Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[Lady_Silvermoon]

They also have VR, which living people can enter, like we did to fight Sphene and I'm assuming their VR can run on electric and doesn't need to run on human souls, so even allowing the Endless to exist in VR given 90% of them are stuck on servers anyway due to the aether shortage would have been a better idea than murdering everyone until the universe runs out of people.

So yes, I do think the combined knowledge of all the people who owe the WoL a favor could have solved Sphene's problem, because Alexandrians are the dumbest scifi civilization I've ever seen. They don't even password protect the terminals which anyone can walk up to and wipe out a swath of their populace and there was a time when the living were in Living Memory, what if some kid walked up and accidentally took out the Aero terminal? The ziplines had more security than the terminals keeping everyone up and about.

Even Sphene admits that we possess new knowledge that might be able to solve her problem in a less stupid way. It's just that Zoraal Ja offed a bunch of her people and so she had an influx of dead coming in and needed life force NOW. But even if we could just shut down the programmed imperatives controlling her, I think even that would have given us the time to solve Preservation being the worst programmers and dumbest designers in history.

And if it didn't and it did come down to a fight to the death which in turn caused all the servers to go down, at least we tried. Because that's what heroes do. They at least TRY not to wipe out entire civilian populations.

[Arzalis]

I couldn't agree with that last paragraph more.

We didn't even try to look into other alternatives or dig deeper into what was going on. We destroyed an entire civilization because we decided they were lesser than us and couldn't be bothered to do anything else. That's just not how heroes act.

Sphene had to be stopped, but there was actually nothing preventing us from stopping her and then taking the time to look into the situation. The game is pretty explicit that the deletion wasn't actually necessary in any way. We did it because we had nothing else to do while we waited to access Sphene. If that led to the Endless being wiped out, then it's a matter of survival and an understandable tragedy. But we actually took the most callous, uncaring approach to it all.

[EchoingPulse]

I couldn't agree with that last paragraph more.

We didn't even try to look into other alternatives or dig deeper into what was going on. We destroyed an entire civilization because we decided they were lesser than us and couldn't be bothered to do anything else. That's just not how heroes act.

Sphene had to be stopped, but there was actually nothing preventing us from stopping her and then taking the time to look into the situation. The game is pretty explicit that the deletion wasn't actually necessary in any way. We did it because we had nothing else to do while we waited to access Sphene. If that led to the Endless being wiped out, then it's a matter of survival and an understandable tragedy. But we actually took the most callous, uncaring approach to it all.

It's not that we didn't try to find alternatives. The writers didn't want us to look for other options; they gave us only one side of the story and nothing else, even if you ignore everything Cahcuia says. The story is very explicit in that the Endless NEED living aether to sustain the Endless. When we go there, we are told that the reason so few are around is because the aether levels are low.

Remember what the Watcher said in Endwalker.
"Whatever fate befalls the Source. Her reflections will share." If the Source blows up, every reflection, including Living memory blows up. Something absolutely needed to be done before they drained the Source of all its aether.

[DreadCrow]

We didn't even try to look into other alternatives or dig deeper into what was going on. We destroyed an entire civilization because we decided they were lesser than us and couldn't be bothered to do anything else. That's just not how heroes act.

We destroyed an entire "civilization" because that civilization was ruled by an AI that's goal was "protect her people" by any means necessary and the said AI decided that the best way to do that is literally consume the souls of every living thing across time and space and decided that because its original plan to use a conqueror to take over the whole world and do it slowly went to hell that it needs to hasten the process.

To me, preventing the death of all life is exactly what heroes do. Especially when a member of the the said civilization says "dude, we're just ChatGPT bots, don't worry". People get so caught up on Emet's comment that he doesn't think we're really alive, when they here someone else say it, they think of him... Even if , you know, different context.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Hypothetical question. What if the moment Sphene went to reformat G'raha said, "I have an idea for how to switch them over to being powered by electrope so all of them can exist at once with no harm to anyone," do you go with his idea or do you continue with Cahcuia's request?

