Spoilers for 7.0 Alexandrian life style

[SannaR]

Are you sure the NPC you talked to didn't mean they couldn't go out and work because they had anxiety about doing any labor without a spare soul rather than they won't be hired without a spare soul? I haven't done the side quests, so I don't know which NPC you're talking about.

ETA: I thought about it more and given people are allowed to go without the regulators entirely, not being able to find work unless you have a stock of souls doesn't make sense. That seems like the kind of thing that would have to be mentioned in the MSQ given they stress how Sphene allows people to choose how they wish to live and provides supplies for those who do not wish to make their home in Everkeep. If going without a regulator meant living in poverty, then that should have came up. I think perhaps the NPC you spoke with either works in a dangerous field or just has general anxiety about being out of spare souls.

It most likely is anxiety. The quest doesn't say what she did just that she wasn't a hunter. Though Solution 9 isn't as safe as most would like you to think if people can threaten to beat up a garbage collector who had to take a break because they have a milder case than the boy we get introduced to does of their aether tilting too far towards lightning.

[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?

[Hesitate89]

Whats with the Fortune Teller in S9? She has her own special room, any correlation to Astrologian?

It was interesting that the NPC says they are booked for next couple months, possibly next patch? almost like we will eventually be able to converse?

[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.

[SannaR]

Whats with the Fortune Teller in S9? She has her own special room, any correlation to Astrologian?

It was interesting that the NPC says they are booked for next couple months, possibly next patch? almost like we will eventually be able to converse?

What fortune teller?

[Cilia]

[G]iven 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.

The only purpose-driven Endless is Sphene. She is hardwired to preserve Living Memory at all costs and cannot directly contradict that directive, but the others are not. If the AI modeling Cahcuia concluded that she would tire of eternal "life" as an Endless knowing the cost, she would then be compelled to find a way to shut down Living Memory... which is exactly what happened.

Other than Sphene the Endless have no purpose; they're just images acting out behaviors modeled on data. Living Memory is itself just a comforting lie about "eternal life," which is stripped away when we shut down the Terminals running it. Even Sphene's behavior is modeled on personality data (memories) from the Storm Surge era Sphene, albeit modified to have her love and compassion amplified by Preservation. The only time we talk to "Sphene" as her own independent self is in the moments after defeating her Queen Eternal form, as she is still shorn of Storm Surge Sphene's memories; and she concludes she never should have been created. (Harsh.)

What fortune teller?

There's a fortune teller in one of Solution Nine's buildings, directly behind the Neon Stein mini-aetheryte warp point. It's the building with the neon Yans on the outside. All the clerk says is that they're busy and will be for a long while, and to check back later.

[Rosenstrauch]

I think the fact that multiple Endless persist after we shut off the terminals sustaining them—and whose dissipation is rooted purely in their own self-fulfillment—is proof enough that the Endless aren't being operated by some heretofore unseen AI. This is especially evident with Dreamborough's residents, who persist as voidsent-like beings despite decades of disconnection from Everkeep and Living Memory. Likewise, that they explicitly require living aether to sustain themselves, something that's been said of voidsent and sin eaters, but notably not primals, familiars, or arcane entities... I feel that's enough to say that the Endless are living beings, albeit incomplete ones. Like the Ea they lack physical bodies, and spend the bulk of their existence inside domiciles that preserve their incorporeal form. Like the Omicron they lack "the vital spark"—souls, I believe.

All that is irrelevant in the face of Living Memory being a system that devours life to sustain the Endless, resulting in an ever increasing population of Endless that in turn require even more death and destruction to sustain them. It needed to be shut down before it could destroy the Source, to say nothing of the Reflections, the Universe, or gods forbid even the Multiverse*. That the Endless don't begrudge this shouldn't come as a surprise—their self-defined purpose is reaching a state of fulfillment, which Cahciua, Otis, Wuk Lamat's entourage, and the WoL provide them every step of the way. It's precisely because of this need that Cahciua has us reactivate the fountains, and why she insists on stopping to smell the roses, so to speak, alongside her son in the final region.

*As an aside, what do you suppose happened to Everkeep in the 8th Era timeline, where Black Rose left the world of Hydaelyn nigh incapable of sustaining life for at least 200 years? The Key was still in the Source, so unless an Ascian helpfully delivered it to them it's unlikely that they could use interdimensional fusion to sustain Living Memory.