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Min

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10 years ago
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Min

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10 years ago
I was thinking about this on the drive to the train station this morning; what actually *are* the Talents?
I know that they're fantasy and all :P but is there any way to break down what each Talent is doing and try reason what science (or faith, or whatever) has gone into the definition and practise of each?

Eg:
Farseeking. What we know:
- a Farseeker can communicate mind to mind.
- they can more easily farseek another Farseeker.
- they have trouble communicating over long distances, unless they connect with another Farseeker (also mentally) - draw from their talent I guess.
- they communicate in 'thought-speech' (as opposed to imagery).
- they have trouble (and sometimes, can't) farseek over water or taint (radioactive substances).
- Farseekers can attune their thoughts to target (converse with) a particular person/people.
- they almost all seem to have this connected ability to create 'shields', which stop unauthorised entry to their minds.
- Farseeking can be physically exhausting.

(Yes, some of the above cross over to other talents)

So in combination, this has me thinking that the Farseeking talent is the ability to package data, light and one's own energy, into an encrypted, transferable stream, sort of similar to fibre optics (go with me here), and the ability to decrypt data received back into mental speech. I think I have mentioned before about how Farseekers are like a living Internet :P but this goes further.

Fibre optics enable the focus and transference of light and data, at very fast speeds, right? In order for it to be of any use it needs to be fed to a receiving vessel that can decrypt and read the data (otherwise its a jumble of code, or just portions of it are understood at the other end).
The reason I'm thinking more fibre optics than any generic cabling is purely because of the way light moves...because of the water & taint restrictions, though it's foggy at best...because it's been a long time since I studied any of this...
That a farseeker message moves like data and light through a fibre optic cable, but because there is no actual physical cabling, when it passes over anything whose molecules are vibrating at a certain resonant frequency (obviously buildings are no obstacle - so that frequency must be ok/ignorable), portions - or all - of the data/light is changed, and becomes unreadable/unrecoverable.
Sort of like how...water refracts light. The light is still there, the original path is just changed.

Radioactivity's effect on this light/data stream is similar to water's - only more extreme.

What confuses me at this point is how a person can even receive the message, since we're chiefly composed of water, though I suppose it could be that the data/light/energy are received and decrypted without having to actually make contact with the physical body - sort of like, each person has a field (or wifi zone), and as soon as the data enters that zone, the message is decrypted.

So if water and taint change or corrupt the transmission - what's a shield? It doesn't corrupt the data, it's just a temporary shutting off of the wifi zone the recipient has. Or not shutting down, but putting up authentication. Which means that the demon bands could be a double-whammy - they suppress the recipient's wifi zone, and corrupt the data being transferred.

As for targeting particular minds - we hear them speak of mental signatures - I guess this is like an additional package, appended to the message/data/light, which further directs (like a private message as opposed to a public post). The same actions are undertaken to create the message, just an additional bit of information is added telling the sender and receiver that the message is 'private' - though technically if someone hacked into another person's wifi zone they'd receive it too (yeah, now I'm tired/going cross-eyed...).

...any other ideas? I've got thoughts about Healing too but I just got to work/have to go...
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10 years ago
Ooooh that's a really interesting idea Min! I do like thinking of farseeking as fibre optics, and I think the refraction of the light through water and over radiation is a really clever way of thinking about it. Plus I'm doing this topic in physics now, so it's quite interesting!

It's made me think maybe it's more just an electromagnetic wave of some sort (so more like a radio/tv signal), that has a specific frequency or polarisation that can be picked up only by the other person. So as you said it's sort of encrypted to protect against anyone else reading it. I guess you have be tuned to the right signal to receive it, and since everyone has their own signal, then maybe they are using different frequencies or something, so you can tell who is who. And then beasts just speak on an open channel cause beastspeaking is public rather than private.

