Chaos

Don't worry, guys, we totally defeated that hacker of the Cheese Lord.

I don't know what all you are talking about.

If it doesn't involve waffles, you didn't get it right.

I always knew the waffle pattern had a deeper meaning.

Eric showed me this crazy analysis of how math influenced art. That's what I was talking about up there. It was more awesome than waffles, and I never thought I'd say that.

Citation needed.

Sure, but there's only evidence for three main magic systems on Roshar (both from the book and Brandon's comments). If there were combination magics, there would 6 to 7.

You need more theory posts. In exciting news, I love math.

I would like to announce that March 2012 has the most posts of any month on 17th Shard, with 3417 posts. In second was November 2011 at 3399. This month freaking beat the release of Alloy of Law for post activity (barely, but still, holy crap guys).

I agree completely! I wrote a long theory quite a while on the subject called the Principle of Intent, which is pretty much this. I've always thought Breath can't be taken due to the direct nature of Endowment, too. I feel the consensus on the site leans to Surgebinding being Honor's magic system. The oaths and bonds scream too much like Honor for it to not. EDIT: The Principle of Intent topic, though, very much needs to be rewritten. It's too long and rambly. It was posted a long, long time ago... Sorry about that. But it was in that topic where I happened to hypothesize how Allomancy is of Preservation, and it turned out to be right.

It'll be after AMOL, so most likely a 2013 release.

Haha, indeed LevenThumps, it's also been presumed that Shallan's Memories are derived from another Surge. As well as... that other thing Jasnah does, which I won't say, because I don't know if you've seen it yet.

Well, there you go then. Thanks! EDIT: Stormlight expert, I am not.

When was this? It's not in the interview database (as far as I can tell).

Haha, I know. Just didn't want anyone else jumping in, you know? Musicspren and Bunyod, it's funny you were mentioning rep/post ratios, because Will and I were talking about this a week ago. It's crazy how much reputation you have, Musicspren. Way to beat Peter, haha. I would like to announce that I'm going to Montana State University for my Master's.

Agreed, consider it a primary source unless contradicted otherwise.

Your middle school is way more awesome than mine, clearly Voidbringer, I need to refresh myself on my abstract algebra. It was never my strongest suit. So I'll go look into it, but no promises. I kind of didn't expect so many high level math people here! I'll do my best though. Satsuoni, the solutions of the Dirac equation certainly are what you use in Quantum Electrodynamics. I'm not familiar with the derivations for that stuff, but yes, essentially, you need the Dirac equation for that. Full QED definitely will solve your problem.

Oh, yeah, naturally. I am, in fact, totally lying to make an illustrative point. To do a proper treatment requires Quantum Electrodynamics, which is waaaay too math-intensive to make the point about wavefunction collapse I was trying, haha. If it makes you feel better, maybe think of the double-slit experiment with electron beams. Or something.

