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ELI5: Why is it so much easier to kill a fly with a flyswatter or newspaper than with your hand? | Flies are highly sensitive to changes in air pressure and/light. When you attack it with a newspaper or swatter, you are using a flicking motion with your wrist that causes it to move much faster than your hand alone (think about how the tips of whips move faster than the speed of sound). So the window of time the fly has to react is much slower.
The swatter has the additional advantage of holes, which help allow it to move faster. | 23 | 34 |
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[Warcraft] How do you imprison classes that can teleport/generate portals? | Mages, Druids, Death Knights, Monks and Shamans.
Also, what's stopping a bunch of warlocks from casting Ritual of Summoning to bust people out of prison?
| Magical barriers are regularly used to imprison practitioners of magic. Depending on the specific enchantments, they can be anything from force-reactive barriers to magical null-bubbles that prevent magic from affecting the interior. | 20 | 18 |
ELI5: How do password manager work? What is the best one and does it work on mobile as well? | Password managers are a secure vault to store your passwords and other sensitive information in. They work by storing your usernames and passwords in a way that can be retrieved easily, provided you remember the master password.
The master password is used to decrypt the vault so that the information within it is accessible. It is recommended to have a two-factor authentication method configured as well. This means that you’ll need both the password and a code that is generated by an app or physical token. When the code and your password are paired together, the vault is unlocked.
There are many options available. You can read a non ELI5 explanation on them at www.privacytools.io
They recommend Bitwarden as a solution. There are Bitwarden apps for MacOS, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android, plus a web interface. Bitwarden is open source, which means anyone is able to review the source code and determine if there are flaws.
In summary, a password manager enables you to have very complicated and unique passwords for all of your accounts without you having to remember each one. | 11 | 15 |
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ELI5:Why does so many things cause cancer. | Take smoking cigarettes, everyone says that causes cancer. But how? I thought cancer was just a malfunction in the cells? I know I'm wrong it just doesn't make sense to me | The chemicals inhaled during smoking interact with your cells and can change your DNA. This now "incorrect" DNA tells your cells to do the wrong thing such as start rapidly reproducing, causing a cancerous growth.
The reason so many things can cause cancer is because there are a lot of things (chemicals, radiation, etc.) that can interact with the molecules that make up our DNA. In fact, your DNA is messed up often but it typically can repair itself. But the more you smoke, the more the DNA has to repair itself, the higher the chance is it makes a mistake while repairing itself. | 95 | 83 |
Are humans instinctually inclined to forming dominance hierarchies? | I know human societies can have tiers, but hunter-gatherers are generally egalitarian. My interest is on the smaller-scale, whether humans have alpha, betas, gammas, etc like chimps or wolves. | If you look at primates, you have a range between species which exhibit very strong hierarchical systems and species which exhibit very weak ones. The very general rule is that the greater the sexual dimorphism (the physical differences between sexes, particularly size and strength in this case) the more likely the species has a strong hierarchy. As with most of the claims in this post, these are going to be generalities, there will always be exceptional circumstances and examples which make the whole thing both complicated and interesting.
Human behavior is more plastic (changeable) than in other species, but our range generally falls in the middle of primates with greater degrees of diversity. Take courtship practices as an example; hierarchical primates exhibit strong polygamous tendancies, with a few dominant males mating with many females and relationships not doing much to withstand changes in social status while egalitarian primates exhibit monogomous long-term relationships. Humans exhibit all of these behaviours with high degrees of frequency, but looking across time and cultures, we tend to see serial monogomy being the predominant mating strategy with dedicated relationships which are broken after a few child-bearing cycles.
Similarly, low-density tribal societies tend to be somewhere in the middle with a defined hierarchy which intermittently becomes important in settling disputes within the group. We tend to not see many populations of this sort with anything like the agressive dominance we see in hierarchical primates, but we do see hierarchy as a resolution to issues in a much higher degree than in egalitarian species.
The deeper issue is that there is no behavior without genetics and environment working together and human behavior is exceptional in its responsiveness to environmental context (learning). To say that something is an 'instinct' is far too simple. Our 'instincts' are always a reaction to the environmental stimulus we are and have previously received and the diversity of social hierarchical systems and the conviction which the people support them is tremendous. The capacity for either hierarchy or egalitarianism given different contexts is very large and making a claim that any of them is 'unnatural' would be very difficult. | 12 | 81 |
It's possible to explain the gravitational force with geometry, as the curvature of spacetime. Is it possible to explain other forces (like electromagnetic force) with geometry too? | Yes. The mathematical framework is gauge theory. In particular, the fundamental forces of the standard model are a specific type of gauge theories called Yang-Mills theories.
Roughly, the wavefunctions of particles "charged" under the interaction are thought of as taking values in a thing called a bundle, which is a thing "attached" to spacetime. This bundle can have curvature, and this curvature can act back on the particle as it travels, giving the force. The curvature is also known as the field strength; in the case of EM the curvature is nothing else than the electric and magnetic fields. | 14 | 63 |
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ELI5: Why can sports teams, sports channels on TV, or sporting news on the internet reveal the exact details of sports players' injuries if HIPAA exists? | I thought there existed patient-doctor confidentiality? Why don't you see players suing journalists, teams, websites, newspapers, etc. over violations of HIPAA? Are they exempt for some reason? | HIPAA only restricts certain types of organizations from revealing health information (basically healthcare providers and insurers, plus their agents). The Hospital---without a release from the patient---couldn't say much of anything about a famous person's injury or treatment, but the coach or the team can. It is also almost certainly part of any athlete's contract that they consent to share health information with the team, probably with only a limited expectation of privacy in return, if any. | 23 | 45 |
[Superman] NASA asks for Superman's help | How quickly would we advance in space exploration? What would be the main tasks NASA have for Superman? | Most tasks would involve bringing vehicles and supplies into the upper orbit. Even if they paid him a million per trip, that'd still be a fraction of what it costs them to currently send anything into space. | 58 | 53 |
ELI5: What is energy? | What technically is energy, not how it is measured, used, or converted into different forms. I am looking for what energy actually is. | Energy is the capacity to do work. Many forms of energy can't be used to do work we would think of as practical (like low temperature differences and low heat), but energy is just that element of physical reality that is the capacity to do work. | 16 | 27 |
CMV: OnlyFans should change their age minimum to 21 and not 18. | A lot of people see OnlyFans as more similar to Instagram than to a cam site or other selling sex sites.
Influencers are promoting their OnlyFans on Instagram to their millions of young followers and with the popularization of sex positivity being equated with being liberated, (which it definitely can make people feel liberated), a lot of young teens will see these influencers shamelessly joining OnlyFans because they make thousands of dollars from it. I have no problem with this, but as they influence on other things, they will influence others with this action as well)
Teens will think that once they turn 18, they can take the easy way out and make thousands on OnlyFans too. But it won’t work that way for them. It is difficult to build a fan base on any social platform, even if you’re showing your booty.
There are millions of young people who are making next to NOTHING on OnlyFans and you don’t see them. All you see is Bella Thorne, Trisha Paytas, and Bhad Bhabie making millions from it.
So. To my CMV. When I turned 18, I got unwanted attention from older men who were waiting for me to turn 18. Now that was a small group of men but still, a lot of (women especially) can relate.
I left high school knowing two things: that men wanted me for my body/sex/the way I look, and that a lot of hobbies I liked as a teenage girl were ridiculed. Like Twilight, One Direction, (which I kept quiet about because I saw other teen girls get made fun of for liking) and even video games because I must be a “fake gamer.”
It’s overall difficult for teen girls to have high self-esteem when they feel like their hobbies and interests are lame but they can gain attention through their looks.
I AM NOT REFERRING TO EVERY TEEN GIRL THAT EVER WAS BUT IT IS A LOT OF TEEN GIRLS’ PERSPECTIVE DUE TO SOCIAL MEDIA WITH ITS FILTERS AND OVER SEXUALIZATION.
When I was 21, in University, with a job, I had brand new hobbies and new career goals then when I was 18, I shiver at the idea that I would have ever considered a “sugar daddy” or selling photos online as it doesn’t align with my values now.
Back in the day, some sleazeball 25 year old would show up to a high school party and start talking to 17-year-olds to try and get them involved in porn once they turn 18. Things have become A LOT more influential since.
The internet is forever and thinking of a teen who wanted to try their luck at OnlyFans at 18 later regretting at age 21 because there are naked or suggestive photos of them online forever. There is now a looming fear that these photos will cause problems for future jobs.
I would love to live in a reality where your boss can’t choose to hire you because they find out you were once on OnlyFans, but that’s not reality. They will judge you for it.
Social media is making teens built to be insecure and they are exposed heavily to the idea that “sex equals easy money” it’s all a lie. Most of these influencers who just post ass shots are escorts. They make little money from paid promotions. But teens don’t see that.
Will OnlyFans ever change their policy, probably a big NO. But my view is that it would help save some teens from regret. If someone has had a few years of adulting and they then choose to post on OnlyFans, that’s cool, but let’s give them a few years to think about it. I believe it would make a great change in allowing young people to find out who they really want to be, a chance to see what the world has to offer them and what they can offer back.
I AM IN NO WAY BASHING SEX WORKERS OR TRYING TO SAY THEY SHOULD BE LIMITED IN THEIR WORK. I JUST THINK ONLYFANS SHOULD CHANGE THEIR POLICY BECAUSE OF ITS CLOSENESS TO SOCIAL MEDIA AND HOW IT IMPACTS TEENS WHO WILL WANT TO TRY IT TO MAKE A QUICK BUCK.
(Also didn’t even get to the users of OnlyFans, but that’s for a different day, so I’m just speaking on the posters)
Also I know that there are so many reasons why this would never happen, but it’s just my view of what I would like to happen. They can’t just kick out all these 18-20 year old all of a sudden I know. Maybe it can be a new policy for new joiners.
Ok that’s it! Let me know what you think :) | To summarize, your view is that the minimum age should be raised because 18-year-olds are more susceptible to pressure than 21-year-olds? If that's the case, what made you decide that 21 is the age at which the influence of external pressure is low enough to be acceptable? | 35 | 89 |
ELI5: how is it that gravity is strong enough to hold the massive body of water around the globe, yet we can move freely without feeling any pressure from the force of gravity? | This question is best answered with another question.
What force is pulling the oceans off of the earth?
you are correct that the pull of the earth isn't that significant, but when its the only force acting on an object its gonna win every time. | 22 | 16 |
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[Marvel] I heard that Juggernaut was at one time powered up enought to break dimensional barriers, can someone illuminate me on the subject? | How did he get so strong? How was he stopped? How strong was he? He could break dimensional barriers, is that superboy prime level? | Ok, first things first, it's important to know where Juggernaut's strength comes from. Despite his association with the X-Men Cain Marko is not a mutant, he's actually the avatar of a powerful God named Cyttorak. Cytorrak's power is stupidly strong, rivaling the Phoenix Force and other similar entities, and so long as Juggernaut and Cyttorak are aligned in thought and deed he's got access to a huge chunk of it.
During the Trion Saga Cyttorak's powers were co-opted by a third party (the titular Trion gods), who used them to power up Juggernaut with nearly the full extent of them. Driven nearly mad and empowered so Juggernaut was able to rampage across dimensions, only stopped when when Cyttorak's powers were forcibly removed from him. | 68 | 78 |
ELI5: I was always told/heard the my Toyota will run until the the engine falls out of the car. What is different about them that makes them more reliable then american made cars? | Pretty Self Explanatory | This is surprisingly difficult to explain like you're five, as the answer requires delving deep into the management strategy of the various companies, and the context leading to those strategies is deep in historical and cultural detail.
But from a technical perspective, it's because American engineers would design a system, and then cut its cost to the bare minimum. The Japanese engineers would design the system with cost (and perhaps even more importantly, manufacturability) in mind from the get go. That's a gross oversimplification but captures the general spirit.
This is a question that you could (and many have) write a book to answer. | 205 | 282 |
Is it possible to slow down a particle until its momentum is 0 if the universe has a finite size? | I was just wondering about Heisenberg's Δx * Δp ≥ h/4π. If you can make p (and therefore Δp) arbitrarily low, then its Δx gets infinitely big.
But if the universe is finite, then so is Δx, meaning p can't be 0.
Does that make any sense, or it it stupid? | If the Universe is finite (i.e. it is a 3-sphere) there exist a zero-momentum state where the wavefunction is simply a constant. Since the volume of the Universe is finite, this is a normalizable wavefunction. This is called a zero mode.
