text
stringlengths 82
65.5k
|
|---|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: What the heck is a mole exactly?
edit: I apologize for not specifying. I meant mole as pertaining to chemistry.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Moles occur when cells in the skin grow in a cluster instead of being spread throughout the skin. These cells are called melanocytes, and they make the pigment that gives skin its natural color. Moles may darken after exposure to the sun, during the teen years, and during pregnancy.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Does the human body recognize symbiotic microorganisms?
To my understanding, most of the cells in our bodies are not our own, but are rather outnumbered (ten to one by some estimates) by our microbiome, which led me to this question.
Does the body's immune system recognize (and therefore leave it alone) symbiotic microflora? Or does such microflora just avoid the places it could be found by the immune system?
Or is it possible that symbiotic microflora just simply masquerades as our own cells?
If the body does recognize such microflora, how does it do that? Is it simply something that we've evolved? Is it something that the microflora have evolved? Is it a little bit of both?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Symbiotic microflora existing in the gut is tolerated by the immune system due to a couple of mechanisms.
Firstly non-harmful organisms don't do any harm to the body (eg. kill cells or invade) so the body doesn't produce the inflammatory mediators that cause immediate inflammation and when samples of the organism are presented t to the adaptive immune system they are present in a way that causes the generation of tolerance rather than an active immune response. This forms this set of cells called regulatory t-cells that go around killing off anything attacking the symbiotes and secreting anti-inflammatory mediators where ever they detect the symbiotes.
Secondly the way the immune system is set up in the gut is such that responses aren't readily generated to the content of the gut. The body constantly samples the contents of the gut, and but in the absence of damage or invasion it just generates tolerance.
Those ended up sounding very similar.. . Basically immune tolerance instead of activation is generated in response to gut flora simply due to the location of the pathogens, and that no damage is being detected.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
[Rick and Morty] Why did Rick freaked out when he saw the cob particles?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
We absorb matter to replace the matter lost from decay and add it to ourselves. If they were to stay on that planet they would have eventually replaced all of the particles in their body with corn, thus turning into corn themselves.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
If microprocessor manufactures are able to get more transistors on a processor why do they make them smaller?
I understand that power and efficiency are factors they have to consider but if you're looking for all out performance why not make the processor bigger so that you can fit more transistors/cores/memory etc on it to make it faster?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
three things: propagation time, power consumption and (to some extent) price.
The first is that the electrical signal only goes so fast, slightly less than that of the speed of light. This seems fast until you realize that in one clock cycle at 3GHz light only travels 10 centimeters. Chips are usually less than this but once they get larger it can be a significant problem.
Secondly, the capacitance and hence power consumption of a transistor gate decreases with size. lower power consumption is a bonus by itself but it also directly relates to speed because it means you can run it faster before it starts dissipating too much heat for you to remove practically.
Also, although the smaller sizes are expensive to develop, ultimately you can produce more chips on one wafer than you could before, bringing down the price in the long run (this is more relevant on less extreme cases, such as embedded microprocessors)
Also, just adding more cores/transistors/memory doesn't immediatly make the computer faster for most workloads, especially games, since the software cannot effectively make use of increased parallism. Most of the increased transistor count on modern chips goes towards better branch prediction, more instructions, and better caching instead of increasing clock speed, for which you in fact want *less* transistors.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: How do people afford the lifestyle of an extreme adventure enthusiast?
I'm talking about the folks who skydive, BASE jump, ski/snowboard, hike, explore, climb mountains, and trailblaze new areas of the world that people have been yet.
I want to do all of that stuff. And more. But it's to expensive! How is it possible for people to do this kind of stuff with their life?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Most of the time the people who go to these places are either already successful or some kind of athlete. The majority of the people you are talking about already have a lot of money to finance these trips. The alternative is usually some kind of athlete like the ones you see on YouTube doing extreme sports (base jumping, paragliding, etc.) In these cases the athletes sponsors foot the bill for the trip.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Why is Chlorine so effective in killing anything alive?
What happens chemically and physically when an organism gets in contact with this substance? Why is so deadly?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Chlorine is a very effective oxidizing agent, meaning it is capable of oxidizing a lot of things while itself getting reduced in the process. Intuitively, this makes sense because the chlorine atom is very electronegative (meaning that it's happier existing as reduced Cl- anions as opposed to neutral Cl in Cl2). Chlorine also has a very positive standard reduction potential, meaning that it is capable of reducing anything with a lower potential, which just so happens to be most things. Because of this, chlorine can attack a huge variety of molecules, including most carbon-based compounds. Thus, it can effectively destroy living things.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
How do Prions transfer their shape to other proteins?
All I could find is the are ABLE to do this, but how do they do this? Aren't prions just a misfolded protein? How could they reshape a protein?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Generically speaking, when proteins misfold, it can expose regions which are normally buried within the protein. These regions can bind to the surface of other proteins, destabilising their “normal” shape and stabilising the misfolded shape. These exposed regions are often hydrophobic, meaning they “hate water” and it’s energetically unfavourable for them to be exposed to it, so the misfolded proteins then aggregate, clumping together, and the cycle repeats.
Looking at a 2019 review, it looks like the best current models point to a seeding/nuclear ion process where prion fragments can act as a seed/template, catalysing incorporation of previously healthy protein into a polymer aggregate; eventually the polymer fragments and each of the new fragments in turn can act as a seed.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: How are animals born with “instincts”? That is, how is it possible that newborn animals are born with the knowledge to do things like go to the water (sea turtles) or swim to a certain location to mate/eat (orcas)?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Evolution works because only the variations that work get a chance to reproduce and pass on their genes while the variations that are detrimental tend to die.
Baby sea turtles make a great snack for a lot of animals. Hatching sea turtles can go in any direction they want really. But the safest direction for them to go is the water.
Imagine thousands or hundreds of thousands of generations of sea turtle babies hatching year after year. Which ones have the best chance of survival? The ones attracted to the sea. They are the ones most likely to pass on the genes that gave them a preference for the sea.
The sea turtle babies that preferred to warm up in the sun a little likely all get eaten and don't pass on their genes.
A selective pressure like that will change animals over successive generations until the urge to make a run for the sea is very strong in all sea turtles. After all, the ones missing that urge never reproduced.
And not everything is simple instinct. Whales like orca's, often reproduce in very specific places because of their requirements. The reproduction of most animals is closely tied to the availability of food because reproducing is very resource-intensive for the parent and the young also need food.
So, in the case of whales, they're not instinctively driven to certain areas. They're instinctively driven to reproduce when they get the chance to glut on food. For orca's, that's when other whales, seals, penguins, fish etc. start to reproduce. Which in turn is often when the food for those animals start to reproduce.
Orcas tend to be very habitual. Different pods specialise in hunting different food sources. A pod can be traditional whale hunters, seal hunters or fish eaters despite all orca's being the same species. As such, they all share the instinct to reproduce when food is plentiful but where that is varies and is learned behaviour that young orcas pick up from their parents.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
CMV: There should be more emphasis on entry level/trade jobs than college
It’s no surprise that college is a massive life issue for almost everyone who’s grown up in America. It just keeps inflating, like our monetary system - first it was a privilege to go to college but not the end of the road if you didn’t. Then, more and more people started going. Now, you prep for college as soon (or before) you enter high school, and you graduate at 18 pressured to go SOMEWHERE, learn SOMETHING, pay for EVERYTHING. Most young people have a “mid-school crisis” and change their majors a few times. Most people also come out with massive financial debt, YEARS of their lives gone, and just as little hope for a job as they did before school. You can no longer go through higher education without partaking in studies abroad, missionary trips, extracurriculars, or years and years and a handful of degrees in an effort to stand out in some tiny way in a bloated, exhausted system. College is a great way for young adults to break out for the first time in a sort of training ground for real life, but in reality (besides the stress and debt) it’s still not the same and people have to emerge as sometimes middle aged adults, broke and with no sense of direction. Only a few rise to the top.
No wonder everyone lives with their parents until 30 now. This entire generation relies on the ones before it more than ever before. What will happen when the next generation comes? There will be no support for them when they’re in the same shoes. My grandparents finished school in 8th grade, bought multiple homes, and were successful and well content their entire lives. The valedictorian of my school has no idea what he wants to do for college - a huge decision for a young person - but none the less he’s going to school just for the sake of going to school. That’s all there is now. Youth are locked in a cycle of not contributing to the work force until they all get out of school looking for the same job they all studied for but no one will get.
I think there should be more entry level, work-up-through-training jobs available to stabilize the economy and the population’s mental health. You don’t know what you’re going to do with your life? Don’t waste your money and time on school! Work! But why would you? A cashier or retail job isn’t going anywhere. People take their labor off the table in the hopes of a bright future which keeps getting farther away. I work in healthcare currently. The way up is full of student debt and years of degrees, so that one day I can count my money at 45 and decide...this isn’t what I want to be doing. Just like changing majors but a less derailing, expensive way - if I wanted to try being a veterinarian, or a journalist, or an actor, or scientist, there should be some kind of entry level jobs that offer promotions through training. Apprenticeships worked before, and eventually there would come a point where, after you decide you enjoy the field you’re in, you can now go to college to become a higher, more successful level in that area.
It’s my belief that the economy would benefit greatly from having more people in the workforce younger, learning what field they want to stay in before spending money they don’t own and can’t pay back to switch endlessly between majors and remain living in their parent’s homes with only a part time pizza job to sustain them. There shouldn’t be a field that doesn’t offer entry level programs to train and work and advance before reaching a point where college is needed. College should return to being a speciality for privileged or ambitious people that know more about where they’re going, then a giant swimming pool with no shallow end for the people just jumping in.
EDIT: I’m seeing a lot of people comment that there is no value in trade jobs you can get after highschool. People are saying how the economy is geared toward degrees and that you need to go through college to get any jobs. That is exactly what I’m saying is the problem. We need to rebalance so there is NOT a 99% need to cycle through colleges before getting jobs. The workforce would be better off if people could have more jobs available out of highschool, with college as an option to move up after reaching your highest point of training and experience.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
An economy needs people to ascend to the highest level of skill they can as quickly as they can. A degree gives a person an excellent chance to showcase an ability to learn about a feild compared to their peers. Getting promoted from entry level to a high skill job, in contrast, is slow and almost completely dependant on networking.
I completely agree that it is a waste to muddle through a degree and not be able to get a job on the other side. However, the loss for society as a whole is balanced out by far more people demonstrating their talents in a certifiable way.
Spending years working just to then get a degree and end up where you would have been if you had just immediately got a degree is useful only if you are very unsure of a direction and should not be the norm. Most people who get a degree can then go on to work in any field after a while anyway.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: Why do meal combinations become "boring" and unpleasant over time?
For example, if I eat rice and beans flavored with the same spices for several meals or days in a row, why do I get "sick" of that particular meal, yet enjoy it again if I go back to it after a hiatus?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Our bodies need a lot of different things in order to be healthy. Vitamins, minerals, etc.
Different foods may have different toxins that the body has to deal with and expel, or it may have different vitamins that are absorbed differently and that enhance or inhibit absorption (ie: vitamin C and iron... calcium and iron).
Varying our diet means we're more likely to get what we need, not miss trace minerals, and not consume huge amounts of toxic substances that might be in a particular food (think of Taro root/cassava).
We're probably genetically programmed to seek out and desire a variety of food sources to make sure our needs are met.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
What advantage does the eye's (or brain's) white-balance-like system give, and how does it work?
So I have noticed that when I close my right eye for a while and keep my left eye open in broad daylight, I see warmer colours in my left eye and see cooler colours in my right eye when I open it. This is similar to the white balance in smartphone cameras.
But is there any evolutionary advantage to this? And how does it work?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Auto color balance lets you see things in all kinds of light conditions (dynamic range is something like a factor of a billion!) and perceive colors correctly despite variations in the color of the illumination. The mechanism is fatigue in your retinal cells, which makes each cell’s response self-adjust as fresh unexposed pigment gets regenerated in the eye. In bright light not only does the total amount of pigment shrink, the rate of regeneration also shrinks. There are other time dependent and spatially-dependent adjustment mechanisms but that is the dominant one.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
How do you write a very efficient code?
While doing some LeetCode exercises I noticed that they also included the total runtime of my algorithm. Quite disappointing that I write a runtime inefficient code.
I noticed that most of the fastest running algorithms used data structures, some are very compact code. Although I noticed that some of the fastest algorithms are copy pasted from the net, which I guess defeats the purpose of LeetCode (for me LeetCode is to test you algorithm writing skills)?
Also any reading materials for Big O notation?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
This comes with experience. Note that Big-O notations can sometimes be misleading due to the way hardware is designed.
At the end of the day, if you really want to write very efficient code, learn how different data structures mean to cache locality, registers, heaps and SSE. This is not an easy task either.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
What is Gödel’s incompleteness theorem and why is it important? How did it change math/physics ?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
The incompleteness theorem is about axiomatic systems. Around the turn of the last century, there was hope that we would be able to find some kind of ultimate logical foundation that could prove everything in math. This is kind of a perennial hope, and even Gottfried Leibniz (co-inventor of calculus) hoped that we could have such a system.
The incompleteness theorem says that, no consistent axiomatic system is powerful enough to prove EVERYTHING. This is bad news..!
What Incompleteness says exactly is that if you have a system of axioms that is strong enough to prove everything in (Peano) arithmetic, then there is a TRUE statement that CANNOT be proven within that system. That's what 'incompleteness' refers to; the collection of true things that you can actually prove is incomplete. There's definitely something out there that's true, that you can't prove JUST using your axiomatic system.
Gödel's original proof uses a contradiction to show that an unprovable statement has to exist. So, in a sense, it's ALSO a proof that mathematicians are cleverer than axioms :)<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5 How can hackers crack a password through brute force if there's a limit of attempts?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
In some cases, a hacker might gain control of the server and be able to execute their own commands directly to the software on the server or obtain a copy of the database storing the hashed passwords. In either case, the webpage's limitations on password attempts doesn't matter because the hacker may not be using the webpage to check password attempts.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: After invitro eggs are fertilized, are they kept at a certain temperature to grow before implanted? How does the lab part work?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
They are incubated under optimal conditions (the correct Temperature, Oxygen levels and nutrients) , usually until a blastula is formed. at this point a cell can be removed for genetic analysis (also called Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis or PGD) and the embryos can be frozen in liquid nitrogen until needed.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
How in the heck do I find a good postdoc?!
