Questionable ethics - Living Memory

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Originally Posted by Eyrilona

You know, the problem with attacking me on a position I did not take, is that you will always miss me.

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It wasn't meant necessarily as you personally, but more as I don't see anyone pointing this out either.

But some would say not taking a position on what I wrote is taking a position and implicitly approving it.

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Originally Posted by Galvuu

I also love how people are so certain of what's alive or not in FF XIV.
I'd love people who're on that camp clearly define what it means to be alive in XIV according to the lore right now, and then define what consciousness/sapience/self-awareness are on top so we can label things as "alive" and "not-alive" or "intelligent, creative consciousness" and "AI chatbots" clearly. They clearly seem to know.

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Personally, I don't really care about the lore in this case. Not because I dislike world building, or find it useless and pointless, but there is a line where an analysis of a story as it's written and presented is more important to me than making sure every single brick fits neatly within cohesive diegetic boxes from the many disparate stories that exist within the game itself (with multiple writers contributing to it over the span of years). A rose in one story may mean, or symbolize, one thing; a rose in another may mean the opposite, and the context to know which is what would be where that rose is blooming.

I do feel the intended idea of this specific story is as I mentioned (above somewhere) since that is how it reads, that is how the language is couched and the characters presented in their statements, behaviors etc... in conjunction with the heavy talk of commemorating the dead prior, from a civilization influenced from this one, as well with the ending context showcasing:

A somber graveyard, filled with blackened tombstones etched with memories once projected onto the eternal play place that now lies dormant.

(well, barring gameplay purposes).

What you're going for, to me, feels almost like a completely separate discussion wherein you're more trying to figure out what the internal mechanics of the world(s) FFXIV encompasses would classify "Living" and "Dead" as (or, even, in-universe philosophy regarding "what does it mean, to be 'alive'?"), versus this specific story's theme and statement as it presents itself with the context it exists within.

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Originally Posted by Galvuu

Snip[/I]"?
But ty for illustrating my point, it's all just "next level cope" and whatnot.

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Bo the endless are literally ghosts, they are not living creatures, this is such a stupid analogy to make my man.
Read the MSQ dude, READ. You are told this multiple times. These are facsimiles of people, memories, ghosts. They are long dead, and Sphene's living memory was barely sustainable. Sphene was killing people in order to preserve what were essentially advanced AI chatbots based on dead people. Everyone hammers home multiple times that it's fucked up that they are continuing to live like this, and not even all of the endless either, just a few at a time and the algorithm specifically plans out meetings of people who knew each other. It's a hollow existence. You are ushering on the dead. You are letting go. That's the point. The lights go out in living memory because you need to learn to let go. You need to teach Sphene to let go. This is all foreshadowed in the Yok Huy segment, where it's hammered in that even when people are long dead, they live on through the memories of those close to them. As long as they aren't forgotten, they will never truly die. So keeping them in a hollow endless dream is madness.
And before you start with me again, need I remind you that this almost PERFECTLY mirrors Emet and the Ascians as well. We defied the Ascians because we are protecting all of our people, despite knowing the Ascians' plans to revive their people. We defy Sphene because we are protecting our people, the only difference is instead of Sphene actively reviving her people, she's parading around hollow memories of them, not even the real living beings.
Earlier people mentioned "Well why not genocide the Omicrons?" The Omicrons are a dead race, what few exist in Ultima Thule are merely just existing, and posing no threat to basically anyone.
Also very very epic argument on your part belittling my intelligence, that certainly helped your argument and didn't entirely destroy any remaining respect I might have had for you.

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Originally Posted by Wired-Lain

But... They can interact with the real world. The entire story is predicated on Cahciua, an endless, leaving via a robot to plot against Sphene. I don't understand why everyones acting like they're just empty replays of old memories when they constantly show that they're sentient and capable of aspiration. These aren't faded recordings of dead people on repeat like the shades in Amaurot, these are the memories of dead people continuing to live. I mean for gods sake we literally see one of them attain a happier memory and change before our eyes. Yes allowing them to persist as is is out of the question, the needs of all shards outweigh a single city, of course it does. I just cannot see the warrior of light or the scions not even bothering to discuss this obvious ethical dilemma, theres more discussion in this thread about the Endless than we get in the game itself. It just feels incredibly shallow that none of the characters we know stop to think about this, given everything we went through redefining the definition of what it means to be "alive" over the past 4 years. That's my issue.

To me the total disinterest in this from both the game and people in this thread showcases a weird and unfortunate shift from topics this game used to excel at and relish exploring. Now we're told to just not think about it too much.

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There is a reason for that out of character shift and why we're "not supposed to think about it too much", but it's IRL politics. Last time I tried to explain that, all that happened was I got called paranoid and crazy. Let's just say, they want you to "just accept the message and let it happen."

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Originally Posted by Alaray

snip.

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You kind of touch on the problem yourself. All these stories are meant to take place in the same universe, which should have a consistent set of laws/rules. Even if you want to approach a different theme or subject matter, as you're working in a per-established universe, you're constrained (or, well, you should be) to the previously established rules.
Otherwise you get some of the laziest writing where anything goes. The story isn't divorced from the mechanics of the world it takes part- yes, it's fiction, you have liberty to set the rules, but that doesn't equate to being able to change those rules, once established, to whatever you want arbitrarily. Or rather, technically you can do that, it just leads to a bunch of inconsistencies and bad writing.
Which really is the problem, isn't it? Yes, sure, you can make a new story in XIV where the element of Darkness is now shown to be that of stasis instead of Light, or where the Sundering actually created 37 shards and we just didn't know, or where there were actually 11 moons in the world, or where souls don't reincarnate, or where you can defeat primals by throwing a banana at them because banana-aether is primal-destroying and the Heart of Sabik was a banana all along. You definitely can write all of that to drive a specific point- but that's just shoddy writing that retroactively undermines all the previous work and established lore/world-building.
If this is truly the way XIV wants to go, just ignore the lore/world-building. Just stop wasting time with Encyclopedia Eorzeas and trying to make a logical framework of things because nothing matters. It can be retconned or changed at the whim of any random future author to fit whatever nonsense message they have in their minds.
I find this to be appalling, but maybe people like it. Still doesn't change the fact it will raise a lot of questions.

