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How do housing prices and rent increase simultaneously in areas without significant population growth while a record number of new homes are being built? | Edit: To clarify I’m located in the Oklahoma City metro area, according to multiple websites that track population growth, for the last couple years population growth has slightly declined while all the above factors remain true. I’m wondering if there are any other factors or phenomenon that can explain the increase housing prices as of late. Such as income increasing allowing people live without roommates. | Can you clarify which areas you're referring to? Because most US places with large rent increases have seen large increases in demand and relatively little housing supply growth.
I will note that you should be careful reasoning from (a lack of) population increases and supply increases: If demand for housing in Miami goes up and Miami doesn't build any housing, then price goes up, but population and housing supply will stay the same (because we haven't built any housing for people to move into, it's just new, richer residents replacing old, poorer ones). | 50 | 96 |
ELI5: Why are the Paris Catacombs so hard to map. | First off, they’re dangerous for a number of reasons (the difficulty of navigating/mapping them is just one reason) so there aren’t many professional organizations spending time down there or otherwise devoting major resources to exploring them. I’m sure there are plenty of people who explore them on their own time but they aren’t part of a well organized or regulated mapping effort.
Because they’re underground and tunnels could be at different depths, you often wouldn’t have a reference or hint at your location when different tunnels cross each other— like city streets must do because they’re all at the same elevation.
Compasses work down there so you can track direction but distance is tricky, especially if you’re counting distance but your direction is constantly changing.
GPS definitely does not work underground.
You also can’t use an aerial photograph or a number of other visual techniques that you’d use above ground.
Actually, it’s super hard to map underground tunnels *anywhere*, and renovations of subways and sewers in other cities rely heavily on records of where existing tunnels were built. And they can run into serious problems when those records are incorrect or missing.
So when you have a large, complex system of tunnels like the Paris catacombs, and it’s too old for there to be a complete record of exactly where all the tunnels are, it’s going to be very difficult to map or navigate. | 21 | 15 |
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How do we know the actual wavelength of light originating from the cluster of galaxies that are receding away from us when all we observe is red shifted light because of expansion? | Every element has its own characteristic spectrum of light, so we can look for this fingerprint in the light we receive. Since hydrogen is by far the most abundant element, we expect the spectrum of hydrogen to feature prominently. However, the features of the hydrogen spectrum won't appear at the same wavelengths as they do when we measure hydrogen in the lab, because of the red shift.
Instead, the spectrum is shifted by a certain amount. But despite the shift, the structure remains unchanged, so we can identify the spectral lines of hydrogen in the light we collect. And by the amount it has shifted from what we measure in the lab, we can obtain an estimate for the speed with which the source is moving away from us. | 2,090 | 3,774 |
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ELI5: Why is it that when you're cold your body creates goosebumps to essentially warm you up, but when you're sick with the flu and get the shivers your body is already hot? | Why is your body creating goosebumps in a room temperature or even sometimes a hotter environment? | Part of your body's immune response against infection is to increase the body temperature. White blood cells are more heat resistant than many others, and a lot of the processes that govern viral replication are less stable at higher temperatures, leading to fewer functional viruses being produced.
In order to increase your body temperature, you only have limited tools. The most straightforward one is for your brain to start treating your surroundings as if they were cooler than they truly are. This in turn causes the homeostatic mechanisms you mention in your question to kick in.
Of course, a lot of your body's normal functions are less effective at higher temperatures as well, so having a particularly high fever, or a fever for a long time, can be bad news. | 28 | 39 |
ELI5: Why college tuition costs continue to increase at such a fast pace? | Thanks in advance! | Like most questions of the form "why does X cost what it costs" the answer is generally "supply and demand".
Basically, schools can charge more without significantly lowering the amount of students who attend, so they will. The reason this is the cast is partially because they know the government will loan more to cover the increase in price, and also because a college education has become a standard requirement for a working professional. This makes demand very high. | 16 | 36 |
How do construction workers determine which type of charge they will use to destroy a structure? | When removing a building, how do engineers figure out how to remove a building safely? Once they decide to blow it up, how do they determine which type of charge (I hope this is the correct term) to use? When I say charge, I mean what factors determine the relay series that will detonate the bomb. | There are usually a bunch of rules and regulations to follow first.
Survey the building, remove hazardous material, preparation of plan, install safety measures.
Most implosive demolitions "fall like a tree". The explosive is small because it only needs to weaken most of the structural beams on one side. The building then falls over towards the weakened side.
Rarer, but more interesting, is "falling in it's footprint". The building appears to collapse in on itself. The explosives are planned to follow a design procedure called *progressive collapse*. Remove keys supports and make sure there is space for the material to fall into, otherwise it will fragment outwards and create a huge dust cloud. Any timing and arrangement is unique to the building and what's around it - for instance, chimneys, elevator shafts, stairs, walls, etc can all be supporting or floating. The explosives are designed larger and as close to simultaneous because you don't want the building to fall to any side.
This "relay" is all controlled through the *initiation system*. Wireless blasting systems are the latest sexy tech, however, traditionally demo crews time the charges by running different lengths of wire to the controller. Can be electric system or non-electric with detonating cord/shock tubes. If you play Minecraft it's really similar to redstone wiring. | 11 | 17 |
ELI5: Why are there four pulmonary veins leading back to the heart from the lungs, but only two pulmonary arteries leading out of the heart? | Because the pulmonary veins are a lower pressure system, they need a larger collective diameter to allow for reasonable flow and filling of the left atrium within a reasonable time.
There are only two pulmonary arteries because the right ventricle can push blood at a higher pressure and adequately perfuse the lung. | 23 | 35 |
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Is philosophy reading a skill you get better at with practice? | Does one improve the comprehension and the reading speed if he practices diligently?
Or does he basically remains the same in terms of comprehension and reading speed
Background: I'm a beginner in reading philosophy and was curious about this matter | The more you read in philosophy, you gain more than anything confidence and the ability to understand the internal referencing inherent in any philosophical texts. The reading doesn't get much easier - but you get a lot more out of it as time goes by | 140 | 221 |
CMV: There is too much stress placed on going to the perfect college. Your success depends on your actions, not your diploma. | There is too much pressure on today’s youth to pick an “elite” college. After finishing my senior year and therefore the college application process in the previous year, I felt first hand this pressure and observed it in my class mates.
People have themselves convinced that to land a good job they have to attend a highly ranked school. The stress both parents and children themselves place onto acceptance letters is unnecessary. If success in life depended on the performance of 17 and 18 year olds, then we would all be in trouble.
At an internship at a law firm I had over the summer, I worked with attorneys who attended both the University of Chicago for their undergraduate studies, easily one of the top universities in the world, and attorneys who attended Grand Valley State University, a small regional school. A good school, but not one that is nationally ranked. Both worked at the same firm, but the Grand Valley alumn was arguably more successful based on number of cases and hearings.
Now one might say that since it was a job that requires additional schooling, this argument is invalid. But I also know two people who went to University of Houston Law School and Harvard Law School who ended up at the same law firm immediately after graduation.
I am not arguing for the diminished accomplishments of attending elite institutions, but instead for a shift in focus that success is given from the obvious hard work students attending said schools put in-- not a fancy diploma, and hard work and intelligence is not limited to certain schools. And while elite schools can supply you with certain advantages like networking, name recognition, and renowned professors, it is ultimately up to the individual to determine his or her own success.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | While it's true that the University a person goes to is not as important as the connections they make and things they accomplish at the University of their choice, a person will likely have a better chance at making connections (and more valuable ones at that) at an elite school than at an unknown institution. So in that sense going to an elite school is still more valuable than going anywhere else on average.
Also, if a student at Stanford talked to literally no one, made no friends and only decent grades while he was there, he would still have the immense benefit of being able to include Stanford on his resume. He would probably get turned down from top level positions as they'd have higher expectations than even that, but when applying for middling positions or entry level positions in just about any industry, people will look at the resume and still go "holy shit, Stanford?" It gives you a general leg up in a lot of places that other colleges wont. | 42 | 210 |
Given two complete sets of DNA belonging to father and son, is it possible to distinguish which set belongs to who? | You are given two sets of DNA, and told that they belong to a father and son. You are not told which one belongs to the father and which one to the son.
Apologies if this is a basic question, haven't taken genetics since high school. | Another possibility would be to look for evidence of crossover events.
As these events lead to the exchange of parts of homologous chromosomes during meiosis you could identify the son by him having markers on one singular chromosome which are on two (homologous) chromosomes in the father | 35 | 40 |
ELI5:Why is it hard to simulate human mouse movement? | I read that Websites can know that you're not a bot by looking at the mouse movement. But why would it be hard to simulate that? | Because an automated system to move and click through dialogs and pages would have to be able to scan and know where the targets to click on are. No human takes a perfectly straight line between targets, and certainly not with the same speed that a computer could react.
You basically have to tell a computer to take a non-optimal path at a non-optimal speed, and to do so differently each time. It can't follow the same bezier curve, for example.
Most humans also idle with their hand on the mouse and make it wiggle, whereas the computer won't move the cursor if it isn't given a reason to. | 61 | 76 |
CMV: I think smokers are an exploited group. | Tax on cigarettes [have been increasing exponentially for years.](http://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/2010/06/22/how-much-is-the-government-making-off-of-tobacco/) There has been nearly a 200% increase since 1997! Some groups still [want to triple the taxes placed on cigarettes.](http://health.usnews.com/health-news/news/articles/2014/01/02/big-cigarette-tax-hikes-might-prevent-200-million-deaths-in-a-century)
I understand that smoking is unhealthy, but that is no excuse for our politicians to be exploiting a subset of society. We don't put absurdly high tax on foods high in fat and sugars even though they are the leading cause of heart disease (the leading cause of death in the US).
Smokers are milked like a prized heifer and it is disgusting and immoral. | Increased Cancer Risk = Increased Medical Costs = Cost to society to implement care for those afflicted.
Triage plays an important role here. For every lifetime smoker admitted to cancer treatment and spending government-subsidized healthcare funds, there's a perfectly innocent man, woman, or child who can't get the healthcare they need in a system that is already overburdened with rising costs and sinking funds.
Playing Russian Roulette with your body is none of our business - it's when your unnecessary risks affect those around you that it becomes our business.
EDIT: For those misunderstanding me - It's not just about money. Medical care is a limited resource. There are only so many doctors, so many hospitals, and so few drugs to go around. Voluntarily increasing your risk to burden that system is irresponsible. | 34 | 45 |
If 2 objects are traveling at 0.5 the speed of light relative to some 3rd object but in opposite directions, would each perceive the other as going the speed of light? What about 0.6 times to speed of light? | In the first case (both objects at 0.5 c), the outcome would be 0.8 c. In the second case (both objects at 0.6 c) the outcome would be 0.882 c.
The way we add up velocities for everyday objects (v = v1 + v2) is just an approximation. It is an incredibly good approximation when the velocities are very small compared to the speed of light, but the closer you get to c, the more it will deviate from what we call "relativistic addition of velocities". A result that directly follows from the special theory of relativity is that two velocities, in the scenario you described, should be added up as follows:
v = (v1 + v2) / (1 + v1 * v2 / c^(2))
If v1 and v2 are extremely small compared to c (so in everyday conditions on Earth), the denominator of this expression is very close to 1 and can be effectively ignored, which reduces the expression to the one we're familiar with: v = v1 + v2. | 9,075 | 10,093 |
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Do solar panels produce more energy the closer they are to the sun? | In my Green Technology class, we are researching UV rays but cannot find how far the rays can travel without losing their efficiency. Does distance affect the energy produced significantly? | Distance affects the flux of solar radiation on the surface of your panel. As the solar radiation spreads in 3D, the further away you are, the less rays\m^2 you can intercept. So yes, distance is a big factor when comparing panels orbiting earth to panels orbiting mars (for example). | 12 | 18 |
ELI5 Why are nutrition facts and ingredients included on bottled water, but not on alcohol? | Because Foods are regulated by the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), which requires nutrition information on the packaging; and Alcohol is regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF*), which does not require the products to be labeled for nutritional information.
*edit. commerce of legitimate alcohol was regulated by the ATF up to 2003, where the job was handed over to the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB). | 10 | 43 |
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ELI5: How can we calculate the mass of the earth? | We start with the formulas
>Weight = m*g
and
>F_g = GMm/R^2
which is just Newton's second law and Newton's law of universal gravitation. If we equate the two, we get
>M=gR^2 /G
so if we know the gravitational acceleration on the surface of Earth, radius of Earth and the gravitational constant G we can calculate the mass of Earth easily. | 10 | 20 |
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eli5: If good habits are rewarding and healthy, why is it easier to keep falling into bad habits? | I’ve been trying to sleep earlier lately because i genuinely feel great in the morning, and have a productive day. But I keep falling into the habit of staying up too late and feeling tired in the morning. This feels like a trend across the board.
Why the self sabotage? Anyone got an explanation? | The example you're talking about is a type of procrastination; staying up late pays off \*now\* while the negative effects don't show up until later. Going to bed early "hurts" us \*now\* but doesn't pay off until later. We're wired up pretty strongly to prioritize near-term benefits over longer-term ones because of the heavy evolutionary survival pressure for a sure thing now against a more risky thing later. Successfully fighting this tendency is one of the major differences between children and adults, but it's always there.
Good habits that pay off now area easy and don't backslide. It's the ones that you have to invest some "pain" for now in return for a (presumably) more worthwhile gain later that have problems. This is why exercising is so hard for so many people. | 36 | 18 |
Why is radiation contagious? | I understand radioactive decay and how that can damage cells by polarizing the DNA.
