Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[Eyrilona]

They are data, they get new data, store it, and respond accordingly to present and past data, much like an AI. They aren't doing actual introspection or personal growth as a living being, they are just adapting to their surroundings.

Much like an AI you say? Defined so broadly, that also sounds like how all life on Earth goes about things, us humans included. And how can you say they are not doing introspection when they clearly integrate new experiences with their existing body of experience? Moreover, they literally reflect on the nature of their own existence! Even if the story only lets them do it to have them reassure us they are fine with being turned off, that sure sounds like introspection to me.

[MikkoAkure]

One of the major issues is that the story we as the players were presented with actively contradicts itself. Through Cahcuia it tells us one thing, then shows us another through the MSQ and Side Quests across the zone. If the "people" in the zone are merely facsimiles, AI constructs, then why are we encouraged to engage with or "help" them at all? They shouldn't matter at that point. A lot of the naysayers like to present the scenario of turning off an electronic device, well... let me ask you this: Before you turn off your electronic devices do you first make sure they were happy with the tasks they completed today? Do you try to make sure your electronic devices are comfortable before you shut them down for the evening? Do you lay them down gently on a pillow?

In-game, we were attempting to connect with them and remember them because their own people have had their memories wiped of them. One of the themes of the expansion's story was that someone isn't truly dead until no one remembers them.

Out-of-game, we needed padding for the final zone and lore dumps and this is what they gave us.


The philosophical debate is meaningless because we were told in no uncertain terms that what the Alexandrians were doing was wrong multiple times starting as soon as we met them in Heritage Found.

What the Alexandrians were doing with the Endless is no different from what Edda and Nybeth Obdilord were doing. It has nothing to do with "what is consciousness?", "what is alive?", or anything to do with NieR: Automata and everything to do with people raising the spirits of the dead. The only differences are that the Endless were produced in a factory and have a semblance of free will instead of being souls brought into shambling corpses.

I'd be more willing to take your side if the Endless weren't taken from actual spiritual parts of dead people in order to pursue an endless undeath. If they were life spawned in a digital machine like Tron Legacy, that would be something entirely different but we're talking about actual people who had lives and then died and instead of returning to the natural cycle of death and rebirth that has been a part of the world since before the Ancients, they cast that aside and have the components of their whole aether artificially ripped apart and deposited into a machine to dream a happy "life" for eternity and live off the souls of others.

[Galvuu]

Much like an AI you say? Defined so broadly, that also sounds like how all life on Earth goes about things, us humans included. And how can you say they are not doing introspection when they clearly integrate new experiences with their existing body of experience? Moreover, they literally reflect on the nature of their own existence! Even if the story only lets them do it to have them reassure us they are fine with being turned off, that sure sounds like introspection to me.

I mean, as far as modern science knows, our consciousness seems to be an emergent phenomena that primarily arises from the pattern recognition our brains do... while I, personally, feel we're centuries away from creating any real artificial consciousness, regarding what happens in fiction, the parallel can certainly be drawn with a lot of merit.

[OMGJesuis66]

I explained it in the same sentence. Data being compiled.

[AlysCamoa]

Sphene is an Endless. They extracted her memories and soul to be able to make such an amalgamation.
That is explicitly spoken and even has NPC dialogue in her own erased memories talking about how they were capable of preserving her Soul.
Your second rhetoric is not a point of conversation, it would lead us to a very silly tangent about Wuk Lamat that I have no interest in jumping on. But to properly explain what I meant, is that newfound memories for those beings do not have an impact on themselves. They are data, they get new data, store it, and respond accordingly to present and past data, much like an AI.
They aren't doing actual introspection or personal growth as a living being, they are just adapting to their surroundings.

I get new data that you claim the Endless don't develop based off of new data, and am now forced to evaluate it: do I accept this new data as true, or false? I weigh the evidence in favor of your claim: you have furnished none, so there is none. I now reject your data as false. I continue on in the manner I did prior. Under your framework, I have undergone no change, and therefore am merely a LLM incapable of new experience, only base replication of prior experience. This further weights my decision to reject your claim, as following your logic to its conclusion proves how illogical it is. So, I reject your claim again; now I'm an AI twice over. Neat, isn't it?

Again, I'll ask you to cite your claim that Sphene fits under the Endless framework. Here, I'll demonstrate what that means: in quest #91, 'Those Who Live Forever', Cahciua states that the Sphene we meet is an ideal brought to life by Preservation, utilizing the memories of Sphene's love for her people. Wuk then mentions an original Sphene, and Cahciua calls the current Sphene created. Despite Cahciua being previously established by the story to be an unreliable source of information, this claim can be evaluated against other statements: Otis mentions in quest #81, 'Memories of a Knight', that the Queen's soul was stored for a considerable amount of time before extraction technology was working, and Sphene herself treats her living memories as an 'other'. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to draw the conclusion that Sphene- as we know her- is a facsimile purpose-made by Preservation to provide the personality and face for their system. Sphene is not like the other Endless, much like the Otis we meet in Living Memory is not like the other Endless; so to call them Endless confuses the definition when discussing the monolithic group of Endless her were made by extracting the original memories in whole from the soul, and placing those original memories on new aether. Whether Living Memory Otis and Sphene are alive is a topic best discusses separately from whether the Endless are alive, because the context of their existence is different.

