Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[Lady_Silvermoon]

*snip*

My favorite part is that you realize their are plenty of stories that contradict your point, but you dismiss them as simply being wrong. To that I say...

Nuh-uh.

Vampires throughout fiction have represented desire, power, disease, alienation, mental illness, addiction and much, much more. The monster vampire is only one use for them among hundreds. And every living being lives at the expense of other living beings. Life if brutal and harsh. You and I are the most dangerous predators on the planet. And while all life feeds on life, as intelligent creatures we do try to carve out an exemption for things like ourselves. So the question is were the Endless people and they were and they made it several hundred years feeding off the aether of those who died of natural causes. It seems given what there were there were a multitude of ways to change their dietary needs (or eliminate them completely) that we didn't bother to explore because it was time for a trial.

*snip*

If you presented me with just the facts on paper, I would assume your assessment of what they are is entirely correct. The problem is, I played DT. Up until DT, I would have assumed the "spark of life" was part of the soul. But DT is an expansion where souls are coins and everything that makes a person a person seems to be part of their memory aether. The shades in Amaurot are not self-aware, except for maybe Hythlo's and I would object to destroying Hytho's shade for being "twisted and unnatural." That shade has done us quite a few solids and isn't hurting anyone.

The people in Living Memory are very much self-aware. They aren't just running off a script. They have thoughts, they have opinions, they can get bored, they can lead a rebellion orchestrating their own destruction out of prejudice. They are feeling, thinking people by every metric of measurement I'm aware of. There are so many instances in Living Memory that debunk the theory they are just the most convincing bots ever created from literally viewing Otis's thoughts thus KNOWING he has thoughts to the tour guide approaching us and assuring us that everything should feel the same as when we were alive. If everyone is being controlled by a system, he should be aware we're not on it, and why would the system be assuring itself it feels the same. Heck, why would a system of bots be sitting around interacting with other bots for all eternity anyway? Without the Endless being sentient, Living Memory makes no sense.

I'm fairly confident the writers didn't fully consider what they did here and wrote the Endless as 100% convincing people in order to get some tears out of players when they later off everyone's mom. But from what I can see in DT, your mind is with your memory aether, not your soul.

[Ayche]

My favorite part is that you realize their are plenty of stories that contradict your point, but you dismiss them as simply being wrong. To that I say...

Nuh-uh.

Vampires throughout fiction have represented desire, power, disease, alienation, mental illness, addiction and much, much more. The monster vampire is only one use for them among hundreds. And every living being lives at the expense of other living beings. Life if brutal and harsh. You and I are the most dangerous predators on the planet. And while all life feeds on life, as intelligent creatures we do try to carve out an exemption for things like ourselves. So the question is were the Endless people and they were and they made it several hundred years feeding off the aether of those who died of natural causes. It seems given what there were there were a multitude of ways to change their dietary needs (or eliminate them completely) that we didn't bother to explore because it was time for a trial.

I was not born yesterday, I know there are many subversions and twists on the vampire concept, and they are not all valid to begin with. You really want to push this idea that the writers did you an injustice by putting their foot down that the Endless can only be fueled by the death of the living, like they reject your weird moral quandary that maybe 3 AAA batteries might had been enough actually. The message was not "The endless had a flawed energy production!", that would be utterly asinine way to take the story. Get real.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

I was not born yesterday, I know there are many subversions and twists on the vampire concept, and they are not all valid to begin with. You really want to push this idea that the writers did you an injustice by putting their foot down that the Endless can only be fueled by the death of the living, like they reject your weird moral quandary that maybe 3 AAA batteries might had been enough actually. The message was not "The endless had a flawed energy production!", that would be utterly asinine way to take the story. Get real.

Well, according to YoshiP the Endless aren't there to teach us that beings that feed off life are inherently evil and should be exterminated no matter what. He says they are there to get us discussing and thinking about how we will treat similar beings once tech advances to the point where we can digitally upload the human brain. So I guess I didn't miss the plot after all. I guess I'm doing what they included them in the story to get me to do. To think. To discuss. Not to blindly accept what one character strongarms the other characters into accepting to get us to the next boss fight.

“When we talk about ourselves as humans, we have gone through a lot of technological advancements and as we continue to make breakthroughs in the field of science. I do really believe that what we would call mecha is a possibility and we will eventually get to a point where we can recreate memories and recreate the brain in a digital form. That then makes us face the question, would we call that human? If someone is living in this digital world, are they really living? I think this is an issue that humanity will face in the next 100 years.”

https://www.thegamer.com/final-fanta...siting-future/

[Ayche]

Well, according to YoshiP the Endless aren't there to teach us that beings that feed off life are inherently evil and should be exterminated no matter what. He says they are there to get us discussing and thinking about how we will treat similar beings once tech advances to the point where we can digitally upload the human brain. So I guess I didn't miss the plot after all. I guess I'm doing what they included them in the story to get me to do. To think. To discuss. Not to blindly accept what one character strongarms the other characters into accepting to get us to the next boss fight.



https://www.thegamer.com/final-fanta...siting-future/

That is misdirection, you know very well this entire thread is not 40 pages long because people are not getting the concept of a digital ghost or a very human robot. And that quote has NOTHING to do with the fact that they eat literal souls. If the Endless were kept alive with happy thoughts and clapping your hands like tinkerbell, we would not be having this discussion except maybe that the fiction would be nonsense.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

That is misdirection, you know very well this entire thread is not 40 pages long because people are not getting the concept of a digital ghost or a very human robot. And that quote has NOTHING to do with the fact that they eat literal souls. If the Endless were kept alive with happy thoughts and clapping your hands like tinkerbell, we would not be having this discussion except maybe that the fiction would be nonsense.

