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ELI5: Why does rubbing your eyes feel so good when you're tired? | The LI5 version is that the response serves three purposes:
1. You massage the muscles around your eyes, which can relieve tension that builds up after a long computer session or some such.
2. Your eyes can stop producing enough fluid, and rubbing them stimulates the production of that fluid (basically tears) and rubs it around to the dry areas.
3. Last and most interestingly, increased pressure on your eyeball actually triggers a reflex that slows down your heart rate a bit to calm you down or prepare you for sleep.
Credit goes to /u/SkyOfTheSky | 125 | 187 |
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ELI5: The different types of Catholicism | I was raised Roman Catholic and eventually became an atheist. Anyway growing up I was only ever able to get partial or biased information regarding Mormons, Baptists Anglicans, witnesses, evangelists etc, I've always wondered what the actually differences are, is it just splitting hairs over scripture translations/meanings or is it more than that?
Edit: I had meant to put Christianity in the title, not Catholicism, sorry for the confusion. | Basically the religions split based on theological or political arguments between the leaders and the flocks just followed along.
For example, in the early days of the Church, the church elders would get together to discuss the finer points of their faith. These were called 'Councils' and named after the city they took place in. So there was the 'Council of Chalcedon' and the 'First Council of Nicaea', etc, where they would debate things like when Easter takes place.
Sometimes those debates ended and everyone agreed, so there was no split, but more often those debates ended with major disagreement and one side calling the other side heretics and claiming the 'One True Faith' for themselves. Since you can't really prove one side right or wrong, the church would end up splitting into parts. For example, the Arians believed that Jesus and God were separate entities, with Jesus subordinate to God, instead of being one entity with two manifestations, as believed by the rest of Christianity.
Other times, the arguments were more political than theological. For example, when the Anglican church broke off, it was mainly because King Henry VIII wanted a divorce, which was against church law. So he broke off the Church of England, made himself in charge, and granted himself a divorce.
Many times, there were both theological and political arguments. For example, the Great Schism between Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox dealt with the Filioque clause (deciding whether God and Jesus were one entity in two beings or one entity in two forms, AFAICT) and whether or not the Pope has more authority than the other Bishops. Catholics believed the 'one entity in two forms' and 'pope is supreme', while Orthodox believed 'one entity in two beings' and thought the pope was full of himself.
So, some of the differences are fairly large issues of dogma, others are basically political or splitting hairs, and others (like the filioque clause above) have major debates about whether it's an issue of dogma or splitting hairs (Now is a good time to point out that priests were the original lawyers). Some churches have split and rejoined. More churches have split but are 'in communion' with each other, which means they think the issues are just splitting hairs. For instance, if a Catholic happens to die and get buried by an Orthodox priest, the other Catholics will consider that a proper burial, or if an Orthodox man goes to a Catholic mass the other Orthodox Christians will assume he's fulfilling his duty to attend mass. Finally, there are churches that are not in communion, which basically means they both think each other are going to hell for not being good Christians, like the Baptists and the Catholics.
EDIT: grammar and spelling | 20 | 31 |
What is it about a curing process of meat, drying of fruit etc. that makes the food last longer and allow you to store it unrefrigerated? | Microbes and fungus rely on the moisture present in their food to survive. Lower that moisture, and you lower then number of rot causing microbes and fungus spores the food can support this extending the shelf life of the food. | 34 | 24 |
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When a virus injects a cell with DNA, what makes the cell able to follow the instructions? Could the process be controlled for medically useful reactions? | From what I've remember in school, viruses inject a living cell with DNA in a way that somehow makes it listen to that instead of what it already had, reproducing virus after virus until the cell is depleted. How does the new DNA supplant the existing DNA?
Once replaced, what enables the cell to turn itself into something else? I was under the impression that stem cells were valuable for their special ability to do something similar?
If viruses are reproducing that effect, can we use them?
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I'm sorry if this is super obvious or simplistic, but I tried to research it today and everything I found was not helpful at all. | Viruses have a few ways of infecting the host cell depending on the type of viruses. In general, after the virus injects its genetic material, it will create RNA copies which code for protiens that cut and paste DNA. These proteins allow the virus to put its genome into the host's genome. When the host cell translates that section of DNA, it will create another copy of the virus.
There are a few other tricks the viruses can use to make the cell express their genes more often by making that spot expecially attractive to the replication mechanisms.
Viruses have been used to insert genes into organisms as a way to genetically modify them with desired genes by attaching those genes to viral DNA. | 13 | 17 |
ELI5: why do schools teach a really proper version of foriegn languages thats too proper for a real native speaker to understand you? | The native speakers of the language dont understand a lot of it.
Why would you teach it this way if we cant really use it that effectively? Wouldnt it be better to teach real life conversational versions of the foreign language to be able to use it? | Fundamental of language are taught which are how proper form is based.
Everyday speech is usually full of slang and colloquialisms which you will pick up quiet fast once you know the basics, even before you hit that damn wall. | 20 | 22 |
CMV: The only diversity that matters is diversity of thought. All other forms of diversity are superficial bullsh*t. | The only Diversity that matter is diversity of though. All other forms of diversity are superficial bullshit.
I say this because while certain Races, religions, ethnicities, gender, what have you may have certain ideas about the world as starting point but their race, religion, gender, ethnicities, what have you don't in fact matter only their ideas matter.
I bring this up because there seems to be a quarter of the progressive left and the conservative right that seem to be putting race, religion, ethnicity, gender, what have you above the persons actual ideas.
In the progressive left its called the [progressive stack,](https://youtu.be/6B3WQPdqTNs?t=3m44s) on the right they are just called bigots.
Basically why does diversity have to start with an ad hominem?
Edit I will be afk until ~0800 est and then on until like 0900 & sleeping from like 0900-1500 est (I work nights).
Edit for clarity:
Layer one
Diversity of ideas matters over ethnic, sexual, gender, racial, ect, identifiers.
Layer two
Only the quality of your arguments/idea matter. Not your race/sexuality/gender so why bring it up in the first place. Either the idea stand without an identity component or it doesn't.
Also i am going to sleep.
Edit back Also thanks every one for evaluating my ideas sans personal identifiers and letting my argument hold water sans those identifiers. :-)
> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | Diversity of thought comes from diversity of experience. Diversity of experience comes from diversity of background and lifestyle.
It's very difficult to accurately measure diversity of thought. It's a problem of unknown unknowns—blind spots people aren't even aware they have.
The more visible indicators are useful. | 266 | 286 |
What are some techniques every programmer should learn in 2020 ? | So i found this article about some techniques that every Java programmer should learn by 2020 : [https://hackernoon.com/10-things-java-developer-should-learn-in-2020-px9j309i](https://hackernoon.com/10-things-java-developer-should-learn-in-2020-px9j309i)
i would love to get some ideas about all techniques not just for Java developers but for all developers. | 1. Pragmatism. Do not waste time defending technologies/frameworks/paradigms. Do what's best to the problem at hand to the best of your knowledge.
2. How to negotiate salaries.
3. The code you write is not more important that the business it is placed on. Domain Driven Design.
4. How to mentor others
5. Keep your cognitive abilities up to date, algorithms, data structures. Learn something new every now and then and you should be fine and avoid getting rusty. | 58 | 66 |
ELI5: How does flossing make your gums healthier/not bleed? | Flossing makes them healthier because you remove food that sits on them essentially removing the exposure to foreign bacteria deposits. Over time they stop bleeding because just like most parts on your body, the tissue thickens due to adaptation. | 15 | 17 |
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ELI5: Why do some vehicles (certain busses, semi trucks, etc) have completely flat front ends? Isn't this the last aerodynamic shape possible without getting concave? | A lot of vehicles prioritize length and internal volume over aerodynamics. A bus operator for example wants to be able to fit the maximum number of people in his buses, while still staying under the total allowable length for a bus. | 30 | 28 |
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ELI5 How acupuncture needles "cure illnesses" and why it is mostly found practiced by Eastern doctors | The idea of acupuncture is based on a concept that only exists in Eastern medicine: qi (also spelled chi). Qi is the concept of an invisible "life force" that flows through living things. Those who practice Eastern medicine claim that medical problems are often caused by inbalances in the flow of qi. Stimulating certain points of the body, they say, can correct these inbalances and restore the proper flow of qi.
As far as Western/allopathic/conventional medicine is concerned, there is no evidence to suggest that qi exists in the first place. Western medicine agrees that things flow through the body like blood and electric impulses, but nothing matching the description of qi has been observed or demonstrated experimentally.
So, how does acupuncture help people? It helps only with pain relief. In other words, acupuncture can't cure a disease, but it can lessen the symptoms. A technique called "sham acupuncture" has been used in experiments, in which some patients are given a acupuncture-like treatment with the needles in incorrect locations. Generally, acupuncture does not give results significantly better than the sham treatment. However, it's more effective than doing nothing, so the mechanism is probably the placebo effect. | 25 | 19 |
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CMV: Funerals should be a celebration of a life that a person had, rather than a mournful ceremony. | At least in America, funerals tend to be bleak reminders of the inevitability of death. We celebrate birthdays, graduations, weddings, and so many other milestones in a person's life, and I don't see why death can't be one of them. Sure, a person's departure can be tragic and heartbreaking; however, that doesn't mean we can't be happy for the life they lived. Death is inescapable, so it only makes sense to me that we look to it as a necessary friend, instead of a lurking enemy. For example, Jim Henson, creator of the Muppets, asked for his funeral to be a happy gathering that commemorated his existence. We should be happy that a person lived, not sad that they are gone.
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | The purpose of a funeral is to allow for the family and friends to mourn. If you do not mourn you cannot properly deal with a situation and move past it. You cause permanent psychological damage by not mourning. Celebrating the life of someone is involved in the Eulogies, but it does not replace the mourning the event is suppose to focus on.
We also have a matching event that is focused on celebrating the life after funerals called a Wake. So since a celebration event already exists why do you want to eliminate the mourning event? | 11 | 35 |
Why do we keep trying to find new heavy elements if they only snap into existence for milliseconds? | Would these super-heavy elements have some use? Is it self-assurance?
Thanks for the help, I'm only a sophomore in high school, but I'm super interested in this kind of science so try not to use to big of words, I think I have a somewhat basic understanding though.
Again, Thanks! :) | Science isn't always about finding applications. There have been many discoveries throughout history that didn't have practical applications for decades or centuries.
These super-heavy elements won't have applications because they're too short-lived. But they're useful for testing our current theories on nuclear physics. | 3,457 | 4,176 |
Eli5: Why do dancers start with a “5, 6, 7, 8” count? | Why is this and what’s the point? Why not just start at 1, 2, 3, 4?
P.S. I’m a ballerina
Update: Thank you so much everyone for participating in this post. Your replies have my wheels turning and I feel like I’ve learned alot. Everything from music theory, to dance technique, and more. Now time for me to enter stage left for my big performance in the Nutcracker Ballet. Wish me luck, or shall I say….break a leg. | Music tends to be grouped into sets of beats--often 3 or 4 beats to a set (known as a measure).
That winds up being too few for dancing "phrases," so dancers tend to group a couple of measures together. They'll often count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3..., looping back to 1 every time they get to 8.
The first step of the dance will be on a count of "1," and the four numbers that precede 1 are 5, 6, 7, and 8. | 11,844 | 7,676 |
CMV: I believe having a weak immune system (i.e. calling out sick often) should be added to the categories of equal employment protected classes. | In the US, we have determined that there are certain things in life that can hinder an employee or potential employee's value in the eyes of employers, but that it is not acceptable for employers to discriminate based on these things.
These things are: age, race, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, pregnancy status, religion, and disability.
I propose that having a weak immune system should be added to the list.
People with weak immune systems get sick more often than those with stronger immune systems, and thus have to miss work more often, and I propose that it is unfair to discriminate against these frequently-absent employees just like it is already determined to be unfair to discriminate against disabled or pregnant employees. (The other protected classes don't relate to weak immune system as much as those two do.)
Just like with the other protected classes, it is not any individual's fault if he or she has a weak immune system. While eating all the nutrients you need and taking precautions like washing your hands often have an effect, immune systems are also genetic and beyond our control. Some people have a weak immune system no matter how healthy they eat or how often they wash their hands.
Those people need to work in this capitalist society just like anyone else, and it is unfair that they may be punished or fired by their employers for missing work for being sick often when that is beyond their control.
