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Why are the cracks on glass opaque? | If the air is see-through, and the glass is too, why are cracks not? | Light moving between different mediums (air, water, glass) gets a little bit bent; this is why drinking straws look bent when put into a glass. When the glass pane is smooth, the bend is minimal, since it only transitions twice (in and out). When it breaks, the glass becomes super rough, and air and glass get jumbled up. Now light is making that transition hundreds of times, so it gets all bent out of shape. All of the colors sort of blend together, giving a ‘white’ appearance. This is also why snow is white.
Edit: Polar bears have black skin and transparent hair. | 388 | 475 |
CMV: Sandi Toksvig earning 40% of what Stephen Fry earned is not inherently bad | Sandi Toksvig has replaced Stephen Fry as host of the panel show ‘QI’. She had mentioned that she earns 40% of what Stephen earned for the same role, to the shock of an audience and many on the internet.
Here are two reasons as to why I don’t think paying her 40% is outrageous, and that I don’t think gender is the issue here:
•Stephen is incredibly more famous than Sandi, and a significant part of the pay will be based on the audience brought in
•It is not known whether she is referring to his starting pay or his final pay, which would make a drastic difference if it’s the latter
Edit: [Sandi’s statement](https://youtu.be/evcaQohPfqc) | I think the question that needs to be answered is: Has the viewership of QI dropped by 60% as a result of Sandi taking over?
Because if she's providing the same benefit to the show that Stephen did, then she should be paid the same amount | 21 | 74 |
[Fallout] How does a Pip-Boy collect data? | Well that sucks, you attacked by ghoul, clawing at your arm. Blasting it back with your shotgun you check your surroundings. You go to your pip boy and see that your arm is showing "78%"
How does it know that? How does it do this? How could it have that much power to quantify ones health into a number, or know your inventory? That would be painstaking to enter items manually considering the controls. | Small sensors monitor your blood pressure and heart rate while also checking for any signs of toxins within your blood compared to your baseline levels when you first put the pipboy on. Everything else is just contrivance of the medium | 37 | 58 |
ELI5: Why does an orchestra have many people playing the same instruments? How does it add to the overall performance? | Generally, the main reason is that having more instruments playing the same part creates a richer sound, but there are multiple reasons that vary for different instruments.
For example you have three trumpets, and they often play different parts (different melodies that harmonize with each other) but they can also play the same part, then that melody will usually be heard over the rest of the orchestra.
Now, the instrument that there are the most of in an orchestra is the violin. There are usually around 30 violinists. They are usually only divided into two parts (but can be divided further) so you often have 14 instruments on the same part. One of the reasons is as I've mentioned richness, but another is that brass instruments like trumpets are so much freaking louder than strings so having more strings creates a more balanced sound.
Edit: typical number of violins.
Edit 2: clarity | 9,793 | 10,393 |
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ELI5: How do antibiotics kill unwanted bacteria but not the body's own cells? | I know about enzymes and such in a basic sense, but the fact that an antibiotic actually *works* still doesn't quite make sense to me. Wouldn't we need a specifically engineered antibiotic for each strain of bacteria? Why does the antibiotic only harm bacteria? | This principle is called "selective toxicity".
It utilises the fact that bacterial cells are different from human/animal cells. Specifically, they have different biochemistry, different anatomy, etc.
For example, a very popular group of antibiotics called beta-lactams (an example is penicillin, but there are lots of synthetic variants) work by blocking the biochemical pathway that builds the bacterial cell wall. Because the bacteria cannot maintain or extend their cell walls, eventually the wall degrades and the bacteria die.
Other antibiotics affect different chemical processes. For example, the antibiotic tetracycline, blocks the process that bacteria use to translate their DNA code into protein manufacture. The ribosomes, the molecular machines that build proteins, are different between bacteria and mammals, so the mammal ribosomes are less affected (also bacteria actively pump tetracycline from outside to insude because the tetracycline tricks the bacterial molecular pumps which absorb nutrients, so the bacterial ribosomes get a much bigger dose than mammal cells, which don't have pumps which accept tetracycline). The other interesting thing about tetracycline is that it doesn't kill bacteria. It just stops them, or slows down, reproducing because it slows down protein production. This is still useful, because it gives the immune system time to catch up. | 15 | 35 |
ELI5:What is the psychology behind motivation?. | Motivation generally is about fulfilling one's needs. Maslow described these needs in terms of a Hierarchy of Needs that once you have satisfied the most basic need you are only motivated by the next until that is satisfied.
Roughly those needs in order of basic first are
* Physiological needs: Warmth, Food, Water, Oxygen.
* Safety: Free from risks of injury, bad health, abuse.
* Social: Love and Belonging. Association with others.
* Esteem: The sense of being respected by others.
* Self-actualisation: Reaching ones self defined potential.
So for example if the alternative is starving to death we are willing to put up and be motivated in pretty shitty jobs. Once food and safety are taken care of we may be motivated at work by team spirit and friendships. If we find love and belonging outside of work we may only be motivated at work if the job we are doing builds prestige or we find interesting intrinsically. In fact beyond a certain point salary is only motivating as a symbol of prestige if that is how you measure your esteem.
Loads more writing on this, as you can imagine a lot of Business Managers spend a lot of time looking for the magic formula. | 11 | 40 |
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ELI5: Why are vegetables and fruit so important for your diet? | Both veggies and fruits have a ton of vitamins that humans don't naturally produce. Several vitamins originate in plants, with the amount we get from eating meat being diminished by the animal in question using them.
Vegetables have tons of fiber, which is good for your digestive health because humans can't digest most fiber. This helps keep you more regular, as it increases the amount of solid excrete you make.
Leafy veggies are low calorie and high in vitamins, so you can eat a lot of them without it having a significantly effect on your weight, which is why people on weight loss regimens are told to eat more leafy greens.
Starchy veggies like potatoes have more calories while still being rich in vitamins, so they are a good alternative. However, once they've been processed they lose a lot of that health value, which is why potato chips and french fries aren't really great for you, especially commercially produced ones that are basically soaked in vegetable oil.
Vegetable oil, despite being made of vegetables, is pretty awful for you. Olive oil is almost always going to be better for you.
For fruits, they are in a strange spot. Most berries are basically balls of sugar, but they do have plenty of vitamins as well, so you should eat them but primarily as snacks. It is not going to be healthy once you pass your first bowl of strawberries, and fruit cups are generally a generous but good amount of fruit to eat. Citrus fruits are famous for being good sources of vitamin C(a deficiency of which causes scurvy), but you can get vitamin C just as well from broccoli, kale, and brussel sprouts.
Anyways just eat veggies. | 104 | 52 |
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How did scientist come up with and prove carbon dating? | So, as you may know, the number of protons in an atom determines what kind of element it is. In it's stable form, carbon has 6 protons and 6 neutrons, and is otherwise known as carbon 12. Nitrogen, the next element on the periodic table, is most stable with 7 protons and 7 neutrons, aka nitrogen 14.
Sunlight in our atmosphere causes atomic particles, like neutrons, to be blasted around (I can explain this more if you'd like). When normal Nitrogen 14 in the atmosphere comes into contact with a free flying neutron, it causes that nitrogen atom to gain the neutron, but also to immediately lose a proton. Since the atom now has 6 protons, it is officially carbon, but since it also has 8 neutrons, it is an unstable (and radioactive) form of carbon, Carbon 14. Carbon 14 behaves just like regular carbon, but since it is radioactive, it slowly decays into stable Carbon 13. This decay can be detected using a Geiger counter and its relative abundance can be quite easily measured.
Carbon 14 is generated in the atmosphere at a very constant rate, making it's concentration both in the air and inside every LIVING thing quite predictable (about 1 per trillion carbon atoms). However, when organisms die, they stop recycling carbon, so they no longer collect new Carbon 14. The Carbon 14 that they do have slowly decays, so the organism's concentration of the radioactive isotope is also slowly depleted.
Depending on when an organism lived (whether it's a tree 50,000 years ago or a squirrel 30 years ago) it will have some amount of Carbon 14 remaining. As such, the ratio of carbon 14 to stable carbon atoms can give us a very accurate measure of how long ago this organism stopped taking in new carbon (died). This is the basis of carbon dating.
TL;DR - carbon 14, a radioactive isotope of carbon, is generated at a constant rate in our atmosphere. Its concentration in the atmosphere is mirrored in all living organisms. When an organism dies, it's concentration of c14 slowly depletes. Depending on the ratio of remaining radioactive carbon to stable carbon, we can quite accurately estimate how long ago the organism lived. | 3,024 | 5,849 |
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Should I drop a class because of an American-centric professor? | On the first day of class for Intro to Political Theory, my professor conveyed that her class would be centered around American affairs, as the two hours, oddly enough, focused on contemporary American issues, which concluded with a blanketed assertion that the same issues apply to Western political thought throughout history. She also referred to the United States as being the "freest, richest" and generally best nation in the world.
Is it right to view this as a warning that the professor will not be objective throughout the course, or am I not giving this experienced professor of 20+ years not enough credit? | All professors and university instructors, in Political Science and its sub-themes, have an ideological perspective. From your perspective, are you going to drop an under-grad class because you dislike the prof's political leanings? Take the class and learn to deal with people with different political leanings than you have. You seem to be a first or second year under-grad. It could be difficult to finish your degree if the prof's political leanings drive your class choices. This is even more of an impediment if you plan on going to grad school, as by that time students should have developed the inter-personal skills to co-exist with different ideologies.
I like the fact the prof actually stated their position--I do the same, it's the only fair and transparent policy. | 70 | 37 |
How can I as a non-academic know if a book is widely used and well accepted by scholars? | I am referring to the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) area. | An easy way would be to track citation metrics. Search for the book in google scholar and look closely at the entries. That won't work if the book is very new as it takes time for research to get published.
Another method would involve searching for a review of the book in journals. Reviews are generally positive for academic texts, but it at least gives you more context. | 56 | 52 |
Why aren’t alcoholics all overweight? | Asking because I am wondering if alcohol metabolizes faster and thus .... doesn’t stick on to turn to fat?
If alcohol is generally high in calories (90 for a shot of vodka!!) why aren’t people who are addicted to alcohol heavier? Is it because of alcohol itself, or am I making a bad generalization. | Generally alcoholics are malnourished, and special precautions are actually implemented in hospitals to replace key nutrients like thiamine and folate before they can be fed or receive glucose/dextrose. The reason for this malnutrition is mainly behavioral, but is also physiological. Additionally, chronic alcoholism causes liver damage, which can lead to low protein states which may cause muscle/protein catabolism further refusing lean muscle mass.
Edited for inaccuracy | 72 | 35 |
How do you build large structures in violent water? | [E.g.](http://i.imgur.com/hCSs3.gif) | Concrete sets underwater, so from that perspective submarine and terrestrial construction techniques are very similar, provided the seabed is sufficiently stable. Piles can be driven traditionally, or by vacuum driving hollow piles into softer substrates. Work areas can be isolated with seafloor caissons if necessary. Otherwise work is conducted from barges where weather permits, or from jack-up platforms (minimal water plane area) if the sea is consistently heavy. | 104 | 203 |
ELI5: How government subsidies for commercial farms work. | This is a pretty board topic. Basically the idea is the government gives money to farms to ensure they continue to grow food.
Imagine this example, there is a really great year for farming and all the farms grow lots of food. This means there is a huge supply of food, but because of supply and demand it means the food sells for a lower price than usually. This could lead to a lot of farms going out of business because they couldn't sell enough food to make ends meet. Next year you have a really bad year and all the farms left over produce a small amount of food. Well now since so many farms went out of business last year there isn't enough food to feed everyone and people starve.
This is the point of farm subsidies, to make sure that enough farms survive when food is plentiful and cheap that when there are hard times there will be enough food for everyone.
