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[Bioshock Infinite] How does Booker not rip his left arm off when using the Sky-lines? | The skyhook is designed based on two principles, ensuring that your wrist doesn't break, and relying on forward momentum.
The skyhook is designed with an arm brace, so that the shearing force doesn't do some damage. But the important thing is that you have to be moving in order for the thing to work. That forward momentum transfers the force that would rip his arm off into moving forward. Physics, basically. | 20 | 23 |
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[Star Trek] What are some common strategies for the Kobayashi Maru simulation? | Common strategies?
You might as well ask me to give you the scientific numerical breakdown of the Lourve?
The KM hasn't been a standard test for ages.
No its about adapting, improvising, innovating, exploiting and creating.
We don't mark you for completing it, we mark you for how far you will go. For how much you can push the confines of your situation to come out on top? Hacking the program isn't even an offence, but a good hack shows us that you know what its like to be forewarned, and the level of ICE we've got on the network alone requires some serious genius to break. If you hack it to win, thats fine because you chose your path to completion based on your ability to game the defining controls yourself.
Winning and losing are pointless when you are destined to fail, in these circumstances something changes. Old veterans have seen it, anyone who's come out of the rough end of an almost last stand have lived it. That moment where you can line up all of the variables and not be restricted by false barriers like chain of command or rules of engagement.
So what if you jettison several drive cores to wipe out the whole fleet and the KM? Or maybe trying to actively break the computer security on the Klingon FFI beacons so they fire on each other? Heard about the cadet who used an oddball theory on warp drives to destabilize localised warp space cause the incoming warping ships to split at the molecular level when they tried to enter the radius of the effect? He's now in top secret R&D. One plucky cadet convinced the bogies to defect to the Federation.
Hack the system, play out some kind of cultural blackmail, push the limits of our engineering and science, feint and decieve them, fight to the bitter end by adapting and making up tactics on the fly to cope with the oncoming doom. These are all how you pass the KM.
Do you know how you fail the test?
You try to save the KM by the book.
Anyone can follow SOP, thats the bloody point of it, but the KM exists because SOP will fail. When we setup the KM for a new batch we don't want to see textbooks answers we want to see what fresh new minds do when given the impossible to achieve and thrashed and thrashed until they damn well succeed. | 201 | 134 |
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Does language affect learning and studying? | What I mean by this is do different languages explain concepts better and can you learn something better in another language.
Say person A is equally fluent in 2 languages and the person is studying something which has specific terms and concepts. Is it better to study with one language than the other. Could it be different when studying in different ways(viewing, listening). | Yes. For example, studies have shown that people who's language does not have words to describe spatial relativity have a very hard time learning spatial concepts. They even do poorly when tested remembering where something is in a room.
Conversely, people who speak languages with more words for the color blue have been tested and are able to differentiate between similar blue colors with significantly more accuracy than English speakers.
So yes, language does affect how we learn, study, understand, and even perceive the world. | 16 | 21 |
Why can tenured professors teach poorly and stay employed? | The whole point of tenure is so professors can concentrate on research.
The professors primary job isn't to teach, but to make advancements in his or her own field of study. Teaching is like a side gig for tenured professors. | 21 | 20 |
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With the talk of a functional bionic eye, would hallucinogens impact the users perception just like a real eye? | Oh yes. The physical tools of perception (lens, retina etc) are merely the first step in the process. Perception is highly constructive- you create what you see based on utility and past learning. The idea of direct realism/direct perception is not well supported in the vision research world. The way that humans perceive the world is highly specific to our species and is NOT necessarily a true representation of reality as it truly is. Perceptual processes are heuristics for guiding behavior (i.e. finding food, avoiding death, mating, etc etc) See Interface Theory (D. Hoffman) , Vision ( D. Marr )
Hallucinogens alter the way information is dealt with on a higher level than the eye to begin with. Any differences in the experience would be rather muted, and would be analogous to the differences in bionic/biologic sight to begin with. A person with a bionic eye will get used to the input that it creates and that may be different from a natural eye (until bionic eyes become functionally identical). Taking hallucinogenic drugs will alter the way that perceptual items (objects, faces etc) are processed and created in the same way that it would alter them for people with normal eyes.
tl;dr : Hallucinogens work on the brain, the mechanics of the eye shouldn't matter much. | 48 | 305 |
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Does a language's complexity (grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary size, etc.) follow a standard curve over time? | As a language develops, matures, and eventually fades away or morphs into new distinct languages, does it follow a standard pattern in terms of linguistic complexity?
Is it true that mature languages simplify themselves over time, with rules for grammar, spelling, and pronunciation becoming more relaxed? If so, why do languages get complex in the first place? | There aren't "mature" and "immature" languages. As far as linguists are concerned, all languages (barring a few exceptions like creoles and some sign languages) are equally "mature". (Edit: to clarify this a bit, we have no idea how old most languages are. Excepting creoles and some sign languages, their origins are shrouded in the depths of human prehistory. We have the comparative method, and it's powerful, but it only gets us so far before it becomes incredibly unreliable.)
As to whether languages get 'more' or 'less' complex over time, that's difficult to answer for a few reasons. There is no single measure of linguistic complexity. We can, perhaps, quantify complexity in a part of a language (for one such approach, see Ackerman and Malouf 2013), but not for a whole language.
There are a lot of different pressures that act on language users. Speakers are generally lazy, and want to use the minimum of effort to get their point across. Listeners, on the other hand, want unambiguous and clear speech so they don't have to spend a lot of time processing the signal. One very popular (though controversial) framework these days is called Optimality Theory, and attempts to integrate these pressures into linguistic description. | 11 | 31 |
ELI5: How do we actually know what colours other animals can or can't see? | The rods and cones in your eyes contain dyes, which are the chemicals that do the light sensing. A dye is just a molecule that absorbs a very specific frequency of light. This makes them a particular color, and you can literally just measure the light reflected by these dyes to see what color they absorb.
These molecules also bleach as they absorb light (which is how they adapt to brighter light), so you can also see what color light you have to shine on them to make them change color. | 24 | 17 |
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[Fullmetal Alchemist] Why do the alchemists that we see in the series all practice just one type of alchemy? | I'm sure it's in part due to them specializing in that type of alchemy -- a theory supported by the fact that state alchemists are required to present research in their chosen fields -- but is that all there is to it? If so, why don't more alchemists research and use the techniques used by, say, Mustang or Kimblee, considering how powerful they are? Is it all "just science," as Ed has said? Or does it ride off of Hohenheim's explanation that only a few people are able to draw upon the energy necessary for alchemy, and, as such, people are better attuned to different types?
**TL;DR:** Alchemy: "Just science" or innate characteristics? | Throughout the series, alchemy takes a lot of study. It might be "just science" but most alchemists spend considerable time studying.
State Alchemists are military. Just like the military has a standardized style of combat, the state alchemists learn a standardized method of fighting with alchemy.
And just like there are many different martial arts of varying effectiveness, some alchemists work with special styles or methods. Like the Armstrongs who apparently pass their techniques down the family line.
So yeah it's just science. Most of our scientists also get stuck doing routine work and research while a few rock stars stand out. So it is with state alchemists and their more talented peers. | 22 | 45 |
[Star Trek] Is everyone in starfleet entirely adverse to recording anything ever? | So I've been looking through the records of a few missions (NCC-1701 and 1701-D) and I've noticed something; despite the fact that these ships are some of the most technically advanced pieces of equipment that the UFP has to offer, people aren't really ready for anything going wrong.
For example, anytime there's a teleporter mishap everyone acts like this is the first time someone's been turned inside out or phase-shifted out of time or something; never once does someone call up the tech manual on a terminal and check out the F.A.Q.s or common errors.
Also there doesn't seem to be much established procedure on temporal mishaps, if your ship gets displaced in time there's not much you're supposed to do other than reverse the polarity on something and cross your fingers hoping it gets fixed.
It seems to me that these problems have to happen at least every so often, does nobody record the fixes to save people headaches and possible unwanted hyper-evolution? | Common problems are generally dealt with automatically by the ship. Most of the time when you're watching the highlight reel of Enterprise D missions, you're seeing them dealing with unprecedented issues like a giant space baby or a god-like trickster or trying to detect a cloaked Romulan fleet that's involved in a Klingon civil war. | 20 | 26 |
Was Aristotle an advocate for the welfare state? | I heard this claim from Chomsky.
He writes: "Aristotle also made the point that if you have, in a perfect democracy, a small number of very rich people and a large number of very poor people, the poor will use their democratic rights to take property away from the rich. Aristotle regarded that as unjust, and proposed two possible solutions: reducing poverty (which is what he recommended) or reducing democracy."
However, I have recently read Aristoteles Politics. While it seems to me that he does advocate for a similar thing or rather hints at it, with his mixture of oligarchy and democracy, whoever, I seemed to have missed him advocating for wealth redistribution.
Maybe I was just inattentive, because I found the text somewhat less interesting than Plato.
Can someone help me out with a quote maybe?
Thanks. | Take a look at Aristotle's comments in Book VII when he discusses ways of minimizing crime within the state as well as wars with neighbors. This book begins with a question about the equalization of property and the positions of Phaleas and Plato. What Aristotle is doing in this passage is both affirming Phaleas' general worry and then critiquing Phaeleas' application. He goes on to worry that Phaleas' process works best on small cities, but will create problems with larger ones.
This is not the whole bit, but a part which goes directly to the point:
> **There are crimes of which the motive is want; and for these Phaleas
expects to find a cure in the equalization of property, which will
take away from a man the temptation to be a highwayman, because he
is hungry or cold.** But want is not the sole incentive to crime; men
also wish to enjoy themselves and not to be in a state of desire-
they wish to cure some desire, going beyond the necessities of life,
which preys upon them; nay, this is not the only reason- they may
desire superfluities in order to enjoy pleasures unaccompanied with
pain, and therefore they commit crimes.
> **Now what is the cure of these three disorders? Of the first, moderate
possessions and occupation**; of the second, habits of temperance; as
to the third, if any desire pleasures which depend on themselves,
they will find the satisfaction of their desires nowhere but in philosophy;
for all other pleasures we are dependent on others. The fact is that
the greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity. Men
do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold; and
hence great is the honor bestowed, not on him who kills a thief, but
on him who kills a tyrant. Thus we see that the institutions of Phaleas
avail only against petty crimes.
> **The equalization of property is one of the things that tend to prevent
the citizens from quarrelling.** Not that the gain in this direction
is very great. For the nobles will be dissatisfied because they think
themselves worthy of more than an equal share of honors; and this
is often found to be a cause of sedition and revolution. And the avarice
of mankind is insatiable; at one time two obols was pay enough; but
now, when this sum has become customary, men always want more and
more without end; for it is of the nature of desire not to be satisfied,
and most men live only for the gratification of it. The beginning
of reform is not so much to equalize property as to train the nobler
sort of natures not to desire more, and to prevent the lower from
getting more; that is to say, they must be kept down, but not ill-treated.
**Besides, the equalization proposed by Phaleas is imperfect; for he
only equalizes land, whereas a man may be rich also in slaves, and
cattle, and money, and in the abundance of what are called his movables.
