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<\|im_start\|>user If mankind were to become roaming galactic nomads forced to live aboard giant spaceships, as Hawking believes, how would the structure of civilisation change?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It depends on the scope of the universe. If there is enough competition for resources, certain vessels may even attempt to attack others, in order to salvage from the wreck. If that is the case, those in the highest position of power may take their power from some sort of defensive presence, like the classic tribal hierarchy.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [The Culture or other post-scarcity utopias] How are raw materials secured and how is growth managed to prevent such a post-scarcity civilization from overrunning the universe in search of said raw materials?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In the Culture specifically, they have solved all of their energy requirements through a combination of antimatter and grid energy (energy siphoned off from the medium between universes), which is for all intents and purposes limitless. They are able to manipulate energy at such a file level that they can read a human mind from light-years away. They generally don't, but they could. They can also transform matter into new states. For example, if a Culture vessel is going into battle, it might reformat the bulk of its mass into propulsion or weapons systems, and then undo this after the battle. So basically, limitless energy gives them all the building blocks they need, and their technology then allows them to create whatever else they need, essentially from scratch.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user how to know if a career in research is right for you? I'm currently an undergrad studying biomedical science. I have the choice at the moment to either continue biomedical science at a different university in Sweden which is a lot better in the field and so go into research I presume, or to try and get into medical school (which I've heard it doesn't really matter where you do that). I could also change degrees entirely. I have no idea what I want to do, and I've never really done research before, how do you know if academia is the right path?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant You should try it - probably volunteer at your university during the academic year or in summer - try to get into a summer research program such as Amgen scholars if you will still be eligible. But it seems in your case it may be easier to decide if medicine is right for you - e.g., how do you feel about making quick life-and-death decisions? and quality-of-life priorities, such as are you more interested in being able to work almost anywhere in your country of studies (medical doctors are needed everywhere, biomedical researchers in a smaller number of places) or in being able to work in other developed countries (that's typically extra difficult for medical doctors but common in research careers with non-human research subjects)? If it is, you probably should go to medical school, medical doctors are needed in larger numbers and more vitally. "Even" dentists and veterinarians. BTW as a medical doctor you can still end up doing research (though probably of a different kind, on people, such as clinical trials).<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What does Heidegger mean by Dasein having a "Vorontologischer Begriff des Seins?" Heidegger frequently argues that dasein has a pre-ontological or pre-phenomenological understanding of being, but what does this mean? Does Dasein already operate with an understanding of das Sein selbst? But how is this possible? And does this have anything to do with dasein's nature as Existenz and it's Existenzialen? Heidegger attempts to search for the apriori conditions of experience and any conception of the subject, and he begins with dasein which is ontologically prior and analyses it's structures of it's being (Sorge etc) which ground any ontic approaches to the world or the subject. These ontological Existenzialen are more primary and closer to being, right? So does he think that from these concepts he'll get to Dasein's pre-ontological understanding?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Heidegger's method is understood to be "hermeneutical", that means trying to gain understanding of something that has meaning, and it has meaning because someone created it as being meaningful - therefore this someone himself already would have an understanding of this meaning. Therefore you could argue that "hermeneutics" is the art of interpreting not the meaning of something, but the creators understanding of it. In other words: You can only try to understand what has already been understood. Therefore Heidegger claims that in order to understand the meaning of being, we have to assume that there's already an understanding of being prior to our project of explicitly understanding it. And since we as a particular being are able to ask the question of "what is the meaning of being itself", we already would have this kind of prior understanding, even though we can't express it yet. And there's the difference between "ontological" and "pre-ontological": The project of "ontology" as a "-logy" is according to Heidegger "to make visible", or to express something explicitly. There's a pre-ontological understanding as in: it is lived, but not expressed explicitly (through language, respectively). The pre-ontological understanding does not have the form of a shared language. The "pre-" in "pre-ontological" therefore refers to the "-logical" part of "ontological". Therefore the project of ontology is to transform this non-spoken, non-expressive understanding into a spoken, expressive, explicit understanding. Which is according to Heidegger a very hard task because language (as the medium of the being of "Man") tends to distract us, it tends to conceal more than it reveals. Therefore he realizes his "ontology" through the means of what he calls "formal indication": expressing the understanding of being itself in a way that it doesn't fully replace our pre-ontological understanding with a fully developed ontological understanding. Rather, it is being expressed only as far as it helps us to get in touch with our own pre-ontological understanding through experiencing it more vividly and more consciously.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why doesn't intel increase the size of the processor to make it faster? We're trying techniques to make transistors smaller, but would a 1 square meter processor outperform what we have now at the same transistor size? Edit: I'm learning something new with every answer, great sub, thanks a lot.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Several factors: * Job 1 is making money, and bigger processors cost more (and you can't necessarily charge more for them) * Most of the die is not logic anyway - it's cache. You could make processors bigger now, and just not have so much cache (or have fewer processors, since most are 2 or 4 cores per die) * Bigger processors are less power efficient, and everyone is on a power efficiency kick right now * A new (and bigger) design carries a fair amount of risk - you spend a few hundred million dollars, and it might not work as expected. Plus, if it's really bad, you have no new product for the next cycle.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why is dietary advice constantly changing and contradictory? Fat was once the enemy now it apparently isn't, sugar is the demon, eat lot's of carbs/cut out carbs, X is the new wonderfood, never eat Y, eat red meat/go vegan... With so much advance in our understanding of the human body surely there should be a recognised standard?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Nutrition studies are very hard to do precisely, due to the amount of confounding factors, length of time required, small sample sizes and more. All these details get completely ignored by the media, who instead will print whatever new results have come out that gets them a nice headline<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Eli5. How its possible for the light to travel constantly with out stop slowing down from the most old galaxies?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Light is special because it has no mass and always travels at, well, the speed of light. This is one of its fundamental properties due to the laws of physics. You can’t really compare light to say, a spaceship, because it’s just not the same thing. But almost anything can move long distances in space without slowing down. By default, things continue moving at the same speed they’re already moving unless something acts to slow them. On Earth, everything needs to fight air resistance or water resistance or friction with the ground to keep moving. But in space there’s nothing to bump into (at least it’s very rare to hit something) so if you do nothing, you keep moving.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5- how do scientists know that a particular species' (panda, turtle, sharks, tigers) population is getting extinct?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant They do studies to see how many of that animal there are in certain areas, and try to extrapolate outward from there. For example, if you know pandas can only live in bamboo forest, and you survey some random bamboo forest and find 1 panda per square mile, and you know there's only 100 square miles of bamboo forest left, you can make a guess that there probably aren't much more than 100 pandas.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How much energy does it take a bird to flap its wings during flight? Is it equivalent to humans walking/running? Oh wow. Thanks for all the amazing answers and follow up questions. For science!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It varies by the type of flight and the species of bird. Most flight is energetically expensive, at least on a calorie per second basis. Gliding is very efficient, especially with favorable thermals. Some birds can fly for hours without a single flap. This is roughly analogous to you standing on a bicycle while rolling down a hill. You could probably do it all day, but it's going to be tiring and make you sore. From there, you have migratory birds which can fly large distances at high speeds. That is roughly equivalent to a brisk walk or light jog for you. After that, it's a sliding scale of flight becoming more and more energy intensive. As a good rule of thumb the more agile a bird is, the more energy it needs to spend to stay airborne. This peaks with the hummingbird, which burns a staggering amount of calories staying airborne. It's also worth noting that taking off is generally the most taxing part of flight for any bird.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Philosophy, what is it and why do people study it? ELI4<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant What is philosphy? If you were to take a course an Intro to Philosophy course in college, you would learn about major schools of thought regarding human purpose, ethics, and rationality. The foundation of most of today's philosophy is based in Greek Philosophy -- the ideas of ancient philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Socrates. Their timeless writings are still relevant and debated to this day. Their work has been built upon for many years and have gone in many different directions. Some of these schools of thought are in direct conflict with one another, such as utilitarianism (the ends justify the means) and deontology (the ends do NOT justify the means; it is about the best moral choice). ~~Philosophy is considered a "soft" science, similar to sociology. This is different from a "hard" science like biology or physics because it deals in intangible social issues: things that are difficult to measure and prove with hard data.~~ Philosophy is full of a lot of debate and semantics (determining the exact meaning of a word -- such as "morality") that don't always end with conclusive answers. Why do people study it? People study philosophy to better understand the human condition. People want to better understand not only individual purpose (self), but collective purpose (all of humanity). People also want to better understand ethical issues, and argue for what they believe are the most moral choices. An example of a classic ethics debate is whether or not the "needs of the many outweight the needs of the few." Such questions are not easy to answer because they heavily depend on the context. Nonetheless, people spend a lot of time contemplating these questions. Anyone can sit around and read about and contemplate these questions--most people do at some point in their life. But academically (at Universities), it has to be more than wayward contemplation. Therefore, like anything in academics, it requires a deep knowledge of past and current writings on the topic to provide a foundation of supporting concepts and ideas. This creates a web of supporting data to transition and progress into new or modified ideas. At the end of the day, people who study philosophy hope to understand themselves and their world a little better than they did before. There are not a ton of career options tied to philosophy -- many who specialize in it often become professors of the subject, or move onto higher education that is more focused on something like law. The study of law is often intertwined with philosophy due to its connection to morality/ethics. Therefore, a background in philosophy is not a bad stepping stone into law. More often, philosophy as college curriculum is taken as a minor degree, or a class or two in supplementation to a seemingly unrelated degree. Example: someone who is specializing in biological engineering may be forced to take classes in science ethics, which is rooted in basic philosophical principles. This is so they are able to better make choices in a career field that is full of difficult, complex moral dilemmas that cannot be answered with a microscope. They are questions that require subjective introspection. TL;DR- 42.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5:The difference between a Federation and Confederation<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Both a Federation and Confederation distinguish between the sovereignty of the individual members (e.g. states) and the the sovereignty of the whole (e.g. the nation or "Federal" government). Typically a Federation and Confederation differ in who has authority over the other, specifically in regards to conflicts. In a Federation, the Federal government is granted power over the states whereas in a Confederation the power of the states trumps that of the Federal government.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Relationship in the lives of academicians It takes time for someone who went for a PhD to get settled down with a permanent job which is pretty obvious. By that time, a person is near 30 or around 32 or more if we consider postdoc. How does uncertainty of which city/state/country(?) one may get a job relate to finding and keeping relationship a partner? This particularly happens a lot in faculty position. If one's lover or spouse has a job, how should the decision to move in other's city be taken? There is a meme on internet that you either settle down for less or stay single. Jokes aside, once I read an social studies article where it shows that statistically male faculties more likely to have housewife (had a job but left) or wives doing a job she's too qualified to do because of moving with her husband. Female faculties may have faculty husband most likely (I forgot the percentage). Housewife observation may be relatively uncommon nowadays because of the changes compared to 30 years ago. Unfortunately I can't find the article again, so please ignore if you wish. However it is relatable. I wonder about my professors how their life is (am afraid to ask such personal questions). It is more difficult for single academicians in a foreign country to find a partner (like me). From PhD to postdoc, you may need to change your place 2-3 times or more. I have checked my teachers's profiles and I don't know how they manage to do it if they had spouse at that time. Also, taking children is a parallel issue and a time dependent factor for female academicians if they want to. What do you think about this? about me: I am a male grad student of STEM in his mid-20s. I have a plan to stay in academia, if not, in a research lab. I may do 1-2 postdoc (maybe?) in different places in future. I never had any partner and I am worried how it would go in future. I don't want to be a jerk asking someone to leave her job for me. I am even afraid to ask out someone I like because most likely we won't be able to stay together. Any kind opinion and comment on my perspective will be welcome! Thanks for reading.