I am a PhD candidate in Pharmacology and Toxicology, specializing in environmental toxicology (specifically xenobiotic metabolism, disposition, and toxicokinetics). Ultimately, I would love to stay in academia, but if I needed to I want to be marketable as a research toxicologist as well. Is there some magic way to find people who take postdocs in my discipline? Or, is there something better than finding faculty who do research I am interested in and emailing them? Any info is greatly appreciated.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
you can search job postings on message boards, companies and govt. agencies.
most academic post docs are obtained by cold-emailing your CV, research summary etc., networking through your PI, at your current institution or meeting professors at conferences.
make a list of papers youve liked and research areas and who does that work, talk with your current boss and email them. email about 3-4 each round. theyll say no really fast if they dont have space, money or interest. then keep going til someone responds!
you can look at their websites and see how many people they have and you can also search grant databases to see if they have active grants.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
[Dragon Ball] Can I build up my ki energy and learn to fly and shoot lasers by learning other martial arts, or do I need karate/kung fu?
Also if it does work with any martial art, is there a difference between how your ki develops depending on the fighting style? Like, can MMA fighters fly more easily than boxers or capoeira fighters?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
It has been shown that the characters use of martial arts is just one method of expressing their study and dedication. At least one character learns to harness ki and levitate solely using meditation. Likewise Piccolo's primary method of gaining power is meditation as well.
The exact martial art used does not seem to matter, though the various masters and teachers each have their own preferences.
I believe there's a fairly detailed post about it from a week or two ago.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: Why does English invariably demand that multiple adjectives precede its noun in the seemingly arbitrary but non-negotiable order of 'opinion - size - shape - colour - origin - material - purpose'?
You can have a 'lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife', but mess with this word order in the slightest and you'll sound like a proper maniac.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Well, first off, you're missing four in your description and your example is out of order. And if your example sounds good to you, ask yourself if you're a proper maniac (you're not).
You're missing; quantity, which comes first; physical quality, which comes after size but before shape; age, which comes after shape but before color (your examples screws this up); and type, which comes after material and before purpose.
Some lists will have them in different orders, this one is from Cambridge University. And the fact of the matter is that it doesn't actually matter that much, it isn't actually a hard-and-fast rule.
The list keeps getting longer, too. At one point it was just two things; opinion and then fact. Then it was opinion > fact; qualifier > function. Now it's opinion > fact, qualifier > function, but only for correlatives (adjectives that modify nouns without modifying each other). Operators and cumulative words don't follow this trend.
As for why... well, it's a new area of study and no one's really figured that part out yet. We're still studying trends and old texts to see if they follow the example (and they don't, for sure) and even looking at different regions to see if we all do it the same (we don't).<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
[Stellaris] Our civilization is doomed. How can we leave a message for the future?
Our people, the Akar, began at the bottom of the seas of our homeworld thousands of years ago. We raced towards the future, elevated past factionalism, and took to the stars.
In the process of finding new worlds, we found a paradise beyond scientific understanding in a world called Divinity.
It was a "Holy World" of an empire that was spacefaring when our species was still fumbling with bronze and glass. We have been defeated in every single stage of our conflict despite all of our best efforts. Even as I write this, the core worlds of my people burn.
We have perhaps days before the fleet of our enemy comes within an AU distance and glasses our homeworld to set an example. We want to leave a message to anyone who may find our world in the distant future, one sharing our collective sorrow and hopes we once knew.
How can we, as an enemy plans to boil our seas and char our surface? To poison our atmosphere and unleash bio-engineered nightmares upon our children? What can be done?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Begin mass producing faster than light capable probes with as much data on your race and culture as is possible and start shooting them off in every direction imaginable. Many will be destroyed. Many more will drift for centuries, millennia, to be occasionally found and translated. Someone, somewhere, will remember you.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Why do sunscreens expire?
I would like to understand if it is because of microbial contamination or if the UV-blocking agents are degraded. If the latter is the case... how? Sunscreens are light-protected in their recipients and not usually exposed to high temperatures.
Also, do sunscreens lose 100% of the effect at the expiration date, or do they just lose partial effect (e.g. 75% of effectivity after 1 year, 50% after 2 years,...)?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Sunscreen works by absorbing light in the UV wavelengths of a spectra. Conjugated ring systems and other compounds with double bonds are good at absorbing energies at this wavelength, hence sunscreens are often made of organic compounds that breakdown with time.
The good news is mineral sunscreens such as zinc oxide may last longer as its inorganic(its in powder form). The bad news is they are emulsified with essential oils or plant oils etc with emulsifiers to help spread the sunscreen better. When they start to breakdown, you are left with a grainy separated mixture that will not adhere to the skin properly.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
[Dresden Files] In the first book Harry shares his full name. Then later refuses to share the name of a fairy he knows. If names are so powerful why would he tell the reader his full name?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Harry states a few times that knowing someone's true name isn't just about literally knowing the words that make up their name, otherwise anyone could find a humans true name by looking at their birth certificate. Their true name is how they pronounce it - the intonation, the feeling. Therefore it's (relatively) safe for him to write it down for the reader.
Even if it wasn't though, the crux of the matter is - his own name is his to share, other peoples aren't. You let it be known you're going around sharing other peoples true names all willy-nilly, especially those of the fae, then you're going to get murdered real quick. Even if it's just written down.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
[ELI5] Will two supercomputers playing chess against each other always have the same outcome?
If two supercomputers play chess against each other, will the outcome always be the same?
Consider that they will always play the best possible move and that they do not learn from past matches.
If not, which I believe is the case, why not?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Computers playing chess often include the use of a random number generator to choose between moves of apparently equal value. Such generators often vary by time of day or some other input to ensure unpredictability.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5:why are bathroom doors pull to leave?
Surely it would make sense to have pull to enter and then push to leave so that after washing your hands you could barge the door open with your shoulder and not have to touch the handle which I'm assuming might be contaminated as people do not always wash their hands<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Building codes generally require internal doors to open into the room they're for so that the occupants can't become trapped if something outside the room blocks the door.
For residential homes, this also applies to the main entryway, whereas for commercial buildings, external doors are required to open outward, so that people don't become trapped inside if there's a fire that causes people to panic and try to rush out the doors (inward facing doors would be impossible to open if everyone is pushing against them trying to get out, even if the people *at* the doors see what's up and are trying to open them correctly).<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: Why are all doctor's handwriting so messy, and how do pharmacists decipher what the prescriptions say?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Pharmacy side: If we aren't 100% sure, we call and ask. That being said, there are fairly standard dosing for most medications and standard anotations. For example, Z-paks are 99.999% of the time 2 tabs on day 1, 1 tab daily days 2-5. So even if the doc writes iiT PO OD D1, we know s/he meant QD instead of OD. (QD being everyday, OD being your right ear)<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
I believe that Minecraft being used for education is nothing more than a gimmick. CMV
I don't see how a game like Minecraft could possibly teach kids anything more than they could learn on a whiteboard. What could it teach them? House building?
I believe that things like math and science could be taught much more effectively on a whiteboard than in Minecraft.
CMV?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Using what kids are interested in to teach them is an incredibly effective methodology that has worked for generations. What that interest is varies from culture to culture and generation to generation. Any topic can be used for effective teaching, by an effective teacher. Once you've got the kid's interest that 50% of the job done.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Why is logic irrefutable?
It occurs to me that logic and truth are somehow related, but I don't know why or how.
Is it that logic is somehow an inherent property of our universe or the human mind? Did we just make up logic, and due to many years of conditioning, we are now unable to separate a valid logical argument from truth itself?
Heads up: I am not an academic, nor very knowledgeable with general concepts in philosophy. In fact, I'm actually a mathematician.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Most philosophers would say that 'logic' is a set of languages we've made up, but they are languages that describe underlying properties of the world.
Logic has a *syntactic* and a *semantic* side. (You're a mathematician, so the following will probably sound familiar.) The syntactic side refers to how the symbols can be used with other symbols. It tells us, for example, that if you have such-and-such a string of symbols, then you can derive such-and-such other string of symbols. It also tells us which strings of symbols count as 'well-formed,' analogous to real words in a natural language. The semantic side refers to what the strings of symbols mean in the real world. For example, the symbol '&' might mean 'and.' (We could have made it mean 'or,' but we didn't. And we could have chosen a different symbol for 'and.' Some languages do.)
We say that a language of logic is 'complete' if every (semantically) true-in-the-world sentence can be derived (syntactically) in the language. We say that a language of logic is 'sound' if every (syntactically) derivable sentence in the language is also (semantically) true in the real world. Standard languages of logic--those you learn in intro-courses--will be sound and complete. If logic were *just* something we made up, then there would be no answer to the question of whether it's sound. But we do ask that. So we do think of logic "trying" to mirror or match real-world relations between real-world truths. If '*p* & *q*' narrowly logically entails '*p*,' then that matches up to the fact that in the real world, 'the dog is a black and the dog is a mutt' metaphysically necessitates 'the dog is black.'
In sum, according to many or most philosophers, there seem to be metaphysically necessary relations between facts, truths, or states of affairs in the real world, and we create languages of logic to try to model or match or describe or help us understand the relations between those necessary relations.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
'Biology' At what point would an invasive species be considered integrated into an ecosyste?
It obviously varies from individual ecosystems, but I've always wondered if destroying "invasive species" actually hurts ecosystems based on how long it's been in the environment.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
A species could be considered integrated when it has checks and balances to keep its population in check. Most invasive species are only invasive because they are able to reproduce far beyond what the local ecosystem can handle. If there are predators and sufficient food sources to keep the population in balance, a species would just considered not-native, not invasive.
Native or not native is just a human label based on our understanding of recent origins, technically every species on an island is non-native. Though if a species has adapted to the local environment, and separated from the original population then you can make an argument that it is now naturalized.
Source- Biology major<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5 Why people find beer delicious and refreshing.
Honestly I think it's all a conspiracy. I believe every single one of you actually thinks beer tastes disgusting, but since everyone else has a reason to love it, you do too. How do you come up with all these sophistacted adjectives to describe it. I have tried dozens and dozens of different beers. None of them have ever been refreshing or full bodied or "bursting with summer flavors."
Some people tell me "it's an acquired taste." To me, that just means you have to suffer through it until you don't care anymore and I don't really see it as an explanation. But to find delicious and refreshing and decadent flavors in that liquid just doesn't make sense to me.
EDIT: Not trying to say that having a vagina means you don't like beer. I know plenty of females who love it. According to my beer-brewing roommates, however, there's a good chance that that's my problem. xD
TL;DR - What is it about beer that you find so refreshing and yummy? What does it for you?
Maybe it's because I have a vagina. I don't know. Explain this shit.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
It's similar to strong black coffee, protein shakes, liver, and many more bitter or strong tasting foods and liquids, you have to get acclimated to the taste before you can recognize the small subtleties in flavor and texture.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
CMV: Getting rid of DACA will benefit southwestern US
I want to start by saying that I don't agree with deporting people for the faults of their parents. So I think that those that are here now and on DACA should be allowed to remain here, but there should be no more DACA. There should be no more incentive for immigrants to migrate here illegally and establish their children here.
That being said, my view is that removing DACA will benefit the states from Texas to California (in fact, Texas was threatening to sue if the fed govt didn't get rid of DACA) and probably some other states. These states have many illegal immigrants. Therefore, if we no longer take in any more illegal immigrants, then there would be more resources to spread out between those that are already in those states. Also, the big cities in these states are definitely overpopulated and they could benefit from a slow down in the population rise.
I don't have too much knowledge on this topic or on the benefits, I just have a very weak argument for why I think it will benefit the southwestern US. It's more intuitive I think.
_____
> *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
DACA is intended to allow for low-priority illegal immigrants (e.g., minor illegal immigrants who have been on good behavior) to not just find a job and live amicably with deferred deportation, but also to allocate resources in deporting higher-priority illegal immigrants (especially violent criminals). By getting rid of DACA without a suitable replacement, you'd be seeing deportations among all groups of illegal immigrants equally, even people who were illegally brought into the US as infants and are on good behavior and no criminal history.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: P versus NP and the effect(s) on the world that would come from it being solved<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Without getting into theoretical computer science too much, P is the class of problems that are "easy" to solve, and NP is the class of problems that may or may not be easy to solve, but are at least easy to verify. And by "easy" we mean that the best-known algorithm (process) for doing it scales well with the size of the problem.
Adding two numbers together is easy. When adding numbers that are *n* digits long, you only need *n* steps. Adding numbers that are 10 times larger only takes 1 additional step. Adding numbers that are a million times larger only takes 6 additional steps. So that scales really well with the size of the problem.
Finding a solution to the knapsack problem ("here's a bunch of objects weighing different amounts, find me a subset of them that weighs exactly 10 pounds") is really hard. All you can really do is try every combination until you find one that works, or you go through all of the possibilities and find that nothing works. But verifying a solution is easy--you just add to see that it works, and adding is easy.
But why is the knapsack problem hard? Is there something fundamental about the laws of mathematics that demands that there's no good solution? Or have we as humans just not been clever enough to think of a better way? Over time, lots of problems that we used to think were hard have turned out to be easy because someone came up with a better solution, so people got thinking that maybe all of the NP problems are actually in P.
If it turns out that P=NP, then there are a whole bunch of problems that people think are hard that are actually easy. Most modern cryptography systems would end up being broken, because they're based on some of these problems that we assume are hard.
If it turns out that P does not equal NP (which is what everybody assumes is the case), then nothing really changes.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: What is stickiness and do we have a measure for stickiness?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
There are several different measurements for adhesion. Peel is when you pull it off at an angle and measure the force it takes , shear is when you try to slide the two adhered surfaces in opposite directions and again, measure the force it takes, and tack is measured by rolling a small steel ball across the surface of a pressure-sensitive adhesive from a pre-determined height/incline and measuring the distance the ball rolls across the adhesive surface.
