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<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: If a computer only takes an input of 0s and 1s how does it know to expect an image as supposed to text? I get that any symbol is usually 8 characters in binary and that pixels colors in an image range from 0-255 with 255 being 11111111 using binary But how does it actually determine to either look for a letter or a colored image by just using strings of 1s and 0s if that makes sense.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It doesn't. You can interpret the same binary data multiple ways. It's up to the program that's running what it does with the data, which is why you can open binary files in Notepad. However, if the program is expecting data of a certain structure, it may fail if it sees data that doesn't fit that structure. A BMP file, for example, should begin with a header that specifies the width and height of the image and then the image data. If there isn't enough image data for the image size given in the header, a BMP loader will fail and report that the file isn't valid. Many file types begin with a "magic number" that serves to identify the file format. An ELF executable file, for example, begins with the bytes 0x7F454c46.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why does normal pain medicine helps you with a headache for a few hours but not make you immune to all pain? I know basic pain medicaments block some kind of chemical reaction in you body for a while, and this reaction is the base of your pain (extremely simply). But why when I use pills for headaches I still can feel pain from hitting my little toe on a bed?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There is a difference between pain, inflammation, and sensitivity after an injury. Not all injuries feel the same, but they all go through these stages at different rates. After an injury you'll feel pain which includes inflammation, and as the inflammation subsides and new tissue is being formed in place of place of dead tissue, sensitivity. The most common pain medications that you don't need a prescription for are anti-inflammatories. These are really good for swelling and pain caused by immune system responses. It's basically slowing down the increased blood flow that causes the redness, swelling, and hot feeling you get after an injury or infection. Headaches are mainly caused by increased pressure inside the skull. the vessels in the brain increasing in size, usually due to inflammation or higher blood pressure. Anti-inflammatories reduce the swelling happening in your brain and relax and soothe vessels. There is an enzyme that causes the release of prostaglandins , which increases blood flow to affected areas when they're injured , also known as perfusion. It's like calling an emergency services crew with mutual aid and special contractors to repair a busted dam or put out a massive fire. But the body isn't good a regulating inflammatory resposes, which is why inflammation often causes more damage to surrounding tissue. Think of how you feel during a fever, that's mainly the side effects of your immune system. The pain you feel from trauma isn't just inflammation, but direct injury and stimulation of afferent nerve fibers. opioids and other analgesics work in different ways to affect the nervous system to either slow or block pain signals. Some medications like lidocaine block nerve signals in the area where it's applied. It's a sodium channel blocker that also blocks the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which is used by nerves to send pain signals to the brain.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: If a certain result has a 1/x chance to occur per action, on average which iteration will it first occur on? For example, people usually say that a 1/5000 chance means on average 5000 tries are needed. I was wondering if that was actually true, since on the 5000th try there's only a 0.367~ chance of the result not having occurred. I thought it might be 3465~ instead, since by the 3465th try there would be an approximately .5 chance of the result already having occurred. However, that .5 chance includes the result having already occurred multiple times, so now I'm stumped. Thanks in advance for the help! Edit: I definitely might be wrong, but I think my confusion isn't due to the Gambler's fallacy. I know each individual action always has the exact same chance, but the chance of not receiving the 1/x result within Y tries decreases as Y increases. What I mean is there's a lower chance of not having gotten the result after 100 tries than after 10 tries. My question was based on looking at consecutive tries as a whole, not individually. Based on that, if the chance is 1/5000, statistically speaking how many tries would it take the achieve the result for the first time?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant 1. Ask this question on r/learnmath if you want the most correct answers to be upvoted. 2. The first occurrence occurs the xth time on average. To see this, consider a long experiment consisting of, say, 1,000,000x trials. The event will happen about a million times, which means that the average gap between occurrences is about x. But "gap" is the same as "experiment where we keep rolling the dice until the event happens and then we stop". So the average length of these things is the same. 3. The chance that the event occurs on or before the xth time is about 37%.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How will/are human bodies adapt(ing) to increased body fat if obesity continues through many generations? Is there any evidence of human bodies adapting to obesity? If it is true that you can be genetically obese then are those humans better adapted for this? Would the human body be more likely to adapt to automatically store less fat, or to strengthen its organs/structure to be able to cope more easily with increased body fat?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant If being overweight has enough impact on a person's average reproductive success (i.e. total number of children who survive long enough to reproduce themselves), it's not impossible that we'll eventually see human evolution select for people who are less susceptible, perhaps because they retain less fat, have less interest in fatty/high-calorie foods, or are simply more healthy with high body fat. (There are plenty of animals that are perfectly healthy with lots of fat, and would be quite unhealthy without it--look at seals, for example.) But it is way, way, way too soon to see any evidence of that right now. The "obesity epidemic" has been a thing for a couple of generations at most. Try back in a few thousand years. (And even that seems like a stretch, honestly. Obesity kills, but it usually kills in middle age or later, after many people have already had kids.)<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How do I practice becoming a better thinker? Hello everyone I hope it's appropriate to ask this here since it's not a philosophical question but one about your methods. I just started studying philosophy and I'd like to improve the way I think; to be more precise, more critical - all in all I'd like to develop a sharper mind. When googling and youtubing I find that the consensus to improving critical thought is 'writing a lot' and 'reading a lot'. But I just don't really know where to start or what I should be looking for. What should I write? How should I write? What should I read? How should I read? -How did you become a better thinker? -Do you have any recomendations or examples for a book or article where you thought "this is some sharp thinking"? Maybe if I see an example I'd have a better idea for what I'm looking for.. Thanks for reading -A pupil<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant What really helped me become a more critical thinker was honestly reading books on various topics i was interested in, watching lectures on youtube which i think immensely helped as well, and engaging in conversation about the topics I’ve learned to family members and friends. The last point is crucial because you are actively engaging in active recall and it introduces you to perspectives you may have not heard of, all while giving you more perspective and reasoning to aid you in becoming a better thinker.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: There is no Reason to Believe that Sexual Promiscuity is Immoral. I saw that there's already a thread about whether sexual promiscuity is "bad" in a general sense, but I believe this is a distinct question. Apart from adherence to religious dogma, I can't think of a logical reason to believe that sexual promiscuity is immoral. Consensual sex is fundamentally a matter between the parties involved. If the parties properly disclose relevant information about one another and consent with all that in mind, I can't see how either party is harmed. Nor can I see how any other party is implicated, except possibly for a child born out of the sex. On that note, I'll grant that the parties to sex would have a moral duty to any child conceived and born due to the sex. But I don't think that makes the sex itself immoral.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant As do all moral judgements, it depends on the moral system. Depending on one's core beliefs, sexual promiscuity may or may not be "moral" for a particular person and their peers. Examples: Having sex defiles the soul/mind/etc. = having sex is morally wrong. Consenting adults can do whatever they want = having sex is morally neutral. Staying a virgin over the age of sixteen is losing at life = not having sex is morally wrong. A conservative community, a group of rationalists and a college fraternity will make different moral judgements on promiscuity depending on their moral systems. It is also not uncommon for a single person to employ several conflicting moral systems at the same time ("if they sleep around, they're a slut" + "if they don't sleep with me, they're a frigid bitch"), because people are not inherently rational.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: The college education system is antiquated, inefficient, and self-defeating Assuming that the goal of upper education is to educate individuals, I believe that the methods used to achieve this goal in the modern college education system to be very poor and lazy. Instead of college being an environment that nurtures thought, creativity, and a desire to learn; it treats education like a business with students being walking dollar signs. Professors and other members of academia are complicit to this as they are subject to oppressive group-think and often tribalize themselves, shunning other colleagues who think and behave differently, further degrading what should be a free-thinking environment. While I do not deny that students gain knowledge and experience through college; I believe it is usually a side-effect of jumping through the numerous arbitrary hoops of academia, rather than the education itself. At the end of the day, college simply weeds out those who are unable to meet such arbitrary requirements rather than attempting to educate them. Colleges should ditch regimented learning systems such as competition, grading, and test screening in favor of more individual-focused methods. The system would be far better if it stop treating itself as a certification program, but rather an open environment to learn. Instead, letting employers decide if a person is qualified. (As they already do) Colleges should return to their roots, for the sake of creating a more educated populous. _____ > 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 The word education means different things to different people. How important is worldview? How important is being challenged? How important are specific skills? How important is research and development? How important is being exposed to new viewpoints and learning how to dialogue with others? There is no one answer to these questions, but there are vague groupings. 1) College exists so employers don't have to train their workers. Essentially college exists so employers can socialize their losses (training their employees). With a more positive spin, college makes employees more attract to employers (since they have a lower training cost). 2) College is important, even in a post-scarcity world with no jobs and no economy. There exists something ethereally important about being educated, about being able to reason, about being good at rhetoric, which transcends economic reasoning. 3) College puts everyone back on the same track. American High Schools are all over the place in terms of the quality of education they provide. College provides a re-calibration of sorts. Everyone with a diploma meets at least some bare minimum level of education suitable for the modern world. While this may seem silly to those at the top, this is essential for the people at the bottom. 4) College exists for STEM and pre-law. If you are not going into law school or into a STEM degree, go away. Depending on how you answered those questions, or which group you fall into, the meaning of "college" changes. Not everyone comes to college with the same expectations. Try to look at some of the obstacles in your college experience, and try to see how they are benefits from another point of view. Usually you can.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5 - How are height requirements calculated for theme park rides?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant ELI5 answer is that they calculate how short someone would have to be to slip out of the restraints, then add plenty of safety margin to accommodate everyone with different-length torsos, legs, etc. Some rides even have height maximums, where your dangling legs could crash against something. It's the same idea; the max height is calculated and then taken way down, as a safety factor. In all likelihood someone just outside the limits would be fine. But in these things a huge safety factor is absolutely required.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Python is THE BEST programming language for beginners. There are a couple of things that I believe are essential to a good beginner's programming language. The first and most important thing is ease of use, now I'd say this more or less directly translate to a high level of language abstraction. You want a syntax that is fairly readable to a human, you definitely want a language with managed code and a extensive framework to provide the beginner with a lot of useful tools and methods. This leaves us with a couple of VHLLs: * Python * Ruby * Visual Basic * PHP * Scheme * many obscure scripting languages... We can cross off a lot of these entries based on what I consider to be the second critera for a good beginner's language, and that is language popularity. Ideally you're going to want to learn a language that you'll have plenty of use for both professionally and privately. Aside from that as, as a beginner, you will most probably need a great amount of help, so any popular language with an abudance of helpful resources will ease your learning curve. So we can go ahead and cross off all those obscure VHLLs already. Now as for the rest.. We'll start by looking at the TIOBE language index to assess language popularity, now the langagues in are list are ranked in the following order: * 5th place - Visual Basic * 7th place - PHP * 8th place - Python * 12th place - Ruby * 43rd place - Scheme In my opinion we can remove anything that's not in the top 10 so let's cross off Ruby and Scheme. This leaves us with Visual Basic, PHP and Python. Now let's look at the professional populariy of these languags, searching Monster.com for "PHP developer", "Visual Basic developer" etc yielded around the same number of hits for all listed languages except for Visual Basic which yielded significantly less, so based on that we can remove it from our list as well.. Lastly I will actually go ahead and remove PHP as well, now there's nothing wrong with PHP per se, but first of all it is significantly slower than the other two languages, and it is primarily a OOP language while the other two are multi-paradigm which I consider a GREAT benefit for beginners so they can get acquianted with the different programming paradigms while still staying inside the confines of the language that they know and are comfortable with. At this point most people would say it's a toss up between Python and Ruby, and generally I'd agree. But for beginners I would say Python is the superior language, it's easier for a beginner to learn. _____ > Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to *[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules). If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* *[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)*! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our *[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)* first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to *[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview). Happy CMVing!*<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The best language for beginners is the one suitable for the project they are trying to create. Trying to learn stuff abstractly creates really poor programmers. All they can do is repeat what other people have told them because they don't understand the "Whys"<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: how they manage to provide reliable high speed wifi to 80k people at the Ethiad Stadium (home of Man City)?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A very large number of access points with narrow beamwidths (each access point covers only a small slice of the total area) with careful ordering of the available wifi frequencies to limit interference. Think of it like waitresses - each is assigned a small part of the restaurant so you can just hire more waitresses as needed instead of having just one waitress for everyone.