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If you plant the same species of tree in different hemispheres, do they still flower at the same time? | For example, if you plant a cherry tree in the southern hemisphere, will it still flower in march-april? or in semptember-october (spring)? | Trees respond to temperature and light, so they'll bloom when that is correct for that species of tree.
Even the cherry blossoms you mentioned bloom first in southern Japan, then Central, then Northern. You can see Sakura calendars online. As the warm temperatures and longer days move both, the trees bloom when the conditions are right. Cold snaps or warm spells can delay them or make them premature so they aren't just blooming when they "should" bloom based on latitude alone. | 117 | 150 |
ELI5: Why does the moon look so big in some pictures but look so small in personal. Is there a place on earth where the moon appears really bigger? | A combination of zoom lenses, picture processing, and something called the Harvest Moon effect.
When you take a picture zoomed (and a lot of people do), it makes everything look bigger, including the moon. And some people photoshop pictures for dramatic effect.
But most people take pictures of the moon when it's close to the earth's horizon. Seeing the moon in this position makes it look much larger than seeing it when it's way up in the sky as a very well known optical illusion, because you have a lot of features to compare it to. And because photographs are most often taken when the moon's at the sky's edge, you'll see the larger moon more in them than in your "real life".
To see this in person though, check your weather network or web-source for the next time you have a clear evening moonrise, which will be during a full moon. Assuming the weather's clear, make a note in your calendar to watch it come up or set and you'll see how it'll look quite large. If you look at it two hours later and it's a lot smaller by comparison. But if you measure the size of both with a ruler, they're the same! | 24 | 38 |
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I believe that marriage serves no purpose and, if anything, is detrimental to society. CMV. | I don't think it's necessary in modern society. It's just making someone your permanent girlfriend/boyfriend. People expect you to marry, but what other reason is there? If you really love someone, why do you need to sign a formal agreement to prove you love each other? How does marriage benefit anyone? In my opinion, it creates more problems than it solves. Divorces can be really messy, and the expectation that a stable life includes a husband or wife probably causes a lot of people to marry someone they don't really want to.
Edit: So I'm realizing that I would have to have a different opinion on this topic if I was actually married. Now I'm wondering how society would be different without the notion of marriage at all, and would we be better or worse off? | Marriage is a legal framework for sharing property and rearing children. It serves a number of purposes in that regard. Because this situation is so common the baseline agreement is usually codified in law, and even then the contract is usually able to be amended via another document (aka a pre-nup) as long as it doesn't negate the rights granted via the law. | 11 | 16 |
What is a topological material? | I saw this article and I have no idea what’s going on. I tried to figure it out by looking stuff up, but it still escapes me.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EverythingScience/comments/ax54l4/ubiquity_of_topological_materials_revealed_in/ | A topological material is a material whose physical properties on it's surface is markedly different than it's properties in it's interior. A common example is a topological insulator, which has a high electrical resistance inside the material but is quite conductive of electricity along it's surface. | 10 | 22 |
ELI5. Saw a video of a white blood cell chasing down and ingesting a bacteria, why aren't white blood cells "alive" as their own beings? | I know it's a flashback to, like, freshman biology but there are characteristics that we use to define what has life. They are responsiveness to stimuli, growth or change, ability to reproduce, metabolism and respiration, homeostasis-ness (freshman bio was a long time ago), cell structure, and reproduction. White blood cells check off a few but not all of them.
More importantly, though, they're part of *our* cell structure. Without us, they do not exist or exibit any of those characteristics. They are alive (in the sense that they can die, so they must be alive) but it's inherently not as their own beings. They're no different than our skin cells or our teeth - they're alive... As long as they are part of us because we are alive. But they don't have life. | 11 | 27 |
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[Star Trek] Why are the bridges of the Federation's ships in the single most vulnerable and exposed part of the ship? | The Federation seems to invariably place the bridge on their ships on the center of the top of the saucer, in a prominent bulging section, with a giant window. This is, frankly, purest insanity. Time and again Federation ships have been attacked with weapons that punched through the shields, and if they scored a hit on the bridge, would instantly wipe out the entire command crew.
I understand that the Federation's ships are intended primarily as exploration vessels, not warships, but it's not like they're ignorant to the fact that the galaxy is dangerous and full of things trying to kill them. They're heavily armed and have powerful defenses, yet they leave the command crew completely exposed.
Why do they do that? Why not bury the bridge in the center of the ship, under heavy armor? It's not like they *need* a giant window, when the screen can every bit as easily project an exterior view from a camera on the surface. All the window serves to do is present an obvious weak point for the enemy to target.
So, what's their reasoning? | There is some speculation that the bridge placement is a mix of traditional and psychological. Bridges were initially elevated on sea-going vessels on Earth, in order to allow for a better vantage point.
When the time came to build spacecraft, a prominent bridge was incorporated into the design, simply because that was the way it had always been done.
Another facet is that the Bridge module was designed to be replaceable. Hiding the module deep within the ship would require massive destructive efforts to extract a damaged or malfunctioning model. The location at the top of the primary hull would have allowed for easier replacement.
Curiously, a prominent bridge is a trait shared by many races. Klingon, Cardassian, Breen, Tellarite, Rigellian, Vulcan. Romulan bridges were more integrated into the superstructure, but still located at the prow. The Borg are the only race without a defined Bridge, as functions are decentralised throughout the vessel.
Most bridges, despite their exposed position, did not require a direct transparent window to space. Instead, starships use viewscreens - large displays relaying a camera picture. The only recorded instance of actual windows being used was during the JJ!Trek alternate timeline.
It can be seen several time on records involving the *Enterprise-E* that the main viewscreen was 'switched off' for a time, revealing a standard duranium bulkhead.
Later on, especially with the advent of the *Galaxy*-class starships, a "Battle Bridge" was placed deeper within the superstructure. The *Defiant*-class vessels had deliberately sunken bridge for combat protection, although the *Prometheus* class had a bridge in the usual exposed position. | 28 | 33 |
I'm a CS and math sophomore with no work experience. How to get started? | I just made it to my sophomore year at uni and I'm realizing all my fellow CS students are so good at finding jobs and finding things related to their major, while I'm in the art club and fencing club while managing a part time at Target.... I want to start getting serious about my major, but I'm unsure where to start, all the summer internships ask for skills I don't have. | It might be an issue with your resume, or an issue with not enough experience. If you like, you can send me your resume. Bottom line, keep on applying to companies... Like 10 - 12 companies a day for a month or 2.
If you can't find anything, hit up some professors in non-cs departments. they might have money for a summer intern and have a need for a developer to write some programs/ scripts. if you can't get a developer role, be ok with QA roles, and BA roles.
If all that fails, and your situation allows it - look for unpaid internships. | 10 | 18 |
ELI5: How did people know what the world looked like before satellites? | How did people back i the day know the shape of countries and oceans look like without a clear view from space? How did they make accurate globes and maps back then? | They made land measurements, i.e. they determined distances and angles between various landmarks through a process called triangulation. This involves looking from two different points with a known distance between them (baseline) at some distant third point (or landmark). The difference in view angles allows one to calculate the distance to the third point. Now the calculated distance can be used as a baseline for a new triangulation, and so on. People also could make measurements of coordinates for different locations through careful observation and measurement of positions of the Sun and stars. Covering an entire country in triangles paired and adjusted to coordinate measurements will provide one with a map of a country. | 27 | 18 |
ELI5:Why are operating systems written in C? | Windows, Mac OSX, Linus all use C. Windows uses C and C++. Mac uses C and Objective-C. Linux uses just C (I think). Is there any inherent benefit in using C as opposed to python or Java or any other programming language? I have never seen python or Java outside of the context of a C based operating system, so does it mean that python and Java can't work without C? Also why do Windows and Mac use c++ and objective-c when they are based in c? Anything that c++ and objective-c can be accomplished in c. Is that correct? | Your OS needs to care about all the low-level details like interfacing with your hardware or managing memory. Languages running in VMs (Java, C#) or interpreters (Python) do not offer such functionality and adding them does not make any sense from a language point of view (because you actually do not _want_ them). | 49 | 78 |
ELI5: How do they make such complex ASCII art? | Usually with computer programs. There are many different approaches to generating an ASCII image, depending on how you want your final image to look. For example one simple method would be to transform a picture into a low-resolution grid, where each cell in the grid is assigned a letter depending on the brightness of the picture inside of that cell. It's also possible to mimic certain patterns in each cell, for example a "`L`" can be used to represent a right angle, a `#` can be used for heavy shading and a `+` for light shading, etc. | 10 | 19 |
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eli5 How people make fireworks that explode in certain shapes? | The chemicals determine the colors, but the key to achieving a certain explosive shape lies in how the firework's “stars” are aligned inside the shell. To make a shape in the sky, firework technicians simply set up the same pattern with the small pellets inside the packaged shell before firing it. | 17 | 23 |
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[general modern era fantasy] how are magic users trained by the military and integrated with the rest of the armed forces? | Intelligence and medical fields mostly. Modern weapons are easier to use and don't require decades of training or any sort of innate ability. Battlefield scrying, precognition, infiltration, and defenses against those are much cheaper and easier with magic than tech, no need to launch multiple trillion dollar satellites when you just need a couple of guys and their support team. It's the same in the medical field, healers don't need much equipment to restore a broken limb and can do it right on the battlefield, major injuries are easily repaired, and gone are the days of soldiers going home with missing limbs, the only problem left is the psychological impact of said injury. | 18 | 20 |
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Is there a limit to how acidic (or basic) something can be? | I have heard of an acid with a pH of -24. Can anything go past that? What about alkaline compounds? | The way we calculate pH is by taking the concentration of H^+ ions in a solution and inputting it in this formula:
pH = -log[H^+ ]
So in theory as long as the concentration of H^+ is high enough negative pH is possible. The same goes for alkaline compounds (though there you're concerned with the concentration of OH^- ).
The problem comes in practical applications. Measuring a negative pH is very difficult as the glass detectors can't measure the very low pH correctly and will therefor return higher values of pH than might actually be there. Further complicating matters is the facts that at very high concentrations even the stronger acids (for example HCl) don't fully dissociated (release their H^+ ) so calculating the pH from the concentration of HCl wouldn't yield the correct pH either.
In short, theoretically there is no maximum to how high or low a pH can go, in practice, you'll find yourself limited in being able to measure the actual very low or high pH's and less than full dissociation at high concentrations. | 826 | 1,907 |
ELI5:Why is up-to-the-millisecond stock market information so expensive? | Knowing the price of something in the market before other people do is very valuable.
It's like knowing the answers to a quiz the day before you have to take it. You are guaranteed to act it as long as you make an effort.
Imagine if you knew what the price of a share of Apple stock would be one day before everyone else and you knew it absolutely was true. Let's say you knew it was going to go up $1 per share (1%, not much). You borrow $1m of money, buy 10,000 shares at $100 each, and sell them tomorrow for $101 each, pay off the loan, and you're $10,000 richer. Zero risk. Literally a sure thing.
That same logic works for milliseconds too, if you have computers programmed to trade fast.
So companies invest lots of money to get fast data with faster connections and computers and routers, and companies know how valuable it is so they sell it for a lot. | 19 | 34 |
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ELI5: What happens to the common cold during the off season, where does it reside and why/how does it come back? | Colds spread more in winter because people tend to stay inside in closer contact; they don't completely die out over the summer, there's just less people infected. When it gets cold out the infection rate increases, and everyone gets a cold again.
It's also worth noting that plenty of countries are always cold, and that summer and winter are reversed between the North and South hemispheres. Even if colds did completely die out in summer there would still be people infected somewhere else. | 188 | 278 |
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Where can I learn more about the logic/math-y side of Computer Science? | I finished my undergrad a couple of years ago, but there was very little focus on logic or maths after first year. We didn't cover big oh notation aside from gliding over it, for example.
So where can I go to become better at the logic aspect of computer science? I have a good handle on the architecture of a system (I can pick up new tech pretty easily at this point), but problem solving with stuff like recursion, binary searches, algorithms, etc, is an area that I'd consider myself weak in.
