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What is it about light that attracts insects at night? | Hello, r/askscience! Longtime lurker, first time inquirer. A question to all the biologists/entomologists out there, what is it about light that is so enticing to insects (moths, flies, etc.) at night? What is the evolutionary utility of being attracted to a concentrated light source? Thanks! | >What is the evolutionary utility of being attracted to a concentrated light source?
In nature there are very very few concentrated light sources which are not in the sky. For the purposes of an insect, those light sources, however, are infinitely far away and do not change position when the moth flies around.
So these light sources, e.g. the moon, could be used for orientation. For example, "fly with the moon on your right side" or "fly with the moon at 30° in front of you" would lead you in one direction for a while.
Furthermore, those light sources lead away from the ground which might be helpful if you want to get away from predators.
Now enter a lamp which at short distances appears brighter than the moon. The insect then continually adjusts its heading in order to keep the light in the same position and thus flies in circles and appears to be attracted to the light source. | 28 | 47 |
What can I do to advance the cause of open access? | Opt to publish open access whenever possible. Educate your colleagues on open access. Refer them to apply for editorial boards on open access journals.
To me, the biggest barrier is old school thinking, which can change when we present better options. | 24 | 28 |
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ELI5: How does night vision work, and why is it green? | Different models work in different ways.
A typical 1980s-2000s night vision monacle will amplify all of the light that goes into it. It's essentially just a camera and a screen.
They're green for various reasons. The human eye is slightly better at differentiating between different shades of green than it is with red and blue, so less light is required from the scope, reducing the chance that the light will "spill" and indicate the position of the observer. A side benefit about the low level of light is that it doesn't intefere with the shooters natural night-sight as much as brighter white light would. | 16 | 37 |
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[Firefly] Where are all the Chinese people? | I realize this may be casting oversight... but it seems pretty genius to have all these former Earthlings speaking Mandarin, yet the whole idea falls short when they're underrepresented otherwise. I suppose some people are supposed to be mixed (i.e. the surname Tam) but that hardly explains anything. | The Chinese were one of the largest contributors to the Exodus, and settled mostly on the core worlds. They make up a significant portion of the Alliance.
They're probably rarely seen out on the fringes because they have, racially, become so heavily associated with the Alliance core. | 30 | 17 |
ELI5: What's the difference between US and UK language settings? | I see these different English settings on devices and sites all the time but I never could tell what the difference was. Is it just some words spelled differently or is there something I'm missing? | Depends on where the language settings are used.
It could influence any of the following:
* Language selection (English vs US English)
* Keyboard layout (UK QWERTY vs US QWERTY, different placement of special symbols mostly)
* Date formatting (the UK uses sensible dates, the US uses garbage)
* Default currency selection and formatting
* Paper sizes for printers (really! A4 vs US Letter)
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ELI5: what’s the science behind the difference in the nasal spiciness of horseradish/wasabi etc and the mouth spiciness of chillis? | Different chemicals.
The spiciness in chili and other peppers is caused by capsaicin, which stimulates the heat sensing receptors in your mouth. Meanwhile Wasabi and its friends have allyl isothiocyanate which triggers a different set of pain receptors. | 14 | 19 |
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what is the Difference between fluid intelligence and creativity? | I have read that creativity is the ability to perceive something in a novel manner and thus create something new out of it while intelligence is the ability to acquire knowledge and utilise it accordingly. This means you can be intelligent without being creative but how can this be since high fluid intelligence is related to solving novel problems independent of previously acquired knowledge isn't this just creativity? | Fluid intelligence is usually measured by the ability to solve problems, reason non-verbally, recognise patterns, and perform mathematics.
It doesn't directly have anything to do with 'acquiring knowledge and utilising it accordingly'. In fact it's quite the opposite because your description sounds a lot like practical abilities which is different to theoretical abilities like intelligence. It is also difficult to define what knowledge and utilisation is intelligent for a given situation. It depends on the aim of the individual.
Creativity is the ability and action of making something new.
>This means you can be intelligent without being creative
It's pretty much impossible to be intelligent without being able to create new things/ideas. Society's traditional perspective of creativity can be separated from intelligence though, implying it arises as a personality trait, but the simple definition of being able to create novel stuff is not separate to intelligence | 62 | 101 |
ELI5: From a legal standpoint, how much does diplomatic immunity actually allow a person to get away with? | Absolutely anything, theoretically. In practice, it completely depends on the relationship between the two governments. Libya has gotten away with shooting a British cop dead in London on the grounds the person doing the shooting was inside the embassy at the time, and the British cops had no right to search the place or interview anyone. On the other hand a Russian diplomat here in Canada killed someone while driving drunk some years ago. We couldn't prosecute him, but the Russian government recalled the guy and charged him under Russian law. I'd be willing to bet it would have been much more pleasant for him to have waived immunity, but so it goes. | 14 | 21 |
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[The Culture] Why is Contact allowed to intervene in more primitive civilisations? | In the State of the Art, Earth is visited by a Culture vessel in the 1970s, and the possibility of contact is on the table, but our planet is ultimately left alone as a control group. In Surface Detail, it is clearly stated that the Culture is a Level 8 civilisation (one of the Involved), and contracting/giving tech to civilisations more than one level below your own is seen as damaging. But given that the Earth is identified as a Level 3 civ and the Culture a Level 8, why is Contacting Earth considered an option at all? Wouldnt it have to be a Level 4 society that does all the communicating? | The Culture routinely make contact with lower level civilizations. See *Inversions* for an example of how they make contact with a level 1 or 2 civilization.
In general, they do the following:
- Pretend to be native members of the contacted civilization (Inversions, Use of Weapons)
- Acknowledge they're aliens, but pretend to be less advanced than they really are (Player of Games, Matter)
- Openly be from the culture, but refuse to trade technology (Surface detail)
The Culture does have guidelines, but it doesn't really commit to hard and fast rules about contacting other civilizations. Every civilization's circumstances are different, so the Culture tailors their interactions according to those circumstances. | 24 | 16 |
ELI5: Why do fancy people touch shoulders when they shake hands? | There's a lot at play psychologically. Crusco and Wetzel (1984) found that a touch on the hand or shoulder significantly increased patrons' tipping. The effect was particularly strong when the touch was relatively unobtrusive. This was dubbed "the Midas Touch". The influential aspects of touch also include getting things for free. Researchers have demonstrated that bus drivers are more likely to give a passenger a free ride, if they touch the driver while making the request (Gueguen & Fischer-Lokou, 2003). Touch is very persuasive.
Placing a hand on one's shoulder, or cupping one's hand in both of yours during a hand shake, are subconscious alpha signals which show superiority. People who try to shake hands with their hand coming from a high position down to your position, with the hand pointing down, are also asserting superiority. Think "Big Hoss" on Pawn Stars. He is subconsciously but physically showing that he is an aggressor personality, prone to egotism and likely to crave control. Body language speaks volumes whether we know it or not! It's a good practice to return the gesture when someone touches your shoulder with a handshake, otherwise you physically assert that they are dominant in that situation. Likewise, take the hand of the "Big Hoss" handshake and turn it directly parallel with your own hand. Mimic a hand on your bicep or hand on your shoulder handshake in the same way, it levels the playing field whether you know it or not. | 69 | 96 |
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ELI5:What exactly is shadow banking? | Shadow banking is the collective term for organizations that offer bank like services, but aren't regulated as banks.
Because banks take deposits from the public, they allow multiple people to have a claim on the same money. This is a very important role banks play in the modern economy, and because of this role, the government has a huge number of regulations that are special for banks. However, complying with these regulations is expensive. Traditionally, the margin that deposits provided meant that banks had a pricing advantage against other competitors (these advantages became the source of the term banker's hours).
However, as the costs of compliance rose and liquidity in a few markets improved, the cost advantage of accepting deposits stopped being large enough to keep all competitors out.
Eventually, non-bank firms began to offer bank like products (not deposits which would entail taking on regulation costs) but loans and guarantees. These firms are not regulated by banks but can offer loans as though they were banks.
An example of a shadow bank that anyone can participate in are lendingclub and prosper, which have grown dramatically during the bank crisis when credit became hard to get for many.
Most shadow banks are firms like insurance companies or hedge funds that thanks to credit default swaps (a way to trade just the credit risk of a loan without the rest of the loan) and futures and swaps (ways to trade the interest rate risk of a loan) to become very important providers of credit to the economy (either through banks or by themselves).
TL;DR. Non-bank firms that provide loans (or products that allow others to provide cheap loans). Because they aren't banks, they have much less regulation than a bank would. | 18 | 46 |
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Does it require more, or less energy to climb stairs two steps at a time as opposed to one? | From a physics standpoint as long as you are going up to the same height you are always doing the exact same amount of work.
If you lift one pound ten feet in 10 seconds or in 10 minutes you still do the same work.
From a physiological standpoint it might be different.
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ELI5: Why did it take so long for artists to find out about vanishing point and foreshortening? This sounds like a straightforward concept but maybe just because we already know it | It’s not so much a case that it took a long time for people including artists to be aware of these effects, more a case that what artists were trying to achieve in their art has changed over time. A painting can be made to do a number of things. One of those is to be an optically accurate representation of the world. Another is to provide a representational depiction of people, places and events. If your objective is the second of these, then doing things like making the important people the focus of the painting, and depicting them in a way that indicates who and what they are is important. For example if you want to show a man is a king and guided by God, give him a huge crown and add a hand of God directing him. It’s not optically correct, but it tells you something about the person place and events.
It took until the modern period for the idea to gain widespread acceptance that producing an optically accurate representation of the world was actually a worthwhile and valuable thing for an artist to attempt to do. | 4,027 | 9,939 |
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ELI5: if plants age, how can you plant a cutting and still get a normal growth like it was a plant from seed? | Most plants are indeterminate growers, meaning that if they properly care for they can continue to grow for a very long time. A reason a plant might die of "old age" is that they get too big, and therefore have a hard time getting water to their entire system. They're also "perpetually embryonic", meaning that their cells are capable of changing into different kinds of cells, like human stem cells. This is why you can take a cutting and replant it and create a whole new plant. | 10 | 16 |
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ELI5 why in movies they tell the soldiers not to fire until they get closer | Wouldn't I want to start taking them out as soon as I can? | Letting the enemy get closer is advantageous in several ways:
A. It allows more accuracy in a ordinance-expended-to-kill ratio, being that accurate shots are easier to make at closer distances, especially in times before rifled barrels were in wide use.
B. It gives the enemy less time to seek shelter and dig in, avoiding a drawn out stand-off.
C. In relation to B, it provides a much more lethal element of surprise, and doesn't allow the enemy to form defensive formations, leaving them in unorganized disarray and easier to pick off and break their line. | 65 | 28 |
[ELI5] What happens to food that makes freezing twice a no-no ? I at least have always been told it is a very bad things to do, with no further explaination. How bad is it? | Freezing, it, reheating it, and then freezing it again exposes the food to the perfect conditions for bacterial growth repeatedly in short period of time. This vastly increases the chances of food poisoning. | 23 | 22 |
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ELI5: Why do cold/flu symptoms get worse at night? | Fevers spike, cough and congestion gets worse, body pain intensifies. Is it about the circadian rhythm? | Your immune system's inflammatory response is heightened at night. Sleep is when the body and brain do work to repair themselves. This means your symptoms worsen and your temperature raises to fever in an attempt to kill the virus or whatever bug you have. Even allergy symptoms like to get pretty bad at night with congestion. This is often why the PM version of medication has ingredients to help you sleep through it all. | 15 | 21 |
ELI5: Why do we have baby teeth? | Short version: It's advantageous to have matching upper and lower teeth. This is hard to do if you always regrow teeth, like sharks.
On the other hand, only growing one set of teeth is problematic, since your head grows so much during your early life - the baby teeth would be too small for an adult's head. | 27 | 33 |
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ELI5: Why do some cigarette smokers end up with huge health complications (Artificial larynx, Tracheotomy, etc.) while other heavy smokers seem to have been smoking for years with minimal complications? | I fell like this is gonna get down voted to hell, but I'm honestly curious as to why some people die from lung cancer, or end up having to have tracheotomies due to heavy smoking, (like in those anti smoking commercials where all those people talk about how hard it is living with a stoma in their neck) but other heavy smokers (that smoke multiple packs a day) seem to just have a raspy voice or an occasional heavy cough. Is it just sheer luck as to who gets horrible side effects and who doesn't? Or were the people with artificial larynx just smoking a lot more cigarettes, over a much longer period of time? Any information would be appreciated. Thanks!
| Statistics. Smoking does not guarantee health complications, it only increases your risk of them.
Who ends up with health complications is a matter of environmental factors and genetics. A light smoker might end up with lung cancer while a heavy smoker has only a light cough. But make no mistake - on a global level, the heavy smoker is, on average, much worse off than the light smoker. But there will always be exceptions.
