We see this reoccurring theme throughout Fallout where Synths are becoming more and more intelligent, acquiring, what Father refers to as, “Free Will.” IE, the ability to come to conclusions independent of their programming. Father states in one of your first interviews with him, “The superior synth mind and body attempting to wrestle with something approaching free will can be a recipe for chaos”. To which the character responds, “If the synths are intelligent and self aware, then they have a right to free will.” Father, naturally disagrees, and proceeds to tell you that the creators of this technology know what is best for it.

But this prompts us to ask a very telling question… what, exactly is free will, and can human intelligence create an intelligence which surpasses that of the creator itself?

Let’s start with the first question. WHAT IS free will? If it is their ability to arrive at conclusions which escape the cause and effect of their innate programming, then we know this to be an impossibility. All circuitry and algorithmic deductions MUST follow the causal implications of their origin, otherwise what are their decision models predicated on? Magic? Chaos? Randomness? In other words, how could a robot have a THOUGHT which wasn’t allotted for in its source code?

The point is, if all of their decision-models are based off of a specific electronic calculus which produces inevitable results, then they do not have free will. This, however does not preclude their right to…. well, rights. We have to ask ourselves, how are we ANY DIFFERENT? Simply for the fact that we base our decision modeling off of an ORGANIC calculus as opposed to a COMPUTATIONAL calculus?

After all, what is a thought? Is it something we choose to have, or something which is the end result of a chemical catalyzation that has been ongoing since the moment of our birth? There is the famous Descartian phrase, “Cogito ergo sum”-- I think therefore I am. Well, the truth of the matter is, a thought doesn’t come when WE wish, it comes when IT wishes. A thought doesn’t materialize out of smoke and fairy dust, it is a flare of synapses and neurons that operate under VERY SPECIFIC laws of cause and effect. Much like… well, a robot.

In the case of Nick valentine, we see him pose to us the dilemma of his existence. He tells us early on that he struggles with the meaning of his life, being as he was modeled to have the thoughts, opinions, values and characteristics off of a “Nick Valentine” from a popular television show. We see a certain existential crisis occurring-- demarcating that, If anything, this particular strain of nihilism is a true mark of what it means to be human. To doubt, to feel, to think and to ascribe value to the nature of his particular experiences.

So again, we have to ask ourselves: simply because Nick has been programmed to have these particular sentiments, are they any less valid than our own? Are we not ourselves creations of a randomized molecular process which acts out according to a very particular input? Are not our thoughts and feelings a result of an ancient, primordial code that we have no control of? Does this fact unentitle us to our feelings, our needs, and our right to pursue love, life and happiness?

So, in summation, The Institute appears to be an almost narcissistic manifestation of man’s vision of himself as a God, as something separate from the technology it has created. But, ultimately, the synths are a product of collaboration. A collaboration between the best and brightest minds this post-nuclear world could muster. Every synth has in it the functionality of faceted genius, not derived from a single human source, but from MULTIPLE SOURCES that exemplify the best of mankind-- this does not mean that their creations are infallible, or void of negligent reasoning, but it SURELY does not mean it’s human counterparts are individually capable of better decision modeling in themselves, or that, as Father asserted, “They know what’s best for their creations.”

I made a video on this if anyone would rather watch that as well. =) YouTube/watch?v=3tlLnTV-wDU

I think it would be a waste if this post were lost because someone reported this as a spoiler-heavy thread. You probably should place it in the "Fallout Universe" board. You can find that here; http://www.gamesas.com/forum/44-fallout-universe/

Will do!

Considering they murdered everyone in your vault except your character and Shaun for no good reason.....I'd have to say yes, they're evil.

Unless I missed something, that wasn't the Institute's doing. But rather a result of the Vault's life support systems failing because it wasn't built to run 200+ years.

Which is also why the SS was the "back-up." The Institute wouldn't have had any reason to kill them, in fact they might have needed them.

Kellog did kill your wife of course, which is a dike move.

No, it turns out the Institute actually awoke everyone deliberately and then let them suffocate in their pods.

It's one of the good bits of writing that everyone involved in this atrocity lived and died in Star Trek paradise.

So there's no one to take revenge on.

Maybe not evil. But they are damn arrogant. And self important. And smug. And selfish.

