Futuresight related questions

[scudalarm]

I have some questions regarding futuresight and/or predicting the future in general:

1. Why is predicting the future generally frowned upon in the Cosemere?
2. Was Elend's Duralumin-Atium burn a form of Futuresight? or rather are the normal Atium burn already considered Futuresight?
3. Hypothetical, if a version of the Diagram was written for the whole of the Cosmere, and Golden Glowing letters was shown, will the Mistborn / Atium mistings (or anyone that can burn Atium) show up as Black?  How about the Aviar Sak (the one the predicts where someone might die).
4. Will the Returned be blacked out as well?

 

 

Edited June 12, 2019 by scudalarm

[king of nowhere]

predicting the future is not frowned upon in the whole cosmere, only on roshar. in roshar it makes sense, as seeing the future is a power from odium on that planet.

atium is also futuresight. the returned and some avians too. none of those is considered bad.

[Nathrangking]

2 hours ago, scudalarm said:

I have some questions regarding futuresight and/or predicting the future in general:

1. Why is predicting the future generally frowned upon in the Cosemere?
2. Was Elend's Duralumin-Atium burn a form of Futuresight? or rather are the normal Atium burn already considered Futuresight?
3. Hypothetical, if a version of the Diagram was written for the whole of the Cosmere, and Golden Glowing letters was shown, will the Mistborn / Atium mistings (or anyone that can burn Atium) show up as Black?  How about the Aviar Sak (the one the predicts where someone might die).
4. Will the Returned be blacked out as well?

 

 

3. Yes. Future sight cancels future sight think two atium burners burning at the same time.

 

[RShara]

I actually made a thread about 1 a while back

Normal atium is considered futuresight. Duralumin+atium pulled him partway into the Spiritual Realm and let him see what he should do in order for the world to be okay.

Yep, any of them that can reliably and repeatedly see the future should have some issues. I don't know that all of themwould be blacked out completely, but some of their "writing" ought to be fuzzy or grayed a bit.

I don't think the Returned would be blacked out. They only get the singular vision, and just once, and don't always/often remember it when they come back. I don't think that's enough to substantially affect their "writing."

[Weltall]

7 hours ago, scudalarm said:

Why is predicting the future generally frowned upon in the Cosemere?

As mentioned it isn't frowned upon generally but it is in very specific circumstances. On Roshar, the main method of futuresight is the Death Rattles which are the doings of one of the Unmade. There's also what Renarin does, which involes a spren that's been corrupted by another Unmade; Ivory's line about Renarin and Glys suggests that a 'normal' Truthwatcher sees the present rather than the future. So that's double connection to Odium which is a pretty good reason to be worried about futuresight. It's not actually the only example (the final vision Dalinar gets was through Honor's futuresight) but it's enough that the idea that seeing the future is Bad has become ingrained in people's' minds.

On Scadrial, you have a somewhat similar situation where Preservation warns against relying on futuresight because it involves atium, aka the 'body' of Ruin. It's not so much that seeing the future is inherently bad as it is that you're doing it by drawing directly upon the Shard that wants to destroy everything.

By contrast, the ability of the Returned to get a sense for the future in art is seen as holy, as are the visions from Endowment to the Returned themselves (if/when they remember them) and if Riino is an example of Elantrians generally they have no taboo against seeing the future.

As @RShara goes into in her topic (which I should probably read in depth) there's probably other good reasons why Hoid tells Shallan to be wary of anyone who sees the future (including him) but in the immediate term the most pressing concern is probably that on Roshar it's so strongly associated with Odium.

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Was Elend's Duralumin-Atium burn a form of Futuresight? or rather are the normal Atium burn already considered Futuresight?

A-Atium is seeing the future (Brandon explicitly gave it that power because he wanted to foreshadow the existence of Fortune) and what Elend did gave him a more direct glimpse into the Spiritual Realm, so it was basically atium on steroids.

Quote

Hypothetical, if a version of the Diagram was written for the whole of the Cosmere, and Golden Glowing letters was shown, will the Mistborn / Atium mistings (or anyone that can burn Atium) show up as Black?  How about the Aviar Sak (the one the predicts where someone might die).

Will the Returned be blacked out as well?

All forms of future-sight interfere with one another (like how Renarin simply by existing acts as a human black hole where the Diagram is concerned) so any attempt to predict the future would have trouble seeing the actions of anyone else capable of seeing the future, including atium burners, anybody with access to F-Chromium, anyone with a device like Riino's, Sak and Sixth of the Dusk, Hoid (who uses some application of Fortune) and of course, the Shards themselves.

Since Vivenna knows enough about Cosmere mechanics to know Fortune by name and the Returned do have some prescient powers, they should probably be at least somewhat fuzzy to your hypothetical 'Super Diagram' but perhaps less than those who can consciously manipulate Fortune.

Edited June 13, 2019 by Weltall

[+Oltux72]

3 hours ago, Weltall said:

On Scadrial, you have a somewhat similar situation where Preservation warns against relying on futuresight because it involves atium, aka the 'body' of Ruin. It's not so much that seeing the future is inherently bad as it is that you're doing it by drawing directly upon the Shard that wants to destroy everything.

 

But he could have just advised them to use electrum rather than atium.

