Kurkistan

Thank you for recognizing the straw-grasping nature of your claims. In all seriousness, though, I do sympathize with it not "feeling" right. That's part of why I favor the idea that the limb has only be "disconnected" from the control of its owner, rather than "killed" in a more substantive sense. To throw in the relevant quotes: Szeth is in "Exposit about worldbuilding" mode when he notes that fact, and the specific quote indicates a degree of permanency. Though he does refer to a "severed" limb as "killed", providing a counterpoint. Then again, Brandon didn't have a problem when I used "severed" as the term for such limbs.

'Sup... Natans.

Yeah, I got both of them awhile back.

I doubt that. Szeth exposits that severed limbs are paralyzed, not that they rot off.

Some (read: Me and Satsuoni) have theorized that Shardblades don't really damage the soul itself when they "sever" a limb, but rather sever that limbs connection to its Spiritual parts. So your Spiritual "arm" is still there, it just isn't hooked up to anything.

I'd go with (a variation on) the bolded option. Things just get too complicated otherwise.

Actually, I never said that either was right, just implied it. They're both assuming realism, for one. (This has been your currently-procrastinating-on-his-thesis-on-moral-philosophy Kurkistan, stopping by).

Yeah, I think I'll just stick with my old avatar. A bit of trouble to find a new one and I don't think I'll be hiding any day soon with my post-count and sig.

Here's the most complete answer I've seen yet: Source:

Okay, I'm going to play morality police. Shardlet, knight, let's call it a night (ha, note the pun ). Both of you are being a bit less than generous in your assessment of the reality of the other's position: you are both representing cogent schools of moral philosophy; getting to who's right about the proper kind of moral thought is a discussion all its own. EDIT: To clarify, that discussion is a very large discussion. As in several thousand years of philosophical thought.

Not quite, I don't think. Feruchemical gold almost certainly repairs people to their Cognitive selves, which likely includes repair to DNA. I would theorize that Feruchemical gold allowing aging is likely a very separate question from whether it can repair DNA.

We have two WoB's on there being an afterlife in the cosmere, one of them actually saying that Mistborn did confirm it in-text.

No, they're spikes. Melted down Inquisitor spikes, in fact. Sources: A One... A two-HOO... A tha-three.. (crunch sound effect).

Just an evidential note: Amaram does, at this point, know the Shardbearer's identity.

Gospel so far as worldbuilding goes, certainly, but not necessarily characterization or anything more "fluffy". So I'll WoB at you if you say that Sazed's name is spelled with a 'W', but not on its pronunciation. A more nuanced example: Brandon has said on several occasions that Kelsier is a psychopath. Now that word has a lot of connotations and associations which not every reader will agree applies to Kelsier. On that point, then, I think Brandon will defer to the reader's interpretation of Kelsier's character, just as we shouldn't say "WoB tells us Kel is a psychopath, so no" if a Sharder claims that he sees Kelsier as an altruist. No, but then again I never did account for that second slot... Moogle's point, I believe (a point which I also agree with), is that Brandon's opinion on the morality of an action ought to have little-to-nothing to do with our own assessment of its morality. In DnD, the authors' opinions matter because they actually affect how the magic system works. So I think that both I and Moogle would agree that there are multiple ways of measuring morality. Whether one is right or wrong or better than others is, of course, still up for debate (a debate I'd prefer not to have here), but Brandon applying his own system to assess Hemalurgy does not suddenly make it evil across all possible moral systems. I read Gloom's point as concluding that B was bad, not asserting it. My apologies if I misread him. As I've mentioned in more private discussions, Darnam, I don't find "creepyness" to be an adequate measure of moral worth. I will also direct you to my comments on the Callatians. As I said "The first of [Gloom's] three negatives is a universal and legitimate concern, I think. Hemalurgy as benefiting from the death of another is something that must be weighed when considering its morality." I was mostly concerned with dismissing the other two negative outcomes of his example. So far as alternative moral standards go, you yourself mentioned the existence of many sets of moral standards. Feel free to pick one of them (some flavor of utilitarianism springs to mind) as one in which the ends justify the means or the like. To provide an overblown example of such an act being allowable: I could justify buying goods that I knew were the result of theft or murder if, in so doing, I stop the sun from exploding. Or I could justify cannibalism if, in so doing, a dozen lives are saved. EDIT: Well that's just creepy. Moogle NINJAD ( ) my massive post with his own massive post, both of which posts make eerily similar points.