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What does the claim that we, humans, share 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees actually mean?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant What is meant by the claim depends a lot on who is saying it. Some people feel this has philosophical or scientific significance that others don’t agree with. But the claim, on the surface, is true, or close to true. A vast majority of genes are used to carry out basic cellular functions like generating power (converting glucose and oxygen to ATP), cell division to create new cells... even “specializations” like the creation of muscle fibers or electrochemical signaling proteins in nerve cells may be similar between all mammals, or even all vertebrates. The remaining 1% can account for a huge amount of variation, though. This doesn’t mean humans aren’t “meaningfully” or significantly different from chimpanzees. All the similarity just means we share the basic biochemical structure of our bodies, and even methods of reproduction, etc.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Am I right that, fundamentally, any productivity is better than no productivity? And that there should always, in the near future, be at least something for someone to do? Obviously there's a lot of talk about automation and jobs lately. Something that occurred to me is that, anywhere and everywhere, there's always something that needs to be done, or could be done. You can tell me if I'm wrong about that, but my intuition is that we need just look around our house, or our community, and you should pretty easily be able to spot myriad things that could be done, that aren't getting done. Fundamentally, if we have things to be done, and if we have people not doing anything, that has to be completely inefficient, yes? I'm imagining some world in which unemployed people can do some kind of community service, and where there is 'something to do' for everyone who wants to do something. Is there a reason this doesn't work? Even in a future world of automation, it seems like this doesn't cease to be. If you've got, for example, machines manufacturing all the materials needed for infrastructure, that just means we have more stuff which which to improve infrastructure. I mean, are we going to run out of infrastructure to build and improve? It seems like having an unemployed person busy doing that is vastly preferable to having them sitting at home. As far as compensation, perhaps their labor isn't worth a ton at first, but it's worth more to them, and us, than having them idle. Suppose I'm a reasonably bright person who is unemployed or underemployed, and I go down to the community planning office and say, "I'd like to help, maybe I can sit in on the meetings and start learning?" I know, that's basically what an internship/apprenticeship is, and that that exists in places, but it strikes me just how strict, then, the barriers are to doing that. Why don't we have more places where people can easily get into that? You could argue that people don't like to contribute to society for free, but then...why would any of you be here taking the time to answer my questions? I'm sure there are flaws in my thinking, but I don't see them straight out, so I'd love to hear more about it. Thanks in advance.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant What is you core question? Or barring a core question, what is your thesis? It seems like you're making a roundabout argument that automation won't put everyone out of work because there is always more work generated by productive developments. There are certainly those who argue that. Something to consider - is efficiency or productivity the ultimate good in a society? If not, then we must consider how optimizing efficiency affects other things we might wish to pursue, like leisure time.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do some coins get rejected in vending machines? Sometimes a coin will work first time and with other coins you have to insert it a few times for the vending machine to accept it.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There can be a couple reasons, depending on how the machine identifies coins and what money's inside it. It might try to look at the coin's face and think it's not real (too damaged to look authentic, etc). It might try to weigh the coin to see if it's as heavy as a proper, 'standard' coin of a denomination. A valid coin you put in might have enough pieces knocked off that the weight seems wrong. The machine might also have too many coins and not enough bills, where enough money inserted in bills can't be given correct change (not enough/the right coins). EDIT: spelling<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Does genetics come into the equation when considering why all humans don't have the same intellectual capabilities?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Its a sensitive subject, but yes it does. Genetics decide your overall potential. You can of course squander it , especially if neglected in the first few years of life. Its also not a simple on / off genetic switch. There are many genes that factor in and have different effects.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Using the word “female” to talk about a woman or girl is not sexist/wrong/inappropriate As a female who was in the military, I call every woman or girl a “female” when I’m talking about them. Or when I’m generalizing. There’s nothing wrong with doing this. However, several times on Reddit I’ve been downvoted or called out for this. I’m progressive and liberal, so I try my best to speak with groups of people in mind. But this one just makes no sense to me. I’ve never even heard someone use the word “female” intending for it to be condescending. And I’ve experienced plenty of sexism (primarily in the military). Please, someone, anyone explain to me how this is sexist or inappropriate. Because I’m really not grasping it.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In normal life use of the word female for women and male for men can be unusual and that unusual use of language can just give people pause. Mostly nobody will take any offence, its just unusual. Online can be a different thing. Online all people can judge you by is words so they place enormous significance on your choice of words, significance that hardly anyone would apply in a face to face encounter. Also you may run into people who have strong opinions about gender theory online and your unusual use of language will mark you out as not complying with their linguistic codes for their belief system. As that is one of the most heated belief systems generating the most online reaction right now it could certainly explain the responses you are getting. Online people do tend to read into the words you use meanings which you never intended, then take very seriously the meaning that they have inferred. It is just a drawback of the online world. To those who are hypervigilant to use of language that deviates from their beliefs, you can indeed appear 'bad' and that badness will be expressed through descriptions such as sexist/etc.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why is it mandatory that court judges be treated like royalty? And why isn't the President? For example, "All rise. . . you may be seated," and the like. And while it's standard (i.e. everyone does it) to be just as respectful to the President, it doesn't seem as "forced" or required. EDIT: Atomiktoaster [answered it pretty well](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1of4x2/why_is_it_mandatory_that_court_judges_be_treated/ccremzb), and yeeye [made good points](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1of4x2/why_is_it_mandatory_that_court_judges_be_treated/ccrga2x). Thanks, guys! :)<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The US common law system has its origins in English law, where the judge is the representative of the sovereign. The historical idea was that the court is responsible for enforcing the King's justice. Therefore, the judge and the court are accorded a level of respect as an extension of the crown. In the U.S., sovereignty rests with the People, rather than a monarch, but judges still fill the same role and are accorded with a similar level of respect. The Presidency isn't at quite the same level, being accountable to the will of the People and Congress and filling an administrative role under the Constitution. Edit: early morning wrong "its" and TIL the * shows up after an edit.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How does gravity exactly work and why do objects increase in speed when falling from different heights? I get the apple theory loosely but I want more understanding.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It's important to really drill in people's heads that gravity has two parts, the law and the theory. The law bit is really simple: Objects with mass attract each other. How much they attract each other depends on their relative masses. Attraction means accelerating another object towards you. Here, the Earth accelerates every object towards itself at a constant rate of 9.82 meters per second per second. If we ignore things like air resistance, every object accelerates at the same rate when falling. The theory part refers to how gravity actually works: is it a field? is it a particle? that's the part we haven't yet figured out.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do wall sockets only have 1 or 2 plugs? I've always wondered why there were only two. Can't we add more?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There is typically a code (for safety) regarding electrical wiring. There is always the option of running more wires to more outlets, but there is a limit to how many sockets can be wired for a single pair of wires (by code). Also a outlet boxes are very standard items - they are low cost because they are made in large volumes and made to common specification. Anything custom will be very expensive. More outlets means more circuits, means more wires, larger distribution boxes and more circuit breakers. Lots of things can be done (within the electrical code for homes) but it is a matter of paying a lot more. Most households don't bother with the added expense.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Harry Potter] what makes a wizard powerful?... scientifically speaking, of course. okay. So the magic in the Harry Potter series is probably pretty unintelligibly subjective, right? To the extent that (I'd imagine at least) it's difficult to talk about clearly, since magic includes weird abilities, like: \-the ability to change your shape \-the ability to read the minds of others \-the ability to force your will upon others, using telepathy \-other things which, if taken in all of their implications as the series gives us, probably lead us to some contradictions (i.e. is it possible for any spellcaster to be a powerful opponent against one in a duel, if one can read the other's mind and the one whose mind is being read, must speak their spells out loud.) So I understand that in a duel, it will be a most useful trait to be able to do things like send spells without saying them, read your opponent's thoughts, and cast powerful spells. But what else is being measured between two fighters in a duel? Take, for instance, the duel between Voldemort and Dumbledore, at the end of Order of the Phoenix. Theoretically during this fight, each of the duelists has one person they could have assist them (Harry for Dumbledore, and Bellatrix Lestrange for Voldemort) which, iirc, doesn't actually happen. But is either wizard (Voldy and Dumble) so powerful that the other two are just useless during this encounter? If Dumbledore sends out a spell and says to Harry, "Now for the rebound!" and Harry casts a complementary spell, they're only going to help each other out so that they win, right? That's what I'm finding confusing, I guess. I mean throughout the series "powerful magic" is shown, and hinted at as existing far beyond the experiences of one human or another; however, what is the actual nature of some of the more powerful spells shown? Are Dumbledore and Voldemort just throwing big elementals at each other during this duel (in particular, because I feel that it showcases some pretty powerful magic between two dueling wizards where otherwise duels tend to forward more dramatic issues of the plot); or are they using magic that is just so far advanced beyond an average wizard's understanding of magic (or, potentially, Harry's or Bellatrix's), that a novice wizard is going to be completely impossibly outmatched (or not be able to be helpful)? Or is there more nuance to it than that, like a novice could've stood up and helped but Dumbledore was exclusively trying to protect Harry (because Harry was important to Dumbledore's political endgoals); and Bellatrix either isn't that powerful (and she knows it), or she was afraid of Dumbledore because Dumbledore is a very wise, and very old, and very powerful, character? Thanks. This has been confusing me and it's difficult to articulate the nature of this kind of question imo.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant If i'm understanding your question corrextly, Imagine it as working in the same way as raw strength and training. Different people have different innate magic "strength", and different levels of training. Imagine Hermione as someone who's really buff, and is training to be better. Someone like Ron is pretty strong, but isn't putting in the effort to use that. Someone like Neville is naturally weak, but is training really hard to be decent at fighting anyway. And Dumbledore and Voldemort are people who are both naturally ripped and heavily trained They're the magic equivalent of, say, Muhammad Ali- not technically unbeatable, but might as well be for a normal person, or even for a normal boxer. They both know a lot of magic and are able to put a lot of power behind that magic meaning, yes, most other wizards are completely outmatched. They're simply top of the game, and only need to worry about the few others who've reached their level.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: why do we grab our chest when we are startled? "Oh my God you scared me"<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant I just did a quick google a managed to find a little info that may help The responses of people to a startling incident vary widely between the fight, fly, or freeze options. When startled, people may wildly flail their arms, or suddenly raise their limbs in protective poses, or duck to avoid an object. The shocked and surprised often back pedal, jump back, or run away from a frontal stimulus. They may clutch a rail, or furniture to prevent from falling. Their knees may buckle, causing them to fall down. They may drop the things they are holding. They may freeze, or instantly follow orders. They may clutch their chests, faint or even suffer a temporary heart attack The aggressive ones may curse or throw things at the object, which startled them, or strike out at them. So it sounds like it clutching your just is a response you hafe in order to protect your torso.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Is there a word for when organisations or political movements change ideology but retain the same name?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In classic organizational theory there are the dual concepts of ‘mission creep,’ where organizations change focus in response to external pressures (e.g., Zald and Denton 1963), and ‘goal displacement,’ where change results from internal pressures (e.g., Selznick 1943). For a great example of this sort of thing, take a look at Messinger’s 1955 paper in the American Sociological Review on the Townsend Movement.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What is responsible for some people being lonely or socially isolated despite humans being social animals? What are differences from normal humans that make someone vulnerable to be socially isolated or left alone?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Not an expert, but asking a clarifying question: Do you mean what leads some people to be excluded from the groups in which they might otherwise participate, or do you mean why do some people prefer to not be a member of groups?<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Vocational school is just as difficult as a university (relatively speaking) Why is vocational school often recommended for people who aren't college material/ intelligent? Trades and vocational school are still difficult and require intelligence. Whether it be electrical, welding, HVAC, etc it still requires math, reading comprehension and basic skills. Why is it viewed that a welding class or a automotive repair class is easier than college courses ( more specifically freshman level history, college algebra, business etc). If anything I would view learning to weld as a more difficult skill than passing a college class. Additionally you still have to take math and English in most associated degrees. I’ve seen a lot of people even in college struggle with basic algebra and fractions, now how would they be able to thrive in a trade that uses decimals, fractions, micrometers etc quite frequently? Also trades are physically demanding. Someone who has never worked a physical job/ been active will have a difficult time digging trenches, lugging pipes/sheet metal. I just think the grass isn’t greener on the other side and trades are just as difficult as a general degree. ( not comparing it to Ivy League level/pre med/high difficulty degrees)<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Oftentimes, people who are bad at school are bad at particular aspects of schooling, such as classroom learning and dealing with high levels of abstraction. For many people, practical applications of math or engineering principles are much easier than purely abstract mathematics, even if the core concepts are the same. Additionally, they are able to embrace the task more clearly because it is tied to a practical end result, as opposed to being a purely academic exercise. It isn't to say that trade programs are necessarily easier than ordinary undergraduate programs, but they're difficult in different ways that make them suitable to different people. So someone who is bad at ordinary academic programs might still thrive in a well designed trade program that better suits their learning style.