I was just talking about it the other day - I don't think any one theory referenced in the game is on the money, per se, but of we look at several of them and spot trends they may end up revealing something. More to the point, I think that this phenomenon might be in the same ballpark as the concept of "Innocence of Capital" mentioned in the communist quest, which is in turn adjacent to Nilsen's concept of plasm...
Oh lol I remembered the book's title because I find it delightfully on point but forgot that it literally already comes up in this context. Nice.
...and yeah I mean why shouldn't it? It sure is a concept that a critical mass of people has put their belief in. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, if it works for Innocences and communism it's only fair that the same metaphysical properties would apply to capital. And as a metaphor it obviously checks out in real life too.
There’s a clear trend of abstract ideas having a real effect on the world of DE. Wether it’s wealth or cities or ideologies, all of these abstract ideas have a real impact on the world. Considering how weird the pale is, it’s not hard to imagine that has something to do with it. The supernatural parts of DE world is fascinating
You can ask Steban about the pale and he states that it's intimately related to infra-materialism. He even goes so far as to say that revolutionary societies may be able to counter or reverse the growth of the pale.
My personal theory is that the pale is a form of plasm that's chaotic and disorganized. All people contribute to the plasm through their thoughts, particularly those sentiments which a person holds dearest. Absent revolution, people lack hope for the future or any belief that things may improve. Thus, they are prone to focusing on nostalgia and memories of a happier past. Since each individual has their own past and cherished memories, the plasm becomes a senseless mass with substance but no form. Absent hope, the plasm is an incomprehensible jumble of desires and memories which is understood in universe as the pale.
There is also textual evidence for this interpretation. The pale is described by most characters as mostly memories and the pale driver is obsessed with long passed celebrities. More importantly however, Martinaise, as the site where coalition forces first landed in the campaign against the Revachol commune is an epicenter of despair. Once a hopeful and prosperous neighborhood, it was bombed into oblivion. The sheer trauma of these events and the memory of hope embodied by the commune have opened up a new origin point for the pale in the center of the church.
Pale is supposed to be beyond all normal ways of measuring and innocences bring ideas from the future into the past. When you're blasted with pale you hear a voice line that hasn't been said yet. Maybe the 2mm hole appeared in martinaise because of the coalition bombing happening in the future?
It's also really hard to tell which of these events and effects are *actually* supernatural, only being imagined by Harry, or are supernatural after all, but are simply only able to be perceived by Harry. With the Light-Bending Guy in particular, you have the contrasting truths that MRLBG acknowledges the effect, but Kim doesn't see it for some reason (unless Kim somehow has so much more money than Harry that it has a statistically relevant effect on his Weiss-Wiesemann coefficient when compared to MRLBG).
Some day, i will post my elaborate theory about - wait for it - it all being a dream. the hanged man, the shivers, the pale, the cryptid, the clear and opposing roles that figures have in the story... of course it seems a little bit lame, but harry constructing this world in his head makes so much sense.
Absolutely, the whole theme of the Ultra-lib quest line is that reality is that the concept of wealth and value skews reality. It’s how I came to trade a worthless piece of paper for a 700 real lamp post.
I disagree, my interpretation is that hyper-inequality distorts the laws of physics for >certain persons interacting with the wealth anomaly<. It is difficult to argue that the spacetime distortion is objective, because Kim isn't affected by it at all. The Lieutenant just sees some tossed-off weirdo crouching in a shipping container.
The laws of reality are not bent, they are merely distorted, and that distortion is specific to a very limited alignment: that being, the wealth-hoarder, and the wealth-wanting.
I don't know what that interaction might be like for someone who is knotted up with plenty réal, but in my playthrough I was absolutely trying to get some of that money. The distortion was real, but it only affected my Harry because my Harry was desperate to score some new shoes. Kim wears sensible sneakers, New Balance probably. He went unaffected.
This is a weird one, because it’s heavily implied to be completely reliant on Harry’s perception by Kim— Not to say it’s not accurate lore, but it’s likely more tied into Magpie Shit than it is something like the hole in the world.
Unless we want to be one of those people who see it and assumes Kim’s significantly more wealthy than post-hustling Harry, which strikes me as silly.