The spectrum of momentum in this Universe is discrete, because it's given by the hyperspherical harmonics*. The first excited value of momentum is relative to the wavefunction with wavelength equal to the total circumference. This is more what you meant and what you could guess heuristically with the HUP, as you did. This momentum is of order hbar/radius which is of course ridiculously small.
A precise formulation of the HUP is not really possible here btw because, just to mention one thing, Δx doesn't make a lot of sense if x is not a vector.
\* in general, solving the free Schroedinger equation, which is just the Helmholtz equation, on a compact space will yield a discrete spectrum. | 52 | 251 |
What are some good econ papers for beginners? | I have a friend who told me I should read some econ papers if I wanted to know if I should pursue a degree in Economics, however, I am unfamiliar with where to get them and what are some good ones for people who haven't read them at all, or even if I should be reading them. Can someone help me? | What part of economics would interest you? Do you like calculations, markets, individual decision making, history, politics, development? Economics is very diverse but if you would specify we could send you some over. | 26 | 75 |
CMV: Having a child after illegally coming into the U.S. should not affect whether or not you're deported. | The Fourteenth Amendment states that if you are born on U.S. soil you are an American citizen. I'm not about to challenge the Fourteenth Amendment. I also understand that most illegal immigrants aren't 'gaming the system' by having children.
This is purely a question of pragmatism, if you are an illegal citizen, you are an illegal citizen and you are at risk of being deported if caught. The fact that you have a kid should not factor into this at all, it's an irrelevant detail. If you have a child, like everyone else, you are taking a risk.
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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!* | You got three options here:
1. Let the parent stay to take care of the US Citizen child,
2. send the US Citizen child to some 3rd World Hellhole, or
3. break up the family.
If you eliminate position 1, then you're advocating for position 2 or 3, either of which are going to make you sound a little heartless. | 195 | 296 |
ELI5: How do we know the visible universe is 4% and not more or less? | I always hear how the visible universe as we know it is only 4% of everything else... but how do we know the visible universe is 4% and not more or less? And how do we know the non-visible universe is 96% if we can't see it?
Where do we come up with 100% percent of the everything in the universe and what all does it include? | The visible universe and the observable universe are two different things. The thing that is 4% is the collective mass of things in the observable universe comprised of ordinary (visible) matter. The other 96% is dark matter and dark energy, which are invisible but whose presence can be roughly detected via gravitational effects. From these gravitational effects, we have determined roughly how much dark matter and dark energy there are in the observable universe, and there's a lot.
Specifically, dark matter impacts rotational velocities of galaxies, and dark matter impacts the rate of expansion of space. Measuring those allowed us to learn how much there is. | 55 | 148 |
ELI5:Why do companies push to install their mobile app when you visit their website? What sort of information they get from their app vs a web visit? | In a lot of cases, it's not as much about collecting information on you as it is getting you to use their electronic presence more.
Having a mobile app is really convenient, and you're more likely to have it within reach and to use it than the alternative of opening up a web phone browser and trying to hit their internet site.
Since you're more likely to use that convenient, in-reach app, that means you're more likely to have more interactions with the business that is providing that app.
That translates directly to more brand recognition and more sales, and even more visits to their physical store (if they have one) instead of the competition's. All of these - heck, even just any ONE of these - are great for businesses. | 20 | 26 |
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What's the moral ground/argument for caring about animal life but not insect life? | Any texts or schools of thought surrounding this? I'm familiar with animal right activism and their grounds, but I'm interested in knowing what response activists have towards insect life.
If killing a dog is cruel, why is killing a mosquito not? | Peter Singer, iirc, talks a little about this towards the beginning of Practical Ethics. (he talks about molluscs rather than insects but the same principles can be applied).
Basically, anything with a coplex brain, like a human, cow, dog, mouse etc, seems to have a capacity to suffer. (others might render this as 'a capaity to feel good' or use both, the structure of the argument is basically the same). Because of this, they hvae moral standing (we have moral reasons to care about them).
Something that lacks sifficient neurological complexity to have these sorts of experiences lacks moral standing, and so killing mussels or ants for food is fine (and it might even be fine to just kill them out of convenience).
Ofc, all this hinges on a) a story about the neurology of simple creatures, and b) certain theory-of-mind questions that might remain contentious. | 37 | 56 |
Why aren't the *sub*species of brassica rapa just considered different *species*? | I guess the question is, what's the difference between subspecies and species, at least in the plant world? *Is* there even a clear distinction? | One really important thing to understand is that _morphological_ difference (IE, difference in shape) has surprisingly little direct relationship with _genetic_ difference. You can change a very few genes and produce a plant that looks totally different. Or you can change a lot of genes and produce a plant that looks almost exactly the same.
So the visual differences between, say, cabbage and broccoli aren't actually representative of a deep genetic difference. | 203 | 277 |
ELI5: How do doctors perform 20+ hour surgeries? Don't they get mentally and physically exhausted? | I wouldn't want a tired doctor performing surgery on me. Do they get rest cycles with other doctors? Do they have places where they can "pause" the surgery to take a nap? | Most surgeries (when things go to plan) take around 30 min-2 hours. Some major surgeries e.g. a liver transplant might take ~6-8 hours.
20+ hour surgeries would be exceptional e.g. conjoined twin separations where you actually need multiple different teams e.g. plastic surgeons, neurosurgeons etc.
Usually surgery is a very controlled situation so it would be theoretically possible to take a break. It might be reasonable (e.g. 20-30 min in a 6+ hour surgery) but you don't want to leave the patient open/unconscious too long.
In most specialty surgeries you would have someone else who can take over for some of it. | 53 | 89 |
Visiting Assistant Professor at alma mater versus elsewhere? | Hello all, I'm a fresh PhD with two job prospects and I'd like some advice. Both jobs are visiting assistantships lasting one year, with similar enough levels of pay that the financial situation doesn't make much of a difference to me. My alma mater is higher prestige than the other place. Does taking the job at my alma mater look problematic for future tenure track employment? I want to set myself up as best as possible for the job market when I hit it again next year. Is the higher prestige of my graduate alma mater nullified by the fact that I got my PhD there? | If you want a tenure-track position you will need publications in top-tier journals, an extraordinary amount of luck, and ideally real teaching experience. That said, you should almost always favor publications. Take the VAP where you're most likely to be productive in your research. Good luck! | 18 | 24 |
ELI5: The 'derivatives bubble' and why people are scared of it | Insurance is an easy kind of derivative to understand - you give actual value to a company in exchange for a contractual agreement that if X happens, you'll get Y from them. Futures (the kind the derivatives bubble is concerned with) are essentially the same thing in reverse - an investor puts cash forward in exchange for a contract that when the value of the commodity increases, they get a cut of that value when they go to collect. It's essentially an alternative currency based on the value changes of a particular commodity (rice, cows, mortgage loans...).
It's dangerous because it's possible to end up in a situation where the overall value of that currency become inflated in value far beyond the overall actual increase in the value of the commodities, and then eventually the potential return on investment for the people buying the futures becomes more about how much you can sell those contracts for to another financial institution than about actually collecting on the contract. This allows the trade value of the derivatives to then become inflated in value far above its actual face value, which is all well and good as long as there is a market to keep buying it at the higher rates - ie, as long as other financiers keep betting the commodities will increase in value *further* - but is risky because eventually that alternative currency loses value as people become less willing to buy it (for whatever reason). Commodities are particularly volatile because the value of those futures contracts are subject to anything that affects the manufacturing or demand of the items themselves *and* the perceived value of the contracts between financiers.
The reason there's a scary bubble here is that essentially there's so much imaginary extra value tacked onto these alternative currencies that a significant portion of overall spending in our economy is being powered by money that only potentially exists. If/when buyers stop wanting to buy the futures at higher rates, some of that potential money then doesn't ever turn into real money, and in turn less value is moving around in the system. If a big enough portion of the value moving through that system ("real" or not) disappears at once, the loss can be significant enough to hurt our overall spending power, which is what happens when a bubble "bursts".
Short version: derivatives are basically hot potato. As long as the timer keeps going (value generally increases) we all get to keep playing, but when the timer stops (value critical-mass decreases/the bubble bursts) so does the game, and also someone gets burned. | 12 | 27 |
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Aristotle's metaphysics vs Heidegger's being | How exactly is Heidegger's question of being related to Aristotle's quest in the Metaphysics? Aristotle argues that all beings are related to substance (once he expands his notion of a genus to a pros hen way) and that all beings are related in so far as they have an essential nature; a form, actuality etc. He then links all these substances to their cause, the highest cause of all, the unmoved mover. What does Heidegger think about this approach? Does he think Aristotle is wrong? | Well, this is a very difficult question, and heavily depends upon how we interpret each of these thinkers. Heidegger writes volumes and volumes on Aristotle, who is perhaps one of his biggest influences. So this cannot be more than a rough sketch.
But to give you a basic picture, Heidegger thinks that philosophy has basically had the same theory of time since Aristotle's *Physics*. Although he spends some time considering this issue, there's no difference (for Heidegger) between Aristotelian and Augustinian time (the so-called "A-Theory" and "B-Theory"). Both understand Being in terms of *presence,* and interpret time in terms of this interpretation, understanding time as a series of "containers," a stretch of infinitely divisible moments.
So whether we think of time as an eternal present, or the future and past as really existing, Heidegger thinks that we only interpret them in terms of the "present."
For Heidegger, time is *tensed*. So he doesn't understand the *past* as a "present that no longer is" or the future as "a present that is not yet," but understands the future as something "futural" and the past as something "historical." For Heidegger, the three ecstasies of time (past, present, and future) form a unified manifold, where each ecstasy involves a relation to the other two modes. In *Being and Time*, he stresses the primordiality of the *future*, arguing that (at least for Dasein), the past and present should be understood in terms of the futurality of the future. That's the point of the whole "being-toward-death" stuff; Heidegger's trying to show that Dasein can relate itself to a future event that cannot be experienced in the present, but dramatically transforms its entire existence.
Heidegger interprets *ousia* (usually translated as "substance," although this translation is problematic) as "self-enclosed presence." This has some etymological support. So Aristotle, in Heidegger's reading, understands Being as the self-enclosed presence of an *eidos*. Such presence is, Heidegger thinks, implicitly understood in terms of present-moment time, as something that persists throughout a series of nows.
This involves interpreting Being according to only one mode of time, understanding them as self-enclosed presence in the present. This covers over, Heidegger thinks, the ecstatic temporality of beings, as well as the play of concealment/unconcealment that makes their presence possible.
So Heidegger doesn't think that Aristotle is "wrong," because Heidegger falls among a list of thinkers who thinks that every philosopher is basically right. However, he thinks that this interpretation of Being remains *incomplete*, specifically because it has certain presuppositions about time and presence. In early writings, Heidegger also raises the problem of the difference between a "who" and a "what," although this might be dropped in his post-war writings.
>He then links all these substances to their cause, the highest cause of all, the unmoved mover.
Heidegger sees this move as "ontotheology," which means that it grounds the Being of beings in general in a certain kind of Being (in Aristotle's case, the Being of motion) and then grounds beings as a whole in a highest being, namely the "unmoved mover," the source of all motion. Heidegger thinks that this approach covers over the difference between Being and beings, what he calls the "ontological difference." To put it very briefly, it's basically the idea that if "God *is* the cause of all beings," the "is" still remains unexplained. We cannot explain Being by tracing beings back to some highest being, because this highest being *is* also a being, and must be explained in terms of its Being. So insofar as the unmoved mover *exists* as a being among other beings, it cannot clarify the *meaning* (*Sinn*) of Being.
At the same time, Heidegger sees ontotheology as an attempt to make beings as a whole "constantly present," insofar as they are held into place by an eternal being (thus continually secured as possible objects of our knowledge), rather than understood as occurring in time. | 12 | 21 |
How do countries decide how much money there needs to be? | Are there calculations they can make, or do they essentially estimate and then course correct as inflation is under/over target? Or something else? | I think its important to clarify that there are multiple types of money.
Hard money/currency is generally not directly involved in managing monetary policy and central banks ensure there is always enough to meet demand (as if there is not that tends to cause bank runs). A bank can order as much currency as they want from a central bank.
Taking the example from the US the Federal Reserve system is responsible for distributing currency and they order currency from the US Mint (coin) and US Bureau of Engraving and Printing (paper). Commercial banks can convert their reserve in to physical currency (also in reverse) and also exchange old currency for new currency (EG worn out notes). While banks are not required by law to be able to meet any currency demand they are required to be able to meet reasonable currency demand.
