Why Ishamael is wrong: The Nature of the Pattern and the Dark One

Hammar O'Justice said:

I agree that they're completely consistent if you interpret "time" there to mean "the time frame of the Pattern."

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You are twisting the words to a meaning that is clearly not what they say, nor is what is intended by the author.

If our apartments have different TVs, would it be reasonable for me to say "Only in my apartment is there a TV" as a way of saying that your apartment has a different TV? No, and it is just as awkward to assume BS uses these lines to describe the situation you describe.

It makes no sense whatsoever if taken to mean "there is no time outside the Pattern" because it is shown to us, directly, in plain text, that there is. The entire Wheel of Time saga, and in particular AMOL Page 584, make 100% zero sense if there is no time outside the Pattern. If there's no time outside the Pattern, the Creator could never have made the Pattern. "Creator" *means* "One who creates." That means there was a point in Pattern-External Time where there was no Pattern. Otherwise his name would be "Guy Who Sits Over There And Never Does Anything But Yell In Capital Letters Once Or Twice" and that title is way too long, even for a deity.

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The word "Creator" was coined by time-experiencing beings, who have never even had any idea there was such thing as timelessness. Rand is the only person in this entire universe who has, and he didn't name the Creator.

And the chapter 34 makes perfect sense as a description of Rand's perception, just as he perceives the Pattern in a way that is the only way his brain can perceive it. Rand is an entity that exists partially outside, and touches the Wheel at various areas. From the outside, his perception, if there even is such a thing, is not described to us. From inside the flow of time, Rand remembers events leading up to his exit, and following after his entry at the same point. What he described is the obvious description a human mind would put on it.

MuKen said:

You are twisting the words to a meaning that is clearly not what they say, nor is what is intended by the author.

If our apartments have different TVs, would it be reasonable for me to say "Only in my apartment is there a TV" as a way of saying that your apartment has a different TV? No, and it is just as awkward to assume BS uses these lines to describe the situation you describe.

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Suppose Sanderson's story was the heroic tale of Randall Thor, leader of his group of friends and foretold by prophecy to organize the Super Bowl Party to End All Super Bowl Parties.

Now suppose that in this story Sanderson explicitly depicts Randall in the TV store next to his apartment building. He is not in his apartment. He can see all TVs at once, all TVs of all sizes and all on different channels. It's more than he can take in. Each TV is showing the Avengers, but each is at a different point in the movie. Randall wonders to himself "where in the movie is this?" Then he realizes that here that question is meaningless; each instance of the Avengers, while being shown linearly, is each at a different point and so the store is simultaneously at all points along the timeline of the film.

A salesman approaches, and Randall rightly takes an adversarial posture. He's been dreading this for months since he first accepted the responsibility to throw the Super Bowl Party to End All Super Bowl Parties for his friends. The salesman tries to show him a TV that just looks terrible, then another that looks better but still sounds really bad. Tired of the salesman's tactics, Randall uses his smartphone and pulls up a TV spec on Amazon.com right there in the store. It's a 3D TV! Won't this be the best Super Bowl Party ever? The salesman points out that the party goers will have to wear glasses against their will, their eyes will be all weird, and their heads will hurt! The party will be no good because all the fun will be gone. It's of no use and if Randall buys it he will fail for a totally different reason than he'd been worried about.

In the end Randall goes with what he knows the people attending his party want: large screen, HDTV, good sound. 3D was a bad idea, so we're not having that. Whew! Good enough. He even uses the Salesman's True Marketing Power against him and uses a coupon to get an extended warranty for free! It's delivered that afternoon.

The next day a speaker technician shows up and asks Randall where he should hook the speakers up to. Just the day before, Randall was in a place (the store) where his TV was in a box over in the corner, yet he was still experiencing TV there because there were other TVs on in the room. Yet Randall's answer to the technician is, reasonably, "Oh, only in my apartment is there a TV" because the apartment is the only place in which he has the power to manipulate his TV. The only meaningful TV is in Randall's apartment.

In this analogy (which you said couldn't be made, though I admit it is imperfect), Randall's TV signal is Rand's flow of time. Randall has an "intended" TV signal, which is the one in his apartment; Rand's intended flow of time is within the Pattern. Randall's "exceptional" TV signal is experienced in the TV store when he sees the totality of the Avengers at the same time; Rand's exceptional flow of time is when he is unanchored, staring at the Pattern.

I am sure if you were to read your own story without the context of us having this discussion, you would think that is an incredibly awkward way for Randall to describe that situation. And that's even though this story was formatted by you to the best of your abilities to make that line work.