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why is collecting rainwater illegal in some states? Claiming that rainwater harvesting is "illegal.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Water can be hard to some by in some places. Collecting rain water means that you are interfering with the replenishment of the natural water supply, or artificially worsening the water shortage for neighbors that would normally receive run-off from your property. Essentially, you are keeping water from it's natural course and in a drought condition, that can be devastating for others.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user I think that the Paralympic Games directly contradicts the idea of 'not being defined by one's disability' CMV While watching the Sochi Olympics with some sports buff friends of mine, I got into a discussion over Oscar Pistorius [(link)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Pistorius) and whether his participation in the 2012 Olympics and 2012 Paralympics should have been allowed, which stemmed into a bigger discussion about the Paralympics in general. It seems to me that having to put competitors into different categories of disability for each event, as well as focusing on what people with different disabilities are able to athletically do puts far more focus on the disability itself than on the skill of the athlete. This, in short, makes me feel like the Paralympics give off a superficial image of empowerment and equality and because of this the games should not exist so please, CMV.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant I think you're conflating "defined by" with "taking into account". For example, does someone in a wheelchair "define themselves by their wheelchair" when they take the ramp instead of the stairs? The reality is, they have different abilities than people who are not handicapped, so it is only reasonable to take them into account. That doesn't mean their whole identity is defined by their disability though. So the reality is, people racing in wheelchairs are facing a different sort of event than people running with their legs. It would be as unreasonable to ignore this reality as it would be to ignore the reality that they can't use the stairs. It doesn't mean they're "defined" by it...it just means they're in a different sort of competition because the nature of their participation is different.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How is redline on a car chosen? Why do some cars rev-up to 6k while others go to 9k before hitting redline?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Comparing two engines with the same capacity, the one with more cylinders allows for lighter moving parts and thus a higher redline. On a 4 stroke usually the first mechanical limit is the spring load on the valves, the valves not being to return to their position quick enough they might hit the pistons. This is where the rev limiter is placed for safety. Talking about engineering choices, since power=torque*revolutions, higher rpm mean higher power can be produced (simply because you are burning more fuel per time unit). The engine is designed accordingly, usually there is a trade-in between maximum power and efficiency and fuel consumption. A higher-revving engine can produce more power but when you are driving at low speed, which is most of the time, basically you are keeping the engine in a less efficient part of the torque-rpm curve. This is why for average car engines the engine is designed to have maximum torque (thus efficiency) at the typical cruise speed. Sports engine sacrifice efficiency for performance. As a thumb rule, car engines have maximum torque at approximately 75% of max power rpm.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [LOTR] How common was interracial marriage in middle-earth?? How common was it for a person to marry and have children with a person of another race?? Like what would a child between an Elf and a Dwarf look like.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant > How common was it for a person to marry and have children with a person of another race? During the First Age, some Men came under the domination of Morgoth and were reduced to a feral state, in which they interbred with Orcs. This produced the half-orcs. Rape would result in much the same. There is no mention of half-dwarves. It's not clear if unions between dwarves and other races could be fertile. Half-elves were rare but did happen. Elves would only mate with their life-partners, and elven conception having a spiritual component would prevent rape from producing half-elves, hence only genuine unions ever resulted in half-elves. These were the marriages of Beren and Luthien, Tuor and Idril, Earendil and Elwing, and possibly (though this story is not nearly as well documented as the other three) Imrazôr and Mithrellas.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How do gender roles influence emotional expression? At least in the western world (I don't know too much about other cultures) it is common to think that women are more emotional than men. The idea that men don't like to talk about their emotions while women do, and so on. While I have the idea that this is true in general due to biological reasons (but im not really sure), what influence do societies have in expressing emotions, and could it not be that by society not listening to men's emotions cause them to stay silent about them? I can imagine for instance men who would talk openly about their feelings if it wasn't for a society where this was considered shamefull. But the balance between 'nature and nurture', biology vs gender roles, is quite opaque to me. What information/literature is there about the subject, and is there a difference between different cultures?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There’s actually a really great literature within Sociology called the Sociology of emotions, and one of its most influential books is by Arlie Hochschild - The Managed Heart (1983). She argues that, for example, female flight attendants have to perform a sort of emotional labor to effectively do their job. It’s a great case in point as to how gendered job expectations drive emotional expression. There’s also a pretty consistent through line in the Sociology of gender that argues that there is consistently identifiable patterns in gendered socialization that shape emotional expression. This hangs around the idea that children are socialized into norms related to ideal masculinity or femininity that enable or constrain types of emotional expression. For a good review, check out West and Zimmerman’s 1987 article “Doing Gender.” In it you’ll find a substantive overview of the topic that includes dated but empirical work covering all angles of the question.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: If you are playing a game fairly within the defined rules, you cannot act unethically/immorally as it regards to play. As a small preface, this discussion mostly pertains to MMORPGs that have a competitive auction house system in place. However I feel that my view does in fact extend to all games in general. If you are playing a game by the rules as outlined by the person who created the game, you cannot act unethically or immorally. For some reason, a lot of players in MMOs tend to apply a weird idiosyncratic idea that auction house prices have some external room for interpretation. Usually this applies to people getting frustrated with undercutting and whining about "destroying the market." My argument, is that because the rules are defined, and require an implicit agreement between any two players as to how they function it is impossible to then be unethical or immoral, because what is moral/ethical in this case has been quantitatively defined as X rules. I'd like to see a position that maybe I'm not considering in how this view could be incorrect. It does seem pretty cut and dry to me, but it's not so self-evident given how upset people get. (My ultimate point being, that it's pretty dumb to get mad when everyone is otherwise playing fair) I suppose that could just be video game culture at its finest but you don't usually see it manifest in not competitive titles. _____ > 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 Look into hawk/dove games and other models of human cooperation. What you should understand is that calling someone immoral/unethical is a strategy within the game, because it makes people want to cooperate with them less, and potentially makes them feel bad about themselves, thereby making that 'immoral' strategy less effective overall because of the negative consequences to your reputation. Labels like 'immoral' and 'unethical' serve exactly the same game theoretic purpose* in our everyday, real lives. Therefore, since the meaning of 'immoral' and 'unethical' acts is really just 'acts that other people wish you wouldn't do and will refuse to cooperate with you in the future if they see you doing', then those terms are just descriptions of certain types of strategies in the game, and are perfectly applicable and reasonable labels. It's not dumb to get mad when someone acts unethically in the game. Getting mad at them is precisely the best strategy to undermine their strategy and make them less likely to use it in the future. It is a perfectly rational strategic response.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Is an MA in Medieval Studies a waste of time and money? Hello and sorry for the long post. I would like to get some fresh insight about whether it's worth following an academic path in Medieval Studies in the UK. I hold a BA in English and I absolutely loved doing my dissertation on medieval literature and I got a First too. I've been thinking to follow an academic career for a while now and I now hold 2 offers to do an MA on Medieval Studies or Late Antique/Byzantine Studies in two prestigious unis in England. But the thing is that the tuition fees are ridiculously high and I would need to take a loan which really puts me off given that these degrees aren't exactly sought after. I had hoped that for the second course I would get a scholarship but the history department said they wouldn't release any scholarship this year, which was frustrating because they received millions of pounds from some foundation and some of it was supposed to go to scholarships. Anyway, I was told that to land an academic post (especially a permanent one) is super hard, unstable and a lot depends on luck too. If I don't land one then I'm not sure what else I could do with such niche qualifications and a lot of debt... Plus, I would need 4 years to get my MA and PhD and by that time I would be 31-32. I take it that while other friends will have started building their lives, I would be moving here and there in short-term contracts (which aren't even certain). But even that would be fine if there was at least some guarantee at the end. My old supervisor said that those who are good and determined always make it at the end but then again he landed a permanent post two decades ago. How do you see the situation for medievalists in unis? Is it really that grim as been presented to me? If one can't get an academic job, what else do they end up doing even remotely similar? I can't decide whether I should follow this path or just get an industry job and pursue my scholarly interests in my free time. I was reading some old essays of mine today and I got emotional knowing that I might not do literary research again but then again maybe I could become an independent scholar or write articles? I'm just worried that I might shoot myself in the foot while building castles in the sky.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A lot of people will give you similar advice: - Only you can make the final call about pros and cons - There are no secure jobs, unless you are exceptionally talented AND lucky AND well-connected. Or unless you are prepared to go work at unis in Asia or the Middle East (which can be a nice career for those who are suited to it). - If you do it, have a realistic backup plan. Accept that you will be starting at the bottom of the ladder in your early 30s. - Don’t pay to go to grad school. Especially, don’t get in debt for it. If you break this rule, know that by following your dreams you will be sacrificing your future security. If a department thinks your research field is important, they should be willing to pay for it. - Only go to grad school if you literally can’t see yourself being happy doing anything else.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: why does "the big, red, house" sound much more correct than "the red, big, house"?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant While not everyone follows them, generally in English if there are multiple adjectives, they are done in a particular order: * Quantity or number * Quality or opinion * Size * Age * Shape * Color * Place of origin or material * Purpose or qualifier So most people will say "big, red house" so that's what you're used to hearing.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: I think that when asked about something from a child (less than 10) we should try our best to not lie to them. EDIT: Okay people my view has been changed now stop flooding my inbox and get off my lawn! Okay so to start off i'm not a parent, i'm a senior in high school, but I do have a younger step-brother (10 yo) and a cousin (7 yo). I find that when I have to explain something to them after being asked a question, I remind myself of all the phony explanations that my parents gave me when I was their age. So I try to be as honest as possible, even if they aren't 100% able to comprehend the explanation. I find that a lot of people just lie to their children because it's easier, but I feel that this causes a few problems 1. The child is misinformed and may repeat misinformation to a friend at school, or worse embarrass themselves in class by repeating misinformation to a teacher when asked a question. 2. The child no longer can trust that person to be honest with them. It's better to say, "I don't know" or "you're not old enough to understand" than to just say something that's only half true or completely false just because they're a kid and aren't smart enough to know you're bullshitting them. 3. Even worse, the child remains misinformed their entire lives because no one ever corrects them, and they come off as ignorant. I know that parenting is difficult but for the sake of the children, let's not treat them like idiots and tell them convenient lies, but simple truths or at least push the question to the future when they could understand. This isn't a very controversial subject but I have heard arguments in opposition to this view in that "children forget, so why take the time to explain" or "they'll learn eventually". _____ > 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 Some subjects are simply too complex for any child to understand properly (e.g. most topics in philosophy, politics, and religion, which will inevitably be parsed into potentially harmful half-truths), or it may be that a full understanding of them relies on some experiential knowledge or feeling that a child can't or shouldn't have (e.g. most things related to sex). You're concerned about lying because it might cause bad/incorrect information to exist in the child's mind, but if the child can't* understand some fundamentally important aspect of something, then being completely honest will also result in bad/incorrect information once it's filtered through the child's limited cognitive/experiential capacities. In these cases, isn't it better to at least tell the truth selectively, and omit certain things, and deliberately simplify others? That's the only way you'll get them to possess information that's fully comprehensible to them, and not confusing or disturbing. And the kinds of partial, distorted ideas that can form from pieces of the truth can be much more dangerous than simpler, placeholder untruths.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: When many people read, we see the story played out like a movie in our minds instead of the words on the page... What is the neurological explanation of this? How does it happen?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Our mind's eye is the connection between our conscious and subconscious thoughts. When we are told something we try to envision it to better understand it. When reading a well written story involving things that don't exist or have never seen before our internal process of understanding is working harder to create the visuals for it.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Is an increase in population necessary for sustaining pensions in an ageing nation? This applies to many countries but I'm using the UK as an example. The source for all claims in this post is the [Office for National Statistics](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/ageing/articles/howwouldyousupportourageingpopulation/2019-06-24). The UK population is ageing because of a rise in life expectancy and falling fertility rates. Because of this, the proportion of pensioners to taxpayers is growing. Since pensions are paid almost entirely from working taxpayers under the age of 60, the problem of sustaining pensions becomes more difficult as the population ages. One common solution is raising the retirement age, but this cannot be done indefinitely due to obvious physical constraints on the elderly. The other well-known response is to make up for falling fertility rates by increasing immigration levels. Migrants, who are typically of working age, would ensure that the number of taxpayers rises to match the growing number of pensioners. Ignoring any potential future technological developments, in a hypothetical scenario where life expectancy increases to 120 and retirement age rises to 80, how would pensions be paid if fertility rates remain low? Is bringing young workers from abroad the only solution? Is a population increase always necessary, and if so, what happens when overpopulation becomes unsustainable?