Can Silvers predict the future?

[Adamkarma he/him]

Can Silvers see the possible future chances like Shards?

Edited October 11, 2022 by Adamkarma

[Quantus he/him]

Sliver's are by definition the defalted person left behind after they give up whatever huge Power they had previously held that stretched them out (could be a full shard or just a huge amount of Investiture like the Well).  They can almost certainly predict the future in some ways, since over-use of Atium (or any number of things that let you peak into the Spiritual Realm will do that.  But even while holding the Power I doubt they can match a Shard unless they are actually Ascending to become one, and they wouldnt retain the ability when they gave it up.  If its a Well scenario they might be able to Learn how if they hold onto the power long enough without immediately Using it up (like most did with the Well), and they could make tweaks to allow them to retain prescience.  But I believe the sort of Sight that the Shards get requires both the View of the Spiritual Realm and also the ongoing augmentation of actually being a Shard (with all the Shard's Investiture augmenting your cognition and perception).

[Adamkarma he/him]

14 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Sliver's are by definition the defalted person left behind after they give up whatever huge Power they had previously held that stretched them out (could be a full shard or just a huge amount of Investiture like the Well).  They can almost certainly predict the future in some ways, since over-use of Atium (or any number of things that let you peak into the Spiritual Realm will do that.  But even while holding the Power I doubt they can match a Shard unless they are actually Ascending to become one, and they wouldnt retain the ability when they gave it up.  If its a Well scenario they might be able to Learn how if they hold onto the power long enough without immediately Using it up (like most did with the Well), and they could make tweaks to allow them to retain prescience.  But I believe the sort of Sight that the Shards get requires both the View of the Spiritual Realm and also the ongoing augmentation of actually being a Shard (with all the Shard's Investiture augmenting your cognition and perception).

By that definition Vin, Rashek, Kelsier are the only Silvers. Right?

[Quantus he/him]

6 minutes ago, Adamkarma said:

By that definition Vin, Rashek, Kelsier are the only Silvers. Right?

 

Those and the Stormfather since he's now also Tanavast's cognitive shadow.

Quote

 

Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)
1) The Nightwatcher and Stormfather are parallel entities such that Nighwatcher:Cultivation :: Stormfather:Honor.
2) There is sort of a parallel for Odium, but the parallel is the various Unmade instead of a single entity.
3) They are parallel in that they are all Splinters.
4) The Unmade are voluntary Splinters, because Odium ("like almost all of the other Shards") voluntarily Splintered part of it's power.
5) The Stormfather is different from the others because it's a Sliver.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/2/#e9207

 

 

[Returned]

"Like Shards" is a difficult condition to evaluate. Taravangian sort of could see the future, though Odium (while impressed) was dismissive of Taravangian's ability compared to his own. Renarin can see the future in a manner that seems similar to a Shard's, though with severe limitations that a Shard would not face. And even among Shards there is a lot of variation in how well they can se the future. Cultivation and Preservation seem pretty good at it, and Ruin was canonically bad at it. But we don't have a good standard of comparison to say if, for example, Ruin was better or worse than Renarin or Taravangian.

I would argue that, as a general guideline, no non-Shard can do things quite like a Shard can do them, even if the task and method are similar to what a Shard would do to complete it. For all intents and purposes, I believe that Slivers cannot see the future as Shards can either fundamentally or via external (i.e., magical) augmentation.

[Adamkarma he/him]

2 minutes ago, Returned said:

"Like Shards" is a difficult condition to evaluate. Taravangian sort of could see the future, though Odium (while impressed) was dismissive of Taravangian's ability compared to his own. Renarin can see the future in a manner that seems similar to a Shard's, though with severe limitations that a Shard would not face. And even among Shards there is a lot of variation in how well they can se the future. Cultivation and Preservation seem pretty good at it, and Ruin was canonically bad at it. But we don't have a good standard of comparison to say if, for example, Ruin was better or worse than Renarin or Taravangian.

I would argue that, as a general guideline, no non-Shard can do things quite like a Shard can do them, even if the task and method are similar to what a Shard would do to complete it. For all intents and purposes, I believe that Slivers cannot see the future as Shards can either fundamentally or via external (i.e., magical) augmentation.

I mean Death Rattles are kind of seeing the future. Yet not actually SEEING the future.

