post_title
stringlengths 9
303
| post_text
stringlengths 0
37.5k
| comment_text
stringlengths 200
7.65k
| comment_score
int64 10
32.7k
| post_score
int64 15
83.1k
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
ELI5: Pork rinds are incomplete protein and are labeled "not a good source of protein" but beans are also an incomplete protein and do not have this same label. Why? | Because it's not just a question of protien, but of the types of protien and the regulation. In the USA, the Food and Drug Administration requires that food for people aged 4 and over that has, "a protein quality value that is a protein digestibility-corrected amino acid score of less than 20" must have the label, "not a good source of protien." What this means is that the foodstuff in question must have a certain number of absorbable proteins or it must have the label.
How does this relate to beans and pork rinds? Pork rinds are fried pig skins, therefore they're rich in collagen, the protien that gives human skin structure too. Unfortunately, that's about the only protien it provides, worst still humans don't digest nor absorb that protien very efficiently. On the flip side, beans have a wider variety of more easily digested and absorbed proteins so it is not affected by the regulation.
Edit: it's 4 and over, not just 4. | 29 | 24 |
|
ELI5: If the original settlers of America came from England, how come current Americans don't speak with the same English accent? Where did we get our American accent and words? | For instance: In the UK, they say flat or lift where we say apartment or elevator. Where did we come up with our own words? And if the original settlers had an English accent. They would pass their accent down to their children because that is how their kids would learn to talk, and so on. So, when did the English accent drop off? | The English spoken today in England differs as much from the English of the 17th century as American English. Accents change over time even without people moving around.
Also depending on how you define 'America' the Spanish or French were first. | 31 | 52 |
ELIF: Why do humans appreciate views? | Why do humans appreciate views / images when there is no biological benefit to them? | Don't know the answer, but something that could aid our survival is traveling, finding new lands, fresh resources. Gives us more physical room to populate and diversify. I've read before that other humanoids may have died off because of their lack of exploration/diversity.
Appreciating views could help this along. And being curious about the next view. What's over the next hill top, mountain range, valley, lake, ocean. | 11 | 32 |
ELI5: Why do we get the 'spins' after drinking? | There are times I don't even think I'm drunk but as soon as I Iay down I'm suddenly on a roller coaster. Why do we get the spins and why do they sneak up on us when (while standing) we don't feel dizzy ? | Your sense of balance is based on 3 systems. Your vestibular system in the inner ear, your sense of touch and proprioception, and sight. Your brain takes those 3 inputs and together creates a sense of balance. You need at least two active and working correctly at least, your brain can function without one, though it can take a few weeks to adjust if your vestibular nerves are cut.
Ok, but then what causes the spins? Alcohol creates fluid density changes in the inner ear, so it's messing with the vestibular system. But you've not got the spins yet right? You might be a bit off balance but you're doing ok. So what if we took the other two systems out of commission as well. The spins creep up on you once you turn off the lights and close your eyes (losing sight), and lay on a soft thing on the floor instead of feet firmly planted on the ground (losing some touch/proprioceptive information). Now we've got incorrect and unusual information coming from the inner ear due to the fluid changes, and the other two systems aren't sending much useful information either. Welcome to spin-city.
If you want to avoid the spins, you should not smoke and drink. If you're cool though, and still want to avoid the spins, open your eyes, look at static things (so not your ceiling fan), and plant a foot firmly on the floor. Get those other 2 systems working. | 40 | 18 |
ELI5: Why does a deep scrape on elbows/knees/shins stay white for a period of time before bleeding? | Say when you dive into a pool and scrape your knee on the bottom, why does it stay white without much blood for around 30 seconds before properly bleeding? | This is because initially after an injury, blood vessels contract in order to minimise blood loss. They increase again in diameter later to facilitate healing and the movement of specialised cells and materials towards the site of injury. You can see this contraction and subsequent dilation of blood vessels anywhere; try scratching your arm with your nail (don't cut yourself!) and you'll see that your skin will become pale initially, then redden. | 138 | 259 |
ELI5: Why is it smarter to eat fruits and veggies than to instead take a multivitamin and fiber supplement? | It'd be cheaper for me and I'm about to start a cut phase for lifting, and I'm assuming it's smarter to eat fruits and veggies than... Well I assume you read the title. | While we've discovered and studied a number of compounds that are important to our bodies and classified them as "vitamins" and estimated how much you should eat, the reality is that our bodies and our diets are much more complex. A vegetable contains thousands of different compounds, and we still don't understand what sorts of benefits our bodies might get from many of them. Basically, edible plants are more than just the list of vitamins and minerals you might read on a nutritional label. There's a ton of other stuff in there that our biology evolved along side of. | 45 | 61 |
ELI5: Why does a carbonated beverage that has been frozen and then thawed out again lose its carbonation? | Bonus: How many more times do I need to put a beer in the freezer before I remember to set a stupid timer to get it out? | Carbonated drinks are created by having a large enough quantity of gas (CO2) dissolved into a liquid. How much CO2 will dissolve into the liquid before it is saturated is a function of the liquids pressure and temperature.
The CO2 becomes *edit:* ~~less and less~~ more and more soluble as the liquid cools far enough to become a solid. Once it freezes however, the CO2 will entirely separated from the solidified frozen liquid. depending on how full the container is and how it freezes, you'll get a solid with bubbles of CO2 gas in it, or a solid with all the CO2 at the top of the container.
Provided the added pressure doesn't make your bottle explode, when you thaw out your bottle you get a liquid and a bunch of CO2 gas, which escapes when you open it. If you left it for several days, the CO2 and the liquid would slowly reach an equilibrium and you would get a fairly carbonated drink, though if it is over-saturated to start with or even completely saturated you'll lose some carbonation. | 10 | 36 |
Difference between SOFTWARE DEVELOPER and SOFTWARE ARCHITECT | I wanted to know what is the difference between a software developer and a software architect, and what roles do they play in a company.
I also have another doubt, is a systems software engineer the same as a software architect?
NOTE: I humbly request members of this subreddit to understand I am not a very educated person, but very curious and willing to learn about programming. If my question seems stupid please forgive me. | This is not a stupid question. IMO, these are commonly misunderstood terms.
Software Engineer or Software Developer - Someone typically implementing a design. The design may or not have come from them, depending on their seniority/responsibility level.
Software Architect - Someone with technical oversight over one or more components. Typically would either design large portions of one or more components, be the "gatekeeper" of the overall design vision (i.e. approvals from them required to proceed to implementation and, after that, approvals from them on the implementation), or both. Note that a software architect can differ from a business/project/team leader, as the latter are typically more interested in product features and requirements being met, rather on specific designs/implementations to get to those features.
Systems software engineer - Usually refers to a software engineer working within the systems subfield of programming (driver, kernel, and, perhaps, network development) | 44 | 57 |
ELI5: How can some words not translate to another language? If a word means something in one language, shouldn't it be easy to determine what that is in another language? | Not all languages have words for all concepts.
A famous example is the German word *schadenfreude*, for which there is no simple English translation. The English concept is "taking pleasure in the misfortune of others" but obviously that's an entire sentence in its own right, for something that can be expressed as a single word in German.
And sometimes things can be even less translatable. English-speakers tend to think of "blue" and "green" as separate concepts, but there are many languages which have the same word for both. | 425 | 486 |
|
[The Culture/The Matrix] How would The Culture respond to encountering a planet with the Matrix scenario, that is where AI have effectively subjugated the original dominant organic species into a virtual simulation without their knowledge? This also assume a freed minds resistance exists as well. | A mind may come along and effector the Matrix, making it more agreeable to negotiating.
The Culture could offer the Matrix a source of power and safe new home in exchange for handing over the simulation. Prob just run the Matrix as a subroutine in a Minds own consciousness.
Contact could drop agents into the simulation to set people free and start an uprising. The Matrix may never even know its been infiltrated and there already seem to be a few independent AI running around.
Could also take over the Matrix and load it into a simulation of its own. The Matrix goes on believing its running battery farms, while the humans are given the option of the real... | 98 | 150 |
|
On daoism and others of the eastern tradition | Does western philosophy take Eastern philosophy seriously? I've been trying to penetrate the chuang tzu recently, and found it lacking in the clarity compared to even pre-industrial philosophy. Is there any rigor to the epistemological methods hidden in the flowery verse that seems prevalent to eastern writing?
And within western thought, are the intuitive (and in my opinion, valid but unsound) judgements "looked down on" by analytic philosophy?
I'll revise the question if need be; armchair reader here. | There's been some recent motivations among some western philosophers to take an interest in non-western philosophy, particularly growing out of the Heideggerian understanding of the relationship between metaphysics and cultural history. However, precious little Chinese thought is available in translation, so the intellectual tradition remains largely impenetrable except to dedicated sinologists.
Hopefully in the next few decades we will get translations of the major works of New Confucianism, and this will provide the most natural point of dialogue between occidental and Chinese thought. A translation of Mou Zongsan's *Nineteen Lectures on Chinese Philosophy* is currently in limbo owing to some political roadblocks, but hopefully that will get resolved and it will stir some interest among western readers. | 11 | 16 |
why when i tilt my laptop screen up do the colours go negative? | Each pixel in an LCD screen consists of several layers - a white layer, a colour filter layer, and a twisted liquid crystal layer.
The liquid crystals are connected to small electrodes and seen through Polaroid filters. When a current is on the crystals line up, causing light to go in the filter one way and get stuck at the second filter. When the electrode is off, the crystal naturally forms a 'twisted nematic' phase. This is an almost magical phase analogous to one part of a spiral staircase - it is 'almost magical' in the sense that it can twist the plane of polarized light. Thus light can go in one polaroid filter; get twisted by the crystal and exit the second filter. Gradiations of current produce gradations of light.
The screen is designed to be viewed head on. When you see it at an extreme angle the various layers don't line up properly. Given that every pixel has the same three colour filters (red green blue) in the same order, you get the same discrepancy on all pixels. What should be a red part of a pixel may become blue, and so on. | 12 | 15 |
|
Why do viruses have such complex antigen structures which follow distinct geometrical patterns? | There are many ways to answer your question. Here are a few of them:
1. Viruses that don't evade the immune system do not produce more of themselves, so their genetic line dies off.
2. Some viruses do indeed have very complex antigen structures. This is especially true of enveloped viruses, like HIV, where the key proteins are covered in sugars (glycoproteins). These sugars don't adopt one specific structure, so there isn't one antigen for the immune system to recognize.
3. Some viruses have antigenic sites that don't vary much, which is why we have vaccines. Sometimes these sites can't change because their structure is required for a specific function (receptor recognition, pore formation, etc)
4. Not all viruses have capsids that adopt distinct geometrical patterns. HIV, for instance, can assemble in many different ways, although it does follow some rules of assembly. Capsids enclose and protect the genome of the virus until conditions are met for genome delivery and replication.
But there's a problem. The virus has to encode the information for a shell that will enclose it. This becomes a surface area/volume issue. The genome requires 3 bases to encode 1 amino acid, so you can easily guess that it would be excessive for a virus to encode one giant protein to encase the whole virus, since it would inflate the amount of genetic material. The solution (a handful of proteins that snap together, usually by self-assembly, into a defined shape) allows the virus to encode a small number of proteins, let the cell produce them in large number so that there is a sufficient amount to enclose the genetic information and form another infectious virus.
So, to summarize:
- geometrical shapes because you need to enclose the genome that encodes the things making the shapes.
- complex antigens propagate because the simple ones are, as a rule, more easily recognized and terminated by the immune system. | 17 | 93 |
|
Why do our bones stop growing, do we run out of chondrocytes? | I would assume we run out of chondrocytes the older we get and that would be the reason bone growth slows down significantly until the growth plate closes. Or is it that a signal tells our body to stop proliferating bone cells.
Another question would then be why can’t we inject out bones with more chondrocytes if that's the issue? | The lengthening of bones is mostly done during adolescents through the growth plates. With hormonal changes, these will close down appropriately.
Bones don't stop growing. They are a living matrix that is constantly going through remodeling based on environmental stresses and workload. This is Wolfs Law.
The density of bones changes based on; time, diet, and stress. Typically, we beat up our bones and cause micro-fractures that store additional calcium that we can pull from as we age. In our late 30s, this process ends and you are basically stuck with what you got unless you are put on prescription medications.
These factors should help people understand the importance of exercise, posture, and proper nutrition throughout life. | 613 | 790 |
ELi5: Why do things (walls, paper, art, etc) turn yellowish as they age? Why not blue or red or black? | Earlier today I was looking at an old newspaper that had become yellowed and I wondered why most everything I've seen left to age fades the same. Sometimes more pale yellow and sometimes a stronger yellow but I never see anything age in a different hue.
