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<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How does looking far help relax the eyes when our vision is 2 dimensional?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Your eyes are controlled by muscles as almost anything else in your body. Looking at screens makes your eyes fixate very close spots, narrowing down your field of view both mentally and physically. By looking far, you allow your eyes to use their muscles in another way and leave a tense state as well as your brain to process different signals. See it this way: After spending a day with your head turned to the left, looking straight or even right will feel very relieving.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why are amalgomations of objects around a gravity source roughly disc shaped/flat? (ie Saturn's Rings, the Solar System, or the Milky Way) I would not necessarily expect gravity to align randomly distributed objects into the disc shape that seems so prevalent. Will objects distributed in a random spherical shape around a large gravity source always eventually collapse to a disc shape in a way that is calculable based on the initial distribution of the objects? Or is there something else at work?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant You're really talking about three different things. Consider a galaxy. It can be nearly any shape you can think of: spherical, elliptical, lens-shaped, or just blobby, like a cloud. Some galaxies in particular have a spiral appearance. These are the ones you were most likely thinking of when you asked the question. As to why a spiral galaxy has a disc shape instead of any other shape, it has to do with angular momentum and self-interaction. A collapsing cloud of uniformly distributed dust will inevitably have some net angular momentum. As the cloud continues to collapse under its own gravitation, the dust interacts with itself such that particles with orbits outside the plane of the cloud's overall angular momentum tend to get perturbed into orbits that lie within the plane of that angular momentum. The solar system is thought to have formed in basically the same way; not from a truly uniform cloud of dust, but the overall principle is the same. The planets in our solar system lie in a plane — mostly — because that's where the stuff was from which the planets congealed. As for Saturn's rings, there are two conflicting theories about where they might've come from. One theory says the matter that makes up the rings used to be a moon — a moon with a name, believe it or not; it's called Veritas — that dipped too close to the planet and was pulled apart by tidal forces. In that case, the rings occupy a plane because the moon was orbiting in a plane when it came apart. The other theory is that the matter that makes up the rings is stuff left over from when the planet and its moons first formed, but because of its proximity to Saturn it was unable to congeal together into a moon. In that case, it occupies a plane because the same principle that pulls spiral galaxies into a planar shape also pulled the protoplanetary cloud that became Saturn into a disc. So basically it all boils down to conservation of angular momentum. Once you set something in rotation, that rotation doesn't go away, and due to self-interaction of clouds of stuff, it in fact tends to become more and more well defined as time goes on.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Starcraft] Why have the terrans never attempted to utilize protoss shielding technology? Even lowly robotic protoss probes have shielding tech, and they are plentiful in number. Why have the terrans not attempted to capture, reverse engineer and utilize shields for themselves? The tactical benefits of having essentially doubled survivability and regerating durability would certainly be useful.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In sc2 you could do research on a nugget of protoss crystal, the ubiquitous basis of a lot of their technology. This simple material (to protoss engineers) totally blew the humans away, it could do things they didn't even know were possible, and they had no idea how it was doing it. They're not employing protoss tech not as an oversight, but because they've no idea how to. Imagine a faction in medieval Europe got a hold of some digital technology, maybe a server stack, what could they do with it? They couldn't even power it correctly let alone benefit from it's function. Terrans are medieval compared to the protoss, so don't yet have the foundations required to use their shizzle.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why is g++ saying my header file does not exist? I am trying to use g++ to compile a program that uses header files I created in the same directory as the .cpp file. The cpp file is titled "pgm2.cpp" and the header file is "cardDeck.h." I have made sure to add #include <cardDeck.h> to the cpp file, but when I run the command "g++ pgm2.cpp" I get the following error: &#x200B; pgm2.cpp:12:10: fatal error: cardDeck.h: No such file or directory 12 \| #include <cardDeck.h> \| ^~~~~~~~~~~~ compilation terminated. Is there any reason why this is happening? &#x200B; EDIT: Found my issue. Should've used quotes instead of angled brackets, so my include line should have been #include "cardDeck.h"<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Including a file with angle brackets tells the preprocessor to look for that file in the system include path, or in directories specified with the -I directive when invoking the compiler. This does not search the local directory unless you have asked for the local directory to be searched with `-I .` or equivalent. That's what you'd use to include system headers like <vector> or <iostream>, but shouldn't be used for user defined headers like cardDeck.h. For that you should use quotes, which first searches the local directory and then goes on to search all the places that including via angle brackets would have. Note that this behavior is not specified in the standards--both `#include <filename>` and `#include "filename"` search in an implementation defined manner. This answer is specific to g++, though it's a common design decision on how to interpret angle brackets versus quotes. At a minimum clang has the same behavior.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: I don't believe that identifying as a gender actually makes you that gender I believe that gender is a simple matter of sexual organs and horomones, and that if you are biologically a female, no amount of gender identification could make you male (or vice versa). A lot of girls will say that they identify as males, and they truly feel they are males, therefore they are males, but I think that that just makes them transgendered, and that they shouldn't make others refer to them as male. Anyways, this opinion bothers some people and I don't really passionately defend it, so I was wondering if you guys could change my view. Edit: Thanks to everyone who commented, you are all very good at this. Edit 2: That first edit was made pretty early on. Some of you are awful at this<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Generally, we separate "sex" (which is your biological sex, i.e. sexual organs and hormones) and "gender" (which is what you personally identify as). Identifying as a different gender doesn't change your biological sex. Nothing can change the biological sex in your DNA - you either have a Y chromosome or you don't - but there are of course medical means that can change the sexual organs and hormones. So it gets complicated. Western society only has two genders: male and female. There are some other cultures that have three or four socially accepted gender orientations. For instance, many Native American and First Nations tribes have "two-spirits", the Balkans have "sworn virgins," and Southeast Asia has "hijiras." Many sociologists believe that there should really be a minimum of five gender orientations. But western society only accepts two, and two genders just aren't always sufficient. Anyone who falls outside those two categories is automatically marginalized. What if a female-to-male transman looks completely male, is taking testosterone supplements, and has a sexually functional penis? Should he still have "female" written on his driver's license? Should he be prohibited from using male restrooms? If he lives in one of the many countries with separate retirement ages for men and women, would he retire at the male age or at the female age? What if a male-to-female transwoman is taking estrogen supplements and has had breast implant surgery, but she still looks noticeably "mannish?" How will the many legal and social effects of gender apply to her? Do you feel that she should be treated differently because they can't "pass" as female?<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Warhammer 40k/Halo] Do Spartans and Space Marines serve similar combat roles, and which is better used by their governments for their purpose?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Spartans are a precision tool for completing important missions and defending key installations. Space marines are shock troopers meant for frontline duty. While there is overlap tactically between their roles the two forces are deployed very differently. A Spartan is sent to an area where they'll have the greatest impact or be able to do what a 100 soldiers can't. A space marine is sent into the thickest part of fighting to cause as much damage as possible while achieving their objectives. One's a sniper round the other is a bomb. In terms of usage it's debatable since both fight radically different wars but space marines are more easily produced and more widespread in application and effect than Spartans are.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How do I get better at philosophy without majoring in philosophy? I'm a politics major. I'm almost done but I'm realizing how important philosophy is. I'm assigned snippets of political philosophy but I'm realizing how all of philosophy is important. It's honestly amazing how much the humanities overlap. I need a deep understanding of philosophy to perform well. I kind of regret my major but it's too late, I see now why philosophy majors score higher than politics majors on the LSAT. I spent much of my teens engaging in "scientism" (Dawkins, hitchens, Harris) and I'm realizing how incorrect that is. My professors are helpful but I feel like I'm really lacking. So my question, who are the most influential philosophers that I must read and what philosophers are most involved in political philosophy? I was taught history, math, science in highscool but not philosophy. I feel like I barely have a foundation.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The philosophers you need to know to understand politics are the major historical ones like Plato, Hobbes, and Locke. Reading contemporary academic political philosophy will have a smaller payoff in that specific respect, because it has had less time to influence the culture.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user In a biological way, how are hallucinations really created? With all the light on the retina and everything, it's like the inverse process- the brain sends message to the eyes to create something that isnt there. How does that happen?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Normally the eyes send signals to the brain to interpret. When you see hallucinations, your brain is either creating signals spontaneously which it tries to interpret, or your brain interprets real signals wrong.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How did you make money on the side through grad school? I will have a job at the school, but I'm looking to do more than just pay the bills. (Hey, conferences are expensive!!) What tips can you share for earning spending money?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant TAing, RAing helping out with admin stuff (handing back papers, helping at open days) I worked at other uni offices in admin freelance work at big crowdsourcing companies (I did some translation work) tutoring apply for external funding (charities etc.) Did all of the above for three years and paid for tuition fees (Europe) and rent.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5:What does Aspirin do to us?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant So aspirin has a couple of therapeutic effects. It is known as a salicylate (this is important later on) and a NSAID, non steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. To start it is an antipyretic, also known as a fever reducer, much like Tylenol. It is also an anti inflammatory, aka stops swelling, and an analgesic, aka stops pain. It’s most common use though is for anti platelet which means that it lowers the platelet amount in your body in order to prevent clots, which can wreak havoc if they get to the lungs or brain. In the lungs it causes a pulmonary embolism and in the brain it causes a stroke. It also is used to prevent heart attacks due to these properties. If platelets are higher than 450,000 per microliter of blood, there is an increased risk for these clots. Aspirin will lower the function of platelets sticking together and prevent coagulation. However, you cannot give aspirin to a child as it can cause Reye syndrome, which is deadly. If you’d like me to go into depth about the other three effects let me know, but there are much better options for those, including for children. Edit: misspoke, evidence of comment down below. Sorry guys, doing multiple things at once!<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why does Southeast Asia have such a high concentration/reputation for lady-boys in regards to the rest of the world?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant First, that area (Thailand in particular) has a long history of cultural acceptance toward transgenderism. Or, at least, more social acceptance than more countries. Transgender people are more free to be open with their gender and sexuality, and therefore, a greater percentage of them are. In itself, this wouldn't account for a worldwide "reputation," as other countries probably wouldn't care unless people take an active interest in the region's culture. But when you couple the nation's desire to attract tourism and boost its economy, this sub-culture has been touted as a point of interest for cultural tourism and sexual tourism, exploiting an otherwise innocuous part of their society as something more "exotic" and taboo. It's kind of a shame, since this could have been a shining example of gender acceptance for other countries to follow, but has instead only further promoted transgenderism as something weird or fetishized.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Iron Giant] What is the world like after the movie ends? A talking 100 ft. tall metal robot from space got blown up by a nuclear missile. News had to travel fast. What is the world view on this? How does it affect national and economic relations?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Obviously, the military had time to examine and analyze that piece they found. Using rudimentary techniques, they eventually extrapolate the rough designs of the machine and begin construction. In this universe, it's more than likely the transistor isn't invented. Computers remain large and bulky. Nuclear energy is utilized and compartmentalized and the two techs are brought together to realize a weapon of enormous value. Liberty Prime. Democracy is non-negotiable.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What is the DSGE Model? I'm a 2nd year undergrad student at economics, and despite knowing a bit about the terminology and the history, the wikipedia page (that usually helps) couldn't really help me understand the basics of the DSGE Model, and its implications for policies and macroeconomic research. This is despite being a bit familiar with the critique of Lucas. Do you have any recommendations for me to better understand the DSGE Model?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant you are just a 2nd year undergrad so don't worry if you don't know it. we typically don't learn it that early (if at all, for some undergrad programs). DSGE stands for Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium, and it's a modelling standard for macroeconomic models. more specifically, a model needs to be dynamic, in the sense that the agents make decisions taking into account all future periods, it needs to be stochastic, in the sense that some variables are determined also stochastically (random error terms in some equations which then are carried over all the way to the equilibrium solution, and are used to make predictions or to evaluate the model with impulse response functions), and general in the sense that in the model all types markets and agents will feature in the model and they will all be at equilibrium at the derived equilibrium. take for example the simple ISLM model, i assume you are familiar with (if you aren't, all the better for you tbh). it's not a DSGE, because the model is not dynamic, the variables dont move through time, it's not stochastic since there are no stochastic terms, the variables are all exact points on graphs, and it is a "general" equilibrium model in the sense that the markets it has clear, but it's not a general equilibrium model in the sense that it is not microfounded (with households, firms, intermediate firms, banks, or what have you)<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user I’ve been perusing Wikipedia pages on hurricanes after Michael and have found detailed accounts of hurricane development for storms back in the late 1800s. How were these accounts recorded and/or constructed?