Jump to content

Taravangian's Empathy and the Diagram


Kurkistan

Recommended Posts

First of all, forgive me if someone else has already posited this. I will freely admit that I lost track of all the new posts during the post-WoR explosion, and I'm actually quite bad at finding stuff that I haven't read at least once before.
 
That said, I have had an assumption about how the Diagram is so accurate floating around in the back of my head ever since I first saw someone question how a smart Taravangian (hereafter referred to by his proper title of "Mr. T") could make accurate predictions about human behavior given his previously demonstrated idiocy in that regard whenever he's really smart. Like how one day a smart Mr. T tried to get all the dumb people to commit suicide, and actually thoughts that everyone would agree with him so long as he explained it all well enough.
 
So the question naturally arises in many minds: How could the super-ultra-duper-mega-smart Mr. T who wrote the Diagram predict the course of a conversation, let alone the course of human events on an entire planet?
 
My immediate thought when I saw this question was as follows: Super-Mr. T crossed a very important threshold that day: he became intelligent enough to model human thought and behavior (on the macro scale, at the very least) as a pure abstraction, a pure exercise of thought without any reference at all to his own feelings, intuitions, or proclivities. It's as if you dropped a Mr. T-shaped AI on Roshar with all of Mr. T's memories and the directive "save humanity" and then let it figure it all out on its own.
 
Where I would think that normally we model how other people will think and behave based in large part on our own capacities—our empathy and how we'd react in their situation and the like—it seems that intelligent Mr. T, besides not having compassion to care for the suffering of others, doesn't have that ability to empathize, and quite likely doesn't really even think in the same ways as normal people. So any attempt by an intelligent Mr. T to predict the behavior of others will necessarily be poisoned by his own atypical intuitions and proclivities. There may even be another threshold that Super-Mr. T had to cross before he was intelligent enough to recognize and consciously ignore his own intuitions about how other people will behave, such as his incorrect intuitions in the dumb-person-suicide case.
 
---
 
So, in concluding, I think that the Diagram faction is entitled to trust in Super-Mr. T's predictions and directions because Super-Mr. T was so smart that he could model how us puny humans would react and take those reactions into account. Given the assumption that the Diagram's end goal is the salvation of some part of humanity, and given that Diagramists are heavily skewed towards the "ends justify the means" camp, Super-Mr. T is worth trusting.

 

EDIT: I'm "espousing" the main idea in the OP (and other threads, as it turns out), not necessarily all the morality discussion that follows.

Edited by Kurkistan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I very much tend to agree with all of what you said, especially this:

 

 

 

My immediate thought when I saw this question was as follows: Super-Mr. T crossed a very important threshold that day: he became intelligent enough to model human thought and behavior (on the macro scale, at the very least) as a pure abstraction, a pure exercise of thought without any reference at all to his own feelings, intuitions, or proclivities. It's as if you dropped a Mr. T-shaped AI on Roshar with all of Mr. T's memories and the directive "save humanity" and then let it figure it all out on its own.

 

King T became transcendent for a day, tapping into the entire potential of the human brain. IMO, it's all about probabilities, and that's shown in the diagram, and why they allow so many members to operate independently. That goes more along the lines with your AI metaphor. He doesn't just predict one outcome, he predicts several plausible outcomes, and has other plans in case those fall apart. 

 

 

 

So, in concluding, I think that the Diagram faction is entitled to trust in Super-Mr. T's predictions and directions because Super-Mr. T was so smart that he could model how us puny humans would react and take those reactions into account. Given the assumption that the Diagram's end goal is the salvation of some part of humanity, and given that Diagramists are heavily skewed towards the "ends justify the means" camp, Super-Mr. T is worth trusting. 

 

I trust Super Mr. T, and I pity the fool that doesn't believe in the diagram. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I very much tend to agree with all of what you said, especially this:

 

 

King T became transcendent for a day, tapping into the entire potential of the human brain. IMO, it's all about probabilities, and that's shown in the diagram, and why they allow so many members to operate independently. That goes more along the lines with your AI metaphor. He doesn't just predict one outcome, he predicts several plausible outcomes, and has other plans in case those fall apart. 

 

Emphasis mine.  The myth that Hollywood and pop culture are so insistent on perpetuating of "Humans only use 10% of their brain" has been explained, debunked, etc. multiple times.  If you meant to say "being as smart as it is possible for a human to be," then please disregard my comment as a misunderstanding :D

 

I do, by the way, agree with both you and Kurk in part--Mr T was predicting and modeling human behavior and reactions on the macro level with a high degree of success, but a much lower level of success on the individual level.  Diagramist's interpretations of the Diagram also led to various inaccuracies and failures, especially at the individual level.  Because Mr T was actually modeling actions/reactions/etc based on known and observable data, combined with likely events based on previous Desolations and Gavilar's visions rather than actually seeing the future, I think it likely that this model will continue to degrade as time goes by.  We are already seeing this degradation in WoR, and each time a different results than was predicted, the chances increase for the next result to be off as well. 

