Master_Moridin

Just now, Calderis said:

Per this kind of long WoB from Boskone, it all investiture. 

 

Well, to be technical it just says that physical things become Investiture when they travel to the cognitive.

If stuff in the Physical Realm is made of mass-energy, what is stuff in the Cognitive Realm made of?

1 hour ago, Pagerunner said:

1 hour ago, Oversleep said:

Well, I'm basing it on the WoB that magics arise due to the interaction of the Shard(s) and the planet they're Investing in; since we have different Shards with different magic systems sharing the focus and we also have a case of a new Shard coming to an already established Shard-planet-magic interaction on Scadrial and still getting metal.

I'll go look for that WoB. I usually have trouble finding it...

Yeah, I don't recall anything that explicit. We do have some quotes that say a Shard must Invest in a particular planet, but that's not quite specific enough to say that planets in the same system have different looking Cognitive Realms.

 

I also remember the WoB Oversleep was talking about, though I don't remember where it is.  It honestly didn't say much from what I remember, just basically that

Shard + Planet = Magic

2 hours ago, Pagerunner said:

Everything exists in three Realms. Here's a third option: I think it's the planet's Spiritual aspect that determines the focus, the Identity of the planet itself. Worlds without Shards aren't like Real-Life-Earth; they still have the three Realms, the inhabitants still have stuff like Connection, Fortune, and Identity in the Spiritual Realm. Some magic systems can leverage Connection to a region allows you to speak the language. I think the whole planet can be interacted with in the Spiritual Realm, and that when a Shard creates a 'bond' of a certain kind with a planet, you get a magic system (part from the nature of the Shard, part from the nature of the world). In the context of this theory, Ruin and Preservation wouldn't have just built the Physical component of this world, they would have built the Cognitive and Spiritual aspects of it, as well, which let them choose metal as the focus.

I've actually been mulling over an idea similar to this.  As a general statement, assume that a person exhibits magic due to the interactions of their spiritweb with some source of Investiture (Surgebinder's spren bond, Scadrian's connection to Preservation and Ruin, Elantrians and the Dor, etc).

Then consider that a spiritweb is just a chunk of innate Investiture with a bunch of Connections.  When you think about a planet then and how it would have a ridiculous number of Connections with its inhabitants, everything on it, the star and others planets in its system, and presumably even between the different things that make it up, that's one really big spiritweb.  Then a Shard Invests in it.  Boom, magic system with its own unique focus.

20 hours ago, Yata said:

Previous page, tenth post ;-)

Ah, thank you.

I might be completely remembering something that doesn't exist, but wasn't there a recent WoB that talked about how breaking a Sand Masters sand stream with a hand was due to investiture interference?  Cause I also remember that quote making mention that this was related to Identity.

So long as that quote actually does exist somewhere, then it seems likely the Identity of a person is "encoded" in their innate Investiture, not in their Connections.

On 7/1/2016 at 2:26 PM, Stormgate said:

That WoB looks like Sanderson wiggling out of a question.

yeah, iirc the phrasing of the question correctly, the answer could easily be read as not everyone can do it, cause not everyone knows how to.

Gonna try and find it.  Found it.

Around Feb 22nd, 2016, Brandon Sanderson said:

Question

With Forgery and ChayShan, can anybody from that country do them?

Brandon Sanderson
Forge? No.
(source)

It'd be a tight wiggle, but there's room.

Here's the WoB for reference

Viper

Hah. So in Cosmere, does physics work the same way in the physical realm as it does in our world? Specifically, particle physics; and are atoms made up of protons and neutrons and electrons, and is light photons, etc?

Brandon Sanderson
Yes.

Viper
So what's at the core of an atom of Atium? Ate-teum? Also how do you pronounce it? At-teum?

Brandon Sanderson
Yes. And the matter is just normal matter, but it's wrapped in the spiritual. The Spiritual DNA [or something] is what makes it magical.

