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6e1rfi | with world record calculations of pi, how can we be sure that the digits calculated are accurate to the extent claimed? | For example, if someone claims to have calculated the new world record for digits of pi (or some other irrational number), how can we be sure that they didn't just make up the numbers? What structures are in place to double check that the digits are accurate without the ability to cross check it with the "true number"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6e1rfi/eli5_with_world_record_calculations_of_pi_how_can/ | {
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"Short of, as you hinted, actually calculating it yourself, there are algorithms (google \"Bailey-Borwein-Plouffe\" if you want the gory details) which allow you to calculate the n-th digit of pi without knowing the preceding digits. Using this, one can spot-check random digits until they're satisfied it looks good.",
"If they provide the algorithm used for the calculation, the you can prove the algorithm is correct, but not the result itself.\n\nYou can use other algorithm to compare, but it will take longer.\n\nYou can compare the know part and then check remaining values with formula that can calculate arbitrary digits of pi, so you don't have calculate the whole number.",
"There exist what are called spigot algorithms that allow you to calculate the nth digit of pi without calculating all the digits before it. These algorithms are less efficient than those that generate all the digits in order, but they can be used to cross-check those algorithms.\n\nFor example, if you generated pi to a million digits, you could use a spigot algorithm to check a thousand of them. They odds the algorithm messed up, but those thousand digits still match is so astronomically low it can be ignored.",
"Follow up: Is there any practical use of knowing what the five trillionth digit of pi is, or is it just random trivia / bragging rights for figuring it out?"
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a1heem | how is a simulation created? | I've seen these all over the internet and boy are they fascinating!( r/simulated )Do I need to know how to code? Is there a website that can be used? Please help. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a1heem/eli5_how_is_a_simulation_created/ | {
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"They use 3D animation software such as Blender. The subreddit's sidebar has a [beginner's guide](_URL_0_). "
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8xsa95 | is it possible to ingest just caffeine? no coffee; no kind of binder at all? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8xsa95/eli5_is_it_possible_to_ingest_just_caffeine_no/ | {
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"Caffine is just a molecule that has a function in the body (specifically, a mild stimulant, I'm not quite sure on the exact mechanism of action.). \n\n It is not metabolized in a way that can fuel other reactions (and thus has a minimal caloric value, not that it would be safe to consume enough caffine in one sitting to compose a few calories even if caffiene was as calorie dense as fat or sugar). \n\n",
"Caffeine is an *alkaloid*, a different class of chemical from proteins, carbs, or fats. Many other drugs are alkaloids... vitamins are a range of different types of chemicals. \n\nYou can buy it in crystal/powdered form, so the direct answer to your question is yes. It would be extremely bitter, based on my experience with caffeine pills (which do have binders). It would also be easy to take an unpredictable, possibly too large, amount so this might not be recommended. I’m not sure of the exact reasons it *is* available in pure form, but this will usually come with a “not for human consumption” disclaimer and you won’t find pure caffeine at a vitamin shop, food store, etc, even though you could find caffeine pills. ",
"Caffeine is a chemical compound. It is not a protein, fat or sugar. It is very easily absorbed by the body and can be absorbed through the skin itself. High doses can kill you via heart attack. So while it is possible to ingest pure caffeine lethal doses are small volumes and it is hard for someone not involved with a chemistry lab to get pure concentrations of it. \n\nVitamins are mostly minerals, but do include other chemical compounds used by the body for maintenance or function. They are specifically all things that are not proteins, fats, or sugars that your body needs to function. ",
"Ingest? Yes. But you could just as easily ingest a rock.\n\nClarification: If you are asking if you can *digest* just caffeine or vitamins, that's a different question. Most vitamins do not actually absorbe into you, but the water or fat they are disolved in does get absorbed and the vitamins go with them. Most vitamins are \"fat soluble\" so if you have a multi vitamin and water without eating you aren't getting all the benefits. All other vitamins are water soluble so they absorbe with the water you used to swallow the multi vitamin.\n\nCaffeine is water soluble, as it's absrobed my the water out of the ground coffee, and into you. If you ate powdered caffeine it would dehydrate you as it would absorbe into the lining of your guts and that mix would then be absorbed. Some people have been known to snort it too, which would cause similar problems."
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3gpyul | how do chameleons work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3gpyul/eli5_how_do_chameleons_work/ | {
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"most chameleons change their color to show \"emotions\", not to blend in\n\n multiple layers of skin with different cells of color that expand to show a color and retract to hide a color. \n\nedit: oops, forgot relevant media: [Scishow](_URL_0_)"
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au5org | why is file sharing illegal? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/au5org/eli5_why_is_file_sharing_illegal/ | {
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"In short: You've purchased the rights to use and enjoy a product, you Dan even use and enjoy a product with others. However, you have not purchased the rights to give that product to others to use and enjoy. Additionally the courts believe, with some evidence to back it up, that if there's no profit motive for content makes they will not make content. This would stifle creativity and entrepreneurship.",
"It's theft. That's why. You bought it, not everyone else. You could give the Blu Ray to someone, or resell it. But copying it and giving it away is theft, you are giving away their product that they say you should pay to see. You aren't buying the movie and it's rights. You are just buying a copy of it for personal viewing. ",
"First of all, your summary of what you think \"free market\" means is ludicrous. \n\nTo answer your question, though, because you don't own the rights to the work. First sale doctrine refers literally to the object you bought. If you buy a book, you have every right to sell that book. You don't have the right, legally, to scan the book, upload it to a web host, and share it for free with everyone else. Copyrights go back a long way in history and their enshrinement in the US constitution (Art. I, s 8, c 8) reflects a societal understanding that if you can't derive useful revenue out of works, then it removes the incentive for anyone to create those works. \n\nCopying and sharing intellectual property to which you don't have the rights isn't any functionally different from buying a designer purse and then manufacturing knockoffs and distributing those, the prohibition against which probably seems more clear to most people.",
"File sharing is illegal because you don't own the right to copy that software. Possessing a copy of the software does not give you ownership over it, just like owning a book doesn't give you the right to start printing that book to give away to everyone.\n\nSoftware copyright is a prevalent issue because copying software is a very easy thing to do.\n\nImagine you're a company that makes software. You sell a copy to someone. That person then gives a copy to all their friends for free, who then give copies to all their friends for free. You made one sale that benefited a hundred people, when you could have made one sale to each person that wanted the software.\n\nIt's important to make profit off of software because that profit is used to develop more software and maintain your company. Hiring developers costs money. Keeping the lights on in your office costs money. If your business can't turn a profit from software sales because people are copying your software instead of buying it, then you can't afford to make more software, and you shut down, and nobody wins. \n\nThis is called \"capitalism\" and it's a bitch. No one likes it, but no one has come up with anything that works any better, so here we are."
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6brycf | if tomatoes and cucumbers have so much water in them, how do they get their unique taste that water doesn't have? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6brycf/eli5_if_tomatoes_and_cucumbers_have_so_much_water/ | {
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"From the parts of them that aren't water.\n\nEven if they are mostly water, we can still taste the other parts. Some things need only a very small amount for us to taste. Cooking with a single little bit of garlic for example can make food have a definite taste of garlic, for example.",
"Plants have things called terpines, they make smell and taste. The plant makes them by taking up nutrients the better the plants hunger is filled the more terpines they make. Terpines are very very strong as well so a little goes a long way"
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57f89s | why do some airlines serve free alcohol on flights? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/57f89s/eli5_why_do_some_airlines_serve_free_alcohol_on/ | {
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"Where is this airline you speak of? "
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1far3r | how do companies like 'jack threads' make profit? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1far3r/how_do_companies_like_jack_threads_make_profit/ | {
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"They only buy excess inventory at steep discounts. This allows them to sell a small inventory at very low prices and still generate a profit."
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5oexio | what exactly do artist do in video game design with the programmers to make the game complete? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5oexio/eli5_what_exactly_do_artist_do_in_video_game/ | {
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"Artists provide the 3d renders and models that respond to the programmed code. A programmer writes a code \"if W is pressed: model A does X action\" the artists create the model and animate the action that occurs; as well as they create the landscape that the model walks on. ",
"Artists make everything you see on your screen. \n\nAnimators make all the things you see on your screen move the way you see them move on your screen. \n\nProgrammers write code that tells your computer when to play what animation when you press a specific button. "
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74pc2h | why do some people with adhd seem to outgrow it as they age? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/74pc2h/eli5_why_do_some_people_with_adhd_seem_to_outgrow/ | {
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"Its not really that they grow out of it it's more the fact that as you age most 0eople get better and better at dealing with their ADHD that to all outwards appearances they don't have ADHD,\n\nBut what a lot of people fail to understand is it takes a lot and I mean a whole lot of energy and mental stress to keep it under control especially if you have other conditions that go with it (like me I have bipolar as well),\n\nBut there are some that are very good at keeping it under control that it isn't a deciding factor in how you live your life."
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1ucau6 | how does a clicky top pen prevent the point from drying up? isn't it still exposed to just as much air? | Or maybe pen caps are not to keep pens from drying out, but just to keep them from marking your pocket. Please ELI5 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ucau6/eli5how_does_a_clicky_top_pen_prevent_the_point/ | {
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"You figured it out. It's to keep them from marking things when you are not using them.",
"Ballpoint pen ink is often oil-based, and won't dry out as much as a water-based ink when it's left exposed to the air. ",
"The ink doesn't dry, because the little ball at the tip of the pen provides pretty much an airtight seal. The holes in pen caps are there in case you choked on it - to let air through."
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fu5kuo | what’s the difference between hot and spicy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fu5kuo/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_hot_and_spicy/ | {
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"Many people will say \"hot\" when they mean spicy. Spicy would be something like curry or hot sauce. Hot usually just means warm temperature, but as I said, many people will say hot in place if spicy.",
"Microwaved a hot pocket and now it’s hot. But it’s Ham and cheese so it’s not spicy. Take a habanero pepper out of the fridge and take a bite. Might not be hot, it’s actually cold in fact, but it sure is spicy!",
"As an Indian, I typically call food hot when it is loaded with red pepper, jalepeno, etc which have capsaicin acid which triggers your heat receptors.\n\nThen there's a whole chunk of foods that I call \"spicy\" which contain a bunch of spices coming from various herbs such as black pepper, cardamom, etc. \n\nSpicy food isn't always hot, and there are various sweet preparations loaded with spices (masala tea for example). It is more complex in taste and aroma. Hot food is typically unidirectionally spicy, and you need a tub of yogurt or bottle of water to help chug the food down."
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bgr3v5 | why do american writing conventions (chicago, mla, etc.) mandate that periods and commas directly following quotations should lie within them? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bgr3v5/eli5_why_do_american_writing_conventions_chicago/ | {
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"You would actually need two full stops -one for the quote and one for the entire sentence- but people decided that it looks better to have only one. Apparantly, Americans chose to leave out the other full stop.",
"For me its also weird. In this case there should be 2 commas like other redditor mentioned, but if only one, then it makes more sense if comma is outside of quotations, its logically more correct.",
"I’m a copy editor for several academic journals. \n\nYour aversion to the .” isn’t unjustified. It’s entirely illogical and it’s why I enforce the period last in my journals. The period marks the end of a sentence—not quotation marks. \n\nIt’s still somewhat the exception though. Academia as a whole loves its outdated conventions.\n\nFurther, style is style: English has few ‘rules’ that people don’t debate.",
"It's all just convention, there's no reason behind any of it. \n\nA publisher has that convention and they gotta stick to it, and they need to have a standard, any standard, or else it will be impossible to properly copy edit. If you publish a journal or edited volume and everyone uses random conventions and standards that will be very ugly and distracting. And if you don't have a convention then in a single article/book how else would you make it consistent without a set of rules. \n\nAnd it's too late, they won't change their conventions or have a unified convention.",
"I wish I could remember where I read this, but it was several year ago. Anyway, I read that it was created when moveable type printing presses came into use. The tiny piece of metal that held the period would slip out of place when they moved the press, so they ended up putting the quotation mark after it. The quotation mark piece was large enough stay in place when printing, and kept the period from moving while they printed. From there, it became common.",
"That rule is purely for looks, it is actually one of the lesser enforced rules in the writing conventions you listed because of this. \n\nThe idea is that:\n\n“Hello world.”\n\n“Hello world”. \n\n“Hello world.”.\n\nThe first one just looks cleaner... that really is the sole reason this rule exists at all; no fancy typewriter backstory like some conventions have.",
"Start sentence, open quote *context* end of quote, end of statement.\n\nThe British method just assumes it's a quotation of a sentence, the American is that a quote is part of a sentence, contained within it(I'm Australian and I prefer the American method it behaves more like syntax).",
"It's a *typesetting* convention, rather than a grammatical one. It's about what looks good on the page. A full stop (period) out on its own after the closing quote marks can look a bit lost and lonely, especially in monospace type, where the quotes will by necessity be as wide as an *m*. Some typesetters decided to move it in.\n\nIncidentally, the non-American convention is a little more complex than you might imagine. If the quote is (a) a complete sentence or can stand as a complete sentence and (b) is preceded by another punctuation mark, then the full stop should fall within the closing quotation marks. This applies even if the quote is interrupted.",
"Wow, this is funny because I have felt the same way my entire life. It bugs the crap out of me when the quotation doesn’t really end the sentence, but I still have to put the punctuation inside the quotation marks. It makes no sense.",
"Because its simply more pleasing to look at. (from a typography/layout point of view)\n\nSource, am Graphic Deaigner",
"From Grammar Girl (whom some people argue to be bad, but whom I like, because she cites her sources AND takes sources from both sides into account):\n\n > Compositors―people who layout printed material with type―made the original rule that placed periods and commas inside quotation marks to protect the small metal pieces of type from breaking off the end of the sentence. The quotation marks protected the commas and periods. In the early 1900s, it appears that the Fowler brothers (who wrote a famous British style guide called *The King’s English*) began lobbying to make the rules more about logic and less about the mechanics of typesetting. They won the British battle, but Americans didn’t adopt the change. That’s why we have different styles.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nBut do note that it depends on the piece of punctuation. Commas and periods go inside, and it doesn't skew the message. However, em dashes, semicolons, colons all go outside because the sentence isn't over--the quotation is merely part of it. Exclamation points and question marks vary depending on whether or not they are part of the quotation mark. For example:\n\nCorrect:\n\n > Mark asked, \"Did you see Us in theaters?\"\n\nCorrect:\n\n > Did Mark really ask if you'd \"seen Us in theaters\"?\n\nIn the first, Mark is asking the question, so the question mark goes inside. In the second, I'm asking the question about what Mark said, so it goes outside, because the whole thought is a question, not just the quote.\n\nIf it comes to things like code in IT-related situations, we usually have different typeface, alignment, and visuals for code altogether; it would be set apart and not included within quotation marks. Thus, this issue with periods and commas would not be relevant. \n\n & #x200B;\n\nSource: am editor, am instructional designer for a tech firm, do edit books, have read and followed Chicago Manual of Style cover to cover, Microsoft Manual of Style, various sections of various British style guides, MLA, and various in-house tech style guides, have a degree in Creative Writing with a focus on grammar.",
"This breakdown from the MLA actually walks through some of the reasons we think the convention exists and talks about some of the transnational differences: [_URL_1_](_URL_1_)\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe ELI5 version might say that in the time before a computer could adjust space for different width letters (L vs l) we developed some rules to make sure things looked clear. One rule was putting punctuation inside quotation marks since having them after left a gap that editors thought looked weird. To explain why Britain didn't follow us, you'd have to remember that they often use single quotation marks ( ' vs \" ) and that means editors weren't seeing the same weird spacing they saw in America. \n\nSidenote: This is also why some of you heathens continue to put two spaces after a period before you start a new sentence. Cf. [_URL_0_](_URL_0_)"
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3uzio6 | how is the average life of long-life products calculated? some led bulbs have a 24.8 year life. that seems unusually specific for a product that hasn't existed that long. | EDIT: We get it people, LED technology isn't new. But the consumer bulbs that have been on the market for a few years are. They have new technology and processing that differentiates them from LED technology that was in your 1984 Sony ghetto blaster.
EDIT 2: There's a lot of really smart people that use Reddit. Great responses everyone! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uzio6/eli5_how_is_the_average_life_of_longlife_products/ | {
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"Those bulbs are simply an array of smaller high-power LEDs, placed behind a diffuser to get a more even light over a larger area. The electrical and mechanical properties of those smaller LEDs are very well known, so it's trivial to make assumptions on their life expectancy.\n\nBy the way, LED is not a new technology. They have been around since early 60's.",
"**The lifespan for an LED bulb is actually measured in hours of use and on/off cycles, not years.** Primarily we're concerned with hours of use, which is almost always the limiting factor but on/off cycles do have some effect.\n\nThere's then a set standard of hours per day that a bulb is expected to perform - eg an assumption that the bulb will be used for an average of, say, 3 hours per day (which I believe is roughly the industry standard). I don't know if this is the exact number used, but you get the idea. The standard used is that once the bulb is < 50% or < 70% of the original brightness (the number varies by jurisdiction), it is considered \"failed\" and in need of replacement.\n\nSo for example if the assumption is that the bulb will be used for an average of 3 hours per day, we divide the rated number of hours by 3 and then divide that by 365 to know how many years the bulb should be last.\n\nSimilarly if the assumption is each bulb is turned on/off twice per day, then we divide the number of on/off cycles by 2 and then divide that by 365 to know how many years it should last. This is usually a \"use it until it breaks\" thing, and is pretty rare with LED's.\n\nThe expected lifespan is the smaller of these two numbers (almost always the number of hours). The companies aren't allowed to round the numbers up (so can't say 15 years), but at the same time 14.8 sounds better than 14, so they don't want to round down.\n\nNote that there's no guarantee of these numbers, they're based on what's called \"Mean Time To Failure\" (MTTF) which is basically \"on average, how long will a bulb last\" (although as a comment below points out, I believe this isn't a *true* mean/average and doesn't use 50% as the target). Some will last longer, others not as long.\n\n----\n\nSo the next part of the puzzle is **how do we get this number?**. Mostly by \"accelerated testing\" - basically by putting the bulb in a warm environment and then leaving it on 24/7. We know for each of the pieces of the bulb, how much they are affected by heat, so we can know that, for example, it fails 5x faster at 80c than 20c. So if we test at 80c for 24 hours a day, that's roughly the same as testing at 20c for 6 hours a day, but for 20x as long (5x longer because of the heat, and 4x longer because there are 4x 6 hours per day). This means we can test for 1 year and actually have a decent idea of the lifespan of around 20 years.\n\nAs an extra \"bonus\", we don't even necessarily have to test until every bulb fails - if we take enough bulbs, we can wait until maybe 1/4 have failed and extrapolate the overall failure rate from this. Meaning the testing can be done in < 1 year even for a product with a 20+ year lifespan.\n\nThis comment may help to some extent, too - I won't try to steal it, but it's worth a read \n\n_URL_0_\n\nAs mentioned in another comment, LED's are not new - it's just that they've recently become much more popular in consumer electronics.\n\n**And because this answer has grown to around double the size since I originally wrote it, here's the super TL;DR ELI5**\n\nMake it hotter so it breaks faster, then test it 24/7 instead of using it like a normal person would.",
"Something else no one has mentioned yet is a process called Accelerated Life Testing. This is an artificial way to test products by speeding up the different stresses and usage a device might experience. \n\nIn the case of light bulbs, that could be higher or lower temperature extremes, rapid on/off cycles, or higher and lower than normal voltages. \n\nDepending on how long something should last and in what ways it would be expected to fail, they can design specific tests to average out the time it takes to fail, and from that you get the estimated times seen on packaging.\n\n[Wiki- Accelerated Life Testing](_URL_0_)",
"LEDs have a general life expectancy of 50 000 hrs. If you use your lights for 10 hours a day, this should be 13.7 yrs. If this is correct, then LED’s are definitely an investment, even the top of the range bulb would work out to cost 2.55GBP per year. Add that to the saving you would make on energy and you’ve got a very cost effective bulb!\nHowever, there are times when, even high quality, LED products can last as little as a year. The problem with these can be attributed to a large number of things, here are a few main causes:\nHeatsink\nDesigning a heatsink is a fine science. Some heatsinks do not have the correct amount of surface area, some do not take into consideration about the gaps between fins to enable air flow. Some have horizontal fins, when they are positioned vertically. The main design fault with the latter, being that heat rises. Rather than dispersing the heat away from the bulb, the heat coming from the lower fins heat the upper fins even more.\nCapacitors\nMost, standard, electronic capacitors are made from a plastic. These have an average life time of around 1 year, if used regularly. Capacitors are part of the circuit in every LED driver. Now a number of companies are making their capacitors from ceramics, giving them a much longer life expectancy.\nEnvironment\nLEDs are usually designed to work in our country, and in our climate. If they are used in a hot country, or enclosed area, the heat around them can easily surpass the heat they were designed to withstand, shortening their life time.\nTo get LEDs to their full potential, these factors, among other considerations, must be taken into account.",
"Off topic but something frustrating about LED lighting. \n\nSome people ask \"If LED's are so efficient and great, why aren't all buildings using them? Commercial LED lighting which conforms to the UK Building Regs is very expensive, its dropping in price but the initial high cost is due to the luminaire (bulb) not being sold separately. Generally they're only sold with the fitting attached so the builder/contractor has to buy the bulb and the expensive fitting to go with it. Except hundreds of times. The cost adds up fast and when funds on a project start running out, expensive lighting is one of the first things to remove. ",
"A bit of a tangent. I haven't had LED light bulbs long enough to tell, but CFL light bulbs really disappointed me with their lifespan. Touted as lasting so much longer than regular light bulbs, they tended to burn out as fast or even faster in my home.",
"As someone who deals with LEDs everyday, the lifespand is based on the Mean Time to Failure. since a product like an LED light last so long, they look at the rate of decay of the product and guess the number based on the rate. With LEDs, they aren't suppose to fail, so the number you see when you see 24.8 years is when the light bulb is producing 70% of the original light output. \n\nIt is similar to solar panels, they are based on useful life not when they break. It is the same for most other products. \n\nAs for LED lights (since you brought it up) the rate will vary based on temperature. 100,000 hours is a standard number you see, but that number is if the light bulb is able to stay 25C. most bulbs run at about 80C, which is the max before significant damage is done. 80C may give you 75,000 hours. 90C may give you 60k hours. \n\nSome manufacturers are being little jerks when they claim 100k hours, but they know the product will last only 25k hours based on temperature. You will see this with the CHinese LEDs, as they don't give a fuck. They might even only last 500 hours or less depending on design. I had one last 30 minutes, it hit 175C and blew up the capacitors \n\nI have taken some LEDs bulbs apart to find that the power supplies are rated for 80C and the bulbs run at 120C... meaning the bulb may last 5000 hours before it overheats the power supply.... so, NEVER BUY CHINESE MADE BULBS ONLINE, stick with what you can buy in stores as they are lab tested for quality. \n\nCREE, for example, has a junky new LED bulb with no means of cooling itself off. they are happy to tell you 25k hours of use if you run it 3 hours, but if you run it 4 hours, it will last about 20k hours, and so on. \n\nIf you want an LED to last 24.8 years, you need to find a company who took the time to add a huge heatsink that can keep heat away from the LED. _URL_0_ has an LED that runs at 56C and the power supply is separate so the bulb should last the estimated 100k hours. \n\nCompanies like SWITCH led had an awesome design, they used liquid to keep the bulb cool, but no one was willing to pay the price. that bulb would easily last 100k hours of nonstop use. people still rather buy the lower quality bulbs.... cant look at price when shoping for leds... gotta look at the metal they use, it has to have a heatsink!! it is better to spend $50 for a switch made LED that actually can last 100k hours of nonstop use, not $5 - $10 on a bulb that can only run 3 hours a day and barely last 25k hours. you will end up buying way more bulbs and it will cost you far more than a CFL at that point. \n\nOh, and dont even get me started on those fire hazards phillips is selling. you would be lucky to get 6k hours out of them, those suckers hit 150C after a few hours. \n\nHope that helps. ",
"There is a complex mathematical formula that correlates the failure rate of electronic components when tested under high temperature conditions to their expected failure rate and MTBF/MTTF in real life. Even at zero failure over the course of the test, the formula produces a non-zero estimated result.\n\nBut the numbers on LED bulbs in particular probably also have some average usage assumptions and marketing factored in.",
"LEDs have existed for 53 years. They were first produced in 1962, and they were actually invented in 1927. Not saying anything about MTBF for LEDs here, just pointing out that there has actually been science and technology before the year 2000, hard as it may be to believe it.",
"As mentioned by others, there are techniques for quickening the lifetime stresses of devices. \n\nIf the device is especially stressed by turning on and off, then they might flip the power repeatedly. If the stress comes from the first 3 seconds of power on and not from power off, then the testing regimen would be to flip on for 3 seconds and then immediately off and then back on to stay on for 3 seconds. You could then establish an average number of times to be switched on per day, and divide the total times switched on by that average to establish how many days the product will last. \n\nThis can also be made quicker by increasing heat, or power to the device to simulate longer times of usage in a short amount of time. \n\nQuality assurance and research & development work together to insure that a product of minimal accepted quality can last at least this number of days/years under typical usage. There is a very important point here that the device's usage and rate must be similar to expected patterns in order to get the 'expected' lifetime. If you use the device/product harder or more than intended this will (usually) shorten the life of the product.\n\nThere is usually a margin of error that included. They want to provide a lifetime expectation that covers most (if not all) of the products tested. Quality control will insure that the products are up to a certain quality, this helps to insure that all of the products last as long as the expected lifetime.\n\n",
"This question reminds me of a classic Calvin & Hobbes bit:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nScience! It can actually calculate without measuring. ",
"Engineers should know this. HALT - highly accelerated lifecycle testing. Buncha extreme electrical and environmental test conducted concurrently.\n\n\n_URL_0_\n\n",
"The Philips bulb that won the Department of Energy LED efficiency prize (the L-Prize) back in 2011 have been run continuously for over 40,000 hours with an average of just 5% luminous loss. Of the 31 bulbs being tested, not one has failed. _URL_0_\n\nI have a number of these bulbs and they are still the best bulbs I've found by a wide margin. Too bad they were discontinued.",
"I worked as an Failure Analysis Electrical Engineer. You put tons of components through stress tests for long periods of time. Some stress tests induce humidity, some heat, some cold, some pressure, some a combination of those. You also run the components at a high voltage on the threshhold of its operating voltage to induce more stress on it. The stress accelerates the wear on the part simulating more time passing, this is described as the acceleration factor. After getting all this data you can use the acceleration factor and probability concepts to determine the failure rate and mean time to failure, estimating how long a part is expected to last.",
"I work in the juice industry. We are currently working on a new line of almond milk. We have these jugs of almond milk in the back fridge that are green and black and funky, but we leave them there still because the qa manager wants to know how long it takes for the milk to separate.",
"Just wanna point out that LEDs aren't new at all. They have existed for decades. The little lights on old computers, TVs and eletronics in general (usually yellow or red) are LEDs, you've most likely seen them. They just weren't used as a lighting source, only as signals.",
"They have a time machine. The movie time machine was based off of a real device. so they started a stop watch, started the time machine and stopped the stopwatch when they saw the bulb go out.\n\nThen they went back in time and printed the packaging.\n\nFairly simple actually.",
"bubbles of accelerated time. they're not really cost effective to use in the general manufacturing process yet but they do wonders for a couple spot checks of qa testing",
"Also the 24.8 year life is as well as the energy savings listed on the package are based on something like 3 hours of use a day. So only like 3 years of use 24/7",
"It should be pointed out that LED bulbs don't last even close to the number they claim. \n\nI've gone through 4 of the CREE LED bulbs in about a year. They keep failing on me. Also, if you look at the LED tail lights of cars you'll see that they often have LEDs out on them. \n\nUsually it's the power supply circuitry that fails and not the diode itself, but the end result is that you have a light that doesn't work. The claimed number is extremely misleading.",
"Answers have been pretty good so far. I worked for the research center which developed and performs this testing, as well as conducts a lot of the science behind LED/lighting R & D (including the invention of the white LED) if anyone has any questions regarding lights/ lighting in general. AMA!",
"There are two types of people in the world; those who can extrapolate from incomplete data ",
"Here's one to think about : acceptance criteria for safety critical systems on a commercial airplane have to show a catastrophic failure rate of less than 1e-9/hr. This failure rate has to be tested and verified before acceptance.",
"the main item is called MTBF or as earlier mentioned Mean Time Between Failure.\nIt is a pure statistical data and it gives you a probability of a failure for a (large) number of samples.\nThe principle of gathering the data. Take a large number of components (in your case LED), let it run for a certain time. The sum of operating hours divided by the failure is your MTBF. In other words - it is not telling you that your specific LED last that long.\nBut, if you have a panel of lets say 1000 LED's and you let it run, then you have a statistical estimation of how many will fail during one year of operation. This statistical data is useful for engineering purpose and also for maintenance. Based on the MTBF, you may estimate your spare part consumption and also repair time - here joins the so called MTTR ( Mean Time To Repair ) the game. And in result, how many Service Engineers you need to provide an high uptime.",
"For some materials, and by deduction some products, the material life can be calculated using Accelerated Life Testing, or ALT for short.\n\nALT uses hightened temperatures to simulate longer lengths of time. So if a material needs to work at 70 deg F for 30 years, you can test the material at 300 deg F (or whatever the practical maximum temperature of the material is) for say 2 years. Following the ALT, a set of paremeters (hardness, tensile strength, durability) are also tested and compared to the original unaged sample.\n\nThe above #'s are made-up and not accurate, however it explains the concept of performing ALT. Source: Am a R & D engineer for E & P oil and gas and am constantly testing new materials to meet challenging environmental requirements.\n",
"It's also worth mentioning that LED lifespans are estimated on lab hypotheticals and usually only list how long the LEDs them selfs are going to last, and not the electronics supporting them in the base of the bulb (usually fail way way way before the LED).",
"I used to work in the semiconductor industry, and a lot of the chips have ridiculously long lives (thousands of years in some cases). \n\nThat is measured by building a model of mean time to failure (MTTF) as a function of environmental factors like heat and humidity. At extremely high heat, pressure, etc, these devices may take only a few days or weeks to fail. Once you have a decent model you just extrapolate down to normal conditions where you say things like \"this device will last 500 years!\"",
"This is actually a rather large area of science and engineering known as failure theory. There are a lot of different failure modes that have to be considered. The #1 post explains what is know as fatigue failure - it occurs when a product is expected to last a number of cycles. Other types of failure can be if a steel reaches it's yield strength or if it is deformed because it goes beyond the elastic limit of the material. \nFatigue failure for materials can be tested in what is known as a R R Moore rotary beam test (it has some limitations though). Again, I don't know about light bulbs but with materials we simply run the tests. We're currently doing tests for the US navy in my lab, we have 20 machines just keeping the materials at constant uniaxial tension and we just document whether they moved or not. Some of them have imperfections, rust etc on them to see how that affects them. The navy is paying us a sizeable sum of money for this and many of the samples will probably last several years before they fail.\n",
"This comment has been overwritten by an open source script to protect this user & apos;s privacy.",
"Anecdotally, I had HID lamps installed in my basement. At the three month mark, they would all fail within one week of the first failure.\n\nLighting companies have designed obsolescence down to a fine science. ",
"o ho HO, so fun that you chose light bulbs to wonder about it.\n\nThe light bulb conspiracy (2010)\n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_\n\nELi5: planned obsolescence and it's no joke for the manufacturers.\n\n",
"Look at your package more closely. Chances are, it'll say it'll last 24 years . . . at 3hrs/day (in other words, 3 years).",
"The new LED bulbs are ass. I find they have a shorter lifespan than the tungsten bulbs, aren't are bright (and yes, I've tried various brands and brightness ratings), and seem to 'blow out' more quickly with repeated on/off switching.\n\nAnyone else having this experience?",
"I assume they use such a specific figure because if they simply said 25 years, people would think they just pulled the figure out of their ass. \n\nAlso, my sister wears too much eye makeup. People think she's a whore. ",
"Two of the most expected failure modes for white LEDs are phosphor aging and power supply failure. \n\nBoth of those technologies have been around a long time so we already have data on them. ",
"I remember the CFLs stating they had a 7 year life or something like that... I've still replaced them several times over. They don't even last half that long. Of course, who is going to take them back after 2 years? Nobody.",
"Manufacturing engineers estimate lifetimes by accelerated aging tests. Some tests heat the object and then many units are put on a test stand.. the failure rate observed, rules about heating acceleration and some statistics allow a calculation of the probable lifetime. Common in electronics industry"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uzio6/eli5_how_is_the_average_life_of_longlife_products/cxjd8t6"
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"http://www.solidstatelightingdesign.com/oringinal-l-prize-competition-winning-led-bulb-from-philips-reaches-over-40000-hours-of-actual-testing/"
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85qqes | why banks offered much higher interest rate in the past? | _URL_0_
Did they invest that money similar way modern-day funds do? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/85qqes/eli5_why_banks_offered_much_higher_interest_rate/ | {
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"Bank interest rates are based on the interest rate set by the central bank. In the US, that's the Federal Reserve. Interest rates have been very low since the 2008-09 financial crisis. This encourages banks to lend, which hopefully spurs economic growth. The downside is that savers have had a pretty shitty time."
