Split (1)

train · 52.8k rows

text stringlengths 82 65.5k
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How does it hurt someone to be over-qualified for a job? I'm planning to get my PhD, but I'm not entirely sure what I want to do for a career. I'm worried that having a PhD would make me overqualified for other jobs. I've often heard that this happens, but I do not understand why. If I have a PhD in one subject, but pursue a career in an unrelated field, will my PhD hinder my chances of getting that job?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The employer may feel that your high qualifications mean you won't be satisfied with the job, perhaps due to it being insufficiently stimulating. This might lead to you looking for other jobs and quickly quitting the old one. The employer wants to avoid hiring an employee who will leave shortly, because then they would have to go through the application/interview procedure again which wastes time (edit: oh, and money, of course). So they don't hire someone that they think will want to leave very quickly.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What do divestments in Russian assets acheive? Norway's sov wealth fund now says it will also divest of Russian assets. But does this do anything to harm Russia at all economically? Doesn't it just mean potential Russian buyers could buy shares for a lot less than their original value, while at the same time giving them more control over their own nation's organisations? And in any case, is it even possible to offload such a large amount of assets? Who can afford to buy multiple billions of dollars worth of shares right now?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It affects their ability to raise capital in future. Imagine there’s the total supply of Russian assets and total demand for Russian assets. If one group of investors divests and no longer demands Russian assets, that has to be absorbed by the remaining pool of investors. As with any demand shift, you’d expect a price reduction and a quantity reduction. As the existing assets can’t cease to exist, the reduced quantity comes via crowding out new investment.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Trying to reverse engineer POST requests, how do I 'catch' them? I can see the response in Developer tools, but I can't see the POST request being sent. Do I really need to MITM myself to see this?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant You should be able to see the contents of POST requests in dev tools. Assuming you're talking about Chrome, under the "Headers" tab of the request detail, there should be a section "Request Payload" which contains the request body.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: why do you get the pee shivers, and what's going on to make your body do that? Pee shivers. What's the deal?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant I've asked this question here before and have yet to find a suitable answer. Edit: Did google search. The following is courtesy of Mental_Floss. The most plausible one, espoused by a number of scientists who aren't this guy, is that the shiver is a result of two parts of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) getting their streams crossed. The ANS is a control system for involuntary muscles affects things like heart and respiration rates, digestion, body temperature control and urination. The ANS has two divisions. The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) controls bladder function, among other things. It keeps the bladder relaxed and the urethral sphincter contracted so you don't have to concentrate on not peeing your pants all day. The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) relaxes the urethral sphincter and contracts the bladder when you decide to answer nature's call. Part of the SNS response to a full bladder is the release of chemicals like catecholamines (which include epinephrine, norepinephrine and dopamine). When you finally grab a minute to urinate, the PNS takes over, and catecholamine production changes. Some sources point at the change in chemical production as the cause of the shiver, and others say it's the SNS to PNS switch itself that does it.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do fruits like pinneapples and kiwi leave a rough feeling on the tongue?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Human skin contains oils which aid in blocking out the absorption of chemicals which would harm or irritate the skin. Those oils contain proteins. Pineapple contains a chemical compound called bromelain which has the ability to break down these proteins. This enzyme is called a protease. Kiwis also contain a protease called actinidin. Because these enzymes readily breaks down proteins, bromelain is frequently used as a natural meat tenderizer. In addition, they may also induce a prickly sensation in the mouth when consumed. In pineapples the enzyme is present in all parts of the plant, it's most concentrated in the stem, the hard piece in the middle of the fruit, which is much more fibrous and chewy but still edible.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [General Superhero]What would the medical term for super powers be? Like if I were filling out a patient form at a doctors office, how would the question asking if I had any super powers be worded, and what would the actual medical condition be named?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant For arbitrarily complex medical language, it's going to depend entirely on the mechanism by which your powers were attained. Which of course depends entirely on the universe. Mutants, Metas, aliens, supers, etc. A couple of universe-agnostic possibilities: Have you ever been a participant in an event that granted you para/extra/trans-normal talents or abilities? Are you a member of a para/extra/meta/trans-human species/subgroup? Have you ever been altered on a genetic level? Are you human?<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Difference between exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis I tried doing research/ readings but I'm still pretty confused. Any explanation would be very helpful.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Hello! An EFA is for finding the factor structure of a set of items. A CFA is for confirming that factor structure. So let's say you developed a new measure of say...depression. You get like 500 people to take the measure and conduct an EFA on their responses. You learn that there are apparently 3 factors underlying the data, so you then review the text of the items to see what the common theme among each factor is - let's say sadness, lethargy, and ideation for argument sake. This process will also tell you which items are not good and should be culled from the measure. Then, you would collect ANOTHER sample of about the same size using the items that fit well from your EFA except this time you impose the factor structure you found from the EFA onto the data instead of telling the software to "find" the best factor structure. With CFA you are asking it to tell you how well the factor structure from your EFA fits the data from your new sample. If it fits it well you would say you have "Confirmed" the factor structure, thus CFA. Hope that helps!<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do computers start to slow down over time?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There's many different things at play here, but here's just a few. First and foremost, your software programs become more demanding over time, while your computer's physical hardware stays the same. As software is updated and made more complex, your hardware falls behind because it's still the same old hardware running new and more complex software. Another major factor is how much software you've installed over time. Lots of programs run automatically when you start your computer, and many users have a tendency to install many programs over the years and never uninstall them. They build up over time, and eventually your computer will have to launch a couple dozen programs every time you turn it on, and keep them all running in the background while you use your computer. There's other more subtle factors as well. Battery powered devices like cell phones are often designed to intentionally slow down as the battery ages, to prevent situations where the old battery can't supply enough power to drive the phone. If you've seen an old phone that randomly turns off even though it still has some battery remaining, that's what happens when the battery can no longer support the device at its full speed. Devices with cooling fans such as laptops, computers, and gaming consoles also fall to another culprit -- dust. Over time, dust will pile up on the cooling vents and block the flow of air through your fans. This makes it harder for your computer to stay cool. Over time, as your computer gets hotter and hotter, it will start to slow itself down to prevent heat damage to its components. This is especially common with gaming; cooling is very important because the computer is working very hard.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What advancements could quantum computing provide for future videogames? Would CPUs and GPUs be more powerful, resulting in realistic game physics and unlimited AI? What other effects could we potentially see? I'm new to the ideas and potential of quantum computing.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Quantum computers produce probabilistic results. That is, if you ask it to add 2+2 you might get something close to 4 with error bars. Software written for a normal Turing machine (e.g. Crysis) probably won't ever transition well to a machine that is technically bad at basic math. Quantum computers are not even currently particularly fast and do not threaten encryption through raw power. They also can't really check every possible outcome at once, although Grover's algorithm can do something sort of conceptually similar where it checks O(N) possible encryption keys in O(N)^1/2 operations. Unless you are doing specialized math or cryptography and you're okay with a small chance that your computer will give you the wrong answer, then you probably don't ever want a quantum computer.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why can't we make the 9 essential amino acids? From what I understand, other organisms can synthesize them so where along the evolutionary period did we lose this ability?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The exact point at which our ancestors lost the ability to synthesize the amino acid is going to vary greatly between each of the nine essential amino acids, but the basic concept is the same for all of them. TL;DR: Our ancestors got sufficient quantities of them in their diet. If a species partakes in a diet that supplies it with enough of an amino acid, then there is no need for the organism to synthesize it, and in fact it becomes wasteful for the organism to be producing all the biological machinery it needs to synthesize that amino acid. So, there is no downside to not synthesizing the amino acid, and a slight downside to synthesizing it (Side note: it's always amazed me how such slight advantages propagate so readily throughout a population over the generations). As tends to happen, the organisms with the slight disadvantage have less chance of surviving and reproducing than the ones without that disadvantage, and eventually all members of the species lose the ability to synthesize the amino acid. Edit: Read /u/EvanRWT's comment about a far more likely way that such slight advantages become so widespread.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How did Walmart become so successful? Did it use the government to pass laws that helped it expand/corporate welfare, or does it have nothing to do with any of that?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant They buy in bulk, make incredibly good deals with manufacturers, move into growing areas that are ripe for their business model, when economically feasible instead of buying from a supplier they buy the supplier, own the land their businesses sit on(mostly) and own their own shipping company. By keeping everything in house they dominate. Having unending capital can do that for you.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Eli5 why foam is always white, regardless of the color of soap or detergent?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Whenever light goes from one transparent material to another, some of the light is reflected off the surface. You can see your own reflection in a glass window. Foam has lots of surfaces like this, all the walls of the individual bubbles at different angles to each other, so the light goes in, bounces off the surfaces like crazy, and comes out in random directions. So what we see is white, because the scattering effect from the bubble walls is so much stronger than the absorption from the liquid's natural color. The light bounces back out of the foam before it can go through enough liquid to affect the color. You see the same thing in other situations. Crushed glass turns from clear to white. A crushed hard candy turns from a clear bright color to a pale pastel powder. And if you do something to reduce the amount of scattering off the surfaces, the material will become clear again. Pour water onto glass powder and it becomes clear, because there's less reflection between the water and glass than between air and glass. Pour oil onto paper and it becomes translucent.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Does isotopic abundance differ enough on the various planets enough to think about producing planet specific periodic tables? So the relative atomic masses on our periodic table are earth specific. Would there be a significant enough difference in isotopic abundances from Earth to warrant a change in these reported masses for that planet or moon?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The periodic table is really just a guide; anyone doing real calculations should have some idea of the isotopes (or distribution of isotopes) that are involved, and they would adjust the numbers accordingly. Furthermore, the mass of the elements on the periodic table isn't really a critical part of the periodic table. It's added there as an extra piece of useful info. The periodic table is characterized by its order by atomic number and arrangement of the rows to maintain periodic patterns.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What exactly is a watershed and how does it work? For instance, we live in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed area. I have attempted to read on the subject, and consider myself a smart gal, but this just confuses me all day. Thanks<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Pick a spot on the ground. Imagine that a raindrop falls on that spot. Imagine that it doesn't soak in, but it runs downhill. Which way will it go? Trace its path. Eventually, it will flow into a stream. That stream will flow into a bigger stream, which will flow into a river, which may flow into a bigger river, and so on, which will eventually reach the sea. The last river will have a name; let's say it's the Mississippi. That means your original spot was part of the Mississippi watershed. Sometimes large watersheds are divided into smaller watersheds named after the various rivers that flow into it; for example, the Mississippi watershed may be divided into the Ohio watershed, the Missouri watershed, and so on.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Carbon makes steel strong. But why does too much carbon makes the steel brittle? Carbon is added to steel to increase its strength and hardness but why does too much carbon makes it brittle? Can some explain in terms of the iron crystal lattices ?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Metals have crystals. The atoms in the metal form these grids with space in between. Regions inside metals all with the same pattern and orientation are called grains. A single metal can have many small grains or it can be few large grains Defects in metals form inside these structure at grain boundaries. Where the crystal faces one way and then suddenly a different crystal faces another, cracks form easily. Imagine a metal sword made of two grains. The boundary runs across the sword the short way, through the middle. If the sword gets hit, the crack only has to start there to make it all the way across the sword through the shortest path possible. Compared to an iron atom, a carbon atom is very small. These atoms can get in between iron atoms and force new grain boundary patterns to form around them. So if there are a lot of carbon atoms, the grain boundaries are very small. Like the lines of a jig-saw puzzle, cracks have to jog around all kinds of grain boundaries to make it all the way through the metal. No single crack can follow one grain boundary all the way through. If there are too many grains because they are super small, the metal becomes weak in a new way. It becomes soft and more malleable because of all these small slip interfaces.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why is Finnegan's Wake considered to be such a classic of English literature, when it's completely incomprehensible and scholars can't even agree on what the plot is? I mean really, here's the whole book - http://www.chartrain.org/PDF/Finnegans.pdf - what the hell?