Kurkistan

Indeed it appears that we do think alike. If I'm "greater" in any sense, it's in that I devote too much time to this stuff. I subscribe to a "Black Company" philosophy of magic theorizing: you need both time and power to get anything done, but the proportions of each is variable. I await their answer. In future communication, be sure to emphasize that you don't have any guaranteed demand yet; also any Kickstarter would almost certainly be entirely run by Crafty. Some Sharders may contribute, but we don't have the infrastructure, capital, or drive to co-sponsor a project.

It would be a fair amount of work to set up, but I imagine that Crafty could probably start a Kickstarter on this, to get real commitments before they start spending money. If you're in contact with them, it might be worth it to suggest that, Blair.

Hello. Since we're already doing some overhauling, I'd like to lodge a few suggestions for how stuff should be organized. First of all, I've come to the conclusion that TES and Elantris oughtn't to be the same section. Yes, they're on the same planet, but, honestly Elantris and WoK (Galladon) are probably more connected than Elantris and TES, in any real sense. I'm not sure how to resolve this, since TES isn't really big enough to go out in the wild on its own, but I've had some thoughts... On that note, I would suggest that we reinforce the firm divide between Cosmere and non-Cosmere books. Currently the "Other Stuff" section has sub-boards for Alcatraz, The Rithmatist, and Steelheart, with the caption "Discuss any of Brandon's shorter works here, be they novellas, short stories, or even YA. If it's not Epic Fantasy, it belongs here." Normally, I'd say we should throw TES in this section, since it isn't Epic, really, and definitely a shorter work. But then we have the Cosmere problem. To that end, I'd suggest that another section be created--called "Other Cosmere," or something similar--to house TES and any future short stories or novellas that don't fall inside the remit of any other Shardworlds' real arcs. So Shadows For Silence in the Forests of Hell would go in there too when it's released. As a side note, I think we might benefit from a simple "Short Stories" section in "Other Stuff" to house discussion for Firstborn, Defending Elysium, I Hate Dragons, and anything that follows. I doubt it will matter or that we'll get more than a thread or two on any of them, but it's the principle of the thing! I don't mean to be presumptuous here, and thanks for going through all this trouble in the first place, but I wanted to get some changes in while the foundations were still being worked on.

^He could just try and try again on the same problem until a day where he can solve it, and then formulate a new one that same day.

The name is Twinawesome. Deal with it.

Akin (adj.): Of similar character: "genius and madness are akin"

@Aaradel A good thought that had not occurred to me. The craftsman, and indeed, any craftman, probably has a large and lasting impact on how an object perceives itself. A lovingly crafted abstract sculpture might hold firm against hundreds of casual "looks like scrap metal to me" views in the face of a few opinions of earnest appreciation. Be careful where and how you use the word "form," though. The window's own Cognitive aspect might view itself very strongly as being a window--perhaps represented by an unusually strong connection to some Window Form--but that Cognitive aspect itself is not a "form." It is quite posible, even likley, that a haphazardly constructed window would have had a weaker, more malleable Cognitive aspect that stayed as a stained glass window for less time, but it's not a matter of "forms" on the level of the individual object. That last paragraph may be a bit unclear. Do you get what I'm saying? Discrete but "close enough" just doesn't sound right to me. Shai's quote indicated something a bit more singular. As far as end results go, the two models are functionally the same, though, so far as I can tell, so there's little in the way of concrete criticism I can offer. I suppose I'll have to be a it more foundational in my attacks: if you can't justify each new window being plugged into the entire network (forming (n-1)^2 n(n-1) connections in the process), then the network can't be how it works. Ah, I'd forgotten that you only had one-way connections. Sorry. Okay, so just 2(n-1)^2 n(n-1). Still O(n^2), so not really different in terms of complexity. It's not the number of connections I'm worried about, complexity wise (or at least not only the number of connections), it's how that many connections get formed in the first place. I just don't see where the impetus is coming from the connect W0 to W1->Wn. Z isn't going to think of each and every one of those windows individually and be like "oh, W0 is like that one too", and I don't want to attribute enough autonomy to the windows that they actualize the connections themselves, so I'm concerned as to the authority/power by which those many many connections are made No, I caught that part. I just argued that it was inconsistent with the rest of your theory. I suppose I simply don't like the idea of all and everything being pathways and their energy. It seems to me that something ought to anchor them. Persistence is an open question. I think it's suggested by the evidence, but you can certainly argue against it. If you take my Spren argument as true, then you get a fair amount of evidence due to the transience of many Spren-associated phenomena. Or you could call them phenomena, I suppose. The problem is their transience and lack of first-order reality. If I'm right about Spren, then are your pathways sufficient to connect these concepts strongly enough to persist and be accessed by Spren? Animals are an interesting question. I would hazard that they do attract painspren, if only because they experience pain as such. I suppose you have to philosophize about it to see if they have a concept of pain, though, and how that might change things. So Honor and/or Cultivation have parts that resonate with Ale? With Fire? I await your exposition. *Looks it up. Closes tab immediately.* No, thank you. I don't feel like getting educated today. Why don't you give a whack at explaining how they apply to the Cosmere, if you think that they are particularly enlightening?

