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The Atium is a lie! (Sort of.)


skaa

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None. A Goldmind that is almost empty would still be a Goldmind, so burning it would still give the user Health. (Which is very handy for people like Miles :D)

You got a source for this? Because if you do, I could store a second's worth of Speed in an I-beam and shave pieces off to Compound unto eternity.

Edited by Kurkistan
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The energy in a proton is miniscule compared to a filled metalmind, sure complete decay might take ages but it would still noticeably decay in some respect within an observable span.

 

Why is the amount of energy relevant?

 

Let's say I built the statue of liberty out of solid gold.  882,221,938 kilograms of the stuff.  The energy in that is... what, 8*10^25 joules?  Equivalent to trillions of nukes?

Let's further say I am neglectful, and leave my glorious golden statue in place for... oh, let's say the entire period life's been on this planet.  Gold's nonreactive, and a stable isotope, so assuming dinosaurs don't go at it with chisels or something, I could even come back a billion years in the future and say 'welp, that's exactly the same giant golden statue of liberty I left'.

Edited by Phantom Monstrosity
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You got a source for this? Because if you do, I could store a second's worth of Speed in an I-beam and shave pieces off to Compound unto eternity?

 

Just simple deduction. Storing Speed in the I-beam makes it an Steelmind, right? Now Brandon said that Allomancy doesn't get its power from the metal being burned, but from Preservation himself (hence the "end-positive" label). So the Speed gained from burning shavings of your huge Steelmind came from Preservation, not from your stored Speed, right? So, why would the amount of Speed stored matter?

 

Of course, you'd also have to remember that alloys like Steel need to follow an exact ratio of components to be used in the Metallic Arts. You'd have to make sure the whole I-beam is Allomantic Steel before you can use it.

Edited by skaa
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Why is the amount of energy relevant?

 

Let's say I built the statue of liberty out of solid gold.  882,221,938 kilograms of the stuff.  The energy in that is... what, 8*10^25 joules?  Equivalent to trillions of nukes?

Let's further say I am neglectful, and leave my glorious golden statue in place for... oh, let's say the entire period life's been on this planet.  Gold's nonreactive, and a stable isotope, so assuming dinosaurs don't go at it with chisels or something, I could even come back a billion years in the future and say 'welp, that's exactly the same giant golden statue of liberty I left'.

because a 1% change in entropy to something with 10^25 joules of energy is much more easily observable that a 1% change in something with just 1 Joule, there will be some noticeable entropy to the statue, however that is reflected. More importantly if entropy is involved in feruchemy in any way at all, it ceases to be an end-negative system.

EDIT:

Just simple deduction. Storing Speed in the I-beam makes it an Steelmind, right? Now Brandon said that Allomancy doesn't get its power from the metal being burned, but from Preservation himself (hence the "end-positive" label). So the Speed gained from burning shavings of your huge Steelmind came from Preservation, not from your stored Speed, right? So, why would the amount of Speed stored matter?

Same reason the amount of metal matters, you need a gateway to access the power and once you go through the feruchemical charge that gateway can't remain open. Edited by Windrunner
Please don't double post, you can just edit your original post. Thanks! :)
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because a 1% change in entropy to something with 10^25 joules of energy is much more easily observable that a 1% change in something with just 1 Joule, there will be some noticeable entropy to the statue, however that is reflected. More importantly if entropy is involved in feruchemy in any way at all, it ceases to be an end-negative system.

You mean end-neutral?

 

And you actually *do* get less stuff out when you try to tap at a multiplier. 

 

http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=727

3) And this is more towards the whole physics stuff, but is Feruchemy really balanced?  If it gives diminishing returns, wouldn't this end up as a net loss of power?

 

3)  It doesn't diminish.  Or, well, it does--but only if you compound it.  You get 1 for 1 back, but compounding the power requires an expenditure of the power itself.  For instance, if you are weak for one hour, you can gain the lost strength for one hour.  But that's not really that much strength.  After all, you probably weren't as weak as zero people during that time.  So if you want to be as strong as two men, you couldn't do it for a full hour.  You'd have to spend some energy to compound, then spend the compounded energy itself.  

 

In more mathematical terms, let's say you spend one hour at 50% strength.  You could then spend one hour at 150% strength, or perhaps 25 min at 200% strength, or maybe 10min at 250% strength.  Each increment is harder, and therefore 'strains' you more and burns your energy more quickly.  And since most Feruchemists don't store at 50% strength, but instead at something like 80% strength (it feels like much more when they do it, but you can't really push the body to that much forced weakness without risking death) you can burn through a few day's strength in a very short time if you aren't careful. 