So many entities can predict the future. (Shards, Silvers, Dying people?, people who are highly Investitured by certain Shards (especially Odium), and "parallels" to Shards (Stormfather, Nightwatcher, Sja-Anat, and that weird Fjordell king) Am I missing someone?

[Returned]

10 minutes ago, Adamkarma said:

I mean Death Rattles are kind of seeing the future. Yet not actually SEEING the future.

So many entities can predict the future. (Shards, Silvers, Dying people?, people who are highly Investitured by certain Shards (especially Odium), and "parallels" to Shards (Stormfather, Nightwatcher, Sja-Anat, and that weird Fjordell king) Am I missing someone?

I may be leaning too hard on the "like a Shard" piece, which seems significant to me. But even a totally mundane person can "see" the future if they know enough present details and have decent deductive skills. That's how Taravangian did it, and he foresaw pretty effectively.

And Shards, while explicitly able to see the future, can't actually see what will come to pass very well-- see every Shard whose plans have failed for examples. Atium is very reliable, though not allowing knowledge very far into the future. But Death Rattles seem like the most accurate predictions and are also described by the one example we've had who was aware enough to describe the event as "what he saw" (paraphrased). Nothing yet has suggested that the things the dying see when near Moelach can fail to occur.

I'm not sure all of the examples you listed can see the future in the manner of a Shard. Do the Stormfather, Nightwatcher, Sja-anat, and the Fjordell king actually do that? Have we seen a Sliver do it? I may just be forgetting.

Additionally, do you count it if an entity sees the future through the direct intervention of a Shard? It would seem to me that anyone would have access to that, in the same sense that anyone can fly if they sit in an airplane. Am I misunderstanding? For example, do you count Renarin as seeing like a Shard when his powers come directly from a Shard?

Edited October 11, 2022 by Returned

[Adamkarma he/him]

7 minutes ago, Returned said:

I may be leaning too hard on the "like a Shard" piece, which seems significant to me. But even a totally mundane person can "see" the future if they know enough present details and have decent deductive skills. That's how Taravangian did it, and he foresaw pretty effectively.

And Shards, while explicitly able to see the future, can't actually see what will come to pass very well-- see every Shard whose plans have failed for examples. Atium is very reliable, though not allowing knowledge very far into the future. But Death Rattles seem like the most accurate predictions and are also described by the one example we've had who was aware enough to describe the event as "what he saw" (paraphrased). Nothing yet has suggested that the things the dying see when near Moelach can fail to occur.

I'm not sure all of the examples you listed can see the future in the manner of a Shard. Do the Stormfather, Nightwatcher, Sja-anat, and the Fjordell king actually do that? Have we seen a Sliver do it? I may just be forgetting.

Additionally, do you count it if an entity sees the future through the direct intervention of a Shard? It would seem to me that anyone would have access to that, in the same sense that anyone can fly if they sit in an airplane. Am I misunderstanding? For example, do you count Renarin as seeing like a Shard when his powers come directly from a Shard?

Let's see.

1- I would count an entity seeing the future but not through the DIRECT intervention of a Shard. Like Renarin now can choose to see scenes from the future at will. He did it once while he and Dalinar were in Emul. But, I wouldn't count the few times Odium showed Taravangian the future.

And yes we have seen Sja Anat seeing the future in her interlude in RoW.

Quote

Once he'd found her windspren, and unmade them to lose their memories, he would hopefully be content, and not see the other child she had sent

Maybe it's simple planning, but to outwit a Shard, you have - at least - to partially see the future. Like Taravangian.

And what strikes me as strange that Ruin was even bad in close future, like that one time he appeared to Vin as her dead brother, she knew right away. What do you think?

[Returned]

4 minutes ago, Adamkarma said:

1- I would count an entity seeing the future but not through the DIRECT intervention of a Shard. Like Renarin now can choose to see scenes from the future at will. He did it once while he and Dalinar were in Emul. But, I wouldn't count the few times Odium showed Taravangian the future.

That seems like a fair definition to me.

4 minutes ago, Adamkarma said:

Quote

Once he'd found her windspren, and unmade them to lose their memories, he would hopefully be content, and not see the other child she had sent

Maybe it's simple planning, but to outwit a Shard, you have - at least - to partially see the future. Like Taravangian.

