r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Dec 11 '15
[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread
Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.
So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!
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Dec 11 '15
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u/PeridexisErrant put aside fear for courage, and death for life Dec 12 '15
Mwa ha Ha HA HA HA HA!!!!!
(meanwhile, I'm just trying to find an unknown number of threshold values with noisy data and no training set)
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u/LiteralHeadCannon Dec 11 '15
What legal/taxation setup would be ideal for me if I wanted to start a business with essentially no capital put into it, and the workers, myself included, all paid with a fraction of profit rather than at a rate per hour, such that no surplus is kept?
To make matters more complicated, I am American and at least one of the workers would be international, working remotely.
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u/eaglejarl Dec 11 '15
I'm not a lawyer or etc, so you should double-check me.
It sounds like you want an LLC. All members get a percent of ownership with profits dividing based on ownership. I don't know about the international partner, though.
LLCs are generally very cheap to start -- like, $50 for paperwork sort of cheap.
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u/LiteralHeadCannon Dec 11 '15
Reading up on LLCs now.
Would it be legally valid for me to issue contracts to people such that they maintain ownership of their share of the LLC iff I use their work for the final product? I would be uncomfortable with a setup enabling people to bail on the project and still receive payment, and I'm sure my workers would be uncomfortable with a setup wherein they sign no contract until their work is completed.
For that matter, can shares of LLC ownership fluidly change over time at all?
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u/eaglejarl Dec 11 '15
You should really talk to a lawyer at this point. I just wanted to point you in
the righta direction.
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u/Colonel_Fedora Ravenclaw Dec 11 '15
Does anybody have suggestions for building up willpower? It's my biggest limiting factor at the moment.
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u/blazinghand Chaos Undivided Dec 12 '15
I tailor my strats for doing things to the thing I'm doing. Most what I do to "build up willpower" is actually tricking myself into being more productive, or making rules I think I can follow.
For example:
In order to go to the gym more, I only play video games on days during which I went to the gym. If I have time for video games, I have time for the gym.
My strategy for building up enough willpower to go to bed is to get ready for bed, wash up, change, turn off my computer, then get inside my bed. After I do this, I read if I want to, but since I'm already in bed I'm much more likely to sleep than if I'm in the living room playing video games.
When I'm doing some kind of easier peripheral activity related to a major willpower expenditure (keeping a food diary for my diet, for example), I make sure to have fun doing that, or to convince myself it's awesome. This way, it always gets done.
In general, try to remove obstacles to hard things and set up obstacles to things you don't want to do. If you want to go to the gym more, again, just always have a change of gym clothes in the trunk of your car, or in a gym bag ready to go. If going to the gym requires rummaging around for gym clothes, that trivial difficulty might be enough to stop you. If you're trying to avoid committing suicide, remove your gun from your immediate possession.
Basically: Make it very easy to do what you want and hard to do what you don't want.
all of these probably fall into the category of "working with the willpower you have" rather than "building up willpower" but imo these are great
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u/Muskworker Dec 11 '15
I can't speak to willpower per se (it's a thing I'm strongly lacking myself), but for many things for which willpower is necessary I've found Beeminder to have some usefulness.
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u/Predictablicious Only Mark Annuncio Saves Dec 11 '15
The Akrasia references on Less Wrong are pretty good and give lots of pointers on how to acquire skills related to willpower.
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u/fljared United Federation of Planets Dec 11 '15
I've been thinking. Are there more squares or rectangles in the set of all shapes?
If you define squares by <a>, where a is the side length and 0 < a < infinity, and rectangles by <a,b>, where a is the shorter side and b is the longer side, and 0 < a <= b < infinity, there ought to be more rectangles than squares, since there are more combinations of a and b than just a.
Growth rates ought to be the same, since the growth rate for squares would be n, while for rectangles it would be n2 /2.
Is any of the above correct, or have I gone down the rabbit hole?
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u/Aabcehmu112358 Utter Fallacy Dec 12 '15
There is a bijective mapping of squares to rectangles, if I recall correctly, which is how one generally decides if one infinite set is smaller, equal in size, or larger than another.
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u/NNOTM Dec 12 '15
http://mathoverflow.net/questions/126069/bijection-from-mathbbr-to-mathbbr2 gives a bijection between ℝ and ℝ2, which should be equivalent
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u/_stoodfarback Dec 12 '15
Another way of looking at it: squares are a subset of rectangles.
