Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[Hyperia]

I have a feeling that this topic is good enough to merit its own ethics class: Ethics 407 - AI Entities

[Carolingian]

We have a right to delete the Endless because that was part of stopping Sphene who planned to kill everyone on the Source and eventually all the Reflections in order to power them. If she had her way, eventually the only people left would be Endless and then they'd slowly run out of souls to use and we'd be back to where we were before.

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.

I have a feeling that this topic is good enough to merit its own ethics class: Ethics 407 - AI Entities

The philosophical and ethical debates and questions around AI Entities are genuinely interesting. It's why they're such a popular topic in science-fiction. It's what makes it so frustrating and disappointing that DT doesn't seem at all interested in exploring that topic beyond the most shallow and surface-level "they don't have souls so it's fine to erase them" without any real further discussion.

[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.

[Turtledeluxe]

I also do not believe we have the right to wipe out the spirits in the aetherial sea, do you? I agree they are not alive, but I don't think being dead erases personhood and then gives me the right to do with the dead whatever I want. Alive or dead, they were sentient beings whose existence we were ending. I don't really have a "you had your chance" policy when it comes to wiping out societies.

You can frame it as wiping out a society all you want. That's not what the intention was. The games gonna go on, telling the same story, and your outrage isn't going to change it.

Thank goodness no one in real life judges things this way with such blatant disregard for context.

And yes, I'd wipe out spirits any time and any place if the only way to sustain those spirits is soul aether. Period end of story. There is no alternative fuel source. Humans in XIV are composed of memory and soul aether. That's the whole point. there is no alternative.

Also regarding the Sundering, the writers clearly tell you that meaningful change cannot occur as a result of the Elpis visit. And no the raids don't disprove this, because they hadn't happened yet in the story. Elidibus clearly spells out that nothing can disrupt the timeline we are already on. The writers may make mistakes and maybe even ignore their own time travel rules, but it's commonly understood we were never going to change anything regarding Meteion no matter who or what tried.

[Jojoya]

It is scary how many posters in this thread have become so consumed with living in a virtual world that they will choose preserving artificial recreations over genuine living beings.

Nothing sentient was killed when the terminals in Living Memory were shut down. You can go back to Living Memory after completing the MSQ and everything that was sentient is still there. Flora and fauna can be seen over the zone.

What was removed were facades and facsimiles created to cling to the dead past. Computerized recreations of people who are long dead are not sentient or living no matter how much they mimic such qualities.

Living Memory smells badly of Ascian Plan B. If they weren't able to force the aether sustaining new life into replacing the aether of their dead still contained within Zodiark so the dead could be revived, then they would consume that aether to power recreations of their friends and loved ones based on memory. Only the Ascian would have been demented enough to design the system to require aether from living beings as a power source when there were so many other options that could have been explored and used such as electrope.

Regardless of personal feelings, regardless of whether an individual's actions were right or wrong, the universe wants to move on. Attempting to cling to the dead that are part of the past is dangerous, especially if sustaining those dead means destroying the future.

[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.

[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?

[CVXIV]

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

[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.

[Khryseis_Astra]

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

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.