I'm not persuaded on this example. It seems like memory and planning (Sja-anat herself was unmade), plus a wish for the future (she hopes for an outcome). Shards can be outwitted without seeing the future, though it's certainly difficult. Vin and Kelsier both trick Ruin through misdirection and deceptive comments. Though Ruin is probably among the worst at seeing the future among the Shards, so that may have been a factor.

8 minutes ago, Adamkarma said:

And what strikes me as strange that Ruin was even bad in close future, like that one time he appeared to Vin as her dead brother, she knew right away. What do you think?

It's so hard to get into the mind of a being as alien as a Shard. We probably literally cannot fathom their thought processes and motivations. We've got a WoB that Ruin was very poor at seeing the future, maybe the worst of the Shards we've seen. so it might have just been bad future sight that caused those problems. But he was also arrogant, like assuming that all humans were fundamentally his servants and would advance his goals no matter what they did. I don't know if he really intended to deceive Vin (and failed), or if he wanted to pressure and manipulate her (which wouldn't depend on her being tricked), or if he was operating with future sight in mind and perceived that it wouldn't matter to his aims if Vin knew it wasn't really Reen. I think that Ruin didn't bother to rely on future sight much, both because he was poor at it and because he preferred other methods.

My overarching impression is that relying on future sight is at best a desperation move for Shards, and an absolutely terrible thing to depend on generally for their day-to-day goals. Some of that may be due to Fortune's existence and nature, but I mostly think that the constant unreliability of "knowing" what will happen in a non-deterministic future makes it a very weak tool for anything that would bother a Shard. Especially when compared to all of the other capabilities a Shard has. It simply doesn't seem to protect them from failure or promote success very well.

[Adamkarma he/him]

3 minutes ago, Returned said:

 

I'm not persuaded on this example. It seems like memory and planning (Sja-anat herself was unmade), plus a wish for the future (she hopes for an outcome). Shards can be outwitted without seeing the future, though it's certainly difficult. Vin and Kelsier both trick Ruin through misdirection and deceptive comments. Though Ruin is probably among the worst at seeing the future among the Shards, so that may have been a factor.

Probably you're right on that one, maybe even Odium wasn't concentrated on Sja Anat. So he was fooled, maybe Rayse was arrogant and thought himself to be better than a lowly unmade spren.

 

8 minutes ago, Returned said:

 

My overarching impression is that relying on future sight is at best a desperation move for Shards, and an absolutely terrible thing to depend on generally for their day-to-day goals. Some of that may be due to Fortune's existence and nature, but I mostly think that the constant unreliability of "knowing" what will happen in a non-deterministic future makes it a very weak tool for anything that would bother a Shard. Especially when compared to all of the other capabilities a Shard has. It simply doesn't seem to protect them from failure or promote success very well.

Future sight isn't a desperation move for all Shards. Preservation completed his plan perfectly a 1000 years from when his plan even began. I guess that since Ruin is the worst Shard at predicting the future then Preservation is the best.

Maybe it is a desperation move for some Shards like Odium who "cornered himself" as Taravangian put it.

But Cultivation has above average future sight, and I believe very high Fortune.

It depends on "power's Intent and Vessel's craftiness" as Harmony said

Don't you agree?

[Returned]

59 minutes ago, Adamkarma said:

It depends on "power's Intent and Vessel's craftiness" as Harmony said

Don't you agree?

Sure. But I also think that a Vessel's "craftiness" covers a lot of ground. It might describe great planning which accounts for errors, including in future sight. It might also indicate an awareness of how unreliable future sight can be. And as for Intent, Shards themselves don't seem to have goals in the same sense that Vessels do. They are what they are and promote what they promote, whether or not it's "good" for the Shard or in line with what its Vessel wants. Odium is a great example: it wants and promotes conflict in others, even when that conflict is against Odium itself. It's not clear that Odium (the Shard) could forestall or resist a conflict that it knew would lead to its own destruction any more than Preservation could kill one person to protect everything else.