Central banks have lots of tools for managing inflation and there is some variation between how countries manage it but they are looking to manage the supply of money, generally growth in deposit accounts. In most countries the traditional policy tool for this is managing the cost of credit by influencing the overnight rate banks lend reserves to each other at, they do this by buying or selling assets banks hold in reserve.
In the US the Federal Open Market Committee meets to set a target rate. The OMO desk at the NYFed executes trades to nudge the actual rate towards the target rate. The OMO desk buys & sells US Treasuries from banks, this changes reserve liquidity which changes the overnight rate. The process of credit creation is a bit weird but the TLDR here is that when banks create credit they need access to overnight markets to settle accounts so a higher overnight rate will increase the rates they charge for credit. | 31 | 79 |
ELI5: Why do older cars have a kind of line pattern on the headlights and it is a little blurry while newer cars have nice and transparent headlights? | Normal driving light (not high beam and not parking lights) has to be asymmetrical, meaning the beam of light needs to light up the road differently. Towards the middle/traffic, the light has to hit the road sooner than towards the side. This is to not blind the oncoming traffic, yet provide enough light (and give you enough time) to react to pedestrians/bikes/animals that could be on the side of the road.
One could now think that the lightbulb towards the middle is just pointed lower than the one to towards the outside. But that's not the case. Both bulbs are shining on both sides. Asymmetrical.
On older cars, this effect was achieved by making lines and making the glass thinner and thicker different places, it creates this difference in where the light beam hits the road (if you know about the lights refraction in glass).
Today, this is done in a much more technical way, thus the lines are not needed anymore (also making it much cheaper to replace a broken headlight glass). | 28 | 40 |
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How do you use "a priori" properly in a sentence? | There are a few ways of using it.
* "'2+2=4' is a priori knowable" : here it works like an adverb, meaning independently of experience.
* "'2+2=4' is a piece of a priori knowledge" : here it works like an adjective, meaning piece of knowledge, which is independent of experience. | 27 | 25 |
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CMV: The reinstated Los Angeles mask mandate is a bad move | **Background**
Los Angeles reinstated its mask mandate at 1159 yesterday. [http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/phcommon/public/media/mediapubhpdetail.cfm?prid=3240](http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/phcommon/public/media/mediapubhpdetail.cfm?prid=3240)
All people regardless of their vaccination status are required to wear masks indoors. This is due to the rise of the delta variant that is causing a spike in COVID-19 cases.
There are two arguments coming from both sides, that being from the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
The vaccinated are arguing that they took the pandemic seriously, played their part, and should be able to go on living their usual lives.
The unvaccinated are pretty much saying, "I told you so," that the vaccines don't work and the vaccinated essentially used their bodies as test subjects for a non-FDA-approved vaccination. Some even say the vaccine caused the delta variant mutation. There is no evidence for this claim which has likely arisen due to the widespread distrust in what seems like any public health and government institution.
**View**
LA reinstating its mask mandate has essentially decreased any chance of the unvaccinated choosing to get the vaccine out of their free will. If there are no incentives for people who are vaccinated to get the vaccine then why get it.
Instead of forcing everyone to wear masks for the sake of the ill-informed, especially those unwilling to change their views, there are a few more effective methods I feel would be more acceptable, at least socially.
LA could have used this as an opportunity to improve its public health infrastructure so it can handle these COVID waves—which is my main assumption, that LA is reinstating the mandate because it fears its medical infrastructure can't handle the shock. Another method would be to have everyone hold their vaccination records on them—that is a little more controversial, however.
The point is, there are other ways the county could have controlled this. By reinstating the mask mandate, the county is not only losing whatever trust it had remaining from the unvaccinated population but also from the vaccinated population. It is overreaching by what seems on a whim instead of on scientific data; and if anything, any government that makes decisions like this without hard evidence backing the reasoning behind their actions is hard to trust.
**Tl;dr**
Reinstating the mask mandate is detrimental to public trust in government. The unvaccinated have even more reason not to get vaccinated, and the vaccinated can't trust their government is acting on scientific data as opposed to on a whim. | Here your main objection seems to be trust in the government. But shouldn’t the primary goal be to protect the public health? If masks are necessary to do that then they gov is obligated to do so.
I also don’t think the gov has done anything untrustworthy. They can only make decisions based on the information they have at the time. Unfortunately a combination of a new variant and fewer vaccinations than predicted (mostly due to anti-vaxers) has forced them to alter their actions.
Finally, these people wouldn’t have trusted the government either way, so I’m not sure there is much of a loss. | 38 | 41 |
ELI5: How do aircrafts know when they are being targeted? | Two basic ways:
Sensors on the aircraft detect the targeting radar of a ground installation or missile being pointed at the aircraft. Radars depend on hitting a target with energy and then detecting the energy as it bounces off the target and returns. Planes can detect when a radar is simply scanning the whole sky and when it is focused specifically on them by analyzing the radar energy hitting the plane.
Missile Approach Warning systems scan the sky for missiles using pulse-doppler radar, infrared, and ultraviolet sensors. The radar can quickly detect objects moving fast towards the aircraft, and the IR/UV sensors look for the bright light produced by the missile's rocket motor. | 30 | 25 |
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[Warhammer 40,000] What was our glorious Emperor doing during the Dark Age of Technology? | I was poring over the ancient chronicles of the Unification Wars, relishing in the Emperor's godlike exploits, when I was struck with a question: Why did our God-Emperor not reveal himself when mankind was at its height? Surely if he'd emerged then, humanity would have reigned over all, and the xenos would kneel before our might. So why did he not emerge?
| The Emperor chooses his role depending on the circumstances. Before the cataclysm, the Emperor worked in secret to bring mankind to the height of it's power. And make no mistake, mankind before the fall was the greatest race in the galaxy. The orcs were comfortably contained and of no threat except to the poorest and most isolated of worlds, and the decadent Eldar were a mere shadow of their former selves, and they never had the kind of power that mankind did at its height, no matter their vain protestations to the contrary. After the opening of the eye of terror and the destruction wrought by the Iron Men, mankind was in a precarious situation. The Emperor was unwilling to let 40000 years of guidance and careful shepherding go to waste, so he revealed himself and took a more active role in the affairs of mankind. | 21 | 37 |
ELI5: Why do Webpages on mobile devices especially still jump around frequently while loading? It goes as far as you cannot reliably trust what you about to hit will be still there when hitting it. Can't there be a load order that prevents that? | Scripts load at various times, often triggered by other scripts and elements on the page. Also, many images are not properly coded with width/height info causing the image load to make the page fluctuate.
A fun way to learn about how the web really works is to use an add-on like noscript. You will have the base page load (html) and each script in the page will need you to manually turn them on one-by-one. Well, you don't HAVE to, there is an "allow all scripts on the page" button.
Some pages only have one or two script approvals required. Journalism/media sites will have so many you will need to approve them all, then approve the scripts those scripts loaded. Possibly multiple times.
As the scripts load, you can watch the content on the page jump around as they load in. That's what is happening normally every time you load that page, just mostly all at once. | 12 | 25 |
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ELI5: How does salt give food flavor? | Salt performs a number of functions; it unlocks the aromatic compounds in foods, reduces our perceptions of bitterness, enhances sweetness. All of which enhance the overall flavour and subsequent enjoyment of food.
Salting foods (in various concentrations for varying amounts of time) prevents the protein structures in foods from releasing water and drying out as quickly, making for moister textures (specifically meats, but also applicable to other types of foods). Cooking in salted water also encourages food to maintain its nutrients.
Source: Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat - Samin Nosrat | 37 | 24 |
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ELI5:How were modern day scholars able to translate works written in archaic English (e.g. The Canterbury tales) so accurately when the language used is so different from the English today? | You have a lot of texts written in Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, Victorian English, etc., so you can trace the evolution of the language and backtrack. By now, Old English is an easy language to learn since we know so much about it.
Things that help:
* Having the same text in multiple periods (the Bible)
* Having translations of earlier texts done in different times (English doesn't rely on this as much, but for example we know a lot about Japanese and its evolution thanks to people adapting Genji Monogatari every 50 years or so starting the 12th century)
* Having repetitive texts drawn out over the centuries (census data, tax books, etc.)
* Having a fairly straightforward evolution that you can explain using historical context (Sudden French loanwords? Go figure, it was after France became a cool place. Sudden Latin influence? Go figure, it was around the time that the church had a say in written language)
* Having a lot of text to work with
You can also figure out pronounciation based on linguistic analysis and old songs which use rhymes (Ever notice that Shakespeare sometimes randomly doesn't rhyme? That's recorded language change right there, and you can figure out the pronunciation of old words based on the fact that, in Shakespeare's time, they used to rhyme)
It's harder with languages that don't have as much data to work with, but fortunately English started writing down things pretty early. | 15 | 15 |
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Ask Anything Wednesday - Economics, Political Science, Linguistics, Anthropology | Welcome to our weekly feature, Ask Anything Wednesday - this week we are focusing on **Economics, Political Science, Linguistics, Anthropology**
Do you have a question within these topics you weren't sure was worth submitting? Is something a bit too speculative for a typical /r/AskScience post? No question is too big or small for AAW. In this thread you can ask any science-related question! Things like: "What would happen if...", "How will the future...", "If all the rules for 'X' were different...", "Why does my...".
**Asking Questions:**
Please post your question as a top-level response to this, and our team of panellists will be here to answer and discuss your questions.
The other topic areas will appear in future Ask Anything Wednesdays, so if you have other questions not covered by this weeks theme please either hold on to it until those topics come around, or go and post over in our sister subreddit /r/AskScienceDiscussion , where every day is Ask Anything Wednesday! Off-theme questions in this post will be removed to try and keep the thread a manageable size for both our readers and panellists.
**Answering Questions:**
Please only answer a posted question if you are an expert in the field. [The full guidelines for posting responses in AskScience can be found here](http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/wiki/index#wiki_answering_askscience). In short, this is a moderated subreddit, and responses which do not meet our quality guidelines will be removed. Remember, peer reviewed sources are always appreciated, and anecdotes are absolutely not appropriate. In general if your answer begins with 'I think', or 'I've heard', then it's not suitable for /r/AskScience.
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Ask away!
| Linguistics: is it possible to extrapolate an accent into the future? For example, quantifying a typical northeastern American accent 200 years ago, compared to present day, can we work out the sound of someone talking in 2216? | 28 | 444 |
ELI5: Why do different races have different hair textures? | Hair texture is based on the protein composition of your hair and how those proteins interact together. Proteins are encoded by genetic information, which is hereditarily passed down. I'd assume that at some point in our evolution, as we moved out of Africa, either certain hair types came about that were either adaptively advantageous to the environment or were spontaneous mutations.
(more detailed answer on protein structure of hair) The structural component of hair is basically keratin, which is basically two helical protein loops coiled around each other. At the ends of these keratin strands are "head groups" that can interact with each other and bind these keratin strands together into larger bundles that become the hair you see. Depending on the chemical nature of the head groups, you can have coarse or fine hair, curly or straight etc. For example, more head groups = coarser, thicker hair. That's why, for instance, if you heat up hair you smell it "burning" (heating up the disulfide bridges that form the chemical bonds between the keratin head groups), and you can bend it into different shapes. | 13 | 15 |
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ELI5 How does toothpaste protect for 12 hours? | Does it set up some sort of barrier? | the fluoride binds with the minerals in your tooth enamel and makes them protected against acids. this allows them to re-mineralize and be stronger.
you can even put fluoride toothpaste on an eggshell , then wash it off and put it in some vinegar and it won't weaken where a egg that hasn't been treated will get all gummy and elastic. | 17 | 17 |
How come we often squint our eyes in order to see more clearly? It seems to have the desired effect but why? | I've noticed myself doing this more often, especially in order to see things further away. It seems to make objects appear clearer... but how? | Reducing the aperture of the pupil (which reduces the area where light can come from), increases the focal depth since there is less ambiguity in where each photon can have come from. It is exactly the same principle as in camera lenses.
| 50 | 57 |
ELI5, how someone who earns money through stocks creates jobs. | Let's say you run a little ice cream company. Your ice cream shop is doing great! You want to build more space to make more ice cream and give out more cones to your friends! (hopefully their parents will pay, too) The problem is that building a bigger ice cream shop is expensive, and you don't have all the money you need right now. Actually it's really really expensive and not even your credit card can cover it.
What if you asked random people to give you money in exchange for part ownership of the company? That way you can get all the money you need now to build, and the people who helped you out get some money back in the future - it's a win/win situation.
