Omicrons and The Endless (Do Endless Dream of Electric Sheep?)

[TaleraRistain]

If I am remembering right the goal of the Terrans was to harvest souls from Gaia and use them to revive or fill the soulless people that are left on Terra. This would seem similar to the endless which as I understand it need souls harvested from living people to then be combined with their memories to then exist in the Living Memory. So I guess technically they do have souls, but it is the soul they took from someone else who is now dead, and with the way things have been going probably killed to obtain that soul.

They weren't harvesting their souls. Terra and Gaia and any other world in the IX universe has at its heart a crystal that all souls return to when they die to be reborn. One of those typical FF tropes. Terra's crystal is dying. They tried to fuse with Gaia to steal Gaia's crystal but ended up shifting Terra inside Gaia. Garland used the Iifa Tree to prevent the souls of the Gaians from returning to their crystal so they could be replaced by the Terran souls that were in safekeeping. The genomes on Terra were constructs to hold the Terran souls since they don't currently have bodies.

So it's not exactly the same, but if soul and memory are both required to return to the aetherial sea in the XIV universe, then it is possible the Endless were being denied their right to be reborn and live new lives, instead being held to the lives they had already lived through.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

The Endless are instances of a person. This is why Sphene mourns Otis when he dies. You can argue that a digital projection that walks, talks and acts like a person is really them. But it's not them. And Endless themselves acknowledge this and interact with the living in this exact way.

Excuse me? Sphene did what again? I'm sure you meant that the program that controls her extrapolated from her memories that the loss of her childhood protector would have made the original Sphene sad and instructed her hologram to appear to be mourning. Because programs don't mourn. Spit that cake out sir. You cannot have it and eat it too.

Also Sphene does not mourn Namikka. I'm not sure where you got that from. She mourns Otis though. Namikka is calmly explained to be euthanized.

How odd. It's almost like one was a childhood friend now lost forever and the other was a citizen among many that she knew would be saved to the cloud. It's like the program is practicing discernment, caring more about some people and situations than others. Almost like she was a feeling, thinking person. Wow...those programmers sure made her impression of personhood quite convincing. But I mean they scripted Cahcuia so well she helped destroy the entire system while being a part of it. It was like she had autonomy. That's some impressive programming right there. Maybe I just haven't played enough video games to recognize when someone is behaving like an autonomous self-aware person verses an algorithm.

If someone fed my memories to a Meso Terminal and created a new instance of me that can shape shift and be immortal, I'd also hope it was deleted unless I wilfully participated.

Good point. If only the Alexandrians had a way to opt-out of being uploaded into the system. Some action you could take to indicate you didn't want your memories to go to Living Memory like, I don't know, maybe not wearing the device that sends your memories to Living Memory! You have to die with a regulator on to end up in Living Memory. Cahcuia eludes that she did it on purpose to figure out a way to destroy Living Memory because she was morally against it and perhaps Krile's parents died unexpectedly being rebel leaders, but the vast majority of people in Living Memory would have worn regulators their entire life knowing they'd be uploaded to the cloud after death. So while I agree the Endless who want to erase themselves should have the ability to do so because I believe in personal autonomy. I also believe that to delete people who didn't want to be deleted is a violation of personal autonomy. We are ignoring their rights because we're deciding they are not people, but how is that any different than what Emet-Selch did? We didn't fit his definition of people and so he was at liberty to do whatever he wanted with us even though we were also feeling, thinking, self-aware beings.

[Turtledeluxe]

Excuse me? Sphene did what again? I'm sure you meant that the program that controls her extrapolated from her memories that the loss of her childhood protector would have made the original Sphene sad and instructed her hologram to appear to be mourning. Because programs don't mourn. Spit that cake out sir. You cannot have it and eat it too.

My point there wasn't that mourning makes Sphene human. It's that she mourned Otis because he's dead.

How odd. It's almost like one was a childhood friend now lost forever and the other was a citizen among many that she knew would be saved to the cloud. It's like the program is practicing discernment, caring more about some people and situations than others.

I think you need to watch the scene again. Sphene explains why Namikka passing is of no concern, and why Otis passing is. We will never meet the real Otis again.

point. If only the Alexandrians had a way to opt-out of being uploaded into the system. Some action you could take to indicate you didn't want your memories to go to Living Memory like, I don't know, maybe not wearing the device that sends your memories to Living Memory! You have to die with a regulator on to end up in Living Memory. Cahcuia eludes that she did it on purpose to figure out a way to destroy . So while I agree the Endless who want to erase themselves should have the ability to do so because I believe in personal autonomy. I also believe that to delete people who didn't want to be deleted is a violation of personal autonomy. We are ignoring their rights because we're deciding they are not people, but how is that any different than what Emet-Selch did? We didn't fit his definition of people and so he was at liberty to do whatever he wanted with us even though we were also feeling, thinking, self-aware beings.

