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Shardcast: Frost and Dragons


Chaos
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This week on Shardcast, we are discussing one of the mysterious figures in the cosmere: Frost, a real life cosmere dragon. We discuss the letters involving him, the Traveler, the Dragonsteel sample chapters, and the in-world Seventeenth Shard. Also, Pokemon and quantum mechanics. For some reason.

Our cast today is Eric (Chaos), Ian (WeiryWriter), Joshua (jofwu, who talks more this time!), and Grace (thegatorgirl).

 

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On Frost not always being immortal: are dragon's born or are they made on Yolen? Could Frost have been born a human and been altered into a dragon? Via Dragonsteel, maybe? Would be a Brandon-esque twist, people think it's called that because Dragon's grow it, but Dragonsteel actually makes Dragons. 

Then there is the possibility that Frost acquired a new type of immortality. As Brandon said in this WoB there are several in the Cosmere. 

Side note: I wonder if Frost can't leave Yolen because he can't. Maybe he is a cognitive shadow reincorporated, like Kelsier or the Heralds. There are WoBs stating they can't leave the systems they are in. There is a way to do it, but Kelsier hasn't figured it out.  I think it's more likely that he chooses not to leave, but it's possible that he can't. 

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#50 Nov. 29, 2016

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on which definition of immortal you mean.

Doesn't age, but can be killed by conventional means. (You've seen some of these in the cosmere, but I'll leave you to discuss who.)

Heals from wounds, but still ages. (Knights Radiant with Stormlight are like this.)

Reborn when killed. (The Heralds.)

Doesn't age and can heal, but dependent upon magic to stay this way, and so have distinct weakness to be exploited. (The Lord Ruler, among others.)

Hive beings who are constantly losing individual members, but maintaining a persistent personality spread across all of them, immortal in that as long as too much of the hive isn't wiped out, the personality can persist. (The sleepless.)

Bits of sapient magic, eternal and endless, though the personality can be "destroyed" in specific ways. (Seons. Spren. Nightblood. Cognitive Shadows, like a certain character from Scadrial.)

Shards (Really just a supercharged version of the previous category.)

And then, of course, there's Hoid. I'm not going to say which category, if any, he's in.

Some of these blend together--the Heralds, for example, are technically a variety of cognitive shadow. I'm not saying each of these categories above are distinct, intended to be the end-all definitions. They're off the cuff groupings I made to explain a point: immortality is a theme of the cosmere works--which, at their core, are experiments on what happens when men are given the power of deity.

 

Edited by Child of Hodor

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Gray to

Posted (edited)

When Chaos and WeiryWriter said they cant comment on whether dragonsteel is how Hoid became immortal, it only made me suspicious that they know the answer.

I'm on to you guys:ph34r:

*Adjusts aluminum foil hat*

Also since Dragonsteel looks silvery and silver seems to be an important aspect to dragons' appearances, maybe a dragon founded Silverlight?

Edited by Gray to

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Pattern

Posted (edited)

Grace called for a physicist, so here a short explanation:

You can't apply quantum mechanical principles like changing a state by observing it (projecting the system to an eigenstate by measuring) to macroscopic events due to decoherence. Many particles interacting with each other will lead to classical behaviour if not brought into a very special environment (like with Bose Einstein condensates). So Frost observing the cosmere does not change events in the cosmere.

An experiment showing this effect of decoherence is when you repeat the Young double slit experiment (which orinally shows interference patterns with electrons) in a heated environment. There you get a classical result with two maxima. The reason is that the electrons interact with heat radiation (photons) an therefore their coherence is disturbed - leading to a classical intensity distribution.

Edited by Pattern

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What if the letter thing is more simple and they're just being chucked into a perpendicularity? 

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