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What would happen to a shrimp that achieved the third hieghtening


Lesser spren

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Humans have 3 color receptors, shrimp have 16(heh heh) color receptors. If a shrimp was somehow given 600 breathes to achieve the Third Hieghtening (perfect color recogniton) what would the shrimp expirience? Would he understand only the colors humans can see, would it extend to all of them? Would the shrimp need to be sentient for the breathes to affect him let alone for him to process the information? Would the shrimp gain sentience due to the amount of investiture pumped into it's soul?

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So, I unfortunately couldn't find any WoBs about the plausibility of giving Breaths to animals, but I'm not sure it would work, given that there has to be enough higher thought to have the intent to receive the Breaths, a la 'My Life to yours, My Breath become yours.' 

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Brandon has said that some forms of magic like emotional allomancy require a level of sapience to work, so they won't affect animals. I'm guessing that something similar holds in the case of the Breath-transferring Command and you need a similar level of sapience to actually receive the Breaths and an attempt to transfer them to something that isn't at that level would simply fail.

Now, assuming it worked for purposes of argument, Brandon has said that his magic systems can handle senses that don't work quite like the average human's. For example, someone who was blind could still 'see' atium shadows and use them like a sighted person could despite the visual nature of the magic. Likewise he's said that synesthesia would have different effects on people vis a vis Breaths (depending on the form it took) but they'd still get the benefits of them. So I imagine that a highly Invested shrimp would gain a better ability to distinguish colors (which they aren't actually good at) and it would probably do funky things to their ability to perceive light polarization. There's a really cool video here where you can see researchers with an underwater camera that's designed to try and capture how a mantis shrimp sees the world in a way humans can process.

Likewise I'd imagine that anything able to receive Breath that can perceive infrared or ultraviolet light would get better at distinguishing those spectra.

Edited by Weltall
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2 hours ago, Weltall said:

There's a really cool video here where you can see researchers with an underwater camera that's designed to try and capture how a mantis shrimp sees the world in a way humans can process.

Likewise I'd imagine that anything able to receive Breath that can perceive infrared or ultraviolet light would get better at distinguishing those spectra.

Your link accidentally redirected to a WOB

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I still wonder how much investiture (if it is at all possible) it would for a shrimp to gain sapience. If a shard were to create human beings,they would still need a certian amount of investiture (or a piece of a shard) to gain sapience, I wonder whether the same would apply to shrimp.

Edited by Lesser spren
misspelling
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9 hours ago, Weltall said:

Brandon has said that some forms of magic like emotional allomancy require a level of sapience to work, so they won't affect animals. I'm guessing that something similar holds in the case of the Breath-transferring Command and you need a similar level of sapience to actually receive the Breaths and an attempt to transfer them to something that isn't at that level would simply fail.

Now, assuming it worked for purposes of argument, Brandon has said that his magic systems can handle senses that don't work quite like the average human's. For example, someone who was blind could still 'see' atium shadows and use them like a sighted person could despite the visual nature of the magic. Likewise he's said that synesthesia would have different effects on people vis a vis Breaths (depending on the form it took) but they'd still get the benefits of them. So I imagine that a highly Invested shrimp would gain a better ability to distinguish colors (which they aren't actually good at) and it would probably do funky things to their ability to perceive light polarization. There's a really cool video here where you can see researchers with an underwater camera that's designed to try and capture how a mantis shrimp sees the world in a way humans can process.

Likewise I'd imagine that anything able to receive Breath that can perceive infrared or ultraviolet light would get better at distinguishing those spectra.

This makes me wonder if you could give Breath to someone with a severe cognitive developmental disability...

Edited by Kingsdaughter613
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18 hours ago, Bejardin1250 said:

Only on the Shard would this Question be takin seriously...

I don’t think a physical animal can gain sapiance unless they have a spren bond

So all you need is a shrimp bonded to a [insert spren here] and a few hundred breaths:D

 


Any investiture would work, so breaths wuld be just fine

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On 3/6/2021 at 8:58 PM, Bejardin1250 said:

Only on the Shard would this Question be takin seriously...

I don’t think a physical animal can gain sapiance unless they have a spren bond

So all you need is a shrimp bonded to a [insert spren here] and a few hundred breaths:D

 


So what you're saying is that it's possible.

 

 

Also is the did we learn of the spren thing based on Gallant and and Chiri Chiri, if so, why does that happen and what kind of spren would I need to make my shrimp an awakener? (if it doesn't have a language could it still awaken?)

Edited by Lesser spren
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On 3/8/2021 at 7:30 PM, Lesser spren said:

Also is the did we learn of the spren thing based on Gallant and and Chiri Chiri, if so, why does that happen and what kind of spren would I need to make my shrimp an awakener? (if it doesn't have a language could it still awaken?)

We don't know what type of spren bond with the Ryshadium but there's a theory that it's musicspren. We do know what Chiri-Chiri bonds and it's a luckspren. Odds are that if a shrimp could form a bond it would have its own specific type. Considering that Roshar's native ecology is inspired by tide pools anyways, I imagine a crustacean would have an easier time convincing a spren that it belongs and to bond one. Hypothetically speaking. xD

So far as we know, you do require language skills to Awaken since the spoken Command is part of what makes the magic work; we see Vahr gagged in the porlogue precisely because this makes it impossible for him to perform that part of Awakening.. You can bypass the 'speaking' part with the Tenth Heightening and training but some kind of higher thought and language is required.

Edited by Weltall
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So as fun as this question is, I believe your initial premise of asking it is incorrect. Despite having more color receptors than humans, shrimp do not actually see more colors. Humans have 3 receptors that can blend and work together to create the full variety of the visual spectrum. Shrimp can only use each of the 16 or so receptors they have individually. So in reality they see less color than we do. Here's a scientific journal making the same point probably better than I did: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2014.14578

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