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Originally Posted by AddictedToWitches

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If I read then the argument that the Ultima Thule beings aren't live can certainly be made. Which is probably why you immediately deflected it "those are ok because they're not hurting anyone!". The beings in Ultima Thule are either alive, or are not. Same for the Endless. I'm not pretending to have a definitive answer based on what the game has shown throughout the entirety of its lore/writing across all expansions, because the game changes its mind when its convenient. I dunno why you keep mentioning the "defy Sphene" thing. I've been saying every time, we were justified in destroying the Endless- I'm not arguing we shouldn't have done that. I'm wondering if we destroyed something that was somewhat alive, or not, or somewhat in-between. But yes, read, because what's written doesn't somewhat contradict what was written before. Maybe in 8.0 there are new not-Endless who don't need souls but are the same in every other way and the game goes "these things are alive!" (like they did with Omega/Alpha/Ultima Thule/etc) and then they retroactively become alive. Until 9.0 needs them to retro-retroactively become not-alive for some reason.

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Originally Posted by LuciferMournstar

There is a reason for that out of character shift and why we're "not supposed to think about it too much", but it's IRL politics. Last time I tried to explain that, all that happened was I got called paranoid and crazy. Let's just say, they want you to "just accept the message and let it happen."

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Why do I get the feeling that these "IRL politics" you're talking about are somehow related to "woke ideology" or something similar? idk, I'm just getting an alt-right vibe, let me know if I'm wrong though.

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Originally Posted by Boblawblah

Why do I get the feeling that these "IRL politics" you're talking about are somehow related to "woke ideology" or something similar? idk, I'm just getting an alt-right vibe, let me know if I'm wrong though.

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As if you don't know, considering you were one of the people to go after me. "Alt-right" and more buzzwords you use to cancel anyone who brings attention to something you want kept quiet and not brought attention to. "Let me know if if I'm wrong though", don't play coy with me.

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Originally Posted by AddictedToWitches

Bo the endless are literally ghosts, they are not living creatures, this is such a stupid analogy to make my man.
Read the MSQ dude, READ. You are told this multiple times. These are facsimiles of people, memories, ghosts. They are long dead, and Sphene's living memory was barely sustainable. Sphene was killing people in order to preserve what were essentially advanced AI chatbots based on dead people. Everyone hammers home multiple times that it's fucked up that they are continuing to live like this, and not even all of the endless either, just a few at a time and the algorithm specifically plans out meetings of people who knew each other. It's a hollow existence. You are ushering on the dead. You are letting go. That's the point. The lights go out in living memory because you need to learn to let go. You need to teach Sphene to let go. This is all foreshadowed in the Yok Huy segment, where it's hammered in that even when people are long dead, they live on through the memories of those close to them. As long as they aren't forgotten, they will never truly die. So keeping them in a hollow endless dream is madness.
And before you start with me again, need I remind you that this almost PERFECTLY mirrors Emet and the Ascians as well. We defied the Ascians because we are protecting all of our people, despite knowing the Ascians' plans to revive their people. We defy Sphene because we are protecting our people, the only difference is instead of Sphene actively reviving her people, she's parading around hollow memories of them, not even the real living beings.
Earlier people mentioned "Well why not genocide the Omicrons?" The Omicrons are a dead race, what few exist in Ultima Thule are merely just existing, and posing no threat to basically anyone.
Also very very epic argument on your part belittling my intelligence, that certainly helped your argument and didn't entirely destroy any remaining respect I might have had for you.

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It’s funny that you call other people speed-readers while ignoring the game’s lore yourself. Classic.
Suggestion for you: go read the Unending Codex entry on souls that got added this very patch.
Also, consider whether Cahciua telling us something- immediately after requesting we do a horrific action that would never otherwise be considered- means her words are objective truth in-universe, or her own biased outlook.

Unrelated to you, I had a real good laugh reading a reply that says Endless don’t respond to stimuli. That’s a good one, gamers. Almost as good as ‘they’re copies’ or ‘they’re chatGPT’.

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Originally Posted by LuciferMournstar

As if you don't know, considering you were one of the people to go after me. "Alt-right" and more buzzwords you use to cancel anyone who brings attention to something you want kept quiet and not brought attention to. "Let me know if if I'm wrong though", don't play coy with me.

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I'll be honest, I remember your name because it seems intentionally provocative, but I don't remember anything you've said in the past. If we've clashed before though, yea, that answers the question. I'll leave you to it.

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

It actually doesn't matter if the Endless are alive. The intention behind turning them off is still of the utmost importance.

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It does matter for the quality of the story. you know like, the thing the game is known for.

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Originally Posted by Boblawblah

I'll be honest, I remember your name because it seems intentionally provocative, but I don't remember anything you've said in the past. If we've clashed before though, yea, that answers the question. I'll leave you to it.

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Biblical references are provocative now? You sure you ain't a fisher main? Cause that bait be looking juicy rn.

There's no moral ethics on this story because in reality nothing happens, for starters we are told by Cahciua before entering Solution 9 that the "people" here are basically replicas of their memories, and when one of them dies they go back to the cloud and everyone gets a reset. This could be a nice idea but Hiroi didn't know what to do with it, like none of the NPCs showed something any emotion or at least some interest to keep "living" even when you do the "quests" (The elezen looking for his ring) He would tell you that he knows he is dead, that he knows that people don't come back (when asked for his SO) because the server doesn't have enough aether/souls to recreate everyone, if you want the player to have a """""conflict""""" at least put a scene in which you have NPCs telling you "This might be an illusion, but i'm alive! Who are you to decide what is a living being? I don't want my home destroyed"

We had any of that? No, in fact when you are going to shut down the last tower Cahciua would drop casually "oh yeah, that's not the real Sphene. Its this program following her wishes" so again if the story doesn't care, why should the reader? The ideas were there but Daichi Hiroi never used anything that he establishes, the gondola scene was good but is there anything besides that? You have Graha telling you about "bring someone back" I mean that's interesting but the only NPC (The Elezen) with that story he's just "It's ok, i haven't manage to meet with my fiance due to the lack of bandwidth" there's no urgency, there's none "I WANT TO SEE HER AGAIN" there's no little quest to using the bandwidth you liberate after shutting down some towers so the server could "miraculously" bring her fiance back, so they have a reunion and you could have the "we are happy and alive" but no.

