Is this a plothole? Question about the Endless

[LilimoLimomo]

Also, the regulators are extracting memories, so that sounds more like they are removing memory aether, rather than just copying memories.

We actually know that memory data does get copied/duplicated, because that's what happens constantly with Regulators; a person's memories are uploaded to the cloud as a backup, while the person still retains all their memories. Then when a person dies and needs to be revived by using one of their souls, the uploaded memories are pasted back onto the actual person to prevent soul corruption or whatever.

However, we are also told that the Endless are made from memory aether

From what I recall, the Endless are simulations based on memories, but not actually entirely comprised of memories. For example, their bodies are made of living aether. Living Memory has a shortage of this living aether relative to the number of simulations it stores, which is why only a subset of the simulations can have physical bodies at any one time, with lengthy waiting periods for simulations that aren't currently manifested.

And in fact, remember that they're not just comprised of the memories from the dead person, but also the memories of the dead person from those who knew them. Keep that in mind!

They shouldn't require lifeforce to exist if they are just digital copies of memories and not memory aether.

They aren't just digital copies, though; Living Memory gives the computer simulations physical form by providing living aether to constitute physical bodies for these simulations.

As for why robots require actual life-force to exist...yeah, they don't provide a reasonable explanation for that.

If it's the latter, then we dissipated the one and only version of these people that exists, so they won't get the slower disintegration in the aetherial sea that allows them to watch over friends and family and wait for them, so why would Erenville expect to see his mother there?

It sounds like you are somehow interpreting the concept of "dissipating" as "being deleted"; it's an understandable mistake to make, so let's illustrate with an example. A crowd can dissipate. And what this means is that the people that make up the crowd spread out and go their separate ways. Everything that comprised the crowd still exists, it's just not consolidated as a "crowd" anymore. Aether (which is just the FF14 word for "energy") is similar. It cannot be destroyed, it can only change form and move.

So regardless of what kind of aether the simulations in Living Memory were comprised of, it's all still in play. When it dissipates because it is no longer being forced into a certain form by Living Memory's systems, it will once again be subject to natural forces.

Edit: Re-reading this, I think I misunderstood what you were saying the first time. On re-read, it sounds like you're saying that his mom's memories have long-since been separated from their associated soul, and hence when the soul returns to the aetherial sea it will have already been cleansed of memories, thus not allowing for the brief window when souls would be in the aetherial sea as some semblance of their former selves. And if I have you right this time, then I 100% agree with you.


To be clear, it's entirely valid that you're confused by all of this, because you seem to not simply be trying to understand the mechanics of Living Memory, but trying to understand them in a way that makes sense. And Living Memory simply doesn't make sense.

It's a place where soulless computer simulations of dead people are given bodies made of living aether, where these simulations convincingly mimic the dead until the end of time. And they're very convincing replicas, as your party members repeatedly tell you after interacting with them. But like...there's no purpose to doing that.

It's like making robots that act like your dead grandparents and locking them in a room together for all eternity, and then never entering that room again. And you might think, "Yeah, that's odd, but grief is weird, and we do weird things to try to process grief." And yeah, we do...but there's no grief here. Regulators ensure that you can't remember your dead loved ones, thus removing grief from the equation. So now you've got 2 roombas in a shed pretending to be your grandparents where you'll never witness it, and you don't even remember that you ever had grandparents....so what purpose is there to the roombas in the shed? Living Memory is an absolute nonsense system that doesn't help anyone, and it does so at the cost of requiring an unsustainable amount of energy.

I hope that this helps!