I feel that depends entirely on what the The Witch in Glass means by “as you understand it”. Knowing all things that will happen, there’s a lot of potential qualifications there. Thirty Five years of life as Al-yisun will experience it? Or her “death” as she currently understands it? Or perhaps she has a lot longer to live, but the date of her death is what Jadis is giving.
I feel that Jadis could also be lying, and giving this information to Allison so that she will play out whatever future and plan Jadis has witness unfold due to her actions.
It could also be her biological life span. In short, Allison’s expiration date, the amount of time she’ll continue to live before her body fails from natural causes like cancer or heart failure.
Jadis may not be lying per se. It may be that it’s just a complicated question without a simple answer.
I think she means 35 Earth years. 35 birthdays more. Time in Throne is counted a little differently, as I understand it, and there’s 777.777 universes out there too, all with different cycles.
When you tell someone when they’re gonna die, you gotta be specific.
There is a lot of wiggle room in that phrase, “as you understand it”.
Just for starters, does that 35y10d693s mean…
… in linear time in this universe from this moment?
Which could mean that we have no idea at all how much longer Alison will live, since time seems to flow differently in different universes. To say nothing of time loops, or jaunts into the past or future or other pocket timelines…
… in non-linear perceived time for the individual?
Which could mean that boredom stretches things out, since time being bored passes more slowly. And excitement would be dangerous, since time flies when we’re having fun.
… time measured by Alison’s Earth standard clock? Or by some other temporal standard?
For example, in Alison’s home system, a Jovian day is slightly less than 10 Earth hours, a Martian day is while a Venusian day is about 116.75 Earth days. We don’t know much about the rotational periods of Throne or other planets such as Jadis’s homeworld.
Jadis has given Alison a number. But on its own, without a lot more context than we currently have, that number doesn’t mean a whole lot.
and beyond that, its has been, implied mind you, that death may not necessarily be permanent? perchance to do as the worm did and find more hosts of ones consciousness? so it could even just be the ‘death’ of allison as we know her, not even necessarily a death as its being thrown around here, these guys have a habit of playing word games
Traveller Śavrāt is observant indeed in commenting on the polite visage of despair. But if the girl our hope rests in is to venture into the reach of royalty then this would always have been something Allison would have had to confront by virtue of the restful ladies existance alone.
Yeah if she knows everything, and that’s true, that when can at least rule out the multiverse being totally destroyed and everyone in it dying, right? Right?
“As you understand it…” There’s a lot of wiggle in that phrase. Maybe part of the multiverse being destroyed impacts time, or the perception of time. Or maybe the key in Allison’s head interacts with time. There’s so many options here.
I agree. There is a lot of space for meaning to be hidden behind such words. It could simply be an allowance for localization as Pree Katieushka suggests, but I see more opportunities there.
It just as easily could mean ‘as you understand the concept of death.’
Perhaps, in thirty-five years and some-odd days, Al-Ysun will cut DEATH, or ascend into a form of godhead that her current more human form would think of as a death of the person. She has been unmade and re-made going between worlds.
In thirty-five years, death could be an extremely fluid concept for her. It certainly was for Zoss.
From a certain point of view, that’s 35 years of being able to live recklessly with limited consequences. But as Pratchett intimated it’s bad idea to try to abuse such knowledge, because injuries can linger, and no one ever said one had to die quickly.
Since there’s more than one Alison wandering around, I am curious as to which one she’s referring to?
I wonder how Zoss doing the time warp affects her cognition of everything. Does she see beyond it (as if he wasn’t doing it) or does everything just… end at some point in the future.
How does her view of all creation interact with free will? Numerous questions there. Is 35 years just one of many options if things carry out as expected? How does Zoss’ key effect this prediction, if at all? What happens if this knowledge sets Our Protagonist on a different course? Or does this knowledge set Aliceson upon her 35 year path?
I don’t know that we have enough information to say, but the indications thus far are that Jadis doesn’t believe in free will – everything was set the moment she saw it.
See for example her comment that she saved Allison because she saves Allison. She doesn’t know why, she simply saw herself doing it and thus did it.
This leaves a couple outs for Allison. She might live a century or a day, but Jadis said 35 years because she saw herself say 35 years.
