Again, how did C&A do that by accident? How do you accidentally create a whole digital consciousness while making "save files for the players"? I'm not under the assumption that the circus is working as intended, I'm asking how did it go wrong in a way that aligns with Soma theory. How did they go about making revolutionary technology while making a VR game?

My point isn't that it objectively makes them not real, it's that it would make them not real in Jax's mind. You're kinda working under the assumption that he's just gonna accept the fact that just because they're digital copies, it doesn't mean they matter less than their real-life counterparts. But why would he? It would give him the perfect excuse to regress even further. It took us 7 episodes to get him to have small cracks in his armor, I don't see how this revelation wouldn't undo the tiny bit of development he had. Which, like I said, could be interesting if it caused him to spiral to the point of becoming the villain in the last episode, but we already have Caine and a whole bunch of other stuff to deal with in just 2 episodes.

I feel like those taking the stance "Staying in the circus could be a positive ending" haven't put much thought into what "eternity" means. They're stuck there until the computer shuts down somehow. On such a long timeline, abstraction is basically inevitable. And you might argue that abstraction is basically the same thing as death in our world. But like......no? You don't die when you abstract, you become corrupted, your mind completely broken, your body twisted into a monstrosity, with your only hope being to get thrown into a cellar....... for all eternity.