Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[MikkoAkure]

We had just enough time to interact with the Endless and remember them since no one else has the capability. Generations of Alexandrian dead, gone forever because Sphene erased them from the minds of the living. If you think that in just 1 afternoon we could have solved the problem that Sphene couldn't solve for hundreds of years with her own technology, then you're delusional. We didn't have anything special that could bring something new to the table. If Cahciua, an actual hacker and part of a rebellion who had been present in Living Memory for years couldn't hack the terminals to prevent Sphene's plan, then no one in our group could.

It was presented to us that there was no other way, that we had to shut off the terminals to stop Sphene, and that the Endless would be caught in the crossfire. If the writers wanted to entertain any other possibility, they would've let us know. It's their world and their logic. The same people who came up with the problem also invented the solution. Cahciua had been there for years and knew more than anyone else how to stop Sphene and that involved shutting down the terminals. With time of the essence, we had no reason to doubt her.

Also, can you provide somewhere it says that anyone on Venat's faction was aware she intended to rip every man, woman and child into 14 pieces and were totally on-board with that? Because I've never seen that anywhere, including EE3. It sounds like she galvanized them on the premise of stopping the third sacrifice, which what's the point if the third sacrifice is gonna get shredded along with everything and everyone else? The Watcher makes it sound like not only was she incredibly vague with her plans, she gutted chunks of his and the Twelves' memories to make sure the Sundered world was shaped by her influence and hers alone.

Venat convinced her followers that Hydaelyn and Her sundering were the only path forward.

Also it wasn't just about the third sacrifice though that was obviously a large sticking point. A few pages before the above quote it mentions that Ancients believed that mankind could not continue as it always had and blamed creation magic. Others lost faith in the Convocation.


Continuing to play something you don't like and arguing about why you don't like it and only staying because you've already spent 10 years on it is just sunk-cost fallacy. If this has been the direction of the game for multiple expansions now, I don't know how you would expect it to suddenly change for you.

No, this is simply evil. We were at war with Sphene, not with the Endless. Attacking civilian targets is always a war crime. It's really not something anyone has a right to. Yet it's the main strategy that the Scions settle on immediately. As soon as they enter Living Memory they don't even try to target Sphene, they instead target the innocent civilians. And only after they've killed those do they go for Sphene herself. It's honestly pretty crazy.

We didn't attack anyone, we turned off a computer. And again, it was Cahciua who knew what to do and made the suggestions and she was someone experienced in the technology, had reasons to oppose Sphene, had been there for years, and had no other solution for this.

It's tragic, but it was what had to be done to stop Sphene from killing everyone. And in the end, the Endless can't be "killed" because they were already dead. Like I've said over and over, it would be one thing if these were people who entered the cloud alive but they already had lives and died before they were made Endless. Living Memory is an afterlife.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

*snip*

Sphene was conquered by a lizard with a stick who spent 30 years building an invasion force with that advanced tech which was destroyed in an afternoon. I wouldn't bank on the Alexandrians having enough knowledge to solve their problem when they couldn't even program their way out of a paperclip paradox.

As for Cahcuia having figured it out, why would she? She's morally against the existence of the Endless and has already been shown to be comfortable using manipulation and deceit to get what she wants by hiding the fact she's an Endless from us. She's also incredibly selfish, leaving her crying child to go explore the world and then expecting him to smile through wiping her out as to not bring down her mood. She is the one insisting the Endless aren't people and it's obvious they are. We even see Otis's thoughts during the play, which means Otis thinks. He's a feeling, thinking person, and we're told by her that he's not, so we should be fine with killing him. But that alone should make it clear she's lying to us. And so even if she had a solution to preserve the Endless, why would she give it to us? There is no reason to even believe stopping Sphene would shut the whole thing down anyway, because that's something she says to push for us to do the thing she wants RIGHT NOW with no thought or consideration.

I am aware the writers don't want me to "think too hard about it" because they served me slop. If DT was a burger I got at McDonald's the cook would be fired already. I really wish people would stop suggesting I give up thinking to enjoy the last two expansions.


If I'd spent 10 years playing the story then I might agree with you, but the story is a small part of the game. Ultimately, this is an MMO and I don't actually need to know I'm fighting the big bird snake thing because Bakool Ja Ja released it which didn't get him disqualified even though Zoraal Ja got disqualified for way less later on. I could just fight the big bird snake thing.

And I definitely didn't need to know the mascot was for entertaining all those kids I killed, I could have just grinded FATES in blissful ignorance.

