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ELI5: What is the logic behind fast food places making their next size up in soft drinks only like 25 cents more. Wouldn't they make more money if the difference in price was proportional to the difference in size? | 35 | I believe there's two factors at play:
1. For something like a soda, it's mostly water, which is essentially free. The cost is mainly the container. The volume of a container increases as a cubic function, while the cost of the material is closer to a square, so bigger containers cost less per unit volume. Taken together, that 25 cents is mostly profit.
2. Psychology. People sometimes ignore the base cost, since they either want a particular product, like a soda, or not. They are, however, more conscious of the upgrade cost. By setting the base price high, but then having small steps to the large size, the net effect is more people buy the most expensive size. In contrast, if the base price was low, but the steps were large, more people might buy the small size. | 105 |
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ELI5:Why do Canadian car models use slightly different icons than the other NA country counterparts? | So I just got my first car, a 2012 Toyota Yaris. I was going through the car manual and I noticed that in the manual it had a few "tweaked" icons for Canadian models. For example, on my US car, when the parking brake is enabled it says "BRAKE" in red letters, but it said for the Canadian model it had this weird symbol that looked like a "!" inside (). I went to get my mom's car book from her Mercedes, and it was the same situation. It wasn't just those icons too. It was almost like Canada doesn't allow text for icons? Can someone explain this? I never understood. | 18 | it is the other way around, there are standardized universal symbols/icons for stuff in a car used by car manufacturers in almost all their cars. but America require them to be written in English, i think top gear made fun of that once. | 31 |
What is super-symmetry? | I recently watched the documentary Particle Fever and this word was used often.
Can someone explain to me what it is and why Super-symmetry would be supported by the Higgs Boson having a mass of 115 Gev.
And since it has been found that that the Higgs Boson has a mass of 125 Gev what could that mean?
| 23 | Basically it's the idea that for each particle with a given spin (electrons have a half, photons have one, etc), there is another particle with a spin that differs by one half. Some processes might occur differently if, for example, these particles were being created, but there hasn't been any evidence of that thus far in the LHC experiments. | 11 |
Gravity and Oxygen in Star Wars: Is it the same on every planet? Are there variances? | I'm left with the question after realizing that in our own solar system, the amounts of gravity found in all 9 of our closest planets (scratch that, 8 because pluto isn't one anymore, supposedly) differ greatly, not to mention gases. Let's assume that all the planets in SW have the same gravity and air quality, from Hoth to Tatooine, to Bespin, to Endor... How is this even possible? | 23 | There are variances. A good example of the gravitational issues is the Empire opting for the AT walker program. Though repulsorlift technology is tried and true, there are still planets with serious variances in their gravitational and magnetic fields which wreak havoc. Walking around in a gyroscopically stabilized tank is better then bottoming out or being flung several meters into the air due to some anomaly. On Coruscant alone, the difference in gravity between the Senate Chambers, and the outlying auxiliary maintenance shafts can be as much as 20%. | 14 |
Current climate surrounding Eastern Philosophy | A trend that I have been picking up on lately is a shift towards more acceptance and seriousness taken toward Eastern Philosophy. I know that there was some aversion to it being taken seriously in some departments and subreddits, but lately i've seen a trend toward studying eastern philosophy as a more legitimate philosophical genre. Do any of you know what is responsible for the previous aversion to it and why it is moving in the direction that I have seen recently? | 23 | I mean, it might sound awkward to say but one reason for it being taken more seriously is probably quite literally just racism decreasing. In the past a lot of people thought eastern philosophy was just vague nonsense. And some others thought it was real philosophy, but is not really worth considering since the modern west took off faster in terms of this type of scholarship, and has everything covered. But the problem is that its becoming more obvious that there's a lot of depth in the east, and some parts that have trends heavily different form the west. But more importantly that these trends come from divergences that started hundreds of years ago rather than anything new discovered by modern western philosophy. Making dismissing their relevance come off highly racist as if its just a given that western philosophy was always more accurate in a way that makes everything done outside of it irrelevant.
