Compounding Copper

[Quantus he/him]

OK, I know this question has been RAFO'd more than once because it's a Compounding question, so Im more curious what people's current thoughts on it are since we won't have a definitive answer.  The only particularly relevant WOB I found was This One that says Compounding Copper would "do some things", as compared to Aluminum Identity that wouldnt give you much. 

 

Normally compounding works because you are "hacking" the two systems together, you are able to make the external Investiture from Preservation (via the metal burning) to resonate and behave the way feruchemy treats/stores it.  But unlike every other metal, the investiture that copper stores is specific and unique, they are actual memories that were specifically chosen for storage, degrade when removed, etc. rather than just some commodity energy like Heat or Breath. 

So if you used compounding to fill a coppermind, what memories would you find in there? Would it just duplicate the original feruchemical memory over and over, givng you multiple copies (would be helpful to counter the degradation)?  Would it be the same memory but clarified and "perfected" because it was exposed to a direct conduit to the Spiritual Realm?  Rather than just that specific memory, might it make a detailed imprint of your entire intellect (the way comic books love to do whenever somebody wants to make an AI)? Or would it just be investiture that you couldnt recover because the memory "files" that they store are all blank?  

 

Thoughts?  This seems like an issue unique to Copper, since none of the others store anything as specific with the investiture.  Unless Bendalloy is storing the specific nutrients that are being eaten?  Does a Subsumer still need to eat a balanced diet, or does it fulfill all their various nutritional needs once its gone through a Pure Investiture stage?  If a Subsumer eats nothing but potatoes will they need vitamin supplements?

[Quantus he/him]

1 minute ago, Calderis said:

Compounding gives a Feruchemical trait, and Brandon has said that he has never had plans for Feruchemical savants. So I doubt it. 

I tend to agree, though I would qualify it by saying that Im not sure which side of that line Compounding would fall on, since it's a combination of the two systems. The WoB makes it sound like more of a Doylistic decision not to feature them for narrative complexity's sake, rather than a Watsonian and/or realmic-theory reason it wouldnt ever happen. 

1 minute ago, Calderis said:

And as a curiosity, why do you think compounding would corrupt the memory? 

Mostly just as a spit-balled possibility if the result is not going to be an added benefit (and since it's a Hack of two systems that seems like a reasonably possibility).  Memories are arguably the most "complex" form of Investiture stored in feruchemy by far, in the sense that it is a Charge but also a recorded Signal, if that makes any sense?  If Investiture is like electric charge and the different forms/effects are different "frequencies" (in the same way Microwaves and Radio waves are just different frequencies of EM energy), then a Copper metalmind might be more akin to an actual recorded song (and Identity is kind of like the unique recognizable "voice" pattern of the singer, btw).  Operating under that paradigm, if the normal hack works because the pre-charged metalmind is "ringing" with the feruchemical effect's frequency, amplifying copper by cramming a ton of extra energy into that signal might easily override and scramble the actual contents of the signal, resulting in just a really loud but largely incoherent mental shout.

 

[StarrFall]

Been off the forum for a while but this seems like a good one to jump back in on.  I'm spit-balling here myself, but:

1) Regarding the exceptional details TLR can recollect; perhaps that is a simple function of his filling a coppermind while compounding mental speed and burning Tin (providing enhanced senses and the ability to process them consciously)?  Presumably an enhanced mental capacity at the time of storage could affect the granularity of the memory "signal" stored (thinking analog vs digital).

2) Perhaps recalling a memory from a coppermind through compounding pins the memory to the compounder's spirit web (or some such) in addition to their physical brain, facilitating the indelible "super memory" theory (my favorite running theory at this point).

Edit for clarity: #1 makes the memory a "super memory" while #2 makes the "super memory" indelible.

Edited October 8, 2018 by StarrFall

[Embrisk he/him]

Damnnn, that is overpowered. No wonder compounders are so strong.

So, through compounding, you don't squeeze more out of the metal, you draw power directly from the shards?