 

However, because it's impossible to tweak and modify the Diagram based on real-world outcomes, my own prediction is that by Book 5, the Diagram is useless--or worse, actively harmful.

 

Mistborn spoilers.

This is especially true, given that everything is written down.  Remember what Ruin was able to do, with barely a shred of active, conscious thought?  Maybe Odium hasn't been able to do anything, because he's not present on Roshar (supposition, not fact).  I imagine he'll hardly be bound that same way once the Desolation starts in earnest.  He may not feel the need to do so, due to hubris, but I doubt he would have been so successful at splintering Shards if he were not meticulously careful in all of his assaults.

Edited by kaellok
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree on the treeshold part. mr T had a godlike intelligence that day, and his predictions are surprisingly accurate.

However, I don't trust the diagram. Even with his scary intelligence, T could not predict everything. especially from incomplete informations. there's bound to be minor errors in the diagram, and those errors will compound with time, until the point the diagram will have nothing to do with reality. probably we're at that point right now: the alethi were never supposed to find urithiru, or to become united.

The diagram is already more harmful than good: it almost got dalinar and kaladin killed, just because they could become competition. and i'm pretty sure jah keved - the whole world, for that matter - would have survived better the desolation without a civil war. I would not be surprised if he was influenced by odium and subtly manipulated, in fact.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Emphasis mine.  The myth that Hollywood and pop culture are so insistent on perpetuating of "Humans only use 10% of their brain" has been explained, debunked, etc. multiple times.  If you meant to say "being as smart as it is possible for a human to be," then please disregard my comment as a misunderstanding :D

That one always bugs me too!

 

On topic, I agree that T's Diagram has a lot of solid information and predictive theory going for it (Hello, psychohistory!) but I'm not 100% convinced that it's going to prove the best for the planet and the people on it in the long run.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The diagram is already more harmful than good: it almost got dalinar and kaladin killed, just because they could become competition. and i'm pretty sure jah keved - the whole world, for that matter - would have survived better the desolation without a civil war. I would not be surprised if he was influenced by odium and subtly manipulated, in fact.

 

Minor quibble: the Diagram never tried to get Kaladin killed, just Dalinar, and only if Dalinar attempted to sue for peace with the Parshendi (aka Voidbringers).

 

@Kurk:

We discussed it a bit in this thread, and my thoughts essentially mirror yours. Mr. T's lack of empathy harms his ability to interact and predict other humans until the point where his intelligence is great enough that he doesn't have to rely on intuition to puzzle out human behavior. At this stage, his thinking is clear and he can be trusted to act towards his stated goals. With this in mind, his plan (as written in the Diagram) can likely be trusted as unmodified and workable.

 

Mr. T for World Emperor! Hopefully the Radiants don't decide to oppose him. Last thing anyone needs is a civil war right now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Mr. T for World Emperor! Hopefully the Radiants don't decide to oppose him. Last thing anyone needs is a civil war right now.

Yeah, how did that civil war in Jah Keved work out for them?  Oh, right...  Well, I'm sure it at least went 100% according to what the Diagram predicted, right?  Oh, right, it didn't...  Well, at least the giant plague released in the Purelake is bound to have the predicted results, right?  Right?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, how did that civil war in Jah Keved work out for them?  Oh, right...  Well, I'm sure it at least went 100% according to what the Diagram predicted, right?  Oh, right, it didn't...  Well, at least the giant plague released in the Purelake is bound to have the predicted results, right?  Right?

 

Well, you can't predict everything. And, I highly doubt that the Diagram is set up as a flunky system, just to illustrate the "Journey Before Destination" motto. Most likely, it will come down to a much more difficult choice: go with the Diagram and have a reasonable chance of saving a section of the population, or choosing the honorable path at the risk of humanity being destroyed. If the Diagram is flawed, the tension of that choice just deflates.

 

EDIT: And, I'm pretty sure that the civil war in Jah Keved did work out exactly as planned. Down to the exact number of highprinces who died, and the circumstances that led to Taravangian being in control. Too lazy to look up the chapter, but Taravangian marvels at how accurate the Diagram was in that situation. However, nature being chaotic as it is, I doubt he anticipated the plague in the Purelake, unless Mr. T's power is straight up divination.

Edited by Chrono
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, you can't predict everything. And, I highly doubt that the Diagram is set up as a flunky system, just to illustrate the "Journey Before Destination" motto. Most likely, it will come down to a much more difficult choice: go with the Diagram and have a reasonable chance of saving a section of the population, or choosing the honorable path at the risk of humanity being destroyed. If the Diagram is flawed, the tension of that choice just deflates.