How someone might pick up the signal, I guess the mutations of the Misfits from the radiation, has just enabled them to receive electromagnetic waves that they usually couldn't. I.e. it's given them another sense (just like sight picks up electromagnetic waves - light)

As for the range thing, if it was a wave of some sort, then obviously it has a limited range, as the further away you get from the source the weaker it gets (just like radio/tv), and then if you want to boost the signal you get someone else to send out the same signal. That's what I see the other misfits doing when they draw on one another, they are all sending out the same signal so that means the two waves combine (constructively interfere if you want to start getting scientific) to create a stronger signal which then has a greater range.

I guess with the radiation/taint, it might be that is also sending out electromagnetic waves and other particles, which interrupt/interfere the farseeking waves (could be destructively interfering to create no wave at all). I think it would almost make sense for the radiation to be sending out waves at a similar frequency to farseeking, because the Misfits can feel the taint when they try to pass it, so they can detect it, which would make sense if it was on the same frequency as regular farseeking (so then the two waves superimpose and cancel).

As for water, I also assumed it was more because the water was tainted, which would lead back to the radiation interfering, but I really do like your idea of it being refracted, so that then it might not be able to be received, like it could just be refracted (bent) into the ground, so the signal doesn't travel any further.

I'm interested to hear what you have to say about healing. As for something like coercion, I guess it's a more extreme form of farseeking, but instead of receiving signals you can control them. So, the coercers can make people do things and get in their heads, which again makes me think electromagnetic waves, since brains also send out similar waves, so maybe they can manipulate the brain's waves to make a person do whatever they want, or to rewire a person's brain by creating some sort of electromagnetic block that stops the brain accessing the memory it once had....

And empathy, I guess that could just be a different sort of frequency of electromagnetic waves. Or I prefer thinking of our bodies emitting emotions kind of like smells, so the empaths can just 'smell' the emotions, that's how I picture it.
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Fri Jul 26 2013, 05:53pm
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10 years ago
Regarding receiving the signal; (I'm putting it under spoiler, not because it spoils things, but because it's bloody long and only mildly relevant. Skip it if you want to)
I 'm not sure how that would work either, but I think it's worth pointing out that audio microphones and audio speakers are, in their most basic forms, essentially the same thing. The process that converts electricity to sound is the same that converts sound to electricity, only run backwards. And the thing about evolution is, that it tends to come up with the clumsiest workable strategy, which has the advantage of usually being the strategy which is most easy to turn into something else.

So sending out thoughts probably came first (And when I say first, I mean way back in some reptile. Probably a dinosaur - I bet you it was a velociraptor), as a side effect to something else. And that something else was beneficial, so it was carried forward into future generations, both of animals and of species. Which is why we see primitive talents in a lot of birds, more advanced stuff in a lot of mammals, haven't really had any reptiles to test it on, but we haven't seen anything in fish.

And then once you've got that, getting it to do the reverse would probably be fairly easy and could possibly have happened on several evolutionary strands (convergent evolution). Also, that would explain why it's harder for humans and beasts to communicate since they would have to bridge different methods of converting signal to thought.

(Side note, the species we've seen exhibiting talent are mostly either social; dolphins, wolves; or domesticated, that is, we haven't seen Elspeth talking to any squirrels. So that's weird.)

Another thing is that when only a few members of the population can do the transfer back and forth, there's a lot of use to variations like coercion and empathy. When everyone can do it, not so much, because when everyone knows what you're doing, it's less of an advantage. You can see that from how rude it is to steal thoughts from others at Obernewtyn. So maybe the age of the ability in beasts is part of why there are so few other talents seen in the animals; we haven't seen horses who are empaths, coercers, only "human-speakers" and healers. Maybe it's because when the entire population can communicate mentally, the benefit of empathy and coercion is out-weighed by the social cost, so they disappeared or became less common.
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10 years ago
Sian I think it's quite relevant, and very interesting. I agree that it could quite possibly be an unintended consequence of mutations, and things just evolved to have it.

And I think your explanation of convergent evolution of receiving signals would explain a lot, and I guess beastspeakers just have happened to have the same 'gene' to allow them to pick up beasts.

And that's a good point about which animals we have seen communicating, they definitely are the social, almost 'higher-order' animals, that seem capable of telepathic speech.

