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<\|im_start\|>user Before and during a recession, what is seen as the “better” option: cash or real assets? Or neither? Additional questions: does the attractiveness between these asset classes change when not in a recession? What is seen as the least valuable asset class during a recession? Why?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant You can measure the risk of an asset in terms of the coefficient of variation between the real returns of the asset and consumption growth, sometimes called its "beta". Assets with fixed nominal payments like Treasury bonds tend to perform well. Inflation tends to decrease when consumption falls, so the real returns on bonds go up. Because returns increase when consumption growth decreases. Bonds are said to be a "negative beta" asset as a result. Assets like equities tend to do poorly. They are "positive beta" assets. Returns increase when consumption goes up.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Would people who are more intelligent, beautiful, and/or social than average be considered more evolved according to the theory of evolution? I understand that all of these characteristics are relative or can be considered as constructed by the society. However, the majority of us can agree whether a guy is more handsome than another regardless of his race or nationality. Is a "handsome" guy more evolved than an "ugly" one? Thanks<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There is no "more" or "less" evolved; there is only how fit they are to their environment. But attractiveness can indicate certain markers of health: There are lots of metrics and measures for "attractiveness." But there are definitely several that are hard-wired and purely biological, rather than cultural or social. And probably the largest and most influential of these is facial and bodily symmetry, where the sides and hemispheres of your face all match one another. This is not the only metric of attractivness, but symmetry is a huge part of that "wow" factor you feel the instant after looking at someone very attractive. Chances are you see attractive people every day; but every once and a while, you've probably seen someone that was almost otherworldy attractive. Usually this beyond sexual - you can probably equally identify these factors in men and women, regardless of who you are sexually attracted to. These people are just instantly, magnetically attractive, well beyond the limits of attractiveness we're used to. In these cases, you're seeing someone who is on the very edge of the bell curve in terms of phenotypic expression of symmetry and genetic markers for health and fertility. Symmetry is cross-cultural. In every culture and society, people with high degree of facial symmetry are considered more beautiful (there is also a theory that the reason "dancing" evolved simultaneously in many separate isolated human cultures was as a mating strategy to demonstrate excellent balance and coordination, which therefore indicated your body was highly symmetrical). Facial symmetry is largely indicative of how healthy you were as a fetus. A growing human fetus can be subjected to a number of various illnesses and diseases that will disrupt the process of symmetrical facial and body growth. People who are symmetrical, therefore, may be considered biologically "healthier". From a primitive perspective, these people would be better to procreate with, because your child with them would be more likely to survive, because its healthier in the womb. Scientists believe there are actually other ways your immune system comes into play in determining attractiveness. The unwashed scent of a potential mate contains certain markers of their immune system. Several studies have shown that you are most likely to find someone attractive who has an immune system much different than your own. This actually makes perfect sense, because again, your brain is selecting an individual with whom your child would be most likely to survive. If you combine your immune system with one much different than yours, you're giving your child the broadest possible immune system to fight off many different diseases (and also be more likely to develop into a symmetrical, attractive child). Keep in mind though, again, that these are all generalizations. Symmetry doesn't always indicate health. And there are many, many other factors overlaid on top of this with which we ultimately determine attractiveness. But your brain is extremely quick at picking up very small cues. So if you're ever out and about, and you encounter that rare person that is just so impossible attractive that they strike you like a bolt through the heart, where they almost seem like another race - in all likelihood, what you're seeing is just a perfect combination of symmetry, strong immunity, the perfect phenotypical expression of "good health." TLDR; no they're not more evolved: they simply have more physical cues indicating they will make a healthy, immunologically sound baby<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How do directions work in space? On Earth we have north, south, east, and west, but those are relative to Earth. What directions, if any, do people use for space?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are a few different celestial coordinate systems, which tend to be used in different applications. Astronomers usually use an equatorial coordinate system, which describes the location of objects in the sky using two angles. Right ascension describes where an object is along the celestial equator (basically longitude), while Declination describes the angle from the equator (basically latitude). The equator is aligned with the Earth's spin axis to make observations simpler. Ecliptic coordinates work similarly, but align the equator to the plane of the Earth's orbit to work better within our solar system. There's also a galactic coordinate system, which aligns with the galactic plane and center. For describing orbits of objects in a solar system, such as asteroids, usually a set of six orbital parameters is used. These parameters can be used to calculate where an object will appear in the sky at a particular time in an ephemeris table. For small objects, these parameters have to be updated frequently to account for perturbations by larger planets.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What are some philosophical arguments against antinatalism other than the quippy “If life isn’t worth living, why are you here?” Title<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A few points that are commonly targeted: * The argument for axiological asymmetry between goods and bads is hard to define/justify without resorting to conceding that it only works within certain meta-ethical frameworks. E.g. deontology and intuitionism and the example of non-existent martians' absence of suffering being a good thing, but their absence of pleasures being neutral. * Where is the distinction point between antinatalism and promortalism - Benatar argues for annihilation as an inherent contributor to the badness of death, and this combined with the free will of an already existing being can take precedence over the initial asymmetric calculus when considering a 'being' that is yet to exist (hence the delimiter between a life worth starting vs a life worth continuing). This depends on views on the badness of death itself, i.e. Epicureanism vs the deprivation account, as well as views on free-will and rationality in people with depression and other mental health issues. * The point at which an embryo/fetus becomes sentient is still debated as it relies on views on personal identity. * The tendencies for humans to ignore empirical/a posteriori 'bads' of existence and of pollyannaism (to overrate the quality of their lives) are difficult to dispute without telling people their opinions don't matter and they're mistaken. How much value should be placed on people's subjective opinions about their own life quality when humans tend to adapt to their circumstances and regress to an happiness mean. * Antinatalist misanthropic arguments can also be challenged from a utilitarian perspective, which depends on the ascribed value of non-human animals and the negative effects humans can have on other conscious beings, directly or indirectly. E.g. if we were to say that non-human animals can't suffer, then the misanthropic argument would be severely weakened. edit: clarity, spelling<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How does one word end up meaning several, completely different things? Synonyms make sense, but a word like "match" have at least three different meanings that have nothing on common.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The borrowing of a related word from another language which becomes the original word's main meaning. A good example is the English word "magazine", originally a French word meaning something like "warehouse" or "storehouse" and retaining that meaning when talking about a ship's powder magazine. Then in the late 1700's in France there appeared a new regularly published literary anthology called "Magasin des Histoires" or warehouse of stories. The format proved hugely popular both inside and outside of France and spawned many imitations, which in English became known by their French name, "magazine".<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Eli5 how people stay alive during surgery I’ve never really been able to wrap my head around how people can survive certain kinds of surgeries. For example, stuff like organ transplants, open heart surgery, brain surgery, etc. How is it that a stab wound can be fatal but we’re also able to cut open people, rearrange their insides a bit, and sew them up? Wouldn’t they die of blood loss or because a critical organ is removed during a transplant?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Biologist here Generally, we have a collection of advanced machines that can supply oxygenated blood to the body, we can use machines to circulate blood while we stop your heart to work on it, and we can cut flow off to organs to remove and replace them. As long as blood flow is provided to the brain and organs, its easy to keep someone alive for as long as we need to provide care, using blood transfusions, we can keep enough blood in the body's circulatory system to keep someone alive<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [DC] how did superman age when he was young but doesn't seem to age now that he is older?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Maturing and aging are actually independent processes. There are kids with a condition that causes them to age prematurely and it doesn't make them grow any faster, there are adults with a condition that makes them stop physically maturing too early but it does not give them biological immortality. Ergo it is quite safe to assume that people of his species mature at a rate equal to humans but do not age as quickly.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How can a diary be admissible as evidence? Couldn't it be completely forged the night before? I see diaries often mentioned as great tools for keeping organizations honest and a few big political cases where diaries or personal journals became major evidence. Is it just so the journal-keeper can keep better track of his or her own memories better or are they validated in some way? edit: The ELI5 gist I'm getting is that it's usually considered something along the lines of a verbal testimony, and not usually used by itself to decide a case, but that there are a lot of variables involved such as how important the diary evidence might be, and it has the added weight that it's already written and cannot be changed later. And there are ways to at least validate that it was written when it was claimed to have been written. Thanks for the answers guys!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant They can be evidence as much as any other written document can be. Yes, a diary could have been forged. But so could any other written document. Just like a witness might be lying, computer evidence falsified or any other kind of evidence corrupted. Evidence has to be critically examined to ensure that, as best as can be determined, it's genuine. For example, if the relevant diary entry was in a different hand, different pen and on a page stapled into the rest of the diary, there would be good grounds for assuming it was false.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Star Trek] Food dispensers produce any quantity of virtually any delicacy you can think of. Why isn't obesity rampant in the Federation? I know for sure if I had unlimited food at my disposal I know I would snack like crazy. A food dispenser that beams anything I want into existence? Yeah I'd be crazy fat. There must be people like that among the billions of Federation citizens, and if contemporary obesity figures and probable causes are to be considered, that issue must be more widespread among many billions than it is today. So why isn't it the case? Or is it?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Under the presumption that caloric intake, fat content, and whatnot are taken into consideration and [easily] modified by the replicator as appropriate. Plus, have you ever noticed how busy Feds are? All those electronics to play with, it's amazing they don't forget to eat.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What are the differences between all these awards show ? The Grammys, the Golden Globes, the Emmys, the Oscars, the Tonys, the Academy Awards, the People's Choice awards .... There are so many different ones and I'm not so sure what the differences between them are. It seems some of the categories overlap as well. What's the difference between all of them ?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Each award belongs to a different group. The Grammys for example are given out by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences for outstanding work in the music industry. The same group gives out the: Emmy Awards (television), the Tony Awards (stage performance), and the Academy Awards/Oscars (motion pictures). The specifies for each award are on Wikipedia.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Laws against holocaust denial is a bad thing.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In Germany and Austria, holocaust denial laws are a historical legacy. In the decades after WW2, those countries were such a mess that they could not afford to adhere to lofty ideals of absolute free speech. They had to be pragmatic in order to rebuild a civilized society. De-nazification was part of that effort. It is hard to imagine just how brainwashed society was. It is difficult to fix that without restrictions on free speech. Nowadays, these laws are no longer necessary, but repealing them would send the wrong message and offend a lot of people, so Austria and Germany are stuck with them. These laws are not as illiberal as they seem. You are not going to go to prison for denying the holocaust while talking to someone on a bus stop. In practice, only the people who express these views to larger audiences get prosecuted.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Will China fail? According to Why Nations Fail, China appears to have a significant amount of the issues seen in failing nations, albeit does seem to have fairly strong institutions. So the question is, can China avoid the fate of states with their similarities, by massive state spending on developing an innovative knowledge run state, or is it destined to fail? Edit: I realise it's a more normative than positive question, but still interested. And not looking for some crappy communist capitalist slap fight either. More interested in extactive vs inclusive societies and how that may manifest in China's future.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Acemoglu’s work doesn’t describe a binary — there aren’t just failed or successful states — a country’s institutions can fall on a spectrum of more or less inclusive. Eg, maybe Sweden or wherever is extremely inclusive, Spain a little less so, Malaysia has serious flaws, and somewhere like Equatorial Guinea is a truly failed state. And each will reach some steady state economically — E. Guinea will have most people dirt poor until it has better institutions, Malaysia will be better off than most places but not truly rich, Spain will be rich but not as rich as it could be with better institutions, and Sweden will be somewhere near the top. China went from having some of the worst institutions in the world, which caused mass famines, disease, suffering, and cultural destruction, to a place where most people can at least have a shot at an education, a modest wage, and can even maybe start their own business. Accordingly, they’ve gone from a dirt poor country to one that’s still fairly poor (gdp per capita is in the ballpark of Brazil or Mexico) but not destitute. Maybe it will get better institutions, maybe worse, but one might expect it to stay about the same. And it could plausibly stay that way for a long time, and be quite stable. Maybe economic success has some link to stability, but that doesn’t mean somewhere economically unsuccessful can’t be politically stable for a very long time. It’s not a ticking time bomb. Also, just because of Chinas sheer population, even reaching moderate success economically gives the CCP enough resources to be a superpower. So, it’s complicated, but there’s no reason to expect an implosion just on economics alone.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How do speakers generate sound? Subquestion: why is it that smaller heaphones usually can't product strong bass sounds compared to bigger speakers?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant What we know as sound is our response to pressure waves in the air around us. The frequency (how close together) and amplitude (the size) of these waves make different sounds. A speaker creates pressure waves by moving a cone back and forth. By moving at different speeds and over different distances, it creates waves of specific frequencies and amplitude. The cone of the speaker has a magnet attached to it. Near that magnet inside the speaker housing is a coil of wire. When electricity is run through the coil of wire the magnet gets pulled toward the coil. When the electricity in the coil stops, the magnet springs away from the coil due to the shape of the speaker cone. Running electricity through the coil at differing frequencies and for differing durations cause the speaker cone to move sound waves at various frequencies and amplitudes. Headphones usually have very small speaker cones and very small magnets. Because of this, they are usually not very good at creating low frequency sound waves.