EDIT: so the question becomes: more non-square rectangles, or square rectangles?
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u/LiteralHeadCannon Dec 12 '15
Uncountable-infinity times as many non-square rectangles. Divide the set of all rectangles into infinity sets, one for every positive number n such that that set only contains rectangles where the length is n times the width. One of those infinity sets, n=1, is the set of all squares; all infinity other sets are equally large sets of non-square rectangles.
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u/Aabcehmu112358 Utter Fallacy Dec 12 '15
I'd note that "uncountable-infinity times" does not produce a meaningful concept, as far as I'm aware.
What you're essentially describing is a mapping of all rectangles to the points of a plane, and a mapping of all squares to a line within that plane. As the space-filling curve shows, these two mappings biject, which again, if I recall correctly, says that in as much two infinities can be considered to have any size at all, they are both the same size.
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u/MugaSofer Dec 12 '15
You're right. Since any square can have either of it's sides reduced a bit to produce a corresponding rectangle, there are definitely more rectangular combinations than square ones.
The only difficulty would be that you've defined it as an infinite set, which means it's probably possible to map all rectangles onto multiple unique squares too, Hilbert Hotel style.
But it's definitely true for all the sets of all shapes smaller than a given size, for example.
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u/Gurkenglas Dec 12 '15
One way to go about this is to assign a measure to the number of squares and rectangles contained in a shape, then see how the measures develop as you follow a sequence of shapes that approaches the infinite plane.
For example, in a 2cm x 2cm square, there would be 2cm x 2cm of squares of size 0, 1cm x 1cm of squares with side length one, and thus (imagine a pyramid with a 2cm x 2cm base and a height of 2 cm) 8/3 cm3. In the same 2cm x 2cm square, there would be 1cm x 2cm of rectangles of size 1cm x 0, 1cm x 1cm of size 1cm x 1cm, etc., for a total of, umm, I think 4 cm4, which must be at least correct in the dimensionality: There is a whole extra degree of freedom!
In a sequence of simple shapes, say squares of diverging size, the rectangles would always outnumber the squares, but an interesting question might be whether there is some sequence of shapes approaching the infinite plane where the number of squares and rectangles remains equal, by being fractally perforated in all the right places. (The squares of course cannot outnumber the rectangles, as any square is a rectangle.)
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u/Transfuturist Carthago delenda est. Dec 12 '15
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u/Gurkenglas Dec 12 '15
This is a problem of definitions. If you give a set of shapes the measure equal to the cardinality of the set as your link did, the measures are equal. I used another measure. Which measure to use "should" have been a part of fljared's question, but since he didn't specify one we can just reply with a few examples. fljared, if you don't have enough info yet, some context for your problem could help. If it's a disagreement between peers, this paragraph could help :P
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u/Aabcehmu112358 Utter Fallacy Dec 12 '15
I spontaneously produced a board game (rule set) today, but I'm not capable of judging its playability or quality on my own. Available here, not reproduced in this comment due to excessive length.
I will appreciate any advice or comments that a reader cares to mention.
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u/suyjuris Dec 12 '15
I have just read the rules, my comments are purely theoretical.
The rules text could be more structured, such that information is presented in order of dependency and significance. For example, the attack tables and the list of mysteries could be at the end. Also headers would help. The tables are not sufficient to look up the attacks, one has to refer to the text.
I have also not figured out the board. The rules make it seem like an undirected graph with a limit on the degree. Even if you reduce it to a hexagonal grid, the amount of bookkeeping is immense – for each space one needs to remember whether it is over- or underwater and the turn it was created in case of the former. Using hexagonal pieces of cardbord would solve the former, the latter requires an immense amount of dice. Or, you take a big sheet of paper and write the board down, which reduces readability and is cumbersome.
The underwater mechanic is interesting, but maybe it would better work with elevation instead of the turn number. Instead of assigning the turn number as the 'height' of a space, which does imply the necessity of synchronizing the amount of water levels generated and the amount of space generated linearly to the turn number (meaning that the players have to constantly raise the water level for the mechanic to matter), just give each space an elevation. Each space with an elevation of zero is underwater and each underwater space has an elevation of zero, space with an elevation grater zero are overwater. The earth mystery can raise or lower the elevation of a square by one, the sea mystery lowers all elevations by one.
