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ELI5: Why we cant just put water on dry skins? | Aesthetician here...dry skin is not just the lacking of water, but natural oils your body naturally produces. **Sudoriferous** glands (sweat glands) excrete water. Internally, adding more water and clear fluids to your diet will help improve the hydration of your skin. Externally, wash with a softer water that is medium warm, and use a PH balanced cleanser. **Sebaceous** glands excrete oils. Internally, add foods with good oils to your diet- olive oils, coconut oil, avocado. Externally, when washing, do not use uber hot water. It strips the skin of the natural oils that moisturize your skin. When out of shower/bath, pat skin dry and immediately apply moisturizer or coconut oil to skin. Not only does it "trap" the water on your skin, it restores the natural oils.
**TL:DR**...dry skin is lacking in both water and natural oils. Sorry the explanation isn't really ELI5. | 405 | 566 |
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ELI5:What exactly happens when we black out from drinking? | First of all, it is important to understand that your brain is communicates with itself using neurotransmitters, which relay (transmit) messages around the brain to neurons.
There are two types of neurotransmitters: excitatory and inhibitory. Excitatory neurotransmitters increase brain activity (through the cascading release of other neurotransmitters, the creation of electrical impulses, etc.). Cocaine acts to increase the activity of dopamine and norepinephrine, two excitatory neurotransmitters. Inhibitory neurotransmitters have the opposite effect. They decrease activity.
Alcohol potentiates the effect of GABA, which is the brain's primary inhibitory neurotransmitter. This means that every time your brain releases GABA (which it does all the time to regulate itself), alcohol makes the effects of GABA much stronger than normal. When you black out, your brain is prevented from forming lasting memories, as GABA is inhibiting (with heaps of help from all the alcohol, of course) every attempt to do so. That's all a black out is: a void where no lasting memories were able to be formed. | 17 | 17 |
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CMV: Western music has missed out on a ton of creative possibilities by restricting itself to a 12 tone system. | The major and minor scales have a thorough basis in harmonics: the major scale is composed of the first and second harmonics of the fundamental tone (i, v, iii), the dominant (v, ii, vii), and the subdominant (iv, vii, i). The minor scale is just an inverted major scale, and so it may be similarly constructed (Schoenberg describes this beautifully in *The Theory of Harmony*). Thus, the major and minor scale have a foundation in physical phenomena, so it is reasonable that they should appear throughout a large portion of music.
On the other hand, the twelve-tone system we see in Western music does not come (at least not canonically) from a physical phenomenon; instead, it comes from a numerical coincidence, namely that 2^(19) is approximately equal to 3^(12). Thanks to this coincidence, a 12-tone system allows us to play a good approximation to a major and minor scale in any key. This was a revolutionary discovery as prior to this realization, an instrument would have to be tuned to a particular key, but now, instruments could be tuned (within a small margin of error) to all keys simultaneously. Bach's *Well-Tempered Clavier*, a series of fugues that go through all 24 major and minor keys, famously demonstrates the power of this 12-tone system. Ever since this discovery, the vast majority of Western music has been composed in 12-tone equal temperament.
But there are alternatives that have been ignored almost entirely. For instance, a 19-tone system actually gives a better approximation approximation to the major third and a *much* better approximation to the minor third, at the cost of a slightly worse approximation to the fifth. A 31-tone system also gives excellent approximations to the important intervals, though having so many notes is arguably a bit cumbersome from a notational standpoint. A 19-tone system, however, actually fits into the standard Western musical notation system; we just now distinguish sharps from flats of the key above.
I am not arguing that 19-tone equal temperament is a better system than 12-tone, but I do think that by ignoring the alternatives, composers have neglected a massive amount of artistic possibilities that are unavailable in a 12-tone system. Many modern composers have experimented with microtones, creating pieces that do not fit into any equal-temperament system, but to my knowledge, very few have composed works that still fit into an equal-temperament system, but not the standard one. I think that doing so would open up a new world of possibilities in music composition, and that our society has missed out on an infinitude of beautiful music as a result. | Whatever tonal system you use, two factors limit its applicability: the ability to discern notes and produce pleasing scales. It was researched discerning quarter note intervals can be taught, but that doesn't mean the arabic scale can faithfully reproduce all western-scale songs. Furthermore, arabic and indian scales have a form of complexity to them that wouldnt reflect well in all types of feelings conceived through music. But id agree it be probably best if we taught music including quarter notes.
Although we might've missed out in the past, electronic music certainly progressed far beyond this limitation. Every detune you add in a synthesizer could be used to convey even more complex emotions or any reproducible sound for that matter. So we missed out, but the lack of discerning skills in listeners could've dimished the popularity of such music in the first place. Right now its either a deliberate choice or a lack of musical education. | 10 | 26 |
ELI5: why are we set up to not eat healthy? | In America, there was an obesity scare in the 1970's-1980's that told Americans "fat is bad" and so they've removed the fat content from many foods. by doing that, they became less tasteful and so to replace that they added sugar.
But also, we've been told every day to eat our grains and oats. But the thing is, most of the bread that we consume is actually really bad for us, even the whole-grain breads. It isn't the same oats and grains are grandparents consumed.
Many companies too try really hard to make things seem healthy when they aren't.
So how is a person in this society supposed to be able to eat healthy? Do you have any tips and tricks to make it simple? Can you point us to sources we as consumers should be able to trust? | If by "set up" you mean biologically it's because some nutrients were much rarer then others and over time we became hardwired to seek those particular nutrients more so over others since obtaining those nutrients required more effort. Now in modern times those nutrients are quite abundant but we still retain that need to seek those once rare nutrients which causes problems due to excess. Also those rare nutrients: salts, sugars, fats, etc. are not unhealthy. | 19 | 33 |
ELI5: How does the human mind develop what is attractive to them and what is not? | The other day i pointed out a really beautiful girl (in my opinion) to my friend. He replied "Yeah she's alright". This sparked a question in my thoughts on how people develop opinions on attractiveness. | There are shared opinions of beauty, like symmetrical faces and such, but one of the biggest influences on what somebody finds attractive is the environment they grew up in.
For example, say you had a very nice blonde teacher in elementary school and your closest family (mom, cousins, maybe even grandma) have blue eyes and have athletic bodies, chances are you're gonna be into swedish girls.
Of course it's not this literal, but you get the idea. | 49 | 178 |
ELI5: How do QR codes work, and why can my phone recognize one before I get the entire thing in view of the camera? | QR codes work in quite a complicated way, but the short answer is that they're designed to continue working even if damaged. You can cover something like 1/3 of the code and it'll still read, which is how the QR codes with logos and things in the centre still work - they aren't cleveley generated, they're just slapping the image in there and trusting to maths that it'll still work.
That's why the phone can read it before seeing the whole thing - it's using the redundancy built into the code. | 26 | 20 |
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ELI5:Why do some companies create different brands even though they all operate in the same industry? | example. Kroger owns kroger, ralph's, and food4less grocery stores. Even their individual phone apps are duplicates of each other (design wise).
I understand some stores are only available in certain part of the country but wouldn't it make more sense for them to have one brand? esp if they all, essentially, offer same products. to have greater impact in terms of brand recognition? | For most products, the idea is that having multiple brands under your umbrella allows you to produce slightly different products with different advertising aimed at different customers. You can make a car that targets a middle-class buyer & one with some fancy options to target the luxury consumer. You can produce a makeup line for 18-25 women that emphasizes fun & freedom while your products for the 40+ crowd emphasize elegance & class.
Grocery stores are a little different however. People are *really* weird about food & will often stick with names & brands they grew up with. Keeping a smaller local chain name reminds people of home cooked meals, growing up and the like. The brand itself has decades of goodwill built up that would be completely wasted if you bought them out & changed the names. | 22 | 15 |
ELI5: Why is it so much more enjoyable to spend hours and hours doing repetitive tasks in a video game than it is at work? | Usually video games have a reward system in place that you can easily track your progress and see a "real" reward for it in real time. If you grind more enemies, you get more points, new items, new stats, unlocks, etc. Numbers go up. Even on something like Minecraft, you may set out to simply dig a really big hole in the ground with no benefit other than having done it. However, you've set a goal and accomplished it, and that feels good.
Work is often times you doing stuff you don't have a vested interest in. You also don't necessarily have incentive to do the work other than keeping your job and getting a paycheck. | 45 | 50 |
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Why can both X-rays and radio waves penetrate things that visible light can't? | Something about the energy being on the scale of eV so high adsorption there? Did we evolve to be able to see the energy range that is absorbed by everyday objects? | Light tends to interact with molecules whose size are either near its wavelength, or densely packed enough that an integer group is near the size of its wavelength. The visible spectrum covers a large range of molecule sizes, so its convenient for us to see in. Longer and shorter wavelengths only interact with high density or very large molecules. E.g. you'd want lead or thick HDPE between you and a gamma ray. | 10 | 17 |
Please explain the meaning and reasoning behind this: "Anyways, never catch exceptions when not strictly required! It's always easier to introduce an error handling later, than remove it!" in Code. | In one of the github repository: [Error-Handling-presentation - GitHub](https://github.com/4face-studi0/Error-Handling-presentation/blob/master/src/main/kotlin/stringUtils.kt) (Kotlin)
There's the quote:
>Anyways, never catch exceptions when not strictly required! It's always easier to introduce an error handling later, than remove it!
What does it mean?
In my understanding, it is saying we should avoid using `try catch` whenevery possible. If that is the case, what is the alternative way of handling error?
I might have missed some obvious points but please explain with a code example and use case:
1. When NOT to use try catch and use something more "flexible"
2. When to use try catch
3. Why catching exception is not good at times. | There are 2 ways that exceptions can happen:
\- Programmer error (i.e. NullPointerException, IndexOutOfBoundsException)
\- Faulty environment (i.e. FileNotFoundException)
When you're handling exceptions, you only want to catch the ones related to faulty environments, since the causes for them are outside of your control. With programmer errors, you want the exception to end the program, so that you can fix it
There is a risk with catching programmer errors that they become part of the program logic, which is not good, since you can't remove them without breaking some other parts of the program | 26 | 22 |
Why does hair come in just a few colors? And why these colors? | As the title says - why can we only have different shades of a few specific colors of naural hair and why can hair only have one of these particular colors and not, say, green? | Layman.
There are two major natural pigments found in hair. Eumelanin is black or brown. Pheomelanin yellow or red. Our hair colours are limited to what can be produced by mixing these two pigments in various quantities.
I can't say why we never evolved to produce another pigment (like a green pigment). | 29 | 57 |
Choosing an advisor who produces only professors when I’m not sold on academia | I have a pretty incredible offer on the table for a top US PhD program in applied physics; I am currently a senior undergrad. I met with an incredible advisor there last week who expressed an interest in taking me as a student. For reference, he has an H-index > 150 while only taking a couple students annually, and is very renowned as a mentor. 14 of his last 15 students are either group leaders at national labs or professors at R1s, the last being in industry (you get the picture—I’m probably doxxable at this point), and while I think it would be an incredibly edifying experience for me and my best shot to do high impact work in grad school, I am not totally sold on academia as a career path. I value being geographically unconstrained + starting a family + being able to participate in startups ~mid career, though in principle I love the idea of pursuing an academic career. Based on this I am probably likely to look for industry group leader positions and the like post-PhD. Based only on this information, does it sound short sighted or self sabotaging of me to choose his group over one where I would do lower impact work, complete an industry internship, etc., but graduate as pretty objectively less of an expert in my discipline? | Mentorship and expertise are huge selling points regardless of where you end up. If his last mentee ended up industry, that's a good sign and also a potential contact for when you make that jump after grad school. Regardless, it's worth having another discussion with your mentor about your career goals - being transparent with them is your best strategy for making an informed decision. | 34 | 19 |
I think the word "Pansexual" is a meaningless term for people who need to feel special. CMV. | I am a very sexually open-minded person, so do not think I am a bigot here. I myself am bisexual, so I have experienced prejudice in the LGBT community and society at large, so I can understand the judgment non-heterosexual people face, so understand that.
However, especially as someone who is bisexual and is attracted to males and females, I do not see the point of being "pansexual". I do not see the difference between bisexuality and pansexuality. I know the definition of the word, as in gender not being a factor in your decision making process in finding a mate, but in practice that is literally no different from bisexuality.
I am bisexual, and I do not actively seek a male or female partner specifically, I choose someone based on who they are, if we get along and if I am sexually attracted to them. I do not see how that is different from being "gender blind", as pansexual people claim to be.
To me, it seems people who are "pansexual" simply need to feel special and different. It may be confirmation bias, but every person I have met who has identified as pansexual has fit this mold. For me, it just seems that pansexual is a term for when bisexual is too mainstream.
I am an open-minded person and would like to hear different opinions and obviously have my views changed as I have many friends who identify as pansexual (even my significant other does) and I would like to understand it better.
Thank you for your time. | The term pansexual is meant to be even more inclusive than bisexuality because it encompasses sexual attractions to trangendered and genderqueer people, thus going beyond the binary/dioecious model of sex phenotype. | 181 | 309 |
If I live on a top story apartment, and leave my heat off, will it raise the heating bills of my downstairs neighbor significantly? | A basic principle of heat transfer is that the bigger the temperature difference is the faster heat will transfer between the two through conduction. This means that by keeping his apartment colder than he would with his heat on, he will be absorbing energy (heat) from his neighbors at a faster rate. Since they're maintaining the temperature in their apartment, this costs them more money. So yes, his decision does affect his neighbors.
This also means that the warmer his apartment is the less money he is saving by "stealing" from his neighbors, until he eventually makes the temperature at his floor higher than their ceiling, and he starts giving them free heat.