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why is it so hard to build robots that have more fluid motion? [This](http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/diy/canadians-teach-darwin-to-ice-skate-play-hockey?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IeeeSpectrum+%28IEEE+Spectrum%29) may be more ground-breaking than I realize but I'm trying to understand why we haven't seen more capable robots by now? Asimo, I suppose is the most impressive one I've seen so far. What limitations are preventing us from building a robot that has human-like or even animal-like gait. Something that can move faster and quickly change direction. EDIT: I forgot about [PETMAN](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mclbVTIYG8E). It would be impressive to see it run and change direction in one smooth motion.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Engineer who does robotics here. First of all there's very little to gain for "fluid" motion from a practical sense. Industrial robots are designed to lift a load, do a motion efficiently not necessarily look human-like when they do it. second. Human motion is much more complex than it looks. Anyone who's been around a baby learning to walk you can see the brain and coordination isn't just there yet and they constantly fall over. A human gait is not statically stable. That means if you were to stop all motion half way through your step you would fall over. Robots like Asimo are stable throughout their entire step that means if you were to cut power to asimo half way through it's step it would just remain frozen and not fall over. This is because most robots are designed such that the center of gravity is always over their foot, eveyrthing is perfectly balanced so that the robot won't fall over. Humans on the other hand are not. We can't even sleep standing up because we would fall over. So why don't we make robots that are dynamically unstable like humans? The answer is that it's much much much more difficult. Humans have a lot of feedback mechanisms like their inner ear, and nerve cells throught their feet and legs letting them know how much weight is on each foot and if they are falling over etc. If even one of these systems breaks the system generally doesn't work. For exmaple ear infections cause dizziness, and if your leg falls asleep or is numbed you can barely support yourself. Having a multiple feedback loop system is much more difficult to program. It's a field of active research, but the technology just isn't there yet.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5 why it can be too cold to start a fire I was scrolling through youtube shorts and stumbled across [this scishow short](https://youtube.com/shorts/fCv6a5jYWa8?feature=share) from Hank explaining how it can literally be too cold to start a fire. I did not know this possible and his explanation did not make sense to me. Can someone either break down what he said into something more manageable, or explain it in a different way? Thanks! also PLEASE don't eat me alive if I flaired this wrong. I failed chem. I never took physics. I have received five different answers on whether or not this is a "physics", "chemistry", or "other" flair.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Fire needs three things: heat, fuel, and air/oxygen. That’s because the chemical reaction for combustion needs three things: energy, a “reducer” and an oxidizer. If the fuel/oxygen mixture isn’t hot enough, it won’t ignite; think about gasoline vapors when you fill up a car. The fuel (gasoline vapor) and oxygen (air) are mixed, but it’s not hot enough to ignite. Usually an open flame (a lit wick or match) or a spark are hot enough to ignite the fuel. However, if the air is extremely cold, it’s possible that the air pulls away heat faster than the reaction can generate it. Therefore, the fire will go out; think about blowing out a match. You’re putting more oxygen into the fire; that’ll just make it worse! Except you’re taking away heat at the same time; if you take away heat faster than the additional oxygen can burn with the fuel, the fire will go out.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: 20% Downpayments for Houses are Unrealistic So, I've been looking at purchasing a home in the next few years. All of the calculators and tools that I've seen assume a 20% downpayment plus closing costs out of pocket. Yet, all of the banks around me are advertising no or low-money down loans. Given the economic trends in the housing market and the current rate of inflation, it seems nearly impossible for the average person to save up 20% of a loan for a house and be able to pay that up front. It also doesn't appear that 20% is really the norm any more. Accordingly, I believe that we should stop giving out this outdated advice. It is contributing to the low rate of home ownership.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In the US you can get a loan for less than 20% down, but typically you'll be required to maintain mortgage insurance that adds 0.5-1% of the loan balance per year. The advice is just that it's easier to qualify and costs a lot less to borrow if you have a 20% down payment.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why, when someone dies from something that does not permanently damage anything vital, they can not be "restarted" or brought back to life? Just wondering why, for example, if someone is cut and loses enough blood and dies, they can't simply "replace" the blood and get everything working again? I get that if someone's brain or heart is damaged and can't be repaired then they can't be resuscitated... but what makes every form of death completely permanent? Like if someone drowns, I imagine everything is undamaged; why can't they be brought back to life?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Blood is the method that the body uses to distribute oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body. Without blood, your brain isn't going to get oxygen, which is actually what kills you, not the blood loss itself. Same goes for drowning: You're not getting O2 to your brain, so your brain dies.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why does Benford's law apply to so many different data sets? Why is a leading digit of 1 so much more common than 9? This blows my mind and I can't understand the explanations easily. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law Benford's Law, also called the First-Digit Law, refers to the frequency distribution of digits in many (but not all) real-life sources of data. In this distribution, 1 occurs as the leading digit about 30% of the time, while larger digits occur in that position less frequently: 9 as the first digit less than 5% of the time. Benford's Law also concerns the expected distribution for digits beyond the first, which approach a uniform distribution. This result has been found to apply to a wide variety of data sets, including electricity bills, street addresses, stock prices, population numbers, death rates, lengths of rivers, physical and mathematical constants, and processes described by power laws (which are very common in nature). It tends to be most accurate when values are distributed across multiple orders of magnitude.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Take a set of prices in a shop, and then add in inflation at 3%. An item will spend a long time with a 1 as the leading digit. EG Year 1 £100 Year 2 £103 Year 3 £106.01 ... But when it gets to a higher number as the leading digit, it spends less time with that leading digit: Year X £900 Year X+1 £927 Year X+2 £954.81 Year X+3 £983.45 Year X+4 £1012.96 Then it's back to a 1, and will spend a long time with a 1 as the leading digit, then slightly less time with a 2, etc. Benford's law is a consequence of exponential growth/distribution of numbers. So as long as a shop starts with a random distribution of prices, after many years of exponential growth, the 9s will tick over to 1s faster than the 8s tick up to 9s, creating the distribution.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user eli5: If the US is a net exporter of oil, can’t we easily become self-reliant for oil? Am I just confusing crude oil for “petroleum products”? Or is there too much money exchanging hands? I’m just confusing by all the rhetoric around us being dependent on foreign oil when statistically speaking all the data I see shows 1) the US produces more oil than any other country in the world and 2) we export more than we import. So what gives?!?!?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are different types of oil, Heavy/Light describes one aspect and Sweet/Sour is a terminology for the amount of sulfur. Years ago we invested heavily in factories that handle Heavy Sour oil. Turns out after the Shale breakthrough to all that oil in the US, we have much more Light Sweet then we estimated. It’s not impossible to retrofit and refit our factories but it’s vastly cheaper to just import Heavy Sour and export the Light Sweet. Edit: Props to u/veemondumps for a great thorough description<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Do each ring on trees actually signify a year or does the amount of time vary? Do the differences in color signify weather changes? Does* lol<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The rings signify rate of growth. Since trees grow different amounts at different times of the year, we get the rings. Interestingly, the annual rings even exist in trees that grow near the equator. Differences in colour are due to all sorts of environmental factors; you can track forest fires, drought, flooding, beetle infestation and many other things through ring colour and texture. [edit] an s<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why is it so hard to cure baldness? What exactly are the challenges that make this such a difficult task, despite all the other amazing advancements in medical science?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant our current advances in medical science excel at repair. if you broke your leg, we can easily repair it. if you cut your finger off, we can likely repair it with some luck and skilled surgeons. what we cannot do is grow a leg or finger back. on a similar vein, we have products like rogaine that can be used to maintain the current hair follicles but we do not have the tools to grow them back where they've died/atrophied (apart from a hair follicle transplant).<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Is there a limit to wireless connection speed? (Internet) With all the recent posts about increasing data speeds, such as: the 5G coming in S. Korea and and the proposed deal between the UK and Germany, as well as the new 800Gigs/sec cables Intel is making soon - I was wondering what limits are on wireless connection speeds. Thanks in advance.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Technically the limits are... 1. The frequency of the transmission, which partly determines the data rate. 2. The energy requirements of said frequency to broadcast it over any distance (the higher the frequency the more energy required to broadcast it over distance). 3. The ability of the recipient to receive and process the data 4. The error correction algorithms managing to correct any errors in the data to product a stable data stream. If those obstacles can be overcome theres no reason why you can't increase the data rate again and again.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do people claim to know how many illegal immigrants are in the United States? If someone is illegal, there's no documentation on them, right? I realize the numbers are estimates, but I can't imagine how these estimations are even close if there isn't any hard data.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are multiple ways to estimate the illegal population. These include economic impact, public service usage, population samples, the census, and migration tracking. Economic impact looks at levels of spending and the flow of money to determine the population involved in the economy. We can compare this to the documentation we do have to find who is missing. We can also use this method to determine the black market size and under the table economy sizes, these are how illegal immigrants are paid. We can also use data on public service usage to estimate size. Hospital visits, public school enrollment, and arrests all alow use to sample the population. Population samples, the census, and migration tracking are forms of mass and local data collection taken on by the government. The data collected can be compared to know populations and communities to adjust for errors such as non-reporting by the population themselves.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What does the term "imaginary time" mean Stephan Hawking uses in the context of cosmology (or if it's related what does it mean in quantum mechanics)?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It's a mathematical trick which you can use to simplify certain problems, or connect different areas of physics. The underlying idea is this: when we talk about space and time as this one thing called spacetime, what we mean is that we're defining a notion of distance that combines both spatial distances between places and time intervals between events. Remember the Pythagorean theorem? If you have two points separated on the x-axis by a distance x, and so on, then the distance s between them is given by s^2 = x^2 + y^2 + z^(2). Now let's say we have two events. They're separated spatially by distances x, y, and z along those axes, and they happen some time interval t apart. The spacetime distance between them is (ignoring gravity, which changes this) s^2 = -(ct)^2 + x^2 + y^2 + z^(2), where c is the speed of light. Notice the minus sign in front of time. That minus sign is what makes the time dimension "timelike." This means that if you replace time with an imaginary variable, i.e., write t = iτ where τ is some imaginary number, then we get rid of that minus sign, and the spacetime distance becomes just a spatial distance, s^2 = (cτ)^2 + x^2 + y^2 + z^(2). That's just the spatial Pythagorean theorem in four-dimensional space (not spacetime). τ is imaginary time. If we write our problems in terms of τ, rather than t, then the time direction looks just like any spatial direction. It stops being special. This makes it easier to mathematically understand certain problems. But it's fundamentally just that, a mathematical tool.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Peter Singer on vegetarianism For my college moral ethics class we have been studying moral ethics around animal rights/interests. I recently read "All Animals are Equal" by Peter Singer and just wanted some more clarification regarding his utilitarian view on reasons for vegetarianism. So far, I've deduced that he believes that people should become vegetarian because killing animals causes pain and suffering which is not in the interests of the animals. Because it eating animals causes them pain and suffering, we should not eat meat because the pain outweighs the pleasure that is derived from eating meat. I am just slightly confused because he argues that animals have equal consideration but at the same time says that not all living beings are equal but if not all living beings are equal, what is the reason as to why people should convert to vegetarianism? On another note, if it was painless to kill an animal, would Singer say that is okay to eat meat? Also, if I've analyzed anything incorrectly, please feel free to correct me! I would like to grasp this concept as best as I can!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant He claims that all living organisms that feel pleasure and pain, that are sentient, deserve equal moral consideration. He has a quote where he says "moral considerability lies somewhere between a shrimp and an oyster". This is because shrimp are sentient but oysters are not, despite being animals. Plants are also living but don't feel pleasure or pain, are not sentient, and so don't deserve the same moral considerability. Yes, he has claimed that if you could kill an animal quickly, painlessly, and away from other animals which it's death would cause distress towards, and that the animal could save the lives or alleviate the suffering of others, killing it could be moral. But as a utilitarian, he is kinda obligated to this, even with humans. But, that isn't a reason to support the animal agriculture industry since they do not operate like that and because animal products are not needed for survival 99% of the time in humans.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Medicare in the United States I quickly read the Wikipedia of medicare and it said that it is for senior citizens in the Wikipedia but what I've heard sometimes is that it is the United State's version of universal Health Care. I guess I'm just confused, could somebody clarify for me? Thanks<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Medicare = government-provided medical aid for seniors Medicaid = government-provided medical aid for the poor The former is for all people that are 65 or over, the latter is only for those that qualify. Some have considered expanding medicaid to the point where it eventually becomes universal health care, but it's not anywhere near as robust/helpful as true universal health care seen in countries like Canada.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Do the potatoes in my kitchen have an immune system? I was thinking about how the potatoes I'm cooking are in some sense alive since I had to cut the sprouts off them before peeling them. So it got me thinking, if they're alive then they must have potential pathogens that can infect them. So the next obvious step is that they should have an immune system of some sort. Do they?