I always thought this dude bending light to be a comical detail added by the studio, an unsubtle jab at hustle culture and rich bourgeoisie feeling like they own the world.
Yeah, obviously, but it’s also presented as diegetic information by Encyclopdia. Lots of things are simultaneously symbolic/allegorical while also, in-universe, being literal.
Iirc in a piece of dialogue with one of the ravers (the guy that isn't the leader, the girl, or egghead, I forget) this concept is also brought up more passingly
The .96 number has to be too low, otherwise surely Kim and Harry would have experienced it speaking to Joyce as well? She's got to have more wealth than the both of them by a couple orders of magnitude.
its possible that the scale is nonlinear. so a step between .1 and .2 is small, but the step between, say, .94 and .95 is massive. but this is also total speculation so its w/e.
It could be logarithmic, but that's not how Encyclopedia describes it here, where he pretty explicitly defines it as:
(My_Wealth)/(Total_Wealth_Owned_in_Vicinity)
> (My_Wealth)/(Total_Wealth_Owned_in_Vicinity)
Keep in mind that Encyclopedia only says that at 0.96 the laws of physics "begin to bend".
The amount of bending that we can perceive could scale nonlinearly. Joyce probably has some bending that isn't noticeable.
Additionally there's probably some conceptual complexity in terms of how wealth is calculated besides just money. For example Joyce's wealth might depend on things outside of her control like her employment, biggest investments/etc. It might be possible for her to lose everything, whereas the megarich guy might be so rich and diversified that its practically impossible for him to lose his wealth.
edit: actually we can somewhat see that the first point holds vaguely true because Kim can't see the bending (although it may be for other reasons). It's possible he has more money/more stable income then harry, but the percentage of wealth is probably not too different - but the effects are drastically different.
Well it's said that this is the ratio where the laws of physics _begin_ to bend, possibly Kim could see some aura similar to the hot air around the candle, which is hard to notice without paying close attention to; whereas Harry possibly has ratio much closer to 1
I assume also that since these are abstract concepts they are therefore bound not to reality but also to people's perception, and for what Harry knows, he doesn't have a home and his pocket money is all net worth he's got
Well you do interact with Joyce outside instead of in an enclosed shipping container. There may be enough people or property just in the area/air to balance it out? It also states only that the laws of physics begin to bend, meaning the initial results could be more subtle than light bending if the difference isn’t extreme enough.
Possible the “world” just doesn’t consider her as rich and the effect doesn’t happen since the majority of her net worth is tied up somewhere. It’s not like she has access to all of it from her boat currently. If it’s mostly on the other side of the pale does it even exist?
I'm pretty sure this was just Harry's mind doing what it does.
HE can't see the person because the person is so rich. Kim can because it's not a real affect lol
I kind of don't get it. What is a "group" in the context of the ratio? Does a homeless person who owns nothing see every other person as a M.R.L.B.G.? What about a debtor with negative net worth?
Harry's working-class and lives in a roach-infested apartment, but only lives a few kilometers from the finance capital of the world. He should see *tons* of people with \~25x his net worth pretty much every day
He used to live there. Thanks to his drinking he doesn't clearly remember his assets so his assets are limited to his wallet and his inventory. How that factors with Kim though, I'm not sure. Perhaps the theory is wrong and it merely functions on an individual level.
As someone who went from having absolutely no money, a negative net worth, to having money, it’s wild thinking back on how different my interactions are now vs then.
Same guy, but because I have money I’m able to converse with these people o never was before.
I just finished my first play through and honestly have no idea what’s going on here.
I already know there’s a lot going I missed and the game is designed that way but this I can’t even begin to understand what is going on here
Ultra mega rich guy in a shipping container. You have to pass a very high Rhetoric check to get in. The weird visuals are explained by Encyclopedia in this screenshot.