Most people already understand this principle without realizing it. Keeping your heat at 70 is going to be more expensive than keeping it at 50. In a perfectly insulated house (no heat transfer between outside and inside) they would cost the same once you got to that initial temperature. Obviously this isnt the case though, just going to show you how important insulation is to heating bills | 71 | 206 |
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[The Magic School Bus] Does Ms. Frizzle have the parents’ permission to take their children on these bizarre field trips? | Also, has there ever been a PTA meeting addressing Ms. Frizzle’s unusual teaching methods? | She has permission to take them on field trips, but she's not specific on the details. She just says "taking kids to aquarium to learn about the life cycle of the clown fish" not "taking kids to aquarium and turning one into a sea anemone, one into a shark, and the rest into clown fish." none of the kids are narcs (not even Arnold) so so far no PTA meetings about it. | 71 | 47 |
Could a tree grow in zero-G? If so what would it look like? | The complication that needs to be overcome is that plants make use of gravity when planted to orient themselves (as they can't rely on being planted the right way up), so that their roots go down and their sprouts go up. Without gravity, they will tend to just stay at around the same depth and not sprout. One astronaut reported that this was simple enough to fix, however, just by plucking the ends out of the soil, pulling them to the surface, when they first sprout. From this point, the plant can orient itself using light and will continue to grow. Roots don't suffer as much, as they just grow away from the seed and avoid light (the surface), so develop relatively normally.
After this, growth is mostly normal The resulting plants can look a little unusual because they don't have the usual drooping from gravity, so will tend to be more upright.
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CMV: The cons of organized religion outnumber the pros | To begin, I'd like to say that there are definitely merits to organized religion, such as fostering a sense of community. I'd love to hear any other merits as well, but I'd like to see arguments for how these merits can only be achieved by organized, and not disorganized, religion :)
The biggest problem I see with organized religion is that it is too easily used to control other people. I have the most experience with Islam, but I believe Christianity is also used in that way. As far as other religions such as Judaism go, I don't know much about it so I won't comment but I'd love to hear your perspectives on it. I'll state a few examples of how religion is used for control here:
- Abortions not being allowed as it goes against religious rules.
- Not being able to convert out of a religion, and being bound by the rules of that religion. This is the case in muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Malaysia etc. In Malaysia in particular, if you're born muslim or convert at any point in your life, you can't convert to any other religion, and you can be held accountable by Sharia law.
- Religion being used as a justification/loophole for unethical things such as child marriages - this occurs all around the world from my understanding. I feel like the scandal with the Catholic church regarding priests sexually preying on young children falls into this category too.
- Religion being used to scare people into following practices they may not necessarily agree with, such as wearing burkas. I understand that there are women who wear it out of 100% choice, but we can't deny that there are women who are forced into it as well. This point also extends to things like sexuality (for example, gay people who live in fear of going to hell).
- Religion being used to justify extremism and terrorism (of course, it's not justifiable to non-extremists but religion is what terrorist groups like ISIS use for control).
- Religion being used to justify cults (ie. Scientology, I think the LDS church also falls under this category but I could be mistaken).
- Religion being used to promote sexism.
I feel like religion is something personal. Insofar as the ideals of being a good person etc go, I feel disorganized religion serves those ideals. With disorganized religion, you can use your own judgement to decide what aspects of the religion you believe are true and good, and you can follow those aspects while disregarding the ones you believe to be outdated, sexist, unethical etc. Thoughts?
EDIT: Messed up the formatting.
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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!* | >I'd love to hear any other merits as well, but I'd like to see arguments for how these merits can only be achieved by organized, and not disorganized, religion :)
Organized religion provides a legitimate, but alternative power structure where minority opinions can take root and gain wider acceptance.
In America for example, the abolitionist movement, the women's suffrage movement and the civil rights movement found a lot of their initial support and momentum in the church. Martin Luther King would have been a lot easier for the mainstream to dismiss if he had not been a reverend, and the church provided the movement with not only leaders, but with a network and an organizational structure.
Organized religion has caused a lot of problems over the years, but it has also acted as a force for progressive, positive change. That is why autocratic regimes seek to either outlaw, suppress, or co-opt organized religion, and why freedom of religion is an important measure of a free society. | 12 | 26 |
[Superhero] I can make pocket dimensions by painting them. Who has jurisdiction over this "terra nullis" as the authority of the United Staes claims? | They can't enter my painting without my specific permission and even if they destroy the painting while I'm inside, I can still paint my way out. Can a country really claim jurisdiction if they can't enforce their will on that territory? | Jurisdictions, borders, etc. are essentially diplomatic alternatives/complementary to shows of force to exert control. With you being the sole force-owner for that space, unless you yield that control, anything they claim is moot.
They can enforce consequences on you otherwise in an attempt to coerce though. | 30 | 28 |
ELI5: Why are people dyslexic and how does it work? | Obviously I understand dyslexia can cause words to look 'different', but how? And what causes people to be dyslexic?
EDIT: Wow, thanks people! These are some really interesting answers :) | The two most important contributers to dyslexia are an underutilized left-hemisphere, and an out-of-whack central bridge of tissue in the brain, called the corpus callosum. The left hemisphere of the brain can match a letter with its sound, handle information that comes into your brain in strings, like the sounds in a word - one letter after the other, rather than seeing a word as a single picture, separate a word into its individual sounds, and understand grammar and syntax. The right hemisphere is different. It deals in areas and space and patterns. It doesn't understand parts of speech, or keep track of letter-order in spelling. It "reads" a word as a line drawing that it has been taught has a meaning, -- a sketch, not a line up of sounds. If the left side leaves the reading to the right side, the result can come out scrambled eggs. As to the corpus callosum, it is a bridge of nerve cells over which information from one side of the brain gets to the other. Everything you see or hear goes to both sides, but each side has it own specialty. The corpus callosum not only transfers information, it helps decide which is the appropriate side, and sends it there. Obviously a wimpy CC may not deliver language tasks to the left where they belong. On top of that, it transmits slowly, so part of the information arrives out of sync with the rest. As if all that weren't enough, the language areas in the dyslectic brain tend to be smaller than they are in a standard brain. Now you take a wimpy corpus callosum, an over eager right-hemisphere, and an undersized left language area, and you have the recipe for trouble.
Source: dyslexia.org | 57 | 237 |
In your opinion, is it possible for an autodidact person to obtain an undergraduate level of knowledge by reading textbooks? | Hello,
I am a graphic design student who's also interested in subjects like history and philosophy. If I wasn't majoring in graphic design, I'd be majoring in one of those. However, it also occurred to me that I could simply buy the textbooks used in the classes for those particular degrees and teach myself that way. There's also free and open courses from places like MIT, Harvard, Yale, etc. that could supplement my learning. I have no interest in credentialing myself in either of those fields; I just want to learn. Do you think that I could roughly obtain the same level of proficiency over the subject matter as an undergraduate through self-study alone? Thanks! | Yes and no. By reading textbooks and studying diligently with an eye to existing tests (maybe subject matter GREs?), you could probably memorize a fair bit of stuff. By using the bibliographies of the textbooks as direction, you could read a lot of key primary texts (which is crucial, because these are not textbook-driven fields).
What you can't do solo is engage in the conversations, based on close reading of primary sources, that would shape you as a thinker. A university isn't the only way tl do that, of course, but it's one of the most efficient and reliable. | 20 | 16 |
Has anyone ever got to a certain point in reading philosophy where they are just completely confused | Is there a way to get out of this without completely giving up?
EDIT: Thanks a lot for all the replies! | If you're talking about confusion as in not understanding what is meant by what is written, there's a possibility that the work you're reading is, for example, subtly referring to other major works. Reading works by philosophers can often feel daunting and it's important to try to orient oneself in the conceptual framework that they've partly adopted and are partly modifying. A good commentary can be really helpful in this regard.
If you're speaking about an experience that your thinking has reached an impasse and some previously held beliefs have been thoroughly questioned, what you're asking about could be called "aporia". In the early dialogues of Plato the dialogues between Socrates and his interlocutors often end in impasses where the interlocutors who previously thought they knew something (what justice is, for example) now experience a profound sense of disorientation and lack of knowledge. This state can be considered very fruitful and philosophically important since it ideally engenders a desire to keep searching for knowledge. Aporia is thus a breaking point of philosophical thinking: giving up is possible (and understandable since philosophical thinking can heavily disturb important beliefs) but it's also possible to keep on searching. | 60 | 102 |
Why would the immune system attack the eyes, if it knew they were there? | There are organs in our body that are immunologically isolated from the bloodstream:
1. The thyroid follicles contain thyroglobulin, a protein which never leaves the inside of the follicle (unless first transformed into thyroid hormones) and lymphocytes never enter the follicle. If such a follicle is broken and thyroglobulin enters the bloodstream, lymphocytes react towards it like a non self structure, resulting in Hashimoto or Basedow thyroiditis.
2. The ovarian follicles the same. This is actually because the female egg is haploid (has only one set of chromosomes) thus is different immunologically from the body; again, non-self reaction.
3. The sperm inside testicular ducts. Actually, in the seminiferous tubules, a specific cell type (Sertoli) is responsible to let the spermatogonic cells pass from the basal layer (towards the edge of the tubules, touching bloodstream) to the luminal layer (towards the center of the tubule, not touching bloodstream). This passage is done during the reductional meiotic division, when diploid cells pf the body become haploid (and start to change their immunological profile).
4. The eye liquids are not naturally in direct contact with the bloodstream. If one eye is traumatized, the bloodstream touches the eye liquids for the first time, and a non self reaction begins. Actually, a trauma of one eye can cause the destruction of the other eye (because antibodies can usually pass membranes that lymphocytes can't), disease called sympathetic ophthalmia.
Why wouldn't lymphocytes react to everything in our body? Well, during childhood, T lymphocytes are trained in the thymus and are exposed to basically*** all the self antigens that the blood touches. If no antigens specific to the eye are in the bloodstream at that moment, T lymphocytes won't be tested and rejected for a self-host reaction.
Edit for ***: /u/CD11cCD103 has a comment explaining better how all the self antigens reach the thymus. It's not that the blood carries bits and pieces of everything towards the thymus, but that some "nanny" cells of the thymus can express antigens of anything during the T lymphocytes maturation process. | 1,118 | 1,570 |
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Wouldn't it be cheaper/more efficient to pay people, rather than bail out companies? | What I'm reading is that we need to bail out companies in order to maintain jobs. Wouldn't it be far more efficient just to pay a UBI-type thing? (Note: I'm not advocating UBI *per se*, rather as a stop-gap in the current crisis.)
Arguments/my reasoning:
* If businesses are failing because no one is using them (e.g. air travel), then they are going to continue to need bailouts. Thinking bailouts are a one-time thing vs. ongoing UBI-type payments is unrealistic.
* We've already seen companies using the cash to buy back stock. OK, we can put in legislation to stop that, but paying people would be far more efficient.
* Giving working people money maintains money flow - working people buy necessities, rather than investments.
* Medium/long-term, we would realise either a) we don't need this/that industry or b) this industry needs to be more efficient. It would provide a huge opportunity for innovation and entrepreneurship as people try to fill the vacuum left by collapsed companies.
I am a complete econ-novice and my reasoning is probably super-naive, so I'm def here to learn! | I'll address one point:
>Medium/long-term, we would realise either a) we don't need this/that industry or b) this industry needs to be more efficient. It would provide a huge opportunity for innovation and entrepreneurship as people try to fill the vacuum left by collapsed companies.
The problem is that whole industries are collapsing, not because they are badly run, but because they're faced with an extremely serious natural disaster disaster, an act of god. These companies would be essential to the coming recovery. Case in points is the airline industry. All airlines are going to have practically zero flights for the next few months, but they are still going to incur significant costs. Any business operating in such a situation will collapse- it isn't about efficiency. A random shock has fallen from the sky. It's like allowing all local businesses and companies to collapse after hurricane Katrina.
When the virus eases up and we're trying to rebuild the economy, if the airlines are all out of business, it will take time- for new entrants to set up businesses etc- that will take months, even years. Do you think the American economy can function without airlines for a few months, and recover quickly? Probably not.
The coronavirus isn't some terrible moral failing of capitalism, it's a very very very serious natural disaster that affects just about everyone- if you let the businesses collapse, your recovery is going to be very slow. | 87 | 167 |
CMV: Women in western nations, specifically America, have more rights than men. | I keep hearing about the "women's rights movement". Maybe some will just say it is semantics, but the movement should be "women's equality movement".
This is not intended to be a debate on the wage gap, or other social and financial inequalities between men and women. Instead, I would like to gear the conversation towards our rights as human beings. There is no law that says women cannot receive the same pay as men. But there is a law that requires male conscription or eligibility for the military draft.
Men also have no right to the life (or continuity of the biological processes that lead to life, depending on where you land on this other debate) of their offspring. Abortion is the sole right of the woman in America.
Women also have the right to genital integrity upon birth in (I believe) ALL western nations. However, men are subject to circumcisions, specifically in America.
I am not saying that women don't *deserve* these rights, or that there isn't valid reason behind them.
I am saying that women have more rights than men. Please CMV!
EDIT: I have conceded abortion on the grounds of biology and bodily autonomy. Although I do still think men should have the right to abandon parental duties such as child support so long as he does so in writing with ample time for the woman to perform an abortion. I have conceded conscription on the grounds that there if Congress passed a law tomorrow requiring women to enlist, there is no fundamental right that women could point to in order to prevent it.
I am still looking for someone to CMV on circumcision which still holds up my overall thesis. People keep saying that it is the parental right to permit medical procedures on their children. However, these should all be medically *necessary* procedures. Male children currently have no right to prevent unnecessary medical procedures performed on them, while woman do (see : the FGM Act )
EDIT 2: I awarded my 3rd Delta for someone pointing out that circumcision isn't a male/female issue. Parents consent to it just like they consent to a daughter's ears being pierced which is another medically unnecessary procedure. I still would like circumcision outlawed similar to the FGM Act.
But you got me Reddit! I changed my view ! Thank you to all who participated. | Everything you list here as a rights of women that are greater than men are part of much larger, more complex issues that have positives and negatives for both genders.
> But there is a law that requires male conscription or eligibility for the military draft
Sure, and this is certainly unequal. But this is all part of a system in which, until recently, women were unable to serve in certain capacities in the military. And a system in which women face gender discrimination within the ranks, sexual harassment, and sexual assault in much higher rates than men (speaking about the US here). Laws requiring male conscription are a direct result of sexist notions that women cannot and/or should not be "fighters."
