I think she would have to have a comparable situation in her memory—I don’t think memory of a story would fit, but that’s speculation—and she has to be communicating with someone who already knows.
It’s stated very early on that her power sometimes changes what she says when she’s telling the truth to phrase it so that the listener would understand. That’s already admitting that her power can reveal facts about the people she’s communicating with, more specifically what they find to be true.
They have to speculate because they don’t have anyone there who knows. Now, if they kidnapped someone who was in the know, and had Elspeth try to run through scenarios to see which analogies fit, then they could get information out of that person. Really, she’s more of a sort of mind reader, in an incredibly roundabout manner, than any kind of oracle.
Assuming that my understanding is sound, did that clarify anything with you?
I don’t think memory of a story would fit, but that’s speculation
Already gave a number of possible workarounds to demonstrate that any ad hoc rule will leak. This reminds me of computer security—someone puts forward an ad hoc system, someone else immediately breaks it, the first patches the exploit, and so on ad infinitum until eventually the patches start introducing as many security flaws as they fix and they just give up.
Really, she’s more of a sort of mind reader, in an incredibly roundabout manner, than any kind of oracle.
I went back and re-read the scene. That could be the right explanation.
But that’s not much better. Nothing in the scene forces Alice & Jasper to be there. For all we know, Elspeth could have run through the exact same mental steps with them on the other side of the planet (assuming A&J had telephoned with news of their defection or something): ‘Magic, would comparing A&J to Del convince someone of the comparison?’ ‘Nope!’ ‘Oh good.’ In fact, since truth or falsity do not change, Elspeth could as easily have worded her analogy as ‘would comparing A&J at the instant they called to Del convince someone?’ and gotten the same answer.
So your reading brings Elspeth down from logical omniscience to ‘merely’ being able to find out anything anyone has ever known (and maybe will know). Which is still so impressive a power that Alicorn couldn’t’ve intended it.
Her magic changes what she says when she’s communicating with people. I agree, nothing in the scene forces A&J to be there, but Elspeth’s power—as I understand it—requires her to be communicating to the people she’s testing for it to work.
Now, the fact that her magic now has an avatar might change the rules, but as Alicorn obviously didn’t intend for it to work like how you are describing, you can assume that her magic is still limited to needing to be in communication with the person in question for it to determine whether the analogies fit.
Even with those constraints, there are experiments that seem worth performing.
Experiment one: select some known object X. A confederate either puts X in their pocket, or doesn’t. Elspeth attempts to say “You have X in your pocket” to the confederate. Does Magic object to Elspeth saying that when it isn’t true?
If that doesn’t work, set up an indirect version of the same thing where, instead of saying “You have X in your pocket,” Elspeth calls up a memory of the person having X in their pocket and says “You’re in a situation like that time when you had X in your pocket.” That, at least, ought to work… it’s essentially what Elspeth did to Alice.
Either way, there’s a whole series of experiments to be performed in the same vein to establish whether this depends on someone having the knowledge, or whether it merely depends on the state of the world. E.g., experiment 1b: there are three people in the room, two of whom have a sealed box in their pocket. One of the boxes contains X. The third person in the room knows which box it is, but nobody else does. Elspeth attempts to say “You have X in your pocket” (or equivalent memory) to both people. 1c: get rid of the third person. Nobody knows which box it is. 1d: get rid of all the people; there are two boxes, left and right. Elspeth attempts to say to herself “The {left, right} box contains X”.
Another direction of experimentation… set up the same experiment, but Elspeth is in another room far away, communicating by telephone. If that works, hang up, and have Elspeth simply intend to communicate by phone. (This should work if the first one does, since we’ve seen Magic answer questions about intended communications.) If that works, throw the phone away and have Elspeth intend to communicate in some unspecified fashion… or, if that fails, have her write the answers on a piece of paper with the intention of handing the paper to the appropriate person at the first convenient opportunity. If any of this works, how far away is too far? What if she doesn’t know exactly where the people are?
Yet another variation: set up a probabilistic test case. That is, instead of “You have X in your pocket,” try it with “This coin is about to come up heads.” If it fails, try it again with Alice, after she has determined how the coin will come up.
Completely different: Every thirty seconds, Elspeth looks around the room and says “There are N people in this room.” Allirea is in the room, fading in and out. Can Magic tell when what Elspeth wants to say is false? Does it matter if Bella is in the room?
It seems like these would be useful things to know about Elspeth’s talent, not to mention useful directions to train it in if the potential exists. Some of them I expect to fail, because Word of God says she’s not an oracle, but I’m not clear on which ones as I’m not exactly clear what an “oracle” is. In any case, Elspeth doesn’t have access to Word of God, all she has is experiment.
But maybe Addy’s the only one who has an experimental mindset about this stuff.
Completely different: Every thirty seconds, Elspeth looks around the room and says “There are N people in this room.” Allirea is in the room, fading in and out. Can Magic tell when what Elspeth wants to say is false? Does it matter if Bella is in the room?