Wow...so even YoshiP's statement of what they were trying to do doesn't count as what they were trying to do. Only your interpretation is the possible truth. Even though is "all vampires must be slain" really a moral we need to learn in FF14? I believe YoshiP when he says he wanted us to question what makes a person a person, but like most of DT it was poorly implemented.

And they don't eat "literal" souls. They don't even eat metaphorical souls. They require corporeal aether. No souls have ever been destroyed by the Endless. The souls are all downstairs in the vending machines being bought like soda pops.

If anyone could be said to be eating souls it's the people in Everkeep. Guess we should kill them next, huh? They might be vampires.

[Mortex]

I don’t like that they don’t even give the characters an option saying this entire “turning off” living memory feels wrong. Like we stand there like muppets and not try everything in our power to safe them because the game and the story says too us “well they aren’t alive so might as well pull the plug”
And we had to do it because if we didn’t sphene would have done shard fusion and kill way more people. The problem I also had is that they try too make you feel bad and sad for the endless but on the other hand tell you that you should delete them. Like the writer know they can’t make this have bad consequences for the characters because we are the hero’s and not emet or ascians so we can’t be the bad guys.

[Fiel_Tana]

“When we talk about ourselves as humans, we have gone through a lot of technological advancements and as we continue to make breakthroughs in the field of science. I do really believe that what we would call mecha is a possibility and we will eventually get to a point where we can recreate memories and recreate the brain in a digital form. That then makes us face the question, would we call that human? If someone is living in this digital world, are they really living? I think this is an issue that humanity will face in the next 100 years.”

https://www.thegamer.com/final-fanta...siting-future/

The major problem I have with that zone is that nobody in the MSQ questions "If someone is living in this digital world, are they really living?". Does Yoshi think it does? If so, has he not played DT? Had he even read the script? Talked to the writers at all during pre-production? Checked in during production? Where is that questioning in game??

The MSQ shows the "heroes" destroying them all without questioning the morality of it, looking for better/other alternatives or even feeling a tiny bit bad about it.

Was the MSQ written that way on purpose to make some players question it and start discussions? That seems like quite a reach, so pretty doubtful.

So what went wrong there?

It feels he's talking about a story that is pure headcannon, not what we actually received in the MSQ and that is honestly more than a bit worrying for the future of FFXIV.

[Turtledeluxe]

Well, according to YoshiP the Endless aren't there to teach us that beings that feed off life are inherently evil and should be exterminated no matter what. He says they are there to get us discussing and thinking about how we will treat similar beings once tech advances to the point where we can digitally upload the human brain. So I guess I didn't miss the plot after all. I guess I'm doing what they included them in the story to get me to do. To think. To discuss. Not to blindly accept what one character strongarms the other characters into accepting to get us to the next boss fight.



https://www.thegamer.com/final-fanta...siting-future/

This quote just confirms that the Endless are recreations, which means your claim that the mind is with your memory aether false. The memory aether allows an instance of the original person to exist. And no one has to regard a new instance of a person as the original person, or really a person to begin with. People who do this will be regarded as willfully delusional if it ever becomes reality.

And frankly, the cast were not willing to entertain this delusion. So Yoshi P answered his own question. It will be a little novelty for 2 hours and then people will move on. Krile turned off her parents happily for gods sakes.

To be clearthe mind is not with the aether. A mind is. An important distinction.

[Alchemii]

The major problem I have with that zone is that nobody in the MSQ questions "If someone is living in this digital world, are they really living?". Does Yoshi think it does? If so, has he not played DT? Had he even read the script? Talked to the writers at all during pre-production? Checked in during production? Where is that questioning in game??

The MSQ shows the "heroes" destroying them all without questioning the morality of it, looking for better/other alternatives or even feeling a tiny bit bad about it.

Was the MSQ written that way on purpose to make some players question it and start discussions? That seems like quite a reach, so pretty doubtful.

So what went wrong there?

It feels he's talking about a story that is pure headcannon, not what we actually received in the MSQ and that is honestly more than a bit worrying for the future of FFXIV.

Hey now. They can't have the player base questioning if living in a digital world is actually living. If that happens people might you know realize they need to get away from the computers and go outside, and then next thing you know they'll stop playing the game, and paying subs, and buying stuff.

[Turtledeluxe]

Of course the cast doesn't feel bad about it. Convincing as they are, Endless are perversions of real people. This is not like humans creating artificial beings with their own unique consciousness. That would be cool. Perverting the dead by using other people's soul aether is weird, and wrong.

And for the millionth time, there is no alternative "fuel". How many different ways did the team have to write it? It's stated by 3 characters at least and also indirectly by our knowledge of what humans are composed of in XIV.