Moment of respect for Dan’s continued vigilance and awareness of the Schrodinger-esque temporal abnormalities created by Intentionally Blank’s recording vs upload schedule (whereby the appearance of Ben on the podcast has simultaneously already happened but also is yet to come).
Every vaguely engineering or science adjacent person on hearing the bad story idea: "Nope, not possible. Immediate apocalypse." There's no way for anyone to hold even a vanishingly small sliver of the information we need on a regular basis without superhuman memory. Reference materials are mandatory for any remotely complex field.
20:00 What influence how you write nations and cultures? 24:00 role-playing games, what rules have you invented? 29:00 Magic: The Gathering - do you have favorite colors or cards? 33:00 when you write tragic events, does it effect you? 35:30 what are your writing weaknesses? 40:00 what is the strangest fan interactions?
I'm not sure I want to hear it.. I'm exhausted by that show and I have a feeling they might ignore or mitigate the fact that it's absolutely horrendous and misremember/make fun of Tolkien's lore like they did with the "Is Gandalf a mary sue" episode 😔 So I'm a bit scared.
@@Edward-W They didn’t make fun of Tolkien’s lore, they were making fun of the idea of labeling characters as a Mary Sue, using Gandolf as an example of an incredible character that “fails the Mary Sue test”
@@HoofOffTheTop I know that was the point of the episode, but there were a few things that irked me about their recounting of Gandalf's character and several others things too. Specifically the way they misremembered some things and took that as fact to justify jokingly giving Gandalf more points on some absurd test
Absolutely love this podcast and these two brilliant guys! Dan always has such interesting information to impart to us. Whether reporting on a food heist or clarifying common idioms, Dan is always enlightening. One day, upon hearing another of his pearls on the podcast, I thought, “Well, I’ll be da … Danned!” And so, I proposed a name to a new segment: “Well, I’ll Be Danned!” (or “Wells, I’ll Be Danned!” if you really want to lean into it.) :) Thank you for all you create and all you do!
In the MechWarrior Roleplaying Game, McGuyverism was called the Tinker skill. It allowed you to jury-rig and cobble together barely-functional machines out of other machines and equipment.
It's funny listening to their idea of a sort of (as they put it) "post literacy society" because Brandon kiiinndda already came up with the idea for it in Mistborn. Feruchemist's have the ability to store memories inside their metalminds, but only they themselves can tap into their own metalminds. Sazed even mentions quite a few times how he has to "tell" others what he has learned so they can hold the information as well and continue to pass it on (verbally). I know they can also share written things and store it that way (like what Sazed did with Alendi's book) but you could easily remove that and have everyone only be able to verbally share what they've stored away. I think it's pretty funny he's talking about an idea he's already done 😂
@@CassiusDrake I'm with you on that. I LOVE Island in the Sea of Time. Dies the Fire was ok, but not totally my jam. If we're talking Stirling I love his Domination of the Draka stuff. Though it often gets a bad rap, as people thought he was glorifying them. It was more a cautionary tale. :(
Piers Anthony did a futuristic book where most of the population did not know how to read (Steppe). A supercomputer AI pretty much ran things, and people would often learn about things by watching educational cartoons.
I started to come up with an outline for the bad story idea but...i think i might be too close to a book series Brandon already writes. My idea is that without reading we need to find a way to remember everything and the best way to remember anything is through song and story so I think this story would be about bards writing songs to remember how bits of science and maths work as well as a lot of history being turned to songs to help us recal and pass on human knowlage. at this point my plot wold try and follow someone who writes accurate songs atempting to be heard over a more catchy but less accurate song as people start to tell history their way. The books called "history is sung by the victor". So I was chuffed with this as a good outline from Brandons start but then realized if i had a sequel I'd probably time skip and have people struggling to remember a song. perhaps some words got miss remembered and/ or someone decides to test some of the forbidden stuff from the songs. (next bit has light spoilers for Cosmeer so stop here if your not mostly up to date) so this to me started either being a little bit like the singer backstory with a bit or everything must be written in metal mixed in which makes me feel a little more of a copy cat even though i didn't start there. also proves Brandon has already written bits of this into good story ideas himself.
first thought on the bad story premise: protag needs to develop a cipher because there's something important in the text that will save humanity/whatever. conflict arises because of a person/corporation/entity working against them. and neither party knows which books have what. but there's a rumour that there's one librarian in the world who has already figured it out, and holds an index of all books. insert twists, red herrings, etc.