> Men also have no right to the life (or continuity of the biological processes that lead to life, depending on where you land on this other debate) of their offspring. Abortion is the sole right of the woman in America.
Yeah, but honestly, what's the alternative? Are you suggesting we force women to carry to term and give birth against her will? Regardless, this is a given going into a sexual relationship and there are measures to easily avoid this scenario (e.g. condoms, discussing potentialities w/ significant other ahead of time, etc.).
But again, this is a complex issue and highly correlated to the fact that women give birth and men don't. Also a result of that is the fact that childcare and home care disproportionately falls to women, even when both parents work equivalent hours. Also, because a man is only needed for conception and women actually carry and give birth, it's much easier for a man to skip out on any involvement or responsibility for offspring, leaving many women single mothers.
> Women also have the right to genital integrity upon birth in (I believe) ALL western nations. However, men are subject to circumcisions, specifically in America.
I hear you on this one. But female circumcision and male circumcision, while both involve "mutilating genitals," are very different procedures and have very different outcomes. Oftentimes female circumcision removes all of the external genitalia, including the clitoris, leaving the person with very little left to feel any pleasure and often lifelong pain or problems. For men, it's just the foreskin that's removed, a comparably small portion of the genitals, and the men go on to have overwhelmingly normal sex lives.
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CMV: Identity comes from both within and without. It’s not all about what you see yourself as. | While self image or self identity is important, it serves a much smaller utility than how others perceive you. Functionally, identity occurs many orders of magnitude more often in the eyes of those who perceive you rather than yourself. The total sum of their perception of you is much more impactful to both them and yourself than whatever it is you may see yourself as. This cannot be undone. Self identification is not the entirety of identity. It’s not even a majority of identity. It exists, but it’s not the whole. | I think it differs depending on what type of identity we're talking about. Racial identity, for example, is a very external identity. It has almost nothing to do with who you are on the inside, and has everything to do with how society treats you. This is why "transracial" can't be a thing. (Fun fact, transracial was a term used before the appearance of Rachel Dolezal types, and was used to refer to adoption situations where the parents and child are different races.)
Gender identity and sexuality, on the other hand, are much more internal. Say you're a bisexual man, but have only ever dated women to avoid homophobia. The world might perceive you as a straight guy and treat you like one, but internally you still feel that attraction towards men. You're still, by definition, bisexual, and the way people treat you can't change that. | 30 | 43 |
What are some good beginner books on philosophy? Touching on topics like the meaning of life itself, or anything similar. | The Big Bad Wolf book sale is happening in my country in about a week or so, and I just finished playing a videogame called Nier: Automata. It touches on topics like the meaning(less) of life and even nihilism. I really very much enjoyed this part of the game, and it made me want to get into philosophy proper.
What are good beginner philosophy books that touch on similar topics? | A great place to start would be "The History of Modern Philosophy" by Josiah Royce. Take notes on texts mentioned in the book that you would like to explore further, and enjoy the trip down one of the most fulfilling rabbit holes ever. | 11 | 56 |
ELI5: If a movie production has $5,000,000 (estimated) Budget, must some of that money go to the actors? or only movie's production quality? | It has to include equipment, pay for employees (all cast, crew, and extras), fees, *food* on larger productions, constryucting sets, making costume,s all of the makeup artists, set design, sound guy, camera guy, lighting guy, dozens of other specific jobs, and yes, the actors. | 161 | 379 |
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How does someone get a PhD, and what does it mean? | I don't exact get what a person does to get a PhD. What they do after their Masters? Do you apply to a university to "do a PhD"? Do you still get educated through higher-level course or something? What is a PhD thesis supposed to be? | >What they do after their Masters?
They often enroll in some classes, teach other classes, and perform research which will make up their thesis.
>Do you apply to a university to "do a PhD"?
Yes. You need not just a university but an adviser with whom you will work closely.
Another thing is that some programs have qualifier exams. Meaning, you enroll in the PhD program and have to pass a very difficult (usually written) exam by some deadline. If you don't pass by that time, you go home.
> Do you still get educated through higher-level course or something?
Usually there are some course requirements. You might also take courses that are essential to your research, for instance, stat courses for a psychology PhD student.
>What is a PhD thesis supposed to be?
It is an original work you must produce in order to be granted your degree. The idea is that a PhD is a research degree, so you must demonstrate your ability to contribute to the research in your field.
A thesis is usually based on the work the student has done under guidance of their adviser. It is not uncommon for a thesis to take over 5 years of work, depending on the field. | 11 | 19 |
ELI5: Why do antidepressants take several months to build up proper levels but only a few days to metabolize out? | Imagine your brain is a natural environment, like a field. The good chemicals in your brain (the ones that help you feel calm, happy, satisfied, etc) are like a small river flowing through. All around the river grow lots of plants and trees (or, that is to say, hobbies, things you enjoy, etc). Those can grow big and tall next to the river since they have lots of water flowing past.
Now in someone who's depressed (due to lack of chemicals), their river is barely a trickle, barely enough to support some shrubs and small trees or grasses. What SSRIs (Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitors) do is build a dam in the river. Over time, that small trickle of water adds up and forms a small pond. Now there's plenty of water, and once the pond is established, trees and bushes can grow along the banks and we've got a nice environment going.
But what happens if you tear down that dam? All of the water in the pond rushes away, and you're left with a large, bare area where it used to be. The little trickle of water is still flowing, but it's not enough to fill the pond, let alone to keep the large trees alive. So you have to rebuild the dam and let that trickle of water slowly fill the pond back up, which will take a little while, depending on how much of the water flowed out, or leave it gone and let the small bushes and grasses go back to where the creek flows, which will probably take longer. | 55 | 20 |
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Do former professors miss students the way we miss them? | I had a really wonderful professor a few semesters ago that really changed my perspective about life. In private she taught us so many life lessons and I’m so grateful to have had her as my professor. I miss her.
I’m just wondering if it is mutual.
Edit: did not expect this post to blow up, it’s been lovely to hear your thoughts and personal experiences. Thank you so much! | Depends on the professor. But for those of us that got into it because we actually enjoy teaching, it is the interactions with students and seeing that look of Revelation on their face when they understand something that is why we do it. Being online only has denied us for any meaningful dialogue, and the ability to connect with our students on some deeper level. | 268 | 416 |
[Star Wars] Do Force users have to physically hold their lightsabers while dueling? Can't they just use the Force to control their lightsabers' movement hands-free? | That degree of precise, continuous control takes a great deal of focus and concentration.
At which point you don't see the saber or blaster bolt coming from your opponent who *isn't* showing off like an idiot. | 30 | 15 |
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ELI5: Why is it so difficult for NASA to take true-color pictures of planets? | For the iconic [Pluto](http://i.imgur.com/H7vukHD.jpg) picture, NASA says they had to "combine four images with color data to create a global view of Pluto."
Meanwhile they can easily take dozens of pictures of Pluto in [black and white](http://i.imgur.com/kwP78i4.png). Why is it so difficult to create a color image of a planet? | The full-color or approximate full-color images you see are assembled from multiple exposures taken with different color filters. That minimizes the amount of camera equipment involved as it allows the optics and CCD to be reused for imaging at different wavelengths.
Full-color images are not always "sufficiently interesting" to justify the weight and expense of additional equipment. For example, it was already known from telescopic images that Pluto had little green detail, so there was little point in sending up a camera with a green filter. | 26 | 68 |
Light doesn't have any matter, yet it can be bent by gravity...I don't get that :-/ Can someone explain it please?! | What the title says...It doesn't make sense to me:-/ | As Einstein showed us with general relativity, gravity is curved geometry. The presence of matter/energy results curves spacetime. Particles (both massive, and then massless) then follow the shortest paths in this curved spacetime, which results in what we think of as gravity. | 31 | 18 |
CMV: Moving to a new city with better career potential without a job lined up is worth the risk. | I'm a 27 year old mechanical engineer who thinks moving across the country to greener pastures (major cities such as Denver or Seattle, for example) but no job lined up is worth the risk. I've exhausted all of the decent jobs in my small southern town and feel the area is stifling my career prospects at this point.
Why not just apply online you say? Well, I've tried but not much luck despite being, at least in my eyes, a 95% match for a lot of jobs. After seeing numerous job posts that blatantly state that only local candidates will be considered, I've come to the conclusion that the odds of me getting something across the country are slim to none at this point.
I have enough money saved to last me over a year with some budgeting. And this includes moving expenses, increased COL (as best as I could estimate), and one time expenses like a deposit.
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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!* | There are major issues with blindly jumping into a new city. For starters, you will have *zero* local connections or references within the job market. This automatically places you at a disadvantage relative to local candidates.
You'll also need to juggle multiple other major decisions and processes at the same time as finding work. Where will you stay? Will you take a lower paying job in the interim? Do you have a way to reliably get back home in case of a family emergency? Are you sure your cost of living estimates are accurate?
Finally, consider the opportunity cost of moving. Will you have to start at an entry level position(and thus lower salary) at your next job? Are you prepared to put your career on hold for up to a year just for the shot at some more money down the line? Will that money even be worth it when you consider the lost income associated with moving? | 22 | 112 |
[Star Wars] What made Admiral Ozzel think he could get away with condescending to Darth Vader? | "My lord, there are so many uncharted settlements..."
Ozzel sounds straight up *patronizing* to Vader when he says this, as if Vader were some foppish visiting dignitary, and not the Emperor's personal cybernetic murder gargoyle. How could he possibly thought it was a good idea to talk down to Vader? | The Empire works on strength. You get ahead by showing no fear and intimidating people (also getting shit done which was Ozzel's mistake). Being frank and questioning superiors has worked so far and gotten him in the Admiralty. Ozzel has seen guys like Tarkin or Thrawn directly challenge Vader and get away with it so he figures if he wants a Grand Admiralship he should do the same and prove himself not afraid of Vader. The thing is Guys like Tarkin and Thrawn have earned Vader's respect so he lets them talk to him as an equal. Ozzel being disrespectful just pisses Vader off. Ozzel is trying to play the game and sucks at it because he didn't realise the guys that are winning the game aren't playing a game they are just hyper competent. | 106 | 78 |
ELI5: How does YouTube.com (aka Google), manage it's storage and bandwidth costs when thousands of videos are uploaded and stored daily? Do the advertisers actually cover its costs? | Do advertisers actually cover the costs? Yes. That's the business model of google. That's how they set their prices.
How does google do it? They have a lot of infrastructure, and a lot of smart people working for them who spend all their time at work coming up with ways to reduce the amount of bandwidth used, and the amount of computation required to produce results. They've built their whole company on this kind of technology, and they're among the best companies in the world for dealing with huge data sets, and storing them safely and efficiently. It's the reason that Google the search engine was able to out compete it's competitors in the early days. In most cases, it was better at finding related results, and faster too.
Edit: A couple of people have pointed out that Youtube is loosing money, but that Google as a corporation is able to cover the loss. | 61 | 47 |
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[Star Wars] What makes someone a Jedi? | No one would argue that Luke isn’t a Jedi Master but he doesn’t even remotely seem to follow the Jedi Code, either by Canon or Legend standards.
So I’m legitimately curious now- what makes someone a “Jedi”?
Luke feels emotions and has a family and all that stuff. By the old standards I don’t think they’d even let him train at the Temple. So how is he a Jedi?
Is it merely enough to just use the Light side of the force?
Is that it?
I’m sure you can be an asshole and still use the Light side as a tool but that’s beside the point- is it merely “being good” that makes you a Jedi? How is that a quantifiable standard across the whole of galactic history?
Is it just some self-identification or something? | Jedi is a philosophy, and one which can have different interpretations as time goes by.
Some general points are:
- Force user
- Serenity, peace
- Following the will of the Force
But there are quite a few ways to interpret that. Do you fight to defend life? Do you act passively? Do you become a hermit and meditate? Do you forsake all attachment, because it might lead to clouded judgment? Do you forsake all passion, or do you use some of it, carefully controlled? | 29 | 39 |
ELI5: Why is Canada still technically a constitutional monarchy? | Why hasn't Canada separated itself officially from the UK after years of independence? | Think of it like growing up with your parents. When you're young your parents tell you what to do, but as you get older you need them less and less. Now some people or countries in this case don't really like their parents so they decide they want to get emaciated (a fancy word for them not having any control over you) and they become republics.
Canada on the other hand really didn't mind it's parents and as it got older decided it could be more and more independent without them. Canada basically got to the point where our parents don't really have any input on our decisions. Any time Canada makes a law we still ask our parents if it's ok but we're adults now so they really can't ever say no. So we operate as if our parents aren't in our lives. Every once in a while our parents come to visit and a lot of people really like having them here.
The reason we haven't emancipated is because now there really isn't a point, it would just be a lot of work to separate from someone we really don't mind. | 51 | 52 |
eli5 What is equity? | Equity has several meanings when it comes to accounting, but generally it means value of ownership.
Often you will hear people talk about how much equity they have in their house. If you have a $500k house and $300k mortgage, then you have $200k of equity. That means if you sell the house, that's how much money you'd get in your pocket.
If you own shares of a company, that's called shareholders' equity. It's the value of the slice of the company that you own. | 60 | 42 |
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ELI5: why would a landlord rent control an apartment? | If a landlord owns an apartment in say New York, why would they offer rent control when they could just raise the price of rent year over year and make more money? | Rent control is a state mandated option for people who are qualified under welfare care laws and regulations to ensure that people can afford housing.
Rent control and EHO homes are reserved pricing structures for what the tenant can afford to pay under what the laws deem appropriate. | 24 | 37 |
[Back to the Future] What would have happened if Doc sent Einstein back in time for one minute instead of forward in time? | The arrival of Einstein could affect the experiment, such as by making Doc send the Delorian at a different time, risking the space-time continuum, or at least making things much more complicated than necessary. | 14 | 22 |
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ELI5: What makes holding certain positions, e.g. while lying in bed, more or less comfortable, and why does the degree of comfort eventually change? | Your body isn't a straight line, and at different times different parts of your body have more pressure on them than others. It takes a small amount of effort to endure that pressure on those points, and over time it adds up and becomes uncomfortable. Shifting positions is basically cycling out which parts of your body are enduring the pressure. More comfortable positions tend to spread out or decrease the pressure on your body, which is why soft things are more comfortable because they do this well. | 50 | 94 |
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ELI5: Why does hard exercise cause people to throw up? | I just don't understand why you're body would react this way | Exercise increases oxygen demand in the muscles being used. This causes the vessels supplying your skeletal muscles with blood to dilate, supplying a greater amount of blood. Conversely, areas of the body that are not essential for exercise (such as the digestive system and other inactive organs), experience a reduced blood supply. Essentially blood is rerouted from inactive organs to skeletal muscle.