Szeth's Blade, at least, is made of metal of some kind, according to that Brandon quote, since it's only "mostly immune" to pushing and pulling, and Brandon attributes that immunity to its Investiture. Another Investiture quote: Nothing really new besides Investiture being akin to spirit, but the more the merrier.

That actually makes a fair amount of sense. You'd be better of couching it in terms of a theory, rather than a fact, though.

Can you give us any hints as to what we'll see? EDIT: Have you squashed the /> bug? :huh:/>

The Kelsier bit is about Kelsier taking up some guidance over Preservation for a little while at the end of HoA. Spren are a mixture of Honor and Cultiavtion, and don't really have any "nucleus" similar to Seons'. We also know that spren were (probably) around before Honor's death, so Honor would have had to splinter himself on purpose for that to work. I think that this quote tells us that, not only are Spren created by those two, but they are also Invested with some amount of their power and/or intent. It could also be that Spren simply have a natural affinity to Honor's power, and so started to bleed off the excess once he died, as opposed to being initially invested with the lion's share of his power. Or some point between those two extremes. EDIT: Sorry, I read your post wrong the first time. I suppose I can see Spren "attracting" Splinters of Honor once he died, though I still think it's a more generalized "release valve" like Brandon said.

Just to clear things up, gaining magic on Roshar definitely isn't based on destiny/genetics: English is a bit broken there, here's a link to a cleaned up version: http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=608#15

That seems to be somewhat too complicated, I think. The way you have it, Observer Z sees window W0, and thinks "'yeah, that is a window.'" This then creates an arbitrarily large number of Spiritual connections between W0 and W1->Wn for a world/region with n other windows. This requires that something keep track of all of these windows so that new bonds can be forged. But okay, let's be charitable. Let's say that W0 only has to connect to W1, then it piggy-backs on its "knowledge" of W2->Wn to establish the new bonds from W0. How does W0 know about W1? Does Z transfer that information--perhaps unconsciously thinking of W1 when he says "window"? Anything else smacks of W0 just spontaneously knowing where to look for other windows. I suppose this model would work, then. It essentially mimics Z having a single connection to a Window Form and then passing on the link to W0. So then we ask why we should favor your conception, and/or if it's meaningfully different from mine. In my model, each window W has a single connection with the same Window form, for n connections going instance <-> ideal. In yours, there are (n-1)^2 n(n-1)/2 connections between all windows, with "Window" only having meaning in the abstract. Anyone who thinks of "a window" is in fact just thinking of one or more particulars, and so gaining access to the broader web. Okay, they seem to be equal in terms of function at least. Mine is certainly simpler in terms of how many connections you need, but that isn't a guarantee of correctness. You could even scale down to just n connections yourself and have a unary tree, though that would risk losing parts of the network if any intermediaries get axed. I suppose you could have some happy median between n and (n-1)^2 n(n-1)/2. But then we get to the inertia/durability of Forms. I posit that they are semi-independent and can last a bit after they lose "thinkers" to sustain them. Now I think this is supported by Brandon's "mashup of Platonic Forms and..." Shai's "takes on life, after a fashion", but you could argue against it, if you wanted to. You could say that these Forms can still be wholly dependent on their particulars. It goes a bit against the spirit of both Idealism and Shai's quote, but you could get away with it. But that's the only option your theory has left. You define these Forms as entirely dependent on the webs of connection that define them. If all the windows in the world suddenly see themselves as stained glass, then there is no longer any conception of a clear window. You say that "[w]hen such a network is strong enough, it may become self-sufficient (at least for a while), and continue to exist even if you destroy everything window," but I don't think that that is supported by your theory, or even allowed. Where is such an enduring image going to live? Connections have to be between things: they're pathways, not tracks. The very idea of your Form was a mere abstraction from the beginning, simply the aggregate of windows in the network. So if we go with you, we have to abandon the idea of these Forms having any durability, and stray away from (what I read as) the spirit of our evidence. So, in conclusion (sorry, you got a bit of stream-of-consciousness there), you're theory is theoretically acceptable, but I find it less appealing than my own both because of my interpretations of the quotes I gave and because of the simplicity of that interpretation. ---- Also, we have Spren. Now this is just me personally, but I think Spren accessing Forms is a fairly elegant answer to at least part of the question of their nature. You lose that if you only allow "forms" of your type to come into being as connections between real objects. "Death" and "wind" and "pain" don't have objects to form a network of bonds between, and so never get Forms under your system. Even if you say that some "wind" object has temporary existence, that doesn't seem to last long enough to form the kinds of world-spanning Spiritual connections between large numbers of such transient entities. Sorry if I was rude, it can just get a bit hard to read every once in a while. You're usually on the right track--you have one line break, you just can't seem to hit "Enter" a second time. I wouldn't call them "cognitively-based <what the frankenfurter does that word mean!? *Wikipedia* No, still don't get it>" mostly because they're Spiritually based, according to the quote. I'm against this. As my mondo-theory holds, I'm good with Spiritual connections and whatnot having profound effects on the other two Realms, but I think it's going too far to say that those connections "extend" to the other realms. I think they act indirectly. Sorry for your inner OCD, but Shai is pretty clear on "collective ideas" being in the Spiritual. I say it's disconnected in the OP, because Gaotona's test-stamps needed something to compare to, but FlashWrogan suggested that it could have accessed Ashraven's body's Spiritual aspect instead. I still don't know if the body would know enough, though. I'm still leaning a bit towards disconnected, but that goes against the strong "destroyed" language used in the book. The problem is, we really need something to compare the stamps to, and Shai says the window-Form comparison is the same one that her test-stamps do on Gaotona.