Here's the idea: All of a sudden, people snap and cant read: All over the world. That means you can see a stop sign, but you can't quite remember what it means, it's like a lost memory, you know it meant something, just no exactly what. After decades and decades of no reading, many things go wrong, but society adjusts to this new reality. Signs have been torn down and books were burned. At first, because there was no use to them, but, eventually, they became a reminder of an old universe, words became a trauma inducing sight. Eventually, reading and writing, as well as owning books and stuff, became highly illegal. It's a part of oral tradition, after all... Things change in meaning once they're passed down through generations. Now, writing is seen as this occultist activity, those symbols are part of devilish ancient cults. Words are not only illegal, they are morally unnacceptable and religiously reprehensible. The main character visits his (now dead) grandma's house with his parents, they just wanted to show the big house where they lived. Searching in the basement for toys and things to fiddle with, he finds and old object, something that was lost. No, his grandma was not some cultist trying to decipher the ancient runes of demonic adoration, those books fell under some old chest or something and were never found, so they were never burned. Those were children's books and there was something exciting about them, although the kid knew there was something wrong about what he was doing. He hid them, and constantly kept reading. Whenever he went back to grandma's house, he would deposit his old book and swap it for a new one: A more advanced, more challenging book. It just turns out, whatever snapped and made it impossible to read, went away, and that very smart boy was able to teach himself to read. Now, where does the story go from here? It could be a story about persecution, about finding books, a secret reader's society... Haven't thought that far.
I won't claim to be a writer, but this is strikingly similar to a novel idea I had a while back. I keep saying I'll actually try writing it one day, but I need some practice if that's ever going to happen.
I will just assume that recording and transmitting voice is a thing instead of writing, that would just mean that programmers would have to rap instructions to the machine over and over until they got it right
Post literacy computer usage is probably doable. Since we have OS like windows now and most basic function have icons now. People just have click on it. The problem is most searching be reduced to scrolling. And of course all text based you do in the internet will be gone then.
"you mean you didn't build a 4 milion dollar theatre in your house?" "no, I convinced you to do one" I literally LOLed so hard, people are staring at me
the no reading world is interesting, but easy IMO. What's a section of culture where meaning can be transmitted through images and not words? MEMES! Sure, some memes have words on them, but plenty of memes over time transcended their original "caption" and took in meaning of its own. There's also plenty of crossover of memes and emojis so, what does this mean? I think we wake up and eventually kind of assume we use Emojis to communicate. I'm sure there are plenty of people that have a history of short exchanges of emojis in their message history. So they'd already have a level of familiarity. Heck we even made a movie about them so they must be important right? Brandon just made a world where everyone can only communicate with memes and emojis. Honestly I think we could function fine as an iconographical society. It worked for the Aztecs and hundreds of other ancient civs.
Premise on the bad story idea: After humanity stumbles through the initial chaos, they discover through devices that still have speech-to-text and text-to-speech activated at the time of the "forgetting"(I don't know a cool term to call it) that they can interact with code through microphones to keep some of the systems running. This involves strict adherence to phrases that make the machines replicate the symbols(code) that were already in place. This leads to the creation of an special class of workers that requires layers of examinations and years of study to achieve. Families spend their resources in the hopes that their children can be a part of this higher class. This achievement is difficult for two reasons: First, many of the words/sounds have no meaning outside of literacy. What are parentheses? Or semicolons? Or Plus signs? Second, because of the limitations of modern/current voice recognition, speakers must use specific "proven" tones and cadence in their speech to ensure that the machines understand them. This is also not including the lessons needed to recognize the symbols and to understand if they are the correct ones or not. Since they don't understand the actual meanings, they can't logic their way out of errors (Ex. A "for" loop needs to increase the variable by 1 every time, but the ending is "n+" instead of "n++". So instead of adding the extra plus, the speaker erases the whole phrase, or whole project, to start over. Because of these strict parameters for success, and no improvement available to the microphone technology, the process of "mechanic speech" becomes preserved as the only way within the field of technology. I imagine it becomes something of a mix between the Tech priests in Warhammer 40K worshiping the Machine God and the South Asian languages like the recitation of the Vedas in India where the Sound is more important than the forgotten meanings of the words.
Honestly this reminds me of the programming community that currently uses voice programming to do their jobs due to hand issues that prevent typing (carpal tunnel, etc.). They've typically set up their own custom grammars to represent symbols and other programming specific details. Most of the community began from a video by Tavis Rudd on the topic back in 2013: ua-cam.com/video/qXvbQQV1ydo/v-deo.html
the question would be can you store sound information on discs or is this also scrambled. Having sound based pcs would bring back whistle hacking attacks like in the modem days.
