To kill or not? [spoilers]

[Kore]

So, in this discussion post, I want to figure out everyone's personal opinion on letting the WAU live, because it is interesting the different perceptions everyone is taking on it. It's either a monster or savior, an animal or an algorithm. Quite honestly, to me, it's merely not human. Obviously not, but think of this for a moment; the WAU's core programming is to keep humanity alive at all costs, which of course went hay wire when Telos hit. It turned people into horrific monsters (except Akers who created his fate) and placed everyone else into horrible comas. However, if anyone has missed it, it also created a single human being: Simon-2. Simon-2, as Catherine stated, is the best of both human and robot, and was clerified to be built and nutured by the WAU. Thus, it can be assumed that the WAU is not a monster but a scientist merely trying to create new bodies for his charges and failing miserably until it finds a way through Simon-2. The WAU just created a human, essentially: not a failed creation seeking out prey, but a sentient life form that thought out problems and bobbed and weaved around dangers. Simon-2 was a mouse, and Pathos-II was the Cretan maze, with some nasty minotaurs lying in wait, the cheese being to save humanity and Simon himself. I personal allowed the WAU to live because, for one, it is the only viable creature that can live on Earth succesfully, and two, it has shown the potential to recreate life, a sentitent life. Now, of course this life will not be human, but it is still a step forward. As Ross claimed, the WAU is a nightmare to humanity, primarily because of how alien it acts, the ignorance it shows towards the concept of humanity. It is like a child trying to save a fish by placing it in tap water, not knowing the chlorinated water is actually burning the fish alive. With time, I believe the WAU can easily find a way to replicate humans successfully, but these bio-organic creatures may be far more than their original copies.

[КириллСтоякДжонс]

Best

[Cruna]

Killing or not killing WAU.... I think it's the hard question. The question is this: Do you want to preserve humanity in any form? WAU is doing exactly that. Or let humanity vanish from existence, and let the planet do it's natural cycle. WAU is NOT a destructive force, nor an enemy. But how important is the preservation of human consciousness to you? You get a chance to decide exactly that.

[v00d00m4n]

ill copy my reply from another thread:

Originally posted by John_Goatti:

Dude, it's just a game.

it is not just a game, its a game with phylosophical story, that supposed to make people think about existancial questions.


As for a subject - i dont think people got the point of game.
Have you see that scenes where our character was left on chair 2 times without any value of his life?

Point is that all the arks - just an illusion, sort of Matrix, world that was made to make blind and prevent seeing the truth - they are already dead.

Ark did not save any human, whole project was just a "snake oil" or "placebo", sort of religious stupidity, people forced themselves to believe that once they are digitized they will be kept alive, when in fact they are all going to die, and ark will just have virtual AI copy that simulates original human mind and will mistakenly think that they are real and living persons.

Point of this game was about value of real biological life, and that transhumanism ideas of immortality via digitalisation and transformation into machine - is placebo and dangerous idea that will wipe out humanity and will replace it with fake machines that simulate humanity.

WAU did not value biological life form, it did not value life, it only valued the idea "preserve life" by any means, and the only mean it was aware - turn people into machines, even despite their lifes will be a misery. Remember all the robots scattered around with essence of human mind uploaded into them? Most of them was not even able to move, and has cognitive disfuncion, they was dellusional and suffered. Just imagine if you mind was transfered into plant. Now imagine this plant was not even organic. What kind of existance is that? Its worse than death, its a hell.

Also, remember those uncapable to sustain human mind and crazy monsters and machines? They was human too, but they gone crazy and turned into mindless drones that purely exist as basic instincts of preservation of their lives (this is why they attacked you, they did it because they wanted to live). The only one monster who actually kept part of his mind was that doctor (dont remember his name, played a while ago) who wanted to destroy WAU. WAU saved him from death, but in fact it did not, it saved a copy and turned that copy into a monster who suffered from such form of existance.

Whole point of the game - VALUE YOUR BIOLOGICAL NATURAL LIFE! You are alive while your biological body and its mind alive, they are one and same, they cant be separated, cant be transfered, only copied into machine but that copy would not be you and it would not be even alive or human, it would be just a machine simulation, surrogate, fake that pretends as you and believes it is you, but it is not you and is not even a human.

WAU stands against this point, WAU does not understand value of natural life, it does not understand the concep of life itself, WAU is not alive, its machine that runs simulation of mind, and everyone WAU "Saved", is not alive and machine that runs simulation as well, and even this simulation is suffering and goes crazy.

ARK is also a placebo, agony of dying people. It did not save anyone, even AI simulation will not live long.

Guess how many years this tiny ARK will exist in space until it elements will be damaged by space trash, overheat, overcold, and natural degradation of electronic elements or until it will star falling on earth and will be destroyed during crash with all the simulation gone? "People" on ark dont even have robotic bodies to get out and fix something that broken outside, they are totally cut away from real world, and their existance will come to an end shorty.

Remember the last alive human who died in front of us? That was the real ending of humanity, real ending of game, rest was just a dellusion or illusion, blind faith in existance of humanity in form that neither human, nor alive, just a simulation.