But we don't know all that much about how genetics and environmental factors affect this. So to modern healthcare, it basically is luck that determines who ends up with complications and who doesn't. With statistics though, we can see that smokers are on average worse off than those who don't smoke, and heavy smokers versus light smokers.
You should also be aware of perception biases - the heavy smoker who stays healthy is a surprise, so you're going to hear stories about them - it's newsworthy and interesting, and you're more likely to remember that tidbit of information. But you don't hear about the 100 other smokers that died of lung cancer, because that isn't news, it's what's expected, and you're also less likely to remember that information because it isn't that interesting. | 36 | 54 |
ELI5: Why not just Google your question to find the answer instead of posting it on here? | The purpose of this forum is to have answers explained in friendly, simplified, and layman-accessible explanations. Frequently when you search Google you find explanations that use unfamiliar vocabulary or assume too much prior knowledge, or they're just not explained very well.
This is the place to go when you asked a question, got an answer, but you don't understand the answer and you'd like some help understanding it.
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What does it take to develop a vaccine, and why does it take so long? | My basic understanding is that a vaccine contains a weakened or dead version of the virus in question, which can be injected into the body so the immune system can develop antibodies without risk of infection. The vaccine acts as a practice run of sorts.
What exactly is it that stops us from just getting a sample of the virus and, say, irradiating it with x-rays or dunking it in some sort of “virus-killer” chemical (if such a thing exists)? Do we have to figure out how to weaken each virus on a case-by-case basis?
I know there obviously must be some reason, and it’s not as simple as just *bake virus for 15 minutes, until golden brown*. Otherwise disease just wouldn’t be an issue, and that’s obviously not the case. I’m wondering what makes it so hard.
Edit: Thank you for the answers everyone! To sum things up: it’s complicated! (Who knew?) But it basically comes down to a whole host of biological factors that I now have a very vague grasp on but am not qualified to summarize (see comments if you want competent biological information), plus a bunch of administrative hurdles. | Safety is important—you have to be sure that you’re not infecting anyone with the virus or causing some other off-target effect, especially with live-attenuated vaccines. This leads to another issue:
Some viruses are not really good targets for vaccines because they are too variable and mutate too quickly. This is the case for Hepatitis C and HIV to an extent (although there are other difficulties with HIV).
Also, most vaccines today are not killed or live-attenuated pathogens, but conjugated antigen or toxoid vaccines. These eliminate the risk of infection but require you to identify a unique and stable antigen associated with the virus/bacteria and biochemically engineer a complicated molecule to elicit an immune response in vivo. | 3,253 | 5,693 |
If increased per capita wealth=increased consumption=inflation that cancels out increases in wealth, how did per capita wealth ever increase in developed nations? | This is an argument that seems to come up every time a program that offers some sort of wealth redistribution like increasing the minimum wage or student debt forgiveness is discussed. The idea that if consumers get more money, the inflationary effects will cancel out their increase in wealth/income.
But the entire history of industrialization and the middle class seems to disprove this concept.
Am I missing something? | What matters is the supply of real goods and services, like food and housing and medical care and Netflix TV shows. We talk about economic growth in $ terms (or £ or € or whatever) because it's impractical to talk about all these goods and services individually, and money is the only way we have to aggregate them all.
Luckily, we can control (albeit Imperfectly) for changes in prices that don't reflect changes in the real goods and services. Modern day statistical offices put considerable effort into this, and economic historians have calculated long time series of incomes and GDP controlling for inflation for a number of countries.
So we can talk about things like "real Income growth" and "GDP in volumes".
So how can real incomes increase across an economy? Technological progress is one, increased efficiency of operation (e.g. well functioning price system, relatively uncorrupt government, not having a civil war), labour force, like healthier, better educated, higher proportion of working age, returns to scale (a large part of why foreign trade is valuable), etc.
Redistribution can increase the amount of output of real goods and services, e.g. childhood nutrition and vaccines can pay off in multiple areas. Redistribution can also support civil peace. Conversely redistribution can also discourage this, e.g. higher taxes meaning reduced work effort, or more resources spent on tax avoidance and trying to stop tax avoidance. Some redistributist policies can have negative impacts on social peace, e.g. why cancel student loan debt but not debt a, say, plumber might take on to start their own business? Some redistributionist policies can create problems like moral hazard, etc.
And, finally the more complex policies are, the more likely they are to interact in unexpected and undesirable ways, which is where things like poverty traps where as people's market incomes go up they can lose actual disposable income come from.
TL:dr: what matters is real goods and services, not the money. | 35 | 22 |
magnets have the ability to do work, and energy cannot be created or destroyed, so how are they able to do SO MUCH work (w=fxd) over their life? | My guess is that its potential energy is tied to its electrons, NOT joules? | Magnets create a magnetic field. Magnetic objects in this field have _potential_ energy. The situation is similar to masses on earth. They gain potential energy when you lift them up. However, the earth itself (or the magnet) does not create the energy. No, its _you_ who does the work, by lifting them up. | 41 | 48 |
ELI5: Why scientists can date the age of Earth, but not the Egyptian pyramids or the Sphinx? | I read that really old objects can sometimes not be carbon dated, because there isn't any C14 left in the object. Then how come we can decide the age of Earth, which is significantly older? | Radiometric dating works by comparing the ratio of isotopes in an object now to a known reference ratio at the object's inception. Each element has a different useful range of applicability based on the half-life of the decaying isotope, with increasing error and eventually uselessness outside that range. C14, for example, is only useful out to about 60,000 years. In the case of dating the Earth, it was actually the Uranium --> Lead decay which was used to determine the age, based on the content of these isotopes in the oldest known zircon minerals in rocks found in Australia and Canada.
As far as the Egyptian artifacts go, carbon dating only really works on objects which contain(ed) organic material. Dating the stone used in the construction of the pyramids and the Sphinx would of course tell you how old the rock is, but not when these objects were constructed. | 56 | 40 |
ELI5: 30's - 60's fascination with the future (à la Retrofuturism) and how it disappeared | It was the start of a lot of different technologies and innovations: widespread urban/suburbanization was increasing, the computer became a much more common tool, space exploration was beginning, including the space race, widespread aviation available to common travelers, nuclear energy promised abundant clean energy (this was before the major power plant disasters), there was a lot of advancement in medicine and vaccines, there was widespread economic growth and consumer spending following wartime saving, and there was just generally a lot of good stuff going on.
Of course, we tend to forget about the conditions of the poor, disadvantaged, minorities, or discriminated peoples during this timeframe. And the cold war, global geopolitical conflict, and the number of wars/genocides outside of western countries in this time period. But there was generally a lot of optimism that things would continue to improve at a rapid pace, at least for industrialized western countries. Many thought this would improve conditions in poorer countries, as those advancements filtered down to them.
Things have improved at a rapid pace, but people are still people, and the end of scarcity that many predicted never came about, and people still were focused on their own personal wealth. A lot of bad news started to come out (global warming, lead in gasoline/other cancer scares from industrial goods, increasing mistrust in science, rise in terrorism and extremism, civil unrest, recessions, rise of obesity epidemic, to name a few) that put a damper on things. There's a lot more to it, but basically things were pretty good for a while, and people thought that meant things would be pretty good *forever*, which is kind of a silly thought. Can't really blame them for trying to be optimistic after coming out of two world wars, the Great Depression, and the Holocaust; people need something to look forward to. | 51 | 93 |
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CMV: Stereotypes are often true and there’s no way we can get rid of them | Excuse my English.
I understand that stereotypes leads to prejudice and discrimination, but stereotypes itself imo isn’t a bad thing or a good thing, it’s just.. statistics.
I’m kind of annoyed about how people are “woke” about stereotyping and stuff. Like for example showing a pic of a mechanic thingy and ask if women knows what it is. Then women started complaining about stereotyping and sexism and stuff, saying “NOT ALL GIRLS PLAY BARBIE DOLLS SOME ARE VERY HANDY IN FACT MY MOTHER BUILT ALL THE HOUSES IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD AND I OWN A CAR REPAIR SHOP”. Sure, there’s definitely gonna be tons of women who are handy and loves mechanical work. But they’re not the majority. Ask 100 women and how many actually know about these things? It’s just statistics, no one is discriminating here. Im a woman, so I’m not offended by this at all. And I can assure you that most of my female friends do not know mechanical stuff too.
Stereotypes about races.. well idk about America but in my country I can say most of them are freaking true. Like saying Chinese have small slanted eyes well yeahhhhh most of us do have small slanted eyes so..
Another example would be terrorism. Just ask yourself truthfully, consider a dodgy looking mid eastern man vs a Chinese man carrying a backpack suddenly sitting next to you or your kids. Who would you be more suspicious towards? For those non-Muslims who say “not all Muslims are radical”, Be completely honest. I live in a Muslim country. I can tell u that a huge portion of the Muslims here are radical, not only about religion but also their privilege.
Stereotypes are based on history and facts. It’s just showing the tendency of something. It’s like smoking is more likely to cause cancer. Why didn’t anybody freak out about this stereotype? There are tons of smokers who live long happy lives too. They should be outraged!!
Anyway I know it’s hard but stereotypes can just be stereotypes as long as everyone keeps an open mind.
| Problems with stereotypes:
1. They can be based on small sample sizes
2. They don't help you deal with individuals within the stereotyped population
3. They don't have to be based in fact to spread
4. They get updated much slower than actual statistics
5. They don't help relations.
And this isn't a point, but a joke about how stereotypes can be faulty.
The average person is a Chinese woman named Mohammed with 1.8 legs. | 18 | 25 |
ELI5: Why is “Sigma” such a pervasive word in business? Six Sigma, Two Sigma, lean sigma... | Let's use a manufacturing business as an example...
Everything you make has a target specification range. This could be width, weight, etc. For example the product should be between 2mm and 4mm thick.
In a perfect process, your mean would be exactly in the middle and never shift. That never happens though. Variation is inevitable. More variation means more products you have to scrap.
How much variation you have can be measured and plotted on a curve. We can then see how many standard deviations exist between our mean and our spec limits.
Sigma is the mathematical notation for standard deviation. Six sigma is having 6 std deviations between the mean and spec limits.
If we can achieve 6 sigma, then we'll only have 3.4 defects per million opportunities. | 45 | 35 |
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What's hot in philosophy of language? | I was wondering if anyone could point me towards any of the major/important debates happening in philosophy of language at the moment. | Plenty of issues: nature of propositions, semantics of indicative conditionals, semantics of generics, theories of reference, theories of meaning, indexicals, names, restricted and unrestricted quantification, counterfactuals, embedded conditionals.
If you want a good intro to the field check out William Lycan's *Philosophy of language: contemporary introduction*. | 15 | 20 |
ELI5: If it is highly risky to give birth after 40, why do women continue to have periods into their 40s or 50s? | In it's simplest form evolution works on a basis of "how likely is this mix of DNA to produce offspring to carry on to the next generation".
Evolution doesn't really care if you live long or not, only that you pass on your DNA as much as possible. Generally speaking someone who lives longer will have more chances to do that, even if the risk of death increases. So it wouldn't build in a process to stop the cycle early, because that drops your chance of passing on DNA to 0. | 126 | 92 |
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How do I convince my parents to let me study philosophy next year in college? | Hi all,
I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, but I'm at a complete loss, and I would like to hear your input.
I'm 17 years old high school senior. Next year I'll be going to college and I have been set since I was 14 to study philosophy later. The reason is my fascination for the subject, and how much it's changed me since I was in middle school.
The only problem is that my parents want me to study to become an engineer. They said that they're the ones who pay for my tuition, so they have a right to say what I get to study. My father says it's a compromise: I get to go to college, but he gets to say what I do. I said that he cannot control my life and tell me what to study, he says that in this case just pay for college yourself.
But I really don't want to study engineering. While I find it interesting, my heart is not in it. I really want to study philosophy, and have been reading on my own on philosophical topics since I was 13. I feel extremely frustrated about the whole ordeal.
My father says that studying philosophy is useless, as there is no real life application. He says that I am trying to escape the real world, and hide in childish fantasies. He says that once I'm an adult, I will thank him for choosing engineering as it will secure me a job (he didn't say this in a condescending tone, but in a rather supportive one, before you get super angry against my father). I tried explaining to him what philosophy does, and how it isn't *useless*, but he says that these things don't matter at all. He kept arguing that I should focus on things that matter, like taxes, accounting, coding, etc.
I agree with him that these things are primordial to live, but there is more to life than just practical things. To give you a picture of my father, he's the kind of man that thinks everything that isn't popular is "pretentious", his idea of the good life is barbecueing, beer and watching sports on TV with his friends from high school. He's a really hard working man, and for that I respect him a lot. He's sacrificed a lot for me and my sister so that we could go to college. But he doesn't want me to study philosophy, and to be honest I don't know what to say, because I am 60% sure that if I study philosophy, I'll have a really difficult life.
