Dawnshards/Shardic Quadrants Theory

[cometaryorbit]

So we now know the names/Intents of 14 Shards, and have hints that the 15th is something like "Wisdom". Which leaves us with only one total unknown.

The mural in Dawnshard suggests the 16 Shards divide into four groups of four, each connected to one of the four Dawnshards. And each Dawnshard seems to be some kind of fundamental Command or Intent. One is "Change"; and the epigraph about the Dawnshard known to bind all creatures voidish or mortal suggests that another is "Bind" or an equivalent.

Cultivation and Ruin are clearly "Change" associated. Honor, Devotion, and Dominion would be "Bind" associated.

Preservation and Autonomy suggest that one of the others would be something like "Be" or "Be Yourself" or "Remain".

I would suggest something like this scheme:

Change

Cultivation - Ruin (controlled growth vs entropic decay)

Odium - Endowment (hatred and division and turning others against each other vs. giving freely of oneself, "without strings" - both are kind of "unbinding" but in very different ways)

 

Be

Preservation - Autonomy

Mercy - Ambition (opposed in a sense, allowing others to heal and flourish vs becoming the most important thing in the universe)
 

Bind

Honor - Valor (oaths and bonds, putting yourself in harm's way to protect others)

Devotion - Dominion

 

Think

Whimsy - Invention

Wisdom - Judgment (understanding what is / making decisions and classifying the universe*)

Judgment as the last Shard, and my interpretation of Valor's intent**, are probably the most likely to be wrong (well, I really doubt "Think" is the correct name for the fourth Dawnshard, but the concept might be valid).

 

*I don't necessarily mean "Judgment" as just being guilty vs innocent in a "Skybreaker" sense, but also about analysis, classifying things, and understanding them individually rather than as a whole (Wisdom)

**Valor could just be courage for its own sake, not necessarily have a positive connotation

[Frustration]

Honor and Odium are closely related.

Spoiler

Questioner

What Shard is the opposite of Odium in the sense of the *inaudible*

Brandon Sanderson

There are several that could be considered opposites--

Questioner

I mean in the assimilation sense, you’ve said that Odium doesn’t want to absorb any of the other ones but which one would want to?

Brandon Sanderson

Oh, which one would want to join with him?

Questioner

Or any of them.

Brandon Sanderson

I think that if personalities had been different, Honor and Odium, there would have been a very natural pairing, not that they’re opposites but they would have attracted. [...]

Calamity Seattle signing (Feb. 17, 2016)

And I'd like to make a rough quote from Elantris "...hatred can unify men, far more quickly, and far more powerfully, than devotion ever could."

[Quantus]

My take on some of the newer Shards:

For the Quadrants, the bold are the ones I have spefic arguments for. The rest are more just me slotting them in where gaps remain.

• Physical (Be)
  • Outward Increase = Invention
  • Outward Decrease = Ruin
  • Inward Increase =  Valor(?)
  • Inward Decrease = ??

• Cognitive (Think/Perceive)
  • Outward Increase = Dominion (OR Endowment?)
  • Outward Decrease =Odium
  • Inward Increase =  Devotion
  • Inward Decrease = Whimsy

• Spiritual = (Connect/Bind?)
  • Outward Increase = Honor
  • Outward Decrease = Mercy
  • Inward Increase =  Valor(?)
  • Inward Decrease = Autonomy

• Temporal ("Change")
  • Outward Increase = Cultivation (Or Ruin?)
  • Outward Decrease = Preservation
  • Inward Increase =  Ambition
  • Inward Decrease = ??

 

Mercy is the Anti-Honor.  Where "Honor is the sense of being bound by rules, even when those rules, you wouldn't have to be bound by", Mercy is about breaking those same rules and Bonds.  Autonomy is similar but more Internal and about not letting those Bonds hold you personally. 

Similar, if Odium is being motivated by inflating the importance of a thing (ie Passion), Whimsy is the lack of that Passion, instead doing it just to do it. Also may be more internal than Odium appears to be.

