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3goaxv | why are exo-skeletons not much more commonplace? | As someone who has worked in construction and carpentry, exo-skeletons would have been a *massive* help when having to lift heavy objects and such. These would heavily benefits such highly physical jobs- why can't they be made readily available? They would be just like any other equipment used in the job. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3goaxv/eli5_why_are_exoskeletons_not_much_more/ | {
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"They're expensive, bulky, and they are just coming out with some that are usable in the real world",
"Basically it has to do with mobile power source. If there were batteries capable of powering a light exo power suit they would be a lot more commonplace. \n\nThe [exo suit in the movie \"Aliens\"](_URL_0_) would be extremely useful, but if you have to attach a large internal combustion engine to get a feasible energy density power source you might as well make the thing twice as big and make it a forklift and save yourself the engineering headache..."
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642rug | why do most females "throw like girls"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/642rug/eli5_why_do_most_females_throw_like_girls/ | {
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"It's just from lack of proper instruction. At least in the US, people (boys and girls) who don't play baseball or softball aren't taught proper throwing mechanics, and the \"elbow in front of the hand\" technique is just what your brain thinks needs to happen.\n\nTry to throw with your non-dominant hand and see if you \"throw like a girl\" I bet dollars to donuts you will.",
"\"Throwing like a girl\" is really not knowing how to throw properly, lack of practice, and a lack of muscle memory. Your left arm is evidence of that. The phrase most likely came about because boys have historically been more interested in playing sports while girls were often actively discouraged from playing, leading to the belief that an inexperienced arm is a \"girls arm,\" so to speak. There is no structural difference between a girl's and boy's arm that would make someone throw a ball differently.",
"People in this thread have mentioned that girls who \"throw like girls\" don't have athletic training, which is definitely true and almost certainly the primary factor.\n\nHowever, it would be unfair not to mention that women are physically weaker than men. Studies have suggested that nearly all women are weaker than nearly all men. [Graph.](_URL_0_) I mention this only because OP asked if there was a physical difference. There is, it's just not the biggest factor.",
"Blah blah triggered etc anyway this is actually interesting my sister and I were both pitchers in a softball league, it took her a lot longer to get the hang of it underhanded but once she did she was more accurate then me although my pitches were way faster. When we threw overhand no matter how many times they tried to beat It into her head she always \"threw like a girl\". All the guys got it immediately they threw like a hardball pitcher while all the girls did this weird throw using a shit ton of elbow and the arm would only extend at the last minute causing an extremely weak throw overhand. Personally I think it has to do with how the brain works. Only 1 girl got the hang of it at a decent rate out of the 10 that were on the team. After a few years that weird throw was eventually ironed out of their brains but they all did that weird elbow throw for ages. Science dictates that most girls tend to be better right hemisphere and men better left hemisphere so I would say that has something to do with it. Dudes tend to be really good at replicating actions and things while women seem better at coming up with original ideas and planning for most scenarios.\n\nAt the Olympic stage women are 10% weaker than men which is negligible. This gap become a lot wider in normal everyday life as women tend to be smaller then males. When you take all the feminism and bullshit out of it and look at the data it can be really revealing. "
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1ula6t | how congress is voting for their own pay raises. | Is it a bill? A law? Or do they just sit around and say "We should be making more money, let's have a vote"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ula6t/eli5_how_congress_is_voting_for_their_own_pay/ | {
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"For the past twenty-five years or so, congressmen have gotten automatic cost-of-living adjustments to their pay, so actually passing a bill to give themselves a raise is rare. But yeah, it could be a standalone bill, or tacked on as part of a different bill, like a Treasury Appropriations bill."
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52htvc | why are animals sometimes rejected by their families ? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52htvc/eli5_why_are_animals_sometimes_rejected_by_their/ | {
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"Various reasons but essentially it's survival of the fittest. If a parent knows that their young is weak, or won't likely survive, they'll reject it and often times kill it. \n\n",
"A lot of reasons, big one is resources. Raising young is a big investment of time and energy to feed, clean, and protect them. So if it is clear that the youngster isn't going to make it due to permanent injury or disease, the parents may ignore it so their efforts could them be invested in young that have a much better chance of survival. Also in the case of disease, the parents may dispose of sick baby to prevent the others from falling ill.",
"Survival. Weakness in the wilderness among animals that eat each other surely means death. This law, unfortunately, is even ingrained upon apex predators. ",
"Resources, illness and deformity. I see people misquoting \"survival of the fittest\" which refers to the environmental adaptation and filling niches but they're still *close* to the right track."
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3qtloj | if clouds get too heavy when it rains, how do they manage to hold large pieces of ice (hail) | So this happened where my family lives in Australia _URL_0_
My uncle owns a farm here where his crops have been destroyed by this freak of nature storm. So would like to know how this all happens. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3qtloj/eli5_if_clouds_get_too_heavy_when_it_rains_how_do/ | {
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"Hail is carried upwards by very powerful updrafts that occur within a storm. They're not held up by buoyancy, they're thrown upward by sharp gusts of wind."
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6sh8f6 | how is microfiber cloth so much better than regular cloths? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6sh8f6/eli5_how_is_microfiber_cloth_so_much_better_than/ | {
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"Teri cloth (Normal towels) have many little loops of fiber that soak up water.\n\nMicro fiber has little hairs- with little hairs on them. It's much more surface area for moisture to be sucked in to.\n\nMicro fiber has the added benefit of being less linty than other cloths, which make it more ideal for surfaces prone to scratching, like glass and plastic screens."
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6i4ka0 | why were large denominations of us currency discontinued when it seems more reasonable to use them in present day? | With inflation and such, it seems more reasonable today to use a $1000 bill than it would have 100 years ago. Why were large bills in circulation back then and not today? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6i4ka0/eli5_why_were_large_denominations_of_us_currency/ | {
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"100 years ago we didn't have nearly the same ability to do electronic transactions. Now more and more large transactions are being done electronically. There is less and less need to have any paper money, especially bills larger than what would be normal small expenses. In fact, there is a growing movement to ban bills like the 100 dollar bill as it has little practical use besides being used for tax evasion and drug trafficking. \n\nEdit: Just a thought experiment for you:\n\n* How does your job pay you? Cash, check, or direct deposit?\n\n* Do you ever have all of your money from a pay period in cash?\n\n* Did you purchase your car and/or house in cash? Do you make payments on either in cash?\n\n* When was the last time you bought something with cash that was over 200 dollars? (Combined or individually)\n\nFor me the answers are direct deposit, never, paid through check/auto-debit, and can't remember ever doing that. "
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372lsu | what is the difference between a muscle car and a sports car? | Everything from how do the bodies differ to how they are powerful/fast. Google answers I found were either too vague or had too much jargon.
Edit: thanks for all the replies everyone | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/372lsu/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_a_muscle_car/ | {
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"Muscle car - car that can go really fast in a straight line, but can't handle. A lot of muscle cars are really heavy and have a big engine.\n\nSports car - car that can handle very well, tends to be light. These don't have as much power, but make up for it with less weight, so they can still accelerate pretty quickly, but can also handle. They're also a lot smaller.",
"IMO \n\nMuscle Car: usually a rear wheel drive V8 with straight line speed and lots of Horse Power\n\nSport Car: better and cornering and acceleration, a more total driving experience "
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4ttn7r | why are there still so many electronics devices like printers that give cryptic error codes instead of just a plain english explanation of what's wrong? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ttn7r/eli5_why_are_there_still_so_many_electronics/ | {
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"Two things, the first is complexity, devices with a tiny 16 character display really don't have much of an option to display a full error message and might not have the capability to store that text internally (it's an extremely simple processor), error codes are a simple way to give the user a very condensed description, where they can look it up.\n\nSecond, it's sometimes just the work and effort in displaying the error isn't worth the effort for the quantity of errors the developer wants. A good example of this is the way the C programming language works, there is one variable, errno which contains a single number, there is a large list of predefined errors, and a library can state that error simply by writing one number to one variable. This is extremely simple, ensures that almost anything can issue an error (don't have to worry about writing out to the error object, locks, permissions, etc), and an error handler can simply check this periodically and display the easy to read error code. Sometimes you get numbers because developers don't really track their codes, and just put numbers in, it's enough for them to track it down, and while not really helpful to you, it's likely the real description of the problem wouldn't be helpful to you too."
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3oqlp0 | why is it a "social faux pas" to talk about who you vote for? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3oqlp0/eli5_why_is_it_a_social_faux_pas_to_talk_about/ | {
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"Some of it is that a private ballot is seen as a protection against being forced to vote for a particular candidate. You may have an oppressive boss, spouse, parent, whatever but they never have to know which lever you pulled inside that little curtain. \n\nSome of it is just that politics tends to make a lot of people passionate and if you know something can easily lead to a heated argument then maybe its best not to bring it up at all, particularly with someone you've just met. Or if you're in a group of people and not all of them feel as passionately as you do. ",
"I know that at work, I avoid talking about politics at all - there are too many possible ways to offend or to get into arguments. It's a shame, but people often become very heated and angry when discussing politics with someone who doesn't share their political leanings - it just isn't appropriate in certain circumstances. ",
"It really depends on the context, among friends talking about politics is fine, but its considered rude if you are at a party or among acquaintances/co-workers/people you never met/the girlfriends family, etc. etc, etc. because politics is often a very divisive issue and can bring up a lot of ill feelings especially if you mix in a few drinks. Therefore its best not to talk politics unless everyone in the room is expressly interested in talking about politics. My grandfather once told me not to talk about religion politics or hockey unless you are looking for a fight, obviously I'm Canadian but I think the point stands. "
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2nnhsd | if people having an education is good for the economy, why doesn't the government just make education cheaper/free | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nnhsd/eli5if_people_having_an_education_is_good_for_the/ | {
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"Everything costs something. The concept of \"free\" is invalid, as it costs money to maintain the buildings, utilities, and teachers as well as equipment, etc, etc. The government would have to foot ALL or most of that, which would no doubt require higher taxes, etc.",
"I am a bit biased in this regard. A lot of European countries have \"free\" education (as for paid by taxes), my country included. But this causes lower standards at universities:\n\n- University is paid per student, so many try to \"keep\" the students even if they're not doing so well, and they tend to take as many students as they can, causing overcrowded lectures and classes\n- Many people go to university just to get a degree, not caring for what they are actually studying, so we end up with thousands of people with political science or sociology degree. But they have no interest in those fields, nor are they interested in seeking a job in this area. They just wanted an \"easy degree\".\n- Some go just to get a student ID and thus for student discounts...\n\nThis also causes very silly pressure that everyone needs a degree. So now you need a degree in chemistry if you want to mop floors...\n\nSaying that education is always good for the economy is not really true. GOOD education is beneficial to economy. Low lever \"mass\" education not necessarily.",
"The setup cost is immediate and it takes a long time to see the benefits (longer than the average term of office). ",
"We would like to think that people in government want what is best for the population at large, but it looks, instead, as though most officials act primarily in their own interest.\n\n[Unfortunately, I think George Carlin was largely right](_URL_0_)",
"Tennessee has free community college for every graduating high school senior starting next year.",
"I'm assuming you're talking about college? Everybody going to college *isn't* good for the economy.",
"Nothing is free! Who is going to pay for the salaries of the educators and their pensions? That's right CoolanJay... you are, through higher taxes. That might be good for bigger government, but bad for the individual.",
"Who's paying for the school, teachers, books etc? There is no such thing as free."
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crycu1 | if transistors in computers act to switch off or on the flow of electricity, what mechanism acts to "decide" whether it should be switched? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/crycu1/eli5_if_transistors_in_computers_act_to_switch/ | {
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"Other transistors.\n\nYes, this sounds circular, and it sort of is. At the very \"start\" of the system (I.e. startup) there are some circuits which are not controlled by transistors and are hard coded to do specific startup actions; but from there it's all controlled by some transistors signalling others to switch, which signal others etc. and coming back round to the original ones at some point.",
"Computers (or to be more precise, the microprocessor at their heart) are controlled by programs.\n\nA program is simply a list of numbers and the computer, on each tick of a very fast clock, reads a number then does the instruction defined by that number.\n\nWhen a microprocessor has power switched on (or when it is reset) it loads the first instruction from a hard wired place.\n\nThe first few instructions will be commands to get the microprocessor set up, then to do some self checks before it starts the main operating system (Windows, iOS, Android etc.) that then allows user programs to be loaded and run.",
"If you tie a bunch of transistors together, and have them all control each other, you've basically made a microcontroller or a computer processor.\n\nInputs into the machine (key pressed, network traffic, whatever) are the thing controlling the transistors, which end up modifying other transistors. With clever arrangement those transistors that are activated and those that are not end up being cleverly made to do something useful, which results in some transistors being activated which then control outputs (e.g. the screen, a printer, a speaker, whatever).\n\nIt's like a giant puzzle, with billions of transistors arranged in very clever ways to make simple inputs get acted upon to produce simple outputs. Every game you play, program you run, etc. is just the result of those clever arrangements of transistors switching their output on or off based on their \"control\" deciding pin.\n\nIf you think \"How can that work, if you tell it to switch on, it switches on, otherwise it's off\" then you're right. But with arrangement of the circuit and the voltages on it, you can very simply make a transistor do to opposite (e.g. when you tell it to switch on, it \"shorts\" the output so it actually outputs the opposite of the input). That's a NOT gate, in logic-gate terminology.\n\nThe transistor itself is an AND gate... when input and control are both turned on, the output is on, but otherwise it's off.\n\nAnd with a bit of simple wiring of ANDs and NOTs (or just transistors themselves in a certain pattern), you can make an OR gate (where output turns on if \\*either\\* of two inputs is on).\n\nOnce you have the equivalent of AND, OR and NOT (actually you only really need two), you can make every other type of logic gate (e.g. XOR). And when you have all the logic gates, clever arrangement of them can form a Turing-complete machine, like your computer.\n\nAnd even the base, core language of the machine (machine code, represented to us as assembly language) literally includes AND, OR, NOT and XOR as instructions on the processor itself. So once you are there, every single machine code instruction is just a certain arrangement of logic gates/transistors to do what you ask (e.g. ADD, MUL, etc.).\n\nA transistor is just a single building block. Put together with wiring in certain ways, you can make more complex blocks. Put together in certain ways, those blocks can form logic gates. Put together in certain ways, those gates form everything you need to make a processor.\n\nYou need billions of them. They all need to be arranged in a particular fashion. But basically a simple \"switch\" can make all the computers you see today.\n\nIt's like a giant mechanical machine made of nothing but ball-bearings (electricity) and seesaws of wood (the transistors). Pop the ball bearing into the top, let it clack down and hit the seesaws on the way, and get redirected, etc. If you arrange the obstacles cleverly enough, it can do calculations. Basically the concept behind the Turing Tumble teaching game which some schools use to teach computing."
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29u0e9 | how do companies like java and adobe make money if their downloads are free? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29u0e9/eli5_how_do_companies_like_java_and_adobe_make/ | {
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"Adobe: they charge for products that create media that can be viewed for free.\n\nJava: enterprise support contracts.",
"Because both Java and flash player are only side items. Adobe makes Photoshop and flash animators. The more people with flash player, the more content creators that will buy their animation software. \n\nJava is used on billions of devices, and manufacturers pay Sun for software support. The more people with java compatible PC's, the greater the utility of java to device manufacturers.",
"The above answers are correct. Also both of these programs now install 'add-ons' as part of the package. Things like Google Chrome, mcafee security scan and the ask toolbar that are automatically opted in if you don't uncheck the box during the Adobe or Java install and Adobe and Oracle get fractions of a cent for each install that completes. \n\nSource : am it guy, uninstall this crap all day long. "
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q6mdx | why are left wing socialist parties associated with both workers and intellectuals? | I don't get the connection. At least in europe, leftwing parties such as the german SPD or the swiss SP (and I guess a majority of [european socialists](_URL_0_)) are **traditional** worker parties AND the traditional parties for "intellectual do-gooders".
Why?
Edit: Thanks to all of you for the responses. Maybe I should have stressed more that workers voting for leftwing parties is nowadays some kind of tradition for workers in labor unions. The other part of workers votes traditionalistic, conservative and nationalistic right-wing.
This are quite brute generalizations as I'm well aware. But I didn't mean to ask about the actual voting people, more the general(ized) image we all seem to hold - hence the "associated".
Edit 2 (at 123 comments): To make it more clear: I'm heavily relying on stereotypes. I know that intellectuals can be workers. It's more about the stereotype that leftwing voters are intellectuals and/or workers. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/q6mdx/eli5_why_are_left_wing_socialist_parties/ | {
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"Lets use the standard wild stereotype and say that the left wing party tends towards big government, including things like national healthcare, workers rights, high regulation of corporations, and so on.\n\nNow, this kind of party can (and does) present itself as *functionally* good for the workers. They can very much see the benefit of national healthcare, as they can't necessarily afford their own in a system without it (such as the US). They believe strongly in workers rights, because they're well aware of what their employers would do to rip them off if they could. And similarly, high regulation of corporations works for them, as otherwise the significantly-richer corporation could again stomp all over them.\n\nFor the 'intellectual do-gooders', these same policies (and the others that we might lump in with them) appeal *intellectually* rather than necessarily functionally. Healthcare for all and workers rights both have a strong logical case for existence, in terms of being fair, and in terms of actually being good economic policies for keeping the populace happy and the country in good shape. The same is true of corporate regulation; the alternative, such as the unchecked logging in the Amazon, is demonstrably worrying. To continue stereotyping wildly, though, both of these conclusions rely on a long term logical view; none of the policies can be supported based on short term money savings, because they're more complicated than that and will appear as cost increases, but that means that our stereotypical big business owner doesn't like them and lobbies for the other party.\n\nNow, this is very much a polarised view of things. Of course there are many intellectuals who support relatively conservative parties, and vice-versa, for good reasons. However, I think these examples illustrate the main difference between the 'two' (of course, two isn't really enough) sides of the political coin. A stereotypical free-thinking intellectual may find it intellectually difficult to support the policies of an inherently conservative and anti-change party that appears short sighted to them, and a stereotypical worker may find it functionally foolish to support the policies of a party that will withdraw the services he depends on.\n\n(I'll stress again that this explanation represents a polarised view of things, and of course real politics is much more complicated and nuanced)",
"Rough guesses forthcomming: \n\nSocialism as an idea originated with intellectuals. The kind of upper crust educated people who had the free time to imagine totally different economic and societal systems. Organized labor came later, especially in the United States, where the working class started agitating in the 1870's. At first, clashes between labor and management (or capital, as the intellectuals were calling it) generally focused on immediate quality of life improvements, not revolutionary change. They wanted shorter hours, less dangerous conditions, better pay, and so on. \n\nThere are, and were, some intellectual working class people. They bridged the divide. In the United States, you can see this in the IWW, the International Workers of the World. They provided organization and ideological underpinning to what might otherwise have been isolated disputes about wages and such. This attracted attention from left leaning rich folk, and a marriage of convenience was born. In the US, this culminated in the Roosevelt coalition, politically. \n\ntldr: intellectuals and educated people are more likely to want to transform society with the power of government. They have natural allies in organized labor, who want to transform their workplace. ",
"I think the idea that all intellectuals support socialism is really just a load of crap that socialists push. The have been a lot of brilliant men who support Austrian economics and anarcho-capitalism.\n\n\nEDIT: spelling",
"Easy there, SPD is not a left wing socialist party. That would be \"Die Linke\". SPD is left-middle. And that should also answer your question.",
"Left wing parties, also called progressive parties, are about changing things. This appeals to workers and intellectuals. Workers hope when things change they will do better financially. Intellectuals like change because it allows them to pursue their theoretical goals.\n\nRight-wing parties, also called conservative parties, on the other hand, are about holding up the existing status. This appeals to the rich, religious people, and farmers.",
"The association with the intellectuals and the workers with the left of the political spectrum is fundamentally down to the framing of issues. All political theories and ideas (generally) are developed by intellectuals or those at the top of society. However throughout the last 300 years or so western society has become far more 'liberal' and 'left-wing'. New ideas (as those on the left tend to be) come from the intellectuals because those are really the only ones capable of articulating these new ideas (not so true in the last 50 years, but broadly speaking in historical terms). However left wing politics is generally seen as the betterment of society as a whole, and the vast amount of any given society is made up of the workers. modern society today is still the pyramid structure it was in feudal Europe, just different people at the top. \n\nTo take an extreme example. The communist manifesto was drafted by Marx and Engels. Both very intelligent men, who were members of the intelligentsia. However, theoretically the benefactors of such a society would be the workers (if true communism was every a realisable goal, please don't confuse Marxism with Stalinist Marxist-lenninism that was the ideological blue print for the USSR) and not those at the top.\n\nplenty of intellectuals are also in favour of right wing politics. Many famous scientists and novelists were in favour of eugenics as and supported (and still do) what one might call the right. its just when in school or whatever we learn about these topics we are told about the intellectual involvement. \n\nalso the left wing usually involves the expansion of government. Now who could possibly benefit from an expanded government that would need educated people to work in it. oh yeah, those who are educated (again this works much better in historical terms than it does today because of the expansion of education to the masses - well at least a much larger percentage of people) ",
"1. They care about the workers.\n\n2. Smart people care about other people.",
"Intellectuals typically feel morally guided to help those who need it - the poor workers. Poor workers want some help now and again. It's a match made in heaven."
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409vq6 | why are double negatives grammatically frowned upon, but often occur in situations like "not uncommon" without refute? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/409vq6/eli5_why_are_double_negatives_grammatically/ | {
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"\"not uncommon\" is not the same as \"common\". \"Common\" means it happens very often, \"uncommon\" means it's rare or even unheard of, \"not uncommon\" means it does happen somewhat often, but less than average. \n \nI'll use an analogy: \n \nSeeing a 5ft 10in male: common \nSeeing a 7ft male: uncommon \nSeeing a 6ft 3in male: not uncommon",
"That particular type of figure of speech is called [litotes](_URL_0_), for the record.\n\nDouble negatives are usually only really bad when using them obfuscates the intended meaning of the sentence. For instance in English the phrase \"I don't know nothing\" is almost always understood to mean \"I know nothing\" even though if taken literally it states the opposite.\n\nWhen used for stylistic effect, they're perfectly fine. English bends the rules for the sake of rhetoric all the time. \"Not uncommon\" has different connotations from \"common.\"",
"Double negatives should be avoided when they cause ambiguity. If I say, \"I don't have none\", it is unclear what I am saying, which \"I have none\" and \"I don't have any\" are perfectly clear. This is particular true with words that have strict binary meanings, as there is no reason for that kind of tortured logic.\n\nFor words that do not have strict binary meanings, negating its opposite can be used to express a middle ground, reservation, or a form of understatement. For example, there is isn't just attractive and unattractive, there is an entire subjective spectrum. If I say someone is not unattractive, that might mean I find them to be ordinary looking. Or many I do find them attractive, but I don't want to commit to that fact, so I simple say they are not unattractive. Or maybe it is clear I find that person attractive, and I am understating it for emphasis."