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Some literature is interesting not for its themes, popularity, or plot, but because of the way it uses language and explores the English language and the written medium. Finnegan's Wake is interesting precisely because it's (almost) completely incomprehensible. Think of it like Marcel Duchamp's urinal, submitted to an art competition. The urinal is, of course, not beautiful, nor of any civic value, and displays no great skills of the artist. But in the absurdity of submitting a urinal to an art competition, Duchamp challenges traditional ideas about art by taking the typical discussion of what art is to an extreme conclusion. Finnegan's Wake, like Duchamp's urinal, is interesting. That doesn't mean it has to be enjoyable.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: We raise children to embody "good" personality traits, but society heavily rewards "bad" behavior. In essence, by trying to raise our children to be good people, we are ultimately setting them up for failure. NOTE: I would like to preface this by saying that we should NOT change what we preach, but I believe that society needs to stop rewarding liars, cheaters, and manipulators, and instead, needs to start rewarding the "good" behaviors that are supposed to make us better people. We frequently hear about how the rich are getting richer at the expense of the poor, how rich people are jerks or sociopaths and that's what made them successful, how some company lied through their teeth and broke a dozen laws to make a ton of money and then didn't get penalized for it, how people with power are becoming physically abusive to those without it, or how corrupt businesses and politics in general can be. These things are constantly in the news, and people wonder why the little guy can't catch a break. We try to be good people. We work hard and do our best, and yet somehow it feels like we always get the bad end of the deal. While "good" and "bad" are open to individual interpretation, people who adhere to the personality traits that we were told to embody as children are usually seen as good people, but instead of being rewarded for it, they're often punished for it. 1. Be kind = Get walked on, used, & abused - If you stand up for yourself, you're seen as being "mean". 2. Have a positive attitude and only say positive things = Don't stand up for yourself or address a problem, even if presenting a solution. Negativity is unattractive (see #1) and people don't like problems OR messengers. Instead, just ignore them and hope that they go away, even though they won't, and will only continue to get worse over time. 3. Be a hard worker and have a good work ethic = Pick up the slack and extra work for all of your coworkers and boss without any sort of thanks or compensation. You don't like that? Refer to #2. 4. Be good at what you do = There are lots of people who are good at what you do, so spend all of your time, even personal time, trying to be even better than all of them. You won't be compensated for it, but refer to #2 and #3. And never forget - there are a million people who can take your place, and your company is willing to pay your replacement, even if they won't pay you. 5. Do a lot of things = #3 + #4 x ? number of roles, and all so that no one has any idea what you actually do, so you'll be phased out. 6. Be a team player = Let your bosses walk all over you and your coworkers take credit for your work. 7. Respect your elders = Do what you're told without thinking so that they can yell at you for having a mind of your own AND for not thinking for yourself, and let them abuse you in general, because they've earned it by putting up with other people doing this to them for longer than you have. 8. Listen to those who know more than you = This is entirely based on the perception of the person giving you this advice, and therefore includes people who know nothing, and lie to you constantly about their knowledge. And of course, question nothing at all, because how much do you REALLY know? 9. Trust others and give them the benefit of the doubt = They will betray you, because they know that they can lie to you and you'll believe them. 10. Tell the truth = ... so that people can (possibly purposefully) misinterpret and get offended by every miniscule thing that you say, even if it is straight fact, so you can be seen as "unprofessional" for not towing the company line, and you can be fired for offending someone. 11. Don't lie, cheat, or steal = Give everyone else an unfair advantage, because you're "better" than them somehow by adhering to "good" behaviors that you are not in any way shape or form rewarded for. 12. Don't manipulate people = Good luck finding a customer-facing job that pays a livable wage, and definitely don't even think about standing up to your bosses or coworkers when they're trying to manipulate you, because they'll accuse you of manipulating them instead. 13. Be supportive and put others first = Make everything about everyone else and ignore your own needs. Hopefully if you only focus on them, they'll like you, and maybe one day they MIGHT care about something that you need... maybe... There's a reason that people say, "Nice guys finish last." You don't have to be a bad person to succeed in life, but being a good person makes it significantly harder, if not almost impossible, unless your personal definition of success is simply "to be a good person". That's not to say that we shouldn't teach our children to embody these traits, but we should start rewarding people for these traits instead of manipulating and abusing them and throwing all of our opportunities and money at fads and people who are already successful. If the good people don't stand up for other good people, who will? Edit: I sincerely apologize for this, but this view was created in the US based on US society. I realize that things can be very different elsewhere, and I should've mentioned this at the beginning. :)<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Aristotle, the Greek philosopher, taught that virtues are the balancing point between two different extreme vices. For example: Courage is the balancing point between cowardice and foolhardiness. Generosity is the balancing point between profligacy and miserliness. Hope is the balancing point between delusion and despair. If you are not teaching your children that any virtue, taken too far to any one extreme, becomes a vice, then you are not teaching them very well. If you are not preparing children to face and cope with the unscrupulous and evil people in the world, you are not preparing them very well.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Fight Club] When Tyler is present, who is in control of the body? First, I know I'm breaking the first two rules for posting this. Kind of a simple question, when Tyler Durden is around who is actually "in control" of the Narrator's body? Does it change depending on context? When the Narrator is having a conversation with Tyler do they switch control depending on who's talking or is it more like just one is a voice in the other's head?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Whenever there is an action taken that is observable by others and has physical effects, it's the person doing that action that is in charge. For example: Jumping on Lou, Tyler. Destroying something beautiful, Narrator.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Legally, if we have the right to bear arms, why can't we own bazookas, machine guns, anti aircraft guns etc?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In most states you can, it requires a Federal and State firearms license, and if you do enough selling or trading a business license. Most people who do own heavy weapons tend not to advertise much to avoid being ripped off or having a demonstration 24/7 on their lawn. But bazookas and many AA guns are considered antiques as well as fire arms, making them even easier to buy.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Everything has Sodium Laureth Sulfate in it. What's the real difference between hand soap, shampoo and body wash?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Sodium laureth sulfate is what is called a wetting agent. Together with various chemical compounds that break surface tension and make emulsions, it becomes very effective at making the soap bubbles and lather. The thing about hair and skin is that it is hydrophobic, so water can't really rinse off dirt and grime as easily by itself. Adding sodium laureth sulfate helps correct that problem. The differences between those soaps would be whatever main ingredients, additives and moisturizers they want. Sodium laureth sulfate is not the ingredient that determines what area of the body it is for. It just boosts the cleaning power of everything.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Out of all alkali metals, why is it that Lithium used in batteries? What makes it supperior to use over other alkali metals which have properties alike. As the title says. I am trying to understand, but I can't find anything on the internet. I'd really appreciate if someone who knows the answer would explain to me. Lithium is supposedly the least reactive out of all the alkali metals. It has one valence electron, which is willing to release to another atom. But so are all of the other alkali metals. They all have one valence electron. I don't know why or even if lithium has any advantages over other alkali metals. If yes, what are they? Please help me out reddit! Have a good one<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It has the smallest atomic size, which is useful in terms of the power-to-weight ratio and for maintaining a high kinetics efficiency and low damage potential when physically moving the ion through a solid-state electrolyte.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: the difference between variance and standard deviation Thanks to everyone for the guidance. It may not seem like much to some of you, but it has been a huge help to someone who is getting off the ground in this area.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Standard deviation is the square root of variance. Variance is used in calculations because it makes a lot of maths easier - a lot of things like error propagation are done in quadrature (i.e. on the square of the values). Standard deviation has the big advantage that it's got the same units as the original data so you can more easily interpret what it means.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: When swiping a card, you would think if you swipe slowly the machine could get a better read and accept your card. Why is this not the case? Why do you have to swipe it fast?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A magnetic stripe readers operates by listening to a magnetic field for changes created by the passing card. A card moving faster creates what could be described as a "louder" "message". Ideally, a consistent, swift swipe produces the most clear "message" for the reader to pick up on, and it is also generally easier to maintain a more consistent card speed when the card is moving over the read head faster.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why are some skills perishable, while others are not? Last evening I was reading a book, and it said something along the lines of 'unlike riding a bike, piloting an aircraft is a perishable skill.' This made me wonder: why are some skills perishable if we don't make use of them, while others, such as riding a bike, are things you can pick up even years later?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Some skills are motoric coordination - like riding a bike, and others are cognitive processes, like what button to push when while flying a plane. Motoric skills become hard-wired in your brain, you actually build the necessary structures that connect certain balance-governing reflexes with certain repetitive movements, like pushing the pedals while keeping the bike upright. Your entire body learns this process and it remains in your neuronal structure. Cognitive skills are basically knowledge becoming routine, so while you are doing it regularly, it becomes less and less cognitively effortfull to accomplish. If you stop doing it, however, you begin to forget what needs to be done when. Also, once you learned to fly a certain type of plane, fly it for about 5000 hours in total (over a period of some years), and then stop flying it for 10 years, if you got back into the cockpit of such a machine, you'd still remember quite a bit and would only need to "refresh your memory" for a relatively short time before being good to go again.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why do some programs require a specific version(s) of Windows or Mac OS, but some don't? Some programs might require Windows 7, others 7/Vista, and others 7/Vista/XP. What causes these programs to require specific versions, and why do some seem to not?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are typically two reasons for this: Programmers make assumptions For example, in the Windows 95/98/ME days, any program could modify any file anywhere, so many Windows programs wrote their settings to c:\program files\app name\settings.ini or something similar. When Windows NT/2K/XP/etc. came out, programs were only allowed to write to places their users had permissions to write to - and c:\program files\ is not one of them. As a result, many programs stopped working. This can be circumvented by running the program as admin, but that has two issues; first, it's less secure. If there's a bug in the program, it can make any changes it wants to your system. Secondly, in a lot of environments (e.g. offices, schools, large enterprises, libraries) users don't have the ability to run as administrator, meaning they can't use these programs, they'll crash randomly, they won't save their settings, etc. OSes change Windows goes to a lot of trouble to keep things working whenever possible, but bugs still get fixed that app developers assume are ok. On Mac OS, Apple is almost militant about getting rid of old code in favour of new code. If Apple adds a better way of doing things in 10.6, then the old way will often be 'deprecated' (meaning that developers are told not to use this code because it will be removed) in 10.7, and it will be removed entirely in 10.8. This can cause problems in one of two ways; first, old apps that don't get updated will continue to run on 10.6 and 10.7, because the old ways of doing things still exist, but will not run on 10.8. New apps that are written from scratch (the proper way) in 10.7 will continue to work in 10.8 and onward, but will not run in 10.6. Notes Good developers are able to mitigate these issues by detecting which version of the OS is running and using the old or new ways depending on which is available, but this can be a significant amount of development work, and can introduce subtle bugs. Also, there is often a very clear signal 'which way the wind is blowing', and developers can update their apps long before there's an issue (if they have the developer time). Bad developers are especially prone to these issues. Most problems can be solved by writing code the way that Windows is designed to work, using the correct built-in functions instead of writing your own, asking Windows where to put documents instead of picking an arbitrary location, and so on. Bad developers are lazy, and instead of writing four lines of code to figure out where the documents directory is, will just use the app directory instead. They'll write their own functions because they're too lazy to look up the documentation to see if there is already a function to do what they're trying to do, and when they write it themselves they'll miss certain cases (e.g. what if the system language is in Hebrew? What if the timezone is different? What if the Windows directory isn't in c:\windows? They assume everything will always be the same as what they have and when things change in subtle ways, problems happen.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Please explain how first, second, third and so on cousins work? Also what does ‘once and twice removed’ cousins work in that context?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant brother/sister - same parents 1st cousins - share grandparents 2nd cousins - share great grandparents and so on. Removed is by generation downwards. The children of your first cousins are your first cousins once removed. The grandchildren of your first cousins are your first cousins twice removed.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What is oxidation exactly?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Oxidation is the process by which an atom or molecule loses electrons in a chemical reaction. Since this happens pretty much any time oxygen reacts with something and oxygen reacts with lots of things easily (see: burning things) the process got the name "oxidation."<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Star Trek] The Tamarians can only speak in metaphor, how did they develop warp drive? A key element of working as a team (which presumably researching, developing and building a warp drive would require - along with all the preceding developments that enable it) is effective communication. Speaking only in metaphor, how did the Tamarians manage to build effective teams? Further, since their metaphoric language depends largely on historical reference, how do we get from the "first" reference to the second and so on, in order to construct a language capable of expressing enough information to build anything? Where did the words come from in the first place? A society which can only look back must surely not be able to move forward.