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ELI5: NBA structure explained to an European | As an European just approaching the NBA, I keep struggling to understand how the conference's and divisions work, I've seen posts here from 2016 but I Know some things changed since then.
I thought I understood but now I see the Chicago Bulls played the Golden State Warriors, the only game between two conferences, and it's not playoffs... What did I miss? | Two conferences, with 3 divisions in each, and 5 teams per division.
Each year, every team plays:
* 4 games against the other four teams in their division. (16 games total)
* 4 games against 6 other teams in their conference. (24)
* 3 games against the remaining 4 teams in their conference. (12)
* 2 games against each of the 15 teams in the other conference. (30)
Total: 82 games in the regular season. | 59 | 22 |
ELI5: Why is having home-field Advantage so significant? | Familiarity with the pitch and playing surface, crowd support and less travel. Lots of professional athletes are also superstitious, it's easier to do your routines in a familiar place. Also, away dressing rooms are rarely as nice as home ones, which can psychologically make you feel better. | 87 | 29 |
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[WH40k] What does space marine combat training actually consist of? | Everything you would imagine it would, but more rigorous.
They learn to shoot, sure, but they will also learn the recoil and spray patterns and the very "feel" of an assortment of weapons. They will learn how to wield a number of melee weapons, but will also be taught when and why to use them. They will learn the limits of their bodies and their power armor such that they become one and the same. They will learn tactics built upon a foundation of literally countless battles over the course of millennia. They will learn to work as tight-knit teams with any peers under any circumstances. They will learn of the enemies they will face in excruciating detail.
They will learn how to effectively harness their loathing and despair and vigor, and they will learn to know no fear. They will learn to be the very fire that brings light to the darkness. They will hone themselves into the point of the Emperor's spear. They will be the very weight of our Lord's hammer. They will become paragons of virtue and justice and unmitigated power such that they can once again bring all of Humanity to a golden era of superiority.
Space Marines spend every second of their waking lives, from the time they were basically toddlers, honing and perfecting their bodies and their minds. They are molded into the absolute epitome of what a soldier should be in any given circumstance or situation. | 36 | 39 |
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ELI5: Why is it normally that the bigger the species, the longer the lifespan...but the bigger the animal within the species, the shorter the lifespan? | The average size of any given species is the largest it can be, without over stressing its vascular system. When an organism is of average size compared to overly large, its systems act in better equilibrium. Larger examples have overstressed vascular systems and typically have joint issues. Imagine that as a species you do jumping jacks and a different species does push ups, etc. Your joints are designed (evolutionarily) to withstand your body weight doing that specific action until your body can't go any more (death). Your vascular system is designed to keep your body at a peak level of performance until you expire. If you are larger, your joints which are designed for less weight, and your vascular system which is not designed to pump nutrients that far, will support you for a time, but will give out sooner. The star that burns twice as bright burns half as long in most cases. | 21 | 54 |
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ELI5: How does gravity have an effect on time? | I seriously can't wrap my head around how time changes when gravity is in play. Let's say there is a clock on earth and a clock on a gravity dense planet, the time on the gravity dense planet will be slower. If you bring that clock back to earth from the gravity dense planet will they now be the same or different? | If you take two clocks and synchronize them, then send one to a location with more gravity, that clock will run more slowly than the clock still with you.
If, instead, you travel with the clock to the high gravity area and observe the clock in lower gravity, it will appear to run more quickly.
Time and space are the same thing - dimensions, or directions, in which things can move. Get a piece of paper and draw a straight line on it. Call it a dimension. If something moves across that piece of paper, and gets closer and/or farther away from either end of that line, it is moving forwards or backwards in that first dimension.
Is there some direction something on the paper can move, without moving at all in the first dimension? At a right angle, perhaps?
Right - so the surface of the paper has two dimensions. It is 2-dimensional. The world is 3 dimensional, because you can draw three lines perpendicular to each other. Movement in only the direction of time is perpendicular to all directions in space, so space-time is 4-dimensional.
This next part is difficult to visualize, but mass causes this flat space-time to curve - as gravity increases, directions in space become less and less perpendicular to the time direction, they begin to point forwards in time. Get another piece of paper, draw another line labeled time, and a perpendicular line labeled space. This is flat space, outside a gravity well. Now, motion is some distance in space per unit/distance of time. Draw a second set of lines, angled 45° towards the forward time direction. This represents space curving towards time. Now, using the intersection between normal "perpendicular" space and time as a starting point, pick a point some distance in the space direction, and some other distance in the time direction. This represents speed, or distance through space in a given time (miles per hour, furlongs per fortnight, whatever). Do the same thing, the same distance, but from the intersection of curved space-time - move your point in the 45° direction rather than 90°.
The two endpoints represent something moving at the same speed in their own frame of reference - both will have experienced traveling the same amount of distance in the same amount of time. According to an observer in the "flat" frame of reference, the guy down in the well did not move nearly as far in the "space direction" over the same amount of time, and therefore more slowly. Time passes differently for each.
This is not a mathematical tool for making general relativity calculations, merely a visual aid to help understand why time passes differently for observers in radically different inertial frames. | 12 | 18 |
CMV: In software development; and in other fields involving extended thought-work that depends on focus and concentration; there is no value in having coworkers to interact with face to face - and in fact, distractions created that way are counter-productive | I believe this comic expresses the argument most cogently:
http://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt-a-programmer/
Now, to my wall of text:
I run a small software company that's reasonably successful. I've been doing this for the past 15 years.
I've been employing people for years that I have never met — and quite possibly never will meet.
Last time I met any of my developers face to face was maybe 6 years ago.
I perceive no value whatsoever in meeting face to face. None.
Working together in an office is an impediment to getting work done, and is a source of constant interruption.
Email is generally better for productivity than face to face contact, or instant messaging.
Both face to face contact, and instant messaging, are distractions, and are useful primarily in the situation that you cannot progress on anything without immediate input. Such situations are extraordinary.
The people I meet face to face in my life are my wife, my son, and our nanny. I don't have a social need for more.
I believe people who think they need face to face contact for work in software development are either confusing social needs with work — or possibly, I would fear, aren't competent to work on their own. Or maybe they're involved in some kind of work that involves extraordinary synchronization — the kind of which I do not know.
If someone can't work independently, and must constantly interrupt other developers, I would consider them a burden, rather than an asset. To be an asset, one must be able to get work done on one's own, and coordinate as necessary.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that, if you're not going to physically touch the other person, there is nothing you can do in a face to face meeting that you cannot do online.
There's literally no reason to meet unless you're going to kiss, or have sex, or give a person a massage. | Steve Jobs was big on getting different types of employees (project managers, developers, marketing people, etc.) to have informal meetings throughout the day. A lot of Apple's better products came about because people just sat around at lunch and bounced ideas off of one another.
Eventually, yes, everyone had to go back and do their own work independently. But that doesn't mean there was *no* value in the face to face interactions. Online meetings are good when there is a specific task at hand, but in person meetings are better for long term planning and generating ideas. | 15 | 15 |
ELI5: Why do plastic bottles have pointed bottoms? Also, how come others like Gatorade completely ignore this and don't have it? | The pointed bottom helps provide structure to the bottle. If it didn't have this, the bottle would crumple a lot. Gatorade bottles are made of a harder plastic than most plastic bottles, so they don't need the shape to keep their form. | 2,061 | 1,829 |
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Why do things get darker when wet? | **Refractive index** of a material is the ratio between speed of light in vacuum and speed of light in that material. Light tends to bounce back when encountered with a sharp change in refractive index. Being wet means that there's a water film covering the material, mediating the change in refractive index, resulting in reduced reflection.
**Edit**
Part 2 of the story
Apart from index mediation, the water film does something else. For rough/fibrous surfaces, the reflection will be **diffuse**, i.e. visible from all directions. When a water film is present, the surface becomes smooth, and the reflection will be **specular**, and only visible in one direction. So in most directions, the material will appear darker.
Conductors are a completely different beast. The reflection off of metals are not solely dictated by the refractive index. | 2,557 | 7,761 |
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ELI5: How is heart muscle so superior endurance wise compared to other muscles? | Walking up a few flights of stairs makes your leg muscles burn and fatigue. Doing something like squeezing a stress Ball 2000 times consecutively would render your forearm muscles almost unusable until they recover. Yet your heart beats 50-80 times per minute every single minute for your entire life and never needs a break, never gets sore even after beating at a higher rate during exercise. How does this work? | Because the body is very well optimised to provide the heart the resources it needs.
Muscle pain is due in considerable part to lactic acid build up. This occurs when energy is being produced faster than oxygen can be provided. The heart always has a strong supply of oxygen as long as there are no blockages and the lungs have oxygen, which means the heart never really runs out of the stuff. If the body is running a little low, then vessels are constricted to preserve blood oxygen at the heart and other vital organs.
Muscle pain is also in part due to the formation of tiny tears in muscle tissue. This happens when a muscle is exerted beyond what it's used to. The heart is always pumping, so it's completely accustomed to this motion and thus doesn't form tears.
There's also quite a bit of redundancy in the heart. At any given point in time, 60-70% of your heart cells are resting. The heart has such a huge amount of mitochondria (bits in the cell where energy is produced) and such a ready supply of oxygen that even just very tiny rests for cells is enough to prevent fatigue. | 33 | 22 |
If we should use antibiotics sparingly, why is daily antiseptic mouthwash OK? | We've been hearing for a while now that overuse of antibiotics leads to proliferation of antibiotic-resistant strains. Why doesn't the same apply to dental mouthwashes/rinses, which are recommended for daily use?
I understand that "old school" mouthwashes are not really antibiotic; that they work by making it harder for plaque to settle on tooth surfaces. However, newer "burn-free" mouthwashes without alcohol, e.g. those that contain cetylpyridinium - does the same concern apply? | It is typically much harder to develop resistance to disinfectants applied externally. This is because disinfectants and topically applied antibiotics can be much more toxic to both the human and the bacterial target without negatively impacting the human. Things like bleach and alcohol are very toxic to microorganisms due to broad damaging effects, damaging effects that would occur in humans if we tried to use them internally. Consequently, bacteria cannot evolve total resistance since the disinfectant hits so many targets.
For internal antibiotics, we must damage only bacterial proteins or processes without damaging host proteins or processes. Thus the antibiotics used internally tend to have much more specific targets like cell wall synthesis or ribosomal function. As a result, bacteria are able to more readily evolve resistance since only one or two proteins are inhibited.
However, that is not to say externally applied antimicrobials are fine to use prolifically as we are beginning to discover bacteria resistant to triclosan, found in numerous products like soap and toothpaste.
So the tl;dr version is that topically applied disinfectants like alcohol are able to damage numerous targets within the bacteria making resistance almost impossible. Think of it like a weed growing in a lawn. A weed can evolve to resist a pesticide that only targets the weed but allows the grass to grow but likely won't evolve resistance to napalm which would kill everything including the grass. | 60 | 40 |
ELI5: What is the reason that it is common to eat 3 meals in a day? | 'Mealtimes' are constructed to accommodate social, geographic and economic norms and lifestyles. Doctors will often ask you if you're getting three square meals, but that's just because its an easy way of gauging whether you eat enough. Its not the natural, or even optimal, way of doing things. Naturally, the time we eat should be determined by our stomachs, not the position of the sun in the sky. That's why more recently doctors recommend you have healthy snacks throughout the day.
In modern Western culture, we eat three square meals because it coincided with industrial work patterns.
The industrial revolution brought a very strictly regimented workday. Suddenly people were very concerned with hours and minutes. You couldn't simply allow workers on a factory line to pop off whenever they liked because they were hungry. Over time, our eating patterns developed around that industrial workday, to the point where they became a social and cultural fixture. You had breakfast before work, you had lunch with your peers when the line shut down at midday, and then you would usually have dinner with your family after the workday. We developed social patterns and rituals around those ideas, until they became so entrenched that many of us thought that's just how people have always eaten.
In the modern world, with ready-to-eat meals available at all hours, those strict lines are also diminishing. You don't go home and have a big family dinner as much anymore. Lunchtime is also not necessarily a shared meal for all workers in a given workplace, because the nature of the workplace has changed.
In short, its the way we organize our society that really determines our mealtimes. When we work, how we work, and even things like gender roles or technology can determine the cultural norms for mealtimes. | 28 | 20 |
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ELI5: Will a kickball that is pitched faster go further when it is kicked? | Why or why not? My friend tried to say it was related to Newton's "Equal and opposite reaction" thing, but I think the action here would be the kicker's foot, nothing to do with the ball. I believe that a faster pitch will be harder to kick because more force is required to turn it around. | Keep the elasticity of the ball in mind. The harder you throw a tennis ball against the ground, the higher it bounces, the same principal applies here. The kinetic energy of the ball is converted into elastic potential energy as the ball deforms against your foot, then is converted back into kinetic energy as the ball goes flying. More energy in yields more energy out.