WAU and ARK in its core are same, except that maybe in WAU this simulation would be able to exist longer, but in much less human and much less comfortable form, which will drive "survivors" crazy of will make them suicidal and after some time, there is nothing but basic animal instincts would be left of humanity.

Choice to spare ot destory WAU is not really about humanity, its about biological life as whole, or whats left of it. By trying to preserve it WAU actually killed it and replaced with re-animated "nanomachines powered" (or whatever this gel was) corpses which was more machines, than biological life forms. While humanity is dead, some species could still be alive deep underwater and could evolved after many years and get back to land. If you would not stop WAU it will spread accross whole earth like cancer and will terminate all remaining real life forms and replace them with mindless suggorates, in the end whole earth would just one solid WAU and some mindless drones, who would not be even alive, tha would not value a life, just a simulation of life, that mocks its.
Guess why 1st monster in a game is some sort of mocking bird? It was a foreshadow of whole point of game - this is not life, its a parody of life, WAU is mocking life.

Its better to terminate this cancerous WAU to give some chance for real life form to repopulate earth and evolve. Attempt to save humanity by saving WAU is selfish dellusion that will destroy remaining non human life forms with this "nanomachine\structure gel" cancer.

Thiking of religious symbolism in this game, ARK represent the concept of heaven, while WAU represents concept of hell, in ark people living happy lives as people above the earth, in wau people living miserable live as some abominations at the deepest bottom of the earth... but both heaven and hell just a dellusion, none of them is real, none of them preserves lives, none of people will end in heaven (ark) or hell (wau), everyone is dead and any deviation from understanding of this, is dellusion.

I think our protogonist realised this at least twice - 1st time, when he was left on that chair after he copied himself into another body, that left one realised whats really going on, while copy was still dellusional, then this copy realised same thing as well in the end, when it was left alone on chair in darkness. This was kinda the most important showcase of this dellusion of life and why its worse than death - just imagine that your mind keeps existing in endless darkness and lonlyness, unable to move and unable to end this pointless existance. When human dies vision and hearing and all senses fades out and turns into silent darkness (phenomen of white tunnel some people who was almost dead saw is actually description of process of how senses fades out and vision turns into darkness and tunnel of light that fades out as well) and mind fading out its cognitive functions until its stop realising its existing... but lets say, that while you cut out of your senses, cant see, hear, feel, move and do anything, some "cheat" allows you to still think and realise your existance. This is basically what happened in the end, except that it was not alive or human, it even worse than hell and heaven, its literally a limbo or void, and there is no one to put him out of his misery.

That was the scariest moment of the game when you realise what happened, and it was a strongest message of this game, that such dellusions of heaven may end up in void, which is worse than hell and death.

Actually our hero, the one in begining of game, was the happiest and luckiest of all incarnations, because he died, and did not stuck as simulation in some void.

[TripleHelix935]

I killed Wau and every robot and human i could including my copies because i didn't see any possibility for any sort of future beyond Pathos-II for humanity nor WAU. Simon was successful thanks to his neural chip which by every indication was not something WAU could create on its own, Ross was the best case scenario for any future pseudo-human life through WAU and he lived in constant agony. It would be irresponsible to leave thes people alive to suffer in this hell, once Pathos-II decays and collapses on itself, WAU would be left with only the option to spread itself like a cancer onto the local undersea and still fail to recreate human life for probably thousands of years. I believe that at the end when the third simon is left in his chair in darkness, he would take off his helmet and rip his chip as everything eventually collapses around him.

[76561198292631324]

Just wondering to myself, if to take away the sense of vision for a while and leave just the sound, dialogues and action capabilities, how would the euthanasia scenes sound like and how would all this be excused? It is mainly the visual interpretation that lead Simon to think the state of entities he met was different than they claimed - the same sense of vision which told him he was human until the events went obvious there is something bizarre on the matter with him. Maybe it was instinct, some kind of survivalist feeling he must destroy them for his own benefit?

[vkobe]

i dont kill him, because he is the last hope to save civilization

[wcc]

Originally posted by Sp3ctA:

I did not kill Wau because, there are no more humans on earth, and Wau is the new "living form" on the planet. I let him survive, because i had no right to destroy this new life form.
Wau is not good , not bad, it is just something that survives.

I felt like that, too.

Originally posted by velis:

Second problem: humanity's last hope: launch of the ark - is actually humanity's final surrender in my eyes: There's no way for any kind of progress / restoration once launched. The ark has no materials to develop even if consciousnesses on board figure out - well anything, really. They could only simulate things in their simulated environment. And we've seen storage requirements on the beta ark. Doubtful the completed ark has much more storage available than what is needed for simulation with the 50 consciounsnesses uploaded and the extremely limited environments we saw. No chance for anything except a few thousand years of (un)life for the consciousnesses involved. I'd also say - very boring lives. Not to even mention Catherine knows they killed her. Let's just not go there, but it would make those lives a bit more interesting :)

It's hundreds of thousands of years in the end. If this is not enough for you (what I could understand) you should remind youself that all existence is limitied due to the second law of thermodynamics. Sooner or later, the progressing entropy will make the universe become an infinite space of equally distributed (thermal) energy, with no matter left. So if you think on a bigger time scale, the length of "human" existence does not matter at all, which is just disturbing and serves no good. So, if you don't, then hundreds of thousands of years are fine.

