A big problem with the Endless is that what we're being shown contradicts completely with what we're being told.

Everything we see in Living Memory points to the Endless being their own sentient people who hear, feel, and think like every other person on Etheirys. They're intelligent, self-aware, and conscious. We even see them pass the Turing Test. Yet what we're being told constantly by Cahciua (and others like Erenville who copy her words) is that they're just "facsimiles constructed from someone's memory" and therefore erasing them is fine. And it's that contradiction which causes the confusion and debate.

The writers had three options when it came to the Endless:
1) They're sentient/alive and their own individual people
2) They're not sentient/alive and not their own individual people
3) It's not clear whether they're really sentient/alive and whether they are their own individual people

Each of those scenarios could have made for a great story as long as what we were being told and what we were being shown was the same.

But we didn't get that. We were shown that scenario 1 was going on, but were being told that we're dealing with scenario 2. And because of that the Scions/WoL never really care too much about shutting down the terminals beyond feeling a bit sad about losing Cahciua. But apart from that everyone is just completely fine with it and they barely care.

If they wanted to keep things vague on purpose and went with scenario 3 there should have at least been some discussion amongst the Scions about whether or not this was the right course of action. Some philosophical debate. And also some hints and teases that would have pointed to the Endless maybe not being completely sentient after all. But instead we got this contradictory mess.

Even if they went full in on scenario 1 it could still have ended with us having the erase them all. If anything if the Endless were treated as real people by the Scions and the WoL the story would have ended up being even more tragic. I can only imagine the desperation of the Scions to come up with an alternative solution and finally being forced to choose erasure.

But right now it really feels like the writers wrote a story but didn't want to go too serious and mature so they needed to soften it up by making it extra clear that erasing the Endless isn't actually bad. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the scene in Shaaloani where we're being shown a gun duel only to then be told "don't worry, they're just rubber bullets, there aren't any actual bad things going on here".