post_title
stringlengths 9
303
| post_text
stringlengths 0
37.5k
| comment_text
stringlengths 200
7.65k
| comment_score
int64 10
32.7k
| post_score
int64 15
83.1k
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
How do we know it's 'quantum' uncertainty, and not uncertainty in measurements or interference from unknown factors? | Firstly, I don't mean to suggest that I don't believe the quantum interpretation. When I read articles about quantum mechanics, there is always a bit that says that a particle's position and velocity can't be measured to a certainty; there is always a random chance of finding either within a range, with probabilities determined by the wave function (as far as I can tell). For the sake of example, say we shot a particle at a given velocity, and then measure its position after a given period of time. If we determine the particle's velocity to be somewhere between 10 and 20 m/s, why interpret that as an indication of the particle's probabilistic nature, instead of assuming it's the effects of precision of the particle gun, the precision of the detector, the particle colliding with other particles on its way, etc? | Sort of a quick TL;DR-style approach is to say that quantum theory predicts that a certain amount of uncertainty exists because of the nature of wavefunctions. When we do experiments, after eliminating all sources of uncertainty we can eliminate, we're left with an amount of uncertainty that is never less than the amount predicted by quantum theory. So why not believe that quantum uncertainty is real? | 11 | 17 |
Eli5: why are a lot of the designs from 50s so good and considered timeless? | Clothes, cars, sunglasses, architecture, and others
All seem to have good designs back in the 50s, not saying that other decades have bad designs it's just that it's either a hit or miss, what made the 50s so timeless? | It's important to distinguish what you mean by "good design". In a lot of ways, the functional things in the 50's are not as well designed. Our cars are more efficient, safe, and comfortable for instance.
If you're talking about purely that 50's retro look, America suffers from a sort of cultural nostalgia for the 50's. The 50's is often presented in this dream like vision of the perfect America, men were men, women were women, people had big back yards and barbecues, drove their cars for fun. Life is depicted as being simpler back then, and that affects our perception of the designs.
The 50's were also a time when consumerism was becoming a huge thing, as in part of your identity was about what you owned. This was spurred on by a rapidly growing middle class that could afford luxury gadgets like a TV. There were more products being made in larger quantities to more people and that stuff needed to look nice. | 16 | 15 |
CMV: Universities should not be able to take 50% of scientific grant money, just to funnel it into slush funds for the rest of the university. It should be required to stay in the department. | I feel like a lot of people don't know this, but when an investigator at a research university gets a grant, typically about 50% of it is taken by the university. So if a cancer researcher gets $10 million, he gets $5 million to do research, and $5 million goes directly to the university. Of course, part of this $5 million goes towards heating the building, keeping the lights on, etc. But essentially it is going into the university slush fund.
Why should NIH or NSF money, provided by the taxpayers for scientific research, go to a university that then uses it for whatever it wants? NIH money should not be allowed to be used for a new theater building that is gorgeous and costs hundreds of millions of dollars. NSF money given for scientific research should not be used to subsidize fields in the humanities that can't support themselves. We shouldn't be using our limited scientific research funds to enable universities to continue to waste billions of dollars on expensive architecture and non-research related fields.
You can try to argue that other fields are important and need this money. But in my view this doesn't mean that money earmarked for cancer research should go towards the football team or the English department. Find a different way, and if you can't then cut those departments.
If a physics professor gets a grant, the university can take their 50%, but it should be required to stay in the physics department, or an approved related department. Same with biochemistry, engineering, etc.
EDIT: Some commenters are saying that this is also a problem for fields like psychology which are more closely linked with the humanities, and how their funding often gets used for less funded fields in the humanities. So I think this shows that this is not limited to the hard sciences.
_____
> *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 university isn't just providing the project with the building cost and power to carry out the research, it is also providing the opportunity for the researcher to apply for grants in the first place. They did not just fund your project, but a half a dozen other projects that never receive grant funding. Did you have to get a petition to build the lab you're working out of, or was it there before you got there? It was probably paid for by portions of previous grants that went to the university instead fo the project. That new beautiful building is an investment in future projects and future developments.
It's the now classic "you didn't build that" argument, the infrastructure and resoruces that gave you the opporuntiy to succeed were there paid for by others, and your successes will fund yourself as well as future projects. | 240 | 791 |
ELI5: why is it freezing in space if there is no matter in the vacuum to transfer body heat into? | Heat can be transferred two basic ways. One is conduction, like when your body is in contact with cold air. As you realize, you need something to conduct the heat *to* for this to work.
The other mechanism is radiation. Your body is constantly radiating infrared light, carrying away heat energy. (This is known as "black body radiation".) Black body radiation isn't all that fast, so freezing in outer space will take a bit of time.
All objects that have a temperature above absolute zero will emit black body radiation, so this process will eventually freeze you, probably after you've died from some other issue like running out of oxygen to breathe. | 4,314 | 5,948 |
|
[Green Lantern] When GL casts his constructs, what does an observer who's color blind to the green spectrum see? | Maybe I don't properly understand GL's ring or color blindness for that matter, but would someone who's unable to see the green spectrum see anything? Would there be an outline to the objects? Would the objects appear greyish if they're solidified light?
| If they're colour blind, they'll be unable to discern the exact colour, so might see the constructs as red/orange.
If they're unable to see green things are a bit more interesting - we humans have 2 light sensing cells in our eyes (cone, for colour and rod for absence/presence of light).
Assuming the person is a human, if the cone cells werent stimulated by green at all, the very few rod cells in the middle of the eye (they're found in the highest concentration around the edges of the retina) would be telling the person that there was **something** in front of them, but it would be conflicting with the information from the cone cells, so they'd see constructs out of the corner of their eyes, and have a vague sense of something being in front of them.
If both the rod and cone cells were blocked from seeing the wavelengths associated with green lantern constructs, then it would be like invisible telekinesis to them. | 44 | 36 |
ELI5: Why is it so easy for many people to be able to go cross eyed, but much more difficult to look left and right at the same time? | As your eyes/brain have adapted to follow things coming towards your face, that increases your depth perception. But once your eyes are facing forward, there's no depth perception gained by them "spreading apart" further. So learning to do it is near impossible, as we don't naturally need to | 49 | 59 |
|
[General] Say I found a genie...what if I asked it to give me the ability to warp reality to my desire? | Basically, what if I asked the genie to give me the powers of a genie without the limitations? Is that the one, true unstoppable, unfuckable, and still ultimately useful wish? I haven't wasted it, can do whatever I please, and can force the genie away immediately after. What's the downside?
Edit:
Also, for my second wish, I wish to know how to use my powers, as for my third wish, I wish to have complete control over my powers as well. | Well, to have the ability to warp reality to your desire, you must surely have to know everything in the universe, past, present and future, forever, any alternate outcome of every decision ever made, and so on?
Surely that would fuck with your brain to the point of it turning to mush.
Also, "the ability to warp reality to your desire" seems to imply you turning into a Genie. Wasn't that basically what Jaffar asked for?P | 16 | 15 |
[Star Trek] What is the Borg’s criteria for being worthy of assimilation? | The Borg are picky with who they assimilate. I.e. in Voyager the Kazon who are a space faring race are deemed as being of little interest (I know this was a wink to the audience) but then the Borg are willing to time travel back to assimilate Earth in the mid-21st century. It thus seems that it isn’t technology the Borg find interesting, rather something more esoteric.
Any theories? Understand of course that canon is all over the place with the Borg especially with the ending of Voyager and Picard making it all a bit fuzzy, so don’t feel the need to explain everything in universe. | Usually they assimilate a society that has a better tech than them or the odd member of a new species to learn about it.
The 21st century one was so that the federation would never be and wouldn't have fought em off | 26 | 30 |
I think taxes are good for freedom, and libertarians have been tricked by the rich. CMV | There was a long facebook thread on this point after the Pope started shit talking capitalism, and it made me realize something. I no longer understand people who tell me that they think taxes should be radically lowered and most government services privatized.
I think that everyone who holds this opinion has been more or less tricked by the rich and powerful into thinking that taxes and government are antithetical to liberty when they really aren't. Taxing and spending creates a more even playing field and government is (at least supposed to be) a check on the ability of the rich and powerful to do whatever the fuck they want.
Key to my view is this: who stands to gain the most from a society with less government and lower taxes? Clearly not the poor.
Obviously I don't think that 100% taxes is good either. Don't reduce this to the absurd. As I have said in other fora, I believe the job of good economic governance is to strike a balance between encouraging individual creativity and making sure the most fortunate and successful don't break the system by becoming too powerful.
To head this avenue of attack off at the pass: I am an adult (most of the time) living int he USA, and I pay a ridiculously low rate of state and federal income tax and sales tax.
The kicker of it all is that I used to be a radical libertarian too, before I reached the age of reason (about 25). So I don't think you will, but I want to hear your best arguments for why taxes kill freedom. | Let's first agree upon a definition for "freedom", e.g. "the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action".
By that definition, taxes, by their very nature, limit freedom, in that you must pay them, and are threatened with force if you choose not to pay. | 107 | 203 |
Is it ever reasonable to accept an explanation that is more complicated than it needs to be? | I remember asking a professor about this and they said that Occam’s Razor (if this is what you are referring to) should only be applied when comparing to equally plausible explanations. If one option is much more complex but more plausible than another less complicated and less plausible answer, then you should still favour the more plausible answer | 20 | 22 |
|
To cut college costs, students should be given the option to teach themselves. CMV | Basically, I think that by the time you are out of high school, you should have mastered the ability to read, study, take notes, and ultimately teach yourself the material. A teacher was necessary in childhood for helping kids comprehend and understand it when their reading abilities were lower, but someone should not need that kind of help in college. If someone wanted to save money, they could just request the book, study it over a period of a few months, then take the final to prove they have learned the material.
This should be an option for every college student, but it is not because they don't want to devalue the necessity of the professor. I don't think it will do that completely, though. There would probably be a lot less students enrolling for formal classes (which could be a positive for the teacher in a way with smaller class sizes), but there would still always be a need for teachers for people who can't teach themselves or are very new to a subject. Math in particular is something you will always need a teacher for because it is not just reading, but a skill that you need someone to show you. Foreign language will also always need teachers for the same reasons.
Still, if someone wants to take on the material and teach it to themselves, I believe they should have that option.
| The assumption here is that knowledge is the only thing a university cares about when conferring degrees.
I believe this is an incorrect assumption. Universities care about what kind of students they produce *holistically,* not just what they know. That's why colleges are selective in terms of extracurriculars and personal essays and not just taking the highest standardized test scorers.
Universities care about what kind of *person* you are and what kind of person *you will* be, not just what knowledge is in your head. For example, they care if you are able to interact in group projects or group labs. They care if you are able to participate in group discussion. They care to examine if your studying habits and attendance and punctuality are acceptable for future employment by employers who associate a university degree with specific graduates.
Thus, the degree they award to graduates is a product of a holistic evaluation; they are willing to call you an alum of the institution and allow you to associate and be associated with them; not just that you know many facts.
Hopefully that helps! | 24 | 42 |
ELI5: How do old people die from old age? | Often times their organs (heart, lungs, digestive system...etc.) just straight up stop working. Causing them to die.
Things, unfortunately, deteriorate over time. Same goes for our bodies.
That is, if disease/medical problems, aren't the cause. | 20 | 38 |
|
Terrible professors - why can't teaching and research be separated? | I'm doing a masters course in Europe and I'm honestly shocked at the number of terrible professors teaching me here. Out of all the courses I've taken this year, maybe one had a prof who I'd call a good teacher. My university isn't some local university either, it's pretty well known internationally (in the QS top 100). It's frustrating because it seems like some of them are completely aware of their incompetence when it comes to teaching but just don't care or try to improve it.
One particular prof who teaches econometrics, which at the masters level is pretty mathematically dense and should require at least minimal use of a blackboard, literally just reads off the slides in his lectures. He doesn't try to solve anything for us, just "if you solve this, you get this" and moves on. What's even worse is that his slides are EXACTLY copied from the book, they're literally just the books split into smaller chunks. So in his lectures he reads out the book to us essentially. I asked someone who was in the course last year and he said that the prof was famous for being terrible. When this guy has been teaching the course for a few years now like this, probably receiving horrible feedback each time, I don't get why he himself or the university doesn't do anything.