What I don't understand is how a non-radioactive material can become radioactive to a dangerous point. I would think that the material would get hit by the decaying particles, get damaged and that's it. Instead, the material can also become radioactive.
For example, Marie Curie's notebooks are reportedly still too radioactive to be safely handled. How does paper become radioactive just by being exposed to radiation? | There are two ways in which objects can be 'activated':
The first is that radiation from the original radioactive material hits the nuclei of the object, and through the reverse process of radioactive decay create an unstable nucleus. This however very rarely happens, unless you put something in a very intense radiation field (near the core of a nuclear reactor for instance).
What probably happened with Curie's notebooks is that radioactive material got transferred to her hands, and from her hands to her notebook. Where they still radiate. This is why radiation hygiene is very important when dealing with radioactive materials. For instance, the same radioactive particles were probably transferred to food that she than ingested. Inside her body is where the radiation could do most damage.
| 40 | 25 |
ELI5 Why do animals go grey/lose follicle pigmentation around their mouths before other parts of their body? | Both humans and other animals seem to go grey around their mouths before other parts of their body, why is that? | Melanocytes, which produce pigment, are unevenly distributed in the body. As an organism ages, melanocytes become less effective and produce less and less pigment. Regions that have less melanocytes go grey first. In humans the area with the lowest number of melanocytes is around the temple, in dogs the nose, and cats have more or less evenly distributed melanocytes and typically don’t go grey but slowly fade in color over time. | 258 | 562 |
ELI5: What drives people to falsely confess to major crimes? | Every true crime podcast/documentary deals with this. Someone is killed or kidnapped. The press release details. The public immediately calls in false information and, even more baffling, fake confessions.
What drives so many people to do this? | Interrogation techniques that work to break down psychological defenses that people have. Prolonged Interrogations can make people more susceptible to suggestion and leading questions can lead people to make statements that aren't actually true. Detectives are also allowed to lie directly to suspects. They can make up whatever stories they wants to coerce confessions and pressure people into making false statements. And if they are dealing with an individual is already mentally handicapped, they can pretty much confuse them into agreeing to anything | 28 | 26 |
[WH40K] What is the proper etiquette in the Empire of Man? | It really depends on who you are, where you are ect ect.
But im going to assume you meant a civilian, which narrows it down a bit. There is still a lot of variation, so this is the general picture. Don't question the emperor's rules, or you'll be killed. Everyone is more important than you.
Thats pretty much the picture, because the majority of the imperium is kept in ignorance of what is really out there in the galaxy.
I'd love to give a more specific answer but the imperium is so big and varied anything can happen. | 26 | 16 |
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"You don't understand something unless you can say it clearly." Do you agree with this thought? If so, why? | I think that explaining something clearly is a sufficient condition for understanding it, but not a necessary one. In the context of teaching, it might be a helpful metric to determine whether someone has in fact understood what they're learning. But taken at face value, the proposition is false. | 20 | 16 |
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ELI5: Why do some foods seem to "go right through you"? | I think Taco Bell would be the place that comes to mind most with this title but why do some foods seems to slide right through you when others seems to take your normal digestive cycle to be processed?
EDIT: WOW! Thank you for my first award! All the comments have been a joy to read through. I've laughed and learned immensely. Thank you, thank you, thank you all. | Your GI tract does a lot more analysis and evaluation than you expect.
When you eat something that makes your gut decide, "Nope, this is toxic." it will release instructions to the entire GI tract that more or less translate to, "MAKE WAY!"
So it's not actually the Taco Bell that you're passing a couple hours later, it's a meal or two before. Your GI is just greasing the wheels so that it can get whatever is in the Taco Bell that it doesn't like out as soon as possible. | 4,669 | 3,153 |
ELI5: Why are different sleeping positions comfortable for different people? Does it have to do with how we were comfortable in our mother's womb? | It definitely isn't related to how we were in our mother's womb, but many factors can influence how people are comfortable. For example many women find a pillow between their legs is more comfortable as their hips are wider than men's and the spacing keeps their legs comfortable on their side. Why their side? Larger breasts can put weight on their chest so offloading it by turning to the side makes breathing easier.
Men tend to have wider shoulders which can make laying on their side less comfortable as it bends the spine more. All these are just examples though as it comes down to personal preference. | 14 | 16 |
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ELI5: In humans, what is the functional difference between wide, flat noses and narrow, pointed noses? | Or is there a difference? | The various shapes of noses appear to be tied to adaptations to climate.
The nose must properly heat and humidify the air that you breathe. In a cold climate, it's advantageous to have a narrower nose. That's so that when a person inhales, more air comes into contact with the mucosal surface of nose, which provides moisture. The narrow nose maximizes the surface area.
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eli5: Why are there no large Native empires in North America the way the Mayan and Aztec were in Central/South America? | From North America - traveled to Central and South America and saw these big beautiful ruins of the past. A bit of research shows that these vast empires existed but were (wiped out by colonizers?) so why are there no big city ruins in North America? \[For example, Xunantunich\] | South and Central American cultures were essentially based on agriculture and domesticated animals. In other words, they were very stationary cultures that could produce a lot of food relatively reliably.
North American cultures were much more reliant on migratory animals like caribou, buffalo, and seasonal fish like salmon. There were some large native American nations but relatively little permanent settlement.
In addition, South America is essentially a greenhouse producing an abundance of food with many rivers acting as highways for transporting food and other goods. By comparison, much of the North American heartland consists of enormous expanses of desert and field. It's difficult to transport large amounts of goods across these lands, which is why many North American cultures focus on staying mobile.
North America did have some agrarian cultures surrounding the wetter areas but it still lacked good ways of transporting the bounty those people might grow.
So in short, South/Central America encouraged permanent stationary development of their civilizations while North America encouraged migratory cultures that didn't invest heavily in trying to grow large stationary populations. | 305 | 127 |
Eli5: How do amateurs keep long exposure astonomy shots from blurring? | I keep seeing all these posts "I took this 10 hour exposure of the sky and wow look at many stars:O".
How do you do that at home and keep it from getting blurry? I mean, the earth (in this case the sky) moves, how do you keep that at a steade pace in the exact right angle over 10 hours so that the picture doesn't blur? I can easily see how a professional telescope can do this, but all the amateurs posting all the time? | A ten-hour single exposure is difficult, requiring good equipment and experience. These days you can “stack” a series of shorter exposures in software to reach the same total exposure time. This has the advantage of being able to throw away bad exposures so a single adverse event doesn’t ruin everything. The software can also align all the shots, effectively correcting for any long-term drift in the tracking system. | 66 | 122 |
Does the surface tension of water affect the rate of evaporation? If so, would adding a surfactant speed up evaporation? | Evaporation is basically describing the statistical probability that a molecule has enough kinetic energy to escape bonds with its neighbors. As the temperature increases, energy is added, so statically more molecules escape. At its boiling point, most molecules in the gaseous state have enough energy to prevent forming bonds and re-entering the liquid state.
To answer your question, surface tension is a property of the intermolecular bonds.However, adding a surfactant would cause boiling point elevation since it forms its own bonds with the water.
Edit: Fixed some autocorrect weirdness | 381 | 1,891 |
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[Mad Max] Is there any evidence that the rest of the world is in the same situation? | Is there any information on Europe, Africa and America? | Not much information directly tied to the other continents but plenty of circumstantial information.
During the events of mad Max there was a major resource shortage leading to both a water and oil crisis and several small wars for the dwindling supplies. Between mad max and road warrior these small wars escalated into nuclear war but how far the nukes went is unknown other than Australia being able to see mushroom clouds. By the events of thunderdome radiation was extremely high in some places and no water is visibly available near bartertown. Fury road takes place on the sea floor off the coast of Sydney Australia with the events of the video game showing the sea floor extending farther than 500 miles out.
Assuming the videogame is canon then the rest of the world is severely screwed. Without the Pacific Ocean to regulate weather and the mentioned big wet event hinting at the ice caps melting the world is in a bad way. Most of Eastern Asia and the western half of South America and North America will be in severe droughts and suffering ecological collapse. That large of a population displaced will put a strain on the unaffected regions ability to produce food and extreme weather like dust storms and lightning storms will become prevalent. The combination of refugees radiation and extreme weather will destroy nearly 2/3rds of the population of earth alone with direct warfare during the oil and water wars killing millions according to the comic tied to Fury road.
While nations like India and China are the most at risk from weather changes and sea level other African nations and the middle east will find themselves the target during resource wars since they have the largest untapped resources with the smallest militaries compared to places like Brazil and Russia. While i doubt Europe and South America will be as arid and barren as Australia is they'll likely be heavily bombed and war torn until disease and radiation turn them into deadly ruins worse than the sparsely populated and resource poor Australia. | 38 | 43 |
ELI5: If the earliest humans only arrived 1-2 million years ago, and the last dinosaurs were 65 million years ago, then what exactly was walking the earth for all those millions of years in between? | What i'm really getting at is, What was occurring during those millions of years in between the dinosaur extinction event and the first human's presence? Thanks | For clarity and fun:
Humans (*Homo sapiens*) our species arose about 200,000 years ago in Africa. Our genus, (Homo) arose about 2-3 million years ago in Africa. Hominins arose about 7 million years ago in Africa. Hominins are the collection of species, both extinct and alive (humans are the only remaining living hominin), that split from the chimpanzee (Pan) line. Hominins and Pan share a last common ancestor that lived about 7 million years ago. This ancestor was not a human, and it was not a chimpanzee. It was its own unique ape species. This ape species would split into two lineages - the hominin lineage and the pan lineage. Within the pan lineage there are many extinct species, and only two living species: the chimpanzees and the bonobos.
| 223 | 437 |
[Star Wars] Are there any other "special" Force powers like Force Lightning? | Certain bloodlines in the force have specializations or weaknesses.
For example, Corran Horn, Jedi Master and Scion of the Corellian Halcyon Jedi. His bloodline was notoriously weak at telekinesis. However they were especially adept at mind manipulation, illusions, and bending week wills. The Skywalker line is especially adept at energy deflection/absorption/manipulation. When Han Solo fires at Darth Vader on Bespin he's not deflecting those bolts with his armor but with the force. Cade Skywalker, a Great Grandson of Luke Skywalker could manipulate energy to the point where he could bring people back from the brink of death. Kyp Durron's bloodline was especially adept at telekinesis. He was able to pull a starship from the core of a gas giant.
Not all Jedi bloodlines have these strengths and weaknesses however, and use of such things normally depends on training and general affinity for the force. | 12 | 17 |
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ELI5: Why is texture so important in our enjoyment of a food? | I just had pad thai. Why is it that it wouldn’t taste as good if I put it in a blender and then ate it? It would contain all the same flavors and nutritional components. What is it that makes texture so important and therefore, makes food like hamburgers or pad Thai taste undesirable when blended up? | Texture is a major indicator of food quality. A carrot that's mushy isn't good. We develop expectations for what foods are supposed to be like texture-wise and deviation in these expectations set off our reptile brain alarms | 66 | 46 |
Can somebody explain LI5 why computer/calculator random number generators supposedly aren't truly random | Computers simply follow instructions that tell it what to do: add these two numbers together, check if this number is bigger than that number, and things like that. Computers can run instructions that produce a list of numbers that look like they're random. However, if we were to run the same instructions again, we would get the same "random" numbers again, which obviously isn't very random.
Here's a simple example. You can generate numbers which look random by taking (for example) every 10th digit of pi. By doing that you get 5,6,9,1,0,4,4,9, etc. These numbers look random but obviously they're not really random. This might work ok for some situations, but you wouldn't want to use this to draw lottery numbers because smart people could figure out what the next numbers are going to be by looking at pi.
Obviously that was a simple example, actual "random" number generators use fancy algorithms to make sure that the numbers generated satisfy all sorts of mathematical properties that real random numbers do. But even if they do that, they're not random because it's possible to retrace the steps the computer took to get the same numbers.
That being said, many computers ARE capable of generating truly random numbers by getting randomness from input devices, such as looking at which microsecond you touch the key or move the mouse. | 21 | 18 |
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Trailing spouse options | Hi everyone! Looking for some advice regarding options for a trailing spouse headed to Champaign, IL (UIUC). It sounds like there are many options there, though might be tricky for a foreign national who may need a work visa. Has anyone had experience with UIUC’s dual career program? Or alternatively, has anyone’s partner decided to pursue a PhD or higher education in lieu of finding full-time employment? Thank you! | Big employers include Parkland College (a community college where you can teach with a masters degree) and Carle Hospital. A lot of young professionals also work for the university in staff positions (e.g., NCSA). There are also a handful of startups there at all times that spin out of the university; however, if they take off, they quickly relocate to the Bay Area. | 11 | 15 |
Does a computer display use more energy displaying white pixels rather than black pixels? | It depends on the specific display technology and implementation. As a general rule of thumb, if a display tech is emissive, it most likely uses more power as the picture gets brighter. It might also be better to think of it as "using less power for the black pixels," because in general, we're comparing displays like LCDs that have an "always on" backlight to displays that don't produce light in parts of the picture that don't need it.
CRTs intrinsically use more energy showing white than black. The power consumption is directly proportional to the light produced.
Plasma displays are similar. Each pixel is its own light source, and they use more power when they're bright than when they're dim.
LCDs, in their most straightforward implementation, don't use noticeably more power in either direction. The backlight is the largest power draw, and it is always on, whether individual pixels are white or black.
LCDs that implement some sort of Dynamic Contrast Ratio can use more when the picture is bright rather than dark because they adjust the backlight brightness to suit the scene.