 

EDIT: And, I'm pretty sure that the civil war in Jah Keved did work out exactly as planned. Down to the exact number of highprinces who died, and the circumstances that led to Taravangian being in control. Too lazy to look up the chapter, but Taravangian marvels at how accurate the Diagram was in that situation. However, nature being chaotic as it is, I doubt he anticipated the plague in the Purelake, unless Mr. T's power is straight up divination.

Just so it's clear, I think that at the time the Diagram was created, it was accurate--it's just that its vulnerability lies in the inability to 'tweak' it to account for new data and variables.  That means that even though it starts off as a valid choice and alternative, it becomes less and less so as time goes by. 

 

I don't have the book on-hand, but I specifically remember there being inaccuracies of results obtained vs. the prediction for Jah Keved, especially relating to the number of highprinces involved and dying.  The plague in the Purelake, I'm assuming, was deliberately started by Diagramists so that Mr Ts healers can go and 'save' them in "Stage Two of Unifying the World by Killing People."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Quibbles:

  1. As king said above, based on lack of information, the diagram can be wrong (Garbage In, Garbage Out, as computer programmers say).  It seems possible that the Diagram may have always lacked so much information that it has been actively harmful to surviving the desolation from day 1.   
  2. The goal, assuring humanity's survival, may not even be the best one, as it might be better to take on more risk of losing in order to get a better outcome (prevailing against Odium, for example). 
  3. With incomplete information, a synergy based approach seems best, working from the medical principle of "First, do no harm."  This would allow Mr.T to contribute to other positive efforts that he does not fully understand, such as Hoid (assuming Hoid is positive).  The fact that the Diagram's solution is to become the "king of everything" by attrition throws it's strategy into question. 
  4. Mr. T supposedly has intelligence based on investiture that may actually exceed uninvested human potential.  We are told that it is purely based on intelligence and not at all precognitive.  Based on investiture, all three Shards had super-intelligence and varying degrees of precognition.  Can a shard make a person have more precognition or intelligence than itself?  I doubt it.  So that means that super-Mr. T may have been less intelligent, less prescient and more ignorant than both O and C. This, in turn, would mean that the Shards may be better equipped to judge how well thte Diagram fits in their plans than the Diagram is able to work them into it's schemes. 
  5. Odium apparently was working with Szeth when he tried to assassinate Dalinar per Mr. T's orders.  That verifies that Mr. T is advancing Odium's plans. 
  6. As we see, the Diagram failed to get Dalinar assassinated.  Likewise, the purpose seems to have been to keep Dalinar from making peace w/the Parshendi.  But peace w/the Parshendi was never even possible, so that can be chalked up as another failure of the Diagram. 

The Diagram has so many problems that it is almost certainly harmful.  It's goals (1 and 2 above), strategy (3 and 4 above), tactics (4 and 5 above) and execution (6 above) have all been shown to be questionable.  The strongest argument I can see for the Diagram helping in some way is that it is so obviously bad that it is due for a Sandersonian reversal. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Emphasis mine.  The myth that Hollywood and pop culture are so insistent on perpetuating of "Humans only use 10% of their brain" has been explained, debunked, etc. multiple times.  If you meant to say "being as smart as it is possible for a human to be," then please disregard my comment as a misunderstanding :D

 

I was referring to intelligence unbound, not the "we don't use our brain" drivel, but I wouldn't chalk that up to your misunderstanding, its more my bad cliche phrasing that did it.  I was thinking more along the lines of a savant in probability prediction.

 

 

There's one thing I don't understand though. If he was so intelligent at the time, why didn't he think to ask for paper???? :blink:  All the knowledge in the world isn't useful if it's illegibly scrawled on a bedside table, or forgotten underneath a floorboard nobody but Super Mr. T knew was loose.

Maybe he also foresaw his success, and knew that the room where the diagram was created would become a great tourist attraction.

 

 

Quibbles:

  1. As king said above, based on lack of information, the diagram can be wrong (Garbage In, Garbage Out, as computer programmers say).  It seems possible that the Diagram may have always lacked so much information that it has been actively harmful to surviving the desolation from day 1.   
  2. The goal, assuring humanity's survival, may not even be the best one, as it might be better to take on more risk of losing in order to get a better outcome (prevailing against Odium, for example). 
  3. With incomplete information, a synergy based approach seems best, working from the medical principle of "First, do no harm."  This would allow Mr.T to contribute to other positive efforts that he does not fully understand, such as Hoid (assuming Hoid is positive).  The fact that the Diagram's solution is to become the "king of everything" by attrition throws it's strategy into question. 
  4. Mr. T supposedly has intelligence based on investiture that may actually exceed uninvested human potential.  We are told that it is purely based on intelligence and not at all precognitive.  Based on investiture, all three Shards had super-intelligence and varying degrees of precognition.  Can a shard make a person have more precognition or intelligence than itself?  I doubt it.  So that means that super-Mr. T may have been less intelligent, less prescient and more ignorant than both O and C. This, in turn, would mean that the Shards may be better equipped to judge how well thte Diagram fits in their plans than the Diagram is able to work them into it's schemes. 
  5. Odium apparently was working with Szeth when he tried to assassinate Dalinar per Mr. T's orders.  That verifies that Mr. T is advancing Odium's plans. 
  6. As we see, the Diagram failed to get Dalinar assassinated.  Likewise, the purpose seems to have been to keep Dalinar from making peace w/the Parshendi.  But peace w/the Parshendi was never even possible, so that can be chalked up as another failure of the Diagram. 