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Mostly by observing the change in barometric pressure of a passing storm from multiple locations along with witnesses and damage when and if it came ashore. All ships carry a barometer and depending on off it is falling and the direction of the wind you can tell which quadrant you were in and which direction the storm was heading. Also with no radars ships would not have advance warning so there were more instances of ships being caught in and around storms thus more reports of pressures. It was a very imperfect science and lots of people died.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How does a camera know when the image is focused? When you half-press the shutter, the camera adjusts and you physically see the image become slightly less / slightly more focused until it's done - how does it know that what it's showing you isn't blurry?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant 3 main ways: Contrast Detection Auto-Focus (good enough) Phase Detection Auto-Focus (best) Laser Auto-Focus (eh) When the camera picks what the objects it needs to focus on: Contrast Detection looks for the focus level where there is the most contrast (difference between white and black), as that means there is no blurriness, where they fade into each other. Phase Detection splits the light into 2+ beams and each beam goes into 2 sensors, and both sensors are focused until they are both "in-phase": > When the light reaches these two sensors, if an object is in focus, light rays from the extreme sides of the lens converge right in the center of each sensor...Both sensors would have identical images on them, indicating that the object is indeed in perfect focus. Laser Autofocus is just sonar with light, a beam of light is emitted from the camera and the time is takes for the light to bounce back to the sensor is used to determine the focus.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user I think we should combine feminism and men's rights movement into one, CMV So, where I'm from the feminist movement is not in favor of females, but is fighting for equal rights for both sexes. They do fight strongly for women but I don't feel left out. I'm really proud of it to include rights for men as well as women. International feminism is defined as "the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes." according to Google definitions. The feminist movement overshadows men's rights movement and each factions tend to get bad reputations every now and then. Why can't we just have one to rule them all?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant People who fight against racism are also for equal rights between all people. People who fight against discrimination against the disabled are also for equal rights between all people. People who fight for gay rights are also for equal rights between all people. By your reasoning, all these people should be combined into one movement. The problem is that women face different forms of discrimination than men. Black people face different forms of discrimination than the disabled. Gay people face different forms of discrimination than he elderly. In theory they may be all fighting for the same thing but in practice they all have different concerns. So it makes sense that they form separate groups.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Is PEMDAS a human invention, or is there some mathematical logic that says it must be done this way?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It’s a hierarchical schedule of what is implied in ambiguous representations in how mathematical expressions are written. For example the expression 2x^2 means twice the square of x, not the square of twice x. Only a textbook would deliberately create a sloppily ambiguous monster like -x^2 and make you decide if it means the square of negative x or the negative of the square of x. But if 2x^2 means twice the square of x, then by analogy -x^2 must be the negative of the square of x, the exponent applying only to the symbol it’s attached to. So the OOO is not about math but about the grammar of written representation.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Is the eyesight of small animals like mice and snakes as poor as ours would be if our retinas were the size of theirs?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Better or poor are tricky descriptors. Animals evolve their senses to be suited to their environments. Humans’ colour vision is amongst the best in the world and have some of the most detailed up close vision in bright light. The trade off was poor low light vision. Other animals prioritize low light vision over perceiving colours. Humans have sharp vision in a tight area directly in front of them but the trade off is poor peripheral vision and no vision behind them. Other animals have an almost 360 degree field of view, but lack a region of extreme sharpness. Each of these different sets of abilities is “better” in a particular set of living conditions.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What do software engineers do once an app/website is built? Realize the absolute ridiculousness of the question to those of you in tech. Just wondering as a casual outsider. Like, once the app/website is built isn't the heavy lifting basically done? What do all the engineers at Facebook/Twitter/Instagram actually work on all day? is it just refining the code? fixing errors? or preparing the website/app to work as the web, OS, and other things evolve?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Fix all the problems you created in the initial implementation that you didn’t find during normal testing. Add features that are necessary to sell to more users or make the boss happy. Find and fix performance issues or security vulnerabilities. Build internal tools to make the lives of your coworkers easier and more automated. Depending on type of work you might even assist in helping onboard high value customers. There is no “done”<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [English History] Why did Henry VIII break off from Catholicism?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Because the Pope at the time, Saint Francis-Pauljohn XV, discovered that the Royal Bloodline was carrying a notable disease, apart from hemophilia and weakchinedness. The Pope was visiting his faithful Archbishop in London for the annual wrestling match that determined who would be the Pastors of the more desiralbe parishes in the UK, when he happened to visit on the palace on the night of a full moon. There, he witnessed the members of the Royal House turn into Werewolves, and he was only able to escape with the assistance of the noted monster hunter Van Hellsing. Once the nobles had come to their senses the Pope confronted Henry VIII, engaging him in an epic duel that ended with the Great Fire of London, the Pope dead and Henry VIII having to start a new church to ensure he would have someone to witness the vows as he married new wives (his old wives coming down with a sudden and unfortunate case of headlessness after failing to produce for him an heir.)<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why are some US grad students on food stamps? I often see on Reddit mentions of grad students living on food stamps - how common is this, and how come this is a thing? To put my question in context, I’m not from the US and I’ve been led to think that US grad schools are well-funded unlike the UK. If there’s funding, why do students have to rely on food stamps? I’m confused!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Funding levels differ dramatically; at some institutions they are adequate to support a grad student, and possibly even minimally support children of a grad student, but at other institutions the pay is absurdly low. It's a real mess and (imo) a disgrace on academia.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Star Trek] Can the Borg actually assimilate any biological abilities? Or just technology? "We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile." Chilling words, but how much is true and how much is meaningless boasting? As far as I can tell, they don't add any biological distinctiveness to the collective. The biological organisms they assimilate don't seem to be used as anything more than corpses adapted to carry the borg's advanced technology. I suppose the drones' extreme strength and lack of dying of old age could be partially biological adaptations, but they're almost surely augmented by technology. We know that the Borg are simply unable to assimilate some races with bizarre biology like Species 8472. It also seems like they've never assimilated other biological abilities like the psychic powers inherent in Betazoids, Vulcans, etc. Thank God. Are there any biological abilities that have been assimilated? Even on a microscopic scale? Or are the Borg only after technology and not really interested in biological distinctiveness on anything beyond a cosmetic level?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The Borg do alter the genetics of the assimilated lifeforms, these artificial Borg genetics are a combination of the most desirable traits found in the assimilated lifeforms to date, new traits can be added once found and deemed useful. The alterations idealise the biology of the assimilated lifeform for assimilation, implantation, and service. The Borg use both biological and non biological alterations to augment the drones. Biological alterations serve to create the ideal base for cybernetic augmentation, and to turn individualistic specimen into hive drones harmonized with the hive mind. Observed changes in the biology are a uniform biochemistry, thus adapting all drones to the same life support conditions, and the psionic capacities used for communication and vessel regeneration. >We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological (true) and technological (mostly recycling, but sometimes interesting ideas are picked up) distinctiveness to our own. Your culture(what little is not deleted/suppressed. It is more efficient than saying 'species/race/faction/alliance/political and or biological unit/whatever/organisation that builds and/or controls what we are about to assimilate') will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile. ^(one cube short of being true)<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Netherlands, I have difficulties finishing my master thesis because of my research questions and methods. I am not an expert on the methods but I don't really have too many options because it was "assigned". I am an international student from a developing country where the education is only for getting papers. I have difficulties when I write a thesis and these difficulties are not only with language problems, English. I also have problems making it concise and more critical. I read the research that many Asian countries have this problem due to their education system. In my experience, my country is always descriptive and explains as much as we can when writing a thesis. My topic is about the environmental impact that happens because of tourism. My problem is about the topic itself and the supervisor, but I guess I cannot undo this. It is like I get assigned a certain supervisor and topic even tho I don't like it or I am not an expert on that. My thesis uses fuzzy cognitive maps, it is like a mind map and it is obtained with a participatory approach. My rationale for using this because my supervisor excels in this. It was his will. If I want to use another method then I need to choose another supervisor but I cannot do that. I won't explain it here because this is a long story. In short, it is due to my previous explanation about the assigned topic and supervisor. I can choose another topic and supervisor but I need to pay for the fieldwork where I cannot pay. Unfortunately, I don't really understand how the method works. I should make my research questions more specific but I already gathered the data, and it cant be more specific. I don't have any idea how to make it more specific. For example, my SPV suggests making it narrow with spatial issues, but it is clear to me because of tourism. So I don't get why I need to use my method/participatory. I think it is better to use a satellite and see it with eyes compared to 10 years ago with now. I think there is something that lies behind why my SPV wants to use it and wants me to be critical but I cannot see it. So during data collection, I collected all data not only restricted to spatial analysis, but I have a problem analysing it. I believe something is missing. I tried to use a tutor not from NL because I cannot afford it. They have a bit different approach that is more conventional (similar to my country, strict to descriptive) and it makes me more confused. They are from South Africa. So I wonder how to solve this. I spoke with my SPV and study advisor but they told me to study more.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Arrange a meeting with your supervisor and come prepared: \- Tell them that you are struggling to understand the method and carry out the analysis. Ask them for study materials, or people that can give your guidance. \- Tell them that you prefer doing things another certain way and why you feel it's better. Don't make it sound like a demand but more of a suggestion. However, stand your ground if their answers are not sufficient for you. In the end, it's your thesis to write. \- You are not supposed to pay anything for your master's project. Maybe the supervisor has some means to cover it. Final point: just in case you are similar to me and also have a personal fall-out with your supervisor: they are supposed to guide you and you are supposed to ask. Send them emails, ask them for office hours, and document everything. Always cc your study advisor, the project coordinator, and the PI in every one of your emails. Make sure they know the situation before it's too late.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why does tap water feels colder when touching it than when drinking it ?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The temperature of water relative to your body temperature vs the temperature of water relative to what you perceive as cold drinking water. Another example would be getting into a pool of "cold" water. The water may only be 60 degrees, which is cold when you submerge yourself into it, but you would not think it is cold if you drank water the same temperature.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Star Wars] it's the first day of high school (or whatever is equivalent). What sort of classes would an average teenager expect to take during the time periods of the prequels, original trilogy, and new trilogy? Would there be a planetary history course as well as galactic? Are the jedi brought up at all? Would the text books change after order 66? I am assuming in an empire this big, there would be much more to learn. Would children be required to go to school longer than us on earth? Would schools on other planets be under the same district or are they seperated? Would rich kids have to travel the galaxy to go to the best schools in the galaxy?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Your education experince would change depending on what planet you are from. Most worlds would apprentice you, or have you start working at a very young age. The core worlds would likely have a general schooling, to prepare you either for the workforce, or for the best and brightest, to be sent to the imperial academy.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How did we measured the radius of earth and sun?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The circumference (and by extension the radius) of the Earth can be measured by comparing the angle of shadows of vertical objects at different latitudes (same longitude) at identical times. The radius of the sun was a little more complicated and there are a variety of methods. One was to measure the ratio of the distance to the moon and the sun (using trigonometry during a half moon). Based on this ratio, and the size of shadow the Earth casts upon the moon during an Eclipse, you can estimate the size of the sun. Similar and different methods have been used over the years, but they basically boil down to: shadows and math.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How are logic chips (AND/OR/NAND/etc) actually built to work like their chosen logic gate? Like with an AND gate I understand how it works in that an input of 1 AND 1 make an output of 1, but how do the logic chips actually perform the function? How would you build a logic gate without using logic chips?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The basic building block of electrical/electronic gates is the transistor. You can think of a transistor as an electrically operated switch. This switch has an input, output and a "switch" (also an input). If the switch is "on" it connects the input to the output, if the switch is "off" the input is disconnected from the output. By differing configurations of this switch (several transistors connected in different circuit patterns), all logical gates can be constructed.