Just like the other protected classes, not being able to fire the protected employee may cause a slight hindrance to the employer, but we as society have already decided that in certain cases the employee's right to work supersedes the employer's right to pick and choose his/her employees in this respect.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | Aren't medical reasons covered under disability? I've worked for companies that would crap on their employees as much as they were legally allowed to, and you could call out as much as you needed to (provided you have a doctor's note and could afford to take the day off and pay the $75 copay if you bought their shitty $50/week insurance.) Basically calling out for a day would cost you 2-6 days pay depending on insurance, but they couldn't punish you for it. | 15 | 17 |
How do we know the number of stars in a galaxy? | So I came across [this post with a picture of the Sombrero Galaxy](http://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/2i5z9i/the_sombrero_galaxy_28_million_light_years_from/). It says that there are 800 billion stars in it. How do we know the number with any sort of accuracy when (I assume) the resolution of our telescopes is not good enough to count individual stars? | They estimate....
Useful information includes:
Total luminosity
average luminosity per star. (After accounting for dust, and for average age of stars, which can be accounted for by measuring metalicity...)
Size
Shape
Rotational speed profile (galactic mass)
Suffice to say they certainly don't count the stars.
[Edit: Formatting] | 12 | 47 |
[Star Trek] Why do Federation starships always beam down the highly-ranked officers to planets rather than more expendable soldiers? | You'll note that the most famous records of Starfleet explorations involve exceptional danger even by the standards of the various flagships. Death for Starfleet personnel is vanishingly uncommon, and only seems to be a widespread risk because we're only exposed to the stories that involve that risk.
For every away mission that results in death, another thousand go without incident.
Most of the challenges faced involve diplomatic or technical obstacles that need to be overcome. Therefore, the vessel sends its most apt diplomats and engineers, which happen to be senior staff. | 31 | 40 |
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ELI5: How do companies that make things such as drone remotes and car keys ensure that the signals won’t work with other drones/cars? | Much like a physical key, each remote key system uses a unique code to identify itself. It was not always like this; in the early days of remote keys, a manufacturer would use a limited number of codes, and it was possible for a key to open a car that wasn't yours.
Today it's typically taken a step further using what is called "rolling code." Basically, both the key and the car get a copy of the same book, and they each maintain a bookmark. When the key gets pressed, it transmits the first sentence of the page we're on. The car checks its copy of the book, says "yup, same as what I've got" and both turn to the next page for next time. | 37 | 45 |
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What are the implications for Einstein's theory of general relativity for Kant's metaphysics? | Kant argued that space and time were a priori fields that our mind uses to give structure to our perceptions. Einstein then showed that space and time are relative, as well as part of the same field called "space-time". Are there any philosophers or physicists who thought about how these two very fundamental ideas of space and time relate to each other?
Do they contradict each other? Do they complement each other? Do they together lead to an entirely new insight? | In the transcendental aesthetic Kant argues for the transcendental ideality of space as the form of outer sense and for the transcendental role of this pure intuition as the condition for the a priori syntheses involved in geometry. And then this sets up a larger argument extending through the transcendental analytic, according to which geometry is then a pure science of the relations holding between spatial things, so that we can know apodictically that physical things must be adequate to geometrical description, and this thereby furnishes us with an epistemology justifying one of the methodological peculiarities of modern physics.
The way these issues develop in the critical response developed from Helmholtz through Mach to logical positivism is that philosophers will increasingly distinguish different senses of space: intuitive space, as the space of our imagination and visual perception; formal space, as the space constructable in geometry; and physical space, as the space of physical relations.
The challenge is that these senses seem to be collapsed, or at least intrinsically connected, on Kant's view. As, on Kant's view, it seems that intuitive space provides the conditions for formal space and these two jointly provide the conditions for physical space, such that if intuitive space is Euclidean, then so must formal and physical space be.
Whereas, on the critical reception, these three senses of space become more independent. I.e., on this later view, it could be that intuitive space is Euclidean, but that doesn't mean formal space has to be, and indeed it seems that mathematicians can construct a variety of formal spaces, including both Euclidean and non-Euclidean. And since this freedom of mathematicians permits us to think of these different spaces, there is likewise a freedom in physics to choose which of them is adequate to the demands of physical theory, as happens in the choice of non-Euclidean geometry for space as constructed in general relativity.
Underpinning this move is the rejection of Kant's dual-source model of knowledge which categorically distinguished between intuition and understanding as joint bases of cognition, and which manifests in the distinction in Kant's epistemology between the transcendental aesthetic and transcendental analytic. On Kant's view, this mooring of understanding to intuition, as joint factors, restricts the capacity of the understanding to posit mathematical structures to those which can be exhibited in intuition. Conversely, on the later view when the understanding has been unmoored from a supposedly distinct doctrine of intuition, it is free to construct whatever mathematical structures can be grounded on merely the principles of conceptual construction as such.
And then the experimental challenge would be: if it turns out that scientific findings demand this later approach, then this would provide us with a prima facie reason to prefer it over Kant's. | 37 | 66 |
Why is it that some philosophies translated into religions whereas others did not? | I’m a bit concerned about what makes a philosophy a religion and at what point does it become a religion.
For example, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism are philosophies but to many they are also religions, and atleast one of them is a world religion. How did it get this way and at one point does something stop becoming just a philosophy and become a religion as well? and more importantly why haven’t other philosophies (even in a relative time period) did not catch on?
As a frame of reference, why didn’t stoicism, or any Greek philosophy, have a similar outcome? | Since philosophy is such a broad term, what we today ultimately call "philosophy" might not be what people in earlier periods or of different traditions call "philosophy". For instance, the Western philosophical tradition during the middle ages seems to be inseparable from theology. But there were many elements of scholastic philosophy that were not solely concerned with religion. Additionally, in Plato and in Aristotle we see religion pop up in their texts, though it is clearly not as dominant a topic compared to scholasticism.
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I think it is important to think about this problem historically/sociologically. What were the dominant forces in the society that contributed to a higher degree of "religious" influence or sentiment within that society's philosophy?
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If you are not interested in the historical analytic approach, then also consider the idea that all of us at some point have to reckon with faith in something beyond ourselves. Some philosophers take that idea much more seriously than others, which might mean that their philosophy is of a distinctively religious flavour. | 20 | 20 |
[BladeRunner2049] What is the baseline test for and what does it do? | Originally it was to determine whether a subject was a human or replicant. In 2049, it was updated to determine whether or not a replicant was emotionally stable.
As the name implies the test first establishes a "baseline" for each replicant, since every replicant is in fact a unique construct. Then the test is given again and again to check up on them. You could argue it was a psychological stress test to see whether or not the replicant will perform its duties, unintentionally fail, or active seek to undermine the mission objective like escaping or consciously disobeying orders. | 29 | 24 |
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[Fallout/Wall-E] On average whom is healthier, the average human from the Wasteland, or the average human from the Axiom? | That all depends on exactly what metric you use to measure health.
People from Axiom healthier in terms of infectious diseases, cancers, lacerations, gunshots, mutations, vitamin deficiencies, and malnutrition.
Wastelanders would be healthier when looking at BMI, strength, and cardio ability. | 91 | 41 |
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Can an action be obligatory if it is impossible NOT to perform? | So, there's the principle "ought implies can" which says that an action cannot be obligatory if it is impossible to perform. But what about when an action is impossible *not* to perform?
I was thinking about this, and it seems kind of weird. When an action is impossible not to perform, doesn't that sort of undermine the force of the obligation? You have no choice *but* to perform that action - doesn't it seem less forceful now to say that you *have* to perform it? Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I was wondering if anyone else thought similarly. What do you all think? | Kant thinks similarly, if that's company you're interested in. He argues that while we have an obligation to make the happiness of others our end, we do not have the corresponding obligation with regards to our own happiness. That is not because we have to put others ahead of ourselves but because Kant thinks that human beings already necessarily take their own happiness as an end, and we cannot have an obligation to do something we already necessarily do. | 19 | 20 |
ELI5: In WWII, How did the Germans know who was Jewish or not? Couldn't they have just covered it up? | I love WWII stuff, but this is never really explained other than people not having the proper ID or they looked stereotypically Jewish. | They used three main approaches. First, everyone had to register themselves and their ancestry, and to get the most privileges, you needed to prove your status as a pure Aryan by providing your pedigree. So if you couldn't prove your racial status, you were already disadvantaged, even if evidence did not necessarily suggest you were a Jew.
Second, in the beginning, many Jews practiced their religion openly despite discrimination. Even non-practicing Jews often had clearly identifiable Jewish relatives or sufficiently participated in the Jewish community to cast suspicion on them, and friends and neighbors were often willing to identify Jews they knew, under coercion or with the promise of a reward.
Third, even if you were safe from being identified socially, the Nazis made a point out of going through civil and religious archives to identify Jews (including people with distant Jewish relatives). You could try to pretend ignorance about some of your relatives and accept you could not prove pure status, but that does not mean you would not eventually be identified as a Jew from other sources. Consider that the Nazis were only in power for a little over a decade--before that, Jews had freely identified themselves on taxes, census records, etc. and this data could now come back to haunt them and their relatives.
Lastly, it's worth noting that for all the strict rules involved, the implementation was not so rigorous in practice. Local government officials had great power, and with the right connections some Jewish ancestry might be overlooked--conversely, it was no big problem if an official erred on the side of caution and officially proclaimed someone a Jew even if they were not. | 48 | 60 |
ELI5: What does it mean when objects absorb light? What happens to the light and to the objects? | Every object is made up of atoms and molecules. Those atoms and molecules have different electronic structures, meaning the electrons inside them sit at different energy levels, different amounts of energy apart. Electrons can absorb photons (light) and move up to a higher energy level with the energy of the photon.
So when an abject absorbs light, a photon is basically giving it's energy to one of the electrons inside the object, allowing it to move to a higher energy level and destroying that photon.
Objects can only absorb light that corresponds to an exact transition from one energy level to another. Because different materials have different levels, this is why different objects absorb different colours of light and appear to have different colours. | 20 | 22 |
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For those who have sold programs, script or projects, how did you come up with the idea and how did you sell it? | Im working on a program i wrote for automating some of the tasks as an insurance seller and my company is paying me 500$ a month (which is too cheap as my script is able to make the company tens of thousands a month)
We were tasked to prospect at home so that we had people to call the day after and i told my boss that i would make a program that did it for me. It went from a small python project to becoming much bigger with a lot more data handeling than i thought..
I was curious about other peoples experiences with something like this as i’m learning python at the same time as im making this project. I took the first offer i got from my boss as an extra motivation for learning the ropes of python. | I think you’re on the right track for how to build/sell projects. Find a _real_ problem, build a proof of concept, sell it to a few customers, then grow your business until you can sell the company. Next time you should work on it as a side project/business so your current employer doesn’t own the legal rights to it. | 21 | 33 |
ELI5: How come when people experience memory loss they can forget everything and everyone they know, but they still know how to speak? | There are multiple different types of memory all of which are stored and accessed in different ways in the brain.
Procedural memory, which governs things that are learned through repetition, is one of the strongest, most durable types of memory we have. It's almost impossible to wipe it out without also destroying the brain to the point where the person is no longer really there at all. | 71 | 135 |
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Where does new wealth come from? | I've been reading "The Commanding Heights" by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw which is really my attempt at learning anything about anything in economics. Anyway, while I was reading it and considering the keynesian vs hayek arguments and the author said something about how to have to generate wealth before you can share it around, or something like that. Hearing that I realized that I don't actually know where wealth comes from. How does a society create new wealth out of nothing? I've always thought of an economy as something that trades around wealth, but obviously new wealth is integrated all the time. I guess I'm heaving trouble divorcing the idea of wealth as something separate than money. Could someone help clear this up for me? | Human labor.
People make stuff and provide services. That's wealth.
Imagine two guys on an island who happen to have one $100 bill, call them Amos and Bill. Amos, who started with the $100 bill pays Bill to build him a shelter. Bill builds a shelter for himself too and pays Amos to build a bed. Amos builds his own bed and pays Bill to build a fireplace.