Now either all these things must be equalized, or some limit must
be imposed on them, or they must an be let alone.** It would appear
that Phaleas is legislating for a small city only, if, as he supposes,
all the artisans are to be public slaves and not to form a supplementary
part of the body of citizens. But if there is a law that artisans
are to be public slaves, it should only apply to those engaged on
public works, as at Epidamnus, or at Athens on the plan which Diophantus
once introduced. | 42 | 100 |
ELI5: how does camera auto focus work? | There are a few systems, but the easiest to understand is contrast detection. This is very common on any digital camera showing a "live view" of what the sensor sees. The camera searches for parts of the image where color or brightness differ and adjusts the optics until the edges of colors and brightness get sharper. This is why if you try to focus on a featureless area, e.g. snow or a cloud, it will keep hunting as it's difficult to find any well-defined edges.
Since all this requires is firmware (you need the image sensor already...), this is the cheapest. Other systems use specialized, dedicated sensors so the system can compute how unfocused the light hitting the sensors is, and *predict* how to move the optics; this is why the autofocus on a nice dSLR camera will be very fast. This is called phase detection. | 83 | 132 |
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[General Sci-fi] If I was abducted by aliens and taken light years away from earth how could I find my way home if I gain control of the ship? | Assuming the aliens technology is understandable and user friendly you could simply see where they've been and back track. Otherwise you'll have to find a way to orient yourself by finding something like galactic north then figuring out which arm of the galaxy earth is on. Then narrowing your search to every star that's similar to ours. Which even if it takes an hour to visit a star you'd be searching for years possibly even decades. Hopefully you'd have the ability to detect faint radio waves from background radiation and then you would only need to get within around 50 light years of earth to pick up old SETI broadcasts and can triangulate earth's location from there. | 20 | 18 |
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[The Big Bang Theory] Leonard's mother, being a successful psychiatrist should be aware of how damaging she can be to Leonard so is she doing what she does on purpose? | I mean what the hell? | A lot of professionals struggle with blind spots in their analysis when the task is personal. Doctors are suggested to not diagnose themselves, even the best lawyers would never consider defending themselves in court, and plenty of psychiatrists have issues of their own.
I mean they're human too. A lot of people assume that their kids are perfect angels even when there's tons of evidence to the contrary. | 114 | 101 |
After exercising do all proteins (meat, vegetable) have the same effect on muscle development? | Proteins are made up of "building blocks" which are called amino acids. Muscle repair/growth is limited by amino acid availability. To elaborate on that, the essential amino acid (essential AAs must come from the diet, whereas non-essential AAs can be synthesized by our tissues) which is least abundant sets the cap on muscle growth/repair. For example, if you had 10 units of each essential AA, but only 5 units of one of those essential AAs, you could only synthesize 5 units of protein, and all the excess AAs (5 units of each other essential AA) would be deaminated and burned for energy.
Different proteins will provide amino acids in different ratios, so to answer your question, no, all proteins do not have the same effect on muscle development. This is why it's important to get protein from varied sources, and to seek sources that are known for having relatively complete amino acid profiles, such as eggs and milk. | 593 | 2,315 |
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Can you study Computer Science without being super passionate about it? | Atm I study philosophy at uni and due to some logic courses I took I remembered how I used to enjoy programming a few years ago in school and I wasn't too bad at it. Since then I've been thinking about switching to studying computer science. Like I said, I used to quite like programming and in general am interested in the topic as a whole but I am not someone who for example creates websites in their free time or does projects on their own and stuff like that. I feel like a lot of people who study cs are super passionate about it and know so much about computers (which I don't) and spend their free time programming. I'm not like that but still interested in cs, do you think it's a good idea if I still try? I'm also a bit insecure about switching to cs since I'm a girl and the subject is still widely male dominated at my uni (50 women and 250 men) and I don't want to fill out the stereotype of women not being able to do math or code.
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TL;DR: I loved the logic courses I did in philosophy and want to switch to cs but I'm not too tech-savvy or do coding projects for fun - is it a good idea if I still try? At school I was quite good at math and coding. | Software engineering != computer science. It really depends on how CS at your uni is taught. If it’s more theoretical and mathematically rigorous (this is the real CS you do in grad school) then it sounds like you are more likely to enjoy it than those who study it just to become software/web developers. If it’s more practical/industry-oriented then it doesn’t sound like an amazing fit for you.
But to answer your question in the title: yes. CS is quite useful that even if you don’t feel super passionate about it at first you might grow to like it for practicality alone. But if you don’t care about projects and code development, why don’t you consider studying math instead? | 85 | 102 |
How can the liver break down so many different chemicals? | The liver is where a lot of chemical compounds are broken down into useful or waste compounds. But how does the liver correctly handle so many different compounds? There are literally thousands and thousands of different compounds we can ingest, how do the liver cells know how to deal with each one correctly? | The liver has a lot of different enzymes and isoforms of those enzymes that takes care of most things we encounter in the world. All these enzymes systems are in homestasis with your body at any given time. That said, there's only about 12+ or so reactions that take place in a biochemical system and your plethora of liver enzymes and their isoforms can cover most anything you can run in to. Problems occur when a toxin irreversibly binds to a specific enzyme and the regular ligand can't bind. An example would be cyanide which binds and enzyme in the last step of making ATP, the energy your cells run on. Basically the body runs out of ATP and its ability to make more and you die. Another way you can die is if you overwhelm a particular enzyme system by taking too much of a substance. The liver is an amazing organ but we still need to take care of it. Avoid over doing on any substance, food or drug, including alcohol and you can live a full healthy life. | 35 | 53 |
ELI5: how can the dollar store sell items for only 1$ while the same items are much higher elsewhere? | I always wondered if there is something wrong with those items? Maybe almost expired or damaged? | It's simple and yet not easy to understand. Take the entire stock of the dollar store and we find very few items valued $5-$10 and the majority at or around $1 price. Compare to other places inventory you will find that dollar stores inventory is a low dollar figure. This means that every space of rental property is cheap to stock and rotating inventory (assumed) along with smaller shelf space needed for these smaller items (assumed) allows greater selection. These stores rely on the consumer being able to afford more items more often, they reduce profit margins to increase customer volume.
Or 7/11 has Twinkies for $1.29 with a profit of 35¢ and dollar store has Twinkies for $1 profit of 5¢. Dollar store sells five boxes of twelve each month 7/11 only two. $8.40 for 7/11 and $3.00 for the dollar store. Not great. But the dollar store customer buys 10-15 items and the 7/11 customer 2-5 items. Both models are successful by method, execution and market. They just see growth and profits different with either finding appeal in the eyes of different customers and business men alike. | 29 | 25 |
ELI5:Why is the newly-found SSL vulnerability referred to as "heartbleed" so dangerous? | SSL uses what's called "public key cryptography". Simply put, it means we have two different keys to protect the data. One of them is used to encrypt the data, and the other is used to decrypt the data. The one that's used to encrypt the data is public- anyone can see it. The one used to decrypt the data is private- it never leaves the server.
When you connect to a website, it sends you some information from a certificate proving its identity (the certificate is signed by an organization your browser trusts) and it sends you the public key. Your computer then uses that key to create an encrypted message that only the server with this certificate can decrypt. This is important because information sent over the Internet is not sent over a dedicated line- there's lots of opportunities for people to intercept messages, which can include things like credit card information and passwords.
This flaw allows an attacker to steal information from the server including that certificate. With that certificate, a malicious attacker can both impersonate the server and it can decrypt traffic intended for the server. And 2/3rds of the world's websites are vulnerable. Can you imagine the damage if someone used this flaw to impersonate Amazon and then stole the credit card numbers of everyone using Amazon? Or impersonated Google and stole everyone's Gmail passwords? | 21 | 24 |
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ELI5: Why do people lose their accents when they sing? | A large part of accents is the pronunciations of various sounds, the stress patterns of words and the 'rhythm' of sentences. The last two are lost when singing, generally, because songs have their own stresses and rhythms that take precedence. The pronunciations of vowels and other stuff *is* kept in song, but the more noticeable things are generally lost. | 73 | 86 |
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[MCU] How does Ant Man revert to his exact default size? | Maybe I missed it somewhere in the movies, but is there a "default size button" or could Ant Man presumably be 107% or 97.3% his normal size? | Pym particles operate similar to atomic orbital tracks in that there are a set number of stable sizes. It takes the active application of the particles to flip you up and over the low stability sizes until you drop back into one of the stable positions.
Your natural, normal height is the most stable track. Growing or shrinking you bounce along multiple stable points until you get to your desired height. That's why it looks like a series of different-sized ghost images when you observe it.
The increments are larger than just a few percentage points plus or minus, so 107% would likely be a low-stability point and require active expenditure of Pym particles to maintain. | 539 | 335 |
ELI5: The Turkish Protests | I know some will downvote me and refer me to r/answers, but I purposefully ask here in the hopes of getting as bare-bones an answer as possible (hence the sub).
Haven't particularly kept up with Turkey goings-on in the past few years, but I always thought they seemed like a pretty secular nation... | To understand why the protests are happening, you need to understand some of the history of Turkey as a nation, and the Ottoman Empire before it. To understand the Ottoman Empire, you need to understand the Islamic concept of a caliphate. So, here goes:
In the Islamic world, there has always been the concept of a "caliph," which in Arabic means "successor"– a successor to Muhammad. Sometimes, people think of a caliph like a "Muslim Pope," which isn't really accurate. The concept of a caliphate and a caliph isn't tied to any particular region. Instead, the idea is that the Caliph represents all Muslims, and has the authority to speak for them. In the most basic terms, it's a symbol of where power in the Islamic world rests at any given time.
Here's where the Ottoman Empire comes in. As one of the most powerful states in the world for a few centuries, it was natural that the Caliphate was based in Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, for most of that time. It's for this reason that the Ottoman Empire is often considered the fourth (and last) caliphate.
Now comes Turkey. After World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and the war's victors were already circling like vultures, ready to pick apart Ottoman territory. However, there was a guy named Mustafa Kemal (or Ataturk, meaning father of all Turks)– he is basically the George Washington of Turkey, and it was with his leadership that Turkey managed to survive as a single state. Here's the catch: Ataturk also established a strong tradition of secularism in the Turkish state, and he *abolished the caliphate.*
Ataturk had seen how a reliance on Islamic thought had stifled the technological advancement of the once-great Ottoman Empire. He felt that to adequately "westernize" Turkey, he had to do away with the state religion. This choice upset a lot of people, and still does. The current reigning party in Turkey comes from strongly Islamic roots, which also rubs people the wrong way– it seems to fly in the face of Ataturk's memory. Much of Turkish political history since then can be viewed as the struggle between Western secularism and the Islamic thought of the Ottomans.
Given everything I've just told you, it should make a lot more sense why people got so mad about the bulldozing of a park to put up a replica Ottoman barracks– a symbol of Islamic military might. True, there was also a shopping mall, but ask any Turk, and they will tell you: the protests are about much more than a shopping mall. They are about the Turkish people's right to secularism, and about their right not to be swaddled in state-sponsored Islam.