The equal yet opposite reaction basically means that as your foot exerts a force on the ball, the ball exerts a force on your foot, which slows it down a small bit, but not a whole lot considering a human leg has much more mass than a kickball. | 14 | 23 |
ELI5: Why are human eyes usually blue, brown or green as opposed to any other colors? | The stroma (top layer of the iris) is what determines eye color. For those with no melanin (pigment that makes eyes or skin a warm brown), the only color comes from the Tyndall effect of light scattering in the iris. This creates a blue color, like water with glacial flour or dirty smoke.
When the stroma has a little melanin, it looks green because this blue combines with the the orangey brownish melanin. When it has a lot of melanin, the brown color takes over completely. | 256 | 492 |
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ELI5: Why is it easier to talk when we move hands? | I see it all the time during speeches. I noticed I was doing it the other day and it made my flow of speech better. | Words are linguistically representative of concepts, but their range of meaning is limited. You can get a lot of information from things like tone and emphasis (the audible equivalent of "reading between the lines"), but body language adds yet another level of interpretation. For people with the subconscious desire to be understood with specificity and precision, making hand motions and facial expressions is a natural extension of the communication process.
Let me make it even simpler: you know when you comment on something in a sarcastic way and someone overreacts in a reply, not realizing that you're not really angry or upset? Imagine how much easier it would be if someone was listening to you speak instead of reading text in their own assumed tone. Hand motions and facial expressions are exactly that, but one level higher. You feel like it's "easier" to talk because you're using even more tools to make your communication clear, and you feel more comfortable and confident that you're being understood.
And you're right - most of the time, you are being understood better when you use the right words, the right tone, the right emphasis, and the right body language. | 40 | 38 |
CMV: Teachers should be one of the highest paid professionals in our society | We need to prioritize what is beneficial to society as a whole and what is not. There is no justification to pay a CEO thousands of times more than what a normal employee makes. The foundation of our society depends upon educating our kids. It pains me to see teachers using their own money to buy school supplies because of budget cuts. Also it pains me to see teachers quitting their jobs over low pay. The average teacher's pay is so low compared to other useless professions like sports managers, investment consultants, etc
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Edit: No, I did not mean teachers should be paid millions of dollars as CEO's. I was just trying to compare the difference in pay and the value they bring to society. You may pay a bit more in taxes now to pay for the teachers, but it will be rewarded in the future. Teachers make way less than the value they add to society. | How do you propose this be done? CEO’s, consultants, sports professionals are all paid through private industry. Teachers are paid through tax dollars. Should we privatize schools or nationalize all remaining industry? | 21 | 15 |
ELI5:Difference between "Decriminalize" and "Legalize" | So I'm trying to figure out the difference between legalizing something vs decriminalizing it? E.g. Marijuana | In practice, "legalizing" something allowes the government to regulate it in a way that allows for some legalty. With marijuana, legalizing it is the process of getting the government to approve a legal amount to possess and tax the sale of it.
Decriminalization is more straightforward- it simply means making it a non-criminal offense, like a speeding ticket. If marijuana were to be decriminalized, it would not be regulated by the govenrment, so you would only be fined for posession and the government would not regulate it with taxes. | 20 | 26 |
CMV: People should be kept anonymous until found guilty. | In the American Justice system, arrest records are public, and it's easy for newspapers to find out what someone has been charged with. From high-profile celebrities to average people, all of this information is easily accessed. However, I think people should be kept anonymous until found guilty. This reform would consist of the following:
1. When someone is arrested, it is kept public that they were arrested, however the charges are kept private to prevent from their reputation being tarnished. This prevents abuse by law enforcement, so they cannot "disappear" someone, as they would be able to do if the arrest records themselves were kept private. This both keeps the media from publishing information that could tarnish the reputation of an innocent individual, as well as making jury selection easier, as fewer people will be biased by news coverage of the defendant's charges.
2. The defendant and their attorneys are provided access to any and all charges against them. A neutral 3rd party is also entrusted with the charges, and empowered to to postpone a trial in the event of charges being added the day of. This is to prevent prosecutors from withholding charges from the defendant and their attorneys until the court date in order to prevent them from putting together an adequate defense.
3. During the trial, the defendant is kept anonymous, using vocal filters and methods to obscure their appearance. This is to prevent the jury from being biased based on any personal aspects of the defendant, and to ensure that judgments are made solely based on the facts. In essence, ensuring that Justice is blind. This will also be done for expert witnesses, with the exception that their credentials are provided to the jury, in order to judge the merits of their claims.
4. In the event the defendant is found innocent, their arrest record is purged. An anonymous version of court records is maintained for the purpose of maintaining precedent and keeping records, however the defendant's identity is purged from the records. If they are found guilty, then their arrest and conviction record becomes public record, unless they are exonerated later.
5. The defendant should be able to waive the right to privacy at any point. This is their right, however they'll have to deal with the consequences of doing so. Unauthorized breaches of privacy should be punished, to deter people from violating the defendant's privacy.
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There's a couple things I have to support a system such as this. The big thing is that there are many things a defendant can do in order to reduce their chances of being convicted. A good example is [wearing glasses](http://www.thejuryexpert.com/2011/03/eyeglasses-and-mock-juror-decisions/). Implicit bias is a major determining factor of a juror's decision on someone's guilt, and if something as small as glasses can alter the outcome of trials, then other things(race, gender, etc) most definitely play a part. These unconscious biases prevent juries from ruling solely on the merit of the facts, as they should be.
Secondly, having an arrest record, even without a conviction, can cause hardship to innocent people. [Here's](http://articles.latimes.com/2005/aug/21/news/adna-rapsheet21) [some](http://talkpoverty.org/2014/12/09/held-back-by-a-criminal-record/) [stories](https://www.abine.com/blog/2011/online-guilty-before-proven-innocent/) about that. While some states have laws preventing this, not all do. Regardless, one of the cornerstones of the justice system is "Innocent until proven guilty". People should not be judged or prevented from finding employment because of arrests that did not lead to a conviction. This system prevents people's charges being broadcast through the media and staying in perpetuity regardless of the actual outcome.
Our justice system is supposedly blind, but people are judged on a million things regardless of the facts. Even after they're innocent, those records can haunt them for the rest of their lives. Some people might think this is infringing on the press's right, but the individual's privacy should trump the press's rights until such a time as they're found guilty. The government in this case would have a compelling interest to abridge the Press's 1st Amendment rights, as they're protecting potentially innocent citizens. This system protects those who are innocent while allowing the press to report on those who are guilty. It's a happy medium between privacy, free speech, and protection from abuse. In today's information age, Anonymous Until Proven Guilty is the same as Innocent Until Proven Guilty.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | Some interesting ideas there but a couple clarifications. Would you intend to stop citizens who necessarily know the identify of the accused, such as the victim, from identifying them publicly? If so how and how would this be enforced? | 38 | 314 |
I believe school administrations have no business interfering with student activities, particularly with respect to fraternities and sororities, when they aren't detrimental to people who aren't participating. CMV | Background: I currently attend a university in the United States with a somewhat small fraternity/sorority (Greek, not the ethnicity/nationality) community next to university property. This Greek community is highly regulated by a university office that requires fraternities and sororities to do certain things in order to remain recognized by the university and participate with one another in any social activities (defined as any gathering with more than 8 members of one fraternity/sorority).
Argument: The university is unjustified in regulating the Greek community to this extent, especially because 100s of non-Greek organizations on and off campus property are not subject to the same regulations, but have very similar risky social activities (parties, rites, etc.) which the university uses to justify its regulation.
Examples of the rules:
- must attend X number of school-administered workshops
- must attend X number of school events
- must participate in X number of Greek "dry" events
- may only recruit in certain times and places, and only off of campus property
- must pay semiannual fees to the administrative office
- must document attendance/ participation of these events for annual review
- failure to follow proportion P of these rules (there is a point system) allows the university to deny
recruitment and social opportunities to fraternities and sororities | > non-Greek organizations on campus are not subject to the same regulations
But what do those organizations bring to the university? Let's say the hockey team throws parties. Okay, but they also play hockey, which benefits both the players and the university. The theatre club probably throws parties. But they also put on plays. And so on.
What does the Greek system do besides throw parties? Sure, they're great for networking for their members, but what do they do for the rest of the student body and for the university itself? You'll hear about charity events and whatnot but that isn't an integral part of their function and it's not a certainty that all frats or sororities do those kind of things like it is a certainty that the hockey team plays hockey.
No wonder the school wants to regulate them - all the downsides of all the other groups, none of the upsides. There's nothing they can point to and say, "this enriches the students and brings the school money" to justify any outcry over potential wrongdoing in the Greek system like they can with every other organization.
By the way, if you want to make paragraphs, add an extra linebreak after the line. (Hit enter again.) Those would make your post a lot more readable. | 18 | 22 |
ELI5 : Why do we like to bother our siblings much more than other human beings around us ? | I have two brothers, and I can't help but notice how much I like "fighting" with them, much more than anybody else, even the people I don't like and would love to see sad. Is it just the bond between brothers, does it affect all siblings, or is there any logical explanation behind this ? | * familiarity - you know your sibling, what to expect from them in a way you don't with others
* family bond - you are stuck with your siblings for the most part...friends might drift away, but you almost always will maintain a connection to close family
* trust - you can "fight" with your siblings, knowing there isn't ill intent and there won't be lasting consequences...usually
* culture - society is based on family unit acting together for their mutual interest...this notion has being impressed upon you from an early age.
* genetics - children are not the only way to pass on your genes...your siblings share many of your genes, so helping them help you fulfill your genetic destiny | 20 | 28 |
ELI5: The difference between an API and a REST API | An API is just a formal, well-defined interface for programs to interact with each other. These interacting programs can be running on the same machine, or they can be communicating over a network. Doesn't matter. The API just makes it possible to pass data back and forth in a structured manner.
A REST API is a certain type of API. It defines a set of standard rules as to how the computer hosting the API is supposed to behave, how it's supposed to handle requests made to it, how you're supposed to interact with it, how you're supposed to access its data. The implementation details, that is how the API works under the hood, don't matter. What a REST API is all about is how requests are responded to. It's primarily used on servers where clients must be able to access, create or manipulate data. | 277 | 282 |
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ELI5: How does music invoke such an emotional reaction from us? (e.g. making us want to dance, cry or sing) | I heard a story that Charles Darwin always believed that humans invented music (probably rhythm and humming) 10,000's of years before a spoken language developed to explain why music moves us more than the spoken word. He had no evidence to back his theory so he never published it. | 17 | 32 |
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[Star Wars] Why does Vader close his fingers together to choke someone if he doesn’t actually have hands? Does the force still flow through his cybernetic limbs? | Many of the Force techniques (at least how they're taught) seem to require gestures of one sort or another. I'll theorize that this is sort of a mnemonic to whatever mental processes are required to activate the ability more quickly or with less mental overhead involved. | 490 | 487 |
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ELI5:How do signatures prove anything? Are they not easily forged? | Legally, your signature is any mark you make under the eyes of witnesses with the intent of affirming something.
So the mark itself means nothing. The mark is merely evidence that you had, at the time you made it, the intent of affirming whatever it is to which you affixed the mark. | 25 | 33 |
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CMV: Gender-neutral pronouns reinforce the gender binary | Gender roles are outdated and there is no realistic reason in America for people to confine to a gender norm or gender roles. It is socially acceptable today in mainstream culture for both men and women to do many things that once traditionally belonged to only one gender. For instance, it is becoming more acceptable for men to show feelings, enjoy crafts, or to take on the role of homemaker and childcare. It is acceptable for women to wear pants, work outside the home, and abstain from childbirth and/or from being the primary caregiver of their children.
If we accept the notion that gender is a societal construct, then gender has been progressively becoming less defined through these changes. By identifying oneself as non-binary or "they," a person is implicitly defining what a woman (she) or man (he) is. This in turn reinforces the notion that to be a "real" man or woman, a person needs to have certain characteristics. By saying that you identify as "they," you are claiming that these characteristics do not define you...but in order for that to be true, you need to have a set idea of what it *means* to be a man or a woman. If "man" and "woman" (taken as gender) do not have set definitions, then "they" is a meaningless pronoun. | >By identifying oneself as non-binary or "they," a person is implicitly defining what a woman (she) or man (he) is. This in turn reinforces the notion that to be a "real" man or woman, a person needs to have certain characteristics.