Oh I forgot futuretelling, I think that's largely unrelated to the other talents, and could just be these misfits being higher-dimensional beings, well at least able to tap into the fourth (or higher) dimensions. So they can tap into time and see in the past and future, and possibly into higher dimensions, where (some argue) are all the possibilities of the world.

But then that makes me wonder what the mindstream is, I guess it could be sort of a higher dimensional object, one you can't see usually, but it's there 'above' everyone. And the dreamtrails are also extra dimensional travel or something.
larana

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Fri Jul 26 2013, 04:27pm
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10 years ago
This reminds me of the project I did all those years ago, about how what parts of the brain would be involved in the misfit talents. I must hunt it down...I'll be back.

Edit: I found it!

~Link~

I will have to read it again as I haven't touched it in 2 years
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10 years ago
Very interesting Larana! I do like your hypothesis about how the Talent has evolved!
Min

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10 years ago

Sat Jul 27 2013, 08:12am
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Min

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10 years ago
I thought you had Larana - I remember you talking about this on Theories years ago. I do love how detailed you've been with it. Can we put this in the theories archive?
I'm loving the synaptic transmission theory, and your evolution flowchart. What does the chemical portion of that type of transmission do (genuinely have no idea)? Invoke a feeling or present a piece of information as logic/correct? It could be how coercion and even empathy actually works.

Sian it is interesting/relevant - I love your theorising on why the bests have less diversity of talents - because they've evolved out some of the less socially beneficial talents. I wonder if coercion will become less common?

Re range limits of farseeking - I think the range limitation comes from the person's own energy, mostly because of how they always seem more physically exhausted the further they send their messages. It's why I guess I was thinking it's a data/energy/light transfer - the data is the message itself, the light and energy come from them and act as the power source. They're their own electricity, but it needs constant recharging.

Daniel - I like the concept of transmitting on frequencies to target individuals and I was thinking about how that could work - I was wondering if they would run out of clean bandwidths. You would eventually get to a critical mass of farseeker bandwidths, you'd have harmonic frequencies and cross-overs and the like if mental frequencies were anything like tv and radio ones. Though, true, if there aren't any physical cables between people, it is more like a signal transmission tuned into by a recipient than a cabled/networked relationship...though it's hurting my brain thinking of how a recipient would know to tune into a message for them - it needs to work almost in reverse.

Wait, they are connected by cables! Sort of. When Elspeth travels the dreamtrails, before going onto them we always see this ghostly snippets of people's light bodies, swirling with colours, and cords connecting them to various people they're related to or in love with. Maybe these connecting strands are actually like the cables of the fibre optic idea - conduits that make their various talents transmission and receipt possible. When they farseek, they're creating a temporary light cable on that plane, that connects to the recipient's light body (hence no problem about sending the data through water, because their light bodies encircle their physical bodies). Once the transmission ends, it returns to them, or dissolves. When farseeking to multiple people, it's simply a branching out of these ethereal cables to the desired people. Since this takes place in the dreamtrail-level (can we call it another dimension?) there should technically be no limit to distance, but I guess because they're using it while conscious, they're limited by the energy they possess, whereas if they were on the dreamtrails they'd be drawing from the mindstream instead of using their own body's energy reserves. So the slipstream method the farseekers employ to go over greater distances is like using a tiny portion of mindstream - the farseeker utilises the other person's energy to strengthen their own cables.
If this was true then they'd get a lot further if they just jumped into a trance whenever they wanted to farseek over long distances :-/ but I guess it's an advanced technique - Elspeth and the Futuretellers can slip onto the dreamtrails but it's very dangerous for an untrained mind to do so - with the mindstream wanting to merge with them and all...so it takes a level of concentration many haven't attained.