Viper
(Note: he might've said slightly more about this but I didn't write it down and I don't remember. Sorry for not bringing a tape recorder :(/> )
(source)

 

7 hours ago, Chaos said:

I'm going to talk about themes in just a moment. But first, I would like to ask you some questions, Moridin. Was the old site too much? The old site used white quite liberally in its main area too. Also, is Facebook or Gmail too bright? They also use white very liberally.

I don't use Facebook and someone created a Stylish theme for Gmail that I use that makes it super dark.

I had problems with the old site, but it wasn't quite as bad as the new is.  I think it might be the monitor size thing you mention, cause the purple sides are barely the width of my little finger on my monitor, or it might be that there's just more white than before.

Oh hey, thread about the update I didn't notice.  I had sent a tweet about this topic, but might as well go ahead and post here for extra chance of being noticed.

Is there any sort of dark theme option I can set for the site?  I have a specific eye condition and the site being a good 90% white now is making it really hard to even type this.

I think that the frame of reference of the source of the bubble (whether human or cube) must come into play somehow. In all the examples we've seen, the source is moving along with the bubble and the vehicle is either large/fast enough to Cognitively dominate (the train) or it isn't (the carriage). If the source stays still (relative to the planet) as in your example, I'm not sure that the bubble would get dragged along with the train. Now, if they were floating in a bubble above the train and then dropped onto the train while still inside the bubble, that might be a different story. The timing on that might be difficult though.

 

Aside from all of that, which is essentially baseless speculation on my part, the bubble would pop as soon as the person moved outside it. So even if it gets dragged along with the train, it wouldn't be very useful without the person moving along with it.

 

Also, it was really cool seeing my own question to Brandon cited in this thread. Feels like I've accomplished something with my life.

We've also seen that a bubble's position is independent of the source.  Once a person throws a bubble up they can move around in it and even leave it.  We know by WoB that a bubble determines what still is based on the things it "intersects".  To me it seems things like the cube are edge cases, where the only thing the bubble has to determine its concept of still off of is its source.

So our hovering Mistborn throws up a bubble.  So long as the bubble doesn't intersect anything that would supersede the Mistborn's concept of still, it should follow the Mistborn around if they wobble around and such.  If they Mistborn suddenly dropped to the ground and the bubble touched the planet, then its concept of still should shift.

If it wasn't for the carriage incident and the WoB about the bubble intersecting I'd be inclined to agree it has something to do with the source's concept of still.  As is I think it's a sort of conversation where it tries to reach a decision about what still is, and it just happens that the more massive and fast something is, the more weight (heh) its argument has.

Alternatively:  Since humans are more Cognitively complicated than a cube, a human's more complex conception of still as related to their perception of their environment might make things odd, in which case a wobbling hovering Mistborn would move around inside their bubble.  I actually think I prefer this idea of how the bubbles would interact with humans at least.  I do however still think that a passing train intersecting the bubble would override the Mistborn's concept of still.

I'm afraid that's not the way it works.  In the real world, if the interactions with the Higgs boson were changed, or even turned off, it would result in a person dying spectacularly as chemistry shifted unpredictably, but it wouldn't affect their mass much.

Put more specifically, the bulk of the energy inside protons and neutrons comes from the kinetic energy of the quarks and gluons, minus the binding energy caused the the strong force.  The gluons are massless, best we can tell, and the (up and down) quarks almost massless, by comparison with the proton.  Even if both were perfectly massless, the proton would still have essentially the same total mass, due to its internal energy.

I know that science popularizations claim that mass comes from the Higgs field interactions, but that's popular science for you.  It 's dead wrong in this case.

Well, it's always possible the Cosmere runs off of popular science xD

On 5/31/2016 at 8:33 AM, Kurkistan said:

That's essentially how I'd model it as well; the question then is the details of this conversation and how all that state is reliably and consistently tracked.

My initial assumption would be that the bubble is sort of continually querying everything in it for what they think still is, and then assuming which ever conception of still has the stronger argument, and then it tries to convince everything else in it that that idea of still is correct.