Can you explain more as to why you think it does this? These things seem completely unrelated to me, as using the word "they" doesn't mention any characteristics. | 111 | 306 |
ELI5: The difference between Laws, Statutes, and Ordinances in the USA? | Statutes and ordinances are laws. Statutes are promulgated by the federal and state government. Ordinances are promulgated by counties and cities.
Statutes will apply in the whole state or country (if federal). Ordinances will only apply in the particular city or county where they are passed. | 13 | 27 |
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AskScience AMA Series: I’m Dyann Wirth, Chair of the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health and Director of the Harvard Malaria Initiative, and I’m here to talk about malaria eradication; Ask Me Anything! | Hello, reddit!
I’m [Dyann Wirth, Chair of the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health and Director of the Harvard Malaria Initiative]( http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/dyann-wirth/). I also serve on the board of the University-wide [Defeating Malaria: From the Genes to the Globe initiative]( https://www.defeatingmalaria.harvard.edu/).
Malaria’s impact across the globe is vast: Nearly half of the world’s population—about 3.2 billion people—is at risk of malaria. And an estimated 283 million people are infected every year—most of them young children in impoverished Sub-Saharan Africa. Recently, President Obama pledged to wipe out malaria. I told the [New York Times]( http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/18/us/politics/obamas-goal-to-wipe-out-malaria-may-be-a-dream-too-far.html) that we currently don’t have the “arsenal” to eradicate malaria today, but it's a goal that we’re working towards.
My lab’s research has provided new insight into how the malaria parasite has evolved, allowing us to better understand the fundamental biology of the parasite and the [mechanisms of drug resistance]( http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/features/a-new-twist-in-malaria-drug-resistance/). Our team at the Harvard Malaria Initiative employs sophisticated laboratory approaches to understand the underlying causes of drug resistance identify and screen potential new drugs and drug targets, rapidly translate new findings into practical treatments, and train researchers and global public health professionals from the U.S. and malaria endemic regions.
**I’ll be here from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. ET to answer your questions about malaria; Ask Me Anything!**
EDIT:
It's 1:00 p.m. ET and I'm now here to answer your questions!
EDIT AGAIN:
Thank you so much for your great questions! If you want to see more about how you can help us fight malaria, [check out this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46AHLCgXXgE). | In the setting of the ongoing Zika epidemic, recent press attention has focused on the notion of eradicating mosquitos that are vectors for pathogenic parasites (anopheles, aedes, etc.), thereby removing the primary host for many infectious diseases - including, of course, your dear Plasmodium genus. What are your thoughts on this as a tactic, from both a theoretical and logistical perspective? | 54 | 1,704 |
ELI5: You can locate an airplane when you hear one with reasonable accuracy. But why is it much harder to locate a helicopter? | You can make use of the Doppler effect to gauge the direction of incoming sound waves (changes in pitch correlate with the direction and motion of an object).
Helicopters move a lot slower. Especially if they're just hovering, you lose one source of information about it's direction. So it's harder to locate. | 20 | 34 |
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ELI5: What differentiates a "cuss word" from a normal word? | In simpler terms, what determines/determined words like "damn" and "sh*t" to be bad words?
Thanks :) | Well, in some sense, words are defined by what meaning people ascribe to them. So, a word is a cuss word or otherwise vulgar because people ascribe to it a meaning or connotation of vulgarity. Bad words are bad because people believe them to be bad / insulting.
But if we dig a little deeper, cuss words tend to have one of three basic origins - sexual, scatological, or blasphemous. The first category includes your F-word, the second one contains s**t and related, and the last one has your hell and your damn and so forth.
Why these particular origins? Because that's what was considered "unclean" or taboo, especially from a historical setting. Those topics, even today, aren't exactly the paragon discussion topics for polite society, and to associate an action or a person with something unclean is to, in effect, call the other person unclean or otherwise insult them. | 24 | 22 |
Why do economists plot independent variables on the y-axis ? | Other than to annoy physicists | Do you mean with price vs quantity graphs?
Neither price nor quantity are truly "independent variables". In some models of markets such as Bertrand competition, we can think about quantity as if it were a function of the price, but other models (for example, Stackelberg competition) it's the opposite, price is a function of quantity. | 28 | 18 |
CMV: The new Canadian Cabinet should have been less about equal gender count and different cultures and more about who is RIGHT for the job. | I'm in an office environment by day, and all I'm hearing is about Justin Trudeau being sworn in as the next Prime Minister of Canada.
But when they're all talking about the cabinet of chosen representatives, they're not talking about their merits at all. All they can talk about is "That Kent is the right man for the job. He's in a wheelchair!" Or "There's going to be 50% women in it from now on!"
When Justin Trudeau was asked why such diversity, his response was "It's 2015." Hooray for diversity, but not what I think should have been his answer...
(I'm not starting a feminism debate, hear me out)
So the look on their faces when I said, I'm more for the 'right person for the job' or 'who has the most merit to uphold the position. It's great that the selected are very diverse and gender balanced. But I don't agree that it should stay that way for the sake of it. If other people are better for the job, then they should step down. Not stay to keep a culture or gender balance...
I wasn't saying pull them out, but their reaction was like i said i hate anyone different than me or something...
Am I crazy? Let me know if this isn't how to use this subreddit...
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | Have you considered that these selections (which you apparently think are too diverse) also happen to be "the right people" for the jobs?
I don't know about the other cabinet slots, but the new Minister for Defence is a retired Lieutenant-Colonel who served several tours in Kosovo and Afghanistan. Yes, he was born in India, which gives him "diversity points" or whatever you'd like to think of them as, but he appears to be qualified for the job. You might want to be careful about deciding that the new cabinet members are just diversity picks. Would you be so worried about their qualifications if they were all white guys?
Your coworkers are a bit silly for being so excited about the new picks without actually knowing very much about them, but it is a fairly big deal that the Cabinet is a better representation of the Canadian people then it has been for previous administrations. | 24 | 28 |
ELI5: Why are old "religions"(norse, pagan etc.) are not considered religions today, when Christianity, Islam etc. is and they have pretty much the same proofs for their beliefs? | A religion isn't just the things people believe, it's the institution to act in accordance with that belief. That is, Christianity isn't *just* the belief that Jesus lived and taught in Galilee, was crucified by the Romans, and was resurrected, liberating some or all people from some or all of the consequences of sin. It's the whole apparatus of believers and churches and Mass and revival meetings and Bible study groups.
Norse or Greco-Roman paganism doesn't have that in the modern world (except for a few revivalist movements, which most people would agree are religions, even if they think they're silly). The Elusinian Mysteries aren't performed. No one goes to Delphi or Cumae or Dodona to consult with an oracle. There are no Vestal Virgins. The last vestiges of the actual practice of Roman paganism died off in the five or six hundreds. | 28 | 26 |
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ELI5: Why does wearing black make people seem slimmer? | Because black absorbs most light, rather than reflecting it like lighter colours, we can't see much detail in dark clothing.
When we see someone wearing a light coloured item of clothing, more light reflects: specifically, it reflects differently depending on the shape of the person - lots of shadows, different light levels etc.
What does this mean? Well, it means we see all their lumps and bumps and bits that stick out, because we can see the shadows created by those lumps and bumps more clearly.
With dark clothing, we can't see those imperfections as easily or clearly, so our brain assumes they're smaller/not there.
The same applies to some extent with the sides of the clothing - because the clothing is darker, there's no clear "shadow" as the body curves away. That means our body assumes the dark areas to the sides are all shadows at the side of the curve (rather than front of your body) and we "see" the person as "narrower" (or slimmer) | 136 | 219 |
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Why is it that I can't see clearly under water without swimming goggles? | Your eyes have evolved to see in air, your corneas have evolved to shape and focus light passing from air into the eye. The different refractive index of water makes it so that your cornea focuses the image in the wrong spot. Goggles/masks give an air gap that allow the image to form properly. However, the refractive change from the water, through the lens, into the air, makes things look bigger than they are, that shark you saw diving wasn't 12 feet long, it was more like 9. | 344 | 431 |
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ELI5: How does 'Anti-Paparazzi Scarf' work ? | I just saw the [Anti-Paparazzi Scarf.](http://i.imgur.com/LxxdHSE.jpg) Explain how it works. | Cameras can be set up a couple of ways. one way to use them very quickly in unpredictable situations (Like paparazzi for instance) is to put a flash on top so you always have enough light, and to let the camera pick your exposure for you so you don't have to take the time to set up the settings.
In that sort of mode, when you take the photo, the camera very quickly does a couple of things.
First, it starts up the light meter inside the camera. Then, it fires a "pre flash" to see how far away the scene/subject is to determine how bright the real flash needs to be, and to set the rest of the parameters in camera (ISO, aperture, and shutter speed)
When that pre-flash hits the really reflective scarf, a LOT of light comes back at the camera, directly off of the scarf, which tells it that the scene is really bright, and doesn't need much extra light. So the camera decides to only put out a little bit of light from the flash, and to only let in a little bit of light from the ISO, aperture, and shutter speed, so in the final image, the scarf is exposed correctly, but because nothing else in the scene is so reflective, the rest of the image looks way too dark, and isn't usable.
It's really easy to beat, however, by taking the time to set the camera manually for the exposure you know you'll need, or by not using a flash on the camera (which is how they get the "before" photo in the examples)
TLDR: The scarf reflects the flash from the camera and tricks the camera into under-exposing the image so much that it isn't usable. | 354 | 396 |
ELI5: Why do celebrities rarely get prison sentences that match the severity of those given to non-celebrities? | EDIT: thanks for all of the thoughtful responses, this turned into a really interesting thread. the side topics of the relationship of wealth and fame could probably make up their own threads entirely. finally, this question was based solely off of anecdotes and observation, not an empirical study (though that would be a fascinating read) | * Better lawyers
* Often have positive contribution to society to become celebrities, so better prospects of rehabilitation
* More money = easier rehabilitation for things like addiction/violence
* Reputation damage is often seen as a large punishment which 'normal' people don't have
| 838 | 916 |
Why do advances in animal models rarely translate to equally functional & effective therapies? | I understand that there are fundamental differences in biology between animal models and humans. However, I don’t think I have a clear answer as to what broad categories of issues might be responsible for the aforementioned failure of successes in animal models to translate to human therapeutics and I was hoping someone could explain. Enormous amounts of funding go to these therapeutic developments each year, surely someone must have discussed this discrepancy. | A few of the "broad categories" that come to mind:
* Actual anatomy -- presence or absence of anatomical features, differences in relative sizes of anatomical features or organs, etc.
* Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics -- how quickly drugs are taken up by the body, distributed within the body, metabolized, and excreted
* Immune system response -- how the body reacts to foreign species (e.g. implanted devices)
* General considerations about genetic diversity -- animal models may use individuals more closely related to one another than a human trial would, which can confound study effects
There are more factors, to be sure.
I don't think that anyone using animal models of disease in their research expects the models to be perfect analogues of human physiology / biochemistry, but the idea is that the animal models are far closer to the "real thing" than an in-vitro test / cell culture or computer simulation would be. | 41 | 131 |
Why are people skeptical about metaphysics? | I saw few posts titled ".... save metaphysics?" "is metaphysics no longer valuable?"
Why are people skeptical about metaphysics? What's the problem? | "If all we can have access to is the physical, the natural, how can we talk about the things beyond the physical?" has been an important question in philosophy. Some argued that they can finally get rid of metaphysics (some forms of empiricism); some argued that all philosophy is metaphysics (Kant's synthetic a priori); some argued that even arguing for physicalism/materialism is itself a metaphysical position (Wittgenstein); some held that metaphysics is an inevitable aspect of all linguistic usage, and that we should just accept it and move on (Quine), etc.
I'd say in the beginning of 20th century, the rise of empiricism in the Anglophone world and the rise of phenomenology in the Continent made people skeptical of the old metaphysical ways of doing philosophy. But in the later half of the 20th century, there were some philosophers who "saved" metaphysics. | 56 | 63 |
CMV: Teaching your kids to believe in Santa is stupid. | Note: this goes for other made up characters like the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy.
As a kid, I never understood people’s obsession with Santa. Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Christ and sure it’s now evolved to include some gift-giving and a big celebration too— I’ve known that since age 3. But I never understood why other kids in my class would insist that Santa is real or why their parents would happily go along with it instead of just communicating the real meaning behind Christmas (I’m not even Christian, so thankfully my parents never tried to push this nonsense on me). So here’s why I think teaching your kids to believe in Santa is dumb.