Exercise activates the sympathetic nervous system, known to most as the "fight or flight" response. This pours out hormones such as Epinepherine which increase heart rate, and cause dilation of the bonchioles in the lungs. Exercise also deactivates the Parasympathetic Nervous System known as the "rest and digest" response which shunts blood to the digestive tract, and stimulates salivation and digestion. Lack of parasympathetic output and decreased bloodflow to the digestive system during exercise results in a temporary slowing of digestion which can make the person feel nauseated or having a previously consumed meal sit "like a rock" in the stomach during exercise. | 17 | 30 |
Eli5 why do people have Aphantasia? | I recently got told that people are actually able to visualise images in their head, something which I cannot do, which brought me to the condition of Aphantasia.
Why is this something that I cannot do? | First off, you have to narrow it down. There's actual aphantasia, and there's people who read a poor overly-romanticized description of what visualization is and conclude they must have aphantasia. The former is extremely rare, the overwhelming majority describe normal visualization as what they're able to do and assume everyone else has some sort of superpower that they're missing. | 45 | 34 |
[Jupiter Ascending] what is the long term effects of a protected world like earth? | Secondary question is there any way to move away from their immortality economy? | 1)
It depends on how the world will eventually be "used". Say it is protected long enough for them to develop Space faring technology they could eventually either join the galactic community and also start using the immortality technology. Or they could see themselves as endangered and start a war against the other humans (most likely the other humans wouldn't (want to) accept them anyways and see them as inferiors).
So either you have a few billion more people on in this galactic community or you have a war (which humanity (Terranity?) would most likely lose).
2)
No. Not unless the royals (influential people) want to give up their immortality which judging by how far they would go just to get a planet with a few billion citizens on it would most likely not be the case. | 12 | 39 |
Why do plants never get cancer? | All humans and most other animals are at risk of getting cancer during their lifetime.But why plants have the privilege of not getting this disease?
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I'm really impressed by most of your responses,but their is a question in my mind that is still bugging me.
When a person gets really old,cancer cells would form in a certain part of his body since his DNA becomes "weaker"as he got older ,but let's say just in this case that the cancer cells can not move to other parts of his body(Metastasis )to make the situation similar to plants where cancer cells are locked in this position since they have cell walls that surround the cells. Cancer cells would still originate from different parts of his body as he gets older until tumor covers all of him and he dies.
This case is theoretically possible for a human,but some trees live for thousands of years and it doesn't seem that tumors are covering all of their parts...Why? | Plants have a decentralized anatomy. No organs that are explicitly vital to survival, and no circulatory system that allows cells from one place to another. They do get tumors from time to time, but since there's no means for them to metastasize they stay in one place and it's unbelievably unlikely for them to damage anything the plant actually needs to survive.
Because of that, plants are much more tolerant of genetic weirdness than animals are. | 8,522 | 7,831 |
ELI5: Why did evolution decide to require a male and female in order to reproduce, when single celled organisms successfully reproduced asexually? | Trying to understand the evolutionary benefits of requiring a male and a female when a satisfactory option (perhaps even better?) was already in place...
Wow... lots of responses quickly! Thanks guys... I dont know if I am breaking rules, but can i throw a curve ball out there? If multiple partners creates stronger/complex offspring... why hasn't (and can) evolution evolve to allow more than 2 involved... therefore further complicating and diversifying the offspring? | Sexual reproduction gives more variation within the species in a shorter timeframe. Variation can be a good thing.
Edit: to answer your second question, these sorts of things come about if the benefit outweighs the cost. So if it's beneficial to have a multi partnered relationship, outweighing the cost of complexity, it will eventually happen. The closest we have come that i know of are polyamory, polygamy, harems... You get the idea. | 72 | 73 |
Humans apparently share 50% of their DNA with bananas. We can all see the genetic differences but how do the similarities manifest themselves? | All multicellular organisms need to do some basic things like divide cells, have all the parts of cells, have cells stick to each other, decide how each new cell will function. For example, we all have structures in our cells called ribosomes that help make new proteins. The ribosomes of humans and the ribosomes of bananas do pretty much the same thing (even using the same code instructions for how to make new proteins).
The basic building blocks of cells are the same, with minor changes. So, the basic genetic code for these things is the same, with minor changes. | 2,665 | 2,738 |
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ELI5:If you are paralyzed from the neck down, why do your organs still work? | shouldn't your heart, lungs, intestines etc... stop receiving signals from your brain? | Even though your lungs are organs the way they work is a little different as they require help. The process of breathing uses skeletal muscle (The diaphragm) and thus has no "Automatic" control. There are 2 nerves arise from up in the neck at C3-5 ( C3, C4 and C5 keep the diaphragm alive), there is one on either side called the phrenic nerves. If lets say a tumor on one side compresses the nerve this is reflected in one side of the diaphragm becoming paralysed.
Someone mentioned the heart. The nerves that supply the heart are NOT all directly from the spinal cord they come partially from spinal cord but also from two cords that run parallel called the sympathetic trunk. The heart is a weird one. If you removed all the nerves from the heart it would beat at around 100 bpm. So it takes nerves (these ones from the spinal cord) to slow it down. This is called a parasympathetic tone and comes from the longest nerve in our body called the wonderer (Vagus X).
Intestines are really weird. They are tricky to learn about and even harder to explain. Basically remember i mentioned the sympathetic trunk well that and the top and bottom of the spinal cord (Called the parasympathetic outflow) both help regulate a third nerve system called the enteric nervous system (ENS). The ENS is the one that regulates the movements of the intestines along with a few hormones e.g. motalin
Interesting bonus points: Stomach acid can be released via a few mechanisms but one way is by the same nerve that slows the heart. Years ago when people had stomach ulcers one of the treatments used to be to remove the nervous supply to the stomach and thus reduce acid secretions.
As for the Kidneys, Liver and Spleen the nervous supply is primarily to do with blood flow rather than function.
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ELI5: What is smoke made out of that makes ham and fish taste better? | Hardwoods (the type used for smoking ham, fish and other foods) are made up mostly of three materials: cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin.
Cellulose and hemicellulose are sugar molecules which, when burnt effectively caramelize to produce carbonyls. These provide most of the color components and sweet, flowery, and fruity aromas.
Lignin also produces a number of distinctive aromatic elements when burnt, including smoky, spicy, and pungent compounds such as guaiacol, phenol, and syringol, and sweeter scents such as the vanilla-scented vanillin and clove-like isoeugenol.
Since different species of trees have different ratios of components, various types of wood impart a different flavor to food. | 51 | 56 |
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Instead of the Universe expanding, could matter actually be shrinking? | Would the same characteristics of the universe not apply? Everything would be moving away from us rapidly, not because space is expanding, but because all matter is actually shrinking while the fabric of space stays the same? | You can build a model where it's true (technically, it's just choosing new spatial coordinates) but then the speed of light changes...
Imagine that you cut a stick at a length of 1 meter, using the definition of the meter (the distance light travels in roughly 1/30000000 second). You measure the distance to a distant galaxy and find that it's 10^23 times your stick (that's a long and impossible method, but that's not a problem with thought experiment). Then expansion happens. If you measure the distance to the same galaxy, you will find 2.10^23 times the stick.
The first interpretation is to say: the stick is 1 meter, so the distance increased from 10^23 m to 2.10^23. Cosmological distances change but the matter is staying the same.
Your interpretation would be: the distance used to be 10^23 sticks and now it is 2.10^23, if we assume space is not expanding, it means the stick is now half a meter long. Matter is shrinking!
Up to now, both interpretations are good and you can prefer yours if you want to keep cosmological distances constant. But...
We actually have a way to make a choice between these interpretations. We can get back to the definition of the meter, to see if the stick is now 1 or 0.5 m. So we measure the time light needs to go from one end to the other and we find it's still 1/30000000 s.
So in the first interpretation the stick is always 1 m, the speed of light is always around 30000000 m/s but cosmological distances increase with expansion.
In the second interpreation matter shrinks. The speed of light varied from 30000000 sticks/second to 60000000 sticks/second but cosmological distances stay the same. A varying speed of light is not very good but why not?
Actually, cosmologists can use both interpretations. The second one is called "comoving coordinates" (because it moves with the expansion) while the first is "physical coordinates" (because they are the ones that really matter for physics, like for the speed of light). | 20 | 21 |
CMV: There is an harmful tradition of "graphing by hand" in American math curricula. | This is not to say that understanding graphs, translations, and being able to visualize expressions visually are not important skills. They absolutely are and I would never dispute that. I also don't want to confuse graphs in math with graphs in science; science classes teach students how to create graphs from real-world data, label them, and extrapolate new data. I think that's a vital skill.
However, I question the practice of having students make graphs by hand more than once or twice. It's a separate issue, it's inefficient, and it wastes time and mental energy that would be better spent on other topics.
1. The common rationale is that students need to understand how modifications to a formula will transform a graph, but this is actually circular reasoning. Why do students primarily need to be able to transform graphs quickly? Because it helps them draw them faster. True, it is useful for students to know that the 3 in y=x^2 -3 will shift the graph 3 places down. But you could cover that in one lesson using a graphing utility where you simply have the students change random elements in their equations. The point here is, practicing drawing graphs to allow students to draw graphs faster is not a proper reason.
2. Students have near universal access to graphing utilities, so it is no longer necessary to graph by hand. Almost every student at the high school level, and a majority at the middle school level, owns or has access to a smartphone or computer. There are countless apps and web apps that allow for graphing.
3. Graphing by hand is inherently inaccurate, time-consuming, limited in scope, and generally just clunky. You will never draw a perfect graph, you'll never do it quickly, and you won't be able to see very far in your graph if you want to finish within a minute or two. The only real advantage anyone can cite is that if you can draw a graph, you can use one without your phone. Sadly for apologists, there are very few cases in which people don't have phones and also need to graph something. In addition, you *do* need technology to draw a graph--you need pen and paper. So there are few cases, if any, where drawing is the only option.
4. Proponents claim that graphing by hand helps you visualize graphs when you look at equations, but I've never seen any evidence that you can't achieve that ability through playing with a graphing utility. There is no reason to suggest that extensive graphing by hand has any unique benefit to visualization. On the contrary, graphing utilities reduce the need for visualization in most people.
5. You can achieve more practice in less time by using graphing utilities. In fact, I've seen games that challenge students to design graphs that go through certain points or meet certain criteria, and because the graph is created instantly, a student can instantly determine whether he or she was successful.
6. It's actually a disadvantage to *not* be able to use a graphing utility. Imagine if all math classes refused to allow students to use calculators because "doing arithmetic by hand strengthens understanding." The students who leave would be vastly less capable in the real world than those who simply take a second to whip out their phone and use a calculator. If graphing is a vital skill to the average Joe, and I'm not sure it is, well you'd better teach Joe how to do it with a computer.
7. The time and effort spent on graphing could be better spent on other concepts which actually are incredibly useful to the average person, like algebraic thinking. Spend time on word problems or introduce students to applied mathematics in physics or computing. Spend time on geometry that they could use to build something, or explain how scientists can somehow magically know where all the stars are and how big they are from light years away.
8. The students don't care about the graphing by hand. They don't want to make tables to find points. They know what the curve should look like. They know where vertices are on parabola or ellipses. They understand the concept, and making a graph is frankly beating a dead horse to them. The students who were interested in the class or homework become less interested, grades fall, and for what?
9. This is less of a topical argument and more of a general critique, but mathematicians fail to understand one basic concept, and that is that they are biased to all hell. Mathematicians and math teachers enjoy math and math classrooms (which are not the same thing). But they fail to understand other points of view, and often think those people uneducated as to "what math really is," and with a knowing smirk they dismiss such pragmatic questions such as "When will I ever use this?" That question is a valid critique regardless of the fantastical, masturbatory sentiments of mathematicians.
Please understand, I like math. Many students do. But I, and many students, hate math classrooms, because people apologize for old-fashioned traditions and the remnants of a classical education system which do not meet the needs of a modern society. I have yet to see ANY convincing proof that graphing by hand, which is but one of those traditions, is necessary or desirable in a modern classroom. Convince me otherwise, because I don't want to fight this fight. Being wrong means there's something wrong with me, not with the entire American education system. And I'd rather it just be me.
DELTA EDIT: I gave one away to /u/catastematic for his comprehensive address of all my points, and for his understanding of my perspective. Most comments in this thread seemed to revolve around my lack of study, a concept of me as merely complaining and trying to weasel out of math class, or support for the status quo as some golden standard of education. [Here is the comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/30vnnn/cmv_there_is_an_harmful_tradition_of_graphing_by/cpyogse) where I gave the delta and explain my new position, but you ought to read our whole exchange and the link that he put in his final comment.
Also, remember that CMV threads are sort of a team effort thing. Even if you don't individually get a delta, your points may have contributed to the discussion in a meaningful way. Some of them certainly did. Some certainly didn't, but they were in the minority. Thank you all for taking the time to debate a serious issue. | There's a significant amount of evidence that in general (not specific to math), students who hand-write note tend to retain information better than those who type notes. A comparison can be drawn to the practice of drawing out graphs by hand: Students probably retain and understand the concepts of graphing better when they do it out longhand.
Secondly, I'd say that the ability to draw graphs quickly using graphing calculators/programs could be a downside, as it encourages a sort of "guess and check" methodology to transform a graph, rather than developing any deeper intuition about what the equation actually means.
