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Human: What's a day in the life of a philosophy professor? I'm in high school and considering this career path; I would appreciate having the title answered as well as satisfaction, salary, job opportunity, and anything else you find worth mentioning. Assistant:I'm a philosophy prof. What a typical day is like depends on a lot of things, including where you're working and what your responsibilities are. Teaching at a community college is different from teaching at Harvard or Yale. I teach at a midsize, private liberal arts uni in the US. I teach 3 classes per semester with 25ish students per section. My typical day involves prepping for teaching (anywhere from 30 minutes to 2.5 hours, depending on the material), teaching, research (usually 1-2 hours if I'm lucky), responding to emails, grading, and committee work. I'd say I work 8-9 hours a day and a 4 hours on the weekend if needed. For classes, I teach 2 sections of critical thinking and one section of an upper division course that fulfills uni curriculum requirements. I think I'm probably pretty average for workload. Some folks get tenure and then do next to nothing. Others work 60-80 hours a week. Work-life balance is a real struggle for many academics. Salary depends on where you live and work. Mine is good. I can afford to buy a house and occasionally take a vacation. But you won't be making 6-figures at most places until after at least a decade or two, if at all. You definitely don't go into this job for the money. I'm very lucky. I like my colleagues (most days) and my students (most days). I get to do research on interesting issues and talk with fascinating people. But let me say that many aren't as lucky as I am. The philosophy job market is brutal. 300 people applied for my job 7 or 8 years ago, all of them with PhDs, teaching experience, and publications. Many people spend 7 to 10 years getting a PhD and then maybe a few more in temporary positions only to realize they'll never get a permanent job. I advise undergraduates to find another way to indulge their love of philosophy without getting a PhD or going into academia. So ask yourself: what do you love about philosophy? Could you be happy majoring in it and then maybe teaching high school with a few units on philosophy? Of course you're in high school and there's no need to figure out your life plan right now, but the more you know, etc. Make no mistake: I think philosophy is intrinsically valuable. But I don't think folks need to get an advanced degree in it to reap the benefits.

Human: What's a day in the life of a philosophy professor? I'm in high school and considering this career path; I would appreciate having the title answered as well as satisfaction, salary, job opportunity, and anything else you find worth mentioning. Assistant:You might want to say in which country or state you live since it could depend on that a lot.

Human: [Hitman] How is 47 not notorious when he's a tall bald man with a very unmistakable barcode on the back of his head? Assistant:This is sort-of explained in a novel that serves as a prequel to the story of *Absolution* as well as some of the earlier games - Agent 47 is a boogeyman of sorts, only rumored to exist by federal agencies who aren't aware of him (the CIA knows since they've hired him before). But for everyone else, there's no reason to *believe* he's killing people. And you want to know why? Because by official canon, all of 47's kills are declared to be *accidents*. There's always a way to kill his targets in-game using a non-obvious means and when taken, nobody bats an eye. In fact, killing people this way as of the game *Blood Money* means that they're not even registered as kills in the game's scoring system. And going back to Absolution's prequel book, 47's reputation of doing so has actually become legendary in the ICA to the point where some of their agents botched a high-profile contract by attempting to perform their own accident kills and screwing things up. And going back to Blood Money, it's actually a sort-of example because it's used to measure your overall performance in the game. As you complete each mission, you'll see a newspaper article discussing the events that happened during the level. This actually serves as your overall rating for the game up to that point, and the more obvious your murders are, the more the headlines talk about 47 and will slowly reveal more and more details about him, including better police sketches until they see your face. Later levels will also be harder since the NPCs will recognise you from the papers. To lower your reputation, you need to replay the older levels and get a better mission rating, with the in-canon reason being that Agent 47 never left any evidence and was always ranked "Silent Assassin". Also, he's surprisingly good at blending into disguises and fooling people, helped by his face being mixed-race and easily passing for no-one in particular, not helped by his wide range of skills.

Human: [Hitman] How is 47 not notorious when he's a tall bald man with a very unmistakable barcode on the back of his head? Assistant:Well, I don't know about *your* experience, but in *my* experience there's very little for him to be notorious for. He is in the vicinity of some unfortunate accidents and about four billion people (approx) being knocked unconscious and shoved into wardrobes by unknown assailants.

Human: [TX] My father died without leaving behind a will. What needs to be done to make my mother the his executrix so that we can get his assets in her name? The title says it. My dad died unexpectedly and didn't leave behind a will. I'm wondering how my mom can become the executrix of his estate. (It's my understanding that this will put her in control of all of his property/assets. That is, all of the things that aren't in both of their names.) Assistant:Probate lawyer here. Sorry to hear about your father. Mine died last week. It's pretty lousy. First question: what are the assets and liabilities of the estate? This is important because getting your mother appointed as an estate administrator is expensive when there is no will. There are less expensive alternatives, but they are fact specific regarding the estate's assets and liabilities. Second question: Did your father have any children outside the marriage? The decent and distribution laws vary greatly depending on whether or not there are stepchildren. Third question: Are any of your father's children minors? This can also complicate matters. Here's what to do: 1. List out all of the assets that are in your father's name solely. Find out (if possible) when and how he acquired them. Texas is a community property state. If he received property as a gift, inheritance or something he had before he married, it's likely separate property. Most items acquired after the marriage are likely community property. 2. Of those assets, find out if any have beneficiary designations (such as life insurance, pay on death accounts, etc.) Usually, beneficiary designations do not require any probate action. 3. List out any debts that your father has--credit cards, taxes, mortgage, cars, etc. 4. Assemble a list of all of your father's children. If he has deceased children, list the deceased child's children. Include all contact information. If any are minors, include date of birth. 5. Organize. Have your father's death certificate handy. If he's been married more than once, get the divorce dates or other materials showing the end of the prior marriages. 6. Depending on how he died, get information on the death. Also, get a death certificate from the funeral home. If your dad died as a result of an accident or malpractice, the lawyer will need to know immediately. 7. Find out if there are any pensions or other materials. 8. Contact a probate lawyer in your county. If it's a larger county, it should have a lawyer referral service. If you are in a smaller county, check some websites such as avvo.com or lawyers.com. **Interview at least two or three lawyers and figure out which ones you like best.** This is such a personal deal. You have to find someone you work well with. Feel free to PM me if you'd like to talk more.

Human: [TX] My father died without leaving behind a will. What needs to be done to make my mother the his executrix so that we can get his assets in her name? The title says it. My dad died unexpectedly and didn't leave behind a will. I'm wondering how my mom can become the executrix of his estate. (It's my understanding that this will put her in control of all of his property/assets. That is, all of the things that aren't in both of their names.) Assistant:I'm sorry for your loss. Here's a Nolo link to start. Most likely your mom will just own everything.

Human: I have been interested in space and astronomy for a few months and I have a question. So, a blackhole's singularity has infinite density with 0 volume. So when two blackholes collide, their singularities merge. So the the volume would increase right, but the gravity of the bigger blackhole increases Am I understanding balckholes wrong or something Assistant:> Am I understanding balckholes wrong or something Yes, but it's not your fault. The singularity is not real. That word keeps bouncing around in pop science and social media, but it does not reflect a physical reality that we've ever seen. There are no physical singularities, ever. The concept makes no sense. Nature does not divide by zero, ever. What really happens is that the equations of General Relativity exhibit a mathematical singularity) at the center of a black hole - which is only another way of saying you get divisions by zero and other such things that basically just mean math is broken at that point. Or look at it this way: math is polite enough to let us know "hey, I can't handle this part, you're on your own now". GR as a theory is not wrong. We know it works, and it works insanely great. We've verified it in practice. We know black holes exist. We know GR makes correct predictions for stuff that happens around black holes. It probably makes correct predictions for stuff happening inside black holes, although that was not verified (yet). But GR reaches its limit at the very center. When you get a mathematical singularity out of your equations, that's just a sign that you need some extra theory to handle that part properly. We know what that "extra theory" is - it's Quantum Mechanics. It would be really great if we could apply it there. But the problem is, GR and QM do not play well together. You have to pick one or the other, not both at once. Their equations are not compatible. For this reason, the mathematical singularity (not physical - it's not a thing) at the center of a black hole remains unsolved for now, until we deal with the quarrel. Unfortunately, popularizers of science kept talking about "singularities" as if they were things, the general public got that idea, and here we are now. It's like when doing econometrics and your equations tell you that there are "minus one hundred and four" people inhabiting the district of Such and Such. That's bullshit, how can there be -104 people anywhere? Your math, which may work well for the whole country, is insufficient for that district. You need to add something on top of it to get the real result. And meanwhile, don't go around and talk about the "negative population" of district S&S. That's not a thing. TLDR: We don't really know what actually happens there, and we should stop pretending that we do. Here be dragons.

Human: I have been interested in space and astronomy for a few months and I have a question. So, a blackhole's singularity has infinite density with 0 volume. So when two blackholes collide, their singularities merge. So the the volume would increase right, but the gravity of the bigger blackhole increases Am I understanding balckholes wrong or something Assistant:u are assuming the singularities merge...and even if they did....how does 0+0= something greater than 0?

Human: Why did so many civilizations all over the world all similarly create a God/Gods despite having no contact with each other? Originally posted in r/askhistorians but was told to post here as well. My dad’s a skeptic (history channel watcher, alien believer, etc etc) and he asked me this recently and I didn’t know the answer. Apologies if this has been posted already and I just haven’t seen it. Anyone have any info regarding this topic? Assistant:Scott Atran’s theory is that belief in the supernatural is a side effect of our cognitive capacity to assign motivation to actions. Our brains are wired for social interaction, so when we interact with others, we assume they do or say things with a particular intention. What if we applied this thought to everything? Suddenly the world is governed by unseeable forces.

Human: Why did so many civilizations all over the world all similarly create a God/Gods despite having no contact with each other? Originally posted in r/askhistorians but was told to post here as well. My dad’s a skeptic (history channel watcher, alien believer, etc etc) and he asked me this recently and I didn’t know the answer. Apologies if this has been posted already and I just haven’t seen it. Anyone have any info regarding this topic? Assistant:This is complicated and I've been taking an anthro course specifically about these concepts and am happy to finally have a reason to share some of what I've been learning. People project a sense of sentience onto objects around them, this is a key concept in the Theory of Mind in regards to magical/mystical thinking and emerges early in human history. This is partially a means to make sense of things yes but a lot of it has to do with your ability to control the uncontrollable. If you are in dire need you create a system of mystical thinking that enables you to control things which you cannot, yet rely on for survival. Ritual often takes place to ensure the success of different things. It's desperation. God's are birthed after animism has been long established and as civilizations begin to take root and project animistic concepts and specific cultural ideologies (geographically influenced) onto physical things turning them into entities. These entities are the epitome of their geographies, their weather, their food sources, their behaviors, their material culture and their needs. Look into Theory of Mind, Animism/animatism, contagious magic, sympathetic magic, and the law of similarity/law of contagion. These are all core concepts around the need/use of magic and I think you will find a lot of it helpful in understanding your question about the emergence of Gods. The need for them is the same but comes about through different immediate influences reflecting diverse character traits. Remember magic existed before more formal god's emerged, which is interesting to consider.

Human: Explain like I'm five years old How do physicists know that time can be warped and molded? Where is the proof and the evidence that lead them to that conclusion? Assistant:To get to this point, we need to go back in time a bit. Back in the 1800s, people discovered that light behaves as a wave (also as a particle, but let's focus on the wave bit for now). Now, since sound waves and water waves move through a medium, it's safe to assume that light moves through one as well. In an attempt to show this, they did an experiment. In this, they tried to show that Earth drags this ether, as they called it, along with it like the wake of a boat. In one direction light would move slower than in the other. What they actually found was that light moves at the same speed, no matter what. This is a big deal (side note: also a good example of the negative outcome of an experiment mattering!), and it led people to theorize a lot, and see what the implications would be. One of these folks was called Einstein, and did a lot of theoretical work. First he just considered stuff going in a straight line, and see what would happen. From this, he deduced that time and space are relative, and that simultaneity doesn't exist. Special relativity is a big thing, and has a lot to unpack, so I'm just going to focus on the time bit here. Let's imagine a train, it's hurtling through space at speeds close to the speed of light. On it, there are two mirrors: one on the floor, the other on the ceiling. Between these two mirrors, a beam of light is moving. Each time the beam hits the bottom mirror, some time has passed. Let's call that length of time t. Now, for someone inside the train, the light just goes up and down. And if the carriage is 7 feet high, the time t is about 14ns. Now we take a look at what someone outside the train sees. Someone who sees it passing by at an incredible speed. They'll also see the light going up and down, but they'll also see it going sideways, with the velocity of the train. As a result, to an outside observer, the light goes diagonally. This image shows both side by side. Because the speed of light is constant, the light beam the outsider sees takes longer for a round trip. So this rudimentary clock aboard the train is ticking slower to the outside observer. Einstein then went on to look at what happens if the train isn't going in a straight line, but what happens if it undergoes acceleration. Now, I'm honest, I don't really understand how all that works theoretically, but at lower altitudes, ie closer to the gravitational centre of the planet or star, time moves slower, than at higher altitudes. But that isn't what you asked. You asked how we confirmed these theories. Well, there have been some experiments that showed this. For the special relativity case, the easiest to explain is the one with muons. These particles are created high in the upper atmosphere when sunlight hits on it. They are scattered around, and some move towards Earth. These muons have a very short lifespan. In fact, so short that they would decay before getting to the surface of the Earth. But we've mezsured them down here anyway. That is because they move fast enough to have a significant time dilation effect, meaning that they can survive just long enough. An example for the gravitational time dilation is a bit more complicated. Scientists have found that light with the same frequency gets its frequency shifted a bit depending on where on Earth you are, or rather how close to Earth you are. After all, the frequency of light is just how often stuff moves in a second. The results they found are in accordance with Einstein's theory. But then there are also examples of both at work at the same time. GPS is the best example of this. Because of how it works, an accurate time stamp is needed. The issue is that if you only account for dilation from velocity, or only for dilation from gravity, the results are off. But if you account for both, then you know where you are. EDIT: hit comment to soon.