Take open individualism for example. Its a mainstream position in parts of the east. In the west its been more or less barely considered by most people, other than indirectly by spinoza and directly by schopenhauer. But neither of those people are read for this reason when read. Bringing it to light in the modern relevant sense is done by someone who is still semi obscure named daniel kolak. The truth is that philosophy got to modern day without actually even considering it that much. And at this point its hard to ignore that this is something way different than how the east played out, and that it definitely has racist connotations to not accept that these people were right that its more worth considering. | 16 |
[Men in Black] Why did the bug always have cockroaches and other bugs around and on them? Are these it's offspring, or are they Earth bugs that are somehow attracted to this giant space bug? | Edgar-Suit Bug always has bugs around and on them, but are they normal earth cockroaches that are just drawn to them somehow, or is it leaving a trail of offspring everywhere. It seemed pretty mad when J started crushing them, but if they're just random bugs from earth why would it care?
I suppose maybe it's just that protective of bugs, but I wonder why they would be drawn to them, or if it's collecting them or what the deal is there... | 63 | The bugs from space release a constant cloud of pheromones. Most humans can't notice the smell but insects are drawn to it. The earth bugs end up serving the space bug by keeping it's skin and exoskeleton clean and free of any unwanted parasites. And there is a small possibility that the roach like bugs seen in the dumpster and falling off of Edgar are some larval form of the space bugs. They very closely resemble Madagascar hissing cockroaches which aren't native to north America or New York City so it could be just coincidence that the space bug spawn resemble an earth species. Or Edgar hit up an exotic insects shop for more effective symbiotic bugs while on earth and felt a kinship with them when J was killing them after he put them in the dumpster. | 75 |
Have you ever had a collaboration that turned into a nightmare? Please share! | Please share any less-than-ideal experiences you have collaborating with others, so we can learn to recognize them! I'm in the process of entering into a few, with some trepidation. | 19 | Had a collaborator steal a research idea and pass it off as his own. He built a series of papers on it with no mention whatsoever of any correspondence with us, not even an acknowledgement :/ But he was in such a rush to publish before us that he didn't realize a huge flaw in the methodology, and I've been beating him over the head with it in the literature ever since. | 24 |
ELI5 how are radio audience numbers calculated? | If radio signal just goes one way and our radio devices aren't transmitting anything, how on earth do they know how many people are listening? | 37 | In the US, bigger markets, use whats called a Portable People Meter (PPM). Its a small device about the size of a pager, that listens in the background. But don't worry its not spying, radio stations all broadcast a "watermark" of sound that a human can't hear, but the PPM can. From this, they gather what radio stations are being listened to. This is somewhat reliable
In many smaller markets, they still use old school diaries. They have people literally write down and catalog what they listened to on the radio-- this is viewed as quite unreliable, to hilariously unreliable, but its still used, because thats just how things are | 33 |
ELI5:How does breast cancer research manage to get so much funding and make so little progress? | 233 | Part of the problem is the foundations. Susan G Komen only donates 3% of their funds to actual research.
Be careful who you donate to. Any charity is considered a 501c3 by the fed so you can easily and publicly find their taxes online to see where their money goes | 167 |
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ELI5: When something falls into a drilling hole on an oil rig, why is it so catastrophic and expensive to fix? What goes into fixing it? | 21 | Drilling into the ground for oil or gas is expensive. If, during a bit change or other time there is an open hole, a piece of metal falls in, it can damage the tri-cone or hammer bits used to do the drilling. The carbide buttons on the bits do the work, and are very hard, but brittle. Metal in the hole can snap these and slow or halt the drilling process. A bit can cost around $2000 per inch of the diameter of the bit. Sometimes, the bits can fail if the bearings go out, due to too much weight put on them, or from a manufacturers defect. The entire drill stem needs to then be "tripped" back out of the hole, to gain access for what is called a "fishing trip", where magnetic ended, barbed, or other means of grabbing what fell in or fell off back up out of the hole. At any time, there are 2-4 large diesel engines running on a rig, to drill, pump fluids, or to compress air for drilling purposes, which can use around 55 gallons or more of fuel per hour. That fuel cost, plus cost of the 3-5 man crew, the waste of time for the setback, the possibility of a downhole pipe casing cementing crew being on location and on hold due to unforseen problems like an idiot dropping a pipe wrench down the hole when breaking apart a flange on the casing and leaving it in a precarious spot...wait time and fishing trips can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in added expense. | 18 |
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ELI5: Why are some ships’ decks numbered/named from the bottom of the ship, and others are named/numbered from the top? | 25 | Former Squid here, as far as I've ever known it was just sort of the convention. At some point in the past it was convenient to start numbering, and if you chose to start from the top or bottom was fairly arbitrary excepting perhaps in cases where it is easier or more clear to differentiate between certain numbers depending on the language. But one specific designer or organization is likely to stick to one method because that leaves less room for confusion.