Some time one of the lobotomized scions would tell you "it's sad" so you feel something, i guess? The difference between Living Memory and Amaouroth it's that for the later we are seeing everything on Emet's side, he tried to bring back his colleagues and the guy is so jaded that he couldn't see anything beyond that. And of course we spent a lot of time with Emet to undersand something that the last 5 hrs of DT trying (and failing) to set up Meteon from Temu as this tragic villain, but she just doesn't work. The trial is cool tho.

Again, there's ideas in here but sadly the writers were way over their heads for this project, which is funny because everything could be stayed "low stakes" by only making a somewhat a war between Zoraal and Gulool ja (the proud son going mad and then corrupting himself looking for power) but no "world ending scenario" lol.

My issue is that the Endless are essentially AIs that are self aware, they can make decisions, they have feelings, they are intelligent. You could even consider them a race on their own, a cybernetic race.

Erasing them is no different than killing them. We should have shut down the system and placed them into stasis. How is this not genocide?

I am in agreement with others that I do not buy the whole “there not alive” argument. By shutting down and erasing everything, we are no different from the old Asians.

The old Azim would have been very against this…

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Originally Posted by Darnuss

if the story doesn't care, why should the reader?

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Yes, that is pretty much the argument why people are saying this is a badly written story. And then other people act as apologists for the story by making arguments that you can reduce to "the story never told us that the story was bad, so it isn't bad".

I can recognize that yes, by the internal logic of Dawntrail 95-100, this was the right course of action. But I can also recognize that any story that has this logic in it that contradicts the entire tradition of what the game has always been about, should have been stopped at quality assurance. For Dawntrail to be valid, all of ARR through EW and our character's involvement in it must not be. And people are taking offense with that.

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Originally Posted by Magikazam

It does matter for the quality of the story. you know like, the thing the game is known for.




Biblical references are provocative now? You sure you ain't a fisher main? Cause that bait be looking juicy rn.

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Oh they are fishing right now, hard. Obfuscate and redirect. The same old song and dance. Along with being called "alt-right", next they'll use the biblical reference of my name to say i'm some bigoted bible thumper who hates anything progressive. Not that thematically, it just works with the fact i'm an Au'Ra male and the horns. Do I like biblical references and such? Yeah, sure do. Though being agnostic personally, it's just a cool reference and looks neat.

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Originally Posted by Galvuu

The beings in Ultima Thule are either alive, or are not. Same for the Endless.

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The beings of Ultima Thule are recreations based on Meteion’s observations. They are made out of gathered dynamis and probably have souls, due to Meteion also gathering the lifestreams of their worlds. That said, I wouldn’t really consider them “alive” in our traditional sense and I’m two steps away from calling the ghostbusters on them. Up until recently they were reenacting their final moments exactly like ghosts and now are more like “ghosts with a purpose making a ghost civilization”.


The Endless are literal ghosts. They are dead beings separated from their corporeal aether and made to manifest in the way they did in life, even being able to look younger or older at will. They’re also separated by their original souls and stitched on artificially to someone else’s, that may have been taken against their will. They lack two of their three original components that made them a whole person in life.

They are a purposefully made abomination of nature, created by someone who was pathologically jealous and refused to let go of her people at any cost, not even letting them know the peace of death and allowing them into the natural cycle to be reborn.

They are the product of an industrialized necromantic ritual to preserve the memories of the dead in a dilapidated Disneyland for solely Sphene’s benefit. They live like zoo animals in exhibits designed to keep them stimulated and the system even organizes “serendipitous” meetings based on all the people stored in the cloud, but after centuries they’re already bored.

Would you feel the same about all this if instead of shiny cyberpunk facilities making the undead it was all magic sigils and bloodstained keeps? We’ve been down this road before with other Ashkin like those in the Sirensong Sea. Do we need to leave those alone because they’re “new life”?


But the main difference between the two is context. Not everything has to be “it’s all ‘this’ or it’s not” and context is very important. While I don’t like the concept of the Ultima Thule beings, they were created externally by an outside force and had no say in it and are now moving on and making the best of it and if they die, they will return to their nearby livestreams to start over as is normal. New life has even arisen and the dragons and Ea(?) have produced children.

The Endless were created by a society with institutionalized necromancy as its core feature and completely removed themselves from the cycle of death and rebirth that depends on harvesting others for their leaky system.

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

Erasing them is no different than killing them. We should have shut down the system and placed them into stasis. How is this not genocide?

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How? Who among the group even knows how to do that? If it were possible, it would've come up. You can't just say that the story is bad because they didn't do a situation that you just made up. We don't even know if they could've done that.

And it's not genocide, the people in the computer were already dead. Alexandria's society, culture, and people are still alive right there on the source and by any indication, are thriving. We shut off their graveyard that barely anyone even knows exists.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

How? Who among the group even knows how to do that? If it were possible, it would've come up. You can't just say that the story is bad because they didn't do a situation that you just made up. We don't even know if they could've done that.

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Exactly. We don't know. Because the question is never raised and no attempts are made. Hence the dissatisfaction.

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Originally Posted by LuciferMournstar

There is a reason for that out of character shift and why we're "not supposed to think about it too much", but it's IRL politics. Last time I tried to explain that, all that happened was I got called paranoid and crazy. Let's just say, they want you to "just accept the message and let it happen."

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? Don't lump me in with whatever you're alluding to here but wont expressly say.