And finally, concerning intuition: With graphing programs, it's easy to view the graph simply as "a picture". But when you graph something longhand, you physically have to count out distance in x and y, reinforcing the physical relationship that the equation represents. Graphing by hand gives this deep, intuitive sense of what the equation represents (a relationship between x and y), whereas graphing by a program does not force your brain to make the same connection. | 21 | 22 |
ELI5: What happen between Half-life and Half-life 2 ? | I read somewhere that HL2 takes place 20 years after HL1, and I know there was some war going on Between the combine and the earth, but that's basically al I know.
what's the purpose of City 17? Why is Freeman so important? what's the connection between all of this and the events of HL1?
Sorry for my bad english.
| There's a lot of good information about this that can be gleaned by examining Dr. Vance's office at Black Mesa East during HL2. Basically, the resonance cascade of HL1 got the attention of the Combine, who invaded earth shortly after Freeman was put in stasis. They defeated all of earth's military forces in 7 hours (hence, the 7 Hour War). They proceeded to subjugate humanity and begin draining earth of resources, most notably its oceans, the results of which are plainly obvious in City 17 and the surrounding coast. Cut ahead some unknown amount time (Generally agreed to be about 20 years) and Freeman returns.
City 17 is the seat of the Combine's power on Earth. It doesn't hold any particular significance than that, and in fact there are many other citadels like the one at the center of City 17 across Earth.
Gordon's importance isn't entirely clear yet. He's more of a symbol of human endurance against alien invaders to the rest than anything, though he's undeniably proficient with a wide variety of weapons. The G-Man's interest in him means that he probably has some other significance as well, but what that is has yet to be explained. (Though Valve has promised it will be explained more completely in the sequel)
EDIT: changed HL2EP3 to "the sequel," as it isn't clear at this point how exactly the sequel will be named | 122 | 172 |
ELI5: What is an "Agile" environment? | Agile can be summarised very briefly:
* Only work on the most important things at any given point in time
* Break those things into small bite-sized tasks for individuals to work on autonymously
* Catch up for about 10-20 minutes every morning on progress
* Meet at the end of a set of 'things' to plan the next set of 'things'
Edit: As someone pointed out the flavour of Agile here is Scrum. Agile broadly can be summarised by the first two bullets. | 781 | 931 |
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ELI5: Why does it seem like some colors look good together and others clash? | As with most things dealing with human perception, there is probably an evolutionary basis for what colors look good together (for humans at least). Perhaps during hunter-gatherer times, certain color combinations in nature would indicate whether food was fresh or, if it was unsafe to eat. There are probably many factors, but it's important to remember that 'colors' are just the way our brain intereprets light wavelengths in our visual spectrum, and color combination preferences that look good to us might look very bad to other species based on how their perception of contrasting colors contributes to their evolutionary fitness. | 24 | 68 |
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AskScience AMA: We are scientists in the food and feed laboratories that test imported products for dangerous pathogens as well as illegal dyes, metals, antibiotics and more. Ask us anything! | We are scientists at state food and feed laboratories. Among other things, we [test products imported into the US](http://www.aphlblog.org/2013/11/whats-hurting-the-dogs-ny-lab-searches-for-the-answer/) for dangerous pathogens as well as illegal dyes, metals, antibiotics and more.
In addition, we work with the Association for Public Health Laboratories ([APHL](http://www.aphl.org/Pages/default.aspx)) to assist food and animal feed testing laboratories to achieve, enhance and/or maintain accreditation to ISO/IEC 17025:2005. This accreditation is key to creating a national integrated food safety system. *[Accreditation Support for Food and Animal Feed Testing Laboratories](http://www.aphl.org/aphlprograms/food/laboratory-accrediation/pages/default.aspx)*
Want to hear more about our work and the fascinating things we’ve come across?
**We will be back at 10 am EST (7 am PST, 3 pm UTC) to answer your questions, Ask us anything!**
We are:
**Cynthia Mangione**, BA
Food Laboratory Specialist 2 – Microbiology QAO
Food Laboratory Division
[New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets](http://www.agriculture.ny.gov/)
[Proof](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthia-mangione-a7a28375)
**Stephanie Brock**, BS
Radiation Health Supervisor
Radiation/Environmental Monitoring Section
[Radiation Health Branch](http://chfs.ky.gov/dph/radiation.htm)
[Kentucky Department for Public Health](http://chfs.ky.gov/dph/)
[Proof](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-brock-806b2131)
**Edit: Our colleagues had various emergencies and are unable to participate today. Yeah, we're disappointed too. We do have some others on speed-dial if we need to phone a friend! Hopefully we can still answer all the questions you have and/or point you in the right direction.**
Edit: And we're off! Thanks so much for having us! | * Is there anything we should worry about when shopping on ethnic markets besides obvious things like expiration date?
* If you could give one food advice to the world, what would it be?
* Please complete the following sentence: DO NOT EVER EAT _______ | 185 | 2,514 |
ELI5: Why are CPUs/Processors so small? Couldn't we double our processing power / GPU by increasing the size of the chips? | I wouldn't mind twice the CPU/GPU size for a gaming PC | You can improve processing power by increasing the size of the chip, but there are some issues, and you won't necessarily get twice the processing for twice the size.
The biggest issue is cost. Cost of a chip increases faster than the size (due to the higher chances of a defect). So a chip 2x the size costs more than 2x the $$$.
Another issue is the I/O bottleneck. Processing speed can be limited by how fast information can be delivered to or sent from the processor. So to double the amount of processing power, you might need to increase the I/O speed or number of signals, both of which are going to have cost impacts and possibly impact the size of the package.
If you're going to double the size of the chip to get more processing, you're probably going to add more cores (and cache memory). That means that what you are working on must be able to be split between multiple cores efficiently. Sometimes this is true, sometimes it isn't.
Hot hot hot! Microprocessors get hot, and increasing the size of the chip increases the amount of heat you have to be able to dissipate. So the thermal solution used is going to have to be more capable, which usually means bigger and more expensive. Of course, along with the heat comes the power delivered. The power supply needs to be able to provide the required power, and the motherboard needs to be able to deliver it without causing noise or ground bounce issues.
All of these things are problems that can be overcome. All you need is money. | 19 | 15 |
ELI5: Why is there a standard arrangement of the numbers on a game die? | Some arrangements of numbers keep the extremes from clumping up on one side of the die, which if the die is unbalanced, would mean significantly higher or lower averages if rolled a large number of times. Though with dicemaking techniques available today, most dice are going to be mostly fair for most practical purposes regardless of pip arrangements, so it's nowadays mostly due to tradition and symmetry/aesthetic. | 27 | 51 |
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ELI5: Why does mold grow on overripe fruits and not while fruits are ripening? What stops the mold from forming at an earlier stage? | Plants defend themselves actively against molds and other pathogens by producing substances thet either kill or doesn't allow to grow the mold, but for this the fruit must be able to communicate with the plant to tell it "send help". Once the fruit falls from the tree or is so ripe that the communication paths do not work, pathogens win. | 45 | 57 |
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ELI5: How does Google have a searchable version of the internet that isn't the same size as the internet? | I just what how can this machine even work what is this a school for ants? | In the same way a book has a index which is much smaller then the size of the book but allows you to find which page something is on, Google has a index of Internet.
First of all the Google Search Database does contain a large portion of the text of the internet but is less concerned with the video, and pictures which is where most of the actual size comes from.
It then creates a index of the data allowing the search engine to quickly search the internet, and then compresses the crap out of the webpage making it small and manageable enough.
| 30 | 41 |
CMV: All Political Campaigns in the United States should have EXTREMELY strict spending caps | By extremely strict, I mean $500,000 for House and Senate campaigns and $10 million for presidential campaigns. Why so low? Because with how high campaign spending currently is, massive corporations are able to buy political influence.
For instance, corporate campaign spending holds up subgovernments called [Iron Triangles](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_triangle_(US_politics)). Iron Triangles political structures that consist of an interest group or corporation, the Congressional subcommittee related to that group, and the executive branch agency that’s supposed to regulate said group. Corporations promise campaign donations for Congressmen in exchange for lax regulation. Congressmen promise increased funding for the federal agency in question in exchange for law enforcement that will benefit the corporation, and in turn the political campaigns of the congressmen. The federal agency promises the corporation lax enforcement of already lax regulation for corporate support of that agency via lobbying or higher paying jobs within the corporate world (known as the [revolving door](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)). An example of an iron triangle at work is the [fueling of the opioid epidemic](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/ex-dea-agent-opioid-crisis-fueled-by-drug-industry-and-congress/). Big pharma was able to coerce congress and top officials at the DEA to look the other way while the industry was flooding the country with pills. How? Because all parties benefited through this iron triangle. Corruption like this would be abated if campaign spending weren’t so high. With such strict spending caps, corporations wouldn’t be able to buy influence in politics. As evidenced by Bernie Sanders, who raised [$20 million](https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/04/02/bernie-sanders-raises-18-million-in-first-quarter-of-2020-presidential-campaign.html) almost exclusively from small donors, corporate millions would simply not be needed to reach such strict spending caps.
“But wait”, someone might say. “All that campaign money is spent for a reason. Ads and rallies cost a lot.” And to that I ask... why the fuck are constant ads and rallies needed in the first place? They’re literally just echo chambers. Any asshole with shitty views can sound good in an echo chamber. All that’s really needed in a campaign cycle are debates. Because if your ideology can’t hold when challenged, it’s flawed. Campaigns should consist of initial ads/rallies to get a certain amount of supporters to qualify for the debates. After the debates commence, no more ads or rallies should be needed. Winning a debate will be a candidate’s ad/rally. Instead of spending ridiculous amounts on TV ad space, candidates could take a fucking bus to the debate and project their ideologies to the nation for free. No more exorbitant spending on useless echo chambers.
All you corporate lobbyists out there, change my view. | This would favor candidates with pre-existing name recognition: incumbents and celebrities. Why should the limit be on campaign spending, and not on campaign donations? Wouldn't it make just as much sense, if not more, to limit the amount that companies and individuals can donate to a campaign. That way, if 20 million private middle class Americans want to donate 5 dollars a piece to Candidate A they can, but if Exxon wants to donate the same hundred million to Candidate B they can't buy the same amount of influence? | 22 | 49 |
[Tunak Tunak Tun - Daler Mehndi] Who are the four magical men and what is their mission on Earth? | They are the anthropomorphic embodiments of the Classical Elements, the avatars of Nature itself. Petty dichotomies like good and evil, or light and darkness, are irrelevant to them, as Nature is an impartial and ultimately *amoral* force. Their sole purpose is to keep the natural order of things upon Earth in balance.
Tunak Tunak Tun is an incantation used by earthly priests to channel their energy in nature-magic ceremonies. | 109 | 227 |
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What exactly is Effective Altruism and why is it controversial? | Looking for a basic rundown of the concept and the controversy around it, not really up to speed in this area. I get it has some relationship with longtermism, which I think I have a reasonable handle the basic concept of, but otherwise I’m out of the loop here. | Broadly speaking, Effective Altruism is an institutional movement concerned with encouraging people to commit to promoting the good, as the good is understood according to a broadly utilitarian account, and to using considered measures of efficacy -- by this standard -- to determine which charitable ends to commit themselves to.
Partly this is controversial on the grounds that many people think utilitarian accounts are insufficient or just bad accounts of the good.
Mostly, however, Effective Altruism has invited controversy by an increasing proportion of its members directing its aims toward unusual goals that are not normally regarded as meeting the aforementioned criteria as effective goods, but which its members feel intuitively are such important goods that they trump these considerations. For instance, Effective Altruism has often promoted GiveWell as a standard of measuring the efficacy of charities, but where GiveWell recommendations contradict the intuitions of Effective Altruism members, they've not hesitated to argue for simply disregarded these recommendations. This disparity is further underscored by the unusual culture which has become associated with many Effective Altruism members, where their intuitions favor particularly unusual projects as charitable priorities.
For instance, GiveWell, and on this basis Effective Altruism, has traditionally argued for the efficacy of anti-malaria interventions as particularly effective forms of charity. But Effective Altruism, in these cases in opposition to GiveWell recommendations, has increasingly prioritized peculiar projects like concerns that an AI overlord will become the dictator of the human race and exercise near-supernatural powers over them, or concerns that perhaps electrons in the depths of space by sheer coincidence organize themselves into structures that through some currently unknown means experience unprecedented suffering, as being vastly more important than any concern we have with the health and wellbeing of living people. This is controversial in the sense that many people regard such priorities is wildly ill-considered, on the grounds that we have little reason to think that anything like these things are happening, and that even if they are happening none of the charities Effective Altruism supports give any indication of being able to do anything about it.
In objection, proponents of these priorities use arbitrarily chosen figures to promote their decisions: for instance, they ask us to suppose that the unprecedented suffering of spontaneously organized electron systems in the depths of space is a trillion times worse than the worst suffering of all humans we could do anything about; in that case, they reason, even if there's only a one in a million chance that this could ever happen, and even if there's only in a one in a million chance that we could ever do anything about it even if it did happen, that still makes it as much a charitable priority as is addressing that human suffering. And on this basis, the reasoning goes, we have as much reason to give as much money to anyone even considering the problem of suffering electrons, as we have to give to people doing things like combating malaria. And many people regard this kind of reasoning as arbitrary and spurious. | 111 | 81 |
CMV: Ghosts don't exist | Science tells us that once we die, we cannot come back to life (excluding the exceptional cases of people coming back to life a couple minutes after their death). Our body decays and our brain too. Our "soul", i.e. memories, ideas, thoughts, knowledge, etc. disappear. And there is no scientifically rigorous way to assert that the mind somehow survives and continues to exist in the world.
All alleged pictures and videos of ghosts can, I believe, be explained by logic, whether it is optical illusions/defects on the camera, stuff that looks like a ghost, smoke, combination of air and light in special ways.
Moreover, to my knowledge, no one able has been able to photograph or record a ghost regularly; the only documents we have are 1-time shots. If ghosts existed and wanted to communicate with us, they would manifest themselves more often, and we would have ironclad proof of their existence. This is not the case (hence the CMV). If they existed but didn't want to communicate with us, why would they "scare" people and be in settings where people are likely to notice them?