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29ypwc | does the human eye work with a continuous flow of information to create the image we see, or is there some sort of "frame rate"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29ypwc/eli5_does_the_human_eye_work_with_a_continuous/ | {
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"The human eye starts noticing darkness after [16 milliseconds.](_URL_0_), but overall, the fastest humans have been tested at to notice an image is [220 fps](_URL_1_).",
"If you are just talking about the eye, it's somewhere in between.\n\nWhen a rod or cone, the light sensitive cells in your eye, is stimulated with light, through a chemical reaction it sends a signal through nerves to your brain. The rod or cone then takes some time to recover before being able to be stimulated again. This sets a rate in which individual cells can transmit signals.\n\nYour eye has roughly 100 million rod cells and ~7 million cone cells so with constant light, some will be firing and some will be recovering. For the brain, it looks like a constant flow of discrete packets of data much like a flow of individual sand particles falling down an hourglass.\n\nNow for frame rate, it's really how your brain interprets the signals from your eye. Sure, your brain receives all the data from your eye but it only selectively processes changes in data. If you were driving a car, you wouldn't want your brain to constantly tell you \"THERE'S A BLUE SKY ABOVE, THERE'S A BLUE SKY ABOVE\" but rather if there was a car appearing on the side of your vision that you need to care about. Large changes such as a camera flash or swinging your head back and forth between sights can overwhelm your brain and cause you to be disoriented. \n\nBut then there's one huge change in our vision that occurs every few seconds that causes everything to be black: blinking. Luckily, our brain is quite smart and ignores the lack of signals from our eyes when we blink so we never notice our vision getting obscured by our eyelids. Likewise, when you turn your head, it never seems like the quick panning blur effect in movies because your brain knows that your complete vision will be shifting. It ignores a lot of the visual data when your head is moving and it prepares to show you new information once your head has stopped. If there is any disconnect between the motion you feel and the motion you see, your brain can get confused and this is the main cause of motion sickness.\n\nIn terms of how fast we can detect small visual changes, our brains need to process them very quickly in order to respond. People often reference the USAF test that determines how quickly fighter pilots can respond to changes in vision. The pilots are placed in a dark room and then an image of an aircraft is flickered for a fraction of a second. Fighter pilots can identify the aircraft when the image is flickered at 1/220 of a second ([Source](_URL_0_)). I could not find a credible study to back this up however.\n\nThis doesn't mean that fighter pilots can see at 220 frames per second, making movies that run at 24 frames per second seem like slide shows. It just means that they can detect a very quick changes in their vision which is very necessary when they are flying so fast in their aircraft.\n\nEDIT: Expanded a bit more on the fighter pilot information",
"To be honest, you really can't compare the two. Doing so would be like comparing the maximum flying speed of a 747 to my ham sandwich... Computer monitors and the human eyes really aren't even in the same category.",
"You might find the [Phi Phenomenon](_URL_0_) and Persistence of Vision interesting.",
"As it is well known, the peripheral vision is very good at detecting the motion. Both the eyes have a slightly different perspective which is combined by the brain which is known as stereoscopic vision. The actual lag between the \"moment\" and when you see is 1/10 of a second. So your brain takes that much amount of time to ingest the data collected from the 2D retina and form an image. Evolutionary mechanisms thus has led the brain to foresee the future by 1/10 of a second. The processing is continuous though. The sharpest vision occurs at the Macular region of retina which is very small.",
"As u/PrionBacon described, the information sent to your brain from your eyes is many discreet packets of information, but all the processing and visualizations of that data takes place in your brain, and it gets weird. There is about a 1/10th of a second lag from the time a light photon hits your eye until your brains processes what you've seen. Imagine trying to escape an animal trying to eat you, or even catch a ball with a 1/10th second delay in your vision. The ball will probably smash into your face and you'll be eaten. So the brains work around is to predict will objects will be based off of past experiences and reacting to that. What we perceive as the present is a few blurry 1/5ths of a second that reach into the future and lag in the past. It isn't a steady stream of information like a movie. This phenomena is how several optical illusions work. \n\n_URL_0_",
"TLDR; Nobody can explain how the eye works simply enough for ELI5. Go to /r/askscience.",
"Just watch this video.\nWhat Is The Resolution Of The Eye?\n_URL_0_",
"I don't see someone posting this link, not sure if it's against the rules but [vsauce](_URL_1_) had made video kind of on this topic, [also another video](_URL_0_)",
"The brain is a very complex organ and we still have a lot to learn about it. But we know that the brain can adjust how your \"frame rate\" is perceived. \n\nHere's a fun example, get close to a mirror and look from pupil to pupil, Do it now! Did you notice that you don't see your eyes move? \n\nNow have a friend do it, or use a camera to record yourself. You see that their/your eyes actually do move. When you move your eyes, your brain suppresses the visual information for a split second to avoid seeing a blurred image. \n\nThis is called a saccade, it ties the ends of the scenes together so your vision is not disrupted in your perception.\n\nUnder times of intense emotion, such as fear or having an epiphany, people describe seeing things and remembering things in a higher clarity. It's sometimes described as seeing things in slow motion. The mechanics is still being looked into, but in cognitive psychology, the occurrence of the phenomenon is undisputed.",
"There's no literal framerate limit to the eye, the speed is determined by how fast you brain can process what we can see, and the amount of light hitting the eyes.\n\nThe beys way to describe it is a buildup of photons, constantly moving and changing in differing amounts and areas, in a noise like effect. It happens so fast that you don't notice the effect in most cases, but you can notice this \"noise\" easily in the dark, when there are less photons hitting your photoreceptors. It looks similar to film grain, or sensor noise.\n\nWe can notice a slow FPS because the change of frames are often so sudden (rather than gradual ie. real life) but we can be tricked into detecting it as movement at a certain threshold. People claim this is at around 15fps or more, or even 24. We can easily see a lot more than that though, with differences between 60fps and 120fps still being obvious.",
"Doesn't the universe have a \"frame rate\" ?",
"A similar question was asked about a universal frame rate. I don't have the link right now. The answer was the speed of light. You can't see things happen faster than light can travel.",
"I think perhaps the best way to think of it is comparing pixels to photoreceptors.\n\nIn a digital image, you have a grid of pixels, and different cameras have different ways of taking in those pixels, but it usually amounts to a mostly-concurrent snapshot at a particular time.\n\nIn the eye, you can think of the pixels being distributed in what's called a Poisson-disc distribution (there's a nice visualization [here](_URL_0_), but you can think of it as \"random, but pretty evenly distributed\"). So this just gives us a different arrangement of pixels, but you can kind of think of them as pixels just the same.\n\nNow, in a camera, the pixels are being read in at pretty much the same time (a snapshot), but in the eye, each \"pixel\" can read at any time it's ready and gets enough light to tell its neurons that it has something. Each individual \"pixel\" has a certain rate at which it can do this, but it only goes at that rate if there's so much light that it's always firing as soon as it's ready (i.e. you're staring into a lightbulb). Otherwise, it'll fire less often, because it may take a little longer for it to get enough light to fire.\n\nSo overall, it's more like a continuous flow, in that each overall image is not what was actually there at that time, but instead a compilation of pixels from the last few milliseconds. But it is a bit like a frame rate in that each pixel does update at a particular time with the light that it's seeing then, and then won't update for another few milliseconds (ignoring what happens during that time).\n\nEdit: of course there's a whole lot more complexity than that, particularly in what happens in the neurons after the photoreceptors fire-- tons of processing that happens all along the way to and within the brain, which others here have explained better than I could.",
"_URL_0_\n\nQuote from the article: \"our brain records its perceptions in discrete “snapshots”, like the frames of a film reel.\"",
"This is a bit of a derail but I've done some testing with a function generator and LED. I've tried starting from low frequency and increasing it, and starting from high frequency and decreasing it. I found my capacity for seeing the blinking was different depending on whether I used my central or peripheral vision. My central vision capped out at around 60 fps, peripheral was a bit higher, around 65 or so.",
"I read somewhere, that your brain processes information, at a rate of 6 frames per second. Anything less than that, and it would only be absorbed subconsciously. This is where subliminal advertising/messaging was tried/banned in the 20th century. \n\nThis does not directly relate to the eye; I just thought it was an interesting related story.",
"Each receptor cell fires at its own rate independently. ",
"neuroscientist here.\n\nmove your hand back and forth in your field of vision, gradually increasing the speed. at some point the motion will stop being continuous/fluid and start being more \"frame\"-like. That's your effective \"frame rate\" for vision.\n\nmechanistically, it's a lot more complicated than that, but that's the simplest answer.",
"B-But I have to say the human eye can only see 30fps to justify my purchase of an Xbox One! A-And mention how m-movies use 24fps, even though movies and video games are w-way different!",
"Retinal neuroscientist here. It all comes down to contrast detection. Sure, the rod or cone recovery rate will influence light responsiveness of the retina, but ultimately the detection of an object against a background or even motion comes down to processing of light-driven signals in the inner retina. So\nto think of vision as a camera is a bit too simplified. Your brain compiles the information received through the optic nerve in a way that \"frame rate\" as we know it is irrelevant, i.e. The blinking example . But our ability to detect changes in contrast and intensity is far more precise than the regeneration speed of rods and cones.",
"The [Flicker Fusion Rate](_URL_0_) of the average human is around 16 hertz, or 16 frames per second. That is the frequency at which a blinking light will look steady to a person. \n\nFor instance, Movies are shown at 24 fps to create the illusion of fluid movement; because the individual frames are on screen too briefly for us to notice them change. If the frame rate falls below 16 then we will be able to notice the individual frames as they change and it will look choppy.\n\nTL;DR: Humans have a \"frame rate\" of about 16 Hz (frames per second)."
]
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"http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm"
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"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buSaywCF6E8"
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3iiefp | if a new york city taxi medallion can cost over $700,000, how do people become taxi drivers in nyc? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3iiefp/eli5_if_a_new_york_city_taxi_medallion_can_cost/ | {
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"If a New York City home costs over $700,000, how are working-class people not all homeless in NYC? Similar answer.\n\n1. They can get a loan and pay for it over time.\n2. They can lease it from the person who owns it.",
"Frequently the new entrants lease the medallion. There are [companies](_URL_0_) whose entire business is leasing and making loans secured by taxi medallions to drivers. ",
"By renting. Buying a medallion is like buying your own business instead of working at someone elses. There's an up front cost, but you get to keep more of the profits.",
"They get a loan. It's remarkably easy, because the value is in the medallion, and it is 100% repossessable, and has very little chance of decreasing in value. It's the closest thing to a risk-free loan any bank will ever make."
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cb7bb2 | how do fish swallow other fish whole and not get cut up from the inside by their sharp fins? | I saw a video of a grouper swallowing a shark and it made me question why the shark wouldn’t just rip its way out. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cb7bb2/eli5_how_do_fish_swallow_other_fish_whole_and_not/ | {
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"The inside of the stomach is very compacted and there's no flow of oxygenated water into it. As a result, the shark has little to no room to move to try to bite its way out and is dying of hypoxia. Meanwhile, the walls of the stomach are thick and lined with mucus that protect it against sharp fins.",
"Evolution over millions of years (hundreds of millions in the case of fish - sharks have been on the planet longer than trees).\n\nIf fish that ate other fish had their stomachs lacerated and died, then they did not move on to breed and birth the next generation. Fish that had stomachs that could hold up to daily eating of existing prey fish with defensive mechanisms ended up living and spawning the next generation of predator fish.\n\nAs much as this drives evolution in the predator, it also drives evolution in the prey - prey fish with successful defensive mechanisms go on to spawn the next generation of prey fish with even more successful defensive mechanisms.\n\n\nEvolution is a process. But it's neverending either - everything is constantly under the pressure of survival and adaptation. The present is nothing more than a snapshot from the movie that is showing the change from the past to the future."
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3ij9yl | if many republicans are anti-abortion, how come they're also against contraceptives? seems counter-intuitive. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ij9yl/eli5if_many_republicans_are_antiabortion_how_come/ | {
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"Both abortion and contraceptives interfere with the precious gift of human life. Add your preferred dose of religious fervour, and that's basically what it boils down to.",
"[Republicans are not against contraceptives.](_URL_0_) The only people who think otherwise are people who believe everything they read on /r/Politics. ",
"Many conservatives believe that some forms of birth control are abortive. Basically because they think they result in the expulsion of a fertilized egg, and that that is a human life. Some conservatives simply view contraceptives as a way to have selfish sex with anyone you want, or whatever."
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||
5pjkig | how did insects survive the ice age? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5pjkig/eli5_how_did_insects_survive_the_ice_age/ | {
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"The ice did not cover the whole planet. There were large regions of decent weather closer to the equator. Insects lived there in the normal manner.",
"The ice ages (plural!) weren't a several hundrey thousand years winter. Seasons did exist and they weren't any shorter or longer than the seasons we know now. The only difference is they were colder on average, which is why glacier ice shields could stay at their maximum reach longer and eventually stayed there permanently. Insects in the northern hemisphere very likely had their normal life cycle during the summer but fell into hibernation during the winter."
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9htp30 | hosting a website and domains | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9htp30/eli5_hosting_a_website_and_domains/ | {
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"I've used go daddy before and I haven't had a problem. They actually offer a $12/year deal with Linux hosting and a free domain. One big problem with the free domain from go daddy is that by default it exposes your registration information(name, address, etc.) unless you pay more. You can use 2 domains to connect to one website but one of the domains would have to be a redirect. ",
"Yes, you can point both domains to your hosting service. \n\nAs to which hosting website, thats gonna depend a lot on what you need. I am assuming here that you don't need any cloud service stuff (i.e. no amazon web services or microsoft azure). Ok, do you need a website builder app like GoDaddy and whats that one Keanu Reeves schills for? Squarespace. Is it a retail website? there are hosters who provide turnkey shops including shopping cart support, order resolution and fulfillment, shipping management, payment facilities etc. Just gonna upload some HTML pages? (what is this, 1995 here?)\n\nIf you don't need anything fancy I'd suggest just going with the cheapest (aka free) webhost you can find. e.g. 000webhost is free and they have a site builder. You can always scale up your hosting as your website picks up traffic. "
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4ytg0d | why is it easier to talk to complete strangers about your problems than to people who are close to you? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ytg0d/eli5_why_is_it_easier_to_talk_to_complete/ | {
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"We fear the judgment of people we regard as being close to us. We want to appear strong, capable, and well-adjusted in their eyes, because what they think of us has immediate impact on our social standing. With a stranger, many people feel much more of a disconnect, and are more open because they see less possibility for any negative consequences as a result of being open."
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2rm9t1 | why is the usa so right wing compared to the countries it should seemingly be similar to, like canada and those in western europe? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2rm9t1/eli5_why_is_the_usa_so_right_wing_compared_to_the/ | {
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"One reason is because of the Puritan settlers that moved to America. Their tenets align fairly well with what became American Conservatism. \n\nA. Godly people were sober, hardworking, and responsible. English society had been corrupted by foreign influences\nand by disorder and needed to be purified.\nB. Catholicism had undermined the relationship between God and the individual\nC. Election & predestination – God chooses who is saved and who is damned. No one can earn salvation through works.\nYet the saints are responsible for their actions.\nD. The congregation of saints chooses its members, hires and fires its ministers, and recognizes no other religious\nauthority.\nE. Worship should be plain, lack mystery, and be focused on God, No stained glass, instrumental music, or art.\nF. Much value of education\nG. Intolerance – error must be opposed and driven out \n\n_URL_0_",
"An excellent question for /r/AskHistorians, by the way."
]
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3u9yc1 | why can't we make portable ram-devices? | What prevents us from having a special USB-like stick with some extra RAM to access when needed?
I suppose it would exist if it were possible. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3u9yc1/eli5_why_cant_we_make_portable_ramdevices/ | {
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"For RAM to be useful, it has to be fast - if it's not fast, it'll just slow the computer down.\n\nUSB - even USB 3 - just isn't fast enough for that sort of application.",
"Generally speaking the thing that differentiates \"RAM\" from other memory in a computer is the ability of the computer read and write to it very quickly. A USB-port is too slow for this purpose.",
"RAM is connected to the CPU via a high speed bus on the motherboard. \"Virtual memory\" is already thing, and it doesn't compare to actually having more RAM.",
"Windows Vista and up have [Readyboost](_URL_0_) which allows you to use a USB drive as virtual ram if it is compatible. As others have said, the speed is not as good as true ram but in certain instances it may add some benefit.\n\n"
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"http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-performance/can-i-use-my-usb-flash-drive-as-ram/cb099335-6926-4463-b856-787a391e1e1e?auth=1"
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1twy5j | what is happening at a physical level when someone feels "awkward"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1twy5j/eli5_what_is_happening_at_a_physical_level_when/ | {
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"Uncertainty between fight or flight. "
]
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e6n37f | how do prices keep rising? will one day a bottle or water cost $1,000? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e6n37f/eli5_how_do_prices_keep_rising_will_one_day_a/ | {
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"text": [
"Prices measured in dollars keep rising, but it's not because a bottle of water gets more expensive, it's because a dollar gets cheaper. As more dollars get printed, each individual dollar is worth less. So yes, one day a bottle of water will be $1000, but by then $1000 will a tiny amount of money.",
"Prices keep rising because the government keeps printing money. Our currency and total worth off all money printed is to remain the same, so printing a dollar does not make another dollar, but decreases the value of all dollars by a certain sum. Prices aren't truly rising for most things, the value of our currency is just decreasing, the term is inflation. I mean someday a bottle of water could cost $1,000 but at the same time you'll be making enough money in your salary (employers raise salaries to cope with inflation) that it would be no different to you as a 25 cent bottle of water is now."
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2qipll | why are computer science-related careers so hard to get into when there is such a high demand? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2qipll/eli5_why_are_computer_sciencerelated_careers_so/ | {
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"It is an open field and easy to get into. Problem might be your specific location, any requirements that you have with a job, or perhaps any requirements you perchance lack.\n\nDon't want to insult you, but IT guys are in high demand (that much I know to be true) so if you have trouble finding a job introspection might be needed.",
"Try looking for jobs in other areas. Just because they are in high demand doesn't mean they are in high demand in your city ",
"Well my guess is you haven't done an internship?"
]
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69bksr | why does soaking your muscles in warm water help soothe the ache? | Always played sports and have always wondered this?! Just curious:) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/69bksr/eli5_why_does_soaking_your_muscles_in_warm_water/ | {
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"dh5cw4e"
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"text": [
"When muscles are achy or sore, this is generally caused by microscopic tears in your muscle fibers due to intense usage. Repairing of these tears is what increases muscle strength. It can also be caused when your immune system reacts to an illness, releasing a chemical into the blood vessels which has a side-effect of making you feel sore. \nYou feel much better when you soak muscles in warm water because the heat increases blood flow in your body; when blood flow increases, more blood comes to the achy parts of your muscles, delivering oxygen and nutrients to repair these micro tears or to clear immune system chemicals. Thus, you start to feel better when you soak in warm water! Running has made me feel the same thing; I had sore muscles for an entire week after running my first half marathon! "
]
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cyjygk | why do cigarette packs have disturbing imagery but alcohol bottles don't? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cyjygk/eli5_why_do_cigarette_packs_have_disturbing/ | {
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"Bc cigarette usage is almost certain to be an everyday thing, thus ensuring you will end up with those diseases whereas the majority of drinkers don't do it every day, and illnesses or death are not a guarantee.",
"Various reasons.\n\n1. At its simplest, politicians decided to mandate this on cigarette companies, and not alcohol companies.\n\n2. According to the CDC, alcohol causes about [88,000 deaths a year](_URL_1_) while cigarette smoking [causes 480,000 deaths per year](_URL_0_).\n\n3. While most studies agree the correct amount of alcohol to drink is \"none\", there are definitely countless studies that also cite upsides in drinking in moderation. Whereas there are zero health upsides to cigarette smoke.\n\n4. Alcohol has been a large part of human society since the dawn of agriculture and in the US, far more ingrained in culture than smoking. Which factors into #1.\n\n\nEdit: formatting",
"Waaay more people smoke than drink. (I'm talking frequently, so smokers vs alcoholics) \n\nCigarettes are cheaper. Teenagers are more likely to smoke than to get wasted. \n\nSmoking leads to way more deaths than alcohol, simply because, again, there are way more smokers than alcoholics.",
"TL;DR: Because cigarettes are many times more addictive than Alcohol. Also, since most people dilute alcohol while consuming it, it ends up being a lot less harmful.\n\nAlso, the image of a Lung destroyed by Smoking is far more gruesome than a Liver destroyed by Alcohol.\n\nImagine you are a five year old kid addicted to Lemon Iced Teas. However, one day, someone comes along and rolls up tea leaves and lemon leaves in a piece of paper puts a foam filter at the end of that roll, and tells you that you will get an even better kick if you smoked the Lemon Tea leaves instead of diluting it with water and ice. You try it, and now you can't even think of going back to your Iced tea.\n\nWhat changed, Tea contains a mild Poison called Tanine. When ingested in a diluted form through your food pipe, it goes to your stomach where your digestive system processes it and then releases some chemicals to counteract Poison, thereby waking you up. When you start smoking it, it goes directly to your lungs with a lot of CO^(2) and Tanine instead of Oxygen. This Lethal combination of Carbon Dioxide and Tanine sends your body into a shock, and it over compensates by releasing an even higher amount of antibodies to counteract Tanine, thus increasing your alertness (wake up mode) by 100 times more than your Iced tea used to do.\n\nNow, the Tanine woke you up, but what about the insane amount of CO^(2) you consumed? Your mind is alert now, but you deprived your body of Oxygen, so it tells you to breathe in more air, by making you cough profusely. Now, our social peers step in to tell you that the coughing only happens to beginners and weak kids. So, we learn to subdue the coughing reflex while smoking. \n\nReplace Tanine with Nicotine, and you will realize how people get addicted to Tobacco.\n\nAlcohol on the other hand (and in my uneducated opinion) is as harmful and addictive as Sugar or Fat. The main difference is that most people consume alcohol in a diluted manner, and rarely over-consume it to get into an inebriated state. Alcoholism is more similar to Diabetes and Obesity, with an added side effect of inebriated behaviour.",
"The simple answer is that cigarettes are on average much worse for our health.\n\nCigarettes are very addictive, have well documented harmful effects on the human body (with few benefits), and most importantly can cause significant effects on those nearby through secondhand smoke.\n\nAlcohol on the other hand is less harmful on its own - larger amounts of people enjoy it sensibly and recreationally, and do so in a way that doesn't typically cause long term harm to themselves, or negative consequences to those around them. A drink of wine with a meal, a very poor two in an evening, or even getting a bit drink on a night out is ultimately not a huge issue.\nWhen alcohol does start causing an issue is almost entirely when the people consuming it so it irresponsibly. Those people will admittedly often cause more of as public scene than someone standing with a cigarette, but they are the minority of alcohol drinkers.\nAlcohol can obviously cause big problems such as alcoholism, and had damaged many families and lives, but not so single mindedly as cigarettes, and often alcohol is not the problem, but the result of other issues underneath."
]
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"https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm",
"https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm"
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mrlkt | how squeaky toys work? | THAT SOUND.... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/mrlkt/eli5_how_squeaky_toys_work/ | {
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"theres an insert with a small plastic reed in it. when the air blows through the insert, the reed vibrates and makes a squeak.",
"theres an insert with a small plastic reed in it. when the air blows through the insert, the reed vibrates and makes a squeak."
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5k9hyx | why is there a standard arrangement of the numbers on a game die? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5k9hyx/eli5_why_is_there_a_standard_arrangement_of_the/ | {
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"Some arrangements of numbers keep the extremes from clumping up on one side of the die, which if the die is unbalanced, would mean significantly higher or lower averages if rolled a large number of times. Though with dicemaking techniques available today, most dice are going to be mostly fair for most practical purposes regardless of pip arrangements, so it's nowadays mostly due to tradition and symmetry/aesthetic.",
"On a cubic die, when the sum of opposite sides is seven, 1,2, and 3 share a corner, which looks nice. Changing the arrangement won't affect probabilities.",
"The pips (or dots) on a die are made so that one side and it's opposite side total 7.\n\nThe 1 is opposite the 6, the 2 opposite the 5, and the 3 opposite the 4.\n\nDue to the removal of some of the die to create the pips, placing the specific numbers to specific sides of the die creates the most balance to the entire die thus ensuring the greatest possibility of randomness.",
"_URL_0_\n\nStarting at 5:27, mathematician (and comedian) Matt Parker talks about this property of dice in great detail. He goes through the different reasons of what makes dice fair: each pair of opposite sides all adding to the same number, or all vertices having their adjacent faces adding to the same number, etc.\n\nHe takes out numerous 6-sided dice, 20-sided dice, and 120-sided dice and gives an over-the-top mathematical critique of each of them."
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3x7jge | why must my camera adjust to a single brightness setting in the picture, while my eyes can perceive all the vibrant colours and shades in view at the same time? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3x7jge/eli5_why_must_my_camera_adjust_to_a_single/ | {
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"Your eyes need to adjust as well... when you are perceiving all of those colours and shades they have already adjusted. (Walk from a dark room into sunlight, or vice-versa... it takes us longer for our eyes to adjust than it does for most cameras.)\n\nWe also do an astounding amount of 'vision' in the brain. Our eyes need to be good edge-detectors, so when it is too bright our pupils contract, our eyelids squint, and our brains start turning down the brightness until features around us can once again be resolved.\n\nPointing a camera at something new makes it start adapting at that moment... you, on the other hand, have been watching the scene long enough to decide to take a picture of it, which also means you've been watching long enough for your eyes to adapt.",
"Your brain does an enormous amount of processing in the background and from memory (you don't need to see many things you've seen in the past for your brain to remember that they are vibrantly colored and just insert the memory into your vision). Optical illusions expose some kinds of processing (many of them work because the brain makes *lots* of assumptions).",
"It's worth noting that a lot of what you \"see\" is filled in. Your eyes, just like the camera, can't perceive good detail in both a very bright area and a very dark area at the same time. But your brain keeps you from realizing this. \n\nYour brain is never actually showing you the current raw input from your eyes. Ever. It is showing you a 3D reconstruction. In parts of the visual field where you don't actually have good color vision, colors are filled in based on recent memory. In your blind spots, your brain just fills in what it knows is there (based on what the eyes saw when they most recently did have coverage of that area). When there's really bright and also really dark areas, your brain will to some extent fill in the areas that you can't currently perceive."
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8atij7 | why do people refer to their "hearts" when talking about emotions? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8atij7/eli5_why_do_people_refer_to_their_hearts_when/ | {
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"Even ancient people knew the blood and the heart were important, and the two were related somehow. Since loosing your blood, or having your heart stops, means you are dead, they thought that the heart was the location of the human essence. For awhile they thought that the heart was also the center of human intellect, but they determined that a blow to the head caused people's thoughts to be confused, and a hard enough blow will remote someone's wits entirely. Given this they developed the thought that the head was the set of intellect, but the heart was where your emotions came from."
]
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1yxeio | if dogs can detect cancer by scent, why aren't there dog-cancer-detection centers everywhere? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1yxeio/eli5_if_dogs_can_detect_cancer_by_scent_why_arent/ | {
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"Not FDA approved. Not insurance reimbursable. It's lame. It's very effective for lung cancer especially and should be more widely utilized.",
"One thing that people don't realize, till they have to face it themselves, is that there is no monolithic \"cancer.\" Each cancer has it's own prognosis, it's own mechanism, it's own manifestation, it's own protocol, and it's own causes. All because one thing might/does work for one type of cancer, doesn't mean it'll work for other types of cancer. There's eleven different type of lymphoma, thirty different types of sarcoma, twenty one different types of carcinoma and more. And each type may have a subtype. Some of these are so rare that it'll be next to impossible to get enough samples to use to train an animal is sniff them out, **IF** they can be sniffed out.\n\nThe people that do go to get cancer screenings, are usually people in high risk groups and with hereditary predisposition. Usually the screening are for the type of cancer that they might develop depending on their environment or genetics. Meaning, if you work around a lot of benzine, you will/should get screened for blood cancers. The thing is, most people don't actually go to get screened because it's not worth the time, fear, stress and panic. The only active screening that people do is the mammogram (which studies are showing this should be changed), and a prostate exam. Usually you just get one or the other. While cancer is a horrible disease, you are unlikely to get it. For example, last year there were an estimated 1.6 million new cases of cancer in the US. The population of the US is about 314 million. That equals to less .5% of the population.\n\nThe other thing about cancer, is that it's what I like to call an ambush disease. You never know if you have it, till something manifests itself in such a way that causes concern that it could be cancer. The signs and symptoms of many cancers are common signs and symptoms of other illnesses or other health related problems. For example, you are tired all the time, when you brush your teeth your gums bleed, new freckles are showing up on your body, but no fever or cough. What does that tell you? Well, tired all the time could be any number of things. Your gums bleeding can be from your dental hygiene not being as good as it should be or you aren't doing a good of a job as you think you are, and the freckles? Well, you have been in the sun for a bit playing volleyball with your friends, but you always wore sun screen. Would you go to the doctor for any of those symptoms? If you did, would they do the right blood test, if they choose to do a blood test at all? All of those symptoms are symptoms of leukemia. I know this because I had these signs when I was diagnosed with AML in 2010.\n\nBasically, with cancer you are lucky. Even if you take care to minimize your risk of getting cancer, you are still at risk. You could live your life getting screened every 6 months and pace around the room pulling your hair out wondering when the doctor calls you, which type of lucky you'll be: lucky to get cancer, or lucky to not get cancer. Lucky to get it because of the long odds against you at certain stages in your life; lucky because you are being treated by the knowledge gleaned from those before you, that suffered for you and others so you can have a chance to live; lucky to actually see who your real friends are, who is a member of your real family; lucky to get a whole new perspective on life."