Usually, an adhesive with high shear will have low peel and vise versa.
*Edited for clarity.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Why do we use phase change refrigerants?
So from my memory of thermodynamics, an ideal heat pump is the carnot cycle. This cycle uses an ideal gas on both the hot and cold sides of the pump. However in the real world we use the refridgeration cycle with an evaporator and a compressor.
I understand that the Carnot cycle is 'ideal' and therefore we can't get to Carnot efficiencies in real life.
But what real life factor means we can't try and use a gas both sides (with a turbine to replace the evaporator? Is it energy density? Cost? Complexity? Do space/military grade heat pumps with high performance requirements do something different?
Thanks!
Edit: just a quick edit to say thanks so much for all the responses so far, it's exactly the sort of detailed science and real world experience I wanted to understand and get a feeling for. I will try and respond to everyone shortly!
Edit2: bonus question and I think some commenters have already hinted at this: flip the question, what would it take / what would it look like to have an all-gas cycle and if money were no object could it outperform a phase change cycle? I'm assuming extremely high pressure nitrogen as the working fluid to achieve a good energy density... Enormous heat exchangers. Could it get closer to Carnot COPs?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Phase changes occur at fixed temperatures. When you introduce a saturated liquid in a heat exchanger and extract a saturated vapour from it, your temperature difference between the exchanger and your heat source has remained constant (assuming a sufficiently large source). Same goes for a saturated vapour entering a heat exchanger and leaving as a saturated liquid. This is more efficient than heating a vapour, as its temperature will increase, causing a smaller temperature difference between itself and its heat source/sink and with that a reduced heat flux. The latent heat of vaporisation for e.g. water is quite high, which means you can absorb or reject a lot of heat at a constant temperature.
This is readily apparent from the heat capacity of water vapour and the latent heat of vaporisation of water. The c_p of water vapour is roughly 1.8 or 1.9 kJ/(kg K) at 0 degrees Celsius. This means that adding 1.8 kJ to one kilogram of water vapour will raise its temperature one Kelvin. The latent heat of vaporisation for water at 0 degrees Celsius is about 2500 kJ/kg. Meaning one kilogram of saturated liquid water will absorb 2500 kJ before its temperature will start to rise.
So to answer your question more directly, yes, you can use a heat engine with only a gas as a working fluid, but phase transitions are an excellent way of absorbing or rejecting large amounts of heat quickly. An example of a real-world gas-only heat engine is the Stirling engine, which runs on the Stirling cycle.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: How does the "Meta" in Video Games develop?
How does the metagaming come about in game that are played competitively like Street Fighter or Overwatch? Do developers account for that or is it a entirely fan made thing?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
The metagame is almost always originally created by players. Players want to try to win, typically certain strategies are more effective. Even with "perfect balance" players' preferences tend to congregate (for example, a group of influential people agree a strategy is good, so they begin playing it. As they become experienced with that strategy, writing guides and so forth, they get better with that strategy so the strategy becomes even better). It's inevitable that certain strategies will become more common.
Developers will often influence the metagame by nerfing strategies that are deemed too powerful or "too stagnant" so the players and fans don't get bored.
Developers might also choose to reinforce the metagame. Somewhat famously in League of Legends, developers force players to play with assigned lanes fitting predefined roles. It was a bit controversial, because this means every single league game follows the same formulaic lane assignments. (Compare to other MOBAs where the lane you choose to go is a very important strategic decision.) But there are advantages as well. When you log in and play a game of League, you know exactly what you're doing and what your responsibilities are. For a 30 minute game with 9 other complete strangers, it makes it a lot easier to jump in.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Why use spaces in C when they don't affect the code? (Beginner CS50)
I have a question that's very confusing to me. So you know how you write
if ( i + j < n - 1)
printf(" ");
else
printf("#");
right? When I write it as
if ( i + j < n - 1)
printf(" ");
else
printf("#");
I get the same exact result. Why go through all the trouble of putting spaces and all that? I get confused what's for what in longer code sometimes. Is putting those spaces just a common programmer practise, or is it a MUST? Is it just the CS50 IDE that doesn't register those spaces? So many questions.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
The spacing and indentation is to make it easier to read. For example, you could write the above as:
`if(i+j<n-1)printf(" ");else printf("#");`
It's still the same result, but harder to read. C is very lenient when it comes to spacing. As the following is also the same but much harder to read. It's best to agree on a coding style with the other engineers on a project and stick to it. The more you look at a particular style the easier it becomes.
`if`
`(i`
`+j`
`<`
`n`
`-1)`
`printf`
&#x200B;
`(`
`" "`
`)`
`; else`
`printf ( "#"`
`);`<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: How do you find the line of best fit on a scatterplot?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
There are different ways to do it depending on what you care about most. The most common way is doing a least squares regression. Basically you use calculus to figure out the line that makes the square of the distance from that line to each point the smallest. The math of it is a bit above an ELI5 but you can look up least squares.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
It is said by many cultures that suicide is a sin because it is God's/the god's decision when you die. But, now that humans are able to artificially keep the body alive during terminal illness well past the point that people would have normally died, should suicide now be considered a viable option?
This is in reference to keeping someone alive with a terminal illness, even when quality of life has decreased dramatically, and they normally would have died much faster.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
I won’t pretend to be a mod, but it seems to me that this is more a question for somebody’s personal opinion, or personal system of ethics and the more appropriate question for this sub would be along the lines “[insert your preface about extended life spans] what are some philosophers or schools of thought surrounding ideas like physician-assisted suicide and right to die?” Is this the conversation that you were hoping to start?<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: The difference between diamond cuts and what makes one better than the other?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
A lot of it is about light reflection. If you ask your mommy for a pocket mirror, you can put it near a lamp and make light reflect on the wall. When you move the mirror, light will do funny things and move on the wall. When you cut a diamond, something similar happens. If the pointy end of the diamond (the side that is hidden, under the ring) is too far away or too close to the top of the diamond (the pretty top you can see) it will reflect light in a way that does not look good. If you, look at the top, you will find that it is not shiny at all, and the people who buy them want them to be as shiny as possible. So you have to cut it exactly at the right place. Each time you make a little cut, which are the small shapes you see inside the diamond, you make a little mirror for light to bounce. If you meant cuts as in heart, pear and oval, you are talking about ''fancy cuts''. A lot of it is about the quality that your diamond has before it is cut. When you take it out of the earth, it is not always in a very good shape. Some people with big magnifying glasses look at it and decide if the shape and the shiny-ness is good enough. If it is very good, they will very likely cut it into the round brillant cut, which is usually the most ''ideal'' and popular form. The ''fancy cuts'' are a lot about fashion. Every few years or so, people start liking new things and that also affects jewelry, and diamonds.
(I worked in a jewelry store, I've seen diamonds and pretty gemstones with lots of funky colors)<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
CMV: Minority Groups Are Justified in Believing That African Americans Should Just Work Harder
So I feel pretty bad for posting this, because I know I'll be called out as a bigot. That's why I'm hoping some of you can CMV.
However, every time I look at an argument for why African Americans don't do as well as their white counterparts, it comes down to disadvantage. They tend to live in poorer areas and go to poorer schools, and may also face workplace discrimination.
If that's the case, then why is it that Asian and Indian Americans, many of whom are first or second generation immigrants who come in with nothing more than the clothes off their backs (arguably even MORE at a disadvantage than their African American counterparts, who at least are already established in the USA), can grow up to be just as successful as their white counterparts? It's practically a stereotype that Asian and Indian children are going to grow up too be doctors or engineers! So how exactly is it that *they*, who face many of the same challenges as blacks, can grow up to be comfortably successful and well-respected in just one or two generations? The only answer I can think of is their hard work ethic...which, let's be honest, is just another way of saying "blacks are lazy".
I'll sum up how I feel with a quote from a user on another thread. Please don't go witch-hunting, he is in no way related to this post.
>Let me give you a little background. I'm in my early 30s, I'm a second generation immigrant. I'm not white. I went to majority black schools. My grandfather was an illiterate farmer, my father worked manual labor, I'm a physician. This general pattern is >true for my entire extended family, and perhaps 90% of the people of my diaspora I know.
>I know there is tremendous racism and inequality, I've felt it too. I live with it as well, from both blacks and whites. Let me tell you something, I'd rather deal with white racism than black racism. White racism means I get a few funny looks walking my dog. Black racism stabs my kid for his sneakers (that's a true story, I watched that happen in high school). Black racism means that when I was in university the black woman at the desk denied me access to the "minority study center" and angrily told me that I was the wrong type of minority. I'd rather deal with the funny looks.
>I grew up around black people, I know most of them are perfectly normal hardworking decent people. I've got a few black friends from medical school who are some of the most brilliant absolutely lovely people I've ever met.
There is a problem though, the black middle class blurs very quickly with the black lower class. The black lower classes are the most fucked up unpredictable dangerous people I've ever had the misfortune of being around. I've lived around this, I know the score. I've personally seen people beaten and stabbed. My literal next door neighbor was running a dog fighting / gun-market operation. It was a comical level of stereotypical criminality. It was also fucking terrifying.
>I packed my shit up. I live in a state with less than 5% black population. I live in an incredibly white area, I see perhaps one black family a year.
>All your points are completely accurate, but you're missing the reason. Anyone who can avoid living around black people does it, including other black people. I don't want to be a victim of crime and I don't want my property value to go down the toilet.
>My group started with a far lower standard of living and has faced the same racism. Through work and education over a couple of generations we're at the point where we have been able to elevate ourselves beyond those circumstances. I might get funny looks in my neighborhood, but I don't bring down the property values.
Indians, Chinese, Russians, Polish, Vietnamese, Nigerians, Taiwanese, any other immigrant group can improve their lot within a few generations, while living in those same horrible neighborhoods. Why can't blacks?
Why do we have to do it for them? Nobody did it for us. They need to fix their own situation and get to a point where people don't mind living around them.
Please CMV, I feel uncomfortable holding such a view (and in case it wasn't obvious enough already, yes I am an Asian-American).
_____
> *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
One big factor to consider is that new immigrants are a highly nonrandom sample.
It is really hard to uproot your family and move to a new country. Especially one where you're not part of the mainstream culture, don't know any of the language, and have little money or resources to start with.
The kind of people who see all those hurdles and do it anyway are going to be, on average, smarter, more ambitious, and harder working than normal.
Average Indians don't move to America. Exceptionally ambitious Indians move to America, because moving to America is hard and scary. It shouldn't be surprising that them and their children are unusually successful, despite hurdles of racism and discrimination. If they were going to have an average reaction to those hurdles, they wouldn't have overcome all the extra hurdles that come with immigration, and would still be in their home countries.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Can someone link me to some articles discussing the mainstream scientific consensus on the normalcy of homosexuality?
I'm having a conversation with someone who is talking a whole lotta bullshit about how homosexuality is a "mental condition" which can be "fixed". He claims that he's read articles which show that homosexuality is clinically categorized as a mental disorder. He even used the term "gay agenda" when describing the news. This is a man who I would not generally have considered to have some obviously offensive and bigoted beliefs. Anyways, he claims to be open to changing his mind after I told him that, beyond being extremely offensive, the science on the subject does not agree with him. Can you link me to some articles explaining the scientific consensus on this topic? I honestly don't have anything off the top of my head, and I figured I'd be better served asking you fine people instead spending an hour searching the web for some extremely basic science on the subject. Thanks!
Edit: Thanks to all of their effort<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
A place to start is the APA's 1974 statement:
Conger, J. J. (1975). Proceedings of the American Psychological Association, Incorporated, for the Year 1974. American Psychologist 30(6), p. 620-676.
At its January 1975 meeting, Council adopted a statement of policy regarding homosexuals, recommended by BSERP and amended by the Board of Directors and Council, and adapted from a statement adopted by the Association of Gay Psychologists Caucus Meeting in New Orleans in September 1974. Further, Council voted that the Association's Statement of Policy regarding Equal Employment Opportunity be amended to include sexual orientation among the prohibited discriminations listed in the statement. Following is the Policy Statement regarding Discrimination against Homosexuals:
1. The American Psychological Association supports the action taken on December IS, 1973, by the American Psychiatric Association, removing homosexuality from that Association's official list of mental disorders. The American Psychological Association therefore adopts the following resolution:
Homosexuality, per se, implies no impairment in judgment, stability, reliability, or general social or vocational capabilities: Further, the American Psychological Association urges all mental health professionals to take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness that has long been associated with homosexual orientations.
2. Regarding discrimination against homosexuals, the American Psychological Association adopts the' following resolution concerning their civil and legal rights:
The American Psychological Association deplores all public and private discrimination in such areas as employment, housing, public accommodation, and licensing against those who engage in or who have engaged in homosexual activities and declares that no burden of proof of such judgment, capacity, or reliability shall be placed upon these individuals greater than that imposed on any other persons. Further, the American Psychological Association supports and urges the enactment of civil rights legislation at the local, state, and federal level that would offer citizens who engage in acts of homosexuality the same protections now guaranteed to others on the basis of race, creed, color, etc. Further, the American Psychological Association supports and urges the repeal of all discriminatory legislation singling out homosexual acts by consenting adults in private. (p. 633)<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
If ocean waves are a perturbation of a medium (the ocean), and sound waves are a perturbation of another medium (air), then what is the medium for light / electricity?
We know that electricity does not need matter (e.g. induction chargers work in a vacuum / in space) as well as light (seen from space yet space is a vacuum) so I'm wondering what the field medium could be.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
So light is an electromagnetic wave. A changing electric field will generate a magnetic field - this is how electromagnets work. And a changing magnetic field will generate an electric field - this is how generators work. So if you set it up right, a changing magnetic field will generate a changing electric field which generates a changing magnetic field, and so on, and you get a wave of oscillating magnetic and electric fields that propagate onwards until it hits something. So there isn't a material medium, but it's electric and magnetic fields that are "waving".