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: We Should Significantly Lower the US Military's Budget # I believe that the seven-hundred billion dollar US defense budget is extremely excessive and should be substantially less. I have this view for three main reasons: wasteful spending, obsolete army bases and development of useless technology. There is a lot of wasteful spending in the US military and unaccounted money. >A staggering report by the Defense Department’s Inspector General last summer found the [Army](https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/army/) made $2.8 trillion worth of wrongful adjustments to accounting entries in one quarter alone in 2015, and $6.5 trillion for the year. The [Army](https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/army/) lacked receipts and invoices to support those numbers or simply made them up. > >[Source](https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/7/us-military-wasting-money/) > >The Pentagon, for example, employs [more than 600,000](https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2015/10/08/pentagon-needs-to-cut-shadow-contractor-work-force) private contractors. There are so many of them and they are so poorly monitored that the Pentagon (as it has reluctantly [acknowledged](https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2015/10/08/pentagon-needs-to-cut-shadow-contractor-work-force)) doesn’t even have an accurate count of how many of them it has hired. What we do know is that many are carrying out redundant tasks that could be done more cheaply by government employees. Cutting the contractor work force by 15 percent—theoretically an easy task but light years beyond anything presently imaginable—would save a quick [$20 billion a year](http://pogoblog.typepad.com/pogo/2012/01/nyt-misses-elephant-in-the-room-defense-service-contractors-.html). > >[Source](https://www.thenation.com/article/heres-where-your-tax-dollars-for-defense-are-really-going/) They also overpay for parts, having once spent $264 for a helicopter part worth $8 — even when they already had a surplus of the supplies in military warehouses. This is a ridiculous waste of money that simply cannot be justified. They maintain obsolete army bases that should be closed. If the bases aren't doing anything, they shouldn't be sucking up tax money. (FYI this is my weakest point so I'm most open to change here.) [Source](https://www.cheatsheet.com/culture/states-cities/the-disturbing-ways-we-waste-money-our-military-budget.html/) And develop mostly useless new technology such as the F-35 stealth fighter jets that are only effective 26% of the time and my never be ready for combat. [Source](http://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/weapons/2016/f-35-may-never-be-ready-for-combat.html). This project costs almost 400 billion dollars and most likely will be 400 billion dollars down the drain. Regardless of what the military is doing, its budget is far too high and there is to much waste for it to be justified. After saying all this however, I am open to change(which is why I'm posting on this sub).<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The U.S military is the part of the U.S government that actively funds and develops all the fundamental research for the high tech economy. Satellites, computers, GPS, cellphones, land lines, the internet, nuclear energy, commercial planes, and so on. The only way we as a society have figured out how to fund research that either doesn't pan out (like the plane you think was a waste) or doesn't provide any kind of clear benefit until decades after that massive spending, is to put it in the "we NEED this research/project/technology or \[insert arbitrary enemy to rattle our sabers against here\] is going to totally kill you and everyone you care about!!!!" category.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user When you lose weight, where does it go? How does the mass leave the body? I've been trying to get fit lately, and have lost three pounds. It got me thinking - where does "the weight" go when you lose it? In other words, how does the mass leave your body? I understand that when you lose fat, the fat cells shrink, but the actual mass must escape the body somehow. I can only think of four ways mass could possibly escape the body - through the excretory system (urine or sweat), the digestive system (defacation), or the lungs (in the breath). So, when you lose fat (or muscle, in the case of muscle atrophy), where does it go? Before you laugh, let me say that I'm pretty sure you don't exhale fat. But I'm curious. Do we know? How does it happen? Thanks.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant With the help of oxygen, cells eat carbon containing molecules like glucose and fatty acids, and respire CO2 and H2O. The CO2 is in solution in your blood and travels to the lungs, where you exhale it in exchange for more O2. A 140 lb person exhales about 1 kg (2.2lb) of CO2 each day from basal metabolism, more if they are active. The H2O either gets used in other places or goes out through your urine. The net loss is about 270 grams of carbon, and around 110 grams of H2O, per day.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How and why people develop irrational fears and phobias? There are many people among us with Irrational fears, like fear of spiders "Arachnophobia" (Not like normal fear which is common but really exaggerates one, people that can literally fade if they see one) or fear from the ocean, or Ancraophobia or Anemophobia Both terms are used to define the fear of wind, I'm sure there is many more examples. So how this is happen and why??<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Phobias are the typical example of the manner in which the brain exhibits a One Time Learning or a Single Type Generalisation. Usually, it takes a minimum of 3 experiences to generalise for the brain to learn. Fear is something which is essential for survival. Fear protects us. However, with fear, the brain responds contextually. For example, if you burn your hand by touching a hot stove, the next time you're going to be careful about it. This is because your brain learns that a hot stove is going to burn you. At the same time your brain also knows that it is safe to go near a stove as long as you don't touch it. Further, your brain may also learn that it is also safe to test touching the stove really quickly, to check whether it is hot or not - and if it is not hot, then it's perfectly safe to touch the stove. Now, if your brain has an overwhelmingly strong response to the first time you touch a hot stove - either because you burnt yourself so extremely badly that you had to undergo tremendous trauma and stress or because you were punished by someone so severely that you underwent extreme trauma or stress, the chances are that in future, every time you see a stove your brain begins to undergo the same trauma and stress, resulting in a phobia. Your brain is no longer in a position to contextualize the learning. In extreme phobic cases, just looking at a photo of the stove may result in the phobic response.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How do pure C programmers deal without some sort of STL containers? Hi all! Being interested in programming in pure C I wonder how pure C programmers deal without having some sort of containers in the C std. Vector may be replaced with C-style arrays, although with some limitations, but what about queues, trees, hashtables and other interesting data structures? Do the C programmers have to implement them every time from scratch? How does Linux kernel deal with it, for example?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are a couple of strategies: * Implement reusable data structures that always store the value as a `void`. Basically like you did in Java before you have generics and had to use Object for everything. This is pretty common, but you lose some performance and type safety. In return, it's simple and you get code reuse. You can implement reusable generic data structures using big preprocessor macros if you really want to, but it's kind of a chore. Some codebases do that. * Many others just implement the data structures they need for the types they need. You only implement the actual functions you need for each particular use of a data structure. So if you need a hash table but don't need to ever delete anything from it, don't bother implementing a delete function. You'd be surprised how few different data structures you actually need and how few operations on them.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV Just as women have the right to have an abortion or give up the baby for adoption, men should have the right to give up all custody at birth, without any continuing financial obligation Women currently do and should continue to have the sole authority over their bodies - especially related to pregnancy. Abortion is very safe, but it is a medical procedure. Keeping a baby is also on the whole safe, but comes with a boatload of hardships throughout the pregnancy - spmething that I'd never want to go through. After birth there is again a decision, with adoption of new borns being very easy in the US - demand far outstrips the number of babies up for adoption, and the standards for adoption r very high (maybe too much so). Legally in most states however if the woman chooses to keep the baby the man is expected and obligated to atleast help financially support the child. Here on Reddit especially I have seen the argument that its just not the same, and after the mother has decided to raise the baby the father has a responsibility to the child. I agree that the kid's life is worse off with an absent father. With multiple options open to the mother to forgo the hardship of raising a child though, why is there no option for the father to relinquish any and all custody and rights to the baby at birth, if the mother is knowingly taking on the physical and financial responsibility to raise them? Note that I do believe whether a woman choses to abort or carry the baby to term the man should help with atleast 50% of the costs involved either way, as the risk of pregnancy is Edit: I made some inherently sexist assumptions when I wrote this, unfortunately can't change the title. To clarify my view - I think that it is unfair for either parent to be unable to give up their parental rights at birth. I understand that plenty of fathers have full custody as the mothers did not want to be a part of the baby's life - those mothers should also be able to relinquish parental obligations. The fairly robust adoption system present should mean that if a single parent does not believe they can raise the child all on their own they have the option to pht the baby up for adoption at birth. If they think they can do it, then the other partner should be able to walk away from the numerous physical and financial burdens of a child.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Do you think that women should also have the right to do this (i.e. to relinquish all financial obligations and place them on the father of the child, who then has the option to place the child for adoption or to raise the child with no support from her), or do you think that only men should have this right?<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Is there any philosophy that critiques the notion that the reduction in crime / overall safety of citizens within a society is the ultimate end goal of that society?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Arendt argues that providing for basic physical needs of citizens is a precondition of a well-functioning society. For her, society's end goal is enabling citizens to express their freedom in the public political forum.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why are there flat head and Philips head screws and screwdrivers? Are either better than the other?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Each has it's own advantages. Flat heads have the advantage that they're simple to make, and in a pinch can be worked with other flat metal objects. Phillips heads screws are specifically designed so the bit slips if too much torque is applied. This is especially important for electric drills, so that if a screw gets stuck it doesn't damage the motor.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do all government-negotiated contracts with businesses in the UK seem to be ridiculously bad value for money? Every government contract that makes the news seems to involve giving some companies inordinate amounts of money to do a shitty job, and recently with clauses preventing future governments from ending or changing the contracts. Is the government truly the worst negotiator in the business world, or is it just media hype?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant 1 - not all of them are, you hear about the overspends and failures disproportionately to the successes that come in on time and/or under budget. 2 - change requests. A bud is received and accepted for X work. When it comes time to produce X the users are involved and note a few things they will need that are not in the original bid, perhaps not designed correctly or a change on regulations or a new law that has been implemented between bid time and production time. Capita /Serco et al know how the government works, so they bid low, beating out other bidders. But they know they will make it back on change requests, these costs are much higher than they need to be but are usually not a major consideration in bid assessment.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Community] Why did Abed take the Who's The Boss class, if he was so convinced he knew who the boss was?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Abed has an interest in the systemic study of pop-culture. This is a pop-culture class. He didn't come in intending to contradict the Professor, but when the professor appeared to be explicitly wrong, he saw no reason why he shouldn't correct him.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How are chords made from a scale?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are four major types of chords: major, minor, augmented, and diminished. Major Major chords are the basic chords that make up any song you listen to. Every other chord is just a major chord with a little bit difference. That being said, the major chords are the simplest of all the chords. A major chord, or major triad, starts with a root note like a C note. The next note on the chord is the third note in the scale of the root note. For example if the root note was C, the next note would be an E note. The third and final note of the chord is the fifth note on the scale. In the example of a C scale, the fifth note would be a G note. When you put them all together you get a chord with the note combination of 1-3-5; a C chord will have a note combination of C-E-G. Minor Minor chords are major chords in which the third not is taken down a half step to make it flat. In the example of a C chord the note combination would be a C-E flat/F sharp-G. This creates a more mellow and deeper sound and creates a more sorrowful feel to the song. Augmented Augmented chords take the major chord and increase the fifth note by a half step, making it sharp. For the C chord, the note combination C-E-G sharp/A flat. Augmented chords kind of sound weird and are used in songs that are not very harmonic. A good example of this would be "Oh Darling" by The Beatles. Diminished Lastly, diminished chords take a minor chord and make the fifth note down a half step, making it flat. The note combination for a C chord would be C-E flat/D sharp-G flat/F sharp. Diminished notes create a very flat tone and makes songs sound deep and sad. <TL;DR> Major chord note combination: 1-3-5 Minor chord note combination: 1-3 flat-5 Augmented chord note combination: 1-3-5 sharp Diminished chord note combination: 1-3 flat-5 sharp<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Does 'mastering' fusion mean making current fusion reactor designs a lot more efficient, or is there a different design or process we are hoping to figure out? You hear people talking about the amazing potentials if we master or 'have' easy fusion, while current designs are struggling to be positive in net energy output. Does 'having fusion' just mean making the current design a lot more efficient, or is there a specific design, process or way of approaching fusion we don't know how to do yet?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The difficulty of fusion is that the constraints are pretty tight from an engineering perspective. Throughout the years the questions you ask have been driving ones: is it just a matter of getting the engineering right, scaling things up, etc.? Or are they barking up the wrong tree, is there a better approach? The answer is... we don't really know yet. We haven't achieved true breakeven yet except in thermonuclear weapons. We _have_ achieved fusion reactions, but they consume more energy than the system requires to get started. Inertial confinement fusion looked like it was going to take the prize a few years ago... and then it turned out it was harder than they thought. Scaling up magnetic confinement fusion (the ITER project) is looking promising, so we'll see, in a few years, when they start doing real experiments with it. Will it ultimately work, or will it create new engineering problems that will have to be solved? We'll see, we'll see. Are there better ways to do it? Some people and companies are betting on other approaches altogether, and, again, we'll see, we'll see.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Harry Potter] Why are there no wizard colleges or universities?