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5b2pre | how do mathematicians prove theorems? | I was speaking with my math teacher the other day, and I asked her if mathematicians prove theorems by using examples. She said that they couldn't because there are an infinite amount of examples, so you can't test them all. So how have mathematicians proven theorems true? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5b2pre/eli5_how_do_mathematicians_prove_theorems/ | {
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"There are several different ways of proving a theorem. One of them, that is one of the easiest to explain (I feel) is the so-called \"proof by contradiction\".\n\nIt works as follows: You take the opposite of the theorem you want to prove, and prove that it cannot be true. It is called prove by contradiction because you show that the opposite of the theorem leads to a contradiction. For example, to prove that the square root of two is an irrational number, you assume that it is a rational number, and that then leads to a contradiction.",
"Let's prove that any even number plus one is an odd number:\n\nAn even number is a number you can divide into two equal parts, each of which is a whole number. \n\nA number is odd if it's not even. \n\nIf you add one to an even number, you have to add it to one of the parts, and you clearly can't add it to both parts without splitting it. So now one of the parts is bigger than the other one, and so they clearly can't be equal. So this number can't be even, because there is no way to divide it into two even parts. \n\nAnd there's the proof, the simplest infinite example I could think of. But it demonstrates the basic idea, you don't have to do a separate proof for each example as long as you give instructions that work on every example you *could* choose. There are an infinite number of even numbers, and I was able to prove something for all of them because I only used steps that are valid no matter which even number was chosen. "
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1kwc66 | why can airlines get away with delayed flights so often? | It seems that my flight is delayed at least half the time I take an airplane, but I can think of no other business that could survive with this track record. If someone you hired was an hour late every other time you needed them, they would be fired! Is it because there are only a few airline companies, or that air travel is difficult and complex, or some other factor? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kwc66/why_can_airlines_get_away_with_delayed_flights_so/ | {
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"text": [
"Well certainly air travel is hard, but ask yourself this: Have you stopped flying because it's bothersome?",
" > I can think of no other business that could survive with this track record.\n\nCable installation.\n\n\"Someone will be at your house between 8am and 1pm\" < shows up at 5pm > ",
"what do u mean \"get away\"\n\nyou as a customer have every right to not give money to that airline if they have a bad on-time record. \n\nevery flight delayed or cancelled, airlines lose income money. it's not all profits to them, late or not.",
"If it were easy and cheap for an airline to always be on time, they would be. However, some delays are basically inevitable (weather) and others would be expensive to prevent.\n\nFor example, sometimes flights are delayed because the airplane was late arriving where the next flight leaves from. The airlines could have extra airplanes and crews sitting around everywhere just in case a flight is late arriving -- but that would be expensive. Would you pay 50% more for tickets just to reduce the chances that the flight would be late? Unlikely."
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11v8iq | in football, when players have the ball, why do they try to muscle through the middle of the pack instead of going around? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11v8iq/eli5_in_football_when_players_have_the_ball_why/ | {
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"text": [
"Because the field is 55yards wide. Why run potentially over 50 yards to gain two or three forward yards instead of allowing your blockers to open a hole and get three yards?",
"Also, in rushing plays like you are describing, the role of the offensive line is to \"make a hole\". The play is executed in less than a second, so if the defensive line thwarts this, then the ball carrier slams into a meat wall like a dufus. He's already committed to the route so there are very few backs that can revise successfully if they are cut off.",
"If the strategy goes well, their team mates on the offensive line will have made them a hole in a very specific place. That is the hole that the ball carrier is trying to run through.\n\nAlso, this kind of play is often run when only a few yards are needed. It isn't expected that the ball carrier is going to make a break for 50 yards or more, the team really just needs him to pick up maybe 5 or 7 yards.\n\nLastly, going around takes time...and that gives the opponents time to get into position. When the runner finally stops going laterally and starts breaking down the field, not only will he not have support (because his offensive line can't keep up), he'll face a lot more defenders.",
"Watch a play where a team attempts a reverse. Most times it is very easy to see that there really is no room to run on the outside, and the running back would lose more yards than he would gain if he tried to run to the outside."
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1t7szg | how oral disease didn't kill everything before proper dental care. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1t7szg/eli5_how_oral_disease_didnt_kill_everything/ | {
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"Heres your answer. It did. Primary reason of death was dental related before dental hygene was found.",
"It probably did! People with a genetic tendency for oral disease regularly died thereby keeping the average genetic pool dentally healthy. Only when dental care was discovered, the genetic pool would have diversified to let dental diseases be more common."
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3hpr9p | how are deleted files recovered from "empty" memory storage | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hpr9p/eli5_how_are_deleted_files_recovered_from_empty/ | {
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"Files systems in cards and hard drives use 'pointers' to know where to find stored data. When you just delete files, those pointers are only taken away but most often the data remains.\n\nWhen you format, this is when the file system knows to take those pointers and the data and get rid of it.\n\nIn data recovery it's usually called an 'undelete' when recovering those files."
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||
3pkmqc | the consequences of breaking a treaty by legalizing weed. | The newly elected canadian government wants to legalize pot. I read some bad journalism about how there may me consequences to breaking a bunch of treaties.
What are the possible consequences? Worst case. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3pkmqc/eli5_the_consequences_of_breaking_a_treaty_by/ | {
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"The worst possible consequences are probably that Canada might have difficulty in the future with signing new treaties because other countries might perceive them as being untrustworthy, and unsure whether Canada can be relied on to honor the terms of treaties. \n\nIf legal Canadian pot starts flowing into America, then the American government might get mad, but that's already happening with medicinal marijuana from British Columbia, and the consequences haven't been too severe. Plus America already looks it's begun a slow turn towards legalization as well, but who knows, it could be temporary.\n\nI don't think there will be any serious impacts besides those, certainly nothing as serious as international sanctions. "
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7fudfc | why do your gums and teeth feel weird when you don't get enough sleep? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7fudfc/eli5_why_do_your_gums_and_teeth_feel_weird_when/ | {
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"I've never felt this. Is this really a thing?",
"Sometimes a sleepy brain makes you hallucinate or feel strange. I get an itching/twitchy/cramping sensation in the gums behind my two bottom front teeth sometimes. It's weird.",
"Ur prolly stressed and clenching ur jaw. Try wearing a mouth guard when you sleep and maybe that will help."
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g0s7e0 | cavities, how does it works and how toothpaste prevents it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/g0s7e0/eli5_cavities_how_does_it_works_and_how/ | {
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"My understanding is that the sugars you eat accumulate and for a thick paste we call plaque. That plaque builds up and is acidic enough to eat through the enamel on your teeth. As it gradually dissolved the enamel, it forms little pits, pockets, or holes that we call cavities. First it’s not deep enough to cause much problems, but eventually these can expose your tooth’s nerve which causes great pain or even kill the tooth, allowing it to fall out. \n\nBrushing (and flossing) your teeth regularly is more important than using toothpaste, but brushing with toothpaste is best of all. Toothpaste acts as an abrasive to really help break up the sugary goo on your teeth. You don’t have to eat sugar...there is sugar naturally in many foods, and not only sugar can cause plaque. \n\nSo imagine that eating food is like digging your hands in caustic dirt. When you’re done, you need to wash your hands (brush your teeth) to get the acid off, or it’ll wear through your skin (teeth). But I’m not a dentist, just a dad.",
"The mouth is filled with more than 700 different bacterial species. Over time, if undisturbed, this bacterium can form plaque deposits in and around the teeth. When we eat too much sugar certain sugar loving species get out of control and create an environment that causes your tooth enamel to break down. This is why we need to brush the plaque away...toothpaste makes it easier but isn't necessary, some people use baking soda and make it into a paste.",
"Your teeth are made out of calcium phosphates held together by hydroxyl (OH) ions in a specific structure. This is called hydroxyapatite.\n\nThe hydroxyl groups in hydroxyapatite is very susceptible to acid attacks via the food you eat or via the waste products of bacteria in your mouth. Acids dissolve hydroxyapatite easily for this reason, leaving small pores for bacteria to grow on and wear away even more. The pores inherently gain surface area, making it pretty easy to grow. The bacteria in these pores sometimes dig in deeper and deeper, causing cavities.\n\nToothpaste contains fluoride ions. These fluoride ions replace lost OH ions in ionized hydroxyapatite to create fluoroapatite. Fluoroapatite has a higher energy of dissociation compared to hydroxyapatite, meaning that it takes more to break it apart and more resistant at the same pH. Fluoroapatite, in this way, \"remineralizes\" a very small surface layer of your teeth and provides some protection until it is worn off."
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j3s55 | li5 can someone please explain ram, memory, processor, etc? | Basically when I look to buy a computer I understand bigger numbers are better. But I don't understand what those components like ram, memory, and processor actually do. The only one i get is hard drive space. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j3s55/li5_can_someone_please_explain_ram_memory/ | {
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"RAM is where things are sitting when they are running - the more RAM you have the better programs work when they are open and running.\n\nMemory (I'm assuming hard drive) - is where programs are installed, the more memory you have the more shit you can install (BTW: the term memory, by itself, is usually assumed to be RAM).\n\nProcessor: This is how fast your computer can figure stuff out. Your processor is in charge of launching a program, getting the important parts stuffed in RAM so they can be grabbed quickly.\n\nSome other useful terms:\n\nGPU: This is a special type of CPU, whose entire focus is drawing things on screen. It's much faster at math than your CPU is. CPUs have to worry about all sorts of other things as well - the GPU is a hardcore mathematician.\n\nModem: This is a fake phone, it makes phone calls for your computer.\n\nNIC: Network Interface Card (also called an Ethernet card) - this is typically used when you have cable/DSL and allows you to join a local network of systems. In your home, this is probably just between your computer and the cable/DSL modem or a router.\n\nRouter: This is like the mailman for your apartment complex. He gets all the traffic and stuffs it in the correct box.\n\nSwitch: This is like your USPS regional distribution center. They help filter the traffic down to a specific region, but they aren't too worried about which exact mailbox it goes into. They just want to get it into the general area and let the mailmen take care of it.",
"This is uber simple: \n\nLets pretend food represents \"work to be done on a computer\" So opening up email, watching naughty videos, etc. \n\nSo first you have something you want to open, a file. This is the raw ingredients are the grocery store. its a bit of the pain to get to, takes some time but its alllll there in the big store. \nSo now you double click on said file. This is like driving those things home to your fridge. Its much closer to where you live and process the raw food items. \nSo now its open but instead of displaying how its really stored in the raw, it needs to be processed. The processor is your stove. \nNow imagine you have multiple stoves and multiple fridges. think of ALL the food you could cook. \n\n",
"The hard drive stores lots of information, but it takes a long time to read. \n \nRAM and memory are the same thing. It stores less information, but can be read much faster than a hard drive, so it is used to store information for running programs. \n \nWhen you run a program, the computer will constantly need to look up information for that it, whether it be photos, music, graphics, etc. The faster the computer can access that information, the faster the computer can react to your actions. Split seconds are noticeable.\n\nThe processor handles the data behind the scenes, and does a ton of simple things like adding and multiplying numbers really fast. The average processor is plenty fast today, so the biggest impact on speed that you will notice is the amount of memory/RAM you have. The numbers you see advertised for processors make no difference.\n \nWhen you try to run more than one program at once, the computer tries to load those programs and all their data (music, graphics, etc) into RAM. If you don't have enough RAM the computer has to store some of that data on the hard disk instead. You could notice the slowness when you switch between programs because the computer needs to stop, make room in RAM by saving some to the hard disk, read the program you want from the hard disk into RAM, and then it can display the content you want. \n \nThe biggest number that matters is RAM. Luckily RAM is pretty cheap.",
"Let's imagine you're working in an office (long shot, I know...)\n\nYou (**the CPU**) are the brains of the operation. You're responsible for taking in information and deciding how to deal with that information. You're bright, with an IQ of 100 (or CPU speed of 1 Gigahertz), and can do your job effectively and quickly because of your specialization in skills needed by your job. You have a coworker who was hired because of having an IQ of 115...on paper they look smarter (and faster), but perhaps this coworker lacks the specialized skills you have, and is therefore no more efficient that you.\n\nYour desk (**the Ram**) represents the temporary workspace where documents, projects, pictures of your family, and anything else you'd like to have 'open' in front of you would exist. The bigger your desk (i.e. the more RAM), generally the more you can do at one time without needing to slow down and reshuffle all the papers and such on your desk. Bill Gates would have a [very tiny desk](_URL_0_) these days.\n\nYour filing cabinet (**the Storage drive** i.e. Harddrive, etc.) represents where you store all of your documents, pictures, record albums, and anything else for long term storage when they are not being used. Today you work on a letter for a colleague, and place the letter in your filing cabinet when you're finished writing for revising or sending later.\n\nYour eyes and vision (**the Graphics Card and Display**) represent how much of and how clearly you can see documents, images, or anything else visually. If you've got clear, healthy vision (i.e. a high resolution display) you may be able to view multiple documents on your desk simultaneously, without needing to pull that single document close into focus.\n\nAlmost as important with selecting a job is being comfortable with how it feels to perform the job. With a new computer, hands on experience with things like the keyboard, trackpad, physical size and build quality can make a big difference up-front and in the long run...",
"Imagine your computer is an office where someone sits at a desk working out the answers to problems. Like solving math equations, looking up the meaning of a word, etc.\n\nProblems are written down on pieces of paper and placed on the computer's desk. RAM, or memory, is the size of the desk. The bigger the desk, the more pieces of paper the computer can see at once.\n\nDisk, or storage, is a filing cabinet down the hall in another room. If the computer runs out of desk space, or has to look up a piece of paper that isn't on its desk, it has to get up, walk down the corridor, and riffle through the filing cabinet. The more storage, the bigger the cabinet, the more paper it can hold. This cabinet can hold paper for short or long periods of time. For example, if a computer runs out of desk space, it can stuff some paper in the cabinet to free up desk space.\n\nProcessors have a couple of different aspects. Processor speed relates to how fast the computer can solve a given problem. A faster processor means it will be able to solve problems faster.\n\nThe processor's cache size determines how much of a problem the computer can keep in its head: it's like trying to remember a phone number. Some people have such a good short-term memory, they only have to look at a number once to dial it. Some people, like me, can only comfortably remember three or four digits at a time.\n\nIf a processor is \"dual core\" or \"quad core\", this means there are actually multiple people working at the desk. Dual core means two, quad core means four. They have to share the same desk and filing cabinet, but can work on different pieces of paper at the same time.\n\n\"HyperThreading\" is a fancy marketing term for having an ambidextrous person who can work on two pieces of paper at once: one for each hand. Only, they don't really... think of it like a really, really hyperactive person switching between two bits of paper so fast it *looks* like they're doing two things at once.\n\nNow, bigger numbers usually mean better, but all these things interact with one another in various ways. For example, you might have a computer that can add numbers together really, really fast; but if it has a tiny desk, it will spend all its time walking back and forth between its desk and the filing cabinet.\n\nIn the end, you want a computer where the cabinet is close enough to keep a steady stream of work flowing on to the desk, a big enough desk to hold it all, and a processor fast enough to solve the problems. (A fast disk, enough RAM to keep everything live without having to swap to disk and a fast enough processor to keep stuff moving.)\n\n**Bonus component**\n\nGPU (Graphics Processing Unit): this is actually *another person* working at another desk. If the computer wants pictures painted, it describes the picture on a piece of paper, then carries the piece of paper over to the GPU's desk. The GPU then paints the picture to a canvas and shows it to other people on the computer's behalf.\n\nIt's easiest to think of a GPU as a computer that specialises in painting pictures; many of the same components exist on a GPU.\n\nSome computers have more than one GPU, in which case you have more than one artist collaborating on the same painting.\n\nSome computers have an \"integrated GPU\". If the phrase \"Intel GMA\" is anywhere in your computer's specification, that's what it has. This is where the GPU, instead of its own office, is locked in the closet with a packet of crayons, so it doesn't do very good work. Thankfully, this is changing and integrated GPUs are being given bigger offices and better paint brushes."
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3kpmnq | how do they predict the life span and failure rates of new products? | For instance say you invent the light bulb, how would the company know the expected life of the unit? They can't just leave it on for years and wait for it to burn out. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kpmnq/eli5_how_do_they_predict_the_life_span_and/ | {
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"Torture testing.\n\nIn the specific case of a light bulb, filament failure typically occurs during the initial surge when the circuit is energized.\n\nThe test would likely be repeatedly turning the bulb on and off until failure. If it fails after 20,000 cycles and bulbs usually get turned on 4 times a day, the manufacturer will rate it for 5,000 days of \"average\" use.\n\nThey'll probably sell it at 3,500 or 4,000 days so that most bulbs in slightly harsh use will still hit the target."
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5r9ku9 | can the us president be impeached? and if so, under what grounds? | I have watched the TV series 24, and IIRC there was something called the 25th amendment (or something like that, can't remember exactly what it was) that they used to remove the president from office.
In the show, they used majority vote of the cabinet members to decide the outcome of the impeachment. But it seemed that the process of impeachment could be initiated by one cabinet member, if he or she thinks the president has gone bat shit crazy.
Does such a thing actually exist within US law? And if it does, what would the president have to do, for someone to invoke this law/amendment? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5r9ku9/eli5_can_the_us_president_be_impeached_and_if_so/ | {
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"Article II, Section 4 allows for the impeachment of the president. It requires a majority of the house to impeach him, and a 2/3s majority in the Senate to remove him from office. This removal is permanent. \n\nThe 25th amendment allows for the vice president and the cabinet, or the president himself, to declare the president to be unfit for office. This can be temporary or permanent. The only time it has happened were twice during the Bush Adminstration, when Bush needed to go under anesthesia for a colonoscopy. Bush declared himself unfit, went under anesthesia, woke up, then declared himself to be fit again. \n\nEDIT: The reason that this was added to the Constitution is because in 1919 Woodrow Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke and spent the last two years of his administration as an invalid while his second wife ran the country. "
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11jkbd | the relationship between northern ireland, england, and the republic of ireland. | What is the current relationship like? Are there tensions between Ireland and N. Ireland? Do either consider themselves the "true Ireland"? How are they both governed? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11jkbd/eli5_the_relationship_between_northern_ireland/ | {
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"In 1997 the Good Friday agreement was signed which declared that Ireland,which is the official name of the Republic would no longer call for or claim Northern Ireland as apart of its territory. In turn the UK would allow for Northern Ireland to become part of Ireland if the People, by majority voted for it as so. With this terrorists or extreme branches, mostly went into cease fire and peace. \n\n\nThere are however some extremists within Northern Ireland. Within the North there are two major views being Republican and Unionist/Loyalist. Republicans wish to joining the Republic of Ireland where as Unionists wish to remain with the UK. While there have not been any major troubles from there extremes of either side since 1997, there are incidents every so often however involving shootings, one of the most notable being the shooting of two British soldiers two years ago. \n\nThe relationship between the UK and Ireland is very good however, having both a strong Cultural and Economic connections. This being both the people and government at large. A Irish person may \"joke\" with a British person over certain topics, but for the most part it is only fun.\n\nIrish and a Political Student here btw. This is the simplest I could put it :)"
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4ddfre | why are there no national referendums in the united states like there are in other countries? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ddfre/eli5_why_are_there_no_national_referendums_in_the/ | {
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"The US constitution simply does not have any procedures in place or allowance for a national referendum, so there isn't one. There have been amendments proposed to do just this, usually with a specific case in mind, but they have never gotten anywhere.\n\nThis makes tremendous sense that the framers of the constitution specifically (intentionally or not) did not include a national referendum or any national votes into the constitution and laws. At the time, the US was still viewed as a collection of states who were sorta independent little countries, but agreed to have connections for the better of them all, but they were not really a unified country as today (this did not really happen until the Civil War). Having a national vote is a bit contrary to this, even the presidential election process was state based, not national.",
"The US does not have a process for it in the Constitution. The reason for this is that we are a federation of semi sovereign states. We are more like the UK than we are like France. As such we are not a direct democracy and vote on things via our representatives as a State, not as individual citizens. ",
"Also a reason for not having referendums in the constitution is that at the time it was written the process would have been too complicated on such a large scale. Nowadays with telecommunication in mind it would be very possible. ",
"There are a lot of good points here. Indeed, there are a lot of concrete reasons for this but the lack of national referendums is also based on founding fathers's ideology. Essentially, the founding fathers wanted the people to have power on decision makers, not the decisions themselves. They believed that this way guaranteed the best possible decisions because they didn't think that the average people were intelligent enough. They believed that the voters would vote the brightest minds to make the best possible decisions. That's a reason there's no procedures in place in the US constitution for a national referendum. ",
"Speaking for the \"other countries\", in Croatia we have a law that enables referendum, but it is hardly ever held, partly due to number of signatures (10 % of registered voters) needed for the initiation of procedure. Only meaningful referendum that we had was about independence in 1991, after that referendums were pretty much a joke (one for the accession to the EU, other to ban some gay rights). There was even one about the labour legislation, but even though there was enough signatures it was never held.\n\nI think that only in Switzerland referendums have a real weight.",
"We are a representative republic, some of our states have landmass and populations equal to entire countries. Texas for example, if it was counted as a country, would have the 12th highest GDP in the world. We do have referendums on a state wide basis however. Unfortunately our federal government is entirely too intrusive to allow states referendums to actually change anything radically, and given another 100 years or so, the EU will represent this same type of force in Europe.",
"There are no federal elections in the United States, other than the Electoral College. Everything else is state level only --- we literally don't have the infrastructure for a national election, since every state has different voting processes and procedures, which would likely be deemed unacceptable under due process, since different voting methods have different errors in counting rates.",
"\"Why are there no European-Wide Referendums?\"\n\nThat's a much better comparative question. And in it lies the answer. We already have a representative government dictating single-solutions over a massive, diverse population. \n\nHaving 151 million people dictating what all 300 million do? Not a recipe for happiness.",
"Sour-grapes answer: Because the people don't tell the government what we want, the government tells the people what they *should* be wanting.",
"Referendums are simply inconsistent with rest of the federal system, which is based off a representative democracy. Referendums, propositions and direct initiatives take place at the state and local level, however. Nevertheless, such practices still are crititicized as \"sloppy democracy\", a good example would be the direct initative in Schuette v. BAMN. "
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5dyqmz | how much water is actually wasted when we shower? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5dyqmz/eli5_how_much_water_is_actually_wasted_when_we/ | {
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"Water is not wasted. It is not removed from the water cycle. Water goes from your shower, into the sewer system, to the sewage treatment plant where it is treated and then sent back to the city to water grass in grey water systems where it evaporates, or it is sent to holding ponds where it evaporates. ",
"Every 5 minutes of showering (with average water pressure and temperature) will use about 20 gallons of water, compared to the 40 gallons for the average bath. \nIf your city has a decent enough water treatment facility, no water is \"wasted\", for reasons noted by other users. ",
"A shower is actually a very efficient way to clean yourself, so if you needed to get clean, arguably none of the water is wasted.\n\nHowever, you could get just as clean with half or even 1/3 as much water (by turning it off intermittently, and by using a washcloth or sponge instead of a continuous flow). So compared to the optimum, an ordinary shower still uses about 50 litres more than necessary."
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17jlc2 | how does navigation know what roads are the quickest route to your destination? | I know it pulls data from maps but how does it know which roads it should take that would be quickest? Often a straight line from origin to destination looks faster on a map but may have many lights so navigation recommends a faster route on a highway. How does it know speeds, accidents, etc? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17jlc2/eli5_how_does_navigation_know_what_roads_are_the/ | {
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"It cross references the distance that needs to be traveled with speed limits. The more advanced navigation systems use real time traffic data from highway monitoring stations. Many roads have sensors to detect how many cars are passing per minute and what speed they are going, this information tells the navigation system whether there is heavy traffic or to expect delays."
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16nrot | java programing language was originally billed as "extremely safe". why isn't it? | [This question is slightly more specific than another recent question about Java.]
I remember that when the Java programming language was first introduced, it was billed as exceedingly safe.
(As I recall, this was because Java apps/applets would run in the "Java virtual machine." I see that Wikipedia says "The remote code runs in a restricted sandbox, which is designed to protect the user from misbehaving or malicious code.")
However, Java is apparently turning out to be "not adequately safe".
What accounts for this gap between the original model of Java being "designed for safety" and the current real-world security problems that it's experiencing?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/16nrot/eli5_java_programing_language_was_originally/ | {
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"Java is fairly safe. A programmer cannot simply write a program to take over a computer, as they can with C or Pascal, or other compiled languages. Exploits to break out of the Java sandbox exist, similar to exploits used to break out of VMs and other sandbox programs."
]
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9agdan | when you grow your muscles, do you also grow more skin or does your skin just stretch? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9agdan/eli5_when_you_grow_your_muscles_do_you_also_grow/ | {
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"Typically a bodybuilder, tears his muscles during work out, and additional middle is made as the muscle heals. During this process capillaries the blood vessels that feed the muscles are also made. The veins how ever do stretch though and overtime then grow.\n\nSkin will grow but rapid muscle or fat growth with stretch the skin.\n\nMany pregnant women bear the results of rapid growth. Stretch marks."