There are a number of ways that farm subsides can work. Two examples that have been used in the US are the government can buy excess food to make sure farms don't go out of business, then stockpile it or destroy it. Or the government can supplement the price of food, basically paying the farmers the difference between some set price and what food actually sold for at market. | 10 | 20 |
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ELI5: How do we know that languages like Sanskrit and most the European languages are descended from the same language but languages like Basque we know are completely unrelated to any known language? | We can compare the words for different things in different languages. If the words are almost the same then it is likely that the languages are very closely related. For example Spanish and Portuguese share a lot of words and grammar. The less similar they are the longer back they separated. For example Spanish and French both share some words and most words have the same base but are pronounced and spelled differently. When you get really far back it can be hard to see how they are related but you can track some words back to their origins. For example French and German sounds very differently but if you compare each word you can find similarities. Where possible you can also go back in ancient texts and find the original common language between them. For example French and Hindu have very little in common but there are texts from the bronze age which show similarities with both of the languages. And then you have languages like Basque, Mandarin and Finish which do not have anything in common with most other languages even how hard we try to find a link. | 33 | 65 |
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CMV: It's not racist to try to preserve cultural heritage in certain spots with native ethnic people or who speak the language natively. | Classic examples like Venetian gondola rower or City centre markets where you hear the old traditional women speaking in a particular accent and story. No one should be discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity for a job or command of a language (as long as it is professional), so if someone from a different ethnicity (to the majority) was born and raised in a city and wanted to work in that particular job, all for it. But completely unrelated immigrants, just doesnt fit the role. I feel like this tradition is maintained by governments and town councils by means of bureaucracy and elitism that ends up keeping 'outsiders' from applying but every now and again you see immigrants with rough accents selling tourist trap smoothies at a traditional market and it doesn't make any sense. It's partly the commercialisation and banality of the 'transition' that affects me the most rather than the person doing it, and I feel like I am idealising something that was never really set in stone and is tending towards an attitude of "everything in my time was better, so we need to keep it exactly as is, nevermind the fact that the previous generation was totally different". Thoughts? | Well first we need to unpack the idea of cultural heritage as a tourist commodity. Why do you feel entitled to seeing something 'traditional' when you visit when the commodification is already very artificial, and why should national origins have any bearing on that anyway? The 'traditional' market you're seeing isn't really authentic to any sort of historical market, a real historical market would have no smoothies and a lot more business owners jostling to get the best animals and goods before the others did. And it would smell a lot worse. So it's all smoke and mirrors really, it's a modern creation based on nostalgia and catering to tourist's interests. Does it really matter then that the guy who sells you the 'authentic venetian' baubles (made in China) is Syrian or whatever | 11 | 22 |
[ELI5] How does Adderall (amphetamines) calm down those with ADD/ADHD. It seems counter-intuitive that stimulants calm someone. Explain! :D | Title says it all. Just doesn't add up. I've been told (and experienced) drinking coffee or anything with caffeine wires me for sound. How does it have a reverse effect? | There is a part of your brain that assesses what's happening to you and around you and basically portions out your brain's resources (focus, memory, retention, etc) to it based on importance. A leaf falls off the tree in the backyard? Barely even registers. The dull hum of the computer in the corner? Your brain tunes it out. But a gunshot goes off outside? 100% alert, full power to everything, what the fuck was that, get up and focus right NOW. A movie you're watching is halfway along that scale.
ADHD is, to oversimplify, a disorder in that system that means your brain constantly underestimates how stimulating things are. With severe ADHD, no amount of stimulation or urgency is enough for your brain to dedicate your full attention to it; important things get tuned out and your brain is always feeling laggy, irritable, looking for something to stimulate it. The football game you're playing is as important to you as a dull novel is to an ordinary person, and a dull novel is as important to you as the barely-audible sounds of traffic outside.
Have you ever been so bored that you're just thrashing around, pacing up and down, frustrated? You've got your taxes to do, but they just make you so much MORE bored that you can't even sit down and do them, it makes you space out and the words just don't register? That restless-legs feeling in your mind? That's what it's like. Being bored for a long period of time makes you really antsy and hyper.
What stimulants do is make your brain assess everything as much more important. So for an ordinary person, they would think "Okay, nice, this music has got some energy to it" and bop their head, then take speed and think "FUCK YEAH, this is the BEST FUCKING SONG EVER", and dance for hours. Everything is jumped up in urgency 50%.
So if you're ADHD, you take stimulants, and it pushes your brain's urgency levels *to what would be normal for other people*. Everything seems 50% more energetic and vital and important to your brain, so now it actually gives out your attention and brainpower and focus the way you need it to.
This is actually calming, because before your brain was desperate for any kind of stimulation and constantly saying "Nothing's going on. Dude, let's go find something. There's nothing here. Go do something else. No, nothing important here either. Nothing's been interesting in days." With stimulation it will say "Okay, this is important, let's turn on memory and focus and pay attention to this", and you can work and feel satisfied in what you are doing.
If you are ADHD and take *large doses* of stimulants you get the same overhyped wired feeling that ordinary people get from a medium dose. | 44 | 18 |
CMV: The amount of power that certain words are invested with by our society is extremely unhealthy. | This post is prompted by a news story that I've seen posted elsewhere on Reddit:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/nicholas-campbell-impasse-racism-1.6231055?__vfz=medium%3Dsharebar
I refer to this quote in particular:
>He said two Black crew members were given the option to leave the production with full pay and opted to leave. CBC News has confirmed one of them was Mike.
I feel as though people in our society, particularly minorities, are being conditioned into this hypersensitivity towards words. I do not condone any form of racism, however I believe that in the matter of trying to counter racism, the pendulum has now swung too far in the opposite direction and we're causing deleterious long term damage to people by raising them with this mindset that "words are violence" and that being traumatised by an epithet is a natural and healthy reaction, and the entire world ought to grind to a halt after every instance of such.
As a homosexual myself, I got a fair amount of grief in secondary school for my sexual orientation, but it never really bothered me much, and you could call me a 'f____t' all day long and wouldn't even cause me to so much as flinch. However, if I heard that word from someone at my work and my work offered me the option of retiring with receipt of my full salary as redress for having heard that word, then I'm not sure what would win out in a battle between my self-respect and my desire never to have to work again in my life. So I cannot fault the 2 crew members for accepting the offer.
However, I think that we should have a level-headed mindset towards these instances where we appreciate that words are just words, regardless of how horrendous the history associated with them might be. Making those words permanently forbidden doesn't erase those events from history. However, if we invest the words themselves with that much power, then people will fail to build up a healthy reserve of resiliency, and will be more easily traumatised by the rare occasion where one of these epithets does manage to slip through society's net. This is a very sensitive issue and one that is difficult to approach tactfully; however, we do people no favours at all by sensitising them to verbal abuse by treating it the same as a sexual assault, and having endless awareness-raising anti-racism campaigns about the power of words. As human beings, we need to be annealed to stressors in our environment and conflict with our peers. Even in matters so odious as being verbally abused for our racial identity or sexual orientation. If we aren't sensitised to those words through over-zealous (but well meaning) paternalistic coddling, then we reduce the amount of power that those racists and homophobes have over us, and we are stronger as a result.
Here in the UK, verbal abuse that references an individual's race is a criminal offence, and we even had one farcical court case some years ago in which a famous footballer was accused of referencing the race of another player in a racially demeaning fashion, and they actually brought in a lip reader as an expert witness to report on the video footage of the altercation.
I'm open to changing my view if someone can show me that the current approach to dealing with racism is more damaging to the psyches of individuals over the long run than allowing people to become more resilient to it. Or can show me that society's approach to dealing with these issues is proportional and rational to the scale of the offence. To be clear I'm not advocating fo a cultural shift that would allow racists to freely spout their vile epithets without fear of any form of social censure or sanction from their employers. But I do believe that the pendulum has swung from one unacceptable extreme (e.g. racism being widely accepted and normalised) to the opposite extreme which is likely to be deleterious to the long term psychological wellbeing of members of society. | Why do you think society is conditioning minorities to be sensitive, and not minorities trying to condition society to be more sensitive towards them?
Why do you think society instills certain words with power, and it's not society reacting to how much power the words already have? | 24 | 50 |
Is the purpose of life to contribute to society? | Is the purpose of life to contribute to society?
An average life consists of surviving, learning, reproducing, teaching, working. Then you're finished. You're born, you contribute a small bit of your existence to the world then die. Outside of that, there is using your physical and emotional functions to work through life and its obstacles. That's life. There will be suffering, there will be joy. Then there are experience such as sport, love, sex, drugs, games, and many more other life experiences to try.
You can look back on all lives in the past and you can see that pattern in what we do. It seems happiness can come from your experiences, but meaning comes from contributing to society on your work, or just passing on your knowledge to many or few. That seems to be the meaning and purpose of our lives. That do you think? | It really depends on your definition of "purpose".
If by your definition of purpose then yes. You will find the answer to that in many western political philosophies especially the philosophy of communitariansm, utilitarianism and socialism. You'll find alot of what you're looking for in Jean Jaque Roussoeus work and the social contract or Thomas Hobbes idea of how a society should be run also helps. Then again purpose draws a fine line between the individual and the community. If you are familiar with any sort of works regarding existentialism it is based almost fully on the self and personal freedom. As for linking that to society that has more links to social science and political philosophy. Then again, your question is very subjective since purpose is a very broad term. | 32 | 84 |
What reason do I put to recommend a reviewer for a journal paper? | I'm going to submit my first journal paper this week, and have got to recommend some reviewers. However, what reason do I put for recommending them? I can't leave it blank, so what are they looking for? I want to put something like "expert in the field" or "knowledgable on topic area", but this seems so vague it's almost pointless. Anyone ever had to do this? | >I want to put something like "expert in the field" or "knowledgable on topic area", but this seems so vague it's almost pointless.
That's more-or-less what they're looking for, so it's not really pointless. | 42 | 28 |
ELI5: How can such a small dose of medication have such a huge impact in the way our bodies work? | I take some medications prescribed by my doctor. These medications are all prescribed in milligram doses ... when you take into consideration I’m a male of 190lbs, I just can’t fathom that such small quantities can have such drastic effects on how my body functions. Another example: I hear on the news the rise of drugs laced with Fentanyl and that all it takes is a few grains to kill you. How is this even possible? | This question is wildly broad, since the mechanism of action for various substances can be wildly different. But metaphorically, it's the same way you can demolish a high rise without explosives on every wall. We think of our bodies as a distinct unit, but they aren't. They're huge conglomerations of various systems. You don't need to affect everything; you just need to affect one special piece of a given system. | 22 | 35 |
ELI5: What does North Korea get out of its continuous empty threats of war? | By making threats, they can get aid when they agree to rescind the threat.
Threaten to kill us in exchange for scheduled annual training with SK. Then agree to not freak out over the training, but only if we give them 300 bulldozers and 1000tons of rice.
Read The Mouse that Roared. | 66 | 92 |
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When a child get's an organ/limb transplant, will the transplanted organ/limb grow with the child? If so, will the organ/limb grow according to the donor child's body genetic makeup or the recipient's? | Some organ transplants (such as heart transplants) need to be reasonably size-matched between the donor and the recipient. That means that a baby can only receive a heart from another baby - there's no room to stick an adult heart in. In these cases, yes, the organ does grow with the child. When they first started doing heart transplants, they weren't sure if this would be the case or if they would have to re-transplant every few years as the child grew, but it turns out that the heart will grow. The donor heart maintains its own DNA (hence the need for organ recipients to take anti-rejection medication for life), and would grow according to the donor's genetic makeup. That being said, the organ would also be receiving input cues from its environment (i.e., the recipient's body) that may influence how it would grow. | 881 | 2,120 |
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[Blade Runner 2049]Is JOI self-aware? Is she Sentient? Is she just extremely clever software reflecting her users desires? | I believe that sentience is fundamentally performative, even for humans; "You" are just a story your brain tells itself to explain its own actions. If JOI can fake being sentient to the point that no amount of analysis could ever prove otherwise, then she is - or at least, she is as sentient as a human is. | 35 | 55 |
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ELI5: ELI5: How does a scientist go about quantumly entangling two photons | There are a couple of main ways:
* When you put calcium atoms into a specific kind of energized state, it will emit two photons in random directions. When those photons are emitted in opposite directions, they will be entangled.
* You can take a single, high-energy photon, and emit it through a special crystal, and it will split into two lower-energy photons that are entangled. | 16 | 22 |
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ELI5:Why do so many actors end up directing some of the episodes of the tv show they are starring on? | e.g. Michael J. Adams directed the winter premier of Suits, like I have seen it very often. Is it something with their contracts? | It is a way to expand professionally.
Being on a mid-tier basic cable TV series isn't something you can ride for the rest of your career...especially if you were cast for being young and good looking, and that is becoming less true each passing year. If you don't want to go back to doing dinner theater and TV commercials, directing is a career path you can continue one with when you are balding and overweight.
Also, not to disparage a career, but it isn't that hard to do with an established TV show. The producers and writers have all the creative control, the actors know their characters, the sets are build, the wardrobe stocked, and there is an experienced assistant director standing right next to you. It is more than just yelling "action!" and "cut!", but with a bunch of people who've done a hundred times before, it is a pretty gentle way to break into the craft.
Finally, sometimes it is in the contract. If you are a lead in a long running TV show, there is a temptation to leave and find something else before it loses its popularity and before you lose your looks. The show has to provide inducements for you to stay, money, more creative control, and sometimes the opportunity to direct.