Anyway - I'm going to work on an idea for Healing and Futuretelling. They really interest me, they're both kind of really different to the other talents we see.
Min

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10 years ago

Sat Jul 27 2013, 10:16am
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Min

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10 years ago
*dpm* It's a discussion on healing on its own so thought it could do with a new post. So - healing - the talent, not the doctoring skill or bandaging things or the herb lore. It's...a lot more difficult to pinpoint than I thought it'd be. The bit below the spoiler tag...it's there because it's long and because while it's a dissection of how healings seem to function in the book, I didn't make any real conclusions...and the more obvious answer is under it (non-spoilered)... If we look at a few cases from the books - when healing works, and when it doesn't. 1) Elspeth's legs (never fully healed, until Nerat), 2) Dragon in a coma (maintenance of coma), 3) Miky and Angina (who could not be healed), 4) The description of a healing feeling like 'siphoning off the pain', 5) Darius' info about healing on a spiritual level. From the sounds of the talent, the healing ability allows the healer to amplify the recipient's own natural ability to heal itself, and/or includes some level of manipulating the recipient's pain receptors. Whether it's a switching off of the pain (similar to local anaesthetic - a calm patient has to be easier and more willing to be healed than one in pain) or it's an actual fixing of whatever was causing the pain which means the body naturally switches the receptors off (wouldn't this dampen the body's natural ability to heal itself?), I'm not sure. Maybe it's both. Low level 'healing' is more like maintenance of a patient's state and removal of pain, as opposed to fixing the core issue. In Dragon's case, they just feed her energy (so she doesn't wither away). It doesn't have to be a healer either; Angina sits with her for a time and performs the same function (Elspeth sees light cords connecting them before delving into Dragon's mind). In the case of Elspeth's legs (end Ober/Farseekers), Roland is frustrated that the burns aren't healing properly despite regular treatments. We can assume from his frustration that the sort of treatment they're administering usually works. Something is missing from the equation, that Roland puts down to Elspeth not resting them enough. With Angina it's not that he couldn't be healed; he wouldn't be healed. For want of a more suitable description, he had acute depression. His sister became ill/couldn't be made better, because Angina wouldn't - because he was using all the energy she fed him (similar to how Angina fed energy into Dragon) and refused to break the connection that allowed this transference, so he just kept using her energy up. Darius mentions levels of healing - physical, spiritual. That beasts require spiritual healing. He does actually say something about Angina being spiritually ill as well, doesn't he? So...for healing ability to work, it requires the patient's consent or will to genuinely fix a problem. It's why when presented cases like Dragon, Elspeth and Angina, they can't do more, because the recipient's will is not in it. So talent-wise, the ability can't force the recipient to focus on a problem and resolve it, if the illness/trouble is caused by something emotional/spiritual (eg depression), which has lead them to not want to be healed, or if they have accepted it but are too busy redirecting the healing energy they're given to somewhere other than healing. So Elspeth...does it mean that Elspeth's leg burns weren't healing because she was spiritually scarred, or didn't want to be healed (didn't want to let go of Cameo, Selmar, the memories or what they'd fought for, etc)? Or was she so busy focusing her energy on other talents that she left nothing for her body to heal with, if that's even possible? That because she's able to direct her energy, Roland was giving Elspeth energy to heal with, and she was just redirecting it and using it up in other areas? Quite often we have Elspeth redirect pain in the later books, too. It's something she can store, so that her body doesn't divert its energy from her current task or requirements inward and try fix itself. Anyway I'm getting distracted trying to reason and connect all the healing instances we see in the books...how does it actually (yes, in a fantasy-land :P) work? If we go with the cabling/light/data transmission idea used for the farseeker talent (because I'm in love with this idea now), the first step seems to be just creating a connection to the subject and feeding them energy, not data (since there's no message). Like connecting a new computer to a network, but not using it. This connection allows the healer, if they deem it necessary (or are asked to) to dim the mind's pain receptors (a dimmer switch?). So how does this work? Is it a form of hypnosis? The recipient can't accept that the pain is gone if they don't want to? This step feels counter-intuitive because the pain receptors exist to tell the body that something's wrong and needs fixing, and the healing ability seems to rely on the amplification of the recipient's own body being on task as well. Perhaps...the the receptors are more like a firewall in the context and that while it's up, while it's technically protecting the recipient, the healer isn't able to access what it needs to to get the job done. Anyway I'm confused by this point so I think I need to move on... There's one obvious thing that healing was modelled off that I've ignored so far :P because it's fun to theorise: Reiki (on Wikipedia). From what I can gather Reiki is about healing a person through positioning the hands on key points and transferring energy (in the form of heat, sound (so, specific frequencies?) symbols (somehow...) and reiki - universal energy AKA in OC canon, the mindstream). Tying in with the mammoth dissection of healing in the books under the spoilers:
...the Reiki treatment is said to stimulate the body's natural healing processes...
Anyway, read the article if you're interested in it - and I believe it fits - because I doubt reiki would work effectively on anything unless the recipient was willing to accept the energy in the first place. The concept of chakras has been hinted at (Darius) too and I'd go as far to say that Nerat and maybe Darius are Reiki masters (if there were such a definition in the OC), Darius because of his level of skill, and Nerat because he teaches Elspeth's body to heal itself (as a Reiki master passes their skill to their pupils). Please help with ideas - this theory of healing is a bit of a mess :P [act]moves onto Futuretelling[/act]
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10 years ago
I guess they are connected by 'cables' of sorts from the mindstream. And if there is a stronger cable between two people, they can communicate easier? Like Matthew and Elspeth just clicked and could do more together than anyone else, so maybe their 'cable' was better? And yes I was trying to think about how if there were all these waves being sent out, how the recipient would know to pick it up. I guess there could almost be a sort of open channel thing to start with, cause we know that the farseekers 'seek' someone else out first, and then connect with them, so maybe they do the seeking on an open channel (cause we also have moments where Elspeth has detected other farseekers with her probe, so that makes me think part of it is on an open band), then 'encrypt' and go on one frequency when they've connected?

