Could a cadmium savant exist yet

[Rossamund]

Savantism takes years to develop in most cases however cadmium would take stake substantially longer due to the time compression.
In our world cadmium was discovered in 1817 and industrial scale production began in the 1930s-1940s. It's production requires electricity and as such small scale production could only have began recently, further evidenced by it's high cost.

Coming up with a number that seems reasonable we can say cadmium production began 20 years ago. So if some rich cadmium misting decided to go to the future 20 years ago and burned non-stop excluding sleep breaks would they have become a cadmium savant yet?
Sadly it seems unlikely we'll never see a cadmium savant.

[Slimy_Slider]

Yeah, cadmium savants are gonna be pretty rare. Not only because of the time stretching effects, but because Cadmium is an extremely dangerous poison and no-one's probably going to want to take the risk of dying horribly for benefits which may or may not be worth it.

[Calderis]

11 minutes ago, Slimy_Slider said:

Yeah, cadmium savants are gonna be pretty rare. Not only because of the time stretching effects, but because Cadmium is an extremely dangerous poison and no-one's probably going to want to take the risk of dying horribly for benefits which may or may not be worth it.

As long as they're burning it, poisoning isn't a risk. Their main issue is that you have to burn the cadmium. 

Quote

Mason Wheeler [PENDING REVIEW]

Kelsier said to Vin, "Always make sure to burn off your metals before you go to sleep," because of toxicity issues. And when we get to Second Era, that just makes me think, because cadmium is truly nasty stuff. And most metals to burn them off, that'll be just fine. But with its effect, it would mean that trying to burn it off would shorten the night and you don't end up with any time to sleep. How does Marasi deal with this?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

You measure very carefully and you deal with the side effects of being an Allomancer.

source

Cadmium savants would be rare mainly because by the time they reach that point, everyone they cared about who wasn't in the bubble with them would be long dead. 

Though, if they were smart with investing, they could be ridiculously rich. 

[Slimy_Slider]

2 hours ago, Calderis said:

As long as they're burning it, poisoning isn't a risk. Their main issue is that you have to burn the cadmium. 

Cadmium savants would be rare mainly because by the time they reach that point, everyone they cared about who wasn't in the bubble with them would be long dead. 

Though, if they were smart with investing, they could be ridiculously rich. 

Yeah, I know that burning it away is safe. My point was just that to do so safely, they would have to be constantly administrating small doses, burning them away, then administrating another dose. They couldn't just do it like Spook does, taking a big dose of metal and letting that carry them through the day. Which would be more inconvenient and wouldn't allow for burning while sleeping.

[HSuperLee]

It occurs to me we don't really know how long it takes to become a savant. Now, someone may have to correct me on this, but doesn't savantism not just come from excessive burning, but excessive flaring? I always thought that when in Final Empire, Kelsier told Vin to be careful about flaring for too long because he'd heard of weird things happening to those who did, he was talking about some level of savantism. Further, I saw when Vin was injured in the same book, and talked about how much she had come to rely on pewter to deal with the pain, I thought maybe she was beginning to experience those weird things Kelsier talked about.

Now obviously (well, I say obviously), Vin didn't become a pewter savant. But let's say she at least started the path. That would indicate that savantism requires only a few months of flaring. Similarly, I believe (though I cannot check right now) it only took a few months of flaring for Spook to become a savant. Let's take that as a standard for the moment. Say it would take a few relative months of flaring for a pulser to become a savant. While yes, I agree that would take several years outside the bubble, I don't actually think it would take over a lifetime. We also don't know how much cadmium slows time by, though granted it probably depends on the individual and how fast they're burning. But it would seem to be comparable to a bendalloy's effect. In Wayne's case, this means time rarely looks frozen, just slowed. I actually, completely guestimating, don't think it would take that long to get a cadmium savant.

Basically, I think 20 years might be cutting it close, but might also be enough.