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"https://www.bankrate.com/banking/cds/historical-cd-interest-rates-1984-2016/"
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[]
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|
1zb20t | why do eye drops make my eyes not red? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zb20t/eli5_why_do_eye_drops_make_my_eyes_not_red/ | {
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"It could be because the redness was irritation caused by dryness. If your eyes are too dry, stuff that gets in them isn't washed out as quickly (to the corners of your eyes) and your eyelids rub more on the eyes themselves. ",
"Eye drops usually have anti-inflammatory compounds which triggers to stop any damage caused and stimulates blood flow within an eye ball (so that blood cleans up and capillaries are restored i.e. your eyes stop being red). In addition to that, your eyes are humidified (in case that a dryness was the main cause of your eyes' redness). "
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195siv | why do words like "xylophone" and "xenophobe" start with an x instead of a z? | It seems completely unnecessary for the letter X to make the same sound as the letter Z like that. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/195siv/eli5_why_do_words_like_xylophone_and_xenophobe/ | {
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"They come from Greek, and has almost the same spelling as the Greek words. Greeks love (or loved, since it's an old word) x-s. It hasn't been changed to something more logical because.. well, English isn't logical or easy. "
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2aahj9 | what makes a safe crackable or uncrackable? | Please do elaborate, from lowely safe to high tech. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2aahj9/eli5_what_makes_a_safe_crackable_or_uncrackable/ | {
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"Whether it has a mechanical fault that would allow you to determine the combination without just brute-forcing and trying them all, or a mechanical fault that allows you to disengage the deadbolt or whatever else prevents it opening without needing to input the code at all. \n\nThere is no uncrackable safe.\n\nSome people might also just including using physical force as a form of safe cracking - no safe is invincible. Given the right tools even a hypothetically perfect lock could just be drilled through or something else.\n\nMeans of cracking can vary wildly depending on the form of mechanism that locks it, the size, the specific model, etc.\n\nRest assured, though, that there's no perfect lock and people are finding cracks for new locks all the time.\n\nA safe, like all security measures, isn't about being perfect it's about being enough of a hassle that it's not worth it or intrusion attempts can be detected before they're successful. \n\nI only understand a few of the vulnerabilties and how they work, but that's only because I only understand a very small selection of the actual mechanics behind safe's locks. \n\nExplaining those to you, or any other safe cracking mechanism, would involve explaining the workings of the lock. Doing so in text is really difficult and tiresome. You'd be better off looking online for resources with images and animations that make things more clear.",
"All safes are crackable.\n\nSafes are rated in terms of how many minutes it must take for an experienced person with the right tools (but not the combination/key obviously) to open it, and really good ones are rated for like 60 minutes.\n\nThe purpose of a safe is not to resist talented burglars indefinitely, it's to resist dumb burglars, and prevent talented burglars from getting in, cracking it, and getting out, in less time than it takes your guard to make his patrol and discover them, or the alarm to trigger and the police arrive.",
"You should google 'defcon lockpicking' there are a lot of really great talks about the subject of locks(and even a few that mentions safes specifically)\n",
"Safes that are advertised as “uncrackable\" often have some sort of mechanism that will simply break the unlocking mechanism if it is tampered with. "
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9jw04g | when discussing the causes of cancer, why do researchers rarely talk about the hundreds of nuclear test that have been done across the world throughout history? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9jw04g/eli5_when_discussing_the_causes_of_cancer_why_do/ | {
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"The carcinogenic effect of those tests are negligible compared to other main factors like the sun or smoking. It's pretty easy to measure whether that particular nuclear radiation has spread and to what level. It's ionizing radiation and it sticks relatively close to the impact radius."
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di186q | how do antihistamine anxiety meds (like hydroxyzine hydrochloride) work differently than other anxiety medications? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/di186q/eli5_how_do_antihistamine_anxiety_meds_like/ | {
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"This is one of those cases where we use what was originally a side effect as a primary effect. Benadryl, the most commonly known first generation antihistamine, causes some pretty significant sedation. First generation histamines like Benadryl and hydroxyzine do this because they cross the blood brain barrier, much more so than second generation “non-drowsy” antihistamines like Claritin do. So we use this sedating effect to calm people experiencing an active panic attack or anxiety episode down so they can get back to normal functioning. \n\nBenzos are also used due to their sedative/calming effect, though the exact mechanism is different. SSRIs are used as a preventative medication for anxiety rather than acutely like the first two.",
"There are different parts of the brain we can manipulate to induce calmness or drowsiness. It's not like \"antihistamines vs others\".\n\nAntihistamines act on histamine receptors. \n\nBenzodiazepines and valerian root act on the GABA system.\n\nMelatonin works by telling your brain it's night time.\n\nOpioids work on opioid receptors.\n\nSome antipsychotics also bind to histamine receptors. \n\nThe difference between all these and many others is the part of the brain they interact with. People are different, so are their brains, some will find antihistamines work best, some will prefer another one."
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3cu52y | why does rubbing a magnet against non-magnetic metal make it temporarily magnetic? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cu52y/eli5_why_does_rubbing_a_magnet_against/ | {
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"When something is magnetic, the unpaired electrons are all spinning in parallel. Normally, materials that can be magnetized (iron, nickel, cobalt, etc.) won't exhibit this because the spins are randomly distributed. When you apply an external magnet, it causes those spins to line up. Anywhere the spins are lined up, it is called a domain. Rubbing a magnet against a ferromagnetic material will get all of those domains lined up temporarily (known as hysteresis), but because it's imperfect, when you remove the magnet they may move back toward their original orientations. How much this happens is known as remanence. You want high remanence materials to make a permanent magnet, but low remanence materials to make temporary magnets, such as in a transformer."
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2bcasq | why do tobacco products not require a label as to what they are made with, and other products do? | Pretty much the title. I was looking at my pack of cigarettes wondering what exactly they use to create a cigarette. But they don't say. Yet most common products do. So why are tobacco products special? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bcasq/eli5_why_do_tobacco_products_not_require_a_label/ | {
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"text": [
"lobbying by the tobacco industry. \n\nIf people say all the different added chemicals they would be more likely to quit. "
]
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1qus8f | why is it that most people get more emotional when they see animals get hurt as opposed to seeing other humans get hurt? | This counts towards me too. I've watched countless videos of people being seriously injured or killed. But I don't get as emotional as when I see a puppy get thrown off a cliff. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qus8f/eli5_why_is_it_that_most_people_get_more/ | {
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"Movies and television have desensitized us to the horror of humans being hurt or killed. We see it every day so we get used to it. Animals not so much.",
"In part, because domesticated animals tend to explicitly trust us and most feel that we have a responsibility to treat them appropriately. Also, they for the most part are truly innocent, whereas we tend to assume humans deserved what they got in some way, or at least that they had the power to avoid it at some point. I think most people feel just/more strongly about children- who also trust and rely on us. ",
"I'd say alot of this comes from our paternal instincts that are affected by the appearances and habits of things. things we think look cute are related to their similarities to babies (i.e. they are small, round, big head, big eyes, etc.). Cute actions are usually associated with immaturity or helplessness. Animals, generally, fit into one or more of these triggers for our paternal instinct. We want to protect cute things.\n\nSo really its not that they are animals, it's that they are cute and vulnerable. Imagine the difference between a child dieing and an adult dieing, and then imagine the difference between a puppy dieing and a zombie hound from resident evil dieing. One you feel for strongly, one not so much.",
"No offense, but what makes you think that this is true of most people? ",
"because you can be sure that the animal didn't deserve it",
"Most people have been insulted, degraded, and humiliated by other people at some point. Many have been beaten or sexually abused by people. Dogs and cats haven't done that shit to you.",
"It's not most people, this is something particular to the economic north/cultural west. It is a reflection of the state of society and interpersonal relations: \n\n* People aren't always nice and this jades many, making them weary of human interaction; pets, for example, are a less complicated surrogate for humans\n\n* People in developed countries are relatively selfish (1st world problems and all of that); life is pretty mercenary, every man for himself\n* People no longer feel any kinship with fellow citizens; related to the previous point- we live in big cities, don't know each other, don't *want* to know each other) \n\nPeople who feel more for animals than they do other people see animals as innocent and free of sin. There is a presumption of some sort of guilt in humans (save kids). Pets \"love\" you unconditionally and though a lion would kill you, people don't attach any malicious motive to their behavior, just natural instinct. Plus pets are cute.\n\nTL;DR while people aren't that great, we tend to attribute human characteristics (esp. loyalty, love and innocence) to animals and then compare them to humans; humans will look like a bad proposition every time",
"For most part cause we're somewhat desensitized to human suffering (some more than others) from our own experiences, TV, news, history, etc while animal abuse is something you rarely see.\n\nPartly because animals are usually less capable of defending themselves or even seeing it coming.",
"We were watching something the other night when a bad guy hurt a dog, my wife says \"Change the channel\". I didn't. The guy later dies and it changes to \"Yea die mother fucker\"",
"Insanity and the comfort of living a relatively trouble-free first world existence.",
"I'm more emotional over a child dying or being hurt than an animal.",
"I thought i was just cold... Watching that vid of the Apache helicopters taking out Taliban fighters the other night - people dying everywhere and on the telly comes a story about abuse of export cattle in asia. \n\nAs they start to show the footage the graphic content warning comes on and I grab the control and the flick the channel thinking \"nope can't watch that\"...and then resume watching people die at the hands of machine gun and rocket fire. \n\nFor me it's very much to do with humans being able to comprehend and influence what is happening to them that makes me indifferent. It's the confusion and pain in an animals eyes as it's being mistreated and me knowing that they don't know how to change it because they don't know what they did wrong that really gets me in the feels though",
"I think there are a lot of reasons, but mainly just because they're cute. I'm only 23 and since childhood I feel I've always been raised by society to care more about cute or better looker people and things. If it's ugly, make fun of it and forget about it (at least that's what school kids show one another).",
"Picture this. \n \nA man living his life in a run down neighborhood often sells drugs in order to make a living for himself. He deals to many people in his neighborhood even some in a violent gangs territory. One day, he goes out during his routine sales route and gets stopped by the violent gang. They tie him up a mutilate and kill him and post a video of it online. People watch it and don't think anything of it. Just another drug dealer getting the bad end of a deal. However, the same gang capture the now deceased man's dog and kill it on camera in order to make a statement to no longer sell in their territory.\n\nAnyone watching that would sympathize with the dog because it was dragged into something it had no idea was going on and was not responsible for. I would become enraged to see the pet die because it had no part in what was done other than it's life being taken away for nothing more than pity rivalry.",
"IMHO: Its the \"destruction of innocence\" that really is what those people (myself included) are perceiving; They realize the animal doesnt even know itself that its being screwed, so it hurts even more. most of those will still empathize with children being hurt too for the same reason. ",
"self-awareness. a human might understand why he is getting hurt but an animal can't and will still tend to explicitly trust you even if they go on to live",
"It's simple desensitization.\n\nPeople in the past were used to seeings animals killed and would often have to do the task of slaughtering themselves. Even more generally, they were used to the harshness of the animal kingdom. If they saw a dog that had been badly injured in a fight they'd have to put it down themselves instead of calling animal control and seeing the problem neatly vanish into the decaled van of a nicely uniformed professional.\n\nNowadays it's the opposite and we're more used to seeing humans harmed than animals.",
"Because Sarah Mclachlan doesn't narrate the videos of people getting hurt.",
"I wish I had a scientific method to explain this but I don't. I'll give you what I think is the best answer. I've seen a man get executed in the most brutal ways and think deep down, he did something to get into that situation, therefore, I don't really pity them (Mexican drug cartels). When it comes to animals though, they trust and sometimes need us to survive. We are their world and as such have a responsibility to treat them right. When a human being decides to kill an animal, the animal has no idea what is about to happen and will sometimes unwittingly do what the sadistic human being wants. This (for the majority of people) is very sick and twisted (myself included).\n",
"I must be unpopular opinion puffin\n\nI'm the exact opposite. \n\n",
"because wee see animals as helpless. not so of people.",
"Because animals are helpless\n",
"Most people like animals more than most people.\n\nThe more helpless and innocent the living thing hurt, the more empathy it evokes. As in, if you climb Mt Everest and freeze, no pity.",
"That's easy: people are assholes.",
"When it comes to animals or children, I think of how helpless they are and how much they trust that we are supposed to take care of them.\n\nThat's not to say that I don't care for adults being hurt or killed but children or animals just makes me sadder.",
"Because you like puppies, and you don't have any emotional attachments to these strangers. Maybe if a dude in one of these videos looked enough like your dad to remind you of his face while he was getting his head cut off, then that might affect you differently. I know me personally, I'm usually shocked at watching videos of people being killed or something, but emotional is certainly a word I wouldn't use. But in reverse, I love puppies, and have had plenty of them, with lots of fond puppy memories floating around in my head, and to see one thrown off a cliff breaks my heart. Its cries were the worst =/",
"Movies! for years we've been subconsciously trained by the media to ignore the dead bad guy and focus on the good guy killing all the bad guys and it has made us a little less sensitive towards real blood.. and when an animal gets hurt in movies, its always an emotional scene having influential emotional music that just touches your heart.. Viola! that's how you program people .. I can't say what all the implications of that are on our lives but i can safely say that its turned us into senseless people having distorted priorities.",
"I don't know. I know it's condescending, but I think that if you care more about animal life than human life there's something wrong with you, and it kind of sickens me.",
"Here is the real answer: You think you feel this way because they don't show videos of humans getting thrown off a cliff on the news. \n\nWatch the video below of adult men getting executed (NSFL) and then talk\n\n_URL_0_\n\nScroll down to it.",
"I know there are lots of other replies, sorry, I haven't read them... but I have one really simple answer:\n\nBecause they can't speak for themselves.\n\nThis essentially means that someone has to stick up for them, stick up for their rights. Their lives are more often than not in our hands, they trust us with their lives, and it also really hurts to see your fellow humans acting in such a way toward another species who is perceived to be harmless and/or innocent. Most of us also believe in the concept of \"innocent until proven guilty\", and more often than not animals are in fact innocent and our guts kick in when we see injustice at our own hands. ",
"Animals are often a better class of people. ",
"People have hurt us before. Animals usually haven't.",
"In modern western society we have become so far removed from the concept of animals as food - we only see the meat as meat that magically appears in the cooler at the supermarket, we don't engage with the actual process of breeding them and slaughtering them. This so much so that most people are legitimately horrified when they are put face to face with the breeding and slaughtering of animals - note in example the immense attention and reactions the clip from Samsara got a few months back. So over time our relationship to live animals has become that of pets, it has grown from practical use (guard dogs, cats hunting mice on the farm etc) to become creatures that only 'work' as substitute children for their owners. \n\ntl;dr we treat live animals like children",
"Because violence is everywhere and it's mostly about human beings. Wars, murderes, assaults, tussles and so on. It's shown through media every day. So you're used to violence against people somewhat. Animals getting hurt are just few % of violence and we're still sensitive when we see animals get hurt because we're not used to it, YET. Moreover, we see animals harmless and what about people? Not necessarly, I'm sure we all have met assholes in our lives and we probably will meet a lot more. IMO!",
"I can say I feel the same way. I fucking hate people because they are fucking stupid. Dogs are innocent and only beg for your love and companionship. If you handed me a gun and told me to either kill someone That annoys me, or an obnoxious dog, I'd pick the person any day.",
"Because animals are innocent. ",
"This one is so modern western style......my asian mum and dad don't respect much to animal",
"I'm definitely one of these people. For me, it's because animals are forever innocent. Every human has done something bad in their life, or they will as soon as they get old enough. Animals are purely instinctual. There is no evil in their actions. Their suffering always seems unjust because of this while human suffering is earned. Human suffering has meaning. Animal suffering has none.",
"the same can be asked of why people are ok with animals shitting in public, but every time I do it, it always draws a few gasps and stares ... hey, I have a plastic bag with me, I'm not leaving it behind.",
"Human empathy is something that needs to be developed through the biopsychosocial route; we gain this sense through observational learning, and are even classically conditioned to honor and preserve human life. There are so many variables that will ultimately influence the level of empathy in any given person such as brain chemistry, life experiences and preconditioned schemas regarding our sets of morals, which is also influenced by many factors such as our cultures and-in groups. There is a general implied reverence for human life yet we conversely cause more destruction amongst our own species than any other I am aware of. Perhaps a major reason why humans tolerate human suffering in opposition to all the things we are taught is the media desensitization, once again with a mix of other variables. I don't believe you can honestly answer your question without writing a thesis on the subject of empathy, and even then you would have to subscribe to a specific school of thought which can't currently be scientifically ProveN one way or the other. I believe the amount of importance put in human life is a factor, as humans typically want to rebel against their environments. I also believe there is a fair amount of mental illness and genetic mutation in the world today due to various factors. Still, it's way too much content to go into on reddit. PM if interested though, I can point you to some very relevant scholarly articles and such. "
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4tgfuu | how do some websites know that i reached them directly with their ip instead of help from a dns server. | When I visit _URL_0_ it brings me to their correct website.
When I look up the Ip for _URL_0_ I get 82.94.226.104.
But when I visit 82.94.226.104 all I get is a plain text with "It works!".
What exactly is happening here? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4tgfuu/eli5_how_do_some_websites_know_that_i_reached/ | {
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"Part of a standard HTTP request includes sending the name of the host from the URL. This allows a single webserver to host multiple sites and serve up different pages based on the domain used in the request.\n\nIf you do a reverse DNS lookup on that IP, you'd see what other domains are hosted there. There might be multiple subdomains, it could be shared hosting for multiple unrelated sites or it could just be a poorly configured sever.",
"IP addresses are associated with a particular server - a specific piece of machinery. In the most basic case, one server delivers files for one website, so there's a one-to-one correspondence between the IP address and the URL, and the two are pretty much interchangeable.\n\nIt's possible for a single server (with a single IP) to serve files for two different websites, though. For example, the server 82.94.226.104 might serve both _URL_0_ and _URL_1_. In this case, when you request _URL_0_ through your browser, the DNS system tells you, \"that's IP 82.94.226.104\", so your browser sends a request for \"_URL_0_ at 82.94.226.104\". When you request _URL_1_, DNS gives you the same IP, and your browser sends a request for \"_URL_1_ at 82.94.226.104\". When you make the connection, the server knows which website to send you based on the website name you requested, not just the IP. So, this is called *name-based virtual hosting*. \n\nWhat happens when you connect to the server directly through its IP, without specifying the name of one of its websites? It doesn't know which one to send you! Normally it would be configured to send you to a default site, but in this case, it seems like you're accessing one of the server program's utility pages that are used to check its status. Users typically aren't supposed to see that page, so it looks like the admin forgot to configure the correct default behavior."
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1qjnun | why is it that when you watch someone go through something uncomfortable/painful, you have a physical reaction (ex. in text) quite like theirs? | is it just me or did anyone else feel like they could breath better for a short moment after watching the video (im sure many of you saw) of someone having something huge extracted from his nose? i mean, i obviously didn't even know the guy... not that that is the only example, but that one's pretty clear.
i googled "physical reaction to someone else's pain" and got a bit on empathy and how physical and emotional pain work but not quite the answer to my question. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qjnun/eli5_why_is_it_that_when_you_watch_someone_go/ | {
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"Its called mirror neurons. It's the same reason why you cringe when you see a hardblow in football, or when you jump and cheer on a buzzer beater 3-pointer!"
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18yglt | polygons in video games - what they are, what they do, why people rave about them, etc. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18yglt/eli5_polygons_in_video_games_what_they_are_what/ | {
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"everything you see in a 3D picture is made up of polygons. More polygons means more detail, so instead of having a mountain that was made up of 6 polygons (2 triangles on the base, and four for the sides, making a pyramid shape) you could have it made up of thousands of polygons, creating ridges and chasms and caves and even trees and rocks.\n\nMore polygons is the reason that characters in Final Fantasy 7 were blocky (and didn't actually have hands!) and the ones in FF10 were a lot more realistic looking.",
"Computer graphics work in terms of \"points on space\". If you connect those points with straight lines (computers are not good at curves, as they are difficult to calculate) you get blocky looking graphics ([example on the bottom](_URL_1_)).\n\nYou can easily see how this makes circles and curves look bad. To better this, you can increase the number of points, lines and polygons. The result looks better, but means more work for the computer to do.\n\nComputer uses to be very slow, so they could not handle a lot of this work every second, so computer games used to look not very round, and level designer usually tried to avoid certain shapes which would look awful.\n\nBonus image: Comparison of high and low polygon numbers, notice how the old half life guard seems to have creases in his body: [image](_URL_0_)\n\n*edit: spelling*"
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2ju62k | why are many highways winding and not straight? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ju62k/eli5_why_are_many_highways_winding_and_not/ | {
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"They have to go around hills and valleys without going up and down to much. Therefore, they gently curve around to keep the road relatively level.",
"In addition to needing to navigate the terrain, much of the land that highways are built on was privately owned before the highways were built. There is a concept known as \"right-of-way\" (or, more generally: [easement](_URL_0_) ) that allows a government to take possession of or force an owner to allow them to rent land in order to build the highway. However, not every property owner is equally willing to give up their land for a highway to be built. So the exact course of a highway is often a balance between how much it will cost to build, and how much it will cost to convince the land owner to let it be built. If it's cheaper to build the highway around a piece of land than to take the land owner to court, the highway gets a curve in it.",
"It depends on what is in the way of where you are building a road. Much easier to go around a large hill than up one side and down another, let alone a tunnel through it or to remove the hill all together. There are also rivers to cross and elevation to think about. You also need to go around property that is privately owned. ",
"Winding roads make you more alert than straight roads. It's safer. \n\nEdit - Don't know why I'm getting downvoted. Google highway hypnosis, it's a thing. There have been studies and everything. ",
"Lol drive through New Mexico or Arizona or Texas and you'll be begging for a Curve"
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2pfn8i | why do black people get pulled over? | From what I have experienced and understand in a typical stop, the cop is usually behind the victim when he flashes his lights. Can somebody please explain to me the concept behind "I got pulled over because I am black" when you can not see the skin color of the driver in front of you? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pfn8i/eli5why_do_black_people_get_pulled_over/ | {
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"you can see them pass you before you start following them. cops sit parked on the side of the road waiting for someone to pull over.",
"why take responsibility for your actions if you can just accuse the cops of being racist?",
"First, the cop does not need to be behind you when they decide to pull you over. They will often go behind you so there is no confusion of who they are pulling over. Second, you absolutely can tell the race of someone in front of you, unless they have small windows/low seats/tinted windows.\n\nNot saying black people do or do not get pulled over unfairly, but if a cop was specifically trying to pull over black people (or any race of people) all day he could certainly do that. Not legally obviously.",
"Black people don't get pulled over more than other races NOW; we just happen to raise a bigger stink when we do. In the past, it actually was a problem, especially when driving a newer car, or traveling through a majority white area. Now, it's more likely to happen if said black person is out later and/or traveling through a majority white area.\n\n\nSource: 100 year old black grandmother who lived through civil rights movement."
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kyw5u | why can i take out dead batteries, flip them around and then they suddenly become usable again? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kyw5u/eli5_why_can_i_take_out_dead_batteries_flip_them/ | {
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"One theory is that by removing the batteries you scrub off some of the oxidation that has formed on the contacts of the batteries. This allows a cleaner connection, enabling you to get the last few drops of the battery out.",
"Placebo effect. Don't tell the batteries.",
"When something goes dead that runs on batteries I often use a multimeter to check the voltages of both batteries. You would be surprised to find that in many cases one battery is at 1.3 or 1.4 and the other at .7 or .5 or so. The combined voltage not enough to run the gadget. I think this has to be because the power source drains power from the first battery then the second. when you flip flop the batteries sometimes the gadget works, though often I just replace the lower voltage one with a fresh 1.5 V. You can save a ton of batteries and money with a simple multimeter.",
"What do you mean by flipping them over? Do you mean \"insert the battery in the opposite orientation as it was before?\" If that the case, the battery wasn't dead. It was plugged in wrong.",
"Most cells (technically, most \"batteries\" are actually just one power cell, not a battery of cells, but never mind that) are strips of metal with a chemical paste between them, rolled up into the familiar shape.\n\nThe electrical capability of the battery depends on the chemical reaction between the paste and those metals. The small amount of energy you add into that reaction from the heat and motion (which latter is a bit like shaking up a soda) can allow the battery to release more of its stored energy -- sometimes *just* enough more to be over the threshold of what your device needs to work.",
"When a remote stops working, i tap the battery end off a table or hand. This causes the oxidation at the contact to move slightly and allow the energy to pass into the the device. It works almost everytime until the batteries are truly dead.\n\nFlipping the batteries does basically the same thing, although you could open it up and twist the batteries to get the same effect.",
"not an ELI5 but fairly easy to understand\n\n_URL_0_",
"I thought it had something to do with moving the acid/alkaline around which helps it generate a little bit of a charge. It's how you can gain a slight voltage increase when you rub two batteries together. Not that you need two batteries to do this, just the theory behind moving one batterie around. \n\nI of course am not an expert in this field, obviously. Wheres the PHDinEverything guy when you need him?",
"One theory is that by removing the batteries you scrub off some of the oxidation that has formed on the contacts of the batteries. This allows a cleaner connection, enabling you to get the last few drops of the battery out.",
"Placebo effect. Don't tell the batteries.",
"When something goes dead that runs on batteries I often use a multimeter to check the voltages of both batteries. You would be surprised to find that in many cases one battery is at 1.3 or 1.4 and the other at .7 or .5 or so. The combined voltage not enough to run the gadget. I think this has to be because the power source drains power from the first battery then the second. when you flip flop the batteries sometimes the gadget works, though often I just replace the lower voltage one with a fresh 1.5 V. You can save a ton of batteries and money with a simple multimeter.",
"What do you mean by flipping them over? Do you mean \"insert the battery in the opposite orientation as it was before?\" If that the case, the battery wasn't dead. It was plugged in wrong.",
"Most cells (technically, most \"batteries\" are actually just one power cell, not a battery of cells, but never mind that) are strips of metal with a chemical paste between them, rolled up into the familiar shape.\n\nThe electrical capability of the battery depends on the chemical reaction between the paste and those metals. The small amount of energy you add into that reaction from the heat and motion (which latter is a bit like shaking up a soda) can allow the battery to release more of its stored energy -- sometimes *just* enough more to be over the threshold of what your device needs to work.",
"When a remote stops working, i tap the battery end off a table or hand. This causes the oxidation at the contact to move slightly and allow the energy to pass into the the device. It works almost everytime until the batteries are truly dead.\n\nFlipping the batteries does basically the same thing, although you could open it up and twist the batteries to get the same effect.",
"not an ELI5 but fairly easy to understand\n\n_URL_0_",
"I thought it had something to do with moving the acid/alkaline around which helps it generate a little bit of a charge. It's how you can gain a slight voltage increase when you rub two batteries together. Not that you need two batteries to do this, just the theory behind moving one batterie around. \n\nI of course am not an expert in this field, obviously. Wheres the PHDinEverything guy when you need him?"
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4w6rt6 | why do most (popular) rappers release albums as mixtapes and not as a purchasable album? | Best example I can use is Drake's "If You're Reading This It's Too Late" album that was first released as a mixtape but was then taken down to be sold as an actual album. This confused me because why not just release it as an album to begin with? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4w6rt6/eli5_why_do_most_popular_rappers_release_albums/ | {
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"Generally speaking a mixtape is used as a medium to refine rhymes, a beat, or something similar, which will be used in a fuller capacity at a later date in time. Your example speaks directly to that point. It's not a fully realized/complete product so why charge?",
"Im giving an explanation from what I learned with Travis Scott's mixtape Days Before Rodeo.\n\nIts mostly used as a self-promotion of a rapper, using either remixed songs/beats or his own music to attract masses and show his skills/talent. Should contain bangers or attracting hooks, featurings with popular artist are great assumption it will be well recieved by the audience. Its published by big websites for free to anyone, another thing that should make the artist renown grow."
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8aduie | when did goldfish become the fish pet? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8aduie/eli5_when_did_goldfish_become_the_fish_pet/ | {
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"The ancient Egyptians kept fish both as a source of food and for entertainment. Their hieroglyphics depict Tilapia species and Mormyrids. The Chinese began to breed goldfish from carp in the 10th century. Goldfish were introduced to Europe at the end of the 18th century.",
"Goldfish (basically tiny pretty carp) started to be bred for decoration in around the 6th century AD in China. They had been farmed for food previously to that, but they eventually became fancy decorative pond-fish, and then brought inside to be displayed. \n\nAs to the why, goldfish are super easy to keep alive indoors now because they have been selectively bred so long. They are the teacup Chihuahua of fish. Also, humans love shiny things so they spread in popularity in Europe pretty quickly after getting there in the 1600s."
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3x405o | how do weather reporters know where to point on the map when they're using a green screen? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3x405o/eli5_how_do_weather_reporters_know_where_to_point/ | {
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"There's a TV monitor [off to the side](_URL_0_) where they can see what you see at home. They're looking at the screen as they point.",
"They have a bunch of screens showing them how they look to the audience, which includes whatever's being laid on top of the green screen.\n\nPlus, they use the same maps constantly (local, state, US), so they have a general sense of where things are after a little while."
