Observer

ALRIGHT KARMA I'M SORRY! I'LL NEVER WHINE ABOUT CAPTCHAS AGAIN! Seriously though, how are so many of them getting in here and what click-happy internet-goer is dumb enough to justify the existence of these abominations?

If there is a thread devoted to the Roth hatedom I will post and upvote plentifully. But back on topic, I'm a pretty enormous Sanderfan (who here isn't?) and don't have a lot of characters I didn't like. Raoden, however, is starting to wind up like this with each re-read. His chapters are the best on the first read just because he's a flattie in a really cool place. Examined as a person, I lose the ability to care about him, but keep the ability to wish him success just because I like the setting and what he's helping it with. It's kind of a roundabout example, but there it is. I like Elantris more than the people in it.

In the spirit of my namesake, I'll just drop one little idea and scurry. Nalan has a fabrial of unknown properties, and it has been proven that bringing somebody back from the dead is possible. Harmony has a lot of power, but lacked the experience and finesse at the window of time he needed for it to work. Nalan is old, and has enough XP to be maximum level by this point. I'm guessing he'd be able to take what he had and work it into resurrection far better than Harmony could in the moment. It's not so much that Nalan has something Harmony doesn't in terms of power, he just knew how to use what he had at the moment when it mattered. EDIT: So basically, to sum it up less confusingly, Szeth might have actually died all the way, Nalan just knew enough about what he had available to bring him back, whereas Sazed was too inexperienced to do the same.

Every character ever written by the ever despise-worthy Veronic-oh wait, we're talking about Sanderson characters? Oh...okay. In that case, I hate the Stick fandom for wrecking what was actually a pretty good moment in the book, as much as I love him I think Dalinar has far too much screentime in WoK, and I really didn't care about Tindwyl as a person and only the ways she impacted Sazed. As usual, I come out of posting and feel like a monster.

Burn Chromium and poke yourself. (Is that even possible? How about with Nicrosil? If so, why would you ever hema-graft duralumin if nicrosil is so much better?)

You create a set of stats, skills, and feats Brandon has D&D style, and then wonder how you could possibly balance such an OP character.

The implications of a world where powers are the majority, rather than the minority, can be quite serious. Steelheart demonstrates how laws would begin to completely fail ala Screw the Rules, I Have Powers, and even if the law enforcement had them, a power like control or mind-reading is still capable of rocking the system. Actually, it brings to mind Scadrial, and how society can advance with Mistings and Feruchemists running around. Sure, law enforcement can take down these threats with their own powers, but it's kind of a glass cannon thing. The criminal's first strike is likely to do so much damage that stopping them preemptively becomes the only way. I guess what I'm saying is, how would this theoretical world even function properly without the help of some kind of future-sight?

If it isn't broken, don't fix it. If you want TLR dead, just Duralumin-yank off the metalminds, or use Nicrobursts and Iron/Steel mistings if you don't have access to Mistborn. Problem here being that Hoid had no real reason to mess with the Final Empire. It was holding two shards down where they couldn't hurt anything, and at the time had very little cosmere-wide significance. Why would a worldhopper mess with that?

If I had to guess, it's the mention of drugs, coupled with unhelpful dose of black comedy. I found it funny, but I can see how others would not. In the spirit of your comment I'll say that hanging with a friend is a wonderful way to cheer myself up. I'm not sure if it's the heartwarming relationship or the oxygen loss, but it makes me feel tingly. Well, crying is actually a natural way the body forces itself back into emotional stability, so if it comes to that, crying is a wonderful way to get over my problems and get back to work. Given lots of time, a quick flying dream has never failed to cheer me up, and given very little time I can always rage around an internet forum, watch a few bloopers/outtakes of a favorite series, or hold a snarky swearing duel with myself. Any one of these will usually have be feeling better in no time.