[Calderis]

@HSuperLeeyes, flaring exacerbates the issue but it's not absolutely necessary.

Quote

Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

So I have a question about Savants. Could you only get there by flaring, or if you burn it for a long period of time or like duralumin--

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

Yeah, you can get there other ways.

source

Spook reached the point he was at in HoA, which was pretty far gone, in a year of solid flaring, so if you're pushing yourself you can get there pretty quickly... The issue with cadmium is the time dilation. 

A year solid of burning cadmium normally would be, by the rough numbers we've been given in the book, a measly 8 years... But if the dilation of flaring is anything close to the compression we've seen from Wayne, with the explosion.... Then you're talking about a very very long time. 

Edited October 22, 2018 by Calderis

[Yua999]

Does just burning cadmium/bendalloy place the speed bubble on you automatically?

[Mah'alleinir]

9 hours ago, Yua999 said:

Does just burning cadmium/bendalloy place the speed bubble on you automatically?

Yes it does, however I believe there was a way to cancel out the effects by two people next to each other burning each one simultanously or some other way. May be spilling nonsense about that last thing though

[Calderis]

5 minutes ago, Mah'alleinir said:

Yes it does, however I believe there was a way to cancel out the effects by two people next to each other burning each one simultanously or some other way. May be spilling nonsense about that last thing though

Overlapping bendalloy and cadmium bubbles negate each other. 

The issue is that cadmium bubbles at the same strength are larger than bendalloy bubbles, you wouldn't have a total null, you'd have a ring of slow around normal time. 

[Yua999]

9 hours ago, Calderis said:

Overlapping bendalloy and cadmium bubbles negate each other. 

The issue is that cadmium bubbles at the same strength are larger than bendalloy bubbles, you wouldn't have a total null, you'd have a ring of slow around normal time. 

Could you possibly change the size of your cadmium bubble to match the bendalloy one?

 

Just had a thought: a cadmium savant, while not burning would probably feel that the world was moving too slowly around them and a bendalloy savant would feel that it was moving too quickly.

[MrFish]

On 23/10/2018 at 10:50 AM, Yua999 said:

Just had a thought: a cadmium savant, while not burning would probably feel that the world was moving too slowly around them and a bendalloy savant would feel that it was moving too quickly.

That's a really interesting idea and it's probably close to being correct. If that is the case it's almost better being a cadmium savant as you wouldn't have to rely on your metal to help your speed in thought and it could be close to having feruchemical zinc. But the bendalloy savant would have to rely on his metal ALOT which would make it insanely expensive to experience life at a normal speed.

[Rossamund]

That seems unlikely since Brandon wants there to be negative consequences for Savantism. I think it's more likely that it would mess with the perception of an objects speed.

[Yua999]

7 hours ago, Rossamund Rhapadocera said:

That seems unlikely since Brandon wants there to be negative consequences for Savantism. I think it's more likely that it would mess with the perception of an objects speed.

I was thinking more along those lines too.

[MrFish]

I understand that part, but surely if one was to observe life going much faster around them they would be able to make sense of some things quicker even if it was by a small margin. The disadvantage of being a cadmium savant could be the fact that you age slower so your friends and family die sooner? So it could be that in cadmiums case it's the method of becoming a savant that is the bad part and not a consequence of being a savant?

[Scion of the Mists]

If you had a Slider friend who also wanted to be a savant, you could both put up your bubbles, which would mostly cancel out.  They you could both burn/flare your metals nonstop.  It would be very expensive, given the cost of Bendalloy.  

[+robardin]

14 hours ago, Rossamund Rhapadocera said:

That seems unlikely since Brandon wants there to be negative consequences for Savantism.

Yeah, I see a lot of speculation or thought experiments around here based around becoming an Allomantic savant of one metal or another, and I wonder, why would an Allomancer WANT to do this? For most metals, becoming a savant is kind of warping yourself in a possibly unhealthy way (a la Spook in Hero of Ages).

