Sarif's: I thought the ending that Sarif suggested was by far the worst of the four. A terrible disaster has just occurred due to augments and the control they allow evil people to have over others and Sarif wants to continue down that path full steam ahead. How is this a good idea? If the augmentation business continues with absolutely no regulation you are practically sending out an invitation to every crazy, maniacal, power-hungry person in the world to start their own business and find a way to manufacture people however they see fit. How can leaders of the world (of countries or corporations) resist using augments in an unethical manner to allow them the upper hand when there is no one watching them at all? This ending is an unethical means being used to justify an unethical (and, quite frankly, ridiculously idealistic and unrealistically utopian) end.
Taggart's: Once again, this is another somewhat unethical ending choice because you are telling a bold-faced lie to the people of the world and assuming that you are intelligent enough to understand that this is what's best for them. I think Taggart's goal appears somewhat noble at first glance (regulating augmentation) but the way he attempts to accomplish it reeks of arrogance and elitism. The whole, "let the wise people make the decisions" idea seems very tyrannical and arbitrary to me. Who are these "wise people"? Who decides that they are the ones who are smart enough to regulate the entire population of the world from the shadows, a location that conveniently excludes them of accountability? Obviously this is simply a set-up for the rich and powerful to rule over the general populous. To me this ending would only lead to the same result as Sarif's, too much control in the hands of too few people, a scenario that allows and invites rampant evil and misuse of power.
Darrow's: Here's where things start to get kind of tricky. I had a hard time choosing between Darrow's choice and the suicide choice because they both seemed like decent enough options to me that were flawed in some way. On the one hand, telling the world exactly what happened and allowing them to sift through the information and arrive at their own conclusions seems like a good idea. On the other hand, you are still presenting one (crazy) man's view of the situation, and it's a view that will greatly impact the future of augmentation, perhaps in an unfairly negative way. Yes, augmentation opens up the potential for crazy dictatorial leaders to control and create people in unethical and immoral ways but is getting rid of it completely throwing the baby out with the bath water? I would say yes, and that's why I chose:
The suicide choice: After much deliberation this option seemed like the most logical one to me. First of all, on a note unrelated to which option is "best" for humanity, I liked the idea of Panchea disappearing in a mysterious way, along with the disappearance of Taggart, Sarif, and Darrow. The potential intrigue associated this choice was very attractive to me, and it took some thinking for me to separate this initial impulse from the logic associated with this and the other decisions.
Anyway, I think this is also the best solution from a logical standpoint because it allows augmentation to continue forward without any input from these men under the belief that humanity as a whole will eventually arrive at the destination that is best suited for them. A bit idealistic, sure, but it's not near as crazy of a stretch as the first two choices (Sarif's and Taggart's). Also, after the incident caused by Darrow I found it logically sound to conclude that humanity will rethink how augmentation is handled by the various corporations and countries of the world, and it will cause them to carry on in a less care-free way that focuses more on accountability. As Darrow said, this is the wake-up call that humanity needed, and now they know that augmentation can have potentially devastating consequences if it isn't kept in check by un-biased, outside sources. The thing is, I didn't find it fair for humanity to be told this from the mouth of one man, as that sort of bias could otherwise skew the conclusions that they would draw from the incident that occurred at Panchea.
To me this choice was the democratic solution to the problem because it assumed that humanity would eventually weigh the pros and cons of each view of the three main players and arrive somewhere in the middle --- namely a world where augmentations exist to better humanity but not to harm it.