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If you could render an object invisible using optical camouflage, would it still cast a shadow? | I was playing Metal Gear Solid 4 last night and was driving around the MKIII robot with the stealth engaged, when I noticed that the robot was still casting a shadow on the ground. This got me thinking, if you COULD make an object invisible, would it still cast a shadow? I mean, there is still an object there. Assuming the camo is dependent on displaying whats on the other side, not bending light, wouldn't there still be a space where the light isn't passing through the object itself? | In your description of how this particular invisibility works, something like a display mesh that identifies its surroundings and projects light as though it were passing through the object, it's entirely possible that the maximum amount of light the mesh is able to output wouldn't equal the light reaching us from the sun. Such an object would have a shadow, though that shadow would likely be less dark than an object without the invisibility mesh (whatever amount of light the mesh was able to produce would lighten the shadow some). There could even be multiple shadows if there were multiple light sources that exceed the mesh's light output (very bright spotlights, etc). | 359 | 977 |
Is anyone here familiar with process philosophy, more specifically as developed by Alfred North Whitehead? | I'm fascinated by the cosmological framework he built, most notably in Process and Reality. It does seem to be to be a viable contender for a metaphysics which can be scaled up and down to incorporate the very large and very small. I'm curious as to whether or not any Redditors share my interest in this field, as I don't see process thought being discussed often here and on r/philosophy. | A particularly lucid example for understanding process ontogenesis for example, can be found in Jorge Luis Borges' description of language on the planet Tlön, whose inhabitants take process as their default:
'For example, there is no noun that corresponds to our word “moon”, but there is a verb... “to moonate” or “to enmoon”. “The moon rose above the river”... translates [as] “Upward, behind the onstreaming it mooned”'
(2000, pp. 13).
**i.e, process philosophy is dope y'all.**
It should be our default metaphysics. It has such enormous implications for ethics and politics too, and areas outside of philosophy - just as a fundamental assumption - because it leads us to understand everything in a radically different and more constructive fashion.
Man process philosophy is the shit.
I love process philosophy. | 16 | 17 |
Why do some organisms age faster than others? What determines how fast an organism ages? | The rate at which an organism ages has all to do with the natural selection of its life strategy. This means: organisms that are at a higher risk of dying early on in life, evolve to mature quicker so that they can reproduce sooner. | 18 | 19 |
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ELI5: Why can we see certain stars in our peripheral vision, but then when we look directly at them we can no longer see them? | You have two different cells in your retina of your eye that can sense light.
-cones, that can see color, but only when there is much light
-rods, that cannot see color, but can see better with little light
the cones, which works best during the day, are in the center of you vision.
the rods are everywhere else.
So when you see a star at your peripheral vision( very precise words by the way), you use your rods, which are better during the night.
When you you look directly at a star, the light falls on the cones, which are not very light sensitive, so the star seems to disappear. | 2,528 | 8,300 |
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ELI5: Do multivitamins and Omega-3 pills actually do anything? or is it more of a placebo-type thing? | **TL;DR**: *Depends on whether you have a terrible diet or a good (or even average) diet. They only really help if you have a complete absence of some nutrients; you'll get enough to get by if you eat a variety of non-junk foods like most of us do.*
With a terrible diet, such as if you're a senior citizen that can't cook and eats very small portions or you live off of low-end ramen noodles or something, you're simply missing out on a ton of nutrients, particularly vitamins but also protein and fibre.
Since you're not eating any greens or organ meats at all and stick to inexpensive pre-prepared foods with soft drinks on the side only, you're not going to get any Vitamin A, C or K, for example. The first is important for a lot of stuff like vision and immune system, the second helps keep your blood systems healthy, and the last is critical to avoid a condition known as scurvy (but doesn't actually do much else despite what the marketers tell you).
(Omega-3's are needed in there too, but it's kind of overstated as to how much they help unless you have cardiovascular issues. Bad if you don't eat any fish at all ever, usually okay otherwise if you get a trace of 'em from that Tuna Helper casserole or have anchovies on that pizza.)
And there's lots of similar vitamins that can be missed if you go the other route and stay completely uniformly vegan too.
So if you have a really shitty diet, that once-per-day vitamin pill gives you SOME of those vitamins when otherwise you don't get any at all. That's good and helpful...
...but most people don't need them if they have a mixed salad once in a while or eat "fortified" foods which have them added. In that case, they get arguably limited value out of multivitamins. | 46 | 106 |
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Sociology says people with friends who are friends among themselves are happier. Is there any science on what's the most effective way to create or enlarge an interconnected group of friends? | Christakis and Fowler argue in their book "Connected" that people who have friends who are also friends among themselves tend to be happier.
I was wondering if there's any science on what's the most effective way to create and enlarge such tightly knit networks. For instance, what's the best way to make the group interconnected? You just put everybody in a room and facilitate conversation? Or you start out with a small group and enlarge it as you go on? In which case what's the best way to introduce new friends to your already well-connected group of friends? You introduce new ones one at a time?
This kind of things... | Have you tried looking into studies regarding the psychological/social benefits of team sports/activities?
I believe the "unified goal" aspect of team sports/activities could facilitate the quality of "interconnectedness" you're seeking to foster.
Also, you probably want to clarify how (if at all) Christakis and Fowler talked about these interconnected friend groups numerically (e.g. - is there an optimal amount of interconnected friends, and at what point does the benefit of adding people to the interconnected group plateau and/or start to diminish?). | 15 | 78 |
CMV: American cuisine is so underrated. It’s not all about burgers and hot dogs. | People tend to immediately gravitate towards burgers, hot dogs, fries, greasy/fatty foods when they think of American cuisine. I don’t understand that stereotype. Sure we love our burgers and hot dogs, but there’s so much more to it that I think many people don’t know of. First of all, we’re a melting pot, which is beautiful. Cultures from all over the world have left their mark on this country and because of this we have plenty of dishes that deserve the light of day when American cuisine is brought up.
Here’s a few I’d like to list:
1. Jambalaya
2. Gumbo
3. Tex-Mex
4. American BBQ
5. Cajun dishes
6. Creole dishes
7. Philly Cheesesteak
8. Chicago’s deep dish pizza
9. NYC-style Pizza
10. NYC Chopped cheese
11. Boston’s Lobster rolls
12. Sloppy Joe Sandwich
13. Pulled pork BBQ sandwich
14. Soul food (Don’t tell me this is just a mix of foods put together. It’s still a popular combination dish that originated in the south. The same argument can be made for many dishes around the world that combine multiple foods together)
15. Spaghetti and meatballs (Yes it’s American. Italians from Italy do not eat spaghetti with meatballs; they may have meat mixed in their sauce but not with meatballs; this combination originated here)
16. American alfredo
17. American tacos
18. American Chinese
19. Southern chicken-fried Steak
20. Shrimp and grits
21. Funeral potatoes
22. Peach cobbler
23. Pizookie
I’ll leave it at that in order to spare this post from becoming any longer.
Some are well known, others aren’t. But that is the same case for every cuisine. Just because some dishes aren’t popular, it doesn’t change the fact that the USA has it’s own cuisine inspired by cultures worldwide.
Another point I’d like to make clear, some of these originated in America while other dishes (ex: jambalaya) are twists; that still doesn’t disqualify them. A lot of countries have their own twists of a dish that you see everywhere in other cultures (ex: paella).
Some cultures even have dishes that they’re not aware of their origin (ex: the Dominican kipes, which was introduced by the Lebanese [kibbeh). At the end of the day, kipes are still Dominican regardless. So the point I’m trying to make is that we all have dishes that are inspired by others in some ways; The USA is no different and deserves more recognition when it comes to its’ cuisine.
Edit: Updated the list.
Also, some of these dishes are fatty, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. American cuisine is usually ONLY regarded as fatty foods, which is NOT always the case at all. It has some greasy/fattiness to some dishes (as do other cultures btw, it’s called comfort food), but not all the time. Please focus on changing my view that America has a proper cuisine which is underrated, not that "all" foods are “fatty”. | 1) Countries' foods are judged by the foods that they take to other countries. American chain restaurants have almost exclusively produced burgers in other countries, so that is what we are judged by.
2) The dishes that you mention are generally regional dishes. This is because America is a big place, and it's really tough to characterize the entire population as a single culture. You have Southern Food, Tex-Mex, Cajun, Italian-American...the list goes on. These cuisines are more recognized as their own things in other parts of the world, and are not lumped in with the burgers and hot dogs that people generally call American food. They also *shouldn't* be considered American food because they are really regional dishes that are becoming popular in other parts of the world, including other parts of America. | 189 | 305 |
ELI5: How does a landfill work? Does it compact and compact or does it just keep piling up until its eventually taller than the buildings around it? Is it ever at risk of bursting or damaging anything around it? | Modern sanitary/municipal landfills (at least in most of the developed world) are highly engineered structures. Holes are dug on flat ground or scraped out of the side of a hill, and "cells" are filled with highly compacted waste, ostensibly picked through to remove the worst environmental offenders (things like car batteries, drums of industrial waste, etc.). Each cell is lined with special barriers designed to last for decades that allow bacteria to thrive and break down most of the waste, while at the same time preventing contact with groundwater and channeling runoff (from rain percolating through the ground) into a collection system for treatment. Cells are sealed and buried as they fill up, and new ones are opened. This continues until the landfill is filled, then another barrier is placed on top and the whole thing is covered by a layer of soil. Sometimes the landfill will be built up higher than the original land, sometimes it's at the same height, but it's not a good idea to leave it as a depression - then water will fill the depression, and a lake over a landfill is a bad idea. Usually a system to vent gasses produced during decomposition is installed as well - they're largely passive venting systems (think pipes sticking up from the ground that allow lighter than air gasses to vent upwards). Some systems catch the vented gas and burn it to generate (a small amount) of power. Properly designed and properly maintained, there's no significant risk of bursting or collapse. | 80 | 25 |
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Why isn't it always light? | On a clear night, without light pollution, I can follow the path from Cassiopeia to the Andromeda galaxy, which appears as a dim smear of light.
I assume that the closer I travel towards Andromeda (as impossible as that is) the brighter and more visible it will be and therefore it stands to reason that if I am *inside* Andromeda it will be incredibly bright. I mean, I'd be standing inside something which is giving off enough light to be seen from *Earth* in a whole other galaxy.
I assume our galaxy looks the similar from the perspective of an Andromedan so why does it ever get dark? | Suppose you had several floodlights on stands, at varying heights and set a distance apart but angled so that they’re pointing at the same place. A person walking up to the spot at which they’re pointing would, for awhile, just see a wide swath of very bright light. But at some point, they would get close enough to start resolving the individual points of light from the separate lamps, and eventually they would get beyond the point where the lights are pointing and thereby see the darkness behind and around the lights.
An imperfect metaphor, because stars emit lights in all directions, but it does illustrate the point: multiple light sources that are all emitting light towards you will blur as if they were one larger light source, but the light will individualize as you get closer and you can better resolve the actual space between them. | 1,041 | 1,340 |
CMV: Diversity doesn't matter. A job, especially one with certain and specific skill sets, should go to the most qualified person, without bias on gender or race, etc. | I want to clarify this does not racism or sexism in any sort of way. I got this thought when I heard something about unnecessary diversity on the radio today, and it annoyed me in kind of way.
People are not getting the recognition they should be because of the job that they do, but rather becasue what they were born with. For example, a black lady doctor has more pats on the back these days for being a BLACK LADY doctor over a black lady DOCTOR.
The recognition of one's career, and the likelihood of getting that career should be based on the skills and attributes that they bring to the job, not the person in that job.
If this isn't clear enough I'd be happy to expand. | So diversity can be important.
Take these scenerios:
- Microsoft’s voice API was made predominantly by men. As such couldn’t recognise higher pitch voices of women.
- in the 1960s and for a long time going forward (still a problem today) crash test dummies are moddled after men. As a result, women were 47% more likely to be seriously injured in a crash. Because none of those designers (predominantly men) thought about it - a result of unintentional bias.
- Google’s picture recognition AI couldn’t tell apart black people. Google’s development team was predominantly white, such bias influenced their design.
- Apple healthkit, a thing made predominantly by men, failed to include a period tracker, a fairly basic thing until IOS 9.
Unintentional bias effects design a lot.
And the thing is when it comes to “just hire the best person”. When it comes to high level jobs or jobs with lot’s of applicants, lot’s of them have the same written qualifications. And then it comes to an interview. And frankly, an interviewer is going to be influenced by already exisiting bias and unintentional bias. We can see this a lot.
Two applicants with a male vs female name the female is likely to be denied. Amazon’s hiring AI which learned from their own hiring practices highlighted their own bias agaisnt hiring women.
When it comes to looking at a crowd of people, a study showed, that men percieved it as 50/50 gender split when actually it was only 17% women, and percieved a female majority when it was only 33% women.
On the black lady doctor thing, it’s more of a way to congratulate someone for going past institutional and personal barrier related to them being a women and being black. There is a problem still in healthcare of women doctors being ignored for their less trained male counterparts. | 60 | 93 |
LI5 How Can You Own A House, But Not The Land That It's Built On? And What Exactly Are Property taxes? | I can try to help a little. With property tax, you are paying for the space that your 'Property' takes up.