 

1. Definitely valid point, but that's why they continue to tweek the diagram on his better days. 

2. I disagree another goal would be better, they're facing flat out extinction. Aim for the safe bet. but that's just my opinion.

3. I think we can assume from Dalinar's visions "unite them," that a universal leader will be accepted. As far as setting himself up as the ruler, the atrrition tactics he's using are only affecting other forces, not his own. I think it's the most perfect strategy I've ever read to usurp a throne. 

4. I strongly feel that this is more probability based than precognition, otherwise he wouldn't need to account for different outcomes. This puts him on a different playing field than Odium and Cultivation.

5. We believe Odium was observing Szeth (stormcloud coming for them when Szeth attempts to kill Dalinar the first time.) But that could be a spren similar to the stormfather, or if it is Odium, he could've been drawn by Szeth's skill and hate, looking for possible champions. 

6. Can we attribute this to the diagram, or is it an imperfect interpretation of the Diagram?

 

I think the biggest problem with the diagram is that it requires so much interpretation. They offset this by allowing members to work independently and attack problems from several angles. 

 

Edit: I got ninja'd, then wanted to reply to the post. 

Edited by EMTrevor
Link to comment
Share on other sites

T is using good strategies to usurp trones, but he's causing the death of many human soldier, which would be useful against the voidbringers. he almost caused the death of two radiants, which are humankind's best hope. he is hindering everyone else's efforts.

Now, if T was always super-smart, or at least reliably often, that may work. but he was smart enough to write the diagram only once. all that followed rely on speculations over speculated speculation based on theories inferred from hints on speculations on incomplete data. There's just no way it can work.

As a researcher, I see it all the time. You start speculating on the data you have, and yoru conclusions are almost always wrong, until you're already more than halfway towards completing the project. Even then, if your initial speculation is correct, doing further speculation on that is almost never going to work, and the further levels of speculation you add, the lower the chances to be correct. the diagram has been mostly correct for five years, and that would be enough for me to go kneel in front of supersmart T and execute his every order, even the clearly suicidal ones, on the certainty that he knows better than me. But that man don't exist anymore, and the diagram is slowly failing to keep up. can they adapt it to the alethi finding urithiru? is it still worth trying to destroy the alethi to let T reign, or dalinar has enough of a chance now that is better to work with him?

 

What I'd have done, as hoser says, is "first, do no harm". I'd have offered my full cooperation to someone else who is working towards saving mankind. It don't matter if thrree groups of good guys have the perfect plan to save the world, if they are all going to kill each other because they were spanners in the reed of someone else's plan. between the ghostbloods, the kholin and mr T, that's exactly what's happening now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The OP's primary point about Mr. T being smart enough on his supremely intelligent day not to need empathy for accurate prediction is probably right (given enough data and imagination he should have been able to postulate and verify a model of how humans generally react going by his own history). In fact how he behaves when he's just 'really smart' doesn't seem that smart to me; for the most part being smart is all about making predictions (or specifically, good predictive models) and he does a terrible job at it, despite having plenty of data from his own lifetime.

 

That said, it's unlikely the Diagram is really a good thing. As noted by a previous poster, the main thing is that Mr. T doesn't really know when the Diagram is drifting off course because he doesn't really know how it works. The number of factions in Jah Keved might not matter much right now, where things are apparently going (on a macro level) as predicted, but there's no way to know for sure that change (or the changes that resulted in that consequence) haven't already derailed the plan six months from then. Taravangian has no gauge except looking at outputs. Essentially, the problem is that a small delta in the prediction might be indicative of a big delta in the internal computation generating that prediction (this is especially true if that prediction is an attractor - fairly likely to be proximate under a large number of initial conditions).

 

Mr. T can't really fix the Diagram, and he recognizes that - that's what his chapter is about: how he desperately needs another supremely brilliant day so he can fix it. Without it, he's probably screwed and taking the world with him.

 

That's the main issue because there's probably far more ways for his plan to go bad than there will be for his plan to go well. No matter how good his original intent was when creating the Diagram, if he can't control the outcome of his plan, it's much more likely to end up somewhere bad than it is to end up somewhere good. It's like trying to hit a bull's eye with a badly inaccurate gun; it doesn't really matter if he's aiming at the bull's eye or somewhere else, he's probably still not going to hit the bull's eye.