Well, it appears that not only has this post not been posting, but when I finally get it to post all I have in the textbox is a 'd'. Frankly I don't want to type all of that again for the third time, and this debate has kind of run out of humor value. As I've mentioned before, I don't believe a word I've been saying this entire time and have mostly just been seeing where it goes, which, as it turns out, is in circles. Though I won't argue that forcing goodness into the world could be a good thing, and I generally believe that the ends can justify the means, there comes a point where one bites off more than they can realistically chew, and when the serving sizes aren't getting any smaller regardless of what you tell the waiter. I personally still believe that a power like this has to be used and not wasted, though using it in the aforementioned ways is asking for something to go horribly wrong. It is theoretically possible to pull it off, but it would require a perfect-play run on the first try with very little room for error, something that, while possible, simply isn't plausible. Taking into account more people on earth with more powers, it simply becomes a convoluted juggling routine where the batons are flaming wolves and the ground is hot coals. So I guess what I'm saying is, I've lost interest in talking in circles, more or less agree with the arguments against me, will give kudos to Tien'sPetLurg for deciding to use the powers at the very least, and would like to hugely congratulate Shaggai for an excellently engaging discussion. It's not every day I get to exercise my inner sociopath in a debate without getting kicked, so I thank you all for indulging my mania.

"We were loved, once." The Way of Kings, page 15. I got lucky and landed myself an epigraph. ...Or so I thought, until I realized every single epigraph in the first part of that book is something somebody screamed while they died.

Kell calls TLR Lord Tyrant during their "fight" near the end of TFE, as a sign of disrespect. He is identified as the rightful and godly ruler of the Final Empire, and calling your gracious god a tyrant is kind of a slap in the face to his image. Didn't realize he used the term so often though.

These world bear the touch and design of Adonalsium. Each worldhopper has their goals, and despite the good helping a whole planet might cause, their goals tend to supercede the needs of a world, especially when shards are involved. Imagine trying to mess with things on Scadrial. Harmony would probably have every reason to crush you flat for upsetting the balance, and your efforts would cause no good. Whatever Hoid wants with Roshar, he clearly thinks it's worth more than the planet's lives, which I find telling. It's kind of late on my end, so sorry if this post makes no sense, but it seems to me that they have more important things to be doing with their time and with the attention they gather, and helping people is only a short-term thing in the Cosmere.

Well, we could repeat the same points back and forth over and over to each other, but instead, I'll take your theoretical complication as permission to introduce my own. Instead of attempting to tackle the entire world's crime rates, sifting through billions of people and needing a lot of effort to keep travel rates from coming up, what if I only focus on North America? Years spend building up a reliable intelligence network with puppetry and brainwashing that can be significantly more personal at this stage, and years more spent hunting down unproductive Staying within the US, I even get handy state borders with their own annually announced crime-rates and segmented media stories, making tracking people down even easier. If I'm going to have anybody helping me keep track of all these different people I'm helping with, they will be the kind that checks in with me regularly so I can talk with them. Or actually, just scour their minds for any corruption at all, which shouldn't be there because I don't trust people who have technical free-will. Annual crime-rates in the US have been going down every year, and are currently sitting at a little over a million annually. Normally finding and fixing one million people every year would make me throw up my hands in despair. Luckily, it shouldn't take all that long to notice that any time somebody commits a crime, reported or not, they eventually wind up vanishing. The bigger the quicker. Sure, in the drug business or gangs this might be nothing more than an unexpected promotion to some people, but a job position starts to look less and less desirable when everybody who takes it on instantly vanishes, because find one guy who has knowledge in his brain and have a whole lot more. If nobody notices anything then hey, at least I made a lot of unnecessary people vanish and possibly reappear later as hardworking and honest individuals. If people do notice, I'll fix everybody who needs fixing, and when I die, the crime rates will ideally have plummetted as the criminals were replaced with better people. Sure, it's not permanent, and sure crime-rates will probably climb back up once I'm gone, but since I didn't just kill them, and instead fixed them, their legacy of goodness that would not normally exist, replacing the legacy of crime they would have left that is no longer there, will add up to a much better future. Sure, if these people were dying, and suddenly stopped, things would go poorly. But this is, instead, a large number of criminals suddenly deciding they have better things to do, and a slightly smaller number of politicians suddenly becoming selfless and more willing to screw over their careers for the greater good. All the good they do isn't just going to stop being a thing once I die. Frankly I'm expecting a lot of them to outlive me and keep on being good people long after I'm gone. In the event that somebody traces this back to me, they'll need to work their way through the general obsessive checks associated with important people in dangerous territory, a roving network of controlled lookalikes, me searching the general populace at all times with both mind's eye and the normal kind for anything suspicious, the fact that this job requires constant, endless movement, the fact that the intelligence network I would ideally have set up for something like this would almost certainly be looking out for any hits that could come anywhere near hitting me, and a dozen other factors preventing mass and singular attacks. As far as insanity in the kid goes, insanity doesn't necessarily mean inoperability, and it's extraordinarily unlikely for me to fail to notice something like that coming up in them. As for going nuts myself, assuming that by some horrific flaw in the insanity plan my lack of marbles actually means anything, the plan will at the very least inform me of my growing madness, giving me a chance to hand the kid over to the most trusted and most brainwashed member of the council, set up a squad of bodyguards/assassins for the event that something goes wrong, and scale the whole thing down to a single state or less and have it fade into the background so that it's hopefully nothing more than an unusually peaceful area. But until that happens, this power will be used.