Lets say you have a table. This table only has a limited amount of space. People want to put stuff on the table (food, toys, etc.). There are more people that want to put things on the table then there is space. This means that not everyone can put something of theirs on the table. Because of this, if you are 'lucky' enough to get a spot on the table for your item, it has value, since there are people that are waiting to take your spot. The more people that want to put their things on the table, the more valuable your space becomes.
**This is why property tax is higher in locations that a lot of people want to live.**
The property tax itself is the amount you pay for the physical space you take up at the table. The more stuff you want to put on the table, the more property tax you pay. | 22 | 64 |
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ELI5: Why do we write the letter "A" like an "O" with a tail but type it like an backwards "6"? | Easier visible differentiation.
The small letter "a" like in this font is much easier to tell apart from an "o" than the "O|" combined shape. Consider the words "ball" and "boll". If the printing press (the precursor of the typewriter) had any blurring at all in its ink, you wouldn't be able to tell which was which if the ink ran the "a" and the "l" together in the first word. Ditto oh/ah; fob/fab; loon/loan and so on.
But it's hard to write an "a" while continuing to the rest of the letters in the word without lifting the pen, so we write the O| version instead. We do the same while writing the letter k, putting a loop in the top right leg so we can continue onto the rest of the word without slowing down to reposition the pen. | 223 | 328 |
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[DC (New 52 and Old] How public is Batman's "no killing" stance? | Wouldn't fighters on the level of Deathstroke be able to take advantage of that by... say... making moves that would be risky because the enemy could land a lethal blow, but are considerably less so (or not at all) if the enemy is both skilled and 100% unwilling to kill?
I'm fairly certain this sort of thing was implied in at least one battle between the two, but how common is this? | Depends where and when you are in the multiverse. There are a lot of stories involving low level thugs who are totally terrified of being killed by Batman and others where the Joker and other villains specifically exploit his no-kill policy. The criminals who have repeated run ins with Batman and never die all eventually catch onto it. | 33 | 25 |
What is academia's take on proofreading of theses? | Hello everyone,
I am an "English as a second language" author. I published few papers before. However, they have all been proofread by my supervisor/co-authors, and significantly improved. In all cases of my writing, there were no severe coherence and cohesion issues. Mostly a suboptimal academic tone, and some unclarities (super long sentences). Anyway, I'm expected to submit my thesis in September. And i wonder what is the general consensus in academia regarding proofreading of a thesis by a third-party. My university policy allows it, and in fact some colleagues were required to do so by examining/ supervisory committee.
I'm not very happy with my writing skills. I tried taking some short online courses but I only improved marginally. My thesis is already completed and i began the polishing stage. There are no editing and style issues I'm very well familiar with the ACS style. It's just the language that I'm not very happy with.
What are your thoughts on this? I'm quite reluctant and feeling a bit guilty and embarrassed to seek for help in this. My supervisor offered to help a bit in proofreading, but of course he's very busy, and I don't think he'll have time to properly proofread a 60000 words document. | Do you have any labmates or grad program peers to get feedback from? I’d say it’s encouraged because scientific writing depends on getting feedback to improve - you can double check with your advisor if it’s okay. | 56 | 70 |
What makes good code good? | Assume that you've just become part of a team that manages a large code base for an interesting and fulfilling project. What most important aspects of the way the code is written will make the code **good**? What specific things are going to make your journey a **complete breeze** in terms of reading and understanding the code, adding new features, improving and patching it?
I'd highly appreciate it if you also indicated your experience and included an example from your past experience of encountering really good code (or bad), and what made it good (or why it wasn't). | Hard question to answer.
A few things come to mind:
- easy to read and understand
- easy to change
- easy to test
How to get the above qualities in code is a matter of great debate though.
Abiding by SOLID, KISS, DRY, etc principles helps but is not by any means sufficient.
It takes experience tbh to get a feel for what is gonna come back and bite you later. It is our job to be fortune tellers and predict the most likely areas of the code to change given the problem domain, and then code such that those areas are both robust and resilient to bugs while at the same time easy to augment and modify. There's no silver bullet. | 32 | 37 |
Can t-cells turn into cancer? Are they any more or less likely to do so than any other cell? | Any cell in the body can accumulate mutations that eventually allow it to evade destruction by the immune system by neither being recognized as part of you or foreign, replicate (grow), invade surrounding structures and in some cases metastasize either through the circulatory or lymph systems predominantly. T-cells are a type of white blood cell which arise from lymphoid stem cells in the bone marrow and mature in the thymus. Abnormal T-cell malignancies, therefore, most commonly present as a hematologic malignancy which is to say the problem is in one of the early stage cells in the bone marrow and would fall under the umbrella of leukemia or during later stage maturation, most often in the thymus, which presents as a mediastinal mass (chest cavity) which is called lymphoma. Despite being very different presentations, there is a lot of overlap between leukemia and lymphoma - particularly in T-cell origin cancers.
Source: pediatric oncologist | 43 | 37 |
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ELI5: Does my dog understand that I'm putting cream on her foot to help it heal, or does she just think I'm am asshole for rubbing weird stuff on her open wound? | Your dog understands you are the pack leader, you are in charge, and you typically act in her best interests and she trusts you.
She does not understand specifically that putting cream on a wound is helping her, and might be confused why you are doing something that hurts her. | 15 | 15 |
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ELI5: Why do only some displays display HDR? Isn't a display just a series of pixels that display different color values? What makes an HDR display different? | To clarify, if my normal LCD display does not display HDR, what makes it different, hardware wise, from an HDR compatible one? I understand the HDR process when taking a picture, and the layering of differently exposed images, but then how can I view the HDR image on my non-HDR phone? | An HDR screen is a different concept to taking HDR photos. Although both relate to using a wider range of colours.
A non-HDR screen only has 256 different levels of red, green and blue. So there's only a certain range of colours and brightness it can display.
HDR screens increase this so there is a wider range of colours/brightness levels. True HDR screens are supposed to be capable of more brightness, but it's not just the maximum brightness that matters, it's how many levels of brightness each colour channel has.
So for example you could have a movie in HDR which for the most part looks the same as the non-HDR version, except explosions are brighter. If you just turned the brightness up on the non-HDR version, everything would just look washed out because the brightness goes up for everything. The HDR version has more brightness levels to work with. | 14 | 17 |
CMV:All Professional qualifications should be able to test in. A degree should never be a hard pre-req | Title says most of it. My reasoning is that a professional qualification should be a test of specialized knowledge and should be judgeable by testing of that knowledge and not have a dependency on the educational industrial complex.
Yes, I know you can get shitty degrees in all kinds of places and ways and you don't have to pay $100k+ for years at a college. But that's also my point. A degree is of such varying value that it isn't meaningful to use as a pre-req.
I'm looking at you medical school. The lawyers have got this one right. College is designed to help you pass the bar, but - as I understand it - it's not strictly necessary.
My apologies that this post is clearly ameri-centric.
EDIT: people seem to be reading my post as suggesting that I'm against training and schooling. I'm not. I'm against getting ENTRANCE to those things requiring unrelated schooling.
EDIT2: Maybe my title wasn't well written after all. What I believe is that even qualifications that have a safety element (becoming a doctor) can have their schools (eg. medical school) have alternative qualification criteria to simply demanding a 4 year degree.
And other (non-safety) quals should, where feasible have a test that demonstrate proficiency that precludes the need to go to classes. This is already the case in most IT qualifications. | Put yourself in the shoes of someone who confers degrees. Can you really make a single test that would demonstrate “yes this person should be licensed to be a medical doctor”? Why should anyone believe you about this test?
When you have coursework and grades and items to fall back on you begin to build your reputation and resume. And fair or not your professional degree has some representation on the organization that conferred it. Would you personally want to be operated on by a surgeon who had only ever passed a single test? | 35 | 57 |
What is Spinoza's influence on Hegel? | I am beginning to really get into Hegel for the first time and I have heard multiple people say Spinoza had a great influence on Hegel (and Marx). I have not gotten into Spinoza yet.
Can someone explain Spinoza's influence on Hegel? | Spinoza had extensive influence in German philosophy during the period of Hegel's maturation as a thinker, particularly owing to the Pantheism Controversy, which hurtled Spinoza into the limelight of the German intellectual scene. Though, for most German thinkers of this period, the Spinoza they encountered was Spinoza as presented in the documents of this controversy -- Mendelssohn's remarks on Spinoza, or Jacobi's, or Herder's -- rather than a Spinoza they were encountering through the primary sources.
Spinoza's role in the Pantheism Controversy made him a figurehead for general questions about the role of reason and the nature of the Enlightenment, but he also became influential during this period because he was perceived to be the great representative of an "objective" mode of doing philosophy, that was a contrast, corrective, or supplement to the "subjective" mode associated with Kant's idealism.
This context sets the stage for Hegel's engagement with Spinoza. But beyond this what Hegel found in Spinoza was also a philosopher of systematicity, who had presented an encyclopedic account of the various topics of philosophy derived from one another and organized according to foundational principles. And this would become the model for Hegel's own understanding of his mature system. | 14 | 19 |
Why are price controls considered bad, specifically? | I can understand that it could deteriorate the market with bad products, but can you not just regulate that as well?
For example, Have a percentage profit based on the cost to produce the product and have modifiers for the quality/safety of said product. And since stores havent produced the product, they can only earn profit on the cost to transport the product, store the product, etc. And since they degrade over time theyre checked again at the point of sale for the nutrient modifiers.
Food for example. Say it cost 1 dollar to produce a banana and the base pricing limit is 100%, then it gets tested for nutrients and found that it has higher/lower nutrients than the set standard so it gets a 1% increase/decrease of profits for each mg of nutrients(thats capable of being absorbed by the human body). Or something along those lines.
And then for shipping theres something similar for the drop in quality, shipping cost, etc. [I dont know a whole lot for shipping, but I dont see why you couldnt adapt a sinilar approach so they can turn a profit as well]
And because we already have models for quality testing for virtually every product on the market, we should in theory be able to do this with everything.
On top of all this you could give government incentives for basic necessities and such. Obviously this would need to be ironed out, but I dont see why this couldnt work.
TL;DR: I dont really know much about economics, so I came up with a scenario for people who know what theyre talking about to poke holes in so I can understand better. | Because absent market failures the price mechanism results in an equilibrium quantity at a price that maximizes producer and consumer surplus, or economic welfare.
This mechanism is automatic and doesn't require any far fetched expensive government programs to test nutrients in bananas or whatever. | 49 | 41 |
ELI5: What is "Catastrophe Theory"? | Think about how things change. Something like a plant grows a little tiny bit every day so that you don't notice the change at all. On the other hand, when a building falls over this change is dramatic. Catastrophe Theory deals with this second kind of change, when something changes from one state to another very different state.
Somewhat more mathematically, various phenomena can be modeled using (certain kinds of) equations. These equations have numbers in them that define the solutions. Some equations, however, have solutions that are dramatically different depending on the numbers used in the equation. Catastrophe theory deals with studying those equations and how the solutions change. | 17 | 19 |
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ELI5: Why would allowing companies to extend their intellectual property rights as long as they were using the property be a bad thing? | I've been pondering this for a while and I get the argument for the public domain but with the protections that fan created art and fiction get under fair use laws why would it be bad for Disney or any other corporation to try and retain the rights to their core IP so long as they were using it? | The original concept of Intellectual Property was to grant TEMPORARY protections on an idea, with the understanding that it would eventually enter the public domain so that society could benefit from it outside of a profit-generation center.
Disney obviously wants to protect how people can use Mickey, and wants to continue making money off of things it created. Eventually it should enter the public domain, but people are having trouble defining when that should be. Is it more important for the public to use things creatively? Or is it more important to protect initial investments in expensive IP for as long as it's deemed useful by the investors?
| 13 | 17 |
When 2 fermions are affected by the Pauli Exclusion Principle, what actually happens to them that causes "repulsion" ? | For example in electron degenerate matter in a white dwarf, there is pressure holding up the mass from further collapse. But which force is producing that pressure? Two electrons try to get into the same space closer to the core, and they are prevented by Pauli Exclusion, but what "pushed" them back? | Easier to understand if you think of a large collection of fermions in a small finite volume, rather than just 2.
When you attempt to force multiple fermions into a small space, they cannot all occupy the lowest kinetic-energy state. Instead, they start to "stack up" in terms of kinetic energy or momentum. Even if there is a mechanism for them to emit energy and achieve a lower momentum, the ones with high momentum can't because there's no unoccupied state for them to drop into.
If you now attempt to squeeze them into a slightly smaller volume, there are fewer available states within each narrow range of momentum, so you have to add enough energy to push some up into higher momentum states. This is the equivalent of classical pressure, in that you must do work to reduce the volume.