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1ljtu7 | the uefa champions league... the format, structure, and anything else i need to know. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ljtu7/eli5_the_uefa_champions_league_the_format/ | {
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"I'll try this one.\nChampions League brings the top teams from around Europe together.\nDepending on the UEFA co-efficient [here](_URL_0_) decides how many places in the competition a country gets.\n\nFor example, England gets 4 places in the Champions League. But somewhere like Hungary gets less.\n\nIn England the top 3 teams get automatically put through to the group stage, with the 4th having to go through qualifiers. Co-efficients is also relevant to whether a team has to go through qualifying.\n\nOnce the qualifying has been done, the winning teams, and the teams already put through get seeded between 1 and 4 in relation to how good they are. I.e Man Utd would be seeded 1, someone like Anderlecht would be 4. Groups are drawn, there can't be 2 of 1 nation in a group, so Barcelona and Real couldn't face each other in the group stages, and in every group there would be someone seeded 1, 2, 3 and 4. A team seeded 1 also can't be in a group with another team seeded 1.\n\nThere are 8 groups of 4 teams, each play each other in their group home and away. This years groups can be found [here](_URL_1_)\n\nThe 2 teams with the highest points from the group get put through to the knockout rounds. Anyone can play anyone that advanced now regardless of nation. This is the round of 16. There are home and away legs for this stage.\n\nThe 8 teams advanced from the last round play now in the Quarter Finals, home and away games.\n\nThen the last 4 play in the Semi Final. These are generally the best teams. Last year was Barcelona vs Bayern and Borussia Dortmund vs Real Madrid. Also played twice, home and away.\n\nThen the final, and whoever wins gets the Champions League trophy. It's played at a Neutral venue. The Champions League Final is probably biggest game in club football. Whoever wins gets automatic re-entry to next years tournament. \n\n\n"
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3ejjdq | what do we benefit from keep near extinction animals around? should we just let them go extinct? (not a popular opinion i know, more of a description in comments) | So don't get me wrong I love Pandas and don't want to see animals go extinct myself, but in the sense of evolution and progression shouldn't we let animals that are going extinct go extinct.
Now barring a few condition like bees, where their extinction would have a direct impact on our survival I can totally understand preserving them, but Rhinos and the like that have no direct impact on us. Throughout history millions of species have gone extinct with or without our help, and I know many people would argue that they are going extinct directly due to how we as humans are changing and affecting the planet. But wouldn't that just be another deciding factor in whether or not that species has what it takes to survive.
The planet and its condition will change regardless of our impact, and although these changes would have happen more slowly without our interactions this argument is invalid because fact is conditions are changing because of us, and will forever be altered because of us.
I apologize if my grammar is all jacked up. I've been living in China for 4 years. Thanks!
Edit: Thanks guys you've given me some great information to ponder over. I hadn't even thought about that fact that we still don't understand just how much of an impact some of the species may have on the ecosystem. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ejjdq/eli5_what_do_we_benefit_from_keep_near_extinction/ | {
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"There are two basic arguments. First, the moral one. We are morally obligated to protect animals that we had a hand in taking to the brink of extinction.\n\nSecond, the utilitarian one. We can possibly learn something from ecosystems with intact species that could help us later. If we alter the ecosystem to much it could come back to hurt us later in ways that we don't expect.\n\nHere's a good thread that goes over this topic in more detail: _URL_0_"
]
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48bc3y | how is it that all cell providers claim to have the fastest nationwide network? is there a 4way tie for first place? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/48bc3y/eli5how_is_it_that_all_cell_providers_claim_to/ | {
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"Just take a look at all the fine print at the bottom of the screen whenever a cell company makes a claim about anything. They can redefine 'fastest' or 'best' to mean whatever they like. Fastest...in this specific area? During this specific time? Best as in... highest customer survey rating or highest uptime? Etc etc..",
"In my part of the world, some networks or parts of networks are shared between numerous carriers - if that network happened to be fastest one around, they could all say they were using the fastest network. Is it possible something similar is happening where you are, or at least in some areas?"
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9e4wj9 | what role does gaba have with regards to things like anxiety and depression, and what effect do benzodiazepines have with regards to gaba? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9e4wj9/eli5_what_role_does_gaba_have_with_regards_to/ | {
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"There are two things to discuss here. GABA as a chemical in the brain and GABA as a supplement some people eat, and [this great WebMD article goes into detail](_URL_0_ ).\n\nGABA as a chemical in the brain, at low levels, may lead to: Anxiety or mood disorders, Epilepsy, Chronic pain.\n\nGABA supplements in your stomach, well there isn't much evidence they do any of these things. The body has lots of anti-poisoning systems that minimize the prospect for something you eat changing chemical balances in the brain.\n",
"GABA is the principal neurotransmitter responsible of tuning your brain activity down, which makes is effective at reducing anxiety and such in high levels.\nBenzos are a category of molecules that « helps » GABA at doing what it does, basically by making GABA latch more easily onto it’s receptor which leads to amplified effects for the same amount of GABA."
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wxcgx | why do some programs require a specific version(s) of windows or mac os, but some don't? | Some programs might require Windows 7, others 7/Vista, and others 7/Vista/XP. What causes these programs to require specific versions, and why do some seem to not? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wxcgx/why_do_some_programs_require_a_specific_versions/ | {
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"Newer versions of operating systems can do more things; that's a large part of why new versions are made. Programs written to rely on these new things won't work with old versions.",
"Why do some programs only work with *older* operating systems. A company that I work with has to use XP because of some software/server program they use. They even had to use IE7 up until a couple weeks ago because their website was so old",
"There are typically two reasons for this:\n\n**Programmers make assumptions**\n\nFor example, in the Windows 95/98/ME days, any program could modify any file anywhere, so many Windows programs wrote their settings to c:\\program files\\app name\\settings.ini or something similar. When Windows NT/2K/XP/etc. came out, programs were only allowed to write to places their users had permissions to write to - and c:\\program files\\ is not one of them. As a result, many programs stopped working.\n\nThis can be circumvented by running the program as admin, but that has two issues; first, it's less secure. If there's a bug in the program, it can make any changes it wants to your system. Secondly, in a lot of environments (e.g. offices, schools, large enterprises, libraries) users don't have the ability to run as administrator, meaning they can't use these programs, they'll crash randomly, they won't save their settings, etc.\n\n**OSes change**\n\nWindows goes to a lot of trouble to keep things working whenever possible, but bugs still get fixed that app developers assume are ok. On Mac OS, Apple is almost militant about getting rid of old code in favour of new code. If Apple adds a better way of doing things in 10.6, then the old way will often be 'deprecated' (meaning that developers are told not to use this code because it will be removed) in 10.7, and it will be removed entirely in 10.8.\n\nThis can cause problems in one of two ways; first, old apps that don't get updated will continue to run on 10.6 and 10.7, because the old ways of doing things still exist, but will not run on 10.8. New apps that are written from scratch (the proper way) in 10.7 will continue to work in 10.8 and onward, but will not run in 10.6.\n\n**Notes**\n\nGood developers are able to mitigate these issues by detecting which version of the OS is running and using the old or new ways depending on which is available, but this can be a significant amount of development work, and can introduce subtle bugs. Also, there is often a very clear signal 'which way the wind is blowing', and developers can update their apps long before there's an issue (if they have the developer time).\n\nBad developers are especially prone to these issues. Most problems can be solved by writing code the way that Windows is designed to work, using the correct built-in functions instead of writing your own, asking Windows where to put documents instead of picking an arbitrary location, and so on. Bad developers are lazy, and instead of writing four lines of code to figure out where the documents directory is, will just use the app directory instead. They'll write their own functions because they're too lazy to look up the documentation to see if there is already a function to do what they're trying to do, and when they write it themselves they'll miss certain cases (e.g. what if the system language is in Hebrew? What if the timezone is different? What if the Windows directory isn't in c:\\windows? They assume everything will always be the same as what they have and when things change in subtle ways, problems happen."
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8nkh9e | how come when we find large planets we go straight to their moons to search for life, is there something about larger planets that prevent life? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8nkh9e/eli5_how_come_when_we_find_large_planets_we_go/ | {
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"I'm not familiar with this search pattern at all. We're usually lucky to see even *extremely huge* planets in different star systems, let alone any moons at all.\n\nIf you mean gas giants here in our own solar system, their conditions are markedly different from what we are familiar with life developing in, while some of their moons have encouraging signs like liquid water. ",
"Moons were at one point just large Asteroids or other planets that crashed in others until they eventually came into orbit of a planet."
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5kohsr | how do zip files compress information and file sizes while still containing all the information? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5kohsr/eli5_how_do_zip_files_compress_information_and/ | {
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"And if I could add to this question: why, if we can easily do this to our information and save space, is the zip file not our main file type?",
"Compression takes time so we don't use it all the time. It probably isn't used as much as it should be, but whatever.\n\nSo think of it this way. If I want to compress a text document I could look at all the words and see which are most common. I could then create a language where the most common words were the shortest. If I write the document in my new language the document would be smaller and is just need to have a dictionary to translate back to the original.\n\nThis is what happens in compression, first an algorithm finds repeating series of data, then it looks at what data is most common, them it creates a dictionary to translate the most common data to shorter strings, then it just writes all this out to a file. \n\nMost files have a lot of redundancy in them so they commonly compress well.",
"Sometimes there are repeated characters, \n like several spaces in the beginning of this line.\nThey can be replaced with single space (1 byte) and another byte saying that space must be repeated 5 times. \n\nCommon words can be replaced with abbreviations or codes. E.g. \"abbreviation\" is word #123. \n\nWe do not use only zip b/c zipping and unzipping takes time. Try to zip a large file, or a folder with many files. \n\nLook at your desk - you could probably store all the stuff on it in a much smaller box. But it would be a huge pain to get every thing you need out of that box, and put it back once you are done with it. Box is the zipped file, your desk is unzipped. ",
"I believe that it works this way (i'm only 90% sure, though):\n\nData is represented in a computer at his most basic level with zeros and ones. Knowing this, compressors don't work at that machine level, but they do compress data simply saving the amount of units of the same type that an archive holds and (probably) their positions. For example:\n\naaabccccddffaa = > a3bc4d2f2a2\n\nNot the best answer, but tried my best.\n\nSource: my teacher. I study software engeneering.\n\nBonus Fun Fact: There is an actual malicious file called Zip Bomb, used to render a system or program useless or created in order to make them run slow. You can \"manufacture\" a zip file telling it's a extremely big amount of zeros, and freeze any system trying to decompress it (memory blockage). Modern antivirus can detect them.\n\nBonus Fun Fact Source: _URL_0_",
"Image if you had a long paragraph and then try to find all the repeated word or phrases. For each repeated word or phrase, you replace the word or phrase with a lookup. Then you only need to write the repeated word or phrase once and from then on every spot you would write the shorter lookup. This is how files are zipped. \n\n\n\nExample\n\n1 - word or phrase\n\n2 - repeated \n\n3 - lookup\n\n4 - you\n\n5 - then\n\n6 - write\n\n7 - and\n\n8 - the\n\nImage if 4 had a long paragraph 7 5 try to find all 8 2 1s. For each 2 1, 4 replace 8 1 with a 3. Then 4 only need to 6 8 2 1 once 7 from 5 on every spot 4 would 6 8 shorter 3. This is how files are zipped.",
"Imagine this is the content of your file:\n\nAAAAABBBBBBB\n\nCCCCCCCCCCCD\n\nFile compression works by looking for patterns in the file. It uses mathematical formulas to ensure the duplicate data is removed, but also that the duplicate data can be restored properly when uncompressed.\n\nA simple pattern compression on the above file can be represented as:\n\nA5B7\n\nC11D\n\nwhere the number after the file content indicates the number of times the pattern should be repeated.\n\nThis example also shows why text data can be compressed very easily - there's a lot of repeated characters in any major piece of text. However some files (mainly media files, movies etc) contain lots of non-repeating data, so they don't compress that well.\n\n",
"TL;DR They give special instructions to get rid of repititions in the data\n\nFrom my limited knowledge, the main way a file is zipped is by getting rid of repetitions in the data for the file.\n\nSo say you have a string like [100101001011]\n\nWell, you notice a pattern and decide to compress that data into something simpler like [2 {10010}11].\n\nWhen that data is read out it just knows to repeat that {10010} twice and add 11 at the end.\n\nNow you would have to keep it in binary so 2 would be 10 so you're final piece of data is [ < 10 > {10010}11]\n\nNow I'm using special symbols to show where I'm grouping things, but there are probably special characters to indicate special instructions like that.\n\nTo answer the other question about why we don't just use this system for storing all data.\n\nIf I were to guess, it would probably have to do with something along the lines of it being more difficult or more work to read these new special instructions. Your computer probably likes all of the normal characters as it just happily runs along taking in and spitting out all of the easy characters you give it, but when you come along and say \"So after you do this, you're gonna go back over there, and in the middle of that, put an extra one on here... etc.\". Essentially, you're making the simplest form into something more complicated.\n\nThis also follows for why we use binary. Why don't we just convert all of the computer's binary into decimal to do calculations, the convert back into binary to do something with the output? \n\nBinary is the building block of computet code, and once you begin giving special instructions for how to read the binary, you're building something more complicated.\n\nHonestly though I'm more into physics and math, so you'll probably want an answer from someone who actually knows something about CS, or just Google it I guess.\n\nHope I helped though.",
"A normal file, text or anything else, contains a lot of data. So, it is expected that there will be a lot of repetition, called Data Redundancy. Now if we can take all this data that is exactly the same and encode them using just one keyword and tell the location where to insert this keyword, using something called a Dictionary.\nThe second compression technique is employed by taking the most used data to be represented by least number of bits. Suppose that a data x is repeated 500 times, data y is repeated 200 times and data z is repeated 50 times. Normally, if we need to represent these we would use 2 bits for each. So our file would contain a total of 1500 bits. But now if we encode data x by 1 bit (say 0) and data y by 2 bits (say 10) and data z by 2 bits (say 11), then our file size will be 1000 bits.\n\nTL;DR: Data Redundancy and using less bits for most common data are two major compressing techniques.",
"Here's a really simple explanation. If I type this out: \n\n > XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX\n\nthen it takes up a couple lines of space. But if I type this out:\n\n > The letter \"X\" one hundred times\n\nThen it conveys the exact same information, but in a way that takes up way less space.",
"Find information that looks the same, instead of writing it down twice you just make a note that it's the same as the one before.",
"A lot of the data computers regularly deal with is not random, but has various more or less obvious patterns in it. If you know what patterns to expect (say, by already seeing some of the data, or by knowing what sort of data it is), then you can use that knowledge to convert large patterns into smaller symbols and then add a decoding instruction to the file to convert the smaller symbols back into the larger patterns, and if the patterns occur frequently enough, the space you save by converting them into smaller symbols outweighs the size of the decoding instruction.\n\nHere's an example: Imagine that you took a TXT file of one of Shakespeare's plays, analyzed it, and found that the letter 'z' appears 2000 times and the two-letter sequence 'th' appears 5000 times. In that case, you could switch all the original 'z' for 'th', and all the original 'th' for 'z', and put a note at the beginning of the file saying 'before reading this, replace all the 'z' with 'th' and vice versa'. By replacing the occurrences of 'z' with 'th' you increase the size by 2000 letters, but by replacing the occurrences of 'th' with 'z' you *decrease* the size by 5000 letters, and because the note is only 65 letters long (counting spaces and punctuation), you end up with a TXT file that is smaller than the original by 2935 letters but can still be precisely reconstructed into the original by following the instructions in the note. You've taken advantage of the fact that 'th' occurs especially frequently (and 'z' especially *in*frequently by comparison) to produce a file that ultimately says the same thing (assuming the note is followed correctly by whoever reads it) but has fewer letters in it.\n\nThe actual techniques used by modern data compression software are more advanced than this, but the basic idea, that of finding patterns and encoding them using smaller amounts of information, is the same.\n\nNote that *not all* types of data have patterns that you can take advantage of in this way. In particular, data that has *already* been compressed using a technique like this tends to have fewer patterns in it than the original version.\n\n(This is a copy+paste of a [previous post](_URL_0_) I wrote on the subject, so I apologize if it doesn't seem written precisely to address your question. If you have further questions about these techniques or their mathematical limitations, or any clarification of the above, ask away.)",
"what most ppl explain here is RLE, run-length-encoding, like if something is repeated X times, you only write it twice and add a number of repetition, later simply decompress by reading a repetition byte whenever you encounter a repeated character. \n\ntheres also huffman encoding. like currently one character takes up 8bit / 1 byte because thats the atomic size of storable data. that means you have an alphabet of 256 characters, known as ASCII f.e.. Now if you compress text f.e., you wont need all of those, also some occur more often than others (like \"e\" f.e.), so instead giving each character the same length, they get a variable length, depending on their occurence, where alot of occurences mean a short length and vice versa. this means a character could be 1-n bits long. now how to read such data? well there is a binary tree, called the huffman tree, where each node has only max. 2 leaves, and those can either be end nodes or subnodes with again max. 2 leaves. the end nodes are where each character is placed, and you simply read bits 1/0 and walk the tree from top to bottom. that allows you to place often used character more on top (shorter binary path) and less used ones on the bottom (longer binary path), resulting in a binary stream of variable sized characters, thus saving space. \nofc if you have f.e. noisy data like images,sound, video, etc. then its unlikely that you can reduce the space with that or the RLE. for those data, lossful compression is used, but I guess that would go over the bounds of the question...\n\ngreetz WV",
"*For this explanation to make sense, it's important that you know what bits and bytes are, and how a computer uses them to store information. This is a topic of its own, and you can find ELI5 threads that explain it.*\n\nA simple algorithm is counting how many there are of each byte in a set of data. Remember that a byte consists of 8 bits. You then replace the most common byte with a single bit, 1. The second most common one is replaced by two bits, 01. The third most is replaced by 001, etc.\n\nIn the end, you end up with a lookup table, and a bit pattern.\n\nThe string \"AAABBC\" looks like this in binary (in bits, with added spaces for easier reading):\n\n 01000001 01000001 01000001 01000010 01000010 01000011\n A A A B B C \n\nBut if we replace every occurrence of the most common pattern, \"01000001\" with just 1, etc, we end up with something that looks like this (still with added spaces):\n\n 1 1 1 01 01 001\n A A A B B C\nSince a byte is 8 bits long, and we have 10 bits here, our result would be two bytes:\n\n 11101010 01000000\n AAAB B C (Padding)\n\nWe have effectively compressed 6 bytes down to 2.\n\n---\n\n**Edit, and some possibly interesting points:**\n\nIt's important to remember that to be able to unzip a file, you must keep track of which replacements you've made. Somehow, you have to remember that 1 corresponds to 01000001. In this particular algorithm, you can declare a dictionary by first listing how many items are in the list, then all the items in the list itself, and finally the zipped string.\n\nIn the case above, this would result in the following:\n\n Length A B C AAAB B C Padding \n 00000011 01000001 01000010 01000011 11101010 01000000\n (The length being 3.)\n\nThis means that out of our original string, which was 6 bytes long, we've now zipped it down to 2 bytes, but we also added 4 bytes of data to know what the zipped portion means.. :)\n\nWhat does this mean? Well, it means that it's not always useful to zip data. Very small amounts of data, or data that is very diverse, could end up being no smaller, or sometimes even bigger than the unzipped version.\n\nThe algorithm still works, though. We could pack a few more A's into this, and still keep the size at 6 bytes, for example.\n\n AAAAAABBC\n\nwould turn into\n\n Length A B C AAAAAAB B C Padding \n 00000011 01000001 01000010 01000011 11111101 01001000\n\nwhich is still only 6 bytes, but we've packed 9 bytes into it. We could add another 3 A's, and it would still be only 6 bytes:\n\n AAAAAABBCAAA\n\nwould turn into\n\n Length A B C AAAAAAB B C AAA\n 00000011 01000001 01000010 01000011 11111101 01001111\n\n---\n\n**Another quick edit:**\n\nI should mention here that this algorithm is a slight variation of something called Huffman's algorithm. Huffman is used in combiantion with LZ77 in zip files.\n\n---\n\n**Thanks for the gold, kind redditor \\^\\^**",
"Think if you had 30,000 instances of the letter A. \n \nIn a computer that would translate roughly to 30kB. \n \nWhen a zip file compresses, it would basically say in its file \"30000A\" which is 6 bytes. When it goes to decompress, it just takes that information and writes your file. It's a little more complicated than that, but that's the general idea.",
"For those interested in what a zipped file looks like, I copied /u/TreeForge's explanation from [here](_URL_3_) and saved it as a normal text file, `unzipped.txt`.\n\nI then opened that text file in a [hex editor](_URL_0_), and it looks like [this](_URL_1_); 639 bytes of readable text (the black characters are called line feed, a form of [newline](_URL_4_) character that denotes the end of a line of text).\n\nI then zipped that file and also opened it in a hex editor, and it now looks [vastly different](_URL_2_). You'll notice that it's quite a lot shorter (410 bytes instead of 639 bytes), and the only readable text is the name of the original file that was zipped, i.e. `unzipped.txt`.",
"Imagine you're reading the lyrics to your favorite song. The first time you have the whole chorus written out, but after that you just have \"CHORUS\" because it takes less space than writing it out all over again. ",
"To illustrate in the most simple way... \n\nSay I want you to memorize this string of numbers: 1111222233333\n\nHow would you do it? You'd probably remember it as four 1s, four 2s, and five 3s.\n\nHow might you write it down? Well one way you might try is 414253\n\nAs you can see no information is lost, and the string did get shorter. \n\nThat's the gist of zip. The real algorithm finds more complicated repetitions and store them in more clever ways. But the central theme is it exploits repetitions of information and realize that you do not have to store those repeats verbatim. ",
"This is possible due to sets of data (example: a sentence) containing elements (example: words) that tend to repeat more often than other words.\n\nThe so called 'information entropy' is the key here - this is basically the measurement of diversity of a dataset - if our 10 word sentence would contain 7 same words and 3 different ones, that means the entropy is quite low in that sentence. If it contained 10 unique words, the entropy is maximum - the dataset couldn't be any more diverse.\n\nWhen the entropy is lower than maximum (and it usually is, like certain words or letters being much more often used than others in a language), that means you could replace the more common elements with shorter values and leaving the longest values for the least common elements.\n\nSay that we have a sentence where each word is represented as a byte of memory, containing 8 bits. We could take the most often used word like 'the' and use only half of the bits to denote it which would shorten the whole thing, even though we'd then need new longer values to denote some rare words. We could then take this resulting string of bits and again split it into chunks of the same size and see if some chunks appear more often than others, meaning we could optimize it better.\n\nOnce you are able to encode such a sentence in a way that the resulting dataset is fully diverse with no elements repeating themselves (maximum entropy), that means you cannot shorten it further and you've reached the theoretical limit of compression.\n\nIt is not possible to compress further than this theoretical limit without losing data, like the guys from the tv show Silicon Valley did (if I recall correctly).",
"ZIP compression has been explained very good here. I'd like to add JPG compression, which more or less works the same way. pixel information that occurs more than once gets only saved once plus an information on how often and where it is used. lets say you have 2 photos with the same resolution: one a very complex picture with many details, and one just a blue sky. as a bitmap they are the same size. if you convert it to JPG the complex picture will stay more or less the same size (might be even a bit bigger), but the sky photo has so many repetitve blue pixels that it will be very small after conversion.\n\nso, exactly like with ZIP compression, the \"compressable amount\" heavily depends on the content of the file itself.",
"Masters in computer science here.\n\nThere are two ways to store information, directly and indirectly. Say I want to store the number 10000000000. I could write 10000000000, which is storing it directly. Or I could write \"a 1 followed by 10 zeroes\", which is storing it indirectly in the form of directions to build the number. Note that when I say number, behind the scenes all files on a computer are numbers so I can be talking txt, bmp, or any other file type.\n\nIf the number is very random then storing it indirectly will be a similar size to storing it directly. However, many things we store are not random. For example, a picture may have many pixels of the sky, all a very similar color. In those cases storing the number indirectly can save a lot of space.\n\nTo store something indirectly, we have to create directions to build the number. This is called \"compressing\". To retrieve something stored indirectly, we have to follow the directions to build the number. This is called \"decompressing\". Both compressing and decompressing take time, which is the downside of storing information in a compressed form.\n\nOne last thing: my favorite college lecture of all time was about what is random. Random turns out to be a *very* hard thing to define. One way to define randomness, called Kolmogorov complexity, is to use how compressible the data is. If it does not lose size when compressing then it is very random, otherwise it is not very random.",
"Stealing this answer from [this thread](_URL_0_)\n\nCredit to /u/sje46 \n\n---\n\n**Non-Compressed**\n\nThat Sam-I-Am! \nThat Sam-I-Am! \nI do not like that Sam-I-Am! \nDo you like green eggs and ham? \nI do not like them, Sam-I-Am! \nI do not like green eggs and ham! \nWould you like them here or there? \nI would not like them here or there. \nI would not like them anywhere. \nI do not like green eggs and ham. \nI do not like them, Sam-I-Am. \n\nTotal Characters = 322\n---------------------\n**Compressed**\n\n1=hat \n2=Sam-I-Am \n3=I do not like \n4=green eggs and ham \n5=you like \n6=here or there \n7=I would not like them \nT1 2! \nT1 2! \n3 t1 2! \nDo 5 4? \n3 4! \nWould 5 them 6? \n7 6. \n7 anywhere. \n3 4. \n3 them, 2. \n\nTotal Characters = 186. \n----------- \n\nCompression rate = 58%. Would almost certainly get much better as you go throughout the story.\n\nEDIT: Total characters for compressed version was actually 186, not 210. Sorry about that. Also, thanks for the BestOf!\n\n---",
"Most of these explanations are not eli5. \n\nZip files compress information in the same way you do in conversation every day, they're just more efficient at it. For example, when I refer to them in this sentence, notice I'm not repeating the words \"zip files\" over and over again, that'd be too long. Instead I replace their full name with \"them\" or \"they\" because of the context you know what I'm talking about. File compression works in much the same way. With context you can express much more complicated ideas with fewer bits of information. It's just in file compression, that context is something that's more meaningful to the computer than to you. Never the less, it allows the computer to store information in a much smaller footprint.",