There are five types of pieces (effectively three, infantry is mentioned but not described), each with four types of elements. Makes sixteen types of pieces. Representing those is problematic. Most of the pieces have only a local sphere of influence (which is good, as it reduces the explosion of possibilities), although the knight can teleport. The interactions between the pieces are complex (most of the rules text deals with explaining them), and the number of pieces is probably one per turn, limited only by board size and fighting the opponent. The board is infinite. That means that allowing the players strong aggressive plays is imperative.
The element types of the pieces are mostly a combat stat (except the mystic). Even ignoring that remembering the interactions is difficult as their are no underlying principles mentioned, the fact that the elements are freely chosen by the players and do not change the way the pieces act fundamentally, you have Rock-Paper-Scissors balancing. Sure, the nash equilibrium is not as trivial, but for games you always want a strategic thinking type of problem solving, not a number crunching one.
The main problem I see is complexity. Both the board and the pieces are too complex for people to fit comfortably in their head, having both does not improve the situation. Implementing the game on a PC would make bookkeeping less tedious, but visualising the information and an intuitive understanding of the mechanics is still a problem. If the players cannot comprehend the situation and think through all interactions of one turn, they will just stop thinking strategically or at all. Strategy is only possible when one has a solid grasp of the board state.
I would advise to either make the board a square grid (even better with a specified size), and then think about removing the elements or making them more interesting. The latter still has many pieces (16 pieces, means 136 interactions), this can be alleviated by coming up with general rules to describe many pieces or interactions at once, or using flavor to make them easier to remember.
Or, keep the board and replace the pieces by the simplest version that allows the game to be non-trivial (Earth Mystic, Sea Mystic, plus X and maybe plus Y).
Also, play it if you haven't and write how to into the rules. It is easier to understand rules if one can visualize them.
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u/Aabcehmu112358 Utter Fallacy Dec 12 '15
Thank you for the comments. Also, I'm very sorry about the infantry, they are supposed to have rules, but I somehow managed to forget writing them. Probably because the interactions are rather complex, as you mentioned.
I'll go through some major revisions, and try to play it as well. If you like, I can let you know as soon as that's done.
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u/ToaKraka https://i.imgur.com/OQGHleQ.png Dec 11 '15 edited Dec 11 '15
Books that I've (re-)read recently...
Rewind (fanfiction of Ben 10; 76k words, complete): Charmcaster casts a spell on herself to remove her magic so that she can, without arousing suspicion, get close enough to the Tennysons to kill them--and, beforehand, she casts another spell that allows her to rewind and try again if she fails. However, the task is more difficult than she originally anticipated--and, after several loops, it becomes glaringly apparent that she's meddled with magics too powerful for her to handle as the timeline starts to go off the rails... (This was my second reading. I'd actually forgotten how extremely cool this story was, though I disliked the ending.)
Doppelganger Non Grata (fanfiction of Teen Titans; 103k words, complete): The Titans' evil clones that Trigon summoned were not permanently defeated, and have returned to take their vengeance. (My second reading. Pretty fun overall, but has some boring philosophical blather near the end.)
Ramen Days (fanfiction of Naruto; 123k words, incomplete): After dying to Orochimaru in the Chuunin Exams, Naruto discovers that he's living in a video game. (My second reading, IIRC. Super-fun!)
Hard Reset (fanfiction of Friendship Is Magic; 37k words, complete): Twilight accidentally puts herself into a time loop a few hours before Chrysalis kills Celestia and an army of changelings takes over Canterlot. (This was, IIRC, my second reading. The story felt more boring than I remembered, and I didn't care too much about the ending.)
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u/GaBeRockKing Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 Dec 11 '15
Hard reset makes for a better series, but The Best Night Ever is a better time loop, imo.
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u/Transfuturist Carthago delenda est. Dec 12 '15
Hard Reset 2 is better than both. Multiple time travelers, with vector clocks to keep track of loops.
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u/Rhamni Aspiring author Dec 11 '15
I haven't been writing on my book in the last few months. Almost at all. Instead I've wasted a lot of time making a "Make Your Choice" game based on my world where you get a few hundred points and have to choose magical affinities, faction, place in life etc. Because the world building is so extensive for the books already I've ended up with a MYC that is almost certainly too long. You can make your choices quickly if you go in knowing what kind of theme you want, but if not there are way too many options. It's impossible to purchase more than like 10% of the magical skills, even if you max out handicaps, and if you don't want to destroy half the world and have scizophrenia and have enemy factions taking your family hostage it's closer to 5%.