Had I known ahead of time, I would have done exactly that. Story skipped and played in blissful ignorance. But when they advertised the vacation expansion, there was no mention of wiping out a themepark full of children, so I didn't know. I don't think anyone was prepared for what DT ended up being, and I don't just mean the utter lack of thought about ethical implications, but the lazy writing across the board. While I may have disagreed with some of the morals espoused in EW, it didn't feel like I was reading a teenager's Wattpad story the way DT does.

[MikkoAkure]

We even see Otis's thoughts during the play, which means Otis thinks. He's a feeling, thinking person, and we're told by her that he's not, so we should be fine with killing him.

The real Otis died. We watched it happen. There was the Otis who was alive when he was transferred to a robot with his soul intact and there's the copy-Otis that exists in Living Memory. That if nothing else should serve as proof that the Endless are just copies of dead people. The Endless are fully aware of what they are as well, which is likely why they are able to pass peacefully. If the Endless were more like Otis and were transferred to another state while alive and continued to live, that would be one thing but the Endless died and their memories were ripped out and placed onto a server where they continued to act out "happiness" to please a pampered princess, who is also dead.

The Endless accepted they were dead when they arrived in Living Memory and accepted their disappearance at the end of the MSQ minus a few with things to finish up first before turning out the lights. Even those were fine with how it ended up.

Accepting that life is hard and death is inevitable has been a theme of this game since the theme song Answers all the way back in 1.0. Endwalker's plot was even seemingly based on the song. It is built into the DNA of the game. Accepting loss and moving on is a part of life and Sphene showed how bad it is when you can't let go, which seems to be something you share with her.

So would you say Cahciua was a sentient being to be able to do and think all that?

Never said they weren't sentient. I said they're not alive. Not the same thing. Ghosts and other undead in the game are sentient but they're not alive.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

regarding the themepark full of children remark
while it's likely there are children that are of the endless, we are told that the endless take form of their happiest moment in life
iirc some of the child NPCs you assist in the side quests turn into adults

And some died as kids, probably of levin sickness. But knowing some of the kids I wiped out probably died at a later age wouldn't really make me feel any better about wiping them from existence to demoralize a program. I needed a two day break from the story after that part.

The real Otis died. We watched it happen. There was the Otis who was alive when he was transferred to a robot with his soul intact and there's the copy-Otis that exists in Living Memory. That if nothing else should serve as proof that the Endless are just copies of dead people. The Endless are fully aware of what they are as well, which is likely why they are able to pass peacefully. If the Endless were more like Otis and were transferred to another state while alive and continued to live, that would be one thing but the Endless died and their memories were ripped out and placed onto a server where they continued to act out "happiness" to please a pampered princess, who is also dead.

The Endless are "fully aware" you say? So...like self-aware? They know who they are, what they are, where they are, like people? A copy of a person is still a person. You put me in a transporter, make two copies, you have two people. A dead person is still a person. The characters wouldn't be upset by the Alexandrian use of souls if that weren't the case. And the soul cells aren't even sentient and self-aware like the Endless are. And if the Alexandrians were destroying the souls the way we destroyed the Endless, I would see that as a monstrous act. Right now, my lack of objection to the soul system is it's opt-in. If the Alexandrians started sucking up souls out the aetherial sea to use as power ups, I'd take issue with that, cause those are sentient beings, chilling in the afterlife, watching us, making comments and sometimes saving the universe. You can't just do anything you want to them cause they are dead. And if people wanted to chill in the amusement park instead of the aetherial sea, I'd leave them be rather than delete them as a workaround to bad programming.

Sphene isn't preserving the Endless because she's spoiled, she's preserving them because she's subject to a badly programmed imperative that was so poorly written that it's deleting her actual memories in order to fulfill it's objective. She's what this whole project is for, and the AI meant to preserve her is deleting her so that it can do a genocide. And instead of caring about the code that's impairing her judgement and subjugating her will, the focus is deleting the Endless cause they are "unnatural and twisted."

Is Alexa a “sentient being?” Is Siri? It’s an AI bot, “trained” with the memories of formerly living people. As convincing as they are, they are artificial copies of people who are already gone.

So the same bot that's deleting it's primary objective is also running a rebellion against itself and orchestrating it's own destruction while also conducting calculations to merge with another shard to preserve the things it's strongarming us to destroy? While also having PTSD flashes about the death of the princess it's actively deleting to preserve the people it's actively destroying? Preservation: Worst.Programmers.Ever.

We should have called Cid.

[Carolingian]

We didn't attack anyone, we turned off a computer. And again, it was Cahciua who knew what to do and made the suggestions and she was someone experienced in the technology, had reasons to oppose Sphene, had been there for years, and had no other solution for this.

So would you say Cahciua was a sentient being to be able to do and think all that?