I've actually considered moving to Germany or France, where the tuition is really low so that I can get to study what I want without crippling student debt.
I'm really at a loss. I'm sure some of you on this subreddit have had the same problems. How do I convince my parents of the utility of philosophy, my passion for the subject, and that there isn't only practical things in life?
Much love, F. | Offer a compromise. You can say you'll get a philosophy minor and a practical major. If he doesn't want to pay for that, then offer to take out loans for the additional minor credits. Since you need gen eds anyways, the only additional credits you'd need is a small handful. If we're only talking about undergrad anyways, then if you're dedicated to self study you can easily learn as much as you could with a major with only a minor. | 23 | 18 |
ELI5: Why does restarting my router sometimes help with internet connectivity problems? | I mean, what changes with that reboot that helps? | Imagine that you start solving an equation in your notebook.
Halfway through you notice that the number don't add up anymore. You try to figure out what the problem is but you can't seem to find it.
So you just tear that page from the notebook and start again from the beginning with a fresh perspective.
This is similar to what happens with your computer. For some reason a mistake was made in its calculation that it's not programmed to recover from. So when you restart the computer it starts from scratch. Now, you can hope that whatever caused the problem doesn't occur again. | 48 | 31 |
ELI5 Why aren't all instruments in Concert C? | It makes no sense to me that an Eb on some instruments is a C on a piano. Why would have we chosen not to standardize what tone a particular note is? Transposition is tough, is what I'm trying to say. So, please, somebody justify it for me (like I'm five). | Historically, it was common to have families of very closely related instruments with identical fingering systems but different sizes (for example, clarinets in A and Bb).
Players of one instrument would often play the other, but if all music were in concert pitch, then the player would have to learn an entirely new set of fingerings for an identical-feeling instrument.
It's not necessary to constantly transpose to concert pitch when you play a transposing instrument. However, if fingering systems were shifted around between identical instruments, it would be necessary to keep in mind which of many sets of fingerings to follow.
Hope that helps you. Please let me know if you need additional clarification. | 29 | 38 |
ELI5: Why does MS Word open files in "Protected Mode"? Like is there really any threat for a "Protected Mode" to be needed? | Word documents can contain embedded programs. These programs can do things like respond to clicks, or do things like have drop down lists for forms.
It is a common ploy for hackers to embed viruses and malware into word files.
Protected mode deactivates embedded programs, so prevents any malware activating, until you deactivate the protection. | 71 | 23 |
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Realistic paintings of real subjects are pointless. CMV | We're living in an age where almost everyone has a camera in their pocket at all times, and professional photography is a reasonably successful industry. I just don't see the point in painting a realistic portrait of someone anymore when you could spend less time and effort to frame a photograph and produce a greater result.
Some counterarguments I can think of off the top of my head:
- *Portraits don't necessarily reveal the real picture, but the idealized version of the subject.* My problem with this is that if you're not revealing the true picture, it's not so much realism as an extremely detailed caricature.
- *It allows dead relatives to be included in a family portrait.* While true, in 30 or so years there won't even be people left who haven't bee photographed.
- *It's an artisan job that takes real skill to accomplish.* Photography also takes real skill to accomplish, in fact I would say it takes more skill to make a truly great portrait with a camera, despite taking less time to complete.
I'm not knocking painting people in general, and I'm not even knocking realism; it's great for rendering a mental image of fictional subjects. But if you're going to try for a hyper-realistic painting of a "real-life" thing, why wouldn't you just use an HD camera?
CMV | >photograph and produce a greater result
For me, this is the very reason why paintings are still necessary. The very fact that you acknowledge that a photograph produces a greater result is a testament to the fact that there is clearly a difference between a photo and a painting. It is that very difference which is why paintings still have value. A photo-realistic painting is still a painting. We can still tell its not a photo. Its not quite perfect. And it is that flaw which makes it somehow more.
Think of it like this. What is the point of putting a filter on an image. The original image is perfect. Its what is really there. The camera is not lying. Yet tens of millions of people use Instagram every day. As much as it pains to be say it, in this context, a painting is no different to an Instagram filter. Its a bit different. And its that difference which gives interest. | 21 | 15 |
CMV: Black and white are colors | Artists, pedants, and pedantic artists like to say that black and white are not colors, because of some property about not reflecting any light, or something along those lines. I am not saying anything against this definition. If the experts want to define things this way, I'm certainly in no position to say otherwise.
However, "Black is a color" should still be a valid statement. My shirt is 'black.' I'm not a color-physicist, but I'm almost certain that it does not completely absorb the full spectrum of colors. If I wanted to be totally correct, I would have to say: "My shirt is a color that very nearly approximates black." (Disproving this would be a very easy way to CMV!)
There are enough black-colored items in the world for this to be ridiculous. Thus, it's only logical that when we are casually talking to other humans, and mention the word 'black,' it can be assumed that we're referring to this close-enough faux-black, which does reflect (I'd assume) some light, and thus is totally a color.
The argument for white follows similarly.
Edit: I'm not saying that it's wrong to say that black and white aren't colors. I'm saying that it's okay to say that they are, in certain contexts.
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The whole point of communication is to get a point across. This means that different communities define things differently in a way that suits their own needs. When artists talk about a painting needing more colour, other artists will intuitively know that this means add colours that are not black or white. If they all assumed "colour" included black and white that conversation would be way more confusing for everyone involved.
If your day to day life involves talking about colour all the time, you should have an established definition of what counts as a colour so everyone's on the same page. At the end of the day it doesn't matter, it's just to ensure proper communication.
So when they say things like that, it's just an arbitrary distinction that has been made for their sake. Not sure if I've changed your view, but maybe I've atleast shown you why they would do that, and why it's okay to do that | 13 | 28 |
ELI5: Why are surgeons allowed to do 20+ hours of surgery in one sitting but truck drivers are strictly monitored as to how much they can drive at a time? | I thought of this after hearing about Sen. Charles Schumer comments in lieu of Tracy Morgan's recent accident. I'm pretty sure truck drivers aren't legally allowed to drive more than 12-15 hours at a time and only after a few days of rest beforehand. | A 20 hour surgery will often involve a team of surgeons, with breaks in between.
Also, a 20 hour surgery is there because *there is no other choice*. Moving cargo, there's a choice -- the driver can pull over without his cargo dying. | 54 | 24 |
ELI5: How come making your heart work extra hard during cardio exercise is considered healthy, but making your heart work extra hard by consuming large amounts of caffeine is considered dangerous and bad for you? | I'll preface this by saying I don't *actually* think this would be a good idea, and exercise obviously has other benefits besides keeping just got heart healthy, but let's ignore those other benefits for a moment.
Aerobic exercise like running, swimming, cycling, etc is considered good for your cardiovascular health because it "works out" your heart, increasing both heart rate and blood pressure.
However, if I increase my blood pressure and heart rate by chugging down a pack of Red Bull, I'm no longer "working out" my heart, I'm "excessively straining" my heart and its considered both dangerous and unhealthy.
So what gives? How come I cant decrease my risk of heart disease by drinking a pot or two of black coffee every morning instead of running on the treadmill for an hour every day? | During normal exercise the heart beats faster and builds it's vascular infrastructure to deal with the increased metabolic demand of exercise induced hypoxia. The more you exercise over time the more the heart develops its infrastructure to adapt to the demand.
Coffee causes the heart to beat faster due to caffeine's effect as a neurological stimulant. It doesn't receive the normal stimuli to adapt a more robust atheletic vascular infrastructure and cardiac cells are put under abnormal stress because of the lack of said adaptations. | 25 | 44 |
PhD - Finland vs Germany? | Which country would you pick for your PhD?
List your pros/cons below please.
(Looking for answers related to a PhD in the biological field, but happy to hear about experience, work culture, programme structure, difficulties and benefits in general from others) | Finland, like the rest of the Nordics, prioritises a healthy work-life balance. You will find a high quality of living and a fairly decent salary even as a PhD student. Oh and you get a sword if you graduate from a Finnish PhD program.
The most important factor is the prospective supervisor. They can make or break your whole PhD experience. | 137 | 63 |
Eli5 why the coastline paradox is a paradox? | The term paradox does not necessarily mean something that is impossible, but can also be applied to some things that are just so counter intuitive that you would not remotely think of them
The counterintuitive thing here is that you would think that the measurement of a coastline is consistent. Most people find it incredibly counter intuitive when they are told that the answer varies from a fixed number to infinity depending on how you measure it. | 1,629 | 1,311 |
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ELI5: What's the difference between the UK Government and Parliament? | Parliament is the overall institution consisting of two houses - the House of Commons, elected by the people, and the House of Lords, who are appointed and serve for life. They both meet in the Palace of Westminster in London, they both draft and vote on legislation, but generally all of the political power is in the Commons - because they're elected.
Within the House of Commons, the party (or coalition) who has the most seats *generally* forms Her Majesty's Government - their leader is Prime Minister, and the cabinet is made up of members of that party (or coalition). The next largest party/coalition in the Commons who isn't part of the government forms Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition - their job is to present the other side of arguments and ensure that the Government is doing things properly and justifying their decisions.
Currently Her Majesty's Government is the Conservative Party, who have 329 out of 650 seats, and their leader, Theresa May, is Prime Minister. The Opposition is Labour, who has 231 seats, and the remainder of the House is made up of other parties (next largest is Scottish National Party with 54). | 21 | 22 |
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ELI5: How does a sextant work ? | Sextants are designed to accurately measure the apparent angle between two visible objects. The key component is a semi-silvered mirror that allows half of the light through and half the light to be reflected. The reflected part is bounced off a second mirror that you can rotate. The idea is that you rotate the mirror until two objects are aligned. The angle scale on the bottom allows you to read off the angle between the two objects. Even though the mirror rotates through about 60°, the scale reads double the angle, i.e., up to about 120°, because the angle of reflection is double the angle of the mirror.
For navigation the directly viewed object is generally the horizon and the reflected object is the sun, moon, planet or star. For the sun and moon there are dark filters that are used to avoid damaging your eyesight. Those objects are obviously also large, so generally you measure the angle to the bottom of their discs; trying to guess where the centre is is not precise enough. Sextants usually have a small, low-power telescope to view through but this is not essential. | 10 | 15 |
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ELI5: The differences between the Gaelic languages as well as any other traditional British languages. | Welsh, Cornish, Irish and Scottish Gaelic, Breton etc. How similar are these languages? Can you converse between them? What are some basic examples?
Also it seems that Scots language is something separate from traditional gaelic languages, could someone explain this in a bit more (simplified) detail.
Thank you. | There are two surviving branches of the Celtic languages: the P Celtic ones like Welsh, Breton, and Cornish, and the Q Celtic ones like Irish, (Scottish) Gaelic, and Manx. There's a lot of mutual intelligibility between Welsh and Breton, and some between Irish and Gaelic, but virtually none between, say, Irish and Welsh.
As for Scots, it's in the same dialect continuum as English, and isn't a Celtic language at all. It's a Germanic language that is very closely related to English. Ever read the novel Trainspotting? It's written in a mixture of standard English and Scots.
As for samples, here's the start of the Lord's prayer.
In Irish:
>Ár n-Athair atá ar neamh,
>Go naofar d'ainim,
In Welsh:
>Ein Tad yn y nefoedd,
>sancteiddier dy enw;
In Scots Gaelic:
>Ar n-Athair a tha air nèamh,
>gu naomhaichear d'ainm.
And in the Scots Language:
>Oor Faither wha bides in heiven,
>Hallowt be thy name; | 12 | 20 |
How would living for over 300 years change a sentient being. | **Growth & Development:** That which ages slowly, but breeds quickly, either has to suffer vast attrition (like having 20 children in your lifetime but all but 3 die), or will run out of resources. If you are following evolutionary theory, enough generations will pass to find a balance for this. So it is rational to believe that a creature so long lived would either have children at wider intervals, in fewer number, or that it would be so resource intensive that they would not commit to it as an experience.
In the event that they are resource intensive (like a human baby) and slow to grow (also like a human baby), then it makes sense that you could extend out the childhood of a longer lived race by a similar scale. Thus the more cliche belief that an elf would be a 'child' until the age of 100, in a species that lives for thousands of years. This is only one narrow interpretation of how a species would evolve around overcrowding, resource loss, etc.
**Culture and History:** You measure time different when you live that long. Or so most accounts would claim. It is more likely you would measure time just as a human would for the first few hundred years of life, likely moving and bustling more than those elder to you. However, perspective and perceptions of mortality may slow you down considerably as you age. Who is to say that an elf or dwarf in their 1800th year isn't terrified of death, after such a long life? Enough so that their culture might not even talk of the subject. But we assume that with age comes wisdom (there are few things further from truth), and derive that those species should find an equilibrium with their mortality. A peace. But we cannot know that--they might rage until their very last breath, clawing moment upon moment into their gaping maws of hungry experience.
