Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[sindriiisgaming]

Damn Ancients!

They ruined scotland!

As a scot I can confirm this

[Fiel_Tana]

It's ai. It's not alive.

[CidHeiral]

People trot out this quote quite a bit but they're not really comparable. Emet is referring to beings who have souls. The Endless are just simulacrums made from data. It's like insisting your Legos are alive and when someone tells you that's ridiculous you pull out the Emet quote.

[Chiru_Kai]

Still doesn't matter if the Endless are technically alive or not. They (or rather: Sphene AI overlady) wanted to invade all of the reflections and harvest all of the souls.
Alive, not alive, doesn't matter, there is no ethical conundrum in stopping that. I'd happily murder some genocidal maniac and if you go around saying "omg it's wrong to kill ppl", then you need to get your priorities straight.

In Sphene's case we also did the Wuk Lamat approach of Trying To Be Friends, but Speen was committed to the bit so then we kinda have no choice.

EDIT: and if you argue "but then only kill Sphene! not every other innocent Endless", means you paid no attention to the MSQ. Destroying the Endless terminals would result in opening up a weakness at the main terminal which we needed to actually get to the problematic Speeeeen wanting to consume all the souls. Just so happened to align with what Cuckatoo MILF wanted and it gave us some story exposition when they finally realized that Krile was also around and needed some character development.

[Y2K21]

It's ai. It's not alive. If we didn't shut it down she'd have farmed more people for souls and aether. Her time was finite and she knew it

Didnt we just have an entire beast tribe that involved the Omnicrons who technically are robots with uploaded consciousness?

[Fiel_Tana]

People trot out this quote quite a bit but they're not really comparable. Emet is referring to beings who have souls. The Endless are just simulacrums made from data. It's like insisting your Legos are alive and when someone tells you that's ridiculous you pull out the Emet quote.

It's never been determined in this story what "alive" really means, it's never been defined. Therefore having, or not having, a soul is irrelevant. I wish that zone had delved into the entire question of what it really means to be alive in this story's world, but it did not sadly. It could have made for a far more interesting and emotional story imo.

That DT zone did however show us thinking, feeling people with hopes and dreams yet said that deleting them was not something to feel bad about simply because they were 'incomplete'. Emet-Selch felt that despite the sundered's abilities to think, feel, have hopes and dreams they were not truly alive simply because they are 'incomplete'. Same thing.

That zone failed by showing one thing and saying another, simply sloppy writing really, but unfortunately that does leave a rather difficult moral failure according to pre-existing in-story lore.

Didnt we just have an entire beast tribe that involved the Omnicrons who technically are robots with uploaded consciousness?

Yes, that also leaves a planet sized plot hole! Our WoL's either forgot or didn't feel it was relevant to mention that fact. Despite Sphene in one scene stating she wanted to find a peaceful way.

[Y2K21]

Yes, that also leaves a planet sized plot hole! Our WoL's either forgot or didn't feel it was relevant to mention that fact. Despite Sphene in one scene stating she wanted to find a peaceful way.

Listen, we couldnt do it during the MSQ - we need a plot for the Post MSQ!

[Papayatar]

Didnt we just have an entire beast tribe that involved the Omnicrons who technically are robots with uploaded consciousness?

Everyone always bring up Ultima Thule or the Omicrons as a solution for the Endless, but wasn’t the issue for the Omicrons that they p.much lost their humanity or w/e makes living important? With no small part of them “evolving” by getting stronger and better through conquest of other stars and improving themselves after destroying places (like their war with the Dragonstar and then some of the modified dragons you see in the one dungeon from the Omicrons experimenting).

I guess as far as we know Alexandrians could be fine with a robot body, Robo-Otis is p.much the closest to the Omicrons. But they deemed putting everyone in Robo bodies not viable, for some reason unknown to us, or we would have saw more people like Robo-Otis.

The Omicrons seem to value function over form, and improved themselves based on what was the superior option regardless of looks. So it’s possible their memory transfer process varies by a lot from the Alexandrians, and may even not factor in the soul in their process either.

[KageTokage]

None of the UT shades in general have souls, but nonetheless are treated no differently from actual living beings.

That said, none of the reasons they bring up for terminating their existence felt terribly convincing to me aside from the "sustained by living aether" bit...and I question why they were even designed with that specifications in the first place.

[Magikazam]

Didnt we just have an entire beast tribe that involved the Omnicrons who technically are robots with uploaded consciousness?

We also had Omega who canonically ''developed'' a soul.