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Just simple deduction. Storing Speed in the I-beam makes it an Steelmind, right? Now Brandon said that Allomancy doesn't get its power from the metal being burned, but from Preservation himself (hence the "end-positive" label). So the Speed gained from burning shavings of your huge Steelmind came from Preservation, not from your stored Speed, right? So, why would the amount of Speed stored matter?

 

 

I would advise you to be careful in the future before phrasing deductions or theories as fact. You know how Shardblades are all stored in the Spiritual Realm? Well, no, actually you don't, because that was just a popular theory that people started bandying about as fact because somewhere down the line posters stopped knowing better and took assertions of "we all know..." at face value. Life lesson for the day.

 

All that aside, I think you're deduction is wrong. As basic evidence: see the fact that I can make buildings into perfectly Compoundable metalminds under your model. Compounding works because the "feruchemical charge overwrites the allomantic charge". Therefore, it stands to reason that, when the Feruchemical charge is gone, so is the Compounding. There are a number of models for how Feruchemy actually stores energy in metalminds (from changing the physical composition of the metal to messing with Spiritual aspects), but most won't include the entire metalmind being inalterably changed forever after a single sip of Feruchemical power.

 

If you store an attribute in a piece of metal, then tap it all out, the metal should be back to the way it was before you even touched it, right? So, it seems, if you store an attribute in a piece of metal, then burn all that attribute out by hot-wiring Allomantic power through it, what remains should be normal metal.

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Yes but that's only when you compound it, which makes more sense for temporal relocation really, if it were really just a charge then it shouldn't matter how much you tap at once, you shouldn't just get 1 for 1 you should be able to compound without energy loss if each time you store it always just becomes an identical charge, then the rate of storage doesn't matter, and the rate of tapping shouldn't matter.

But if it were end-neutral then there shouldn't be any decay over time if you just try to get back 1 for 1, but as per the second law there has to be a decay over time, unless it doesn't experience any time.

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Yes but that's only when you compound it, which makes more sense for temporal relocation really,

Quite the contrary.  'Temporal relocation' should require compounding at 100% efficiency.  Since you're just shuffling around different 'chunks of speed' or 'chunks of strength'

 

 

if it were really just a charge then it shouldn't matter how much you tap at once, you shouldn't just get 1 for 1 you should be able to compound without energy loss if each time you store it always just becomes an identical charge, then the rate of storage doesn't matter, and the rate of tapping shouldn't matter.

But if it were end-neutral then there shouldn't be any decay over time if you just try to get back 1 for 1, but as per the second law there has to be a decay over time, unless it doesn't experience any time.

You're assuming thermodynamics applies to magical stuff.  Sanderson has said thermodynamics is his bane, and large amounts of energy routinely appear and disappear in every magic system.  This is a universe where perpetual motion machines are entirely possible, so bringing up the second law of thermodynamics is needless pedantry.  The second law is crying its eyes out in a corner somewhere, trying to piece together the broken fragments of what it once considered to be a worthwhile career.  It's got nothing to live for now, and will die in ignominity.

 

You're also assuming that any hypothetical decay rate of investiture is fast enough to be noticeable to anybody in a human lifespan.  A very slow decay rate (like the proton, which has never been observed to decay, and thus has a theoretical halflife somewhere above 10^34 years) would never be measurable by anybody at any point in the series.

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I would advise you to be careful in the future before phrasing deductions or theories as fact. 

 

I'll keep that in mind. :)

 

 

All that aside, I think you're deduction is wrong. As basic evidence: see the fact that I can make buildings into perfectly Compoundable metalminds under your model. Compounding works because the "feruchemical charge overwrites the allomantic charge". 

 

It's terribly unlikely that the materials people use for building construction are useful for the metallic arts. From what Kelsier said in The Final Empire, the elemental metals (iron, gold, etc.) will have to be quite pure, and the alloys will have to be of the exact composition and ratio. On the other hand...

 

 

Compounding works because the "feruchemical charge overwrites the allomantic charge". Therefore, it stands to reason that, when the Feruchemical charge is gone, so is the Compounding. There are a number of models for how Feruchemy actually stores energy in metalminds (from changing the physical composition of the metal to messing with Spiritual aspects), but most won't include the entire metalmind being inalterably changed forever after a single sip of Feruchemical power.

 

If you store an attribute in a piece of metal, then tap it all out, the metal should be back to the way it was before you even touched it, right? So, it seems, if you store an attribute in a piece of metal, then burn all that attribute out by hot-wiring Allomantic power through it, what remains should be normal metal.