1. It literally adds nothing to their life. Santa is nothing more than commercialized balderdash by corporations taking advantage of children’s naïveté. He isn’t a God to pray to or instill “moral” values in the kid (other than “be good”, which is kind of meaningless). He isn’t some celebrity or amazing selfless person to look up to and idolize. He isn’t even real! Why feed your kid a load of commercialized bullshit, when instead you can be teaching them about the real world? You can teach them about why certain families can afford certain gifts and others can’t, why certain kids in their class don’t get gifts not because they’re bad but because they aren’t even Christian and don’t celebrate Christmas, where these gifts come from and maybe the economics behind creating and selling these items during a holiday season, etc. Literally all of that is more valuable than peddling bullshit to your kids.
2. It probably teaches kids to not think critically about the world. First of all, kids shouldn’t just be blindly believing what their parents tell them. They should be led to ask themselves whether it’s even possible for Santa to exist: How does his sleigh fly? How does he reach all 8 billion people in one night? How are his elves somehow able to create the brand new iPhone and package it in the exact Apple box it comes in? Furthermore, how is it possible for people to have explored the North Pole and yet never seen a trace of Santa? (I don’t even know how kids themselves don’t ask these questions on their own, because I did, but I have to imagine it’s in part due to a lack of emphasis on critical thinking in our education systems and the parents continuing to sell a crock of shit).
3. This just delays the inevitable truth from coming out. Your kid is going to find out that Santa doesn’t exist— if they don’t come to that conclusion by considering his impossibility, they’re going to realize it because their parents are definitely buying the gifts. Why delay the inevitable? What does that even do to benefit the kid?
4. It teaches kids the opposite of learning “good” behavior for its own sake. Kids shouldn’t be learning to be good because they’ll get a present at the end of the year. They should be kind and respectful because it’s just basic human decency 101. So you’re basically ruining their own development by linking good acts to rewards.
Anyway, open to changing my opinion but this is it. | I’d argue in question 2 that part of the point is to teach kids to think critically. Kids largely figure out for themselves on that the balance of evidence Santa doesn’t make realistic sense by age ten or so. It’s one of the first times kids can find out that they can come to a different conclusion than what the authorities in their lives are telling them and be right and encouraged in doing that.
It also teaches kids, once they inevitably do find out, that there parents have been giving them gifts for years with no intent on taking credit for it, which implies gift giving is an exercise in making the recipient, rather than the giver, happy. | 17 | 34 |
ELI5: How do they measure the depth of caves when there’s no real direct path top to bottom? | I’m talking about the record-holding ones in Georgia (the country) or Mexico. I’ve read a few books about these adventures but never do they go into HOW the depth is accurately measured. I’m 49, but my 13 year old asked me. Let’s pretend she’s 5. | Pressure, as you go down the amount of air pressure increases and this can be used to find out how low in the ground you are.
It's the same principle which hikers use to measure how high they are while climbing mountains. | 211 | 400 |
Why do queen ants shed their wings after mating? | Title | After a queen ant has mated, she will search for a suitable place to produce offspring and start a colony. Most species of ants make nests in the ground, in small holes of (dead) trees or other narrow spaces. Having wings in that case obstructs your movement greatly (which is why worker ants are wingless as well). The ant queen will also stay in that nest for the rest of her life (although sometimes ant colonies can move to a new place but even then she does not need to fly) and creates offspring that does the foraging and caretaking for her. So there no longer is use for wings.
Therefore, ants that had their wings shed after mating probably had an advantage over ants that did not shed wings. When only living underground, wings are a burden and probably get damaged over time anyway. | 11 | 45 |
ELI5: What actually is Asbestos? | I keep hearing about it in different contexts but still am not too sure what it is why it was considered good and turned out to be bad. Anyone know? | Asbestos is a naturally occurring silicate mineral. People have been using it since antiquity because it is flame resistant. Even the Ancient Greeks knew about it. During the Industrial Revolution it was mined at large scale, and used in all sorts of products - insulation for homes, textiles, bricks...
The problem with asbestos is that when you cut it, you release tiny fibers into the air, and these tiny fibers are incredibly sharp. So you breathe in the tiny fibers, and they cause tiny holes in your lungs. Long-term this leads to scarring of the lungs, a condition referred to as asbestosis. You can also develop cancer in the lining of your lungs, which is referred to as mesothelioma. | 62 | 25 |
ELI5:How does the Bible explain dinosaurs? | According to the Christian faith, God created man and woman. How does that explain dinosaurs?
> Wanting actual advice, not hating on relgion
> > I'm just curious | Worth pointing out that the bible is made up from texts that are about 1900 years old. Dinosaurs have only really been recognised in the last 200 years. The area in which the bible came about is not somewhere with particularly good fossil bearing geology so it's not a theme the bible ever had to deal with. | 61 | 21 |
[Marvel comics/MCU] Could Steve Rogers be worthy of wielding Mjolnir pre-SSS? | Steve obviously has the requirements in his heart and character to wield mjolnir but is it the SSS that makes him capable of acting out these traits that lets him lift it or could he lift it pre-serum? | His training prior to receiving the serum and talks with Dr. Erskine all indicate it was his character and attitude which made him who he is. The serum made him human-tier strong, but the hammer is on another level. Even if pre-Serum Steve didn't have the physical strength to lift the hammer overhead, if he was worthy the hammer would make him strong enough as soon as he tried to lift it | 16 | 16 |
What is the significance of "returning the power to the states"? | You hear this a million times in every debate. A candidate is asked about his position on a topic, and ultimately the answer boils down to, "I don't believe the federal government should be making those decisions. I think those choices should be left up to the state." Well, why? Why is it OK if a single state passes x law, but unacceptable if made federal policy? Why should what is "right" not apply to the entire country? | It allows each state to pass legislation that is more tailor-fit to their population. Federal government passes a law that gay marriage is illegal, EVERYONE has to abide by it. Whereas places like Utah that may not be a big issue to the majority of people, places like California where the gay population is larger would be more upset. Similiarly, If the federal government required all personal automobiles meet a 30mpg fuel efficiency. That would go over well in New York, but smaller rural areas like Alabama where people drive trucks for functional purposes alot would be negatively effected.
Basically, Federal government should be making as few decisions and laws as humanely possible, and leave the states to do their own thing. The only time they should be stepping in is when one state is functionally denying its citizens their constitutionally guaranteed rights. (for example, overruling Chicago Illinois' restriction on people owning firearms, which is protected by the 2nd amendment) | 15 | 19 |
CMV: Antifa is a terrorist organization | In the United States, the Antifa have successfully gotten two events canceled in the past week. First, at Berkeley, they made it impossible for the University and the Berkeley police force to ensure that Ann Coulter and people interested in hearing her speak would be safe. Second, they got the Portland Rose Parade canceled by threatening to attack any participating Republicans. They have also behaved violently in the past, so there's little reason to think that they won't make good on their threats. This is violence in the service of a political agenda, i.e., terrorism.
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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!* | Terrorism is generally defined as "the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims." The actions so far are questionable as to whether they truly constitute terrorism. As well, this is a sizeable ideology, so it's rather diffifcult to claim the entire ideology is a terrorist organization, since it is not a very clearly defined organization. It's more of a lose ideology. At minimum, it lacks the true qualifications to be a terrorist *organization* due to not really being an organization, and also doesn't really meet the requirements for terrorism either. | 31 | 53 |
How were carnivorous plants able to evolve as they did? | Let me preface this question by saying I have always been a firm believer of evolution. However, I've puzzled over many strange results of evolution and how they got to be where they are. Carnivorous plants are one example. How can a plant GRADUALLY evolve the ability to trap insects and absorb them without use of its roots? Did it just start out as a mutation that made a plant kind of sticky? It seems like such a radical change and the intermediate steps don't necessarily seem beneficial enough to ensure greater than average reproductive success.
Edit: Thank you for all your informative responses! This was my first reddit post since the 4 years I've been lurking, and it is very encouraging. | These plants are usually found in regions with poor soil quality meaning that they may only receive vital nutritients when animals die around them. They could hav evolved to simply inhibit the movement of insects with a sticky surface and gradually moved toward movement themselves. Once movement was common, natural selection picked the most efficient animal. Ones with the best energy efficiency survive and yield todays carniverous plants. | 1,481 | 2,792 |
ELI5 Why is there so few natural blue colored foods? | Plants have only three pigments: Anthocyanin (red), xanthin (yellow), and chlorophyll (green). It's pretty difficult to combine them in a way that yields blue. Some plants get close, but it's really more of a purple color than a true blue. | 31 | 79 |
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Resources on the philosophy of fear? | Since a very young age, I have found this emotion to be one of the most fascinating... especially with how it hinders a person.
If you know of any resources on the philosophy of fear and can share them here, it would be much appreciated! Thank you. | You might find that, through studying what people who study the virtue 'courage' (cf. Aristotle, the Stoics, or any virtue ethicist, really) have to say, it would help to illuminate the nature of fear. Also, this may be a little different from fear (although it certainly contains it), but *angst* or *anxiety* are crucial concepts in the existentialist tradition (cf. Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Sartre, or even certain Buddhist texts). And, finally, of course, the key scholars of the psychoanalytical tradition (cf. Freud, Jung, Marcuse, Irigaray) have some interesting things to say about where fear *originates* and how it manifests itself in one's decisions/actions and general perception of the world. | 23 | 47 |
ELI5: Is the amount of wealth which exists in the world a constant? If I gain more wealth, is someone else somewhere loosing money? | I just want to know like if above is not the case if it is increasing or decreasing, is it possible that everyone will be rich or poor someday? | Wealth is generally increasing because value is increasing, primarily because people use their labor to turn natural resources into valuable things. Suppose you went out into the woods and built yourself a cabin. By making a place to live, you've improved your life and your wealth (if you decided to sell the cabin, it would be worth a lot more than selling the plot of land before the cabin was erected). But you didn't have to take away anyone's home to make your own. Even if you had to pay the person who originally owned the trees you cut down, the value of the cabin would still be greater than the value of the trees. There ARE absolutely ways to enrich yourself by depriving someone else, but most economic activity is productive rather than redistributive.
That said, it's unlikely we'll reach a state where everyone is considered "rich". Rich and poor are relative concepts, and many people who are considered poor today have more resources than people who would have been considered rich long ago. | 75 | 76 |
ELI5: Why do accidental notes in music have word accident in them? | In old-school philosophy things were described as having an *essential nature*. Objects behaved according to their essential nature - rocks fell downwards, smoke rose upward, dogs barked, water flowed, old men were grumpy, and so on.
Anything that happened that was contradictory to something's essential nature was *accidental*. So if you threw a rock upwards, that was accidental motion of the rock. If you dammed a river to stop it from flowing, that was accidental motion of the water. Make an old man happy, that was an accidental mood, and so on.
Expanding that into music, the key signature at the start of the piece sets the "essential nature" of the notes. If there are notes that go against this essential nature, that have to be marked with their own sharps or flats, those are accidental notes. | 70 | 19 |
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ELI5: Why is Disney allowed to merge with all of these other big companies, most recently 21st Century, and not suffer from monopoly laws? | Just off the top of my head, they own Marvel, Lucasfilm, 21 Century, ESPN, ABC. How is this not considered monopolization in the eyes of the law? | Monopolization is, generally speaking, when you control all (or a substantial portion) of a _market_ or _industry_. Standard Oil was a monopoly because they controlled almost all of the oil industry; Microsoft was thought to be a monopoly because they controled 90% of the PC OS market.
Disney, even as big as they may be, controls only a tiny fraction of the entertainment industry. There are many, many other companies producing entertainment, so they are not where near the level of market share you'd need to think of them as a monopoly. | 48 | 62 |
ELI5: How and when did we realize stock trading was something we needed? What prompted the first companies to issue stock for outsiders to buy shares in their company? | Since the whole sector from the outside looks really silly (it isn't), how did the first few pioneers in the sector realize there was a need for it? | It was a long time ago (think like the 1700s) and it was necessary to fund growth and to create bigger opportunities.
To start, let's understand what came before. If you were a merchant in the Middle Ages you were basically trading on your family's money. You paid for the goods, you paid for the ship to transfer them, and if that ship sunk you were in deep trouble. You were *personally liable* for the debts of your business. Even a group of people funding an expedition would be in the same boat (heh) in regards to what happened.
Obviously this means that early companies tended to be a single very wealthy family and relatively limited ventures anyway. You simply couldn't fund the kind of large scale companies that you see today. There wasn't enough money in one or a few people's hands, and it was risky. A single bad deal could break an entire family.