It is even less sensible in the WoT story to describe your model with those lines. If it were a separate timeline, there is no need to mention time at all, simply saying that Rand sees all of the past, present, and future of the Pattern together already is enough to imply he's left our timeline. Saying he's outside of time on top of that is clearly to indicate there is no time. An author trying to convey what you are proposing simply would not write what he did. Especially not multiple times in different ways and with different wordings.

Would Randall in your story say the store is "away from TV" or "away from my TV"? It is natural to specify when you are talking about a specific instance rather than the entirety of a set. If Sanderson wanted us to think it was a separate timeline, he would say "outside the Pattern's time".

The other possibility is that the authors didn't think about what being 'outside of time' meant nearly as much as we are, and left it ambiguous on purpose. This seems the most likely theory to me, even if this 'outside of time' stuff is intriguing. :P

That's always a possibility for stuff like this, and for Sanderson at least I'd say it's more like a probability :P He did after all have a lot on his plate to tie up, and I'm sure he just tried to put as much of whatever was in the notes he was given to book as possible.

RJ, on the other hand, I think most likely put a great deal of thought into this. The ending has been fully fleshed out since the 80's, and I'd imagine a good deal of all the Rand-vs-DO AMOL scenes were as well. Given that he's been writing towards a specific ending, RJ has doubtlessly referred to these often throughout the writing of the series to make sure he keeps things consistent with it and I'd be surprised if this didn't mean a lot of thinking about the philosophy, themes, and metaphysics of it.

MuKen said:

That's always a possibility for stuff like this, and for Sanderson at least I'd say it's more like a probability :P He did after all have a lot on his plate to tie up, and I'm sure he just tried to put as much of whatever was in the notes he was given to book as possible.

RJ, on the other hand, I think most likely put a great deal of thought into this. The ending has been fully fleshed out since the 80's, and I'd imagine a good deal of all the Rand-vs-DO AMOL scenes were as well. Given that he's been writing towards a specific ending, RJ has doubtlessly referred to these often throughout the writing of the series to make sure he keeps things consistent with it and I'd be surprised if this didn't mean a lot of thinking about the philosophy, themes, and metaphysics of it.

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Sorry for popping out of the discussion for a few days - I was very busy.

So basically, we wait for the Encyclopedia?

Haha, yeah same goes for me vanishing for a couple weeks. It's a busy time of year. Yeah, nothing for it but to wait for more confirmation of what the Wheel is really about, either from the encyclopedia or if BS ever gives out more of what was in those notes.

I know I'm a little late to this party, but here's something that hasn't come through clearly. Time as we experience it has two distinct features. These two features are being run together above, driving at least some of the objections to the theory, and then they're not clearly distinguished in the responses, although I think they are exactly what the proponents of the view have in mind.

Time is, first, linear and well-ordered (circular and well-ordered in WOT). Not every event happens at the same time, and we can clearly distinguish which one is before the other if they are not simultaneous. Think of this aspect of time simply as a numbered line or circle, maybe the good old number line with zero in the middle, the positives to the right and the negatives to the left. But second, time also passes. Not only can we distinguish which event is before which other event, but we experience now as moving from the earlier to the later.

The two properties of time are obviously related, but the first one does not entail the second. What are we to say about someone outside of time? That entity might well fully appreciate the well-ordering of time without experiencing the flow of time. That being might well perceive the entire wheel "at once", see it's linearity (or circularity) and even be able to say things such as "This battle is not like the previous one" or "This enemy is ancient" just as one might have said "The battle at 2003 on the number line is not like the battle at 1990 on the number line" or "This enemy covers 3000 marks on the number line". The "timeyness" of words like "previous" and "ancient" does not entail the psychology of temporal flow.

Then the dark one gets dragged into the pattern and for a while (or for a portion of the number line) he does experience time as flowing. This may still cause us some worry, but it's not the kind of absurdity that some respondents think. If time is a circle, then it could well be that the dark one perceives the entire circle, recognizes the portions of the circle and certain aspects of its "timeyness", and touches one portion of the circle. Within the circle, because of the flowing nature of time, it looks like multiple touchings the way one might keep coming back to the same spot while intending to simply go on (We've been here before, Mr. Frodo). Outside of the circle where time still has order, but doesn't flow, there is only one touching. Inside, the final battle is repeated. Outside, there is only one battle.

Nothing I've said here is new, I know. I think this is exactly what's been said all along. But I hope it's just a little more explicit. If so, it might help remove the apparent absurdity of the theory.