Argent

http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cs10vm7?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cs10ws9?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cs1ee6s?context=10000

I don't know where they came from either, but since they were pseudo-confirmed, I am willing to live with it.

Man, there must've been so much, ahem, Seeking and Steelpushing early after the remaking of the world, I feel I need to include an 18+ sign somewhere in this thread...

Right, I know they didn't all die at once. The ashfalls, the mists, the various armies, and other factors have been killing skaa for a few years before the rise of Harmony. I can't imagine any of those doing any kind of significant damage, however. A few percent of the population, maybe.

This may be because, I believe, the majority of the members in this forum are millennials, a generations known for its low levels of religiosity.

I was going to say how those numbers don't tell the entire picture, but then my reply got a little too long, and so I went to create a separate thread about it, and after messing it up twice, it's finally accurate. Bottom line, The Final Empire lost about 99% of its population at the end of The Hero of Ages.

Yeah, my numbers were mostly right when I first posted this, then I got confused and edited them to be completely wrong (I was working with 1 million instead of 100 million), and now they are finally correct. And worse than my original estimate.

Disclaimer: I was using the wrong numbers when calculating the percentages (i.e. I was taking the population of the Final Empire to be 770 million - Earth's Industrial Age population - instead of its own 100 million). So all my original percentages were about 8 times higher than they should've been. The numbers have been fixed, but the takeaway is that if we want over 90% extinction rate, Scadrial would've had to have averaged about 1.68% growth rate for the 300 years between the eras. For 99% we need about 2.23%, which is a number I can accept for several decades after the Harmonization™, maybe even a century, but not the entire intermission period.

You misunderstood me. I meant that you calling yourself agnostic implies that I am arrogant. Agnosticism is actually define as true neutrality on the belief spectrum - "I don't know if there is a higher power, but I am willing to accept evidence for its existence if it presents itself" kind of sums it up. It's a good stance, but it makes people who call themselves atheists look like people who won't accept evidence for the existence of a higher power. It's a very subtle distinction that may very well exist only in my head, which is why I didn't want to go into it. @Quiver, I guess the historical argument is believable enough. I can accept a lot of today's nonsense simply because of some tangentially related event in the past...

Okay, final numbers are in. Sorry for the confusion(s)... Originally I was going to post this as a reply to Joe ST's comment in the Brandon Sanderson AMA thread, but my reply started getting just a bit long and technical, so I figured I'd post it separately. Not necessarily because it merits discussion (though it might merit a reaction), but because I wanted to keep it independent of the AMA. So. Turns out, as far as our viewpoint characters know, the population of the Final Empire was about 100 million people before the events at the end of The Hero of Ages, so we are talking Era 1. By the time The Alloy of Law rolls in, Era 2, we are down to about 15 million (again, as far as our protagonists know). This is enough information for us to make some educated guesses about how impactful Ruin's release, as well as Vin's and Harmony's tinkering with the planet was. Let's look at our Earth as a baseline. According to World of Meters' page on World Population, we entered the Industrial Age with about 770 million people (a number we don't actually care about here) and exhibited a population growth rate of about 1% (1.0059% for the period between 1760 and 1804). The Final Empire takes place during a kind of pre-Industrial era, skaa were created (or modified) to be more fertile, but I find it likely that more of them were dying when compared to our history, so I think establishing a 1% population growth rate for the Final Empire is, if not accurate, then at least a good starting point. Given that about 300 years have passed between The Hero of Ages and The Alloy of Law, knowing that we reach about 15 million people, and assuming the 1% (1.00596%, actually) population growth, we can calculate that all of (known) Scadrial had about 750 thousand people when it began repopulating. From 100,000,000 to 750,000. That's 99.25% of the population gone. Over. Ninety. Nine. Percent. And you know what the worst part is? I don't know if 1% is not too low. People tend to, um... get active after surviving disasters, something about the human spirit likes to celebrate the death of others and its own survival with procreation. Harmony had just remade the entire world, I would be surprised if he didn't try to make things just a little better for his people. You know, kill and infectious disease here and there, boost people's immune systems, maybe even tinker with the fertility rates so that people have an easier time repopulating the planet. If we raise that 1% to 1.20% we end up with 420,000 people surviving the apocalypse (99.6% extinction)! You know what the population growth rate was in 1965? 2.19%. If Scadrial had the same annual growth rate during the 300 years between Era 1 and Era 2, Harmony would've had only 22,500 people to work with! Twenty-two-fraking-thousand! Want this as a percentage of the Final Empire's population before that? 99.98. How crazy is that?! So, two edits later, we are back where we started - if my estimates are anywhere near correct, we are talking about 99% extinction rate. You know, no big deal. For comparison, the Permian-Triassic extinction, Earth's worst extinction, wiped out only 95% of all land-based animal life on the planet.

