Anyone else think this whole 'Synth' thing has gone too far?

[The Dutch Ghost]

Now to compare this to something similar, The Think Tank made Cazadors and Nightstalkers in mass and released them onto the Mojave after tagging them, but here's the difference: The Think Tank are fucking insane. They've gone completely bonkers and think there's nothing outside of the Big MT, so it's perfectly okay to release their creations outside the mountain because nothing else exists in their mind.

Plus the Think Tank thought the Cazadores and Nightstalkers are sterile. You can't even convince the scientist who created them that both species are thriving and breeding outside the Big MT grounds.

The Institute is badly written, plain and simple.
The idea of them getting FEV is already ridiculous, I find it rather stretching reality that the government or West Tek before the war would give a sample of FEV to MIT. (Does the real massachusetts institute of technology even have a genetics program).
And then after the war they just start capturing people from the surface in order to transform them into Super Mutants and release them back on the surface again? What is the scientific value of that?

I don't have to add anything to the whole synthetics discussion as my thoughts on it have already been discussed.
It seems the Institute is both insane and stupid. They create thousands of Super Mutants for no real purpose and they can't even keep track of their Gen 3 Synthetics, let alone implement more advanced security measures to prevent escape.
Hell why not put in some kill switch that if the Gen 3s get out of range of an Institute transmitter their 'minds' are automatically fried?

 

[Gaddes]

The Institute could have interesting, but like so many things in Fallout 4, it suffers from seriously bad writing. I mean, them having FEV and making another batch of rock stupid Super Mutants was bad enough. Emil and their writing staff just don't have the chops for writing.

 

[Dr Fallout]

Fallout 4 needs a fuckton mods, and even that won't save it.

 

[Hardboiled Android]

Because it turns the LEADING change of Fallout, you know the thing that makes everything technological about Fallout possible is suddenly made unimportant.

According to a terminal in the dreaded Cabot House, transistors were invented circa 2023.

qpCWnZf.png

Also, an unsourced claim on Nukapedia says they were invented in 2067. Personally, I'm not too surprised- you may be able to build simplistic Automatons off of vacuum tubes and hybrid-analog systems, but a ZAX, or the seemingly sentient robots we see in Beth titles? No way jose.

Though the Synths that would actually use a transistor (Gen 1s and 2s) are, ironically, the least emotionally intelligent of all the bots in the game- seemingly dozens of General Atomics and RobCo models specifically designed not to be sentient and do menial labor have developed it by chance. And the Institute couldn't accomplish what RobCo and General Atomics did by accident with two centuries of concerted effort. Except for with Nick Valentine, who they then threw into the trash because... reasons.

Then, they basically phoned the whole thing in and just started cloning people- that's what Gen 3s are, after all. Three-d printed clones.

TLR: Calm down on integrated circuits, and the Institute is a bunch of fuckwits

 

[Dr Fallout]

Still... it's very stupid.

 

[Izak]

seemingly dozens of General Atomics and RobCo models specifically designed not to be sentient and do menial labor have developed it by chance. And the Institute couldn't accomplish what RobCo and General Atomics did by accident with two centuries of concerted effort. Except for with Nick Valentine, who they then threw into the trash because... reasons.

Isn't the official explanation that robots with personalities are simply programmed to act that way but in reality don't have any emotions whatsoever, take the various personalities of the Sink as examples, they are all simply programmed to behave and react in simple ways, similar to the way real life Chat-bots react to conversations.

 

[Dr Fallout]

Isn't the official explanation that robots with personalities are simply programmed to act that way but in reality don't have any emotions whatsoever, like the various personalities of the Sink are all simply programmed to behave and react in simple ways, similar to the way real life Chat-bots react to conversations.

Maybe... I mean the sink was made by a genius, crazy but a genius. I doubt designer #20456 can replicate that as well.

 

[Hardboiled Android]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that MIT is mostly made up of people who don't know how to farm land,

http://openag.media.mit.edu
http://stellar.mit.edu/classlink/course7.html

mine rare minerals

https://eapsweb.mit.edu/research/geology
http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2016/finalwebsite/elements/ree.html

or, create nuclear reactors without help from people who actually do these things.

http://web.mit.edu/nse/education/index.html
http://web.mit.edu/nrl/www/

This is a very silly argument your making. MIT is THE premiere STEM school in the world- of course it has people and info to do literally all of that. Where do you think the "people who actually do these things" get their training? What do you think all those Professors did before they committed to the halls of Academia? And what do you think is inside all of those computers?