Since you decided to hand out ownership slices (stock) to these people (stockholders), you now are able to build a much bigger shop and hire new people to run the bigger shop. Once you start making money (which is now, everyone loves ice cream!) then those people (stockholders) start getting a certain share of the money your business makes after paying normal bills (dividends).
It's not that people make money and jobs are created, it's that people give money to create jobs, then some (or a lot) is made back. | 11 | 30 |
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What do PhDs in Philosophy do? | Hi all,
If I were to get a PhD in, say, Math or Science, I would have to take an unsolved problem and solve it sufficiently cleverly to earn a PhD thereby extending the boundary of knowledge.
What about Philosophy? What are its unsolved problems and what counts as solving it sufficiently cleverly? Could you indicate recent PhD dissertation topics in the area of philosophy and how they have extended the boundary of knowledge in the 21st century? | Philosophers work in a number of broad areas of inquiry.
A lot of philosophical work is concerned with the formal conditions of saying or thinking anything whatsoever. This can involve, with various emphasis: formal logic and related areas in mathematics, informal logic, rhetoric, and philosophy of language. This sort of work has implications for just about any theoretical work in any discipline, and contributions from this kind of work span from the material of a freshman course in critical thinking to fundamental mathematics.
There's also a lot of philosophical work that is involved in conceptual analysis, trying to clarify the meaning or significance of concepts drawn from everyday language or from specialized disciplines. So philosophers doing this sort of work might be interested in studying things like what we mean when we say someone knows something or should be held responsible for something, or they might be interested in studying things like what role the concept of *species* has in biological explanations, or what role *function* has in psychology explanations. This sort of work involves numerous "Philosophy of..." fields, such as philosophy of biology or philosophy of psychology, as well as a general program of conceptual analysis that might be organized topically, for instance a philosopher might be particularly interested in conceptual analysis pertaining to epistemology or ethics.
There's also a lot of philosophical work that's concerned with the study of values, particularly of truth, goodness, and beauty, leading to the fields of epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. In a sense, this kind of work is like conceptual analysis, and there is often a lot of overlap between, for instance, a conceptual analysis of morality or obligation, and the axiological study of ethics. But values are of particular interest to philosophers as they seem to be important notions, but notions which escape the grasp of descriptive enterprises like science. If this is so, then we need people who develop a particular expertise in thinking critically about the nature and meaning of value judgments, and this has always been a traditional role of philosophy.
There's also a lot of work in philosophy on systematic or architectonic concerns, for example inquiring into the relationship between various sciences, or between scientific activities and non-scientific activities. Specialized disciplines like physics or psychology have tended to develop by breaking off one particular aspect of the world and developing methods particularly suited to studying that aspect. We've had a lot of success with this, but it raises the systematic or architectonic question of what relation the various sciences have to one another, as well as what relation the sciences have to non-scientific activities. This question is important, so again we need people thinking critically about this, and this has been another traditional role of philosophy. This sort of work is typically associated with metaphysics, but in the modern period also, increasingly, with epistemology and the philosophy of science, or sometimes more broadly, with philosophical anthropology and the philosophy of culture.
Related both to this systematic project and to conceptual analysis is high-level or theoretical work in the sciences. There are philosophers involved in the "Philosophy of..." fields who often also have a background in the other field, for example in physics, and do the kind of work we would associate with theoretical studies in that discipline, for example some philosophy of physics overlaps with theoretical physics itself. While similar to conceptual analysis, this sort of project can go further and include, for example, syntheses, interpretations, criticisms, analyses, and defenses of various scientific theories and methodologies.
Some philosophers are also particularly concerned with applying knowledge from the humanities and the social sciences to practical problems in policy and society. This sort of work can involve things like consulting on policy relating to multiculturalism or things like supporting economic or social activism. This sort of active orientation is particularly associated with critical theory, but philosophers from various orientations and with various interests may have such projects.
Another field philosophers work in is the history of ideas. Philosophers doing this kind of work tend to combine something of a historian's expertise with the thought of a past era with typically philosophical concerns about value, conceptual analysis, theoretical science, etc. Working in the history of ideas, philosophers might contribute to our understanding of topics like the history of democracy, or might contribute to something like the debates about the relation between science and religion.
I hope this provides a decent picture of the sort of general projects which philosophers work on. If you survey something like the list of dissertation topics which /u/ReallyNicole has provided, you should recognize particular examples of these various sorts of projects. | 22 | 21 |
ELI5: How can water vaporise at every temperature if it requires heat from outside? | What about below 0 Celcius, or when you put some water that's colder than the room's temperature( before the temperature of water and room equals)? | What happens when water (or any other liquid) evaporates, is that a molecule of the liquid at the surface has enough individual energy in order to overcome the attraction of local inter molecular forces. The temperature of the water is essentially the average energy over all the molecules; it does not represent the actual energy of every single molecule. As such, some molecules will have less energy and some will have more. As they move around and bump into each other, energy is exchanged and constantly in flux.
Because of this, at any point some molecule of water at the surface might have enough energy to escape and become vapor. The lower the temperature, the slower this process, of course. | 13 | 17 |
Why do animals have different lifespans? | This seems like a really stupid question but here goes:
My dog is 7 and she's obviously gonna die much younger than I will. That got me to wondering, since she's a mammal like me, with roughly the same batch of parts, why do we have such different lifespans? Also, why do some dog breeds live way longer than others? It seems to have something to do with size, but there doesn't seem to be an exact correlation.
What is it in our genes that says "this many years for a human, this many years for a dog, this many for a horse, etc.?"
Thanks in advance for the education! | At the ends of your chromosomes are sequences of DNA called telomeres. Their job is to keep your DNA from fraying. Think of them like the aglets at the ends of your shoelaces. As your DNA replicates over time your telomeres slowly unravel and get shorter. The rate at which telomeres shorten in a given species directly correlates with their average lifespans. Mice telomeres, for instance, were observed in one study as unraveling at a rate nearly 100x that of a human | 490 | 288 |
ELI5: Why can't babies drink water until they are six months old? | I have read that babies shouldn't drink water until they are six months old. So what changes in babies from infancy and six months later? | Newborns receive all their nutrition from breast milk or formula. They also have very small stomachs, and if you fill the stomach with water, they won't be hungry for milk or formula and thus might not receive adequate nutrition. As they grow, their stomachs become larger and their digestive system better equipped to handle mushy foods and water in addition to breast milk or formula. | 253 | 139 |
I believe that the Federation's laws against genetic enhancements are ridiculous. CMV | First of all, for those of you who do not know, the controversy in the Federation about genetic augmentation spawned from "the Eugenics Wars" in the late 20th century Earth. Some augmented super humans took control of the world from the shadows, and were probably responsible for most of the wars throughout the 21st century leading up to WWIII. The most powerful of these augmented Tyrants was Khan Noonien Singh. I think having laws in place barring the improvement of living beings based on an event that happened almost 400 years in the past is an obsolete way of thinking. The Federation is the champion of individual rights and libertarian values, so the right to improve ones self through genetic augmentations should not be infringed upon by the state. Individual determination has always been the central ideology of the Federation, and this ban is nothing, but a disgrace to what the Federation stands for.
Some of you may argue that augments are naturally violent and egotistical. Spock said "Superior ability breeds superior ambition," and I find it laughably ironic that a Vulcan would be the one degrading human augments. Vulcans are physiologically stronger and smarter than humans, rivaling even augments, yet the Federation doesn't ban Vulcans. The idea that the ban on augmentation revolves around the assumption that all genetically engineered people are all going to end up like extreme egotistical elitists has been proven false by the countless different species within the Federation, all with different levels of strength and mental capability living in almost perfect harmony. Vulcans are a prime example of this.
My third issue goes back to civil liberties and equality again. What if I was born a human, and decided that I'm a Vulcan trapped inside a human body. So I want to change my genetic and psychical structure to that of a Vulcan (kind of like a sex change). The Federation should not legally deny me this opportunity. By prohibiting the right to change oneself for the better or worse, the Federation is thereby making itself a less free and equal place. Why should I be born in a body that is weak and feeble, while my neighbor T"vok gets to live to 200, has psychic powers, and can lift 2 tons effortlessly. Its unfair to say the least.
| Julian Bashir provided an alternate argument against genetic enhancement, analogous to those used against performance-enhancing drugs on Earth in the pre-warp era. If genetic enhancement for children became the norm, parents would be pressured to have their children genetically engineered as well, just to keep up. Twentieth-century Earth explored the dehumanizing effects of such an outcome in the film "Gattaca", among others. That's not to mention that genetic enhancement is inherently quite risky and can have serious side-effects. For these reasons, genetic engineering remains illegal so that it doesn't become a necessity for success. | 32 | 166 |
ELI5: Why does some food taste better when it’s hot? | Your “Sense of Taste” is actually a combination of how you perceive food molecules with your tastebuds and with your nose. When you heat food, water in the food turns to steam which carries more food molecules to your nose than when the food is cold.
So basically more molecular energy = More smells = perception of better taste. | 29 | 19 |
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[Pokémon] How does a gym leaders Pokémon not gain experience points? | after every pokemon battle, a pokemon gains experience points, enough experience points, and they then gain levels which make them stronger, allow them to learn more moves and even evolve. So how does the gym leaders pokemon not gain levels? while the leader can choose to not evolve their pokemon or teach them new moves, there is no way for me to prevent my pokemon from gaining XP. this doesn't really seem fair, if my friend battles the gym leader at 10 am and I dont battle him till 3pm, the gym leaders pokemon can easily be several levels higher cause of all the people that came between us. so what gives? the same goes for the pokemon of the other trainers in the gym | Gym leaders are suggested by the league to have multiple sets of Pokemon depending on the skill level of whoever is facing them, so that someone who comes to your gym looking for their first badge isn't facing the same set of Pokemon as someone who comes to your gym looking for their eighth badge.
Part of that is an understanding that if one of your pokemon gets too strong, you'll replace them with one that is appropriate for that level of challenge. | 52 | 18 |
does philosophy education diminish interest in the sciences? | Before taking philosophy classes, I had thought of science as the pinnacle of the potential of the mind & investigation. I was especially interested in astronomy as it was the means of exploring the outer space, the cosmos. After learning about a few philosophical concepts, however, I think all astronomy, physics, biology, chemistry, etc; are all *empirical phenomena*, knowledge acquired by the senses; and *contingent*, not necessarily true. All of a sudden, physics equations such as Kepler's laws do not seem to be *that* different from, say, the historical study of Ancient Egypt, which is basically likewise *empirical phemomena* and *contingent*.
I am not sure about what kind of question I am asking here, but does this make sense? Does learning philosophy render science a little less valuable than it used to be in our prephilosophical mind? | science does not become less valuable, but with philosophy we are able to see science not as an “correct” and infallible human good, but like any other thing, contingent to the context which brought it about. the value of science is not diminished but we should remain skeptical of all objective claims about reality | 172 | 95 |
Why are cars so expensive in Europe? | I came across various articles saying that profit margin for car companies are the highest on European sales. Why is that so? What are the relevant diffrences compered to the US or China? | > What are the relevant diffrences compered to the US or China?
European Union imposes 10% tariff on cars produced outside of European Union (source: _A picture of the EU car industry_ by Library of the European Parliament, 2013). US imposes 2.5% tariff on personal cars. Reduced competition increases profit margins of producers. | 22 | 39 |
ELI5 why Mayor Bloomberg banned food donations to the poor | Aid organizations prefer donations of money to donations of goods in general, since they have a much better idea of what they need to do to serve the people they're trying to help than the general public does. Individual contributors, in contrast, sometimes prefer to buy goods than simply donate money, as this makes them feel like they're doing something more substantial. Banning donations of specific goods like food can make sense in this context, as it forces people who want to help to do the more useful thing and donate cash, rather than do a less useful but often better feeling thing. | 14 | 18 |
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Why is the 4th order Runge-Kutta method so commonly used in numeric integrators? | Is it somehow optimally balanced between accuracy and efficiency? Or is it just popular because it's the lowest order method that doesn't usually fail on complicated functions? | Whether it's "optimal" depends on your perspective, but it's a good balance between accuracy, code complexity, and stability. It doesn't have many crazy artificial behaviors, and unlike other higher-order methods, it doesn't require extra un-natural initial conditions.
Adams-Bashforth 2 is another common choice, it's less accurate but simple enough to memorize. | 10 | 18 |
What is the meaning of the concept of time at the beginning of the "Big Bang" before cesium existed to measure the length of a second and while the Universe was expanding faster than the speed of light? | Currently we measure the length of a second as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom at rest at a temperature of 0 Kelvin. Since cesium did not exist in the early Universe, and the Universe was supposedly undergoing a bizarre expansion how is it meaningful to apply the concept of time to that early Universe? | You can define a second as ~1.85E43 times the square root of Planck's constant times the gravitational constant divided by the speed of light to the power of five.
