Incurable Wounds and Copperminds

[Trusk'our he/him]

I know I came up with the idea before that you could theoretically hack Feruchemical health to grow new things (like Metalborn powers) by altering your memories (linked here: Permanent Spiritweb Modification via Feruchemy).

But, how about something far, far simpler, yet possibly far more useful to the average person?

Since old, lingering injuries or wounds already accepted by a person can't be healed simply due to their cognitive filter being wrong, could an Unsealed Coppermind simply whisk away months or years of dealing with a lost limb or cancerous growth, allowing for an Unsealed Goldmind or Radiant to patch it up?

Then when they're done, just restore the siphoned off memories (and if you're worried about the restored memories tampering with the healing, you might want to wait a few weeks or months before doing so. The principal of old injuries sticking now becomes beneficial, as the healed body is now the new norm).

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

Sounds reasonable enough, can't have a self-image problem with old wounds if you put away all relevant memories and suddenly it's like those old wounds have just appeared on your body.

Though depending on how long you've had the wound, you'll need to store more memories, since you'll also have memories of living with the wound, so to ensure maximum effectiveness, you'd be better off storing away all memories up to acquiring said wound. Not pleasant and will defeintely be confusing for most anyone, but I think it would have a near-guarantee of working.

But problems that you've been born with would be much worse, since you might have to store your whole life away, which sounds really bad and probably wouldn't end well.

[therunner he/him]

I'd just note that you would likely also have to store memory of storing those memories in the first place, because so long as you know you stored away memories of the wound for such a purpose, you still have cognitive knowledge of you seeing the wound as 'yours', and so it is not yet 'new' to you.

Question the also is if this is sufficient, i.e. if the block on healing also does not come from Identity (where the wound became part of it).

[JustQuestin2004 he/him]

35 minutes ago, therunner said:

I'd just note that you would likely also have to store memory of storing those memories in the first place, because so long as you know you stored away memories of the wound for such a purpose, you still have cognitive knowledge of you seeing the wound as 'yours', and so it is not yet 'new' to you.

Question the also is if this is sufficient, i.e. if the block on healing also does not come from Identity (where the wound became part of it).

Just looked up a WOB, and I think that this topic may be more complicated than just Memory and Identity.

Spoiler

Questioner

We know that magical healing has a lot to do with Identity, like Lopen and Rysn. Suppose someone was tapping Identity from an unkeyed metalmind, and then you tried to heal them with any kind of magical healing. What would happen?

Brandon Sanderson

Most likely, that person’s perspective of themself is going to filter that unkeyed metalmind, and so what’s going to happen is what would normally happen to that person. In most instances. There are ways to get around that, but the vast majority, that’s what you’re gonna see.

Questioner

And if they were storing Identity instead?

Brandon Sanderson

Then you’re gonna go back to their Cognitive picture of themselves, which is going to be what’s filtering this, how they see themselves. If you knock them unconscious, they can’t see themselves, you’re blanking them of Identity, and things like that. They still, basically, will have… it’s gonna be really hard to get that all separated. The mental picture of themselves still exists on the Spiritual Realm. Remember, Realmatics is based on Plato’s theories of the forms, but your perspective is what’s shaping that. So there’s still gonna be, like, on the Spiritual Realm, there’s gonna be some version of yourself that is deeply influenced by how you view yourself that is going to be what that Investiture is trying to match, it’s trying to bring your body into alignment with that. So you’ve gotta replace that thing if you want it to do something different. Which you can do with Hemalurgy.