Human: Explain like I'm five years old How do physicists know that time can be warped and molded? Where is the proof and the evidence that lead them to that conclusion? Assistant:The proof is in the mathematics. Empirically, we know that a moving clock will tick slower than a stationary one - satellites make regular adjustment for this.

Human: [LoTR] What is the economy of Mordor like? What are the main imports and exports? What is the GDP? How is the employment situation? I'm thinking of moving my family there, I'm hoping the schools are better then here in Oklahoma Assistant:I'm going to start this by saying that "Mordor" isn't a country with a central leadership system anymore than "the Germanies" were prior to their unification. As such, I'll be referring to it as "the Mordors" from here on out. It's also a famously isolationist region due to a strained political relationship with it's neighbor, Gondor. There are some things we do know, which I'll discuss here. [What are the main imports and exports?] As I've already said, the Mordors have traditionally been something of an isolationist region, not well known for their exported goods. As far as imports are concerned, it's generally raw materials that can't be mined there. Rarely food, as their farmland is famously fertile due to its volcanic soil. There are occasional militaristic excursions done as an opportunity to aquire valuables. More often, though, they're simply part of the traditional "coming of age" rites done by young Mordorians who are attempting to gain personal standing within Mordorian society than any kind of true, active malevolence. The goal there, however, is to go out, fight, and return, having gained honor through their actions in combat, not through what loot they got. More saber rattling than not. [What is the GDP?] Again, they're isolationist, so we don't know for sure, but considering how rare ACTUAL attacks to gain material goods are, the Mordors' economy can be assumed to be healthy. [How is the employment situation?] Again, we don't know for sure, but based on what we've seen, we're do know what careers are available. There's traditional farming, of course, but also a robust animal husbandry field. The raiding groups we've seen have potent, if bad tasting, medicines, so the pharmaceutical industry is also alive and well. Further, mining, metallurgy, and engineering programs are robust. Most of the STEM fields can be found there. There is, unfortunately, little evidence of the arts, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. [I'm thinking of moving my family there, I'm hoping the schools are better then here in Oklahoma] Again, considering the careers we've seen available, the STEM education system is quite good. The arts are less so. +++++ Overall, while the Mordors are an isolationist region, there's no reason to believe that moving there would be a bad idea. That said, the last few decades have shown a shift in the Mordors' regional policies. This might mean there's been a change in leadership, possibly shifting to a more central authority, but we don't know for sure.

Human: [LoTR] What is the economy of Mordor like? What are the main imports and exports? What is the GDP? How is the employment situation? I'm thinking of moving my family there, I'm hoping the schools are better then here in Oklahoma Assistant:Centrally planned.

Human: swiss meringue buttercream help!! so this is about my 4th time making SMBC (its also been about a year since the last time). i've made my first practice batch today. the piping texture seems spot on to me! but its the taste i'm unsure of. i feel like it has a slight hint of butter taste. also, im not sure if it should do this, but when i hold it between my fingers it leaves a greasy film. i've never tasted homemade SMBC until i made it myself, so i'm unsure of everything. recipe i used: 200g egg whites 200g sugar 426g butter (recipe called for 450, but 426 was all i had on hand) pinch of salt 1 tsp vanilla extract. Assistant:I really like Sally's SMBC recipe. I made two batches of it for a cake this week and both turned out so dreamy.

Human: swiss meringue buttercream help!! so this is about my 4th time making SMBC (its also been about a year since the last time). i've made my first practice batch today. the piping texture seems spot on to me! but its the taste i'm unsure of. i feel like it has a slight hint of butter taste. also, im not sure if it should do this, but when i hold it between my fingers it leaves a greasy film. i've never tasted homemade SMBC until i made it myself, so i'm unsure of everything. recipe i used: 200g egg whites 200g sugar 426g butter (recipe called for 450, but 426 was all i had on hand) pinch of salt 1 tsp vanilla extract. Assistant:Swiss meringue buttercream tastes buttery, and will have a buttery texture. Because of all the butter in it. Personally I don't really like it for that reason - too buttery. But that's what it is. Mostly butter. Sounds like yours is right on. If anything was going to go wrong you would know from the texture. If the whites were whipped improperly, the sugar wasn't incorporated properly, the butter wasn't the right temp or added the right way, you would know from the texture being off. But if it's piping perfectly then the texture is perfect.

Human: [The Matrix] Did all iterations of Neo know how to stop bullets? But then why was Merovingian surprised? Assistant:I would say, no I always imagined each Anamoly manifested a different set of system breaking abilities when their cycle came through.

Human: [The Matrix] Did all iterations of Neo know how to stop bullets? But then why was Merovingian surprised? Assistant:The scene in the Matrix Reloaded were the Merovingian is surprised is when Neo stops a sword with the edge of his hand, isn't it? Then a drop of blood falls and the fight resumes. Something unexpected, that the previous iterations did not show?

Human: [UPDATE 4] My husbands expire wants access to my banks accounts. [Florida and Texas] Her lawyer dropped her. He even called us to apologize. She had been lying to him and made it sound like we stole her money and that she was promised alimony. We now have a restraining order against her and she's gone back to Texas. https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/3q7dtk/update_3husbands_exwife_wants_access_to_my_bank/ EDIT: Exwife not expire. Stupid iPhone. Assistant:It seems like he really didn't do his due diligence before acting. If I were you I would start working on having her declared a vexatious litigant as soon as possible, or this is likely to keep happening.

Human: [UPDATE 4] My husbands expire wants access to my banks accounts. [Florida and Texas] Her lawyer dropped her. He even called us to apologize. She had been lying to him and made it sound like we stole her money and that she was promised alimony. We now have a restraining order against her and she's gone back to Texas. https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/3q7dtk/update_3husbands_exwife_wants_access_to_my_bank/ EDIT: Exwife not expire. Stupid iPhone. Assistant:Thanks for updating! Glad to hear you got a break for the holidays, hopefully it will last.

Human: Does academic philosophy have a publish or perish mentality similar to the sciences? Assistant:Most research universities define professional success primarily in terms of research output. So in that sense, fancy places are going to hire all/only the people with the biggest research presence. This doesn't mean you have to put out the most articles, or publish them in the best journals, although both tend to correlate pretty strongly with research presence. It means you have to do good work that moves the field, and be recognized for it. Many people handily get tenure at excellent universities with about 1 paper per year. Some get tenure with much less (Tom Ricketts, a few decades ago, made tenure at Penn with two papers); some (cough, cough, Mark Schroeder) put out a bit more. What's necessary is impactful research (read, good papers) and the sorts of professional activities that move the field forwards (conference partitipation; invited talks; reading through books manuscripts; etc.) and the recognition as a major scholar that comes with them. Sometimes other activities (editing major journals, organizing major conferences) count too. In fact, one statement that's almost categorically true in philosophy, as compared to the sciences, is that philosophers produce many fewer publications than most scientists do. We really emphasize quality over quantity here. So there's definitely a "research or perish" mentality. But it's a little more complicated than the standard "publish or perish" doctrine makes things out to be.

Human: Does academic philosophy have a publish or perish mentality similar to the sciences? Assistant:Oh my god yes

Human: In 62 bc Cicero bought a house from Crassus for 3.5 million sesterces. How was that transaction executed? Seems like it would be a logistical nightmare. Did Cicero cart all that money across town and deliver it? Where was that money stored? Assistant:I had the honour of attending a lecture by Dr. William Harris on Feb 26th, 2015 at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where Dr. Harris addressed almost this exact question. I have found my notes I took from this lecture, and if this sub will allow it, I would like to share some of what I can recall from this talk. I am not an expert on this topic, but I hope I can help provide some information. The issue with a purchase as large as the one mentioned is, as you have realized, that the physical act of moving that much money is not only prohibitive, but also dangerous and difficult to store. The average weight of a Roman sesterces is known to be approx. 3.54g each. Quick math shows that a payment of 3.5 million sesterces would weigh around 12.39 metric TONS of coin and bullion. Even making an adjustment for coins of larger denomination (which were often also made of gold, so that probably wouldn't help matters), that amount of money would be a serious undertaking for a modern shipping or security company, not to mention one of the Roman era. Not only would you need to feed the wagon train to transport it, you would also need to pay the people needed to drive that train and also guards to guard both the bullion and your personnel. Moving that much money very quickly moves into the realm of the absurd. The Romans had recognized this, and created systems to allow more fluid monetary transactions. According to Dr. Harris, the primary method large payments of money were made through the use of a system that would look very familiar to someone living today: through equity, credit, and credit transfer. See, for example, another purchase made by another Roman named Canius mentioned in "De Officiis" (Book II, 3.59)[Emphasis is mine]: >"Pray, Pythius," said Canius thereupon, "what does this mean? — all these fish? — all these boats?" >"No wonder," answered Pythius; "this is where all the fish in Syracuse are; here is where the fresh >water comes from; the fishermen cannot get along without this estate." >Inflamed with desire for it, Canius insisted upon Pythius's selling it to him. At first he demurred. To >make a long story short, Canius gained his point. The man was rich, and, in his desire to own the >country seat, he paid for it all that Pythius asked; and he bought the entire equipment, too. >**Pythius entered the amount upon his ledger and completed the transfer.** The next day Canius >invited his friends; he came early himself. Not so much as a thole-pin was in sight. He asked his >next-door neighbour whether it was a fishermen's holiday, for not a sign of them did he see. >"Not so far as I know," said he; "but none are in the habit of fishing here. And so I could not make >out what was the matter yesterday." Poor Canius gets duped in this story, but the point is that this is a first hand account of how the purchase of house is being made, through the use of a ledger and credit system. Certificates of credit were called "Nomina", and were kept in ledgers like the one described above. Ledgers or books of "Names" are mentioned as well in accounts of the Jewish Revolts when the Zealots burn the roman storehouses which they kept the "Names" (or Nomina) of the oppressed. Harris suggested these would likely have represented credit houses which, the act of attacking them an attempt at economic emancipation by the Zealots. At Pompeii, no large stores of ingots or bullion were found in the buried city, the absence of which would have been conspicuous in an affluent coastal trading city if the primary form of exchange was through physical money. Bullion would generally be reserved for emergencies, fast payment, or financial dealings with outside peoples. One humorous story told by Dr. Harris was of ~~a Roman senator obsessed with making sure that the gold he would need to bring with him to his new African estate would be safe travelling across the Mediterranean (heavy, coin laden ships tend to sink...). He apparently tested the idea of using strong boxes affixed with cork and blown glass floaters to prevent them from sinking in the event of a shipwreck. (I wish I could remember the name, it's not in my notes, I may have been laughing at the description more than writing..)~~ EDIT: u/sunagainstgold has kindly pointed out that I am likely wrongly remembering a situation involving Cato the Younger, and has the relevant passage below. Trading by credit was not limited to a one to one arrangement between the debtor or creditor either. It was also possible to pay through "Delagatio", by which you could pay your debts by offering debts owed to you of equal or a negotiated value. To paraphrase Dr. Harris, you "paid your loans with loans you were never paid". All Nomina seemed to be negotiable to some extent, as many creditors preferred to be paid a portion of what they were owed if they felt the debtor might not pay at all otherwise. Credit markets existed as well, Caesar is described as passing laws to restrict the credit market and predatory money lenders (Cassius Dio "Roman History", Book 41.37-38): >Having obtained this, he at once instituted an important and necessary reform. Those who had lent >money, it seems, being now in need of large sums because of the civil strife and the wars, were >collecting their loans most relentlessly, and many of the debtors for the same reasons were unable >to pay back anything, even if they wished to do so, since they did not find it easy to sell anything >or to borrow more. Hence their dealing with each other were marked by much deceit and fraud, and >there was fear that they might go to the point of accomplishing some fatal mischief. To be sure, the >rate of interest had been lowered even before this time by some of the tribunes; but since >payment was not secured even thus, but instead the one class was ready to forfeit its securities, >while the other demanded back its principal in cash, Caesar now came to the aid of both so far as he >could. He ordered that securities should have a fixed valuation according to their worth, and he >provided that arbiters for this purpose should be allotted to persons involved in such a dispute. >Since also many were said to possess much wealth but to be concealing it all, he forbade any one to >possess more than sixty thousand sesterces in silver or gold; and he claimed he was not enacting >this law himself, but was simply renewing a measure introduced on some previous occasion. His >object was either that those who were owing money should pay back a part of their debt to the >lenders and the latter should lend to such as needed, or else that the well-to‑do might become >known and none of them should keep his wealth all together, for fear some rebellion might be set >afoot during his absence. When the populace, elated at this, demanded also that rewards should be >offered to slaves for information against their masters, he refused to add such a clause to the law, >and furthermore invoked dire destruction upon himself if he should ever trust a slave when speaking >against his master. Monetary reform like this actually happens a number of times throughout Roman history as their economy outgrows the systems it is built on (or collapses under its own weight) but that's a topic for another time. (See the reforms of Diocletian and as well as earlier in 130AD when small denomination coins were removed from circulation) The **TL:DR** of your question is somewhat simple: the Romans avoided the logistical nightmare of moving around tons of roman coins and bullion by not using it for big purchases. Instead, systems of credit called "Nomina" were used inter-personally as well as through credit markets to move money around ancient Rome. It is suspected that much of the tax revenue from places like Syria were paid to Rome in this way, which begs the question what the local governors did with all that "idle" currency. Dr Harris did not have an answer for this, but surmised they probably quietly pocketed it or used it to pay local debts. EDIT: Forgot my citation. *tsk tsk* (Chicago) Dr. Harris, William. "Roman Money: Problems, Solutions, and More Problems." Lecture, The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Greek and Roman Studies Lecture Series from Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, February 26, 2017 Link to event page @ Carleton: https://carleton.ca/grs/2015/upcoming-lecture-understanding-roman-money-problems-solutions-problems/