Jumping forward a bit, as business ventures got larger and more complex (because empire) people came up with an interesting idea. Instead of paying for an expedition to the Americas or to sell wool in Flanders or whatever by yourself... why not crowd fund the thing? So you would create a company, and sell ownership stakes in it to your wealthy family, friends and fools. This gave you a source of funds to make it happen without having to fund it all yourself. Everyone risked a little bit and would get paid based on their stake at the end. Of course there was still some issues with the debts of the company falling back on the owners... but this was fixed with the notion of "limited liability" which basically means that as a owner of a company you are only responsible for YOUR share of the company and if that hits zero that is the limit of what you can lose.
That developed into our modern system where shares of ownership in massive companies are traded at the rate of millions a day. | 36 | 22 |
Should I switch to Linux? | Hey I just won a laptop in a coca cola prize contest (Lucky me). And I am studying programming (currently first year), so it will come in quite handy. Since I will be using it only for college work, i taught i should install Linux on it. I never used it before, so what do you think? Better learn it now than never. Also do you know some good Youtube channels where you can learn basic and advanced Linux stuff.
Also what are benefits of using Linux? | Benefits of using linux: easier to be closer to the code, it's the lingua franca of backend (servers, the web, etc.), it's got great security, an open source culture and a lot of tools ready to go for developers.
Ubuntu is the most painless distribution to use, as it's focused on ease of use, has a large installed userbase and lots of help information online. For 18.04 (the most recent version) its front end is gnome. Mint and kubuntu are variants of ubuntu that use other front ends.
I really like fedora, which is a different distribution, but they're all mostly the same.
I'd suggest getting accustomed to the linux terminal and file operations in the terminal, and get comfortable with the package manager for whatever distribution you install. At a high level, these distributions all behave similarly to windows and macos. As you proceed though, access to the linux terminal will slowly give you exposure to a more powerful set of tools.
If you're concerned about which to install, dont be! Load up a couple usbs with different distributions and try them all and see what you like the best. Its all free. Just takes a little time. | 30 | 20 |
[WH40k] Chaos marines and death and other things. | Does chaos marines truly die in battle, or are they reborn in the warp like demons? Or is that exclusive to people who have achived demonhood?
If they premently die, how do they substain their numbers? I know that every leagion started at about 100 000 strong, but 10 000 years of war must have taken its toll. I've also heard that they sometimes steal geneseed, is this enough to substain their numbers or do their own geneseed still work? Even if its corrupted, aint that what they are aiming for, corrupted marines?
Also, have any traitor leagion been totally erradicated, had their numbers reduced to zero, or to few to come back? | So, here are some answers.
As far as replenishment of numbers is concerned, there are a few different methods. There's the daemonculaba, there are Dark Mechanicus/Hereteks to assist with creation (remember, they're unbound by typical Mechanicus rules), there are plain old traitors and mercenaries, and there's... well... the nature of Chaos itself. Time is all wonky for them... from their perspective it could have only been a few years since they turned traitor, or it could be a million years. Chaos doesn't play by the rules of physical reality.
As far as death goes, their souls would return to the warp. Unless they're remarkably willful and powerful, their soul would just sort of "unravel" and become part of the warp rather than its own entity. | 25 | 35 |
ELI5: how are employees forced to sign non disclosure agreements? I always hear that former employees of corrupt companies were forced to sign NDA’s so they can’t speak about their time at their companies. Do they receive large settlements for these or what? | It's usually a condition of employment. So before an employee starts work on their first day they'll be told "your job will have access to sensitive information. In order to work for us you must sign a Non Disclosure Agreement. If you are not willing to sign the offer of employment will be withdrawn". I've worked in two companies who have required then for legitimate reasons (one was prevention of insider trading, the other worked with the government and had access to classified information - had to be sec screened for that too) but if you're concerned about the dodgy state of it you can question why you need to sign an NDA.
Also, in the UK at least, there are whistleblowing laws that allow you to work around the NDA if the company is involved in illegal activities, so it is not really as much of an excuse as people make it out to be. | 76 | 83 |
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CMV: It's a waste of money to buy protein powder. | I like to workout, and protein powder has always seemed like a useful way to get a few extra grams of protein, especially if i'm busy. I have recently learned however that the FDA does not regulate the honesty of supplement labels, and only steps in when supplements kill or harm people. This leads me to believe that my protein powder might not actually contain the things on the label, and this is corroborated by scandals where protein powder companies have been caught amino acid spiking their powders. By this process they artificially raise the tested levels of protein in their product, so even with a home protein test kit there really is no way to know if the readings are accurate.
This excerpt from the Wikipedia article on bodybuilding supplements captures many of my feelings.
"Mislabeling and adulteration
While many of the claims are based on scientifically based physiological or biochemical processes, their use in bodybuilding parlance is often heavily colored by bodybuilding lore and industry marketing and as such may deviate considerably from traditional scientific usages of the terms. In addition, ingredients listed have been found at times to be different from the contents. In 2015, Consumer Reports reported unsafe levels of arsenic, cadmium, lead and mercury in several of the protein powders that were tested.[4]
In the United States, the manufacturers of dietary supplements do not need to provide the Food and Drug Administration with evidence of product safety prior to marketing.[5] As a result, the incidence of products adulterated with illegal ingredients has continued to rise.[5] In 2013, one-third of the supplements tested were adulterated with unlisted steroids.[6] More recently, the prevalence of designer steroids with unknown safety and pharmacological effects has increased.[7][8]
In 2015 a CBC investigative report found that protein spiking (the addition of amino acid filler to manipulate analysis) was not uncommon,[9] however many of the companies involved challenged these claims"
Amino Acid Spiking: https://www.t-nation.com/supplements/protein-trickery-nitrogen-spiking
| The solution to this is to find protein powders that are evaluated as food, not as a supplement. If it says "supplement facts" on the label you're dealing with a supplement. If it says "Nutrition Facts", it's been evaluated as a food product and the label is much more reliable. The difference between the two is literally whether or not substances that aren't considered food (or substances that are food components in levels not known to be safe) are used in production.
Of course some companies will try to spike the tests, but the article you linked to says the problem is nowhere near universal and gives tips for spotting spiked protein. Just do your research and find a brand you like. | 30 | 24 |
ELI5:In Golf, how do they determine what the Par is for the hole? | Currently administering a college beginning golf class final exam. As stated above, par for the hole is based on yardage of the hole.
Each hole, no matter the length, is appropriated 2 strokes for putts. Therefore, par for the hole is the number of strokes it should take a golfer to reach the green plus the 2 putting strokes.
Par 3 = 1 stroke to reach the green + 2 putts
Par 4 = 2 strokes to reach the green + 2 putts
Par 5 = 3 strokes to reach the green + 2 putts | 300 | 613 |
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Does the moon have the proper nutrients in its surface "soil" to grow plants? | If we dragged in a bunch of lunar dirt to a pressurized area and planted something like wheat grain into it, then added a bunch of earth soil bacteria into it, would the plant be able to healthily grow in the soil? | It likely has enough mineral context but making soil is a lot more than that. Since lunar regolith is basically dust/sand and rocks without anything else, no microorganisms no organic matter nothing. That’s not really soil by any definition and the best you’d get is things like lichen. To get proper soil though you’d need to break the rock down to the right size, mix it with organic matter as you get it, add water and perhaps with the right microorganisms you could get something recognizable as soil but it takes a lot more work than just lunar regolith and add water and atmosphere to get soil. | 14 | 17 |
Do we actually LEARN to walk, or do we ACQUIRE THE ABILITY to walk as our brains continue to develop? | In most(?) species, newborns begin walking right away, so that's clearly not a learned behavior. I also know that humans are born with a LOT of neurological development still to occur.
So... do human children actually *learn* to walk, or is more accurate to say they start to walk as the necessary neurological wiring matures (i.e.: walking is hardwired, but the wiring isn't complete at birth)? | Humans are born with a walking reflex that serves as the basis for walking behavior. Applying pressure to the bottom of the foot will cause the same leg to extend and the other leg to swing forward. Like many reflexes, this is based on nerves traveling from peripheral sensory receptors through the spinal column and back to muscle effectors. | 18 | 48 |
CMV: Labeling people as the "First African-American" or "First Woman" to do something does more to separate us than bring us together | I think that all humans deserve the same amount of respect, all else being equal. In other words, if I don't know you at all, my respect for you won't change based on your gender, orientation, race, religion, etc (If I do know you, and you give me reason to increase or decrease my respect for you, I will, of course).
I think that referring to people based on their accomplishment is just fine -- being the First Person in Space is a grand title for Yuri Gagarin. But why is he referred to as the first *man* in space? To me, calling Valentina Tereshkova the First *Woman* in space simply emphasizes her difference -- she's female -- instead of her accomplishment.
If we're all supposed to treat everyone equally regardless of race, nationality, gender, orientation, religious views, etc; wouldn't referring someone as the first *whatever* to do something simply remind everyone that the difference is still there, and make it that much more difficult to ignore in the future?
EDIT: My V has been C'd! I see that the social impact of the accomplishment is equally important, and we need to recognize what these people had to go through in order to actually get there! I do think, though, that these types of titles will slowly become irrelevant for future accomplishments, and eventually will be relegated only to the history books.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | I'd say that there's a notable exception to this principle, and that's when a person had to overcome a major social barrier to become the first whatever of their category. For example, Jackie Robinson and his whole team took a major risk to be the first baseball team with a black player. When we celebrate these people, we're celebrating the battles previous generations fought to bring us together. | 101 | 276 |
ELI5: Why do your eyelids get puffy after crying? | There are a number of factors.
Tears from strong emotions are less salty than regular tears which keep your eyeball moist. Since your eyelids are "more salty" than the tears, the water from your tears goes into your eyelid tissue to balance out the amount of salt, causing the eyelid to swell.
You could also say that blood vessels around the eyelid have to expand in order to be able to deliver that much fluid for waterworks. Also, rubbing your eyes can cause it to swell, as the friction can cause irritation of the membranes around your eyes (conjunctiva). | 171 | 286 |
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Can you explain 'Gödel Escher Bach - an Eternal Golden Braid' to me LI5? | It tries to answer a question about mind: "Does mind follow rules?" and the related "Is Artificial intelligence possible?"
While explaining this, Hofstadter references art, music and logic through the works of Escher, Bach and Godel.
Another important theme is the concept of what he calls **Strange loop**, for example "*this statement is false*", so something that refers to itself.
Every chapter has an introductory dialogue between Achille and the Tortoise. Another interesting fact about this book is that even though it is an essay it has many wordplays.
However this boook is surely too complex to be discussed here. | 12 | 24 |
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What should undergrad philosophy majors be doing to be successful in grad school? | There are a couple of similar posts in the past, but it's always nice to hear from different/more people. Anything from study skills to networking is appreciated. | 1. Get good grades
2. Write papers which could serve as the foundation for a writing sample
3. Make substantial professional relationships with professors for letters and advice
4. Do what you can to participate in profession adjacent events (talks, colloquia, department events)
5. Do what you can to participate in grad school adjacent events (seminars, student TA work, UG thesis) to ensure you know what you’re getting into | 53 | 41 |
[MCU] Why Kangs from different timelines fight each other, but from another universes that exist in the multiverse don't? | Each universe has a timeline.
There are multiple universes in the Multiverse.
The Multiverse has its own timeline.
He Who Remains was the Kang that defeated all the Kangs in all the universes and now sits at the end of the Multiverse Timeline running the TVA to prune timelines in other universes that produced Kangs. | 23 | 17 |
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ELI5: How do some mountains have an ecosystem around the peak? Wouldn't the nutrients from the soil of any wash down and make it difficult? | "Life, uh, life finds a way"
Extremophile bacteria can find ways to make energy/nutrients out of basically anything that'll react, and lichen can survive on nothing more than air, water, sun, and minerals in the stone They can create soil conditions in pockets or depressions (where nutrients don't wash out) suitable for alpine plants and insects. Once plants get established, their roots can help hold soil in place and prevent nutrient leaching. | 29 | 28 |
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Why is there such strong disdain towards non-physicalist theories of consciousness? | I say disdain, cause I've read a few papers and articles recently and it seems like alongside regular criticisms of stuff like dualism, panpsychism, a lot of people really seem to have these really like....emotional reactions to it. Whether it be throwing insults and buzzwords or being just completely dismissive and scornful towards the mere existence of other ideas. | A lot of these other ideas depend on undiscovered or undetected physics (or some other nature for the universe), for example that the brain is a radio for consciousness, but the argument doesn't make a claim for the medium of transmission or what the underlying nature really is in a physical way at all etc, so this makes it less-well founded under the scrutiny of current understanding. People have very strong beliefs, and argue very passionately or even claim that we can't know anything about consciousness at all. Coming up against that passion would make anyone salty about the whole thing. The journey to Physicalism being a natural conclusion is very short for some people today and the frustration isn't always dealt with responsibly or with patience and charity. | 31 | 114 |
ELI5: How does a database handle 1 billion users? | I'm really interested in how companies store such HUGE amounts of data but somehow retrieve and display the information in <1s.