I think terrible professors are so common because they don't have an incentive to try and get better at their job. They're hired for their research, consider that as their main job and hence really don't give a shit about whether their students are learning or not. But why does it have to be like this? Why aren't research and teaching considered separate and equally important jobs? Why aren't profs held accountable for their horrible teaching? | For tenure-track professors at R1s, the calculus is simple: at the end of six years, if they excel in research but are marginal at teaching, they get to keep their jobs (basically permanently). If they excel at teaching but are marginal at research, they're going to be unemployed. It's not a hard choice to make. | 140 | 76 |
ELI5: Do raw ingredients for baked goods share the same nutritional value as the final product? | It seems too "easy" to just add up the total calories, fat, etc from each of the individual ingredients due to any chemical reactions that happen during the actual baking process from the combined ingredients in a heated environment. Examples could be any baked good like bread, cake, etc. I know when cooking it seems like it's fairly straightforward (minus any burned off grease/fat left in the pan/bowl/etc), but baking seems like it'd be different.
Basically, I wonder if I could just eat all of the ingredients (whether that can cause other health issues aside) and get the same level of nutrition that'd be labeled on the recipe/box. | No. Part of the reason for cooking foods is that the cooking process makes some of the components of the food more available for absorption and use. Its not adding anything, just causing some changes. Starches can become sugars. The sugar is easier for your body to use, so you get more nutrition/calories from it. If you ate the pre-cooked high starch ingredient you wouldn't be able to break down and absorb as much.
Its similar with cooking meat. The cooking process alters the meat breaking down some of the tougher parts making it easier for your body to break down and digest. | 13 | 15 |
ELI5: Why do red clothes appear gray / black underneath red lights? | If the room is only illuminated by red light, bright red pigment is indistinguishable from white pigment: they’re both reflecting nearly 100% of light falling on them (all of which is red).
If you have a dark red shirt that reflects 10% of red light, it will look the same as a grey shirt that reflects 10% of all light. The fact that the grey shirt is also capable of reflecting green and blue light is irrelevant because there’s no green or blue light around. | 41 | 39 |
|
Are pacemakers able to adjust their "heart rate" based on the exertion of the person they belong to? Do they support a feedback system with the body? | I was thinking about this today, since someone's heart rate fluctuates even as they just stand up, do pacemakers have a way of dealing with such fluctuation? And if they can, to what extent can they support changes in heart rate? Could a pacemaker patient go for a run, or participate in extreme sport, for example? | Pacemakers generally regulate pacing at a lower boundary; this lower boundary is usually set by a cardiologist.
Pacemakers do not, however, regulate every heart beat. Aside from other contraindications there is no reason a pacemaker patient cannot run, exercise, or live a normal, healthy life. Their heart rate will increase, yes, but the medical device has nothing to do with this. It will only intervene when there is a missed beat or arryhtmia.
EDIT: This is not entirely accurate, particularly some different styles of pacemakers; there are pacers that will regulate maximum limits as well as constant heartbeat. Please see corrections in comments below. | 983 | 1,483 |
ELI5: How can cancer be "cured" or "stopped"? | You hear talk from cancer charities etc. of "curing" cancer or a point where "no one will die of cancer", but if cancer is basically the body's natural processes going haywire, how can it be stopped? I understand there are reactive treatments for it with varying degrees of success, but I don't understand how it's possible to stop cancer happening in the first place | Here's a try at an ELI5 answer:
* Normal cells are like cheese.
* Cancer cells are like butter.
* Cancer can easily spread around the body where it shouldn't be
* We don't want the two mixed together (someone with cancer)
* Since butter melts easier we give it some heat.
(Cancer is more sensitive to the poisons in chemotherapy)
* Unfortunately some cheese might get melted as we try and rid the butter. (Chemotherapy makes you sick overall)
| 38 | 88 |
CMV: The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement won't be as disastrous as people say. | Lots of people on Reddit are saying TPP can moot huge areas of U.S. law, or allow foreign companies to sue the U.S. for doing anything that hurts them financially. I've been trying to wade through analyses of TPP but even the ones on ELI5 weren't written as clearly as [this page](https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/02/26/investor-state-dispute-settlement-isds-questions-and-answers) from the White House.
I tried asking for a rebuttal of the points there from someone who was gilded for his enthusiasm in opposing TPP, but he didn't respond (nor did anyone else). Other times I have asked for straightforward explanations of how people know what they purportedly know, I have been pointed to links and videos that didn't really answer my questions.
I am hoping someone here will be willing to engage in a real discussion instead of what is increasingly coming off as propaganda. I care deeply about our rights and I want to help if there is truly a danger, but it's hard to take things seriously when people's main message seems to be "We don't know what's in here so it *must* be the worst thing possible."
So I'll start with this: Is [this White House page](https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/02/26/investor-state-dispute-settlement-isds-questions-and-answers) inaccurate, or is there some rebuttal I'm missing? From what I can gather:
* The United States has never lost an ISDS case, yet people are asserting that this setup will be disastrous.
* If a company sues for loss of profits, it will be based on contract law-ish theories ("abrogating its existing commitments"), not some general prohibition against hindering a company's profits. Contract law isn't new and I don't see how we can oppose it in this situation and approve of it elsewhere.
* "TPP will make it absolutely clear that governments can regulate in the public interest, including with regard to health, safety and the environment, and narrowing the definition of what kinds of injuries investors can seek compensation for." Kind of speaks for itself—is this just a lie?
Now, I can still understand concerns about copyright because we've seen the U.S. try to crack down on violations (SOPA, etc.) even here, so I don't trust our government to protect the people. But in cases where the U.S. would ordinarily try to protect people, I'm persuaded that they'll be able to do that.
When answering, **please point to specific text within publicly available portions of the TPP or give evidence to show that your predictions about what unknown portions say is reasonable.** There are a lot of statements out there that seem to be guesses based on a general lack of faith in the U.S. government, but I find that unpersuasive.
Edit (6/16/15): No one has been able to quote specific bad text that isn't also in a different agreement we're already party to. Please don't respond with links, unless it's a link to an annotated version of the TPP text. Please don't respond without actual text from the leaked portions or concrete evidence of what's in it (like if someone who's actually read a mystery part said that the language is the same as some law we have access to).
_____
> *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!* | I think it is less about the potential implications (while important), but more about the lack of transparency. People are concerned because the government is discussing something that will potentially affect their lives, yet can't see what it entails exactly, let alone vote on it, have their say about it or make amendments to it. | 10 | 19 |
CMV: My mindset of "time is money" has made me miserable. | Setting:
I am currently a college student finishing up my last year. Age 22.
Background:
I am a typical Asian-American and I grew up in a traditional Asian family. My parents immigrated from Asia to give their children (me) a better future in America. Because of my parent's pressure wanting me to succeed and obtain a successful job with high income so that they can retire early, i have instilled a mindset that "time is money". Unused time means lost of potential money.
Problem:
I started having this mindset near the middle of high-school. During that time I realize why am I wasting my time playing games? Why I am wasting my time hanging out with friends? I could be spending all of this time to further develop my skills and gain new experiences. In college, that mindset has hit me even harder. I see all of these college kids socializing, having fun, "wasting away their time" that could have been used to study or work or to do something productive.
As I grew older and learned more about what's available in the world, I decided that my interests and work ethics match me well for a Chief Technology Officer career. I like the science and technology side of how things work and I have done much R&D research in college. I also like the business side, leadership skills, and challenges involved. Since I am already working as hard as a CTO, i thought this dream position would also fit me as well. I am considering a PhD as well since many CTOs do have it. But PhD students also work 70+ hrs a week so they can graduate on time.
Because I have been so heavily invested in this mindset, reality just hit me. I am incredibly tired, internally as well. I have not had any vacations in the past two years. During Christmas break, I stayed at school and worked on my projects. I worked as well during spring break. As soon as summer started, I started my internship. And as soon as my internship ended, I came back to school to continue working on my project.
This negative "time is money" mindset of mine also repelled a lot of friends. They want me to go out and have some fun, but I pessimistically reminded them that they are wasting their time having fun and could be doing something much more productive. So now I also feel quite lonely with not many friends to reach out to.
Not only that, but my social skills are lacking and I still have not had my first girlfriend or my first kiss yet at the age of 22. (I have tried to pursue girls actually, but my mindset was, I need to get a girlfriend so I can get this over with and continue focusing on my career which let to numerous downfalls.)
Now that I am reflecting, I have focused on my career so much that I gave up everything else in my life. It is really hard for me to swing out of this mindset that I have had for the past 7 years.
I am starting to think CTO is not something I want to do if it means sacrificing another 10 years down the road. I want to convert my mindset to live a working 9-5 life and come back home worry free to enjoy other aspects of life that I am currently missing out on.
I hope someone can help me. I feel so miserable right now although I'm not worried about my career options after I graduate.
Thanks so much!
**Update**
Thank you everyone for helping me to clarify the problem with my current views. This is not something I can turn 180 on with a flick of a switch, but hopefully I can transition to a more balanced person because rewards and happiness can come in all types of form.
_____
> *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!* | To treat time as a valuable resource ("time is money") is smart. But it doesn't seem like you're treating time as a valuable resource that you have to allocate carefully: you're acting as though you have unlimited amounts of time to squander on your professional goals.
Imagine if you treated your money the same way you are treating your time. Imagine instead of spending money on food and rent, you starved yourself and lived in a homeless shelter so you could invest in the stock market and have more money in 20 years. When you have more money in twenty years, what will you do with it? Would having slightly fancier food and a slightly larger mansion in 2034 be worth *starving* and *living in a shelter* in 2014?
Or conversely, think about balancing food versus rent. It might be worth getting a slightly cheaper apartment to eat out more, or eating more ramen to move to a nice neighborhood, but it's not worth being homeless to eat Beluga caviar around the clock.
These are the questions we ask ourselves about our money. We need to spend it on various important goods, so we don't want to fritter it away mindelssly or squander all of it on one project, past the point where spending it on that project makes us signifcantly happier and healthier.
You say you've been treating your time like money, but it sounds to me like you've squandered it. You needed to allocate your time between work, study, professional development, health, rest, friendships, family, and various passions and hobbies. Education can be an important investment. But so can friendships. An hour a week watching movies or eating dinner together may turn into a life-long friend and ally who will be with you through thick and thin. Treating time as money means you need to both "buy" or "invest in" a BA, and also "buy" or "invest in" friends. Spending so many hours buying your degree that you don't have any hours left over to buy friends is wasteful. | 14 | 22 |
ELI5: Why are movie scripts formatted like they are? Is it because of tradition, or efficiency? | The typical movie script is *very* [spaced out](https://pbblogassets.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2014/12/Screenwriting-Websites-Cover-Image.jpg).
Why are they like this? I understand how this may have started, probably because that's the easiest formatting possible on a typewriter... But why are scripts *still* like this? Is it just tradition?
I also understand "It's easier to read", but that doesn't explain why it's the only option. Movie sets don't always put a premium on doing what's easy for people's bodies — many are all about penny-pinching and saving whatever money they can. With hundreds of scripts printed on a production, wouldn't a tighter formatting save a lot of paper & ink?
Even just something [like this](https://www.wikihow.com/images/2/26/Write-Movie-Scripts-Step-14.jpg) would eliminate a ton of spaces.
I'm sure there are other formatting options now that computers are widespread — ones that are easy to read *and* space-efficient. Why aren't those used? | The first is very easy to immediately see where each part begins and ends, has the speakers name immediately identifiable, has a standard and easily recognizable space for any notes to the actor/director, and has space on each side to allow marking up the script in a way that is clear.
When scripts are pitched the production company also wants it in a standard format - this makes their processes easier if they aren’t trying to work around the writer (and the production company is the boss here, they’re proving the $$$ so are calling the shots). The format in the first example makes it very easy for them to interpret and develop a script.
Given the cost of production the savings on paper trying to eliminate lines are insignificant and flatly not worth losing even the tiniest bit of clarity. | 108 | 106 |
Why is the outside of the human body symmetrical while the inside is not? | The organs, muscles etc. are 'packaged' super efficiently. If it were symmetrical, then nothing would be able to fit, as every organ would have to be set out in a straight line (unless there were 2 of the organ i.e. kidney). This would make it a logistical nightmare, as, if every organ was laid out end to end, thus being symmetrical, then it would cover something like 6 metres from mouth to anus. It has to be compressed and convoluted in order to fit inside the body in the first place. | 263 | 940 |
|
ELI5: Is animal milk healthy for adults? Or is it harmful? | Looking information about milk being healthy on internet is an absolute chaos, every article is different to each other, and while some will tell you about how good it is other will consider it absolutely pernicious.