LCDs with local backlight dimming are more similar to something like a plasma, since the backlight can be dimmed in specific areas, reducing power use (and improving black level) where the pixels are black.
OLED displays (actual OLED, not LCDs using OLED backlights) are emissive, so they go in the list of stuff that uses more power when pixels are bright.
VFDs LED array (like stadium TVs), SED, and the like are also emissive displays with power proportional to brightness.
Reflective LCD, DLP, LCD projection, LCoS, and Laser (really just DLP with a laser light source) televisions are also technologies where the power either doesn't vary with brightness, or only does so if there is some sort of Dynamic Contrast Ratio implementation. | 39 | 38 |
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[Avengers Infinity War] What effect would Iron Man's new armor have if it can be applied on other forms of technology? | After watching Infinity War and seeing Tony Stark's new armor, I was wondering what kind of effect on society and economy would such a tech have if it was on the market. It can obviously fit into a small space and weigh very little since Tony wasn't affected by carrying it around with him, and it can switch into multiple forms near instantly and repair itself by rearranging parts.
Obviously Tony wouldn't sell it as a weapon, and probably would program it so that it can't form a weapon, but the amount of applications seems endless.
| Would be very handy for any job that required a variety of hand tools, like carpenter or mechanic.
Good for safety gear too. If cars, trains, and airplanes had one of these for every passenger it could greatly reduce injuries and deaths in accidents. | 19 | 21 |
ELI5: In developing countries, poor people tend to be thinner than rich people. But in developed countries, rich people tend to be thinner than poor people. What explains the discrepancy? | Edit:
Poor Americans/Brits, and rich Chinese/Russians, are fat.
Rich Americans/Brits, and poor Chinese/Russians, are thin.
Why?
**Edit 2: In this thread - Answers to *why poor Americans are fat*. However, that does not explain how poor Chinese are *not* fat, or why rich Russians are fat.** | I don't know that there's one answer to this, but if you're poor and in a developing country, there's a much higher chance you have food insecurity and more commonly intensive manual labor.
In developed countries, rich people can afford more time for exercise, and have better access to healthier foods, while poor, calorically dense foods, are cheap and widely available, and jobs have a higher proportion of sitting behind a desk. | 38 | 21 |
Moral Realism: How can the normative affect the non-normative? How can we know of the normative by non-normative means? | Similarly to substance dualism within the philosophy of science debate, moral realism seems to invoke a sort of dualism.
There are normative ("Killing is wrong") and non-normative properties and utterances ("Jim kills Tom") which are both real, and normative properties seem to affect non-normative ones in particular ways. After all, assuming moral realism to be true, we don't banish normative properties to an isolationist existence within the normative realm never to affect anything non-normative, e.g. whether Jim actually kills Tom or not, as in whether his neurons are fired in such a way or not that he actually does kill Tom or not.
As moral realists, we want "Killing is wrong" to affect "Jim kills Tom" (preferably, in a way for the latter to be wrong as Jim refrains from killing) and we don't want "Killing is wrong" to be purely subjective or even non-normative, e.g. as in "My neurons are arranged in such a way that I dislike killing".
However, there is no "ought" value of neurons or the such. It either fires or it doesn't. How do normative properties affect non-normative ones? How do they determine or increase the likelihood of neurons to be fired in such a way that Jim kills Tom or not? Or even more importantly: How do we even know that "Killing is wrong" in the first place if our whole capacity of knowing is based on a very much non-normative instrument, the brain, consisting of very much non-normative entities, neurons, who either fire or not, but surely don't "ought" to fire or not. How can normativity arise from such non-normativity? | There's a lot to say here. First, not all realists agree that normative and natural properties are distinct. Naturalist normative realists argue that normative properties just are natural properties. But you seem like you're assuming some form of non-naturalist normative realism that denies this, so let's work with that.
This leads to the second thing, which is that no non-naturalist normative realist thinks that normative properties have causal powers that work at the physiological level. It's our *beliefs about what we have reason to do* that move us to act, not *the reasons themselves.* The reason that we are moved by our beliefs about what we have reason to do is that we're rational agents.
Some normative realists have argued that normative properties themselves figure in causal explanations (as opposed to our beliefs about normative properties). For instance, common examples include that Hitler's depravity led him to orchestrate a genocide, injustice causes revolutions, and trust engenders friendship. But usually those normative realists who accept these views are naturalist normative realists who think that depravity, injustice, and trust just are natural properties, and hence there's no puzzle about how they can cause people to do things.
Regarding your remark about how we know that killing is wrong since the brain is a physical mechanism, the framing here is problematic. Obviously our brain is a physical mechanism, but it's not your brain that grasps and responds to reasons. It's rational agents that grasp and respond to reasons, and while our rational agency depends in someway on our brains, it's a mistake to conflate the two. | 18 | 34 |
ELI5: When a migrant illegally enters Europe and has no ID, how will Europe know where to deport him? | There are many ways. The simplest is to ask the migrant "Where are you from?"
Beyond that, it's generally not hard to determine what country someone is from based on their features, language and accent. | 12 | 23 |
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CMV: There is nothing wrong with the idea of trigger warnings | I'm usually very skeptical of concepts related to intersectionality, such as mansplaining, safe spaces or cultural appropriation.
However, perhaps the most mocked aspect of the movement (and the origin of the often abused term "triggered") is an entirely benign and overall positive concept that really benefits everyone.
Trigger warnings are of course nothing new. Typically they have been attached to age restrictions, for example indicating that an R-rated movie includes violent or sexual content. This does not prevent anyone from seeing the movie (well, no adult anyway), but rather equips the potential viewer or parent with information on what to expect from the film.
You might say that these measures exist to help parents protect their children from potentially harmful content, and that adults are expected to be strong enough to handle these subject matters. But I'd argue adults are expected to know what's right for them. A rape victim might not want to read a graphic description of a sex scene, a war veteran might not want to hear the gory details of a battle. Indicating that a work of fiction, a public speech or a comedy show will involve "triggering" subjects such as sexual violence, disease, disability, war, torture, car accidents or drugs puts the onus on the audience to decide whether to consume a piece of media or not. Not only are potential audience members properly informed, but the author or communicator has the freedom to talk about sensitive topics without restrain, as anyone listening will have consciously chosen to do so. | The question becomes, does the sentence "the following contains depictions" increase or decrease the likelihood of an adverse reaction.
You can have people read about graphic murders with or without the warnings, and even with PTSD victims or rape victims, they are no better off with the warnings, and arguably worse off -modest increases in anxiety prior to reading the passage.
All you are doing, is making people fear the worst, and not avoiding any issues with the passage itself.
If the warning, doesn't mitigate anything, and arguably just needlessly raises anxiety levels, what are we actually doing?? | 16 | 52 |
In a double slit experiment, is there a minimum necessary distance between the photon (or other particle) source and the slits in order to see interference? | If we put the laser/source right up against one of the slits, surely we wouldn't get two slit interference, no?
If there is a minimum distance here, does it depend on the type of particle? Also what happens if we reflect the photons off a mirror on their way to the slits? In this case, is the relevant distance the total distance or only the distance from the mirror to the slits?
Edit: after some googling, I think I'm asking about the wave packet dispersion relation, discussed [here](http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/77860/why-do-wave-packets-spread-out-over-time), especially Dominique's final equation.
I want to know a) if interference requires sufficient dispersion for the wave to cover both slits and b) if the wave hitting a mirror (pre-slits) is a measurement-style interaction that causes its Gaussian to become fairly narrow/well localized again, which might prevent the wave from covering both slits. | If it's possible for the photon to get to both slits, you'll see an interference effect. The strength of the effect, as well as the specific pattern formed, will depend on the position of the source relative to the two slits. So while there's no "minimum distance" per se, your intuition is correct that we will see a weaker interference pattern if the photons are much more likely to go through one slit than the other by virtue of the position of the source. | 331 | 2,088 |
ELI5: Why Is The NFL Draft So Popular Compared To The NBA/MLB/NHL Drafts? | There are a number of reasons.
* It's the most popular professional league in the US by a longshot.
* It has a sweet spot for the number of rounds--7. Hockey has this as well but it's less popular than the other three in the US. The NBA has two and the MLB has *forty*
* There is a lot of uncertainty. Given the number of positions in football, teams will have a lot of needs or weaknesses to address. It's interesting to see how they prioritize these needs. Further, it's tough to predict much outside of the top 5 picks.
* The NFL does an excellent job of promoting and building excitement around the draft.
* It involves college football, the most popular college sport in the US. Many of the players in the draft are already well known to even a casual sports fan.
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ELI5 How do EnChroma glasses work? What does it look like if someone who isn't colour blind puts then on? | Color Blindness (one of many kinds) is overlap of the visible colors in the eyes of the color blind person. So the person can't distinguish between certain colors.
Enchroma Glasses cut off a certain part of the visible spectrum, that cause the major overlap in the eyes. Which should help eyes to separate certain colors. Which should emulate, at least to a degree a vision of people without color blindeness.
If you put them on, you should see everything a little bit more brightly than usual. Maybe little bit more green or purple. | 15 | 37 |
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ELI5: Why does leaving food in the freezer for a long period make the food taste like 'freezer'? | ...even if the food is in original, unopened packaging? | Frozen foods keep their fresh flavor because of flash freezing, where the water solidifies so fast that molecules don't have time to form regular crystals which would normally increase the volume of the ice and produce sharp, crystalline vertices, causing cells and tissues to rupture and destroying proteins and starch chains in the process. If food is placed in the freezer fresh this will occur and create a "freezer burned" taste because many of the chemical structures we have evolved to taste have been disrupted by the crystals. Flash frozen foods may become freezer burned too if they have been in your freezer long enough. The occasional temperature changes (opening the door, putting new, room-temp items in, power outages, etc.) can cause partial thawing and recrystallization, slowly rupturing cells and tissues and creating a similar effect.
For actual 5-year-old : the ice in the food makes sharp edges that break down the food over time. | 45 | 144 |
ELI5: how does the moon gravity only affect tidal forces and not anything in the land? | It does affect the things on the land, but water is a more fluid substance than rocks and people, so it is capable of being pulled up higher than something more rigid.
This is because the moon isn't lifting the whole ocean. It is lifting a whole bunch of water molecules, which drags in more of them up. This creates a change in the pressure which rises the water level a bit, and lowers it where the moon's gravity is not affecting.
But land is stiff and bones are rigid, so when it tries to pull on stuff that is not as liquid as water, there is not as pronounced of an effect on the body. | 70 | 49 |
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CMV: You should not be required to visit a primary health care provider for an acute problem. | I have a ruptured eardrum and I had to wait 3 days for an appointment with the VA primary care doctor, who I knew would have to give me a referral to ENT. Sure enough, she said I had a ruptured eardrum and she would refer to me to ENT, which I am now waiting 3 weeks to see. All the while still having no relief of symptoms.
Primary care should be for checkups, preventive care, and health planning. Making PCP's "gatekeepers" for acute issues that need to be quickly resolved by specialists is a waste of time. If a patient can describe an issue over the phone that is obviously going to be a referral, then why make them visit the PCP to confirm that? Over the phone I could have said, "significant loss in hearing, blood tinged discharge coming from ear, occurred while blowing my nose" and they could have referred me immediately based off that description. | Being able to immediately schedule an appointment with a specialist would have saved you at most 3 days in the situation you described. They would not have been able to get you in immediately as there is still a large demand for their services. If people were allowed to just schedule things with them immediately it could lead to an even longer wait. While with your case your symptoms make it seem likely that you do have a ruptured eardrum, there's always the small chance that it's not. By seeing a primary care doctor first they are able to make sure that you are seeing the right person and that the specialist isn't getting people who have the actual condition they think they have. That could be the difference between a 3 week wait and a 4 or 5 week wait since allowing patients to immediately schedule with the specialist doesn't change how many people the specialist can actually see in a week. | 30 | 95 |
How long is too long to wait to get into your degree field? | So I graduated from college 3 years ago now with a bachelors degree In Biology. I had high hopes of getting into the environmental field as a starting job. After 6 months of applications to over 80 positions I heard nothing back and needed to get a job so I work at a ski resort In the winter and kept trying to find jobs. Summer came around again and still not reply from any jobs in the past year so I went back to my summer job because they paid well. So I continued this process for the past three years now I feel like my degree is worthless and I'm basically not a good option for employers To hire as I have zero job experience which pretty much every jobs requires. Should I just look for a different career path now? | There are options. Here’s one: volunteer at a university research laboratory 15-20 hours per week while maintaining your other employment if possible. Make that work for 8 months or so and then start applying for lab tech jobs at research universities/hospitals. Those jobs are usually something like $17/hr starting out and after two years often people become salaried in the $40k-50k range.
Depends if you like lab work. | 23 | 24 |
Eli5: If you're dehydrated and then you drink water, how long does it take to get where it needs to go? How does it get there? | When you drink water, it gets absorbed through your intestines (like food), gets into your blood, and then travels to where it needs to go.
If you drink water on an empty stomach, it gets the green light to go to the intestines right away. It starts entering the bloodstream within 5 minutes of drinking it. Half of it is absorbed into the bloodstream by the 11-13 minute mark, and the rest is absorbed within 2 hours.
Drinking water at the same time as eating food changes the timeline.
It's the stomach's job to make sure everything is ready to be digested (all squished up and mixed together), and food takes way longer to get ready than water does! The water has to wait patiently while the food gets ready to go. When everything in the stomach is ready, the intestines open up and things start being absorbed.
(The time it takes food to get ready in the stomach varies, but it's somewhere between 45 minutes and 2 hours.)
