miqius

Not traveling to the Cognitive Realm, but the Cognitive Aspects while in the Physical. How do they exist in the CR, with the Dor being a pressurized Investiture tempest and whatnot? Doesn't it affect people on Sel at all?

This is the first time I hear about an Aether of Wind, where can I find the discussion? Was it theorized before TOTES? It would provide a pretty good explanation of how the seas of spores are fluidised, that's why I ask. My take: maybe the region around the "Lunagree of wind" has some mechanism that allows the spores to seep down the planet's crust and reach aquifers. When in contact with water, the spores produce air that escapes through the planet's crust, maybe through narrow tunnels that flow into the other seas, generating the necessary setup for fluidisation (ignoring possible erosion and excess of pressure xd).

I really believe that having this effect on space itself would require a lot more Investiture. Also, we have this wob: Honest question: why don't you think that just like some individuals like Axis and Jasnah are able to pull the "inverse shadow" aspect from the Cognitive into the Physical so other beings can see it, Light is doing something similar to the lengthened bands? It's true that Stuart Eliason didn't say "in any significant way", but I like the sound of Brandon's "yes!" hehe. Edit: could you share Evgeni's take on your theory?

Hmm yes somewhere around an augmented fifth I think. I guess you could draw some formal similarities to that, but it terms of perception I don't see how they relate.

Yeah it just doesn't work that way (color neither it's our perception of it that does that). So frustrating hahaha.

Nice! So there lies the main reason comparing sound to color is so difficult. Since it has to do with perception, Brandon could somehow bypass it. I'd like to discover a way myself, though.

I think of charging white sand as overcoming an energy gap. The microorganisms on the sand need a certain amount of energy to become a (allomantic metal-like) focus that lets Investiture pass from the Spiritual Realm to the Physical. That energy would be provided by the radiation of Investiture, so the sand is never actually Invested. Once it's been used as a focus for an indefinite time by a sand master, it returns to the original state. It bothers me that it's indefinite since metals disappear after a time of using them as focus, but of course it's not the same, the lichen is alive and creates a sort of bond with the sand master that allows the magic, it's not just a piece of metal. Maybe radiation from Investiture of different Shards takes different times/intensities to turn the sand white(?), since they're associated to diferent frequencies, so they would carry different amounts of energy. There's a looooot of stuff an in-world scientist can study with white sand and the presumed fixed energy gap, I'm so hyped.

I've heard about that mental filling of fake colors, I think you're right. I'd like to study it a bit more, though. It just dawned on me writing this! hahaha. The problem I had was I was thinking about color combination mathematically (it can be proved that the combination of two different frequencies gives an envelope wave of the frequency exactly in the middle, so blue and red should make green, not magenta) but thinking about the 3 cones, maybe it's just that one picks the blue part, the other the red part, and since the green one detects nothing, the brain goes haywire and invents magenta. (I think something similar happens with yellow.) And you're somewhat right about cones. Each type picks up the intensity of light of the frequency they're tuned in, but that frequency is actually a range, and the three ranges overlap with each other. They then send the signals, and then the brain reconstructs the original combination. In our ear, it's actually similar, but we only have one receptor with the whole continuum of frequencies (each frequency of the sound that enters the ear makes the fluid within the cochlea vibrate in a different segment --due to its spiral shape-- and there's "little hairs" that pick up that vibration and send the signal), and that's why I think we have relative pitch with sound, you can compare the different patterns of vibration within the cochlea, f.e. a note will create vibrations in similar sectors than its fifth, whereas with light the signal gets separated in reception and arrives disassembled to the brain, so yeah what you said. But returning to the Cosmere, I think stuff like the fake colors enters the realm of perceptions, and we're looking for something beyond, or not influenced by, that. It's really hard... I'm really intrigued about this so I'm happy to be able to discuss it with someone . Sorry if it has veered off too much from the Cosmere. Edit: Hey @Kureshi Ironclaw, tagging you in case you didn't get a notification without a quote. Sorry if it's a bother you don't need to answer <3.