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant 1. Find a partner working in academia (at your grad or postdoc university) 2. Be kickass as you both begin your careers, and both apply to faculty jobs 3. Whoever lands the job at the better university, condition the appointment on also finding a faculty position for the partner 4. ???? 5. Profit Kinda tongue-in-cheek obviously, but that route seems to happen an awful lot.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: If food gives us energy why do we get tired after a big meal? Edit: Thanks for the answers!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Different definitions of "energy". Food provides chemicals that your body needs to support its metabolism. Feeling tired has no relation to whether or not your body has what it needs to function (except in extreme cases of starvation), but is instead a result of brain activity. In short, "feeling energetic" is not caused by having chemical energy available for your body to use.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How is the breakthrough of the IBM 7nm chip is going to change technology and why it is important.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Computers calculate by turning a series of switches on and off in various patterns. If a computer has more switches, it can perform more calculations. But the bigger the switches are, the more power it takes to turn these switches off and on. The more power it takes, the hotter it becomes, the more complicated the way these switches cooling has to be, etc. So people make the switches smaller to put more switches on a computer on the same space to make a computer faster. That is why computers today are so much faster than in our fathers time, while they have become smaller. The 7 nm process can be used puts the double number of switches that your computer today has in the same space. So it will take so much less energy to run so much more faster.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Was there a cultural reason for why Postmodernism developed primarily in France? and among French intellectuals as opposed to German and Anglo/Anglo-American philosophers?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In the context of philosophy, usually what people mean by "postmodernism" is what is more strictly called "poststructuralism", which is a response to structuralism and phenomenology, which had been the dominant intellectual currents in French culture. So the reason that poststructuralism largely happened in France is the more or less plain one that structuralism largely happened in France. But analogous developments were going on in Anglo-American intellectual culture as well. They just don't get called "poststructuralism", because they're not responses to structuralism. Rather, they get called "post-positivism" or "anti-foundationalism" or "neo-pragmatism", or other such terms which situate them in the Anglo-American context. In the literal sense of being after modernism, or using modernist strategies to critique modernist principles, these Anglo-American developments are as much "post-modern" as post-structuralism is.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Eli5 why are today's webcams so bad when compared to phone cameras? I made a short attempt in streaming to Twitch during lockdowns and the pandemic. One thing I noted quickly was that the video quality differed immensely when I used an old android phone as a webcam compared to my then newly bought Logitech C920. Why do they differ so much in terms of visible quality? Edit: My webcam is a C920 HD Pro and cost me around $110-120 (1190 SEK). Edit 2: I bought it a few years back.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The lens and sensor are only two of the four critical components of a camera You need a good lens to get a lot of light onto the sensor. Most webcams are still using pinhole cameras while many phones have switched over to much bigger apertures, this results in brighter cleaner images. You need a big sensor to collect the light that makes it through the lens and to provide you a lot of pixels to get the image quality you want. But more importantly than either is that you need a signal processor and good storage connection to actually handle what's coming in. A 4k 30 fps camera will be sending 750 MB/s of data that needs to be processed, compressed, and then stored at least briefly in memory. The chip in your phone has a good signal processing segment specifically dedicated to the cameras with lots of hardware acceleration to help it with this job and connections to a large fast bank of memory, but its part of an expensive chip. Your webcam is limited by the realities of its size, power allowance, price point, and connections. Most external webcams today are still USB 2 which restricts them to just 60 MB/s which means that they either need something that can get really good compression of the video stream very quickly to get their 30 FPS 4k video to fit down the connector, or they just film at 1080P and call it good enough. The aggressive compression of the video stream combined with the tiny lens result in a sub part video quality for most cheap desktop webcams but there are good ones out there that sport a proper lens for good light collection they're just at a different price point<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV:US Citizens should not have to justify being in any public location with legal accessories including guns So many people have argued that the Rittenhouse verdict was correct but not just, or that it was incorrect on the basis of "He had no reason to be there" or "he couldn't justify why he was there" or that "no one should go to a protest/riot with a gun no matter what", etc. I think it was a bad idea, a dangerous idea, etc to do what Rittenhouse did. But I don't think we can or should condemn him or anyone based on simply being on public streets that were dangerous. I can't see how we get the restrictions on movement out of this argument. I don't mean legally, I mean even morally - who decides what constitutes a public place where certain people "can't go"? Presumably, on different days, these same people wouldn't say Rittenhouse would need to justify being in Kenosha. Most of them explicitly say if he was just outside his house it would be different. So this would be a shifting curtailment of freedom of movement. What is the universal standard here? I've never liked "I'll know it when I see it" because it seems inherently ex post facto and just likely to be unfair and biased in application. The final part of my view is that I don't think taking one legal activity and adding an accessory to it that is also legal changes any need to justify yourself. I see that all the time with Cameras - so many people get harassed for having a camera on them in public, even though it's perfectly legal. There is no need to justify having a camera in a public place. This is the same with guns when they're allowed open carry. You could disagree with the law, but that doesn't mean I need to justify myself to anyone. Anyway - if you have a coherent argument on why we should require people to "prove they should be somewhere in public" and have that play into their criminal or moral culpability, or clarify why carrying something legal is morally wrong because it bothers others I'll listen to it.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Choosing to go somewhere, and choosing what to bring to that place reflect on your intent or expectation. These things absolutely can be morally problematic, and depending on how strongly they imply intent they could also have legal implications. Going to a fur coat sale is fine. Carrying a can of red paint is fine. Carry a can of red paint to a fur coat sale raises legitimate questions. Do you always carry red paint? If not, why did you bring it here? Assuming you don't usually carry paint, and that you aren't on your way to paint something, it's a reasonable assumption that you came to pour paint on fur coats, which is at least morally problematic. Similar questions can be raised for guns even if they are legal to carry. Do you usually carry a gun? If not, and you felt like you needed to carry it to this place, why did you choose to go to a place where you felt unsafe? You could answer that you felt the counterprotest was important, but that you thought it might escalate so you brought a gun for defense. You could say you carry your gun all the time. You could also say that you wanted to bring your gun so that you could keep the protesters in line, and now you've entered problematic territory. Our laws factor intent heavily into guilt and sentencing. We can't read minds, but we can look at the situation and deduce at least a bit of what the likely motives and thought processes were. Where we choose to go and what we choose to bring there are good things to consider in trying to determine this.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Shouldn't time dilation prevent the creation of a black hole? Because of relativity, the effects of time should almost stop at the event horizon. Doesn't that mean that a black hole takes an infinite amount of time to create?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The time dilation that goes to infinity at the horizon is meant between two observers that remain at a certain fixed distance from the black hole. To do so, they have to accelerate so as to fight the BH's gravitational pull. This necessary acceleration for not falling in becomes infinite at the horizon, another presentation of the fact that you cannot escape. The surface of the collapsing star that forms the black hole, instead, is not doing this. It is (essentially) freefalling down, not fighting, and does not experience this particular time dilation. It does measure time dilation with respect to a distant observer, but it is milder and it does not go to infinity at the horizon. So the black hole can form in a reasonable sense. Still you can imagine insisting on using an array of hovering observers watching it happen and relaying to you far away (this coincides with using the standard Schwarzschild coordinates). What you would see then is that the falling surface of the star slows down as it approaches the horizon and pancakes above it, never overcoming it and getting more and more redshifted; in the meanwhile the horizon grows pushing along the pancaked star outwards. The final result is a proper black hole with a "film" of star dimming exponentially fast. However, this is just one (partial) representation of facts, following from a choice of arbitrary coordinates.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Marxist commentaries on Hegel I'm looking for some secondary readings on Hegel written from a Marxist perspective. I plan to read The Phenomenology of Spirit, mainly because I'm interested in Hegel's relevance to Marxism. So, I would like to supplement my reading with some evaluations by Marxists.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Marx wrote a bunch of things obviously like Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right or the section called "Critique of Hegel's Philosophy in general" in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Engels has a section on Hegel on Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Lenin has a few commentaries of some of Hegel's works in his Philosophical Notebooks. Lukács' The Young Hegel and The Ontology of Social Being Volume 1: Hegel. Also the section "The Antinomies of Bourgeois Thought" on History and Class Conciousness. Ilyenkov's Dialectical Logic and also a bunch of essays collected in Intelligent Materialism: Essays on Hegel and Dialectics. Althusser's Spectre of Hegel is a collection of essays from his early writings. Jameson's The Hegel Variations: On the Phenomenology of the Spirit<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Eli5 How does inducing a coma help save a life but if someone is dying you sometimes try to keep them awake?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Different methods for different situations. For instance, you want to keep someone focused and awake on you if you're trying to prevent them from going into shock, falling asleep while in the stages of hypothermia, that kind of thing. Medically induced comas are largely used when dealing with brain issues. Perhaps a major artery was damaged and you need to induce a coma so you can actually operate on it. Maybe you want brain activity and blood flow very low so the brain can be less active, and perhaps recover from swelling or simply buy more time.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Where to start on big project? So I had an idea for a project that is quite expansive, a lot of parts all working together. I've figured out most of how everything should work and what I need to do to implement different functionalities, the problem I'm having is because it's such a huge project I have no idea where to begin. Every time I start to do one thing I get sidetracked of on one tangent or another. So my question is, when starting a large project how do you decide where to start or what order to do things? I understand this probably varies depending on the project but some generalizations should at least help get me on the right track, thanks in advance!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Start with a prototype of the Minimum Viable Product. Break down the functionality and build it up piece by piece. Deciding what that is is up to you and can only really come with experience. Just get started and have your plan/sprits/kanban sorted out for the functionality<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What the hell is going on regarding Planned Parenthood Trying to be objective about the situation. I'd like to hear from both sides what is really happening, why, and if it really is as bad as some people and the media are currently saying it is.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant They donate tissue to research labs and are reimbursed for the costs of storing/shipping the tissue. PP does not profit from this. Research on fetal tissue, while perhaps unsettling to think about, is not illegal or immoral. A right-wing group videotaped discussions with PP representatives edited them to make it appear that PP is gleefully murdering babies for profit. The group has been exposed as a fraud but they keep publishing the edited videos because a certain percentage of people want to believe the lie.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Timed essays like the SAT don't properly measure one's writing skills, nor their critical thinking skills. Timed essays, especially with as little time as the SAT gives, force test takers to come up with a BS answer without really thinking about it. As a result, they are either forced to justify an answer that they really aren't confident about, or they don't have enough time to write about their well-founded conclusion. Consider the following essay question: Do memories hinder or help people in their effort to learn from the past and succeed in the present? This is a really interesting question. I wouldn't expect anyone but those that have already thought about it to formulate a truly essay-worthy opinion (one that they are confident in, and can truly justify it because they have thought through all facets that are apparent to them), and write about it in twenty-five minutes. If I don't have the time to truly form an opinion, how can you claim to measure this ability? It measures my ability to make a decent-sounding opinion in a short amount of time, and write about it. I understand that test-takers are given a quote to consider before writing their essay, in addition to the question itself. This may indeed help people formulate their opinion, but it will also make it easier for test-takers to take a cookie-cutter opinion from the quote, which is really what many are forced to do given the time requirements, and write an essay without really formulating their own opinion. Furthermore, everyone knows that one of the most fundamental aspects of good writing is good editing. Everyone's first draft in almost any form of writing is going to be poor. Ask the folks over at /r/writing if you're not sure. I know that the graders know that, and that they grade accordingly, but you can't really measure one's writing skill from a first draft. This is because the purpose of the first draft is really to put ideas on paper, and you get rid of the crappy ideas and crappy phrasing by editing. It really puts a damper on one's essay to have 25 minutes to write, even if one devises their argument in the instant they receive the question, and be forced to not only be rushed at the very writing of it, but to not have time to edit. _____ > 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 The SAT is designed to measure your aptitude for college so that schools can determine whether you are qualified for their programs. Most of the courses you take during college will have midterms and final exams that have time limits, and therefore the SAT accurately captures your ability to do well on those exams. Of course schools do care about your writing skills as well, which is why competitive schools will ask you to write a specific essay for admissions which you have unlimited time and resources to work on.