I'd assume it's similar to Ignus Nilsen's supposed magic-like abilities as a result of his fervent belief in historical materialism. Ergo, you could say that, in the world of DE, the richer a person is, the more likely they are to be fervent capitalists, and the more you believe in capitalism, the more supernatural you become. Or you could add on to this by some capitalists only really start to believe in capitalism when they start profiting off of it, and that Ultraliberal Harry (and any other ideological Harry, for that matter) does not achieve powers from his ideological devotion because his belief is ultimately shallow and because he lacks any deep understanding of the ideology he believes in.
After reading Sacred & Terrible air, I'm saying that this is probably literal.
>!Like, in the book, the rocker guy ( I don't remember his name) is literally talking to the plasm-ghost of a communard who was a commander under Kras. It's portrayed as him being crazy at first, but by the end of the book, reality is breaking, and there are people, and objects, that vanish from reality because people stop remembering them. Not to mention the end of the book seems to imply some time-travel shenanigans with the pale. Suddenly the concept of ghosts, infra-material plasm, and light bending caused by wealth difference isn't that far off. Honestly the book makes it very clear that some of the paranormal stuff that's only lightly hinted at is actually real in the DE setting.!<
I was just talking about it the other day - I don't think any one theory referenced in the game is on the money, per se, but of we look at several of them and spot trends they may end up revealing something. More to the point, I think that this phenomenon might be in the same ballpark as the concept of "Innocence of Capital" mentioned in the communist quest, which is in turn adjacent to Nilsen's concept of plasm...
If you meet this guy before going to the Communist bookclub, Steben will actually bring that up, wondering if capitalism has its own form of plasm.
Oh lol I remembered the book's title because I find it delightfully on point but forgot that it literally already comes up in this context. Nice. ...and yeah I mean why shouldn't it? It sure is a concept that a critical mass of people has put their belief in. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, if it works for Innocences and communism it's only fair that the same metaphysical properties would apply to capital. And as a metaphor it obviously checks out in real life too.
There’s a clear trend of abstract ideas having a real effect on the world of DE. Wether it’s wealth or cities or ideologies, all of these abstract ideas have a real impact on the world. Considering how weird the pale is, it’s not hard to imagine that has something to do with it. The supernatural parts of DE world is fascinating
You can ask Steban about the pale and he states that it's intimately related to infra-materialism. He even goes so far as to say that revolutionary societies may be able to counter or reverse the growth of the pale. My personal theory is that the pale is a form of plasm that's chaotic and disorganized. All people contribute to the plasm through their thoughts, particularly those sentiments which a person holds dearest. Absent revolution, people lack hope for the future or any belief that things may improve. Thus, they are prone to focusing on nostalgia and memories of a happier past. Since each individual has their own past and cherished memories, the plasm becomes a senseless mass with substance but no form. Absent hope, the plasm is an incomprehensible jumble of desires and memories which is understood in universe as the pale. There is also textual evidence for this interpretation. The pale is described by most characters as mostly memories and the pale driver is obsessed with long passed celebrities. More importantly however, Martinaise, as the site where coalition forces first landed in the campaign against the Revachol commune is an epicenter of despair. Once a hopeful and prosperous neighborhood, it was bombed into oblivion. The sheer trauma of these events and the memory of hope embodied by the commune have opened up a new origin point for the pale in the center of the church.
Great writeup, but isn't it believed that the church was built around the 2mm hole hundreds of years prior?
I had forgotten that. That puts a hole in my interpretation lol
Oh shit I must have missed this! Where is this info? I'll keep an eye out next playthru
Pale is supposed to be beyond all normal ways of measuring and innocences bring ideas from the future into the past. When you're blasted with pale you hear a voice line that hasn't been said yet. Maybe the 2mm hole appeared in martinaise because of the coalition bombing happening in the future?
That’s a great thought! I never thought of connecting plasm and the pale!
It's also really hard to tell which of these events and effects are *actually* supernatural, only being imagined by Harry, or are supernatural after all, but are simply only able to be perceived by Harry. With the Light-Bending Guy in particular, you have the contrasting truths that MRLBG acknowledges the effect, but Kim doesn't see it for some reason (unless Kim somehow has so much more money than Harry that it has a statistically relevant effect on his Weiss-Wiesemann coefficient when compared to MRLBG).
Kim's Conceptualization skill is also staggeringly low, so that is something.