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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!* | Let's start with your basic premise. "Science has proven that...". Science doesn't work that way. Science is ever changing and is not immutable. Science is a great way to explain things, but can be changed based on data as it is discovered. A "soul", for lack of a better term, is not something that science can either prove or disprove at this time. We do not have the technology or understanding to do so.
Now onto your multi conversationalist ghosts. What makes you presume that they are trying to communicate with us? Could it not simply be that they exist like any other animal? The gorillas which were no more than folk tale until a century ago were much the same. People would bring photographs back and it was explained away. They couldn't exist, people would argue. Scientists would agree. Then they were discovered and their habitat founded.
To state with absolute certainty that ghost don't exist, is anti-science. A better way to say is that you do not believe ghosts exist based on what little data we have. Take some other scientific truths and replace ghost for them. Aliens exist. We know this because science has concluded that they should based on the near infinite amount of universe that exists. Does this mean we can definitively state that Aliens exist? No, we have no evidence to show that they do. Nor do we have any that they don't.
What about Bigfoot? Could a small tribe of human sized apes live on Earth without having been detected like the gorillas previously mentioned? A small tribe of 20-50 that have near human intelligence and avoid contact with humans? We have no evidence that disproves their existence but none that proves it either.
The short answer here is that, if you believe in science, you should neither believe that ghosts exist nor believe they don't exist. You should believe that there is enough scientific evidence that they don't exist but remain open to the possibility of their existence if proven otherwise. | 441 | 607 |
What is the psychology behind ruminating on negative thoughts? | A common feature of depression or anxiety. Thinking about sad thoughts or worrying almost feels good or addicting. Why is that when it obviously is bad and makes us feel worse? | Basically, we are programmmed to solve problems (problems involve negative thoughts/worrying/stress), it may seem paradoxical, but we even like it, a lot, because it helps us function in our life, it's beneficial for our survival as a species. If we participate in the process and solve the problem (get the desired result), our brains produce hormones that make us feel good and make us want to solve more problems. That's why it feels addicting. We even have more negative thoughts than positive, and remember negative experiences more vividly, because of the reason above (with the exception of traumatic experiences, because it's too overwhelming for a person to handle it properly). The problem is (pun intended), when it is too much, it becomes anxiety/depression. Hope this helps to clarify it :) | 29 | 36 |
ELI5: Why do you need a NASA lens to record candle lit scenes on film, yet the human eye is as small as a mobile phone camera and can see low lit scenes just fine? | Our brain is incredibly powerful and can 'compute' the dynamic range and the white balance of everything we see. Even the the most expensive sensors on the best cameras available today can't recreate the wide dynamic range our eyes do for us, at least not without combining multiple images.
Example. When driving through a tunnel as you approach the end your eyes see fantastic detail in the tunnel around you, AND in the bright outside the tunnel in front of you. Now try taking a photo of that (passenger!!) and see that you either get detail in the tunnel and super overexposed outside, or detail outside and underexposed inside.
One day cameras may reach this level but not for a long while. | 48 | 69 |
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[General Sci-fi / Fantasy] Why do warrior societies tend to have a "whoever kills the leader becomes the leader" rule? Why not something more pragmatic, like "whoever kills the leader's killer becomes the leader"? | One thing that's usually hidden is the 'unspoken social contract' of how and when you can challenge someone to become leader. It isn't just that the leader was killed, it was that someone was bold enough, confident enough, and strong enough to actually do the challenge. | 152 | 144 |
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ELI5: Spirits | What is the difference between popular spirits such as whiskey, scotch, bourbon, and rum?
Also when a scotch or whiskey is 'single malt', what does this mean? | There are a few basic differences. To make a spirit in the first place, you have to start with a base product. This can be a grain, as is the case with whiskey, or can be a fruit, such as grapes in brandy, or can be molasses from sugar cane, such as in the case of rum. Where you are in the world is likely going to dictate what base product you would use to make your booze.
The next thing to consider is the type of still you're using for distillation. Some people like to use traditional copper pot stills, which give spirits kike Scotch or Bourbon a nice heavy, rich flavor. Other people, like vodka producers or Canadian whisky makers, like to use special column stills that specifically strip out as much flavor as possible, leaving only ethanol.
The last major thing to take into account with spirits is the aging process. Many spirits are put into barrels to take on rich flavors over time. If this barrel is brand new and heavily charred on the inside, it will affect the distillate differently than a barrel that has previously been used for aging something else, like Sherry.
Where the barrel is aged also affects flavor. A barrel will age more aggressively in a climate that changes from extreme hot to extreme cold, like Kentucky. Scotland is more moderate in temperature, so barrels there age more gracefully over long periods of time.
"Single Malt" simply means that all the whiskey in your bottle came from the distillery on the label, vs. a blended Scotch, which could come from multiple distilleries in Scotland.
| 19 | 30 |
ELI5: Why is a small amount of inflation considered "good" for an economy? | I mean, it's pretty obvious why large amounts of inflation are bad. But it's much less intuitive why some amount of inflation is considered "good." Does that help money move around somehow? Or are people more motivated to spend because the value of their savings diminish over time? | Small amounts of inflation are good for the economy because it encourages investment. If you have a large sum of cash, it's losing value every day (slowly, but it's still happening). If you want to make the most out of your money, you'll recognize that you need to to put into an investment fund of some sort so your stored cash doesn't lose value. Or you'll want to buy something with it, since given more time, the same item will be more expensive. Investments and purchases are needed to keep the economy churning.
If deflation is occurring, then it's a good idea for you to sit on your big pile of money Scrooge McDuck style since it's because it's worth more every day. If everyone does this, the economy stagnates. | 66 | 61 |
CMV: Exams should utilize multiple choice less often | I mean the issue is that multiple choice oftentimes encourage students to cram, memorize and regurgitate rather then learn. In certain subjects multiple choice is fine when you cannot just come to the correct answer by guessing or using process of elimination (or by memorizing everything before the test and regurgitating it on the test).
I feel that multiple choice tests doesn't necessarily measure how well you're learning as well as how deep you're learning. It does not necessarily tell you how well you're able to apply the info or to seen connections between pieces of information. It does not tell you whether or not you have the skill set of applying the info or to figure things out. All because you score well on a multiple choice test doesn't necessarily mean that you understood the information or actually learned the info well. Learning involves the ability to apply and see connections, or to have a deep understanding over the issue or else you aren't actually learning (instead you're just memorizing).
So to sum it all up, it does not necessarily provide students a way of demonstrating their knowledge and what they're learning. It does not measure understanding, instead it measures memorization.
Another issue is theirs's a higher chance that a person would be able to guess things correct based on intuition and process of elimination. For example a lot of multiple choice tests has only a limited amount of answers and the person could easily eliminate some of them due to how silly they are. Because of the limited amount of answers their's a higher chance for a person to guess something correct.
Multiple choice tests also doesn't necessarily even measure how well you retain info, as sometimes you can answer a question correct with only a vague memory of something and the answers provided that you have to choose from may provide a hint to the true answer of the question.
I think tests should be more short answer and analysis and less multiple choice. | Multiple choice is so that teachers can grade all the scores without being biased. With multiple choice you are either right or wrong, but with word problems the teacher could be strict or not, or the teacher could even be wrong. It also takes more time for the teacher to mark. | 963 | 1,223 |
What was it like preparing your first semester's worth of lectures? | I'm considering becoming a lecturer in the future, was wondering what it's like.
Do you normally have to start from scratch when preparing for lectures? Or did you have a contact from whom you received some help?
How long did it take? | The first time you teach a lecture course it is a huge amount of work. Multiple hours of preparation for every hour of lecture. This is the case even if you have some kind of textbook or other materials (e.g., someone else's lectures) to base it on, assuming you aren't just doing a complete copy-paste job (which makes for bad teaching). It's a major endeavor.
After that, though, the preparation for subsequent years is much less — looking over, making some changes to what worked/didn't work (keep notes!), adding new things, etc. But there's no way around the fact that the first run take a lot of work, as it probably should: you're figuring out for yourself how you want this class to be, and even with the help of others that's going to be a lot of work. | 56 | 42 |
What's the biological advantage of metamorphosis/pupating if the process is so energy-consuming (destroying the entire body in the pupa and rebuilding it again, rather than simply growing up) and vulnerable? | Not to mention leaving the pupa immobile and completely vulnerable for long stretches of time.
Why do almost all flying insects start as grubs, then mature to have wings, rather than just mature to have wings without pupating (like birds)? | The caterpillar has low mobility and can focus on eating plant food, while the butterfly can live on nectar and because of its high mobility the offspring can be spread in a wider area. So a single specoes can benefit from two different niches. | 25 | 64 |
CMV:Anyone over 70 shouldn’t be able to run to president no matter the party | CMV:Anyone over 70 shouldn’t be able to run to president no matter the party
Sure they have life experiences but those life experience where in a completely different time so those life experiences are not worth as much and being that old can have so many other problems such as ability to make rational decision.The reasoning behind this is that being over 70 you had most of your life experiences when you were younger and in ur 30s,40s,50s which was 20,30,40 years ago the world was completely different back then so those life experiences are not of much value to you trying to be a president in the current times. While I don’t think a super young person like 20,30 should be able to be president we need people in there mid 40s,50s because they are still in touch with what’s going on in current times and can relate to the current public | Consider a few things:
1. The experience of "time of life" is just as significant as when in history your time of life occurred. The 40 year old has absolutely no experience being a 50 year old, a 60 year old and so on. The 70 year old has at least experienced the world the 40 year old knows, but the 40 year old has never experienced _being_ 50,60 or 70.
2. "the current public" includes 70 year olds, doesn't it?
3. Only a very young person would see right now as "completely different" than 40 years ago. The 70 year old has perspective where they are able to see the commonalities across the time, apply failures and successes from what would be multiples of experience of the young person. There is _certainly_ more in common across these years than there is difference, but I'd not expect a young person to have the experience to see that :)
4. If this is true and you're compelling the voters should determine this, not a declaration.
5. We should take great evidence in the fact that young people tend to vote less. It's the 65+ group that votes the most. This alone tells us something about age and wisdom, certainly wtih regards to politics. But...hey...I'd happily cede the argument here if you could get younger people to vote. Political participation increases with age, nearly uniformly, so...one way to create the change you want is TO GET OUT AND VOTE. | 16 | 59 |
Eli5: How did the Romans do complex mathematical calculations with Roman numerals and without using zero? | The Romans mostly used math for practical purposes...accounting, construction, engineering. And Roman numerals don't have place meaning...an M is 1000 no matter where it is. As a result, they didn't really need an explicit zero.
And addition, subtraction, and multiplication in Roman numerals isn't hard. Somewhat tedious if you're doing large values, but once you're used to it not really any worse than memorizing times tables (which you don't have to do for multiplying Roman numbers).
Division does suck...but they had abacuses. And abacuses inherently do place-based numbers. So if you needed to do "heavy" math you'd just use an abacus and that takes care of most of what makes it look like it would suck if done by hand.
Uncoincidentally, the Romans didn't do much with pure mathematics. But that wasn't what they were trying to do either. | 217 | 171 |
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ELI5 Why do probiotic supplements need to be taken daily? | Surely if you are adding 1 - 50 billion new bacteria to your gut you shouldn't need to do this daily. How fast are they dying? Is it due to factors like high amounts of sugar, yeast and stress in people's lives that make it advisable to take a daily probiotic?
Edit: Thank you all for your answers. It seems it is a much more contentious subject than I first thought. | Your gut is a class that has a session everyday. Your native flora are the students that show up to class each day.; they all have their preferred seats, and they won’t give them up without an argument. The probiotics are the new kid; in order for him to earn a spot he has to be consistent. He has to show up at the right time and sit in the right place, maybe taking a seat from someone who has been slacking on attendance.
Your gut flora is well established, taking advantage of every niche. In order for a new species to take hold it has to ~~overpower~~ slide in next to the present bacteria, and that won’t happen with just one day’s dose of probiotic | 285 | 104 |
If plants are constantly exposed to the sun, why don't they develop cancer? | Is there something special about plant cells that shields them radiation that is harmful to humans? It it possible for a plant to "develop cancer" or any sort of harmful mutation? | Plants do develop cancer. But their lack of a circulatory system makes cancer not very harmful to plants. Note that, in humans, cancer is usually only deadly when it is able to spread through the bloodstream and start growing in many sensitive areas of the body at once (such as the brain). In plants, cancer just manifests as a local growth. | 330 | 213 |
Is it realistic to want to be interdisciplinary? | My favorite Wikipedia pages are the ones that say “John/Jane Doe was a philosopher, scientist, historian, sociologist, mathematician, and artist.” Those are the kinds of people I look up to. Those are my role models.
But there’s a lot of information out there. More than there was 100 or 200 years ago. Which means it takes longer to become an expert in a discipline than it once did.
Are there still polymaths in the 21st-century? | Being a 16th or 17th century style polymath is difficult to impossible, but interdisciplinary studies are basically required at this point. Where do you draw the line between compsci, biology, and chemistry in genetics? Where is the line between biology, chemistry, and psychology when you're working in neuroscience? Toss in some physics for flavoring when you're talking about acoustics, or fMRI, or... | 137 | 137 |
ELI5: If science can now produce cuts of beef with a small tissue sample from a living cow, why can’t we also produce transplant organs from human tissue? | Also, how far away from that technology are we, in your estimation? | Producing meat (basically growing muscle) is a much easier process than producing other functional organs due to complexities of the organs. But that area is being actively researched and developed. We are expected to be able to grow organs in forseeable future as well. | 63 | 26 |
Why do some species use copper to transport oxygen through their blood while most other species use iron? | I'm under the impression that copper is less efficient at transporting oxygen, so why don't all animals use iron instead? Did some just never evolve to be able to use iron even though it would actually be better for them? | So, this is a very abbreviated explanation, but you have to think of it in terms of evolutionary problem solving. Life finds new answers to new problems all the time in evolution, and this is a great example. Consider that the main disadvantage to hemocyanin is that it does not bind the oxygen as effectively or plentifully, so it's just not as effective as hemoglobin. Hemocyanin also performs better in colder, less oxygen-rich environments, like the oceans. The groupings of creatures that use molecules other than hemoglobin to transport oxygen through tissues are much more primitive, and their bodies are much smaller (which is a big part of it). Hemocyanin is less efficient, but in a small body that doesn't have far to transport stuff, it can work just as well as hemoglobin. They don't need to evolve using hemoglobin, hemocyanin works fine for their use case. Hemocyanin users are also cold-blooded, so they tend to just need less oxygen in general because they're not thermoregulating. They are not lacking anything by using hemocyanin because it works perfectly for their life history.