Shipping breaks down as you cannot read your navigational instruments. Pilots cannot control most advanced systems. Food distribution breaks down. Power plants cannot be operated. Most people die within days.
Brandon, if you ever have the interest, you should do your own version of the "electricity stops working" series. S. M. Stirling is the best there is at worldbuilding, but his narrative structure is just okay. If someone wrote a book series in his world, but with really good pacing and payoff, I would want for nothing.
I like the story concept they proposed. The way I would do it is to have a world where like 99.99% of people lose the ability to read/write. Those who still can read/write become revered figures. They travel the world telling stories and also recording the stories they come across. Maybe follow a kid as they train to become one of these storytellers after it's discovered that they can read.
Brandons not a big fan of the grimdark stuff, he may not be watching it at all. It comes up whenever anyone asks if he would finish ASOIAF, and the answer is always a resounding no, their styles are way too different. (He does say GRRM is a good writer, just not his preferred genre)
@@Duiker36 they’ve talked about recent movies and several shows that had only released a couple of episodes at the time of recording on multiple occasions.
Dark Knight Rises is absolutely Nolan’s worst movie. Having said that, it’s a good movie. It’s just Nolan’s worst. And the worst of the trilogy it’s in.
In a world where all of humanity lost the ability to read, but books still existed, there would arise people who would pretend they could read to gain power Sort of...religious leaders. Also....people would have to stop being able to perceive art and drawings, because that would lead to a plot hole where people are able to preserve information through paintings, which would eventually lead to an alphabet
Omg, Brandon also loves Cheaty Face from Unhinged? Oh man that was one of my favorite cards from that whole stupid set. It was so dumb but it was so fun basically anytime I got it in my hand the whole rest of the time we would play with that game I was trying to get it on the table sneakily. It rarely worked but it was so much fun.
About writing weakness: Brandon is one of my favourite authors (doh, im here for a reason). But if I compare either the world of Mistborn or Sormlight with other great fantasy authors main work or more precisely main world - Like Tolkien, Robert Jordan, GRR Martin - I find that all of them have created way more history for their worlds than Brandon. Their lore is deeper, the walls of the hollow Iceberg much thicker in their creations. In Brandons works we usually have 1 big, relevant hisorical even in the past and than we have the great story he creates at the present. But there is no Arthur Hawking, Trolloc wars or any medium or global level of importance stories inbetween. We barely know anything of Roshar between the Fall of the Radiants and the recent asassination of the alethi king or of the world of Mistborn between the ascension of the Lord Ruler and Vin's story.
Ok, how about this for the bad story idea good. Option 1: This race of people did not develop the part of their brain that makes written language easy to learn. Instead, they have a very strong capability to remember and communicate verbally eventually they develop technology to record and playback audio and eventually they invent computers but they build powerful voice recognition circuits bypassing the need to use visual language. They encounter the remains of another race that relies heavily on written words and learn of a disaster that they need to avert but the only clues on how to do it are written down and they need to find a way to glean the information without being able to read. Option 2: disease struck a population that mainly targeted the ability to understand written language. Perhaps it was deliberate. Years later some people are able to re-engineer computers to all be like Echo devices. Like option one there is a disaster or some other thing that needs to be averted but the knowledge is only contained in the books and they have to find a way to figure out the information without the ability to read it. Another option is to just take option 2 and find conflict where written words would be the obvious solution but they need to get creative to work around it
Well at the beginning of August he said that he would be surprised if they aren't on set for Mistborn this time next year. So if they're going to be on set in August 2023 I don't think we can expect the movie until 2024.
Because big corporate companies take a long time to make decisions. And we know Brandon wants the absolute best and wants some actual control over the work being done. I'm sure when he is allowed to share news we'll hear about it.
You do the "bad story idea" like the movie 'Yesterday' about the Beatles did - you make the main character be the only one who remembers and tries to teach the world how to write and read again and feels like a complete fraud for doing so.
Idk I don't think anyone would feel very guilty about teaching people how to read again...maybe if they've taken the technique from a mentor or something and are taking all the credit but even then...it's just too general. It's one thing to be guilty about stealing a chefs recipe, it's another to feel guilty about teaching people to cook based on a chefs recipe you remember
@@fiachnaodonnell7895 I was thinking more alongside the lines of teaching the humanity by stealing the best ideas/inventions written in the past. But maybe it is just me misunderstanding the concept
@@MrKenilles oooh I do quite like that as a premise, like they're almost setting themselves up as a god or messiah but in the old world they were nothing special...I suppose this is kinda the same plot as a time traveler going back and inventing a ton of stuff, slightly different though as in this one they might be a sympathetic character as while they are fulfilling their ego they are also saving humanity or something...