Is there a specific reason for this? | Colors are the product of chemicals that have many staggered double bonds in them. When light hits a compound with these double bonds, it reflects a specific color back to you. Over time, these chemicals oxidize and when light hits that oxidized chemical, you get the yellowing. Yellow is the most oxidized compound reflecting light back whereas the darker colors are the least. | 15 | 72 |
If inbreeding is bad for a species how does the "first" of that species overcome it? | Inbreeding is regarded as highly negative for most species (as I understand it) so how did the first of any type of animal get past this problem? | A "species" is just our way of categorizing an animal based off of certain characteristics. A species doesn't just pop up. As animals evolve, their characteristics slowly change until it gets to a point where they no longer fit our definition of their current species and would then be classified as another. If you could actually determine an individual animal to be the "first" of its species, it would be a "straw that broke the camels back" situation. Those animals would have been pushing the limit of that species definition for a REALLY long time. This "first" would be almost identical to the rest and would still be able to mate with others of its kind. The new species would continue to grow as more and more gained that specific characteristic that warranted the reclassification. No incest necessary. | 45 | 38 |
[alien/promethius] Had humans encountered other aliens in the past? | There are many things that would strongly indicate yes.
In the novelization of Alien, Ash says "No known creature is a natural invisible." One of the Company brass talks about "a creature not seen once in over 300 surveyed worlds." LV-426 is "a rock. No indigenous life." The Nostromo crew has quarantine procedures. And of course "It don't matter when it's Arcturan, baby!" and "Another bug hunt."
You could *kinda* explain all this in other ways. Maybe Arcturans are humans who are into some kind of androgynous subculture/fetish. Maybe the planet has no indigenous life because *no* planet except Earth has indigenous life, and so on.
But by far the most natural, unforced meaning of these lines is that we have encountered many other alien species in the past. If not, a lot of tortured alternate explanations are needed. | 33 | 27 |
|
ELI5: Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme | or ponzi schemes in general. | Let's say you have a lot of money you want to invest. You have a couple of options: Guy A offers you a 2% return, Guy B offers you a 3% return, Guy C offers you a 40% return. You'd have to be crazy not to go with Guy C right? So you invest your money, wait however long, and you get your money back, with the interest promised. Great deal! You tell all your friends and they all throw money at Guy C.
How does Guy C do it? Well, he isn't actually investing the money. He's taking your money, waiting until more people give him money, then giving you their money. So you give him $100K, he keeps it, the next two guys give him $100K each, he gives you $150K and keeps the other $50K. Then he has to pay those two guys, so he gets $300K from the next three guys. Well, now he has to pay those three guys...
The reason it's called a pyramid scheme is you have to keep expanding the number of people giving you money to make it work. It's illegal because it's impossible to keep growing that pyramid forever and eventually the last round of investors loses everything. It's named after a guy named Ponzi that had such a large pyramid scheme the name stuck.
Madoff was guy C, the early investors made a lot of money but all the later ones got hosed since their money had been given away already. | 132 | 234 |
CMV: The idea of white privilege is damaging to poor white Americans. | I went to a wealthy liberal arts school and I believe white privilege totally applied there. However, I would argue that a rich person of color is far better off than a poor white person. I feel like the term is useful in certain contexts, but diminishes the experience of a white person who feels they definitely are not privileged. I guess my belief boils down to the fact that I think your socioeconomic class has much greater impact on your opportunities in life than your skin color. That being said, I’m aware that the two are quite correlated. | The idea of "privilege" works on the principle of "All else being equal".
For example, if you're talking about white privilege in the context of a poor white person, that person is privileged relative to a poor person of colour.
That's not to say that all white people are better off than all people of colour. There are many types of privilege, including race and socioeconomic. It's not about a competition about who's better off based on what privilege they do or don't have. It's about recognising that not everybody has the same experience as everybody else. | 71 | 58 |
How does evolutionary science explain how fresh water fish ended up in inland lakes? | EDIT: Thanks for all the responses. I'm not arguing against evolution (I believe in it), I'm wondering because I live in a glacial lakes area (with many lakes) and it kind of makes me wonder, where did all these sunfish, walleye, northern pike, etc come from? Are they all descendants (that have evolved) from ocean species, or did they end up in fresh water lakes some other way? | There are a large variety of fish that can live in both freshwater and saltwater. Some of these fish include salmon, bull sharks, and striped bass. All three species mostly come into freshwater to spawn. (There are other fish that leave freshwater to spawn in the ocean)
There are incidences where man-made dams prevented fish from returning to the ocean. They are now 100% freshwater fish. As Pangea became the continents, it trapped some species and that could explain how some fish went from saltwater fish to freshwater fish.
Another explanations would be flooding. An area becoming flooded and previously barren lakes trapping fish when the flood waters dissipate. | 87 | 170 |
CMV: I am a staunch Bernie Sanders supporter and moderate liberal democrat. | I am a staunch Bernie Sanders supporter and moderate liberal democrat. I believe in 2nd Amendment rights, but believe that the War on Drugs is failing miserably, healthcare is a joke, Wall Street is destroying America, everyone should have the right to go to college or university without crippling debt, and the election system is rigged from SuperPACs and lobbyists.
I don't understand how people could want to vote for Donald Trump when he claims he's a businessman, but has had to file for bankruptcy four times, or so blatantly racist, xenophobic, and self-absorbed.
But I'm an open-minded person, so change my view.
Edit: Sorry, let me clarify, i just want my view changed from on why i shouldnt vote for Bernie Sanders. I only included Trump because he seems to be making hedgeway and for the life of me cannot see how people cannot see through him - but if someone could convince me that Hilary is the better candidate, im open for that too.
_____
> *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!* | What specifically is the view you want changed? Its not clear from your title or text.
Do you want someone to convince you why you should vote for Trump, or simply explain why someone else might support him? | 15 | 16 |
CMV: Marriage equality (gay marriage) does not threaten or endanger marriage for religious, traditional and straight couples. | Marriage is not in need of protection and gay marriage does not threaten marriage.
UPDATE: Thanks to some posters I better sympathize with why people feel the recognition of an expanded definition of marriage feels threatening. Among other reasons, that is attributed to
\*gatekeeping
\* losing the authority to set the definition as it applies themselves
\* the loss or dilution of legitimization of their religious/moral code
These reasons are difficult to recognize in one's discomfort and probably why it's hard for me (and others) to find the blanket statement of "'marriage' is threatened " justifiable. Thank you all who participated.
(Edit: if you agree with me, please respect the rules of the subreddit and not echo. I just don't think it's a threat. If you think it's a threat to marriage, I want to know why)
I understand and accept that religious and 'traditional' people might not support marriage for same-sex couples. My view on supporting gay marriage is not up for being changed.What I find no logical support for is the argument that marriage as an institution is undermined or threatened by gay marriage. A US Representative, in her arguments against the US Marriage Equality Act, pleaded, " “Protect religious liberty. Protect people of faith. And protect Americans who believe in a true meaning of marriage." Since I am convinced there is nothing under threat, traditional marriage still exists and is equally recognized, there is nothing to protect. I cannot find any legitimate arguments that marriage itself is under threat and consequently becomes a validated reason to stand against gay marriage.
Civil marriage, which is the marriage that is enacted by the government, is rather simply, a legal contract. Originally, one way to keep 'traditional' people happy, from feeling threatened, was to introduce 'civil unions' for same-sex couples that mirrored 'marriage'. To not have to reinvent the \[marriage\] wheel, it makes sense to include any two consenting adults wanting to enter into a civil marriage contract with each other. Religious marriages are defined and recognized by that religion.
Civil gay marriage does not intrude and it does not threaten traditional marriage. | Historically, "marriage" as an institution was not created as a private matter between two people, or as a love matter. The old and new versions of marriage are representative of the shift from a communal to an individual view of ourselves and of society, and the new version of marriage does threaten the communal view of society, and therefore threatens the identity of those who share that view.
People, historically, have seen themselves as members of a group more than as individuals. In Ancient Greece, banishment was considered a fate worse than death, because you were cut off from the group, from your identity and purpose.
Marriage was part of that - it was primarily a way for two families to become one, as part of a deal between the families. Part of the deal was children, because children ensure continuity, can contribute to the welfare of the new united family, and are a living representation of that union.
A marriage that is no longer about families uniting but about individual people uniting, a marriage that isn't about children, is a completely different thing, a thing that doesn't make sense in a communal society but makes sense in an individualistic one.
That's what religious people are REALLY upset about. A communal society only works if everyone follows the same rules, so when some people are following other rules, that's a threat to their view of the world and identity. | 369 | 1,584 |
If the DNA is the same in every cell, how does the body know to build an arm here, run a blood vessel there, put a femur in the thigh, and put 4 chambers in the heart? | I think I understand that the DNA in cells command the cell to make certain types of amino acids which then form into proteins, and that's difference between an epithelial or goblet cell or connective or muscular neuron cell. But if the DNA is the same, how do the cells end up making different proteins? And how do the cells end up physically organizing into just the way we need to create the human body, all the way down to super smart Circle of Willis blood vessel in the brain if every human being? | This is kind of the root of embryology/development biology, which is a huge field with lots still to be discovered. At the adult level, differentiated cells have different levels of DNA expression - just because the DNA is there does not mean it is expressed the same way everywhere. There's a lot of regulation at both the chromosomal level (eg histone methylation, chromatin condensation) and the nucleotide level (eg transcription factors, mRNA splicing, etc). This is further mediated by signalling via chemicals (eg cytokines/growth factors/hormones etc), as well as physical parameters (eg the stiffness of the underlying substrate, or contact inhibition when cells become confluent).
In the fetus, one of the key players is the HOX gene, which regulates development along the anterior-posterior axis. Various defects in this signalling pathway may result in things like duplication of structures (eg with synpolydactyly). There are many others (if you're interested, check out Shh and wnt-7a), and while we have a general idea of what each one generally regulates, there are many details that are yet to be perfectly described.
To address your last line, note that 'normal' anatomy is highly variable. The circle of Willis is actually one of the sites where the exact connections and locations of various vessels can vary a lot between individuals. So it's not like our DNA encodes every single connection in the body - often times, it's more a matter of regulation at the cellular level (eg cells sense lack of oxygenation, and release signals like hypoxia inducible factors to stimulate angiogenesis). | 11 | 18 |
CMV: Rape can be partly be the victims fault. | If I leave my keys in my car over night and the car gets stolen, partly my fault.
The doors and windows of my house and all unlocked while I'm at work and my house is then burgled, partly my fault.
A gay man walk into a homophobic/ religious gathering and starts flirting with men there and he gets punched or shouted at, partly his fault.
Woman gets so ridiculously drunk she passes out at a party full of not so nice men and gets raped, partly her fault.
Woman walks into a shitty neighbourhood at night on her own wearing reveling clothing and gets attacked, partly her fault.
You're safety is your responsibility, the bad guys and girls in the world that steal cars, rob houses, are homophobic, rape or attack other people are NEVER going to change as much as we want them too, so we should take responsibility for our own decisions in these scenarioes that put as at risk of getting hurt.
I'm a girl and I've never really had any experience with 'rape culture' that feminists keep talking about, but if not taking any responsibility for our own decisions in dangerous situations is rape culture then I guess I'm a part of it.
If a Rape has happened directly because of a victims extreme unsafe actions (not just leaving the house alone, or walking down a street when man grabs you, or something unforeseeable like that) then it is partly your fault. Change me view | If those things are all partly your fault, does it reflect at all how the law would deal with those situations? You're arguing semantics; fudging the definition of the word "fault."
Your view assumes that men are animals that can't help themselves when they see a pretty girl. Both girl and rapist are humans capable of making decisions. Only one of them made that decision to rape.
EDIT: Removed accusatory words. | 53 | 21 |
CMV: It's ok for employers to discriminate against smokers | Sorry if this is a repeat but I couldn't find a similar post, so...
I think employers should be able to discriminate against smokers in some situations. For instance jobs that require physical fitness testing (cops, military, etc.) should be allowed to ask if you smoke and incorporate that into their decision to hire you. Not that they'll never hire a smoker, but that it should be allowed to be part of the decision. Similarly employees shouldn't get special treatment for smoke breaks. If the employee makes a special agreement as part of their contract, that's fine, but employers shouldn't need to give smokers extra breaks for smoking. If they want to give all employees those breaks or allow smokers to take lunch time to smoke breaks, that's fine, but it's up to the employer. If an employer does't allow a smoker to take breaks outside of the normal, designated, non-smoker break times, the employer isn't doing any wrong (legally and morally).
​
Edit: There's some redundancy in responses to I'm going to try to address them all here. If I missed your response in this edit, feel free to let me know.
Extra smoke breaks: most people seem to think smokers shouldn't deserve extra breaks and there was just some confusion on what entailed extra breaks or whether it even happened. So seemingly there's not much of an argument smokers should get extra smoke breaks that nonsmokers don't have.
Not allowing smoking on the premises: I hadn't thought about that, but it's a good point. If there's a medical reason or even if the employer just thinks it's a bad look for the company, employers should be allowed to say no smoking on the premises. And if there is an employer that wants to say you can't come in smelling like nicotine at all because of medical reasons/allergies I think that's fine. I assume that's a very small minority of companies, but if an employer wants to create a medically safe place for allergies that's fair.
Discrimination based on personal preferences: I don't condone this though I do recognize it happens. If an employer doesn't want to hire a smoker because they think the smoker is lazy or bad or whatever, that shouldn't be allowed (though it's hard to prove and does happen for other things like obesity and probably happens for smoking)
What constitutes smoking or being a smoker: This is up to the employer and they can define it however they want. I understand it's not a binary of your either a pack a day or never, but employers can determine the definition for themselves.