Consider for a moment just how these things would affect your feelings about child rearing. If you can have hundreds of children only for most of them to die, your species would have to grow rather either callous from indifference, or quite bitter to the point of possibly even rejecting the idea. If neither is the case, perhaps it is because of a dispassionate sense that your children aren't even really alive until their 20th year, when they can finally begin defending themselves against their hungry siblings. It isn't that you wouldn't care for them, merely that you're too busy caring a little for all of them, and don't care enough about any individual. Or if you did pick one, a favorite, the one that exemplifies the characteristics you would have pass on, the competition to be that highest among others would be fierce. Fratricide and fear of death every waking moment from conscious awareness through to adulthood.
Meanwhile, on the opposite side, if the children take a ton of resources, or infant mortality is very high, you may see the race gravitate toward sharing their parental duties so they can better utilize their resource. Suddenly you have a species that is very aggressive in every way regarding their children, barely breaking even from generation to generation and only flourishing in times when their predators are scarce due to retaliation. It would create a boom and bust gene-economy, as it were. Or it might even generate a tripartite gender set if these conditions happened early enough in development. A male, female, and a neuter whose role is less sexual and more facilitative or guardian-like. That would throw sexual dymorphism all over the place; you might even end up with a species where male and female burn themselves out to bare children, and the neuter acts as the only caregiver they'll ever know. Imagine the strange culture that could come of that. Might even explain some of that sexless androgyny commonly associated with elves.
All other aspects of a society will ripple outward from these sorts of biological concepts. Say for example we went with a child-scarce resource-intensive breeding process with three genders of elves. The males and females live for potentially hundreds of years, finally settling down when they feel age coming on. The neuters are younger, more plentiful than male or female offspring, and a tripartite set forms. The male and female grant their wisdom to the children, the neuter (or a hermaphrodite) its strong back and remaining lifespan, and you see generations that leapfrog like links in a chain. Now their culture is fascinated with all things three in number. Three petaled flowers, three phased moon cycles, triangular polygons, three-concepted art (triptychs would be more natural, less forced), three-faced gods, three-staged afterlives or reincarnation cycles, et cetera. Three is balance--not two, not black and white, but black, white and grey. If three hold hands, they may lean back, spinning above the darkness, safe in the knowledge that someone will hold their hand even if another lets go. The idea of a 'couple' is pretty much gone. Adversarial legal systems? No, you're going to have arbitration everywhere. At the more adversarial, you have three facing off, one representing the defense, the next the claimant, and the third the will of the government. These don't all *have* to be true, but they're more likely to be.
It all ripples out from the biology. From introspection and trying to understand what, who, why, you are. If your species has pointy ears, more similar to a native canine, you may (although you might be wrong) liken your race to it in your art or beliefs. If you have long fingers, you'll no doubt have stories involving delicate and dexterous monsters or heroes, digging their fingertips into the bottoms of wine bottles to solve riddles and set free genies of a sort. If so, you may find the removal of a hand more offensive than the removal of genitals. Or darker, a mark of traitorous narrow thinking. Ripple, ripple. | 71 | 116 |
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ELI5: How does someone freeze to death? What exactly happens inside the body to be fatal? | Life depends on a number of biochemical reactions that occur in each and every cell in your body.
All chemical reactions (and this includes those upon which life depends) are affected by temperature. In general, decreasing temperature tends to slow chemical reactions (particularly exothermic chemical reactions, which describes most of the chemical reactions upon which life depends).
Dropping the temperature of the body affects virtually every organ system. It causes the heart to slow (because, in part, the chemical reactions in heart muscles required to cause heart contraction are slowed by lower temperature). It causes blood to reduce its capacity to carry oxygen. It causes basic energy-producing chemical reactions in every cell (cellular respiration) to slow, and to produce less energy molecules (i.e. ATP, etc) required for basic cellular function. It causes nerve conduction to slow and slows down neurotrasmitter release.
In short, through a number of mechanisms at the cellular and organ level, it causes cellular activity to slow, and, eventually, to be unable to maintain the intracellular environment required for life.
Cells die, organ systems fail, which causes more cell death, until the body is in a catch-22 of death and becomes irrecoverable.
| 32 | 25 |
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Does a Knife with lubrication cut/stab/slice/etc better or worse than a Knife without? | It would not appreciably effect the cutting power of any variety of knife. What it would be is protect the blade from tarnishing. The force applied to the blade perpendicular to the cut is what causes the friction. This force is from the sides pushing in on it. While lubrication would make the coefficient of kinetic friction between the blade and the object being cut lower, what slows a blade is mostly the object in front pushing directly back on it. It would certainly not hinder cutting, but the reduction in friction is nominal in comparison to the force required to cut an object. This being said lubrication would help sharper knives more than dull knives because the force to cut forward is lower, and as such friction may come into play, albeit barely. As stated earlier the lubricate makes sure that liquids don't accumulate on the blade and cause it to rust, although you should still keep your knives clean.
TLDR: Not really, although the sharper the knife the more it would help. | 27 | 76 |
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AskScience AMA Series: We're compression experts from Stanford University working on genomic compression. We've also consulted for the HBO show "Silicon Valley." AUA! | Hi, we are Dmitri Pavlichin (postdoc fellow) and Tsachy Weissman (professor of electrical engineering) from Stanford University. The two of us study data compression algorithms, and we think it's time to come up with a new compression scheme-one that's vastly more efficient, faster, and better tailored to work with the unique characteristics of genomic data.
Typically, a DNA sequencing machine that's processing the entire genome of a human will generate tens to hundreds of gigabytes of data. When stored, the cumulative data of millions of genomes will occupy dozens of exabytes.
Researchers are now developing special-purpose tools to compress all of this genomic data. One approach is what's called reference-based compression, which starts with one human genome sequence and describes all other sequences in terms of that original one. While a lot of genomic compression options are emerging, none has yet become a standard.
You can read more in this article we wrote for IEEE Spectrum: https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/the-desperate-quest-for-genomic-compression-algorithms
In a strange twist of fate, Tsachy also created the fictional Weismann score for the HBO show "Silicon Valley." Dmitri took over Tsachy's consulting duties for season 4 and contributed whiteboards, sketches, and technical documents to the show.
For more on that experience, see this 2014 article: https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/computing/software/a-madefortv-compression-algorithm
We'll be here at 2 PM PT (5 PM ET, 22 UT)! Also on the line are Tsachy's cool graduate students Irena Fischer-Hwang, Shubham Chandak, Kedar Tatwawadi, and also-cool former student Idoia Ochoa and postdoc Mikel Hernaez, contributing their expertise in information theory and genomic data compression.
| * What specifically differentiates genomic data vs typical data? More specifically, is genomic data not ergodic?
* What similarities does reference based compression share with Slepian-Wolf (or Wyner-Ziv) coding?
* Since there has been a large push towards machine learning, could you elaborate on the role you foresee information theory playing in the future machine learning? | 104 | 2,073 |
eli5: Why do intrest rates fall while average living costs increase? | I live in Germany and my interest rates plummeted over the last 10 years. I always thought, that interest rates existed to level out inflation. But I did some research and found out, that inflation rates are actually pretty stable. Meanwhile average living costs increase. How does all this fit together?
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Sorry for bad english :) | Interest rates are controlled by central banks and are used as a tool to meet Government policies to manage the money supply and the tradeoffs between inflation and economic growth. Interest rates are however only one influcence on either of these factors and are not the core reason why costs rise or fall.
It's not simple to Eli5 but Inflation is a result of the herd behaviour of a complex web of billions of human interactions where the price / value of millions of goods and services are constantly changing. When everyone expects prices to rise they adjust their behaviour according. In this way Central Banks have a role to guide these expectations as well as to intervene to control inflation by using interest rates to affect a change in behaviour.
What is relevant to OPs question is that almost all central banks have a Government mandated policy of targeting a low positive annual inflation rate e.g. this is 2% for the Bank of England. This is because a low positive rate has been determined to produce the best conditions for long term sustainable economic growth
Ever since the financial crisis of 2008 intrest rates have been kept near historical lows as central banks used low rates to prop up demand and support the economy....by making money cheap it is easier to invest. It was also not seen as a good thing to raise interest rates too quickly following an economic crisis and during a period of repaying debt. It is also a matter of many debates whether they should ever return to previously higher levels. There has also not been a trigger to do so in major economies such as a case of runaway inflation or boom that would have caused Central banks to raise them quickly to act to dampen down excessive inflation.
TLDR Interest rates are a tool to control inflation..they are not it's route cause. It is possible that they may move in either direction at the time of higher/lower inflarion in response to wider economy wide issues. | 10 | 22 |
ELI5: How does a fly have so much energy to use it's wings for as long as it does? | Super adapted muscles/metabolism for flight. The flight muscles in insects can be up to 1/5th of their body mass. But it's really all about efficiency. Your cells can use aerobic or anaerobic metabolism to produce ATP from glucose (and sometimes lipids and other stuff). During aerobic metabolism - when oxygen is available to the cell - breaking down one glucose molecule yields something like 30 ATP. When cells can't get enough oxygen, they instead use other molecules in its place, but the process is way less efficient - you get 3 molecules of ATP per glucose. In mammals, oxygen is carried through our blood by proteins called hemoglobins. The eli5 version of this is that it means if your muscles are working really hard, eg you're sprinting, they will use more oxygen than can be released from the hemoglobin and your cells will have to use anaerobic respiration for energy. Flying insects, on the other hand, don't have hemoglobin at all. Oxygen travels through their bodies as a gas, and they have a network of tubes designed to provide it directly to their muscle cells, so their muscle cells have virtually infinite oxygen and never use anaerobic metabolism for energy. They also have by far the largest aerobic scope in the animal kingdom. That means they can generate energy by breaking down glucose around 75 times faster when working hard then when resting, and they are able to switch between these rates nearly instantaneously by very tight regulation of the enzymes involved. By comparison, we can at best increase respiration rates by about 20 times, and it takes a long time for our cells to slow down respiration so a lot of "fuel" is wasted. | 24 | 21 |
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ELI5: What the heck is a mole exactly? | edit: I apologize for not specifying. I meant mole as pertaining to chemistry. | Moles occur when cells in the skin grow in a cluster instead of being spread throughout the skin. These cells are called melanocytes, and they make the pigment that gives skin its natural color. Moles may darken after exposure to the sun, during the teen years, and during pregnancy. | 16 | 17 |
Does the human body recognize symbiotic microorganisms? | To my understanding, most of the cells in our bodies are not our own, but are rather outnumbered (ten to one by some estimates) by our microbiome, which led me to this question.
Does the body's immune system recognize (and therefore leave it alone) symbiotic microflora? Or does such microflora just avoid the places it could be found by the immune system?
Or is it possible that symbiotic microflora just simply masquerades as our own cells?
If the body does recognize such microflora, how does it do that? Is it simply something that we've evolved? Is it something that the microflora have evolved? Is it a little bit of both? | Symbiotic microflora existing in the gut is tolerated by the immune system due to a couple of mechanisms.
Firstly non-harmful organisms don't do any harm to the body (eg. kill cells or invade) so the body doesn't produce the inflammatory mediators that cause immediate inflammation and when samples of the organism are presented t to the adaptive immune system they are present in a way that causes the generation of tolerance rather than an active immune response. This forms this set of cells called regulatory t-cells that go around killing off anything attacking the symbiotes and secreting anti-inflammatory mediators where ever they detect the symbiotes.
Secondly the way the immune system is set up in the gut is such that responses aren't readily generated to the content of the gut. The body constantly samples the contents of the gut, and but in the absence of damage or invasion it just generates tolerance.
Those ended up sounding very similar.. . Basically immune tolerance instead of activation is generated in response to gut flora simply due to the location of the pathogens, and that no damage is being detected. | 25 | 51 |
[Rick and Morty] Why did Rick freaked out when he saw the cob particles? | We absorb matter to replace the matter lost from decay and add it to ourselves. If they were to stay on that planet they would have eventually replaced all of the particles in their body with corn, thus turning into corn themselves. | 30 | 15 |
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If microprocessor manufactures are able to get more transistors on a processor why do they make them smaller? | I understand that power and efficiency are factors they have to consider but if you're looking for all out performance why not make the processor bigger so that you can fit more transistors/cores/memory etc on it to make it faster? | three things: propagation time, power consumption and (to some extent) price.
The first is that the electrical signal only goes so fast, slightly less than that of the speed of light. This seems fast until you realize that in one clock cycle at 3GHz light only travels 10 centimeters. Chips are usually less than this but once they get larger it can be a significant problem.
Secondly, the capacitance and hence power consumption of a transistor gate decreases with size. lower power consumption is a bonus by itself but it also directly relates to speed because it means you can run it faster before it starts dissipating too much heat for you to remove practically.
