Mental DNA

[Pagerunner]

A recent WoB from last month has got me thinking:

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Questioner

Your magic systems are very structured, and specific rules that dominate them. But are there any universal laws that apply to all of the magic systems in the cosmere together?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, there's several of them. Basically, the most important one and relevant to people who enjoy real physics is that I consider something called Investiture to be a third state of matter and energy. So, instead of e=mc^2, we have a third thing, Investiture, in there. And you can change Investiture to matter or to energy. And so, because of that, that law that you can do this, is where we see a lot of the cosmere magics living.

We also have a kind of rule that beings all exist, everything exists on three different levels. The Physical, the Spiritual, and the Cognitive. And, like we have DNA for our Physical self, we also have Mental DNA and Spiritual DNA, and all three influence one another. For instance, you couldn't test an Allomancer's blood and find the Allomancy gene, because it is in a different set of their DNA. You just have three sets. You could compose a test that could test it on the Spiritual Realm, but you're gonna have to use a different branch of physics to do that and determine who was an Allomancer. And so they all work on this kind of fundamental rules of: your Identity, your Connection, and being part of your soul, and the magics working through those things.

So there's some fundamental rules about this, about changing forms from energy to matter, and you having this Identity, Investiture, and Connection stored in your Spiritual DNA that are really relevant to everything.

ICon 2019 (Oct. 15, 2019)

We know pretty well what Physical DNA is. (Because it's like real DNA.) We're getting a sense of Spiritual DNA: things like Identity, Investiture, and Connection. (As so helpfully listed out by Brandon in the WoB in question.) But he also explicitly calls out this concept of Mental DNA as one of the fundamental principles of Realmatics. As far as I'm aware, this is the first we've seen explicitly of this topic, and I'm trying to figure out where we may have seen it in play, and where we may see it going forward.

Feruchemy seems somewhat related in how your physical body will sometimes change. Specifically F.Pewter, where you will gain or lose muscle mass; it's not like A.Pewter, where you just get stronger. That's a manipulation of your Physical DNA. I wonder if mental manipulation works the same way - Feruchemy will be directly manipulating your own Mental DNA to make you more determined, for example, whereas A.Brass and A.Zinc manipulate your Cognitive aspect, so to speak.

Stormlight, and the various neuroatypical characters, may be another place this plays out. We know that cracks in the Spiritual aspect are what allow you to become Invested; I wonder if those are areas of Mental DNA affecting the Spiritual DNA.

The listeners on Roshar might be another candidate for mental DNA in action. We had Eshonai's POV while she was in Stormform. She actually thought differently. I wonder if the bond with a spren warps their mental DNA the same way it does their physical DNA? Which explains why some forms are more intelligent than others, as well as why some forms are inherently 'evil' emotionally.

Where else might we have seen Mental DNA in action throughout the cosmere? (This is not a rhetorical question; I need some help broadening my mental horizons and trying to get my head around this topic. What other magic systems or realmatic phenomena may rely upon it?)

[Honorless]

Hmm... maybe emotions? Like Zinc and Brass Allomancy

Soulcasting seems to be about affecting the Spiritual via affecting the Cognitive resulting in Physical changes, right? Could that give a hint?

Also would there be Mental or Cognitive DNA? Going by Khriss' light analogy, the Cognitive seems like it would be constantly in flux, influenced by both the Physical and the Spiritual

What of Cognitive entities?

[Aon Tia]

10 minutes ago, Honorless said:

Also would there be Mental or Cognitive DNA

 

4 hours ago, Pagerunner said:

I wonder if mental manipulation works the same way - Feruchemy will be directly manipulating your own Mental DNA to make you more determined, for example, whereas A.Brass and A.Zinc manipulate your Cognitive aspect, so to speak.

I was thinking that it could be how the spiritual DNA makes Spiritual aspect, in a similar manner, Mental DNA probably makes up cognitive aspect of a person. So, A.Brass and A.Zinc could also be manipulating the mental DNA to Shape the way Cognitive aspect works thus resulting in manipulation of emotions in the Physical being.

Mental DNA might also be at work with the Lightweaver Resonance, which is their mnemonic abilities..

 

[Rorzikel]

Might be as simple as the actual contents of your mind, what gets preserved as a cognitive shadow should you be sufficiently invested.

[Karger]

10 hours ago, Pagerunner said:

The listeners on Roshar might be another candidate for mental DNA in action

That kind of transformation is spiritual.

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Stuttgart signing (May 17, 2019)
#10 Share Copy

 

 

Krios (paraphrased)

If you have a form of manipulating your Identity and a form of healing, are you able to shapeshift or even evolve your body like growing wings?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

You'd have to do some real work on your Spiritweb to make that work. It'd take more work than you're implying, but the [singers] for instance are doing this. It'll take a little more work, it's not just blanking your Identity. Hemalurgy would make it very easy, but also very evil. But what you want to achieve is possible.

 

#hemalurgy #identity

 

Edited November 20, 2019 by Karger

[Honorless]

Hmm... There's also the fact that emotional Allomancy can be used to control beings with cracks in their Spiritweb. This could either support or undermine the idea of Cognitive DNA though

[Halyo_Alex]

11 hours ago, Honorless said:

Hmm... There's also the fact that emotional Allomancy can be used to control beings with cracks in their Spiritweb. This could either support or undermine the idea of Cognitive DNA though

Well, here's a hypothesis in favor of it; the cracks in the spiritweb allow the emotional allomancy to reach through and affect the cognitive DNA. if the natural investiture/Identity of the spirit acts like a shield for physical allomancy (can't push/pull metal inside someone), then why not the same for mental allomancy?

of course the glaring flaw with this is that you can soothe and riot things without cracked spiritwebs, but it's worth noting that copper allomancy helps to block emotional allomancy. If one of the theories i've heard is correct, then that would be because copper allomancy reinforces the divisions between the 3 realms, which would make it harder to reach someone's cognitive DNA with emotional allomancy. Therefore, there would be a sort of spectrum of how effective soothing/rioting is on someone's cDNA:

cracked spiritweb: very easy to affect it, there are gaps that the emotional allomancy can seep through with less effort.
normal spiritweb: standard effectiveness, the spiritweb shields the cDNA and limits the effect to their emotions rather than their entire mind.
copperclouded spiritweb: basically impossible for the copper allomancer's cDNA to be affected. Copper causes the division between the realms to strengthen, and that makes it much harder to penetrate the shielding of the spiritweb and reach the cDNA.

Again this is just a hypothesis based on what I know right now. Feel free to debunk this.