I've always been confused by the desire of the English-speaking countries to define their religion by the flavor of Christianity they believe in instead of just claiming to be Christian. It's a phenomenon I haven't seen in other countries (of which I've only had contact with a few). As for myself, I am an atheist. I have a tiny bit of a problem with the term "agnostic" because its existence implies a certain level of arrogance in people who have been using the label "atheist," but this is only a remark, not something I want to discuss here and now.

Depends. How do you feel about grimdark?

Not my question. Credit where it's due, please And on the same topic...: http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cs07liy?context=10000 And now, tune in for (what I believe to be) another installment of Brandon misinterpreting Weiry's question! http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cs07oz0?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cs07qyi?context=10000

Honestly, at some point you've got to just say "this is how things are." I imagine it's the same with Breaths, Awakeners just knowing how many they have.

Uh. I don't have an official list really. Plus, even if I could narrow it down, announcing the names on it implicitly insults any artist who is not there, and I don't want to do that.

When you attach files directly to a post here, they get attached as clickable thumbnails if they are above certain size. So the thumbnail is super tiny, but when you click it, it turns full size. It's fine. As for the portrait, massive improvement! I've always imagined him a little... broader, in both face and body, but this might be purely a personal interpretation. The quality of the art is easily in Top 5 Cosmere artists I've seen. Maybe Top 3.

THE MAN CANNOT BE STOPPED! http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crz9qxr?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crz9rgy?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crz9rlo?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crz9s4q?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crz9s9q?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crz9sb6?context=10000 Man, the RAFO train rides hard and it rides fast. http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crz9srh?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crz9sub?context=10000

Making my way through The Skull Throne. It's kind of weird. It's not an overall improvement over the previous book in the series, but I feel like more things got better than those that got worse. We'll see if I keep this sentiment in the second half of the book.

http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cry9xml?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/cry9zxe?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crya03x?context=10000

I don't know if we can make this assumption. I am pretty sure the Elantrians' ability to teleport violates the principle that information cannot be transmitted faster than the speed of light. If one example breaks the rule, there is no more rule.

http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crxbahj?context=10000 Unsurprisingly, Gifters can't cheat the system and turn the entire world into pseudo-Epics. http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crxbbb3?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crxbbsg?context=10000 Somebody doesn't believe in RAFOs here http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crxbdm3?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crxbgkf?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crxez5z?context=10000

Possible. I'll ask him in the AMA when he answers my last question.

Damnit, it's been years since Mistborn ended. I don't need to keep coming back to it and finding more cool things!

Hmm, Chaos' reply hasn't hit my feed yet. No fair.

With the text: http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crwabx4?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/whowouldwin/comments/37yn6r/a_full_shardbearerstormlight_vs_a_space_marine40k/crwac1k?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crwaeeh?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crwaeso?context=10000 I didn't really expect an answer here, but it's good to know that we'll find out. Though revisting this meeting in-world would be... interesting. http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crwafnh?context=10000 http://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/2ytg2h/im_novelist_brandon_sanderson_ama/crwah70?context=10000