[Ashertliden]

19 minutes ago, Servillius said:

So, through compounding, you don't squeeze more out of the metal, you draw power directly from the shards?

Well, yes, but only from Preservation, not "the shards". This is because Allomancy is end-positive, and power is drawn from Preservation, so when you use allomancy to fuel feruchemy, the power is drawn directly from Preservation.

 

Check out the "Mechanics" section here: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Compounding

 

[Dunkum he/him]

19 minutes ago, Servillius said:

Damnnn, that is overpowered. No wonder compounders are so strong.

So, through compounding, you don't squeeze more out of the metal, you draw power directly from the shards?

yea, pretty much.  normal ferruchemy is limited to what you can store, compounding allows you to overcome that limit.  a gold compounder can heal from pretty much anything as long as they have metalminds available.  A cadmium compounder would literally never have to breathe again once they started compounding...as long as they had a supply of cadmium.  and likewise a bendalloy compounder could theoretically go without eating for as long as they want, provided they have the metal. etc.

[Ashertliden]

2 minutes ago, Dunkum said:

A cadmium compounder would literally never have to breathe again once they started compounding...as long as they had a supply of cadmium.  and likewise a bendalloy compounder could theoretically go without eating for as long as they want, provided they have the metal. etc.

I don't believe that's true. TLR, for example, could never become immortal because as he aged he needed to store his youth at progressively faster speeds. Eventually, he would've reached a point where his age would become so great he couldn't store and burn his stored youthfulness quickly enough to survive.

[Embrisk he/him]

Yeah, I always wondered why the Lord Ruler didn't have to, after a thousand years, have to sit in a room for six hours a day to compound enough atium to survive.

[Dunkum he/him]

1 hour ago, Kal-Eldin said:

I don't believe that's true. TLR, for example, could never become immortal because as he aged he needed to store his youth at progressively faster speeds. Eventually, he would've reached a point where his age would become so great he couldn't store and burn his stored youthfulness quickly enough to survive.

sure but age accumulates in a way that breaths do not.  lets say you breathe 1 million times per year (no idea what the actual number is, but not really important).  in that case, if you want to go a year without breathing, you need 1,000,000 breaths stored (or really 1 year's worth of breath stored).  to go 2 years you need 2,000,000, for 10 years you need 10,000,000.  but age doesn't work that way.  If TLR wanted to be eternally 40 years old, then on his 41st birthday, he'd have to be constantly tapping 1 year worth of age,so he has to have, for that day, 1 days worth of 1 year of age stored up (that is a really weird unit of measurement, by the way - the amount of stored age you need to be 1 year younger for 24 hours), but on his 42nd birthday, he'd need to have twice that much, slightly more in fact, since we know from Sazed that tapping more of a trait at once induces some loss (annoyingly Sazed called this concept - tapping greater and greater amounts of a trait for a shorter time - compounding, but that term obviously won't work in this context).  so 2 days worth fo 1 year of age wouldn't be sufficient, it would have to be fractionally more than that to account for the loss. so to go 2 years without aging, he need to tap over 3 years worth of 1 year of age (an even more awkward unit of measurement somehow - the amount fo stored age you need to be 1 year younger for 365 days).  to go 3 years, he need 6 years worth of 1 year of age, plus the fraction to absorb the loss.  to go a full 10 years he needs 55 years worth of 1 year of age compared to breaths where he just needed 10 years worth of breaths.  it increases quadratically ([y*(y+1)]/2 is the actual equation where y is the number of years), while breaths or nutrients increase linearly.  Also, eventually that fractional loss from tapping more of the trait at once is going to matter. in order to get to the time of mistborn era 1 TLR had to tap something like half a million years worth of 1 year of age, not including the overhead for tapping so much at once.

and yes, I am aware that he doesn't need a full year of age on the first day after his 40th birthday in order to not age, but that doesn't alter the math too too much.  trying to account for the fractional years and fractional days wasn't worth it, so I didn't bother, but ultimately you arrive at a similar end point.

anyway, the real limit for TLR in terms of compounding age was always going to be the amount of available atium - since the amount of atium he would have to burn to prevent himself from aging would increase quadratically as the years passed.

