Next episode will not be two weeks from now, but three weeks from now (April 1st/2nd). My wedding is in two weeks, soooooo we're taking that week off. More WoBs to come and then Secret Project 2! -Eric

Never stop doing the "what is a..., anyway?" bit - cracks me up every time. Correction: Okay, maybe not with your vows. And congratulations to you and Jess!

"I am a sentient pile of cash" and this whole conversation has me DYING

I have to imagine that, occasionally, Brandon tunes into Shardcast and just sits there giggling at the amount of time we all spend thinking about this stuff and how wrong we are.

Should have commented last episode, but I am 100% here for unhinged, as long as you guys are having fun.

Gosh I love the wob episodes! Happy marriage day to Eric and Jess!

On polymorphism: This is definitely talking about the computer science concept. The use of the word contract gives that away. Brandon has done some programming in the past, so that's why he's so certain he understood this. Polymorphism refers to the idea that multiple instances of something (different magic systems) can share an interface. For example, we could define a contract for a magic system that says it's wielders can: 1. Push objects away from them, 2. Manipulate emotions, 3. Speed up time around them. This is a contract, and Allomancy fulfills this contract (it can do all 3). So for another magic system to fulfill this contract, it could produce the exact same outcomes, even if the specifics of how it is done is completely different.

I need a super cut of this episode with just Argent’s monologuing and Kadie’s face :)

As someone who doesn't have an opinion on whether or not Shallan's alters are a form or polymorphism or not, this episode made me feel validated.

Roshar may have a Bondsmith Unchained, but Earth has a 17th Shard Unhinged 😆 I'm totally here for it! Also, congrats to Eric and Jess!

50:20 This begs the question: What happens when you take an Honorblade into the Cognitive Realm? Nightblood probably wouldn't be different from Vivenna's blade.

Congrats to Eric and Jess! On the reuniting Adonalsium question, maybe this is a hint there’s a Dawnshard or two on planets without perpendicularities.

We need to re-ask that question to Brandon as "Brandon with your knowledge of the exploits in the Cosmere, what do you think you could set as the 'Unite All Shards Any%' speedrun record baseline" and see if he gives a better answer

Thank you for all of the thank you’d for the wedding!!! Though Argent might not make it through after describing Shallan’s alters as polymorphism cause that’s not how that would work at all they share the same DNA, don’t me me shank you at my wedding. *chicken with a knife meme* Also @Ene Shakadolin

Singers were reborn in the everstorm, so they enter child form. I like it

Argents face when being told that hemulurgic potential begins at conception: 😳

The AI talk makes me want to see one pick up Invention+Autonomy and go full exterminate mode

Rewatching this after Yumi and the AI WOB is quite fun, especially the speculations about initial spark etc 1:11:54

Two things, first, if we do get a AI shardcast to see where it takes us, it will probably take us to mushrooms. Second, the cosmere space whales are in fact not in space, but roshar's cognitive realm (star spren)

Congrats Eric and Jess! Hope you have a wonderful day!

Congratulations (again) to Jessie and Eric. Don't let pre-wedding stress get to you.

Congrats on the wedding and getting to have the crew there! I enjoy your content and personalities 😆

i love how polymorphism has a slightly different definition in every disicipline making that wob completely different depending on which you use

1:15:00 Eric mentions investiture gravity when talking about Investiture being attracted to an AI. I actually think that a pressure differential is more accurate in this case. Investiture Osmosis. After all, Brandon has talked about Spiritual Humidity before, using water terms to refer to latent Investiture.