Human: In 62 bc Cicero bought a house from Crassus for 3.5 million sesterces. How was that transaction executed? Seems like it would be a logistical nightmare. Did Cicero cart all that money across town and deliver it? Where was that money stored? Assistant:Hello everyone, If you are a first time visitor, welcome! This thread is trending high right now and getting a lot of attention, but it is important to remember those upvotes represent interest in the question itself, and it can often take time for a good answer to be written. The mission of /r/AskHistorians is to provide users with **in-depth and comprehensive responses**, and our rules are intended to facilitate that purpose. *We remove comments which don't follow them for reasons including unfounded speculation, shallowness, and of course, inaccuracy*. Making comments asking about the removed comments simply compounds this issue. So please, before you try your hand at posting, check out the rules, as we don't want to have to warn you further. Of course, we know that it can be frustrating to come in here from your frontpage or /r/all and see only *removed]*, but we ask for your patience and understanding. Great content is produced on this subreddit every day though, and we hope that while you wait, you will check out places they are featured, including [Twitter, the Sunday Digest, the Monthly "Best Of" feature, and now, Facebook. It is very rare that a decent answer doesn't result in due time, so please do come check back on this thread in a few hours. If you think you might forget, send a Private Message to the Remind-Me bot, and it will ensure you don't! Finally, while we always appreciate feedback, it is unfair to the OP to further derail this thread with META conversation, so if anyone has further questions or concerns, I would ask that they be directed to modmail, or a META thread. Thank you!

Human: How to compressed files (.rar, .zip) work? I just don't understand them. I download 1MB of files, unpack it using a program like WinRar, and suddenly I have 2MB of files. How can a program like WinRar use 1MB of input to find the correct 2MB of output? Try to keep it at least a bit simple, I don't know a terribly large amount about computers. Thanks! Assistant:There are many different kinds of compression, and different tools that do similar kinds of compression. Let's talk about zip, since it's a fairly common form of lossless compression -- the kind you're talking about. Everyone here has already described something called dictionary coding, but there's another important type of compression that's done by tools like zip. A single byte of data can represent 256 different values. English has a 26-letter alphabet, computers have a 256-letter alphabet. Each of the values in the computer alphabet can be translated to a numeric value; an ascii table shows all of the different 256-bit values. So, in ASCII, the 49th letter of the alphabet is "1", and it looks like 00110001 in 8-bit binary. What if you had a file that didn't have all 256 different values in it? If the file only had, say, 30 different values, you wouldn't need 8 bits to represent every value, you'd only need 5. You could create a sort of dictionary at the beginning of a file, describing which characters had which binary values, and then for the rest of the file, you could use just 5 bits instead of 8 for each value. Your file would get about 30% smaller, but it would still mean the same thing. But, most data doesn't have a perfectly even distribution of values. That is, it doesn't have the same number of "A"s, "B"s, and "C"s, and so on. It might have 10,000 "A"s and only forty "C"s. So, you can improve the situation even more by saying that every "A" will need only two bits -- 01 -- and every "C" will need three or more bits -- 101. This is the basic idea behind Huffman encoding. This is why some kinds of files compress really well, and others don't. A text file written by a human will probably only have around 70ish unique values in it, and there will be lots of "e"s and not as many apostrophes. Compression algorithms can squish these kinds of files really well just by re-encoding the characters in the text file. This type of file has low "entropy". But a video file is all binary data. It will have all 256 different values in it, and there's a pretty good chance that the values are evenly distributed -- there's about as many "e"s as "1"s and other things. These files have high entropy, and Huffman encoding can't do very much with them. Which is part of why you can't zip a movie file and have it come out a lot smaller. It's also why you can't just zip a file over and over and over again until there's nothing left -- the first time it's zipped, it becomes a file with high entropy. edit: most of this is from memory, from "the Data Compression Book, second edition", which is still sitting on my bookshelf but hasn't been picked up in a long time. I've also been a programmer, professionally, for almost 20 years, and as a hobbyist for even longer, working on lots of different systems. I've oversimplified some of my explanation, someone will probably come along and correct it.

Human: How to compressed files (.rar, .zip) work? I just don't understand them. I download 1MB of files, unpack it using a program like WinRar, and suddenly I have 2MB of files. How can a program like WinRar use 1MB of input to find the correct 2MB of output? Try to keep it at least a bit simple, I don't know a terribly large amount about computers. Thanks! Assistant:It looks like others here have done a good job of explaining the details, but I find that this video is really eye-opening for how the process works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWBkneyTyPU The red bits closed in curly braces are "substitutions", where it found the exact same text earlier in the file and was able to avoid repeating it again (thus achieving the compression).

Human: I am a game designer and need some help about for designing a system to design a new society/tribe . I am a game designer and planning to design a computer game to play as a tribe in late stone , early copper age. The key idea of the game is , the player can design and guide the culture of the tribe. Cultures is every aspect of their live , from marriage system to political system , to their attitude to outsiders , and even to specific custom like " old man should suicide " I am planning on a system , a simplified model to describe a society/tribe . I am not a anthropologist and I guess there should be something like a guide or a checklist , to describe a society/tribe ? Here is the system I currently working on , a society have the following aspects : 1. political system. How decision is made ? is there classes ? who enforce laws ? is there age set system 2. Economic system. （ Is there private property or things are shared in the whole tribe ? 3. Marriage system , ( that part can be quite complicated for a game 4. inheritance system ( Patrilineality or matrilineal or dead members property is shared ?) 5. Religion and taboo 6. Value ( how is the ideal person looks like ? what kind of skill is most valued 7. Attitude towards outsiders. Assistant:This is an awkward question. If you are just looking for a bunch of minutia to define a culture I could add to your list. Foodways, feasts/festivals, art, symbols, rites of passage (often gender specific), language (writing?), horticulture, animal husbandry, shelter, funerary practices, origin myth, ethno medicine, technology (lithic, pottery, hide), trade etc. My education focus on the relationship between culture and ecology. Every aspect of a culture develops in a particular ecological system and works within that ecology. For example your foodways are based around what is locally available or what's traded. Marriage practices typically make emic (subject perspective) and etic (observers perspective). In parts of Tibet a woman will marry multiple brothers. The brothers take turn shepherding and the land isn't fracture in inheritance. They've adopt a culture to the needs of the landscape. In the tropics little clothing is worn. In deserts you will see loose but well covered people. They might have different ideas about modesty, but you will find clothing often matches the climate. To me the culture needs to fit the ecology and before you even begin to pick your quirks and values you would need to know what you are dealing with ecologically. There are something that are inherently connected as well for example you don't have true classes like priest, artisan or ruling elite until you develop agricultural. A shaman or healer wasn't a "full time" occupation. They still had to do all the substance practices of their group. Whereas priest are maintained by others. You are going to have a hard time getting serious anthropologist to help you. They can spend their entire career on one trait or cultural group. To them it would likely seem like folly. At some point your game is going to make an evaluation of these cultural practices which actually goes against what Anthropologist are taught via cultural relativism. You are essentially describing a Structuralist Theory which had a place in the development in the field of Anthropology, but we have since moved past. If you were creating a game that will exist in virtual world that uses math then structuralist are the intellectuals you want to read. I wish you luck on your project. My advice is use real world culture for inspiration, but create unique customs not directly tied to any group in particular.

Human: I am a game designer and need some help about for designing a system to design a new society/tribe . I am a game designer and planning to design a computer game to play as a tribe in late stone , early copper age. The key idea of the game is , the player can design and guide the culture of the tribe. Cultures is every aspect of their live , from marriage system to political system , to their attitude to outsiders , and even to specific custom like " old man should suicide " I am planning on a system , a simplified model to describe a society/tribe . I am not a anthropologist and I guess there should be something like a guide or a checklist , to describe a society/tribe ? Here is the system I currently working on , a society have the following aspects : 1. political system. How decision is made ? is there classes ? who enforce laws ? is there age set system 2. Economic system. （ Is there private property or things are shared in the whole tribe ? 3. Marriage system , ( that part can be quite complicated for a game 4. inheritance system ( Patrilineality or matrilineal or dead members property is shared ?) 5. Religion and taboo 6. Value ( how is the ideal person looks like ? what kind of skill is most valued 7. Attitude towards outsiders. Assistant:You might get better results if you can steer some of your dev budget towards hiring an expert.

Human: What does Albert Camus mean by "Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined" in Myth of Sisyphus? Assistant:Camus immediately says that: ​ >In a sense, and as in melodrama, killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it. > >Living, naturally, is never easy. You continue making the gestures commanded by existence for many reasons, the first of which is habit. Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, and the uselessness of suffering. ​ Camus argues that life is meaningless, or that if it has meaning, it is impossible for us to find it because of our limited faculties. Thus, when we try to find meaning, we quickly realize the futility of our endeavors, and a process of undermining starts. The more you try to see things (actions, persons, objects, etc) as meaningful, the more you realize they are not, and you realize the absurdity of your everyday life. ​ As a sort of side note, I always liked how Zappfe in his essay The Last Man portrayed more or less the same but in a very pessimist way: >Whatever happened? A breach in the very unity of life, a biological paradox, an abomination, an absurdity, an exaggeration of disastrous nature. Life had overshot its target, blowing itself apart. A species had been armed too heavily – by spirit made almighty without, but equally a menace to its own well-being. Its weapon was like a sword without hilt or plate, a two-edged blade cleaving everything; but he who is to wield it must grasp the blade and turn the one edge toward himself. > >Despite his new eyes, man was still rooted in matter, his soul spun into it and subordinated to its blind laws. And yet he could see matter as a stranger, compare himself to all phenomena, see through and locate his vital processes. He comes to nature as an unbidden guest, in vain extending his arms to beg conciliation with his maker: Nature answers no more, it performed a miracle with man, but later did not know him. He has lost his right of residence in the universe, has eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and been expelled from Paradise. He is mighty in the near world, but curses his might as purchased with his harmony of soul, his innocence, his inner peace in life’s embrace. ​ Then ​ >The tragedy of a species becoming unfit for life by overevolving one ability is not confined to humankind. Thus it is thought, for instance, that certain deer in paleontological times succumbed as they acquired overly-heavy horns. The mutations must be considered blind, they work, are thrown forth, without any contact of interest with their environment. > >In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer to the ground.

Human: What does Albert Camus mean by "Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined" in Myth of Sisyphus? Assistant:I see it in several ways. First, you cannot undermine what you’ve been told, or given to believe without first thinking about it, analyzing it, and making sure it corresponds to reality, and measures up against what you already know and experience. The process of undermining your understanding of the world must necessarily begin with, or include within it as a pre-step, the act of thought and thinking. Additionally, as the SEP mentions, “The essential paradox arising in Camus's philosophy concerns his central notion of absurdity. Accepting the Aristotelian idea that philosophy begins in wonder, Camus argues that human beings cannot escape asking the question, “What is the meaning of existence?”" Camus talks about this as a sort of paradox, that once we begin philosophy, once we begin thinking and wondering about the world, we cannot escape, but must keep coming back to the question of the meaning of our existence, and that is the process by which we and our non-absurdist understandings of the world begin to be undermined. In the next line of the original quote, Camus continues, “Society has little connection to such beginnings. The worm is in man’s heart. That is where it must be sought.” Which I take to mean that our society is but a construct built on top of the fundamentally absurd natural world. It is a derivative that has become alienated from its origin and surroundings, and which currently holds little connection to the natural world it attempts to supplant. It is not through society that you will find meaning, but by wondering and thinking, by searching for meaning you will undermine your previous understandings of the world and of society, and come into a new understanding of the world as meaningless and absurd first and foremost; from there, it is up to you to choose how (or whether) you will live.

