Overthinking F-Tin (Again)

[Koloss17 She/They]

Well, here I am again, praising F-tin from the rooftops. I often spend too much time wondering what senses can be stored from other sources of magic (lifesense, allomancy, whatnot), but I really haven’t soent much time wondering how many senses a regular Windwhisperer ferring could store.

So let’s find out, shall we?

Obviously, you have the base 5 (sight, hearing, feeling, taste, and smell). We also know for sure that we can store pain separately, so that makes 6.

I would say it is fair to say you can store your sense of balance, sense of temperature, proprioception (knowing where your body is in relation to itself) quite well. To add on to that, I would add sense of gravitational direction (whether you are up or down) and sense of being in motion as separate enough to count as it’s own sense for tinminds. I would also count sense of dimensionality (if something is 3d or not) in this category as well.

Now, on to the stretches.

Sense of Time. This one I feel is not that bad, but at what point do we determine cognitive processes are their own senses? Another similar sense would be internal Sense of Direction. Knowing if you’re pointing south or west, or where you are in relation to an object or place.

We also have some extensions of other senses.

Color recognition: is this sight? Not quite. But is it different enough?

Sense of Pitch: same thought as color recognition, but with hearing.

I would argue that since we have identified that pain can be stored separate from touch, that these two can be stored separately.

So thus far that is 16, which is a number I would be very happy staying at. However, I’m certain there is more.

Well, we do have internal senses. Sense of hunger, thirst, and bladder needs. Perhaps you could even count internal pain, such as head or stomach aches as separate from other sense of pain.

To take it even further, what about sense of light? Could you gain night vision using F-tin? Maybe!

Some of these are stretches, and some of them are quite reasonable. Where would we draw the line? Are we going to chalk it all up to Intent, and decide that if the Windwhisperer thinks it’s a sense, then it can be stored? That would certainly make sense (no pun intended), but then how overpowered could a Windwhisperer truly be?

 

 

[Argenti he/him]

If they are the right species they can store the ability to see electromagnetic waves, the capability to sense rhythms, allomantic bronze, and probably future sight?

[Koloss17 She/They]

3 minutes ago, Argenti said:

If they are the right species they can store the ability to see electromagnetic waves, the capability to sense rhythms, allomantic bronze, and probably future sight?

Certainly! But what of a regular old Scadrian? Where are their limits? Without any other allomantic metals, that is.

[Argenti he/him]

Their sense of empathy?

[Koloss17 She/They]

43 minutes ago, Argenti said:

Their sense of empathy?

At first, I was hesitant. However, many people have an unconscious feeling of sadness when others get sad. It isn’t a conscious thing.

Now, is that what we would qualify as a sense? Anything that is intrinsically done by the brain without conscious intervention? Maybe. It seems to make sense, but that opens the floodgates.

Would fear count as a sense? Well, it is something that you just…do. 
 

If that’s fair game, what of language? You don’t think about speaking, you just do it. So would you be able to learn another language? Maybe.

 

Now, is the idea of senses all about getting information? Do they all have to be informational in nature? If that’s the case, then sense of direction (where you are, and how to get somewhere) wouldn’t really count. 

[Argenti he/him]

I'm guessing realistically the "senses" are just ways to gather information.

Emotions? No

Language? No

Hunger? Probably

Thirst? Probably

Sense of light? Maybe

 

[alder24]

You're overthinking it a bit. Not every sense is a sense. If you have a sensory organ, you have sense to store. We have thermoreceptors in skin for detecting differences in temperature, you can store that. But we can't feel wetness, our brain does it by examining differences in temperature and touch. Balance comes from your inner ear, where is located a sensory system responsible for sensing your balance, that's a sense to store.

Quote

The inner ear is home to the cochlea and the main parts of the vestibular system. The vestibular system is one of the sensory systems that provides your brain with information about balance, motion, and the location of your head and body in relation to your surroundings.

 

6 hours ago, Koloss17 said:

I would add sense of gravitational direction

That's coming from the combination of your eyes, pressure felt by your body and again, inner ear. So it would kind of be a side effect of storing/tapping other senses, and not a sense of its own.

6 hours ago, Koloss17 said:

and sense of being in motion as separate enough to count as it’s own sense for tinminds.

That's proprioception 

Quote

Proprioception, otherwise known as kinesthesia, is your body's ability to sense movement, action, and location. It's present in every muscle movement you have.

 

6 hours ago, Koloss17 said:

I would also count sense of dimensionality (if something is 3d or not) in this category as well.

That's coming fully from your sight and touch.

6 hours ago, Koloss17 said:

Another similar sense would be internal Sense of Direction. Knowing if you’re pointing south or west, or where you are in relation to an object or place.

That's not a sense. That's a brain deducting from the surrounding area where north is. There is no sensory apparatus in the human body that would provide us with this information. Sense of time is tricky, it mostly comes from outside stimulus (and we all know how easy it is to read just a few more pages and lose an hour or two doing that).

6 hours ago, Koloss17 said:

Color recognition: is this sight? Not quite. But is it different enough?