So, without join in ethical debates, could someone explain to me like if I'm five about the benefits or disadvantages about drinking animal milk? | If you think a particular diet works for you, great, follow it. But science doesn't really support any of that crap...
Mind the calories, get your vitamins, have a bunch of fiber and you're good to go. If you ate a bunch of fresh veges and got some protein, doesn't really matter where the rest of you calories come from.
With milk there is an agenda either way, so googling is probs a nightmare... neither good nor bad, but is calorie heavy. | 15 | 19 |
ELI5: Why does risk of Down Syndrome increase with the mother's age? | If the woman has all her eggs at birth, then why does the risk of Down Syndrome increase with age? I assume the eggs would have no reason to replicate, so how does the mutation occur? I searched ELI5 beforehand but found nothing.
Thanks!
~WaffleTwats | The chance of having a child with Down syndrome increases with age because older eggs have a greater risk of improper chromosome division. If the cells don't split properly, an egg or a sperm cell could get an extra chromosome. If an egg with 24 chromosomes is fertilized, then the baby will end up with a total of 47 chromosomes. The same thing happens when a sperm with 24 chromosomes fertilizes an egg. If the extra chromosome happens to be number 21, then the child will have Down syndrome. | 294 | 771 |
ELI5: Why do insects/arachnids with such tiny brains have lightning-fast movements and reflexes compared to larger organisms? | Weight increases cubically while size increases linearly. This means that the power to weight ratio of smaller creatures is much higher than larger ones, and this allows them to accelerate their relatively lighter bodies much more quickly. | 13 | 23 |
|
Is De Morgan's Theorem true for more than two things? | De Morgan's Theorem states that (not A) and (not B) is equal to not (A or B) (or, if you prefer that, A nor B), and vice versa.
My question is, is this also true for more than two things? For example, does (not A) or (not B) or (not C) equal not (A and B and C)?
Tagging this as maths because I reckon boolean algebra counts as maths! | Yes. You can show this directly via truth tables, but it is nicer to show this for three objects based on the result for two objects. We use the associativity of AND and the associativity of OR (which is important, as otherwise something like "A and B and C" which you reference above has no meaning without parentheses). Here's how you go from two to three:
not(A) and not(B) and not(C) = not(A) and (not(B) and not(C))
= not (A) and not(B or C)
= not (A or (B or C))
= not(A or B or C) | 257 | 812 |
Didn't the person who wrote world's first compiler have to, well, compile it somehow?Did he compile it at all, and if he did, how did he do that? | Early on in the history of computing, programs would be written as a sequence of operations in assembly language, which basically means they would be written in terms of actual physical operations for the computer architecture to perform, e.g. copy this numeric value to that memory location.
That's obviously very time consuming and difficult, and it means that programs have to be rewritten for each new type of processor that you run them on. So to make it easier, higher level languages that are more human readable were created, with commands that basically work as shortcuts for all the repetitive number-juggling required in assembly language. So you have to write a compiler in assembly language, which doesn't require compiling.
It's interesting that you ask "did **he** compile it at all", since the first person to write a compiler was actually a woman, Grace Hopper :) | 9,375 | 17,062 |
|
[ELI5] Why do fossil fuels not replenish themselves? | So, according to wiki, the theory is that fossil fuels formed from the fossilized remains of dead plants by exposure to heat and pressure in the Earth's crust over millions of years. So are fossil fuels constantly being recreated by new plants dying? Was there just way more plants to create fuels long ago? Are we simply using them faster than they are being replenished? | In the Carboniferous geological age, a plant underwent a mutation allowing it to make a new type of structural support called lignin. (You might know it better as the main reason wood is solid - before it, plants were ferns made of cellulose.) For sixty million years nothing on this planet was able to digest lignin, meaning that dead trees just piled up... everywhere. Tens of meters thick around the entire globe.
This ungodly amount of tree locked up a huge amount of the atmosphere's CO2 and oxygen levels rose accordingly. Wherever this carbon sink was buried by geological processes, it was subjected to heat and pressure, changing it into coal.
The Carboniferous ended when some fungi evolved a metabolic pathway to digest lignin. No longer would trees fall and remain, unrotting. Coal is not replenished and will never be replenished because trees break down. | 36 | 27 |
ELI5: What is the difference between brightness, contrast, and gamma? | These are terms relating to video, both analogue and digital. They are settings that affect how a TV or other display device shows the video information it's receiving. Let's say the video has the raw brightness in the range from 0 to 100...
The TV's brightness setting controls which level is considered black. Usually the correct setting is around 6 and anything from that level or lower will show as black. Turning the TV brightness setting up higher sets the "black level" lower which will make the picture brighter on the screen but can also reveal dark information not intended to be seen, like the sync information on analogue video.
The TV's contrast setting controls which level is considered white and is usually around 92. Turning up the contrast sets the "white level" lower, exaggerating the difference between the brightest and darkest part of the screen but also hiding detail in the brightest parts of the image.
A TV's gamma affects how the video levels correspond to the brightness of the light coming from the screen. You might think that video level of 10 would show 10 times more light than a level of 1 but instead, the amount light goes up according to the video level taken to the power of gamma. If the gamma is 2, the video level 10 shows 10^(2) as much light as video level 1. The NTSC standard uses a gamma of 2.2 and PAL has 2.8.
The reason for gamma is that the human eye can see a very wide range of brightnesses and using a power or even an exponential function to represent levels better corresponds to the way the eye works. It gives a better quality image for a given quality of video signal. | 73 | 74 |
|
What exactly makes a question philosophical? | What exactly makes a question philosophical?
What defines the bounds of "philosophy" and "not philosophy"? | Typically, that it's a question that pertains to the typical concerns of philosophers.
That is, to issues of norms, the formal aspects of thought, the foundational principles of the specialized fields of culture and their objects, the relations among the specialized fields of culture and their objects, inquiries into particular ideas or practices related to the aforementioned themes, and the history of the foregoing -- or something like this.
What common feature connects these various topics? Opinions are divided. Maybe nothing, beyond the historical contingency that they're topics that have typically been left to people calling themselves philosophers. Maybe something like this: that non-philosophical fields of intellectual culture involve participating non-reflexively in a certain kind of cultural act, while philosophy involves reflexively raising into consciousness and inquiring into the grounds of the conditions of these cultural acts. | 43 | 53 |
ELI5: How does an insect's mind function relative to our own in terms of "thoughts," motivation, and instinct? | Watching "Microcosmos" on Netflix and just wondering with the complex mechanics of insects and their activities, they must think on some level, but how does it work?
| As far as brain development is concerned, humans have a shared heritage with other mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and even fish. There are structural similarities between the human brain and the brains of these species, and through various states of altered consciousness we can make an educated guess about the consciousness of these species. For example, the basal ganglia plays an important role when humans dream, and a reptile's brain by comparison consists (mostly) of a structure similar to the basal ganglia, so we can make an educated guess about reptilian consciousness. Obviously the human basal ganglia has evolved some unique features, but the "driven" and "self-absorbed" sense of awareness experienced by humans when dreaming is likely similar to reptilian consciousness overall.
Insects however do not have a common heritage with humans, at least not as far as brain development is concerned. Insects evolved from crustaceans, which in turn evolved from annelid worms (by comparison, fish evolved from chaetognatha worms). We can look at the amount of neurons contained in the insect brain, but we haven't really a good understanding or reference for the structures of the insect brain. As such, we can't really make educated guesses about insect consciousness, only speculation. | 14 | 21 |
How do eyelash microorganisms get to a newborn? | All people have eyelash microorganisms, but I don’t think they are born with them. How do they populate a newborn?
Edit—I was referring to the mites that exist near eyelashes, but I’m also curious about other microorganisms as well! Thank you for all of these detailed and thoughtful responses. The human body is cool: | If you are talking about the skin microbiome (this is the germs / microbes on all skin and eyelashes) then babies obtain a lot of their microbiome from their mother during birth. They they will have additional colonisation through any skin to skin contact as well as their food. This microbiome is made up of lots of different types of microbes and millions of each and transfer very easily.
If you are talking about eyelash mites, eyelash mites can also live on general skin. These are transferred from people with them on their skin / hairs / eyelashes to the hair / eyelashes on a newborn by touch. Keep in mind that everyone has hair all over so this could be to anywhere on the baby and they can then move. It is also worth noting that not everyone has these mites and the same goes for newborns. | 1,736 | 2,990 |
ELI5: Why are objects floating in water attracted to each other? | It can depend on what kind of objects you use. If you've looked at a glass of water from the side you see the water creeps up the side of the glass slightly (meniscus) from the surface tension. If you float something less dense than water the meniscus will curve up. Put two objects in the water and the floating objects want to go 'up' the hill. So they float together. Heavier objects like paperclip will float if placed correctly on water but these have a downward meniscus. They fall towards each other for similar reason. Put a floating object next to a paperclip and they repel each other. | 60 | 174 |
|
How do we know what the Milky Way Galaxy looks like if we're stuck on the inside looking out? | While watching Cosmos last night, it dawned on me that all the pictures we see of the Milky Way must be artistic representations, since it would be impossible to view ourselves from a third person perspective. How do we know for sure that we are living in a spiral galaxy or things such as the number of spiral arms? | Think about it like classical map making; you measure the direction one object is from another, then measure the distance. So what we have are many thousands of measurements, each plotting the direction and distance of a single point - a star. That is enough to build a comprehensive map (or in this case 3D model) which gives you a top down view (or in the case of a full 3D model, any view you want to make).
Classical mapmaking would also use triangulation, but obviously we only have on measuring point.
| 15 | 19 |
ELI5: When you block one end of a straw why does the liquid stay in place/in the straw? | There are three main forces at work here.
The first is a force called capillary action. In short, this is the tendency for a cohesive fluid (cohesive meaning it's sticky to itself and holds together, like water) to cling to the walls of the inside of a tube and generate an upwards force. This upward force combined with the waters surface tension, another product of waters cohesive properties, allow the fluid to stay intact inside of the straw instead of just running off and separating like oil would.
The second is gravity, which obviously pulls the fluid towards the ground
the third is suction, which causes the air pressure in the straw to drop as the water is pulled away by gravity. after a short drop, the pressure is low enough to provide a suction force powerful enough to suspend the fluid.
so basically, capillary action and cohesion keep the fluid together, and gravity combined with suction keep the fluid in place by pulling in opposite directions. | 48 | 44 |
|
ELI5 Why is radiation visible on cameras? like a radioactive object would have loads of white dots around it? | Cameras operate either by having pixels on something like a CCD, or grains of light-sensitive chemicals embedded in a film. In both situations the actual radiation, charged particles or high energy rays, interact with small areas of the film or pixels of the CCD. The radiation triggers them as if a large amount of light struck them, producing white spots on that one frame. As many frames of a video affected by radiation are played these spots are visible as very brief speckles. | 19 | 15 |
|
How come nitrate is common but tetra-oxygen isn't? | Nitrate is NO3−, a nitrogen and 3 oxygens with an overall negative charge of -1. I always like to think of ions as the next element over when drawing lewis structures, makes it easier than thinking of them as an element + or - electrons. So I look at nitrogen and see that a nitrogen anion is pretty much the same as oxygen, electron-wise. So why is nitrate a super common compound, but tetra-oxygen is pretty much non-existent?
EDIT: Thanks for the answers, now I'm going to wikipedia all the concepts y'all mentioned. | Short version: You'd either have to have a quadruply bonded oxygen with a 2+ formal charge, or a oxygen with only six electrons on the periphery. None of these are good things. This would be a stupid reactive species.
O4 could be transiently formed by reacting ozone (O3) with atomic oxygen, but I'd expect it to either be linear or equilibrate rapidly between a linear and square structure.
tl;dr Draw Lewis structures. Flinch in horror. | 10 | 56 |
[Star Trek] what are the primary sources of energy for the Federarion? | Mostly fusion for planetary and station needs. Starships have a combination of fusion reactors and m/am reactors.
Starships need massive power output to travel at warp and one way to do that is a matter/antimatter reaction. However, to get antimatter you need to make it. The TNG:TM has this to say on antimatter generation:
>As used aboard the USS Enterprise, antimatter is first generated at major Starfleet fueling facilities by combined solar-fusion charge reversal devices, which process proton and neutron beams into antideuterons, and are joined by a positron beam accelerator to produce antihydrogen (specifically antideuterium). Even with the added solar dynamo input, there is a net energy loss of 24% using this process, but this loss is deemed acceptable by Starfleet to conduct distant interstellar operations.