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant 1) Math is seperate in their language. While they do not have direct words for numbers and operations, there is a system that is musical in nature (whistles and such) that can be used for math complex enough to develop Warp drive. 2) Children are taught language in school similar to Federation children, except teaching tends to consist of "plays" that bestow the meaning of more complicated phrases. 3) Their brains are fundamentally different from human brains and tuned to both understand and more importantly remember a vast number of such "metaphors". 4) Many people who learned English (or another language that uses Latin or similar letters) wonder how children of Asian cultures can remember such a vast array of characters to write with. The difference between Tamaranian language and other Humanoid species is similar.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How does one market a philosophy major? My 'primary' major is biomedical engineering. I'm 2 courses short of a double major with philosophy, but I have a minor in philosophy pretty well secured. I'm trying to justify taking the two extra courses I need in order to get the major. If I didn't take these 2 philosophy courses, I could instead take two graduate level BME courses. On the surface, it feels hard to justify taking some philosophy classes over the tangible skills that I could gain from the graduate level BME classes. My BME advisor has strong opinion in favor of BME (unsurprisingly). I want to get the major, but its mostly because it feels personally important to me. I feel like the double major with philosophy and BME really accurately reflects my identity, in that I am passionate about both topics and I am able to sort of bridge the gap between humanities and engineering. But, it feels hard to justify on that basis alone. If I had a clear way of marketing degree, I would feel a lot better. I'm doing my concentration in ethics, which is good because that's probably most relevant to medicine. I also do genuinely think that the degree is valuable, in that it has improved my critical thinking skills. The problem that this advantage feels to vague to be able to really sell - if an interviewer asked me why that will be useful in my role as an engineer, I have a hard time coming up with any really clear examples of how philosophy could give me better critical thinking examples in this setting. So, how do you market your philosophy major?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant IN your position, you could argue that your double degree gave you 1) analytical skills not typically learned by engineering majors, that would be very useful when interacting or leading a team, and when interacting with clients, and 2) gave you insights into ethics unmatched by most other engineers.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user I’m reading Will Durant’s “The Story of Philosophy”. What should I be aware of? I’m new to philosophy and was recommended lots of starting points. I went with Will Durant’s book. I’ve been told there are flaws and biases in every “history of philosophy” book, be it Russell or Kenny, so I’m wondering if there are any glaring problems with it that I should know of. Or anything it doesn’t cover that I should look into myself?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The Story of Philosophy is quite an accessible introduction to the discipline. Just know that Durant wrote in the early 20th century, so obviously, a lot of philosophers who came after the book was written are not mentioned. In addition, one can question the philosophers that he picks. There's no mention of the earliest Greek philosophers prior to Socratics, and while the inclusion of Francis Bacon is commendable, he leaves out Descartes, the father of modern philosophy! He also leaves out Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Rousseau, while Hegel is reduced to a critical footnote at the end of the chapter on Kant. There's an entire chapter on Herbert Spencer (who is neither a good nor an important philosopher), which could have been replaced by one on either John Stuart Mill or on Kierkegaard. That said, it's unreasonable to expect an introductory book to have everything on everyone; such a book would be a massive and unreadable tome. Durant's book is as good a starting point as any other. It's good that you are aware of the biases of different authors. The more books you read, the more you will get a better picture of the different philosophers and schools of philosophy, and how they are characterized.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: The solution to Adblock is more entertaining ads and/or better targeting A lot of people run adblock. It sucks for content creators. That much is pretty obvious and I think we can all agree on. That being said, I'm generally a fan of targeted advertising. For example, I tend to hang out a fair amount on /r/buildapc and related subreddits, so when I'm watching a twitch stream and an ad for a new motherboard comes along, I'm OK with that. I'm not OK with getting an ad for laundry detergent. In Spanish, which I don't speak. I already tend to whitelist channels or sites I care about, but I think having better targeted advertising would make more people likely to whitelist more things. On the entertainment end of things, I know the advertising agencies are capable of some really entertaining stuff. If every ad was of comparable quality to, for example, the Old Spice ads with Isaiah Mustafa, there would be a lot of times where I'd be stoked for an ad break, because I'd probably have myself a bit of a chuckle. So in broader terms: don't want people running adblock? make ads that people want to watch, and serve them to the people who want to watch them. Edit: I'd like to add that a lot of people are pointing out potential privacy implications. I totally understand why other people worry about that, but I don't, so that will not be an effective path to Cing my V. _____ > 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 of the key complaints against targeted advertising is that it often leads to tracking your online habits in order to deliver topical content. Many people are uncomfortable with that tracking as a perceived invasion of privacy. Are you ok with the trade off in privacy in order to see more topical adds.?<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: why are smart people more prone to depression?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Smart people, by nature, have more of a realization (or understanding if you will) of the world and how it works. As well, smart people have a bigger ability to conceptualize things that might happen ("What if?"), and will see more inherent dangers of the world. Then, as mentioned, there's a certain disconnect people have, mentally, when they can't interact with others socially on their own level. Truly, the more knowledge and wisdom one has, the more sorrow and grief that comes with it. Pair that with the realization of how truly vain the world is in so many ways (which comes with being "smart" after a while), and the depression and loneliness comes. Simply for not "fitting in" as it were.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5, why if you jump inside a moving train you will land on the same spot, but if you jump on the roof of a moving train, you land on a different spot? seen it on twitter and I can’t get my head around it EDIT: thanks guys I get it now 😅<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In most cases you'll see in high school physics, both should give the same result. But there is a big factor that high school physics (and depending on your field, uni physics) igbores: air. When you jump inside a train, the air inside it is moving along with the train as well. But the air outside of the train is still with respect to the ground, or moving with the speed of the train, in the opposite direction, with respsect to the train. The air then pushes against you, and when you jump, it blows you back. Of course this depends on how fast the train is going, and how strong the wind blows (and in what direction), but in general, that's what happens.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Aren't some experiments very hard or expensive, and thus not reproducible? Why isn't this a problem? One of the tenets of science is the idea that experiments should be replicated to be verified. But some experiments are too complicated to be so. Giant expensive experiments like the LHC, or complicated ones like the Phoenix landers, experiments that depend on a given political will like the collecting of moon rocks, some things that are sheer luck like finding the Antikythera mechanism and maybe even some truly opporunistic experiment like the Voyagers that depended on a very precise planetary alignment to get their slignshots – those are things that are probably not being replicated, or at least not in the exact way. We sent other probes to mars and the outer solar system, but never to the exact same spot the previous ones were ("yes we don't see those Voyager bubbles but maybe they're there and not here"). So what happens when one of these experiments come up with some incredible piece of data? How can scientists assure themselves this wasn't a fluke, a experimental error or the aliens playing a prank on us?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant So the trick with particle colliders, is that you generally build two or more experiments simultaneously. RHIC has STAR and PHENIX still operational, LHC has ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, LHCb all running simultaneously. That's how we "verify/reproduce" the data. Recall a few weeks ago, the hubbub over the mass bump in the CDF experiment at Tevatron. They claimed it was a bump in the data approaching 4-5 sigma over background. But the sister experiment at the Tevatron, D-Zero, did not find the bump, so it's likely to be improper background subtraction/error etc. And finally, each time we build new experiments we reproduce the old data. LHC has been "recovering the standard model" in its initial turn-on. Reproducing results that other detectors have seen before it.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Instead of breathing would it be possible to just oxygenate our blood? Like instead of breathing through the lungs, just directly oxygenate the blood and have it enter the blood stream.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant This is what is done during some heart surgeries, using a heart-lung machine to mechanically oxygenate the blood. It takes venous blood out of the patient and passes it along membranes to oxygenate it, then reconnects to the patient's arteries. However, there are complications associated with using a machine to do imperfectly what our lungs are very good at. Studies have shown that many patients who have been on a heart-lung machine suffer minor brain damage afterwards.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5:why is it harder for weed smoke to set off my fire alarm compared to a little smoke from my burnt grilled cheese sandwich.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are two types of smoke detectors: optical and ionizing ones. I don't know if ionizing smoke detectors have a harder time detecting weed smoke than sandwich smoke, so I'll focus on optical smoke detectors, which are more common in households anyway. Optical smoke detectors have a light barrier inside of them. If smoke particles enter the detector, they reduce the amount of light that reaches the end of the light barrier. The smoke from your burnt sandwich contains alot of soot, which has lots of big molecules. It's pretty easy for a smoke detector to detect these. Your weed burns relatively cleanly and doesn't contain as much big particles as the sandwich smoke.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Whem pouring liquid from one container to another (bowl, cup), why is it that sometimes it pours gloriously without any spills but sometimes the liquid decides to fucking run down the side of the container im pouring from and make a mess all around the surface? Might not have articulated it best, but I'm sure everyone has experienced this enough to know what I'm trying to describe.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Surface tension. Water wants to stick to hard surfaces. This is what causes a meniscus in a test tube, for example. That "u" shape at the top of the water. The attraction between the surface and the water molecules is stronger than the attraction of the water molecules to each other. So, when pouring, the force of the gravity on the water needs to overcome this surface tension to pull the water away from the container. When the angle between glass wall and vertical direction is small, the component of gravity perpendicular to container wall is small and surface tension is stronger, causing the water to stick to the container and run down the outside.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do so many people believe that if your urine isn't clear you aren't drinking enough water and is there any truth to it?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant To understand this, you have to know why we have urine at all. Your blood has to have a very precise chemical balance for your body to be able to work. If it's off even a little bit, you will get sick and eventually die, unless it's corrected. Your kidneys have the job of doing the corrections. They work by filtering out any excesses, returning blood that is chemically "balanced", and they are very good at it. The stuff they filter out is basically urine. The most important things filtered out are extra water, extra salt, and urea, a chemical produced continually by the body. Another chemical filtered out by the kidneys is urobilin, which makes urine yellow. Removing certain amount of water is necessary to the process, whether your blood has excess water or not. If you are dehydrated, meaning you have not been drinking as much water as your body needs, your kidneys will do their job by removing the bare minimum amount of water to get the other stuff out. That means the urine will be concentrated. Think of it as being like strong tea. Because everything including urobilin is concentrated, its color will be dark yellow. This is actually normal first thing in the morning because you don't drink water while you're sleeping. During the day, it's a reliable sign that your body could really use more water. But it doesn't have to be clear for you to be healthy; a well-hydrated person's urine will still be light yellow unless they are drinking much more water than they need.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Can someone explain the concept of gravitational potential between 2 masses? I am struggling with the concept of gravitational potential. I know that by definition it is the work done in moving a unit mass from infinity to a point in the gravitational field (GPE per unit mass), but I don't truly grasp what this means and its significance. I also don't really get how gravitational potential is defined between 2 bodies, such as the earth and the moon. If we talk about bringing an object from infinity into the gravitational field of Earth I can visualise that, but how do you define the potential at a point where 2 fields act (such as that of the moon and the earth)? Where is 'infinity' in this case? Is there a point of 0 potential between the 2 bodies, where essentialy the strengths of the gravitational fields are equal and there is no resultant force on a body at that point, so no gravitational potential? I am only doing A2 physics (pre university) so a simple explanation will suffice.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The "brought in from infinity" thing is useful mathematically but can be confusing physically. The gravitational potential between two objects is basically how much more energy they have if they're far apart than if they're touching (not exactly a technical definition). So you can have an object on the Earth and raise it to some height, and that object gains gravitational potential equivalent to the work required to raise it to that height. You can do the same with the moon, consider how much work would be required to raise it from the surface to the height of its current orbit. That is the gravitational potential of the moon in this scenario. Because only the difference in potential between two points matters, you can set the "zero" to be anywhere you want. For things falling near Earth's surface, it's useful to treat the surface as being at zero potential, while for mathematical reasons it's useful to treat "infinitely far away" as the zero point for celestial dynamics.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What is Dialectical Materialism?