That or it only queries initially and when something new enters it.

I figure the Realmatics would possibly be somewhat like low-key soulcasting.  Object's Cognitive is convinced of the new idea of still, its Spiritual Connections readjust themselves slightly to reflect that.

This would have some possibly weird implications though, the foremost being that it could potentially be possible for bubbles to be "picked up" by something heavy and fast enough hitting them under the right conditions.

Say, for example, a Mistborn was making themselves hover over a railroad track such that when they threw up a bubble, it didn't touch the planet (this is just a cautionary thing to avoid the planet possibly overriding anything else).  Currently, the bubble's only conception of still is the Mistborn.  Now, let's say a train comes along the track at full speed, and intersects the bottom of the bubble.  If the bubble is querying things that enter it for their idea of still (and as we know a train is massive and fast enough to count as 'still'), then it seems likely the bubble's idea of still would change to that of the train and get dragged along by it.

Which doesn't make much sense, since from what I've read most mass in a body doesn't come from the Higgs field, but from the energy of the subatomic bonds in said body.

IMO, It makes more sense to just say Iron Feruchemy creates energy from nothing and destroys it as well.

Subatomic bonds are the result of the transfer of force particles, which get their mass through Higgs field interactions.

Hello Fellow Theorists,

I have noticed something I cannot explain and was hoping your vast collective knowledge would be able to help. On three separate worlds we see the same traits in three different people. 

 

Nalthis-

Tonk Fah: Has a strange obsession with dissecting people, directed toward animals by Denth.

 

Roshar-

Nan Balat: Has a strange obsession with taking living creatures apart.

 

Scadrial-

Forch: Has a strange obsession with dissecting people.

 

Assuming this is not just some coincidence, (I mean, it's Brandon Sanderson, coincidences don't exist) where is this from. I am fairly certain that it is not Odium, it doesn't seem to be driven by hate. It also doesn't seem to be Ruin, because Ruin is not around for any of them. Same for Dominion. In fact, I can't find any of the Shard's work here.

 

I am extremely curious about this, so if anyone has any ideas, other instances of this happening, or WoB, please post in the comments.

 

Edit:Changed name of Forch

Well, this kind of obsession is a thing that exists in our world too.  Somewhat common considering the number of people in the world.

Are Cohesion and Tension roughly equivalent to hardness and stiffness, respectively?

That thought has crossed my mind before. If so, though, it would probably cease function beyond the planet and that would be no fun. Metal glowing is more of a local thing.

I suspect that other planets would have their own "gateway" type of thing, with different methods of opening them (Aons/Forms on Elantris for example).  If they also all had a leaking gateway, maybe they'd have to change fuels?  (at this point it gets to pure speculation though)

First of all read BoM, second, does steel actually allow you to go faster than light?

I presume special relativity would still apply to steel compounding, as all it's doing is giving you more physical speed.

 -Kurk's Kommentary: Well that's interesting. I'd been assuming relativity of reference frames, but it looks like there needs to be some other mechanism at work to decide how the cork is "really" moving. I don't think this necessarily messes with current FTL models, but it requires some rethinking. The "everything we know" thread will need to be reworked to excise my relativity-based analysis and incorporate this.

 

I think I might know what this "other mechanism" is.  I think the cork is adopting the frame of reference of the bubble, which would only know about the existence of things it "intersects".

So let's say when thrown, the cork's frame of reference is the planet.  As you said, to the cork the train is moving.  The bubble's frame of reference is the train.  When the cork hits the bubble, they have a sort of conversation, where the cork's idea of "still" is changed to be the same as the bubble's.  The cork proceeds to continue moving north relative to the position it was in when it hit the bubble, then when it hits the other side of the bubble, its frame of reference jumps back to that of the planet.

I hope I described that well.