There's even a third option. Numbers that start in between top and bottom! Our (US) aircraft carriers do that. You start with the flight deck, and the numbers increase as you go down. But if you go up, vertically, now you're on levels, not decks, and those numbers also count up numerically. The decks are just called like "3rd deck" while levels are "the O-3" (that's a dash not a negative). It helps prevent having to talk about decks or levels in the teens or beyond. Given how much we love to shorten names and messages, ease of use seems to be the culprit. | 10 |
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CMV: The European-style "free" higher education proposed by Bernie, among others, would never work in the US. | I'm quite liberal but I think that this is a unattainable goal for a number of reasons, primarily:
1. American College culture. Americans expect and place value on the college experience, and that costs a ton of money. Dorms, stadiums, sports teams, Greek life, drama clubs, student newspapers, political/religious/hobby groups, paid guest speakers. European Universities have much more of a focus on pure academics and cost much less as a result.
2. The American desire for everyone to go to college. No matter what you end up doing, everyone still wants to go to college, and most parents strive to send to send them, and rarely accept a trade as an acceptable and equal option. Most of the kids that go to college here in Switzerland do so with the goal of a career that necessitates higher education. (sciences, medicine, etc). The rest go to trade schools or enter apprentiships in their teens.
Any attempt at making this idea workable will have to be focused on making colleges more selective and less of a necessity for the average American, and will be met with a massive bipartisan outcry far worse than what was seen during the Obamacare debate. | 48 | Well, 1. is solvable. If education is free, no one has the ability to complain if their expectations are not met - they aren't paying for this stuff, so if they want to have it, they can figure out how to get it themselves. The government doesn't need to be paying for these amenities, since they aren't essential, but a university may choose to spend a portion of its budget on student activities - which most European universities, even the free ones, do. And after a few generations, American culture will shift away from their movie-based expectations and will come to understand that university is a place for learning.
For 2. We have this in the UK, where education is *essentially* free - ie, the payback rates on the loans are so low you don't even notice it, and unless you're extremely well-payed you'll never actually pay it off. We also have a culture of wanting our kids to go to university, so similar to the US, we get a lot of people going to university just for the sake of going to university, with no particular career in mind. It's not ideal, but it works fine, and it's better than the alternative if the alternative is spending tens of thousands of pounds on it, even for the people who already have a career path.
If these were the only problems, free higher education in the US would work fine. The real problem is that America is the land of looking out for yourself. Even if you shuffled the budget around so that giving everyone free education had absolutely no increase in tax, people would still not vote for it because they hate the idea of their money helping other people to succeed. It's the same argument that you see against nationalised healthcare. People are more concerned about their taxes paying for someone else's health than about whether or not they're actually paying more taxes.
There's also the universities to consider. Given how extortionate the prices they currently charge are, they may lobby against a program that could potentially see them get less money. The only reason British universities don't complain too much is because they can still charge excessive prices to foreign students (which we get a *lot* of). As such, any solution to this would probably have to be one that increases the number of foreign students coming in and paying high prices for education, and because of how big the US actually is, there's going to be an awful lot of american universities that no foreign student wants to go to in the first place. | 61 |
[Marvel] I hear Vibranium is stronger than Adamantium. Would Wolverine be more powerful with Vibranium? | If so, what kind of characters could he now take on with Vibranium compared to Adamantium?
And if Adamantium is in fact stronger, how would Captain America be affected by wielding an Adamantium shield as opposed to Vibranium? | 27 | Vibranium absorbs/dissipates vibrations with near perfect efficiency, whereas Adamantium is an extremely hard yet non-fragile metal. The two can't be measured in terms of which is the stronger as they gave completely different properties with different intended functions.
For example, an adamantium shield would be a lot worse than a vibranium one. The shield would be able to absorb massive impacts, but because the impact would continue through the shield to its wielder, the shieldbearer would get destroyed by the transmission of force. Similarly, claws made of vibranium would be useless as they wouldn't have the same hardness (and therefore lose their sharpness). They'd also absorb/dissipate vibrations, so any attack would be heavily dampened by the effect and the transfer of force would be greatly lessened as well. | 54 |
Japanese philosophy | Hi,
Recently I've read something about an old Japanese philosophy about the 3 masks that humans wear. I forgot the name, and I can't find any resource or book about this.
