Omicrons and The Endless (Do Endless Dream of Electric Sheep?)

[CuteBucket]

Are the Endless alive? For that matter, are the Omicrons alive? Let's get incredibly granular about it and find out! For something to be considered "alive," it must meet the seven criteria of life. These are, pulling from Wikipedia:

1)Homeostasis: regulation of the internal environment to maintain a constant state. I think an argument could be made that Endless adhere to this, though somewhat abstractly. The Omicrons would also pass this test, as they need to maintain a correct internal environment to function.

2)Organisation: being structurally composed of one or more cells. Endless are composed of aether, so they don't pass this one, unless one wants to argue that aether can be formed into functioning cells. The Omicrons fail this one as well, as they have fully inorganic bodies.

3) Metabolism: transformation of energy. Living things require energy for homeostasis and other activities. While they don't meet the strictest definition because they do not anabolize or catabolize matter, both the Endless and Omicrons do need to take in energy to keep existing, and depriving them of energy would more or less "kill" them.

4)Growth: a growing organism increases in size and structure. The Endless don't meet this criterion nor do the Omicron because they do not start out as a single cell which then divides over and over until it has developed into an organism. They are constructed and built, not born.

5)Adaptation: the evolutionary process whereby an organism becomes better able to live in its habitat. One could argue that the Omicron possess the ability to adapt themselves to new environments, though it seems more artificial than natural. I don't believe anything suggests that the Endless could do this, however.

6) Response to stimuli: Both the Endless and the Omicron pass this one, they have senses that allow them to interact with and react to their environment.

7) Reproduction: the ability to produce new individual organisms, either asexually from a single parent organism or sexually from two parent organisms. We don't know anything about how Omicrons make more Omicrons, but we know they can. Granted, this is probably just a matter of "build more robots" with no DNA involved, and thus they would not qualify. The Endless definitely can't reproduce because they have no DNA to reproduce with. They cannot make more of themselves, they can only wait for more memories to be uploaded and given aether.

So if I'm being very generous, the Omicrons score a 4/7 on the Alive scale and the Endless score a 3/7, making the Omicrons slightly more "alive" than the Endless, though they both don't actually meet the scientific criteria of being alive at all.

[CuteBucket]

BUT WAIT!
FFXIV BONUS CRITERION 8) Presence of a Soul. This is not enough alone to determine if something is "alive" or not, but it seems to be part of the equation in the world of FFXIV. If we are to take Hermes at his word, he says on the matter:
"Tell me─do you know the difference between living beings and arcane entities? It is the presence of a soul. Yet the soul isn't something you can choose to have at will. No, it manifests only in those beings whose forms adhere to the laws of creation. That can endure on their own. Beings that do not fulfill this requirement, such as those spontaneously born of magic or natural phenomena, do not have souls. No matter how much it might resemble flora or fauna, if it lacks a soul, then it is considered an arcane entity. So you see, it is not for mankind to decide what is living. That domain lies beyond our manipulation, and it is hubris to assume otherwise."

What does it mean to adhere to the "laws of creation?" In the context of the quest Lives Apart in Elpis where Hermes says this, it seems to be referring to if the butterflies he's talking about before this bit of dialogue can successfully live and reproduce in their environment. Perhaps the laws of creation are the seven qualities of life as defined by biology. Only then will a soul manifest. The Omicrons once had flesh bodies that met the criteria of life, but found a way to pull their souls out of their meat bodies and become machines instead, but this eventually lead to their undoing. So too did the Ea once have bodies that they abandoned to become...whatever the hell the Ea are, but this too lead to their doom. So is the presence of a soul enough to be considered "alive" barring all the other factors? Is something that meets all the criteria of life but lacks a soul more or less alive than something without a soul? I think an argument could be made that at least some of the Omicrons have souls (it is unclear though), but we are told, flat out, that the Endless do not have souls. That leaves Omicrons at 5/8 and Endless at 3/8. So are they alive or not?

The answer is...