Human: If the position of a particle is probabilistic until measured, can it be anywhere in the universe? We throw a photon towards a screen that while record the position for us (let's say we have a similar set up as the double slit experiment, since it's somewhat familiar). Until the wave-function collapse, we cannot be certain of the position at which the photon/electron/whatever will hit the screen. We know the probability of it landing in a certain area, but that's it. This probability function extends to the whole universe, doesn't it? Does it imply that there is a >0 probability that the photon actually lands arbitrarily "far" away from the center of the screen/area of higher probability? Can the photon even land light-years away, despite the wave only having to travel a short time to reach the screen? Assistant:Before we get to quantum mechanics, let's look at the heat equation for a moment. I promise this is relevant. Let's say we set up the initial conditions for the 1D heat equation like this: the entire real line is at some uniform low temperature, except for a very small region around the origin, which is at a very high temperature. We want to study, in a sense, "how fast" heat dissipates outward, so this is a sensible way to set things up. Idealizing this situation a bit, our initial temperature is basically a Dirac delta function, which means our solution is the Green's function for the heat equation: G(x,t) = 1/sqrt(4 pi kt) exp(-x\^2/4kt) But that's weird - no matter how far away we go from the origin, every point *immediately* starts getting hotter! As soon as we place our "hot spot" at the origin, its effects are immediately felt all the way out to infinity! The conclusion we must arrive at is that, according to the heat equation, heat must somehow travel infinitely fast. Obviously, this isn't compatible with relativity. The propagation of heat, like everything else, cannot, in reality, travel faster than light. So what's going on here? The resolution turns out to be the fact that the heat equation is **non-relativistic**. It's not built to be compatible with relativity - formally, it's not Lorentz-covariant. Because of this, it can't be trusted to make predictions where a speed limit to heat propagation matters (in fact, it assumes that there is no such speed limit). So, for sufficiently large distances examined over sufficiently small timescales, the heat equation doesn't do a great job predicting things. We have to use a different model for those circumstances, one that is built to survive Lorentz transformations unscathed. In the same manner, quantum mechanics done with the Schrödinger equation is for the most part *also* non-relativistic. Its predictions stop making sense once distances become large enough and timescales become small enough for the speed of light to matter. To deal with these situations, we have to switch to a theory of quantum mechanics that is built to be compatible with relativity; that theory, it turns out, is quantum field theory. You have pointed out one situation in which we need to switch from non-relativistic quantum mechanics to quantum field theory in order for things to make sense.

Human: If the position of a particle is probabilistic until measured, can it be anywhere in the universe? We throw a photon towards a screen that while record the position for us (let's say we have a similar set up as the double slit experiment, since it's somewhat familiar). Until the wave-function collapse, we cannot be certain of the position at which the photon/electron/whatever will hit the screen. We know the probability of it landing in a certain area, but that's it. This probability function extends to the whole universe, doesn't it? Does it imply that there is a >0 probability that the photon actually lands arbitrarily "far" away from the center of the screen/area of higher probability? Can the photon even land light-years away, despite the wave only having to travel a short time to reach the screen? Assistant:The function doesn't collapse until its observed, not based on the distance of your detector I think?

Human: How do we know that Plato accurately represents Socrates' opinions? I was reading some answers on this lovely subreddit, and my copy of The Republic earlier, and I came to a thought "why do we assume that Plato accurately represents Socrates' views on anything?" Plato was the one who wrote all of these things down, it makes no sense to me that we can assume anything written by him is accurately reflective, thus we should really be referring to Plato's opinion when we oftentimes say "Socrates said [insert quote here" So, how do we know what is, and what wasn't Socrates' opinions? Assistant:We don't. There exists no external evidence either for the claim that the philosophy of Socrates (as opposed to the philosophy of Plato) is found exclusively in a certain group of dialogues or for the claim that Plato’s thought ‘developed’ in the precise sense that whereas he was for a time focused on representing the philosophy of Socrates, he eventually arrived, for whatever reasons, at a decision to represent his own philosophy in subsequent dialogues. The view that (some of) the dialogues represent Socrates' "philosophy" was *hypothesized* by some thinkers in the 19th century and became popular with Vlastos in the middle of the 20th century in order to *explain* the differences we see between the so-called early and later dialogues. For perhaps the best argument that says there was this "Socratic period" in Plato's thought/writing, see virtually anything written by Vlastos on Socrates. For perhaps the best argument against this theory, see Gerson's "The Myth of Plato's Socratic Period." Nobody is going to maintain the view that, as you put, "it makes no sense that we can assume anything written by Plato is accurately reflective of Socrates." That's way too strong. The question is: since everyone sees that Plato at least *seems to* say different things about the same subjects (and changes style, etc., very often), how do we explain these apparent differences? And some people are going to have different answers. Straussians, developmentalists, unitarians, followers of Vlastos, esotericists, etc. -- everyone puts forward their own theory. Unfortunately, this hypothesis has struck many people in English-speaking academia as a good and fruitful way of teaching Plato's dialogues -- which it isn't. Usually this is taught by well-meaning scholars who are trying to introduce people to philosophy in general and like having the ability to contextualize Plato's writings by telling students that they capture Socrates' views. This gives students the mistaken impression that there actually a large number of scholars who believe and defend this view. There aren't. It is a respectable view, of course, but compared to the perception that students have that this is actually widespread, there are very few scholars who defend this theory. This approach to teaching Plato also gives the mistaken impression that we could somehow point to some piece of evidence to justify this view. We can't. There exists no such evidence. In reality, people who teach this approach to Plato are for the most part specialists not on Plato but on some other subject in philosophy and are thus unacquainted with the details but perhaps just heard about this hypothesis before and thought it made for a good introduction to Plato; or, less frequently, they are struck by the differences between the so-called early and later dialogues and are trying to make sense of this difference. In the latter case, they are familiar (whether they know or not) with the reasoning behind the so-called "Socratic hypothesis" but there's no convenient way of demonstrating its justification to students.

Human: How do we know that Plato accurately represents Socrates' opinions? I was reading some answers on this lovely subreddit, and my copy of The Republic earlier, and I came to a thought "why do we assume that Plato accurately represents Socrates' views on anything?" Plato was the one who wrote all of these things down, it makes no sense to me that we can assume anything written by him is accurately reflective, thus we should really be referring to Plato's opinion when we oftentimes say "Socrates said [insert quote here" So, how do we know what is, and what wasn't Socrates' opinions? Assistant:This problem is often referred to as 'The Socratic Problem'. The accounts we have of his life and positions are contradictory and unreliable. This breaks down quite well the issues surrounding identifying the historical Socrates: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socrates/#SocProWhoWasSocRea

Human: CMV: Nothing is wrong with raising people to be color blind. I legitimately feel like I’m missing something here, because it seems like such a good idea. If we raise people to not see race, there is no racism. Right? I imagine it’s not that simple and I’m likely missing some key point, but on a surface level it seems like that. Something I would imagine we all agree with is that treating people differently because of there race is racist. So, if we raise people to be color blind, that removes race from the equation, therefore getting rid of racism. Now that’s a really basic version of my train of thought, but the logic applies. Conditions to CMV: Show how raising people to be color blind causes harm/causes no good. Assistant:> If we raise people to not see race, there is no racism. Imagine we have a world populated by two groups, Blues and Greens. Blues have historically oppressed Greens, denying them education, economic opportunity, legal equality, and all sorts of other things. As a result: * Blues tend to live in wealthy areas and Greens tend to live in poor ones. * Blues tend to have more education than greens. * Blues tend to have wealthier and better-connected friends than Greens. * Blue culture is associated with the upper class, education, and professionalism; Green culture is associated with the lower class, crime, and urban blight. * Blues have higher paying jobs than Greens. * Blues have better health outcomes than Greens. ...and so on. Now, imagine some evil genius creates a death ray that renders everyone on Earth colorblind. Suddenly, Greens and Blues are indistinguishable by their actual color. No one can tell if you're a Green or the Blue by looking at you. But: * Joe Blue still has a nicer house than Sally Green. * Joe Blue still has a degree, and Sally Green doesn't. * Joe Blue still has rich friends, and Sally Green still doesn't. * When Joe Blue says "ah, and a fine blue day to you, gentlemen" (the customary greeting for Blues), he's seen as professional. When Sally Green says "good evening, my green friends!" (the customary greeting for Greens), she's seen as unprofessional. * Joe Blue still has retirement savings, and Sally Green doesn't. * Joe Blue is still in better health than Sally Green. And because Joe and Sally still live in a culture that tends to reward pre-existing success, education, "in-groupiness", etc, these differences can perpetuate *even without anyone knowing what color Joe and Sally actually are*. This is systemic, institutional racism: the system is set up in such a way to disadvantage those already disadvantaged, and Sally is disadvantaged because she (and her parents and grandparents and great-grandparents and so on) were Greens. It's like they're playing a game of Monopoly in which the rules are completely fair in terms of the rules under which earn turn is played, but in which Joe starts with a hotel on Park Place and Sally starts with $1000 instead of $1500. It's not *impossible* for Sally to win such a game, and once in a while a former Green does win, but it's sure as hell not a *fair* game. ------ Which brings us to your next line: > Something I would imagine we all agree with is that treating people differently because of there race is racist. Would you say that it is racist to recognize that Sally has not been given the same opportunities that Joe has? Colorblindness is the equivalent of insisting that the rules of each turn of Monopoly be equal, without acknowledging the fact that Joe started with a hotel and Sally started with less cash. It doesn't solve the problem - it perpetuates it by ignoring it, and worse yet, it encourages a notion of a fake meritocracy where if Sally loses it's her fault and if Joe wins it's his virtue. ------ EDIT: And as a quick demonstration that racism and racist apologism is alive and well, please enjoy this comment in this very thread, where someone decides that the *Vice-President of the Confederacy*, who gave a whole speech about how white people are better than black people and that's why the Confederacy was started, was not a racist because "you can't take peoples words on anything, since they understand themselves poorly". True art.

Human: CMV: Nothing is wrong with raising people to be color blind. I legitimately feel like I’m missing something here, because it seems like such a good idea. If we raise people to not see race, there is no racism. Right? I imagine it’s not that simple and I’m likely missing some key point, but on a surface level it seems like that. Something I would imagine we all agree with is that treating people differently because of there race is racist. So, if we raise people to be color blind, that removes race from the equation, therefore getting rid of racism. Now that’s a really basic version of my train of thought, but the logic applies. Conditions to CMV: Show how raising people to be color blind causes harm/causes no good. Assistant:Depends on your definition of “color blind.” Raising kids not to discriminate, not to see people of different colors or races as less-than, yes, absolutely do that. But don’t teach them to ignore someone’s rich heritage. Don’t teach them to dismiss what that person or their ancestors may have been through to get where they are. Don’t teach them that how other people were treated back then doesn’t matter anymore. Teach to appreciate and treat everyone equally, yes. Teach them not to be racist, but don’t neglect to teach them that racism and the long-term effects of racism still exist.

Human: [DC] The Flash is sitting down, calmly eating dinner. I draw a bead on the back of his head with a sniper rifle and fire a supersonic bullet. What happens? The bullet is going to hit the Flash before its sound can reach him, and neither I nor the bullet are in his visual field. So the first point at which he can possibly be alerted to the danger is when it first touches the back of his head. What happens next and why? Follow-up question: If the Flash easily survives unharmed, how exactly do DC speedsters *ever* get hurt? Or fail at all? Assistant:Scene in an early Wally West comic- Wally is watching a movie, and for no reason everything slows to a stop. He's trying to figure what's going on when he starts to feel the pressure of a bullet on the back of his neck. His speed had kicked in automatically and unconsciously.

Human: [DC] The Flash is sitting down, calmly eating dinner. I draw a bead on the back of his head with a sniper rifle and fire a supersonic bullet. What happens? The bullet is going to hit the Flash before its sound can reach him, and neither I nor the bullet are in his visual field. So the first point at which he can possibly be alerted to the danger is when it first touches the back of his head. What happens next and why? Follow-up question: If the Flash easily survives unharmed, how exactly do DC speedsters *ever* get hurt? Or fail at all? Assistant:He finishes dinner, does the dishes and goes to his day job before the bullet hits.