 

It's unlikely the interpretation issue is in of itself a problem with the Diagram; we can probably assume that Taravangian accurately accounted for everything he knew about (which is the big issue). In particular, he may have written his plan in the way he did because he needed them to be interpreted at the correct time by the right person; if we assume most of the 'team' was already available before the Diagram was made, he probably could have accounted for the interpretation issue (it's worth noting however at least some of the team joined after - in particular the ardent Dova; if she is actually a hidden Herald or another major player and is involved with the Diagram...). If he failed to account for things he already did know, he wasn't as smart as he thought he was.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do we even know what the Diagram aims to achieve? Sure, Vargo's original goal was the capacity to save the world/humanity and he assumed that in his brilliance he found a way to do so. But he has only vague recollections of the day he wrote the Diagram. He thinks he knows his own endgame, but I'm not convinced he had solely the survival of humanity in mind on that day. To me, the purpose of the Diagram is yet unknown.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do we even know what the Diagram aims to achieve? Sure, Vargo's original goal was the capacity to save the world/humanity and he assumed that in his brilliance he found a way to do so. But he has only vague recollections of the day he wrote the Diagram. He thinks he knows his own endgame, but I'm not convinced he had solely the survival of humanity in mind on that day. To me, the purpose of the Diagram is yet unknown.

 

I agree. I am not convinced the Diagram is such a brilliant thing. Currently, I see it as a plot device to justify Mr T murdering thousand of innocent people, usurping thrones and launching plagues. The fact it could predict, with some measure of efficacy the future, does not justify the means. Anyone willing to go to such lengths is not working for the good of humanity: Hitler probably thought he was right to murder people based on their race..... It does change the fact he perpetuated the world's greatest genocide. I could say the same about Mr T. He thinks he is saving humanity, but I will never accept the fate of humanity can be played upon by murdering so many innocent. There has to be another way and the fact Mr T is not looking for that other, the fact he merely trusts his stupid Diagram just blatantly puts him into the "evil to be killed" people ranks.

 

Besides, there is one thing we all learned while reading fantasy: predicting the future never works. It never happens as the foretelling says it would.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bah!

 

Since mr T lacks all empathy in super smart form, he likely just goes for surviving through himself. So he goes towards a chance for a small % of humanity to survive as slaves for Odium, through he himself having leadership and surrendering/follow Odiums guidance.

 

Its proven that smart Mr T dont much care about people as individuals. I dont think hed see the majority of humans dying/being slaves as a problem as long as a few "smart" humans like himself can survive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bah!

 

Since mr T lacks all empathy in super smart form, he likely just goes for surviving through himself. So he goes towards a chance for a small % of humanity to survive as slaves for Odium, through he himself having leadership and surrendering/follow Odiums guidance.

 

Its proven that smart Mr T dont much care about people as individuals. I dont think hed see the majority of humans dying/being slaves as a problem as long as a few "smart" humans like himself can survive.

 

Which is why I associate him to Hitler..... He makes me think of him or what I know of him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do we even know what the Diagram aims to achieve? Sure, Vargo's original goal was the capacity to save the world/humanity and he assumed that in his brilliance he found a way to do so. But he has only vague recollections of the day he wrote the Diagram. He thinks he knows his own endgame, but I'm not convinced he had solely the survival of humanity in mind on that day. To me, the purpose of the Diagram is yet unknown.

 

I give you the Diagram's answer to that:

 

Q: For what essential must we strive? A: The essential of preservation, to shelter a seed of humanity through the coming storm. Q: What cost must we bear? A: The cost is irrelevant. Mankind must survive. Our burden is that of the species, and all other considerations are but dust by comparison.

 

We've seen no reason yet to think that Super-Mr. T suddenly became evil, and this bare survival of humanity has been his goal since before he went to see the Nightwatcher (he asked for "Capacity to stop what was coming. The capacity to save humankind.")

 

I agree. I am not convinced the Diagram is such a brilliant thing. Currently, I see it as a plot device to justify Mr T murdering thousand of innocent people, usurping thrones and launching plagues. The fact it could predict, with some measure of efficacy the future, does not justify the means. Anyone willing to go to such lengths is not working for the good of humanity: Hitler probably thought he was right to murder people based on their race..... It does change the fact he perpetuated the world's greatest genocide. I could say the same about Mr T. He thinks he is saving humanity, but I will never accept the fate of humanity can be played upon by murdering so many innocent. There has to be another way and the fact Mr T is not looking for that other, the fact he merely trusts his stupid Diagram just blatantly puts him into the "evil to be killed" people ranks.

 

Besides, there is one thing we all learned while reading fantasy: predicting the future never works. It never happens as the foretelling says it would.