By analogy, consider a large bin containing incompressible balls. At very low density (only a few balls rolling around on the floor of the bin), there's no additional work required to compress the bin a bit. At high density (the bin is partially filled with tightly packed balls) you have to add energy to lift some of the balls higher against gravity. But that's only the case if there are more balls than can sit side-by-side on the floor of the bin. | 49 | 67 |
CMV: Philosophy has no tangible value as an academic field of study. | As an independent form of study, philosophy doesn't seem to have any practical applications. What value does philosophy have in the modern age, right now, aside from contemplating things. Is it truly worth it to invest a significant amount of time and money studying this field?
There do not seem to be any tangible applications or appreciable benefits from studying philosophy aside from personal growth and the expansion of one's intellectual perspective, which I argue can be gained without studying philosophy in a rigorously academic manner.
I often have read the argument that it is impossible to argue that philosophy is useless without using philosophy, or something along those lines.
I acknowledge this. Yes, I am engaging in the use of philosophy right now, at this very moment. However, this does not provide an argument as to why it would be worthwhile to STUDY philosophy.
What do you gain from studying philosophy that could not be gained from thoughtful introspection?
Certainly, important tools have originated from philosophical study, such as the scientific method, and science could be described as a subset of philosophy itself but that isn't an argument against the lack of tangible benefits to be gained from studying philosophy.
You don't need to study philosophy to become a capable scientist. You shouldn't need to study philosophy to cultivate a reasonable set of moral principles, or to be thoughtful about the circumstances and situations you encounter in your life.
EDIT: I didn't expect so many answers! I'll try to read them all before I get too tired.
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Two answers. #1 rigor and #2 it saves us from reinventing the wheel.
When you ask the question of whether philosophy is useful, you give us an example of a practical application of philosophy. We're on the same page there. To expand on that, we face a lot of practical questions about what things have value. When we create school curricula we're making value judgments, when we allot budgets. These are, at least in one facet, philosophical questions, and important ones.
But you suggest we can answer these questions without studying philosophy. Can we answer high level economic questions without studying economics and math? Can we figure out plumbing questions without training in plumbing?
These value decisions (and value is just one kind of philosophical question we deal with constantly) can be based on valid or invalid arguments. If no one studies arguments of value, why do you believe that we can naturally recognize these with no study? Why do you think we should start from scratch in all value decisions rather than seeking to understand the work that has been done in the past?
A lot of philosophy seems to be common sense just because it's been so thoroughly integrated into our culture. The place that we're currently at though is the result of a lot of work in ethics, epistemology and metaphysics. To assume we can arrive at the best answers just by thinking hard is ignoring the work that got us where we are, both in failing to understand how much labor was required to get us here, and failing to challenge some of our current baseline.
Not everyone needs to study philosophy for their day to day lives, but everyone consumes it whether they know it or not. If no one studies it, then no one will be able to teach it. If no one is able to teach it, then everyone's philosophical positions will have no rigor, will make no use of the work that has already been done before.
All our philosophical questions then may as well be answered by /r/showerthoughts or /r/trees. Without rigor and background, that's where introspection gets you. | 48 | 34 |
CMV The Prime Directive in Star Trek is Immoral. | I believe that the Prime Directive is immoral and unethical.
For those who don't know: the prime directive is the belief held by the United Federation of Planets that they are not to interfere in the affairs of other cultures or people.
I'm an a huge Trekkie but I'm not going to be able to site a lot of sources here, do to the fact I don't have the script of every episode ever memorized.
1) Why is watching millions of people suffer from drug abuse and not doing anything about it moral‽ If you could go on a missionary trip, without a high degree of danger, to North Korea and save lives wouldn't you‽
2) If you I have technology to better the lives of millions (say cure cancer) is their any reason why I shouldn't tell anyone‽
3) If on the figurative twirl of a wand I could provide a people with knowledge beyond their imaginations, should I give it to them‽
4) Many say it's because their society isn't ready, I say bull. If I can save lives their society takes second place. With enough precautions, a civilization as advanced as the one Picard lives in would be able to keep peace and save lives doing it.
Am I wrong? If so, why?
Edit: Snap -> twirl | Societies are allowed to go through their own stages of development in their own ways.
If an alien just suddenly came down and cured cancer, humans might stop learning about how to cure other diseases and just beg for the alien to do something else magical. In doing so, humans would alter their own development.We would stop learning how to do things our self and be beholden to this outside giver of knowledge. | 27 | 65 |
ELI5:What is hot water doing that makes cleaning dishes etc easier that cold water isnt? | More heat: more energy to the molecules.
More energy, more movement, the molecules will weaken and cut the low energy bonds that let them stick together like hydrogen bonds or Van der Waals bonds.
In this way fat molecules won't have a strong grip on other fat molecules.
Think of butter, it needs very little heat to reach a liquid state, because they are have enough energy to destroy their bonds. | 5,862 | 9,579 |
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Difference between PhD degrees from different countries in the world? | A PhD degree in North America takes 6-7 years, in Europe it takes 3-4 years, in Asia and Africa it takes 5-6 years, no idea how long Australian and South American PhDs take. What is the difference between these PhDs? Would you prefer one of these over the others? | One major difference is that many American Ph.D. programs, especially in the sciences, functionally have a Master's program rolled in, whereas similar programs in other countries frequently expect students to complete a Master's before applying. | 22 | 29 |
[Marvel/MCU] Why don't T'Challa get creative and make a better ironman suit than ironman? | I'm going to see the movie tomorrow, so if the MCU answer is in a spoiler please tag it.
We have seen the tech of vibranium do stealth, energy projectiles, absorption and redirecting of energy. So why isn't Black Panther's suit a more physics hack version of ironman suit, with flying, stealth, and energy blasting tech, that can withstand way more punishment than any ironman suit?
I realize T'Challa likes stealth, and the whole warrior's way of fighting, so the regular BP suit coupled with vibranium handheld weapons suits him for that purpose.
However, much like the portable ironman suit from a suitcase isn't as full featured as the Hulk Buster suit; Shouldn't T'Challa have an a suit to go all out on just in case, some kind of all our war of Kree, Skrulls, chitauri invasion, or say some big names like Galactus or Thanos decides to show up at earth door? | 1. Tradition. In Wakanda tradition is important. The Black Panther is supposed to act and fight in a certain way. T'Challa is working to change some of Wakandans reliance on old practices but this is a fight he probably doesn't want to expend political capital on.
2. He may not be able to. MCU Black Panther doesn't seem to be as intelligent as his comic counterpart (though he is smart) and even Shuri while probably around as intelligent as Tony Stark, is younger and hasn't spent as much time inventing weapons. With Wakandas technology and enough time she may eventually be able to build a better Iron Man suit but for right now Tony is by far the best weapon/suit maker Earth has. | 66 | 52 |
What type of economics is taught in China? | Im assuming Marxian because of the ruling Communist party? Do they allow economists from other schools to teach/exist? | I taught the same (mainstream) principles curriculum at a top tier Chinese university’s summer school as you see in nearly all US universities. The textbooks were preselected for me by the program. We might have used Mankiw’s principles textbook iirc.
The university economics curriculum is fairly uniform around the world and across types of universities. At various points, I’ve been affiliated with the following universities:
a US liberal arts college
2 different US private research universities
a US public research university
a UK public research university
a Chinese public research university
Even when there were heterodox components of the curriculum, they were taught in addition to bog-standard mainstream economics, starting from neoclassical and Keynesian models. | 39 | 16 |
My sociology teacher says that gender is socially constructed. Is this true? | She has said that biological arguments are easily disproved, and that gender is a social construct with no inherent basis in human neurology. How true is this? | It depends on how she is using the word gender. Many differientiate between sex and gender with sex being the biological basis of division and gender being the socially constructed basis of division. For example, you could be a woman sex wise but you could dress and "pass" as a man socially, although it's not easily done. In this sense there is a difference between "transgender" and "transexual", where someone who is transgendered has switched from their "default" gender (e.g. crossdressing) and someone who is transexual has or is in the process of medical procedures to change their sexual organs/secondary sex characteristics (e.g. beards, brests).
If she is using gender in this sense then it is socially constructed by definition. If however she is a radical feminists/social constructivist and she is using it to refer to gender/sex divisions generally, then certainly no.
As a general rule, whenever anyone tells you that something is 100% socially constructed or 100% biologically predetermined, they are categorically wrong, and they usually have some political motive behind their claim. | 114 | 41 |
I hope this isn't a dumb question. I am taking ekg classes to further my education, and one lead on the machine I am using is the "ground". My question is this: what is the natural "ground" for the electrical activity in the heart? | Everything I have learned about closed electrical systems has come from working in an automotive shop for 15 years, and replacing or installing electrical outlets in my home.
I do understand how the heart works, chemically and anatomically. I just can't seem to understand the grounding part. I have a BSN, but this was never touched on that I can recall. Google gives me nothing, no matter how I ask.
Edit: google, rrrrrr. | One thing I'd like to add is that voltage is used to measure a *difference* in potential. When you have circuits measuring change in potential caused by something like the heart, they need to compare this change to a baseline value. This value is often called ground, allowing different parts of the circuit to know how the input (or other components) potential is changing. | 25 | 136 |
Do glasses improve vision over time or will vision deteriorate over time? | Ophthalmologist here.
Pertaining to adults, eyeglasses will not harm or improve your eyes. Eyeglasses will not change your prescription if you wear them or if you don't.
There are essentially three ways that our refraction (eyeglass prescription) changes over time:
1. The length of the eye can change.
2. The shape of the cornea can change.
3. The shape of the lens can change.
The length of the eye does not change after we reach adulthood, but it does change during childhood.
When we do close work, we focus the lens in our eye by using the ciliary muscle. This exerts a "squeezing" force on the white of the eye, lengthening the eye over time, making nearsightedness worse in children. | 3,810 | 5,263 |
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Update: Professor re-arranged authorship order without my consent. What are my options? | **Original post:**
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAcademia/comments/3e9ftn/professor_rearranged_authorship_order_without_my/
**THANK YOU**
The information provided by commenters on my first post was incredibly helpful, so thank you very much for that!
**Update:**
It's still hard to process everything that has happened, so I'm going to just write it out in bullet points.
* After being a total wreck about all of this for weeks, gathering options from lots of people (on here, other faculty members, friends, administrators, etc.), I decided that I couldn't live with myself if I didn't fight this. It was already tearing me apart and I thought I would regret it forever if I let it just happen.
* I called them on their ethical breaches (yes, using those words). The corresponding author started making up excuses. One of the things she claimed was that the journal automatically lists authors alphabetically (conveniently that puts her first and me last). Of course, this is not the case.
* Every time I refuted her claims with evidence (showing her the list of journal policies, etc.) she came up with another excuse and never addressed my points.
* The paper progressed to the final stage at the journal, so I sent an ultimatum that the authorship be restored and the corresponding author be changed or I would report their violations to the journal.
* They said they wouldn't change the authorship and were fine if we just dropped the paper altogether. (I knew this was a bluff.)
* We negotiated on the authorship. I made them an offer that was so reasonable, it would have been ludicrous to not accept it. They did accept it.
* The paper is fully accepted.
* *Cons:* Lots of stress, hassle, arguments. My chair resigned from my committee (she was a co-author, but not the main instigator of the ethical violations).
* *Pros:* I stood up for myself and held onto my dignity and self-respect. Also, the paper now reflects the actual contributions of the authors, not how devious someone is willing to be.
**tl;dr - I threatened to report them to the journal. Negotiation ensued. Paper is published. Chair resigned from my committee. I have no regrets.** | At least now you have a great story to tell when they ask you in a job interview to describe a difficult situation and how you handled it!
Usually no one has anything to say to those questions, so you might get some offers just on that alone. | 23 | 63 |
CMV: Online ads are just as, if not less effective than traditional ads | A lot of websites or "start-your-own-company" ads always like to stress the importance of digital marketing, but I believe that this is merely a fad.
Ads on YouTube, Facebook or many websites are often intrusive and they don't really help grab a sale - whenever I see a Coca-Cola or car insurance ad, much worse an unskippable one play on YouTube, it doesn't make me want to buy the product, it just annoys me and makes me dislike the company even more.
The banners displayed on websites are often ignored and sometimes are atrociously clickbait-y. These don't seem any better than the banner ads of newspapers.
It's different from ads on, say, TV or the radio, because those mediums are designed around commercial breaks. Seeing an ad right after Hero X meets up with the villain adds to the suspense.
But when I see a movie trailer pop up right as I thought I was going to be able to watch a cooking recipe video, it really does tick me off, and this is a really common complaint of YouTube users. Why do advertisers pay to have their ads intrusively blasting at people who don't care about their product?