Hope that helps! | 44 | 51 |
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ELI5: Why is it when I wear 3d glasses on top of my glasses, it works. But, when I wear my glasses on top of the 3d glasses, it doesn't? | Glasses is spelled weird. | 3d glasses work using polarized light.
The projector shoots light a the screen with two pictures, one using lines that go up and down and the other with lines that go from side to side. The 3d glasses sort the lines, so that your left eye sees only lines that are side to side and your right eye sees only lines that go up and down. That means each eye gets a slightly different picture, the way they would if you were looking at an actual 3d object. That's what fools your brain into thinking the flat screen is 3d.
Your glasses then bend the light so that it hits your eye with correct focus. To do that well, they have to be the correct distance from your eye.
Putting your normal glasses outside the 3d glasses likely messes with the distance. Some glasses also have coatings that affect the polarization (the up/down and side-to-side) of light.
So you could be looking at 1) a picture that is improperly focused and fails to fool your brain, or 2) a picture where the polarizing effects of your normal glasses ruins the sorting function of the 3d glasses. | 41 | 31 |
CMV: The Western view of science is more valid than Eastern view of science. | In class we're studying the effects of politics and culture on science, and how things become classified as either "real science," or something else, in what is known as Boundary Work. Western vs. Eastern science is a major part of this, and Eastern science tends to get written off as less valid than in the Western world.
I've been struggling to see how you can call something scientific if it doesn't meet western scientific standards (peer reviewed, testable/falsifiable, etc.). Real or not, if something is spiritual in nature and we have no way of testing it effectively (such as Tibetan medicine), how can it be considered scientific knowledge? If anything, Eastern science shouldn't be given this same title.
EDIT: I think the main issue here has been the unclear definitions I'd been presented, as well as my lack of grasp on the topic. Thanks for the discussion though, I still feel like I learned a lot from the comments. I'm still curious how international standards of science came to be. Were they agreed upon? Did one country introduce them to others? Were they reached independently?
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ELI5: why does paper turn yellow and brittle as it ages? | Wood pulp from trees is made up of two major substances: lignin and cellulose. To make paper, we want just the cellulose part. So ordinary papermaking uses a strong acid, sulfuric acid, to break down the lignin in a sort of "cooking" process. They mostly neutralize the mash before making paper out of the remaining cellulose, but not entirely.
So over time, the leftover acidity in the paper gradually attacks it, breaking down the cellulose (which is much more resistant than lignin, but still, it's acid) and causing that sort of aging.
For long-term survival, that's why people use "acid-free" paper. It costs more but the papermakers use extra care to fully neutralize it. Whereas something meant to be thrown away quickly, like newspaper, uses the cheaper and still very acidic paper. It can start yellowing a day after it's printed. | 39 | 15 |
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Does the formation of bonds mean a chemical reaction has occurred? | I was reading about how the components in a mixture haven't reacted with each other so can be separated via boiling which got me wondering what does it mean for them to react with each other. I've always thought of it as bonds forming but this doesn't seem true here as bonds exist between the atoms in the mixture so how do you classify whether they've reacted or not? | Bonds forming is an indication of a chemical reaction. A mixture does not create new bonds or break bonds. Sugar, for example, just mixes in with water. Each sugar molecule is surrounded by water molecules and becomes an aqueous solution. These are not “bonds” but rather intermolecular forces that hold the mixture together the way it is. | 20 | 16 |
CMV: Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend is Nearly Flawless | Andrew Yang's campaign fuel of "Freedom Dividend" allocates 1,000 a month to every American citizen over the age of 18. The way this is payed for is a system called a value added tax. 10% tax is added to all products that are not sales tax exempted. This is specifically good because we will see better currency equality. We will get the majority of money out of large corporations and monopolies and into the hands of consumers. There will be obvious improvement in poverty rates, but we will also see an increase in small business which is crucial to American economy. There are MANY reasons why freedom dividend will be the pivoting movement in the economic well being of the American population.
Extra Info: I am a freshman in high school seeking input on this topic for a congressional debate speech and cannot think of solid negative arguments. Thanks ahead of time. | > There will be obvious improvement in poverty rates
How so? Americans in poverty are by and large reliant on welfare programs, to varying extents. The "freedom dividend" will remove those. That leaves the poor no better than before, except they're now competing in a housing market where everyone else can affort to pay more, so landlords will likely try to exploit the situation. | 32 | 24 |
[Marvel] So if Secret Wars is supposed to take place in 2015 (sliding timescale means Marvel is always in the present), and that's gonna result in an All-New Marvel universe, how can 2099 exist? | Marvel has a many-worlds concept of time with one primary self healing timeline.
What that means is there is one main timeline that is full of chronal energy and points in one direction- towards the future. Every action causes an infinity of parallel timelines to emerge, most of which are reabsorbed back into the primary timeline because they don't have enough difference to break away.
This allows for single events to change the past in a way that causes paradoxes, but the future timeline will immediately attempt to heal it by removing the offending portion of the timeline. For example, if cyclops from the past shows up in the future and future Cyclops kills him, the timeline will attempt to resolve that problem by removing future Cyclops. Obviously his loss at that moment wouldn't have changed the future enough to cause a chronal fracture.
But some changes are so critical to the orderly continuation of the timeline that when they happen they fracture it- causing a parallel timeline of the current universe- separate reality that exists on it's own.
2099 is one of those universes. Something happens between now and 2099 that made that universe possible. No matter what happens here, that event happens, and when it does the split occurs. It may have happened a hundred years ago, it may happen in ten minutes. Only people who analyze and catalog chronal energy or have cosmic awareness can ever truly know.
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CMV: It's impossible to help random beggars just by giving them money | Background: I'm from Germany, so we do not have probably as extreme poverty issues as e.g. the US or other 3rd world countries.
Assumption: While we have a social safety net, which entitles every citizen to a home and money to not starve, I can fully understand that also here people fall through the system. Either due to mental illness, addiction or just bad luck. E.g. the movie "I, Daniel Blake" really shows how easy and undeservingly you can end up like that.
In public transport or on the street I regularly come across beggars/homelss people. I would say there are four categories:
1. Organized begging. These poor souls are basically slaves being owned by a criminal organization. They drive them everyday to there begging spots and collect them in the evening.
2. Drug / alcohol addicts, collecting money to survie/ continue consuming.
3. People with bad luck that are fighting to get out of their tough spot.
4. Scammers / pick pockets / etc. Think this is by far the smallest group.
(1) I think I cannot help at all by giving money. It breaks my heart to see this stuff happening. I heard horror storys of some mother being blackmailed with her kids. I do not understand how the govrment / police is not fighting to help these people. If I give them money, it will not end up with them but with the criminal organization. Yes it might help them not to get punished or something for not making enough money, but that's it.
(2), (3) and (4) are impossible to distinguish. And I can even only distinguish them from (1) by social profiling, e.g. their skin color and country of origin.
I don't want to finance someone's drug use. It's only enabling and potentially killing them.
The times where I genuinely thought that a beggar was (3) and believed the story they were telling, I learned later that they were lying. Also I ended up giving away money based on someones charisma, which is probably not a good selection criterion.
This brings me to my view that I cannot contribute by supporting homeless people just by giving them money. It seems just super heartless and not what I expected I would do, when I was a kid.
Alternatives I could consider:
* Buying/giving them food
* Giving money to organizations that help homeless people
Note: In other countries many many more poverty and (3) beggars exists and there it probably makes more sense to give money. | I mean, obviously this greatly depends on what you define as "help." Even the people in category 2 or 4 will probably enjoy getting your money and will be materially better off to have it than to not have it. You won't be alleviating their poverty or fixing the problems that caused their situation in the first place, but booze money is booze money.
On the other hand if you're defining "help" as fixing their situation, then you can't do that anyway, regardless of what you do with your money, unless you're a billionaire. The structural problems in society that lead to homelessness and poverty are outside of your reach to fix with the money that you have available to you, and while charity can help mitigate some of the worst outcomes, it can never really fix the problem. | 46 | 60 |
CMV: I think gifted kids should receive more attention than special needs children | I'd like to preface this by saying that parts of my post may sound like they're bragging, but they're not trying to come across that way. Also, I'm using a throwaway because I would not like my age to be associated with my main account. This is going to come across rant-like but I am very open to having my view changed.
^^sorry ^^for ^^the ^^wall ^^of ^^text
Hey,
I'd just like to get this out of the way first, I'm technically "gifted" and I'm 13 years old (turning 14 in February). No, I'm not the type of kid to be "I'm 12 years old but I'm *really* mature!!11", I can be immature and most of time - at least at school - I do act immature. Also, when I say "technically gifted" I mean that I'm assigned a letter, which is P. Category P, at least in British Columbia where I live, stands for gifted. Also, I will be focusing on Canada throughout this post as it's where I live, specifically British Columbia but I'm sure the US and most other Canadian provinces are quite a bit like this.
I was designated as gifted about 2 months ago although I had originally been tested in Grade 2 (Grade 7, going to 8 now) but they didn't give me the designation although they gave me high scores. I was tested again in Grade 6 and I still didn't receive the designation, not sure why they tested me that time, I was never told. The reason I just received the designation is because my district just gave out the funding to _test_ for gifted children. Yes, my school district just gave the funding to TEST for gifted children. Not to do anything with them. I was given to option to skip a grade when I went to get my results, which would mean going in to high school. After that meeting I was never contacted by the school psychologist (The person who did my test and gave me the results) again. Now, skipping a grade might sound fine and dandy but the negatives out weigh the positives. The biggest being the big impact on my social life. I'm not a very outgoing person and I might as well be the definition of awkward. So going to high school surrounded by a bunch of people a year older than me isn't going to be very pleasant. Now, say I wanted to get into a gifted program well, my district, and for a matter of fact, almost _all_ districts in British Columbia don't have a program for gifted children. There's a special school/program in Victoria and one in Vancouver. If you don't live in either of those cities, your screwed.
Anyways, I'm getting off topic here, here is where I get a little angry.
Last year in Grade 6 we had quite a few special needs children (Severely autistic, Down Syndrome, and some other stuff). These guys go to school and play all day. Of course, they can't participate in actual classes, but instead of actually doing stuff with these kids, they walk around the halls with them while they scream and interrupt classes. Every few kids get a helper, I'm not sure of the exact number but I think it's around 3 kids to a helper. But usually there are about 10 kids that are severely special needs so there are 3 or 4 helpers. These helpers stay with the kids at all times. This doesn't sound too bad, right? School pays for a couple extra teachers that help a few special needs kids. But then you hear about how they're treated. These kids regularly went on field trips, extravagant ones at that, sailing, those fancy indoors gymnasiums, to the airport to have a flight around the city (This one was weird, but they did it). Mean while, we had 25 - 30 kids to one teacher and I was bored out of my mind because I knew all the curriculum and the teachers were already stretched too thin to give any of the gifted kids special attention, hell, the teacher would sometimes ask me to go around and help the other kids because too many kids were confused with a new math concept or needed help writing their essays. So while these special needs kids got to go on special field trips and had many teachers to so few children, our teachers were struggling to help any kids who might fall behind and I was getting so bored I ended up skipping school to stay home and program or learn a language (Working on Latin right now). This year, the same thing happened, except it was worse. Instead of me just skipping school, I just stopped trying and my grades plummeted. School was so boring to me it's getting unbearable. The final nail in the coffin for me was my English teacher putting me in a low level reading group. I read at the 99th percentile. I just didn't even try anymore. I didn't even read the curriculum. The only reason I passed was because I did the bear minimum on worksheets and tests. Of course, I got excited when they tested me, only to find out that it wasn't going to change anything about 2 weeks later. I know another gifted kid a couple grades ahead of me (Going on grade 11 next year) who almost dropped out. This kid is a genius, I think he has an [FSIQ](http://www.special-learning.com/article/full_scale_intelligence_quotient_fsiq) of about 150. The only reason he stayed was because his parents pretty much forced him to. He used to just skip school. I don't talk to him much anymore so I don't know whats happening with him now, but he's a prime example of what happens when you don't treat gifted kids like gifted kids. Mean while, the special needs kids in his school get their own room, their own teachers, their own everything. Even with a smaller classroom the teachers don't give a flying fuck about you. And it's not just the special needs kids, it's the less intelligent kids that get special treatment. I don't want to call them stupid but that's what some of them are. They aren't special needs, they're just dumb (really don't want to sound rude but that's the best way to describe them). They get student teachers to help them, they get easier worksheets and for some reason, I'm still sitting there, doing worksheets that are far below my grade level.
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I haven't heard many arguments as to why I'm wrong since I'm not a fan of sharing this view since it kinda sounds like I'm hating on special needs people if I do. The one that I have been told is this:
>"Gifted children are smart enough to be left on their own. So what if they get bored, so does every other kid! Special needs children simply can't do the work, they need to have their own helpers!"
Okay, that's fine, I recognize that special needs children can't do the work, and I'm absolutely fine with them getting their own teachers. What I'm not fine with is gifted children not getting any special attention. Every kid gets bored, but non gifted kids still learn stuff in school. I don't. That's how bad it gets. I don't learn stuff. I don't interact with kids I get so bored. I wouldn't say I get depressed but I do start feeling sad. It's a vicious cycle when I'm told I'm intelligent, then I get these terrible marks. Then I start hanging out with the wrong groups and my marks plummet more, on the days that I go to school I sit at the back of the classroom with the "bad kids" and listen to music, I don't pay attention to the teacher because I don't care what she's telling me, because I know it. This is were I sound very contradictory. I say that I know the curriculum but then I get bad marks. It's kind of a hard thing to explain, I guess I can try to explain it and it might sound like absolute bullshit but here it is:
I stop trying because I get bored and when I get bored I rush through things or don't read things fully or think clearly. Instead of think through a test question and writing a well thought out answer, I write some absolute bullshit. Because it's fun. That's how bored I am. I _purposely fail tests_ because it's more _fun_ than learning the curriculum. I enjoy doing something like:
>What earths core composed of?