 

Well thank you Dalinar. :P

 

Discussions of utilitarianism vs. the virtue ethics that most of the heroes seem to be espousing aside, Hitler (besides being a good way to derail a discussion) is not a very interesting antagonist. Or character. Pure EEEEEEVIL isn't really very interesting to read about. Also, historically, Brandon has been very fond of the "every villain is the hero of his own story". Beyond the subjective definition there, it also requires that these villains be sane and hold somewhat cogent beliefs; Brandon is also fond of villains also being genuinely sympathetic even from an external perspective.

 

To be brief, Mr. T would likely respond to you by saying that "There has to be another way" is wishful thinking that will see humanity dead. He wouldn't say "DEATH TO ALL WHO OPPOSE ME!" or the like.

 

--

 

So far as predicting the future goes: It worked out pretty well for

 

Cosmere-everything spoilers (telling you what I was spoiling would be itself spoilers):

Preservation, not to mention quite a few of the Returned have done pretty well. And the Wyrn generally seems to do pretty well by it, if the size of Fjordell's conquests is to be even in part credited to his (literal) foresight.

 

And, as others have said, Mr. T is doing probability, not flat-out prediction. It isn't a matter of "the spirits have told me...", but instead "given known variables and accounting for the unknowns, I give am X% +- 15% of Y happening after Z happens." It's not like people are going around interpreting the Oracle at Delphi. We have no evidence that Super-Mr. T was trying to be obscure and unhelpful and ambiguous, so while interpretation is still an issue what is there at center to be interpreted is quite real for what it is.

 

Bah!

 

Since mr T lacks all empathy in super smart form, he likely just goes for surviving through himself. So he goes towards a chance for a small % of humanity to survive as slaves for Odium, through he himself having leadership and surrendering/follow Odiums guidance.

 

Its proven that smart Mr T dont much care about people as individuals. I dont think hed see the majority of humans dying/being slaves as a problem as long as a few "smart" humans like himself can survive.

 

I think you do Mr. T a disservice. We've seen nothing yet to indicate that his motives are anything but pure.

 

----

 

Of course none of this is to say that what Mr. T & Co. are doing is necessarily right, or even the best utilitarian course of action after five years of drift and potential ignorance on Super-Mr. T's part. But simply calling Mr. T an idiot or Hitler is not the right criticism to make.

Edited by Kurkistan
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

There has to be another way and the fact Mr T is not looking for that other, the fact he merely trusts his stupid Diagram just blatantly puts him into the "evil to be killed" people ranks.

 

"There has to be another way"? What if there's not another way? Are you fine with the Diagram if it's literally the only way for humanity to survive the Desolation?

 

(Of note, may I offer this Death Rattle? “So the night will reign, for the choice of honor is life." Plausible interpretation: Odium gets to reign because people decide not to follow the Diagram so they can be honorable.)

 

Since mr T lacks all empathy in super smart form, he likely just goes for surviving through himself. So he goes towards a chance for a small % of humanity to survive as slaves for Odium, through he himself having leadership and surrendering/follow Odiums guidance.

 

Nothing Mr. T has ever said has implied his goal is to survive himself at the cost of others. In fact, it seems highly unlikely that his entire motivation is to survive. He's an old man, feels crushing guilt, and he explicitly says where his motivations come from in his interlude:

 

“Did ever I tell you, Adro, what I asked for?” he whispered as he read.

“Yes.”

He was barely listening. “Capacity,” he whispered, turning a page. “Capacity to stop what was coming. The capacity to save humankind.”

 

These are not the words of someone who is scared for themself and who doesn't want to die. Taravangian is incredibly kind and empathetic - he wants to save humankind, not himself. Why did he go to the Nightwatcher? It's made clear here:

 

It had worked. Just as the Diagram instructed, Taravangian was king of Jah Keved. He had taken the first major step toward unifying the world, as Gavilar had insisted would need to happen if they were to survive.

That was, at least, what the visions had proclaimed. Visions Gavilar had confided in him six years ago, the night of the Alethi king’s death. Gavilar had seen visions of the Almighty, who was also now dead, and of a coming storm.

Unite them.

“I am doing my best, Gavilar,” Taravangian whispered. “I am sorry that I need to kill your brother.”

 

Gavilar confided in Taravangian that a terrible apocalypse was going to happen. Together, they decided to try and save the world. Gavilar got himself killed by being a moron, leaving Taravangian. Nothing in Taravangian's interlude shows a fear of death, or some selfish desire to serve. Taravangian eats crappy meals, has purposefully made himself a prisoner, and shows remorse for what he's done.

 

Frankly, I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if Taravangian committed suicide after the Desolation is over.