No reading or writing = no legal system, military, healthcare, engineering, computer science, and a whole multitude of other things that modern society needs to function.
@@dmi5664 not on the scale that they currently exist. How would you run a military that consists of hundreds of thousands or millions of people spread across most of the world without being able to communicate using written words? How would you have a complex legal system at all, without the ability to see every law? These can exist without writing on a very small scale, but many countries are so large that the loss of writing would be utterly crippling.
It would have been interesting if people could still read numbers, maybe it would become a binary society, 1s and 0s, or there could be a language with numbers and punctuation marks🙺
He's talking about "prose" which is the style in which an author writes their story. Brandon said he's pretty utilitarian(practical) in the way he writes, and he doesn't add a lot of flair, whereas Robert Jordan is famous for the way he describes every little detail.
Brandon, if you ever have the interest, you should do your own version of the "electricity stops working" series. S. M. Stirling is the best there is at worldbuilding, but his narrative structure is just okay. If someone wrote a book series in his world, but with really good pacing and payoff, I would want for nothing.
Brandon, if you ever have the interest, you should do your own version of the "electricity stops working" series. S. M. Stirling is the best there is at worldbuilding, but his narrative structure is just okay. If someone wrote a book series in his world, but with really good pacing and payoff, I would want for nothing.
“Intentionally Blank is a phase we’re going through. It’s not going to last.” Brandon said. In episode 72. 😂
3 months after the 1st year anniversary. :P
Honestly I think they should keep it 😆
Episode 490, six years later: “it’s not a phase guys, we swear! The title WILL change, we promise!”
Moment of respect for Dan’s continued vigilance and awareness of the Schrodinger-esque temporal abnormalities created by Intentionally Blank’s recording vs upload schedule (whereby the appearance of Ben on the podcast has simultaneously already happened but also is yet to come).
Only thing missing is the entire crowd yelling in the end "How's that Ben?"
When Brandon said Schmuck and then Dan said A-holes I felt things.
Lol mood
Every vaguely engineering or science adjacent person on hearing the bad story idea: "Nope, not possible. Immediate apocalypse."
There's no way for anyone to hold even a vanishingly small sliver of the information we need on a regular basis without superhuman memory. Reference materials are mandatory for any remotely complex field.
20:00 What influence how you write nations and cultures?
24:00 role-playing games, what rules have you invented?
29:00 Magic: The Gathering - do you have favorite colors or cards?
33:00 when you write tragic events, does it effect you?
35:30 what are your writing weaknesses?
40:00 what is the strangest fan interactions?
@King Crab fixed :)
thnks
Brandon: "I repeat too many words."
Brandon's characters could really use a dentist after how many times they've "gritted their teeth."
Never noticed that before. I look for it now.
Also women blush all. the. time.
First few chapters of Mistborn first book. Everyone rolls their eyes
As Dan now works for Brandon, I would hope Dan likes his job.
Electricity not working suddenly sounds like the TV show several years ago (Revolution).
New headcannon is that Dan and Brandon are O'Brian and Bashir playing authors.
Soon we'll really need that food heist prison novel, it turns more interesting every week!
This is a novel made for lift lol
I desperately want to hear you guys talk about The Rings of Power now that it's done.
I'm not sure I want to hear it.. I'm exhausted by that show and I have a feeling they might ignore or mitigate the fact that it's absolutely horrendous and misremember/make fun of Tolkien's lore like they did with the "Is Gandalf a mary sue" episode 😔
So I'm a bit scared.
@@Edward-W They didn’t make fun of Tolkien’s lore, they were making fun of the idea of labeling characters as a Mary Sue, using Gandolf as an example of an incredible character that “fails the Mary Sue test”
@@HoofOffTheTop I know that was the point of the episode, but there were a few things that irked me about their recounting of Gandalf's character and several others things too. Specifically the way they misremembered some things and took that as fact to justify jokingly giving Gandalf more points on some absurd test
@Jar Jar Binks Okay
Yes please!