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Basically yes but not in the kind people usually refer to when they say 'immune system'. Higher animals have adaptive immune systems and this is what comes to mind when people think of the immune systems; the active part that involves circulating IgE antibodies, learnt immunity and a whole raft of white blood cells. Plants don't have this kind of system. Instead plants have what is called an Innate Immune system which in plants roughly divides in to two main branches. The first recognises and deals with common microbial molecules and will recognise all sorts of bacteria harmful or not. The second branch copes with virulence factors; usually chemicals or proteins produced by microbes once they are inside the host cell. If either of these systems are activated the plant mounts some form of defense, this could be killing the infected cell, building some kind of "wall around the infection", or producing toxic chemicals. The first innate immunity branch is largely made up of receptors on the surface of all the plant's cell. These recognise common features on the surface of infecting cells. Typically these are features which are slow to evolve (essential to the infecting cell). Once an infecting cell is recognised then the cell switches on it's defense processes. The second branch of defense happens inside the plant cell. If a microbe gets inside the cells then the defense proteins allow the plant to recognise the 'invader' or chemicals the invader is producing and switch on the responses. These internal recognition proteins are encoded by R genes (resisitance genes) and plants typically have a great many R genes often quite specific to the plant's principal pathogens. Edit: worth noting all living things which can resisit infection have some form on innate immunity of varying degrees of complexity. It's a particular area of study in plants in large part because of wanting to understand how crops resist pests<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Crime in the ghetto isn't due to just poverty, it's due to violent & drug culture [Looking at the list of countries by homicide rate,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate) there are countries which have generally much worse poverty than ghettos, yet astonishingly low homicide rates. In the slums of Indonesia for instance, murder is almost nonexistent. Yet, compare the living conditions of someone in the ghetto, and it's vastly better than those of the [poorest in Jakarta](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Jakarta_slumhome_2.jpg). Even if you say guns are the main issue, since you need a license to own a gun in Indonesia, if you just look at non-gun related homicide, the ghetto still has a far higher rate of homicide via stabbings and beatings than that of Indonesia. Education isn't the issue. The quality of inner-city education is still leagues better than those in these slums, where kids often must quit school at a very young age to [become workers or prostitutes.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Indonesia) In some of these slums, there are no bathrooms, or running water for miles. You simply cannot argue that the ghetto even approaches how bad these living conditions are. There are also far fewer safety nets in the slums. There's no food stamps, and there's no medicaid, and there's no subsidized housing.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The way crime manifests itself differs between community / across society, poverty has some impacts that transcend boundaries, but the way people live in poverty deal with then more 'generic' aspects of poverty (lack of resources) will depend on the place they live in, and what options they have available to them. The options they have available will depend on many things, culture, law, politics, ideologies / beliefs etc, demand and supply systems will be similar in principle / process but will involve the acquisition, processing and distribution of different products and services. Many places across the world focus on other crimes that, in the ghettos of the West are relatively uncommon, think organ and people trafficking. Such things are more common in Asia, Eastern Europe etc, where due to differences in socio-economic and political standing, and the society itself, offers different opportunities for making money / alleviating many of the symptoms of poverty. At the end of the day, people in precarious situations, or those whose survival is unclear, will be more likely to set aside their morals and engage in controversial activities. What results is an almost cyclic underworld economy and society, that utilises the same economic model as the rest of society, but seeks profit out of activities that are significantly regulated by laws, or outright illegal, bypassing the aforementioned regulations. This is not ideal, but if your kids are starving and family need food, nourishment and shelter, your consideration for your neighbour, or people outside your community becomes distorted, as your priority is yourself and your immediate environment. Those in more stable communities have the time, and resources to contemplate and consider the lives of others, they have the capital, agency and autonomy to benefit and change the lives of others without significant detriment to their own, as a result they have the time to muse over others circumstances and suffering, and are therefore less likely to engage in controversial activities. That does not stop people, many people with stable jobs, great educations etc, will engage in illegal / morally questionable activities to further their position socially, economically, or politically. Each person and their circumstances is different, despite appearing on the surface, relatively similar.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why can mathematics and physics simulate natural phenomena so closely in thought experiments, calculations and computer programs?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Because mathematical and physics models that do not correspond closely to reality are deemed incorrect and not used, then the scientists get to work trying to fix what is wrong or looking for a new approach. Your question is quite like asking why a car is so good at travelling on roads: because the attempts at building a car that resulted in something that really sucked at travelling on roads are simply not selected for mass production.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user French vs German for continental philosophy I'm currently a senior in high school and plan on majoring in philosophy next year, and after that would most likely pursue graduate studies in philosophy. I've already done a fair amount of self-study and, after taking a very broad look at the history of philosophy, have started to hone in on continental philosophy as my main interest (for the sake of argument, let's say Hegel onward (plus Spinoza), with a specific interest in Merleau-Ponty). To bolster this interest and to get a head-start on skills that will be useful for graduate studies, I'm thinking of trying to learn either French or German. Here are my main considerations and questions: 1.) Reading primary sources. For me this is sort of a wash--there's Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, etc., but there's also Ponty, Sartre, Derrida, Foucault, Iragay, Deleuze, etc. (although I'm not as familiar with the later French philosophers, so it's harder for me to gauge my interest; they also sort of have a bad connotation of pretentious French naval-gazing and after reading Simulacra and Simulation I'm pretty weary of any poststructuralism/postmodernism...ok maybe German does have the slight edge, but David Abram really has made me fall in love with Ponty...) 2.) Reading secondary sources. This one I know almost nothing about, but I think it is the most important. Which language would give me the wider access to secondary commentary and contemporary continental literature? I suspect that a lot of continental research and scholarship never gets translated into English, so which language is more fundamental for academic/dissertation purposes? I know this somewhat depends on where in continental philosophy I decide to really hone in on, but maybe there is a general consensus on which is more useful, and more widely used, in this regard? Maybe another way of phrasing the question would be: For the purposes of research, which is more indispensable? 3.) German vs French universities. I know this is sort of getting outside of my original scope, but if I'm considering doing graduate studies in the continent (this seems fitting given my interest in continental philosophy), would I find one or the other more useful? or are they about equal? 4.) Ease of self-study. Ultimately, I'll probably have to learn both (plus maybe Attic Greek), but which one does it seem more realistic to try to tackle by myself. For background, I'm in AP Spanish and have a pretty good grasp of the language (I joke that I'm just a month's stay in Spain away from fluency), so I feel like I would basically already know French grammar, not to mention the cognates from Spanish, as well as the Latinate cognates that came into English through Norman French. On the other hand, English is a Germanic language, so maybe the same would hold true for it (although I've heard that everyday English is Germanic and academic/literary English is Latinate, i.e. French). I'd really appreciate any advice you all could give and I'd be happy to provide any more detail you might want Vale<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant I won't comment on primary sources as you've got plenty of time to decide, but learning another language is always good. Your idea about French is approximately correct, in that familiarity with any other Romance language will be a major advantage (though there's a big difference between basic grammar and literary writing). On the other hand, >English is a Germanic language, so maybe the same would hold true for it Not exactly. While German borders on English in some ways, it has very different grammatical rules (including three genders and some remarkably idiosyncratic conjugation). In the end, studying either (or both) on your own will give you a leg up on academic language study later on, and developing new listening/pronunciation skills is a good idea even if you don't end up going further, so you can't really go wrong.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What kind of jobs/internships do people with B.As in economics get? So i just finished my first year of undergrad, and im kinda lost. I had to declare my major in the beggining of the school year, and i choose econ and compsci without haven taken courses in either of those two classes before, because why not. I found that I enjoyed both my majors, but i have no fucking clue what kind of jobs or internships I can get into once I graduate; to be honest outside of being professors I have no clue what econ majors actually do; I just chose this major because I liked the freakonomics podcast. Please help.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant I started out as a Business Analyst / Business Intelligence Analysts / General Accounting bod at a large bank. It was fine. It pays pretty well and it led to more interesting things. You will need to have something more than just an BA to get a job. Just some proof you can actually work with people to some sort of goal & can communicate with people as an adult.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why does nature like square roots and cube numers? Late bloomer when it comes to physics here but I wonder why nature is first of all describable in such a precise way with numers and letters and why nature even "obeys" to square roots and cube numbers. Take for example Newton's law of universal gravitation: F=GMm/R² As far as I know, the idea of square roots and cube numbers were invented some time BC, so way earlier than any serious physical discoveries regarding gravitation. It would make sense to me if we invented square roots and cuber numbers AFTER we observed nature and tried to create formulas that gave us precise output, but the fact that it happened the other way around is astonishing to me (not that we came up with the mathematical concept, but that nature "likes" these concepts so much). It almost feels like a discovery of the "code" of nature that seems almost too simple to be good enough for reality.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The answer is dimensions. Things that scale in two or three dimensions tend to use square and cube numbers respectively. To take the law of universal gravitation as an example - when talking about gravity, you have a massive object with a nonzero volume (usually a sphere) that has gravity. The surface of this object is essentially two-dimensional. As you move away from the object (increasing R) gravity "spreads out" in these two dimensions, which results in the force of gravity decreasing with the square of distance. Light works the same way, light coming from a spherical source (like the sun) spreads out in two dimensions, which means the amount of sunlight you get decreases with the square of distance from the sun.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How come water does not flow deep into our ear canal?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Water has a high surface tension, and clings to the walls of a container. In order to flow deep into the ear canal, the water would need to displace the air already there. But the air has no way to escape past the water. You might thing that the air would just rise above the water allowing the water to flow under but surface tension forces dominate gravity at this point. If you trap air and water in a straw and cover both ends you can see that the water won't change position relative to the air no matter how you orientation the straw, unless you do something like shake it violently.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why do you need to take malaria pills BEFORE you travel?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant General rule of pharmacokinetics, start with high dose, probably double what the goal is. This gets the drug passed "first pass" which is removal by liver and kidney, but leaves "target" dose in the blood stream. Then keep dose steady, which takes a little while to reach equilibrium since the bodies natural response is to clean things up. If you have to be exposed, you want it to be in this "steady" state when there is adequate supply in the blood to adequately fight off the invading condition. You don't want a inconsistent amount in the blood leaving yourself susceptible to infection. Once the risk has cleared, the dose is stepped down, for one of two reasons, 1) to fight off any small lingering amounts of whatever the drug is for 2) some drugs cause shock to the system if not stepped down (prednisone and most steroid based drugs) and slowly let the body clear it with little to no repercussions from taking the drug. Hope that helps.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user The hard problem of consciousness and solipsism From what I understand, the so-called "hard problem of consciousness" arises from the difficulty in reconciling physicalism with the phenomenal qualities of our experience. Now, I take physicalism to be the view that there is an external world made of matter which obeys some observable laws, and furthermore this "external" world is "all there is". In fact, under this view, it doesn't even make sense to talk of an "external" world, because it is not really "external" with respect to anything: even we observers are part of it. On the other hand, the phenomenal qualities of our experience, which I assume to be the so-called "qualia", are so unlike the kind of entities that we think make up the external world: they are immaterial, private and indescribable, although they are immediately knowable by us, we are immediately acquainted with them. We could in theory discover (and considerable progress is being made in this respect by neuroscience) a perfect, one-to-one correlation between some parts of the external world (brain states) and our phenomenal experiences, but this would be a correlation between two very distinct and unreconcilable dimensions of reality. There are typically three attempts at resolving this contradiction. 1. Some people (like Chalmers) "bite the bullet" and accept the existence of a non-physical dimension of reality. 2. Some others (especially neuroscientists I believe) attempt to explain qualia in physical terms. 3. Finally, some people (like Dennett) deny the existence of qualia altogether, they practically say that we are tricked by our brains into believing that we have qualia. Now, I find the second attempt metaphysically unfeasible, because it seems to me that it cannot ever go beyond correlation (or even causation, but I don't think it makes a difference here) between two ultimately unreconcilable dimensions of reality. The third view feels very awkward to me, because it denies the very thing that gives rise to it. Surely our phenomenal experience is a datum, nay, the only datum; it is the starting point of all knowledge. Only from our phenomenal experience can we postulate the existence of an external world, but we don't have to. It is just a very convenient interpretation and allows us to better understand our experiences (for example it is convenient to think that the sun keeps moving in its apparent motion on the sky when I take a nap, so that when I wake up I have a simple explanation of why the sun appears on a different location in the same trajectory: it simply kept moving in the same direction as when I was observing it). It doesn't matter if the external world "actually" exists or not, our experience is the same regardless. Solipsism and the existence of an external world are qualitatively the same for us and distinguishing them is as impossible as proving the existence (edit: OR nonexistence) of god. Thus the first attempt is metaphysically redundant, but not in the sense that people like Dennett take it to be: the redundant postulate is not the existence of an immaterial dimension, but the existence of a physical external world; solipsism suffices to account for our experience and we don't need to posit the existence of an external world. So why can't solipsism solve the hard problem of consciousness? [EDIT: as has been pointed out to me indirectly, I should clarify this. I don't mean that we need to show the correctness of solipsism vs external world in order to solve the hard problem. But I believe that thinking about the way in which the "solipsism postulate" and the "external world postulate" are equivalent should solve it, because the Hard Problem seems to rest on the asymmetry between these two postulates, with a strong preference for the "external world postulate". Although I do admit that my argument seems to also give reasons for rejecting the existence of an external world, because it is just as good an interpretation as solipsism, but at the same time confuses our intuition (like when we think there is a hard problem of consciousness) in a way that solipsism does not.] I know that I am probably missing something big here (for example I am aware that I am implicitly assuming that the Hard Problem is a metaphysical one) so I am hoping that someone can point it out to me. EDIT 2: as pointed out by u/wokeupabug, solipsism is an unnecessarily "strong" view. Berkeleyan idealism is just as good.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant But the question isn't whether solipsism suffices to account for our experience, it's whether solipsism ought to be affirmed as the correct account of our experience. Your conflation of these two issues seems to be the main place your reasoning is running amok here.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What happens in our brains when we are asked to say the first word that comes to our minds? How does our brain choose?