:This doesn't happen in my world.  Not since the start of safe-to-know history.  Something must account for that difference.  It's just - so much is different - it could be that I'm mining completely the wrong resources, because this is real life, and the actual key factor is that everybody in my world knows how to prove this doesn't happen to dignified agents, and the real difference I should be looking at is something that made mathematics progress more slowly in this world, nothing to do with Karse or Valdemar in particular.  Or we could just be earlier in this world's history, before people prove the key theorems, and that stage of history looks completely different because of mage-lights and Mindspeech and gods.  In a much more practical sense, I'm trying to decide if I believe the story where, roughly, Karse is wrong and Valdemar is right.  It sounds like Vanyel is confident that he has full access to the relevant information, and he seems like a dignified person who keeps to universal Virtues, but good practice really says that I should talk to at least one Karsite about this too.  Why don't all the other countries come in on Valdemar's side, if it's that clear-cut?:

:This doesn't happen in my world.  Not since the start of safe-to-know history.  Something must account for that difference.  It's just - so much is different - it could be that I'm mining completely the wrong resources, because this is real life, and the actual key factor is that everybody in my world knows how to prove this doesn't happen to dignified agents, and the real difference I should be looking at is something that made mathematics progress more slowly in this world, nothing to do with Karse or Valdemar in particular.  Or we could just be earlier in this world's history, before people prove the key theorems, and that stage of history looks completely different because of mage-lights and Mindspeech and gods.  In a much more practical sense, I'm trying to decide if I believe the story where, roughly, Karse is wrong and Valdemar is right.  It sounds like Vanyel is confident that he has full access to the relevant information, and he seems like a dignified person who keeps to universal Virtues, but good practice really says that I should talk to at least one Karsite about this too.  Why don't all the other factions - countries? - come in on Valdemar's side, if it's that clear-cut?: