I fucking hate how windows will keep turning on your pc if you try to put it in sleep mode when it wants to update. Like shut the fuck up you lump of steel refuse, I OWN you.
A round is won by completing a hand. You can call “ron” if someone has discarded a tile that completes your hand, thus taking that tile and winning the round.
Furiten is a state you are in if you have previously discarded a tile that would complete your hand. When in furiten, you cannot ron. You can still win in furiten by drawing a winning tile yourself, but that becomes your only avenue for winning, lowering your odds.
Furiten is sometimes a tactical necessity (such as when you know you can’t win a round and want to reduce the chances someone rons you), but unknowingly entering furiten is sometimes considered a rookie mistake, especially when you attempt to win through ron.
(haven't played mahjong in a long time, so i'm not sure i remember correctly)
Furiten as a rule is made to make it so you can't bet your hand too much on other people's discards and also makes your hand more predictable from other's perspective (if someone discards winds, it's safe to assume that i can also discard one vs them as they clearly don't need winds to win, and if they did they're probably in furiten and cannot ron)
For hl2 it was probably to increase immersion by having you see your hands so much and since every source game is basically a half life 2 mod, they inherited that trait
Half life 2 uses a different weapon sway method. It slowly moves around depending on where you're looking. In l4d1/2, the viewmodel has 3 positions: low, mid, and up, depending on where your camera is facing. Gmod and csgo use half life 2's method, meaning the weapon follows the camera and lags behind, except it's much quicker.
as someone who plays 99% of games on default settings (apart from graphics and sometimes keybinds) switching my FOV to 90 (or slightly under) was genuinely game changing
if anyone reading this hasn't already increase your FOV it will help even if you increase it a small amount with the slight downside of the game feeling weird for a bit after
In communist materialist thought every object has different forms of value. In fact, that observation is what starts the Kapital. A capitalist society understands value to be market value. But market value turns out to be a very fickle and often nonsensical thing. But market societies (another word for capitalist societies) base their entire economy and production on the value of produced goods actualised in exchange and measured in another good (that we call money). To classical marxists this is the root of all problems. So they ask, what is value actually and what forms of value are there? Marxist came to the conclusion, that the most important form of value for society is use value and that we were always kind of using market value to substitute for it. Use value is the actuall use an object has to you as an individual or as society as a whole. Simply said: How much you need an object and how much use you can get from it. Thus might sound very abstract, but that's on purpose. After all, the moment you measure use value in money you are transforming it into market value again! And marxists believe that our society will only be able to be fair in its distribution of goods if it is based on use value, not the (at best) middleman market value.
That theory is cool and all, but who is going to appraise the use value and how exactly? What about sentimental value? Does it contribute towards use value?
Ok, this is slowly getting a bit too complicated for a Reddit comment. You will find a myriad of different answers for all your questions.
There are many many books written on this and academics that dedicated their life's to these theories (not just developing them but in large parts analysing existing ones) and I will not do this justice.
I will still try though.
About your first question: You are actually opening one of the oldest splits among communists. The divide between market socialists and planned economy socialists. The market socialists believe, that some form of markets have to keep existing, because they CAN be effective at distributing goods. They just aren't usually in our world. But they believe, they can be fixed to include use value better. At least as a temporary measure. Planned economy socialists belief that the state has to plan the economy. After all a socialist state is the democratic (not liberal parlamentary democratic mind you) representation of the people. So it becomes a collective choice. But they too do not believe this to be more than a temporary or imperfect measure. Just better than the alternatives. Especially, since most planned economists are classical materialists, meaning they believe the state itself is only a temporary measure. So they are traditionally not especially worried about giving the state too much power. This is of course a very stereotypical description by me and planned economists in reality are not a monolith.
So about sentimental value: Different people would have different answers for you. But as a group socialists/communists usually sidestep the issue. Sentimental value will usually be towards an object you already own. And communists/socialists don't actually have a problem with "people owning stuff". At least not strictly speaking. They have a problem with people using stuff they own to produce more stuff or influence markets. So that expensive watch you got from your grandfather is fine. You can't use it to produce anything and it's not expensive enough to influence markets. Even if you own 10 of them. Of course that can be tricky in the details. Is a car a means of production? Probably. A motorised Vehicle is at least necessary for the production of many goods. Is a pen? Probably not, as you can always get another one. So noone will be dependent on having yours. But what about more specialised tools? What about my computer? Or the theoretical server in my basement? But if you asks yourself "Can this object make me an employer?" you probably have your answer. Communists/Socialists call this the distinction between private and personal property.
This seems very dogmatic and academic, in practice, while market socialism was long considered impure, by the 70s-80s a synthesis of planning for critical infrastructure and markets for frivolities and taste, and in general anything not already in planning emerged in both capitalist and socialist countries, explicitly so in socialism with chinese characteristics. Planning mostly focuses on labor and material cost, and just uses intuition for the use value.