Hmm I think that healing could be an extension of the transfer of energy like farseeking/coercion. So if we continue saying that farseeking is some sort of electromagnetic wave, which is just energy (since they are photons, which are 'packets of energy', and yes they are particles and waves, and that goes for light, radio, TV, x-ray, all electromagnetic waves), I guess in extension you could say that healing is just the same thing, but on a different wavelength/frequency. And it just so happens that that is connected to the body's own energy, which is needed to heal.

I think it's quite interesting to think that Elspeth's legs didn't heal because she didn't really let them heal, she was too busy doing other stuff, and expending energy elsewhere. And I guess that is true in our world, if you are sick, and exert yourself you stay sick for a while longer than if you just rested up for a bit. So I think there might be something to it, to say that to heal you need energy, and you need to be willing.

And I think reiki is most definitely 'healing' in Ober, they are very similar. As for the 'science' behind that, that's obviously more complicated. So if healing is giving energy, that energy has to do something. My thoughts turn to, if you are sick, then the energy promotes your immune system into action. And if you are physically injured, then the energy promotes your cells to divide, and repair (because that requires a lot of energy to occur). And maybe you need to stimulate specific areas of the body to assist in healing?

As for the spiritual/physical healing, I guess if you use the chakra idea, then there's physical chakras, and spiritual chakras, so both need attention to be properly healed?
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10 years ago
Min, more than happy to have it in theory archive, there is still a lot that I could do on it too :)
Min

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Fri Aug 02 2013, 07:46am
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Min

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10 years ago
Cool thanks Larana - I'll pop something up over the next few weeks for you - you can still edit it and add to it from the archive :)

Futuretelling; what we know:
- the futuretelling ability lets one see pieces of possible future events, and events past, as visions (I guess like a dream, or like watching a film).
- at its simplest a futureteller goes into a trance and sees a disjointed snippet of a future event. It is then up to the futureteller to reason the event out and guide (or mislead) the involved parties about the consequences of certain actions/inaction.
- advanced futuretellers seem to be able to 'travel' these events back to see what specific event/s caused it.
- a futureteller can also follow alternative decisions to see how they'd make the future pan out.
- a futureteller can travel the dream trails, though there's nothing saying that only those with a smidgen of futuretelling ability can travel them, just that it's somehow easier for them.
- a futureteller is able to tell the difference between an ordinary dream and a Truedream.
- a futureteller can not be seen by those involved in the vision (though, if on the dream trails, this appears to be a conscious choice, not the rule, as Maruman's says to Elspeth she isn't seen unless she wants to be seen).