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Very few students would want to go into that level of education, plus the fact the role is taken by apprenticeships similar to how medieval blacksmiths or bakers were trained. When a wizard or witch wishes to take a career path they must ask a wizard / business within the field to take them as an apprentice in order to pass down the teachings and training. Certain government professions, such as Healer or Auror, have you assigned to a senior to train but in the private sector it's entirely at the digression of the person you are seeking apprenticeship with. Of course there are rules primarily governed by the union / guild that the business owner must follow such as taking at least one apprentice and breaching these rules can lead to fines or union / guild support seizing.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why does food stick so strongly to plates or frying pans after its sat out a few hours compared to when it's fresh? I was doing dishes today and had a couple particularly old stubborn smears I had to clean off. Even food items that were never hot (like guacamole or sour cream) seem to bond abnormally strong to dirty dishes after a night's rest in the sink. Why are they so stubborn!?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant When food is wet, it tends to be soft and goopy. In this liquidy state it can seep into microscopic cracks and such. As it dries out, it loses moisture and both shrinks and hardens. As it shrinks and hardens, it solidifies its grip on the surface as if it were clenching its fists. Once it's hard, as all hard things are, it becomes difficult to move and thus to clean.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Eli5: Why does the eye need a moment to "get used" to the dark to see properly?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are two main things that dictate how well you can see in low light: First is the iris. It expands or contracts fairly quickly to let more or less light in. Second is a special chemical in the back of the eye that increases light sensitivity. This chemical is destroyed by bright light and it takes 20-30 minutes for the body to produce more after it gets dark.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How can economics be used to make the world a better place? I want to become an economist because I´ve always loved economics. I am also very interested in politics since I really do want to make the world a better place before I die. I understand how naive this sounds but will be really grateful if you could throw me some ideas.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Understanding the actual economic effects policies will have according to theory, and understanding how to best craft policies in order to effect incentives in a way that efficiently and effectively accomplishes its goal is as you can imagine very important Also if you want to become an economist you should look at the career advice on the sidebar<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How come when we close both of our eyes, our eyes can still perceive darkness, but when we only have 1 eye open, we can no longer "see" the darkness out of our closed eye? Why are we able to "see" the lack of light behind our eyelids when both eyes are shut, but how come when only 1 eye is open, it feels like our closed eye just no longer exists?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant What you "see" is not just the raw data coming in from your retinas. Your brain constructs your vision by adding a lot of neural processing to these images. Deleting the effect of a single closed eye is part of this processing.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How do metal detectors work? To clarify, why does not all metal set off a detector? Such as zippers on jeans, or metal buttons? Do these detectors not detect certain kinds of metals, or do they just need at least a certain amount?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A metal detector makes a varying magnetic field in an area using an electromagnet. Conductors such as metal will temporarily block magnetic fields from entering them due to the skin effect. The driver used to power the electromagnet will be affected due to the presence of large amounts of metal, since it has less space to fill with magnetic field. The power being supplied to the electromagnet will be noticable different, but the amount of difference depends on the conductivity and volume of the material, as well as how close it is to the electromagnet. The distance issue is why an airport security officer will sometimes use a hand wand, since it can be placed much closer to the body. Conductivity varies a lot between metals. The skin depth is proportional to the square root of conductivity. Stainless steel is 45 times less conductive than copper, so the thickness of stainless steel that is "invisible" to a metal detector is 6.7x more. These thicknesses will still be incredibly thin, at 1MHz the skin depth of stainless steel is 0.5mm.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Employers should not be in the business of providing insurance (health / dental / vision / etc). I believe that all types of insurance should be extracted from the "benefits" of employment altogether. Instead, the benefits of employment should only be cash income (to the amount of your current salary plus whatever your insurance costs to your employer were). This would put consumers collectively in control of which insurance plans they want to purchase on an open market (something similar to the ACA's online marketplaces perhaps? ... or exactly those?) instead of being subjected to the plan selected by a single human resources manager or a small committee of colleagues. This would serve to make the marketplace much more competitive, as there would be hundreds of millions of consumers making purchasing choices. The cost of the monthly premiums could be written off by the taxpayer, instead of the employer taking advantage of a big chunk of that tax write-off. This idea will only work under the condition that the employee is compensated by employer for the full value of the benefits that s/he is no longer receiving, and this is the angle from which I am making my argument, so please consider this when making your argument. Thanks! Looking forward to reading the responses. _____ > Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to *[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules). If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* *[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)*! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our *[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)* first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to *[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview). Happy CMVing!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Here's an analogy using labour unions. Think of the following two types of employees: 1. Unionized employees: Generally get higher pay, better benefits, and are collectively able to force changes in a company. They can strike if things get really bad. Since this can be devastating to an employer, an employer will try hard to make the union happy and prevent a strike. Edit:* Often, you have to be in the union and pay dues in order to work for your employer. Regardless, employees rarely object to this condition given the benefits of a union. 2. Un-unionized employees: Lower pay. Lack of benefits. Difficulty in forcing a company to make policy changes because you're only one person. If things get really bad, the worst you can do to your employer is quit. Considering you're only one person, your employer probably won't try that hard to keep you. Now, consider that when your employer buys a group plan they are like a labour union, except instead of employment, they deal with insurance. Firstly, your employer can guarantee a lot of people will be insured and thus get a "bulk" rate, which is likely lower than all the employees could get individually. Secondly, your employer has much more leverage than an individual: Insurance company denying too many claims? Insurance company not providing timely customer service? Increase in rates? If you were an individual customer the only leverage you have against the company is to threaten to switch, but the insurance company wouldn't try that hard to keep you, since you're only one person/family. However, consider that when you get insurance through your employer your employer can "strike", and threaten to move hundreds or even thousands of people to a new insurance company, which is considerably more leverage. The insurance company would try really hard to keep a 1,000-employee company happy by giving better service and preferential rates.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What do the astronauts on the ISS actually do up there?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Mostly research. In order to best study an environment with little to no gravity, the best place to go is space. Research includes tools and procedures for spacewalks, procedures for operating in minimal gravity areas, and any other microgravity research. Other than that, astronauts are sent there to maintain and operate the systems onboard the ISS<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How do humans go from having no concept of language as a baby to being able to speak whatever language they learn fluently<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant First, babies learn to recognize certain categories of noises. As this gets fine tuned, they start tracking which sounds appear together and mentally cutting up streams of speech into individual words. Then they start babbling and trying to mimic the noises they hear. At about two years old, babies have about 100 words. After that, vocabulary increases exponentially over the next few years. That said, there is apparently a big debate over whether or not babies start off having "no concept of language" or if we're born with some inherent concepts behind grammar.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Where do saltwater mammals such as whales, seals, etc, get drinking water? Do these animals not require water in the same way land mammals do? What about fish and other sea creatures?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant They primarily get water from food, both as water in the food and as a byproduct of metabolism (plants use water and CO2 to make food, and those come out again when the food is broken down). Some may drink some water, but most of the water comes from food. There are land animals that also get their water that way, particularly desert ones. Saltwater fish, on the other hand, do drink (a lot). They excrete excess salt through their gills. Some other marine organisms have salt concentrations roughly the same as their surroundings, so they don't need to drink.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user We are four Stanford students looking to improve academic publishing and we want to hear from you! We are four students (incl. three MBAs and two PhDs), all of us fed up with academic publishing and embarking on a project to improve the process. But before we start building anything, we want to hear from as many scientists as possible. We'd love to hear your thoughts on what the biggest issues are. (The amount of time it takes? The opacity of peer reviews? The Elsevier racket?) Please leave your comments below, or PM me to arrange a short interview.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Anonymous submissions and a transparent review process will improve accountability and reduce editorial decisions based on factors beyond the quality of the work. EMBO has taken great strides towards this end by publishing reviewer and editor comments.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What's wrong with these Homeopathy studies? I've always believed homeopathy to be a pseudo-science, but yesterday someone provided me with a link to studies on homeopathy that seem to show that it has valid medical applications. List of all the studies: http://knol.google.com/k/scientific-research-in-homeopathy Here are a couple of examples from the list: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15016577 - Triple blind trial, Significant improvements in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome using homeopathic methods http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2886%2990410-1/abstract - Double blind trial, found that homeopathy improved hayfever symptoms Most of these studies show that homeopathy works at least better than a placebo, and in some cases leads to significant improvement. I don't understand how this can be the case. Homeopathy seems to violate everything I know about chemistry, but these studies show that it works. What's your take on these studies?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The first study states in their abstract that the results were not statistically significant. In any clinical trial you have errors due to the random nature of human response to treatment, so your sample size must be large enough to show that there is a statistically significant difference between two treatments. Imagine flipping a coin 100 times, and it comes up heads 52 times and tails 48. Even though heads came up more, you wouldn't say that the coin is biased, because the difference is so small. This is basically the result they got in this study.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [ELI5]: How do calculators find out the square root of a number?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Depends on the calculator, but here’s one approach, illustrated for square root of 100 1. Make a first estimate (eg half it, your calculator might make a better guess though) = 50. 2. Add that guess to your target divided by that guess, and halve. So (50 + 100/50) / 2 = 26. That’s your next estimate. 3. Continue until the difference between succeeding estimates is small (again depends on your device). 50 -> 26 -> 14.9 -> 10.8 -> 10.03 so it’s getting there very quickly. Edit: as the other poster said, the actual algorithm used by any given calculator may be a lot more sophisticated.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5:What exactly is happening when a program is "not responding" but continuously consumes large portions of CPU and memory?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In a graphical environment like windows, programs receive input like mouse clicks and keystrokes and they are required to respond to requests like redrawing the graphics in their window. When a program starts failing to do that in a timely manner, the os deems it "not responding" and gives users options to wait or kill it. Sometimes that happens because the program is calculating something complicated... but only when it's a shitty program. Using threads and other techniques it's possible to have a program work on a big task without becoming non-responsive. It can also just mean that the program has crashed, that is, gone into some kind of loop that it will never escape from. There's no way for the operating system to tell the difference between those two cases, which is why it asks you. (And there never will be.)<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user I still don't understand what a share fundamentally is Please explain it precisely and simply (sorry). Obviously it is a share of a company, but in what way? 1) Is a share defined as a percentage of a company or as a dollar amount of a company? Or something else entirely? I don't get how share prices can rise/fall if they represent a set amount, but it would make sense if it was a set percentage. But from what I've gathered it isn't defined as a set percentage. 2) How does issuing new shares impact old ones? And is there a limit to the amount of shares they can issue? (Especially this last part hinges on whether a share is defined as a set percentage of a firm or something else I guess). 3) How do shares determine how much the holder will profit from liquidation? E.g. if you own 1/1000 of the shares you get 1/1000 of the profit of liquidation I assume. But if the board decides to issue 1000 new shares soon before liquidation, you will loose half of that, at least if you don't pay to buy one of the new shares. This seems unfair.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Imagine you start a lemonade stand. You see it doing well and generating decent profit in your locality. Since this one's doing so well, you think about expanding your business, and now you wanna open a lemonade stand in your neighbouring localities. But you need a lot more money for that, and you don't have the money. So you get an idea: You decide on a valuation of your business based on your future plans, for the sake of simplicity, let's say, after you open a lemonade stand in your neighbouring localities, you decide that your business will be worth $1000. You need $500 to open a stand in your neighbouring localities, so you "divide" your business into 100 parts. Each part is called a share. Each share is now worth $1000/100 = $10. You show your friends your expansion plans and now they want in. Since you only need $500 for your expansion plans, you sell 50 shares of your company to your friends. The only reason they bought your share is because they believe that your company's valuation will go up as your business grows when its valuation goes up, the value of their share goes up, since the value of a share = (company valuation)/(total number of shares). After your expansion, people in your neighbouring localities also know of your business and looking at how good your lemonade is, they believe that your business has more growth potential. So they go out asking your friends, to whom you initially sold your shares, to sell it to them and they're willing to offer $12 for it (it was previously only $10). This is how your share's value goes up and now your business' valuation is suddenly $1200 (from $1000). At some point, you'll notice that 100 shares are not enough since the demand is too high, more people want to own a part of your business, so you announce a stock split. Instead of 100 shares, now there'll be 200 shares in the market. That'll not change the valuation of your company, but now every shareholder will have double of what they previously owned, you will now have 100 shares, but the price of an individual share will halve since supply just doubled. Higher share prices help you get your business get more loans with ease. They also help you with your company's public image.