Hemoglobin is something that evolved to solve two issues unique to vertebrates: thermoregulation and being big. Thermoregulation is a problem particularly in mammals; they expend energy and oxygen warming their bodies, therefore they need more oxygen to reliably reach their tissues. Hemoglobin is the answer to that problem. The other thing to consider is that a blue crab only needs the oxygen to make it a matter of inches, so the binding between the oxygen molecule and the metalloprotein does not need to be that strong. In a blue whale, the oxygen may need to reliably be transported hundreds of feet, so we need hemoglobin, to which oxygen bonds much more strongly, to make sure that happens. So yeah, animals using hemocyanin are not at any disadvantage because they don't NEED hemoglobin to meet their oxygen needs. For a smaller, cold-blooded creature hemocyanin is more than enough. Hemoglobin is necessary for animals that have a much higher oxygen demand and potentially a much farther oxygen transport distance.
And just for fun, hemoglobin (red blood) and hemocyanin (blue blood) are not the only options out there. There's also Chlorocruorins, used in many annelids which makes the deoxygenated blood green, vanabins in sea squirts that use vanadium as the metal binder (it doesn't work very well), and coboglobins which appear yellow (there's a few more, but those are the fun-colored ones). There is also a group of fish called cod icefish which live in environments so cold and so-oxygen rich that they don't use any oxygen transport proteins at all, so their "blood" is clear. But yeah, everything evolves to solve a new problem, and hemocyanin users have no need for hemoglobin, and hemoglobin users could never survive using hemocyanin. One is not "better" than another, they're just different use cases. | 21 | 40 |
ELI5: When there has been no rain & all the plants you want to keep around are dying, why do weeds thrive? Could we not "breed" that hardiness into our flowers & such? | For the plants that matter, like ones we eat, that kind of hardiness usually works against large yields. We need plants to perform very well and grow quickly to feed all of us. Weeds survive because they don't grow juicy fruit, or large edible roots. They just devote their all to... weedlike growth. | 72 | 142 |
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ELI5: How come when you have an upset stomach, it’s looser or watery stool? You would think things are being digested less, leading to solid in, solid out. | I’m sure there is a lot more too it. However, why would something spending less time in your stomach lead to it being more broken down? It also seems that the more upset your stomach, the more rapid and liquified your BM is. | A lot of water is added to the food you eat during the initial parts of digestion. Saliva, stomach acid, and the small intestine all add liquid to the food.
The large intestine is where the water is absorbed back into the body, and that takes time. If you're sick, the body doesn't want whatever made you sick to stay in your system, so it gets sent out faster than normal, so there isn't time to absorb that fluid back. | 51 | 22 |
How can anthropogenic climate change (global warming) cause the earth to dry up when more water becomes part of the hydrologic cycle as ice caps and glaciers melt? | I thought that the earth was more dry than it is now during the last ice age when more water was trapped in ice caps and glaciers and wetter during times when there was no permanent ice.
edit. I've seen predictions of the earth becoming drier with larger deserts due to climate change. | It would be easier to address the individual predictions- but while there may be a larger total amount of water in the surface oceans and greater surface area of water on the planet due to inundating low-lying coastal areas, the *distribution* of water may change in ways that greatly enlarge existing deserts and create more dry areas, especially in tropical and subtropical latitudes.
Climate is a dynamic system- as we add heat and water, ocean current and wind patterns may shift, changing precipitation patterns, rainfall, and local climates. The Sahara, Kalahari, Taklamakan, Gobi, and other deserts would likely expand. The disruption of the monsoon could massively dry out much of southern Asia. Central Africa could dry out as well.
However, other areas might see increased precipitation- while we can make predictions with some confidence, it is difficult to know exactly which effects will dominate in which areas, and how they will fully interact. Nevertheless, it is very easy to imagine a drier, more arid world with larger deserts despite a greater total volume of water in the water cycle- the problem is simply disruption of existing climate patterns causing the water to move elsewhere, destroying local biomes, agriculture, and making it much harder for people to live in those regions. | 12 | 30 |
ELI5: How are LED Bulbs of different Brightness/ Wattage made ? | An LED works by making electrons give up a certain amount of energy when they cross the diode. That determines the wavelength of light that is emitted. Every electron that passes through means that a photon will be emitted. If you want more photons, you need more electrons, for more electrons you need more power (higher wattage). Now you can't just take an LED and force more power through it, or else you'll burn it out, so if you want to make one rated for a higher wattage, you need it to be built to allow more electrons through. It's like a pipe, if you build it to hold more water, more water can pass through it, but if you over fill it, it will burst.
A simple explanation, how "long" an LED is determines the color, and how wide it is determines the brightness. | 47 | 57 |
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CMV: It would be benificial to start using the term 'GSM' instead of continually adding to the classic 'LGBT' | *EDIT: Thanks for the replies, everyone. My view isn't changed yet, because while there are some issues with the acronym GSM, I don't think they outweigh the growing problem of inclusiveness in the term LGBT+. Additionally, as I felt like I wasn't clear on this, but I feel that adding to LGBT+ makes it difficult to "advertise" because it alienates and makes it, admittedly, seem like every group is being pandered to individually.*
*EDIT 2: I feel like I've been unclear with this, but the way I would very specifically proposer introducing this term is to sparingly use the full term to help provide context, and then use the acronym to refer to the idea. My goal wouldn't exactly to eclipse the usage of 'LGBT' in a short period of time, but rather push towards using an end-all term to group together people with common goals/who are commonly oppressed. A new acronym isn't simply used without context, it's used to shorten up an already established idea. I don't think of GSM as an acronym, I see it as a change in descriptor to point more directly to the goals.*
*EDIT 3: As stated below, SGM (Sexual and Gender minorities) curbs the problem of GSM already being popularized through cell phones. So that's, in my mind, not really a valid reason anymore. Sorry :(*
*EDIT 4: I awarded a delta to SanityInAnarchy for a post that immediately made it clear that I was already excluding a group in my proposed solution. While adding to LGBT might not be good, on it's own it seems effective right now. Good night!*
Hello denizens of CMV. I've been lurking around LGBT spaces online for a while now, being a trans woman and all. I've not been involved much in LGBT spaces in real life, but I've been planning to at the start of my current school year (now that I'm presenting female full-time).
My main belief/view is that it is probably harmful to continue adding to the 'LGBT' acronym. For example, my university's pride office uses the term 'LGBTQPIA2+' to refer to GSMs (Gender and Sexual minorities). For those not in the know, that's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender/Transexual, Queer/Questioning, Pansexual, Intersex, Ally/Asexual, Two-Spirited, and more.
I think justice and awareness for all these groups is extremely important. Whether it's regarding bisexual erasure, anti-trans violence, coercive assignment of intersex people, and the media confusion (locally anyway, in northern Ontario) regarding two-spirited people. And obviously, that all goes far beyond gay marriage.
But there's a big difference between LGBT and LGBTQPIA2+. One of these acronyms is extremely effective for communicating what you're talking about, and the other looks like a mess. And while constant usage of the latter will eventually make that problem go away, if another group needs to be included for awareness reasons, we're back at square one.
However, using 'Gender and Sexual minorities' is automatically inclusive of anyone who might be a victim of the problems that LGBT people face. Additionally, it's much easier to include further groups. This is why I think the usage of GSM to refer to these groups is a much better way to communicate what any of these groups might be persecuted for, whether locally or worldwide.
As a side note, some people claim that the term GSM might be too inclusive of people who are into BDSM and the like. What's the problem with this? Awareness for any group is a good thing if it's used to curb public opinion towards a more positive light.
So anyway, Change my view!
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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!* | In addition to what others have said, GSM is an important acronym in another area. Particularly, it is the acronym used for the main cell phone technology in the world, the Global System for Mobile communications.
Because GSM is a widely used acronym already, it will create confusion because people will think you're talking about cell phones. | 81 | 254 |
ELI5: Why, when I have a cold, is my nose stuffy when I'm sitting down, but clears up when I'm walking? | It helps to explain the source of the stuffiness: blood capillaries that are leaky and cause the sinus tissues to swell and "stuff" your nose. When you become active (like walking), your sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous system becomes slightly activated and some epinephrine (adrenaline) is released into the blood stream. This epinephrine works to constrict blood vessels and raise your blood pressure. The blood vessel constriction in your nose stops the capillaries from leaking so much, and the swelling in your nasal tissues decreases.
This also helps explain why your nose gets more stuffy when you lie down, because it increases the blood flow to your nose, and the capillaries leak. Leaky vessels + blood pooling there => nasal congestion. If you're congested, sleep sitting up to help clear your nose.
Pseudoephedrine is a common medication that stimulates the blood vessels to constrict and stop being leaky, which explains why it works as a decongestant. | 76 | 263 |
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CMV: The concept of gender is irrelevant. | I'll start by laying out my thoughts and please correct me anywhere I am wrong. I know I have a lot to learn about this topic and I would really appreciate if someone could show me why and where my thinking is wrong if it is.
From what I understand: gender and sex are different. Sex is grouped into male, female, and sometimes intersex, and is determined entirely by biology. Chromosomes, genitalia, hormones, and the like. Gender on the other hand, exists on a spectrum and is determined by a person's internal relationship to their sex and the degree to which they conform to cultural stereotypes and expectations for their sex.
I understand that gender dysphoria is a real thing and that it must suck to feel completely alienated from your body and society's expectations of how you should act because of your sex. I also am hugely in favor in transgender rights and I would never want to take away basic human dignity and liberty from anyone. That being said, it is not physically possible to change sexes. A woman has a uterus. A male has a Y chromosome. It is just not possible to physically change your sex. If that gets me downvotes or is a point of contention in any way, seriously people have lost their minds. That should not be controversial. This is not hate speech and I am tired of being labeled as a bigot for saying that. That is part of the reason I made this post. I really am trying to understand the other side but there are just some things I can't get down with like the outright denial of biological fact followed by accusations of bigotry.
If you still reading, thank you, but the difficult part is not over yet. It's about to get worse. I know how terrible this may sound to people and I really want my mind changed so I can understand this topic, but as it is now I have just learned to shut my mouth when this comes up.
Here it is: I believe that transgenderism is a delusional state of mind and it makes no sense whatsoever to me the degree to which it is accepted, respected, and encouraged. No matter how much a person who is a biological male wants to believe he is a female, he is not. No matter what modifications he makes to his body, he is not a female. I will call him/her their preferred pronoun, I will respect him/her, because that is the polite and kind thing to do. I will not judge him or her based off of this. But really I cannot understand how things got to this point where we openly accept and encourage a literal delusion. To me it is identical to a white person believing they are black and then trying to act like a black person and color their skin. That is horrifically unacceptable but somehow gender transformations have become mainstream. I would really appreciate an explanation of how transgenderism is OK but transracialism isn't. I fully accept transgender people and their rights. If that is what they have to do to be happy, I am all for it. I love them and respect them the same as I would anyone else. But really I just do not get it.
Here's another thing I don't get which ties into the title of this post. Gender is a cultural construct, it exists on a spectrum, therefore there are a myriad of gender identities on this spectrum one can have. But you know what else is a cultural construct? Nearly everything humans do. I do not understand the hyperfocus that has been applied to this one aspect of human relations in our culture. Let's take an example. In some cultures, eating meat is forbidden. In others, it is a staple of the diet. You could now say that eating or not eating meat exists on a socially constructed spectrum. Another example: some societies encourage alcohol, music, and dancing, and others forbid these activities. If I enjoy these activities more or less than the cultural mainstream, am I now given an identity on a spectrum? Some cultures have tight familial connections and some do not, do these traits exist on a spectrum that is worth discussing the same way we discuss gender identity and the gender spectrum?
In every culture there will be a mainstream expectation of behavior for a group of people and there will be people who conform to that expectation and people who do not. This is a huge concept and is not confined just to gender. That's not to say that the concept of gender isn't worth talking about, it definitely is, but I feel like when we do that we often are prone to forgetting that social constructs stretch way beyond gender. Gender expectations change across time in the very same cultures. I do not understand why gender has become such a paramount topic of conversation today.
Thank you if you read this all the way through. I would appreciate any and all feedback someone can give me. I do not want to be interpreted as a bigot. If I am unconsciously a bigot, I would like to know about it. And I'll reiterate: someone please explain how transgenderism is different from transracialism. If I can get that then I can at least do away with the most offensive of my beliefs. Thank you.
| Just like doctors assign your sex depending on your genitals at birth, so too do you get assigned a gender and socialized as such at birth. Gender dysphoria comes from a misalignment with the *gender* assignment, not the sex assignment. No one is trying to change their sex, a trans man will continue to have the chromosomes of a biological women. What they are trying to change is their gender.
Yes, gender is a meaningless construct like race, but also like race, it determines a great deal about how people treat you and how you're expected to interact with others. It gets hyper-focus because it determines so much about your social interactions that you're probably blind to if you haven't experienced gender dysphoria. So by changing their physical appearance and taking hormones, they're going from one gender to another. Gender reassignment surgery (changing your genitals) is just another way that trans people can better fit the gender the feel more comfortable.
You're conflating sex with gender. | 53 | 81 |
ELI5: How much (aesthetically) will a child from one sperm vary from another? | In other words, of the millions (billions?) of sperm in the firehouse, how close in appearance would a child conceived between two sperm in the same.....load.....be if 1st and 2nd place to the egg were swapped. Got curious from the sperm over/underproduction ELI5. | There are a variety of factors that would effect the phenotype (physical traits) of a child from sperm to sperm. The most obvious one is of course that they could become either male or female. The next factor is the chromosomes they get from the father. There are 23 sets of chromosomes, two per set. This gives you 2^23 (~9 million) possible chromosome combinations that can be present in the sperm (including the variation of sex). Finally, there is a process called recombination, in which parts of chromosomes in a set will swap, leading to further variation. This gives huge variability to the inherited traits from a father from sperm to sperm. | 30 | 29 |
Math as synthetic a priori | I just had my first lecture on Kant. My teacher of course talked about the synthetic a priori, but only went on to talk about it in regard to Kant's description of space and time.