If they’re going with strict determinism, as I think they are, then free will is an illusion, strictly caused by the present which has been strictly caused by the past. You choose but are the result of yours and others’ choices.
Lacking perfect knowledge of the future creates the perception of free in the sense that you can choose based on present information that creates the future.
However perfect knowledge of the future annihilates the ability to affect the future based on choice; if you could change the future using the knowledge of the future then by definition the knowledge wasn’t perfect.
Perfect knowledge of the future causes you to create the future based on the knowledge of the future, It is congruent with a self fulfilling prophecy, any action you take is what brings the future into being and you wont do any action that prevents that future from happening.
For example next page Alison will probably threaten to kill herself to spite Jardis, Jardis will call her bluff, and for whatever reason Alison wont die. Of course Jardis new the outcome of the conversation but chose to do it anyway, but chose to have this conversation because its what she would choose to do.
Jadis does not choose anything any more. She just plays the script that she already knows by heart.
She believes that time is linear, or maybe circular, but definitely not that there are choices to be made. She already knows what she, and everyone else, will choose, forevermore.
It that is what time really is, fated doom is already upon all. Alison must find a way to change fate and time if she is to free this demiurge from her sin.
Nothing prevents Jadis from lying, but if she does so, she falls into one of Allison’s categories – fraud. If she’s stuck in a pre-determined path though, it doesn’t really matter. She’ll give the answer she gives, because that’s the answer she always gives, regardless of whether or not it’s true.
Worse (for Jadis), she can be forced to lie. Imagine the following scenario: Allison and Jadis enter a room with two exits. Allison asks Jadis which door she’ll leave from, but privately resolves that whichever door Jadis gives, she (Allison) will leave by the opposite (or some other way, through a window, for example). Assuming Jadis responds, she will be forced to respond with the wrong answer, so that Allison takes the “right” action, all the while knowing that this is the case but being unable to express it. Someone with the illusion of free will can exploit Jadis’ situation to reinforce their own belief in free will, and Jadis is basically helpless to get a word in edgewise.
I’m uncertain how that could be exploited other than to mildly annoy Jadis, but it’s amusing nonetheless.
[My understanding of the structure of time and space is as follows:
Free will and predetermination are not mutually exclusive. The actions that you take and the choices that you make within your life already exist and you simply have not progressed to the correct point along your thread wherein said action takes place. On the other hand, all those actions *are* driven both by previous choices and by uncontrollable environmental factors; free will and predetermined ‘fates’ are in fact two sides of the same coin.
The concept of each choice causing a collapse which diverges timelines is also accurate, and therefore Jadis’ current view is of a specific version of Allison along the thread which that version of Jadis has observed; every version of our protagonist inquiring will receive an answer, and those answers may both be true and incredibly various in their content.
Higher-dimensional navigation is as infinitely thick with overlapping probabilities and possibilities as time is with infiniteseimal, immeasurably-specific points; there is as many points of possibility within possibility as there are points in space, and therefore any view of same must be bounded in some way – for example, along a specific fourth-dimensional thread – in order for observation to be meaningful to a consciousness-bearing system extant within space and time as we understand it.
Infinitely-rich data is functionally unparseable. The version of Allison which inquired of Jadis is, however, a specific version (or a set of specific versions), all of whom have now made a choice – to ask after their own time of death – which all iterations of Jadis within that (countably infinite) set have answered, perhaps truthfully and nothing more, perhaps as a method of adjusting an outcome ‘visible’ to a higher-cohort version of which the visible/interactable Jadis is a tiny part, etc.
Everything you will do, you have already done. Still, who you are and the things which happen to you are essential to asserting the thread you will follow; one of these concepts cannot exist independently of the other.
The interesting part of all of this turns out to be consciousness, I believe; the idea that consciousness is a result of humanity and not a universal force which we lens (not unlike the fractal self-annihilation of Yisun in this series’ mythology) is fascinating and I have yet to see evidence which invalidates consciousness as something akin to gravity, nuclear forces, etc. Structural to the Universe, to causality as we experience it, and not merely an uncomfortable reality of human life.]