To the first paragraph, all I really have to say is that when I say "demoralization", I mean "If you aren't contributing, you lose free will". That is a very demoralizing thought, and is generally a good way to keep somebody in line. Because free will is good. Destabilization means, in this case, yanking out all the pieces I don't need, yanking out all of their pieces they depend on in so many ways, and then filling it up with the totally dependable meat sacks who are either good people to begin with or weren't before but are now. It's basically terrorism but towards a more constructive and slightly more specific level. As for micromanagement, when I first begin I won't really need it. As I expand, I should ideally have one or two brainwashed people around to help me out, and as I succeed in correcting more and more people, I'll have more and more helpers, though I really shouldn't need all that many. The small numbers will greatly contribute to my ability to fulfill the omnipotent/omniscient part of reinforcement, and allow me to weed out corruption with ease. Micromanaging won't be as much an issue as it may sound. I won't be able to use tactics of much specificity past a certain point, but general tactics along the lines of lack of control, isolation, and more are universal, and can simply be done almost by default. And finally, the ever-present threat of assassination. Assuming I can just scan nearby minds for certain thoughts and patterns, snipers won't be an issue. Assuming this isn't possible, constant, random travel and change of appearance will have already been a part of the strategy from the start, a wave of control would help narrow down the number of minds I need to look through at all times, and basic military VIP procedure should be a great help in shutting down other attempts. Above this all, the combination of spotsearch mindreading and a team of expendable puppets should combine with all other factors, stated or otherwise, to keep me safe from attack. And in all honesty, the majority of assassination attempts will be coming from the government, and I'm already considering coming after me a "dumb move" to be treated like all others. Frankly I'm wondering how they'll get my face, considering the inevitable disguise and likely surgical changes, without me noticing and disposing of them. As long as I keep anybody from truly knowing or being able to target what they think is me, I should be fine.

Delightful, you've edited several songs to fit the Cosmere before. How could you miss the chance to apply this to Defying Gravity!? I do not take responsibility for the fact you almost certainly have already, I just want to be the one to suggest it on the off chance you have not.