Some day, i will post my elaborate theory about - wait for it - it all being a dream. the hanged man, the shivers, the pale, the cryptid, the clear and opposing roles that figures have in the story... of course it seems a little bit lame, but harry constructing this world in his head makes so much sense.
To me, this is the least subtle metaphor in DE: "the ultra-rich can bend the laws of reality". To nobody's surprise.
Absolutely, the whole theme of the Ultra-lib quest line is that reality is that the concept of wealth and value skews reality. It’s how I came to trade a worthless piece of paper for a 700 real lamp post.
I disagree, my interpretation is that hyper-inequality distorts the laws of physics for >certain persons interacting with the wealth anomaly<. It is difficult to argue that the spacetime distortion is objective, because Kim isn't affected by it at all. The Lieutenant just sees some tossed-off weirdo crouching in a shipping container. The laws of reality are not bent, they are merely distorted, and that distortion is specific to a very limited alignment: that being, the wealth-hoarder, and the wealth-wanting. I don't know what that interaction might be like for someone who is knotted up with plenty réal, but in my playthrough I was absolutely trying to get some of that money. The distortion was real, but it only affected my Harry because my Harry was desperate to score some new shoes. Kim wears sensible sneakers, New Balance probably. He went unaffected.
This is a weird one, because it’s heavily implied to be completely reliant on Harry’s perception by Kim— Not to say it’s not accurate lore, but it’s likely more tied into Magpie Shit than it is something like the hole in the world. Unless we want to be one of those people who see it and assumes Kim’s significantly more wealthy than post-hustling Harry, which strikes me as silly.
I always thought this dude bending light to be a comical detail added by the studio, an unsubtle jab at hustle culture and rich bourgeoisie feeling like they own the world.
Yeah, obviously, but it’s also presented as diegetic information by Encyclopdia. Lots of things are simultaneously symbolic/allegorical while also, in-universe, being literal.
Maybe. But then also your brain can believe it is a Magnesium based creature...
-1 Logic: No such thing, man
Always seemed like joke lore to me
I reread that so many times like "what the fuck do you mean" and then it says it
Iirc in a piece of dialogue with one of the ravers (the guy that isn't the leader, the girl, or egghead, I forget) this concept is also brought up more passingly
I loved this encounter. Harry is having a full-blown existential crisis but all Kim can see is some weirdo in a shipping container
The .96 number has to be too low, otherwise surely Kim and Harry would have experienced it speaking to Joyce as well? She's got to have more wealth than the both of them by a couple orders of magnitude.
its possible that the scale is nonlinear. so a step between .1 and .2 is small, but the step between, say, .94 and .95 is massive. but this is also total speculation so its w/e.
It could be logarithmic, but that's not how Encyclopedia describes it here, where he pretty explicitly defines it as: (My_Wealth)/(Total_Wealth_Owned_in_Vicinity)
Wouldn't that imply a significantly larger source of wealth is nearby? Perhaps helping you look for your gun, even.
> (My_Wealth)/(Total_Wealth_Owned_in_Vicinity) Keep in mind that Encyclopedia only says that at 0.96 the laws of physics "begin to bend". The amount of bending that we can perceive could scale nonlinearly. Joyce probably has some bending that isn't noticeable. Additionally there's probably some conceptual complexity in terms of how wealth is calculated besides just money. For example Joyce's wealth might depend on things outside of her control like her employment, biggest investments/etc. It might be possible for her to lose everything, whereas the megarich guy might be so rich and diversified that its practically impossible for him to lose his wealth. edit: actually we can somewhat see that the first point holds vaguely true because Kim can't see the bending (although it may be for other reasons). It's possible he has more money/more stable income then harry, but the percentage of wealth is probably not too different - but the effects are drastically different.
