Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[Carolingian]

This whole conversation reminds me of one of my favorite pieces of fiction ever and why, with the way the endless were written and portrayed, were more than just AI or chatbots.

Now if the endless were retconned to be shown to be mindless automatons, that'd be fine, but the fact the endless were very aware of their existence, were intelligent, and conscious of their surroundings, and able to act upon new information tells me they were sentient beings, despite what the garbage writing says.

Also a sidenote, the writing for DT was absolute dogwater the entire way though, I don't know why anyone is defending it here.

Yup, The Measure of a Man and Voyager's Author Author are exactly why I believe the Endless are sentient beings and we (/the writing) shouldn't have been as quick about ending their existence.

Some people here keep saying that they're just code and only exist because Sphene can't let go. But the fact that said code can go against Sphene to the degree of destroying her and all Endless shows that they aren't just code only there for Sphene's entertainment. It shows that they've got their own desires, thoughts, and dreams. It shows that they're self-aware. It shows that they're sentient.

[Turtledeluxe]

Yup, The Measure of a Man and Voyager's Author Author are exactly why I believe the Endless are sentient beings and we (/the writing) shouldn't have been as quick about ending their existence.

Some people here keep saying that they're just code and only exist because Sphene can't let go. But the fact that said code can go against Sphene to the degree of destroying her and all Endless shows that they aren't just code only there for Sphene's entertainment. It shows that they've got their own desires, thoughts, and dreams. It shows that they're self-aware. It shows that they're sentient.

Just invoking a book/show/whatever doesn't make your take any less of a misunderstanding. Endless who can go against Sphene probably had the capacity to face adversity long before becoming an Endless. They could probably problem solve long before becoming an Endless. You have failed to definitively prove anything they do is novel, but rather only pointed out behaviors they could have well been capable of prior to their Endless state. You seem to be implying the original humans were unable to form new desires or new dreams? I am pretty sure they could do that. Being a new instance that is acting based on a source (memory aether) does not prove sentience. Being self aware also does not prove sentience.

[lolnotacat]

What people are really getting at....

Ah so if we're able to make clones and copy their memories, it's totally fine to kill them with impunity? I'm of the camp that in that situation that would be its own distinct individual with said memories.

Just being self aware...

It's one of the most important critera. But I'll go all out and slap the definition of sentient at the bottom and we'll see if the endless met all the criteria.

As far as sentience, it's not clear....

As far as sentience, it's not clear that you're actually feeling emotions or dreaming for example. All that's clear is that your behavior is coded into your DNA. I hope that shows why whole argument as to where their ability to interact comes from is a moot point. The moment they can interact with new information an with the world around them shows they are sentient to some degree because it's not a binary, it's a gradient. As someone who trains AI at my company, I can tell you that it is not on the gradient of sentient because it cannot cope or understand new situations.

It's not like Cachiua never learned....

She's aware of her surroundings and is able to adapt to them. If she were just a program of her copied memories, she'd only be able to handle situations she was in before. Unless you're saying she had previously piloted a robot body to lead a rebellion and help her still living son shut down a supercomputer so warriors could stop a rogue AI from invading another shard.

Whats garbage imo, is stopping at the most....

Ironic because they were acting in a sentient manner the entire time, and every example of them being "just a copy" is just a "nuh uh because the writers said so" without providing any actual counterpoints to the definition of sentient.

Since I'm so nice, I'll make it easy:



Sentient:
1. Conscious or self-aware.
Yup, they were all conscious of their situation and self aware. They were able to adapt to their situation and novel information.
2. Experiencing sensation, thinking, thought, or feeling.
They definitely were experiencing all that -- Love, dreams for the future, happiness, sadness.
3.Possessing human-like knowledge and intelligence.
I don't think any of them didn't possess human-like knowledge and intelligence.

[Turtledeluxe]

Ah so if we're able to make clones and copy their memories, it's totally fine to kill them with impunity? I'm of the camp that in that situation that would be its own distinct individual with said memories.

This is false because it wasn't done with impunity. Your tendency to distort things is concerning.

It's one of the most important critera. But I'll go all out and slap the definition of sentient at the bottom and we'll see if the endless met all the criteria.