WE DON'T KNOW and we can't know with the information we have because the story and setting is not very clear about its own internal logic! Wow! What an unsatisfying answer!

[Tsumdere]

Even if we came to conclusion that they were alive, their existence posed an imminent threat to our existence. Their survival depended on our extinction. Faced with such a threat, whether they were alive or not becomes irrelevant, and the right thing to do was to shut them down because it ensures our survival, assuming there was no other solution.

I don't think there is many people saying that we should have let the Endless drain the entire universe of life. I really wish people would stop bringing up this point in an attempt to crush any discussion about how Living Memory was written.

What people are saying is that the plotline is messy, poorly explained, contradictory, and easily lends itself to feel more like murder and less like heart-wrenching survival because the characters didn't even try. We are told immediately that the Endless are not worthy of existence or consideration and we're not allowed to question that. Yet, as VoidsentStatus is pointing out with that dialogue, even the characters seem confused on the living/dead status of the Endless so the story can't even get it's own ducks in a row.

If a player believes they are alive or listens to NPCs that treat them as alive, then treating the Endless so flippantly feels very bad.
There is a night and day difference between turning off the Endless with no thought and then playing around in elephant costumes for two hours and turning off the Endless after failing to find a solution to coexistence. Both of these end the same, but the reception and emotional impact would have been much different.

WE DON'T KNOW and we can't know with the information we have because the story and setting is not very clear about its own internal logic! Wow! What an unsatisfying answer!

I'm pretty sure some Omicrons are explicitly stated to not have souls. Both Omega and Alpha didn't start with souls. Alpha gained a soul, but it's unclear if Omega gained one. I think he did. That means some Omicron are more alive than others if they haven't gone through self-actualization apparently.

Regardless of if the Omicron have souls or not, its funny that by the definition of life not even having a soul makes you fully alive in FFXIV. A sliding scale of aliveness is a wild concept and I wish they would have actually explored that instead of what they did.

[Nitelancer]

I don't think there is many people saying that we should have let the Endless drain the entire universe of life. I really wish people would stop bringing up this point in an attempt to crush any discussion about how Living Memory was written.

What people are saying is that the plotline is messy, poorly explained, contradictory, and easily lends itself to feel more like murder and less like heart-wrenching survival because the characters didn't even try. We are told immediately that the Endless are not worthy of existence or consideration and we're not allowed to question that. Yet, as VoidsentStatus is pointing out with that dialogue, even the characters seem confused on the living/dead status of the Endless so the story can't even get it's own ducks in a row.

If a player believes they are alive or listens to NPCs that treat them as alive, then treating the Endless so flippantly feels very bad.
There is a night and day difference between turning off the Endless with no thought and then playing around in elephant costumes for two hours and turning off the Endless after failing to find a solution to coexistence. Both of these end the same, but the reception and emotional impact would have been much different.



I'm pretty sure some Omicrons are explicitly stated to not have souls. Both Omega and Alpha didn't start with souls. Alpha gained a soul, but it's unclear if Omega gained one. I think he did. That means some Omicron are more alive than others if they haven't gone through self-actualization apparently.

Regardless of if the Omicron have souls or not, its funny that by the definition of life not even having a soul makes you fully alive in FFXIV. A sliding scale of aliveness is a wild concept and I wish they would have actually explored that instead of what they did.

I agree with you about the story. I didn't like it at all and found it extremely boring and unengaging. I think the whole thing should be retconned lol. But I didn't bring that point up to crush discussion about the quality of the writing. I was responding to points about whether the endless are alive and whether it was morally right to shut them down. I didn't feel that they were, and I personally didn't feel bad about it.

[Bright-Flower]

While Erenville's mom says that they should be deleted, it feels to me like she's trying to comfort and encourage us to go through with it.

I don't think the game is telling us the Endless didn't matter. If they didn't matter, why gray everything out and leave us with that silence after each section? Why take the time for Wuk to say goodbye to her surrogate mother, for Krile to bond with and say goodbye to her parents? For Erenville and his mom to spend those last fleeting moments together, if she didn't think it actually mattered? Her words and her actions do not line up. And I think this is intentional.