The problem with Jadis, is that she can’t answer one question- is she acting because time is set in stone, or is she acting because she saw herself doing something? I suspect the paradox has driven her quietly mad. Why, she could still be stuck in her block, living a life entirely in her mind, while the actual world occurs around her.
Another 35 years is unexpected. A few months, until the Jagganite army rolls through, is plausible. Hundreds or thousands of years, sustained by Jadisian tech, is plausible. “Forever”, sustained by her own demiurge-imortality gig is plausible. But a shortish, humanish lifespan? That’s what happens when one goes home to a backward place like Earth.
And not just any Earth. Earth 316, 429 to boot! They don’t even have sorcery there! It’s a YIS-UN forsaken place- Very much a down grade from Throne, even if it is falling apart.
Pft, that just sounds like coward talk there Mendicant. Pity isn’t really needed innit? She’s got the power of god there, she just needs to get some anime and she’ll be right golden.
Indeed. Knowing often doesn’t mean ond can actually prevent something from happening or even influence events, for the net of causality is vast and every node is a turning point.
Nor does it free oneself from their own poisons.
“Beetles cannot learn Pankrash Circle Fighting, Lord Intra,” said Intra’s attendant, and made a bitter motion.
“Don’t tell the beetle that,” said Intra, who was very skilled at smiling. “If you don’t tell him he will learn it anyway and cut the lion in half with a single blow.”
Unconscious in a coma for 35 more years is still an accurate curse. Here there is unwaveringly knowing everything or unwaveringly knowing nothing. Every coin has two sides and is also one coin. They make a cute couple, eh?:
I must say, I held different anticipations of the omnipotent witch in glass. For one as all knowing as she, her speech inflections and hesitations remind me of the very un-godly origins of she and her fellow demiurges, those who remain. But ah! In hindsight, thus seems obvious. This is a story of subversion after all.
Well, if she wanted to test her knowledge, she should have asked something that is testable within reasonable time (immediately, if it is something Alison already knows and only she is supposed to know). But that was probably not the actual point.
That is one example from a list of many. Any obscure trivia from Earth would work.
Note however that Jadis claims to be omniscient, not omnipotent.
BTW, this lead to the problem that led Calvinist theologians to the concept of predestination. True omniscience is possible only if the future is fixed in every detail. If the future is not fixed, omniscience is not possible. This might be the reason Jadis follows the book so faithfully. She might loose her omniscience if she try to actually use the knowledge. She is more scared of the uncertain than certain doom.
Hey! all things considered, that’s not so bad!
The span of one breath would be more than I was guaranteed before.
But I would risk everything to take one more still.
This priest gets it.
One could take a load off knowing they have another 35 years, just avoid being seriously maimed or imprisoned like my grandpa used to say
I feel that depends entirely on what the The Witch in Glass means by “as you understand it”. Knowing all things that will happen, there’s a lot of potential qualifications there. Thirty Five years of life as Al-yisun will experience it? Or her “death” as she currently understands it? Or perhaps she has a lot longer to live, but the date of her death is what Jadis is giving.
I feel that Jadis could also be lying, and giving this information to Allison so that she will play out whatever future and plan Jadis has witness unfold due to her actions.
It could also be her biological life span. In short, Allison’s expiration date, the amount of time she’ll continue to live before her body fails from natural causes like cancer or heart failure.
Jadis may not be lying per se. It may be that it’s just a complicated question without a simple answer.
Exactly. Time shenanigans could ensue, this -could- be the past, who knows?
I think she means 35 Earth years. 35 birthdays more. Time in Throne is counted a little differently, as I understand it, and there’s 777.777 universes out there too, all with different cycles.
When you tell someone when they’re gonna die, you gotta be specific.
As I understand it, however, aren’t you dead inside already?
There is a lot of wiggle room in that phrase, “as you understand it”.
Just for starters, does that 35y10d693s mean…
… in linear time in this universe from this moment?
Which could mean that we have no idea at all how much longer Alison will live, since time seems to flow differently in different universes. To say nothing of time loops, or jaunts into the past or future or other pocket timelines…
… in non-linear perceived time for the individual?
Which could mean that boredom stretches things out, since time being bored passes more slowly. And excitement would be dangerous, since time flies when we’re having fun.
