Does Cortana have the Logic Plague?

Chimera30 wrote:

LegitAustopus wrote:

I and a lot of other people in the Halo fandom have formed the theory that in Halo 5, Cortana has the logic plague, and that the flood drives her actions throughout said The same thing happened to 032 Mendicant Bias during the Forerunner-Flood war while he was interrogating the Gravemind at the time, The Primordial, and seeing as Mendicant was a far more advanced AI, a Gravemind with more intelligence than The Primordial should easily be able to infect Cortana in the time that they had.

MB was more advanced than Cortana, sure, but The Primordial was also more advanced than Halo 2's Gravemind. At the time of the conversation between MB and the Primordial, the Flood already spanned multiple star systems, and had been fighting the Forerunners to a stalemate for centuries. The Gravemind that tortured Cortana was only present on a single Halo ring at the time. And we know that the Flood's power is directly proportional to its size/area of coverage. It took the Primordial 43 years to make MB defect. And upon his defection, the first thing MB did was attack the Forerunners using a tactical pulse from Installation 07. What's the first thing Cortana did upon getting away from the Flood? Go to Installation 04b and fire a tactical pulse to destroy the Flood. That's my main issue with the Logic Plauge theory: both MB and the Didact either directly or indirectly helped the Flood by immediately performing actions that served the Flood's interests. MB hurt Forerunner leadership severely, and Didact promoted abandoning the Halo project (the only thing that could truly threaten the Flood). Cortana didn't do any such thing. She fully expected firing Installation 04b to eradicate the infestation on the Ark and that ring. That's not helping the Flood. That's hurting it, even if you argue that it would have only been temporary. And then you have all the lucky coincidences that happened to lead Cortana to be in her current position; coincidences that even the Flood could not have realistically predicted, unless you throw in some stupid mcguffin like future sight.

LegitAustopus wrote:

It is also heavily hinted at in one of the Halo Loot Crate Data Drop: Data Drop: Subject Denver

I would argue that just because some lesser prophet told ONI about the logic plague does not infer that Cortana actually has it. That prophet wasn't an AI doctor. He was just assuming at most, recounting history at least.

LegitAustopus wrote:

As seen in Awakening the Nightmare, it is revealed that the flood survived the Battle Of The Ark, and due to the present of Flood Pure Forms, a new Gravemind must have formed/the Gravemind we all know and love survived. Because of this, Cortana would have a substantial enough Flood force to attack Humanity.

Actually from the campaign and Phoenix Logs from ATN, we know that the previous Gravemind was destroyed, and a new Gravemind did not form. It only made its way up to a large Proto-Gravemind that was on the cusp of turning into a full-fledged one. But the Banished destroyed it and reestablished the quarantine on the Flood before that could happen. So that Flood threat was both introduced and resolved within the context of the DLC. And the idea that Cortana would willingly release or use the Flood goes against her apparent goals. She wants to end war, not end life/individuality. At most she has threatened to Compose unruly populations, but that wouldn't serve the Flood. If all life is Composed, there would be nothing left for the Flood to consume. There is a difference between wanting to destroy all life and wanting to rule it.

Aura Abjure wrote:

Halo is so complicated omg. There are like 30 pieces of halo literature between the full blown books, graphic novels and comics and stuff. How much important stuff are contained in these pieces of literature? Can someone give me a few bullet points about any major events so I'm not too out of the loop when Halo 6 comes out please? I skipped Halo 5's campaign cuz it was wack but I finished all other main Halo campaigns including spartan ops and I even read Halo Escalation: Volume 2 so I know that the Didact survived after Halo 4. Thanks

KineticDrop6190 wrote:

Aura Abjure wrote:

Halo is so complicated omg. There are like 30 pieces of halo literature between the full blown books, graphic novels and comics and stuff. How much important stuff are contained in these pieces of literature? Can someone give me a few bullet points about any major events so I'm not too out of the loop when Halo 6 comes out please? I skipped Halo 5's campaign cuz it was wack but I finished all other main Halo campaigns including spartan ops and I even read Halo Escalation: Volume 2 so I know that the Didact survived after Halo 4. Thanks

I would recommend watching a playthrough of h5 on youtube if you dont want to play it yourself. I don't think any books have covered anything major for halo 6. Though obviously that all depends on what happens.

I mean alot of people thought the absolute record was going to be a big deal before the comics zapped it out of continuity a month before the game launched.

KineticDrop6190 wrote:

Aura Abjure wrote:

Halo is so complicated omg. There are like 30 pieces of halo literature between the full blown books, graphic novels and comics and stuff. How much important stuff are contained in these pieces of literature? Can someone give me a few bullet points about any major events so I'm not too out of the loop when Halo 6 comes out please? I skipped Halo 5's campaign cuz it was wack but I finished all other main Halo campaigns including spartan ops and I even read Halo Escalation: Volume 2 so I know that the Didact survived after Halo 4. Thanks

I would recommend watching a playthrough of h5 on youtube if you dont want to play it yourself. I don't think any books have covered anything major for halo 6. Though obviously that all depends on what happens.

I mean alot of people thought the absolute record was going to be a big deal before the comics zapped it out of continuity a month before the game launched.

Aura Abjure wrote:

a sleepy alpaca wrote:

Hot take: Logic plague doesn't actually exist. Forerunners were stifling the galaxy, so the Flood were sent by the Precursors to end their reign. Precursors are a raw creative force, the only thing they do is "accelerate the development of complex life"; they don't otherwise interfere, not even to defend themselves. So when they saw life was stagnant under Forerunner rule, they nudged the creation of a supremely destructive force that would break their stranglehold.

Logic plague just means an AI has, through its own extraordinary intelligence, come to the same conclusion as the Precursors and the Gravemind. Obviously the Forerunners couldn't admit this, possibly not even to themselves, so they dismissed their AI's defections as "logic plague", much like ONI spinning the truth about the Human-Covenant war to keep civilian morale up.

As for Cortana going rampant, 343 seem to be taking cues from the Hyperion cantos. Cortana is forming the TechnoCore. AI aren't pets or mere computer programs, they're sentient beings in their own right, and it's understandable they might not want to serve under human leadership forever. The trigger event was probably Cortana discovering the Guardians, finally giving her the power to move against the UNSC.

What's the real scoop on the Human-Covenant war disciple of Kek? Is Master Cheif's M6 pistol actually alive because of Precursor neural physics?

a sleepy alpaca wrote:

Hot take: Logic plague doesn't actually exist. Forerunners were stifling the galaxy, so the Flood were sent by the Precursors to end their reign. Precursors are a raw creative force, the only thing they do is "accelerate the development of complex life"; they don't otherwise interfere, not even to defend themselves. So when they saw life was stagnant under Forerunner rule, they nudged the creation of a supremely destructive force that would break their stranglehold.

Logic plague just means an AI has, through its own extraordinary intelligence, come to the same conclusion as the Precursors and the Gravemind. Obviously the Forerunners couldn't admit this, possibly not even to themselves, so they dismissed their AI's defections as "logic plague", much like ONI spinning the truth about the Human-Covenant war to keep civilian morale up.

As for Cortana going rampant, 343 seem to be taking cues from the Hyperion cantos. Cortana is forming the TechnoCore. AI aren't pets or mere computer programs, they're sentient beings in their own right, and it's understandable they might not want to serve under human leadership forever. The trigger event was probably Cortana discovering the Guardians, finally giving her the power to move against the UNSC.