Jump to content

viengua

+Patrons
  • Posts

    13
  • Joined

  • Last visited

viengua's Achievements

21

Reputation

  1. Important to assess the level of technology as "what problems have they solved?" and "how efficiently have they solved them?" (and "how widespread are the solutions?") rather than "do they have this specific invention from IRL Earth history?" or else the answers will end up being less useful IMO. Some inventions we might consider progress markers aren't appropriate/relevant/useful on Roshar. Railways are going to be a challenge when you have frequent highstorms (trains here in the UK shut down for *leaves*). Aircraft can land somewhere safe, or fly above the storm, however. Disinfectant is in common use, but vaccines aren't going to be quite so useful given the relative lack of pathogens. Electricity pylons also probably won't play well with the extremely frequent magical hurricanes. As you mentioned earlier, the steam engine and railway tracks were invented thousands of years before someone put them together and made a steam-powered railway. They probably don't naturally go towards heat as a source of power though, given how stormlight is abundant and free, heat Fabrials are fairly new, and they're in a high oxygen environment. I think they're closer to engines than might be immediately be apparent. Navani theorises about creating Fabrial pumps, which is one of the ways they could start converting stormlight into mechanical energy. That I think would qualify as an engine, and could be a building block for more complex systems.
  2. I agree for inter-personal communications, however in the design of machines there are a lot of other interesting implications from using conjoined spren instead of radio waves or even wires. Modern CPUs perform operations faster than the physical wiring on the motherboard can get data to them, which becomes a microarchitectural design consideration when arranging memory subsystems. This might not matter for Rosharan computers though. I can't recall if you get the same induction problems you have with wiring, or interference problems that you get with radios, but I don't think so? Not having to worry about spectrum availability would be quite a big benefit. IIRC you can't intercept a conjoined fabrial's movements which makes them quite useful as a confidential method of communication. Depending on the availability of gemstones, fabrial cages, and spren, fabrial communications might be way cheaper too in terms of the infrastructure required. No need for telegraph cables or antennae.
  3. Absolutely tons, I think. The key thing here is that the fabrials that produce effects do so in a very analogue, rather than discrete, way. How you control fabrials with other fabrials isn't something that's completely clear to me, but the clocks/watches prove that it can be done. Making peripherals in general might be way easier, as everything is of the same kind in a way that just isn't true for modern electronics (microphones are not cameras are not CPUs are not keyboards are not radios, etc). On Roshar, everything can just be a fabrial, which means it uses a common vocabulary for how they can interact. The types of input devices would probably be quite different. I imagine the Sibling+Urithiru as one possible model for how Rosharans might develop computers, but you're limited by the number of higher spren that might oblige your needs for a processor. In less broad terms, off the top of my head, it could mean compression algorithms might not be such a big deal; when your representation of images is more like waveforms, like light, it's closer to being something the spren understands intuitively. You aren't as limited by the things that make compression essential in modern computing, though we don't know the bandwidth of conjoined fabrials, let alone in terms relevant to how they might usefully pass data.
  4. Man, this is a fun question. Assuming a lack of surge fabrials or cooperative higher spren, I would expect that Rosharan computers would not have a monitor quite like those currently in everyday use on Earth. I think they would be much more likely to develop a holographic approach. Monitors as we think of them suit digital computing, and require a whole stack of technologies and advances to work. They follow certain approaches to hardware/software separation, data representation (pretty huge in implications and weight), memory models, power usage, and protocols for communication between devices, that don't really fit with how spren and fabrials seem to work. I think it would be possible to reproduce, but at that point you're wasting a lot of the potential of a fabrial vs just making a digital computer as we have them on Earth. Rosharan Fabrials could produce holography more easily, I think, than they could produce pixels and screens. Screens are a development path you'd really have to be forced down, because of how many technologies you need to get that to work, and how easily Rosharans could take other paths. Rather than representing images internally as a big list of coloured dots, you represent them as a waveform, which seems a more natural fit for how artifabrians might approach this. Holographic displays would require far fewer component fabrials (and thus, captured spren, gemstones, and fairly intricate looking cages) to produce the image than a screen. Soulcasting makes a big difference too in availability of materials, which has often been a problem for holography. I don't know how deep to go into explaining why I think this, I'm holding myself back from the rabbithole big time. While I am a CompSci PhD candidate, I am not directly working in the field of display/video stuff. My work sometimes touches on implementations of video and image processing, but only ever because something's broken. I have, however, had conversations with colleagues who do work directly on producing hologram technology, but AFAIK they haven't read Stormlight, else I'd refer directly to them for the answer.