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [BTTF 3] Why did Doc waste his time building the model of what they were going to do when it was just pushing the car with a train? Is Marty "special"?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It often helps to go over the details with actual models in order to foresee potential problems that aren't readily apparent when it's just in your mind. Some law enforcement and special ops teams use models of buildings when they're planning a mission for this reason.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What is it that gives a material the ability to be polished? I've always wondered what it is that allows you to polish metals to a mirror finish, but not wood or plastic, for example? I assume its something to do with light scattering and reflection from the internal structures of the material?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are two things that go into why a material can have a mirror finish. First, is whether light that hits it reflects straight back or gets scattered in many different directions. Smooth surfaces scatter less of the reflected light, and will be shinier than rough surfaces. Any material can be polished.* Polishing is just making the surface smoother. Generally, the smoother a surface, the shinier it looks. So the real question is, why are smooth metal surfaces extremely shiny and other materials not so shiny? The second part of the story is that light is reflected any time it encounters a boundary between two materials with different indexes of refraction. The bigger the difference in the index of refraction, the more light gets reflected. For visible light, metals have very large indices of refraction. The huge difference in the index of refraction between the metal and air can result easily in over 90% of light being reflected. Explaining why metals have such high indices of refraction for light is a little more complicated. Metals have lots of free electrons that can move around inside them (that's why they conduct electricity). All these electrons interact strongly with the electric field of light. Things like wood and plastic do not have many free electrons so they don't interact nearly as strongly with light. For example, when travels through air and hits a glass surface, only about 4% of the light will be reflected. * It turns out that it's a lot easier to polish a metal than it is to polish wood.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why does the propensity for motion sickness increase as you get older; e.g., riding roller coasters or other rides at amusement parks?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Balance is controlled by a group of small organs in the ears, called the vestibular system. These organs detect two different kinds of motion: rotation and movement in a straight line. The way straight line movement is detected is that there are tiny little bones shaped like bits of stone that sit in a kind of sac that is lined with tiny hairs. When you move in a straight line, the little stones press against the hairs, which send signals to the brain that say “hey, we’re moving forward!” or “hey, we’re tipping over!” The way rotation is detected is with three rings inside your ears. These rings are filled with fluid and more tiny hairs, and they are arranged in a way so that no matter which direction you move, the fluid presses on the hairs, too. So, if you did a cartwheel, one of the rings would say to your brain, “hey, we’re doing a cartwheel!” If you spin around like a ballerina a doing a pirouette, a different ring would tell your brain, “hey, we’re doing a pirouette!” And if you nod your head up and down, a third ring tells your brain, “hey, our head is nodding!” The fluid in our ears is roughly the same as blood. Sometimes, that fluid thins out, which makes movements seem more intense than they actually are, which can cause problems with balance. Sometimes the little hairs in the organs will break away, and the spot where they were either sends too many signals to the brain, or none at all. This can also affect balance.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: I think it is ridiculous for one ethnic group to be indebted to another based on the actions of people who've been dead for hundreds of years. ~~For example - government funded benefits to people with even small traces of Native American genetic makeup. Is this really justifiable? Are the taxpayers who are funding these people's free income really responsible for the actions of men who lived hundreds of years ago - who they may not even have any genetic relation to? It gets even more complicated when we start talking about percentages - for instance, a person who is maybe 1/4th Native and 3/4th Anglo would qualify for these benefits despite the fact that the majority of their genetic makeup represents the people that they are claiming victimization by. But this is really not a relevant piece of the original topic - so don't feel obliged to include it in your arguments.~~ Edit 2: This example has done nothing but misrepresent my original thought, and I clearly do not have a strong enough understanding of Native American history to justifiably use it. Thanks to rigoding90 for making me realize this. Note: My view extends far beyond any controversy involving Native Americans, to include any instance of this phenomenon. Change my view. Edit 1: It's currently 1am and I just realized that there are several very detailed replies to this post. I need to get to bed so I can get up in time for work tomorrow, but I will be reading through them in the AM. Thanks for taking the time to reply if you did.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The actions of people who have been dead for hundreds of years can have lasting effects if not adequately remedied. Don't think of it as necessarily a debt tracing back hundreds of years - think of it as an attempt to remedy a current inequality, the reason for which we acknowledge to be some past cruelty.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Affirmative action is wrong. Edit: I'm mainly talking here about quota style affirmative action. Of course, racism is very real in modern society, but I feel that Affirmative action is the wrong solution. First off, it's fighting racism with racism. It creates a system in which someone who is more qualified but in the majority might lose out to someone less qualified who happens to be a minority. Adding to this, there are few to none affirmative action programs support Whites in areas dominated by other groups. For instance, in my high school, we have a STEM magnet class. We take more advanced classes and have access to a research research program as well as apprenticeships. The program has an affirmative action program, yet despite this, roughly 80% of the members are of East Asian descent. If someone suggested an affirmative action program for people of European descent in the program, they would be labeled a racist. This reveals some level of hypocrisy. This next reason is based on principle. Race and gender should not be taken into account when it comes to who is allowed in. Time and time again in history, we see that bringing race into policy only creates more problems. Why is this time different? My third argument is this. It make people more likely to find some way in which they are "disadvantaged", when they really aren't. My final argument is that affirmative action does not help the real issue. Let me explain. Let's say you have a population split between group A and group B. Group A tends to have a lower socioeconomic status. Level \| part A \| part B \| Notes -----\|-----------\|----------\|------- Gen. Pop \| 50%(100,000) \| 50%(100,000) \| evenly split. HS grad. \| 25%(25,000) \| 75%(75,000) \| Here shows the racism. num HSG qual. for Coll. \| 12,500 \| 37,500 \| 50% of each qualify accepted after A.A. \| 50%(25,000) \| 50%(25,000) \| after affirmative action. Here's the thing. After all of that, things are only "equal"on the surface. Within group A: 25% are in college. 0% have only completed high school. 75% are high school dropouts. In group B: 25% are in college. 50% have only completed high school. 25% are high school dropouts. That doesn't look very equal to me! The issue that must be addressed is lower down. Despite all this, I understand that my arguments may have flaws, and I always want to understand the other side of an argument. Adding to this, if presented with logic and facts, I will change my views. I try to live my life putting rationality above emotion. _____ > This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please *[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)*! 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 I think it largely depends on the rationale for affirmative action - obviously each case or situation needs to be judged on its own merits. In NZ for example Law and medical school has a small pool for indigenous applicants and interestingly restricts international students (because these courses would be absolutely overwhelmed with international students if totally open) For the indigenous applicants it has nothing* to do with equality, its hardly going to even and scales or past injustices etc, but its about trying to enhance the areas of law and health which are noted problems in their communities and having people within the culture qualified in the areas is thought to be a good way to target the problem. So yes affirmative action is unfair, pretty much by definition, and its unlikely to be a balancing tool for unfairness, but it may be a relatively small cost of unfairness for a big benefit in some wider community issues.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5 Classical music is still relevant es ever. Nevertheless how come there are no longer super star composers like in earlier times and how do you actually transcend undying music of genius composers to be relevant today? Yes, I am aware of world star performers like David Garret, Lang Lang but they still perform old repertoires 90% of the time. The closest star composer I know is Ludovico Einaudi but the music still sounds very modern and different. Is it because classical music no longer has a monopoly and because the world has become more diverse? TL;DR where is the next Beethoven or Vivaldi? Thank you Edit: „as ever“ as opposed to „es ever“<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Well, the landscape of classical music changed a lot over the course of the last hundred and fifty years because there are other means of entertainment. It used to be that classical music was the music of the common man, but now it has the appearance of an aristocratic activity. Composers writing academic art music aren’t necessarily writing for a wider audience, rather they’re writing for academically trained composers like themselves. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t composers that everyone knows these days, take John Williams or Hans Zimmer for example. They’re writing for the most popular media of today just like how Puccini, Verdi or Wagner wrote for opera, which was the most popular media in the 19th century.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user HOW do sunflowers face the sun? I'm not asking why, I'm asking how. It has puzzled me because they are the only flowers that do this behaviors. No other plants do this, so I'm wondering how it works.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Firstly, a correction; many plants display phototropism (movement in response to light source/s). In terms of flowers, many are named after this phenomenon with “heliotrope” in the name, such as the European Heliotrope, or the Salt Heliotrope. As for the mechanism, there are two primary methods known. One uses “motor cells” which pump potassium ions into other cells nearby when exposed to light. This makes the pressure in the receiving cells change, while the pressure in the cells on the shadow side stays the same. Different pressures in the cells make them different sizes, thereby causing the flower to rotate. The other method is through actual cell growth rather than modifying the pressure in existing cells. In this method, the plants promote the growth of the cells on one “side” (either the light side or the shadowy side) more than the other, making the flower bend one way or the other.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why does the ISS maintain a radial-in attitude? In almost every photo of the International Space Station, you can clearly see that the cupola module is always pointing towards the earth. That means that the ISS maintains a constant attitude relative to Earth and that it's spinning at 1 rotation/orbit (90 min) I understand that it doesn't need any energy to maintain this low angular speed, but I assume that it does create some potentially avoidable problems: • Small centrifugal accleration on the outer most modules. • EVA astronauts will maintain the linear velocity of the spin, thus moving away from the station after they exit. • Docking: I just can't wrap my head around how stuff could dock to the ISS if it's spinning at 4°/min (unless it stops spinning for docking maneuvers). So why is it spinning? Just to maintain a view for the cupola at all times? Does it stop spinning during EVAs and docking?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant This orientation helps decrease atmospheric drag, decreases chances of micrometeorite impacts. This attitude also requires the least amount of energy to maintain (well an uncontrolled spin wouldn't require any energy, but that would cause a whole bunch of other problems) And this means they can place antennae for communication in positions which always have a good view of Earth. Or for science experiments which need to always face towards or away from Earth.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Mathematics] What number refers to the number of possible orderings of natural numbers? The number of unique orderings of a set of length n is n! and as such it seems logical to me that the number of unique orderings of the natural numbers is Aleph null factorial, but what does it mean to take the factorial of an infinitely large number as infinity minus one is still infinity(i think). I was also thinking about the Continuum hypothesis which says that the cardinality of the set of real numbers is 2 raised to the Aleph null. x! grows faster than 2^x so would that make the number of unique orderings of the natural numbers to be larger than the set of real numbers(assuming that we are able to take the factorial of Aleph null)? Apologies if my question makes assumptions which are incorrect, but thanks for reading!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A rather simple way to encode numbers between 0 and 1 to all possible orderings of natural numbers would be to create decimal number between 0 and 1, and type each integer in order, in base-2, then use 5 as separator. So if your ordering starts like 1, 5, 16, 4, 2, ... Then we'd have our encoding of 0.1510151000051005105... Or to replace 5 with clearer separator 0. 1 \| 101 \| 10000 \| 100 \| 10 \| ... It's quite easy to see that if n'th digit of two orderings differs, then the encoding differs, so it's an injection from all orderings to the interval ]0, 1[, and as such, there are at most as many orderings as there are real numbers.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why do so many drugs end in HCl (hydrochloride)?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Hydrochloride salts of drugs are often easier to work with. The native form of the drug is often an oily liquid at room temperature, while the hydrochloride salt is a powder which can be shaped into a pill for easy administration. Once the drug is in your stomach, it dissolves into HCL + the drug. Conveniently, there’s already a lot of hydrochloric acid in your stomach, so adding a little bit more is basically harmless, and the drug can go on to the intestines to be absorbed into your bloodstream.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How did they get, and keep, the footage of the atomic bomb tests? You've seen the footage: those orange-red tinged shots of the car and bus being blasted across the desert, the shockwave hitting the trees and making a "forest" shimmy, and the house blistering into ashes. So with all these thermonuclear torments, how the the camera stay trained on the spot, and how did the film not vaporize? What about retrieval? Don't get me wrong, I'm not some truther who's trying to say it wasn't real or the Freemasons did it (we had a pancake breakfast that day so we're good on alibis), or any such nonsene. Just curious. Was camera tech good enough back then to have super long-range zoom? With the terrible force and energy, the shockwave pushing out and the negative pressure return wave what was used to stabilize the image? How was the recording possible with the presence of EMP?