Invention is a Physical quadrant, I think, as the most direct Creation shard.

I see Devotion in the Cognitive/Think rather than the Spiritual/Bind, but it's a little tenuous.  I think it's a more internalized thing than Odium but asimilar Inflating of Importance, but also potentially too one-sided to be a Spiritual Bond-thing that requires two parties. 

Per this WOB, Preservation, Cultivation, and Ruin are all External/Outward shards, and per a few Endowment is all about external grants.

Ruin makes a lot of statements about being the embodiment of Change, so I can understand the argument of it being a Temporal Shard.  But the only one that would fit is The Outward Increase slot which is also the only real possibility I see for Cultivation.  And while Ruin can exist as a concept in a steady State, Cultivation requires Time and Change at a fundamental level.

[+ShardlessVessel]

I haven't formalized it into a "theory", but my personal conjecture is that the Dawnshards represent the fundamental Spiritual aspects of the Cosmere. Connection, Identity, Fortune and... Intent? I'm not sure about the fourth.

[Quantus]

16 minutes ago, ShardlessVessel said:

I haven't formalized it into a "theory", but my personal conjecture is that the Dawnshards represent the fundamental Spiritual aspects of the Cosmere. Connection, Identity, Fortune and... Intent? I'm not sure about the fourth.

This WOB makes me very much think they map to the 4 quadrants of the metallic arts charts, though Im assuming Temporal is the more Thematically relevant one than "Hybrid"

 

Quote

 

Aurimus

What was the thematic decision behind the number 16? Why did you choose that?

Brandon Sanderson

I really like how divisible it was. It looked really cool when I was playing with things like an Allomantic table and whatnot. It was mostly an aesthetic choice. Like, it just felt right.

Aurimus

So was it originally the Shards or the metals you decided on?

Brandon Sanderson

So, I started with the metals. And then expanded out to that, yeah. So what you've gotta remember is, like, I write Elantris without knowledge of the cosmere. I knew I was gonna do something, but I didn't know what I was gonna do. And then I wrote Dragonsteel, and in Dragonsteel I had all sorts of theories and plans, but I never canonized any of that. And when I sat down to write Mistborn, I said, "All right. We're building the cosmere for real now." And before then I had just kind of been winging it. So when I did Aether of Night, which I put Shards in, I was like "Okay, there'll be some of these things, and what-not." Mistborn was, like, the first real cosmere book, if that makes any sense.

Oathbringer London signing (Nov. 28, 2017)

 

 

 

Fwiw, here's the old write-up I had for the Quadrant Theory, though it definitely needs to be updated for what all we learned in Dawnshard and RoW

[KandraAllomancer]

Here is my proposition:

Change: change, grow, adapt etc.

Cultivation, Ruin, Invention, Whimsy

Bind: everything should be bound by rules / obligations. The Dawnshard mentioned in the Poem of Ista, obviously

Honor, Dominion, Devotion. Possibly Survival Shard / Wisdom, depending on the exact intent

Live: create and protect sentient life. The Dawnshard Hoid used to hold

Preservation, Endowment, Mercy. Possibly Survival Shard / Wisdom, depending on the exact intent

Fight / Be free (?): have free will, assert and protect one's freedom etc.

Odium, Autonomy, Ambition, Valor

19 hours ago, ShardlessVessel said:

I haven't formalized it into a "theory", but my personal conjecture is that the Dawnshards represent the fundamental Spiritual aspects of the Cosmere. Connection, Identity, Fortune and... Intent? I'm not sure about the fourth.

Based on Feruchemy, the fourth would just be Investiture. I spent a lot of time thinking considering this, but I see some significant evidence against it: Passion (whatever it is) seems to be strongly associated with futuresight / Fortune, and it doesn't seem to correlate well with any known or predicted Dawnshard. Some additional divisions (like external vs internal, borrowing from Allomantic terminology) might be a solution, but I'm not sure if we have enough data to figure it out just yet

Edited February 1, 2022 by KandraAllomancer

[Kandrafish]

It is not finished...