Also, although the smaller sizes are expensive to develop, ultimately you can produce more chips on one wafer than you could before, bringing down the price in the long run (this is more relevant on less extreme cases, such as embedded microprocessors)
Also, just adding more cores/transistors/memory doesn't immediatly make the computer faster for most workloads, especially games, since the software cannot effectively make use of increased parallism. Most of the increased transistor count on modern chips goes towards better branch prediction, more instructions, and better caching instead of increasing clock speed, for which you in fact want *less* transistors. | 20 | 16 |
ELI5: How do people afford the lifestyle of an extreme adventure enthusiast? | I'm talking about the folks who skydive, BASE jump, ski/snowboard, hike, explore, climb mountains, and trailblaze new areas of the world that people have been yet.
I want to do all of that stuff. And more. But it's to expensive! How is it possible for people to do this kind of stuff with their life? | Most of the time the people who go to these places are either already successful or some kind of athlete. The majority of the people you are talking about already have a lot of money to finance these trips. The alternative is usually some kind of athlete like the ones you see on YouTube doing extreme sports (base jumping, paragliding, etc.) In these cases the athletes sponsors foot the bill for the trip. | 81 | 183 |
Why is Chlorine so effective in killing anything alive? | What happens chemically and physically when an organism gets in contact with this substance? Why is so deadly? | Chlorine is a very effective oxidizing agent, meaning it is capable of oxidizing a lot of things while itself getting reduced in the process. Intuitively, this makes sense because the chlorine atom is very electronegative (meaning that it's happier existing as reduced Cl- anions as opposed to neutral Cl in Cl2). Chlorine also has a very positive standard reduction potential, meaning that it is capable of reducing anything with a lower potential, which just so happens to be most things. Because of this, chlorine can attack a huge variety of molecules, including most carbon-based compounds. Thus, it can effectively destroy living things. | 946 | 1,564 |
How do Prions transfer their shape to other proteins? | All I could find is the are ABLE to do this, but how do they do this? Aren't prions just a misfolded protein? How could they reshape a protein? | Generically speaking, when proteins misfold, it can expose regions which are normally buried within the protein. These regions can bind to the surface of other proteins, destabilising their “normal” shape and stabilising the misfolded shape. These exposed regions are often hydrophobic, meaning they “hate water” and it’s energetically unfavourable for them to be exposed to it, so the misfolded proteins then aggregate, clumping together, and the cycle repeats.
Looking at a 2019 review, it looks like the best current models point to a seeding/nuclear ion process where prion fragments can act as a seed/template, catalysing incorporation of previously healthy protein into a polymer aggregate; eventually the polymer fragments and each of the new fragments in turn can act as a seed. | 15 | 18 |
ELI5: How are animals born with “instincts”? That is, how is it possible that newborn animals are born with the knowledge to do things like go to the water (sea turtles) or swim to a certain location to mate/eat (orcas)? | Evolution works because only the variations that work get a chance to reproduce and pass on their genes while the variations that are detrimental tend to die.
Baby sea turtles make a great snack for a lot of animals. Hatching sea turtles can go in any direction they want really. But the safest direction for them to go is the water.
Imagine thousands or hundreds of thousands of generations of sea turtle babies hatching year after year. Which ones have the best chance of survival? The ones attracted to the sea. They are the ones most likely to pass on the genes that gave them a preference for the sea.
The sea turtle babies that preferred to warm up in the sun a little likely all get eaten and don't pass on their genes.
A selective pressure like that will change animals over successive generations until the urge to make a run for the sea is very strong in all sea turtles. After all, the ones missing that urge never reproduced.
And not everything is simple instinct. Whales like orca's, often reproduce in very specific places because of their requirements. The reproduction of most animals is closely tied to the availability of food because reproducing is very resource-intensive for the parent and the young also need food.
So, in the case of whales, they're not instinctively driven to certain areas. They're instinctively driven to reproduce when they get the chance to glut on food. For orca's, that's when other whales, seals, penguins, fish etc. start to reproduce. Which in turn is often when the food for those animals start to reproduce.
Orcas tend to be very habitual. Different pods specialise in hunting different food sources. A pod can be traditional whale hunters, seal hunters or fish eaters despite all orca's being the same species. As such, they all share the instinct to reproduce when food is plentiful but where that is varies and is learned behaviour that young orcas pick up from their parents. | 100 | 145 |
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CMV: There should be more emphasis on entry level/trade jobs than college | It’s no surprise that college is a massive life issue for almost everyone who’s grown up in America. It just keeps inflating, like our monetary system - first it was a privilege to go to college but not the end of the road if you didn’t. Then, more and more people started going. Now, you prep for college as soon (or before) you enter high school, and you graduate at 18 pressured to go SOMEWHERE, learn SOMETHING, pay for EVERYTHING. Most young people have a “mid-school crisis” and change their majors a few times. Most people also come out with massive financial debt, YEARS of their lives gone, and just as little hope for a job as they did before school. You can no longer go through higher education without partaking in studies abroad, missionary trips, extracurriculars, or years and years and a handful of degrees in an effort to stand out in some tiny way in a bloated, exhausted system. College is a great way for young adults to break out for the first time in a sort of training ground for real life, but in reality (besides the stress and debt) it’s still not the same and people have to emerge as sometimes middle aged adults, broke and with no sense of direction. Only a few rise to the top.
No wonder everyone lives with their parents until 30 now. This entire generation relies on the ones before it more than ever before. What will happen when the next generation comes? There will be no support for them when they’re in the same shoes. My grandparents finished school in 8th grade, bought multiple homes, and were successful and well content their entire lives. The valedictorian of my school has no idea what he wants to do for college - a huge decision for a young person - but none the less he’s going to school just for the sake of going to school. That’s all there is now. Youth are locked in a cycle of not contributing to the work force until they all get out of school looking for the same job they all studied for but no one will get.
I think there should be more entry level, work-up-through-training jobs available to stabilize the economy and the population’s mental health. You don’t know what you’re going to do with your life? Don’t waste your money and time on school! Work! But why would you? A cashier or retail job isn’t going anywhere. People take their labor off the table in the hopes of a bright future which keeps getting farther away. I work in healthcare currently. The way up is full of student debt and years of degrees, so that one day I can count my money at 45 and decide...this isn’t what I want to be doing. Just like changing majors but a less derailing, expensive way - if I wanted to try being a veterinarian, or a journalist, or an actor, or scientist, there should be some kind of entry level jobs that offer promotions through training. Apprenticeships worked before, and eventually there would come a point where, after you decide you enjoy the field you’re in, you can now go to college to become a higher, more successful level in that area.
It’s my belief that the economy would benefit greatly from having more people in the workforce younger, learning what field they want to stay in before spending money they don’t own and can’t pay back to switch endlessly between majors and remain living in their parent’s homes with only a part time pizza job to sustain them. There shouldn’t be a field that doesn’t offer entry level programs to train and work and advance before reaching a point where college is needed. College should return to being a speciality for privileged or ambitious people that know more about where they’re going, then a giant swimming pool with no shallow end for the people just jumping in.
EDIT: I’m seeing a lot of people comment that there is no value in trade jobs you can get after highschool. People are saying how the economy is geared toward degrees and that you need to go through college to get any jobs. That is exactly what I’m saying is the problem. We need to rebalance so there is NOT a 99% need to cycle through colleges before getting jobs. The workforce would be better off if people could have more jobs available out of highschool, with college as an option to move up after reaching your highest point of training and experience. | An economy needs people to ascend to the highest level of skill they can as quickly as they can. A degree gives a person an excellent chance to showcase an ability to learn about a feild compared to their peers. Getting promoted from entry level to a high skill job, in contrast, is slow and almost completely dependant on networking.
I completely agree that it is a waste to muddle through a degree and not be able to get a job on the other side. However, the loss for society as a whole is balanced out by far more people demonstrating their talents in a certifiable way.
Spending years working just to then get a degree and end up where you would have been if you had just immediately got a degree is useful only if you are very unsure of a direction and should not be the norm. Most people who get a degree can then go on to work in any field after a while anyway. | 129 | 1,198 |
ELI5: Why do meal combinations become "boring" and unpleasant over time? | For example, if I eat rice and beans flavored with the same spices for several meals or days in a row, why do I get "sick" of that particular meal, yet enjoy it again if I go back to it after a hiatus? | Our bodies need a lot of different things in order to be healthy. Vitamins, minerals, etc.
Different foods may have different toxins that the body has to deal with and expel, or it may have different vitamins that are absorbed differently and that enhance or inhibit absorption (ie: vitamin C and iron... calcium and iron).
Varying our diet means we're more likely to get what we need, not miss trace minerals, and not consume huge amounts of toxic substances that might be in a particular food (think of Taro root/cassava).
We're probably genetically programmed to seek out and desire a variety of food sources to make sure our needs are met. | 22 | 57 |
What advantage does the eye's (or brain's) white-balance-like system give, and how does it work? | So I have noticed that when I close my right eye for a while and keep my left eye open in broad daylight, I see warmer colours in my left eye and see cooler colours in my right eye when I open it. This is similar to the white balance in smartphone cameras.
But is there any evolutionary advantage to this? And how does it work? | Auto color balance lets you see things in all kinds of light conditions (dynamic range is something like a factor of a billion!) and perceive colors correctly despite variations in the color of the illumination. The mechanism is fatigue in your retinal cells, which makes each cell’s response self-adjust as fresh unexposed pigment gets regenerated in the eye. In bright light not only does the total amount of pigment shrink, the rate of regeneration also shrinks. There are other time dependent and spatially-dependent adjustment mechanisms but that is the dominant one. | 650 | 2,020 |
How do you write a very efficient code? | While doing some LeetCode exercises I noticed that they also included the total runtime of my algorithm. Quite disappointing that I write a runtime inefficient code.
I noticed that most of the fastest running algorithms used data structures, some are very compact code. Although I noticed that some of the fastest algorithms are copy pasted from the net, which I guess defeats the purpose of LeetCode (for me LeetCode is to test you algorithm writing skills)?
Also any reading materials for Big O notation? | This comes with experience. Note that Big-O notations can sometimes be misleading due to the way hardware is designed.
At the end of the day, if you really want to write very efficient code, learn how different data structures mean to cache locality, registers, heaps and SSE. This is not an easy task either. | 46 | 52 |
What is Gödel’s incompleteness theorem and why is it important? How did it change math/physics ? | The incompleteness theorem is about axiomatic systems. Around the turn of the last century, there was hope that we would be able to find some kind of ultimate logical foundation that could prove everything in math. This is kind of a perennial hope, and even Gottfried Leibniz (co-inventor of calculus) hoped that we could have such a system.
The incompleteness theorem says that, no consistent axiomatic system is powerful enough to prove EVERYTHING. This is bad news..!
What Incompleteness says exactly is that if you have a system of axioms that is strong enough to prove everything in (Peano) arithmetic, then there is a TRUE statement that CANNOT be proven within that system. That's what 'incompleteness' refers to; the collection of true things that you can actually prove is incomplete. There's definitely something out there that's true, that you can't prove JUST using your axiomatic system.
Gödel's original proof uses a contradiction to show that an unprovable statement has to exist. So, in a sense, it's ALSO a proof that mathematicians are cleverer than axioms :) | 61 | 51 |
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ELI5 How can hackers crack a password through brute force if there's a limit of attempts? | In some cases, a hacker might gain control of the server and be able to execute their own commands directly to the software on the server or obtain a copy of the database storing the hashed passwords. In either case, the webpage's limitations on password attempts doesn't matter because the hacker may not be using the webpage to check password attempts. | 46 | 25 |
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ELI5: After invitro eggs are fertilized, are they kept at a certain temperature to grow before implanted? How does the lab part work? | They are incubated under optimal conditions (the correct Temperature, Oxygen levels and nutrients) , usually until a blastula is formed. at this point a cell can be removed for genetic analysis (also called Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis or PGD) and the embryos can be frozen in liquid nitrogen until needed. | 1,101 | 4,075 |
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How in the heck do I find a good postdoc?! | I am a PhD candidate in Pharmacology and Toxicology, specializing in environmental toxicology (specifically xenobiotic metabolism, disposition, and toxicokinetics). Ultimately, I would love to stay in academia, but if I needed to I want to be marketable as a research toxicologist as well. Is there some magic way to find people who take postdocs in my discipline? Or, is there something better than finding faculty who do research I am interested in and emailing them? Any info is greatly appreciated. | you can search job postings on message boards, companies and govt. agencies.
most academic post docs are obtained by cold-emailing your CV, research summary etc., networking through your PI, at your current institution or meeting professors at conferences.
make a list of papers youve liked and research areas and who does that work, talk with your current boss and email them. email about 3-4 each round. theyll say no really fast if they dont have space, money or interest. then keep going til someone responds!
you can look at their websites and see how many people they have and you can also search grant databases to see if they have active grants. | 22 | 21 |
[Dragon Ball] Can I build up my ki energy and learn to fly and shoot lasers by learning other martial arts, or do I need karate/kung fu? | Also if it does work with any martial art, is there a difference between how your ki develops depending on the fighting style? Like, can MMA fighters fly more easily than boxers or capoeira fighters? | It has been shown that the characters use of martial arts is just one method of expressing their study and dedication. At least one character learns to harness ki and levitate solely using meditation. Likewise Piccolo's primary method of gaining power is meditation as well.