And so on and on. They trade the $100 back and forth, each paying the other for something and making things themselves as well. In the end there is only ever $100 of money in anyone's hands, but there is much more than $100 worth of wealth created. | 44 | 27 |
[ELI5] If hot air rises, then why is there snow on mountains? | The temperature of air depends on pressure. In physics there's something called the ideal gas equation which looks like this:
PV = nRT
where P is pressure and T is temperature. You can see that if you make P smaller, T will be smaller as well. Air pressure goes down as you go up in altitude because gravity is pulling air closer to the surface - more air = more pressure. That means that as you go up in altitude, the air temperature drops.
Hot air never rises forever - it goes up, cools off, and then comes back down. The reason why nothing like that happens indoors is because you built a box around the air, so it hits the ceiling before it can get high enough for altitude to matter. Outside there's nothing to hold it down and so it rises until it cools off. | 15 | 21 |
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Why isn't there any consensus in the philosophic community like there is in the scientific community? | The simplest answer is that many of the objects of study in philosophy are not as directly experienced as the hard sciences are. If scientists disagree on the interior structure of an apple, they can obtain apples, split them open, view them through microscopes, and so on.
But if philosophers differ on the nature of Being, we cannot go look at the nature of Being. We can't pick it up and study it with a microscope. There are many theories about Being, but there are no experiments to see if Being really is this way or that way - because we cannot access it in that manner. The same is true for all these debated topics in philosophy: consciousness, ethics, value theory, knowledge, God, etc. We instead form justified beliefs about these topics based on what we can and do experience.
Of course, science is not wholly exempted from this either. Science depends on our sense experience, for example; if our senses do not convey reality to us, then science isn't conveying anything about reality to us either. It's just conveying the world we appear to see, so if that world is fake (like in the Matrix), the real world may be completely different. But if we assume our senses do convey reality to us as it relates to our senses, then science has a much firmer foundation. The same can be true for some other parts of philosophy; not everything is heavily debated or has no consensus. But all the same, there is little which is wholly unable to be contested, either. | 111 | 61 |
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[Star Wars] I was a Jedi extremely strong in the force, I turned to the Dark Side, and then I abandoned both sides and went into hiding, I affect no one. Will I still be hunted down? | I was one of the strongest users of the force, so strong that I felt the Jedi were holding me back from true potential, never giving me the straight answer. So I turned to the Dark Side, and in it, I found immense power.....but never felt happy. I was alone, my "master" was nothing but just another bigger asshole hell bent on power (I could've probably killed the bastard in his sleep).
So now I have left both sides. I have knowledge of both sides, but I no longer affect them in their cause. I just want to live on my own, not have to use my powers for either side.
I have one problem, will I be hunted down? I have parted with both sides on positive terms, caused no mindless bloodshed. I just don't want to be part of this eternal cycle of war between Light and Dark anymore. Will this independence come at a price? Or will I be left in peace? Do Sith and Jedi ever just let their former members live freely? | It depends mostly on what period of the timeline you are, and what did you do while you were a sith/jedi.
If you were alive during the Old Republic, you would definetly be hunt down by the Sith Empire, loose ends and all that, as well as Siths greedy for the knowledge you definetly amassed. If you commited any war crimes while a Sith the Republic would probably put an arrest for trial on your name. | 17 | 22 |
ELI5: Why did my hair change from blonde as a child to brunette in my teens? | Why did my eyes go from crystal blue to green/blue? Hair from bright blonde to light/medium brunette? I'm male, it it matters. | Hair and eye color darkens over time because the respective genes get turned on during your growth.
For people to get the traits encoded in their genes, the genes need to be turned on. You can think of a gene as a recipe. A recipe in a cookbook does you no good until you open the book, get the ingredients and follow the instructions
The same is true with our genes. In our analogy, the gene is the recipe and the cookbook is the chromosome (a large collection of recipes). The gene needs to be "read" by the cell in order for it to do what it should. An unread brown or black hair recipe will give you blonde hair. | 1,719 | 2,200 |
Why does lithium react so violently with water? | I've seen somebody put lithium in water, obviously it started crackling and creating sparks but I wanted to know why. | Atoms and molecules are always trying to find their way to their most stable state. In the case of Lithium, it has an extra valence electron compared to the noble gases (with their full outer shells), and it'd prefer not to have that one, so it donates it readily, forming an ion with +1 charge. That ion, however, wants to be neutralized by something with a -1 charge, which it can pull off by pulling an OH- from the water (which is plentifully surrounding it while immersed in water). The hydrogen is then free to become whatever it wants to be! But in this case, the reactions gave off a lot of heat, and the hydrogen then finds the most stable thing it can become again is water - by reacting with the oxygen in the air. So while it's a fiery, messy (and possibly explosive - wear your goggles kiddies) reaction, in the end state, all the atoms and molecules have, essentially, become what they most wanted to be - neutralized and stable. | 36 | 39 |
Is consciousness a higher layer of abstraction, or is it the most concrete thing we can know? | This very antimony is the first problem wrestled with by Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit, and resurfaces throughout his work. Sense certainty, while initially appearing to be concrete, struggles with the problem of indexicals. The idea of an object, which might seem to be an abstraction imposed on sense data, is actually a means of making the consciousness of exteriority more sensible (thus avoiding the “now is night” problem) | 25 | 28 |
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What language do the deaf and blind think in? What about deafblind people? | I'm interested to know what they would think in. I have no prior knowledge. | Deaf people, if they were deaf from birth and raised speaking a sign language, think in their native sign language much like you think in your native spoken language. Hearing blind people obvious have no issue acquiring or using spoken language. | 10 | 16 |
[40k] How inept is the Imperium really with their tech? | Are we talking having one person for each button on a keyboard kind of inept or just general lack of knowledge? | Inconsistent. They do understand enough to build new ships and repair warp drives and such. Various groups are also perfectly capable of building entirely new technology. The other problem is that information travels slowly, and the cheapness of human life doesn't inspire innovation.
What is clear is that Mechanicus knows a lot more than they let on, For instance: it turns out the ancient Ark Mechanicus (of which they have several) used in their explorator fleets are full STC factories and **fucking overpowered* with an advanced man-machine interface that lets the pilot control a kilometers long ship like it's power armor, black hole guns, and casual time travel capabilities. But individual Magos, Forge Worlds, and the Mechanicum themselves jealously guard all information and technology, beyond any reason really.
For this reason the inability of the Imperium to fix anything is somewhat overstated. There are people who understand *almost* all the technology in the galaxy, and they do actually manufacture and repair it. The problem is that since information isn't shared and Amazon Prime will be 2000$ a month by then, it only makes for a drop in a bucket in one of a thousand widely spaced buckets. There are no doubt individual high Magos who have personal Skitarii around a thousand years more advanced than the Tau and a clean, safe, fast ship that is the envy of the Eldar(most of it understood, enough to be replicable). In the grim dark future of the 41st millennium, people are greedy fucking morons. | 97 | 49 |
ELI5: Why does exercise help with so many health problems? | So many health issues like heart disease, kidney disease, liver disease... It seems to be the same case in that exercise should help keep those at bay.
But why?
Doesn't exercise increase your heart rate? And isn't an elevated heart rate generally a not good thing outside of exercising? | The heart is a muscle, the stronger it is, the less pumps it needs to create a good blood flow.
People who do cardio will usually have a lower heart rate during normal activities due to this strength. | 190 | 188 |
ELI5: Does the immune system get weak or “rusty” having not had to fight off human spread infections for over a year while in quarantine? | It really depends upon the organism being bacteria or virus. Nobody knows how long Covid-19 vaccines will offer immunity, yet. Also different vaccines will vary. Chicken Pox vaccine (varicella) lasts \~40-50 years, then immunity lessens, that's why there is a Shingles vaccine for elders. Measles last your lifetime. Tetanus should be re-vaccinated every 6-10 years.
The yearly flu (influenza) lasts only about a year, but not because the immune system weakens, it's because the virus changes and the body no longer recognizes it.
Vaccines or the natural infection itself (such as chicken pox) give the same immunity. With chicken pox whose immunity lasts about 40 years, it is the immune system getting weaker. With influenza, it's "I don't recognize this enemy." With Tetanus it's "I forgot how to fight this."
Not all mutations are bad. Back around 2009 the "swine flu" hit the world, another pandemic, but the virus mutated so much that it pretty much was no longer a big issue. Unfortunately Covid-19 is not being so polite, but it also could mutate into a friendlier form, or as you've heard a "worse" one. In this case it's not more harmful, it simply spreads easier.
Covid-19 vaccines are most likely going to become an annual thing, maybe even mixed with the flu shot. Remember though that vaccines can give "partial immunity." This means that while you might become ill, you might not become seriously ill. | 72 | 106 |
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Are we smarter than the first humans, or is it just collective knowledge? | When I asked this is class, it started a debate that led nowhere.
Would like to see what fellow redditors have to say on this subject. | If you could raise a baby that was born 200,000 years ago with modern technology and methods, would they less capable that a modern baby? Would a 50,000 year old baby have the abilities of a modern human? | 244 | 888 |
Academics of AskPhil: what constitutes a great research proposal for a PhD? | I'm graduating my second masters soon, so it's time for me to start looking for a PhD position. Mind you, I am in Europe, I think stuff may work a bit different here in terms of graduate schools etc.
For nearly every position you have to write a research proposal that covers the what/how/why of your research. I have written some short ones, but a proposal for research that'll last 3 to 4 years is a different story.
How can I go about this in the best way? What should I focus on? How did you do it? | I've just had mine accepted.
Our Research Methods taught module had a research proposal as one of its components.
The structure we were given to follow was the following:
Title/Question - The question you intend to answer in the thesis
Context - A survey of the literature and surrounding area to your question. Why is the question important. What contribution will it make to the overall scholarship.
Method - How you intend to go about answering your question. A rough division of the sections you intend to have in your thesis.
Bibiliography - The texts you intend to use.
Most of the proposal is in the context, then the method.
The expected length (including bibiliography) was about 1500 words. | 11 | 17 |
ELI5: Why is the proof for 1+1=2 over 100 pages long? | Because the proof has to first define what the numbers 1 and 2 mean, as well as defining the concept of addition and proving that addition operates in the manner that it does, all before tackling an actual instance of addition being used. | 197 | 174 |
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ELI5: Why is charging an electric car cheaper than filling a gasoline engine when electricity is mostly generated by burning fossil fuels? | First, electricity is generated in many different ways. In some areas, large amounts of electricity come from non-greenhouse-gas sources, such as nuclear, hydroelectric, solar and wind, and more.
Second, the way in which we harness the energy of burning fuel in an engine is very different to how we harness burning fuel in a power plant. Any power source will have an efficieny percentage of how much theoretical energy something produces, versus how much useful energy is created.
Specifically, when you burn fuel in a car, you are using the explosive (kinetic) force of the fuel to push pistons out. However, a large amount of the energy in the reaction is lost as heat energy that doesn't have any practical use. Compared to an electric plant, we can capture extra heat and use that heat in sufficient quantities to spin a turbine to produce more electricity, increasing the overal efficiency. | 7,205 | 10,587 |
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What is the relationship between reason and emotions? | It seems to me that many, if not most, philosophers throughout history claimed that a life governed by reason is superior to one governed by 'passions' (emotion, desire, appetite, etc.).
Also, there seems to be a common conception that reason is something opposed to emotions. I feel like this idea is deeply mistaken, but can't explain why.
So, what could be the relationship between reason and emotions (and, by extension, 'passions')? Are they necessarily in conflict with each other? Is reason something that puts emotions under control, and vice versa? Can reason exist without emotions, and vice versa? Can I lead a life deeply affected by both reason and emotions? | This is a huge topic and you’ll find that there are many different arguments about it. Very briefly:
Plato: reason should control the unruly emotions, to lead to a state of equilibrium between reason, courage and the emotions.
Aristotle: the emotions can be habituated to work with reason to see the noble and the good.
Hume: reason is the slave of the emotions, morality is relative to our emotions.
Kant: reason gives us access to morality, the emotions are sources of heteronomy.
Nietzsche: the will to power doesn’t eliminate the emotions but it doesn’t consist in giving into them either.
Freud: the unconscious attacks the idea of all powerful reason. | 14 | 15 |
At nighttime, how come i can see something better if i use my peripherals but if you stare directly at it the object gets darker and harder to see? | Your eye has two different ways to "see" light - rods and cones. Rods are can see with less light, but don't see color. Cones can see color, but aren't very good in the dark.