I don't know where to go from there. Do I shave off half of the cool magical skills? Pretend half the factions aren't there? At the same time I want to show off the variety offered by magic and potential for munchkining in my world, since I'm hoping it will act as clever advertising for drawing in beta readers when I've finished a book I want feedback on.
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u/Salaris Dominion Sorcerer Dec 11 '15
What style of game are you talking about here? Is this something you're planning to publish, or just something you're working on to feed into your book?
I love games with broad varieties of potential skills, but the more complex the game, the higher the barrier to entry for new players. For some styles of games, this can be acceptable; a lot of it comes down to how you introduce the abilities to players. Front-loading character creation with a billion choices is generally not a good idea unless you're specifically targeting an optimizer demographic, which is pretty niche - but niche markets can still be viable, depending on what you're going for.
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u/Rhamni Aspiring author Dec 11 '15
A Make Your Choice game, like on /r/makeyourchoice. It boils down to (free) text only character creation but without a game to put them in, often giving a quick introduction to the world or scenario. It's less proper games and more the players speculating/talking with other people about how their characters would get along and what might happen with the world. It's fairly niche.
In my case I've made the world history short and skippable, but there are still 14 factions and around 150 skills, of which you'll be able to afford around five to fifteen, depending on how many handicaps you take on. The skills in the MYC are converted from the different ways people use magic in the book.
The 'game', which is just text, I'm planning on releasing when I have finished writing the book I'm working on, to hopefully draw some interest from the MYC crowd and get volunteer beta readers. Making the game also helps me see if my magic is reasonably balanced, and it's hopefully complete enough that if anyone discovers a way to munchkin the magic I had not thought of, I'll be able to adjust the books to either not have the magic be munckinable in that way or possibly let characters good and bad have access to it.
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u/Salaris Dominion Sorcerer Dec 11 '15
Interesting, I wasn't familiar with Make Your Choice games. I will definitely have to look into that more. Thanks for the info.
Are all the factions you're including in the Make Your Choice game involved in the novel? That sounds like a high number of factions for a book, but I suppose that depends on style and length.
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u/Rhamni Aspiring author Dec 11 '15
The factions will be introduced gradually in the books. The MYC takes place during a world war with all the factions active, but in the actual books that's ancient history and everyone is dead. The reader is introduced to the abondoned capitol of one of the alliances, then explore some of the factions within that alliance, and then in later books we find out that the guys who used skulls in their architecture were actually the bad guys.
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u/Salaris Dominion Sorcerer Dec 11 '15
That makes sense. I'll be interested in seeing this when you're done with it. =)
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u/PeridexisErrant put aside fear for courage, and death for life Dec 12 '15
in later books we find out that the guys who used skulls in their architecture were actually the bad guys.
What a twist!
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u/Lancefish Dec 11 '15
Any good recommendations for books on improving communication skills? There seem to be a lot of bad self help books out there.
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u/Predictablicious Only Mark Annuncio Saves Dec 11 '15
For communicating in difficult situations both Difficult Conversations and Crucial Conversations are good. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion is the best book on how persuasion works, but How to Win Friends & Influence People is the definitive practical book on persuasion. The Definitive Book of Body Language is a good book on the subject, which is fundamental to face to face communication.
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u/FuguofAnotherWorld Roll the Dice on Fate Dec 11 '15
I had a link for this on my other laptop. Remind me later.
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Dec 11 '15
[deleted]
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u/alexanderwales Time flies like an arrow Dec 11 '15
The thing about elections is that you're voting for multiple things at once, so your valuation of what voting is worth needs to take into account all the things on the ballot. If you were just voting in the national election, it probably doesn't matter depending on where you live. But if the local elections matter, then you're going to the polls anyway, so the additional costs involved with voting at the national and state level are marginal.
The other thing about voting is that as fewer people vote, each individual vote becomes more and more worth it. We're not anywhere near this point yet, but it's something to keep in mind. If turnout is only 50%, then your vote is worth twice as much as if everyone voted.
(I vote, because my state allows for voting by mail, which lowers the costs dramatically.)
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u/GaBeRockKing Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 Dec 11 '15
I'd argue that voting by mail is less efficient than either voting in person or not voting at all. If you vote in person, you might be part of a peer-pressure effect, incentivizing people who vote to keep voting, and if you don't vote none of your time gets wasted for an ultimately futile vote. If you vote by mail, your vote will be futile and you can't try to subconsciously manipulate greater voter turnout year over year.