Organization over Time/ Temporal

Preservation--Ruin   Outer  If time is slowed all is preserved (Bendalloy). Over long times entropy wins and all goes to ruin (Cadmium).

Dominion--Autonomy   Inner  Augury is about consolidating your past selves to one future self (Gold). Knowing your own future and that no one will mess with it is of autonomy (Electrum).

Emotion and Empathy/ Mental

Cruelty/ Slaughter** -- Mercy Outer  Bronze lets you feel other powers. Mercy is about feeling for others.  The opposite of mercy is unfeeling as a coppercloud.

Devotion--Odium    Inner  Love is soothing (Brass) and Hatred is rioting (Zinc).

Physical Action Strategies/ Physical

Cultivation--Endowment  Outer  Cultivation requires change into something new in the form of growth (steel). Endowment is about receiving something old (Iron)

Survival/ Prudence -- Valor Inner    Valor is brave and dangerous (pewter). Survival requires cowering and being cautious (tin).

Planning for Improvement/ Enhancement

Invention--Whimsy  Outer Invention is about logic and creating with purpose (Nicrosil). Whimsy is about ignoring logic and purpose (Chromium)

Ambition--Honor  Inner Ambition is about taking what you want and becoming better (Duralumin). Honor is about principles that are more important (Aluminum)

Outer is about how you treat the world around you:

Do you preserve or ruin?

Treat people with mercy or cruelty?

Do you help to cultivate what surrounds you and let it grow on its own? Or do you plan to endow the world with gifts so that it might not need to change with any urgency? 

Do you view the world with consistent mathematical logic and understand enough to invent? Or view it for its artistic flair and have the world be everchanging, amusing and unfathomable?

Inner is about how you treat yourself:

Do you dominate others or act autonomously for yourself (free of the dominion of others)?

Do you devote yourself to others and love them or do you have only disgust and contempt and hate for them?

Do you put in a valiant effort no matter what? Or do you know when to make the wise choice and cut your losses to survive?

Are you controlled by your own ambition and what you want to gain (you do not care about morals)? Or by intrinsic values that determine what is right (you do not care about your own gains)?

 

When I look at the wheel I see some other patterns like Ruin is directly opposite from Cultivation and one is change to break down and get smaller and the other is to change and create new things.

I would love to hear if anyone has any ideas of how to improve this.

 

Edited February 2, 2022 by Kandrafish

[cometaryorbit]

Personally, I doubt the parallel with the metals is that exact. I took it mostly to just mean four quadrants of four, potentially further divided into pairs. I am not sure that WOB means that there is an External/Internal divide, either, just that Shard Intents in general are not self-directed.

On 1/31/2022 at 8:58 AM, Frustration said:

Honor and Odium are closely related.

Compatible, definitely... but so are Ruin and Preservation, and if one of the Dawnshards is "Change" I don't see that Ruin and Preservation can belong to the same Dawnshard.

Edited February 2, 2022 by cometaryorbit

[Frustration]

2 minutes ago, cometaryorbit said:

Compatible, definitely... but so are Ruin and Preservation, and if one of the Dawnshards is "Change" I don't see that Ruin and Preservation can belong to the same Dawnshard.

Given Harmony I would say that Preservation and Ruin are most certainly not compatible.

And I think Preservation and Ruin can definately both be Change.

[Kandrafish]

On 2/1/2022 at 1:59 PM, KandraAllomancer said:

Here is my proposition:

Change: change, grow, adapt etc.

Cultivation, Ruin, Invention, Whimsy

What if Whimsy is not about change and we put in the Unknown Shard 2?  I have Vanquish/ Slaughter as a placeholder... I have it as the opposite of Mercy

I propose Cultivation, Ruin, Invention, Vanquish.