I agree with everything you said. I also have high studies in music and was thinking along the same lines. There's no reason why the palettes above should be related to harmonic consonance, in fact some seem quite vibrant and others are close together (which gives a sense of cohesion you don't get in music for those intervals). And that is why I had an issue with Brandon's approach, because it seemed to me he was trying to justify the sense of beauty someone from 3rd+ Hightening gets from the palaces' rooms palettes with harmonic consonance. So yeah I agree you could twist it saying that it's not about consonance, but more like being able to see the palettes like you and I can hear a diminished 7th chord and find beauty in it. But like you said, two musicians won't go much further without a visual artist. I'm also a physicist and I've tried to find correlation between these two concepts from that side, but to no avail. When I discover how the transition from the linear spectrum to the color wheel works I'll try to apply the geometry patterns you mentioned. (All this more for my own satisfaction than to unveil the next step in the Cosmere, since I too believe we'll get another "sweep under the rug" move from Brandon, like with red-shift in time bubbles.) Btw, I like your take on having an interval of proximity for each point of a palette, where if you go further you find "dissonance" within that palette, hadn't thought about it that way. I'll try the physics approach and see if I have more luck. The thing is though, again, Brandon is quite specific on the reason to finding beauty in those rooms' palettes being the ability to recognize the specific shades and the harmonic relation to one another, so having an interval of proximity wouldn't work here. I agree this is the case for real live color compositions, but well, it is what it is. We'll see what Brandon has in store for us in a couple of years or decades xd. I'm sure he surprises us somehow.

Wait, what??? So the body is made of Investiture in the CR(?). Or is he saying it transfers into Investiture while travelling and popps out of Investiture into the CR? If not, now all the reasons I was given on reddit don't fit!

Brandon has clearly stated that the laws of thermodynamics apply to the Cosmere (taking Investiture into account) and the total ammount of matter-energy-Investiture is conserved. It's a fundamental aspect of his worldbuilding. When you see matter appear from nothing, it's probably an Investiture-matter conversion. I'd love to discuss the holes you see in his law of conservation and respecting thermodynamics, though.

Hey @Kureshi Ironclaw! Here's an excerpt of Interference - A grand Scientific Musical Theory that explains how to do the 12 note wheel of colors, and here's the combinations on the wheel of colors. As you can see, they don't correspond to any consonant chords, which is what I wanted. (Keep in mind that an equitempered scale doesn't respect harmonics, so to make chords we should change them a bit.) There are some things I still don't understand, like how the transition from a linear spectrum to the wheel works, so I can't make a satisfying comparison to sound yet. I'll have to investigate a little bit more.

Thing is, we all have perfect color pitch (color-blinds just see less colors). We all know if a yellow is yellow effortlessly, without comparing it to red or blue, just like someone with perfect pitch recognizes a G4 when they hear it. BUT, a grid is needed to express the frequency heard. If that someone comes from a culture with f.e. a 4 note equitempered scale (the first being C) and all their melodies use only those, when they hear a G they will immediately know it's between their 2nd and 3rd notes, closer to the latter than the former, but they'll have no means to pinpoint it exactly. The same happens with colors: a painter may easily tell garnet from ruby, but for me it's just red. That's because I have a low-res grid and my brain cannot store those different shades separately, but not bc I don't have perfect pitch, I still can picture the shade of color in my head without reference like the aforementioned person can sing the note. This video isn't exactly about this but segments 3 and 5 could be useful. The interesting thing is we don't have relative color pitch, which is what everyone has with sound. That's because light doesn't interact in our cones/receptor system like sound does in our cochlea. We can tell if a sound interval is dissonant or sounds "harmoniously" without training, but no one can tell which shade of green the color-equivalent fifth of garnet's frequency is. And I think this is what Brandon was going for: Relative Color Pitch. He's always said that color and sound, tones, have a special place in his worldbuilding and the Cosmere. He's very interested in how these are shaped by perception. However, with this magic he aims for the opposite. He wants to show there's something underlying that perception, something objective that follows only the laws of nature. There's only one problem with all this: we only see the equivalent to an octave. What does this imply? The harmonics of a base frequency that could be grouped into the same color (like different shades of red), would be too far in the harmonic extension, meaning they would be so close that would be dissonant. So the palaces' rooms in Warbreaker would actually be even more hideous to those of 3rd+ Hightening than they are to us. Comparison to sound Harmonics of C1: C1 C2 G2 C3 E3 G3 Bb3 C4 D4 Fifths and thirds would be too far off (blue-greens and yellows for a red, respectively), only those within a 2nd would still count as red. Sound-wise, they might add a bit of color (pun intended) to a full chord, but only the tonic and second it's just plain dissonant. It's a very interesting theme and I love it, but I just think he was a bit too hasty when he introduced it in Warbreaker and it won't work as I would've liked it to. Of course, I respect the fact that Brandon can't go so deep in every aspect of the Cosmere, and some things will need some magical mumbo-jumbo to make them work in a roundabout way and that's fine. I'm just a wee bit disappointed because it seems color and sound will have huge implications in the future and I don't see this part working perfectly. If someone disagrees or thinks I'm on the wrong path I'd love to discuss!

