Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[Scarletelf]

I see your point and looking at it outside of them being a simulacrum of life. We interact with these citIzens and they’re fleshed out, we empathize with them, we feel for them. I think in the end if it wasn’t a necessity we just wouldn’t be able to stop her. But it does help that every endless you meet is cool with it. They knew this special time, this eternity wouldn’t last, and they’re grateful they were given an opportunity to get their happy ending. Everyone you interact with is okay with the terminals stopping, in fact it is only sphene who isn’t okay, and whether it’s her programming or her heart that bleeds for her people. She is the only one who is wanting her people to stay in this eternity. It’s bittersweet and tragic for sure, but all of the msq/side quests are telling you that they’re content with it ending. They are self-aware and know that they are only memories, but even so they cherished this opportunity to be given a temporary chance.

[Kiarin]

I see many people responding with an an argument "they are only projections of already dead people, so shutting them off is not morally evil".

I agree to that and don't argue. As I wrote, most likely Endless are just glorified chatbots, so shutting them off is objectively not more evil than deleting a game from your PC. Most likely, as we cannot be 100% about their nature, since many things about aether and souls are vague in ff14.

However that misses the main point of my argument: evil or not, we simply don't have neither authority nor legitimacy nor right to do as we please in Sphene's kingdom. Even if existence of Endless is in the end harmful, as long as Sphene doesn't use outside souls for her system, we have no right to intervene. What we have is the right to stop her from threatening souls outside, by force if needed. Erasing Endless within their bubble, however, is an internal affair, a decision that must be done by local legitimate authority, not by us, a hostile outside force.
And if we say that we allowed ourselves do to as we please in Sphene's realm because of situation in extremis, that makes us somewhat of a war criminals, since we were targeting civilians which has no direct effect on stopping Sphene here and now.

[Daralii]

Theoretically speaking, would it have been possible to relocate the recreations and the hardware containing the memories to Ultima Thule to remove the necessity for soul vampirism? They share a lot of the same concepts as Meteion's museum pieces, but those are all given form and maintained by the inexhaustible dyanamis.

[Cach]

Everything surrounding The Endless felt nonsensical and inconsistent which made it difficult for me to care. Not to mention that coming up with these complex sci-fi elements and just slap you with them at the last 1/4 of the story made it felt rushed and very shallow.

I don't want to write an essay, so I'll just boil down my opinion to two points:

You either:
1- Committed genocide with barely a question or objection. Refused to explore any other venue.
2- Were forced to go through pointless, hollow melodrama during the last moments of the game. After all they're all "fakes that deserve to die", a giant waste of time.

Gotta pick one.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I see many people responding with an an argument "they are only projections of already dead people, so shutting them off is not morally evil".

I agree to that and don't argue. As I wrote, most likely Endless are just glorified chatbots, so shutting them off is objectively not more evil than deleting a game from your PC. Most likely, as we cannot be 100% about their nature, since many things about aether and souls are vague in ff14.

However that misses the main point of my argument: evil or not, we simply don't have neither authority nor legitimacy nor right to do as we please in Sphene's kingdom. Even if existence of Endless is in the end harmful, as long as Sphene doesn't use outside souls for her system, we have no right to intervene. What we have is the right to stop her from threatening souls outside, by force if needed. Erasing Endless within their bubble, however, is an internal affair, a decision that must be done by local legitimate authority, not by us, a hostile outside force.
And if we say that we allowed ourselves do to as we please in Sphene's realm because of situation in extremis, that makes us somewhat of a war criminals, since we were targeting civilians which has no direct effect on stopping Sphene here and now.

Sphene was in the process of attempting to dimensionally fuse the shards (where the endless memory was with the source), she then would kill people on the source for their souls to power living memory.

She was actively attempting to kill everyone on the source to preserve the living memories (digital data and projections) of her soulless dead citizens.

Her entire purpose, as modified by the organization (probably ironically named Preservation) who preserved her memories, is to preserve the endless.

That's why we couldn't convince her otherwise. She was programmed to do so.

[Espon]

To me, the Endless are the equivalent to AI chatbots that we see today. They're not actually real people despite how much they act like it, they're just recreations based on memories. The man meeting in love after death did not truly happen because their lives did not continue on after death in the living memory, it's just a recreation based on their memories to create a what-if. Also notice that none of the Endless seem to plea with you to not shut them down, even the ones that linger on with unfinished business. It's like they know they're life has long since ended and some even encourage you to shut them down or help them with their final desire so they can disappear. The only exception is Sphene, where her created purpose was to keep the Endless going. It's even said that the real Sphene likely would of never wanted any of this.