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A dialectic is an interaction between two things, sometimes opposites. Materialism is a method of reasoning that primarily believes objective reality exists without any observation, that the person observing doesn't create the object they view. One consequence is that a materialist has to seek the truth as a thing outside themselves rather than trusting that their subjective view of reality creates the truth. Dialectical materialism is a way to parse reality through looking at new information in relation to what you already knew, two sides of the dialectic both related to observing objective reality. The usual formula is hypothesis plus antithesis equals synthesis, but its less formal than that in practice. A common example of dialectical materialism in action is when a scientific hypothesis is tested, the new data proves part of the old wrong and when they are synthesized the new hypothesis becomes the accepted scientific truth.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user If possible, could someone give a layman's description of what 'information' is (in reference to the Black hole information paradox the and holographic principle)? E.g. What information is contained within a hydrogen atom, or a water molecule or a cup of tea? Can this information be expressed by numbers or equations? Why is it said that information can't be destroyed? (I have tried reading the wikipedia articles on these subjects and they went right over my head. If there is no easy way of explaining this and it really is something that needs several years of post-graduate study to understand, I'll accept that and occupy my mind with something else.)<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In the context of the black hole information paradox, "information" basically refers to everything that's exactly conserved. For example, electric charge conservation is never violated, so the charge of a particle, or the net charge of a system, is information in this context.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why are shoe sizes separated into men and women's categories instead of one neutral scale? I was at the mall today and went to a Footlocker just browsing shoes and then left without getting anything. However, in another section of the mall there was a Women's Footlocker selling the exact same shoes as the other Footlocker. I've bought women's shoes of the same design for myself in colors not available in men's shoes before (I'm a guy) and they fit the same exact way that the mens shoes do (gotta buy 2 sizes up in women's shoes though because I'm in the US and not sure if it's the same in other countries). So why hasn't the US shifted to one scale if both men's and women's sizes overlap with eachother?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Men's shoes are not only longer than women's (higher size number) but also wider than the length would strictly indicate. In the sizes you'd ordinarily buy women's shoes, you probably wouldn't notice - but a man with size 12 feet would probably feel very pinched if he tried to wear a size 14 woman's shoe.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What broad distinction can be made in the fields of study between mathematical logic as practiced by mathematicians and philosophical logic as practiced by philosophers? I understand that they both rely on the same, or at least very similar, foundation, but when I look at mathematicians vs philosophers who work with logic at my university, they almost exclusively publish with other mathematicians or philosophers respectively? Are the differences stylistic or goal oriented? or more abstract?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant >Are the differences stylistic or goal oriented? or more abstract? Rather goal-oriented. Usually philosophers and mathematicians are interested in different things. Mathematicians are not interested in, say, paraconsistent/relevant/deontic logics, or the problem of absolute generality, or formal theories of truth, because usually there is not much of interest there for mathematicians. Philosophers, on the other hand, are not that interested in proving some obscure fact (like that there exists an upper bound of something) about first-order logic with two variables. And even when mathematicians and philosophers coincide in the object of study, they are interested in different aspects of that object: mathematicians will not use type theory to discuss higher-order metaphysics. This does not mean, of course, that philosophers and mathematicians cannot significantly influence each other, and it can be difficult to determine whether a work is strictly mathematical or philosophical logic (just think about Tarski or Kripke). >they almost exclusively publish with other mathematicians or philosophers In addition to the above, this is also largely due to institutional, administrative, and publishing reasons.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Modern Feminism is doing the opposite of what they hope to achieve Edit: the issue is primarily with the extremist activists who would preach their ideology of feminism under the same banner as a more sensible group. Extremists being individuals who would put down the other gender in the fight for equality. My view is primarily that the second-third wave of feminism causes more harm than good by causing animosity towards the people preaching it. It may seem like an overstatement, but any time I hear the word patriarchy spoken seriously, or see that what should be a fight for equal rights is really just a focus on one half of the population, they are causing more of a divide than if they were to say nothing at all. Saying this, there are very real issues in the middle-east that I can say do warrant feminism as there is a true patriarchy there, and I feel that the western-world's feminist problems are a joke compared to say, institutionalized racism or the middle-east. CMV. (p.s. The majority, but not all, of my experience with this issue comes from online, I've only met a couple of radical modern-feminists in real life).<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant First wave feminism primarily focused on ways in which women were legally oppressed, and made great strides in that. The problem is that we still have a great deal of cultural oppression. The concept of "patriarchy" is perhaps not the best way to phrase things, but it's really not about male-hating. It's about an entire culture designed around women being primarily valuable for their appearance and reproductive potential, rather than as fully actualized human beings. Sure, plenty of cultures still have that legal oppression that is much more obvious (and therefore, actually, much easier to fight). That doesn't mean that there's nothing left for feminism to fight in western cultures. Women still experience glass ceilings, are expected to take primary child care duties, and are rated as more competent when they wear makeup. That's what 2nd wave feminism was focused on, and if you don't think they were successful, then you have a very strange view that culturally the 1950s and 2010 present the same opportunities to women, and there's nothing that has improved with regards to women's actual opportunities. We're still only now seeing the possibility of a female president in the U.S., and as long as the people in power are largely men we'll still have a long way to go even on the things 2nd wave feminism is concerned with. 3rd wave feminism is primarily about how 1st and 2nd wave feminism have largely only improved the lot of (comparatively) rich white women in the modern era. Indeed, one of their bigger focuses is on exactly those legal barriers that women still face in much of the 3rd world, and in subcultures imported from those areas. Don't confuse the rhetoric of the extremist members of a movement for the goals of the movement itself.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why does our body start to shake after holding a strenuous position for like an extended period of time? e.g. planking or wall-sits and starting to shake before failure.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In short, holding a position or working out requires muscular stimulation which involves neural signals from the brain. These signals come in the form of neurotransmitters, which can get depleted after strenuous exercise. Low levels of these neurotransmitters mean muscle contractions are not as fluid and prolonged, so we feel our muscles "shake" as some muscle fibers fire and others do not. It's similar to a lawnmower engine: as the available gasoline supply declines, the engine sputters and dies.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Final Fantasy] Why are martial artists doing so much damage? I'm a white mage, and I'm in a party with a knight, a ninja, and a martial arts master. We're pretty badass. We just defeated Tiamat, which was no easy feat with no offensive spell power except that one lightning gauntlet we found in the castle of ordeals...which I really don't have time to use because I'm always healing somebody! Right now we're on a random dungeon crawl with outrageously hard bosses but tons of easy nuisance monsters and everyone in my party is doing crazy damage to everything! We just fought a band of 4 goblins like the ones we killed as newbs in the forest outside Cornelia and each of the damagers in my party are inflicting at --minimum-- 15x the amount of damage it took to kill the same monster back when they were a threat to us. I mean, the ninja will decapitate one blue goblin in a single strike, and then cut off each appendage from the corpse and leave the whole graven package neatly skewered on a nearby tree branch. Now, it's really cool that he can do this all in about 15 seconds flat, but once you've seen it about 80 times, it seems like overkill. The master will hit a madpony with a paralyzing blow and then shatter every other major bone in its body with a serious of acrobatic and strength achievements that inspire awe...but again, far beyond the point at which the threat was terminated. Our knight is far less elegant, but equally over-effective. He just carries the biggest, sharpest sword he can find and bashes it into everything while grunting desperately until the creature is nothing but a fine red paste (or green, or purple, depending on what they bleed). As a guy who'se always conserving spell points and preparing to need more as dangers grow, I wish my comrades would realize it's a marathon, not an exhibition. Why are they so overzealous in attaching weaker monsters?!<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant As a mage, you get better with study, but martial types need practice. What you see as overkill, they see as a chance to practice techniques in real world but low stress situations. Drilling the techniques when they can pay attention to each muscle twitch means that they are perfected when fighting for their lives and needing to focus on tactics.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How come the Female Immune system not reject (treat as foreign material) human semen during reproduction? Isn't semen/sperm considered "non-self" by the female immune system?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant We have many types of immunity, classified as “innate” or “adaptive”. The adaptive immune system is the one that recognises foreign things like colds and flus. However, this response has to be custom-manufactured by the body for each foreign thing and takes three or four days to start fighting the infection. In contrast, fertilisation from a sperm can happen as soon as half an hour after sex. Our innate immune system does not specifically recognise sperm and does not seem to be effective against them (semen, the fluid that sperm are ejaculated in, may help protect them too). Having said that, a baby is actually considered a foreign invader by the woman’s immune system and it self-suppresses in order to avoid killing the baby, and the same seems to apply to the sperm.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why is there serotonin in snake venom if that chemical is the chemical that makes us happy?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Your body repurposes the same chemicals for multiple uses. Serotonin is used in the brain to modulate your mood, but it’s also used in the circulatory system to control blood vessel constriction and blood clotting. The snake doesn’t much care about your mood, but it does want to blow up your circulatory system with a huge dose of chemicals that interfere with normal behavior.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: DNA Transcription and the roles of mRNA, rRNA, and tRNA ty in advance<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant So in the nucleus of all our cells, we have strands of DNA, which provides a code for the creation of proteins out of little building blocks called amino acids. There has to be a method for the code in the DNA to be interpreted to turn into proteins. This is where we have mRNA (messenger), tRNA (transfer), and rRNA (ribosomal). mRNA literally performs the job of the "messenger". A little "computer" if you will, called RNA polymerase, basically "reads" the DNA code and interprets it (analogous to turning a book into a summary), making a strand of mRNA (this process involves copying the DNA code, and removing the introns, which are useless segments). This mRNA moves out of the nucleus and goes toward a ribosome, which is the construction plant for making proteins. The ribosome is made out of rRNA. Now the ribosome is the construction plant, but it cannot fetch the materials by itself. So when mRNA comes over and gives the ribosome instructions on how to make a protein, tRNA "fetch" the building blocks needed to build it (the building blocks are called amino acids). The tRNA has a structure such that it ends up attracting the amino acids (similar to a magnet), and it carries the amino acids to the ribosome. The ribosome then takes these building blocks, and joins them together to make proteins.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Lord of the Rings] How do the Nazgul/Ringwraiths work? I know they're undead, but past that, I don't know what's going on there. Their bodies are gone, but they're corporeal somehow or something? Can someone explain that one to me.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There is the world, and the unseen world. The Maiar seem to be native to the Unseen World, but can fashion bodies to appear in the regular world. Sauron is cursed to always seem evil to men in corporeal form. Presence in Unseen World can be equated to magical power. Looking upon the Two Trees gave the Eldar a presence in the Unseen World, and this is the source of their "glow." Men don't have have any native presence in the Unseen World. The Rings of Power have the effect of bringing the wearer into the Unseen World. This makes them invisible to persons in the regular world and allows them powers they don't normally have. They see and can be seen by other beings in the Unseen World. Glorfindel could not join the Fellowship of the Ring because he had an exceptionally strong presence in the Unseen World and would be trivially easy for the Ringwraiths to detect. The Ringwraiths were kings of Men who wore rings subject to the One Ring. They gained a presence in the Unseen World, and thereby power. They also became subject to Sauron's will, as Sauron provided the rings.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [General Sci-fi] What advantages (if any) do walking vehicles have over wheeled ones? Examples such as [this](http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20071022025719/starwars/images/e/e9/At-st_large_pic.jpg), [this](http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090425021909/starwars/images/5/5e/AT-TE_TCW.jpg) and [this](http://imageserver.moviepilot.com/call-of-duty-advanced-warfare-walking-tank-call-of-duty-advanced-warfare-future-tech-will-change-gameplay-forever.jpeg?width=1280&height=720). What are the benefits of these types of war vehicles over ones that use wheels or tank tread? Are there any?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Ambulation has several advantages over wheels: 1) Climbing terrain- A fully articulated set of walking limbs can adjust to all most any grade, providing they can apply enough force to the surface the limb is on to maintain traction. Also, in the process, because of the jointed nature of the limbs, the body can be kept pointed in an appropriate direction for any other task while the limbs are busy scaling an obstacle. Lastly, articulated walking limbs give the ability to simply 'step over' barriers shorter than their 'hips'. 2) Maneuverability- Articulated limbs give instant translation to lateral motion. The ability to transfer from full speed forward motivation to strafing in a very small space and without having to turn the body of the vehicle is extremely effective. The vehicle also has enhanced evasive ability because the vehicle can move in three axes quickly allowing it to provide a more difficult target or lower it's profile for concealment, or raise itself to a considerable height for attack. Sufficiently powered limbs can jump, which gives them an entire other dimension with which to maneuver and do battle in. 3) Last ditch offense/defense- If all else fails...kick.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: Freedom of religion should be removed from law. Since we where I live we have freedom of speech I would like to propose to remove the freedom of religion from the law. 1. There is no hard line between any belief (pink unicorns) and say Islam. (saying one believes in pink unicorns does not grant some sort of super status, calling it Christ is different for some reason) 2. Good argument for cutting all state funding related to religion (since no special treatment is required, no special reason to give away tax money is directly justified, we dont randomly give taxes to anyone saying anything.) 