"Besides the actual algorithms an interesting point is that compression algorithms can compress some data only because they actually increase the size of some other data.\n\nIf you fill a file with uniformly distributed random garbage and zip it chances are the resulting zip file is larger than the original file.\n\nThe compression algorithm has some kind of a priori knowledge of the structure of the data it is supposed to compress. In the case of text files there are various things to use:\n\n * they actually only use a limited subset of the available symbols. Say bytes can have 256 different values but most text only consists of letters and some punctuation which is around 64 symbols. So you can go from a uniform length encoding (8 bit per symbol) to a variable length encoding that assigns shorter bit sequences to more common symbols. An example of this is [Huffman coding](_URL_0_). If the data is the uniform garbage mentioned above all symbols will appear with the same frequency. Except now you also have to store this \"translation table\" between the uniform and variable length encoding (or at least have to indicate somehow that the table is not there due to there being no compression possible with this method).\n * they contain the same sequence of symbols multiple times (words being used multiple times etc.). So instead of repeating the word (or sequence of symbols in general) you just reference the position of the previous occurrence of the word in the hope that the reference is shorter. This is called [dictionary coding](_URL_1_) and is the primary method of compression that zip uses. Again if the data is random garbage that is essentially free of useable recurring sequences you can't do any referencing but you still have to somehow indicate the difference between references and actual data which ends up adding to your data in the end.\n\nIf you zip things like raw audio or image files (wav, bmp etc.) you will notice that the compression is much worse than for text. The lossless and lossy compression algorithms for these kinds of data tend to be different because the algorithm needs \"different a priori knowledge\".",
"It's like a Box of lego vs a fully constructed lego castle. \n\nOn the one hand you have all the pieces ordered in the box and an instruction on how to assemble them. It's much smaller and easier to handle/transport. But it isn't yet functional, you can't play with it yet. \n\nTo transform it into the functional state you need to follow the instruction and have all the pieces. If you do, you get a much more spacious lego castle, but you can totally play with it now. \n\nIf you want to transport it again, you can deconstruct it again and save space. As long as the instructions and all the pieces are there. \n\nThis is the basic idea but you might argue \"wait, you don't actually make the volume of the castle smaller. Filesize after compression IS getting smaller though\" \nTrue. The keyword here is redundance. \n\nSay, you have 200 identical grey legos in your Box. You need them to make the castle walls. Now, your computer doesnt need to pack all 200 of those pieces. Just pack one, and include an instruction on how many of this one piece you need. Boom, 199 less pieces in the Box. \n\nCompression is a BIG topic and there is much more to this \n ",
"There are some very good answers here! To add a little on the theoretical background:\n\nThis ties into what's known as Information Theory.\n\nInformation Theory was studied at lot in its early days so governments could figure out the best way to encrypt signals in WWII, and also to know how much information you could send through a cable when the cable picked up \"noise\" (random, uncontrollable change in the cable's signal).\n\nTo answer any of these questions they had to define what information is and how to calculate how much information is in a message. They decided to calculate it based on how complex the signal is - how many different symbols (like letters) are in the signal. The idea is that if the message is always the same letter, then the receiver knows what the signal will be. If the signal changes, then you only need to know when it changes and what it changes to.\n\nThis can be tied back farther to the even more theoretical notion of \"complexity\". In the case of Kolmogorov Complexity (different kinds of complexity have different definitions), a signal's complexity is the length of the smallest computer program that can recreate the signal. If your signal is a bunch of words then this has to do with the content of the message, but imagine if your signal is a mathematical sequence like a sine wave or the Fibonacci sequence - then you can simply send the equation and the receiver knows all the information about the signal from a very short message (compared to sending a long string of numbers that represents the values of the sine wave or Fibonacci sequence).\n\nCompression uses the basic idea that not all the bytes used to store a normal file are necessary to contain all the information - that there's some \"wasted\" storage in standard files. There are a few different ways to calculate which bytes you can get rid of or how to restructure the data without losing information, but there are also ways that will lose a little information (saving a photo as JPEG does this - it simplifies the image using an algorithm to save storage space at the expense of discarding some \"information\" - i.e. details - in the photo)",
"Plenty of people have covered the basics, so let me just recommend a topic: [Arithmetic coding](_URL_2_). It isn't used in zips, but it is used in some more advanced compression formats (e.g. lzma, technically it uses [Range encoding](_URL_0_), which is virtually identical) \n\nIt's one of those brilliant ideas that takes a little work to wrap your head around at first, but once you get it, it seems so obvious you want to travel back in time and slap yourself for not knowing it. In a sentence, it boils down to \"what if each possible digit in a numerical base didn't take up the same space\". So e.g. in binary, instead of allocating half of your space to 0 and half to 1, you know there are going to be a lot more 0s, so you allocate 90% to 0 and 10% to 1.\n\n\"But when it comes to computers, you can't really handle any numbers between 0 and 1\" you may say. The solution is essentially [fixed-point arithmetic](_URL_1_). Start with a big range, normally 0 to the biggest value your variable can take (2^(32) - 1), but let's say 0 to 1000 for illustrative purposes. If your first number is 0, keep the first 90% of that range -- it becomes 0 to 900. If it's 1, keep the last 10% -- it becomes 901 to 1000. To encode the second number, repeat the process, e.g. for 00 you'd go 0-1000 - > 0-900 - > 0-810. If you run out of precision, you can renormalize (\"make the range bigger again\"). Once you're done, pick a number within the range you have left, and that's your compressed string.\n\nTo decode, you take that number and do the algorithm backwards. So if the number is 600, you know the first bit is 0 (because it's in the range 0-900), then you know the second bit is 0 (because it's in the range 0-810), etc.",
"Zip uses a compression algorithm called DEFLATE, which is really just 2 other algorithms packaged together, LZ77, and Huffman.\n\nLZ77 basically records runs of the same or similar data, and Huffman assigns the most common bytes shorter bitstrings.",
"This is how it was explained to me way back in the Dos 6 days. Take a sheet of paper, rip it into little squares and stack them on top of each other in an order. On the top piece of paper write the order so you know how to put them all back into a full sheet again.",
"I wanted to reply because the top explanations are very different from ZIP and do not capture what makes ZIP special. One top explanation is RLE (run length encoding) and teaches how to replace strings like \"RRRRRGGGBB\" with \"5R3G2B\" (5 Rs, 3 Gs, and 2Bs). RLE is simple, but is not ZIP, and unlike ZIP, cannot effectively compress strings like RGBRGBRGBRGB... Another top explanation is dictionary-based compression, where long bit patterns are replaced with much smaller offsets into a dictionary. Then the dictionary and the smaller offsets are stored together, ready to be decompressed by looking up each offset in the dictionary they were stored with. This is also not ZIP and I think does not explain what makes ZIP really magical and elegant. ZIP is special because like dictionary compression it performs an effective substitution-based compression, and so is more effective than RLE, but unlike dictionary compression, it does not have to store the dictionary alongside the compressed output, making it much more efficient than dictionary compression in the end (the dictionary is quite large).\n\nZIP uses a sliding window. It scans over the uncompressed data from start to finish with a fixed-sized window and prints out the compressed data to a separate output file. So it might make more sense to say ZIP encodes rather than compresses the original input file, as the input file is left untouched while ZIP is running, and instead a new encoded (compressed) output file is constructed alongside the original uncompressed file. What ZIP will do is try to replace each string in the uncompressed input file by printing a much smaller offset to the compressed output file. Each time ZIP does this we say it is \"replacing\" the string from the input file. The key idea in ZIP is to replace the string just beyond the sliding window with a pointer to a matching string found within the sliding window, and then move the sliding window forward to encompass the string we just replaced, and kick out a string from the sliding window to keep the window a fixed size:\n\n uncompressed input, with window ending at '|', valid strings to point at are 0, 1, 2, and 3:\n |(3)RBGR(2)RRR(1)R(0)BBB|RBGRBBBRRRGBG...\n\n compressed output, with window ending at '|', strings replaced with pointers into window:\n |RBGRRRRRBBB|302GBG...\n\n move window in input forward now...\n RBGRRRRRBB|(3)B(2)RBGR(1)BBB(0)RRR|GBG...\n\n move window in compressed output forward now...\n RBGRRRRRBBB|302|GBG...\n\nIf a string cannot be matched up with a string within the window, that string is not replaced, but instead becomes a valid string to point at within the sliding window, hopefully helping to compress later strings. This also means that when starting compression, the window is empty, and it cannot replace strings with smaller pointers as there are no valid strings to point at yet. ZIP has to \"get started\". Once it encodes some data however, it has built up enough contents for its sliding window of valid pointers and is able to achieve good compression from then on.\n\nThe most elegant thing about ZIP is during decompression, the contents of the sliding window where the values of the valid pointers are stored is always decompressed first, so subsequent pointers can always be decompressed. This is very roughly like surfing, where the decompression of data is like the wave, and the end of the sliding window, where we are replacing compressed pointers with their original pointer values is like the surf board. We complete decompression when the surf board reaches the shore. Since the 'dictionary' (the wave front) is built dynamically during decompression, there is no need to store it with the compressed output.",
"Let me demonstrate:\n\nFUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!!\n\n-- > \n\nFU(10)CK!(7)\n\nThe second one is smaller, but contains all the same information. It's just that the repetitive and empty bits have been expressed in fewer letters.\n\nImagine doing a search and replace on the text of War & Peace to change every instance of the word \"intelligence\" to \"X98\" and every instance of the word \"something\" to \"X71.\" The book definitely has fewer letters now. But you'd need to remember what words those codes stand for to change everything back and make the book readable again. \n\nThat list of codes is the compression method. Maybe you even saved enough letters through your the entire book that you could tack on the \"key\" to all the codes in the book itself and still save space. \n\nWhat if you could come up with a computer program that would invent as many codes as it needed to save as much space as possible, and then always tack on the code \"key\" at the end, so anyone could decode it? Then you'd have something like a Zip compression method software.",
"basically they look for repeating sequences of data and replace them with a smaller value that represents them. \n\nSimilar to if you had an essay on US presidents and every time you found the word \"president\" in the essay you erased it and wrote \"p\". The essay is now smaller but everyone who is informed before that \"p\" means president will have no trouble reading it.",
"Compression algorithms looks for patterns. These can be groups of letters, phrases or repeated bytes. Text can be compressed quite well, there are only roughly 64 characters (upper/lower case+punctuation) that are used, while a byte can hold up to 256 characters (you can store 4 letters in only 3 bytes this way). There are also common letter/word combinations, q is almost always followed by u and 'the' for example. Truly random data cannot be compressed as there aren't any patterns. That's why it is better to compress first, then encrypt. Trying to compress an already-encrypted file would not work very well as encrypted data looks random.\n",
"It depends upon what you're trying to compress.\n\nVideo compresses by using a reference frame then a set of instructions for the following X number of frames which details which pixels get changed and what they're changed to (since they're just numerically mapped color squares) in each of the following frames.\n\nThis is because in video, in two consecutive frames, very little has changed. Therefore the most efficient method to compress is simply to use frame 1 and then a section of code which tells you which pixels in frame 2 to alter.\n\nIf too many pixels change, just include it as a new frame.\n\n\nAlso, one other note about data compression. The bits are usually mixed up in a preset way (part of the compression algo, then reversed in the decompression algo). This lowers error rates because random bits can be corrected for but errors tend to occur in groups. So if you lose a random bit here and there, it can be corrected for with error correction coding (ECC), but if you have groups of bits lost, said groups of bits can't be fixed.\n\nSo you mix up the bits and groups of lost bits end up becoming random once the data string goes through the decompression. Those random bits get fixed with ECC and the entire thing works.\n\nIt's just one of the steps used in gaining higher data compression rates.\n\nRealistically, data compression uses multiple techniques combined to achieve high compression rates.",
"If I tell you the number 111111 you wouldn't remember it as 111111 you would remember it as 6 ones. That's essentially how compression works. It finds patterns. The same as if it told you 1234543 you would remember 1-5 ascending then back down to 3.",
"Let's answer with an analogy. In the novel Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, the phrase \"so it goes\" appears 106 times. That adds up to 1060 characters (including spaces.) If you replace every occurrence of this phrase with a placeholder code, say \"42\", you just saved 848 characters of space. \n\nYou can recreate the original by reversing the replacement. Do this for a bunch of common phrases and you can reduce the storage size by quite a bit. \n\nZip works on a binary level, but the concept is the same. ",
"Here's a non-technical explanation I was once given:\n\n\"The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.\"\n\nTake each instance of \"ain\" and replace it with \"X\":\n\n\"The rX in SpX falls mXly on the plX.\"\n\nYou've shortened the sentence while preserving all of the information. ",
"For a true explanation for a five year old:\n\nImagine you had to write some 0's and 1's on a piece of paper. You have to write this:\n\n 00011110011111111100000000\n\nBut then instead of writing this, you could make it easier for yourself by compressing it a bit by writing it like this:\n\n 3x0 4x1 2x0 9x1 8x0\n\nIt's clear that this fills less space to write on the paper, and you haven't lost any information. To get back you simply need to write the number of 0's and 1's as the sequence specifies.\n\nNaturally, this is not how it really works and is a very, very simplified explanation but it does explain how information can be compressed without losing information.",
"Take the following data:\n\n ABABABABABABABABAB\n\nThat's just `AB` 9 times. Compression algorithms find patterns like that and reduce them down to something like\n\n 9AB\n\nwhich, during decompression, signals to the program something to the effect of _repeat the next sequence N times_. In reality, there are _many_ patterns (not just repetition, but things like bit packing and other voodoo) that compression algorithms can figure out.\n\nThe meaning of the data is the same, it's just expressed differently. This is all fairly standard information theory.\n\n---\n\nThe golden rule in information theory is that data must have some non-randomness to it in order to be compressed. **Truly random data cannot be compressed** (and if you try, you will most likely _inflate_ the overall size).",
"Here is an amazing primer on information theory, information entropy and eventually compression.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nYou should watch the entire series, it really breaks everything down and makes it easy to understand, and it gives you a framework of answering questions like \"why can't I just keep running winzip on this file over and over infinitely, compressing it more and more each time.\"",
"Data compression actually has two methods, lossy and lossless. Let's talk about lossless first.\n\nLossless is a kind of compression that keeps the same data once uncompressed. Imagine properly packing things into a box so you can take them back out with no damage.\n\nIn terms of data, it is a little different. Data tends to have repeated patterns. Compression means instead of spelling everything out, you build an abbreviation system (Federal Bureau of Investigation = > FBI) to use less characters to say something. More advanced mechanisms are more serious about abbreviating everything possible, further reducing the file size. ZIP, RAR, and 7z are some popular generic lossless file compressions. FLAC is used for audio, while PNG is used for pictures.\n\nNotably, since you will get exactly the same thing after compression and uncompression, there is no quality setting for these files.\n\nFor lossy compression, you focus on cramming everything into a box as small as possible, then step on the box and cinch it down even further with a really strong rope. This will damage the items, but they can still be used.\n\nIn terms of data, in addition to abbreviations, you also ignore some finer details like a groove in a leaf of a tree with thousands of leaves. It's more like \"nobody cares about that\" kind of data compression. You are bound to lose some image quality, but the size reduction can prove economical for generic daily use photos and amateur photography.\n\nText, documents, and programs (exe) are usually not compressed like this, as any one bit different than the normal and it has severe problems. Images and music are usually compressed lossy, such as jpg and mp3 files. It doesn't contain all the information -- just what you would notice.\n\nWhen you set the quality slider during a JPG export, you basically say how much detail you want to keep in the file. The programs responsible for compressions will comply and produce a proper comprsssion you need. ",
"Here is a great explanation: _URL_0_ on that subject that cleared everything up for me. I couldn't understand it either to be honest, but now I do :) Hope it helps!"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ymt63/eli5_how_can_the_3gb_zip_i_download_turn_into_7gb/cyess3t/"
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_editor",
"http://i.imgur.com/SnBV1oo.png",
"http://i.imgur.com/4QXZIFT.png",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5kohsr/eli5_how_do_zip_files_compress_information_and/dbpgtvs/",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1dshk6/eli5_a_file_is_often_compressed_to_smaller_size/"
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[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huffman_coding",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_coder"
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_encoding",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed-point_arithmetic",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_coding"
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"https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/computer-science/informationtheory/moderninfotheory/v/compressioncodes"
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"http://www.winzip.com/learn/file-compression.html"
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25jbxd | how come 'awful' generally means bad, not 'full of awe'? | Like 'awesome' | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25jbxd/eli5_how_come_awful_generally_means_bad_not_full/ | {
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"The same can be said for 'terrible' and 'terrific'. English is a cruel hearted bitch.\n",
"_URL_0_\n\nFound that it should answer your question "
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"http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/6802/awesome-vs-awful"
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4lu793 | why are cosmetic surgeries such as skin lightening and breast implants frowned upon unlike braces? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4lu793/eli5_why_are_cosmetic_surgeries_such_as_skin/ | {
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"First of all, this is very subjective. I think amongst people I know, botox would be \"frowned upon\" just as much as breast implants - both of them are unnecessary surgery for purely cosmetic reasons.\n\nBraces, though, are often required for medical reasons, to prevent difficulties with teeth getting in each others' way or even causing gum issues. Here in the UK, the NHS provides free or highly subsidised dental treatment when it's medically necessary, and many, many people have braces fitted under this scheme. The NHS will not provide cosmetic dental work though - anyone wanting cosmetic dental work will have to pay to have it done.\n\nAs for skin bleaching, I think the big issue with it is that it somehow implies that having dark skin is a bad thing - and this is an idea which many campaigners have been working hard for decades to overcome, and which is generally seen as not being acceptable in the western world.",
"Everyone agrees that straight teeth is better than crooked teeth.\n\nNot everyone agrees that light skin is better than dark skin, big boobs are better than small boobs, tight skin is better than wrinkles. So when someone does one of those surgeries, it's like they're saying \"fuck people with wrinkles, wrinkles suck\" and people generally do not appreciate feeling offended and marginalised like that.\n\nSay everyone who looks like you suddenly went to get surgery to look less like you. You'd feel pretty stink about it.",
"Because unlike skin lightening or breast implants, braces can improve someone's health. Also as /u/LondonPilot pointed out, skin lightening implies that there's something wrong with having dark skin.\n\n"
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23tkcx | national debt and the financial state of a country | I don't understand how national debt works. How can a country such as the US continue to spend, loan and borrow money when their debt clearly exceeds what they'll ever be able to pay off? Does high national debt mean that a country is in bad shape financially? Why or why not? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/23tkcx/eli5_national_debt_and_the_financial_state_of_a/ | {
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"Debt is and isn't a bad thing. Think of it like owning a credit card. If you use the card here and there for things that you need but don't necessarily have the cash on hand for, the credit card is a great tool. You pay it off every month or in a few months during a hard time, but that debt gives you the flexibility to make decisions without relying on capital that you have right now.\n\nOn the other hand, if you use that card for all your purchases and you put money on it that you can't afford, eventually the interest kicks in and you have to cut back on things you need in order to pay it off. \n\nRight now, the US is fully capable of paying off its national debt and will be able to fund it for quite some time. There is however a tipping point where a high debt significantly cuts into a nation's ability to do other things. The current debt service in this year's budget is about 6%. However, if a country continues to borrow beyond its receipts, they have to commit a larger portion of the budget to pay it back. In other words, the US would have to make cuts to programs like Medicare, Social Security, defense, etc in order to pay back the debt. Either that or raise taxes. Both are options that aren't great, so the best idea is to just make sure it doesn't get to that point.\n\nMost of the debt becomes debt because the government issues bonds. The bonds are bought by the public or other nations at face value with a maturity date in the future where they will be worth X more dollars. When maturity comes due, the treasury owes the bondholder that money, so that is how it is financed.\n\nThe other option on paying back debt is a somewhat nuclear option that some countries have had no choice but to embrace: inflation. In essence, say you owe $10000 on your credit card you can't afford. You call the credit card company and say you have $100 dollars in your hand you can use to pay it off. Then you tell them that the $100 you have magically turned into $500. Obviously, you can't do that because you don't print your own currency, but the US does and can simply print more currency, effectively devaluing it to a point where the debt becomes more manageable. This is usually an awful idea though because it has severe ramifications on the economy. Even though the government can pay back its debt, everyone's dollar is now worth less, prices rise, unemployment rises and lots of other really terrible things occur.\n\nHope that helped.",
"High national debt may or may not be indicative of a country's health. Essentially, there are two main ways to use debt. You can borrow money in order to fund future investments to get more money in the future, or you can borrow money for consumer goods and services, which is a short-term boost in a country's output but doesn't provide lasting growth. \n\nWhile you shouldn't compare a country's financial situation with a citizen's; imagine this scenario. You're purchasing a new $15,000 car and you have $20,000 saved up. The responsible thing to do is to finance the car (using debt) to pay the $15,000 over time as opposed to up front. While you'll be paying more in physical dollars, you now have the ability to use the $15,000 (minus down payment, first payment, etc.) to make you more money.\n\nWhile a country's government could use its own money to finance investments, it is a better move to use foreign money to finance the investments and use domestic money for domestic uses.\n\nAs far as how a country like the US can continue to borrow money, it all boils down to a nation's credit rating. Because the US is (currently) in good economic standing, the default risk that the US will never pay back its debt is low. It's assumed that the US will continue to be in good economic standing indefinitely, or until some event offers evidence to the contrary. If evidence like that arose, then the nation's credit rating will subsequently drop.",
"If you're trying to educate yourself, add these to the pot and stir it:\n\n* The **deficit** is this year's budget shortfall. Congress authorizes the spending of money on this project or that, but doesn't actually have the money to spend, so it must be borrowed. \n* The **debt** is the sum of the deficits -- the total amount of borrowed money that has to be paid back.\n\nGovernments borrow money by selling bonds. When they come due, we borrow new money to pay off the old debts. Fortunately, this is not difficult, because governments can usually borrow money at really low interest rates.\n\n"
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1aq3tc | [meta] two suggestion for eli5 | Hello, all. I'm a big fan of this sub and I think we could improve it in two simple ways.
1) **Use CSS to give more visibility and prominence to the box that suggests searching your eustion before submitting**: I see the same questions getting asked almost every other day. One way to respond would be to post "USE THE SEARCH BAR" in every repeat thread. I think using CSS to make a very big, white on red sign that informs submitters that we've answered a BUTTLOAD of questions is a more elegant solution
2) We should make a compilation megathread. It'll just be a series of already answered questions categorized broadly by subjects and will simply include LINKS to those posts that have the most, highest rated answers in the case of multiple threads that ask the same question. We could put these threads into the sidebar as a big "compilation of knowledge". We can all pitch in threads and the original psoter can keep editing in links. This should also help with repeat questions that get asked every day.
3) Flairs. This one isn't so important, but we should be able to list our specialty in our flairs, like in Askscience and Askhistory. This is purely a secondary suggestion. EDIT: This is really not that important, that's why it wasn't counted in the title | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1aq3tc/meta_two_suggestion_for_eli5/ | {
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"I'm not a moderator, but I've heard #3 a bunch of times, and when it comes up, the founders of the subreddit are generally pretty opposed to it. They don't want contributors to feel as if they must be a certified expert in a field, having a better-than-average knowledge or even just the ability to digest complicated information and write a good layman-friendly explanation is sufficient.\n\nI personally think there's a risk of having flaired users drown out regular users because people will see flair and think \"that means he is definitely correct\" and not take contradictory answers seriously. I've run across a few posts where someone had a nicely written, moderately upvoted post that was completely incorrect. I think ELI5 would need a wider base of expert contributors and a stronger culture of \"downvote incorrect posts\" as well as stronger moderation, at which point it's just become a more general askscience or askhistorians. "
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4phvam | how does mold grow on packaged foods? is there just mold on everything everywhere all the time | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4phvam/eli5_how_does_mold_grow_on_packaged_foods_is/ | {
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"Yes. There are mold spores in essentially every bit of air there i (outside of like a microchip or NASA processing room). When those mold spores land on an organic surface, and they have water, they will grow. "
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1q8sat | how in the hell does evolution produce 'pictures' of ants on a fruit flies' wings? | This absolutely boggles my mind. [This unique species of Fruit Fly comes equipped with fully detailed images of 'ants' on it's wings to scare off predators.](_URL_0_) For the life of me I cannot wrap my head around how this could have evolved. Please help. Brain Hurts. It feels like aliens did this to mess with our heads :(
Thanks to u/**zqyogl** who summed my question up far more easily than I did. It appears this is still an open question and it may have no answer, yet! Onward Science :)
> ** I think the entire problem is that if the image evolved to only be perfect to the species' predators, then it would not be recognizable to humans. The OP is pointing out that if the images were created through selection pressure from predators, then either fruit flies process qualia like humans or there is some metaphysical pattern.
-from the OP**
EDIT: PIC [Here](_URL_1_)
EDIT: I understand selection and mutation. Of course I thought of something similar - but consider this little problem. This would mean that a 'blotch' which is probably all that local predators would need to confuse as 'ants' in the first place, evolves over time into a picture perfect image of an actual ant in a manner of how it looks to humans. Same with selection. The images are not consistent, not all fruit flies have it, some just have pretty blotches and those are all that are necessary for selection.
~~Remember, all nervous systems do not 'see' things the same way.~~ Higher order mammals do not all process qualia the same. The fact that fruit flies and higher order mammals would process the same qualia in the nervous system/brain is what I am stumped on. This would suggest that genes can just 'pop out' an picture perfect image randomly in a way that is identical to both insects and big brain folks like ourselves. Makes my head hurt please make it stop.
EDIT: Qualia as a color is not the same thing as qualia as a pattern and shape. Consider, fruit flies and humans process the same information in unique ways. But if it's selected because of it's visual consistency in terms of looking like an ant, it could only mean that there exists one set of information that looks like x to fruit flies and y to humans. You do not see how this suggests some sort of metaphysical pattern? It can only be one of two things, either fruit flies process qualia like humans or there is some metaphysical pattern. Please poke holes in what I am suggesting! I don't like it either but the more I think about it it appears all I am left with.