Here we have some common ground… I do think that should have at least been explored. It makes me wonder if that will be something that we’ll revisit in the patches, or if this is really where we leave LM for good. Seems a waste of such a nice zone! But I guess you could argue that letting go of things and people we lost was the whole thematic point of the zone, so a “solution” would go against that. If they go back after this and find a way to power it back up with some other energy method, I don’t think that would feel satisfying at all, beyond getting the pretty amusement park back. They kind of have to leave it as it is, otherwise everyone would go “what was the point of that?!”

I did feel the last part of the story should have gotten way more screen time… it felt rushed, and you barely had any time to interact with the zone before shutting it down. And this was the part of the MSQ I was most interested in. There should have been way more time devoted to Krile/parents, Erenville/Cahcuia, and yes, like you said, our brilliant Scions, Students and other associates trying to find an alternative solution that doesn’t involve murdering living people to steal their souls to use as batteries.

In the end though, it is implied that once Sphene completes her transformation, she’ll go into mass murder mode, with the last of her “conscience” gone. Effectively giving priority to the “save our people at all costs” directive, over the “act as this person would based on their memories” directive that she shares with the other Endless. And if the only way to keep the Endless alive, again essentially AI bots created from the memories of the deceased, is to murder people who are actually alive now, then that’s not a choice. You protect the living and shut down the computer simulation.

[AnotherPerson]

How would G'raha Tia know any more about how electrope works than say Sphene or any of the researchers? We just recently learned about it even existing.

Not only that, but isn't there a shortage of the material to begin with? The whole war between Lindblum and Alexandria?

Is it because of the method using white auracite and his blood, which was done by Beq Lugg on the first?

There's some supposed shortage while we see tons of electrope all over Alexandria.

The same white auracite and his blood was a joint effort between G'raha and Beg Lugg. Just like how it was a joint effort for Alisaie, who has basically no knowledge on the subject of souls to devise a cure when she collaborated with them. The knowledge which eventually evolved to be able to be mass produced with the help of Matoya. The same cure for Levin Sickness that plagued the Alexandrians for centuries because it was damage to the soul that they cannot figure out how to mend -- this cure promptly gets left out in the story.

That should be raising a lot of red flags on how 'developed' the Alexandrian's understanding to the soul is. They have very specific knowledge on memory preservation of a soul, but not much else. Knowledge that the scions could have easily collaborated with, improved upon, and shown Sphene there is definitely an alternate solution if they just worked together.

It's not that we didn't try to find alternatives. The writers didn't want us to look for other options; they gave us only one side of the story and nothing else, even if you ignore everything Cahcuia says. The story is very explicit in that the Endless NEED living aether to sustain the Endless. When we go there, we are told that the reason so few are around is because the aether levels are low.

Remember what the Watcher said in Endwalker.
"Whatever fate befalls the Source. Her reflections will share." If the Source blows up, every reflection, including Living memory blows up. Something absolutely needed to be done before they drained the Source of all its aether.

They shot themselves in the foot because they already wrote the solution to this too. When they had less life aether, they mention the terminals would reincarnate less Endless. Therefore, they could just ... dismiss all the current Endless so they aren't using life aether at the moment to drastically reduce the consumption of Life Aether to the bare minimum. That would have brought us so much time to actually research on a proper cure. Now that's no longer possible because we shut down the terminal -- which is completely different than having the terminals go into super low energy saving mode because all the stored memory are erased upon shutting the terminals down. Even worse -- because there would be Endless that refuse to disappear even if you cut their connection to life aether away, Sphene and the scions would have paid attention to how the Endless can continue to exist without Life Aether being supplied to them. The discovery only improves as they realize they don't even need their memories stored in Electrope to maintain their existence (The Terminals were fully powered down but the Endless can still persist).