The exact martial art used does not seem to matter, though the various masters and teachers each have their own preferences.
I believe there's a fairly detailed post about it from a week or two ago. | 25 | 25 |
ELI5: Why does English invariably demand that multiple adjectives precede its noun in the seemingly arbitrary but non-negotiable order of 'opinion - size - shape - colour - origin - material - purpose'? | You can have a 'lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife', but mess with this word order in the slightest and you'll sound like a proper maniac. | Well, first off, you're missing four in your description and your example is out of order. And if your example sounds good to you, ask yourself if you're a proper maniac (you're not).
You're missing; quantity, which comes first; physical quality, which comes after size but before shape; age, which comes after shape but before color (your examples screws this up); and type, which comes after material and before purpose.
Some lists will have them in different orders, this one is from Cambridge University. And the fact of the matter is that it doesn't actually matter that much, it isn't actually a hard-and-fast rule.
The list keeps getting longer, too. At one point it was just two things; opinion and then fact. Then it was opinion > fact; qualifier > function. Now it's opinion > fact, qualifier > function, but only for correlatives (adjectives that modify nouns without modifying each other). Operators and cumulative words don't follow this trend.
As for why... well, it's a new area of study and no one's really figured that part out yet. We're still studying trends and old texts to see if they follow the example (and they don't, for sure) and even looking at different regions to see if we all do it the same (we don't). | 55 | 51 |
[Stellaris] Our civilization is doomed. How can we leave a message for the future? | Our people, the Akar, began at the bottom of the seas of our homeworld thousands of years ago. We raced towards the future, elevated past factionalism, and took to the stars.
In the process of finding new worlds, we found a paradise beyond scientific understanding in a world called Divinity.
It was a "Holy World" of an empire that was spacefaring when our species was still fumbling with bronze and glass. We have been defeated in every single stage of our conflict despite all of our best efforts. Even as I write this, the core worlds of my people burn.
We have perhaps days before the fleet of our enemy comes within an AU distance and glasses our homeworld to set an example. We want to leave a message to anyone who may find our world in the distant future, one sharing our collective sorrow and hopes we once knew.
How can we, as an enemy plans to boil our seas and char our surface? To poison our atmosphere and unleash bio-engineered nightmares upon our children? What can be done? | Begin mass producing faster than light capable probes with as much data on your race and culture as is possible and start shooting them off in every direction imaginable. Many will be destroyed. Many more will drift for centuries, millennia, to be occasionally found and translated. Someone, somewhere, will remember you. | 15 | 17 |
Why do sunscreens expire? | I would like to understand if it is because of microbial contamination or if the UV-blocking agents are degraded. If the latter is the case... how? Sunscreens are light-protected in their recipients and not usually exposed to high temperatures.
Also, do sunscreens lose 100% of the effect at the expiration date, or do they just lose partial effect (e.g. 75% of effectivity after 1 year, 50% after 2 years,...)? | Sunscreen works by absorbing light in the UV wavelengths of a spectra. Conjugated ring systems and other compounds with double bonds are good at absorbing energies at this wavelength, hence sunscreens are often made of organic compounds that breakdown with time.
The good news is mineral sunscreens such as zinc oxide may last longer as its inorganic(its in powder form). The bad news is they are emulsified with essential oils or plant oils etc with emulsifiers to help spread the sunscreen better. When they start to breakdown, you are left with a grainy separated mixture that will not adhere to the skin properly. | 36 | 21 |
[Dresden Files] In the first book Harry shares his full name. Then later refuses to share the name of a fairy he knows. If names are so powerful why would he tell the reader his full name? | Harry states a few times that knowing someone's true name isn't just about literally knowing the words that make up their name, otherwise anyone could find a humans true name by looking at their birth certificate. Their true name is how they pronounce it - the intonation, the feeling. Therefore it's (relatively) safe for him to write it down for the reader.
Even if it wasn't though, the crux of the matter is - his own name is his to share, other peoples aren't. You let it be known you're going around sharing other peoples true names all willy-nilly, especially those of the fae, then you're going to get murdered real quick. Even if it's just written down. | 71 | 44 |
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[ELI5] Will two supercomputers playing chess against each other always have the same outcome? | If two supercomputers play chess against each other, will the outcome always be the same?
Consider that they will always play the best possible move and that they do not learn from past matches.
If not, which I believe is the case, why not? | Computers playing chess often include the use of a random number generator to choose between moves of apparently equal value. Such generators often vary by time of day or some other input to ensure unpredictability. | 18 | 29 |
ELI5:why are bathroom doors pull to leave? | Surely it would make sense to have pull to enter and then push to leave so that after washing your hands you could barge the door open with your shoulder and not have to touch the handle which I'm assuming might be contaminated as people do not always wash their hands | Building codes generally require internal doors to open into the room they're for so that the occupants can't become trapped if something outside the room blocks the door.
For residential homes, this also applies to the main entryway, whereas for commercial buildings, external doors are required to open outward, so that people don't become trapped inside if there's a fire that causes people to panic and try to rush out the doors (inward facing doors would be impossible to open if everyone is pushing against them trying to get out, even if the people *at* the doors see what's up and are trying to open them correctly). | 54 | 25 |
ELI5: Why are all doctor's handwriting so messy, and how do pharmacists decipher what the prescriptions say? | Pharmacy side: If we aren't 100% sure, we call and ask. That being said, there are fairly standard dosing for most medications and standard anotations. For example, Z-paks are 99.999% of the time 2 tabs on day 1, 1 tab daily days 2-5. So even if the doc writes iiT PO OD D1, we know s/he meant QD instead of OD. (QD being everyday, OD being your right ear)
| 39 | 63 |
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I believe that Minecraft being used for education is nothing more than a gimmick. CMV | I don't see how a game like Minecraft could possibly teach kids anything more than they could learn on a whiteboard. What could it teach them? House building?
I believe that things like math and science could be taught much more effectively on a whiteboard than in Minecraft.
CMV?
| Using what kids are interested in to teach them is an incredibly effective methodology that has worked for generations. What that interest is varies from culture to culture and generation to generation. Any topic can be used for effective teaching, by an effective teacher. Once you've got the kid's interest that 50% of the job done. | 15 | 30 |
Why is logic irrefutable? | It occurs to me that logic and truth are somehow related, but I don't know why or how.
Is it that logic is somehow an inherent property of our universe or the human mind? Did we just make up logic, and due to many years of conditioning, we are now unable to separate a valid logical argument from truth itself?
Heads up: I am not an academic, nor very knowledgeable with general concepts in philosophy. In fact, I'm actually a mathematician. | Most philosophers would say that 'logic' is a set of languages we've made up, but they are languages that describe underlying properties of the world.
Logic has a *syntactic* and a *semantic* side. (You're a mathematician, so the following will probably sound familiar.) The syntactic side refers to how the symbols can be used with other symbols. It tells us, for example, that if you have such-and-such a string of symbols, then you can derive such-and-such other string of symbols. It also tells us which strings of symbols count as 'well-formed,' analogous to real words in a natural language. The semantic side refers to what the strings of symbols mean in the real world. For example, the symbol '&' might mean 'and.' (We could have made it mean 'or,' but we didn't. And we could have chosen a different symbol for 'and.' Some languages do.)
We say that a language of logic is 'complete' if every (semantically) true-in-the-world sentence can be derived (syntactically) in the language. We say that a language of logic is 'sound' if every (syntactically) derivable sentence in the language is also (semantically) true in the real world. Standard languages of logic--those you learn in intro-courses--will be sound and complete. If logic were *just* something we made up, then there would be no answer to the question of whether it's sound. But we do ask that. So we do think of logic "trying" to mirror or match real-world relations between real-world truths. If '*p* & *q*' narrowly logically entails '*p*,' then that matches up to the fact that in the real world, 'the dog is a black and the dog is a mutt' metaphysically necessitates 'the dog is black.'
In sum, according to many or most philosophers, there seem to be metaphysically necessary relations between facts, truths, or states of affairs in the real world, and we create languages of logic to try to model or match or describe or help us understand the relations between those necessary relations.
| 26 | 24 |
'Biology' At what point would an invasive species be considered integrated into an ecosyste? | It obviously varies from individual ecosystems, but I've always wondered if destroying "invasive species" actually hurts ecosystems based on how long it's been in the environment. | A species could be considered integrated when it has checks and balances to keep its population in check. Most invasive species are only invasive because they are able to reproduce far beyond what the local ecosystem can handle. If there are predators and sufficient food sources to keep the population in balance, a species would just considered not-native, not invasive.
Native or not native is just a human label based on our understanding of recent origins, technically every species on an island is non-native. Though if a species has adapted to the local environment, and separated from the original population then you can make an argument that it is now naturalized.
Source- Biology major | 21 | 85 |
ELI5 Why people find beer delicious and refreshing. | Honestly I think it's all a conspiracy. I believe every single one of you actually thinks beer tastes disgusting, but since everyone else has a reason to love it, you do too. How do you come up with all these sophistacted adjectives to describe it. I have tried dozens and dozens of different beers. None of them have ever been refreshing or full bodied or "bursting with summer flavors."
Some people tell me "it's an acquired taste." To me, that just means you have to suffer through it until you don't care anymore and I don't really see it as an explanation. But to find delicious and refreshing and decadent flavors in that liquid just doesn't make sense to me.
EDIT: Not trying to say that having a vagina means you don't like beer. I know plenty of females who love it. According to my beer-brewing roommates, however, there's a good chance that that's my problem. xD
TL;DR - What is it about beer that you find so refreshing and yummy? What does it for you?
Maybe it's because I have a vagina. I don't know. Explain this shit.
| It's similar to strong black coffee, protein shakes, liver, and many more bitter or strong tasting foods and liquids, you have to get acclimated to the taste before you can recognize the small subtleties in flavor and texture. | 24 | 23 |
CMV: Getting rid of DACA will benefit southwestern US | I want to start by saying that I don't agree with deporting people for the faults of their parents. So I think that those that are here now and on DACA should be allowed to remain here, but there should be no more DACA. There should be no more incentive for immigrants to migrate here illegally and establish their children here.
That being said, my view is that removing DACA will benefit the states from Texas to California (in fact, Texas was threatening to sue if the fed govt didn't get rid of DACA) and probably some other states. These states have many illegal immigrants. Therefore, if we no longer take in any more illegal immigrants, then there would be more resources to spread out between those that are already in those states. Also, the big cities in these states are definitely overpopulated and they could benefit from a slow down in the population rise.
I don't have too much knowledge on this topic or on the benefits, I just have a very weak argument for why I think it will benefit the southwestern US. It's more intuitive I think.
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | DACA is intended to allow for low-priority illegal immigrants (e.g., minor illegal immigrants who have been on good behavior) to not just find a job and live amicably with deferred deportation, but also to allocate resources in deporting higher-priority illegal immigrants (especially violent criminals). By getting rid of DACA without a suitable replacement, you'd be seeing deportations among all groups of illegal immigrants equally, even people who were illegally brought into the US as infants and are on good behavior and no criminal history. | 17 | 16 |
ELI5: P versus NP and the effect(s) on the world that would come from it being solved | Without getting into theoretical computer science too much, P is the class of problems that are "easy" to solve, and NP is the class of problems that may or may not be easy to solve, but are at least easy to verify. And by "easy" we mean that the best-known algorithm (process) for doing it scales well with the size of the problem.
Adding two numbers together is easy. When adding numbers that are *n* digits long, you only need *n* steps. Adding numbers that are 10 times larger only takes 1 additional step. Adding numbers that are a million times larger only takes 6 additional steps. So that scales really well with the size of the problem.
Finding a solution to the knapsack problem ("here's a bunch of objects weighing different amounts, find me a subset of them that weighs exactly 10 pounds") is really hard. All you can really do is try every combination until you find one that works, or you go through all of the possibilities and find that nothing works. But verifying a solution is easy--you just add to see that it works, and adding is easy.
But why is the knapsack problem hard? Is there something fundamental about the laws of mathematics that demands that there's no good solution? Or have we as humans just not been clever enough to think of a better way? Over time, lots of problems that we used to think were hard have turned out to be easy because someone came up with a better solution, so people got thinking that maybe all of the NP problems are actually in P.
If it turns out that P=NP, then there are a whole bunch of problems that people think are hard that are actually easy. Most modern cryptography systems would end up being broken, because they're based on some of these problems that we assume are hard.