The problem wasn't that they didn't matter per say. But more that they couldn't be sustained without gorging on living souls at the expense of other worlds. It was something that had to be done because the only way to sustain it was to inflict terrible suffering upon othesr.

[LisseyCrowe]

I don't think the game is telling us the Endless didn't matter. If they didn't matter, why gray everything out and leave us with that silence after each section? Why take the time for Wuk to say goodbye to her surrogate mother, for Krile to bond with and say goodbye to her parents? For Erenville and his mom to spend those last fleeting moments together, if she didn't think it actually mattered? Her words and her actions do not line up. And I think this is intentional.

Technically, one could argue the opposite, that the actual real Living Memory is just gray, boring, empty, etc. Everything else is just an illusion.

That aside, I don't understand those who 100% assume people here are real and living. What, you think the highly advanced civilization that can not only pinpoint delete all your memories of a dead loved one but do so at an entire society level without having it implode cannot create advanced enough AIs that can convincingly emote? We don't even know what "living" here entails. The Elezen man who was in a hurry to find his girlfriend to propose to said it was his third "reincarnation". How long did these reincarnation last? How long is someone "alive" in Living Memory? How does one die?

To go a step further, what even is the point of Living Memory? The Living sure seem to cling to their lives, so it's not for them. Living Memory's been in a constant shortage of Aether partly due to the Living using Souls as currency so even it's not been a priority. And I have to be honest here, due to Dawntrail's flimsy writing, I am incredibly worried that that's not going to be brought up. It's going to stop at "Sphene considered both Endless and Living her People, and so they were. The End."

Which is not to say Living Memory couldn't be used for interesting concepts. I have a fun theory myself, but I'm not convinced it's worth my time to explore it when the writers sure didn't.

This ended up going in a lot more directions than I expected. Speculating is fun and can be rewarding, but I can't help but feel we've been given so little to mess with that it's practically an experience in frustration. Literally everyone is right and wrong because the game barely discusses the topics itself, and instead just hammers your over the head with "They're AI, don't worry lol".

[Cach]

I don't think there is many people saying that we should have let the Endless drain the entire universe of life. I really wish people would stop bringing up this point in an attempt to crush any discussion about how Living Memory was written.

What people are saying is that the plotline is messy, poorly explained, contradictory, and easily lends itself to feel more like murder and less like heart-wrenching survival because the characters didn't even try. We are told immediately that the Endless are not worthy of existence or consideration and we're not allowed to question that. Yet, as VoidsentStatus is pointing out with that dialogue, even the characters seem confused on the living/dead status of the Endless so the story can't even get it's own ducks in a row.

If a player believes they are alive or listens to NPCs that treat them as alive, then treating the Endless so flippantly feels very bad.
There is a night and day difference between turning off the Endless with no thought and then playing around in elephant costumes for two hours and turning off the Endless after failing to find a solution to coexistence. Both of these end the same, but the reception and emotional impact would have been much different.

Very well put. Also I found it funny how your posts in this thread actually made other people wonder about what constitutes life.
You know... THE THING THE STORY SHOULD HAVE DONE.

[Mikey_R]

Gra'ha: "All men eventually die. If you make Endless of everyone, you will never have enough aether to sustain them. You but prolong the inevitable." <- Speaking as if Endless are not dead or AI since he's using the word prolong.

I have a bit of an issue with your assessment of G'raha's statement here as I interpreted it differently.

You seem to assume the word 'prolong' implies it is related to life, however, that isn't the case. You can prolong anything as it's definition is 'extend the duration of'.

So, from the start, 'All Men die.' Easy to see what he means there. 'If you make Endless of everyone, you will never have enough Aether to sustain them.' This then goes into killing the natural cycle of life and death. We are taking Aether out of the cycle and storing it unnaturally. Do note that G'Raha is neither saying they are alive, but he is also not explicitly stating they are dead. It is a neutral statement on the topic of alive or dead.