 

Bind: everything should be bound by rules / obligations. The Dawnshard mentioned in the Poem of Ista, obviously

Honor, Dominion, Devotion. Possibly Survival Shard / Wisdom, depending on the exact intent

I think Survival obeys no obligations... Anything to survive... Where Valor is dying for a cause because it is right.

I propose Honor, Dominion, Devotion, Valor.

 

Live: create and protect sentient life. The Dawnshard Hoid used to hold

Preservation, Endowment, Mercy. Possibly Survival Shard / Wisdom, depending on the exact intent

What about Whimsy here?

I propose Preservation, Endowment, Mercy, Whimsy.

 

Fight / Be free (?): have free will, assert and protect one's freedom etc.

Odium, Autonomy, Ambition, Valor

What about Switching Valor for Survival/ Prudence here?

I propose Odium, Autonomy, Ambition, Survival/ Prudence.

 

Based on Feruchemy, the fourth would just be Investiture. I spent a lot of time thinking considering this, but I see some significant evidence against it: Passion (whatever it is) seems to be strongly associated with futuresight / Fortune, and it doesn't seem to correlate well with any known or predicted Dawnshard. Some additional divisions (like external vs internal, borrowing from Allomantic terminology) might be a solution, but I'm not sure if we have enough data to figure it out just yet

 

It is still not done yet...

I think it is better after reading this, though. I would appreciate further advice.

 

[cometaryorbit]

15 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Given Harmony I would say that Preservation and Ruin are most certainly not compatible.

And I think Preservation and Ruin can definately both be Change.

Yeah, compatible probably not the right word... but they are a 'natural pair' in some sense.

Preservation I think is quite literally the exact opposite of Change, it is stasis, the prevention of change.

[Frustration]

1 minute ago, cometaryorbit said:

Yeah, compatible probably not the right word... but they are a 'natural pair' in some sense.

That would be Ruin and Cultivation.

Just now, cometaryorbit said:

Preservation I think is quite literally the exact opposite of Change, it is stasis, the prevention of change.

You can't describe Preservation without connecting it to Change.

[Kandrafish]

12 hours ago, Frustration said:

Given Harmony I would say that Preservation and Ruin are most certainly not compatible.

And I think Preservation and Ruin can definately both be Change.

Sorry for double posting, but I was working on the other post while you made yours...

I think that I agree with cometaryorbit. I think that Preservation would definitely be out of the subset of shards that change.

12 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

Personally, I doubt the parallel with the metals is that exact. I took it mostly to just mean four quadrants of four, potentially further divided into pairs. I am not sure that WOB means that there is an External/Internal divide, either, just that Shard Intents in general are not self-directed.

I also do not think think that the metal comparison will be exact, but I do think that it can be used as a primitive model to learn more about the system as a whole.

Look at chemistry's VSEPR theory. It can predict most molecular configurations without even touching on group theory... It isn't sophisticated, but it gets results. MO theory on the other hand is great and sophisticated and works, but it took primitive models and pattern analyses to discover MO theory.

 

(As a side note, my (unfinished) diagram's original purpose was for figuring out shard names based on what was missing for all the different sides to sum together and create Adonalsium)

 

I have a double eye model too. With the shards on the 16 polygons that make up the double eye... I don't think it is as applicable. It doesn't have quadrants.

Edited February 3, 2022 by Kandrafish

[cometaryorbit]

2 hours ago, Frustration said:

That would be Ruin and Cultivation.

You can't describe Preservation without connecting it to Change.

I think that most Shards probably have several which would be "natural pairs" in this sense, especially as Vessel personalities apparently make a difference.

Cultivation is "most compatible" with Ruin per WOB, sure, but Ruin/Preservation are also in some sense a natural pair - it's referenced repeatedly in the Mistborn annotations. That might be more a result of them creating that planet together, so it's kind of polarized between their two poles - but it still worked, so I think there's some broader truth to it.

I think Ruin could also pair well with Valor (creating an Intent like The Thrill), Autonomy (creating something like "Anarchy"), or maybe even Endowment (unbinding and dividing in both positive and negative senses).