Can anyone please tell me what book I can read about this?
Thanks
tl;dr I'm looking for a book about an old Japanese philosophy about the 3 masks humans wear. | 16 | Probably from *Shogun*, a fictional novel that is a pretty good example of Orientalism, that quote in particular being pretty dumb. An actual cultural concept is honne and tatemae, which you can find plenty about. | 10 |
How could someone possibly believe that the Holocaust did not happen? | What do they even base their argument off of?
I have heard many different things but their is so much evidence to show that it happened and it baffles me to think someone could deny it. | 64 | There seem to be four broad claims: the Holocaust never happened, the numbers are exaggerated, it wasn't intentional, and something that sounds like undiagnosed schizophrenia
The first actually seems to be really uncommon, and is usually based on nothing. They seem to present no evidence of any kind, and don't care to.
The second is usually that a lot less Jews died in the Holocaust then claimed by everyone else. Their evidence is usually about how the chemicals used were not strong enough to kill the number of people that were killed in gas chambers, and that a lot more food shipments were going to the camps then would be needed if the people in the camps were being starved to death.
The claim about it being unintentional is just that: Jews were being deported to Russia or detained for being anti-Nazi conspirators and were treated fairly until near the end of the war when the Allies started bombing the camps and destroying the food supply. The thing is, we actually have documentation from Nazi high command of them flat out discussing the most efficient way to kill as many Jews and other undesirables as possible.
The last is basically everything else, things like it was the Jewish wealthy killing their poor to remove competition, it was done by teh Gayz to make the Nazis look bad, and various other arguments that look remarkably like what happens when you convince an undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenic that he's a racist
Source: spent way too much time on a political forum with neo-nazis and Holocaust deniers | 71 |
[Mario] Are Mario and Donkey Kong still enemies? | 29 | No. In fact, Mario and Donkey Kong were never enemies. Back in the Donkey Kong games, Mario aka "Jumpman" was fighting Donkey Kong's grandfather, Cranky Kong. The modern DK we see today is actually Donkey Kong Jr. all grown up. Mario and DK jr decided there was no point in being bitter enemies despite the past Mario has with his family and that they should just have fun in friendly contests. | 67 |
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ELI5: How is it that copying a 1Gb file takes less than a minute, but copying 22,000 lines and 20 columns in MS Excel takes forever and potentially crashes the software? | Can't they make a copy/paste procedure similar to how the hard disk normally copies files? I know that it's Excel and that moving data around inside an application is different from moving it around a hard disk, but why? Nowadays computers have gigabytes of RAM, and multi-core 64-bit processors, and they can even scratch your balls for you, but still it's a real hassle to manipulate large amounts of data in Excel, and probably many other programs. | 106 | You can compare it to trying to move a 10 kg box filled with marbles, and 5 kg of marbles without a box. For some reason moving the marbles are easier when they are in a box, even though you are moving more. | 82 |
ELI5: What do producers and executive producers do? | 19 | It really depends. In some cases, they do *nothing*, and appear on the bill just because of a contractual obligation. Sometimes they are providing financial backing for the film, operating an an overseer management role, creative consultant, or are even the same person as the writer or director.
Stan Lee is an executive producer on every Marvel film & series whether he actually did anything directly for that production or not. | 12 |
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[Matrix] When Neo said "I know kung fu" after loading the Kung Fu training into his brain was this only inside the Matrix or he also become a kung fu fighter outside of the Matrix? | ^ | 328 | He knew kung fu in the real world as well. However, knowing Kung Fu and being able to use Kung Fu are completely different beasts. His weakened musculature, finite energy stores, and real body mechanics would have meant he would not be a kung fu master in real life despite knowing every maneuver as a master. | 404 |
ELI5: Why the deep ocean creates total monstrosities compared to other regions. | 110 | The simple answer is evolution. As /u/friend1949 said it's all about perspective and what we are used too seeing. The deep ocean is an environment totally unlike anything we experience on a day to day basis, and life has evolved to survive in those conditions; Lack of sunlight means skin pigments become pointless to protect the skin, meaning most deep see animals are full or partly translucent; Why would a fish need bones or a tough exoskeleton when it spends it's life floating in water and not coming into contact with a hard physical surface it's entire life; They develop big eyes and bioluminescence to hunt and evade prey/predators. There's nothing about the deep ocean that creates monsters, it's purely a very different environment that we are not used too. If humanity had evolved to live underground in cave systems instead of the surface we would look and act very different to how we do now, and wouldn't consider monsters of the deep so strange. | 115 |
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CMV: USA is not that bad of a place to live | I’ll preface this by sharing my background. I was born and raised in Germany to sub saharan African immigrant parents. I’ve only lived in Europe my whole life.