"Institutionalized necromancy" is such a great way to put it. I felt such utter revulsion going through Living Memory, making it look like an even faker version of the Fakest Place on Earth(TM) was a perfect move. I don't think the devs *could* have made it worse for me by having it all in blood rituals and whatnot. It was WORSE than blood rituals, because at least those are done by hand!

Sphene is wrong no matter how she or rather the AI version of her wants it's wrong. For various reasons. Killing innocent people is wrong. Using their life force is wrong. I happily switched off every one of them. It didn't matter how many times the story tried to guilt trip me into reconsidering that choice. I still made it on my own. And I would absolutely do it again.

A lot of people like to quote Emet to justify it, completely neglecting that in that moment, he was also wrong.

We did the right thing.

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Originally Posted by Galvuu

You kind of touch on the problem yourself. All these stories are meant to take place in the same universe, which should have a consistent set of laws/rules. Even if you want to approach a different theme or subject matter, as you're working in a per-established universe, you're constrained (or, well, you should

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What you describe, with details clashing diegetically, is inevitable (and to be fair, the potential discrepancy here isn't congruent to the over-exaggerated "what if" scenario). It's in almost every story you can pick up, every world ever imagined: nothing is perfectly consistent, there is always an inconsistency somewhere. It is what it is, and for all I know, the Ultima Thule shades have something different at their core, but I don't need to really care if that is true or not true to understand what the Living Memory story is trying to communicate.

A rose at the Edge of the Universe is still rooted in a different soil, than a rose bloomed in the Unlost World.

And, I enjoy the stories of loss, death, acceptance, that are told. I have my complaints, but I dunno, I felt it was really obvious we're just helping would-be ghosts move onwards. That we're turning off the lights to another haphazard, memory of the past made into a false eden to show it for the graveyard it is and to accept that fact and not to be mired in the infatuation of "eternity".

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Originally Posted by AlysCamoa

It’s funny that you call other people speed-readers while ignoring the game’s lore yourself. Classic.
Suggestion for you: go read the Unending Codex entry on souls that got added this very patch.
Also, consider whether Cahciua telling us something- immediately after requesting we do a horrific action that would never otherwise be considered- means her words are objective truth in-universe, or her own biased outlook.

Unrelated to you, I had a real good laugh reading a reply that says Endless don’t respond to stimuli. That’s a good one, gamers. Almost as good as ‘they’re copies’ or ‘they’re chatGPT’.

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The lore entry about souls, as stipulated by the very own game for years is that we have two manners os Aether.

Corporeal and Incorporeal. The Souls, being Incorporeal and a being composed only of Incorporeal (Case in question) ARE GHOSTS. The very own Unending Codex proves the person you are making fun of is right, the Endless are simple ghosts of passing people, and as much as you may claim it was a horrible action, it was not. They act accordingly with their memories, they are capable of storing new memories as Endless, but those do not develop them beyond what they are. Those 'dreams, hopes, and aspirations' are unresolved matters. To which, even the Unending Codex, states that Incorporeal beings cling to memory and emotions, having unresolved matters means they can turn into actual harmful beings (Hello, Deadwalk).

By shutting down this place, we are putting many ghosts to rest, it is a moral act to do. We also resolve matters of those unable to move on so they find comfort and feel capable of passing on and resting as we carry their legacy.

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Originally Posted by OMGJesuis66

The lore entry about souls, as stipulated by the very own game for years is that we have two manners os Aether.

Corporeal and Incorporeal. The Souls, being Incorporeal and a being composed only of Incorporeal (Case in question) ARE GHOSTS. The very own Unending Codex proves the person you are making fun of is right, the Endless are simple ghosts of passing people, and as much as you may claim it was a horrible action, it was not. They act accordingly with their memories, they are capable of storing new memories as Endless, but those do not develop them beyond what they are. Those 'dreams, hopes, and aspirations' are unresolved matters. To which, even the Unending Codex, states that Incorporeal beings cling to memory and emotions, having unresolved matters means they can turn into actual harmful beings (Hello, Deadwalk).

By shutting down this place, we are putting many ghosts to rest, it is a moral act to do. We also resolve matters of those unable to move on so they find comfort and feel capable of passing on and resting as we carry their legacy.

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Oh good, somebody who read the entry. I'd like to know where you're getting the idea that the memories formed by the Endless do not develop them. In fact, we're demonstrated quite the opposite, several times, as the dozen or so characters we interact with there change merely by meeting us. The most glaring counter-point to your claim would be Cahciua, no? But I'm willing to entertain the idea this might be true—if you can cite the part of the story where the Endless do not develop based on new experiences.

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Originally Posted by Alaray

What you describe, with details clashing diegetically, is inevitable (and to be fair, the potential discrepancy here isn't congruent to the over-exaggerated "what if" scenario). It's in almost every story you can pick up, every world ever imagined: nothing is perfectly consistent, there is always an inconsistency somewhere. It is what it is, and for all I know, the Ultima Thule shades have something different at their core, but I don't need to really care if that is true or not true to understand what the Living Memory story is trying to communicate.

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I think the key thing to observe here is, there is room for things to be different in different expansion to an extent. But not the fundamentals. You can't have a new Sherlock Holmes story where Sherlock is suddenly a bumbling fool constantly being rescued by his clever assistant Watson, even if the idea of a bumbling inspector with a competent helper can in its own right be good standalone story material. Those things do not make sense, you are going to get complaints from people who bought your story because it had promised a continuation of a story universe they know and love, and if you are not consistent with that, then you have sold your story on a false premise.

I feel like this was already said in one of the prior topics, but...


One of the major issues is that the story we as the players were presented with actively contradicts itself. Through Cahcuia it tells us one thing, then shows us another through the MSQ and Side Quests across the zone. If the "people" in the zone are merely facsimiles, AI constructs, then why are we encouraged to engage with or "help" them at all? They shouldn't matter at that point. A lot of the naysayers like to present the scenario of turning off an electronic device, well... let me ask you this: Before you turn off your electronic devices do you first make sure they were happy with the tasks they completed today? Do you try to make sure your electronic devices are comfortable before you shut them down for the evening? Do you lay them down gently on a pillow?