Well Szeth isn't a KR, he isn't even bound to a spren, so he's not exactly going to contest the claim. As for Jasnah, it remains to be seen whether she's spoken the Ideals yet, or is simply at a "level 0" bond with one or more Truthspren, leaving her behind Kaladin so far as reaching full KR-status goes. We also have the fact that Nahel bonds seem to have existed before the KR, assuming that the guy in Dalinar's vision was actually Nohadon (on whom's book the KR were based), so Jasnah could have the powers of an order indefinitely without becoming a member of it.

On TLR: He didn't have to go old when he did his weekly Terris-hut stint, but he was going to die of old age eventually. Source Source So, in fact, he did need to age, as seen in how his "base age" kept going up even though he was constantly tapping Atium. I'll answer Satsuoni later, a bit short on time at the moment.

^Thanks for grabbing that quote. Myself, I don't think Szeth's stone is anything special. If anything, I'd look at that sword. Your theory came out before TES, so I'm curious as to how you intend to fit the "what is and isn't a window takes on . . . meaning, in the Spiritual Realm. Takes on life, after a fashion" quote into your theory. EDIT: Also, proper spacing between paragraphs is always nice, Satsuoni. Your posts can get a bit wall-o-text-like at times.

I feel like I should start handing out badges for that alone. That's what I was getting at, essentially. I've never managed to get a clear picture of the line between the Cognitive and Spiritual; they always seem to be a bit mixed up. My view has been evolving as of late. Right now, I would probably say that Forms are what happen when people (or animals) possess a Cognitive "view" about something that does not exist in any real sense, and so that view doesn't have a proper aspect of any kind to latch onto. Like "the average German" or "windows" or "wind". This then actually gives rise to a Form (which we do know is based in the Spiritual Realm) to serve as the object of these ideas. For all I know, it may be the case that simply having Cognitive opinions about something is enough to establish Spiritual connections. Or, in parallel, Cognitive interactions are all mediated by Spiritual connections (justifying some of the fuzziness), and so Spiritual connections to something are necessarily created whenever you form an opinion about a generality. I have a whole 'nother thread about Spren that I linked to in the OP. Essentially, I think that Spren access these Forms (fire, wind, ale, death, etc.). They may well be (Cognitive?) beings with independent existence beyond that, but when you see an X-Spren, you're seeing a Spren that is tied to Form X, at least at that moment.

No real need to plate the inside of the barrel, if aluminum actually has Iron/Steel Allomancy "shielding" properties. A steel barrel could be shielded by an aluminum shell. Or you could just use the same alloy of aluminum that the Vanishers used, so it would be durable enough to coat even the inside of the barrel. You could also have an exceptionally heavy layer of aluminum over a lead core for the bullets, if you wanted to. The main idea of my objection is that there are a lot of ways to get around having to use solid aluminum if coating stuff in aluminum was all that you needed to do.