[Weltall]

7 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

But he could have just advised them to use electrum rather than atium.

That doesn't make anything I said incorrect. Also, two points. First, while electrum can do more than what we saw Vin and Elend manage in Hero of Ages it's still not as effective as atium and requires more practice and better reflexes to really take advantage of its power. Second and more importanly, Preservation's master plan required that people use atium. He doesn't have to like it and he can warn people that it's dangerous to draw directly upon Ruin, but it's still a necessary element of his plan to defeat him.

[Karger]

16 hours ago, RShara said:

I don't think the Returned would be blacked out. They only get the singular vision, and just once, and don't always/often remember it when they come back. I don't think that's enough to substantially affect their "writing."

Their dreams and impression often do reveal a bit about the future.  Lightsong's dreams of war for example were a result of various political intrigues happening at court at the time which made war more likely. 

Future sight often has a stigma attached to it because of the temptation involved.  The future difficult to predict and it is extremely hard even for a shard to gain any real information from it.

[RShara]

10 minutes ago, Karger said:

Their dreams and impression often do reveal a bit about the future.  Lightsong's dreams of war for example were a result of various political intrigues happening at court at the time which made war more likely. 

Future sight often has a stigma attached to it because of the temptation involved.  The future difficult to predict and it is extremely hard even for a shard to gain any real information from it.

You should read my thread that I linked

[Karger]

1 minute ago, RShara said:

You should read my thread that I linked

Will do

[scudalarm]

15 hours ago, Weltall said:

All forms of future-sight interfere with one another (like how Renarin simply by existing acts as a human black hole where the Diagram is concerned) so any attempt to predict the future would have trouble seeing the actions of anyone else capable of seeing the future, including atium burners, anybody with access to F-Chromium, anyone with a device like Riino's, Sak and Sixth of the Dusk, Hoid (who uses some application of Fortune) and of course, the Shards themselves.

Since Vivenna knows enough about Cosmere mechanics to know Fortune by name and the Returned do have some prescient powers, they should probably be at least somewhat fuzzy to your hypothetical 'Super Diagram' but perhaps less than those who can consciously manipulate Fortune.

So I think we can assume if someone wants to hide from the Shards, they can utilize fortune and/or any form of future sight as a defensive measure,it will be their choice to act upon the vision or do they need to act upon the vision and usually they act against the vision to become blacked out or blurry?

[Weltall]

13 minutes ago, scudalarm said:

So I think we can assume if someone wants to hide from the Shards, they can utilize fortune and/or any form of future sight as a defensive measure,it will be their choice to act upon the vision or do they need to act upon the vision and usually they act against the vision to become blacked out or blurry?

It doesn't seem to matter and just seeing the future is enough to potentially mess up anyone else's ability to see yours. Renarin both tries to prevent the future he sees from happening (during WoR, when it fails) and do nothing to prevent it (at Thaylen City) and he's still invisible to Odium's vision. Atium burners (and people countering them with A-Electrum) don't have to do anything other than burn the metal(s) to cause atium shadows to multiply to the point of uselessness. Since it goes both ways it seems like peering into the Spiritual is the important thing and what you do with that knowledge doesn't ultimately determine whether someone else looking at the future can or can't see you.

There are other ways to hide from Shards as well. Hoid is able to hide from Harmony (though apparently not from Endowment) and whatever was done to Lift makes her invisible to Odium, or at least very hard to sense.

[scudalarm]

17 hours ago, RShara said:

Normal atium is considered futuresight. Duralumin+atium pulled him partway into the Spiritual Realm and let him see what he should do in order for the world to be okay.

I have a another question, so after some mroe reading, it was mentioned that futuresight is influenced by the shards, hence Ruin's futuresight is geared towards being good at killing the opponent, Preservation's Terris Prophecies, yes it's directly from a shard, but it's still futuresight. Endowment's a bit hard to identify since I don't understand it's intent.  Odium's seems chaotic and the usual method of obtaining it is morbid, and if we'll ascribe to the theory that the Diagram is Cultivation's I would say it is "branching", it had those conditions like If Dalinar tries to unite the high prince, then kill him, but if he is to become a warlord he can be an ally.

So my question is should it have been that Elend's vision be of destruction since he was using Atium? or was it also considering Elend's intent? 

[RShara]

Just now, scudalarm said:

I have a another question, so after some mroe reading, it was mentioned that futuresight is influenced by the shards, hence Ruin's futuresight is geared towards being good at killing the opponent, Preservation's Terris Prophecies, yes it's directly from a shard, but it's still futuresight. Endowment's a bit hard to identify since I don't understand it's intent.  Odium's seems chaotic and the usual method of obtaining it is morbid, and if we'll ascribe to the theory that the Diagram is Cultivation's I would say it is "branching", it had those conditions like If Dalinar tries to unite the high prince, then kill him, but if he is to become a warlord he can be an ally.

So my question is should it have been that Elend's vision be of destruction since he was using Atium? or was it also considering Elend's intent? 

I don't have a really good answer to that. Atium makes people better at killing, but does it affect what they see? That's an interesting thought exercise. Perhaps it doesn't affect what they see, but it does affect what they do with what they see?  Or because atium is such a small amount of fore-vision, it only tinges them a little bit?