>>Fairy dust and love
Yes, I gave that as an answer to a question on a science test. I actually wrote "Fairy dust and love" on a test because it gives me some sort of amusement, more than writing "nickel and iron" does.
Anyways, back to the topic at hand. I know that special needs kids need their own special teachers. Just give the bloody gifted kids some too.
>But we don't have the funding!!!
Yep, that's also something I've heard. You wanna know what my schools most recent purchase was?
You're not going to believe this one...
A mother fucking[ 1300 dollar drone](http://www.staples.ca/en/DJI-Phantom-2-Vision-Quadcopter-with-Integrated-FPV-Camcorder/product_1560844_2-CA_1_20001?kpid=1560844&cid=PS:SBD:GS:n:n:SBD:58:21800&kpid=1560844&gclid=CjwKEAjwwZmsBRDOh7C6rKO8zkcSJABCusnbEFDFedFJiylb-l-oJH-JM9_EVrHBpewynENnfpD9QxoCIRLw_wcB).
Not rented.
They literally bought a 1300 dollar drone.
What for? Maybe it's a good purpose!
Nope.
They took a picture of the school with it. Instead of hiring a photographer to climb up on a ladder and take a picture of our entire school like every other school ever, they spent 1300 dollars on a drone to take 1 picture. To clarify I mean one of those pictures where your school huddles together outside and then gets a picture taken, I don't mean the school building.
This is kind of a bad example because a CEA (The kind of teacher who teaches special needs kids) salary is like 30 grand. But if we can pitch the idea of buying a drone to our funding guy, couldn't we pitch the idea of getting an extra teacher for the gifted kids?
So yeah, they probably can get the funding. It's that we're not the priority. The special needs kids are. The dumb kids are. The kids who excel? Fuck 'em, they can have fun in University.
I guess I've conveyed my opinion as I see it. Sorry if the post isn't incredibly clear, I get a little emotional about some of this stuff. Feel free to ask me any questions. I'm very open to any criticism.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | The reason special needs kids get so much attention is that they need more hands on teaching and care to get to the minimum level of being able to function and survive. They are not being cared for to get them to the level of excelling, but to just the bare minimum that is below average.
Gifted children are much more self reliant (in fact that is one of the defining traits) and do far better than average all on their own without any additional help, often excelling without help as well. When choosing the allocation of resources (including teachers and time) it is best to focus on getting everyone to the minimum accepted level rather than sacrificing large segments of the population to helping those who are already doing very well do better. | 19 | 61 |
What makes CRISPR better than other genome editing methods, and what makes it worse? | Most gene editing methods take advantage of local DNA repair mechanisms which are there to repair errors in DNA. As you might expect, these mechanisms are more active when there is a problem with the DNA that prevents cells from reproducing, such as a break in a DNA strand. CRISPR-Cas9 is useful because it allows people to create breaks in DNA strand that will cause DNA repair mechanisms to be upregulated. To take advantage of natural DNA repair systems, we can insert a repair template that will get integrated in a targeted manner at the site of the break while it is being repaired.
Now of course, there were other ways to create targeted breaks in DNA before CRISPR was developed. However, these methods were targeted by altering long proteins that binded to DNA in a sequence-specific manner. The disadvantage of those methods was altering such long proteins was more laborious, so if you wanted to target a lot of different things it took much longer and was more expensive. Also, those other methods tended to be less efficient at breaking DNA, so you have to screen sometimes thousands of cells before you would find one that got edited. CRISPR is much more effective, and is easier to target due to only needing to change a few dozen bases in a targeting guide RNA sequence, which can be done quickly and cheaply.
One disadvantage of CRISPR-Cas9 is that while most of the DNA you want to target can be whatever sequence you want, the proteins have evolved to require a short sequence of DNA next to the target be a pre-determined sequence, such as NGG for the most common Cas9 protein. This limits where you can target, and if there is no sequence nearby where you want to edit, then the efficiency will be much lower.
Another disadvantage is the sequences guide RNAs target are only around 20 bases long, which gives less specificity than other methods, which can target regions of around 40 bases and higher. This means you'll have more instances of cutting DNA that wasn't intended to be cut but looks kinda like the region you were interested in cutting. However, there is a lot of research and engineering being done to reduce these off-target effects, so hopefully it won't be a real issue in the future. | 15 | 33 |
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ELI5: Why does the moon look so big and bright through our eyes, but when we try to take a picture it just looks like a small dot? | Drives me nuts. | Part of it is the automatic adjustments of the visual information happening inbetween the eyes and the conscious part of your brain. Basically your brain is adjusting everything you see to make it as clear and bright as possible. You can get the same effect by editing a photo of the moon or by using better technology to get a sharper and bigger picture. The brain is just doing that by default.
TL;DR: brain is touching up our eyesight before it reaches our consciousness. Modern cameras have functions similar to this but the human eye and nervous system have been gradually improving this capability for a long time. | 17 | 47 |
ELI5: How does a radio station send metadata like song name to my car's radio? | I was driving in my car, and for the first time noticed that the name of the current song on the radio was scrolling across the little LCD screen, and I wondered how that metadata works from the radio station's perspective. | Modulation became more efficient, which opened up space in the guard bands to transmit digital information on a sub carrier.
Edit : okay imagine that while recording the song the radio station was tapping out a special code in the background of the song that only your car radio could hear. That code is the meta data. | 24 | 44 |
eli5 If inbreeding causes a lack of genetics, how is there such genetic diversity? | How is there such genetic diversity now if inbreeding causes a lack of it? How did that not happen when there wasn’t a lot of animals on the planet? Or was it that there were a lot of land animals by the time that was an issue to not have to worry about it? | Genetic diversity happens through random mutation in DNA. Some mutations are good, some are bad, and most are neutral. These mutations build up over generations, leading to genetic diversity.
Of the mutations that are bad, many are what's called "recessive." That means you need to get two bad copies of the gene to get the bad trait. If your parents are very genetically distinct, it is unlikely that both will be able to give you the same bad mutation. If your parents are closely related, they are more likely to give you the same "bad" gene. | 39 | 43 |
CMV: Disregarding Economists' consensus on things like free trade and corporate taxes demonstrates the same ignorance as disregarding Climate Scientists' consensus on climate change. | If one believes (as I do) that we should believe experts when a consensus is reached on an issue within their field, which at least on reddit is generally accepted on issues like vaccination and climate change, it is inconsistent to not apply this pattern to economics as well.
It seems to me that economics and climate science especially have a particular set of features in common. Both rely heavily on the creation of mathematical models based on past data. The fields attempt to predict future events based on these models making revisions as new data arrives and the models are shown to be consistent or inconsistent.
To be clear. I am not of the opinion that we should believe every economist or economic theory, only that when a broad consensus exists, it should be treated with the same consideration as other fields, such as climate science.
Furthermore, I am not necessarily of the opinion that every such policy be enacted, there may be non-economic reasons not do so. However, we should accept proposed economic consequences as likely being true.
In comparison there are non-environmental reasons not to enact a policy that climate scientists know would be good for the environment (e.g. getting rid of cattle). But the basic premise "X would be good for the environment" should be generally accepted by reasonable non-experts.
I am extremely unlikely to find arguments against climate change convincing or relevant.
I am also unlikely to be convinced by an argument against any specific economic policy. I do not have a background in economics. You are unlikely to be able to teach me enough economics in a single post to think I understand the issue better than the entire field of Economists. Just the same as I am likely to be swayed on climate science by a post arguing against global warming, not having a sufficient background in climate science.
This is a rather new opinion of mine and am posting because, so far, I can't find any major faults with it and it represents a fairly major adjustment in my worldview.
Edit: I awarded a delta based on an argument that there are less consistent laws that economics models must follow that may make modelling less reliable, however, I want to mention that my delta is awarded on economics potentially not being comparable to climate science. I still believe that people should generally accept the consensus of experts even in the social sciences (sociologists on sociology, psychologists on psychology, economists on economics).
Edit 2: Please stop trying to argue there is never a consensus unless you have a more reliable source than the [Chicago Booth IGM Experts Panels](http://www.igmchicago.org/igm-economic-experts-panel)
Edit 3: I am unlikely to find arguments for Austrian Economics convincing. | Economics is a social science, whereas climate science is a (collection of) hard science(s). It has a much more solid empirical base of evidence. You’ll also find a lot more disagreement among economists over things like free trade, taxes, etc... | 32 | 19 |
CMV: Conversation is the only way to change someone's mind, argumentation almost never, ever works. This is why the majority of protests in the United States will get nothing done. | Note: I believe that semantically, "arguing" implies that the "winner" has shown dominance and subordinates the "loser," while "conversing" implies that there is no winner or loser, which allows for more acceptance of ideas.
Have you ever been mad at someone in an argument, and realized you were wrong halfway through? Odds are you didn't admit you were wrong. People don't ever want others to subordinate them.
But in a calm discussion, have you ever been convinced of a new idea? I imagine you have.
I believe the reason groups like the alt-right exist is because many white men feel that they aren't even given a chance to converse, but are argued against. OR, they have no interest in conversation in the first place and only want to argue in the first place- both are realistic pathways.
Two of the most influential rights activists of all time- Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.- strictly advocated for non-violence, but did advocate for civil disobedience. This would both take away the oppressors ability to subordinate their group, AND show no willingness to subordinate the oppressor. That is part of the reason why their movements were so rapid and successful.
As a white man, I fully recognize I have an unfair advantage in many walks of american culture. However, I have had my accomplishments straight up diminished and discredited because of my "white male" privilege. **I am not saying this is wrong. But it is a direct attack on something I take pride in. Naturally, a direct attack on something someone takes pride in is subordination.** When this happens, of course I get emotionally invested, and I am incapable of having a proper disscussion afterwards.
Unfortunately, many of the loudest voices in activism tend to subordinate white men, and this is why white men end up in the echo chamber that is the alt-right.
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*TLDR*
I want equal opportunity for all, and I know that currently we do not have that in this country. The fastest way to change that is activism and I fully support those who advocate and fight for their opportunity. However, to do so requires empowerment of the oppressed, never the subordination of the oppressor.
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*Side note:* I may be laughabley wrong on this, or I might have worded it in a poor way. I'm looking for both corrections, and possibly critiques to how I approach this perspective. | Debate can be helpful, mainly when done in public. People who don't have strong feelings or are uninformed on the topic will probably side with the person who makes the more persuasive arguments. Most protesters on either sides aren't aiming to convert those that directly oppose them, but appeal to the majority in the middle. | 530 | 1,856 |
ELI5: Why is lead the best element for stopping radiation? It's a big atom, I would assume that small atoms arranged in a highly compact lattice would be best. | Lead has the unique quality of possessing both a very high molecular weight and a very dense molecular structure. Those qualities make it appealing as a radiation shield material.
It's more commonly used over even denser elements because it's extremely cheap compared to elements like tungsten. | 122 | 66 |
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What uses does philosophical logic have, and is it necessary to learn it as a student of History and Philosophy of Science? | If you have in mind a basic understanding of logic, and/or logic taught in an "applied" way, the use it has is that it trains skills in some of the elementary practices of rational inquiry -- which would be useful to a student of history and philosophy of science, as this is a form of rational inquiry.
Not much in life is *necessary*, so this is probably not a useful criterion to worry about.
If you mean more advanced studies in logic, in this case we are dealing with a technical discipline in its own right, with its own technical problems and so on, which someone may wish to contribute to. Though, it's a technical discipline that sometimes overlaps with other technical disciplines -- for instance, with some issues in linguistics or mathematics.
A student of history and philosophy of science would find use in understanding this insofar as the technical field of logic is implicated at various significant points in the history and philosophy of science. For instance, one of the significant contributors to the development of a concept of scientific methodology during the Scientific Renaissance is work on Aristotelian logic, such that understanding the relevant issues in the history and philosophy of science would involve understanding the relevant bits of logic. | 10 | 17 |
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ELI5: If prepared foods should not be left unrefrigerated in the "danger zone" for extended periods of time for fear of bacteria growth, why do we treat baked goods differently? | Is it some property of baked goods that prevents leaving them out from being problematic? Or do they still pose a risk but we just treat them differently due to the fact that refrigeration tends to compromise the texture of baked goods? | For sweet baked goods, the sugar added functions like a preservative to prevent mold growth.
For non-sweet baked goods like bread, baking generates a crust where the water has been baked out. The lack of water makes it more difficult for mold to grow. You'll find that mold grows much easily once you cut open the bread and that the mold often grows on the white part of the bread where it is much more moist. | 65 | 42 |
[DC, Comics] So exactly what the hell is S.T.A.R. labs? | they seem to have endless amounts of money to fund a frankly ridiculous amount of R&D including what can only be extremely situational devices that must cost in the millions to make. but they don't seem to sell anything or have any source of income at all but they can do all that and still hire the best of the best?(static shock for example) | Mostly military R&D contracts for theoretical and fringe research. Certain government agencies have noticed how more than one superhero can be traced back to their experiments, and that has kept the funding coming in year after year. | 23 | 39 |
CMV: Alcohol Is More Deserving of Schedule 1 Status than Cannabis | Alcohol is equally as deserving, if not more deserving of a Schedule 1 status than cannabis.