I feel like in book5 when she regains more memories it's gonna get more interesting and super wholesome, but this is how it felt to me until midRoW

Don't mean to be mean but... sorry guys ly Aether of Night Credits for Wayne art

Hey @Halyo_Alex! I enjoy this theory very much, but I'd like to discuss some aspects. I might be wrong, but bear with me for just a moment. From what I know about quantum interference, you get an intensity pattern caused by electron scattering. So first, this wouldn't work on a metal, where electrons aren't localized and therefore don't follow its atomical structure. In crystals though... there's a thread we could pull on (gems: Brandon has specified that some Polestones have almost the exact same composition, the only difference is in structure, caused by impurities; same as their real counterparts). And second, this scattering doesn't affect frequency, the electrons absorb the energy from the light and then release this same energy (so light in the same frequency) in all directions. So if blue light goes through a crystal, blue light comes out (also blue light can't penetrate crystal or metal, it would have to be x-ray or higher, but we're actually talking about Investiture so who knows). If you are talking about another type of scattering related to the nucleus wavefuction (and not electron scattering) that actually modifies or filters frequency please explain, I've never been a fan of crystallography and I'm a bit rusty. Also, it bothers me that what would be filtered is what gets scattered, and the rest actually passes through :'(. That being said, I'd love this theory to work (or maybe a slightly different angle), it tackles the basics and would explain many things. And I think Brandon wouldn't go this deep, but instead say yeah there's some magical physics-like mumbo-jumbo related to metallic structure that filters the Investiture's Tone. Edit: I'd also love to know the other theories if you find the time to share them

Well technically you could use a lot of names on the first . The second one is nothing specific, just Lift being Lift.

Since it's my first, let me use the unfair ununlikeableness of mr baby yoda. No need to write the characters' names, I presume. This one's not RoW but...

She says it didn't glow as strong as she thought it should. When I read it I attributed it to the Sibling's shield dampening gravitation, but now I'm inclined to believe it's related to @MyrmidonOfAchilles's quote.

Oh wow, this went over my head. Why would a Reverse Lashing do that? You are infusing an object with Stormlight same as the other two, are you not? This intrigued me hahaha do you know of any thread about this that I could check? Thanks!

You're right, the dark glow of the anti-Voidlight is because it's Voidlight, I didn't find anything about it having an appearance of sucking in light (I didn't mean it actually sucks light in). The Skaze is described as having the same warping effect, though. There are more chances of it being a coincidence if anti-Voidlight is never said to appear to suck light in, but I wouldn't compare it to naming dozens of three-letter words and coming up with Ati.