If it turns out that P does not equal NP (which is what everybody assumes is the case), then nothing really changes. | 63 | 63 |
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ELI5: What is stickiness and do we have a measure for stickiness? | There are several different measurements for adhesion. Peel is when you pull it off at an angle and measure the force it takes , shear is when you try to slide the two adhered surfaces in opposite directions and again, measure the force it takes, and tack is measured by rolling a small steel ball across the surface of a pressure-sensitive adhesive from a pre-determined height/incline and measuring the distance the ball rolls across the adhesive surface.
Usually, an adhesive with high shear will have low peel and vise versa.
*Edited for clarity. | 4,639 | 4,614 |
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Why do we use phase change refrigerants? | So from my memory of thermodynamics, an ideal heat pump is the carnot cycle. This cycle uses an ideal gas on both the hot and cold sides of the pump. However in the real world we use the refridgeration cycle with an evaporator and a compressor.
I understand that the Carnot cycle is 'ideal' and therefore we can't get to Carnot efficiencies in real life.
But what real life factor means we can't try and use a gas both sides (with a turbine to replace the evaporator? Is it energy density? Cost? Complexity? Do space/military grade heat pumps with high performance requirements do something different?
Thanks!
Edit: just a quick edit to say thanks so much for all the responses so far, it's exactly the sort of detailed science and real world experience I wanted to understand and get a feeling for. I will try and respond to everyone shortly!
Edit2: bonus question and I think some commenters have already hinted at this: flip the question, what would it take / what would it look like to have an all-gas cycle and if money were no object could it outperform a phase change cycle? I'm assuming extremely high pressure nitrogen as the working fluid to achieve a good energy density... Enormous heat exchangers. Could it get closer to Carnot COPs? | Phase changes occur at fixed temperatures. When you introduce a saturated liquid in a heat exchanger and extract a saturated vapour from it, your temperature difference between the exchanger and your heat source has remained constant (assuming a sufficiently large source). Same goes for a saturated vapour entering a heat exchanger and leaving as a saturated liquid. This is more efficient than heating a vapour, as its temperature will increase, causing a smaller temperature difference between itself and its heat source/sink and with that a reduced heat flux. The latent heat of vaporisation for e.g. water is quite high, which means you can absorb or reject a lot of heat at a constant temperature.
This is readily apparent from the heat capacity of water vapour and the latent heat of vaporisation of water. The c_p of water vapour is roughly 1.8 or 1.9 kJ/(kg K) at 0 degrees Celsius. This means that adding 1.8 kJ to one kilogram of water vapour will raise its temperature one Kelvin. The latent heat of vaporisation for water at 0 degrees Celsius is about 2500 kJ/kg. Meaning one kilogram of saturated liquid water will absorb 2500 kJ before its temperature will start to rise.
So to answer your question more directly, yes, you can use a heat engine with only a gas as a working fluid, but phase transitions are an excellent way of absorbing or rejecting large amounts of heat quickly. An example of a real-world gas-only heat engine is the Stirling engine, which runs on the Stirling cycle. | 608 | 1,370 |
ELI5: How does the "Meta" in Video Games develop? | How does the metagaming come about in game that are played competitively like Street Fighter or Overwatch? Do developers account for that or is it a entirely fan made thing? | The metagame is almost always originally created by players. Players want to try to win, typically certain strategies are more effective. Even with "perfect balance" players' preferences tend to congregate (for example, a group of influential people agree a strategy is good, so they begin playing it. As they become experienced with that strategy, writing guides and so forth, they get better with that strategy so the strategy becomes even better). It's inevitable that certain strategies will become more common.
Developers will often influence the metagame by nerfing strategies that are deemed too powerful or "too stagnant" so the players and fans don't get bored.
Developers might also choose to reinforce the metagame. Somewhat famously in League of Legends, developers force players to play with assigned lanes fitting predefined roles. It was a bit controversial, because this means every single league game follows the same formulaic lane assignments. (Compare to other MOBAs where the lane you choose to go is a very important strategic decision.) But there are advantages as well. When you log in and play a game of League, you know exactly what you're doing and what your responsibilities are. For a 30 minute game with 9 other complete strangers, it makes it a lot easier to jump in. | 63 | 81 |
Why use spaces in C when they don't affect the code? (Beginner CS50) | I have a question that's very confusing to me. So you know how you write
if ( i + j < n - 1)
printf(" ");
else
printf("#");
right? When I write it as
if ( i + j < n - 1)
printf(" ");
else
printf("#");
I get the same exact result. Why go through all the trouble of putting spaces and all that? I get confused what's for what in longer code sometimes. Is putting those spaces just a common programmer practise, or is it a MUST? Is it just the CS50 IDE that doesn't register those spaces? So many questions. | The spacing and indentation is to make it easier to read. For example, you could write the above as:
`if(i+j<n-1)printf(" ");else printf("#");`
It's still the same result, but harder to read. C is very lenient when it comes to spacing. As the following is also the same but much harder to read. It's best to agree on a coding style with the other engineers on a project and stick to it. The more you look at a particular style the easier it becomes.
`if`
`(i`
`+j`
`<`
`n`
`-1)`
`printf`
&#x200B;
`(`
`" "`
`)`
`; else`
`printf ( "#"`
`);` | 69 | 29 |
ELI5: How do you find the line of best fit on a scatterplot? | There are different ways to do it depending on what you care about most. The most common way is doing a least squares regression. Basically you use calculus to figure out the line that makes the square of the distance from that line to each point the smallest. The math of it is a bit above an ELI5 but you can look up least squares. | 16 | 24 |
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It is said by many cultures that suicide is a sin because it is God's/the god's decision when you die. But, now that humans are able to artificially keep the body alive during terminal illness well past the point that people would have normally died, should suicide now be considered a viable option? | This is in reference to keeping someone alive with a terminal illness, even when quality of life has decreased dramatically, and they normally would have died much faster. | I won’t pretend to be a mod, but it seems to me that this is more a question for somebody’s personal opinion, or personal system of ethics and the more appropriate question for this sub would be along the lines “[insert your preface about extended life spans] what are some philosophers or schools of thought surrounding ideas like physician-assisted suicide and right to die?” Is this the conversation that you were hoping to start? | 21 | 19 |
ELI5: The difference between diamond cuts and what makes one better than the other? | A lot of it is about light reflection. If you ask your mommy for a pocket mirror, you can put it near a lamp and make light reflect on the wall. When you move the mirror, light will do funny things and move on the wall. When you cut a diamond, something similar happens. If the pointy end of the diamond (the side that is hidden, under the ring) is too far away or too close to the top of the diamond (the pretty top you can see) it will reflect light in a way that does not look good. If you, look at the top, you will find that it is not shiny at all, and the people who buy them want them to be as shiny as possible. So you have to cut it exactly at the right place. Each time you make a little cut, which are the small shapes you see inside the diamond, you make a little mirror for light to bounce. If you meant cuts as in heart, pear and oval, you are talking about ''fancy cuts''. A lot of it is about the quality that your diamond has before it is cut. When you take it out of the earth, it is not always in a very good shape. Some people with big magnifying glasses look at it and decide if the shape and the shiny-ness is good enough. If it is very good, they will very likely cut it into the round brillant cut, which is usually the most ''ideal'' and popular form. The ''fancy cuts'' are a lot about fashion. Every few years or so, people start liking new things and that also affects jewelry, and diamonds.
(I worked in a jewelry store, I've seen diamonds and pretty gemstones with lots of funky colors)
| 12 | 42 |
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CMV: Minority Groups Are Justified in Believing That African Americans Should Just Work Harder | So I feel pretty bad for posting this, because I know I'll be called out as a bigot. That's why I'm hoping some of you can CMV.
However, every time I look at an argument for why African Americans don't do as well as their white counterparts, it comes down to disadvantage. They tend to live in poorer areas and go to poorer schools, and may also face workplace discrimination.
If that's the case, then why is it that Asian and Indian Americans, many of whom are first or second generation immigrants who come in with nothing more than the clothes off their backs (arguably even MORE at a disadvantage than their African American counterparts, who at least are already established in the USA), can grow up to be just as successful as their white counterparts? It's practically a stereotype that Asian and Indian children are going to grow up too be doctors or engineers! So how exactly is it that *they*, who face many of the same challenges as blacks, can grow up to be comfortably successful and well-respected in just one or two generations? The only answer I can think of is their hard work ethic...which, let's be honest, is just another way of saying "blacks are lazy".
I'll sum up how I feel with a quote from a user on another thread. Please don't go witch-hunting, he is in no way related to this post.
>Let me give you a little background. I'm in my early 30s, I'm a second generation immigrant. I'm not white. I went to majority black schools. My grandfather was an illiterate farmer, my father worked manual labor, I'm a physician. This general pattern is >true for my entire extended family, and perhaps 90% of the people of my diaspora I know.
>I know there is tremendous racism and inequality, I've felt it too. I live with it as well, from both blacks and whites. Let me tell you something, I'd rather deal with white racism than black racism. White racism means I get a few funny looks walking my dog. Black racism stabs my kid for his sneakers (that's a true story, I watched that happen in high school). Black racism means that when I was in university the black woman at the desk denied me access to the "minority study center" and angrily told me that I was the wrong type of minority. I'd rather deal with the funny looks.
>I grew up around black people, I know most of them are perfectly normal hardworking decent people. I've got a few black friends from medical school who are some of the most brilliant absolutely lovely people I've ever met.
There is a problem though, the black middle class blurs very quickly with the black lower class. The black lower classes are the most fucked up unpredictable dangerous people I've ever had the misfortune of being around. I've lived around this, I know the score. I've personally seen people beaten and stabbed. My literal next door neighbor was running a dog fighting / gun-market operation. It was a comical level of stereotypical criminality. It was also fucking terrifying.
>I packed my shit up. I live in a state with less than 5% black population. I live in an incredibly white area, I see perhaps one black family a year.
>All your points are completely accurate, but you're missing the reason. Anyone who can avoid living around black people does it, including other black people. I don't want to be a victim of crime and I don't want my property value to go down the toilet.
>My group started with a far lower standard of living and has faced the same racism. Through work and education over a couple of generations we're at the point where we have been able to elevate ourselves beyond those circumstances. I might get funny looks in my neighborhood, but I don't bring down the property values.
Indians, Chinese, Russians, Polish, Vietnamese, Nigerians, Taiwanese, any other immigrant group can improve their lot within a few generations, while living in those same horrible neighborhoods. Why can't blacks?
Why do we have to do it for them? Nobody did it for us. They need to fix their own situation and get to a point where people don't mind living around them.
Please CMV, I feel uncomfortable holding such a view (and in case it wasn't obvious enough already, yes I am an Asian-American).
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | One big factor to consider is that new immigrants are a highly nonrandom sample.
It is really hard to uproot your family and move to a new country. Especially one where you're not part of the mainstream culture, don't know any of the language, and have little money or resources to start with.
The kind of people who see all those hurdles and do it anyway are going to be, on average, smarter, more ambitious, and harder working than normal.
Average Indians don't move to America. Exceptionally ambitious Indians move to America, because moving to America is hard and scary. It shouldn't be surprising that them and their children are unusually successful, despite hurdles of racism and discrimination. If they were going to have an average reaction to those hurdles, they wouldn't have overcome all the extra hurdles that come with immigration, and would still be in their home countries. | 394 | 205 |
Can someone link me to some articles discussing the mainstream scientific consensus on the normalcy of homosexuality? | I'm having a conversation with someone who is talking a whole lotta bullshit about how homosexuality is a "mental condition" which can be "fixed". He claims that he's read articles which show that homosexuality is clinically categorized as a mental disorder. He even used the term "gay agenda" when describing the news. This is a man who I would not generally have considered to have some obviously offensive and bigoted beliefs. Anyways, he claims to be open to changing his mind after I told him that, beyond being extremely offensive, the science on the subject does not agree with him. Can you link me to some articles explaining the scientific consensus on this topic? I honestly don't have anything off the top of my head, and I figured I'd be better served asking you fine people instead spending an hour searching the web for some extremely basic science on the subject. Thanks!
Edit: Thanks to all of their effort | A place to start is the APA's 1974 statement:
Conger, J. J. (1975). Proceedings of the American Psychological Association, Incorporated, for the Year 1974. American Psychologist 30(6), p. 620-676.
At its January 1975 meeting, Council adopted a statement of policy regarding homosexuals, recommended by BSERP and amended by the Board of Directors and Council, and adapted from a statement adopted by the Association of Gay Psychologists Caucus Meeting in New Orleans in September 1974. Further, Council voted that the Association's Statement of Policy regarding Equal Employment Opportunity be amended to include sexual orientation among the prohibited discriminations listed in the statement. Following is the Policy Statement regarding Discrimination against Homosexuals:
1. The American Psychological Association supports the action taken on December IS, 1973, by the American Psychiatric Association, removing homosexuality from that Association's official list of mental disorders. The American Psychological Association therefore adopts the following resolution:
Homosexuality, per se, implies no impairment in judgment, stability, reliability, or general social or vocational capabilities: Further, the American Psychological Association urges all mental health professionals to take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness that has long been associated with homosexual orientations.