Other factors: There are definitely other factors that can be discriminated against and are discriminated against. A lot of people have brought up weight and that is something used to discriminate. Jobs like police, military and even flight attendants all have BMI requirements. But this isn't an askreddit on what should be allowed to be discriminated against or a cmv: all discrimination is acceptable, so I'm not going to try to make a comprehensive list on what factors should or shouldn't be discriminatable factors. I'm just saying employers should be allowed to discriminate based on smoking. And I don't mean because the interviewer doesn't like smokers personally or saying no smokers ever (except for medical reasons), but rather employers should be allowed to incorporate that into their decision to hire and can weigh it against the applicant
Wait until it effects their job: Most jobs don't have a binary on job effectiveness. So you can't just say they're doing their job or they're not. It's about job effectiveness and an employer wants the most effective employee so it's fair to hold things that could effect the employees ability to do their job against them. I know there are other factors, but in my experience interviewers usually try to get a complete picture to determine total effectiveness. Plus for many jobs it's much harder to fire someone than not hire them, so waiting until they can't do the job is a risk. Lastly medical premiums won't just go away if someone's good at their job. So even a model employee who's a smoker may not be hired because the employer doesn't want the added insurance premium and I think that's fair. I'd moved several times in a few years so I'd moved jobs several times and an employer was a little hesitant to hire me because they thought I might leave quickly. That's in no way addressing my ability to do the job, they just didn't want to waste money/time training me just to have me leave when they could have an employee who more likely stay. So if there were two equally qualified employees and the employer chose the one more likely to stay, that's fair. If there's two equally qualified employees and one will have added insurance premiums it's fair to take the one without premiums. | If something isn’t directly affecting their ability to do the job, it shouldn’t be legal to inquire about. Why should people be forced to give any company information that isn’t important to the position? | 13 | 26 |
Is it possible for a fish to get dehydrated? | Yeah, hydration is a measure of how much water the organism has in its body. It isn't necessarily how much it has access to. So if you put freshwater fish into seawater, water will leave through its body via osmosis because the concentration of solutes in the seawater is higher than that of the fish's cell, making the fish dehydrated. | 57 | 32 |
|
What is the psychology behind gender? Does it even exists? | I argued with a friend who has a passion for psychology, he basically said that gender is a man-made concept and does not exist in real life. What do actual psychologists think about his statement? | Gender is a social construct, like race.
It is not based on any biological circumstances.
Sex is a biological category. Dependent on chromosomes and genitalia. Although there are some people born who can have both male and female sex characteristics.
Many people get confused on the distinction between gender and sex.
Gender is not defined by biology but instead is a social construct. Gender labels are ascribed based on cultural traits, behaviors, and appearances that a culture has determined to be under each of those categories.
Race is similar.
There is no biological test to determine which race someone is.
Instead , race is determined based on a culture's collective belief about what traits are associated with a given race.
And neither of these are universal. They heavily depend on the culture they exist in.
So your friend is sort of right.
Yes, Gender is a construct, it is created. But so are the meaning of words. So are any other groups. These constructs still have a lot of impact in our world. | 50 | 29 |
Why are certain electrons only excited by specific wavelengths? | I was reading about why glass is transparent to visible light. The stated reason was that photons of visible light don't have enough energy to kick the electrons within the silicon atoms up to a higher orbital, so they instead pass through the atom.
Thinking about this from a chemistry viewpoint, this lines up with what I was taught.
But thinking about this from a physics/engineering standpoint, I'm a little confused.
Visible light is just an electromagnetic wave with a frequency of several hundred terahertz. Electromagnetic waves being a propogating electric field and magnetic field at 90 degrees to one another. Electrons are influenced by both electric and magnetic fields.
So it doesn't make sense to me that an electromagnetic wave of a particular frequency would just be ignored by an electron. Surely even these frequencies that 'don't interact' with the electrons still impart SOME energy, right?
Can someone please shed some light on this for me? | Electrons obey quantum mechanics, and if you have a quantum system confined to some finite region of space (for example, atoms, or lattice sites in a crystal), there are quantized energy levels. That means that the electrons can only exist at certain discrete energies. So if you want to excite an electron from one state to another, you have to provide just the right energy to reach that higher state.
In reality since the system is constantly interacting with external electromagnetic fields, it’s not really a closed system, and it can be shown rigorously how that leads to energy levels not being infinitely sharp. There is some natural linewidth associated with each energy level, so if you supply the atom with 0.99E rather than E, where E is the energy required for some given transition, you may still observe the transition anyway. But that’s just a technicality, the important thing is that bound quantum systems have discrete energy levels.
Now if you take a macroscopic piece of material with several 10^(23) atoms in it, the levels get smeared out, and what you end up with is some continuous absorption spectrum, but you can still see remnants of the microscopic quantum structure in resonances in the absorption spectrum. While the material still absorbs light off-resonance, the absorption might go up by orders of magnitude on the resonance. | 1,079 | 3,894 |
Have ethics been solved yet? | If not what are the major problems of it? | What does "ethics being solved" mean to you? If you mean, do we have some ethical theory that everyone agrees on, then the answer is no. If you mean, do we have some rigorously argued for positions in ethics then the answer is yes. If you mean something else, well, what do you mean? | 50 | 19 |
ELI5: I keep seeing posts, “I pointed my telescope here for 20 hours to give you this image.” Why does it have to be 20 hours of pointing? What’s happening exactly? | Simple version, there are 2 kinds of light a telescope camera gets: signal, and noise.
Signal is what you want; it is light that came from the object itself. Noise is what you don't want; light from the atmosphere, from interstellar dust, cosmic rays hitting the detector, etc.
What you can see in a picture depends on how these two things compare: this is usually called the "signal-to-noise ratio", or SNR. A high SNR means that you can see a lot of detail, while a low SNR may even mean that you can't see the thing at all. A high SNR is like listening to a flute play in a silent concert hall. A low SNR is like listening to a flute play on the side of a busy highway.
When a chunk of light hits the detector, it doesn't know which it is, which means that it can't really figure out which is which. There is, however, one difference between the two that we can use: Signal increases with time, noise increases as the square root of time.
For example: imagine you have two identical telescopes pointed at the same object. Telescope A spends 1 minute pointed at that object, telescope B spends 4 minutes pointed at that object. Telescope B will have four times as much signal, but only twice as much noise.
This means that as you spend more time pointing at a single target, the SNR increases, which lets you see more and better detail. | 48 | 34 |
|
ELI5: How does headache work? | A headache (not a migraine) is when the muscles or vessels that cover a person's head or neck, swell or tighten. These changes stimulate the surrounding nerves or put pressure on them, and the nerves send a rush of pain messages to the brain. | 145 | 348 |
|
CMV: Acts of God should not be legally allowed as an excuse to not pay out insurance claims. | Acts of God events are exactly the moments people need their insurance pay outs the most, thats the whole point of spreading the financial risk across large chunks of population.All of those acts are predictable events that we just happen to not have a good model for yet. Even things like global pandemics actually already have yearly projection models ( they were telling us one is imminent for years). Insurance companies have good enough actuaries to do a pretty good estimation on what the premium should be to account for them, they just choose not to because it is more profitable for them to be able to deny people's claims.Additionally is there is an industry out there that can afford to invest billions into better seismic, weather and other other models - its Insurance industry.
Insurance industry should not be able to be risks free for itself where they always make money regardless of what happens, because with big enough events they claim Act of God and government has to bail people out. Classic privatize the gains, socialize the losses.
​
Edit: Due to this conversation i realized that my issue is not Acts of God, but unethical behavior by insurance industry. | You can find an insurance company that'll insure you for basically anything, including the acts (of God or otherwise) that you mention. And if you can't find a company that will, what's your suggestion? They're forced to, somehow?
It's not like insurance companies get out of paying for hurricane damage if the policy includes hurricane damage. "Acts of God" is simply a term (that's not really used much any more) to describe a bunch of things that aren't covered by a policy. The resulting lack of pay-out is because you bought an insurance policy that didn't cover you for the thing that caused your loss - that's all there is to it. | 17 | 31 |
How do aeroplane black boxes withstand crashes which otherwise destroy the plane and everything inside of it? | I get that they are built to a higher specification, but not how that is achieved. | Flight recorders are usually built with a compound casing of aluminium, steel and insulating material that can protect the electronics from high Impact and extrem temperatures. Compared to that aircrafts are built with the lightest possible materials, like alumium-carbon alloys. They can withstand the pressure of flight, but certainly not the extrem forces on impact. An airplane made out of blackbox material wouldnt be able to fly very far. | 92 | 69 |
ELI5: what happens in the brain when you draw a blank on a name? | I'm talking about those things that you normally know but may forget momentarily. It's like your brain draws a blank or can't access the info. What causes that when it happens? | Most depictions of the brain show a library with memory books that can be pulled out whenever you want. However, a more accurate depiction of memory as strings of information. You keep pulling at the string to get more information about a subject.
An example is the alphabet song. It's easy to start at a letter and continue to sing the song as you pull the string along. However, it's very difficult to go in reverse or compare two separate letters without singing the song since the memories are stored in one direction!
For information about a person, your brain first matches its sensory information to a particular string. The person's build, facial features, movements, sound, even smell help us find a particular string that indicates we know this person. Then we start pulling on the string to get more stored information.
However, sometimes when you pull the string, you end up with an empty string end. Memory strings are strengthened from use but will weaken or break if not used. Furthermore, when your brain is organizing memories, it can accidentally break a few strings. When you can't pull up the information from the string, you literally draw a blank.
Thankfully, once you're reminded of the name, your brain can reattach the missing name string to the person and it helps you recall other information attached to the name. | 1,583 | 916 |
If competition for faculty positions is so intense, why are there so many complaints about the quality of research? | I hear the following two claims quite often -
1. Getting a faculty position is tough, and even the top graduates from the top grad schools have trouble finding faculty positions at the most prestigious schools.
2. Most papers that are being published are not of high quality, while innovative and meaningful research is only done at the top schools and research institutes.
If the first claim is true, then shouldn't those top students and postdocs that end up at less prestigious schools and research institutes still be producing high quality research? | To succeed in academia, you need lots of publications. You can spend 2 years crafting a great paper that will get into a top journal, or you can pump out 5 mediocre papers to mediocre journals. Generally speaking, the latter is much better for your career, so that's what happens. | 19 | 16 |
ELI5: Why do Mexican drug cartels display violence and ruthlessness far greater than other criminal organizations? | Control of resources and cash flow. They want anyone that would like to enter the drug smuggling business to be too terrified to attempt to cut into their market because it would weaken their monopoly. They want the mexican military to fear them, and the mexican police to fear them. If enough people are terrified to a sufficient degree, then its not likely any sizable force will have the courage to take the neccessary steps to defeat them.
In short, its all about greed and preservation of power already acquired. Fear of them is what deters people from taking action against them, violence is simply a means to inspire the level of fear they need to maintain their empire. Its a tactic that has been used against populations for centuries.
| 13 | 18 |
|
[Warhammer 40k] How do you become a High Lord of Terra? | Be rich. Be influential. Be good at your job. Be old.
Basically, in order to become one of the 13 High Lords, you have to rise extremely high in the ranks of various branches of the Imperium. That requires competence, influence, and most of all... living a very long time. | 47 | 39 |
|
If scientists uncovered something that would demoralize the entire population, should they refrain from publicly disclosing it? | And by demoralize I mean to the point of possibly driving people to suicide. | If you could turn this question into a more specific example(preferably if it’s something you already had in mind), we could run the thought experiment together,
or perhaps even be able to give more relevant sources.
Are we talking about an asteroid coming that will certainly eliminate all life on earth?
A disease epidemic?
Impending zombie apocalypse?
Some sort of undeniable verification that life truly has no purpose or meaning?
Trump wins a second term? (Hey, perhaps an argument can be made that such a thing shouldn’t be broadcast) | 60 | 119 |
Where to start with Leibniz | Hey guys , have been listening to Firas Zahabis mma podcast and he has mentioned Leibniz a few times on different occasions. I’ve tried to find any essays or books to read about his philosophy but I’m stuck and not sure where to start , any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers ! | For primary source material, get the Ariew and Garber translation of Leibniz’s “Philosophical Essays” you can probably find a free pdf pretty easily if you look in the right places.
Also any secondary source articles by these guys is top notch. | 12 | 17 |
Before genes are sequenced, how do scientist make sure they are using the genes from the right organism? | As a birthday present I am getting my genes sequenced by a private company. For my sample they send a tube that I have to fill with spit then seal, shake and send back.
Once they get my sample how do they make sure that its actually my genes that are sequenced and not some bacteria or other organisms (cow cells from a recent rare steak or something)? | The tests use human specific primers/probes for DNA amplification and sequencing, and the sample tube has chemicals that retard bacterial growth. Most of the interference from bacteria is a degradation of human DNA in the sample, it's not really possible to sequence the bacterial genome instead of yours. | 19 | 51 |
I think that prices in North America should include taxes. CMV | We deserve to know exactly how much we're paying just by glancin at labels, besides, there's no benefit to the customer whatsoever in not including taxes. | The benefits of sales taxes being added after prices is that:
1. Retailers can make their price appear lower, and thus more marketable.
2. We, as consumers, can see on our receipt EXACTLY how much is being added as taxes, and thus will be more sensitive to tax changes. If taxes are slowly raised without customers seeing them on the receipt, they will not be truly sensitive to exactly where their money is going.