  5. (I somewhat agree with meltdown sounding pejorative/patronising. Unfortunately, it's the term we have, and it's mostly a term people at least recognise if not understand.) We don't fully understand allistic brains, let alone autistic ones. I imagine Knights Radiant have a higher proportion of ND people than general population due to the nature of the bond and its requirements and the shape of Roshar's societies. We see elements of how those two clash in the way Renarin is treated, so we might get to see more examples that answer our questions later on. We can see that being a Radiant and having access to Stormlight affects people strongly. Within that, we only have one Radiant we know for sure is autistic, whose PoV we haven't had much of. There isn't really a universal Autistic Experience, so how it affects Renarin isn't necessarily a perfect guide for how it would affect other autistic Knights. I suspect it would have more of an effect than others seem to, as I've previously said. Having day to day experience of it, I feel about sensory stuff and meltdowns similarly to how I feel about exhaustion or pain. I find it hard to believe an autistic person wouldn't derive any benefit from Stormlight towards these kinds of issues. To me, the starting point is coming up with a reason why it wouldn't. It seems my perspective on this leads me to a different conclusion than others. To me, this is just another part of being alive, so I just assume that Stormlight would affect it in the same way it would exhaustion. It's kinda hard to communicate why, because to me it seems to fundamental and obvious. It's the same reason I'm equally convinced that it wouldn't affect other parts of being autistic, which are more a part of being me than a part of being alive. Investiture healing one towards a cognitive ideal seems to make this distinction in what it affects, and it seems fairly intuitive on an individual basis.
  6. We don't know explicitly how many he's seen, but the prologue does mention he's seen the Aharietiam vision dozens of times. It'd be weird to rewatch the one so much without seeing the others if they were on offer. WoB mentions that Gavilar "[saw] the same visions" which is sufficiently ambiguous, though I'd be comfortable inferring that he saw them all at least once. SF apparently lying could mean that the visions are being manipulated by someone who knows the truth and is deliberately changing it, or someone who only knows parts of the truth and is trying to manipulate Gavilar. Almost like a bootleg/mockbuster copy of the true visions made by someone playing with the same magic Tanavast used to create the originals, but without knowing quite how it was meant to go.
  7. I think we've misunderstood each other somewhat? It would be entirely at odds with my own self-image to argue that Stormlight healing would cure autism and other such things, so if I suggested as much I definitely miscommunicated. That being said, self-image is key to how Stormlight healing works. Epilepsy is treated differently than being autistic because Renarin sees a difference between his "blood-sickness" and his self, whereas he doesn't distinguish between being autistic and being Renarin, though both have roots in one's neurology. I have firsthand experience of how the effects of coming off a long term addiction to stimulants feel (I used to self-medicate before I was diagnosed with ADHD, it caused problems so I stopped and then the ADHD was harder to manage, ho-hum), and I never really noticed any resonance between that and the way post-Stormlight tiredness was expressed in the text. My experiences might not be universal, but to illustrate what I'm talking about I'd draw your attention to Kaladin's exhaustion, before he's said the Second Ideal, at the Battle of the Tower. Definitely not solely a "next day" kind of thing, and the feeling of coming off even a milder stimulant definitely doesn't just wear off after an hour or so. Sounds more like coming off an adrenaline rush than a sugar crash. Back to the main topic, what I was trying to describe was that there are aspects of what causes a meltdown that Stormlight would help with. There are specific things that cause one to have a particular meltdown/sensory overload on that day in that place. It's not as simple in practice as a particular neurology being exposed to a particular set of stimuli will always result in a meltdown. Meltdowns are made over the course of everything leading up to that threshold being crossed, and the state one's in at the time. If I'm wearing comfortable clothes and eating food I like somewhere I'm familiar with, if I've had a good day and plenty of sleep, I might be able to cope with a noisy restaurant. If I'm stuck in a dinner jacket on too-little sleep following an uncomfortable car-ride after I've been around people all day and the food they serve doesn't match the description on the menu, that noisy restaurant is near-instant torment. It's about how much I'm dealing with, and how much energy/capacity I have at that moment to deal with it. While Stormlight might not do much for the former, it seems like it would easily help with the latter. Another way it might help is that being in crisis-mode, with an adrenaline rush or similar, sometimes allows me to put off or push through what would otherwise be a meltdown. The descriptions of how Stormlight feels line up pretty well with that.
