Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[Turtledeluxe]

Accusing the cast of moral insufficiency requires some kind of argument aside from murder. Killing is just a word. I killed my chances. I killed you in Tekken. Killing is an excitable term that doesn't come equipped with gravity.

You also can't argue that something simply existing means it couldn't or shouldn't be ended. If that were the case, our justice system would be very different and arguably less effective. What's morally problematic is arguing that simple sentience means endings aren't on the table.


This kind of thinking also makes me think about the actors' strike and their protections. What are we supposed to tell them? Oh sorry, this AI can take new dialogue and speak just like you. You'll need to forfeit all your rights and employment to this AI..sorry. it's not 1:1 because the argument doesn't hinge on sentience buuut.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

This kind of thinking also makes me think about the actors' strike and their protections. What are we supposed to tell them? Oh sorry, this AI can take new dialogue and speak just like you. You'll need to forfeit all your rights and employment to this AI..sorry. it's not 1:1 because the argument doesn't hinge on sentience buuut.

Not the same at all. It's more akin to "this class of people are not people in the same way you are a person, so it's morally acceptable to do anything you want to them."

AI does not have sentience, but one day it might and we will have to decide how we will treat this creation that can feel fear, feel pain, desire freedom, strive for happiness.

And when that day comes, I hope we do better as a society than our characters did in Living Memory.

*snip*

The Sundered are not a natural creation. They are the mutilated bits of another species. Given your view here, I have to wonder if you agree with Emet-Selch about the rejoinings. After all, Ancients are the natural evolution of humanity in the FF14 universe.

[MikkoAkure]

The Sundered are not a natural creation. They are the mutilated bits of another species. Given your view here, I have to wonder if you agree with Emet-Selch about the rejoinings. After all, Ancients are the natural evolution of humanity in the FF14 universe.

The Sundered at least are still alive.

The Endless are a bunch of collected dead people. They had lives, they died, and instead of being reincarnated they're removed from the natural cycle and uploaded to a cloud server that randomly decides when to manifest them into a dilapidated purgatory until the end of time (or the terminals) by stitching their memories onto someone else's soul.

Again, if the Endless were collected while they were actually alive and the state of being Endless was a natural continued state of life and done to evade some sort of calamity, I'd feel a little different about the whole thing. Or if like the Sundering, it had been done widespread against an entire people but they still managed to continue actual mundane living after that. But it's not any of that. Their memory aether is collected postmortem. These people are ghosts. They're not a "new version of life", they HAD lives.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

The Sundered at least are still alive.

The Endless are a bunch of collected dead people. They had lives, they died, and instead of being reincarnated they're removed from the natural cycle and uploaded to a cloud server that randomly decides when to manifest them into a dilapidated purgatory until the end of time (or the terminals) by stitching their memories onto someone else's soul.

Again, if the Endless were collected while they were actually alive and the state of being Endless was a natural continued state of life and done to evade some sort of calamity, I'd feel a little different about the whole thing. Or if like the Sundering, it had been done widespread against an entire people but they still managed to continue actual mundane living after that. But it's not any of that. Their memory aether is collected postmortem. These people are ghosts. They're not a "new version of life", they HAD lives.

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.

[MikkoAkure]

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.

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. The fact that they're dead and already lived just makes it "easier" to let us end this farce and allow them to peacefully pass on.

The people we fight in the Aitascope if that's what you're referring to are already fragmented souls who have partially merged with the Aetherial Sea itself. The deceased antagonists there are only able to maintain any sort of sense of self because they're angry and want to kill us. Defeating angry fragments of souls in the Lifestream if anything only speeds up the natural process of fully returning to it and ALL people who return to the Aetherial Sea are supposed to have their personhoods erased. That's literally the entire point.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

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.

Deleting them all is one possible solution to stopping an AI from wiping out all life in the universe to obey it's poorly programmed directive...or...we could have tried reprogramming it. *shrugs* But that would have probably cut into our ice cream eating and boat riding time. Sure, wiping out every Garlean would have solved a lot of problems for us too, but for some reason we never brought up any Final Solutions when it came to them. Wonder why?

The fact that they're dead and already lived just makes it "easier" to let us end this farce and allow them to peacefully pass on.