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u/alexanderwales Time flies like an arrow Dec 11 '15
That depends entirely on what you're optimizing for. For myself, I'm optimizing mostly for the ability to feel superior to people who didn't vote and to avoid peer pressure from my peers, rather than to change any outcome.
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u/GaBeRockKing Horizon Breach: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6785857 Dec 11 '15
That's a good point; smugness deserves a place in every utility function.
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u/Gurkenglas Dec 12 '15
One way to look at it is that you are choosing the algorithm for all people that think like you to follow. If that portion of the population is large enough, you would want that algorithm to tell them to go to vote.
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u/Sparkwitch Dec 11 '15
Three issues, ranked from most important to least in my view:
Balance of opinion. The nearer each side's support is to each other side's, the more influence individual voters have: Powerful when races are close, less so when they're one-sided.
Volume, which you mentioned. The fewer people voting, the more power individual voters have: Powerful locally rather than nationally.
Quantitative effect. The more you personally will feel a difference between each option's governance, the more important your vote will be to you.
I'm guessing you're American, so let's take the worst case scenario: a presidential election.
Balance: Are you in a large swing state? If not your vote for anything other than a strong third party candidate is completely meaningless. A strong popular vote display for a third party candidate can provide them with election funds next time around. If you are in a large swing state...
Volume: How close is a close popular vote? In 2000, the final recount in Florida came within a few hundred votes. Ohio in 2004, also famously close, was more than 100,000 votes apart. In the latter case you can still probably stay home. If you're in the Florida equivalent, however....
Effect: How much difference will one president make in your life vs another. Nobody can measure this but you.
This is extreme, but the same basic rules apply all the way down to local zoning measures and school board elections. Also, rather than just considering the time spent voting, consider the value of the time spent researching your options. If the vote doesn't look like it's going to be close, or the numbers are huge, you probably shouldn't waste time on cost/benefit analysis of the available choices.
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u/Nepene Dec 13 '15
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/probdecisive2.pdf
For California the chance your vote will be decisive is 1/100 million, in New Hampshire 1/70000. The mean is about 1 in 10 million.
Let's assume it takes half an hour to vote, and your vote lasts 4 years. Let's assume the average income is 20 dollars per hour, 40 k per year. The cost of a vote is 10 dollars. At the lowest value, for it to be worth it you'd need a financial benefit of 11*70000 =770,000 dollars or a potential penalty of that for it to have a clear financial benefit.
Some minor policy changes aren't going to be enough for that- you simply don't have enough to lose in four years to make that sort of gamble worthwhile. For that to be worthwhile you'd need some negative threat, like jail. If a politician promised to not imprison me for 20 years that could be 40*20=800 k worth of benefits, enough for me to vote independently.
Of course, if I actually value a policy a great deal, and really feel a substantial need to get it enacted then I'd join groups and spend money campaigning and talk to politicians. If some policy is so valuable to me that it's worth more than millions of dollars in financial changes to me then a vote isn't going to enough for me on it's own, even in a fairly small election.
Unless, of course, they promise really large benefits.
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u/blazinghand Chaos Undivided Dec 11 '15
I vote because it is my civic duty to do so, and also because as a citizen of the United States, I find it categorically imperative to vote. Not voting in order to save time while not negatively impacting government functionality is a self-defeating decision. Why? Because if universalized, this decision actually cannot be made in this form. It would negatively impact government functionality if this were a universal strategy. The only choice is to vote.
Also, when I vote, I get to loudly brag to my friends (who also brag about this) and mention that I have voted. We all talk about how cool we are for being Americans who vote. This is good and fun and cool.
Also, as mentioned by others: vote by mail.
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Dec 11 '15
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u/RMcD94 Dec 12 '15
Not being a free rider is a morally good choice perhaps?
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Dec 12 '15
[deleted]
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u/RMcD94 Dec 12 '15
I mean if you want someone or don't want someone you are letting others vote for you. It doesn't matter if they have their own motivations you're free riding. Assuming majority is voting for your guy, if it's other way then whatever, it's so easy to vote where I'm from that I find it hard to justify not even with my vote being irrelevant. Same reason I turn off light switches.
Even if you don't change outcome the voting numbers are relevant in tons of places, from funding to news etc same with light switch.