As is stated above the creation of antimatter an energy loss. Antimatter is also extreamly dangerous. An antimatter containment failure on a planet of even a few kg would be devastating. Where fusion is much safer. Coupled with abundant space to build power plants and easy/cheap fuel sources, there is no need for m/am reactors on planets. | 22 | 22 |
|
Why are bugs attracted to the light? | Never really thought about it honestly, and this summer i've been sitting outside and the spot lights are on and all the bugs keep dive bombing it. | Moths navigate and orient themselves by using the sun as a guide. For example, Mr. Sample Moth likes it on his left, means he's going the direction he wants to. Porch lights, street lights, etc, confuse them. They will fly in circles around it because they think they're flying straight. In their heads, the light is on the correct side, so they must be heading the right direction. | 32 | 20 |
Why do most objects in the night sky (stars and planets) look to be the same size relative to our naked eyes? | To be able to tell the difference, by sight, that something is a disc rather than a dot, your eye needs to be able to detect the difference in angle between light leaving (say) the right and left edges of the disc. Planets and stars are so far away that our eye can't resolve this angle. It all just looks to our eye like it's coming from one place.
Whether it's a huge sun at an extreme distance or a small planet at an extreme distance, either way our eye can't detect anything more than that there is light come from a particular spot. Our eye doesn't have the resolution to be able to detect that the light from the right and left edges of the body is coming from different places.
Think about it this way; imagine you are looking at a really pixelated picture of a small very bright light against a pitch black background. All you can see in the photo to represent the light is a single big white pixel. Now imagine you are looking at a picture of a much smaller very bright light against a pitch black background. It will *still* look to you in the photo like a single white pixel. There isn't enough resolution to tell the difference | 2,434 | 6,053 |
|
When an electron in an atom is excited, does its probability distribution instantly change from one shape to another, or is there a transitionary period? | If the latter, what does the distribution look like as it is shifting and how long does it take? | The electron's probability distribution is related to it's wavefunction. The time dependence of the wavefunction is governed by the Schrodinger equation, which is a first order differential equation in time. The solutions have smooth time dependence, so the probability distribution does not change instantly. In real systems, there can be significant changes in time scales of nanoseconds, which is very fast in human terms, but the wavefunction still changes smoothly. | 36 | 37 |
CMV: The electoral college is undemocratic in the sense that certain citizens votes are "worth" more than others depending on what state they live in. | Unless I misunderstand, an individual New Yorker's vote is worth less than the vote of someone living in North Dakota because of electoral vote distribution for the state. Even though the state of New York (31) gets more votes than North Dakota (3), the individual Dakotan has more influence over what the state decides because it has a much smaller population. Additionally, the state votes for whoever the majority votes for in their state. This means (again, unless I misunderstand) that someone in Texas who voted for Hillary Clinton had their vote disregarded when Texas voted Trump, and the opposite is obviously true for a Trump-supporting Californian, for example. I do understand the point of the electoral college, but I believe that the electoral college should be second to the popular vote, and not the other way around.
Also, I'm not here because I like arguing, but because I would like to have a little more faith in the system that we have, and I know I could just be misinformed.
Well, go ahead, change my view.
Edit: To everyone saying that the US isn't a democracy but a republic: I know. That argument doesn't explain or fix anything.
Edit 2: To everyone posting new comments - I'm not ignoring you and I'm not afraid of a good debate, I've just been pretty busy and there's so many of them that it's sort of hard to manage. I'll try to read every comment when I can, though. I'm really enjoying the discussions other people are having, too. | First I'd like to address that winning a state means winning all the electoral votes from that state. The electoral votes are up to the individual states as to how they wish to appropriate those votes. Most states have chosen a "winner takes all" model, but certainly not all of them.
Second is that no one's vote in presidential elections (per the US Constitution) actually matters. It's entirely symbolic. The only votes that matter are the votes of the electoral college delegates. US citizens vote for their delegates, the delegates vote for the president. Most states have chosen to bind their delegates' votes to the popular vote.
Third, the fact that different people in different states have more or less say in the overall vote is entirely the point. This is an equalization effort to make sure that states such as Wyoming can have a voice in politics to defend its interests when going up against California. In a pure democracy, the will of California would win out hundreds of times over, but with the way things are set up in the US Constitution this doesn't happen. This does create a bit of a negative to be sure, but the Constitution was amended to have a representative cap in Congress, and this has caused the difference in voter power to become as wide as it is. | 79 | 398 |
Why is there a tidal bulge on the side of the Earth facing away from the moon? | There are two high tides per day, but we face the moon only once. Even when there is a new moon and the sun and moon are aligned in the sky, there are still two tides per day. How? | This problem is best thought of by looking at different reference frames. If we look at the moon’s reference frame, every piece of matter on earth (including water) is being attracted to the moon. The further away you are from the moon, the less gravitational effect there is.
So a piece of matter on the near side is being pulled the most, the center is being pulled a smaller amount, and the opposite side of the moon is being pulled the least.
Now let’s put that into the frame of reference of the earth, which we reduced to “the center” above. We know the center of the earth is not moving with respect to itself, so it is stationary. The moon-side is being pulled more than the earth center, so the water is pulled slightly towards the moon. The non-moon side is not being pulled as much as the center, so in the frame of reference of the center of the earth, it is being pushed away!
Inertia does not really play a large role in terms of two rides per day, as the water’s inertia cannot really be transmitted over landmass as the tides go around the earth. | 44 | 61 |
Physicists have transmitted data via quantum entanglement. Shouldn't this be huge news? | https://phys.org/news/2017-07-physicists-transmit-earth-to-space-quantum-entanglement.html
This seems like a monumental achievement. This potentially opens the door for instantaneous communication and data transfer with no spacial limitations, wires, etc. Data transfer via quantum entanglement could have incredible implications for computation as well. My mind is racing, why is there so little buzz surrounding this achievement? | A common misconception is the idea that quantum entanglement allows for instantaneous exchange of arbitrary data / communication. As far as we know, it does not.
What happens is that the 2 entangled particles share the same quantum state, but that state is unknown. Only when you measure it for one particle, does this state (and the information it contains) become known. At that point, measuring the other particles would yield the same result.
An analogy for this would be a random number generator in a box that periodically generates and displays a new random number. But once you open the box, it freezes on the last number generated.
Now, with quantum entanglement we can somehow create a set of 2 of these RNG-in-a-box contraptions that have the property that as soon as one of them is frozen to a final value, the other is frozen to that same value as well. You can then take these boxes and physically separate them, without opening them and once they're in different locations, open the boxes and read the same value.
This allows two parties to share a common piece of data which they could use as an encryption key, for example. However, neither party can influence which value is displayed when opening the box. Nor can a party determine if/when the other party has opened its box. So there is no way to communicate actual data between the two parties in this way. | 54 | 16 |
ELI5: how do illegal streaming services work? | I don't understand.
Why are there several servers per episode?
How do they get the media?
Who's behind those servers?
How can we find EVERYTHING from ANYWHERE in some illegal streaming websites? | Those services work by making money by drawing in an audience. They don't own what they host - often these servers are located in countries that the rightsholders will have a hard time legislating in, so they're pretty much out of luck when it comes to shutting the servers down. The global nature of the internet also means that blocking access to that content isn't as easy. Attempts at content filtering at your internet service provider (think cops determining which cars may pull out of the driveway) aren't popular or widespread yet, and have already been countered by VPN services (think getting your car on the road by loading it into a hauling van so the cops can't see that your car is actually moving inside the truck).
How are they getting the media? Various ways, but usually just from downloading the stream from a legal source, then editing it to remove watermarks and such, and reuploading it to the new service. Sometimes an insider can also pass a master copy of the data, if the right person is bribed.
As for why you can find all the stuff - it used to be there were very few streaming services - primarily netflix - and all the major content producers were content to make stuff and get it out to the public efficiently. So you had all the good content on one streaming platform. Nowadays, everyone is making their own private streaming service, with 10% good content and 90% trash filler, and that's a generous estimate. The stuff people want no longer gets aggregated on any legal platform. The illegal streaming services disregard the trash and aggregate what people are actually interested in, therefor it looks like everything from everywhere is available.
The trending pages on an illegal streaming site are generally a better barometer of what people are watching these days, then sites like Rotten Tomatoes. | 333 | 190 |
How cold would it have to be to slow data packets transmitted over wire? Does temperature even have an effect on this? | My friend and I were joking about the cold weather in Canada. I remarked that it was "so cold packets were freezing and ping was timing out."
While humorous, it got me thinking -- is this possible? How is our data transmitted over wire? Can it be affected by temperature? If I cooled a section of the wire to just above absolute zero -- what would happen to new data as it flows into that area? Would it just be a giant traffic jam? | Many metals become more conductive at lower temperatures, which would reduce the voltage or wattage requirement in order to transmit.
Although not all materials become superconductors when cold, all superconductors must be cooled to be superconducting.
So, no. There would not be a traffic jam. It would make things easier. | 66 | 79 |
How is .999999999 ad infinitum exactly equal to 1? | There are a number of ways you can demonstrate this. Using fractions:
1/3 = .333...
1 = 1/3+1/3+1/3 = .333... + .333... + .333... = .999...
The method of extracting a fraction from a repeating decimal:
x = .999...
10x = 9.999...
10x - x = 9.999... - .999...
9x = 9
x = 1
Using the sum of a geometric series:
`0.999...` means `9/10 + 9/100 + 9/1000...`. For a geometric series of the form a, ar, ar^2,..., the sum of the series is a/(1 - r). In our case, a is 9/10 and r is 1/10, so we have (9/10) / (1 - 1/10) = (9/10) / (9/10) = 1.
Edit: One more interesting way, although this one gets a bit more technical. In the real numbers, any 2 distinct numbers have numbers between them. This isn't exactly a rigorous proof, but think about how you would define a number that falls between 1 and 0.999... (hint: you can't). | 95 | 23 |
|
ELI5: Why can juicy fruits like watermelon be grown in regions of the world that have horrible water pollution, but it doesn't seem to affect the people who eat it? | Plants absorb water through ultra-fine membranes made of plant tissue. Some chemical pollutants can indeed get in and poison the plant. But the most common pollutants we worry about in our water -- things like bacteria -- are way too big to make it in through that membrane. | 27 | 29 |
|
ELI5: Nutritional Value | How do companies and chefs determine the fat, carbs, fiber, ect. of their products and dishes? | You can burn things to determine calorie content, and you can also separate things by weight with a centrifuge (after blending) which can separate, for example, protein from fat.
After this has been done once (or a few times) however, you can use already-known information about your ingredients to calculate how much of each nutrient ends up in the finished product. For example, 1/4 pound of ground beef (from a certain part of the cow, or certain combination of different parts) cooked a certain way would have a known nutritional value. McDonalds wouldn't need to test each product individually, and could instead use that known value to figure out nutritional content of a double burger, for example. | 40 | 89 |
ELI5 when your pour a liquid over flour, why does some of the flour remain dry? | Flour molecules have a hydrophilic end (water-loving) and a hydrophobic end (water hating). When the water drops into the flour it is immediately surrounded by flour molecules with their water loving ends pointed into the droplet, entirely surrounding it, and thereby keeping it away from the dry flour. | 46 | 33 |
|
Why is it that human babies take so long to learn how to walk, as opposed to most other mammals? | Surely it'd be benificial for survival if the smallest could walk? Why did evolution decide it wasn't a good idea? | As with most developmental priorities its a question of when to invest.
Some mammals have immediate needs like ungulates: cows, horses, etc. and their offspring develop limps that can be used very soon after birth often in under an hour. Their mothers cannot carry them and there aren't places to hide the grasslands and steppes they live on. It is imperative they walk as soon as possible to escape predators.
Other mammals like rats have young in nests that are helpless and can't walk for quite a while but are protected and hidden away by the mothers.
Human babies likewise have the alternative of being carried by their parents and while they do need to eventually walk it is not needed till later in life. Human parents are capable of not only moving the baby but can protect it. The child therefore does not require use of legs immediately. | 11 | 17 |
Thinking of life-long health, is it better to avoid germs as much as possible or be exposed to them and strengthen your immune system | Will I be healthier if I always wash my hands, always practice food safety and temperatures to a tee, avoided dirt generally, used disinfectants, etc etc, or would it be better if I just dealt with germs, dirt, bacteria, etc (within reason of course). | Biologist here. Yes and no, as with all things biology. (EDIT: Bonus gamer analogy TL;DR at the end! EDIT 2: clarified a couple of redundant redundancies.)