3. Retailers might jack their prices up slightly when a new tax law is enacted, and people would attribute it to the tax. Say their product was $30 and was to have a $5 tax added on. They might retail it for $36 when the new tax law came out, and consumers would barely know the difference, but are still paying more for the same product.
4. Ultimately, there is no disadvantage to showing sales tax separately from product price, and the advantage it confers is more information: the more information you have on where your money is going, the better. | 42 | 69 |
ELI5: High fantasy/Low fantasy | I never really understood it. I know it has something to do with primary and secondary worlds, but what does that even mean? | Generally high fantasy involves worlds where magic and fantastical creatures are common. Example: LOTR
Low fantasy is when there are subtle fantastical elements in a more realistic world. Example: Game of Thrones (at least so far in the first half of book 1) | 143 | 205 |
ELI5: how does keeping a journal help people with depression, food disorders etc. | ive heard that this helps with things like that but my question is how? or is this wrong? | Journaling can be useful in a few different ways. It can help providers track behaviors (with regard to food disorders or even things like headaches) to help nail a diagnosis or find a spot where one treatment or another will help the patient the most.
Another way is that journaling can be a helpful coping strategy. When life’s stresses bother us, it is important to channel those feelings towards something that isn’t self harming. In this sense, journaling can be something that a therapist recommends to their patient to write down their feelings. The patient can talk about those feelings with their providers if they feel comfortable doing that. | 12 | 22 |
How difficult to find a position at a research university? | I am applying to PhD programs this fall in political science. While I do desire to teach, I am primarily motivated by a desire to spend my time doing research. How difficult is it to find a job at a research university, or at least one with a 2-1 or 2-2 teaching load? | Easiest way to find this out is to go to such a university's webpage, find the department of interest, look through the CVs of the untenured assistant professors. Then remember to scale up cos that shit keeps getting harder. | 32 | 17 |
ELI5:Why Humans in general are so scared of Arachnids | Why are Arachnids so terrifying to such a wide audience of people? There are many other similarly sized/ potentially similarly shaped creatures, why aren't they as feared as arachnids? | Fear is an evolutionary tool given to us in order to avoid potential threats that may harm us or cause death. the fear of Arachnids, vermins, snakes and heights for that matter are instincts rooted in (most) of us to help us survive and pass our genes. those who lacked these instincts usually had slimmer chances to pass their genes before an untimely death caused by a fascinating poisonous spider. and so the slightly more fearful and cautious has survived and passed their genes to us. | 11 | 23 |
ELI5: Is genetic diversity almost always a good thing? | For example people of different races or ethnic background, do they usually breed genetically stronger offspring? Being that the genetic code has more resources available when creating said human? | The most important effect in this is not necessarily that different ethnicities create *better* offspring, but that the genetic defects that permeate individual populations are far less likely to be present in both parents if they are from different populations. It means that children with mixed ethnicities are less likely to express those defects because they have received a "healthy" chromosome from one of their parents. They can still pass on the defective one to their children however and it takes a few child generations for the defect to become less and less prevalent | 105 | 120 |
How effective is a wet shirt as an air filter? | In dusty environments, people sometimes wet their t-shirts and cover their nose and mouth with it. How effective is this really at preventing foreign particles from entering your body? | For Water soluble contaminants: it works as long as the water still has the effective capacity to dissolve/attract contaminants into it, once it has been thoroughly saturated it will let more and more through until it is useless.
For small particles: the water fills spaces which would let particles through and traps them in the fibres of the cloth
note that this is not very effective and should be only used as a last resort/ emergency like a fire or chlorine gas attack | 10 | 32 |
How do scientists detect molecular data on other planets and moons in the solar system without sending probes? | Every element releases a different light wavelength, we use the light data from the telescopes into a spectrometer and find out the wavelength of the light, and from it the molecular data is determined by comparing with the atomic spectra of the atoms | 15 | 15 |
|
What would happen if you peeled an orange and removed a segment from it while it is still growing on a branch? | Nearly all living things have defense mechanisms for "exposed" or damaged tissue.
For humans that's anything from blood to calcified collagen.
For plants this is anything from low viscosity sap to bark.
The segment you removed would cause an upswing in activation of hardiness epigenetic activation.
This is why farmers introduce plants to cold/severe weather as slowly as possible or avoid it all together.
So youd see that section of the orange essentially create "plant scar tissue", stop growing, and only if the rest of the fruit remained viable would it continue to send nutrients.
This is also why you can still see rotten fruit on plants before they give up, they continue to try even if something went wrong until the fruit is no longer viable.
The fruit undergoes what is essentially a miscarriage and eventually detatches from the flower. | 221 | 176 |
|
How do we measure the frequency of light? | Especially since the resolution might be to several decimal places and that unpolarised light might have the frequency change moment to moment.
With regards to measuring the frequency of distant galaxies - to measure Redshift - how do we measure the frequency of one galaxy and not all the stuff in between and near it. For example, if there were a trillion small dust clouds in the trillions and trillions of meters (in the straight line) between us and the galaxy, the reflection, absorption and reemission of light by the dust, asteroids etc could affect the frequency.
And galaxies extremely far away will blend into one since a second of arc from our measuring equipment will include quite a lot of celestial bodies (1/1296000 of all of them)
And large distances in space, as I understand it, are curved due to the gravitational effects of bodies we have no idea about it (as there are an infinite number of objects with mass in very deep space)
Lots of questions about this. | Light you see from all natural sources is rarely of one frequency. It’s a mix. Only lasers contain “one” frequency of light.
And we estimate frequency using `frequency = speed / wavelength`. We know speed of light and it is constant. We estimate wavelength using various methods. One is using spectrometer which changes the angle of light related to the wavelength of the light. Similar to a prism. Based on this we can estimate various frequencies coming from that light source.
There are other ways to measure wavelength too. Using interferometer which creates a fringe pattern and since light behaves like a wave it reacts to small slits. Like you say these instruments are very precise because measurements need that precision. | 10 | 25 |
CMV: Either neither Jews nor Arabs have a right to nation-states in Palestine, or they both do. | # Preface
First of all, I want to get a few things out of the way. I am an American Jew. My political perspective is extremely liberal, but I put a lot of effort into (and take a lot of pride in) being self-critical and understanding what I believe, why I believe it, and whether or not my beliefs are coherent together.
When they’re not, it’s clear to me that I’m making an emotion-based argument, and that I’m twisting facts or logic to suit that argument. I’ve been guilty of that often (as I’m sure many of us have), but conversations like this are really helpful to me as I try to find that happening less and less.
I know that bringing up the Israel/Palestine conflict is a shit show, and that I’m inviting hard-core Zionists to call me a self-hating Jew and hard-core anti-Zionists to call me a white supremacist or something along those lines. It hurts my feelings, but it is what it is – I’m expecting it.
Normally, I don’t add off-topic stuff to these posts, but because ad-hominem arguments and straw men are so rampant on this topic, I’m proactively including a “What I do believe and why” section at the end, in the appendix. **I am not here to argue any of those positions, nor am I saying any of them are relevant to, or required for, my CMV post.** If you want to argue with me about them you’re welcome to do so, and if it’s interesting I’ll respond, but that section is intended to be info-only.
Below, you’ll find a fact base, the body of my argument, and then the appendix.
# Fact Base
Feel free to disagree with me about facts if you feel the need, and I’ll edit this post to change any that prove to be inaccurate. You’ll need evidence from a reputable data source, clearly cited. If I update a fact and it changes my view, I’ll award a delta; otherwise, I won’t.
>Although the Romans decimated the indigenous Jewish population of Palestine in the 2nd century (and killed and deported most Jews, opening the area for resettlement)[1](https://archive.org/stream/diosromanhistory08cassuoft#page/448/mode/2up), Jews were consistently present in Palestine as a minority population[^(2)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)) throughout the next 18 centuries.
>
>Greeks, Syriacs, etc made up the demographic majority until several hundred years after the Muslim conquest of Palestine in the 7th century[^(3)](https://books.google.com/books?id=3kbU4BIAcrQC&pg=PA70&dq=iSLAM+pALESTINE&ei=Vvm9SqGtKIjwkQSWl_GIDw#v=onepage&q=iSLAM%20pALESTINE&f=true); Muslims made up the majority population in Palestine from the 13th century onward, with ethnic changes via an admixture of new Arab populations and the existing population groups, with a similar genetic composition and linguistic profile to Syrian, Jordanite, and Lebanese
>
>The Ottomans, who ruled a multi-national empire inclusive of Palestine until the end of WWII, allowed significant immigration to Palestine by the Bedouin, Egyptians, and Jews.[^(4)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)#Ottoman_period,_1800%E2%80%931918)
>
>In 1914[^(5)](https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-and-non-jewish-population-of-israel-palestine-1517-present), Jews made up about 14% of Palestine's population (at around 100,000).
>
>Due to a combination of natural population growth and legal (and certainly on the Jewish side, and possibly on the Arb side) illegal immigration[^(5)](https://web.archive.org/web/20140810170235/http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/E3ED8720F8707C9385256D19004F057C) [^(6)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Palestine_(region)#Ottoman_period,_1800%E2%80%931918), population had grown significantly by 1947 to 630K Jews (32%) and 1.3M non-Jews (68%), of whom about 100K were Bedouin[^(7)](https://www.google.com/search?q=bedouin+population+palestine+1947&rlz=1C1GCEA_enUS830US830&oq=bedouin&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j0i433j46j0j69i61l3.2535j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8).
>
>In 1947, the United Nations proposed, and voted to accept, a partition plan of Palestine[^(8)](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_Nations_Special_Committee_on_Palestine_Report/Chapter_VI) based on the premise that both Palestinian Arabs and Jews were making nationalistic claims to Palestine, both possessing validity, and irreconcilable without partition.
# Arguments
Finally! Sorry for how long this has been up till now, but I wanted to be thorough. I frequently hear these arguments being made, and I think both of them are not only incorrect, but internally inconsistent. I'm going to use the word 'Palestine' for simplicity, don't jump down my throat about it.
**My position** is that either both Palestinian Arabs and Jews have a moral right to establish/maintain respective nation-states in Palestine, or neither group has a particular moral right to statehood in Palestine; in either scenario, neither group has special moral rights.
I hear two arguments to oppose this viewpoint:
* **From hardcore Zionists:** Every people have a right to self-determination in their native land. The Jews are the indigenous population of Palestine, and so Israel should possess *all* of Palestine.
* **From hardcore anti-Zionists:** The basic idea of a "State of Israel" is fundamentally illegitimate, both because establishing it interferes with the Arab Palestinian right to national self determination, and because maintaining any kind of nation-state requires fundamentally racist policies that elevates one group above another.
**BASIC POINTS**
1. **"National self determination"** is a nice-sounding, but not vague. It could mean one any one of these things:
1. If you live in a place, you should be able to participate in the formation & running of its government to an equal extent to others that live in that place.
2. If you were born in a place, you have a right to participate in its government to an equal extent to others that were born in that place.
3. The ethno linguistic groups that are indigenous (that is, originated in) a particular geography have a unique claim to live in it, and form an ethno linguistic nation-state there.
2. **Discrimination on ethno-linguistic or religious grounds is either OK for a government to do, or not OK.** It can't be selectively one or the other.
3. **Either it is morally meaningful to make a distinction between groups of people based on existing political borders, or it is not morally meaningful.**
**MY POSITION**
**Why the hardcore Zionist position is wrong.**
**If ethno-linguistic groups indigenous (1.3) to a particular land have a unique claim** to form a nation in it, then discrimination on ethno-linguistic grounds (2) must not be OK in at least some situations. If you can't discriminate on those grounds, then an indigenous ethno religious group could never exert its "right to national self determination." To be a hardcore Zionist, you have to believe this as far as I can tell. In that case:
* Jews had a right to form a nation in Palestine, their indigenous land
* Palestinian Arabs speak a unique dialect and have a unique genetic profile; they have a perfectly reasonable claim to also be indigenous.
* Since more than one group of people are indigenous to Palestine, neither can have all of Palestine to the exclusion of the other.
**Why the hardcore anti-Zionist position is wrong.**
As briefly as possible:
* **A) To believe it's fundamentally wrong to maintain an nation-state,** you have to believe that it's not permissible to intentionally create (or try to maintain) a state with ANY ethnic, linguistic or religious majority in power, because doing that requires discriminating against existing and potential citizens based on those grounds (3).
* **To believe that establishing** ***any*** **majority Jewish state in Israel is wrong because it violates the Arab Palestinian right to self determination**, you have to either believe some version of one of these:
* **B)** Because Palestine already existed as a political entity (3), it would have been wrong to change its borders to accomodate a Jewish and non-Jewish state, and even if Palestine ceased to exist, the fact that it used to exist makes it continue to be wrong.
* **C)** Regardless of whether Palestine exists as a political entity now, it did exist then, and the only legitimate way to break up a political entity is for either everyone that was born there (1.1) or everyone that lives there (1.2) to vote on it. Because that isn't what happened, the political entities that exist there now don't matter, just the original one.