EDIT: I am copying my response here because there is still confusion as to my question and i apologize if I'm the problem there.
yeah, I get that that fruit flies don't see ants or know they are ants. I get how a blotch can evolve in a short amount of time over hundreds of generations into a perfect image of an ant. That's Bio 101 and I am also not questioning it. That's what I thought too, but now think that through one more layer in evolution. A fruit flies wings evolve from blotches into perfect ant images. We agree that fruit flies don't see 'ants' the way we do. But they do see/process something that to us looks like a perfect ant and they react to it as if it were an ant. But it doesn't need to look like a perfect ant to us for it to be selected, so how it appears to us is irrelevant. Fruit flies also do not see blotches. They either process information that their nervous system screams 'ant' and it's just fight or flight or they don't, right? You're not considering that predators react as if there are ants. The ants on the wings suggest there are ants to predators. Nature can only evolve a message if that message is selected for by a predator (like stripes on a zebra for example)
So whatever form of information regarding the 'ant' or images of the ant generates in the nervous system of the fruitfly or predator (I assume we can probably never have a clear answer here) it means that what we call evolving blotches to the fruit fly generates the same image as a perfect ant to humans. Remember, selection does not need to generate a perfect image of an ant to higher order mammals for selection to occur. Wings are one dimensional, like a piece of paper. There are no smells, no three dimensional shapes, no pitter patter of little ant feet or antennae.
All there is is the equivalent of a jpeg on the fruit flies wing. Which suggest that it's visually appearing to fruitflies or predators as an ant however that gets processed by their tiny little minds. But we know that fruitflies cannot generate qualia like higher order humans, it would fly in the face of everything we know about the brain and nervous system. It doesn't matter if it's just instinct - it's still visual that is triggering the reaction in predators and that visual looks identical to an ant in higher order mammals.
What some are suggesting is that selection produced a perfect image of an ant to higher order mammals over time, but there is nothing selecting for the perfect image of the ant, just selecting for whatever the 'blotches' show to whatever predators encounter them.
It's hard problem to wrap the head around because we assume that how we process information is complete, but it's not. We just know how ants appear to our nervous system. Fruitflies just know how ants appear to their nervous system. The 'ding an sich' is the metaphysical entity - the 'ant in and of itself' independent of whatever nervous system is processing the signal. If you're thinking that's getting unnecessarily philosophical, I agree - that's why I am questioning this, I am not sure if redditors here realize the metaphysical issue they are invoking when they try and explain selection and mutation here. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1q8sat/eli5_how_in_the_hell_does_evolution_produce/ | {
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"Baby steps.\n\nA formless blob on the wings could be a neutral mutation, it could even be positive in some way. And then it's just a matter of the more it looks like another thing the more likely it is to survive with its camouflage pattern because predators will mistake it.\n\nOf course predators adapt to the camouflage as well so it's a constant arm's race.",
"Its a beneficial mutation. A fruit fly is born with this strange mutation, but this mutation helps it survive. It's able to reproduce more because of this. It's kids have the same mutation because of heredity, and they are also able to survive better and reproduce more often than other fruit flies. Eventually there are so many that it's now a sub-species. \n\nThere were probably flies with other mutations, like neon pink flies and flies with pictures of delicious steak on their wings, but these traits do not really help them survive better or reproduce more so they died out. This is how evolution works kinda.",
"Here's how I think it happens. \n\nA fruit fly with a dark spot on its wings in the vague shape of an ant survives longer than one without - maybe the dark spot fools predators or maybe it fools prey, or both, it doesn't matter. What matters is that this fruit fly succeeds where a plain fruit fly doesn't. \n\n\nThis fruit fly breeds and passes along this successful trait. The plain fruit fly starved or was eaten (again, doesn't matter - it's dead regardless of exact cause). The result is that over time you get more fruit flies with splotches on their wings and fewer plain fruit flies. The splotches change with each generation and the ones that support survival the best are the ones that look the most like ants, so the fruit flies most likely to survive are the ones with the most ant-looking wing splotches.\n\n\nEach generation of flies refines the wing splotches until you get something that looks totally Photoshopped. \n\n\nDo they all have wings that look this precisely ant-like or is this the best one ever, like when someone finds a potato chip that is an exact silhouette of Winston Churchill? Even with evolution I agree with OP, those pictures, if real, are incredibly mind-boggling.",
"It's hardly the first time something like this has happened. You have bugs that blend in seamlessly with leaves or sticks, butterflies that appear to be a face when extending their wings, and of course as featured in *Cosmos* the heikegani crab, who thanks to superstitious fisherman have been artificially selected into having samurai faces on their shells. ",
"What I don't understand is how ants could be more threatening than a fly. Unless the way it flutters its wings makes it looks like there are tons of ants.",
"I'm going to take a crack at this and suggest that there is/was an arms race of sorts occuring between the fruit fly and its predator.\n\n1)After a while some of the predators had better pattern recognition and could see through the fruit fly's disguise. \n2)As a result of this selection pressure the blotches on the fruit flys which were a little bit more realistic survived to reproduce\n3) The realistic patterns were possibly selected for by the sexual selection mentioned in the article.\n4) Rinse and repeat.\n\n"
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"http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/science/fruit-fly-with-the-wings-of-beauty#ixzz2jhxlLGaH",
"http://i.imgur.com/Cjz4Tui.png"
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325hu5 | what are rare blood types and how do they differ from the normal ones | I don't remember where but i read somewhere about rare bloodtypes that only a small amount of humans have. But how do they differ from the normal ones ( AB,A,B,O) and why are they so rare ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/325hu5/eli5what_are_rare_blood_types_and_how_do_they/ | {
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"I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, but I can explain blood types a little bit. Its a little bit of a puzzle. AB blood type is the universal receiver. A person with AB blood can **recieve** type AB, A, B, and O blood. You're lucky if you have AB blood, because that means you can receive any type of blood. However, your blood is in less demand at blood donations because type AB blood can only be given to other people with type AB blood.\n\nNow, O blood type is the universal donor. Meaning a person with type O blood **give** to people with type AB, A, B, and O. You're unlucky if you have type O blood because that means if you need blood, you can only get it from other people with type O blood. However, you'll be very popular at blood donations because your type O blood can be given to everyone.\n\nAnd for the last two, types A and B, they're in the middle. Type A blood can give to A and AB, and can receive from A and O. Type B can give to B and AB, and can receive from B and O.\n\nNow, I could also delve into positive and negative blood types. Because technically O- is the universal donor and AB+ is the universal receiver. But then we'd be leaving the realm of ELI5. "
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e0eyzk | how can some things be sold so cheap? | Specifically I just picked up a pack of cookies, 6.17 oz's caramel chocolate and from the Netherlands, so can you dumb down how they can manufacture, then ship from over seas and still make it worth selling for one dollar? It was at one of them el cheapo dollar places... well they sold other stuff too that wasn't just a dollar but, I just can't comprehend. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e0eyzk/eli5_how_can_some_things_be_sold_so_cheap/ | {
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"You will notice most of the ingredients would be sugar, something that is extremely cheap.\n\nCost of manufacturing for most things is really miniscule nowadays as we are talking about a handful to a dozen workers overseeing a set of machinery that can produce thousands of these sweets a minute.\n\nAs for shipping, if you are shipping in bulk via cargo ships, it is also extremely cheap. A single cargo ship can ferry thousands of containers per trip. Each container can hold tens of thousands of boxes of these sweets.\n\nPer box, these costs are really small.",
"Some companies also makes up for the money on some of these things by selling other products that they make more profit on.",
"Other reasons in addition to the good “sugar is cheap, shipping is cheap” response. \n\nSometimes these packs in dollar stores are a loss leader: selling small volumes cheaply in the hope that when you shop in more expensive shops, you buy the more expensive packs of the same brand. That’s why they can be odd sizes, as they’re specifically made to sell at that single price point.\n\nIf the demand planner has ordered too much stock for their big customers, I’m sure they they will happily divert some to dollar stores to get some revenue from it rather than scrap it.\n\nI know some big customers are very picky about how long the shelf-life is on products they buy. Dollar stores may also be a way of shifting stock that is coming close to its expiry date.",
"Something that nobody seems to mention is the idea of “markets of sale” sure shipping 1 cookie oversees is like thousands of dollars - but know what the same cost of shipping 1 cookie is the same as shipping 1000000 cookies as they are small and easily packed - so even though 1 cookie would need to cost $1001 to make a profit 1000000 cookies spread it out to the point of which the shipping cost is less than 1 cent per cookie..."
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3n94h1 | why do ceos still manage to get paid millions for failing at their job? | I understand they probably managed to put in a clause when they got hired so they'd be guaranteed tens or hundreds of millions whether or not they succeeded. But why would any company agree to that?
Surely there are plenty of people wanting to become CEOs that there would be a wide pool of suitable candidates to choose from. they aren't desperate enough to give such huge compensation packages. But even CEOs with a track record of failure would get scooped up and guaranteed tons of money. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3n94h1/eli5_why_do_ceos_still_manage_to_get_paid/ | {
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"You are part owner a large corporation. Your CEO sucked and the board has pulled him from power. \n\nYou need a CEO to head the company in the right direction.\n\nYou list out all the people you think would do a good job based on how they've done in other companies. These are people that are actively running other companies similar to yours. (or are in high up positions)\n\nYou hire them away from their already successful companies with tons of money. They might agree to incentives, but none of them are going to give up their highly successful gigs for turning around your company without some guarantees. \n\nThe come in and maybe:\n\n1. they suck at CEOing\n2. the board refuses to let them CEO properly\n3. the company and or their product is inadequate\n\nThey fail, but still get to keep the money promised. \n\nNow, they need to find another job, who wants the CEO that failed to turn your company around?\n "
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bv62ss | why are rainforests always so wet? | I understand they’re wet because there is a lot of precipitation, but what is it about the weather pattern that creates all that wetness? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bv62ss/eli5_why_are_rainforests_always_so_wet/ | {
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"Sometimes it's due to terrain. The Hawaiian islands have dry and wet sides, the moisture laden water from the ocean hits the mountains, rises, cools, and falls as rain. By the time the wind gets to the other side of the island the moisture is gone.\n\nThe rainforests remain humid from the rain, which decreases evaporation rates.",
"When water evaporates in the ocean and forms clouds, wind pushes them around the globe. Sometimes they get pushed into mountains. Mountains cause the air to rise (imagine blowing air at a slope, it has to go up), and mountains usually have colder air masses over them any way. As the clouds cool, due to rising or entering a colder air mass, they can't hold as much water vapor before it condenses into droplets. Those droplets turn into rain. Mountains cause clouds to rain. You see rain forests in areas where prevailing wind patterns push air into large mountain ranges. In the northern hemisphere, air currents (generally) rotate clockwise, and counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere. In the northwest of North America, air currents off of the Pacific Ocean (which are coming from the east, or north east) push clouds into the Coast and Cascade Ranges. These are high enough that they cause the clouds to cool down and release their water as rain, causing rain forests in Washington and British Columbia. In South America, it's from the opposite direction. Air from the southern Atlantic blows in towards the Andes Mountains, which have the same effect, causing the clouds to rain over the Amazonian rain forest."
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1vzzea | how do i play pachinko and why is it so popular in places like japan? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1vzzea/eli5_how_do_i_play_pachinko_and_why_is_it_so/ | {
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"Pachinko is not a game in the sense that most westerners mean that term. There are in most pachinko games no choices. It's like a roulette wheel where you don't even get to decide on which numbers to bet.\n\nThe mechanics of a Pachinko machine are simple. Small steel balls are fed into the top of the machine, they fall through the machine following random paths based on ballistics and physics, and some number of those balls exit the bottom of the machine ready to be scooped up and fed back into the top to continue the cycle. Paying money gets more balls. Depending on how the balls fall they may trigger various effects inside the machine - spinning wheels, ringing bells, triggering lights and sounds, etc. Sometimes the balls fall through holes which remove them from the cycle of play, after a time if you don't keep buying more balls, all the balls will exit and you'll have to stop playing. Sometimes the ways the balls exit produce points or prize tokens or tickets.\n\nAsian cultures often teach people how to engage in meditation and many Asian people find it comforting and pleasurable to enter a light (or deep) meditative state. Pachinko can facilitate that experience. Listening to the balls fall through the machine, watching the wheels turn and the lights flash the \"player\" can enter a state of reverie and mindfulness. People playing long sessions of pachinko are usually in an induced meditative state.\n\nAt the end of the session, in some places, the pachinko machine disburses some tokens or paper receipts which can be converted to cash or prizes. The machine behaves like a very slow slot machine where you don't really know what you've won until after you stop playing. This connects to other Asian cultural practices involving luck, fate, the intersection of ancestors and spirits with the power to intervene in people's lives, etc. And of course it's an economic benefit if you win more than you paid to play; and in some places with some games you can win a lot of money if you're very lucky."
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2464u0 | how oregon's death with dignity act works and how it is a humane way to die. | Hello I'm currently doing research on Physician Assisted Suicide in the United States and quite confuse on Oregon's model regarding PAS. I understand some part but in most it is really confusing, especially the process with the pills. What exactly is the pill that they give the patient and how does the pill kills the patient. Does the pill numb the patient? Also how is it exactly an humane way to die? Is it because they're abel to choose when they want to die or what? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2464u0/eli5how_oregons_death_with_dignity_act_works_and/ | {
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"There's a great documentary on Netflix called, Death With Dignity. It explains it really well. They interview some people who have chosen to use the death with dignity act and a lot of them say they like being able to chose when they go. They all have their own reasons for choosing to use that act, but many of them say they don't want wait until they can't take care of themselves. Another common theme is they want people's last memories of them to be of when they are still themselves and not completely dependent. \n\nThe people they profiled in the film have two steps. The first is a couple of pills that they take a number of hours before the second step. The second step is having the person drink water that has a bunch of pills dissolved in it. They film a couple of people to the very end, and those people say they feel very calm at the end. I would definitely watching that documentary if you can. "
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7tbkee | when windows first loads and everything is going extremely slowly for several minutes but task manager doesn't show anything taking up much cpu or ram, what the hell is it doing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7tbkee/eli5_when_windows_first_loads_and_everything_is/ | {
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"Look at your I/O (Disk usage), most of the time, that is what is slowing down your windows startup the most. \n\nThat's why so many people buy SSDs, they are much faster than regular hard drives (but obviously more expensive).",
"The problem is that it doesn't show anything taking up much RAM\n\nUnused RAM is wasted RAM!\n\nWindows aggressively precaches what it thinks you're going to need so that things can load quickly and seem super responsive, but when it first starts up the RAM is empty, it has nothing in the RAM so when you try to open something it has to pull it from disk, but the disk is also busy filling up the cache so what you just asked for has to wait in line.\n\nThe initial slowness is Windows ensuring that it will be quick for the rest of its ontime"
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1jv5b1 | why can't we make alcohol pills to get drunk? | Basically the title. Everyone seems to hate drinking so much... why can't we just pack a load of alcohol into some (albeit horse pill sized) pills and take a few to get hammered? Are there some sort of limitations to this? Dangers? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jv5b1/eli5_why_cant_we_make_alcohol_pills_to_get_drunk/ | {
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"I feel like it would be dangerous because everyone needs a different amount of alcohol to get drunk. A 120 lb girl won't need nearly as much as a 200 lb guy. I foresee it being incredibly easy to accidentally overdose if these ever existed."
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3ai2ou | how did pigeons come to inhabitate almost every region of the world? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ai2ou/eli5_how_did_pigeons_come_to_inhabitate_almost/ | {
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"Trade.\n\nPeople from one part of the world travelled all over, and pidgeons are one of those species that went with them, either by staying up in the sails of ships, or hiding away inside train cars, or wherever they could rest.",
"Pigeons were domesticated thousands of years ago from the rock dove, a wild species that made its home in seaside cliffs, mainly for their homing abilities, and used to carry long-distance messages. So before radio, everywhere humans went, so did pigeons. ",
"A number of things. They have a large natural range, from Ireland, across Europe and northern Africa, all the way across to China and Mongolia, so when they arrived new places, they were able to live there without trouble, because they were able to handle lots of different environments. \n\nThey build crappy nests, so they don't need a lot of elaborate construction materials to make babies. \n\nThey were popular (and useful) pets when the white folk were exploring the world, and they fly so escape easily.\n\nThey're happy in cities, which most birds aren't, so can occupy a place that was otherwise large and empty. \n\nSo basically they were well suited to live just about anywhere people took them. They escaped easily and just took over in the cities where no other birds were wanting to hang out. "
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9ahdub | why do self-checkout machines sometimes need “assistance?” | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9ahdub/eli5_why_do_selfcheckout_machines_sometimes_need/ | {
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"Sometimes the customer operating the self-checkout don't follow prescribed steps, so the machine calls for assistance. For example, not placing a scanned object in the bagging area without indicating that you are going to skip bagging will call for assistance. Or because a customer scans a restricted item, like alcohol, that requires an ID check. Or scanning an object and want it removed will call for assistance to ensure that the item isn't being removed from the purchase, but stolen along with the paid items.",
"A lot of people don't think about the fact that the bagging area is a scale that weighs the items you put into it. The computer is expecting everything you scan to have a set weight, so it knows the rough total of what should be in the bagging area. If you do something that screws with the total weight, the computer goes \"well now I have no idea if this person is trying to steal something or not, let's get a human over here to investigate\". \n\nI worked the self checkout when I was in high school a decade ago, and it was mostly ladies setting their purses down on the scale, children leaning on it, sitting on it, grabbing items from it, or people coming with so many items that they have to shuffle items around on the scale to make room for the next things they will scan.\n\nThe key to making your self checkout experience a breeze is to scan one item at a time, place it into the bagging area in one motion, and move on to the next item. Dont touch any of the items in the bagging area until you have finished paying.\n\n",
"Because the machines are not designed to anticipate untrained human actions, i.e., customers. "
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376j28 | why the act of war is an option to solve disputes between countries | It's 2015 and people still have to die because of political disagreements, etc. Isn't negotioations the best solution? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/376j28/eli5_why_the_act_of_war_is_an_option_to_solve/ | {
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"Why would it not be one of the options? There are times when force is needed to ensure the safety of your people or their access to resources or other interests their government may have. These are not always just political disagreements and negotiation does not always work. It is the same reason police are armed. "
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4feqdk | why is judaism one of the major world religions now that there are only 15 million of them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4feqdk/eli5why_is_judaism_one_of_the_major_world/ | {
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"There's nothing that makes one religion \"major\" at the exclusion of another. It's not like there's an official list.\n\nJudaism is historically important as the precursor to Christianity and Islam. It is also a culturally and politically important group in much of the Western world.",
"I can't really explain the logic behind any particular list without seeing it first but, in general:\n\nA) Judaism is one of the top-10 religions by count of worshipers.\n\nB) Judaism is the foundation on which Christianity and, to a lesser degree, Islam is built upon."
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2054fq | what makes tires blow out? | I was struck by how many blown-out tires I see on US freeways. that's something I very rarely used to see in germany, where the cops check your threads at pretty much every traffic stop and where fines for tires with low profiles are quite steep. do tires blow out because people run them into the ground in the US or are there other reasons? what can I do to prevent this from happening to me? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2054fq/eli5_what_makes_tires_blow_out/ | {
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"yep. regular replacements and using tires suitable for the road surface you're on simply retains the integrity better. if they're regularly checked, they're less likely to cause problems. arguably german road surfaces and the climate are generally less harsh on tires compared to the US, tho of course that depends on where you go in the US."
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35ssr5 | why is it when i get strep throat it hurts to swallow my own saliva, but not food/drink? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35ssr5/eli5why_is_it_when_i_get_strep_throat_it_hurts_to/ | {
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"First thought would be that with saliva you are swallowing a very small thing forcing your throat to contract more than it would with a pile of food or a mouthful of fluid.\n\nEdit for analogy: A toothpaste tube is your throat. Squeezing out the toothpaste is swallowing. Much easier to push out the toothpaste when there is a decent amount still in the tube. Swallowing a bit of spit is like trying to squeeze out that last little bit. Now imagine the tube is sore. Poor tube :("
]
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3hhkde | where/when did the nun dress code originate? does it share a history with other abrahamic dress codes like the hijab? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3hhkde/eli5_wherewhen_did_the_nun_dress_code_originate/ | {
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"You're probably thinking of sisters, not nuns. It's a common mistake, sisters are allowed to live public lives, they typically work at a church and they go to stores, they can go to movies, etc. Nuns are cloistered and they typically live secluded in a monastery from the time they join until they die. The typical black and white dress that you're probably used to seeing depicted isn't as common as you'd think, they're only worn by those in the order of St. Francis because those colors and typically associated with him. \n\nOther groups wear browns, white and blue, other stuff like that. The garment is really just simple robes, my guess would be that it's mostly just tradition, the wear dates back to a time when similar clothing would have been common for women of high status. Most orders advocate poverty, which is why the clothing is very simply compared to something you'd see a noble or queen of those times wearing. You can see similarities in depictions of [Queen Isabella of Castille](_URL_0_).\n\nSource: 4 years at a catholic school, and we actually had a day where the sisters specifically told us about this kinda stuff. \n\n\nBonus: I don't know about all nuns, but the only nuns I ever met wore only extremely simple brown tunics. \n",
"At the simplest level, Catholic religious clothing including nuns' habits descends from ancient Roman dress, filtered through 2000 years of interpretation, aesthetics, historical accident, etc. It's really meant more to separate out members of religious orders as having a specific role within the community, and less about being super modest because you are religious. I mean, surely the women's clothes are going to be modest, because, well, you've read the bible. But it's not like a chador or niqab or something where the nuns are doing it because they believe it's the most spiritually proper way to dress. It's also not really about averting the male gaze or anything.\n\nTL;DR: nun's habits are more like a uniform, at the end of the day, and less like a burqa.\n\nAlso, YSK that a hijab isn't a particular type of garment. Hijab just refers to any head covering used for modesty."
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5qyvjr | why doesnt the earth move from under me while im in the air. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5qyvjr/eli5_why_doesnt_the_earth_move_from_under_me/ | {
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"It's because you're moving at the same speed. This is the same reason, if you were to flip a coin in an airplane, it wouldn't go flying to the back of the plane. It's moving at the same speed as the plane so, relative to the plane, it's stationary. Likewise, relative to the surface of the Earth, you're stationary. ",
"Because of Newton's First Law of Motion: \"In an inertial reference frame, an object either remains at rest or continues to move at a constant velocity, unless acted upon by a force.\"\n\nYou were moving along with the surface when you jumped or whatever and being in the air doesn't change that.",
"I had a friend who thought this would apply if he jumped in the air while we were on his boat, moving at a high rate of speed.... It does not!"
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4kkmbz | why is it easier to do pull-ups with our hands facing towards us as opposed to outward s? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4kkmbz/eli5why_is_it_easier_to_do_pullups_with_our_hands/ | {
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"Different muscles in use, see for example this picture;\n_URL_0_",
"That is way too general of a statement/question. It's only easier facing us if you have stronger biceps. It's easier forwards if you have stronger shoulders/triceps and back. ",
"Both movements recruit similar muscles. However the chin up activates the biceps and the pectorals more than the pull up. So it's easier because more muscles are used to assist ",
"A pull up, hand facing out, uses your back and mostly your lats. A chin up, or hand facing towards, uses your lats but also your biceps or more specifically your brachialis"
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2d4k48 | i've often heard people say that america is lawsuit-happy, but how exactly is that different from europe? do other countries not have so many lawyers? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2d4k48/eli5_ive_often_heard_people_say_that_america_is/ | {
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"We have a different regulatory framework than Europeans in a very fundamental way. Neither is better or worse. The US basically allows products to launch when industry says they are safe, we don't register new products/technologies with a regulatory body (with the exception of the FDA) before sale into the market. We allow economic forces like consumer repurchase or govern what products stick around. The EU is governed almost exactly oppositely... industry had a different burden of proof, they prove safety first, so lawsuits after the fact are much more rare. The user is seen as misusing the product if they are harmed by it, because the culture is more reserved in product introductions. \n\nI read once that the US has something like 100 product launches, for every launch in the EU, but don't quote me on the number. We are more wild-west-ish....",
"There's no universal healthcare in America, so often when people get hurt, the only way they're going to be able to pay for it is to sue and try and get a settlement for their medical expenses. ",
"Such silly lawsuits are often seen as childish and they are thrown out of court. Often such trolls will get fines from the court for wasting the court's time too. ",
"IMO, it's the amount of damages rewarded. In Europe, you might get a couple of hundred euros if a waiter spills hot coffee over you: compensation for the clothes, medical costs, time lost. That's it. If there is further medical costs, the insurance companies settle it amongst themselves. Result? It's not worth suing. These things often get settled without lawyers involved. Compare that to [this infamous case](_URL_0_), and add the fact that lawyers are allowed to work under a no cure no pay regime, and you've got all the incentives needed to file law suits."
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1drjcc | the relationship between game theory and mathematics. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1drjcc/eli5_the_relationship_between_game_theory_and/ | {
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"Game theory is a type of mathematics, like number theory or geometry."
]
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[]
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||
11s4or | how is reddit able to handle so much content, why is reddit so fast? | I have almost a hundred reddits. I post comments all day, everyday. There is always a new link or new reddit that I seem to find. I am always upvoting and downvoting.
Despite all of that, I am amazed at how much reddit can handle all of the data. How does it handle keeping track of upvotes? What about all of the comments? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/11s4or/eli5_how_is_reddit_able_to_handle_so_much_content/ | {
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" > Reddit was originally written in Common Lisp but was rewritten in Python in December 2005.[42] The reasons given for the switch were wider access to code libraries and greater development flexibility. The Python web framework that former Reddit employee Aaron Swartz developed to run the site, _URL_1_, is now available as an open-source project.[43]\nReddit currently uses Pylons as its web framework.[44] As of November 2009, Reddit has decommissioned their physical servers and migrated to Amazon Web Services.[45]\nReddit uses PostgreSQL as primary datastore and slowly moving to Apache Cassandra, a column oriented datastore. It uses RabbitMQ for offline processing, HAProxy for load balancing and memcached for caching.\nIn early 2009, Reddit started using jQuery.[46]\n\n_URL_0_"
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17gyxs | when i add bass to my tracks, why does the song sound/get louder? | With my [track](_URL_0_), I looked at the waveform and I noticed that it is thicker after the bass drop than it is before the drop. Why is that? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17gyxs/eli5_when_i_add_bass_to_my_tracks_why_does_the/ | {
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"Our ears are less sensitive to bass frequencies compared to mid-range or treble frequencies. This effect has been documented by acousticians and charted as [equal-loudness contours](_URL_0_) (like the Fletcher-Munson curves and Robertson-Dadson curves). In order for bass frequencies to be perceived as equally loud as treble frequencies, they must actually be played louder (and would appear thicker when you look at the waveform)."