Thinking they have the right to kill anyone to achieve their plans for the future of mankind. They are worse than raiders.

What really pisses me off is my son. If the game allowed I would've shot him in the face.

it's not even the synths - which I think, along with mutants, are abominations - it's that they think its perfectly fine to "replace" people. I mean, I felt like asking, "Just how many of us do you need to kill to save us?". They care so little for any life besides their own. I mean, even the damn mutants take care of their own.

Of course they convince themselves they are doing the right thing. But really! Replacing people with robots? That as bad as the FEV.

My first play though I chose the Institute. Not again. This game everyone down there dies.

Where can I find this info in-game?

Because that's just utterly moronic. What the hell is the reasoning narrative wise for that? Just to make the Institute "Evil for teh lulz" I assume.

Your son tells you part of it . nd other scientists in the institute fill in the rest.

But yes they killed everyone. The only reason you are alive is your son. Since you share DNA, if he died they had you. Your wifes death was a mistake.

During Kellog's memories, you can look in the other pods and watch the survivors waking up, smiling and happy then start to suffocate as they bang on the windows begging to be let out.

And the Institute eliminates witnesses to its activities.

They often order their Synths to kill everyone involved in a experiment (like monitoring crop growth) to hide their involvement.

If you're not part of the Institute, you're just fodder for experiments.

Like the hundreds of people they turned into Super Mutants.

Follow the main quest until you end up in Goodneighbor.......when what happens happens, make sure to select everyone in each scene before "you" then watch carefully as the scenes play out.

Jeez.......enough spoilers, you think?

I must have missed that somehow. Too focused on Kellog killing Nora for the second time I suppose.

Well, I suppose joining the Institute will be reserved for my bad-karma characters from here on out. Because the more I find out, the more its unjustifiable for any good-karma character to side with them.

Its annoys me that once again, there's really no moral ambiguity in faction choices once you learn everything. The Institute is evil, the Brotherhood are dikes, whilst the Minutemen are heros. Whoohoo.

You were the backup because you had related DNA to Shaun(obviously). Using another vault dweller would have meant starting over from square one since they would have to rebuild the synth DNA from the ground up using the new person's DNA since it wasn't related to Shaun's.

It stuns me so many people seem to miss the Institute plotline isn't about accepting the Institute as is. Shaun doesn't like the Institute as is. He wants you to reform it.

However, you can only do that as Director and to become Director you have to destroy the Institute's enemies.

The people who murdered everyone in Vault 111 are dead.

They died of old age, snug and warm in their beds.

Shaun, as Director, was responsible for the FEV experiments. He KNOWS he's screwed up. Everyone else is completely ignorant of these atrocities.

The Institute isn't an ideology, it's a nation.

And nations often have screwed up histories but can be salvaged.

So I think there's plenty of moral ambiguity.

A fair point, unless they just used Shaun's DNA as a base genome. In which case I would think any pure strain human would do.

I mean, they weren't trying to make a bunch of exactly cloned Shauns, they were trying to get the pure human genome sequenced if I understand their objective correctly.

But then again I'm not a biologist.

I would agree, and that was my intial justification for siding with them, but there's nothing really you can do in-game to exact change. Which makes it hard to continue justify keeping them around when you're trying to play a good-karma character.

You can get the SRB director framed, but otherwise all Institute operations continue as planned. So its really unsatisfying.

No, but Shaun does point out that every gen3 synth is related to him, which is why he is called Father. He is literally the genetic "father" of the synths.

Which means romancing *REDACTED* and *REDACTED* is incist.

The Institute makes a lot of really screwed up decisions which Shaun points out is because they're academics, not soldiers or government leaders.

Working in academia, I know EXACTLY what he means. Scientists are some of the WORST people for thinking outside their field. For example, they make Synth dopplegangers to cover up their kidnapping people as experiments and to spy on people without them realizing.

Which, of course, means that when the Synths are discovered--people become MASSIVELY MORE PARANOID. They also know the Institute is responsible since NO ONE ELSE can make these things.

When if they'd just kidnapped people the old fashioned way and used regular spies, the panic wouldn't be a fever pitch and everyone wouldn't automatically know the Institute was involved.

It also means that the Institute has another strike against it. While siding with Shaun is siding with your son, it's also enslaving your own grandchildren and killing them.

