PlumPudding

I’ve got a theory about the Intent of Shards. Shardholders are very caught up with one idea about the Intent of Shard… how to withstand the effect the Intent on their personality. Sazed especially is trying to quell its effects. But my theory is that the Intent of Shards is INTENDED by Adonalsium to affect personality. In short, the Intent of Shards prevents the infinite investiture held by Shards from waking up/gaining sentience/coming alive for example like the Midnight Essence or young Honor after WaT. This is because the Intent of Shard just gently, but continually, applies an emotional force to that infinite investiture. Because of this it’s possible that if Sazed can successfully eliminate the effect of Harmony/Discord’s Intent, then it will run the risk/unintended consequence that his infinite investiture may come alive under his very hands. In other words, use the power (and be affect by it), or lose it (and have a bunch of new investiture being things show up in your world) This is a fun theory because we all WANT Sazed to balance his Intents… but it may ended up harming him and our precious misty friends instead. Thoughts?

Further thoughts: How do you collapse a quantum super position in the real world - you observe it. How do you collapse a number of superpositions, or a number of number of super positions in the Cosmere? You observe it and you think about it. But in the Cosmere matter can observe itself (such as I am Stick) especially when it is highly invested (ie Nightblood), and in fact is being observed by shards all the time. So this can explain why matter can effectively act like magic in the Cosmere, and end up in increasingly unlikely states of being, and yet someone in the Cosmere can’t just control reality at a thought. If you could control exactly how you want invested matter to be observed, you could collapse it’s super positions into any state, achieving effectively any result. This is easier said than done - by comparison in the real world if we had perfect control over atoms, their placement, and the placement of their electrons and their superposition we could - theoretically - turn rocks into Coca Cola. So not only is a massive amount of control required in the Cosmere, but a massive amount of knowledge and moment-to-moment understanding of the axi you are trying to manipulate. There are beings in the Cosmere who have both control and understanding - Shards. And coincidentally they actually can control reality at a thought. How do they have control over the super positions of the axi/matter/energy they are working with? WoB they have an infinite amount of Investiture - they flood the axi with investiture and achieve perfect control - they can pick and choose how to collapse its superpositions despite the axi being observed elsewhere by other beings and other matter. How do they have the massive understanding required? WoB says they can know anything they want just be thinking about the question… functionally similar to intellectus in the Dresden Files. All this is to say - the proof is in the pudding… we have seen exactly how this theory is proven at a theoretical limit of infinite investiture and infinite knowledge … the effects of the third axis of Investiture of matter and energy results in straight up reality warping. Can any non shard entity achieve this? Maybe With enough mental processing power (Feruchemical thinking speed with diminishing returns approaching infinity withdrawn all at once), or enough connection (to inherently become one with the entirety of the system of superpositions you wish to collapse) you probably could. You might be able to reduce the infinite amount of mental processing power or connection required by using gold or atium to have more datum… a breadth of understanding of the present by understanding the past and the future. And of course, having people like Bondsmiths around will never hurt. So all of this is possible… in theory. And at a lesser level of control or lesser level of knowledge, what do we have? The magic systems present in the books. Thanks again for reading.