**tl;dr: The Ottoman Empire was Islamic, Ataturk made sure that Turkey was definitely not. The conflict is about bulldozing a public park to put up an Ottoman barracks, a symbol with strong Islamic connotations. Also, shopping malls.** | 785 | 1,180 |
ELI5: How do we know the universe is 14 billion years old? Do we have telescopes that can see that far? | So, I understand we know the age because that's how long it took the light to reach us - but do we have telescopes that can see that far? If we invented modern Hubble telescope with better technology, wouldn't we be able to see farther than the current one, or am I sorely misinformed about how telescopes work? | The age of the universe is determined by measuring the rate at which its expanding. The light emitted by an expanding galaxy becomes redder as it moves away. This is called the red shift. The rate at which the colour changes determines its velocity. If this velocity was reversed and the galaxies move closer with the same rate of change, the time taken for them to come together to a dense point is measured as the known age of the universe. | 17 | 19 |
ELI5 How did scientists find out what layers exist under the Earth's crust? How did they determine that Earth has a solid core? | Most of this is figured out through seismic surveys. You make a loud sound somewhere and then measure how the sound waves travel through the Earth. This is exactly how ultrasonic surveys work in humans. The sound waves will experience different levels of refraction or even reflection as they hit layers where the density changes. We can measure this and figure out the density of all the rock. It turns out that the core of the Earth is very solid compared to the material above it. So similar to how sound bounces between the walls in a room but is muffled outside the room any loud sounds on Earth is bounced back from the core but is very muffled on the other side of the Earth. | 26 | 34 |
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ELI5:What is happening when you see the air ripple on a hot day? | Light travels at different speeds through different mediums, and as the density of the mediums vary. The air is being heated at different rates between you and the horizon creating different air densities, like ripples on the surface of a river. Light from the horizon refracts as is passes through the different boundaries of densities, just like looking down into a river bed or sea shore through the water. | 11 | 20 |
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ELI5: How does something gets contaminated from radiation? | Re-watching Chernobyl and this doubt just got to me after seeing the cloths disposal of the first responder firefighters.
As far as I know radiation works by collision with other's atoms and breaking them, so, how does something that has been affected by this collision become radioactive? | First off, radiation causes damage by breaking chemical bonds or by knocking electrons off of atoms in a way that causes unwanted chemical reactions, not (usually) by splitting other atoms apart.
But there are two main ways:
One is chemical contamination, where bits of the original radioactive material are mixed in with the other material. For example, small particles of dust containing radioactive metals could contaminate clothes worn at Chernobyl, or radioactive iodine could replace the normal iodine present in a human thyroid gland.
The other is *activation*, where radiation itself turns an atom that was previously not radioactive into a new radioactive form. The most common form of this is neutron activation, where a neutron released by a splitting atom is absorbed by another nucleus, converting the other nucleus into an unable form. For example, non-radioactive Cobalt-59 might absorb a neutron and become the very radioactive Cobalt-60, so that a sample of cobalt near a neutron emitter can become radioactive even if none of the original radioactive material comes along with it. | 49 | 38 |
ELI5: How does your metabolism work? | Like what makes you metabolism faster and what makes it slow down? In my day to day cycle what happens to it? How big of a factor is this in losing weight? Can I overcome a slow metabolism with exercise? Is it going to totally mess up a diet? | Metabolism is the balance between the amount of food you eat (what you put in) and the amount of energy you use from that food for things like moving, thinking, or growing (what comes out).
So if you were a car, the engine would be what controls metabolism. As you hit the gas pedal, you turn more gasoline into the energy that moves the car forward. In return, the car loses gasoline and needs to be refilled, just like when you exercise all day you need to eat.
And like a car, you can use up this energy at different rates. Sometimes this is out of your control: certain changes in your body at different times of the day will make you use more or less energy than you normally would (and some people naturally use more or less energy than others). For example, waking up into a cold house will force your body to shiver, thereby converting some energy into heat.
Sometimes, however, the rate at which you use energy is in your control. You can change the amount of energy you use through exercise and drugs. Exercise, such as running or weight lifting, will use the energy in two different ways: first, you'll use energy to move fast or to lift heavy objects; second, you'll use that energy long after you've stopped exercising to build larger and more efficient organs, such as your muscles and your blood vessels. Drugs, such as testosterone, can trick your body into using more of that energy to grow your organs, but improper use of these may damage your health. On the other hand, certain drugs such as those that prevent seizures will trick your body into using less energy and may cause unintended weight gain.
While you can't change your normal metabolic rate, you can take control of it by controlling how much you eat, what you eat, how much you exercise, and what drugs you take. Because your normal metabolic rate is unchangeable, it may be slightly more or less difficult for you to lose weight, but it is always possible. | 19 | 49 |
How do scientists measure the universe's expansion rate? | Red shift (similar to Doppler effect, but for light, which tells us how fast things are moving away from us) of standard candles (events that have consistent and known brightness (to measure distance) and colour (to measure red shift)).
Usually done on the light curves of super Nova events. | 12 | 20 |
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ELI5 the pros and cons of GMOs | Pro GMO foods: Crop yields can be improved by as much as 10x, allowing more people to be fed. Crop diseases can be wiped out, improving yields further.
Anti GMO foods: Risk of the unknown. GMO's are man-made, and might have health or environmental risks that we can't predict or test for. Most GMO strains are produced and controlled by Monsanto, a company that many people hold a negative feeling. Risk of cross contamination, as GMO plants might grow and reproduce with ordinary farmers crops. | 19 | 17 |
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How are we able to calculate the mass of the Sun? | I understand that you use The Law of Universal Gravitation, but can someone give me an in-depth explanation? | Law of Universal Gravitation
F = G*M1*M2/r^2
We know G, we know M2 (mass of earth), and we know r (earth-sun distance), so all we need to do is calculate F.
We also know that for circular motion
F = V^2/r
r is the same as above, and V (velocity of earth) we can calculate based on the period of revolution (1 year) and the distance (2*pi*r).
Of course the orbit is slightly elliptical so you can get a bit more technical, but that should get you most of the way there. | 10 | 17 |
ELI5: How does a VPN change my location and IP address, even though I'm still going through my router? | A VPN will create a connection between two machines over the internet and send other traffic over that link where it is routed to the open internet on the other end. Think of it as a mail forward service. You can send an envelope within an envelope to your mail forward service and they will take off the outer envelope and send the inner one. When they receive a letter for you they will not open it but just stuff it in another envelope and put your real address on the front and send it to you. A VPN service works very similarly. Your ISP only see packets going between you and your VPN provider and all others only communicates with your VPN provider and don't know that they are sending all the traffic to you. | 23 | 24 |
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Why are there more islands in the Pacific Ocean compared to the Atlantic Ocean? What causes this difference? | The Pacific Ocean is significantly older than The Atlantic Ocean, does this have anything to do with the amount of islands each contains? Or does the depth of the oceans play a role in it? | There are several factors.
Firstly, the pacific is obviously bigger so it's normal to expect more islands in it.
Secondly, the Atlantic is growing (South America and Africa are moving away from each other) so the newly formed ocean bottom as this happens is at the bottom of the ocean. Some places in the Pacific are moving towards each other, hence places like Japan and New Zealand. When two plates push together it makes sense that parts of the ocean stick up above the water. | 19 | 26 |
ELI5: how does a painkiller like Percocet or Vicodin or tramadol work? | To first understand painkillers, you have to understand how pain works. Pain is a sensation, an electrical impulse sent from cell to cell to cell until it eventually reaches your brain and tells you "OW!" Each time the pain impulse passes through a cell, it has to cross the synapse, where it is converted into a chemical. This process is like hopping on a boat to cross a river; the impulse has to get off at a certain "dock" (receptors) which tells the next cell what to do with the signal. The next cell gets "pain" and the process repeats.
Painkillers like Vicodin work by binding to certain receptors in the synapse called Opioid receptors. These receptors essentially tell a cell that receives a pain signal to stop transmitting it. The impulse basically dies at that cell and, because your brain never receives it, you don't experience pain.
Painkillers like Morphine and Vicodin are highly dangerous, however, because of the side-effects they have on the body. Your body has a natural painkiller called endorphins that it pumps out whenever it experiences pain. When the body gets that job taken care of by an outside source (ie, morphine), it stops producing endorphins. That's why opiates have such bad withdrawal symptoms. Your body is constantly producing endorphins naturally, so we are always experiencing a level of pain constantly (think about the kind of impulses your feet is sending when there is 150+ pounds of flesh and bone crushing them). When these endorphins aren't produced, you'll be in terrible pain along with feeling all sorts of things your body naturally blocks out; chills, tingles, sweats, etc. Opiate withdrawal is not a fun experience. | 14 | 26 |
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ELI5, Please: Why are people hollering for Obama to not raise Minimum Wage? | I see a lot of flak from folks claiming min wage shouldnt be raised. However I see in min wage jobs, people, (myself included) who are not teenagers, and trying to raise a family, and how hard it is to do on mere minimum wage.
What is it about raising minimum wage gets people so riled?
Edit: Hey guys - I appreciate the time you took to explain this. Thank you very much for your responses :) <3 | 1. Raise minimum wage
2. Raise prices (or lay people off) to compensate for increased labor costs
3. Cost of living goes up as a result
4. You're back where you started except now everything costs more. People earning (even slightly) above minimum wage won't see any pay increase and now effectively earn less. This means they also have less disposable income to dump back into the economy. | 391 | 430 |
CMV:Religion should not be a protected class in anti-discrimination laws | (Talking about America and the west in general) Currently, if an employer is, beyond a reasonable doubt, proven to have fired/not hired someone for their sex, ethnicity or religion, that's deemed illegal.
Let's ignore the fact that sexual orientation isn't on that list and focus on this. All of these traits share a common characteristic : They're innate and cannot be changed. A man cannot become a biological woman, a white person cannot become a black person, and (afaik) a gay person cannot become straight. Except for religion.
I see no reason for religion to be treated similarly. I know a lot of people are born into religious beliefs, but there's no legal barrier preventing you from choosing not to believe in or practise a religion. I think an employer should have the right to fire someone for being Christian, like they would if they just didn't like their attitude.
You wouldn't call someone bigoted for saying they generally are more likely to dislike republicans/democrats because they disagree with them, so why make that distinction for religion, when in the end it's all more or less an opinion?
That being said, my research is shallow, this is mostly just mental gymnastics I thought up randomly. | >All of these traits share a common characteristic : They're innate and cannot be changed.
Well because of the inclusion of religion, which is one of the first protected classes recognized by the United States government, this is not the common characteristic between them. The common characteristic is that these are all social classes that have been historically used to justify discrimination. Discrimination based on race, sex, ethnicity, disability, and of course religion is well-rooted in American history and society. To ignore religion on the basis of "you can change it" (which is not always the case since religion isn't simply tied to belief but is often tied to ethnic heritage and cultural traditions i.e. Judaism) is to overlook one of the greatest sources of discrimination in American culture. | 22 | 30 |
ELI5: Why do humans take so long to fully develop? | Humans take over 20 years to grow and mentally develop completely, which is longer than most animals lives. Why does it take so long? What in nature causes this and has it always been this way for humans? | The body is ready for reproduction around 13-14 years (and in some populations even earlier than that). This isn't that much longer than many other large-ish mammals.
It takes a long time for our brains to develop and learn properly (~18-25 years) because our brains are just so big and complex. And we have to go through a lot of cultural learning, with our culture being very complex because of language. No other animal has this. | 339 | 721 |
ELI5: How do astronomers identify galaxies that are light years away from us? | It depends what you mean by identify.
If you mean "How do we tell that they are galaxies", we tell using telescopes that are big enough to make out tiny details. The size of the telescope and the color of the light you're looking at determine whether or not the galaxy looks like a dot or a blob or a galaxy; this is one of the reasons why we like to build bigger and bigger telescopes, to be able to make out smaller details. The other reason is that big telescopes can collect more light, so you can see dimmer things. Galaxies are really faint, because they're so far away!
