Lurker > GEKGanon

Lokarin posted...

Rules:

-Torture is ethically wrong in this context

-Someone tortured anyway and gained information

...

Is it ethical to use that information?

Hypothetical example: German scientists Mengele/Heim did absolutely horrid experiments during WW2, but suppose their torturous experimentation found a cure for cancer/malaria/whatever

Is it ethical to use such cure?

On the one hand, you don't want to validate torture - but on the other hand, what's done is done why waste what you've gained?

Sure, it is ethically right to use the information. Now, is the information accurate? That's a bigger issue, since torture will often result in people just saying whatever in order to get you to stop torturing.

But if the torture is already done, and the information is already given, if you ask me, it would be unethical to NOT use the information. I mean really, you're just going to torture someone and then not act on any information? That's exceptionally cruel.
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Steam Name: gekganon

Lokarin posted...

GEKGanon posted...

Consider for a moment that anti-Christ would, in the most literal sense, refer to someone whose actions run completely opposite to what Jesus preached. Is Trump such a person? Absolutely.

Well, in the sense that Jesus doesn't exist and everyone else does - we're all the anti-Christ

Yes, but even as a fictional character, Jesus has certain teachings and behaviors attributed to him. Donald Trump behaves counter to those teachings and behaviors.
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Steam Name: gekganon

Foppe posted...

GEKGanon posted...

Skynet thinks it can score a victory against John by preventing him from being born, but why would it even think this is a viable strategy if John's birth is only prevented in a DIFFERENT timeline, one in which the Skynet that sends back the assassin DOESN'T BENEFIT?

Either Skynet doesnt know that it wont affect the current timeline, or it doesnt care as long as it results in a timeline where it wins.

Skynet is fighting a war, and the entire premise of the film is that Skynet sends an assassin back in time as a means of breaking a stalemate in the war. It would be absolutely pointless for Skynet to drum up this plan as a means of winning another Skynet's war, just as it would be silly for John to send Kyle back to stop it, since doing so wouldn't even matter in his own timeline. But John sends Kyle back anyway, because he already knows from Sarah that Kyle is his father, and needs to go back in order for John to be born.

Regardless, the entire time travel plot is very silly to begin with; John Connor's very existence in the future should be a big red flag to Skynet that the plan to kill him doesn't work. Even if the assassination did work, Skynet wouldn't even know it worked, because it would simply exist in a world that never had a John Connor in it. Although, that then creates the paradox that, if John Connor never existed, Skynet would never send a Terminator back to kill Sarah in the first place... it becomes the entire paradox whereby if you invent a time machine to fix something, fixing that thing means you no longer have the reason to invent the time machine, which means you never go back and fix it.
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Steam Name: gekganon

ParanoidObsessive posted...

GEKGanon posted...

There aren't separate timelines, there is no John A, B, or C; it is one jacked up loop. That's what it means to be a paradox. John only exists to send Kyle back because Kyle went back to father him in the first place. The entire reason Kyle has the photo of Sarah and is the one chosen by John to be sent back in time is because John already knows from Sarah that Kyle is his father, there is no unknown father.

Which, again, asks the question, how did the loop begin in the first place? How can John Connor send Kyle Reese back to become his father before he exists in the first place to send Kyle Reese back?

And if it IS an ontologically stable time loop with no beginning and no end, then how could they alter events at all in T2, when literally everything they did should have been part of a preexisting stable time loop that couldn't be broken, because that's how ontological paradoxes work?

And like it or not, Cameron's explicitly said that multiple timelines exist in the Terminator films, which gives rise to this sort of thinking in the first place.

Because it is a loop. That's the point.

When Kyle is in the future, swooning over a photo of Sarah, about to be sent back in time by John, that is the exact same timeline in which Kyle already intervened in the past.

The problem with time travel in movies and books is that there are different ways time travel can be depicted, and the people writing it don't necessarily stick to just one. The Terminator franchise seems to deviate wildly between different types. In the first film, it appears there is one looping timeline, in which the future that Kyle comes from is the future that directly stems from his intervention in the past. Skynet thinks it can score a victory against John by preventing him from being born, but why would it even think this is a viable strategy if John's birth is only prevented in a DIFFERENT timeline, one in which the Skynet that sends back the assassin DOESN'T BENEFIT?

The second film introduces the idea that the loop can be broken, which creates all sorts of other paradoxes. By the time T3 rolls around, they've basically just thrown out all time travel logic (Judgment Day still happens, just a different way, at a different time, duhr!). Then there is Genisys, which is even jankier.

I haven't seen the new film yet, so I can't speak to the logic there, but my understanding is this film renders T3, Salvation, and Genisys as non-canon.
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Steam Name: gekganon

ParanoidObsessive posted...

GEKGanon posted...

Except that isn't correct. Kyle Reese is John's father, period. It is a time paradox; the future that Kyle Reese comes from is one in which Sarah Connor has already had his baby in the past. The photograph of Sarah that he swoons over before ever being send back is the one that he himself took of Sarah in the past.

John Connor would be two completely different people if "some guy" was his father in one timeline, and Kyle Reese was his father after being sent back.

I think the latter is exactly what he was trying to suggest.

In other words, the original "untampered" timeline has Sarah give birth to John via an unknown father. In that timeline Skynet takes over, then tries to use time travel to screw with the past, so "John A" sends Kyle back to stop it. Kyle winds up boning Sarah, so she gives birth to a completely different version of John with different genetics, personality, personal history, etc.