I was looking at my Facebook activity for 2010 and it has the thousands upon thousands of posts I liked. You can't possibly store this in some sort of pivot table database, could you? Facebook would have literally 800 billion rows.
And my actual question is, how does a company, like Facebook, store more than 1 billion credentials? Is it split into regions like Users_GB, Users_US?
I work as a web developer. But as I work for a small company, I just can't fathom data this big.
Any insider knowledge, anecdotes and discussion from anyone who works on large databases would be appreciated.
Edit: Went to bed, woke up and the blew up. Thanks for all the great discussion, and thanks for the gold. | The good news is that data isn't stored in one giant table. It is actually made up of multiple tables. Tools exist that then link those tables and read the information in them fairly effeciently. Oracle, MySQL, etc handle massive amounts of data pretty easily. Because these tools don't actually care what the data is, they just need the reference points, they can quickly retrieve the data.
Think of how RAM works: fast switching pointers. This is how you get a user's data out of billions in a table. The software doesn't need to know that the person's first name is JOHN, it just needs to know that that user's pointer is here and it points to that table and then that table points to the next connected bit of data, etc. It is a chain of tables. Again, most of the retreival of the data isn't getting ALL of the data, it is just getting the pointer. That pointer leads to the next pointer, and so forth. Just fast swapping pointers and then one DISPLAY of the data.
Big Data as it is termed, is a huge industry specifically for this challenge. It isn't perfect, but an entire industry exists simply to find better ways to store data so that that pointer chain can be processed faster and faster. | 3,739 | 11,125 |
[General Sci-fi] How can a multi planet/multi system empire be governed in any effective way? Isn't there just too much to govern? And how does life really change much for the average person? | Technology is a major contributing factor.
High tech settings like Star Trek or Star Wars where communication between systems is almost instantaneous and travelling light years can be done in days or hours, it's more than manageable.
Settings like The Expanse where FTL doesn't exist and traveling to other systems can still take months or years, ruling other systems is done pretty loosely. | 34 | 27 |
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ELI5: Why personal computers mostly use graphical user interfaces and mainframe/servers & supercomputers are mostly controlled through command/text line? | I know why PCs use GUI that is interactive for personal usage but for the sake of making a complete el5 question for others, I've included it. | People who use the latter category are mainly IT professionals and computer scientists who a) may not need the more user-friendly interface, which saves development costs, and b) might actually be restricted by a GUI. Pure command line interfaces give the user complete control of whatever the program in question is capable of, generally speaking.
E: the resource cost of running a GUI may also matter, as another comment says, especially when you're in the business of optimizing algorithms. | 75 | 92 |
ELI5: Why do animals like parrots and tortoises' live so long | Most of the time, sexual organisms take one of two evolutionary paths to reproduction: either produce a ton of kids in a short life or fewer kids over a longer life. You usually don't see longer lived organisms producing tons of offspring (elephants, whales, humans, etc.) because the energy of these animals is devoted to repairing cell damage as the body ages. Basically, it's hard to send all of your energy into your uterus if you're all trying to prevent cancer mutations from creeping up in your tissue. Conversely, animals like mice and many fish produce tons of offspring over relatively short lifespans because they simply don't live as long and fixing mutations/putting energy into repairing a body that only lives 1-2 years is inefficient. | 62 | 103 |
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"The scandal of philosophy" - the unsolved problem of induction and its impact of rationality | Before I start, let me state that I'm not trying to put forward an idea here rather just asking a question out of pure curiosity.
Every time I read about the problem of induction and it's many proposed solutions, I'm always left unsatisfied. It seems to me at least that no proposed solution is satisfactory. I'm starting to wonder whether the correct response to the problem is to revise our concepts of rationality or revise what we want from our arguments.
From what I've read of the literature it seems that attempts to solve the problem try to show inductive reasoning to be rational in a traditional sense. Of course what is meant by 'rational in a traditional sense' is debatable. But, is this the correct response? Hume's problem seems to be too strong. Inductive reasoning may be impossible to ground rationally (as we traditionally understand the concept). Should we need weaken our concept of rationality to include inductive reasoning? Has anyone attempted this strategy?
Sorry about the vagueness of the terms used and the lack of directness of the question. It is a question of mere curiosity rather than a fully fleshed out one; but if this subreddit is not the place for mere curiosity where else is?! | Briefly, yes, many philosophers have tried some variation on the strategy you suggest. There are several options. First, Hume himself (at least on one reading -- Hume isn't especially *clear* on this) suggests justifying inductive reasoning non-rationally, by way of custom and habit. Loeb and Qu have developed readings of Hume along these lines, if you want to look into professional literature on it. Other naturalists in the Humean tradition, most prominently Quine, have also pursued this kind of line. Second, some philosophers such as Strawson think the way to go is to simply take inductive reasoning as *constitutive* of rationality. It is just analytic that using induction is rational. You might understand this as revising the meaning of "rationality" or you might understand it as challenging Hume's understanding of that term. Third, some philosophers, such as Popper, think that Hume's attack is entirely successful but that it doesn't really matter because in our best reasoning, we don't use induction anyway. It's not obvious to me that Popper's strategy really works, but that's a longer conversation. Fourth, there are some Bayesian philosophers, such as Howson, who think that Hume cannot be answered directly but that there are deductive constraints on permissive credences and how they are updated. You could understand Howson's position (I think) as approximating induction with some stipulations. And then you could take the stipulations as what we add to our account of rationality.
Is this the sort of thing that you're looking for? | 30 | 95 |
Is it more energy efficient to leave the heater on low when nobody is home, or to heat it up from cold when you get back? | So this morning as I was the first to walk back into my freezing office after the holiday, I was reminded of an argument I used to have with my roommate when I lived in a drafty old house in upstate New York. We would both leave the house for one to two weeks every Christmas, turning the thermostat down to something like 5C while we were away, and when we returned we would have to run the furnace full blast for about three days to get the house up to 22C again. I would always suggest that it would be better leave the thermostat on something in the middle while were gone, like 15C, but he thought it was a waste of energy. I argued that it took just as much energy to run the furnace continually for those three days when we returned than it did to maintain a modest temperature while we were away. In reality, I have no idea, but I just hated those three days of feeling cold.
Obviously, this depends on lots of factors, like how cold it is outside and how long we are gone. But in general, ignoring issues like pipes freezing, does it use more energy to maintain a moderate temperature for a long time and then heat it up for a short time, or to let something cool way down and then heat it up all the way? | The amount of heat lost by an object to the environment is proportional to the temperature difference between the environment and the object.
So if the object is at 20C, while the environment is at freezing (0C), then the rate of heat loss will be twice as high than if the object was at 10C.
If you keep heating the house while you're away, you keep the temperature higher and the total heat loss during your away time will be higher. Whereas if you turn the thermostat down very low, the rate of heat loss will gradually slow down as the house becomes colder and colder.
The total amount of energy you consume during this absence and the reheating that follows will be equal to the amount lost. In the case where you keep heating your house, this energy loss will be higher than in the case where you don't heat your house at every point in time (except for the initial period where the temperature drops from the starting point to your "something in the middle" value, in which case the energy loss is equal in both cases).
So from basic physics, it will be more efficient to turn the heater down as much as possible (without risk of freezing pipes) and heat it back up upon return. To overcome the discomfort of returning to a cold home, consider a smart thermostat that can be programmed to reach the desired temperature when you return (and will start to heat before you get back). Some can even "learn" how long it takes to heat up your house specifically with repeated use, so that they start at the exact right time. | 202 | 306 |
ELI5: When and why does a company require a board of directors? How come it can sometimes overrule or even push out the owner? | A board of directors is usually found at a public company. The board is elected by the shareholders (the owners) to run the company on their behalf and look out for their interests. Usually, the board then hires the executives who actually run the company per the board's instructions.
The board works for the owners. However, in lots of cases, "the owner" is one of the original owners from before the company went public and they still own a lot of shares. But if they don't own a majority (very common with large public companies) then the other owners (the rest of the shareholders) have enough votes to push a particular person \*off the board\* or \*out of working at the company\*.
And since the board represents the \*majority\* of the shareholders, minority owners may not always get their way. If the majority of shareholders decide to sell the company, then the minority can be "forced out". They will still get whatever they're due from the sale but they may not be able to stop the sale. | 26 | 24 |
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ELI5: How does Velcro retain its strength through continuous use? | Given the basic hook-loop mechanics, I would think it would become significantly less effective extremely quickly. | There are a couple factors that explain this. First, most loops don't find a hook each time the Velcro is sealed. Only a minority of the loops need to find a hook for the Velcro to hold. Second, not every loop tears when you rip apart the Velcro. There are many times more loops on the one side than there are hooks on the other, so this combination of factors gives Velcro an appreciable use\-life.
If you notice your Velcro is getting less sticky, you'll get more bang for your buck by trying to clean lint out of the hook side first. | 26 | 30 |
If an ant was the same size as a tiger, would still be able to lift 20 times its own weight? | No. The problem starts when you scale up the length and all other measurements in equal proportion, then your volume (i.e. mass) grows with the third power of that length, while the strength of your bones and muscles, which depend on their cross section, only grow as the square of that length. An ant the size of an elephant would collapse under its own weight.
You just have to look at the body shapes of very small animals, e.g. ants with their long thin legs sticking out sideways and their large abdomens supported by a very narrow waist, to very large ones like elephants, where the legs are very massive and under the body to be able to support its weight. | 45 | 25 |
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When citing a review in APA, do you cite the review, or the paper the review is citing? | Usually if I'm reading a research paper and they cite something I want to cite, I read the original paper and cite it directly to make sure its correct and relevant, but I do not want to read 18 papers to write 2 sentences, so can I just cite the review? | If the assertion or point clearly originates from the authors’ synthesis of the literature, consider citing the review. If the authors’ assertion or point clearly stems directly from a particular cited work, consider looking at that specific citation and using it as your reference. | 45 | 27 |
ELI5: why are humans so fragile and dependant to be successfully birthed but other animals are dropped onto the floor at birth and walk it off | Other animals, such as the giraffe, have a much greater developmental focus in their legs and general musculature. Many of these animals can stand minutes after birth. While weak, they are still able to survive to some extent.
Humans in contrast have an importance placed on brain development that far exceeds any other trait, like the ability to run from predators just after birth.
Thus, the physical development is much slower for us, but that time is spent absorbing all the information necessary to be a proper human with a nice, full brain. | 20 | 15 |
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ELI5: Why is it uncomfortable to stand with both legs straight for extended periods of time? | Muscles in the legs massage the veins when you're walking. This helps the veins return blood back to the heart.
If you're standing still all your muscles are tensed to keep you upright. This means they're not in a cycle of contraction and relaxation, like when you're walking. No cycle, no vein massage, which in turn leads to less back flow of blood to the heart. This causes your feet to swell with fluid that pools in your legs (if you've ever wondered why the elastic bands on your socks leave imprints on your skin after a long day, it's the same phenomenon).
Besides, your muscles don't particularly enjoy being contracted for very long amounts of time, because when they contract and tense up they tend to shut off parts of their own blood supply.
All of this contributes to the uncomfortable feeling you're describing. | 49 | 30 |
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CMV: Standardized testing should be abolished especially for children. | Standardized testing is bad for a bunch of reasons:
1) It's stressful, you're under time pressure and what's on the test could be unexpected.
2) For many people it causes test anxiety
3) I don't believe it's an accurate reflection of your knowledge. You need to in depth understand everything to get a good mark. Especially in uni where they expect you to be able to apply everything you've learned. Missing one or two things could tank you. This is unfair.
4) Grades aren't a reflection of how intelligent you are and people shouldn't define themselves by these numbers. This goes especially for elementary and middle school children.
5) It's not an accurate reflection of your abilities in the workplace. Where you can ask questions and look up something quickly if you've forgotten.