We can also tell that they're galaxies by looking at a spectrum of the light they emit. Galaxies don't look like anything else: they're stars and dust and black hole emission all added together. So even if it just looks like a dot, you can still tell if its a star or a galaxy because galaxies emit a different combination of colors than stars do.
If you mean "How do we tell how far away they are", there are a few ways to do this. One is by using "standard candles". Basically there are some objects (certain types of supernovae and variable stars) in other galaxies that we know exactly how bright they are, and since brightness drops off with distance in a known way, we can measure the distance just by measuring how bright it looks to us. Another way is using redshift. The universe is expanding uniformly, so the farther away something is, the faster its moving away from us. This makes light "stretch out" as space stretches out, and when light stretches out it gets redder. So you can look at the light of the galaxy and compare it to other galaxies you know about, or chemical signatures from a lab, and determine how far away it is that way. This has some errors because galaxies also move pretty fast, so their actual motion can throw a wrench in that calculation, especially if the galaxy is close by so the redshift from the expansion of space isn't a huge effect.
Lastly, if you mean "tell if its the same galaxy we saw before" i.e. how do we name galaxies; usually just by where they are on the sky. The sky has a coordinate system, and there are WAY too many galaxies to give them all a unique name (though some are named from previous conventions from early surveys). So we say "in this coordinate system, this galaxy is at this coordinates". Andromeda's name, in this context, is J00424433+4116074. Which is to say, we name galaxies by pointing to where they're at on the sky and saying "that one right there" | 10 | 16 |
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Should I study Rand? | Is Ayn Rand valuable as a philosopher at all? I doubt I will agree with her, but will I get anything genuine out of reading her or is she just entirely useless? | It can be used as good philosophical exercise. Read some of her short essays and spot how many unstated assumptions, logical fallacies, and misrepresentations of other philosophers you can find. And hey, you might just stumble across a decent point or two.
edit: typo | 46 | 15 |
ELI5: Given the number and types of bacteria in our mouths, why is it that cuts/ulcers in our mouths don't get super infected very quickly? | I've heard that the human bite is one of the most dangerous because of the types of bacteria in our mouths and teeth. Knowing this, wouldn't cuts to the inside of our mouths (tongue, cheek, inner lips, etc) also be very dangerous? | The bacteria we live with are well known and quickly recognized by our immune system, which is ready to kill them if they find themselves were they should not.
It's always the same bacteria in your mouth so your blood has lots of antibodies ready. | 45 | 58 |
Say that atoms found in the island of stability were found to be really stable. What could we potentially use them for? | There is something called the island of stability which dictates that it may exist heavy elements that are stable. If we create such elements and their half-time is on the order of years. What could we use this new material for? | Some things that we need heavy materials for could be improved if we had *heavier* materials. For instance, shielding against gamma radiation. You want something with a high Z so that it's got a lot of electrons which can leech energy from a gamma ray via the photoelectric effect and Compton scattering.
Superheavy elements will have higher Z than anything else currently on the periodic table.
They could also have some very cool chemical properties, because at such high Z, the atomic electrons have to fill higher and higher orbitals. This means that have larger and larger single-particle energy levels, and relativistic effects start to become important. This can actually change the behavior of macroscopic amounts of that material. The band structure can be completely changed by relativistic effects. You could have materials which you'd naively expect to be metals based on their location on the periodic table, which actually behave like semiconductors. Of course this is all theoretical, since we're talking about elements which might not have been produced at all, let alone in macroscopic quantities.
But anyway, there are lots of reasons why we need to pursue this avenue of research and understand the extreme limits of nuclear and atomic physics. | 30 | 44 |
ELI5 why are some colours commonly found as surnames (white, brown, green) but not others (red, blue, yellow) | And furthermore how does language play a part - I know red (rojas/rossi) is a Spanish and Italian surname but not English | Metallurgy.
A lot of early surnames started with tradesmen and described their trades. Smith is the most common English last name because it is part of several professions: blacksmith (working with iron), whitesmith (working with tin), greensmith (working with lead or copper), and brownsmith (working with copper or brass).
Most of these eventually were shortened to either their first or second half, leaving Smith as the most common surname, and Black, White, Green and Brown as relatively common ones.
Edit: whitesmiths are tin | 1,953 | 2,500 |
CMV: If one were to create a new country today, there would be no reason to include an equivalent to the 2nd amendment in the new constitution | By way of initial disclosure, I am Australian and hold the view that our gun control regulations are effective in reducing gun related violence.
However, I am less interested in that issue (what gun control regulation should look like) than the relative legal importance of the 2nd amendment to Americans. It seems to me that Americans and the rest of the world approach the question of regulation from diametrically opposed positions. Americans seem uniquely pre-disposed to viewing gun ownership (in a broad sense) as a 'right', as necessary to a free society as free and transparent elections, freedom of speech, and other fundamental democratic norms.
If one were to draft a constitution today (in a modern, developed country), not from scratch but as your founding fathers did, based on historical experience and examples from other countries, there would be no good reason to include an equivalent to the 2nd amendment instead leaving the question of gun ownership rights and regulations to the discretion of parliament/congress.
NB: I have considered what I expect to be the counter argument; that tyranny may follow in the absence of armed resistance to which my initial response is (1) modern governments are unlikely to be overthrown by force, as distinct from mass political uprisings (especially where democratic institutions are already in place) or civil war and (2) the argument that gun control will not stop the flow of illegal weapons seems to cut both ways here - an absence of constitutional protection for guns will not make them impossible to acquire at scale.
CMV.
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | Rights - freedom of speech, assembly, press, protection from torture, etc. are only as strong as the people who support them. Allowing a population to bear arms gives it some defense against a government that could infringe on any other rights. Not having that puts all the power in the government to give the rights it promises. Sometimes this is successful, but there are many examples of democratic governments turning authoritarian and quickly removing the rights of the people.
Guns may not give the population an upper hand, but they help equal the playing field. | 22 | 35 |
ELI5: How come the extreme pressure at the ocean floor isn't making the water boil? (Like high pressure areas on land equals higher temperatures) I've heard the temperature underwater actually goes as low as 33°F | Forget about temperature for the first part.
Water is made of molecules. Molecules in liquid water are relatively free to move, but they are still slightly attached to other molecules, so they don't "escape". When water becomes a gas, the molecules escape.
If we increase pressure, we constrain the motion of these molecules. Water at higher pressure needs more temperature to boil, because we don't let the molecules escape freely.
The second part, temperature. Pressure alone does not increase temperature. It's necessary to compress something (change its volume) to introduce energy (which, in part, increases temperature). Liquids have a hard time changing its volume, so it's very difficult to change their temperature by compressing them.
Finally, water at the bottom of the ocean is cold not because of the pressure, but because cold water is denser than hot water, so it sinks. In equilibrium, water at the bottom is colder than water at the top.
Edit: Remember, PV=nRT only works for ideal gases. Water is not an ideal gas, especially liquid water. | 2,897 | 9,684 |
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Do atoms emit spectral lines in the nonvisible spectrum? | I'm taking a Stellar Astronomy course, and have a very limited understanding of spectroscopy.
My basic understanding is that emission lines are the result of electrons needing a very specific amount of energy before they can change orbitals, and when changing orbitals they emit a photon to account for the energy change. This photon results in the emission line, right?
Assuming I have that understood properly, Here is my question. Do atoms have emission/absorption lines in the radio/infrared/ultraviolet etc. spectra? And if so, could we gain any information by examining these additional spectra?
Like I said, My understanding is very limited, but I really enjoy this subject and look forward to the answer! | Electronic transitions commonly occur in the UV and visible region. Most materials that aren't colored (i.e. do not absorb visible light) do in fact absorb in the UV region somewhere.
There are other types of transitions that occur in the radio, microwave and IR region, but these are not generally electronic. They include spin magnetic moment, vibrational and rotational transitions. | 13 | 32 |
What's the probability that in n vectors, each with n elements where each element is a random integer, that the set is linearly independent? | You are asking the question: "Given an N x N matrix *A* with random entries from some commutative ring *R* (e.g., integers), what is the probability that *A* has non-zero determinant?" The word "random" in this particular context means that we have assigned some probability distribution to the ring *R* and the matrix entries are chosen according to that distribution. (In particular, there is no uniform distribution on the integers, so your question doesn't make sense as stated since an unqualified "random" is usually taken to mean "uniform".)
This question is pretty tough and there are entire branches of mathematics that describe random matrixes. One easy-ish result is the following. Suppose the ring *R* is just the real numbers. The condition that the matrix *A* has zero determinant is equivalent to some equation of the form p(a*_ij_*) = 0, where *p* is some polynomial and the a*_ij_* are the entries of the matrix. This equation describes some set in R^(N^2). All non-zero polynomials on R^(m) are non-zero (Lebesgue) almost everywhere, whence the set of points that satisfies p(a*_ij_*) = 0 has Lebesgue measure zero. Now suppose we give the real numbers *any* probability measure. That measure is absolutely continuous with respect to Lebesgue measure, and so the zero set of *p* has zero probability. In other words, the probability that a random matrix is *singular* is zero, no matter what the probability distribution on the reals is.
For other rings, the answer may be different. For instance, if *R* = **Z***_2_* and we give *R* the uniform distribution, the probability that *A* is singular is actually positive for all *N*. (In fact, the probability remains positive as *N* --> infinity.) | 22 | 17 |
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ELI5: Can you explain how online data works and why the corporations want it? | Personal data is anything having to do with you or your interests. What colors you like, what you eat, where you work, how you look, etc etc etc.
Corporations use this data to automatically target ads, which lets them stop using money on ads which don’t have any chance of success.
The downside is with all that personal information, they or hackers who get access could work out things in your life and blackmail you. | 14 | 31 |
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ELI5: How exactly does counting cards work and how does it level the playing field against a casino or improve one's chance of winning? | Counting Cards is all about keeping track of probability.
Let's say you're playing blackjack. And the first five cards that are dealt are relatively low (let's say less than seven).
If you keep track of this, you know that the probability of drawing a high card is larger than normal because several low cards have already been played. This information will help you decided whether or not it's smart to hit or pass. | 28 | 76 |
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Why do tidal ranges in different parts of the world vary so greatly? | I understand the basics of how tides work with the sun and moon causing neap and spring tides, but why does the tidal range vary so greatly in different areas? (from as little as 1m to 17m) | Resonance based on shape and depth of the basins. Tides are essentially very large waves which travel around an ocean basin. Unlike the waves you normally see at the beach which have a wavelength of 1-10 meters, the tidal wavelengths are 1000s of km. For a place with large tides, such as the Bay of Fundy, the natural unforced period for a wave to travel around the basin is very close to the period of the gravitational forcing of the sun/moon (~12 and ~24 hrs). Therefore the sun/moon are very effective at driving a large tidal response. Other basins, such as the Mediterranean, have a natural free wave frequency which is different from the sun/moon forcing and thus ineffective at transferring much energy into tidal motions. In order to get large tides, the size and depth of the basin have to be in the sweet spot for resonant excitation.