On the subject of Polymorphism -- if we're going with the Computer Science angle, we're talking about constructors and inheritance, functions, overriding and overloading, etc. A very high level overview of this is this: A huge subset of programming languages are what we call 'object oriented' -- you create an object, you give it values, you can perform procedures (functions) on that object. Some objects are built-in (a string of text is a 'String', a non-decimal number is an 'Integer', etc.) but you can also define your *own* objects. For the sake of demonstration, let's say you define a Person object. This Person object classification has a name, and a birthdate, and a home planet as required parameters -- every instance of the Person object must have these defined. Now, we can create a child object, and, again for the sake of demonstration, we could call this child object 'Scadrian'. Because Scadrian is a child of the Person class, it inherets the requirements of its parent and therefore *must* have a name, a birthday, and a home planet, *however* Scadrian places a further requirement that 'home planet' *must* be 'Scadrial'. Now we'll define a third object: Nalthian. As you can imagine, the Nalthian object, a child of the Person object, requires their home planet to be Nalthis. Now, we can associate functions to these objects. So, we can say that every Person object has an 'Eat' function, and a 'Sleep' function. For every person, these do the same thing. If a Nalthian person eats, they eat in the same way a Scadrian eats. Same with sleeping. We can also define an 'Invest' function, but let's say we define that function differently for Nalthains and Scadrians. So, when you perform (call) the Invest function, the program will look at what type of object it's being called upon and use the appropriate Invest function. If you call Invest on Nalthian object, they gain a Breath, and the same Invest function for a Scadrian gives them Allomantic abilities. This is polymorphism. The idea that the same action, performed under different circumstances, can have different effects, or require different inputs. For instance, an 'ExpressInvestiture' function for a Nalthian might require specifying the number of breaths, and a command. 'ExpressInvestiture' for a Scadrian might require inputs of the type and amount of metal being burned, and whether or not Duralumin is being used (but you can't define the metal being burned if the Scadrian is further defined as a Lurcher object -- it's always going to be Iron). So, the question is asking 'are the sets of functions that make up an Invested art associated with the Shard that Invests the person? The planet they're on? The planet they're born on? The planet they're most Connected to? Where are these functions being defined, and which association are they tied to?' My read of this WOB, given that Honor could give Allomantic abilities to a person, implies that Invested arts are not inherently tied to any of these things. They may tend to be, but it is not a strict rule. If we were to go back to the programming analogy, the Shards do not each have their own dedicated InvestPerson function. Nor do planets. Nor does Connection. Instead, this WoB, to my read, suggests that all shards have an InvestAllomancy function, and the InvestAllomancy function for Honor (a Shard object) has different requirements than the InvestAllomancy function of Whimsy, and so on. Honor might, instead, use the InvestSurgebinding function in a weird (or even new) way to achieve the same results because the requirements are more suitable/easier to meet for Honor. (Honor having more than one different InvestSurgebinding functions would be an example of function overloading, but that's not really relevant.)

Congratulations for the wedding, Jessie and Eric !

The Sleepless are also called Dysian Aimians. I would imagine that their homeworld is named Dysia.

Argent and I maybe be saying the same thing in regards to the polymorphism WoB. It can be one of several things. 1.) The magic ends up being made with fueled by different things. So allomancy would be fueled by Stormlight instead of ingesting metals. 2.) the magic would somehow be reproduced using the magic system native to that shard. So if steel pushing and iron pulling are drawing off the surge of gravitation effectively you have a preservation powered Windrunner. 3.) there is some unknown side effect that would happen with each. Basically it seems that every shard can make every type of shard UX magic system in the cosmere but there would be something unique to each one.

"You hear a little ringy-dingy? That's a call from the bone phone. Answer the damn thing, I ain't got call waitin baby." Sorry, that's all that I kept going through my head after hearing "bone phone" XD

Kelsier has been trying to figure out a way to ethically source hemalurgic spikes. In other news, the church of the survivor does not prohibit abortion

24.51 I think Odiums edge is that the vessel can act so in tandem with the intent of the shard. So since the shard of Odium seems to represent passion and hatred and rage, his acts of aggression with the power are more powerful in that he can more direct the powers Intent in that instead of fighting it. Where as the other shards seem to not be as able to focus on splintering another shard as well because the power doesn't inherently want to

Congrats Chaos! My friend is getting married the 25th, tis the season~

45:45 My thought is if The Great Beyond exists outside of time that means no matter WHEN you get a missing piece of your soul back due to it being used or it decaying out of the spike or whatnot you’ll ALWAYS have that piece back and won’t ever be without it in The Great Beyond.

