Feruchemy: is it really "end-neutral?"

[+robardin]

I suspect this is so fundamental that it's come up before, but I didn't see any explanation of this in the Coppermind entry, so I'll pose it here.

Feruchemy is one of the three Metallic Arts on Scadrial, which clearly has links to Allomancy in that it uses the same metals as Allomancy does, but as attribute storage instead of "burning" them to tap into a flavor of the power of Preservation. So it would seem that an admixture of Preservation and Ruin is at work in powering it (not some other Shard), and supposedly, to equal measure.

In a recent thread, it seemed established (including cited WoBs) that there is no Snapping involved for the ability (though at what age, or how, a Feruchemist comes into knowledge of their ability is unknown, nor if pre-Catacendre Feruchemists experienced it differently than Era 2+ Ferrings do), and what was news to me, that it was originally a "gift" to the Terris people (from who?):

In that thread, it was mentioned once again that where Allomancy is "end-positive", with power being gained from Preservation, and Hemalurgy is "end-negative", in that power is lost while transfering Investiture from one person to another, Feruchemy is "end-neural" and thus doesn't need something external to power it (the metalminds are "batteries" for the Feruchemist's native attributes).

But that's not really true, right? Feruchemy can be ultimately seen to be "end-positive with a time delay" because the person "bounces back" to normal when they stop filling a metalmind.

For example, when Sazed or Wax fills an ironmind with weight, they become lighter. But when they stop filling the ironmind, their weight immediately goes back to normal. And then he's immediately able to tap the ironmind to be at greater than normal weight.

But if Feruchemy were end-neutral, shouldn't they only get their normal weight back by tapping the ironmind? Even without the "multiplier" aspect, where you can be twice as heavy for slightly less than half as long (and doesn't that imply some "systemic loss" as well for the multiplier gain)?

By way of analogy, if I have $100 in my pocket, and I put $10 in a sock and walk away, I have $90 on me, my money won't bounce back to $100. If I want $100 in my pocket again, I'd have to take all $10 back out of the sock.

Same thing with speed, metal ability, etc. - if you "bounce back to normal" while leaving behind attributes in a metalmind without having to empty the metalmind to get back to normal, isn't that mechanism fundamentally end positive?

Edited December 1, 2018 by robardin
OK now my OP contains the point I wanted to make

[ReStack]

My thinking is that it is a balance sheet. While filling a metal, you are creating an increasing value for that trait. When you withdraw you remove balance up until you reach 0 and you can't go negative.

 

So you have give and take, but nothing is actually created or destroyed. They are are choosing to convert a trait to potential energy and store it for later use.

 

[Quantus]

Couple things:

First: Yup, Per WOB there is a reasonable argument to be made that even Feruchemy is End Positive, since there is still a small amount of Investiture needed to facilitate moving the Investiture into and out of the metalminds.  But I think that is similar to how most people are not considered Invested like a radiant or somebody with heightenings, even though all living things have some Investiture flowing to them in the form of a Spark of Life that powers their living body day to day.  He says that generally the terms are only useful in comparing Metallic arts but less for the other systems.  For example, there are various arguments to be made that Breaths could be End-Positive or End-negative depending on whose perspective you were talking about.

Second:  In a feruchemist as I understand it is not that they Bounce Back, rather there is a constant flow of Investiture between their bodies and their spiritwebs accomplishing all the normal things it takes to make a sentient being functional (eating, aging, sensing the world around it, etc), and Feruchemy allows you to fiddle with the Rates at which those flows are happening by either diverting some of the flow into a metalmind storage, or adding what is stored back into the normal Flow as an added supplement.  So to use the money analogy, what you are doing is taking your daily wages of $100 per day and saving $10 each day for a week in metal-mind piggy-bank.  During that week you have to live on $90 each day, but next week you have enough saved to live as if you were making $110 per day for the whole week. Or you can blow it all at once on one crazy purchase.

[Yezrien]

It's not weight that you're storing, but time with weight. Feruchemy is all about reallocating attributes across time. Otherwise the time you spend storing wouldn't mean anything.

Edit: @Quantus has the right idea. You have to wrap your mind around a new measure, weight-time. If you weigh 2 weight-units and live for 100 time-units, then your whole existence amounts to 200 units of weight-time. As a normal human, you must experience those 200 weight-times at the normal rate of 2 weight-units per 1 time-unit. But a feruchemist can defer some weight to a later date, slowing the rate initially and speeding it up later. But, without compounding (which uses allomancy to make the whole process end-positive) you can never experience more than your allotted 200 weight-times in your allotted 100 time-units.

Edited December 1, 2018 by Ookla the Apostate

[Calderis]

It's not even weight. It's effectively mass. 

Quote

Seonid

I noticed that you-- Was that a retcon on the way iron Feruchemy works?

Brandon Sanderson

What do you mean?