 

Yes, that would would be a valid alternative theory. I was assuming that storing in a metalmind changes it forever, which is, of course, just speculation. In hindsight, reverting to a non-metalmind upon emptying does seem to make more sense, so I'm subscribing to your model now. :)

Edited by skaa
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You're assuming thermodynamics applies to magical stuff.  Sanderson has said thermodynamics is his bane, and large amounts of energy routinely appear and disappear in every magic system.

He's specifically said that he tries to work around thermodynamics but he still makes his magic obey thermodynamics, that's why we have the whole power of creation thing, the energy to run magic doesn't come from nowhere, in the cosmere it is an open system, not closed like our universe, so it still is completely in line with thermodynamics.

Sure it could just have a low rate of decay, but that's still decay which puts feruchemy as end-negative, directly against what we know of it from WoB.

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Aside from trying to claim that 'determination' or 'luck' is something that can be measured in terms of thermal energy available to do work... (And both tapping and storing luck flip entropy the bird)

 

 

 

Under what grounds are you arguing that a system with more investiture is a less entropic one? 

 

 

Surely you'd have a higher number of possible states for any given system if there's more investiture floating around.

 

 

In fact, given that the vast majority of systems are not end-negative, the amount of investiture in the world has been increasing pretty much continously.  Thus, in very long term, we'll end up with a far more highly invested cosmere than we started with. 

 

So if anything, one might expect invested objects to normally become MORE highly invested as time goes on.

 

 

But I'm curious.  How are you going to define a 'feruchemical charge' using your definition?

Edited by Phantom Monstrosity
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He's specifically said that he tries to work around thermodynamics but he still makes his magic obey thermodynamics, that's why we have the whole power of creation thing, the energy to run magic doesn't come from nowhere, in the cosmere it is an open system, not closed like our universe, so it still is completely in line with thermodynamics.

Sure it could just have a low rate of decay, but that's still decay which puts feruchemy as end-negative, directly against what we know of it from WoB.

 

I would think we can let Feruchemy slide here, that's a really nitpicky point regarding Thermodynamics and one which I'm personally willing to ignore.

 

Also, I fear there may have been some confusion during the thread between compounding (storing an attribute and pulling it back out at a faster rate for diminishing returns) and Compounding (available to Twinborn at your local Bank of Investiture, whereby one feruchemically charges a metal before allomantically burning it to release the feruchemical effect for a higher return on initial investment).

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Phoenix Comicon.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_sTZkZ0Irdf3haauT5PnX94yYQSyQGlCqUAcOBafTMs/edit

So Mistborn’s got a fun continuum and the reason I’m doing that is a lot of fantasy worlds and this is a fun thing about fantasy, you can go a thousand years and the technology doesn’t change.  That’s not a bad thing, it’s an aspect of the story those author’s wanted to tell but I haven’t seen some say we are going to jump a thousand years and suddenly we’re science fiction because that ‘s what happens when you get a thousand years of technology and you have something cool like magic that breaks the laws of thermodynamics and you can use for cool energy sources.  That’s where I’m going, that’s what I find interesting.  Alright, right here.

 

There.  Magic in mistborn breaks thermodynamics

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  • 3 weeks later...

I haven't read the whole of this thread yet so maybe this has already been pointed out. Some are saying that only steel and iron destroy atium crystals, but that isn't what it says in the book.

 

It says using Allomancy near atium crystals shatters them. So that includes Allomantic metals such as tin.

 

Here's a quote from Kelsier.

 

"He stepped over to the rift and forced himself to climb down inside of it. Then he burned tin. Immediately, he heard a cracking sound from below."

 

"He could already see his first crystalline atium-hole--or what was left of it. The long, silvery crystals were fractured and broken. Using Allmancy near atium crystals caused them to shatter"

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I haven't read the whole of this thread yet so maybe this has already been pointed out. Some are saying that only steel and iron destroy atium crystals, but that isn't what it says in the book.

 

It says using Allomancy near atium crystals shatters them. So that includes Allomantic metals such as tin.

 

Here's a quote from Kelsier.

 

"He stepped over to the rift and forced himself to climb down inside of it. Then he burned tin. Immediately, he heard a cracking sound from below."

