Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[OMGJesuis66]

-snip-

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.

[Eyrilona]

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

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.

[AlysCamoa]

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.

[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.

[MikkoAkure]

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.

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.

[Jeeqbit]

Our actions in Living Memory seem morally wrong.
We don't hold any authority in Sphene's kingdom and don't have the right to wander around switching off parts of her realm as we please.

She doesn't have the right to wander into our realm and steal our souls. So we went and fought back. That's how wars work...

Besides, it was explained that all of them were originally from the Source. Thus, they are in fact under our jurisdiction.

Our jurisdiction because the Warrior of Light has effectively solidified their position as the most important person on the Source.

Why we do even have to erase them instead of just shutting the system down?

Because she was trying to use the archived data apparently, to create something awful. And she could have potentially tried to make the worst ones appear or something like that. Action needed to be relatively quick to prevent this sort of advantage.

when the fight with Robo-Sphene starts and she talks again about protecting her precious Endless, why couldn't anyone tell her - sorry, lady, we just erased all of them, so you don't have the reason to fight anymore?

I don't think this would have made a difference. It was clarified that this was not really sphene, but her essence. An essence that has a motive that the real version of her may have been more reasonable about. This was actually clarified. What this means is that no matter what you would say to her, she was not going to change course, because she is programmed to do this... even if she has nobody left to protect.

[Bright-Flower]

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."

You were saying that the Pelu Pelu are stand ins for jews, that the disease the giants encountered during their conquest was somehow a parallel to the Nazi invasion of Russia, and that Living Memory is saying white people are expendable because most npcs there are fair skinned, ignoring that that's just a general trend in the game at large for the more human races. And then here, you made ups tuff about how Alexandria is somehow doomed despite the MSQ not indicating this at all.

Yes, you are paranoid. Yes, you are reading too much into stuff.

[ArcaviusGreyashe]

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.

Y'all are still missing the point.

If your existence only depends on sucking other peoples' lives, destroying them from all planes of existence, slowly but endlessly voiding the aethereal sea, especially at a ratio of "a lot to expand your life a tiny bit more", it doesn't matter whether you are alive. You are a nuisance, and a greater evil to the world than people putting an end to your selfish existence.

Your whole argument may be interesting, but it's unrelated to the living memory ethics issue, really.

[Turtledeluxe]

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.

That's cool, it doesn't matter if they are alive or not. That's not how questionable ethics are determined. Anything else you need or just trolling at this point and trying to compare real human existence to a fictional story with rules established by humans?

We also didn't turn off the Sphene in the main story or the Otis in the main story. We turned off a Sphene created in the trial, per the script, who concedes that her existence is dependent on the Meso Terminal. Otis obviously dies in combat. Can't remember who was talking about that but it's irrelevant.

[Bright-Flower]

Y'all are still missing the point.

If your existence only depends on sucking other peoples' lives, destroying them from all planes of existence, slowly but endlessly voiding the aethereal sea, especially at a ratio of "a lot to expand your life a tiny bit more", it doesn't matter whether you are alive. You are a nuisance, and a greater evil to the world than people putting an end to your selfish existence.

Your whole argument may be interesting, but it's unrelated to the living memory ethics issue, really.

Exactly. Sphene is the poor man's emet-selch. Where as Emet could conceivably bring his old world and people back in some form at the expense of the current one, all Sphene could do is massacre innocents to keep her digital theme park afterlife running that much longer. Plundering other worlds for souls, because it requires souls and not just aether to power, and not stopping to think about the sustainability issue when she runs out of shards to steal from.

This is not a moral quandry with two valid outcomes, it's a bad situation where we have to do something unpleasant but completely necessary to stop Sphene from going to going to other shards and killing people to steal their souls for battery juice. All the while the number of endless to sustain only grows and grows and grows because she will not or can not let go.