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Studies show that part of what is happening is priming from whatever came before it. For example, if you hear "money" and "Finance", and then are asked to say a word related to "bank", it will be a word related to a financial institution, whereas if you hear words like "fish" and "river", and are asked to say a word related to "bank", you'll say something related to a river bank. Also, if people are asked to say a string of nouns as quickly as possible, they will all tend to be related: "tree, leaf, grass, dirt, road, car, tire" etc. It's far less random than we believe when it's actually studied.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: If one cannot give consent while intoxicated why can one still engage in transactions, such as buying something while drunk? I mean it seems like the merchant would be unable to sell you something as you could not legally consent to buying it. Is he not taking advantage of you?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Law student here who is really good with contracts: To briefly answer your question -- technically, if Person-A is intoxicated then Person-B should not engage in a transaction with them. Despite what some commenters have said, "contracts" can be oral or written... and they can be as simple as buying a stick of gum. So let's say Person-A ("Adam") goes to the store. Adam is intoxicated. He picks up a pack of gum, walks it to the register. When the check-out person scans the item and presents the price, Adam pulls out his money to pay for it. This is an offer to purchase the gum. The store clerk can "refuse service" (reject the offer), or accept it by taking the money in exchange for the product. If Adam wakes up the next morning and can't remember what the heck he did last night because he was so black-out drunk... but he comes across a pack of gum and a receipt... he could go back to return the gum (assuming it isn't opened). If the store says "no," then Adam could bring a law suit to recover his money by showing that the "contract" (agreement) between himself and the store is invalidated for lack of "mutual assent." If he could show that he was wasted at the time of sale and -- most importantly -- the clerk should have reasonably known that he was wasted, then he can argue that he was not in a fit state to engage in the transcation. WITH THAT SAID.... Would anyone ever really go through all that trouble for stupid things like that? No. But if instead of a stick of gum it was every stick of gum in the entire store... and maybe all the candy, liquor, etc. If Adam just burns his credit card buying everything he can -- then that would be a bit more predatory of the clerk to engage in a transaction with them. Keep in mind though -- if you are conscious enough to purposefully "get drunk" as a strategic measure to avoid being bound by a contract... it could be shown that you, in fact, were not drunk enough at the time. You'd have to essentially get so hammered that your "auto-pilot" kicks in, and you lose the conscious ability to assent. It's not a very high bar. In fact, it is one of the lowest bars required as far as mental health comes... lower than the level required to get married and far below the ability to devise a will.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why are white surfaces not mirrors? An object is white because it reflects all wavelengths of light within the visible spectrum. Mirrors also reflect all light within this spectrum. So why are white surfaces not mirrors? Alternatively, shouldn't all mirrors be white?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Mirrors reflect images because the incoming light rays bounce at the same angle they come in at, this is usually stated as "angle of incidence equals angle of reflection". This means if you point a light beam at a mirror at 90 degrees, it will bounce back at 90 degrees, the same direction. If you aim the light beam at 45 degree angle to the mirror, it will reflect at 45 degrees. This is basically because the reflecting surface of a mirror is extremely smooth, even at the microscopic level. But things which are white have rougher surfaces (at the microscopic level), and any light beam hitting it will just scatter in random directions, so incoming light just goes everywhere pretty much. Think of it like bouncing a small rubber ball on a smooth surface like a sidewalk - dropping the ball it will bounce back in the same direction. But if you bounce the same ball on a pile of broken up bricks or jagged rocks, the ball will probably bounce away in a seemingly random direction. In this analogy light is like a whole lot of tiny rubber balls, a mirror is the smooth concrete, and white things are the pile of jagged rocks. If you had an opaque white material and you polish it smooth enough, it will turn into a mirror.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5 why do so many people seem to hate hippies? Like the title says! Anyone who I've met you is a 'hippy' has been a great person, and they have jobs so it's not like they are bumming off the economy<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Two main reasons: 1) Historically, hippies have had a reputation of being (basically) bums. They didn't hold jobs, electing instead to simply take drugs, have sex, and mooch off of society. While not all hippies were like that, a lot of them were (and not to mention the politically charged situation with the Vietnam War draft and other issues like that). Even if hippies today don't have all that baggage, the reputation stays. 2) Hippies (just like any other "deviant" class) rub people the wrong way. Society has a set of rules that most people tend to abide by: you follow these rules, and you get something in return. Hippies basically say "we want all the stuff, but we don't want to play by the rules." Obviously this is a generalization, but it irritates people to see someone who is being treated the same way but not paying the same "costs."<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Critical Race Theory doesn't offer a clear or realistic solution to the supposed issue of "Systemic Oppression" Perhaps I have not quite fully understood Critical Race Theory, or am missing a crucial point. However, as of now I just don't see this theory offering any realistic or clear solution to the issue of Systemic Oppression. From what I have read, it seems that CRT argues for the dismantlement of white supremacy by pointing out the inherently racist system of government in the U.S. It also criticizes liberalism and it's "colorblind" laws for being able to only point out the most obvious forms of racism, and not the subtle microaggressions that prey upon POC. It calls for POC to share their personal experiences with racism, and to use their narrative to fight systemic oppression. The main problem I have with CRT is that, while their arguments are understandable (I can understand how the U.S. could be fundamentally racist and supportive of the white status quo), I don't see a clear picture of what exactly they're offering to do to replace the supposedly "systemic" forms of racism and oppression in U.S. law. When I look at liberalism, I get a clear picture of how it wants to solve oppression and racism through laws that mandate that people of all races should have equal opportunity at success. I just don't see that kind of clear solution being offered with CRT. Is it asking us to dismantle the entire nation state of the U.S. and start anew? If not, are they asking for whites to continue recognizing their "position of privilege" for near eternity? It's just not clear what they're advocating for, and to me this makes CRT seem more of a anti-U.S. propaganda than an actual solution to race problems in this country. So if anyone could offer me a different viewpoint, that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Critical race theory is an academic lens through which to analyze the role of race in the United States. It’s a method of study. Liberalism is a political ideology. The reason you’re not getting a sense that critical race theory offers action items, while liberalism does, is that theoretical academic lenses aren’t about action in the same way political ideologies are—they’re about analyzing and understanding.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user When fossil fuels are forming, what makes the dead stuff become oil vs coal vs other fossil fuels? Is it the type of organism deposited? The conditions? How does this work?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The process of transforming organic matter into hydrocarbons is controlled by 2 main effects: temperature (itself controlled by depth) and the composition of the organic matter. In the case of marine sediments, the majority of the organic matter is derived from plancton. In this case, thermal maturation results in a process called catagenesis, whereby the organic molecules are progressively streamlined and shortened as temperature goes up. At first, assorted radicals are flushed out and replaced by simple hydrogen. Further along the process, long chains and cyclic molecules begin to break down into alcanes; this point would correspond to the oil window where liquid crude is produced. Further along yet, alcanes break down into progressively shorter molecules and result in natural gas (gas window). Beyond this point (about 2 km), the hydrogen bonds become unstable and the organic matter "cooks itself" into mineral carbon species (graphite). In the case of continental deposits, the majority of the organic matter comes from trees, moss and peat. This flora has an overall different bulk chemistry, in large part due to the abundance of lignin. So this stuff matures into coal following a similar progression from peat, to lignite to bituminous coal to anthracite.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: I don't see a point in having so many pronounces to choose from I don't get why people need other pronouns when there are already they/them, she/her, he/him for them to choose from. As someone whose English isn't their first language it's so frustrating. I feel bad for those who already struggles to use she or he correctly now they have to be mindful and learn other pronouns? Plus some of them r hard af to say Xe/Xem, Ze/Zir... Xie/Xem. I hope English as an additional language people don't have to learn this any time soon... it just seems in inconvenient. I don't have a problem with trans/NB people btw, it's just the pronouns, ik someone irl who uses 3 pronouns (includig Xie) and I don't see why... Edit: just noticed title says pronounces and not pronouns*<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The point is to create room in our social hierarchy for people to explore themselves and the idea space of gender and gender expression, so that we can learn more about ourselves and our society an converge towards better norms in the future. The more exotic pronouns are never going to be mainstream, they're never going to be adopted by more than .00001% of the population, mostly tens exploring their identities and activists/artists exploring the bounds of our culture and social expression. Theoretical physicists need equations and models that deal with 12 spatial dimensions when considering the most in-depth questions of their field and the nature of the universe, but the average person will never really need to think in more than 3 dimensions at a time. The fact that the average person only needs dimensions doesn't mean we should abolish all higher-dimension equations that theoretical physicists want to use, and the fact that they are using them doesn't inconvenience or invalidate the experiences of normal people. Similarly, that .000001% of people who are exploring the outer boundaries of self-expression and cultural norms need the flexibility to try out new constructs an ideas, and attaching these new ideas to the established framework of pronouns is a necessary step, like attaching the idea of higher-level dimension to established mathematics and equations. In their hands, these are useful exploratory tools, and the fact that average people will never need them doesn't mean they should be taken away form the explorers who do. Nor does the use of these exotic terms by the explorers invalidate or impinge on the experiences and needs of average people.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How do news organizations report natural disaster death counts so specifically and so quickly (i.e. "88 people dead as a result of ...")?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant When there are major incidents, local emergency workers generally establish a command post-type place where things like fatalities are reported as soon as they're located. When they give the death toll, they give it based off the numbers that have been reported thus far.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do they launch boats sideways instead of forward when first launching them? It also looks like they just roll straight in, do they not use any mechanism to slow the boat down?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Boats are designed to have their weight supported for the entirety of the keel length. If you tried to launch long boat pointy bit first, you'd have a time when the front is in the water, the back is still on the dock and the middle is unsupported. This (potentially) kills the boat. And there's no real need to slow one down, since they're designed to withstand many assloads of force, at least in the directions they're designed to handle force.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Peanut Butter should absolutely be served in a tube much like icing or toothpaste. I'm sitting here toiling over removing that last bit of peanut butter from the bottom of the jar. I have to reach a whole hand in to get the peanut butter at the bottom and I end up getting it all over my hands and knife handle. I see this to be ridiculous considering the alternative. If peanut butter could be placed in a tube it could easily be squeezed out onto bread or whatever and would be much cleaner. This would make it considerably easy to make sure that none is left in the container when it's done being eaten. I think that the old way is outdated, ineffective, insufficient and should be done away with in favor of the tube. EDIT: I can't get smaller hands so don't even bother making that point. EDIT: EDIT: I've included [some pictures to help illustrate my points](http://imgur.com/a/Sxpqa)<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant 1. A jar can be used for dipping pretzels or crackers in a way that a tube cannot. 2. It's easier to measure peanut butter from a jar because you can scoop it right out with the tea/tablespoon. This is helpful for recipes or calorie tracking. 3. Natural peanut butter separates. It would be difficult to properly mix the oil back into the peanut butter in a tube. Edit: also a quick Google search reveals that peanut butter is already sold in squeeze tubes<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: I have endometriosis—how does my heating pad make my pain subside?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Heat or ice work for pain relief because effectively they offer two solutions. Heat increases blood flow which promotes the ability of the body to heal. This is more useful for muscular pain such as those muscles in your pelvic area. This is more suitable for pain that is not caused by muscle tears or recent injury. Conversely, Ice slows blood flow and is best to remove inflammation and slow the process. This is why you use ice on a sprained ankle so it helps reduce swelling. Technically ice could help reduce the swelling effects but it isn’t pleasant long term! You should also consider the psychological effects of having something warm and comforting against you when you are in pain compared to something icy and cold. It’s the same reason we like physical comfort when we are sad or in physical pain.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Explain academic philosophy to me (science PhD) TLDR: how does your committee determine you've done "enough" to achieve a PhD in philosophy? Give me some very clear, concrete examples of philosophical "rigor" (for example, submitting for peer-review...what kind of comments do you receive and how exactly are these comments not subjective and simply a matter of making a more convincing intellectual argument?). If I submit a paper to an academic journal, there is statistical significance or there isn't; the techniques were utilized correctly or they weren't; my experimental design has gaping holes or it doesn't; at the end of my PhD I've published x amount of papers or discovered novelty via scientific rigor (proving through experimentation) or I haven't. I have friends who are philosophy PhDs and they get very annoyed when I even suggest the notion that someone can have merit as a "philosopher" without traditional academic training. In fact, I notice several philosophy PhDs scoff at anyone outside of the strict academic bubble interpreting or laying out philosophical arguments ("they don't have the training"). Often, they will say to me: "you'd feel the same about a lay person making arguments in the context of your scientific study". Probably, but it's really not an apples to apples comparison despite how desperately a humanities PhD wants it to be. Philosophical techniques are fully intellectual. Scientific techniques are both intellectual and skill-based/hands on. I am a firm believer that any intellectually equipped lay person can ascertain the same level of knowledge in my field from reading on their own, as I can. In fact, I have met some individuals with no graduate level degree in the basic sciences, yet have a very strong grasp of all the most necessary scientific concepts as it relates to cell-bio, molecular bio, genetics...simply from reading. But, the separation point is they cannot do a western blot, perform qPCR, do survival surgeries on mice, perform techniques to alter a genome etc; they may understand all of this theoretically, but the PhD training is necessary to even have access to these techniques. A lay person can spend all of their free time after work tirelessly reading everything they can on a particular philosopher or school of thought; they can take the time to learn the mother language of that philosophy (greek, german) on their own. From my perspective (which, I readily admit may be wrong and why I am posting), is that many humanities PhDs need to scoff at lay people having highly nuanced, philosophical arguments of merit, because those fields are based entirely on intellectual training. If you were to concede that someone outside of the academic Philo world had a degree of mastery, you'd be devaluing your formal academic training. From a basic science PhD perspective, it's not too much a dig on my field to acknowledge a lay person with intellectual science mastery (knows biochemistry inside and out etc) without devaluing my formal training; the technical skills I have that they lack in actually performing those techniques make my formal training totally necessary.