[Ember Hawk]

So I like to think how this can work.  if someone is making a copper cloud and pushing that into a copper mind what is being stored? With the others it is easy to say, some attribute.  I think the advantage you would have with compounding copper is you would not have to forget it.  If i remember right when you store something in a copper mind it is taken from you mind and put in there.  you can remember that it is in there but not anything too specific.  So when burning copper to fill the copper mind I think it as a way of recording what you are currently seeing/thinking.  and It might even record anything around you as a copper cloud will effect all within it.  all of this done without having to remove them memories from your mind in the first place.  

Edited October 9, 2018 by Ember Hawk

[Rossamund]

On ‎10‎/‎10‎/‎2018 at 8:39 AM, Ember Hawk said:

So I like to think how this can work.  if someone is making a copper cloud and pushing that into a copper mind what is being stored? With the others it is easy to say, some attribute.  I think the advantage you would have with compounding copper is you would not have to forget it.  If i remember right when you store something in a copper mind it is taken from you mind and put in there.  you can remember that it is in there but not anything too specific.  So when burning copper to fill the copper mind I think it as a way of recording what you are currently seeing/thinking.  and It might even record anything around you as a copper cloud will effect all within it.  all of this done without having to remove them memories from your mind in the first place.  

That's not how compounding works. Compounding makes more of what was stored in a metalmind. The allomantic and feruchemical  abilities don't interact in compounding. Instead the alomancy is altered to produce the feruchemical effect. So the effect of compounding copper will be on the already stored memories.

[garlick]

As I read this thread I just keep getting a mental image of a copper compounder being able to keep the memories whiles hes compounding while storing a new copper mind. With the era 2 tech I could see medallions that instantly teach you things. A copper compounding doctor stores his knowlage compounds it back filling medallions and keeps his memories. 

[StarrFall]

I'm not feeling super confident about what I said previously about the role of the spirit web in this, and I think I have an answer that is more consistent with compounding in general and is satisfactory to my mind (assuming my assumptions below don't make me an a$$): given that compounding will replicate Investiture to 8x the original amount, perhaps the memory can be replicated to 8 new copperminds upon compounding (instead of trying to cram all of that replicated signal into a single coppermind), one of which can then immediately be recalled into TLR's mind and the other 7 of which can be stored for future compounding, disaster recovery, or simply as a future refresher for TLR?

Another possible factor:

I'm unsure if compounding REQUIRES the compounder to fill a metalmind with the investiture being compounded, or if the compounded Investiture can be accessed directly without being piped into a metalmind first, but assuming it CAN be utilized directly then one could assume that compounding copper would make a very (8x) strong impression on the compounder's mind.  This could be a contributing factor to the quality of TLR's memories.

Regardless, even if TLR only recalled the memories via tapping the copper (instead of burning/compounding), I would suspect that the initial memory stored would have a lot more detail by virtue of TLR's constant tapping of Zinc and burning of Tin, and the redundant copperminds would allow TLR to nab a fresh copy of all memories stored, with absolutely no degradation whatsoever, whenever he wishes.

Edited October 15, 2018 by StarrFall

[Ashertliden]

Quote

perhaps the memory can be replicated to 8 new copperminds upon compounding

This would be a very useful skill, not necessarily to yourself, but definitely to others. As the use of Aluminum and Nicrosil medallions become more common in Scadrial, if copper compounding gave you the ability to store the same memory in multiple copperminds, then this could be used in great effect to share memories with large amounts of people. I imagine this skill would be greatly valued at in-world universities, or places like Silverlight. 

[StarrFall]

5 minutes ago, Kal-Eldin said:

As the use of Aluminum and Nicrosil medallions become more common in Scadrial, if copper compounding gave you the ability to store the same memory in multiple copperminds, then this could be used in great effect to share memories with large amounts of people. I imagine this skill would be greatly valued at in-world universities, or places such as Silverlight. 

