Radical interaction with the physical environment of the Cognitive Realm

[+Oltux72]

It is full of beads. They can be carried around and used for arcane techniques. But nobody has ever done something to the beads themselves on screen. As they are linked to physical objects that should have consequences. So you go all out. You take a nuclear bomb to Shadesmar and detonate it. What happens to the objects whose beads you ought to be vaporizing?

[Honorless]

Interesting question. Would that destroy their Physical or Spiritual (& Physical, because if you destroy the Spiritual, that'll reverberate down to the other realms from what we know of Dragonsteel)?

If it doesn't destroy the objects in the Physical Realm, only their Cognitive aspects or "minds", what effect would that have on the objects? What would happen to the people, would their flames be affected? Would they turn mindless?

What would be the effect of an irradiated Cognitive Realm? Keeping in mind that the Cognitive Realm does have Physical materials, people can breathe there: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/332/#e9512) What happens to the Investiture, how does it react?

[Quantus]

Fun!

This is really two separate and equally fascinating questions:

1) what happens to the physical Object if you manage to damage a Bead?

2) What happens to... Everything else if you dramatically alter the "stone" landscape of Shadesmar?

 

For #1, Do they Pop, or Split?  I wonder if that might schism the Conitive Identity of the object.  Break that Mansion of Shallan's into two distinct Wings of a Building, or some such?  Something that might happen naturally if it were, for example split into a duplex, or the home of a particularly strong feud.  On the other hand, we may be underestimating how durably these individual beads are to pop.  

For #2, the natural landscape that would take damage (rather frictionless flowing beads) is the Water-equivalent.  But on the other hand if the coastline were significantly altered/destroyed and the beads flowed in, that could imply a raising of the land in the Physical world to maintain the balance, something Crem could accomplish simply enough.  

[Weltall]

10 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

So you go all out. You take a nuclear bomb to Shadesmar and detonate it. What happens to the objects whose beads you ought to be vaporizing?

Based on this WoB about Nightblood and the beads, I'm guessing that if a nuclear explosion could actually destroy beads you'd see something similar happening: Every object represented by those beads would at the very least have their Cognitive identities damaged or outright destroyed and that would be Bad. I don' think it would immediately destroy them Physically like Nightblood would (since it annihilates things on all three Realms) but you'd probably end up with a bunch of things that are suddenly the equivalent of deadeye spren at the very least. You'd probably not be able to Soulcast or Forge the objects while they're in that state since there wouldn't be a Cognitive aspect to interact with. I do suspect that as long as the Physical and Spiritual aspects are intact, the Cognitive would eventually be restored to some extent, if only by people in the Physical realm thinking about the objects since that has a huge impact on how they see themselves.

[Quantus]

56 minutes ago, Weltall said:

Based on this WoB about Nightblood and the beads, I'm guessing that if a nuclear explosion could actually destroy beads you'd see something similar happening: Every object represented by those beads would at the very least have their Cognitive identities damaged or outright destroyed and that would be Bad. I don' think it would immediately destroy them Physically like Nightblood would (since it annihilates things on all three Realms) but you'd probably end up with a bunch of things that are suddenly the equivalent of deadeye spren at the very least. You'd probably not be able to Soulcast or Forge the objects while they're in that state since there wouldn't be a Cognitive aspect to interact with. I do suspect that as long as the Physical and Spiritual aspects are intact, the Cognitive would eventually be restored to some extent, if only by people in the Physical realm thinking about the objects since that has a huge impact on how they see themselves.

Chasing that: The beads are the object's Cognitive Aspect, which is what is negotiated with and eventually rewritten in Soulcasting, yes?  So what happens when such as thing has a sudden Identity Crisis from external "cognitive" damage?

[Weltall]

50 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Chasing that: The beads are the object's Cognitive Aspect, which is what is negotiated with and eventually rewritten in Soulcasting, yes?  So what happens when such as thing has a sudden Identity Crisis from external "cognitive" damage?

Good question. This is where it gets wonky because while the object might not know what it is any more* unless there's some sort of obvious Physical change that would happen, there wouldn't be any reason for sapient thought to look at, say, a chair whose bead was destroyed and think of it differently than before. As long as external sources think of the chair in the same way there would still be that attached association of chair-ness, which is why I think the Cognitive aspect would eventually repair itself to some degree. It wouldn't necessarily remember things in the way that the broken window in Shai's room remembered that it had once been a beautiful stained glass piece (or maybe it would due to Spiritual shenanigans, but only vaguely) but it would eventually sort out that 'I am a chair' and work from there.

* Except for Stick of course, it always knows exactly what it is.

Edited April 13, 2021 by Weltall

[+Oltux72]

3 minutes ago, Weltall said:

Good question. This is where it gets wonky because while the object might not know what it is any more* unless there's some sort of obvious physical change that would happen, there wouldn't be any reason for sapient thought to look at, say, a chair whose bead was destroyed and think of it differently than before. As long as external sources think of the chair in the same way there would still be that attached association of chair-ness, which is why I think the Cognitive aspect would eventually repair itself to some degree. It wouldn't necessarily remember things in the way that the broken window in Shai's room remembered that it had once been a beautiful stained glass piece (or maybe it would due to Spiritual shenanigans, but only vaguely) but it would eventually sort out that 'I am a chair' and work from there.

