Spoilers for 7.0 Alexandrian life style

[Lady_Silvermoon]

But what stops the regulators from just snatching up all the souls in the persons body after death? Zoraal Ja also seems to be a special case because we dont see souls leaving other death bodies. (Like the guard he killed or all those killed in solution 9.)

I guess for me it just makes the most sense that these souls wouls also be collected because it would make it easier to keep the system running.

The regulator doesn't grab the used souls because it would be useless to do so. When a person dies, the regulator uses the life force from a soul cell to revive them. The now drained soul is inside them. If Alexandrians had a way to replenish life force, there would be no conflict. The only way to get more life force is for the soul to be reborn, which means there is no reason not to release it until the aetherial sea at the death of the user. If they Alexandrians had a way to refill souls with life force and thus recycle soul cells then they'd actually need way, way fewer of them as they could just keep refilling the ones they already have. That would mean a certain number of souls would be held hostage forever, but the rest of the cycle of life would be unaffected because there would be no need to gather more if they could simply keep using the ones they already have in stock. So you are correct that if what you are saying was possible it would be easier to keep the system running, in fact, it would make it so easy there would be no need to travel to another shard in search of life force.

I have seen so many posts on different sites that were like: Those are real people because they got a soul and memories. They compare them even to those at Ultima Thule.
While I just read these and be like: But thats not true. These are walking memories. Memories that are completely at the mercy of the towers. And these towers are powered by the aether of the dead. (They are imo kinda like the shades that Emeth Selch created. Just with a bit more personality because of the memories)

In the end you are right, it does not really matter because Sphenes plan is bad. But I do think it paints the wrong picture if too many believe that these were constructions with a soul.

DT brings into question what a soul does. The beings in Living Memory are feeling, thinking people capable of love, ambition, hope, compassion, deduction, they meet every metric of personhood I can think of. That bunny girl we met in Living Memory was Erenville's mom in every way that mattered. So if you tell me, no, actually Erenville's mom is a white ball in someone's headpiece that will give them a full heal if they fall down a flight of stairs, I'm gonna have a lot more questions. Does that white ball love him? Cause the simulacra in Living Memory seems to. Can that white ball lead a revolution? Cause the simulacra in Living Memory can. Can that white ball strong arm me into deleting an entire population? Cause that simulacra in Living Memory did. The shades in Amaurot were very obviously not self-aware. They interpreted us as children because they couldn't think outside their programming. The people in Living Memory knew where they were, what they were, the cost of maintaining them and those with unfinished business continued existing through sheer force of will. WHY DO THESE THINGS HAVE FORCE OF WILL?!

[Alleo]

DT brings into question what a soul does. The beings in Living Memory are feeling, thinking people capable of love, ambition, hope, compassion, deduction, they meet every metric of personhood I can think of.

Well we do know from the lore of this story that in this universe you need at least a soul and body to be alive. (Memories do come later through living their lives) The soul houses the core personality which is not washed away after death (and sometimes memories can stick to it too). This is the reason why we and Ardbert are similiar to Azem for example. So the soul is a very important part in shaping who we are. (And I guess its also the reason why they do need to imprint the memories of the person again after they used a spare soul. Otherwise the personality of the other soul may influence them) In real life of course we have no idea if a soul even exists so for us the memories and experiences we built are us.

I guess for me the endless are mostly just like ghosts, stuck in a everlasting cycle of repeat. They cant choose stuff on their own free will. Even Erenvilles mom was just able to do all the things she does because she once had a huge adventures spirit. So to fufill her wishes the tower gave her the options to go beyond anyone else. No NPC we meet there has a will to live on no matter the costs. Nobody truly cares what happens to them. Even those few who stuck around after we deactivate the towers are not doing it because they dont want to "die" but because they just want to do one last thing. Like ghosts they linger on because they had unfinished business.

It was kinda creepy how many where just fine to being stored away in the towers because of the low amount of power. And how many of the children in that one zone where once adults but their happiest time was as a child. Those wont change. They wont ever grow. At least not without some sort of outside influence. Just like Namika was young again at first eventhough she died as a old woman with all the memories intact. Yet she was forced by the system into that younger form that was constantly on the search for little Wuk Lamat because it saw it as her happiest time. Only when she meet Wuk againg does she change back to the old form and I am honestly not sure if that wasnt the tower who did it. So all those children probably also dont have a huge amount of their memories because the system does not want them to suffer. What a horrible way to exist.

About the shades: Well we do know that Hythlodeaus shade had a sense of self. Is he now alive? While at the same time the real Hythlo was stuck in Zodiark? Or what would happen if someone copies our memories and stuff them in that zone. Is that person alive? (Its like Otis, who was still alive the whole time while his endless was part of living memory.)