* **D)** It *is* permissible to discriminate against a group based on ethnic, religious or linguistic grounds in order to preserve an ethnic, religious or linguistic majority (3), even if doing so would create great hardship and death. For that reason, the Arab majority in Palestine should have been able to block immigration for Jewish refugees in the 1920s-1940s, and should be have been / be able to stop any smaller geography that *is* a Jewish majority from becoming independent based solely on that factor.
* **E)** Indigenous peoples *do* have a special right to national self determination in their native land (1.3), but if the majority of the indigenous group moves somewhere else for long enough, the whole group loses its status as indigenous. Any Palestinians that left Israel's pre-1967 borders still live close enough, or haven't been gone long enough, for that to apply here.
* **F)** All Jews are hardcore zionists, and would not have been satisfied with anything but an apartheid state or genocide of the Arabs. They would not / will not / could not accept a partition of Palestine, even though that would have been a good solution.
Hopefully I've captured these as neutrally and as completely as I can. Now:
* **A and D** are conflicting statements; it can't be OK to discriminate against Jews to preserve an Arab majority and not OK to discriminate against Arabs to preserve a Jewish majority.
* **B** doesn't pass the basic logic test. Palestine has been part of myriad different political entities (the Ottoman empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Roman Empire, the Hasmonean kingdom, and so on) with nothing like its current borders. By this logic, any state in Palestine is wrong.
* **C** doesn't make sense either, and it also indirectly supports the legitimacy of the status quo ("Israel exists *now,"* etc). Why is the British Mandatory Palestine, which lasted for about 20 years, more valid than the Ottoman province of Syria, which lasted for 300+? By that logic Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and Turkey are all illegitimate, and for the same reason.
* **E** is over engineered to apply to just this situation, and it loses its power to convince with every passing year; the fact is, only 30,000 Palestinian refugees are alive today who were born inside the 1967 borders of Israel. When do Palestinians stop having a right to that land? Why do other diasporas that have happened more recently not get the benefit of the same phenomena? Why should the minority that remained in a country not have their own indigenous right to self determination?
* **F** isn't historically accurate, it's easily falsifiable and requires making an "all jews" statement -- which is just about the broadest version of ethnic discrimination possible, and a dick move.
**In conclusion,** arguing that Palestine should be *entirely* controlled by Jews or *entirely* controlled by Arabs is based on self-conflicting arguments. Arguing that it *must* be a single state to be morally relevant is also based on a faulty position; either Jews and Arabs each deserve their own nation states in Palestine, or anyone should have a say over the system of government in the place they live or were born -- ie, either a single state or a two state solution could be fine, but neither *must* be fine.
**Edit 1: I need to clarify my stance to recognize that I am talking about a *moral right* to maintain a nation state; that is, to whether they can ethically do so. I recognize that this does not necessarily extend to whether or not they have the practical "right" to do so based on whether anyone is in a position to stop them, and that most countries' claim to their own territory rests on the latter, rather than the former.
However, we spend a lot of time on reddit talking about whether things are right or wrong without the test being "can I get away with it"; I'd ask that we do so here.**
# Appendix
OK, let me clear the air with anyone who wants to dive into ad hominems (or maybe just give you ammo, I dunno).
* I am Jewish, and American. I am deeply familiar with the history of Israel.
* I am liberal, and I know a lot of Israelis are liberal. I am deeply opposed to Likud's policies.
* I am passionately in favor of a two state solution, but concerned about its diminishing viability as Netanyahu chips away at it. This is because:
* Only about 10% of Arabs in the West Bank and fewer than a third of Israelis *want* a one-state, bi-national solution
* I'm pragmatic enough to understand that two population groups with separate nationalistic identities and a history of violent conflict with one another rarely integrate into a single society without bloodshed
* If a single state solution is risky and unpopular and there's an alternative solution, I prefer it
* I do not believe Israel is an apartheid state at present, but I do think that's where things are headed if nothing is done to change the course. I'm out of juice to explain why. | Throughout history, the people who have the power to claim a land and can defend against anyone who would dispute that claim, and with that example of power build a general consensus of their entitlement to that land are recognised as the rightful owners of that land. This has been true of every corner of the world throughout the course of human history. And it’s ever-changing.
How is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict really any different? Israel has the upper hand, they won it through blood and sacrifice. They built a widespread coalition that recognise their legitimacy.
Any “right” to land that is not acquired by power is charity on behalf of the powerful, often as a concession to maintain their legitimacy, maintain a semblance of political order, and fend off challengers.
How is this any different? | 19 | 61 |
CMV:Fighting gentrification on the basis of "watering down minority communities" is in direct conflict with "valuing diverse communities." | Here is the deal. I live in Chicago, and right now, there is a big fight going on in the Pilsen neighborhood. This is a neighborhood that was 90%+ Latino for the longest time. This is starting to change. That number is down to 75%, and it's still dropping as more white people move into Pilsen.
Now, there are tons of problems with this. Rent goes up, the culture of the neighborhood changes, less community engagement at schools as white people in Pilsen either don't have kids or send them to private schools.... However, that's not the complaints I hear. The complaints I hear is that **Pilsen is becoming less Latino**.
To me, this is a really shitty reason to oppose gentrification. The culture of Pilsen is changing; there is no denying that. However, that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It's becoming a more diverse community.
If you think that a Latino community gentrifying is a bad thing based on race, you oppose diversity.
_____
> *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!* | Maybe when people say they "value diverse communities" they mean it more in the sense of a diverse set of communities. If your city has a Chinatown, a Little Italy, a Jewish quarter, a Barrio, and a Little Saigon, then that's a diverse set of a lot of distinctly different neighborhoods. Someone could go to the city and immerse themselves in Chinese culture one day, and then El Salvadorian culture the next day, and then Italian culture the next day, etc.
If you were to take all those people living in those neighborhoods and distribute them evenly throughout the city, every neighborhood might be like 70% white, 10% black, 10% latino, 5% Chinese, and so on. Every neighborhood would have a variety of people in it, but every neighborhood would be the same. There's no more variety in communities, and not much of a way to really immerse yourself in a variety of cultures since every neighborhood in the city is majority white. | 137 | 500 |
What makes glass transparent? | At an atomic level, what allows glass to be like 1cm thick and still be transparent, but for example a cloth of only a few mm’s thick to be opaque?
(Hope this makes sense, English is my second language) | Two things make glass transparent.
Firstly, it's molecular/atomic structure simply does not have an available state to absorb the energy of visible light.
Light is made of photons. Depending on the frequency (colour within the visible spectrum but extending beyond it on either side), each photon carries a different amount of energy. Low frequency, like radio waves, have very little. High frequency, like x-rays, have a lot. In the visible spectrum, blue has about twice the energy of red per photon. That's not to say blue light is always more powerful, you can simply have more or less photons to get the same amount of power.
Things like exciting electrons or causing molecules to rotate or vibrate take very specific amounts of energy. It's kind of like the concept of resonant frequency that you likely have heard of. The wrong frequency does nothing while the right one excites it. Similar idea here.
So each material has certain energies that can excite it. And certain frequencies of light consist of particles of a given energy. Put the two together, and only certain frequencies of light can excite a given material. And exciting it can cause reflection or absorption of the light, depending on whether it gives it back or not. If the light can't interact with the material at all, it passes through pretty much unaffected. Ie, transparent.
Glass just happens to have the right molecular/atomic structure that visible light doesn't interact with it. It's actually opaque to infrared and ultraviolet, just past the visible spectrum. Everyday glass is far from the only thing that's transparent to visible light, there's actually a lot of types of glass that are different materials, lot's of plastics, ice, water, air, diamond, quartz, sugar, etc. Other materials strongly block visible light. All metals for example strongly block most kinds of light, right from from radio waves up to the UV spectrum, as the free electrons that make them electronical conductora can absorb near any amount of energy. Even a few nanometers of metals can block light.
Secondly, and actually the important one for your cloth comparison, it's fairly well organized on a more macroscopic scale. Small imperfections and defects, random jagged edges, random small particles, etc, cause random scattering of light. This highly distorts a clear image from making it through, so you'll never see through it. As well it cause more of it to be absorbed or reflected quicker, though not necessarily as fast as an truly opaque material. You can see light through thin cloth for example, you just can't see a clear image.
A large quartz crystal (very similar to glass) is clear, smashed into sand (which is melted and then solidified to make glass) it is not really transparent. Water is clear, turbulent waves aren't. Ice is clear, snow is not. A hard candy is transparent, powered sugar is not. Polyethylene terephthalate plastic is clear (your plastic pop/water bottle), Polyethylene terephthalate plastic spun into very fine fibres and then all tangled up into a your polyester shirt is not. You'll notice the trend here is very unorganized transparent things just end up white. | 20 | 15 |
ELI5 - How does anaesthesia work? Specifically, general anaesthesia? | General anesthesia has has a few main elements, although one anesthetic agent might not affect all of them at the same time, which is why anesthetists carefully choose a combo of drugs that work together. The four elements are unconsciousness, amnesia (forgetting), analgesia (lack of pain), and immobility. Anesthetics, in general, depress the central nervous system and work on different parts of the brain in order to have all these different effects on your brain and body. We're not actually 100% sure how they all work, and there are tons of different kinds of drugs, but they have a few principles in common.
There are specific parts of the brain involved in wakefulness, like a region called the *reticular activating system* and the *thalamus*, which are commonly affected by anesthetic drugs. The thalamus is a relay, processing, and integration gateway region that works sort of as middle management: many basic sensory signals and information come to this structure, and it works to integrate all the information together into a more cohesive picture and send it out to higher (conscious) parts of the brain for further analysis. It also interacts with the reticular activating system, which is a connected system of regions responsible for regulating your brain's transition from awake to asleep.
Another important thing to remember is that pain is all in your brain. The actual physical cell damage (like a cut or a bruise) is noticed by specialized nerve cells called *nociceptors* that are throughout your body. These cells notice the damage and send the information up through your spinal cord to your brain ("hey brain! some bad stuff is happening to the body, you might wanna alert them so they can escape the danger!"), and different types of these cells encode different types of pain (sharp vs dull, burning, etc). However, the actual "feeling" of pain comes when these signals get to your brain, where lots of modulation and regulation of these raw signals happen. Using lots of pathways, your brain can enhance these signals or downplay them, which is why sometimes a cut doesn't hurt until you see it or why a surge of adrenaline can make you not notice a huge injury. For example, t*he opioid pathway* (which is stimulated by drugs like Vicodin and Oxycontin) interferes with the nociceptors so it's harder for them to tell the brain what they're sensing. It also enhances the dopamine (the "feel good hormone") pathway to cause euphoria or a sense of well-being.
In addition, some drugs work by enhancing our brain's natural inhibitory mechanisms ("off switches"). Your brain is a complex system full of signals and things trying to regulate and modify these signals: sometimes exciting them, sometimes inhibiting them. Some anesthetics also work by "disconnecting" certain connecting pathways, so that the sensory information never gets to the conscious parts of your brain. Ketamine works this way.
Here's an example of some of the diverse actions in a common anesthetic class, the **barbiturate** (phenobarbital, thiopental, etc):
Inhibits release of neurotransmitter (chemical signals) and inhibits neuronal firing in the thalamus and reticular activating system, causing sleep. Also enhances the functioning and binding of inhibitory neurotransmitter called GABA-A, basically depressing the function of the central nervous system as a whole. Cerebral blood flow and brain metabolism decreases. It also depresses important brain areas like the ones that regulate your breathing and heart rate, which is why during surgery you're hooked up to all those monitors. It also works at the junction between your muscles and the nerves that make them move, causing immobility (important during surgery!). As an example of "one agent doesn't do everything," these drugs don't stop pain, so you need to add another drug like an opioid when using a drug like this as a general anesthetic.
| 19 | 40 |
|
ELI5: How do fruits ripen after they are picked from the trees? | There are two kinds of ripening, climacteric & nonclimacteric.
Nonclimacteric have seperation issues and can't grow unless they are connected to their parent because they are too lazy to produce their own sugar.
Climacteric don't have seperation issues instead they like to get high off of a hormone called "ethylene" which activates enzymes which break down starch into sugar. So basically they can produce sugar on their own without a parent tree.
Hope that helps. | 21 | 21 |
|
Physicists sometimes talk about symmetry or "supersymmetry", but they seem to use it in a different way than in normal conversation. What does it mean in this context? | Symmetry in physics is in general invariance under a certain mathematical operation. For example, a cube is symmetric under rotations by 90°. When you put both the cube and the rotations in a vector space where you just perform an abstract math operation, you see that the operation simply maps the cube to the cube. In the same way, equations have symmetries. The Maxwell equations are invariant under Lorentz transformations, for example. Then you have CPT symmetry, where all of quantum mechanics is the same when you turn charge, parity (left<->right) and time around.
Supersymmetry is a hypothetical invariance under a transformation that turns fermions (half integer spin particles) into particular bosons (integer spins). | 15 | 16 |
|
[Judge Dredd] What would happen if a Megacity Judge chose to use their authority as judge and jury to be as soft on crime as possible, while still following the law? | Judges are empowered to interpret and enforce the law as they see fit. Within the prescribed guidelines, leniency is an option open to them. One of the first ever sentences by the Judges was against "Smoothie" Booth, the last president of the United States, an irredeemably evil man who frankly deserved death if ever any human being did, and they all considered it; but in the end they opted for the arguably more lenient option of cryopreservation.