Cesium has nothing to do with the flow of time, its oscillations are just regular enough that they can be useful for reconstructing the second. | 29 | 16 |
ELIF: Water is transparent but a stream of water has shadow. | I was waiting for the bus and I realized that the fountain upwards stream had shadow, but since water is transparent how is this possible? | Mostly, this depends on the shape of the water.
When light moves from air to water or back, it bends (refracts) based on the angle it hits the water or air. Because a stream of water is round, the light bounces away from the stream when passing through it, leaving a shadow where the light didn't end up.
This is why the bottom of a pool is not in shadow: the light hits the top of the pool mostly straight, and so continues to the bottom. If it is refracted, it is all bends the same direction, so you still get an even amount of light at the bottom.
Similarly, if you have ever seen a waterbug, or other lightweight object floating on the surface of a pool, you will notice they create round shadows where they touch the water. This is because they make "dents" in the water which bend the light away and leave a dark spot.
The opposite effect happens with light from air to glass: a magnifying glass concentrates the light by bending it inward.
TL;DR: light bends when it hits the water. If the shape of the water is round or curved, all the light bends away from the water, leaving a shadow.
| 2,734 | 8,438 |
Are borders on maps drawn at high tide, low tide, or somewhere in between? | Mean Sea Level is the usual standard datum for mapping. Because high and low tides can vary in magnitude, as well as having seasonal and weather related variation imprinted on them, mean sea level is the most readily applicable standard in most cases. Because MSL also acts as the standard datum for ~~nautical and~~ topographic mapping, everything is much neater using this as a standard (although, let's face it, simplicity rarely comes into these things). | 268 | 796 |
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ELI5: If we can use the rectum for effectively absorbing suppositories, how come we don't get blood poisoning from all the bacteria and waste minerals in our faeces? | It doesn't make sense to me. | Our digestive tract has a pretty strong barrier (lots of IgA antibodies that act like a web to trap) that prevents bacteria from crossing into the blood. Bacteria (or viruses) have to pass either between or through epithelial cells in order to enter the blood. There are numerous immune cells present to prevent this from happening. Drugs that are absorbed in the intestines are generally lipophilic (fat-loving) and can cross the fatty cell membranes of epithelial cells (think about "like dissolves like") and get into blood.
This is a gross oversimplification, if you want more detail just message me! | 1,289 | 2,155 |
ELI5: Why are venomous creatures so rare in cold environments? | Perhaps it is just coincidence, but why do venomous creatures seem to be almost entirely confined to the southern hemisphere, or at least warm countries. For example, the UK has only one venomous animal I can think of (the adder), as well as a couple of insects which are found pretty much worldwide. The Arctic meanwhile has no venomous animals at all. Is there a reason for this? | Cold environments generally have the advantage of less predators to avoid, less population and competition. Thus defensive mechanisms like venom are less useful. The most beneficial traits are ability to find food, attract mates, and survive the harsh weather. | 47 | 97 |
ELI5: Why is dental not considered a health matter and not covered under medical insurance when poor dental health can lead to a variety of life threatening conditions? | In that same vein, why does it seem that no two dentists can agree on the services a person needs? Is the industry less regulated?
Edit: For the folks saying most dental issues would go away if people took care of their teeth- yes and no. Some people are pre-disposed to more cavities and gum disease regardless of how much they clean and floss. Also, if that's the reasoning behind not covering dental and it not being a health matter, why are we still covering smokers or people who develop heart disease or diabetes who refuse to change their diets? Arguing that we should not cover dental because it's largely preventative ignores the high fat/sodium/diets the American public consumes and is likewise covered under medical insurance. Gum disease and tooth decay can lead to life threatening conditions in the same way a high sugar diet can lead to diabetes. What's the difference? | Because health insurance originated in hospitals (as a way to provide a more stable income for them and easier to plan expense for patients) and they covered the people who provided services within hospitals. Dentists rarely are affiliated with hospitals, so they started their own insurance programs. | 49 | 289 |
ELI5: The urge to mess with cuts, sores, and burns inside my mouth | I burnt my mouth today, and I don't understand the urge I have to rub my tongue over the spot over and over again. It doesn't make it hurt any less, but it almost seems involuntary. What gives? | Your mouth is a certain shape and taste, your tongue has it well mapped out, it knows every little nook and cranny. When you get a cut or you bite your cheek or when you burn the roof of your mouth, the shape and the taste of your mouth in that area changes. The shape because of swelling, the taste because of blood or increased sensitivity in burned areas. And so your tongue keeps going back to that area to keep checking any new developments.
I dunno if you are too old to remember this, but when your milk teeth become loose, your tongue also played with them. | 12 | 24 |
[Star Trek] Why are transporters not used as weapons? | As I start my tactical training at the academy I can't help but wonder at the oversight of the tactical utility of transporters.
* Methods of transporting even antimatter have been known since the days of Kirk, and lower-grade explosives and weapons are routinely transported.
* Even with the supposedly big bad Borg, our ability to routinely access their vessels via transporter, even to the point of carrying out assaults and kidnapping their leader during that Locutus thing... for as adaptable and scary as the old timers say they are, I don't believe I heard they ever adapted to this. So why didn't the Enterprise simply beam over their compliment of photon torpedoes, the antimatter storage, or even the warp core? Or override protocols and beam matter into the enemy's antimatter storage or weapons systems?
* If Borg can be unwillingly transported why not repel Borg (or any) invaders on a ship by simply slapping on a pattern enhancer and dematerializing?
* Sure, most of their doings are way to classified for the clearance level of a cadet, but I heard something about one of the early enemies Voyager faced... the Kayzon or something like that? Anyway, space-fairing race that couldn't even replicate water??? (Or even harvest hydrogen and oxygen enough to manufacture it? Sheesh!) So clearly no understanding of any of the principals of replication/transportation, yet were somehow a tactical threat to an Intrepid class vessel? They want water, exchange all the air in their ships' haul with it!
I can't wait to to sit up front and ask Admiral Shelby about this when she does her big Borg guest lecture in a couple weeks! | Transporting is more difficult than you seem to know - looks like you'll be spending a lot of extra time reading your engineering handbooks! First off, transporting requires transponder signals - a physical beacon - in most cases to be done easily. Starfleet officers have these embedded in their communicators. Transporting is possible without them, of course, but if you don't have one, transportation engineers must spend a lot of time and effort correctly calibrating the transporter for each transport, which is difficult enough when there is no high-stress situation. In combat, much more difficult!
Next, most shields block transporters. The Borg were actually uniquely weak in this regard, since Borg vessels didn't use conventional shields, instead relying on their adaptation technology.
Also, transporting must done between two locations that are stationary relative to each other. During combat, that's very unlikely, and ships in combat are moving fast enough that while you might TRY to transport a photon torpedo into the enemy ship's engineering, by the time the transport is completed, the enemy vessel may have moved from that location. In order to accurately transport something onto a ship that isn't stationary relative to yours, you'd have to correctly guess where the ship would be, and "lead" it, so to speak. But that assumes that you'd know exactly how long the transport would take. Transport times can vary wildly, however, depending on certain kinds of interference - that are very likely to be present during a battle. And if the transport fails? Well, now you have unstable antimatter or an armed torpedo in your OWN transporter bay.
So while there are some tactical applications to transporting, they generally apply to sabotage, not to actual combat. | 26 | 54 |
CMV: The world seems to host more Islamic extremists than other religious extremists because of poverty. | Friends of CMV, challenge my view.
I hold the belief that in the 21st and 20th centuries, Islamic extremists are more prevalent and violent because of their life conditions and circumstance.
_Please no "Christians instigated the Inquisition!" rebuttals._
Not because of their religion.
I suspect that if their basic needs were met to a reasonable and satisfying degree: food, shelter, social life, etc... There would be less overall angst and they would be less susceptible to the errant extremist preying on vulnerable and disadvantaged youth.
The same logic applies to young urban American men who are attracted to gangs. They're typically attracted to the support network and fraternity, not the violence.
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[Delta awarded here. Explanation also here.](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/2s6mb4/cmv_the_world_seems_to_host_more_islamic/cnn9qns)
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | While poverty is definitely a large factor, the religion also plays a factor. When we look at other groups suffering poverty such as those in Latin America or the gangs in North America, there doesn't seem to be any goal of jihad. They might be violent and do terrible things to improve their quality of life, but there doesn't seem to be in drive to topple Western institutions, especially ones not within their nation. | 19 | 47 |
ELI5: What happens on a global ecological level if the Great Barrier Reef is entirely bleached and dies? | The Great Barrier Reef is a zone which indicates a relative diversity of life on Earth, like Rainforests. The more diverse life is on the planet, the better, as we humans like to harvest things. Imagine if rubber trees didn't exist? Or if the fungi that made up immune suppressants didn't exist? Diversity is really good and when one of these places loses its diversity, we see that most other places are losing diversity too. Furthermore, an estimated 375 billion dollars are generated from food and tourism related to reefs, with about 500 million people dependent on their survival. Animals that depend on these corals for food go too. Entire food chains are disrupted. Imagine no more snapper, grouper, clams, or oysters! Fish rely on corals for protection from larger predators.
About 70% of Earth's oxygen comes from the ocean, from the smallest organisms to the largest kelp forests. Losing life in the ocean directly impacts our world's ability to sustain life. If the reefs, which are some of the most fragile ecosystems start to die, then it's an early warning sign that things are going to get worse. | 132 | 245 |
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ELI5: Why do people feel comfortable at different temperatures? | For example, I feel most comfortable with the thermostat set to around 80 degrees. I have a friend that will literally start sweating when he comes over if I don't change it. He sets his to 69, which I find unbearably cold.
We're both about the same size and build (5'10 ~165lbs) and both have lived in the same city (Orlando) for 30+ years.
| There are a few different things at work here - different people have different levels of metabolism even if their physical sizes are similar. Also, there's the psychological aspect - the ambient temperature at which an individual *feels* comfortable, called the "thermal comfort". There are a variety of other factors as well, such as, clothing, recent activity levels, etc.. | 14 | 34 |
ELI5: How does adding adding mayonnaise to certain foods make them a salad (potatoes, chicken, eggs, etc). | According to Wikipedia a salad is a dish consisting of small pieces of food, which may be mixed with a sauce or salad dressing. It seems that a salad being things such as the traditional leafy greens and dressing is something of a convention. | 16 | 21 |
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Why isn't nuclear physics considered to be chemistry? | Chemistry is primarily concerned with things at the atomic or molecular level. Nuclear physics is concerned with the nucleus itself. There is a whole branch of chemistry called "nuclear chemistry", and what they do is essentially identical to what nuclear physicists do. | 204 | 267 |
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ELI5: How can they tell how much oxygen is in my blood by putting a clothespin from Tron on my finger? | They work on the principle of spectrophotometry. Hemoglobin is the protein that carries oxygen through your blood and hemoglobin is a different color when it's bound to O2. The clothes pins simply emit light and the amount that passes through is dependent on how much hemoglobin saturated with oxygen is in your blood. The colors they emit are red (absorbed by deoxygenated blood) and infrared (absorbed by oxygenated blood). The machine then does a calculation to result in a percentage. | 12 | 21 |
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ELI5: How did Detroit become the undesirable city that it is now? | I heard it was like any other large cities back in early history. Why is it the only large city that turned out with the most crimes and negative stereotypes? | The city was built and supported by the growing auto industry. In the 70's and 80's a lot of external factors (rising prices, competition, new labor laws etc) forced most of the car companies to change their business models/move somewhere else. This means a lot of the manufacturing plants in Detroit were shut down and all of a sudden you had a large percentage of the population unemployed with nowhere to go. The cities economy started to suffer and has never fully recovered back to the state it was in in it's glory days.
There's a lot more to it than that, people have written entire books on the decline of Detroit. There's a lot of socioeconomic analysis that can be put into it, but that's the basics. | 33 | 59 |
How to get good student evaluation scores? | I am an instructor in a state university and have not been getting good student evaluations. I try my best, am easy with grades and try to be as interactive as possible. Please let me know how I could improve in getting better student evaluation scores. | If your university offers any pedagogy lectures or classes, I’d strongly recommend looking into them. Often what leads to low scores is a combination of different things, only some of which you may have control over (eg higher grade averages for a class often correlate with higher evaluations, but are the higher grades because you graded easily or because the students learned more effectively and therefore achieved better scores themselves because you taught well?).