While I'm sure there is a small percentage of the human population that take their electronic devices to bed for a cuddle, I would wager that most people do not. Most of us just click the shutdown icon and don't afford it anymore thought until we need to use it again. Yet the MSQ and Side Quests have us go through the zone and treat these "constructs" with dignity and respect to "help" them what? Turn off easier? Why? None of that should matter if they're not people... we never should have engaged with any of them and just merely walked straight to the terminal we needed to interact with to shut the system down.


Second, Cahcuia is an unreliable narrator at best, and if we do accept her explanation of the Endless at face value, then it renders most of the story characters' experiences in Living Memory meaningless and actively wastes our time as the players because all the heartfelt moments ultimately don't matter.

We, as the players, are expected to have an emotional reaction to Krile and Erenville having sendoffs with their respective parents... but did they though? Again, if we merely accept Cahcuia's explanation, that these were AI facsimiles merely presenting the "best" versions of the Endless, then nothing that they say can be trusted because they're just telling us what's needed to be said to be "happy." They're just drugs. I mean Krile is even worse if we go down that line of thinking, did she truly even "meet her parents" at all if they were fake AI constructs presenting their best selves and nothing they told us was reliable information? At least Erenville did know his mother outside the machine first, so he presumably has his own memories of her to gauge against the AI.


It's kinda funny, but this conversation/debate we're having here on the forums right now is literally the argument that 9S and 2B have about the Automatons, and by extension the Androids, in Neir: Automata. A game with a story that actively questions what is consciousness? What is life? What is existence? And ultimately arrives at the viewpoint that over time, maybe all these AI constructs have managed to evolve into something more. And while sure, normally I wouldn't think it wholly relevant to point at a different story and be like... look how they arrived at a different answer... conveniently Neir: Automata has a crossover with the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV expansion Shadowbringers, where we got to see the continuing adventures of the androids 9S and 2B as they continue to fight for their right to exist...

I don't know, I have my own thoughts/fanfic about how they could have better presented the MSQ and side quests to actually convince me that the people of Living Memory were merely AI constructs caught in an endless loop of nonexistence... but even then my issue would still probably be that they've shown us different results multiple times in the the same story. There were perhaps alternative solutions to the Endless, the problem is that many of those solutions are gated behind the Side Content of FFXIV, and much like how the battle system of this game seemingly has to be designed for the lowest common denominator... so too must the story, and that LCD seems to be the person that only does the MSQ and never engages with Side Content at all. Could we have talked to the Ea or Omicron in Ultima Thule? Maybe... but the relevant content where we affirmed their existence is gated behind having level 80 Gathering Jobs... which they can't guarantee that every player going through the MSQ will have.

Like Ryne... a lot of people loved the wholesome friendship between her and Gaia through the Eden Raid Series... but since that was technically side content that meant every time we went back to talk to Ryne on the First it was a massive bummer because it's assumed that she was still alone there with no friends except maybe Lyna to talk to as a caretaker... cause Gaia doesn't exist outside of Eden. Until they threw us all a bone and showed that Gaia at least exists in the MSQ now, regardless of the individual players status on Eden completion. And I think going forward that more of the side content should be considered canon and they should just do the comic book thing with an asterisk saying "if you'd like to know more please go play _______ content" so they can come up with more interesting solutions to problems that can incorporate and pull from all the other lore they've established over the years instead of just making up plot contrivances as to "why we can't do that doh!"

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Originally Posted by AlysCamoa

Oh good, somebody who read the entry. I'd like to know where you're getting the idea that the memories formed by the Endless do not develop them. In fact, we're demonstrated quite the opposite, several times, as the dozen or so characters we interact with there change merely by meeting us. The most glaring counter-point to your claim would be Cahciua, no? But I'm willing to entertain the idea this might be true—if you can cite the part of the story where the Endless do not develop based on new experiences.

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Actually, the counter-point to my argument is Sphene. Not Cahciua.
But Sphene is an anomaly in comparison, as to genuinely be able to enact under these new memories (recent ones), she had to erase past memories to get rid of her inhibition to perform her primary directive.
Any new memory an Endless receives is stored inside themselves, compiled, and still performed as the person would based on the data received out of them. That is what we say, not the other way around, those people do not develop as living ones.
We did not have enough exposition on Cahciua to argue she changed, for all principles, she didn't. As Erenville even argued in his hurtful rant how she was deciding things for everyone.
That was already a trait of her personality that complied with the memories, and since we are talking with Ghosts, it is important to keep in mind they live in the past and only by what they know.
And after new experiences quieted past grievances or any left out unfinished business, they feel at peace and capable of departing.

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Originally Posted by Eyrilona

I think the key thing to observe here is, there is room for things to be different in different expansion to an extent. But not the fundamentals. You can't have a new Sherlock Holmes story where Sherlock is suddenly a bumbling fool constantly being rescued by his clever assistant Watson, even if the idea of a bumbling inspector with a competent helper can in its own right be good standalone story material. Those things do not make sense, you are going to get complaints from people who bought your story because it had promised a continuation of a story universe they know and love, and if you are not consistent with that, then you have sold your story on a false premise.

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That's an entire character, though? I disagree with this analogy, since it'd be more akin to G'raha suddenly being written as a cannibal than a potential oversight on even the reader's end here, since I don't necessarily agree with the postulation that there's a true inconsistency to begin with (just that I, personally, don't really care /that/ much even if there was)

Like, if I had to guess I would presume that what separates Endless from everything else marked as "Alive" is just the "soul" part of the equation. Endless don't have that. They're more like Primals, like Garuda, in the sense that they are memories projected outwards in a constructed facsimile. Or akin to Amaurot, which is the narrative parallel, which was another "Living Memory" in a manner of speaking. And the story is often extremely harsh to the concept of "Eternity". It never really puts prospects of being "eternal" in a positive light, usually it opts to look at the concept as: foolish, anathema to life itself, fruitless, a regression of Life in the context of apotheosis, or a Hell in Waiting for stylings of Salvation. Throw in the, Endless' case, that their supposed afterlife subsists off present temporal life, and that's the sort of point being reiterated again.