You can create a similar resonant wave in your bathtub. If you swish your hands back and forth you can create a standing wave where the water sloshes back and forth from end to end. The period of this wave depends on the size of your tub and the water depth. If your hands move back-and-forth at just the right frequency, you can excite a large sloshing with very little effort. But if you move your hands too fast or too slow, you will still create lots of small waves and ripples, but it's only when you force at the resonance frequency that you can create the really large response. | 34 | 38 |
[LI5] Can someone explain software patents (and the controversy surrounding them) please? | Inspired by [this](http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/j44gp/software_patents_in_the_real_world/).
I'm specifically looking for information about why they are so controversial, and what they mean for software developers looking to market their own prouduct (e.g. if someone makes a spreadsheet application can Microsoft sue them for copying Excel)?
**Edit:** Thanks all. Great explanations. | Patents primarily help inventors get an advantage over others who only copy things. This way, if companies want to use an invention from other companies, they have to pay money to the inventor otherwise the inventor can file a court case against the company that copies. Companies that copy are allowed to legally copy the invention only after a number of years have passed since the invention was first 'patented'.
With software patents, there are two issues - First is the speed with which inventions/updates happen. Unlike other areas where patents make sense, software require lesser time to develop. As a result, the rate at which new updates happen is very very fast. Just because Microsoft built a way for users to manage spreadsheets on a computer, it does not mean other competitors should stay away for 10 years or so before they can launch a similar service. 10-15 years is a very long time in technology. Even a year is.
Second and the more important one is the number of useless patents that companies file as a way to harass competitors. An example is the patent that Apple filed to prevent competitors from using the 'swipe to unlock' feature on the iPhone. Quite clearly, this is just a creative way to unlock phone and there is nothing technologically brilliant about it that it needs a patent. Still, companies do such silly things and that is causing the controversy. | 17 | 25 |
ELI5: What is interferon and how does it work? | Interferons are drugs that are used when a person has a viral infection. They take advantage of existing complicated human body responses and make the body more vigilant to cells that maybe infected.
>
Side note, there are two main types. Alpha and beta:
Interferon beta is made via modified e.coli and interferon alpha is mammalian based | 12 | 25 |
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ELI5: How does youtube meet the incredibly high demand for storage required for all the uploaded videos? | I read that if you tried to watch every video on youtube, for every minute of video you watched, you would fall one week behind due to all the uploads that would take place in that one minute.
So this raised the question - how does youtube (or Google) meet such an incredible demand for storage? Are there algorithms that make video storage size smaller? And even if such algorithms existed, wouldn't there still be an absolutely atrocious amount of data that would need to be stored? | By having entire buildings filled with servers and hard drives.
How many terabyte drives can you fit in a million sq ft datacenter? Google has over 20 datacenter worldwide.
And you continuously add more drives. By the rackful. | 15 | 15 |
ELI5:Why are basketball officials so much more touchy than football officials? | Is there an answer beyond "That's just the way it is?"
Football coaches yell and curse at football officials routinely without flags being thrown. Yet when a basketball coach or player vehemently questions a call, even without cursing, an official will often call a technical foul. | Part of it is the courtside experience is a core part of basketball both for the image but also for a very important set of clientele. Also, since Allen Iverson, the NBA has worked very hard to sanitize their image and shy away from "street ball."
The refs can take it, but it's very much against the rules.
That's commenting more on the attitude and cursing than questioning calls. The latter is probably due to delay of game being a very real threat in Basketball where in football most of the game time the ball is not in play. | 11 | 17 |
How are the digits of constants (eg pi) calculated to so many places? | ELY12:
They calculate quantities that are near pi, and refine their calculations as many times as they want.
The Greek mathematician Archimedes drew a circle with a radius of one unit and then drew two hexagons, one inside the circle and one outside. You can find the area of a hexagon using basic geometry and algebra. Since the circle is bigger than the inner hexagon and smaller than the outer one, he knew that the area of the circle was between the two. The area of the circle is just pi (since the radius is one), so pi is also between the two.
By itself, this isn't a very good approximation, since the hexagons aren't a very close fit to the circle. But if you do it again with 12-sided polygons, you'll get a much closer fit, and you can keep on doubling sides as long as you want.
Modern mathematicians use the same idea, but with calculus instead of geometry. For example, using something called a Taylor series, you can figure out that pi = 4*(1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + 1/9 - 1/11 + ...). Adding more and more terms to the series gets you closer and closer. | 39 | 17 |
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[Dune] Why didn't anyone ship water to Arrakis? | When Arrakis was a desert planet the population had to take extreme measures to conserve water. But for a society that has enormous spaceships, it seems like it would be fairly simple to move a few million liters of water around every now and then. So why didn't some water-rich money-poor house bring in plenty of water to sell at Arrakis prices? | Introducing more water to Arrakis would've introduced water to the atmosphere, and eventually lead to increased rainfall (over centuries). Water is problematic for the health of the great sand-worms, who are in turn a necessary part of the production of the spice melange. Thus, for Arrakis to have any value, it needed to remain a desert. | 35 | 17 |
What is the "holy grail" of your field, what is needed to obtain it, and how will this impact the world? | I am interested to see what kind of research people do here, and for what reasons. I find that most researchers I've had the opportunity to speak with usually work on something really cool. You can also talk about your specific research as well, it does not have to be particularly broad.
For example, I am a graduate student studying in the field of Tissue Engineering/Regenerative medicine.
The holy grail of our field is to be able to either grow or repair an organ to restore complete functionality (for example, to grow a liver in the lab for transplantation, or to add the right growth factors, cells, and/or scaffolds to a damaged liver to repair it.)
There are many steps required to obtain this, and there are many approaches, but one important step required is to grow a vascular system with the organ so that we can deliver oxygen and nutrients to the tissue. As a result of this challenge, most cells are currently grown in sheets on petri dishes, and we cannot grow "organs" that are thicker than 2mm. (other students, researchers, and/or professors are welcome to correct me)
The impact of being able to grow an organ will help save lives who are on the organ transplant list, but will also be able to improve the lives of those who get permanent damage from injuries (for example, replacing the knee after a major tear, or replacing a long bone that has been shattered, or even replacing an entire arm...)
| An unambiguous and universally-applicable site index for tree quality. In Urban Forestry, the national standard for trees (ANSI) specifically does not ensure quality, and only serves to standardize tree nursery practices. The vast difference between planting sites and tree quality results in huge monetary losses in maintenance, tree death, and growth stunting. Currently, no objective and broad-spectrum criterion exists in order to optimize possible tree growth and obtain the most ecosystem services per tree for the money spent on it. If we do come up with such a site index for trees, we can ensure that urban forests develop as predicted with minimal losses, maintenance, and a more stable ecosystem for a longer time period. | 16 | 33 |
[Elf] Does Buddy the Elf have (magic) Powers or is he an ordinary human? | He starts life as fully human, but when he was taken to the north pole, did his mortal self 'die' at the hands of elf incompetents only for them to bring him back to life with aid of their magic so that he could become this elf/man immortal? He reveals some special powers of song, dance, merriment (charm spell?) and snowball stamina and ability to stay up all night and decorate (sneak? Dazzle?). Is this all explained by his diet of sugar alone? Is this a sustainable diet once you break through certain barriers? | In order to master something, you need to do it for 10,000 hours or consistently for about 10 years as a common rule of thumb. That's about an average of three hours of practice a day, every day of the year. Now imagine doing something for nearly 16 hours a day for 30 years. People are gonna think you're downright magical in speed with your skill.
There are some people that only need about 4 hours of sleep to be fully functional. It's rare, but Buddy could be one such person. And in order to stay healthy, as long as you get all your nutrients you should be fine. There's been several cases where people live off of junk food or fast food while only taking the missing vitamins who turned out healthy. As for the sugar, he either developed a tolerance or they lowered the amount in his food. | 46 | 43 |
ELI5: Why do we avoid raw meat when japan consumes it so often? | I used to think it was just sushi/sashimi, but now I realize they eat raw egg, chicken, and possibly more. | They take care to ensure that the chickens are raised and processed in a hygienic fashion to minimize contamination with harmful pathogens. They're not going to the local ~~Giant~~ grocery store and grabbing a pack of saran-wrapped Perdue chicken tenders and just slapping them on a plate. | 2,447 | 2,397 |
How does a hard drive compensate for the expansion of itself when in use? | It is my understanding that there are very precise points of magnetised sectors within a hard drive, an expansion of just fractions of millimetres could disrupt the whole hard drive, or so I would presume. Why does it not? | The head positioning amplifier is driven from processed feedback out of the heads that are reading in a dynamic fashion. Fine positioning is determined by the picked up signal, not absolute, predetermined locations. | 510 | 1,009 |
CMV: The Media Only Cares when White, Pretty, or Rich Woman are Missing. | People go missing everyday and nearly 600,000 people go missing each year in the United States alone. Yet I have seen it time and time again for the last few decades. Whenever the media picks up on a missing persons story they are generally as the title states (White, Pretty, or Rich). And they receive an absorbent amount of coverage and nationwide police assistance (which is good in any case). However you rarely if ever see that type of coverage regarding POC.
[Missing white woman syndrome - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome?fbclid=IwAR22fmA_gBo_G3drytbt4d-We3qR3c-iXclv8HoMwzkFnVRH3mxBN4SntcE#United_States)
And I am not trying to take away from the fact that a young life was recently lost. It is a terrible and tragic story and that family will never recover. | It's more like this: when a missing person case is *highly unusual,* that's when people pay attention. This may align with race. For example, you may have heard about the problem of missing Native American women. This is a common problem, so individual cases won't draw much attention - it's seen as part of a broader problem.
But missing white women from affluent communities is extremely unusual. At the end of the day, the novelty of the case is all that matters.
For a comparison, this is why the media never talks about black people being shot by other black people. It's seen as part of a much larger problem. | 63 | 53 |
CMV: The act of forcing police to wear cameras is merely treating a symptom of a problem rather than the cause | I am not arguing that if police were to wear cameras that it would not have a positive effect, it might, it might not, I am not sure. However it is merely trying to treat one small part of a larger issue that needs to be addressed.
From an external perspective, albeit from a country with very similar problems - the UK, the problem with the police and ethnic minorities, a large percentage being black, stems from deeper issues. Cameras may help bring down excessive force and other such activities from the police, but the actual issue stems from deeper issues such as inequality, the relationship with the state and individual that borders on egotism, to name just a few.
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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 would argue that greater transparency in the police force through the mandatory use of patrol cameras and public access to these recordings in the court of law actually treats one of the main issues that minorities have with the "system".
As an inscrutable monolith, the police garner little trust in communities that have been oppressed over decades or centuries. With the cameras, the police force is now easily accountable for any indiscretions, balancing the scales of legal power. It also helps to defend officers that perform their duties appropriately, preventing rumours and incitations to violence among communities where opportunists may use the lack of information to their advantage. | 37 | 67 |
[Doctor Who] Are the Doctor's future regenerations built into his genome? | If we fully sequenced the Doctor's DNA (if he even has it), could we predict the appearance/personality of his next regeneration? Do we even have a biological explanation for regeneration? | The change is dependant on subconscious and situation. You can control regeneration with practice and meditation (as mentioned with Romana, and as Master statedly turns into a younger version to reflect Tennant's Doctor).
Doctor could have some control over regeneration, but the way he handles these crisises (acute immediate death seconds away) doesn't leave much time for thought. It might also be that Doctor isn't particularly focused (as Romana implies) and rather relies on subconscious.