Later on Dredd himself would commute that sentence to a lifetime of community service, possibly even more lenient (though Dredd had cause to regret this later on) | 53 | 44 |
|
When you train yourself to hold your breath longer, what exactly is it that you improve? | **LUNGS**=======
Vital capacity (how much air your lungs can hold) is increased in competitive divers, but that may be misleading. Most competitive divers use a technique called "lung packing", in which they basically force more air into their lungs using their pharynx. This could cause changes in lung structure. Therefore it's not known if people who don't practice lung packing would also have increased vital capacity (AFAIK).
**BRAIN**=======
Your brain is unique in its vascular needs for two reasons: First, it needs a lot of oxygen. It doesn't work well on anaerobic metabolism. Second, it's the only major organ completely encased in a rigid structure. If your leg needs more blood, more can go there and the leg will just expand. No problem. Not so with the brain...more blood there, and you get increased pressure, which is a Very Bad Thing.
That brings us to dynamic cerebral autoregulation (dCA). This is a mechanism by which your body keeps the blood pressure in your skull within reasonable limits. Enough blood for proper oxygenation, but not so much you squish your grey matter.
During breathold, you get a kind of compensation...more blood is allowed into the brain case. Vessels in the brain expand (allowing for greater volume in there), and vessels in the periphery constrict (increasing blood pressure and "squeezing" blood elsewhere). This is a reduction in the dCA mechanism.
People who train themselves in breathold diving can train themselves for greater reduction in dCA, allowing for more prolonged breath hold.
There is also an increased tolerance to the chemoreflex that gives "air hunger" in response to high CO2 in the blood.
**HEART**=======
In addition to the increased blood pressure, there is a reduction in heart rate with breathhold. This reduction is exaggerated in people that train to hold their breath longer.
**SPLEEN**=======
There are also effects in the spleen. It can act as a reservoir for red blood cells, and when it contracts, oxygenated RBCs are pushed out into the blood. This could possibly be trained, but AFAIK it has not been investigated.
Spleens are bigger in competitive divers. However, this could be a physiologic adaptation to training (NBA players have well developed legs for jumping), or a pre-existing physical trait that makes better free divers (NBA players are tall). | 55 | 181 |
|
What is unique about carbon that makes it ideal for organic chemistry? | I understand that it bonds well molecularly with many other elements. What other elements could be the basis for advanced life (I've heard silicon might be suitable)? What qualities in an element might make it reasonably suitable?
*EDIT*: Wow, thanks for the extraordinary response! I posted this just before going to sleep last night, so I didn't get a chance to respond, but your answers were fascinating! Much appreciated! | It easily makes 4 strong bonds, either with more carbon atoms or with other non-metals like oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and phosphorus. This allows long chains of carbon atoms with other atoms hanging off the side, leading to a bewildering range of possible molecules of different shapes, sizes, and chemical properties.
Other non-metals either don't make enough bonds (oxygen makes 2, nitrogen 3, hydrogen 1), or the bonds aren't strong enough to form long chains that are reasonably stable (silicon, phosphorus, etc.). Metals usually don't make covalent bonds at all, so they can't form chains (inter-metallic bonds are far too weak). | 970 | 1,781 |
[Metal Gear Rising] How does Raiden's sword cut clear through things his sword is not near long enough to do so? | This happens a lot throughout the game, you slash your sword, which is roughly the length of the engine block through the front of the car, and it slices clean through to the back.
I imagine it goes without saying here, but please no "because Japan" type responses. | High frequency blades use vibration to part objects on a molecular level, through specific motion the operator of a blade can project the waves produced by the blade outward beyond the physical limitations of the blade itself making an invisible to the eye but none the less deadly projection of the forces used in the initial cutting action. | 56 | 49 |
ELI5: If correlation is not causation, how(why) can(do) we believe scientific studies? | Scientific studies that are believable aim to prove the cause, not the correlation.
Take drug studies. They use similar populations, and split them in to groups. One group gets nothing, one group gets a placebo (sugar pill basically), and one group gets some drug. Then they study each population to determine if the drug does anything good or bad, how each population compares in their tolerance of the drug and their recovery time, and so forth. It may be that a drug doesn't shorten the duration of an illness, so they don't proceed with it. But the proof is there.
It's completely different from scenarios where, for example, children who learned to walk early on also tend to suffer from allergies. i heard it on Oprah. Srs.
| 14 | 16 |
|
[Ghostbusters] How exactly does the Containment Chamber trap the ghosts ? | We're shown a different Containment chamber in each Ghostbuster media, with two showing how it looks inside (The real ghostbusters and Xtrem Ghostbusters) and all showing its outside aspect. As far as I know, although we know the function of the Containment unit, we're not given any clue about its method of operation, or to put it differently about the nature of the Ghost prison. Is it some kind of alternate dimension ? | There are different methods of operation in different canons. In the film canon they are essentially creating an energy field "bottle" (similar to the magnetic fields used to control super high temperature plasma in fusion experiments) that holds ectoplasmic entities in a way that no conventional wall could. They developed this (along with the proton packs and hand traps) based on the data they got off the Library Ghost. This bottle is the *only* thing keeping the ghosts in place, hence why everything goes straight to hell within 10 seconds of Peck turning off the power grid. Some draft scripts elaborated on what the inside looked like, essentially looking like a very literal prison complete with a closed-circuit tv feed on a bunch of ghosts stuck in a box with nothing to do, which none of the boys like to look at because it's depressing.
In the animated series the tank works on a mix of the same containment tech as the original, as well as the exploitation of pocket/parallel dimensions. In the comics, | 56 | 90 |
CMV: Cars should have right of way unless at pedestrian crossings. | So many instance where driving around a carpark or something similar and pedestrians who walk right infront of cars without looking up ot pay attention to thiet surroundings. This forces the driver to slow down or stop complete halting way of traffic. Cars are 1000kg to 2000kg metal objects + they move faster than people. I think in situations unless at pedestrian crossing where pedestrians actually have right of way, people need to stop thinking they have more priority than cars cause cars can kill you. And its not my fault that you werent looking or paying attention i manage to hit you. It should be both parties looking and paying attention to hazards around you. We need to stop this culture of being too arrogant for your own safety. | So there are two different things here - the cultural expectation of how different people behave in various situations, and the legal concept of 'right of way'.
In terms of cultural norms, yes, pedestrians should be more careful around cars, and more conscientious of not getting in the way of traffic.
In terms of the legal concept of 'right of way', it's very important that the person who is in a position to kill people has the legal responsibility to not kill people, rather than that the person who is in a position to get killed, has a legal responsibility to not get killed.
That is, we don't want everyone who runs down a pedestrian to be able to say 'I had right of way, so it was their fault' and get off scott free. Partially because this leads to more people being killed, but also because, once you've killed someone with your car, they're not there to testify about whether or not they were *actually* violating right of way, or not.
| 107 | 68 |
ELI5: Where does the idea of multiple universes come from? Is there any scientific proof backing it? What exactly does the idea of "alternate/multiple universes" entail? | There are various places in physics where the idea of multiple universes arise, for a bit different reasons. I'll write a bit about two of the main ones.
First, lets talk about the one coming from an interpretation of quantum mechanics, which roughly says that every time a quantum measurement is performed, the universe "splits" into multiple branches, where each branch has its own result of the measurement. This is called the many world interpretation, for obvious reasons. That somebody came up with this comes from how the math of quantum mechanics looks like: the state of a system is described by a wave function. The wave function "spreads out" over different classical values, and normally we think of this as giving probabilities of the various possible outcomes. When we then take a measurement, we see just one of the values, and the wave function "collapses" to the value we found. But the many world interpretation says that the wave function is actually real; so all the different outcomes actually all happen, they just happen in different "branches" that doesn't talk to each other. Then there is no collapse. So in a way this comes out of taking the math of QM very seriously.
The other version of multiple universes comes from cosmology (the study of the very early universe). The common model believed today is that of inflation, which roughly means that the universe underwent a very rapid expansion closely after the big bang. This seems required to explain various observed features. Then some people observed that it is natural for this inflation to actually go on forever, something that is called eternal inflation. In this model, the rapid expansion only randomly stops in small "bubbles", that because of quantum fluctuations "freeze out" of the surrounding inflating universe. Each such bubble becomes its own universe, and the randomness of the freezing should give each new bubble some new random laws of physics. This also ties in with the anthropic principle, which is an attempt to explain why the universe looks the way it looks. The logic of this goes that of course the universe has to look this way and be such that it supports human life, since if it was any other way we wouldn't be here to ask the question. This combined with a multiverse is a possible answer for why the laws of physics look the way the do and so on. Of course many (probably most) physicists are not satisfied with this "answer". Some people also use the anthropic principle to argue for a multiverse without pointing to any particular physics model.
| 26 | 111 |
|
ELI5: Does sign language provide the predominant message for hearing impaired people? | Or does the lip reading do most of it and the signs are just there for context?
EDIT: Who the fuck is downvoting this? | Note that there's more than one sign language, just like there's more than one spoken language. Deaf people in the U.S. usually speak ASL (American Sign Language), which isn't the same as what's signed in the U.K., Australia, France, or other countries. Oh, and there are regional dialects, too.
To answer your question, though, all of those sign languages are complete languages, just as rich and expressive as spoken language. There's nothing that can be communicated via speech or writing that can't be communicated between two people who are both fluent in sign language.
| 25 | 36 |
ELI5: Why doesn't Trader Joes have sales? | They're the only grocery store I've ever seen that does not have sales. | You do sales for two primary reasons: get people into the store, or get rid of excess inventory.
Trader Joe's has a nearly cult-like following...they don't need sales to get people in the store (they barely advertise anyway so having a sale wouldn't help much).
They also have only about 1/10th the number of unique items for a typical grocery store and have a much lower stock of perishable inventory. This combination means they're much less likely to be overstocked on anything, so they don't need sales to get rid of excess. | 11 | 15 |
Any literature/guidance on writing a purely theoretical master's thesis? | I'm currently a master student of sociology and decided with my mentor to write a purely theoretical thesis. However, I couldn't find any good guidance besides Umberto Eko's "How to Write a Thesis", everything I found was research-based (theoretical framework, method, results, discussion).
Any help would be welcome, even your own advice. | Rather than books - which may be entirely unapplicable to your specific situation - ask your advisor for examples from their past students, and find relevant examples for yourself.
Pretty much every university out there puts masters theses online, usually through the university library. Go find some examples of the kind of thesis you're doing, in similar fields, for the same type of degree, and from whatever country you're in (since the standards/expectation for masters thesis vary a *lot* by country and type of degree). Skim through several. Look at how they're structured, how the work is introduced, how much depth there is, how the different sections are related to one another, etc etc, and go from there. | 34 | 65 |
What does "modal" refer to in "modal logic"? | This is an [etymological question,](https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=modal) really.
Also, does the term "modal" here have any common reference with "mood" as it applies to syllogisms? | Modal logic is the logic of possibility and necessity (what can be the case, what must be the case, etc.).
The standard semantics for modal logic is possible world semantics (PWS), where a possible world is (very roughly) a fully described way the world might have been.
So in PWS, a statement is possibly true if it is true in at least one possible world. It is necessarily true if it is true in all possible worlds.
'Modal' literally just means 'mode', as in 'mode of existence'. Different possible worlds represent different modes of existence (different ways the world could be). | 12 | 19 |
ELI5: How does saltwater and freshwater fish body system work? | Living organisms need to have some amount of salt in them, but not too much. Now water will naturally want to flow from less-salty areas into more-salty areas to maintain its own balance. The body of a fish will not have the same saltiness as the water it lives in so fish have to do some special things to maintain the right amount of saltiness within their bodies.
Freshwater fish have more salt in their bodies than there is salt in the water. As a result, water tends to flow into their bodies. So they don't drink very much and they pee a lot.
Saltwater fish have less salt in their bodies than there is salt in the water. As a result, water tends to flow out of their bodies. So they drink a lot and don't pee very much.
There are various glands and organs and things that help the fish do what they need to, but that's the basics of it. | 16 | 26 |
|
Why can't we make a balloon that never loses air or helium? | Inspired by [this post](http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/hxqzx/best_balloon_animal_ever/). Won't it be sad when it droops away into a meaningless pile of rubber? WON'T YOU SAVE THE DINOSAURS, ASKSCIENCE?! | There's a process called permeation where the gas molecules or atoms actually move through the interatomic spaces of the enclosing material. This puts a limit on ultra-high vacuum systems, but is also relevant for balloons. | 24 | 29 |
[Stargate/SG1]What was the benefit of having to manually lock the 7th chevron? | Why are the addresses 7 digits long if a particular gate would always have the same last digit? Why wasn't it just assumed, or are there other possible functions than point to point transport that could be accessed via last chevron manipulation? | In one book, they could be locked on the lines between chevrons for off-planet, interstellar locations. So if you are moving a gate by a ship the last chevron changes.
8th chevron dialed another galaxy (Atlantis)
9th? who knows? | 17 | 19 |
Eli5: What happens if I take an ant (or bee) and move it to a far far away colony or hive? Do the other ants/bees kill the newcomer? Does it try to go home? Does it start working? | There are a large variety of ants with a large variety of behaviors and social structures.