Why on earth do you think for a second their wouldn't be countless people knowledgable on (in addition to books and computers) agriscience, geology and atomic physics? Of all the factions, MIT would actually be one of the best set up.

How the hell did the Institute build their first synth without:
A) Needing some resource that wasn't available to them through salvaging.

There is a robotics department at MIT, in addition to the countless other things that use complex electronics- in fact, I actually went to a museum for it. Really cool stuff.

https://robotics.mit.edu

B) Farming enough food to feed a fairly sizeable community.

In addition to food reserves, which a large school would have plenty of? They do have indoor greenhouses with genetically engineered super plants. So. There's that.

C) Power; although there are a lot of talented engineers at MIT they don't have the ability to create large scale reactors without help from the working class.

How many working stiff Joe Blows do you imagine work at the average American Nuclear Plant? There aren't many Homer Simpsons. This isn't the Soviet Union- we staff our plants with engineering and physics majors, not coal miners. And, as illustrated above, there's already a reactor on campus, in addition to the fact that the campus would probably have dozens of other fusion and fission reactors in the world of Fallout, in addition to conventional diesel engines and batteries.

I doubt the Institute was the superpower it is in Fallout 4 before they began synth production so it's unlikely that they'd have scouts capable of finding new recruits who could solve these problems,

Good thing they have literally the greatest pool of minds to choose from on the planet.

so how the fuck did the Institute ever survive the post-apocalyptic world? You'll notice most successful factions have either always had strong militaries or knowledge on how to survive in the harsh environment, the Institute would have had neither of these things, they should have died the moment they left their underground cradle.

Because they developed in splendid isolation, without fear and dangers that plagued the outside world with- again- some of the brightest young minds our nation has to offer

 

[Izak]

Maybe... I mean the sink was made by a genius, crazy but a genius. I doubt designer #20456 can replicate that as well.

Well, robots like Victor, Jane, EDE and, Curie make sense seeing as how Mr. House, Dr. Whitely and some Vault Tec scientist created them but I guess it would be implausible for computer scientists to painstakingly create personalities for every random, off-the-shelf Mr. Handy as was done in Fallout 4 with Codsworth, the English bartender in Good Neighbour, the lemonade serving robot in Covenant and, that weird robot the teacher wanted to bang.

A whole bunch of links to various educations offered by the fine university of MIT

Knowing how to Mine minerals, Farm land and, build complex robots =/= Mining minerals with little to no access to power, farming in an irradiated hellhole and, building complex robots without the aide of the private sector

Let's say, hypothetically, that you're a geologist, with your vast knowledge of the earth's minerals and all the information required to operate a sizeable mine; does this mean that you can instantly operate the heavy machinery needed to work the mine? No, you have to hire people to do that. The Institute has access to plenty of experts in various fields but those experts cannot suddenly become professional farmers, circuit manufacturers and, whatever the term is for people who hand-build nuclear reactors; the experts figure out how to build shit but they can't actually build shit, that requires access to resources that simply don't exist in the world of Fallout.

 

[Hardboiled Android]

Thing is, you SAY the working class was robots, but outside of the Synths, we don't see a single other robot in the Institute. No Protectrons, no Securitrons, no Sentry Bots, no Assaultrons, no Mr. Handies, nada, zip, zilch.

Presumably because they've been phased out and broken down for scrap. I don't know if you recall, but there is an opportunity to go into an "abandoned" wing of the Institute during the final assault, which turns out to be a massive robot factory full of old Protectron parts and torsos. So that's direct evidence that they used it at one point.

 

[Hardboiled Android]

Still... it's very stupid.

What are you specifically referring to?

 

[Hardboiled Android]

Isn't the official explanation that robots with personalities are simply programmed to act that way but in reality don't have any emotions whatsoever, take the various personalities of the Sink as examples, they are all simply programmed to behave and react in simple ways, similar to the way real life Chat-bots react to conversations.

Bethesda has changed that. Now, Robots actually are sentient. I'm not sure how I feel about that one- on the one hand, fuck Bethesda, that's dumb, robots should be robots. But on the other, it could provide interesting storytelling opportunities down the road, and I love merging properties.

