Cultivation and the diagram

[manukos he/him]

Soooooo....  I always loved the concept of Taravangian , a man with varying intelligence and compassion. So recently I re-read the interlude from WoR that explains (sort of) how his boon and curse work . And then something peaked my interest but to give you my point of view I would like to clarify some points 

1. Taravangian got this "power" when he asked for the capacity to stop what is coming
2. the nightwacher doesn't give you what you as (no matter how well you phrase it) but intead what she thinks you deserve and a curse to go along with it  -as we learn from the shalash interlude (don't remember the number)
3. in one of Dalinar's visions Tanavast (Haonor) tells him that although he can read the future Cultivation is far better at doing so 

So, is it possible that Cultivation through the Nightwacher  gave Taravangian this power predicting his actions and knowing that this way it would be better for Roshar in the long run? 

I think yes

[Landis963 he/him]

On Sunday, January 01, 2017 at 11:29 AM, Manukos said:

Soooooo....  I always loved the concept of Taravangian , a man with varying intelligence and compassion. So recently I re-read the interlude from WoR that explains (sort of) how his boon and curse work . And then something peaked my interest but to give you my point of view I would like to clarify some points 

1. Taravangian got this "power" when he asked for the capacity to stop what is coming
2. the nightwacher doesn't give you what you as (no matter how well you phrase it) but intead what she thinks you deserve and a curse to go along with it  -as we learn from the shalash interlude (don't remember the number)
3. in one of Dalinar's visions Tanavast (Haonor) tells him that although he can read the future Cultivation is far better at doing so 

So, is it possible that Cultivation through the Nightwacher  gave Taravangian this power predicting his actions and knowing that this way it would be better for Roshar in the long run? 

I think yes

Thinking it would be better; the Shards are not infallible no matter how much future sight they have. 

[Turtle373 he/him]

well based on this theory then Cultivation also gave Lift her boon/curse seeing that it possibly would be better for Roshar (because lift is going to be a very prominent character later on) 

[wildbuc117 he/him]

27 minutes ago, turtle373 said:

well based on this theory then Cultivation also gave Lift her boon/curse seeing that it possibly would be better for Roshar (because lift is going to be a very prominent character later on) 

I want to think that Taravangian understood his abilities incorrectly (that his "stupid" days are the days that actually would save the world and that Odium corrupted the diagram) and furthermore that from a conversation in edgedancer, Lyft is the solution to this misunderstanding.

Edited January 10, 2017 by wildbuc117

[+Extesian he/him]

27 minutes ago, turtle373 said:

well based on this theory then Cultivation also gave Lift her boon/curse seeing that it possibly would be better for Roshar (because lift is going to be a very prominent character later on) 

My take is that the Nightwatcher have Lift the ability to metabolize food into Stormlight based more on the rules of the Old Magic and it was the Cultivationspren who then saw the potential in that and bonded Lift. We have this useful WoB that indicates the boon was more due to Lift's strange request than any Roshar-saving plan.

Spoiler

BRANDON SANDERSON

So Lift is a really weird one. She visited the Old Magic and asked something very strange, and the Old Magic didn’t know how to treat that, and so answered with something equally strange. So you will actually see what happened with Lift and things like that, but suffice it to say some really weird things are going on.

Though it could be both of course, the WoB is pretty vague.

[emailanimal he/him]

1 hour ago, wildbuc117 said:

I want to think that Taravangian understood his abilities incorrectly (that his "stupid" days are the days that actually would save the world and that Odium corrupted the diagram) and furthermore that from a conversation in edgedancer, Lyft is the solution to this misunderstanding.

As cool as Taravangian saving the world via his two standard deviations apart from the mean stupid days would have been, I have to disagree.

We have the following:

1. Taravangian asked for capacity to save the world.

2. Cultivation has some foresight into the future. In Cosmere terms it probably means that Cultivation has a way of accessing Spiritual Realm, and interpreting what she observed there in terms of chronology.

3. One interpretation of "capacity" to save the world is to allow of transference of this foresight ability under certain circumstances, onto a human.

4. The Diagram sounds like the result of such foresight/insight.

5. Giving this capacity to a person without making any other changes basically creates an augur (with a lower-case "a", NOT a Scadrial misting) with a lot of power. So, the curse is something that should limit it. Creating the bell curve of intelligence overcomes this issue: it is difficult to comprehend the insight.

 

[wildbuc117 he/him]

4 minutes ago, emailanimal said:

As cool as Taravangian saving the world via his two standard deviations apart from the mean stupid days would have been, I have to disagree.

...

Okay, first off, love the subscript as that is almost exactly how I initially introduced myself to 17th shard, so props for that.  Secondly  damnation your good points.  Stop making me rethink my thoughts

Edited January 10, 2017 by wildbuc117

[Spoolofwhool]

We have a WoB that what is happening to Taravangian is an increase in multiple types of intelligence.  While it doesn't completely eliminate the theory of foresight, it does seem to put the mathematical probability theory more in favor.