But this is a really interesting question, because in the 19th century it *was* postulated that there was a medium that light propagates through. The idea is that, while the equations of motion for a particle (e.g. throwing a ball) do not change when you add a constant velocity to the whole system, the equations for electromagnetism *do* change when you add a constant velocity to the whole system (assuming that time and space are the same for every reference frame). This means that light should look different depending on your velocity. So, what is the "zero velocity" frame for light? The best guess they could come up with is that there is some "aether" medium that light propagates through, and the velocity of this aether gives the zero point for velocity for an EM wave. This was only later removed because Einstein took the much more radical step of postulating that when you shift the entire system by a constant velocity, instead of light acting different, *the entire nature of time and space changes*, and this is what we call Special Relativity.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Why is average income calculated as GDP ÷ Population and not GDP ÷ Working Population?
Since we want to find the average income of the average worker, then why is average income calculated as GDP ÷ Population and not GDP ÷ Working Population?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Both are calculated and are used depending on the context.
For example, income / population could be used to depict quality of life, whereas income / working population depicts the average income contribution per worker.
They're just two different measures with different uses. Often when people are looking at average income they are using it to gain some measure of quality of life for the overall population<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Eli5: what is energy exactly?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Think of energy as the capacity or power to do work, such as the ability to move an object (of a given mass) by the application of force. Energy can exist in a many forms, such as mechanical, electrical, thermal, or nuclear, and can be transformed from one form to another.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: Game Theory
After seeing the golden balls split standoff, I understand what he did but don't understand the wider concept.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Game theory is a branch of math built around something called games. There are multiple players, and they each have some strategy to try to get the most points. You try to find something called the Nash equilibrium, where each player's strategy is the best possible strategy given their opponent's strategy.
For example, if you're playing rock-paper-scissors, if you always pick rock you opponent can beat you by always picking paper. If you always pick paper they can always pick scissors. And if you always pick scissors they can always pick rock. But there's a Nash equilibrium if you randomize it. If you pick rock one third of the time, paper one third of the time, and scissors one third of the time, then no matter what strategy they use, they'll win one third of the time, lose one third of the time, and tie one third of the time. If they're using that strategy too, then there's nothing you can do to be more likely to win, so that's the Nash equilibrium.
You can also look at subtle variations, like what happens if you count rock as two wins instead of one. In that case, you should pick paper half the time and rock and scissors one quarter of the time.
Also, games aren't necessarily zero sum. The Prisoner's dilemma is probably the most famous example of a non zero-sum game.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Why do small animals (rabbits, mice, etc) have a faster heartbeat compared to larger animals (elephants, whales, etc)?
To my knowledge, I thought smaller animals have a smaller volume therefore less blood needed to be pumped. Does it have to do with the volume-surface area ratio? What is the factor is that is influencing this?
edit: spelling<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Heart rate varies due to the relative difference in surface area to volume as volume increases. The smaller the animal, the greater surface area it has relative to volume, so it loses heat exponentially faster. This necessitates a more active metabolism, faster heart rate is a part of that.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: Moving things in the dark are lower ''fps"?
Whenever I look at something that has a spotlight or a focused bit of light shining on it for example someone's hand, then they move it really fast. It seems as if their hand is moving in "lower fps'' than usual.
I'm not sure in what other way to put it, I've only recently noticed it.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Your eyes have two types of light sensitive cells called photoreceptors.
One type, cone photoreceptors, have 3 configurations that make up our color vision. They can repeatably fire and are very concentrated in the center of your vision. The downside is that they require a lot of light to fire so they're used for medium to bright environments.
The other type, rod photoreceptor, are extremely sensitive to light but reload very slowly. They are concentrated in the peripheral of your field of view. Rod photoreceptors are useful when it's dark or dim.
In dark environments, your cones don't have enough light to fire so your rods do most of the work. Although rods are very sensitive to light, they recover slowly, giving you the feel that things have low FPS or blur more. You'll also notice you can't sense color very easily. Rods only report black and white so your vision is mostly gray.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Desire to study PhD abroad after masters - how can I maximise my masters experience to reach this goal?
I did my undergrad in journalism at an average UK university- finished with a 2:1. My MRes will be in international relations at a top 10 UK university with internationally recognised research.
I start in September and want to start applying for PhD places in Central Europe- Germany, Austria, Czech Republic etc - as soon as I can.
What can I do during my masters to maximise my chances of being accepted by foreign universities? Is there anything important that I should do/ know before applying for English speaking PhD places in these countries?
Thanks!
EDIT: I’m a British citizen so am expecting to have to navigate visas wherever I go.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Are you hoping to work on your own project (applying with a research proposal) or join an existing project (applying to studentships with CV and writing sample)? Because it changes what they will be looking for in your application. The latter is boring but easier, because then you don't have to worry about finding the right supervisor and about your research proposal fitting their research objectives there. It would also be fully funded.
Even if you can't churn out a publications quickly, seek fast options such as posting in famous blogs in your area (as guest contributor) if possible, or book reviews.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
CMV: Society should reduce the length of the standard workweek from 40 hours to ~24-30
From Bertrand Russell's In Praise of Idleness, which is a goldmine of insight and worth reading:
"Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?" - Bertrand Russell, [In Praise of Idleness](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html)
And the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has been in the news for calling for a three-day workweek (Google: Carlos Slim FT):
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/16605cfc-10e9-11e4-b116-00144feabdc0.html#axzz38KzsoPJv
There is nothing special about 40 hours except that's what we've been brought up to expect.
Productivity and technology have sufficiently advanced that we don't have to work as much as prior generations did to achieve a really high standard of living.
It's just that,
"what will happen when the point has been reached where everybody could be comfortable without working long hours?
In the West, we have various ways of dealing with this problem. We have no attempt at economic justice, so that a large proportion of the total produce goes to a small minority of the population, many of whom do no work at all. Owing to the absence of any central control over production, we produce hosts of things that are not wanted. We keep a large percentage of the working population idle, because we can dispense with their labor by making the others overwork. When all these methods prove inadequate, we have a war: we cause a number of people to manufacture high explosives, and a number of others to explode them, as if we were children who had just discovered fireworks. By a combination of all these devices we manage, though with difficulty, to keep alive the notion that a great deal of severe manual work must be the lot of the average man." - Bertrand Russell
So the norm is that we have people competing in increasingly long and pointless rat races to work for too long at too many [bullshit jobs](http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/), instead of spreading the work that actually needs to be done around so that everyone can make a good living without working 40-60 hour weeks or whatever.
“We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.” -Buckminster Fuller
What is the point of the economic system we've set up if it's making people more miserable than it needs to?
I really think people in the future will look back and wonder why we took so long to free one another from unnecessary bullshit/drudgery.
_____
> *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 key points you may have missed: Sims is also advocating 11 hour work days and pushing retirement back well into the 70s.
Other than that, how do you propose the actual economics of this would work? How are people supposed to sustain themselves on 2/3 to 3/4 of their salaries?<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
In the current employment market with such a glut of applicants, how is a failed search even possible?
With literally hundreds of applicants for each job posting, how does it actually happen that the search committee is unable to find someone? In my frustration I'm thinking it's ineptitude...but I've never been on a search committee, and so I'm looking for a more empathetic explanation.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
I've been on a search committee numerous times when we have had a failed search. I'll give you a breakdown of the current one:
1. Position for an assistant professor, tt. 75 applicants total.
2. 20 are international and blindly apply to everything, whether they have the experience/expertise we need or not.
3. 20 are obviously using PUIs as a backup if they don't land an R1, and it's very obvious in their application.
4. 20 are pretty mediocre. They don't sell themselves well, and never make it past the "meh" stage for pretty much everyone. They need to go to a workshop that teaches them how to put together an application packet.
5. We give a phone interview to 8 people we all agree on from the remaining 15. Not all of them are good. Many trip over words and can't answer basic questions. One person asked us to remind them of what the job was even for. He did not make the next step.
6. The next step is to figure out which of the 8 were the best bet. We invite 3-5 of them because that's what we can afford.
7. Of those, some can't teach. We have had a few strong ones, and some where the person has zero energy, or has a lot of inaccurate information in their presentation.
8. We decide to offer a job to the top, but they may have already accepted somewhere else. So we try the next person, and they may also have accepted somewhere else, or didn't like the area when they visited, or wouldn't settle for our pay scale. If those things happen, we have a failed search.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
CMV: Universal child care is more important than universal health care
It is more important for the government to sponsor child day care (birth – kindergarten) than it is to spend on health care. Health costs are mostly consumed by the elderly . Child care costs are almost by definition consumed by working age parents. Free child care would eliminate the need for a parent (usually female) to leave the workforce and reduce house hold income to care for the child. This absence from the workforce is a contributing factor to the “wage gap” (I’m not here to debate this part) females experience when returning to work after kids are in school. This would be a natural economic boost to the middle/lower class that needs all the income they can get.
Anecdotally, my wife is a teacher and once we have our second child we will be spending more in day care than she makes for the year. For reference the day care near us charges $329/wk – per child.
Edit: I mean to refer to day care costs, not health care. Also for the sake of debate I'm pretending we have to pick either health care or day care costs.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Universal health care covers universal child healthcare, and are of equal importance. If you're talking about a government paying for **all** care for children, that's a bit trickier. When you have a kid, you take on some responsibilities that the government is not responsible for. The important point here is you *don't have* to have children, but in a country with universal health care, you *have* to have health care (I'd hope you'd sign up for it at least).
As for the government paying for day care, well, since ages 0-4 are very important for a child's growth, you technically shouldn't be putting them in a day care. The government already provides for education past age 4, which is a pretty big expenditure in itself.
If we're talking about comparing importance, universal health care covers all people of all ages for their entire lives. Universal child care covers kids of age 4 or less and would ease a bit of the burden of the parents. It is decidedly not more important.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: Why do doctors always check the eyes of a patient with a light when they are unconscious?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
To see how the pupils change in response to light stimulus. They should shrink, and both eyes should do so equally.
Failure to respond, delay in responding, or asymmetry in response are all signs of potential neurological issues, like drugs, bleeding or damage.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: each time a new wireless standard comes out, it seems better and faster than before. Any reason we couldn't have accomplished this sooner? What are the enablers we now have that we didn't have before?
I'm asking because I happened to be reading about Bluetooth 5. This is also applicable to wifi etc. Did we discover new encoding / compression algorithms or what?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Every engineering problem comes down to a trade-off between cost and capability. A wireless standard is limited by what the cost effective electronics of the day can accomplish. As time goes on, processing power gets cheaper, so you can do more at a target price point.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: WHY are the symbols for power on / off "|" and "◯"?
What are/were they meant to represent? When were they introduced? I can't find any consistent reliable sources. I'd really appreciate references if anyone has any!<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
The International Electrotechnical Commission standards organization define it as open/closed as many others have stated.
The line is on. The circle is off.
Yes, the numbers 0 and 1 are used for on off sometimes , but the symbol is a line abd circle and they were originally chosen as a language neutral representation for an open and closed circuit.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
If time slows down proportionally, the closer to the speed of light you travel, does that mean that time has no existence to a light wave in a perfect vacuum?
I've been getting WAAAAAAY into the cool parts of science lately. Rewatched every through the wormhole episode, currently halfway through "Physics of the Impossible" by Michio Kaku, watched tons of episodes of Nova, and one question I haven't seen answered(yet), is whether time exists at all for a light wave travelling in a perfect vacuum?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Do you understand mathematical limits?
If you take the function, then yes the limit approaches "zero" or "no time".
**HOWEVER**, nothing moving at c can have a valid reference frame, because the equations are undefined at c.
So the answer is "light waves in a vacuum cannot have a reference frame", and also "as you get closer and closer to c, time slows down more and more to a complete standstill, but never gets there"<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
CMV:There's no reason to wash your hands after going number 1.
For the record, I always wash my hands. But it is partly as a social courtesy. The other part is psychological. If I don't wash my hands, I "feel" like they are dirty.
That said, if you've only urinated, then your hands are not any dirtier than before you went to the bathroom. A man can pee and touch nothing more than his belt buckle. I assume most people are able to use the facilities and touch nothing more than toilet paper or clean skin. I say clean skin, because I feel like our hands are dirtier than most of our body. So I don't think they become significantly germier in the course of normal business.
I believe hand washing is 97% psychological. I think we do it because it makes us "feel" clean, and because if other people don't do it, we "feel" like they are unclean.
I'm not very interested in debating exceptions or fringe cases. I'm talking about the standard. I'm open to changing what I view as the standard. But basically, if you have an exceptional need to wash your hands, I don't believe that responsibility impacts my argument.
Edit: For clarity, my position is that urinating does not make your hands significantly dirtier. I think hand washing is a good habit as a separate issue from restroom use. I'm not likely to respond to further comments about the convenience of washing your hands while you happen to be by a sink.
_____
> *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
Washing hands, in general, is a way to keep the spread of germs down. A typical person will go #1 3-5x each day. And if you just wash your hands each time you do that, you're washing off the germs you accumulated over the last few hours. So it's less about washing off germs you got in the 2min you were in the bathroom and more about taking advantage of the fact that you're near a sink and soap already so why not take a step towards general cleanliness.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5 Why does sunlight darken skin but lighten the colour of other surfaces?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Sunlight can breakdown the molecules that give things their coloring, lightening them. This works for objects because they are not alive, and so can't replace the destroyed color molecules.
You, however, are alive. Your body will actively choose to produce more skin pigment molecules if you get exposed to a lot of sunlight. It does this because the pigment protects you from the damage sunlight can do to you.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Is there any reason other than "for looks" that long hair on females became a social norm?
Is there any reason as to why females have almost always had long hair, at least compared to males, throughout history? Was there any kind of advantage this offered? Is male hair different than female hair?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Anthropology major here (graduating senior), long hair on women is a signal of reproductive health for women in western society. It is has links to youth and vitality, which are indicators of reproductive health.
A citation for clarity and accuracy
Hinsz, Verlin B., David C. Matz, Rebecca A. Patience. Does Women's Hair Signal Reproductive Potential?. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 37:2 (2001), 166-172.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Super-hydrophobic walls in Hamburg, Germany, reflect urine back at the evildoer. How does this work?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoN5EteWCH8
Apparently the product in question – a simple shelf product – is called Ultra Ever Dry.