… time measured by Alison’s Earth standard clock? Or by some other temporal standard?
For example, in Alison’s home system, a Jovian day is slightly less than 10 Earth hours, a Martian day is while a Venusian day is about 116.75 Earth days. We don’t know much about the rotational periods of Throne or other planets such as Jadis’s homeworld.
Jadis has given Alison a number. But on its own, without a lot more context than we currently have, that number doesn’t mean a whole lot.
and beyond that, its has been, implied mind you, that death may not necessarily be permanent? perchance to do as the worm did and find more hosts of ones consciousness? so it could even just be the ‘death’ of allison as we know her, not even necessarily a death as its being thrown around here, these guys have a habit of playing word games
For someone who is meant to be immortal?
Ah, the sneer of the Restful Lady, the final argument of despair. The little girl should have known better. JADYS ATUN!
Traveller Śavrāt is observant indeed in commenting on the polite visage of despair. But if the girl our hope rests in is to venture into the reach of royalty then this would always have been something Allison would have had to confront by virtue of the restful ladies existance alone.
Yeah if she knows everything, and that’s true, that when can at least rule out the multiverse being totally destroyed and everyone in it dying, right? Right?
The omnicides can only torch the worlds they can get to. Some are locked, and the keys are missing. Except the one in Allison’s head.
“As you understand it…” There’s a lot of wiggle in that phrase. Maybe part of the multiverse being destroyed impacts time, or the perception of time. Or maybe the key in Allison’s head interacts with time. There’s so many options here.
“As you understand it” could also apply to the concept of “die” …
Perhaps the deadline refers to when Allison undergoes apotheosis and fully ceases being the person she is now.
The biggest question, I think, is whether the time given is subjective (time as Alison perceives it) or objective (time as the wheel turns).
Especially since it’s already well-established that Zoss is screwing with the turning of the wheel.
Considering what death did to Zoss, it’s safe to say dying isn’t that big a deal for the king of kings.
Suspiciously specific..
“As you understand it..”
I think that just means “in units you can understand” i.e. years, days etc instead of turns or whatever.
I agree. There is a lot of space for meaning to be hidden behind such words. It could simply be an allowance for localization as Pree Katieushka suggests, but I see more opportunities there.
It just as easily could mean ‘as you understand the concept of death.’
Perhaps, in thirty-five years and some-odd days, Al-Ysun will cut DEATH, or ascend into a form of godhead that her current more human form would think of as a death of the person. She has been unmade and re-made going between worlds.
In thirty-five years, death could be an extremely fluid concept for her. It certainly was for Zoss.
From a certain point of view, that’s 35 years of being able to live recklessly with limited consequences. But as Pratchett intimated it’s bad idea to try to abuse such knowledge, because injuries can linger, and no one ever said one had to die quickly.
Since there’s more than one Alison wandering around, I am curious as to which one she’s referring to?
I wonder how Zoss doing the time warp affects her cognition of everything. Does she see beyond it (as if he wasn’t doing it) or does everything just… end at some point in the future.
How does her view of all creation interact with free will? Numerous questions there. Is 35 years just one of many options if things carry out as expected? How does Zoss’ key effect this prediction, if at all? What happens if this knowledge sets Our Protagonist on a different course? Or does this knowledge set Aliceson upon her 35 year path?
I don’t know that we have enough information to say, but the indications thus far are that Jadis doesn’t believe in free will – everything was set the moment she saw it.
See for example her comment that she saved Allison because she saves Allison. She doesn’t know why, she simply saw herself doing it and thus did it.
This leaves a couple outs for Allison. She might live a century or a day, but Jadis said 35 years because she saw herself say 35 years.
If they’re going with strict determinism, as I think they are, then free will is an illusion, strictly caused by the present which has been strictly caused by the past. You choose but are the result of yours and others’ choices.
Lacking perfect knowledge of the future creates the perception of free in the sense that you can choose based on present information that creates the future.
However perfect knowledge of the future annihilates the ability to affect the future based on choice; if you could change the future using the knowledge of the future then by definition the knowledge wasn’t perfect.