The middle part of your eye has more cones than rods, and the outsides have more rods than cones. So you see better color in the middle, but better in the dark around the edges. | 63 | 98 |
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ELI5: In traffic, why do cyclists by default have to use the road instead of the sidewalk? Aren't motor vehicles and cyclists a bigger danger to each other than cyclists and pedestrians would be? | Doesn't seem reasonable to me from a risk-reward-perspective.
Edit: I wrote this ELI5 from the perspective of a slow cyclist who is intimidated by cars and would feel much safer on the sidewalk. The regulations- and predictability-argument makes a lot of sense - but when I'm driving on a busy street with 15 km/h I feel EXTREMELY uncomfortable with cars (who might otherwise be driving with 50 km/h) lining up behind me (passing a cyclist still requires you to keep your distance, you can't just squeeze by) | Bicycles and cars are supposed to follow the same rules, and both drivers and riders are responsible for maintaining situational awareness. This is intended to create a predictable flow.
As others have mentioned, while there are notions about how best to walk on a sidewalk, there aren't really any rules or regulations. A bike coming up behind a car can make a fairly accurate assumption about what the car is going to do next based on signals used by the car and/or the lane the car is in. Sidewalks are pure chaos. | 35 | 46 |
Why does egg turn white when you cook it? | Proteins are shaped with hydrophobic parts of the molecule on the inside and hydrophilic parts on the outside, allowing them to be water soluble. When the egg white is clear, you're seeing a solution with dissolved proteins in it.
Proteins are very large molecules that are typically designed to function in a certain range (of temperature, pH, ...). For most proteins, that range does not include typical cooking temperatures. On a molecular level, the heat imparted by cooking is enough to undo some of the bonds that give protein its structure.
Then the protein loses its shape, so it is no longer water soluble. Then the proteins come out of solution as a solid. This solid happens to have a white color.
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How to leave academia after post-doc | I’ve been on track for a TT position since I started doing research in my undergrad. Finished my PhD with a solid amount of top tier publications in my field (STEM), post-doc at a high ranking university for a year, and now I’m on my second post-doc at a higher ranked university.
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In my post-docs, though, things just slowed down, and I haven’t been able to publish anything. There are a number of reasons for this. I was spread thin on different projects and never found time to finish anything. I was less motivated to output without my thesis looming ahead. I had an absent post-doc advisor. I’ve been just doing the things that need to get done. Things that I used to really like doing I find very dull and dread doing now, which is why I'm writing this post and not something else.
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Next thing I know, it’s almost 2 years later and I have little to show for it; I’ve barely even submitted a paper. I’ve been told by a few people that this part of academia just sucks, but I think it sucks enough that I really don’t want to keep doing something I don’t like, especially because I’m afraid that TT won’t be any better. On top of all that, I’m afraid my 2 years without publishing can’t be made up for with my PhD publications and anything I do next. The thing is, outside of work things are going super well - which I know is a problem for a lot of post-docs. But I love the city I moved to, have supportive partner, made lots of great friends, have a great social life, picked up new hobbies.... It's just my job that's really draining me.
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So now to the real problem I want to ask about (although I'll take advice on the rest). I’ve always been working for a faculty position, and I don’t know what to do without that. People who’ve left academia, what do you do know? When did you realize that you wanted to leave and how did you go about finding something else? Are things better?
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tldr: always been on track for faculty position; now I wanna jump ship, but I have no idea where to land. | If you're in STEM, consider an industry research lab. It's a mix of both worlds. Your publication profile will help you get a job, but the lab may also appreciate some of the more menial tasks you may have done during your postdocs. | 52 | 56 |
[The Boys] If Vought really wants to start making money off the military... | ...wouldn't it make sense to start manufacturing military clothing and field gear out of whatever the Seven's outfits are made from? Those costumes take an incredible amount of punishment, and those outfits never seem to need fixing. A soldier wearing BDUs made from the same material as Homelander's outfit would still be knocked over by gunfire but it would be less likely to penetrate, and would be resistant to shrapnel, sharp edges, fire, etc. Queen Maeve's outfit stood up to being shoved through an armored car and didn't look any different, and Stormfront's clothing took no visible damage from gunfire. | You have to remember that these outfits are few and far between with decades of research and development leading to the material used now. Each supes combat suit likely costs several million dollars in final product form. The pentagon loves wasting money but not that much. Iirc an average soldiers gear costs around 10-12 thousand dollars. So a super suit would realistically cost 100k or more which is too much for an otherwise disposable outfit. | 38 | 50 |
ELI5: How do house builders avoid weather damage while the buildings are under construction? | Whenever I see unfinished houses in a downpour all I can think about is all the places water is seeping in to cause damage. How does the potential damage get mitigated by the time a roof and siding gets added? Does the wood really just dry out enough in the sun that it is not an issue? | Depends on what phase of construction they are in. In new construction, there is rarely any need to keep things dry during the framing phase. By the time you need to have things kept dry you'll generally see a house-wrap and windows installed as well as a roof (either the final roof, or an underlayment that will stay there for the long run, but is temporarily serving as a water barrier.
The crudest rule is that if you're gonna put up insulation and sheetrock the house should be dry and be able to stay dry. Anything prior to that and you'd be ok with some moisture as long as it has a chance to dry out. | 13 | 20 |
How would the water cycle be affected if we were to switch to hydrogen as a fuel for the majority of cars? | Would there be a net change in the amount of water on the planet? What would be the ramifications long term (100 years, or more into the future)? | It depends on the source of the hydrogen. If hydrogen is obtained through electrolysis of water then the net change would be zero. However electrolysis of water is a relatively expensive way of obtaining hydrogen.
Currently the most common way of obtaining hydrogen is through refining natural gas (natural gas reforming) or biomass gasification. Both process requires water in their chemical process However neither is carbon neutral and the refining process produces CO and CO2 so neither process really abates the accumulation of greenhouse gases.
The hope is that renewable energy can be made cheap enough that electrolysis of water can be done economically to displace fossil or biomass sources of hydrogen. There are possibilities of genetic engineering bacteria’s that produces hydrogen as a byproduct through some kind of biological process which would be carbon neutral but this is still an area of active research.
All of that is the preface and context needed to answer your question. The amount of changes to the water cycle depends on how the hydrogen is primarily going to be sourced in the future. Both natural gas reforming and biomass gasification are water intensive chemical processes and may have impact on the local water source near where the refineries are located. On a planetary scale the consumption of natural gas derived hydrogen means an effective mass transfer of hydrogen in the form of hydrocarbons to the form of water. The amount of hydrocarbons on the earth is pretty insignificant compared to the amount of water on the planet so the net change in water through these process would be negligible (my assumption as I’m an engineer and not a geologist; please correct me if I’m wrong here).
If hydrogen is sourced from electrolysis using renewable energy then the local impact on the water cycle will again be dependent on where the water sources are drawn from. On a planetary scale there will be no net change in the amount of water on the planet. The water to hydrogen+water back to water cycle is essentially a means to store and transport the energy used for electrolysis. | 1,049 | 2,004 |
Do you keep your old/unfinished projects on github? | Pretty much what title says. I was wondering whether you guys keep the old projects on your github(or any similar site) or you keep it clean and only have the ones you're proud of?
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Personally i actually do keep most of the projects i've worked on ever since i started programming (\~6 years) and even though some of them are terrible (in terms of readability/architechture etc.) for some reason i don't want to remove them (i lie to myself i will update them).
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I wonder if it can be harmful in a way, i.e. recruiter would see old project and would judge my skills based on that. | I’m not suggesting unfinished projects or projects you create early on when learning a language are necessarily bad, but you can choose to create new projects as private and then only make them public when you are happy with them. | 53 | 71 |
CMV: Being fat/obese/severely overweight and being okay with it with no desire to change is a form of self harm. | If a person is severely overweight and they can change it just by eating less and working out more but are choosing not to, they are deliberately harming themselves.
Whenever an overweight girl uploads a picture to a site like instagram or twitter and her friends comment stuff like "Slayyyy" or "Yasss queen"...they are encouraging this behaviour.
These people need help just like everyone else self harming. Think about how we would perceive a person who uploads a picture with slit wrist scars on instagram or twitter and their friends were encouraging it and saying stuff like "looks beautiful" or "wow that's amazing"...we would think they are delusional. | Do you believe this applies to all forms of poor health? Smoking? Not exercising? Not getting enough sleep?
And does this apply to people who eat to the point where they are clearly using food as an emotional crutch, or does it apply to all fat people who are ok with their body's? Even those trying to have a healthier lifestyle? | 43 | 153 |
ELI5 why increased atmospheric CO2 levels don't just mean healthier more lush plant life which in turn offset that CO2. | . | Photosynthesis = H20 + CO2 + Light (particularly UV/V/B light) made into O2 (oxygen gas) + C6H12O6 (Sugar).... Let's keep that simplification in mind for now.
When we think about plants making O2 to offset the CO2 production, you run into two key limitations: water and rate of photosynthesis. When there is no water (particularly clean, harmless water), it prevents the process of photosynthesis from occurring. That is why a drought can be devastating in that regard. This usually isn't an issue as rain forests contribute much of the plant-based global-O2 generation and these environments are not insanely water deprived (but global warming and deforesting have still affected this cycle in some regards).
The biggest issue is rate of photosynthesis. Just because more CO2 is present, that does not mean the plant will engage in photosynthesis much quicker. Think of it like this: let's say your car tops out at 100mph. Does adding more gas in your tank make your car faster? The answer - no. Your car (plant) is still limited by its internals (plant chlorophylls) regardless of how much gas (CO2) is in the tank (atmosphere).
Also, the Ocean makes about 70% of oxygen. Phytoplankton and the sorts, and they are also in danger due to the dropping quality of ocean water in some regions.
EDIT: Phone auto corrected "in danger" to "endangered." | 13 | 15 |
ELI5: How a dyno determines how much horsepower a car has from the tires spinning. | Is it how fast the drum takes to get up to speed? I'm sure there is alot more to it like gearing, but this has always boggled me. | The simplest type uses a(very large) weighted wheel of a known weight, and the engine's ability to accelerate that weight to determine power. That's how a "mustang dyno works. Other dynos use a known load, either an amount of water pumped, or an amount of electricity generated to find out the amount of power created. The mechanisms behind both methods are much more complicated, but are generally accepted as better, and more useful results, since they can be applied "steady state". Meaning an engineer can find out how much power is produced at any given rpm continuously. | 48 | 192 |
[Fullmetal Alchemist]How is Alchemy used to heal? | How do Alchemist heal people? Do they accelerate the growth of cells in the body to close wounds and etc? Doesn't this ignore equivalent exchange?. | This depends on the Alchemy.
Amestrian generally can't heal except with the Philosopher's Stone because the Philosopher's Stone uses a powerful energy source to "violate" Equivalent Exchange.
Alkahestry from Xing can because it's based on the principles of chi, the natural flow on energy in everything from mountains to humans. It uses that chi to speed up natural human regenerative processes, strengthening and healing the body. | 39 | 46 |
ELI5:Evolution (former jehovah witness) | The theory of evolution.....ELI5: | Basic explanation:
You have animals producing offspringThere will be slight variations between offspring and parents. These differences are due to recombinant of genes (you are a combo of genes from your mom and your dad, so you aren't exactly like either one of them) and from mutation. Mutation is when a part of your DNA is accidentally changed (many ways this can happen). Some mutations don't cause any change while others can have a huge effect. These mutations can create new traits that did not exist in your species before.
Now, as populations of animals create new offspring and live they must compete with each other and other animals to survive. They must also survive environmental factors such as weather. This struggle for survival causes what is referred to as selective pressure. Basically what it means it is since it is difficult to live only the best animals will be able to survive and reproduce. (This isn't 100%, but the idea is your chances of surviving and reproducing are higher if you are a better individual). if only the best survive and you have random changes between generations then any new mutations that are a benefit to the animal will survive and be passed on to more and more offspring while any traits that are disadvantageous will eventually die of. In this way species slowly change over many generations to become better adapted to their situation | 49 | 19 |
[Rick and Morty] Are Meeseeks created with the knowledge to compete the task? Can they complete any task someone trained could do? | In the episode they are created with the ability to teach Golf, speak well in public, write the speech given to help Summer, and had enough emotional depth to help Beth.
