Cognitive Shadows and the importance of perception.

[2spooky4myshirt]

Naturally general spoilers for the whole cosmere.

 

I think I know what causes cognitive shadows to go insane. Or at the very least a major factor. Perception. We know spren are heavily effected by how they are perceived. and CS are "the spren of the person" living investiture. I think sentience and sapience lets a invested entity

The fused are all about tradition and their legacy. Their legends. They get upset that current singers don't know their history.

The heralds are trickier, they have a lot of normal madness and stress placed on their minds. And they may not even notice this extra strain. Ash seems to know the most, or has intuited the most. She is obsessed with removing images of herself and grows upset when people speak of worshiping her.

Ishar was spoken of as sane by other heralds but is clearly not so. Maybe adding another religion based on himself was the breaking point.

Vasher seems fine despite his age. But he had one solid legend based on him, which faded with time. Plus he removed himself from his planet and divine breath does weird things and might protect him.

Now if this theory is right that means a specific cognitive shadow who happened to make two major religions off himself, which have very different opinions on who he is. Plus historical accounts that differ from both of those religions. Might have dug himself into a deep hole.

[Arsteel]

I really like this idea. I have an ideas why Vasher might be less affected by this, despite the many legends built around him, and it is that very few people associate the legends featuring him with the names "Zahel" or "Vasher" which seem to be the two names he associates most with himself. I think maybe he has disconnected his other past names from himself, and instead simply sees them as unrelated legendary persons, like everybody else.

[DresdeMBM]

Right, right, and perhaps that is why Thaidakar is now known as Thaidakar instead of his original name. Maybe this way he can prevent those cognitive effects that would arise from having religions based around him.

And that is also why he is so secretive with the Ghostbloods. I think not many people know him as the leader, personally or not. 

[2spooky4myshirt]

That would explain all of that. I had thought Thaidakar was just Skadrian for survivor, and using it as a title messed with Connection translation.

But hiding behind a false name and using a chain of command would be a good way to dodge even more perception problems.

Maybe its both. Calling him the Survivor didn't work out and he didn't bother correcting it. Then noticed it helped keep his mind sane. 

[DresdeMBM]

There is a WoB somewhere stating that Thaidakar didn't translate to Survivor, which would be better, I think. I don't know to which extent the Spiritual Realm could be tricked with translations. 

 

Here is the WoB: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/498/#e15728

Edited July 18, 2022 by DresdeMBM
Added the WoB

[offer]

36 minutes ago, DresdeMBM said:

There is a WoB somewhere stating that Thaidakar didn't translate to Survivor, which would be better, I think. I don't know to which extent the Spiritual Realm could be tricked with translations. 

 

Here is the WoB: https://wob.coppermind.net/events/498/#e15728

Do we know if it transates to "sovereign"? Maybe the name is south-scadrian.

[DresdeMBM]

2 hours ago, offer said:

Do we know if it transates to "sovereign"? Maybe the name is south-scadrian.

No, I think we don't have confirmation for it, but I believe (no proof) that it is just a random name. 

[cometaryorbit]

The Stormfather says with regards to the Fused "each rebirth further injures their minds". He also refers to the Heralds' souls being "worn thin" by torture.

I think Vasher is sane mostly because hes never undergone anything like the Fused/Herald cycle.

I think that perception likely influences *how* the Heralds' madness manifests (twisted versions of their Divine Attributes), spren-style, but isn't the *cause* of it happening in the first place (or at least not the primary cause). The Fused aren't individually remembered by the living, so no clear source of perception effects, but they still are mostly mad.

Vasher and Kelsier are also way younger. The Fused and thus presumably the Heralds are 7000 Rosharan years (~7700 standard years) old.

Kelsier is about 383 as of AOL (38 at death + about 4 years to the Catacendre + 341 years post Catacendre). RoW is a couple years before maybe? So 380 ish.

Vasher is maybe 500ish (very roughly, but definitely well under a thousand; there's 600 years from the First Returned to Warbreaker + "a few generations" from Warbreaker to RoW, so absolute upper end would be like 700-750).

Edited July 19, 2022 by cometaryorbit
wrong age for Kelsier, he's 380ish not 360ish

[Why Kaladin?]

On 7/17/2022 at 7:25 AM, Arsteel said:

I really like this idea. I have an ideas why Vasher might be less affected by this, despite the many legends built around him, and it is that very few people associate the legends featuring him with the names "Zahel" or "Vasher" which seem to be the two names he associates most with himself. I think maybe he has disconnected his other past names from himself, and instead simply sees them as unrelated legendary persons, like everybody else.

I agree that perception probably does play a large point though I'm not so sure about the Vasher thing I think that the Divine Breath might play a larger role we don't really know what it does besides the basic immortality and 5th level Heightening. Since it comes directly from Endowment I think she would most likely not want her Returned slowly going mad.

[DresdeMBM]

We can also point out how Kalak behaved in the prelude before abandoning the Oathpact (paranoid, but not as much as in the present time). 