Previously you've said when a gemstone is infused, the light it emits is from the Spiritual Realm.  Is the mechanism beyond what causes this similar to that behind Perpendicularities?  Could an infused gemstone be described as a small-scale perpendicularity?

It apparently radiates power though, which interests me.

The description of ettmetal glowing makes me think of how metals glow in the Cognitive.  Perhaps they're a sorta super-open gateway, constantly leaking Investiture?

Though if so it makes me wonder why it doesn't "burn" away.

...thanks for clearing that up. Although, after a while, the body could shut down the lungs if the brain recognizes that "Hey, continually tapping breath? Well, I don't need these anymore."

There isn't anything for the brain to shut down.  All breathing is just the result of air pressure and the diaphragm letting the lungs expand.

Like king of nowhere said, the diaphragm might eventually atrophy though.

I am beyond exited to have cracked this code, my follow up theory is that AonDor is made up of what are basicly mega Spren that represent the various cultures inherent in the different countries of Sel, and that these Spren are somehow invested within the land itself, or are a manifestation of it made up of investiture. When someone begins to show devotion to their culture (or maybe when their spirit web begins to show similarities to a kind of ideal representation of the culture) they are bonded to this mega Spren and transform into Elantrians.

Let me know what you guys think!

Just a note, AonDor is solely the magic of Elantrians, unless you just meant Dor there?

Well Master_Moridin said there is a WoB about a double powered Spike, therefore I was wrong.

But to me a Metalmind and a Spike are two very different things... A metalmind is quite raw Investiture (with some flavour but in the end there isn't any ... "functional part"), a Spike contains a piece of SpiritWeb a precise structure of Connections. In my mind simply overlapping two Spiritwebs didn't create a better SpiritWeb (yeah I know that Moridin's WoB made cleat that I am wrong about this point).

I said I want to say there's one about whether you can or not.  I didn't say there was one that confirms it, and I also didn't say there is even a WoB on the topic for certain.  I just seem to remember seeing one.

I don't think the Spike will stack power in that way... I don't think there is a lot of interference but in the end in that Spike you will find two "set" of Spirit Web with Iron Allomancy. Just one of them may be implanted in a specific portion of your Spirit Web.

Anyway if this would be possible, with a single Atium Spike you may (in theory) collect every 32 Metallic Arts's power in a single Spike (One Spike to rule them all)... Something tell me that this thing is impossible but at the moment I can't say why without going in a "Spoiler zone"

I could see it being possible if instead of putting multiple spiritweb chunks into the spike, they sorta...stacked.  A soul is Connections and Investiture, so if you're stealing Connections maybe stealing the same ability again would just make those Connections stronger.

If it's Investiture I could definitely see that just filling the spike more.

You could probably also get around the "multiple abilities in one Atium spike" issue by invoking investiture interference.  I want to say there's a WoB on whether you can double-up in one spike, but I haven't been able to find it.

This is where AonDor comes in. It's just a huge mass of Devotion and Dominion's power sitting in the Cognitive Realm, just like a spren. Maybe that mass of investiture is tied to the land itself and different portions of it are tied to places that are seen as different and grant abilities to each of these places.

I was actually considering writing up a post detailing a theory sort of like this, that Cognitive representations of the different nations became invested when the Dor happened, and so the location restricted magics are a result of a bond/Connection to those Cognitive entities.

So basically there's really big (probably low-intelligence) super-spren that represent the different nations, and through virtue of a person's Spiritual Connection to a location they're also Connected to these spren, and Elantris helps amplify the effect by amplifying/concentrating/compressing Arelon's spren's power?

Though I have no idea how the Moon Scepter letting you use a Selish magic away from its originating location would play into that.

Edit: Closer to on-topic.  Maybe the similarity to dead shardblades could have something to do with the cause of the problems also?

For the Shaod it was the Reod changing Arelon's geography, which changed the necessary Forms for Elantris to work correctly.  For shardblades it's a Surgebinder breaking their oaths.  So a change in the bonding/power transfer medium?