Because of the reasons above, we should completely get rid of this testing. Opting for knowledge being proven by projects, assignments and oral tests. | The major benefit of standardized testing is standardization - the measuring of different people in exactly the same situation. I'll address each of your points in turn:
1. Timing tests how well one performs in a timed setting. If you aren't going to test how well someone performs with limited time, how are you going to measure how well they perform with limited time? Time limits are a feature of standardized testing, not a bug.
2. Does anxiety caused by standardized testing make standardized tests inherently bad? Are the benefits of being able to measure large groups of people against each other in a controlled environment outweighed by the anxiety people feel during the test? I'd argue that they are not.
3. A person who scores a 75 out of 100 on a math standardized test is not going to have the same level of math knowledge as someone that scores a 95 out of 100. You say that it is not an accurate reflection of your knowledge without any type of support; why would testing your knowledge of a subject directly and on exactly the same level and scale with the same questions as everyone else not be an accurate reflection of your knowledge? You say that missing one or two things "could tank you," but if everyone else gets those one or two things right, and you do not understand those one or two things, you do not have as thorough of an understanding of the subject material as the others and should be graded as such.
4. You're right, grades are not a reflection of how intelligent you are. Rather, they are a reflection of a combination of innate talent, learning ability, and how hard one worked compared to others. Ultimately standardizing a test does tell you how well people understand the material presented in the test when compared to other people. They are also a proxy for how hard you worked to prepare for the examination. This is extremely useful when ranking students for something like university admissions.
5. Standardized tests are generally not a test of how well someone will function in the workplace, nor are they meant to be. They are meant to measure the current aptitude in the subject tested, and then (usually) rank individuals by their performance. These tests do not measure how well someone will do in the workplace, nor do they try to. With very few exceptions, there are no standardized tests that you take to get a specific job.
If you were to get rid of standardized testing, how do you propose that universities would measure you when entering in such a way that would be realistic and efficient enough to get the job done? | 18 | 19 |
ELI5: Why are multipack can and packets always "not to be sold separately"? | There's laws involving how foodstuff must be labeled. They need nutrition information, ingredients and whatnot. Some products packed in multipacks don't have that info on them - it's on the outside of the package - so they're not legal to sell individually. | 26 | 18 |
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How did scientists measure the radius of atoms and other stuffs? | They can seem to measure very accurate things at 10 decimal places. How do they do it? | The most accurate measurements are spectroscopic measurements, in which the energy between states of e.g. atoms is measured. These measurement happen typically with lasers, the frequencies of which can be very well controlled. This is the domain of atomic physics, which is mainly quantum mechanics dealing with discrete energy levels and interaction of matter with photons.
First, remember that the energy states of electrons orbiting a nucleus are quantised.
In a spectroscopic measurement, the frequency of a laser is scanned along a certain range while it passes through a sample, e.g. a gas of atoms. Most of the time, the light will not interact with the sample. Only when the frequency (and thus the energy of the photons that make up the light) is equal to the energy difference of two internal states of the atoms, some of the light can be scattered. In this way, the energy levels of atoms are measured very precisely.
Finally, one can calculate from theory what the electron orbits and the corresponding energies should be. These calculations depend however on some constants, such as the Bohr radius, which describes the distance between the nucleus and the electron in a hydrogen atom. By comparing these calculations to the results of the measurements, these constants are retrieved. (The Bohr radius is now known with a relative uncertainty of 0.2 parts per billion.) These constants can then be used in the theory to calculate the sizes of different atoms.
TL;DR: Experiments measure the spacing between energy levels, theory relate these energy differences to (among other things) the sizes of electron orbits. Both lasers and quantum mechanics are very accurate. | 15 | 25 |
ELI5: How come my contact lenses are thin as paper, yet my glasses with same prescription have thick lenses | The contacts are closer to your eyes, so less refraction is necessary. There's a point when you can no longer where contacts because they'd be too big. There's also glass contacts. They're very painful though and you have to put them in with a special tool. They are a lot thicker. | 16 | 40 |
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How does one respond to the assertion that because we haven't discovered the Higg's Boson, the entire field of particle physics is 'just a theory.' | The person making this assertion disregarded my explanation that a Theory is the graduating point of an idea in the scientific community... They hold that a 'theory' is 'just an idea' or 'just an opinion.'
They disregard that facts are true regardless of one's opinion...
I expect they are a lost cause... But, I need rational humans to help me feel as though I am not losing my mind. | A theory is an attempt to explain evidence. A good theory can make accurate predictions, can be easily falsified if contradicting evidence appears, and is simple.
The evidence in this case is the readings of the particle accelerators that occur after collisions, and our theories are built up around that data. If they want to disregard the whole field, ask them which part they think is "just an opinion". | 19 | 22 |
What does Foucault mean when he says “everything is a prison”? Does he even say that or is that just a meme? | Broadly, it's a perspective on power, where power is less directly possessed by people and groups than it is distributed through institutions and their logics of flow. Bodies and statements are organized, shaped and channeled by power, the example of the prison demonstrating how bodies are materially organized into spaces (individual cells, counted and checked, allowed to flow under constrained conditions), with accompanying, collectively-observed expectations for talk and behaviour (defer to the authority of guards, don't talk to each other, etc.). On the meme side of things, the prison example leads people to miss his point here that power is not just oppressive as a result, it's PRODUCTIVE..
Yes, the prison is repressive on the terms of this combination of bodies and statements, but you can analyze a classroom in the same way: materially, bodies are organized in individualized desks, for x number of minutes a week to listen to a lecture, chairs are oriented towards the front of the class. And in terms of talk and behaviour, students usually speak much less than the lecturer, and there's a shared sense that the latter is more authoritative than the former. In other words there's an asymmetry of roles, akin to the prison guard and prisoner.
But in this case students and lecturer each get something out of it, eventual credentialing and knowledge and other things that contribute to driving the productive regimes of a given society. So it's less that "everything is a prison" and more that "every institution has a power diagram that organizes people and things and statements in certain productive ways, and let me use the prison as an obvious (but potentially misleading) example." | 87 | 104 |
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ELI5: What is a Markov chain? | I keep hearing about them and after looking it up I'm not much closer to figuring it out. | A markov chain is simply a "path" of various destinations, where each direction you take has a certain probability of happening.
For example, lets say every time you encounter a crossroads, you always take a random turn. This means that you have A->B(0.5)/C(0.5) chain. Thats a very simple markov chain.
An example of a slightly more complex chain would be:
1. Start in A
2. 30% chance to stay in A, 50% chance to go to B, 20% chance to go to C
3. B has 80% chance to stay in B, 10% chance to return to A, 10% chance to go to C
4. C has 0% chance to stay in C, 50% chance to go to A, 50% chance to go to B.
That is a markov chain. If you are in the chain, all you care about is your current position - if you are currently in C, it doesnt matter what probabilities A has, all that matters is what probabilities C has. | 40 | 39 |
CMV: People's weight is none of your goddamn business. | Generally speaking, you have two sides on the "Fat Debate": the fat acceptance movement (Healthy At Every Size, etc.) and the fat shamers (who cajole fat people into losing weight, with either benign or malicious intentions.
First of all, I don't buy HAES. I believe that anyone of any size can be *healthier* at that size. If I start jogging once a week, I probably won't lose weight, but I'll be a teeny-tiny bit healthier and that's good.
Secondly, BMI is an overall population indicator. There are of course given people who are overweight who are healthier than given people who are within normal range. Same goes for given people who are underweight vs people in normal range. However, I would state that *in general*, the further you slide on the scale from 22.5 in either direction, the further you're getting from optimal.
However, wherever people lie on that scale - underweight -> optimal -> fat is none of your fucking business whatsoever.
You are not a stakeholder in a stranger's health and people would do well to keep their mouths shut about other people's appearance. If you *are* stakeholder in their health (and this is exclusively limited to loved ones and the person's healthcare practitioners) then maybe you get to say something. *Maybe*.
The best analogy for this is smoking. I smoke and am slightly overweight (~10lb) and it is certainly the smoking that is more detrimental to my health than the few extra pounds.
I *know* that smoking is bad for me - I'm not an idiot. I view the HAES as a bit like "Healthy No Matter How Much You Smoke". It's not true, it may even be damaging. On the other hand, encouraging hardened smokers to run around despite being smokers ain't a bad thing. Attack the campaign, if you must, but leave the people alone.
It does not matter how many people tell me that smoking is bad for me. Their statements are uninvited, irritating and will do precisely nothing to change my habits. They may even reinforce them.
It is *none* of their business if I smoke.
You know when you're eating pizza and you have that one vegan health nut friend who tells you about how pepperoni is full of carcinogens and dairy will cause all kinds of damage to you? That, **at best** is what fat shamers come off like.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be public health campaigns (much like we have anti-smoking campaigns), just that YOU PERSONALLY should never say a damn thing about a stranger's weight, EVER.
*EDIT: Good discussion, guys. I'm going on a delta spree now, because as /u/ThereOnceWasAMan put it: "OPs view is that "others' weight is none of your business", not "you shouldn't shame people for being overweight". They are annoyingly correct in that that is how I *should* have phrased it.
*EDIT 2*: Work has come up and I have to run off for the evening. I'll come back to this to give ∆s to the deserving. Sorry for the delay!
Don't bully fat people, kids. It helps no one.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | If people on your health insurance plan are overweight, you'll have to pay higher premiums to cover their inevitable medical care. If people in your society are overweight, you'll have to contribute more money and effort to cover the cost of their choices. That's the fundamental argument behind why anyone else's concerns are your business. You can apply it to obesity, gun control, taxes, drug use or pretty much any other issue. As for whether this is a good argument or not, you can argue it both ways. Political philosophers from Aristotle to Plato to Hobbes have debated this point for centuries. | 379 | 327 |
[Venture Bros/General] What is the difference between science and "super science?" | Science is when you spend years of your life researching a single subject until you manage to make a slight advancement in your field. Super science is when you take a toaster and turn it into a sentient robot. | 82 | 57 |
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CMV: Spirituality or ways of living should not be considered a part of physical activities like Yoga or Sports. | I was reading through the comments on [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/4xer5w/egyptian_judoka_refusing_to_shake_hands_with/?ref=share&ref_source=link) on the Egyptian Judoka refusing to shake hands with an Israeli Judoka after their match. It's clear that this is bad sportsmanship but in the comments many people were saying that he showed that he didn't understand Judo. They claimed that he ignored Rei which is the mentality and etiquette attached to Judo.
I find it hard to consider Rei a part of Judo, at most it seems to be a tradition that is followed by many practitioners. Judo is a sport where you attempt to defeat another practitioner by following the rules of the match. If you can defeat your opponent while following the rules then you have won the match and you are a better Judoka. It is a sport not an evaluation of personality/ dogma. You could argue that there are penalties in scoring for unsportsmanlike behavior in the match but that seems like an effort by organizers to dissuade it from happening rather than it being a core part of the sport.
The same for Yoga. Yoga often has a spiritual element attached to it. You can find many examples online of Yogis talking about how you have to get on the spiritual journey of yoga to get the full benefits of the practice. It seems to me that anyone who practices the stretching techniques and forms found in yoga is a yogi and gets the exact same benefit from the movements. That is not to say that the mental journey they talk about doesn't have value on it's own, simply that it is separate and not necessary for yoga.
I can find other examples in various martial arts and other hobbies of this type of thinking. I do find it more often in hobbies originating in Asia, where concepts of energy movement / spirituality are more prevalent.
I don't think that the mental / spiritual aspect should be considered a part of these activities. They can be beneficial, and they can often correlate with the activities. But they are not necessary to perform the activities nor compete in them so they are not really a part of those activities. | Yoga is a sanskrit term which comes from a similar root to our English word "Yolk" (not the egg kind) and has been a religious practice for millenia. Yoga outside of modern Western interpretations is entirely spiritual. Banning spirituality from Yoga is turning Yoga into "stretching".
I am 100% atheist but you're argument is like saying "take spirituality out of buddhist meditation". | 12 | 18 |
ELI5: The Double-Slit Photon Experiment | In the wise words of Bender, " Sweet photons. I don't know if you're waves or particles, but you go down smooth."
Please help me understand why the results of this experiment were so counter what was predicted, and why the results impact our view of physics? | Briefly, in the early 20th century, people like Rutherford, Planck and Einstein had competing theories as to whether light was fundamentally a particle or a wave. Thomas Young had performed the double slit experiment by showing that light that passed through two slits resulted in an interference pattern on the detector screen. This is analogous to dropping two stones in a perfectly calm lake. Waves will recede from each stone's landing spot, until the waves collide with each other. Wave crests will collide with other crests, causing supercrests, and troughs will collide with troughs, creating supertroughs (as long as the waves are in phase, which they would be in you dropped the stones at the same time). This pattern of supercrests and supertroughs is called an "interference pattern". When Young saw an interference pattern on the detector screen, he declared that light behaved in the exact same way as water waves do, and therefore, light is fundamentally a wave.
