Is this a plothole? Question about the Endless

[Nitelancer]

It occurred to me that there is an instance of cloning of someone in the lore; Pupu clones Hildibrand with his spaceship, lol. The clones don't require some seem to require any soul or memory aether (at least I don't remember that coming up), but they have all the characteristics and personality of the person. Doesn't it throw a wrench into explanation of requiring aether to make the endless if not even physical clones require it?

[LilimoLimomo]

It occurred to me that there is an instance of cloning of someone in the lore; Pupu clones Hildibrand with his spaceship, lol. The clones don't require some seem to require any soul or memory aether (at least I don't remember that coming up), but they have all the characteristics and personality of the person. Doesn't it throw a wrench into explanation of requiring aether to make the endless if not even physical clones require it?

With respect, you're making quite a few assumptions here. We don't know anything about the material requirements for Pupu's cloning, nor do we even know if the clones have souls.

What we do know is that there is something materially different between the original and the clones, as Pupu's saucer has a function that "deletes" clones but not originals. All in all, I don't think we have enough information to determine anything based on Pupu's extraterrestrial technology.

Just to add, there are two other instances of cloning in the game that I can think of:
- the Allagans did lots of cloning; Unei, Doga, Amon, etc
- Emperor Solus had a batch of cloned bodies (though presumably they lacked souls)

[Vyrerus]

It occurred to me that there is an instance of cloning of someone in the lore; Pupu clones Hildibrand with his spaceship, lol. The clones don't require some seem to require any soul or memory aether (at least I don't remember that coming up), but they have all the characteristics and personality of the person. Doesn't it throw a wrench into explanation of requiring aether to make the endless if not even physical clones require it?

Can actually just assume that Pupu's cloning cloned their souls too. It's not really explained 100% and Hildibrand often does ridiculous things that most Lore experts will shy away from. I think Anonymoose, one of the pre-eminent Lore Heads, always liked to claim that Hildibrand exists in a bubble of exaggeration and not of FFXIV's reality.

(which I don't agree with, but hey whatever floats folks' boats)