Which is why #10 spoke like Rose and #9, #10, #11 were all younger than the previous incarnation. Bad Wolf indicates this to be a wish to escape the guilt and life-experiences of the War Doctor. As #11 succeeds in getting rid of the guilt, #12 is again older (closer to the "long term average") and not looking like a doctorate-student (like Matt Smith). | 26 | 30 |
ELI5: Why do some people get so many cavities? | I'm not really familiar with the makeup of the teeth, and this is largely anecdotal, but why do some people get tons of cavities? In my case, I was never taught any real dental health by my parents. I probably brushed my teeth once or twice a month (I know, looking back it's absolutely disgusting), max all the way into my late teens when health classes taught me to be more vigilant with dental health. Even then I brushed maybe 3 times a week. I drank sodas and had tons of carbs and sugars as a kid, and went to a dentist for the first time at 26. He said I had no cavities at all. This stands in stark contrast with a number of my friends who would get a cavity filled once or twice a year during their teens even though they brushed 2-3 times per day. Is there a difference in makeup of some people's teeth that causes them to be more susceptible? Are teeth like other bones where your diet as a child can influence how strong they are? | There's a strong genetic component to oral health. Some people just have different saliva pH levels and different amounts of carbohydrates and proteins in their saliva, and it all just fosters bacteria growth. You happen to be lucky in that your mouth mostly takes care of itself. | 11 | 19 |
ELI5: when you apply for a patent how do they check there isn't already a conflicting one? | Patents are indexed by subject matter and words they contain, but basically the patent office still does it the hard way, by looking at all the related patents they can find. Computer searching speeds things up a lot, but someone still has to read the patents and understand what they are about, in order to decide whether a new idea is new and different enough to deserve a patent. | 11 | 20 |
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ELI5: In html, what is the difference between a div id and a class | And how and when would you use one over the other?
I cannot wrap my head around this concept.
Thanks! | An id is a unique thing - an identifier for a specific object. A class is a name for multiple similar/identical objects.
Imagine you create a long list of <person id="x" class="y"> tags. Values for id are social security numbers - values for class are "student", "assistant", "professor". Obviously you can have multiple persons that are students, but only one person should have a specific social security number. | 25 | 70 |
ELI5: Why are whole tunas bought for so much when canned tuna is one of the cheapest foods you can get? | Different species and parts of the tuna. Similar to how wagyu beef is more expensive than regular beef. And Beef tenderloin is a lot more expensive than hamburger. Different parts of an animal can cost different amounts, and that goes into the price of the overall animal. The tuna in a can is most likely the scraps and/or cheaper cuts of a tuna after all the "good parts" have been removed and processed. Just like how a lot of hamburger is just the leftover meat after the good steaks and roasts have been removed | 6,837 | 12,109 |
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Economists, what do you think most other economists get wrong? | Further, what are your biggest pet peeves with your peers. What do you see other economists saying or doing that makes you think, “we’re all full of crap”
Spill the tea | The hierarchy of the profession, for sure. Economists at low- and mid-tier departments can do great work, and economists at top departments can do shit work. Likewise, a paper published in a good field journal is often just as solid as something published in a top general interest journal. We like to act like we’re a pure meritocracy, but the work is rarely judged on its merits alone. | 143 | 148 |
ELI5: Why does the can of compressed-air dust remover gets so cold if used continually at once? | So, when you're dealing with gases, you have to understand that, in order to expand, a gas must heat up.
When you use compressed air duster, there's more room in the can that the gas then has to occupy. In order to do that, it has to absorb heat from its surroundings; in this case, the can, which we sense as the can cooling down. | 122 | 142 |
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Which philosopher invented the idea that today's me is under tyranny of yesterday's me actions? | I found it year ago on existentialcomics, I think there was here a case in court where accused one said "it wasn't me, it was yesterday's me, I'm not guilty" | Kant discusses it in the *Critique of Practical Reason*, albeit in a more abstract way.
According to him, freedom is impossible for a being determined in time (as our phaenomenal selves are) because the form of time implies the transcendental law of causality, whereby each phaenomenon suceeds another necessarily according to a rule.
Hence, your actions (which are phaenomena) are merely a consequence of those that came before. However, your phaenomenal self is the mere sum of every action happening in a certain time. Therefore, none of your actions are caused by you -- they are result of who you were instants ago, which is something you're not.
But freedom is being the sole cause of your actions. Thus, there is no such thing as freedom for a temporal being.
The one way to allow for freedom is to postulate a non-empirical, a noumenal self. This one, metaphysically connected with your phaenomenal self, is outside time, and hence can be transcendentally free. Although we never experience our noumenal selves, and thus never experience a free will as the cause of our actions, we can still think of it as such.
Therefore, it may be that natural necessity is the sensible cause of action, but free will is its intelligible cause. | 82 | 170 |
ELI5: How were mines ventilated before electric pumps and fans were invented? | There were a few different techniques. Clever designs of ventilation shafts could get the air to move from a slight wind and the heat of the ground. Sometimes they would have a fire burning in the mine with a proper chimney that would draw fresh air into the mine. They did also have bellows and fans to blow air into the mine. These bellows could be powered by humans, donkeys, wind or water. | 33 | 18 |
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CMV: If it's unacceptable to judge people based on their career achievements or status (job title, income, etc), it should be equally unacceptable to judge people based on their academic achievements (GPA, how prestigious their degree/university is) | People make mistakes and learn from them in both phases of life. I think the best way to evaluate someone is on their personality/kindness.
I realize that it's possible for everyone to get a degree if they put in the effort and that certain aspects of getting a job or promotion are out of a person's control. Someone may be promoted for superficial reasons or because they know someone. And the person without those connections wouldn't have that opportunity. But there is a natural talent aspect in the academic world as well. People learn faster in certain subjects and require more practice in others. Some people are math/technical data types and others are more communication/writing types. A person may have tried their best, asked for help, not slacked off, and just didn't get an A.
I feel both work and school have unpredictabilities, ups and downs, and a person's worth shouldn't be determined by statistically measurable rankings in either.
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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!* | Who's doing the evaluation? If someone's looking at your transcript, it's probably to hire you for a relevant job or graduate program. In that case, it makes total sense to judge you by your academic performance.
> Some people are math/technical data types and others are more communication/writing types.
That might be true, but if you're a communication/writing person applying for an financial analyst position with a statistics degree it doesn't matter. Maybe you would have done better as an English major, but you *chose* a math/technical field.
> A person may have tried their best, asked for help, not slacked off, and just didn't get an A.
If you can't make an A in a class, that's fine. If you tried hard, you'll get a B or at least a C. In the 100+ credits you need for a degree, it won't matter.
If you're consistently getting Cs or worse, you clearly weren't cut out for your major. Maybe you had a good reason one semester, like your dad died in the middle of semester. If that's true, you could take some incompletes or petition for a late drop. But overall, if you're applying for an entry level position college was your last long term position and your GPA is your performance history. | 13 | 18 |
What mathematical concepts are involved in voting and voting systems? | Above | There is a subsection of decision theory called social decision theory which aims to find a way of ranking a set of outcomes that best fits a large group of people who all have individual rankings of those outcomes.
You may be interested in the work of Kenneth Arrow, particularly Arrow’s impossibility theorem, which states that there is no way of doing this fairly (for a specific definition of ‘fair’), for which amongst other work he won the Nobel prize in Economics.
Like a lot of decision theory, it’s not really strongly related to any other area of maths, it’s probably most closely related to operations research.
It’s also worth noting that in real life voting/political systems, politicians rarely listen to mathematicians (hence why most systems use FPTP which is objectively terrible). | 16 | 39 |
CMV: Critical thinking is the most important and/or useful thing anyone could learn. | Be it Maths, foreign languages, natural sciences or whatnot, critical thinking is the most important asset anyone should have.
It wouldn't matter how much you have read or know about any given area of expertise if you don't possess the ability to 'tinker' with it inside your head. Even when trying to apply that knowledge to practice, if you haven't learned beforehand how to analyse it and critique it by yourself, you wouldn't do that much good. Neither will you be able to defend your motivations for using said method in the situation.
P.S. Sorry for my possibly bad wording - this being my first post in CMV as well as English not being my native language hamper me somewhat.
EDIT: as /u/EttPsykFall pointed out - basic communication comes first and I failed to communicate to you all, that basic human behaviour should be taken for granted. The ability to function as a human being, as far as I know, includes the ability to communicate with your peers, so please - set "one is capable of interaction with at least a fraction of his peers" as a presupposition in your arguments. (you're welcome to give counter-arguments about this as well, of course)
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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!* | Learning to communicate, by speech, writing, sign language or what have you, is way more important. It's the foundation of society, in every society all over the world. How is critical thinking going to benefit you as a person if you can't even discuss, let alone communicate at all, an idea with your peers? How are you supposed to know what critical thinking is if you can't even read or understand what another person says to you? | 35 | 112 |
How did Newton know there was a distinction between weight and mass? | Early physicists already realized that mass plays two roles: as the source of inertia, or the resistance to acceleration, and as the property that the gravitational force acts on. These properties are clearly different because even when gravity is balanced, as on a flat horizontal surface, a more massive object requires more force to accelerate. Inertia appears as an intrinsic property of a massive object, whereas as gravity has to do with the interaction with other distant masses.
The surprising fact is that inertial mass is equal to gravitational mass, which is known as the equivalence principle. A consequence of the equivalence principle is that, in the absence of air resistance and other factors, all falling bodies accelerate at the same rate because the mass factor from the gravitational force cancels the mass from inertia.
EDIT: The implication is then that on different planets, objects will have different weights (and thus fall at different speeds), but the weight will still be directly proportional to mass. | 23 | 23 |
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What "classic/basic" Philosophy books (such as Republic) should I read before moving to less known stuff that I am attracted to? | I know that a lot of philosophy might mention things that I will not fully understand if I have not read an important book, such as Republic. I might want to read a Lithuanian book (I am Lithuanian) about nihilism, but I might not fully understand it if I haven't read Nietzche. So which books would be considered "a must", and if possible in what order?
Edit: Do know that the nihilism book was just an example. I actually have around 25 Lithuanian philosophy books that interest me. Thank you for the suggestions 😁 | I'd recommend reading what interests you without feeling the need to study the whole history of philosophy first. Usually, the texts will reference enough back to earlier writers they're going off of. There is no set order for reading philosophy; its a flow. | 23 | 18 |
How does evolution for non-breeding individuals in colony insects (bees, ants) work? | How can evolution select for drone bees or honeypot ants if they don’t breed and pass on genes? | The genetics of the non-breeding members of the colony are determined by the genetics of their parents, who (of course) *do* breed. And they only get to keep breeding and passing on those traits if the colony is successful. So, traits that are favorable in the non-breeding members are still selected for. | 108 | 78 |
From the point of view of evolution, is there a particular advantage or disadvantage to having one eye color over the other? | We have evolved to have skin colors based on the environment that our ancestors lived in, for example, greater sun exposure in the tropical latitudes meant it was advantageous to have a darker skin. Is there a similar story with eye colors? | Allmost all genetic traits like eyecolor or skin color are influenced by many genes. In this specific example, most genes that code for skin color also code for eyecolor. Fair skinned people have brightest eyes way more often, and dark skinned people with bright eyes really stand out because of its rarity.
Bright skin was adaptive to sustain vitamin D production in the skin with less sun. Bright skin contains less melanin, which gives the skin and the eyes it's darker color. Bright eyes don't have an optical advantage, the iris always blocks light, no matter the color.