To think they called it the *Peeback*. Wow.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Water forms hydrogen bonds, polar interactions, and dispersion interactions with stone that cause it to stick to the wall. The product is a mix of polymers and hydrocarbons and some other things like ketones that don't do hydrogen bonding and polar interactions to a high degree so don't stick to water.
When the urine hits the wall it as such bounces off like a ball bouncing off a wall, and hits feet.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: How are living DNA and cells formed out of atoms and dust?
I always found it weird how atoms and dust can suddenly become life, and I know the right conditions are needed, etc. But how does rock dust or tiny little atoms suddenly "come alive"? or form a complex helix of DNA?
If it is made out of literal minerals and atoms, how come we're not as heavy-duty as them? How does DNA carry genetic information from nowhere?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
There are theories about how life started, but we don't know for sure. Laboratory experiments with a mixture of chemicals in water have resulted in some rather complex organic chemicals that ARE part of life, but so far we have not observed an entire cell assembling itself and starting to "live".
Otherwise, we do chemistry by dumping 10^23 or more atoms of one kind into 10^23 atoms or molecules of another kind, and they react because atom energy levels are "better" if they complete their electron orbitals by joining with other atoms.
Cells, on the other hand, do chemistry internally atom-by-atom: the proteins function like little robots that literally assemble molecules together. Cellular function is extremely complex, but in simple terms, sections of the DNA (master recipe) get copied to RNA (recipes) and proteins get created or used to *do* what the instructions say, with other parts of the cell acting as "sensors" for "too little or too much" and to control the reactions.
The cell is a factory, basically.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
[Star Trek] Bridge officers = away team: Is this normal for the Federation?
You would think that on a large starship with hundreds of crew members, there would be dedicated, specially trained away teams. Sending the captain and/or next several officers in command down to the planet every week seems like an unnecessary risk for such vital crew members. Is this SOP for the Federation, or just on ships named "Enterprise"?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
In normal situations, usually one officer, maybe two officers, would be sent down in command with a team of regular crew.
Of course, what you see in the history vids isn't usually the mundane missions, it's only the exciting or exceptionally interesting missions. As the various Enterprise's were both vessels pushing the frontier of known space and flagship vessels often given important tasks, these were more common than on other vessels.
In unusual or dire situations sending down the most experienced and well trained crew available is necessary, those crew are usually the officers.
As for sending down the captain, sometimes it's necessary, as in negotiations or anything formal or diplomatic, or the odd situation where the captain actually needs to be in direct command, usually it's more a case of noone being able to tell the captain no.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
How do I get productive while programming?
I have the ambition to program, but every time I open up my IDE, I just procrastinate for what seems like forever. Any suggestions?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Why do you open your IDE if you don't know what you're going to do?
Really the most effective approach here is to scratch an itch. But you need to have an itch first. It might be stupid small but that's enough to trick your brain into throwing an over-engineered solution at it.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Could a bright enough light shine through metal?
So, light waves can be either absorbed or reflected by a material, or can go through a material. However, no material reflects or absorbs 100% perfectly. At least a few photons will go through (correct?).
Anyway, say I write a message on a white piece of paper, and cover it with a black piece of paper. I can't see the message anymore, but if I went in a dark room and shined a light under it I could.
If I did the same thing but covered the message with aluminum foil, it wouldn't work. What if I bought one of these expensive flashlights with thousands of lumens, would it work then?
Is there any amount of light that would make it possible to see through the aluminum foil? Or a different wavelength of light? Somehow "x-ray" it?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Up to the plasmon frequency most metals will be an essentially perfect reflector/blocker of light given a reasonably thick cross section.
Beyond that frequency you get diffraction and scattering to lesser and lesser degrees as you increase in frequency.
In thinner sections there isn't enough material to fully cancel the electric field of the photon internally, resulting in nonzero transmission.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Why do our eyes handle HDR situations fine (ex. looking own a hall at a bright window) but a camera needs a special mode?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Your eyes do several things that cameras don't.
1. Your eyes are constantly adjusting the effective "exposure" they're getting in real time. Your pupils are constantly expanding to let in more light and contracting to block it out, depending on what you're looking at moment to moment. Squinting in bright light can take this even further.
2. Your brain does a lot of postprocessing to create the illusion of a constant stream of vision, correcting brightness is only one part of this. Your brain edits out your nose, and the blindspots caused by your optic nerves. It corrects for color, brightness, and contrast. It covers up the blur that happens when you move your eyes or blink. It ignores the fact that only the central ~15 degrees of your vision is sharp and full color, and stitches together an approximation of the rest of your field of view from mental models and your blurry peripheral vision.
3. You actually have 2 different light sensing cell types, that have very different sensitivities, and you automatically switch which ones are dominant. Cones are responsible for full color, sharp, detailed vision, but need a lot of light (relatively) to work. Rods only sense light vs dark, and don't form as sharp of an image, but work with extremely small amounts of light (starlight with no moon for example) and are very good at detecting movement. This is why you can navigate at night, but you can't read: your rods let you see objects, but not details as small as most text.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Are there any other species that use tools to "improve" their environment?
Adam Savage pointed out that humanity's ability to adapt to our environment (and adapt our environment to ourselves)^1 has been a major evolutionary advantage. Clothing seems like the earliest example of this kind of adaptation. Unlike tool use for hunting/gathering, which definitely predated homo sapiens and shows up in other species, is use of tools for creating habitats unique to us?
1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjOOD70T_fM#t=13m39s<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Beavers essentially create habitat for themselves by building dams, and creating ponds. Those ponds provide a relatively safe watery environment to inhabit and build their lodges.
That said, beavers kind of do one thing really well, and they don't have the power to invent new tools and concepts like we do. No chance of a high tech beaver empire for now.
Still, they totally fit your question of using tools (dams, sticks, mud) to create habitats imo.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
What is the relationship of quantum field theory to quantum mechanics?
The way I see QM is as a sort of general "protocol" for making predictions at the quantum scale. First, choose a Hilbert space representing all the possible states of your system; then choose a self-adjoint operator A representing the variable you want to measure; find the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of A; use the Born rule to calculate the probability distribution; exponentiate iA to find the time evolution.
My understanding of QFT is that it uses this protocol to model fields like the EM field, so that the basic procedure is the same; the difference is that you use classical fields as a guide for choosing Hilbert spaces and operators, and this leads to things like Feynman diagrams and whatnot. How correct is this?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Correct. QM is a framework in which to describe physical systems. QFT is basically a certain subset of QM where you
1. Can create and destroy particles, and
2. Treat things relativistically (as in *special* relativity).
To make a classical theory quantum, you just apply the postulates of QM. You describe your system as a state vector in a Hilbert space, you promote dynamical quantities to operators, and "have at it".
To turn a classical theory into a QFT following canonical quantization, you promote your fields to operators which create and destroy particles, and impose the canonical commutation relations.
To get from there to Feynman diagrams, you just consider time evolution and expand the time evolution operator (or the S-matrix for scattering problems) in a perturbation series. There are some cool tricks due to Feynman, which allows you to do everything in a relativistically invariant way, and Wick, which allows you to easily work out the kinds of diagrams you need to draw.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
[Matrix] Why do the agents miss their shots?
Any hacker worth their salt can make an aimbot.
What up?
Is it all a ploy to get Neo to the architect?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Agents can bend the rules but not break them. Pistols aren’t terribly accurate at range and hitting a moving target is hard. Or rather it’s hard to hold a pistol accurately. If they’re held in a clamp they’re accurate up to hundreds of yards.
Copied from somewhere else, I’m no expert:
The Model 1911 .45 semi-auto, in its unmodified form, was rated by the Army as having an effective range of 50 yards. The Army definition of effective range was the range at which a soldier of average skill, trained with the weapon, could hit an enemy soldier anywhere on his body, with half his shots, if the enemy soldier were standing still in the open.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Is Deleuze a post-structuralist, if so, how does his concept of difference differ from the structuralist concept of difference?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Oh boy this is a hard one, because Deleuze's relationship to structuralism is not stable through the course of his works, and even where - as with 'early Deleuze' - his takeaways from structuralism are unambiguously positive, they are always filtered through a Deleuzian vocabulary that makes his structuralism incredibly idiosyncratic. So, for instance, there's an early essay of Deleuze's, "How Do We Recognize Structuralism?", where he lays out six 'criteria' by which we can 'recognize structuralism'. What's fascinating about it is that if you read it along with his major works published soon after (*Difference and Repetition* and the *Logic of Sense*), that essay contains, in embryo, almost the entirety of what would become those works. In other words, if those 'criteria' are 'how we recognize structuralism', then we cannot help but 'recognize' Deleuze's early solo works as not only meeting those criteria, but elaborating and expanding upon them, in new and creative ways.
What's tough about it is that even while Deleuze self-identifies some of his major concepts as structuralist in this period, it's kinda hard to recognize them *as* structuralist from any 'orthodox structuralist' perspective. So for example, when Deleuze identifies one of his most important concepts from that period ('the virtual') as being nothing other than structure itself ("the reality of the virtual is structure" *DR*209), and then when he further goes on to identify the virtual with what he calls 'the problematic' and the 'Idea' (which have their own provenance in Plato, Kant, and Maimon), this chain of identifications is almost entirely original to Deleuze, even as it can be said to 'translate' the notion of 'structure' in a way more or less consistent with structuralism proper. So one might cautiously say that Deleuze is transcribing sturcturalist ideas into a 'non-strucutralist' vocabulary. Does this make him a 'post-structuralist'? Or is he rather elaborating and expanding the richness of structuralist concepts? Hard to say.
In his later works, Deleuze becomes positively hostile to, at the very least, the nomenclature of structure. In fact, a great deal of his conceptual vocabulary in the later period is defined by being engineered *explicitly* to be counterposed against any notion of structure: in *Anti-Oedipus*, 'Oedipus' is pretty much another name for structure ("Oedipus-as-structure" *AO*107), which means the book may as well be called 'Anti-Structuralism'. Elsewhere, 'machines', 'the rhizome', 'schizoanalysis' and 'the event' are all deliberately theorized as being alternative ways of thinking about things than in terms of structure (to quote the Deleuze scholar Daniel Smith, who himself is quoting Deleuze's biographer, Francois Dosse: "‘Machine’ is a veritable catchphrase that was meant to dethrone another catchphrase of the time: the notion of ‘structure.'" In contrast to the idea of "structure," which seems to suggest something fixed or static, activity seems to be built into the very notion of a 'machine'". Smith, "What Is the Body Without Organs?").
Bringing the question of 'difference' into it makes the problem yet more complicated. One way to think about what early Deleuze is doing with structuralism is as 'purifying' the notion of structure so as to expel any trace of either 'identity' or 'the negative' associated with the concept ("the difference between differences relate difference to itself without any other intermediary"). This in contrast to 'the structuralists' proper who are a little ambiguous about this. It's possible that, in Deleuze's later work (where the 'virtual' and 'the Idea' also recede in importance, if not disappear entirely), 'structure' itself become a constraint on thinking about difference that had to be sloughed off. Especially if one takes Deleuze at his word when he (and Guattari) simply identity Oedipus with structure (in which case *Anti-Oedipus* more or less details point by point why structure is no good). And even then, in a 'late' work like *A Thousand Plateaus -* written after *AO* \- perhaps the most important conceptual distinction that runs through the entire book (one of the few distinctions that remains stable throughout that sprawling, disjointed work - that between 'content' and 'expression') is drawn from noneother than the structural linguist, Louis Hjelmslev.
So is Deleuze post-structuralist? Er, it's complicated.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Does burning cash (literally, with fire to ashes) improves the strength of a currency?
If yes, then by how much?
is there a paper that deal with this scenario?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
If by strength you mean its value to others. Well if you are creating too much that it is inflationary then destroying some to make it less inflationary could improve its value relative to others.
However the utility of money which is to act as a medium of exchange could be reduced if you do not have enough money for commerce.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: Why do counties have different names in different languages?
Example: Deutschland is Germany in English. Why dosnt everyone just call a country by the name it gives itself?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Translation into other languages, including mispronunciation and physical inability to pronounce certain sounds.
1) Translation: countries like the United States are just words. You can directly translate them into a different language. In Spanish, it's Estados Unidos. The words just happen to have pretty direct translations.
2) Mispronunciation: Turkey in Turkish is pronounced probably closer to the spelling Turkia. It's not that hard for an English speaker to try saying. But they didn't. Keep in mind, too, that country names can be very old. So at some point, the mispronunciation is simply the way you say it in that language.
3) Inability to pronounce certain sounds: language is interesting. We're born being *able* to learn and produce all phonetic sounds of any language. But at a very young age, you lose your ability to say sounds that aren't familiar.
In English, R and L are very different. In Japanese, they're very similar. You actually lose the ability to even *hear* the difference if you aren't exposed to it as a child. In Hindi, there are 3 different ways to pronounce the letter D. It's really hard as an English speaker to even tell any difference between them. And this is proven by experiment: if you slowly transition an R to an L step by step with computer programs, English speakers have a clearer threshold where R becomes L. Japanese speakers have a lot harder time having a consistent threshold of detecting which is which. Same thing for English speakers and the D's.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
What do PhD graduates who get jobs in industry do differently in their PhD program than their peers who get academic jobs?
Options post-graduation basically boil down to academia and industry. I personally would like to go into industry. So what traits, experiences, etc do students tend to display during their PhD program that allows them to jump into industry afterwards? Was previous industry experience a factor or had they gone straight from BS to PhD?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Joining a research group that has placed people into industry. Usually the first position for a newly minted graduate is due to getting one's CV in the hiring manager's hand from someone inside of the company. I've seen this time and time again. Otherwise, you're battling extremely poor signal-to-noise ratios.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Was scientific racism actually "bad science" by the methodological standards of the time?
Apologies if this has been asked before but I have searched around and been unable to find any good discussion on this point.
Obviously the racial science conducted in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries purporting to classify various races into scientific categories and measure them by their intelligence, brain size, savagery, etc was tremendously flawed and harmful. Today we know that our folk racial categories are very weak socially constructed proxies for complicated genetic patterns, that 'savage' and 'civilized' are not objective scientific terms, that geographic and ecological factors are mostly responsible for the technological, social and epidemiological advances which the West made over other countries, that those advances were smaller than the West realized at the time, that phrenology and craniometry do not provide any useful information, and so on. So a lot of people regard what was done in the old days as pseudoscientific.