But, that's just with regards to the notion of an inconsistency. And, the framework and message of the story goes back to the original post I made with regards to how I perceived this specific storyline as not really... about killing beings that are alive, but instead, helping them pass on from the eternity they've been forced into by a false god that can't let go. And overall, I felt this theme to be very clear, very obvious, and I don't actually feel like there's a true inconsistency at least with how the fictional world denotes things. Could they have written a much lengthier, in depth narrative and explored the notion of "What does it mean, to be 'Alive'?" Sure, but they didn't, and had they in this section I don't think they'd have the time to develop that through to any satisfying direction. They chose to continue the parallels to older expansion stories, with Wuk Lamat predominately as the WoL proxy for the small parallels.

Arguing whether or not a fully fleshed out, choice making Artificial Intelligence is alive or not in like, the real world, or utilizing real world concepts to apply them to a fantasy world that inherently breaks them, is whatever to me -- I'm not interested in that kind of discussion, since I feel like it's a discussion better to have in the framework of the real world, and not a fictional one, and it's ultimately not really the point being made by the narrative.

I would kill Wuk Lamat and would have helped Sphene find a solution. Sphene was a better leader anyways.

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Originally Posted by OMGJesuis66

Actually, the counter-point to my argument is Sphene. Not Cahciua.
But Sphene is an anomaly in comparison, as to genuinely be able to enact under these new memories (recent ones), she had to erase past memories to get rid of her inhibition to perform her primary directive.
Any new memory an Endless receives is stored inside themselves, compiled, and still performed as the person would based on the data received out of them. That is what we say, not the other way around, those people do not develop as living ones.
We did not have enough exposition on Cahciua to argue she changed, for all principles, she didn't. As Erenville even argued in his hurtful rant how she was deciding things for everyone.
That was already a trait of her personality that complied with the memories, and since we are talking with Ghosts, it is important to keep in mind they live in the past and only by what they know.
And after new experiences quieted past grievances or any left out unfinished business, they feel at peace and capable of departing.

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Except Sphene isn't an Endless. She's an amalgamation artificially made by Preservation. This was stated quite explicitly. She is not the memories extracted from a soul and stored for later use.
Anyway, if your litmus test for 'change' is 'acting like a completely different person', then by that metric Wuk Lamat never changes. Should I then consider Wuk Lamat to not be alive, given that Ultima Thule has established a soul is not necessary for life?

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Originally Posted by Rowde

One of the major issues is that the story we as the players were presented with actively contradicts itself. Through Cahcuia it tells us one thing, then shows us another through the MSQ and Side Quests across the zone. If the "people" in the zone are merely facsimiles, AI constructs, then why are we encouraged to engage with or "help" them at all? They shouldn't matter at that point. A lot of the naysayers like to present the scenario of turning off an electronic device, well... let me ask you this: Before you turn off your electronic devices do you first make sure they were happy with the tasks they completed today? Do you try to make sure your electronic devices are comfortable before you shut them down for the evening? Do you lay them down gently on a pillow?

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Kindness, I guess. Regardless of them still being simple constructs, they were still constructs of someone's else soul. And not being allowed to rest until their unresolved business is settled.
It is not really different than a wandering spirit if we are to use many different media portraying ghosts around the world.
Adding to that, Deadwalk is a perfect example of what could happen if unresolved business and lack of Aether is also left unattended. Everything we fight there were Endless and turned into monsters because they were Ghosts.

Also, regarding possible solutions tied to sidequests? You are not wrong. MSQ always avoids trying to bring sidequests into it, which is a massive shame.
Want a good example of why this was obnoxious, in the Endwalker patches? The being of primordial Light, Eden, could be transported with the assistance of Ryne and Gaia to the 13th when we were to face Zeromus.
Use the being of Primordial Light against the Primordial Darkness and by that clash allow the 13th to start to restore itself.
And that without mentioning the two former Warriors of Light from the 13th that now reside in the First, one being part of the Trial Quests of Heavensward and has a complicated name to type, and the other being the Waitress Elezen.
None of them were mentioned or even brought over a topic that genuinely would've mattered to them because all of it is side-content and they cannot force players to do side-content unless they make it obligatory.

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Originally Posted by AlysCamoa

Except Sphene isn't an Endless. She's an amalgamation artificially made by Preservation. This was stated quite explicitly. She is not the memories extracted from a soul and stored for later use.
Anyway, if your litmus test for 'change' is 'acting like a completely different person', then by that metric Wuk Lamat never changes. Should I then consider Wuk Lamat to not be alive, given that Ultima Thule has established a soul is not necessary for life?

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Sphene is an Endless. They extracted her memories and soul to be able to make such an amalgamation.
That is explicitly spoken and even has NPC dialogue in her own erased memories talking about how they were capable of preserving her Soul.
Your second rhetoric is not a point of conversation, it would lead us to a very silly tangent about Wuk Lamat that I have no interest in jumping on. But to properly explain what I meant, is that newfound memories for those beings do not have an impact on themselves. They are data, they get new data, store it, and respond accordingly to present and past data, much like an AI.
They aren't doing actual introspection or personal growth as a living being, they are just adapting to their surroundings.

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Originally Posted by Alaray

What you describe, with details clashing diegetically, is inevitable (and to be fair, the potential discrepancy here isn't congruent to the over-exaggerated "what if" scenario). It's in almost every story you can pick up, every world ever imagined: nothing is perfectly consistent, there is always an inconsistency somewhere. It is what it is, and for all I know, the Ultima Thule shades have something different at their core, but I don't need to really care if that is true or not true to understand what the Living Memory story is trying to communicate.