Immune challenge is one of the ways our immune system learns how to defend against bacteria, viruses and parasites. We have patches of immunological tissue in our gut and other mucous membrane lined tissue in addition to our lymph nodes, thymus, and spleen. It contains multiple types of immunological cells--those that attack and digest potential threats, and those that "present" antigens derived from those now-broken up threats. Antigen-presenting cells can then activate lymphocytes your body has already created. If one of those lymphocytes recognizes the antigen presented, it's not because it has necessarily seen that antigen before--the body is very good at anticipation, and creates receptors with HIGHLY variable paratopes to match epitopes on the presented antigen. Think of the epitope as the key and the paratope on the lymphocyte receptor as the lock. Genes that encode the proteins that build these receptors undergo a process of recombination that creates many cells, each with receptors that will respond to different things. There is a round of selection that only allows immune cells that don't recognize proteins that are supposed to be there (self-antigens) to hang around, i.e., cells with paratopes that recognize self antigens are destroyed. It doesn't want to waste resources on creating things that will harm the body. That still leaves many cells, each with a paratope that will recognize epitopes of a different antigen--locks waiting for their own special keys--called "naive" because they haven't yet been presented with antigen that matches. When a key fits into a lock, the magic begins. Immature B and T lymphocytes undergo a process of maturation in your lymph nodes, and two things happen: the structure and function of the cell changes, and that cell--it only takes one!--undergoes clonal expansion, a fancy way of saying that that cell reproduces itself many, many times exactly, with receptor paratopes matching the antigen epitope that "unlocked" it. (When you get swollen glands, it's partly because of clonal expansion, it happens that fast and that many times.) Immature T lymphocytes become "killer" T cells that can attack precisely and directly, and immature B lymphocytes become plasma cells that become little factories that make antibodies. (Antibodies, by the way, are just versions of the receptor "locks" that are secreted by plasma cells that can attach themselves to the antigen that unlocked the original naive lymphocyte.) Antibodies coat whatever they lock onto, and then activate other parts of the immune system to help out as well as telling other "naive" immune cells to mature. When the initial response is over, a few activated B and T cells hang around in circulation for years afterward, waiting to be unlocked again so that the immune response happens much, much faster next time--this is how vaccines, which are basically just antigens directly injected into the body, work to give lasting immunity. More challenges that match other types of antigen increase both the circulating antibody (more active plasma cells) and circulating T cells.
There's a balance. If your immune system is constantly under challenge, it doesn't work as well because it's too busy responding. Hygiene is important for this reason, and certain viruses specifically overactivate the immune system so it goes haywire and can't actually do its job. But, if you compulsively avoid sick people or keep everything covered in sanitizer, your body never learns to respond to the antigens in your environment by having those circulating mature lymphocytes and antibodies, increasing the likelihood that you'll *have* to respond to too much at once.
TL; DR: It's like unlocking an achievement and getting a special, specific weapon every time an antigen matches a lymphocyte's receptor. Vaccines are like cheat codes. Hygiene makes sure you only encounter what you can handle at one time and respond appropriately, otherwise it's like mashing the jump button over and over until you fall off a cliff. Oversanitizing is like not playing the game at all and then expecting to beat the final boss without knowing what you're doing. | 25 | 17 |
ELI5 How do glass and other transparent materials work on a molecular level? Do they have more space in between molecules? Does the light interact a lot less with their molecules? How does the light come through where in other materials the light is absorbed? | Glass does absorb light, but not in the visible spectrum. Molecules have molecular energy levels for their electrons (and atoms also have atomic energy levels the same way). When they absorb light, the energy of the light matches the energy difference between the energy levels, and an electron is promoted to a higher energy level. It just so happens that typically, the molecules in glass (mostly SiO2) don't have a difference in energy levels corresponding to the energy of visible light. They do happen to have a difference in energy level that corresponds to light in the UV spectrum, hence UV light does not pass through normal glass very easily (unless it's pure SiO2). This also means you're unlikely to get a sunburn in your car with the windows up.
It also happens that the glass molecules are generally not the right size or shape to scatter visible light either very much. However there is some light reflected from the surface because glass has a different refractive index than air (ie. light travels slower through glass). At any boundary where there is a refractive index change, some light will usually reflect (see the Fresnel Equations). Hence if the surface of the glass is not smooth, it will reflect light in many directions, and it will effectively scatter light at the surface.
EDIT: like Mariofosheezy pointed out, also remember that most matter is not very dense, most of the volume is made up the "electron clouds" hence if the molecular orbitals of the glass don't interact much with the light, then it is basically passing though 99.9% empty space as far as it's concerned.
EDIT2: It get's more complicated than this. Many other materials have other properties that make it so that visible light can't really pass through. Some have very good absorbance in the visible spectrum, others have very densely packed molecules/atoms that attenuate light very rapidly, etc. | 206 | 921 |
|
ELI5: How does concrete work on a molecular level? It goes from powder to chalky to wet to rock hard - what exactly is happening that makes it so shapeable and suddenly strong? | The chemical principle is called “water of hydration”. Concrete doesn’t dry out like paint. It cures by combining the water into a chemical bond. The reaction is also highly exothermic, meaning it gives off heat, a LOT of heat. If concrete can’t give off the heat, it remains liquid. When Hoover Dam was built, they installed pipes at various places in the dam and circulated water through the pipes to cool the concrete and cure it. In theory, some parts of the dam are still liquid. | 38 | 33 |
|
[Star Wars] How would Star Wars not be a post-scarcity society? | This kind of applies to any SciFi setting where an entire galaxy has been colonized and exploited. With the sheer number of planets and resources in a galaxy, how come there isn't just plenty of everything for everyone? I ask about Star Wars in particular because one of the most iconic aspects of Star Wars is the lived-in feel that many of the planets and ships have. Could there be any real explanation in-universe? | Because even with hundreds of thousands of planets, there are quadrillions of sentients to provide for, and they've reached peak technology relative to their knowledge of physics-- they're already producing at the greatest level of efficiency possible for them. | 24 | 20 |
ELI5: Why do some cancers present symptoms early while others don't often present until stage III or IV? | It's important to understand every type of cancer is a different disease, even within similar types of cancers there are subtypes that present different mutations or levels of gene expression which effect their behaviour. Therefore the tumour itself can behave differently.
You also have to consider where the tumour is in the body. The physical location of a tumour could mean it's putting enough pressure on the organ or nearby organs, to disrupt their normal function. If you're lucky a very small tumour growing in the right place could cause symptoms that warrant a screen before it has spread.
But unfortunately if you pair a fast growing tumour subtype with a location in the body that isn't disrupting normal bodily functions, it can result in tumours that cause no symptoms until they have spread to other areas of the body like your lungs. Where you may present with a bad cough when the original tumor was on your kidney for example.
This is why diseases like pancreatic cancer are so deadly and result in one of the highest mortality rates for cancers. | 28 | 36 |
|
ELI5: Dimensions: How can there be more than 3 dimensions? | A dimension is simply a variable that is independent of any other variable. In this universe there are only 3 spatial dimensions (I.E. in the x, y, and z directions). However a dimension is not restricted to simply being a spatial one. An example of another one is time, for instance if you wanted to know the temperature at a certain location the answer depends not only on spatial location but time as well. So a universal temperature function would be 4 dimensional, as it is dependent on the x, y, and z location as well as the time the temperature is recorded. | 61 | 154 |
|
ELI5: How is the printing of currency regulated? When do they print more/less than previously ? | title :) | Central Banks (like the Federal Reserve in the US, or the ECB in Europe) have the responsibility to manage the amount of currency in their respective countries.
The 'how' is quite interesting: by now, most money is digital. It's one's and zero's in a computer, and doesn't exist as coins or pieces of paper anymore. So when a central bank wants to create money, they can just create it on a computer without ever needing to print anything. When they want that money in circulation, they just spend the money. Usually they buy government bonds, sometimes other bonds or stocks. These things keep their value pretty well, so if the central bank wants to decrease the amount of money in circulation, they can simply sell the bonds and/or stock, and destroy the money they get for this (again, they do this just on the computer).
The "when" is a little trickier. The Federal Reserve has what is known as a dual mandate. This means they're supposed to take care of two things: full employment (in practice this means just very low unemployment, you're never going to have no unemployment), and stable prices (in practice this means 2% inflation per year). But the thing to keep an eye on, is that central banks are not so much reacting to what's already happened, but they're trying to predict what's going to happen and act based on that. So for example, the inflation is pretty low right now (below 2% still), but the Federal Reserve is thinking about taking action because they're afraid that it might go over that target soon. | 21 | 72 |
Do water filters (i.e. Brita) actually provide tangible health benefits in 1st world nations? | In most locations in most developed countries, the municipal water supply is "safe" to drink, by whatever national or local standards apply. This does not mean that there aren't *any* contaminants in the water, just that they're below an acceptable level.
Using a water filter could reduce your exposure to potential carcinogens and toxins that are present in *tiny* amounts in your tap water, which would in turn reduce your risk of disease caused by those contaminants. Would it reduce the risk in a measurable sense? Probably not - your odds of developing a health problem from the tiny amount of contaminants in the water is already very low - the limits are typically set at least an order of magnitude below what's expected to have any measurable adverse effect.
Of course, even in developed countries, not everybody gets their water from a water treatment plant. If you get your water from a domestic well, it's likely that it isn't monitored to the extent that city water supplies are (if it ever gets tested at all). So there, a water filter is potentially good insurance against a change in the condition of the water between tests.
**Edit to add:**
A number of people below have pointed out that just because your water starts out healthy to drink doesn't necessarily mean that it's still safe by the time it gets to your home. Particularly if you live in an old building, there may be lead in your drinking water, and a Brita-style filter would actually remove that, and would provide some potential health benefit. | 495 | 897 |
|
Eli5: Why is light both particle/wave? Could we be getting wrong results due to the method of measurement? | Light is a particle because it appears to be a discrete, countable thing with a certain amount of energy. We've measured with with the photoelectric effect (Einstein won a Nobel prize for this) where a photon hits an electron, giving it a jolt of energy and we can use this to produce electricity. Measurements and more tests suggest that light is a whole bunch of discrete things.
But they are also waves. They have a frequency and can interact with each other in ways that cancel each other out, like how sound cancelling headphones use frequency shenanigans to block sound. You know how an oil slick on the ground has a rainbow effect? That's wave interference in the light. You can also do it at larger scales with lasers.
The effects gets even weirder with electrons, which are easier to measure, and where you can generate a different interference pattern (wave style, or particle style) on demand with relatively minor changes to your test setup. | 27 | 16 |
|
what is the best economic path that a newly industrialised country like brazil or Mexico should take | for example, do you consider the privatization of PEMEX a good approach?
| This is a sincere response.
I think you're asking the wrong question. The language you use is laced in neoliberalism and ethnocentricism (global north). You consider economic growth an evolutionary and hierarchical path. You ask as though Brazil or Mexico should take a path suggested by US/EU models. Furthermore, you see privatization of public goods as something outside the confines of globalization, capitalism, and neoliberal policies pushed by capitalists, not the individuals with a stake in the health of the national economies of Brazil or Mexico.
I highly encourage you to do some research on Structural Adjustment Programs from the IMF from a critical perspective. You might start asking different questions altogether. | 11 | 48 |
CMV:I believe that all religion was born out of the fear of death. | Every single religion that I have encountered has always focused on what happens in the "after-life" phase of existence. The options come in multiple formats, some examples are: Valhalla/Hel from the Norse culture, Heaven/Hell from the slave religions(Judaism, Christian, Islam), and reincarnation (eastern religions). Even the new kid on the block (Jediism) attempts to explain life **after** death. Death is a force of nature and is the only certainty of life. It is unstoppable and mysterious. Religion attempts to downplay the certainty of death, trivializing it as only a small hurdle in your everlasting life. Religion also attempts to reassign the fear of death to an imaginary character(s) while dispelling the mystery into *tangible* categories. Why fear death? Can you stop it (permanently)?
**edit**
Thank you to everyone who has participated in this discussion.
_____
> *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!* | It would probably be more correct to say that religion is an attempt to explain the unknown.