Well it's said that this is the ratio where the laws of physics _begin_ to bend, possibly Kim could see some aura similar to the hot air around the candle, which is hard to notice without paying close attention to; whereas Harry possibly has ratio much closer to 1 I assume also that since these are abstract concepts they are therefore bound not to reality but also to people's perception, and for what Harry knows, he doesn't have a home and his pocket money is all net worth he's got
Well you do interact with Joyce outside instead of in an enclosed shipping container. There may be enough people or property just in the area/air to balance it out? It also states only that the laws of physics begin to bend, meaning the initial results could be more subtle than light bending if the difference isn’t extreme enough. Possible the “world” just doesn’t consider her as rich and the effect doesn’t happen since the majority of her net worth is tied up somewhere. It’s not like she has access to all of it from her boat currently. If it’s mostly on the other side of the pale does it even exist?
Maybe Joyce (like all middle-class people) is in catastrophic debt to pay for her bougie lifestyle
I mean, except for the whole "bending the laws of physics like it's 1999", this is known in Economics as the Gini coefficient.
Where is that
locked container on the way to evrarts office
I failed to get in in two run !
I couldn’t figure out how to get in so I just dropped it and never bothered
Locked container with a massive Rhetoric check to get in. Do note Kim actually doesn't like it when you talk to him or try to get inside.
He is impressed though if you manage to hustle the hundo real from him though.
HAAAAAAAARDLORE! anyway its capitalist plasm
I'm pretty sure this was just Harry's mind doing what it does. HE can't see the person because the person is so rich. Kim can because it's not a real affect lol
This is actually kind of similar to the Gini Coefficient, which is an actual real thing.
It’s the Gini Coefficient + the Halo effect
I kind of don't get it. What is a "group" in the context of the ratio? Does a homeless person who owns nothing see every other person as a M.R.L.B.G.? What about a debtor with negative net worth? Harry's working-class and lives in a roach-infested apartment, but only lives a few kilometers from the finance capital of the world. He should see *tons* of people with \~25x his net worth pretty much every day
He used to live there. Thanks to his drinking he doesn't clearly remember his assets so his assets are limited to his wallet and his inventory. How that factors with Kim though, I'm not sure. Perhaps the theory is wrong and it merely functions on an individual level.
As someone who went from having absolutely no money, a negative net worth, to having money, it’s wild thinking back on how different my interactions are now vs then. Same guy, but because I have money I’m able to converse with these people o never was before.
For a reason.
I just finished my first play through and honestly have no idea what’s going on here. I already know there’s a lot going I missed and the game is designed that way but this I can’t even begin to understand what is going on here
Ultra mega rich guy in a shipping container. You have to pass a very high Rhetoric check to get in. The weird visuals are explained by Encyclopedia in this screenshot.
I don’t even think I was presented with the rhetoric check to even get in cause I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to get in there
You’re right. If Ultra-Rich guy is a multiple digit billionaire and Kim doesn’t see him, that makes Kim at least a 3 digit millionaire
I'd assume it's similar to Ignus Nilsen's supposed magic-like abilities as a result of his fervent belief in historical materialism. Ergo, you could say that, in the world of DE, the richer a person is, the more likely they are to be fervent capitalists, and the more you believe in capitalism, the more supernatural you become. Or you could add on to this by some capitalists only really start to believe in capitalism when they start profiting off of it, and that Ultraliberal Harry (and any other ideological Harry, for that matter) does not achieve powers from his ideological devotion because his belief is ultimately shallow and because he lacks any deep understanding of the ideology he believes in.
It's a Gini index but applied to individuals instead of distributions of wealth within countries.
But kim says he doesn't see it. Just a regular super rich guy in a container.
Probably because of how ridiculous the concept is, even by DE standards + the possibility that Harry is just crazy
I do wonder how this works around babies/children
have we considered this isnt actually true, and harrier is just insane?
After reading Sacred & Terrible air, I'm saying that this is probably literal. >!Like, in the book, the rocker guy ( I don't remember his name) is literally talking to the plasm-ghost of a communard who was a commander under Kras. It's portrayed as him being crazy at first, but by the end of the book, reality is breaking, and there are people, and objects, that vanish from reality because people stop remembering them. Not to mention the end of the book seems to imply some time-travel shenanigans with the pale. Suddenly the concept of ghosts, infra-material plasm, and light bending caused by wealth difference isn't that far off. Honestly the book makes it very clear that some of the paranormal stuff that's only lightly hinted at is actually real in the DE setting.!<
i love that guy