It's a definition, not the definition. A shallow one I've never heard of. Sentience, consciousness, DNA are all hotly debated subjects. That's really the problem is none of these things rooted in chemical reactions, biological processes, evolution, etc are comparable to magic memory aether used to clone people.

As far as sentience, it's not clear that you're actually feeling emotions or dreaming for example. All that's clear is that your behavior is coded into your DNA. I hope that shows why whole argument as to where their ability to interact comes from is a moot point. The moment they can interact with new information an with the world around them shows they are sentient to some degree because it's not a binary, it's a gradient. As someone who trains AI at my company, I can tell you that it is not on the gradient of sentient because it cannot cope or understand new situations.

[
But DNA itself is not crystal clear, so that's a moot point. Aside from the theoreticals, DNA has a way more unique application in the real world from memory aether. DNA can, albeit very slowly, result in novel behaviors. We are talking about memory aether being copied. That's very specific. We know how it came to be and how it's being applied. I'm glad you work in this field and understand that we have not remotely achieved consciousness in AI.

she's aware of her surroundings and is able to adapt to them. If she were just a program of her copied memories, she'd only be able to handle situations she was in before. Unless you're saying she had previously piloted a robot body to lead a rebellion and help her still living son shut down a supercomputer so warriors could stop a rogue AI from invading another shard.

I didn't say she is a program per say. I said that her behavior isn't provably novel. Only the situations she is in are novel.

Sentient:
1. Conscious or self-aware.
Yup, they were all conscious of their situation and self aware. They were able to adapt to their situation and novel information.
2. Experiencing sensation, thinking, thought, or feeling.
They definitely were experiencing all that -- Love, dreams for the future, happiness, sadness.
3.Possessing human-like knowledge and intelligence.
I don't think any of them didn't possess human-like knowledge and intelligence.

It's just a definition, not the definition, and not one I would regard as an authoritative source. It also lacks context, because we are talking specifically about a separate instance of an original person who had their own consciousness and their own subjective experience resulting from highly influential DNA and and a CNS interacting with the material world.

Endless are non physical and can't interact with the real world outside of a proxy body. And even then all of their thinking would be impossible without that specific memory aether. Unlike DNA and humans (potential has shifted over time and varies per organism) Endless have zero potential at one specific time to do anything or be anyone without the original conscious experience to emulate.

[MikkoAkure]

Some people here keep saying that they're just code and only exist because Sphene can't let go. But the fact that said code can go against Sphene to the degree of destroying her and all Endless shows that they aren't just code only there for Sphene's entertainment. It shows that they've got their own desires, thoughts, and dreams. It shows that they're self-aware. It shows that they're sentient.

If they were people who were disembodied while they were still alive I would feel different about this whole thing but the most important part of this situation to me is that they all had lives before they were Endless and then died.

It’s not as though a whole civilization was uploaded to the cloud, only people who have died become Endless. Alexandria still exists and is populated by living, thriving people. These Endless are literal ghosts since the setting already established that ghosts are incorporeal aether from dead people. The bhoot encyclopedia entry even shows that this situation of memory aether continuing after death can happen outside the Everkeep but no one lifts a finger to prevent adventurers from killing ghosts.

The whole situation is unnatural and frankly a little disturbing and goes against the laws of nature that everyone else up to and including the Ancients have followed. The fact that they required living aether and Turali people were killed for their souls in order to power the dead and Sphene planned to do that worldwide and then move onto the next reflection when she was done here was the final straw.

It doesn’t matter if they’re sentient or have free will to me, their existence goes against the laws of nature and prevents the natural course of reincarnation. If left to spread, it will create dead worlds. The Ultima Thule beings at least seemingly have an expiration date since they require actual food to sustain themselves instead of fake popcorn and ice cream. Even the Ancients eventually would decide their time was over and give their aether back to the star, which the Endless do not do.

[Turtledeluxe]

Accusing the cast of moral insufficiency requires some kind of argument aside from murder. Killing is just a word. I killed my chances. I killed you in Tekken. Killing is an excitable term that doesn't come equipped with gravity.

