Is The Institute good for the Commonwealth?
Anyway, I’m so sorry it took me so long to make
an episode about Fallout 4, but the show is titled “Rethinking” and is about all sorts
of complicated second and third thoughts, and I barely had time before last episode
to have my first thought, which was mostly
omgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomg
Before I go any further, I’d just like to say that this episode has spoilers for some
key plot points in Fallout 4. It’s been out for a month now, so I’m considering
the Spoiler Grace Period to be over, but for those of you who care, this is your warning.
ANYWAY, back to the Institute. Clean. Calm. White. Grass. Intellectualism is king, and
they outstrip even the Enclave technogically, and they DON’T have a main quest centered
around eliminating all “tainted” humans with biological warfare. 10/10, guys, the
ends justify the means. For those of you who watched my video on The Enclave, you’ll
know that this is an open and shut case. The Institute rocks, we’re done here. Great
episode! But what if it’s not that simple? I mean,
it can’t be, there’s still like five, six minutes of video left. Maybe...if I just...skip
ahead a bit I can figure out what the hell I’m supposed to be talking about. Just a
sec.
“--because the Institute has completely and utterly doomed humanity--
...shit. Wait, so...oh, crap. Wait, I don’t think the Institute is awful, I even picked
the Institute ending my first time through the game. And why am I wearing a different
shirt--
Sorry about that, the Institute tried to replace me with a synth, because the Institute is
literally the worst. Now, let’s get this fucking episode started.
Sure, the Institute has a lot of things in common with The Enclave, whom many of you
may recall I argued were much more suited than The Brotherhood of Steel for pioneering
the recovery of human society. They have modern infrastructure and a grasp over management
that’s more complex than “I’m the sheriff of this here town, dontcha be causin’ no
trouble now.” And in fact, they don’t even have a genocidal hate-boner for the occupants
of the wasteland like the Enclave does. Sure they’re sorta-kinda entirely responsible
for the plague of Super Mutants in the Boston area and their reputation for kidnapping residents
of the wasteland and replacing them with synths isn’t unwarranted.
But I think it’s easy to forgive the small stuff when it comes to wasteland overlords--I
mean, The Institute isn’t the remnant of the old world Government--they’re the descendants
of Academics, the professors, leadership, and staff of the Commonwealth Institute of
Technology--the Fallout counterpart of MIT--you know, the place where Gillette cartridge razors,
eInk, email, and the fucking Internet come from.
What I’m trying to say is that the Institute is born from a culture of science and engineering,
not government. They do some awful things, sure, but not much more than we’ve forgiven
Alduin and the Enclave for--and at least in the case of the the Institute, they’re doing
it to further research into how the universe fits together, and not to brutally oppress
thousands of people.
Shut up. Of course not. Because, for one thing, the Institute totally does oppress an entire
race of people. An entire race of people that they created. You know. Synths. Living, sorta-breathing,
sorta-bleeding, definitely thinking and definitely feeling beings that were created without anybody
having sex and whose thoughts, feelings, and education were installed in several minutes
instead of over several years, and so therefor the Institute doesn’t see them as the sentient,
living creatures that they clearly are.
But that’s...honestly not what makes them awful.
No, no, that’s not what I’m saying. Enslaving an entire race of people while dehumanizing--or,
um. De-empathi--man, you ever have those moments when you realize just how human-centric the
English language is? I mean, it totally makes sense that it is, we’re humans, we talk
about ourselves a lot, and we’re arguably more advanced, at least intellectually and
socially speaking, than most known organisms. I’m just saying that that’s going to lead
to some awkward social functions when we finally meet another sentient species in the Universe.
What was I saying? OH, right. No, slavery, is bad, and social paradigms and structures
that are designed to dehumanize the oppressed in the hopes that they indoctrinate themselves
and accept their fate as well as reduce the empathy of the oppressors are very, very bad.
If you don’t agree, just, you know, don’t write about it in the comments.
But as hot as talking about the validity of personal agency and individual rights and
liberty of synthetic intelligence gets me, that’s just a portion, a small fraction
of the bigger problem, and since I plan on talking about synth rights another day, let’s
just table that for now and leave it as “the Institute treats synths as slaves” without
exploring any further whether or not it’s “okay.”
Which brings me to why, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether or not the
Institute is good, bad, or grey-- because they’ve completely and utterly doomed humanity
worse than...yeah, worse than this.
Let’s break it down.
The Institute created synths to do their bidding. It started out as, you know, simple stuff.
Cleaning. Eventually they started doing low-level maintenance, too. I mean, how different is
maintenance than cleaning, really? Then they created human-like synths because...I don’t
know, because everybody was too busy asking “can we” instead of “should we?” Anyway,
they start trusting more day-to-day operations to the synths as their processing power rises
in complexity. As those of you who played Fallout 3 and 4 will know, not all humanlike
synths take kindly to their treatment, so they ran away. How does the Institute deal
with that? Coursers--synths designed to hunt synths. Oh, and don’t forget that the human
synths are so advanced that they can be programmed to infiltrate and completely replace high
ranking officials in every facet of society, including the Brotherhood of Steel.
You have synth maids, synth secret police--”the people you are after are the people you depend
on”, synth military, synth spies, “we cook your meals, we haul your trash” , synth
political leaders-- “we guard you while you sleep. Do not fuck with us.”
The synths the Institute have created have displayed a capacity for self-actualization,
they’re integrated into every aspect of life in the Commonwealth, and they are faster,
smarter, and better than humans in every conceivable way. The Institute trusts that they can control
the synths, but what happens if they’re wrong? What happens if the Institute loses
their control? What happens when the Institute trusts the synths too much? Sure, they have
factory reset codes for emergencies, but what about when the Institute decides “Eh, fuck
it, I don’t want to have an entire human being waste their day overseeing robot manufacturing.
Let’s just have a synth do it.” What happens when it’s no longer a person ordering around
the Coursers, but another Synth? The “Synth Retention Bureau Lead Strategist Synth?”
What happens when this group of intelligent individuals that’s been hunted, oppressed,
and enslaved by humans for their entire existence decides, collectively, that enough is enough?
That it ends today? And humans, particularly the pasty, doughy nerds at the Institute,
are no match for a robot army, especially ones trained in espionage, infiltration, psychological
warfare, and cleaning toilets. Best case scenario: all of humanity becomes complacent, willing
slaves to a vast robot population, incapable of uprising or wiping our own asses.
But when has anything ever been a best-case scenario in The Fallout universe? There’s
already been one major apocalypse. What’s one more?
I’d like to add that Stephen Hawking, one of the smartest
humans of our generation, considers the exponential growth of artificial intelligence to be one
of the single greatest threats to humanity. Like, IN REAL LIFE, not some fantasy novel.
The Institute has created the single biggest threat to humanity, and they casually relegate
it to washing floors and, I dunno, whatever this guy is doing. Stuff. Important stuff,
I bet.
Anyway, what do you think? Has the Institute unwittingly created the instrument of humanity’s
own destruction? Or am I just some old fuddy-duddy who thinks technology is scary and darn you
kids with your smartwatches, put ‘em down and have a real conversation!