Organisms you can use Progression on

[+Oltux72 he/him]

Can you use Progression on animals in the same way it can be used on plants? Can you turn a tadpole into a frog or an alligator egg into a fully grown alligator? Do you have a choice among features depending on environment, like sex in alligators?

[Honorless he/him]

Progression can be harnessed as Re-Growth so I don't see why not. I don't think it can be used on more intelligent animals though or ones with simply more self-awareness, if the Surge works through the Cognitive Realm. I don't think it should be able to kill anything by 'over-Progression', i.e., aging them (aside from maybe, fruitflies). But those are just my opinions, we haven't seen Progression enough to definitively know the answer.

As for how it would affect sex-changing animals... I think it would switch to the default gender (female, in most cases... or at least the ones I know of) but shouldn't hamper their ability to turn their sex in response to environmental stimuli, same as what occurs in nature

[Dunkum he/him]

1 hour ago, Honorless said:

As for how it would affect sex-changing animals... I think it would switch to the default gender (female, in most cases... or at least the ones I know of) but shouldn't hamper their ability to turn their sex in response to environmental stimuli, same as what occurs in nature

We know most cosmere healing works by sort of aligning the physical with the cognitive/spirtual versions of the self.  this is why Kaladin's slave brands don't heal for instance, but his tattoos do - he considers the brands to be part of him at this point.  so based on that, if an animal changed its sex and was later healed with progression, then its likely that it would retain the new sex, provided it had had it long enough to shift its cognitive image of itself.

[Quantus he/him]

I dont think we have any specific data, so Im going to say that logically the line between Growth and Regrowth will likely fall at the same point where a life-form goes from Bead to Flame representation in the Cognitive Realm.   That seems to represent the separating line of Sapience.  

 

On the other hand, we dont  have anything that actually proves that Growth cannot be used on anyone, humans & Singers included.  Maybe Growth could indeed be used to rapidly age a person (from childhood to adulthood or to geriatricity), and it simply able to maniplation both the Health and Age regions of the Spiritweb (ie both F-Gold and F-Atium traits)

[Calderis he/him]

I agree with @Quantus

"Re-growth" is only one aspect of Progression. I don't see any reason why Progression couldn't be used offensively to advance age Spiritually. 

[GoWibble he/him]

Although aging the animals would do something that elves in The Inheritance Cycle touched on: 

basically, if you change yourself too much, you wouldn't know how to use them properly. 

 

[Pathfinder]

4 hours ago, Dunkum said:

We know most cosmere healing works by sort of aligning the physical with the cognitive/spirtual versions of the self.  this is why Kaladin's slave brands don't heal for instance, but his tattoos do - he considers the brands to be part of him at this point.  so based on that, if an animal changed its sex and was later healed with progression, then its likely that it would retain the new sex, provided it had had it long enough to shift its cognitive image of itself.

We do have a WoB that supports this. He was asked if someone had the transition surgery to go from (for example) male to female, and then was healed using cosmere magic, would the person go back to being male, or would the person heal not only in appearance as a woman, but also having functioning organs etc. Brandon confirmed that the person would remain female, and the cosmere healing would heal the surgery to be functioning because the person sees themselves at a fundamental level as female. 

 

So having trouble finding the WoB I was thinking of, but this one basically says the same thing, but with the Returned instead

 

Kogiopsis

Since Returned come back as kind of an idealized form of themselves, if somebody was transgender in their original life would they Return as the sex they had been assigned the first time or the gender they identified as?

Brandon Sanderson

I would think that a transgendered person could definitely come back as how they identify. Perception is very important in these sorts of things. It would really depend on the person, but yes.

Words of Radiance Portland signing (March 7, 2014) Edited October 28, 2019 by Pathfinder

[+Oltux72 he/him]

But the egg literally has no sex and never had. We could conclude that you cannot do a sex change on a grown alligator, because it knows whether it is male or female, but that is not the use case we are looking at.

[Pathfinder]

On 10/29/2019 at 9:39 AM, Oltux72 said:

But the egg literally has no sex and never had. We could conclude that you cannot do a sex change on a grown alligator, because it knows whether it is male or female, but that is not the use case we are looking at.

I read what was proposed as how for instance a marlin fish if there are a plethora of male fish, then some of the group will change their sex to female, so the group can continue to procreate. That if the male marlin that changed itself to female then got injured, it would heal back to female rather than male, because it sees itself now as female. I posted the WoB that supports this. If you are talking about changing the sex of an animal while still in gestation, that I think is a different matter. 

[Dunkum he/him]

6 hours ago, Pathfinder said:

I read what was proposed as how for instance a marlin fish if there are a plethora of male fish, then some of the group will change their sex to female, so the group can continue to procreate. That if the male marlin that changed itself to female then got injured, it would heal back to female rather than male, because it sees itself now as female. I posted the WoB that supports this. If you are talking about changing the sex of an animal while still in gestation, that I think is a different matter. 

Looking at it again, i think the question was more...if you do something like rapidly age an egg to hatching (similar to using progresssion to grow vines or something) then would you be able to control things like sex of the eventual baby, since that isn't determined when the egg is laid but later in the gestation process.

 

My guess would be that someone sufficiently talented probably could, yes.  but i don't have much to back that up with.

[Quantus he/him]

On 10/29/2019 at 9:39 AM, Oltux72 said:

But the egg literally has no sex and never had. We could conclude that you cannot do a sex change on a grown alligator, because it knows whether it is male or female, but that is not the use case we are looking at.

Genetically speaking they do, the gender chromosomes are determined at the moment of fertilization and dont change past that.  Environmental factors can cause female traits to manifest on a genetically male chicken, but progression tends to ignore environmental factors.  

[Pathfinder]

15 hours ago, Dunkum said:

Looking at it again, i think the question was more...if you do something like rapidly age an egg to hatching (similar to using progresssion to grow vines or something) then would you be able to control things like sex of the eventual baby, since that isn't determined when the egg is laid but later in the gestation process.

 

My guess would be that someone sufficiently talented probably could, yes.  but i don't have much to back that up with.

I understand that was the original query, just @Honorless made a comment that you then responded to, and I was confirming your response in that comment. Basically I was saying "although I do not know about prior to birth, I do know once the individual sees themselves a way, they will heal in that manner. So although I am not sure whether we can determine how something sees itself prior to birth, if there was a way to, then that is how it would heal"

[+Oltux72 he/him]

5 hours ago, Quantus said:

Genetically speaking they do, the gender chromosomes are determined at the moment of fertilization and dont change past that.

In birds and insects. But not in crocodillians and turtles.