What is Identity?

[Trusk'our he/him]

Identity has been a rather difficult thing to understand for me, but I've come up with another proposal for its function. 

We know that Identity acts as a marker for your Investiture, so when a Feruchemist stores an attribute it's keyed to them. I like to think of this as a radio frequency, where the Investiture of the Metalmind and the Investiture of the Feruchemist are in tune, possibly like how Navani was able to move Stormlight from one Gemstone to another via frequency manipulation. 

We also know that Identity develops as an entity gains sentience and that this cognition can be lost alongside that Identity. 
Lifeless and highly-Invested Awakened objects have a separate Identity from their Awakener, the Malwish medallions have an Identity that lets them act more independently, and the loss of Connection and Identity for the Singers rendered them obedient as well as very dull of mind. This could also help explain why Hemalurgic constructs are so vulnerable to control, particularly Koloss- the spikes must bypass their Identity to function, which creates a road for other Investiture to enter. A weakening of the base Identity (like with Koloss in Era1 or Charred) makes it much easier to take control as well, as there's less resistance. 

Identity can be affected by appearance and is part of why you appear as you do in the Cognitive Realm, but blanking it isn't enough to alter how tapping health would affect you. 

Lastly, we know from Shai that Identity is constantly shifting and evolving. I think that this is because Identity is an emergent property of your Connections, with your Spiritweb comprised of Investiture, which is shaped and given context by Connection, which your Identity attunes its frequency to. Your Identity and Connection are very closely related, so much so that Hemalurgic duralumin affects both. 

So, I think that Identity is like a frequency that your soul vibrates to, kind of like a Rhythm but instead of being the tune of a general spiritual concept (which is what I'm guessing Rhythms are) it is your own special spiritual ideal. It determines one's autonomy and independent thought, and weakening it makes you more susceptible to control from outside sources. It can change based on Connections you have. It seems to be an emergent property of many Connections coming together, seemingly like how consciousness is an emergent property born of many thoughts (not trying to advocate this outlook on consciousness, just using it as the best explanation I can find), and can be suppressed independently from Connection, though Connection seems to influence it as a more base-level attribute. 

Based on these facts and guesses, I think that messing with Identity can be used primarily to affect Investiture compatability (like with tapping others' Metalminds or Hemalurgically Compounding), contribute significantly to mind control (as with Hemalurgic constructs, Slaveform Singers, and Charred), add to autonomous thought/action (Awakened Metalminds and other Invested machines), or possibly create hive-minds (like with Sleepless). 

I still wonder whether physical alterations are viable through Identity manipulation, but I'm starting to doubt it somewhat. 

Any thoughts? I'd love to update this with ideas and information others can bring in 

[therunner he/him]

I always saw Identity as effectively a "tag" on Investiture, or perhaps like anti-gens on cells.
Something that let's Investiture that comprises particular spiritweb recognize what is still 'it'.

9 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Lastly, we know from Shai that Identity is constantly shifting and evolving. I think that this is because Identity is an emergent property of your Connections, with your Spiritweb comprised of Investiture, which is shaped and given context by Connection, which your Identity attunes its frequency to.

I don't think Identity is emergent property of Connections, I think they are two different fundamental concepts, though heavily related.

If you can assume different Identity, you can also assume different Connections (e.g. tapping foreign metalminds or Investiture), and having different Connections will to some level alter your Identity (tapping Connection to alter languages/accents).

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

14 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

Identity has been a rather difficult thing to understand for me, but I've come up with another proposal for its function. 

We know that Identity acts as a marker for your Investiture, so when a Feruchemist stores an attribute it's keyed to them. I like to think of this as a radio frequency, where the Investiture of the Metalmind and the Investiture of the Feruchemist are in tune, possibly like how Navani was able to move Stormlight from one Gemstone to another via frequency manipulation. 