Maybe after the first bright eyes appeared, there was some sexual selection because they were outstanding, or it made communication easier because the pupil increase due to arousal is much easier to see in bright eyes.
Tldr: bright eyes are a side effect of less melanin in the skin to allow Vitamin D production. Also Sexual selection | 221 | 468 |
ELI5: What are birth marks and why do we get them? | Edit: Thanks for all the replies guys loved reading them all! | **What are birthmarks?**
There are different types. Some are a bunch of blood vessels and capillaries close to the surface of the skin. These are not permanent, but are common among newborn children. This kind is usually red.
The other kind is an above average accumulation of pigment cells in the skin. These are typically brown, and are long lasting if not permanent.
**Why do we get them?**
In short, nobody really knows. There are theories about late mutations in embryo development, but the short (and real) answer is we aren't quite sure. | 131 | 339 |
ELI5: Why does sleeping for a long time make you feel tired and groggy? | Your body has a natural cycle referred to as circadian rhythm. If you do anything to throw it off, you can feel out of it. This includes sleeping longer than normal, and stuff like traveling time zones. When your body isn't a synched up to the activities you want to be doing, you won't feel at peak performance. | 134 | 241 |
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ELI5...If aliens put a satellite into earth orbit to observe us, would we even notice with all the other satellites up there? | Topic. | Yes. Astronomers carefully track all sattelites - as do some world governments. Even space junk is tracked.
Astronomers need to know where sattelites and debris are so it does not interfere with looking at stars.
Governments want to know where spy sattelites are and who is looking at what.
NASA and other space agency's track space junk and sattelites so stuff they launch into space does not collide with it.
So, things orbiting our planet are carefully examined. | 154 | 215 |
CMV: Charity in its truest form does not bare your name. | I feel that if you are helping anyone out with 100% sincerity, it will not matter to you if people know that you are behind the charity, no matter how big or small the contribution. I see large charities bearing the name of the person behind it followed by words such as "foundation" and I often see people on social media looking for a pat on the back for something good they've done. This is still giving but the giver is still looking for something in return.
For instance, we have the Oprah Winfrey Foundation and the Trump Foundation, then we have Mathew McConaughey's charity 'Just Keep Livin" and Morgan Freeman's 'Rock River Foundation'. Until I looked it up, I had no idea about the people behind the last two... and maybe they prefer it that way.
The stories in the news of anonymous givers have always intrigued me and make me have hope for mankind... like the recent one about the man at Walmart who paid off everyone's layaway items. This man insisted on remaining anonymous. He gave for the pure sake of giving. | If you are a person who is already famous (such as Oprah Winfrey, Bill Clinton, or Bill and Melinda Gates) then having your name on a charitable foundation can help it seem more legitimate, which increases donations and make the charity more effective. | 15 | 25 |
ELI5: Why do some plants have defense mechanisms like poison ivy and gympie gympie (called the suicide plant because it's so painful) and others don't? | Plants develop all manner of elaborate defensive mechanisms to thwart their predators.
Some grow tall and encase themselves in armored bark. Some are covered with nasty thorns. Some pack horrible irritating oil. Some fill their leaves with noxious alkaloids.
All these cost the plant time and energy though, which gives plants that pour all their effort into growth an advantage sometimes. Yes they're defenseless against a wandering cow, but if you and 10,000 of your seedlings can overwhelm the slower-growing competition it's still a good strategy.
Basically, nasty thorny poisony plants are optimized to fight animals, fast growing leafy plants are optimized to fight other plants. | 52 | 84 |
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Would universal basic income basically drive up the price of everything? | For instance, where I live rent is expensive and housing supply is limited. If EVERYONE here had an extra $1000 a month, they could afford to pay more. So wouldn’t the market price of rent pretty quickly adjust to the new normal?
And wouldn’t the same principle apply to many things in the economy? | It depends on how you finance it.
If you finance it via money creation, you get higher inflation.
If you finance it via redistribution, e.g. taxes, you don't necessarily end up with inflation. You will get higher demand for some goods and it's perfectly possible that goods bought by poor(er) people will go up in price. That doesn't mean you get a (significant) increase in the general price level. | 139 | 108 |
CMV: We need a world-wide moratorium on viral Gain of Function research and to place strict restrictions on DNA synthesis. | This CMV is NOT about covid. I will not speculate as to the origin of SARS-CoV-2 except to say that the possibility of it having been leaked from the lab has [not been dismissed](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/bies.202000240) and there are [more](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj0016) and [more](https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/05/13/1024866/investigation-covid-origin-wuhan-china-lab-biologists-letter/) articles from reputible sources to that effect.
This CMV is as clear as the title:
**We need a world-wide moratorium on viral Gain of Function research and to place strict restrictions on DNA synthesis.**
Here is my reasoning:
* This outbreak was NOTHING comapred to what it could have been. SARS-CoV-2, for all the harm it has caused, is a wimpy virus. H5N1 is 70 times more lethal and the measles is 20 times more infectious.
* Without going into details (but I could if desired), it would be fairly trivial to combine the features that make those viruses so deadly/transmissible with the SARS-CoV-2 trick of disabling your innate immune system so that you're spreading disease weeks before you're symtomatic... It would be a virus that spreads without you knowing your sick, spreads basically at will, and eventually kills the vast majority of those it infects. The hospitals would be instantly overwhelmed. I'm not even sure where we'd put all the bodies.
* There are at least 4 ways this supervirus could emerge:
1. Naturally in the wild (least likely)
2. From the resevoir of SARS-CoV-2 currently mutating in the human population
3. Gain-of-fucntion research
4. It could emerge on purpose from a terrorist or religious organization that, for whatever reason, wants to bring about the end of the world. Hell, it could emerge from a disgruntled grad student.
* We have the technology to engineer such a virus and have had it for years. I estimate it would take a single average mol bio grad student half a year to accomplish this. Regardless of timelines, this can be accomplished with today's technology and this will only become easier as our mol bio tools improve.
* Gain of Function (GOF) research has a spotty track record in terms of safety and utility. There were calls to ban it [as early as 2013](https://www.nature.com/articles/495411a) when some researchers became alarmed because [the cost/benefit ratios of the research were unacceptable](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4099557/). We now know that viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 were being worked on under totally inadequate safety conditions (BSL2) in Wuhan. We also know that GOF has been previously performed on H5N1 to make it more transmissible.
* Virsues escape the lab all the time, [both in China and the West.](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/3/20/18260669/deadly-pathogens-escape-lab-smallpox-bird-flu)
* DNA synthesis is poorly regulated today. The most challenging part to making a novel virus is obtaining the synthetic DNA. This is becuase many comapnies that offer this service will routinely compare the sequence ordered to a database of known pathogens. So that should make us pretty safe, right? Wrong. There are literally 1000s of unregulated labs around the world that either have or could easily obtain the capacity to make their own synthetic DNA without any sort of regulation. You could also order the building blocks of synthetic DNA from the established commerical suppliers and assemble your plasmid DNA yourself (you'd have to be clever about this but it's doable).
* There are groups today and certainly more in the future who welcome the end of humanity. These range from death cults, fatalist religious groups (ex. Aum Shinrikyo), and terrorist organizations who'd love to [hold the world hostage](https://i.pinimg.com/600x315/2a/d6/3f/2ad63f0f2333d5bc0e423689f90ef38d.jpg).
We need to treat this problem with the same or greater seriousness as we treat nuclear proliferation. We need to prevent anyone from obtaining DNA that corresponds to existing or novel pathogens. If we fail to do this, covid is going to look like a blip and it's just a matter of time.
**Why I want my mind changed:**
Becuase if it cannot be, then we are in a scary as hell position with our pants already down and our chin already bloodied.
**To change my view:**
Make a convincing argument that one or more key point in the body of the argument is not true. | So how would scientists understand virus and figure out ways to get a head of the curve to prevent another pandemic events and create vaccines for them?
&#x200B;
If they don't fully understand the nature of the virus how can they make vaccines and how can they create any predictive models to try and stay a head of any mutations to keep the vaccines effective? One of the many aspects of GoF is learning about the virus and how it might mutate and to be able to develop vaccines to resist these mutations before they get out of control. | 12 | 15 |
ELI5: What is the difference between computer programming languages and what makes one "more powerful" than another? | Different languages exist either to attack different sorts of problems, or to implement different computer science paradigms. It is not very wise to say a language is more powerful than another, because this lacks context. Powerful at doing what?
For instance, Java has a couple of major claims to faith: it was one of the first popular Object-Oriented languages, and in this sense it was created to implement that particular paradigm. More importantly, though, Java is made to be portable. You can write something once, and it works equally on all operating systems with a Java implementation. It is very powerful in this sense, because it has huge penetration.
Take C and C++, on the other hand. They are harder to learn, code needs to be recompiled and sometimes rewritten and repackaged quite extensively to be able to run on different systems; but, it is extremely fast and allows you to manipulate the hardware in a very direct way, which Java doesn't. In this sense, it is more powerful than Java for applications that require extreme hardware integration and speed. Most Operating Systems themselves are written in C. | 12 | 16 |
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Where Can A Math-Minded Person Learn Economics | I am a math kinda guy (I work with computers) and I would like to have a deep understanding of the economic machine around me (both the theoretical and the practical). Where can I start learning if I don't have any economics background (I mean I know some super basic stuff, but let's pretend I don't even know that). Any books or online resources you know of? | What is your math background? What is the hardest math class you've taken? How much of formal proof have you done? Saying that you are a math kind of a guy just cause you work with a computer doesnt really mean anything unfortunately. | 28 | 31 |
Why don't birds fall of trees when they sleep? | Birds in the order Passeriformes have a specialized method for this. They have flexor tendons in their legs which, when perched, automatically closes their toes which allows them to grasps branches, wires, etc. with no extra effort. Passerines account for about half all birds so there are many that are not able to perch effectively. | 307 | 535 |
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The Mars Perseverance Rover's Parachute has an asymmetrical pattern to it. Why is that? Why was this pattern chosen? | Image of Parachute: https://imgur.com/a/QTCfWYe | The asymmetry in the coloring makes it easier to study the video and assess the parachute's performance. In multi-chute systems, you'll see that each parachute has a different pattern so they can tell them apart.
Edit: more explanation: the parachute is able to twist with respect to the vehicle (and therefore the camera). If there's any strange behavior in the parachute, they can track it visually and then go back and look at photos of the folded and packed chute, the fabrication process, etc, and the markings help them to make a direct comparison. | 6,734 | 8,740 |
My dream job would be to teach, but I'm starting to wonder if it's the path for me.. | I really want to be a teacher/professor of some sort, the idea of keen students coming to my class, me trying out new methods of studying by keeping up with technology, making sure everyone passes etc makes me happy.
However, I've been poor all my life and hearing about the pay and job security of professors is straying me away. I live in Sweden and my dream would be to be a professor in any scientific subject and teach all over the world. Japan, Korea, USA, UK, Canada, Saudi etc.
Are these dreams of mine realistic? Would it be worth pursuing this or orthodontestry? I may seem shallow thinking about money but I'm not all about bling. | There's quite a range from adjunct pay to professor pay. At the same time, to become a professor, it's not just about wanting to teach, but it's also about becoming an expert in something so specific and tiny and producing research about that one thing. You need to have the research side to enter the teaching side.
