side, because she is dieing.

"Well, it was a pleasure to meet you all. Pity it has to end like this...." -Melkor coughs some blood.

It's exactly what Sennacherib would do. And the allegory is deliberate, because it is exactly what Sennacherib wanted to do- destroy most of his own race in order to destroy all the Humans.

But the Machine leadership said no. It has been suggested that Machines objected on grounds of their own survival. But it wasn't them who chose- it was a small number of Machine leaders who chose, and who would have all survived personally.

And they chose not to do it, on the grounds that it would be immoral. They could not stomach slaughtering so much of their own kind, even though it would certainly destroy all the Humans.

You are now (at least in this theoretical scenario) facing the exact same dliemma. The question is whether you would slaughter your own kind for the chance of destroying the Machines.

Well, Melkor would hesitate to destroy all the Machines even if no human dies in the process. Especially that he now sees that they are not faceless and opressive enemy he imagined them as.

Well, the destruction of Zion is also imminent. If Zion is lost, then all hope that mankind has for advancing is lost with it. The death of thousands may appear insignificant to the billions in the Matrix, but if you think about it, the billions in the Matrix are not going anywhere or really contributing anything to the well-being of mankind. That may sound incredibly heartless, but it's more or less true.

It's like Sennacherib's example of the Battle of Zion, in which his altered version saw the end of Judaism and all religions that spawned from it. If our own Battle of Zion ended with that kind of result, it would not just be the end of a religion. It would be the end of any future for the human race.

After all, we're not going to be able to free most of the minds in the Matrix. It's a shame about potentially freeable people, yes, but billions upon billions of humans would be born free in generations and generations and generations after the Matrix was destroyed.

In regards to the Sennacherib issue, Klez does agree that we sound a lot like Sennacherib. The thing is, though, is that he was more or less correct. The Machines did not take their opportunity to wipe out mankind, and so they have spelled their own doom. If we don't take our opportunity now, Zion and mankind's future is lost.

Eh, yeah, you're right, that sounds incredibly wrong...

I'll need to think on this. Heph was initially for stopping the Virus, after all.

As a side note, this reminds of the Bomb-stopping plot in Heroes, if anyone's watched it...

I don`t think that you can judge whether someone contributes to well-being of mankind....

Not wanting to sound like I am contradicting myself, but at this point the destruction of Zion is not as factual as the Virus is.

It's very difficult, from a rational viewpoint, to see Zion surviving. But then, Humans have really known that all along, haven't they? Jericho said it. How is one tiny bunch of Humans going to defeat a vast ciivlisation of Machines? It's a straight war- not even a terrorist action. How can the Machines not win?

So before the Virus came around, what did any of you think the point of fighting was?

So Klez, I'll ask you two questions.

The first is- do you consider you have the right to kill billions of humans in the name of an unknown future? Is that the logic of life you engage in?

And secondly... in saying Sennacherib was right and the Machine leadership wrong, you identify yourself of taking the position of the being of no morals against those who held them.

Are you comfortable with proving Humanity are the bad guys in this war? Winning victory against a Machine civilisation that failed because they refused to be as immoral as the Humans ended up being?

Hmm, "When you put it that way..." is becoming a popular saying in this, isn't it?

First- If it has seemed likely that Zion will not win this war, then Klez would take this chance to destroy the Matrix. I mean, it would still be very heavy on Klez that billions of his own race are being killed. He's not a heartless git. But he would rather eliminate the certain future of Zion's destruction for an uncertain future where Zion might possibly see victory.

Second- Erm, yeah...if it means making Mankind sound disgustingly immoral, then Klez does not think that Sennacherib was right. He was right factually, that sparing mankind will lead to the Machines' downfall. But on the matters of morals, Sennacherib was wrong to think that morals should be ignored...

Klez is contradicting himself.

Well yes, as indeed was talked about during this Path, the Machines never contended that Sennacherib was making a factual error. There was no issue with his logic.

What price victory?

As to who will sound immoral- well, let's say historians from Mars study the conflict in future, beings with roughly the same way of thinking as us.

They will see the Machines had the chance to destroy the Humans by wiping out most of their own kind, and declined on moral grounds.

They will see that when faced with the same decision, the Humans said yes, rejecting the moral grounds.

Who do you think they will see as disgustingly immoral? It will be glaringly apparent that the Humans won by being less moral- and on an enormous scale.

It will already, after all, be very much on record that the Humans already tried it once, with the sky.

The obvious answer to that is that the Martians will think that we were incredibly terrible people.

is/this/not/what/you/wan/ted/az/ral

Ahhhh! There is something repugnant about the whole idea, but the probable loss of all humanity versus the loss of the majority of humanity?

Azrael wouldn't have released the virus, but he's finding it difficult to get to logical ground that would convince him to stop it. There's a big difference between actively doing something, and passively doing it.

As for this Martian comment: they might not see it as immoral at all - the machines, after all, enslaved virtually all of humanity (heh - 'virtually'😉 and they might see it as the practical way to end a war that would have finished with the deaths of billions anyway.

I mean, when the machines find an alternative source of power, they'll just turn the Matrix off, won't they?

The machines had to enslave all of humanity because the Humans had destroyed the sun in an attempted genocide. Their alternative was destroying humanity.

The machines, of course, never will find an alternative source, as presented.

However, Jericho did actually just say that to you, Azrael. He's just outside the cage.

"Does anybody want the death of billions, Jericho?" Azrael replies, before coughing again, "And I do not desire my own death."

Azrael feels that refusing to act is not the same as actually spreading the virus and doesn't hold the same moral repercussions.

no/az/ral. you/would/die/to/bring/vict/or/y. i/have/brought/you/what/you/want/ed. bet/ter/they/die/for/vict/or/y/than/live/as/slaves/at/the/whim/of/the/mach/ines

you/were/al/ways/meant/to/o/pen/that/door

"It is not quite the course I would have chosen, had I other options," Azrael says, "But I think you know that. And now you tell me it's our only hope for victory. I have no reason to disbelieve you - there is no other plan for success.

"To agree that this is the best thing for us to have done is something I cannot accept. This is not the best thing, but merely that dictated by necessity if we wish to win the war. We are no longer really a part of that human society that flourishes inside the Matrix - they belong to machine society as simple batteries used to fight the war effort against us. But neither are they slaves - they have no mental shackles placed on them. That we will allow them to die, who we have fought so long to free, is reprehensible, but the only way to preserve our own society, and true choice for humanity.

"My friends believe they have taken refuge upon the moral high ground, but that means nothing. That we might be judged immoral by some future historian is a foolish argument, because if we are defeated our morals will become a mere footnote."

i/knew/you/would/a/gree. but/then/you/had/al/read/y/told/me

Heph looks over at Azrael.

"What is THAT supposed to mean?" Heph asks.

can/you/nopt/see/heph/as/tus? az/ral/planned/this. it/is/what/he/was/meant/to/do. you/all/just/need/ed/to/get/him/to/the/door.