Human: Ive tried to cook my favorite food a couple of times and failed miserably.... can someone how me how to make kung pao chicken like the ones you get at asian restaurants? Assistant:Here's my version, adapted from *Cook's Illustrated* to be a bit more flavorful and a bit less fussy. I'm not Chinese, so this could be the cultural equivalent of ketchup on spaghetti, but I like it! It was their idea to combine bell peppers with pepper flakes, but you could swap those out for hotter chilies. Also: mind the salt! This uses a lot of commercially-made sauces, which can leave things too salty. Try to find low-salt versions of you can. Substitutions work well. Just don't skimp on the oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, and sesame oil. **Ingredients** * 4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs * 1 small red bell pepper * 1/2 cup unsalted peanuts * 3 cloves garlic * 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes (or a few chiles) * 1 tablespoon brandy or other liquor * 1 teaspoon soy sauce or teriyaki sauce * 1 teaspoon cornstarch * 1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth * 2 tablespoons oyster sauce * 2 tablespoons hoisin sauce * 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil * 2 teaspoons vinegar (preferably rice vinegar) **Directions** 1. Dice the chicken into 1/2 inch pieces. Toss the chicken, brandy, soy sauce, and pepper flakes together and set aside in a small bowl to marinate. 2. In a small bowl or measuring cup, mix together the chicken broth, vinegar, sesame oil, oyster sauce, and hoisin sauce. Mix the cornstarch with a tablespoon of water or reserved chicken broth, and whisk together with the rest of the sauce. Set aside. 3. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a skillet on medium-high heat. Add chicken and brown on all sides. About halfway through, add the peanuts. Cook until the chicken is done and the peanuts are beginning to darken. Transfer to a bowl and set aside. 4. Add a bit more oil to the pan, then add red bell pepper and cook for a minute or two until softened. 5. Add the garlic to the pan and cook gently until fragrant but not browned. 6. Stir the broth mixture to recombine it, then add it to the pan along with the chicken mixture. 7. Use a spoon to stir and scrape up the brown bits in the pan. Reduce sauce to a syrupy consistency. 8. Serve with white rice.

Human: Ive tried to cook my favorite food a couple of times and failed miserably.... can someone how me how to make kung pao chicken like the ones you get at asian restaurants? Assistant:What recipe have you been following, and where did it go wrong (ie, what was the end product "missing")

Human: Why do we experience no sort of gag reflex when we are swallowing food or a drink? Assistant:There's a voluntary and an involuntary aspect to swallowing. Generally you start by pushing your tongue back, it triggers a cascade of reflex movements that close the nasal passage at the posterior end of the palate with the soft palate and close the trachea opening with the epiglottis. Once the reflexes start, your body presumably disables the gag reflex as further sensation from the Vagus nerve in the area is unnecessary to complete the action of swallowing. EDIT: Nomenclature mistake

Human: Why do we experience no sort of gag reflex when we are swallowing food or a drink? Assistant:As per our guidelines, please refrain from posting anecdotes. Thank you.

Human: Four years in aerospace startup company since college, worked to the bone. Exhausted, work/life balance doesn't exist anymore-- have any of you tried similar, or completely different careers for a change? Did any careers surprise you in how much you liked them? Interned at a major aerospace corporation in college, and was so bored it depressed me/made me regret getting my aerospace degree. When I found a startup company after graduation, I thought "now THIS is the life for me", and loved it. 4 years later, I've been worked to a pulp-- I'm constantly exhausted and stressed, I don't go out anymore, just sleep. Left all my family and friends 4 years ago to move out to the middle of nowhere for the job, where there is nothing to do but work. I realized that I've been working my ass off this whole time because I feel like I'm part of a mission, except the allure has worn off, and it's become routine unpaid overtime, and constant exhaustion and stress. Have any of you been here before? What did you do to turn things around? Have you tried any wildly different careers? Were you surprised at "hey, I never thought this would have been up my alley, but I love this job"? Assistant:First of all... every time I hear something like this I roll my eyes. Very very few people are capable of doing 10 hours of real, productive work a day. Work that's worth anything that requires actual mental effort, anyway. I'm good for about 4. If I really focus I can do 3 before lunch, break, 3 after lunch. I can maybe do 7 or 8 for a week if we are back up against a wall. For a week. Any longer than that.and my capacity for real, actual work worth anything rapidly starts approaching 0. I might be good for some mindless work like babysitting a finicky printer or uploading files somwhere, but honestly how often is that necessary? I am reasonably certain that I am fairly typical. I've worked at places where people are at work 10 or 12 hours a day. But inevitably later in the day people would not really be doing any work. If some industrial psychologist has data to refute my hunch I'd be happy to hear it. But until then that has been my observation. So every time I hear about some place working their guys 12 hours a day I want to slap them. You aren't getting any more work done, it's just pissing your workers off, and what's more it's sending a message that you don't care the least bit about them at all except as much as they are cogs in your machine. Enough of my ranting. On to you: Have you considered just leaving? I don't mean the job itself, I mean at 5 just telling everyone "See you tomorrow" and walking out the door. You might be surprised to learn this, but odds are that no one will say anything. If you are ready and willing to quit this job over unpaid overtime and overworked stress, and it sounds like you are, just walk out the door at 5. The only thing they can do is fire you. If you don't care about that there isn't much they can do to you.

Human: Four years in aerospace startup company since college, worked to the bone. Exhausted, work/life balance doesn't exist anymore-- have any of you tried similar, or completely different careers for a change? Did any careers surprise you in how much you liked them? Interned at a major aerospace corporation in college, and was so bored it depressed me/made me regret getting my aerospace degree. When I found a startup company after graduation, I thought "now THIS is the life for me", and loved it. 4 years later, I've been worked to a pulp-- I'm constantly exhausted and stressed, I don't go out anymore, just sleep. Left all my family and friends 4 years ago to move out to the middle of nowhere for the job, where there is nothing to do but work. I realized that I've been working my ass off this whole time because I feel like I'm part of a mission, except the allure has worn off, and it's become routine unpaid overtime, and constant exhaustion and stress. Have any of you been here before? What did you do to turn things around? Have you tried any wildly different careers? Were you surprised at "hey, I never thought this would have been up my alley, but I love this job"? Assistant:I was in a similar, over-worked situation in construction. I decided to go into tech in SF and it's been great. I say, what you're experiencing is a cultural problem. I actually ended up at another construction firm after the tech startup, and the culture of work life balance exists. You may just need to network and see if there are similar firms that have a different culture.

Human: Explain like I'm five years old: Why exactly does traveling at light speed slow down time for the traveler? Beyond just the usual explanation I've heard about having to bend a variable in the velocity equation. What's going on with the traveler at a molecular level to make time move slower for them? Or is that the wrong question? Assistant:I'm going to share this answer from another thread that I found quite useful. >Everything, by nature of simply existing, is "moving" at the speed of light (which really has nothing to do with light: more on that later). Yes, that does include you. >Our understanding of the universe is that the way that we perceive space and time as separate things is, to be frank, wrong. They aren't separate: the universe is made of "spacetime," all one word. A year and a lightyear describe different things in our day to day lives, but from a physicist's point of view, they're actually the exact same thing (depending on what kind of physics you're doing). >In our day to day lives, we define motion as a distance traveled over some amount of time. However, if distances and intervals of time are the *exact same thing*, that suddenly becomes completely meaningless. "I traveled one foot for every foot that I traveled" is an absolutely absurd statement! >The way it works is that everything in the universe travels through *spacetime* at some speed which I'll call "c" for the sake of brevity. Remember, motion in spacetime is meaningless, so it makes sense that nothing could be "faster" or "slower" through spacetime than anything else. Everybody and everything travels at one foot per foot, that's just... how it works. >Obviously, though, things do seem to have different speeds. The reason that happens is that time and space are *orthogonal*, which is sort of a fancy term for "at right angles to each other." North and east, for example, are orthogonal: you can travel as far as you want directly to the north, but it's not going to affect where you are in terms of east/west at all. >Just like how you can travel north without traveling east, you can travel through time without it affecting where you are in space. Conversely, you can travel through space without it affecting where you are in time. >You're (presumably) sitting in your chair right now, which means you're not traveling through space at all. Since you have to travel through spacetime at c (speed of light), though, that means *all of your motion* is through time. >By the way, this is why time dilation happens: something that's moving very fast relative to you is moving through space, but since they can only travel through spacetime at c, they have to be moving more slowly through time to compensate (from your point of view). >Light, on the other hand, doesn't travel through time at all. The reason it doesn't is somewhat complicated, but it has to do with the fact that it has no mass. >Something that isn't moving that has mass can have energy: that's what E = mc^2 means. Light has no mass, but it *does* have energy. If we plug the mass of light into E=mc^(2), we get 0, which makes no sense because light has energy. Hence, light can never be stationary. >Not only that, but light can never be stationary from *anybody's* perspective. Since, like everything else, it travels at c through spacetime, that means all of its "spacetime speed" *must* be through space, and none of it is through time. >So, light travels at c. Not at all by coincidence, you'll often hear c referred to as the "speed of light in a vacuum." Really, though, it's the speed that *everything* travels at, and it happens to be the speed that light travels through space at because it has no mass. >edit: By the way, this also covers the common Explain like I'm five years old question of why nothing can ever travel faster than light, and why things with mass cannot travel at the speed of light. Since everything moves through spacetime at c, nothing can ever exceed it (and no, traveling backwards in time would not fix that). Also, things with mass can always be "stationary" from someone's perspective (like their own), so they always have to move through time at least a *little bit*, meaning they can never travel through space as fast as light does. They'd have to travel through spacetime faster than c to do that, which, again, is not possible. >edit: Holy shit, thank you for all the kind words. >To those of you asking questions, please do a quick look-through of the thread before you ask. I'm getting questions faster than I can answer them, and a lot of them are repeats that I have to just ignore. >second edit: Please stop giving me gold. I don't need it. Donate your money to charity and write "CORPUSCLE IS AMAZING" in the memo. If you really just want to give out gold, go find another Redditor who was helpful to you and give it to them instead. http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/22pi7o/eli5_why_does_light_travel/

Human: Explain like I'm five years old: Why exactly does traveling at light speed slow down time for the traveler? Beyond just the usual explanation I've heard about having to bend a variable in the velocity equation. What's going on with the traveler at a molecular level to make time move slower for them? Or is that the wrong question? Assistant:In spacetime you are always moving at the speed of light. If more of the movement is in space, less is in time. Because photons move at the speed of light they experience no time

Human: Explain like I'm five years old: Why does a single proton change everything about an element and it’s properties? Assistant:For Explain like I'm five years old purposes, you can think of an atom as being made up of three parts: * Protons, which have a positive charge and have a relative mass of 1. * Neutrons, which have no charge and have a relative mass of 1. * Electrons, which are negatively charged and have a relative mass of basically zero. (It's actually 1/1836, but for our purposes we can say it's negligible.) The protons and the neutrons chill out together not really doing much in the centre of the atom -- what we call the nucleus -- and the electrons exist in variously shaped clouds floating around the nucleus. You can think of them as buckets, if that helps; more electrons will always, *always* fill up these buckets in a particular order, which give them predictable properties. (We call these buckets 'orbitals'.) So, how do you put together an atom? Well, the golden rule is that for it to be an atom, it has to have a neutral charge. Given that there are only three particles to choose from, and only two of them have a charge -- +1 for every proton, and -1 for every electron -- that means you have to have the same number of protons and electrons. Stick an electron to a proton, and you have an atom of hydrogen. (You might remember Doctor Manhattan in *Watchmen* burning a symbol onto his forehead; that's a representation of a hydrogen atom, with the proton at the center and one electron at the outside.) Adding a new proton, then, means that you have to add a new electron to keep things balanced -- and that's why elements act differently. Remember earlier, when I said that electrons fill up those orbitals in a particular order? Well, only the ones on the very outside can interact with other atoms. (It's not exactly a *correct* model, but for Explain like I'm five years old purposes you can think of these as being like the layers of an onion; that's how they're often taught, especially at lower levels. We're only really interested in what the outer layer is doing at any given time.) When it comes to reacting with other elements, each layer of an atom has a specific number of electrons that it wants to have in it -- two electrons in Layer 1, closest to the nucleus, and eight electrons for every subsequent layer. We call the number of electrons in this outer shell the *valence* of the atom. (It's *slightly* more complicated than this, but for the most part it holds up.) When these electron shells are full, the element is very unreactive. But that's OK! Atoms are perfectly happy to share electrons in order to get these shells full. Think back to the symbol for hydrogen from earlier. You have one electron in a shell that really wants two, and so two hydrogen atoms come together to make one molecule of hydrogen, sharing their electrons so they both have two in their outer shell. This is called a *covalent bond*. When you talk about a chemical bond, you're *usually* talking about this. When a chemical reaction takes place, it does so by breaking and forming these bonds. Everything from using the energy in the food you eat, to breathing, to dropping alkali metals in water, to thermite... it all depends on how many (and which type) of these bonds form, which is directly related to how many electrons you have -- which is, as we've seen, directly related to how many protons you have. (Sidenote: you'll sometimes hear about the 'noble gases' -- helium, argon, neon and so forth -- and how they don't react; that's why they're called the *noble* gases, after all. The reason for this is that their outer electron shells are full, so they can happily exist on their own without any interaction with other elements. It's for this reason that argon is used in welding, because the high temperatures involved would make the metal you're welding react with other gases, such as the oxygen in the air, which you *do not want*.) The number of electrons in an outer shell can also change the *shape* of the molecule. It's easy to think about electrons orbiting the nucleus in rings, like a solar system where everything is on a flat plane and the nucleus is the sun in the centre, but that's not how it is; atoms exist in 3D space, with the electrons buzzing around in weird shapes. It's because of these shapes -- and the negative charge of these electrons pushing atoms out of the way, that molecules have the shape they do. Ammonia, for example, is a pyramid shape; water isn't a straight line, but has a little kink in it. This is *also* very important, because it means that the charge isn't equally distributed all around the molecule. (In the case of water, even though there's a net neutral charge, the mass of the oxygen and the positive charge of its eight protons pulls the electrons ever-so-slightly away from the poor hydrogens, with their one proton each; this greedy oxygen, then, has a slightly negative charge at its end, while the two hydrogen atoms have a slightly positive charge.) We call molecules that display these properties *polar*, and it changes how they interact in a lot of ways. If you've ever wondered why ice crystals form such regular structures, or why water drips down the side of a glass when you try and pour it slowly, that's why: interactions between the slightly-charged parts of different water molecules. All of that depends on the electron structure, which depends on the number of electrons, which depends on -- you guessed it -- the number of protons. Finally, there's one more way that protons can change an element's properties -- one that *doesn't* include electrons. Remember how earlier we were talking about the relative mass of an element -- that neutrons and protons have a mass of 1, and the mass of an electron is barely there? Well, that mass makes a difference. Adding protons makes things heavier, which is why -- along with the extra neutrons -- that hydrogen (with one proton in its nucleus) is lighter than gold (with 79 protons and 118 neutrons in its nucleus). Quite aside from the expense, this is why trying to get an zeppelin to fly by filling it with gold is a *very bad idea* -- although in fairness, it would be less reactive and therefore less flammable, so... call it a draw? **Because it's been requested: so how do neutrons fit into all this?**