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Addressing a very simplistic model, suppose that: X is the amount of actual workers, Y is the amount of retired workers receiving a pension, w is the mean wage and p is the mean pension. t is a % tax for the workers. We have w * t * X = Y * p or w * t * X/Y = p X/Y is the ratio of workers per pensioner, we will cal it k. So w * t * k = p If the population is getting older and fertility is decaying, then k will fall and ceteris paribus the mean pensions will fall down too. There are two options that can rise this pension again: A rise in the tax t, but you cant do this for the eternity, or to increase the mean wage. The last option is what have kept the system still operating the last decades. So, answering your question, pensions are sustainable in aging countries as long as an increase in productivity is maintained.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Copyrigtht lasting longer than the lifetime of the creator stops more creativity than protect it. Copyright is a brilliant thing, protecting the ideas of an artist, writer or director. With that they are encouraged to produce something and sequels to successful stuff. But no person on earth can produce new things, after they died. They don't need any encouragement or protection after their death. It benefits only profit driven companies. They will keep the rights and don't promote creativity based on the pool of the artists work. I think one or two years after the artists death could the copyright be extended, so the legacy can rest. After that it would only be profit not the idea of protecting artists, that put the copyright at death+75 yrs.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Copyright is a transferrable asset; this is why you can sell, license, or give away all or part of your copyright. Because it's an asset, it has value, and our current system of inheritance is generally very averse to removing any value that somebody might get from inheritance. Copyright existing past the death of the author does not just apply to large companies or to allow the "legacy to rest", but also to the family members of authors, and can protect those family members from having residual income taken away by a company swooping in and making knockoffs or simply republishing the original works. Now, this isn't to say that 70 years makes sense, or that it's exclusively beneficial to estates or whatever, but just to point out that there are impacts of copyright aside from allowing Disney to keep exclusivity over Mickey Mouse forever or whatever.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5:Why do words sometimes begin to "sound weird" or not like words at all, after we repeat them over and over in our heads or out loud?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant This is called semantic satiation. It's basically your brain messing up slightly due to certain things up there happening repeatedly at a fast pace. The Wikipedia article has more a lot more if you want to dig deeper.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user When you see a shockwave what are you actually seeing?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Air at different densities refracts light differently, like when heat waves coming off the pavement or a grill create pockets of air at different densities. The shockwave has different densities of air ahead of and behind the shockwave, which gives a lensing effect.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user eli5: What are the benefits of digitigrade vs. plantigrade feet?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Plantigrades are generally more stable and able to bear more weight. That's because the weight goes basically straight down the leg to a relatively large surface area. Digitigrades are essentially walking on their toes. This increases the effective length of their leg, increasing the stride length and subsequently their speed. It's also somewhat more mechanically efficient given the arrangement of their tendons and ligaments, as they effectively act like springs.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user I don't believe the patriarchy exists, and is simply used as a tool to silence criticism of feminism. Alright, I would like to start this CMV by stating that I do think feminism is necessary in our society. Girls everywhere are faced with discrimination due to their gender in overt and covert forms, and the feminist movement has been good for combating said discrimination. That said, I don't believe the "patriarchy" is a real thing as of the year 2013. So far as I am aware, the patriarchy is a catch all term for male privilege and the causes, ideologies, and actions that uphold and advance said privilege. Sure, the patriarchy may have existed in the past, but it has been wiped out, or at least reduced to a role of irrelevancy. First of all, the concept of the patriarchy doesn't make a ton of sense in terms of advancing the position of men. MRA's and similar groups often note the ways in which men are disadvantaged: Higher suicide rates, forced conscription, cultural expectations to be the bread winners, higher incarceration rates, imbalanced divorce/custody courts, lower education rates, and a lack of identity. Why would the patriarchy set up these factors to intentionally hurt men? Assume the goal is male dominance, why would the patriarchy set up disadvantages for men such as these? Another thing I've noticed is that often feminists sight the patriarchy and/or male privileges for discrimination against them; we've all heard the arguments about wage discrepancy, traditional gender roles, and rape culture. However, it appears wage discrepancy today is more of a cultural thing than overt discrimination; men naturally flow into higher earning fields of work such as STEM. Where I feel this falls apart is that any girl can enter a STEM field if she chooses and face little resistance, but a straight male entering a traditionally "feminine" field such as dance or women's studies faces heavy resistance from both men and women. And although rape is a serious issue, I feel that those who are convicted receive heavy punishments (usually lengthy jail time). Why would the patriarchy seek to limit men in these ways? If it truly was about making men dominant, wouldn't it seek to give men complete freedoms while limiting the same freedoms in women? Ultimately, I feel like this is where the idea of the patriarchy falls apart; both genders are limited in certain ways, it isn't simply men dominating over women for their own gain. So what relevance does this have to modern feminism? I feel that the concept of the patriarchy is used to suppress any criticism of feminism. As a straight male I am not allowed to question feminism, because I am part of the patriarchy and therefore my male privilege blinds me. I find this is extremely restrictive to discussion about the aims of feminism, where it succeeds, and where it fails. EDIT: Something I forgot in the original post, which I meant to comment on. A lot of people state that the issues men face are a result of the patriarchy assigning gender roles to men as well as women. I can agree with this. There are even men out there who are currently fighting these gender roles, not unlike women did "back in the day". However, whenever somebody even suggests discussing the possibility that men face issues, the response they usually receive is "well you're privileged so shut up/women have it worse, quit bitching". I have observed this happen twice relatively close to home for me: Once at University of Toronto, where a "MRA" lecture was barricaded by feminists, and then again even more recently at Ryerson university (also in Toronto), when students suggesting a new group to examine mens issues was immediately shut down. Now, where these groups raising legitimate points or just spouting misogyny? We'll never know unfortunately, because the concept of "privilege" was used as a tool to prevent men from voicing their opinions. This is where I have a large complaint; women are allowed to discuss their issues and work towards a solution, but any male attempting to discuss an issue is instantly shut down by the more militant side of feminism.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant >Assume the goal is male dominance, why would the patriarchy set up disadvantages for men such as these? >Why would the patriarchy seek to limit men in these ways? You seem to be thinking of the patriarchy in terms of a grand conspiracy that's pulling strings to make life better for men at the disadvantage of women. In reality, when feminists refer to "patriarchy" they are referring more to the historic dominance of males in society and the lasting cultural implications of that dominance. These implications (are seen to) disadvantage women in favor of men, but they can also hurt men (see: your point about men taking on "feminine" roles in society). In reality, no one is pulling the strings.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why do people get sick from eating contaminated food? Wouldn't the bacteria/virus be broken up by stomach acid?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The capacity of microbes to survive the acidic environment of the stomach is largely dependent upon a few variables: \-The microbial load: The number of organisms accompanying the food bolus. The more organisms there are, the greater the likelihood that at least a few will successfully pass through the stomach and in to the small intestine. \-Time: Food can pass through the stomach relatively quickly depending upon a few factors. It takes time for the acid concentration of the stomach to do what it does. Sometimes food (and, therefore, microbes), simply pass through too quickly. \-Adaptive mechanisms: Many microbes have adaptive mechanisms that protect against low pH. There is a long list of pathogenic microbes for which this is the case, but this also applies to microbes that are part of our normal microbiome and do not necessarily share a pathogenic relationship with us. \-pH fluctuation: The stomach isn't always at pH-2. When food empties in to the stomach, the pH can rise as high as pH-6 depending on the particular materials being digested. It's also important to recognize that, while the pH of solution can be low, the surface of food contents in the stomach can have a micro-environment that is relatively high-pH. So while the normally low pH of stomach contents (pH 1-2) is often deleterious to a great many microbes, there is a wide array of conditions that ultimately allow microbes to pass through the stomach and in to the intestines, which is the primary site of infection for most food-borne infectious organisms.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How do they re-attach severed limbs? How do they re-attach severed limbs in surgery? Also, if you just physically reattach your severed finger by securing it with tape/stitches, would your finger reattach itself?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant When body parts are reattached, the most important thing to get right is blood flow. The arteries and veins are all reconnected as best as possible. This is needed to keep the part alive. Muscles and nerves are also reconnected to give you sensation and movement. The skin is the last to be reconnected. If you just taped a finger tip in place, it wouldn't have the blood flow, and just die.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: People who are Pro-Life or Anti-Abortion (specifically those who oppose abortion at any stage) have an obligation to adopt at least one child. Note: I do not want to argue on whether a fetus should be considered a human or at what stage a fetus is considered alive and has the right to life. How many children are brought into this world to parents who are in no way capable of handling the responsibility of raising them to successful adults? How many of these parents decided against abortion solely because of the stigma attached to it and the shame thrown at them by pro-lifers? There are half a million children in need of loving homes in foster care or available for adoption. Yet I never see any pro-lifers protesting for a better foster care system or standing up and adopting the children that are brought into this world unwanted.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A person's belief that something is wrong is not and cannot be grounds to obligate them to fix it. If someone is against ISIL, it is not their moral duty to go to the Middle East and fight ISIL directly. If you start to apply this standard life quickly becomes impossible for everyone; there are simply too many problems for everyone to actively try to correct everything with which they disagree.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why do CRT monitors work differently in the Northern and Southern hemispheres? My supervisor was telling me today about how the psych department at my uni has to spend huge amounts of money on getting CRT monitors in (they're still the gold standard in perception research because you can display things for more precise amounts of time). One of the biggest costs, apparently, is getting the monitors adjusted for the Southern hemisphere. The little bits of info I've been able to find through Google tell me that it's something to do with differences in the Earth's magnetic field in each hemisphere, but does anyone know what those differences are, and how exactly it affects monitors?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant CRT monitors work by shooting electrons whose paths are bent by magnetic fields which can control where the electrons strike your screen. The CRT monitor creates a magnetic field in order direct the path of the electron. However, the Earth's magnetic field will also affect the path that the electron travels in, and the CRT must account for this. Let's just talk about a 1 dimensional case here. If the monitor wants to create an magnetic field pointing, for example, to the left and the Earth's magnetic field is pointing to the right in the region you are in, then the monitor would have to create a slightly stronger magnetic field in order to compensate. Where if you switched hemispheres, the Earth's field would be pointing in the opposite direction thus lining up with the field the monitor needs to create, so the monitor would create a slightly less powerful field in order to compensate. The monitor's field is much larger than the Earth's, so this is a small correction so thus moving monitors across the Equator only creates a small color error- but if color fidelity is important, it is something that must be compensated for.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: In open world games like GTA V, is the entire world constantly running the simulation, or is it just the parts where the playable character resides?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant To be efficient with resources, the game only loads in the chunks where the player is present, or where a relevant event to the player may be occurring. If the entire simulation were running at all times, it would be far too taxing on the computer.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user eli5: How do historians know that ancient people actually believed in things like demons or spirits, and that it wasn’t just like the Boogeyman or Santa to them?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Mostly through ritual evidence. Believing in Santa is one thing, but sacrificing an animal or part of your harvest to appease him is another. Anthropologists will find alters or walls covered with figures or spirits. At the base they'll find things like animal bones or clay jars with evidence of decomposition in the soil around it. They'll find many layers and many different artefacts that date back decade after decade. All that is evidence of long term ritualistic worship.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Bernie Sanders wants to 'break up' the big 6 corporations on Wall Street.... What does this actually mean?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A large corporation has many business units. For example GE makes many consumer electronics. They make electrical components, they make military equipment, they make equipment for power & water, airplane engines and a few other industries, plus GE capital that does a lot in the financial sector. Maybe each of those can be broken up into 7 smaller independent companies. That would reduce the size and political influence of GE, since each individual new company would have different political goals and motives. GE Aviation wouldn't care about a new law to regulate railroad engines, and wouldn't spend money to lobby influence on it, while GE Transportation would. Before GE as a master company, would.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Buffy] Inconsistent magical help for physical injuries I never quite understood why Xander's facial injuries in the last season never got magical help. Buffy got magical help when a demon tore off some of her skin. I'm theorizing that skin -tries- to grow back so that might have been it but I'm wondering what other people think. TL;DR: Why not use magic to heal injuries always?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant I can think of two or three main reasons. As you stated 1) Eyeballs do not naturally grow back, once you lose them they are gone. 2) Magic can be used to repair "supernatural" problems and injuries, but having a human preacher take your eye out isn't close enough. Also healing spells might actually be dark magic, because they go against the natural order of things. 