[Dragaera] Tiassa -- Chapter the Sixth vs Epilogue -- spoiler

[Steve Rapaport]

On 19 April 2011 23:47, Philip Hart <philiph at slac.stanford.edu> wrote:

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> On Tue, 19 Apr 2011, Scott Schultz wrote:
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>  s
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>>  Maybe the tiassa is Paarfi's source.
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>> I doubt it acted as a source for Paarfi, like an oracle or some such. More
>> likely it gave him literary insight that  he might not have had without its
>> influence.
>>
>
> Beyond Occam, why?  It was present, or had access to the people involved,
> and seems to have some agency, and certainly can read and write people's
> brains.  Maybe it's like a GW and contains someone's soul.  More likely, as
> is claimed by its maker, it has a good chunk of a god in it.
>
> I believe the concept you're looking for is "muse", noun, in the sense of "
the goddess or the power regarded as inspiring a poet, artist, thinker, or
the like."    A muse doesn't provide information (as a source does), it (or
she) provides inspiration.  Or, as Vlad puts it, uniting the conscious and
unconscious minds.

This nicely explains both the increased quality and quantity of art from the
people holding the thing, and the need for a bit of a goddess, but doesn't
by any means require either agency (open question) and certainly doesn't
need to imply the thing passing information around from one person to
another.