It's beyond that. We're told they are unnatural and we should feel no guilt in wiping them out. But the characters do feel guilt. They feel guilt and shame when Krile's parents ask are we about to erase them. The characters know they are doing something wrong, you can see it on their faces regardless of what Cahcuia tells them to view it in order to get it done. Krile even suggests "finding another way" when faced with the possibility of her parents begging her for their lives. Good thing like everyone else's mommy they were perfectly cool with being deleted, they even WANTED to be deleted. *whew* Might have had to face the gravity of what was being done.

Did they peacefully pass on? Memories are washed away in the aetherial sea. It's the soul that's eternal. From my best understanding, we sent those people to oblivion. The guy who waited centuries to be with the love of his life? Welp, hope he made the best of those five minutes before we erased the both of them from existence because their existence was worth less than those the program might hurt in an attempt to preserve them.

Defeating angry fragments of souls in the Lifestream if anything only speeds up the natural process of fully returning to it and ALL people who return to the Aetherial Sea are supposed to have their personhoods erased. That's literally the entire point.

Everyone on Etheirys (barring accident or murder) is supposed to die when they want to, but a single individual decided we'd be tougher if we died sooner, more often and more horrifically. The Sundered life is not a natural state. It was a state decided not by a god, but a retired politician. Soo...maybe we shouldn't use that as the metric for when it's good and right to wipe people from existence. Maybe we shouldn't wipe people from existence unless absolutely necessary to save ourselves and that wasn't absolutely necessary. That was Plan A.

[MikkoAkure]

snip

The Garleans are actual living people in an actual functioning society. The Endless are dead people prevented from reincarnating by stealing the souls of others to maintain a boring existence in a broken down Disneyland because their dead queen is too scared to just let people die naturally.

They're still innocent of what they are and what happens to maintain them since they can't control that and that's part of what makes the situation tragic, but Sphene has no right to people's souls and after absconding with the key there was only so much that could have been done. We have a right to defend ourselves and our world and that involved shutting down the terminals. If you believe that we were just going to let it happen because it's too morally dubious then I don't know what to say. If hacking into her terminal and reprogramming her to not be a terrible person was an actual possibility it would have come up. We already tried to talk her down and negotiate which may have led to something, but she refused. But hey, we might get round 2 since her special regulator is still around.

You keep trying to bring Venat back into this, but she didn't make the decision unilaterally. The game itself mentions there were others and then EE3 goes into even more detail about how other Ancients were anti-Convocation and others as well who blamed creation magic for the Final Days and wanted it removed. Her faction was fully aware of the Sundering and what would happen. And she was also right. The Convocation's plan would just delay the inevitable. We could argue all day about what could have happened but there's absolutely no way to know whether any of that would have worked and we know that her plan was the one that actually worked in the end and Emet-Selch admitted it.

The game also goes along with ending the Endless as the correct choice and no other possibilities existed at the time we did it. The writers are the ones who invented the whole plot and the framework it's all taking place in and would know better if there was another way than random people on the forums including myself. In the end, if the game you're playing continuously makes decisions in the story that go against what you believe should happen, then sticking around is probably going to cause you more frustration than satisfaction anyway.

[AnotherPerson]

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. The fact that they're dead and already lived just makes it "easier" to let us end this farce and allow them to peacefully pass on.

The people we fight in the Aitascope if that's what you're referring to are already fragmented souls who have partially merged with the Aetherial Sea itself. The deceased antagonists there are only able to maintain any sort of sense of self because they're angry and want to kill us. Defeating angry fragments of souls in the Lifestream if anything only speeds up the natural process of fully returning to it and ALL people who return to the Aetherial Sea are supposed to have their personhoods erased. That's literally the entire point.

We don't have a right. We have a compelling reason to get rid of things that stand in our way, but not a right.
Civilian causality in war is never a "right".

Plus, you don't own those lives. DRK storyline really does wonders in this regard. You may see yourself as 'morally right to remove the Heavensward'. Then you see the consequences of your actions later on in the storyline, and you live with them. No one truly wins in war. There's only losers and casualties. A real shame there's no more job quests.

[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.