Autobrecciation
-
Posts
40 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
News
Forums
Blogs
Gallery
Events
Posts posted by Autobrecciation
-
-
Folks in other threads are stuck on trying to get to 16 from 4 Dawnshard commands to fit with Shards, Allomancy, etc. Maybe there are 6 undiscovered surges... but I'm not putting my eggs in that basket
If you have 4 commands, and want to combine them, you have 10 unique combinations of two. The example from that thread was Unite, Connect, Change, and Survive. That gives these combinations:
- Unite Unite
- Unite Connect
- Unite Survive
- Unite Change
- Connect Connect
- Connect Survive
- Connect Change
- Survive Survive
- Survive Change
- Change Change
I think that the 10 surges arise from combination of 4 Dawnshard command/intents. I don't think the above (Unite, Connect, Change, and Survive) are the right commands. My thoughts from another post:
QuoteMy guesses for the Dawnshard commands are:
Change
Persist
Perceive
Unite
I feel like change covers both growth and decay. Thinking about the Dawnshards as the tools Ado used to create the universe, I like Change as kind of this constant movement towards entropy. Persist comes from me imagining an empty universe. Ado in there, making things that change or cease to exist when they aren't actively thinking about them - kind of like cosmic object permanence. Unite likewise makes sense as kind of the opposite of change. If the universe is coming into being, it needs to have this kind of balance or else it flings itself apart and you get nothing. Perceive is the last... I was thinking about the creation of life, this idea that a universe full of stuff that could never know itself was empty. Of them, this is the one I am least confidant about.
1 -
Quote
From the Iri coppermind article https://coppermind.net/wiki/Iri#Religion :
The Iriali worship a god they call "The One". According to this belief, the One knew everything but had experienced nothing. And so the One became Many in order to experience all things. As each experience is different, it brings completeness to the One. Eventually, all will be gathered back in when the sum of land is attained and they will once again become One. Every person is a different mind of a single being experiencing different lives. As Many, they need ignorance. Each fragment of the One’s mind has its own body with different passions and inclinations. They exist in variety to experience all kinds of thought. That means some people must know and others must not. Just like some people must be rich and others poor.
So I think we have a situation like this. We know that Harmony holds two shards that oppose each other for the most part, and that he talks about how if he acts too much to favor one side bad things happen. Adonalsium would be this on an infinite level. All this power, but unable to use the power in any way to affect change without push-back, overrule, bad things happening. So I think the shattering was this plan to allow the separation of powers which would let the power be used without the interference of the other shards. I also think Ado knew ("Resignation? Confidence? Understanding?") that the power needed to be separated as a way to experience the universe they created.
So I agree that it was a suicide, in that there is no way a godlike being with infinite power wouldn't know that their power was going to be ripped apart and distributed. And that they were unable to stop it, because using the power in any direction would be opposed by the opposite of their own personality. This also explains why the Shards are supposed to separate out (Pact of non-interference, but I believe Frost (or some other letter writer) implied that even 2 shards that got along with each other were breaking the rules by settling in the same system together.
7 -
I took this as him projecting his betrayal of her at that point, but it could also be one of the other three that betrayed the swarm (or even Arclo)?
0 -
I think she might not be immortal specifically because the command she has is "Change". Think like how Ruin claims to push for - that without change there is no evolution, no death, everything becomes stagnant. So maybe she won't become immortal because that would be antithetical to the thing that has invested her.
I have a feeling that now that she is the Dawnshard, she will be like a Splinter. Not exactly immortal, but her cognitive shadow will likely be. I think that's why part of the deal is that she can't become invested - because she could use it to become immortal, in addition to becoming able to use the command. I don't think that limit will really work though. Just having access to this tool will change her perspective, and the longer she has it the more changed she will become (I think).
1 -
Quote
Ok first on the rock fact: Moho is actually a sick name lol. Dang I didn't even know that could happen! Is it bad that it has been thrust up or is that just something that happens?
Don't think its bad, since it probably happens over millions of years. Just an interesting thing. And I think its pretty rare, but I'm sure its less rare than I think it is. Basically when you have subduction, part of the plate thats getting covered is also getting scraped, warped, and broken. Sometimes that brings up rocks from the mantle, which is cool. Kind of like like a snow plow picking up dirt from cracks in your driveway, even if its going over those cracks.
QuoteHuhhhh that's interesting that they could come to that conclusion if the evidence for it really can't be proved.
