How would my path look like in shadesmar?

[KaladinWorldsinger]

If I had a friend who was sailing from the west in shinovar to Natanatan in the east in the physical realm, to definitely prove that Roshar is a globe perhaps and I was chasing his life-flame representation in the cognitive realm, what would my path look like?

The nerdiest answers are welcome

[Ixthos he/him]

14 hours ago, KaladinWorldsinger said:

If I had a friend who was sailing from the west in shinovar to Natanatan in the east in the physical realm, to definitely prove that Roshar is a globe perhaps and I was chasing his life-flame representation in the cognitive realm, what would my path look like?

The nerdiest answers are welcome

We don't know how it is structured yet, but we do know spren have difficulty crossing that zone, and that you get to a point where if you walk in Shadsmar in a particular direction you leave the planet, while the corresponding area would wrap to the other side of the planet. So it seems there is a point where it stretches and disconnects, where the more you move in one way the further you go. Think of it like having a book - you take the middle pages and bend them around to touch edges, then tape them together, while the rest you let spread out below - don't do this to an actual book. The loop is the planet, where you can keep going around to reach the other side, while the other pages are Shadsmar, where the further you go eventually you leave the shadow of the loop, even though some areas clearly map between the two zones (the overlay of the original pages / the continent of Roshar) and others don't (the pages now away from the loop / the seas in the physical realm and the space between planets in Shadsmar).

In theory if enough people started to live around Roshar, on islands and so forth, Shadsmar would change and new roads would have to be made, but it may be that then one could travel around Roshar in Shadsmar, but it would take people believing and seeing Roshar are round. Until then the intuitive sense they have of their world sets the oceans as boundaries, and so allows travel to other worlds as those areas aren't "in use" in the minds of the inhabitants.

 

This may give more information:

Quote

Questioner (paraphrased)

Shadesmar is an inversion of Roshar. In the Physical Realm, planets are disconnected, but in Shadesmar you can reach one from the other. Is there a point in Shadesmar where I can instantly cross between diametrically opposed points on Roshar?

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Yes, technically there is, but oceans, etc. are problematic since there's not enough minds there. There are points, but the transition is more steady than instantaneous. It will be hard, since you're basically leaving the planet when you go far enough. If you just went south, you'd end up on another planet. Kind of yes. Shadesmar gets funky because you end up in no man's land. We'd need to do the exact maths on that one.

Footnote: On the way back to the signing table, he talked to me about this question. He said it ought to be possible, but really would have to check out the maths behind it.
Stuttgart signing (May 17, 2019)

 

[NameIess he/him]

This is a good question. Here's a WoB I found:

Quote

Dirigible's sister

Is the Cognitive Realm flat or spherical?

Brandon Sanderson

The Cognitive Realm is this weird thing, where it's flat, but it's distorted.

Dirigible's sister

Yeah, 'cause I was going to say, if you make a globe flat...

Brandon Sanderson

You can walk from one planet to the next. So it's got really weird...the spatial reasoning doesn't work the same way.

Calamity Denver signing (Feb. 19, 2016)

so maybe you'd warp to the other side of the cognitive realm?

[+Oltux72 he/him]

23 minutes ago, KaladinWorldsinger said:

If I had a friend who was sailing from the west in shinovar to Natanatan in the east in the physical realm, to definitely prove that Roshar is a globe perhaps and I was chasing his life-flame representation in the cognitive realm, what would my path look like?

The nerdiest answers are welcome

The way you expect it to look.

[KaladinWorldsinger]

@Ixthos Thanks for the great reply! I figured that would be the ans but I wasn't confident about it. I think this really confirms how wierd shadesmar is.

1 hour ago, Ixthos said:

but it may be that then one could travel around Roshar in Shadsmar, but it would take people believing and seeing Roshar are round. Until then the intuitive sense they have of their world sets the oceans as boundaries, and so allows travel to other worlds as those areas aren't "in use" in the minds of the inhabitants

Aren't there more technologically advanced societies in cosmere that already know this and their subastral is still flat?

[Ixthos he/him]

3 minutes ago, KaladinWorldsinger said:

@Ixthos Thanks for the great reply! I figured that would be the ans but I wasn't confident about it. I think this really confirms how wierd shadesmar is.

Aren't there more technologically advanced societies in cosmere that already know this and their subastral is still flat?

You're welcome 

I think that ties to two or three factors which I can't confirm but I suspect to be the case. The first is the presence of minds - so people knowing something doesn't have as much of an impact as someone actually being there, so areas of habitation are expanded, but areas which are only known about are only partially expanded. Rosharans know about their gas giants, but the gas giants have only a small presence - I think a few people living in an area has a greater impact on that area then lots of people knowing something about a different uninhabited area knowing something about that area, though both still have an impact.

The second is conjecture, but I think there is also a difference between "knowing" something intellectually, and knowing it through experience. We know how far apart planets are in the real world, but when you look at scale images it still blows one away - I think the quality of the knowledge, whether it is experience vs purely informational. I know the world is round, but I also know the area immediately nearby is for all intents and purposes flat - that likely shapes the local area, and multiple local beliefs of the area being effectively flat combine into a total perception of the ground in general being flat - you know the world is round, but the Cognitive Realm only cares about or mainly prioritises your local belief.

The third factor is also that the Cognitive Realm has its own rules - water becomes solid and large bodies of water connect to the space between planets, and it may be that only sufficiently powerful beliefs can change that. There also seems to be some sort of mountainous areas in Shadsmar that I suspect connect to the other planets in the Rosharan system, so it could be that there is a natural "pull" each subastral has on the nearby areas, and so despite what people believe the geometry warps to connect disparate areas, though we'll have to see what Brandon further reveals. Myself I'd be very interested to see how an O'Niell Cylinder appears in the Cognitive Realm and how it connects to other areas, as those are small enough that people living in them likely would perceive their curvature and transpose that into the Cognitive Realm - then the question becomes how would it relate to any planet it may be orbiting - what direction would correspond to the planet, or would it be isolated? There are many interesting possible combination of properties.