Keep in mind of the consequences of what would happen if we didn't stop Sphene. The Endless need the souls of the living to continue to exist, and for every soul taken Sphene thinks she's doing them a service by turning them into an Endless as well. It's an exponentially increasing problem that will require more and more souls to sustain. Even though Zoraal Ja lead the attack on Tuliyollal, Sphere was completely complicit in it. And it's not like we did not try to reason with her. We really did, but she absolutely refused to negotiate. Even in her final moments when Wuk Lamat was calling out to her, she did not give in.

[Randomer169]

We had no legitimacy to break in and shut it down. We had no right to interfere in Doma or Ala Mhigo. The WoL is a wandering vigilante, and sometimes that's what the world needs. A lot of horrific things were done with authority and legitimacy. Paperwork shouldn't be enough to justify allowing an atrocity to continue.

[MikkoAkure]

However that misses the main point of my argument: evil or not, we simply don't have neither authority nor legitimacy nor right to do as we please in Sphene's kingdom. Even if existence of Endless is in the end harmful, as long as Sphene doesn't use outside souls for her system, we have no right to intervene. What we have is the right to stop her from threatening souls outside, by force if needed. Erasing Endless within their bubble, however, is an internal affair, a decision that must be done by local legitimate authority, not by us, a hostile outside force.
And if we say that we allowed ourselves do to as we please in Sphene's realm because of situation in extremis, that makes us somewhat of a war criminals, since we were targeting civilians which has no direct effect on stopping Sphene here and now.

And Sphene didn't have the authority to transplant her country into a different plane of existence, steal the land of a different country and absorb the population into hers while eliminating most of their culture, and then making a surprise war on the nation she stole from and killing its citizens in order to power her dead. Alexandria is the hostile force here, they killed Tuliyollal's civilians in a targeted attack with no warning. The Endless aren't a culture, they're not a society, and they're not citizens. They're the projections of people who have already died and were being used as a reason to plunder all of reality of souls that aren't Alexandrian. The country of Alexandria STILL EXISTS with LIVING PEOPLE, but all everyone seems to care about is the country's overcomplicated graveyard and how it made them sad.

Any argument that "this is a them issue" is rendered moot when they are the ones who came here and brought others into their problems. They're the outsiders from a different reflection. The idea that we needed to go through proper local laws and regulations and ambassadorial bureaucracy in order to shut off the machine powering dead people from a hostile nation that is attempting to take our souls is insane.

The Endless don't even care. One NPC you can talk to is fully aware of Sphene's plan but is apathetic as to whether or not it succeeds. We go in and shut down terminals very slowly one-by-one and no one does anything or raises a voice in protest. You'd think if they had a problem, there would be more Endless left over after the terminals shut off if they had a strong enough connection, but the only ones left just wanted to make sure that books are returned to a library or had other unfinished business.

[Astronis]

And Sphene didn't have the authority to transplant her country into a different plane of existence, steal the land of a different country and absorb the population into hers while eliminating most of their culture, and then making a surprise war on the nation she stole from and killing its citizens in order to power her dead. Alexandria is the hostile force here, they killed Tuliyollal's civilians in a targeted attack with no warning. The Endless aren't a culture, they're not a society, and they're not citizens. They're the projections of people who have already died and were being used as a reason to plunder all of reality of souls that aren't Alexandrian. The country of Alexandria STILL EXISTS with LIVING PEOPLE, but all everyone seems to care about is the country's overcomplicated graveyard and how it made them sad.

Indeed, there are lots of living Alexandrians, some with aether-imbalance disorders that aetheroligists on the Source are well-equipped to deal with. Now that Alexandria isn't waging a war to power their very pleasant and friendly soul-eating zombie collection, we can get to tending to the actually alive Alexandrians!

[SDaemon]

We had no legitimacy to break in and shut it down. We had no right to interfere in Doma or Ala Mhigo. The WoL is a wandering vigilante, and sometimes that's what the world needs. A lot of horrific things were done with authority and legitimacy. Paperwork shouldn't be enough to justify allowing an atrocity to continue.

You can't really gloss over the fact that Sphene is the aggressor in the situation and that defending yourself from an entity that seeks to wipe out all life in your world gives you ample reason to break in and stop them. Especially when said aggressor refuses any attempts at diplomacy.