So any tips folks? | If you are interested on the logic side of CS:
- Proposition as Types by Philip Wadler is simply *excellent*
- Mathematical Logic by Chiswell and Hodges
- Introduction to Lambda Calculus by
- CS245 "Logic and Computation" at the University of Waterloo (most of the lectures handouts/assignments are online) and it's a course that second year take in their first semesters so it's pretty accessible.
For the complexity theory/algorithmic parts:
- "Introduction to Algorithms" by CLRS is awesome | 10 | 17 |
Are there any solid arguments against moral relativism? | Seeing as how morality varies wildly across cultures, individuals, and even species, I believe it to be purely subjective. It is something we feel in the soul, rationalize with the mind, and then project onto the world.
Are there any solid arguments against this? | One thing to be clear on is the difference between descriptive relativism and normative relativism. So, for example, if we try to articulate what different people think about morality we will find this varies by culture and by individual. So, it seems to be that, descriptively, morality is relative in this sense. But this isn't typically seen as the sense that philosophers are interested in. Instead, philosophers are more interested in whether or not moral claims, as such, are relative.
So, as an analogy: different people believe different things about whether ghosts exist, or the age of the universe, or any other number of things. The fact that these beliefs vary wildly across cultures and individuals, however, need not suggest that these areas are just "purely subjective." Rather, we might think, some people are right and some people are wrong. Similarly, so the thought might go, morality works in the same way: people might believe different things but there are facts of the matter about the moral domain and we use our powers of reasoning and arguments to try to get more clear on these matters.
The above is not yet an argument for moral realism, or even against moral relativism, but more so trying to set the stage for how we might begin to think of such things. | 76 | 21 |
Why do we assume water is necessary for supporting extraterrestrial life? | I constantly hear about these new planets that are being discovered that could harbor life because there may be water present on them. I understand that all life on Earth needs water, but what evidence do we have that shows every living being must require water? Couldn't a form of life on a different planet evolve in a way that uses some other liquid as it's base? Or is there something that proves that every single living being, no matter its origin, absolutely must have water? | Polarity is, to use the technical term, pretty big shit, and gives rise to properties of water that [help] make life possible. Water is an incredibly good solvent, allowing transportation of ions, larger molecules, cells, etc. It can transfer electrical signals, especially when aided by dissolved ions. It reacts with all kinds of stuff. It dissociates into protons (H+) and hydroxide ions (OH-), which are themselves reactive and chemically interesting/useful. It's also liquid over a fairly wide range of temperatures due to hydrogen bonding.
There are other molecules which can do some or most of these things, but nothing does it nearly as well, or is as chemically simple. Also, with only one data point, it's the only thing we *know* of that can support life. There are other possibilities (ammonia and ethanol come to mind, ask a biologist if this is actually reasonable), but we don't actually know. Look for what we know. | 21 | 24 |
What do I say to someone who claims everything they claim or state is just their opinion? | I would get in arguments with people and then suddenly they would just say it’s their opinion and I should respect it. It’s very frustrating because it’s never goes anywhere. | You could ask them any number of things:
* Why are they presenting their opinion as fact if it is merely an opinion?
* Why should their opinion be respected if it is not rooted in fact?
* Do they have an obligation to update their opinion if the facts contradict their opinion? | 74 | 46 |
CMV:Racism, sexism and general discrimination will only begin to fade when we stop pointing fingers and accept that "Us" vs "Them" isn't real, there is only "Us" on this earth. | It's a fairly accepted fact that humans are social creatures and like to form groups. This can have positive effects like a sense of belonging, cooperation and division of burdens. However, to make a group, each member has to have something in common, other than just being human. It could be gender, race, a common vision or belief. You get the idea.
So by uniting based on common characteristics, we automatically exclude those who don't fit the mould. Thus creating every kind of discrimination you can think of.
The worst part is, if you look at groups of people looking to reduce discrimination, they're as much as part of the problem as the original perpetrators. One example of this in action is the reporter who was kicked out of a Black Lives event in CSU. African Americans have a long history of mistreatment in the US and many have the right to be furious. But the problem is that they see all "whites" as being the perpetrators of this mistreatment and exacerbate the "white vs black" dichotomy.
My opinion on how to solve these issues is this: I've been told that to solve problems as a couple, you mustn't make it "you" vs "partner", you have to make it "both of you as a couple" vs "the problem". So I think we should apply the same logic to racism and sexism. Women vs men and whites vs blacks (only two of the uncountable amount of dichotomies that exist) can't be solved by separating and pointing fingers at the other group, it can only be solved by uniting. There is no Us vs Them, only Us.
Perhaps you've suffered discrimination first hand (as I have) and disagree with my opinion because you want justice above all. In which case, please explain your opinion.
Edit: Sorry if I reply late, having a bit of a family emergency. | Interpersonal relations have improved, and interpersonal discrimination is less prevelant than it once was (that is not to say it has disappeared). The issue is that those forms of discrimination are now systemic, implicit. For example, schools and neighborhoods are still highly segregated due to white flight, and because public schools are funded by taxing local residents, richer white neighborhoods can fund better schools while poorer black ones cannot, resulting in a massive achievement gap.
Think of it as a problem of the commons, the issue isn't that one individual does it, but so many do. As a result, the group's actions adversely affect another: systemic discrimination. Uniting under one banner as you, and many others, have suggested is a noble goal, but it doesn't address the issue that one group's actions are unintentionally yet adversely affecting the other. Calling out the side-effects of another group's actions isn't segregating, as you put it. It's necessary in order to address the problem. | 14 | 46 |
ELI5: What prevents banks and other institutions that hold money electronically from just digitally changing the amount that they have? | There are audit trails. Every time money is added to an account, there **must** be a corresponding removal from another account somewhere, and every step has to be recorded. If government auditors find that there was fraud committed, and money just materialized out of nowhere, someone is going to federal prison for a very long time. | 39 | 52 |
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[General Sci-Fi] With as diverse as Earth is with languages, religions, races, and ethnicities, why are other planets so homogeneous? | When we watch sci-fi, other planets are generally shown to have only one language, one race, and one religion. What makes Earth special in its cultural diversity? | Primitive planets are generally very diverse, because of the large travel times between different parts of the planet. Your other posts lead me to believe you're talking about earth at the turn of the twentieth century, when it was rapidly homogenizing. During this period most people on the planet speak one of only four language (Arabic, English, Spanish, Mandarin).
Predictive models give it between two and five hundred years (local) before most of the planet speaks one language and is unified under a single planetary government. | 130 | 136 |
ELI5: Will everyone on Earth eventually have the same/similar skin hair colour? | Different skin colors came about in the first place because of natural selection.
People who lived in deserts and other places with continuous, harsh sun gained extra protection against the excessive UV that hit their skin by growing extra melanin.
People who lived in climates where the sun shined less than the optimal amount required for their skin to create vitamin D with sunlight, lost pigment in an attempt to compensate.
Neither of these pressures have gone away. There's still way too much UV hitting the skin of people who live in the Sahara desert, and way too little hitting the skin of people who live in Siberia.
Unless the entire earth is somehow drastically changed to eliminate all differences in sunlight, there will always be differences in skin color. | 21 | 45 |
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ELI5: What is the Muslim Brotherhood? (As unbiased as possible) | what is it? what is their goal? | It is an international Islamist social and political movement which seeks to promote and install Islam as the basis of social life from the family to the state. They're similar in some respects to organizations like the Salvation Army, doing charity work, operating hospitals, and promoting religious faith as a means to solving social problems. Unlike the SA and other similar groups, the Muslim Brotherhood maintains a strong political motive and actively seeks political power in the countries in which it operates, sometimes through violence.
The Egyptian wing of the movement which has been in the news lately has openly rejected violence and is seeking to come to power through democratic means. While they are tolerant to a degree (expressing a "respect" for the "personal conviction" of others), there is much valid concern on the part of secular and Coptic (Christian) Egyptians that the type of government the MB offers (essentially a soft Muslim theocracy built on democratic underpinnings) could lead to discrimination and oppression. | 68 | 102 |
Does exposure to COVID-19 after vaccination extend the immunity received from the vaccine? | From what I understand, the immunity provided by vaccination lessens over time which is why a booster shot is going to be offered (at least for Pfizer). However, if a person who is vaccinated were to begin going out to public places a short time after receiving the vaccine in such a way that they are regularly exposed to the virus but not necessarily infected, would this preserve the immunity received from the vaccine? | It really boils down to the concept of sterilizing immunity versus immunity from illness. Sterilizing immunity is when your immune response is strong enough to stop an infection from even taking hold. For a viral infection this would be mediated by your circulating serum and mucosal antibody levels. If they remain high enough the virus can be neutralized by those antibodies without ever taking hold. This means that you could be exposed to the virus without the rest of the immune system being activated again. The virus would enter, be bound by the antibodies that are already made, and there would be nothing left to stimulate an additional response. These antibodies are maintained by cells called long-lived plasma cells that sit in your bone marrow and act as antibody producing machines against whatever pathogen they were generated to fight. As their name suggests they are very long lived (on the order of decades to lifetimes typically though that can vary) and they are also very efficient at producing high antibody titers.
Now these cells may not always be enough. Either due to the amount of virus in the initial exposure, death of plasma cells over time, or just them not producing quite high enough titers to stop the infection. If this happens the virus would get past the initial response and actually infect you. This would trigger the rest of the immune response, and in this case since you were already vaccinated, mainly your memory T and B cells that would do their job again to restart antibody production and clear the infection. This would then act as a booster and generate a strong response again.
Now the other comments are correct in that there's no concrete data about our current situation and measuring that is hard because you can't directly measure exposure, but this is how it should work in theory. There are likely people currently experiencing both of these situations right now with some having enough immunity to prevent infections and others getting mild infections that likely act as their own boosters
-An Immunologist | 1,222 | 1,323 |
Why do beavers build dams? | First: I'm unaware of an "ask an animal expert" subreddit, so I hope this still fits here. Second: The most common answer as discovered by google searching suggests that beavers are seeking calmer waters to build their home. This doesn't sound like the end of the story to me. Surely if a beaver simply wants calmer water, they'd seek calmer water. I feel like there has to be more to the behavior, so I'm curious. | When asking why animals do things we can divide the question into proximate and ultimate causes. For example, the proximate cause of you eating is that you are hungry. The ultimate cause of you eating is that you need energy and nutrition to live and grow.
The ultimate cause of beavers building dams is to provide a suitable safe habitat for them to live. Beavers live in lodges, and prefer to have the entrance under several feet of water to prevent predatory entry and allow the beaver to exit under the ice in winter. Beavers are also faster swimmers than walkers, and are safer in the water.
Where a suitable body of water and embankment exists, beavers often _won't_ build dams. Instead they will just burrow into the bank and use the pond to access nearby trees. But in a narrow, fast flowing stream or a location without an embankment, they will construct a dam to raise the water level several feet. Then they can construct a lodge in the middle of the water with a suitable entrance.
So that's the ultimate reason; beavers need a safe place to live
But there's also a proximate reason. Beavers are probably about as smart as your average mammal, which means they can't work through the rather abstract chain of logic listed above, any more than your dog knows it needs to eat because of energy and nutrients. Beavers need a direct reason to build dams, a reason that will help them build dams in the right place and time and keep them repaired.
So what's the proximate reason? Beavers have a strong instinct to stifle the sound of running water. In a famous experiment a researcher recorded the sound of running water and played it out in a field near a beaver dam. He came back a day later and found the speaker buried under a pile of mud and logs and debris until the sound couldn't be heard. That's the basis of dam building. If there's a shallow area with water running over it, they'll start dumping logs and twigs and mud on it. If there's a gap in the dam with water splashing out, they'll fill it up. All this dumping debris to silence the sound of running water means that eventually the flow is stopped and a nice, calm pond remains. | 53 | 43 |
[General] Can someone ELI5 hardlight? (Illusion context) | The idea of a hologram is a three-dimensional projected image. Where normally we think of images as being two-dimensional and projected on a flat surface (like a movie screen or a television or your phone screen), a hologram uses either a special surface or some sort of force field to project a three-dimensional image. However, this is still just a projected light image: you can move your hand through it, and maybe even *see* through it. The hologram cannot pick things up or physically affect anything around it. Think of the 3D Jaws hologram that tried to "eat" Marty McFly in *Back to the Future Part II*.