But lots of other scientific inquiry conducted in other fields in those times was later discredited.
Obviously their conclusions were wrong, but to what extent can we actually say that their methodology was pseudoscientific by the standards of the time and rooted in racism? In other words, how do we know that they only came to the conclusions that they did because they were motivated by a desire to show that their race/country/religion was morally superior, as opposed to simply doing what made sense to them? They didn't know what we did now, and the empirical evidence available to them was that there were relatively distinct different races which had different technological and social capabilities. Is it likely that an unbiased inquirer, to the extent that we can hypothesize such a person in that historical context, would have come to similar conclusions?
Obviously I'm talking about work which was conducted in many different countries for more than a century and a half in various fields of natural and social science. So probably a generalization is not possible. But any information on this would be appreciated.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
I would recommend you check out *The Mismeasure of Man* by Stephen Jay Gould. He wrote about this topic extensively. In his book, he analyzes the work of Samuel George Morton, a renowned race scientist of the 19th century who had the largest collection of human skulls in the United States and was dedicated to using craniometry and supposedly "objective" anthropometric methods to determine the limitations and qualities of each racial group. During his time, Morton was revered as an exemplary empiricist, relying only on the "evidence" of racial differences in the skeletal structures of human beings. Gould's fundamental conclusion, however, showed that even though Morton used quantitative methods, both his measurements and conclusions were biased by his racial-ideological conditioning. Though Morton measured skeletal structures, found the volume of different races' skulls, and generally took obscure measurements, Morton and his ilk failed to see the fallacies their work was based upon, however, because their social context limited their vision his set of unquestioned assumptions about what was true inevitably impacted his scientific conclusions despite the seemingly objective nature of his quantitative methods.
Gould reveals the race scientists' biases by reevalutating their measurements. Gould goes over the multitude of methodological failures of Morton. Firstly and most critically, Morton assumed that intelligence could be quantified. Since Morton believed it related to the physical size of the brain, measurements of the skull were interpreted as objective measurements of intelligence. However, there is *absolutely no proof that this is the case.* One's skull size holds no bearing upon one's abilities or potential. Morton, because of his historic notions of racial hierarchy tracing back to Aristole's Great Chain of Being, Carolus Linnaeus racist categorizing of people, and his upbringing in the slavery capitalism of the US, was unable to realize this fact. In beginning the process of measuring his subjects, Morton massaged his sampling to match his preconceptions. He unconsciously selected for whites with large skulls, but overrepresented Inca Peruvians with smaller ones. When measuring whites, Morton tended to sample male skulls, but mainly measured black female skulls. His results apparently showed a large gap between the skull sizes of whites and blacks. However, when analyzing these differences, Morton did not note that men simply have larger skulls than women. He inflated the racial differences in skull sizes in order to epistemilogically solidify American racial hierarchy Furthermore, Morton's measurements themself reveal a bias towards whites. Morton remeasured the volumes of the skulls in his collection with both pieces of lead and seeds. In the process of remeasuring, however, large discrepancies arose between his original seed measures and the newer volume readings he got using pieces of lead to take skull volume readings. It turned out that white skulls had heavily benefited from being measured with seeds as opposed to lead, coming out with far higher volumes than black, Indian, or Asian skulls. With seeds, skulls could potentially be shaken to settle them within the skull, or stuffed inside of the skull when measuring volumes. Morton could not do this with his lead measurements. However, whites always had consistently larger volumes over other races when measured with seed--a discrepancy that was largely erased when using lead. Gould suggests that this discrepancy could have originated in Morton's assumption that whites would simply have larger skulls than others, and naturally stuffed more seeds into those skulls, but would never have bothered with a black skull.
Gould argues that even though Morton used quantitative methods, and was in fact the standard of his time when it came to the quality of scientific endeavor, his work was nonetheless impacted by the social context of imperial racism that shaped his conclusions *and* even the measurements themselves. Most importantly, what Gould demonstrates is that even if scientists attempts objectivity using seemingly neutral methods of quantitative inquiry, scientists are always impacted by their settings. So to answer your question "was it bad science?" well, Morton's work was highly popular and widely accepted in academia when he was writing because he used the tools of objectivity to approve the dominant power structure of his time. But just because he used those tools does not mean that he was doing "good science, because his reliance upon numbers and measurements did not guarantee any actual truth value in his work. Rather, he validated the social structure he grew up in.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
CMV: Government spending should be referred to as money spent per person living in the country, not the absolute amount.
Lets take the latest US infrastructure bill as an example: 1 trillion dollars spent. That is an amount I can't really grasp. However if you were to divide it by the US population (330 million) it would come out to be $3030 spent per person living in the country. That's an amount I can actually relate to.
This could also be done state level i.e. state spending divided by state population.
Of course the amount wouldn't be exactly what you pay for it (in taxes) as thats obviously dependent on your income etc. but as a ballpark estimate it would still be way more relatable than the absolute amount.
Another reason against it would be that the US also taxes citizens living abroad which are therefore also paying for the spending but they won't be included when dividing by the population. However that would still be a small amount. And also this is specific to the US as other countries generally don't do that.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
The idea seems good on its own, but how would you mandate it? News agencies often change the way they present numbers depending on whether they want to make it seem big or not, wouldn't they also choose whether to use this method or not based on what they want to make you think?<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
What happens during near-death experiences?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
First off: there isn't all that much known about NDE's apart from anecdotal experience.
Chemically, it is often said that during an NDE, there is a release of certain neurotransmitters in your brain, including the powerful psychedelic compound DMT. This is often used as the explanation of the NDE, and the effects of DMT do often correlate with those reported to happen during NDE's.
The 'typical' experience often involves floating above your body and looking at yourself from above; possibly flying around and visiting relatives etc. If you want to experience similar things, try lucid dreaming, meditation and even DMT itself.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: Why do employers want experience for entry-level jobs?
We've all heard of employers who demand a couple of years' experience for even entry-level positions, but I still don't understand why they do that. What's the logic behind wanting that much experience for an entry-level job?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
proof that you can function in a work environment.
seriously... look around you, sad fact is that a sizable portion of our society cannot be relied upon to even show up consistently. Let alone perform semi complex tasks of some importance.
Truth is, they will always *want* experience, doesnt mean they require it. But if they can get enough applications with experience, why wouldnt they. there are internships and tertiary job fields that can provide the first foot hold.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: How was it possible to build those highly accurate CNC machines we have today?
As the questions in the title says, how could we build those higly accurate CNC machines (or any other manufacturing machine) to that accuracy, assuming you need accurate machines to machine the accurate parts for the accurate machine?
Was it some kind of „make 10 parts, take the best one“ and repeating this and gaining the accuracy through that?
And to take the best part, you need good measuring tools and they needed manufacturing by accurate machines and so on.
Its like „what was first, the egg or the hen?“<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
One of the most important parts of how very high precision machine tools are made is the fact that clever design allows relatively inprecise parts to be assembled into a machine that can make a more accurate part. A pretty good example of this is the micrometer, which uses a screw to measure parts with a significant level of precision. Screws are easy to make on even a relatively crude lathe, and micrometers can be used to check the accuracy of parts that will be made into a more precise machine. Another important part of making good machine tools is being able to make perfectly flat surfaces that can be used as beds, machine ways and reference planes. In theory it's possible to rub or scrape any three non-flat surfaces together in a specific order and eventually they will reach whatever level of flatness that is needed for their intended application, without any fancy tools or precision equipment required.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
What do software architects use to plan in advance? (UML tools?)
I'm a self taught Python dude (Biotech pivoting to bioinformatics) and I've been learning through building a procedurally generated video game. As the game gets larger, progress gets slower. I spend (imo) too much time drawing out class architecture and the flow of data, only to have things change the next time I add a feature. There's got to be (free) tools out there to make this easier, but I really don't know what those would be. My googling usually leads me to "3d modeling tools" or "software tools for architects/civil engineers". Even looking at the "best UML tools 2020" I don't know if that's actually what I want, or what the difference between a good and bad one is. I feel like I'm suffering from "I don't know what I don't know" syndrome since I've never taken actual classes or had a mentor. Any help is appreciated.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
I've been a professional software engineer for 12 years now.
I would say that it's not super common to use UML class diagrams in big software companies. As you note, these things change frequently. It's just a fact of life - you can rarely plan the entire system from the beginning. Often you don't even know what you really want until you build it. For your example with a procedurally generated game, maybe you start with just a collection of objects in the world. But then you realize that's too slow, so you need some tiling system to generate new tiles as the player nears them. Then you need a way to unload old tiles (and maybe save enough state to regenerate them the same later).
Experience will help you get better at planning ahead for these things, but there will always be surprises.
In general, such diagrams are most useful to communicate designs between different members of a development team. Usually the class structure shouldn't be super complex, so it can be documented in comments or design documents (usually explaining what the code is trying to accomplish and why is the more important task).
I will say that state machine diagrams or sequence drawings can be pretty helpful. For state diagrams, it can be really helpful to list and explain all of the possible states and show what the transitions are. For example, in a multiplayer game, you might have states for players waiting to join a game, in active gameplay, waiting for respawn, etc. This is particularly useful since many different systems might need to deal with the state.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Is learning RStudio better than MATLAB?
Currently an undergraduate student studying Genetics. I'm learning data computing in RStudios at the moment but I was wondering if other programs like Matlab are better or more helpful when I apply for Master's/PhDs?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Not a genetics student, but it's always valuable to learn a well supported open source language like R or Python.
MatLab costs a small fortune for a licence, and while in academia it shouldn't be an issue just generally there may be a time where it's not always available because of this reason.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: Why is it hard for me to watch others embarrassing moments i.e. Embarrassing scenes in movies and such<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
It is because of empathy, of the ability to put oneself in another's shoes. Most humans have an innate sense of empathy, but the degree varies depending on how much a person develops the thinking habits. By default, though, many humans will not like seeing embarrassing things due to empathetic embarrassment.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Is there a chemical way to supress sexual feelings?
Wasn't sure if this was a better question for askreddit, but i'd like some more intelligent suggestions based off psychological knowledge or chemical/hormonal expertise. Have there been any drug studies of the sort?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Yes, several medications have been investigated for this purpose, and some are used. Certain anti-depressants were found to have a common side effect of diminished sexual arousal/desire and are used for treatment of things like premature ejaculation. Androgen antagonists are also used to treat more significant hypersexual disorders, especially in cases of criminal sexual deviance.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: Why is it easier to gain back muscle after a period of not working out versus when you first started going to the gym?
The title.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
There are two mechanisms for muscle growth. Hypertrophy and hyperplasia. The former refers to protein accretion, so think of it as muscle cells gaining mass. The latter refers to a form of proliferation, where you either get more muscle cells or the cells get more nuclei. Both lead to an increase in size, but when the muscle atrophies (loses size) due to lack of use or mechanical stress, size is lost because of a reduction in size of individual cells due to loss of protein content (and others), but number of cells and number of nuclei is more resistant and stays longer.
So when you lose muscle mass and want to regain it, it is easier to do when you already have more cells and more nuclei per cell. However, hyperplasia capacity decreases over age. Because satellite cells (muscle stem cells) decrease as you age. So if you gain muscle size at a young age, lose it, and train again, it's easier to regain the size than if you started training at an older age, lost it and tried to regain it again.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
CMV: Satan is the hero of the Bible.
I’m speaking purely in a literary sense interpreting the Bible as a narrative. I’m not religious I’m not a Christian or satanist. To me this is like discussing whether Hector or Achilles is the protagonist of the Iliad. This is not a novel idea. Paradise Lost essentially frames Satan as the protagonist but I think if you look at the stories of the Bible typically attributed to Satan (for example the serpent is not specifically mentioned to be Satan but has been interpreted that way culturally) Satan is the good guy of the Bible.
Genesis: Satan convinces the humans to eat of the tree of good and evil. This is framed as a bad thing because human beings now die and experience suffering. But I would argue this is a massive gift from Satan. Knowledge of good and evil gave us ethics and free will. We now could make choices which gives our lives meaning. And again without death it’s impossible for our lives to have any meaning. If we lived forever we’d do everything we could possibly do 100,000 times and we’d still have an eternity left. Death gives our lives purpose and meaning. It means what we do matters I consider that a great gift. Now every hero needs a villain and that villain is obviously god. The guy who made a bunch of creatures to worship him like an authoritarian psychopath and when one guy wanted independence he threw him into an eternal torture chamber. Real heroic stuff. Then after making people, tempting them with the fruit despite the fact that he chose to not give them a sense of right and wrong, he then decided to drown them all because the creature he designed was “wicked”. Then he kills a bunch more people for being gay, then he orders a few genocides in Joshua judges kings etc. our buddy Satan doesn’t show up again until
Job:
Not satans best look, but God sure looks like a douche here. God bets Satan that Job will praise him no matter what Satan disagrees, so God let’s Satan ruin jobs life. Eventually Job gets angry at god, the all knowing god somehow loses a bet then he goes to yell at job and basically tells him “your suffering is for reasons beyond your understanding” when in reality the reason was god wanted to win a bet which is a terrible reason
Finally we have the New Testament. Where god decides the only way he can ever forgive the creatures he made, is to sacrifice a perfectly innocent person in a brutal method of torture. That’s the only way his insatiable blood lust can be partially taken care of. But only for people who believe it on really weak evidence. God still needs some people roasting in hell to fill his nostrils. He couldn’t just go on a loudspeaker and tell the world hey I’m sending a sacrifice to die for you because I love you and want to be with you. You have to believe it because it’s in a book. But anyway Satan offers to give the perfect being Jesus all the power in the world. Imagine a world run by Jesus the most perfect loving human in existence. What kind of global government could he have made with Satan’s power helping him. He could’ve prevented the holocaust, Ghengis Khan etc. but instead nope this perfect beautiful human being needs to be slaughtered and tortured because God just hates his own creations so much he needs to see a perfect person tortured to be satisfied. So Satan tried to save an innocent person and institute a one world government led by gods incarnation on Earth. Sounds pretty heroic to me
Revelation:
God is preparing for his final solution of condemning the vast majority of humanity and creation to eternal torment in the lake of fire and establishing his thousand year theocratic dictatorship a thousand year reich you could say where His sycophantic Christians rule over all the rest of humanity as second class citizens. But then Satan has one last heroic attempt at rebellion. Even though he knows he’s doomed to fail. Even though he knows the cards are stacked against him he rebels anyway because he knows it’s better to die fighting than to die a slave. A tragic ending to a tragic hero<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
First, the Bible is a collection of disparate texts written by different authors in different centuries in different cultural contexts. Attempting to read it as if it is a unified whole is basically a theological viewpoint ("God-breathed scripture").