Some ant species would take it as a slave worker, others would murder it and leave it out, other would eat it.
| 15 | 18 |
|
CMV: I think the media and collective societies focus is often misguided and down right immature, deciding to focus on Gender Equality, LGBT rights, Trans people and human relations and emotions rather than real issues such as the chronically ill, disabled and or in-firmed. | I keep seeing media articles and posts about trans people in gaming, adverts, TV, radio talk shows, opinion pieces and just a sheer focus on the topics I relate to above. Like the wave of movies focused on girl power or recreating characters to be "represented" when personally I think they were represented well before.
Speaking out on an issue which isn't an issue but brining more attention to it can make it an issue, plus people need to stay relevant and have a job right? If no one in the advocacy media had nothing to complain about they'd get no checks.
I am a disabled gamer, but does it matter in gaming? nope. The adaptive controller and making games accessible is about it, but Im not that severe, Im glad however common sense prevailed and created a something to help a real issue. There is no need to keep going on about non issues. If you wish to be a different gender or want to dress differently or tell your boyfriend you don't value him as a male by all means do so.
Keep making symbols, keep making flags, keep making statements and points of contention you signal to the rest of the world you WISH to be different and treated differently. For people with disabilities there is one real symbol, and it's used practically. Like literally without that symbol people in society would have such a harder time. It is a symbol thats universally needed and is practical for some people too function. It is not their choice.
But this? it makes you wonder if people with disabilities kept on going, kept on wanting to be different, would everyone of viewed us as something thats not the same? If we made an issue out of all facets of life? It is worrying that something as "choosing to dress differently" or "identify as something else" or "self empowerment" is almost equal to or being cared for more than issues such as people with disabilities or chronic conditions and mental health.
It makes me worry were society places its values. Is it vanity, the self and self empowerment over the chronically ill and damaged. I could be extremely wrong and I see some similarities in the problems, but I honestly wasn't bothered about people being gay, trans or whatever until you started seeing it everywhere. I have a friend who's a lesbian and she doesn't care, there was a cross dressing waiter in cafe I used to frequent and he was funny as in actually a funny person and everyone loved him would make everyones day. This though I see as an issue, sometimes. I feel it is an exploited issue, its pure intentions, its origins lost to corrupted ideals. Im not saying this group shouldn't have a voice, Im just saying its getting so loud that you barley hear others of people who need saving. If you are a man who now wants to be a woman, at least you can still walk in either case. I really don't see the issue, other than people's opinions being strong and hurtful, but I was bullied all through school for having a disability, but that issue has not ever been addressed. Probably never will because it's such a minor minority. In which half of those probably can't even speak. So the "normies" who are the majority of who get to decided what breaks into the media have a voice on the topic of the week.
I just feel society is rather thickle and unjust in its collective focus on world issues and priorities. I would love to hear opposing thoughts on this, its rather bugging me and Im not sure if my frame or perspective is correct. I am not saying this is a bad thing, rather that there is more important pressing issues in the world than the media (not individuals) media decide to drone on about.
Yet thinking this way, apart of me thinks I am not allowed this view and that I am the evil one, but be in a hospital bed surrounded by the sick and weak, and then be in a room of people who "think they have problems" is often quite insulting and immature to me. Like gain some perspective please. Like even me with my disability, Im just lucky to be alive. Im grateful, so why are people and society not. Why are they not helping people with disabilities more, I know countless of people with disabilities who do not have the resources or tools to help them not feel lonely, isolated and down right worthless. Im one of the lucky ones who just recognise this and Im a "middle man" Im not to the extremes of either end, and I have a life, but others who are worse than me just don't and are the most misrepresented people with real issues ever. Infact the only thing I think society gets right in this regard is Cancer treatment and awareness and Covid.
But do abled bodied people see how insulting it is to chronically ill people who suffer every day of their lives for someone to post on facebook "I have covid and you don't know what suffering is until you get it" granted it is effecting everyone, so thats why its important, hence why I said society is right in doing so, but can people please just have some more empathy and understanding for real issues.
When will this bullshit end though? (not covid or cancer) but the superficial nature of society. What is it ? you don't want to be reminded that people have it worse? to that I say "fuck you". Why doesn't society structure itself more to help those people, we seem to do it fine for everything else. Instead of funnelling the disabled to only allowed to be "stand up" comedians or low menial jobs.
but perhaps Im wrong. I don't fully sit in this camp, I don't have to care, but I just know a too few many disabled people (who cannot be independent like me) who just get left behind. Im just luckily enough to be damaged enough by my disability to see it. All the time. It is honestly disgusting. I can't even discuss it because my social circle is a mixture of both, and I'd offended one and depress the other. but I honestly feel there is some truth to my statement.
but I want to be wrong or show a more positive message that I may of missed out on. Im also writing a book on this and want to understand peoples points of views or fairer views, correct me where I am wrong. What is the most altruistic approach we as humans could take? No inspiration porn, just the right way to solve this.
Educate me please.
Edit: It seems people think I am attacking those groups when infact I think its more societies priorities as a whole, not the groups or people within those groups that are the issue I recognise, I honestly take no issue in your choice in what you do with your life, just that society should be more vocal in the area of people with disabilities. Just to make that clear. I hate no human.
Edit: I have been enlightened by some beautiful people out there. Thank you. | Tons of time and resources are spent caring for the disabled. There are charities, public programs and billions of research dollars that pour in to things like that. Almost all people care about the rights of disabled people and if they’re infringed upon, public outcry is almost immediate. Sure, people fall through the cracks, but no system is ever perfect and a lot of disabled people aren’t going to be able to live successful and fulfilling lives because of the nature of their illnesses at this point in human history.
LGBT people don’t have the same universal support and their struggles are most because of backlash from a segment of the population rather than any issue out of human control. The resources spent per lgbt person compared to a severely disabled person are likely remarkably small. | 49 | 29 |
ELI5: How do you get job experience without having job experience? | A bit of a rant here...
I'm a recent grad looking for work in a particular field. Every job posting in this field says "2-5 years work experience in this field required." But how am I supposed to get experience the field when I can't get a job in the field to begin with?
Edit: People are asking what field I'm interested in. I intentionally left that out because I'm more interested in general strategies and advice that apply to the work force in general. Hopefully someone else reading this who is in my position in life can benefit from this post as well.
Thanks for the replies, everyone! :D | You start out with very low-level, very low-paying jobs, sometimes ones that are only a little bit related (if at all) to what you're trying to do.
You can also show independent work as your work experience. For example, if you're trying to get a programming job, you can go "I have a 4-year degree in computer science. I've also written a couple of small apps and built a website to support them."
You could also do volunteer work and count that as work experience.
Also, if you think you have the skills for that job, *apply for it anyway*. Show up being very well-prepared, and basically prove yourself to them. | 15 | 18 |
ELI5: How do the federal banks of a country determine whether to increase or decrease interest rates? Like whats the relationship between interest rates and a country's economy? | Low interest rates make loans easier and stimulate investment.
High interest rates make loans more difficult and discourage investment.
Central banks use interest rates as a tool to try to increase economic growth or decrease it. Usually what they do is they watch the economy and they lower interest rates when unemployment is the most serious concern. When inflation is the largest concern, they will raise interest rates to try to keep prices in check. They try to make all changes slowly and they try to telegraph every move so that nobody is surprised or shocked. | 23 | 27 |
|
[Men in Black] [DC] How would the MiB agency view Superman, Martian Manhunter, or the Green Lantern Corps? | They'd want to recruit the former two, and establish a working relationship with the latter.
You can see that they pretty much manage diplomatic relations with alien powers (at least, you can see that just before getting neuralized :P).
Ditto for them employing aliens in their agency. Whatever you might think about them running around erasing memories, at least they're an equal opportunity employer. | 23 | 28 |
|
I’m starting a philosophy club at my High school, any tips or advice? | Reading excerpts and discussing them is an easy to prepare and useful activity. Also, try to diversify the positions you talk about. If people find themselves unable to relate to the positions because they are all too similar they may be put off, and similarly if everyone agrees on everything then it's not much of a philosophy club!
Edit: Also, if you are going to look at historical works rather than contemporary philosophy (which is probably wise), try to get a discussion going about how the ideas can/can not be applied to modern society. Historical context is important, both for appreciating past breakthroughs that seem obvious now and being able to see how past works can still be useful (most obvious examples being Plato & Aristotle) | 23 | 52 |
|
ELI5: How is buying a textbook, starting a Meetup group, and chipping in for a professor to stop by every week for a few hours is different than paying $40k a year to attend grad school? | Accreditation. If you go through a proper university course, there are standards in place to make sure you've been taught certain information, and having a degree reflects that. Plus, when you attend a university, you're also paying for access to a lot of the facilities. | 34 | 16 |
|
[ELDERSCROLLS] If you have magic, why are swords even used? | Think about it. Anyone can learn magic, so it isn't like wizards are hard to recruit. Also, a man with a sword has no chance against someone who shoots fire out their ass. Why are swords even used? For that matter, why doesn't everyone use magic? | Being able to manipulate magic on the level of the player characters is extremely rare, and requires years upon years of research, practice and meditation.
Using magic in combat is also very tiring, and the people who sit around studying magic all their lives are very likely to be physically unfit in comparison to soldiers who fight with shields and swords, so they're likely to lose in a one-on-one battle.
Having every soldier be a mage is about as difficult as having every soldier be a mounted cavalry knight with full plate armor, shielding and training. It's very hard to find someone with the skill, dedication and resources to become a combat ready mage, so giving random mooks a sword and telling them to swing it at anyone in the enemy's group is much more efficient. | 58 | 36 |
CMV: There is no benefit to having the electoral college. Either allow a percentage based sharing of electors, or have the presidential election decided by popular vote | For those who don't know/don't understand how it works, the U.S. uses a system of electors to elect the president. Each state has a certain number of electoral votes which aren't proportionate to their population (less populated states are overrepresented, more populous states are under represented) and its a winner take all system. If you were running for president and won 50.000001% of New York's popular vote, then you would receive 100% of their electoral votes. This is messed up for several reasons, mainly that the minority parties people's votes don't count in reliably blue/red states. I see two ways of fixing this.
1. Get rid of the winner take all system and replace it with a percentage system. If a democrat won California by 64%, then the republican candidate should get the other 36% of the vote. This would make reliably blue/red states competitive again, and stop nominees from spending 99% of their time and money in just a few battle ground states. It would also help to make the most popular candidate the winning candidate. OR
2. Have a simple popular vote system. In the first solution mentioned, one of the issues would be the over/under representation of states based on the population of the state. I am personally of the opinion that the person who the majority of Americans want to be president, should be president. | Benefit is a matter of perspective. The system was designed to benefit low pop states, and it does.
Your proposal would harm large pop states. It would harm the political calculus of Democrats especially. With 3 EC states like Wyoming their vote splitting is largely inconsequential, but if the 55 California EC votes were to split that harms the advantage Democrats have. The same to Texas and the GOP. | 20 | 60 |
not sure how to title this but the question is about the affects of an oxygen deficient environment on the body? | if a person went outside in an environment with little to no oxygen so they had a oxygen supply for breathing what effects would the oxygen deficient environment have on the body? | You would need to have your oxygen supply also cover the eyes, because the cornea depends on absorption of oxygen directly from the air.
Otherwise there shouldn't be any effect in the short term. Maybe there would eventually be effects from changes in your external microbiota (different bacteria would be able to live on your skin etc). | 672 | 1,617 |
Immigration | Why does immigration have a positive effect on the economy? Is it just because of differing skillsets between immigrants and natives? Other than that, I would think that everything would scale up and the impact would be neutral. | Immigrants are a complement to the current work force. Low skill immigrants work low paying jobs that Americans don’t want to work and high skill immigrants have advanced educations and are qualified for high tech jobs.
Immigration also helps spur innovation and entrepreneurship. Immigrants move to America because of a lack of opportunity in their home countries. It is largely a subset of hard working people who are looking for a place where upward mobility is possible. | 34 | 20 |
Does the fossil record show significant changes in the global diversity of land animals coinciding with the formation or breakup of supercontinents? | For instance, something similar to the Columbian Exchange, when colonization spread invasive species between continents? | You're looking for the field of biogeography! Biogeography is the study of the distribution of species and ecosystems in geographic space over geologic time. It's super fascinating stuff.
There is a lot of evidence for tectonic theory in the paleo record, including related animals on either side of a divergent plate boundary (think west side of Africa and east side of South America). The processes that you mention, tectonic movement, generally happens too slowly to be associated with big extinction events, but you can certainly see speciation occur over time as populations become separated over time. Some smaller extinctions may occur as a result of populations being brought together (land bridge or similar, two species that filled the same niche now have to compete for resources) or as an ecosystem changes slowly over time due to something like mountain uplift. Generally mass extinctions are caused by climatic events, like fast global temperature change or sea level rise, or one-off events like volcanic eruption or the well known asteroid impact. | 211 | 677 |
ELI5: If the body has a set point for weight, how does it "know" how much you weigh to regulate it? | Set point theory says that the body has a weight range it wants to maintain and will try to regulate changes in weight. If this is true, how would the body be able to tell how much it weighs? Based on how much calories you're consuming? The volume of food? Can it sense how much is in fat stores? | There is no sensing system for fat, per se. Weight gain is driven by your metabolism, which generally occurs at a set point. So weight is not necessarily regulated, but rather metabolism is.