The last thing, 'You but prolong the inevitable', is talking about the fact that the Endless are every growing and will need an ever growing supply of Aether, one that eventually, no matter how much you try, is going to have a requirement greater than what you can supply, leading to it being shut down. The prolonging of the inevitable here is the fact, at some point, whether it is us or just nature, Sphene's hopes and dreams for her people are going to fall apart. Her idealistic vision is not going to work, no matter what.

All G'Raha has done is look at the facts and said the plan is unsustainable, that is all. There is no precedent set for whether the Endless are alive or not.

[VoidsentStatus]

assuming there was no other solution

2 things:

1) I don't think we'd want to commit multi-shard genocide to the level of Ascians each time one of them comes to threaten us for resources.

2) This was the biggest puzzle I was trying to solve myself when I was looking at the lore encyclopedias.
- The Ea are stated to be biological immortality. They are stated to consume pure aether have no mention of sustain problems. They actually said the universe would freeze over before they had that problem if ever, and then killed themselves.

- The Nibirun are stated as also obtaining immortality and later having also created their definition of a perfect world. With nothing left to do in their existence, they chose to off themselves as well. Another instance of not having supply shortages.

We know that in the world of Final Fantasy that immortality without any negative future limitation does for a fact exist since we have 2 races that achieved it. So the question is where does infinite soul aether come from?

Well, one interesting side question I had was: If dynamis is another energy source like aether, do soul dynamis, memory dynamis, and corporeal dynamis exist in the same split as aether does? It's stated that a being with less aether is able to use dynamis. Well, we, in our nerfed state are able to use dynamis (Thancred using his will to physically manifest in Ulthima Thule). The issue is that we're technically aether, 100%. Which means that aether with a conscious/emotion is able to use dynamis. And, we know that memory aether is only a fraction of what we are. Endless do not have soul aether, but are memory aether, which we know carry emotion. Does that possibly mean they would be able to more strongly use dynamis than what we are?

If you check the description of creation magicks and concepts in the lore encyclopedia, they sound extremely close to the idea of Ancients actually creating soul aether types (basic instincts, physical manifestation details, etc. because keep in mind, corporeal aether is just elements by itself, it doesn't take on a living type behavior by default), but, would be lacking in memory aether as a means for having a full "soul".

If the creation of a soul aether type is actually a thing, a soul dynamis should be able to be created as well. Could a memory aether, be attached to/control a soul dynamis and corporeal dynamis? This would be something not even fathomable to Alexandrians, but if possible, dynamis dwarfs aether in volume and you would have a vast amount available. Not to mention, as a dynamis being, similar to Meteion, they should be able to fly wherever they wanted in the universe to get a new aether/dynamis source.

Few different ways things could go especially with other mysteries such as the origin/creation of memory aether since only soul aether and corporeal aether are recycled, as well as how much soul aether is pending use in the lifestream already.

[Somnolence]

What people are saying is that the plotline is messy, poorly explained, contradictory...

To me, Alexandrian lore does not neatly integrates with the rest of the game, because it is clearly a transplant from another Final Fantasy.

They tried to adapt this by making Alexandrians do the Aetherial Sea soul recycling technologically, but the souls in FFXIV do not work exactly in the same way.

Consider that the Ascians did not put ancient memories to some random strong souls; original souls were needed. The entire rejoining plan was about restoring souls of the ancients from disparate shards to complete state and then undoing reincarnation memory cleansing, in effect resurrecting them all. Because all ancient souls originally possessed echo, which made them immutable and able to exist without body (the whole plotline in needing to hit ascian souls with huge amount of aether or they would just escape)

Yet in Alexandria a person with regulator "dies", purified soul is put into his body (which for unexplained reasons repairs all damage to the body), memory is restored from backup and somehow this is the same person? What would happen if the previous soul would get to the Aethereal sea, would it enjoy seeing an impostor walking around in his body, pretending to be him?