Like let's say I ask a Meeseeks to coach a baseball game, fix my car, or cook dinner. Would they instantly know how to compete those tasks? | I believe they have access to some sort of hammerspace-like information system where all the information they need to complete any given task is stored.
When a Meeseeks first poofs into existence, it has no idea what it will be asked to do, so there's no way for it to be created with the knowledge to complete every possible task, large or small. That would require them to be omniscient, and Rick himself said that they weren't gods.
So they pop into the world, receive their instructions, and then mentally download the relevant information from the Meeseeks version of the internet. This gives them the appearance of knowing off the top of their heads how to complete any given task.
It's worth noting that merely *having all the necessary information* to complete a task is not the same as *actually completing* that task. Ultimately, Meeseeks are primarily limited by the task completion parameters established by whomever summoned them (in addition to whatever else prevents them from being gods able to accomplish anything).
The Meeseeks that Jerry summoned knew exactly how to get two strokes off his golf game, but was limited by Jerry's utter incompetence and unwillingness to actually put into practice the coaching he was given. It couldn't physically *compel* Jerry's body to perform the necessary movements to make a lower handicap stroke.
So Jerry himself became a system-breaking task parameter. The Meeseeks had no idea how to work around him, so it did the only thing it could think to do: create another Meeseeks and ask for its help. This created a system loop which resulted in a large group of Meeseeks being created, none of which could accomplish the task as given.
The first Meeseeks came up with the only logical solution: kill the person that set the task, and the task is completed under the established parameters. "But we WILL get *all* strokes off his game...
**WHEN WE KEEL HIM!!**"
So a Meeseeks isn't automatically created with the knowledge to complete its assigned task, but it has instant *access* to that knowledge and is primarily limited in its application of that knowledge by the parameters set by the person giving it the task. | 241 | 178 |
ELI5: How can bands play cover versions of older songs & make money doing it, without penalty? Do they have to pay licensing beforehand? | A mechanical license is all that's usually required (in the USA). You can cover any song you want for $0.091 per copy that you sell, paid directly to the owner of the song (whoever legally owns the rights to the song, almost always the publisher). The person who owns the rights doesn't have any say in the matter.
You usually have to pay this fee upfront based on an estimate of how much you'll sell. If you think you'll sell a thousand copies, you'll pay $91 upfront.
If you're streaming on YouTube or Twitch or whatever, you'll need a synchronization license instead. For a synch license, you need permission upfront and they can charge whatever they want to charge for it.
For live covers, if you aren't recording the event it should be fine, but if you're playing a really big gig/recording it for sale you'll need to get in touch with either ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC to obtain public performance rights and pay public performance royalties.
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Finally, there is the strange case of music copyright that allows you to play any unpublished song you want without issue. An unpublished song is one that hasn't been recorded and released for sale. For example, the Mountain Goats had an album called Hail and Farewell, Gothenburg that was never released (until it leaked), but they'd occasionally play songs from the album live. Because it was never released for sale, anyone could cover those songs absolutely free, because they didn't have legal rights. Only published songs have legal protection. | 85 | 78 |
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ELI5: Alpha Go and its decision making process. | AlphaGo uses something called machine learning, which is essentially a way of classifying objects based on the classification of past objects that we give the computer. In this case the objects being classified are the states of the board. So we tell AlphaGo what the good and bad moves of past games were, and AlphaGo uses that data to tell which moves it should think are good or bad. It then uses a combination of this information and searching through possible moves to make a decision about what it should play. | 30 | 144 |
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I firmly believe that mathematics is given far too much priority over arts, humanities, and even science. CMV? | **Edit:** Some elaboration.
Where is the culture in overemphasizing mathematics? Sure, did can do trigonometry in the eighth grade, but can he appreciate a good novel, or is he taught the important of walking and riding a bicycle versus taking a vehicle? He can find the volume of his pencil if it were hollowed out, but does he know about the mass deforestation and global warming? Can he simply sit and be present for ten minutes, thinking of nothing? Does he know what to do if his bicycle experiences a chain derailment or if his vehicle starts making a knocking noise below his feet as compared to the passenger side of the engine bay? Does he even know the state bird or flower? Can be name *three* literary geniuses of the 20th century? The 19th? Does he know of Bach? Vivaldi? What of John Nash, even? What about Home-Ec? Sure, you can do quadrilateral whatcha-call-its, but can you bake a loaf of bread? Do you know that you should not use a credit card if you don't have the money already? Do you know when to pay that card to avoid interest?
I could go on. Truth has it that mathematics is being placed at far too high of a priority than all other fields. Mathematics is *not* the soul of the universe (okay, so, it is...). Where are we if what we are most focused on is that of *technological* advancement and not even cultural *maintenance*?
**Note:** Thank you all so much for some great discussion and viewpoints. I can see some reasoning behind the value of mathematics, for the most part. Maybe, then, we should look at the value of our educations and its delivery methods. | Music and other art forms are often heavily influenced by math. BPM and the longevity of notes all flow mathematically. Science could not be understood without math either. Mathematics basically are part of everything in our day to day lives, maybe not in a geometry or algebra question, but math is always in our lives. | 36 | 49 |
ELI5: Why is it often times easy to give advice to someone in a tough situation, but when you’re in their shoes, it’s hard to make up your mind? | Along with answers people have given, it is also a matter of perspective. We can see the bigger picture when we are seeing someone else’s situation. But when we are experiencing it, we are lost in the details. | 842 | 1,735 |
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ELI5: Why do printers use cyan instead of blue? | The primary colors of light are red, green, and blue. Pigments though absorb light and reflect portions of the spectrum so their primary colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow. Printers have to use cyan because they aren't printing light, they are printing a substance which absorbs light. | 404 | 320 |
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Do you need microservices? | There have been two posts on Medium about Microservices lately. One saying [I need them](https://medium.com/devops-dudes/yes-you-do-need-microservices-c38be2c7cd4) and one saying I [don't](https://medium.com/swlh/stop-you-dont-need-microservices-dc732d70b3e0) need them. What should I be learning? | Microservices have value, but there are a lot of ways you can go wrong when building a microservice architecture
Some will say that the benefit of easier deployment and separation of concerns makes them a preferable architecture. Others will say that it's unnecessary risk and overcomplication when a monolithic architecture works just fine for most use cases | 22 | 42 |
ELI5: Where do your thoughts go when you forget them? | If a brain is analogous to a computer, is there some place where memories are stored either short term or long term? | Memories in the human brain are, as far as we know, stored as links between clusters of neurons. When we remember something, we're sending a cascade of impulses down this network to re-experience something as you did originally.
When you forget, those connections are broken. The memory is literally disassembled. The neurons are (usually) still there, but without the connection, the cascade can't happen and you can't remember it. Degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's involve brain cells literally dying, cutting those connections in the process. | 24 | 16 |
How would you educate your child? | In the US, we are aware that the public education system, K-12, is not running optimally. Lack of funding, irrelevant curricula and stifling of creativity are just some of the problems facing our schools. As a person who is familiar, or even involved, with academic pursuit, how would you choose to educate your child? Private schooling? Home schooling? Public school? Private tutors? Please let me know your thoughts. | Whatever the state of the public education system as a whole may be, you should evaluate your local public school option first. There are some very good public schools out there that are not irrelevant, underfunded, or stifling of creativity. | 42 | 15 |
ELI5: How do animals survive being struck by lightning if the temperature of an average bolt is 5 times of that of the surface of the sun? (roughly 30,000 kelvin) | [Apparently this bison got struck by lightning. Seems alright to me. Sorta.](https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/uploads/NealSmithNWRKarenVisteSparkmanFWS.jpg) | How much heat you absorb is a function of both temperature and time. A lightning strike is over in a millisecond, so only a small amount of energy is transferred. It is enough to burn the skin, but not enough to damage anything internal. It's sort of like how if you cook at too high of a temperature you can burn the outside of meat and still have the inside undercooked. | 56 | 81 |
Why do we perceive octaves to be the "same" note? | Is it cultural, psychological, or physics? I've always wondered this. Is it a feature of the waves? And if so, why does our brain interpret that feature to be the "same". Is it possible for a sentient being to perceive different "octaves" than ours, say a 15 step octave?
For that matter, is there any significance to what is considered a half/whole step in music? Or is it all cultural/psychological? | We perceive pitches that are an octave apart to be the same pitch class because there's a unique mathematical relationship between the two pitches - 1:2. For example, the A the orchestra tunes to is 440 hz and the A above that is 880 hz. The octave is not universal per se, but it is very, very common in different world musics.
Tones and semitones are somewhat less clear-cut, but they're based on the same principle. Collectively, the pitches of a scale embody the pitches that have relatively simple ratios to the tonic pitch. If you take the first 12ish notes of the harmonic series, you'll get the chromatic scale. This is less universal than octave equivalence.
| 30 | 28 |
What's the difference between an argument and an explanation? Homework Help | I know that this question was already asked (2 years ago), but I couldn't understand the explanation. I tried to google it as well, which led to me only becoming more perplexed.
I read that an argument can answer the question "How do you know?" while an explanation answers the question "Why is that so?" But I'm struggling to notice the difference.
For example (from my homework, which we are being asked to determine if what is written is an argument or not, and if it is to standardize it):
"I don't care what you say. I really think that Mary is in love with Allan. Why? Because she always wants to talk about him. And she gets very excited when he is due for a visit. She even blushes when you ask her about him."
I initially assumed it was an argument, but it doesn't seem to have a logical flow, it just seems to be answering why the speaker believes in what they believe.
Sorry if this was long. Thank you. | An argument gives an account as to *how you know* a conclusion to be true, while an explanation gives account as to *why* a conclusion is true. From your example, it is clear that the narrator is giving an account as to how he “knows” that Mary is in love with Allan. He argues that since Mary always wants to talk about Allan, gets excited about him and even blushes around him, she must truly be in love with Allan. But ask yourself are those truly reasons *why* Mary is in love with him? Surely these facts about Mary are a result of her being in love, not what’s causing her to be in love. Therefore, these aren’t explanations as to why Mary loves him. It’s an argument as to how the narrator is justified in believing that she does. | 48 | 75 |
Ways for the rich to invest in the poor? | Obviously the point of having extra money is to put it to work making more money, but in doing so limits its circulation within the economy. What are ways to turn a profit that also directly improves the lives of poor people? For instance, creating a factory provides jobs which directly puts more money in a local circulation and creates more jobs.. basically is both an investment of the rich and an improving of the nonrich. Are there more examples beyond just creating jobs that rich people can invest their money into and receive a nonzero ROI? | Development of medical treatments (e.g. Covid vaccines), cheaper manufacturing processes, improving the efficiency of services delivery, etc. Basically things that reduce prices tend to help the poor.
A plus of reducing prices is that this helps the poor who can't work (say due to disability or unemployment). The lowest income quintile has a disproportionate share of households with no one earning a market income (at least in every country I've seen data for). | 10 | 18 |
Is Nietzschean philosophy anti-religion, or just anti-Christianity? | I'm not an expert, but I've read Thus Spoke Zarathustra and The Antichrist, along with bits here and there and it seems that much of what Nietzsche criticized about religion, what he called slave morality, was actually about Christianity. Christianity is unique, even among the other Abrahamic faiths, for its "blessed are the poor and meek" outlook and its negative view of sex, treating a celibate and monastic life as holier than marriage and children, while Judaism and Islam condemn a life of chosen celibacy and are quite positive on sex between husband and wife.
I've tried to find statements from Nietzsche on other religions, and while his statements on Jews are mostly talking about them as people (in the context of his opposition to anti-Semitism) and his statements on Buddhism are contradictory and misguided due to his knowledge of Buddhists being filtered through Schopenhauer, I did find his comments on Islam and Islamic civilization in The Antichrist to be very interesting.