This would of course include death as well as the huge number of natural occurrences that mankind did not (or still does not) understand. ie causes of natural disasters, evolution, weather etc etc | 10 | 26 |
ELI5: How does the body get ‘used to’ running long distances? | Your body gets stronger and through that it also gets more efficient at using the oxygen you inhale. As a result your heart doesn’t need to pump as much blood throughout your body and you don’t need to breath as hard/heavy.
Basically you aren’t as strained physically due to lack of oxygen, because your body needs less oxygen to do what it needs to. | 25 | 48 |
|
ELI5: How do we know for sure that cancer and other deceases aren't caused by being constantly exposed to small radiations from electronic devices and 3G, 4G, WiFi, LTE, Bluetooth-signals? | I am in no way trying to be ignorant. I am certain that scientific studies has drawn some kind of conclusion, but how do we know *for sure*?
If you think about it, there are rarely times where you can enter a room and not being in the way of some kind of signal. It just crossed my mind, how heavily has this area been studied?
How do we know that testicular cancer is not a consequence of an electronic device constantly receiving signals from various sources?
Best regards, and merry christmas! | Simple, cell phones/wifi/etc all emit either radio- or microwave radiation. These two types of radiation fall under the umbrella of non-ionizing radiation. Other types of radiation in this category are infrared and visible light. Ionizing radiation includes UV, x-rays and gamma rays as well as radiation from nuclear reactions.
Now, what separates non-ionzing from ionizing? Well the former can't knock electrons from atoms and thus can't make ions. Now to cancer, cancer is a genetic mutation where the DNA that controls cell reproduction is damaged and runs uncontrollably. In order to have this happen, you have to mess up the bonds in the DNA, which means you need enough energy to strip away electrons. So its physically impossible for non-ionizing radiation to cause cancer. The worst thing that going to happen from cell phones use, etc.. is your face is going to get a little warm. | 23 | 20 |
Heidegger's the nothing | Can somebody give me a relatively straightforward account of Heidegger's concept of nothing? Especially in relation to his essay What is Metaphysics?
| The key to this text is the line where Heidegger says that the sciences "look at beings a whole, an nothing else," and repeats a similar line three times. He then says: "Yet what is *this* nothing?" That is, the "nothing" indicated by this phrase "nothing else." As the essay eventually reveals, in reference to Hegel's *Logic*, "the Nothing" is another way for thinking about "Being," the main subject of all of Heidegger's essays.
One of Heidegger's most basic insight is the "ontological difference" between beings [*Seiende*] and being [*Sein*]. Previous philosophers, he thinks, have conflated the being of beings (what makes beings *be*) with the beings that are (the things, or entities, that "have" being).
So in sketching out the "nothing" that remains when we look at what lies outside of a total theory of everything, something that Heidegger also connects to Dasein's feeling of angst, Heidegger is attempting to pave a path toward the main topic of his entire philosophy: Being itself.
At the same time, Heidegger is clearly engaging in meontology (a theory of nothingness), and makes some very interesting points about how different conceptions of nothingness inform metaphysics. For example, there's the interesting paragraph of the difference between Greek and Christian meontology, and how this informs the respective theories of being.
Heidegger is also interested in how thinking the idea of "nothingness," the total nihilation of being (the nothing noths) helps us think about the "pure thatness" of beings, the fact that beings are not nothing, but rather reveal themselves in their manifestness.
In *Being and Time*, Heidegger looked at angst to illustrate how most of the time, we are engaged with the world, interested in it, and care about it. In angst, all significance disappears into nothingness and depression, showing us that most of the time, the opposite is true.
In "What is Metaphysics?", Heidegger makes a similar move on the level of Being itself. Most of the time, beings are manifest, but we usually overlook this simple "thatness," taking it for granted. Only in thinking about the whole of beings against the background of the nothing do we notice the presence and manifestness that we take for granted on a regular basis. That's why Heidegger ends with that Leibniz quote: "Why are their beings, rather than nothing?" The feeling of this question, a sense of wonder at the pure manifestness of beings, attunes us into thinking about Being itself, thus making the ontological difference between Being and beings (what-is) evident.
So that's the gist of what's going on in "What is Metaphysics?" | 26 | 23 |
ELI5: What Are The Principles Of Chicago School Economics? | What are the principles of Chicago School Economics? The Pros and Cons? | The core principles include favor of free markets and supply-side economics as opposed to Keynesian economics. It prefers monetary policy as opposed to fiscal policy. Probably the most influential scholar was Milton Friedman, who may be the most influential economist in modern day. It continues to have strong influence among a significant faction of the GOP in U.S politics. This faction would be best described as neoliberal, libertarian, or classical liberal. The demographics tend to be the most affluent and influential.
I can't tell you its pros or cons because that is subjective and political. | 11 | 20 |
How do computers do math? | What actually goes on in a computer chip that allows it to understand what you're asking for when you request 2+3 of it, and spit out 5 as a result? How us that different from multiplication/division? (or exponents or logarithms or derivatives or integrals etc.) | This is actually a REALLY complicated question. Here it goes...
The computer "thinks" in binary. To do addition, subtraction, multiplication etc...the numbers need to be converted into bits first. Then the outcome can be calculated using relatively simple rules.
NOTE: Binary is calculated from right to left (typically...called most significant bit 'MSB' on the left). Going from left to right you have 8 bits: 128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1 for a total of 256. This is a 8 bit number or a BYTE. If you go to 16 bits, you just keep adding 8 more bits and doubling the values as you go.
So: 32768 16384 8192 4096 2048 1024 512 256 and so on...
Addition uses the following bit rules:
0+0 = 0,
1+0 = 1,
0+1 = 1,
1+1 = 0 carry the 1
For instance: add 10 + 23
(work from right to left...)
1 11 (the carry is stored in a special register on the CPU...)
10 = 0000 1010
23 = 0001 0111
---------------
0010 0001 = 33
That's how they do it. Subtraction, multiplication and division have their own ruleset and can take more than one pass sometimes. So they are more computationally expensive.
Edit: wow...formatting is harder than doing bitwise math. | 235 | 374 |
Why do Mars rovers work so much longer after their mission is over? | I saw Opportunity is going on 4000+ days, for a 90 day mission, but even Curiosity, with a much longer mission, is now hundreds of days past it's mission end date. What were their original missions, and what are they doing now? Is there a list of mission objectives, and then an extra long list of potential extra things they want to do if possible?
Thanks | With Spirit and Opportunity, there is a specific reason. It was expected that the solar panels would quickly become coated in Martian dust, and soon the rovers would not receive enough power to function. However, the Martian wind turned out to be quite effective at cleaning the solar panels, so while they look fairly dirty they never get completely covered. As solar-powered rovers, they can basically run forever until they start breaking. This won't happen for Curiosity because it's nuclear powered.
But in general another part is probably just the mission planning, where they set a fairly low standard for "success" - acknowledging that lots of things can go wrong - and so they can declare the basic mission a success fairly quickly. | 1,339 | 1,925 |
How stable is a person's personality over time? | Personality is highly, but not perfectly stable (either rank-order or mean-level change). However, change may well be a heritable individual difference.
Roberts & Delvecchio (psych bulletin, 2000) did a study on this and found that the test-retest correlations between the "Big Five" personality traits (agreeableness, emotional stability, conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness) were quite high over the lifespan, and actually, that the correlations increase over time. For instance, the average correlations for teenage years when tested at 13 and 19 was .49, while the correlation at 30-39 was .62 and at 50-59 years old was .75.
Other research (Roberts, Walton & Viechtbauer, 2006) suggests that emotional stability tends to slightly increase over the lifespan, as does conscientiousness and agreeableness, while extraversion pretty much remains constant.
Ultimately, yes, personality is quite stable over the lifespan, but small changes do occur for some individuals. | 42 | 108 |
|
I'm beginning to think that I shouldn't go out of my way to help people if I could stand to lose from it. CMV | When I see people in difficulty, I have a very strong urge to help them. Though I can't claim to be any sort of humanitarian, I have in the past often helped friends, acquaintances and colleagues. However I've noticed that when my aid involves a possible risk on my behalf, more often than not I end up losing as a result of the other person failing to behave altruistically in return. Then I regret that I helped at all.
I want to be the kind of person that thinks of others before themselves, but I can't handle feeling like I've been cheated and as such have decided to stop helping people if I could potentially lose from it in any way. CMV | There's a thought experiment done in the study of game theory that might be beneficial to you, called the *iterated prisoner's dilemma*. The idea is such:
- take two people, call them A and B. Separate them, and tell them they've been charged with a crime.
- If they "defect" and turn evidence on their opposite number, they will go free and the other will serve three years in prison.
- If both cooperate and don't talk, then they only serve one year. However, if both defect, they both serve two years.
In the non-iterative game (and any finite iterative game), the only Nash equilibrium is for both players to defect, thus giving us the belief that altruism is irrational. However, in a non-finite iterative game, both prisoners have the ability to punish each other for previous mistakes. In that case, the strategy that emerges as the probable most successful is that of "tit for tat", wherein you initially cooperate, but after the first move, repeat your counterpart's last move.
To put that into plain English, it is most beneficial for you to be altruistic towards a person initially, but if that person fails to reciprocate, to not repeat the altruism. However, that's on a person-by-person basis, so you should be altruistic towards everyone initially. On average, you'll probably work out better in the long run. | 16 | 21 |
CMV: If a state treated men the way certain Islamic nations treat women, the UN would ostracise that nation. | This is more a collection of views rather than just one, but I believe is nicely summarised in the above point.
From an outsiders perspective, it seems to me that some Islamic nations essentially practice slavery when it comes to the treatment of women. I should not think this view too radical; the restrictions placed upon women, restrictions that some countries have codified into law, are absolutely the definition of slavery. These slaves may be kept well, but they are kept nonetheless.
We have fought wars over slavery. We excluded South Africa from the community of nations for arranging its laws so that blacks could never live as well as whites, but some Islamic countries do exactly that all the time.
If any men in the world were treated like these nations treat women, the UN would ostracise that nation.
It's precisely because it's happening to women that people (men) in power look away. It becomes a cultural matter, a religious matter, something not to be interfered with.
It is not called slavery because it is only an exaggeration of how women are treated elsewhere; this is as much an issue of introspection as it is anything else. Our relative silence on this issue undermines all our talk of gender equality when examined in the light of the global effort to eradicate international racial prejudice.
Change my view. | It's possible that the international community has changed tack over the last few decades and now tries to engage with other nations wherever possible. Isolating other countries in an attempt to get them to change their policies doesn't have a stellar track record (Cuba, North Korea, Iran). Engaging with countries we disagree with opens them up to other mentalities and ways of doing business. Myanmar, China, and Vietnam were (and maybe still are) repressive states, but where they are now is amazing compared to where they were in the 80's. | 105 | 342 |
ELI5: how do fleas jump so high for their body size? | As something gets larger, it's weight goes up proportional to it's volume, and it's strength goes up proportional to the cross sectional area of it's muscles. Volume scales as the third power, area scales as the second power.
So, very large things are much weaker for their size as compared with very small things.
Of course, this doesn't explain why, for example, ants aren't great jumpers, while fleas are.
It turns out fleas have a cool spring like mechanism that they can bend and store energy. When it releases, it propells them higher than their muscles alone can. | 14 | 15 |
|
ELI5: How are we sure Challenger Deep is the deepest point when we have barely fully explored our ocean? | Basically the title, but I always wondered if the Mariana Trench was the actual deepest point on our planet | Mix of:
1. All science is always "...to the best of our knowledge". Thus, Challenge Deep is the deepest point in the ocean *to the best of our knowledge*. If we find out that we're wrong, then we'll have learned something new.
2. We don't need to *explore* the ocean floor to *map* the ocean floor. For example, radar can do the work for us. | 148 | 59 |
Is Having Several Files Named the Same Bad? | I'm currently making my first website and noticed that I have several files similarly named. It's going to possibly be my portfolio so I have access to the programs I want to share all being routed (using express.js) through a file called `routes/programs.js` These programs have information stored in a MongoDB, so the model schema is called `models/program.js` There's a file to verify the fields entered when adding a new program called `public/javascript/program.js` And there's a file that contains functions relating to the programs, such as finding one by name, changing parameters, etc, called `tools/program.js`
I personally don't have any trouble when working with this and it's intuitive enough for me, but I'm not sure about a team environment, I'm still in school so I haven't really had that experience yet. I'm wondering if this is perfectly fine or if I should be naming them all different things.