 

So yes, I can understand that people hate what Taravangian does to people. There are obviously issues with the Diagram, and it's possible it is not the most reliable path to victory over Odium. However, the motivations behind the Diagram are made clear through Taravangian's desires, which do not suddenly change when he becomes smart. The Diagram even explicitly says what its goal is:

Q: For what essential must we strive? A: The essential of preservation, to shelter a seed of humanity through the coming storm. Q: What cost must we bear? A: The cost is irrelevant. Mankind must survive. Our burden is that of the species, and all other considerations are but dust by comparison. —From the Diagram, Catechism of the Back of the Flowered Painting: paragraph 1

 

Taravangian and his followers know the entire plan. If the plan behind the Diagram did not convince them that it would lead humanity to surviving the Desolation, then they would not follow it. It's possible that Taravangian lied to himself and the entire Diagram is a masterly crafted lie designed to lead them all astray, but the evidence for this is slim at best. There's a better chance that Odium himself has been altered words, but I find this similarly unlikely, as Odium spends all of his time on another planet and only makes brief appearances for Szeth.

 

Taravangian is not selfish. In some ways, he's the most selfless character in the series. As well, Taravangian is probably the kindest person in the entire series, given that he opened hospitals that were free for all decades prior, before he had any plans to extract the dying. He spent hours almost every day visiting people in the hospitals, and did this before he ever heard about the Desolation from Gavilar. I can't even recall an instance where he's said an unkind word to anyone, or shown any hateful thoughts, unlike literally every PoV character. Comparing him to Hitler is rather unfair to him, overall.

 

Edit: And of course half-ninja'd by Kurk. Oh well, I made a few different points.

Edited by Moogle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Moogle:

 

The person who asked that and the person who wrote the diagram are very different. The person who wrote the diagram does not care if people die.

Even the person he is when he is half-way(ish) to the diagram writer dont care about killing half the population in a city(and likely in the world if he ruled it).

 

Even hitler thought he was creating a better world through his craziness, through removing those he thought destroyed it. He too thought it was ok to kill millions to achieve it. Good comparison tbh. Thou Hitler was not as bright, luckily ;).

hitlers view of slaying jews, and quite clever Mr. T´s view of removing the dumber half of the population is quite near eachother. Both are measures to, in their mind, make the people better. Creating übermench so to speak.

 

Mr T is the really scary dude. Sadeas for one don´t hold a candle to him.

Edited by dyring
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 I give you the Diagram's answer to that:

 

Q: For what essential must we strive? A: The essential of preservation, to shelter a seed of humanity through the coming storm. Q: What cost must we bear? A: The cost is irrelevant. Mankind must survive. Our burden is that of the species, and all other considerations are but dust by comparison

 

.

That sounds really creepy and not like building a shelter for actual living people. He's not aiming to build a shelter for some super smart people to survive nor is Vargo planning to necessarily survive the Desolation since the Diagram freely admits Szeth might kill him, I give him that. But he doesn't say anything about in what condition will humanity be after the survival. Parsh-race (er, let's say it's an acceptable word) survived by becoming slave-form Parshmen. I could say the Heralds survived through all the tortures Odium put them through, but I hope Vargo has a better definition of humanity surviving.

 

Since Shallan, I have issues trusting characters.  Brilliant Mr T might have left misleading paragraphs such as those to convince his less smart self and others to follow the Diagram, because noone would be able to foresee its final goal. Now, I admit this doesn't have textual evidence and I am overly suspicious on the matter. However, it just feels like the Diagram will have a plot twist in it.

Edited by Aleksiel
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The person who asked that and the person who wrote the diagram are very different. The person who wrote the diagram does not care if people die.

Even the person he is when he is half-way(ish) to the diagram writer dont care about killing half the population in a city(and likely in the world if he ruled it).

 

Diagram-level Taravangian is less empathetic and cares a bit less about the suffering of people, but he obviously cares about people dying. Every single person will be needed to fight the Desolation, so he can't just kill people willy-nilly.

 

The person half-way(ish) to the Diagram is an idiot who doesn't understand people. Of note, the Diagram itself doesn't say that they should get half the population to commit suicide, likely because it's a ridiculously bad idea. Mr. T cannot be trusted until he's Diagram-level intelligent, as he's an idiot before then.

 

Even hitler thought he was creating a better world through his craziness, through removing those he thought destroyed it. He too thought it was ok to kill millions to achieve it. Good comparison tbh. Thou Hitler was not as bright, luckily ;).

 

Hitler suffered from mental illness, at least towards the end of his reign. Not unlike smart-Taravangian. However, Taravangian realizes he has major issues when he's more intelligent, and keeps himself a prisoner during those times.

 

As to Hitler: he did turn around Germany's economy and basically accomplished what he set out to do. The German people didn't support the Nazis because they were afraid of retribution if they did otherwise, they supported the Nazis because Hitler saved the entire country from a Great Depression. Living under Hitler was (generally, if you were not one of the millions murdered in gas chambers) a good thing - he improved the standard of living for the working class, unemployment went down, and there were massive infrastructure improvements. This isn't to defend his actions, but when you say he "thought he was creating a better world", he actually was in the eyes of millions. If we're using Hitler as a basis for Mr. T, we can expect Mr. T to save the world.