The Plum Pudding Model of atoms but for the Cosmere WoB has said that in the real world we have matter and energy (e=mc2), but in the Cosmere they have a three way axis of matter/energy/investiture (E=mc2=X amount of investiture) I think this is the big hint when discussing where characters will go next in Cosmere physics In short, I think that investiture can be on an axis of matter - mists, pools and metals; and on an axis of energy (ie pressure and electromagnetic wave lengths) - tones, light; and finally investiture can exist on an axis of … investiture. I believe Brandon squeezed the axis of investiture into the real world realm of quantum, and the quantum properties of light - taking the properties of both: investiture can be present in both as a particle and wave length at the same time, and is expressed in the super position of electrons. I think the future of Cosmere science will depend on realising that you cannot actually have invested matter or invested energy, but that matter and energy can behave in a way that demonstrates how much investiture is present. WoB has talked about harmonium being like super caesium… unstable and chemically reactive, not nuclear reactive. Caesium is reactive because of it’s place on the table of elements, and the stability of its electron structure when exposed to other election structures (such as of the H2O molecule) As I say it’s not the electrons positions in the valence shells that are important but their super position, and how that can be changed when investiture is nearby. If the equation E=MC2=X amount of Investiture is true, then in the right circumstances, straight up matter ie atoms of iron or molecules of water can be converted into additional super positions and quantum potential for existing matter ie the iron or water can now move in ‘invested’ ways rather than the normal E=Mc2 ways. Of course Brandon has said that every atom in the Cosmere is invested to some degree, so every atom will already to some degree depart from E=Mc2 due to their quantum potential, and therefore will depart from determinism as we know it… because physics cannot determine how any particle will act given that the number of super positions of the electrons can change at any time. In fact, it may be impossible to ever know if the Spiritual Ream is deterministic because for all we know investiture can also change the number of number of super positions at any time of electrons in matter, by increasing the amount of investiture. I think E=Mc2 matter should be called atoms (and molecules), and have the character that the behaviour of their electrons, their valence shells and number of their electron super positions and quantum behaviour are consistent. E=Mc2=X matter should’ve be called axi and have the character that the behaviour of their electrons, more specifically the number and behaviour of the electron superpositions ie their quantum potential, can change at anytime due to the additional third axis of investiture. As an extra logical step - I do not believe investiture would affect real world matter/atoms because atoms are deterministic (to the extent that something that is consistently quantum is deterministic)… although by the definition above, any atoms that could be affected would no longer be atoms, but would be axi. Or perhaps it is more correct to say that in the real world X is a constant. It follows that the definition of axi is that “E=Mc2=X where X is variable” What does this all matter? It means that we can control the behaviour of matter and energy using investiture, and that we can control the behaviour of investiture using matter and energy. In the real world if someone wanted to research caesium, or even some of the advanced elements on the periodic table (such as Element-116 which becomes Copernicum) or short lived forms of matter (such as isotopes hydrogen-7 or Francium-223), then they would construct a test environment that created the right conditions… think of the Hadron Collider. Or they would determine that an element is theoretically possible (but our chance of creating it for a meaningful period of time is unlikely). If someone in the Cosmere wanted to do the same with an unstable axi or axi-molecule such as Harmonium, they would need to test in the right conditions - which means the right conditions for matter, energy AND investiture. How to control for investiture and it’s effects on the quantum aspects of matter and energy: 1) Prevent all outside investiture. In the Cosmere a faraday cage, an artificial vacuum, and a big aluminium box are related technology. Although it’s unclear if a big aluminium box is like a vacuum, or if it’s like a soundproof room… a soundproof room will never EVER be fully sound proof - just sound proof to the satisfaction of our be detecting technology. But then again I suppose rogue atoms and axi can and will cross a vacuum despite a vacuum theoretically containing ‘nothing’. In this way, we can control for matter, energy and Investiture and remove enough of its effects to perform our tests, but we can never create an area within the Cosmere that is totally divorced from existence, and therefore determinism or intervention. 2) Flood axi with Investiture that gives it a consistent and controllable behaviour on the quantum level/in its super positions Use tones, breaths etc and make it ‘highly invested’ - as we know a highly invested object resists other investiture. 3) Use a Bondsmith? … control over connection from a highly invested individual … could be a way to achieve ‘test conditions’ in any environment 4) Use Feruchemy affecting destiny, connection or identity - would tapping these allow you to have magic required to control the effect of investiture on matter in the same way that Pusher allomancy can control iron? 5) Hemalurgy - steal quantum behaviour or the behaviour of electron super positions from matter. Steal it from energy and light? Stab sound? This sounds ridiculous… but matter and energy behave strangely in the Cognitive Realm… and Ishar has pulled spren (ostensibly beings of light and investiture) into the physical world, ie converted them into matter. So why not stab invested sound in the Cognitive Realm and take its quantum properties. 6) EDIT Ask matter or energy to change form or to stay stable in the Cognitive Realm - persuade it to have stable superposition… by offering it investiture similar to option 2 above Overall: When Brandon says something is ‘theoretically possible’ or ‘you would have to jump through a lot of loopholes, but you could do it’, this is what he means. He means that you COULD control super-caesium, or you COULD make Element-116 (or Element-117, or theoretical Element-400) stuck around long enough to test… if you had the right controls. And a lot of what our protagonists want to do in the Cosmere… are not in controlled environments. Ultimately we may be asking them to do the Cosmere equivalent of the setting up a faraday cage… or of setting a Dyson Sphere or transcending to exist after the failure of the fabric of space time… which we may be able to do in the real world with perfect knowledge … theoretically. In conclusion, thank you for reading my Plum Pudding theory of how axi behaves on three axis in the Cosmere… ie just like the real Plum Pudding model of atoms but if the Plum Pudding could fly. EDIT - additional comment … the term Invested Matter is still correct, and it’s not totally correct to say that matter and investiture can be ‘nearby’ to each other… because the investiture is present ‘in’ the change to the super positions of electrons and in the change in quantum potential. One way of looking at it - what sound does a wave make if it is dead still - none.