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant First of all: for most shots of the blasts themselves, the camera was with the human observers i.e. sufficiently far enough away to be safe from massive shockwaves. Zoom lenses did not need to be super zooms, given the sizes of the explosions. Some cameras were put in massively heavy enclosures to survive being closer e.g. to capture the shock wave effects on structures and animals. You can design such things if you have an estimate of the conditions, which they did. Plus: who's claiming that no cameras or film were ever destroyed? I'd be very surprised if that never happened!<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Harry Potter HBP] Is Snape a good defence against the dark arts teacher? The narrator presents Snape as a terrible teacher, presumably because he really wants the Defence against the dark arts (dada) job. Yet most his students seem to do well in Potions, taking O.W.Ls and gaining skills like polyjuice brewing (Crab and Goyle are even making it in the final book). In spite of hating Harry, he still passes him to advanced potions and with the Prince’s (Snape) old potion book Harry learns more in that year than ever before. But we don’t see much of what is happening in DADA besides essay writing. Is Snape doing anything in DADA to prepare Harry to fight the dark Lord or go after horcruxes? Is he giving the DA any skills to fight death eaters?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Snape is a good teacher in the sense that he's a very smart person who can deliver information clearly and answer any questions that come up. He's a terrible teacher in the sense that he's a bitter bully who will not hesitate to berate students that he doesn't like. So he creates an environment that's hostile - look at Neville Longbottom. He's a good enough study with a lot of self-confidence problems. Over the course of the books he starts to excel in most other subjects as he grows more self-assured, but he's never able to get that chance in Potions because Snape can't actually help someone with personal challenges, he can just tell them they're dumb for forgetting the order of a recipe. He seems to take a more theory-focused and less hands-on approach to DADA (at least at the level that we see), so he'd presumably be a fine teacher in that sense, though with less ability to inspire struggling students. Also just a minor note - Snape isn't actually the one who passes Harry's OWL in Potions - those are administered by a separate Ministry-run group who test the students and grade the results. That being said, he did teach well enough that even Harry, who had almost no personal interest in the subject itself, was able to get an excellent grade.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How do cameras, or their lenses, auto-focus? At first I thought that maybe the concept was a little similar to our eyes in that it tries to get as much of the incoming light on one point, the middle of the sensor, and so adjusts the focus ring until it finds a position with the largest amount of light on this spot. However, this doesn't explain (to me, anyway - maybe I'm just being thick) how a lens will be able to refocus on objects based on distance.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant 2 ways: - You digitally analyze the frame to figure out the least blurry lens configuration. Least blurry means sharpest color transitions between neighboring pixels. Only works in certain types of digital cameras. - You measure the distance between the camera and the target, and figure out an appropriate lens configuration. Little IR sensors can be used to measure the distance.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do hot glass shatter when cooled down with cold water?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Glass expands when hot and contracts when it's cold. It doesn't conduct heat very well so when the hot glass comes in contact with cold water some of the glass shrinks faster then other parts which causes the glass to shatter.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do men go bald solely on top of the head as opposed to on the sides or on the back?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are different levels of "why". There is something different about the hairs in that zone that makes them more sensitive to a particular hormone called DHT. There is a whole series of inflammatory events that slowly kill the follicle. Now, why are the hairs in one spot more sensitive than the hairs in another spot? No one knows.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user If refraction is caused by the absorption and reemission of photons, why don't materials only refract certain wavelengths of light? It's my understanding that light seems to slow when entering a more optically dense medium because the photons are being reabsorbed and re-emitted by the atoms of the medium, which takes time and results in a lower average speed of light. However, don't atoms also only absorb photons of certain energies? Wouldn't this mean that only certain photons with the right frequency would be refracted and those with other frequencies would carry on straight through?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Refraction is an emergent property of a material, that is, it only arises when there is a large number of atoms that the light is passing through. For instance, if you have 5 carbon atoms, that group of carbon atoms will not have the refractive properties of a diamond which is made of carbon. So, how do large collections of atoms have continuous absorption patterns? Because large collections of atoms have many more absorption methods than simple electron promotion. Collections of atoms can vibrate and oscillate, using two to n atoms (where n is some large number) which allows a nearly continuous absorption pattern as they are many, many combinations.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How do thermometers work and how do they calculate what "it feels like." Checking my phone for the temperature, I see that its currently 91 degrees but it feels like 99. Got me wondering how thermometers work/how they came to be and how they calculate "what it feels like."<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Thermometers often exploit the fact that materials expand/contract depending on temperature, and different materials do it at different rate. The "feels like" temperature is a mix of the real temperature and the humidity. Humidity decreases the ability for sweat to remove heat from the body, so it makes the body heat up more than the same temp with low humidity.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How did the cameras that were used during the moon landing work? How were they able to broadcast relatively clear picture and sound from space, using 1960s technology? I ask this because there is a group of people who think the moon landing itself is real but the tv broadcast was staged. I personally don't believe that the broadcast was fake, but the question piqued my curiosity and I would like to know how it worked.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Basically, the important thing in space communications is not the size or power of the transmitter, but the sensitivity of the receiver. Once you have compensated for local issues like atmosphere, other radio sources, the rotation and revolution of the Earth, etc, then the only thing that affects the transmission is distance, and we have lots of distributed, really sensitive receivers to pick up weak signals.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What are wavelengths and how does it relate to color? What exactly are wavelengths, and how do colors have wavelengths? What exactly is a color?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant >What exactly are wavelength? The distance between two crest of a wave. Imagine an ocean with waves. There are high points and low points. The wave moves forward, but the distance between the high points stays the same. This is the wavelength. >how do colors have wavelength? Color is just light, and light behaves like a wave. Sort of. As light moves through space it has high energy areas and low energy areas which can be measured just like the area of high water and low water with an ocean wave. >What exactly is a color? Color is just how our minds perceive different wavelength of light. The same way our hears perceive the difference between high frequency and low frequency sounds, our eyes perceive the difference large wavelength and low wavelength light. Our brain then interprets that as color.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How/why is space between the sun and the earth so cold, when we can feel heat coming from the sun?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant You need to distinguish between heat and temperature to understand this. The sun radiates energy, but it doesn't contribute to an increase in temperature until it hits something and warms that something up. Because there is nothing in between the sun and the earth, it is "cold". But if you were floating there, with the sun full on you, it would heat you up. They need to put reflective foil on spacecraft for this reason. In the shade of something, your body would radiate heat, which would make you very cold.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do some light bulbs need to warm up, while others don't?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are a few different types of artificial light in common use, and they all behave differently. - The good old-fashioned light bulbs are called "incandescent." They work by making running electricity through a tiny little tungsten wire to heat it until it glows. These have to be warm to work, but they warm up completely in a fraction of a second, so they're pretty much instant-on from your perspective. Problem is, they're super inefficient and waste lots of electricity, although we've made some more refined varieties (called halogen) which run even hotter and use a bit less energy. - Fluorescent bulbs are a newer, more efficient technology. Both the long, straight tubes in office lights, and the little twisty spiral bulbs at home, use this technology. They pass electricity through a special gas at low pressure, and the electricity makes that gas glow. These turn on pretty fast, but don't reach full brightness immediately. They keep getting brighter gradually over the next few minutes as the gas inside warms up. These are much more efficient, but some people don't like the gradual warm-up. They also contain a small amount of mercury, so they're not totally environmentally friendly. - Vapor lamps are the worst offenders for slow warm up. It's so bad, they are only used for big lights which stay on for a long time like streetlights, warehouses, and school gyms. These work by using an electric arc to vaporize a little blob of sodium, which gets so hot it glows super bright. The lights take five minutes or more to turn on at all, and then they gradually get brighter over the next few minutes. That's just how long it takes to heat up the blob of sodium to melt and vaporize it. The reason we put up with this kind of lamp at all is that they're very efficient. The most efficient ones, for things light street lights, make a very ugly yellow light, so stores and schools and warehouses use a slightly less efficient type which runs at higher pressure and makes nicer white light. - A new kind of light is called LED. These are little semiconductor devices, like computer chips. They're the most efficient type of all, and can be made into all different shapes and sizes, with all different colors of light. They also last a very long time (years or decades). And they turn on immediately. So fast, in fact, that you can turn them fully on, then fully back off again, thousands of times per second. We sometimes use this to our advantage, to dim their output very efficiently by blinking them on and off faster than the eye can see. The only reason we don't use LEDs absolutely everywhere is that, as a newer technology, they're pretty expensive. In the coming years, these will likely start to replace all the other kinds above.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5 Why do our personal tastes differ? Like, why does one person like chocolate but the other vanilla? Why does one person like pink and another blue? I understand genetics and how you are conditioned as a child play roles, but can one say more?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Our preferences and tastes are subjective to our own bodies and experiences. If you live in a country that has a lot of spicy food, like India or Mexico, you are more likely to develop a taste for such spicy foods. As you said, genetics and hormones can also play a part. If you react painfully to chili peppers, you will grow to dislike spicy foods. In a more general sense, out tastes are pretty random, because our bodies are random, our minds are random, and our situations are random. So, while shared traits can lead to reasonable predictions, like little boys in America favoring blue over pink because "girls toys" are colored pink, there is no set mechanism that will force or prevent a little boy from liking pink anyway.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why does a company like Tesla or Uber have such high valuation (over 50 Bn) despite have low sales or losing money yearly?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Valuation is not simply a product of sales/revenue/net. It also has a growth component to it. The hope is that these companies will grow into profitable companies. So the value of the company today, is it's current value + its expected value at some point in the future.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What actually kills a person when their body temperature is too low? What is the first fatal effect of lowering a person's body temperature? I bet a lot of bodily functions cease to function at too low temperature on different scales. Is there a big one? Maybe one that occurs way before the rest. Thanks.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are a strange set of physiological responses to hypothermia. In one sense, hypothermia can be preservative - the body's functions slow to a minimum - and is in fact used in some critical situations in hospitals. Humans can also survive a hugely depressed core body temperature. In fact, people are not supposed to be declared dead when they are hypothermic because recovery may be possible. There is a common adage among doctors that "you're not dead until you're warm and dead". However, there are a number of physiological responses that could potentially cause death in hypothermia: 1. Low temperatures affect the electrical system of the heart. The channels that allow ions through them respond slowly and incompletely. So the heart doesn't get the signals to beat as fast as it should. If this continues, you can get what's called bradyarrhythmia (slow heart rate) to such an extent that the heart cannot maintain proper blood pressure. This could be fatal. 2. The cough and gag reflexes are suppressed in cold temperatures. You could potentially die from aspirating saliva or vomit. 3. Carbon dioxide production by the body decreases because the body is not metabolically active. Carbon dioxide is one of the major triggers for your brain to stimulate breathing. This is generally protective in normal physiological situations. This control system is broken in hypothermia and the brain may stop triggering breathing.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Never thought about Grad School before but now I'm interested in something pretty specific and think it might be worth a PhD... I really just need to pitch this thought off some people in-the-know who can set the record straight. I'm really interested in a topic that seems like it'd be worth it to pursue a PhD in. I'm interested in big data/machine learning in regards to genomics and its applicability to medical marijuana. How do I get a PhD in this? Where do I even start? All I have is a Bachelor's degree. Do I need to find an institution that is slightly relevant? Find a professor in a relevant field who can help/mentor? Can I even pick a topic of interest and pursue it? Are PhDs not really like this? Are they more strict/structured than what I'm thinking? Sorry for the dumb questions but googling most of this just brings up the scare articles about how people shouldn't go for PhDs... Not very informative about the inner workings of it all. *** Editing to add:** BS in Computer Science, currently work at an R1 institution in the US in their IT department. Tuition assistance covers 1/2 the cost of grad courses.