TL;DR: online marketing is ineffective because it's intrusive/easily ignored, no better than traditional ads
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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!* 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!* | But online adds can be targeted, a physical add is almost completely random in who sees it, while an online add can be shown to who you want.
you can show luggage to pole who are looking for luggage, Drones to people who want drones, video games to people who want video games, and not show adds for retirement home to 12 year olds.
you cant do that with a billboard. | 14 | 17 |
The "highest degree received" question | So, I've noticed in applying to academic positions (assistant professor, etc.) that there is generally a question with a drop-down menu asking for "highest degree received", which lists BA, MA, PhD, etc. as part of the application process. As an ABD student, I don't yet have a PhD, so it seems that I should choose MA. However, I know that a lot of HR software automatically filters those candidates that are don't meet the requirements of the position. Given that TT positions all require a PhD, but I don't have one as of yet (but will), is it a mistake to choose MA as highest degree? Does anyone know how these things work? Any answers are much appreciated. | Put PhD, on the grounds that presumably you're applying for jobs you'll take up after conferral. Be very clear in your CV and follow ups and interviews what the actual circumstance is, but if you're applying for jobs to take up after you've gained the PhD, then you will have the PhD for the purposes of the job.
| 43 | 23 |
ELI5 - How can astronomers determine what a planet/moon is made of, just from a few pictures of it? | Spectroscopy.
Notice how different things are different colors?
This is because different chemicals absorb, emit, and reflect light differently.
Not only do we know how *nearly every* chemical absorption/emission spectrum (what light they absorb, emit, and reflect). We can predict it via quantum electrodynamics (Quantum Mechanics) for chemicals we haven't gotten around to inventing and testing yet.
To go a step further this emission spectrum changes based on temperature the chemical is at. So knowing all of this a powerful computer (or a powerful computer in the 70's/80's... your smart phone is sufficient today) can decompose the spectrum and find a planet/star's temperature + chemical composition. | 145 | 434 |
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ELI5: why some sunny days are hotter than others? | Why 2 consecutive days can be with great temperature differences, given that the sun is at the same angle and botth days are sunny, clear sky, no wind?
By great temperature differences I mean from 21 degrees Celsius onde day to 32 the next, to 39 the next next. | There are many variables that can cause temperature and weather to change (and ‘feel like’ a different temperature), much of which is interconnected, but essentially the density of the air that the sun’s heat must travel through will make it feel cooler (colder, denser air) or hotter (warmer, thinner air). | 18 | 15 |
CMV: Terms of service agreement should be simple, short, and easy to read | Pretty much very time you sign up for a new service or download a new app you have to agree to a new terms of service. No one reads them. They are usually extremely long, complicated and convoluted documents. Everyone just hits agree and moves on because they just want to use the app/service, and companies know this. They know no one will read a 5000 word terms of service agreement just to use the app, and because of this they can put sneaky things into the terms of service agreement which allows companies to violate our digital privacy use our data in ways that we wouldn't agree to if we knew exactly what they were doing.
To put terms of service agreements in context, the U.S. constitution is 4543 words. Terms of service agreements can range from 2550 on the low end to 15,000 words in length. And, these terms of service agreements are written in legalese. On top of that, many companies have separate privacy policies that are just as long if not longer than their terms of service agreements.
I think a law be passed that requires Terms of Service Agreements (TOS) to be short, simple and written in language that is easy to understand for regular people. It's not really an agreement if people are agreeing to things that they don't understand. How many terms are actually essential for a user to agree to before using the app? I'd argue, not much. There is no reason for a terms of service agreement or privacy policy to be over 1000 words and ideally it should be 500 or less, and it should always be written is language that is easy for everyone to understand.
CMV! | You need the legalese because that's how you make sure you've covered everything. When you talk in broad strokes, you usually leave loopholes and technicalities open. When money is on the line, you need to make absolutely certain you're being as clear as possible, or else those loopholes appear and you have a nightmare in court.
Your own example of the US constitution actually works against you here: The US constitution has 4543 words, and for decades, you've been arguing about what it actually means, what the intentions of the forefathers were, and how it should be interpreted when it comes to making policy. The US constitution is a perfect example of a text that should have used more words to make itself clearer. If the 2nd Amendment was written in legalese and clear about what it meant for example, you would know exactly what the right to bear arms meant and would be having a much, much more effective conversation about how to reduce gun violence.
So, I'd offer an alternative: Terms of service should be as long as they need to be, but they should offer a layman-accessible summary at the beginning that gives them a reasonable overview of what they can and can't do. That way, people can read the general content of the terms of service, but still have access to the precise terms should they need them - for example, if they ever need to sue a company for breaching the terms of service. | 81 | 275 |
ELI5 How does a desert oasis work? | There's water under the ground in most places, that's why wells work. In some places, like deserts, it's very deep underground. But sometimes the land dips downwards, and you naturally get to where that water is, forming an oasis.
The water in the oasis often comes from underground, and the rain that feeds it could be hundreds of miles away. The water spreads out underground until it finally reaches the oasis, and replenishes its supplies. | 88 | 92 |
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I think "Buy Local" or "Buy American" are unhelpful concepts and, in many cases, even morally objectionable. CMV. | We hear it all the time. People place a large amount of abstract benefit to a purchase made locally. e.g., 'A t-shirt made in the US is more desirable than a t-shirt made in Vietnam.' Or, 'I only buy coffee at local coffee shops and not chains.'
I think you should buy items from wherever in the world that offers you the best combination of price and functionality in the product.
Many people cite a vague concept of keeping money in the local economy but there's not much economic evidence to back this up. I'd love to see it if anyone has it. If the concept of 'foreign-made' is bad, where do you draw the line? Buying American is better than foreign. Buying from your state is better than national. Buying from your local community is better than some company in a state far away. But why stop there? Why buy anything outside of the people on your block or even your own home? That way, your money never even leaves your home and just keeps recirculating between family members.
Certainly if you believe the quality of a foreign good to be inferior, it can be a reasonable decision to spend your money with a different manufacturer. But many times the foreign product might even be of better quality but gets demerits for not being made locally.
Here's where the moral angle comes in. By choosing to give special privilege to shopping at a local store, you are saying that this person is more deserving of your money than a person in a far-away land. Assume you are choosing between two scented candles of identical quality, one made locally and the other produced by a company in a 3rd-world country. Likely, the maker of your local candle is much better off financially than the foreign worker. Why does this person deserve your money more, especially when it's likely that the person in the 3rd world needs the money more desperately?
Now, some caveats. I recognize that there are some serious human rights issues at stake in this subject. I do not want to turn a blind eye to them but, in my opinion, the best way to confront those is through positive change in working with those companies to better their working conditions as opposed to stopping doing all business with them altogether. A good example of this is Apple. They work with a lot of suppliers and many of them have had some serious ethical issues with their workforces in the past. Apple didn't abandon the suppliers but instead has worked very hard with them to improve wages and working conditions. According to independent auditors, conditions have improved greatly.
If instead of working with them to improve conditions the buyer simply stops purchasing from them, the foreign company very likely will release some or all of their workforce and it's the poorest workers who are the worst off from the drop-off in sales. Many of them choose to work jobs in very sub-par conditions simply because their only other option without that job is outright destitution or starvation. That's the outcome that's never discussed when people rally some big boycott of a foreign manufacturer--what happens to all of those workers when the orders stop coming in? They certainly don't keep getting paid out of the goodness of the company's hearts. And besides, there's a much better social safety net in first-world nations than in third-world nations.
I believe that there is no inherent benefit to buying locally and, in many cases, it is even morally objectionable.
Change my view. | What about looking at it from a climate change and carbon emissions standpoint? Buying local reduces the travel required for the product to reach you - and thus reduces the overall carbon footprint of that product. | 11 | 25 |
ELI5: How does the UN work? | All the countries that are members of the United Nations send representatives to the council, and they have meetings, discussions, and hopefully agreements over all the subjects that are important to people all over the planet.
"The United Nations is an intergovernmental organization tasked with maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations, achieving international co-operation, and being a centre for harmonizing the actions of nation." | 24 | 29 |
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ELI5 : Why does Alcohol make a person dehydrated | There are two stages in producing urine. The first stage uses a lot of water to help the kidneys filtrate waste products. The second stage recycles the excess water and recircles it into your body. When drinking alcohol this second step is interrupted and doesn't work as effectively thus you will produce more urine and waste lots of water.
So basically alcohol makes you pee until you are dehydrated. | 93 | 74 |
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ELI5: If the liver filters out toxins from the animal's body, then why does it contain such nutritional value for carnivores and is typically what the eat first? | The liver does a lot of things. There are lots of biochemical reactions you need to survive which takes place in the liver. The liver does not actually filter out toxins but it changes it to other less toxic chemicals that can either be metabolized or filtered out by the kidneys. But this is just a small part of the biochemical reactions taking place. The liver produce proteins, a lot of the hormones, bile, insulin, etc. A lot of these biochemical processes is what actually requires the vitamins and minerals you need so the liver is where you find the biggest concentrations of these. | 159 | 277 |
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Why are hydrogels used in tissue engineering, what is the main advantage over just sterile water? | Some context would be helpful, as this is a vast field. Some important aspects:
- Hydrogels have a shear modulus and don't drip away, in contrast to water.
- Hydrogels can have a stiffness and viscoelasticity that's tunable in situ, unlike water.
- Hydrogels may contain electrolytes to maintain isotonicity with physiological fluids; pure water isn't isotonic.
- Hydrogels can hold useful cells (e.g., stem cells) in position in the manner of a scaffold; water can't.
- Hydrogels can be fabricated to present tissue-like mechanical properties that drive cells toward certain behavior; water doesn't provide this. | 35 | 28 |
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ELI5: What does the term "identity politics" mean? | This is super embarrassing -- but it comes up all the time and I don't totally get it.... | "identity politics" are political idea or efforts to encourage political activities based on someone's membership in a particular "identity" group. The most common examples in the U.S. are race, religion, and gender.
The term is most frequently used with a negative connotation -- the idea being that "identity politics" is a way of setting groups against each other and making it harder to talk about actual policy because every discussion becomes about whether you are betraying your "group." However, it can also be used in a neutral or positive sense, to describe political appeals based on problems uniquely faced or experienced by people in certain social contexts.
| 192 | 235 |
ELI5: How do some symptoms of illness being “an impending sense of doom” work, chemically? | I don't mean like mental Illness but like if
you have something physically wrong
with you just happen and you're gonna
die. I read that the wrong type of blood
transfusion can cause that feeling as a symptom of something being seriously wrong with your body. What makes the doom feeling feel so different than other
feelings, chemically?
I know similar questions have been asked before, I’m not asking why it’s a symptom, I’m trying to ask how does the doom feeling happen, what kind of things does the body and brain do to produce that feeling, versus a normal adrenaline rush when you are in danger. | The body is full of many sensors, that try to measure what's happening. This information is used to operate many of the body's safety systems.
For example, if you eat the wrong plant and it starts to impact your sense of balance, the body detects this and you barf. Alas, you evolved before cars were invented, so sometimes the balance confusion is a function of being inside a moving car, which we call motion sickness. Throwing up doesn't change the car, so this doesn't work, but the body sensors don't know that.
When the brain hasn't experienced something before, and doesn't have an instinct to fall back on, it makes you very upset. Many things act this way, like your blood example or high CO2 levels in the room's air. You don't know what to do, but you get upset in hopes you'll try something that works. It's your body trying to engage your brain to solve the problem, whatever it is. | 22 | 15 |
ELI5: the rule in English that makes 'enough' pronounced like 'enuff' but 'though' is pronounced 'tho' | Congratulations, you've just figured out by yourself the first lesson of Linguistics 101: Orthography (writing system) has absolutely nothing to do with language.
Language is part of the human experience. Every human being has language and learns it without being taught. Orthography is something that we have invented, and you have to go to school to learn it.
Have some more:
uf- enough, rough, tough
af- cough, trough
au- bough, drought, plough
ou- dough, though
aa- bought, sought, thought
oo- brougham, slough, through
uh- thorough, borough (in some dialects, esp. British)
up- hiccough
ok- hough (spelling reformed to "hock" in the 20th century)
okh- lough (irish spelling of "loch")
If you're curious, how this happened is that these all used to be pronounced the same: the "lough" one. The "kh" (ipa: /x/) phoneme left the English language, and people found new ways to pronounce words that used to have it. | 116 | 141 |
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CMV: Saying that Bollywood needs white representation as a retort to Hollywood needs Asian representation is not a valid comparison | This comparison does not make sense to me. In some cities of the US Asians (both South and East Asians, I stuck to Bollywood in the title because I don't know enough about Chinese cinema) make up to 10-15 % of the total population. This warrants at least one recurring or support cast character on a tv show. I couldn't even find a percentage of Caucasians in India, but I fairly safely say that none of the major cities in India can boast a significant percentage of Indians.
Which makes sense. While India and the US are both melting pots, the US is a melting pot of races from all around the world, whereas India is a melting pot of only all the different cultures within its geography, and possibly East Asia and the middle East.