"Hardlight" basically increases the forcefield(s) to the point that the hologram is tactile - you *can* touch it and feel it. The hologram is still essentially just light; it has no more mass than a bunch of photons - but your hand won't go through it anymore, which definitely increases the illusion. | 54 | 54 |
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ELI5: What is the difference between an ointment and a cream? | Ointment = 80% oil, 20% water
Cream = 50% oil, 50% water
Lotion = <50% oil, >50% water
That is the medical distinction. Over the counter products may be regulated as drugs and/or cosmetics, and may not be held to strict standards.
Basically, feels oily, it is ointment, feels creamy, cream or lotion. | 52 | 17 |
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How many GPU's? | I'm trying to teach myself the basics of how a computer works. I was going down a path of videos called CPU Explained, GPU explained, etc.Though I got confused when i got to the graphics card. The graphics obviously works with a GPU but what's not clear to me is whether or not it has a seperate GPU reserved for the graphics card or if it uses the same GPU as the main RAM-related chip that works with the CPU aswell.
Thanks in advance for the help! | There are two main kinds of GPUs: integrated and discrete
An integrated GPU is just part of the CPU designed for graphics processing and must run at the same frequency as the CPU while also being subject to the CPU's strict size and thermal limits. This is fine for rendering a website or word processor or even simple 3D games.
However for tasks that require much higher amount of graphics processing a discrete GPU is used as part of a device we call a graphics card. The card has an extremely fast connection to the CPU and hold its own memory specialized for graphics as well as the discrete GPU itself. This GPU is generally physically larger, clocked to a lower frequency, and provided with a lot of cooling. The graphics card also includes a whole circuit board to manage everything of course but the GPU and VRAM and the brains of it. | 22 | 24 |
ELI5: Are any negative consequences for judges (or courts) whose decisions get overturned frequently by higher courts? | You will get a better explanation from others, but simply put, the lower courts rule on basic interpretation of the law and use prior rulings as justification. The judge may even agree that the ruling appears unjust but prior rulings dictate they must rule in that way. So then it goes to appeal to a higher court that can seek more evidence and interpret the facts and circumstance with more authority and more interpretation that the lower courts can. So to punish the lower courts for doing what they are supposed to do would not be appropriate. | 55 | 130 |
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What exactly is a 'rhizome' according to Deleuze and Guattari? | A decentralized network of ideas, notions, philosophies, actions, human forces, etc. The traditional Enlightenment/Western structure is a tree, where everything branches out of a larger authority. With the rhizomic structure there is no center, rhizomes can multiply and extend. There is no destroying them in the traditional method (by destroying the trunk), they are evolutionary and individual and potentially transformative. An example of the rhizomic system in effect politically would be #Occupy, BLM, or the #metoo movement in social media. None had any direct leadership but spread organically by self-activating agents. | 44 | 56 |
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Does our brain process the image our eyes see all at once, or does it start at one point and move from there (like starting in the centre and moving outwards, or from one side to the other)? | Idk if this is something that we have the technology to test, but I just wonder if this is a known thing or are there some working theories or something?
Also, knowing this could be used for things like marketing and creating illusions, right? | Primary processing of different areas of a visual field will happen simultaneously, as the cells doing the processing are actually topographically organized. However, because there is greater detail in the fovea (dead center) of your visual field, there's simply going to be more raw information to speed up downstream feature extraction. This is pretty intuitive, as if we see a big brown fuzzy object somewhere in our visual field, we will recognize we are looking at a bear much quicker if we are staring at it than we would if it were on the periphery of our vision. | 19 | 26 |
Showing potential for external funding | I'm a postdoc going into the job market for assistant positions this year. I keep being told to show how my research program has potential for external funding in my application materials. My question is, how do I do this if I'm still a postdoc? For context, I have a couple small grants/awards from projects in grad school and I'm co-pi on my PI's grant, however I couldn't/can't get any other external funding going into my postdoc because I'm not a US resident and therefore don't qualify for virtually any NSF/NIH-type grant. Any suggestions? | Highlight the experience you have writing and talk about your strategy for applying for grants when you receive the position. They want to see that you have thought about how your work will be funded and who would be interested in funding it. | 13 | 17 |
ELI5: How do the big torrent uploaders like Yify, EZTV, etc, not get caught? | There can be many reasons:
- hiding behind a VPN or TOR or another proxy, or all of those; remember that there still are countries where piracy is not regulated by law
- initial seeding from a remote server
- actually living in a country with no laws against piracy
- all of the above
I also doubt that they are *that* heavily hunted for. The authorities have much bigger Internet problems like hacking, fraud, drug trade. | 11 | 43 |
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ELI5: What happens to a cucumber or other food when it's pickled? | How exactly does the vinegar solution pickles are in saturate and preserve them? What changes about the cucumber's chemistry that changes the taste and keeps it from spoiling? | Pickling is a fermentation process involving lactobacillus bacteria that can tolerate a high salinity environment which kills almost all other micro-organisms. The lactobacilli break down the structure of the cucumber changing its structure and also produce different compounds which change the flavor and increase the acidity of the cucumbers. Additionally, osmosis infuses the pickle with flavors from spices added to the pickling liquid. You end up with a salty, acidic, spice infused pickle that is not only preserved against rot from the action of other micro-organisms but a much different flavor | 50 | 135 |
Why is transracialism seen as less authentic than transgenderism? | If race and gender are both social constructs, categories society puts us into because of the way we look rather than biological realities about us, then why should one be seen as more authentic than the other? Many of those who claim transracial identities undergo surgery to look more like the race they identify with, it is obviously very important to them. The case is often made that we should refer to trans people by their preferred pronouns as not doing so can negatively impact their mental health. If it were the case that not respecting transracial peoples identities would have a negative effect on their wellbeing then I fail to see why theres a difference. The only argument I’ve really heard against transracialism is that race is a lived experience, therefore someone who was born as white British cannot truly know what it’s like to be Korean. Switch out “white British” to “man” and “Korean” to “woman” and it’s the same argument trans exclusionary feminists use as far as I can tell. I’m certain I haven’t heard all the arguments either way and my mind is far from being made, looking forward to an interesting discussion below. Thanks! | Attempts to validate transracialism through analogy with transgender people fail to acknowledge that race, ethnicity, and gender are fundamentally different categories.
Race is a political category, which in its modern form was invented in the 15th through 19th centuries by white people to justify colonialism, especially in America and western Europe. It is fundamentally defined by a set of shared political experiences and goals.
Ethnicity is a cultural category, fundamentally defined by shared cultural history and frameworks.
Gender is a social category, fundamentally defined by expressions of aesthetics and personality.
People who identify as belonging to races or ethnicities that they are not of are attempting to claim that they have political, cultural, and historical experiences that they do not.
On the other hand, the core idea of being trans is that it makes absolutely no sense to presume that ideas of gender defined and enforced by cisgender society are more accurate to a person than ideas defined and "enforced" by that person. It's more comparable to the Scientific Revolution than to transracialism - it seeks to leave issues of personal identity to those actually capable of verifying (and determining) personal identity, rather than to those who merely claim to be authorities on the matter.
In summary - Race and Ethnicity are categories that, at their most basic, level, are defined by external traits. Gender is a category that, at its most basic, can only be defined internally.
Also, for the record, "transgenderism" is generally a frowned-upon word, since it is often used to reduce the self-advocacy and push for greater public consciousness of trans identities and the nature of gender to a mere ideological allegiance. EDIT: To be clear, this addendum isn't intended as "you've committed a moral wrong by using the word in your question" but as "don't be surprised if someone calls you a transphobe if you frequently use the word around them" | 319 | 369 |
If the Higgs field gives mass to matter, and the mass of matter curves spacetime, and said curvature is the basis of gravity; does this imply that the Higgs field causes gravity? | Here the distinction between two types of mass becomes important. There’s inertial mass, which is the m in Newton’s F=ma. It takes effort to make something with nonzero inertial mass move. In contrast, something with zero inertial mass, such as photons, must always move at the speed of light. We know that electrons and quarks (which make up neutrons and protons) don’t move at the speed of light, so they must have nonzero inertial mass. The Higgs boson is what gives them this inertial mass.
On the other hand, there’s gravitational mass, which is what makes things gravitate towards each other. Incidentally, this is exactly equal to the inertial mass in Newton’s theory of motion and gravitation. In Einstein’s updated theory (general relativity), this equivalence between inertial and gravitational mass is so central that it has a name, the equivalence principle. However, Einstein extended the definition of this mass to include all forms of energy, so even massless things like light can now gravitationally attract other things. You don’t need inertial mass to have gravity, according to Einstein, so quarks and electrons would gravitate even without the Higgs boson (though it certainly helps).
In the Standard Model of Particle Physics, we included all the known fundamental particles and interactions between them (photons, electrons, quarks, Higgs boson, etc), with the exception of gravity. If we try to include it, then every single particle (with or without inertial mass) will interact with the graviton and lead to gravitation, in a way consistent with Einstein’s generalised mass-energy. However, doing so happens to cause the whole quantum field theory (the mathematics framework of the Standard Model) to utterly break down, so we have not yet understood the precise relation between the Higgs boson (which can only be explained through quantum field theory) and gravity. | 1,132 | 3,341 |
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ELI5: How did pre-industrial tribal societies - for example Inuits, manage to deal with inbreeding even though they were small in size and lacked outside contact? | Well, many such groups have dealt with issues associated with inbreeding. It's not like an instant thing though, you could go generations with no issues at all, or only a few unlucky ones who wind up with the bad genes. Also, it's pretty common for such tribal societies to have their daughters marry into neighboring tribes, adding more distant blood into the mix.
But, it's not like inbreeding will instantly lead to habsburg jaws or the hills have eyes, it just slowly raises the probability of certain issues over time. | 60 | 43 |
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How do fighter pilots/planes know that an enemy aircraft has them "locked"? | What signals are they receiving and why would an enemy plane or munition emit these signals in the first place? | >What signals are they receiving
Imagine you're hiding in a dark room. And you know someone is looking for you: because in that darkness you can see someone using a flashlight, inspecting every dark corner where you might be hiding ...
It's the same thing with whatever electromagnetic signal you're using to find and track enemy airplanes: There's got to be a constant stream (like a flashlight in a dark room) of signals (e.g. radio waves emitted by a radar) in order to see anything.
Back to you in the dark room: How do you know you were found? Because the person holding the flashlight is shining the light directly into your face, dead on, and they have stopped looking into other corners ... They obviously know exactly where you are, right?
Same thing with e.g. radar-tracking: Once a radar is starting to track and aim at a target that airplane will know it's being aimed at because there will be a constant beam of radio waves in frequencies that are very typical for a radar...
In modern military airplanes the radar warning should go off and warn the pilot that he's being aimed at.
Same thing if you use other tracking methods, e.g. laser: Modern military airplanes and helicopters have a laser-warning sensor too.
&#x200B;
>why would an enemy plane or munition emit these signals in the first place?
See the analogy with the dark room: how are you going to find someone in a very very dark room without a flashlight? Stumble in blindly and just touch everything, hoping your sense of touch will do the job? Yell and shout into the room and politely ask the other person to come out? The flashlight is the easiest and safest way.
Same thing with finding and tracking enemy airplanes: you have to emit signals (e.g. radar) or else you're blind. But it also means that the other side can detect where that signal came from...
It's a "cat and mouse" game. | 59 | 30 |
ELI5: Why does food's taste fade away the more we chew it? | This phenomenon varies between different food types. Put simply, as you chew, your saliva dissolves the food in your mouth to help you swallow it. The first thing your saliva touches is the outer layer of your food. In the case of prepared meals like steak and pasta, the main flavor is on the outermost layer of your food, as you chew and swallow the saliva in your mouth it takes the flavors (herbs, spices, salt, seared crust etc.) down with it and you taste more of the remaining meat or wheat in these examples, which don't taste as flavorful without that outer seasoning. This is also why if you don't like the flavor of broccoli or peas, they taste worse the more you chew them, since the seasoning washes down with your saliva and the vegetable taste starts coming out.