With that in mind, note that there isn't really a 'Satan' in the Tanakh. In Job, you have the 'ha-satan', or the accuser, and a similar figure appears in Zechariah. That's it. The idea of Satan developed in the Second Temple period as the ruler of evil, taking influence from Zoroastrianism and other pagan philosophies. In apocalyptic thought, which is where Christianity eventually developed from, Satan was the cause of evil in this world, and his eventual defeat would usher in the 'kingdom of God' where evil and death would be driven out.
All this is to say that he's not the protagonist because 1) there isn't a 'protagonist' of the Bible and 2) in the Christian conception he's very clearly the epitome and cause of evil.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: What determines whether gas comes out your mouth or your butt?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
It depends on where the air is released or generated in the metabolic process. If you drink a carbonated beverage, there's a lot of gas dissolved in the soda so you're more likely to burp it out. Other foods create gas as a metabolic by-product and that usually stays trapped in the digestive tract to produce flatulence. If gas is produced in the stomach, you are likely to belch it and if it is produced in the intestines, you would fart it.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: Why do we borrow money from China and give it to countries like Pakistan
How exactly is the juice worth the squeeze?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
We don't do anything similar to that.
What you're referring to is bond sales and foreign aid, two topics that are merely tangential to each other.
Foreign aid is a topic in diplomacy and international relations. It's got both moral and pragmatic dimensions to it. On the one hand, the moral argument goes that those who have more should do more. It's pretty simple, and no different really from the basic moral arguments for charity or generosity … or even hospitality, when you get right down to it. The pragmatic argument is that foreign aid prevents conflicts.
Deficit spending is a *completely* different kettle of fish. It basically works like this: There are two ways, generally speaking, in which governments can fund their activities. One is taxation, and the other is the sale of bonds. All extant governments (worth talking about, anyway) use both of these methods in combination. Taxation is just what you think it is: taking money from the populace through the authority of law. But there are obvious downsides to that approach, both philosophical and economic. So taxation only gets you so far.
Bonds, however, are clear-cut. When a government wants to spend some money — whether it be on buying an aircraft carrier or paying the salaries of a police force or building a school to replace a madrassa in, yes, Pakistan — it issues a series of bonds and sells them on the open market. Anybody can buy bonds. In the United States, about half of all the outstanding Treasury bonds — nearly $8 trillion worth — are held by the government itself, one agency buying bonds from another in order to move money from bank account to bank account. So those really don't count, in any meaningful sense.
Of the rest of the bonds, the largest share — about $4 trillion — is held by *us,* the American people, in one form or another. Over $1 trillion of that is held by individual US citizens who have bought and own US Treasury bonds as personal investments. The rest is held by domestic institutions, like mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, state and municipal governments, commercial banks, credit unions and so on.
And the other quarter? That's held by those same kinds of holders — institutions, private citizens and governments, and most prominently central banks — in other countries.
So what about China's share? China's central bank holds about a quarter of the foreign-held US Treasury bonds — the largest share held by any one party, but just 8% of the total sovereign debt.
And *why* does China's central bank hold US Treasury bonds at all? Because US Treasury bonds are more valuable than yuan. The Chinese central bank can do a better job of managing China's economy if it converts as much of its cash reserves into negotiable instruments of stable value, and US Treasury bonds are the most stable negotiable instruments on the planet. If the US didn't sell Treasury bonds, China's central bank — as well as the central banks of Japan, Brazil, the UK, Switzerland, Taiwan, Russia and all the other economies that currently use the dollar as their preferred reserve currency — would just go shopping for the next best investment and put their money into that instead.
So long story short? The US sells Treasury bonds — "borrows money," if you like, though that's a really misleading way of looking at it, since it implies we're talking about personal debt — because there's a *huge* demand for them, and the revenue from bond sales lets the US do more each year than it could do if it relied on tax revenue alone. Since the American people generally agree — at least right now — that their government should be doing more rather than less, the sale of bonds is a very lucrative way of funding all those extra activities that we couldn't do if we just spent tax dollars.
And yes, one of those *myriad* extra activities is building schools to replace madrassas in Pakistan.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: Why does our body sometimes moves or shakes when We remember a cringy situation from the past?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
If the situation triggers a flight or flight response, the body's first impulse is movement.
A loud noise behind them will cause most people to start. This is your brain telling your body to fire up its muscles and get ready for whatever is about to happen.
Remembering a sufficiently unpleasant situation could trigger a similar flight or fight response, firing off muscles for the hardcoded classic danger response that nearly all mammals share.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
[Anything really] Examples of druids that aren't named as druids?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Ancient Druids were the educated elite of the Celtic people, like doctors and poets, and were responsible for the religious aspect of Celtic society.
The more common interpretation of the druid is generally of someone who communes and lives in harmony with nature, often gaining magical abilities in the process, such as spells and the ability to shapeshift into various animal forms. They might worship nature itself directly, or a nature god/goddess, or they might simply strive to keep the 'balance' of the world between civilisation and the wilderness.
Radaghast the Brown from Middle Earth, while technically a wizard, is very similar to many of the more popular interpretations of what druids were like. He lives in the wild and is a little odd from being alone so long, can communicate with animals, etc. He just lacks the shapeshifting.
Malfurion Stormrage from Warcraft is another one, and he can shapeshift as well as use a whole host of other magical powers.
An argument could be made for Merlin being a druid in certain interpretations, though he's more commonly viewed as a wizard.
There are a bunch of D&D characters that are druids. First one to come to mind is Pikel Bouldershoulder, who's a *dwarf* druid.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Does fiber simply speed up our digestive system, or do our bodies want to expel fiber quickly?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Fiber acts as a bulking agent, and as mentioned by HonorAmongSteves, it carries water, creating a rather substantial mass that moves through one's digestive tract. Peristaltic movements by the colon and eventually defecation are stimulated by stretch receptors present in the wall of the colon. Due to the increased bulk in the colon, stretch receptors are activated, passage is expedited, leading to a faster mouth to anus transit.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Is it better to teach theories first before empirical research?
Hi everyone, I am new to teaching and currently working on a module on the sociology of education, which requires students to describe, apply and evaluate both theory and empirical research. I’m in a little bit of dilemma on how best to structure the content. I usually start by presenting data around a given topic before bringing in relevant theories to make sense of the data. However, I am wondering whether it is is better to first introduce perspectives and then consider research that both supports and challenges those perspectives? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Not your field, but I've had success with an illustrative case followed how different theories explain the case. Then more on the empirics. Case helps make the topic 'real' before revving analytic thinking with theories and using theories to understand the data.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
CMV: The gender pay gap is largely explained by factors other than gender.
When I first started hearing about the general consensus that women are underpaid compared to their male counterparts, (sometime around 2015) I was quick to believe that it was a result of deeply-rooted, institutional biases by employers and business models.
Since then, on several occasions, I have deep-dived, to try and find my own sources of information and get a clearer picture of what exactly was happening and why.
Unfortunately, the more I read, the more I find that
A- The wage gap is nowhere near as large as the general twitter-sphere claims it is (as much as 18%) and in reality it appears to be closer to 2%.
B- Most of the reasons for this gap are explained by factors OTHER than gender, such as education, experience and industry.
So, I have arrived at the conclusion that essentially, people are making a mountain out of a molehill and any attempt I make to point out that the pay-gap is not as widespread and gigantic as social-media clickbait would lead you to believe, I am made to feel like an ignorant misogynist.
I really do want to have my view changed on this. I'm generally very progressive, and I want to be presented with information that will unlearn this viewpoint I have.
I find myself at odds with my girlfriend over it and I can't bring myself to just lie and say "You're right, women are overpaid everywhere because sexism, the end".
Help me out, Reddit.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
It depends on what you mean by including gender as a factor here.
On average, the main drivers of the "wage gap" are:
* Women on average tend to favor flexible hours over money. More women work part time than men. This is likely because women are still expected to do unpaid house and care work for their family should the need arise.
* Women tend to only apply to jobs they are fully qualified for. Men will apply to jobs that they are underqualified for.
* Women tend to be less bold in salary negotiations.
* Women tend to make different subfield choices than men, usually preferring more "people-centric" lines of work. For example, a roughly equal number of men and women graduate medical school, but more women tend to go into pediatrics afterwards, while more men go into anesthesiology. The latter pays more, so men in medicine will tend make more (because of all the aggregate subfield decisions in this direction.)
Now the question is: are women making these choices because they reflect their authentic desires, or because they feel pressured to? If you think that the difference in choice is primarily driven by how women are socialized, then there is still an issue here that could be resolved. It just pushes advocacy back a step to advocacy for cultural and norm changes. We could normalize women not taking time off to take care of their families, being workaholics who work 50 hours a week, etc.
On the other hand, if you think that women and men have naturally different psychological tendencies on average, then you might say the world is close to being just, even if we have different outcomes.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: What is the difference between theory and law in science?
For example: theory of relativity and law of gravity.
I googled this but answer wasn’t clear to me.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
In science a law is a **description** of an observed phenomenon. Often this takes the form of a mathematical equation describing the relationship between observed phenomenon.
A theory in contrast is an **explanation** of why a phenomenon exists or what causes it. They run the range of completely untested guesses to enormously supported explanations accepted by basically everyone as correct; there is no "graduation" from one thing to another via consensus or evidential support, a theory is always a theory no matter how well or little it is accepted.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Do philosophers have a moral obligation to follow their own school of thought? If not, is there a rationale for not doing so? AKA why aren't all philosophers vegan?
This question primarily stemmed from my pondering on whether there was any argument to be made to support the eating of meat. I have search through both /r/askphilosophy and /r/philosophy and the consensus seems to be that no, there is almost no philosophical justification for eating meat if there's no nutritional need to do so (which for most adults there doesn't seem to be).
But I also got the indication that while most philosophers (assuming at least some fraction of people posting in these subs have a background in it) agree that eating meat is not morally acceptable, they still do so themselves. That raises a more fundamental question? Do philosophers today follow whatever school of moral rules they believe makes most sense to the extent that it does apply directly to their life? Did philosophers of the past do so at least? And if a philosopher chooses not to "drink his own Kool aid" in the parlance of our times, is there a moral justification they can give for not doing so?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Interestingly, ethicists *are* more likely to be vegan than laymen, in addition to being more likely to hold the ethical position for which veganism is one consequence.
Nonetheless, even among the philosophers who agree with the ethical position, a majority are not vegan.
To me, this really seems like a question about human psychology and how people rationalize/how our beliefs do or do not motivate our actions.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
[ELI5] With supply-chain delays of trucks, ships, etc. costing "millions of dollars per day," who exactly is it costing?
I'm reading about the backup of trucks at the border between Mexico and Texas, which was said to be costing $100 million a day (when trucks were stopped), and now $2.4 million per day with the inspections. But none of the articles explain how the economics of this work out.
While I understand it has an economic impact, I'm a little unclear on who it is "costing". Is it the trucking companies, because they have to pay drivers for more time? Or the companies who sold the goods? The ones buying them? (Or all three?)
Like, if a truckload of apples rots while sitting at a checkpoint, who pays for that? I would assume the trucking companies have insurance. Or are the buyers having to pay for rotten apples? Or do the sellers have to eat the cost of lost product?
I know costs could eventually hit consumers due to shortage of supply, but that seems like a different issue.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Many businesses rely on estimates of what they expect to receive and sell, not having the product to sell while still having costs to pay (like payroll) means they count each day of lost sales as direct monetary loss<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: If a fever, coughing, vomiting or diarrhea are the body’s defenses fighting an infection, why do OTC drugs offer to combat the symptoms? Wouldn't you want the body to do its job?
I understand that deaths related to Spanish Fever were caused by the body's overreaction, but most symptoms of a sickness are the body’s defenses fighting the battle. Shouldn't they be aided and not suppressed or is it all just marketing and they are really just drugging you with a small dose of DXM?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
The symptoms you list might be *part* of an immune response, but the real work in fighting the infection is being done at the cellular level by your immune system. Stopping these symptoms does not stop the immune response.
If you have a cold and you stop the runny nose by taking something, the immune system hasn't shut down. It is still actively fighting the virus. But you just aren't as miserable.
In more extreme cases, like high fevers where the fever does actively help the body, the issue is that the body can push the fever past the point of helpfulness and into a dangerous realm. We don't know why it does this. We do know that you can suffer long term consequences from running a very high fever for an extended period of time, so the fever gets treated alongside the illness.
Some symptoms, like vomiting or diarrhea, might help flush out the issue, but again, can cause harm to the body as well (dehydration being the main one here). They are also not fun symptoms to experience. But even though these are part of the immune response, they are not the whole thing. The real work is being done at the cellular level.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
How has the understanding of exoplanets changed since the first were detected in 1988?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Among various discoveries:
* Exoplanets seem to be very common for many types of stars - other than failing to detect planets due to technological limitations, just about everywhere we've looked for planets, we've found them. We've even observed what are believed to be the remains of destroyed planets around white dwarfs, the dead remnants of stars.
* Planets can exist both much closer and much further from their stars than we see in the Solar System. The discovery of "hot Jupiters" (and then hot Saturns, hot Neptunes, hot Super-Earths...) came as quite a surprise, and their formation mechanism is still an open question.