With complex square roots, I am very careful in that I am taking the principal square root. Yes, there are two square roots, but I am doing the principal square root w = z^(1/2) so that w is a function, and so I can do operations like differentiation on it. I can't do that on a multivalued thing. And this way, you will always get a unique answer. The thing with infinity is that it isn't a real (or complex) number. Yes, once I define the complex numbers, I will eventually make the extended complex plane which contains one extra number, infinity, but infinity is not an element of the complex numbers nor it is a real number. There is no pair of fixed real numbers (a, with the properties you describe. We have nothing against infinity; we use it literally every day when we invoke calculus. However, it really isn't a number. Infinity is relatively meaningless outside a proper epsilon-delta definition of a limit. It's important to be rigorous with this, because otherwise you will have logical inconsistencies. This is, at least, how we do it in analysis, and that's the field I know best. I can't speak for other mathematical fields. By the way, in the complex world, there's no such thing as negative infinity. There's only one infinity, and this is because we define it in terms of the modulus of a number. So, anyway, it's because of mathematical rigor that we need to be very careful with infinity. Plus, I can't do proper operations, and we'll have other difficulties if we define infinity in this way. The next suggestion you had is that all pairs of numbers containing zero to be the Zero Element. Now, there's many problems with doing this. While you could do this--as you can define things in a lot of ways, however you'd like--this is a bad way of defining this. Firstly, directly to the point at hand, the way I defined addition makes an algebraic group with respect to addition. This is very good, because the real numbers are an algebraic group with addition, too, and we always want the complex numbers to give back the real numbers and all their properties when I let the imaginary component of the complex numbers go to zero. By doing this, I wouldn't get the real numbers back, and that's a rather pointless endeavor. These group/ring/field properties are very necessary. Specifically, the Zero Element must be unique in groups. The Zero Element has a very importantly, namely, in a group G, with operation + and Zero Element e, for all a in G, we get a+e = e+a = a. In effect, the Zero Element doesn't "do" anything under this "addition". Which is exactly what we have for the typical addition. This for all elements in the group, including the Zero Element. So let's say we have two Zero Elements, call them, for kicks and giggles, 0 and 2. We need 2 + 0 = 2, because 0 is a Zero Element. We need 2 + 0 = 0 + 2 = 2. However, if 2 is also a Zero Element, that means for any a, we get a + 2 = 2 + a = a. Set a = 0, and then we get 0 + 2 = 2 + 0 = 0. We can't have multiple Zero Elements for this property to be true. 2 must be 0 in this case (the abstract 2 and 0, I'm talking about). The Zero Element is unique. Plus, come on. Even in non-complex land, it's very silly to say that (0,a) is "zero" for any a. Namely, let's look at some nice properties of vectors, like length. Using the distance formula, the length of (0,a) is sqrt( 0^2 + a^2) = a. I don't know about you, but I think a proper "zero vector" should have zero length. There's only one vector does this, and that's the vector with every component equal to 0. If that wasn't the zero vector, then we've destroyed linear algebra. I kind of find the machinery of linear algebra to be kind of important, so this may not be the best zero we could choose So you see, in defining an expansion of the real numbers, we have a couple of issues. We need the key fact that, when the "imaginary" part (which we haven't defined yet, but let's just say for now that it's another, "nonreal" component that we are adding to the usual real number) is 0, then we need to get the real numbers back. As in, a + ib = (a, If b = 0, then we just have the real number a. I should get the real numbers back. But, in your definition of 0, (a,0) is considered a Zero Element. So, whatever that new space is, it certainly doesn't have the properties of the real numbers, because the real numbers are an algebraic field. This may suggest to you that an "extension" of the real numbers should also be an algebraic field, and there's only one bigger field than the reals, and that is the complex numbers, as I have defined them. Besides, even though that complex multiplication seems weird, it's certainly true that if the imaginary components are 0, (a, 0)*(c, 0) = (a*c - 0*0, a*0 + 0*c) = (ac,0). Which is exactly you'd want--pure real numbers multiplied by pure real numbers are real numbers. So, long story short, I didn't want to "save" my random multiplication that I made up back there, because it turned out to be a rather poor choice of multiplications. This multiplication forms a field, and is much more useful because of it. Hoo boy, I fear we may find a limit to my math knowledge eventually, haha. We can talk physics, but realize that you can't derive physics from first principles, like I did with the complex numbers That, in my opinion, makes physics more challenging than pure mathematics. So we have three questions here. 1. What happens when a positron and an electron are in the same potential well? 2. What is a spinor? 3. What's the difference with Lie algebra and normal algebra? Well, for #1, the thing is... well. You aren't going to ever be able to answer this with nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. Those particles are going to very quickly annihilate into two photons, and depending how the potential well was constructed, the photons may bounce around the well, or be absorbed into the well, or escape the well. The short answer is that you need Quantum Electrodynamics to properly make sense of this system beyond that qualitative thing I just wrote about. While I have had senior level particle physics, and have seen some of QED, I know nonrelativistic quantum mechanics much more, on a much more practical level. This is because if you think solving the Schrodinger Equation for wavefunctions is hard, the relativistic version, the Dirac Equation (well, at least, for spin 1/2 particles. The Dirac equation does not apply to spin 3/2 or others, but there are apparently other equations that work for that) is really, really hard. Why is the Dirac equation harder? Well, it leads to your second point, about spinors. The thing is, the Dirac equation is a matrix equation, with very special, 4x4 matrices called gamma matrices in it. These gamma matrices incorporate the Pauli matrices (if you're familiar with them) and so, in a weird way, the Dirac equation has spin built right into it from the start. (Fun fact, Schrodinger actually always wanted to derive a relativistic version of the Schrodinger equation, because everyone had known about relativity for a while now. Even before Schrodinger found the equation that bears his name, he discovered what is now called the Klein-Gordon equation, which is a relativistic quantum equation, but it happens to only work for spin 0 particles. Schrodinger then later found the nonrelativistic version, which he finally decided to release because, to his surprise, it gave kinda good results) So, what is a spinor? Well, since the Dirac equation is a matrix equation, the "wavefunction" solutions are now a column vector with four components. So where nonrelativistic wavefunctions have a scalar amplitude, the relativistic version has four amplitude components. This makes things... a lot harder. Partial differential equations are hard enough, and now I have a vector to keep track of? As you can imagine, the Dirac equation is incredibly hard, and you kind of need to guess the form of the spinor (that is, that vector "wavefunction") and try to solve the Dirac Equation that way. As for question #3, I can't really tell you what Lie algebra is. I may be able to in two years, when I get my Master's, but right now, I've only had one abstract algebra class, so I couldn't tell you. I direct you to Wikipedia, because honestly, that'd be the first thing I'd do to try to explain it right now