Savantism isn't supposed to be "leveling up in skill or power" so much as becoming rather inhuman as the price for your body having been so long a conduit for a very specific power between the Spiritual and Physical realms, like what starts to happen to (non-Radiant) Soulcasters on Roshar.

On the not-so-bad side, we have a WoB that Seekers, and possibly Smokers in a similar vein, often become savants over time, but their metals are not particularly physically taxing. Even with a metal like pewter, becoming a savant isn't a purely beneficial or healthy thing, as pewter savants are "likely to run themselves to death, never noticing that their body was exhausted."

When you get to time dilation effects like with cadmium and bendalloy, the "inhuman downsides" become a simple matter of functioning with other humans. Even if a Pulser could Pulse so much that they could Pulse longer, or with a larger bubble, or with more finely tuned area (like a moving bubble, or a projected cone), the cost of achieving that expertise would be that everybody you knew would be old or die while you were still young. And possibly, affecting your perception of time flow even when not burning the metal.

That's one reason why Brandon might be backing away from the idea that Wax's unusual facility with steel (as in generating his steel bubble) is solely because of "savantism"; that starts to sound too much like "if only other Coinshots practiced enough, they could do this too!", without there being some awful downside. If I recall correctly, he's started to hint that his bubble power is partly due to something else as well (a resonance with his Feruchemical iron, or yet something else).

That said, we DO have it in the annotations for Alloy of Law that Wax is an Allomantic savant with steel, so, whatever warping effect it has on a person, he's exhibiting it.

[Scion of the Mists]

15 hours ago, robardin said:

That said, we DO have it in the annotations for Alloy of Law that Wax is an Allomantic savant with steel, so, whatever warping effect it has on a person, he's exhibiting it.

The WoB about Brandon likely backtracking on Savantism is more recent than the Alloy of Law annotations.  The WoB also says that he was supposed to be a savant of both powers (which also conflicts with the annotations which specify only steel.  So basically, we don't have any idea what Wax is.  Maybe Brandon doesn't either.  

 

15 hours ago, robardin said:

Yeah, I see a lot of speculation or thought experiments around here based around becoming an Allomantic savant of one metal or another, and I wonder, why would an Allomancer WANT to do this? For most metals, becoming a savant is kind of warping yourself in a possibly unhealthy way (a la Spook in Hero of Ages).

Savantism isn't supposed to be "leveling up in skill or power" so much as becoming rather inhuman as the price for your body having been so long a conduit for a very specific power between the Spiritual and Physical realms, like what starts to happen to (non-Radiant) Soulcasters on Roshar.

Being a Savant comes with benefits as well as drawbacks.  So if a person wanted the benefits enough, they would be willing to bear the side effects (or risk them, if they didn't know what they were).  

[Yua999]

On 10/29/2018 at 8:34 PM, Scion of the Mists said:

If you had a Slider friend who also wanted to be a savant, you could both put up your bubbles, which would mostly cancel out.  They you could both burn/flare your metals nonstop.  It would be very expensive, given the cost of Bendalloy.  

A bendalloy burner and a cadmium burner standing in the same place could potentially nullify some long-term drawbacks of the process of becoming a savant, like having to be in a bubble to feel normal, and the aging.

Another thing, if the fast bubble only cancels out the slow bubble where they overlap, then you could have a cadmium "ring" around you where everything that gets close is slowed down. This could be a cool move for Marasi and Wayne fighting together.

[Scion of the Mists]

1 hour ago, Yua999 said:

Another thing, if the fast bubble only cancels out the slow bubble where they overlap, then you could have a cadmium "ring" around you where everything that gets close is slowed down. This could be a cool move for Marasi and Wayne fighting together.

That would kind of be like their own pseudo-steel bubble.  

[Yua999]

21 minutes ago, Scion of the Mists said:

That would kind of be like their own pseudo-steel bubble.  

But for everything.