]
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9rl1ts | what is the role of pigments in photosynthesis in autumn? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9rl1ts/eli5_what_is_the_role_of_pigments_in/ | {
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"Strictly speaking, the colour change in autumn is actually the tree not continuing with photosynthesis. While there are a lot of other changes that occur in leaves around this time that also contribute to colour, the main reason they change is the chlorophyll in the leaves breaking down from not being required anymore. \n\nThroughout the year, leaves also have red and yellow pigments from components within, however these are masked by the vibrant green of the chlorophyll. When autumn arrives it isn’t viable to continue and trees abandon their leaves, and the chlorophyll breaks down. Without the vast amounts of green pigment, other colours can be seen, hence the change from green to reds and oranges. \n\nFinally the leaf is severed (intentionally by the tree) and the full process is complete."
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||
fkinxn | what is the difference between price gouging and supply/demand pricing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fkinxn/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_price_gouging/ | {
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"Price gouging is when the product value is raised disproportionately to its value due to lack of supply. Supply and demand should show a regular, consistent price based off of value, with a sales price when demand drops, or supply increases. (When practiced properly)",
"In the classic (and simple) model of supply and demand it is _assumed_ that both supply and demand are what economist called \"elastic\". This means that if you reduce demand then supply will decrease and if you increase demand, supply will respond by being increased, or...if you increased price, then demand would go down.\n\nIn the case of a massive event like we're experiencing supply is _not elastic_ - it cannot be risen quickly enough and if prices were to go up dramatically as a result demand would _not_ decrease because demand is also at least temporarily not elastic.\n\nSo...to describe this phenomenon intersecting with something that we find morally questionable, we call it \"price gouging.\". there are lots of arguments for why we should allow the market to determine price even in scenarios like we are in now or like I described. there are - obviously - arguments on the other side that lead to this term and to price control laws for both classes of products that we simply don't let into the market (we don't have a free market for babies for example) or for circumstances.",
"Price gouging is usually related to hoarding, where sellers intentionally remove items from the market in anticipation of a shortage, applying behavior they would not have used if they were no shortage was expected. In this way, they contribute to and exacerbate the shortage.\n\nHowever, the line between gouging and supply and demand is ultimately a subjective one. If a store owner tripled their order of toilet paper in February, just in case, and customers are now offering $20 a roll, so that is where they decide to price it, is that gouging?"
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5r5ptd | why is calculus important in the medical field? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5r5ptd/eli5_why_is_calculus_important_in_the_medical/ | {
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"When you take any medication, someone has to have calculated how long the drug lasts at each dosage level. They have determined the correct dose for each body weight. They know how that medication is affected by other drugs, including how the duration or decay rate changes.\n\nTo do these types of calculations, scientists and pharmacists use computers... But they used to use calculus.",
"The science behind how modern medicine works requires calculus. Outside of certain specific circumstances a doctor probably wont be doing calculus on the fly while treating patients. but in order to conduct or even just understand medical research they need a solid grasp on calculus. Calculus is required in every scientific discipline and in order to understand and evaluate new research a medical practitioner needs to understand how the research was conducted.",
"Calc 1 is all about rates of change. This would be really applicable for things like determining dosages due to the fact that the body absorbs different drugs at different rates, and a certain concentration is required. A good example of this would be a changing blood/glucose level. But like everyone else is saying, this is all probably done by computers now. It's good to know what the computers are doing, though."
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3u015y | how is it that those affected with down's syndrome have varying degrees of function? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3u015y/eli5_how_is_it_that_those_affected_with_downs/ | {
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"The same way that those without have varying degrees of function: humans are very complex, and many different factors, both those with which we're born and those which we experience, influence who we are and what we can do."
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2zfl09 | why are philosopher's like epicurus famous and still studied | My friend is currently writing an essay for her final grade in a university philosophy class. I dont understand how this guy's "arguement" is the focus... "something can only be bad for me if i exist...when im dead i don't exist....death cant be bad for me" I feel like this isn't worthy of focusing even more than 10 minutes on, and yet this guy gets remembered for a thousand years. HOW? WHY?
p.s. sorry if I'm essentially offending all philosophers :\ | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zfl09/eli5_why_are_philosophers_like_epicurus_famous/ | {
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"Thinking is a lost art, my friend. This kind of thing is important. We should figure out as much as we can about the universe and not only scientific things. Philosophy is a way of figuring out our humanity and our place in the universe.\n\nPhilosophers are famous because of their intellect. Philosophy is actually the root of all sciences. The atom was first thought of by an Ancient Greek philosopher. These philosophers are famous because their ability to think shaped what civilization knows about the world. We need to study then or else we'll lose that."
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awe27u | why do people want a foldable phone? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/awe27u/eli5_why_do_people_want_a_foldable_phone/ | {
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"The first flip phones were about minimizing size while remaining functional(ish). Then touch screens were figured out, and internet and wireless functionality called for larger readable screens and therefore larger phones; so small flip phones went out of style. \n\nNow the tech exists that allows us to have both, which is why the flip phone hype is back again."
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duyt3r | dual-channel ram in computers | I recently found out that I had my 2 RAM sticks in apparently a 'wrong position' (side-by-side).
Someone pointed out that they needed to be placed in alternate slots.
I read my motherboard manual, I tried doing as much research as possible about this but all I got from that is that the alternate placement puts the RAM in 'dual-channel' mode and is somehow better.
I haven't got any clear-cut/simple explanations as to WHAT 'dual-channel memory' means or WHY it's better.
Someone please ELI5. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/duyt3r/eli5_dualchannel_ram_in_computers/ | {
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"Just circuitry and the way they always wire dual channel memory slots. Think of each channel of memory access being the connection to each set of banks/slots. So channel 1 = slots 1 and 2, channel 2 = slots 3 and 4. \n\nIf you put two 4 GB sticks in slots 1 and 2, both are being accessed via a single 64 bit channel. \nIf you put one each in slots 1 and 3, you have a dedicated 64 bit channel for EACH 4 GB ram module. \n\nIn theory (depending on what manufacturer's benchmark report you read) dual channel RAM should give you a 10-15% improvement in memory access, but in practice (and due to a lot of other factors that make it hard to isolate) you get about 5-10% increase by utilizing dual channel."
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chmtkr | why is it that when we take a picture of the sun or moon with our phones it never really looks like we see it with our naked eye. | This morning a big beautiful dark red sunrise over the lake. Then i snap a picture and its a blurred red dot. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/chmtkr/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_we_take_a_picture_of_the/ | {
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"Dynamic range. Your eye can resolve a candle a mile away at night, or the sun shining on white walls at noon, basically at the same time.\n\nPhone cameras are more limited, and tend to adjust for the brightest object in the field of view. That tends to darken everything else relative to your eyesight.",
"The eye is not a camera, not at all.\n\nThe sense cells in the eye have a combined \"how bright is it\" sense, which is used to control the iris, the eye's aperture. However, each individual sense cell has its own gain sensitivity.\n\nThe camera in your phone probably doesn't even have a variable aperture. Instead is has an overall gain control that it uses to adapt to overall scene brightness. That leaves bright regions over exposed and dark regions under exposed.",
"We got a few things that cause this.\n\n• Our camera doesn't quite zoom in on the moon as much as our eyes do. \n\nCamera lenses zoom in different amounts, this \"zoomability\" can be described by the 'focal length' of a lens. When you see some number followed by \"mm\" in a lens description, that's the focal length, e.g. \"35 mm lens\". \n\nThe bigger the number, the more it zooms. So a 50mm is pretty normal looking, 600mm zooms in a lot, and a 10mm sort of \"zooms out\" and gives you a wider field of view than our eyes normally can. \n\nYour phone camera is only something like 35mm, or 28mm. It is \"zoomed out\" a bit. And the further away something is, the more exaggerated this 'zooming out' effect looks.\n\n• Your camera overexposes the photo.\n\nExposure describes how bright or how dark the photo looks. Our eyes adjust to different levels of brightness almost instantly. Like what Gene is referring to.. if you look at that white wall at noon, your irises rapidly shrink to let in less light. Then you can see stuff like the texture on the wall once they adjust. Then if you look into a dark tunnel, your irises adjust again, they quickly open up to let in more light, and maybe after a second you can see the walls of that tunnel.\n\nYour camera tries to do automatic exposure adjustments, but sometimes it's not smart about it. \n\nIf it sees the moon in the night sky, it says \"ok, 95% of this scene is really dark, and 5% is really bright. Obviously it's more important to make sure 95% of the photo can be seen clearly, so I'll try to brighten everything up.\" ... it doesn't realize that the part you're interested in, the moon, is already really bright, and if anything the phone camera should be letting in LESS light.\n\nTo some extent you can fix this by having a phone camera where you can manually control the exposure settings.\n\nUnfortunately, you still have the first problem... instead of a tiny red dot, now it's a tiny dark red dot. You still can't see any cool details, on most phone cameras.\n\n• Your phone autofocus may be off. \n\nMost phones are pretty good about this but you mentioned a blurred red dot... it may be your phone accidentally focused on something close, and this can make faraway stuff a little blurry. \n\n• Your own hand movement can cause blurring.\n\nFor most photos, the slight natural movement of your hands is no problem. Phones do all sorts of smart tricks to fix this like take a quick series of photos and pick the sharpest one, without you even knowing it. \n\nBut if you're photographing something far away or with really small details, having your hands shift a tiny bit during the photo might cause those crucial details to look blurry. It's better if your camera or phone can be propped against something solid that doesn't move (a tripod, or even just resting against a wall or tree or something)."
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dr9kqt | how do you treat injuries like the one andre gomes suffered from today? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/dr9kqt/eli5_how_do_you_treat_injuries_like_the_one_andre/ | {
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"I saw it live, it was horrendous. But usually surgery to reposition the bones, insert rods/plates/screws to hold the bones together, remove threatening bone pieces and the rest is left to the body to heal itself over a long period of time. I’m sure sure if he will recover well enough to play again.",
"Sports injuries tend to be assessed in this order:\n\nFirst the team's trainer or doctor (a medical professional who specializes in sports injuries) will try to determine if it is a \"soft tissue injury\" (a sprain or a strain) or worse, and call over the emergency responders (EMTs or paramedics) if needed.\n\nThe emergency responders will check for excessive bleeding and control it with a tourniquet if necessary. They will check CMS - Circulation (pulse), Motor (can you wiggle your toes?) and Sensation (can you feel me touching your foot?) This will tell them if there is a blood flow or nerve problem. They either try to reposition the foot into its \"anatomical position\" (where it is supposed to be in line with the leg) and splint it or leave it as they found it with lots of padding. Protocol usually dictates that they only attempt to reposition ONE time, as manipulating an injury too much can cause further damage. But if achieved, getting the foot back into anatomical position can help alleviate pain and restore bloodflow. This will all happen immediately and simultaneously while they wheel the player off the field to transport him to a hospital specializing in trauma surgery. During transport he will get pain medications through IV (intravenous / in the vein) tube that can be used in the hospital for administering more meds and fluids.\n\nOnce at the hospital, the injury will be X-rayed and the patient will go to trauma surgery right away, especially if there is a bleeding or circulation issue, but further repairs may be delayed waiting for a specialist orthopaedic surgeon. the bones will be held together with pins, tendons and ligaments can be reattached but they do not regrow or repair like bones. The patient will then require physical therapy that will probably involve the team's trainer and sports physician again."
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1n3m1t | why do people who are abused as a child (sometimes) become sexually compulsive later in life? | I was with someone recently that experienced sexual abuse as a child, and explained to me sleeping around helped somehow? Its sad, and I don't understand.
edit: Wow! Just checking this again for quite some time. Thank you all for sharing your personal experiences/ explanations. I feel very privileged to have read them! Defiantly going to help | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1n3m1t/eli5_why_do_people_who_are_abused_as_a_child/ | {
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"They want to feel like they're in charge of their sexuality. Someone took that power, that choice from them. This is one way for the victim to reclaim control. ",
"Someone once explained to a group of us after attending a bystander intervention class, that victims of abuse were so hurt and traumatized as a kid that they never want to feel that hurt again, and by willing to be promiscuous they avoid ever feeling that hurt again.",
"Hormonally speaking, those who are sexually abused as children develop higher levels of oxytocin faster than their peers. (Oxytocin is a hormone that regulates many aspects of human sexuality and relationships)",
"Often, they're compensating. I've been going through therapy for a lot of issues in my own past, and thankfully none were sexual assault, but I think the theory holds. I dive into a relationship right into the deep end because I've had very few deep connections in my life and was often uprooted, so I'm always looking for that thing I never had. My sister even explained how she felt the same way, that by having a family of her own, she could control how it turned out so it wouldn't be like ours was growing up.\n\nFrom that, I would imagine that for people who were abused they want to take control to compensate for the lack of control they had from their abuser. It's easier to be the one in charge of the actions, even to the point for some of being the one to abuse again or simply being the one to start and end the relationship than it is to be on the receiving end of pain again.",
"There are different theories. In regards to someone who is sexually abused (you didn't specify) as a child, or even as a teenager-adult, the one with the most merit as of current, is that it is an attempt to normalize what happened to them. This is also why many rape victims opt for a more promiscuous lifestyle after their assault, or why many rape victims resort to rougher sexual preferences, control-play, etc. after the fact. \n\nAlso, like bhanel says, it's the victim taking charge in their lives, in an aspect that they CAN do so. \n\nPeople seem to be focusing only on child sexual abuse, when you simply said \"abuse\", however. Psychological abuse and physical abuse are going to vary in how the victim copes. You almost have to look at it backwards. Looking at their current behavior and deciding if you can attribute it to their prior abuse, then you can look at the path the individuals have taken to get to the point they are at now. There isn't a clear formula to this and it isn't ethical to test cause-and-effect in these situations, therefore we can only see correlations. Correlations meaning a relationship between the two variables. ",
"Hmm... I'll try to explain this as best I can (I have no degree in childhood development nor do I have a degree in psychology). I'll try to do so in the limited scope of what I know.\n\nYou. You are a child. The world is your oyster (though at this point that would probably taste pretty bad). See that big tree there? You can probably climb it- but wait, the big pink blob who keeps saying \"Mama\" is telling you that it's dangerous.\n\nThough at some point in time, you'll try to conquer that tree, today will not be the day. Let's fast forward a couple years. The world is still just figuratively your oyster, but Mom and Dad have given you what you need. You go to school just like the other kids and associate with them because they're just like you. Sure, some have nicer toys and others have less, but at the end of the day, someone will pick you up or you'll hang over another persons' house like a daily party until you can get picked up.\n\nFast forward more. You're in college. You experienced the full span of childhood so far. You climbed that tree and by goddamn that broken leg was worth it. Was it though? Mom seemed pretty pissed and cried a lot. That kind of made you realize something: your parents really care about you. For the past forever, you've been crying about your own needs, but the only times you see your parents crying is for your successes in failures. \n\nAs dumb as we are in our childhood, I think it's in college that we grow to appreciate what our parents did/do for us a lot more. We're cognizant that the world is not there to help us, but at least our parents are. Why would I need someone else's love when I have my parents? Of course there IS that one cute guy that talks to me a lot...\n\n-----\n\nYou. You are a child. The world is your oyster (though at this point that would probably taste pretty bad). See that big tree there? You can probably climb it. No one there? It's okay. Now you're scared. That probably was a bad idea, but at least a pink blob will find you right?\n\nLet's fast forward a couple years. The world is still just figuratively your oyster though you don't want to jump into that, You go to school and you go home- though you don't want to go home. Mom and Dad don't really say I love you more than when Dad decides to play a game with you. You don't like this game that much and it doesn't feel very good, but at least Dad says he loves you. Maybe you're okay with playing games.\n\nFast forward more. You're in college. You experienced the full span of childhood so far. You stayed in that tree and sometimes you'd rather the world close up. Without the love that Dad gives you, where else can you find love? Mom found out and essentially hates your existance, but Dad loves you.\n\nBut Dad isn't here. Where else can you find love? Wait. Dad loved you when you played games with him... maybe you can play games with someone else.\n\n",
"When you are a child you are learning feelings, you aren't born with them. The people who are supposed to love you and therefore teach you these feelings are your family and family friends. Most sexual abuse happens with people who the child knows. When a sexually traumatic event occurs children can associate the feeling of being loved to sexuality.\n\nThe human brain is amazing in that it finds ways to cope or survive almost anything. What the person you are describing is likely doing is using a coping mechanism to deal with confused feelings that are rooted deep in the way they were raised.\n\n\nDealing with trauma is one of the hardest things a person can ever do. You have learned through your whole life that this is the world and you cope with it. Now to heal from it you need to accept that the world is completely different than what you've known your whole life. It takes huge amounts of courage, support, and patience to successfully deal with trauma. It is a long and difficult process.",
"I've known a couple of women who were abused sexually as a kid and they tend to not sleep with men they really love and care about but will sleep with some piece of shit that just uses her like a toy. It's kind of a strange psychological phenomenon",
"And remember, not all do. My wife has abuse history and is the most closed, limited, shy, almost anti-sexcual person you can imagine. She hates it, but seems helpless to change it, for over 20 year's.",
"As someone who has gone through extensive therapy for just this reason and have done quite a bit of digging into my motives with professionals, I have found that there are a few reasons for this (some of them mentioned already, some not):\n\n1.) Control. If I say no, he could take it anyway and it would further degrade me and hurt me. If I instigate or go with it, I'm taking away his power to rape me.\n\n2.) Self worth. This is usually a result of conditioning. If I say no, I'm taking away his right to my body. I do not have any right to autonomy. If I don't give people sex, they will have no reason to want me. That is my purpose. I would be mean if I denied him that right, so I have to do it so he doesn't hate me.\n\n3.) Sex = love. This could be because I was also raised in a physically/emotionally abusive home as well, but I think this is also a common one. The people I cared about, who were supposed to show me love and affection did this to me. It must mean that they care. As a child, I needed to believe that my family cared about me, so this is what I taught myself to avoid rejection and lonliness. Now, if someone wants to use my body, it means they want me. That's all I ever got, so that's enough for me to feel good. It's just a way to fill that hole (an attempt to satisfy non-sexual needs with sex).\n\n4.) If I keep things about sex and be promiscuous, it makes sex meaningless. If sex doesn't mean a lot to me, that means that when it was forced on me it wasn't meaningful. You can't hurt me if what you stole is meaningless to me. It doesn't matter that I got sex instead of love and affection because that is all I need. I'm not lonely and I didn't want to be loved anyway, so fuck you.\n\nThose are just my processes that I have heard described by other survivors. Again, I'm not a professional. I've just done a lot of reflection with professionals.",
"With sexual abuse it's usually one or the other. Either they shut down sexually or they become hyper-sexual. With pysical or emotional abuse it kind of makes the victim seek out chaos. Causing fights, accusations of cheating etc. Because if things are \"normal\" the person is uncomfortable with that and needs the chaos. And conversly people who are abusers can sense people who are attracted to that.",
"I speak for myself when I say it's a way of coping. I'm giving freely to someone of my choice what was once taken from me. A way to wash over the bad memories with more pleasurable and happy ones, as well as an insult to the one who hurt me. Look, I'm giving away what you had to coerce from a five year old, and I'm forgetting you each time I do it. It's helped me handle the situations when I have to be around him again.",
"It's important to note that's not the only outcome.\n\nTake a look at the cdc website regarding the [Adverse Childhood Experiences study](_URL_2_).\n\nChildren with unstable childhoods have problems later, as shown in the [findings](_URL_1_).\n\n[another article about it](_URL_0_)\n\ntl;dr:\n\n* Alcoholism and alcohol abuse\n* Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)\n* Depression\n* Fetal death\n* Health-related quality of life\n* Illicit drug use\n* Ischemic heart disease (IHD)\n* Liver disease\n* Risk for intimate partner violence\n* Multiple sexual partners\n* Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)\n* Smoking\n* Suicide attempts\n* Unintended pregnancies\n* Early initiation of smoking\n* Early initiation of sexual activity\n* Adolescent pregnancy\n",
"If the child is too young to remember the abuse, can he or she still have psychological affects from it? I always thought for a few reasons, that I was sexually abused by my birth father's family. The only memories I have are hating going over to his mothers house, nothing beyond that. ",
"I was abused by two family members. One was an older man who was I believe married into the family and the other is an uncle I kinda have a decent relationship with. All of my family knows of the older man but only a few (not my parents) know about my uncle. When I was younger I was very fascinated with sex. I for the first time will admit that I did touch two family members when I and they were very young. One was my younger brother. We have never talked about it since we were in kindergarden and first grade when it happened. But I still wonder how much that has affected him. He is almost 30 now and has never had a relationship. The other was a female cousin, while she was sleeping. \nI regret my actions everyday and wonder the impact my actions had caused.\nI am the total opposite of promiscuous. Although I developed early (physically) and got lots of male attention, I have only been with one man. I actually feel weird when people that I only casually know try to give me hugs or try to touch me. \nI find everyday a struggle with my thoughts. I know it is in me to be a terrible person but I choose to be better. I have a son and I want the cycle to end with me.",
"I was sexually abused as a kid. Other people have had it way worse than me, and I was adopted after awhile. My evil stepmother used to make me eat her out everyday. 20 years later I can't get enough of performing oral on women. I'm obsessed with it and I sometimes like doing it more than sex. It's weird how I'm obsessed with something that should have totally turned me off to it forever. Can't really explain it.\n\nI'm way over the things I went through, and I'm doing really good for myself now. If anyone wants to talk. Just shoot me a PM and I'll be all ears.",
"This is easier to explain with cigarettes.\n\nIf someone *loves cigarettes* and thinks to themselves \"Oh my god, I love smokes. Can't wait 'til my next one!\" on a frequent basis they are going to smoke a lot.\n\nSimilarly if someone repeatedly thinks to themselves \"I can't believe I ever smoked! I am going to stop! I'm not going to have another cigarette, nope, not one more cigarette\" then they are still pretty much doing the same thing - obsessing over them so much that the likelihood of them actually stopping is extremely low.\n\n (In case you didn't pick it up by now, the way to not do it would be to also not thinking about it).\n\nSo why do those who were abused obsess over sex? Because of the abuse. And obsession in thought patterns leads to the emotions that create action.",
"There was a recently study that said that women who were abused had much higher levels of oxytocin than others. Oxytocin is a hormone that causes you to seek out sex. ",
"I know this is ELI5, but if you are really interested, read \"Don't Call it Love\" or \"Out of the Shadows\" by Patrick Carnes, \"Facing Love Addiction\" by Pia Mellody, or any SLAA (Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous) literature.",
"There are various reasons, and it is usually a combination of several. There are two common explanations that I know off the top of my head:\n\n* The victim wants to feel like they're in control, instead of having someone else control them. By being promiscuous, it allows them to say \"Yeah, I have a lot of sex, but it's all by choice. I'm *giving* it to people, so they can't steal it.\"\n\n* The victim wants to take the abuse that they went through and separate it from *actual* sex. They want to take that abuse, and rope it off with caution tape in their mind. Having lots of sex helps, because it lets them say to themselves \"This is what *real* sex should be. What happened to me wasn't real because I didn't want it, so I shouldn't feel bad about it.\"",
"I know I'm kind of late to this party, but I had a therapist explain it to me in terms of modelling the 'functional relationships' that you are brought up around. We model our parent-like figures. If you are around an abusive family, somewhere, deep down in your noggin, your brain thinks that its normal. The promiscuity and kink are you either reliving things or trying to recreate emotions (such as love).\n\n",
"Hypersexuality isn't limited to those of us who were abused. As well as being sexually, physically, and emotionally abused, I'm actually diagnosed Bipolar with a case of PTSD, and hypersexuality is very common among people with either, regardless of their previous experiences. \n\nAs people above and below have said, it's about being in control. Being wanted for any reason. Pretending it's love. A friend of mine is currently ending a 4 year relationship with a woman that cheated on him multiple times, and now that he's able to take a step back, he realizes her behaviors are very similar to his ex-wife, who was bipolar. He's attracted to excitement and unpredictability. Hypersexuality is one of the things he's attracted to. Some people enjoy it. \n\nPersonally, I'd love it if I could go a week without sex with my husband and not start thinking he's going to leave me, or he doesn't love me anymore. We're on different schedules, with a son, and he has uncontrolled severe Crohn's disease. It's not easy to find time sometimes, but my brain just screams \"HE'S OVER YOU! YOU'RE GOING TO BE A SINGLE MOM! DO EVERYTHING HE LIKES AND MAYBE HE'LL STICK AROUND!\" It's gotten better with medication and therapy, but it still happens. I even want sex when I'm in pain from my reproductive disorder, and sex actually has no pleasure. It makes me happy because he wants me. He treats me well, we love each other, but that sex thing can drive him crazy. \n\nAnyhow, having sex helps. Your self-esteem shoots through the roof, you feel worthy of other's time again, you have things under control. When you don't have sex for whatever time threshold you have, the opposite happens. You get depressed, feel alone, hate yourself, and get self-destructive. It sucks. Dating is hard. Even if the guy sucks, you still have to prove something to yourself. It's a very large cycle of self-abuse, in my experience. Feel free to AMA, I'm not special by any means, but I'll be honest. \n\nEdit: spelling",
"This article should clear things up.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nIt was a study completed around July if I recall.",
"Thanks for bringing this topic up. I am married to someone who I believe was sexually abused as a child and now has a mania over penises. It is not intercourse simply touching an pleasing men through hand jobs or blow jobs. In some instances she is the aggressor and in others she plays the victim. Although she is truly a victim. She refuses to admit that she has a sex problem. Is this very common among victims who become compulsive about sex? ",
