How long can souls age before they die?

[kroen]

Brandon confirmed that while stormlight can heal, it doesn't prevent aging. I'm assuming gold compounding works the same way. 

But what I want to know is this: As far as we humans are concerned, no one has ever died strictly due to old age; it's always some disease or another like cancer or organ failure that gets us. But since radiants and gold compounders can heal themselves of such maladies, when exactly will age kill them? 

Unrelated question: We know stormlight and gold compounding can heal wounds caused by a shardblade. But would they be able to heal a shardblade wound to the heart or brain? (Assuming of course they engaged their super healing before being stabbed.)

Edited July 9, 2020 by kroen

[RShara she/her]

So when Cosmere healing takes place, it heals to the Spiritual Ideal. The Spiritual Ideal is affected by age. So even though the organ is the tip top shape it can be, the organ is still old and wearing out. So it just eventually stops working, because the Spiritual Ideal is also aged. So the organs still give out eventually. It takes longer because most damages are healed, but not quite all.

I think that if they have a healing started before they're hit, they could theoretically heal from it. Stormlight is more passive healing, and requires effort in order to heal a Shardblade wound, so I think the Radiant would have to be expecting the hit and forcing through the healing before the hit happens. I would guess gold-healing would be the same way.

[Doomdrinker she/her]

Now that I'm thinking about it gold compounding should completely eliminate old age and the associated death. The reason we age and eventually die is because as our cells replicate over the course of your lifetime they slowly get damaged and lose the ability to self replicate then things start breaking and we die, but if your cells never get permanently damaged they will always be able to replicate.

There are animals that have just this ability, a species of jelly fish can repair it's cells periodically and thus never dies of old age. 

 

As to the healing from an instantly lethal blow, I'm not sure. Before reading OB I would have said that any radiant could have survived as long as they already had a fair amount of stormlight in them. But in the Renarin scene in OB it's made pretty clear the his healing is way better than other radiants so perhaps only radiants with access to regrowth could heal fast enough. As for gold combounders then I'm pretty sure they can heal through basically anything, the Lord ruler was litteraly beheaded at one point.

[Honorless he/him]

There are 3 ways to look at this:

And well, I can't give you any numbers as I don't have the books with me but I can tell you where to look

1) Szeth's revival by Nale was not perfect, he was almost too late and as a result Szeth has a Cognitive afterimage trailing behind him.

As Kelsier showed us, people's Cognitive selves don't linger long in the Cognitive. You can linger somewhat longer if you're Invested. A Sliver could stay on as a Cognitive Shadow indefinitely or near indefinitely.

2) Spiritwebs themselves can linger in the Spiritual Realm for a really long time. Szeth's screams come from there as confirmed by both Nale & Wyndle, so did Evi's forgiveness to Dalinar, confirmed by Brandon.

3) This answer is the closest to what you're asking: physical age is something that is noted in the Spiritweb. Holding a lot of Investiture can be used to lengthen one's lifespan, but one will feel the weight of their years if their Investiture is taken away; most forms of immortality in the Cosmere involve tricking the Spiritweb.

 

As to your question, if healing is activated beforehand, most likely yes, perhaps short of a beheading (which would result in a cessation of brain activity fast enough that maintaining the healing going should be very improbable). We see Renarin surviving getting squished and Shallan getting stabbed in the face. TLR could also survive an atrocious amount of damage.

Edited July 9, 2020 by R J

[kroen]

What I wanted to know is what age would souls say is enough.

[Dunkum he/him]

2 hours ago, Doomdrinker said:

Now that I'm thinking about it gold compounding should completely eliminate old age and the associated death. The reason we age and eventually die is because as our cells replicate over the course of your lifetime they slowly get damaged and lose the ability to self replicate then things start breaking and we die, but if your cells never get permanently damaged they will always be able to replicate.

this would have the opposite effect, actually.  increased healing has to come from increased cell generation.  human cells can only divide so many times before they fail, so increasedhealing, from a biological perspective, would cause you to burn through your life faster.  that said, i'm pretty sure it doesnt actually work that way in the cosmere, and instead works along the lines of what RShara was saying.

[Honorless he/him]

6 hours ago, kroen said:

What I wanted to know is what age would souls say is enough.

Natural lifespan or indefinite, there's no specific upper limit as far as we know

[Weltall]

10 hours ago, Doomdrinker said:

Now that I'm thinking about it gold compounding should completely eliminate old age and the associated death.

Miles quite specifically notes that It Doesn't Work That Way. He ages and eventually he'll just keel over (because of his Spiritual age fhough he doesn't use rhat term) even if he's in otherwise excellent health.

All methods of immortality we've seen in the Cosmere involve some sort of cheat that either stops your soul from realizing its age (F-Atium within limits, Fifth Heightening) or floods it with Investiture which is functionally eternal (Elantrians, Cognitive Shadows). Healing magics don't work that way.

[Doomdrinker she/her]

12 hours ago, Weltall said:

Miles quite specifically notes that It Doesn't Work That Way. He ages and eventually he'll just keel over (because of his Spiritual age fhough he doesn't use rhat term) even if he's in otherwise excellent health.

All methods of immortality we've seen in the Cosmere involve some sort of cheat that either stops your soul from realizing its age (F-Atium within limits, Fifth Heightening) or floods it with Investiture which is functionally eternal (Elantrians, Cognitive Shadows). Healing magics don't work that way.

Ye I am aware of that , what I'm saying is that it's weird because based on how ageing actually works in real life it should work differently to how we see in the books.

[Weltall]

7 hours ago, Doomdrinker said:

Ye I am aware of that , what I'm saying is that it's weird because based on how ageing actually works in real life it should work differently to how we see in the books.

Last I checked, the real world doesn't have a tripartite division of reality into three Realms so the way aging works on the physical level is kind of irrelevant.

[Brgst13]

On 7/9/2020 at 8:14 AM, Dunkum said:

this would have the opposite effect, actually.  increased healing has to come from increased cell generation.  human cells can only divide so many times before they fail, so increasedhealing, from a biological perspective, would cause you to burn through your life faster.  that said, i'm pretty sure it doesnt actually work that way in the cosmere, and instead works along the lines of what RShara was saying.

This assumes that Investiture-based healing does not restore the cells to their Spiritual ideal.  This Spiritual ideal would include the appropriate length of telomere for the age of the cell.  Also, this should in theory greatly reduce or eliminate single point mutations and replication errors in the DNA, as well as mitigating free radical damage.  (I agree with your point that it likely doesn't shorten lifespan, just wanted to put out some explanations on how it would work on the cellular level)