Here's my take. I agree with OP that Brandon's description of the Skaze is too similar to Anti-Light in RoW (sucking in light, warping effect) and both were released recently (the Skaze bit is from the 10th anniversary, so 2018). So I say it's safe to assume it's intentional. If the relation is real, with what you all have said we don't have many options left. The Splintering of Dominion with some of his Anti-Investiture sounds feasible for Odium, but since Inv and A-Inv annihilate each other, I think there shouldn't be remnants of the A-Inv. Side note: I believe the polarity or opposition of pairs of Shards like Pres-Ruin or Dev-Dom are a different concept from Investiture and Anti-Investiture. The first seems something Brandon would have had laid out since quite early on, while Anti-Investiture is more of a narrative tool he's come up with to be able to threaten or kill the overpowered Knights Radiant and Fused (as he himself has admitted). So, being Skaze splinters of Dominion, the only explanation of the "Anti-Light feel" I can think of is that, at some point in the distant past, some Selish Cosmere-aware group (like Elantrians) inverted all existing Skaze much like Navani inverts Voidlight. The reason for doing that might had been a way to be protected from them, but it could be anything. This is obviously pure speculation. And I know it's farfetched, but I really think there's a reason behind the similarities in Brandon's descriptions. So I agree with @Ba-Ado-Fisherman in everything except that Skaze must have originally been normal Splinters of Dominion and somehow were later inverted. Elantrians were very old and quite secluded in their city, I find it perfectly plausible that they knew stuff like that and Khriss hasn't been able to peek into their library or find any forthcoming Elantrian. It would be fun to see Raoden sharing Elantris secrets with Khriss. Also, Skaze are quite rare (Sel is pretty vast and with a lot of civilizations, maybe some secret cult monopolized Skaze for all we know, and that's why nobody knows anything about them), I see the ever-traveling Hoid acquiring one more easily than Khriss and her scholars, even if they are more knowledgeable overall (she doesn't dare wolrdhop to Sel). Although I admit it's weird for the Skaze and Hoid to meet out in the open beside the pool. There could be some other explanation as to why Skaze and Anti-Voidlight are so similar other than being both Anti-Investiture, but I can't think of any. If someone has ideas please tell :).

Not necessarily, because Brandon describes the Cognitive Realm as a 3D space where you have an expansion of space on inhabited places and a high compression where there's nobody, and dimensions don't correlate one to one with the Physical. So I can see matter traveling through the cognitive in a wormhole sort of way. (One theory behind wormholes is that 3D space folds into a 4th dimension getting 2 points closer than they should be, right? Making the distance traveled shorter and thus not exceeding light-speed.) Here, the Cognitive would be the fourth (and fifth and sixth, I guess) dimension, where you travel a short distance between two points that are farther apart in the Physical because that space in-between is compressed there. So no FTL travel here (yet ). But I have trouble with physical bodies in the Cognitive, still. There's a reference in Secret History that I believe supports my theory/way of viewing the Cognitive now that I think about it:

I have a theory (All-Mistborn spoilers) that kind of links the two references we have on Vax (one, having Khriss compare it to another planet, suggests it's most likely a planet, and the other is Ati confusing something/someone with it --a WoB confirms Leras would've recognized it/them too). Since Scadrial was made literally from the ground up by Ati and Leras, what I wonder is to what extent were they responsible of the form Scadrial's Cognitive Realm has. Because if they also made it all up maybe they used some sort of reference, just as how I suspect they drew from Yolen to create the physical part. I don't know if we have WoBs about this, but Khriss mentions that Scadrial is size 1 Cosmere Standard (I think the CS takes Yolen as a reference) and it has 'normal'/Yolen-like oxygen levels and humans to inhabit it (unlike Roshar). And the reference they took for the Cognitive Realm was Vax's. So Ati, in his delusional pre-death state, might had 'forgotten' everything post-Shattering and finding himself in Scadrial's cognitive he confused it with Vax's and wondered what he was doing there. This would put Vax sort of at the level of Yolen in terms of pre-Shattering existence, and maybe the would-be vessels worldhopped there to have a picnic from time to time heh. But I don't know how much a Shard can shape the Cognitive Realm, even if they create the planet from nothing. Because I think Brandon explains its creation as an expansion of 'cognitive space' created by the existence of sapience/sentience in a certain place (sort of bubbles popping up as a consequence of that existence or something of the like). So my theory depends on that. But since we see great differences between Shadesmar and Scadrial's Cognitive Realm, I think it's safe to assume Shards can shape it somehow (especially if they created the whole magic system too, instead of just investing in a preexisting planet like what we see on Roshar). Thoughts?