Note: This is ignoring naming conventions that workplaces set. I'm aware that every workplace has their own naming conventions, but I'm just curious on in general what the convention is, or if there's none a all. | I like to keep them distinct. That when when the file name shows up in an error message it's immediately obvious where the problem is.
I would have, for example, program-router.js, program-model.js, program-service.js, etc. | 13 | 15 |
Where does the pi in Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle come from? | Is there a good intuitive reason why the uncertainty principle includes the pi term?
If we absorb the pi and say that h(bar) should be considered as the physical constant, we find h (Plank's constant) shows up in many other expressions. So there is a pi in there that needs to be accounted for.
Where does this come from is what I am wondering! | It comes from integrating over the bell curve (or from the prefactor in the Fourier transform). It's a bit technical but can be found in most undergraduate text books on quantum mechanics. Basically, you assume that the wavefunction is described by a bell curve and compute the uncertainty of it and its conjugate variable (i.e. position and momentum). It comes out to be exactly h/4pi or whatever. Then you can show that this is minimal for the bell curve, and larger for any other wavefunction.
Often the factor in front of the h is being ignored. For lots of applications the exact lower limit doesn't even matter that much, the most important part about this result is that there *is* a lower limit greater than 0. | 22 | 19 |
ELI5: What is different in the brain of a person having add or adhd? | In comparison to a average brain what is different in someone having a attention deficit disorder ?
I tried googling it but I couldn't find a real answer
Also can someone please tell me what causes adhd ? Is it genetics ? | A 'normal' brain filters all the senses and focuses on what matters most. An ADHD brain rates more/most things as important and floods the brain with too much input. It's the difference between talking to a person and hearing what they say, and talking to a person and hearing traffic and static, seeing a blue poster, red pants, a stain on the carpet--is that a light?--smelling garlic, and somewhere, faintly under all that, hear their response. | 33 | 24 |
ELI5: Kant's transcendental idealism | Thanks for all the great responses. | There are things as they are in themselves, which are things as noumenon, and things as we experience them, things as phenomenon. We cannot experience things as noumenon. The structure of our experience is necessarily spatio-temporal, so for us, reality and the things in it are spatio-temporal, but we cannot know whether things are ultimately spatio-temporal or whether these properties are just a consequence of how we perceive the world. This approach solves problems that idealists (who think there is nothing *but* what we perceive) have and problems that realists (who think we perceive things as they fundamentally are) have.
There is a divide between people who think Kant believes noumena and phenomena are ontologically distinct (two worlds view) and peopel who think Kant believes noumena and phenomena are two ways of seeing the same thing (two aspects view). | 11 | 19 |
[General Fantasy] How come humans are the dominant species in just about every fantasy world despite the existence of other sapient species? | Not counting fantasy settings where only humans exist it’s something I’ve always found weird that when humans share a world with other sapient species it’s somehow humans that dominant everything? How humans have numerous kingdoms and empires while everyone else is relegated to just a handful of cities or a single kingdom each? And with urban fantasy where supernatural beings are forced to hide from humans and where somehow driven into hiding by them.
How humans rose to become so powerful and prominent in a world with other, much more powerful species just doesn’t make that much sense to me. Especially with humans traditionally being portrayed as just average, no special powers or abilities to speak of other then the “adaptable and fast breeding” that’s often slapped onto them. And other fantasy races being portrayed as being superior to humans in most aspects, like elves and their superior magic and lifespan. Dwarves superior technology and strength. Orcs and goblins superior strength, aggression and even faster reproductive rate. Supernaturals like witch’s, vampires and shapeshifters all having magical abilities and strength above that of any human.
Aside from the meta reason of “the author and reader are human” to explain all this human favoritism in fantasy? How humans somehow don’t get conquered or destroyed by everyone else and somehow become the dominant species? | Humans have a natural drive to explore, expand and dominate their surroundings. Basically while the elves are bound to their forest and the dwarfs to their montain the humans are willing to establish themselves everywere.
Basically humans have a very good fertility rate, the ability to produce tech and sometime magic, they can be just as violent and aggressive as any orks. | 43 | 21 |
Therapeutic approaches to metaphysics/ethics? | I've read Wittgenstein's *Philosophical Investigations* accompanied by McGinn's *The Routledge Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations* (which, as an enthusiast, is a fantastic book), and recently I finished the first half of *The New Wittgenstein* (which is not as easy to read but still very good AFAIK).
Both of these secondary sources are in the "therapeutic tradition" (no philosophical theories or positive theses are to be advanced and so on), which is what I'm interested in right now. While the former offers a more structured view on the Philosophical investigations, the latter extrapolates Wittgenstein's ideas in contrast to Derrida's deconstruction, political thought, and different accounts on rule-following (including Kripke's reading of Wittgenstein).
I'm curious if there are any papers/books that extrapolate Wittgenstein's ideas (according to a therapeutic reading) on major subjects, namely metaphysics and ethics. On the subject of metaphysics, specifically truth, I was able to find the paper *Wittgenstein on Truth* by Paul Harwich. Moreover, *The New Wittgenstein* at some point discusses the problem of universals.
The one book I found is *The Fate of Wonder: Wittgenstein's Critique of Metaphysics and Modernity*, but I'll take a look at it. If anyone has other recommendations, they would be very welcome. Thank you. | Definitely look into John McDowell, he uses the exact word you use to describe the way he conceives philosophy: therapeutic. His ethical work is primarily in collected essays, the most important of which is Virtue and Reason. He is very influenced by Wittgenstein, especially Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations and idea of a shared form of life. He advocates for a virtue ethical approach on the basis of those arguments. He is difficult but the most difficult part of the essay Virtue and Reason is his use of the Wittgenstein material, which you probably got down by now. | 10 | 55 |
Becoming a researcher without a PhD | I'm currently a CS undergrad and I have a job lined up for after I graduate. However, I love CS, learning, and research and have thus been considering going into a PhD program after working for 1-2 years but it will be difficult for me to give up my job making $90k/year to trudge it out in the program for 6 years making $30k/year if I'm lucky. My question is how plausible is it for me to become a researcher without a PhD? I know of many people who tell me they do research in a lab who do not have a PhD; how does the work they do differ from the work a PhD does if it differs at all? | If you want to be a director, or be in charge of what gets researched, a PhD will be helpful. If your OK with your boss coming to you saying to research X,Y, and Z then a lack of a PhD should not hold you back. | 60 | 56 |
Eli5: What does epistomology and ontology mean in simple words? | Epistemology: the branch of philosophy that investigates what knowledge is; what it means to know something; how we come to know things.
Ontology: the branch of philosophy that investigates what kinds of things there are; what it means for something to exist in reality; the status of different kinds of things such as numbers, ideas, persons or objects | 31 | 15 |
|
how to combine philosophy and computer science? | how to combine philosophy and computer science? | Like, in college? Or in research?
it is fairly common to study both.
In research, there's a few interesting questions, from questions of logic to how AI (edit: and machine learning) works to ethics stuff. | 35 | 69 |
ELI5: [NSFW] Why are the breasts and the butt now sexualized body parts of women, when their biological purpose is not sex related? | *No misogynistic comments, please.*
It's clear why the vagina is sexualized, but why the breasts and the butt? If it's just because of the round, protruding shape, then why aren't pot-belly stomachs regarded as highly as the former?
Legitimately interested; inform me Reddit! | The shape of the breasts and buttocks in women are considered secondary sex characteristics. This means that they are not directly related to reproduction, but are used as an indicator of sexual maturity, viability, health, etc.
A man looking at a woman cannot know directly if she is fertile and will make a satisfactory mother, but it happens that women with large breasts are, on average, better at providing children with nourishment, and women with particular fat distributions are likely to be of prime reproductive age (fat distribution changes with age).
As a result, brains find these things desirable. And culture responds to this desirability by relating it back directly to sex. | 76 | 46 |
[anime] Why do all protagonist's parents work overseas? What do they do for work? | Where are they? | I have a couple of friends who work in companies and you can end up traveling a lot for business. Finance, sales and management positions often involve a lot of traveling to various countries and cities in order to make deals and meet with VP of regional sales or stuff like that. And those tend to be the high paying jobs because it's super important and lots of stress
You know how lots of anime kids live in a mansion in Tokyo despite Tokyo having property prices that would put NYC to shame? You gotta have wealthy parents working full time (and possibly overtime) at high paying jobs | 20 | 20 |
ELI5: How does the Options market work and can you use a lifelike example of a put / call position which is relatable? | You can see Options as a "price guarantee" for something you want to buy / sell in the future, but you want to agree on the price in advance.
**Put Option Example**: You are an American company and get a contract from an EU company. You'll get the payment of one million EUR for your work in one year. Today, 1 EUR is roughly 1.10 USD, but you don't know what the exchange rate will be in a year.
If you want to "insure" that exchange rate, i.e. make sure you really get 1.1 million USD in a year, you can buy a put option on the EUR/USD exchange rate. A put option on EUR/USD with a strike of 1.10, expiring in one year and a total contract of 1 million EUR will guarantee that you at least get the 1.1 million USD in one year. This put option gives you the right, but not the duty, to sell 1 million EUR and receive 1.1 million USD in return. If the exchange rate were to rise, then you just let the option expire (i.e. you don't exercise your right), and do the exchange at the current rate.
**Call Option Example**: For this job above, you'll need a part from a Canadian company which costs 100k Canadian Dollars (CAD). Today, that's 75k USD. You'll need that part in 6 month, which is also when you'll pay the Canadian company. Again, if you don't want to gamble with the exchange rate, you'll get a call option on the USD/CAD at strike 1.33 (current rate), expiry in 6 months, total contract of 100k CAD. The Call Option gives you the right, but not the duty, to buy 100k CAD for 75k USD in 6 months. | 12 | 21 |
|
Can someone please explain some aspects of E=MC^2? | Sorry in advance if these are dumb questions, just trying to understand Einstein’s equation better.
I understand E represents energy, usually potential energy, but what unit is E measured in? Is it dependent on what units are used in the case of M and C (i.e. using grams or kilograms etc, meters per second or kilometer per second etc) or are all of the variables associated constant units? If it’s constant, what is the correct unit to use for each variable?
For example, take a 5 kg object. Multiply by the speed of light (defined in this case as 299,792,458 m/s), squared, (8.987551787368e16 m/s), which gives us 4.493775893684e17. What unit is this number measured in?
What makes the speed of light relavent to measuring energy in objects with mass? If light is made up of photons, and photons have a mass of 0, that would make the energy of photons equal to 0 according to this equation. Wouldn’t that mean light contains no energy, and therefore isn’t a form of energy like we know it to be? If it’s not a form of energy, why is light warm? How would solar panels work? How would photosynthesis work? How are lasers powerful enough to cut through metal? These are just examples to explain my thought process, not necessarily other questions that need to be answered.
Thanks y’all, I’ve tried googling (albeit not as hard as I could’ve) but I found nothing that answers these questions, and figured it would be easier to ask. | > For example, take a 5 kg object. Multiply by the speed of light (defined in this case as 299,792,458 m/s), squared, (8.987551787368e16 m/s), which gives us 4.493775893684e17. What unit is this number measured in?
Joule.
> If light is made up of photons, and photons have a mass of 0, that would make the energy of photons equal to 0 according to this equation.
E = m c^2 relates the mass to the energy of a particle at rest. A photon is never at rest and therefore has 0 rest energy.
The equation is a special case of a more comprehensive relation between energy, mass and momentum. This relation is expressed by the following equation:
E^2 = (p c)^2 + (m c^(2))^2
When a particle is at rest, p = 0 and this equation simplifies to E = m c^(2).
But for photons, which are massless particles, the second part of the equation disappears and you're left with E = p c, which expresses a relation between the energy and momentum of a photon. | 40 | 19 |
What advances would be required for us to see galaxies farther beyond the 700 million year mark? | Larger telescopes, especially in the infrared, longer observation time. The oldest galaxies are very dim, and their light is shifted towards infrared.
JWST will be the largest space telescope ever launched in 2018, and it is specialized on the infrared range. Guess what is a key part of the observation plan. | 22 | 16 |
|
I dont understand philosophy at all | Im in an intro to philosophy class and ive never been more confused in my life. I have to write an essay on what philosophy is and cant write more than one paragraph. I spent the last 10 hours reading and watching youtube videos and im still so lost. How am I supposed to write an essay about what is philosophy? Any help aprreciated im so stressed right now and cant seem to figure anything out. | How is philosophy different from other things?