You'll notice that this doesn't happen with fruits, ice cream, or chocolate etc. since in those cases all layers of what you're eating have the same flavor. | 25 | 31 |
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ELI5: why does our sense of taste go off when we catch cold | Very often when i catch a cold my sense of smell goes off it’s understandable but why does our sense of taste also go off | Your olfactory bulbs determine the majority of flavour beyond the five basic tastes detected by your tongue. They reside in your upper nasal cavity, which as you might have noticed becomes blocked and inflamed when you have a cold. If the aromas from food can't reach the receptors, they can't be detected, it's as simple as that. You will still be able to detect tastes, i.e. salt, sweet, bitter, sour and umami, because your tongue is not obstructed. This is also why people may hold their nose when required to eat something they find unpleasant. Blocking the airflow prevents the unpleasant flavours from getting up there. | 61 | 120 |
ELI5: Why are some types of alcohol drinkable while some, like rubbing alcohol will kill you? | "Alcohol" is a general term for a group of organic substances. There are a lot of them and almost all alcohols are poison for the human body. However, at some point in time people found out that beer tastes well, and over the course of many generations a pretty good resistance to a single alcohol that is called ethanol was developed (hurray to the liver).
So only one Alcohol is somewhat safe for consumption **in very small quantities**, which has its reason in ancient human culture, all the other ones really are not (a few ml of methanol will blind you, a few more will kill you, for starters). | 30 | 27 |
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ELI5:What is supergravity / supersymmetry? | Quantum mechanics divides particles into two types that obey different rules, fermions and bosons. Supersymmetry claims that, for every particle species, there is a partner species such that, of the two, one is a boson and the other's a fermion. If this is true, electrons (which are fermions) are partnered with selectrons (which would be bosons), and photons (which are bosons) are partnered with photinos (which would be fermions). In physics, "symmetries" are things that don't change the laws of physics, the idea being that, if you swap all particles with their partner species, the interactions are unchanged. (Well, not quite unchanged; the details depend on particle masses, and these undiscovered partners must have a lot more mass or we'd have found them by now.) But supersymmetry is the only unconfirmed symmetry nature can have, given the constraints of quantum mechanics and relativity.
Particles and their supersymmetric partners have similar interactions with the Higgs field. There's a technical problem with the theory of Higgs bosons that can be easily solved if high-mass supersymmetric partners exist. And some attempts to explain gravity in the same terms as other forces in nature require supersymmetry to work. Supergravity is one such approach; another is string theory. | 39 | 265 |
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ELI5: How does Hypnosis work? What is it capable of? | How is it that people can describe something or someone in great detail when hypnotized which they wouldn't have been able to remember otherwise?
What goes on in the brain during Hypnosis? | It really depends on your definition of "works." Real hypnotists just put you in a very calm relaxed state. It's easier to communicate and think when you're calm. But you probably won't remember things youve forgotten or repressed. | 4,059 | 7,953 |
eli5 What is a Candidate Key? [Normalisation Process] | I know it's a basic question but I can find a simple answer.
Is it just multiple primary keys? | It is a key which is eligible to be a primary key, it is also unique. There maybe multiple candidate keys in a table out of that we select one as the primary key, which is the most suitable for a particular table. For an example in Employee table there is employeeId and passportNo, both are unique so they are eligible to be primary key so they are called the candidate key. But out of that employeeId is the most preferred to become the primary key since it is the Employee table. | 12 | 20 |
If supply problems are causing inflation, isn't increasing interest rates make that worst? | From what I understand the supply problem caused by the pandemic led us to inflation and the war exacerbated it.
If that's the case, isn't raising the interest rates make that problem worst? By making difficult to businesses to adjust (aka invest) to the demand. At the same time, destroying the economy.
A secondary question is, what can governments do to inscrease supply?
Maybe nothing? That's why the only alternative is lower demand? | Increasing interest rates should lower demand and ease backlog/congestion on the supply-side in theory.
Increasing supply from a government's perspective would involve investing in building programs, infrastructure, and liberalizing the labor market to some extent. | 22 | 24 |
How to choose an appropriate title in Biotech industry (without industry experience)? | Currently, I am working at a University. I have 10+ years of experience in lab with PhD degree.
I am looking for a job in Biotech industry.
Should I choose the such as research associate or senior scientist?
My concern is that I may be overqualified as a research associate, but for a senior scientist I lack industry background, as commented by my friends.
Any advice? Thank you in advance. | Senior scientist is entry level research with a PhD and often (though not necessarily) postdoc in hand.
If your 10+ years experience includes time before your PhD and the years you've spent in training roles, Scientist or Senior Scientist are your biotech industry level to target.
If you have a PhD + 10 years researcher (not faculty) experience after PhD it's Senior Scientist to Principal, depending on how much leadership or management you had the opportunity to develop. If you were faculty for ten years, you can go higher. | 16 | 20 |
ELI5:If our bodies slowly begin to ignore constant external stimuli (Nueral Adaptation), then why does tinnitus exist? | Tinnitus can be cause by a number of things, from ear infections to medication reactions. Long term tinnitus is typically due to hearing loss and isn't really an external stimuli, it's a neurological response to the hearing loss or ear damage. Think of it as similar to phantom limb pain, there's no actual physical stimuli but the nerves still send the signals. | 43 | 242 |
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ELI5: Why can I see in low light so much better than even a high-quality camera? | Cameras seem to perform so much worse in low light than how I perceive a room in person, why is that? | Night vision in cameras and night vision in eyes aim for the same thing. In both cases, the goal is to widen the dynamic range available to view the environment. However, cameras and eyes work in very different ways. The he camera sets one exposure level for the entire scene, but each minute portion of the retina (the eye's "sensor") sets adaptation level independently. For example, suppose the scene has a small light at night. The camera will meter an entire photo (normally at a number of points) and the resulting average will probably be pretty dark. So the exposure or ISO are pumped up, which means any light in the picture will be over exposed, and noise is added.
On a quick aside, ISO is basically the "volume" of the light hitting the sensor; the circuit amplifies the light hitting it but as you amplify the digital signals interruption from radio waves, heat etc can make light be registered when it isn't even there. thus the random little dots.
Meanwhile, the eye will measure 120million different points of the environment, sensing the amount of light available in each and exposing it accordingly. You can still over/underexpose, like when you look from a screen to a dark room quickly. So basically, your eye is more sensitive to light than a camera, is performing a HDR style photo (ie varying exposures across the environment), has a decent sized sensor (better than those camera phones), and because of this gets much better results. Current high end SLRs are getting pretty damn close though! | 36 | 93 |
Spinoza Explanation | To make it simple, we are studying Spinoza in class and i still cannot fully understand the teacher and the texts made by spinoza. This is why i came on this thread, to have some answers, explanations. The subject i would need help are: The substance and modes thing, his theory of truth, theory about making errors, etc. In other words a recap of almost eveything, because i dont understand almost anything i read.
Thank you. | Spinoza's theory of Truth / Error is terrifically difficult. But you won't understand it until you get the basic system down.
The starting characters are substance, attribute, and mode.
Substance is the basic stuff, the being, of existence.
Attributes are ways of understanding substance. Ways of interpreting or relating to substance. For Spinoza, the two attributes we know are thought and extension. Every particular thing will be either a thought thing, or an extension thing. (This will get more complicated later.)
Modes are modifications of substance.
Ok. So what the hell does that mean.
Think of the hood of a car. Suppose someone hits the hood with a hammer. That will produce a dent, right? The relationship of the dent and the hood of the car is kinda like the relationship of substance and modes. In order for a mode (dent) to exist, there has to be something in which it exists. All of the modes (dents) exist in substance (the hood of the car). You couldn't have dents without car hoods; there has to be some thing that is dented. Moreover, those dents in some way modify the car hood. The dent exists in the car hood, and the car hood is modified by the dent.
That's reality, for Spinoza. Reality is a really big car hood. Every existing thing (mode) is a dent in that car hood.
That's a basic starting point for Spinoza's system. Can you think it? Because nothing else will make sense until you can think the substance-attribute-mode model. | 10 | 15 |
Lets say an LED emits one wavelength of light & each photon has a random phase angle. Why doesn't destructive interference cause the average amplitude of the light wave to be 0? | From [here](http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1zkwnh/why_do_the_atoms_that_comprise_reflective/cfv5nqm?context=1). | LED's do not emit coherent light. Light waves have to be coherent in order to experience stationary destructive interference (the kind you are referring to). You hinted at this when you stipulated that the LED only emits one wavelength of light. But there is more to coherence than wavelength. Coherence of two waves also involves:
* that the waves have the same polarization
* that the waves have a constant relative phase (which seems to be the opposite of what you stated)
* that each wave retains a constant overall phase over the length of interest. (Mathematically, a perfect sine wave retains its phase for eternity. That does not happen in real-life waves. The fact that no physical wave retains a constant phase forever is equivalent to the statement that there are no perfectly monochromatic waves in the real world)
Consider this. For simple, classical electromagnetic waves, the intensity if light is proportional to the time-average of the electric field squared:
*I* ∝ <|*E*|^2 >
If the field is the sum of two waves, this becomes:
*I* ∝ <|*E**_1_* + *E**_2_*|^2 >
*I* ∝ <|*E**_1_*|^2 > + <|*E**_2_*|^2 > + 2 <|*E**_1_*||*E**_2_*|cos(Arg(*E**_1_*)-Arg(*E**_2_*))>
*I* ∝ *I**_1_* + *I**_2_* + 2 <|*E**_1_*||*E**_2_*|cos(Arg(*E**_1_*)-Arg(*E**_2_*))>
The angle brackets represent taking the time average and "Arg" means the phase of a wave. The last term is the interference term. If the phase difference changes in time, then the time average of the last term is zero and the intensity of the total wave is just the sum of the intensities of the individual waves. We call these waves incoherent. If the phase difference is constant in time, then the time average is generally some non-zero number and you get interference effects. These waves are called coherent. Note for simplicity, these equations only represent two waves with the same polarization.
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[Guardians of the Galaxy] How come Rocket Raccoon is the only one who can understand Groot? | In information theory, there's an implication of the theorem called the Shannon Source Coding Theorem, and the concept of the Shannon Limit, which instructs us that for any given set of symbols, there is a limit to the amount of distinct bits of information that can be communicated via possible arrangements of those symbols.
What that *tells* us is that Groot is *not* communicating using the English language. Or … whatever language it happens to be that those other anthropoform bipedals around him are using.
Groot's communications are instead *"out-of-band"*. The same phenomenon happens with, for instance, Earth Mockingbirds. They remember and perform everything — from car alarms, to musical passages, to human speech, to the sound of engines starting to the stop notifications of transit busses.
Yet, when mockingbirds perform these, their choice of which performance isn't (usually) communicative. Instead, studies demonstrate that they choose the performance to match the acoustic qualities of the environment (quiet, loud, cluttered, open plain, high up perch, down in the grass, sheltered in a cubby), and *modulate particular frequency bands and amplitudes* — which may or may not be in human hearing capability — to convey their meaning to their intended recipient. The performance that humans experience is, for mockingbirds, simply a carrier, a *base* against which to set their communications.
TL;DR: ^*wheeze* ^^**sound** ^^**of** ^^**children** ^^**laughing** *tinkling of bells*
`Understanding`
`is a three-edged sword`
^^^**_creaking_** ^^^**_of_** ^^^**_an_** ^^^**_old_** ^^^**_boat_** *sealing of an airlock hatch* | 265 | 367 |
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How do Maxwell's equations prove that electromagnetic waves are light? | Initially, Maxwell conjectured that, since Maxwell's Equations predict waves that move at the speed of light, light waves might be electromagnetic waves.