I think of it as just old timey scientists making assumptions. We can do better now.
QuoteSo wildfire naturally or human caused (accidents and global warming)?
Wildfire is such a complex thing that I've only scratched the surface on. The main (direct) cause of the fires is generally lightning strikes, and with hotter dry periods, there is more dry fuel available; both of which are associated with patterns of extreme weather variability rooted in climate change. In the historic fire database I'm using there have been 831 fires since 1939 for my area. 218 are from before 1984, and the rest are after, so we see an increase in fire frequency. The cause of this (I think) that when an area burns it destroys the built up vegetation, and we get invasive grass (cheatgrass if you've heard of it) that grow quickly, out-competing more draught resilient native grasses. The cheatgrass also dies off early after spring, and tend to catch fire easier, and help the spread the fires between islands of fuel sources. So you have these areas of sagebrush, juniper, low brush, etc that get converted to cheatgrass, which creates a feedback loop.
QuoteAnd neural network is like machine learning right with the layers of nodes and then they like process data and send it to the next layer and eventually come to result?
Yeah, neural networks are just fancy machine learning algorithms. You create an architecture for the layers, feed in training and validation data, the computer optimizes the output based on making correct predictions (Like, lowest mean squared error, or low loss rates between iterations). Then you feed in some data that you know the answer to see how well it did (Kind of seperate validation). If you are happy with the results, then you can feed in data you want to make predictions with. The one I'm using is good for image processing, its called a "Convolutional Neural Network". They are supposed to be good at breaking down an image into constituent parts - recognizing edges and curves, which is good for object classification within an image. They also do some randomized selection of the input data, in an effort to make a more generalized model (Basically to make predictions accurately for data that is different from what the model was trained with).
QuoteSo it is machine learning right just teaching it to upscale using drone images as reference. That's actually really smart that sounds awesome!!
It is. The thing that hopefully makes it useful is that the drone sensor has matching bands/colors to the satellite imagery, which is useful because the colors can tell us about plant health which has applications to agriculture and food security.
QuoteSo considering this does work what is the final goal? Like use this to advance forest management or as data on the result of global warming induced fires on bird populations?
So one of my goals for the study was to look at wildfire recovery, and quantify how well fires recovered based on land management after the fact. So potentially Forest Service or USGS has an area that burned, one group had done like, drill seeding to restore native veg, one did seed drops from like a plane or something, you could tell the difference, then start doing the better treatment. As for the birds, since they are still (relatively) successful in this area, but have declined all over the west, if we can isolate whats different here, we could attempt to re-introduce them in areas that they are more likely to thrive in. Since they are popular game bird, that can (eventually) drive some of the local economy.
On a personal note, my goal coming into my masters was to learn as many tools as I could, to be versatile and have a useful toolbox. I wanted to learn some programming and data science, to learn to plan and pilot UAS missions. Right now all my data is collected, and I'm getting ready to write my thesis between now and the spring. Hopefully I will graduate in May, do some work helping new students plan and fly missions over the summer while I look for a job. I picked a good and bad time to graduate tho, because once the COVID vaccine is out I'm sure everyone is going to be out looking.
0 -
My guesses for the Dawnshard commands are:
Change
Persist
Perceive
Unite
I feel like change covers both growth and decay. Thinking about the Dawnshards as the tools Ado used to create the universe, I like Change as kind of this constant movement towards entropy. Persist comes from me imagining an empty universe. Ado in there, making things that change or cease to exist when they aren't actively thinking about them - kind of like cosmic object permanence. Unite likewise makes sense as kind of the opposite of change. If the universe is coming into being, it needs to have this kind of balance or else it flings itself apart and you get nothing. Perceive is the last... I was thinking about the creation of life, this idea that a universe full of stuff that could never know itself was empty. Of them, this is the one I am least confidant about.
1 -
If you have 4 commands, and want to combine them, you have 10 unique combinations of two. Using the above example commands:
- Unite Unite
- Unite Connect
- Unite Survive
- Unite Change
- Connect Connect
- Connect Survive
- Connect Change
- Survive Survive
- Survive Change
- Change Change
I predict the 10 surges arise from combination of 4 Dawnshard command/intents. Could be useful to "reverse engineer" Commands/Intents?
4 -
Just take him out? Chiri-Chiri. Bring down / co-opt his church and raise himself to God-Emperor status? Taravangian.