On the subject of when Nightblood was created, we know that the five scholars can't have visited Roshar directly because they hadn't rebalanced the Invested Entity chart to account for spren yet which Zahel implies he did as soon as he was able to study them firsthand.

The sentient shark/bug Sci Fi series is called Galaxy Outlaws

The WOB revolving around AI and investiture looks particularly prescient elevant after SP3. (I am pretty sure this came out prior to its release?)

I believe the beyond/the spiritual realm is where all expended investiture returns to and its where all the information of that investiture exists at once, hence the endless supply of mumbojumbo contained within it.

Congrats Eric and Jessie! I wish you all the Connection and all the muffins!

"im so close to figuring out the cosmere" -> "there is a very incomplete picture in my head" i love argent

Congrats on the nuptials, sounds like a wonderful reason for this group to get together and celebrate!

Before I forget congratulations Eric - enjoy your day!

For attracting investiture. Maybe he means something to do with the interactions of tones on investiture and this is all leading on from that dagger in rythm of war. Maybe as we enter the more science-age of the Cosmere they'll discover metals or tones which draw investiture by giving the component essentially a "negative" investiture charge and have investiture flow into it like electrons passing a charge down a cable. Chemically or tonally making the component have an investiture deficit rather than a neutral state so that investiture is attracted to what is essentially an investiture vacuum in reality.

I wonder if Tanavast made the Stormfather into an Avatar near the end of his life, when he knew he was going to die soon, with the specific intention of getting his power and/or cognitive shadow to attach to the Stormfather. We know from Dalinar's last vision that Tanavast knew he was going to die/was dying sometime before it happened, and I don't think he just sat around and waited for it to happen. He probably wanted to have someone or something in the place of Honor, rather than just leaving it completely rogue, which could have more harmful effects on Roshar. Maybe he even intended for the personality and cognitive aspect of Tanavast to persist in the Stormfather, who would not be an actual Shard but rather an Avatar, but it didn't work exactly as he had planned. Either way it could have been some sort of contingency plan for after his death where he made the Stormfather into an Avatar specifically so that he could sort of stand in for Honor, as opposed to the much more independent Avatars that Autonomy makes

congratulations, Eric and Jess! marriage is awesome, and good luck to you!

Mateform meek, for love to share, Given to life, it brings us joy. To find this form, one must attune The True Tone, the Rhythm of Boning

Congratulations Chaos and Lady L!!

I agree based off what's in the books and WOBs I've read that stormfather and nightwatcher were there before Honor and Cultivation showed up, and that they did something to "uplift them" since stormfather calls them children of those shards. Or at least speaks in such a way that feels very much like he's talking about a father. Stormfather also speaks directly from his own sight flying over roshar, he never speaks as though he IS honor. The only time he seems to have memories of Honor are the visions, and even those aren't direct visions of Honor doing something. What I have always seen the Stormfather as, was a carrier of the Shard, and that Shard was looking for a new host, and that host couldn't be Stormfather for some reason.

Obvious question: "Why do you have a bottle opener?" Obvious answer: "Because I have an unopened bottle."

Congrats to Eric and Jess!

This is exactly what I needed today! Thanks Sharders

Im imagining the honorblades have the answers to all the stormlight archives issues and just are unable to talk. A i must scream and have no mouth kinda scenario.

Something for the soul discussion: consider memories. Memories are considered part of the person, but can be stored in metal minds or with Breath. So they are a non-physical outside mental force that can influence and be influenced by Investiture. Same for whatever causes the spark/breath of life. It could be that these items are based upon some other power outside of Investiture, and there could be many of these powers. We might just be over reliant on Investiture as a power, as it is easier to lean on and obvious.

