The Fourth Law of Thermodynamics

[+ILuvHats]

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yurisses

You once said that Investiture follows its own version of the laws of thermodynamics. The first one is that Investiture is neither created nor destroyed.

Is the second law of Investodynamics that the amount of corrupted Investiture in the Cosmere cannot decrease?

Brandon Sanderson

Basically, the idea is that there is a third item in the equations--matter, energy, and investiture. That's the basis of how they work.

Entropy is not corrupted Investiture. The second law stands as is. However, there is a fourth law that relates to Adonalsium, which I'm not going to talk about at the moment.

I have a theory about this so called fourth law of thermodynamics.  Its always bothered me that all Shards are incapable of breaking promises or agreements, and not just Honor.  By extension, spren are also incapable of breaking their word.  So, I think this law is at the root of this limitation on Shards and spren.  I’d phrase it as follows.

- Investiture is inherently only able to form Spiritual bonds.  It cannot destroy bonds without some form of intervention from non-investiture, sapient beings.  

Maybe it could be better re-phrased, but hopefully I got the gist across.  Basically, investiture by itself cannot break spiritual bonds. I think investiture wielded by humans or other sentient beings could, but not investiture alone.  So when investiture-based beings like shards or spren make agreements, they form spiritual bonds, and because they can’t break these bonds, they are bound to their word.  

I’m not good with following the mechanics of the spiritual realm,  so there might be problems with this theory.  For example, Shards can obviously kill people.  When you kill somebody, are you physically breaking their spiritual bonds?  I don’t know, but maybe somebody better informed does.  If this is the case (and there might be other equivalent problems with this theory) maybe a qualifier could be added to the types of spiritual bonds investiture cannot break.  For example, maybe investiture can’t break bonds keyed to it by Intent.  So when Shards make promises, they are forming a bond molded by their own Intent, so they can’t break it?  Or something like that. Hopefully, if people think I’m onto something, they could modify or rephrase this theory.  

If I’m right and the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics is along the lines I think it is, then I have another proposition.  Honor is not the embodiment of one of Adonalsium‘s personality attributes, but rather is the embodiment of this fundamental law of the cosmere.  So, Honor is more comparable to Ruin and Preservation as fundamental forces than Shards like Odium or Devotion.  

Anywho, what do you think?  Sorry if this has been discussed before, by the way.

[Jace21]

I am not sure if this is the law that Brandon is talking about but I definitely think you're onto something.

There a fair few people here who agree that Shards are bound by their word, and not just Honor, as you have pointed out.

As to Shards killing people, we haven't seen a Shard kill someone directly, so your theory stands. They seem to use their investiture to manipulate something physical when they need to kill, either an object or another physical being.

Overall, I agree that Shards are bound by their word. For the rest, I have no idea if this is the "4th Law" but it is certainly an interesting idea.

[Scion of the Mists]

Regarding Shards smiting people:

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RandyD [PENDING REVIEW]

Can a Shard just smite someone? Like, "Boom, you're dead," and they die?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

So, Shards can do this, depending on where they are. For instance, Odium can't, but Endowment could.

source

[MountainKing]

The problem with that WoN is that Odium can't make a physical avatar while Endowment can. For all we know a shard has to manifest themselves, and then use the manifestation to smite someone.

[Calderis]

23 minutes ago, MountainKing said:

The problem with that WoN is that Odium can't make a physical avatar while Endowment can. For all we know a shard has to manifest themselves, and then use the manifestation to smite someone.

That's because, at least in my opinion, Odium is bound most heavily on Braize, whereas Endowment is on Nalthis. 

I wonder if that WoB would still hold true if someone were on Braize itself. 

[MountainKing]

15 minutes ago, Calderis said:

That's because, at least in my opinion, Odium is bound most heavily on Braize, whereas Endowment is on Nalthis. 

I wonder if that WoB would still hold true if someone were on Braize itself. 

See, another good point.

[Jace21]

1 hour ago, Calderis said:

That's because, at least in my opinion, Odium is bound most heavily on Braize, whereas Endowment is on Nalthis. 

I wonder if that WoB would still hold true if someone were on Braize itself. 

This seems reasonable, my only issue is that Ruin was incapable despite being present on Scadrial so an added requirement may be that a Shard can only do it when alone/unopposed.

Endowment is alone on Nalthis so she can, even if Odium can do it on Roshar from Braize, he may be prevented from acting so directly by virtue of Cultivation and residual investiture of Honor. 

[Calderis]

5 minutes ago, Ookla the Mind Sculptor said:

This seems reasonable, my only issue is that Ruin was incapable despite being present on Scadrial so an added requirement may be that a Shard can only do it when alone/unopposed.

Endowment is alone on Nalthis so she can, even if Odium can do it on Roshar from Braize, he may be prevented from acting so directly by virtue of Cultivation and residual investiture of Honor. 

Ruin was also crippled due to the loss of a significant portion of his "body". 

We were told pretty straightforwardly in the annotations that if Ruin recovered the atium, it was game over for Scadrial. 

[Jace21]

True, just worth mentioning that factors other than proximity play a part.

My understanding is that Ruin sans-atium was the same power level as Preservation after he overinvested in humanity.

I struggle to believe the extra power Preservation put in humanity is more than what Endowment gives to every Nalthian. Since we know Endowment can do it, it seems reason able to assume Ruin coud have if his own power were the only factor.

[Calderis]

54 minutes ago, Ookla the Mind Sculptor said:

True, just worth mentioning that factors other than proximity play a part.

My understanding is that Ruin sans-atium was the same power level as Preservation after he overinvested in humanity.

I struggle to believe the extra power Preservation put in humanity is more than what Endowment gives to every Nalthian. Since we know Endowment can do it, it seems reason able to assume Ruin coud have if his own power were the only factor.

I strongly disagree.

The piece of Preservation endowed into scadrians crippled the mind of a Shard and made a species Sapient and balanced against Ruin. 

Endowment gives little packets of investiture to people who most likely already existed which let's them make inanimate objects move around. 

[Quantus]

To the OP:

This probably wont make sense outside of a larger "Investiture-as-Electromagnetic Energy" model Ive been working on, but for what it's worth my current (largely useless) theory on the 4th Law is that "Adonalsium = Ground State of Investiture"

 

 

 

[+ILuvHats]

@Quantus So you’re theory is that Adonalsium was the state of investiture at which the net energy of the system was minimized?  (I probably phrased that wrong).  Did you ever post thread about it?  I am intrigued.

[Quantus]

3 hours ago, ILuvHats said:

@Quantus So you’re theory is that Adonalsium was the state of investiture at which the net energy of the system was minimized?  (I probably phrased that wrong).  Did you ever post thread about it?  I am intrigued.

More or less.  Electricity is, for the most part, a relative measure of Potential Difference (typical AC power for example just bounces back and forth across the Zero/Ground level)  and under that model the shattering had a lot to do with the shatterer's polarizing the Investiture (more or less ripping it apart along multiple metaphysical axis) which may or may not have involved an Investiture "prism" even though those two analogies dont really fit together.  

 

This is a theory that Ive been percolating for a while now, but I havent had the time recently to sit down and type it all out (end of the year overtime at work) but Im hoping to get to it over the holidays.

PS. Dont get your hopes up too much, a lot of it will look like I Googled "frequency" and put the results into a blender... 

Edited December 11, 2018 by Quantus