What about high school? | 29 | 26 |
ELI5: Why do I hear about technological advances (such as shown in r/Futurology for example) But I never see them implemented in society? | Much of the new technology is beneficial to the world and the current problems we are facing, and despite the mass potential it proposes, I never see them implemented. Why is that? | The road from discovery to implementation is long and costly. Creating something a few times in a lab is very different than creating tons of them in a mass production facility. It can take years to implement things, and in some cases it can be incredibly difficult to scale production up. | 27 | 42 |
ELI5: How trees get their rings. | I'm sure we all know the saying that for every ring you see in a stump of a tree, each ring is supposed to represent one year of the trees life. I'm sure that statement is debatable... but my question is how are those rings formed?
I hope that question makes sense. I'm just confused as to how a tree, which grows continually overtime, has noticeable rings that can represent the lifespan of the tree. | Trees grow at different rates at different times in the year, producing slightly different appearances in cross-section. After roughly a full year, the tree should cycle through a similar pattern of growth. | 17 | 20 |
What is the environmental benefit to purchasing a Nissan Leaf if the grid is charged on is powered by fossil fuels? | Suppose my house gets power from an oil powerplant? Any way we could compare this to the Toyota Corolla? What would be the net difference on pollutants to the environment? While the Nissan Leaf itself doesn't pollute very much for driving 30 miles, I assume recharging it for 30 miles creates some pollutants from the power plant.
What if it's hooked up to a coal power plant? Same questions.
I was told by someone that powerplants are, at best, 50% efficient. Are cars any better? | There are 3 benefits:
* First of all, power plants as extremely efficient (compared to your car engine). The reason being that they are built to run at a specific RPM and a specific temperature and constant (almost) output etc. Car engines, on the other hand, are very inefficient - below 30% of power plants - because they have to give bursts of power, are still running when you don't need power, vary in operation temperatures and, well, are just smaller and cheaper. So **creating the same amount of energy produces much less pollution** in power plants. Much much less.
* A power plant is easier to upgrade - immediately upgrading the environmental benefits of all electric cars. Upgrading all the cars in the world is much more difficult. So, even if right now the electric car pollute because of the coal plant, once more solar panels are installed (for example) **all** the electric cars become "less polluting" all of a sudden
* The pollution of power plants is "out of the way" - usually the plants are built outside of residential areas, and they have these huge "chimneys" that move the pollution up and out of reach. Pollution from cars are, on the other hand, right in the cities, right in the residential areas. Kids (and adults...) breath this pollution when going to school, opening a window at home, playing around in parks. So even if both methods polluted the same - just having electric cars makes the streets and parks and homes less polluted.
| 48 | 18 |
Eli5: How do we know that dinosaurs were likely reptilian/avian but not likely mammalian? | Species that are closely related to each other will share certain anatomical features in common, which they both inherited from a common ancestor.
Other species that are not descendants of that common ancestor — and therefore are more distantly related — won’t have those same anatomical features.
For example, on the one hand, all mammals have three tiny bones in their middle-ears (called the malleus, incus, and stapes), and no mammals have hallow bones that connect to their respiratory systems.
On the other hand, neither birds nor dinosaurs have those tell-tale three little bones in their middle-ears, but they both do have hallow bones that connect to their respiratory systems.
From these and other similar anatomical comparisons, we conclude that birds and dinosaurs must be more closely related to each other than either of them are related to mammals. | 74 | 38 |
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How does the "I am not a robot" checkbox know I'm not a robot? | The verification is based on many different factors such as-
Mouse movements, clicks and keystrokes: Many of the bots work by directly generating a click on a certain position of the screen or requesting a browser to send a click to a certain element of the website (button, link etc); they don't bring the mouse cursor to that location. We on the other hand bring the cursor to the buttons, links etc before clicking them and our response time to do so varies as well. The pattern in which we hover the cursor is random and hard to imitate for bots. An ai system is trained to look for these cues.
Our browser caches, cookies and other information sent through browser request: Google has its trackers on countless websites in the form of google analytics, google ads etc so, it can create a basic idea about the sites you visit. Bots on the otherhand are made to do certain tasks on certain websites. This can be used to detect them as well.
The model checks for many other factors and create a score of how likely are you to be a bot. If the chances are low, it predicts you to be human. If the chances are high, it proceed to show an image based captcha. | 14 | 18 |
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Eli5: Why is cancer so harmful to the body? | I understand that cancer is uncontrolled reproduction of cells but why is that so harmful? How do extra cells make is so sick? | Tumors not just replicate, they actively siphon off the body’s resources by causing blood vessels to grow into them and provide them with nutrients. These blood vessels are what makes tumors look vaguely like crabs with veins protruding all around as if a lot of limbs, giving cancer its Latin name. With tumors spreading and growing everywhere the body eventually runs out of resources and dies. | 25 | 17 |
ELI5:How is information attached to radio waves? | How is information attached to radio waves? Such as sound/music or text such as commands for computers? | Information is attached to radio waves by altering (modulating) their physical properties (amplitude and frequency). That's why there is FM (frequency modulated) and AM (amplitude modulated) radio.
For example if you want to transmit the message 1101 you could define a "1" as a radio wave with a high amplitude and a "0" as one with a low amplitude. Now you create a radio wave whose amplitude goes high, high, low, high. Obviously you have to tell the receiver of the radio wave that a low amplitude means "0" and a high one means "1". | 36 | 95 |
ELI5: why do I have to wait 30 seconds after I unplug my modem to plug it back in? Once it's off, isn't it just...off? | When resetting a modem, why does the 30 second time limit matter? | Electronics contain capacitors and will maintain a capacitive charge for some length of time. The 30 second window is intended to be enough to let that capacitive charge drain. Not starting discharged can lead to some sequencing problems as the modem powers back up. In a perfect world they'd be designed such that it wouldn't matter, and it usually probably really doesn't.
You can see it one some electronics when you unplug them and the LED slowly fades out rather than going blank entirely. | 26 | 28 |
CMV: My choice for not believing in God is equivalent to my SO's commitment to do so. | I'm agnostic, secular, whatever you could call it. I have no evidence nor reason to believe a God exists, therefore I act as if there is none until proven otherwise. I believe decisions should be made upon rationality and logical arguments. A religion can support your view and give you a start, but your arguments should hold up on their own without religion.
My SO wanted to take me to church for the fifth time, yet she refused to discuss the fallacies in religion or watch some videos of Bill Nye or Richard Dawkins. I could understand she doesn't like to be swept away by me pointing out what is wrong in her view. I was surprised however, that my SO saw her view as superior. Even worse: she thinks my view is inferior.
**Why I think they are both equal:** *(pro statement)*
- All of us are equal. (Quite general so here are some more arguments)
- We both actively chose to believe or not believe, she upon emotionally experiencing God and I upon rationality.
- We both live in a world where most people think a God exists although the group of church-goers is shrinking. Both a devout Christian and an open atheïst attract some weird looks.
- Even when SO sees her believing as superior, I see my view as superior. Seeing both as superior makes our views equal to eachother even though in another direction.
**Arguments from the SO:** *(contra statement)*
- 'You have not experienced God. I live in a world where most people are atheïst and therefore I had to actively make the choice to become Christian. I doubt everyday and have my own questions, but I believe He is good and I trust him. I have therefore experience in not-believing releasing me from having to watch your videos. You don't feel good about religion because you don't have experience with God, which is why you need to come to church with me.'
- 'I believe in a loving God. What I believe is good and positive. Your not-believing contradicts my positive belief and is therefore negative. Positivity is better than negativity.'
- 'I don't need to prove anything, I am who I am'
- 'Then you shouldn't be allowed to take holidays off throughout the year'
I'm not looking for relationship advise, this is CMV. My SO is otherwise usually rational although she hates debating and logical arguments.
I'm looking for a way to understand my SO and I think I won't get it out of her this time. **CMV.**
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | Let us start by assuming that you are both equal partners in the relationship, that you owe it to one another to understand where you both are coming from, and that you should see and try to value the things that are important to one another.
A Dawkins lecture on atheism is *not* equivalent to church. For a Christian, church is an important part of life. Going and participating is a way of sharing time with a community you care about, a way of reminding yourself to live the good life you are capable of, and a way of guided meditation that helps you learn what is good in life. For an atheist, the equivalents would be going to the gym, science, voting, doing community service, Westernized Yoga mindfulness, etc.
If you want to take her to your book club, your research symposium, or your Westernized Yoga class, she should be open to going if these are important to you. If she isn't, she's not participating in your life. But taking her to a lecture on "religion is dumb and stupid" would be like if she asked you to her church's Harry Potter bookburning or its "The following people are all going to hell" lecture. It's a negative event that doesn't add anything of value to your life other than the chance to feel superior to others. It's something a decent atheist stays away from, just like a decent Christian doesn't actually hold any book burnings or comment on which people are damned.
Your *view* isn't inferior to hers. The events you are taking her to in support of your view are inferior to hers. She is showing you earnestness; show her earnestness back. | 56 | 48 |
ELI5: How do we know that unsolved math problems have an answer? | I was watching Good Will Hunting the other night, and this popped into my head. How do people know that unsolved problems have an answer? Furthermore, the professors in the movie seemed to know pretty instantly that the problem had been solved. Is that realistic? Or does it take additional years to prove that the answer was right? Finally, are most of these problems a result of a lack of effort, like how we could technically count all the sand on a beach, or does it take a genius to solve? | For a math problem, there may be both constructive and non-constructive proofs.
A constructive proof proves that there is an answer, **and** the answer is given by the proof.
A non-constructive proof is not as good, perhaps, but it simply proves that there is no answer, or it proves that there is an answer but not what that answer actually is.
For example, Euclid's Theorem has a non-constructive proof that there is no "largest prime number". The problem "What's the largest prime number?" is now proven to have no possible solution. | 52 | 49 |
Will my paper be rejected if I don’t test and meet ALL of the assumptions of the regression that I did? | I applied multiple regression for economic data and I carried out tests and also met some of the assumptions of the regression method that I used. However, I left out some tests because I didn’t meet these tests. Do you think that this would cause problems at the point of submission? | So, you’re saying that the methodology you applied should not be applied, because there are multiple violations of the underlying statistical assumptions? The results of which you are omitting because they invalidate the methodology?
I wouldn’t submit knowingly shit science… | 65 | 19 |
ELI5:How does the witness protection program work? | Specifically, how severe does one's experience have to be to be submitted into the program. Is it voluntary? Do you get totally shut out from all friends and family? | They take the person and their family and find another area in the country to work, change their name, and find them a job under that identity. All contact to their former life is cut.
No person in the program who does this has ever been found. People are only found if they decide to retain some contact with people they knew. | 20 | 21 |
ELI5:Why is the human body not sensitive to radio waves? | Why are humans not able to see,feel or hear radio waves? We are sensitive to the rest of the waves in the EM spectrum. If EM waves are composed of oscillating magnetic and electric fields, why am I not electrocuted by the electric constituent of the Radio waves? | Radio waves have wavelengths of several feet, so humans are virtually transparent to radio waves, like glass is transparent to visible light. If you have a piece of conductive metal the right length (an antenna), the waves WILL interact and make electricity move in it. Because the signal is so weak and humans are not as conductive as metal, we don’t notice any effect.
But if you stand really close to a powerful transmitting antenna, it can heat up your body (microwaves were discovered this way when a technician noticed the chocolate being melted in his pocket). | 31 | 19 |
Subsets and Splits