Now I'm questioning whether my hypothetical "Judgment" being a distinct Shard from the Wisdom one, btw... if the Intent was really something like "Prudence", Wisdom and Judgment could be two sides of it - understanding, and acting wisely on that understanding.

EDIT: Re: Preservation and Change - I see Preservation belonging to a "Be" or "Remain" Dawnshard which is diametrically opposed to the "Change" Dawnshard. Natural opposites.

I feel like the Dawnshard I'm calling "Think" should be a natural opposite to the Binding one, but I don't have the right concept for those yet. Perhaps binding is really just a function of it, not the Command itself, and it's really something like Enact (with its counterpart being Envision)?

Edited February 2, 2022 by cometaryorbit

[Kandrafish]

On 1/31/2022 at 10:26 AM, Quantus said:

My take on some of the newer Shards:

For the Quadrants, the bold are the ones I have spefic arguments for. The rest are more just me slotting them in where gaps remain.

• Physical (Be)
  • Outward Increase = Invention
  • Outward Decrease = Ruin
  • Inward Increase =  Valor(?)
  • Inward Decrease = ??

• Cognitive (Think/Perceive)
  • Outward Increase = Dominion (OR Endowment?)
  • Outward Decrease =Odium
  • Inward Increase =  Devotion
  • Inward Decrease = Whimsy

• Spiritual = (Connect/Bind?)
  • Outward Increase = Honor
  • Outward Decrease = Mercy
  • Inward Increase =  Valor(?)
  • Inward Decrease = Autonomy

• Temporal ("Change")
  • Outward Increase = Cultivation (Or Ruin?)
  • Outward Decrease = Preservation
  • Inward Increase =  Ambition
  • Inward Decrease = ??

 

Mercy is the Anti-Honor.  Where "Honor is the sense of being bound by rules, even when those rules, you wouldn't have to be bound by", Mercy is about breaking those same rules and Bonds.  Autonomy is similar but more Internal and about not letting those Bonds hold you personally. 

Similar, if Odium is being motivated by inflating the importance of a thing (ie Passion), Whimsy is the lack of that Passion, instead doing it just to do it. Also may be more internal than Odium appears to be.

Invention is a Physical quadrant, I think, as the most direct Creation shard.

I see Devotion in the Cognitive/Think rather than the Spiritual/Bind, but it's a little tenuous.  I think it's a more internalized thing than Odium but asimilar Inflating of Importance, but also potentially too one-sided to be a Spiritual Bond-thing that requires two parties. 

Per this WOB, Preservation, Cultivation, and Ruin are all External/Outward shards, and per a few Endowment is all about external grants.

Ruin makes a lot of statements about being the embodiment of Change, so I can understand the argument of it being a Temporal Shard.  But the only one that would fit is The Outward Increase slot which is also the only real possibility I see for Cultivation.  And while Ruin can exist as a concept in a steady State, Cultivation requires Time and Change at a fundamental level.

I like the Mercy being anti-Honor argument... I think I need to reconsider and try to use that pairing.

I would like you to consider that I think of Devotion and Odium as a pair because they are in essence Love and Hate. There is a WoB that I cannot find where Brandon says something like this.

I also think that Autonomy and Dominion are pretty opposite. 

Otherwise... I've been reorganizing sections of my circle because Honor's pair didn't make sense....

[EmulatonStromenkiin]

On 2/2/2022 at 5:50 AM, Kandrafish said:

The opposite of mercy is unfeeling as a coppercloud

opposite might be reverence or something along that line

[KaladinWorldsinger]

On 2/3/2022 at 2:09 AM, Frustration said:

That would be Ruin and Cultivation.

You can't describe Preservation without connecting it to Change.