Me: *sees FANX in thumbnail*
Also me: You're welcome
Absolutely love this podcast and these two brilliant guys! Dan always has such interesting information to impart to us. Whether reporting on a food heist or clarifying common idioms, Dan is always enlightening. One day, upon hearing another of his pearls on the podcast, I thought, “Well, I’ll be da … Danned!” And so, I proposed a name to a new segment: “Well, I’ll Be Danned!” (or “Wells, I’ll Be Danned!” if you really want to lean into it.) :)
Thank you for all you create and all you do!
4 million dollar theatre
Gosh dang
In the MechWarrior Roleplaying Game, McGuyverism was called the Tinker skill. It allowed you to jury-rig and cobble together barely-functional machines out of other machines and equipment.
Andy Weir's latest book "Project Hail Mary" the alien Rocky and his space-faring culture are sightless and learn orally.
It's funny listening to their idea of a sort of (as they put it) "post literacy society" because Brandon kiiinndda already came up with the idea for it in Mistborn. Feruchemist's have the ability to store memories inside their metalminds, but only they themselves can tap into their own metalminds. Sazed even mentions quite a few times how he has to "tell" others what he has learned so they can hold the information as well and continue to pass it on (verbally). I know they can also share written things and store it that way (like what Sazed did with Alendi's book) but you could easily remove that and have everyone only be able to verbally share what they've stored away. I think it's pretty funny he's talking about an idea he's already done 😂
Brandon is genuinely hilarious on these last 2 episodes. The charlatan comment was pretty funny in this one.
"I don't like spoilers"
...this from the guy who spoiled Sauron for everyone
I can’t believe that Dan knows Dies the Fire! I love those books, and I’ve never heard of anyone else reading them! Read them all! They are great!
One of my favorite series!
The connected series starting with “Island in the Sea of Time” is my all-time favorite, I’ve probably read it 20 or 30 times
@@CassiusDrake I'm with you on that. I LOVE Island in the Sea of Time. Dies the Fire was ok, but not totally my jam. If we're talking Stirling I love his Domination of the Draka stuff. Though it often gets a bad rap, as people thought he was glorifying them. It was more a cautionary tale. :(
Piers Anthony did a futuristic book where most of the population did not know how to read (Steppe). A supercomputer AI pretty much ran things, and people would often learn about things by watching educational cartoons.
The DS9 excursion makes me more likely to try actually listening to the Audible downloads I have of some of Dan's books.
I was listening to this out loud, and I almost spoiled the secret of Christmas for my kids. Hahahaha
I think your name should be "B.S. With Dan".
I actually really like that
20:38 for the Q&A
in a society where nobody can read, alexa is everywhere and/or the emperor of earth.
I started to come up with an outline for the bad story idea but...i think i might be too close to a book series Brandon already writes.
My idea is that without reading we need to find a way to remember everything and the best way to remember anything is through song and story so I think this story would be about bards writing songs to remember how bits of science and maths work as well as a lot of history being turned to songs to help us recal and pass on human knowlage. at this point my plot wold try and follow someone who writes accurate songs atempting to be heard over a more catchy but less accurate song as people start to tell history their way. The books called "history is sung by the victor".
So I was chuffed with this as a good outline from Brandons start but then realized if i had a sequel I'd probably time skip and have people struggling to remember a song. perhaps some words got miss remembered and/ or someone decides to test some of the forbidden stuff from the songs. (next bit has light spoilers for Cosmeer so stop here if your not mostly up to date) so this to me started either being a little bit like the singer backstory with a bit or everything must be written in metal mixed in which makes me feel a little more of a copy cat even though i didn't start there. also proves Brandon has already written bits of this into good story ideas himself.
first thought on the bad story premise: protag needs to develop a cipher because there's something important in the text that will save humanity/whatever. conflict arises because of a person/corporation/entity working against them. and neither party knows which books have what. but there's a rumour that there's one librarian in the world who has already figured it out, and holds an index of all books. insert twists, red herrings, etc.
L
Here's the idea: All of a sudden, people snap and cant read: All over the world. That means you can see a stop sign, but you can't quite remember what it means, it's like a lost memory, you know it meant something, just no exactly what. After decades and decades of no reading, many things go wrong, but society adjusts to this new reality. Signs have been torn down and books were burned. At first, because there was no use to them, but, eventually, they became a reminder of an old universe, words became a trauma inducing sight. Eventually, reading and writing, as well as owning books and stuff, became highly illegal. It's a part of oral tradition, after all... Things change in meaning once they're passed down through generations. Now, writing is seen as this occultist activity, those symbols are part of devilish ancient cults. Words are not only illegal, they are morally unnacceptable and religiously reprehensible.