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4nix9y | what is the relative benefit of a full frame camera? how are the same or less pixels on a larger sensor better than more pixels on a smaller or same size sensor? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4nix9y/eli5_what_is_the_relative_benefit_of_a_full_frame/ | {
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"Bigger sensors deal with noise better. Larger pixels mean the signal to noise ratio is larger, so bigger sensors have better low light performance. \n\nI'm sure there are others, but this is the biggest aspect that comes to mind\n\nThe downside being you need larger lenses that project a larger image which means you need better glad which means it costs more"
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34tt7j | how do rules in war work, and what happens if a country breaks the rules? | How are the rules enforced and what happens if they are broken? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34tt7j/eli5_how_do_rules_in_war_work_and_what_happens_if/ | {
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"When chemical weapons were used in the Iran-Iraq war, pretty much all that happened was that they were asked to stop using them.\n\nNot sure how it usually goes but I had hoped there would be heavier punishment.",
"Prior to World War 1 there were such organizations as the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. ~~All of which obviously failed since there was a world war.~~ (per comments)\n\nSo after World War 1 it was decided at the Paris Peace Conference that there needs to be some sort of international organization to stop another world war. The organization stood up was the [League of Nations](_URL_1_). \n\nThe League of Nations ended up being a failure. It lacked a way to enforce it's ideas and when the Axis Powers arose for World War 2 those countries withdrew which meant the end of the League of Nations. \n\nThis is the perfect lead in to your question.\n\nDuring World War 2 FDR would come up with the idea of the United Nations. The big difference would be the security council system in the UN. \n\nThe security council has 5 permanent members (the winners or WWII) - US, UK, China, Russia (prev USSR), and France. In addition to these 5 very powerful seats, 10 other nations are voted in to the security council and sit for 2 years. \n\nIt's important to note that only the 5 permanent members hold the veto card to resolutions so global politics play a huge role on what the UN does ... cough Ukraine cough Russian Federation right to veto.\n\nHaving the security council gave countries with the most power at the time additional power. It also gave the losers of WWII a say in international law but not nearly as much power. It was the perfect timing and setup to get buy-in from ALL of the countries (of course not immediately it took time). \"Buy-in\" is very important to the UN's success. As of right now there are 193 nations that are members of the United Nations. It's basically every nation except Vatican City. This is huge - it is direct evidence that there is buy-in and with buy-in comes influence.\n\nSo how are rules of war managed by the United Nations? \n\nThe UN develops, votes on, and implements international law. For example, I've seen it on Reddit many times as a TIL post. The Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. Which bans any military use of celestial bodies, including weapon testing or as military bases. This is international law passed by the United Nations in an attempt to create peace before belligerence occurs.\n\nBut for war the UN is very effective. Of note, there hasn't been a World War Three which points to success during times of exponential military capability improvements. So let's talk about how it works.\n\nIn the most basic case State A has an issue with State B and decide to use military aggression. The aggression that is allowed is already agreed upon by the United Nations so don't use chemical weapons, napalm, nukes, if you bomb a building the military objective better outweigh the loss of civilian life. That's all international law and if you break those laws your country is likely going to face some major sanctions voted on by the United Nations ... unless of course a permanent party vetoes those attempts ... Ukraine crisis.\n\nThe hardest thing for some first studying the UN to understand is that it is not entirely a peace organization. The UN is realistic and allows for war between countries and even multiple countries. Very strong laws about how other countries can intervene during a civil war. What it does do well is reduces the spillover of war. A country can claim neutraility and doing so buys that country protection but don't you dare aid a belligerent country by sending them goods that are going to be used for war - you are no longer neutral and you can be attacked.\n\nThink you can beat a country by starving them to death? Blockade their ports and stop all commercial shipping? Nope that would be against international law.\n\nSo what happens when international law is broke? Well, it depends. The UN isn't the most powerful thing in the world by a long shot so the comments about you can break the law and nothing will happen are not wrong. Global politics will always play a part.\n\nBut I will say the UN is a success. It undoubtedly has major errors such as the [United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda](_URL_0_) which I would consider it's biggest failure. Not only did UN Peacekeepers get killed but genocide happened. All because it was a peacekeeping mission rather than peacemaking.\n\nBut it's the right forum to deal with issues in regards to war. It's okay and certainly can get better.\n\nFeel free to correct me. I studied the UN during my two years with the Naval War College and am by no means an expert. Since studying the UN I do keep up with the news and have a deeper understanding each time something happens in the world. I only suggest you do the same.\n\nTL;DR - The United Nations is the successful international forum for war. Since its inception laws have been passed that guide the rules of war and if a country does not abide by those laws they will likely receive sanctions. The UN has done a fantastic job of keeping wars between belligerent nations and reduce the probability of world war. The UN is not perfect but is the best we have ever seen in the history of civilization. P.S. The ribs were fantastic.\n\nEdit: I'll finish the rest after lunch.\n\nEdit: I'm back I'm typing and eating ribs soaked in Open Pit USA\n\nEdit: Hey guys I did warn you that some of this may be incorrect. There are some really good responses that I suggest you read. Great to see the dialogue and learning going on in this thread.\n\nEdit: Strikethrough the failure of Red Cross and the Hague Conventions. ",
"Often the rules are broken. They are usually enforced by whom ever wins the war prior to Geneva convention in 1864 and then again after WWII 1945. I believe the UN imposes the law in the [International Court of Justice](_URL_1_) ([War Laws](_URL_2_)). I don't really know if the consequences are really enforced. For example after Germany lost WWI they were instructed to pay reparations for the damages of WWI. They fought this vehemently, Germany felt it was humiliating to pay and ended up paying only a small portion of the [expected 33 billion](_URL_0_). IMO this allowed them to build up their infrastructure to support the second world war. ",
"Sometimes if a group of nations like the UN makes rules, they can agree to embargo whatever nation breaks those rules.\n\nOr if a group agrees not to use weapons that they have, whoever breaks the agreement will be allowed to be hit with those weapons. For example, neither USA or USSR used nukes in the Cold War, but whoever struck first would be hit with the full force of the other's nuclear arsenal.",
"No such thing as rules in war. Only winning and losing.\n\nIf you lose, you get punished. If you win, you do the punishing.\n\nFor example, in ww2, the allies committed just as many war crimes as the axis. Only the axis face war crime charges.\n\nEdit: I love I'm getting downvoted for stating basic fucking facts... Nuking and firebombing of cities is a war crime. Can anyone tell me who got charged for that?",
"The British Army is largely subject to UK domestic law (not all for obvious reasons) and the Law of Armed Conflict, which ensures they act within international law. Breaches are dealt with by the Chain of Command or the Military Police, or the local civilian Police, whichever has jurisdiction for the seriousness or location of the crime. Again depending on jurisdiction, defendants are tried in court martial (military court), UK/local civilian courts or the International Court.\n\nProfessional modern armies all have a similar system. \n\nEdit - countries that break international law would probably would be breaking their own law too. The individuals responsible should (as in Iraq) get tried for their crimes. But enforcement then falls to the UN to impose sanctions or undertake military action to forcibly stop the 'criminal' nation from doing what it is doing. However, that's definitely a political issue instead of a legal one. ",
"How do pows play a part in this? Why not kill them, when captured? ",
"So there are a number of mechanisms such as universal jurisdiction for domestic courts of violations of IHL, human rights commissions and international court criminal prosecution for violations, incorporation of principles into domestic law. There are also organizations such as the ICRC who work to disseminate knowledge about IHL. \n\nTruth of the matter though is the major deterrent is pragmatism. \n\nCountries and groups fear reprisal for a major violation of the rules of war. While they may follow the letter of the law if not the intent at times or try to skirt the edges many governments realize a gross violation will likely result in retaliation. It's the same principal as mutually ensured destruction for the most part.\n\nAdditionally those in power desire to remain in power. This can be difficult if world leaders are against it and placing pressure whether through condemnation, sanctions, attack. \n\nAlso almost all the world powers stand behind the principles of IHL. With that position comes an implicit understanding that those countries are likely to come out on top in a war. Those who violated IHL would be subject to prosecution after the fact (victors justice still exists). This isn't as strong a deterrent though as the prior. \n\nThis is what keeps those in check who are not party to the treaties that comprise IHL, have not subjected themselves to the jurisdiction of international courts, or are what could be described as \"rogue.\"\n\nEdit: If you want greater detail let me know. I focused on IHL and HR in law school, and have helped develop trainings for the UN as well as worked with the International Criminal Tribunals and in The Hague. \n\n\n",
"The victor can't break any rules . The rules of war are only to legitimise the victor and demonize the loser ",
"Defending a few military installations is easy. Keeping the enemy from dropping a parcel with Black Plague in a city is a bit more difficult, so the agreement is basically that even in war times, certain things are unacceptable.\n\nEnforcement happens because it is in the interest of everyone, even non-participants, to keep everyone abiding to the rules, so the agreement is that if you break the rules, you suddenly have the entire world against you.\n\nIf my neighbour set fire to the house on the other side of the street for obstructing his view, I'd want that guy gone no matter what, and I'd be fairly sure the entire street would support me, but some yelling over the fence is not my concern.",
"None of the answers so far have been great, so I'll take a stab at it.\n\nThe rules of war have changed extensively over history. Militaries had internal rules--primarily concerning organization, chain of command, etc.--but when it came to defeating the enemy, there were no rules. It was kill or be killed; any members of the losing military that did not escape or retreat in time (which was very unlikely, as this was considered cowardly) were usually killed or enslaved. It was also considered inappropriate to inflict unnecessary damage to civilian populations, but pillaging, raping, and similar atrocities were fairly common.\n\nThis culture began to change around WWI due to the rapid development of dangerous military technology, such as the machine gun and poison gas. [The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907](_URL_0_) were the first modern attempt at formally regulating the rules of war and the standards and punishments for war crimes. The administration of these regulations have been inconsistent, to say the least. [The Geneva Conventions](_URL_1_) refers to a series of treaties that attempt to institute humanitarian treatment of POWs and civilians during wartime, and it also covers the neutrality of aid organizations (the Red Cross, for example). The implementation of Geneva Convention standards has, sadly, also historically proven to be rather uneven.\n\nWhat happens if a country breaks the rules? Some people will tell you that the answer is nothing, others will tell you that only the losers are punished. Neither is totally true. [The International Criminal Court](_URL_2_) is an independent judicial body that was established less than 20 years ago which prosecutes war crimes and crimes against humanity. It has successfully prosecuted and jailed war criminals, such as [Charles Taylor](_URL_3_. The United States is not a member of the ICC.\n\nHistorically, the forced demilitarization of German after WWI (which would obviously later be violated) and Japan after WWII are examples of what could happen to a country if they were found to have committed serious war crimes. Unfortunately, there's more nuance to these punishments than which countries won and lost. The United States, for example, has never faced punishment for war crimes, despite the fact that the U.S. is now known to have ordered [a massacre of civilians and subsequently covered up the incident](_URL_4_) during the Vietnam War, a conflict that the United States is widely agreed to have lost. I suppose one could say that war criminals are punished, but only if they are among the losers AND command less hegemony than the winners.\n\nI hope that answers your question. I'll gladly edit if I missed the mark the first time around, and will answer any other follow-up questions that you may have.",
"The \"rules of war\" are mainly laid out in the Geneva Conventions, a set of treaties that put forth basic concepts like the treatment of POWs, the types of weapons that are permissible, and so on. The US and many other countries have signed international treaties on these, and in the US, they are incorporated into federal law by Congressional ratification.\n\nAs to breaking them, it depends on WHO breaks them. If it's the losing side in a war, people will undoubtedly be tried and either imprisoned or executed for war crimes. Several German and Japanese military and civilian leaders were executed after WWII.\n\nIf it's the winning side, or a power strong enough (like the US), then little or nothing. Over the years, the US and other superpowers have committed horrible, clearly-illegal war crimes, and those responsible are rarely or never punished. When people DO get punished, it's typically lower-level flunkies, not the people at the top. \n\nOr if they do target top people, the punishments are slight. In the US-Philippine war, General Jacob \"Howling Jake\" Smith ordered his men to kill every enemy combatant on sight--and his definition of enemy combatant was EVERYONE over the age of 10. He was court-martialed for that, found guilty, and sentenced to \"admonishment by the reviewing authority.\" Decades later, at the My Lai massacre, they didn't stop at age 10, they killed every man, woman, child, and baby. But they threw the book at Lt. William Calley, he did 3.5 years in jail, about one year for every hundred people he killed.\n\nIn WWII, the strategic bombing campaign (ie, against civilian targets) we waged on Japan was so severe that Gen Curtis LeMay, who never met a people he didn't want to bomb the crap out of, confided to a subordinate (Robert McNamara, later to become Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam war) that if the US lost the war, everyone in their unit would probably be tried for war crimes.\n\nMost recently, the Bush administration took a big, steaming crap on the Geneva Conventions during its Glorious War on Terror. Dick Cheney had his pet lawyers David Addington and John Woo draw up seriously-flawed legal documents that classified terrorists as \"illegal enemy combatants,\" which they fancied meant that they had no protection under the GC at all, and we could therefore do things like torture them with impunity.\n\nThey were wrong, of course. Neither Addington nor Woo had any significant experience whatsoever in international law in general or the GC in particular. Woo's work, in particular, has been characterized as \"stunningly amateurish.\" The GC actually DO allow for \"illegal enemy combatants,\" in the form of spies and saboteurs. It doesn't take so much as one mental push-up to realize that a terrorist is easily the equivalent of a saboteur. The GC allows you treat people like this a *little* more harshly--for example, as long as you hold a hearing to determine the person's status as an illegal, you can execute them, which is strictly forbidden with POWs. But torture is still WAYYYY off the table.\n\nThe fiasco that was the war in Iraq also saw many other questionable practices by the US military and intelligence agencies, such as the taking of hostages.\n\n",
"Isn't this where the Geneva Convention comes into play too? The only thing I know about it is there's a rule that you can't harm a non-threatening medic.",
"Depends on how you spin the last play. Winners write the history books and decide who the bad guys are. ",
"What are the rules you are referring to?\n\nThe \"don't burn and pillage\" rules or the \"don't shoot paratroopers and medics\"?",
"[This video](_URL_1_) by [TestTube](_URL_0_) should give you a good idea of what these rules are. Hope this helps.",
"Rules of war: Anything goes as long as the country holds enough power. If your country is not one of the major players, then it depends on whether or not the people who do have enough power care to do anything about it, have your back, or are upset with you. Take for instance the drone war... ",
"A lot of people are speaking terms of modern context. \n\nIn truth, there are no rules in war. \n\nI know this is a short answer, but this is the most basic and most important fundamental rule to war.",
"Have you ever heard of victor's justice? \n_URL_0_. Reading down to the Nuremberg trials you'll find that some of the crimes he was accused of were just normal submarine warfare. \nIn reality, plenty of our countries have done some pretty shitty things following war. It makes me sad but I don't necessarily blame anyone either. \n",
"**Rules of War:**\n\n* Only get in fights after the bully on the playground pushes you down.\n* If the bully punches you or your friend you can fight back.\n* If you break the rules the teacher (United Nations) steps in and punishes you. Typically it's not super bad in the long run (except for the whole German punishment after WWI).\n\n**Rules in War:**\n\n* Teacher observes a sanctioned fight, don't punch below the belt.\n* If you do, you get in trouble and can go to timeout.\n\nThis is a really really simplified version of Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello. But, that's basically the five year old kind of description.",
"The rules are enforced if the side that came up with the rules wins the war.\n\nIf the side that came up with the rules does not win, then that rule was not really a rule. \n\nAlso, if both sides commit the same war crimes, only the losing side will face consequences for those crimes.\n\nIt's a bit like a hockey team also being the authority of the league it plays in. It's just pretending. There are no real rules and the authority is a farce with a heavy conflict of interests.",
"There are international laws and norms but they are broken constantly so there are no real rules. Examples: the United States invading Iraq for no reason, Syria using chemical weapons.",
"It would be nice to say the rules of war were followed but they aren't. What happens when they're broken? It depends on if it's the U.S. or another country with veto power in the UN breaking them. If it's one of them, nothing happens. If it's any other country it depends on their standing with powerful countries. Mostly nothing happens. Unless you are a small billed country with no friends. Then sanctions, war crime tribunals any number of fun things. ",
"Rules in work do not matter, until the war is over. If the victor broke the rules, nothing happens.\n\nIf the loser broke the rules, it will be prosecuted and enforced, accoding to the rules themself.\n\nThat said, certain things like \"Do not use gas weapons\" have been agreed upon AND respected. Even though Germany had more than enough gas weapons to use, those remained sealed even through the Volkssturm.",
"Lawyer here, specialising in international law. The answers that have been posted so far are not bad, but contain some significant mistakes and don't answer the question very well. Here's my attempt at a brief explanation.\n\n\n**What rules govern war?**\n\nThe use of military force is governed by international law. When it comes to war, there are two bodies of law that need to be considered. \n\nThe first body of law, called *jus ad bellum* is the law governing whether or not a sovereign State is permitted to even use force in the first place. Most commonly, a State is permitted to use force in only two circumstances. The first circumstance in which a State may use force is in self-defence, where it has suffered an armed attack. The second circumstance is where the United Nations Security Council has authorised the use of force (see, for example, [the UN authorisation of the use of force in the first Gulf War](_URL_3_)).\n\nThe second body of law, called *jus in bello* (or, its much more friendly English name, *international humanitarian law*), governs how parties to an armed conflict must behave once the war has actually started. The most important rules about how countries are required to behave in war are found in the four [Geneva Conventions](_URL_4_) and the [1899 and 1907 Hague Regulations](_URL_1_). It's impossible to talk about these in any detail here, but the most important thing about these treaties is the general principles that they lay down. In particular:\n\n* The principle of distinction, which requires that the parties to the armed conflict should only target military objectives, and never target civilians.\n* The principle of proportionality, which requires that any harm caused to civilians or their property not be excessive when weighed against the military advantage to be gained.\n* The principle of military necessity, meaning that any attack carried out should be for the purpose of militarily defeating the opposing army, not for some other purpose.\n\n**How do the rules work and what happens if they are broken?**\n\nThe second part of your question is a lot more complicated. There is no simple answer, but I will do my best to summarise it. First of all, we need to note that there are two levels of responsibility involved. There is the responsibility of the countries, as legal entities, and the criminal responsibility of the leaders, as individual people. \n\nOne country may sue another country for a violation of the laws of war. For example, during the Cold War, [Nicaragua successfully brought a case against the United States in the International Court of Justice for violation of the rules of jus ad bellum](_URL_0_). However, due to various technical reasons, it is quite rare for one country to sue another in this way.\n\nThe more common kind of responsibility is individual criminal responsibility of soldiers, commanders, and politicians who were involved in ordering or carrying out criminally illegal attacks under international humanitarian law (e.g. war crimes, ethnic cleansing, genocide, crimes against humanity). Under the Geneva Convention, States are meant to prosecute violations of the laws of war carried out by their own soldiers. However, as you might expect, this is not all that common.\n\nInstead, these violations are often prosecuted by international courts and tribunals. Sometimes, a group of States or the United Nations will set up a court system to prosecute crimes carried out in a specific conflict (e.g. [Yugoslavia](_URL_6_), [Rwanda](_URL_2_)). More recently, the [International Criminal Court](_URL_7_) has been established in the hopes that it would be able to prosecute crimes committed in many different conflicts, whenever the violating State fails to prosecute its own responsible citizens.\n\nSome countries have also adopted [controversial laws](_URL_5_) allowing their domestic courts to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, etc. regardless of where the crime was committed and regardless of the nationality of the perpetrator.\n\nUnfortunately, there are also cases where prosecution and enforcement of the rules is not forthcoming for political reasons. In these cases, you might see only a condemnation by the United Nations, or some lesser form of censure.\n\nI could keep talking about this forever and in a lot more detail, but this is it in a nutshell!",
"Doubt you'll see this, but read Hans Morgenthau's *Politics Among Nations.* It is considered the 'realist Bible' by some and regardless of how you see the world it is a very good primer for this sort of stuff. I've read it about three times now and IMO is probably the single best book I've ever had when it comes to helping me understand how the world really works.",
"Europe has been at war for some 1300 years. In that time, rulers decided to start calling out cheap-shots. \n\nYou need to remember that Europe was ruled by 1-4 families, so often you were going to war with your cousin.\n\nWhen you broke the rules that everyone agreed upon, the rest knew you were desperate. Desperate enough to challenge your other cousins once you won. Basically, if you broke the rules of war, everyone knew that something fishy was going on.\n\nThe Spanish Civil War, WW1, WW2 took it to the next level. Rulers had such powerful weapons that one country (Germany) stood a chance to conquer the rest. Everyone else banded together against them.\n\nTL;DR Rules of war are a defense mechanism & alarm system.",
"Obviously if a country violates the rules of war, the other countries declare war on it. And so forth and so on.\n\nTL;DR rules of war do not work.",
"Better question....why is it that the winners of wars are never tried for war crimes??",
"rules of war are broken in EVERY.SINGLE.WAR. The victor gets to judge the loser and get away with his own crimes.",
"We all agree to follow the rules and shun anyone who doesn't. The world is so interconnected now that being isolated from every other developed country is extremely detrimental. Just look at Russia. ",
"Alright so I haven't seen a ton of useful answers that are super accurate. As this is ELI5 this is super duper generalized but hopefully you can understand the basics.\n\n**TL;DR:** What's stopping people from committing war crimes? Nothing really. It's like losing weight. Other people are willing to help but really you're the only one responsible. \n\nAs warfare became industrial, new weapons popped up that while they were incredibly useful at killing people, ethically they were not something that people could use to kill each other and then sleep well at night. Some caused people to die horribly, some caused collateral damage, some were distateful.\n\nSo throughout the years committees and international groups have gotten together and signed, or have passed \"laws\" making use of certain weapons illegal. The Hague conventions were some of the first but there's been many, particularly through the United Nations.\n\nBut why I quote 'laws\", there's really no one to enforce these rules, they're self-enforced. Like the Kyoto Protocol, many countries can sign a \"Rules of War\" document of some sort, but essentially it's up to them to decide whether or not they want to follow it. Other rules are applied to countries whether they want to abide or not through UN declarations. Let's look at some examples.\n\nNuclear Weapons: Countries such as the US and Russian Federation (the primary drivers of these as they have the most) sign non-proliferation agreements. But essentially all that is saying is that they won't make new ones and will try to get rid of the old, they're signing a contract that no one has the authority to enforce. \n\nLaw of Land Warfare: Starting with the often cited Geneva conventions, there's been many laws internationally and set by each government to decide how enemy combatants, civilians, property et cetera should be treated in war. Again this is mostly enforced by the countries doing the fighting with the hopes that if they abide by these laws, so will the other side. It's sort of the idea behind Mutually Assured Destruction during the Cold War. The issue is that essentially, if you're going to war you're going to cause war crimes, one of the many reasons to simply not go to war in the first place. This means that both sides leaders are directly responsible for everything bad their soldiers do. And often laws don't make all that much sense. 50 caliber sniper rifles aren't allowed to be used against people, only materiel (radios, vehicles, et cetera) while 50 caliber machine guns that fire basically the same round are allowed to be used against people. If you're a sniper and friendly forces get attacked, would you use your 50 caliber sniper rifle to commit war crimes? Hollow point rounds are illegal because of the complications involved with treating those wounds, but both NATO and Russian Federation weapons have bullets that do essentially the same thing. \n\nChemical/Biological/Radiological/Treatment of Prisoners: While these are dictated by treaties ratified by conventions, a major source of enforcement is popular opinion and again Mutually Assured Destruction. Even Al Qaeda stated they would not use a radiological (dirty) bomb as that would make them too unpopular and detract from their cause. I don't have sauce, but trust me I'm an expert on the internet. \n\nPunishments: Okay so as you now see, there's not a lot people can do to stop countries from breaking laws, but there's a few options.\n\nInternational Military Tribunal at the Hague: leaders during wars fear prosecution for their war crimes and therefore don't authorize illegal acts. Usually this happens after the fact. After winning, the victorious side will prosecute the losing sides leaders for war crimes. What's going on right now is that leaders from the Balkans wars in the 90's are being caught and tried for war crimes. Penalty is generally death/life in prison. This has two problems. 1) The winning side has to be friendly with the UN and completely defeat the losing side in order for this to be applied. Surrender can even have the stipulation \"we don't want to be prosecuted for war crimes\". Basically every US President, as well as most international leaders, who has lead their country in a time of war could be prosecuted by the Hague, but no one is going to extradite and arrest a sitting or retired major world leader, that would cause a war itself. Frequently for lower level members of government that have had a hand in war crimes, when they travel abroad they get assurances they won't be prosecuted for international crimes. 2) Faced with the prospect of defeat, some leaders will then resort to more extreme measures in an attempt to win or at least prevent unconditional surrender. That was a major concern with invading Iraq, as well as many prior wars as well. \n\nGoing to war against someone committing war crimes: It's just not going to happen. Just looking at the UN mission in Rwanda, it's hard to be a world leader and go to your country saying \"hey there's bad things happening somewhere else that don't affect us, but we're going to intervene and spend billions of dollars and thousands of our own citizens lives in order to stop it.\" This is part of the reason why Western countries aren't fighting ISIS, which everyone agrees are worse than the Nazis. Especially when you consider that the subsequent war could be worse than the crimes committed, it sucks to suck.\n\n3) Embargo: This is pretty common, countries committing crimes against humanity/war crimes/going against international opinion will not be able to export/import goods. Even if they're not necessary for war, the lack of that economic activity may impact the country enough to stop them from doing whatever it is they're doing. This won't work if the country is committed to whatever activity they're engaged in (Cuba, Russia/Ukraine, N. Korea, Iran) but also makes them less of a threat as they're less capable of making war. The problem is that if the embargo is not enforced by most or all countries, it just benefits those countries that don't follow the rules - ISIS is selling oil to someone for pennies on the dollar so someone is getting cheap gas and ISIS is funding war crimes.\n\nCourt of Popular Opinion: Especially in democratic countries, news reports of war crimes make the conflict unpopular and may lead to its termination, or may lead to pressure from the international committee to end the war or lead to punitive measures (eg embargo). The Vietnam War was lost due to lack of public support, and a lot of support was lost due to reports of what some soldiers were doing in Vietnam. Remember that wars don't happen in a vacuum, while you're fighting one country you may be negotiating tariffs with another and establishing ties with a third, so your actions will affect other actions. Germany in modern times has had to be super nice because of things that happened 60 years ago. \n\nUN Security Council: People have quoted this, I don't know why. The UNSC is designed to prevent additional violence, not start it. Rwanda is a good example of how involved UN troops get into local violence. Perhaps the founders of the UN didn't realize that it was always going to be China & Russia vs. US, GB, and France, but I'm pretty sure it was intentional that (other than a few incidents which have extenuating circumstances) the UNSC would not become involved in a shooting war and doesn't have the power to enforce laws of war, particularly against member nations of the UN or even more, members of the UNSC. ",
"The American Colonies broke the European rules of war during the War of Independence. They did so by shooting military officers high in rank, which was considered an act of great disrespect, but it also served as a cue of seriousness for the American colonies. They were willing to break major rules for independence.",
"There are some really good, well-intentioned answers here, but I'll give you the no bullshit one: \n\nThe \"rules\" are scraps of a paper signed by the bigger, more powerful nations. They mean not one single thing at all, ever. The only enforcement mechanism is the UNSC, which is utter shit when it comes to human rights or war crime issues, unless the nation being punished has not one friend on the Security Council.\n\nThe domestic rules don't even apply. The US president is supposed to get congressional approval, so he doesn't bother declaring it a war. That's what we've done in Iraq and Afghanistan. \n\nGas forbidden? Don't worry, we only sold chlorine to Saddam so he could purify water? \n\nTorture illegal? Do it overseas.\n\nNot supposed to mine a harbor in a time of peace? lolololol Fuck the ICJ.\n\nHe who wins makes the rules and breaks them whenever the fuck he wants.",
"This is a great question because I have always wondered, if you're going to do something as shitty as fight in a war and use bombs and kill people (civilians included) like why bother following rules? It's barbaric either way. ",
"Basically there is the u.n. which the U.S. corporate-military industrial complex empire owns, and then the u.s. does whatever it wants. I am pretty sure that sums it up.",
"International law is bullshit. The only time you get prosecuted for \"war crimes\" or \"crimes against humanity\" is when you lose a war. Don't want to be prosecuted, don't lose.",
"Technically all is fair in love and war. These \"Rules\" of war your talking about exist just to basically keep peace with countries you aren't at war with and to prevent cruel treatment of civilians and POWs. No country by any means is obligated to obey them.",
"They'd better hope they win, or else the leaders get hanged afterwards. In general there's nothing compelling a country to abide by war rules other than:\n\n* the threat to their own troops and population if the enemy were to discard the rules as well, and\n* the threat of punishment from a powerful individual or group of outside nations who could impose anything from censure all the way to invasion",
"Random example: the surviving Nazi members were tried in Nuremberg (known as the Nuremberg trials). They were charged with \"genocide\" (unheard of at the time) and the Nazi's tried to argue they could not be tried for a crime that did not exist when they committed said crime. Anyways, it was hard to disagree with the the charge when practically the entire global community agreed with it so the Nazis were convicted of a crime that was made up AFTER it was committed. My point is: in the most extreme circumstances, rules of war are kind of made up as you go along.",
"If you lose, you will probably get punished hard and your leaders charged for war crimes. But even if you win you have done unspeakable damage to your diplomatic relations and are likely to get embargoed or lose foreign trade deals which could wreck your economy.",
"Okay most people here have covered modern war rules. But war rules have existed since the dawn of conflict. Human societies have always tried to \"civilize\" armed conflicts.\n\nTake the early tribal societies. Generally war (not talking about raiding) was conducted on pre established rules, shared by the same culture group. For example, the Celts used \"champions\" (1 versus 1) to settle disputes in somewhat codified rites generally to avoid destroying too much property and lives. Other early war rules, like in Mesopotamia, was that armies tried to fight outside of agricultural lands, avoided destroying granaries if possible, minimized civilian casualties so you could enslave them later. In early China, generally only nobles (who fought on chariots) and their retainers were allowed to fight. In these cases when you defeated your opponent, it was assumed they would surrender to you, unless they had walls to hide behind.\n\nA somewhat more known equivalent and written example of rules of war are the Bushido code, in Japan (ex:commit sepuku for acting dishonorably) or the code of Chivalry, in Europe (ex: nobles are suppose to fight other nobles, not armed lowborns; you were suppose to capture fellow nobles if they asked for mercy or yielded in exchange for ransom). Most of these rules were only enforced by reputation among peers. If you broke them if would sour your relationship with other rulers or important members of the elite class, making diplomacy much harder. \n\nAn other example during the Middle Ages is the banning of crossbows by the Catholic Church. It did not stop powerful lords to arm peasants or mercenary bands with it because they were able to take down knights at long distances and training time was short compared to most bows. Lords at time had a difficult time to pay their armies so they agreed to let their soldiers sack conquered towns for 3 days; after that they were suppose to enforce order once again even if it meant hanging their own people. There was also the common practice of letting garrisons go unharmed if they surrendered voluntarily, that way you avoid the drama of a lengthy and costly siege.\n\nDuring the gunpowder age, and especially in the 18th century Europe, you were not suppose to kill officers (generally occupied by aristocrats) but capture them so you could exchange them for your own officers. Main reason besides their noble birth was that training officers was a long term process and most were career professionals expected to climb the hierarchy in the army. \n\nAfter the Napoleonic Wars in Europe you had the institution of the Concert of Nations, in order to avoid total war scenarios that happened in those years. This summit was suppose to help avoid major conflicts, codified the rules of engagement and help fellow monarchies by providing a certain defense from outside interference when faced with internal conflicts, such as revolutionaries (ex: 1848 spring revolutions).\n\nIn the end these conventions, rites, codes and treaties could only be enforced by their own communities, whenever by strength of arms, diplomacy or religion. That is why when different cultures fought each other, the conflicts would be quite bloody in the initial phases. Like most human social conventions, belligerents can choose to ignore or enforce them. \n\nI hope this post gives a you a little snapshot of how humans have tried to control the chaotic world of War.\n\n\n\n",
"This is a bit outdated, but pre-guerilla days, an army didn't do anything they didn't want done to them. The horrors of poison gas from WWI trenches were still fresh in the minds of world leaders in WWII, and no one wanted their soldiers to endure it. Hence, no one used poison gas. If either side had, the other side likely would have reciprocated.",
"Well, God acts as an arbiter for right and wrong.\n\n...and because God doesn't exist, everybody tortures and rapes people.\n\nThe End.",
"Rules in war are PR that is used to make people comfortable that their representatives are raping in murdering in their name. Most people are absolutely fine with murdering thousands of children as long as they can say \"at least we're not as bad as them\".",
"The rules are for the losers, really. Consequences are war crimes trials - see the Nazis (losers and war criminals).",
"The War Room, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room.\nwow how many words do I have to type before this does not get killed my a bot blah Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg?",
"When I was young, I asked my dad how they figured out who won a war. My assumption was that whichever side had the most dead guys lost. \n\nMy dad is a WWII enthusiast. I think my question made his brain short circuit, cuz he just sorta stuttered for a few minutes. Then he simply said \"Yes\" I guess he didn't want to try to explain it to a 6 year old. \n\nFor a while, I thought there were counters out after every battle, counting how many dead guys there were and which side they were on \n\n\"Side A has 115 dead, Side B has 116 dead....Side A wins this battle!\"",
"there are rules to war? \n\nyou mean we can't just bomb a school using a drone strike? \n\ncould have fooled me",
" > what happens if they are broken?\n\nThe winner punishes the loser for breaking those \"rules\".",
"Well I'm getting here a bit late, so there's a chance no one will see this, but there is something I would like to add that hopefully won't be seen as pure speculation. I want to address what creates this line of questioning in the first place.\n\n\nThere is a sort of assumption or idea that seems to pervade the host of western philosophy that ethics have a certain breadth of spectrum that they simply may not. I see this attitude in pure philosophy, and in just about every sort of law, or rules that anyone hopes to create governing the behavior of those involved with conflict of interest.\n\n\nFirst off, if you google \"definition of ethic\", you get something that relegates the meaning of 'ethic' to become incredibly dependent on the meaning of the word 'moral': \n\n\n \"moral principles that govern a person's or group's behavior\" \n\n\nif then, you check the definition of moral, google gives you: \n\n\n\"concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character.\" \n\n\nSomething again which hasn't taken us anywhere particularly interesting. I am of the camp that chooses to define the words like this: 'morals' are guidelines to survive within a culture that are externally imposed, ethics are individually chosen and are typically more susceptible to 'objective' reason and rationale than the specific circumstances of where one happened to be born or what the beliefs are of who they are surrounded by.\n\n\nPeople choose ethics because they are concerned with the consequences of their actions. Values are what motivate conscious creatures. Now, survival is possibly the most common value that could guide an ethic, and so survival as a value enjoys a certain type of universality that many other values lack. Ethics, is then most often a question of how best to survive. \n\n\nDoes making enemies increase or decrease the variety of situations I can expect to survive? Does permitting women to have an education increase or decrease the vibrancy and intelligence of my set of allies? Does increasing \"defense\" spending encourage others to do so and create an arms race? What is the best way to allocate social resources? There is a value of survival implicit in all of these ethical questions.\n\n\nSo now we (at long last) can ask the relevant question: does cooperation or competition most likely increase my survival? The answer to this determines ones ethical orientation and obligation to other actors.\n\n\nThe fact is that despite a large amount of confusion to the contrary, there are no such things as \"ethics of competition\" unless there is an underlying value of cooperation that supersedes the individual situation in question. People cheat when they have lost sight of this underlying value of cooperation, but without that value actually being there, 'cheating' is truly meaningless. \n\n\nNow, how rules of war work in practice is really just this: \"We hope we can resolve this conflict with a minimum of collateral damage, and will not do anything to you that you don't do to us\", and there are actually some relatively well established norms as far as this goes. However, as the war amounts more and more to \"we are coming to kill you\" to those in power, and what can be expected of that countries enemies begins to fluctuate more wildly, the willingness to use everything at ones disposal simply becomes more and more relevant as the ethical obligation to ones enemy (and the citizens of your country -- especially as they become increasingly threatened) begins to evaporate. When your survival is brought into question, the idea of having an ethical obligation to those raising the question is never taken seriously by those who will lose their lives. Eventually when things get grim enough, and its clear your enemy has no sense of cooperation with you whatsoever, all previous rules will find themselves rationalized to irrelevance.\n\n\nWhat happens when a country breaks the rules in practice is that the leaders of that country are labelled war criminals, and most likely executed if defeated. If victorious their media will control the prevailing narrative, and years later academics will discover a sense of patriotic exceptionalism about what actually happened.",
"You took one too many candies or you took candies that belong to someone else so now a few of the kids from the block are rallying to shut down your candy-stealing ass\n\nSource: Civ5/EU4",
"Simple answer: You have ROE's (Rules of Engagement) that govern who an active and legal threat is. For example, a soldier is a legal threat, a nurse is not. As soon as the nurse pulls out a firearm and returns fire, they then become a legal threat. You would be surprised how difficult is to engage a target, especially from an aircraft. Once a country declares war on another, they then enter the guidance of the ROE's and LOAC (Law of Armed Conflict). \n\nYou need to remember there are countries that do not follow the UN, however opposing forces still must follow these guidelines. If a country is found to break one of these laws, such as using chemical or biological weapons, they will be tried in front of the UNs Warcrime Council.\n\nSource: I am active duty military and a history buff.",
"The Adam Carolla podcast had walter o'brien on as a guest who has an IQ of 197 and is the subject of the TV show scorpion. In the podcast he points out as one of the ways to better the world is to make it not illegal to assassinate heads of state. Imagine how different these crazy dictators would behave if they knew we would take them out if they get out of line. ",
"Real ELI5:\n\nAll the kids on the playground agree on what is accepted and what is frowned upon. If there is a bully on the playground, then the kids agree to stop playing with the bully (Sanctions) or to protect the kid being bullied (military intervention). Eventually the bully gets lonely or beat up and decides to play by the rules again and is allowed to play with the other kids.\n\nThe real UN rules are much more complicated, but are enforced by the collection of countries that have joined the UN and agreed to follow these rules. They enforce these rules mainly by use of economic sanctions because in the long term, they hurt more than bombs. Just see North Korea. ",
"Well, it's different in each case. There are 2 cases: Winners and losers. Losers get tried, basically, for said crimes. Winners get away with whatever they did and whether they want to try people or not is up to them. ",
"Maybe I missed it but no one seems to have mentioned LOAC (low-ack) or Law of Armed Conflict which is the answer to your question at least from the US perspective. This is the set of rules for war that all US military personnel must follow. These rules come from various sources--the Geneva Convention for instance. Violation of LOAC by US military personnel can be grounds for court martial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice or an international military tribunal. You can read more about it [here](_URL_0_).",
"There are no rules. The winners decide what the rules are or were, and punish the other side accordingly to make themselves look better. Politics has a long history of trying to cover up or mislead in an effort to present themselves in a favorable light. This goes for all countries. Nobody is immune to it.",
"I think there are plenty of explainations of how the \"rules\" of war should work but here's the truth. If the US does it it's ok. If anyone else does it it's against the rules. ",
"What happens if a country ignores the rules of engagement? I.e chemical warfare, killing medical personnell. Or is that some honor code only the us follows?",
"Only one thing matters when it comes to the rules of war. Who won? \n\nIf the Allies had somehow lost WWII after using the bomb on mainland Japan there is a good chance Truman would've been brought up on War Crimes. \n\nEveryone breaks the rules, because the only thing that can enforce a rule that prohibits certain uses of force is additional use of force... \n\nThe trick is to not get caught, or to win. If Assad wins in Syria who will be left to say he gassed his people?\n\nAs an aside, the US has signed the Geneva Convention, but has not ratified certain parts, and likely never will. To ratify an international treaty forces the US to give up sovereignty. Despite the fact that they may adhere to a certain convention, not ratifying it still gives them the \"flexibility\", if you will, to act as they deem fit in a certain situation international conventions be damned.\n\nWhether right or wrong any military is focused on winning the conflict and minimizing friendly casualties. As the USMC says, \"Always cheat; always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.\"\n\nAlso the UN security council is the final arbitrating body when it comes to enforcement of the Geneva Convention, this consequently means the US, Russia, China, UK & France will never be tried for breaking the convention. ",
"The \"rules\" of war if you want to call them that, are really only enforced when they serve the purposes of the victor or winner in a conflict. Trials, tribunals, etc are used to legitimize the winner in a conflict and are more a reflection of power relationships than anything else. \n"
]
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[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Assistance_Mission_for_Rwanda",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Nations"
],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_reparations",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Court_of_Justice",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_war#International_treaties_on_the_laws_of_war"
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[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_1907",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Taylor_(Liberian_politician)",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre"
],
[],
[],
[],
[],
[
"https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgRvm1yLFoaQKhmaTqXk9SA",
"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R26ltwNHZ5A"
],
[],
[],
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"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Dönitz"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_v._United_States",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_1907",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Tribunal_for_Rwanda",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_678",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_jurisdiction",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Tribunal_for_the_former_Yugoslavia",
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court"
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2kd40y | why do we consider female chests worthy of censorship, but not male chests? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2kd40y/eli5_why_do_we_consider_female_chests_worthy_of/ | {
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"You can never be certain when it comes to societal reasoning.\n\nPerhaps due to the intimate nature of breastfeeding it has been considered something that should be out of the public eye and female breasts have been included with this.",
"It is a cultural thing. Boobs are considered sexual, male chests aren't.",
"Because breasts are highly sexualized in Western cultures, and cultures influenced by the West. From a more evolutionary perspective, females developed larger, rounder breasts because they helped to further the species. They were a clear signal that she would make a healthy mate who could feed offspring, and men attracted to that sort of bosom bred with the women who possessed them. Genes did their thing, and the next generation had girls with larger breasts, and boys who liked them. This continued for generations upon generations, and now here we are. \n\nBreasts do have a sexual purpose, so it's not surprising they're treated as sexual body parts. Especially when you consider how uptight and prudish our not-too-distant relatives were. It was not uncommon for bodies of both genders to be thought of as \"dirty\" or \"obscene\". Centuries of religious influence, moral trends, and even fashion have played roles in this.",
"The idea that female breasts are something in need of cover is relatively new. Up until Victorian times, exposing an ankle was more risqué than showing a breast in European or Western cultures. Breasts at that time were still utilitarian, and in art, the exposure of a breast signified fertility, not sex. Whatever societal ideal that lead to Victorian people to condemn masturbation probably also brought on the high neck collars and the idea that women's bodies were purely sexual and so must be kept covered to keep the men from losing their minds. \rEdit: Forgot the link. _URL_0_",
"Some time ago, there was a video where they covered the nipples only and that got the green light. The same team published pictures of topless women but the nipples were removed so basically there were no nipples and that got green light too. And they asked at the end, \"Why are you afraid of nipples?\" That was funny."