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant If you have a computer programming background and foundational coursework in either biology or statistics, you may be competitive for a PhD program in computational biology or something similar. However, your research interest is currently too specific and needs to be more generalized. Specifically, you should be saying that you are: "interested in big data/machine learning in regards to genomics and its applicability to ~~medical marijuana~~ human health."<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What is happening when the shower water pressure drops and the water gets hotter?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant If someone flushes a toilet or turns on the cold water it reduces the pressure in the cold water feed lines, and thus the total flow for any one open tap. Since the water coming from the shower is a mix of hot and cold, reducing the cold water flow reduces the total flow but increases the proportion of that flow which is coming from the hot water feed. How strong an effect it has will depend on how close (not physically, but in terms of the pipe layout) the newly opened tap is to the shower, and the details of the plumbing system.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user According to this chart, "Retirement Wealth" increased for white households during the recession. Why might that be? I'm looking at data related to the racial wealth gap, and I'm wondering about why [retirement wealth for white households increased?](https://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/RaceCharts5.png) Does this seem accurate? Is their an obvious explanation? Data from this (old) huffpost piece (figure 4): https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/civil-rights-act-anniversary-racism-charts_n_5521104<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant From the study the article is based on: > This finding is consistent with research that suggests lower-income families are more likely to withdraw money from retirement savings after a job loss or other adverse event....Those families able to hold on to their retirement saving over longer periods (such as those who remain employed or have other assets to which they can turn) come out much better than those who sell when markets are low. So basically it's a product of income and overall wealth. White households drew from their retirement funds less, and perhaps were less likely to be laid off, so they'd continue contributions to their retirement accounts, benefit from continued employer matching to those accounts, and bought the market cheap via continued contributions into those accounts during the depths of the crash in 08-09.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user If salt raises the boiling temp of water, is there additive that will let water freeze at a higher temp also?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Adding salt depresses the freezing point of water - that’s why municipalities salt the roads in the winter where it is snowy and icy. Both the boiling point elevation and freezing point depression are types of colligative properties (in case you want to read more - use that term). Colligative properties are about how the properties of a solvent (in this case water) can be changed by an added solute. It doesn’t matter what the identity of the solute is, it only matters how many particles are present (the particles essentially get in the way of the interactions between the water molecules). Fundamentally what occurs is that you lower the vapor pressure curve of the solution relative to the pure solvent. This causes both the boiling point elevation and the freezing point depression. So there is no way to add a substance to water and increase its freezing point, because the solvent is still water.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How were sufficiently coherent light sources generated for optics experiments before lasers? All the optics and photonics lab work I did as an undergrad a decade ago used a laser as the source due to its coherence. I still don’t understand how the famous optics experiments (thin slit interferences, interferometers...) that predated the laser were achieved without that advantage.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant For light sources to be coherent, they must be monochromatic (one colour) and have a constant phase difference between them. The monochromatic-ness is easy to achieve, just use a source which produces only one wavelength of light. For the constant phase difference, a single slit was often used before the gratings, or double slit, or whatever equipment the experiment was using. This works because the single slit acts as a point source, and therefore, as long as it is not moving relative to the other gratings/slits, will mean there is a constant phase difference between the sources. Hope this is correct and answers your question :)<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What is emulsification and how does it work?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant An emulsion is when two liquids that don’t mix or dissolve in each other (immiscible) are put together and then mechanically mixed so that even though they remain separate at a small level, they’re still pretty well mixed. The most familiar example is probably oil and water. Oil will float on top, and stirring a little doesn’t change it. If you stir and shake a lot, the two liquids form droplets that can be all randomly jumbled together.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Are professors in Europe hired mostly behind the curtains? I asked a friend who did a PhD and a postdoc in Europe why I see so few professor jobs for my field in websites like Euraxess. He told me that based on his experience, it seemed that European professors are initially informally offered a position based on personal connection, and then they post an ad for that position exclusively on their university website just because that's a formal requirement, and then they formally hire the person they had in mind. Is this how it works most of the time?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There is no answer to this question. European countries differ vastly in hiring practices. What you describe certainly isn't true for most (or even all) of the countries with open academic systems (i.e., the ones in which a foreigner might get hired). That's places like the Netherlands, Switzerland, etc. But even some of the countries with mostly closed systems have strong internal competition among candidates (e.g., Germany). What you describe might be true for some of the closed systems that suffer from nepotism; Italy struggles with that, for example.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Could there exist a planet made completely out of water?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Liquid water? No. To keep water a liquid requires a few constraints: 1. The pressure has to be high enough to keep it from all evaporating. This generally requires an atmosphere to keep pressures at least above 1 kPa (1/100th sea level pressure), though a fair bit higher to maintain a reasonable range of temperatures where water remains a liquid. We could imagine our proposed water planet evaporates enough water vapor off the surface of the ocean to maintain a water vapor atmosphere to prevent this. 2. The pressure has to be low enough to keep it all from freezing. This requires that, at depth in the ocean, the pressure climbs no higher than about 2 GPa (20,000x sea level pressure), or else we start forming exotic crystal structures of ice, even at high temperatures. 3. We need the right temperature, but let's assume we can play with the planet's position to maintain the right distance from its star. Suddenly we find ourselves playing a very careful balancing game here: if our planet is too large, then the lower layers will have a pressure that's too high and start freezing. On the other hand, if our planet is too small then there won't be enough gravity to hold on to the water vapor atmosphere, and the whole thing will just evaporate out into space. So let's start crafting this planet...we want to start by defining the escape velocity, which we'll do by first considering the average velocity of a water molecule at room temperature: v = sqrt(2kT / m) v = sqrt[2 * 1.38x10^-23 * 293 / (18 * 1.66x10^(-27))] v = 520 m/s That's pretty fast - about 1000 mph - so let's make sure our planet has a high enough escape velocity to prevent a molecule moving that quickly from escaping our planet. In truth, we want an escape velocity quite a bit higher than that since 520 m/s is only the average molecular velocity - other molecules could be moving quite a bit quicker. Let's say 8x that so our planet will at least stick around for a while. (By comparison, Earth's escape velocity is about 8x hydrogen's mean velocity, and while we do leak hydrogen into space, we can hold onto it on million year time scales.) The equation for escape velocity is: v = sqrt(2GM / r) We know we want v = 8 * 520 = 4160 m/s, and since our planet is liquid water which is pretty incompressible, the density = 1000 kg/m^(3), defining the relationship between mass and radius as just: M = 1000 * 4/3 Pi r^3 r = (3M / 4000Pi)^1/3 We plug that back into our escape velocity to find: 4160 m/s = sqrt(2 GM / r) = sqrt[2 GM / (3M/4000Pi)^(1/3)] = sqrt[2(4000/3 Pi)^1/3 G M^(2/3)] M = (4160 / sqrt[2(4000/3 Pi)^1/3 G])^3 M = 7.22 x 10^23 kg ...and plugging back into our radius equation... r = (3 * 7.22 x 10^23 / 4000Pi)^1/3 r = 5560 km That's big, but not too ridiculous...a bit smaller than Earth in terms of radius, but about 8x lighter in terms of mass, which makes sense when you consider this planet is much less dense. So what's the central pressure of this planet? Well, to first order we can use the following equation (though a more thorough treatment would use an integral): P = G * M * density / r P = 6.67 x 10^-11 * 7.22 x 10^23 * 1000 / 5.56 x 10^6 P = 8.66 GPa ...or about 80,000x sea level pressure, which is already well above the freezing point of water at extreme pressures. In other words, this thing has to have an ice core. TL;DR: In order to have a liquid water planet large enough that it doesn't evaporate away into space in less than a million years, the core must have a pressure high enough to become ice.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [DC] What could Superman discover about the planet that we don't currently know? There isn't much of the Earth left unexplored but the places humans can't go pose no problem to Superman. He could find out what is at the bottom of the Mariana Trench and what the core of the planet is really like. What else could he find out that remains a mystery to us?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant As you've said, most things on Earth are already explored, so Superman contribution would be about the same that unmanned probes can do - like discovering some extremophile life forms in extreme environments, carving up eternal ice in Arctic and Antarctic to see what's beneath, etc. Of course, in DC, Earth has a hole on the pole, where there is a passage/portal into the Skartaris, supposedly the place at the Earth's core, so there's that to discover too. Well, for the public to discover - adventurers of all kind have visited the place for ages.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Star Trek/The Culture] The Federation has a proven track record of hating AIs. How would the Culture deal with this if they encountered them? I've written at length about this, but I'll just quote [my most recent comment here](https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/6rxq94/starships_and_emergency_ais_why_doesnt_starfleet/dl9ea70/): > 1. Starfleet has ordered Data to be vivisected, insisting that as an artificial life form, he has no right to resign from Starfleet to avoid this fate. To pour salt onto the wound, they ordered one of his commanding officers to prosecute their case. > > 2. When Wesley accidentally creates life as a homework assignment, they almost eradicate it, despite knowing that it's a sentient life form. > > 3. When the holodeck accidentally creates a self-aware entity because of a verbal slip-up, Dr. Moriarty, the best solution that Captain Picard, one of the most liberal and empathic high-ranking officers in Starfleet comes up with, is indefinite imprisonment without a trial, and without even letting the accused know of their fate. > > 4. The EMH Mark II, after being considered inadequate as a back-up physician, is forced into slave labor cleaning plasma conduits. To be fair, they were never active as long as the Doctor on Voyager, but the Doctor's experience certainly backs up the fact that any AI system, allowed to run long enough, becomes a sentient being - and these are sentient beings that are literally slaves, and thanks to the Doctor's novel, are very aware of it. > > So: any AI becomes self-aware if allowed to run long enough, a high-school-equivalent student can create conscious life accidentally, and a holodeck on a Galaxy-class starship is powerful enough to do so as well. The only reason the Federation can possibly overlook this is through willful disrespect for non-biological life. > > The Federation hates, fears and kills - when it can't enslave - artificial intelligence. > > Frankly, I'm surprised Dr. Soong bothered to work under the Federation ageis, instead of running to a more liberal government likely to treat his creations as sophonts - someone like the Vulcans, who would at least give Data an honest trial before trying to split him up for parts. How would Contact and Special Circumstances deal with this bias, given the Federation's otherwise fairly liberal outlook and mission statement?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Contact would proceed Introducing safe and productive AI agents into the Federation via clandestine and seemingly native means, slowly acclimating the Federation to the idea that AIs are truly sentient and sapient, and that they won't necessarily turn rogue and attempt to kill all humans. Dr. Soong may well have been a contact agent, or inspired by one serving as a stealth tutor helping him design the first federation positronic brain, for example. I don't think Special Circumstances would get involved. The Federation has its issues, but is nowhere near the level of depravity that would compel the more self-righteous elements of the culture to act unilaterally.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Emperor's New Groove] What does Yzma normally use her llama transformation potion for? Are there a lot of practical uses for turning people into llamas?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Animals are excellent for intelligence gathering. Who pays attention to a bird, or a squirrel, or a beetle hanging out nearby? Given that people apparently retain their mental capacity when changed into an animal of any size, there are a lot of possibilities. Once you know that it's possible you'll want to keep several different kinds on hand in case you need to grab a specific animal quickly. Then, if you have the free time and inclination (or compulsion), you might as well see how many different animal extracts you can create. Alternatively, Yzma was trying to create a potion of youth and animals were the best she could come up with.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How does "turning it off and back on again" fix such an array of different problems?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Programs work by following really long lists of instructions. When something goes wrong it's often because programs get stuck in little loops, or several programs conflict, or something failed to load, etc. By turning it off and back on again, you start over. It's a bit like if you were counting sheep and suddenly got really confused. If you took a deep breath and started over, you could try again.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Is any one race easier to distinguish using facial recognition software? There are many stereotypes of "white people all looking the same" or "Asians all look the same", but when it comes to facial recognition, are they all the same?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant No. While it may not be perfect, a good facial recognition program uses far more data points to identify a face than the ones we associate with 'race.' Shown two black men, the software will be able to identify between them as easily as between two whites.