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Would debt forgiveness for things like student debt and medical bills have negative effects on the economy? I’m only asking because I saw a video on it, I liked it but I wasn’t sure how actually feasible debt forgiveness would be, or rather if there would be repercussions for immediate forgiveness given the structure of debt in America. Like, would creditors not having debt to sell around have any affects on the economy in the immediate? How about generally speaking long term? Has there been studies conducted on this? I haven’t been sure where to look so I just wanted to come here and ask.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Most lenders are companies and not governments, largely banks. This means forcing them to forgive debts is equivalent to confiscating their money and giving it to the people who owe the banks. Once you do that, banks either (1) pack up and leave, or (2) bake the probability that you will screw them into future interest rates. This effectively means that by cancelling debts for one generation of students, you doom all future students to have no access to debt - which basically means to access to higher education. There are ways around it, for example the government might be the one issuing the loans; or more convolutedly, the government pays the loans to the banks on behalf of the borrowers. This isn't great either, because you're effectively transferring money from taxpayers to students/sick people (and banks get to pocket a bit too). But not to all students/sick people, just the ones with poor financial management (we call this moral hazard). Ironically, the ones with good financial management would have realised they can't afford student debt in the first place and not have taken any. In that case, the superior policy would be to just provide free or heavily subsidised education/healthcare, which avoids this entire tangle.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Have there been any theories on the decreasing efficacy of governing exceptionally large population? There has to be a humanly capable limit on governability in modern democracies<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant From A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, a book about architecture and urban planning. Contains several references to just such studies. Page 71: >COMMUNITY OF 7000 >Individuals have no effective voice in any community of more than 5000-10,000 persons. >People can only have a genuine effect on local government when the units of local government are autonomous, self-governing, self-budgeting communities, which are small enough to create the possibility of an immediate link between the man in the street and his local officials and elected representatives. >...today the distance between people and the centres of power that govern them is vast - both psychologically and geographically. Milton Kotler, a Jeffersonian, had described the experience: >The process of city administration is invisible to the citizen who sees little evidence of it's human components but feels the sharp pain of taxation. With increasingly poor public service, his desires and needs are more insistently expressed. Yet his expressions of need seem to issue into this air, for government does not appear attentive to his demands this disjunction between citizen and government is the major political problem of civil disorder... (Milton Kotler, Neighborhood Foundations, Memorandum #24; "Neighborhood corporations and the reorganisation of city government," unpub. ms., August 1967) >There are two ways in which the physical environment, as it is now ordered, promoted and sustains the separation between citizens and their government. First, the size of the politic community is so large that it's members are separated from its leaders simply by their number. Second, government is invisible, physically located out of the realm of most citizens' daily lives. Unless these two conditions are altered,, political alienation is not likely to be overcome. >1. The size of the political community. >It is obvious that the larger the community the greater the distance between the average citizen and the heads of government. Paul Goodman has proposed a rule of thumb, based on cities like Athens in their prime, that no citizen be more than two friends away from the highest member of the local unit. Assume that everyone knows about 12 people in his local community. Using this notion and Goodman's rule we can see that an optimum size for a political community would be about 12^3 or 1728 households or 5500 persons. This figure corresponds to an old Chicago school estimate of 5000. And it is the same order of magnitude as the size of ECCO, the neighborhood corporation in Columbus, Ohio, of 6000 to 7000, describes by Kotler (Committee on Government Operations, US Senate, 89th Congress, 2nd session, Part 9, December 1966) >The editors of The Ecologist have a similar intuition about the proper size for units of local government. (See their Blueprint for Survival, Penguin Books, 1972, pp. 50-55.) And Terence Lee in his study, "Urban neighborhood as a socio-spatial schema," Ekistics 177, August 1970, gives evidence for the importance of the spatial community. Lee gives 75 acres as a natural size for a community. At 25 persons per acre, such a community would acommodate some 2000 persons; at 60 persons per acre, some 4500. >2. The visible location of local government. >Even when local branches of government are decentralised in function, they are often still centralised in space, hidden in vast municipal city-county buildings out of the realm of everyday life. These places are intimidating and alienating. What is needed is for every person to feel at home in the place of his local government win his ideas and complaints. A person must feel that it is a forum, that it is his directly, that he can call and talk to the person in charge of such and such, and see him personally within a day or two. >For this purpose, local forums must be situated in highly visible and accessible places. They could, for instance, be located in the most active marketplace of each community of 5000 to 7000.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How come when a camera is pointed at a monitor, it looks like there are lines in the picture?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Your monitor has what's called a refresh rate, measured in hertz (which is just number of times something happens per second). 60 Hz is a fairly common setting. That means it redraws what's on the screen 60 times every second, but when it does it doesn't refresh the entire screen at the same time. Instead it will rotate through the rows continually. So at any given time a few of the rows are being actively redrawn, while others are up to 1/60th of a second behind. This all happens too fast for the human eye to detect, but when you take a picture it freezes the screen image at the state it was at that exact moment, so you can see where the redraw (the bright part of the picture) is occurring and the darker parts are the area that hasn't been redrawn as recently.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5:Why do we see same sex marriage being accepted globally so much recently?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Increased networking and globalization. Rather than being small communities scattered across cities and towns, they're not able to be heard as a more unanimous voice. Plus as /u/okayifimust said, older generations dying out and giving rise to younger generations that tend to be more open-minded about these things.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why can I not take a good photo of the night sky? Whenever I do, it is typically just a black photo.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Those good pictures of the sky you see are taken with cameras on tripods set to long exposure. The exposure on a camera is how long the shutter stays open to light light onto the film or digital sensor. In the daytime or with good lighting, the shutter only needs to open for a fraction of a second in order to let enough light in to take a picture. When the only light is coming from the stars, you need to have the shutter open for much longer so more light can gather on the sensor. As an analogy, think of light (photons) as ping pong balls and the camera as a set of buckets. With lots of light it means there are tons of ping pong balls being thrown at the buckets at once and they fill up fast. When photographing the sky, only a few balls (photons) from each star may be hitting the buckets, so in order for it to show up, you need to let the ping pong balls collect in the buckets for a longer time.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user in the FAQ it is stated that one proof of the universe's expansion is that "more distant galaxies are packed closer together". What sort of measurements have been made to show this?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Telescope observations were done to establish two things. 1) The distance to galaxies using Supernova Light curves and redshifts. 2) How seperated the galaxies are (basically galaxies "per square inch") Its found that at larger distances, there are more galaxies per unit area at that distance. So at 10 billion ly we might have 5 galaxies per unit area. At 12, the average is 8, at 13 the average is 14 per unit area. &#x200B; Its essentially a matter of sectioning off a portion of the sky and counting. Then comparing that to the distances for each galaxy.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Are there any modern defenses or defenders of Plato's overall philosophy? Do any modern philosophers argue that Plato was more or less correct in his major assertions about metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics? I take "Plato's overall philosophy" to be roughly the positions that (1) our world is a defective version of a more real and perfect realm of Forms; (2) knowledge of these eternal Forms is imprinted on each person's immortal soul before birth; and (3) we live good lives to the extent that we contemplate and come to better understand these Forms, especially the Form of the Good. Which contemporary philosophers are most thoroughly Platonistic?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Lloyd P Gerson's work might be a good place to start. He argues for a definition of Platonism as characterised by 5 negative theses: anti-nominalism, anti-mechanism, anti-materialism, anti-relativism, and anti-skepticism. Someone who defends all five 'antis' would be a true Platonist according to Gerson and he defends this view against its naturalist opposite, arguing also that positions seeking a compromise between the two are doomed to inconsistency. You can find a couple of his lectures on this on YouTube or read his new book Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy. Another modern philosopher who makes a case for Platonism, and does a really good job of placing Platonist positions (e.g. in philosophy of language) in dialogue with contemporary theories, is Julius Moravcsik. I'd recommend his Thought and Language or Plato and Platonism.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user If a Higgs particle was the size of a human, how big would the sun be?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant As is tradition, 'size' is a word that has multiple meanings; one is sensical in this case, the other is not. One meaning of 'size' involves comparing length scales. As the Higgs is a fundamental particle, this doesn't make much sense. On the other hand, 'mass' makes more sense. If the Higgs particle was as massive as a human, how massive would the sun be? In this case, the Higgs mass is about 125 GeV/c^2 - which is about 10^-25 kg. A human is about 10^1 or 10^2 kg. So a human is 10^26 or 10^27 times more massive. What's 10^26 times more massive than the sun? Well the sun is 10^30 kg, and the entire observable universe is about 10^53 kg... so if the Higgs particle was the mass of a human, the sun would be ten thousand times more massive than the combined mass of the entire observable universe. I hope this gives you a sense of scale of just how small a Higgs particle is, or more importantly, just how big you are.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How much more advanced and safer is a nuclear power plant built today compared to one built in 1986? I was recently thinking about how much better computers have gotten in the past few decades, and wondered if nuclear power plants had improved along the same rate of improvement. I chose 1986 because of the Chernobyl incident, but I'm kind of talking about all types of nuclear power not just the Chernobyl type of reactor. (Also I'm surprised there isn't a Nuclear flair)<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Engineering? Chernobyl was based on a stupid reactor type that is not built any more. In addition the operators were actively overriding multiple safety rules and mechanisms - something that won't happen any more because we have an example how that can end. Another accident like Fukushima is not completely impossible if something really bad happens (like one of the most violent earthquakes and tsunamis in recorded history). Chernobyl will stay a unique event. It is very difficult and problematic to assign numbers to big accidents. They are so rare that there is not enough data to determine it experimentally.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Modern study of Philosophy is essentially worthless, and it is a very outdated practice to be a philosopher. EDIT: OK guys... There are a lot of good responses, and there are a lot of bad. A lot of you are saying that you don't know why I would possibly ask this since I said I'm a law student. You clearly have no idea what my view actually is... And if thats my fault, I'll look at my post when I get the chance and try to word it better. EDIT 2: There are a lot of replies, many of which are tearing apart other replies. If I don't reply to you, then I'm sorry, there's a lot here. But I'm still going to read everything. EDIT 3: I'd like to give a shoutout to /u/AgnosticKierkegaard for posting this to /r/badphilosophy (a circlejerk subreddit where people go to mock others for holding a different view), then in a number of comments being hostile towards me, judging me, mocking me, and trying to convince others that I am "incompetent" . It looks like many of these comments have been deleted either by him or the mods, but please, do not be this immature. It solves absolutely nothing, and will not change anyone's views. I chose to hide his top comment because someone that immature should not be a candidate for a delta. FINAL EDIT: I gave my delta, and I think it is a good idea at this point to delete everything I had. About half of you gave good replies, while the other half leaned more towards "I'm going to be hostile to convey my excellent argument!". I don't think that anymore replies are necessary. If you really want to tell me something, PM me.