1 -
Drominad system. Dusk as the reluctant, crotchety scout master with a heart of gold and wisdom.
1 -
Favorite character - I really love Steris. Every character I've ever played in D&D is like some insanely over-prepared because half the fun of character creation is buying gear! Think like, if you had Steris, but with Wayne's tendency to half plan ridiculous scenarios and absurd disguises.
Um, cool rock fact. So there is this layer between the earths crust and the mantle, called the moho. There are places in the world where there has been so much deformation that the moho (And parts of the mantle) have been thrust up, and are now exposed on the Earth's surface. If you ever see a green rock with red speckles (Eclogite), you can think to yourself, that might have formed in the mantle. It's not 100% but its a good guess.
As far as my thesis work... we have this bird that has declined in population over the last 100 or more years in the western US, except in this small pocket in Idaho, where its successful enough that its still considered a game bird. Old scientific papers from the 50s lay out that the decline in the bird population is due to increased agriculture, but don't present evidence other than the declining population. Intuitively, it makes sense that if you remove the habitat it should adversely affect the bird population. My predecessor used the National Land Cover Data set to examine the change in land cover, and correlate that with the population statistics, but the results were inconclusive (no correlation between agriculture increase from 2001 to 2018 and the bird counts for those years). Their conclusions is that there isn't enough agriculture change in the last 17 years to really capture its real correlation with the population.
So I will be using neural network to classify satellite imagery, which will allow us to look at a longer time scale. My hypothesis coming in to my masters is that it isn't agriculture (alone), but wildfire that is decimating the birds habitat and thus the population.
So super resolution processing is essentially when people on TV say "Enhance" and make images better. Turns out this is possible with a neural network and good training data. So the second half of my research was planning and flying a drone to take pictures over some bird habitat that had burned a few years ago. I will be looking at the imagery collected there to see how the vegetation is recovering. Since I have the data to train a neural network, we want to see how well we can increase the resolution of satellite imagery for the area. Hypothetically we could use this process to examine the area using satellite data back before a wildfire, to get better resolution images essentially back in time. This is useful because satellites are generally collecting data over years, but old satellite imagery has relatively poor resolution. Landsat (the series) has had 30 meter pixels since the 70s, but Sentinel-2 has 10-20 meter pixels which is pretty good. The drone data I collected has ~7 centimeter (0.07 meter) pixels.
Sorry for the essay there.
TLDR; Over 100 years, the local bird population has gone down, so we ask why? Some folks think farming, I think fires (and maybe farming too). The plan is to use a computer to figure out whats in old pictures (1980's) and compare to new pictures (2020), then compare the change (In farms and fires) to bird population and see how well it matches. Finally, I will use drone pictures matched to satellite pictures to train a computer, then the computer will use old satellite picture to make fake drone picture, and see how that matches to reality.
3 -
Good question. I think I'd love the freedom of pseudo-flight via steelpushing.
1 -
I keep intending to write a hello thread, but I'm really a lurker at heart. So about me:
- Grad student / Teaching Assistant - M.S. Geographic Information Science - thesis work is on applications of Neural Network classification and super resolution image processing, looking at impact of agriculture and wildfire on ground bird populations in the sagebrush steppe of ID / MT / WY. Did my undergrad in Geology, so I know something about rocks and earth processes (Not a ton though, I decided to specialize in the maps and computers side of Earth sciences).
- First Brandon Sanderson book was Mistborn 1. Wanted to read it before The Gathering Storm so I'd know what to expect. Like many of you I was hooked.
- Big reader growing up, got busy with school so read maybe 1-2 books a year for several years. This year I got a kindle, and with the lockdown I've had more free time to read. Did my complete Cosmere reread from May-August. Just finished Dawnshard this weekend.
- Favorite Cosmere series - Stormlight, followed closely by Mistborn Era 2.
- Favorite non-Cosmere series - this is a tougher question so I'm going to write it out as more of a discussion. The Wheel of Time is kind of foundational to my reading, but just due to massive amount of rereads of the series over the years it was coming out, I don't know if I could read it again, so maybe its not my favorite anymore? I know book 3 is never coming out, but The Kingkiller Chronicles I've read twice, still feel like I could read again. This year I read The Kings of the Wyld and I loved it. It bought me back to weekends playing D&D with my friends, some of the absurd things we got up to. The Expanse novels I read mostly (First 4) before this year at the slow rate, and I think the TV adaptation has been phenomenal. I hope that the WoT show is as good. Plus the last of the 9 book series comes out next year.