But if Ruin and Preservation are opposites then they cannot be in the same quadrant for 'change'. I am thinking of the sun mural which is divided into four and Ruin and Preservation will be on the opposite sides of the diameter

[Frustration]

Just now, KaladinWorldsinger said:

But if Ruin and Preservation are opposites then they cannot be in the same quadrant for 'change'. I am thinking of the sun mural which is divided into four and Ruin and Preservation will be on the opposite sides of the diameter

Ruin and Cultivation are opposites, Preservation would have had the same relationship with Cultivation he did with Ruin.

[KaladinWorldsinger]

2 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Ruin and Cultivation are opposites, Preservation would have had the same relationship with Cultivation he did with Ruin.

How are ruin and cultivation opposites?? The WoB is they both are very similar because they both are about change. On the other hand, harmony can barely do anything, because Ruin and Preservation have opposite intents.

5 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Preservation would have had the same relationship with Cultivation he did with Ruin.

I didn't understand this, how is this possible if Ruin and cultivation are opposites as u say anyway?

[Frustration]

Just now, KaladinWorldsinger said:

How are ruin and cultivation opposites?? The WoB is they both are very similar because they both are about change. On the other hand, harmony can barely do anything, because Ruin and Preservation have opposite intents.

Cultivation adds, it creates more, Ruin destroys it makes things less.

1 minute ago, KaladinWorldsinger said:

I didn't understand this, how is this possible if Ruin and cultivation are opposites as u say anyway?

Preservation would have fought Cultivation to stop growth from occuring, Cultivation is push, Ruin is pull, Preservation is inertia.

[Kandrafish]

5 hours ago, Frustration said:

Cultivation adds, it creates more, Ruin destroys it makes things less.

Preservation would have fought Cultivation to stop growth from occuring, Cultivation is push, Ruin is pull, Preservation is inertia.

Ruin is the change of degradation on a large 

Preservation is the lack of change of no degradation

One way to think of them is that Preservation is 0 and Ruin is -1, but if instead you think of it more abstractly, or pictorially they can be seen as opposing forces. Just like how soothing pushes to zero emotion while rioting adds emotion. Ruin is pulling on destruction to create it and Preservation is pushing to prevent destruction.

Cultivation is about change to slowly reap the benefits of long term growth. She will give and take (think of Dalinar's memories) and the person will struggle, but eventually get the benefit of what they do themselves. Like a farm that is tended well or perhaps a well thought out fishing operation where you put fish in a shallow pond and let the population swell so that they might be sustainably fished for a long long time. (Let the people secretly worship you and pretend to worship Odium)

Endowment is about giving gifts that are expected to be passed down. She will take and give (think of the Returned) and the person will give them many benefits but eventually  they must sacrifice and give a great gift themselves. Like seaweed being eaten by the fish and fish eaten by the humans and human lives eaten away by many wars (Manywars) (all because they got some seaweed).

[Frustration]

4 hours ago, Kandrafish said:

Ruin is the change of degradation on a large 

Preservation is the lack of change of no degradation

One way to think of them is that Preservation is 0 and Ruin is -1, but if instead you think of it more abstractly, or pictorially they can be seen as opposing forces. Just like how soothing pushes to zero emotion while rioting adds emotion. Ruin is pulling on destruction to create it and Preservation is pushing to prevent destruction.

Cultivation is about change to slowly reap the benefits of long term growth. She will give and take (think of Dalinar's memories) and the person will struggle, but eventually get the benefit of what they do themselves. Like a farm that is tended well or perhaps a well thought out fishing operation where you put fish in a shallow pond and let the population swell so that they might be sustainably fished for a long long time. (Let the people secretly worship you and pretend to worship Odium)

Endowment is about giving gifts that are expected to be passed down. She will take and give (think of the Returned) and the person will give them many benefits but eventually  they must sacrifice and give a great gift themselves. Like seaweed being eaten by the fish and fish eaten by the humans and human lives eaten away by many wars (Manywars) (all because they got some seaweed).

But Preservation cannot create, if Cultivation tried to make a planet Preservation would try to stop it, if Cultivation made a fish farm, Preservation would stop them from reproducing. Continuing with your Preservation 0, Ruin -1 analogy, Cultivation would be +1. 