"Redd's creations might have been undone, but her influence on society was still noticeable." -Seeing Redd, Page 45. Apparently I'm the Red Queen, gone but still hanging around in the form of past evils. Huh. Get funny glasses too. .-Homestuck, Page 45. Uhh....I have no idea. I really should have expected this. It should be worth noting that for a moment I got mixed up, and posted the quote from page 15 which is: "SQUAWK LIKE AN IMBECILE, AND ---- ON YOUR DESK", which makes this current command a significant improvement over the old one.

Well, according to material I actually happen to have laying around my house because of reasons, an entire nation can and has been brainwashed in something around 60 years, give or mostly take, as this is the worst case scenario, something I won't be facing. Simply apply the widespread demoralization and destabilization tactics globally to all who need it and maybe a lot of those who do not. I have it on good word from various dictatorships that this is very effective and not nearly as time-consuming as you might think. EDIT: Oooh, there's a soviet interview series online that's actually about the kind of tactics I'm talking about. I'll link it if I finish it and think it's relevant enough.

That would be assuming an inability to brainwash multiple people at once. As it turns out, I have that opportunity. Keeping tabs and grouping should allow me to apply similar tactics to multiple people simultaneously through puppetry. Historically, dictators have been able to brainwash entire populations with nothing more than general tactics applied to the entire population. With the extra knowledge given to me with telepathy, tons of extra options are opened up and a unique opportunity for singling out targets and breaking willpower in record time. I'm confident I could pull it off, even in that scenario's limitations. Edit: Well, I see Moogle's name down there. This is about to get ugly.

Even without the ability to control what a person thinks, I still have my telepathy and the kid still has their puppetry. If we take a look at the wonderful and infamous CIA Kubark Manual from 1963, we'll find the core principals of brainwashing and rules. One of these is that brainwashing tends to work on nearly any scale, any technology, any situation. It's one of those unchanging things thanks to its unchanging foundation. Now, the core techniques, effects, and variations of brainwashing are as such: Isolation: - It leaves victims dependent on their captors, and deprives them of social support. - Complete isolation, semi-isolation, or in this case, feeling alone in the group. Demonstrations of Omnipotence/Omniscience: - Reinforces the pointlessness of resistance, greatly increases compliance expected by themselves and others. - Demonstrations of control over the victim's fate, removal of free will and proving knowledge of the supposedly unknowable. Degradation: - Hurls the subject down to the bottom of the hierarchy of needs - Demeaning punishments, taunts, deprivation of privacy, in this case controlled self-humiliation Perception Control: - Forces intense thought and introspection, locks attention onto their situation. - Monotonous food, lack of movement/control/anything to do, situational isolation. Even without the ability to force them into the easy road, I still have all the right tools for the old-fashioned kinds of brainwashing. It will require micro-managing them, but I intend to take them in chunks regardless. No point taking the whole planet in one step. Each person I take control of will begin a countdown of inevitability. In time, they will be reformed, regardless of their willpower, with only the occasional need for reinforcing punishment, with the goal of eventually removing the need for them at all.