We also know that Identity develops as an entity gains sentience and that this cognition can be lost alongside that Identity. 
Lifeless and highly-Invested Awakened objects have a separate Identity from their Awakener, the Malwish medallions have an Identity that lets them act more independently, and the loss of Connection and Identity for the Singers rendered them obedient as well as very dull of mind. This could also help explain why Hemalurgic constructs are so vulnerable to control, particularly Koloss- the spikes must bypass their Identity to function, which creates a road for other Investiture to enter. A weakening of the base Identity (like with Koloss in Era1 or Charred) makes it much easier to take control as well, as there's less resistance. 

Identity can be affected by appearance and is part of why you appear as you do in the Cognitive Realm, but blanking it isn't enough to alter how tapping health would affect you. 

Lastly, we know from Shai that Identity is constantly shifting and evolving. I think that this is because Identity is an emergent property of your Connections, with your Spiritweb comprised of Investiture, which is shaped and given context by Connection, which your Identity attunes its frequency to. Your Identity and Connection are very closely related, so much so that Hemalurgic duralumin affects both. 

So, I think that Identity is like a frequency that your soul vibrates to, kind of like a Rhythm but instead of being the tune of a general spiritual concept (which is what I'm guessing Rhythms are) it is your own special spiritual ideal. It determines one's autonomy and independent thought, and weakening it makes you more susceptible to control from outside sources. It can change based on Connections you have. It seems to be an emergent property of many Connections coming together, seemingly like how consciousness is an emergent property born of many thoughts (not trying to advocate this outlook on consciousness, just using it as the best explanation I can find), and can be suppressed independently from Connection, though Connection seems to influence it as a more base-level attribute. 

Based on these facts and guesses, I think that messing with Identity can be used primarily to affect Investiture compatability (like with tapping others' Metalminds or Hemalurgically Compounding), contribute significantly to mind control (as with Hemalurgic constructs, Slaveform Singers, and Charred), add to autonomous thought/action (Awakened Metalminds and other Invested machines), or possibly create hive-minds (like with Sleepless). 

I still wonder whether physical alterations are viable through Identity manipulation, but I'm starting to doubt it somewhat. 

Any thoughts? I'd love to update this with ideas and information others can bring in 

Let's explore some extremes for a thought experiment:

Consider: Identity naturally and gradually evolves and changes over time, this is established in the Cosmere as a hard fact for sapient creatures. Capturing and recording a manipulation of Identity via Forgery requires persistent updates or a built in self correction and calibration method to allow an assumed Identity to continue being viable (which is shown to require a world-leading master of the art to perform using the methods shown thus far on page).

 

Question: can a feruchemist child store a memory in a coppermind and retireve it when they are 100 years old if they still possess it? Let's assume that they don't even have awareness of its contents, only vague knowledge that they stored something. Is it possible for an individual's Identity to change, evolve, or become damaged so much over a lifetime that any bonded metalminds, shardblades, honorblades, dawnshards, Breath, ect. No longer recognize them? From what I have observed, I would assert: no, almost certainly not. This would imply that spiritual keying is, in some sense, far deeper, and technically independent of, whatever it is inside a soul that makes a sapient creature feel and behave as themselves.

Posit: damage done to the singers is widely theorized to be due to artificial damage to their spiritwebs, primarily in the forms of targeted damage to their Identity and Connection sectors. Question: would a singer blessed with the power of feruchemy be able to accidentally revert and trap themselves in slaveform by simply storing Identity and Connection? Again, I would assert, almost certainly not. Would a "human" feruchemist blank out their sapience by performing this same feat? Dear lord I hope not, or those southern scadrians seriously have a civil war coming at them for what they've done to themselves...

[Quantus he/him]

16 hours ago, Trusk'our said:

So, I think that Identity is like a frequency that your soul vibrates to, kind of like a Rhythm but instead of being the tune of a general spiritual concept (which is what I'm guessing Rhythms are) it is your own special spiritual ideal. It determines one's autonomy and independent thought, and weakening it makes you more susceptible to control from outside sources. It can change based on Connections you have. It seems to be an emergent property of many Connections coming together, seemingly like how consciousness is an emergent property born of many thoughts (not trying to advocate this outlook on consciousness, just using it as the best explanation I can find), and can be suppressed independently from Connection, though Connection seems to influence it as a more base-level attribute. 