Perfect knowledge of the future causes you to create the future based on the knowledge of the future, It is congruent with a self fulfilling prophecy, any action you take is what brings the future into being and you wont do any action that prevents that future from happening.
For example next page Alison will probably threaten to kill herself to spite Jardis, Jardis will call her bluff, and for whatever reason Alison wont die. Of course Jardis new the outcome of the conversation but chose to do it anyway, but chose to have this conversation because its what she would choose to do.
Jadis does not choose anything any more. She just plays the script that she already knows by heart.
She believes that time is linear, or maybe circular, but definitely not that there are choices to be made. She already knows what she, and everyone else, will choose, forevermore.
It that is what time really is, fated doom is already upon all. Alison must find a way to change fate and time if she is to free this demiurge from her sin.
Why can’t Jadis lie? The knowledge that one will die at a certain point in time may be the key to circumvent death.
Nothing prevents Jadis from lying, but if she does so, she falls into one of Allison’s categories – fraud. If she’s stuck in a pre-determined path though, it doesn’t really matter. She’ll give the answer she gives, because that’s the answer she always gives, regardless of whether or not it’s true.
Worse (for Jadis), she can be forced to lie. Imagine the following scenario: Allison and Jadis enter a room with two exits. Allison asks Jadis which door she’ll leave from, but privately resolves that whichever door Jadis gives, she (Allison) will leave by the opposite (or some other way, through a window, for example). Assuming Jadis responds, she will be forced to respond with the wrong answer, so that Allison takes the “right” action, all the while knowing that this is the case but being unable to express it. Someone with the illusion of free will can exploit Jadis’ situation to reinforce their own belief in free will, and Jadis is basically helpless to get a word in edgewise.
I’m uncertain how that could be exploited other than to mildly annoy Jadis, but it’s amusing nonetheless.
perfect knowledge of the future means knowledge of all branching possibilities to an infinite degree of depth.
[My understanding of the structure of time and space is as follows:
Free will and predetermination are not mutually exclusive. The actions that you take and the choices that you make within your life already exist and you simply have not progressed to the correct point along your thread wherein said action takes place. On the other hand, all those actions *are* driven both by previous choices and by uncontrollable environmental factors; free will and predetermined ‘fates’ are in fact two sides of the same coin.
The concept of each choice causing a collapse which diverges timelines is also accurate, and therefore Jadis’ current view is of a specific version of Allison along the thread which that version of Jadis has observed; every version of our protagonist inquiring will receive an answer, and those answers may both be true and incredibly various in their content.
Higher-dimensional navigation is as infinitely thick with overlapping probabilities and possibilities as time is with infiniteseimal, immeasurably-specific points; there is as many points of possibility within possibility as there are points in space, and therefore any view of same must be bounded in some way – for example, along a specific fourth-dimensional thread – in order for observation to be meaningful to a consciousness-bearing system extant within space and time as we understand it.
Infinitely-rich data is functionally unparseable. The version of Allison which inquired of Jadis is, however, a specific version (or a set of specific versions), all of whom have now made a choice – to ask after their own time of death – which all iterations of Jadis within that (countably infinite) set have answered, perhaps truthfully and nothing more, perhaps as a method of adjusting an outcome ‘visible’ to a higher-cohort version of which the visible/interactable Jadis is a tiny part, etc.
Everything you will do, you have already done. Still, who you are and the things which happen to you are essential to asserting the thread you will follow; one of these concepts cannot exist independently of the other.
The interesting part of all of this turns out to be consciousness, I believe; the idea that consciousness is a result of humanity and not a universal force which we lens (not unlike the fractal self-annihilation of Yisun in this series’ mythology) is fascinating and I have yet to see evidence which invalidates consciousness as something akin to gravity, nuclear forces, etc. Structural to the Universe, to causality as we experience it, and not merely an uncomfortable reality of human life.]
The problem with Jadis, is that she can’t answer one question- is she acting because time is set in stone, or is she acting because she saw herself doing something? I suspect the paradox has driven her quietly mad. Why, she could still be stuck in her block, living a life entirely in her mind, while the actual world occurs around her.
i need MOREEEEEEEEEEEE
Another 35 years is unexpected. A few months, until the Jagganite army rolls through, is plausible. Hundreds or thousands of years, sustained by Jadisian tech, is plausible. “Forever”, sustained by her own demiurge-imortality gig is plausible. But a shortish, humanish lifespan? That’s what happens when one goes home to a backward place like Earth.