Human: Explain like I'm five years old: Why does a single proton change everything about an element and it’s properties? Assistant:Protons are positively charged, and hence attract electrons. Add more protons and you add more possible arrangements of how different numbers of electrons can arrange themselves. There's more to it than that, but this about covers the Explain like I'm five years old.

Human: Explain like I'm five years old: How do Hard-disc Drives (HDD) store data i.e. images compared to solid-state hard-drives (SSD)? Looking for a layman's explanation please? My lecturer banged on about how HDD's 'read/write head aligns magnetisable domains in one direction for 1's and other for 0's' which literally makes no sense to my computer naive self. I do remember my dad recommending me to get a SSD instead because they're faster and slimmer. But I have no idea how these hard-drives 'physically' store the data and why solid-states are faster? Thanks peoples Assistant:Hard disks are magnetic. Compare to an audio cassette tape, where the magnetic tape just scrolls by the recording head, and the head magnetizes its 1's and 0's on the tape as it scrolls by, like this --- - ---- - ---- -- ---. Then you have VHS video tape, where the tape still moves by the head, but now the head spins at an angle, so the tape gets magnetized with lines of information (1's and 0's) like this ///////// with each spin of the head. So hard disks are actually disks, like LP records but magnetic instead of plastic indentations. And each hard disk enclosure has a stack of, like, 3, 4, or 5 of these disks, all welded to the same motor so they spin in unison. And the magnetic heads are on an arm that can swing across the surface of these disks, to reach any piece of information. So to write information the head magnetizes the surface of these disks with magnetic NORTH for 1, and magnetic SOUTH for 0. It's just like tape, but it's arranged on several disks. Wikipedia article explains it in full detail. Solid-State Drives (SSD) are electronic. The SSD has some memory chips inside, and the memory chips have transistors and really tiny capacitors that can actually store electricity. A few electrons are stored in the capacitor, and the transistor attached to it detects these electrons (via the electric field, basically), and responds with a 1 or a 0 (transistors in integrated circuits are, basically, on/off switches that are controlled by electricity rather than by a person flipping the switch). Wikipedia article. So the SSD is faster because the information is stored with electricity, and electricity reacts basically at the speed of light (it's slower than that because the electronics does take some time to do its stuff, but the speed of light is the limit, more or less). Whereas hard drives HDD's are limited by physical constraints: how fast the motor is spinning, how fast the arm with the magnetic heads can swing a certain angle (with precision), etc. Think of an LP record vs. music on your phone; the phone can find your mpg song and play it almost instantly; the LP record you have to wait for it to spin up, then the needle-head has to move to the correct spot, lower itself, and then you can hear the song.

Human: Explain like I'm five years old: How do Hard-disc Drives (HDD) store data i.e. images compared to solid-state hard-drives (SSD)? Looking for a layman's explanation please? My lecturer banged on about how HDD's 'read/write head aligns magnetisable domains in one direction for 1's and other for 0's' which literally makes no sense to my computer naive self. I do remember my dad recommending me to get a SSD instead because they're faster and slimmer. But I have no idea how these hard-drives 'physically' store the data and why solid-states are faster? Thanks peoples Assistant:This is very non-technical and way way over-simplified but: - a HDD stores information on a disc that spins, like a DVD. - an SSD stores information in memory chips, like your phone or a flash drive does. To retrieve a specific bit of information from the HDD, the correct disc has to be found and the drive has to physically spin to a certain speed, whereas the SSD uses non-linear memory and there’s no moving parts. The data is exactly the same on both, but the spinning disc is much slower than memory chips.

Human: [Harry Potter] A Boggart is a creature that morphs into it's victim's worst fear. In Prisoner of Azkaban we see one turn into among other things, a Snake and Professor Snape. What if the target's worst fear is something non-physical, such as heights or the unknown? What form would the Boggart take? Assistant:If someone's afraid of heights, I don't see why the boggart couldn't turn into that. Here's how I might write it: *A breeze came from nowhere and stirred the students' hair. The room seemed to grow darker somehow. Except for the boggart.* *David gazed in horror at the sight before him. He couldn't look away. Through the boggart he could see the back of the classroom, but it seemed to stretch farther away from him somehow, before his very eyes. It moved and it didn't.* *David's stomach lurched. He swayed unsteadily on his feet as space seemed to warp before him. He realized suddenly, as he starred in horror at the illusion before him, that he was looking nearly straight down. By the ancient ones, he was going to fall. He was going to plummet hundreds of feet and splatter all over the wall on the other side of the room.* *"R.. riddik..." he muttered, his wand shaking in his hand. David thought briefly of how his mother was going to react, after the teachers scraped his remains off the classroom wall.* *And then he fainted.*

Human: [Harry Potter] A Boggart is a creature that morphs into it's victim's worst fear. In Prisoner of Azkaban we see one turn into among other things, a Snake and Professor Snape. What if the target's worst fear is something non-physical, such as heights or the unknown? What form would the Boggart take? Assistant:As others have said, the boggart goes for a simple physical representation of your fear. The intent is to get potential predators/threats to run away, I imagine, not to actually plumb the dark depths of a person's subconscious. I'm not sure how it would handle "fear of the unknown," but it would probably respond to a fear of heights by turning into a wide view of a steep drop off a cliff, to trigger vertigo in the target.

Human: What sort of food would European hunter-gatherers gather? What did their diet look like? Do we know the specific plants they ate? (Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this. I previously posted on r/AskHistorians but didn't get any responses and thought I might try my luck here.) Assistant:Even if we limit ourselves to anatomically modern humans, we have to remember that this is something like 40K years over multiple geographical, ecological and climactic regions. There is certainly not even a simple answer for one area at one specific times; diets vary between groups and individuals. Here is a list of sources from a project I did on upper paleolithic diet recently. I hope some of them can be useful. Bello, Silvia M., Rosalind Wallduck, Simon A. Parfitt, and Chris B. Stringer. ‘An Upper Palaeolithic Engraved Human Bone Associated with Ritualistic Cannibalism’. PLOS ONE 12, no. 8 (9 August 2017): e0182127. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0182127. Demay, Laëtitia, Stéphane Péan, and Marylène Patou-Mathis. ‘Mammoths Used as Food and Building Resources by Neanderthals: Zooarchaeological Study Applied to Layer 4, Molodova I (Ukraine)’. Quaternary International, Mammoths and their Relatives 2: Biotopes, Evolution and Human Impact V International Conference, Le Puy-en-Velay, 2010, 276–277 (25 October 2012): 212–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2011.11.019. Morin, E., J. Meier, K. El Guennouni, A.-M. Moigne, L. Lebreton, L. Rusch, P. Valensi, J. Conolly, and D. Cochard. ‘New Evidence of Broader Diets for Archaic Homo Populations in the Northwestern Mediterranean’. Science Advances 5, no. 3 (1 March 2019): eaav9106. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aav9106. Pettitt, P. B., M. Richards, R. Maggi, and V. Formicola. ‘The Gravettian Burial Known as the Prince (“Il Principe”): New Evidence for His Age and Diet’. Antiquity 77, no. 295 (March 2003): 15–19. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00061305. Power, Robert C., Domingo C. Salazar-García, Lawrence G. Straus, Manuel R. González Morales, and Amanda G. Henry. ‘Microremains from El Mirón Cave Human Dental Calculus Suggest a Mixed Plant–Animal Subsistence Economy during the Magdalenian in Northern Iberia’. Journal of Archaeological Science, ‘The Red Lady of El Mirón Cave’: Lower Magdalenian Human Burial in Cantabrian Spain, 60 (1 August 2015): 39–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2015.04.003. Riel-Salvatore, Julien. ‘A Niche Construction Perspective on the Middle–Upper Paleolithic Transition in Italy’. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 17, no. 4 (1 December 2010): 323–55. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-010-9093-9. Sanz, Montserrat, Florent Rivals, David García, and João Zilhão. ‘Hunting Strategy and Seasonality in the Last Interglacial Occupation of Cueva Antón (Murcia, Spain)’. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 11, no. 7 (1 July 2019): 3577–94. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-018-0768-6. Trinkaus, Erik. The People of Sunghir: Burials, Bodies, and Behavior in the Earlier Upper Paleolithic, 2014. Villa, Paola, Paolo Boscato, Filomena Ranaldo, and Annamaria Ronchitelli. ‘Stone Tools for the Hunt: Points with Impact Scars from a Middle Paleolithic Site in Southern Italy’. Journal of Archaeological Science 36, no. 3 (1 March 2009): 850–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2008.11.012. Wilczyński, Jarosław, Piotr Wojtal, Martina Robličková, and Martin Oliva. ‘Dolní Věstonice I (Pavlovian, the Czech Republic) – Results of Zooarchaeological Studies of the Animal Remains Discovered on the Campsite (Excavation 1924–52)’. Quaternary International, Mammoths and their Relatives: VIth International Conference, Grevena-Siatista, Greece, part 1, 379 (27 August 2015): 58–70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.05.059. Wojtal, Piotr, Gary Haynes, Janis Klimowicz, Krzysztof Sobczyk, Jacek Tarasiuk, Sebastian Wroński, and Jarosław Wilczyński. ‘The Earliest Direct Evidence of Mammoth Hunting in Central Europe – The Kraków Spadzista Site (Poland)’. Quaternary Science Reviews, 22 April 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.04.004.

Human: What sort of food would European hunter-gatherers gather? What did their diet look like? Do we know the specific plants they ate? (Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this. I previously posted on r/AskHistorians but didn't get any responses and thought I might try my luck here.) Assistant:Hey I'm curious as to why you asked your question. It's very interesting. I know of we followed our ancestors diet wherever we're from, we should be pretty healthy right? I've also read some Zerzan on how healthy Hunter gatherers were compared to us today. That's why your question intrigued me

Human: Why don't photons interact with the higgs field? As the quarks gain their 1% of mass from this interaction. They why don't photons too react with the field,does this has to do anything to their speed? Assistant:The short answer is: In one way of thinking, the photon is not "fundamental," in that it's not the most natural form of particle to include in the Standard Model. Rather, it appears as a combination of other kinds of particles, which mix in a specific way due to the Higgs's interactions with the "natural" fields. At high energies, there is no electromagnetic force that appears in an obvious way. Instead we have two different forces: weak force, characterized by 3 particles (W1, W2, and W3), and an extra electromagnetic-like force, commonly parameterized by a particle termed the B. Forces in particle physics come about as a result of a "gauge symmetry." When the Higgs receives a vacuum expectation value (due to parameters in its own potential energy changing), it breaks both the symmetry of the weak force and of the B particle. But it does not break them entirely. The W1 and W2 particles gain mass and combine in a linear combination into the W+ and W- particles we recognize. The W3 and B particles similarly combine into two different neutral particles: the Z particle of the weak force, which has a mass, and the photon, which doesn't. The part of the original symmetries which is not totally broken is associated with this photon. The particles which gain mass are associated with parts of the original symmetry (the weak force + the B force) that are now broken. The particles which stay massless are the ones which are associated with the remaining unbroken symmetry. To give an analogy: suppose I have a perfectly clean sphere, like a cue ball in billiards (https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31XR-VS1Y8L.jpg). This sphere has a spherical symmetry, obviously; rotating it in any direction doesn't change how the sphere looks. Now consider the 9 ball, which has a stripe across one way (http://entertainmentsudbury.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/9-ball-image.jpg). For the discussion, ignore the number label on the ball and pretend nothing is written. The rotational symmetry that the cue ball had is gone, since there are rotations that could, say, change the stripe from being horizontal to being vertical. If we had some operation changing a cue ball to a 9 ball, it would destroy the cue ball's symmetry. However, there is still a remaining symmetry of the 9-ball: it can be rotated in the direction of the stripe (again, ignoring the written number) without looking differently. So we say that most of the spherical symmetry is gone, but it has been broken down to just the stripe-ways rotation symmetry.