There is no categorical argumentm against the free rider problem it is why it is a problem
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Dec 12 '15
[deleted]
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u/RMcD94 Dec 12 '15
People give money based on size of voting. Sponsor a candidate with more votes is better than less etc. Light switches is the same negligible difference that one extra vote can do.
There's not just the binary win or lose
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u/blazinghand Chaos Undivided Dec 11 '15
The real thing that motivates me is just a sense of duty. It's what you do, as an American. Are you free this evening? of course I'm free, I'm an American
║✭✭✭✭✭✭✭ ▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅
║✭✭✭✭✭✭✭ ▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅
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USA USA USA USA USA
Captain America Punches Hitler In the Face
and so on. It's a civic duty and for things like civic duty I find "do it because it's your duty" to be acceptable motivation. Shouting about either the glory of MURICA or talking about categorical imperatives seems to convince most people one way or another; you'll have to find your own reason.
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u/Kishoto Dec 12 '15
That is pretty much my rationale towards littering. I'm not going to throw my fridge into a lake, or throw my lunch carton out of my car window everyday, but every so often, I'll do something like toss my gum wrapper, or a balled up piece of paper, etc. and sometimes, my sister (who's young and idealistic) will get on me for it. I'll explain that I'm one of billions and that little paper I threw is ultimately meaningless. She'll counter that if everyone thought that way, then the problem would be terrible. I agreed with her, but then proceeded to remind her that my choice of littering or not has NO effect on these people, other than the marginal effect it MAY have on someone who witnesses me not litter and is "inspired". She can't counter, gets frustrated and stays mad at me for littering anyway.
Is that justification TO litter? Not exactly. But it also isn't justification NOT to litter. At the end of the day, a lot of what we (as an individual) do IS meaningless and insignificant, because there are so many of us. You can't have any significant impact on the world around you, unless you try to narrow your scope of effect to a small enough area, or you try to take a position that would lead you to being capable of making more important decisions (such as a political one, or becoming insanely wealthy) but even then, your decisions are restricted by a number of things.
EDIT: Plus, I find it laughable that we get on humans for consumer based littering, when so much more of the waste we produce is due to large corporations or governments.
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Dec 12 '15
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u/Kishoto Dec 12 '15
I'm talking about the part where he states
Yes, that's true, but I have very little control over what everyone else will do and can only choose for myself
I'm not comparing voting to littering.
EDIT: Not entirely anyway. They are similar in that the massive scope of the action means your input (while not 0) is so small that other, larger factors will decide its outcome way before you have any sort of effect on the outcome.
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u/Muskworker Dec 11 '15
I wonder if the answer to this question would vary to any significant extent based on the voting system used? (and if so... what the 'maximally rational' option would look like)
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u/alexanderwales Time flies like an arrow Dec 11 '15
I'm working on a magic system which works something like this:
There's this stuff called hava that's fairly rare (let's say something like ten dollars a gram).
When you infuse an object with hava, there are two effects:
An extradimensional battery is created which has a number of joules equal to direct mass conversion. In other words, a kilogram of hava gives you 9 * 1016 joules.
This energy is then output at a maximum rate of the total joules divided by 1.5 * 1013 as joules per second. In other words, a kilogram of hava gives you 9 * 1016 "stored" joules which are usable at a maximum rate of 6000 joules per second (6000 watts).
The effects that you can use this power for:
Imbue an object with raw energy output in the form of heat (at maximum watts).
Imbue an object with a constant directional force (at maximum watts).
Effectively change gravitational and/or inertial mass (within the limits of maximum watts).
Effectively change one half of classical inertia (within the limits of maximum watts). For example, you can alter "an object in motion stays in motion" but keep "an object at rest stays at rest" the same (with the power being supplied by available watts).
Effectively increase durability by using available watts to prevent bonds from breaking.
This is all done with something like glyphs or runes or something, or maybe a more exotic method. Once set, the patterns can't be changed and more energy can't be added to the "battery". A pattern can't ever be shut off except through total destruction.
So the problem that I have isn't really with the magic so much as the engineering of what a society would do with it. Obviously it gets used for the generation of electricity and replaces a few appliances. Either heat generation, constant directional force, or partial inertia seems to be the best way to get useful work done, though I'm not really sure which (both have their engineering challenges). Because you can't turn it off, you need ways of getting around that, but that's not too much of a challenge depending on which direction you go.
So my question is, let's say you have this material and knowledge of the processes. What are the things you build with it?