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How do you handle financial stress as a grad student? I just posted in /r/personalfinance, but maybe this sub is more appropriate. I'm nearing the end of a master's program in evolutionary biology (August). I've been monitoring my finances throughout the program (no loans, paying out of savings with small grant assistance - also no stipend), and I am on track to be at < $1,500 when I finish this program. I'm 25, and I will have no savings (not even emergency fund) outside of that amount. There's no field I'd rather be in than academia. I will work industry if I have to do it, but I don't want to further delay starting a phd/postdoc/etc. I'm considering working a weekend job or doing some kind of freelance work/tutoring, but I don't know how well I can manage those hours on top of my current thesis project. Anyways, I'm not necessarily looking for specific advice (though that would be welcome). I'm more interested in just hearing about how other people have managed it. Even if I do get accepted into one of the phd programs where I applied, my salary would only bump from $0 annually to $20-25k post-tax until I'm at least in my 30s. How do people manage buying a car/house, starting a family, doing any kind of traveling (outside of conferences) or really just having an entertainment budget in general? I'm not even going to let myself think about retirement funds/investing... How do you manage the financial stress of worrying about whether you can afford rent in 6 month's time? I welcome stress - I wouldn't be in this career if I wasn't expecting a lot of it - but I was expecting it to come from frustrating research results, difficult students/mentors, writing publications regularly, etc, not from the budgeting side of things. STEM was supposed to be the "safe" career choice...right?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant > How do people manage buying a car/house, starting a family, doing any kind of traveling (outside of conferences) or really just having an entertainment budget in general? ime unless they have family/spousal support or some extraneous source of personal savings/income, they don't. depending on where and how you live, $25k should be enough for entertainment and maybe vacation, but you shouldn't expect to make big-ticket investments until you're out of grad school. > STEM was supposed to be the "safe" career choice...right? leave academia, and this will be true.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [WH40k] Is there anyone with enough fincnaial wealth and personal elan to gain access to the Golden Throne?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Short version: No, the Custodes wouldn't let you in no matter how rich or impressive you are. Longer version: Yes, but not directly. Basically, if you're rich and powerful enough - and we're talking owning multiple gigantic spaceships, and possibly one or more worlds - and also smart enough, you could theoretically get in with the Inquisition. If you can persuade an Inquisitor to make you an Inquisitor, then you can petition the High Lords of Terra for an audience with the Emperor. But you'd need a very good reason for them to let you in. Alternate route: Bribe the right people and have them slip you in with the regular tithe of psychics who are sacrificed to keep the Throne functioning. You'll die pretty much instantly, but the last thing you will see is the Throne. Probably not the part with the Emperor on it - it's a massive device housed in a building the size of a small country - but you'll be closer than the billions of pilgrims who will be crowded outside.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What impact does it have on my chances of getting a PhD if something I'm working on gets published first? I've spent the last 6 months combining a novel neural network architecture with computer vision as part of my computer vision PhD project. (I have no CS background a lot of this time has been spent learning how to do software engineering properly) and the other week I saw a publication that had the same idea as me and had implemented it and it seems like it may end up being high impact. The implementation also smashed a bunch of benchmarks which I myself had recently achieved with my own work. Does this mean my work no longer counts? I'm pretty bummed out about this and I'm concerned it means I've wasted a significant chunk on my PhD doing work that won't help me even if it was publishable. While I understand the publishability of my work has gone down to independant reviewers / viva givers give you credit for coming up with a good idea just slightly too late like this?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Not gonna answer your question directly, but if you had a research idea dreamt up and implemented in 6 months, had to learn the skills to get it done, and had it validated by other researchers who were already experts in the field... you’re gonna have more ideas and you’re gonna be just fine. Ask your PI about strategies for making the best of what you’ve already finished, and don’t let the bummerness of getting scooped slow your roll<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why is there only one species of human?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are a variety of reasons, but here are two: 1: Due to our technology and general intellect, humans around the world have been able to live in far more similar conditions than another, equally distributed species. 2: We are a relatively young species . Since the migration from Africa and the general distribution throughout the world, we didn't have enough time to develop to many unique genetic traits in various isolated populations. Now that the world is so much smaller due to technology, that will never happen. It should be noted that various groups did undergo independent evolution leading to changes in skin colour, sand slight changes to things like bone and muscle structure, certain desease immunities and other minor differences, some of which we were directly responsible for, such as lactose tolerance which is more prevalent among populations who historically milked cows.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why does the hair on our head keep growing, while eyelashes and eyebrows, etc, stop?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant This has been asked a lot so try searching for more explanations. The short answer is all hair follows the same cycle. It grows to a certain length, then falls out as a new hair starts growing. The length it grows to depends on what type of hair (head hair tends to grow longest) and genetics. So yes, your hair would reach a maximum length if you stopped cutting it; it wouldn't go on forever. The reason you don't notice hair missing when long hairs fall out is that they all fall out at different times so you don't really notice/miss the ones that have fallen out.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why do we continue to give high-stakes tests, especially when they are counter-productive to both students and professors? While this may seem like a cringingly naive question to ask this, however, the consequences of colleges that continue to unquestioningly to give hair-pulling exams aren't. It becomes more costly to the school and to the student to retake a class and postpone their graduation date, and extensive grading of these exams take away research time from professors and graduate students trying to get their foot in the door, and not to mention that even the most well-motivated students can succumb to life-tragedies in their semsters that cause them to bomb the exam entirely, thereby repeating the first sentence.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The language around high stakes testing didn't originate around finals, but rather achievement/qualifying exams like the SAT, ACT, and GRE. Midterms and Finals in college courses are excellent assessments but not the totality of assessment. When paired with other forms of assessment and designed well, they offer a way to gauge student performance in one of the environments best suited to mitigate cheating. For that reason, they are unlikely to ever go away.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user If energy can't be created or destroyed, does that mean it has always existed? This question seems to have one of two possibilities, either energy can be created and was in the big bang or the universe/existence is infinite, reality has always existed in some way and always will?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Conservation of energy holds upon certain conditions. We are not sure at all that the energy was conserved at the Big Bang, or even for the universe as a whole. In the first case we don't know the physics involved, and in the second is an open question in general relativity<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How to obtain energy gain or loss of chemical reactions? Chemical reactions either take or release energy. So this "energy" must be on either the reactant or at the product side. What specific chemistry concept is this? I assume that I need specific computations for getting the energy of all reactants and products as well, how do I obtain this "energy" value as well? what formulas and table values do I need to use?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant I believe you are looking for reaction enthalpy, often also called "heat of reaction" Roughly, there's an energy associated with sticking a molecule together. This is related to the bond strength, and atoms involved, etc. This is the enthalpy of formation, or heat of formation. This can be measured, or in some instances modeled and calculated, although the specifics get nit pickey iirc. Once you know the heats of formation, you can use the chemical reaction to calculate how much heat will be released or absorbed. 2A + B -> 3C A: 5 j/mol B: 7 j/mol C: 10 j/mol 2A + B = 17 j/mol 3C = 30 j/mol ∆ = 13 j/mol (correction. See below for explanation.) So this reaction absorbs 13 j per mole of reactions.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How come the human genetic code can fit roughly in ~1.5GB of data yet we turn out such complex organisms? Furthermore, the code that separates us from other mammals can fit on o floppy disk.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A few key differences between the genetic sequence and a computer sequence: 1. Computers run in binary. Genes run in quaternary (4 types of nucleic acids). That immediately increases the amount of data you can store exponentially. One step further, gene sequences build amino acids. There are 21 total amino acids that can form thousands of different proteins. 2. People are made of matter. Matter is comprised of 120-something (the number keeps changing) different elements, each with unique interaction with each other and interactions with groups of other elements, which is even more information than a simple quaternary system. Electricity, on the other hand, is not matter. There are various theories about coding data in different voltages or currents or whatever to allow electricity to provide more than a binary system, but we don't have the technology yet (and it may not even be possible).<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV translating place names is pointless and causes unnecessary confusion It is common practice to translate names of places, cities and countries instead of using the original names or the names the country chose for them. It is harmless most of the times like Berlin/berlijn or London/Londres (but this also makes it really pointless). But it can get very confusing with examples such as Küln/Cologne, Pays-Bas/Netherlands or even the weird Deutschland/Germany confusion. I live in Europe and since there are so many languages present at any given moment, it can get really confusing if everyone is familiar with their own languages version of place name. And just smth dumb that annoys me, it takes up too much space on signs. But anyway, I really haven't come across any good or any argument FOR doing this. So I think it's unnecessarily confusing and really pointless.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are valid linguistic and historical reasons for why place names are translated. If a place name features sounds or spellings that someone who speaks a foreign language could easily mispronounce, the translation of that place name will usually do something to fix that, like in your first 2 examples. In the examples where the translated place name is completely different, the translated names almost always have a historical reason for being that way. The reason that Germany has so many different names in European languages (as an example) is due to this reason; the name for Germany in each language group was adopted at a different time in history and based on different words, either from German or the other language itself. This is particularly the case for Germany as the country has existed in so many different forms over millennia, but happens with lots of other places too. And once a translated name becomes the official name for a place in a certain language, it becomes hard to change it. This is why these odd translated names stick around when more logical ones are available. They may cause confusion, but it is not unnecessary confusion, as it makes sense for linguistic or historical reasons.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user I think humanity should genetically engineer itself, once it is able to do so effectively. CMV Not thinking that much about designer babys and more about things which can be objectively improved, mainly: physical condition and cognitive abilities. I don't know how far away we are from being able to do so, but I think when we are, we should absolutely do it. Evolution is quit a slow process and if we could accelerate that, while sticking to nearly unarguably good stuff like thinking faster, have better memory etc. I don't see why we shouldn't do so. A two-classes community (directly translated from german, hope you get it) might or will probably be a temporary result and I realize it sounds a lot like some of the things people tried to do which had quit a bad influence on our history, but once we know enough about it and use it with responsibility, well why not? People I talked about to this didn't really like it, let's see what reddit has to say.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The big issue here is this: how do we know when we're responsible enough? Is it responsible to create "super soldiers" for our wars? Is it responsible to create people designed for a certain task or role in life (i.e., someone designed for manual labor vs someone designed for high-end technology creation)? Once we have control over how someone is born and how they develop, we would almost have to do these things since such specialisation would not longer be chance and up to nature. Is it right to essentially strip someone of their freedom to choose?<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How long after the big bang did the heavier elements necessary for life form? Just musing in relation to the Fermi "where is everybody?" paradox: My understanding is that it takes several generations of supernovae to generate the various heavier elements that are necessary for life as we know it, and it took 4-5 billion years on this planet to get around to intelligent life. The big bang was 13.7b ago, but for how much of that time has there even been the possibility of planets with the necessary elements?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant This is the topic of possibly the most famous scientific paper of all time, "Synthesis of the Elements in Stars" by Burbidge, Burbidge, Fowler and Hoyle - nicknamed the B2FH paper. Just search around a bit, especially under Fred Hoyle's name.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Is Aristotle begging the question? So I (just) started reading Aristotles politika, and really haven't got far. For me, it seems like he makes the following claims on why humans group in a state or polis: Humans nature is being in a community, or a polis. Polis forms because humans communicate about values, morals etc. Therefore, human society or community is a neutral state. My problem is, doesn't that make the argument "humans nature is to form a society, and that society is natural because it is humans nature to form it"?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant You could also start with Nicomachean Ethics as well since Eudaemonia (flourishing) is the key for Aristotle, and that can only happen within a state or polis. Understanding Aristotle’s philosophical outlook gives a good contextual framework when trying to understand his political philosophy.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: why does sugar help a burn? My friend burnt her finger and her son said to "put in in the sugar." She did and felt immediate relief. We looked online and found that sugar is indeed used to help burns, but nothing about why it helps.