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant I think you're really missing the point of a theoretical field of study. And you're also attacking what is taught in introductory courses and then claiming that contemporary work in philosophy is worthless without knowing what people working in that field actually do. It's much like attacking how basic mathematics can be intuitive, who needs to go over addition so much, mathematicians must be pretty worthless if this is what they're working on. The basic things taught about arguments and fallacies are not what modern philosophers are working on. Those things, along with problems like Theseus’s ships, are introductory topics. As with other fields you must learn basic problems which introduce ideas and terminology before you can move into the more interesting complex problems. And work in those more interesting and complex problems, be they work in logic or another philosophical field, are providing benefits in computer systems, algorithms, math, linguistics, political policies, and interpretation of scientific research. You asked “what's the point of debating Theseus's ship, who's it helping”? Again, contemporary philosophers are not still debating Theseus's ship, but they may be arguing about a concept related to the one Theseus's ship addresses. For someone that goes on to study deeper philosophy courses it's important to know the history of where a concept came from and how it was changed over time. Philosophy, as with soft sciences like sociology and humanities like literature, isn't as much about “out with the old and keep the new” as it is in hard sciences. Many old concepts and arguments are kept so that you have a large pool of ideas to pull from. When you're trying to research something that is not quantifiable you need to be able to come at it from many different viewpoints. Psychology is a great example of this, how in studying a problem the same researcher may try thinking about it from a behaviorist perspective, or a functionalist perspective. Sociologists can look at a problem from a class perspective, or a feminist perspective, etc... The benefit of a student learning about Theseus's ship who isn't going on to study more philosophy, is to learn about the concepts the problem brings to light and open their mind to a new perspective. One might say that other fields can also open a student's mind to new ways of thinking, but that ignores that maybe there was a specific insight the class is trying to teach, not just any new concept. One might say that there are other problems or fields that demonstrate the same concept as Theseus's ship. But many older philosophical problems are very simple in a way that anyone can approach them. There isn't much prerequisite knowledge you need to hear and start thinking about the problem than if you were going to try and teach the problem using an example from say physics to demonstrate the problem. Then you'd need to define physics terms that are new to the listener before moving into the actual problem. The value of theoretical fields of study is to understand reality better, regardless of what you can then apply that knowledge to. However, generally a better understanding of reality will always have practical benefit in that it informs your decision making. In philosophy, when someone can make a good arguement with solid logical form, and no misrepresented or untrue premises, and it leads you to see a very basic truth as being unclear. It's not a novelty of language, it's a sign that there is a problem with your concept that needs to be worked out. Whether you find that there was a problem with the question, or it is the concept itself that was flawed you will have moved closer to understanding the world better. Historically, philosophy works out the concepts and others who have adopted the worldview of those new concepts bring the useful benefits. The Ship of Theseus problem (along with others) addresses concepts like identity and unity. Being able to break apart our intuitive assumptions of identity and unity are what inspire early thinkers to imagine atoms abstractly before they can even see them. Philosophers debate ideas of class, human nature, and rights, and later once culture has adopted the ideas do we get our human rights movements.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Feels like I've lost hours googling locations of publishing companies Elsevier is where again? And why doesn't it say in the book I'm trying to cite? And which one of the freaking Springer publishing companies do I need to cite? Are they in Wiesbaden or Berlin? Anyone else? What else are you googling constantly - or feels like that?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A reference manager like Zotero or Mendeley can often auto-fill some of those details for you-- punch in the ISBN and it figures the rest out. I haven't run into this issue in a long while, though, partly because common citation styles are starting to remove the publication location requirement. So double-check if you even need it. :)<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What, exactly is capitalism? I have googled it, trust me. I just don't understand it, no idea why. Can anybody help me out here? Edit: sorry about the comma in the title, lol.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Three main factors (simplified for this post) make capitalism: * private citizens own the businsses, not the government * goods are sold for profit, not given away at cost * markets decide the prices of things, not cartels or governments Now, as with most things in life, in practice not everything is black and white. Even in a "capitalist" nation like the USA, the government owns some businesses and sets some prices. Other nations like China may be in even more of a gray area. But these are the main factors.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user PhD Application without publication/thesis I am an international student (South Korea) who recently graduated from Imperial College London MEng Chem Eng. Although I have graduated with Masters degree (it is an undergraduate degree, 4 years program), I got no publication or proper thesis. I do have research experiences, doing UROP (undergraduate research opportunities programme) at Imperial College, but I am not sure if this would be a strong appeal. After this I wanted to apply to top US universities for PhD, but I was concerned whether I would be a strong candidate or not, so currently I am thinking of applying to MS as well. I got good GPA grades, but only got 2 letters of recommendation from academia, and 1 from non-academia. So my major concerns are: 1. No publication/thesis 2. Letter of recommendation, 1 from non-academia 3. Haven't directly contacted to any professor for PhD availability yet Would I have a chance to make it to top uni's PhD?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Many many people are accepted to PhD programs without publications, maybe more than 50% of candidates. Perhaps in top 5 worldwide Unis may be slightly lower proportion but most would be fine. Grades, experience, passion, and good communication will help your application a lot more.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How do Japanese keyboards work? I mean, if they have a symbol for every word as opposed to letters that make up words, doesn't that make a keyboard very difficult? In addition to this, how do they have books? I mean, obviously it's not going to be difficult for them to have books, but does that mean their books are much smaller than ours? A book of 100,000 words means they don't have, say, 500,000 little squiggles - doesn't it mean they have around 100,000?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant japanese language is a mix of an alphabet system (hiragana and katakana) and a idiogram (kanji) system. some words are written in idiogram, others in alphabet. all the words that are written in idiogram can be written in alphabet. when u type, u type in the alphabet system. software converts to kanji when appropriate. kind of how you can type :) into a chat program and it converts it to a yellow smiley face, even though a yellow smiley face isn't on your keyboard.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5:Why do tomato based foods stain tupperware?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Tomatoes contain a compound called lycopene that reflects light strongly in the red portion of the visible spectrum. The lycopene binds to the plastic in the container causing it to take on a reddish tint.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Pokemon Games] What stops someone from buying 100 rare candies and beating the Champion and rule the world? I'm basically asking what is stopping someone from carefully selecting a team and leveling it? Are the game mechanics and items just there for the players convenience or you really can teach Pokemon from CDs? And while we are at it why are Gyms usually specializing in type rather than stuff like speed and defense?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Rare candy's increase the level, but do not increase the bond with your Pokémon, nor does it give them the time and real experience to use their skills to their fullest, nor the trainer the same experience. Gyms running by type is more a community aspect than a function. They gather people of like mind, and temperament that understand the abilities and care of the type of Pokémon and truly love them. If they were based on speed, or defense then people would focus on only the "best" or "most powerful" Pokémon instead of the companions they love.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5:What is the exact mechanism by which an implosion of a dying star becomes an explosion?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant To understand supernovae you need to understand some basic gas laws and nuclear fusion. First of all the gas laws. Gas expands when you heat it up (see, hot air balloons). The reverse is also true: Compressing gas will heat it up. If you confine expanding gas, it has nowhere to go and it'll cause the pressure to rise. Now for the fusion. Fusion is what happens when you heat up a plasma to ridiculous temperatures and the nuclei begin to combine. For light elements this releases energy in the form of heat (actually radiation, but it'll be absorbed by the star and converted into heat). The crucial bit that allows supernovae to happen is that heavier cores cost energy to fuse. If you try to fuse anything heavier than iron you're bleeding away energy. So let's look at a heavy star. As it forms from its initial gas cloud gravity is essentially compressing the star. This heats it up and increases the pressure as per the gas laws. At some point the temperature and pressure are so big that hydrogen fusion begins. This dumps additional heat into the star to further increase the pressure and a balance forms. The extra energy from the fusion counteracts the force of gravity. The core of the star is the hottest bit, so fusion will be most intense there. This means that the core runs out of hydrogen pretty quickly. No hydrogen means no fusion, so the star will shrink and increase the temperatures. Higher temperatures allows helium fusion, which again counteracts the gravitational force. So now we have a core of helium fusion, surrounded by a shell of hydrogen fusion. This little game continues for several steps as the star burns through its elements. You get an onion like structure with the heaviest elements fusing in the core and shells of other types of fusion around it. This continues until the star reaches iron. Now the star has a problem, fusing iron does not produce energy but instead it consumes it. So the star builds up iron in its core and depletes its supply of fuel until a crucial point is reached where iron fusion starts. Now the balance is broken: the star shrinks a bit, the core heats up, iron starts to fuse, core cools down, star shrinks some more. This happens incredibly quick as the entire core collapses at a significant fraction of lightspeed. The core reaches ridiculous temperatures and ever more exotic elements are produced. This continues until the entire core is converted into neutrons and kept from collapsing by neutron degeneracy pressure (neutron star), or the collapse just never stops and you end up with a black hole. The supernova occurs because of the layers above the core. These contain elements that can still provide energy when fused. Normally this energy is released at a slow burn. But now the core is suddenly gone, and all these layers suddenly fall towards the center. When they collide against each other in the middle the resulting temperatures causes runaway fusion reactions in these light elements. This energy is what fuels the supernova. The spike in energy is much bigger than the gravitational binding energy of the entire star and it tears itself apart. The outer layers blast off at a significant fraction of the speed of light to form a nebula, leaving behind the remains of the core.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How to avoid "wasting" a year if I don't get in any of the Ph.D. programmes I applied for? I am in the process of applying to four programmes, one in Italy, one in Norway and two in the UK, and patiently waiting for May's intake to go bug another couple of institutions. In the while, I am trying to get a driving license, begging for the occasional part-time gig (the job market in my country is awful) and planning to do "half a Master" in order to gain a more specific Advanced Diploma related to my field. This is perfectly fine for a year, but I have to admit that my relative's "when are you gonna get a real job" mantra is happily feeding into my "what if nobody wants me" paranoia that yes, is happily sticking around, no matter how many reassurances I throw myself and the others. So, what if I just end up with a pile of rejections? How to better my chances for the next round? I keep considering that second master, partly because I want to gain a better specialization (my Anthropology Mphil could be seen as a bit generic) and partly because, well... I just really like to study. I am open to advice :) Edit: Grammar stuff. Seems like I can't use touchscreens.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant I'd also apply for research assistant positions. They advance your chances of getting in to a PhD programme, and would make you better prepared for that programme when you do get in. To find these, you can either email people you're interested in working with and see if they are looking for research assistants, or can go to your local universities' websites and looking for RA posts. It's not a real job maybe in the sense that your family would like (i.e. high-paying), but it might be enough to ease their minds?<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Big Hero 6] Question about Dr. Callaghan (full spoilers) I'm utterly confused about Dr. Callaghan's plan and his approach towards executing it. When he was walking around the science expo, was he prepared to steal a piece of tech that could successfully destroy Krei, and was he fully committed to fake his own death at a moment's notice? He didn't know Hiro was going to bring tech that could be a powerful weapon. When he got dressed for that evening event, what was going through his mind? Did he have the building rigged to explode, or did he have some convenient device that could quickly start an inferno so intense that he would stand no chance of being rescued? Did firefighters not find it odd that they couldn't find his body afterwards? Even more confusing, if Callaghan was so absolutely consumed by his hatred for Krei, why didn't he just wait for him to arrive that night and stab him from behind? Or do the same thing months earlier? He obviously had the means to rig a building for either a fire or an explosion very quickly. Why didn't he just get a tour of Krei's new building and explode it? You might say that Callaghan wanted to kill Krei in a method that would guarantee his anonymity, but one could easily argue that the plan he chose was far less anonymous than the stab-in-the-back technique. For one, tens of thousands of people in Sanfrantokyo would have recorded the masked Callaghan, and dozens of respectable, trustworthy students and professionals would later come forward and say that the only place they saw that tech before was at an expo in which only two people died: Tadashi Hamada and Robert Callaghan. Even if the police didn't make this connection, however, after Callaghan successfully executed his plan it's not like he could just stroll back onto campus. He also had an insufficient number of microbots to execute his plan, and had to manufacture more. With this in mind, why didn't he just steal Hiro's idea at his leisure, and then produce the microbots in secret? He would then have an alibi and not have to incur the obvious risks of trusting a brand new technology to save his life in a broiling inferno. If this was a crime of passion, perhaps sparked by Callaghan unexpectedly running into Krei, all it would've taken for Callaghan to enact his plan is to steal the neurotransmitter and a handful of microbots, and he already had access to both of these. If killing Krei using the poetic justice of the Stargate was absolutely essential to his plan, it still doesn't explain why he didn't just ramp up manufacturing in his free time. Also, withdrawing money from your ATM and purchasing manufacturing equipment tends to raise eyebrows when you're supposed to be dead. (And stealing it is perhaps even riskier.)<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Consider this theory: Callaghan's entire plan (burn down expo, steal microbots, manufacture microbots, bring down Krei) was all accidental and ad-hoc. Callaghan had (mostly) moved on with his life. He was a successful professor, running a very popular program at a prestigious school. This is not the life of a man bent on revenge. He sees Hiro, young, with lots of spirit and potential, and he has just invented a rather spectacular, world-changing, invention. Then in walks Krei (obviously uninvited). Krei makes a bee-line for Hiro: he wants those microbots. While Callaghan calmly deflects Krei, the entire exchange had to make him wonder. He knows (or at least believes) Krei will do whatever is necessary to get those microbots. He also might be worried that Hiro will eventually cave to pressure. The microbots are a great invention but they can't fall into the hands of a man like Krei; more people will just die. He has to destroy them. Be begins trying to destroy them when something goes wrong. A fire starts and he can't contain it. He manages to survive/escape but then realizes that Tadashi died trying to save him. He's distraught. But rather than accept blame for his reckless actions, he blames Krei. This is all Krei's fault. Once again Krei has robbed him of someone whom he cared for. Krei must be stopped. Not just stopped, but publicly exposed. Not just Krei, but his entire enterprise. But how? As he stands among the rubble of the rubble of the expo he looks down into his clenched fist and opens it: Inside is a microbot.