3. The state should never acknowledge the justifications or existence of religions or its implications, its something they should be either completely neutral towards or only accept things that belong to the realm of truth and therefor not religion or 7 legged sheep. 4. Freedom of religion can be put under freedom of speech, since you can say whatever you see fit , just dont run to the state to support your claims or once again give you a special hat. 5. Its an old fashioned basis for law , if you want to truly divorce state from law then simply don't mention it or treat them differently. EDIT Thanks everyone for the high quality responses and thought provoking arguments. Ill try to respond to all the arguments made. _____<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant An important part of the freedom of religion, half of the US First Amendment's portion regarding religion, is the freedom from imposition of religion. The government at all levels (in the US due to the combination of the 1st and 14th amendments and judicial incorporation doctrine) from federal to a local school district is prohibited from imposing religion on people. The freedom from imposition of religion and the freedom to believe and practice as you wish are inseparable.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user When staring into complete darkness do your eyes focus on infinity or are they unfocused?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Optometrist here. In complete darkness the eyes almost fully relax their focus (accommodation). Some amount remains, known as tonic accommodation, which varies from person to person. This is inherent to the person's visual system and present unless they are dead! Note that focussing on infinity and fully relaxing the focus are, in terms of accommodation, the same thing. Accommodation is the system by which the eyes move their focal point closer to the body e.g. to read. At optical infinity no accommodation is required and the system is, in theory at least, fully relaxed. Is this the type of focus you meant? Vergence is the system by which the eyes move closer together to point at a near object. This works a bit differently, though the two, along with pupil dilation, are linked in terms of the nerve supply.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user If we can already make hydrogen fuel cells that produce water as waste, would that have the potential to solve a future crisis over lack of fresh water?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are a number of ways in which energy can be used to produce fresh water (desalinization, for one example). Whether or not this can solve a future fresh water crisis depends on whether or not we have enough available energy.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: as a parent it is your responsibility to care for your child to the best of your ability even after they turn 18 When you make the choice to become a parent, you are choosing to take on responsibility for another human being in perpetuity. That child did not choose to be born, you chose to have them and as such you owe them your care to the best of your ability. You have to feed them, house them, clothe them, not just until they’re 18 but until you have done what you can to adequately prepare them to take care of themselves and you cannot and should not make them feel guilty for that. Kicking your child out at 18 because “they’re an adult” is wrong. Turning 18 doesn’t magically make you responsible enough to care for yourself. I also think you have an obligation to educate them to the best of your ability. If you can afford to send your child to college, you should be paying for it. College helps prepare kids to be self sufficient and independent and as a parent it’s your duty to help your kids become those things. Obviously people have different financial situations and not all parents can provide the exact same support to their kids as others might be able to, but to the best of your ability you owe your kids support, financial, emotional, physical, etc. Also quite frankly, it’s normally parents who do have the financial means to support their kids that are the most stingy. They’ll say they want to teach their kids to work hard, but are making life for them unnecessarily difficult. This is especially true of rich parents who deny financial support for things like college, but because of their financial means are disqualifying their kids for aid they’d qualify for if they were on their own. Now if you have done everything within your power to prepare your child to support themselves and they are still expecting a hand out that is one thing, but otherwise, you chose to have a child, you need to take care of them.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant >You have to feed them, house them, clothe them, not just until they’re 18 but until you have done what you can to adequately prepare them to take care of themselves A good parent will have adequately prepared their child to take care of themselves by the time they turn 18 and graduate from high school. So long as they've done so, then by your own logic the parents don't have to continue taking care of the kid beyond 18.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why do commercial aircraft fly against the jet stream? I've noticed (in the USA) that flying from west to east is significantly faster than flying from east to west. This is because of the jet stream. For instance, flying from Philly to Denver will take about 4 hours and the aircraft will manage a ground speed of about 440mph at 36,000 feet. From denver to philly takes about 3 hours, the aircraft will average a ground speed of about 550mph. I've also noticed that if the aircraft stays down around 27,000 feet, it can stay out of the Jet stream (or be in a slower part). So why don't planes heading west fly lower to stay out of the jet, save fuel and time?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Many of them do depending on the air streams for that particular flight. However weather and other air traffic will dictate the altitude and course that particular aircraft takes. For instance an aircraft heading west might be scheduled for 27,000 feet but half way through its journey there may be a storm that would create some considerable turbulence. To avoid the turbulence or "chop" said aircraft may climb several thousand feet to get above the rough air. Airlines have spent decades studying and planning the fastest/most fuel efficent routes for their aircraft to take. This helps them since their motto lately seems to be "fuel costs money"<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How exactly does the brain store information?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Information and stimuli comes into your brain trough your senses: smell, sounds, vision, etc. Most of this if filtered before you even realise it. The relevant stimuli then comes into the working memory, which contains information you are using right now (like when you are calculating, the numbers are in your working memory) and is fairly limited. You can only hold 4-7 'chuncks' of information in there. When the information is repeated or you pay more attention to it, it will go to the short term memory. For example, you repeated a phone number a few times, so you can put it in your phone. Most of this information is discarted, but some will go to the long term memory. This is mostly information you pay attention to and repeat often, which is important to you or which you relate to stuff you already know. That is why, for example, you remember a name of a person better if you relate it to a fact you are familiar with. How we store it, we don't know. Some say pictures, some say words, some say something abstract, certain nerve patterns, to name a few.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: The 1950s were not even close to being a "Golden Age" of America I hear many people talk about the 50s as some glorious era in US history but if you look even slightly beneath the surface that's just not true. If we measure aspects of well-being like health, access to commodities, wealth, safety, peace, and equity, there's no comparison. People remember it fondly because there was no longer a World War but compared to what we've seen since the 1950s, now is just so much better in essentially every category of life even through the darkest shade of rose tinted glasses In terms of health: \- There was 218,000 total cases of Polio throughout the 1950s; there's been zero for the past 50 years (this led to many people being disabled long-term in an era with limited accommodations) \- There was around 500,000 cases of Measles per year in USA throughout the 1950s compared to less than 100 today \- Infant mortality was 30 per every 1k births compared to 6 per 1k births today \- Life Expectancy was 69 years in the 1950s compared to 79 years today \- The advancements in medical technology alone would disqualify the 1950s as a golden age In terms of commodities: \- There was no internet and cell phones which means a lot of lucrative industries today would not exist, hence most of our jobs/businesses would not either. \- We have more access to bulks of information than scholars did in the 1950s due to internet, and with cell phones, we have a more sophisticated way of communicating than world leaders did in the 50s \- Food was very bland. The food we eat today is so much better and we get a lot more diversity/options because now they can come from all over the world if we don't produce them \- Less than 3/4ths of homes had electricity in the 1950s whereas now it's universal \- About 20% of homes didn't have indoor plumbing yet whereas now it's universal \- Only 50% of homes in America had running water in the early 1950s \- Things like dish washers, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, stoves, and washing machines were either all luxury items or not invented yet \- "Lower-end" cars today function wayyy better than the best cars did in the 1950s \- Commercial airlines didn't start until 1953 and were not widely used until the 1970s (it took like 15 hours with 12 stop points to get from Boston to Los Angeles in 1950) - also, most of the world was unstable at the time so international travel isn't what it is today \- In terms of wealth, Americans are on average, about 16x richer now than they were 60 years ago In terms of safety/peace: \- Homes in the US built during the 50s included bomb shelters because everyone was so convinced the USSR was going to attack America at any moment \- 37k American lives were lost in the Korean War which lasted 3 years compared to 6k in Iraq and Afghanistan combined over the course of 20 years \- In the 1950s, we were about 7x more likely to die in a vehicle accident \- In the 1950s, pedestrians were 5x more likely to be killed by a vehicle \- In the 1950s, we were 20-25x more likely to die on the job \- Lead poisoning is down significantly after leaded gasoline was banned in the 90s; emissions of carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and lead as a whole is down by like 90% since the 1950s \- Smoke was literally everywhere because everyone over age 12 was never seen without a cigarette In terms of discrimination: \- Being gay was illegal \- There was still racial segregation for African Americans \- Immigration was certainly not widely accepted yet \- Women couldn't own credit cards and domestic violence was regularly brushed off<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant People tend to decide how well they’re doing based on relative gains. They check and see how well they’re doing compared to other people and compared to how well they were doing before. The 50s were a good time for relative gains. People were very upwardly mobile, income inequality was going down, and women and minorities were making huge strides towards equality. I’d also point out that you seem to already be judging the 1950s relatively — based on what life is like now. But this isn’t how people in the 1950s were evaluating life. And here in 2022, we’re not judging life based on how much better and more enlightened life will be in the future. Judging that way is impossible because we can’t see the future, and if we could it’s likely no point in history would be considered good except whatever period would be considered the apex.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How are some bacteria able to survive in the upper troposphere? I read in this [article](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2013/01/microbes-survive-and-maybe-thrive-high-atmosphere) that some bacteria can survive for weeks at an altitude of about 10 km. How can they withstand the low pressure and cold for extended periods of time? And how are they able to quickly readjust to sea level conditions once they land?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Many organisms can survive extremely harsh conditions. Basically, their metabolism slows down and they go into a type of stasis. In fact, in the lab, we frequently store bacteria like e. coli at -80 degrees celsius for long term storage. Take the bacteria out, let them warm up, and they divide just fine. Even some animals can survive treatments like this. The roundworm, c. elegans can be frozen and tardigrades can famously survive in the vacuum of space! Note that surviving is different than growing. They slow down all processes so they aren't using energy. Some cells have mechanisms to store proteins/other molecules for release when conditions become better.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How are cosmetics and skincare products tested for safety if they don't use animal testing? Do they just use humans which are taking a risk? Even if theoretically something is safe and effective, you need to actually test it to verify.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Almost all chemicals used in cosmetics have been extensively tested over the last 60 years or so. However, even when a company explicitly states they do not use animal testing on products, that does not necessarily mean they do not use chemicals that the provider at some point in the past (or present) did not test on animals at some point. And yes, most cosmetics are tested on human volunteers; most actively state that they have tested under dermatological support, or have in-vitro results on human cells.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How scientists know how far away things in space are. Ex stars, planets<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are a few methods that we use to find out how far away things are in space. The first is called parallax. Basically, we take a picture of the object in the sky. We wait for awhile, and do it again. We can then measure the difference in the angle of where we see the object, as compared to things that don't appear to have moved at all (because they are very, very far away). Because we know about Earth's orbit very well, we can use this angle to come up with a distance. In fact, you may have heard of a "parsec." This is short for "parallax second." It is the distance that something has to be from earth to have a parallax angle of 1 second (1/3600 of a degree). But, what if something is so far away that we can't measure the angle using the method? Well, then we usually use what are called "standard candles." These are stars or other objects that we know a decent amount about, and can then use how bright they are to estimate the distance, as a star's intensity fades with distance in a predictable way. A certain type of supernova is fantastic for using this, but supernovae are rare.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Will being near a large particle accelerator such as the LHC cause a magnetic compass to drift from true north? If I am walking near the LHC on the surface how close would I have to be for my magnetic compass to drift an appreciable amount due to the strong magnetic field?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Accelerator facilities often use strong magnets to steer and focus their particle beams. These magnets will in general have fringe fields when they're turned on and ramped up to a significant current. If you come within the range of the fringe field, you will see magnetic effects such as deflection of compasses, distortion of CRT screens or other electronics, erasure of credit card strips, etc. You shouldn't be near them if you have a pacemaker. The magnets used in these facilities are mostly dipoles and quadrupoles, so their fields drop off as 1/(distance)^(3) and 1/(distance)^(4) respectively. Often they'll have some magnetic shielding around them or additional coils to minimize fringe fields, so the ranges will probably be even shorter in practice. In other words you need to be pretty close to the magnet for these things to happen.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why is it that light slows down when moving through a substance such as air or water when light doesn't have any mass?