However, once you make that connection, then you can test it, and see if light interacts with charges as it should if it is an electromagnetic wave. In this way, you can indeed verify that light waves are electromagnetic waves. You can study how charges will produce electromagnetic waves and then check that in those situations in which those waves have the right frequencies, you see light. You can see what properties cause electromagnetic waves to be reflected, transmitted, or scattered, and by how much, and then show that light waves reflect, transmit, and scatter in exactly these situations by the right amount. In this way, you can demonstrate that light is, indeed, electromagnetic radiation. | 18 | 26 |
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What would happen if I looked at Medusa through contacts or glasses? | It depends on whether you could see her clearly or not.
If they aren't your prescription, and they make everything blurry enough, you won't be able to see anything but a blob and be fine.
If you can see through them fine, you'll gaze upon her legendary visage and be turned to stone. | 14 | 15 |
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ELI5: what does a music producer actually do? | I just watched an amazing documentary about Quincy Jones, trailer is here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT7gn6nhsAc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT7gn6nhsAc)
He is responsible for decades of hits, but I'm not sure what that exactly means. Dr Dre says he became a producer because of Quincy, but in what ways are they the same? | The producer’s role is to oversee the creative elements of the project and manage the budget. It’s a term largely misused in some genres where every person who walks in the studio gets a producer credit, but as an official music industry gig, it comes with a tremendous amount of responsibility.
The producer is the glue AND the lubricant for taking the artist’s vision and turning it into a sellable product. Some are more musically hands on while others are fairly administrative, and the way that plays out generally depends on the artist. In the case of the greats like Quincy Jones, there is a musical depth and a sound they’ve become known for and artists will seek them out to our that signature on their music for them.
More mundane, the producer manages the budget and deals with the label on the business side. The super creative types will have a production coordinator who helps navigate those things while the administrative types might use a PC to help wrangle studio scheduling and such.
In reality, a music producer is no different than a sandwich producer or a house producer. They get paid to make something great out of loose parts and the great ones are few and far between.
Source: 25 years in the music industry. | 20 | 17 |
Are there any commentaries on the relationship, or distinction, between knowledge and wisdom? What would it mean to be knowledgeable, but unwise? | Echoing u/Aakacia... your best bet and starting point is Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Especially book VI where he talks about intellectual virtues (2-5 mostly spent on moral virtues like courage, liberality etc) like philosophical wisdom, practical wisdom, craft, scientific knowledge and intuitive knowledge.
While it is always better and advisable to read a classic text yourself (try the MIT PRESS ARCHIVES edition of NE trans by Reeve) here’s the broad gist of the difference-
Wisdom as explained above by Aristotle can be philosophical (about things that are unchangeable and we cannot deliberate about, what he calls first principles, think loosely Kantian a priori) or practical wisdom (concerns worldly stuff that changes and we can deliberate about) whereas there are three types of knowledge that can be learnt- craft or techniques (think art and technology), scientific knowledge (standard science) & intuitive knowledge (certain reflexes etc). Overall intellectual virtues can be learnt and taught but moral virtues are only learnt by doing.
So one can be knowledgeable about the craft and science but may not be wise since wisdom involves deliberation - the understanding and judgment to know where and when to apply the knowledge for the best outcomes. The person who is able to do that well is practically wise (phronimos) & such people are best fit to be rulers and legislators. The ideal city-state for Aristotle thus plans their education etc for the children such that they can become good legislators eventually. Note that this naturally means only the moneyed, well off Greek MEN get to be so since the rest (non Greeks, slaves, cobblers and other labourers, women etc) are unfit morally and intellectually. Yeah, Aristotle was a gigantic asshat like that :)
Let us know if that helps and if you need more supplemental reading... will suggest some nice articles. Good luck! :) | 18 | 56 |
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[General] How would you deal with a growing metahuman problem? | People everywhere are getting powers. They're putting on costumes and having really expensive fights. You're a person with resources. What do you do? | Invest in construction companies, hedge your bet by also investing in insurance.
Start a meta-powered training course for collateral damage mitigation to train as many of the hero capes as possible to not break things. Harvest as much data as possible on the capes your people are training, use that data to determine better tactics and try to determine if there's a pattern in powers awakening.
If you can predict which people will have powers you can invest in those specific people when they're young to remove them from potential sources of abuse and cruelty in their lives and with a team of sociologists, psychologists and neurologists sculpt their upbringing to minimize chances of them turning to cruelty or crime.
You now have an army of indoctrinated power users. You win. | 25 | 17 |
ELI5: what is the purpose of the value e? | The mathematical constant e is referred to as representing natural growth. Unlike other popular constants like pi, e does not have a handy visual to explain it. Instead it can be thought of using banks and interest:
(For true ELI5, interest means "the bank will add 'this much' to your money at the specified time)
If we have a bank that generously offers 100% interest every year, and you give them $1, then after a year you will have $2.
But wait! A rival bank wants to offer 50% interest TWICE a year if you bank with them. At first, you may think that 50% twice = 100% once, but that isn't the case. After 6 months with this bank, your total + interest will be $1.50. Then another 6 months later it would be $2.25, getting $0.75 from 50% of the $1.50.
So it would seem that even if the % interest adds to the same 100%, getting it more often leads to giving you more money! So what about a bank that offers 25% interest every 3 months? Or 8.3% every month? How about an inconceivablely small percentage interest at every fraction of a millisecond throughout the year?
You'll find that the final amount tends toward the value of e if you were able to gain interest at a "natural" rate of growth.
100% once a year: $2
50% twice a year: $2.25
25% four times a year: $2.4414
8.3% twelve times a year: $2.613035
Every possible moment in a year: $2.71828 (approaching the value of e)
e is also important in Calculus and the natural log, but those are waaaay beyond a 5 year old. | 206 | 74 |
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ELI5:Why do people who work in an office who never leave the office and are never seen by anyone other than coworkers required to dress up? | What you wear influences how you feel about yourself and how other people feel about you. Which means that what you wear has influence about how you behave and about how people behave towards you. What you wear sends out signals to yourself and to other people.
That's part -- *part* -- of the reason why a judge wears a robe, a doctor a white coat, a nurse scrubs, a "professional" a suit and tie, a christian a cross, a person from the country a camo shirt, someone who identifies as a redneck a shirt with sleeves cut off, a cop all his or her various adornments, etc. How we appear sends out signals about who we are to ourselves and to other people.
When you're representing a company and supposed to be professional and interacting with clients then it's clear why you might have to wear a suit and tie: to signal to the client that you are a professional.
Client or not, you're going to be interacting with your co-workers and vice versa. As a general rule businesses think that it would be a good thing if all y'all employees interacted with each other in a professional way. Having to dress professionally reminds and encourages all y'all to behave professionally and treat each other professionally. | 30 | 51 |
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ELI5: People say that proving P=NP would change computing overnight, but how? Wouldn't you still have to figure out the programming/computing technology to solve the NP problems? How would it affect our current computing? | First you have to understand a little bit about the P and NP problem classes. For instance computer scientists already know a fast algorithm to multiply two numbers together, which happens to be a P problem.
However computer scientists don't know a fast algorithm to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem, which happens to be an NP problem. The Traveling Salesman Problem is defined as so: Given a list of cities what is the shortest possible route that a traveling salesman can visit each city exactly once and return to the origin city? Alternatively computer scientists also don't know a fast algorithm to solve the Knapsack Problem, which also happens to be an NP problem. The knapsack problem is defined as so: Given a set of different objects, each with a weight and a monetary value, determine the number of each item to put into the knapsack so that the total monetary value is as large as possible.
What computer scientists learned is that some problems can actually be converted into other problems by using clever logic. For instance the Traveling Salesman Problem can actually be converted to the Boolean Satisfiability Problem, where the details to this problem are not really important here (just know that it is also an NP problem and does not have a fast algorithm to solve it as well). Computer Scientists also found out that the Knapsack problem can be converted to the Boolean Satisfiability Problem, along with many other problems (Decryption is another one of these problems, which also happens to be an NP problem). These problems, that can converted to the Boolean Satisfiability Problem, are actually called NP-Complete problems.
Now IF a computer scientist figures out a fast algorithm to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem it would mean that we could convert that algorithm to solve the Boolean Satisfiability Problem as well. In turn we could use the fast algorithm to then solve the Knapsack problem and all the other NP-Complete problems.
The important part of all this discussion is that, if in fact P does equal NP, that means there MUST exist a fast algorithm to solve the Traveling Salesman Problem and therefore a fast algorithm to solve all the NP-Complete problems (which there are a fair amount of). This would be a major discovery because then programmers would be able to use fast algorithms to solve problems that they previously thought could only be solved with slower algorithms. Which means that programmers would be able to make much faster software than they previously thought was possible just by modifying the algorithm alone and not relying on hardware advances. | 220 | 432 |
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Can someone help break down this Covid-19 Delta variant vaccine ADE research? | This article was recently shared with me in an attempt to discourage me from getting my child vaccinated against Covid-19. That biased me against the article immediately, but Journal of Infection appears to be a reputable, peer-reviewed source.
At a high level, the article appears to be saying that generation 1 mRNA vaccines show a preference (in a lab environment?) for ENHANCING Covid-19 Delta variant infections.
Every news report I have seen up until now has indicated that, although breakthrough infection is more possible with the Delta variant, vaccination has strong co-indications with less severe infection, easier hospital stays, and survival, regardless of variant, so I don't understand what, ultimately, these "Enhancing Antibodies" are doing and whether this actually presents a cause for concern, as Yahi, Chahinian, and Fantini seem to be saying ("ADE of delta variants is a potential risk for current vaccines") or if this simply helps to explain WHY the Delta variant is slightly more likely to result in a breakthrough infection.
The conclusion of the article absolutely doesn't support the "don't vaccinate your kid" message of the person who shared it (simply saying more research is needed), as it says more study is needed, but I'd still like to ensure I understand the article correctly.
https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(21)00392-3/fulltext#relatedArticles
Edit to fix broken link | "ADE" is a condition where antibodies enhance disease, logically enough.
We know that in the case of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies do *not* enhance disease. How do we know this? We have literally billions of people carrying antibodies, whether from infection or vaccination, and they are *protected* against disease. There are no observed situations in which antibodies enhance disease for SARS-CoV-2, given hundreds of millions of observations.
So we know that ADE is not a thing for SARS-CoV-2.
But vaccinologists are extraordinarily careful. This paper asks:
* Can we make an artificial system, a model case, where we do everything we can to force ADE to happen? *Answer*: Nope. Even when we do that, there's no ADE.
* Well, if we analyze this artificial, forced system, can we see hints of a shadow of the potential of ADE? *Answer*: Maybe we can. There's a minor component of the immune response that is swamped by the protective response, but that if isolated might cause ADE.
* Well, what about the variants? Are they more likely to cause this shadow of a hint of ADE? *Answer*: Not really worse, not better. Still no ADE, still a tiny fraction of a response.
* Is there anything we could do to remove this shadow of a hint of ADE? *Answer* Probably! If this artificial, barely detectable thing ever becomes detectable and in a non-artificial system, here's how to fix it.
This is three levels deep of due diligence. | 28 | 30 |
CMV: Modern day protests are pointless. | Don’t get me wrong, I understand their importance in a democracy, however I feel like I haven’t seen a protest in my lifetime that has actually generated positive change. Most I see simply solidly people’s own opinions and split the community in to two halves on a topic.
The media coverage of all protests only ever show the bad apples which of course is going to undermine any message you want to get out there. It just feels like there are people who simple love to protest, and gather in the streets and yell stuff.
This comment refers to all topics, BLM, anti-lockdown, climate change. I agree with so much of the messaging, (with some of these topics) but find the act of protesting just so counter productive to meaningful change.
CLARIFICATION: ok, I don’t want to reply to everyone because you all have valid points. I knew going into this that I was wrong, I just needed to hear some hope in humanity.
I guess my frustration stemmed from a conversation I was having with someone after the lockdown riots. They are a hardline conservative in their view and simply see BLM and Extinction rebellion protests as anarchists stirring up trouble, while the lockdown protests were good people who just want to buy their kids some shoes. It just annoyed me that he couldn’t see the difference, and made a thought go off on my head that protest simply locks people into whatever suits their narrative and who they see as the bad guys is totally dependent on pre-conceived political views.
