Does Ascending heal your mind?

[Gray to]

So we know that when someone Ascends, their mind expands so they could handle all this new information they've obtained. I want to know if this will also heal any mental illness the new shareholder has. I think it would be interesting to see a Shard that has short term memory loss. 

So if Renarin or Steris Ascended, would they still have their autism? 

[Calderis]

No clue, but honestly I doubt it. 

Investiture seeks a mind to guide it, and it enhances/expands that mind... But it still relies on that mind to shape it. 

[CrazyRioter]

We know that Stormlight healing did not remove Renarin's autism. I don't think holding a Shard would either, though it might be harder to notice it, especially as the mind was shaped by the Shard's intent. But that's a very gradual process.

Autism is heavily tied to a person's personality and the way they see themself,

[Thurin]

Autism is not an illness, it just classifies your personality. It's not a matter of being good or bad at something, you just approach all kinds of things in a different way than most/'normal' people.

Yes, they would still have their autism, and it wouldn't even get harder to notice. Just because of the Ascending itself their personality won't change. The only way that a Vessel's personality gets changed is by the Intent of the Shard, but that depends on which Shard we're talking about.

Edit: but if Shallan Ascended she probably would learn how to handle her alter ego's

Edited August 24, 2018 by Thurin

[Fanghur Rahl]

Actually, technically speaking autism is an illness or at least a disorder (to be clear, I’m not in any way using these terms in a pejorative sense), at least insofar as what we mean by those terms medically. It is a deviation from the ‘norm’ resulting from various physiological and neurological factors. But I don’t think Stormlight could heal it, because it would effectively be an essential aspect of how you see yourself, so it wouldn’t ‘register’ as such to the Stormlight. Whether that would still be the case if the autism was the result of some kind of brain injury that occurred later in life or something of that nature is a different story; in that case, I suspect that it probably would be healed 

[Thurin]

5 minutes ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

But I don’t think Stormlight could heal it, because it would effectively be an essential aspect of how you see yourself, so it wouldn’t ‘register’ as such to the Stormlight.

Partially right. Autism won't get 'healed' because a person doesn't see himself as ill, it's a term that other people use to describe someone else and thus stormlight/other investure won't change it.

[Fanghur Rahl]

At the very least Renarin doesn’t.

[CrazyRioter]

Lots of autistics consider autism to be part of their identity and some have self-diagnosed as autistic without being identified as such by others.

Renarin doesn't use a label because he wasn't raised in a society that has one. I think he would be glad to be able to understand better why he has difficulties with some things others don't.

[Fanghur Rahl]

Like I said, I wasn’t in any way trying to belittle people who are autistic. 

[Slimy_Slider]

On a similar topic, I wonder if taking up the combined powers of Ruin and Preservation would have caused Sazed's mind to expand at a greater rate or to a greater extent than a single-shard ascension.

[Fanghur Rahl]

5 hours ago, Slimy_Slider said:

On a similar topic, I wonder if taking up the combined powers of Ruin and Preservation would have caused Sazed's mind to expand at a greater rate or to a greater extent than a single-shard ascension.

I don’t think so. As far as I know all of the Shards have pretty much the same powers and amount of raw power at their disposal, the only difference is the ‘lens’ through which that power is expressed. That said, it probably would have resulted in him acquiring even more knowledge than he otherwise would have, since he took both Shards.

[Yata]

20 hours ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

I don’t think so. As far as I know all of the Shards have pretty much the same powers and amount of raw power at their disposal, the only difference is the ‘lens’ through which that power is expressed. That said, it probably would have resulted in him acquiring even more knowledge than he otherwise would have, since he took both Shards.

Well Sazed has actually the double of the raw power available to the other Shards.

Regardless I don't think Sazed's mind is more expanded than the other vessels' ones. After all a finite mind could expand only so far and the Shards are already at the extreme.

It's one of the main difference between the current Vessels and Adonalsium. It's meaningless how much power they could stock... Their finite mind can't process it all at once like an infinite mind could.

It's the reason the Shards can't even access all the power at their disposal without a great deal of effort to spot bits of power in the Cosmere

[Fanghur Rahl]

4 hours ago, Yata said:

Well Sazed has actually the double of the raw power available to the other Shards.

Regardless I don't think Sazed's mind is more expanded than the other vessels' ones. After all a finite mind could expand only so far and the Shards are already at the extreme.

It's one of the main difference between the current Vessels and Adonalsium. It's meaningless how much power they could stock... Their finite mind can't process it all at once like an infinite mind could.

It's the reason the Shards can't even access all the power at their disposal without a great deal of effort to spot bits of power in the Cosmere

Yeah I know, my point was just that I would think that when he took up the Shards, he also took on the knowledge of both Ruin and Preservation rather than just one of them. Although thinking more about it, I'm not entirely sure that it works that way since he still needed to access his metal minds in order to know how to "fix" Scadrial. Maybe that's just a plot hole, I dunno. Do we know whether or not someone "inherits" the knowledge of a previous Shardholder once they take up the Shard?

[Yata]

You don't inherit the previous Vessel's knowledge.

At best you gain a bit of the power history but not an actual knowledge or skill.

Of course with the expanded mind and the Realmatic knowledge intuitive to you... Using the power itself may be trival/natural to you depending by the task you try to perforne

[Weltall]

5 hours ago, Fanghur Rahl said:

Maybe that's just a plot hole, I dunno. Do we know whether or not someone "inherits" the knowledge of a previous Shardholder once they take up the Shard?

We know for certain that they don't. Sazed mentions that he gained an impression of something called Adonalsium when he Ascended, which is a far cry from the actual knowledge that Ati and Leras would have had. The understanding he gained in Ascending came from the Spiritual Realm. Separately we know that a Vessel does not leave any imprint upon the Shard.

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Fyodor

Can you tell us how Sazed knows about radio?

Brandon Sanderson (Part 1/Part 2)

Certain natural phenomenon became visible to him when he ascended, and he could logic the rest.

He also has some vague prediction abilities.

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Brandon Sanderson (paraphrased)

Shards and Shard intents: Holding a Shard is a contest of willpower against the Shard that, over time, is very hard to resist.

Shards affect you over time, but your mind will not leave a permanent effect on the Shard. A holder's [Vessel's] personality, however, does get to filter the Shard's intent, so to speak. However, if that holder [Vessel] no longer held that Shard, the Shard will not continue to be filtered by that person.

source