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant In classical theory, the "stiffness" of the medium changes. Consider a string. When plucked, a wave will be seen to travel - the speed of which depends on the tension. In quantum theory, photons are absorbed and re-emitted. The rate of collisions and interactions governs the transmission speed through the medium. That rate is controlled by the electron density and other things. Classical treatments which consider the electron density to define a "stiffness" of the space in a medium (or vaccuum) - the permittivity - are best and most versatile for many calculations of these things. Edit: The vacuum having no electron density still has a value for the permittivity. In the presence of electrons which act to slow light down, the new permittivity is defined relative to the vacuum value.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [Doctor Who] What would it take to make the Doctor just give up and leave? Are there any circumstances in which the Doctor would emerge from the TARDIS, take a good look at the evil and tyranny that was going on, and then just get back in the TARDIS and go find something else to mess with? Any situation in which he'd say: "Well, this mess is clearly an internal matter, and cannot be fixed by outside interference. I must leave them to sort it out, regardless of how many people die along the way." Any situation in which he'd say: "This is too horrifying to confront. I'm going to run away and hide."<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The Doctor has a history of sometimes letting some situations play out without his interference, usually because there is something to gain in doing so. He didn't stop WWII, for instance, because the lessons involved in it's resolution would be important to Humanity in the future. He also didn't stop Pompeii, and only interfered with the loss of the first Martian Colony after having a bit of a mental lapse. So, he does sometimes step back and say "Nope, they gotta sort this one out themselves". As for the second point... He literally laughed in the face of the immortal, Universe transcending personification of Evil, and regularly butts head with Great Old Ones. No, i don't think there's anything that would make him run and hide, at least not indefinitely. To buy time to come up with a plan? Sure, he does that all the time.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Would wires made of anti-matter have the same electrical properties? Would the right hand rule still apply or would it be the left hand rule? Would electricity be propagated with positrons and would this change how the magnetic fields would be generated? Is it the same, but opposite or the same in general?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant All the same rules and formulas would still apply; with the definitions we use, a current going in a given direction can be the flow of positive charges in that same direction, or a flow of negative charges in the opposite direction. Or both! Magnetic fields are the same for the flow of a positively charged antiparticle (like a positron) as for a positively charged particle (like a proton). But, like you suggested, in an antimatter wire the moving charge carriers would be the positively-charged positrons, with the anti-nucleons forming the fixed "lattice" of the solid wire. Slight aside: there are a variety of sign and handedness conventions baked in to our laws of E&M. The sign of charges, the direction of current, the direction of magnetic field, and whether to use the left or right hand rule are some of those. The choices that we use are largely due to choices made by people muddling in the dark trying to figure things out as they went along (like Ben Franklin assigning positive and negative charge). The physical observables of course don't care what choices for those we make, as long as we're consistent. Note that we do have experience with "antimatter currents" in the proton-antiproton and electron-positron beams at various particle accelerators. We also have experience with the flow of positive and negative charges in electrolyte solutions and plasmas. We of course don't have experience building solid antimatter wires; connecting those to our instruments (or even suspending them magically in a pretty good vacuum) would be... a bit too exciting.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Are cancers always fatal when left untreated?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Depends on the cancer's ability to metastasize. One can live for many years with small carcinomas in thyroid nodules that don't really do anything much, for example. And many people are diagnosed with latent cancer on pathology after they have died of something else. If you get to the point where you are diagnosed, though, treat your cancer or it will probably kill you.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What limitations are currently stopping us from collecting and using lightning bolts? Is it the inability to quickly route and store the varied amount of voltage and or amperage?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Engineering difficulties aside, from a practical standpoint, a lightning bolt has energy in the range of a few megajoules to possibly a gigajoule. Even if this could be collected and used, it's about the same amount of energy that a large power plant delivers in one second, so even if it were possible, harvesting lightning wouldn't contribute very much energy to the electrical grid in the long run.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [1984] Are the countries Eurasia and Eastasia like Oceania? Better? Worse? Do they even exist? All we know is from the propaganda BB pushes on those countries, right? I haven't read the book yet, it's on my to read list.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It's understood that Eurasia and Eastasia have governments that are functionally identical to Oceania. Oceania's Ingsoc (English Socialism), Eurasia's Neo-Bolshevism and Eastasia's Death Worship are all virtually indistinguishable from one another in practice. The fact that all three are the same is kept from the people as to maintain the constant war between the three. All three governments depend on perpetual war in order to survive, since dedicating each nation's entire industrial effort towards war production allows the population to be kept productive while never allowing general quality of life to ever improve.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user [D&D] Do the civilized and semi-civilized races share a common anatomical arrangement? Hearts left of center between two lungs, etc?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Follow up questions: * Are racial differences explained by differences in biology? Do Dwarves have redundant livers explaining their constitution? Do Elves have unique visual cortex explaining their resistance to hypnotism and illusions? * Humans ability to interbreed with Elves and Orcs suggest a common ancestry? With Elves & Drow more distant to Orcs than to humans explaining their inability to produce offspring?<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How do shells form? Why are there so many types? Why do all the curly shells curl in the same direction?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Mollusks like snails and clams have very delicate bodies, so they need protection from the elements and predators. As mollusks develop in the sea, their mantle tissue absorbs salt and chemicals. They secrete calcium carbonate, which hardens on the outside of their bodies, creating a hard shell. The shell stays attached to the mollusk but it is not actually part of its living body because it is made of minerals, not mollusk cells (unlike most animal structures). The mollusk continues to take in salt and chemicals from the sea and secrete calcium carbonate, which makes its shell grow even bigger. When a mollusk dies it discards its shell, which eventually washes up on the shore. This is how seashells end up on the beach.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why does Schopenhauer think that the highest ethical aim is to deny the will to live? "According to Schopenhauer, moral freedom—the highest ethical aim—is to be obtained only by a denial of the will to live." - translator's footnote in Schopenhauer's "Studies in Pessimism" I'm very confused. Is it even referring to morality, or is it referring to "ethics" as in the ancient Greek sense? Why did Schopenhauer believe this? I'm becoming a big fan of his work so far.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant He was heavily influenced by Indian philosophy (particularly the Upanishads) and his views on this subject are closely related to Hindu and Buddhist thought (I would guess he likely drew much of this line of thought directly from those sources, then used his own manner of explanation). In Buddhism you have "tanha" the "thirst for life" and in Hinduism "kama" or desire plays into the same idea. The heart of Krishna's teachings (Bhagavad Gita) is what some have termed "actionless action" or "disinterested action", that is to say one ought to live without desiring anything from the results of your actions (only the act rightly belongs to the sage, not the results of the act, as Krishna explains). Indian texts bring forward the same essential moral conclusions from these as Schopenhauer. So, the main connection between the "will to live" and moral freedom is that thirst for life influences our actions (in the most basic sense, we avoid pain and seek pleasure), and this interferes with our morality because the right thing to do might cause us pain or reduce our pleasure. Having a thirst for life (or will to live) and desiring pleasure / avoiding pain becomes a non moral factor in our decision making and provides a (at least potential) counter force to moral choice. To have absolute moral freedom would require that one not have this factor present in decision making so that one is capable of approaching any given situation with a purely moral consideration.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What happens if an animal who is supposed to hibernate is unable to? What happens if an animal who is supposed to hibernate during the winter is unable to because of health reasons or even environmental factors (i.e. home being destroyed by forest fire or being snatched out of environment by poachers)? Does its body wear down and fall into a deep sleep regardless of the severe circumstances? Does the animal eventually get over the need to hibernate after pushing through the normal sleep cycle? Does the animal risk death if it doesn't hibernate?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A particular example: brown bears. If the bear doesn't get enough chow to get fat before hibernation, it's likely to wake up in the middle of the winter and go about looking for anything to eat. What you get is a шатун, a "rocker", which is willing to kill anything that gets in its way (including armed humans), and is likely to starve to death before spring anyway.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why does distilled water not work in a keurig machine?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Coffee makers rely on boiling water to pump the water by gravity. Basically, a column of boiling water containing bubbles is lighter than solid water, so the water in the column can go higher than the water level. This allows it to act like a fountain. In order for the pumping effect to work properly, there has to be smooth, even boiling. A problem can occur with very pure liquids and very clean surfaces. Bubbles tend to form more easily on impurities. In pure water, it is difficult for bubbles to form. This allows the water to become superheated (heated to more than the boiling point but without boiling). When a bubble suddenly does form, you can get a chain reaction where bubbles start forming on bubbles, leading to a sudden explosion of boiling which can spray water everywhere. This sudden and erratic boiling is called "bumping". It doesn't always happen, but it can happen and be a problem, so it's best avoided as far as practical. By using tap water, it is much less likely that you get this "bumping" and instead get smooth boiling which causes a smooth supply of water to the coffee. It's the same reason why distilled water is not recommended for use in clothes irons. You want a steady supply of steam. Bumping boiling risks sudden spurts. The minerals in tap water help stop this happening.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5 Why are different sections of the Ocean labeled as "Seas". For example, the Bearing Sea, Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea, ect. I understand the Mediterranean Sea and Black Seas as they are separate bodies of water. Most of the rest just don't make sense.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Naming conventions for almost everything in nature is arbitrary, and the names of those seas in particular may be due to limited perspective. These bodies of water would have been named long before the technology needed to map them accurately would have been invented, and the names just stuck. Take, for example, the Bering Sea in the northern Pacific. Outside of the islands that dot its southern edge, there is no clear divide between it and the Pacific that can be discerned from the coastlines. With satellite imagery we could easily find one, such as through tectonic mapping, but in the end the Bering Sea was give its name largely arbitrarily.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What's the difference between "quality" gasoline and "cheap" gasoline? Everyone talks about "quality" gas like Chevron or whatever and knocks "bad" gas like Arco. What's the difference? Is it worth it? Why?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The difference is the additives in the gas. For example, Shell sells nitrogen enriched gas that they claim helps eliminate deposits in the engine. They advertise heavily by saying that their gas is fundamentally better. Independent tests have shown that there is no difference in emissions, fuel economy, or performance. There might have been a difference 30-40 years ago, but all gas has to meet strict government standards. Once gas has met those standards, there isn't much more you can do to improve it. So the difference is mainly advertising dollars.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Drinking glasses - why we use certain shapes for certain drinks. Why not drink red wine out of a whiskey tumbler? Does the thickness/quality of the glass matter?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant For wine glasses, they are very shallow and wide at how deep you pour wine as to increase surface, allowing the wine to "breathe", i.e. react with oxygen to improve the taste. For whiskey, there are so-called "nosing glasses" which have a round bottom part and a relatively slim upper part; this allows the whiskey to evaporate and be sniffed at a concentrated intensity. These are for enjoying good whiskeys; tumblers are for a more everyday usage. I don't think thickness and quality of the glass matters.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What keeps water from getting in, or collecting in, our lungs during heavy fog or mist?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant >What keeps water from getting in, or collecting in, our lungs during heavy fog or mist? Nothing. Water does get in. It coats the entire surface of the lungs. However, lungs are always coated with moisture, so it's no big deal. The moisture traps dirt and dust. The surface of the lungs is covered with tiny hair-like structures called cilia. The cilia move in waves and sweep excess moisture, dust, dirt, and foreign contaminants out of the lungs. It all gets swept up into the throat to be swallowed and digested.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How are we able to store data in diamonds? In reference to this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/5a4u4w/its_well_known_that_diamonds_are_extremely/ This is not the first time I've read about this but I never looked into it. What is the scientific logic behind being able to store data in diamonds?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Basically it comes down to the stability of localised "defects" which can be placed in structures like diamond. The technique used in the link you suggest used nitrogen vacancy centres, these are formed when a carbon is replaced with a nitrogen. Nitrogen atoms have an extra electron which instead of forming a covalent bond, just exist as a pair localised to the nitrogen atom. These vacancy centres actually absorb light as visible frequencies, and so can be "read" out with a laser. If you can control where you put them in the diamond, then you store a position which is essentially data.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why are prices of goods lower on Black Friday, when demand for Christmas gifts begins to surge, than After Christmas (Boxing Day), when demand sharply declines?