]
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[],
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"http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleavage_(breasts)"
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||
2c5js3 | why do i feel society anxiety or embarassment when i watch a cringey video of someone else? | Sometimes I come across a video on the internet of some social scenario that it induces real embarassment when I watch it, and in most cases it keeps me from continuing the video. Why does that happen, even if I'm not in the video? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c5js3/eli5_why_do_i_feel_society_anxiety_or/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjc5o63"
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"text": [
"Because you associate yourself in that same scenario, and think of how you would feel."
]
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[]
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|
1ieboq | what is self-esteem? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ieboq/eli5_what_is_selfesteem/ | {
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"text": [
"English major here.\n\nLet's look at the word. \"Self\" obviously means you. \"Esteem\" means \"respect and admiration, typically for a person.\" So basically, self-esteem means self-respect.\n\nSo basically, self-esteem is respecting yourself, being comfortable with who you are, and generally liking your personality."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
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||
1heoqn | why are there so many english news presenters in the us? | When I watch clips of The Colbert Report/The Daily Show, I keep seeing clips of several different English news presenters. I find this really bizarre. We don't have any Americans presenting the news in our country.
Edit: To clarify, I don't mean the comedians on the actual show (e.g. John Oliver), I mean when they show clips from actual news channels in order to make fun of them. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1heoqn/eli5_why_are_there_so_many_english_news/ | {
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"text": [
"The British accent is considered to be trustworthy and therefore perfect for news programs.",
"There have been a few psychological studies that show that Americans perceive people with British accents as being both more intelligent and more trustworthy. I'd guess they're milking that."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[]
] |
|
bxch0i | how much apples do you need to eat before you get cyanide poisoning? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bxch0i/eli5_how_much_apples_do_you_need_to_eat_before/ | {
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" [_URL_0_](_URL_0_) \n\n & #x200B;\n\nThe article goes through a pretty in depth summary, but the tl;dr is you would need to actually grind up or chew (swallowing a whole seed is not as dangerous) between 1-2 cups of apple seeds depending on your weight before you begin running into issues."
]
} | [] | [] | [
[
"https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/318706.php"
]
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||
ebpab1 | what is an electrical surge protector and what can potentially happen without it? | I see that commonly labeled on outlets is a "surge protection" feature, but what are the benefits and the consequences of not having one?
Also, why do some of these devices have an Ethernet and phone line ports? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ebpab1/eli5_what_is_an_electrical_surge_protector_and/ | {
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"Surge protection basically means that if there's a lightning stroke or something that causes a sudden increase in voltage, the protector will stop it from ruining your electronics. It's good to have in general, but especially on your expensive devices.",
"A surge protector is basically an electrical \"bypass\" for your equipment. When a high voltage occurs, they are designed to short to ground, basically collapsing the voltage across your device. Once the condition is past, they basically restore to normal (assuming the voltage wasn't high enough to destroy them). Anything electric (ethernet, phone) can benefit from them because surges can come from the ground as well as the power line. The closer they are to what they are protecting, the better they can work, so while a \"whole-house\" surge protector is good, having one at the point of use is better.\n\nTo elaborate a little, a 'varistor' is a device (used in arresters) whose resistance decreases as the voltage exceeds a certain level. So it sits there fat and happy as a high resistance to ground in parallel to your device. Once the voltage exceeds it's design level, it starts conducting (basically a controlled short) to ground and collapses the voltage, which protects your device. The amount of energy they can withstand is rated in joules, so make sure you get one ample enough to do it's job."
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cjmsz0 | if the human body is constantly seeking homeostasis, and our ideal body temperature is near 98.6 fahrenheit, why do most of us prefer external temperatures that are 20-30 degrees cooler? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cjmsz0/eli5_if_the_human_body_is_constantly_seeking/ | {
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"Because the human body generates a lot of heat so in order to maintain homeostasis it needs to be able to shed excess heat, a high external temperature make it difficult to shed this extra heat. - _URL_0_",
"Your body produces heat. If the temperature of the air is the ideal body temperature, that would be the temperature of the outermost layer of skin (ideally). The body internally would heat up beyond that.\n\nAlso, the ideal body temperature is 37 Celcius.",
"Because our body is constantly producing heat and is trying to maintain homeostasis. This means it has to dump the excess heat into the air and it does so most efficiently at around 70F. Go 10+ degrees lower and you start losing heat too rapidly so need to wear protective layers, go 10+ degrees warmer and you start to have difficulty dumping the heat into the air around you and you begin to sweat."
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9wir7h | console gaming limitations? | Why is it that I buy games on Steam/Origin for PC, download them with no disc and play them, but RDR2 for PS4 has a dedicated installation disk, a play disc AND you still need to download 90GB of files in order to install the game? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9wir7h/eli5_console_gaming_limitations/ | {
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"The disc is optional, you can just download it from the PS store, but a disk saves space that would be taken up on the drive without it.",
"You’re not downloading the content, you’re installing it from the disk. RDR2 is a huge game, and would not fit on one disk.\n\nAs far as the installation, PS4 and Xbox One basically use the physical disk a form of copy protection. All of the data is installed no matter what game it is. RDR2 just happens to be 100GB.",
"On Steam the game is tied to your account. You don't need a disc, but there also isn't a convenient way to sell it or give your copy of the game to someone else when you're done.\n\nYou can do that on PS4 too if you want, if you buy it via PSN.\n\nBut on PS4 you also have the option of buying it on disc. That means you can easily transfer ownership of the game to someone else, just give them the disc. It also saves you having to download everything, it installs the data from the disc which is much faster (unless you have an extremely fast internet connection). But RDR2 happens to be so big it needs 2 discs. You shouldn't need to download much, just the latest update which should be much smaller than 90GB."
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1ovh6n | how does a drug dealer explain how he's rich? | How does someone who's income comes from illegal work, explain where he get's his money? or what his job is? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ovh6n/how_does_a_drug_dealer_explain_how_hes_rich/ | {
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"They don't. They don't exactly file taxes, and it's usually one of those 'open secret' things where everyone in the neighborhood knows where the money came from but nobody talks about it.\n\nThe higher-up guys, the importers and major distributors, usually have some kind of small business as a front. I understand laundromats, cheap motels, and small apartment buildings are common ways to do that in my part of the country.",
"Gambling or car washes, of course.",
"They launder their money, often through false investments. ",
"A) Money laundering.\n\nB) Buying lots of shit that can be paid for in cash. Why do you think the stereotype exists of the ridiculously well-dressed drug dealer, blowing money at the club, with a bad-ass stereo & a pimped out old car exists? The only 'real' asset there is a $2000 car - the government doesn't track the $10k in the stereo system or the $5000 rims or the new pair of $250 sneakers for every day of the week."
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406ozi | why do dogs mark their territory by peeing on bushes, poles, etc., when the next dog is just going to come along giving zero fucks and pee on top of it? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/406ozi/eli5_why_do_dogs_mark_their_territory_by_peeing/ | {
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"Most likely at this point, after thousands of years of evolution, it's a programmed behaviour and not a conscious decision.\n\nI read in a Dawkins book that around the 50's they were studying this type of thing and they put a beaver in a bare room and it still mimicked the behaviour of trying to build a dam. ",
"Kind of like Human taggers?",
"I think of it kind of like a Reddit thread. Everybody comes and marks their territory, but you still feel better about the whole thing once you piss on it yourself.",
"It's not really zero fucks. Dogs can tell a lot from other dogs' urine markings, and they want to put their information where everyone else's is. And on top. It's much less interesting to leave your urine-soaked calling card where nobody's going to notice it. ",
"It's like playing a game of King of the Hill. You know you won't keep the hill for the entire game, but as long as that little spot is yours for a little bit of time, it's all worth it.",
"How else are dogs supposed to read pee-mail?",
"Part of it is the height of the spray... a bigger dog will spray higher up (and in more quantity), so dogs can tell if there is a bigger dog in the territory they need to yield to.\n\nThey also appear to mark at the 'local maxima' of their route, that is, the places that stick out from the surrounding terrain (fire hydrants, trees, etc.) if it's the most obvious object in visual range, they want to mark it; making it so that most dogs are trying to mark the same object, instead of spraying randomly.\n\n(You can fuck with the dogs in your neighborhood by buying wolf urine, and spraying it 3 feet above ground level on the tree they mark.)"
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59vps1 | if ammon bundy and his group most definitely occupied the malheur national wildlife refuge without permission and most definitely did so with weapons and even calling on others to join them, how were they found not guilty? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/59vps1/eli5_if_ammon_bundy_and_his_group_most_definitely/ | {
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"The jury found them innocent, and as for reasons why, they won't be known since jury deliberations are strictly private. The most likely cause is that the number of insiders from the government was enough to convince them that it would be entrapment, since the case hinged on whether the defendants would actually use force on the police and others attempting to enter.",
"The state's main charge was conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer. In order to show they committed the crime, the prosecution had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that two or more people conspired to prevent by force, threat, or intimidation, the employees of the wildlife refuge from doing their jobs.\n\nI assume prosecutors brought those charges because it carried the penalty they wanted, but it's not hard to see how that might not have stuck. Conspiracy requirements an agreement to accomplish a specific act. The occupiers conspired to occupy the building and protest, but it seems highly unlikely they cared about whether the federal employees could do their job. They should have known they would prevent employees from doing their jobs (though I'm not even sure employees would have been present when they occupied the building), but I don't think that was something they agreed to accomplish.\n\nSome of the defendants were also charged with possession of a firearm in a federal facility. I'm not entirely sure how the arguments on that went, but the law banning firearms doesn't apply to \"the lawful carrying of firearms or other dangerous weapons in a Federal facility incident to hunting or other lawful purposes.\" That clause gave the defendants an out to argue that their weapons were possessed lawfully. The federal facility also has to have warning signs saying that weapons are prohibited. I don't know if this particular facility had them or not, but if it didn't then the defendants shouldn't have been found guilty on that charge."
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3555jo | what is the advantage of a society with large corporations versus one with many many small businesses? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3555jo/eli5_what_is_the_advantage_of_a_society_with/ | {
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"Large corporations can do things in bulk, meaning the process is cheaper and more efficient. This means cost of living comes down and the money we have for leisure goes up\n\nMany small businesses means we have much control over the way they operate as it'd be much harder for them to create overseas HQs in tax havens and hire expensive lawyers and accountants to fiddle their earnings to pay the least tax possible\n\nWhat you really want is a balance, which is what most first world nations have. It is balance between whether you want the state to be richer or its people to be richer. The US model is for the people to be richer, where as many European countries would rather the state get richer as generally the trickle down is better there because of aforementioned desire for US people to keep their money themselves \n\nIn less developed nations you often have almost entirely huge companies that can act as they please as their bribes are worth more than the possibility of losing their trade. There are also more often than not not many registered small businesses and most people act as sole traders as that is all they can really plan together due to lack of resources"
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5l47gm | why are old lp's printed on one record , but modern ones on 2? | All of my old records are consolidated to just a side 1 and side 2, but my modern records typically come with an A,B,C, and D side spread out over 2 pieces of vinyl. These modern records aren't any longer either. Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5l47gm/eli5_why_are_old_lps_printed_on_one_record_but/ | {
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"I have plenty of older double LP but I believe double LP's are more popular now because bands are able to fit more music on CD's and digital releases than they traditionally could on an LP. And with longer play times possible for an album digitally or on a CD, it is more likely that it would require more than just two sides of a vinyl record.",
"Are you sure they're not longer? The average album length has almost doubled since 1980, and modern albums are often too long to fit onto single records. Many albums in the past were released on double records for this reason. \n\nThere's another reason, though: vinyl records have variable length, with greater length involving lower sound quality. In the past, keeping albums affordable was a reason to compromise the quality and push for longer sides. Today, the only people buying albums are enthusiasts and collectors, who will pay a premium for higher quality if possible, and for whom double albums are a plus. "
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2wrbzc | what's with these desperate teenage girls trying to join isis? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wrbzc/eli5_whats_with_these_desperate_teenage_girls/ | {
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"Well, some of us just grow up wanting to join the military. If we have those desires in a country where our beliefs are perhaps not aligned with those of that country - say, you're Muslim in a country where there's a fair amount of anti-Muslim feeling in the populace - you probably aren't all that inclined to join that country's military forces. So what alternative is there? IS offers one. ",
"Because they wanna be rebels, man.\n\nRebel against their parents coz they're so random, cool and edgy and get fucked in the process. Like, you just don't get it, alright.\n\nWho wouldn't want that?",
"Teenagers can feel quite disillusioned and easily get caught up in ideals that take them away from the difficulties of puberty.\nIn the case of young women, they are often radicalised online through influence and the promise of a better life. Through using social media they can promise idealised notions of Islamic life.\n\nSome may be involved with a boyfriend or husband that becomes radicalised to fight for ISIS and therefore follow similar ambitions to be with them.\n\nThe idea of women joining the Islamic State is romanticised. In this new \"state\" women are allowed to contribute, there are female 'police forces', women feel like they can contribute and work, many young muslims may feel they will never be equals and have the same opportunities in the Western world. It gives a sense of purpose to disillusioned, frustrated young teenagers who can be easily influenced by online propaganda.\nEdit: Woah, this got bigger than expected.\nEdit 2: spelling",
"I think it has to do with value like so many such decisions. Everything that was wrong with you doesn't matter anymore because all that matters now is your new mission. You are a selected special person for going on that mission. You are worthy of respect for going on that mission. It is what makes people knowingly choose death over life and hardship over luxury since forever. The tragedy is, the mission does not need to make any sense at all. ",
"How can 15 years old fly without being dropped off by a parent or guardian? \nYou can't do anything in the UK until you're 16, and then only with permission of your parent or guardian. You'd think of all the things they'd control better, especially with the the security at airports, would be children travelling alone?",
"I think we need to consider the fact that these people are very influential to people who feel marginalized by Western culture. \n\nYou take a group of people and you put them in a society that is frightened of them. You have tons of discrimination, they're not treated fairly, and they begin to foster hatred and mistrust towards the establishment, which is harboring hatred and mistrust against this group. Of course people, especially young people, are going to be on board when another group of their own comes along and says, \" trust us, we'll protect you.\"\n\nFor these people, isis represents the group that's trying to take the establishment of western society down: this same society that has been treating them terribly and causing problems for the entire world for *centuries* and these people are saying, *\"yeah. Why **doesnt** someone take them down?\"*\n\nFact is, terrorist attacks feed hate and fear. Hate and fear feed terrorist groups. Terrorist group feed attacks. \n\nIf you want to stop the attacks, treat the group of people like human beings and they'll see isis as a dangerous terrorist group, in lieu of \"a decent alternative\" to western society. \n\nEdit: ah bring on the down vote brigade. My invisible internet points mean very little in the face of this problem. ",
"People are looking at this from a western point of view. You should also recognize that IS is declaring itself a caliphate, and if one is following Islam fundamentally, they are required by Islamic law to become members of the caliphate so long as it its in their power to make it there. \n\nAlso, IS is less about destroying west and more about conquering the middle east. They are not the same as al Quaida, in that to give themselves \"legitimacy\" as a caliphate they must control territory and embark on jihad continuously until the end of time. The problem is going to be if and when they make it to Israel. If their conquest reaches Israel, reqruitment will skyrocket even more and we Will be forced into WW3.",
"They probably didn't get to the fine print which says something about them being rape slaves. Just a guess. Kids these days never read the fine print.",
"I'm no expert but this is a theory of mine: Teenage angst + feeling powerless to change your perceived helpless situation + feeling Invicible/immortal + highly impressionable + wanting to piss off mom and dad + under developed world views + not fully understanding the permanence of the consequences of your mistakes/bad choices sounds like the perfect combination for extremism and bad decisions. Children and young adults who are extremely frustrated tend to fall into bad crowds. Like teenagers who join street gangs. Most teenage boys and girls generally don't join gangs because they fully understand and accept that they can be killed for leaving or because they expect to be abused and forced to go through terrifying initiation trials. Angsty teenagers join gangs because they want change. They want more control in their lives and they feel like mainstream society has failed them. They want to be a part of something bigger. Something that promises them protection and a future within a group of seemingly like minded members who express similar frustrations. Teenage girls who join ISIS are not too different than those who join violent street gangs in my opinion. I don't think they don't go in anticipating being abused. It seems seems to me that they think they're escaping abuse, only to become sickeningly aware of the trouble they got themselves into when it's too late to back out. \n\nAnyone else share this theory? I'd love to have a discussion and hear any thoughts and opinions on the comparison. I'm no expert in the psychology of what pushes teenagers to make such radical decisions and join extremists groups (gangs, violent religious groups, etc) but this is my best guess. ",
"The primary tool for Isis recruitment is through social media. I'm making a correlation assumption between primary age and gender of social media tools.",
"Their parents are from one culture, their fellow British/French/Dutch etc citizens from another, and they are stuck not really belonging to either. Becoming an extreme salafist jihadi allows them to stick two fingers up to both (because they feel alienated and 'othered' by the host culture, but on the other hand no teenager wants to exactly conform to their parents' model either). This along with the usual teenage search for adventure and identity, inability to asses the long term impact of their actions, and propensity to be more easily led than adults are, create strong pull factors. ",
"Most insane thing I've heard so far in regards to this is the CNN report that claimed women were being \"lured\" with Nutella and Kittens. Even the terrorists thought this was ridiculous and started posting pictures on the official ISIS twitter accounts of....Nutella and Kittens. I mean....what the hell do you think the marketing gurus over at Nutella are thinking about this? No publicity is bad publicity,right? Do you think they mind that their brand is being dragged into all this? What if the next hostage we see who gets set on fire or beheaded dies with an empty jar of Nutella in his cage? BY WAY OF SOCIAL MEDIA,AND OUR BELOVED SPONSORS NUTELLA AND KEYBOARD CAT,ISIS IS PROUD TO BRING YOU-THE DEATH OF THE INFIDELS!!!!! ONLY ON YOUTUBE THIS SATURDAY NIGHT!!!! THINGS ARE GONNA GET \"NUTS\" SO BE SURE YOU \"TELLA\" ALL YOUR FRIENDS!!!!!",
"It baffles me. They're straight A students from good families, they're in the UK so they will have seen the media coverage of how ISIS treats girls, yet they still go. Without doubt someone is brainwashing them (to the extent they're convincing the girls to ignore the media coverage) and then they'll be radicalised in Syria. Baffles me. Scares me too. Such a shame.",
"They were told they couldn't join and that made them desperate to join.",
"Teenagers are finding themselves, they don't really know who they are. they rebel against their parents/society. Previously that was going out to all hours, getting in bar fights, fucking around etc. These days those kind of personalities have much better options if they really want to go big. I think teens are vulnerable and that's why radicals target them, weak easy recruits. The idea or concept that these kids are being exploited doesn't factor into teenagers thinking. ",
"They have false illusions of gory. They truly believe that they will fight for a worthy cause. What they do not realize is that they will either become the wife of a ISIS commander/soldier or become a suicide bomber. Foreign fighters in ISIS are used as cannon fodder. ",
"To be blunt, some people are just mind bogglingly stupid. They hate their parents, lived fucked up lives, and want to do the worst thing imaginable just to piss off mummy and daddy. Star in porn movies. Join a terrorist group. Become a lawyer. Etc. \n\nAnd BTW, when many of these people wind up with ISIS they find out \"Holy shit, these people are fucking crazy! Someone wants me to blow myself up! Some other guy wants to chop me up for parts and sell my organs on the black market! Some frikking imam wants to marry my ass off to some frightfully awful eighty year old cocksucker! This isn't fun anymore and I want to go home!\" -to which I have little to absolutely no sympathy whatsoever. You made your bed, now burn in it, it's not like the world needs dumb people in it anyway. ",
"Muslim teenage girls live in super oppressive households. Getting married gives them a chance to escape.",
"Not sure, but if it's not obvious they will be raped and tortured and then forced to marry some rando, then quite frankly they deserve it for being so damn stupid and not learning about what it is they are getting themselves into."
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7h9sny | gestalt psychology | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7h9sny/eli5gestalt_psychology/ | {
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"Yer not alone in askin', and kind strangers have explained:\n\n1. [ELI5: Gestalt Psychology ](_URL_2_)\n1. [ELI5: Gestalt psychology versus Gestalt therapy ](_URL_4_)\n1. [ELI5: Gestalt Therapy ](_URL_3_)\n1. [ELI5: Gestalt Psychology ](_URL_0_)\n1. [ELI5: Gestalt psychology and pattern goodness ](_URL_1_)\n1. [ELI5: What is \"Gestalt\" thinking and could future A.I. ever achieve it? ](_URL_5_)\n"
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4x0eqo/eli5_gestalt_psychology/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/12ylve/eli5_gestalt_psychology_and_pattern_goodness/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3uqhtr/eli5_gestalt_psychology/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2bmvem/eli5_gestalt_therapy/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2fzgj4/eli5_gestalt_psychology_versus_gestalt_therapy/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1upf18/eli5_what_is_gestalt_thinking_and_could_future_ai/"
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4cmkgi | why are the names of oil companies that spill oil into the ocean plastered on the news, but not the party responsible for the california natural gas leak? | We've all heard of Exxon Valdez and BP's role in Deepwater Horizon. But most articles didn't seem to mention much about the company in charge of the gas leak in California. Why? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4cmkgi/eli5_why_are_the_names_of_oil_companies_that/ | {
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"The sad truth is that the BP Oil spill got mass attention because it's a much more tangible event and it harmed animals. The California gas leak is equally or worse than the oil spill but I suppose that news isn't selling. I won't say there's conspiracies but some could easily say that parent companies of, say, CNN don't find it in their best interest to demonize big oil and gas unless they can sell it on something about saving the animals."
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4oeuil | if red tinted light is better for night vision, why do all cars have yellow, white, or blue headlights? [x-post from r/showerthoughts] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4oeuil/eli5if_red_tinted_light_is_better_for_night/ | {
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"while it might favor preserving our night vision, it provides an inferior view of the road that is lit. \n\nyou get up in the middle of the night to pee, do you turn on the light? nooo that would ruin your night vision! yeah.. but the light will be on and you wont NEED night vision. \n\n",
"Red light just doesn't degrade your ability to see in the dark as fast, so you can quickly check something and then not be completely blind without the light. That's one of the reasons red tint is used for map lights for example. \n\nFor sustained use, like driving, no tint is vastly superior. \n\nOh, and if headlights are blue, they're likely xenon. If they're yellow, chances are they're xenons with improper casing. ",
"Red light is good for seeing where objects are in low light, but not really their features, movements or other things about them. White light can give you those features, at the cost of having to let your eyes adjust to sudden changes in lux ( brightness ). Red light makes this adjustment a lot faster, but again at the cost of important distinguishable features."
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4m5oyb | what constitutes an "error" in baseball? | I've only seen the error thing go on a couple times in games, and even when people make obvious mistakes sometimes it doesn't. What exactly is the criteria? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4m5oyb/eli5_what_constitutes_an_error_in_baseball/ | {
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"The simple answer is if you misplay the ball resulting in a runner advancing at least one base, it is an error. Typically this is a bad throw, a dropped catch, or a bobbled/missed ground ball. It is up to the official scorer to decide if the play is an error, which means it can vary. If, in the official scorer's judgment, the runner would have advanced anyway, it is not an error. Also if a fly ball drops but doesn't touch anyone, and no one called for the ball, it is often scored as a base hit. One specific exception is on an attempted steal, if it is a bad throw by the catcher, it is *not* an error unless the runner advances another base.",
"Rule 9.12 in The Official Rules of Baseball describes it in excruciating detail.\n\nThe short version is two things are required for an error:\n\n* the player should have been able to make the play with ordinary effort\n* the play must benefit the offense\n\nAlso, there some results like wild pitches and passed balls, are not considered errors and are scored separately."
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[],
[]
] |
|
81ax35 | where does the energy from the engine go when my (automatic) car is stopped? | This is actually a question my friend asked me, but I had no idea how to answer so here I am. Basically, if my car is stopped, the engine is still running. Presumably, things in the engine are spinning and moving gears around and whatnot. At what point does that energy stop going to the tires (if at all?) Is there some mechanism for discarding the excess energy produced while the car is stopped? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/81ax35/eli5_where_does_the_energy_from_the_engine_go/ | {
"a_id": [
"dv1tpl5",
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79,
5
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"text": [
"the disconnect is in the torque converter, 2 fans that face each other, 1 turned by the engine, the other connected to the transmission. they can slip by each other, forcing the fluid through the other fan without it spinning.\n\nUltimately, that energy is converted to heat in the transmission fluid via friction and then expelled through the transmission case/transmission cooler to the atmosphere.",
"With respect to fuel consumption, would an idling manual consume less fuel than an automatic at a stop light? Assuming same make model year vehicle. "
]
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[],
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|
2dp32r | why am i able to rehearse foreign languages perfectly in my head, but can't speak/pronounce it? | I've been listening to foreign music lately and I have literally been remembering the lyrics word by word. But when I try verbalizing what I've remembered, I am unable to do it. Why is this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2dp32r/eli5_why_am_i_able_to_rehearse_foreign_languages/ | {
"a_id": [
"cjro99c"
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"score": [
5
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"text": [
"talking is a physical process that requires some coordination. A different language makes your tongue move in some new patterns that require practice, just like anything else you would practice. You can't just think about throwing a ball and expect to be good at that either."
]
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[]
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|
cmt1ng | how are tv stations allowed to air movies like 'war of the worlds' with eas tones in them while tbs got fined for using them in a commercial? | Is there some sort of procedure you need to follow to remove the code from the sounds? Is it only a no-no if it's an ad? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cmt1ng/eli5_how_are_tv_stations_allowed_to_air_movies/ | {
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"ew4sdgv"
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"Technically it is not allowed if the movie is broadcast. There have been numerous cases where stations have been fined for airing ads. The trailer for *Olympus has Fallen* got multiple stations fined. Enforcement seems to be primarily based on complaints and I could see that ads would generate more complaints than a movie would because there is context with a movie."
]
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[]
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|
14dheh | simple statistics question | I have a question on a review sheet that a teacher gave that I can't figure out. The teacher gave us the answer, but I've tried the problem multiple ways, but can't get that answer. The question is "The scores of a reference population on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for children are normally distributed with mean 100 and standard deviation 15. Aprox what percent of the scores fall in the range from 70 to 130?" The teacher put down the correct answer as 95%. So since I've been wrong every time I've tried this problem , can someone explain how to do it like im 5. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/14dheh/simple_statistics_question/ | {
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"c7c39an"
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"text": [
"So let's take a normal distribution with mu=100 and sd=15. The probability that any given score falls in that range is 100% or 1. We want to cut out the left part that's under 70 and the right part that's above 130 and find out how big the chunk in the middle is.\n\n= 100% - (Percentage under 70) - (Percentage above 130)\n\n= 1 - P(X < 70) - P(X > 130)\n\n= 1 - P(X < 70) - ( 1 - P(X < 130))\n\n= 1 - P(X < 70) - 1 + P(X < 130)\n\nStandardize to Z by subtracting mu and dividing by sd,\n\n= 1 - P(Z < -2) - 1 + P(Z < 2)\n\n= 1 - 0.0228 - 1 + 0.9772\n\n= 0.95\n\nCheers!\n"
]
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[]
] |
|
3istwi | how could dzhokhar tsarnaev receive the death penalty for killing 3 people at the boston marathon when james holmes was sentenced to life without parole for killing 12 people in a movie theater in aurora, colorado? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3istwi/eli5_how_could_dzhokhar_tsarnaev_receive_the/ | {
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"text": [
"Different states, different penalties, different lawyers, different case, different judge, different jury. \n\nThere is no concrete nationwide punishment for anything. Everything is relative to the crime and where you are. Some states got rid of the death penalty while others still use it.",
"Holmes jury couldn't agree on the death penalty but has gotten. A 1000 year+ sentence, tsarnaevs jury agreed on the death penalty. Both men will die in jail and cost us about the same amount of money."
]
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[],
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||
3vlz1s | why don't ads buffer? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vlz1s/eli5_why_dont_ads_buffer/ | {
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"_URL_0_ has a few good answers",
"Money is earned through ads and not content, so more effort is spent on ads. Also, there is a limited set of ads available at a given time while there is effectively an unlimited set of content -- so the ads providers can pre-copy the ad to someplace near you on the internet (a content delivery network or caching service) to minimize the chance of hiccups. \n\nIt is feasible to pre-copy ads but not every possible video.",
"These are excellent theories and some very close. Most ISP infrastructure has \"common content\" caches. These hold content like videos, webpages, etc that the software detects are requested very often. If YouTube launches a new ad campaign and a fresh ad is being fed for the first time, it's not going to be as fast as normal. But once your ISP detects that this video is flowing through at a certain threshold, it will keep a copy on its content cache for quicker accessibility. When your GET request flows from your computer through the ISP to youtube, the content cache will notice the string of characters for that video and start feeding it back to you right away. Once every 30 minutes, at least at the ISP I worked for, the servers would recheck hashes on all of its content to make sure it has up to date versions. \n\nThis is also why viral videos, popular news stories, and alot of other high traffic content load instantly too, not just ads.\n\nSource: Worked for a hated internet service provider for 3 years."
]
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[
"https://m.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3itdko/eli5_why_do_internet_ads_load_faster_than_the/"
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3mk853 | why are so many comments marked as deleted? | Is this because people delete their accounts, the individual comments or something else? If they do delete the comments/accounts, what motive is there for this, isn't Reddit supposed to be anonymous? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mk853/eli5_why_are_so_many_comments_marked_as_deleted/ | {
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"If people don't like a certain comment they downvote it / say bad things. When lots of people down vote a comment the owner delete it to prevent losing his karma/ gets a lot of hate message in his inbox..",
"I once deleted my comment because I had said something that people didn't like (but it was what I thought). I was receiving so many hate in my inbox I just decided to delete my comment.\n\nI didn't sign up for hate.",
"Sometimes I'll miss read or not read the entire subject and post something that doesn't exactly pertain to the topic so I'll delete it. Not sure why everyone else does it",
"As much as it is anonymous from your IRL identity, it can have an online identity of it's own. Just like your IRL identity you tend to take care of how people perceive you. So if you post something in the moment that you thought/felt and it turned out to be very unpopular, you might delete it as people can go back through your post history and see it.\n\nOR\n\nYou realise that the post will create a link between your IRL identity and your online one, meaning you lose your anonymity.\n\nOR\n\nThe discussion was against the rules or unproductive and so deleted by a moderator.\n\nOR\n\nYou care greatly about magical internet points and want to get away from the negative karma.",
"A lot of times, especially if you see a huge chain of deleted comments, it's because a moderator has decided that the originating comment of the chain has blatantly broken a rule on the sub. For instance, a thread marked \"serious\" will have obvious joke reply chains deleted. /r/science has certain rules that top level comments have to adhere to, namely that you have to provide references to any claims you make. "
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33nmcb | what program do programmers use to code? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/33nmcb/eli5_what_program_do_programmers_use_to_code/ | {
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"Depends very much on the programmer. I write mainly Java, and the program I use is Eclipse. Other people at my same company working in the same codebase might use Intellij, or Emacs, or Vi. They all have their pros and cons, and I suspect a lot of it comes down to what sort of editor you used when you first learned to code. Though now that I say that, I recall from my time as a teaching assistant that some students would write their code in Microsoft Word - hopefully they've abandoned that habit since then.",
"That depends on how \"deep\" the coding is. However, most high-level languages have programs known as \"compilers\" that translate the human-comprehensible programming language into low-level languages like machine code or assembly code, which the computer will understand and be able to do things with.\n\nObviously, different languages have different compilers. If you try to run Java though a C++ compiler, it will reject the code because it's total nonsense to a C++ compiler.\n",
"Code can be written in ANY text editor, such as notepad. Programming languages are meant to be read by humans.\n\nDifferent programs (called compilers) turn the human readable text document into a file with a language meant to be read by computers (this is the program).\n\nMost programmers use a program that combines these 2 programs, along with other features designed to make development easier. At its core, the program is still a text editor and a compiler.",
"Nowadays, we have programming environments like Visual Studio (on Windows) and Eclipse (multi-platform). In the very beginning, you'd have to figure out your program on paper and hard wire it directly in the computer by rearranging the connections. After that, there were multi-purpose computers with loaders that took in punched cards or paper tape that was manually created, again by first figuring it out on paper. Then they made compilers, which took human readable code and converted it into binary machine code automatically. And now we have fancy software that immediatly tells you when you make a typo, auto-completes, etc and builds the code for you.\n\nEdit: By \"builds the code for you\", I mean it takes all the different source files of a project, compiles them into machine language and links them all together in a ready to run executable file (e.g. a .EXE file on Windows).",
"Oh! Oh! I can answer this!\n\nAll it takes is a text editor, but most programmers will use an IDE - integrated development environment - to expedite the process. The IDE highlights various things in the code to make the process easier. Eclipse is a popular IDE for Java. In the professional world, Visual Studios is very popular. At the end of all of this, a compiler (Separate from the text editor, built into most IDEs) turns the code written by the programmer into something the computer can read.\n\nTLDR; An IDE, like Eclipse or Visual Studios",
"Mediocre professional programmer here.\n\nAs you know, the point of programming languages is to let a human think about computer instructions in a way that makes sense for humans. We can name things what we want so we can remember them later, we can store things that go together in files and folders together, and we can add notes and comments to things to remind us later what we were thinking or planning when we wrote something.\n\nEven with these language pieces that help us think, modern programs are still very complicated. While your brain's capacity for complexity grows as you learn and program more and more, there's only so much you can keep in your brain at once.\n\nIn my office we all use a program called Microsoft Visual Studio (and sometimes another one called Eclipse) to write programs. These programs are called integrated development environments or IDEs. They make work faster and easier by giving you information you might need when it thinks you might need it, letting you look up something by just pointing to it, and suggesting correct things when you make a mistake.\n\nMore importantly, IDEs make it easier to debug a program. Programmers make lots of mistakes, constantly. We plan things that don't work, we forget things, we misunderstand some of the details of what we were asked to do, and we often don't realize it. Modern IDEs will immediately tell you if you've written something the computer doesn't understand the meaning of: syntax errors, type checking and inferencing failures, etc. More importantly modern IDEs also give you ways to run a program slowly, a little bit at a time, and watch what it's doing so you can figure out what is making it fail or not work the way you planned it would.\n\nAll a programmer really needs is a few tools designed for their language: maybe a compiler and a linker, maybe an interpreter, maybe just a web browser. But most programmers work better and faster with an IDE."