This one fails trivially. Elspeth has, in the past, without so much as a twinge from Magic, neglected Allirea’s existence verbally and explicitly:
Siobhan pursed her lips and closed her eyes. “Elspeth, how many children does Joham have?” she asked, slowly and carefully.
“Three,” I said.
“And their names are, from oldest to youngest...?”
“Noemi, Nahuel, and Iseul. Don’t you already know—”
I think she would have to have a comparable situation in her memory—I don’t think memory of a story would fit, but that’s speculation—and she has to be communicating with someone who already knows.
It’s stated very early on that her power sometimes changes what she says when she’s telling the truth to phrase it so that the listener would understand. That’s already admitting that her power can reveal facts about the people she’s communicating with, more specifically what they find to be true.
They have to speculate because they don’t have anyone there who knows. Now, if they kidnapped someone who was in the know, and had Elspeth try to run through scenarios to see which analogies fit, then they could get information out of that person. Really, she’s more of a sort of mind reader, in an incredibly roundabout manner, than any kind of oracle.
Assuming that my understanding is sound, did that clarify anything with you?
Already gave a number of possible workarounds to demonstrate that any ad hoc rule will leak. This reminds me of computer security—someone puts forward an ad hoc system, someone else immediately breaks it, the first patches the exploit, and so on ad infinitum until eventually the patches start introducing as many security flaws as they fix and they just give up.
I went back and re-read the scene. That could be the right explanation.
But that’s not much better. Nothing in the scene forces Alice & Jasper to be there. For all we know, Elspeth could have run through the exact same mental steps with them on the other side of the planet (assuming A&J had telephoned with news of their defection or something): ‘Magic, would comparing A&J to Del convince someone of the comparison?’ ‘Nope!’ ‘Oh good.’ In fact, since truth or falsity do not change, Elspeth could as easily have worded her analogy as ‘would comparing A&J at the instant they called to Del convince someone?’ and gotten the same answer.
So your reading brings Elspeth down from logical omniscience to ‘merely’ being able to find out anything anyone has ever known (and maybe will know). Which is still so impressive a power that Alicorn couldn’t’ve intended it.
Her magic changes what she says when she’s communicating with people. I agree, nothing in the scene forces A&J to be there, but Elspeth’s power—as I understand it—requires her to be communicating to the people she’s testing for it to work.
Now, the fact that her magic now has an avatar might change the rules, but as Alicorn obviously didn’t intend for it to work like how you are describing, you can assume that her magic is still limited to needing to be in communication with the person in question for it to determine whether the analogies fit.
Even with those constraints, there are experiments that seem worth performing.
Experiment one: select some known object X. A confederate either puts X in their pocket, or doesn’t. Elspeth attempts to say “You have X in your pocket” to the confederate. Does Magic object to Elspeth saying that when it isn’t true?
If that doesn’t work, set up an indirect version of the same thing where, instead of saying “You have X in your pocket,” Elspeth calls up a memory of the person having X in their pocket and says “You’re in a situation like that time when you had X in your pocket.” That, at least, ought to work… it’s essentially what Elspeth did to Alice.
Either way, there’s a whole series of experiments to be performed in the same vein to establish whether this depends on someone having the knowledge, or whether it merely depends on the state of the world. E.g., experiment 1b: there are three people in the room, two of whom have a sealed box in their pocket. One of the boxes contains X. The third person in the room knows which box it is, but nobody else does. Elspeth attempts to say “You have X in your pocket” (or equivalent memory) to both people. 1c: get rid of the third person. Nobody knows which box it is. 1d: get rid of all the people; there are two boxes, left and right. Elspeth attempts to say to herself “The {left, right} box contains X”.
Another direction of experimentation… set up the same experiment, but Elspeth is in another room far away, communicating by telephone. If that works, hang up, and have Elspeth simply intend to communicate by phone. (This should work if the first one does, since we’ve seen Magic answer questions about intended communications.) If that works, throw the phone away and have Elspeth intend to communicate in some unspecified fashion… or, if that fails, have her write the answers on a piece of paper with the intention of handing the paper to the appropriate person at the first convenient opportunity. If any of this works, how far away is too far? What if she doesn’t know exactly where the people are?
Yet another variation: set up a probabilistic test case. That is, instead of “You have X in your pocket,” try it with “This coin is about to come up heads.” If it fails, try it again with Alice, after she has determined how the coin will come up.
Completely different: Every thirty seconds, Elspeth looks around the room and says “There are N people in this room.” Allirea is in the room, fading in and out. Can Magic tell when what Elspeth wants to say is false? Does it matter if Bella is in the room?
It seems like these would be useful things to know about Elspeth’s talent, not to mention useful directions to train it in if the potential exists. Some of them I expect to fail, because Word of God says she’s not an oracle, but I’m not clear on which ones as I’m not exactly clear what an “oracle” is. In any case, Elspeth doesn’t have access to Word of God, all she has is experiment.
But maybe Addy’s the only one who has an experimental mindset about this stuff.
This one fails trivially. Elspeth has, in the past, without so much as a twinge from Magic, neglected Allirea’s existence verbally and explicitly:
True. Cool, they can scratch that one off the list.