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The surge in demand around Black Friday is well anticipated by stores, who preemptively increase their supply in order to capitalize on the increased demand. This helps keep prices from increasing for most things as the supply rises to meet the demand, but creates increased pressure for the stores to attract that increased demand to their products specifically, resulting in the numerous sales, as well as tactics like loss leaders (steeply, often unprofitably, discounted items meant to get people in the door where they will then buy other, more profitably priced merchandise at the same time), or more cheaply made versions of expensive items like TVs that can be sold at a discounted price without cutting into profits. Likewise, stores aren’t ordering extra stock to replenish what is sold during the holiday season for the post holiday, because they know ahead of time that demand is going to drop off sharply. Increased and decreases in demand tend to raise or lower prices as supply tries to catch up to the change in demand. Since the demand changes are predictable, suppliers can anticipate those changes and plan accordingly, which somewhat or entirely negates the effect of the change in demand on price. That said, it should be noted that unexpectedly hot items during Black Friday will often fly off the shelves very quickly and then see a spike in prices on resale sites, while stores that fail to sell off their excess stock during the holiday season may be left in a position that they need to steeply discount their supply to get rid of it in the post-holiday, so in that sense the changes in demand still do have their intuitive impact on pricing. For the most part, good planning prevents this from being too much of an issue as retailers attempt to capture the increased demand, though.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Who are some significant "pantheist" philosophers other than Spinoza who believed essentially that 'matter/energy' and 'spirit' are the same phenomena/completely identical, thus implying that the universe was not created by an eternal being, but is in fact an eternal being?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Spinoza thinks that matter and mind are two different attributes of substance, which is a neutral monist position and at odds with the idea that they are "the same phenomena/completely identical." What it suggests is that matter and mind are two different expressions of, or two different ways of conceiving a single underlying substance. Accordingly, they have a kind of unity to them, insofar as they are both expressions of the same substance, and this has theoretical consequences, notably in the notion of a strict parallelism between mental events and material events. But mind and matter also have an irreducible diversity in Spinoza's philosophy, since while they are about the same substance, they are nonetheless still fundamentally different in their expression of it. This too has consequences, namely the mutually irreducibility of mind and matter, and the strict independence of the causal history of each. But none of this really has anything obvious to do with whether the universe was created by an eternal being or whether the universe is in fact an eternal being. Spinoza's account of the relation between God and nature is, for a large part, fairly traditional: he understands God to be an infinite, eternal, immutable, self-caused, omnipotent and maximally free substance whose creative activity produces nature, and he distinguishes being regarded as this infinite substance, which he calls "naturing nature" (in the sense of nature that is enacting the process of naturing), from being regarded as the product of the creative activity of this substance, which he calls "natured nature" (in the sense of nature that results from the process of naturing). So far this is pretty typical stuff for the tradition of metaphysics which runs from ancient philosophy to the rationalists. Where Spinoza departs from the orthodox Christian understanding of this metaphysical picture is with two related points. First, he thinks that God's omnipotence and freedom only make sense if it's recognized that God's creation of everything he could create necessarily follows from them. That is, he thinks that if God would ever not create something, that there must be something which held him back from doing so, but in that case he wouldn't be omnipotent and maximally free, so that God's omnipotence and maximal freedom, somewhat ironically, render the creative act a metaphysical necessity. Traditional theology had often wanted to identify a point of contingency here, to imagine that God could have chosen to create or not, and accordingly to understand creation as a contingent and freely willed event. For Spinoza, conversely, creation follows necessarily from God's nature. The second radical point of Spinoza's philosophy follows from this. Just as the traditional theological picture tended to conceive the creative act as contingent, it also tended to conceive of its object as contingent. That is, God could freely choose to create or not to create, and he could also freely choose to create one possible universe rather than some other one. Spinoza, conversely, argues that God's omnipotence and freedom only make sense if his creative activity is expressed without limitation. That means not only that the creative act necessarily follows from God's nature, it also means that God, as it were, doesn't hold himself back so as to make one particular sort of universe (i.e. typically, in the theological picture, one particularly kind to human beings) but rather just limitlessly creates an infinite diversity of everything that can be created. Spinoza, then, might be called a pantheist because in his philosophy (i) God and creation are not separated by a notional point of contingency, but rather are more closely connected, through the necessity of the creative act, than in the orthodox theological picture, and (ii) there is similarly no notional space between the various possible universes and the one God chose (providentially) to create, but rather creation expresses God's infinite nature in its own limitlessness--limited not even by a providential design. In these two ways, Spinoza's God is, as it were, closer to creation than in the orthodox picture. Whether this means that "the universe was not created by an eternal being" is not clear. The universe is, straight-forwardly, certainly created by an eternal being in Spinoza's philosophy. But this creation is a necessary rather than contingent act, which might reasonably be regarded as an important difference from the traditional theological accounts of creation. Similarly, is the universe "in fact an eternal being" for Spinoza? Certainly, insofar as there is only one being (God), this being is eternal, and the universe is its expression. But so far as this goes, it's not significantly different from the traditional theological and metaphysical picture. What is different about Spinoza's universe is its necessary connection to God and its infinite nature rather than providential design. The difference between Spinoza's "pantheism" and traditional "theism" is thus less straight-forward, and certainly of a different nature, than is popularly supposed. As to what other philosophers present a metaphysical picture similar to Spinoza's on these points, as suggested above, the framework of his system is fairly traditional. The ways I've noted above in which he departs from the traditional system are not entirely original to him, but can be found raised in medieval debates and still further back in the context of ancient philosophy. Spinoza's own emphasis on God's freedom and omnipotence over notions of contingency and providential design are themselves claims that had already been developed in the context of Reformation critiques of Catholic theology, and Spinoza may have inherited them from this tradition of Christian thought through his contact with the Collegiants. One can thus go back through the history of traditional metaphysics that stretches from the ancient Greeks to the early modern rationalists and find much in various sources that is sympathetic with Spinoza. Eriugena often received the pantheist characterization, as did the Latin Averroists, and various Renaissance philosophers of nature, e.g. Bruno. Going back to the Greeks, the pantheism characterization is leveled rather extensively: certainly at the Platonists, Stoics, and at least some of the pre-Socratics. Of the rationalism which flourished in the early modern period, Spinoza's is particularly noteworthy for the points mentioned above, which are suggestive of the pantheist characterization he often receives, while Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz tended to argue the more orthodox line which recognized a greater distinction between God and creation, especially permitting a notion of providential design. After this rationalist period, the general project of traditional metaphysics in which thinking like this--pantheist or not--occurred largely fell out of favor and was replaced first by empiricism and then by various reactions to it. In this later period, one may wish to look particularly at Schopenhauer, who also often receives the pantheist label, and belongs to the general context of German idealism and romanticism where an interest in rationalist metaphysics and especially in Spinoza was briefly revived.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How did Marcus Aurelius’s Stoic philosophy reconcile his “living in the moment is the correct way of life” beliefs with the inherent necessity of looking to the future to be a good emperor? In Book 3 of the Meditations he reiterates how a good man does not want to control his future and how one should strive to accept one’s daily life’s happenings yet he as an expansionist emperor must have had a vision and plan for the future of Rome, else he’d feel all he’s doing is for nought which his philosophy rejects.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Stoic philosophy is about virtue ethics in the here and now. It places strong emphasis on playing the cards you have been dealt (the Romans didn't have cards, but Epictetus does use the equivalent example of a dice game at one point). So it doesn't exactly require a vision and plan for the future. The main thing to bear in mind is that Marcus's reign had terrible waves of epidemic disease as well as troublesome border wars on the Danube. The _Meditations_ were written quite late in his life, the Antonine plaque had killed countless people including his co-emperor Verus, and probably killed many of Marcus' own children (Marcus lost maybe eight or nine children). So it's not a document about grand plans for the future, it's about him trying to make sense of the present, but from a certain Stoic cosmic point of view.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What seems to be the best method for raising a dog? I don't think negative reinforcement is the answer. How do I raise a good dog?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant To raise a dog the right way you should place both arms underneath the animal and lift whilst keeping your back straight and shoulders level. Face the same direction as your hips. Always bend your legs instead of the trunk to reduce stress on the spine.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Is there a term in Economics for something which has an east to measure cost but difficult to measure benefit? EDIT: Always spot typos after submitting, I mean "easy to measure cost" This seems like something there would be a term for. An example would be someone who is employed purely in a support role, their cost can be easily measured in terms of their salary but it difficult to quantify how much indirect benefit they provide. I've heard this kind of role described as overhead but that doesn't seem to cover the ease or otherwise of measuring benefit.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant For nearly everything it's easier to measure the cost than the benefit. Consider the adage "the value is not the price" as critical. It's incredibly important in questions like this to be as deliberate and clear as possible in your word choices. Benefit is broad and ambiguous. If you are discussing this in the context of a firm, you most likely did not mean benefits, but rather revenues. Revenues are a specific form of benefit and are distinctly more measurable than teamwork, watercooler jokes, and morning doughnuts. The field of transfer pricing analysis studies the contributions to revenues along the supply chain.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: This Bitcoin mining thing again. Every post I saw explained Bitcoin mining simply by saying "computers do math (hurr durr)". Can someone please give me a concrete example of such a mathematical problem? If this has been answered somewhere else and I didn't find it (and I tried hard!), please feel free to just post a link to that comment. Thank you :)<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It looks like there's still a bit of misinformation here, so I'll try to clear it up. The Big Picture Mining increases the bitcoin network's security and fights fraud by calculating what's effectively a checksum for transactions. By contributing their computing power to the bitcoin network for mining, individuals are rewarded with newly minted bitcoins by the community. This also provides a way to distribute new bitcoins in a fair manner. The Details Hash functions are at the heart of mining. A hash function is basically a complicated math formula that takes in some arbitrary input and gives a reproducible output. However, changing the input even slightly will completely alter the output. For example, using the SHA-256 hash function: SHA-256 of "Test" always outputs a hash of "532eaabd9574880dbf76b9b8cc00832c20a6ec113d682299550d7a6e0f345e25" SHA-256 of "test" (lowercase t) is "9f86d081884c7d659a2feaa0c55ad015a3bf4f1b2b0b822cd15d6c15b0f00a08" Now, let's say Alice decides to pay Bob 10BTC. The bitcoin network basically records that in the public ledger of transactions as "Alice -> 10 -> Bob". However, right now someone could change that 10 to a 20 without consequence. The network has to have some way of checking if the recorded transaction is valid or fraudulent. That's where mining comes in. When Alice pays Bob those 10BTC, miners in the bitcoin network will try to hash the transaction "Alice -> 10 -> Bob", resulting in "aa314e08a642f5be3857276ecb4a4085a33b916f84aebef32a077df9c29949b3". However, mining has a requirement that the resulting hash must start with a certain number of 0's (depending on the network's hash speed). Thus, miners will slightly alter the transaction by adding a random number to the end like so: "Alice -> 10 -> Bob 12345". The miners will then hash it again and see if it has the required number of 0's. If not, it'll change the random number and hash it again. This is repeated until an acceptable hash is found. Once the correct hash is found, the transaction and the hash are permanently stored in the public ledger of transactions, and if anyone tries to change the transaction (i.e. changing the 10 to a 20), the hash will naturally mismatch and the network will know that that transaction is fake and will reject it. The miner who calculated the correct hash is rewarded a certain number of newly minted bitcoins and transaction fees for his contributions to the security of the network. Thus, "bitcoin mining" is actually a slight misnomer. Its other equally important purpose is "bitcoin transaction securing." Hope that answered some questions! Edit: Thanks for the Gold! \^_^ Edit: mappum clarifies a few intricate details below.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What does Sartre mean when he states that 'In fashioning myself I fashion man'? Sartre's theory that existentialism is a humanism includes the idea that our actions account for actions of all mankind. He says 'I am thus responsible for myself and for all men' I understood this to be an extension of Kant's categorical imperative whereby one's actions are only morally acceptable if they can be acted by everyone and not cause a problem. 'act in accordance with the maxims of a member giving universal laws for a merely possible kingdom of ends'. Am I miss-understanding what Sartre meant?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Not really mis-understanding, though he's exploring something a little bit different from Kant. Sartre is saying that the actions you choose are ultimately the actions you believe anyone ought to choose, and that in this way all of your choices reflect your ideal of a person. You are creating your own ideal of a person in yourself, through your actions.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What does it mean when people say that an industry is worth $XXX? For example when people say that the electric car industry will be worth 1 trillion. Does that mean that all the goods sold added together are worth that much combined?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Let's say you are in 4th grade and sell candy bars. If you have 20 classmates and half of them like candy, your total market is 10 kids. Now, you sell each bar for $1 and there's 10 potential clients. Your market is $10. Your friends like candy so much that they buy two bars per day, so $10 x 2 = $20. This is what you are selling daily: $20. Now, there's about 180 school days per year, so your market is $20 x 180 = $3600. Your local market is worth $3600 yearly. You have to realize that there are 87.500 elementary schools in the US, and that there are kids selling candy bars in every 4th grade, so. 87.500 x $3600/yr = $315M $315M is the total market value for the 4th grade candy bar industry. Now, there are several markets per industry. Here we are assuming that there is only one product in this industry. Most industries are more complicated, have several competitors and have more products. Now you can repeat this process for the electric car industry. With some sophisticated analysis you can know how many people are currently willing to buy one, and can forecast the future trends regarding prices and willingness to buy. Like so, you can estimate how much an industry will be worth.