Agreed. Could provide the foundation for the era 3 Scadrial library.  The upside for the individual being they always have a fresh copy of their memories ready to go should their memories get a little hazy.

Edited October 15, 2018 by StarrFall

[Ashertliden]

If Dysian Aimians are able to use medallions in this way, once Scadrial interacts with them in MBE4 information should be able to be communicated and distributed almost instantly. I doubt there will be a naturally born Dysian compounder, but if they were to share their memory with a compounder using a medallion, then that compounder could then share the info. I imagine that would be remarkably helpful for communications between FTL spaceships.

Edited October 15, 2018 by Kal-Eldin

[StarrFall]

3 hours ago, Kal-Eldin said:

If Dysian Aimians are able to use medallions in this way, once Scadrial interacts with them in MBE4 information should be able to be communicated and distributed almost instantly.

Do Dysian's component cremlings need to report or are all aware of each other in real time?  If the latter (and assuming my theory on filling multiple copperminds is correct) then I'd say that you understated just how powerful this could be; there could be a single Dysian Aimian stationed (distributed?) on every colonized world in the Cosmere that could potentially relay incredibly complex messages in a heartbeat.  A living quantum spanreed that can communicate so much more than what a writing implement is capable of; a living Cosmere Service Bus, ha!  Would just need a good collection of double-copper twinborns to spread the messages once they arrive on each given world/ship.

Good call on that @Kal-Eldin

Edited October 15, 2018 by StarrFall

[Embrisk he/him]

Just double checking on something I am kind of confused about.

"The only way to allow someone else to use a metalmind that you stored an attribute in would be to dump your entire Identity into an Aluminum metalmind. This way your metalmind is not "keyed" to your specific Identity. Any ferring/feruchemist capable of tapping that attribute should be able to access it this way."

If this was real, and you could store the ability to play piano into copper, you could have one person who can do everything.

[StarrFall]

21 minutes ago, Servillius said:

If this was real, and you could store the ability to play piano into copper, you could have one person who can do everything.

You are correct about making a keyless metalmind, but copper can only store memories, not developed skills. You could store information on music theory and info on HOW to play the piano, but the experience and muscle memory involved would need to be developed by each individual. Would give you a definite leg up for getting started for sure, though. 

[Embrisk he/him]

^^

[Calderis he/him]

2 hours ago, StarrFall said:

You are correct about making a keyless metalmind, but copper can only store memories, not developed skills. You could store information on music theory and info on HOW to play the piano, but the experience and muscle memory involved would need to be developed by each individual. Would give you a definite leg up for getting started for sure, though. 

This is all true, but there is an additional limitation. Memories stored in copper need to be retrieved, used and then stored again as quickly as possible. For some reason, memories pulled out of a coppermind deteriorate rapidly. You want to store them again as quickly as you can to preserve the knowledge. 

[Embrisk he/him]

Yeah, that was just linking with my idea that maybe muscle memory could be stored in a similar way to regular memories.

[StarrFall]

1 hour ago, Calderis said:

This is all true, but there is an additional limitation. Memories stored in copper need to be retrieved, used and then stored again as quickly as possible. For some reason, memories pulled out of a coppermind deteriorate rapidly. You want to store them again as quickly as you can to preserve the knowledge. 

What do you think about the "copying into multiple copperminds upon compounding" theory?  If that stands up, then there would be redundant copies that would/could negate the need to preserve the knowledge by putting back into the coppermind.

Edited October 16, 2018 by StarrFall

[Calderis he/him]

19 minutes ago, StarrFall said:

What do you think about the "copying into multiple copperminds upon compounding" theory?  If that stands up, then there would be redundant copies that would negate the need to preserve the knowledge by putting back into the coppermind.

I think it's likely. It's part of how I think compounding works for any informational system, including spikes. 

 

[StarrFall]

@Calderis, you are a living library yourself.  Thanks for connecting the dots there!

[MountainKing]

I actually like the theory that is you don't store the copies of the memories in a coppermind, you just get one memory back that's really hard to forget(because you would have eight versions of the memories stored together)