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I mean, sure, inconsistencies will show up with sufficient scrutiny on most- if not all- media. But there are degrees to this, and degrees to what you might tolerate on a work.
I would not be able to accept a LotR sequel where anyone could bribe your way, with influence and money, to the Undying Lands and it actually works, because such a retcon uproots so much of the themes and fundamental lore of that world that it's irreconcilable with the past work. It can exist, people can love it, but I feel it would aggressively undermine the established framework. If you require this to communicate your narrative, then it's either unsuited for that world and should be released in a different world, or you should preserve the message while abiding by the existing lore.
XIV requires more malleability because it's not designed with an ending in mind- and I feel this makes it even more critical to have some pillars that cannot be shaken, a solid foundation that cannot be undermined.
To me, personally, it starts being progressively hard to be invested in a world where, essentially, anything goes. No rule is sacred, anything can be randomly twisted or undone. If we don't abide by some core principles, nothing prevents a patch 9.0 where we suddenly decide that some of the dragons aren't really alive and we go fight them ignoring all the previous history of making peace with them, or anything to that effect.

I think the funniest part is that I don't even care that much for the Endless in a vacuum. I didn't feel particularly bad about shutting them down (I didn't feel anything for most of DT), especially with the context of their incompatibility with life on the Source, but I definitely think that many issues surrounding their existence, such as the question if they were alive in some capacity, warrant discussion and are just ignored or quickly glossed over. My problem is that I feel what's presented to me might conflict with was presented before.
(And I may be wrong, but aren't the Endless powered by aether when they re-manifest anyway? It's all very murky)

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Originally Posted by OMGJesuis66

They are data, they get new data, store it, and respond accordingly to present and past data, much like an AI. They aren't doing actual introspection or personal growth as a living being, they are just adapting to their surroundings.

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Much like an AI you say? Defined so broadly, that also sounds like how all life on Earth goes about things, us humans included. And how can you say they are not doing introspection when they clearly integrate new experiences with their existing body of experience? Moreover, they literally reflect on the nature of their own existence! Even if the story only lets them do it to have them reassure us they are fine with being turned off, that sure sounds like introspection to me.

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Originally Posted by Rowde

One of the major issues is that the story we as the players were presented with actively contradicts itself. Through Cahcuia it tells us one thing, then shows us another through the MSQ and Side Quests across the zone. If the "people" in the zone are merely facsimiles, AI constructs, then why are we encouraged to engage with or "help" them at all? They shouldn't matter at that point. A lot of the naysayers like to present the scenario of turning off an electronic device, well... let me ask you this: Before you turn off your electronic devices do you first make sure they were happy with the tasks they completed today? Do you try to make sure your electronic devices are comfortable before you shut them down for the evening? Do you lay them down gently on a pillow?

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In-game, we were attempting to connect with them and remember them because their own people have had their memories wiped of them. One of the themes of the expansion's story was that someone isn't truly dead until no one remembers them.

Out-of-game, we needed padding for the final zone and lore dumps and this is what they gave us.


The philosophical debate is meaningless because we were told in no uncertain terms that what the Alexandrians were doing was wrong multiple times starting as soon as we met them in Heritage Found.

What the Alexandrians were doing with the Endless is no different from what Edda and Nybeth Obdilord were doing. It has nothing to do with "what is consciousness?", "what is alive?", or anything to do with NieR: Automata and everything to do with people raising the spirits of the dead. The only differences are that the Endless were produced in a factory and have a semblance of free will instead of being souls brought into shambling corpses.

I'd be more willing to take your side if the Endless weren't taken from actual spiritual parts of dead people in order to pursue an endless undeath. If they were life spawned in a digital machine like Tron Legacy, that would be something entirely different but we're talking about actual people who had lives and then died and instead of returning to the natural cycle of death and rebirth that has been a part of the world since before the Ancients, they cast that aside and have the components of their whole aether artificially ripped apart and deposited into a machine to dream a happy "life" for eternity and live off the souls of others.

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Originally Posted by Eyrilona

Much like an AI you say? Defined so broadly, that also sounds like how all life on Earth goes about things, us humans included. And how can you say they are not doing introspection when they clearly integrate new experiences with their existing body of experience? Moreover, they literally reflect on the nature of their own existence! Even if the story only lets them do it to have them reassure us they are fine with being turned off, that sure sounds like introspection to me.

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I mean, as far as modern science knows, our consciousness seems to be an emergent phenomena that primarily arises from the pattern recognition our brains do... while I, personally, feel we're centuries away from creating any real artificial consciousness, regarding what happens in fiction, the parallel can certainly be drawn with a lot of merit.

I explained it in the same sentence. Data being compiled.

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Originally Posted by OMGJesuis66

Sphene is an Endless. They extracted her memories and soul to be able to make such an amalgamation.
That is explicitly spoken and even has NPC dialogue in her own erased memories talking about how they were capable of preserving her Soul.
Your second rhetoric is not a point of conversation, it would lead us to a very silly tangent about Wuk Lamat that I have no interest in jumping on. But to properly explain what I meant, is that newfound memories for those beings do not have an impact on themselves. They are data, they get new data, store it, and respond accordingly to present and past data, much like an AI.
They aren't doing actual introspection or personal growth as a living being, they are just adapting to their surroundings.

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I get new data that you claim the Endless don't develop based off of new data, and am now forced to evaluate it: do I accept this new data as true, or false? I weigh the evidence in favor of your claim: you have furnished none, so there is none. I now reject your data as false. I continue on in the manner I did prior. Under your framework, I have undergone no change, and therefore am merely a LLM incapable of new experience, only base replication of prior experience. This further weights my decision to reject your claim, as following your logic to its conclusion proves how illogical it is. So, I reject your claim again; now I'm an AI twice over. Neat, isn't it?