The main character visits his (now dead) grandma's house with his parents, they just wanted to show the big house where they lived. Searching in the basement for toys and things to fiddle with, he finds and old object, something that was lost. No, his grandma was not some cultist trying to decipher the ancient runes of demonic adoration, those books fell under some old chest or something and were never found, so they were never burned. Those were children's books and there was something exciting about them, although the kid knew there was something wrong about what he was doing. He hid them, and constantly kept reading. Whenever he went back to grandma's house, he would deposit his old book and swap it for a new one: A more advanced, more challenging book. It just turns out, whatever snapped and made it impossible to read, went away, and that very smart boy was able to teach himself to read.
Now, where does the story go from here? It could be a story about persecution, about finding books, a secret reader's society... Haven't thought that far.
It could always go the way of Isaac Asimov's short story _The Feeling of Power_ where people discover the ancient and long-lost art of arithmetic.
This is a great idea. Kudos
It didn't go away, it was just a one-time thing.
I won't claim to be a writer, but this is strikingly similar to a novel idea I had a while back. I keep saying I'll actually try writing it one day, but I need some practice if that's ever going to happen.
24:30 Rule 1: Brandon and Dan cannot both be players
It seems pretty easy to communicate without writing considering that we can record ourselves but a lot of what was written would be lost
I will just assume that recording and transmitting voice is a thing instead of writing, that would just mean that programmers would have to rap instructions to the machine over and over until they got it right
Watching this made me wonder if Brandon would ever be open to a MTG: Cosmere expansion card set. I'd be all over that.
I would be too! My fiance plays and has tried to get me into it, but I just like the art. 😅
Post literacy computer usage is probably doable. Since we have OS like windows now and most basic function have icons now. People just have click on it. The problem is most searching be reduced to scrolling. And of course all text based you do in the internet will be gone then.
Here's a wrinkle for your terrible idea:
Nobody can read, society has gone on, now suddenly there's ONE person who CAN read...
I think the trolley problem Brandon suggested essentially is “which do you value more, writing or direction?”
Isn't saffron what makes yellow rice so good? I could make SOO much yellow rice with 10kg of saffron.
Yellow rice has tumeric in it as well from like Indian restaurants with a little saffron simmered in I think 🤔
"you mean you didn't build a 4 milion dollar theatre in your house?"
"no, I convinced you to do one"
I literally LOLed so hard, people are staring at me
Adoooonalsium
I hope he will remember our blight eventually
True dedication
@@David-un4cs I took an oath fellow Radiant.. and I intend to keep it.
the no reading world is interesting, but easy IMO. What's a section of culture where meaning can be transmitted through images and not words? MEMES! Sure, some memes have words on them, but plenty of memes over time transcended their original "caption" and took in meaning of its own.
There's also plenty of crossover of memes and emojis so, what does this mean?
I think we wake up and eventually kind of assume we use Emojis to communicate. I'm sure there are plenty of people that have a history of short exchanges of emojis in their message history. So they'd already have a level of familiarity. Heck we even made a movie about them so they must be important right?
Brandon just made a world where everyone can only communicate with memes and emojis. Honestly I think we could function fine as an iconographical society. It worked for the Aztecs and hundreds of other ancient civs.
"Fail Forward" mechanics are awesome, and help keep a story moving when a bad roll can derail the plot (if the rules are strict about some things)
Premise on the bad story idea: After humanity stumbles through the initial chaos, they discover through devices that still have speech-to-text and text-to-speech activated at the time of the "forgetting"(I don't know a cool term to call it) that they can interact with code through microphones to keep some of the systems running. This involves strict adherence to phrases that make the machines replicate the symbols(code) that were already in place.
This leads to the creation of an special class of workers that requires layers of examinations and years of study to achieve. Families spend their resources in the hopes that their children can be a part of this higher class. This achievement is difficult for two reasons: First, many of the words/sounds have no meaning outside of literacy. What are parentheses? Or semicolons? Or Plus signs? Second, because of the limitations of modern/current voice recognition, speakers must use specific "proven" tones and cadence in their speech to ensure that the machines understand them. This is also not including the lessons needed to recognize the symbols and to understand if they are the correct ones or not. Since they don't understand the actual meanings, they can't logic their way out of errors (Ex. A "for" loop needs to increase the variable by 1 every time, but the ending is "n+" instead of "n++". So instead of adding the extra plus, the speaker erases the whole phrase, or whole project, to start over.