* Planets come in all shapes and sizes. Whilst there is quite a gap in size between Earth and Neptune in the Solar System, we've found plenty of planets with intermediate masses and radii. There is still debate as to whether these are Super-Earths, Mini-Neptunes, or an entirely different type of planet.
* Exoplanet atmospheres are also diverse. We've seen clear atmospheres, hazy atmospheres, thick cloud decks, no atmospheres, atmospheres visibly being boiled off by a star - again, attempting to describe these variations and work out what types of clouds exist are hot topics in research.
* Multi-planet systems are common, especially for rocky planets. Once again, a feature that is unlike the solar system is how close some of the known planets are to one another - theoretical work implies that they are about as close as they can be without disastrously affecting each other's orbits.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Why we are more flexible when we’re younger? What changes as we age so it’s harder for us to stretch?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
NAD or licensed professional but am a exercise science major + working under a physical therapist + occupational therapist.
Our bodies lose a small amount of flexibility as we age due to natural aging processes. This can occur due to a variety of factors such as a loss of water in our tissues and spine, increased stiffness in our joints, and a loss of elasticity throughout the muscle tendons and surrounding tissue.
Because the amount of lubricating fluid inside your joints decreases and the cartilage thins as you age, joint movement becomes stiffer and less flexible. Ligaments also shorten and lose flexibility, causing joints to feel stiff.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
CMV: Artificial intelligence can't become conscious.
I believe that it is not possible for a mere computer program, running on a Turing-equivalent machine, to ever develop consciousness.
Perhaps consciousness is a fundamental force of nature, like gravity or magnetism, in which case it lies outside of the domain of computer science and therefore artificial intelligence. Alternatively, perhaps our brains are capable of [hyper-computation](https://arxiv.org/ftp/math/papers/0209/0209332.pdf), but this is not a serious field of research because all known models of hyper-computers can't exist in our universe (except possibly at the edges of black holes where space-time does weird things, but I think it's safe to say that humans aren't walking around with black holes in their heads). I shall consider these possibilities outside of the scope of this CMV, since AI research isn't headed in those directions.
My reason for believing this was inspired by [a bunch of rocks](https://xkcd.com/505/).
The way we design computers today is totally arbitrary and nothing like how a human brain operates. Our brains are made up of a large network of neurons connected via axons and dendrites which send signals chemically through a variety of different neurotransmitters. Modern computers, by contrast, are made up of a large network of transistors connected via tiny wires which send binary electrical signals. If it was possible to write a program which, if run on a computer, develops a consciousness, then this difference would imply that consciousness likely doesn't depend on the medium upon which the computations are performed.
Computers of the past used to be based on vacuum tubes or relays instead of transistors. It's also possible to design a computer based on [fludic logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluidics), in which signals are sent as pressure waves through a fluid instead of an electrical pulse. There are even designs for a [purely mechanical computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Engine). The important point is that you can build a Turing-equivalent computer using any of these methods. The same AI software could be run on any of them, albeit probably much more slowly. If it can develop a consciousness on any one of them, it ought to be able to develop a consciousness on all of them.
But why stop there?
Ultimately, a computer is little more than a memory store and a processor. Programs are stored in memory and their instructions are fed one-by-one into the processor. The instructions themselves are incredibly simple - load and store numbers in memory, add or subtract these numbers, jump to a different instruction based on the result... that's actually about all you need. All other instructions implemented by modern processors could be written in terms of these.
Computer memory doesn't have to be implemented via electrical transistors. You can use dots on a sheet of paper or a bunch of rocks sitting in a vast desert. Likewise, the execution of program instructions doesn't have to be automated - a mathematician could calculate by hand each instruction individually and write out the result on a piece of paper. It shouldn't make a difference as far as the software is concerned.
Now for the absurd bit, assuming computers could become conscious.
What if our mathematician, hand-computing the code to our AI, wrote out all of his work - a complete trace of the program's execution? Let's say he never erased anything. For each instruction in the program, he'd simply write out the instruction, its result, the address of the next instruction, and the addresses / values of all updates to memory (or, alternatively, a copy of all memory allocated by the program that includes these updates).
After running the program to completion, what if our mathematician did it all again a second time? The same program, the same initial memory values. Would a consciousness be created a second time, albeit having exactly the same experiences? A negative answer to this question would be very bizarre. If you ran the same program twice with exactly the same inputs, it would become conscious the first time but not the second? How could the universe possibly remember that this particular program was already run once before and thereby force all subsequent executions to not develop consciousness?
What if a layman came by and copied down the mathematician's written work, but without understanding it. Would that cause the program to become conscious again? Why should it matter whether he understands what he's writing? Arguably even the mathematician didn't understand the whole program, only each instruction in isolation. Would this mean there exists a sequence of symbols which, when written down, would automatically develop consciousness?
What if our mathematician did not actually write out the steps of this second execution. What if he just read off all of his work from the first run and verified mentally that each instruction was processed correctly. Would our AI become conscious then? Would this mean there exists a sequence of symbols which, if even just *read*, would automatically develop consciousness? Why should the universe care whether or not someone is actively reading these symbols? Why should the number of times the program develops consciousness depend on the number of people who simply read it?
To change my view, you could explain to me how a program running on a modern/future Turing-equivalent computer could develop consciousness, but would not if run on a computationally equivalent but mechanically simpler machine. Alternatively, you could make the argument that my absurd consequences don't actually follow from my premises - that there's a fundamental difference between what our mathematician does and what happens in an electronic/fluidic/mechanical computer. You could also argue that the human brain might actually be a hypercomputer and that hyper-computation is a realistic direction for AI research, thereby invalidating my argument which depends on Turing-equivalence.
What won't change my view, however, are arguments along the lines of "since humans are conscious, therefore it must be possible to create a consciousness by simulating a human brain". Such a thing would mean that my absurd conclusions have to be true, and it seems disingenuous to hold an absurd view simply because it's the least absurd of all others that I currently know of.
* EDIT:
A few people have requested that I clarify what I mean by "consciousness". I mean in the human sense - in the way that you and I are conscious right now. We are aware of ourselves, we have subjective experiences.
I do not know of an actual definition for consciousness, but I can point out one characteristic of consciousness that would force us to consider how we might ethically treat an AI. For example, the ability to suffer and experience pain, or the desire to continue "living" - at which point turning off the computer / shutting down the program might be construed as murder. There is nothing wrong with shooting pixellated Nazis in Call of Duty or disemboweling demons with chainsaws in Doom - but clearly such things are abhorrent when done to living things, because the experience of having such things done to you or your loved ones is horrifying/painful.
My CMV deals with the question of whether it's possible to ever create an AI to which it would also be abhorrent to do these things, since it would actually experience it. I don't think it is, since having that experience implies it must be conscious during it.
An interview with Sam Harris I heard recently discussed this topic more eloquently than I can - I'll post a link here when I can find it again.
EDIT EDIT:
Thanks to Albino_Smurf for finding one of the [Sam Harris podcasts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaNLX71Hl88) discussing it, although this isn't the one I originally heard.
_____
> *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
How do you prove consciousness? We have tests that can be performed, but we must design the test and determine what criteria is needed in order to pass it. Does consciousness have to be biological? Why does it even need to exist from our understanding of it? Why do humans get to set the standard of what conscience is? How can we assume that we're the bar/standard/perfect form of it?
I don't think it's about whether we will create consciousness or not, but whether we can create something that simulates it to a point where we can't tell the difference. Since the human brain is limited with evolution over hundreds of thousands of years, the growth of computing ability certainly will surpass it at some point in the future if it hasn't done so already, just waiting for a good-enough program. It doesn't need to simulate the human brain, it just needs to trick it to beat us.
We can't focus on *how* it was created, or the source of the code. Knowing that fact would change your opinion of whether something is conscious or not, regardless of how well it performs.
It doesn't matter whether humans are truly conscious, or whether computers can replicate whatever that may be. We gradually work on AI improving it iteration by iteration. It doesn't need to simulate a human brain. All it needs to do is to create an output that convincingly matches it. And once we get to that point which is inevitable, it should be able to live-test itself and to further identify weaknesses and improve itself, to the point where it's questioning and testing whether we're actually conscious...
I think the point is if conscience is some objective state that is a binary yes/no, then maybe computers can't reach it, but it can act in a way that we won't be able to tell the difference. If it's a continuous spectrum, then certainly computers will be able to step by step progress to a point where it surpasses whatever stage humans are currently, and continue to develop faster.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
ELI5: Why are waiters/waitresses paid below minimum wage in the U.S.? Isn't a tip not a tip anymore when you're essentially paying their living wages and subsidizing the restaurant's payroll?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
1. Servers used to be paid normal wages.
2. People gave them tips.
3. Restaurant owners noticed that the servers got roughly as much in tips as they did in wages. They saw a cost-cutting opportunity.
4. Restaurant owners successfully lobbied Congress to put in an exemption to the federal minimum wage law, citing that servers made plenty of money on tips alone.
5. And here we are.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
Is the Cornell note taking method actually superior to alternative forms of note taking?
I have read that the Cornell method helps stimulate the mind, as it involves more interaction with the written material. Is there any truth to this?
Additionally, why are hand written notes superior to typed up notes?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
You are asking questions of subjective experience as if it were objective truth.
The Cornell method requires a certain additional interaction, as you note. Additional interaction is correlated with better retention. That's generally "superior" to just writing things down once, but there are plenty of "alternative" forms that also encourage additional interaction, and good study habits involve additional interaction regardless of note-taking techniques.
Good study requires interaction with the material - reading, interpreting, synthesising. The Cornell style builds that into the note-taking, but there are plenty of other ways to do it, so the Cornell style isn't innately "superior". There are plenty of ways to get that interaction without Cornell. Scribbling random notes down as the lecturer talks and never coming back to them is not one of those ways, however.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
CMV: The “Don’t Say Gay” bill does not discriminate against the LGBT community
First, the bill is called “Florida House Bill 1557: Parental Rights in Education”. From my understanding, the part that is the most controversial is the fact that it prohibits the discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in classroom settings from kindergarten to third grade.
I think this is exactly as it should be. Kids are only 5-8 in these grades. This bill doesn’t limit sexual education in any way as it allows for the typical sex ed classes in middle/high school.
Even if you think discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity should take place prior to middle school, this bill also limits the discussion of heterosexuality and cis gender identity, so this doesn’t harm LGBT people any more than it does straight people.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Sexual orientation and gender identity aren't just or even mostly about sexual intercourse. For example, discussing a person with two fathers or two mothers, a person in a same-sex relationship, romantic feelings, etc would be "banned", all while it's perfectly fine to have the same discussions about opposite-sex relationships.
How is that not discriminatory?<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
How does synthetic food flavoring work? How is it that ,for example, pizza flavored chips sort of taste like actual pizza?<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Chemists determine what molecules are responsible for what our bodies recognize as "pizza" or "grape" or whatever flavor they want to duplicate, then either isolate these compounds from natural sources (for natural flavors) or synthesize them from other compounds (for artificial flavors). Often what we think of as "pizza" or "grape" is more than one compound that is mixed together. However, some flavors are very recognizable from one compound (e.g. "grape soda" flavor is methyl anthranilate).
There are lots of laws that govern what kinds of compounds can be used, and what they must be labeled as (natural flavors, natural with other natural flavors, artificial, etc.) that vary from country to country.
Flavor chemistry is as much an art as a science, and flavor companies pay lots for people that are able to blend compounds in the right proportions to duplicate the flavors we taste in nature. A flavor chemist would be an interesting AMA.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
How can railway cables be kilometres long without a huge voltage drop?
I was wondering about this, since the cables aren't immensely thick. Where I live there runs a one phase 1500V DC current to supply the trains with power, so wouldn't there be an enormous voltage drop over distance? Even with the 15kV AC power supply in neighbouring countries this voltage drop should still be very significant.<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
Part of designing such systems is allowing for fairly substantial swings in actual supply voltage compared to the nominal.
(The IEC 60850 standard, for instance, specifies that a nominal 1500 VDC system is in spec as long as the voltage on the line is anywhere between 1000 and 1800 VDC.)
System design considerations include the selection of suitably-large, low-resistance conductors, as well as regular placement of substations to connect the high-voltage AC grid to the railway's overhead wires.<|im_end|>
|
<|im_start|>user
How do we know genetically modified foods are safe for human consumption?
Taking BT corn for example. Assuming the necessary animal and human trials have been conducted to demonstrate the cry1Ac protein is safe for human consumption:
This protein is 1178 AA in length, yet the gene it is encoded in is 75 Kb. That would suggest only 4.7% of this gene codes for the cry1Ac protein.
How thoroughly do we understand the structure and function of the other 95.3% of the gene?
Are all the other coding, non-coding, promoter, etc sequences thoroughly studied to make sure no unexpected effects could occur? And what about epigenetic factors?
In my graduate biotechnology course I was told we did not fully understand how most non-coding DNA operated, and we were just beginning to get a grasp on epigenetic mechanisms. If we do not fully understand what these non-coding genes do, how can we say it is absolutely safe for human consumption?
edit: [data source](http://www.uniprot.org/uniprot/P05068)<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant
You are asking the wrong question:
**How do we know that foods which are not genetically engineered are safe for human consumption?**
***
First the GM crops
The only mechanism by which DNA can harm us is by the proteins that it encodes. DNA itself can do nothing, it just gets digested. DNA is DNA no matter it's source.
The proteins that we want a GE organism to express are very well understood. That is the point of selecting them.
The plants then are tested extensively for allergens and if there is even the slightest chance somebody could be allergic to the protein, then it doesn't get approved.
***
For non-GM crops
No testing is done with non-GM crops and some of these are lethal to some people, such as peanuts.
There is no guarantee that a traditionally bred plant isn't poisonous, after all 1000s of genes are being modified, and none of these are tested.
Many hybrid plants are mutagens, that is they were created by radiation, chemical or other type of mutating agents. Again 100s of genes can be altered in random ways. These are also untested and many are grown as "organic".
***
**So ask yourself, why can a person use radiation to randomly alter the genome a plant and it is ok to sell that as organic without testing. But if a scientist changes a single gene in a lab, then it suddenly requires major legal and regulatory hurdles?**<|im_end|>
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.