For example, I’m an a pedagogy course atm, and one thing we’ve practiced recently is ‘transparent teaching’ which is strongly correlated with higher evaluations *and* better results for traditionally underperforming or under-represented students (eg first gen college students). Transparent teaching involves being as explicit as possible in: a) why you are assigning a certain task/homework/project/exam — what skills will they develop from it or how will it demonstrate the skills they’ve learned; b) the exact steps (broken down or ‘deconstructed’ as thoroughly as possible) they will need to take to complete the task; c) how you will evaluate their performance on the task — what qualifies as both a ‘sufficient’ and ‘exemplary/above and beyond’ and why those qualities are important and related to the skills they are developing in your course. Transparent teaching is, unfortunately, sometimes easier said than done, but in general when students are told exactly *why* they are doing something and exactly what they need to do in order to succeed and excel, it makes them feel more confident and more trusting in their instructor.
If your university doesn’t offer any pedagogy lectures (even one-offs can be helpful), try How Learning Works: 7 Research Based Principles for Smart Learning or Teaching What You Don’t Know by Therese Huston, which were both used in the course I’m taking so they’re probably decent introductions.
There’s also things like backward course design and flipped classrooms that might be worth looking into. | 43 | 25 |
ELI5: From a non-religious standpoint, why do we have religion? | Religion was a way for people to explain phenomenons they could not explain in any other way. By being able to explain these phenomenons gave people a sense of comfort and 'power.
Look at it this way. If you don't understand thunderstorms, you don't know why they happen and why they sometimes set stuff on fire. You feel very out of control. Now if you believe thunderstorms are caused by a god, there is an explanation, and because usually you can pray to these gods or do sacrifices etc, you also have a way to 'influence' these phenomenons. You suddenly feel more comforted and in control. | 44 | 24 |
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CMV: trans people prove that men and women are completly different | One tenent of feminism is men and women have more gender simularities than differences. If this is the case though, than why do trans people exist? If you read asktransgender or listen to trans people in the news they always talk about acting like their identified gender instead of their assigned gender. For instance trans women are usually very feminine and like traditionally feminine things and trans men, are usually extremely masculine. One of the main criteria for gender dysphoria is playing with the toys associated with the opposite gender and having friends of the opposite gender. There is even evidence that trans men existed in history and passed as men, while having jobs such as a doctor, soldiar or other male dominated jobs. Brain scans also show that male and female brains exist and that men are more interested in things and women are more interested in people. One reason, trans people are so threatening to radical feminists is they do prove that gender differences are very much real, no matter how much you don't want them too be. | >For instance trans women are usually very feminine and like traditionally feminine things and trans men, are usually extremely masculine.
There are two explanations for this that have nothing to do with the inherent nature of men and women.
The first is that, like cis people, trans people are also socialized with "what it means to be a [man/woman]." A trans woman may grow up as a boy but the whole time she is still taking in lessons on womanhood. Many cis woman feminists (myself included) still conform to a lot of traditionally feminine behavior, like wearing make-up or dresses, because it is hard to undo those lessons you constantly consume from society. And also because if that particular behavior isn't hurting you, why fight it?
The second is that, for trans people, conforming to gender roles is one way to avoid being misgendered, and to be accepted as more "legitimate" in the eyes of those around you. A trans woman *absolutely can* dislike make-up and love short hair, baggy clothes and trucks, but if she expresses those interests she's more likely to be identified as a man in casual interactions, and some will even doubt that she is "actually a woman" if she was born in a male body and "barely even looks like or acts like a woman." Being extra feminine helps communicate to society that you are a woman. And of course, it can help you "pass" which increases your day to day safety and comfort.
Edit:
> One of the main criteria for gender dysphoria is playing with the toys associated with the opposite gender and having friends of the opposite gender.
No it isn't | 39 | 22 |
ELI5: Household water softeners | I recently visited the US midwest where it seems everyone has a water softener in their house. Growing up with hard water, I was really annoyed at how my hands/body felt really soapy and slick after trying to wash off the soap I used. Also, it felt like the extra soapiness make my skin break out more.
**ELI5:** Why do people use water softeners in the first place? Is there any advantage to having soft water over hard water, or vice versa? | Hard water is full of dissolved minerals in the water, typically calcium and magnesium. A water softener uses an ion exchanger to remove them, and replace them with sodium ions.
Soft water reduces the calcium deposits that form in the pipes and shower glass. It also reduces soap scum buildup on shower tubs. As for that soapy slimy feeling, that's a personal preference issue from soft water, but soaps tend to work better in soft water compared to hard water. | 15 | 24 |
ELI5: What do we see when we close our eyes? | You know, when we close our eyes we see some random dots, lines and forms, what's that? | They’re called phosphenes and researchers believe you are actually seeing light that is originating from your eye itself. Basically our eyes are capable of producing "biophotons" which is essentially the same thing fireflies use to light up. Most the time these are lost in the light of the regular day and your brain just processes them out, but when you close your eyes, it sometimes takes a while for you brain to process out the light signals as nothing more than "noise" from your own eyes, rather than something it is actually seeing in the real world. | 29 | 27 |
If so many fossils from Morocco were formed before the breakup of Pangea, why don't we see the same quantity and quality of fossils present in New England? | Morocco and New England were once part of the same area of Pangea, and from googling it the trilobite fossils found so famously and abundantly in Morocco are from between 500 mya and 245 mya. Pangea broke up around 250 mya, so why don't we find the same trilobites along the northeast coast of the US? Is it just random chance? Different geological processes at work? Erosion? | Rocks exposed in and along Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, have some of the best exposures. Conanicutt Island is rich in these fossils once they are recognized after metamorphism.
Erosion to a near plane, sea level, by time and multiple glaciations greatly reduces the chance to observe fossils. | 22 | 20 |
Moral relativism isn't very popular among western philosophers today (especially the naive kind), but has it ever been popular among eastern philosophers? | It should probably be noted that moral relativism as commonly understood in modern day stems from specific meta ethical concerns that before modern day would have been something that didn't really occur to people as often. Yes, there were analogues of explicit relativists in the ancient world, but not very many.
You are more likely to find things in the east that look relativistic, but this is not because they are necessarily relativistic in the "moral relativism" sense per say, but rather because of how exactly they highlight ethics. They talk about ethics more like a path than like a law or fact. And so necessarily it would follow that the language regarding this implicates that different places you are involves different movements to progress on it. But this isn't necessarily them implying a lack of an objective state underlying ethics, more that since in the east their language focuses on the practical rather than the theoretical, then the way they describe it will focus on the differences in these practical situations.
For instance, in hinduism they talk about the dharma that everyone follows and the individual dharmas for your life position. But this doesn't necessarily imply relativism in the modern western sense, but more like contextualism and simply highlighting that different people have different particular duties.
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ELI5:Why isn't vision correction and dental care considered to be health-related in the health insurance industry? | The idea is that these are things that don't come up suddenly, or involve really unexpected costs or tests (the way even a normal check up might).
Most people know in advance how much they are going to spend on eye care and on dental care in a given year, and so there's little or no reason to "overpay" the way we do with regular health insurance to protect ourselves from an unexpected, high-cost event. (notably, most health insurance plans that are not bare-bones *do* cover eye and dental care when it is emergency care, or the result of some kind of accident or injury. They just don't cover the normal stuff.)
Of course, you can get dental and eye insurance. For people with kids it can be worth it, particularly dental. But it's often more effective to just save them amount you pay and use it for care directly. Depends on your risk tolerance, though, since there are some things that dental/eye plans will cover that regular health often won't, they're just really, really uncommon. | 13 | 20 |
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CMV: There should be more minority characters in movies/TV that are villains. | Whenever the topic of minority representation comes up, it primarily talks about protagonists or hero representation. That's all well and good, but eventually we'll have to talk about the flipside of the discussion.
Of course we have had great villains that were minorities (ex: Killmonger, dang what a great villain).
But at least from what I see, most villains (especially in action/superhero movies) either boil down to "calm and collected British bad guy" or "evil Eastern European guy."
It may be that studios are afraid to cast minority characters as villains. The key here is the two camps of minority villains.
One camp I call the "Killmonger camp", where the villains motivation is directly tied to their minority status, and that is purposely portrayed to be in at least a sympathetic light.
The other camp is the straight up villain, that just happens to be a minority. Take Dr. Wu from Jurassic World, or Black Mask from Birds of Prey. Black Mask is a brutal gang boss who enjoys cutting people's faces off, and also happens to be gay.
As the discussion of minority representation in movies increases, why not give Blacks, Asians, LGBT, people with disabilities fun and scene-chewing villainous roles?
This is isnt a big issue, but I feel like it's at least worth talking about. | That is one of the basis of the theory of accurate minority representation. According to a 1969 article by Cedric Clark, there are four stages of representation:
-Non-recognition: the minority is not represented and do not appear significantly in the media. Transgenders are there, only a handful of shows have transgender characters.
-Ridicule: The minority is shown as a subject of mockery and only exists in comedy. Gay people are mostly there, but it's starting to evolve toward the next step,
-Regulation: The character is shown in socially acceptable, generally model or idealized roles. They almost never play villains. Here you can find women, black people.
-Respect: The minority is cast in all roles and as deeper character, on par with the majority characters, and can actually be good or bad. The characters are more real than just stock characters constantly used, and can be villains. Here you can find white "minorities," eastern europeans, Irish, Italians - mostly people that used to be minorities but are considered white now.
So the endgame is indeed more villains being from minorities, but some still have a long way to go before we reach that stage, and it's unclear what happens when we skip steps - a lot of people have been outraged by a transexual villain, recently. | 16 | 33 |
ELI5 In math, what is a tensor? How is it related to tensorflow from machine learning? | A single number is called a scalar.
A set of numbers that belong together is a vector. You arrange them as a 1-Dimensional list.
If you add a second dimension by grouping multiple vectors you get a matrix wich for example allows mapping vectors to vectors.
A tensor is has 3 or more dimensions, so it's basically a generalized matrix. They are usefull in a bunch of calculations for 3D effects like tensions (hence the name). It allows you to have a single mathematical construct to represent forces that can be direct, shearing or twisting.
Tensorflow is a platform that uses tensor arithmethics to make all the calculations you need to train your AI more easy to represent.
In informatics terms: a Tensor is multidimensional array basically. | 250 | 90 |
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[Stranger Things] Where do all the Hawkins National Lab personnel live? | I live near Hawkins, and it just occurred to me that I've never run into one of these Hawkins Lab eggheads in town or at the local tavern or anything. Funny that nobody seems to actually know anyone who works there. | Hawkins National Lab most likely provides on site accommodation for the staff. This the scientists and guard most likely come from around the country they would all live pretty far away from Hawkins.
The reason why you never run into anyone from there is either because they don't wear lab coats or M.P uniforms while off duty or they generally just don't leave the facility for breaks in order to prevent possible leaks of information.
It's also very possible that you have met people from the lab but you just didn't know they worked there.
EDIT: At the very least the lab most likely provides some sort of housing for the staff. Either in the lab or in Hawkins or a near by town. | 85 | 116 |
[DC/ Justice League] people do seem to shit on aquaman a bit more than they should. Do the members of the JLA respect each other equally or do they seem to see each other as a weaker link? | Probably the best answer is that *most* people are treated well, fairly, and respected for what they do. Some get a bit more flack because they can't do all that much or are very specialized, but there's a few that do get shit on constantly behind doors and publicly are pretty much kept out of the big jobs.
1. The Question. He's often mocked behind his back as being a paranoid delusional creep, and they're not wrong. Of course, he tends to be right about his Paranoias more often than not, so is it really Paranoia if they *are* out to get you? Then again it's hard to like the asshole digging through your literal trash and building complex theories as to why you're working for the bad guys (even more when he turns out to be right, all because of a fucking matchbook you had from some dive bar Sportsmaster was meeting you at).
2. Booster Gold. *Almost* no one in the League respects him. At best they tolerate him. At worst, they shit on him and give him the worst jobs to his face. This has to do with a few issues: he's a huge dick for one. For another he's made it clear he's in this for fame, glory, wealth, and chicks. And finally when all else is done, he stole his powers, came back in time, and uses some knowledge of the past to make himself look good (although his History Class Grades seem to have all been D's).
3. ~~Animal Man.~~ B'wana Beast. He's a serious machismo character, not *precisely* misogynistic or anti-woman, but on more enlightened times he comes off a bit as a Gym Bro or Frat Boy. A lot of the female JLers find him grating, but he is good at what he does and can be trusted to have your back, even if he does make inappropriate growling noises when no one's around.