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What is the best way to prepare myself for getting into grad school and eventually doing a PH.d? I am going back to school this fall for Computer Science. I am roughly halfway through my degree although it will be around 2-3 years or so before I can actually graduate. A part of me has always been interested in going on to grad school and maybe getting a doctorate in the field, or a related field. What should I do to put myself in such a position after i get my bachelors, to move on to grad school and doctorate?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant You should put yourself in such a position during your bachelors by doing publishable research with a professor, building relationships with faculty, and getting good grades in advanced classes. Once you're out of school, the scope of things you can do to improve your chances is severely limited.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Lovecraft] Cthulhu is a priest of Azathoth. Why does the "blind idiot god", who isn't even conscious of the world, need priests?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are two portions to this answer: the first part is that azathoth's worshippers are largely interested in keeping him asleep/placated. If disturbed, he can pretty much just destroy the universe in a fit of rage and confusion. The second part is that we just don't know what other motivations the gods may have. The great old ones, and even more so the outer gods, are totally unknowable to humanity. They are so far beyond our minds that just seeing them drives people insane. We could never understand their logic or their motivations.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why isn't lead poisoning a more urgent priority? If there's no safe level of exposure, and the effects of lead poisoning are permanent, why isn't it eradicated?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The effort to remove trace lead from the environment is hampered by two problems: A: you'd have to replace all the plant matter and soil along every mile of highway with virgin plants and soil (same with every piece of land that had a house with lead paint, or is near a factory that spewed lead), and B: the methods of removing lead are either cheap, or easy, or less toxic than the lead. But not all three. Often not even two of three. There's also C: Idiots who bought the propaganda line promulgated for decades by industry-bought "Science-ishts" that lead can be safe.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What is the theoretical height-limit of a building using modern materials and engineering methods?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Modern materials come into play if you want to build a roughly cylindrical structure like a skyscraper. But you can build a very, very tall building with primitive materials if you use a lot of them. Imagine a tapering cone, where the radius decreases rapidly with height so that the amount of material at each level is proportional to the weight of the material above it. With such a shape, you could build it a structure out of stone and still make it arbitrarily high, up until the earth's crust starts to sink under it. Mount Everest is a small example of what could be done given a sufficient budget.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Is it okay for an undergrad to write a letter/communicate to the department that they support a professor who is up for tenure? Greetings all. I have just completed an undergrad thesis with a faculty member of my department. The professor is up for tenure next year and I'd like to show my support if it would help; this professor is liked by all the grad students, helped me out a lot, supported me when I needed support and pushed me when I needed to be pushed. I don't know that anything I have to say would be taken seriously by the committee since I am only an undergrad but would it help, or should I just stay out of it? Thanks.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant What you can do most to support the professor is to write a letter now to the Chair or Dean saying how much you learned from the professor and what a great mentor he (or she) is. Keep it away from the tenure decision/dossier because you do not want there to be even a hint that it was solicited. The Dean or Chair can always suggest to the faculty member that they include the letter in their packet if the administrator thinks it will help their case.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user I rinse my fruit and veggies and pat them dry. are they really clean or is this just theatre?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Rinsing fresh fruits and vegetables is a good idea for getting rid of dirt. I'll let others handle the discussion of how it likely doesn't remove pesticides. Just make sure not to rinse them ahead of time--only just before eating. Many leafy plants wilt from getting wet after they've been picked.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Does evolution opt for lifespan? Is there any reason why evolution would cause variances in life span? I guess I’m just curious why there are discrepancies in the lifespans of organisms. If it inevitably rids the gene pool of disease and defects, should lifespans continually expand over time? Thank you in advance.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Organisms just have to be alive long enough to reproduce and depending on species also do "community stuff" (like e.g. care for young). That's like the general rule of thumb. There are also factors like for example metabolism. The higher the metabolic rate, the more things like oxidative stress occur, muscles get damaged, dna gets damaged, etc. So the shorter those will live, unless they also develop mechanisms to repair such damage again in order to be alive long enough to reproduce.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How can polls be representative if only the kinds of people willing to talk to pollsters respond? I'm pretty sure if I got a call asking me to participate in a poll or survey, I'd just hang up. My friends and family say the same.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A good poll accounts for this--there is data available on the kinds of people that are likely to respond to polls, and the pollster should weight the results to be more representative of the population polled. For example, many polls undersample young people, so giving more weight to the young people who did respond (considering their proportion of the population) corrects this bias. This is one reason that it is very important to check a poll's methodology before considering the results. A poll that is poorly conducted is worthless. Since it is political polling season, it is worth noting that even the best of polls are bad indicators of how people will vote--people say one thing, but when they are in the voting booth it is often quite something else. Hence why so many in the Republican field are hoping for a primary win despite polling low.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Do usbc devices "pull" just the wattage they need from the charger, or does the charger "push" all the power it can?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The device sets the amount of current drawn, and the power supply determines the volt-amps allowed for the circuit. Cell phone chargers are often found in multiples of 5 watts (volt-amps = watts). 5 volts at 1 Amp is 5W (slow charger). 5 volts at 2 amps is 10W (fast charger).<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Is it possible for a mutagenic agent to cause a beneficial mutation?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Theoretically, yes, and this is partly how novel traits emerge over time. In general though, most mutations are harmful and any agent which introduces many mutations is very likely to have a harmful effect on the organism.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Question: fully vaccinated + catch covid19 == booster dose? Since a few weeks we read about more and more fully vaccinated people catch COVID, often mild cases. I wonder what effect this has on the immune system of the affected people. I am specifically thinking about the group of people who become ill enough to notice symptoms and get tested, but not enough to end up needing treatment in a hospital or ICU. Could the effect in them be similar to a booster shot, or even a variant-specific booster? Has this been studied already, or are there any studies in progress?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In theory you're right, exposure to SARS2 is in some ways equivalent to a booster dose. Whatever spike specific T and B cells you had should expand and, if you happened to catch one of the variants, your antibodies will probably adapt to that variant. There havent been any studies that ive seen, its too soon really. Right now we are learning that vaccinated people can still catch and spread the virus, and that the infection can be symptomatic. 3-6 months from now we will be able to look at those people and compare their antibody, B and T cells to those of people who got the vaccine but avoided the virus. It should be noted that we still dont really know what constitutes "better immunity". High antibody titers seems like it would be good, but there is little indication that antibodies are very important for protection. People who arent able to mount an effective B cell response arent getting more sick, its T cells that are the key.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why did point-to-aim videogame light guns die out in the transition from CRT televisions? I'm vaguely familiar with the nature of how light guns used to work, a patterned flash-frame that the gun used to calculate where it was pointing. I'm also vaguely familiar with what light guns have to do nowadays in order to mimic that former behaviour with Wii-esque reference lights and an IR sensor. What I don't understand is, what is inherently different about television technology now that the system that used to exist is no longer possible. Is it a matter of resolution, that the pattern would now be ineffective? Is it that CRT used to be the standard, but now it could be a variety of technologies and having no keystone standard makes coming up with a new trick impossible? Is there any hope to getting back to point-to-aim light guns, or are we sticking with drag-to-aim cursor guns from here on out?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant CRTs work by having an electron beam light up the phosphor of the screen. The electron beam can only light up one pixel at a time. That lit up dot scans across the screen one scanline at a time all the way down the screen to form an image. It happens so fast that you don't see it happening. The light gun has a very narrow view of the screen, and by measuring when it sees the brightness spike within the 60th of a second that it takes to refresh the screen, it can tell where on the screen it is pointing. LCDs don't flicker like that. Every pixel is always on, so it wouldn't work to look for a brightness spike to calculate where the gun is pointing. The Wii uses a very different technique.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) How does it work? Most other explanations I found weren't too 'explanatory'... Pls halp<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Consider that the majority of your body is composed of water. MRIs rely on that fact. Now imagine an MRI machine as a giant magnet with an image capture device. Once you are placed inside of it, the magnet is turned on. This sends a bunch of energy into the water, and causes all of the water molecules in your body to rotate out of whatever position they were in and change into another orientation. Then the magnet is turned off. Now all of the water reverts to its original position and releases that energy placed into it by the magnet. Now the MRI machine absorbs that released energy into an image capture device and forms a picture based on the location of that water. The details of the image made of your body are produced because the water in certain tissues releases its energy at different speeds. Edit: MRIs are extremely safe as long as there is no metal in the room, which will be attracted to the powerful magnet. Also, unlike x-rays and cat scans, they do not increase your risk of cancer because they do not use ionizing radiation. Edit 2: This is a very ELI5 explanation -- there are more complete ones elsewhere in this thread.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Eli5 how inbreeding causes the offspring have a higher change if developing genetic disorders<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Genes can be dominant or recessive. If you have two variants of a gene and one is dominant then only the dominant will be active. Recessive genes are more commonly negative effects, as people can carry the gene without getting it's effect it isn't sorted out as efficiently by evolution. If you have offspring with closely related people then the chance that your problematic recessive genes match up with an unproblematic dominant one is lower. So you have GOOD/bad and your sibling has GOOD/bad in the same location then there is a 25% chance your kid gets the bad/bad combination. For remotely related people that is less likely because the bad genes will rarely be in the same position to meet up.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Is there a comprehensive, CS-oriented book of common mathematical functions and operations and ways they can be implemented? Let me first preface this question by saying I am not exactly sure what it is I am after. I am looking for a book (or, generally, an overview) collating some mathematical operations and functions (and the algorithms that give them) and different ways they can be evaluated, computed, approximated and implemented. For example, in discussing trigonometric funcions, it would give series expansions that one could use to calculate the sine and cosine. I am not looking for something like Eagle & Durand's Handbook of Mathematical Functions, and maybe not even the NIST Handbook of Mathematical Functions; is there an equivalent to NIST's handbook that approaches the algorithms and functions from a more CS or programming-oriented standpoint?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There is a book called Matters Computational - Ideas, Algorithms, Code which more or less seems to fit the description of what you're after. It covers some clever ways to implement various common mathematical operations from simple arithmetic operations like exponentiation to things like Fourier transforms. The book features example code written in a small, C-like subset of C++.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Tactful way to say that someone's published paper is wrong Last year, I became aware that a very high profile, highly cited paper in my field had a rather elementary math error in it that had a significant influence on its results and the author's extrapolation of them. It's not too obvious (because it doesn't seem like anyone else has noticed as of yet) but anyone I point it out to immediately understands and agrees that the paper is flawed. I ended up doing a similar analysis to what the author had done, but with more data and more sophisticated methods, and reached entirely different conclusions. Now I'm in the process of writing a manuscript on my findings. So, essentially, I need to point out this rather striking math error and mention that the previous paper is incorrect. But, I'd like to do this in as tactful a way as possible. I know the author, whose interests are similar to my own, and I certainly don't want to alienate them or come across as condescending. Any advice? Examples of specific verbage that might convey a mistake in a polite way would be very helpful.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant 1. Do a literature review on that paper. 2. Publish your own findings 3. Profit There is no tact in academia. We eat each other for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on daily basis. If you don't have time for a new paper, then you can write a review article on it. Seriously, if you don't point it out, someone else will sooner or later, and that person is going to profit.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How do nuclear missile submarines receive orders from the president to launch a nuke while underwater?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant When deep, an ELF signal can be used to tell them to come up for further info. Extremely Low Frequency signals are very constrained, so it would take a long time to send/receive a more detailed message. But once they come up to a shallower depth, they can deploy a floating wire antenna that floats on or near the surface, and can get much higher-bandwidth signals for more details. Of course, they could also surface, but with the floating wire antenna they don't have to.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How does what we eat and drink eventually become so much different stuff like skin, brain cells, hormones etc.? Are our fingernails really just remnants of dinners gone by?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant What we eat is essentially building blocks for our body. When we digest the food, our body breaks the pieces apart into individual blocks. Our body then reassembles the building blocks in a different order to create the parts it needs. Some of the food is used as energy for this reassembly to occur. But yes, you are essentially made out of the food that you eat.