Actually, I'll concede the ability of soulcasting to affect sub-Cognitive aspects as likely for now. We'll almost certainly know for sure once WoR comes out, either way. I still think that magics "default" to acting on the object as a whole, though. As we've been reminded, it takes particular skill/power for Allomancers to either see or act on the discrete bits of metal that make up any "object". The First Lashing also works on people as a whole, at least so far as we've seen it. Mechanism-wise, I still think it makes more sense for monolithic Cognitive aspects to order around their constituent parts directly, rather than having to bully an infinitude of smaller aspects into doing their bidding. So it's like if you have a marionette and want to move it: you can either pull on the head string and yank the whole thing around, you you can pull on strings each and any of the limbs individually. The head-yanker doesn't just has to pull on the one line to move the entire body immediately, he doesn't have to worry about pulling each string for each limb all at the same time. Following from Inquisitors seeing multiple lines for singular objects, I would posit that you need a certain combination of skill and power to affect sub-aspects without having to mess with the entire Cognitive aspect as a single unit. On the level of skill, Allomancers can train themselves or try particularly hard to discern and push upon different parts of a steel bar, or Shai can craft a near-perfect stamp to affect a single stone in a wall (or Harry can transfigure just part of an eraser). In terms of power, Inquisitors and Zane can work on the micro-level easily, and soulcasting is an absurdly powerful (if brutish) system compared to Forgery, and so has easier access to sub-aspects. If you want to go with the marionette analogy, a very skilled manipulator can make the marionette move fluidly by moving its various parts, while a poor one has to take his time (here, time==power for the purposes of analogy) to accomplish the same precision of movement. Perhaps even Basic Lashings can work on sub-parts, with enough skill? One would think Szeth would have figured it out by now, but assuming that there is more to be learned, I can imagine that lashing someone's sword-arm in an odd direction would wreak havoc on their ability to fight, or lashing just one end of a table towards the ceiling would create a very convenient shield. Or Brandon could come up with something more interesting. You're right, "rushing" is a better description than "trickle" in this case. That was simply poor word choice on my part. Waffles! That's a good point about cognitive aspects being inaccurate. I've also wrestled with the split between the Cognitive and Spiritual, coming down on the "essences are mostly Spiritual side" side myself. ---- On the kinematics discussion: I know nothing about this, so I'll just sit on the sidelines and stay quiet for now.

But electroplating can't work because otherwise we would see Miles, and some other people as well, in AoL just using aluminum-plated guns, bullets, and knives instead of being wasteful and making them out of pure aluminum.

It's probably both. He maintains the "stupid mask" all the time in public, and is known for his stunning mental mediocrity. He may well have been inspired to (slash forced into) this by the effects of the curse/boon, though.