Taking that into account, along with Vasher's divine Breath, maybe we can assume that having a certain level of Investiture shields you from being so affected by perception. Kind of like how a Nahel bond protects a Radiant soulcasting from suffering the "mutations" a normal person would suffer from using a Soulcaster fabrial. 

[cometaryorbit]

57 minutes ago, DresdeMBM said:

maybe we can assume that having a certain level of Investiture shields you from being so affected by perception.

I think there might also be a protective effect of being closer to the person you were pre-Shadow... more complete, kind of?

The way the Fused are discussed, it sounds to me like they're kind of ... eroding, losing the details of their personality, the things that make them fully people.

They start to transition from "a person who does X a lot" to "the literal personification of X and nothing else" (eg the comments in RoW about how Lezian has become a spren of vengeance, doing his Pursuer thing even when it's counterproductive).

There seem to be degrees of it - Raboniel isn't really sane but is a full personality, Lezian is significantly worse and more mono focused, and Venli meets Fused who aren't functional at all.

So maybe if you're still a full complex personality, perception effects can mess around with the edges but not really get to the core of who you are. But the more you become just one thing, the more easily you lose that.

And I think it's also not just cultural perception but your own perception- so it can become a feedback loop.

Lezian defining himself as "The Pursuer" made him more mono-focused on that, and the more he focused on it the more he defined himself that way, etc.

That might be why it still happens to the Fused though there aren't cultural memories of them as individuals, only vague legends of "Voidbringers" among humans or abandoned "gods" among the listeners.

[DresdeMBM]

I think it is very likely, yes.

Perhaps the perception others have of a Cognitive Shadow messes with the Identity of said Shadow, and reinforcing it via forcing yourself to be more like the old you helps with it. That way, as you said, someone who has limited their entire self to one aspect will see their decay much faster (this is taken up to eleven with Lezian, who adopted the Pursuer persona after becoming a Cognitive Shadow, speeding up the process).

[cometaryorbit]

2 hours ago, DresdeMBM said:

Perhaps the perception others have of a Cognitive Shadow messes with the Identity of said Shadow, and reinforcing it via forcing yourself to be more like the old you helps with it. That way, as you said, someone who has limited their entire self to one aspect will see their decay much faster (this is taken up to eleven with Lezian, who adopted the Pursuer persona after becoming a Cognitive Shadow, speeding up the process).

Yeah, we're told that even with Cognitive aspects of objects, "how it sees itself" matters - for a fully sapient being surely self-perception would make much more of a difference.

Perhaps like how self-perception shapes and limits Cosmere magical healing?

Hmmm, I wonder if healing some Spiritual or Cognitive trauma of repeated deaths is why dying more often makes the Fused worse - they're restored each time to their self-image, not exactly how they were before, so there's a "copy of a copy" degradation effect.

So would a Cognitive Shadow that got Shardbladed a lot get worse faster? Does a Shardblade death accelerate Fused madness more than a Physical-injury-only death? Do non fatal Shardblade wounds make Fused worse?

Spiritual damage can accelerate Fused madness - Raboniel says she'd return mad after her anti-voidlight wound - but that may be because they can't heal that?

[Duxredux he/him]

Another topic posted back in January had a similar idea but expanded it out a bit more. They linked the Cognitive Shadows with Connection, Perception, the spirit web, Spiritual Realm, and memory storage.

One of Brandon's friends on Writing Excuses is Howard Taylor who wrote the Schlock Mercenary web comic, and he had a civilization that dealt with immortality with issues of memory expansion. I'll see if I can find the particular strip that addressed it. It's not much to go off of, but I'd be surprised if Brandon and Howard haven't talked about issues of immortality and if Brandon at some level has thought about issues of memory in conjunction with immortality. I'll note that some of the more sane immortals seem to be utilizing some method to expand their memory capacity, either through Breath or other Investiture. @Kingsdaughter613's post has a theory as to the interaction between perception and failing memory. This excerpt from Kalak's journal seems to connect memory as part of the insanity, though he's indecisive and worries that reinforcing his memory would make him worse:

Quote

83	"I remember so few of those centuries. I am a blur. A smear on the page. A gaunt stretch of ink, made all the more insubstantial with each passing day."
84	"Midius once told me … told me we could use Investiture … to enhance our minds, our memories, so we wouldn’t forget so much."
85	"Why would I want to remember?"
87	"Maybe if I remembered my life, I’d be capable of being confident like I once was. Maybe I’d stop vacillating when even the most simple of decisions is presented to me."
89	"Instead I think, if I were to remember my life in detail, I would become even worse. Paralyzed by my terrible actions. I should not like to remember all those I have failed."

What this adds is the changes that happen when whole cultures have certain perceptions of a Cognitive Shadow, and why this may make a difference. There may need to be a certain scale this level of perception needs to affect things, since I think Raboniel specifically tried to stay with her daughter to reinforce their own sanity, but despite Raboniel's memory and familial connection, Essu still lost her mind.

Edited July 26, 2022 by Duxredux
clarity