Questionable ethics - Living Memory

[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.

[Dorito_Burrito]

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.

I think Emet-Selch would've absolutely shut down Living Memory.

[TheMightyMollusk]

I think Emet-Selch would've absolutely shut down Living Memory.

Yeah, but to him, it would've been because they were just another bunch of sundered nobodies. If he doesn't even consider us alive, he wouldn't even blink at turning off a computer.

Alternately, he would've turned it off because stealing and using up the life force of another reflection would've been counter to the whole point of a Rejoining. They can't merge souls back together if they've been spent.

[Dorito_Burrito]

Yeah, but to him, it would've been because they were just another bunch of sundered nobodies. If he doesn't even consider us alive, he wouldn't even blink at turning off a computer.

Alternately, he would've turned it off because stealing and using up the life force of another reflection would've been counter to the whole point of a Rejoining. They can't merge souls back together if they've been spent.

I'd argue he would've done it pre-Ascian days too, seeing it as anathema against the sanctity of souls and the Lifestream.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

*snip*

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. What they "antagonized" were the characters' sensibilities. And it's not okay to wipe people out just because they've gone against the natural order, which isn't even the original natural order, it's only what's natural from their experience.

They wanted to set up a situation where we HAD to sacrifice the innocent to save ourselves, but they botched it so bad that we didn't sacrifice them because we HAD to but because the characters were biased against them.

[MikkoAkure]

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.

Souls are not corporeal aether. I'm not sure where you're getting that from unless you misread previous explanations in the game.

The aether which imbues us with life can be categorized into three forms. Two are of the incorporeal sort, the soul and the memory.

They do not run on corporeal aether, that is the normal, mundane aether literally everything else in the setting runs off of. If they did then the whole situation would be easy. Part of the reason the situation with Living Memory is what it is, is because it's supposed to be a giant callback to FF9, but even then in this setting we have no other comparison to what the Alexandrians were accomplishing other than what little we know about necromantic magic so we have no reason to doubt living, incorporeal aether is required.

Also, the logs in the Everkeep state that the bodies are disposed of and it's our bodies that comprise corporeal aether. I'm not entirely convinced the Endless are wholly corporeal either since they are able to teleport around Living Memory at will without an aetheryte.

Even per Sharlayans, the Endless would be considered ghosts.

Every living being is comprised of corporeal aether of the flesh, incorporeal aether of the soul, and the aetherial residue of their memories. Were one to be possessed of only corporeal aether, they would be but a walking corpse. Conversely, entities comprised of only incorporeal aether are referred to in layman’s terms as ghosts. In either case, they may also retain some of their residual memories. Of course, a ghost that possesses residual memories could likely recall its past and retain self-awareness.

The Endless are dead. They are not "new life" they are a prolonged death. Not allowing aether back to the lifestream harms the star and the whole situation of having the dead running forever around a place that's falling apart and full of monsters is gross. By the definition above, and by what Montichaigne mentions later comparing memories to ink and the soul as paper, the Endless are just residue written onto someone else's soul. I couldn't shut it down fast enough.

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.

Half of all villains in fantasy media are trying to be immortal. Are you saying they're all right? Or is Seymour from FFX in the right for trying to make all of Spira undead like him?

I guess this is the fundamental part of where you and I disagree because I don't think anyone should live forever to begin with, and this setting in particular has already stated multiple times that doing so is detriment to the star they live on. What we do with the Endless is justified by the simple fact that they're already dead. We're returning the stolen souls back to the normal cycle and the dead will reincarnate as is intended for all life.


By the way, I have no idea where you're getting your calculations about "10-1" from either unless you made that up.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

Souls are not corporeal aether. I'm not sure where you're getting that from unless you misread previous explanations in the game.

Correct. Souls are not corporeal aether. That's why I clarified that the Endless, cannot and do not run off souls. They run off life force, which is corporeal aether. From the souls entry in our codex:


People conflate and confuse what people with the regulators are doing and what's happening in Living Memory. But the people of Living Memory are not memory aether grafted onto souls as that would be ghosts and they could have just been that in the first place, be much sturdier for it and not needed any resources to maintain it. All you'd have to do is keep them from going to the aetherial sea and they would have continued on forever. Even a city of ghosts would have been a less stupid plan. But the memory aether is removed from the soul and sent to Living Memory, while the soul is packaged into a soul cell and sent to the lower levels for distribution to living citizens. So if what she needed was souls, extracting memories from them and sending them to the other place makes no sense. She's making their physical bodies out of the stuff physical bodies are made out of. If she was making them physical bodies out of souls, well souls are eternal. She could have just left them on their original souls and none of this would have been necessary.

Half of all villains in fantasy media are trying to be immortal. Are you saying they're all right? Or is Seymour from FFX in the right for trying to make all of Spira undead like him?

Usually when villains attempt to make themselves immortal, the villainy comes in the method, not the desire. Are the Ea evil? They were just minding their eternal business, chilling as blobs when the depression bird hit. And my highest moral value is self-determination, so Seymour attempting to make everyone undead violates that as does "releasing" a bunch of people without their consent, as does holding them without their consent. But given you don't end up in Living Memory without wearing a regulator, I assume the vast majority of people did consent to end up there, but we conveniently only speak to the handful who didn't want to be there. And just so you know, if I had found a way to preserve them, I still would have added a self-release option so that no one was stuck in Living Memory who didn't want to be there.

[Jojoya]

I think Emet-Selch would've absolutely shut down Living Memory.

I think Emet and the other Ascians were responsible for Living Memory. I think Preservation was their experiment group for finding a new way to recreate those they had lost. Emet had already told us they had no hesitation when it came to using our aether to restore their dead.

Once the system was perfected to their satisfaction, they would have removed the test subject memories of the Alexandrian people and replaced them with the memories of the Ancients that were sacrificed to Zodiark or lost in the Sundering. The memory crystals we found then passed onto Elidibus as he died (except for Azem's) may not have been the only ones in existence. The appearance of Living Memory would have changed to reflect Amaurot, Elpis and other places of the pre-Sundering world.