Every Courser and 3rd generation Synth you kill is another member of the Survivor's family.

Oh, messed up fact.

There's probably a LOT of free Synths since they've been made for the past fifty-nine years and the Railroad has been working to free them this entire time.

He does yes, and I'm kind of curious how this works biologically. And wondering if Shaun is just speaking symbolically there.

I mean, they clearly aren't just cloning Shaun, and if they just used his DNA as a base genome to start manufacturing humans. They wouldn't really be "related" in the traditional sense I don't think. Otherwise wouldn't every synth, since they are ultimately organic, look like Shaun on some level if that was the case?

Well, the crazy face-alterations you can do in the game are canon lore-wise.

I have a few questions about the institute
1 for what purpose where they creating so many synths?
2 what have they been up to that would save or help humanity?
I havent joined them yet but i dont mind spoilers.

1. Slaves. They need to be human-like so they can infiltrate the surface and conduct the Institute's business covertly. They needed human tissue which was uncorrupted by radiation because it was difficult to clone otherwise. There's no grand transhumanist plot or super-secret scheme here. It's just that they want loyal, docile, and human-looking and thinking workers to scrub the Institute's toilets and shoot people who don't suspect them.

2. They have a Utopian Mass-Effect Citadel base full of endless amounts of science and resources. Father thinks they could help the surface but in his youth decided to isolate the Institute--he regrets that now. Doctor Li actually can be convinced to defect by it. Mostly, all the Institute has done is keep the Commonwealth divided and weak.

*This post will contain spoilers for the storyline of Fallout 4*

On a more serious level, I think the Institute is an interesting Deconstruction (see TV tropes) of the idea of an organization being evil and the heir to the sort of thing we've seen in Fallout before. Fallout had the Master revealed to be a well-intentioned individual who was trying to deal with the complex problem of human beings being biologically incompatible with the Post-Apocalypse world. He was evil in the context of warping the bodies of countless people into dumb-as-hell monsters but it wasn't just a petty motivation like power or being the Dark Lord the game semeingly set him up into being.

Similarly, the Enclave was shown to be an absolutely appalling embodiment of white Western priviledge with Vault-Tech experiments, their planned mass murder of the Wastelanders, racism, and human/Deathclaw experimentation. Even so, you had the option of persuading Sergeant Rock and his company to leave the Enclave as well as a humanizing treatment of many of them.

The Institute is evil.

No doubt about it.

If you view the Institute as a PERSON.

Which it is not.

It is a NATION.

The Institute practices slavery, the Institute engages in the same sorts of horrific experiments the Master does, and the Institute manipulates the Commonwealth to keep it divided as well as each others' throats.

If the Institute was a person, any moral ambiguity would go out the window the moment you looked into pods of Vault 111 and saw people suffocating in their cryogenic chambers only for the Institute to not release them because they didn't want any loose ends. The thing is, the Institute personnel who ordered the execution of Vault 111's personnel have been dead for decades. They lived and died in the paradise of the Institute and were replaced with your son Shaun when he grew up to advlthood.

They're beyond punishment now. At least by mortal authorities. Maybe Atom will in the Great Radioactive Beyond.

The thing is, we get to see the Institute from the inside and the vast majority of its citizens have no idea what sort of horrific evil is being conducted by their leadership. They profit from slavery but are kept in the comforting lie that Synths are "just machines" and that this is all for the rebuilding of society. The Institute isn't rebuilding society, it's had 200 years to do that and has done nothing to do so, but it's a society of people living their lives in happiness and doing their best to protect that like America and so many other First World Nations have done at the expense of others.

Do they deserve to be destroyed for that?

Perhaps.

Perhaps they could also be reformed but the price of that reformation is killing innocents. The unambiguously good Railroad who have cast themselves as the heroic champions of Synths, even though that will require the destruction of no less than two nations in order to save them. Killing those who would free those who have no other advocate on the OFT chance it would allow you to save the Synths as Director and reform things internally.

Like Elder Lyons failed to do.

In the end, there's no good answer and innocents will suffer.

Because war...

War never changes.

In what way is freewill independent of the synth's programming? Its explained that those who are recaptured have their neural pathways reset, freewill then isn't independent of their design.