4. Plastic Man. As a former Criminal turned good, he has issues. Once he's proven himself, he tends to be well liked and respected, but he has a *long* haul to get there. Batman famously doubts him and considers him barely a member (despite often being a *Founding* member or near enough.
5. Hawk Girl. In Justice League and JL: Unlimited her race invaded Earth and threatened to blow it up. She initially sided with her people, and was revealed to have been reporting and spying on Earth for *years.* It took a long time for her to get her trust back, and many JLers in the Unlimited Era distrusted her even to the end. However in most continuities she does not have this problem.
6. Batman. Respected and feared, but he makes a lot of mistakes in his loyalty. He's nearly killed the JLA off by keeping contingency plans for their betrayals and allowing those to be stolen by bad guys (R'as Al Ghul in the comics, Vandal Savage in one of the movies). He also trends to being the "guy who breaks the rules to save the day" in many other continuities often leading to the dissolution or break up of the JLA. Famously wrecking the JL in Young Justice season 3, joining the Resistance in DC: Injustice, and running off to form Batman Incorporated in New 52. There's also the whole "raises child soldiers for his personal war on crime and has cost many of them their lives, sanity, futures, and deep physical and emotional trauma" thingy he has going on.
7. Shazam/Capt. Marvel. He's usually super respected and beloved riiiiight up until people find out he's like 9. That's usually when everyone flips out and starts wondering why it's cool he's on the Team, saving lives, making major decisions, and risking his own life at such a young age. Some point to the Wisdom of Solomon guiding him, others point to Wisdom is not the same as maturity. Batman usually supports him, although his track record on raising Child Soldiers is spotty at best so take that iota of support with a Gotham sized grain of salt.
8. Guy Gardener. He's the biggest dick in the Justice League, and that's counting Booster Gold. He has a interstellar reputation for being a giant dick. People may not know what a human is, but they know Guy Gardener is one and he's a huge asshole. No one likes him. No one finds him funny. But damn, if he isn't powerful and effective. He's on the League because of his skills, power, and results. If it was by a vote of character he'd been voted off decades ago. If he has two votes in his favor, even he'd be surprised. | 82 | 57 |
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ELI5: Does milk really help you grow taller or is it a myth? | Is milk still reasonable to drink just for a healthy growth or its all a myth and your height growth only depends in genetics and your diet (meat/fish, rice, veggies, water etc etc..)?
| Not having malnutrition helps you grow taller.
Milk is a good source of some minerals that were traditionally hard to find. However, if you live in a developed country and are well fed, it is not likely something you need to worry about. | 23 | 21 |
CMV: Religious people don't need to let gay people get married in their church. However, they shouldn't be allowed to influence their rights for any form of legal marriage outside of that religion. | Religion should not influence politics. Gay people should be allowed to marry if they so choose.
But that doesn't mean that every church or belief has to agree to perform marriages between homosexual people. If a specific belief says they're against gay marriage and don't want to perform it, that's fine. The gay people can just go next door to the church of a different faith, or to a courthouse.
The religion shouldn't have to change it's view because something is made legal. If their's is an unpopular opinion, they'll just get less believers anyway. | I agree with the basic statement. However, a couple of points:
>Religion should not influence politics.
Voters have the right to cast their votes after private deliberation, which inevitably will sometimes include religious influences.
>The religion shouldn't have to change it's view because something is made legal.
There's a difference between views and actions. A church is free to hold the *view* that having a pet cat is a sure sign of witchcraft, and ought to be met with capital punishment. They're not free to act on that view.
If a religious group chooses to operate a business that offers some sort of goods or services to the general public -- a "public accommodation", as it's called -- then it gives up some of the privilege to discriminate that it has in its strictly religious activities. So in the case of the for-profit wedding chapel, the people running the place can't be required to act in their capacity as ministers of their church by holding a religious ceremony for a same-sex couple. But if they offer, for a fee, to help with the legal paperwork for non-believing couples that walk in off the street with no connection to their church, then they can be required not to discriminate in that offer. | 17 | 90 |
ELI5: What makes Glass and some types of Plastic clear? Why couldn't we make clear metal or other "clear" Materials? | The structure of the atoms/molecules forms a pattern that lets light through, usually by having “gaps” that are the right “size” for the visible light to pass through.
We can make transparent versions of (some) metals, for instance aluminum oxynitride, we just don’t because the process is very expensive and difficult for little benefit. | 214 | 307 |
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ELI5: How many pieces of hardware does my internet traffic pass through? | I've been trying to learn more about networking, but can't seem to find any relatively simple answer to my question. Thought it was simple with basically two routers and a server, but then I learned about switches, optical equipment, and something called a content delivery network. | The short answer is a lot!
The amount of equipment your web traffic will pass through depends on where your destination server is and how far away it is.
A typical data path might be:
Your Laptop > Home Router > Modem > ISP CMTS > multiple ISP Fiber switches > NSA tracking device > ISP border routers > Hand off to another ISPs routers > more fiber switches > Datacenter Routers > Datacenter switches > Remote companies Firewall > Remote Companies WAF > Load Balancers > Front End Servers > Firewall > Switching > Database Server | 40 | 18 |
ELI5: When institutions like the Cancer Society spend money on cancer 'research', what are they actually doing? | From someone who has virtually no background in the medical sciences - what does one do when 'researching' cancer? I see calls for donations from organisations such as the Cancer Society all the time, and I know it isn't easy, but objectively speaking (from a public bystander POV), I feel Cancer is still very much out there. Sometimes there are little flare-ups in the media of some potential 'miracle' cancer cure, which are only then shot down again by some other high-up medical authorities. What is actually happening, and where does our money go towards? | Generally it's for researchers working in universities. They put forward proposals for research they'd like to undertake. If the proposal is sound, aligns with said society/organisation's goals and has good prospects, they provide funding, usually in the firm of a grant, to the researcher. | 13 | 22 |
CMV: The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution defines a citizen, then states that all citizens have equal rights under the law. This means that all "age" laws are unconstitutional. | Here's the actual text of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
It has long been my contention that this constitutional provision specifically outlaws "age" laws - including driving age, age to purchase alcohol or tobacco products, etc.
If a citizen is a citizen at birth (or naturalization), then their rights and privileges under the law cannot be curtailed without "due process".
The only argument I have heard against this idea is related to "due process" and the government's compelling state interest to not have 3 year olds driving around the city streets. I'm fine with that, but I do think that depriving 18 year olds, for example, from purchasing alcohol amounts to 'collective punishment' for the acts of a few 18 year olds who couldn't handle it.
Perhaps a better approach would be to have people demonstrate, at any age, their ability to drive a car or handle alcohol - then license them for legality.
Lastly, I get that this is a super controversial position, but it's one I have held for the last 40+ years, and has continued well past the age where these laws affect me directly.
I'm willing to be persuaded! | >Perhaps a better approach would be to have people demonstrate, at any age, their ability to drive a car or handle alcohol - then license them for legality.
Would you do this for *every* instance of age laws then? Working, pornography, signing contracts, making medical decisions... there's tons of things we could probably scrounge up here. That's a *lot* of tests, and a lot of money going into said tests. | 22 | 29 |
The dictionary paradox: Meaning of words in terms of other words? | Is there a subtopic in philosophy (of language) that discusses issues like, what I'm calling here, the dictionary paradox.
That if you keep looking up the meaning of words in a dictionary, you keep getting a definition consisting of other words. "In principle", if an alien could read the dictionary but not know the meaning of any word, the dictionary would be useless to it.
A related question, how come we are satisfied after a certain level of dictionary lookup, because we know the meaning of very simple words, even though we haven't checked the dictionary of those simple words, and are only aware of the "feel" of what those words mean.
In math, I know this is a problem related to formalizing a system, e.g., some algebra or analysis has to start with some axioms which are outside that system, and then the rest of the algebra or analysis is built upon it. Because of this separation of axioms and derivations, this is not that much of a problem in math. Unless we get into Godel's incompleteness (so maybe that has something to do with the dictionary paradox?).
I'm also aware of the concept of recursion (in math and CS). But even here recursion depends on some "base case" to be satisfied, otherwise it becomes infinite recursion and that's undesirable.
(BTW my philosophical level is good but not top notch. E.g., I think I'm good with the mind-body problem, physicalism, dualism, etc, etc, but I have difficulty reading/understanding Putnam and Quine. Actually I haven't read them at all. I watched some of their one-off lectures and interviews on youtube that's it.). | >A related question, how come we are satisfied after a certain level of dictionary lookup, because we know the meaning of very simple words, even though we haven't checked the dictionary of those simple words, and are only aware of the "feel" of what those words mean.
This isn't a problem because a dictionary doesn't determine the meaning of words, but rather tries to describe them. This is similar to how a physics textbook doesn't determine the laws of physics, but rather tries to describe them. | 11 | 18 |
Eli5: How does stretching affect the body? | Animals and humans alike seem to enjoy a good stretch when first waking up or after being still for a long time. What affect does stretching have on the body that makes it so instinctual? | Stretching does a few different things. First, it helps to align the tissues that connect your muscles to your bones. Second, whenever you move a muscle, the muscle will send signals communicating how long it has been extended. If it extends too far, it will receive a message telling it to contract – the purpose being to prevent injury. This message can be overridden by stretching correctly, granting a higher range of motion. | 82 | 138 |
CMV: A major goal of the Ministry of Magic is to keep witches and wizards out of trouble... by employing them | There are very few fields of employment for witches and wizards once they graduate from Hogwarts. They can be involved in organized Quidditch. A few can work for Gringotts. They can start or work for a small business. They can become a healer at St. Mungos. They can work at Hogwarts. Or they can work for the Ministry of Magic.
Now we know that the Ministry has dozens and dozens of departments encompassing every field. It seems like half the British wizard of world is employed by them. We also know that some of the tasks that employees do are incredibly basic, like folding pamphlets using magic. So why waste wizarding resources on busy work?
I imagine a major threat to the statute of secrecy is an unemployed witch or wizard with too much time on their hands. They’ll get bored and start interacting with muggles. If they are distracted by coming into work every day, they won’t end up causing trouble.
This is supported by the fact that it seems like the ministry has some real airheads working for them. The wizarding world has an unemployment rate around 0. How is that possible? How can morons like Crabbe and Goyle find jobs right after they graduate? Easy. They get some monotonous MoM job and stay out of trouble. It seems like they will hire anyone, but only because they will.
It’s not like anyone in the wizarding world needs to work to survive. They can buy a package of dried beans and rice and survive on that forever. They can find a spot in the woods and live in a tent the size of a mansion. But eventually they’ll get bored. And that’s when trouble begins.
Most students find something that they’re interested in. But for anyone who falls through the cracks, there’s a ministry job for anyone.
CMV | Remember that the story is told mostly through the point of view of school children at a boarding school. Of course they're only going to come into contact with a limited sample of employment in the wizarding world. That doesn't necessarily describe the whole of the employment opportunities.
And yes, the prequel series isn't focused on children but does have a lot of people working at the ministry. But again, this is a particular focus of those stories.
We know that the wizarding world has retail, and manufacturing to support that retail. We know of all sorts of service sectors, busdrivers, entertainers. We know there's an important educational sector. These are small compared to the country as a whole, but so is the population of wizards.
Yes, it does seem like the MoM employs a lot of people, but that's not particular to wizardry. The ( real muggle) government is also by far the largest employer in the UK. The US government is also the largest single employer in the US, and so on. | 13 | 26 |
If an organism sexually reproduced with itself, would the offspring have greater chances of genetic weakness compared to asexual reproduction or cloning? | The answer really depends on the organism. As you quite rightly point out, several taxa are locked into life strategies which call upon self fertilisation. These species have a few ways to avoid paying the cost of inbreeding depression.
Most taxa which rely on self fertilisation produce very large numbers of offspring, which allows for sucessful reproduction in spite of large numbers of expressed harmfull recessives.
One approach used by occasional self fertiliers is to selectively abort defective offspring, thus limiting the investment in defectives. In some cases, an individual will abort the whole inbred seed set if it subsequently comes in contact with pollen from a non related plant (ex: ceiba pentandra).
When it comes to obligate self-fertilisers, such as peas and Pyemotes mites, one finds that harmfull recessives are surprisingly rare. This is presumed to result from the fact that several generations of self fertilisation have brought those specific taxa through inbreeding depression, out to the "other side", so to speak, thus flushing out harmfull genetic variants from these species genetic pool. They paid the cost, in other words, by exposing all of their recessives to natural selection in order to adapt to systematic self fertilisation..