A substance is a Schedule 1 Substance if ([per DEA](https://www.dea.gov/druginfo/ds.shtml)):
* The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
* The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
* There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.
Considering the three requirements for a Schedule 1 substance:
* **Alcohol's** addictive qualities are well-documented. Approximately 17.6 million people, or one in every 12 adults, suffer from alcohol abuse or dependence, [according to the NIAAA](https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-consumption/alcohol-use-disorders). **Cannabis** has almost half the addiction potential as alcohol, [according to an article at Scientific American](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-truth-about-pot/), with many cited scientific studies and credible sources.
* **Alcohol** has many accepted health benefits, in moderation, [according to these 11 references](http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/alcohol/art-20044551). **Cannabis**, on the other hand, has many more accepted health benefits, in excess, and in moderation. Here's a list of [23 accepted/documented health benefits of cannabis](http://www.businessinsider.com/health-benefits-of-medical-marijuana-2014-4/#chemical-found-in-marijuana-stops-cancer-from-spreading-5) at Business Insider.
* With a general lack of accepted safety, **alcohol** is known for interfering with how neurons communicate. This ultimately affects one’s ability to perform simple tasks like walking, speaking, and making decisions. [Here's a reference](http://www.maxim.com/maxim-man/alcohol-brain-cells-science-2015-11) for those who don't already know. **Cannabis** doesn't inhibit any neurons from communicating. Rather, our endocannabinoid system promotes our cannabinoid receptors to communicate, per [this expert](http://www.brainfacts.org/about-neuroscience/ask-an-expert/articles/2013/how-does-marijuana-affect-brain-function/). Also, when defining safety as the furthest from harm, cannabis has a lesser toxicity than alcohol, [according to the CDC](https://www.cdc.gov/features/alcohol-deaths/), which doesn't even have a category dedicated to cannabis-related deaths.
Scientifically, I tried to explain my reasoning with cited sources. A lot of this is more or less common knowledge in my opinion. I just don't see any justification for one of these drugs being a Schedule 1 substance, and the other one not.
I don't honestly believe alcohol should replace cannabis as a Schedule 1 substance completely. I believe it is **more deserving** of the status than cannabis.
For contrast, Schedule V drugs (the lowest tier) only have to meet one requirement:
* A Schedule V substance is a drug with a lower potential for abuse and lower risk of dependence than any previously Scheduled substance.
I will always be open to change my view given new evidence. To change my view, I will have to be convinced that cannabis is more deserving of a Schedule 1 status than alcohol.
EDIT: I do not legitimately believe that alcohol should be a S1 Substance. The point of this post was to demonstrate that alcohol is **just as deserving of the S1 status as cannabis.** That being said, I don't think either should be a S1 Substance. I just don't understand how people can be cool with alcohol, but not cannabis. I think it's very hypocritical, given the case made above.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | The reality is that we've had the benefits of literally half a century of direct research into alcohol including basic science, experimental studies, and epidemiological studies that have massively increased our knowledge of the harm that alcohol can produce. This includes harms that we would have never guessed before engaging in rigorous studies, such as increased risk of numerous cancers.
Because of the stupidity of the entire scheduling system, research into the longterm health and cognitive consequences of Marijuana is minimal. While it's pretty clear that Marijuana overdose is not a realistic concern (as it is with alcohol), it's virtually impossible to say much at all about other comparisons because we just don't know. There are certainly preliminary studies, but they are nowhere near as mature as research into alcohol consequences. The irony of the war on drugs is that it has prevented us from doing research on the true benefits or harms of controlled recreational drugs. On the one hand we have had drug ebforcement types pushing harms with no evidence. On the other, we have a reactive counter-culture that has emerged that would have you believe that Marijuana has no negative consequences at all and is in fact a panacea that can cure nearly everything. Of course, it's extraordinarily unlikely that this is true since no known substance on earth is anywhere close as great as some people would have you believe Marijuana is.
Any attempt at a comprehensive comparison of the harm of alcohol and Marijuana is largely speculative at this point. It's completely fair to say alcohol is really really unhealthy. It's also fair to say that Marijuana will not cause you acute direct physical harm. Outside of that we have some nice preliminary evidence and not much else.
| 11 | 35 |
How to satellites dissipate heat in the vacuum of space? | Since resistors generate heat and many, if not all satellites have a large amount of them on board, how is the heat generated by these resistors dissipated into a vacuum? | There are three modes of heat transfer in thermodynamics: convection, conduction and radiation. It is true that there is essentially no convection in the vacuum of space, so all heat generated is dissipated by infrared radiation (electromagnetic waves that travel until they hit some object).
EDIT: heat generated by high output components (processors, memory) may be conducted by heat sinks, but ultimately, any heat dissipated by the system as a whole would be through radiation. | 82 | 120 |
ELI5: Why are water fountains designed so we have to bend down to drink when we drink upright? | You see, humans come in various heights. Some can be 7 feet tall. Others can finish growing in the 4 foot range. Some humans are even said to come in child, ~~midget~~ little person, and baby forms. Still other humans require "wheeled-chairs" in order to be mobile, and are unable to stand. By placing fountains of drinking water at lower heights a greater number of humans are able to drink from them. | 73 | 20 |
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Let’s say a planet is 200 light years away. How do we know? Do we actually keep a telescope pointed in that area for 200 years to get a reading? If not, why is information traveling faster than the speed of light? | There's a couple different ways, but the 3 easiest to understand are brightness, parallax and redshift.
**Brightness** is straightforward. Things further away are dimmer. You can tell how bright a star should be by how big it is, and you can tell how big a star is by how things move around it -- the strength of the star's gravity is related to its mass. If you measure the brightness carefully with a telescope, and you know how bright it should be based on the mass, you can get a decent estimate of how far away it is.
**Parallax** is how things move relative to each other based on distance. So, for example, hold a thumb up in front of your face and look at it while winking with each eye. You'll see the thumb move left-right much more than the background. That's the parallax effect. Closer things move more than further-away things.
So for stars, we take a picture of them at opposite points in Earth's orbit. For example, we might take pictures in summer and winter, or fall and spring. The pictures are similar to your eyes winking back and forth -- and some stars move more than others. So from that we can tell relative distances between the stars. If you know relative distances from this, and you know an absolute distance for one of the stars (say from a brightness measurement), now you know the distances of the other stars.
Lastly, **redshift**. This is basically just the Doppler Effect for light. Doppler is what happens when a train or ambulance zips by -- you hear the high-pitched sound and as it zooms past it changes to a low sound. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEoooooooooooooo. The actual sound is the same the whole time, but what's happening is that as it comes toward you, the sound waves bunch up, so it gets higher-pitched. As it leaves, they get stretched out, so it's lower-pitched. The same thing happens to light at very high speeds. Stuff coming toward you really fast would look BLUER, and stuff moving away fast would look REDDER.
Because of the Big Bang, everything is moving away from everything else. So starlight is redder than it should be. The redder it is, the faster it's moving away. And because of some interesting math with the Big Bang, the faster it's moving away, the further away it is. | 85 | 27 |
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ELI5: When a phone app asks for permission to access your contacts, identity, etc. what data can they get from your phone? | Potentially ALL of the information within the categories they are requesting and in some cases more than that. You are trusting that the creator/company is only accessing the info to for use within the program but most agreements only imply this is the case.
Its within the realm of possibility that a downloaded additional keyboard can record key entries, that photo editing apps upload/save your images to their servers, that additional camera apps could activate/record from your camera when you did not intend it, the list goes on.
The apps are supposed to go through testing before being allowed to be published to the market, but where is the line on what you have agreed to in a user agreement you didn't read or additional content downloaded in an update or through the app itself after installed?
Malware detecting software can only detect methods which are already known to exist... Inevitably someone is always a guinea pig. | 24 | 67 |
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Is the theory behind vapourizers (for cannabis, etc) scientifically sound? | Basically, how realistic is it to claim that a very specific heat level can separate a chemical like THC from plant matter without combusting the material? This is one of those subjects that it's very hard to find unbiased information on, and since I haven't taken chemistry since high school it would be cool to hear answers from some of the more scientifically-oriented folk on Reddit. | Yes, different chemicals have different phase transition temperatures. THC boils at 315F and plant matter burns at approx. 450C. Therefore by controlling temperature you can turn the THC into a vapor without burning the bud.[6] | 31 | 26 |
Should you use academic language at tenure-track job interviews? | When interviewing for work outside of academia, I carefully avoid academic "jargon." However, I'm wondering about academic language in tenure-track job interviews. When describing my research, is it okay to go full-on into academic explanations, or is that a moment to demonstrate my ability to put my research into plain English? | I think the thing to remember here is that though the whole search committee is in your *field* (perhaps-- some schools do have outside members on search committees), they're likely not in your *subfield*. So calibrate appropriately. | 56 | 34 |
[Kung Fu Panda] Why didnt Oogway give the scroll to Tai Lung and explain it to him? | Why didn't Oogway just give Tai Lung the scroll and explain the lesson of self-worth? It was, apparently, the only thing he was missing from his training; if Oogway knew that Tai Lung and Shifu had been working towards making him into the Dragon Warrior but missed something crucial (like humility and self-esteem?), shouldn't it have been his responsibility as Shifu's master to say "Hey, you're missing the point of *excellence of self*"? Philosophy and fate and the illusion of control aside, his actions seem fairly arbitrary. Oogway saw a darkness in his heart, but never felt particularly inclined to identify or address it? He just said 'no scroll for you, fuck off'? | When the student is ready, the master will appear.
Contrapoint: if the student is not ready, the master should remain hidden.
In the philosophical tradition Oogway and Shifu were part of, stuff like 'questioning' and 'explanations' and 'just fucking tell him what's going on you secretive old asshole' are pretty much anathema. True knowledge can only come from within. It's the student's job to find his own path to truth, and it's the master's job to guide the student on that path of self-discovery, *not* by telling the student what to do, but by approving or disapproving of the student's actions and thereby showing him whether the path he has chosen is correct. To teach with words is to provide only the illusion of understanding and so sabotage true growth. If Tai Lung (and Shifu) didn't come to realize the true meaning of *excellence of self* on their own, no amount of words would matter. | 39 | 30 |
I am going to fail a project because nobody is working on it | So, I have a project that is divided in two parts: one it's about a long survey that I have to submit to 50 people, the other one is based on a focus group interview.
I ended up doing the whole survey and submitting it to 50 people without the help of two colleagues who were supposed to work on it with me. But that's fine, at least we've completed it.
However, the 5 colleagues who should work on the focus group are doing nothing right now. They had an entire month to find 10 people to interview, but they still didn't set an interview date and haven't found anyone to interview. I have been trying to contact them to help them complete the project, but they are ignoring my messages.
The deadline is in a week and nothing has been done yet. I don't wanna fail the whole course... what should I do? If they fail completing their part, should I talk to the professor?
Sorry for the grammar mistakes, I am not native in English
Edit: thanks to everyone for giving me some great advice! They were really helpful | Yes, talk to the professor. Bring with you a list of what you've done, when you did it, and a record of when and how you contacted your colleagues about doing the other parts of the project.
Do NOT go in with a list of demands like "I want to be graded independently" or "Assign me to a new group." Instead, explain the situation and ask your professor for their suggestions on how to deal with the situation. Be calm about it and don't be emotional. Don't look like you're trying to blame your colleagues for something. Instead, frame the conversation around what you can do to succeed rather than focusing on what the others are or aren't doing. | 64 | 19 |
If instincts are genetic, is it possible to find and alter the genes responsible to make any information instinctual? (In theory) | What do you mean by 'information'?
You could almost certainly affect behavior by changing genes involved in instinctual responses, but there would be boundaries on what exactly you could do. It becomes difficult to ascertain exactly what those boundaries would be since we know so little about what genes are responsible for instinctual behavior, or, indeed, what behaviors are instinctual.
But as a thought exercise let's think about an instinctual fear of light. You have retinal cells that detect light, association cells that run from your eye to your occipital cortex, and neurons in your occipital cortex all responding to this light. Let's posit that a gene exists in a species instinctually afraid of light whose function is to facilitate the growth of associations (synapses) between that tract and the amygdala, hypothetically strengthening the possibility of a fear response. If we were to insert that gene into a novel species with compatible neurodevelopment, it might be possible to impart this instinctual fear of light.
Now, it would be ludicrous to think you could "instinctually" insert learned human knowledge - like knowing state capitals or how to do calculus - but rudimentary behavior might be possible.
It could even be an interesting area of research if someone lays down a generation of groundwork. | 15 | 24 |
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CMV: Slang is Language, so long as the idea is communicated | I recently came across a situation where I was talking to my friend, using slang. Someone said I was talking "incorrectly" because of the use of slang. This wasn't in the most formal setting, and I could clearly tell that he knew what I was really talking about. My view is that slang is just as "correct" as any other word, as language is simply communication. I know that some people don't think that slang is correct. My points are...
- Language is communication. If I say it, and the idea goes across, it's fine
- All words originated from somewhere *cough*
EDIT: Woah! Thanks guys! This is much more than I expected for a first post on this sub. 4 upvotes, wow!
EDIT 2: Going to go now. Thanks for the awesome answers! 2 deltas rewarded
EDIT 3: Just woke up! 135 Upvote, o man!