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant I don't think that anyone would deny that is theoretically possible to practice philosophy at an academic level without going through formal training, and that's true of any academic field. But it's very, very, unlikely. I suspect your friends scoff at the notion because philosophy in particular has the air of "anyone can do it," unlike the sciences, and this conception is based on probably a further misconception about the historical practice of philosophy. It's true that anyone can do philosophy in the same way that anyone can do science by creating a potato clock, but that doesn't count for much. The other thing about philosophy and perhaps humanities fields in general is that, when you try and do the work on your own, there's no immediate feedback from your attempts to let you know you've failed. You can carry on your whole life with some poorly constructed idea or interpretation of some philosopher without ever having it checked by someone, criticized, etc. And of course, philosophy attracts a lot of cranks who are really, really, really sure they got it right and all of those fancy people in their ivory towers just can't see it. Anyone who has been on a departmental email list for a philosophy, math, or physics department has gotten an email before by some rando claiming to solve this or that central problem in one of those fields, or how once you understand the world as an alabaster time conclave you'll see the ultimate truth.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How do illegal immigrants apply for welfare if they dont have any social security card or formal identification? I hear a lot of talk in the American debates about illegal immigration constantly and how they are using welfare. How is this possible if they dont even have the right credentials to sign up for welfare? I cant even get my new drivers license without several forms of ID.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Under circumstances where you are eligible for such a program, there are usually alternatives to a Social Security Number. For example, illegal aliens can legally receive the child tax credit for their dependents, and can file their tax returns using an IRS-provided International Taxpayer Identification Number instead of an SSN. If you are otherwise eligible for a program, most agencies do not require you to provide an SSN or similar documentation if you can prove you do not have them and cannot obtain them. As for welfare fraud, illegal aliens who participate in that do it the same way as other people, by making false statements and using false documents. There's a lively market in Social Security cards and birth certificates, which illegal aliens often use without knowing they belong to a real person. Your driver's license is not a welfare program. Many states try to make it easy to apply for welfare (though others make it hard), because they feel it is important for the poor to have access to these programs, but they make it hard to apply for a driver's license for the first time, because they want to apply extra scrutiny before providing an identification document.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5:What are the actual physical changes that happen inside a computer while it's running? Specifically curious about what it means to write something to memory: What happens inside a computer when I save a text file, or a Jpeg, or save a game, or anything else that changes the state of the computer from what it was before, to something else, and how it continues to exist after the computer is turned off.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Permanent storage in computers generally is done by one of two technologies. For magnetic hard drives, there's a spinning plate covered with magnetic material and a mechanism that allows to detect and change the "direction" of the magnetism in very very small segments of that platter. So writing a file would involve that mechanism changing the magnetic pattern on the disk. For solid state drives (SSD) in computers, as well as the common USB flash memory sticks, the memory consists of a silicon chip with lots and lots of very small isolated conducting spaces which can store electric charge (extra electrons), and transistors to control that. Writing to that memory involves storing electric charge in some (and removing from others) of these "pockets" called NAND cells. Both of these things are somewhat permanent and continue to persist after power is turned off.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user If I'm in polluted air or there's an awful smell, is it better to breathe through my nose or my mouth, to have as few molecules reach my lungs as possible?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It honestly depends on what is in the air. Is is particles or chemicals? For larger particles (think dust) , breathing slowly through your nose would be best. Your nose is built as a rough filter. For a chemical, think paint thinner or another solvent, it wouldn't matter. You need specialty air filters to remove these (think gas mask). Smells, which are generally chemical, will enter your lungs through either your nose or mouth. Your body has no real method to filter out things like this. If you are concerned about particals, wear a N95 or N100 rated mask. For solvent or smells, which would not be considered particles, you will need a respirator rated for solvent. Hopefully this helps.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How are we able to stand up and balance on two feet easily, but it's hard to balance on only one foot?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It's a skill, let's say standing wasn't a thing that you do normally so you will have to face the same issues as standing on one leg (different of course). Quick explanation about how you gain a skill (standing, handatand, riding a bike): You just need to do it, time after time and each time you are improving your motion and strength your muscles for that position/movement. And when finally succeeding, unconsciously you work on smoothing it up to use less energy spending for the action - this keep going and going. There is a lot of info about how the brain really does it if you're interested in that.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How much of a difference does wearing white/black on a hot day make? I've heard that you should wear white on a hot day because it reflects off more radiation. How much of a difference does it really make on how hot you feel?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant This also depends on the design of the clothing. Loose fitting clothing such as Arab dress can have a dark overcoat over a loose open bottom shirt. This can set up air circulation through a chimney effect.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Ethical problem in writing papers I have a problem I don't know how to deal with. Is it ethical that my professor takes my draft of my paper and rewrite it when he finds it needs improvements and makes himself the first author? Isn't he supposed to guide me through the writing process? If he is right, please explain why? And if he isn't, please tell me what should I do.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant This sub makes me think that the rules of advising need to be codified and you need to be trained and certified to advise on research. It's just like how having a doctorate makes you qualified to teach without any teacher training. You should not be turned loose as an advisor to do it however you want.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Interstellar travel is unfair to the children born during the voyage I've been reading the book [Aurora](http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/08/aurora-kim-stanley-robinson-review-science-fiction) by KS Robinson. It's a book about interstellar travel. A couple thousand people (volunteers) from all over the world set out to travel to Tau Ceti twelve light years away. At the speed they're travelling it's a multi-generational voyage, I think the voyage lasts seven generations. This got me thinking of the ethics of birthing children in an environment which presents extremely limited opportunities to express oneself. It is also system that necessarily restricts the rights of those born there. For example, only a few people are allowed to have children at any time. Obviously, there isn't a market for violin makers, so each traveller's career options are limited as well. There's all sorts little restrictions that the people on the ship resent, though the one that irks people the most (strangely enough, IMO) is that birthing is restricted and requires approval from the ship's council. Most depictions of interstellar travel get around this by putting people into cryogenic sleep. This book's travellers are the first group of travellers to set off to establish a new colony, which means that there's a lot of work to be done during the trip. The ship's also transporting entire mini-ecosystems that have to be maintained, there's a lot of engineering and math and farming, etc. Basically, cryogenic sleep is not an option here. So that means that people will live and die and they need to be replaced. Since there is no way that the children can ever consent to be born (and to die) on a spaceship I believe that they're being unfairly treated - they did not volunteer to give their lives for this and to have their rights curtailed. I also don't see another way around this whole mess and I was wondering whether someone could change my view. Feel free to ask clarifying questions. I tried to make myself clear, but I don't think I've done a very good job of it. I'd also like to point out a couple of things that will not change my view: 1) The free will is an illusion argument; 2) Wormholes - let's try to keep this conversation as realistic as possible. *********** Edit 1: Most of the arguments are coming from a natalist perspective, which is not what my view is based on. Telling me that children don't have a say in their birth anywhere is not an argument that's going to change my view since I'm already aware of that. Instead, it would be better to focus on how/whether the lives of the people on the spaceship could be meaningful/valuable. Also, downvoting OP's comments is churlish and against the rules of the sub. ********** Deltas awarded to: /u/rollingForInitiative, /u/Impacatus, /u/IIIBlackhartIII and /u/Feroc for helping me see some of the things that would make the lives of children born on the ship meaningful. Consider my view changed. _____ > 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 First, would you say this applies to historical pioneers, who raised children in undeveloped frontiers? Or even modern immigrants who raise their children in a strange country? No one consents to being born in the time and place where they're born. And there are worse times and places than a safe, well-provisioned ship. Humans are pretty adaptable, and self-expression could be done in a virtual environment.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How debated of a topic is the idea of "language games" in the philosophical community? How prevalent of an idea is it in modern philosophy/linguistics that the words we use to describe reality cannot be separated from reality itself? What are the counter arguments to this position? I've been taking a computer science course which has really changed my mind philosophically but left me obsessed with specifically language. In my findings I stumbled across the idea of language games and found it made sense to me but after further thinking it seems that would kind of nullify, or at the very least severely hamstrings) the idea of universal understanding on a level desired for philosophy. The thing is I know there's a counterpoint to this view, but I'm currently struggling to see it. It made me curious how commonplace the idea of language games are in the philosophical community and what the counterpoints are to people who disagree.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Part of what helped to crystallize this concept for me was understanding that for Wittgenstein, language-games are a set of practices set within the context of other practices. Within certain kinds of philosophy there is a tendency to separate what we say from how we act, but Wittgenstein forces us to collapse this distinction again and to recognize: speaking is acting. And language games make sense to their practitioners precisely because their speaking is always already embedded within a bunch of other non-verbal social practices (and which themselves implicate shared assumptions and shared values - often unspoken ones) that help to contextualize everything. This helps to explain why, when we take something out of context, it often doesn't make much sense and can even sound absurd. Wittgenstein was making precisely this sort of point when he said of the lion "if a lion could speak, we could not understand it." Because the sorts of things lions do and are interested in are not the sorts of things people do and are interested in. So, bringing the lion into the equation pushes this aspiration for universal understanding a notch higher. Exactly how universal do you want to make your communications? If you want all humans to understand you, why stop there? Why not all mammals? Why not all life? To counter Wittgenstein's argument in his own terms you would need to make a case for a universal context including a set of universal practices (and, potentially, values) that all the relevant forms of life can relate to. A tall order at the very least.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5. In mangroves how do plants filter out the salt water and what do they do with the salt?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It depends on the mangrove. Some mangroves use osmotic pressure in their root systems to limit the salts that are absorbed into the plant. Red mangroves do this-they are called excluders Other mangroves (like the black and the white mangroves) have glands that will collect all the salt and extrude it. These are called extruders. For a black mangrove, the glands are on the back of the leaves...if you turn over a black mangrove leaf, it’s encrusted with salt... BUT the red mangrove can ALSO extrude using “sacrificial leaves”. The tree will funnel what salt IS absorbed into one leaf per branch. That leaf will die because of the salt and then when it dies and falls, the tree will use a different leaf while the first one grows back. Red mangroves are special...<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why and how do insects stay still for hours? I don't understand why this spider chill on my ceiling since yesterday<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It's already been said, but to really ELI5: I dunno how much you know about computer software, but all computer programs are just a giant pile of "IF;THEN" instructions, for example, "IF: chrome icon is double clicked; THEN: open chrome browser". Bugs are so incredibly simple that their nervous system/conciousness is barely more complex than modern computer software(and may actually be less complex than modern highly advanced software), so a bug is literally driven by the biological equivalent of "IF;THEN", as in, "IF: bug lands in web; THEN: eat bug". So, since there's no bug in the web, they just stand still waiting. They're not complex enough for anything else. This is also why you can swat at a fly, and it will immediately land on you again. The "IF" that's causing it to land on you hasn't changed enough for the "THEN" to stop being "land on person". The implications this all has for more complex life, like humans, is actually pretty unnerving. Welcome to the free will debate, please try to keep your despair to a reasonable level, and have a nice day.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: If a US Police Officer detains/arrests someone for simply flipping the middle finger at them/showing contempt of officers, they should immediately lose qualified immunity and removed from duty until further training is completed. I have personally experienced, and have seen a vast amount of incidents where citizens are detained/arrested for simply showing contempt of police. From flipping their middle finger at them, to wearing a shirt that says F the Police, to even just calling them a waste of taxpayer dollars. This is an egregious violation of everyone's first amendment right to protest in a non violent format. Whether you are a fan of the police or not, showing contempt of officers is not illegal, even when done in front of them/at them. It is a form of non violent protesting and so long as it's done in a public format (or if done on private property, they have permission from the owner/s of said property), it is a constitutionally protected act. I believe that the moment an Officer ignores the constitution and uses their authority and power granted to them to quell their emotions after being offended by that, there should absolutely be a third party investigation into the incident, a trial, and said trial should not grant any qualified immunity. The officer in question, if found guilty, should also immediately be removed from duty and be required to take a remedial training course. They should not be allowed back into their official capacity until they demonstrate that they thoroughly understand any civilians constitutional rights.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant How would this work in practice? Say that a cop detains/arrests someone and says that they have done so for some reason X. During their interaction with the cop, the person swore at/flipped off/expressed contempt for police. Does this automatically trigger the 3rd party investigation (which wouldn't otherwise be triggered if the person arrested/detained did not express contempt for police)? If not, what _would_ be required to trigger that investigation?<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why, in bright sunlight, closing one eye completely helps to keep the other more open i never understood this if i have both eyes open, i have to squint hard and my overall vision is worse than if i close one eye, allowing me, somehow, to keep the other one more or less fully open, giving me clearer and less strained vision<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant You have 2 eyes, so your brain receives sensory inputs from both of them. At the region in your brain where both eye inputs meet, the amount of incoming light is being analyzed and then sent to the next brain region. The key thing here is how it's analyzed: the region registers the TOTAL amount of incoming light from both eyes COMBINED. This means that when you close 1 eye, the incoming total amount of light will be halved, and that in turn means that your brain 'thinks' that there is just half the light. It doesn't 'know' that you closed 1 eye. Obviously when you keep both eyes open and it hurts, you should not try to keep them open, because the pain is your body's defense mechanism to prevent your eyes from being damaged. So if you have 1 eye closed and it doesn't hurt anymore, remember that it can still be damaging to your eye.