[Quantus]

On 2/3/2022 at 4:17 AM, Kandrafish said:

I like the Mercy being anti-Honor argument... I think I need to reconsider and try to use that pairing.

I would like you to consider that I think of Devotion and Odium as a pair because they are in essence Love and Hate. There is a WoB that I cannot find where Brandon says something like this.

I also think that Autonomy and Dominion are pretty opposite. 

Otherwise... I've been reorganizing sections of my circle because Honor's pair didn't make sense....

Because of this WOB I dont really subscribe to direct pairings beyond what it implied in the Outward/Inward and Increase/Decrease that is part of the quadrant fault lines.  The shards will each have several that could pair well depending on the perspective, and honestly I think pair compatibility will be more influenced by the Vessel's Filtered Interpretation of the shardic Intent more than most circumstances.  Honor as interpreted as a Singular Bond/Oath thing is a lot more compatible with say Autonomy (as I picture it) than the more communal "Unity" variation.   

 

Quote

 

Shardbound

Do all Shards have a direct paired opposite intent...

Brandon Sanderson

No, I would say no, they do not all have a directly paired opposite intent.

Oathbringer London signing (Nov. 28, 2017)

 

 

[Kandrafish]

29 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Because of this WOB I dont really subscribe to direct pairings beyond what it implied in the Outward/Inward and Increase/Decrease that is part of the quadrant fault lines.  The shards will each have several that could pair well depending on the perspective, and honestly I think pair compatibility will be more influenced by the Vessel's Filtered Interpretation of the shardic Intent more than most circumstances.  Honor as interpreted as a Singular Bond/Oath thing is a lot more compatible with say Autonomy (as I picture it) than the more communal "Unity" variation.   

 

 

I think that that is the tricky part... The pull and push is not a "direct opposite" always. And maybe this is an approximation, but Ruin is the pull and Preservation is the push in my mind. Now, I think we can identify other pushes and pulls and this will tell us fundamental information about Adonalsium. Certainly, if they were exact opposites, they would all cancel and the purpose of God/ Adonalsium would be the null set. This is not the case. I think that none of them are exact opposites, but some could be considered to be pointed in opposite directions. Like how a particle cannot be spin up and spin down, if you break some action down to its smallest components, it will either be spin Preserve or spin Ruin.

WoB below shows that Ruin and Preservation are "complimentary opposites" 

Spoiler

Brandon Sanderson

So when I split Adonalsium I said, "I'm going to take aspects of Adonalsium's nature." And this involves personality to me. So the Shattering of Adonalsium was primal forces attached to certain aspects of personality. And so I view every one of them this way. And when I wrote Mistborn we had Ruin and Preservation. They are the primal forces of entropy and whatever you call the opposite, staying-the-same-ism-y. Like, you've got these two contrasts, between things changing and things not changing. And then humans do have a part, there's a personality. Ruin is a charged term for something that actually is the way that life exists. And Preservation is a charged term for stasis, for staying the same. And those are the personality aspects, and the way they are viewed by people and by the entity that was Adonalsium.

So I view this for all of them. Like, Honor is the sense of being bound by rules, even when those rules, you wouldn't have to be bound by. And there's this sense that that is noble, that's the honor aspect to it, but there's also something not honorable about Honor if taken from the other direction. So a lot of them do kind of have this both-- cultural component, I would say, that is trying to represent something that is also natural. And not all of them are gonna have a 100% balance between those two things, I would say, because there's only so many fundamental laws of the universe that I can ascribe personalities to in that way. 

So I find Honor very interesting, but I find Autonomy a very interesting one for the exact same reason. What does autonomy mean? We attach a lot to it, but what is the actual, if you get rid of the charged terms, what does it mean? And this is where you end up with things like Odium claiming "I am all emotion." Rather than-- But then there's a charged term for it that is associated with this Shard. I'm not going to tell you whether he's right or not, but he has an argument. 