 

"He could already see his first crystalline atium-hole--or what was left of it. The long, silvery crystals were fractured and broken. Using Allmancy near atium crystals caused them to shatter"

 

Brandon said on TWG that Tin doesn't shatter them - which is why the Lord Ruler tossed Mare in.  Presumably the crystals near Kelsier were breaking for some other reason (maybe the freed skaa dropped a caravan of those big heavy steelplated carts into the pit, causing the ground to shake)  and the Tin just gave kelsier the ability to hear it.

http://twg.17thshard.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=ed1b6f08a985fe0dba3502ca5498f6ae&topic=5668.msg118158#msg118158

Also note that while Mare was an Allomancer, she wasn't what one would call a "dangerous" Allomancer. She was a Tineye, which isn't one of the top tier martial powers. She couldn't have used atium, and even if she HAD somehow found silver(ed note: he means tin here), she'd simply have been able to hear and see better. Which would have made her better at finding the atium.

The Allomancers to keep out of the Pits would have been Lurchers or Coinshots (who could have destroyed the crystals), and to a lesser extent Thugs (who could be difficult to control.) Mistborn, of course, needed to be kept far, far away, lest they get their hands on atium.

There's more going on here, of course. If I ever write the Kelsier short story that talks about him discovering the Eleventh Metal, I will get into why the Inquisitors weren't given Mare as they wanted. The Lord Ruler specifically chose to send her to the Pits rather than handing her over to the Inquisitors. (Note: She wouldn't have ended up on a hook. Inquisitors had other...uses for skaa Mistings they captured. See book three.)

In fact, this already has too many spoilers. Ask me more after Mistborn 3 is out.

Edited by Phantom Monstrosity
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Brandon said on TWG that Tin doesn't shatter them - which is why the Lord Ruler tossed Mare in.  Presumably the crystals near Kelsier were breaking for some other reason (maybe the freed skaa dropped a caravan of those big heavy steelplated carts into the pit, causing the ground to shake)  and the Tin just gave kelsier the ability to hear it.

 

Maybe when Brandon said that it had been a while since he wrote about it and he didn't quite remember what he had written in the book about the subject, I dunno.

 

The book is quite clear however that the crystals shattering are a reaction to Kelsier burning tin. 

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Could he really go back down into those cramped, quite depths? Could he enter the darkness again? Kelsier held up his arms, looking at the scars, still white and stark on his arms.

    Yes. For her dreams, he could.

    He stepped over to the rift and forced himself to climb down inside of it. Then he burned tin.Immediately, he heard a cracking from below.

Tin illuminated a rift beneath him. Though the crack widened, it also branched, sending out twisting rifts in all directions. Part cave, part crack, part tunnel. He could already see his first crystalline atuim-hole-- or what was left of it. The long, silvery crystals were fractured and broken.

    Using Allomancy near atuim crystals caused them to shatter. That was why the Lord Ruler had to use slaves, and not Allomancers, to collect his atuim for him. 

 

There's the full quote.

Edited by Duskshard
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Ah, thanks, though I was actually asking for a quote from Phantom "disproving" this scene. ;)

 

The only thing I could find was this exchange on TWG:

 

Peter first says that it's only Steel/Iron, but then someone immediately asks why Kelsier could hear the geodes cracking when he was just burning Tin (he couldn't have been burning Steel/Iron because he had to start burning Iron moments later in order to see the lines). Peter then says he'll have to ask Brandon again. And that's all she wrote.

Edited by Kurkistan
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The 'presumably' is my own speculation - the crystals are fragile enough that it's conceivable that they could shatter unrelated
reasons, and using tin just gave kelsier the ability to notice it.

 

Anyway, Brandon wrote that comment almost a year before Hero of Ages was released, so it isn't like there was a particularly big time gap.

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Well that's downright odd. Even though the time-stamps say that you edited in your evidence before either Dusk or myself posted, I could swear that it wasn't there before. Huh.

 

Now that my attention has been drawn back to that first post (and thus now that I read the evidence for the first time), I agree that Brandon is very clear there and most likely meant what he said.

 

I do doubt that the crystals were shattering for any but Allomantic reasons: they're strong enough to stand up to direct arm-punches, so I doubt a bit of vibration would do the trick, and anything that massive would be worth noting in the narrative itself.

 

I think it's been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but I would guess that any use, or even just burning, or Iron/Steel in the vicinity of the crystals is enough to damage them. Kelsier almost certainly used those metals to kill the guards, and may have even been using them to track the slave who's POV we share at the beginning of the sequence. Burning Iron/Steel without doing anything is enough to send off Allomantic Pulses to Seekers, so I guess the crystals, what with their heavy investiture and whatnot, are just hyper-sensitive to those pulses. Or maybe the establishment of "metal lines" entails some actual interaction between the Allomancer and metals in their vicinity, as opposed to being purely receptive on the Allomancer's part.

Edited by Kurkistan
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