A lot of these are advanced futuretelling abilities though, that only a handful of those with the ability can safely do.

I've been looking forward to dissecting futuretelling because when I started thinking about it, it is actually the most bizarre and sci-fi-ish Talent of the lot. It allows the futureteller to travel back and forth in time! You guys, Futuretellers are Time Lords - which makes the mindstream the time vortex! :D :P

The difference of the ability to all the others makes me wonder if it was either the last to evolve, or the first.

Seriously though (as serious as one can get with this topic :P) - the futuretelling ability seems totally different from the other abilities. Instead of using connections to other people, they sort of do the opposite - send their light cable within themselves until they find the mindstream, and then 'dip a toe' into it? Very few futuretellers seem to be able to control what they see in a vision (eg they cant seem to say "show me what happens if this decision is made") so it's like they get shown whatever the mindstream determines to show them. Rather than suggesting that the mindstream has a level of will or consciousness in itself, perhaps the futureteller/whoever is near the mindstream focuses the mindstream to events relevant to them. As a futureteller advances, they can refine this focusing ability, to show more and more relevant events, and also travel the thread of events back and forth in time (and space! LOL, suddenly love the futuretelling ability).

What do you think? I'd dissect it more but - surprise surprise - I'm at the work front doors...gotta go.
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10 years ago
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10 years ago
I remembered MK starting a topic on healing a couple of years ago: ~Link~

For transmission of farseeking, I like the idea of light or magnetic waves (just remember light doesn't have to be visible, it all falls under what we call electromagnetic waves. Your toaster radiating heat to toast your bread, those microwaves exciting the water molecules in your food in the microwave, the radio waves getting picked up by your antennae, the visible light from a multitude of sources, the radiation coming from radioactive objects, all are photons dancing around in different mediums at different energies and frequencies but moving at the speed of light...OK I nerded out a bit there :P).

A couple of interesting technologies that are being developed include being able to read thoughts from the brain and being able to project images from thoughts (been a while since I've read up on these though). The first is scarily close to being reality. 'Scarily' because some of the thought reading stuff is being developed by DARPA backed projects, the defence research group of the US government ~Link~ So perhaps some misfits have developed their brains in such a way that they can read brain waves like this, through some kind of induction. In a similar fashion you should be able to also do the opposite and create specific waves that cause induction in such a way that you control areas of the brain of others (a radio reciever and transmitter both have the same functional parts). This might be full control or just enough to communicate with. This research group here ~Link~ are trying to develop a form of telepathy. So it would be a matter of misfits evolving this way after the great white compared to our reliance on technology to achieve the same things.

Futuretelling is definitely one I can't really put any reasoning behind :P. I like in Frank Hebert's Dune how Muad'Dib realises that when he is seeing the future that he is at the same time affecting the future by doing so, a problem we have in science where you effectively change the result of an experiment when you observe it (not really an issue until you get right down to the tiniest of things). We don't really have this aspect with Futuretellers but they do caution that these futures may change depending on actions, so I guess they are more like most likely outcomes. Maybe if we view the mindstream as a second universe that reflects our own but how you can move through it and the concept of time in our universe are completely different. In ours we can only go forward. But perhaps the mindstream records the past and at the same time projects what the current future is based on the sum of all the actions and likely outcomes of the current snapshot of our universe. Alternatively, perhaps the mind stream is like a standing wave and has fixed start and end points and the oscillation of that wave is determined by actions within our universe. The great white would have been a huge action on that wave and so there will be very specific nodes on that wave now and most other actions simply cause superficial waves on the wave that the great white generated. And so one of those nodes is where Elspeth meets her fate. The smaller ripples on the bigger wave still have potential to change though before and after that relatively fixed point.
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pizzagreen

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Joined: Sat Sep 03 2011, 05:59pm
Posts: 1041
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10 years ago
So just saw this video, and thought it was somewhat relevant.

It's talking about optogenetics where brain cells can be turned on and off by light, so that could be relatively 'easy' to change the light to a different electromagnetic wave. So maybe that's how coercers and healers work...? Even has your fibre optic cables Min!

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