 

hitlers view of slaying jews, and quite clever Mr. T´s view of removing the dumber half of the population is quite near eachother. Both are measures to, in their mind, make the people better. Creating übermench so to speak.

 

This isn't wrong, but it is important to note that Taravangian has yet to actively discriminate against people like that, and he's set himself up as a prisoner so he never will. Smart-Taravangian is actively harmful if let free, but Diagram-Taravangian is helpful.

Edited by Moogle
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Taravangian is not selfish. In some ways, he's the most selfless character in the series. As well, Taravangian is probably the kindest person in the entire series, given that he opened hospitals that were free for all decades prior, before he had any plans to extract the dying. He spent hours almost every day visiting people in the hospitals, and did this before he ever heard about the Desolation from Gavilar. I can't even recall an instance where he's said an unkind word to anyone, or shown any hateful thoughts, unlike literally every PoV character. Comparing him to Hitler is rather unfair to him, overall.

 

Kindness is the art of offering something without any external motives. Whereas opening hospital may be seen as a "kind" action, using them to murder innocent people just to get their death rattle is an impossibly hypocrite behavior. If he truly were a kind person and selfless person, than he would be able to kill for knowledge. Killing and torturing people is never an act of kindness, well killing someone who is agonizing towards a sure death could be seen as a kindness, but it is not what Mr T is doing. He blatantly decided he knew better than everyone else and that his way was the ONLY way. He does not shy from the horrors he is perpetuating, he thinks he has good reasons to cause such things, he thinks he is right just because he wrote a Diagram on a smart day! Never does he question himself or second guess his actions. A kind person would have, a kind and selfless person would have tried to find another way. I could add that a truly smart person would never use some scheme written in unknown conditions to sell the fate of humanity. He would strive to do better, to find a better way, to work with those sharing the same goal, if is goal indeed is the survival of the human kind.

 

Mr T is a horrible person., He may have a huge IQ, but that does not make him smart. A truly smart person is able to see beyond academics, it is able to not just rely itself on numbers as it knows life is not so easily partitioned. Really smart people have both strong IQ and EQ. Also, a smart person second guesses itself, a smart person does not go with a scheme of extreme violence based on predictions even if it appears "smart". A smart person knows everyone has failures and a smart person does not put itself upfront everyone. A smart person does not considered it should rule simply because it is smart: it knows it takes more than that.

 

I believe the Hitler comparison is very appropriate. Hitler thought he was doing the right thing. Nobody goes on doing mass genocide thinking they are doing wrong unless they are seriously deluded. Alright, we could argue Hitler was deluded and as far as I know, he was, but he was not alone in all this. Before he took leadership of Germany, Hitler silenced all opposition. He got elected using despicable tactics. Why? Well I guess he thought it was in his right and I guess his followers thought the same. Hitler was also convinced medical research had to be done at the expense of human life. How many sick, orphans or disabled person has he murdered besides all the Jews? It was not just the Jews that were killed or deemed "expendables". No matter what his motives were, he did pure evil and I believe Mr T is doing just the same thing. To me, he is not a sympathetic character. The fact he seems "nicer" on his dumb days is not going to erase his actions.

 

I personally do not believe in the Diagram. I believe it is a delusion. It may have predicted some things, but never, never would I warranty mass murders as a mean to save man kind. The future is always in movement and I believe it is impossible to predict. Mr T may have the IQ of a genius, but he has the EQ of a moron and I do hope someone will axe him at some point.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh, T is really selfless. He is a good person trying to do his best to save the world, doing what he think he must.

Also hitler, as far as I know, was trying to help the people. At the very least, most of those who followed him did.

And also the inquisition was trying to save the infidel's souls by converting them through torture; still better than going to hell for being heretic right?

 

We generally prefer to think that evildoers are evil, but most of them are actually well-intentioned. Good intentions do not translate to good results. In fact, I'd go as far as say that most of the greatest crimes in human histories were made by well-intentioned people. evil people will generally just do small scale selfish evil. plus, evil people can be threatened, corrupted, reasoned with. if an evil person has a gun on you, you can give your wallet, you can call for help, you can tell him the police will give him lots of troubles. on the other hand, if a good person has a gun on you, and think you must die, you will die. he will not be corrupted, not be swayed, he will not care about going to jail.

 

That's why I always say that there's nothing more dangerous than a good, but fanatic person. Someone who is ready to kill people for a perceived greater good and that cannot be resoned with. He won't back down in front of difficulties. He won't shy away at personal risk or cost. when he sees that millions will diie, he will mourn them, but will keep on his track. If you defeat him, he will find a way to try again. And his vision has a force that can persuade other people to join him; something that an evil fanatical person lacks.

 

So, Mr T is a selfless, well-intentioned, good person. He also fanatically believes in the diagram. The combination of those two factors make him much, much more dangerous than any simple ruthless warlord bent on conquest like sadeas was.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...