I guess my point is a protest will give someone who is against a topic, a firm enemy to hate and suddenly the conversations I’m having simply turn into - “look at XX protesters and the horrible things those people did (vandalism, violence etc), you want to support them?” | Not only have the BLM protests sparked a national discussion on police brutality and racial injustice in the legal system, but they also led to police reforms in dozens of cities across the nation. So, I'd think twice before calling them pointless. | 39 | 27 |
What are the requirements for becoming a philosophy professor? | I have seen similar questions to this one asked on this subreddit before, but it seems to me that most of those questions are from people seeking to teach at prestigious schools or to also become considered "philosophers" (which I guess means having their theoretical contributions to the branch of philosophy of their interest become widely read and acknowledged?). I do not necessarily want either of those things. I would be satisfied with being a philosophy professor in literally any college no matter the prestige, and I am not concerned with gaining notoriety of any sort. I live in the United States, and I essentially wonder whether I must attend really prestigious schools in order to ultimately attain my doctorate even if I am satisfied with teaching at less prestigious schools? Don't most colleges have philosophy professors in the United States, whether they are top schools or not? If so, do those colleges seek professors that graduated from top schools? Any other information about the path to becoming a philosophy professor in the United States would also be appreciated. | It sounds like you're imagining a position at a small, out of the way school where not a lot of people apply to work (because it's low-prestige and so forth). There is no such position. The job market is incredibly competitive. Any permanent position has hundreds of applicants, even if that position is at a school no one has heard of in the middle of nowhere. Many graduates, even those who went to prestigious doctoral programs, spend years moving between 1-2-year gigs until they finally land a tenure-track or otherwise permanent job -- and that's what happens when everything goes well. Some spend a few years hopping between adjunct and visiting positions before eventually dropping out and doing something else. Keep in mind that these temporary positions quite often are poorly compensated and come with huge teaching loads, leaving you little time to do the research, writing, conference-going, paper revision, and other networking necessary to get a position (*any* position -- again, the market is sufficiently competitive that there are no easy positions that don't require your resume to outshine hundreds of other applicants'). | 71 | 53 |
What ways can a your software development/computer science knowledge make money? | Outside of a job working for a company or freelancing online as an employee or contractor.
What other options are possible for a software developer to make money using their programming/computer science skills/background? | Build a pure API SaaS. If you are familiar with building Serverless applications, on AWS, you can start off spending $0 and scale up with your income from said App, pretty much zero cost of entry except time spent developing. Some quick ideas like product ratings/reviews, appointment management, reminder service etc. would be quick enough to build out. | 22 | 19 |
I am a student majoring in Economics, and I really want to understand the topic very thoroughly.Trying to find some books to help me out | Does it make sense to read books on the subject in chronological order, as to follow the progress of economic thought? Ex; Smith>Malthus>List>...Friedman>Greenspan
Also, any books related to the topic would be great. I've read a few, but I'd like to expand my understanding as much as possible.
Edit: Wow, guys. Thanks for the suggestions! I can't wait to dive into these | Read an intro textbook. Seriously, that's what they're there for. Ten hours in Mankiw or Cowen/Tabarrok is a much better use of your time than ten hours in Adam Smith, at this stage of your education.
Read an intro textbook. Then read Steve Landsburg's *The Armchair Economist* to get an idea of microeconomics.
What subfields of economics are you particularly interested in? | 14 | 32 |
Do we keep our atoms as we age?(more questions inside) | 1.Are there any atoms which stay with us for life?
2.How do we loose atoms?
3.We gain atoms from vitamins an stuff from food right?
first time posting here :S
sorry if they are stupid questions or if there is no way of knowing the answer. just i always wondered. | You are correct in assuming you gain atoms through ingestion, but also through respiration.
There are likely atoms that stay with you for life, or close to it.
An example would be ova (egg cells in women's ovaries) which go into suspended animation in a fetus. Some of them stay in that state for decades, until menopause after 50 or so (average).
It is imposible to know this for sure, without tagging every single atom in your body with a unique tag of some sort, an impossibility. | 11 | 31 |
ELI5: Why are password manager programmes considered secure? Surely hackers then only need to access one piece of software to have access to all accounts. | With password managers, your passwords are encrypted, and are only decrypted on your local computer. So the only way that anyone can access your passwords is if they have control of the computer you're on (via a virus or trojan horse), in which case they could already read every password you type *anyway*, even if you weren't using a password manager. | 367 | 801 |
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ELI5: How do headphones create a sense of something being behind/in front of you, when they only play sound to the left and right of your head? | I want to elaborate on the other answers to explain how it actually works. Your ears aren't just two holes in your ear- they have flesh that is shaped differently in each direction. As sounds come to your ear through different directions, the shape of your outer ear alters the sound (making certain frequencies change in volume by the time they hit your inner ear).
Your can (sort of) reproduce this in the studio by accentuating different frequencies and affects like reverb. But placing audio in front and behind is actually a lot harder to replicate than left and right. "Far vs near" and "left vs right" can be done easily - "forward vs backwards" and "up vs down" are a lot more ambiguous. | 13 | 33 |
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CMV: I'm not sure that the government should be intervening in private businesses to force them to provide service to gays or other groups. | I don't agree with people who choose to discriminate against gays (or any other group really), and I'm certainly not against various individuals or private groups boycotting businesses that have these practices, but I'm also unconvinced that government intervention is necessary/solves the problem.
For one: the vast majority of business won't know they are serving gays. Things like wedding planners/etc. are one of the few exceptions, and I have a hard time believing that so many wedding planners are homophobic that gays won't be able to get that service. Not to mention that fact that unlike with black segregation, failing to get a wedding planner is not such a serious issue as being unable to buy your groceries at any store in the town.
Basically, while I think the individuals who choose to discrimnate are despicable, the issue seems like it isn't serious enough to warrant large scale government intervention, and in this case, let the bigots be bigots. The tide of social acceptance is changing in the country and they will go away on their own without us forcing our views on them. Please change my view.
-edit- Lots of commenters are using hypothetical examples of discrimination to argue the point. I readily admit that there are hypothetical examples of severe discrimination, but my argument rests on the idea that these hypotheticals aren't actually occuring. Evidence of actual **widespread** discrimination (people refusing to serve gays because it conflicts with their religious beliefs) will earn a delta. My point is that these things aren't (yet) happening so it's not yet neccesary to enact protective legislation.
-edit2- I've awarded a tentative delta to /u/NaturalSelectorX for providing a [link](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/same-sex-housing-discrimination_n_3455463.html?) to a study about systematic housing discrimination against gays. However, I have some issues with how the study was conducted and awarded the delta with the assumption that the article just did a poor job reporting about the study and not that the study itself was poorly performed. Similar studies with better methodology (or at least better reporting) would be excellent evidence to change my view. | What about when a business:
* Has a monopoly on service, either locally, regionally or nationally?
* Has provided the exact same service in the past?
* Provides a service that is critical to the function of a citizen in society?
Further, how does the right to discriminate on a purely religious basis differ from the right to discriminate on any other basis, including but not limited to simple racism?
We'll get to the part you mention about determining when and how a business can figure out whom to discriminate against, but I'd like you to clear up the above, first. | 49 | 75 |
ELI5:ELI5:Why do ears hurt in a quiet room when headphones are turned up to full volume, but not at the same volume in a noisy environment? Is it not incurring the same damage? | There's a term in hearing science known as signal to noise ratio. It refers to how loud what you want to hear is in relation to background noise. The auditory processing center in the brain tries to distinguish the signal (e.g. what is coming from your headphones) from background noise. In a quiet room, the signal to noise ratio is high, so you don't need an excessive volume to distinguish from background noise. In this case, full volume is too much for the auditory system, which causes the pain. The ears are designed to hurt when sounds are damaging-inducing loud.
In a noisy environment, the signal to noise ratio is initially lower. You feel the need to increase the volume of your headphones to increase the ratio. The auditory processing system is working hard and distracted by competing signals, so your headphones don't seem as loud even though they are.
Having the headphones at the same volume would incur the same damage, regardless of environment. | 46 | 75 |
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What happens to the earth/soil beneath large cities over time? | When I visit NYC I can't help but wonder what the conditions are beneath miles of tar and concrete. What are the long term implications? Have there been many geological studies on this? | It really really depends on the type of geologic environment you're building on. In NYC, it's mostly alluvial, so the foundations of the buildings go very very deep, whereas in Finland, you can build a highrise just on almost the open ground because the bedrock is on the surface.
Buildings are no where near heavy enough to cause any kind of geologic phenomena (earthquakes) if that is what you are concerned about. | 12 | 35 |
ELI5: Why aren’t medication dosages based on weight? | Maybe some are. But I’m thinking of simple things like aspirin or Tylenol. Also my blood pressure and cholesterol meds. It seems the only factor is child versus adult. But if I am a large person in pain, why isn’t it appropriate to add an additional pill? | They are, when a person's weight will make a medical significance.
Most common medication dosages, though, are just fine as is regardless of weight. Because most people fall within a certain weight range. If someone is outside of that range, or the medicine is that specific, then the dosage will be changed as needed. | 23 | 22 |
ELI5: How did the suit become the worldwide pinnacle of men's fashion? | It became the central uniform of aristocracy/upper classes in the late 19th century, at the height of European (British) Imperialism. As a result it became basically the default for fashion the world over and subsequently it's been used by people in lower echelons of society to appear more wealthy/professional. Every man in the city US except for the very poor were wearing them around the turn of the 20th Century, unless they were given a special uniform by their employer.
It has been the tradition ever since, while the men's fashion world has been less focused on the style of the upper class.
edit: tl;dr The suit is essentially the grass covered front yard of fashion. | 79 | 154 |
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ELI5: If I enter a password wrong thrice, the system locks me out. How are hackers able to attempt millions of combinations of passwords without the system locking them out? | Edit: Thank you everyone who’s taken out time to explain it to me. I’ve learnt so much. Appreciate it.
Yes, I do use ‘thrice’ in my conversation whenever required. I’m glad it amused so many of you. | * Modern passwords work by a process called "hashing".
* Hashing basically means:
* you take some input, like the characters someone enters for a password, and you shove it through a machine.
* That machine then spits out some new string of characters that doesn't seem like it has anything to do with what was shoved in to start with.
* But the trick is that it does have some sort of connection.
* The only way to get that specific output is to feed in that specific input.
* So when you sign up an account with a website, they take the password you made up, shove it through their hash-machine and then store the output.
* So even if they get hacked, the hacker will only get the hash, not the password.
* But when you go back to the website and enter in your password their hash-machine will spit out the correct "hash" and since it matches with the one linked to your user name, they let you in.
* However, if a hacker was able to steal a complete list of all the hashed passwords for a site, they could build their own hash-machine and just start trying every possible combination of inputs to see if one of them spits out a hash that was in the list.
* This would allow them to make as many attempts as they want without running into the rate limit on the website.
* This is typically not easy to do though.
* So most hackers actually just try to trick you into giving them your password.
* Like sending you a link on Facebook that looks like it leads to a login-page when really it's a fake website that just copies whatever you type in the password box.
* EDIT: Updated to more directly answer OP's question. | 13,283 | 25,481 |
ELI5: Why do weightlifters looks “fat” rather than just pure muscle? | To build muscle, you need to lift weights and eat a calorie surplus. The extra calories allow you to grow -- both muscle and fat.
Body builders then cut -- they stop eating as much, but keep working out, to reduce the fat.
But for weightlifters, the cutting is just a waste of time. It makes more sense to keep eating and keeping building muscle. (Mind you, they need to cut a bit, they can't get so fat that it gets in the way, but they don't need to be crazy low fat like body builders).
All the same muscles are there, they just aren't as visible. | 2,731 | 1,262 |
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How do they keep patients alive during heart surgery when they switch out the the heart for the new one? | The surgeon sets up Cannulas (tubes) in both the "in" and "out" of the heart, usually the vena cava and aorta (although the sites can vary).
These tubes are connected to an extracorporeal circulation machine that does many things:
* Circulate the blood as a mechanical pump would. It's "smooth" though, there is no pumping like a heart.
* Oxygenate the blood via a membrane that allows gas to pass through. Recent technologies are pretty efficient.