- What am I here for? Mostly to continue lurking. With the release of Dawnshard and Rhythm of War I'll probably be browsing discussion threads, maybe commenting a bit. Felt like I should put something in the introduce yourself section as a reference and a courtesy before commenting.
So hello to all! Ask me about cool rocks or fossils you found and I'll try to tell you something interesting about them.
3
Themes of the Stormlight Archive and clues for overall Cosmere Story Arc
in Cosmere Discussion
Posted
There is a theme that keeps coming up often enough that I'm starting to think its a clue as to the fate of the Cosmere, and the motivation of Adonalsium.
The heralds are immortal beings that have minds, that have been "corrupted" by madnesses unique to each of them. At first I thought this was tied to their torture on Braize in between desolations, but I think it's also been hinted at that more than just the torture is wracking their minds. The immortality itself means their memories have disappeared into oblivion, which has contributed to the destruction of their identity as well:
Kelek's Note:
It's not just the heralds. A lot of immortal beings are tired of life.
Secret History:
“You didn’t think this was the end, did you?” God asked, waving toward the shadowy world. “This is the in-between step. After death and before…” “Before what?” “Before the Beyond,” God said. “The Somewhere Else. Where souls must go. Where yours must go.” “I haven’t gone yet.” “It takes longer for Allomancers, but it will happen. It is the natural progress of things, like a stream flowing toward the ocean.
Sanderson, Brandon. Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection (p. 206). Tom Doherty Associates. Kindle Edition.
I think Zahel is wrong. I think that cognitive shadows are the soul or contain the soul. The spren thing comes up a lot in RoW, but I think its wrong, if only because we see that the spren become more human-like over time rather than the other way around. Investiture becoming conscious and making decisions; it feels like spontaneous life from power, sort of Cosmere abiogenesis. I think that there are some more clues about this with Ishar's experiments trying to bring them into the physical realm. Also, is Ishar one of the five scholars? Something dark is going on there, maybe Ishar is the bad guy for the back 5?
Anyway, more issues with immortality:
Through Mistborn through era 2:
We also see this deterioration happening to other semi-immortal beings, like the Kandra. The first generation ends up sacrificing themselves, feeling old and stretched, etc. MeLaan also mentions that they've decided to be able to end their own lives to prevent being taken over by ruin. This leaves me with the impression that as they age, their mind goes, and they want an escape mechanism to prevent being enslaved again, but I also think its there so that some can.
From the Coppermind:
This comes up with Paalm/Bleeder. She talks about serving the Lord Ruler, and I think more than just the trellium spike has influenced her - the ravages of time have started to make her worn as well.
Elantris
The Elantrians are immortal, but when the chasm forms they lose their powers and RAPIDLY deteriorate on the mental side due to pretty much being in a permanent state of torture until they lose their minds. I think this is pretty straightforward.
Bringing it all back around:
In RoW we get the BEST vision that Dalinar has ever sent to anyone, and I think this gives us a clue as to the meta-theme of the cosmere:
This is the real deal. Somehow Dalinar used connection to allow a conversation between Tien's REAL soul with Kaladin. I think this has major implications for "Journey before Destination" - that connection is formed on the journey, and that it is possible to revisit those moments through connection. And Tien somehow influenced the world to get this object back to him. I have no idea how. Fortune maybe? The message is here:
So what is the implication for the greater cosmere, history and direction? i laid it out kind of in a previous post
I think these all point to a risk of immortality / immortality being a double edged sword, as a theme in the Cosmere. Even Adonalsium is hinted to have known about, and perhaps even had some part in their own shattering. I actually think this is the inspiration behind the Iriali religion.
Dawnshard:
I think Ado knew ("Resignation? Confidence? Understanding?") that the power needed to be separated as a way to experience the universe they created.
So what is Odium's Endgame? I think with Odi-vangian we are going to see something interesting - Odium wants to preserve ALL life through making them immortal. I think this will end up being very anti-"Life before Death, Journey before Destination, Strength before Weakness". He wants to SAVE US ALL. To do it he will still likely want to destroy all other shards to be the last one standing. I think it might be interesting to see the endgame be the right to die (and go to the Beyond), versus the right to immortality but as a slave/servant/underling of the only god, Odium.