Based on these facts and guesses, I think that messing with Identity can be used primarily to affect Investiture compatability (like with tapping others' Metalminds or Hemalurgically Compounding), contribute significantly to mind control (as with Hemalurgic constructs, Slaveform Singers, and Charred), add to autonomous thought/action (Awakened Metalminds and other Invested machines), or possibly create hive-minds (like with Sleepless). 

I still wonder whether physical alterations are viable through Identity manipulation, but I'm starting to doubt it somewhat. 

Any thoughts? I'd love to update this with ideas and information others can bring in 

 

Yes, exactly, I think.  My take is that Identity is the Natural Frequency of any given Spiritweb.  Mechanically, all objects have a natural frequency, and matching it creates a Resonance that lets relatively small forces build up to dramatic results; the whole singing at the right pitch to break a wineglass is a classic example, but it's also the basis of basically all musical instruments from bells to strings to wind instruments.  The Spiritweb has the same thing with Investiture Frequencies; it's more complex than a static Tone or radio carrier frequency, so to tune into it is much more difficult, more like Spread Spectrum Frequency Hopping in Radio, or if the tuning frequency of a radio changed right along with the song it was playing.  Objects will be more static for obvious reasons, while Sapient beings would be both more complex and more likely to evolve over their lives and choices (and/or spiritual damage).  

We know Blanking Identity on Stored feruchemical Investiture makes something any feruchemist can access, and the WOB makes it sound like Blanking Investiture Hard enough makes things like Purified Dor (or rather Pure Investiture has the Blankest of Blank Identities).  Breaths take on Identity easily when transferred, but it getting Locked in the process of making Lifeless.  In WOB Metallic Arts and compounding have always been described in Frequency Tuning terms, and it's very explicit with Rosharan Lights being manipulated by sound frequency and Wave Tuning mechanics (presumably making Lightweavers stupid OP in ways we havent seen explored yet).  The difference between the Nightblood in Vashers hands vs Szeths is a matter of Intents Aligning which sounds like a similar Investiture Tuning issue.  

 

 

Spoiler

 

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Brandon Sanderson

So one of the things people have been asking about a lot the nature of Identity and its uses for accessing other people's metalminds, and things like this right. And I hedged a little bit when somebody asked me... *inaudible*...send people into spirals of confusion, so I'm gonna clarify it for now. So, someone comes in and says, we need a blank metalmind, anybody can use that. I'm like, yes but, the reason that it's a hedge is that you need to actually be a feruchemist to access it, right, you can't just hold the blank metalmind not being a feruchemist, even though it's somebody else's investiture that's been blanked, right. So people keep kind of missing this thing. I'm hedging in the sort of, you don't quite have it, I've kind of dodged it, but I worry that it's just going to be confusing.

So the issue is, you need two things from one of these. You need something that makes you a feruchemist, and then you need a metalmind that somebody else has filled with blank investiture, ok. Now if you can get pure investiture, that can be used by anybody, regardless, ok, you need it in pure form though. But, so there are some other tricks with this as well that don't make it...so anyway, you've got a couple of things that can go on. So you've got a blank metalmind, right, with nothing. You need either investiture, to be able...like you need to be the right type. There are ways to access that if you are completely blank also, if you were a blank slate, but that is still...kind of hard. It's even harder if you are blank, and the metalmind is not blank, but that's not what they're doing in Mistborn right now. You are tapping investiture, gaining the ability of feruchemy and then you are drawing out a blank metalmind, ok. That's the one you need to be...and everything else I'm hedging on intentionally, and I'm worried I hedged in a way that made it sound confusing, ok. So you know now what they're doing. You know that there are other things possible. But I don't want you to think that you have the explanations for how all those things happen, ok.

Arcanum Unbounded Seattle signing (Dec. 1, 2016)