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | Here is some Linguistics 101. Every native English speaker has his/her own mental grammar, which contains all of the grammatical, syntactic, and various other rules for English. Some of these rules are *prescriptive*, meaning that they are the "proper" way to communicate. For instance, don't end your sentence with a preposition, don't use slang, or don't split infinitives are all examples of prescriptive rules. The other rules are *descriptive*, which is the main topic of study for linguists. These rules are determined by observation of how native English speakers *actually* speak, rather than how they *should* speak. Obviously, if a way of speaking (slang) has such prevalence and is understood by native speakers, it is indeed an effective way to communicate ideas.
However, while slang may be objectively an effective method to communicate ideas, many, many speakers will certainly take you less seriously, or even think of you negatively for using it, especially in certain contexts. If your peers are not okay with your use of slang, find new peers. If your boss is not okay with it, you're SOL. While you may be technically correct, you have to pick your battles. Most people don't understand linguistics. | 50 | 212 |
How do flu/cold viruses survive lockdown? | I live in New Zealand where the coronavirus is nearly eliminated because of the lockdown. However we are being advised to get flu shots. How is it that the lockdown eliminated covid but not all the other cold/flu viruses (which have a lower R naught value)? Where are the viruses being introduced from if no one is entering the country without going into two week quarantine? | Animal transmission and long-term surface transmission do occur, also some people manage to not beat an illness in the average time and stay a carrier longer than average, but the easiest example is also the simplest. Even under lockdown some portion of the population is still required to do work and move around among others and some of them get infected. On top of that long distance travel is likely to resume eventually, probably within your normal flu season, and there are many areas where the lockdown didn't align with others that will still have passed on and picked up new strains. | 1,039 | 1,861 |
How does a few people not getting vaccines cause an outbreak of the disease ? | Shouldn't the disease only affect the people that have not got the disease (and may be for those the vaccine isn't that effective) ?
| With the vast majority of people being vaccinated, the spread of disease follows Herd Immunity. This is where the people who aren't vaccinated compared to the people who are vaccinated are so few, that the spread of the disease can be stopped/controlled and fizzes out. Once a larger percentage of the population decides to not get vaccinated, than the Herd Immunity starts to vanish, resulting in the ability for the disease to spread to increasing amount of people that are not vaccinated. The people who get vaccinated should be protected against, until a mutation/genetic-drift/-shift/different strain causes the need for a modified vaccination. Hope this answers your question! | 15 | 26 |
[Middle-Earth] If dwarves build their cities underground, what do they usually farm/raise for food? Do they have crops that grow underground? | Cave-fish and eating cave critters, mushrooms grown with waste product, and while they had large cities underground, many of them were situated near good pasture lands or rivers where the dwarves could come out of the city to tend to the fields, raise animals, or fish.
As they developed better relations with humanity. They would often exchange craftworks or labor in exchange for food as well. | 58 | 60 |
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ELI5: How is research carried out in order to constantly develop and improve CPUs and GPUs? | What does improving these computer components involve and what methods are used to develop more efficient processing units?
Edit: with a strong emphasis on the experimental aspect | There are three main ways to improve a CPU.
First, you can make it faster, able to execute more instructions every second. The problem is the faster you go, the hotter and sloppier the chip gets, to the point it eventually fails.
Next, you can make the components smaller. The smaller the chip architecture, the more transistors you can fit into one place, and the less power the chip needs, reducing heat.
Finally, you can make the chip smarter. Find ways to do things in 4 steps instead of 5, do multiple things at once, improve caching, and in general do things more efficiently.
Edit: Clarified the language on the second point. | 78 | 122 |
If you see through a colored filter, will the brain eventually adjust and reprocess it normally? | Does it work the same with a colored filter like [seeing in an angle (Perceptual adaptation)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_adaptation)? | if the filter is broad enough that it lets through light that can stimulate all three types of cones, then you could probably adapt enough to be able to discriminate colors again, but not as well as without the filter; if it's a narrow filter (e.g. that is strongly red or blue), you won't be able to see color normally through it, adaptation won't do much for you.
as an extreme case, consider a filter that only lets 'red' light through, i.e. wavelengths longer than 600nm. at this cutoff, you could still use your M(medium wavelength) and L(long wavelength) cones to discriminate some colors; and with adaptation, the M would become relatively more sensitive and the L would be come less sensitive, so your discriminations would improve a bit over time. but the S cone, which allows you to discriminate Blues from Yellows, and mediates green sensations, would be completely dormant - it is totally unstimulated by wavelengths longer than 600nm. so you could never see 'blue' through such a filter, and you'd lose your sensations of 'yellow' - everything would look different shades of brownish red.
adaptation in the retina comes down to changes in gain (related to adjustable rate of production of photopigments), but the range of frequencies that are detectable is genetically fixed. however, deeper in the nervous system (i.e. in the brain), ranges of selectivity (e.g. to perceived direction) are much more plastic, since they come down to network connectivity rather than some fixed physical component. | 25 | 39 |
How do you program a programming language? | I.e. How do you get a computer to understand a language? How does it actually make the transition from that language into assembly language? | First, you define your language. Define its syntax, its semantics, everything.
Then, it comes the hardest part: developing a compiler/interpreter for it.
A compiler is just a translator, it takes source code from the language you defined and pours the equivalent program in another programming language (generally, with a lower level).
For example, the C compilers, read C code and translate them to assembly, them an assembler converts this assembly code into an executable. | 13 | 42 |
[Harry Potter] Do sentient fantastic creatures like centaurs or goblins also have their version of 'Muggles' or can they all use magic? | They are inherently magical creatures--magic is what makes their bodies work, in many cases.
You could consider *Homo sapiens* to be only a quasi-magical species by comparison, as only a very small minority of our species has magical potential. | 48 | 59 |
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CMV: Stoicism in its original form, while pragmatically helpful for daily living, cannot be grounded in sound logic at its foundation due to its teleological roots. | I've been contemplating whether or not I should embrace Stoicism as a life philosophy recently, and the primary stumbling block for me is that it is an inherently teleological ethical philosophy at its core. That is, it relies on the idea that what is natural is what is good, ultimately. The philosophy itself seems to offer many valuable techniques for living one's life pragmatically speaking, but the justification of it as a life philosophy is hard for me to swallow logically.
In summary, here are my issues with Stoicism despite my instinctual desire to adopt it as a life philosophy-
1- Stoicism equates what is natural with what is good. How can this be justified?
2- Stoicism incorporates a concept known as the "dichotomy of control." That is, some things are in our control, and some things are not. The things within our control are the only things we should ultimately concern ourselves with. But how do you know what's ultimately in your control vs. what is not? It seems like finding the demarcation point is extremely difficult in every day life, or perhaps I am just over thinking it.
3- Stoicism posits that nature is guided by reason, and therefore, since nature is reasonable, we should be reasonable. Just because we can explain many aspects of nature within an ordered, scientific, logical framework, that does not mean that nature is inherently guided by reason. That is, observed regularity within nature doesn't mean that it's somehow guided by reason necessarily. This aspect of Stoicism seems to be somewhat similar to intelligent design. How can this be justified?
4- From SEP, "The perfection of one's rational nature is the condition of being virtuous and it is exercising this, and this alone, which is good. Since possession of that which is good is sufficient for happiness, virtuous agents are happy even if they do not attain the preferred indifferents they select." How does living rationally necessarily guarantee a happy life? It seems as though there are a number of happy people in the world who live quite irrationally. It seems more intuitive to me that emotions play a more significant role in one's well being, not how rational you are. Then again, maybe I misunderstand what rationality is.
5- Stoicism seems to have a lot to say about participating in the world and engaging as a social being with others. Why is this preferable to living a socially withdrawn life if that's what you prefer as an individual?
I am quite interested in hearing responses to these issues, as Stoicism seems to be a somewhat useful life philosophy. I guess one could argue that if something is instrumentally useful to you, that's all that really matters at the end of the day (sort of like William James' flavor of pragmatism). But I have a hard time embracing a philosophy without being able to justify it logically to myself.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | As for point 2, In the first sentences of The Handbook, Epictatus straight up, in black and white, spells out what is up to you and what is not. The only things that are up to you are your opinions, desires, impulses, and aversions. Everything else is out of your control and not worth obsessing or worrying over.
What it boils down to is not fretting over things that are not within your control. To make the best of a situation regardless of how it is. To play your role in the production that is life to the best of your ability. | 22 | 42 |
[Tolkien] If Sauron is said to be the most powerful of all the Maiar, and the One Ring makes him even more powerful, why did he lose to Elendil and Gilgalad? | Assuming that Elves and Men are less powerful than Maiar to begin with. You would think that the two kings were incredibly outclassed. How the hell did they win? | There are different types of "Power". Sauron orchestrated the downfall of Númenor, the most powerful kingdom of Men to have ever existed in addition to most of the powerful Elves of the Second Age. He also would have defeated Middle-Earth yet again if not for the blind luck/divine intervention of two hobbits sneaking into Mt. Doom.
Sauron was one of the best smiths of magical, powerful artifacts in the history of Middle-Earth, had uncounted armies of Men, Orcs, and other monsters, had spies all over the world, corrupted the leader of the White Council, and drove the Steward of Gondor to madness.
He also lost a fight to a dog in the First Age. "Most powerful" doesn't necessarily mean physical power. | 41 | 23 |
[Star Wars] "Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. Your devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the Rebel's hidden... <ack>" How does Motti not know to not taunt Darth Vader? | Arrogance and pride are job requirements for being a higher up. Being cautious and empathetic won't get you promoted very far. Combine that with his inherent belief that Vader is basically a fraud and it would make sense that he would scoff at rumors of Vader choking people or other nonsense.
Vader also showed deference to Tarkin, so maybe mistook his rank at being higher than Vader's | 97 | 85 |
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ELI5: How do we “hear” the voice inside our head with no physical sound? | When you talk and others talk to you, your brain lights up in places that process language. When you have an inner monologue, those same places (and some new ones) in your brain light up. Because the same part of your brain that listens to others is also listening to you, you process it as hearing a voice in your head. | 58 | 66 |
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How do cancer vaccines work? | I’ve recently read about BioNTech developing a cancer vaccine with the same mRNA tech used to develop the COVID vaccine. I always thought vaccines were for transmissible diseases such as COVID, polio, measles etc, but as I understand it cancer is not transmissible - you can’t catch it from someone. So how does a cancer vaccine differ compared to a regular vaccine and how does it work?
Edit: thanks for the responses - very helpful! I am blown away that we can do this stuff. Science is bonkers. | Your immune system constantly makes antibodies at random and fine tunes them to bind to foreign antigens. There is also a process called tolerancing where the immune system ensure these randomly made antibodies don’t bind self proteins (i.e. your own cells).
Cancer cells have self proteins that cant be targeted because they are your cells, however cancer cells also have mutations that allow them to multiply unchecked and be more resilient. These differences means that there are some proteins on cancer cells that are different enough from self proteins to be targeted by your immune system.
The idea behind a cancer vaccine is you find those different/unique cancer proteins and train the immune system to target them and destroy cancer cells. There are already cancer treatments that involve manufactured monoclonal antibodies that bind to cancer cells, so cancer vaccines are similar to these treatments except much cheaper and likely more effective. Monoclonal antibody treatments can easily run into hundreds of thousands of dollars a year , and CAR T cell therapy, an approach that uses engineered immune cells, costs even more. So cancer vaccines offer a more affordable and effective way to treat cancer with less side effects than traditional chemo.
Also cancer vaccines dont have to be mRNA, there are other types of vaccines that work as well. | 38 | 58 |
[MW2] So I understand how the initial Russian attack got past the U.S. But how did the Russians keep themselves supplied? | The main Russian force is comprised of airborne units which carry only so much fuel and ammo. So, they need to get supplied via the ocean by tankers. But that's impossible, since they would have to get past the Atlantic fleet, which is larger and stronger than the Russian fleet. So, how did the Russians keep themselves supplied? | The conditions in CoD are that Russia had seen a minor economic boom, had a successful modernization of arms plan, and had access codes to our satellite detection systems.
Using this advantage, they got the surprise attack on America. After this, the fleet diverted to help fight off Russian forces off the coast, leaving the Russian fleet able to overpower the remaining US fleet. | 30 | 45 |
ELI5: How do planes know when there's an air turbulence in front to turn on the seatbelt signs? | When there's a turbulence coming, the lights always go on a few seconds in advance. Can the pilot see the turbulence coming or is there a radar or something like that? | There are multiple ways that pilots can know turbulence is coming.
Some kinds of turbulence can be seen on the radar on the plane. Sometimes pilots can see conditions that are likely to cause turbulence (like layers in the clouds). Additionally, pilots will report turbulent conditions on the radio, so at times air traffic control may provide pilots notice of upcoming turbulence. | 20 | 26 |
What exactly does Wall Street and the Financial Market do for the country and the economy? And is it necessary? | Wall Street creates "markets" which increases "liquidity."
Say you buy a used video game for $20. A few month later you want to sell it. How much is it worth? Perhaps you could list it on Ebay and get $20 for it. However, it will take a lot of your time to list, it may not even sell, and if it does sell, it will take weeks to get your money. Used video games aren't very "liquid" because you can't easily turn them into cash.
You could trade it in to a video game store, but they'll probably only give you $5 for it. That's because the store has to do the work of selling it, and they also want to make money. They also take on the risk that it won't sell.
Buying games for $20, but only getting $5 when you sell them is a sigh of an ill-functioning market. Wall Street fixes that for stocks, bonds, commodities, and various other things. They create huge, efficient systems for buying and selling, and thus they can do it very cheaply. Moreover, the big companies are always willing to buy whenever someone wants to sell.
If Wall Street traded video games, you could probably buy the game for $20 and resell it for $19.98, and it would only take a few seconds to do it. Imagine how much more freedom you would having in playing games if you knew that you so easily get your money back.