Also (and this is only tangentially related), I think that Brandon is being a bit coy when he talks about Shards seeing the future. If you're rolling a die, and I look into the future and see that you'll roll a 6, and then you do roll a 6 because (absent intervention) that's what will happen, then I saw the future. If I look into the future and see that you'll roll a 6, no intervention takes place, and then you don't roll a 6, then I think it's hard to suggest that I saw the future at all. The descriptions we've had of Shardic future sight suggest to me that it's more like the latter case than the former, though there is so much we don't know about it that it's hard to feel confident in any conclusion. Knowing that something could happen, or might happen, or is likely to happen are all very different from knowing what will happen. Certainly knowledge of the future is unstable in the Cosmere.

59 minutes ago, Adamkarma said:

Future sight isn't a desperation move for all Shards. Preservation completed his plan perfectly a 1000 years from when his plan even began. I guess that since Ruin is the worst Shard at predicting the future then Preservation is the best.

I agree that it isn't a desperation move for every Shard. Odium (as Rayse) was pretty into it on a seemingly regular basis, for all the good it did him. But I'd argue that Preservation's use of future sight was a desperation move. Having weakened himself relative to Ruin in creating humans on Scadrial, and sacrificing his mind to imprison Ruin, he became locked into a conflict he couldn't actively win. Hence his extremely long-term plans, the mists following his Intent, the sign of 16, and so on. And those examples underscore my point (and are most of my basis for it, lol): Preservation didn't have a lot of choices, and so bet on future sight and won. Odium (as Rayse) had all sorts of options, seemed very into future sight, and lost badly. Taravangian gambled on knowledge of the future and won (seemingly, and for now), but not in any way that he foresaw. And all of the splintered Shards' access to the future didn't save them.

Edited October 11, 2022 by Returned

[Adamkarma he/him]

Actually you have a very good point. Maybe Preservation plan was despairate but we know that Shards see the possible outcomes not THE outcome. So Preservation is the worst short future sighter. And the best long future sighter. 

Oh and you were right about Ruin he knew beforehand he would be discovered. I have e books and checked.

[Returned]

It's all very tricky, since future sight in one place interferes with future sight in others, and the details, outcomes, and mechanisms are so vague. I think that we're not going to get a very clear view of future sight until much closer to the end of all of the main Cosmere stories. It's too large and undercurrent to a lot of current storylines to be otherwise, though if we actually see Fortune in a story things may change.

My best guess on it is that Shards can sort of cheat by seeing possible futures without needing to know the details that would allow a normal person to predict those futures, and their vast powers allow them to do a variable job in filling in the gaps (depending on the Shard and Vessel, as Sazed states). But that situation makes specific knowledge of one potential outcome they want a lot less valuable than it might seem, especially on the level of a Shard compared with, say, a human. The real, leverageable value would come from getting a sense of those ancillary details and being able to get a sense of what conditions need to be in place in a future where the desired outcome occurs.

Seeing a possible future in which you hold a winning lottery ticket isn't very valuable since we already know it's possible to win the lottery. Knowing what day that ticket won is also not very valuable since that doesn't help you pick the right numbers. Even if you also see the winning numbers in that possible future, that isn't very useful if you can't rely on those numbers to actually win that lottery draw on that day-- any combination of valid lottery numbers could win in any given drawing. That's the sort of thing that people tend to think future sight grants, but which it really seems not to grant in the Cosmere. A good example is Renarin's vision near the end of Oathbringer: his vision is really specific about what will happen, but is wrong. That is, by definition, a poor prediction of the future.

But if you see most (or all) possible futures, and know that on a certain day in the bulk of those futures in which you buy a lottery ticket you win, that would help you act in ways that further your goals (assuming your goal is to win the lottery, at least). You can take your shot when it's most likely to work out for you, and maybe in the way it's most likely to work out. That's how the most successful future-viewers in the Cosmere seem to have approached it: "knowledge" of "the future" that puts you in the right place at the right time for things to work out in your favor, rather than getting an accurate and precise prediction that you can specifically count on. Again, I like the example of Renarin near the end of Oathbringer: his vision brought him to a decisive place at a decisive moment and allowed things to work out in ways that he preferred, even though the actual content of the vision was wrong.

But don't take any of my musings too seriously. Like I said, Shards have minds, abilities, and goals that are almost certainly beyond anything we mere humans would be able to understand, and future sight has all sorts of bizarre implications that we can't test out (especially since we don't know all the rules Sanderson has for it). I think that my opinions are pretty good extrapolations of what little we've definitively seen so far, but I'm certainly no Shard-whisperer nor future-seer.