@Joe Thanks for chiming in. One suggestion that I think might be relatively easy, now that you mention it: would it be possible to have a "Link to this question" option on both the tag-listed and signing-listed questions? Right now, you have to go through a rather annoying number of steps, including manually altering URL's, to link to specific questions/answers on Theoryland. Thing is, I think adding "Cosmere-Relevant" tags (which would be a hell of a job, no doubt) would do just that, "create a comprehensive cosmere database". As for page divisions: Maybe Joe could help us out there? I like how you can CTRL+F an entire tag-set at a time on Theoryland, but maybe some cosmetic alterations to put a line between every X WoB's or something? Don't worry, Joe said "scrape", not "scrap". I believe he was responding to Moogle's offer to write program to "scrape" through Theoryland to find relavant WoB's. I agree that we should slim down the sources: which is why I think we should ideally have one: Theoryland. If you could select multiple tags, you could just enter in "Cosmere-Relevant; Mistborn" and get all Cosmere-relevant WoB's relating to Mistborn, all in one page. All the data, the most annoying and finicky aspect of all of this, is already gathered in one place, with a fairly robust way of accessing it. We just need to tweak the access method a bit and we're golden.

I would reach out to the admins/wiki-people about how it might work on the Coppermind. You might also be able to talk to the people managing Theoryland about altering how it works. It's a bespoke system, which is both a blessing and a curse: it can do just about anything, but takes a lot of work to get to that point. On that note, could you articulate exactly how you might structure Theoryland differently so that it would be more new-Sharder friendly? Because that database already has just about everything there, with a fair amount of meta-data along for the ride. Would a "Cosmere-Relevant" tag solve all of your issues? I agree that we are in need of some way of delivering all of this information to new members, but I want to be sure that the method is useful, sound, and does not require unnecessary duplication of effort.

I disagree a bit on how to interpret Brandon, but at this point it'd just be quibbling over impressions, so let's just leave it at that. Thank you for the upvote, also. Just a quick quote-insertion then I'll be on my way: The way I read MadRand was '2', that you'd be passing along the same physical chunk of metal. Koloss did it well enough, and Brandon has hinted that you can multi-charge spikes, though side-effects might be an issue. That's a bit of a fallacy, Gloom. "A is bad, therefore A and B is worse" doesn't exactly hold up. Killing + Injection could be as harmful as just Killing, if the Injection is a neutral act, or perhaps even less harmful if the Injection is somehow cathartic or healing: See MadRand's idea of "family heirlooms," where having a piece of your father be part of you could potentially be comforting. Forgive me, but this brought good old Darius to mind, so I found that I had to reply. Cannibalism is a taboo; one with a fair amount of cultural, psychological, and even physiological founding, but a taboo nonetheless. I would certainly prefer not to devour my father's heart, but a Callatian might well disagree. Cannibalism is not necessarily evil. Even if it is, it could well be offset by sufficient circumstances. The first of your three negatives is a universal and legitimate concern, I think. Hemalurgy as benefiting from the death of another is something that must be weighed when considering its morality. The other two, that I bolded, though, are entirely circumstantial. We can easily construct scenarios where letting murderers walk free and/or encouraging future crime are both off the table, so those two negatives don't really have a place in a discussion of the inherent morality of Hemalurgy.

No, actually, they used to have this really great functionality. You could hit the "Quote" button for someone's post, then go into the quote and very easily break it up into lots of little chunks, all of which would have the same header as the "real" quote: for instance, "Argent, on 23..." It was helpful for longer posts and/or more involved discussions, particularly if you were quoting multiple sources or users at the same time. And now it's only working intermittently, if at all.

Your wish is my command. Source:

Since we're not talking about Alignment requirements for spells, you'll forgive me if I don't take an author's word (any author or anyone, in fact, not just Brandon) on whether an act is morally acceptable. Also, even Brandon is more nuanced than that: So while Brandon might want to rule out Hemalurgy for executions (or "organ-donations," it seems), not all uses are evil in his eyes.

That's a bit of a harsh reading, Serendipity. We've had a number of discussion over more "humane" Hemalurgy: from using previously-created spikes (ala Pathians) to Hemalurgy-as-capital punishment to "needs of the many...", as well as several other variations. The author of the book needn't be advocating wholesale slaughter of innocents to see Hemalurgy as potentially-not-evil.

*Pseudo-necro* I can tell you that there wasn't technological space travel before the Shattering. Source:

I agree with this disagreement.

I think it's almost certainly the book Marsh gave Marasi, but we know that whatever book Wax is reading wasn't written by Marsh. http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/4258-questions-for-seattle-signing-1014/page-6#entry68628 EDIT: Actually, Brandon basically says in that quote that it's the book Marsh gave Marasi. So no speculation needed there.