So to come back to your question, you have to factor in the effect of self-fertilisation as a breeding strategy across a whole species. The mid to long term efffect is to pay the price of inbreeding depression, in exchange of a cleaned up genome. So these taxa should have less harmfull genetic outcomes than clones, which will maintain whatever expressed recessives the parent had. | 20 | 60 |
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ELI5: Why is it when we look over to a blinking object the first blink seems to take a lot longer? | When I look over at my blinker in my car it seems like it stays on for a longer period of time than it normally does. Why is that? | This phenomenon is more commonly noticed with clocks, and goes by the name of chronostasis. What's happening is your brain decides that what you're seeing while your eyes move over to the blinker is too blurred/dizzying and therefore decides to ignore it for your own good. Instead it replaces it with a copy of whatever your eyes eventually settle on. So if your blinker is normally on for 0.5 seconds and it takes your eyes 0.1 seconds to move, you actually perceive the blinker for 0.6 seconds (assuming you look at it just as it comes on). This process is called saccadic masking. | 27 | 20 |
[general fantasy] If two demigods breed, do they have a chance at birthing a full god? | Demigods are usually the result of a god having a child with a mortal. The resulting child being half divine and half mortal.
If two demigods breed and all the DNA lines up just right, could the child be fully divine DNA and thus a full god? | Generally-speaking, no, because it's not a matter of genetics; it's a matter of "divinity". That's more often than not a quality that transcends any question of flesh or construction, and has more to do with nature, or essence. Once the quality of divinity has been mixed with mortality, it's not fully divine anymore, and becomes something different than what the godly parent possesses.
I suppose the best analogy might be to liquids. Say divinity is like fruit juice. If you mix two types of juice (two gods reproduce), what you get afterwards is different than either original, but it's still juice (i.e., a full god).
But when you mix some grape juice with *saltwater*, say (god breeding with a mortal), then what you've got at the far end is not precisely juice, and it's not precisely saltwater either. And no amount of mixing "salt-juice" is ever going to get you "pure juice" again. | 396 | 550 |
eli5: How did old militaries (such as ancient Rome) manage to keep fed and hydrated thousands soldiers in long military campaigns over long distance and time? | There are a number of ways armies fed themselves and they usually used any or all of them as the situation permitted or demanded.
1) Supply trains - The army would bring food and water with it on the march, and several days behind them would be even more wagons carrying food and supplies, and on and on so you had a continual shipments of food, water, and anything else you needed. Obviously this tactic relies heavily on both the safety of the area and on the wealth of the army to pay for all this.
2) Foraging - Here the army uses some of their soldiers to hunt wildlife, gather wild plants, and even sometimes harvest crops if/when the original owners fled. This is a great way to supply your army cheaply, but this gathering will slow your army down and when you have several thousand men you very quickly drain the local area of any "free" resources.
3) Requisition - The army just takes the civilian population's supplies. Sometimes the army would provide a monetary compensation, but even when they did you were are the mercy of the general's generosity to get a fair price. And even then you can't eat money.
4) Pillaging - Basically requisition but without the possibility of compensation and with the addition of property damage and murder. Primarily reserved for when in enemy territory and you didn't care about local reputation.
Just like today a huge amount of effort went into logistics. Commanders knew that an unsupplied army was a weak army and used that to their advantage whenever possible. | 127 | 76 |
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How does the number of chromosomes change upon species differentiation? | I would like to know how the change in the number of chromosomes as an species evolves can be explained against the idea of "irreducible complexity", and what evolutionary advantage it brings to justify it being incorporated into the genome of the entire species.
Bonus question: do species always evolve to have more chromosomes, or does the number sometimes reduce? | The key event in speciation is the appearance of a barrier to interbreeding. This can (and usually does) happen without any change in chromosome number, but adding or losing chromosomes can be a very effective way of achieving reproductive isolation, because gametes with different numbers of chromosomes (generally) can't combine during fertilization to form viable offspring.
Duplicating an entire genome gives you two copies of every gene, keeping everything balanced while providing the opportunity for each copy to "subfunctionalize" and specialize in a variation of the original function. This helps explain how very complex mechanisms can arise from simpler ones without "breaking" the original system, challenging creationists' "irreducible complexity" argument that evolution is incapable of solving this problem. Genome duplications have occurred twice in vertebrate evolution (and a third time in fishes), and as a result mammals often have 4 genes corresponding to a single homolog in fruit flies.
That said, DNA is heavy and bulky, so new species that make twice as much of it aren't always at an advantage. Plants don't have to worry about this as much, so variations in chromosome number are far more common in plant speciation—often in a single plant genus you can find species with 1n, 2n, 4n, 8n, hybridizing between 4n and 8n to get 6n, etc. | 12 | 15 |
ELI5: How is it that a certain event can change our brain chemistry, such as giving us anxiety or other ailments. But we cant easily change it back? | There are a few major problems with fixing your brain chemistry:
1. It's easier to break something than to fix it. This is true of all things, not just brains, because there are more ways of being "broken" than there are of being "fixed." The human brain, being so delicate, is also prone to breaking more when you attempt something rather than getting better.
2. Brain chemistry is super complex and often involves a cascade of effects. Some of those effects can't just be undone. There's no such thing as the opposite of anxiety down at a chemical level, for example.
3. The side effects of your chemistry being broken - i.e. all the mental symptoms - often make your behavior change in such a way that you're prevented from recovering. This is partially why it's an *ailment* and not just a *mood,* after all. | 13 | 17 |
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CMV: I think that the federal government in the USA should function more like an economic union and that the states should have much more political power. | I think that the only role of the federal government should be to help economic cooperation between states, ensure state laws don't violate people's rights and provide defense against clear threats to the United States and their allies. There is a massive divide between different states. I've traveled abroad, and while traveling to other parts of the United States from my home in California it often feels like I'm in another country. I think that if governments worked for lesser people they could get more done and people could build governments that work for their state's way of living and be better able to fix problems. I also think that the federal government shouldn't collect taxes directly but instead should just write states a bill and then it would be the responsibility of state governments to decide how they're going to get everyone to pay up. It doesn't make sense to me why politicians elected by people who live in states thousands of miles away from me have so much power in my state. It is completely understandable to me how different political philosophies would work in some states and completely fail in others.
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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!* | Powers within federations tend to drift to the federal government (at least to an extent) over time, as people prefer nationwide positions on some issues, and federal governments can often request a state do something in return for increased investment. Even if all 50 states became countries, compromises would need to be made to allow them to perform as a relatively efficient economic and military union.
Alot of your arguments for state powers could be argued at city or county level too. | 12 | 29 |
Is there a philosophy similar to hedonism, but not as radical? | So hedonism sounds a lot like an escape, actively avoid pain, and seek pleasure. I can see it easily leading to addiction, for instance. But I do like the basic idea of hedonism. What is life, if not the pursuit of your desires, instead of being imposed a specific way of life? (As long as not hurting others, and yourself for that matter)
Are there other philosophies that kind of fit this? | Epicureanism might fit this description
> Epicurus advocated living in such a way as to derive the greatest amount of pleasure possible during one's lifetime, yet doing so moderately in order to avoid the suffering incurred by overindulgence in such pleasure. | 92 | 67 |
I don't think religion deserves respect. CMV | I think that religions are almost laughable, that everyone that follows them is extremely gullible. I am open to the concept of religion, I just "haven't seen the light". | If you don't respect if for the fact that you don't have faith, and trust me, neither do I. It should be respected in the fact that it should be studied and well understood from a balanced academic view because of its effect its had on world history. Islam in Middle Eastern History, Hinduism in India, Christianity across Europe and in North/South America, and the various other religions/philosophies of the Far East and Africa. So, while it does seem laughable in some aspects, it has had a profound impact on history that should be respected in any respectable academic environment. | 22 | 36 |
ELI5: How do evolution deniers use the laws of thermodynamics to prove their case against evolution? | They take the notion of entropy, and point out that current scientific knowledge points out two things. First, entropy is always rising. Second, complex biological organisms decrease entropy.
That sounds like a contradiction, right? That's the argument they make: there *must* be some divine intervention or, according to our best science, there would be no way for complex organisms to evolve.
As you may have already guessed, the people making this argument are *not* trained scientists. They're missing a crucial detail: entropy always rises in a closed system (one which has no energy coming in). The Earth is not a closed system. In fact, none of the systems discussed by evolution, or biology in general, are closed systems.
In a single sentence: creationists have forgotten that the sun exists. | 310 | 224 |
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ELI5: Why aren't white people in the United States referred to as "European Americans" like how blacks are referred to as "African Americans?" | The term "african american" came about as a deliberate attempt to reduce discrimination by making race about ethnicity and not about skin color, to get away from the racist connotations associated with the term "black". As there were no comparable negative connotations associated with "white", there was no real need to change the term. | 227 | 489 |
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ELI5:Why does pure Oxygen kill you? | First: Oxygen is a very strong oxidant (of course). While it is necessary for our mitochondria (the "energy plants" inside our cells) to work and "burn" glucose to get energy, high doses of it will oxidise and damage lots of molecules inside our body, thus damaging our tissues.
Our body is constantly trying to get rid of those famous "free radicals": oxygen atoms available to interact, bind and oxidise other molecules. This is, however, a long term damage.
Second: Why do we suffocate when breathing pure oxygen?
When you are breathing pure oxygen, the concentration of it in our blood increases. Chemical receptors inside our circulatory system and brain sense this increase, and as our body knows oxygen is "bad", the brain orders the respiratory system to lower the respiratory rate (breaths per minute). It does this to prevenet more oxygen to get it.
The dowside is that as you have a poorer ventilation, your lungs are not able to exhale all the CO2 they have to. It increases its concentration in our blood, which causes lower consciousness and eventually coma/death, amongst other symptoms, due to the decrease in body pH (respiratory acidosis).
Edit: Paragraphs | 20 | 27 |
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ELI5: Why are we so fixated on finding water on other planets, as a sign of life? Is it not possible that other life forms would function without water as we know it? | I just find that we are constantly seeking water when we discover other planets, because it would imply that the planet could sustain life. Is this just us saying it could sustain our lives?
I just think it a bit myopic to believe that the only life out there must require water for survival.
| It's *possible*, but life probably needs some liquid medium to do chemistry in and water is by far the most common and convenient.
Some planets likely have seas of other liquids like methane and ethane (Like Saturn's moon Titan) but these liquids present some problems that may be difficult for complex biochemistry to solve.
Water also gets the top spot because we have to look for something. We would have no idea how to start looking for the bio signatures of rock men with lava blood. | 82 | 88 |
CMV: All ideas should be open to consideration and examination on university campuses, no matter how dangerous or cherished they are perceived to be. | I am a free speech absolutist when it comes to college campuses. In the university system, all ideas should be given the same careful consideration and scrutiny, irrespective of if they're popular, comforting, distasteful, offensive, or regarded as dangerous by some. I would even go so far as arguing that the ideas we most cherish or find most dangerous are *precisely* the ideas that should be examined first. After all, those are the ideas that have the best chance of having not been properly vetted.
Just to be clear: I am talking specifically about the discussion and exploration of ideas on university campuses. In this context there should be literally *nothing* that's left off the table. | So in one of your comments you stated
>The first priority of a university should be the creation and propagation of knowledge, with the goal of approaching Truth
Well, what you're advocating doesn't really do that. Do you think that phrenology or astrology or anti-vaxxer or "race realism" positions haven't been properly examined in academics? They have, and it's *because* they have that they have been dismissed. We don't teach that stuff because they are based on voodoo, pseudoscience, and/or extremely flawed methodology. To go over this stuff again and again hinders the propagation of knowledge. Do you really want students spending a quarter of the four years they have in University to be one long episode of Mythbusters? Why should people be spending their limited time in school and on earth studying thoroughly debunked ideas when they could be studying ideas with rigorous evidence and using those ideas to bring us closer to new knowledge? | 102 | 278 |
How does the body build tolerance to caffeine? | In addition to building tolerance to its mental effects, how does the body become tolerant to its diuretic effects? | By regulation of the number of receptors sensitive to caffeine on the cell membrane.
Caffeine functions by inhibiting adenosine receptors in the brain, which we believe is involved in our biological clocks. After prolonged exposure to caffeine, the cell tries to return to homeostasis by *increasing* the number of adenosine receptors present on each cell's membrane to compensate for caffeine's effects. This results in the need for more caffeine to achieve the same effect on the brain as before, and can lead to withdrawal symptoms once the baseline caffeine level is removed.
Of course, there's more to it than that, but that's the crux of the idea. | 10 | 26 |
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