Put as fine a point on it as you want Swim, a moral debate is still an awesome moral debate. EDIT: Well, according to this crummy browser your earlier post just changed from 2 paragraphs to 4+. I'll cover that one while I'm here. In a purely hypothetical scenario I won't waste much time on, I would ideally be able to read my own mind better than normal, and at least notice a few fundamental (haha) things changing in time to self-correct. However, this doesn't seem like a safe option to fall back on. Back in of forum discussion of Portal 2, somebody brought up the topic of (Spoilers for P2, for those who somehow haven't played yet) It would give you amazing power and intelligence, but has driven all three people who tried it insane. The people on the thread came together to create a flexible and variable plan. One that, despite one's own madness and impaired judgement, would still keep the original goal and steps above all else. A twisted kind of schedule under which you can simultaneously be insane and following a greater plan made by a smarter you. Kind of like the diagram now that I think of it. The point is that I'm going to go nuts. It'll almost certainly happen, and though I could ideally stave it off, I'll need to spend some of my time either re-inventing what they created, or scouring the depths of my mind to find wherever it got buried. As for bad decisions, I'd find crime of almost any kind to be worth stopping. Wars can end while I'm at it, and misinformation shouldn't be much of an issue with control and reading-access to the mind and body. In terms of controlling the population, I doubt micromanagement of the whole world would be practical. Lucky for me I only need to pull a handful of people off of bad moves, and the rest of them, the ones who are just plain bad, can either die or be forcible reformed by themselves. I'd love to argue about whether or not this constitutes free will, but I get the feeling in this scenario I simply wouldn't care. The goal is to force people to accelerate their maturation on all fronts, and then they can handle the rest once I'm gone. As for the earlier post I somehow missed, in the presence of another person with this power, I'd have to see how they'd use it. If they decide to do as I'm doing, a collaboration might be in order. If they waste it, we strategically grab them and either use them as extra micromanaging or we kill them. If they're making a less well-meaning power grab, I suppose the only option left is to abandon the entire effort and focus everything on correcting them, thus ridding myself of 80% of the guilt and moral ambiguity. If there's any issues with my own child the answer is mental therapy, reassertion of previous brainwashing, possibly drug therapy if it's not too huge a risk, etc. With my particular abilities, I'm fairly sure I could catch it growing before anything became an issue. Pre-arranged traps can always be a problem, assuming anybody found out the details on what I'm doing, but having hordes of loyal servants has its bonuses. A few friends in the right places, with the correct smileys painted on their minds or just outright pupettry would be more than enough to handle most if not all automatic/long-distance traps and attacks. And if I turn out to be completely wrong about the world needing saving, I won't do it. But that would require there to be no war, no crime, and no bad decisions that have wide-spread consequences, which are all how most versions of Earth like to complicate themselves.

Lucky for me, personality is just a programmed series of behaviors a person tries first because it worked in the past. Memories are little more than storage, etc. There are actually perfectly viable, albeit difficult and time-consuming, ways to edit your own personality, memories, and other notable psychological features. Since I own half the populace completely, I would quickly have everybody start fixing themselves the moment their main issue was solved and/or prevented. They themselves would slowly but surely overwrite their own natures and leave much more worthwhile people in their places. Odds are they'll still make the odd dumb decision, but being able to behave passably while independent of my control is a major milestone I will encourage everybody to make. Normally this would be a process far too risky to leave to everybody, but lucky for them I'm a telepath and will be there to guide them to exactly the right result if they happen to be important enough to society. Even if they're not, they should get at least a good enough treatment to make them better than before, and if they make too much trouble I'm sure I can make time to visit them personally. It's not like I have much else I need to do.

On the contrary, I find it would be less like the crush and duct tape example and a little more like surgically extracting a tumor. Or, in this case, temporarily forcing a tumor to be productive. And granted, I'm not immortal, but I'm not holding the world up, I'm stopping it from making idiotic decisions and keeping the criminal aspects of it productive. Really, I probably don't even need to kill most of the heads of crime I use telepathy to track down. I'd like to take this one tiny sentence inconveniently located in the middle of this mess to say that I don't actually believe any of what I'm saying, but intend to keep going until crushed regardless. But anyway, with mind-reading and puppeteering, a little testing and some lab rats ought to let me perfect the art of painting smiley faces on their souls, to keep them productive and happy long after we leave. Sure, things will more or less snap back once both myself and the kid are dead, assuming I can force my views onto another person before I die, which wouldn't be all that hard, but that's still the lifetime of a single person wherein things were better than before. Sure nobody's stopping the bad decisions and unproductive people from doing their thing, but the old unproductives had their efforts blocked, and might even still be alive after I'm gone, carrying on the legacy of not being complete letdowns to the historians. Really what I'm saying is that it would feel like an enormous waste to throw away a gift with as much potential as this. The issue here being that raising somebody with this level of power is borderline impossible. Going through the stages of life, it would be a huge undertaking to even begin raising this kind of child, and odds are you would break them. It's simply a better idea to go on ahead and break them, then use them like an extension of your own abilities. Now it's back to the same question. You have such an amazing power to use, and to use it for little things would be a waste. It's using a shardblade to cut vegetables. Putting the power to constructive use is really the better option. And since the only use for controlling people is to control people, it's going to be needed to control people. Exactly as said on the tin. The only people worth controlling are those who could either have a positive effect but won't, or those who will have a negative effect but shouldn't. From here, all that remains is deciding who needs to have their course shifted, and how to keep your own course straight. Not using it is just such a waste.