Because of these strict parameters for success, and no improvement available to the microphone technology, the process of "mechanic speech" becomes preserved as the only way within the field of technology. I imagine it becomes something of a mix between the Tech priests in Warhammer 40K worshiping the Machine God and the South Asian languages like the recitation of the Vedas in India where the Sound is more important than the forgotten meanings of the words.
Honestly this reminds me of the programming community that currently uses voice programming to do their jobs due to hand issues that prevent typing (carpal tunnel, etc.). They've typically set up their own custom grammars to represent symbols and other programming specific details.
Most of the community began from a video by Tavis Rudd on the topic back in 2013: ua-cam.com/video/qXvbQQV1ydo/v-deo.html
Magical fruit is the magic system in Frank Morin's Bacon Master series! It's sooo awesome. Y'all should check it out!
the question would be can you store sound information on discs or is this also scrambled. Having sound based pcs would bring back whistle hacking attacks like in the modem days.
9:50 you watch it on the small screen, and then later on the big screen.
So is the saffron at the store that's like $15-20 a gram not real saffron? Because if it's real, that's not more expensive than gold.
Shipping breaks down as you cannot read your navigational instruments. Pilots cannot control most advanced systems. Food distribution breaks down. Power plants cannot be operated. Most people die within days.
Brandon, if you ever have the interest, you should do your own version of the "electricity stops working" series. S. M. Stirling is the best there is at worldbuilding, but his narrative structure is just okay. If someone wrote a book series in his world, but with really good pacing and payoff, I would want for nothing.
Wait, Brandon, you have a Black Lotus? Dang man.
Brandon is wearing his black lotus in this video. ua-cam.com/video/9Dj0yimUXVw/v-deo.html
Pretty sure he has stated he actually has three of them.
Alright, next year I'm coming up to FanX
For the Bad Story Idea, I have physics and math degrees which bodes poorly for me since equations are hard to conceptualize without math.
I like the story concept they proposed. The way I would do it is to have a world where like 99.99% of people lose the ability to read/write. Those who still can read/write become revered figures. They travel the world telling stories and also recording the stories they come across. Maybe follow a kid as they train to become one of these storytellers after it's discovered that they can read.
39:10 If we cant do actual SCIENCE on it we have a problem....
Why haven't Brandon and Dan talked about house of the dragon at all?
Brandons not a big fan of the grimdark stuff, he may not be watching it at all.
It comes up whenever anyone asks if he would finish ASOIAF, and the answer is always a resounding no, their styles are way too different. (He does say GRRM is a good writer, just not his preferred genre)
It's off-brand to discuss things that are current.
@@Duiker36 they’ve talked about recent movies and several shows that had only released a couple of episodes at the time of recording on multiple occasions.
It's just a phase mom!
Dark Knight Rises is absolutely Nolan’s worst movie. Having said that, it’s a good movie. It’s just Nolan’s worst. And the worst of the trilogy it’s in.
Is Dan a “hypothetical” member of bridge 4?
I’m so happy someone agrees the dark knight rises is awful
In a world where all of humanity lost the ability to read, but books still existed, there would arise people who would pretend they could read to gain power
Sort of...religious leaders.
Also....people would have to stop being able to perceive art and drawings, because that would lead to a plot hole where people are able to preserve information through paintings, which would eventually lead to an alphabet
The series “See” meets “Severance”
Omg, Brandon also loves Cheaty Face from Unhinged? Oh man that was one of my favorite cards from that whole stupid set. It was so dumb but it was so fun basically anytime I got it in my hand the whole rest of the time we would play with that game I was trying to get it on the table sneakily. It rarely worked but it was so much fun.
3:44 I hope you brought enough to share
I would love for you guys to revisit Rings of power as a topic now that the full season is out!
I'm new to this channel but can someone tell me what Dan's full name is? I keep finding several Dan's and have no idea who is who
Dan Wells
Don't eat the delicious black lotus!
Wait there is no Santa........ Cruz???!!!!!!
So, we'd need to communicate as though everyone were blind without braille
Interesting enough your post-literacy exploration is similar to what stroke patients experience when only one portion of the brain is damaged.
About writing weakness: Brandon is one of my favourite authors (doh, im here for a reason). But if I compare either the world of Mistborn or Sormlight with other great fantasy authors main work or more precisely main world - Like Tolkien, Robert Jordan, GRR Martin - I find that all of them have created way more history for their worlds than Brandon. Their lore is deeper, the walls of the hollow Iceberg much thicker in their creations. In Brandons works we usually have 1 big, relevant hisorical even in the past and than we have the great story he creates at the present. But there is no Arthur Hawking, Trolloc wars or any medium or global level of importance stories inbetween. We barely know anything of Roshar between the Fall of the Radiants and the recent asassination of the alethi king or of the world of Mistborn between the ascension of the Lord Ruler and Vin's story.