I just don't know what to say when I see all those huge inconsistencies in writing. They just didn't even try.

[EchoingPulse]

I'm starting to lose the plot of Silvermoon's arguments. Either they're defending the dead memory ghosts or trying to justify their existance?

[Lady_Silvermoon]

I'm starting to lose the plot of Silvermoon's arguments. Either they're defending the dead memory ghosts or trying to justify their existance?

I'm defending the dead memory ghosts by justifying their right to an afterlife of their choosing. After all, the reason they are exterminated with extreme prejudice is due to philosophical denial of their right to exist. Some might argue it was in self-defense, but the Endless have no ability nor inclination to harm us, it's the program that wishes to harm us.

You're pointing out they're dead to dehumanize them much as the story tries to do, however, we give more self-determination to our own dead (which is why you need either the permission of the person when they were living or the permission of the family to harvest organs) than the characters give those in Living Memory and they can voice their desires, create art, fall in love, construct plans...that's a whole lot of personhood to erase from existence on the grounds one person in the party finds them morally objectionable.

When Krile's parents ask if they are about to be deleted, the first thing Krile says is, "Perhaps there is another way," which meant our characters wiped out countless people based off convictions that aren't even their own.

This thread is about the Questionable Ethics of Living Memory and I've been laying out why someone being dead does not give you the right to do whatever you want with their memory aether. The same way someone being dead in our society doesn't give you the right to whatever you want with their corpse. Consent matters and the Endless are sentient beings capable of consenting and objecting to the things done to them.

[Ayche]

Surely hating on undead is one of the most common stances in fiction. Zombies, ghosts and vampires that prey on the living for sustenance are the most basic narrative vehicles there is, it is very very normal to oppose them. Only twist Dawntrail takes is that they make the undead appear nice and harmless on the surface and the system does the harm.

[Mortex]

Just to clarify, maintaining the Endless doesn\\'t require the destruction of souls. Nothing the Alexandrians are doing is destroying souls. I\\'m pretty sure the characters would have had a far different reaction if that were the case. What the Endless require is for people to die. They are using the corporeal aether to give people bodies. Basically somebody dies and they make ten Endless out of the corporeal aether of that one person. They are effectively, sundered Sundered. Which is dumb. If you want to live forever, creating something MORE fragile is stupid. Had they done what every other species interested in immortality had done and created something hardier, like a machine form or an incorporeal form, then this issue would be entirely avoidable.

And I don\\'t think it\\'s morally wrong to want to be immortal. I think it\\'s wrong to steal other people\\'s corporeal aether in order to do it, but that\\'s not a necessary part of being immortal. Preservation scientists were just bad at their job.

Anyone who wants to argue that it\\'s wrong to want to be immortal due to it being a violation of the natural order, I remind you, nature doesn\\'t have a plan. It just is and we go against what is every time we chop down a tree to build a house. And the Sundered lifespan is not the natural lifespan given to the people of Etheirys by nature, the short lifespan of the Sundered is by design of a person. She altered the entire species in a way she thought best, so why can\\'t those who have been altered attempt to alter themselves in a way they feel works best for them? They should be able to do what they want with their corporeal aether and their souls. The problem comes in when they are trying to do what they want with our aether.

But the Endless aren\\'t trying to steal our aether. Not even Sphene. We\\'re being attacked by a bad line of code. This was a problem better solved with a good programmer than an axe.

And if anyone wants to argue it has to be resolved with an axe cause that\\'s how the game works. Well, the writers knew how the game works, so maybe the shouldn\\'t have made the final antagonists innocent people living in a themepark.

Don’t forget they already had a machine form prototype in the form of robo otis but they did consider a version that has all the memories and can live with minimal help for over 200 years and could be upgraded a bad prototype version. Plus the inconsistency of needing to kill robo Otis off so there wouldn’t be a problem when facing endless Otis (also he dies while saving not even the queen but a drone, so completely pointless death)