@Voodooman: I differ completly. Your labeling as "Placebo" seems to be completely arbitrary to me.

[Kalakian]

I think destroying the "origin" computer core no longer destroys WAU, as it has overgrown the entire remant of human civilisation. Its like the "skynet", as long as there is one host left, it will remain.

[diMaggio]

Originally posted by L-900:

I think destroying the "origin" computer core no longer destroys WAU, as it has overgrown the entire remant of human civilisation. Its like the "skynet", as long as there is one host left, it will remain.

You may have had to infect the core, but the idea was that the virus would spread from there throughout the whole "organism", so to speak.
An "update" of the core code would basically propagate to every bit of structure gel connected to the WAU and render it inert just the same.

So either the structure gel does not need a core anymore but will get infected via the core anyway, or it still needs the connection to the core in which case it simply becomes inert after the infection (and demise) of the core.

[Vanilla Sky]

I killed because even though he wants to "preserve" the human race....

He has starded to mess up with the underwater fauna, as you can see in the game, and that's bad.

So I let all the humans die, but at least I allow the planet to restart a new "natural" cycle, not a tortured universe. When the WAU will reach the surface, he will destroy everything.

[Stelercus]

When we had the opportunity to kill the WAU, I thought that doing so would also kill Simon and be the end of the game: that the choice was between escaping and launching the ARC and allowing part of humanity to live in bliss while another continues in an eternal hell, or end all of human existence entirely. I prefer the latter because at least if there are no humans, then there aren't any humans around to be upset that there aren't any humans.

[Tianshee]

Triggered by the amount of carbon supremacism in this thread. You meatbags are terrible. Joking. Mostly. I wish Cat could rewrite Simon's clip with her copy to put him out of his misery and ignorance and finally make that suit useful. Both Simon-2 and Simon-3. Or if there was a way to patch his brain damage. That scene after launch was terrible. Whoever placed Simon's scan in that body made huge mistake. Who assembled it really? He didn't look like what WAU usually create with its tentacles.

[Firewalk]

Whether or not to kill the WAU was a fairly easy decision for me. It was a program created by us that grew completely out of control and started imposing its programming in (very much) unintended ways. The only good thing I can say about it is that it used Simon's brain scan for one of its creations, which in turn allowed the Ark to get into space.

But consider this: Aside from the highly alarming screen messages you see late in the game (WE SUFFER, etc...) there's another aspect of WAU that is concerning. The WAU doesn't just mess with human life but also started transforming animal and plant life into all new twisted forms.

Humanity is done, the game couldn't make this any more obvious. Survival under WAU's life support is no life at all IMO. The animals never asked to be turned into cybernetic monstrosities either, so for their sake alone, I feel better about leaving the WAU and all it's abominations to rot.

At least this way, Earth get's to go on. Not everything is dead. The oceans still support life and the planet does not deserve to be swallowed whole by the WAU in its misguided attempt at "improving life". We should just accept that the WAU was a mistake and not let it turn the whole planet into a horror circus.

- RA -

[Tianshee]

I think that insane "mockingbird" is still closer to consciousness than a coral or worm. WAU have much more chances to invent advanced life forms than slow natural evolution. WAU experimenting with ocean life "out of control" is not something to care about after devastation that happened on surface. Biological life was never under anyone's control, so what? Nothing is under anyone's control since destruction of humanity. Why anyone, WAU or fish should care about opinions of extinct species? Creatures living on ocean floor don't even know if humans find them creepy or beautiful. Why they should? Why WAU should care? Oh, right... Probably because it's puting digital ghosts of humans into everything. That makes some sense... But this helish life is better than live on Ark in a way. Those malformed creatures have real chanses to conquer Earth back, while Ark have none. People on Ark are stuck in small universe. Ark can not replicate, it can not upgrade itself, can not grow. Their resources are limited in different way compared to real world, but still limited. People trapped in WAU's dreams can escape into reality. Ark's population can't. WAU can grow and evolve, Ark can't. Ark is safe and predictable. WAU is "made" by who knows what and create random ♥♥♥♥ stupidly fast. That "hell" is much more interesting place. And I understand Cathrine, this planet was always like this, "normal" humans are almost as bad as flesher, arguably worse... But I don't understand why she was afraid of meeting herself probably more than anything else. Why?

[Cesar_123_]

Originally posted by LimitlessAeon:

The WAU was a synthetic virus. Spreading across everything organic and artificial and mutating them into grotesque creations.

The Earth would recover again from the extinction-event comet and life would evolve once more along a very different path.

With the Wau seemingly growing at a constant pace (who's to say if the growth was controlled in some form?) it would corrupt the planet's fresh start with its own virulent creations.

The man just said everything that there was to say.