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3vzdqi | machiavellian actions/behavior | What exactly does it mean to be Machiavellian in your actions? I see it used frequently as a descriptor for behavior that is frowned upon and generally evil, but I'm not quite sure what kind of actions can accurately be described as Machiavellian. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3vzdqi/eli5_machiavellian_actionsbehavior/ | {
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"It refers to the mindset of \"the ends justify the means\" most typically. Meaning, if the goal you want to accomplish is good or important enough, then it justifies whatever methods you use to get there.",
"_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_\n\nMachiavelli wrote a book called The Prince about governing that is, by modern standards at least ruthlessly pragmatic and manipulative. He said that it is better to be feared than to be loved, suggested concentrating ruthless acts in a short period (so that the people will forget them quicker), and talked about multiple ways to conquest. To be Machiavellian, is to be a schemer, creating temporary alliances, backstabbing when it suits you, and pretty much doing anything to increase your power."
]
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[],
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prince",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli"
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|
20qxyx | why is there no common standard for console gaming like there is for audio and video disks? | It seems like the economics should work the same way: by having multiple standards like PS, XBox, and Wii, you end up with fewer users and less choice, since some games are only available for one console. If you coordinate on a single standard, like audiovisual companies did with CDs and DVDs, it seems like everybody would be better off? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20qxyx/eli5_why_is_there_no_common_standard_for_console/ | {
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"Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are all competitors. They don't want to work with their competition, they want to own them. \n\ntl:dr capitalism.",
"VHS put BetaMax out of business. Blu Ray put HDDVD out of business.\n\nMicrosoft, Sony, and Nintendo desperately want to put each other out of business, but for now, there's still contention and a strong market for both.\n\nIn reality, it's probably better with competition. Competition breeds advancement."
]
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1n9c7j | why aren't there more regulations about the antibiotics that can be given to farm animals? why are farmers allowed to choose to give all their animals antibiotics, potentially causing a global catastrophe in the future? | It's accepted that antibiotic-resistant bacteria will inevitably come about after repeat exposure to antibiotics. This could lead to a global epidemic of untreatable bacterial infections. I am all for treating sick animals, but at many major farms, ALL the animals, including the healthy ones, are given a consistent dose of antibiotics. Shouldn't our leaders be more concerned? Or am I just blowing this out of proportion? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1n9c7j/eli5_why_arent_there_more_regulations_about_the/ | {
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"Yeah, let's just have farm monitors on patrol 24/7 to make sure farmers aren't giving their animals antibiotics.",
"On one hand we can potentially decrease the effectiveness of our antibiotics against certain types of infectious diseases. On the other hand we could stop using them and have the animals get sick all the time, and herds of animals get wiped out by plagues.\n\nSo your choice is between someone occasionally catching a difficult disease from a farm animal (most people don't rub elbows with them on a daily basis btw) or a meat shortage. Someone occasionally getting MRSA vs. less food.\n\nI think the food thing wins out.",
"_URL_0_\n\nWe are already in an era of antibiotic resistant bacteria! How are you all saying that it doesn't make a difference? "
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1sycza | why are cigarette and newspaper/magazine prices the same wherever you buy them, but other products are priced differently depending on who sells them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1sycza/eli5why_are_cigarette_and_newspapermagazine/ | {
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"I get your question and the reason is that the newspapers and the cigarette makers don't want a bunch of competition. Take the newspaper. You get the same news from either source, so if the prices were different, a cost-conscious consumer would buy the lower priced rag. Take for example the Tampa Tribune and the St. Petersburg Times. The Times, IIRC, used to be the evening paper and the Trib, the day paper. When the Times changed to a morning paper, they kept the price of the night paper and was five cents cheaper. The Times is now the leading news source in the Tampa/St Pete area. \n\nCigarettes are the same way. They want to discourage competition. Many years ago, American Tobacco Company (Lucky Strikes) and R.J. Reynolds (Winston) got into a price war and dropped the price of their products down from the normal price of 20 cents a pack to five cents in order to get more people to choose Winston over Lucky Strike. A new company, Phillip Morris (Marlboro) saw an opportunity and got into the market selling five cent packs. Marlboro won out and busted into the big tobacco market. The cigarette companies don't want that to happen again and keep their prices fixed with the competition. "
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ndnbj | if humans are attracted to attractive people, why don't we all evolve to become attractive? | edit: Guys, I'm looking for complex biological answers that are condensed into an ELI5 answer, not just "herp derp alcohol herp derp evolution assumes we're all naked, therefore rape". Thanks to [tuna safe](_URL_2_), [YouGotTheTouch](_URL_4_), [no_username](_URL_3_), [crotchmonkey](_URL_1_), [bionerd](_URL_7_), [ShinyRatFace](_URL_5_), [dizzytango](_URL_6_), [un-dugjones](_URL_9_) and [applessauce](_URL_8_) for your attempt at answers.
edit 2: I think [Pyrallis](_URL_0_) won this thread. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ndnbj/eli5_if_humans_are_attracted_to_attractive_people/ | {
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"text": [
"The definition of attractive varies. There's no universal standard of beauty. If you look at old advertisements in american magazines from the 1950s you'll see ads for weight gain products, talking about how skinny girls are unattractive and men like curves. If you look at seedy porn mags from the 1970s you'll see ads for \"pubic hair thickener\" products, because that's what's \"attractive\". If you listen to people in bars you'll hear how \"ugly girls need lovin too\".\n\nThere are also a number of cultures out there that have arranged marriages, where people don't know each other until they're predetermined to mate.\n\nIf you look at the big picture though, you'll see that regardless of the many different standards of beauty, humans have only cared about appearances for the last few thousand years. We haven't always been so shallow. The amount of time we've engaged in artificial selection is nothing compared to the hundred thousand years we've existed as a species.",
"attraction varies from person to person",
"Women are getting more attractive, it only takes way too long. Beautiful women get, on average, more children then the less attractive. I have trouble explaining it for a five year old, but i found the article I read about it:\n_URL_0_",
"Almost no one is willing to wait until the most beautiful person they've ever seen becomes available to them. Instead they settle for the most beautiful person that will have them without too much fuss.\n\nAlso, if you're not that attractive to the opposite sex, it means the good looking ones will have zero interest in you, and unless you go with the best that'll have you, you'll get no sex in your whole life.",
"Seriously? Everyone in this thread is wrong. \n\n**It's because ugliness won't stop horny people from having sex.**\n\nThe rest is mostly self-explanatory. ",
"My understanding, what you find attractive in a person is seeing genetic differences to your own, usually in their face. This lets your subconcious know that nay children you would have together would have a smaller risk of developing a genetic condition due to in breeding. This maybe why fat neck bearded men who live with their parents are attracted to japanese school girls, because the two couldn't be more different.",
"Who says we aren't? Homo Erectus wasn't exactly a pretty man.",
"To start with, we probably have evolved to become somewhat more attractive, especially in terms of height. And as ugly as we may seem know, it could always be much worse, and likely was at one point.\n\nAs far as the short term goes, in a civilization where men and women pair up in 1:1 ratios and breed exclusively (at least in theory), you wind up with billions of less-than-attractive people who are nobody's first pick.\n\nRather than going celibate, they pair up with one another, even though scientific research has shown that they are not, in fact, each others's first choices. And so the genes propagate.",
"Appearance comes from both parents. A square jaw is less appealing when your daughter gets it.\n\nThere could also be other costs. Being attractive might get you laid, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it gives you more surviving, productive offspring.",
"You can't evolve good health and nutrition, and no matter how good your genetic inheritance if you don't eat your greens, get enough protein while growing up, etc then you will not look pretty.",
"Because it's fairly unlikely that \"beauty\" is primarily genetic (as opposed to the influence of good health and good luck) or that the portions of it that are genetic are Mendelian (single gene traits that behave in a dominant versus recessive fashion). There is unlikely to be a strong correlation between a desired trait and a particular set of genes that would make it easier for selection to promote those genes.\n\nIn addition, for most of human history, people lived in relatively small groups with limited mobility, and married on the basis of factors like family connections and available farm land or other resources much more than personal affection. You would be much more likely to marrying someone whom you had either never met or you had known all your life and were marrying for factors other than purely physical attraction. It's only recently and still only in some areas of the world that both or even either party had full say in who they married, and even if they had that choice, that there were many options available, or that physical attractiveness was a high priority.\n\nDating and marrying primarily for love are VERY modern ideas.\n\nSo being physically attractive hasn't been as much of a factor until fairly recent times, and even when it is, there's still no reason to believe it's something that can easily be selected for in an evolutionary sense.",
"Evolution requires natural selection. This needs that the ugly people die without kids and the attractive people to have kids.\n\nIf our definition of attractive people don't change for enough generations, this might happen, but I won't hold my breath.",
"You may think you are attracted to attractive people, but it's your brain telling you what society has conditioned you too. ",
"Watch the beginning of Idiocracy\n_URL_0_",
"\"meh, I'd still hit it\"",
"Aside from what the top answers have stated (attractive being subjective), there's also the fact that just because I find Odette Yustman, Olivia Wilde, Giselle Bündchen, and others attractive as hell doesn't mean I'm going to end up with them. I end up with the one who wants me back and, frankly, is convenient.",
"What is considered most attractive in a partner will vary quite a bit from person to person but the universal traits that will make a person either attractive or unattractive are primarily based on good health rather than genetics. \n\nClear skin, shiny hair, being neither too fat nor too skinny, muscle tone, even facial symmetry to a certain extent, are influenced far more by a healthy diet and lifestyle than genetics. When you find someone attractive, you are attracted at least as much to indicators of good health as you are good genetics. \n\nWhen looking for a mate, yes, you want good genetics to pass down to your offspring, but you also want someone healthy enough to be able to help you raise those offspring effectively. You don't want to breed with a spouse that is going to drop dead and leave you with an infant to care for by yourself and you don't want a spouse that obviously has so little resources that they can't feed themselves effectively, much less a child. \n\nAn overweight person with bad skin can change their diet and grooming habits, get healthy, and suddenly be far more attractive than they once were. A very attractive person can develop a meth habit and be very ugly within a few years. Those people both have the same genetics and would pass on the same genetic traits to their children regardless of whether they were in their attractive phase of lives or were unattractive. However, which one, at which time, would you want to breed with?\n\nEssentially, humans aren't going to evolve to a point where everyone is attractive because attractiveness is a lot more than genetics. There is always going to be someone who has the genetic potential to be more attractive but has a bad diet, poor health, bad grooming skills, habits and addictions, or some other lifestyle problems, that make them unattractive.",
"it's all a matter of opinion. what's attractive to one may not be attractive to another.\nAs my grandmother used to say \"every pot has a cover\"",
"\"Attractive\" usually means \"symmetric\" and \"looks like the average of everyone I see.\"\n\nPeople pick people that look like normal. Being too different from normal makes it harder for you to breed. Rather than thinking of attractive as pretty, think of attractive as \"causing attraction.\" Everyone is here today because, in some way, their parents were attracted to one another*.\n\n * excluding cases of rape and test tube babies",
"we are trying, but you are holding back progress.",
"Something no one has touched on - The traits that make men attractive and the traits that make women attractive are very different. So when a man and a woman produce offspring the offspring could be a female with too many of the males traits or a male with too many of the females traits and therefore, even with attractive parents, could be unattractive.",
"Evolution operates based on random mutations and natural and sexual selection. The only way things 'evolve' towards some trait is when a mutation leads to more offspring, leading to that trait having greater presence. \n\nNow, does greater beauty lead to more offspring? One reason that could have been true in the past was that beautiful people may have greater underlying health (there is some good evidence for this). In the hard-knock hunter-gatherer world of our ancestors, this likely made a big difference. But in modern society, where living conditions relative to our ancestors, are *so* much better, most people on earth (including the less attractive), are able to bear and raise children. So as long a there are males who will mate with less attractive females—and there always are since the cost to males is low—there will be no major evolutionary advantage for the beautiful people.\n\nSo evolution of beauty is likely to have plateaued. ",
"Remember that evolution essentially selects for *any* trait that increases the chances of having fertile children. There are more ways of attracting a possible mate than just looking pretty. Strength, social power, social standing, intelligence, and ability to protect your family are all attractive features that are relatively unrelated to physical appearance.\n\nThere's also a tradeoff between a trait and the energy it uses. If you have, say, 2 energy units to spend, you might spend 1 on attractiveness and 1 on survivability, 2 on attractiveness, or 2 on survivability. If you don't survive then you don't have kids, so the people who have evolved at least a little survivability may be less attractive, but they're actually alive to breed.",
"Oh boy, I would love to write a dissertation-length comment here. I'm fascinated with evolution and evolutionary psychology. . . but I'll just say this.\n\nEvolution is not quick (not usually, at least not with humans) and it's heavily influenced by luck. In fact, some people refer to it as \"survival of the luckiest\" not \"survival of the strongest\". What's a strength today, could be your doom tomorrow. E.g. the dinosaurs, being cold blooded reptiles, couldn't survive the massive climate changes (or so it's posited) brought on by a massive asteroid collision. But a few small (and lucky!) mammals did, which is part of the reason we're here today.\n\nThere are many factors which influence evolutionary destiny and the short answer is that \"non-attractive\" people continue to reproduce. If they stopped, then we'd all be sexy and hot, except that there would still be \"ugly\" mutations every now and then.\n\nNot too mention that there are somewhat different standards for beauty anyway. Although yes, you can probably say that the underlying interest in beauty is that it generally indicates the health of a potential mate (and maybe it doesn't do that so well anymore, maybe it was a more accurate assessment earlier in our evolution).\n\nBut we are multi-faceted (thank god for the less beautiful people like myself) and it's possible to find a mate(s) without being a perfect 10.\n\nAnyway, don't get me started about homosexuality. That's a whole gigantic evolutionary can of worms. There are MANY competing theories about why it even exists because, in reproductive terms, it's a dead end. My feeling is that, like attractiveness, there probably is no quick summary/explanation for it.\n\nIt's fun to think and talk about though.\n\n",
"Let's say that there are 5 girls that all like you. Each one of them wants to make babies with you, but you can only pick one of the girls.\n\nWhen you see a girl as attractive, that's like a little voice in your head that tells you \"she is awesome and we could make awesome babies together, let's make babies!\"\n\nWhat if all 5 girls were all equally attractive to you? Then the little voice in your head would be telling you the same thing about all 5 girls: \"she is awesome, let's make babies with *her*.\"\n\nBut you have to pick one! That little voice is saying nice things, but it isn't helping you pick. It just keeps telling you the same thing, and that isn't useful.\n\nSo the little voice in your head has to look closer to find differences between the 5 girls. It has to find some little flaw or blemish, or something extra special, so that it can tell them apart and help you pick the best one.\n\nSo you end up seeing some girls as more attractive and some girls as less attractive. And if girls keep evolving to get more and more attractive, then boys will need to keep raising their standards so that they can tell the girls apart and keep picking the best ones. (And of course, the same thing happens when girls look at boys!)",
"_URL_0_\n\n > people are more likely to form long standing relationships with someone who is as equally physically attractive as they are. This is influenced by realistic choices, desire of the match and good probability of obtaining the date. If this leads you to think of all the successful couples in which the partners differ greatly in physical attractiveness, it is likely that the less attractive partner has compensating qualities to offer. For instance, some men with wealth and status desire younger, more attractive women. Some women are more likely to overlook physical attractiveness for men who possess wealth and status.\n",
"Because just because a trait increases reproductive fitness (i.e. attractiveness), doesn't mean it's automatically selected for in every generation. Confounding variables which decrease attractiveness but increase reproductive fitness in some other also exist. There are other traits that provide a greater reproductive fitness value over attractiveness, which could cause that trait to be selected for and attractiveness to not be selected for as much. Attractiveness is only one trait, and while varies within a certain range somewhat from culture to culture, there is sufficient variance that you are cannot make the assumption that attractiveness itself is an objectively quantifiable trait with monotonic tendencies. What is considered attractive in some populations may not be considered attractive in others.\n\nAnd the reproductive fitness value of a trait will vary by environment. Aesthetically pleasing physical appearance may carry less reproductive fitness in some environments than in others. Attractiveness in peacocks, for example, is an example of a runaway trait because having a large plumage makes males easier prey, but attracts more females. That trade-off could exist among humans but with unknown detrimental variables that we are unaware of.\n\nAnd besides, maybe we are. Maybe we are all statistically significantly better looking than our ancestors of 100,000 years ago or more.",
"If everyone was attractive, no one would be attractive.",
"I have Ptosis in one eye. Basically the upper eyelid droops due to an injury when I was a kid. It is the bane of my existence. Not having symmetrical eyes is ugliness. I'd honestly rather be missing some toes, or have a huge scar on my neck. ",
"Have you ever met a Swedish person?",
"The problem is you have to think about the massive permutations that occur when we're dealing with evolution. There's just way too many factors involved to say \"Humans should be getting hotter\". There's a lot of questions that are hard to answer:\n\n* Which genes predispose us to being physically attractive? \n* How do the alleles of these genes interact? \n* How does the standard for attraction change over time? (Contrast Venus of Willendorf through to contemporary models and art)\n* What if attractive people are likely to have less children on average because they want to stay attractive?\n* What if rich people and poor people have similar genetic pools, but rich people can afford to eat better, exercise and wear more fashionable clothes, biasing the mate selection to rich rather than genetically predisposed to physical attractiveness?\n* What if other traits and factors are more dominant in general?\n* Assume that we have two males and two females, and their attractiveness is due to genetics. If the pair that has the 'more attractive' genes pair off and are 100% faithful, then wouldn't the 'less attractive' pair also pair off?\n* To select against a trait, people with the trait have to have an impaired chance to reproduce. (This is why we will never select against predisposition towards late-life diseases and disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimers). Do a significant amount of the ugly people among us die without mating? \n* Do ugly people have less children on average? More? The same?\n\nThis is all complicated by the fact that we can't easily divine an objective attractiveness level, making data collection difficult.",
"Just because we are attracted to them does not mean that they will mate with us.",
"Because that's not how evolution works. \n\nHere:\n\nSo let's say there's a giraffe with a really long neck that gets born. It was a mutation, but it's pretty cool. It can reach the tall leaves now! But it was born because of a mutation, not because of the tall trees. Evolution is the process where that giraffe gets tons of giraffe-tail and more are born. However, attractiveness isn't like that. Yes, being good looking is a good way of getting a mate, but the non-good-looking people still generally end up with a mate. Therefore, there is no process of natural selection happening. If we only ever mated with attractive people, we'd probably cut down drastically on babies being born and eventually only have attractive children, but that's not what's happening. ",
"Attraction isn't solely based off appearance. . . You have to accommodate for hormone and pheromone discharge as well. Our bodies have created a some-what pavlovian response to things we call attractive. In a sense by evolution and fine tuning what we like, we've created what is attractive, thus our mind is telling our body to be attracted. So for instance beauty and attraction are also relative to who you're talking to and what. So it would be almost impossible for evolution to evolve us into a more attractive group of people simply because attraction is arbitrary. Best example, ass or tits guy.\n\nEDIT: We're not monogamous by nature",
"tuna's right. I recommend Robert Wright's \"The Moral Animal\" for further investigation. It is an evolutionary psychology book that presents some of the major trends in that field of study, reliant on the simple premise that genes \"want\" to survive by expressing themselves in offspring. They do not actually think genes are sentient, just that gene expression will ultimately manifest the best possible evolutionary traits that will allow expression. It is very interesting to see the differences between what attracts a mate and what keeps one, though not very surprising. Trustworthiness, ability to provide for young (or willingness to love them, particularly something Wright calls \"Male Parental Investment\"--part of why adoptive fathers have a harder time loving their offspring than they would a biological child), and a host of other factors come into play for the actual \"makin' babies\" part of mating. But short-term mates are often attractive in a different way. The book also contests that males tend to dabble in that kind of mating, building a sort of \"harem\" whenever possible, if only because it increases the evolutionary probability of creating offspring, whereas in the case of women the best chance for a child's survival is to nurture and protect it. A lot of it is conjectural, and he purports it only to be theory. But there is some very interesting stuff about kinship theory in a pre-evolutionary environment that even explains a few of our less-understood habits and emotions. Worth the read.",
"Do attractive people out-breed less attractive people? Does attractiveness confer a survival advantage? If the answer to either of these questions is \"yes\", the the human race will become more attractive (which by itself is a tricky thing to nail down and define).\n\nI suspect the answer to both is \"no\", however.",
"We don't have evidence that we *haven't* become more attractive other than via fossils and/or preserved bones, and even then we'd only be speculating the subjective.\n\nWhat we can know is that although we humans have a propensity to mate with the preferential, we **also** have both man-made and nature's setbacks working against your hypothesis/supposition.\n\nSuch as anonymous sperm donors, blindness, drug-addiction, desperation, rape, lack of choices (e.g. confinement, prison, desolation, forced marriage) and other wonderful phenomenons that would act only as stifling to your hypothesis.\n\nSo in short, there's just as much out there preventing this concept from manifesting itself as there is supporting it.",
"Whoa. I can't believe this made my front page today, because yesterday during my shower I was trying to figure out the appropriate subreddit to ask this in. I think one of the main questions I came up with before this question is, how reliably do \"attractive\" (as quantified by facial symmetry, whatever other standardized measures are used) couples produce \"attractive\" offspring? And, conversely, how often do fugly couples produce beautiful babies?",
"Because attractive is subjective.",
"Evolutionary time is a lot bigger than social time. Realize that 400 years ago, glut and powdered wigs were very attractive. Humans have too long of a lifespan to evolve that quickly. Instead of biological evolution, we culturally evolve and are taught concepts of beauty at a young age that we strive to appeal to",
"Firstly, because after all the attractive people pair up, the next level of slightly less attractive people tend to pair up, and so on inductively.\n\nSecondly, the genes for \"attractiveness\" are not highly conserved. The reason is that in many societies women have a dominant ability to choose their partner and some science seems to indicate that they are guided by olfaction as much as by other factors. Women will usually express this as \"It's about chemistry\". This olfcation tendency also drives women to seek a specific kind of variation, which will include variation in appearance.",
"Don't know if this has been said yet, but cultural evolution happens MUCH faster than biological evolution. Back in the old tribal days, obesity used to be a sign of wealth and power and everyone wanted to be with that guy/girl. Now it has become a norm and is seen as unattractive. \n\nPerception of attractiveness often changes faster than evolution can catch up to it fully. \n\nMy first attempt at an ELI5 so I don't know if I did it right :(",
"*Attractive* people not *beautiful* people. Girls are not attracted to guys for girls but rather confidence, leader of men, health, wealth, etc. All these factors contribute to attraction because it means survival for him and his mate.",
"There are many other factors than attractiveness that people look at when looking for a possible mate.\n\nIf you have the time, [this documentary](_URL_0_) will completely answer your question. It's a really interesting documentary that I watched when I took a Human Sexuality course.",
"Not all of us can marry supermodels, but we won't not have kids because we can't.",
"Hi deadguysleeps!\n\nWow, your question has inspired a lot of answers. Attractive people are a popular subject!\n\nUnfortunately, it appears that many people in this thread are, well, misguided. So, let's \"clear the air\" of a couple myths, which will help to clarify your question:\n\nFirst, there is a difference between *attractiveness* and *mate choice*. The two should not be confused, but the majority of people in this thread do. They can be forgiven, since the difference is subtle. Attractiveness is, simply, someone's physical beauty. Mate choice is how people choose to mate with one another. Mate choice *is* based on attractiveness, but attractiveness *is not the only variable* that causes people to make the choices they do. For example, women are able to detect how different a man's immune system is to theirs, simply by smelling the man's sweat. That's important for procreation, since a baby born to parents with different immune systems will have a stronger immune system as a result. The women who smelled men's sweat perceived the difference as [smelling attractive.](_URL_8_) Mate choice is a whole other topic, and much can be written about it--but that's not what you asked. You're asking about physical attractiveness---beauty, in other words. \n\nSecond, people can also find various fashions, fads, or cultural trappings attractive. Individuals may have fetishes for what they consider most attractive. It may be a fad to wear your hair a certain way, or groom yourself a certain way. And, yes, some people can find those trends attractive. But, there's something deeper, something more innate about physical attractiveness, that transcends culture or fashion. [Newborn babies show a preference](_URL_7_) to gaze at pictures of attractive people, instead of unattractive people. That indicates that attractiveness--and its appreciation--is something hardwired in human brains. After all, babies haven't time to learn cultural norms or fashion trends yet! And, it's that physical beauty that infants are able to see, that is present even when you strip away all the fashion, culture, and fads. And again, this is what you're asking about. Too many people believe that cultural norms are all there is to attractiveness, and thus attractiveness is variable. As the babies show us, this is false. \n\nOkay, now that we've clarified those two points, we now have to address the question: what makes someone physically attractive? The answer is: health! There are various ways a human can be attractive, including facial symmetry, skin complexion, and (in females), leg length. There are more than this of course, but the point is, all the different physical traits that indicate *attractiveness* signal the health, health history, (or fertility, which can be considered an aspect of health) of the individual. Let's go over a few of these physical traits.\n\nSymmetry. Some people were wise to mention symmetry, or facial averaging. Averaging, meaning \"stacking\" a large number of faces together in a single picture, produces a face more symmetrical than average, since individuals' asymmetries are \"smoothed out\" in the process. Simply put, the more symmetrical someone is (male or female), [the more attractive they are](_URL_4_). The amazing thing is, this applies not only to humans, but to different species as well! [Non-human primates](_URL_12_) prefer symmetry, and it has also been [observed in birds](_URL_11_), and even pollinating insects are [attracted to more symmetrical](_URL_0_) flowers! Symmetry can be described mathematically, as the ratio of distances [between each point, on each side of the midline](_URL_10_). A gentleman named Dr. Stephen Marquardt invented a wire-frame mask, which is perfectly symmetrical, and incorporates the \"Golden Ratio\"-- approximately 1.618. You can overlay this mask on top of any [image of any human, male or female, from any race](_URL_2_), and more beautiful faces will fit the mask better, and less beautiful faces will fit the mask worse. For human faces, beauty is not in the eye of the beholder--it is measurable; it can be described with numbers.\n\nAnd why should symmetry be so important? Well, when someone is conceived, and as they grow, their cells differentiate and grow equally on each side of the body, forming each half of the body equally. In order for someone to be perfectly symmetrical, this process has to occur perfectly. But, that is never the case. Even small amounts stressors, such as disease, injury, or malnutrition, can [interfere with the process](_URL_13_), producing a less than perfectly symmetrical result. The more stresses the person experiences in life--even before they are born--the less symmetrical they will be, and that corresponds to being perceived as less attractive.\n\nLeg length is another thing that makes people attractive. People who have longer legs are [perceived as being more attractive](_URL_1_). It's not hard to see why, when you realize that leg length is [strongly sensitive to environmental stressors and nutrition](_URL_6_) when people are children. \n\nThis also explains why physically fit people are attractive, and obese people aren't. Obesity is extremely bad for the health, and the list of diseases it can cause could probably be hundreds of items long--including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, erectile dysfunction, sleep apnea, liver disease, and various cancers. Conversely, exercise produces health benefits that also could probably be numbered in the hundreds. It can help prevent all the diseases I named for obesity, and has still more benefits as well, such as [increased brain cell growth](_URL_3_) (which improves memory and learning), and improved [emotional health](_URL_9_). Now, you may read posts saying that at certain times, obesity was considered attractive. That is false. It has happened that at certain times, wealthy people *flaunted* their obesity as a sign of wealth and power. However, thinness, or low body fat--a major adaptation to exercise--has been [praised as attractive across different cultures, and across centuries](_URL_5_) of human history. In fact, that study found that thinness in women was praised more consistently (in historical writings) than large breasts!\n\nThese examples I've given--symmetry, leg length, and fitness/slimness, aren't the only things that make a person attractive. But, you'll find that what ever \"marker\" of human physical beauty you look at, it will always be an indicator of the individual's health, potential future health, and past history of health, even back to the womb. And health, in the general sense, reflects an individual's likely success at procreation, and having healthy babies.\n\nSo, in the end, **your question is based on a wrong assumption. Physical attractiveness is not genetic.** All humans start off as a blank slate of perfect beauty. It's only through the knocks of life that that changes.\n",
"Because the key to the survival of our species is variability. Being born attractive would be a big advantage to **your** survival, but not for the **species** as a whole. Take sickle cell disease. You'd think that humans would only mate with people without the disease, thus breeding the disease out of existence. But then when you live in an area where malaria is prevalent, well the \"normal\" people tend to die off quicker than those with the sickle cell gene.",
"The definition of attractive varies. There's no universal standard of beauty. If you look at old advertisements in american magazines from the 1950s you'll see ads for weight gain products, talking about how skinny girls are unattractive and men like curves. If you look at seedy porn mags from the 1970s you'll see ads for \"pubic hair thickener\" products, because that's what's \"attractive\". If you listen to people in bars you'll hear how \"ugly girls need lovin too\".\n\nThere are also a number of cultures out there that have arranged marriages, where people don't know each other until they're predetermined to mate.\n\nIf you look at the big picture though, you'll see that regardless of the many different standards of beauty, humans have only cared about appearances for the last few thousand years. We haven't always been so shallow. The amount of time we've engaged in artificial selection is nothing compared to the hundred thousand years we've existed as a species.",
"attraction varies from person to person",
"Women are getting more attractive, it only takes way too long. Beautiful women get, on average, more children then the less attractive. I have trouble explaining it for a five year old, but i found the article I read about it:\n_URL_0_",
"Almost no one is willing to wait until the most beautiful person they've ever seen becomes available to them. Instead they settle for the most beautiful person that will have them without too much fuss.\n\nAlso, if you're not that attractive to the opposite sex, it means the good looking ones will have zero interest in you, and unless you go with the best that'll have you, you'll get no sex in your whole life.",
"Seriously? Everyone in this thread is wrong. \n\n**It's because ugliness won't stop horny people from having sex.**\n\nThe rest is mostly self-explanatory. ",
"My understanding, what you find attractive in a person is seeing genetic differences to your own, usually in their face. This lets your subconcious know that nay children you would have together would have a smaller risk of developing a genetic condition due to in breeding. This maybe why fat neck bearded men who live with their parents are attracted to japanese school girls, because the two couldn't be more different.",
"Who says we aren't? Homo Erectus wasn't exactly a pretty man.",
"To start with, we probably have evolved to become somewhat more attractive, especially in terms of height. And as ugly as we may seem know, it could always be much worse, and likely was at one point.\n\nAs far as the short term goes, in a civilization where men and women pair up in 1:1 ratios and breed exclusively (at least in theory), you wind up with billions of less-than-attractive people who are nobody's first pick.\n\nRather than going celibate, they pair up with one another, even though scientific research has shown that they are not, in fact, each others's first choices. And so the genes propagate.",
"Appearance comes from both parents. A square jaw is less appealing when your daughter gets it.\n\nThere could also be other costs. Being attractive might get you laid, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it gives you more surviving, productive offspring.",
"You can't evolve good health and nutrition, and no matter how good your genetic inheritance if you don't eat your greens, get enough protein while growing up, etc then you will not look pretty.",
"Because it's fairly unlikely that \"beauty\" is primarily genetic (as opposed to the influence of good health and good luck) or that the portions of it that are genetic are Mendelian (single gene traits that behave in a dominant versus recessive fashion). There is unlikely to be a strong correlation between a desired trait and a particular set of genes that would make it easier for selection to promote those genes.\n\nIn addition, for most of human history, people lived in relatively small groups with limited mobility, and married on the basis of factors like family connections and available farm land or other resources much more than personal affection. You would be much more likely to marrying someone whom you had either never met or you had known all your life and were marrying for factors other than purely physical attraction. It's only recently and still only in some areas of the world that both or even either party had full say in who they married, and even if they had that choice, that there were many options available, or that physical attractiveness was a high priority.\n\nDating and marrying primarily for love are VERY modern ideas.\n\nSo being physically attractive hasn't been as much of a factor until fairly recent times, and even when it is, there's still no reason to believe it's something that can easily be selected for in an evolutionary sense.",
"Evolution requires natural selection. This needs that the ugly people die without kids and the attractive people to have kids.\n\nIf our definition of attractive people don't change for enough generations, this might happen, but I won't hold my breath.",
"You may think you are attracted to attractive people, but it's your brain telling you what society has conditioned you too. ",
"Watch the beginning of Idiocracy\n_URL_0_",
"\"meh, I'd still hit it\"",
"Aside from what the top answers have stated (attractive being subjective), there's also the fact that just because I find Odette Yustman, Olivia Wilde, Giselle Bündchen, and others attractive as hell doesn't mean I'm going to end up with them. I end up with the one who wants me back and, frankly, is convenient.",