Really? When your two options are 1. Everyone dies or 2. Some people dies, but world still exists, as Preservation, you'd seriously choose Option 1? The Shards are not mindless, on some level, your personality does get to interpret the Shard's intent. Ruin can build up to later destroy. Well, you know, Snapping kills people. Preservation can hurt something to later preserve. However, Preservation could never directly destroy Ruin, nor could Ruin preserve the world. As such, if I'm Preservation, it would literally forever damage my conscience if the world was destroyed, and I'd try everything to try to keep it preserved on a permanent level. Psychologically, this perfect sense to me. If your options are "Everyone dies" and "some people dies, but the world survives" if Preservation chooses Option 1, Preservation completely fails. He could not live with that. (Turns out his plan couldn't work if he chose Option 2, either, but whatever )

I do think Cultivation would be better at future sight than Preservation, but I don't see the inconsistency with Preservation and future sight. Preservation doesn't want to preserve just now, he wants to preserve things for all time. That immediately suggests more future sight than Ruin, who doesn't care about destroying later, but just wants to destroy right now. If Preservation didn't take some measures, Scadrial would be completely destroyed. Of course he would be thinking how to preserve everyone much later. Wouldn't you, in Leras's position, knowing that Ruin is highly likely destroy what you've built, and you're so driven to preserve them and keep them alive? Preservation, being alive for so long, has seen many, many people die. Moreso than any sentient being ever has the business to see. So while Preservation certainly knew things would be very bad right for the Lord Ruler's reign, he made a value judgment that life had to survive, no matter the cost. That was his gambit. Given his Shard's intent, I can't say I blame him about that. The fact of the matter is that regardless whether the Terris Prophecies were effective (and you bring up good points, though I agree that Preservation did the best he could. In fact, he did change Allomancy to make atium that temporal metal, so he really did do effective things. His goal was to beat Ruin in order Preserve what he made, and he won.), he certainly accurately predicted the Hero of Ages. That's no small feat with Ruin's manipulations. Preservation's got some very epic future sight, given how we hear Honor talking about how hard it is. How long did Preservation see into the future? Over two millennia, at least. That's a big deal.

It is soooo tempting for me to downvote that post, you don't even know (And come on. There's design related reasons for why we have yet to update the forums--there's serious work to do. The wiki though? Yeah, that's deserved )

I don't mind the use of the gallery for this purpose, but did you just upload your avatar to the Gallery so you could use that URL for it in the Avatar section? You know you there's an option to upload your avatar in the "Change Avatar" section, right? I can see three appropriate uses of images on 17S. 1. An avatar. 2. To use in a post. 3. To show off to everyone. For the first two, you can upload the avatar in the avatar section, and for posts you can upload attachments in the post editor. I'm not opposed to you using the Gallery (however, it is not our own image hosting service, but rather a way to show off things to everyone--keep it related to the site), but when Joe posted, I don't think we knew what you were planning to do. Would you mind using the avatar upload feature and I just delete that Gallery entry? I don't see much point in it being there. EDIT: The two Gallery entries, in fact.

While this is technically possible, there are methods for us to find illegal votes and correct them. Multiple accounts are explicitly forbidden on 17th Shard for this very reason--unless, perhaps, there are very special circumstances like two siblings sharing a computer or something. In any case, it's very easy to find multiple account offenders once we search for them. We do investigate downvotes, because downvotes are not meant to be used for attacking. We are very aware that this power may be abused, and we may have to revoke the privilege at some later point. However, we very much like downvoting, and would like to preserve it. Downvoting is not something our members do to attack new members, by the way. Rather, it is an aggregate of what the community feels about a certain post. These things can and do average themselves over time. As tempting as it is to think of downvotes as a personal attack against you, resist this temptation. I have every faith in our community, and they are much, much better than the average people commenting on stuff on the internet. Instead, look at the post, and ask yourself, "Why would someone not like this post?" Chances are, the answer is never "Because they hate me," but rather a reaction on the post itself. Heck, even I've been downvoted (and it was deserved). Use it as an opportunity to look at what and how you post and how maybe you could improve. And as always, please directly ask the administrators if you feel something was not deserved, and we will be happy to discuss it with you. You're new, and we want to help you Speaking of wanting to help, I'm splitting this topic into a separate thread, Bunyod. The original topic was resolved a long time ago and you have an independent issue. Thanks! EDIT: I totally bungled splitting the topic, and didn't move one of Joe's posts over. Sorry about that.

We can always shift it around once the Chronology is in a proper, pretty format. That'll make things easier. Hmmm, idea which no one may like. Do you think we should have a separate chronology for big series like Stormlight and Mistborn? It could be something beneficial. There's a lot of chronological details in Stormlight, and I know my fake Mistborn timeline is something I use all the time for MBI. (Not saying you should do this now; I'm just rambling about future article ideas)