How is philosophy different from science?
How is philosophy different from thinking?
How is philosophy different from knowledge?
(Questions are important in philosophy.) | 78 | 73 |
ELI5: what is the design process of building an application? | Ex-developer and now IT project manager here. It depends on the size and complexity of the application.
For little wee ones like an Excel macro that processes a sheet or a data-cleansing routine, you usually have an idea in mind of what you need to have happen, so you break it down into steps and work through developing each step. So your mental map of the data cleanser might be: Pick up a record, look at it for these features, correct these features if you find them, put back that record in a new area. Then you build those (sometimes in order, sometimes not), test and tweak it as you go along until it's done.
For slightly larger and more complex apps, such as a simple game, first someone thinks about where they want to go with it, then they write the basics down to describe it to whoever is paying for it to justify getting money (if not themselves). With that concept of the game there, they start breaking it down into what they need to do first - for example, a sidescrolling game needs the ability for the character to stand on something, or a data processing application needs to connect to a data source and read a record from it - and work through that, then meshing out each additional detail as they continue. Sometimes this approach needs a concept demo too, such as if you're going after kickstarter funding. The developer invests some of their time into building a tiny part of the game that will look and feel a little like the end product, then shows it to the people they want money from so that audience can see what they're going to get. Then the now-funded developer gets approval and funding to do all the remaining detail work.
Big projects need teams need a much larger approach. You start with the basics in a story - "it will be a first person science fiction single-player shooter with a machine possession mechanic and will support multiplayer", and then each of your sub-teams on it gets their piece to do once you've decided on fundamentals like what gaming engine you're going to use if you don't build your own, what platforms you're going to target, and who the target audience is (e.g. whether it has cartoony characters or gory exploding ones). The story/script team starts building how the visual world will work and how single-person gameplay will flow by working closely with the art design team, and the technical team weighs in on what's technically possible versus what's not. This is a very back-and-forth process. The multiplayer mechanics team starts working on getting all the send/receive processing going. Then as things work along, all the team leaders meet and check with the boss to ensure they're staying on direction, trading information and changes around, and hitting deadlines, and they adjust as they go along.
The "traditional way" of doing all that organizing, called "waterfall", was to write down and get a signed off list of details before you start coding. The "modern way" is called "agile" and saying "This is what we're pointing at doing this month", getting approval for that, then doing it and figuring out what the next month's work will be like when the time comes. Agile is more flexible than waterfall, but it's also less locked-in, so it's useful for some types of projects more than others. | 59 | 117 |
|
In order to calculate relative atomic mass the masses of isotopes have to be taken into account. How did the scientists know (initially) what is the abundance of those isotopes? | Is it fixed (in an ore) or did they have to use some other method? | You use a mass spectrometer. The basic idea is that you use heat or a high voltage to strip one electron away from atoms, then you use an electric field or changing magnetic field to shoot the positively charged atoms (now ions) down a track. The track is curved, and at the end there is a detector that can tell you when an ion hits it. To make the corner and hit the detector, you have to bend the path the ion takes. You do this with an electric or magnetic field that crosses the track. The amount of bending depends on the strength of the field, which you control, the charge of the ion, which is +1, and the mass of the isotope. You do the math and vary the field to give the right bending for a specific isotope mass to hit the detector and count how many hits you get. Then change the field to give the right bending for a different isotope and count the hits. The ratios of hits for all your tests is the ratio of isotopes.
Same concept but different construction can be with one field and multiple detectors set up at different angles off the sriaight track. | 347 | 1,095 |
[General Supers] I have the power to see through other people's eyes. How can I best leverage this power? | Ok so recently I was thinking about my brother and suddenly I could see through his eyes as he drove down the road. It was wierd but I brushed it off as dejavu or a daydream.
But it keeps happening with different people and I've been able to verify what I've seen with what they were doing at the time.
How can I use this power to:
A) Be a Hero, or at least do good
B) Be a criminal
C) Just have a better life and not get involved with any of that GOOD AND EVIL stuff
Edit. Some further info on the power I forgot to include
The range seems to be about a mile and a quarter in all directions.
I've noticed that huge swings of emotion "kick me out" and I lose the connection.
It doesn't work on animals | The most valuable use of this ability is access to secret information. Espionage, either governmental or corporate, is the most obvious way to either good or evil, depending on who you cooperate with. Corporate espionage is probably your best bet for a better life without getting into grand good and evil stuff. It's shady for sure, but it pays well, and if you're choosy about your targets it's not really that evil. | 22 | 17 |
Eli5: Why do spicy foods like wasabi, mustard and horseradish burn differently to foods like chilli's and curry's? | I always feel that wasabi and horseradish effects the back of my throat and nasal more, whereas the chilli's and curry's burn my tongue. What makes the spices react differently to the human body? | Different molecules, different chemistries, but the same sensory receptor.
Wasabi and horseradish get their effect from a volatile sulfur-based compound. This means it's carried very easily into your nasal passages and throat by normal airflow, where it binds to those receptors and gives you the distinct pungency.
Chili/Currys and similar foods contain oily capsaicin, which binds to the receptors in the mouth and isn't wafted up into other areas as much. | 17 | 15 |
ELI5 : why do certain containers cause the liquid to disastrously pour down the side but others don’t? | Everyone here is talking about properties of water cohesion and viscosity, but OP specifically asked about why certain **containers** pour well while others don't.
That has to do with the type of spout, or the way the glass/plastic is shaped at the top of the container. You generally need a very sharp edge, or a very crisp curve at the end of the spout. The material of the spout also matters, and you tend to want surfaces that your liquid doesn't stick to as easily. If it's just a smooth rounded top, especially of glass, water will happily stick to the gentle flow over the curve and drip right down the sides of the glass rather than slide off the edge for a smooth pour. Sharper edges don't allow this, water can't stick to it and it just pours right off the end.
The thing with your typical glass drinking glasses, is they generally have very smooth edges because that feels gentler on our mouths, rather than the more geometrically sharp edges you'd see on something like a plastic milk jug. This is why trying to pour water slowly out of a drinking glass causes the water to disastrously pour down the sides, while pouring the same liquid out of a plastic bottle is successful. The drinking glass has soft rounded edges on the top for a more comfortable feel on your lips, while the bottle has sharper curved edges for pouring.
The only other variable is speed at which you pour, a faster pour gives the fluid more energy and forces it to fly off the edge and not drip. That's why if you really have to pour water of a drinking glass, you have to pour it quickly if you want to avoid a mess. | 3,739 | 5,088 |
|
ELI5: Why Bashar al-Assad is so universally hated, especially his Arab neighbors? | To better understand all things in the Middle East a great place to start is to know which countries are ruled by Shia vs Sunni. Sunni (think: many or "manni") are the **vast majority**. Shia is anchored by Iran. Sunni by Saudi Arabia. Both are oil-rich and both consider each other a top rival that practices the "wrong" version of Islam.
Assad is an Alawitte, who is a Shia minority ruling a 74% Sunni majority country. This alone divides him from Jordan, Pre-US Invasion Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and of course his own people.
However he is not alone, as Hezbollah in nearby Lebanon is Shia which is why they are assisting him in fighting.
Assad was the son of the previous ruler, Hafez Assad, who frankly was a dictator. Assad grew up privileged. Combine that with gassing his own people during the civil war and you can find many reasons why he is not liked.
| 19 | 22 |
|
CMV. Adding more gender is a problem. | I just posted this to r/unpopularopinion but also wanted to post it here. I haven't posted much, so I hope I don't break any rules.
I've been thinking on the topic for some time now. It wasnt until I read something that stated gender and sex are different. Now I think I understand my problem.
I believe sex should only be based on genitals. It does not matter what gentitals a person is born with, but what they have. If a person wants to their sex, isn't a problem. The constant adding of new genders is a problem.
Sex should not determine actions, attitude, personality, sexual orientation, hobbies, interests, or anything else. Theae ideas should be frowned upon. Adding more genders and the idea of "identifying as a certain gender" is promoting this idea. Adding more genders, adding more labels is separating us as people. We should not have to claim a gender to explain who we are, every one is unique and individuals. There are traits that make us similar and traits that make us different, but labeling them with new genders places us in separate categories. It divides us. It also creates a new opinion, accepting trans or not, to debate about, further creating a rift.
I recognize that I am not intelligent enough to fully understand this topic. Change my view. | As you go about your typical daily routine (school, work, commuting, errands, hobbies) how often does identifying others by a particular gender or needing specific knowledge of their genitals impact your life?
I’m trying to understand how big of a scope of a “problem” it would be if the the guy who makes your morning Starbucks latte decides tomorrow that he’s pansexual or starts sexual reassignment regimen...like, how is that goin to affect your latte? | 29 | 33 |
Why do other mammals not get food poisoning from eating raw meats yet humans do? | Humans are physiologically between carnivores and herbivores. Our digestive system is about 5-6x our body length. Carnivores generally have much shorter digestive systems, maybe 1-3 times body length, This means food is in their bodies for a shorter time, giving bacteria less time to produce toxins. Carnivores also tend to have much stronger stomach acid (dog stomach acid is about 10x stronger than human) which means fewer bacteria survive digestion. | 29 | 24 |
|
How does physical exercise reduce the risk of getting cancer? | A major factor in reducing cancer risk involves lowering insulin levels. Exercise is great for that, especially if it lowers BMI into healthy ranges (avoids insulin resistance). Insulin does a number of things related to blood sugar but it is also a growth factor. Growth factors are part of the uncontrolled cell cycle that is found in cancers. | 294 | 525 |
|
CMV: I consider pronouns and gendered general term unimportant. | In my country there was a recent court case where a lady unsuccessfully complained that a bank was referring to her as (male and general) "customer" and not the "customeress"
EDIT. "Customeress" is not an English term. "Kunde" and "Kundin" for customers in German are used like Actor and Actress in English.
Her point was that male general terms like "actor" diminish women. My counterargument to that is that I don't hear the same complaint from that or any other lady when there is a terrorism alert on the news, soldiers are killing, rapists are being talked about or people are looking for a culprit, those terms are generally male as well.
I am not even sure if this is in the same vain, or if I am convinced for the same reasons but the pronoun debate that seems to be evolving around ever freshly created new gender types is superficial and maybe even superfluous. I don't mind being a meanie and not using the desired term but am i really making a net negative impact by doing so? | Just to provide more information: It happened in Germany and in German nearly every job is gendered. The bank is called "Sparkasse" and the customer wanted to be addressed as "Kundin" (female version of customer) and not "Kunde" (male version). | 18 | 15 |
How do bacteria become resistant to drugs? | Basically, since bacteria are relatively simple organisms, with small genomes, they tend to mutate easily. Additionally, bacteria are able to divide and multiply very quickly.
As a result, as a population of bacteria grows, sub-populations of bacteria with various genetic mutations will arise, and these sub-populations will grow quickly in number. Some of these sub-populations will carry genes that protect them against the effects of antibiotics and other drugs. When the entire bacteria population is exposed to the antibiotic, bacteria without the protective gene will die, while bacteria with the gene survive, and continue to divide.
This is related to the growing problem of he increasing number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, due to an overuse of antibiotics. As antibiotic use rises, antibiotic-resistant strains are becoming more prevalent. Soon it will be difficult to combat these new strains of bacteria. | 22 | 34 |
|
ELI5: Why do we discount the possibility of life on extrasolar planets outside their "Goldilocks Zones," when life on moons (Enceladus, Europa) within our own system, well outside our "habitable zone," are possibilities? | Because we currently have a sample size of 1 planet where we know something we understand to be life exists--so we look for as similar circumstances as we can find. We know Enceladus and Europa are *possibilities*, but we know life on Earth is a certainty, so we look for other Earths, rather than other Enceladi and Europae. | 41 | 54 |
|
ELI5:What happens in your body at concerts when it feels like your heart is about to vibrate out of your chest when they hit super low bass notes? | Sound is effectively just waves of air moving at different speeds and sizes. While most of them are so small you can really only sense them with your ears, as you start to get really low, the waves start to get a lot bigger, to the point you can actually feel them. That feeling is the air physically vibrating your body, usually with what's called a ground sub. Some Front of House Engineers do this on purpose to get that "concert feel", and the wavelengths that do it best are actually below your threshold of hearing, in terms of pitch, but can be powerful enough to knock even a grown person over. | 42 | 103 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.