"What is considered most attractive in a partner will vary quite a bit from person to person but the universal traits that will make a person either attractive or unattractive are primarily based on good health rather than genetics. \n\nClear skin, shiny hair, being neither too fat nor too skinny, muscle tone, even facial symmetry to a certain extent, are influenced far more by a healthy diet and lifestyle than genetics. When you find someone attractive, you are attracted at least as much to indicators of good health as you are good genetics. \n\nWhen looking for a mate, yes, you want good genetics to pass down to your offspring, but you also want someone healthy enough to be able to help you raise those offspring effectively. You don't want to breed with a spouse that is going to drop dead and leave you with an infant to care for by yourself and you don't want a spouse that obviously has so little resources that they can't feed themselves effectively, much less a child. \n\nAn overweight person with bad skin can change their diet and grooming habits, get healthy, and suddenly be far more attractive than they once were. A very attractive person can develop a meth habit and be very ugly within a few years. Those people both have the same genetics and would pass on the same genetic traits to their children regardless of whether they were in their attractive phase of lives or were unattractive. However, which one, at which time, would you want to breed with?\n\nEssentially, humans aren't going to evolve to a point where everyone is attractive because attractiveness is a lot more than genetics. There is always going to be someone who has the genetic potential to be more attractive but has a bad diet, poor health, bad grooming skills, habits and addictions, or some other lifestyle problems, that make them unattractive.",
"it's all a matter of opinion. what's attractive to one may not be attractive to another.\nAs my grandmother used to say \"every pot has a cover\"",
"\"Attractive\" usually means \"symmetric\" and \"looks like the average of everyone I see.\"\n\nPeople pick people that look like normal. Being too different from normal makes it harder for you to breed. Rather than thinking of attractive as pretty, think of attractive as \"causing attraction.\" Everyone is here today because, in some way, their parents were attracted to one another*.\n\n * excluding cases of rape and test tube babies",
"we are trying, but you are holding back progress.",
"Something no one has touched on - The traits that make men attractive and the traits that make women attractive are very different. So when a man and a woman produce offspring the offspring could be a female with too many of the males traits or a male with too many of the females traits and therefore, even with attractive parents, could be unattractive.",
"Evolution operates based on random mutations and natural and sexual selection. The only way things 'evolve' towards some trait is when a mutation leads to more offspring, leading to that trait having greater presence. \n\nNow, does greater beauty lead to more offspring? One reason that could have been true in the past was that beautiful people may have greater underlying health (there is some good evidence for this). In the hard-knock hunter-gatherer world of our ancestors, this likely made a big difference. But in modern society, where living conditions relative to our ancestors, are *so* much better, most people on earth (including the less attractive), are able to bear and raise children. So as long a there are males who will mate with less attractive females—and there always are since the cost to males is low—there will be no major evolutionary advantage for the beautiful people.\n\nSo evolution of beauty is likely to have plateaued. ",
"Remember that evolution essentially selects for *any* trait that increases the chances of having fertile children. There are more ways of attracting a possible mate than just looking pretty. Strength, social power, social standing, intelligence, and ability to protect your family are all attractive features that are relatively unrelated to physical appearance.\n\nThere's also a tradeoff between a trait and the energy it uses. If you have, say, 2 energy units to spend, you might spend 1 on attractiveness and 1 on survivability, 2 on attractiveness, or 2 on survivability. If you don't survive then you don't have kids, so the people who have evolved at least a little survivability may be less attractive, but they're actually alive to breed.",
"Oh boy, I would love to write a dissertation-length comment here. I'm fascinated with evolution and evolutionary psychology. . . but I'll just say this.\n\nEvolution is not quick (not usually, at least not with humans) and it's heavily influenced by luck. In fact, some people refer to it as \"survival of the luckiest\" not \"survival of the strongest\". What's a strength today, could be your doom tomorrow. E.g. the dinosaurs, being cold blooded reptiles, couldn't survive the massive climate changes (or so it's posited) brought on by a massive asteroid collision. But a few small (and lucky!) mammals did, which is part of the reason we're here today.\n\nThere are many factors which influence evolutionary destiny and the short answer is that \"non-attractive\" people continue to reproduce. If they stopped, then we'd all be sexy and hot, except that there would still be \"ugly\" mutations every now and then.\n\nNot too mention that there are somewhat different standards for beauty anyway. Although yes, you can probably say that the underlying interest in beauty is that it generally indicates the health of a potential mate (and maybe it doesn't do that so well anymore, maybe it was a more accurate assessment earlier in our evolution).\n\nBut we are multi-faceted (thank god for the less beautiful people like myself) and it's possible to find a mate(s) without being a perfect 10.\n\nAnyway, don't get me started about homosexuality. That's a whole gigantic evolutionary can of worms. There are MANY competing theories about why it even exists because, in reproductive terms, it's a dead end. My feeling is that, like attractiveness, there probably is no quick summary/explanation for it.\n\nIt's fun to think and talk about though.\n\n",
"Let's say that there are 5 girls that all like you. Each one of them wants to make babies with you, but you can only pick one of the girls.\n\nWhen you see a girl as attractive, that's like a little voice in your head that tells you \"she is awesome and we could make awesome babies together, let's make babies!\"\n\nWhat if all 5 girls were all equally attractive to you? Then the little voice in your head would be telling you the same thing about all 5 girls: \"she is awesome, let's make babies with *her*.\"\n\nBut you have to pick one! That little voice is saying nice things, but it isn't helping you pick. It just keeps telling you the same thing, and that isn't useful.\n\nSo the little voice in your head has to look closer to find differences between the 5 girls. It has to find some little flaw or blemish, or something extra special, so that it can tell them apart and help you pick the best one.\n\nSo you end up seeing some girls as more attractive and some girls as less attractive. And if girls keep evolving to get more and more attractive, then boys will need to keep raising their standards so that they can tell the girls apart and keep picking the best ones. (And of course, the same thing happens when girls look at boys!)",
"_URL_0_\n\n > people are more likely to form long standing relationships with someone who is as equally physically attractive as they are. This is influenced by realistic choices, desire of the match and good probability of obtaining the date. If this leads you to think of all the successful couples in which the partners differ greatly in physical attractiveness, it is likely that the less attractive partner has compensating qualities to offer. For instance, some men with wealth and status desire younger, more attractive women. Some women are more likely to overlook physical attractiveness for men who possess wealth and status.\n",
"Because just because a trait increases reproductive fitness (i.e. attractiveness), doesn't mean it's automatically selected for in every generation. Confounding variables which decrease attractiveness but increase reproductive fitness in some other also exist. There are other traits that provide a greater reproductive fitness value over attractiveness, which could cause that trait to be selected for and attractiveness to not be selected for as much. Attractiveness is only one trait, and while varies within a certain range somewhat from culture to culture, there is sufficient variance that you are cannot make the assumption that attractiveness itself is an objectively quantifiable trait with monotonic tendencies. What is considered attractive in some populations may not be considered attractive in others.\n\nAnd the reproductive fitness value of a trait will vary by environment. Aesthetically pleasing physical appearance may carry less reproductive fitness in some environments than in others. Attractiveness in peacocks, for example, is an example of a runaway trait because having a large plumage makes males easier prey, but attracts more females. That trade-off could exist among humans but with unknown detrimental variables that we are unaware of.\n\nAnd besides, maybe we are. Maybe we are all statistically significantly better looking than our ancestors of 100,000 years ago or more.",
"If everyone was attractive, no one would be attractive.",
"I have Ptosis in one eye. Basically the upper eyelid droops due to an injury when I was a kid. It is the bane of my existence. Not having symmetrical eyes is ugliness. I'd honestly rather be missing some toes, or have a huge scar on my neck. ",
"Have you ever met a Swedish person?",
"The problem is you have to think about the massive permutations that occur when we're dealing with evolution. There's just way too many factors involved to say \"Humans should be getting hotter\". There's a lot of questions that are hard to answer:\n\n* Which genes predispose us to being physically attractive? \n* How do the alleles of these genes interact? \n* How does the standard for attraction change over time? (Contrast Venus of Willendorf through to contemporary models and art)\n* What if attractive people are likely to have less children on average because they want to stay attractive?\n* What if rich people and poor people have similar genetic pools, but rich people can afford to eat better, exercise and wear more fashionable clothes, biasing the mate selection to rich rather than genetically predisposed to physical attractiveness?\n* What if other traits and factors are more dominant in general?\n* Assume that we have two males and two females, and their attractiveness is due to genetics. If the pair that has the 'more attractive' genes pair off and are 100% faithful, then wouldn't the 'less attractive' pair also pair off?\n* To select against a trait, people with the trait have to have an impaired chance to reproduce. (This is why we will never select against predisposition towards late-life diseases and disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimers). Do a significant amount of the ugly people among us die without mating? \n* Do ugly people have less children on average? More? The same?\n\nThis is all complicated by the fact that we can't easily divine an objective attractiveness level, making data collection difficult.",
"Just because we are attracted to them does not mean that they will mate with us.",
"Because that's not how evolution works. \n\nHere:\n\nSo let's say there's a giraffe with a really long neck that gets born. It was a mutation, but it's pretty cool. It can reach the tall leaves now! But it was born because of a mutation, not because of the tall trees. Evolution is the process where that giraffe gets tons of giraffe-tail and more are born. However, attractiveness isn't like that. Yes, being good looking is a good way of getting a mate, but the non-good-looking people still generally end up with a mate. Therefore, there is no process of natural selection happening. If we only ever mated with attractive people, we'd probably cut down drastically on babies being born and eventually only have attractive children, but that's not what's happening. ",
"Attraction isn't solely based off appearance. . . You have to accommodate for hormone and pheromone discharge as well. Our bodies have created a some-what pavlovian response to things we call attractive. In a sense by evolution and fine tuning what we like, we've created what is attractive, thus our mind is telling our body to be attracted. So for instance beauty and attraction are also relative to who you're talking to and what. So it would be almost impossible for evolution to evolve us into a more attractive group of people simply because attraction is arbitrary. Best example, ass or tits guy.\n\nEDIT: We're not monogamous by nature",
"tuna's right. I recommend Robert Wright's \"The Moral Animal\" for further investigation. It is an evolutionary psychology book that presents some of the major trends in that field of study, reliant on the simple premise that genes \"want\" to survive by expressing themselves in offspring. They do not actually think genes are sentient, just that gene expression will ultimately manifest the best possible evolutionary traits that will allow expression. It is very interesting to see the differences between what attracts a mate and what keeps one, though not very surprising. Trustworthiness, ability to provide for young (or willingness to love them, particularly something Wright calls \"Male Parental Investment\"--part of why adoptive fathers have a harder time loving their offspring than they would a biological child), and a host of other factors come into play for the actual \"makin' babies\" part of mating. But short-term mates are often attractive in a different way. The book also contests that males tend to dabble in that kind of mating, building a sort of \"harem\" whenever possible, if only because it increases the evolutionary probability of creating offspring, whereas in the case of women the best chance for a child's survival is to nurture and protect it. A lot of it is conjectural, and he purports it only to be theory. But there is some very interesting stuff about kinship theory in a pre-evolutionary environment that even explains a few of our less-understood habits and emotions. Worth the read.",
"Do attractive people out-breed less attractive people? Does attractiveness confer a survival advantage? If the answer to either of these questions is \"yes\", the the human race will become more attractive (which by itself is a tricky thing to nail down and define).\n\nI suspect the answer to both is \"no\", however.",
"We don't have evidence that we *haven't* become more attractive other than via fossils and/or preserved bones, and even then we'd only be speculating the subjective.\n\nWhat we can know is that although we humans have a propensity to mate with the preferential, we **also** have both man-made and nature's setbacks working against your hypothesis/supposition.\n\nSuch as anonymous sperm donors, blindness, drug-addiction, desperation, rape, lack of choices (e.g. confinement, prison, desolation, forced marriage) and other wonderful phenomenons that would act only as stifling to your hypothesis.\n\nSo in short, there's just as much out there preventing this concept from manifesting itself as there is supporting it.",
"Whoa. I can't believe this made my front page today, because yesterday during my shower I was trying to figure out the appropriate subreddit to ask this in. I think one of the main questions I came up with before this question is, how reliably do \"attractive\" (as quantified by facial symmetry, whatever other standardized measures are used) couples produce \"attractive\" offspring? And, conversely, how often do fugly couples produce beautiful babies?",
"Because attractive is subjective.",
"Evolutionary time is a lot bigger than social time. Realize that 400 years ago, glut and powdered wigs were very attractive. Humans have too long of a lifespan to evolve that quickly. Instead of biological evolution, we culturally evolve and are taught concepts of beauty at a young age that we strive to appeal to",
"Firstly, because after all the attractive people pair up, the next level of slightly less attractive people tend to pair up, and so on inductively.\n\nSecondly, the genes for \"attractiveness\" are not highly conserved. The reason is that in many societies women have a dominant ability to choose their partner and some science seems to indicate that they are guided by olfaction as much as by other factors. Women will usually express this as \"It's about chemistry\". This olfcation tendency also drives women to seek a specific kind of variation, which will include variation in appearance.",
"Don't know if this has been said yet, but cultural evolution happens MUCH faster than biological evolution. Back in the old tribal days, obesity used to be a sign of wealth and power and everyone wanted to be with that guy/girl. Now it has become a norm and is seen as unattractive. \n\nPerception of attractiveness often changes faster than evolution can catch up to it fully. \n\nMy first attempt at an ELI5 so I don't know if I did it right :(",
"*Attractive* people not *beautiful* people. Girls are not attracted to guys for girls but rather confidence, leader of men, health, wealth, etc. All these factors contribute to attraction because it means survival for him and his mate.",
"There are many other factors than attractiveness that people look at when looking for a possible mate.\n\nIf you have the time, [this documentary](_URL_0_) will completely answer your question. It's a really interesting documentary that I watched when I took a Human Sexuality course.",
"Not all of us can marry supermodels, but we won't not have kids because we can't.",
"Hi deadguysleeps!\n\nWow, your question has inspired a lot of answers. Attractive people are a popular subject!\n\nUnfortunately, it appears that many people in this thread are, well, misguided. So, let's \"clear the air\" of a couple myths, which will help to clarify your question:\n\nFirst, there is a difference between *attractiveness* and *mate choice*. The two should not be confused, but the majority of people in this thread do. They can be forgiven, since the difference is subtle. Attractiveness is, simply, someone's physical beauty. Mate choice is how people choose to mate with one another. Mate choice *is* based on attractiveness, but attractiveness *is not the only variable* that causes people to make the choices they do. For example, women are able to detect how different a man's immune system is to theirs, simply by smelling the man's sweat. That's important for procreation, since a baby born to parents with different immune systems will have a stronger immune system as a result. The women who smelled men's sweat perceived the difference as [smelling attractive.](_URL_8_) Mate choice is a whole other topic, and much can be written about it--but that's not what you asked. You're asking about physical attractiveness---beauty, in other words. \n\nSecond, people can also find various fashions, fads, or cultural trappings attractive. Individuals may have fetishes for what they consider most attractive. It may be a fad to wear your hair a certain way, or groom yourself a certain way. And, yes, some people can find those trends attractive. But, there's something deeper, something more innate about physical attractiveness, that transcends culture or fashion. [Newborn babies show a preference](_URL_7_) to gaze at pictures of attractive people, instead of unattractive people. That indicates that attractiveness--and its appreciation--is something hardwired in human brains. After all, babies haven't time to learn cultural norms or fashion trends yet! And, it's that physical beauty that infants are able to see, that is present even when you strip away all the fashion, culture, and fads. And again, this is what you're asking about. Too many people believe that cultural norms are all there is to attractiveness, and thus attractiveness is variable. As the babies show us, this is false. \n\nOkay, now that we've clarified those two points, we now have to address the question: what makes someone physically attractive? The answer is: health! There are various ways a human can be attractive, including facial symmetry, skin complexion, and (in females), leg length. There are more than this of course, but the point is, all the different physical traits that indicate *attractiveness* signal the health, health history, (or fertility, which can be considered an aspect of health) of the individual. Let's go over a few of these physical traits.\n\nSymmetry. Some people were wise to mention symmetry, or facial averaging. Averaging, meaning \"stacking\" a large number of faces together in a single picture, produces a face more symmetrical than average, since individuals' asymmetries are \"smoothed out\" in the process. Simply put, the more symmetrical someone is (male or female), [the more attractive they are](_URL_4_). The amazing thing is, this applies not only to humans, but to different species as well! [Non-human primates](_URL_12_) prefer symmetry, and it has also been [observed in birds](_URL_11_), and even pollinating insects are [attracted to more symmetrical](_URL_0_) flowers! Symmetry can be described mathematically, as the ratio of distances [between each point, on each side of the midline](_URL_10_). A gentleman named Dr. Stephen Marquardt invented a wire-frame mask, which is perfectly symmetrical, and incorporates the \"Golden Ratio\"-- approximately 1.618. You can overlay this mask on top of any [image of any human, male or female, from any race](_URL_2_), and more beautiful faces will fit the mask better, and less beautiful faces will fit the mask worse. For human faces, beauty is not in the eye of the beholder--it is measurable; it can be described with numbers.\n\nAnd why should symmetry be so important? Well, when someone is conceived, and as they grow, their cells differentiate and grow equally on each side of the body, forming each half of the body equally. In order for someone to be perfectly symmetrical, this process has to occur perfectly. But, that is never the case. Even small amounts stressors, such as disease, injury, or malnutrition, can [interfere with the process](_URL_13_), producing a less than perfectly symmetrical result. The more stresses the person experiences in life--even before they are born--the less symmetrical they will be, and that corresponds to being perceived as less attractive.\n\nLeg length is another thing that makes people attractive. People who have longer legs are [perceived as being more attractive](_URL_1_). It's not hard to see why, when you realize that leg length is [strongly sensitive to environmental stressors and nutrition](_URL_6_) when people are children. \n\nThis also explains why physically fit people are attractive, and obese people aren't. Obesity is extremely bad for the health, and the list of diseases it can cause could probably be hundreds of items long--including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, erectile dysfunction, sleep apnea, liver disease, and various cancers. Conversely, exercise produces health benefits that also could probably be numbered in the hundreds. It can help prevent all the diseases I named for obesity, and has still more benefits as well, such as [increased brain cell growth](_URL_3_) (which improves memory and learning), and improved [emotional health](_URL_9_). Now, you may read posts saying that at certain times, obesity was considered attractive. That is false. It has happened that at certain times, wealthy people *flaunted* their obesity as a sign of wealth and power. However, thinness, or low body fat--a major adaptation to exercise--has been [praised as attractive across different cultures, and across centuries](_URL_5_) of human history. In fact, that study found that thinness in women was praised more consistently (in historical writings) than large breasts!\n\nThese examples I've given--symmetry, leg length, and fitness/slimness, aren't the only things that make a person attractive. But, you'll find that what ever \"marker\" of human physical beauty you look at, it will always be an indicator of the individual's health, potential future health, and past history of health, even back to the womb. And health, in the general sense, reflects an individual's likely success at procreation, and having healthy babies.\n\nSo, in the end, **your question is based on a wrong assumption. Physical attractiveness is not genetic.** All humans start off as a blank slate of perfect beauty. It's only through the knocks of life that that changes.\n",
"Because the key to the survival of our species is variability. Being born attractive would be a big advantage to **your** survival, but not for the **species** as a whole. Take sickle cell disease. You'd think that humans would only mate with people without the disease, thus breeding the disease out of existence. But then when you live in an area where malaria is prevalent, well the \"normal\" people tend to die off quicker than those with the sickle cell gene."
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ndnbj/eli5_if_humans_are_attracted_to_attractive_people/c38ana7",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ndnbj/eli5_if_humans_are_attracted_to_attractive_people/c38ahin",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ndnbj/eli5_if_humans_are_attracted_to_attractive_people/c38ajsr",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ndnbj/eli5_if_humans_are_attracted_to_attractive_people/c38a9s3",
"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ndnbj/eli5_if_humans_are_attracted_to_attractive_people/c38e5j6",
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"http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ndnbj/eli5_if_humans_are_attracted_to_attractive_people/c38ay5v",
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"http://www.jstor.org/pss/4221896",
"http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jan/17/humanbehaviour.psychology",
"http://goldennumber.net/beauty.htm",
"http://www.physorg.com/news183199377.html",
"http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138%2899%2900014-8/abstract",
"http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10927",
"http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/31/2/383.full",
"http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6355-babies-prefer-to-gaze-upon-beautiful-faces.html",
"http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/6/l_016_08.html",
"http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Exercise-and-Depression-report-excerpt.htm",
"http://i.imgur.com/sG2wL.jpg",
"http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/266/1425/1235",
"http://www.mendeley.com/research/preferences-symmetry-conspecific-facial-shape-among-macaca-mulatta/",
"http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/f/facial_symmetry.htm"
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"http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jan/17/humanbehaviour.psychology",
"http://goldennumber.net/beauty.htm",
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"http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10927",
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"http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6355-babies-prefer-to-gaze-upon-beautiful-faces.html",
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"http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/f/facial_symmetry.htm"
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26r9p9 | what happens when converting files. | converting/compressing to different formats. i.e. FLAC to MP4 and whatnot. Just curious. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/26r9p9/eli5_what_happens_when_converting_files/ | {
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"This is a complicated question. There are lots and lots of things you need to know in order to understand. I'll do my best.\n\nAll sound is just changes in air pressure, so a sound recording is a record of relative changes in the air pressure over time. On computers, this all has to be stored in terms of binary 1s and 0s, so there are lots of different ways of doing it.\n\nLet's say you have a file in format A and want to convert to file format B. This is what the computer sees:\n\n 101010111010101001010010010001000111\n 000101101111010101010101010101010111\n 110101001010110101010100110101010100\n 101000101110010111001101101010111001\n ...\n\nComputers can use binary (1s and 0s) to store numbers, like this:\n\n 0000 = 0 0001 = 1\n 0010 = 2 0011 = 3\n 0100 = 4 0101 = 5\n 0110 = 6 0111 = 7\n 1000 = 8 1001 = 9\n\n...and so on. Computers have a similar way of breaking it down into text and other data. Once we break it down, do some fancy math, and eventually get something that looks [like this](_URL_1_). We can do the reverse process for file format B, and eventually get a similar load of data.\n\nAudio is usually recorded as [combinations of waves](_URL_0_). If you look at this picture, you'll see two waves, and the bottom wave is the top two added together. For each point in the wave, the height of the sum is equal to the height of the top wave plus the height of the bottom wave. All waves are a variation of the sine wave, and all waveforms can be expressed as a combination of sine waves with different frequencies and magnitudes.\n\nHowever, some file formats store sound as a collection of sine waves, other audio formats store sound as a line graph (just a list of heights), other file formats use other more advanced methods and others are everywhere in between.\n\nIn the simple case of converting from a sound defined by waves to a sound defined by points (line graph), we just use the sine equation, add the values for each wave at each point, and convert it to a list of numbers, where each number is the height of the wave, or the air pressure at that particular instant.\n\nTo do the reverse, we take a list of numbers representing the pressure/height of the wave, and we find wave equations that fit the points within a slice of time (such as 10 milliseconds), then we do the same for every 10 milliseconds in the recording.\n\nFinally, each file format has its own rules for how many points/numbers per second, how many 1s and 0s they use for encoding each number, etc. Once the audio program knows what wave equations to use or exactly what numbers to record for every instant, it looks up this information in the file format specification. It might say something like:\n\n\"The file starts with numbers immediately, and you can use 20 bits for each instant. After each number, add a 0 at the end, so if we see a 1 in the place 20 bits after where the 0 would be, we know you're done.\"\n\n\\^Stuff like that. If the program is encoding waves, it might record the strength and frequency of each wave in a small time interval, or it might record the strength of every possible wave. Once the oncoder knows all of this, it will combine its data on each interval's line graph or wave equations, and write binary bits that represent it according to the file format specification. That's it! Easy as pie.",
"Obviously, at the very lowest level, all data is stored through binary, 1's and 0's. While this is the best option, it creates a problem in that there is no logical way to store most types of information. As such, when engineers are trying to figure out how to do something like store a picture or music in binary, they have to come up with a system to convert that content into binary.\n\nAs you can imagine, when different groups of engineers tackle this problem, they will come up with different systems to store that data. Each system on its own may work perfectly, but since the engineer groups are independent, they develop their own system anyway. This is essentially how you can get multiple file formats.\n\nTo explain how information could be stored differently, let's consider a couple of ways to store an image. \n\nOne way to store an image could be to record the color of every pixel in the image in terms of red, green, and blue intensity. You could define the file format as:\n\n [pixel 1 red][pixel 1 green][pixel 1 blue][pixel 2 red][pixel 2 green][pixel 2 blue]...\n\nWhere the value of each pixel is the binary representation of the intensity level.\n\nThat's simple enough. It isn't how picture data is actually stored, but it is sufficient for this explanation.\n\nLet's now assume that there is another file format being developed that instead of recording the color of every pixel, records how much the color changes in each pixel. So if the red intensity goes from 100 to 150 between two pixels, then the value that is stored for the second would be 50. This file format would be:\n\n [pixel 1 red][pixel 1 green][pixel 1 blue][pixel 2 red difference][pixel 2 green difference][pixel 2 blue difference]...\n\nThis format will still represent the same image, but it is formatted differently. This is where a conversion would have to come in. If you were converting from format 1 to format 2, you would have to calculate the differences for each pixel and then store that information in a new binary file. This binary file could then be specified of being of the 2nd file format.\n\nEXAMPLE:\n\nAssume we have an image of pure red. Pure red has an RGB value of (255, 0, 0).\n\nIn image format 1, this would be represented as:\n\n [255][0][0][255][0][0][255][0][0][255][0][0][255][0][0][255][0][0][255][0][0][255][0][0]...\n\nObviously in binary representation!\n\nNow in image format 1, this would be represented as:\n\n [255][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0]...\n\nIn this situation, you should be able to see that conversion is simple. In the real world, systems of storing information are much more complicated. "
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2wabm8 | why can't we remove smog in smoggy areas by building a skyscraper sized hepa air purifier? | I know it would consume a lot of energy, but let's say it's made of solar panels, or also houses a nuclear energy plant. Why not? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wabm8/eli5_why_cant_we_remove_smog_in_smoggy_areas_by/ | {
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"There are probably a number of practical concerns with this idea, but the first one that springs to mind is airflow. How on earth are you going to consistently get the air through the filter without sucking in everything around it?",
"It is a simple calculation to show that it would take an insanely cost-prohibitive feat of engineering to clear out the LA Basin everyday. If you tried to blow the entire air mass to Palm Springs (50 miles away) at a rate of 40 ft/s, you would need a pipe diameter of over 9000 ft and it would exceed to power capacity of the LA Basin. (I'm using a example from Noel de Nevers' \"Air Pollution Control Engineering\", 2000)\n\nAnd this is assuming Palm Springs would be okay with this. You are moving the problem to someone else's front door.",
"First, a HEPA filter won't filter smog, most of modern smog is carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and hydrocarbons. Very little is things like coal dust or industrial pollution.\n\nLet's pretend you make a giant HEPA filter that can filter modern smog that is 1 city block wide (264 by 900 feet) and 20 stories high (216 feet) that means you can filter 51321600 cubic feet of air at a time. \n\nLos Angles is 503 square miles, or 14,022,835,200 square feet. If you want to filter the lower 100 feet of air, that's 1,402,283,520,000 cubic feet. If you could change the air in the filter every minute, you would have hurricane force winds in the intake and exhaust, and it will take you 5 hours to filter all the air in LA.\n\nIn other words beyond impractical. ",
"Many other comments touch on the massive airflow that would be required for this to be in one giant building. A building dedicated solely to air production might not be practical. However, some newer buildings are already being designed to exhaust cleaner air than they take in, so in effect every skyscraper could soon be a giant air purifier. ",
"How are you going to change the filter?"
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4rmqwe | why are crt tubes, even on tv's that haven't been plugged in for years, so dangerous. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4rmqwe/eli5why_are_crt_tubes_even_on_tvs_that_havent/ | {
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"The electronics inside called capacitors are like very powerful batteries. They hold a high voltage charge that will electrocute you. ",
"Cathode ray tubes can also act as capacitors themselves and supposing they aren't leaking or any parasitic components, you can absolutely shock yourself with them. Not to mention if they're breached they can implode and throw shrapnel.",
"In addition to the commonly known electrical charge, which can last for an unexpectedly long time (especially if the TV is unplugged), there's a concern raised by the vacuum inside the tube itself. CRTs are almost entirely empty, even of air, and if the tube if damaged, the vacuum pressure can cause it to implode and then scatter shrapnel.\n\nThe Wikipedia article on CRTs has a good summary of these and some lesser concerns.\n_URL_0_",
"They aren't except for you don't know how long it has been since the capacitor has been charged. If it's a week, you're fine. If it is 20 minutes you probably are in for a shock of varying intensity. \n\nWill it kill you?\n\nIt is DC current, probably not.\n\nOk, it won't kill you. Will it hurt?\n\nYeah, it'll probably hurt like hell, make sure you discharge it. ",
"I think the \"unsafe even after being unplugged for years\" -- stems more from the fact that the tube is in a vaccuum and when breached can implode throwing bits everywhere. (your eyes being probably the worst place)\n\nKinda similar to flourescent tube bulbs (they aren't at 100% vaccuum, but very low pressure) That combined with the mercury vapor and phosphorus going everywhere.... it's not a good thing to be around. \n\n"
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5gvk59 | why is the pinky more important for gripping things then the index finger? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5gvk59/eli5_why_is_the_pinky_more_important_for_gripping/ | {
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"It is? \n\n\nPlease tell me that I'm not the only one who read this and just started picking things up with 4 fingers. ",
"here is the explanation as to why it's important.\n\n_URL_0_",
"It's strange, but when I was practicing the jo (wooden staff) in aikido, the grip was through the middle, ring and pinkie fingers. The thumb and index finger was to control the direction. "
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2k2hkm | chemically, what makes a good cologne/perfume good and a cheap cologne/perfume not so good? | For instance, what goes into a bottle of Gucci or Prada that makes it such a higher quality than say a cheap brand you would get in Walmart? Or even for a more extreme difference, a can of Axe? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2k2hkm/eli5_chemically_what_makes_a_good_cologneperfume/ | {
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"Some of the most expensive ingredients in top shelf perfumes are ambergris, oris, oud, etc. Each of those three cost tens of thousands per kilo. High quality sandalwood is also very expensive.",
"Colognes contain essential oils which are what make them smell nice. These oils are the most expensive part of it. Cheaper sprays contain a very small amount of these oils and more alcohol as a filler. That's why they last a shorter amount of time. More expensive Colognes contain more oils and less alcohol. "
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4eytfy | why is buying into a time share considered a huge scam? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4eytfy/eli5_why_is_buying_into_a_time_share_considered_a/ | {
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"It isn't necessarily a huge scam. It does, however, cost a fair bit of money, and it has limited use. If you are able to actually utilize it the way it is advertised, they tend to be pretty awesome. Most people aren't, though, and this is why it is often considered a scam.\n\nMy girlfriend's parents have a timeshare, and it saves them about $750 a year. They also spend like a month each year on vacation somewhere. Most people don't fall into this category.",
"Good explanations here.\n\n_URL_0_",
"It's not necessarily a scam and some of them work well. However, some companies use pushy tactics to sell the timeshares and the people who buy them don't really want them. Then the buyers are stuck with annual fees that may be more than a hotel would cost and they can only use the property during set times and only in the one location if they can't trade timeshares. It can also be very hard for the owner to sell the timeshare to another individual and an owner who no longer wants a timeshare may have to pay a company to take the timeshare in order to get out of the annual fees (the company charges because it will pay the fees until it can find a buyer).\n\nNot all timeshares are bad. The analogy I've heard is that they're kind of like used cars. Sometimes you can find a deal that works for you, but the industry has a relatively high number of pushy and sometimes unethical salespeople. They work best for people who have friends with timeshares who can trade with them and have flexible vacation days.",
"You can have a good vacation *anywhere* for the same cost as staying at one specific place. Why lock yourself in?"
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cw47ma | how do painkillers know exactly where do you feel pain in your body? for example if i have a toothache and i drink an ibuprofen(its for pain in general), how does my body know that my tooth out of all things hurts? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/cw47ma/eli5_how_do_painkillers_know_exactly_where_do_you/ | {
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"Disclaimer: I'm not a professional. My understanding is that when you get hurt, that place sends a signal to the brain that tells it you are being hurt. The Ibuprofen just blocks the part in your brain where that signal gets received (it blocks the receptors).\nSo if you get hurt, those signals just bounce off the walls that the painkillers put in place instead of connecting normally to the brain receptors."
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76iwcb | does dna change in adolescence and will affect our children if ever | e.g
-physical features changing drastically, face shape
-emotional disorders, depression
and such things | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/76iwcb/eli5_does_dna_change_in_adolescence_and_will/ | {
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"DNA does change to some degree-mutations and the like. This is what leads to cancer and other non-pathogenic diseases developing later in life. It's probably not going to drastically change your physical appearance because the bone structure that makes your face look the way it does is already built. The body doesn't need to use DNA as a blueprint for the shape because it only has to do minor repairs. (exception being if you have a bony cancer that causes growths.\n\nSomatic DNA mutations (i.e. those that aren't with you at birth) are incredibly unlikely to affect your children, because the cells that form gametes (sperm and egg cells) are separated from the cells that form the rest of your body fairly early in embryonic development",
"When you hit a certain age, your body starts producing hormones which trigger different things to happen in your body but all of those changes are scripted out in your DNA already.",
"Only by mutations as far as i know. It can be changed. But it might affect your children only if the mutation affects your sperm or oocyte.\nNot the ones that you've already produced but the ones you are going to produce. (germinal mutation) And because they are mutated, the zigote will be affected and the offsprings will be affected aswell. \np.s. Correct me if i am wrong please."