I'm not saying that American TV shows set in a rural town where there's a tiny almost 0 % chance of finding an Asian American need to shoehorn such a character in. But if a show like Friends were to air today, it would be deemed too unrealistic and for good reason too.
Getting back to the CMV. Bollywood doesn't need white representation to the same degree that Hollywood needs Asian representation in order to make the setting in which the show is set "realistic" and "representative of reality". Therefore the comparison is wrong. And yes I have actually read this very same comparison being used on reddit as a way to push back against Asian representation on American TV, so it's not completely out of the blue (probably what inspired this CMV).
Am I totally off on this or is there something worth discussing here? CMV!
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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!* | Most people live very segregated social lives. You may live in a city that is 1/3 black, but that doesn't mean a lunch table is likely to be 1/3 black. It means something a lot closer to "1/3 of the lunch tables are black". Inclusive multiracial casts are a way of showing the society we'd like to have, not the one we have. | 16 | 15 |
Are there any solved questions in philosophy? | Sure, primarily in the philosophy of logic and math.
We know for example, that you can’t define truth within a formal language without getting some version of the liars paradox thanks to Tarski.
And we also know that any mathematical theory which is isomorphic to peano systems cannot both be consistent and complete thanks to Gödel. | 35 | 20 |
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How are programs actually encoded into an FPGA? | I understand the principle of constructing a web of logic gates to perform a particular function (process a data stream, do a math computation, etc.). However, I do not understand how my specification for a set of gates is converted into actual hardware. | The key component is called a LUT or look-up-table. This is a small circuit that has 5 inputs and can be programmed to generate different outputs for each of the 32 possible combinations of the 5 inputs.
What kind of device/circuit has that capability? A RAM. A LUT is basically a 32-bit bit-addressable RAM.
In addition to the LUTs there are numerous other memories whose outputs are connected to pass gates and other control structures that set up how the LUTs are connected to each other, how they connect to flip-flops, etc., etc. | 16 | 35 |
ELI5: the Miller-Urey experiment | Scientists were trying to determine if the chemicals needed for life (amino acids) could be produced from the chemicals that they believed existed when the Earth was young.
So, they took those chemicals and put them in a closed loop along with water. They heated that water to simulate evaporation from the oceans and zapped the air with electricity to simulate lightning strikes.
In the end, they found well over 20 amino acids were created, many of which are the fundamental building blocks of organic life.
So, this experiment shows that it is possible to create organic chemicals from inorganic sources. | 14 | 17 |
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In the United States, Why is a Masters degree (particularly in economics) considered a "consolation" degree when it seems like it is highly valued in other countries? | Sorry if this is the wrong subreddit, but since this is about an MA in Economics, I thought it would fit in a little bit and generate a bit more of a response than if it were in say, AskAcademia. So the general consensus I've heard is that in the United States, getting a Masters degree in Economics is generally considered a "consolation" degree for those who drop out of PhD programs and I've heard some call the degree useless. Yet in Canada and other parts of the world, a large portion of economists simply just need to hold an MA in order to take an "economist" position. Why is that? Why does it seem like in the United States you need to have a PhD to be an economist and else where you don't? Or am I wrong?
And kind of related, there are a lot of masters programs in Canada whereas in the United States, most students who wish to go for something higher than their Bachelors have to go for PhD programs and then if they leave early, they are awarded their Masters? It seems to me that a Masters degree is much less valued in the United States, am I wrong about this? Why is the structure of programs so different between the US and elsewhere?
The reason I ask is because a lot of professors I've talked to in economics have advised that it is best for students who do not wish to teach to just get their MA in Economics then go into public or private industry. They've said that the opportunity cost of getting a PhD in Econ is just too high to justify unless you love teaching. Is this true?
Edit to add: I guess what I'm trying to get at is that in Canada, for most disciplines, students first get their honours degree in their field, then their masters, then their PhD. In the United States, it seems very common for students to go straight from their bachelors to their PhD program and I'm trying to understand why this is? Going straight from a BA to a PhD in Canada is very rare. (I've come across one econ program in Canada where you could go straight from BA to PhD) | It has to do with the culture of the degree.
In the US, with rare exception (NYU), MA degrees are not *terminal* degrees. You don't just sign up for Chicago with the intent of getting a Masters. (Indeed, you cannot.) Instead, you sign up for Chicago with the intent of getting a PhD. The MA is given after you've completed your first-year comprehensive exams.
Given that one does not enter a program with the intent to get an MA, but an MA is given after one year in the program, the *usual* inference is that if someone has an MA from an American school, then it means that individual was unable to complete the dissertation phase of their degree.
Now that's not always the right interpretation, but it is the most common.
In Canada and in some European universities (LSE), the MA is considered a terminal degree, and no such stigma applies. | 29 | 51 |
ELI5: what makes a person a fast or slow runner? | Several factors but namely muscle tissue composition. Human muscle fiber is divided into what is called slow twitch and fast twitch. Slow twitch muscle fire slower than fast twitch and uses oxygen more effectively thus making for better marathon runners and cyclists. Fast twitch muscle fibers are more anaerobic only providing energy for short bursts thus leading better sprinters. Most people have a mixture of both types but your Usain Bolts have more fast twitch fibers and your Lance Armstrongs have more slow twitch. | 28 | 47 |
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ELI5: In the house, why does heat set at 68 feel different than ac set on 68? It’s the same temperature but they feel very different! | Others have mentioned humidity which can definitely make a difference.
Another big difference is from radiant heat. On a hot day, the heat not only warms up the air, but also the walls of your home as well, and those walls radiate heat back inside. Your body absorbs radiant heat much more readily, thus why you can feel warm by a campfire on a cold evening. Your standard thermostat can't accurately account for radiant heat, so even though the air temperature may be the same, you'll feel warmer on hot days as the walls warm you up. | 63 | 81 |
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ELI5: What is motivation? I mean what is going on in the brain when somebody gets motivation or has motivation? | A popular model of motivation requires two things: an incentive (something of value), and the belief that you will get that thing. So, what is going on in your brain is an appraisal of value (I want that thing) and an assessment of your ability to do what is needed to get that thing.
Goal-setting plays a large role. You don't just "have motivation". You have to have motivation to do something. Motivation has a direction, it's not a state-of-being. | 465 | 1,509 |
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ELI5: How is it sanitary for doctors and nurses to wear scrubs on their commute to and from work? | There is *some* evidence that shows that the bioburden (amount of bacteria) on uniforms is higher on scrubs that have been home laundered versus those laundered by a hospital facility. This is a topic that has been going round and round with Infection Control, the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Nurses Association (ANA) and Association of peri-Operative Registered Nurses (AORN) for years.
Scrubs get contaminated at work. They get contaminated on the way home from work. They get contaminated on the way into work by sitting in the car in which you drove home from work the day before in your contaminated scrubs.
Wearing them out and about after work can *potentially* spread bacteria/fungi picked up at the hospital.
Patients in the hospital are there because they're already sick. Getting infected by a hospital acquired "bug" is a huge issue and leads to significant morbidity and mortality. In the interest of decreasing *risk*, it's been recommended by Infection Control, the AMA, the ANA, and the AORN to change into clean, hospital laundered scrubs on arrival to the hospital (usually this is done in the OR suites--restricted and semi-restricted areas) and to leave the dirties behind before you exit the facility.
This does nothing to account for the staff who wear their own uniforms in other areas of the hospital to work and back home. They home launder their uniforms and are commonly seen out and about running errands in their personal scrubs.
One study found that the hospital's laundering facility was spreading a nasty fungus because the equipment was dirty. So, there's another place where contaminants need to be monitored.
The evidence that is available shows that it's probably better to not wear them outside of the hospital.
| 470 | 1,346 |
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ELI5: How do sea captains "fight" a storm? | On shows like Deadliest Catch, when there's a storm, the captain is showing struggling to keep the ship afloat and (I assume) in the same position. What is he actually doing at the controls to make this happen? | There are a few strategies. Usually they revolve around keeping the bow (front) of the ship pointed toward the waves. A wave on the side can much more easily roll the boat. If you've ever seen surfers paddling out through waves it's a similar concept. Nose on the ship is designed to cut through water. Anyways the seas can come at odd intervals and directions and keeping the boat lined up can be difficult work. | 49 | 49 |
[Incredibles] Why aren't heroes covered by Good Samaritan laws? | After Mr. Incredible saves the jumper and a train, he is sued by both the jumper and the passengers. Wouldn't this principle make him immune to legal action? | Typically good samaritan laws assume that the individual was acting for the well-being of another and had sufficient training or skills to do good. Someone who has never done surgery is more likely going to do harm if they try to help someone in the street in urgent medical need (say they were shot in a vital organ and the bullet needed to be removed), but a trained Dr could do it.
This comes down to recognition and registration. Supers are not recognised by the law, they are not trained, they do not get tested or audited, they are a vigilante. So good samaritan laws will not cover them.
It wouldn't be long anyway before some criminals took advantage of this cover. Creating a fixed brawl downtown near a bank and conveniently smashing open the vault before the "criminal" escapes with the cash while the "hero" claims immunity as they were trying to do good. These loopholes have to be covered otherwise we need to define what a hero is. | 24 | 18 |
ELI5: Why does going to sleep earlier affect your body differently than going to sleep later, even if you sleep for the same duration? | I usually go to bed around midnight. But lately I've been waking up feeling a bit tired and feeling a little off all day. I was told I should go to bed earlier, which I'm sure is sound advice, but how does it make a difference when I sleep the same length of time anyway? | Your body has a circadian cycle, meaning that certain hormones are released at certain times of the day. For example, melatonin (what makes you feel sleepy) is released at night, and is inhibited by the light.
Similarly, other hormones, such as cortisol (the stress hormone) is released in cycles during the day, including a spike early in the morning that helps you wake up. If you try to sleep during a spike, you won't have as good sleep.
Your body's circadian rhythm can change, but it takes time. If you choose a sleep schedule and stick to it, after a few days, your body will adjust. If you keep changing your schedule, your body can get confused and it will impact how restful your sleep feels. | 61 | 178 |
What career possibilities are there with a philosophy major? | To start with, at the moment, I am a junior in an American high school. In the past three-four years, I have had a wide variety of interests in liberal arts subjects, specifically history, music, and creative writing. But nowadays, while I am still interested in those aforementioned subjects, I find myself analyzing the reasoning/logic behind ethics, religion, laws, and other fairly abstract matters like them, extremely often. As far as I know, the analysis of those topics tends to fall under the broad "philosophy" brush.
So I was wondering, since I plan on going to college in a year and a half, what job opportunities would one possibly get with a philosophy major? I'm not unopposed to a double major/or a minor, but I would like to know what I could do with just a philosophy major.
I would also like to know if any of them would pay decently, because although that is not a primary concern, I would still like to live a semi-comfortable life.
Thanks in advance. | You could go into banking, well, any industry, pursue like project manager, analyst, technical writer, lawyer, counselor, process analyst. There's a ton
you can do along with other liberal arts degrees. The world is your oyster.
You might want to take some technical courses like technical writing, or whatnot.
Ethics and all of that are very important and good to have under your belt. It may be good from a conversational use in the workplace, to actually applying it a little here in there in the work you do, no matter what you do.
In addition to a liberal arts degree, you may wish to also look at some kind of certificate program that teaches a hands-on hard skill.
| 15 | 32 |
How do mutations occur that happen to be beneficial for the environment? | The fact that an organism adapts extremely good to the environment is very strange to me. I understand evolution so my question is not how organisms are so well suited for the environment, it's how they can even develop mutations that is suited to live. I feel like we are heads landing consecutively thousand times.
I hope my question is clear I am having a hard time formulating it.
Edit: Thank you all so much for taking time to respond. I read it all and it was very helpful. I now understand the answer. | I think you may be a little confused about evolution.
Organisms don't adapt to environments, they are simply born with whatever genetic tools they have and either reproduce or die.
Species on the other hand are what we see from the natural selection of organisms that survive (or not, i.e. extinction).
A well adapted species is landing heads a thousand times but what you don't really are the millions of previous throws that failed. That's really the beauty of natural selection, if you have a strong enough pressure then you will either only get those organisms that can survive or the species will go extinct.
We can see this selection and survival of the fittest play out in real-time with antibiotic resistance and bacteria. | 90 | 30 |
Why are potassium supplements so regulated ? | So a grown male should get around 4500mg of potassium a day.
When I was looking for supplements I noticed that most of them only have around 50-100mg per pill and found out that it is because set regulations from the FDA.
I get that too much potassium can be lethal, but I don't understand where the logic in regulating the supplement is, when you could just eat 200 grams of pistachios and get 40 times the amount of a normal supplement dose.
Wouldn't that be equally dangerous ? Could you kill yourself if you eat a lot of spinach, pistachios and avocados for example ? | Quite simply, the 50-100mg potassium supplements are not likely to increase your potassium level by any biologically relevant amount, and that's totally intentional.
