4 ms·

Missing from the analysis is the exploration of Westeros' magical winters. They're described as smal Ice Ages lasting for a few years, and occouring every 5-7 y

Missing from the analysis is the exploration of Westeros' magical winters. They're described as smal Ice Ages lasting for a few years, and occouring every 5-7 years (if memory serves me). People hoard food during the good years so that they don't starve during the long winters, which are (particularly in the north) complety barren. I imagine that would have an impact on society, particularly on specialization and the pursuit of knowledge a related activities.

jffry 13y ago
The seasons are frequently described as unpredictable, but over the course of the novels it's suggested that in recent living history they have become elongated. Imagine the effects that a 9-year winter would have on a population. It's possible that these seasons are a part of a cycle where civilization builds up, and then is decimated, which would be a huge hindrance to technological progress.
Amezarak 13y ago
(If you haven't read all the books, don't read this comment.) There's also magic in general. Until relatively recently, societies could accomplish a great deal through magical means, from road-building to instantaneous long-distance communication. For much of the six thousand years, there was probably no reason to focus on scientific and technological advances when you could just use magic. Things apparently changed with the near-extinction of the dragons. Dragons apparently somehow boost magic - it almost disappeared without them, and now it's coming back with them. In the books, Marwyn the Mage (a maester) claims that the maesters were responsible for the death of the dragons, because they couldn't build the world they wanted with magic, prophecy, and dragons around - suggesting that the maesters want a world of science and technology, perhaps with them as the gatekeepers. Lady Dustin also suggests that the maesters are much more political than they pretend.
- rjtavares 13y ago
  Yeah, I thought about that too. As they say, necessity really is the mother of invention...
- morazow 13y ago
  Also, some of the Targaryen kings tried to revive the dragons using magic.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
antonioevans 13y ago
Yep, as an entrepreneur it would be pretty difficult for me to have my factory shutdown for 5-7 years because the roads had 5 years worth of snow on them.
wfn 13y ago
Obligatory link to a paper on arXiv analyzing the astrophysics of long and volatile winter seasons in Westeros (basically, can you have a system where you wouldn't be able to analytically solve/predict winters, etc.): http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.0445 http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.0445 ("Winter is coming") Excerpt from the abstract: To right that appalling wrong, here we attempt to explain the apparently erratic seasonal changes in the world of G.R.R.M. A natural explanation for such phenomena is the unique behavior of a circumbinary planet. Thus, by speculating that the planet under scrutiny is orbiting a pair of stars, we utilize the power of numerical three-body dynamics to predict that, unfortunately, it is not possible to predict either the length, or the severity of any coming winter. We conclude that, alas, the Maesters were right -- one can only throw their hands in the air in frustration and, defeated by non-analytic solutions, mumble "Coming winter? May be long and nasty (~850 days, T<268K) or may be short and sweet (~600 days, T~273K). Who knows..." (I like arXiv.)
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  The example reminds me of a web page presenting the Awesome Unpredictability of Chaotic Systems that left me underwhelmed. You'd click on a pixel in a flash object and it would start moving in a lemniscatish path defined by some differential equations. The lesson to be drawn was that this system, easy to define, makes it "impossible to predict" the position of the particle at any given time, in the sense that tiny changes in the initial position led to rather wide gaps between the particles at time t=t_1 (maybe two particles released at the same time from adjacent pixels end up across the lemniscate from each other at some later time). The lesson I actually drew was more like so: Hm, if you release a few particles into this system you'll quickly notice that they all seem to be traveling along the same rough lemniscate. The lemniscate is a tiny minority of the entire space, so learning the differential equations lets me substantially improve my predictions of where the particle will be at any moment. ("It's probably near the lemniscate" is much more precise than "it's somewhere in space".) If the difference between the best winter and the worst is a 40% longer duration (admittedly, not pleasant) and 15 degrees centigrade... there's plenty of room left for real variation. ;)
  - claudius 13y ago

jffry 13y ago

The seasons are frequently described as unpredictable, but over the course of the novels it's suggested that in recent living history they have become elongated. Imagine the effects that a 9-year winter would have on a population. It's possible that these seasons are a part of a cycle where civilization builds up, and then is decimated, which would be a huge hindrance to technological progress.

Amezarak 13y ago

(If you haven't read all the books, don't read this comment.) There's also magic in general. Until relatively recently, societies could accomplish a great deal through magical means, from road-building to instantaneous long-distance communication. For much of the six thousand years, there was probably no reason to focus on scientific and technological advances when you could just use magic. Things apparently changed with the near-extinction of the dragons. Dragons apparently somehow boost magic - it almost disappeared without them, and now it's coming back with them. In the books, Marwyn the Mage (a maester) claims that the maesters were responsible for the death of the dragons, because they couldn't build the world they wanted with magic, prophecy, and dragons around - suggesting that the maesters want a world of science and technology, perhaps with them as the gatekeepers. Lady Dustin also suggests that the maesters are much more political than they pretend.

rjtavares 13y ago
Yeah, I thought about that too. As they say, necessity really is the mother of invention...
morazow 13y ago
Also, some of the Targaryen kings tried to revive the dragons using magic.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

antonioevans 13y ago

Yep, as an entrepreneur it would be pretty difficult for me to have my factory shutdown for 5-7 years because the roads had 5 years worth of snow on them.

wfn 13y ago

Obligatory link to a paper on arXiv analyzing the astrophysics of long and volatile winter seasons in Westeros (basically, can you have a system where you wouldn't be able to analytically solve/predict winters, etc.): http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.0445 http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.0445 ("Winter is coming") Excerpt from the abstract: To right that appalling wrong, here we attempt to explain the apparently erratic seasonal changes in the world of G.R.R.M. A natural explanation for such phenomena is the unique behavior of a circumbinary planet. Thus, by speculating that the planet under scrutiny is orbiting a pair of stars, we utilize the power of numerical three-body dynamics to predict that, unfortunately, it is not possible to predict either the length, or the severity of any coming winter. We conclude that, alas, the Maesters were right -- one can only throw their hands in the air in frustration and, defeated by non-analytic solutions, mumble "Coming winter? May be long and nasty (~850 days, T<268K) or may be short and sweet (~600 days, T~273K). Who knows..." (I like arXiv.)

thaumasiotes 13y ago
The example reminds me of a web page presenting the Awesome Unpredictability of Chaotic Systems that left me underwhelmed. You'd click on a pixel in a flash object and it would start moving in a lemniscatish path defined by some differential equations. The lesson to be drawn was that this system, easy to define, makes it "impossible to predict" the position of the particle at any given time, in the sense that tiny changes in the initial position led to rather wide gaps between the particles at time t=t_1 (maybe two particles released at the same time from adjacent pixels end up across the lemniscate from each other at some later time). The lesson I actually drew was more like so: Hm, if you release a few particles into this system you'll quickly notice that they all seem to be traveling along the same rough lemniscate. The lemniscate is a tiny minority of the entire space, so learning the differential equations lets me substantially improve my predictions of where the particle will be at any moment. ("It's probably near the lemniscate" is much more precise than "it's somewhere in space".) If the difference between the best winter and the worst is a 40% longer duration (admittedly, not pleasant) and 15 degrees centigrade... there's plenty of room left for real variation. ;)
- claudius 13y ago