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There's a couple ways it's beneficial. Primarily, sugar absorbs water really well. This sucks up all the water in the wound, inhibiting the growth of bacteria that proliferate in wet wounds. This also has the effect of reducing swelling in the area. Additionally, cells use sugar for energy. When a burn occurs, the normal distribution network of our skin is disrupted, cutting cells off from the nutrients they need to live. There's evidence that sugar can act as an energy source for those cells when it's absorbed into the blood- keeping cell death to a minimum while the wound heals.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Since light takes time to travel how many stars in our night sky don't actually exist anymore?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The stars you can see in the night sky are all pretty close -- tens or hundreds or, in a few cases, thousands of light years. Stars have lifetimes of millions to billions of years. So probably they all still exist.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5:Why were some very toxic substances formerly thought of as medicinal? This question was inspired by [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/3g7689/deadliest_rocks_in_the_world/) post, which included information on the rock [stibnite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stibnite) which is toxic but was formerly used as medicine and material for utensils. I understand that even now many medicines have terrible side effects but how were substances like mercury ever thought of as good medicine?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Most of the "medicine" back then worked by trial and error. If your medicine "cured" the sickness by placebo effect without poisoning the patient that was a success (there is a reason most doctors had a seriously bad rep in the old days).<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What is the purpose of having baby teeth that fall out after a few years? Why don't we just keep the same teeth for our whole life? And also, why do we only grow two teeth in our life? Why not more like sharks and other animals?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There's several ideas why. A child's jaw isn't large enough to fit a full set of permanent teeth. Also, baby teeth may serve as kind of a placeholder so that there will be enough space on the jaw for the permanent teeth to grow in. The baby teeth save the spot of its corresponding permanent tooth until it's developed enough to replace it. Children that lose a baby tooth early might experience problems with overcrowding of their permanent teeth.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do all animals have natural animal instincts that allow them to nurture a child but humans need parenting classes and support when raising a child?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In traditional village (or nomadic) living conditions, children frequently see nearby parents raising other children. They learn by watching, and—when they are asked to help—they learn by doing. Often they were helping with their own younger siblings, or maybe with cousins, or maybe even the children of their older brothers and sisters. In modern society, with people having kids much later, and living in their own isolated houses, this kind of learning by doing is much less available. In other words, modern society has broken the cultural system that allowed earlier humans to successfully raise children, and parenting classes are a poor substitute.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why does contrast increase/decrease when looking at a monitor from an angle?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant LCD work by shining a bright white light (actually a combination of every color, ever see a prism?) from behind the display, then controlling how much of each color can pass through each pixel. This is achieved through multiple stacked layers which have these light and color filters embedded for each pixel. When a pixel is white, it allows most of the light to pass through. When it's black, most of that light is being absorbed or reflected back into the monitor. If that light moves sideways, it bleeds to neighboring pixels and lowers contrast by mixing different colors and blurring edges. This is ultimately stopped by putting "prism" walls around each pixel. When viewed head-on, the walls look the same as the pixels. From the side, you see the different mix of color the walls are redirecting at that angle. As you lower your view angle, you also see more of the walls and less of the pixels. This is why active parts of the display change color when viewed from the side, and why black sections mostly look the same. Edit: Just wanted to add that with older and large format displays, discoloration was instead mostly a result of polarization angle. However, modern high density formats required a shift to extremely thin layers or a curved format to prevent this from occuring at either side of a display you were looking at head-on. Thinner layers introduced problems related to irregularities in thickness, which are generally solved by optical separation.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why was there so much hatred towards Armenians in the late 1800's/early 1900's? They were victims in two notable massacres/genocides resulting in the deaths of roughly 1.8 million Armenians.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Sort of like the Jews, they were the trader and merchant class in the Ottoman empire. So they were everywhere in small numbers, dealt in money, and were involved in a lot of other transactions. Poor peasants resent the more urban merchants (a classic trope), plus they were Christians in a Muslim empire. Armenia also used to be its own country, so as nationalism rose in the late 1800s, there were Armenians talking about getting their own country back. When the strain of WW1 was destroying the Ottoman Empire, they were an easy scapegoat. In smaller towns, they could be attacked in order to take their money. And on the larger level, the Turks could blame the Armenians as the 'enemy within' (and also push them out of their homes and take their money)<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user I believe that if you know exactly what you want to study in college, then gen. eds should not be a requirement. CMV This is a bit of a rant since I am just very up set with having to take gen. eds that have no relation to my major at all, but here it goes. There's also a TL;DR at the bottom for those who'd prefer it. Ever since high school I knew I wanted to study Audio Engineering, more specifically, live sound. I got into the perfect school for this and it has excellent live sound classes that I love taking. I was actually upset when my first live sound class was over for the day, because I was enjoying it so much. However, I feel like I'm loosing potential knowledge and experience by having to take gen. ed courses. I'm a Junior in college and I'm still having to fulfill gen. ed requirements because there are so many. Thankfully after this semester I will be done. I've had to take Math, Physics, Religion, Philosophy, English, Government, Political Science, History, Phys. Ed, & Psychology. I feel that all of these classes were simply a waste of time to me. I could've been taking classes that were related to my major instead, thus better preparing me for my career. I know it's a good thing to be well rounded and what not, but College is the time when you figure out what you enjoy doing and you study that in order to be better prepared in finding a job in your career path. I took almost all of those courses in high school already. Why do I need to repeat them? Why do I need to know pre-calculus, calculating the friction of a box or about Plato's beliefs? They have no relation to my major. (And no, my physics course hasn't even covered anything remotely close to audio engineering, i.e. sine waves. It's all kinematics and forces) I'm terrible at these things, but I'm good with live sound and audio stuff. Why should I be forced to waste my parents and my money (I help pay for college too) on courses that will not better prepare me for a job in the audio engineering field? A potential employer would not look at my college transcript and say "Even though you got straight A's in all of your Audio Engineering classes, you didn't do well in Religion, so I'm sorry but you don't have this Live Sound job." Lastly, I understand that gen. eds are put in place to allow students to possibly find what they want to do as far as a career, and I think that's great for students who are unsure of what they want to do after college. However, I feel that it's unfair to those of us who have already found our passion and just want to take as many classes about our major as we can to better prepare ourselves. TL;DR Bullet point version: * Loosing potential knowledge, because one isn't able to take as many classes related to their major. * A waste of money because gen. eds do not relate to one's major or provide help in it. * College is about finding what you want to do and focusing on that career. It shouldn't be a repeat of high school. * I shouldn't focus my time and energy on making my weaknesses go from "suck" to "not as bad", when I could just make my strengths go from "great" to "Best". * Gen. eds are in place to assist those who are unsure of what they want to do, but they hurt those who have already found their passion and just want to learn as much as they can about it. EDIT: Thank you all for the wonderful new perspectives. While I still don't like gen. eds. my view on their purpose has been changed mostly. I guess I'm just wishing I could take more audio classes, because I always have fun in them compared to gen. eds. For those who've been harping me about not knowing what a Liberal Arts degree entitles; I had honestly never been told what the different degrees were or what they meant. No one in high school talked about them, no one at college visits talked about them, my parents never talked about them, I'd never really heard the term before. How could I have asked what I didn't know?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant 1. Employers who are hiring audio engineers are going to be primarily concerned with your grades in relevant courses - your grades in gen ed courses will not be as much of a factor. So don't worry so much about that. 2. Gen ed courses can indicate your strengths or weaknesses regarding various important skills or abilities. Science and math courses may be used by employers as indicators of your intellect. English, History, and Philosophy courses may indicate your proficiency with basic level writing - an important skill for any working adult. Comparative Religion, Government, and Political Science can indicate that you are capable of understanding how adult society works, and that you are capable of thinking about things from other people's perspectives - which is an important skill when trying to resolve conflicts with coworkers, subordinates, clients, etc. 3. You have wanted to be an audio engineer since high school, but many people think that they "know" that they want to be, and end up changing careers. Many people change jobs and/or entire careers. Having an exposure to a broad array of classes gives college students a broader perspective on career paths - including career paths that may have been previously unknown to the students. In other words, without mandatory exposure, some people would never discuss a career path that would be very good for them.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How do we know water is made of two hydrogen atoms and not just one? How do we know that, for example, H2O, is infact H2O and not just one hydrogen? Further more, how do we know that anything is made of specifically these elements and not something else? And what makes molecules stay together (like in a human)?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant You can take pure oxygen and pure hydrogen and combine them to form water. By measuring how much oxygen or how much hydrogen is left over after all the water is formed, you can deduce the proportions that were used to make the water. When we do this, we can tell that two parts of hydrogen are used for every one part of oxygen. What makes molecules stay together are things called intermolecular forces, of which there are a variety and rather complicated to explain. But basically there are attractive forces between the molecules that keep them together rather than just flying apart.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: as someone from the UK, I have no idea why obamacare has been getting so much hate. explain. I really just have not clue.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Obamacare mandates that you buy healthcare insurance, or apply for free coverage from the government if you're poor enough or old enough to qualify. It gives subsidies based on income. Long story short, there are a lot of Americans who think that the free market is the best solution to all problems - healthcare included. They view Obamacare as evil for two reasons: 1) it forces you to purchase something against your will, and 2) it runs contrary to free market principles. Many (most?) of these people also tend believe that healthcare in the US is significantly superior to that which exists in the UK/Canada/Switzerland/etc.. Thus, any move toward a European model is viewed as a degradation of current services.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why does everyone hate flash and why are they happy that it's "going away"?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant You know how the Olympics have two official languages, English and French, right? This standardization allows everyone (athletes, judges, organizers, and watchers) to have one of two languages in which to communicate. Moreover, for the sake of this analogy, imagine that English and French are easily-accessible languages (that is, there are many many schools that teach the language, and many resources for learning them). Now, imagine that, say, the Russian gymnastics team _insists_ on using only Russian to communicate. They are such an important part of the Olympics that the International Olympic Committee has no choice but to allow them to do so. Finally, imagine there are virtually no resources for learning Russian: either you grew up speaking it, or you didn't, but it's very hard to find a way to learn the language later. This situation would be totally disruptive to the idea that everyone should be able to communicate with everyone else at the Olympics. (note: not picking on Russians here, they're just a great example of an indispensable country for the Olympics to keep its character.) This is what happened with Flash - the open-source web standards of HTML, ECMAScript, CSS and so on were designed from the beginning to be open, accessible, and understandable to people _and other computers_ using the Internet. They were open, and standards-based, which means whole teams of people could support their development and stability. Then Flash came along, which had lots of nice features (like streaming video), but it was closed source, buggy, fickle, and completely opaque to the tools and people involved in using it. The result was that we had a split between the easy-to-understand, debuggable, and standards-based technology with a fickle and unpredictable prima donna that had a tendency to crash, taking down the whole browser.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Pokemon] How are gym leaders and elite four decided?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Gym leaders simply develop enough of a reputation that people start traveling the world just to challenge them, and they eventually take on followers and build a gym for those people to hang out and build their skills. Eventually the Pokemon League recognizes that gym as official and issues them a badge to hand out. As for the Elite Four, they're specially scouted by the Pokemon League. Some of them are former champions, former Gym Leaders, or just people who fit the criteria of being "elite".<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Is it possible for meteoroids carrying microorganisms from Earth to travel to another planet, such as Mars, and seed life onto them? And if possible, how likely is a situation like this to occur successfully?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant What you're asking is basically the panspermia theory, that says life can spread between habitable planets when carried by meteors. Research has been done about this by taking extremophiles into space and exposing them to vacuum, radiation, extreme temperatures and direct sunlight. Survival rates were good enough. The weak link in the theory is atmospheric entry. When the meteor burns up, any lifeforms it carries would be vaporized and destroyed. A possible exception is that lifeforms are carried in very deep a crack in the rock that isn't reached by the hot air outside. ESA has discussed experiments about atmospheric entry in these conditions but none have been performed yet.