I think odium’s edge has to be what his “truest surge” is. If honor’s is cohesion and cultivation’s is progression then odium could be division.... if division is his truest surge then it could give him an edge in splintering shards

My favorite part of my sundays, shardcast, wobs, and tea.

Also, I really wanna talk about the spiking at conception thing in the context of significantly more advanced science and technology. If this is truly the case, then Scadrial will be able to industrially mass produce full twinborn effortlessly through identifying the genes for specific powers, using genetic modification/cloning to mass produce these cells, fertilizing eggs in vitro, then immediately spiking that single cell (or small cluster of cells) into people with a tiny needle or something. This feels like a cyberpunk era if I’ve ever heard it lol

1:14:16 Evgeni’s statement here was proven spot on in Yumi! Followed shortly by 1:14:56 where Eric’s statement is proven true by Sunlit Man!!!

I still stand by my theory that Dalinar will end up becoming Unity, and the end game of the entire cosmere is adonalsium being reformed. Elantris started with a rebirth, it's the biggest theme of the cosmere overall imo, so I can't imagine it doesn't end with a rebirth, making the whole cosmere like the universe, in the sense that the big bang happened, it expands forever. Until it is pulled back together and another big bang happens, and so on and so forth, or something. I really think at the end of the day, adonalsium will be reformed and Dalinar will be pivotal in that.

Congrats to the wedding! I Hope you two have a wonderful day

Professional software developer here. What Argent is describing as "polymorphism" is actually "overloading." Polymorphism is slightly different, and it involves one new concept: hierarchies involving the function's "owner." Let's say I define a very generic type called "Animal," and I put a method (a function belonging to a type) on it called "Noise". I can say that this is _abstract,_ meaning that the Animal type only defines that Noise exists, but not how it works. Then I create a new type called Cat that's defined as a specialized Animal, and I define its Noise method as saying "meow." And I create a new type called Dog that's defined as a specialized Animal, and I define its Noise method as saying "woof." Polymorphism says that if I have a variable that's declared as an Animal, I can put a Cat or a Dog in there, either way, and call Noise on it, and it will do the right thing for the actual type of object that's there. The idea of "all Shards meet[ing] the same contract" is a very formal computer-science way of suggesting that if any Shard can create an Allomancer, or a Radiant, or an Awakener, or an Aon-scripter, etc, that all of them would be able to do so. Perhaps the details of how they do it would be different, but they would be recognizable as the same thing to an outside observer.

1. We don't know if the Fused are the true soul or are investiture mimicking their soul (Which is still up in the air for all CS). 2. Even if they are the true soul, then it would be a soul being maintained or held in some way by the investiture. The way I see it, if it is route 1 then the soul already moved on. If it is route 2, then the investiture/anti-investiture interaction would free the soul.

Polymorphism is super common in biology. The most oversimplified way of putting it would be "different forms of the same species". Butterflies and insects in general tend to do a lot of these shenanigans. (sexual dimorphism and blood types are also a kind of polymorphism) In chemistry Carbon is a very good example. It can exist as graphite or diamonds or as nanostructures (like nanotubes).

I think it's much more likely that the Stormfather isn't an Avatar but I think Dalinar is and has been since OB

Light Secret Project Spoilers: I thought Argent's thing about magic systems became obvious back during a secret project WOB stream. That line of thinking is why I'm so confused about why people are thinking midnight aether and Re-Sephir (sp?) would be related. Forming inky creatures seems to be one of these magic fundamentals. We've seen it now on 3 seemingly unrelated planets. Trying to link them together feels like trying to link all the sources of creating illusions to one source.

Y'all went full WOB-lin mode for this one!

idk the full definition of a spirit web, but my intuition is that it is the entire history of the thoughts and ideals that make up a person, and if you break that spirit web, all those broken pieces would still have the history of once being a perso therefore that person still exists and can go to the beyond

ShakaDOlin had me dying, tho Imma have to go with Kadie's pronunciation lol

Brandon could have just said the 5 scholars met a skybreaker.