>Christianity destroyed for us the whole harvest of ancient civilization, and later it also destroyed for us the whole harvest of Mohammedan civilization. The wonderful culture of the Moors in Spain, which was fundamentally nearer to us and appealed more to our senses and tastes than that of Rome and Greece, was trampled down (—I do not say by what sort of feet—) Why? Because it had to thank noble and manly instincts for its origin—because it said yes to life, even to the rare and refined luxuriousness of Moorish life!… The crusaders later made war on something before which it would have been more fitting for them to have grovelled in the dust—a civilization beside which even that of our nineteenth century seems very poor and very “senile.”—What they wanted, of course, was booty: the orient was rich…. Let us put aside our prejudices! The crusades were a higher form of piracy, nothing more! The German nobility, which is fundamentally a Viking nobility, was in its element there: the church knew only too well how the German nobility was to be won…. The German noble, always the “Swiss guard” of the church, always in the service of every bad instinct of the church—but well paid…. Consider the fact that it is precisely the aid of German swords and German blood and valour that has enabled the church to carry through its war to the death upon everything noble on earth! At this point a host of painful questions suggest themselves. The German nobility stands outside the history of the higher civilization: the reason is obvious…. Christianity, alcohol—the two great means of corruption…. Intrinsically there should be no more choice between Islam and Christianity than there is between an Arab and a Jew. The decision is already reached; nobody remains at liberty to choose here. Either a man is a Chandala or he is not…. “War to the knife with Rome! Peace and friendship with Islam!”: this was the feeling, this was the act, of that great free spirit, that genius among German emperors, Frederick II. What! must a German first be a genius, a free spirit, before he can feel decently? I can’t make out how a German could ever feel Christian….
It seems to me that Nietzsche and his philosophy is less anti-religion as it is commonly perceived, and more anti-Christian, what do you think?
| Based on what he says in *GM* and *GS*, it seems like Nietzsche has grounds to object to any religion which involves investing yourself in a being who you take to be the author of your life’s meaning or moral value.
We might clarify, though, and say that Nietzsche *really* only objects insofar as such religions affect “higher” types. Such religions might be perfectly healthy for people with certain wills. It’s not clear what proportion of society Nietzsche thinks is “higher.” | 13 | 21 |
ELI5: How did/do people learn other languages without a translator | Basically the same way you learn the first language.
Drop someone in a society speaking a language they don't know and they'll get to learn pretty fast.
Survival is quite a strong motivation. Sure it'll take a while to achieve fluency, but once you know enough to have a simple discussion, you can just use the language to learn it. | 57 | 29 |
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[Marvel] Does Daredevil "see" better or worse when it rains? | I was re-watching Season 1 of DD, and during the fight in the rain, I couldn't figure out if DD had an easier or harder time fighting. I can see the argument for both: He can see better because the rain creates sound bouncing off EVERYTHING. Or he can see worse because it's overwhelming or it becomes harder to pinpoint certain objects. | When it rains, he perceives his surroundings with much greater detail but his long range hearing is certainly hampered making it more challenging to detect things further away as the rain drowns out sound over distance. | 47 | 54 |
[HarryPotter] What does the wizarding world export? | The wizarding world seems to purchase a lot of mundane stuff (like food) from muggles. Enough that Gringotts does currency exchange as a regular service. But what do muggles buy from wizards? Wizards don't seem to make a lot of mundane stuff, and muggles certainly aren't allowed to buy property in the wizarding world. Yet without a balance of trade, the exchange rate would quickly collapse. | Natural resources would be a good choice. Locatus Diamondus or a similar incantation would allow the wizards to find something that muggles would easily accept. Or Cowus Biggus and such spells would make them highly effective organic farmers.
Effective divination could allow wizard and witch brokers to make big money in the stock market, then use that money to buy muggle goods to sell to their fellow wizards. Then they'd be paid in currency they can actually use in their daily lives.
Beyond that, possibly there is a grey market ins special magical services for muggles illegally in the know. Scrying, healing, etc. Things that are easily hidden from the outside world, but potentially valuable. | 18 | 31 |
ELI5: Why do older games like to crash or have problems on newer computer? | My buddy has a pretty decent pc he can run Doom Eternal at a smooth 60, but when he tried to run Unreal Tournament 2004 it was pretty much unplayable and I was curious as to why. | Think of it as a language. If you'd jump back in time to a year around 1500 a.d. and try to talk to a person speaking the English language, you'd likely have quite some problems because the language changed a lot since then. Ways computers do stuff evolves too, and UT2004 simply doesn't know the latest vocabulary. | 288 | 193 |
[Fantasy] Why does technology in fantasy worlds stay the same for thousands of years? | I would like to know, why is it that fantasy worlds technology seem to stay the same for thousands of years with no improvement ? For example: Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Eragon, and many other fantasy worlds seem to be trapped in a medieval stasis for thousands of years. Why is that? Why does the technology barely move in those worlds? | Necessity and limitations are the mother and drive of all scientific innovation. Need to carry a load, invent wheel. Need to hunt for food, invent spear. Practical magic erases those needs and limitation. There's no need to invent weapons that does massive damage over a wide area when any magi can do the same. Why innovate medicine when anyone can pray to the Gods for divine healing? Add to the fact the magic is often seen as an elitist talent, so families would send their best and brightest to learn dogmatic rituals of magic, closing other avenues of research and development. | 35 | 29 |
ELI5:Why is a decreasing population considered a bad thing for a country? | Why is a decreasing population seen as a negative for industrialized countries? Doesn't increasing automation technology mean that with less people everyone will have more? Surely cities being less crowded with higher average wealth is a positive?
What am I missing? | People are an input into the economy, just like oil or farm land or machines. As a general rule, the more people you have, the more you can produce. So, on a surface level, a shrinking population is bad for an economy in the same way that a dwindling oil supply or lack of capital is bad.
Unlike most of those things, people also create demand, not just supply. So fewer people can also mean that people aren't out there looking to buy new stuff---especially land and houses. which can also upset the economy quite a bit.
On top of that, shrinking populations also usually mean aging populations. As people get older they tend to go from being net producers to net consumers, especially when health deteriorates. This can force a country to make hard choices about how, and how much, to support an older population that increasingly can't support itself. This is made worse by the fact that some jobs simply aren't suited to older people (There are very few 80 year old coal miners, or 70 year old ER nurses, and even when people are only 40 or so they may find that family and health makes it hard to work the kind of job or hours they could have worked when they were 50.)
| 235 | 287 |
CMV: My brother is making stupid financial decisions over a girl. | My brother is making the absolute worst decisions ever, and it's even worse because he cannot even afford his mistakes by himself.
My brother first started dating a girl months ago, he met her when he was down at a college (presumably hanging out with friends above all else). Months pass and he tells us of his plans of moving out.
He wants to move to Philadelphia, which is 2 hours away from the city we live in now. The girl he met goes to college there. His idea is to attend a community college down in that city. No, not where she goes, but a community college. Alright, that is stupid but it does work out.
What he says next is mind boggling. Rather than attend the community college here, which is likely cheaper than the one down in Philadelphia, he plans on living in an apartment which is $700 monthly. So just to give you the picture here, he refuses to attend the local CC (which is actually in town, nonetheless) so he will rather attend the one in Philly where that girl lives.
So when he could attend a cheaper community college whilst living at home, he would rather topple himself with a $700 a month apartment and a more expensive school. I think my mother is making stupid decisions when she is deciding to pay his first month's rent. Simply because I doubt it will be her last payment.
I'm under the impression that it is solely about this girl. With that said, what happens when they break up? My brother will likely drop everything and try to move back home, and it has happened before. My brother attended Bloomsburg University, so he decided to get an apartment with friends, and the idiot put every single thing under his name, including the lease.
He dropped out of Bloomsburg University and he is still in debt with the landlord of the previous apartment. He was close to having to go to the magistrate, but my mother is deciding to help him by paying off the $400 he owes.
I fear that the same scenario will happen upon my brother and his girlfriend breaking up. He will pack up and move back home, living on the living room couch (he even has a bed in HIS ROOM, what a fool). I don't think it's right for him to bring our mom into this, but she is doing this willingly. It's sad because he can barely afford it, I personally don't think she can. She set herself up for many more payments, I have a feeling.
My brother won't even have a job when he is down in school. I wish it wasn't possible for someone without a source of income to have an apartment in their name.
That's enough rambling, I'm sorry for making this disorganized. I'm new to this, I just wanted to hear what you guys think and how you would approach this. Obviously my voice in this is not meaningful, and it's not really regarded at all. It's not my life, but it's indeed my mom, and I want to change her mind with supporting my brother's stupid mistakes. However, it just hasn't been working.
Thank you for reading, and even more of a thank you if you do help CMV.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | At some point in your life, you get to make your own decisions. The reason people in their 40s make fewer stupid mistakes, is that they already made them in their 20s.
In the short term, it may look like a stupid mistake, but as someone in their 40s it looks like a typical and necessary part of becoming an adult. | 21 | 15 |
How would the earlier Wittgenstein be attacked by the later Wittgenstein, and how would earlier Wittgenstein respond? | Most of the *Philosophical Investigations* is written as a response to his earlier views. To a certain extent, the drama of that book is him talking his earlier self out of those views, rather than a straight elaboration of his current views.
David Pears had an extended commentary on *PI* suggesting that it's simply the method of the *Tractatus* applied to itself (it's not a particularly popular interpretation...). | 15 | 26 |
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How do computers/calculators find the square roots of numbers? | The most basic method is to use Newton's method. This is essentially a smart version of guess and check, where you use calculus to figure out what to guess.
To use Newton's method, first you must phrase your question in the form of "given a function f, which value x satisfies f(x) = 0". In this case, if we're trying to find the square root of c, we want f(x) = x^2 - c, because if we plug in the sqrt of c, we get f(sqrt(c)) = sqrt(c)^2 - c = c - c = 0.
In order to perform Newton's method, then we need f', the derivative of f, which basic calculus tells us is f'(x) = 2x.
Then, Newton's method has us choose a starting guess, x\_0, and then make our next guess be x\_1 = x\_0 - f(x\_0)/f'(x\_0). If we repeat this equation over and over again, we will get closer and closer to the right value. Let's try an example!
c = 7
x\_0 = 1
x\_1 = 1 - (1 - 7)/2 = 4
x\_2 = 4 - (16 - 7)/8 = 2.875
x\_3 = 2.875 - (2.875^2 - 7)/(2*2.875) = 2.65489130435
Now the actual value of the square root of 7 is about 2.64575131106, and you can see that we've gotten pretty close after only 3 iterations of this algorithm. There are other methods that computers use, some of which are faster, but they mostly all use this principle using derivatives to make better guesses.
There are other algorithms, but they usually are only used in cases where speed is so important that it's okay to sacrifice accuracy. | 22 | 28 |
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If factoring numbers with ~1000 digits is so difficult that it is used in encryption, how do we know of primes with many millions of digits? | I know that certain cryptographic systems use large prime factorizations as their encryption method because it takes a long time to factor large numbers, and using numbers with 1000+ digits produces an encryption that is nigh-unbreakable with current technology.
So how is it that the largest known prime has over 20 million digits and we know of many prime numbers with millions of digits, if factoring numbers is so difficult? | They are different problems.
Finding out whether a number is prime is relatively easy. In CS-speak, if you have a number, you can determine whether it is prime in an amount of time that is polynomial in the size of the number. And there are even easier ways to just "find a big prime number."
The prime factor problem is totally different. The prime factor problem is, "Here is a huge number. You can take exactly two prime numbers out of the VAST collection of primes smaller than this huge number and multiply them together to get this number. Which two primes are the right ones?"
For a very large number n, there are approximately n/ln(n) primes smaller than n.
To check all the pairs of primes that can add up to your huge number X, you can check each prime Ai up to sqrt(X), then check if X/Ai = Bi is a prime.
So, for a 1000 (binary) digit number, we have to check all the primes up to sqrt(2^1000) = 2^500.
There are approximately 2^500 / ln(2^500 ) = 2^491 primes smaller than 2^500 .
2^491 is about the same as 6*10^147. Good luck checking that many possibilities. Maybe you'll get lucky. (You won't.)
There MIGHT be an efficient algorithm for this problem, but no one has found one for it or any other problem like it. It's just that no one has ever proven there can't be an efficient algorithm.
| 46 | 37 |
CMV: "The future will be better because the trend of history is one of improvement" is a bad argument | I have seen a lot of people in the past few weeks argue that the future will be swell because the trend of history is one of continuous improvement. And that's it. This, in my opinion, is a bad argument (that both spawns and is spawned by utter optimism, though that is not part of this CMV) because it ignores **why** the trend of history has been one of improvement. *Without analyzing what drives the trend, the argument is just an assertion the trend will continue.*
Let's invert the assertion to reveal its problems. Let's say we're in a world where everything is getting worse for everyone all the time. We then argue "the future will be worse because the trend of history is one of decline" and leave it at that. But that's just an assertion, and unless one can show that the driving forces behind the decay are not weakening, it remains just that. An assertion.