If Wall Street traded video games, there would probably be other problems: high prices (more people would want to play games and then resell them, which would cause the prices to rise). And wild price fluctuations (based on how many people want to buy or sell the game in a given day). This would lead to speculators who don't play games, but they just buy them in the hopes of reselling them later. This then leads to other people who do all sort of weird things like selling games they don't have ("shorting"). Or buying a large amount of games and reselling an a fraction of the games (it would be as if they sold one byte from a million games, rather than a single game, but it's all done on paper so you don't actually get anything. That sort of wizardry is said to be one of the causes of the 2008 recession.
Is Wall Street necessary? Yes, for how our economy is currently structured. Is it worth the problems? That's much harder to say. | 99 | 108 |
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[General]Why is there man-sized ventilation in our place of business? We don't do smelting so nothing that needs that much air. Huge vents take up space on the floor plan and increase the cost of cooling the place. They go to every room in our place of business, seems like kind of a security risk? | I am not worried about terrorists or burglars, that is crazy. More like co-workers stealing stuff or Fred when he is fired next Tuesday after working here for 30 years and having his pension taken. | Building codes requires them, they aren't built for everyday airflow, but for managing smoke and manipulating the atmosphere to help in firefighting. They help firefighters get through to blocked areas and evacuate people.
Air shafts must be big enough to a maintenance worker to crawl through or long-term money will be wasted tearing things out to fix them and putting them backing.
There ave been no complaints yet of workers going AWOL within the vent systems. | 109 | 148 |
CMV: “Homogeneity” doesn’t matter when it comes to a nation enacting and expanding social aid programs and entitlements, and it’s very telling of the ideology and intentions of the Right that this is such a common argument | America is the only industrialized nation without an universal healthcare system, nationally required Paid-Time-Off for workers, and national paid paternity leave. It is also an outlier among most developed nations for very little labor arbitration by the government, at-will employment, and comparatively-high University tuition rates with little aid or government-backed recourse entitled to indebted students. All of this has been the ire of many political progressives, reformers, and garden-variety observers of many different stripes. Many of who like to point to the policies in other developed countries as examples to follow, with the most referenced often being Scandinavian countries.
One of the most common responses by Conservatives to such, is often along the lines of “‘x’ country is small and homogeneous” and that they shouldn’t be compared to a country like the US. The ‘homogeneous’ argument is also often used with larger countries used as examples, such as Germany (pop. over 82 million) or Japan (pop. over 126 million). I disagree, and the fact this is the only serious and most prevalent argument coming from the Right when one sorts out all the misconceptions and false assertions (such as that those countries aren’t as developed as the US, that they lag behind in innovation, that the average earner pays tax rates 40-50%+, that they’re all oil rich) or associating them with fake epidemics (such as that the people in those countries are morally decadent, or that it’s overrun by clerical Muslims), it becomes clear that many of them admit (albeit indirectly) that those policies work and are beneficial, but they don’t want them implemented in the US, for what I believe, are largely reasons of racial resentment against racial minorities, who they either don’t believe are worth investing-in and improving living standards for them.
I should note that this isn’t just some internet-comment phenomenon, but common responses in right-wing media and by right-wing figures. [Prominent Economist Milton Friendman](https://books.google.com/books?id=0mdWW-z1OPcC&pg=PA244&lpg=PA244&dq=the+scandinavians+have+a+very+small+homogenous+population&source=bl&ots=uFfBeppt6m&sig=JieHdYLFq4m-JXpeyUG7esOTiXU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjA753S84bMAhVP82MKHQ9qAWYQ6AEIKTAC#v=onepage&q=the%20scandinavians%20have%20a%20very%20small%20homogenous%20population&f=false), Kevin D. Willamson and Nima Sanandaji from the National Review [1](https://www.nationalreview.com/2014/08/homogeneity-their-strength-kevin-d-williamson/), [2](https://www.nationalreview.com/2015/07/socialism-left-white/), [3](https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/07/nordic-democratic-socialist-model-exposing-lefts-myth/); [The Heritage Foundation](https://www.heritage.org/international-economies/commentary/why-democratic-socialists-cant-legitimately-claim-sweden-denmark), [Forbes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertpearl/2016/04/28/what-america-can-learn-about-healthcare-from-other-countries-and-why-we-will-refuse-to-do-so/#64461a3c6586), [New York Post](https://nypost.com/2015/01/11/sorry-liberals-scandinavian-countries-arent-utopias/), [U.S. News and World Report](https://www.usnews.com/opinion/economic-intelligence/2014/12/18/why-sweden-denmark-and-norway-have-high-taxes-and-still-show-up-to-work), [Washington Examiner](https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/joy-behar-is-deluded-about-scandinavian-socialism), the [AEI](http://www.aei.org/publication/ikeamerica-should-the-us-really-be-more-like-sweden-a-qa-with-economist-tino-sanandaji/), [FOX News guests](https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2019/01/11/fox-friends-guest-sweden-had-everything-going-them-make-socialism-work-including-their-homogeneous/222494), [Ben Shapiro](https://www.liberaldiary.com/2018/10/19/ben-shapiro-on-the-nordic-welfare-model/), and [Steven Crowder](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvF_D4tVfYU).
Have all said something along the lines of it.
To be fair, many of these try to look for other excuses of why those countries are able to pull off those policies (many of which is trivial or false), but ‘homogeneity’ here is stressed in all of them, and in practically all of them, they’re almost always correcting against some person / politician / movement that wants social-democratic-like policies who has pointed to countries like Sweden or Denmark of being successful examples of ‘socialism’ (even though a great many of these figures and organizations label such policies socialist when they are actually proposed here in the US).
“Homogeneity” as the reason why countries like Denmark or Sweden might’ve naturally adopted those policies more extensively than other countries isn’t a refutation of those policies ever being adopted by the US or elsewhere by their Governments, but they (along most people who use and subscribe to this argument and thinking) are subtly implying that it is, by arguing against common social democratic and democratic-socialist policies in their segments / articles / comments while not clarifying further on how ‘homogeneity’ is relevant to their possible effectiveness and benefits.
The implication in all of this is race and racial diversity, and it’s foolish to think that it’s anything but. Scandinavian countries have high social expenditures and labor entitlements, but so does practically every country in Europe, in addition to Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, which all have similar institutions and programs at vary degrees in funding and support at rates far more than the US; and have populations with varying degrees of ethnic, linguistic, cultural, size, and racial makeup,some of which near-match the US (Canada and New Zealand). And some have bigger societal divides with language and nationality (such as Switzerland and Belgium), which impediments their politics and trust, but still nonetheless fund more social aid and services than the US.
If the policies work and benefit all parties, ‘homogeneity’ is irrelevant outside the chances popular support for passing them, and shouldn’t be resisted based on one’s resentment of how a fellow citizen might benefit from it. | The arguments about the viability of social programs where homogeneity is mentioned has to do more with values/customs than skin color. Most Swedes share the same or similar values. Most of their population is concentrated in the southern half of the nation.
How this differs from the United States is that the US population is much more diverse, populace, and spread out. There are about 10 million people in Sweden. New York City, alone, has about 8.6 million people.
The US has 22 times the land mass of Sweden and about 30 times the population. Add to that the reality of how diverse the American population is and the competing values, needs, desires, beliefs, etc...saying that "Most other western countries do it..." is a bit short-sighted. So is claiming that bringing that up as a point is naturally xenophobic or racist. | 14 | 30 |
ELI5:When playing video games, why do I feel like I'm falling when my game character is falling from a tall height? | Say in a video game, my character climbs up a very tall building, but then he falls off. Why do I get that feeling in my stomach like I'm the one falling, when its just my character on a TV screen? | Depending on how immersive the game is, you will start to empathize and identify with the character. Some games encourage this link by not giving the playable character a voice and allowing you to customize his/her appearance, enabling the character to act as a fitting avatar/portrayal of yourself. As you play a game, your mind subconsciously becomes more and more connected with the character and begins to think of it as part of yourself. Thus, when something bad happens to your avatar you may feel as if it actually is happening to you. This feeling could be intensified if you identify more with the character or have a strong fear of the event (i.e. fear of heights in this case). | 14 | 21 |
CMV: Doctors wanting to be millionaires are as much to blame for the health cost problem in the U.S. as pharmaceutical and insurance companies. | If roughly 60% of bankruptcies in the U.S. occur due to medical costs, as is widely cited, and doctors are on average the highest paid profession making roughly 10-20+ times more than the poverty line, then it follows that they are as much to blame for health costs as pharmaceutical and insurance companies.
It's easy to blame politicians, it's easy to blame corporations, it's easy to blame policies; it's hard to point to a group of professionals that want to be treated like "self-less" heroes for curing the sick while receiving in some cases more 50% of the yearly salary of their patients and ruining their entire financial lives.
CMV.
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | Doctors in the US don't make much more than doctors in other Western countries with lower health care costs (often less as a proportion of the mean income) and don't practice very differently other than using more imaging and more defensive medicine. Their income represents less than 10% of health care costs. It would make more sense to blame the enormous administration cost of medicine in the US where every layer (government, insurance, JCAHO, hospital) imposes its own bureaucracy. | 82 | 83 |
ELI5:What is design and systems thinking? | I've referred to various definitions and examples but I don't think I still catch what it's all about. | Most people tend to think of complex dynamic systems in terms of individual components, without fully grasping how they interact and the impacts of those interactions.
Let's say you've got a team project due tomorrow. Collectively, your team needs to write a 20-page paper describing your work.
So you divide the work up into 5 sections, assign everyone a section and you all work independently. Everyone finishes their work by the deadline and you're all set, right?
Wrong. In all likelihood, none of you actually completed your task because certain elements of one section were dependent on the others - and you needed information from other group members to do a good job. The entire document as a whole needs review and markup based on standards established group-wide.
Simply "doing your job by the deadline" in this case is a strategy that leads to failure. You need to come up with mechanisms for coordinating the work beyond this simplistic notion of dividing up the work.
Moreover, you also have to deal with failure modes. Consider that slacker member of your group who never gets their work done. If they completely fail in their assignment, you'll lose points on your grade. So if the deadline is 9 am tomorrow, at what point will you need to do their work for them to complete in time? How do you communicate this to other team members so they're not doing redundant work?
'Systems thinking' is thinking about all of these issues that arise when coordinating different tasks and recognizing the inter-relationship between those tasks. It involves examining dependencies between tasks, and how unforeseen events can affect not just one particular task but all tasks in the system.
A 5-person academic project is fairly easy to coordinate. Much of the time you end up with one person doing most of the work, two people who add some comments/graphics/whatever and two people who do virtually nothing. It's an inefficient approach, but it's easier than trying to get everyone to work up to their potential.
But once you scale that up to thousands and thousands of people, this sort of casual approach to managing the task flow fails utterly. You need people whose entire job is thinking about how the complex dynamic system functions - and ensuring it continues to do so. | 20 | 23 |
ELI5: Why is it that when we eat something too much we start to dislike it? | We have an innate desire of a healthy, varied diet with lots of different nutrients, vitamins, etc., to keep our bodies supplied with all the items required by our metabolism.
Short term, this means that when you eat a whole lot of a single meal in a short amount of time, say a lot of candy, your body is giving a response that it's had enough of that nurtrient, and is likely reaching unhealthy levels where it will have to waste resources instead of use it.
Long term, it's a bit more psychological. Our desire to try out new recipes, new foods and change from the old ones is, when you have a steady and healthy diet, likely because you have acces to information about new food: such as new recipes, new information about certain nutrients, cooking shows, advertisments, etc. I'd argue that the desire to experience a new and exciting flavour eventually causes a mental link to dislike the food you're used to.
Extremly long term, the bud tastes on your tongue, like all other cells in your body, die off and are replaced with new cells. This means that roughly every few years you develop a slightly altered taste that can alter your preferences. Spicy food also scars your tasting buds that can also alter your taste! | 12 | 29 |
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Is socialism a system possible to achieve ? Most philosophers appear to be socialist according to the latest Philpapers survey. | Are philosophers the worst people to talk about economic systems with ? Someone linked me to this place saying "go to r/Askeconomics and find out why philosophers are the worst people to hear talking about economists" | Economists generally don't deal with such "systems" as their definitions are not sufficient to really be able to talk about them in a scientific context. Basically, the question "what is socialism" has too many answers, none of them good enough.
Economists rather talk about individual aspects of an economy, individual policies or reasonably precise sets of policies.
"Can we implement socialism" is not a good question, "can we implement policies X, Y and Z" is. | 112 | 57 |
ELI5: why does putting a credit card in a plastic bag make it more likely to swipe without an error? | Working in retail it's just one of the things you learn. If a credit/debit card will not swipe, put I in a plastic bag and try swiping again. Works 90% of the time but I have no idea why. | This type of card uses a magnetic stripe to indicate the card information. On the card, you have magnetic particle that vary in strength along the length of the card. Say for example, that at a particular spot on the stripe, you can have either some magnetic particles (1) or none at all (0). By reading the stripe sequentially, you get a binary number that represents the information of the card.
Now most of the time when a card doesn't work very well it's because, after a lot of use, the magnetic field will start to "bleed" to their neighboring sections. 0s will start to look like 1s because they "absorbed" some of their magnetism.
From our study of magnetism, we know that a magnetic field's power decreases exponentially with the distance. We also know that we want 0s to look more like 0s (less magnetism), so what we need to do is move the card a bit further away from the sensor. Putting the card in a bag or inside a folder paper sheet is most of the time enough to get that effect. | 84 | 70 |
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