Seonid

There's a researcher who talks to Wax, asking him about whether he's changing his mass of whether he's changing whether the planet perceives him-- affecting his gravity.

Brandon Sanderson

Right. It's more a re-- Defining something I didn't pin down strongly enough. I wouldn't call it a retcon because it's something that nobody really did until Wax, really, in the series. The only one really capable of doing that in the original trilogy would have been the Lord Ruler, maybe some of the Inquisitors, but we don't have viewpoints from them. So I wouldn't call it a retcon I would just say it’s something that didn't come up in the first series that now I have to make sure is clear.

Seonid

So is it Higgs field stuff going on?

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah. Mmhmm.

Seonid

My idea was right.

Brandon Sanderson

Mmhmm.

source

Hooray for magic breaking physics. Manipulating effective mass with consistent density and size. 

[+Invocation]

3 hours ago, robardin said:

news to me, that it was originally a "gift" to the Terris people (from who?):

That was news to me too, but I couldn't find anything about who gave it to them beyond that it was probably Preservation.

[+robardin]

3 hours ago, Quantus said:

In a feruchemist as I understand it is not that they Bounce Back, rather there is a constant flow of Investiture between their bodies and their spiritwebs accomplishing all the normal things it takes to make a sentient being functional (eating, aging, sensing the world around it, etc), and Feruchemy allows you to fiddle with the Rates at which those flows are happening by either diverting some of the flow into a metalmind storage, or adding what is stored back into the normal Flow as an added supplement.  So to use the money analogy, what you are doing is taking your daily wages of $100 per day and saving $10 each day for a week in metal-mind piggy-bank.  During that week you have to live on $90 each day, but next week you have enough saved to live as if you were making $110 per day for the whole week. Or you can blow it all at once on one crazy purchase.

I understand the "time x attribute" aspect, but I think you're hitting on where the "added" investiture is coming from: that a living person is, in fact, a constant draw of some kind of "Investiture", simply by the fact of being alive, even if they're not using any kind of magic. Your analogy of "daily wages" would be a good one: filling a metalmind for a period of time is like saving $10 a day for a week, then when you stop saving money/filling the metalmind, you keep your full wages in hand going forward/your "normal life investiture" goes back to normal.

And what that "normal level" is, is predicated on something spiritual (as indicated by how Cosmere healing typically operates).

[SwordNimiForPresident]

On 12/1/2018 at 11:36 AM, robardin said:

I suspect this is so fundamental that it's come up before, but I didn't see any explanation of this in the Coppermind entry, so I'll pose it here.

Feruchemy is one of the three Metallic Arts on Scadrial, which clearly has links to Allomancy in that it uses the same metals as Allomancy does, but as attribute storage instead of "burning" them to tap into a flavor of the power of Preservation. So it would seem that an admixture of Preservation and Ruin is at work in powering it (not some other Shard), and supposedly, to equal measure.

In a recent thread, it seemed established (including cited WoBs) that there is no Snapping involved for the ability (though at what age, or how, a Feruchemist comes into knowledge of their ability is unknown, nor if pre-Catacendre Feruchemists experienced it differently than Era 2+ Ferrings do), and what was news to me, that it was originally a "gift" to the Terris people (from who?):

In that thread, it was mentioned once again that where Allomancy is "end-positive", with power being gained from Preservation, and Hemalurgy is "end-negative", in that power is lost while transfering Investiture from one person to another, Feruchemy is "end-neural" and thus doesn't need something external to power it (the metalminds are "batteries" for the Feruchemist's native attributes).

But that's not really true, right? Feruchemy can be ultimately seen to be "end-positive with a time delay" because the person "bounces back" to normal when they stop filling a metalmind.

For example, when Sazed or Wax fills an ironmind with weight, they become lighter. But when they stop filling the ironmind, their weight immediately goes back to normal. And then he's immediately able to tap the ironmind to be at greater than normal weight.

But if Feruchemy were end-neutral, shouldn't they only get their normal weight back by tapping the ironmind? Even without the "multiplier" aspect, where you can be twice as heavy for slightly less than half as long (and doesn't that imply some "systemic loss" as well for the multiplier gain)?

By way of analogy, if I have $100 in my pocket, and I put $10 in a sock and walk away, I have $90 on me, my money won't bounce back to $100. If I want $100 in my pocket again, I'd have to take all $10 back out of the sock.

Same thing with speed, metal ability, etc. - if you "bounce back to normal" while leaving behind attributes in a metalmind without having to empty the metalmind to get back to normal, isn't that mechanism fundamentally end positive?

By this logic you could just set yourself at a given level of an attribute indefinitely. If you have to tap a metalmind to get back to neutral then it stands to reason that you would need to store in order to get back to neutral. If this was the case you could just tap a pewtermind and be the Hulk forever. Your idea assumes that there isn't a passive drift towards the neutral of your spiritual aspects.

Edited December 17, 2018 by SwordNimiForPresident