Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[Lady_Silvermoon]

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

And some died as kids, probably of levin sickness. But knowing some of the kids I wiped out probably died at a later age wouldn't really make me feel any better about wiping them from existence to demoralize a program. I needed a two day break from the story after that part.

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 are "fully aware" you say? So...like self-aware? They know who they are, what they are, where they are, like people? A copy of a person is still a person. You put me in a transporter, make two copies, you have two people. A dead person is still a person. The characters wouldn't be upset by the Alexandrian use of souls if that weren't the case. And the soul cells aren't even sentient and self-aware like the Endless are. And if the Alexandrians were destroying the souls the way we destroyed the Endless, I would see that as a monstrous act. Right now, my lack of objection to the soul system is it's opt-in. If the Alexandrians started sucking up souls out the aetherial sea to use as power ups, I'd take issue with that, cause those are sentient beings, chilling in the afterlife, watching us, making comments and sometimes saving the universe. You can't just do anything you want to them cause they are dead. And if people wanted to chill in the amusement park instead of the aetherial sea, I'd leave them be rather than delete them as a workaround to bad programming.

Sphene isn't preserving the Endless because she's spoiled, she's preserving them because she's subject to a badly programmed imperative that was so poorly written that it's deleting her actual memories in order to fulfill it's objective. She's what this whole project is for, and the AI meant to preserve her is deleting her so that it can do a genocide. And instead of caring about the code that's impairing her judgement and subjugating her will, the focus is deleting the Endless cause they are "unnatural and twisted."

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.

So the same bot that's deleting it's primary objective is also running a rebellion against itself and orchestrating it's own destruction while also conducting calculations to merge with another shard to preserve the things it's strongarming us to destroy? While also having PTSD flashes about the death of the princess it's actively deleting to preserve the people it's actively destroying? Preservation: Worst.Programmers.Ever.

We should have called Cid.

[Khryseis_Astra]

So the same bot that's deleting it's primary objective is also running a rebellion against itself and orchestrating it's own destruction while also conducting calculations to merge with another shard to preserve the things it's strongarming us to destroy? While also having PTSD flashes about the death of the princess it's actively deleting to preserve the people it's actively destroying? Preservation: Worst.Programmers.Ever.

We should have called Cid.

I was referring to Cahciua specifically from the post I quoted. All the Endless are AI bots. Sphene and Cahciua are different bots, programmed with different memories. The difference from Sphene and the other Endless is that the ones based on deceased Alexandrian citizens are essentially given the command “act as this person would based on these stored memories,” while Sphene, as the bot of their former leader, was given the added directive of “preserve my people no matter what.”

We’re not talking about “copies” of people (as in Emet’s sundering demonstration with Ryne in ShB), or even clones. This is illustrated when Sphene can “jump” from generic robot to robot. We’re talking about data that has been uploaded to a system of robots. These aren’t flesh and blood beings as much as their technology makes them appear so, and the souls they’re using are just a fuel source. Most important thing being, that fuel source requires the murder of beings who actually are alive, and if allowed to follow Sphene’s objective, they will murder any living beings they find and still eventually shut down due to lack of soul fuel if they kill everyone else anyway. There’s no real moral ambiguities here.

[Carolingian]

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.

They're obviously incomparable seeing as Cahciua is even shown passing the Turing Test.

[CNitsah]

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.

But that exactly where the problem lies. They have the memories of the dead people their personality and they're shown making new choices. They have individuality, their own capacity of judgement, their own memories and the capacity of creating new ones. Isn't that enough to be considered alive? For some, yes, for others no. It's a philosophical question as old as the humanity : "what is being alive", which lead to divisives questions that go from abortion to sentience of artificial intellingence. It's really deep question. Here the game doesn't answer to what it is, but definitely answer to what is not, without delving enough in the reason why they're not, as if it was obvious. It's not that obvious. For people that feels like the eternals met the conditions to be considered alive, this whole section feels wrong.

The story choose to tackle a deeply philosophical question while not wanting to talk about it at all. Hence the very divisive reception of that part.

[Turtledeluxe]

But that exactly where the problem lies. They have the memories of the dead people their personality, they're shown making new choices. They have individuality, their own capacity of judgement, their own memories and the capacity of creating new ones. Is that enough to be considered alive? For some, yes, for others no. It's a philosophical question as old as the humanity : "what is being alive", which lead to divisives questions that go from abortion to sentience of artificial intellingence. It's really deep question. Here the game doesn't answer to what it is, but definitely answer to what is not, without delving enough in the reason why they're not, as if it was obvious. It's not that obvious. For people that feels like the eternals met the conditions to be considered alive, this whole section feels wrong.

The story choose to tackle a deeply philosophical question while not wanting to talk about it at all. Hence the very divisive reception of that part.

How can you be a copy of a human being and not be able to make new choices? What are you talking about?

Only thing divided imo is people trolling and people who just took the story for what it is.

Sorry if it's dismissive but the "this isn't philosophical enough for me" kinda falls flat when you don't really make any sense to begin with.

And I mean that seriously. At what point are you a copy of the person do you become unable to use your brain??? Why would Sphene even invent that kind of system?

[CNitsah]

How can you be a copy of a human being and not be able to make new choices? What are you talking about?

Only thing divided imo is people trolling and people who just took the story for what it is.

Sorry if it's dismissive but the "this isn't philosophical enough for me" kinda falls flat when you don't really make any sense to begin with.

And I mean that seriously. At what point are you a copy of the person do you become unable to use your brain??? Why would Sphene even invent that kind of system?