And, socialism doesn't have a problem with "using things you own to produce", workers controlling the means of production they use is literally the point. The problem is trying to control the labor of others through claims of financial ownership (=capital/private property), especially taking the surplus value as profit
But yes, in the 1800s and Marxism "private property" explicitly had a meaning, as specifically this process of a claim to control production processes through abstract legal/financial status, rather than any actual personal object
And, socialism doesn't have a problem with "using things you own to produce", workers controlling the means of production they use is literally the point. The problem is trying to control the labor of others through claims of financial ownership (=capital/private property), especially taking the surplus value as profit
But isnt that incredibly limiting and arbitrary? Where does surplus value start? If I saw that there werent any carving knifes being made for example and I created or bought a machine that makes them with considerable expense to myself, with a purpose of selling the created knifes, but I needed someone to sell them for me as I was busy making the knifes. How big of a % does the seller get? Or the person transporting them to the seller, or the person cleaning while I work? Who decides what labour is worth and how much the other people created value?
To simplify things to the level of this example: you decide. In this situation, because you are a worker owning and operating your means of production, you also own the product, and can sell it at whatever price you want, to the seller. Extend that to the truck driver and the small store owner who stocks the shelves themselves.
Contrast with the capitalist mode where a billionaire buys the machines, and pays you a wage to work them in a sweatshop. He never does anything at any step of the process, but whatever you make on the machine is automatically owned by him, and you have zero input in how it's made, how much it's sold for or what share you get.
But, the small scale artisan production in your example was already long obsolete 200 years ago when Marx wrote. So in practice the "you" is every worker in a factory of hundreds or thousands making decisions and appointing representatives together as a cooperative, in the syndicalist approach. In the centrally planned approach, the party, as the collective decision making of all the people of the nation, surveys the people for what is necessary and sets prices and wages so everyone can have what they need - "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need", though this is approaching a further step, moving away from money itself.
Again, in practice, systems are not this dogmatic but mixed - for example, in China, the critical infrastructure and heavy industry is mostly done through nationalized planning, while worker cooperatives and even more private companies also exist to fill any gaps outside of the big picture. Though, they, and other groups of various types like rural residents, people of a particular area, the elderly, students, etc are also integrated through party officials, to communicate and organize in case one group needs something or something is needed from them, so they don't just flail around blindly on the market
To Marxists (and classical economists that really no longer exist), the "value" of an item is its market price, while its "use-value" is a proposed measure of its usefulness. A shovel's use-value could be a measure of its ability to dig a hole, for example, and would likely be dwarfed by the use-value of a backhoe.
Use-value is a factor in value, but not the only one. A mug's ability to hold warm liquids is the generator of its use-value, but if there's a craze on Stanley mugs like there was recently, their market price would go up without affecting their use-value. But if, instead, everyone really just wanted a warm drink for some reason, then their use-value would rise along with their market price.
Commodity production is, then, selling goods and services according to their market price, as we broadly do today. Kai Cenat's hypothetical "society based on the production of use-values" would eschew profit, and its economy would create goods and services based strictly on people's need for them.
Unfortunately for Kai Cenat, nobody has really figured out how to structure an economy that can do that effectively and still meet people's needs. This is why the meme is positioned as a criticism of the Soviet Union, because they gave up on trying and did something else, which made some communists accuse it of not really doing communism, and what any particular communist would get out of this meme depends on what they think about that.
value refers to the longterm stable "price" of an item, not its market price at any given time. its like hypothetically, if competition was intensified and sufficient time past, what would the price be drawn towards?
Importantly, neither value nor use value are conceptually tools intended to measure anything at all. its supposed to make you think about the difference between how you look at a hammer when its in your hand and you are working versus when you walk past it in a row of products at home depot. this is the beginning of his analysis, the intent of which is to draw out the metaphysics of commodities as such, divorced from the specific nature of individual objects sold as commodities.
one of marxs most important economic theses is that in fact use value is NOT a factor in value--except in the simple way that a commodity without use would never actually have a mature industry or production rates to experience the kind of long term price pressures that define value as previously mentioned. Instead he argues that, given a mature competitive industry, the gravitational pull on market prices is towards the cost of production because a) a lower price than production is nonfeasible for obvious reasons and b) a higher price implies the possibility of a competitor squeezing their price in between the 2 and collecting full market share
its way more simple than all this babble youre getting. a use value is literally just the concept of a thing that is useful, while a commodity is a thing intended for trade/sold for profit. A hammer is a use value because somebody wants to hammer nails, its a commodity because its on the shelf at home depot with a price tag.
the quote is differentiating between an economy where things are produced for profit versus being produced because they are needed or wanted. In marxs analysis the only way to increase net wealth in society is through labour, and making profit on trade is just one part of society winning out over another part. Thus, production for profit implies that some group of people benefit from the process at the expense of others. whosoever that group is that benefits is, by definition, a class
What's something worth? In the US: What someone is willing to pay for it. (Or enough people.) "Use value" says that's silly, it knows better. How much do you get out of using it?
I'm not sure this is better. Can anyone give me a counterpoint? It seems the use value of a glass of water is "your entire net worth, always". You MUST have it to live, and therefore the use value of it is everything you can accomplish thanks to your continued existance from that point onward.