3) Conscious decision not to use magic to heal everything, because then the sacrifices have less meaning (this is slightly a not in-universe answer, might be a writers answer)<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What is Category Theory?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant As math progressed through the 20th Century, we kinda realized that there were tons of relationships between various mathematical objects that looked the same but weren't actually related at all. This was a bit because we tend to look at the components that make up a mathematical object, like elements of a set, numbers, points in a space, loops in a space, operations, equations, etc, etc, etc. But, if instead we looked at mathematical objects themselves as the constituents of a theory as a whole, we could illuminate what these theories are a little bit better. For instance, we have the theory of sets. And when we look at things in terms of set theory, we generally want to know what things make up the elements of a particular set. But the category theory of set theory does not care. It cares about how different sets relate to each other, and the way sets relate to each other is functions between them. So instead of understanding the set A by asking what its elements are, we understand the set A by asking what are all the functions from A to other sets. This mindset is incredibly useful, because it allows us to ignore unimportant specifics and focus on the important structural components instead. Moreover, it allows us to explicitly compare different theories together. We can transform the theory of topological spaces into the theory of linear algebra, allowing use to easily conclude tough things about weird spaces using simple algebra. TL;DR: Look at the relationships between things, rather than the components of a thing.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Eli5: how does the internet live forever and what would it take to completely shut it down and lose all archives of it<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant the internet is the set of connections between various computers. compare it to the network of roads in your country. you can block all roads leading to one specific city ("Facebook-town", "Google-city", whatever), but simply blocking one or two will generally only make that destination a bit harder to reach but not remove it from the map. to completely shutdown all roads/the internet you'd need to cut all connections and in the case of the internet thats not just cables but also wireless (satellite) connections, making it virtually impossible to really shut it down 100%. but in both cases cutting of some high-traffic/central destinations will lead to chaos and upheaval. to lose ALL archives you'd need to destroy all harddrives connected to the internet, but a lot of stuff is just on a few harddrives, so if you destroyed 20% of all harddrives something like 10% of all content could be lost forever.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do some water bottles 'hiss' when you open them similar to soda, even though they arent carbonated?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Some are still pressurized with a neutral gas, like nitrogen, to help preserve freshness. Others may have simply pressurized from the air and water warming, causing the air to expand and the water to let off some water vapor which expands as well. This creates pressure, and so, the hiss.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What happens to aquatic life when a lake freezes over? Do the animals and plants somehow hibernate, or do they find a way to live under to ice? Where would they get oxygen?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It really depends on the organism in question. Many fish remain isothermic with the water, and do regular fish things, others will go into a semi-restful state where they are sluggish and barely move to conserve energy. There are frogs that will bury themselves in the mud and essentially hibernate through the winter, and even some frogs that allow themselves to become fully frozen in ice until the spring thaw. Arctic fish have adapted to the cold and contain antifreeze compounds in their bloodstream, while Arctic aquatic mammals have thick layers of blubber to provide insulation in the cold waters.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How do people in India know which caste I am? I'm an American of Indian ancestry and reading news about intercaste violence. If I visit India, how will I be viewed in the caste system? I don't even know which caste I am.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In modern times it can get blurred, people from different castes intra-marry, or even different states. Some clues exist, your last name can indicate what caste your family is from. Sometimes different castes use a different pronunciation or word, and that can give a hint. So can the style of traditional clothes worn can also give geographic or caste hints. Think of it this way, can you tell if someone is from rural Alabama? Probably, just as much as you can tell If someone is from the inner city or England. Different fashion, food preferences, and accent or words. Could someone pretend to be a different caste, sure but usually by adulthood, those difference are pretty engrained.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What is it about light that attracts insects at night? Hello, r/askscience! Longtime lurker, first time inquirer. A question to all the biologists/entomologists out there, what is it about light that is so enticing to insects (moths, flies, etc.) at night? What is the evolutionary utility of being attracted to a concentrated light source? Thanks!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant >What is the evolutionary utility of being attracted to a concentrated light source? In nature there are very very few concentrated light sources which are not in the sky. For the purposes of an insect, those light sources, however, are infinitely far away and do not change position when the moth flies around. So these light sources, e.g. the moon, could be used for orientation. For example, "fly with the moon on your right side" or "fly with the moon at 30° in front of you" would lead you in one direction for a while. Furthermore, those light sources lead away from the ground which might be helpful if you want to get away from predators. Now enter a lamp which at short distances appears brighter than the moon. The insect then continually adjusts its heading in order to keep the light in the same position and thus flies in circles and appears to be attracted to the light source.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What can I do to advance the cause of open access?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Opt to publish open access whenever possible. Educate your colleagues on open access. Refer them to apply for editorial boards on open access journals. To me, the biggest barrier is old school thinking, which can change when we present better options.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How does night vision work, and why is it green?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Different models work in different ways. A typical 1980s-2000s night vision monacle will amplify all of the light that goes into it. It's essentially just a camera and a screen. They're green for various reasons. The human eye is slightly better at differentiating between different shades of green than it is with red and blue, so less light is required from the scope, reducing the chance that the light will "spill" and indicate the position of the observer. A side benefit about the low level of light is that it doesn't intefere with the shooters natural night-sight as much as brighter white light would.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Firefly] Where are all the Chinese people? I realize this may be casting oversight... but it seems pretty genius to have all these former Earthlings speaking Mandarin, yet the whole idea falls short when they're underrepresented otherwise. I suppose some people are supposed to be mixed (i.e. the surname Tam) but that hardly explains anything.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The Chinese were one of the largest contributors to the Exodus, and settled mostly on the core worlds. They make up a significant portion of the Alliance. They're probably rarely seen out on the fringes because they have, racially, become so heavily associated with the Alliance core.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What's the difference between US and UK language settings? I see these different English settings on devices and sites all the time but I never could tell what the difference was. Is it just some words spelled differently or is there something I'm missing?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Depends on where the language settings are used. It could influence any of the following: * Language selection (English vs US English) * Keyboard layout (UK QWERTY vs US QWERTY, different placement of special symbols mostly) * Date formatting (the UK uses sensible dates, the US uses garbage) * Default currency selection and formatting * Paper sizes for printers (really! A4 vs US Letter)<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: what’s the science behind the difference in the nasal spiciness of horseradish/wasabi etc and the mouth spiciness of chillis?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Different chemicals. The spiciness in chili and other peppers is caused by capsaicin, which stimulates the heat sensing receptors in your mouth. Meanwhile Wasabi and its friends have allyl isothiocyanate which triggers a different set of pain receptors.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user what is the Difference between fluid intelligence and creativity? I have read that creativity is the ability to perceive something in a novel manner and thus create something new out of it while intelligence is the ability to acquire knowledge and utilise it accordingly. This means you can be intelligent without being creative but how can this be since high fluid intelligence is related to solving novel problems independent of previously acquired knowledge isn't this just creativity?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Fluid intelligence is usually measured by the ability to solve problems, reason non-verbally, recognise patterns, and perform mathematics. It doesn't directly have anything to do with 'acquiring knowledge and utilising it accordingly'. In fact it's quite the opposite because your description sounds a lot like practical abilities which is different to theoretical abilities like intelligence. It is also difficult to define what knowledge and utilisation is intelligent for a given situation. It depends on the aim of the individual. Creativity is the ability and action of making something new. >This means you can be intelligent without being creative It's pretty much impossible to be intelligent without being able to create new things/ideas. Society's traditional perspective of creativity can be separated from intelligence though, implying it arises as a personality trait, but the simple definition of being able to create novel stuff is not separate to intelligence<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: From a legal standpoint, how much does diplomatic immunity actually allow a person to get away with?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Absolutely anything, theoretically. In practice, it completely depends on the relationship between the two governments. Libya has gotten away with shooting a British cop dead in London on the grounds the person doing the shooting was inside the embassy at the time, and the British cops had no right to search the place or interview anyone. On the other hand a Russian diplomat here in Canada killed someone while driving drunk some years ago. We couldn't prosecute him, but the Russian government recalled the guy and charged him under Russian law. I'd be willing to bet it would have been much more pleasant for him to have waived immunity, but so it goes.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [The Culture] Why is Contact allowed to intervene in more primitive civilisations? In the State of the Art, Earth is visited by a Culture vessel in the 1970s, and the possibility of contact is on the table, but our planet is ultimately left alone as a control group. In Surface Detail, it is clearly stated that the Culture is a Level 8 civilisation (one of the Involved), and contracting/giving tech to civilisations more than one level below your own is seen as damaging. But given that the Earth is identified as a Level 3 civ and the Culture a Level 8, why is Contacting Earth considered an option at all? Wouldnt it have to be a Level 4 society that does all the communicating?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The Culture routinely make contact with lower level civilizations. See Inversions for an example of how they make contact with a level 1 or 2 civilization. In general, they do the following: - Pretend to be native members of the contacted civilization (Inversions, Use of Weapons) - Acknowledge they're aliens, but pretend to be less advanced than they really are (Player of Games, Matter) - Openly be from the culture, but refuse to trade technology (Surface detail) The Culture does have guidelines, but it doesn't really commit to hard and fast rules about contacting other civilizations. Every civilization's circumstances are different, so the Culture tailors their interactions according to those circumstances.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do fancy people touch shoulders when they shake hands?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There's a lot at play psychologically. Crusco and Wetzel (1984) found that a touch on the hand or shoulder significantly increased patrons' tipping. The effect was particularly strong when the touch was relatively unobtrusive. This was dubbed "the Midas Touch". The influential aspects of touch also include getting things for free. Researchers have demonstrated that bus drivers are more likely to give a passenger a free ride, if they touch the driver while making the request (Gueguen & Fischer-Lokou, 2003). Touch is very persuasive. Placing a hand on one's shoulder, or cupping one's hand in both of yours during a hand shake, are subconscious alpha signals which show superiority. People who try to shake hands with their hand coming from a high position down to your position, with the hand pointing down, are also asserting superiority. Think "Big Hoss" on Pawn Stars. He is subconsciously but physically showing that he is an aggressor personality, prone to egotism and likely to crave control. Body language speaks volumes whether we know it or not! It's a good practice to return the gesture when someone touches your shoulder with a handshake, otherwise you physically assert that they are dominant in that situation. Likewise, take the hand of the "Big Hoss" handshake and turn it directly parallel with your own hand. Mimic a hand on your bicep or hand on your shoulder handshake in the same way, it levels the playing field whether you know it or not.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5:What exactly is shadow banking?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Shadow banking is the collective term for organizations that offer bank like services, but aren't regulated as banks. Because banks take deposits from the public, they allow multiple people to have a claim on the same money. This is a very important role banks play in the modern economy, and because of this role, the government has a huge number of regulations that are special for banks. However, complying with these regulations is expensive. Traditionally, the margin that deposits provided meant that banks had a pricing advantage against other competitors (these advantages became the source of the term banker's hours). However, as the costs of compliance rose and liquidity in a few markets improved, the cost advantage of accepting deposits stopped being large enough to keep all competitors out. Eventually, non-bank firms began to offer bank like products (not deposits which would entail taking on regulation costs) but loans and guarantees. These firms are not regulated by banks but can offer loans as though they were banks. An example of a shadow bank that anyone can participate in are lendingclub and prosper, which have grown dramatically during the bank crisis when credit became hard to get for many. Most shadow banks are firms like insurance companies or hedge funds that thanks to credit default swaps (a way to trade just the credit risk of a loan without the rest of the loan) and futures and swaps (ways to trade the interest rate risk of a loan) to become very important providers of credit to the economy (either through banks or by themselves). TL;DR. Non-bank firms that provide loans (or products that allow others to provide cheap loans). Because they aren't banks, they have much less regulation than a bank would.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Does it require more, or less energy to climb stairs two steps at a time as opposed to one?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant From a physics standpoint as long as you are going up to the same height you are always doing the exact same amount of work. If you lift one pound ten feet in 10 seconds or in 10 minutes you still do the same work. From a physiological standpoint it might be different.