Thanks for guessing Max so that my brain immediately thought of Tindwyl :P Good wobisode

Chaos “nothing chaotic here, only beautifully curated playlists” LordRuler

Also, congtats on the wedding. I hope "these words are accepted" will be part of the seremony?

I think the answer to why the unsealed metal minds are bypassing the usual rules of storing is simple. Intent. The medallions are imbued with an intent during their creation. In this case, “store weight”. So it’ll constantly be storing weight when worn and probably attempting to when not. We’ve seen Nightblood imbued with an Intent and it’s the basis of Awakening. I doubt they’re using Awakening specifically in their creation but it’s probably similar mechanics at play. If these are moving toward “little machines that give you powers” using Intent this way seems like a necessary step

I don’t have an opinion on whether Shallan’s alters are polymorphisms. Also I love Shakadolin! ❤

I don't have an opinion on whether or not Shallan's alters are a form or polymorphism or not.

"I'm a sentient pile of cash." Argent 2023. Beautiful 😂

The One Ring is also self-aware. So maybe that's what Brandon meant

Hope you had a good wedding!

1:18:30 I think Nightblood is AI - hot take

Having Odium take up the dawnshard that Hoid had though. That could be funny. Not able to hurt anyone.

It all makes sense now! The Pusher and Shover Robots are actually just Honor Allomancers, who have sworn to protect you from the Terrible Secret of Space! Are you protected?

16:00 I would speculate that the endgame of the Cosmere will be a conflict between the "Uniters" and the "Splinterers" 20:30 That process presupposes the presence of multiple Shards 37:00 That has terrible implications for space age Singers. They are stuck on Roshar. 45:30 Under that premise your soul has already gone to the Beyond if you are a Cognitive Shadow 52:30 The Five Scholars have Divine Breaths, like the Heralds that must have something that keeps them alive for millenia.. They may be able to hear Honorblades while normal people cannot. 1:01:00 Odium has done exactly that. He made Surgebinders that run on Voidlight. The Fused.

I expect the soul in the cosmere will not be made of investature. Brandon likes the analog from our world of not known for sure about the afterlife, and I expect that if the soul was investature, it could be identified with sufficient power/skill/technology. From there, if you could identify that it stayed in the cosmere or left, I think that would be too strong evidence one way or the other for that argument for Brandon's liking. It could also just not be possible to identify /trace that level of investature.

I (of course) haven't watched the full vid yet, but I always thought Honorblades were as close to sapient as like, Investiture could be. It just felt right that they'd probably have like, a "soul"? A sense of self? Like, basically like a really smart plant? Does that make sense??? I wonder how Brandon's going to explain that. Keep up the good work as always!

YOU DONT KNOW MY CHATBOT DOESN'T LOVE ME. PROVE IT.

In computer science, polymorphism generally refers to when you make an interface that it so that what you are actually working with doesn't matter. It is generally used so that systems can be swapped out with minimal changes to other parts of the greater whole, as a general rule, if swapping out the part is noticeable then it isn't polymorphism. I wouldn't call Shallan's situation polymorphism, as the whole point is that there are differences between them and that wouldn't be polymorphism, in order to qualify Veil or Radiant would have to be so good at pretending to be Shallan that none of the people around could notice that they had swapped out.

Shallan's alternates are not polymorphism because they can do different activities. They do not fulfill the same contract.

A thought I had is if a midnight aether was on roshar and then it was turned into a creature on roshar then it would be a roshar native

What Command would I use to Awaken a TI-83 calculator? 8008135( if you know, you know).

Talking about AI "attracting" investiture. We have a number of examples of investiture being pulled to specific events. Specifically drawing/painting/ thinking/creating. I feel creating an AI requires a lot of very specific intentional effort. The idea that to create an AI you need to get put so much intention into its creation that investiture would be drawn to it makes sense.

I think that Shallan is absolutely an example of polymorphism. One object that can be viewed as multiple different types.