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: When unions lose the ability to bargain by withholding the creation of value due to automation, they will instead bargain by not destroying value When workers are no longer needed and people are desperate in a United States that is increasingly unfriendly to the poor, workers unions will adopt mafia like practices of strategically destroying value for the companies and industries that fire or threaten to fire them unless their terms are met. Already I have heard of sales clerks tempering with the self check out machines at grocery markets and elsewhere, I wonder if this sentiment could become more widespread and organized. I think that automation is inevitable and that universal basic income will be essential for the massive number of people who will be unemployed and underemployed, however with recent changes in government I can't see that happening any time soon. _____ > 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 By the time that workers are completely uneeded, automation will have increased to the point that the security of these valuable items will be automated too. The second a union takes a criminal act to destroy property, the company will have the government defend their property, or defend it themselves by hiring or buying security. People aren't suicidal. Any organized resistance will be taken down in days.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What's stopping new ISP's from popping up and competing with the monopolies some ISP companies have within major cities? Why isnt there more competition? Spawned from the Japan internet article posted on TIL (I think it was TIL, maybe it was politics)<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Extremely high barrier to entry. To be an ISP, you need to have the cabling infrastructure. To have the infrastructure you need to dig and run lines (alot of lines) to literally everywhere. The costs associated with this activity alone are astronomical. Example: It's estimated that Google's Fiber project in Austin is going to run upwards of $94 Million to implement. Think back to the age of dial-up internet. There were a ton of small and local ISPs because access to the existing telephone infrastructure was cheap and regulated fairly. Barrier to entry was low and competition was high. This is not the case with broadband.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Killing animals for pleasure is wrong Hi all! I've recently been thinking a lot about the subject of ethics and how they apply to the treatment of animals in the modern day and age (especially in the food/meat/dairy industry, obviously). I've come to the conclusion that I could get rid of animal products in my diet and go totally vegan without any health risks, so the only thing that is still making me consume meat is the taste of it. I also believe that due to how supply & demand works, I am paying for the animals to be killed. And this is where this CMV kicks off, I believe that it is wrong to kill animals just for the sensory pleasure. The main reason why I think so is probably empathy and the fact that they are sentient in at least a similar way that we are. If there was overwhelming evidence to conclude with certainty that animals are basically like robots, are incapable of any psychology whatsoever, then I guess I would change my mind. EDIT: Wow, there are a lot of responses and I will try to go through them all but I need to finish my work for today first :P EDIT2: Im starting to respond more today. If I don't respond to a comment then it's probably because someone else already responded and stated something better than I could, I will likely just comment underneath that response and say that "I agree", for example.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant what about invasive or overpopulated species? Would you be ok culling them in order to preserve the indigenous species? Obviously it would be ideal use them for food, fur/skins, etc. but even if we don't, there would still be a benefit to preserving the other animals in the ecosystem.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do animals let us domesticate them? / Why can't we domesticate some animals?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant You should read Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. He talks a lot about why certain animals and plants were domesticated and why others weren't. As far as animals that won't let us domesticate them--some aren't suitable because their panic instinct is so high they aren't dependable. Zebras can be ridden like horses, but since they are used to being attacked by lions and cheetahs, they will dump you and take off the first time something freaks them out. They also get mean as they get older and can really injure you with bites and kicks. Rhinos would be great war animals, but you have to feed them tons and tons of food and when it's mating season, then males will fight to the death, so that would be inconvenient for breeding. The Jared Diamond guy has lots of other examples too.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: There isn't a compelling reason to bid on an eBay Auction before the closing hours/minutes. So, I am not a particularly active user of eBay, but I don't see the reason to bid on a traditional ebay auction well before the closing time. For example, if there is something I want to buy on eBay, rather than place a bid, I usually make a note of the closing time of the auction, and check back much closer to then to see if I am still interested in bidding. As I see it, there is no advantage to me placing my bid early. An early bid gives any other buyers more time to evaluate my bid and possibly outbid me. My plan for auctions is usually to figure out the maximum amount I am willing to bid for an auction, and then submit that offer as close to the closing time of that auction as possible. I don't rebid. I might bid a few hours early if I know I will unavailable at the exact close of the auction, but I never bid several days in advance. Is there something I'm missing? I often see a large number of bidders on items throughout the week, and I'm not really sure of the point. NOTE: I understand there are other types of auctions (Buy it Now, Dutch Auction, etc) where this strategy might not apply. I'm talking specifically about traditional auctions. For reference, here is a link that explains how the standard eBay auction works. It is not the same as you might be familiar with in an auction house. http://www.ebay.com/gds/How-Bidding-Works-on-eBay-and-How-to-WIN-/10000000175182135/g.html _____ > 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 Two reasons that immediately become apparent: 1) You don't have the discipline to remember to check right before the end of the auction. So you put in your maximum bid early on, knowing that even if you forget, you've still got some* chance of winning. Whereas if you don't put a bid in, you have zero chance. 2) Many people, when searching for the best deals, will specifically go hunting for auctions that are closing and have no bids placed on them, knowing that few people are watching it, and therefore they have a good chance of scoring a low price. By entering your bid, you take that item out of the pool of "bidless items", thus deflecting attention onto easier targets.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why does caffeine stop working on the brain/not make people feel awake anymore after adaption but still trigger physical side effects like shaky hands?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Caffeine works by blocking the detectors that your brain uses to figure out if you are tired. If they get block too often, your brain decides the detectors are not working and simply grows more until their are more detectors than the caffeine can block. This means you can still feel tired now, but that doesn't stop anything else the chemical may do.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [DC] How much training do I need to be Batman? Ignoring how much money he has, and the occasional "beyond normal human ability " feat he performs, how much training would 1 person need to go through to achieve the level of skill Batman is able to perform at? Edit: I meant in terms of hours of learning, like how long would it take<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It takes a lifetime to become an Olympic-level athlete in a single sport. An Olympic gymnast might train 20-30 hours a week, from the age of 5 until they are somewhere between 16 and 25. Most of these people will never actually reach the Olympics, let alone medal. Batman, it has been stated, is at least bronze-medal quality in essentially every aspect of human performance. Gymnastic, judo, swimming, weight lifting, Tae Kwon Do, boxing, fencing, and on and on. If you only focus on gymnastics and boxing, you've already taken on more than you can reasonably achieve in one lifetime. Now add in the fact that you're trying to become world-class in skills that are diametrically opposed. You want to be as light and nimble as a gymnast, but as strong as a weight lifter, and able to take a punch like a heavyweight boxer. You want the endurance of a marathon runner, and the raw speed of a sprinter. Now add in his mental skills. He is a master tactician, as adept at planning and strategy as any West Point graduate. He is the world's greatest detective, and has a deep understanding of criminal psychology. He is a master of stealth, theatricality, and intimidation. He is also able to create disguises that fool his closest friends. He also drives better than the best NASCAR and rally drivers, and is trained as a fighter jet pilot. Becoming Batman in any one area would take a decade. Becoming Batman himself is essentially impossible. He is a once in a generation, maybe once in history individual, the epitome of human mental and physical potential, shaped by perfect training and driven by what must be deep seated mental trauma. You can't become the Bat. You either are him already, or you never will be.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: 2A advocates have no incentive to compromise with those who want gun control. By "2A advocates" I mean people who think guns should generally be available to citizens for self-defense, home defense, and as a means to ensure self-government. People who only want guns for hunting, plinking, and/or target shooting have different motivations and interests and would likely be fine with a Canada-like approach. I'm not particularly interested in debating the merits of the 2A advocate position; this post is about the best strategy one should adopt if they hold this position. *** The pattern is familiar by now. A mass shooting happens, Democrats call for gun control measures, Republicans deflect or propose other solutions, and nothing substantial ends up happening. (Ironically, Trump's bump stock ban is the rare exception). Gun control advocates will point to specific solutions such as more comprehensive background checks, closing the gun show loophole, raising minimum age, and others as "common sense" gun control measures which have high support in polling. These measures would not in themselves limit 2A advocates' right to own and bear arms, the argument goes, and so therefore 2A advocates are callous, evil, and want children to die for opposing them. To me, it just looks like good strategy. If 2A advocates do compromise and allow some of these to be passed, especially in the wake of a mass shooting, they are tacitly admitting that mass shootings are valid justifications to limit gun rights. But none of these compromise solutions are going to appreciably lower the rates of mass shootings, so after the next inevitable shooting, it will just be the same arguments from each side, but now with the battle lines drawn closer to the gun control side. Gun control advocates won't accept a compromise as an end solution; they will continue to push until they have an Australia or Canada-like situation, and Canada has been restricting gun rights even further in recent years. As a practical matter, only an Australia or Canada-like approach is likely to bring gun violence down to the level of other developed countries (and that's discounting the likely mass civil unrest and violence if we tried to do it). Ceding ground in this debate is a losing proposition for 2A advocates.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant >Gun control advocates will point to specific solutions such as more comprehensive background checks, closing the gun show loophole, raising minimum age, and others as "common sense" gun control measures which have high support in polling. That's not a specific solution. That's a talking point that doesn't mean anything. How are we implementing more comprehensive background checks? Are we opening NICS up to everybody? Are we mandating every gun transfer go through an FFL? > If 2A advocates do compromise and allow some of these to be passed, especially in the wake of a mass shooting, they are tacitly admitting that mass shootings are valid justifications to limit gun rights. That's not a compromise. A compromise means both sides getting some of what they want. What are gun rights advocates getting?<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Can we make small, lab-sized, analyzable nuclear explosions?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Depends on the size of the lab? But for a "classical" nuclear explosion to occour you need a "critical mass". This the minimum mass of nuclear material that can go critical (explode). Assuming you're not using any special technology to encourage criticality other than high explosives like in a classical nuclear bomb; then no you can not create a "lab" sized nuclear explosion unless you count something like the Nevada testing Fields as a lab. However most nuclear physics and experiments even those related to nuclear bombs do not require a full explosion for testing. You can test aspects in reactors, Lazer ignition facilities, and simulators with out the boom<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why do some fruits grow in 'slices'? For example, the clementine or the orange, they come in slices that each have a sort of skin separating them from other slices. Why do these and many other fruits grow like this?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Fruits develop from the female part of a flower called an ovary (like the ovary in animals, but only by analogy). Each ovary contains one or more smaller structures inside it called ovules that will develop into the seeds, while the ovary itself becomes the fruit. A lot of fruits are actually made from several ovaries fused together and even when they're mature fruits you can still see the separate ovaries. This includes the citrus fruits you mentioned where each section matures from a separate ovary. You can also see separate ovaries in apples, tomatoes, melons, cucumbers, bananas, and lots of other fruits if you cut them the right way, though they're not quite as distinct as in citrus fruits.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: With all the anti-union rhetoric we hear in the US why are the police unions never targeted by politicians and interest groups.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant 1) Police unions tend to wield a lot of political power. There are something like 35,000 cops in New York city, which is high for most municipalities, but on top of that being a sizeable voting bloc, a LOT of people are friends of, family with, or married to police officers, which grows the strength of the bloc a bit. 2) Going after the police unions, much like trying to cut the size of the military, is seen as anti-American. The police do thankless jobs, and there are people that support the heck out of them, so if you alienate the cops themselves, you also alienate a LOT of those who support the cops that are out there keeping them safe from harm. There's also concern that if you hurt their union, you're hurting their ability to do their jobs, and crime will rise. 3) Cops and politicians are "on the same team". In addition to whatever their core job is, cops are also the enforcement arm of the legislature / mayor / governor / whoever. If the legislature and governor enact a law that outlaws firearms, the cops are the ones who have to put their lives on the line to actually enforce that law, so it demands a peaceful coexistence. This is also the reason that cops tend to look after other state officials and vice versa. They're all a part of the same engine, and the engine doesn't work if a piece of it gets thrown out of whack.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Star Trek] How does the Federation base time? Surely not all planets have a 24 hour rotation.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant They tend to use local time for planet-based assignments. Unless a planet has a radically different schedule, like night lasting a month, people adapt. Most planets seem to have like a 20-30 hour day. Ships tend to use 24 hour days. This seems to be just military convenience, as it allows for 6 hour shifts or 8 hour shifts, depending on captain or crew's preference. Enterprise-D used three 8-hour shifts, occasionally using four 6-hour shifts that the crew disliked. Deep Space-9 used the four 6-hour shifts and seemed to prefer them.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Wireless charging. No really, Explain like I'm a young child.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Two very simple ideas govern the whole thing: 1. When an electric current passes through a wire, it creates a magnetic field around it. 2. When a wire is passed through a magnetic field, it induces an electric current within the wire. The shape of the wire in each case can have an impact, and if you coild the wire up, it increases the effect you see. The section of the wireless charger you plug into the power source has a coil of wire in it. The power supply gives an alternating current - basically it switches very very quickly (tens to hundreds of times a second): This creates a corresponding switching magnetic field. By placing another coil of wire within this switching magnetic field, you can induce a switching current in the new coil of wire. A magetic current switching many times is pretty much equivilent to moving a wire through a static magnetic field. This switching current that's induced can then be rectified and modified (using simple electronic components) to provide a nice stable supply to charge the battery.