  8. The post-Stormlight exhaustion makes me think that the negation of sore muscles has a significant psychological component. A lot of athleticism is about how far you believe you can push yourself, and Stormlight can let you push yourself that way. If the Stormlight eliminated lactic acid, I'm not sure the tiredness would kick in the way it does, though I may be wrong. I would also argue that those notions of what constitutes damage and toxins aren't those used as the threshold for Stormlight healing, as a certain Reshi dustbringer demonstrates.
  9. I think you're pretty dead on with those comparisons for how Stormlight relates to sensory issues, and it's possibly notable that Renarin wasn't visibly holding Stormlight on those occasions. I'm going to compare with ADHD (which I also have) with autism for the purpose of exploring this. As I see it, a Radiant with ADHD might well derive significant benefit from Stormlight. ADHD is thoroughly misnamed, it is not a deficit of attention, it is a deficit in Executive Function, or the ability to direct oneself. Stimulation/fulfilment/entertainment suddenly joins food et al at the base of the hierarchy of needs, because you can't *just do things*. You need to have Novelty, Interest, Challenge, or Urgency to enable you to do something. When I started taking ADHD medication (a stimulant), my ability to overcome this increased significantly. Stormlight making the holder compelled to *do things* seems to line up with how this feels and felt to me. I'd describe autistic sensory issues as lacking the sensory filters that neurotypical folks have. We don't necessarily *get* more sensory information, it's not like having more tastebuds or more nerve endings, but we have to process it all rather than subconsciously filtering it. For this reason, we are more aware of things like high-pitched sounds; I've always been able to hear when something electrical is switched on, for instance. In practice, this can be a meaningless difference, because when we hit the overwhelmed threshold we suddenly can't process it all, and everything feels too loud, bright, chaotic, uncomfortable. It all tastes and smells too much. Meltdowns are triggered by hitting this threshold. Where this threshold is, however, varies day to day. It depends on energy you have, how much you've been subjected to so far, etc. I could easily see Stormlight topping this up and putting the threshold higher, or making the recovery period post-meltdown easier, rather than softening the impact.
  10. Indeed, initially that's what I assumed! There were a few things that made me think again though. It's explicitly mentioned that Gavilar thinks it's Jezrien's blade, but he didn't recognise Jezrien's blade when used by Szeth. If Gavilar had noticed it, but the description was a mistake, it being mentioned earlier would make sense as setting that recognition up. Instead, he didn't recognise it and instead ascribed Szeth's powers to being sent by Thaidakar. Gavilar also explicitly mentioned that he thought the missing blade was the one whose herald he would replace, so him not recognising Jezrien's blade along with (OB spoiler) felt like something consistent to me.
  11. I didn't spot a specific mention of this, and it might even be a mistake, but it's interesting to me that Gavilar identifies the "sinuous, curved Blade" as belonging to Jezrien. This seems a little at odds with existing descriptions of Jezrien's blade ("thin, silvery weapon... an unornamented blade" WoR Ch 187) ("long, slender...largely unornamented" OB Ch 122), but more in line with the description of Ishar's blade (in RoW Ch 111) as, "a sinuous Shardblade lined with glyphs." Others noted that Gavilar doesn't seem to recognise Jezrien's blade when wielded by Szeth, which he ought to if he's seen the visions so many times. He also doesn't recognise Szeth using the powers of a windrunner, which I was also shown in the vision that featured midnight essence, IIRC. Furthermore, the SF reacts negatively (with a hiss) to Gavilar treating the blade cavalierly. Thinking about this led me down a rabbit-hole of what-ifs, but I think the above is fairly evidence based, while the rabbit-hole is a lot more guessy, and I'm interested to here what people think of the above.
  12. (Spoiler covers RoW Ch 54) I admit though that there's bias of several kinds in play on my part when I interpret the character this way, both confirmation bias because it's how I initially read him in TWoK, and bias to wanting to see characters like me in books (though in the case of knights radiant, it's less far-fetched than in other cases)
  13. Renarin's reactions to the screams of a dead shardblade tracks pretty well with my own experiences of autistic meltdowns. As an autistic person, I can attest that sudden loud and violent screaming in my head would definitely provide the sensory overload that can cause one. His non-verbal state in WoR Ch 26 (after he summons the dead blade and locks up/has a meltdown) post-plateau assault definitely tracks with my experiences too, so I think if there are examples of autistic meltdowns, those seem the most likely candidates. Quick note: High/low functioning is a tricky label to apply because it's purely external and very subjective (many of us don't like it), like it doesn't really mean anything because even for one autistic individual it's so dependent on situation and energy and a billion other things. It's trying to measure something on a linear scale that doesn't really belong on one. (Just to make my tone clear, not criticising people who use the term, just trying to aid understanding and use of it! )
×
×
  • Create New...