I would definitely agree with this. His worlds are never quite lived in enough. They have a society but not a history.
Not a great episode on a show that is almost always a great listen
Dear Mr Sanderson, please avoid the Amazon show. It is awful. I hope you don’t need the money.
Ok, how about this for the bad story idea good.
Option 1: This race of people did not develop the part of their brain that makes written language easy to learn. Instead, they have a very strong capability to remember and communicate verbally eventually they develop technology to record and playback audio and eventually they invent computers but they build powerful voice recognition circuits bypassing the need to use visual language. They encounter the remains of another race that relies heavily on written words and learn of a disaster that they need to avert but the only clues on how to do it are written down and they need to find a way to glean the information without being able to read.
Option 2: disease struck a population that mainly targeted the ability to understand written language. Perhaps it was deliberate. Years later some people are able to re-engineer computers to all be like Echo devices. Like option one there is a disaster or some other thing that needs to be averted but the knowledge is only contained in the books and they have to find a way to figure out the information without the ability to read it.
Another option is to just take option 2 and find conflict where written words would be the obvious solution but they need to get creative to work around it
Why is the movie News taking so long?
Well at the beginning of August he said that he would be surprised if they aren't on set for Mistborn this time next year. So if they're going to be on set in August 2023 I don't think we can expect the movie until 2024.
@@David-un4cs he hinted to mistborn at best. I'm waiting for confirmation of which book is being adapted and which company is producing it.
Because big corporate companies take a long time to make decisions. And we know Brandon wants the absolute best and wants some actual control over the work being done. I'm sure when he is allowed to share news we'll hear about it.
You do the "bad story idea" like the movie 'Yesterday' about the Beatles did - you make the main character be the only one who remembers and tries to teach the world how to write and read again and feels like a complete fraud for doing so.
Idk I don't think anyone would feel very guilty about teaching people how to read again...maybe if they've taken the technique from a mentor or something and are taking all the credit but even then...it's just too general. It's one thing to be guilty about stealing a chefs recipe, it's another to feel guilty about teaching people to cook based on a chefs recipe you remember
@@fiachnaodonnell7895 I was thinking more alongside the lines of teaching the humanity by stealing the best ideas/inventions written in the past. But maybe it is just me misunderstanding the concept
@@MrKenilles oooh I do quite like that as a premise, like they're almost setting themselves up as a god or messiah but in the old world they were nothing special...I suppose this is kinda the same plot as a time traveler going back and inventing a ton of stuff, slightly different though as in this one they might be a sympathetic character as while they are fulfilling their ego they are also saving humanity or something...
No reading or writing = no legal system, military, healthcare, engineering, computer science, and a whole multitude of other things that modern society needs to function.
I'll concede engineering and computer science but the rest could absolutely exist without written word.
@@dmi5664 not on the scale that they currently exist. How would you run a military that consists of hundreds of thousands or millions of people spread across most of the world without being able to communicate using written words? How would you have a complex legal system at all, without the ability to see every law? These can exist without writing on a very small scale, but many countries are so large that the loss of writing would be utterly crippling.
Never been this early before.
now i wont play a dnd charakter that only has realu high micgiverism
1st
It would have been interesting if people could still read numbers, maybe it would become a binary society, 1s and 0s, or there could be a language with numbers and punctuation marks🙺
Can someone tell me what brandon says when he says „pros“ ?
How can pros be different for each person?
He's talking about "prose" which is the style in which an author writes their story. Brandon said he's pretty utilitarian(practical) in the way he writes, and he doesn't add a lot of flair, whereas Robert Jordan is famous for the way he describes every little detail.
@@emmafritz4657 ahh thank you very much :D
Brandon, if you ever have the interest, you should do your own version of the "electricity stops working" series. S. M. Stirling is the best there is at worldbuilding, but his narrative structure is just okay. If someone wrote a book series in his world, but with really good pacing and payoff, I would want for nothing.
Brandon, if you ever have the interest, you should do your own version of the "electricity stops working" series. S. M. Stirling is the best there is at worldbuilding, but his narrative structure is just okay. If someone wrote a book series in his world, but with really good pacing and payoff, I would want for nothing.