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: It is hypocritical to advocate for cancel culture and a rehabilitative justice system at the same time. I believe there are mainly two types of cancel culture that we see today. The first type is just cancelling someone from the platform where they committed egregious behavior on. If you act like a piece of shit at a bar, the bar can cancel you from stepping foot in their business in the future. If you are harassing people and being racist on Twitter, Twitter can ban you. The second type of cancel culture is advocating for the person's cancellation outside of just the platform where they committed egregious behavior. I've seen people go as far as getting people fired from their jobs, getting people kicked out of college, getting people evicted, etc. This is the type of cancel culture that I am focusing on in my CMV. To be clear, I would consider myself on the left politically. However, I am against the left's embrace of this second type of cancel culture because I find it very hypocritical. How can you on the one hand laugh at someone for losing their job for saying something racist or insensitive online, then on the other hand advocate for a more rehabilitative justice system where even murderers should have a path towards redemption and a normal life? I see this all the time where the same people that ridicule a white person for getting fired from their job or kicked out of college will go around saying that a black guy involved in gang violence should be offered rehabilitation. Either both should be extended a path to redeem themselves, or both should be subject to retributive justice. Having one position for one type of person and another position for another shows that you are ideologically motivated, have no principles, and are hypocritical. CMV<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant I think it’s important to remember that they are two radically different systems. One is a set of consequences of free trade and social interaction and the other is a designed justice system enforced by the societal monopoly in violence and backed up with the threat of state violence. It makes total sense that they be treated differently.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why are we colder when wet?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Our sensation of being cold (or hot) is strongly affected by the rate at which we exchange heat with the environment. When we're wet, the water is almost always colder than the 37 C of our body. That means that heat flows from our body into the water on our skin. And since water has a considerably higher heat conductivity than air, the body loses heat more rapidly when it's covered in water. Next, the water will evaporate, which lowers the average temperature of the water that remains, causing further heat flow from the body to the water on the skin. Essentially, this is the same as sweating, except that sweating is a beneficial process that the body initiates when it is too hot. So when we're wet, we lose heat more rapidly than when we're dry. This causes a stronger sensation of feeling cold, even though the water on our skin may be warmer than the air.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user If my speed is relative, not absolute, and the speed of light always appears the same no matter my reference frame, how is a statement like "I am travelling at 99% of the speed of light" meaningful?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It's true, this statement should be always be followed by "with respect to some reference frame." If you're carrying a cup of tea in your spaceship, the cup of tea doesn't care that some guy on the moon is measuring your speed at 0.9999c.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How differently does the body process sugar alcohols vs regular sugars? I've been trying to reduce my overall sugar intake in recent months, and I've notice one option is foods that substitute sugar with sugar alcohol. I have a baseline understanding of chemistry, and from what I can gather sugar alcohols are basically sugar molecules with an -OH attached somewhere. This seems like enough to fool the tastebuds into thinking that its regular sugar and send "this is sweet" signals to the brain, but I'm curious to how the body actually processes these molecules in the gut. If the body ends up breaking down the molecules like regular sugar molecules, that doesn't seem very advantageous unless you're a food manufacturer trying to skirt around nutrition labels. If the body ends up breaking down the sugar alcohol differently than sugar, how does it breakdown, and what are some advantages and disadvantages of sugar alcohol over regular sugar?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant >If the body ends up breaking down the sugar alcohol differently than sugar, how does it breakdown, and what are some advantages and disadvantages of sugar alcohol over regular sugar? The body processes sugar alcohols a little differently, yes. Specifically, the human body can absorb a little over half the caloric content (2.6 calories per gram versus four), and sugar alcohols also don't cause blood sugar to spike as hard. Sugar alcohols also don't contribute to tooth decay. As you note, their chemical structure is similar enough to sugar to fool our tastebuds. However, it's not as potent, meaning more sugar alcohol would be needed to make something taste "as sweet." Because 2.6 is 65% of 4, as long as the sweetness of the sugar alcohol in question is 65% or more of straight glucose, you come out ahead in a 1:1 swap. One downside that should be noted is because the body doesn't process sugar alcohols completely, you can end up with gastrointestinal effects like gas and diarrhea.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Should I put an anarchist/anticapitalist organization on my resumé when applying for research internships? I've been part of Food Not Bombs at various locations since last June. It's become a large part of my life, and I feel that it's contributed significantly to my personal and political growth. And I'm proud of what we do. But of course the politics of FNB run counter to the norm, and other volunteers have gotten into clashes with the authorities in the past. On the one hand, that connotation might scare recruiters off. On the other, though, I feel that omitting it would provide an incomplete summary of myself, my life, and my accomplishments. For what it's worth, I'm in linguistics/computational linguistics.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Depends what jobs you're applying for, and how much else you have on your resume. Don't forget that you can have two versions of your resume, one with and one without, and send the appropriate one to each job. For example, if you're applying to work at the federal government, maybe don't include an anarchist group. But if you're applying to work for a charity, do.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Dune] The Sandworms are said to have caused the desertification of Arrakis turning what once was a lively green planet into a barren sandy wasteland. How did the Sandworms manage to prompt such significant ecological change?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are two main causes. 1) They thresh Earth into sand sand as they 'swim' as shared by esteemed colleague /u/Poorly-Drawn-Beagle. The destruction of soil is a major contributor to Arrakis desertification, but is also a secondary result of the planet's nearly-nonexistent water-cycle. 2) Sandworm larva, i.e. 'Sandtrout", consume vast amounts of water, removing it from the Arrakis water-cycle, and contributing to the desertification of Arrakis. It's believe it's implied that consuming large amounts of water is what allows the humble Sandtrout to grow into a mighty Shai-Hulud over the course of millennia.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [MCU] How did both Red Skull and Shield use the Space stone to make so much energy? Both Hydra in the 40's and Shield on modern times managed to use the tesseract/Space Stone to create energy to power their inventions. How is that possible from whats basically a giant teleportation machine?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant All six Infinity Stones have their main function and also the side function of producing a massive amount of energy due to their connection to the Big Bang. The only exception is the Power Stone, for which harnessing and releasing energy is the main point. You can see an example of this with other Stones wgen Vision uses the Mind Stone to shoot beams of energy from his forehead and Loki uses it to emit concussive blasts from his scepter. If they used this aspect of the Stone to its maximum potential, they could potentially make bombs like Red Skull did, but the Mind Stone being arguably weaker than the Space Stone may explain why we only see relatively minor energy output from it on screen. If you really want an explanation specific to the Stone, it's possible it harnesses zero-point energy from empty space, which sort of means it's tapping into a perpetual motion machine. Or perhaps Dark Energy, which may simply be a basic property of space rather than a separate phenomenon, is the source of its energy output.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What is the difference between the best, high-pay lawyer and an average or so-so lawyer? You always hear phrases such as "We'll get you the best lawyer in this country". What makes a great lawyer compared to a good or average one?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It helps to think of it like a car mechanic. The best mechanic for you is one that has experience fixing the problem you have at a reasonable price. But the top mechanics in the world have experience solving highly specialized problems in exotic cars.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Work from Home is a benefit in almost everyway for everyone! I really feel work from home should be a culture everywhere in the world and that's how people should actually work! Let me tell you why I say this. * Work from Home actually makes people more productive because when someone actually has to submit a deliverable they will sit and finish their work and maybe can get an extra hour of sleep the next day. People can take a break in between when they need it and not when during the allotted break time. * Companies can reduce the costs heavily. They can reduce the renting space which will save them loads of money on rent and electricity! There are lots of other things that company can save costs on! * Number of negative incidents that happen to people at night when travelling back home from work alone will be significantly reduced. * This will bring better cheaper and better quality Internet for everyone. This could also bring a lot more investment to better Internet security for everyone. * With people spending on average 20% of their lives travelling this can really give them more time to work when they have to and make use of our life in a better way. * Following the previous point, this will also save tons of air, water and noise pollution as there will be less traffic everywhere and which will also help us travel faster when needed. * We can spend a lot more time with our family! Better quality of life! * Nature can heal itself like it is doing now during lockdown all over the world. People can go to office when they need to. When they do not have the necessary hardware to do a work they can go there and get it done. Work can be done at home every other time. I know a lot of places have work from home culture. I say its not enough. Every company in every country where possible should make their employees work from home. All these things were just off the top of my head. I bet there are a lot more benefits to working at home for everyone.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are several disadvantages of home working: - you need an office to concentrate, not everyone has a closed room, comfortable, ergonomic and productive where you can keep family out - home power usage goes up, and homes are usually less efficient than office buildings in heating, cooling and lighting, impacting both consumption and the environment - many jobs have informal knowledge and communicatuin paths to get things done, such as tribal knowledge, look and learn practices and visual signs that are lost remotely - at home it's easy to overwork, leadingto burnout - work facilities have a considerable impact on productivity, so companies spend a lot of time thinking about this. with employees at home they lose a tool for one they have no control over Overall there are many benefits from working from home, but it's not all benefits.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [X2]How did Magneto switching metal plates in the recreation of Cerebro change its search function from mutant to human?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Cerebro works as a mental energy resonator, enabling the professor to amplify his power to a world-reaching scale. The plates look plain on the outside, but on the inside they hide highly sophisticated circuitry. Their geometric arrangement specifies a certain "frequency" of mental energy; by default they're arranged to be tuned into mutant minds, but they can be switched around to tune them into non-mutant minds.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How does the emotion of fear lead to the emotion of anger?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Emotions are like shortcuts to certain behaviors that are meant to help you deal with the situations that trigger them. Fear helps keep you safe in potentially dangerous situations by encouraging behaviors meant to extract you from those situations. Anger is a response to unresolvable problems that can help you break through whatever barriers are in the way preventing you from figuring out a solution to the problem, which is why people are often more motivated to act in general and more likely to resort to reckless or violent behaviors when angry. If you are unable to resolve the situation that is making you afraid, this can result in an anger response.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [DC] While Batman is high tech, the DCU is so much further ahead that he should be far more advanced. Why isn't he using reverse engineered alien tech or at least not using Wayne Enterprises to research as much of it as possible to adapt for humanity and himself?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Based on Batman's let's say...proclivity for planning and control, he likes to reduce unknown variables. Sure he might be able to reverse engineer an alien device and integrate it into his arsenal but there's always the chance he may miss something. You don't want to be in the middle of a fight against Man-Bat and randomly have your alien powered tech stop working due to some unforseen extraterrestrial stack flow error. Batman needs to be one with his arsenal of tools to preform at his peak, and to him that includes end to end control of his gadgets from R&D to implementation.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user By what method do humans generate random numbers? I mean attempt to generate random numbers, since what they generate isn't very random.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant With numbers in general (not necessarily random numbers), we remember numbers based on availability. If you're around a certain number more often you're more likely to think of them first. The numbers that would pop into your head are numbers that are more available to you at the time. This follows a general pattern in retrieval of information from long-term memory into working memory, in that we retrieve information based on their associations with other information. You are more likely to remember information you learned in the same surroundings you learned it; you are more likely to remember something if you are primed with something related to it. [Speculation warning] Perhaps we associate certain numbers with being "random". Given that we are primed to think of random numbers, we remember those numbers associated with being random (rather than creating a novel set of numbers from scratch.)<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How does a multinational company pay it's taxes?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Things obviously get a bit more complicated than this, but at the basic level, they usually have separate subsidiaries operating each country (though we may consider the EU a single country for this purpose). Each subsidiary then has its own separate profits that it earns in the country it operates in, and it pays taxes on those profits. It may then send post-tax profits to the parent company or some other subsidiary.<\|im_end\|>

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