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why is the mortality rate of liver cancer so high in spite of the liver having such a great regenerative potential? Edit: Even if detected early, cancer has a high mortality rate, which I find especially unintuitive. My thought was that, if detected before metastases form, the tumor could be removed with most of the liver without loss of function of the organ, drastically minimizing surgical risks (as comparison: lung cancer has to be carefully removed without damaging the lung, while the liver could be operated out almost completely with the tumor if necessary).<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The liver produces a version of a protein called Methionine adenosyl transferase (MAT) different from all other tissues which has a higher capacity for synthesis of a molecule called S- adenosylmethionine (SAMe). SAMe is the precursor for a number of other molecules involved in growth and repair hence why the liver has such a high regenerative capacity. In most liver cancers the Liver specific protein (MAT1) is switched to the ubiquitous MAT2 protein hence it's ability to regenerate is impaired. Interestingly this switch is also induced directly by a protein in hepatitis B explaining why patients with hepB tend to develop cirrhosis and then liver cancer.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why can you sometimes not recall information in your brain that is there? For example, I forget the name of a song but then later remember it. The information was always there. Why couldn't my brain retrieve it? And why do stimuli "jog" these memories, making them able to be remembered?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant I will try to explain this as far as current knowledge on the subject describes. However, memory is largely unknown both in how it is formed and its exact mechanism. Your brain works thanks to a network of neurons, massive numbers of them. Memories are believed to be created when neurons make a connection during a memorized event. When you go to remember that event those pathways fire and you experience the memory. The brain is very plastic, always changing and making new pathways, so the more a pathway is used the more it is reinforced, the less it is used the likelier it is to degrade and be "forgotten". So, back to your question. Typically things you don't recall often, like a persons name you met once or a song you heard awhile ago, have a less reinforced pathway and thus aren't as easily accessed by your brain. However, people tend to remember things in relation to another memory, like a song to an emotion or a smell to a place. This is why you will think of things similar to the memory, "it was Mary's friend, the guy we met at school. He was sitting right next to me, etc etc". In accessing memories created at a similar time and possibly similar locations in your brain, the old unused pathway will be found and you will spontaneously remember. Now that the memory has been accessed you feel stupid for forgetting. Your mind is just now saying "oh here is that pathway! It's been there the whole time!" Hope that helps...I know it's long. Edit: iPhone typo<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How do countries with more than one official language write their laws? I'll use Canada as an example. When they translate a law from English to French, does it ever lose its intent or true meaning? Who does the translating?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant They have the law in both languages. There are specialists who draft laws and its special language. They also tend to do the translation work. Laws tend to be written in a peculiar style of writing that really is full of legalese and rather clunky. Strangely enough, this makes translation somewhat easier since it typically prefers substance and utility over style. They usually just do their best though, since whether something such as "statutory derivative action" is translated correctly makes minor differences in what it actually does or refers to. Usually, one language will trump over the other in case there is an issue on interpretation or inconsistency. Interpretation of laws is another topic that judges and lawyers will deal with and is another topic in itself.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Do sea creatures (dolphins, fish, whales) see as well outside water as in it? And what about, for instance, baluga whales in tanks that can see people through the glass. How well are they seeing them?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The reason we don't see well in water is because it has a different refractive index than air and our eyes can't adjust to it perfectly. Goggles put air between our eyes and the water, thus allowing us to focus properly. The tank glass effectively does the same thing. Because the whales still look through water before they look through the air, they can focus on objects on the other side of the glass as well as they can on objects in the water.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why do some mints make water 'taste' colder?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant You have cells with enzymes that act as receptors to signal warmth and cold. The molecule menthol, which gives mint its taste, activates your cold receptors and gives a 'cold' sensation. Capsaicin, the molecule that gives chili its 'hotness' works in a similar way, activating heat receptors.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why are we more creative when trying to solve other's problems? others<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Two main reasons: First, you have no personal stakes in the consequences so you're less likely to write off an option because of the potential negatives. For example, if you hear someone complaining about their job, you may say "just quit!" even though you haven't quit your job you dislike. The other is everyone has a different perspective on things. Your ideas may not be more creative than theirs, simply different; the thing is though, if their ideas had* worked, they wouldn't have the problem anymore. You only see the problems that their approach failed to solve, and not all the problems their approach took care of.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5 What causes traffic and what can the average person do to help prevent it?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Traffic is largely caused by an overload of cars in the road system (most road systems in urban areas aren't built to handle the amount of traffic they actually have), but there is a lot the average person can do to help. * Don't be an asshole. * Don't block the box in intersections. Just don't! * Don't create situations just because someone else is an asshole. If someone cuts you off, let them. Don't go flying around them just to brake check them to show that you're the boss. Everyone else is going to suffer for your stupidity. * Use your god damn turn signals! * Try to never be in the way. If you need to stop, don't do it at the cost of others. If you're turning and need to stop, but can move out of the way, do so. * Don't change lanes just to gain a few places, you'll lose them later and you cause the traffic to flow slower for everyone. * Plan your driving, make sure you're in the correct lane well before you need to turn. * When merging into traffic, make sure to accelerate to the same speed the traffic is moving. * If you have a minor accident, move your vehicles out of the way ASAP! No need to make twenty thousand other commuters late to work just because you had a slight fender bender with another car. * Unless you're passing, stay in the right lane. * Keep your distance to the car ahead! Heavy traffic makes it much more easy to tailgate, but tailgating increases the numbers of accidents substantially! Keep a distance of at least two seconds (preferably three) to the car ahead (start counting one-one thousand, two-one thousand, when the car ahead passes a line or mark in the road or a light pole or something). * Make sure you always have enough gas! Cars that are out of gas often causes major traffic. * Try to avoid routes where you know the traffic is heavy. Try to find patterns in when to avoid a certain area or road, this is most often very tightly connected to when people in different business around the area start and end their work day. * Carpool! Far too many cars are driving around with only the driver in them. This is extremely ineffective, both for the traffic and the environment! * Think about alternative transportation methods. Take the train or bus a couple of days a week if you can. * If possible, relocate either your home or your work so you can avoid commuting through heavy traffic. * Buy a helicopter. * Buy a jetpack. * Walk. Edit: added a point.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user If you were a minimum-skill worker and the only thing that mattered to you was the bottom line of your bank account, which country would you go to (if you could)? submitted<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Just to muddle things a bit further, aside from comparing wages to purchasing power parity and cost of living, minimum skill workers would also want to consider available benefits - not paying for something like healthcare and education could dramatically affect your bottom line.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do some foods taste better hot?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Things like texture and aroma play a large part in what we consider the “taste” of food. Heat changes the texture of many foods— for example, take a fatty food like a cut of steak or a piece of fried chicken. when the food is hot, the fatty parts of the dish are moist and almost like liquid, so that they pleasantly “melt” in your mouth. If you were to eat fatty steak or fried chicken cold, it would not be as good because the fat would just taste hard, cold and greasy (think of how a stick of butter feels in the fridge compared to room temperature). Another thing that contributes to our experience of flavor is smell, so a bowl of soup would taste better hot because it’s giving off pleasant aromas with all the steam but if you ate the soup cold, you would not experience this sensation. So those are just two reasons/examples.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How does seeing a therapist actually help someone who is having a hard time coping with a situation?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Yes, if you believe therapy is helpful, and the techniques you're given work on you and you've never tried them before. A lot of therapy is being able to talk through something and arrive at helpful conclusions. Depending on your issues, a therapist may give you exercises to work through to help arrive at causes, and solutions to your problems. In the end you do all the work. Therapists don't solve things, but give you techniques to help yourself. Not everyone has self-actualized their problems, and use assistance to find root causes of problems, and methods of resolution. It's not all just sitting around talking about your mother, unless your mother is your problem, then you may have to talk about your mother a lot.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why is Alan Watts so often considered not to be an actual philosopher? and if he isn't a philosopher, how would you describe who he is and what he does?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Some people hold that to be a philosopher now means submitting one's self to the larger scholarly community and its emphases on professionalism, public participation through speaking or writing for the professional audience, and presenting one's case in a way that's open to rigorous scrutiny as well as responsive to criticism. Philosophy, in this sense, is a profession one gains entry into through work specifically adopting the morals, values, practices, and society of that profession. Some people, with understandable zeal for what philosophy encourages us to be, enforce this positioning of philosophy as a profession unwittingly as a tribal adherent, but it's not really a tribe for people who do earn their way in the profession. It's a workplace, these days, with some lasting relational issues we're working on fixing. For others, it's collegiality with peers about things that fascinate, and with some money involved for doing it. It has a lot of sentiment as a discipline. But, assuming the professional definition, there is an element of caution about how someone outside the profession or discpline can name it, shape it, and mold how people think about it, without subjecting himself to its own professional standards and forms of life. Some people have envy of that ability, some have contempt, some ambivalent, some thankful, some indifferent, some considerate, some refusing. 'Often' is an assessment not so much of what people actually feel, only of what you're seeing. That's why we have to be cautious, since a lot of times we're seeing what we choose to see, and it's hard to choose to see silence or ambivalence or acceptance.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Star Trek] What are some legitimate reasons to turn off the safety protocols on the Holodeck? I mean, it seems like every couple of months something goes wrong on a Federation starship and somebody has to struggle to survive in an environment that is both lethally hostile and wholly illusory. A whole lot of trouble could be avoided, and lives saved, if you just made it completely impossible to disable the safety protocols. I'm not entirely au fait with the programming protocols, but it should be possible to basically hardwire it into the system so that turning off the safeties also turns off the entire damn Holodeck. Obviously there's a reason they don't do this, but what is it? Why do they want it to be possible for a Holodeck to murder random crewmembers in the event of a power surge or somebody getting drunk and thinking it'd be cool?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The Federation is a very Liberal society; they prioritise personal freedom in many instances. If someone (Miles O'Brien for example) wants to go kayaking on a dangerous river then he's not really going to get the full effect when he knows that there's no danger. He doesn't really get to experience the satisfaction of overcoming the challenge and bettering his skill, so he disables the safeties and occasionally gets injured, as is his right as a Federation citizen. The Federation has educated him to the level where he's not at risk; he knows full well what will happen when he disables the safeties, and that's his choice, but as far as the Federation is concerned that must be his choice either way. I wouldn't be suprised if that was a privilige he held as an adult/Starfleet personell/qualified engineer. Children may not be able to disable the safeties. tl;dr: the Federation doesn't make idiots. If you wanna risk your life that's on you.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Dead Space] How are the first Necromorphs created? The marker gets people to kill each other to make bodies to be converted, but how is the first Necromorph made with nothing to infect/create it?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The markers emit guided electromagnetic pulses which subtly alter the genetic code and proteins of nearby corpses to re-animate them. The markers are capable of very precise and subtle electromagnetic manipulation of surrounding objects. So basically xray, gamma rays and radio waves that modify the atomic structure of surrounding brains and bodies.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why do we use the Hardy Weinberg equilibrium if it never in fact occurs in nature? If mating is never random, mutations always occur, immigration and emigration is common and natural selection is always occurring why is Hardy Weinberg so important?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It provides a baseline to compare actual populations to. You can use this for a few things. One, if you know the actual genotype frequency of a population, you can test to see how much it deviates from the Hardy-Weinberg baseline. More commonly, a population is observed and (if AA and Aa genotypes are separate phenotypes) numbers of each genotype is recorded. Then, going by a null hypothesis that the population is in hardy-weinberg proportions, you use statistical analysis to see if it is. Obviously, this is somewhat flawed in that the population will not be in perfect hardy-weinberg proportions, but often times it is close enough that the statistical analysis regards the deviations as not statistically significant. Of course, in some cases, it will show that it was NOT in hardy-weinberg proportions, in which case re-counts would be taken again to confirm this. The applications of seeing if the environment is close to hardy-weinberg proportions is a whole other story.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Should I report my teacher for sharing anti-vax views during class? This is a community college alcohol and drug studies class in California. During class today, the teacher went on a rant about how she is refusing to get her kids vaccinated, that it shouldn’t be required and how it’s extremely dangerous. When the class started chiming in with affirming comments, I spoke up in defense of vaccinations. Her response to me was that I should research Bill Gates and what he’s done with polio vaccines in Africa. I was stunned. I didn’t even know where to start, so I just gave up. It’s alarming to me that a teacher is peddling this misinformation to students, but it’s the beginning of the semester and I’m scared that reporting this to the college could impact my grade. What should I do? Any advice is very much appreciated!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant I think you should approach both the chair and, if the department has one, the director of undergraduate studies. Do this *after grades have been submitted. Email the chair and CC the director at the same time. If you only email one person or email them separately, it'll be too easy for them to either unintentionally overlook it or intentionally sweep it under the rug. Emailing both simultaneously means they'll feel compelled to hold each other accountable. This instructor not only believes in conspiracy theories--she believes them strongly enough to proselytize this idea. There's no point in raising your concerns again. She had no interest in your rebuttal in class, and she won't have any interest in your counterargument if you approach her in some other context. It's difficult (not impossible, but difficult) to disabuse people of these baseless and harmful notions. If someone has a chance of convincing her otherwise, it won't be a student whom she (wrongly) sees as less informed, more naive, etc. Academia should always be a place where many perspectives and arguments can coexist. This stance, however, is both anti-science and actively harmful* for her children and those who come into contact with them. She shouldn't be in a position to teach others. For what it's worth, it's highly unlikely she'd lose her job over this, but hopefully a warning from people she perceives as her equals will make her rethink her boundaries and her beliefs. Sorry you had to deal with this. Good luck with everything.