And not just any Earth. Earth 316, 429 to boot! They don’t even have sorcery there! It’s a YIS-UN forsaken place- Very much a down grade from Throne, even if it is falling apart.
Many deaths await. Even demiurges die. The ambitious plot.
It’s uncertain what happened to the Red God anyway, all that was said is that his army was led by Incubus.
Anger for the one most trapped and broken by the Wheel suits you not, Alice-Un.
Pity her. By YISUN, pity her, for those who Master the Wheel cannot break it…
Knowledge is one thing, understanding is another thing entirely. And the means to effect any kind of change? Now that is a rare and precious jewel.
Sometimes, understanding is the revelation of your own powerlessness.
Revelation is a terrible thing, no matter what good it may bring.
Pft, that just sounds like coward talk there Mendicant. Pity isn’t really needed innit? She’s got the power of god there, she just needs to get some anime and she’ll be right golden.
She said as you understand it, I feel like this implies time shenanigans of some nature or that it isn’t exactly “true” Death.
I suppose with infinite knowledge comes a complete understanding of all the ways in which you’re entirely and utterly powerless.
Seems like ignorance really is bliss.
Indeed. Knowing often doesn’t mean ond can actually prevent something from happening or even influence events, for the net of causality is vast and every node is a turning point.
Nor does it free oneself from their own poisons.
Indeed it is so.
It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness, that is life.
“Beetles cannot learn Pankrash Circle Fighting, Lord Intra,” said Intra’s attendant, and made a bitter motion.
“Don’t tell the beetle that,” said Intra, who was very skilled at smiling. “If you don’t tell him he will learn it anyway and cut the lion in half with a single blow.”
Here Allison learned where keeping it real goes wrong.
She who has seen all can now be seen on the floor. One must wonder what has changed.
Oh, well then, since I’m effectively immortal for the next ~35 years I can resume my hobby of never doing anything dangerous ever again.
Unconscious in a coma for 35 more years is still an accurate curse. Here there is unwaveringly knowing everything or unwaveringly knowing nothing. Every coin has two sides and is also one coin. They make a cute couple, eh?:
Jadis worthless confirmed.
SPOILER WARNING JADIS!! GEEZ
I’m sure she would never lie to make a point or manipulate someone.
Demiurges have a long history of truthful, honest interactions with others.
Considering the turns her life has taken recently, having 35 years left is incredibly good news
Jadis knows that Jadis will have said thus, reinforcing her worthlessness.
I must say, I held different anticipations of the omnipotent witch in glass. For one as all knowing as she, her speech inflections and hesitations remind me of the very un-godly origins of she and her fellow demiurges, those who remain. But ah! In hindsight, thus seems obvious. This is a story of subversion after all.
“As you understand it” Thanks, that’s all the caveats I need to live horribly scared of being maimed or comatose at any given second.
huh, seems like a pretty average life considering the stress her body went through
All time banger of an alt text
Immediately stabs herself with qubit spear to prove Jadis wrong ?
Well, if she wanted to test her knowledge, she should have asked something that is testable within reasonable time (immediately, if it is something Alison already knows and only she is supposed to know). But that was probably not the actual point.
If she truly wanted to test her omnipotence, she could have asked about the ending of her favourite anime.
Considering that Earth-realm wasn’t yet discovered, how else could Jadis know it?
That is one example from a list of many. Any obscure trivia from Earth would work.
Note however that Jadis claims to be omniscient, not omnipotent.
BTW, this lead to the problem that led Calvinist theologians to the concept of predestination. True omniscience is possible only if the future is fixed in every detail. If the future is not fixed, omniscience is not possible. This might be the reason Jadis follows the book so faithfully. She might loose her omniscience if she try to actually use the knowledge. She is more scared of the uncertain than certain doom.
SPOILERS JADIS!
Jokes on you, it’s real life time, not in universe time. We’re in for a long ride. Luckily our author have conceived an heir for this project.