Is this supposed to be a gotcha? I never said that you couldn't opt out. I was establishing my own preferences as far as becoming what an Endless is, another version of me that is non human.

Emet Selch's primary motivation wasnt "youre not people let me be cruel". When he makes that comment he says it with an intense sarcastic flair btw-- not because it is sarcastic but because it helps him rationalize doing what he knows is problematic to the main cast. I feel like what you're suggesting here is kind of an oversimplification of Emet.

That said, we aren't deciding they aren't people. The game defines them as not people. The Endless themselves address the living as distinct from them. The game shows us they are made up of data and calls them fascimilies. Players are the ones telling the writers what the Endless are ITT.

[ValynS]

I was slightly amused at the game taking such strong visual and thematic plot cues from classic scifi/cyberpunk works, but not bothering to also carry over the philosophical questions they raise, giving it a quick shrug and concluding that proactively committing the g-word is totally ok if it saves other people.

[Lady_Silvermoon]

My point there wasn't that mourning makes Sphene human. It's that she mourned Otis because he's dead.

I think you need to watch the scene again. Sphene explains why Namikka passing is of no concern, and why Otis passing is. We will never meet the real Otis again.

I find this a fascinating interpretation of events. If a soul is what makes Otis the "real" Otis and the reason she mourns him, then why does she not mourn the "real" Namikka given she also has a soul? Considering she mentions that Otis does not have a regulator, it seems to me what she is mourning is the centuries of memories and experiences that are forever lost. THAT Otis is gone forever, while Namikka, in her eyes, has been saved. She did not experience the end. Unlike Otis, her memories will live on in Living Memory (well at least for a day or so until we shut it down.)

Emet Selch's primary motivation wasnt "youre not people let me be cruel". When he makes that comment he says it with an intense sarcastic flair btw-- not because it is sarcastic but because it helps him rationalize doing what he knows is problematic to the main cast. I feel like what you're suggesting here is kind of an oversimplification of Emet.

That said, we aren't deciding they aren't people. The game defines them as not people. The Endless themselves address the living as distinct from them. The game shows us they are made up of data and calls them fascimilies. Players are the ones telling the writers what the Endless are ITT.

I didn't say his motivation was that we weren't people, I pointed out his justification was that we weren't people. The same way our justification was that they weren't people.

Also, the game doesn't tell us they aren't people. Cahciua tells us they aren't people, while Sphene insists that they are. And Sphene's right. By every metric we use to measure personhood, the Endless qualify. Souls are not the metric of personhood, they are the metric of life. And the pants my character is wearing came from something that used to have a soul, so clearly we don't use that as the metric of determining what does and doesn't have rights. No one would advocate for wiping out every Garlean so that Varis would have no one to fight to protect, so why is that an acceptable strategy with the Endless?

They are dehumanized so that we can wipe them out without feeling guilt. But the characters do feel both guilt and shame. So much so Krile suggests finding another way when it's time to delete her parents and we have to strongarm Erenville into deleting his mom. If these aren't people, then the pain these characters are feeling as they wipe them out is nonsensical, however, if they are people, then the behavior in between wiping them out is nonsensical.

[Galvuu]

I'm not sure what your point is. That a fantasy race exists for humanity origin story in XIV so the Endless are alive?

Puppies are also alive in XIV. Also to be clear, Ancients are not real and not comparative to humans outside storytelling purposes. They're humanoid.

My statement you quoted was more of a commentary on the theoritocal that I'd be OK with what happens to Endless happening to me. I wouldn't be OK with it because it results in something not me and not human that seems like me.

Their point is that what you pushed forward as a qualitative measure of the nature of the Endless is inconsistent and insufficient- hence, he applied it to a character in the same universe that we all consider to be alive to show the discrepancy.

This thread is rife with excellent discussion. It really bothers me how the game just... glosses over all of it. No nuance, no discussion, even when our party has so many of the greatest minds in the realm in it.
So much missed potential...

[Vyrerus]

This thread is rife with excellent discussion. It really bothers me how the game just... glosses over all of it. No nuance, no discussion

I can't remember quite where, as it's been almost two months now, and I haven't recorded/rewatched any cutscenes from DT, but there is some point DT story where Sphene tells WoL and Co. that she'll value her people over us no matter what, and become a devourer of worlds, that when two nations cannot come to peaceful terms there's only one resolution, and we get a response that's more or less, "Then let's resolve this."

That along with the other options kind of harken back to the kill or be killed nature of SHB's confrontation with Emet-selch. The hopeful, "Find another way." is there in the dialogue, but the process was started, so said she.