"I was abused as a child and have done a lot of therapy, but I was very sexually compulsive in my teenage years. \n\nIt has to do with boundaries, and not having any, and not recognizing other people's boundaries.\n\nIt has to do with morals, insofar as sometimes when what people say and what they do is vastly different, a child growing up in that situation can come to believe that everyone is a bullshitter about morality and everyone lives in a similar way of parroting what they think others want to hear and doing whatever they want in private.\n\nIt has to do with learning behaviors where people act on impulses and then justify their actions later, and not understanding that this is a choice you can choose not to make, not just 'the way everyone secretly is inside'.\n\nIt definitely has a LOT to do with control. My virginity was taken away from me, and when I reached adolescence I was bound and determined to have a do-over of my own free will. I did it too, and it was a very positive experience for me emotionally, even if nobody else seemed to understand at the time. I still look on it as one of my first steps in taking ownership of my body and my life. I also had a parent who tried to molest me when I was younger, but I was so vocal about it that he couldn't seal the deal without me speaking up...so instead he just berated me for the next several years, obsessing over my sexuality (not even letting me use tampons), calling me a slut and a whore any time I showed the slightest interest in anybody or dressed up nicer than a tshirt and jeans, etc. This increased my compulsive behavior because the more I felt like this creep was trying to take control over every aspect of my sexuality, the more urgent it felt to me to go out and do things of my own volition. End result, a lot of compulsive behavior that I didn't actually really want to be doing but felt like my only option for trying to have any control over my own life and body. It's complicated. Even now anyone calling me a whore or a slut kind of shuts me down sexually and emotionally and it's hard to recover from it. \n\nAlso, I experienced this after a rape situation that was rather brutal - if they're going to take it anyway, I might as well just give it away and possibly save myself some broken bones and bruises. That's a dark place to be but I was there, and I know of several other women who found themselves in that place, too.\n ",
"Short and sweet answer... remastering the past. \n\nIt's a compulsion to take on a moment where all control was lost and now this time... this time I choose what happens. I get to be in a point of control in a moment where the past was uncontrollable, where I was violated. And now it's just not going to happen, not this time. Because fuck you for taking this from me, fuck you... fuck you",
"Victims of abuse early in life can actually have a changed brain chemistry. In situations they should be fearful and those hormones should be secreted, the ones that allow sexual arousal are secreted instead. I work in a mental health clinic and I was reading an article about the study that concluded this. I'm trying to find it online, will post a link once found. ",
"\"They made him watch. He probably tried to turn away, and they wouldn't let him. You call him a survivor? He's not. A man comes up against that kind of will, the only way to deal with it, I suspect, is to become it.\"\n- Malcolm Reynolds",
"I'd like to approach this from a different, potentially sophomoric perspective. I was exposed to sexual, domestic, and drug abuse in varying degrees from an early age and have spent a lot of time self assessing. I think of the brain as an associative matrix that when exposed to intense situations links certain stimuli with certain responses in a way that is extremely difficult to separate. E.G. You're on a frozen lake and fall through the ice, the fear is so intense you can't go swimming because you start reliving that traumatic experience. \n\nThe more often you have a thought, the more entrenched that thought becomes in your mind. In EMDR, they theorize that traumas are basically entrenched thoughts that are both isolated and circular, in that there is no naturally occurring association out of them, so when you get stuck in that thought and make no conscious effort to avert your attention, like a race car track you'll continue to go in circles. I saw a comment made about traumatic black holes, which I'm not familiar with but sounds similar in it's assessment. \n\nSex is both a strong stimuli and strong reaction in the individual. If exposed to sex in the formative years, like I was, sex becomes connected to virtually every other thought. You see a person, you think of sex. You touch your thigh, you think of sex. This can either be connected to fear and repulsion, or can lead to arousal addiction. If the latter case occurs, the arousal and the relief becomes the goal and often leads to an objectification of people, as though their only purpose was for sexual satisfaction. As this continues though, the relief decreases and the mind pursues more novel ways of satisfying that addiction.",
"Many people have answered this question well, but I think one aspect has gone unanswered.\n\nOne thing about many sexual abuse cycles is the grooming process, which is the process the abuser uses to make a subject more pliable.\n\nWhen the grooming process is done on younger subjects they learn at a really young age to exchange sex for attention or physical gifts and it becomes their normal. \n\nGetting young victims away from this behavior is really important in their survivor recovery, otherwise they will become really sexually manipulative or, as OP states, sexually compulsive later in life.",
"It doesn't only happen to children, teenagers and young adults can be abused and raped and turn out this way.\n\nThere was a girl I went to High School with, she was the sweetest thing ever, cute, shy, polite, soft spoken. She had a boyfriend who was for the most part a pretty good guy. Well her and I caught up a few years after High School when she was no longer with him and we ended up hooking up. Very shortly after I found out she had a boyfriend (different one), and that there was several other people she was regularly having sex with.\n\nShe told me about how the boyfriend from High School would abuse her, force himself on her, cheated on her, basically treated her like garbage and it caused her to become jaded about sex and it in a sense made her addicted to sex, a nymphomaniac she called her self. She told me how it made her feel good and wanted when she had sex, regardless of whether she was interested in the guy or not.\n\nThe worst part is she was the one who didn't want anything between us to continue, I was actually willing to look past the sex with strangers thing..",
"I don't have anything to contribute that hasn't already been said, and beautifully. I do want to point out, however, that remembering this quality is a good thing for anyone to remember before judging another person. We should all remember that we're on our own journeys, and there's no way to know how you'd be if you lived another person's life.\n\nPowerful stuff. Great question, and inciteful answers!",
"It can be a combination of things: feeling scared to say 'no' because of threat of danger, seeking attention and intimacy in the only way that is comfortable and familiar, feeling that that is all they are 'good' for, feeling of taking ownership over what made them feel so powerless before.",
"My friend once said kinks are a way for people to consent to something they weren't able to consent to before.",
"Well, thanks for this. Reading this thread was like talking to a close friends who has only good advice for me. \n\nA lot of issues got clarified, memories were revisited and I have emerged a stronger man.\n\nThanks a lot everyone!",
"This has never been so relevant...\n\nJust this week there was a boy in my year at college who everybody always knew came from one of those families. Nothing was ever done about it. Literally 3 days ago he was found guilty of molesting an 8 year old (he's 16) and it was all in the news. \n\nI can't answer your question, but there's my two cents.",
"Childhood is when your body and brain are learning what is normal. Your body and mind adapt to the things you experience during that time, whether it's language, metabolism, habits, sense of the world, and dealing with people. You learn how to live by observing the people around you, and because all you know for sure is yourself, you're very self-centered, so the things that happen to you are the most resounding. \n\nSo you learn that what happened to you is something that people do, and your psyche internalizes that and turns it around. Monkey see, monkey do. \n\nIt's the same reason that physically abused children grow up to be abusers themselves. They learned it first-hand that it was a way that people are, and that has stuck with them subconsciously.",
"My girlfriend was sexually abused a lot as a child/teenager and around age 20 she started sleeping around a lot. Even now, it seems like she's overly sexual to the point where I can't keep up sometimes, which isn't easy for a man to admit. She told me that the reason she started acting out sexually was because for most of her younger life, she didn't get choose her sexual experiences or her partners. Once she found out she was in control, she couldn't help but to act out on it as much as possible. She said it was very empowering to be able to choose her partners and what she did with them for the first time in her life. Once she started, it was hard for her to stop wanting more.",
"Like several other people responding to this topic, I was abused (sexually and physically) as a child. I've been dealing with sexual compulsions for quite some time (hookers/craigslist ads/internet meetups). \n\nSome people are saying it's a way to feel in control of one thing or another like it's something you're consciously doing to fix something else. For me it's not like that at all. It's like a constant itch on the back of my head. I can try not to scratch it, but the need to scratch it makes me unable to concentrate on anything else. Eventually you give in and scratch it and feel better for a short period. But then you feel worse afterwords, like you reopened a wound or something. You feel ashamed as you drive home and look in the mirror and literally have trouble recognizing that the person is you. \n\nEventually the feeling comes back. Unlike scratching, it takes work though. Going out, looking for someone, Or calling an escort and spending your hard earned cash. Which is dangerous, because once it becomes that easy, you can easily find yourself in debt. I can't count how many times I've told myself \"This is the last time\".",
"I think they is an over stimulation of the neurons/synapses or whatever that are involved with sex.\n\nI feel like when children are over sexualized at too young an age it physically affects their brain and builds a chemical requirement for that same stimulation.\n\nFrom there having lots of sex becomes a goal (as explained in the top post) and the victims then become addicted to sex and the cycle continues.\n\nAs a sex victim/perpetrator I see how the cycle does full circle",
"I've participated in a lot of therapy, and one of the things that comes up in the groups I'm in is the need for positive attention. So for instance, if a boy is abused by an adult male, the boy will begin to see sexual contact as the only viable way to gain positive attention from other males. Men, even though we don't like to admit it, need connections with other people - the abuse distorts the child's brain in terms of how to achieve that connection with others. Often times a stressful situation can \"trigger\" a survivor into \"acting-out\" in order to achieve the connection. ",
"You believe you are not worthy of love and thus seek out relationships and experiences that reinforce this belief. It is a vicious circle.",
"Or the unpopular idea that the person may have been more sexually compulsive in the first place. With psychology you can't overlook something just because it's unpleasant or inconvenient.",
"Sexual abuse survivor here. I read earlier someone asked the difference between being a victim and being a survivor? Being a survivor means you conquered the abuse and got help and have moved on from self destructive behaviors. \nI'm 16 years old, and from the time I was 10-13 years old I was abused by my adopted brother. To answer the question of why about promiscuity, it goes two ways for someone who's been sexually abused. \n1.) Always being focused on sex\n2.) Being terrified of anything sexual or even the thought of sexual experiences (even as little as holding hands) brings panic attacks and other side effects. \nUnfortunately I fell into the first group and I can explain my reason, which many of you may relate to.\nHe took my virginity when I was young. And being young, I was clueless and innocent. I had barely kissed a guy. With that being said, he manipulated me into thinking that sex was okay and normal to have with anyone. So growing up I never gave it much thought that sex was supposed to signify love.\nAnother one of my factors was the constant need to feel approval from a male, no matter how they treated me or used me for sex. The craving for attention, approval, and \"love\" made me promiscuous.\nAside from promiscuity, I also fell into drugs and alcohol. At the time, I had my abuse bottled up and I never told anybody. I tried to force it away and \"forget\" it. But it always lied in my sub conscience. Drugs and alcohol was how I coped because I didn't know why I couldn't stop doing drugs and drinking and having unwanted sex.\nAlas, my grandma was the one who came to me and predicted she knew why I was so self destructive (she is a former survivor as well). After realizing that the core to my self destructive behaviors was the abuse, I got into intensive sexual abuse therapy. \nI have been graduated from therapy for about 8 months. I got my first tattoo on my back of peace doves with the sexual abuse ribbon (it's like the breast cancer ribbon but teal) with the word survivor underneath. I've been in a solid and steady relationship with a wonderful and respective guy for almost a year now and we're engaged. \nSo to add on to your question, not every victim of sexual abuse will be promiscuous forever.\nFor everyone on this thread who relates to all these posts, go get help!!! No matter how hard and/or embarrassing it is, it is so worth it. I promise self destructive behaviors will never stop until you get the proper help..\nI am so sorry for everyone who's gone any kind of sexual abuse, but remember this:\nIt's not about how bad the situation is, it's about how you handle it and make yourself stronger from it. ",
"It's basically to garner feelings that you are in control of your sexual lifestyle and your own body as an adult because as a child you had none.\n\n\nSource: Child Psych that dealt with rape and abuse victims before he said fuck it, it's too much and quit is sitting next to me.",
"Although I may not have a good explanation, I would like to say I'm quite the opposite. \n\nI was raised in a situation where I had little control, was a consistent target for unwarranted anger that led to multiple physical conflicts, and was left defenseless at times by those who were supposed to protect me. I'm also VERY non-confrontational. \n\nI was raised in a situation where many things were blamed on me, and it molded me to become compulsively apologetic, regardless of whether something is my fault or not. \n\nI was taunted and teased because of my sexuality, and now I'm not sexually compulsive at all. I even have images from my past that prevent me from pursuing relationships with people who I feel I'm most compatible with. \n\nI had a teacher once tell me I wouldn't amount to anything, and at the time was going through a lot things at home. I once had a drive for school and after that year, I began to increasingly quit caring about school. If I wasn't going to amount to anything, why should I try? I was in an environment where I was talked down to, and didn't feel like an equal human being, so I self depreciate because no one can make me feel lower about myself than me. \n\nI guess I am fortunate though, because as far as sexual abuse, I didn't experience any (that I remember). Just the verbal abuse about my sexuality. I really think I_Shot got it right as far as this situation goes. I just hope that one day the world will realize how wrong it is to raise children in such volatile environments. \n",
"Sex was used to hurt and control me. I wanted it to make it something good. ",
"For me its a bit about Control. But not in the way you've described. \n \nIn fact its all of the things you mentioned, but switched up. \n \n1.) Control. I want to be in control of my life. I enjoy sex and I wont let past abuse get in the way. So its not fear, or taking away someones power to rape me. Its refusing to allow the memory of my abuse to continue to rape me. \n \n2.) Self worth. Again, true... but not in the way you have stated. In fact, I LOVE to say no to some guys. I will actually lead them on just so I can say no. Doing that to the creepers/douches makes me feel worth more than them. Its not 'right'... in the same way its not right to bully or do some other things. Then on the other side, the guys I do want to be with, getting with them is 'scoring'. \n \n3.) Sex = love. More accurately the link of sex and love. I can see how what you say is true. But for me Sex != Love... \"making love\" can be very enjoyable, but \"fucking\" can be just as enjoyable. You can only \"make love\" to people you have an enjoyable and emotional connection to... You can also fuck them... but you can also fuck a complete stranger. \n \n4.) Can't sum this one up in a quick 'blurp'. This is the one that I have the most trouble understanding. It seems to be the most harmful. While I mostly keep things \"about sex\" but I don't feel like its a 'shield' from being hurt. Its probably because, I don't link love/selfworth and sex the way you describe. \n \nI think it has a lot to do with the individual. Some people grow up and get married to their HS sweetheart get married and are ok with a 'dead beadroom'... others well... might get married, but are still very 'Open' and very 'sexual'. \n \nIMO, The trick is to find out who you are, and not let someone from your past rule your future. \n \nedit: Its a very complicated issue, and different for everyone. Thats why 'proper' therapy is so important. It lets you understand how things are effecting you, and lets you work out how you can be you.",
"Thank you for posing this question. After reading many of the comments from other victims of abuse, I would like to share this excellent site:\n_URL_0_. \nAdult Survivors of Child Abuse (ASCA SM) is an international self-help support group program designed specifically for adult survivors of neglect, physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse \n\nFor those who can not afford therapy or counseling, ASCA has a free, downloadable program called Survivor to Thriver. \nI wish us all strength enough to be our own best friends and help ourselves.",
"I don't know if this was said, but for me personally it was about counteracting the rape with a positive experience. like if I had consensual sex with someone else that was pleasurable then it would erase the negative. ",
"For me I was 5. My mom had just married this new guy and had left me in the care of my new grandma. I was lying on the bed. I had felt something hard and went to investigate further. I still remember how it feels. I remember him touching me and sticking his fingers in my vagina. I remember him shushing me as I told him to stop. The next day when he was driving me home he promised me a bag of lollies. That was all I was worth. I told my mom and she believed me. But my step dad didn't. He called him up and made me hug him. He said to me that it didn't happen if I could hug him. \nAfter that I told ppl but they didn't believe me. Even my mother but she was a bit of a liar and gossiper. My step father's family refused to acknowledge me and I wasn't allowed to come to any events. I was raised in a church and years later after he reoffended I wasn't allowed to know. The whole thing was hushed over. I was told later when I was 16 that I was too promiscuous when I was a kid. \n ",
"NSFW:\n\nWhen i was a kid, like 8 or 10 i was sleeping at my cousin he was secretly gay in a country in south america with high moral values where gays are not accepted by their famillys, he was 14 or 15 years old and one night he just teached me the blowjobs, he sucked my dick and i did it too him, i really enjoyed it and dont see it as an \"abuse\" and i consider myself bisexual but w/e the point is today i have a fetish for blowjobs, this is the thing i prefer in sex, i generally prefer getting a blowjob from my wife than having normal sex, i'm not sure if this is connected to my child experience or if it is normal to love blowjobs. \n\ntl;dr : blowjobs are awesome no matter what.",
"After reading this thread, I've come to the disturbing realization that a good portion of the porn industry probably employs actresses who were sexually abused as children.",
"This is particularly nefarious for young boys that are molested or raped by girls or women. The boys typically regard the experience as a *positive* thing. ... Until later in life because being molested when you are 8yo permanently sexualizes childhood to you.\n\nAnd there you have the cycle.",
"It's complicated. I'll explain it to you when you're older.",
"As a lot of redditors have stated below me there can be a myriad of reasons as to why this phenomenon occurs. One that I've heard frequently is security. Because what is supposed to be a safe haven has been warped into a den of nightmare, the abused may look elsewhere for self-affirmation, even if that means resorting to degrading lewd acts. \nAn evolutionary psychologist would say something more along the lines of \"because the abused doesn't know when they'll die, it's best to continue their lineage by having as much sex as possible to ensure that offspring will be produced.\"",
"In women sexual abuse is correlated with higher levels of oxytocin women and may be an underlying urge for closeness that is inappropriately expressed in promiscuity (sex releases oxytocin in the brain). More practically, when one learns very young that one's fundamental value is as a sexual object it effects later sexual expression once puberty is reached.",
"To me, the toughest part in reading these stories is the common theme of having to combat your instincts and compromise your heart. Doing this to try to make it feel \"ok\" in an otherwise helpless situation where some part of you is 100% sure that what's going on is wrong. That even seems like it could be the most damaging aspect of the experience....All the while they probably didn't tell anyone, so no one knew to help. I wish all of those at risk in the future could have exposure to a person or a place that would make sure the child understands that it is Not OK and make sure they understand that some kind help is available.",
"Shit, this hit home. I don't think I've ever conceptually thought about why I'm so desirous of sex before, but yes, I can completely understand. To me, definitely, sex is love. If we aren't having sex how am I to know you care. How do you change? The question I'm asking myself is do I even want to change? That's scary as fuck. Idk if I could handle that.",
"It's about control. Since we had absolutely no control over anything as a kid we overcompensate with the thing that we were abused by",
"OMG. What I am reading and learning here explains the troubles, drama and odd intensity of my relationships with a recent couple of friends who I am not friends anymore. Your explanation applies 100% to one and 80% to the other one. I also noticed that they tended to be more sexually compulsive in drinking context, to the point that they actually needed alcohol to have sex.",
"As a child you are supposed to trust others, especially those that are close to you. Unfortunately, sexual abuse is usually between two people that know each other. When something traumatic like that happens, it fundamentally changes how you view relationships, love, and trust. It changes how you define respect, power, honesty, and emotions. \n\nOthers have talked about control so know need to rehash. When you aren't sure what or who you can trust, you get anxious. To manage anxiety, sometimes we go overboard on the control. ",
"Really really late, but here's some science to go along with what everyone else is saying.\r\r_URL_0_\r\r > Half the kids — both boys and girls — had a history of physical abuse at the hands of adults earlier in their lives... Oxytocin levels in the abused girls nearly tripled from their baseline — already three times the non-abused girls' levels...\r\r > \"The peak in oxytocin may be helping to motivate these girls to form new relationships,\" Seltzer says.\r\r > Unfortunately, those new relationships may not always be more stable than the girls' abusive ones.\r\rSo basically girls that were abused have spikes in Oxytocin levels (which is used for love and cuddle feelings) in stressful situations (like being in a new relationship ^(that's me talking though), while girls that weren't abused don't exhibit these symptoms.\r\r|\r\r^^^I ^^^don't ^^^think ^^^anyone ^^^will ^^^see ^^^this.",
"I've never thought of my hyper-sexuality as sad... For me it's just frustrating. Mostly cause I'm afraid to say anything about it and why I have an insatiable urge to please and get pleased. I'm just doing my best to keep myself from cheating and be in a serious, normal relationship. But, again, I don't see my sexual compulsions or their origins in a sad light. ",
"There is a recent psychological theory that has emerged that instability in childhood leads to increased and earlier promiscuity for very biological reasons as well. Put it this way, if a child is raised in an unpredictable environment (i.e. one where harm comes from unexpected places, caregivers are constantly changing roles etc.) then, put into an evolutionary perspective, that human body would not expect to live very long because it can not predict the ups and downs of its own existence. For this reason, biological objectives have been shown to run into overdrive, the individual will often become more promiscuous in early adolescence as their body is telling them \"procreate before you die, we have no idea what's going to happen in the near future so do it quick\". Studies showing this have compared the lives of children with unpredictable childhoods to those who had either consistently positive or negative upbringings and they always seem to come off worse for that reason. That's a very scientific standpoint from an evolutionary biology perspective though and there are obviously huge amounts of other contributing factors to keep in mind. I just thought that was an interesting point when I first read it. ",
"A child valued solely based on their achievements may grow up compulsively obsessed with achieving. Even to the detriment of their own happiness.\n\nA child valued solely for their physical beauty may grow up compulsively obsessed with their looks. Even to the detriment of their own happiness.\n\nA child valued solely as a sexual object may grow up compulsively obsessed with their sexuality. Even to the detriment of their own happiness.",
"Jesus Christ.... My heart hurts for you all. ",
"I know this is so late, but I also wanted to add that as someone who wasn't sexually abused, but grew up without a father, I never really learned how to have a healthy relationship with a man. Because of that I've only really ever known how to interact with men sexually based on my surroundings/society. That was how I've sought \"love\" from a man, because I didn't know any other way. Now after 23 years I have my father in my life, and after a couple of rather immature/dysfunctional relationship, I've definitely toned down my sexual compulsiveness...but it does take a lot of time and growth/self-awareness to get past something you've done so casually for so many years. Things do eventually get better with therapy, and a great support system."
]
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"http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-ellen-stevens/the-adverse-childhood-exp_1_b_1943647.html",
"http://www.cdc.gov/ace/findings.htm",
"http://www.cdc.gov/ace/"
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"http://www.news.wisc.edu/21970"
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|
2i39az | why do most people think of the number 7 when they are asked to think about a number between 1-10? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2i39az/eli5_why_do_most_people_think_of_the_number_7/ | {
"a_id": [
"ckye0bu",
"ckympaz",
"ckyq02u"
],
"score": [
27,
2,
2
],
"text": [
"I think it's because 7 seems like such a random number. \n1 and 10 are the extremes, which people tend to avoid. \n2, 4, 6 and 8 are even, so they don't seem very random. \n5 is a number that is often used in human lives (originated from the fact that we have 5 fingers on each hand)\n3 and 9 are also less random because we often think in multiples of 3 (in stores, economy packs often contain 3 boxes). \n\nSo I think that people try to go for the \"most random number\" because they think that less people will guess it. That's why people often think of 37 when asked for a random between 0 and 100. Because it seems less obvious and more random.",
"7 is an \"attractive\", aesthetically pleasing number. It's the golden ratio between 1-10, rounding up.",
"There's a great Radiolab episode which touched on this..\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"http://www.radiolab.org/story/love-numbers/"
]
] |
||
cr0540 | how does stretching my toes out wide give me better balance for a moment? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cr0540/eli5_how_does_stretching_my_toes_out_wide_give_me/ | {
"a_id": [
"ex0vn29"
],
"score": [
4
],
"text": [
"It disperses your weight more evenly among the whatever it is against as it covers more surface area so that your center of balance isn’t as narrow as those with thinner feet than average"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
19w5uz | why is it that when i begin drinking (such as beer or wine), the beverage tastes great at first, but begins to taste more bitter and less enjoyable as the night progresses, causing me to resort to a new drink? | I'm sure it has something to do with your taste palate and memory. I find myself taking sips in longer intervals and smaller quantities the more I've been drinking.
Footnote: I've been drinking and apologize for my lack of grammar. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19w5uz/why_is_it_that_when_i_begin_drinking_such_as_beer/ | {
"a_id": [
"c8s09vi"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"We've all got these little bumps on our tongues called \"taste buds\". These really are our buds and help us to taste foods and drinks. It's like our tongues tell our brain what we're eating, and whether it's good. Our tongue's job is to give us the important, basic information about the food we're trying to eat. \n\nOur taste buddies let our brain know how salty, sweet, sour, bitter, or savoury a food is. This is pretty important, because while salty, sweet, and savoury foods are usually nutritious and give us lots of energy, sour foods are usually spoiled, and a bitter taste often means poison! \n\nBut the rest of how a food or drink tastes comes from certain chemicals in the food that are tasted not by our taste buddies, but our nose! Our noses and tongues are joined in a really complex way, and foods taste pretty plain if you're not using your nose at all.\n\nIf you're eating a food or drinking a drink for a long time, your tongue but especially your nose is going to get pretty tired of tasting the same thing. When this happens our brains automatically \"ignore\" the same complex flavours that are repeatedly being fed to it, and we're left tasting primarily with our tongues. This means we stop tasting the special qualities of the drink, and start tasting primarily the basic flavours like the bitterness of the alcohol, and the usually abundant sweetness.\n\nOur bodies get sick of eating the same things over and over again, especially if the food has a strong aroma (that means smell!)."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
|
4c7iuv | can somebody please explain why us brits use 3 pin plugs but the usa and other countries use 2 pin? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4c7iuv/eli5_can_somebody_please_explain_why_us_brits_use/ | {
"a_id": [
"d1fos3r"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"We have 3 pins in USA/Canada... the 3rd pin is a grounding pin and only makes sense on items that need a ground (e.g. aren't well insulated).\n\nYour PC for instance is grounded through the case so if the return (neutral) fails touching the case will cause problems for you. So the ground pin provides another return.\n\nYour desk fan is well insulated so you can't really touch it and get electrocuted. \n\nIf anything your circuits should be AFI protected and in Canada for instance all new homes require them."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
||
615i5s | why do humans seem to get diseases from bad water more? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/615i5s/eli5_why_do_humans_seem_to_get_diseases_from_bad/ | {
"a_id": [
"dfbuxu3"
],
"score": [
2
],
"text": [
"I'm not totally sure what you mean by this, but standing water is incredibly likely to be home to bacteria and microorganisms that can easily infect humans. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] |
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