Human: Why don't photons interact with the higgs field? As the quarks gain their 1% of mass from this interaction. They why don't photons too react with the field,does this has to do anything to their speed? Assistant:I can't answer this (or anything) better than Lubos Motl, so refer to /u/overweight_neutrino 's link for the photon part. Just to correct one part: >As the quarks gain their 1% of mass from this interaction. The quarks get all their mass from the Higgs. I assume you heard somewhere that protons and neutrons get 1% of their mass from the Higgs, which is true. What is happening is that there's a lot of energy needed to bind the quarks together. By E=mc^(2), this energy shows up as 99% of the mass of the proton/neutron. The other 1% is the mass of the quarks, which comes entirely from the Higgs.

Human: Whenever something socially progressive is posted about Sweden or Norway on reddit, a dozen "that only works because they're small countries with a homogeneous population" posts pop up, is there any scientific truth to this? Assistant:Why do people say this? Maybe because early studies of the robustness of Nordic welfare states emphasized their social homogeneity? I'd like to see an economist or political scientist familiar with this question comment and cite some literature. Anyway, saw a few studies like this (e.g., Knudsen, T., & Rothstein, B. (1994). State building in Scandinavia. Comparative Politics, 26203-220.). Most of the studies I found seem to support this idea. (e.g., Layte, R., Whelan, C. T., Maître, B., & Nolan, B. (2001). Explaining Levels of Deprivation in the European Union. Acta Sociologica (Taylor & Francis Ltd), 44(2), 105-121. doi:10.1080/000169901300346864; Most studies seemed to address the question of the generosity of a welfare state as a function of social diversity/homogeneity (on different variables). I don't know what it means to say that a welfare state only "works" in certain kinds of societies. A better question is under what conditions is it more likely to arise and in what form? There is an old-school three-kind typology of welfare states that is based on ideology (e.g., liberal in the USA, social democratic in Denmark, etc.). Presumably someone has looked at diversity as a determinant of these outcomes, but I did not find anything on this (but I don't know this lit). See "the three worlds of the welfare state" here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_state . One aspect of this question is whether a strong welfare state can develop in more diverse place. One aspect of diversity is immigration. This cross-sectional study suggests a way in which that would be hindered. "those who favor that welfare benefits should in the first place target the neediest, place the highest restrictions on welfare provisions for immigrants" (abstract). People in diverse societies were less likely to think that anyone should have less-restricted access to welfare. If you can look at this article, there's a super-interesting graph showing a multi-level interaction on p. 131. This study does not say anything about the historical process of welfare state development, but it suggests a mechanism by which diversity could limit the development of the welfare state. Reeskens, T., & van Oorschot, W. (2012). Disentangling the ‘New Liberal Dilemma’: On the relation between general welfare redistribution preferences and welfare chauvinism. International Journal Of Comparative Sociology (Sage Publications, Ltd.), 53(2), 120-139. doi:10.1177/0020715212451987 Rehm asks "Why are unemployment benefits more generous in some countries?" He finds that state generosity is related to unemployment risk homogeneity. The more heterogenous the risk (as you would find in an economically unequal society or one with large disfavored minority groups, for example), the less generous the benefits. He thinks that less homogenous societies "demand" (through democratic institutions) less generous benefits. Rehm, P. (2011). Social Policy by Popular Demand. World Politics, 63(2), 271-299. doi:10.1017/S0043887111000037

Human: Whenever something socially progressive is posted about Sweden or Norway on reddit, a dozen "that only works because they're small countries with a homogeneous population" posts pop up, is there any scientific truth to this? Assistant:In terms of collective action, researchers have found a mixed bag regarding group size and diversity. Generally speaking, if all things remain the same, smaller and more homogenous groups tend to cooperate more than larger and diverse groups. A good scholar who grounded her work in empirical data to read regarding this is Elinor Ostrom (Understanding Institutional Diversity is an excellent starting point). However, diversity/homogeneity is complex. It could be identity--but all identity is socially constructed to some extent. That is, gender, race, sexuality, culture, religion, and so one exist not as Platonic ideals, but are rather created by social practices and discourses. Inequalities and differences are real, but contingent on local contexts and histories. Further, diversity includes financial and material well-being, which is a political outcome. And in this case the logic becomes circular: Norway is more egalitarian because Norwegians are more equal. On the other hand, plenty of empirical research demonstrates large, diverse groups of people cooperating. This may be explainable due to other variables, such as: institutional rules/norms, resource characteristics, and other incentives. For instance, the likelihood of common pool resource management follows a curvilinear path: it is rare when resources are very scarce and very abundant, yet common when resources are moderately available. So in terms of comparing Scandinavian countries and the U.S., there are going to be important social and institutional differences between the two that make it difficult to easily transfer governance systems and strategies between the two. However, just because the U.S. is more 'diverse' does not mean the U.S. can not become more egalitarian.

Human: [Harry Potter] Could Voldemort have made anything a horcrux? Like Hogwarts Castle or a mountain? So Voldemort can turn a ring, a locket, a cup, a diary, a diadem, a snake and a boy (even if inadvertently) into a horcrux.. But what about something that’s got a little more lasting power? Like a mountain for instance? Almost guaranteed to live on forever there… Or the Castle? I know it’s incredibly magical, but so was everything else that he turned in a horcrux, so I’m not sure if that should automatically negate it. Assistant:The process for making a Horcrux is not entirely known, but we do know the following: 1) Of the things a Horcrux can be, that list of things would include both living and inanimate things. 2) In order to create a Horcrux, the wizard must first murder another person. Doing so causes damage to their soul, which the wizard then uses to "tear off" a part of their soul entirely. The severed part is then stored in the Horcrux itself. The death itself does not have to be significant or necessarily symbolically meaningful^(1). 3) Whatever the process for creating a Horcrux is, intent does not ***necessarily*** factor into it. Harry became Voldemort's seventh and final Horcrux *accidentally*.^(2) ​ ​ ​ The question here, then, are what are the limits of a Horcrux. What things *cannot* be Horcruxes, no matter how much magic we throw at them? Unfortunately, we don't know for sure. The diadem, cup, and locket were all presumably extremely powerful magical artifacts in their own right. Hepzibah Smith, the previous owner before Tom Riddle of both Slytherin's locket and Helga Hufflepuff's cup, claimed that the artifacts had all kinds of powers. Ravenclaw's Diadem granted insight and wisdom to the wearer, and when Harry finds it he hears wailing and screaming inside of it as the magic of Helena Ravenclaw clashes with Tom Riddle's soul. That would seem to imply that magic items have some sort of innate ability to "resist" being tainted with a Horcrux, which would in turn imply that a sufficiently powerful magic item might be unsuitable altogether. And, again, this would also fit thematically with what we know about Tom Riddle's motivations. The additional "challenge" of storing parts of his soul in legendary magic artifacts would have further solidified his status as the greatest wizard of all time. It's possible that he imagined that these items could lend more legitimacy to that claim, both on a practical level (i.e. "He's clearly the most powerful wizard of all time, because he overcame the magical defenses of the Hogwarts founders") and symbolically (i.e. "He's clearly the most powerful wizard of all time, because the magical artifacts of the Hogwarts founders say so!"). So, to answer part of the question, could he store part of his soul in Hogwarts Castle? Probably not. The Castle is too well-defended for even Voldemort to overcome. Okay, but could he, hypothetically, store part of his soul in Mt. Everest? Personally, I'm very skeptical that he could. Riddle chose items that were symbolically important, either to him personally or to the legacy he was trying to create. But importantly, he did not choose *locations.* The locket was hidden in a cave guarded by Inferi, the diadem was hidden in the Room of Requirement, and the ring was hidden in the Gaunt Shack, but importantly these Horcruxes were hidden in important locations and were not the locations themselves. And sure, a cottage, a room, and a shack are all spaces one can inhabit, but a mountain is an actual physical object in and of itself, but there are definitely spells and charms which can be cast on *locations* as an abstract concept. After all, if one can cast a spell to make the shack less noticeable, why not also cast a spell to store one's soul in said shack (just as an example). What I'm saying is, we have seen spells and charms cast that could, at least in theory, be cast on Mt. Everest, but the Horcrux creation process does not appear to be one of them, as there is some magically important distinction between a location and an item. It may be tempting to argue a magical distinction also exists between a person and an item, but I don't think there actually is. I think magic probably can be roughly divided along two axes... creation/modification/destruction, and things/places/ideas. So on the one axis, there are spells that can create, modify, or destroy, and on the other axis is that the witch or wizard is creating, modifying, or destroying a thing, a place, or an idea (or maybe concept? Or feeling? What I'm getting at here is that there are memory charms, love spells, fear curses, etc. These are all magical effects that affect the experience of the target in some abstract or conceptual way). In other words, a wizard or witch likely can't change a place into a Horcrux any more than they can erase that place's memory (importantly, I am making a distinction here between a place's memory and a person's memory of a place, in order to illustrate my point.^(3)) Again, I am not sure at what point the magic begins to care about whether Mt. Everest is a thing or a place, but the magic clearly *does* care that it is either a thing or a place. Which may be an additional reason why Hogwarts castle cannot be a Horcrux-- not just that it's too well-protected, but also that whatever magic creates Horcruxes is not the kind of magic that affects Hogwarts Castle. ​ ^(1) Many magical spells rely very heavily on the emotional state of the witch or wizard casting them, and some of Voldemort's Horcrux-related victims were people who were important and significant figures in his life. so one might be led to believe, initially, that emotional significance is important to the Horcrux related process somehow. However, since Tom Riddle used a muggle tramp-- a figure that, to the best of our knowledge, held no significance or importance to him whatsoever-- to store part of his soul in Slyherin's locket, we can say with relative certainty that the Horcrux creation process is not one such spell. The deaths of Myrtle Warren and Lilly Potter might also support this assumption, since, so far as we know, Myrtle was a target of convenience and it was not Riddle's intention to create a Horcrux in Harry. That being said, we can't rule out the possibility that something about using figures who are important and significant to the Dark Witch or Wizard might make the creation of a Horcrux easier or more reliable somehow. ^(2) It's possible that creating a Horcrux becomes easier the more Horcruxes a witch or wizard makes-- the soul becoming so heavily damaged and flimsy that intent becomes less relevant or important. If that's the case, it's possible that whatever spells or incantations are typically used are not actually used in order to "sanctify" the host for the torn soul, but are rather used in order to make the process more smooth or bearable. By the time of Lilly Potter's murder, his soul could have been so heavily damaged that something that ordinarily would be such an intensive experience that the intensity itself implies dedication and intent is, in this case, rendered unnoticeable by virtue of its damage. This would also fit thematically with Tom Riddle becoming less and less human with each Horcrux, and speaks more to the level of damage he did to himself than it does to the process itself. ^(3) My overall point here is that for the purposes of casting spells and charms, there does seem to be an important difference between the literal and the abstract, and it's also clearly a sliding scale as opposed to a hard line. Regardless, there's no such thing as a blackish white, or a white-ish black, and that's not the same as saying that there's no such thing as gray. A Horcrux can be a thing, but it cannot be a place or an idea. That's not the same as saying that magic doesn't affect places or ideas, just that a Horcrux can *only* be a thing.

