Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[CaptainLagbeard]

The Endless aren't really people.
They're constructs based off of the memories and personalities of people.
They're essentially a machine with perfect knowledge of a person impersonating them.


But if you want an actual question about ethics regards to Alexandria, there's the removal of memories about dead people.
Is completely removing a person's entire existence right just to keep people happy?

[Alaray]

I interpreted that entire section as:

Rogue facsimile of a dead leader left with an imperative to sustain a "Living" world populated with what were, effectively (and heavily implied to be analogous to), ghosts of the living and that the protagonists' collective set of actions were done to send off the "Living" Endless as one may ritualistically do for spirits, ghosts, etc... symbolically letting them move on by having them finish a cornerstone moment there. And, the blackened electrope hearkened back to the sepulchers that the Yok Hui create to commemorate the dead.

Some of the aetheryte quests felt heavy handed with that idea - especially when I did them on Reaper, unintentionally.

After all, it is an entire area built from a misunderstanding about the idea of "preserving" memories of people, and the actions of that Preservation group ultimately mishandled those who had died by creating stitched together mnemonic copies who were only projected shadows on the wall (not really dissimilar, in a way, to the Hythlodaeus and other shades in Emet Selch's fake Amaurot). And, part of the theme of this section is the acceptance of an End, paralleling in contrast to Meteion's belief of salvation in annihilation.

And, a part of me liked the choice for an amusement park design for the space. The "one last good day," bit comes to mind and the reminder that playing on the playground, eventually, comes to an end. There is no magic utopia where everyone gets to play on the playground, forever.

At least, that was my takeaway I suppose.

[Evergrey]

The Endless aren't really people.
They're constructs based off of the memories and personalities of people.
They're essentially a machine with perfect knowledge of a person impersonating them.


But if you want an actual question about ethics regards to Alexandria, there's the removal of memories about dead people.
Is completely removing a person's entire existence right just to keep people happy?

Seeing how most are OK with the choice of reporting others if they express any criticism over others gameplay then yeah, if others can be silenced so that the rest can stay happy that's the right choice. /s

[Gortys]

I think the people who complain about this are genuine speedreaders.
The endless are effectively ghosts, they are algorithms and data based on living people, and are not alive, never have been, never will be. Not even all of the "endless" are properly in a state of revival at any given moment, and Living Memory has so many parts of it that are rundown and not even functional anymore.
The whole point of Sphene's character is she can't let go. Not of the past, not of the people who are long past. Death is the natural order of things, so keeping people alive has an obvious drain on those still living.
I have seen people try to say like "Oh, the creatures in Ultima Thule are actual living beings" and you know that is 100% a special case due to Meteion's enormous amounts of dynamis at play.
There is no ethics problem with ending the endless. These people are already dead. We're just allowing them to pass on. Cahciua spends the entire Living Memory segment of the MSQ HAMMERING this fact into your head.

The reason I have no issues Alt-F4'ing Sphene and Living Memory is because of this. So I don't believe they are alive, but I also don't see them as being dead. They literally show the crown at the end which is said to be her own resonator and implied to be special somehow. I'm not sure how in this game people can know this and assume that these beings, AI's, etc won't "return" in some way.

Also, imagine being okay with Sphene being a colonizer and essentially making the living slaves of the Endless.

[Eyrilona]

To all the, "They are not alive so I don't see the problem" people --

If you say that there is not a moral quandary, and you are immediately contradicted by dozens of people arguing with you that there is one.. then there is one. You can not dismiss someone arguing morality of something by saying there is no morality argument to be had. You are literally experiencing the morality argument being had!

[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.

Please avoid the "soul-sucking bots" tangent- I don't think anyone is saying that, when push comes to shove, the WoL/scions aren't justified in putting down the existential threat to the Source. Of course they are, the Endless had to die for the Source to live.
The question is, in the process of saving the Source, were we forced to destroyed a mindless simulation of philosophical zombies, or were actual lives- even if fundamentally different from ours- destroyed?
This is a question worth pondering and could greatly strengthen the plot.

But, of course, it's much easier to go "did you not read the story?! Evil soul-sucking chatbots evil and not alive!!!" than realize that the question being posed is profound and almost impossible to answer, so that shade of doubt endures in our minds.
(Could be a great setup for future patches too... but I already know it's wasted)

[Karkarov]

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.

Right. And do you have any idea how many bs plot holes they had to create to do that and just hand wave it with no explanation? The very "totally real person" you are talking about claims the computer intentionally creates events because they think the simulacrum would want them to happen. They also tell you point blank the endless can't leave living memory period, can't taste real food, can't mature past whatever their memories had them at, they clearly can't reproduce, and they no longer have souls. Souls being a very real thing in the world of FF14.

The writing of this expansion is crap. They desperately want you to care about the enless, while also telling you the endless are just computer simulations and not real people. Good writing would have chosen one route and stuck to it, they chose the lazy way of having your cake and eating it too without taking ownership of any of the obvious plot holes this created. In the end cold reality, I turned off a server and the vast majority of the endless vanished. And thus they are not real people, you can't delete real people by turning a computer off. Not even the Omicrons.

[Gortys]

To all the, "They are not alive so I don't see the problem" people --

If you say that there is not a moral quandary, and you are immediately contradicted by dozens of people arguing with you that there is one.. then there is one. You can not dismiss someone arguing morality of something by saying there is no morality argument to be had. You are literally experiencing the morality argument being had!

So there is no moral quandary with letting them continue to essentially colonize and enslave people to harvest souls? I think there is a moral quandary on both sides and that was intended, but if you can't acknowledge it is on both sides of the issues then you are no better.

[Magikazam]

The Endless aren't really people.
They're constructs based off of the memories and personalities of people.
They're essentially a machine with perfect knowledge of a person impersonating them.

The Omicron aren't really people.
They're constructs with uploaded memories and personalities of people.
They're essentially a machine with perfect knowledge of a person impersonating them.

We should have killed them all, after all those warmonger killed god know how many species just to evolve and prove they are better than other species.

[AddictedToWitches]

I don't want to veer into a "death of the author" tirade, but this type of argument from scripture has nothing to do with what most people are discussing.
Patch 7.1 could come out and tell me that all the beast tribes aren't really alive/conscious and, by necessity of the plot, killing them all off would be ok, and I'd still question this, especially in the face of what's been portrayed before. Even if that's what the writer thinks is true and intended to be transmitted, it's not what their work actually portrays in practice when viewed by most people (I think the author didn't put thought into anything and just made a cheap copy of Amaurot with AI instead of Ancients, honestly).
I'm not even definitely on the camp that the Endless are alive- I don't know what qualifies as "being alive" or what consciousness is, in XIV or irl- but that's why it's a subject of discussion. It honestly feels unnatural that the scions, scholars and brilliant people who are known to be curious, don't spend any time considering this.
It's like we ran into some alien machine that seems sapient/creative/conscious/self-aware and we don't wonder if it's alive or not, if it's like us or not.
For the purpose of the plot, it doesn't matter because the Source was under an existential threat and they had to be destroyed, but that doesn't immediately imply that they were alive or not, or what does it means to be alive. The game glosses this over with a lot of levity.
This rings hollow especially after Shadowbringers, where this is explored in detail with the duality of the Ancients compared to the Sundered souls, and a bit more in EW with the phantasms in the Ultima Thule, Omega and Alpha- which is what many people are drawing comparisons to.

So your argument is despite it making sense in the way it was written. . . you don't like it and think it's still unethical.
I mean, you can dislike the writing sure but this is next level cope.