However, Max Planck had shown that whether light was a wave or not, it existed in discrete packets called quanta. Like a case of beer is divided into 24 beer-sized quanta, you can't have a case of 24.6 beers.
So they were able to repeat the double slit experiment but this time they fired individual quanta of light through the slits, without looking to see which slit the quanta went through. They observed little dots on the screen, representing each quanta of light.... so... particle? Except when they kept firing quanta of light through the slits, the individual dots accumulated to form the same interference pattern that Young saw. This was extremely counterintuitive, because it doesn't seem possible that individual quanta of light could produce such a pattern. How could it? This result suggested that the individual quanta of light were interfering with *themselves*, and therefore must pass through both slits at the same time.
So they decided to add a detector at one of the slits and see which slit the light is going through. To their amazement, when they did this, the interference pattern disappeared, and light clearly passed through one slit or the other, and just showed up on the detector as individual dots with no pattern. So... what?!?
They removed the detector and sure enough, the interference pattern returned. In conclusion, light appeared to behave as a wave, even individual quanta of light, since it appears to pass through both slits simultaneously, which is necessary for the appearance of an interference pattern. When you measure which slit the light when through, light appears to behave as a particle, and just flies through one slit or the other, but not both.
**The act of observing the experiment changed the result**. So light can be described successfully as both a particle **and** a wave. As it turns out, all matter can be described this way, not just light. This was a tipping point for a new understanding of the universe through quantum mechanics, which is a whole different story.
**TL;DR Light is a wave, unless you look at it like a particle, then it's a particle, but also it's a wave. Simple.** | 36 | 72 |
ELI5: How can the unemployment rate increase when jobs are added? | A CNN article (linked below) details how the U.S. economy gained 215,000 jobs in March. Yet the unemployment rate increased from 4.9% to 5%. The article says that this may be a result of people returning to the job market, but can that really account for the complete negation (plus more) of those 215,000 jobs added?
Article: http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/01/news/economy/us-jobs-report-march/ | Oh yes it can, quite easily. To start with you have to look at how they determine the unemployment rate.
The unemployment rate is based on adults that are not employed that are actively looking to be employed.
So people that are not employed that do **not** count as *unemployed* are:
* People in school
* People that are retired
* People who are permanently/temporarily disabled
* People choosing not to work (eg stay at home parents)
* People that have just given up on finding a job
You can easily see how this number could fluctuate as people get out of school and try to enter the work force, parents return to the work force, or people that have given up search start looking for a job again.
Adding to that you have to remember the US population is huge. There are about 300,000 people that turn 18 and become an adult every month. A lot of these people are entering the job market too. | 26 | 44 |
What do philosophers from the analytic tradition think of Nietzsche? | I originally read Nietzsche from a continental perspective (Foucault, Derrida etc) and I know his influence there has been massive. What I would like to know is what people who are more comfortable in the analytic tradition think of Nietzsche. This includes redditors and any published writers. Can you recommend readings? | A lot of analytic ethicists take him very seriously, including Philippa Foot (who has an essay called 'Nietzsche: The Revaluation of Values' in her volume *Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy*), Christine Korsgaard (who cites and quotes him constantly in *The Sources of Normativity*), Christine Swanton (who develops a Nietzschean virtue ethics in *Virtue Ethics: A Pluralistic View*), and (as already mentioned) Bernard Williams (whose book *Truth and Truthfulness* was heavily influenced by Nietzsche, and who has a paper on Nietzsche called 'Nietzsche's Minimalist Moral Psychology' in his volume *Making Sense of Humanity*). | 18 | 28 |
What are some of the most major developments in philosophy of the last 20 years or so? | Here's some philosophy books that represent big developments:
* Knowledge and its limits by Williamson
* Every Thing Must Go by Ross and Ladyman
* On What Matters by Parfit
* What we owe to each other by Scanlon | 24 | 53 |
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ELI5: Humans have been around for roughly 100,000 years. Why have we advanced so much in the past 5000? | I know that we have evolved to be more intelligent and capable, but why such a rapid increase lately? | Much of it is attributed to the Agricultural revolution. For some reason, humans in Eurasia stopped being hunters and gatherers to favor farming. Farming led to more food, which led to more people, which led to more people to discover different things which advanced us further. | 26 | 21 |
How is it that cable lines transmit real-time video for 100s of TV channels without a problem, but it takes hours to download that same amount of video data? | I have a basic understanding of how a television receives a signal and displays its information. I understand how that it so fast. I just don't understand why downloading a video can't happen equally as fast. Is it just a limitation of how fast your computer can write the information to the hard disk? | Each channel is broadcast over a specific range of frequencies to each and every end point simultaneously. Non-overlapping frequencies can be summed together to produce the entire cable signal. Internet, on the other hand, is not multi-cast this way and requires careful routing and quality of service algorithms to queue up which packets get sent first at each router/switch. Data is sent in packets that are often acknowledged for receipt as well. Your internet "bandwidth" (as in frequency band width, not the misused common term of mbps) is much smaller than the bandwidth for all channels combined. Consider that each end point needs to both transmit and receive on the same wire. | 379 | 700 |
How many times can I ask the same professor for a recommendation letter, and how to overcome intense discomfort of asking for these letters? | Rec letters are always my least favorite part of any application, simply because I feel like an annoyance to my professors/recommenders every time I ask. I have one particular recommender who has written me letters on two different occasions. I have another program coming up that I would love for her to recommend me for, but I'm worried she will be annoyed with my 3rd request.
I'd consider asking someone else, but I don't exactly have a huge pool of names to draw from, as I'm very early on in my college career and the opportunity already requires recommendations from multiple people.
Is a third request too many? Additionally, how do I overcome my dread of asking for letters, especially when asking the same person multiple different times? | Once a professor has written one letter for you, it’s far easier to write additional letters since we don’t start from scratch. So if it makes sense, continue to ask the same person - it will be more work for a new person. However, if you’re a junior or senior, having a person who simply had you in class as a freshmen write a letter doesn’t make sense. | 56 | 36 |
CMV: There's no issue with portraying fictional characters as different races. | It's of my opinion that it's of no issue to change the race of a character if it has no effect on the overall story. This recently came to mind as there was a lot of backlash of the idea towards Idris Elba playing the part of James Bond. Personally, I don’t see why Elba couldn’t be Bond, being white isn’t character specific to Bond. His race isn’t acknowledged any longer, so I don’t see the issue with changing it. I get that for example Shaft couldn’t be white because his character is specifically based on his race. On the flip side, I don’t see why Batman couldn’t be black for instance, or even if Luther the character Elba currently plays was to be reprised by a white guy as it isn’t a factor in the story. I’m not saying we should shoehorn ethnic actors into roles they’re not good enough for, just to increase quotas, but with race being much less of an issue why does it matter with liberties taken with the race of characters.
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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!* | Often times the race of the character is very key to their over arching story.
Look at Magneto from X-men for instance, he was a jew who was sent to the nazi concentration camps as a young boy. Consequently he had a natural fear that history would repeat itself and became violent to stop history from repeating itself, him thinking of mutants as the potential victims of another holocaust.
Changing his race to say....asian, for instance would take away that very dark and very interesting origin story. | 25 | 16 |
ELI5: How can casinos tell if you're counting cards playing blackjack? | Unless you were actively illegally cheating aren't they just banning players based on a hunch? | There are certain red flags that can alert them, including:
- Players watching the cards more intently than others;
- Players sitting at "third base" (the last hand to be dealt to - a preferred spot because you can see more of the cards before making a decision);
- Players watching what other cards come out before putting out a split or double wager;
- Bets varying up and down dramatically (this is the most significant thing); and
- Deviations from basic strategy.
Some pit bosses also have a rudimentary knowledge of card counting, so if they start counting a shoe themselves, and see a player raise and lower their bets at the "right" times, this too will be a red flag (admittedly they won't know what exact system you're using, but all systems generally have you increase your bets when the conditions are to the player's advantage).
Casinos also have cameras pointing at *everything*, so someone, somewhere can be remotely watching even *more* closely to determine if the player is probably counting.
Having said all that, it's not like they have to establish proof beyond a reasonable doubt; it's a private company so they can just tell you they don't want your business if they believe you're counting cards.
EDIT: You referred to "cheating" in your post (perhaps inadvertently); for anyone wondering, card counting isn't cheating by any reasonable definition. You're accessing the same information all the other players have, and you're making betting and playing decisions that you're allowed to make. The only thing you're doing differently is mentally keeping track of that publicly available information, and using it to make certain decisions. It all happens inside your head. That's not cheating. It's thinking. | 62 | 35 |
Why don't humans eat one large meal and then not eat for a while, like some other predators? | There are many predators that will hunt a large animal, eat a large amount of food, and then not eat for multiple days. What prevents human beings from doing the same thing? It seems our eating habits are inefficiently designed. | It is believed that during most of human evolutionary life, we lived as hunter-gatherers, and at that time, most of our nutrition came from gathering, not hunting. With gathering one can eat multiple times per day, even grazing throughout the day. The remnants of this are seen in the ways we prefer to eat today. | 46 | 110 |
CMV: Federalism doesn't work in modern day populous countries and the founders of the U.S. would not have setup such a system had they known the implications at today's population levels. | _____
During deliberations amongst the U.S. founding fathers, two contrary views emerged as potential models for a federation of states: 1) a strong, centralized federal government, and 2) a decentralized federal system consisting of many strong, autonomous states. Of course the system our founders adopted is the former.
It is my opinion that it would have been impossible in the late-18th century for even the most intellectually gifted of our founders to conceive of a nation of over 300 million people, and could not possibly have considered the implications a strong federal system would have in governing such an immense population (the population of the United States in 1776 was roughly 2.5 million). Further, I think that had our founders been able to grasp the disconnect that exists today between our citizens and federal government, as well as the role of well-funded private interest groups, they would have been more likely to enact a system of strong, autonomous state-based rule-- a system which would be superior in the modern environment. Change my view. | The founding fathers did set up a system similar to what you are describing. In the original constitution the federal government had the power to regulate interstate commerce (this has been reinterpreted to basically mean any kind of commerce) and establish diplomatic relations with other countries (including wars and such). Basically if a power could be given to the states instead of the federal government it was. Also, the State Legislatures used to vote for Senators, and while the president was voted for by the electoral college, the way the electors for each state were chosen was up to the state (it didn't have to be by the people). It was only over time that through the Supreme Court, a civil war, and various amendments that the federal government gained the vast power it has now. | 16 | 36 |
CMV: it's a good thing that birth rates are declining | Declining birth rates have been in the news lately, and most of the reporting I've read has centered around the resulting demographic shift causing economic difficulties. While I'm sure there will be economic difficulties to overcome, I think it's necessary to do so, and now is a better time than later.
An economy that requires a continuously increasing population is not sustainable indefinitely. Eventually, we'll have enough people that we need more of some resource we don't have a good way to get more of and be forced into the sorts of decisions that form the basis of [dystopian sci-fi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Overpopulation_fiction). That people are voluntarily having fewer children solves the problem before it becomes a crisis.
Fewer people means that each person can have a larger share of limited resources. Each person's labor becomes more valuable due to reduced competition, which is well-timed as automation reduces the demand for low-skill, low-pay labor. Of course owners of businesses that currently profit from inexpensive labor might not be thrilled about it, but as long as the world still has people living in extreme poverty, I suspect there are ways to fill any remaining demand for cheap labor.
# Deltas:
* Sperm counts have been dropping continually in western men for decades, so reduced births aren't necessarily voluntary. While there are some solid suspects, we don't know why for certain, and that's scary.
* Too much of a good thing is possible, and Japan may have it with an exceptionally low birth rate *and* a low immigration rate leading to no viable way to support its elderly.
* There is an education bottleneck for nursing in the US, resulting in a shortage that will only get worse as the population ages unless solved. | Depends where you look. on a macro/resource level you have a point.
But if you look at countries like Japan their issue is they have such an old population, and there isn't enough young people to do all the necessary jobs to look after the elderly.
A lot of western countries are facing similar impending crisis. Mainly around how populations are aging and there isn't enough money in pension pots to support them.
Whilst it may seem good the population as a whole is decreasing. The birth rate decreasing comes with a major problem... Not enough young people to look after the old. | 1,424 | 7,234 |
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