"Aggregate" is a term that just I use, to my knowledge, back from the good old days when we didn't know the nature of the Cognitive, and I was speculating on how Lashings worked. It simply denotes that an object is treated as a whole instead of the sum of its parts; so a chair is a chair, not a dozen pieces of wood. The goblet also refers to itself in the singular (don't worry about your memory, I had to check too). I've been treating objects as having a single, coherent aspect of each kind. Objects are generally treated as wholes in magic, from Lashes to Soulcasting (it's easier to make smaller rocks into food, Jasnah couldn't just smoke-out the top half of the boulder, etc.) to Forging. Recall that Shai couldn't have Forged individual stones in her cell wall. Everything she Forges is treated as a whole. She said that she might be able to attack each block individually, but that it would be harder. I see this as the individual aspects of the wall becoming subsumed to the "wall" identity. Yes, they still have individual aspects, but they might not be there a year from now, and they are essentially subservient to that of the wall as a whole. P.S. I just recalled Jasnah Soulcasting the blood in Shallan's body all by its lonesome. Hmm. Do with it what you may, my noble foes, but I'm going to try to run away from this one by claiming a "blood is an essence, so it's special!" exemption. As I said in my "Role of Cognitive Aspects" section, I see the Cognitive more as an ultimate source of fact-checkery and the burn-offer of bad stamps. Shai clearly defines the Spiritual as containing objects' "essences", and continually refers to Forgery as changing souls, so I think it's basically the opposite, or at least parallel: stick something onto the Spiritual, then watch the changes roll down to the Cognitive and Physical. I never liked that quote... There's been a lively debate on what that means. I have some thoughts on spren (not) being Cognitive aspects here, and others have spoken on it as well. Even if we are to take a simple "Spren as Cogntive aspects" approach, I think I can squeak away from having to say a not!Potato has to have infinite aspects. Option 1: Yes, pieces of things have Cognitive aspects, but they are almost entirely subservient to the overarching object. So my fingernails aren't going to stage a revolt any time soon, and can't be Forged by themselves. Option 2: Pieces of the not!Potato do not, in fact, have Cognitive aspects of any note at all to call their own, but merely the potential to have meaningful Cognitive aspects. They can have vestigial aspects (like the stones in Shai's wall, only even weaker) though, or perhaps even no aspect of their own at all (like a flower petal that's always been part of the flow since it was grown). If Shai had broken down that wall with a stick of dynamite (Miles style), the next, non-blown-up Forger to come along should have been able to mess with the individual bricks with no problem. So whenever an object with a coherent Cognitive aspect is sundered, its parts acquire and/or reacquire their own identity. This could, functionally, be the same as cutting a "spren" into pieces: each time you cut, two new aspects are born. P.S. Another thought, though tangential. I would probably benefit from incorporating the idea of spren as change into my Spren-specific Forms thread. So spren only react to changes of state. Food for thought at a later time. Fair enough. I might do some re-adjusting after things settle down a bit. I suppose I didn't express myself properly as relates to Forms, though. Using Aaradel's model, if people are nodes that have physical bodies and are only partially defined by connections, then Forms are nodes that have no physical bodies and that are entirely defined by their connections, that come to be and sustain themselves purely through the perceptions of living beings. So Forms get folded into this idea of a network, they do not encompass it. Szeth is weird. That is all. @Senor Fresh That sounds about right, actually. Forms, in this case, would be like new pools that formed as flows from people shaped the landscape, appearing, changing, and disappearing as people's ideas changed. EDIT: Sorry, forgot about this: It may come down to how I'm reading Aaradel. I see him as saying that the important stuff happens in the Cognitive, then flows to the Physical, with Spiritual connections simply being used as a means to that end. I think that Hemalurgy, Forging, etc. work first through changing the Spiritual aspect on a fundamental level, then trickling down to the other Realms as a consequence.

^I may have read him wrong, actually. Hold for a bit until I can get to a proper computer, please.

As a general note, I see now that it's easy to take that comment at the end of my last post in the wrong (read: petulant child) way. I have no problem with the rather fascinating line of discussion that is currently happening; a lot of the best discussion comes out of blatant hijackery, so at least this is a bit more subtle. I just wanted to guage general sentiment on my original theory so that I could know what I might need to tweak and/or put in a sack and drown. @Flash I don't know about Szeth's stone acting "hemalurgically", for lack of a better word. I actually don't think there's anything special about the stone at all: I look at the shardblade. But I don't even think the shardblade should be acting hemalurgically either. There's no good reason for my inclination, really, besides thinking that Brandon probably wants to mix it up, and having magic-stealing systems being key in his two big series would be too predictable. Don't sell yourself short, most of our theorizing is about coming up with the proper way to look at things. I doubt I'm superior at theorizing, I just have far too much time on my hands. Shardholders. Hmm. Recall that Sazed was able to "remember" everything done with the powers of Preservation and Ruin, though not the motivations behind those action or any other "memories". Also, Sazed was able to "grab" something when both Vin and Ati died at the Wells. That suggests that Shards have "nodes" with definite physical locations independent of whether they have holders, and that they have some amount of memory (Cognitive?) as well. I think, then, that we might be able to sneak Shardholder's into primacy in both the Cognitive and Spiritual Realms. What if a Shardholder just slots comfortably into the "chair", the node, of the Shard--gaining access to the history of the power--and augments their own Spiritweb with that of the Shard? So the Shardholder provides a directing consciousness in the Spiritual sense. We can also give them primacy in the Cognitive by recalling that they keep all and only their own memories, though the Intent warps both that in the end, I suppose. There's probably some other stuff going on in both of those Realms, true, but this might cover the basics. This is all a bit off the cuff. Your thoughts? Harmonic trickery it is. Source. Hold now, young grasshopper. I argue essentially the opposite about Foring in the OP. Can you persuade us of a reason to go with your version? As for Soulcasting, what do you mean by "all the little aspects that make it up"? Cognitive aspects are necessarily aggregates in the Cosmere (else we would have Chaos).

^I'm fairly sure it's the opposite, actually. IIRC, Marsh spikes some random misting noble, then hightails it to Luthadel and spikes [governor guy] in the heart. After spiking the noble with a relatively small (palm-sized) spike, he internally comments on it not holding a charge as well as larger ones. Since Marsh is essentially Ruin's avatar at that point, I think we'll go with him