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why did it take so long for artists to find out about vanishing point and foreshortening? This sounds like a straightforward concept but maybe just because we already know it<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It’s not so much a case that it took a long time for people including artists to be aware of these effects, more a case that what artists were trying to achieve in their art has changed over time. A painting can be made to do a number of things. One of those is to be an optically accurate representation of the world. Another is to provide a representational depiction of people, places and events. If your objective is the second of these, then doing things like making the important people the focus of the painting, and depicting them in a way that indicates who and what they are is important. For example if you want to show a man is a king and guided by God, give him a huge crown and add a hand of God directing him. It’s not optically correct, but it tells you something about the person place and events. It took until the modern period for the idea to gain widespread acceptance that producing an optically accurate representation of the world was actually a worthwhile and valuable thing for an artist to attempt to do.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: if plants age, how can you plant a cutting and still get a normal growth like it was a plant from seed?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Most plants are indeterminate growers, meaning that if they properly care for they can continue to grow for a very long time. A reason a plant might die of "old age" is that they get too big, and therefore have a hard time getting water to their entire system. They're also "perpetually embryonic", meaning that their cells are capable of changing into different kinds of cells, like human stem cells. This is why you can take a cutting and replant it and create a whole new plant.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5 why in movies they tell the soldiers not to fire until they get closer Wouldn't I want to start taking them out as soon as I can?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Letting the enemy get closer is advantageous in several ways: A. It allows more accuracy in a ordinance-expended-to-kill ratio, being that accurate shots are easier to make at closer distances, especially in times before rifled barrels were in wide use. B. It gives the enemy less time to seek shelter and dig in, avoiding a drawn out stand-off. C. In relation to B, it provides a much more lethal element of surprise, and doesn't allow the enemy to form defensive formations, leaving them in unorganized disarray and easier to pick off and break their line.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [ELI5] What happens to food that makes freezing twice a no-no ? I at least have always been told it is a very bad things to do, with no further explaination. How bad is it?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Freezing, it, reheating it, and then freezing it again exposes the food to the perfect conditions for bacterial growth repeatedly in short period of time. This vastly increases the chances of food poisoning.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do cold/flu symptoms get worse at night? Fevers spike, cough and congestion gets worse, body pain intensifies. Is it about the circadian rhythm?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Your immune system's inflammatory response is heightened at night. Sleep is when the body and brain do work to repair themselves. This means your symptoms worsen and your temperature raises to fever in an attempt to kill the virus or whatever bug you have. Even allergy symptoms like to get pretty bad at night with congestion. This is often why the PM version of medication has ingredients to help you sleep through it all.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do we have baby teeth?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Short version: It's advantageous to have matching upper and lower teeth. This is hard to do if you always regrow teeth, like sharks. On the other hand, only growing one set of teeth is problematic, since your head grows so much during your early life - the baby teeth would be too small for an adult's head.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do some cigarette smokers end up with huge health complications (Artificial larynx, Tracheotomy, etc.) while other heavy smokers seem to have been smoking for years with minimal complications? I fell like this is gonna get down voted to hell, but I'm honestly curious as to why some people die from lung cancer, or end up having to have tracheotomies due to heavy smoking, (like in those anti smoking commercials where all those people talk about how hard it is living with a stoma in their neck) but other heavy smokers (that smoke multiple packs a day) seem to just have a raspy voice or an occasional heavy cough. Is it just sheer luck as to who gets horrible side effects and who doesn't? Or were the people with artificial larynx just smoking a lot more cigarettes, over a much longer period of time? Any information would be appreciated. Thanks!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Statistics. Smoking does not guarantee health complications, it only increases your risk of them. Who ends up with health complications is a matter of environmental factors and genetics. A light smoker might end up with lung cancer while a heavy smoker has only a light cough. But make no mistake - on a global level, the heavy smoker is, on average, much worse off than the light smoker. But there will always be exceptions. But we don't know all that much about how genetics and environmental factors affect this. So to modern healthcare, it basically is luck that determines who ends up with complications and who doesn't. With statistics though, we can see that smokers are on average worse off than those who don't smoke, and heavy smokers versus light smokers. You should also be aware of perception biases - the heavy smoker who stays healthy is a surprise, so you're going to hear stories about them - it's newsworthy and interesting, and you're more likely to remember that tidbit of information. But you don't hear about the 100 other smokers that died of lung cancer, because that isn't news, it's what's expected, and you're also less likely to remember that information because it isn't that interesting.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why not just Google your question to find the answer instead of posting it on here?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The purpose of this forum is to have answers explained in friendly, simplified, and layman-accessible explanations. Frequently when you search Google you find explanations that use unfamiliar vocabulary or assume too much prior knowledge, or they're just not explained very well. This is the place to go when you asked a question, got an answer, but you don't understand the answer and you'd like some help understanding it.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What does it take to develop a vaccine, and why does it take so long? My basic understanding is that a vaccine contains a weakened or dead version of the virus in question, which can be injected into the body so the immune system can develop antibodies without risk of infection. The vaccine acts as a practice run of sorts. What exactly is it that stops us from just getting a sample of the virus and, say, irradiating it with x-rays or dunking it in some sort of “virus-killer” chemical (if such a thing exists)? Do we have to figure out how to weaken each virus on a case-by-case basis? I know there obviously must be some reason, and it’s not as simple as just bake virus for 15 minutes, until golden brown. Otherwise disease just wouldn’t be an issue, and that’s obviously not the case. I’m wondering what makes it so hard. Edit: Thank you for the answers everyone! To sum things up: it’s complicated! (Who knew?) But it basically comes down to a whole host of biological factors that I now have a very vague grasp on but am not qualified to summarize (see comments if you want competent biological information), plus a bunch of administrative hurdles.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Safety is important—you have to be sure that you’re not infecting anyone with the virus or causing some other off-target effect, especially with live-attenuated vaccines. This leads to another issue: Some viruses are not really good targets for vaccines because they are too variable and mutate too quickly. This is the case for Hepatitis C and HIV to an extent (although there are other difficulties with HIV). Also, most vaccines today are not killed or live-attenuated pathogens, but conjugated antigen or toxoid vaccines. These eliminate the risk of infection but require you to identify a unique and stable antigen associated with the virus/bacteria and biochemically engineer a complicated molecule to elicit an immune response in vivo.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user If increased per capita wealth=increased consumption=inflation that cancels out increases in wealth, how did per capita wealth ever increase in developed nations? This is an argument that seems to come up every time a program that offers some sort of wealth redistribution like increasing the minimum wage or student debt forgiveness is discussed. The idea that if consumers get more money, the inflationary effects will cancel out their increase in wealth/income. But the entire history of industrialization and the middle class seems to disprove this concept. Am I missing something?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant What matters is the supply of real goods and services, like food and housing and medical care and Netflix TV shows. We talk about economic growth in $ terms (or £ or € or whatever) because it's impractical to talk about all these goods and services individually, and money is the only way we have to aggregate them all. Luckily, we can control (albeit Imperfectly) for changes in prices that don't reflect changes in the real goods and services. Modern day statistical offices put considerable effort into this, and economic historians have calculated long time series of incomes and GDP controlling for inflation for a number of countries. So we can talk about things like "real Income growth" and "GDP in volumes". So how can real incomes increase across an economy? Technological progress is one, increased efficiency of operation (e.g. well functioning price system, relatively uncorrupt government, not having a civil war), labour force, like healthier, better educated, higher proportion of working age, returns to scale (a large part of why foreign trade is valuable), etc. Redistribution can increase the amount of output of real goods and services, e.g. childhood nutrition and vaccines can pay off in multiple areas. Redistribution can also support civil peace. Conversely redistribution can also discourage this, e.g. higher taxes meaning reduced work effort, or more resources spent on tax avoidance and trying to stop tax avoidance. Some redistributist policies can have negative impacts on social peace, e.g. why cancel student loan debt but not debt a, say, plumber might take on to start their own business? Some redistributionist policies can create problems like moral hazard, etc. And, finally the more complex policies are, the more likely they are to interact in unexpected and undesirable ways, which is where things like poverty traps where as people's market incomes go up they can lose actual disposable income come from. TL:dr: what matters is real goods and services, not the money.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user magnets have the ability to do work, and energy cannot be created or destroyed, so how are they able to do SO MUCH work (w=fxd) over their life? My guess is that its potential energy is tied to its electrons, NOT joules?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Magnets create a magnetic field. Magnetic objects in this field have _potential_ energy. The situation is similar to masses on earth. They gain potential energy when you lift them up. However, the earth itself (or the magnet) does not create the energy. No, its _you_ who does the work, by lifting them up.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why scientists can date the age of Earth, but not the Egyptian pyramids or the Sphinx? I read that really old objects can sometimes not be carbon dated, because there isn't any C14 left in the object. Then how come we can decide the age of Earth, which is significantly older?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Radiometric dating works by comparing the ratio of isotopes in an object now to a known reference ratio at the object's inception. Each element has a different useful range of applicability based on the half-life of the decaying isotope, with increasing error and eventually uselessness outside that range. C14, for example, is only useful out to about 60,000 years. In the case of dating the Earth, it was actually the Uranium --> Lead decay which was used to determine the age, based on the content of these isotopes in the oldest known zircon minerals in rocks found in Australia and Canada. As far as the Egyptian artifacts go, carbon dating only really works on objects which contain(ed) organic material. Dating the stone used in the construction of the pyramids and the Sphinx would of course tell you how old the rock is, but not when these objects were constructed.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: 30's - 60's fascination with the future (à la Retrofuturism) and how it disappeared<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It was the start of a lot of different technologies and innovations: widespread urban/suburbanization was increasing, the computer became a much more common tool, space exploration was beginning, including the space race, widespread aviation available to common travelers, nuclear energy promised abundant clean energy (this was before the major power plant disasters), there was a lot of advancement in medicine and vaccines, there was widespread economic growth and consumer spending following wartime saving, and there was just generally a lot of good stuff going on. Of course, we tend to forget about the conditions of the poor, disadvantaged, minorities, or discriminated peoples during this timeframe. And the cold war, global geopolitical conflict, and the number of wars/genocides outside of western countries in this time period. But there was generally a lot of optimism that things would continue to improve at a rapid pace, at least for industrialized western countries. Many thought this would improve conditions in poorer countries, as those advancements filtered down to them. Things have improved at a rapid pace, but people are still people, and the end of scarcity that many predicted never came about, and people still were focused on their own personal wealth. A lot of bad news started to come out (global warming, lead in gasoline/other cancer scares from industrial goods, increasing mistrust in science, rise in terrorism and extremism, civil unrest, recessions, rise of obesity epidemic, to name a few) that put a damper on things. There's a lot more to it, but basically things were pretty good for a while, and people thought that meant things would be pretty good forever, which is kind of a silly thought. Can't really blame them for trying to be optimistic after coming out of two world wars, the Great Depression, and the Holocaust; people need something to look forward to.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Stereotypes are often true and there’s no way we can get rid of them Excuse my English. I understand that stereotypes leads to prejudice and discrimination, but stereotypes itself imo isn’t a bad thing or a good thing, it’s just.. statistics. I’m kind of annoyed about how people are “woke” about stereotyping and stuff. Like for example showing a pic of a mechanic thingy and ask if women knows what it is. Then women started complaining about stereotyping and sexism and stuff, saying “NOT ALL GIRLS PLAY BARBIE DOLLS SOME ARE VERY HANDY IN FACT MY MOTHER BUILT ALL THE HOUSES IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD AND I OWN A CAR REPAIR SHOP”. Sure, there’s definitely gonna be tons of women who are handy and loves mechanical work. But they’re not the majority. Ask 100 women and how many actually know about these things? It’s just statistics, no one is discriminating here. Im a woman, so I’m not offended by this at all. And I can assure you that most of my female friends do not know mechanical stuff too. Stereotypes about races.. well idk about America but in my country I can say most of them are freaking true. Like saying Chinese have small slanted eyes well yeahhhhh most of us do have small slanted eyes so.. Another example would be terrorism. Just ask yourself truthfully, consider a dodgy looking mid eastern man vs a Chinese man carrying a backpack suddenly sitting next to you or your kids. Who would you be more suspicious towards? For those non-Muslims who say “not all Muslims are radical”, Be completely honest. I live in a Muslim country. I can tell u that a huge portion of the Muslims here are radical, not only about religion but also their privilege. Stereotypes are based on history and facts. It’s just showing the tendency of something. It’s like smoking is more likely to cause cancer. Why didn’t anybody freak out about this stereotype? There are tons of smokers who live long happy lives too. They should be outraged!! Anyway I know it’s hard but stereotypes can just be stereotypes as long as everyone keeps an open mind.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Problems with stereotypes: 1. They can be based on small sample sizes 2. They don't help you deal with individuals within the stereotyped population 3. They don't have to be based in fact to spread 4. They get updated much slower than actual statistics 5. They don't help relations. And this isn't a point, but a joke about how stereotypes can be faulty. The average person is a Chinese woman named Mohammed with 1.8 legs.