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user CMV: You have no basis to tell others what to do based on religious beliefs if they do not hold the same beliefs. I hold the view proposed in the title. I am open to examining it because I see many instances in history and today of people giving behavioural prescriptions based on religious beliefs to others who do not hold the same beliefs. A religious belief is an example of a belief obtained through faith only. This means that spiritually and aesthetically, you find a proposition somehow worthy, and therefore want to believe it is true. At the same time, there may be no evidence for the proposition, but this doesn't matter for the purposes of faith-based belief. This is more relevant today than in the past, when people attempted to prove the existence of God with logic and find empirical evidence, whereas today it seems that most people think faith means believing based on the value they see in the proposition, not any evidence. Most of the core beliefs of a religion fit this description, such as God exists, he is omnipotent, omnibenevolent, etc. Many practices and codes of behaviour are derived from the core beliefs. A religion mandating vegetarianism says: if and only if \[some core belief\], then one must be vegetarian. A religion says: if and only if A, then B. Let's take the example of abortion. Some religions assert that life is a gift from God, and that you ought not to take it away. The proposition "one must undergo abortion" follows directly from the assertions. The assertions are believed based on faith, not evidence. If one were to command another to not undergo abortion, and they both believed the same body of faith-based assertions, that would be completely fine. But when one commands another, and the other does not believe those faith-based assertions, that's when problems arise. Given a certain faith-based assertion, one can choose to believe it or not, and either choice is equally valid. The belief is based on subjective tastes. However, given an evidence-based assertion, one of the choices is more valid depending on how strong the evidence is. For some evidence-based assertions, the evidence is so strong that one choice is absolutely valid. These evidence-based assertions apply to people of all belief systems, so one can always tell another that they ought to do something if that ought is based on evidence. Contrarily, if the ought does not follow from evidence-based assertions, it is incorrect to command another. It is incorrect to say that one religion is more valid than another.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant To what extent does anyone have the right to enforce their moral values, secular or religious, over anyone else? Morality, secular or religious, is inherently subjective. Right and wrong don't have any basis in reality - many people relate right and wrong to good and bad, or pleasure and suffering, but not everyone, and there is no moral system or single value that everyone will agree with. Not everyone believes in the same values you do - can you enforce your values on them? So either nobody has the right to enforce their moral beliefs (say murder is wrong, for an admittedly hyperbolic example) on another, or religiously founded morals are just as legitimate to be enforced on others as secular ones.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user Why does a reactor meltdown, such as with Chernobyl, create a much longer lasting exclusion zone than a nuclear warhead detonation site?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant It fundamentally comes down to quantities. A modern nuclear warhead may contain at most a few hundred kg of fissionable material, likely less. A typical reactor core contains 100 tonnes (200000 kg) of enriched Uranium (and other radioactive species if the fuel assemblies have been in use for a while). There's just vastly more radioactive potential present in the reactor core.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What is the significance of the Entscheidungsproblem ("decision problem")? As a computer science student, I have often been confronted with the [Entscheidungsproblem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entscheidungsproblem) and the work done by Alonzo Church and Alan Turing that showed no general solution to it can exist. However I never really understood the significance of this or what it really means in a practical sense. Can anyone shed some light on this topic for me and explain what the consequences of the Entscheidungsproblem are?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A very important consequence for computer science is, that it is not possible to write a sound and complete program analyzer for many problems. For example wouldn't it be cool to have a tool which finds all null-pointer-exceptions in a Java program? Thanks to the results known for the Entscheidungsproblem we know that we should not waste our time trying to write such a program analyzer as it cannot exist. Instead we should try to find approximations for the problem or restrict the Java language with a stronger type system. And when we design a new type-system we should maybe make sure that it is decidable, but some type-systems (Scala, Java?) are undecidable.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why does it hurt to read green text on red background and vice versa? What happens to our eyes/brain? [Example](https://www.tarleton.edu/accessibility/images/bad-example-green-bg-red-fg.jpg)<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The lens in your eye tries to focus the light on you retina but light of different wave lenght is bending differently (rainbowlike) so your eyes and brain will be confused about what color to make sharp and what to make blurry. You will get this effect with any color combination with large enough difference in wave lenght. In optometry you use a similar test to adjust correction by looking at black text on green background next to black text on red background and see shat color is clearest. Red means you need more negative glasses, green more positive.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user eli5, how do "store brands" work?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Stores contract with manufacturers to make product specifically for them, usually at a cheaper rate. Some ways that they get a lower cost: sometimes the food manufacturer is not the same as the brand name one. sometimes this is cheaper. sometimes its the same, but volume agreements are negotiated leading to a cheaper price. sometimes the same, but the packaging is cheaper, or the ingredients are cheaper. usually this provides little margin for the main manufacturer, but it keeps the lights on/machine running when its very expensive for machines to be down. sometimes its whats called a 'copacker' and they usually do the packaging in place of a manufacturer actually producing it. for them, its a matter of replacing the packaging/labelling and continue producing. ive seen very little difference in product (brand v "generic") when its made by a copacker. source: i work with copackers, private labels, and brands for some of these products<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user If gravity causes time dilation, wouldn't deep gravity wells create their own red-shift? How do astronomers distinguish close massive objects from distant objects?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant They estimate the depth of the gravity well. We sit in one ourselves so this can be taken into account as well. It doesn’t matter much. At distances where this is a large effect the random motion of galaxies is still important. At distances where you get nice measurements the redshift is so large the gravity wells don’t have a large impact any more.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do some airplanes have the wing tips folded up at about 80 degrees and some planes do not?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant A wing provides lift because it creates low pressure on top of the wing, and higher pressure below. As a side effect this causes the air to swirl around the tip of the wing in an effort to equalize the pressure as air on the high pressure side tries to reach the low pressure side. This is undesirable because it screws up the airflow around the end of the wing, and also creates dangerous vortexes that trail behind the aircraft. One way of minimizing this problem is by using "winglets" that serve as a fence to block the air under the wing from being able to curl around the end. This makes the wing work more efficiently and reduces those vortexes.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: What gives fire its shape?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant When air is heated, it tends to expand. To explain why it expands - Heat is basically the measure of vibration and movement of the actual molecules within a substance. When something is solid, these vibrations don't have enough energy to stop the attractive forces between the molecules thus they stay mostly in place. When something is a liquid, the molecules have enough energy to repel a LITTLE bit from the attracting forces, but can at least move so they tend to slide over one another and create something that flows - A liquid. Something that is a gas has enough energy for each molecule that they have completely freed themselves from one another, and will expand to fill any container that they are in because they are basically just constantly slamming into one another as they move. This is what causes pressure because the molecules are constantly bouncing off of one another and forcing each other away, and WANT to move outward. The hotter something is, the more it wants to expand as the movement of the molecules increase. Thus the lower density it would have as it expands. This expansion lowers the density of the air that is being heated by the flame, as such it wants to rise upward because the cold air around it is more dense and forcing the hot air upward. Hot Air balloons work on this idea. So in essence what you are seeing is not the exact shape of the fire, but what the air that is moving upward forms it into. In space, fire would be much more stable in its shape and be mostly rounded as there is no gravity for hot/cold air to convect against.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user What does it mean to be immune to a disease, and how do "carriers" work? From what I understand (I might even be completely wrong?) there is bound to be at least one person on this earth immune to disease X, they could carry it and spread it - but not be affected and killed by it. How does this work? Does their immune system not care about the disease or just isolate it in the body? What happens?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant There are different kinds of immunity. If the infectious disease cannot grow in the host or has been completely wiped out, then they can't be a carrier. This can happen several ways, for example: 1. The disease has been completely obliterated by the concerted effort of your immune system or through drugs. For example, if you clear a yeast infection completely, you can't give it to someone else afterwards because there's simply no yeast left. 2. Certain people are naturally immune to certain types of disease because of there genetics. For example, some people are immune to HIV because they don't have a receptor that HIV attaches to. If the virus can't enter the cells, it can't infect and be passed on. However, there are other disease that the host can contain (maybe for a little while anyway) and render asymptomatic but cannot completely clear, even with the help of drugs. These include herpes, HIV. The disease has mechanisms to avoid or suppress the immune system enough that there aren't any symptoms, but the disease can still be transmitted. Every disease has it's own way of doing though. Typhoid fever, for example, can be asymptomatic in a host, but still be tranmissible because in certain people the bacteria can "hide" from the host immune defense.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user If the solubility of CO2 decreases as temperature increases, then why is global warming causing ocean acidification? I've read that the CO2 becomes less soluble in water the hotter it gets, but I've also read that the ocean is absorbing more CO2, causing its pH to decrease. Are both of these statements true? If so, how?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant For simple solutions, the relationship between the partial pressure of a gas and the concentration of it in a solvent is proportional, >p = kc This is called Henry's law. k can be a function of temperature. For CO2, k becomes smaller at higher temperatures, so at the same partial pressure, less gas can dissolve. However, the amount dissolved always increases with the amount in the air. Even though the solvency of the gas can decrease, we can still dissolve more total gas by simply pumping up the atmospheric concentration.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: How did the term "Latin" become associated the culture of Spanish descendants if the Latins were a central Italian hill tribe? edit: Recognizing, of course, the Latin language as the basis for the Romantic languages (French, Romanian, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese). As Rome expanded, did the term "Latin" follow it? If so, why was it jettisoned as a descriptor for Turkish, Italian, French, German, Greek, North African, Eastern European, Persian and Semitic peoples and not Iberian peoples?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant The term Latin America was first used in the XIX century to describe the part of the Americas that spoke either Spanish, Portuguese or French. You may argue that Hispanic America or Iberian America would be better terms, but none of these terms refer to Spanish, Portuguese and French at the same time. More importantly, in the context of the fight for independence, people from the region would rather be associated with a more general heritage (the Latin civilization) instead of being associated with the countries they were fighting against (Spain and Portugal). The term Latin America, which was used initially to describe countries sharing a common linguistic family, started to be used to describe, by extension, a geographic region (that somewhat wrongly includes English and Dutch speaking countries) and later to describe the people coming from these countries. Since most people from Latin America speak Spanish (especially those who immigrate to the USA), the term Latin has been more strongly associated with the Spanish language.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user How are modern transistors manufactured? With the current generation of GPU's and CPU's being released and talked about I keep seeing terms like 14nm and 7nm being thrown around. I sort of took this as an arbitrary number for a while and didn't think about it. However when I started doing some research, I realized that 14nm's is only \~7 silicon atoms wide. With that in mind, the NVIDIA 3080 is advertised as having 10's of billions of transistors. How is it possible to manufacture these on such scale to supply demand, and without error so that the chips actually work.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Mostly due to advances in photolithography machines (e.g. ASML). The wavelength of the lasers used for patterning are being pushed lower, as this is one way to improve the resolution of printing the patterns to build up transistors and microchips. The latest machines are using 13nm Extreme Ultraviolet light. It is worth noting that nodes used by companies like Intel such as 14 nm, 10 nm etc are mostly marketing and normally don't relate to the actual critical dimensions of the chips<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why do gasoline prices fluctuate so drastically from state to state in the US.<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Different gasoline taxes. Different distances between the nearest refinery. Different blend requirements for the gasoline(California). Different requirements on who's allowed to pump gasoline into a car(Oregon/New Jersey). Different minimum wages. Different property values for a gas station sized plot of land. Different property taxes.<\|im_end\|>
<\|im_start\|>user ELI5: Why haven't we made ski boots that don't hurt yet?<\|im_end\|> <\|im_start\|>assistant Normal shoes will adapt to your feet after a while. Ski boots shouldn't adapt, they should brace your foot. You can get the inner shoe shaped to fit your foot. it costs like $300-500. But a far cheaper thing that people don't know about is that you can take your boot to a (good) ski shop and they can stretch your off-the-shelf boot where it hurts your foot. About half an inch or so. It's usually like $30-80. It works out great for many people. Edit: but they ski boots are not as bad as they used to be, right?<\|im_end\|>

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.