52:20 - or Honorblades are just very quiet. How many centuries they had to ponder over the act of Heralds you say?... But then in that prelude never once an Honorblade speaks, so who knows... But then again, maybe the breaking (or the betrayal?) of the oathpact during ahari... etam(?) was the inciting incident for them developing their personalities, or something-something, like they're so inhuman they don't really bother speaking or whatever, tons of ways to get out of it. And in my opinion Shallan is a composition that contains Veil, Radiant, some version of her personality she associates with herself more closely and that she calls "Shallan", and some bundles of suppressed memories that Veil kinda keeps down. And then potentially some memories that are still there but half-forgotten half-suppressed. I think that some parts of the composition kinda got re-integrated with one-another in RoW, in a sence that some bundles of memories were let up and then Veil kinda smacked "Shallan" with that final one of those she was in charge of and re-integrated with "Shallan", so now there are "Shallan" and Radiant and those half-forgotten memories. Also maybe Radiant would become more of a "work mask" than a distinct personality, but that remains to be seen. 1:25:41 - hmmm, something like the duality of light being a wave and a particle in the same time maybe? Quantum physics-level uncertainty... Also would Hoid ever plan to become an omni-aetherbound just to REALLY get all the magics? 1:42:42 - easy, you make an un-keyed metalmind medallion that stores weight and then you awaken it with some variation of command "when is equipped, store weight". As long as you do it right it sounds like a set and forget thing with a simple if condition. Lets imagine it as an elastic one-size-fits-all bracelet, as soon as you put it on - BAM - you're weightless. I guess full weightlessness would be undesirable in most cases, so maybe it's a set of 4 bracelets each of them set to store 25%, so if you want to do Wax's "I'm half-weight now!" trick you put on 2, want 75% of weight gone you use 3, need to weight nothing you put all 4 on. But then also we can start complicating things with some tricky imaginary rules, for example if a bracelet is awakened to store away a "half of person's CURRENT weight", and it constantly is on outlook for the CURRENT weight, it ends up storing 33.333 and so on of person's real weight, so like the person weights 2/3 of the real weight, and medallion stores half of it, the 1/3. Like at first it will store away half, then current weight becomes 50%, it readjusts to storing 25%, weight becomes 75%, it readjusts to storing like 37.5%, weight becomes 63.75%, readjusts to storing like 31 and a bit % and it oscillates up and down with smaller and smaller amplitude until it seemingly settles. But that's if you say to store a part of the current weight, if you say it to store some portion of real weight it's all good. But of course here we're kinda talking about mass as evident by Wax's movement as he discussed with Khriss on that party.

Reuniting Adonalsium: I've long thought that was the whole purpose that the cosmere was driving toward. The individual shards on the planets would be reunited, one by one, and held by a person of character and quality. And only then could Adonalsium have a chance of being reunited. And I think we will see that unity in Stormlight 10.

I always thought the Beyond and the Spiritual Realm were just two names for the same thing... I figured souls were made of investiture and when a soul went to the beyond it meant the bit of investiture that made their soul was returning to the spiritual realm.

AAAAAAA CONGRATS ERIC

Argent going all "What's in the booooooooxxxxx!?!?!?" right off the bat is the mood of this post. I'm good with that.

I get the feeling that the process of "unmaking" is similar to Sja-Anat's "awakening" in some way

Could someone hold enough breaths to create life? Like Preservation couldn't do it on their own because of their affinity, but ruin and preservation could. But could a person hold enough breaths to create a species? Or would the mechanics of awakening block them from doing so?

The Beyond is the unknowable, beyond the veil of the Spiritual Realm. True AI could attract Investiture directly from the Spiritual Realm to build their soul, just like people throughout their development do.

Argent's pronunciation of Shakadolin is so cursed 😂😂 (I figured making fun of Argent would be a good way to try and boost engagement or whatever)

Is Moash an Avatar for Odium? He takes his passion or soothing him in exchange for him doing things like killing Heralds, right? Oh yeah, congrats Eric and Jess!

1:10:38 UNDERRATED JOKE