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why is “Sigma” such a pervasive word in business? Six Sigma, Two Sigma, lean sigma...<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Let's use a manufacturing business as an example... Everything you make has a target specification range. This could be width, weight, etc. For example the product should be between 2mm and 4mm thick. In a perfect process, your mean would be exactly in the middle and never shift. That never happens though. Variation is inevitable. More variation means more products you have to scrap. How much variation you have can be measured and plotted on a curve. We can then see how many standard deviations exist between our mean and our spec limits. Sigma is the mathematical notation for standard deviation. Six sigma is having 6 std deviations between the mean and spec limits. If we can achieve 6 sigma, then we'll only have 3.4 defects per million opportunities.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What's hot in philosophy of language? I was wondering if anyone could point me towards any of the major/important debates happening in philosophy of language at the moment.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Plenty of issues: nature of propositions, semantics of indicative conditionals, semantics of generics, theories of reference, theories of meaning, indexicals, names, restricted and unrestricted quantification, counterfactuals, embedded conditionals. If you want a good intro to the field check out William Lycan's Philosophy of language: contemporary introduction.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: If it is highly risky to give birth after 40, why do women continue to have periods into their 40s or 50s?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In it's simplest form evolution works on a basis of "how likely is this mix of DNA to produce offspring to carry on to the next generation". Evolution doesn't really care if you live long or not, only that you pass on your DNA as much as possible. Generally speaking someone who lives longer will have more chances to do that, even if the risk of death increases. So it wouldn't build in a process to stop the cycle early, because that drops your chance of passing on DNA to 0.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How do I convince my parents to let me study philosophy next year in college? Hi all, I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, but I'm at a complete loss, and I would like to hear your input. I'm 17 years old high school senior. Next year I'll be going to college and I have been set since I was 14 to study philosophy later. The reason is my fascination for the subject, and how much it's changed me since I was in middle school. The only problem is that my parents want me to study to become an engineer. They said that they're the ones who pay for my tuition, so they have a right to say what I get to study. My father says it's a compromise: I get to go to college, but he gets to say what I do. I said that he cannot control my life and tell me what to study, he says that in this case just pay for college yourself. But I really don't want to study engineering. While I find it interesting, my heart is not in it. I really want to study philosophy, and have been reading on my own on philosophical topics since I was 13. I feel extremely frustrated about the whole ordeal. My father says that studying philosophy is useless, as there is no real life application. He says that I am trying to escape the real world, and hide in childish fantasies. He says that once I'm an adult, I will thank him for choosing engineering as it will secure me a job (he didn't say this in a condescending tone, but in a rather supportive one, before you get super angry against my father). I tried explaining to him what philosophy does, and how it isn't useless, but he says that these things don't matter at all. He kept arguing that I should focus on things that matter, like taxes, accounting, coding, etc. I agree with him that these things are primordial to live, but there is more to life than just practical things. To give you a picture of my father, he's the kind of man that thinks everything that isn't popular is "pretentious", his idea of the good life is barbecueing, beer and watching sports on TV with his friends from high school. He's a really hard working man, and for that I respect him a lot. He's sacrificed a lot for me and my sister so that we could go to college. But he doesn't want me to study philosophy, and to be honest I don't know what to say, because I am 60% sure that if I study philosophy, I'll have a really difficult life. I've actually considered moving to Germany or France, where the tuition is really low so that I can get to study what I want without crippling student debt. I'm really at a loss. I'm sure some of you on this subreddit have had the same problems. How do I convince my parents of the utility of philosophy, my passion for the subject, and that there isn't only practical things in life? Much love, F.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Offer a compromise. You can say you'll get a philosophy minor and a practical major. If he doesn't want to pay for that, then offer to take out loans for the additional minor credits. Since you need gen eds anyways, the only additional credits you'd need is a small handful. If we're only talking about undergrad anyways, then if you're dedicated to self study you can easily learn as much as you could with a major with only a minor.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why does restarting my router sometimes help with internet connectivity problems? I mean, what changes with that reboot that helps?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Imagine that you start solving an equation in your notebook. Halfway through you notice that the number don't add up anymore. You try to figure out what the problem is but you can't seem to find it. So you just tear that page from the notebook and start again from the beginning with a fresh perspective. This is similar to what happens with your computer. For some reason a mistake was made in its calculation that it's not programmed to recover from. So when you restart the computer it starts from scratch. Now, you can hope that whatever caused the problem doesn't occur again.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5 Why aren't all instruments in Concert C? It makes no sense to me that an Eb on some instruments is a C on a piano. Why would have we chosen not to standardize what tone a particular note is? Transposition is tough, is what I'm trying to say. So, please, somebody justify it for me (like I'm five).<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Historically, it was common to have families of very closely related instruments with identical fingering systems but different sizes (for example, clarinets in A and Bb). Players of one instrument would often play the other, but if all music were in concert pitch, then the player would have to learn an entirely new set of fingerings for an identical-feeling instrument. It's not necessary to constantly transpose to concert pitch when you play a transposing instrument. However, if fingering systems were shifted around between identical instruments, it would be necessary to keep in mind which of many sets of fingerings to follow. Hope that helps you. Please let me know if you need additional clarification.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why does MS Word open files in "Protected Mode"? Like is there really any threat for a "Protected Mode" to be needed?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Word documents can contain embedded programs. These programs can do things like respond to clicks, or do things like have drop down lists for forms. It is a common ploy for hackers to embed viruses and malware into word files. Protected mode deactivates embedded programs, so prevents any malware activating, until you deactivate the protection.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Realistic paintings of real subjects are pointless. CMV We're living in an age where almost everyone has a camera in their pocket at all times, and professional photography is a reasonably successful industry. I just don't see the point in painting a realistic portrait of someone anymore when you could spend less time and effort to frame a photograph and produce a greater result. Some counterarguments I can think of off the top of my head: - Portraits don't necessarily reveal the real picture, but the idealized version of the subject. My problem with this is that if you're not revealing the true picture, it's not so much realism as an extremely detailed caricature. - It allows dead relatives to be included in a family portrait. While true, in 30 or so years there won't even be people left who haven't bee photographed. - It's an artisan job that takes real skill to accomplish. Photography also takes real skill to accomplish, in fact I would say it takes more skill to make a truly great portrait with a camera, despite taking less time to complete. I'm not knocking painting people in general, and I'm not even knocking realism; it's great for rendering a mental image of fictional subjects. But if you're going to try for a hyper-realistic painting of a "real-life" thing, why wouldn't you just use an HD camera? CMV<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant >photograph and produce a greater result For me, this is the very reason why paintings are still necessary. The very fact that you acknowledge that a photograph produces a greater result is a testament to the fact that there is clearly a difference between a photo and a painting. It is that very difference which is why paintings still have value. A photo-realistic painting is still a painting. We can still tell its not a photo. Its not quite perfect. And it is that flaw which makes it somehow more. Think of it like this. What is the point of putting a filter on an image. The original image is perfect. Its what is really there. The camera is not lying. Yet tens of millions of people use Instagram every day. As much as it pains to be say it, in this context, a painting is no different to an Instagram filter. Its a bit different. And its that difference which gives interest.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Black and white are colors Artists, pedants, and pedantic artists like to say that black and white are not colors, because of some property about not reflecting any light, or something along those lines. I am not saying anything against this definition. If the experts want to define things this way, I'm certainly in no position to say otherwise. However, "Black is a color" should still be a valid statement. My shirt is 'black.' I'm not a color-physicist, but I'm almost certain that it does not completely absorb the full spectrum of colors. If I wanted to be totally correct, I would have to say: "My shirt is a color that very nearly approximates black." (Disproving this would be a very easy way to CMV!) There are enough black-colored items in the world for this to be ridiculous. Thus, it's only logical that when we are casually talking to other humans, and mention the word 'black,' it can be assumed that we're referring to this close-enough faux-black, which does reflect (I'd assume) some light, and thus is totally a color. The argument for white follows similarly. Edit: I'm not saying that it's wrong to say that black and white aren't colors. I'm saying that it's okay to say that they are, in certain contexts. _____ > Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to *[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules). If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* *[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)*! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our *[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)* first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to *[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview). Happy CMVing!*<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The whole point of communication is to get a point across. This means that different communities define things differently in a way that suits their own needs. When artists talk about a painting needing more colour, other artists will intuitively know that this means add colours that are not black or white. If they all assumed "colour" included black and white that conversation would be way more confusing for everyone involved. If your day to day life involves talking about colour all the time, you should have an established definition of what counts as a colour so everyone's on the same page. At the end of the day it doesn't matter, it's just to ensure proper communication. So when they say things like that, it's just an arbitrary distinction that has been made for their sake. Not sure if I've changed your view, but maybe I've atleast shown you why they would do that, and why it's okay to do that<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why are surgeons allowed to do 20+ hours of surgery in one sitting but truck drivers are strictly monitored as to how much they can drive at a time? I thought of this after hearing about Sen. Charles Schumer comments in lieu of Tracy Morgan's recent accident. I'm pretty sure truck drivers aren't legally allowed to drive more than 12-15 hours at a time and only after a few days of rest beforehand.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A 20 hour surgery will often involve a team of surgeons, with breaks in between. Also, a 20 hour surgery is there because there is no other choice. Moving cargo, there's a choice -- the driver can pull over without his cargo dying.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How come making your heart work extra hard during cardio exercise is considered healthy, but making your heart work extra hard by consuming large amounts of caffeine is considered dangerous and bad for you? I'll preface this by saying I don't actually think this would be a good idea, and exercise obviously has other benefits besides keeping just got heart healthy, but let's ignore those other benefits for a moment. Aerobic exercise like running, swimming, cycling, etc is considered good for your cardiovascular health because it "works out" your heart, increasing both heart rate and blood pressure. However, if I increase my blood pressure and heart rate by chugging down a pack of Red Bull, I'm no longer "working out" my heart, I'm "excessively straining" my heart and its considered both dangerous and unhealthy. So what gives? How come I cant decrease my risk of heart disease by drinking a pot or two of black coffee every morning instead of running on the treadmill for an hour every day?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant During normal exercise the heart beats faster and builds it's vascular infrastructure to deal with the increased metabolic demand of exercise induced hypoxia. The more you exercise over time the more the heart develops its infrastructure to adapt to the demand. Coffee causes the heart to beat faster due to caffeine's effect as a neurological stimulant. It doesn't receive the normal stimuli to adapt a more robust atheletic vascular infrastructure and cardiac cells are put under abnormal stress because of the lack of said adaptations.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user PhD - Finland vs Germany? Which country would you pick for your PhD? List your pros/cons below please. (Looking for answers related to a PhD in the biological field, but happy to hear about experience, work culture, programme structure, difficulties and benefits in general from others)<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Finland, like the rest of the Nordics, prioritises a healthy work-life balance. You will find a high quality of living and a fairly decent salary even as a PhD student. Oh and you get a sword if you graduate from a Finnish PhD program. The most important factor is the prospective supervisor. They can make or break your whole PhD experience.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Eli5 why the coastline paradox is a paradox?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The term paradox does not necessarily mean something that is impossible, but can also be applied to some things that are just so counter intuitive that you would not remotely think of them The counterintuitive thing here is that you would think that the measurement of a coastline is consistent. Most people find it incredibly counter intuitive when they are told that the answer varies from a fixed number to infinity depending on how you measure it.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What's the difference between the UK Government and Parliament?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Parliament is the overall institution consisting of two houses - the House of Commons, elected by the people, and the House of Lords, who are appointed and serve for life. They both meet in the Palace of Westminster in London, they both draft and vote on legislation, but generally all of the political power is in the Commons - because they're elected. Within the House of Commons, the party (or coalition) who has the most seats generally forms Her Majesty's Government - their leader is Prime Minister, and the cabinet is made up of members of that party (or coalition). The next largest party/coalition in the Commons who isn't part of the government forms Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition - their job is to present the other side of arguments and ensure that the Government is doing things properly and justifying their decisions. Currently Her Majesty's Government is the Conservative Party, who have 329 out of 650 seats, and their leader, Theresa May, is Prime Minister. The Opposition is Labour, who has 231 seats, and the remainder of the House is made up of other parties (next largest is Scottish National Party with 54).