I remember reading about Kant asserting that synthetic a priori knowledge also presents in the form of math, for example. My teacher stated during the lecture that math is analytic a priori, as David Hume claims. I stayed behind after the lesson and asked him about it, but he didn't seem to agree that math can be viewed as a synthetic a priori.
Doesn't Kant indeed say that math IS synthetic a priori, and if so, is that view accepted in contemporary philosophy? | For Kant, mathematical judgments have an intrinsic connection to space and time. He thinks of math as involving geometry and arithmetic, and the basis of geometry being the quantity we apprehend as extension in space while the basis of arithmetic is the quantity we apprehend as extension in time. Accordingly, for Kant the question about the nature of math's bases becomes the question about the nature of our apprehension of the quantities of spatial and temporal extension.
So, on the basis of taking space and time to have an *a priori* source he infers that mathematics has an *a priori* source. But the nature of this *a priori* source, on his view, is not merely one of recognizing the content of concepts we already possess (like when we judge that a bachelor is unmarried), but rather has its basis in our capacity to synthesize spatial or temporal extension in order to arrive at propositions describing geometric or arithmetic quantities. So, by taking mathematical judgments to be acts of syntheses involved our apprehension of space and time, he takes them to be synthetic *a priori*.
I don't think that there's any consensus about the foundations of mathematical judgments these days; it was a heated dispute in the early twentieth century. On one hand, there was definitely opposition to this Kantian account, which argued in favor of an analytic *a priori* basis for math, and this has had a wide influence on how philosophers think of mathematics. On the other hand, one of the major proposals during the crisis about math's foundations, which remains a significant though minority interest among people working in this area, was deliberately modeled after Kant's view, which was articulated in a systematic way as a basis for thinking about and doing (it had some consequences for how math is done) mathematics--this is Brouwer's "intuitionism." | 13 | 21 |
AskScience AMA: Hi, I'm Stacy Konkiel, ex-librarian and expert on research metrics. Since 2008, I've worked at the intersection of Open Science, altmetrics, and academic library services with teams at Impactstory, Indiana University , PLOS, and now Altmetric. AMA! | Hi, I am Stacy Konkiel, Outreach & Engagement Manager at Altmetric, and I’m here to talk about whether the metrics and indicators we like to rely upon in science (impact factor, altmetrics, citation counts, etc) to understand “broader impact” and “intellectual merit” are actually measuring what we purport they measure.
I’m not sure they do. Instead, I think that right now we’re just using rough proxies to understand influence and attention, and that we’re in danger of abusing the metrics that are supposed to save us all--altmetrics--just like science has done with the journal impact factor.
But altmetrics and other research metrics don’t have to be Taylorist tools of control. I love the promise they hold for scientists who want to truly understand how their research is truly changing the world.
I especially appreciate the fact that newer metrics allow the “invisible work” that’s being done in science (the data curators, the software developers, etc) can be recognized on its standalone merits, rather than as a byproduct of the publication process. That’s been my favorite part of working for Altmetric and, previously, Impactstory--that I can help others to better value the work of grad students, librarians, data scientists, etc.
Today, I want to talk about better measuring research impact, but I’m also open to taking other relevant questions. There will also be some live tweeting from @Altmetric and @digitalsci and questions using the #askstacyaltmetric hashtag.
I will be back at 1 pm EDT (6 pm BST, 5 pm UTC, 10 am PDT) to answer questions, AMA!
UPDATE: THAT WAS A WHIRLWIND OF DATA! THANKS FOR JOINING I'LL BE ANSWERING MORE OF YOUR QUESTIONS OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS! I'M OFF TO GET A DONUT! ... | >I especially appreciate the fact that newer metrics allow the “invisible work” that’s being done in science (the data curators, the software developers, etc) can be recognized on its standalone merits, rather than as a byproduct of the publication process.
Could you please elaborate a bit here? In addition to publication counts, what are some other specific criteria/indicators that you use to quantify the impact of such work? | 17 | 1,441 |
ELI5: How do buffets stay in business? | It seems that people who eat a $5 buffet usually consume more than $5 of food. Why don't the buffets lose money? | In the food service industry, most of the costs aren't food costs, but rather operational ones. Electricity, rent, and the big one: payroll.
Buffets, being self service, are able to cut down on the cost of employees, as they don't have to hire servers. They can cut down (somewhat) on cooks because they're not cooking to order. In exchange is a minor increase in food costs.
Further, most buffets will buy lower quality food (the ones that offer higher quality food tend to be more expensive than $5), which makes a difference, but not as much of one as most people think.
Really, though, the big one is payroll. Not paying waiters makes a huge difference. | 438 | 438 |
CMV: More students should fail high school. | - http://m.imgur.com/POAeQNS
I put together this graph to illustrate a gap. Above you see a random sample of graduation rates. I just wiki'ed an alphabetical list of CA high schools. Graduation rates are high
Below you see results from the states Early Assessment Program (EAP). The EAP tests Juniors on college readiness. You see those scores in the toilet. For instance, my school just got an award for our high graduation rate from the State's Superintendent. It's at 97%. However, our EAP result for math sits at 8%. 8% of students are proficient in algebra 2.
- the argument not all kids should go to college. Okay...the first two years of college are high school level material; just faster, with a higher Lexile, and no high school supports. It's what high schoolers should know if there wasn't this culture of coddling supports.
- direct kids to the trades....okay. We ignore that many trades are requiring greater levels of education. Auto shop works on internal combustion engines. They need to learn about electric motors and computer brain boxes. Plumbers use algebra, and you should see the number of kids who fail basic algebra as Juniors. | I think it is important to talk about the signaling model of education in this context. Most employers don't care too too much about the specifics of what you learn in school. Some basics like literacy are certainly important, but a lot of stuff (European History) is not.
A high school diploma doesn't just say whether you learned stuff; it is an important signal of conformism and willingness to jump through arbitrary hoops. Most jobs involve a lot of conformism and arbitrary hoops. Showing you graduated high school or college indicates you are willing to conform and jump through hoops, which is very important to a lot of employers.
So in this sense, you're not really going through the process to learn specific knowledge or skills, but rather to demonstrate that you're the sort of person who will put up with this sort of stuff and still show up and put in enough effort to get a job done. | 117 | 276 |
ELI5: What is happening when something gets "sun bleached"? | For example, they say the flag the US planted on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission should be all white now due to "sun bleaching" what physics is happening here? | Ultraviolet rays cause damage over time, leading to breaking down the actual molecules of ink/dye/paint/etc that give something it's colour. Eventually all of the colour molecules are broken into smaller pieces and all colour is lost. | 36 | 41 |
Why some south american plants produce curare alkaloids, if those alkaloids are not absorbed via GI route and are only effective via parenteral injection? | Alkaloids are most commonly produced to protect the plant from parasites or animals eating the plant, but can have other roles as well (it's not a well settled question, in part because there are a LOT of different alkaloids).
It's not uncommon for alkaloids to have very different effects depending on what species ingests them - we see this with cocoa, for example, which is fine for human consumption but poison for cats and dogs.
I don't know the original biological role of curare alkaloids, but it's possible the organisms they're protecting against do not have the same barrier we do in the GI tract preventing the poison from entering the body (into the blood or hemolymph or whatever is relevant for the organism). Or the plant may just be relying on the alkaloid tasting bad, even if it isn't actually poisonous for the animals. | 102 | 427 |
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CMV: I don't think being against gay marriage necessarily makes you a bigot. | This is how Merriam Webster defines bigots:
>a person who hates or refuses to accept the members of a particular group
Over the past five years, gay marriage supporters have very successfully branded the opposition as bigots, intolerant and worse words. I support gay marriage (and am gay if that matters) but I don't believe that you're a bigot just because you're against gay marriage. True, they want to force their views on others, butt...
Forcing you're point of view on large groups of people is what the democratic party is all about. I'm 25. I haven't needed to go to the doctor since I was 14. Do I have the legal right to simply not pay for health insurance that I never use? Nope. Because someone forced their view on me through legislation for the greater good.
If you believe gay marriage should be outlawed for the greater good, that doesn't make you a bigot. Because just because you're against gay marriage doesn't mean you don't accept gay people.
Don't get me wrong, if you're screaming "god hates fags" at funerals then you're a bigot, but that doesn't represent most people against gay marriage.
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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!* | Find me a single reason to oppose gay marriage that is logically consistent, whose requirements the opposers of are equally adamant and determined to be applied to straight couples, and whose basis actually reflects reality. Do that and I'll admit that there are people who oppose gay marriage for reasons other than bigotry.
At the core of the opposition to gay marriage is that we should not extend the same rights, responsibilities and privileges that we (straight folk) enjoy. In other words, a refusal to accept gays as full fledged citizens. | 37 | 20 |
None of my internship interviews ask technical questions... Is this a bad sign for me? | On the internship hunt... and during interviews, I'm seemingly asked none, if not very small technical questions. I've had four different interviews, for positions such as Application Developer intern, Software Engineer intern, ect. and technical questions just don't come up. The only questions I've gotten was in one of them, I was asked what SQL does (Manipulates a database) and to write Hello World in Java (Glad my leetcode grind paid off here ya know)
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Just had another Software Engineering intern interview today, and again just no technical questions. Obviously some questions on some of the school projects and languages I'm familiar with, but other than that they've been purely behavior based.
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Is this the norm? I've been studying O-O concepts and leetcode grinding like crazy for every interview and I've never been asked anything like this | For internship and new grad interviews, this is more common. Mainly because not every company does the leetcode-style type interviews since many companies use these moreso to filter out a huge pool of candidates. But also without much experience, candidates are usually screened by just measuring how well this person could be to work with and mentor at this stage in their career. | 29 | 38 |
ELI5: Why do seasonal changes in weather make everyone sick? | I used to work in a pharmacy and every significant change in weather opened the floodgates of sickness: coughs, colds, runny noses, etc.
Why?
Also, what's the best thing to do to prevent or stop it? | Certain viruses and bacteria spread and multiply better in different conditions. People haven't been exposed to these diseases in months and thus may not have a high level of resistance, although they will likely build up a resistance by the end of the season.
Also, changing weather results in changes in human activity. People are more likely to go outside when it gets warm out, where they're exposed to pollen and other allergens (seasonal allergies are often mistaken for colds). When it gets cold out, people tend to stay inside in close contact with everyone else, which allows for easier spread of diseases.
Another point is that heating and cooling systems are turned on, and if they haven't been cleaned they can have buildups of allergens like dust or mold growing in them.
As far as prevention goes, the most reliable advice would be to practice good hand washing (including before meals whenever possible), get plenty of sleep (as a lack of sleep can weaken the immune system), and take allergy medication if you get any seasonal allergies. | 11 | 23 |
ELI5: Why do insurance rates go up after a car accident? Isn't that like casinos raising their house edge because you won? | Having insurance is like paying early for damages you assume you will have, right? Like a bet. It's not like you stop paying insurance once your total payments exceed the coverage, so why do they get to ~~raisin~~ raise the cost? It's like you're betting, and when you happen to win the insurers just change the rules so they still win. | Insurance is priced based on risk. If you live in an area with lots of tornadoes, you obviously will need to pay higher rates for that home insurance against tornadoes because the company is more likely to have to pay out your claim than if you lived elsewhere.
If you are involved in an accident, you become more of a risk. It's not just that they're trying to recover their costs, but also that you've identified yourself as someone more likely to be involved in an accident, for whatever reason (maybe you suck at driving, maybe you live in an area with lots of sucky drivers, maybe you drive only on days where everyone sucks at driving, etc etc). The company can't get so detailed as to identify the reason exactly, but it knows that drivers who are in an accident tend to also be in other accidents.
It goes away after awhile, though. 3 years, usually. The price drops as you get older, because older drivers tend to be safer (well older in the context from 18 vs 30). | 24 | 25 |
ELI5: Why do lions live in prides if cats in general are solitary animals? | EDIT: Wow, was not expecting so many responses!
This is probably a separate question altogether, but every pride I've seen in a nature documentary has one male and a bunch of females. Does that mean that there a whole lot of single males roaming the savannah? Or do these males necessary get killed off by other dominant males? Seems like that would create a bit of a gene pool situation, no? | They are different species which have evolved different patterns of behavior. Those behaviors persist because they are successful. A pride of lions, for instance, can bring down prey that would be difficult or impossible for a single lion to bring down.
Your house cat is not descended from a lion, or vice versa, though they share a common ancestor.
I will note, however, that cats do congregate into groupings at times, so called feral cat colonies, depending upon the availability of food. | 53 | 60 |
Volts, watts, amps, and how they work together | If you compare electricity to water, it works out like this:
**Voltage** is pressure
**Amperage** is amount of water per second
**Resistance** is the size of the hose
**Wattage** is the spraying power, which is the result of multiplying the pressure by the amount of water
**We can increase the voltage / water pressure one of two ways:**
1) We can decrease the size of the hose (increase the resistance) and keep the same amount of water per second (amperage)
2) We can increase the amount of water per second (amperage) and keep the same sized hose (same resistance)
**We can increase the amperage / amount of water one of two ways:**
1) We can increase the size of the hose (decrease the resistance) and keep the same amount of pressure (voltage)
2) We can increase the pressure (voltage) and keep the same sized hose. (same resistance)
**We can increase the wattage / spraying power** by increasing pressure (voltage), water per second (amperage), or both. | 22 | 16 |
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[WH40K] So what was the plan after humanity took over the galaxy? | What did the Emperor have planned once humans took over the entire galaxy? | Guide the natural evolution of humanity to a point where they would all be as individually powerful as he was. The Primarchs and the Emperor are genetic blips that show humanity what its own future contains. | 26 | 15 |
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