Well, since I just got back from a two hour discussion on manipulation and the circumstances under which terrorism is a viable option, I should totally reply to this morally ambiguous thread without even bothering to cool off and think about the questions outside of my current mood. Here we go. In terms of the first one, I cannot be the only person who's psychology lessons have resulted in an intense fear of reinforcing terrible behavior in children years down the road. Being able to see it all unfold as it happens would be fantastic. Sure, emotions and thoughts are meant to be private, and it's guaranteed to dehumanize everybody around you once you start seeing them as nothing but emotions and words, but I might still stick with it under certain circumstances, foremost among them the #2 question. The kid is a bundle of emotions. Likely simple compared to an adult, manipulation is the ugly word for what we all basically do to them on a daily basis to raise them right. While it would wear on my psyche a little to use my own child as a lab rat, the results of a childhood when one's emotions are on full display are simply too good to pass up. How would this kid do in school? How much would they value the thoughts and emotions of others? Would they be better at reading people or worse? Frankly this isn't something you can just forget about, and I'd be all over it at some point. Really, personality is just a list of physical and mental patterns that we follow because they've worked in the past. Whiny people do it because whining worked previously, etc. Being able to watch the young mind at work would present a fantastic opportunity to rid it of laziness and mental health problems, among other things. Yes, it's terrible but I'd feel just as bad if I didn't do it to somebody and even worse if I did it to somebody else's kid. Then there's number two. The kid just won the superpower lottery. I hate to sound callous or rude, but a human puppeteer could solve so many problems that I'd be horrified to learn somebody passed up the chance to use them. I'd be all but obligated to stall their development as long as possible, just to buy to for me to come up with a solid plan for directing them well. Step one is minimal physical contact. I myself must, at all costs, avoid being controlled. This means that despite having a large presence in the child's life and being seen and heard and loved, I cannot actually let the child be anywhere near enough to use the power on me. At least until they're under control. As sick as it is, nobody should ever grow up with this power. It's simply too easy to be corrupted by it. The child will be raised to follow orders and little more. I myself will follow that one guide for the soon to be power mad, to keep the same from happening to me. Assuming I'm still a telepath, I would make certain to reinforce all the necessary behaviors to have a very obedient and unambitious child. Not really that hard if you can see it all play out in front of you. The house would be set up like a smaller, more personalized version of Aperture Science, something a mind-reader should have no problem paying for with such a good job opportunity. Reinforcement in the form of omniscient/omnipotent seeming beings punishing the child for any unauthorized ambitions or power usage. I myself must be seen as untouchable and above it all, while many unsuspecting visitors are allowed to visit and interact, giving the child plenty of opportunities to learn. Eventually, they will. From there, I suppose a sadistic mix of Death Note and Code Geass must take place. With the ability to control anybody I please under my control, an enormous number of the world's problems could be solved. Idiotic media and political decisions can be neatly undone and covered up, crime can see an interesting and creative downturn when the organization is forced to kill its own members to stay alive, and all the while I'll lament the fact that I'm a horrible person who frankly doesn't deserve success but really took the best available option all things considered.

Only a monstrumologist would identify death as the only true cure-all. -The Monstrumologist No, this does not describe me at all. 100% fiction. Totally has nothing to do with my life or my job or the fact I spend my spare time looking up how to dispose of corpses.