You have certain metabolic levels for different kinds of activity. Sleep has the lowest metabolic activity, while high exertion stuff like sprints or a marathon have the highest metabolic activity. All other activities, like sitting/working/walking are somewhere in between.
So weight is not necessarily regulated, partly because there is no way for the body to know how much you weigh or what your BMI is. The only thing your body knows is how active you are. The rest is up to you: your diet needs to match your activity level in order to maintain the same weight. If you work in an office 5 days a week and sit at home on weekends, you really shouldn't eat a lot. If you're an athlete who trains every single day then you will need *several times* the caloric intake of an office worker.
So yeah, there are a lot of homeostatic "set points" in the body but weight is not one of them. | 12 | 19 |
ELI5: How do people initially determine the amount of protein, carbohydrates, and fat in a food item? | Foods are pretty complex, so the tests used also get complicated pretty quickly, but there are a couple basics. For fat, you can weigh the food first, then wash out the fat with special liquids (solvents). You can remove the solvents from the fat to get the weight of fat alone.
For protein, people usually look for the element nitrogen. There are specific measuring methods to get the amount of nitrogen in the sample, and then a mathematical formula is used to convert that to an amount of protein.
Carbs are kind of assumed to be what's left over from the other two kinds of tests. | 24 | 23 |
|
ELI5 how are radio audience numbers calculated? | If radio signal just goes one way and our radio devices aren't transmitting anything, how on earth do they know how many people are listening? | In the US, bigger markets, use whats called a Portable People Meter (PPM). Its a small device about the size of a pager, that listens in the background. But don't worry its not spying, radio stations all broadcast a "watermark" of sound that a human can't hear, but the PPM can. From this, they gather what radio stations are being listened to. This is somewhat reliable
In many smaller markets, they still use old school diaries. They have people literally write down and catalog what they listened to on the radio-- this is viewed as quite unreliable, to hilariously unreliable, but its still used, because thats just how things are | 33 | 37 |
ELI5: Biologically, what makes a song catchy? | I'm looking at you, Latch by Disclosure. | Repetition & variation. Repetition establishes a pattern and then variation creates unexpected surprise in that pattern. The brain tries to adapt to the pattern but needs to re-listen to the variation to grasp the nature of the unexpected surprise. The repetition can occur in one or more of the elements of music: rhythm, melody, structure, background vs. foreground, or multiple elements against each other. | 10 | 16 |
CMV: outside of subs like this, 99% there is no point in trying to convince others of any point in regards to religion and politics, so i dont think its rude to just not respond | even on subs like debate religion, which I don't go on, I feel that sub is filled with people who have already made up their mind. Both sides are just there for cathartic reasons. That's fine. Like I'm not against venting. But I just think if anyone wants to convince others, 99% of the time its not gonna happen. Christian dude goes in already with bias. A short conversation with no human interaction isn't gonna make him realize he's wrong, and vice versa..
I don't know what's missing but I feel the internet is missing something that allows us to see more..
so I guess my view is more so that, on reddit (and maybe the internet) 99% of the time I'm just wasting my time repeating and expanding my point just for someone to say, no I still don't believe. So what's the point? I'm not motivated by anything I guess.
Maybe I just don't care enough. I care enough to say my peace but after that... Eh. | It depends on what the point is and it’s scale. Trying to make an over generalized point in an attempt to overhaul someone’s entire belief system is pointless. Making a very specific point about a specific contention is doable, especially if their is evidence supporting you. For instance, arguing “ all republicans are bad” won’t get you anywhere. It’s just too general and their is too much room for personal biases and beliefs. However if you argue “ republicans are anti-LGBT”, or “republicans want to take away reproductive rights from women.”, these are more quantifiable points that can be proven or disproven more easily. | 44 | 307 |
I don't see global cultural homogenization as a bad thing. CMV. | I often hear discussions of why it is important to conserve different cultural perspectives, and how multiculturalism is valuable, and why global homogenization is bad... But I don't get it.
It seems like it would make sense, but from a logical standpoint it seems like less divergent cultures would be better. I have just spent some time thinking about it, and everything I find on the internet is either really vague or assumes I already agree with it. So I am hoping that the users at CMV will be able to give me a new perspective on the issue.
Also just to clarify, I'm not in favor of forcing people to abandon their own idea or cultures or anything like that. I just don't see a reason why it is particularly worthwhile to try and preserve divergent cultures instead of letting them just meld in whatever ways they wish.
The spread of the latin alphabet seems like a big plus, and if it keeps spreading and other writing methods become extinct I don't really see the harm. The same goes for the frameworks of civil law. I don't see anything too valuable being added by stuff like movies and TV being massively exported from countries like the US, but at the very least the provide a common reference point for different people all around the world which is pretty cool.
So, CMV!
Edit: So far I am very intrigued by the discussion unfolding and all of it has come from /u/Toptomcat, so I just wanted to write this since I think it's worthwhile to recognize good contributions to discussion. | Cultural homogenization is potentially problematic for the same reason that lack of genetic diversity is.
Which has the better capacity to survive unexpected and novel disasters: a collection of agents that are largely similar, and employ similar strategies to survive and thrive? Or a collection of agents with diverse characteristics and success strategies?
EDIT: This isn't limited to disasters, of course. An unexpected and novel *opportunity* is more likely to be fully seized by at least one of a diverse pool of agents as well. | 11 | 19 |
If you donate blood with low levels of cholestorol into a body with previously high levels of cholesterol, would there be any discernible effects? | It depends on the amount of blood given and amount in the body.
Say you have 4 pints of blood with HDLs at 100. Add in 1 pint with HDLs at 20,you wind up with an end point of 5 pints with HDLs at 84. So, in that case you'd see a drop in HDL levels.
However, various lipoprotein levels are primarily influenced by diet and activity, so after the initial change, lipoprotein levels would drift back to baseline unless significant lifestyle changes also occur. | 31 | 65 |
|
ELI5: Why Are There "Dead Spots" On Paper When Attempting To Write With Ballpoint Pen? | Ball point pens work by rolling a ball on a surface. This requires the surface have significant friction. Ball point pens don't work on glass.
Paper at microscopic level isn't smooth. It s matted weave of fibers. Like a wool sweater. But if you iron a sweater flat, it won't be fluffy and soft and have friction. | 14 | 15 |
|
ELI5: How do programmers use multiple languages to build a product? How do they connect it together? | Imagine you are cooking something, you usually have a recipe that you need to follow, each steps builds on the previous one. For instance, if you wanna make fries you:
1. Find a potato (tool: fridge)
2. Wash the potato (tool: sink)
3. Peel the potato (tool: knife, peeler)
4. Slice the potato (tool: knife)
5. Fry (tool: stove, pan)
6. Serve (tool: plate, table)
Each tool can be considered a different programming language, and each step can be considered a "layer" of your application.
Each layer has an expected format for input and output (e.g. to peel the potato you receive a washed potato, and your output is a peeled potato). In practice, different languages pass input and output to each other using your computer memory (RAM) or storage space; they create files and pieces or information that follow certain "structure", such that the next layer can pick it up from there. | 38 | 43 |
|
ELI5: What exactly does a "karat" measure? | I read somewhere that "karat" is a unit of weight measurement for any precious stone, etc. What I don't understand is how, then, is the same term, "karat", used to describe purity of precious metals? (24 karat gold is apparently pure gold). Couldn't you (hypothetically) have a chunk of pure 24 karat gold, that weighed several kilos?
(This is kind of rambling; I hope my question makes sense) | Carat (with a C) is a measure of weight for precious gems.
Karat (with a K) is a measure of purity for precious metals.
So, a 24 karat gold nugget gives *no* indication of its weight, only that it's pure gold that has no other metals added. | 23 | 25 |
If you lived on a high-gravity planet would you develop super-strong bones and muscles? Would you be able to jump off tall Earth buildings without injury? | You would develop stronger muscles and bones, much like a weightlifter does, but nothing superhuman. You'd also wind up being a lot heavier, which would counteract much of your gain in strength. Top jumping athletes develop the muscles they need for jumping...you'd be developing all of your muscles.
In addition, you'd be more likely to develop joint and blood pressure problems, that could very well make you ability to jump worse.
You'd never be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. | 12 | 22 |
|
If inflation decreases the buying power of cash, why do people sell off stocks on reports of high inflation? Wouldn’t it be better to have your capital invested in an asset? | The expectation is that the Federal Reserve will continue to tighten financial conditions in order to combat high inflation. This means credit will become more expensive and growth will be harder to achieve for these companies. There's so much more to it of course but that's the broad stroke explanation for why equities are responding poorly. | 19 | 153 |
|
What are some common fallacious arguments in favor of atheism, if any? | Something like this (not a direct quote): "We can explain why people believe in Christianity using evolutionary psychology. Therefore, we can conclude that Christianity is false without considering the arguments in its favor or presenting arguments for atheism."
The problem with this is that if we haven't made a rational case for atheism somehow prior to doing the evolutionary psychology, then the Christian can just integrate our evolutionary story of how his beliefs evolved into Christianity.
For example, one common story that atheists use was developed by psychologist Justin Barrett. We developed a Hyperactive Agency Detection Device over the course of evolution, because failing to detect an agent (not noticing a hungry lion in the bushes) was much more costly from an evolutionary perspective than incorrectly believing an agent was present (fleeing when there is no lion). The former would get you killed, while the latter would just be an inconvenience. So we evolved an HADD that inclines us to believe in things like ghosts, final causation, and God.
Many atheists see this as a devastating blow to Christianity, but a Christian could come along and grant this whole story, then say that God designed the HADD in such a way that it would eventually produce belief in God. If you haven't already done the work of refuting the case for Christianity or presenting arguments for atheism, then there is no way to respond to that rebuttal.
Oh and, by the way, *Justin Barrett is a Christian, and he interprets his research exactly this way.* | 23 | 24 |
|
ELI5: I tore my ACL/MCL years ago and it still affects me - What's really going on in my knee? | I tore my knee up playing soccer - got hit from the side when I was 18, felt/heard a pop and it swelled up like crazy. Went to osteo and was told that, since I didn't play school sports, I should just rehab it myself (those people are complete DOUCHE BAGS).
It is a wobbly joint, feels loose, and I've retore it at least three times and it has 'slid around' many more than that without anything drastic occurring.
What's going on inside my knee? ELI5!
EDIT: Thank you so much for your answers - really helpful, both medical and personal experience. I lost count of how many times I've 'tweaked' it. I used to be extremely active but now live a more cautious lifestyle. I love sports, but definitely feel limited. Likely going to speak to an Ortho specialist and see what my options are. Again, thanks all. | Sports doc here. The ACL helps stabilize the two load bearing bones of the leg. That wobbly feeling is likely the bones actually sliding on one another, which is a major risk for a meniscus tear (the cartilage shock absorbing discs) on top of what you already have. Some people can live without an ACL which is why most orthopods will consider conservative management ( non-operative) first. You clearly are one who cannot.
You should get another eval, most surgeons would fix your ACL now. I'd be willing to bet after the secondary injuries that you've got meniscal damage too which is ready enough to address during the arthroscopy (knee scope). Your MCL has probably scarred in already as these rarely need fixed.
Tl:dr. Perfectly reasonable to get your knee fixed and most orthopedic surgeons wouldn't hesitate to iterate on you at this point. | 10 | 24 |
Eli5 why it is easy to cross my eyes, but impossible to move them apart from each other? | Crossing your eyes is important in order to focus your eyes on an object that is very close.
"Splitting" your eyes isn't something that your brain has ever needed to do (there is never a case where an object can be focused on by "splitting" the eyes), so the muscles aren't trained on how to do that. | 85 | 53 |
|
Would animals with non-round pupils (such as cats and goats) see a different shaped image to us, additional to that which is granted by the different eye position? | When light passes through an aperture, each point of out-of-focus light (what photographers call bokeh) takes on the shape and size of that aperture. If you took a near-sighted member of each species and put them far away from a point-source light, each of them would see it as a different shape. A cat would see a vertical slit shape, a goat would see a rectangle, and so on.
Why is this useful?
Let's take the cat for example. The vertical bokeh created by their pupils means they see things with a vertical blur to them and the horizontal remains sharp. If their prey tends to flee sideways, this means they can let more light in their eyes while still seeing exactly where their prey is going.
There are similar evolutionary reasons for the shapes other irises take. | 5,426 | 9,597 |
|
ELI5: Why is the middle class vanishing in the US? | A few reasons to consider:
1. Jobs that used to be associated with the middle class have largely moved overseas, and are likely not coming back. There are no longer as many job opportunities for people without a high level of education.
2. There has been a trend whereby wealth is starting to accumulate at a faster pace for the top 10% of earners. There is debate as to why this his happening. Some people think it's because we are crushing small businesses, and other believe it's because the tax rate on the rich is too low. | 1,355 | 1,790 |
Subsets and Splits
No saved queries yet
Save your SQL queries to embed, download, and access them later. Queries will appear here once saved.