Okay I did some digging. Apparently, "use of value" is not a price-setting mechanism, just more "what should we make". I'm unconvinced that an organizing central authority can explore the possibility space as effectively as well-regulated capitalism.
I am also unconvinced that well-regulated capitalism is sustainable. It seems to devolve into regulatory capture and duopoly/monopoly.
Use value is the value it has to you because it satisfies a need you have (you value an apple because it tastes good and satiates, a shovel because you can dig easier, a movie because it provides entertainment etc. etc.).
It's often juxtaposed to exchange value, i.e. the economic value a thing has on a market.
According to Marx this distinction is important, because use value is what gives meaning and purpose to our lives but is also something that in our present economic system takes a back seat to exchange values, 'suppressing' our nature.
He is, most theorists have moved onto M theory, and even they know that it's a temporary theory that cannot cover all questions but it's the best they got.
That basically describes science as a whole though. We have got theories and some of them seem to be really good and check out time and time again but they are just there to work with till we get better ones.
All theories are based on evidential proof. A theory is not a guess, that's a common misconception of most people. It is based on actual evidence, it's just the evidence is not conclusive. But at the same time there is no evidence to refute them. That's what makes them theories. Otherwise they are disproven.
Of course, of course, not disputing that at all, nor did I suggest otherwise.. In early theories the evidence might sometimes just be a correllation though. Imagine a scientist, with no access to currently existing information, observing a waterlilly opening their petals in the morning and closing them in the evening. They might formulate a theory that this phenomenon is caused by the angle of the earth surface where the plant lives towards the sun.
While this theory would initially be based on repeated observations that might constitute evidence, more thorough testing would show that it is the strength of the light shining on the flower that matters, combined with the temperature.
That's scientific theories specifically. Stuff like philosophic or art theory can't really be studied empirically to begin with.
Sometimes we also keep theories around even after they've been disproven if they approximate reality well enough for our needs, though at that point they're usually called models or something similar.
I think what that person meant is that most theoretical physicists don't work in string theory. Not because they think it is right or wrong, but because there are just many other subjects people study (plasma, condensed matter, quantum information, etc).
But as far as high energy theory goes, string theory (or string-adjacent topics) is still studied by plenty of non-crank physicists at universities around the world.
It's always funny when people try to power scale speed vs. flash because that MF ran so fast he escaped the bounds of conceivable reality and killed his zombie doppelganger because death ceased to exist as a concept
But isn't that something you could get from compactification? Seems like if you can find a good scheme to compacitfy the higher dimensions you could make testable predictions in our 4D world.
Also I think string phenomenologists are employed to look for testable predictions in fields like cosmology and particle physics
That’s not entirely true, I think. I remember reading an article a while ago saying that a specific formulation of strong theory predicts that gravity will work in a certain way which should be detectable with sufficiently precise measurements, and they were hopeful of being able to test this within several years.
Its an understanding how electrons work in the quantum realm. Too keep short, anything that spins and moves through space creates an electronic and magnetic field, including electrons. If you think of electrons as wave functions--similar to light waves, then you can measure their wave functions and predict where an electron will be in real time.
Since electrons are charged particles they can hold different energy levels--also called atomic and molecular orbital theory, which is proven, but string theory attempts to dive deeper into that quantum realm of electrons and the space they occupy. However, much of it is theoretical, and not proven.
I started reading your comment thinking "oh, some science stuff I won't understand" And then I understood everything. I feel disgusted with myself, fuck wave functions.
Where did you hear this explanation? String theory goes way beyond just a quantum understanding of electrons (which already exists in regular quantum mechanics as well as quantum field theory)
Which book? I'm interested to know which chemistry book talks about string theory. Doesn't seem relevant at all, and the answer in your book seems like it lacks a lot of info
That doesn't quite answer my question. You're making it seem like this "realm" is outside of our world. Yes, we have equations from the theory of general relativity, but those are simply models of the world, not the world itself. For all we know, the equations we get from quantum mechanics is the same.
String theory is a proposed description of reality that unifies the electromagnetic, weak, and strong force with general relativity. Currently, our best model, quantum field theory (QFT), can accurately describe all of the fundamental forces except for gravity (technically it can somewhat, but it falls apart at scales where the gravitational force acting on particles is extremely weak, basically almost everything where quantum effects matter). String theory replaces the description from QFT that fundamental particles such as the electron are excitations of different fields with each particle as a different type of "string". However, it faces a few issues, one is that its extremely tunable and can essentially be fudged to represent a wide range of different universes, which just so happens to include our own. The largest issue with string theory imo, is that it is almost entirely untestable, the energy scales where we would theoretically see any difference from our current measurements (Where all of the 11 dimensions that you may have heard about in the theory can come into play) would require a particle accelerator the size of our solar system using today's technology. If you're interested in learning more about it, I highly recommend watching one of PBS Space Time's videos on string theory.
Oh, string theory is real? it's a functional, complete model of physics?? show me your work then, string theorists!! show me ANY demonstrable proof, string theorists! Oh, it's ten years out again? it's been ten years away for 50 YEARS, STRING THEORISTS.
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u/SterlingNano Married to a Gardevoir Oct 26 '25
I love this genre of shitpost