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35iwl7 | why do you instinctively gasp when falling? | Title says it all | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35iwl7/eli5_why_do_you_instinctively_gasp_when_falling/ | {
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"I was told by a martial artist that it is the same reason they scream when they throw a punch or kick. It tightens up your core and gives you \"extra strength\". Why your body would do this instinctually is, when you hit the ground you are not a flimsy noodle that gets squashed. Not sure how true, just what I was told.",
"basic fight or flight response. Your sympathetic nervous system increases your blood flow and breathing rate when you are in danger. So when are startled your heart pounds and you gasp for air. "
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1kku8n | when adverts say "clinically proven" what does that mean? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1kku8n/when_adverts_say_clinically_proven_what_does_that/ | {
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"It means that some clinic/lab, no matter how shady or biased, has \"proven\" the product works. In a lot of cases, it's the manufacturer's own lab that has proven its own product works.\n\nIt's one of those things mentioned in ads that is intended to make the claims seem legit, but really means very little if anything.",
"Absolutely nothing unless they show the relevant peer reviewed findings with legitimate open sources. \n\nIf they dont supply references to back those claims up then they are pretty much making it up.",
"\"Proven\" is one of the worst words in the English language. Most people don't know the difference between proof and evidence. \n\nWhat the ads really mean is that \"Evidence exists that tends to support our conclusion.\"\n\nBut supporting a conclusion is very different from proving it. If my neighbor is murdered, the fact I live next to him is evidence I might have done, but hardly proof."
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7q770x | why does the air after a lightning storm feel fresher? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7q770x/eli5_why_does_the_air_after_a_lightning_storm/ | {
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"When lightning passes through the air, it ionises oxygen gas (O2). As the \noxygen ions cool down, some of them will rejoin into groups of three ozone \ninstead of the two they were in before, forming ozone (O3). It is this ozone \nthat is apparently the \"fresh smell\" observed."
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2zd3i2 | why doesn't the difference between a mean tropical year and a mean gregorian year cause the seasons to shift? also, a question about sidereal years. | The mean tropical year (a full cycle of the seasons, if I understand correctly) is approximately 365 days, five hours, 48 minutes and 45 seconds at the moment. Meanwhile, the average length of a year on the Gregorian calendar over its 400-year cycle is is about 27 seconds longer: exactly 365 days, five hours, 49 minutes and 12 seconds. While it's true that the mean tropical year is growing shorter with time, even in 1582 when the Gregorian calendar was introduced, it was still 25 seconds "too long".
This annual difference seems like it would slowly cause the seasons to drift earlier into the year over time. Emphasis on slowly, since the total "drift" since 1582 has amounted to a little over three hours. Is there any mechanism to counteract this drift, or is it such a slow-moving phenomenon that it isn't worth addressing?
Also, regarding sidereal time: Since it uses multiple points of reference (the fixed stars) rather than just one (the sun or moon), wouldn't that make it a preferable system to calculate the passage of time? Why did we structure our calendar to approximate the mean tropical year instead of the sidereal year? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2zd3i2/eli5_why_doesnt_the_difference_between_a_mean/ | {
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" > Since it uses multiple points of reference (the fixed stars) rather than just one (the sun or moon), wouldn't that make it a preferable system to calculate the passage of time? Why did we structure our calendar to approximate the mean tropical year instead of the sidereal year?\n\nBecause our calendar is very old, and mattered originally for the purposes of the seasons. People started keeping track of time because it told them when to plant and when to harvest, which is based on solar time, not sidereal."
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uu9kc | why did the german people under hitler's regime
allow hitler to be in power, knowing he was a anti-
semetic dictator? | All I know is that the German people of that time were extremely bitter, resentful, demoralized and humiliated over the Treaty of Versailles and having to surrender in World War one, and that the Great Depression played a factor in them wanting to reclaim "Lost glory" as well. But once they knew of the Concentration camps, and his blatant anti-semitism, why did the people not try to stop it? Surely there must have been people who were against Hitler's totalitarianism.
Long run-on sentence is long. Sorry if I didn't make sense, I've just taken some Benadryl for my cough and thinking is hard. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/uu9kc/why_did_the_german_people_under_hitlers_regime/ | {
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"1. They didn't *know* he was an anti-semetic dictator, and the concentration camps weren't until later, and not widely known. All they knew is he was the great leader who pulled them out of the great depression and gave speeches that made them feel good about being German again.\n2. Pretty much all of Europe at the time was anti-semetic. Hitler didn't create that, he just capitalized upon it. ",
"The German people, like most people of the time, *were* blatantly anti-semitic. When Hitler blamed all the problems on the Jews, most people were going \"yeah, Jews *do* suck!\" They also didn't mind someone who acted a little bit like a dictator, because he promised stability and a solution to Germany's problems.\n\nNow, the vast majority probably wouldn't have wanted the concentration camps. But by the time this happened, and especially by the time that the public learned about it, dissenting from the Nazi regime was already a crime. So trying to stop it required an incredible amount of bravery; if the police even *suspected* you opposed government policies, that could get you in trouble.",
"It's sometimes claimed that The Catholic Church played a part in reinforcing antisemitism in Europe in the centuries leading up to the Holocaust. This wouldn't be all that surprising if it turned out to be true - Jews killed Jesus, after all. They also fought alongside Muslims to defend the Holy Land against Christian crusaders.\n\nAn important thing to remember about Germany in the 30's is that the majority of people probably weren't particularly antisemitic, and only a privileged few of them would have understood the Nazis' plan in any detail. Hitler succeeded because many people were *indifferent* to the fate of the Jews. This meant that the outspoken detractors of the Third Reich were silenced because they were the minority. ",
"The problem was that the German people didn't really vote for Hitler. He was never on the ballot and the Nazi party in 1933 only got about 32% of the vote in a low turnout election when it was a much broader tent party, including the thugs of the SA, who were purged in a year in the Night of Long Knives, while also getting votes from angry veteran groups allied to the NSDAP. Also, though Hitler didn't make it a secret his hatred for Jews during his campaign, it wasn't as critical as his focus on National Socialism, throwing off the Versailles treaty, and rebuilding the German economy. Plus the awful economic situation in 1932 scared the German people shitless. They remembered the early 1920's and the 'double dip depression' made them cast about for any answer. The Communists also got an all-time high in votes that same year too.\nPeople were looking for any answer and the situation is somewhat comparable to the Tea Party in 2010.\n\nHitler also used things like Radio and a 'whirlwind' campaign by flying from city to city, day after day, so many more people got to hear and meet Hitler in person than any other candidate in German history at that point. He was also heavily funded by industrialists and the head of Lufthansa, Erhard Milch, who later became a critical figure in the Luftwaffe. Milch gave him a huge donation/bribe and free use of a private airplane to travel around Germany.\nTo compare it to modern politics, it was like Santorum's Iowa primary campaign, traveling everywhere and meeting everyone.\n\nNow as far as what the German people knew...\nWell they knew the Jews were being legally discriminated against and physically assaulted after 1935 and soon were seeing their property seized and sold to 'Aryans', so some Germans benefited from the policy. The problem was that after the night of long knives the Gestapo was around and people started being disappeared. Fear was a major factor in German public life. They were afraid of Communism too, which was right next door and after the burning of the Reichstag and the public disinformation campaign to blame it on Communist agents, it, again, became like post 9/11 America where they people accepted the greater security, but found it was very dangerous to speak out, because that security turned against them quickly. And then there was the Nazification campaign to turn Germany into a Nazi State, not a German one. People were pretty much blanketed by the media pushing Nazi messages and as this was the era where mass media was just being born, the people were more trusting of authority and accepted lots of it in the pre-war era. Add in kids being brainwashed in schools and in the Hitler Youth and the acceptance of State authority just continued to increase, partly out of fear of being informed on. \n\nAs the war went on the German people quickly, especially after the invasion of the Soviet Union, got the idea something very bad was happening to the Jews. The messages of their sons, fathers, and brothers from the East told of horror stories, but by then the police state was solidified and no one wanted to speak out for fear of the government, but also out of a sense of patriotism 'my country right or wrong'. As the war went on and Germany was bombed (starting 1940 onward) and the Soviets got closer, people were just to scared, angry, and brutalized to care about the Jews and all of the other victims of Nazism, especially as the German people became one of those victims too. \n\nInteresting to compare is the authority the Nazi State wielded over their public and the repression the US and Britain used against their in wartime. Far more than just the Japanese were thrown in prisons during WW2 in the US. Germans and Italians were too, as well as anyone that agitated against the war from 1942 on. Strikes were outlawed and strikers were thrown in jail. Though nowhere near as bad as the Nazis, the FBI wasn't too far off the spectrum of repression that saw the Soviets and Nazis at the far end.\n\nYes, Europe was very anti-semitic at this point in history, as was the US and Canada. \nThis has several reasons. First is traditional: Christians blames the Jews for Jesus's death and for various traditional 'crimes' that medieval people imagined (blood libel, etc.)\nThere were other bitterness resulting from money lenders being too zealous in collecting debts, which had been a problem for Jews from medieval times as well (kings like to use Jews as tax collectors, so they could blame the Jews then for abuses in taxing policy).\nWW1 created enormous problems for the Jews in Germany, starting with Ludendorff starting rumors that the Jews weren't fighting in the army and were to blame for the ills in the economy to divert attention from his terrible policies that badly hurt the German war economy.\nAfter the war the Stabbed-In-The-Back myth Ludendorff also started blamed the 'liberal Jews' for betraying Germany.\n\nThis had some real world 'evidence' such as the Balfour declaration, which managed to switch Jewish support in the US from Germany, as they were fighting the Jew-abusing Czar (pogroms), to the British, who promised them a homeland in Israel. Conspiracy theorist claim that Jews in the German foreign office had leaked the Zimmermann Telegram to the British, as it wasn't known at the time the British broke German codes, so giving anti-semites a talking point\n\nAdd to this the Communist uprisings in Germany, Austria, and Hungary, plus the Bavarian breakaway communist state, whose leadership was heavily Jewish and not just German Jewish. Rosa Luxembourg, Karl Liebknecht, Bela Kun, Kurt Eisner, etc. including agents from the Bolsheviks that were mainly Jewish were heavily involved in German and Eastern European communist revolts, so it gave the German people a very bad experience and impression of Jews, as they pretty much blamed all Jews for Communism as a result, and yes Communism at the time, especially in Russia, was very heavily Jewish at the leadership level.\n\nSo the fear of Communism during the 1930's was also a fear of the Jewish people that Hitler exploited and connected in his political speeches.\nAlso there was the feeling that banks were run by Jews, such as the Rothschilds, who had an international banking system that was the most extensive in Europe and probably the world in the 1930's. Germans blamed the banking system for the economic issues experienced in the 1920's and 1930's, because they were demanding repayment of Allied loans, which in turn were pillage from Germany during things like the occupation of the Ruhr in the early 1920's which lead to hyperinflation in Germany. Jewish bankers were then partly blamed for the Depression as well. \nRemember too that this was the era of books like Henry Ford's (yes THAT Henry Ford, who was a big fan of Hitler and vice-versa) \"The International Jew\" and \"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion\", which no one knew at the time was actually created by the Checka, the Czar's secret police. This stuff wasn't just believed in Germany either. Britain, France (with its Jewish Prime Minister Blum, head of the left coalition in the 1930's), the US (so many anti-semites) and beyond all had lots of anti-semitism and support for Hitler's anti-semitic policies. Its disturbing to think that the only reason most people in the West disliked Hitler was for his authoritarianism, not his Anti-Semitism.\nIn fact it took direct experience of the Holocaust by the Allied armies for people in the West to really start to realize that anti-semitism was a bad thing. Even then anti-semitism was normal in Europe and the US until the 1970s.\n\nSo yeah, there were many reasons for Anti-Semitism and the lack of German support for Jews. Partly this had to do with pre-war bigotry, fear of the police state, or just the extreme attitudes developed during the world war where millions were being slaughtered, both at the front and in Germany by Allied bombers and later Soviet ground forces.\n\nIn fact if we look at the progression of the Holocaust it wasn't really decided on until 1942 (Wansee Conference) when Germany lost her gamble to knock out the Soviet Union and the US had joined the war, pretty much dooming the Axis. So the Nazis figured they take the Jew and other undesirables with them. Before that of course there were atrocities in Poland, the Soviet Union and other places, but nothing on the scale of the Final Solution decided on at Wansee. It seems even the Nazis weren't ready for mass genocide until the brutality of war had firmly set in (not that I think they wouldn't have done it had they won).\n\nEdit:\nAlso the Jewish population in Germany at this time was less than 1%, i.e. 1/4 of the proportion of Jews in the US today, so the average German did not know any Jews and could then believe negative stories about them more easily. Think about today in the US about how many racist people make comments and have negative opinions of groups of people they don't know personally. "
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63dnnq | how is isps selling internet usage data to advertisers worse than what facebook/google/amazon/etc is already doing? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/63dnnq/eli5_how_is_isps_selling_internet_usage_data_to/ | {
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"You can (with difficulty) avoid using Google, Amazon, or Facebook. You can stay logged out while googling or use incognito to keep it from being linked to your account. \n\nEverything you do online is through one \nISP or another. All data goes through them. You can't avoid it. If you don't want a website selling your info, avoid them. If you don't want an ISP selling your info, you'd have to stay off the internet",
"Just a side note from this conversation because I think you've gotten some good answers already. It's important to note that because of the new law that has passed nothing has changed in regards to what the ISPs can do with your internet usage. Things just continue moving forward as they always have without any new changes. There's a lot of misinformation out there on this subject."
]
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[],
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||
36g4mt | how to companies that advertise products and services with a no questions asked money back type of guarantee keep themselves from getting taken advantage of? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36g4mt/eli5_how_to_companies_that_advertise_products_and/ | {
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"they can't. people will take advatnage of it, like what happened in costco. they had a policy you could return any item within 3 years, and people bought electronics, waited 3 years, and returned them. it made costco change their policy. but on average people as a whole won't be dicks like that. if it becomes a problem, the company will change the policy. ",
"It's a marketing tool based on the assumption that VERY few people will ever actually bother to attempt to redeem those offers. At least not nearly enough to endanger the profitability of the operation. It's the same reason you see mail-in rebates. Everyone rationalizes to themselves when they buy the (overpriced) item \"Oh with the rebate it's actually affordable\", then they go home and can't ever be bothered to sit down and fill out the paperwork and mail it in, so they end up paying the full price.\n\nYeah, a certain amount of people with too much time on their hands might call your bluff and get their money back, but that's just a little speedbump that doesn't really slow down the profitability of the sale.\n\nSecondly, they will implement all sorts of restrictions to make sure it's not too easy to redeem the offer. Lots of hoops and lots of requirements. Any sort of slight error on your request will void it. This also ensures that very few people successfully redeem the offer."
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wkjve | how some people can be more than just xx or xy chromosome? | I've found that some people can be born with XXY, XXX, etc. How is this possible?
Also, out of pure curiosity: Does it occur in other organisms beside humans, and if so, which ones?
| explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/wkjve/eli5_how_some_people_can_be_more_than_just_xx_or/ | {
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"The same way you can be born with any chromosomal abnormality - one of the two gametes - or both - those are the sperm and the ovum - was formed incorrectly. Perhaps when they divided, instead of one copy going into each gamete, both copies went into the same one, giving for example one sperm with XY and one with none, or one ovum with XX and one with none. Perhaps there was an extra copy made. When these join to form the zygote - the single cell that contains all of future-you's DNA - there can be extra chromosomes. That's why XXY, XXX, and even up to XXXXX or XYYYY exist. There are cases of living and healthy females with only one X chromosome (although as many as 99% of such conceptions are stillborn), there are not cases of males with only a Y chromosome. It happens with the other 22 chromosomes as well - either an extra or missing copy, for example an extra chromosome 21 has been implicated in down syndrome.\n\nYes, it can occur in any organism which undergoes sexual reproduction in the same way it does in humans, although some studies have shown that it is significantly less likely in other species. This may be because our advanced health care improves the survival of such cases, and there are definitely other factors involved as well."
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474unw | why do they manufacture 90,91,92,93 octanes and not just use one standard mixture for all states? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/474unw/eli5why_do_they_manufacture_90919293_octanes_and/ | {
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"1. Different engines require different octane ratings in their fuel. Higher compression engines require a higher octane gas.\n\n2. Different states have different requirements and regulations. CA, for example, has very strict air pollution standards. CA-legal gas is more expensive to produce, so it is not sold in states where it isn't mandated.",
"Elevation, the difference in air pressure means that the octane rating needs to be slightly different to a accommodate the difference in oxygen."
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6044cx | if parts of yugoslavia were part of the austro-hungarian empire, are there still mediterrean, west-european, and slavic minorities within these countries as a result? | And what about other parts of former Austro-Hungary? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6044cx/eli5_if_parts_of_yugoslavia_were_part_of_the/ | {
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"To put it simply, yes.\n\nMy dad is Croatian and grew up in what is Bosnia today. Back when it was all Yugoslavia, you had a lot of small communities. There were predominantly Croatian villages, Serbian villages and so on. Larger towns were a bit more diverse. You can still see the effects of this today, because when Serbia attacked Bosnia in the 90's, the Serbian villages were mostly left untouched, whereas in my dad's Croatian one the houses were all completely destroyed.\n\nWhat this means for today is that it is very common, much more than in other places, for people to have a nationality that is different from their birthplace, without them (or their parents) being immigrants at all.\n\nAlso, what I do know is that there is a sizeable Croatian community in Styria and in Burgenland in Austria.\n _URL_0_\n\nThis is a good read, if you know German. "
]
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"http://mobil.derstandard.at/1385168608277/Kroaten-in-Oesterreich-Sie-kamen---und-blieben"
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206q5q | the difference between "westernization" and "economic/social/religious/etc. progress" | Many countries, regardless of their level of development, claim to not want to be "westernized". Take much of the middle east, for example. Many do not want skin-clad women walking around, although it is a freedom in western countries to do so. This is just one example. It can be extrapolated to politics and more importantly, human rights. From an objective perspective, what defines the difference between "westernization" and advancement? I hope this question makes sense... | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/206q5q/eli5_the_difference_between_westernization_and/ | {
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"Westernization implies an adoption of the cultural aspects of the West, which - quite understandably, I might add - is not something that Indians, Saudis, Chinese or Russians want. They want to maintain their culture, their religion and their historical values. But *most* of them also recognize the importance of shifting to Western historical ideals of governance to be able to grow and be competitive."
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722b8o | how does anesthesia make us unconscious but doesn't harm or shut off unconscious functions? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/722b8o/eli5_how_does_anesthesia_make_us_unconscious_but/ | {
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"actually the reason you need an anesthesiologist is because if the dosages are just slightly off it totally can shut down things like your lungs and kill you. \n\nbut i mean...\n\ni think what you were getting at, the functions of your heart beating etc, are controlled by a different part of the brain than the part that allows people conscious thought.\n\num i don't think a 5 year old would understand even this much though...\ni am not sure how to make the exact way that anesthesiology effect the brain simple enough for a 5 year old to understand...",
"The brain stem controls involuntary functions such as heartbeat and breathing. Those aren't even connected to consciousness, and the brain stem is unaffected by anesthesia. Too much of it would, of course, shut down the entire brain, so that would be bad.",
"The anesthetic gas itself turns off many unconscious functions. It can easily cause cardiovascular collapse so blood pressure is always carefully monitored and treated throughout the surgery. You will not thermoregulate and your body will trend toward room temperature. Your muscle tone will diminish to the point that you will not protect your own airway. The soft tissue will collapse in your throat so they will stick a tube down your trachea (or a shorter tube resting right above your trachea if the surgery is short). Your drive to breath usually diminishes to the point that they will support each breath with pressure. Depending on the length and type of surgery they may paralyze you altogether and completely breath for you. During anesthesia it is commonplace to lower or raise the heart rate and blood pressure of the patient, as well as treat the unconscious body's response to pain. Although you are unconscious and won't process the pain, your heart rate/blood pressure/respiratory rate will rise in response to surgical stimulus. The surgeon is almost never aware of your vitals during the surgery unless you came in due to a trauma like a car accident- they could complete a surgery on a dead body and not know it- it is the anesthesiologist/anesthetists job to monitor vitals and keep you alive (including the giving of blood). They are also responsible for clearing you for surgery and determining what medications you should hold off on."
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97zo3g | why is an increase from $24 to $30 a 25% increase, but a decrease from $30 to $24 a 20% decrease? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/97zo3g/eli5_why_is_an_increase_from_24_to_30_a_25/ | {
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"Because you take the percentage from the starting amount. 6 of 24 isn't the same percentage as 6 of 30. ",
"Because 24 (+6) = 30 \n\n24 / 6 = 4 so adding another 1/4th (6) of the original 24 is 25%\n\n\nBut 30 (-6) = 24 \n\n30/6 = 5 so removing 1/5th (6) from the original 30 is only 20% ",
"Six is a quarter of 24, but it is a fifth of 30.\n\nThe percentages are in relation to different things.\n\n25% of $24 is the same as 20% of $30.\n\n\n1% of a million dollar is more than 100% of $1. That should be obvious.\n\nIf you start out with $10 and double it, you increase it by 100% and end up with $20.\n\nIf you start out with $20 and half it, you decrease it by 50% and end up with $10.\n\n\n\nI think it may help to think about fractions instead of percentages.\n\n$30 is 125% of $24 or 1.25 or in fractions 5/4 \n$24 is 80% of $30 or 0.80 or in fractions 4/5\n\nYou invert the fractions when you turn things around. in the first example have 1/4 more than a whole and in the latter you have 1/5 less than a whole.\n\nThinking in percentages often obscures what is really going on.\n\nWhen you here \"increase of 25%\" think \"125% of the original value\" or better yet \"The original value plus a quarter of the original value\".\n\nWhen you here \"decrease of 20%\" think \"80% of the original value\" or better yet \"the original minus a fifth of the original value\"."
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2sjxq0 | why is it unhealthy for me to sit at my desk for 8 consecutive hours working, but it's okay for me to lay in a bed for 8 consecutive hours. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2sjxq0/eli5_why_is_it_unhealthy_for_me_to_sit_at_my_desk/ | {
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"Because that 8 hours you are in bed, you are sleeping. Something the body needs to do in order to recharge and be ready for the next day.\n\nSitting at a desk doesn't do anything except be part of a sedentary lifestyle. If you were to sit at a desk for 8 hours instead of sleeping, that would be one thing, but you are sitting there PLUS sleeping."
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||
3u9otg | why did the part where i cut my banana turn brown but where i tore it off it stayed white? | This is after about 6 hours
_URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3u9otg/eli5_why_did_the_part_where_i_cut_my_banana_turn/ | {
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"I'm going to break a rule here and bring you some conjecture, because I could find no definitive reason for this happening.\n\nBananas turn brown from oxidization, bananas contain something called polyphenol oxidase that reacts with oxygen in the air and forms a kind of \"rust\", this is the browning on the banana.\n\nWhat can cause bananas to stay white/yellow? By coating bananas in a weak acid (orange juice is commonly used in cooking to keep banana slices white) you can keep this oxidization from happening.\n\nSo here is my conjecture, what I think might have happened:\n\nYour skin produces an oily substance called sebum which is mildly acidic, I theorize that the oil from your fingers might be protecting the banana from oxygen. Alternatively, the uneven ripping of the banana may be exposing the banana to less oxygen, causing it to brown slower.",
"When you cut the banana you broke cell walls and the oxidation went faster.\n\nWhere you tore it, the break occurred mostly between cells."
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7bj3uc | why does two people cuddling increase their body temps? wouldn't the temperature remain the same since the added heat is dissipated between the two people? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7bj3uc/eli5_why_does_two_people_cuddling_increase_their/ | {
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"The trick is that temperature is dynamic, not static. \n\nIf you're temperature at some moment is, say, 90 degrees, that means that you are generating some amount of heat (say 95 degrees worth) and then dissipating heat at some rate that leads to your temperature reading as 90 overall. \n\nIf you were to put on a coat, you'd reduce the speed at which the heat dissipates. That would lead your temperature to go up, despite no internal changes. \n\ncuddling is like putting on the coat, but even better since not only is the person you're cuddling likely to insulate you better than the air, but they are also likely producing their own heat (so if they're hotter than you you might actually gain, not just lose slower). ",
"Surface area.\n\nA person will lose heat in all directions unless they wear clothes. Cuddle with somebody else and a significant part of your body heat is absorbed by them, warming them, and their heat is absorbed by you. Together, especially with clothes and/or blankets, the heat between you can build up.\n\nSo essentially you're \"wearing\" the other person just like when you wear clothes. It keeps the heat in.\n\nEdit: If you want to consider the math, then you don't divide by two. You divide by less than two, since the heat is lost through all sides except the side of the bed and the side touching the other person.",
"Imagine a person being a square box, and they sleep on the upper part of the bed: ▀ . \nThat person has a surface area of \"one box\", and a perimeter of 4 sides exposed to the air.\nNow add a second person to the lower part of the bed: ▄ . \nThat person also has a surface area of \"one box\" and a perimeter of 4 sides exposed to the air.\n\nPeople produce heat from their internal processes, and then some of this heat is lost to the (colder) environment through the 4 sides.\n\nNow put our two people together on the bed: ▀▄ and then make them cuddle, like so: █ . \nTheir total area is \"two boxes\", \"twice the people\", but ... look at that, they only have 6 sides exposed to the air instead of 8. Two sides (one from each person) are touching each other, and since we assume them to be equally warm (both people at around 37 degrees), they have a smaller perimeter exposed to the cold air now that they're cuddling. That allows them to lose heat at a slower rate than when they're separate, making them retain more heat, and feeling warmer.\n\nCuddling is good. And now I feel so alone.",
"Heat is dissipated to the environment at your skin. This rate of heat transfer is pretty constant over your entire body / skin area. \n\nFor this simple example assume both people are identical - same size and same heat generation (from food / fat whatever). When you are laying separately you have more exposed skin area (more cooling) than when you are cuddling even though in both cases you are producing the same amount of heat."
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21cnqn | why do women enjoy sex even if they don't climax yet men are left relatively unsatisfied when they don't "finish the job"? | I didn't really think about this until my girlfriend and I started having sex more regularly. I like the fact that I can finish sometimes without having to finish her off, but I still find it curious. Help? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21cnqn/eli5_why_do_women_enjoy_sex_even_if_they_dont/ | {
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"just think about what's actually necessary in order to reproduce.",
"First, it's worth mentioning that women find great satisfaction in achieving orgasm.\n\nHowever, when you look at a sex-binary (male/female) physiology, different bodies respond differently to sex. Specifically in the typical male anatomy, pleasure increases exponentially the closer one comes to orgasm, which often occurs singularly without immediate duplication. A non-orgasmic sexual encounter for a female does not have the same repercussions - she hasn't spent the entire sexual encounter preparing her ovum. Without orgasm, the fluids in a male anatomy become stagnant, and nocturnal emissions may occur to release the buildup. \"Wet dreams\" might serve a similar purpose to the female menstrual cycle in that sense - disposing of sex cells and other fluids that aren't immensely viable.\n\nIt should also be noted that \"multiple orgasms\" are disproportionally observed in women. This has led people to think that a male orgasm holds much more sexual significance than the female orgasm, which can happen more than once in one encounter, and may indicate a reduced intensity through this reasoning. This is just stipulation though.",
"She is just being nice ",
"Armchair evolutionary psychology would suggest for the most part men cannot reproduce unless they climax, while women can, which leads to a greater need to climax in order to feel satisfied."
]
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3q04b9 | there are different types of galaxies, but..how? | This might be an extremely dumb question.. I'm sorry if it is.
If we assume the big bang is true, and that the universe is in motion; and that general relativity is true, and that celestial objects in motion bound by general relativity usually lead to orbital and rotational movement....
Then how do non-spiral galaxies manage to form? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3q04b9/eli5there_are_different_types_of_galaxies_buthow/ | {
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"The formation of galaxies is still a very open question and scientific understanding continues to evolve rather quickly as scientific theories go.\n\nOne big way that we suspect that we get different 'types' of galaxies is through collusions. When two galaxies get close enough to each other, structures like spiral arms can be damaged in the interaction, resulting in more uniform disks."
]
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7y3uof | the physics behind curling | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7y3uof/eli5the_physics_behind_curling/ | {
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"I don't think it can be explained any better than this:\n_URL_0_"
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"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CUojMQgDpM&t="
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6mycni | what don't cotton, wool, and leather clothes decay if they are made from organic sources? | Doesn't skin, fur, and plant material start to decay as soon as the organism dies? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6mycni/eli5_what_dont_cotton_wool_and_leather_clothes/ | {
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"Ultimately they're preserved in some way and dried. Cotton wool and leather do decay if left to the elements ",
"Things decay because of bacteria. Organic materials are often treated such a way as to get rid of bacteria and inhibit future bacterial growth.\n\nOther organic material, such as wool, which is a type of hair, isn't made of living material to begin with.",
"Wool is hair, its dead. It's dry so it doesn't rot the way flesh does. \n\nLeather is actually treated and preserved so that it doesn't rot. There is a whole process to this. "
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3cnmjx | what made windows vista so bad in comparison to windows xp and 7? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3cnmjx/eli5_what_made_windows_vista_so_bad_in_comparison/ | {
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"I don't think it's fair to say vista was bad, it was just not as accepted as xp / 7\n\nAlthough when it was released vista didn't have a lot of driver compatibility or software compatibility, it had more security prompts which essentially made things more difficult to do than you could do with xp and because windows 7 was being pushed it was more viable for companies and users to simply not use vista. \n\nEdit: words",
"Vista did not handle memory particularly well. It did delivery on a limited set of VM like features, but in reality the whole system could still be brought down by easy to cause read/write errors.\n\nThe problem is that microsoft had sought to deliver something quite different, and payed a lot of money to have it down. the project went over budget and still did not deliver. Microsoft then fired the lead developer and their team (who was broughtinto the co to make vista) and instead had to salvage the project. That salvage ended up requiring a near total rebuild of the core parts of the OS. The final product is win 7.\n\nWindows 7 is what vista was supposed to be. You know how it is almost impossible to crash 7 with a simple application error? 7 is more stable, and has superior backwars compatability, superior security features, including a fully functioning UAC and memory isolation structure. Win 7 also more correctly and securely handles user account. Most important, it does not suffer from memory bloating (it probably releases memory) and is much less prone to registry corruption. By the same mechanisms, when the system does fail, it can more oftne than not repair itself, and even more often than not, isn't corrupted by sudden halts and so a repair is unnecesary. That is to say, win 7 is a lean mean data handling machine. Vista... not so much, it is basically many of the user features of 7 with almost none of the critical technilogical ones. It is prone to memory bloat, crashes, system/registry corruption, does not have solid UAC nor user account structures (outside of enterprise ed with a lot of switches set correctly,) does not handle security certificates as well as it needs to for modern security.\n\nWhat was supposed to be a completely redisgned kernel, dll, registry, and security structure ended up being closer to a reshelling of XP. \n\nXP is slimmer than the wingdings of Vista, and except for some pretty neat 64 bit expansions, vista works well. It is also the cheapest. Finally, it is very well studied, and was least expensive fo ",
"People hated xp when it first came out too. Just took time.\n\nMost of the improvements from vista were incorporated into win 7."