* Except for Stick of course, it always knows exactly what it is.

Well, objects have a kind of memory. Dalinar demonstrated that when he reassembled old temples. At a minimum I would say that that possibility would be removed. At a maximum the answer would be simple: the object is annihilated. But how to decide between this possibilities?

[Quantus]

29 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Well, objects have a kind of memory. Dalinar demonstrated that when he reassembled old temples. At a minimum I would say that that possibility would be removed. At a maximum the answer would be simple: the object is annihilated. But how to decide between this possibilities?

The middle ground is that it is weakened in the physical realm, as in the chair is now weakened, faulty, and likely to break under stress.  I like this over full Nightblood style annihilation because I think he's converting the literal Matter to Investiture and drinking it down (on top of his other realmic damages).  Think of it as the opposite of the Statue, where the Cognitive Self lagged behind the physical Damage.  Instead of the statue wanting to be whole because it identifies as a single item, we have the chair that wants to be broken because it identifies as the pieces now, even though the Whole is still intact in the Physical Realm.  

Edited April 13, 2021 by Quantus

[Smye]

11 hours ago, Honorless said:

from what we know of Dragonsteel

WE? *grumble grumble* But seriously, congrats on being one of the lucky few.

[Weltall]

1 hour ago, Quantus said:

Instead of the statue wanting to be whole because it identifies as a single item, we have the chair that wants to be broken because it identifies as the pieces now, even though the Whole is still intact in the Physical Realm.  

Oooh, that's a good thought.

[Honorless]

5 hours ago, Smye said:

WE? *grumble grumble* But seriously, congrats on being one of the lucky few.

Quite a bit of it is publically available actually,

https://www.brandonsanderson.com/dragonsteel-prime-chapter-25-bridge-four-1/

this is including the bit about attacking the Spiritual to destroy the Physical (which can specifically be found here:

https://www.brandonsanderson.com/dragonsteel-prime-chapter-37-bridge-four-7/

[+Oltux72]

7 hours ago, Quantus said:

The middle ground is that it is weakened in the physical realm, as in the chair is now weakened, faulty, and likely to break under stress.

What is weakened and faulty? The ideal ice cream of a gourmet and a dietician are faulty in the other one's view.

7 hours ago, Quantus said:

I like this over full Nightblood style annihilation because I think he's converting the literal Matter to Investiture and drinking it down (on top of his other realmic damages).  Think of it as the opposite of the Statue, where the Cognitive Self lagged behind the physical Damage.  Instead of the statue wanting to be whole because it identifies as a single item, we have the chair that wants to be broken because it identifies as the pieces now, even though the Whole is still intact in the Physical Realm.  

That rubble had a specific view of itself. Most objects do not. Nobody ever really looked at a leaf among many other autumn leaves in a park. Yet it is represented.

[Quantus]

7 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

What is weakened and faulty? The ideal ice cream of a gourmet and a dietician are faulty in the other one's view.

And Im very sure Wyndle will have strong opinions...

For a Chair Id go with "likely to break under stress" because a Chair is fundamentally "a thing to Sit on" so it will fail at that task and become two "irregular pieces of wood" with their own beads (presumably the eventual fate of that statute).  It was one piece and becomes more likely to become two, in the most literal sense.  A Stick would become two Sticks that happen to be stuck together.

7 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

That rubble had a specific view of itself. Most objects do not. Nobody ever really looked at a leaf among many other autumn leaves in a park. Yet it is represented.

Maybe, and I do have thoughts about things like plants being observed vs not and it's possible implication on Color in the Cognitive Realm. But we're talking about a Statue vs a Chair, both Intentionally hand-crafted items; they have been  conceived & Observed in that process at least.

[Kingsdaughter613]

5 hours ago, Quantus said:

And Im very sure Wyndle will have strong opinions...

For a Chair Id go with "likely to break under stress" because a Chair is fundamentally "a thing to Sit on" so it will fail at that task and become two "irregular pieces of wood" with their own beads (presumably the eventual fate of that statute).  It was one piece and becomes more likely to become two, in the most literal sense.  A Stick would become two Sticks that happen to be stuck together.

Maybe, and I do have thoughts about things like plants being observed vs not and it's possible implication on Color in the Cognitive Realm. But we're talking about a Statue vs a Chair, both Intentionally hand-crafted items; they have been  conceived & Observed in that process at least.

Ahem. Cultivation would like to note that she has personally cultivated all flora and fauna on Roshar.

[Quantus]

1 hour ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

Ahem. Cultivation would like to note that she has personally cultivated all flora and fauna on Roshar.

I am very much not going to argue with her, for all kinds of reasons 

[Draginon]

I would imagine if a bead was broken or shattered it would mean the physical item gets closer to deteriorating or rotting than it normally would. If a flame somehow got extinguished I imagine the person would fall into a brain dead state and end up like the Emperor in Emperor’s Soul... what if that’s what happened to him?