Does Lift ever need to poo? Serious question...

[StarrFall]

New here so please forgive me if this is a repeat.  That said, I have questions on Lift...

I came across a quote where Brandon had mentioned that Lift converted food into stormlight using similar rules to metabolism, in that sugars process faster but don't hold as much energy over all while more complex, higher calorie foods hold more overall energy but take more time to metabolize.  This got me wondering how efficiently Lift converts food into stormlight... 

It stands to reason that 100% of the food matter she eats could potentially be converted into stormlight as stormlight is a form of Investiture, Investiture is the energy that permeates all things in the Cosmere, and the ability to metabolize food into stormlight does not appear to be tied to (or tethered by) her physical biology.  That said there are limits to types of matter that biology can convert into usable energy and so I'm left wondering: does Lift ever need to poo or does her ability allow her to utilize 100% of the matter she ingests?  Does food grown on Roshar metabolize into stormlight more efficiently for Lift than food grown on other shard planets, assuming the matter on Roshar may have potentially been permeated with Honor's and Cultivation's brands of Investiture? 

I'll take it one further.  How much stormlight can Lift derive from food compared to the amount of stormlight required to soulcast that food from some other matter?  Would this essentially just be a game of Investiture catch, is the exchange lossy, or could Lift's ability actually generate a positive gain in usable Investiture on Roshar at the expense of its' physical matter?  If I recall correctly some materials may be easier to soulcast into food than others, so could that factor in as well?

This forum is awesome, thanks in advance for any enlightenment you can provide!

Edited July 25, 2018 by StarrFall

[RShara she/her]

Well she would need to actually metabolize the calories and nutrients sometimes, otherwise she'd die of starvation So that which makes it through her digestive track would need to be excreted. She mentions in Edgedancer that the food she eats disappear as an awesomeness-source in about half a day.

Edited July 25, 2018 by RShara

[StarrFall]

3 minutes ago, RShara said:

Well she would need to actually metabolize the calories and nutrients sometimes, otherwise she'd die of starvation So that which makes it through her digestive track would need to be excreted. She mentions in Edgedancer that the food she eats disappear as an awesomeness-source in about half a day.

If it takes about half a day then that could potentially mean the food has moved beyond the stomach, and if the food can be metabolized into stormlight beyond the stomach then wouldn't her natural metabolism do its' thing in the first few hours while the stormlight conversion ability eats the rest of the matter in the remaining hours?

I've thought about this entirely too much

[+Ark1002]

Really gross question. To answer it simply: Yes. Less simple: As said above, she would have to get nutrients sometimes if she wanted to survive. She probably wouldn't have to do it often as she seems to take too much of it, leaving her undernourished. And she isn't able to use the food that has been stripped of nutrients. This all means she does, or she would be dead.

[StarrFall]

In truth, the poo question is really incidental to the follow up: can Lift and a Soulcaster work together to generate stormlight during the weeping, in sort of a Roshar-brand compounding fueled by the planet's physical matter and seeded with a steak?

[+robardin he/him]

46 minutes ago, StarrFall said:

In truth, the poo question is really incidental to the follow up: can Lift and a Soulcaster work together to generate stormlight during the weeping, in sort of a Roshar-brand compounding fueled by the planet's physical matter and seeded with a steak?

Hmm, can that work?

Like when Shallan infused fabrial gems with Stormlight that she held within her, could another Radiant have drawn it out? It seems like it, right?

So (a) can Lift infuse gems with "Stormlight" investiture that she gained from metabolizing food, and (b) would that be more investiture than Soulcasting the food would require?

That's assuming you could convince Lift to spend a long time eating nothing but Soulcast food, which is supposed to taste noticeably different/worse than "real" food does.

[StarrFall]

24 minutes ago, robardin said:

That's assuming you could convince Lift to spend a long time eating nothing but Soulcast food, which is supposed to taste noticeably different/worse than "real" food does.