At the risk of derailing things by way of metaphor, think of things like this:
>A man takes on enormous debt to build his dream house. The dream house is built, and he's living in it. But the debt is coming due, and the house needs maintenance, and he has no money for that. So the bank forecloses on the house. He gets all notices and warnings but throws them in the trash. The court process takes a long time, and during that time he's able to continue living there, but once the process is done he will be evicted. For now, though, he's still living in his dream house and enjoying each day more than the last.
~~It is my opinion that just because the trend of history has been one of improvement (which I *mostly* agree with) does not mean the future will be improved from the present. *But this opinion could be changed if one could show that the underlying drivers and conditions necessary for the improvement are likely to continue, and the obstacles to improvement are likely to be overcome.*~~ Due to poor phrasing I have confused people as to what I'm trying to do with this. I don't want an argument about the future of the world, this is meant to be about argument/debate/assertion method.
But just claiming "it will get better in the future because it got better in the past" is just articulating a hopeful sentiment.
(Please don't try and convince me the future is going to get better in this CMV, I'm focused specifically on this particular argument and its failings.) | Of course it is an assumption, but it has a lot of different factors that have been changing positively for centuries that lead to that conclusion.
Is medical technology and availability increasing? Is technology becoming more advanced and making life easier to get through? Is access to food easier than before? Is hygiene more or less difficult to maintain?
Those are just a few of many questions about advancement that all can be answered with a 'yes'.
You said it is unrealistic to expect those things to continue to improve but the entirety of human history proves otherwise doesn't it? What reasons would we have to believe that it would switch directions and go downward? | 192 | 1,080 |
What's outside the universe? | So firstly im just some dumb 17 y.o with a question, and the question is... So space between all the objects in space is a vacuum of nothingness or spacetime or whatever but what is beyond that, that the universe is expanding into. Is there no space no time laws of physics??? | This is a very interesting question! And part of the answer is that physicists use the word "universe" in multiple ways that can be quite confusing.
First off there's the "observable universe": the area of the universe that we are able to see, because light or other signals have had time to reach us from there. This is a spherical region centred on us, with a radius of about 47 billion light years. [Important note: the fact that we are at the centre is not special, people in a neighboring galaxy would see a slightly different observable universe, centred on them.]
And then there's what we could call the "full universe" (not a technical term): the whole of everything that exists, even the stuff outside of the observable universe that we can't see. At the moment the evidence we have seems to indicate that this is infinite, it keeps going on forever and ever. Certainly, our observable universe is only a tiny fraction of the "full universe".
Within our current understanding of physics, there is nothing "outside the (full) universe", in that the concept of "outside" doesn't really apply. If the universe is infinite, then it never ends, it just keeps going. And if it's finite then it loops back around on itself, the same way you'd end up back at your house if you started walking North and kept going in a straight line for long enough. There's no "edge" either way.
Now, within theoretical physics there are models that consider our universe to be embedded within some kind of higher-dimensional space (the way the text on this 2D screen is embedded in your 3D room), and you could consider that a kind of "outside" but there's no evidence at present to support that idea.
To answer "what is the universe expanding into?" is tricky. The answer is straightforward: nothing. But explaining why is hard. When you blow up a balloon, it expands out into space that was occupied by the air, we naturally understand this. But that's an example of a higher-dimensional embedding: the balloon's rubber is a (curved) 2D surface embedded in 3D space. In the case of our universe, it isn't pushing out into some external space, it's just that the distances between very far apart galaxies are getting bigger. | 245 | 165 |
ELI5: Why is there a separation between the medical and dental professions? | We have a medical profession with specialties in everything, from head to toe -- neurology, cardiology, gastroenterology, podiatry, etc. etc. But we've decided that oral health, *that's* different. Let's set up a separate insurance industry for that. Your family doctor, (s)he'll check everything about you *except* your teeth. When was that decided? What makes the mouth so different from any other aspect of human anatomy? | Because originally, Medicine was split into two seperate "career paths":
* Physicians: An upper-middle class career, they did the diagnosing, prescribing, and some basic procedures. Generally they do not do invasive procedures. According to the original Hippocratic Oath, Doctors are not supposed to do surgery.
* Barber-Surgeons: A working-class career, they were involved anytime you need to get bloody, they did surgery (at the time, pretty basic stuff, like amputations) and teeth-yanking.
But over time, the physicians took over surgery as surgical procedures became more complex and intricate, but the field of Dentistry managed to spin off into it's own separate specialty (mostly because when the physicians started taking over medical fields in the 18th and 19th century, dentistry was still pretty a basic field and so the physicians left them to their original practitioners. When Dentistry started developing in the 20th century, the boundaries of medicine has already solidified, and so these two fields adapted by creating separate school and regulating body). | 26 | 15 |
ELI5: Why does swallowing an air bubble hurt so badly? | I hate it when I take a hasty drink of water and then suddenly I'm swallowing a giant air bubble. Why does it hurt as it goes all the way down? | ELI5 TLDR: Food is better at keeping it's shape, air tries to expand, and our mouth is bigger than your throat.
Your esophagus is closed most of the way unless you are swallowing something. Typically your esophagus is used to pushing things down that are roughly 1/2 the size of a golf ball (solid foods). When we swallow air we are taking all the air that is inside our mouth and attempting to push it into a shape the same size as that golf ball and shove it down our throat because that's what our throat is used to. This pushes the same amount of air into a smaller space generating a larger PSI (pounds per square inch) than when you just have a mouth full of air. That "Pain" you feel is the air trying to readjust itself to it's natural PSI. If we focus on swallowing smaller bits of air like when you force yourself to burp then it's not painful going down. You will also experience similar pain if you tried to swallowing larger pieces of food that same size. Food is better at keeping it's shape and not expanding is the main difference why the same size food will hurt less. | 17 | 44 |
Does Feminism's Patriarchy entail falsifiable claims? If not, should it aspire to do so? How can we be certain it exists? | I’m reading Johnson's Gender Knot right now, and while it has done a great job to help me understand the concept, I feel underwhelmed from it’s lack of convincing me that it *does* exist, how patriarchy *best* explains what we see happening, and what exactly we see that we can attribute to patriarchy.
As of now, the whole concept is very fuzzy to me on what it exactly entails. I’m not sure I have yet seen anything described in what I ought to expect from the existence of patriarchy, which leads me to my title question: Does Feminism's Patriarchy entail falsifiable claims? If not, should it aspire to do so? And how can we be certain it exists? If we can’t be certain of it’s existence, what reasoning do we have to believe in it? Feel free to recommend any further reading on the subject, I have scarcely read anything authoritative on the subject except for this book. | Patriarchy is a sociological concept. Sociology doesn't operate by a strictly hypothetico-deductive method in general. Instead, sociology follows either quantitative or qualitative research programs, e.g. statistical research from sampling data or observation of social phenomena, case studies, etc. | 46 | 32 |
ELI5: Why is it that if something bothered me really badly and had me thinking about it all day, do I wake up and feel completely fine and not as effected? | How does 'just sleep on it' work?
Also this is more for day to day issue or occurrences. I'm sure more serious problems don't just go away when you sleep (I.e. loved ones passing away, unemployment etc) | Something only is a problem when you make it one, if you are fixated on a bad situation you will focus on the bad parts, not the good parts.
eg: you get fired today, your day is ruined and you spend most of your day pondering about why, how, really???
You go to bed, sleep, shut off the worrying part of your mind, you wake up and have to go to the bathroom urgently, suddenly not having a job does not seem that bad, what you ate yesterday does!
The problem is not gone, and you know this, you still wonder and worry but since it happend some time ago and you had time to relax you also had time to look at things the other way.
Simply put, right after you get fired you are stuck with this idea, and you are unable to put it into perspective untill you stop worrying for a while (eg: sleep). then you wake up and you see the bigger picture.
Not everyone has this, and if this happens frequently to you search for "stoicism", it wont fix your problems but it will give you another view on them and allow you to get past the worry part without needing to sleep it over. | 14 | 26 |
ELI5: Why are there multiple methods for measuring electricity? (Volts, amps, watts, etc.) | They mean different things. Instead of electrons, imagine you're measuring a water pipe.
How wide is it? That's resistance.
How much pressure is inside? That's voltage.
How fast is the water flowing? That's amperage.
The water is turning a waterwheel as it passes, how much energy is that using? That's wattage. | 156 | 30 |
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Why were wolves so easily domesticated to dogs? Why can't we domesticate say, lions? | Dogs were relatively easy and beneficial because of how similar we are;
- a) They are a social pack animal much like humans. Lions are the most social cat but still it's more the females that hunt in groups and the males don't work very well together.
- b) Lions are primarily nocturnal hunters which doesn't match with us.
- c) Wolves are small enough to be controlled. Lions at 250Kgs for a male, not so much.
- d) Lions have really shitty stamina. They can't hunt for long periods whereas humans are extremely good distance runners and, along with wolves, can move over long distances for long periods of time. | 29 | 27 |
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ELI5: is being a morning person genetic or a choice? | I have long been a night owl, and I can't for the life of me get used to being a morning person, in my culture sleeping early at night and waking up early in the morning is a must, but as I said I just can't get used to that, so my question is, can a person get accustomed to being a regular morning person with no issues if he chooses to, or is it something that one needs to be born with?
I am new to this sub and reddit in general, so please let me know if I need to fix anything. | People can adjust to living in a different time zone, and we can switch from working days to working nights with varying degrees of difficulty per person (but it is possible).
To make yourself more like a morning person, you should go to bed sooner which will directly help you to wake up sooner as well. Do not train yourself to rely on coffee or other stimulants because this will just make it harder for you to stay awake in the mornings naturally.
Alternatively, screw what your culture says. Somebody has to watch over the city at night. | 18 | 17 |
Do "non-water rainbows" exist and (if yes) what do they look like? | I've been thinking about rainbows from other liquids than water (e.g. gasoline) and wether they'd look like regular ones | The main difference between different liquids boils down to their indices of refraction and their dispersion. Changes in the index of refraction would alter the size of the rainbow arc, while changes in their dispersion would change how wide the actual rainbow band is. If the dispersion is negative, it would also flip the order of the rainbow (Red would be on the inside, and violet would be on the outside). | 12 | 19 |
[Star Wars] Does the lightsaber of a more powerful jedi/sith have more "cutting" power? |
We're shown that it Qui-Gon isn't able to instantly melt through a thick metal door with his lightsaber. He has to slow down a bit.
Would a more powerful jedi/sith - Yoda or Sidious, for example - be able to slice through with a quick slash? | A lightsabers power is determined by two things; the Kyber crystal within and (in Legends) they can be tuned to different settings, ranging from combat to training modes.
The wielder of the weapon only contributes to its power in terms of their skill at fighting with it, they didn't contribute in any way to the actual output of the blade.
I can't remember if it's still canon or in legends but typically a Sith's lightsaber was more fragile due to the damage dealt to the kyber crystal. | 33 | 24 |
I wear glasses. Why did the optometrist not give me super vision? | The other day I was sitting at the traffic department to have my drivers license renewed. Part of the renewal process requires me to have an eye test. I wear glasses and was tested both with, and without, my glasses on. Without my glasses I failed the test, but with my glasses on I tested as having 6/6 (or 20/20) vision.
Later I wondered what these numbers meant so I read up a little on the internet and discovered that there are a great many people who have vision significantly better than 20/20 visual acuity. For example [Chuck Yeager](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_yeager) apparently used to have a remarkable 20/10 vision.
So my question is, why did my optometrist issue me with glasses that only gave me 20/20 vision. Why not better? Why can't I have super vision? | The best your optometrist can do is to make sure the image on your retina is perfect. That's why they correct the geometrical defects of your eye. But there can remain some imperfections: shape of the cornea, size of the eye, shape of the retina, etc. And it doesn't change the "resolution" of your retina (how many photoreceptor cells you have).
Buying an expensive objective won't make your camera perfect (but it can help). | 861 | 1,243 |
Why can't we create underwater breathing technology | by mimicking what happens in fish' gills?