You also can't argue that something simply existing means it couldn't or shouldn't be ended. If that were the case, our justice system would be very different and arguably less effective. What's morally problematic is arguing that simple sentience means endings aren't on the table.


This kind of thinking also makes me think about the actors' strike and their protections. What are we supposed to tell them? Oh sorry, this AI can take new dialogue and speak just like you. You'll need to forfeit all your rights and employment to this AI..sorry. it's not 1:1 because the argument doesn't hinge on sentience buuut.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

This kind of thinking also makes me think about the actors' strike and their protections. What are we supposed to tell them? Oh sorry, this AI can take new dialogue and speak just like you. You'll need to forfeit all your rights and employment to this AI..sorry. it's not 1:1 because the argument doesn't hinge on sentience buuut.

Not the same at all. It's more akin to "this class of people are not people in the same way you are a person, so it's morally acceptable to do anything you want to them."

AI does not have sentience, but one day it might and we will have to decide how we will treat this creation that can feel fear, feel pain, desire freedom, strive for happiness.

And when that day comes, I hope we do better as a society than our characters did in Living Memory.

*snip*

The Sundered are not a natural creation. They are the mutilated bits of another species. Given your view here, I have to wonder if you agree with Emet-Selch about the rejoinings. After all, Ancients are the natural evolution of humanity in the FF14 universe.

[Dorito_Burrito]

Read the terminals in Origenics and tell me that what Alexandria is doing is really okay.

[MikkoAkure]

The Sundered are not a natural creation. They are the mutilated bits of another species. Given your view here, I have to wonder if you agree with Emet-Selch about the rejoinings. After all, Ancients are the natural evolution of humanity in the FF14 universe.

The Sundered at least are still alive.

The Endless are a bunch of collected dead people. They had lives, they died, and instead of being reincarnated they're removed from the natural cycle and uploaded to a cloud server that randomly decides when to manifest them into a dilapidated purgatory until the end of time (or the terminals) by stitching their memories onto someone else's soul.

Again, if the Endless were collected while they were actually alive and the state of being Endless was a natural continued state of life and done to evade some sort of calamity, I'd feel a little different about the whole thing. Or if like the Sundering, it had been done widespread against an entire people but they still managed to continue actual mundane living after that. But it's not any of that. Their memory aether is collected postmortem. These people are ghosts. They're not a "new version of life", they HAD lives.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Read the terminals in Origenics and tell me that what Alexandria is doing is really okay.

It depends on which thing you mean. Recreating the process of the aetherial sea? That's fine. That doesn't actually hurt anyone or anything. What these people want to do with their own souls in the privacy of their own silo is none of my business. Some people think that they are draining resources from the star like FF7, but there is no indication of that, looks like they are only delaying the return of souls to the aetherial sea with the regulator system, not preventing them.

Attempting to cheat death? Regardless of what the game says about it, I think it's perfectly fine to search for ways to avoid dying. The cycle of life and death is treated as sacred by the game (unless the WoL dies, then we invent time travel) but it's not really sacred, it's just the way things work ever since Venat shattered the planet. If someone subs you to 100 year lifespan against your will and you're not cool with 100 year lifespan, I believe you should be able to unsub because I value freedom of choice.

Experimenting on prisoners? Definitely bad. They shouldn't have done that.

Setting up a system that requires an ever increasing number of people to die to maintain? Both stupid and bad. We could have connected them with at least three different races who'd figured out less stupid ways to be immortal, but that's not even necessary because they figured out how to put souls in memories into mechanical bodies before they figured out how to make Endless, so they moved from a method that gave people mobility and didn't destroy all life in the universe to a method that left them stuck in one location and would eventually destroy all life in the universe. They could have slapped some regulators on the service bots and they would have been good to go, no genocides necessary...

Murdering people for their lifeforce? That's bad. You shouldn't do that.

Deleting memories of the dead? More a bad idea than an immoral one given the regulator system is opt-in, people willingly signed up for it, so once again falls under not really my business.

Wiping out an entire population because you deem them unnatural and subhuman? Evil. Definitely evil. Oh wait...that was us.