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How can encryption methods be open source? I was reading about the signal protocol and saw it has a github page. Doesn't this mean anyone can figure out how the encryption works and break it?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It is a generally accepted security precept that "The enemy knows the system." That is, when you are designing an encryption algorithm (or any security measure) that you assume the enemy knows its design. You assume that, eventually, an adversary will get a hold of the algorithm and therefore A) you cannot rely on the secrecy of the algorithm for security; and B) your algorithm should be secure despite general awareness of it. The strength of encryption methods lies in the keys (and, for asymmetric methods, the inherent mathematical difficulty of reversing the encryption process). For example, the most secure encryption method, the One Time Pad (OTP) has an extremely simplistic algorithm. ALL of the security is invested in how the key is created, used, and kept secret.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Access to information has dramatically reduced the value of a university education. Universities used to hold a monopoly on information. If you wanted to understand a concept about history, math, science, philosophy, etc, you either needed to attend a lecture and have it explained, or go to the university library and use research skills to pour over books until you gathered enough information yourself. Now, a lot of this information is available with a simple YouTube or Google search. For many undergraduate classes, there are renowned experts who post their lectures online for free. If an online explanation of a concept is insufficient, and you want to find the right books to read, you can simply search "best books on X". I understand there is still value if you go to an elite school. Personal access to experts, etc. There is also value in attending a university if you need to become familiar with certain expensive materials or machinery that you would not be able to otherwise access. But aside from that, I don't see many benefits when it comes to becoming educated. I believe that, for the most part, diplomas have become luxury items, with value placed on the label instead of on the quality of the item itself.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant One of the biggest values you're missing is the overall university experience - that is, an immersion in the environment of higher learning. You can certainly be an autodidact at home via your own research and the internet. But it's a far cry from actually dedicating four years of your life to living at a place of learning, surrounded by people who are either similarly dedicated to learning, or dedicated to teaching. The lectures are one aspect of a university's value, yes, but what about the ability to demonstrate your proficiency in a subject? What about putting your own ideas out there and having them scrutinized and dissected by both your peers and your professor? Working with and against your peers, learning what other people are learning, learning outside of class simply by being surrounded by diverse but like-minded people... To me, all that is what makes it an education, as opposed to just training.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Humans and chimpansees diverged some 6 million years ago. This was calculated using the molecular clock. How exactly was this calculation made? Please be very specific but understandable to laymen. I want to understand how divergence dates are estimated by use of a specific example.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Molecular Clock Hypothesis tries to estimate how far apart organisms are evolutionarily by means of using specific proteins. Some proteins, such as cytochrome c (present in almost all organisms) seem to have a fairly consistent time between neutral mutations, meaning that if most mutations are neutral (have no effect on fitness), and if they occur at more or less regular intervals, you can estimate how many new mutations you should see in a generation. Thus, by measuring the number of mutations in that protein from the time when two now distinct species had the same or very similar versions of these proteins, one can theoretically estimate the time these species diverged. There are several limitations of this process, like fossil prevalence, generation time and metabolic rate, among others. So while it may not be a perfect process, it's not without its uses.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why are people with down syndrome almost always obese? Why do we never see any jacked Down syndrome people? Do they have a genetic condition where they put on weight easier than others? If it is a genetic condition couldn't something be done to counteract the weight gain? Hypothetically could someone with down syndrome, following an intense workout program and strict diet, ever become a bodybuilder?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Down syndrome comes with a number of less obvious physical limitations beisdes mental retardation and the characteristic facial features. In general, they have very poor muscle tone (hypotonia), as babies they are typically floppy, and this continues to adulthood. This doesn't necessarily preclude them becoming a body builder, but they do not start out on the same level as an unaffected person. Heart problems are very common, as are underactive thyroids and predisposition towards certain leukemias. Heart problems can limit their ability to work out at a high intensity, and thyroid issues can lower their metabolic rate. Again, these are things that can be managed, but they still act as roadblocks. It is not as much of an issue now, but in the past - encouraging children with Down Syndrome to exercise would not have been considered. There were many physicians and caregivers who didn't give much consideration to their overall quality of life. This is an attitude which is thankfully changing.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Is there any literature on the metaphysics of how does the 'self' change in intimate relationships? I think relationships can have an influence on 'self', I was wondering if there is any material on how does that influence manifest itself in the short run vs long run? A sample material would define what is influence, what is intimacy, not just dictionary or psychological definitions but rather how they arrived at that definition of it as a phenomenon. For example: I'd say influence is a phenomenon of domination, a moment of psychological defeat, where one gives away or shares the agency over a fraction of the territory of 'self' to the influencer. This way the influencer gains more intimacy and power over the one he is influencing. A relationship is a shared ground and the one who is more influential would have more say in other person's life. The more influential a person is to one, the more their thoughts the person starts to accept as his own which in turn replaces their original notion of their own 'self' and influences their self-image, identity etc. My notion is pretty vague but pretty much that's the kind of stuff I'm looking for to read in depth. Thanks.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Yes! Although interestingly enough in your post you've already started using some of the technical vocabulary in the field. Levinas was a really important philosopher, known mostly for his 'phenomenology of the other' which he developed across several major works. A phenomenology of the other considers how the other (especially for Levinas, another human being) appears to us in consciousness. In this, he describes the difference between the 'sites' or 'territories' of the Self and the Other as being in constant exchange during the face-to-face encounter. He devotes a lot of time in Totality and Infinity to reflecting on how the 'face' of the Other reconfigures when it is presented as love. He views love as being something of a surrender of the Self's site to the Other - for this he uses the phrase 'to cease apology'. We can only imagine that by this he means 'apology' as Apologia, the Greek word for 'defence' (specifically against accusations e.g. in a legal case). That love is the cessation of apology seems to mean: in love, we no longer fortify the site of Self and defend it against the approach of the Other; we open up ourselves to them and allow them to totalize the site of the Self (generating an experience he calls 'diachrony'). He also speaks of love as an 'incestuous' relation. It seems like by this he means that love begins when the Self recognizes a 'belonging' in the Other, such that they are from the Same. That is, despite the radical Otherness of the Other, we detect ourselves in them. There are some ways of reading just what's going on here in his phenomenology: it could be that he means something like 'the relation of love occurs only when the Self sees it-self in the Other without looking for it', so that it's a natural belonging. This reading is of course debatable, but it's good as an introduction to his phenomenology. Hope this helps!<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: how do scientists determine the density of something like a planet or moon?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Density is the amount of mass in relation to the volume of the object. They can tell the volume of the object by looking at it ("you can tell by the way it is"), and the mass can be deduced by looking at the orbital distance and speed, and how it impacts other objects of better known mass.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Can we have knowledge of something, without knowing that we have knowledge of it? This question was prompted by a brief exchange I had with a user [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/pdyj02/if_a_replica_of_me_were_to_come_into_existence/hatrw6b/), where they said that philosophers generally think that the truth/falsity of physicalism (as a relevant example) is something they have knowledge about. I was taken aback by this notion, as I previously took philosophers to generally just think that their position is correct -- not that they take themselves to have knowledge of it, especially in light of the ongoing debate on the issue. Taking the user I briefly exchanged with at their word, I realized that perhaps I have a misconception about what it means to think we can have knowledge of something. I've realized that perhaps I took the notion that a philosopher has knowledge that physicalism is false entails that they have meta-knowledge that they have knowledge of it. Using the JTB construal of knowledge, let's say, for instance, that a philosopher (a) believes that physicalism is false, (b) has justification for this belief, and (c) physicalism is actually false. In this case, we would say that they have knowledge that physicalism is false, right? However, would we also say that they simultaneously don't know that they have this knowledge. After all, they could be wrong, in that physicalism may turn out to be true, and many other philosophers believe that they have justification for their belief that physicalism is true, in which case the people holding the contrary view would have knowledge. So is there some delineation between having knowledge on, say, the truth of physicalism, and having meta-knowledge that you have knowledge on the matter, in light of the possibility that we all know that we may, in fact, be wrong, in that our justified belief may actually end up being false. To sum up my thoughts -- it seems that many of us may have knowledge about things, like physicalism, without having meta-knowledge that we have this knowledge. Is this generally how it's conceived here when we talk about knowledge? If anyone could help me parse this out, I'd appreciate it -- thanks.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Hintikka's classic book on epistemic logic defends what's called the KK thesis: if S knows that p, S knows that knows that p. Timothy Williamson has an argument that is regarded by many (but not all!) to be decisive against the KK thesis, called the anti-luminosity argument. Call a mental state luminous iff being in it is enough to put you in a position to know that you're in it. Suppose you feel cold at dawn, and let's say being cold is a luminous state. You aren't aware of any changes over one millisecond. So, plausibly, given those assumptions, this holds: if you are cold at t, you know that you are cold at t+1. Suppose you know at noon that you are hot. That's going to contradict what is said above (obviously, assuming that you can't be hot and cold at the same time). Hence, being cold isn't a luminous state - and analogous arguments show this for other states. Of course, this isn't uncontroversial, but it's certainly influential. It's one of the reasons people reject the KK thesis. If you're curious about reading more, searching for stuff on the KK thesis is likely to be a good place to start. Hope this helps!<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user When people typically die from poisons or toxins that work as inhibitors for vital enzymes (ex. cyanide), how does a relatively small concentration of the poison/toxin completely disrupt a much larger network of enzymes so quickly? For instance I am familiar that cyanide poisoning works by permanently inhibiting cytochrome C oxidase for example. But when someone ingests a tiny capsule of cyanide, it is enough to affect enough of the enzymes so quickly that the person dies instantly. How is this possible? First of all, isn't there way more cytochrome C oxidase enzyme molecules in the body compared to the cyanide molecules in the capsule? Even if it is very readily absorbed, by these enzymes, wouldn't the reaction taper off at some point being that the cyanide would be the limiting factor? Or do these molecules work by denaturing the enzymes and then detaching and moving on to the next enzyme?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It has a lot to do with relative concentration. Lets say you take in a gram of cyanide and it all gets into your blood. You have about 5 liters of blood at any time, and cyanide has a molecular weight of about 27 g/mol. Therefor your blood becomes about 7.5 mM cyanide. Cyanide is an irreversible enzyme inhibitor-- once it complexes with cytochrome C oxidase it inhibits it forever. Now consider the number of cytochrome C oxidase enzymes in a body- lets lay maybe 1000/mitochondria so maybe ~50000/cell * 60 trillion cells -- on the order of 10^18 enzymes in your body. We just calculated though that the number of cyanide molecules was on the order of 10^22-- if we look at it as a ratio cytochrome c oxidase is 0.000005 as concentrated as cyanide. That means that the rate limiting steps are the diffusion rates of the cyanide from the stomach to the blood, blood to intersticium, intersticum to cell interior, and cell interior to mitochondria, etc. That's a very rough calculation, but you get the idea that in fact inhibitor is in far excess of enzyme.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How does a person's body decide where fat is stored? I understand that some people have a high metabolism and can just burn it all off. But other people can carry all their fat in their mid-section, where others have it more dispersed in other regions of their body.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant One of the major factors is hormones. High levels of estrogen, for example, increase fat storage in the thigh, butt, breast, and upper arm regions. High levels of cortisol increase fat storage in the belly. Testosterone is a fat repellent, especially in the thigh and hips area. People with higher levels of testosterone metabolize fat better than those with lower testosterone levels. Your body's hormone levels are a combination of genetics, lifestyle, environmental, and even pathological influences.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why does the US have huge cities in the desert? Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Phoenix, etc. I can understand part of the appeal (like Las Vegas), and it's not like people haven't lived in desert cities for millenia, but looking at them from Google Earth, they're absolutely massive and sprawling. How can these places be viable to live in and grow so huge? What's so appealing to them?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Phoenix began as a farming and mining community, but it grew on the strength of industrial development during and after World War II. Albuquerque is primarily industrial thanks to a neighboring military base, with military development providing the same sort of seed. Vegas was a mix of industrial development (also thanks to the Air Force), proximity to the Hoover Dam, and legalized gambling in Nevada (which helped it become an entertainment hub). In more modern times: land. Those areas (well, Vegas and Phoenix; Albequerque less so) have vast tracts of open, unused land around them that allows those cities to grow and expand very cheaply, unlike cities near the coast (particularly cities on the west coast, which are all surrounded by mountainous areas). That results in a low cost of living and doing business, which attracts businesses fleeing higher cost of living in coastal cities like New York or San Francisco.<\|im_end\|>

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