I also just want the Shards to have a symmetry to them. The number 16 is so perfect for that, so I want to find the pushes and pulls and then the inner and outer.

 

5 hours ago, Frustration said:

But Preservation cannot create, if Cultivation tried to make a planet Preservation would try to stop it, if Cultivation made a fish farm, Preservation would stop them from reproducing. Continuing with your Preservation 0, Ruin -1 analogy, Cultivation would be +1. 

Preservation would preserve the fish farm. Because, it the same way Ruin is not about destroying everything, Preservation is not about freezing everything, it is about the long term power to keep things the same. Cultivation finds a way to add fish using a mix of Ruin and Preservation. But once their are fish they help to preserve the people.

I figured that this would be your view... I can definitely see that point. It is why I put Cultivation opposite (literally, not figuratively) to Ruin in my allomancy chart. Cultivation is opposite to Ruin in a different way (in my mind). A way that does not make it it's push and pull opposite. Ruin and Cultivation do not share enough... Cultivation and Ruin both change things is the obvious argument for why they are similar enough, but I would like to take it further and say that there are aspects of cultivation that run orthogonal to Ruin. Cultivation is not just organized creation... It is reaping what you sow. These benefits that are reaped can be of Ruin or Preservation. Cultivation is tied to life in a way that Ruin and Preservation are not. This doesn't fully do the relationship justice, either though because certainly Ruin and Cultivation would oppose each other on many things... They are opposite in many ways. They just are not push and pull opposites in my mind.

The problem with this analogy is that we are not on a number line, with these shards... We are on something more akin to a Bloch Sphere, but with some sort of twist, since a Bloch sphere only has 8 opposing ends, we need some other metric...

Anyway, (1 0) and (0 1) is what I see Ruin and Preservation as... They can form a basis because they are orthogonal, so to speak. 

https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/physics/quvis/simulations_html5/sims/blochsphere/blochsphere.html --Bloch Sphere

 

Through making this argument, I realize that it probably is not quite enough to convince you, Frustration. But, I would still like to hear your view and how it extends beyond my simple number approximation. I suppose I will end with a question that we could try to answer with similar WoBs or by trying to ask it of Brandon at a future spoiler stream.

Could Vin, as Preservation, have destroyed Cultivation in the same way she destroyed Ruin?

If the answer is yes, your interpretation is more correct. If the answer is no, mine is more correct.

I believe that Preservation's destruction of Ruin indicates a special push-pull relationship. If it really is as I believe you think, then 0 should be able to destroy 1 as easily as -1.

[Frustration]

21 minutes ago, Kandrafish said:

Through making this argument, I realize that it probably is not quite enough to convince you, Frustration. But, I would still like to hear your view and how it extends beyond my simple number approximation. I suppose I will end with a question that we could try to answer with similar WoBs or by trying to ask it of Brandon at a future spoiler stream.

Could Vin, as Preservation, have destroyed Cultivation in the same way she destroyed Ruin?

If the answer is yes, your interpretation is more correct. If the answer is no, mine is more correct.

I believe that Preservation's destruction of Ruin indicates a special push-pull relationship. If it really is as I believe you think, then 0 should be able to destroy 1 as easily as -1.

Given that Ruin and Preservation "polarized" I believe that if Ruin was replaced with Cultivation, and all else remained the same yes they would have destroyed each other.

Spoiler

Argent (paraphrased)

Ruin and Preservation were often represented in the Mistborn trilogy in terms of black and white. Is this imagery limited to that series, or do other Shards also have an associated hue?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

This (Ruin & Preservation's colors) was because of the specific world and their perception of the world and themselves. Essentially, because of the dynamics of the interplay between Ruin and Preservation, they "chose" to view themselves as black and white respectively, so that's how they were represented. Also, because the only two Shards on Scadrial, and their natures were opposites, after the long period of time they spent on the same planet, they kind of "polarized." If similar thing happened on another world, similar coloring effect could happen.

Steelheart Chicago signing (Oct. 1, 2013)