Again, I'll ask you to cite your claim that Sphene fits under the Endless framework. Here, I'll demonstrate what that means: in quest #91, 'Those Who Live Forever', Cahciua states that the Sphene we meet is an ideal brought to life by Preservation, utilizing the memories of Sphene's love for her people. Wuk then mentions an original Sphene, and Cahciua calls the current Sphene created. Despite Cahciua being previously established by the story to be an unreliable source of information, this claim can be evaluated against other statements: Otis mentions in quest #81, 'Memories of a Knight', that the Queen's soul was stored for a considerable amount of time before extraction technology was working, and Sphene herself treats her living memories as an 'other'. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to draw the conclusion that Sphene- as we know her- is a facsimile purpose-made by Preservation to provide the personality and face for their system. Sphene is not like the other Endless, much like the Otis we meet in Living Memory is not like the other Endless; so to call them Endless confuses the definition when discussing the monolithic group of Endless her were made by extracting the original memories in whole from the soul, and placing those original memories on new aether. Whether Living Memory Otis and Sphene are alive is a topic best discusses separately from whether the Endless are alive, because the context of their existence is different.

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Originally Posted by AlysCamoa

-snip-

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We will see in a couple of years when they give us the Unending Codex of Sphene and state she's an Endless, I guess.
I do not really have the interest to convince you from anything beyond your own personal claims, there is the actual point I was trying to bring over that such denizens are indeed not alive in any sort or manner.
Which they aren't. But you can advocate as much as you would like that they are. I personally find it fascinating that people do feel capable of bringing such questioning and even stand by the fact they are alive.

But, to entertain you:

Ideal brought to life = Endless (They are brought back to life as their ideal form akin to the happiest moment of their life, based on Preservation software calculations).
Original Sphene, Dead. Current Sphene Created = Endless.
Otis's information states that the first one which Preservation worked on storing soul and memory, was Sphene, which puts her as a 'prototype', if you prefer. Otis as it came to be, is an alpha version. Technology develops over time to achieve perfection, therefore it makes sense that those are the initial developments of Endless. But version 0.0.1 is still the same software as version 10.0.0.
Sphene did have a directive given to her akin to her process, which was the preservation of Alexandria. Primary function as spoken, and again it falls back that she had to erase prior memories to pursue such directive.

Much of it is just conjecture and interpretation of how the narrative unfolded, I guess. I did think it was very on the nose all that they had written, but, people can believe in what they want.
I, for one in the philosophical stance, believe that if you add humanity to an inanimate something, it will carry over such humanity even for others. But it does not change from them being inanimate something if that makes sense.
Anywho, I have Arcadium to go slap and try to farm that Orchestron Roll.

Have fun.

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Originally Posted by OMGJesuis66

I explained it in the same sentence. Data being compiled.

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Very well. Prove to me that you are not an AI, are alive, and have free will. I will be allowed to use all the arguments you yourself have used in this thread, against you.

To raise the stakes -- if you actually manage to find a way to prove these things, you can send a copy of your post to the Berggruen Institute because you'd have a really good chance at that $1.000.000 prize of theirs.

Their form is based off of the calculations of their own memory, which is demonstrably animate aether, but hey, they're definitely just a rock we drew a smiley face on.
None of the Endless (Endless 10.0, if you will) are merely some 'ideal' brought to life. They are their own memories given new aether to take shape with. Under the in-universe framework of the soul (remember that Codex entry you read?) the soul is separated from its memories in the lifestream, with memories fading into oblivion while the soul is reused. The soul retains no memories, save those of sufficient weight/importance that they are engraved onto it (remember job stones? or Emet's starbursts?). Thus, a soul is not the totality of a given life; rather, it carries on copied fragments of prior lives as it gets tethered to new flesh. (Copied is, admittedly, pure conjecture. Who was the copy? The Exarch crystalized at the top of the tower, or the G'raha we're currently traveling with?) So, it follows that if memory is extracted in whole from the soul, and preserved to be put on new aether, the person is preserved.
You presented the point that the people of Living Memory weren't alive in any sort or manner, and failed to offer any evidence to support it. So, much like an AI, I fear that I must use this data to reject your claims as false, and will not change myself accordingly. Beep-boop.

So... we treated the reconstructed memories of Lahabrea and Elidibus in Anabaseios as actual people but the endless aren't real? Isn't Cachuia's ability to think for herself enough to leave Living Memory to go outside and lead Oblivion not proof enough of sentience? A chatgpt program wouldn't do something like that.

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Originally Posted by Karious

So... we treated the reconstructed memories of Lahabrea and Elidibus in Anabaseios as actual people but the endless aren't real? Isn't Cachuia's ability to think for herself enough to leave Living Memory to go outside and lead Oblivion not proof enough of sentience? A chatgpt program wouldn't do something like that.

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Cachuia didn't leave Living Memory, she controlled a robot from inside Living Memory and the robot left. Just like how Nostalgia does the same thing in reverse later on when she controls a robot from the Source and pilots it in the reflection. Cachuia and the other Endless are bound to the terminals. I believe Sphene was bound to the main terminal as well but possessed robot bodies in a similar, but more elaborate method with electrope projections.

Even if they're more than programs, they're still undead. Would Edda raising her dead fiance be OK then if she was more successful and he had self-awareness? If Sphene were casting spells over the graves of Alexandria's deceased and binding their spirits to her own playground instead of doing it all in a factory, would that still be OK to you? That's exactly what's being done here though the methods are different.

The Endless can't propagate themselves either. They are just the spirits of the dead and their population only increases by adding more dead, the memories of whom are erased from the living. They can't even make more of them like robots. At least the Ultima Thule beings can still make babies. The Endless lived a sad long existence as Sphene's undead pets in a dream world that's all smoke and mirrors. They don't even have enough aether in their own bodies to turn a fountain back on and depended on us to fix it. Consciousness is at the mercy of the system deciding whether or not you get a body at any given moment and then you just get put back in later on anyway. If they run out of aether like the people in the neighborhoods that were lost due to Sphene's failed fusion attempt, they turn into monsters.

Turning the terminals off was a mercy. People weren't meant to live forever and hopefully if the soul-fuel system isn't like Hydaelyn's, the people used up in the machine can reincarnate later on after entering the lifestream. Keeping them "alive" in that place would've been gross.