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How do pH indicators work? How do pH indicators, for example hydrogencarbonate indicator, work? What determines the colour they change to?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant PH is one measure of acidity based on hydrogen ion concentration in a solution. Some kinds of dye molecules gain a hydrogen ion when the acidity increases, and this changes the shape of the molecule. When the shape changes, the color of the dye molecules changes. The color is determined by the shape of the molecule.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Apple Overprices Way Too Many Of Their Products And It Is Not Justified A topic that has been raging for quite a few years now, and the arguments I hear from the people defending Apple are quite weak, so I am now turning to the more Intellectual people of Reddit to see if anybody can change my mind. &#x200B; Before I start, I will state that I am not stating that ALL of their products are overpriced. For example, the reasons one might buy their iPhone are quite obvious. Buying a secondhand iPhone, you can find many for under $300 at this point that are still being supported with updates, but many of their other products are have insane prices without good reason. &#x200B; Now onto the main argument, how their prices are not justified. For the beginners who start to see the truth of Apple, their first argument against the tech giant is most likely going to be the Price. This was the exact case for me, and with good reason. Although their products are high quality, the competition just offers better for less. &#x200B; There are many examples of this. And so that I can target the average consumer, I will not be looking at their "Pro" Series. &#x200B; For this, I can give many easy examples of how overpriced their products are. Their Apple Watch Sleeves are $50 each Beats Headphones, although doing better in quality, get outperformed by any other headphone manufacturer in the market. The Macbook Pro has horrible specifications for $1200 (Edit: It seems like the value of the MacBook is very subjective because of the OS it runs on, so I will leave this out of the argument). And even their repairs can cost upwards for $1000 because of an out of place cable.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A lot of people have already mentioned the "consumers decide what they are willing to pay" aspect. I would add that the reason apple is so high is not based on quality. Having the newest generation of Apple products is a status symbol, and that is what people are paying for. Apple is as much of a designer company as they are a electronics one. For example: A $10,000 mechanical Rolex watch over the course of years tells time worse than a $10 quartz crystal Casio watch. The $10 Casio also comes with more functions (calendar, time zones, timer, maybe temperature, can set alarms). So why isnt the Casio watch $10,000? Because people are buying a ROLEX. And they can show their friends they have a Rolex. And those friends can be very impressed they could afford it, and the the buyer feels good about themselves. THAT is why an Apple product is so expensive. It has nothing to do with the specifications, because the general consumer doesnt give a shit about the specifications.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why are Republican candidates so against Planned Parenthood? As the title suggests. Thank you.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Planned Parenthood is an organization of clinics offering primary care and sexual health services on a sliding scale cost (making them affordable to low-income populations). Services include things like cancer screenings and physical exams. It is also, however, the largest provider of U.S. sexual health services like pregnancy tests, contraceptives, STD tests, and - most controversially - abortions. Most Republican candidates are religious, typically Christian, and abortion goes against their religious values. Therefore, defunding the abortion-offering Planned Parenthood supports their goals. About 1/3 of Planned Parenthood's funding comes from federal family planning grants. While this money cannot legally be used for abortions and is technically supposed to support the organization's other services, some argue that leftover funds may be used for abortions. Others are against supporting an abortion-granting organization in any way.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: "Extra Time" on tests is a broken system which artificially hides weaker applicants on account of their conditions, while not getting at the core issue of ineffective testing. Firstly, to explain my biases I'm thinking about this primarily from the perspective of people who are studying things that they will go on to use in their careers. Specifically I'm a STEM major who will be going on to get my PhD in my major, and have been doing research in my field. My issue is with the idea of providing "Extra Time" on tests for those with learning disabilities, attention disorders, and other permanent conditions. My reasoning is that these students are being helped in ways that do not reflect their effectiveness in the field. While there might be a system through which they can get extra time on a test in school, the point of education is ostensibly to provide the skills for a career, along with providing employers with an idea of an applicant's capabilities. If there are two students, one who used extra time and one who did not, and they are equally qualified for a given position, in most situations the applicant who can perform quicker would be preferred. However by giving people with these conditions a boost that they will not receive after graduating, you are doing their employers a disservice. In my research, for instance, my PI might ask me to do a certain calculation for our meeting the next day. If I work significantly slower than someone else, I would be less suited for my position, yet this difference would be hidden by the "Extra Time" system. In a similar vein, I think this system hurts students who do not work quickly for other reasons. There are a number of students who might taken longer to do a problem, due to either working slowly or not being as talented in a given field, however if these traits were considered deserving of extra time they would do better. Yet we consider some issues medical conditions worthy of assistance, and others not. In the end, I realize that some will argue that if two students can both reach the same answers, the time taken does not matter. I disagree with this point in that I think reaching an answer quicker is always preferable if both are correct, however if this is the stance taken then I would argue that the issue is with timed tests in the first place, and extra time does not adequately fix this problem for others who do not qualify, yet still run into the time limits for whatever reasons they may have. Clarification: I'm primarily considering the case of higher education, and the scope of disabilities I have issue with are primarily mental ones. The arguments above could be easily extended for physical disabilities as well, but physical disabilities can generally be worked around to a good degree. EDIT: A lot of comments are coming in, so I might take a while to respond or miss a couple. Sorry! I'll try to make sure and respond to any significantly novel viewpoints. EDIT 3 (12:38 PST) : Going to sleep for the night. I'll try and get to anyone I missed tomorrow. Thanks for your responses!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It's really pretty rare that the "problem solving" part of an engineering job is constrained by limited time. "Timed tests" on the scale of an hour or two are really a very poor model for the real working world. And even if it were, so what? Engineers are paid on a salary, and people are given tasks to accomplish. If someone takes a little longer at their job, and therefore they have to work slightly longer hours in order to accomplish their set goals, or takes fewer coffee breaks, that's not really a problem for the company. It might be a problem for the employee, perhaps...<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELIF: Why is the frequency 18.9Hz called the Ghost Frequency?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Human hearing ranges from (about) 20 Hz to 20,000 Hz. If a sound wave falls outside of that range, you are not going to be able to hear it. However, that doesn't mean that you aren't able to perceive it in other ways. We can "feel" sound waves outside of our normal range of hearing - both above and below the 20/20,000 thresholds. The 18.9 Hz wave is no different - you can't hear it, but you can feel it is there. In many people, this feeling manifests itself as fear or paranoia. You can "feel" something in the room, but none of your other senses register anything consciously. This incongruence greats discomfort,t which manifests as fear. It is called the "Ghost Frequency" because it is theorized that many "haunted" areas simply produce tones close to 18.9 Hz (through resonance or other natural quirks) and people associate the fear response with a "presence" in the area.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Do you think high levels of immigration is good or bad for the economy and why? I was having a discussion with a few peers about it and would really like to know other's opinion.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant For me it would depend on circumstances. Does the destination have a cheap worker shortage? Do the immigrants typically have a strong educational background or work ethic? Do they speak the language of the place they are immigrated to, if not, are they willing? Is there housing opportunities for them? How widespread is discrimination, racism, or xenophobia? These matter because it's better to have a Japenese immigrant here to work in silicon valley than it is to allow African war refuges to work there (or elsewhere) in the USA. Japan is technologocally similar, has a good school system, and many who move speak at least basic English already. An African War refuge likely won't have the same level of education, may be bilingual but perhaps no English, will have to adjust to our society, and may not have easily transferrable job skills. Historically, it's usually a good thing.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Different degrees in martial arts, what does it mean to be an 8th degree black belt?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In most of the modern martial arts that use a belt system (judo, karate, taekwondo, etc), a black belt signifies an advanced student - not yet an expert, but someone who has a good handle on the basics and is ready for more advanced training or beginning-level teaching. It makes sense to think about it like a bachelors' degree in that sense - you've done real good, and now you're really ready to start learning from the best. Higher rankings or degrees (called dans in karate and judo, not sure about the rest) are used to signify greater advancement - in many styles, a new black belt may assist teaching classes, but may be teaching their own classes after reaching the 2nd or 3rd degree. Many styles will call practitioners of around the 4th or 5th degree onward "masters" of the art, but that's not a hard and fast rule. Past a certain point, attaining a new degree tends not to be about passing a test, but is bestowed more as a sign of respect from the martial arts organization, in recognition of a master's achievements and dedication. So at the upper levels (like 8th degree), there are usually going to be very, very few (if any) people holding that rank, and they're likely to be very old, very well-respected teachers.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Rick and Morty] Why isn't there more automation at the Citadel?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Because when you have someone doing the jobs, they have less time to think of how to get into your position. The jobs aren't even necessary at all, it's just to keep the people on the bottom at the bottom.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user I believe that prayer does nothing to change the world. CMV Prayer as an act of reaching to a deity for help or comfort has no appreciable effect beyond what can be achieved by normal positive thinking. Praying to end world hunger or to get a job has no effect unless you or someone else makes the decision to achieve the goal. These goals could also just as easily be achieved without prayer. Edit: I do not believe in the non corporeal nature of prayer. I do believe in the effects such as positive thinking giving someone a better understanding of who they are a what they can do.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Prayer isn't designed to directly change things but give people the strength to accomplish things themselves or set into motion the events that would allow them to do so. Obviously this could change based on religion but the goal of prayer isn't to just "change" things.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Cruel as it may seem, I do not see the point of handicapped parking spots. Based on what I have seen in my surroundings. I am actually willing to have my mind changed about this but hear me out first. Here's what I see in my neighborhood which has 6 handicapped spots. * They are almost always empty. Almost everywhere I go in my city when I'm looking for parking the handicapped spots are the only empty ones sometimes. (To this day, however, I have never parked or even briefly pulled over in a handicapped spot because it feels cruel.) * The few times I see them occupied, EVERY TIME, I see a completely able bodied person leave the car. As in both are legs made of meat that are fully functional. They have the handicap badge in the car but they don't seem to have any sort of physical ailment. If you need a contraption to get the wheelchair out that seems fair, but if the person is just deaf or is missing a pinky I don't see why they need special reserved parking. * I know one of these fraudsters personally, he had his because his grandfather was handicapped so they just used his handicap badge. Presumably this is ok because sometimes they have to drive him places. He kept it in his car every day and the whole family used it to park in handicap spots. From what I can tell the only people who use handicap parking spots are people with a handicapped relative not a handicapped driver. * I have never seen one of those special cars for people who are disabled where they have buttons instead of pedals and a contraption that unloads a person with a wheelchair. If even ONCE I saw an actual physically disabled person exit their vehicle in a handicapped parking spot I might not even question their special parking spots. Edit: Deltas have been awarded. Many of you are right about my confirmation bias and, more importantly, that there are countless severe visible and invisible disabilities. If we could spot illnesses at a glance why would we need doctors? Thanks everyone _____ > 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 Invisible disabilities exist. Just because you can't see an obvious disability in a person doesn't mean it isn't there. Chronic pain, numerous diseases, and a whole host of other conditions can make it so that walking long distances is severely painful/damaging. It's likely you have seen a ton of physically disabled people, you just couldn't see their disability<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Would heavy water turned to ice still float on normal water I want to know deuterium in its solid form would still float like normal ice. Also would it freeze in the same way that normal water would? Thanks for all the very complete answer!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant For those reading, he's referring to deuterium water, which is where the two hydrogen atoms in an H2O molecule have an additional neutron in their respective nuclei (normally the hydrogen atoms just consist of a proton and an electron). This alters the mass of the molecule, which affects many of its properties on a macroscopic level. The density of "normal" ice is about .92 g/cm^3, while the density of normal water is about 1.0 g/cm^3, which is why ice floats in water. The density of deuterium ice is about 1.02 g/cm^3, which is just slightly more than liquid (normal) water - so it would sink, just barely.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why do solar panels use Silicon cells rather than a metal with a lower work function, such as Cesium/Caesium? Silicon has a work function of 4.05eV, whereas Cesium/Caesium which is 2.1eV. Surely solar panels made with one of the many other metals with a lower work function would produce a higher electrical output?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Solar cells operate through the photovoltaic effect, work function numbers are for the photoelectric effect which is different. Even if that wasn't a factor, Cesium is very expensive and has the nasty habit of reacting violently with water and igniting spontaneously in air. Additionally, it has a low melting point of 28.5 C so your solar cells would melt in sunlight.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user I'm curious about the reasoning and methodology behind the long string of numbers for versions and updates of professional apps Why does it always seem to be something like "v1.0.1.4.2.7," instead of just "version 26" or something like? What's the thought process behind that? How do they decide which number to increase, or when to add a new decimal place? I feel like, if I were releasing something professionally, I would probably just be adding numbers at the end somewhat arbitrarily, only doing it because that's what people expect professional version numbers to look like.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Look into SEMVER for more info but generally: Major.Minor.Patch.Build Major changes means something will break if you update to this Minor usually a new feature Patch is for bug fixes Build the number of the build or pull request<\|im_end\|>

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