[OMGJesuis66]

-snip-

We will see in a couple of years when they give us the Unending Codex of Sphene and state she's an Endless, I guess.
I do not really have the interest to convince you from anything beyond your own personal claims, there is the actual point I was trying to bring over that such denizens are indeed not alive in any sort or manner.
Which they aren't. But you can advocate as much as you would like that they are. I personally find it fascinating that people do feel capable of bringing such questioning and even stand by the fact they are alive.

But, to entertain you:

Ideal brought to life = Endless (They are brought back to life as their ideal form akin to the happiest moment of their life, based on Preservation software calculations).
Original Sphene, Dead. Current Sphene Created = Endless.
Otis's information states that the first one which Preservation worked on storing soul and memory, was Sphene, which puts her as a 'prototype', if you prefer. Otis as it came to be, is an alpha version. Technology develops over time to achieve perfection, therefore it makes sense that those are the initial developments of Endless. But version 0.0.1 is still the same software as version 10.0.0.
Sphene did have a directive given to her akin to her process, which was the preservation of Alexandria. Primary function as spoken, and again it falls back that she had to erase prior memories to pursue such directive.

Much of it is just conjecture and interpretation of how the narrative unfolded, I guess. I did think it was very on the nose all that they had written, but, people can believe in what they want.
I, for one in the philosophical stance, believe that if you add humanity to an inanimate something, it will carry over such humanity even for others. But it does not change from them being inanimate something if that makes sense.
Anywho, I have Arcadium to go slap and try to farm that Orchestron Roll.

Have fun.

[Eyrilona]

I explained it in the same sentence. Data being compiled.

Very well. Prove to me that you are not an AI, are alive, and have free will. I will be allowed to use all the arguments you yourself have used in this thread, against you.

To raise the stakes -- if you actually manage to find a way to prove these things, you can send a copy of your post to the Berggruen Institute because you'd have a really good chance at that $1.000.000 prize of theirs.

[AlysCamoa]

Their form is based off of the calculations of their own memory, which is demonstrably animate aether, but hey, they're definitely just a rock we drew a smiley face on.
None of the Endless (Endless 10.0, if you will) are merely some 'ideal' brought to life. They are their own memories given new aether to take shape with. Under the in-universe framework of the soul (remember that Codex entry you read?) the soul is separated from its memories in the lifestream, with memories fading into oblivion while the soul is reused. The soul retains no memories, save those of sufficient weight/importance that they are engraved onto it (remember job stones? or Emet's starbursts?). Thus, a soul is not the totality of a given life; rather, it carries on copied fragments of prior lives as it gets tethered to new flesh. (Copied is, admittedly, pure conjecture. Who was the copy? The Exarch crystalized at the top of the tower, or the G'raha we're currently traveling with?) So, it follows that if memory is extracted in whole from the soul, and preserved to be put on new aether, the person is preserved.
You presented the point that the people of Living Memory weren't alive in any sort or manner, and failed to offer any evidence to support it. So, much like an AI, I fear that I must use this data to reject your claims as false, and will not change myself accordingly. Beep-boop.

[Karious]

So... we treated the reconstructed memories of Lahabrea and Elidibus in Anabaseios as actual people but the endless aren't real? Isn't Cachuia's ability to think for herself enough to leave Living Memory to go outside and lead Oblivion not proof enough of sentience? A chatgpt program wouldn't do something like that.

[MikkoAkure]

So... we treated the reconstructed memories of Lahabrea and Elidibus in Anabaseios as actual people but the endless aren't real? Isn't Cachuia's ability to think for herself enough to leave Living Memory to go outside and lead Oblivion not proof enough of sentience? A chatgpt program wouldn't do something like that.

Cachuia didn't leave Living Memory, she controlled a robot from inside Living Memory and the robot left. Just like how Nostalgia does the same thing in reverse later on when she controls a robot from the Source and pilots it in the reflection. Cachuia and the other Endless are bound to the terminals. I believe Sphene was bound to the main terminal as well but possessed robot bodies in a similar, but more elaborate method with electrope projections.

Even if they're more than programs, they're still undead. Would Edda raising her dead fiance be OK then if she was more successful and he had self-awareness? If Sphene were casting spells over the graves of Alexandria's deceased and binding their spirits to her own playground instead of doing it all in a factory, would that still be OK to you? That's exactly what's being done here though the methods are different.

The Endless can't propagate themselves either. They are just the spirits of the dead and their population only increases by adding more dead, the memories of whom are erased from the living. They can't even make more of them like robots. At least the Ultima Thule beings can still make babies. The Endless lived a sad long existence as Sphene's undead pets in a dream world that's all smoke and mirrors. They don't even have enough aether in their own bodies to turn a fountain back on and depended on us to fix it. Consciousness is at the mercy of the system deciding whether or not you get a body at any given moment and then you just get put back in later on anyway. If they run out of aether like the people in the neighborhoods that were lost due to Sphene's failed fusion attempt, they turn into monsters.

Turning the terminals off was a mercy. People weren't meant to live forever and hopefully if the soul-fuel system isn't like Hydaelyn's, the people used up in the machine can reincarnate later on after entering the lifestream. Keeping them "alive" in that place would've been gross.