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4ud7f5 | why are cantonese and mandarin the main languages in china? | Was one of them the one that the Communist government tried to make official over the other? Did one or the other spread during the Chinese Civil War in the 1800s? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ud7f5/eli5_why_are_cantonese_and_mandarin_the_main/ | {
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"Mandarin is the official language of China. by official that means the federal government of China uses Mandarin.\n\nChina is not a mono culture nation. Modern China is the accumulation of thousand years of hundreds of different cultures and nations warring and conquering each other. Culturally China chould be more compared to an current EU-like state. Most people are ethnic Han, but there's 100million people that are Chinese that are not ethnic Han.\n\nLanguages in China are not all understandable to each other. Just like a German doesn't understand French or Polish even though they're neighbors, purely Mandarin speakers wouldn't understand Shanghai-ese and can't understand Cantonese, and the other 300 or so languages spoken in China. \n\nThe southeast region of China has historically spoke Cantonese family of languages for a thousand years, way before Communism was even a thing. way before even modern western civilization was a thing. ",
"First off, you need to understand that Cantonese and Mandarin are only 2 of the hundreds of regional dialects spoken in China. It's just that those two are the most widely spoken outside of China (others include Toisanese, Hakka, Shanghainese, Fukinese, etc...). \n\nThe reason that there are so many dialects in China is due to all the feudal wars it has for thousands and thousands of years. There's even a popular expression in Cantonese (\"As messy as seven kingdoms\") that came of this. I think the longest period of peace that China had was during the Tang Dynasty, which allowed the country to flourish culturally, and artistically much more than other periods. \n\nBasically, if China wasn't at war with itself, it was at war with outsiders, and the winner decides whatever language, culture, food, fashion the people will consume until the end of their reign. Rinse and repeat.\n\nIf you want to understand the differences between the dialects, imagine putting an Englishman, a Texan, an Australian, an Irishman, and a Scotsman in the same room and gave to speak to each other in nothing but their own respective local slang. It's technically all English but they're gonna have a hard time understanding each other. That's kind of what Chinese dialects are like. \n\nYou should also understand that Cantonese and Mandarin are so different that they may as well be completely different languages, kinda like English and French in the sense that there are similarities in terms of grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure, but the pronunciation is completely different. It's also easier to learn Mandarin if you already know Cantonese but not the other way around, much like how it's a lot harder for someone who learned English first to master French. \n",
"Cantonese is not a main language. It only has 70m native speakers (about the same as italian) It is a recognized minority language. \n\nMandarin of the beijing standard is the official language that is taught in schools and used for business. Every other language might sometimes be used as common vernacular in its region. \n\nPutonghua became the standard after the CPC made it so in the 1960s ish. There are still only a few hundred million native mandarin speakers, but almost a billion secondary speakers since beijing has pushed for mandarin above all minority languages. \n\nGuangdong is far politically and geographically from beijing, and being the richest province, it has some more autonomy than others. Thus, cantonese is a much more common tongue, even in government affairs"
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fn65cs | how does the brain repress memories and not let people remember entire parts of their lives? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fn65cs/eli5_how_does_the_brain_repress_memories_and_not/ | {
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"I’ve never had a good memory and I’ve always been stressed that something happened to me when I was little that’s making me suppress all these memories. I don’t THINK that’s what happened and I have no reason to other than I just have a horrible memory. I have a pretty bad phobia that’s affected me most of my life, is it possible that could be a cause of my inability to remember my life a lot? Or possibly I just never focused enough to ever make a memory in the first place?",
"It'd also be interesting to know why some traumatic events are forgotten/repressed but others burn with fiery detail many years later.",
"Think of it like how the body works. If you get a splinter, your body will push it out. If you have something that can't be pushed out, the body will calcify it, covering that object to protect itself from it and separate the object from the body. Your brain does that with trauma sometimes. It will push that memory out so you only really have an impression that it was ever there, or it will cover it and make it hazy/cloudy and feel like it's not yours. Denial is pushing it out. Dissociation is covering it up and making it feel like it's not yours.",
"I see a bunch of takes on psychology, which isn't really all that related to the actual brain. So, here's a more (simplified) neurological explanation. \n\n\nImagine your brain is a spiderweb in the shape of a pyramid. There's an \"entrypoint\" at one end, that's the tip of the pyramid, and then the strands of the web all meet together in various ways in the middle until you get to the base of the pyramid. Stuff is connected all over the place to make the web's joints. \n\n\nSo, imagine the entrypoint is \"stimuli\". That's all sorts of things. The stuff you see, hear, feel, taste, smell. That's all coming in through the entrypoint. And depending on what comes in, it bounces around to different joints, interacting with them. Once it does this, the combination of the joints that got interacted with forms a thought or memory. Like an encoding. You activate this particular set of joints to get the idea of abicycle. You change one joint, maybe it changes to a unicycle or something that you've learned to associate very closely to a bike. You change a bunch of joints and it's something totally different, like your parents or the sun. Whatever. The more similar the pattern that gets touched, the more related the thoughts, generally speaking. \n\n\nThat's how your brain (in a contrived sort of way) operates. But the stimuli isn't the ONLY thing affecting that. There's your nervous system, which gives your brain feedback. So, for instance, if your nervous system is triggered when you think of a stove in a particular way, you panic when you think about it, rather than just think \"I can cook spaghetti on that\". There's also hormones and neurotransmitters and yada, yada. \n\n\nAlso, your brain is a very, very interesting organ in that it can affect itself. One region of the brain can learn how to trigger another region. Even affect the stimuli it actually gets. Warp it before it gets there, or change the way it responds. Think of it like playing a game of telephone, where you stand in a line and whisper to the person next to you the secret message. Sometimes you get someone in the middle who messes up the message on purpose. It totally eliminates any chance of the people behind that person getting the correct message at all. \n\n\nIt's a very complicated mechanism, but you could have the combination of your nervous system, hormones, neurotransmitters and even other parts of your own brain affecting the way thoughts are associated and recalled. Even to the degree of suppressing them altogether or distorting them horribly to something that your brain has learned to find more palatable. This is all based on the cycle of stimuli that goes through your entire body. \n\n\nUnfortunately, the brain does not function in isolation. So the mechanism is excessively complicated. But, very, very neat.",
"Researchers have found little evidence of repressed memories where memories of entire parts of someone's lives are missing and recovered by therapies like hypnosis or leading questions. Repression is more typically like the avoidance of recalling memories that sometimes occur as part of PTSD or similar disorders.",
"It probably rarely does. It's a popular theme in movies but there are serious doubts that it really happens or that it happens often. However, there is an extremely popular panic about childhood sexual abuse which claims it happens frequently but there is reason to believe that the notion of repressed memories may in fact be false memories induced by suggestions from therapists aided by the prevalence of this notion in popular culture.\n\nFor a striking example, read about the Margaret Kelly Michaels case: [_URL_0_](_URL_1_) .\n\nTLDR; a day-care teacher served five years of a 47-year sentence based on preposterous allegations by children under her care - including things like allegations of animal sacrifice, including sacrifice of a giraffe (!). These allegations appear to have been induced by social workers and therapists planting false memories in children under the mistaken notion that they were uncovering abuse.",
"Scientists have discovered that our brains are actually wired to forget things.\n\nFor example, when I went to get the mail today, there was a guy walking his dog. I remember that. I couldn't for the life of me tell you what he looked like beyond \"generic white dude\" or what his dog looked like or the color of the leash.\n\nIf our brain held on to mundane details like that, we would drive ourselves crazy.\n\nNow, just like there are people who can remember everything, there are people who forget a whole bunch too.",
"Not a full explanation here but it's important to know that human memory isn't like a computer where it's \"stored\" in one spot to be retrieved later, it's more of a chain reaction between different parts of your brain - both for forming the memory and for drawing it up.\n\nSo when a memory is \"repressed\" it's probably because a person has avoided thinking about it and withdrawn from that context so the signals their brain receives in a regular day don't trigger that chain reaction to recreate that memory.",
"Hello,\nI am a professional at repressing memories as well as having a degree in personality psychology and I’ll tell you how it works for me. People who can do this either know directly or indirectly that this is how they can successfully cope with things. And, the more you do it, the better you get good at it and the more you rely on it. I’ve repressed some terrible experiences successfully (rejection, brother overcoming a heroine addiction, overcoming a divorce, etc.), but you already know intrinsically this is how you deal with things, whether it’s good for you or not; it’s a gift and a curse. People who repress and are successful at it don’t do things to set them back. For example, once you decide this negative feelings will be repressed, you will not do things to set you back because of how much you know it will hurt you. Curiosity on how my ex is doing is not worth the potential pain it will cause so we avoid it without question. TLDR; people who truly repress emotions are strong decision markers when it comes to doing things that will not set them back to an emotional state because they know how much those emotions will destroy them.",
"You have to remember (LOL) the body is a finely tuned machine wired for survival. \n\nMemories are connections made in the brain. During a normal memory making experience, everything is running smoothly ... all your chemical reactions are good, your synapses are firing normally etc. \n\nIn a trauma situation, your body is programmed to shut down unnecessary reactions and processes. Fight or flight and all that. Now, the way your brain processes information has changed. \n\nEvery time you access a memory, even the first time, it's a highly subjective look at what happened. If you see a red car but you think to yourself that it's a blue car and even say no red ... the next time you might remember it as a blue car because a connection has been made in your brain about a blue car. The next time you access that memory, you're pretty sure it was blue and the time after that... it WAS blue. \n\nNow, add in chemicals the body throws at your brain to insure your survival during trauma. Your synapses are not functioning normally. The body doesn't care about your feelings ... it cares about survival. It doesn't care that you need to remember bad things so you can report them. It cares that it got a fight or flight request and it's flooded your brain with whatever it needed to survive the trauma. \n\nLater, you might sense something with one of your senses that sparks a reaction in one of the connections that was made while your body had basically roofied you to carry out the task of survival. You struggle to make that connection stronger. Remember every memory is a copy of that same memory so even if it seems stronger ... the quality actually degrades, just like a copy of a copy of a copy made on a copier. It may not be faulty ... it might be close but it will never be exactly as it happened. \n\nPeople who are depressed suffer from memory loss, probably because the brain's anxiety response is constantly activated. Add in low-quality sleep and boom ... hello forgetfulness, goodbye memories. Of course, they always talk about short-term memory loss as a depression symptom but I'm here to tell you it can cause the loss of old memories too. This is going to be the same response the brain gives you from a trauma ... or something that was wonderful (because chemicals flood your brain when good things happen too).\n\nIt's hard to accept that what we KNOW to be true probably isn't exactly true. Our memories of good times ... probably not exactly correct. Our memories of ordering lunch ... probably not perfect. And that's during every day autopilot living. Once you add in stress, anxiety, trauma and other people's inputs (no matter how much or how little), your brain has made connections so fast and sometimes kind of in the background of our consciousness. \n\nIt's also hard to accept that we're not the masters of our destiny 24/7/365. Your body and brain especially makes decisions for you all the time, in order to give itself the best chances of survival. When we start fucking with it (chemically mostly) is when it gets confused and things go wonky. I'm not just talking drugs and booze ... I'm talking about whatever your personal addiction is that gives you a thrill ... food, sex, roller coasters LOL ... whatever.\n\nSo basically, your body wants to survive, drugs you with chemicals it makes in our body and doesn't care about non-essential synaptic connections we might find useful later on because it's busy keeping us alive.\n\nEdit: fat finger mistake",
"It doesn’t. There aren’t any neurologic underpinnings for why some memories are repressed and other remote memories are obtainable. Clinically, whenever I encounter patients with remote memory loss, the top differential is psychological rather than neurological. \n\nSo,ELI5: it’s not a brain thing. it’s a person/ psychological thing",
"This. I always have a problem with \"missing time\". For some odd reason, 90% of my high school memories are gone. I can remember bits and pieces of that time but I just couldn't make sense of it. Sometimes I can recall the face but not their name and sometimes I remember a name but I couldn't match it to a face. \n\n\nI only realize this back in December when someone walks up to me and say it's been a while, starts asking how I am, what I'm doing this day and just casually talk to me like I'm her best friend but I can't recognize her, I have no memories of her and I just gave her my awkward blank face and I could tell that she looks so disappointed. My older brother at that time saw that and simply say \"how could you not remember her when you two were so close back in high school, you even went to her house to hang out before?!\". High school was just 8 years ago but for whatever reason all the memories are gone.",
"\nA lot of people in this thread are saying we don’t have any science to back up the idea of repressed memories, but I don’t think that’s true. Memory encoding/decoding has been shown to be state-dependent, so many memories are difficult to access unless the subject is in a similar state to the one they were in when they created the memory. There is a lot of good research on this. \n\nThe one I’m linking is interesting because it seems to be saying that fear memories are literally encoded in a neurologically different manner than regular memories and can not be accessed unless the subject is in a similar state of stress. That would certainly explain a lot of “repressed” memories. It’s like listening to FM, but you also have AM which you have to switch over to to hear. It’s still there. \n\nI have definitely experienced memories that pop up only of I am in a similar situation or have a very strongly associated stimulus. I could have eaten something as a child and never thought about it, but if I eat it again, the memories come flooding back. It wasn’t “repressed” but it might never have “surfaced”. Everything is associated. There is definitely scientific research to indicate that things can be effectively disassociated, or rather associated with an entirely different, alternative set of associations. \n\nTime will tell. \n\n[How traumatic memories hide in the brain, and how to retrieve them](_URL_0_)",
"It's maybe worth mentioning the opposite case, where people invent memories in the process of trying to recover repressed ones. It's called the [false memories syndrome](_URL_3_).\n\n & #x200B;\n\n > False Memory Syndrome has been described as a widespread social phenomenon where misguided therapists cause patients to invent memories of sexual abuse (McCarty & Hough, 1992). The syndrome was described and named by the families and professionals who comprise the False Memory Syndrome Foundation (see Freyd, March 1993, p. 4), an organization formed by parents claiming to be falsely accused of child sexual abuse. \n > \n > Since its establishment in 1992, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation has received 14,000 reports of sexual abuse accusations based on recovered memories. \n\n \nCheck the story of [Meredith Maran](_URL_1_) who was trying to recover memory in therapy. She realized she (thought she) was abused as a child before realizing she invented those memories. \n\n\n > *My Lie*, published in 2010 by [John Wiley & Sons](_URL_2_), is a memoir that recounts the fallout from Maran's false accusation that her father sexually abused her as a child. Throughout the memoir, Maran touches on themes such as false memory, the sex-abuse panic spread across the U.S. during the 1980s and 1990s, and coming to terms with taking responsibility for her actions. The memoir provokes dialogue about compassion for the sexually abused and the falsely imprisoned as sexual abusers.[\\[10\\]](_URL_1_#cite_note-10) Maran is especially credible because of the number of years she spent working in the child-abuse prevention area.[\\[11\\]](_URL_0_)",
"Not an expert but have heavily researched it and this is my understanding, it may not be fully correct.\n\nCortisol is the hormone that the body creates during stress and is responsible for the ‘fight or flight’ feeling we get. Short term, the effects of cortisol are great for your survival in the stressful environment you are in, whether life threatening or not. You could be getting mugged and need to fight or run, or you could have procrastinated on a school/work project and get a cortisol kick last minute to pull an all-nighter.\n\nLong term, consistent horrible stressors or a traumatic experience where your body creates a ton of cortisol causes a neuron’s dendrites to shrink and shrivel, leading to the neuron’s death. This can cause a neurological pathway to close, effectively shutting down a memory. For safety, your mind keeps an aspect of this traumatic experience to serve as a ‘warning memory’ in the case you find yourself with similar stressors or in a similar environment.",
"Just to make clear \"repressed memories\" isn't a medically sound diagnosis. There are known issues related to people struggling with memories around a traumatic event or time. \n\n\nThe two more common issues are:\n\nDenial- Something really traumatic happens and as a protective measure, your brain won't allow a solid memory to form the way a pleasant memory would. Your brain is literally denying an event ever happened. \n\nDiassociation- During a traumatic event your brain refuses to accept it/checks out. You kinda start experiencing the event like someone watching a movie, it's not really happening to you. At it's most extreme you can lose time all together and your understanding of what happened can differ extremely from the reality of it.\n\n\nETA:\n\nThe idea of \"repressed memories\" is hotly debated within professional circles, and people should be wary of \"memory retrieval\" therapies as they haven't been proven 100% sound and false memories are a known phenomenon. \n\nIn disassociation and denial, your brain is still forming memories, they just don't look 100% right. Sort of the difference between a photograph of something and a stick figure drawing you are trying to do with your non-dominant hand.",
"There are certain cameras that constantly record, much like your brain, however because of storage issues, it wipes if an event doesn't occur in a certain amount of time. You basically remember certain events that for some reason you found notable, and forgot the other nonessential parts. There are select few who can remember everything but I can't explain that one.",
"Memories aren't like video recordings that you can rewatch, with the file being exactly representative of what you recorded every time you open it. \n\nA memory is more like 1000s of little Christmas lights that activate into a recognisable 'image' when you push the button.\n\nFollowing that analogy, the brain can 'disconnect' the lights from the electricity so it doesn't form the lightshow when you push the button. Or the brain didn't write down how the lights were arranged at the time so it doesn't know how to put them back together. Or it messed up the arrangement or wiring so it either looks like something else or only part of it lights up giving an incomplete image."
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bxts0o | how are there so many different "world champions" for the same weight class in boxing? how does it work? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bxts0o/eli5_how_are_there_so_many_different_world/ | {
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"WBA, IBF, BO and IBO are all different boxing organizations. \n\nImagine it more like there was an NBA, and a Southern Basketball League and a Northern Basketball League and a World Basketball League and a International Basketball League and all of the same teams played. You could have one team hold the titles for all of the leagues.\n\nWith boxing, there are different federations, organizations, associations etc with different monetary backers and different prestige. \n\nWhat tends to happen, is that champs from different organizations fight each other to \"Unify\" belts. So one fighter will take 2 or 3 belts off of one champ to \"unify\" them under one holder."
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459boe | why is today's announcement of the discovery of gravitational waves important, and what are the ramifications? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/459boe/eli5_why_is_todays_announcement_of_the_discovery/ | {
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"From what I understand, it proves that Einstein's General Theory of relativity was right. Space and Time are like an actual piece of fabric, and you can send a \"wave\" of gravity throughout it. This, I think, is the first piece of legitimate proof of Einstein's prediction. ",
"Things with mass and/or energy distort spacetime (which is what gravity truly is). When they move, they make ripples in spacetime like a boat moving in water. These waves will stretch and compress spacetime as they pass, moving at the speed of light. They are detected using lasers set up so that they cancel each other out. If a gravitational wave passes through, the lasers won't cancel each other out, and you'll get a signal. \n\nIt's another medium that we could use to detect messages, but it's a long shot that we'd find anything, like SETI. Right now, all we can detect are the biggest waves coming from black holes, and we can't send messages via gravity, but this is the first step towards something like Interstellar. \n\n",
"All the observations of our universe so far have been based on observing different types of light waves. X-Rays, infrared, optical its all light waves. Gravitational waves however, are not light waves. They are emitted by various Astrophysical sources, and we can use them to get information about their sources. This is an ENTIRELY new way in which to view the universe. This is going to be a completely new field, and who knows what we are going to observe with this new method of astronomy. The excitement in Physics/Astrophysics is genuinely massive.\n",
"Edit: I wrote my original answer in response to OP's question, but there still seems to be a lot of confusion. It might help if I write a bit of a summary about what gravitational waves actually *are*, and I'm adding that to the top here:\n\n**What are gravitational waves?** **What is LIGO?**\n\n- In Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, gravity isn't just a \"force\" that pulls objects. Instead, you can think of space as like a sort of fabric, and that a large object will put a dent in the fabric, causing other objects to move in bent paths as they move through the bent fabric. You've probably seem [images like this](_URL_2_) before, though this is a loose metaphor, and you shouldn't take it too seriously.\n\n- Gravitational waves are a \"wave\" in this fabric. Like any fabric, a big jolt will cause a shock to flow along it. Something like [colliding black holes](_URL_3_) will do it.\n\n- A gravitational wave is a wave of *stretching* and *contracting*. Along the wave, space gets squished and unsquished again. A circular object becomes [a little bit oval](_URL_0_) This effect is very very small - it's happening all the time and we don't notice it.\n\n- We built machines that fires lasers over several kilometres to measure tiny changes in that distance, to detect the tiny effects of gravitational waves. It's so sensitive, it can measure changes in length down to less than the size of a proton. They built two in opposite corners of the US, but there are other ones being built around the world. The American ones recently got an upgrade. The American machines are called LIGO, and they've now been upgraded to \"Advanced LIGO\".\n\n- And these upgraded machines actually detected gravitational waves!\n\n- We've had a long time to think about what pattern of wibbles a gravitational wave from colliding black holes should look like, and it turns out the waves we found look exactly like what we were expecting! Even more specifically, we can say how big these black holes were, and about how far away they were - about 30x the mass of our Sun each, and about billion light years away.\n\n\n----\n\n**And then, to answer the original question: why is this important?**\n\nTwo big things!\n\nFirstly, General Relativity has always predicted that gravitational waves should exist. However, they are very weak, and even the most sensitive detectors should only detect the most dramatic ones - the \"chirp\" of gravitational waves that comes from the merger of two neutron stars, or even better, two black holes.\n\nRecently, the LIGO detectors have been upgraded so that they finally have the sensitivity to detect the strongest of gravitational waves. And a few months ago, both sets of detectors (one in Louisiana, one in Washington state) detected a [chirp](_URL_1_) of gravitational waves, fitting exactly the pattern of frequencies you'd expect from the merger of two black holes about a billion light years away with a mass of about 30x our Sun each.\n\n**This detection is a massive confirmation of General Relativity**. It would be worrying if we didn't detect anything, but this really confirms that our understanding of gravity and the universe is correct.\n\nSecondly, this opens up an entirely new field of observational astronomy. Astronomy works mostly through telescopes that observe different types of light waves - visible light, infrared, x-rays, radio waves, etc. But gravitational waves are an entirely different thing, and they give us a wholly new point of view on the universe, letting us see things we couldn't see otherwise.\n\nFor example, something that's 30x the mass of our Sun is a pretty small object to see at a distance of a billion light years! Black holes are also really really small (these are like 90 km across). So we detected something less than 100 km across that was a billion light years away! And that's something that would be pretty much impossible to do with any other current method.\n\n**It really is a wholly new window into the universe.**\n",
"**To actually explain like your 5yrs old...**\n\nWe’ve just confirmed that I like macaroni and cheese instead of thinking I could like it based on a bunch evidence. You saw cheese, macaroni box, and sort of put two and two together, but who knows… I might have lied or you looked at the wrong cupboard.\n\nYou finally found out a way to give me a phone call, I pick it up, and tell you that I do indeed like macaroni and cheese. That’s what scientist just did. A smart guy has been confirmed to be very smart this whole time...\n\nalso the flashlight you've been using to discover things at night... well you can now use another flashlight that detects monsters at night through the bushes. Pretty nifty.",
"I really think the only honest answer here is: unless you're a relatively big physics geek then no, it's probably not that huge.\n\nI don't mean to be facetious and I understand that some people are totally psyched about this and I'm happy for them. \n\nI understand that this is huge for the study of physics but I haven't seen any mention of any way that this will impact the average person who doesn't study physics or at least have more than a passing interest in it.\n\nIt's incredible though to think that this is yet another (BIG) thing that Einstein was right about.",
"So how fast do gravitational waves move? Is its speed affected by other forces?",
"Gravitational waves distort time and space and cause vibrations in light, the same way that sound waves distort air pressure and cause vibrations on a physical surface.\n\nBasically, scientists built a giant [tin can telephone](_URL_0_) made out of lasers.",
"We have known for some time that a huge part of our universe is outside our ability to detect. We have theorized that it exists but never observed it.\n\nToday, we have taken the first glimpse of what we have been blind to. Today was the day when the blind person got to stop hearing about all there was to see, and actually got to start looking.\n\nWe just unlocked the ability to play in the hidden 98% of the universe.\n\nWAHOOOOO!",
"Particle physicist here. \n\nBasically you can think of this experiment as that of detecting a pin drop at the 50 yard line during an NFL game, and your detection equipment is five states over and in the back of a van down by the river. We're watching the game on a little shitty TV in the back of the van, and we've been told by the announcer that a pin was dropped on the 50 yard line, but we have no way of actually seeing it because its obviously too tiny, our TV is too shitty, and the noise is too loud. \n\nTL;DR- Confirms a bunch of science shit about what we think we know about the universe\n\nEdit: a word",
"The way I've interpreted it:\n\nEverything we know about the universe has been gathered through Electromagnetic Radiation detection (radio waves, visible light, etc.)\n\nThink of this as one \"sense\" (like touch, smell, hearing)\n\nWith this new detection, we have a new way of \"sensing\" our universe. \n\nImagine everything you know you gathered by only being able to see, and now you have the ability touch. (Not literally of course, but analogically)",
"Since I actually tried to explain this to a pair of 5-year-olds today, I figure why not share :)\n\nYou know how when you throw a rock in a pool, there are ripples? And how if we throw bigger rocks in, they make bigger ripples?\n\nWell, a long time ago, a really smart guy named Einstein said that stars and planets and stuff _should_ make ripples in space, and he used some really cool math to explain why he thought that. Lots of people checked the math and agree that he was right.\n\nBut we've never been able to _see_ those ripples before. Now some people built a really sensitive measuring thing that uses lasers to see them, and they just proved that their device works by seeing ripples from a _really_ big splash. So now we know how to see them and we can get better at it, which will help us learn more about space.\n\n**EDIT:** build- > built, work- > works",
"An analogy would probably be that: We finally could see the ripples of a rock that has been thrown into the ocean - very small and hard to detect. Just that in this case instead of water is spacetime and the rock is gravity. \n\n[Also because it is awesome!](_URL_0_)",
"I'm having some problems understanding why is it called a wave, is it actually a wave? I mean, can you measure its amplitude, frequency and wavelenghts? Could it be put in that chart like [this](_URL_0_) alongside the others? Can we call it a \"gravity wave\" or is it something totally different? ",
"In the short term we can use it to look at the universe in a new way and possibly see things we couldn't before. \n\nIn the long term we now know for a fact that the warping of space is possible and can be done with gravity. If we can find a way to control that anything from actual hoverboards to tractor beams to intergalactic warp drives are possible in the future.",
"In essence, it has provided the strongest yet support for Einstein's general Theory of Relativity. **But what exactly is that theory?**\n\nI found [this](_URL_0_) NY times analogy very helpful:\n\n > \"Matter and energy distort the geometry of the universe in the way a heavy sleeper causes a mattress to sag, producing the effect we call gravity. A disturbance in the cosmos could cause space-time to stretch, collapse and even jiggle, like a mattress shaking when that sleeper rolls over, producing ripples of gravity: gravitational waves.\"\n\nThe discovery provides the first real evidence of gravitational waves, giving strong support for the \"mattress\" theory, as I like to think of it.\n",
"So how do we know which direction the wave came from or pinpoint the origin?",
"Let's use our sun as an example. Currently our sun emits light which tells us two things: \"I exist here, and I'm this far away\". Because we can measure distance based on light emissions. Turns out gravitational waves are detectable, and also travel at the speed of light. So now the sun can tell us \"I exist here, I'm this far away, and I'm this big\". That's a 3rd piece of information that's being communicated to us. This will hopefully allow us to more precisely map the universe. \n\n\nAlso since the sun is 7 minutes away, if it were to vanish instantly, it would take us 7 minutes to see the light go out. What the detection of gravitational waves means, is that we also know the earth would continue to orbit where the sun was for 7 minutes until it no longer is effected by the sun's gravitational pull. \n\nEdit - My 5 year old son would understand this when put this way. YMMV.",
"Can you ride gravity waves like surfers ride beach waves?",
"What does this mean in terms of hover boards? ",
"More importantly how this helps our 1000 year lifespan project?",
"What is the speed of gravity and gravitational waves? Is this a redundant question? Could someone please explain this to me? Thanks.",
"Can someone ELI-18 the scientific setup used. How were the waves detected? ",
"Every article I read says that this discovery will allow us to observe the cosmos in a different way, like discovering a new part of the EM spectrum, but I'm not sure how accurate that is to say. Wouldn't the incredibly weak signature of gravitational waves only allow us to detect the most cataclysmic of events, like two black holes combining? I don't want to downplay how significant even that could be, but it seems to be an overstatement to imply that this technique has general applicability to most celestial bodies. It's not as if we can detect individual stars, galaxies, etc. if they're not undergoing massive acceleration.\n\nThis whole observation is a poorly worded question: Am I misunderstanding something?",
"The best explaination I heard is this:\n\nImagine you give a deaf person the ability to hear. Its like that.\n\nWe've just been looking at the universe through the light spectrum. We've now got a whole new spectrum to look at and a new way of \"looking\" at the universe.",
"Imagine if you could only see, not touch, taste, smell, or hear. Then some scientist made a discovery and suddenly you could hear the world.",
"I just saw this video from Brian Greene that explains, and demonstrates, it very well: _URL_0_ The importance of this discovery is that it provides a new way to explore the universe, using waves of gravity.",
"Btw the ripples were caused by an amount of energy equaling three solar masses that was emitted in one second. \n\nFucking nuts.",
"Think about this... \n & nbsp; \nAlthough gravity waves aren't affected much by things like dust/light they still need to be created with enough energy to be detected by us on earth. I like to think if gravity waves are like the ropes in the gym that people swing up and down for exercise, the black holes swung the rope hard enough to make a ripple last for a billion light years!",
"Light and other electromagnetic radiation only allow to see back until some 380,000 years after the big bang. That was the time when the universe became transparent to electromagnetic waves. Gravitational waves should theoretically allow us to see further in the past on the assumption that something was making the waves. I don't know enough about big bang theory to say categorically that that is so, but I would think that the universe erupting into existence might have caused a ripple or six.",
"Gravitational waves happen when two big sources of gravity merge. Or at least that's the theory. The experiment that was devised to detect gravitational waves has actually done just that. Gravitational waves don't happen very often. Think of it like two islands in the pacific. You can't tell, from looking at the water, that there are two islands out there. But if the two islands suddenly merged and became a bigger island, we'd notice those waves. \n\nGravitational waves operate in 3 dimensions and are invisible instead of ocean waves that operate in (mostly) 2 dimensions and are visible.\n\n\n_URL_0_ explains the experiment the best.",
"Can one ride this wave, say for space travel? ",
"Is this discovery going to have any big changes come with it? Like is there certain theories in the astronomy community that couldn't be proven until\n gravitational waves were discovered? Or any advances in space exploration, technology, etc that will be an indirect result of this discovery?",
"We'll eventually be able to make a 'telescope' based on these or similar principles. See things bumping into each other that are not lit by stars, like 'dark matter' because of the ripples they make in space. Possibly also 'see' things accelerating and decelerating, like space ships. Though to see thing less massive than black holes, such detectors will probably have to be put into deep space, because even you and I walking around have gravity fields, and make gravity waves. Very weak, but so would be any gravity wave that's very far away, and space is mostly very far away things.\n\nPerhaps someday we can even make gravity wave 'radio' receivers/transmitters.\n",
"How do we know the vibrations came from gravitational waves and not from something else? Is it because of simultaneous contraction & expansion on the perpendicular axis?",
"This is basically as huge as being able to detect microwaves or changes in air pressure. Being able to observe something or measure it in any way makes learning about it much easier and despite the fact that we all know what gravity is, what it does, and how to manage in an environment with gravity, it is still one of the least understood physical phenomenon. The importance of the discovery is not simply that it could lead to much more meaningful knowledge, but this is a huge part of it.",
"Follow up question, will this have any practical uses? Such as helping us colonize space or provide something of value to our daily lives?",
"Is it at all possible that the LIGO team is incorrect and they didn't actually detect these waves? Or detect anything at all?",
"I teach Life Skills science, so, high schoolers with IQs about pre-k to second grade level. This is how I explained it to them.\n\nWe can look up at the sky. We can see light from the sky. We use our eyes to see the sky and we know where the stars and planets are because we can see them with our eyes. If I put a candle in front of your face, can you see it? (Yes.) What if I put that candle in space, could you see it? (No!) Why not? (It's too far away.) Can we use our noses to smell the sky? (No!) Why? (Because it's too far away.) Can we use our ears to hear the sky? (No!) Why? (Because it's too far away.) Can we use our hands to feel the sky? (No!) Why? (Because it's too far away.) Right. But we have other instruments that can help us sense things we can't sense with our bodies. We have special thermometers that can tell how hot something is even if it's far away. We have special telescopes that can help us see light even when it's far away. *Gravitational waves* are a new things we can detect about the sky. So imagine you had an apple. You could feel it with your hands and see it with your eyes and taste it with your mouth. But what if that apple had a special thing about it that you didn't have an organ to sense? A special *property* you couldn't detect? Gravitational waves are like that. We can't see them or smell them or taste them or touch them but they are still real. So scientists had to build a special machine that could see them, because we can't.\n\n(We had previously discussed what the speed of light means so I'm assuming knowledge of that concepts for this next part.)\n\nIf you look at a star that's ten light years away, you are looking back in time ten years, right? (Yes.) If you look at a star that's twenty light years away, you are looking back in time how far? (Twenty years.) Right. Well, we are limited there by how far light can travel and how far away we can detect it. Gravitational waves aren't affected by matter. (Demonstration with putting hand in front of a flashlight and showing that matter (hand) interferes with light (flashlight)). This means they can travel through matter so they can go way further. With light, we can see hundreds of years into the past. We can see things that are relatively close to us in space. (Draw a circle around a dot on the board.) With the detection of gravitational waves, we can see billions of years into the past. WE can see things that are way, way far away from us in space. (Draw much larger circle around the dot.) If the dot is earth, this small circle is how far we can see when we use light. The big circle is how far we can see using gravitational waves. It's very important for us to understand things in the universe that are happening very, very far away from us and far, far back in time.",
"A bit late to the party here, but why not?\n\n--------------------------------\n\nTwo friends named Anne and Brian want to play a game. They drive out to a lake at night—Anne goes to one side, and Brian goes to the other. Here's the game: Anne will drop a rock into the lake on her side, and Brian will try to guess how big Anne's rock was—even though he never gets to see it.\n\nHow can Brian guess this? When Anne drops her rock in the lake, it will make a splash. The water underneath the rock will try to move away—who wants to get squished by a big rock, anyway? But the lake is full of water, so it's hard for the water underneath the rock to move. It pushes up against other water and that water tries to move.\n\nThink of a queue for a roller coaster. Sometimes everyone pushes together because they want to get on, but they have nowhere to go until there's a new roller coaster car to take people. Sometimes the queue stretches out as some people get on and others hurry forward to fill the space in the queue they just left. This is how the water moves—in waves.\n\nAgain, how can Brian guess the size of Anne's rock? He can do it with math, if he can see the size of the waves that get made when Anne drops her rock in. Those waves get smaller and smaller as they move away from Anne—which is why Brian also needs to know how big the lake is. But if he knows those two things, he can figure out the size of Anne's rock, even though he never saw it.\n\nA hundred years ago, a very smart scientist said that the space all around us acts like water—it can bunch up or stretch out in waves. You can't drop a rock into space, though, so what causes those waves? The waves in space are made by very big things (even bigger than the sun) trying to move very, very fast. We've been trying to find these waves in space ever since the scientist predicted them, but it's hard. The waves are very, very small when they get to us—even smaller than a strand of your hair. (This sounds bad, but it's actually good. For the waves to be bigger, we'd have to be much closer to the things causing them. I won't explain why, but being much closer to those things would be very, very bad.)\n\nWhen Anne and Brian go to the lake to play their game, Brian can learn the size of Anne's rock even though he never gets to see it. The cool thing about these waves in space is that they let us learn about things we'd never be able to see, too. There are things in space called black holes. Black holes are like giant rocks you can't look at—because if you shine a light at them, the light just goes away. But thanks to the waves this scientist predicted, now we have a way to learn more about black holes. And not just black holes. There are other things in space that we can't see—very, very old things—but now we might be able to learn more about them. All because of these waves in space."
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3kk2z9 | if cigarettes contain things like arsenic, butane, cadmium, ammonia, and formaldehyde, how can people smoke then everyday for years without dying within the first few weeks? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3kk2z9/eli5_if_cigarettes_contain_things_like_arsenic/ | {
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"Because they are not at immediately toxic levels. Over time, however, they cause a great deal of damage to a person's health.",
"If you subjected a sandwich to a detailed chemical examination, you would find traces of most of those things as well.\n\nCigarette smoking is bad for you, no doubt, but producing a laundry list of scary chemicals is not the way to prove that. It is just a dishonest scare tactic.",
"There is no such thing as lethal or safe substances. There are only lethal and safe doses. Water can be toxic if you drink enough of it.",
"\"The dose makes the poison\" - Paracelsus\n\nThis is condensed from - \"All things are poison and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes a thing not a poison.\"",
"There are three kinds of poisons in cigarette smoke, those that cause damage and those that cause cancer, and those that cause heart disease. The body has defence mechanisms against poisons and damage, but constant exposure overwhelms them, resulting in chronic damage like COPD (cough and poor lung function). The heart is damaged by small particles that are so small they pass to the bloodstream. This causes blocking of the arteries in the heart. Finally, carcinogens are attacked by the DNA of lung or other cells. Damage to DNA can destroy self-destruct mechanisms that prevent DNA-damaged cells from surviving and dividing. But the genes are in specific positions and the carcinogens are attacked by random parts of DNA, so it's random like Russian roulette. This is why there's no safe dose. Of course people who smoke less get fewer cancers, but this works only on population level. For an individual, if you smoke lightly and get cancer it's still your fault because of the smoking."
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4h2gvp | how do linesmen detect where the breaks in wires are to repair them? | They can't obviously cut every piece of electrical/telephone wire to find it, because it can involve lots of cutting and digging, which would just not be economical | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4h2gvp/eli5_how_do_linesmen_detect_where_the_breaks_in/ | {
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"I do telephone and we use a TDR (time domain reflectometer) that sends a pulse out and times how long it takes an echo to return the unit (based on a given gauge of wire) and it shows the length on the wire. We have records that indicate what the distance should be and compare that to the result.",
"[Time-domain reflectometry](_URL_0_).\n\nThey attach a piece of equipment to the line and send a pulse down it, listening for the 'echo' caused by a break in the line. Knowing how fast the signal travels down the cable and the time it took to receive the 'echo' lets you calculate how far down the cable the break is."
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