That's fully sight. Your eyes have 3 color receptors, from which the brain determinantes what color you see (and to see at all). 

6 hours ago, Koloss17 said:

Sense of Pitch: same thought as color recognition, but with hearing.

That's hearing again. Tapping normal hearing would ultimately make you perfectly recognise pitch (didn’t Spook noted how beautiful noises he heard sometimes?)..

6 hours ago, Koloss17 said:

I would argue that since we have identified that pain can be stored separate from touch, that these two can be stored separately.

Yes, because there are seperate receptors for touch and pain in your skin.

6 hours ago, Koloss17 said:

Well, we do have internal senses. Sense of hunger, thirst, and bladder needs. Perhaps you could even count internal pain, such as head or stomach aches as separate from other sense of pain.

Bladder is pressure, so it could fall under "touch". Hunger comes from hormones that your stomach releases, no idea how it would work, but there likely are receptors that detect those hormones in your brain, so maybe. Internal pain comes from the same receptros that are in your skin, so that would fall under normal pain:

Quote

Nociceptors are sensory receptors that detect signals from damaged tissue or the threat of damage and indirectly also respond to chemicals released from the damaged tissue. Nociceptors are free (bare) nerve endings found in the skin (Figure 6.2), muscle, joints, bone and viscera.

 

6 hours ago, Koloss17 said:

To take it even further, what about sense of light? Could you gain night vision using F-tin? Maybe!

That's what we call seeing.  That falls under normal sight. Your eyes are just doing their job detecting light. If there is no light, you can't see no matter how much tin you tap.

But you have 2 different receptors (3 to be precise but the 3rd one is weird and does almost nothing), rods and cones, rods are used for dark environments, cones for bright, so technically you could divide your sight to bright vision and dark vision + both of those have 3 separation for being better at detecting RGB colors. For example you could have red+dark vision stored separately from blue+bright vision. Totally pointless, but hey, that's an option.

If you tap touch enough you could feel the pressure that light exerts on your skin, as that's a thing that light does, pointless as air is much stronger.

6 hours ago, Koloss17 said:

Where would we draw the line?

You have a physical sensory receptor, you have a sense to store. Some receptors works as a bigger system, providing information for overall sense, like touch, or seeing, so they would be mostly combined together as one sense, not separate (while you can, it's totally pointless to feel just vibrations) That requires intent and knowledge, because you need to know that you have different receptors for touch, pain and temperature to be able to store them separately.

 

 

Thank you, modern technology, for Google  

[Trusk'our he/him]

Well, apparently humans have a vestigial ability to detect magnetic fields, so if you tapped it an accelerated rate you might be able to use it like an internal compass.

Can humans sense magnetic fields?

[alder24]

13 minutes ago, Trusk'our said:

Well, apparently humans have a vestigial ability to detect magnetic fields, so if you tapped it an accelerated rate you might be able to use it like an internal compass.

Can humans sense magnetic fields?

Yeah, I know, but until confirmed, it doesn't matter. It won't matter even if confirmed, as it's very, very weak, so weak that you don't feel it, your brain does "something", so without compounding you wouldn't be able to do anything with that.

But some animals are better at this, so kandra can develop such sense with much greater sensitivity.

[Koloss17 She/They]

24 minutes ago, alder24 said:

You're overthinking it a bit.

Me? On a post titled “Overthinking F-Tin”? I would never.

 

in regards to your other mentions, I think that’s a relatively fair ruling. Now, I’m not 100% sure what exactly would qualify as a sensory organ, and how minute you could get that to be. Could you store specific color receptors? And could you store specific pain receptors? Where would Intent factor into this? (Yes I know factoring Intent into this question is hardly fair, but it’s got to happen).

[alder24]

2 minutes ago, Koloss17 said:

Me? On a post titled “Overthinking F-Tin”? I would never.

 

in regards to your other mentions, I think that’s a relatively fair ruling. Now, I’m not 100% sure what exactly would qualify as a sensory organ, and how minute you could get that to be. Could you store specific color receptors? And could you store specific pain receptors? Where would Intent factor into this? (Yes I know factoring Intent into this question is hardly fair, but it’s got to happen).

Likely, or at least people in Cosmere might think that's possible. I've stumbled on this WoB just an hour ago (or 2, my sense of time is bad): 

Spoiler

[...]

Brainless

That was in context with the thing I was saying yesterday, about Feruchemical savants. If you did that every day for years, would you potentially get to the point where you could potentially make one side of your body heavier than the other side?

Brandon Sanderson

...There are many people in the cosmere who would think this idea has merit and they would want to test it.

MisCon 2018 (May 26, 2018)

If you can do it with F-iron, you can do it with F-tin.

[Trusk'our he/him]

3 hours ago, alder24 said:

Yeah, I know, but until confirmed, it doesn't matter. It won't matter even if confirmed, as it's very, very weak, so weak that you don't feel it, your brain does "something", so without compounding you wouldn't be able to do anything with that.

I mean, you could store it for a while, then tap it at an accelerated rate to improve it and make it actually work properly. You probably don't need it 24/7, so this strategy could probably work.