So THAT John ("John B") lives through the new timeline, which is now different. When he meets and recruits Kyle, he recognizes him as the man who will eventually be his own father, and thus takes the actions we hear about in the first movie (giving him the picture of his mother, causing him to fall in love with her before they even meet), then sending him back in time to save her/become his dad. In THIS reality, because events are different, Sarah basically winds up giving birth to a THIRD different version of John ("John C"), and we've effectively wound up in what looks like a stable time loop.

Then T2 basically implies the time loop is anything but stable, John C's future winds up being completely different from either John A or John B.

There aren't separate timelines, there is no John A, B, or C; it is one jacked up loop. That's what it means to be a paradox. John only exists to send Kyle back because Kyle went back to father him in the first place. The entire reason Kyle has the photo of Sarah and is the one chosen by John to be sent back in time is because John already knows from Sarah that Kyle is his father, there is no unknown father.
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Steam Name: gekganon

FrozenBananas posted...

I only consider the first two movies canon so I havent watched any of the others, but that machine looks mad old in the recent previews

The T-800s are covered in living tissue, which, like any living tissue, will age over time.
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Steam Name: gekganon

Foppe posted...

The first timeline got nobody coming back in time. Sarah gets a kid with somebody. Perhaps the father is a military that makes John interested in making a military career, perhaps it is an abusive drunk bastard that ruins Johns childhood and he sees the military as the family he needs, it doesnt really matter except that he is interested enough to be a highranked military. Skynet is created much later in this timeline and Judgement Day happened much later.

Except that isn't correct. Kyle Reese is John's father, period. It is a time paradox; the future that Kyle Reese comes from is one in which Sarah Connor has already had his baby in the past. The photograph of Sarah that he swoons over before ever being send back is the one that he himself took of Sarah in the past.

John Connor would be two completely different people if "some guy" was his father in one timeline, and Kyle Reese was his father after being sent back.
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Steam Name: gekganon

I'm pretty excited for Overwatch 2. I couldn't give less of a shit about Blizzard's stance on the Hong Kong nonsense. The world knew back in the 1990s what it meant for the UK to give it back to China, and it happened anyway, so you know, get over it everyone.
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Steam Name: gekganon

Consider for a moment that anti-Christ would, in the most literal sense, refer to someone whose actions run completely opposite to what Jesus preached. Is Trump such a person? Absolutely.
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Steam Name: gekganon

man101 posted...

I'm actually a bit disappointed that they never made Gregor out to be the absolute sociopath and vicious animal that he is in the books. In addition to making him more interesting it also explained the Hound's motivations and distrust of knighthood more explicitly. Instead we got a big dude who grunts angrily and smashes people with a big sword.

I mean, the first thing we see him do in the series is chop a horse's head off for losing a joust...
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Steam Name: gekganon

InfestedAdam posted...

SpaceBear_ posted...

How did f***ing GREYWORM - leader of a mercenary army - banish the rightful heir to the throne?! Ffs.

My guess is with the amount of Unsullied and Dothraki left and him being their commander does gives him some pull plus with Tyrion no longer the Hand of the Queen, chain of command probably does far to him anyway. Just cause Daenerys is gone doesn't necessarily mean her "faction" is I'd say.

They explain that pretty well in the episode... the people of the North wouldn't stand for Jon being killed, and the Unsullied and Dothraki would bring war if he was let totally off the hook.
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Steam Name: gekganon

shipwreckers posted...

So...., after seeing the finale, I still stand by my original thoughts as to WHY Daenerys "imploded" the way she did. I'm glad that the show didn't try to "justify" her actions (though she obviously did, from her character's pov).

I guess with it all said-and-done, the biggest problem this season had was merely a matter of pacing, because the narrative ultimately regained some coherence, but it was all so rushed, that the "plot twists" forced people so out-of-character, making it jarring and painful to watch (even though, deep down, much of it was highly predictable). Cramming it all into 6 episodes didn't help either (or technically 8, if you count the 2-hour episodes).

I'm sure the finale will still get buried in a sea of negative reviews among the internet hate bandwagon, but that's to be expected. Were there missed opportunities? Yes. Rushed plot-twists? Yes. Incoherent shit-show? Not by any means.

Well, the real kicker is that she didn't actually "implode", she's always been like that, we just couldn't see it before, because her actions could always be confused as selfless compassion. Really, it was always selfish ambition to remake the world in accordance to her personal preferences, and, as she said nobody else gets a say.
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Steam Name: gekganon

Personally, I thought the only truly disastrous episode this season was episode 3, because the whitewalkers are killed of completely unceremoniously and having accomplished nothing significant. It makes it hard to take them seriously watching any part of the series anymore, because they effectively knockdown the wall and then do nothing before being destroyed.

Aside from that, the rest of the season ranged from good to fair, with a few select parts that were very dumb, such as Rhaegal's stupid death via scorpion bolts than never manage to hit anything else.

In terms of the direction of the storyline in the last 2 episodes, it was always going to go that way. Anyone that doubts that need only go back to the first few seasons and watch Dany's House of the Undying vision.

The biggest issue with the season was that it was rushed. They wanted to get the story finished in as few episodes as possible, when they probably could have gotten at least two full seasons out of this content. So it seems like we end up jumping further into a character's plot than what we actually saw be developed. Grey Worm is a great example... obviously some time passes between the throne room scene and the council scene, obviously some decisions were made by Grey Worm regarding the people being held, but we don't get to see any of that, so his logic seems odd. At the same time the final season felt rushed, it also felt like a lot of time in each episode was wasted focusing on the wrong thing, like building tension.
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Steam Name: gekganon