That is actually a very valid point that could, in and of itself, kill this theory; she seems to prefer to steal the meals of the powerful after all.  That said, if she could get her hands on an un-keyed Nicro/Bendalloy Mind then she could presumably enlist absolutely anyone's help in this particular task  

 

24 minutes ago, robardin said:

Like when Shallan infused fabrial gems with Stormlight that she held within her, could another Radiant have drawn it out? It seems like it, right?

So (a) can Lift infuse gems with "Stormlight" investiture that she gained from metabolizing food, and (b) would that be more investiture than Soulcasting the food would require?

We are very much on the same page with these key questions.

Edited July 25, 2018 by StarrFall
Scadrial to the rescue!

[Calderis he/him]

1 hour ago, robardin said:

Like when Shallan infused fabrial gems with Stormlight that she held within her, could another Radiant have drawn it out? It seems like it, right?

It would depend on whether here having held it imparts it with her Identity or not. If yes, then just like with an Awakened object, only Shallan could retrieve it. 

1 hour ago, robardin said:

So (a) can Lift infuse gems with "Stormlight" investiture that she gained from metabolizing food,

Considering she can't breath in Stormlight, I doubt she can. 

1 hour ago, robardin said:

(b) would that be more investiture than Soulcasting the food would require?

Again, I doubt it. 

[StarrFall]

9 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Considering she can't breath in Stormlight, I doubt she can. 

Can Lift not breathe Stormlight???  I can't think of an instance of her actually doing so, but I assumed that was more about ignorance than ability.

[Calderis he/him]

Just now, StarrFall said:

Can Lift not breathe Stormlight???  I can't think of an instance of her actually doing so, but I assumed that was more about ignorance than ability.

She can't. 

Quote

Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

Why does Lift need stormlight?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

Lift went to see the Nightwatcher, and got a Blessing and a Curse in that she can metabolize food to turn into stormlight, but she can't use regular stormlight. And there is something else, as well.

Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

So they have the same surges or different surges for Cultivation?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

She uses the same surges, but they are powered differently.

source

 

[StarrFall]

Thanks, @Calderis!  I think that is as definitive of an answer as I'm going to get, and it is more than I expected at this juncture.

[Weltall]

Jumping into this illumaniting discussion, there's also the fact that there are things that humans can eat but can't actually digest like cellulose in plant matter. Anything that Lift eats that contains it is going to be useless for purposes of becoming Awesome because she can't metabolize it normally. So, even if Lift could perfectly convert digestible food to Investiture and not starve to death while doing it (which is what would happen) there would still be things that need to get removed from her body. So, she may belch rainbows but she's not so storming pure as to never need a bathroom.

Edited July 25, 2018 by Weltall

[StarrFall]

19 minutes ago, Weltall said:

humans can eat but can't actually digest like cellulose in plant matter. Anything that Lift eats that contains it is going to be useless for purposes of becoming Awesome because she can't metabolize it normally.

In the Q/A i referenced in my first post, Brandon mentioned that her ability to convert food to Stormlight was LIKE metabolism but said that it worked much faster than normal human metabolism.  As such I wasn't sure if the ability of converting Stormlight followed the exact same rules as human digestion or, by virtue of the fact that the ability is related to a Connection to a Shard who has potentially permeated the very matter on Roshar, if Lift's ability would allow her to utilize the energy in ALL of the food matter for Stormlight.  Put another way, I was thinking her stomach digested requisite nutrients for her body but some non-biological mechanism processes the matter converted to Stormlight, and that this unknown mechanism may be able to crack atoms or some such.

Edit: I suppose that would mean that any waste she did have leftover could be radioactive

Edited July 25, 2018 by StarrFall

[Weltall]

17 hours ago, StarrFall said:

As such I wasn't sure if the ability of converting Stormlight followed the exact same rules as human digestion or, by virtue of the fact that the ability is related to a Connection to a Shard who has potentially permeated the very matter on Roshar, if Lift's ability would allow her to utilize the energy in ALL of the food matter for Stormlight.