* Keep it at the required temperature
The patient is also administered anticoagulant medication (usually heparin) to prevent any blood clot from forming in the machine. | 3,695 | 5,439 |
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CMV: "Healthcare can't be a right because then doctors would be made slaves" is a ridiculous argument | (Note, you can replace "healthcare" with basically any other social program or facility, be it education, housing, food etc, the healthcare bit is not the important bit, just one example where this argument is made)
**Argument I see made:**
If healthcare is a human right, that means the government **has** to give it to you, which means if no doctors wanted to work (or not enough doctors), the government would have to **force** a doctor to treat you, which is **slavery**.
**My issue with this argument**:
There are many, for one, it's solved incredibly easily by just saying "rights can't violate other rights" or something, isn't that literally already in the Bill of Rights in the US?
For two, this doesn't seem to happen with any other rights, you could justify a lot of horrible shit with something like the right to life, or right not to be tortured. Should we tap the phone of every single person all the time in order to stop any possible rights violation happening to someone? Well no of course not, that would violate other rights, so we understand it's not a good response to the argument.
For three, there are countries with national healthcare systems where doctors are not enslaved.
And for four, "human rights" are just goals we try to reach, no human right is 100% achieved, people still get murdered, tortured, enslaved, sometimes by the government in cases like George Floyd, it's not like there is some magic force compelling us to push for these rights with 100% of the power we could, I think if healthcare was a right, and we ran out of doctors, people would be understanding to the government saying "sorry we can't help there literally are 0 doctors left they are all busy". I find it unlikely in this scenario people would start rioting to get the doctors enslaved to help more people or whatever.
**Disclaimer about my own beliefs on this matter:**
Personally I do dislike sayings like "healthcare is a human right". For one it's wrong, it's not (talking US here mainly), the proper statement would be "healthcare *should be* a human right", but even that I don't like as it leads to dumb arguments like this, and people get really nitpicky about "positive vs negative rights".
Nothing *is* a right inherently, we just all agree some things should be guaranteed (like not being tortured or enslaved) so we make them rights. "universal healthcare" means the same thing as "healthcare as a human right" and just sounds less strange as an argument and stops a lot of weird responses like the one I'm against here. Anything could be a right if we want it to be, but we don't have to call everything we want people to have universal access to, a right. So I'm not super attached to the saying "healthcare is/should be a human right", I just think this response to it is very stupid and find it surprising it comes up so often. | Human rights are not goals we try to reach. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a right is.
A human right, especially in the US frame of view, is what is available to someone simply because they are a human in a state of nature as described by John Locke. Locke heavily influenced many of the founding fathers.
For example in a state of nature someone would be free say whatever they want, pray to whatever god they want, etc. They would not have right to food (they have the right to go get food but it will not be provided it), they do not have the right to shelter (as with food they have the right to make/find shelter but not to have it given to them), etc.
Now in order to have a society we recognize we will be living in fairly close proximity so we need to set boundaries for natural rights which is where the idea of “your rights cannot violate someone else’s” comes in.
You seem to be mixing up good things everyone should have with human rights. | 24 | 30 |
ELI5: Why did so many Nazis choose to escape to Argentina, and how did they manage to escape over the Atlantic undetected? | There were a lot of German emigrants in Russia (the Volga Germans, named after the are where they settled), who had originally been invited there by the Russian Empress Catherine the Great, who was of German descent. After her passing, the Russia government began to roll back many of the benefits/privileges that Catherine had provided them, so they looked to leave Russia. At the time, a lot of South American countries were trying to attract immigrants from Europe to boost their population and settle the land. Argentina and Brazil attracted a lot of these German emigrants, as they both had officially installed Roman Catholicism as their state religion (the Volga Germans were mainly Catholics).
So there was a large population of ethnic Germans in Argentina long before the world wars. This led to friendly relationships between Argentina and both Imperial Germany and Nazi Germany. After the Second World War, this made Argentina a prime destination for those who were associated with Nazi Germany and wanted to flee. With the destruction caused by the war, record-keeping was not great, so it was not very difficult for officials to travel under false identities/papers in order to escape detection. | 3,012 | 3,114 |
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ELI5: How do Tesla coils work? | Imagine you're pushing a swing. If you push the swing with the right timing, the swing will go higher and higher. When you push the swing, you're store energy in the system. With each push, you add more and more energy.
If you push at the wrong time, the swing system will lose energy as you will be using energy to absorb some of the energy from the swing.
In a Tesla Coil, a similar principle applies. Instead of a swing, you have an inductor and a capacitor, both components which store energy. When you put apply a voltage source across a capacitor, the voltage across the capacitor will take some time to reach the full voltage of the voltage source.
In the context of a Tesla Coil (at least for one type, we'll get to the other types later) once the voltage across the capacitor is high enough, a spark gap fires and becomes conductive. Once this happens, the energy stored in the capacitor is transferred into an inductor.
The inductor stores energy in a magnetic field (unlike the capacitor, which stores it in an electric field). Once the energy from the capacitor is exhausted, the magnetic field around the inductor begins to collapse, transferring the energy back into the capacitor, and the cycle repeats.
This oscillation is electrical resonance (unlike the swing, which is mechanical resonance). In the case of a Tesla Coil, there are two resonant circuits. The first takes energy from transformers powered by the mains. The second resonant circuit gets it's energy from the expanding and contracting magnetic field around the inductor in the first resonant circuit.
The magnetic field around the inductor in the first resonant circuit is used to induce a current in the inductor in the second resonant circuit, transferring energy into it. The two resonant circuits have their frequencies matched, so this energy being added is just like the swing being pushed; the voltage swings up and down higher and higher with more energy being added. In Tesla Coils, the oscillation is at a high frequency (~100kHz-1MHz), meaning the large voltage swings in the secondary circuit build up very quickly.
As for other types of Tesla Coils, the one I've described is called a Spark Gap Tesla Coil. There are also various types of Solid State Tesla Coils. The simplest of these does away with the primary resonant circuit, and instead feeds a pulse of energy into what was the secondary resonant circuit. This causes a few oscillations, which create radio waves. These radio waves are picked up by an antenna, and amplified and fed back into the resonant circuit. This feedback loop can be interrupted, and by turning an audio signal into a square wave, you can create sound (this is how the musical tesla coils work).
**TL;DR, It's sort of like pushing swings, but electrically.** | 67 | 140 |
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What can I do, as a volunteer undergraduate lab assistant, to help the laboratory and make the most of the position? | I've just finished my first year of college, and, while I take a summer course, I'm working as a volunteer undergraduate lab assistant at a neuroscience laboratory whose work I find incredibly fascinating. While I am unpaid, I understand that I am still taxing the laboratory's resources (training, etc.), and, therefore, I want to be as helpful as possible.
How do I make the best impression on the lab? How can I appear helpful? What does success look like in this type of position? In the future, I would like to apply for a undergraduate research grant which would allow me to be paid and work on independent projects in the lab, but how do I, through my actions as a volunteer undergraduate lab assistant, convince the PI I am ready for independent research? | (1) Always try to do more than what you were asked to do, but don't screw things up. (2) Ask questions and be eager to learn, but don't ask the same stuff twice. (3) Learn to be organized: keep notes, write reports, response to email promptly, etc.
I also started as a lab volunteer and eventually got the PhD offer from the PI. Congratulation, and good luck. | 16 | 20 |
How much reading background is usually necessary to read academic philosophy papers (e.g. from a Journal)? | Let's suppose I was interested in a particular field of knowledge in Philosophy (e.g. 19th century post-Kantian philosophy). How much reading background would I need to fully get a modern understanding of the field? Would it be possible to "update" oneself to modern arguments starting from a layman's background through self-learning? | I know people who do it exceptionally well with an MA in a humanities field and very little field-specific background. The key is to be able and willing to use good reference sources (the SEP and IEP are an excellent start), and be simultaneously both patient with yourself and willing to accept that you may be wrong about some things.
Top-tier credentialed academic philosophers *frequently* misread their colleagues’ work; that’s one of the most entertaining things about reviews. If you’ve seen the PhilPapers survey, you may notice “other” is often well-represented in survey answers that are obviously binary. Sometimes this is because academic philosophers stumbled across a novel answer but personal experience suggests to me that it’s more often that they don’t fully understand the question.
In other words, philosophy is like most other academic fields: folks tend to specialize in their research to the point where they lose interest in much of the field, and often they stay up to date more so they’ll be effective in the classroom than because they want to read outside of their research areas.
You’re not going to screw this up—and there’s a lot to be said for being an independent scholar. Just recognize you’re just one person and be willing to accept correction. | 11 | 15 |
At what point does the randomness of quantum mechanics become irrelevant? | I've heard that the Determinism theory was disproven because there is a complete randomness associated with quantum mechanics. However, some things, such as the motion of an object, can be predicted nearly exactly. At what point does the randomness become irrelevant and determinism takes over? | one useful rule of thumb is whenever the system is (much) larger than its characteristic wavelength. Since wavelength is inversely proportional to momentum, higher momentum objects often have very little quantum behaviour. | 13 | 17 |
CMV:(too much) Immigration hurts a country's culture | As a german, especially in the city I live, there's honestly too many turks and muslims here.
My old school was 80% turks/muslims/guys from eastern europe, which seriously lead to germans being made fun of, *for being german, in their own damn country*
But that's not the only example, when I go out, I see as much, if not more, foreigners on the streets.
And by 'foreigners', I don't mean anything like scandinavians, or people from developed countries for that matter, I mean all the muslims/turks/romanians, etc.
A little immigration doesn't hurt, that's for certain. But if there's more immigrants than natives in any place, something's not right.
^^^^I'm ^^^^not ^^^^racist^^^^ | So, what exactly are the 'harms' to culture that occur? You must understand, if you read the statements you've made from the perspective that 'turks and muslims' are people with exactly equivalent value to any other human, like Germans and Scandinavians; then things like seeing them outside and having them in your school are not actually harms. So maybe you could clarify the concrete negative effects (to culture in particular, since you mention it) that would not occur if these individuals were German instead of, say Turkish? | 24 | 56 |
Why isn't the universe perfectly symmetrical? | I'll start off with my own limited understanding of cosmology to make sure I'm not making horribly incorrect assumptions to begin with....
After the big bang, basically what happened was that massive amounts of energy were released in all directions, over time the universe cooled to allow the formation of hydrogen, and from there stars could form from hydrogen clouds and sooner or later we get all the stars and galaxies we see today, right?
What I'm wondering though, is after the big bang, what resulted in the seemingly random distribution of stars and galaxies in the universe? I mean, at the moment of the big bang, wouldn't the universe have expanded in a perfectly symmetrical sphere since there would be nothing from the outside acting upon it to make it do otherwise? And since there's nothing outside the universe to act upon it and influence how it develops, shouldn't the universe have just stayed perfectly symmetrical and evenly distributed all the way to today? So why do we get stars, galaxies, planets, and people in certain regions of spacetime and emptiness in other areas? What caused this randomness?
Hopefully my question makes sense... :S | The current idea is that the seeds of non-uniformity were produced during inflation, a period of accelerated expansion in the early universe. Quantum mechanics tells us that on very small scales there's fundamental uncertainty in things like a particle's position or its velocity. This means there's no real uniformity on those scales. Normally, these non-uniformities are fleeting and average out with each other on pretty short timescales, but during inflation the expansion was so rapidly accelerating that these fluctuations were blown up to cosmic scales, larger than the observable universe, before they had a chance to settle back down. When inflation ended, still only a mere fraction of a second after the Big Bang, these small fluctuations remained as the seeds of structures which eventually, under their own gravity, grew into stars and galaxies and cosmic structures. | 20 | 17 |
Since quality of life, disease eradication and average life expectancy tends to improve each year, are we morally indebted to our future children to wait as long as possible before having them? | As an empirical matter, children tend to be healthier if born to younger parents. Risks for things like Down Syndrome and similar health problems increase radically with the age of the parents.
So, even if we accept the theory that we have a moral obligation to maximise the health of future children, that still does not imply you ought to wait.