 

[Ragemage]

Presumably because they've been phased out and broken down for scrap. I don't know if you recall, but there is an opportunity to go into an "abandoned" wing of the Institute during the final assault, which turns out to be a massive robot factory full of old Protectron parts and torsos. So that's direct evidence that they used it at one point.

I was already corrected on that. I've made many other points though, whole paragraphs worth you can see for yourself on the previous pages. Your attempts at defending the Institute as a proper faction is commendable, but it really isn't worth the effort.

 

[Walpknut]

I actually think it didn't go far at all, it was like a flacid dick trying to penetrate. THey introduce an element that breaks the reular paradigm stablished by the setting, which could have worked to explore new themes and change the status quo.... but they fail to both justify it or use it for anything at all. The Synths are so inconsequential is ridiculous.

 

[Hardboiled Android]

I actually think it didn't go far at all, it was like a flacid dick trying to penetrate. THey introduce an element that breaks the reular paradigm stablished by the setting, which could have worked to explore new themes and change the status quoe.... but they fail to both justify it or usit for anything at all. The Synths are so inconsequential is ridiculous.

Exactly. So many interesting ideas to be explored. They could've gone full Blade Runner, the philosophy of what it is to be sapient. You try to argue with engineers, but your way out of your element, and they understand what they're building. This isn't sapience- it's a facsimile. A Chinese Room. Self Determination is just the result of an RNG set to go off in a certain percent of the Synth population. Their sapience is a purposely designed part of their neurological programming. Even in freedom, they're playing right into the Institute's hands.

Oh, NVM. The Institute is just evil and arrogant cause reasons.

 

[Walpknut]

What went too far is the robots being sentient now, that just breaks every piece of lore regarding robots just to chase on trends, those robots aren't even well written ("My personality module acitvated lololol") the only robot that acts like robots in Fallout should is the Lemonade Mr Handy and the Hippy robot, they arejust looping through their simulated personalities and don't seem too aware of any complex ideas, but Codsworth CRIES, he cries, both Curie and the Nurse Nany in Diamond city fall in love with people and the Automatron robots even say they are feeling anger and sadness.... they went full geth for no reason, they never even bothered with having a ZAX computer which could've worked to explain some of this away (The Zax would just be broadcasting it's thoughts and movements into nearby robots, ala Skynet in FO2) but they didn't. It's almost like they were completely unaware of the lore of the series.

 

[Ragemage]

snip

I think the strangest part about all of it is that, it seems like they clearly knew they were fucking up. Fallout 3 didn't have any sentient robots at all. The only one I can really think of is Button Gwinnett, and that's only because he was modelled after a US.. Senator I think. So he had a personality routine to match that of the guy he was meant to simulate. That one makes sense to me. Hell, Fallout 3 even had a ZAX computer in the form of Eden, so they can't even use the excuse that they didn't know about ZAX computers. Hell, even Eden isn't fully in control of his personality considering you can exploit a glitch in his logic and make him explode.

If they had basically just done a rehash of Eden inside the Institute and that he was the one coming up with all these insane decisions, similar to the cut plot of Boulder Dome from Van Buren, then a lot of problems would just disappear. But no, they didn't, and instead every single named robot in the game save for, like you said, Hippie Handy, Deezer, and the Handies at Greyditch all have personalities for no reason at all.

 

[Dr Fallout]

What are you specifically referring to?

The fact that the Institute was able to create the BIGGEST breakthrough in artificial intelligence housed in smaller robotic bodies during a post apocalypse while centuries of technologically advanced scientists who were desperately searching for better tech failed.

 

[Izak]

The fact that the Institute focused on developing AI rather than on scientific pursuits that would actually help people is insulting, scientists don't just develop shit because they feel like it, they do it to expedite common procedures to save people time and, to save lives; they don't lock themselves in underground bunkers, develop superiority complexes and, forget everybody else.

 

[Dr Fallout]

The fact that the Institute focused on developing AI rather than on scientific pursuits that would actually help people is insulting, scientists don't just develop shit because they feel like it, they do it to expedite common procedures to save people time and, to save lives; they don't lock themselves in underground bunkers, develop superiority complexes and, forget everybody else.

Apparently these guys do.