<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How does a sextant work ?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Sextants are designed to accurately measure the apparent angle between two visible objects. The key component is a semi-silvered mirror that allows half of the light through and half the light to be reflected. The reflected part is bounced off a second mirror that you can rotate. The idea is that you rotate the mirror until two objects are aligned. The angle scale on the bottom allows you to read off the angle between the two objects. Even though the mirror rotates through about 60&deg;, the scale reads double the angle, i.e., up to about 120&deg;, because the angle of reflection is double the angle of the mirror. For navigation the directly viewed object is generally the horizon and the reflected object is the sun, moon, planet or star. For the sun and moon there are dark filters that are used to avoid damaging your eyesight. Those objects are obviously also large, so generally you measure the angle to the bottom of their discs; trying to guess where the centre is is not precise enough. Sextants usually have a small, low-power telescope to view through but this is not essential.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: The differences between the Gaelic languages as well as any other traditional British languages. Welsh, Cornish, Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Breton etc. How similar are these languages? Can you converse between them? What are some basic examples? Also it seems that Scots language is something separate from traditional gaelic languages, could someone explain this in a bit more (simplified) detail. Thank you.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are two surviving branches of the Celtic languages: the P Celtic ones like Welsh, Breton, and Cornish, and the Q Celtic ones like Irish, (Scottish) Gaelic, and Manx. There's a lot of mutual intelligibility between Welsh and Breton, and some between Irish and Gaelic, but virtually none between, say, Irish and Welsh. As for Scots, it's in the same dialect continuum as English, and isn't a Celtic language at all. It's a Germanic language that is very closely related to English. Ever read the novel Trainspotting? It's written in a mixture of standard English and Scots. As for samples, here's the start of the Lord's prayer. In Irish: >Ár n-Athair atá ar neamh, >Go naofar d'ainim, In Welsh: >Ein Tad yn y nefoedd, >sancteiddier dy enw; In Scots Gaelic: >Ar n-Athair a tha air nèamh, >gu naomhaichear d'ainm. And in the Scots Language: >Oor Faither wha bides in heiven, >Hallowt be thy name;<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How would living for over 300 years change a sentient being.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Growth & Development: That which ages slowly, but breeds quickly, either has to suffer vast attrition (like having 20 children in your lifetime but all but 3 die), or will run out of resources. If you are following evolutionary theory, enough generations will pass to find a balance for this. So it is rational to believe that a creature so long lived would either have children at wider intervals, in fewer number, or that it would be so resource intensive that they would not commit to it as an experience. In the event that they are resource intensive (like a human baby) and slow to grow (also like a human baby), then it makes sense that you could extend out the childhood of a longer lived race by a similar scale. Thus the more cliche belief that an elf would be a 'child' until the age of 100, in a species that lives for thousands of years. This is only one narrow interpretation of how a species would evolve around overcrowding, resource loss, etc. Culture and History: You measure time different when you live that long. Or so most accounts would claim. It is more likely you would measure time just as a human would for the first few hundred years of life, likely moving and bustling more than those elder to you. However, perspective and perceptions of mortality may slow you down considerably as you age. Who is to say that an elf or dwarf in their 1800th year isn't terrified of death, after such a long life? Enough so that their culture might not even talk of the subject. But we assume that with age comes wisdom (there are few things further from truth), and derive that those species should find an equilibrium with their mortality. A peace. But we cannot know that--they might rage until their very last breath, clawing moment upon moment into their gaping maws of hungry experience. Consider for a moment just how these things would affect your feelings about child rearing. If you can have hundreds of children only for most of them to die, your species would have to grow rather either callous from indifference, or quite bitter to the point of possibly even rejecting the idea. If neither is the case, perhaps it is because of a dispassionate sense that your children aren't even really alive until their 20th year, when they can finally begin defending themselves against their hungry siblings. It isn't that you wouldn't care for them, merely that you're too busy caring a little for all of them, and don't care enough about any individual. Or if you did pick one, a favorite, the one that exemplifies the characteristics you would have pass on, the competition to be that highest among others would be fierce. Fratricide and fear of death every waking moment from conscious awareness through to adulthood. Meanwhile, on the opposite side, if the children take a ton of resources, or infant mortality is very high, you may see the race gravitate toward sharing their parental duties so they can better utilize their resource. Suddenly you have a species that is very aggressive in every way regarding their children, barely breaking even from generation to generation and only flourishing in times when their predators are scarce due to retaliation. It would create a boom and bust gene-economy, as it were. Or it might even generate a tripartite gender set if these conditions happened early enough in development. A male, female, and a neuter whose role is less sexual and more facilitative or guardian-like. That would throw sexual dymorphism all over the place; you might even end up with a species where male and female burn themselves out to bare children, and the neuter acts as the only caregiver they'll ever know. Imagine the strange culture that could come of that. Might even explain some of that sexless androgyny commonly associated with elves. All other aspects of a society will ripple outward from these sorts of biological concepts. Say for example we went with a child-scarce resource-intensive breeding process with three genders of elves. The males and females live for potentially hundreds of years, finally settling down when they feel age coming on. The neuters are younger, more plentiful than male or female offspring, and a tripartite set forms. The male and female grant their wisdom to the children, the neuter (or a hermaphrodite) its strong back and remaining lifespan, and you see generations that leapfrog like links in a chain. Now their culture is fascinated with all things three in number. Three petaled flowers, three phased moon cycles, triangular polygons, three-concepted art (triptychs would be more natural, less forced), three-faced gods, three-staged afterlives or reincarnation cycles, et cetera. Three is balance--not two, not black and white, but black, white and grey. If three hold hands, they may lean back, spinning above the darkness, safe in the knowledge that someone will hold their hand even if another lets go. The idea of a 'couple' is pretty much gone. Adversarial legal systems? No, you're going to have arbitration everywhere. At the more adversarial, you have three facing off, one representing the defense, the next the claimant, and the third the will of the government. These don't all have to be true, but they're more likely to be. It all ripples out from the biology. From introspection and trying to understand what, who, why, you are. If your species has pointy ears, more similar to a native canine, you may (although you might be wrong) liken your race to it in your art or beliefs. If you have long fingers, you'll no doubt have stories involving delicate and dexterous monsters or heroes, digging their fingertips into the bottoms of wine bottles to solve riddles and set free genies of a sort. If so, you may find the removal of a hand more offensive than the removal of genitals. Or darker, a mark of traitorous narrow thinking. Ripple, ripple.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How does someone freeze to death? What exactly happens inside the body to be fatal?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Life depends on a number of biochemical reactions that occur in each and every cell in your body. All chemical reactions (and this includes those upon which life depends) are affected by temperature. In general, decreasing temperature tends to slow chemical reactions (particularly exothermic chemical reactions, which describes most of the chemical reactions upon which life depends). Dropping the temperature of the body affects virtually every organ system. It causes the heart to slow (because, in part, the chemical reactions in heart muscles required to cause heart contraction are slowed by lower temperature). It causes blood to reduce its capacity to carry oxygen. It causes basic energy-producing chemical reactions in every cell (cellular respiration) to slow, and to produce less energy molecules (i.e. ATP, etc) required for basic cellular function. It causes nerve conduction to slow and slows down neurotrasmitter release. In short, through a number of mechanisms at the cellular and organ level, it causes cellular activity to slow, and, eventually, to be unable to maintain the intracellular environment required for life. Cells die, organ systems fail, which causes more cell death, until the body is in a catch-22 of death and becomes irrecoverable.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Does a Knife with lubrication cut/stab/slice/etc better or worse than a Knife without?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It would not appreciably effect the cutting power of any variety of knife. What it would be is protect the blade from tarnishing. The force applied to the blade perpendicular to the cut is what causes the friction. This force is from the sides pushing in on it. While lubrication would make the coefficient of kinetic friction between the blade and the object being cut lower, what slows a blade is mostly the object in front pushing directly back on it. It would certainly not hinder cutting, but the reduction in friction is nominal in comparison to the force required to cut an object. This being said lubrication would help sharper knives more than dull knives because the force to cut forward is lower, and as such friction may come into play, albeit barely. As stated earlier the lubricate makes sure that liquids don't accumulate on the blade and cause it to rust, although you should still keep your knives clean. TLDR: Not really, although the sharper the knife the more it would help.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user AskScience AMA Series: We're compression experts from Stanford University working on genomic compression. We've also consulted for the HBO show "Silicon Valley." AUA! Hi, we are Dmitri Pavlichin (postdoc fellow) and Tsachy Weissman (professor of electrical engineering) from Stanford University. The two of us study data compression algorithms, and we think it's time to come up with a new compression scheme-one that's vastly more efficient, faster, and better tailored to work with the unique characteristics of genomic data. Typically, a DNA sequencing machine that's processing the entire genome of a human will generate tens to hundreds of gigabytes of data. When stored, the cumulative data of millions of genomes will occupy dozens of exabytes. Researchers are now developing special-purpose tools to compress all of this genomic data. One approach is what's called reference-based compression, which starts with one human genome sequence and describes all other sequences in terms of that original one. While a lot of genomic compression options are emerging, none has yet become a standard. You can read more in this article we wrote for IEEE Spectrum: https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/the-desperate-quest-for-genomic-compression-algorithms In a strange twist of fate, Tsachy also created the fictional Weismann score for the HBO show "Silicon Valley." Dmitri took over Tsachy's consulting duties for season 4 and contributed whiteboards, sketches, and technical documents to the show. For more on that experience, see this 2014 article: https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/computing/software/a-madefortv-compression-algorithm We'll be here at 2 PM PT (5 PM ET, 22 UT)! Also on the line are Tsachy's cool graduate students Irena Fischer-Hwang, Shubham Chandak, Kedar Tatwawadi, and also-cool former student Idoia Ochoa and postdoc Mikel Hernaez, contributing their expertise in information theory and genomic data compression.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant * What specifically differentiates genomic data vs typical data? More specifically, is genomic data not ergodic? * What similarities does reference based compression share with Slepian-Wolf (or Wyner-Ziv) coding? * Since there has been a large push towards machine learning, could you elaborate on the role you foresee information theory playing in the future machine learning?<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user eli5: Why do intrest rates fall while average living costs increase? I live in Germany and my interest rates plummeted over the last 10 years. I always thought, that interest rates existed to level out inflation. But I did some research and found out, that inflation rates are actually pretty stable. Meanwhile average living costs increase. How does all this fit together? &#x200B; Sorry for bad english :)<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Interest rates are controlled by central banks and are used as a tool to meet Government policies to manage the money supply and the tradeoffs between inflation and economic growth. Interest rates are however only one influcence on either of these factors and are not the core reason why costs rise or fall. It's not simple to Eli5 but Inflation is a result of the herd behaviour of a complex web of billions of human interactions where the price / value of millions of goods and services are constantly changing. When everyone expects prices to rise they adjust their behaviour according. In this way Central Banks have a role to guide these expectations as well as to intervene to control inflation by using interest rates to affect a change in behaviour. What is relevant to OPs question is that almost all central banks have a Government mandated policy of targeting a low positive annual inflation rate e.g. this is 2% for the Bank of England. This is because a low positive rate has been determined to produce the best conditions for long term sustainable economic growth Ever since the financial crisis of 2008 intrest rates have been kept near historical lows as central banks used low rates to prop up demand and support the economy....by making money cheap it is easier to invest. It was also not seen as a good thing to raise interest rates too quickly following an economic crisis and during a period of repaying debt. It is also a matter of many debates whether they should ever return to previously higher levels. There has also not been a trigger to do so in major economies such as a case of runaway inflation or boom that would have caused Central banks to raise them quickly to act to dampen down excessive inflation. TLDR Interest rates are a tool to control inflation..they are not it's route cause. It is possible that they may move in either direction at the time of higher/lower inflarion in response to wider economy wide issues.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How does a fly have so much energy to use it's wings for as long as it does?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Super adapted muscles/metabolism for flight. The flight muscles in insects can be up to 1/5th of their body mass. But it's really all about efficiency. Your cells can use aerobic or anaerobic metabolism to produce ATP from glucose (and sometimes lipids and other stuff). During aerobic metabolism - when oxygen is available to the cell - breaking down one glucose molecule yields something like 30 ATP. When cells can't get enough oxygen, they instead use other molecules in its place, but the process is way less efficient - you get 3 molecules of ATP per glucose. In mammals, oxygen is carried through our blood by proteins called hemoglobins. The eli5 version of this is that it means if your muscles are working really hard, eg you're sprinting, they will use more oxygen than can be released from the hemoglobin and your cells will have to use anaerobic respiration for energy. Flying insects, on the other hand, don't have hemoglobin at all. Oxygen travels through their bodies as a gas, and they have a network of tubes designed to provide it directly to their muscle cells, so their muscle cells have virtually infinite oxygen and never use anaerobic metabolism for energy. They also have by far the largest aerobic scope in the animal kingdom. That means they can generate energy by breaking down glucose around 75 times faster when working hard then when resting, and they are able to switch between these rates nearly instantaneously by very tight regulation of the enzymes involved. By comparison, we can at best increase respiration rates by about 20 times, and it takes a long time for our cells to slow down respiration so a lot of "fuel" is wasted.<\|im_end\|>

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