Whether the obligation even exists will, of course, crucially depend on your general ethical theory, and how you deal with the problem that your children don't actually exist yet. | 12 | 23 |
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ELI5: How did the first people find land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean like Hawaii when it seems like finding land in the space of vast ocean is like throwing darts blindfolded? | Sea-going civilizations have a good deal of knowledge of the surrounding area from their fishing activities.
Beyond this, cloud formation and tidal patterns can give you clues about islands long before you can see the actual island.
However, the most likely method for groups like Polynesians would have been simply following birds. Migratory birds "island hop", so all you need to do is know the difference between various kinds of birds and follow the right ones. | 173 | 186 |
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ELI5:Genes, DNA, RNA, mRNA... how are they all connected? | Studying this atm and i really could use some LI5 input, since it rather got me totally confused...
What does a Gene have to do with proteins? How do they get formed?
Please, ELI5 | All your genetic information is contained in DNA - almost everything about your physical being, like the color of your eyes, the shape of your nose, even your likelihood of getting certain diseases is determined (at least in part) by your DNA.
How does your DNA do this? All of these physical characteristics are manifested through proteins your body makes, and DNA is like a blueprint for these proteins. The plan to make one single protein (or sometimes one group of proteins) is called a "gene."
When one of your cells wants to make a protein, the process begins at the DNA, which is in the nucleus. First, the appropriate gene is found and a template of the gene is created. This template is called mRNA, or messenger RNA. If DNA is the blueprint drawn by the architect, then mRNA is the construction manager who is going to deliver the plans to his crew.
And that is exactly what he does. mRNA moves out of the nucleus to the construction site - the ribosome. In the ribosome, the mRNA template is read and a protein is built from specific building blocks called amino acids. That's how a protein is put together.
There are other kinds of RNA - mRNA is just one. Ribosomes are partially made of RNA called ribosomal RNA or rRNA. And small RNAs are used to read the mRNA - they are called transfer RNAs or tRNAs and are like the individual construction workers who build each block. | 39 | 88 |
ELI5: If a crime occurs on an airplane, what country's law applies? | On an international flight, jurisdiction goes to the State of Registry for the aircraft. This means a US plane retains US jurisdiction, even if it's flying from England to Australia. Or an English plane traveling from New York to California., for example, retains English jurisdiction. You can check out the Tokyo Convention for more information.
There are certain limitations. If there is a safety issue aboard the plane, the chain of command is any Air Marshal aboard followed by the pilot followed by the co-pilot, followed by the next place the plane touches ground. | 56 | 42 |
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[Star Trek Into Darkness] What was the ring made up of that caused such a large explosion? | **For those who are unable to access the data archives due to lack of clearance, please watch out because this has some classified information (AKA Spoiler Warning).**
When the one guy sits down at his desk at the Starfleet Library in London, he sends the email, takes off the ring he's wearing and drops it into the water cup. Shortly after we see from security footage that it explodes...violently.
My current task is to try to figure out what that ring was so we can prevent this substance from being smuggled into secure locations this way.
We are currently lost. We at first were thinking it was some sort of alkali metal, such as Cesium, or even Francium, but that would never create an explosion that large from a ring that small. Plus it would have reacted with any moisture on his skin and in the air.
We then thought it may be some miniaturized fusion bomb as it could have used the hydrogen in the water for fusion. If it was, why did none of the radiation detectors see this when he was screened?
It's evident that massive amounts of heat are being generated as the ring starts fizzing and the water almost immediately boils before the explosion.
Some sort of fusion device is our best guess, but we are still unable to understand how such a device was miniaturized and concealed, or even if it was some sort of fusion based device. | Probably something like anti-hydrogen atoms (or even molecules of anti-water) sealed in a stable protective structure such as a carbon fullerene. Dropping the ring in water started a multi-stage chemical reaction that dissolved this protective structure, causing a run-away anti-matter explosion. A fraction of a gram of anti-matter would have been necessary to produce the explosion, and there would have been no detectable radiation. | 23 | 19 |
ELI5: Unlike every other European language, why doesn't English have any diacritics (ë, ñ, å, etc) in the alphabet? | First, what you're talking about isn't just diacritics, but also additonal letters. Danish, for example, doesn't have any diacritics either, but it does have a few extra letters (æ, ø and å) -- but they are fully-fledged standalone letters, not diacritics added to a "normal" letter.
So your question should be broadened a bit, to "why doesn't English have any diacritics or letters that other languages don't have".
And the answer is, it does. Many/most European languages don't really use W, for example, and some typically omit it from the alphabet entirely.
So yes, english does have symbols that other languages don't use. Just like other languages have symbols that aren't used in English. | 205 | 288 |
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eli5 What do people actually do in space stations? | What do they do in space that they couldn't do on earth? Are they just doing experiments on things in a zero gravity environment? Is part of their goal to help people live on other planets? | So a large part of what astronauts specifically is maintenance. Replacing and adding modules and the like. Doing stuff in space takes way way more time. Especially if something goes on the outside of the station. Watched a spacewalk take 8 hours to run an Ethernet cable to an exterior camera.
Inside they are also run support for experiments. Many experiments go into these neat little modular racks and can be monitored and run remotely, but there need to be hands on site to set it up, or change bits out. Others aren't really capable of being operated remotely so they just do them directly.
As for what experiments need to be done in zero g a lot of it is research for long term space travel. For potential missions to the moon or Mars for example. Stuff like studying how zero g and radiation exposure affects fertility in animals, growing plants for food, water recycling, cement mixing, combustion, etc.
The astronauts themselves are also closely monitored to see how their bodies react, so just living in space is an experiment in itself.
Also some time dedicated to education, like doing demos, or running a couple experiments developed by students.
Some neat protein crystal growth to potentially support development of novel drugs. There's a lot of interest in microgravity manufacturing for stuff like drugs or like silicon for computer chips. If something interesting is found actual production would probably be run on automated satellites, but for research having humans there to run the stuff, and sharing rides with other experiments going up and down makes it a lot more economically feasible to research. | 95 | 37 |
CMV: I feel like the American's get a bad rap no matter what they do. I realize that their reputation was seriously hurt by their "War on Terror", but when there is a conflict anywhere in the world, if they intervene, they get shit on, and if they don't, they get shit on. | I feel its important to first of all point out that I am a Canadian. Second, I am studying political science, but I am somewhat new to the field of IR.
To me, I feel like the Americans play a crucial role in the governing, and protection of many nations around the world, and as a result COULD be entitled to SOME of that American Exceptionalism that everyone despises. They are always expected to step up when something happens anywhere in the world.
As a Canadian, I feel like it is an uncommon stance to take, that of "pumping their tires", but, while I cannot say I agree with all (or many) of their politics or decisions, I feel like they do play a crucial role that often goes at least in perception, under appreciated.
I guess, from this I am looking for someone to explain, just why this position that the US is in goes under appreciated, or why they are in such a damned if you do, damned if you don't spot.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | It may be true to some extent that the world benefits from a so-called "Pax Americana", but to what extent does the U.S. itself also benefit from this situation? If you look at situations where the U.S. intervenes it is almost always where they stand to make some material gain. The beneficial effects to the people of that part of the world, when they occur, are almost entirely a by-product of America acting in its own interests.
When Britain played a similar role as dominant world power, the parasitic/rent-seeking aspect of their rule was more apparent because they directly engaged in colonialism. America uses more subtle means and wraps itself in the rhetoric of democracy, but that doesn't mean that behind this facade their interests aren't being promoted in exactly the same way. | 15 | 59 |
ELI5: If cancer is due to damages DNA, how do children, with newer DNA, get cancer so often? | Children can be created with damaged DNA from their parents, as gametes (sperm and egg) pull their DNA from the parent, which may have mutated locally.
In fact, such mutations causing the fetus to be non-viable can trigger the female's body to spontaneously abort the pretnancy, commonly known a miscarriage. | 19 | 24 |
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ELI5: What is "hard" water, and how does adding salt to it make it "soft?" | Hard water is caused mostly by two common positively charged minerals, calcium and magnesium. These minerals can react with soap and detergents in such a as to precipitate (fancy word for remove it from solution) and make the soaps less effective.
Salt water is used in water softeners. Water softeners contain a resin that can bind with the sodium in brine during charging. When in use, hard water is passed through the the resin. Calcium and magnesium bind more strongly with the resin then the sodium and as they bind with the resin, sodium is released into the water while the the calcium and magnesium are removed.
Unlike the calcium and magnesium, sodium does not bind with nor precipitate soap or detergents so they remain just as effective and the water is considered softened. | 18 | 43 |
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ELI5: How exactly do muscle cramps/spasms (for example, calf cramps) occur? What is the process that causes them? | Your muscles move by contracting, and then they expand again when at rest. When you have a cramp, the muscles have not been able to expand for whatever reason, so they remain tensed and contracted which can become painful.
One reason for this can be a lack of electrolytes. The muscles use specific ions like calcium and sodium to contract and expand, and if you don't have enough of the right ion the muscles won't be able to expand after contracting. This is why Gatorade has electrolytes mixed in with it. A lack of water will do the same thing.
Another reason could be the nerves sending the signal to your muscles have gotten confused, sending the signal to tense over and over again.
It could even be part of your brain mistakenly telling your nerves to send a signal to tense over and over. | 47 | 74 |
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ELI5: How are animals, specifically carrion birds, able to eat rotting flesh without ill effect? | In a number of ways.
One is that they can have stomach acid a lot stronger than that of non carrion eaters. This can kill a lot of bacteria.
Their immune systems have also evolved to deal with the bacteria and their toxins and so they have a large number of antibodies always ready to go to neutralise them.
And just like us they have bacteria in their intestines but they've evolved to use the ones that would be deadly to us to help them digest their food. | 538 | 683 |
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ELI5: Why do you get extremely hot right before freezing to death? | Apparently you feel so hot immediately before you freeze to death that many victims take off all of their clothes. Can someone ELI5? | When you are cold, the blood vessels near the surface of your body constrict, reducing the amount of warm blood exposed to the cold and limiting heat loss. Your body can only keep that up for so long, and when it finally gives up, the warm blood comes rushing back to the skin, giving the illusion of being too hot. | 61 | 30 |
ELI5: if European diseases killed 90% of indigenous N & S Americans, why didn't American diseases return the favor when European ships returned? | Europeans had built immunity to a wider array of pathogens over the centuries, from Black Plague, etc., etc., because their range of territory covered was so much wider.
By 1500, Europeans had been attacked by Jihadists from North Africa coming by boat across the Mediterranean, had traveled to the Holy Land to return the favor via the Crusades, had trade voyages of Marco Polo, had experienced invasions by the Mongols and the Huns, etc. Not to mention 1500 years of pan-European contact.
Whereas the typical NA Indian had primarily traded only with adjacent tribes, and there was no widespread large-ship-building and seafaring tradition.
The Europeans were inoculated to a variety of diseases; the NA Indians, to practically none. | 113 | 195 |
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What actually kills you when you are dehydrated? | What goes on in your body that causes you to die from dehydration? | The two most significant issues with severe dehydration are the loss of perfusion volume as well as the electrolyte abnormalities that develop. If someone is hypovolemic enough, they will not be able to maintain an adequate blood pressure to supply oxygen to their organs, which results in multi-organ failure (in particular, the heart, brain, kidneys, and liver are particularly vulnerable). In addition, changes in electrolyte concentrations in the blood (most typically sodium or potassium) can result in comas or seizures as well as cardiac arrhythmias. | 176 | 252 |
ELI5: What are the roles/duties of Queen Elizabeth II? Does she possess any real political power? Is her position mainly honorary in nature? | She gives Royal Assent to any laws passed by Parliament (as do the Governors General elsewhere in the Commonwealth, such as Canada). No bill passed by Parliament actually becomes a law until she signs it. That said, her signature is basically guaranteed; she isn't likely to usurp the authority of Parliament.
Her non-political position also gives her the opportunity to be an observer with long institutional memory. She's been Queen for more than 60 years... her coronation was during Winston Churchill's time as PM! This does let her give advice to the Prime Minister of the day, as she may have a better grasp of historical context than he does. | 29 | 30 |
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