Human: [Harry Potter] Could Voldemort have made anything a horcrux? Like Hogwarts Castle or a mountain? So Voldemort can turn a ring, a locket, a cup, a diary, a diadem, a snake and a boy (even if inadvertently) into a horcrux.. But what about something that’s got a little more lasting power? Like a mountain for instance? Almost guaranteed to live on forever there… Or the Castle? I know it’s incredibly magical, but so was everything else that he turned in a horcrux, so I’m not sure if that should automatically negate it. Assistant:I’m going to go against the grain for how this question is always answered, including commentary about Voldemort being an arrogant asshole. We don’t know the process for a horcrux. It might need to be a magical object since it needs to be destroyed beyond magical repair. It also might need to be below a certain size in order to actually be imbued with his soul as part of the horcrux process. Assuming I’m wrong about all of that, Hogwarts and a mountain would be terrible choices. The power of the Horcrux is that nobody knows about it. If you imbued Voldemort’s soul into a mountain or any castle, let alone Hogwarts, it would have instantly alerted the entire wizarding world that something was amiss with those areas. We see it has serious adverse affects in people by being in possession of a horcrux. I mean Dumbledore barely figured it out but if he hasn’t, it’s likely nobody would as long as Slughorn remained silent about their convo. Another popular suggestion is the moon, but consider the moons effect on our tides, imagine the dark magic emanating all over earth if it were turned into a horcrux. Voldemort wasn’t dumb for the items he chose, he’s dumb for choosing so many of them and letting anyone even know about them, like Regulus. People like worm tail could’ve brought him back without knowing it was through a horcrux or WHAT the horcrux even was.

Human: Writing PhD dissertation and feel LOST I am doing an ethnographic study and I did my fieldwork 2 years back and have all the notes, interviews etc. I am also in touch with some of my interlocuters and can chat with them on and off to gather more data if I need to. This PhD has been long drawn out as I was working full time for a while and then went on a mat leave. Now I just want to get it done. But I am struggling to write and specifically construct arguments. Taking care of a toddler and just going through the motions of the day, I feel I just don't have it in me anymore. I am having big time imposter syndrome and feel lost. I have managed to write first drafts of three chapters but I feel there has been no real progress as the amount of work I need to put in to polish the chapters up, its easier to rewrite all of them. Does anyone have any suggestion on how to proceed? Just to add, I did not stick with my proposal plan and have deviated from that as I started writing. Assistant:As others have suggested, I also think much of the issue is probably the toddler. In writing a dissertation, simply arranging the information you've collected into coherent narrative bundles, and then building these coherent narrative bundles into a larger arc of argumentation that is both clear and nuanced, *takes incredible focus.* When I was writing my dissertation, I spent 6 hours a day in the library, attaining this focus through a silent-but-intellectual environment. When I wrote my first book, same thing. Now, on my second book, I have a toddler. When my toddler is around, I can *never* achieve this focus. More problematically, when I do carve out a few hours to myself (day care or partner) I'm often too exhausted (physically but also emotionally) to really achieve the focus that I used to be able to achieve. So my progress has been much, much slower this time around. (but my kid is pretty amazing... so it's worth it... :-) So, the first thing to do is to understand this reality: you're swimming against the current. So don't be too hard on yourself! My number one suggestion is: do everything on paper. Print out your messy, crappy chapters *on paper* (no matter how bad), and re-organize, re-write, and re-edit everything with a pen. Then, type your corrections back in later... you can do this when your toddler's around, because it requires less intense focus. That's all I got. Good luck! (once you pick up momentum, it will get easier.) p.s. Can you get into a writing group? We all work better under deadline pressure... where you HAVE to share a coherent chapter with a small group at regular intervals. It can be helpful...

Human: Writing PhD dissertation and feel LOST I am doing an ethnographic study and I did my fieldwork 2 years back and have all the notes, interviews etc. I am also in touch with some of my interlocuters and can chat with them on and off to gather more data if I need to. This PhD has been long drawn out as I was working full time for a while and then went on a mat leave. Now I just want to get it done. But I am struggling to write and specifically construct arguments. Taking care of a toddler and just going through the motions of the day, I feel I just don't have it in me anymore. I am having big time imposter syndrome and feel lost. I have managed to write first drafts of three chapters but I feel there has been no real progress as the amount of work I need to put in to polish the chapters up, its easier to rewrite all of them. Does anyone have any suggestion on how to proceed? Just to add, I did not stick with my proposal plan and have deviated from that as I started writing. Assistant:I’m in a similar boat. I have not found any perfect solutions, but a few books have proven to be helpful for motivation. “The Dissertation Journey” by Roberts and “Destination Dissertation” by Foss. I find accountability helps too. Things like writing groups, and the website Focusmate. Just remember, you made it this far! You got this.

Human: Does Rabies virus spread from the wound to other parts of the body immediately? Does it take time to move in our nervous system? If yes, does a vaccine shot hinder their movement? Assistant:I haven’t seen anyone else mention this, so I’ll toss it in. In a suspected or confirmed rabies exposure, they don’t only give you the rabies vaccine. They also give you rabies immune globulin, which contains antibodies to the virus. It’s meant to hold off the virus as much as possible while the vaccine trains the immune system to fight it. The vaccine is administered across multiple doses, whereas you only get the antibodies once- before you start making your own. Treatment for rabies is a really great example of how we’ve harnessed immunology in medicine. It use artificially acquired active immunity (vaccination) and artificially acquired passive immunity (rabies immune globulin). Here is the CDC page about it, but look up rabies immune globulin if you want to read more!

Human: Does Rabies virus spread from the wound to other parts of the body immediately? Does it take time to move in our nervous system? If yes, does a vaccine shot hinder their movement? Assistant:The virus spreads slowly along the nervous system. It travels at the rate of about 3 inches per day. When it reaches the brain, you die. But, if you can get the vaccine before it reaches the brain, you can survive. The shot doesn't hinder its movement as much as teach you to fight it. Edit: there are plenty of sources and papers, including the Wikipedia article on Rabies, but my favorite is this podcast from NPR from almost 10 years ago. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/312245-rodney-versus-death Sadly the Milwaukee protocol has fallen out of favor, but this is hinted at in the beginning of the episode.

Human: Is gravity a real force? Per GR, it is a space time effect. How to understand it? Assistant:Yes. See this comment or other similar posts https://www.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/nzvb5w/if_gravity_isnt_a_force_why_do_physicists_include/h1rny4v/

Human: Is gravity a real force? Per GR, it is a space time effect. How to understand it? Assistant:Yes

Human: I once read a novel (and not like a super old novel, this thing came out in 2000) where a character has trouble getting information from a San bushmen because the bushmen doesn't understand the concept of abstract numbers. Does that have any basis in reality? The book is about a group of present day (well it was when the book came out) US Americans being sent back to the Bronze Age and have to survive there. There's a bit where they visit South Africa (or where South Africa would have been) in 1242BCE. They get attacked and the leader of the Americans can't get one of the San bushmen to tell her how many are attacking them because he doesn't understand that numbers can exist is the abstract. >Extonga shrugged and stood pointing all around to the camp then opening and closing his fingers in imitation of her gesture. >"About as many as you, maybe more." she translated mentally. >The problem was that the San just didn't count the way 20th century westerns did. Extonga could probably describe every antelope in a heard of dozens after a single glance but as far as she could tell the concept of a number as an arbitrary symbol applicable to anything ...a hundred men or zebras or trees, was utterly foreign to him. Assistant:I don't have any sources off-hand, but should be relatively easy to find, perhaps in Donald Brown's Human Universals. Many pre-agricultural societies do not have words for numbers above two or three. There are a number of documented cultures that have a numbering system something like "one, two, many". This may seem odd to us, because the number system seems so natural, but it is actually an invention that is thought to have arisen when people finally had to keep track of otherwise identical goods (e.g., bushels of wheat, bricks, etc.). Many pre-agricultural societies don't have this problem because objects in their world are individually identifiable (e.g., they don't have "8" arrows, rather they have the arrow that curves to the left, the arrow with the funny tip, etc.). In fact, this also maps onto human psychology quite well, as there is a lot of evidence that we have two innate cognitive enumeration systems: the subitizing system, and an approximate estimation system. The subitizing system can precisely enumerate up to four objects, while the approximate estimation system does what it sounds like, approximately estimates larger quantities, and is based on ratios, rather than precise enumeration. Elizabeth Spelke has done a lot of work in this area, and you can check out any of a number of papers she's written on her website if your interested (just search for "arithmetic"). Numbers were "invented" by basically expanding the subitizing system beyond four objects, and we use a little trick to enumerate more than four objects. We all memorize a list of numbers (one, two, three, four, five, ...), and then when we need to enumerate more than four objects we give each object in the set a label from the list until all objects are labeled, and the last label that gets applied is the number of objects in the set. This has also been demonstrated in experiments by Elizabeth Spelke and colleagues.

Human: I once read a novel (and not like a super old novel, this thing came out in 2000) where a character has trouble getting information from a San bushmen because the bushmen doesn't understand the concept of abstract numbers. Does that have any basis in reality? The book is about a group of present day (well it was when the book came out) US Americans being sent back to the Bronze Age and have to survive there. There's a bit where they visit South Africa (or where South Africa would have been) in 1242BCE. They get attacked and the leader of the Americans can't get one of the San bushmen to tell her how many are attacking them because he doesn't understand that numbers can exist is the abstract. >Extonga shrugged and stood pointing all around to the camp then opening and closing his fingers in imitation of her gesture. >"About as many as you, maybe more." she translated mentally. >The problem was that the San just didn't count the way 20th century westerns did. Extonga could probably describe every antelope in a heard of dozens after a single glance but as far as she could tell the concept of a number as an arbitrary symbol applicable to anything ...a hundred men or zebras or trees, was utterly foreign to him. Assistant:Could it be the Nantucket Series by S.M. Stirling?

Human: Any advice for those of us starting graduate programs this month? Assistant:Find the biggest, baddest dude in the program and knock him/her out so everyone respects you.

Human: Any advice for those of us starting graduate programs this month? Assistant:If it's like my program, the first year is a kick in the nuts as far as course work goes. Make friends with your fellow classmates and if it's allowed, work together on the assignments and studying. Give up on the idea of a life or fun outside of your program for at least the first year. This will be very different than what you've done before and much much harder. Once courses are over, you enter research land. This is a bit like that moment when the rocket thrusters shut down, you feel that jerk and then you're floating. The floating is because, congratulations, you've finished book learnin. Now you have to figure something out for yourself. There is no more structure, there is no more syllabus, you wander alone in a desert looking for a clue and feeling like everyone else is doing better than you. Realize that you have to now be your own teacher and student. While your adviser can help, your project ultimately becomes all your responsibility. Once you start research, get fucking organized! Keep a running bibliography of any papers you read that you find interesting. Write something about what you did or what you learned every day. Make journaling a thing, it'll make writing so much easier when it's time. Finally, learn to cook mass quantities of food once or twice a week to pack and bring with you. You dont want to spend your stipend on food and life while going into debt. Live cheaply to the best of your abilities.

Human: CMV: Buying a brand new car straight off the lot is the worst financial decision you could make in car ownership. Important to note that I'm specifically talking car ownership finances here. Yes, people can do far dumber things with their money that doesn't relate to cars, but that is outside the scope of my view. For starters, just by driving the car off the lot, it loses 11% of its value. If you bought a brand new car for $20,000, it would be as if you drove it a mile to your home, started a bonfire in your backyard, and dumped $2,200 cash onto it. And in the first year of car ownership, the car will lose 19% of its value. So imagine repeating your cash-burning offering to the gods after you've only owned the car for one year. With a car losing so much value in just 1 year of ownership, it makes no financial sense to buy one straight off the lot. You could go for a car that was leased for a few years and get great value from that. If you want to own a car for as long as you can and not deal with used beat-up cars, that is definitely the way to go. CMV. Assistant:For many, buying a car has little to do with transportation but with social status. "The cash-burning offering to the gods" is the purpose of buying the car. If it weren't why would anyone ever by a BMW or Mercedes or Jaguar or any other $50,000 car? BMWs aren't twice as good as $25,000 cars, but they are twice as expensive. The expensive (and corresponding social status) is the purpose. "The cash-burning bonfire in your backyard" is a pretty common way to try to win a dick-measuring contest.

Human: CMV: Buying a brand new car straight off the lot is the worst financial decision you could make in car ownership. Important to note that I'm specifically talking car ownership finances here. Yes, people can do far dumber things with their money that doesn't relate to cars, but that is outside the scope of my view. For starters, just by driving the car off the lot, it loses 11% of its value. If you bought a brand new car for $20,000, it would be as if you drove it a mile to your home, started a bonfire in your backyard, and dumped $2,200 cash onto it. And in the first year of car ownership, the car will lose 19% of its value. So imagine repeating your cash-burning offering to the gods after you've only owned the car for one year. With a car losing so much value in just 1 year of ownership, it makes no financial sense to buy one straight off the lot. You could go for a car that was leased for a few years and get great value from that. If you want to own a car for as long as you can and not deal with used beat-up cars, that is definitely the way to go. CMV. Assistant:Is that better or worse than trusting the dealership about how to finance the car? People also talk about how leasing is often a bad deal, though I haven't looked into the details. > ... With a car losing so much value in just 1 year of ownership, it makes no financial sense to buy one straight off the lot. ... You're assuming that everyone else has the same value structure as you do. Maybe people need new cars for their job. Maybe they're so wealthy that they don't care about the depreciation. Maybe the car they want just isn't available used. In East Germany, used Trabants were more expensive than new ones - probably because you had to order the new ones and wait for them to be delivered, but used ones were available immediately.