Any potassium pill large enough to measurably raise your serum potassium is restricted to prescription-only, because it's potentially deadly. A lot of older people have poor kidney function. High potassium can be very rapidly fatal and if you can't pee out the potassium you're in trouble.
So you can get a 10 mEq (750mg) or 20 mEq (1,500mg) potassium pill, but it'll be a prescription.
Taking 20 mEq (1,500mg) of potassium in pill form is much more deadly than eating 1500mg of potassium in avocado or potato or pistachio form. Pills are absorbed into your body very rapidly, while foods are digested slowly, so with food you have more time to get rid of excess K. (and your body may or may not even absorb all of the K in a solid-food meal) | 232 | 243 |
ELI5: When surgeons perform a "36 hour operation" what exactly are they doing? | What exactly are they doing the entirety of those hours? Are they literally just cutting and stitching and suctioning the entire time? Do they have breaks? | different doctors and different teams takes turns working on the patient, while others rest.
Much like in construction, it takes different specialties to do different things. Neurosurgeons stitch together the nerves or separate brain tissue, vascular surgeons cut or reconnect the blood vessels, GI surgeons deal with intenstines, orthopedists deal with bones and joints, oncologist might check things for cancer tumors if that's a concern, etc.
36 hours is not a routine procedure, they might find something unexpected, and then take the time to consult another specialist, or bring in imaging machine to get a better idea of what's going on.
They might restore blood flow to one part of the body, then wait a bit to see if all works as intended, then proceed to the next part. | 11,773 | 13,597 |
[Alien] Back on earth, who is the person most directly responsible for directing Nostoromo to LV-426? | The Weyland-Yutani Corporation has a number of standing interests due to certain knowledge it has acquired over the years. As a part of their policy it is standard procedure to investigate strange signals in case any of these signals might lead to one of these interests. Whoever put such a policy in place is partly responsible.
The Nostromo was selected to investigate one such signal, and it is possible that such a signal was detected before they had ever set out to start their original mission. So someone followed policy and assigned the Nostromo to investigate the ship - they are perhaps partly responsible, although probably not morally.
So it's unlikely that there is any one person, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation is a huge corporation and made up of smaller constituent companies it has absorbed and so there are all sorts of policy and procedural issues which are followed and which no one is really responsible for any more.
Yes, soon enough the truth became clear and from that point on it was the responsibility of those who made further orders, but up until they knew what was happening, a lot of the response and investigation wasjust normal, standard stuff.
it's much the same in that once it was determined that an Xenomorph had been found, Ash was bound to follow Special Order 937 which tasked Ash with ensuring the retrieval and survival of a sample specimen of the Xenomorph and stipulated that this task superseded all other priorities, even the safety and survival of the crew.
Whoever programmed that into him was following whatever orders they had been given which could easily be looked at that making contact with alien species is more important than any individual space jockey's opinion and so it's fair enough the the android to preserve and return with this essential information and specimens.
Sometimes, at first, it's no one fault, just a rubbish set of circumstance and there is no use at all getting upset, pointing fingers and trying to make a court case out of it. | 13 | 23 |
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CMV: The point in life is to have a good adventure, to really enjoy it. | Just read OP's post here https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/j8fil/honestly_whats_the_point_of_life/?st=j1uy8g8w&sh=3187e101
Since that is 5 years and locked..I come here to discuss.
And I find that life is pretty much you do things with consequence. You live with the consequences till you die, till you brain doesn't remember them anymore. So if you fuck up really bad, you will know it, remember it and it will haunt you till you die or otherwise temporarily forget. Though others may find going to some good therapist or whatever to greatly ease the pain I can't comment on that thus far.
I simply see life as the years go past, same trends, shopping malls, people queing up at the sales....for something to spend their cash on. To impress others or themselves. Because they feel that thing is so worth so much. In reality, if it is a piece of clothing it may be worn ~5 times in your life. Then you get rid of it. Idk where I'm going with this. Life keeps going forward and death comes real quick for some, painfully long for others, It's relative to the individual's perspective. Based on stress they can and can't control in themself. Based on how they cope and resultingly act and think. It's all meaningless once your dead. Might as well lie down and be happy that you're going to die, because you did many things you wanted to do, had an adventure and there's no more you want to do because you've experienced the fabric of life and although it will be exciting to see developments and collapse of the human race as it inevidently moves forward, you are simply too tired to continue. Thank god I did so many things when I could.
Hilarity is we don't know if God exists or not, but it's fun to just imagine that he is real. Anything is possible because we can't even prove that he doesn't exist.
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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 is no inherent purpose to life, so we each get the opportunity to create our own purpose ... for you, it could be the adventure of which you speak, but for someone else it might be to solve a problem which faces humanity, or to make the planet better for future generations, or to create a beautiful garden, or anything else they can imagine. | 16 | 19 |
ELI5: The IRS scandal and Obama's connection | I have seen a lot in other subreddits and on the news concerning this scandal dealing with the IRS but haven't picked up on what exactly is going on. | Certain non-profit organizations that raise money (mostly through donations), are allowed to claim a tax exemption with the IRS, when they file their taxes, they file as a 501(c)(4). Traditionally, this has been things like Volunteer Fire Departments or the Salvation Army. They provide a service to their community and use the funds in this manner, and hence are exempt from taxes.
However, after the Citizens United case, a new type of group was formed called a Super Political Action Committee, or a Super PAC. Super PACs used this 501(c)(4) exemption so they could raise unlimited amounts of donations, while keeping the identity of their donors secret. They did this by using the "social benefit" claim for the (c)(4) exemption.
So, the IRS began examining (c)(4) groups more carefully, to make sure groups were not abusing this tax exempt status. There is nothing wrong with this, it is their job. However, the "scandal" is that since 2011, a few individuals in the IRS began scrutinizing specific types of groups, mostly those with affiliation to Right Wing or Tea Party ideologies. Had they simply scrutinized EVERY (c)(4) group, or did it at random, there would be no scandal, but since they singled out certain groups, some people are outraged.
| 34 | 59 |
Eli5- How do consumer drones (DJI, etc) broadcast the camera image to your phone from so far away? How come you can control a drone and view the feed like a mile away but I have trouble getting Wi-Fi reception on the other side of condo | There are two important things range of communication depends on when it comes to radio communication frequency and power. Higher frequency means more data but less range, this is why 5 ghz can carry more data than a 2.4 GHz wifi signal. Power increases range but the further your signal travels but the fewer people can use the same signal without interference. Like imagine being in a crowded room the louder people talk the lower the amount of productive conversations but the further away you'll be able to hear a particular person. Now both wifi and Bluetooth are heavily used and therefore their power is severely limited. However if you use a different frequency band with higher power limits you can greatly increase range | 64 | 214 |
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ELI5: Why do people with severe radiation sickness get that period where they suddenly get completely fine before getting worse again? | The cell life cycle exists in stages. Prior to cell division the cell does a self-check of the DNA to verify it's all where it should be to ensure healthy cell division. If the DNA is damaged and cant be repaired then apoptosis occurs, programmed cell death.
When exposed to high levels of radiation some cells are severely damaged while others are only somewhat damaged. The severely damaged ones die off relatively quickly. Then healing occurs which triggers "healthy" cells to divide to replace the dead cells. Those "healthy" cells go through their checks to ensure successful division. This is when the DNA damage is discovered and the cells kill themselves, resulting in the delayed, more severe cell die off. | 20 | 15 |
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ELI5: What is the difference between Public Accounting and Private Accounting? | Do they serve different industries or is it simply a different kind of company they are doing accounting/financial services for? Is there a difference in education/degrees for Public vs. Private? | It's more who you work for and what you have in your head as your main goal.
Private Accounting, you are there to protect the company you are working for, to ensure they remain within the law.
Public Accounting, you are making sure that other people are remaining within the law.
This is a VERY generalized view of it. | 12 | 28 |
CMV: Japan's population decline is not that big of a deal for the average person | Now first of all, I mention Japan specifically for two reasons: 1) it is always at the forefront of these discussions whenever population issues are talked about, and 2) I actually plan on living there, at least for a while, so it's quite relevant to me. I realize that other countries also have demographic issues like Japan which this could also be applied to, but for sake of convenience and relevance to me personally, I'd like to stick with Japan.
So, I'm aware of most of the predicted consequences, typically things like an overburdened social security system and an aging, retired population without pensions and/or support for government funded programs such as healthcare. What I don't see happening is the idea that Japan as a whole will become a bad country to live in for the average person, because I don't see how a reduction in population in tandem with a declining economy can result in the average person losing access to employment or infrastructure, at least in any worse case than they have now.
Since developed economies, and especially that of Japan, are heading towards automation anyway, it would seem that having a reduced human workforce would actually lessen the burden on the system to provide jobs and incomes for people. Also, large families, houses, things like that are typically the highest financial burdens a family could face, and yet as we see, fewer and fewer people in Japan are even having any kids.
So, in the event of an economic downturn and/or a loss of jobs, I can't see how the average single man or woman, or, the average couple with no kids would be significantly impacted. People often talk about the middle class disappearing, but, in this case it's literally disappearing, and if people aren't there to suffer the effects of a reduced workforce or higher costs, then how can there be a net negative for the average person's standard of living?
Essentially what it will take for someone to change my view is to please just illustrate some specific examples of aspects of life that will make Japan a bad or worse place to live than it is now. Because right now Japan is far from perfect, but it has good infrastructure, a low crime rate, fairly affordable costs of living, and decent employment prospects. Which of these would be reduced significantly by the population decline, and by how much? | For people in large cities, especially Tokyo, there will not be much difference, but the farther you get from cities, the more population decline will impact communities. Trains and buses can’t run indefinitely with almost no riders. Schools and hospitals will close. Restaurants and other businesses can’t stay open. People who can live without any services may find this to their liking, but most people want access to some of these things. | 17 | 73 |
ELI5: Why can some animals go weeks without eating, but humans need food on a daily basis? | For instance snakes or big cats can eat an animal one day and not half to eat for the rest of the month | Animals that don't eat as often tend to eat much more at each meal. For example, wolves eat only a couple of times a week, if that, but during each meal session they eat somewhere around 15% of their body weight in food. If humans ate like that, they would eat ~20-30 pounds of meat in a single meal. | 87 | 112 |
[Marvel/DC] Is getting an advanced degree an indicator of criminal proclivities? Are Ph.D.'s red-flagged in any law-enforcement databases? | Doctor Doom, Doctor Octopus, Doc Samson, Doctor Freeze, Professor Zoom, [Doctor Angst](http://comicbookdb.com/character.php?ID=15432), Doctor Faustus, Doctor Destiny, Doctor Sun, Doctor Phosphorus... even Professor X and Doctor Mid-Nite are a little shady, and who's really sure Doctor Manhattan can be trusted?
There's also Man-Bat, Lizard, and a quite a few others who don't parade their degrees around but still, you know... they're over-educated types. | It's a little more sophisticated than just tracking degrees, but many agencies will track them (and including some non-agencies organizations).
Much of what the agencies will be looking for are for recruits rather than potential targets. There's a lot of work that goes into building a SHIELD helicarrier or getting the Watchtower into space. Even if much of the design is done by Stark Industries or Wayne Enterprises, it's not that Tony or Bruce do all of the work themselves. There are teams of scientists that are needed to produce that work.
As you well know, many heroes have advanced degrees as well. Brother Voodoo is a psychologist, Dr. Strange is a surgeon (if you're counting medical degrees), Daredevil and She-Hulk both have JDs. And then of course, you have Mr. Fantastic, Tony, Bruce, Mr. Terrific, Ray Palmer, etc.
Ultimately, though, it's not really an issue of the education leading to criminal behavior. It's that the educated ones tend to be a lot more visible when they misbehave, i.e., it's the Scarecrows who have grandiose plans of driving everyone crazy; but those with fewer letters following their name are still likely to misbehave -- just in the smaller scale bank robbery kind of ways. | 57 | 111 |
Is light reflected off matter or is light absorbed and then released? | Are my curtains red because all other light is absorbed and (mostly) the red wavelengths are reflected, or does the fabric absorb the phiton and then release light of a red wavelength? | It’s reflecting the red light and absorbing the other colors, this is how pigments work which are how most everyday objects get their color. If a material absorbs and then emits light it’s either fluorescent (emission is almost instantaneous) or phosphorescent (emission is delayed). | 18 | 16 |
ELI5: When we start reading a piece of text, how do our brains know to read it in such a way that accounts for both the upcoming punctuation and sentence structure that we haven't gotten to yet? | The structure of our language syntax accounts for this, usually. There is also a lot of implications involved, sort of 'read between the lines' type stuff that's supposed to be inferred.
Are you reading this with an upward inflection as to create the tone of a question?
The first word of the sentence set it up to be a question. You know this inherently, but you probably can't site any specific rules off the top of your head for how or why this is. | 15 | 17 |
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