2. Regarding discrimination against homosexuals, the American Psychological Association adopts the' following resolution concerning their civil and legal rights:
The American Psychological Association deplores all public and private discrimination in such areas as employment, housing, public accommodation, and licensing against those who engage in or who have engaged in homosexual activities and declares that no burden of proof of such judgment, capacity, or reliability shall be placed upon these individuals greater than that imposed on any other persons. Further, the American Psychological Association supports and urges the enactment of civil rights legislation at the local, state, and federal level that would offer citizens who engage in acts of homosexuality the same protections now guaranteed to others on the basis of race, creed, color, etc. Further, the American Psychological Association supports and urges the repeal of all discriminatory legislation singling out homosexual acts by consenting adults in private. (p. 633)
| 29 | 55 |
If ocean waves are a perturbation of a medium (the ocean), and sound waves are a perturbation of another medium (air), then what is the medium for light / electricity? | We know that electricity does not need matter (e.g. induction chargers work in a vacuum / in space) as well as light (seen from space yet space is a vacuum) so I'm wondering what the field medium could be. | So light is an electromagnetic wave. A changing electric field will generate a magnetic field - this is how electromagnets work. And a changing magnetic field will generate an electric field - this is how generators work. So if you set it up right, a changing magnetic field will generate a changing electric field which generates a changing magnetic field, and so on, and you get a wave of oscillating magnetic and electric fields that propagate onwards until it hits something. So there isn't a material medium, but it's electric and magnetic fields that are "waving".
But this is a really interesting question, because in the 19th century it *was* postulated that there was a medium that light propagates through. The idea is that, while the equations of motion for a particle (e.g. throwing a ball) do not change when you add a constant velocity to the whole system, the equations for electromagnetism *do* change when you add a constant velocity to the whole system (assuming that time and space are the same for every reference frame). This means that light should look different depending on your velocity. So, what is the "zero velocity" frame for light? The best guess they could come up with is that there is some "aether" medium that light propagates through, and the velocity of this aether gives the zero point for velocity for an EM wave. This was only later removed because Einstein took the much more radical step of postulating that when you shift the entire system by a constant velocity, instead of light acting different, *the entire nature of time and space changes*, and this is what we call Special Relativity. | 380 | 288 |
Why is average income calculated as GDP ÷ Population and not GDP ÷ Working Population? | Since we want to find the average income of the average worker, then why is average income calculated as GDP ÷ Population and not GDP ÷ Working Population? | Both are calculated and are used depending on the context.
For example, income / population could be used to depict quality of life, whereas income / working population depicts the average income contribution per worker.
They're just two different measures with different uses. Often when people are looking at average income they are using it to gain some measure of quality of life for the overall population
| 316 | 359 |
Eli5: what is energy exactly? | Think of energy as the capacity or power to do work, such as the ability to move an object (of a given mass) by the application of force. Energy can exist in a many forms, such as mechanical, electrical, thermal, or nuclear, and can be transformed from one form to another. | 32 | 55 |
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ELI5: Game Theory | After seeing the golden balls split standoff, I understand what he did but don't understand the wider concept. | Game theory is a branch of math built around something called games. There are multiple players, and they each have some strategy to try to get the most points. You try to find something called the Nash equilibrium, where each player's strategy is the best possible strategy given their opponent's strategy.
For example, if you're playing rock-paper-scissors, if you always pick rock you opponent can beat you by always picking paper. If you always pick paper they can always pick scissors. And if you always pick scissors they can always pick rock. But there's a Nash equilibrium if you randomize it. If you pick rock one third of the time, paper one third of the time, and scissors one third of the time, then no matter what strategy they use, they'll win one third of the time, lose one third of the time, and tie one third of the time. If they're using that strategy too, then there's nothing you can do to be more likely to win, so that's the Nash equilibrium.
You can also look at subtle variations, like what happens if you count rock as two wins instead of one. In that case, you should pick paper half the time and rock and scissors one quarter of the time.
Also, games aren't necessarily zero sum. The Prisoner's dilemma is probably the most famous example of a non zero-sum game. | 24 | 50 |
Why do small animals (rabbits, mice, etc) have a faster heartbeat compared to larger animals (elephants, whales, etc)? | To my knowledge, I thought smaller animals have a smaller volume therefore less blood needed to be pumped. Does it have to do with the volume-surface area ratio? What is the factor is that is influencing this?
edit: spelling | Heart rate varies due to the relative difference in surface area to volume as volume increases. The smaller the animal, the greater surface area it has relative to volume, so it loses heat exponentially faster. This necessitates a more active metabolism, faster heart rate is a part of that.
| 11 | 24 |
ELI5: Moving things in the dark are lower ''fps"? | Whenever I look at something that has a spotlight or a focused bit of light shining on it for example someone's hand, then they move it really fast. It seems as if their hand is moving in "lower fps'' than usual.
I'm not sure in what other way to put it, I've only recently noticed it. | Your eyes have two types of light sensitive cells called photoreceptors.
One type, cone photoreceptors, have 3 configurations that make up our color vision. They can repeatably fire and are very concentrated in the center of your vision. The downside is that they require a lot of light to fire so they're used for medium to bright environments.
The other type, rod photoreceptor, are extremely sensitive to light but reload very slowly. They are concentrated in the peripheral of your field of view. Rod photoreceptors are useful when it's dark or dim.
In dark environments, your cones don't have enough light to fire so your rods do most of the work. Although rods are very sensitive to light, they recover slowly, giving you the feel that things have low FPS or blur more. You'll also notice you can't sense color very easily. Rods only report black and white so your vision is mostly gray. | 66 | 95 |
Desire to study PhD abroad after masters - how can I maximise my masters experience to reach this goal? | I did my undergrad in journalism at an average UK university- finished with a 2:1. My MRes will be in international relations at a top 10 UK university with internationally recognised research.
I start in September and want to start applying for PhD places in Central Europe- Germany, Austria, Czech Republic etc - as soon as I can.
What can I do during my masters to maximise my chances of being accepted by foreign universities? Is there anything important that I should do/ know before applying for English speaking PhD places in these countries?
Thanks!
EDIT: I’m a British citizen so am expecting to have to navigate visas wherever I go. | Are you hoping to work on your own project (applying with a research proposal) or join an existing project (applying to studentships with CV and writing sample)? Because it changes what they will be looking for in your application. The latter is boring but easier, because then you don't have to worry about finding the right supervisor and about your research proposal fitting their research objectives there. It would also be fully funded.
Even if you can't churn out a publications quickly, seek fast options such as posting in famous blogs in your area (as guest contributor) if possible, or book reviews. | 19 | 70 |
CMV: Society should reduce the length of the standard workweek from 40 hours to ~24-30 | From Bertrand Russell's In Praise of Idleness, which is a goldmine of insight and worth reading:
"Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?" - Bertrand Russell, [In Praise of Idleness](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html)
And the Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has been in the news for calling for a three-day workweek (Google: Carlos Slim FT):
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/16605cfc-10e9-11e4-b116-00144feabdc0.html#axzz38KzsoPJv
There is nothing special about 40 hours except that's what we've been brought up to expect.
Productivity and technology have sufficiently advanced that we don't have to work as much as prior generations did to achieve a really high standard of living.
It's just that,
"what will happen when the point has been reached where everybody could be comfortable without working long hours?
In the West, we have various ways of dealing with this problem. We have no attempt at economic justice, so that a large proportion of the total produce goes to a small minority of the population, many of whom do no work at all. Owing to the absence of any central control over production, we produce hosts of things that are not wanted. We keep a large percentage of the working population idle, because we can dispense with their labor by making the others overwork. When all these methods prove inadequate, we have a war: we cause a number of people to manufacture high explosives, and a number of others to explode them, as if we were children who had just discovered fireworks. By a combination of all these devices we manage, though with difficulty, to keep alive the notion that a great deal of severe manual work must be the lot of the average man." - Bertrand Russell
So the norm is that we have people competing in increasingly long and pointless rat races to work for too long at too many [bullshit jobs](http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/), instead of spreading the work that actually needs to be done around so that everyone can make a good living without working 40-60 hour weeks or whatever.
“We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.” -Buckminster Fuller
What is the point of the economic system we've set up if it's making people more miserable than it needs to?
I really think people in the future will look back and wonder why we took so long to free one another from unnecessary bullshit/drudgery.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | Some key points you may have missed: Sims is also advocating 11 hour work days and pushing retirement back well into the 70s.
Other than that, how do you propose the actual economics of this would work? How are people supposed to sustain themselves on 2/3 to 3/4 of their salaries? | 34 | 142 |
In the current employment market with such a glut of applicants, how is a failed search even possible? | With literally hundreds of applicants for each job posting, how does it actually happen that the search committee is unable to find someone? In my frustration I'm thinking it's ineptitude...but I've never been on a search committee, and so I'm looking for a more empathetic explanation. | I've been on a search committee numerous times when we have had a failed search. I'll give you a breakdown of the current one:
1. Position for an assistant professor, tt. 75 applicants total.
2. 20 are international and blindly apply to everything, whether they have the experience/expertise we need or not.
3. 20 are obviously using PUIs as a backup if they don't land an R1, and it's very obvious in their application.
4. 20 are pretty mediocre. They don't sell themselves well, and never make it past the "meh" stage for pretty much everyone. They need to go to a workshop that teaches them how to put together an application packet.
5. We give a phone interview to 8 people we all agree on from the remaining 15. Not all of them are good. Many trip over words and can't answer basic questions. One person asked us to remind them of what the job was even for. He did not make the next step.
6. The next step is to figure out which of the 8 were the best bet. We invite 3-5 of them because that's what we can afford.
7. Of those, some can't teach. We have had a few strong ones, and some where the person has zero energy, or has a lot of inaccurate information in their presentation.
8. We decide to offer a job to the top, but they may have already accepted somewhere else. So we try the next person, and they may also have accepted somewhere else, or didn't like the area when they visited, or wouldn't settle for our pay scale. If those things happen, we have a failed search.
| 99 | 47 |
CMV: Universal child care is more important than universal health care | It is more important for the government to sponsor child day care (birth – kindergarten) than it is to spend on health care. Health costs are mostly consumed by the elderly . Child care costs are almost by definition consumed by working age parents. Free child care would eliminate the need for a parent (usually female) to leave the workforce and reduce house hold income to care for the child. This absence from the workforce is a contributing factor to the “wage gap” (I’m not here to debate this part) females experience when returning to work after kids are in school. This would be a natural economic boost to the middle/lower class that needs all the income they can get.
Anecdotally, my wife is a teacher and once we have our second child we will be spending more in day care than she makes for the year. For reference the day care near us charges $329/wk – per child.
Edit: I mean to refer to day care costs, not health care. Also for the sake of debate I'm pretending we have to pick either health care or day care costs. | Universal health care covers universal child healthcare, and are of equal importance. If you're talking about a government paying for **all** care for children, that's a bit trickier. When you have a kid, you take on some responsibilities that the government is not responsible for. The important point here is you *don't have* to have children, but in a country with universal health care, you *have* to have health care (I'd hope you'd sign up for it at least).
As for the government paying for day care, well, since ages 0-4 are very important for a child's growth, you technically shouldn't be putting them in a day care. The government already provides for education past age 4, which is a pretty big expenditure in itself.
If we're talking about comparing importance, universal health care covers all people of all ages for their entire lives. Universal child care covers kids of age 4 or less and would ease a bit of the burden of the parents. It is decidedly not more important.
| 14 | 18 |
ELI5: Why do doctors always check the eyes of a patient with a light when they are unconscious? | To see how the pupils change in response to light stimulus. They should shrink, and both eyes should do so equally.
Failure to respond, delay in responding, or asymmetry in response are all signs of potential neurological issues, like drugs, bleeding or damage. | 63 | 16 |
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ELI5: each time a new wireless standard comes out, it seems better and faster than before. Any reason we couldn't have accomplished this sooner? What are the enablers we now have that we didn't have before? | I'm asking because I happened to be reading about Bluetooth 5. This is also applicable to wifi etc. Did we discover new encoding / compression algorithms or what? | Every engineering problem comes down to a trade-off between cost and capability. A wireless standard is limited by what the cost effective electronics of the day can accomplish. As time goes on, processing power gets cheaper, so you can do more at a target price point. | 53 | 111 |
ELI5: WHY are the symbols for power on / off "|" and "◯"? | What are/were they meant to represent? When were they introduced? I can't find any consistent reliable sources. I'd really appreciate references if anyone has any! | The International Electrotechnical Commission standards organization define it as open/closed as many others have stated.
The line is on. The circle is off.
Yes, the numbers 0 and 1 are used for on off sometimes , but the symbol is a line abd circle and they were originally chosen as a language neutral representation for an open and closed circuit. | 938 | 918 |
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