I think that if the process that lets her convert food to Investiture worked on anything a human couldn't normally digest, Lift could just eat rocks and convert that matter to Investiture, then let the actual food she eats do its nutritional thing without needing to use it as Awesomeness-fuel. However, we've seen that she needs actual food, so the process should exclude undigestible matter within her food in the same way that it excludes stuff that just isn't edible period.

Though this does raise an interesting related question, if a Horneater were to have the exact same power as Lift could they get Investiture out of things that she can't owing to Horneaters being able to metabolize the shells they eat? I'd say yes and it's keyed to the individual.

[Quantus he/him]

I dont think the argument that she would starve if her body wasnt leaving some food holds up; if holding stormlight can supplement your need to actually breathe Id assume her method could similarly support her directly, either directly or as part of the more general Radiant spirit-based Healing effects.

 

Also, I think she would still poop if she thought she had to. But probably not if she'd committed to the idea that she's transforming food into pure awesome, and in that case I think she'd consider anything she'd successfully eaten to be fair game in terms of digestion, even if there's varying degrees of energy density. 

[Journey Before Pancakes]

It would probably just be horribly inefficient, and therefore eventually fatal; but I would think Lift could at least temporarily survive while converting all her food to investiture.  She has access to Regrowth, and presumably could keep herself healed from the damage the malnourishment would be doing otherwise.

I can't see a reason why she would want to, but it seems like something interesting that would work in theory.

[Quantus he/him]

If stormlight can substitute for Air regardless of what surges the Order has access to, I dont understand why it would take more advanced methods to substitute for food. 

Separately, I have to wonder if Radiant healing (and by extension things like F-Gold) can "heal" Hunger? They can heal all kinds of damage and trauma (physical or otherwise) but they specifically cannot change/heal things that are part of your natural state like Age or genetic mutations. So is Hunger a natural state, or a malformation of your platonic self?  I tend to think it would fall closer to Aging, and be outside the realm of that sort of healing. 

[Weltall]

18 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Separately, I have to wonder if Radiant healing (and by extension things like F-Gold) can "heal" Hunger? They can heal all kinds of damage and trauma (physical or otherwise) but they specifically cannot change/heal things that are part of your natural state like Age or genetic mutations. So is Hunger a natural state, or a malformation of your platonic self?  I tend to think it would fall closer to Aging, and be outside the realm of that sort of healing. 

My guess is that 'hunger' isn't something subject to healing. We see Hoid eat and we know he's got ridiculously powerful healing that he has to actively 'switch off' when he doesn't want it. We also have Miles in Alloy of Law who notes that he still needs sleep even though he's got gold compounding that's almost as insanely powerful and he's constantly tapping his stores. The various symptoms of sleep deprivation are as physical as those caused by hunger but F-Gold healing apparently doesn't work on those, just like it doesn't work on aging.

Relatedly, while it's only a single application of Investiture we see with feruchemy that nutrition and healing (and sleep as well) are treated as discrete things under that system, needing different abilities and thus metalminds in order to store.

[Quantus he/him]

6 minutes ago, Weltall said:

My guess is that 'hunger' isn't something subject to healing. We see Hoid eat and we know he's got ridiculously powerful healing that he has to actively 'switch off' when he doesn't want it. We also have Miles in Alloy of Law who notes that he still needs sleep even though he's got gold compounding that's almost as insanely powerful and he's constantly tapping his stores. The various symptoms of sleep deprivation are as physical as those caused by hunger but F-Gold healing apparently doesn't work on those, just like it doesn't work on aging.

Relatedly, while it's only a single application of Investiture we see with feruchemy that nutrition and healing (and sleep as well) are treated as discrete things under that system, needing different abilities and thus metalminds in order to store.

Age/Youth too, now that you mention it. 

[StarrFall]

16 hours ago, Weltall said:

My guess is that 'hunger' isn't something subject to healing.

I think you are correct that she could not remove her hunger or replace nutrients, but I'd imagine that Radiant healing can heal cell damage dealt my lack of nutrition.  I'd imagine that a Radiant on the cusp of starvation or dehydration could stay alive and function while they are holding Stormlight but that they would drop dead the moment they ran out.  Sort of like a big Pewter burn.