I don't know how you got that from my message. I'm not saying this is not philosophical enough for me.
I'm saying that the eternals basically ask the question "what does it mean to be alive" (or more accurately, "what are the limits of being alive"), which is a question that has been there for hundreds, even thousands of years, with no definitive answers. Then FFXIV gave a simple answer. If your personnal belief align with that answer given in DT and you consider that the endless don't meet the requirements to be considered alive, you will not have any problem with it. If you consider they do meet the requirement, you will have problems with the way DT treated them.

I'm not giving a solution, I'm explaining why both vision have their arguments, and why there will never be any consensus on that kind of question.

[Post]

I don't think it's trolling to take the story for what it is and finding that WANTING.

They were clearly just trying to hearken back to Amarout, Ultima Thule and their respective not quite living denizens but did a crappy job of it because the only reason shown that these people aren't quite alive is that they disappear eventually after a computer is shut down. Everything else about them is told to us directly, in 'trust me, bro' dialogue.

And, given the option to shut them down when previous final zone people were allowed to live on as long as they could without our interference (the actual threat to us dealt with aside), it seems reasonable that many players scrutinize this scenario far closer than previous ones to me.

[Turtledeluxe]

I don't know how you got that from my message. I'm not saying this is not philosophical enough for me.
I'm saying that the eternals basically ask the question "what does it mean to be alive" (or more accurately, "what are the limits of being alive"), which is a question that has been there for hundreds, even thousands of years, with no definitive answers. Then FFXIV gave a simple answer. If your personnal belief align with that answer given in DT and you consider that the endless don't meet the requirements to be considered alive, you will not have any problem with it. If you consider they do meet the requirement, you will have problems with the way DT treated them.

I'm not giving a solution, I'm explaining why both vision have their arguments, and why there will never be any consensus on that kind of question.

You clearly said "they have the capacity to make new memories, they have individuality". But those are all qualities they had while alive. So please explain how a copy and digital simulation of a dead person, somehow leads to life?

It's not an ethical or deep question. If your grandma died today, and an AI was able to replicate her behavior with a projection of your grandma that was localised to your neighborhood by a projector, is that now your grandma? Does that have rights? Maybe if you are willfully suppressing what you know is true because you want to win internet arguments, but you aren't deep.

The digital projection would never be your grandma no matter how authentic it behaved. You know it and I know it. And that's what the Endless literally are.

[Arzalis]

But those are all qualities they had while alive.

Does having those qualities not also make something alive? You're sort of failing to see the argument here because you don't want to.

In your example, the copy may not actually be your grandma, but it's worth asking at what point something like that becomes it's own living entity regardless of the circumstances of it's creation.

Also, the projector example doesn't quite hold up. When you turn off living memory some of the endless still stick around. That's like unplugging the projector but the projected image stays and says it still has stuff to do. Your whole analogy falls apart with that. Even the slightest bit of inquisitiveness would have someone questioning things at that point.

Personally, for me, my issues with the zone aren't even necessarily about the conclusion the Scions came to. It's how readily they accepted it and didn't really question anything. That's extremely out of character, especially for people who should know better. Cahciua herself is a strong example that her words aren't matching up to the reality of the situation. There's a very "ends justify the means" feeling to the whole story there and that really isn't how the WOL and Co normally act. That is how the Ascians have always acted, however so I think the comparison is worth considering.

All this to say: the writers didn't do any of this intentionally and it's just a poorly written section of the story. You're clearly supposed to just agree with them.

[CNitsah]

You clearly said "they have the capacity to make new memories, they have individuality". But those are all qualities they had while alive. So please explain how a copy and digital simulation of a dead person, somehow leads to life?

It's not an ethical or deep question. If your grandma died today, and an AI was able to replicate her behavior with a projection of your grandma that was localised to your neighborhood by a projector, is that now your grandma? Does that have rights? Maybe if you are willfully suppressing what you know is true because you want to win internet arguments, but you aren't deep.

The digital projection would never be your grandma no matter how authentic it behaved. You know it and I know it. And that's what the Endless literally are.

Me: "there is no right answer, it depends on your opinion on "what are the condition to be considered alive".
You; "You said they're alive, prove me they're alive".

First of all I never pretended to be deep. I said the the question "what is being alive" is a deep question. If you don't understand the difference, that's on you.

But I'll try a last time. If it's it acts like like your grandmother, has her memory,... if it's an exact copy of her, how is she different from your grandmother? It's Theseus ship question applied to a living being. Sure, affectively, you probably won't consider her as your grandmother, but isn't she still living being. The question is "what make a living being a living being", and your answer to that is "I said it's not a living being". That question hasn't been answered by philosophers, doctors, intellectuals for thousands of years (that why question like abortion are still very hot). From the myths about artificial being like the golem to science fiction with frankenstein's monster, all the stories about artificial intelligence sentience or the status of clones, there is thousand of fiction based on the fact this question has not been answered. Even FFXIV relied on that in EW. But all that seem to fly far over your head.

Personally, for me, my issues with the zone aren't even necessarily about the conclusion the Scions came to. It's how readily they accepted it and didn't really question anything. That's extremely out of character, especially for people who should know better. Cahciua herself is a strong example that her words aren't matching up to the reality of the situation. There's a very "ends justify the means" feeling to the whole story there and that really isn't how the WOL and Co normally act. That is how the Ascians have always acted, however so I think the comparison is worth considering.

I strongly agree with that part. I have no problem with the solution chosen, but I feel it should have at least been some kind of moral dilemn with what you were doing, even if you ended doing the exact same thing.