Edit: I mean by "extracting dissolved oxygen from water to stay submersed indefinitely." (thanks ragnarokrudolph) | We are endothermic and have a high metabolic requirement--one that is further stressed when we are submerged. Animals with gills, on the other hand, are almost exclusively poikilothermic and require much less oxygen. For us, the challenge is getting enough oxygen from the water to sustain our metabolism. | 43 | 63 |
[Star Wars] What is life like for Force sensitives living on planets that haven't yet developed interstellar travel or know they aren't alone in the galaxy? | Claims of witchcraft and sorcery are the common result for societies that have not yet made first contact. Since there is no silly "prime directive" preventing contact with primitive sentients, a Jedi is eventually sent to investigate such claims.
That is, they *used to* be sent... | 31 | 27 |
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How does socioeconomic class affect environmental behavior? Would a "War on Littering" replicate the social targeting of the "War on Drugs"? | A relevant idea to consider here is the oft-cited "Broken Windows Theory," a controversial concept that refers to norm-based behavior, namely behavior responding to cues of urban decay. Really the only empirical study (if you can call his work empirical :P) was by Stanford Prison Experiment creator and noted social psychologist Phil Zimbardo (1969), though the idea was first introduced by political scientist James Wilson and criminologist George Keller.
Equal parts social and environmental psychology, the broken window theory (not to be confused with the broken window fallacy) essentially states that environmental evidence of urban decay: dilapidated and abandoned buildings, broken windows (for which the theory was named), and litter act as social cues that seems to influence crime.
Zimbardo tested the theory this way: he parked and abandoned two cars (both used, but in good condition) in two separate locations in California and New York.
Of the car parked in the Bronx:
>”Scott Fraser, a social psychologist at New York University, was one of
the observers who kept round-the-clock vigils over the car for 64
hours. What surprised him was that most of the car stripping took place
in broad daylight. All of the theft was done by clean-cut, well-dressed
middle-class people. Furthermore, the major theft and damage was always observed by someone else. “Sometimes passersby would engage in casual conversation with the miscreants,” says Fraser.
>By the end of the first 26 hours, a steady parade of vandals had removed
the battery, radiator, air cleaner, radio antenna, windshield wipers,
right-hand-side chrome strip, hubcaps, a set of jumper cables, a gas
can, a can of car wax, and the left rear tire . Nine hours later, random destruction began
when two laughing teen-agers tore off the rearview mirror and began
throwing it at the headlights and front windshield and into the Carriage.
>Eventually, five eight-year-olds claimed the car as
their private playground, crawling in and out of it and smashing the
windows. One of the last visitors was a middle-aged man in a camel's
hair coat and matching hat, pushing a baby in a carriage. He stopped,
rummaged through the trunk, took out an unidentifiable part, put it in
the baby carriage, and wheeled off.
The car in Palo Alto was a bit different. The car was left to its own devices and remained unscathed for nearly a week until Zimbardo himself broke one of the windows. The car was quickly stripped after.
Understand that urban decay, litter, and vandalism have little to do with socioeconomic class, but more to do with sense of community. One of the most important observations of the experiment were that most of the vandals were well-dressed and appeared to be middle-class. Urban decay can signal that the bonds of responsibility that bind communities together have weakened. The ensuing apathy results in a sense of environmental anonymity.
Think of the destructive behavior that follows as an extension of the same kind of diffusion of responsibility that causes crowds of people to ignore screams for help. We don't do well with anonymity. We know anonymizing individuals increases aggression, so it makes sense that anonymizing settings (i.e. removing the sense that the setting is cared-for by participants in that setting) would be prone to more crime.
So why was the Bronx car stripped without the broken window, and stripped so quickly where the Palo Alto car stood unmolested for FIVE DAYS? According to Zimbardo, anonymity. Palo Alto was a small community relative to the Bronx. The larger community offered more opportunity for social anonymity.
The question isn't whether or not socioeconomic class affects environmental behavior. The question is how environments affect environmental behavior.
***References***
Aronson, E., Wilson, T. D., & Akert, R. M. (2013). *Social Psychology (8th ed.)*
Kelling, G., Coles, C., (1995). *Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities*
Zimbardo, P., (2007) *The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil*
Zimbardo, P. (1969). Diary of a Vandalized Car. *TIME*.
| 11 | 16 |
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CMV: The US should stop granting federal financial aid to students who choose to attend for-profit collegiate institutions and institutions outside of the USA. | First, I'd like to say I'm not an expert on economics, the education system, or federal financial aid. I would like to state my opinion and I would like someone with a good argument and evidence to change my view.
Many for-profit schools across the country are marketed as quicker and easier routes to a job, profession, or trade. From what I have read, these schools are not accredited by an organization that is recognized by the majority of traditional American colleges and the credits are not transferable. The education you get from these colleges are mediocre at best, and they often lie about their credentials. Sources for the above statements:
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/27/pf/college/devry-university-ftc/
http://money.cnn.com/2014/11/02/pf/college/for-profit-college-degree/
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/10/17/employers-shy-away-from-online-for-profit-graduates
It is my understanding that these schools are usually expensive, and often leave the unemployed graduate in crippling debt. Many of these students end up defaulting on their loans and destroying their whole lives over a false promise that the US government supports by granting them the means to obtain that education through loans.
Furthermore, and this is where I have some expertise, I believe that for-profit medical schools in the Caribbean, which market themselves as an alternative route for US citizens to become doctors, fall along these same lines. These schools accept thousands and thousands of applicants every year who did not have the credentials, grades, or ability to be accepted by a US medical school. The acceptance criteria are many standards of deviation lower when compared to those of US medical schools. These schools charge outrageous prices for the education, with the average debt from a Caribbean program being $300,000-$500,000. Each student is eligible to receive federal funding to attend these off-shore institutions. However, these schools are incredibly poor at placing their graduates into jobs as resident physicians. Only 33% of all the students who enter into an off-shore medical school makes it to graduation and obtains a position inside the US. The rest are left with a worthless degree and crippling debt they are never able to pay off. The US government currently pays for US citizens to attend these offshore scam schools (not just medical schools), and the schools can charge in tuition whatever they wish, because the government would fund them. Sources below:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/23/nyregion/23caribbean.html
http://www.valuemd.com/american-university-caribbean-auc/243777-caribbean-medical-schools-longer-viable-option-md.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/03/education/edlife/second-chance-med-school.html?_r=0
I firmly believe that for-profit institutions and offshore medical schools are working only for their investors and consider the student nothing more than the product. We need to end US government financial support to students who choose to attend them. I don't care so much that they exist, but that US taxpayer dollars are paying for these scams to exist.
Change my view!
_____
> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | What about attending regular colleges and universities outside the USA? For instance, should american students who attend McGill University in Montreal Quebec be able to get financial aid? McGill's tuition even for international students is quite reasonable by most American standards (about $13,500 USD for a bachelor of arts for the current year for example). That's cheaper than the in-state tuition at many American public colleges and universities. | 15 | 183 |
How does a black hole adhere to Pauli's Exclusion Principle and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle? | I was just watching Brian Cox's "A Night with the Stars" on BBC 2. He talked about how white dwarfs are limited to not exceed a certain mass as it would get too dense to support the two laws. Pauli's Exclusion doesn't allow it to get too compact as then the electrons would be forces to the lower energy levels together. Also, they can't be forced into too small a space (Heisenberg). If this is so, how do black holes get to the mass and density that they are at without breaking these laws?
Also, I was a bit distracted at the time, but I thought he said that Pauli's Exclusion Principle states that no two electrons in the universe can have the same energy at the same time. As a consequence, if I was to effect a bunch of electrons (e.g. burn a piece of wood), all the electrons in the universe would have to adjust to this. That just sounds so outlandish, I thought I must have misunderstood.
As a side note, if anyone wants to get a simple summary of quantum physics, it was a very good lecture for anyone with very little knowledge of physics. | The Pauli exclusion principle does provide an outward pressure that can balance the gravitational force, but it's not an infinite pressure, and gravity can overcome it. Any white dwarf is also made up of protons, which is necessary in order to balance out the electric charge of the electrons. Once a white dwarf is massive enough, the gravitational force is enough to push the electrons and protons together to form neutrons. The Pauli exclusion principle also applies to neutrons, though because they're more massive they can be pushed tighter together than electrons, resulting in a neutron star. If the neutron star is massive enough, gravity will also overcome the Pauli exclusion pressure for neutrons, forming either a quark star (which is still hypothetical) or causing a collapse to a black hole. All these rules of quantum physics go out the window once you've collapsed an object inside its Schwarzschild radius, or its event horizon, because it's impossible for a physical particle inside an event horizon to go anywhere but straight to the center. | 17 | 22 |
ELI5: How can you reliably recreate a person's face from DNA? | Talking about artists recreating people's faces in a way that you could recognise that person from them. It's been in the news a few times. | You can't. You can predict the ethnicity, and a few vague measurements. It is still difficult. That is why you see them only *sometimes*. Else crime fighting would be slightly *less difficult*. Instead looking for clues they can just look for DNA, which can give a face that can be searched easily.
It is still not reliable and work only on the known parts of genes. There is a reason artists are working on it and not scientists. There is a lot subjective information that goes into developing the face from genes alone.
The artists, rely on certain markers. A person's ethnicity can be deduced (almost accurately, if there are no mixed ethnicities). Then the *most probable* eye color, probably skin color. The artist extrapolate on such vague points, then apply what they know.
(I simplified, probably a bit too much). | 11 | 19 |
I (undergrad) will need to learn one of (French, German, Russian) for my PhD. Does anyone have any advice? | Hi, everyone,
I'm currently an undergrad, and I'll be going to grad school in the next few years. In my field (mathematics), most PhD programs require that I have the ability to read manuscripts written in one of French, German, or Russian. I feel like I should get a head start right now, and learn one of them, so that I'm not desperately trying to learn a new language in grad school, when my language acquisition skills will be even worse than they are now.
My linguistic background: my first language is English, and I grew up in the United States. English is the only language I speak fluently. I speak a little bit of Arabic and German, and I can sort of read French.
Pick one of the languages. I'm going to refer to it as `$language`.
The problem I've been encountering is that most language courses teach conversational and colloquial `$language`. I'm not particularly interested in learning `$language` to speak with other people; I need to be able to read mathematical works in `$language`, and that's it.
Aside from taking a class in `$language`, does anyone have any suggestions for learning `$language`? Does anyone have any opinions on which one I should pursue? Is there anyone who was in a similar situation that could perhaps provide some insight? Etc. | French is an easy language to learn how to read (gets more problematic to learn how to speak because of elisions, unpronounced letters, etc.)
I strongly recommend the book "French for Reading" by Karl Sandberg. It's designed specifically for graduate students to pass their language exams, and all of the examples they use are based out of actual published scholarly articles and books rather than introductory conversation.
I went from 0 to being able to read the captions at the Louvre unassisted within 3 months. | 32 | 23 |
ELI5: When somebody dies of cancer, what exactly is the actual reason the body stops working? | Cancer is a general term we use to describe any disease where cells in the body begin to divide in an uncontrolled fashion, often fast and with a very high mutation rate (so the cells begin to not look or function like those from the area of the body where they started). Cancer can be confined to a small area, or break off, travel through the blood stream, and lodge elsewhere to grow (we call that "metastasis" or "spreading").
Cancers kill by growing a bunch of the wrong cells in the wrong place. They can physically tear up organ tissue, block blood flow, cause internal bleeding, stop usable blood cells from being made... They effectively choke out organs to the point where the organs can't function and dies off. If the cancer has spread through the body, then many parts of the body will be failing at the same time.
Cancer death is typically due to organ failure, but the specifics of how it grows, the parts of the body affected, how it develops, etc. all depend on the particular type of cancer. | 1,895 | 1,947 |
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[General Fantasy] Why can people usually only wear 1 or 2 magic rings, and never more than 1 enchanted necklace? | Magic works by creating powerful emanations in the fabric of reality. Keeping too many such items too close to each other for too long invites all manner of mishaps and danger, as the Weave twists beyond its natural limit.
On the upside, this provides a useful shorthand for detecting phony mages. If a magician has lots of rings on their fingers, or dozens of bangles and necklaces, and claims more than a few of them are enchanted, then they are clearly lying to bolster the appearance of their (most likely non-existent) powers. | 27 | 28 |
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