Edit: Found a interesting old reddit thread from someone that played the game in japanese:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme..._system_works/

It seems that in JP they do use different terms for these three energy sources, making it much easier to understand. The OP does interpret it though that the spent souls do get back in the life stream after the person using them dies, while the unspent souls still in the regulator will stay in the device for further use. Thus it takes longer for all of those souls to return to the sea. (There is a debate going on though if that last part is correct or only assumption. So its not 100% clear in JP too.)

[Cleretic]

Well we do know from the lore of this story that in this universe you need at least a soul and body to be alive.

That is explicitly and clearly wrong, never stated in the game, and in fact has ample counterevidence.

The Ancients made it pretty clear that a soul was a thing that had to happen, that they couldn't control; that they could do everything possible to ensure that a creation 'checked all the boxes' to get ensouled, but it getting ensouled effectively happened by chance afterwards. But we do know creatures without souls, and there is nothing wrong or different about them. Meteion, by all available evidence, did not have a soul; does that mean she's not alive? Alpha gained a soul over the course of the Omega raids, but the only thing that changed was that we could hear his farewell; do you think he just didn't count until some arbitrary point somewhere around O12?

Does something 'being alive' actually matter? Does it have measurable effects and results? Because honestly, I suspect that it might just be something you're holding to to make a problem easier. That if you can just say 'this person doesn't count', they're no longer as big a factor.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

I guess for me the endless are mostly just like ghosts, stuck in a everlasting cycle of repeat. They cant choose stuff on their own free will. Even Erenvilles mom was just able to do all the things she does because she once had a huge adventures spirit. So to fufill her wishes the tower gave her the options to go beyond anyone else. No NPC we meet there has a will to live on no matter the costs. Nobody truly cares what happens to them. Even those few who stuck around after we deactivate the towers are not doing it because they dont want to "die" but because they just want to do one last thing. Like ghosts they linger on because they had unfinished business.

But they aren't stuck in a cycle. They are able to form new memories. Come up with new ideas. Make decisions based off new data. Cahcuia wouldn't have been able to lead a revolution if she was incapable of all the cognitive functions we consider make a person a person. The problem with Living Memory is that from the looks of it, lacking a soul has had no impact on their personhood at all. Can you really tell the different between Cahcuia and Krile's parents and Emet-Selch and Hyth after they died? Everything that made Cahcuia, Cahcuia seems intact as an Endless, even Erenville says so. So if we want to claim her personhood is dependent on her having a soul, I have to ask why? She looked, acted and sounded like a person to me.

About the shades: Well we do know that Hythlodeaus shade had a sense of self. Is he now alive? While at the same time the real Hythlo was stuck in Zodiark? Or what would happen if someone copies our memories and stuff them in that zone. Is that person alive? (Its like Otis, who was still alive the whole time while his endless was part of living memory.)

Hyth's shade unlike the other shades in Amaurot does seem self-aware. I wouldn't claim he's "alive" because of this, but depending on how self-aware, I might argue he has some claim to personhood and the rights that come with it. If he can experience pain or fear, I wouldn't say it's perfectly fine to gun him down over and over because he's not "alive." And the people in Living Memory can experience fear, the man who lost his ring is AFRAID to go after the beast that took it because he might die and be separated from his girlfriend for an unknown amount of time. He's describing a fear of loss. Do things have a fear of loss?

[Cilia]

[T]he man who lost his ring is AFRAID to go after the beast that took it because he might die and be separated from his girlfriend for an unknown amount of time. He's describing a fear of loss. Do things have a fear of loss?

Is he really afraid, or is his AI concluding based on the data that models him he would be afraid in that situation, then reacting as he would (based on personality data derived from his memories)?

If a lie is a believable lie, can it become the truth?

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Is he really afraid, or is the data that models his AI concluding that in this situation he would be afraid, then generating a response as his data says he would in that situation?

If a lie is a believable lie, can it become the truth?

While I cannot say for certain and AI is not making those people project to me behavior that makes them seem like feeling, thinking people, I also cannot say for certain that's not true for a single person in existence besides myself. For all I know, I'm a brain in a jar and everything I'm perceiving, including this conversation is artificial.

However, if everyone in Living Memory is being controlled by AI to act like themselves, then it's a poorly programmed AI given it's making Cahcuia aid us in it's destruction. And since Sphene is programmed to preserve the Endless, that suggests that it doesn't have to make everyone do exactly what they would do, it has the ability to alter them as it does in Sphene's case, so if you are correct, then we erased the AI based off trusting the AIs assessment of itself...

But given Cahcuia had the ability to act against the AI, it's more likely she's not telling the truth to get us to turn off the machines without feeling like we've committed genocide because she believes they are morally wrong and wants them destroyed.

What's more likely, a rebel leader downplayed the personhood of the beings we were destroying because she wanted the job done or an AI whose directive for preservation was capable of overriding the queen's will, but not the will of a random person in it's system?

If the AI is controlling all of them making them act how they used to act, why give them self-awareness? Why do they know they are Endless? And who are they acting for? There usually are no living people in Living Memory. So it'd be a system making everyone behave like themselves for the benefit of no one. Seems to me like it was just them.