As such, I am wholly aware of my privileges compared to the US and how it may affect my bias. We have far better worker protection laws, far less income/wealth disparity, generally better govt support, cheaper education and healthcare, etc. And I’m not saying EU isn’t a better place to live in than the US.
I would say that in the “first world” as we know it, the US is one of the worse places to live. However, I think it is still one of the better places to live from a worldwide perspective.
I feel like a ton of Americans exaggerate how bad the country is sometimes, and as someone who’s heard countless experiences retold by my African parent, I know for a fact that it can get far far worse in the world. Is the US bad compared to other countries with similar amounts of money? Probably. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a far better place to live than a large portion of the world.
There’s countries where women often don’t even get the right to basic needs such as education, or are oppressed heavily in other ways. There’s countries where being gay or trans will have you locked in a prison or killed. There’s countries where your life isn’t even certain every day due to war and violence. (to a more severe degree than in the US) There’s places where clean water or food isn’t guaranteed for many. Just look at the average age in most of Africa compared to the US. Child death is immense over there and it’s tragic.
I feel like the amount of freedom of speech you have in the US is also massively underrated. The fact that so many Americans can even complain about their life is amazing and also a privilege. We’ve seen countries where that isn’t the case and people get jailed for criticising their governments.
The takeaway here is not “dont complain bcuz ppl have it worse” it’s moreso “be aware and somewhat thankful of the privileges you have in life over a lot of other people.” I often see Americans make large encompassing statements about how the US is one of the worst places to live ever, and.. that’s just insensitive to me. Many people would kill to live in the US, despite its many shortcomings, it can get a lot worse in the world.
EDIT: Okay, I think I ended up being convinced. I believe there still remains a small amount of Americans that do make their life out to be harder than it is; but I don't think that is exclusive to the USA. Largely though, I've reached a middle ground on this where I do start to slowly understand where many are coming from. The USA is not an amazing place to live, and it's not a terrible place to live either. However; the flaws that the USA suffers from are largely unique to the US, despite it technically being a rich country. I can see why that would be frustrating to many. The issues can be changed right now, but they're not. I feel like the conversation won't get much farther like this because we'd be going in circles, but I appreciate everyone who responded. | 116 | Things could always be worse. Things could always be better. Nowhere in the world is all bad for all people. Saying America, one of the wealthiest nations in the world, is not "that bad" to live feels like an understatement. But for some, it is that bad and worse. For some America is the worst possible outcome. It's different for everyone. | 79 |
How relevant is Camus in modern academia? | My friend was telling me that Camus and Absurdism is not too relevant in modern philosophical academia. How true is this statement? Is existential/absurd philosophy not popular in academia? | 89 | Camus is a figure around which there is a little cottage industry (There is an Albert Camus Society which has a journal that does one issue a year). His work, even while he was alive, was outside of the field of philosophy. He was a journalist, an author, an essayist, etc., but he never even pretended to be an academic philosopher.
You can still find plenty of papers about Camus in Literature departments, but very very very few in straightforward, high-impact anglo-american philosophy journals. | 78 |
CMV: I believe that doing an accent is not racist no matter who you are and what accent you are doing. | I believe this for one main reason. Accents and language are part of culture. Not race. While the two may be connected, it is important to make the distinction. When somebody is doing an accent, they are mocking a certain culture, not a skin colour. If I were to do a British accent in an attempt to be funny, I am not mocking white people. Blacks, Asians and other races living in Britain will also have the British accent. The accent you have does not conclusively determine your race but instead the culture that you or your parents come from.
One could argue that doing an accent in culturally insensitive in some circumstances but given that has nothing to do with race, it is a different issue. People should be allowed to mock and criticize other cultures in certain circumstances.
I am willing to change my view so please have at it.
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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!* | 60 | If you have any idea how language works, you know that the defintions of words and the way people use words are fluid. It is obvious to any English speaker that many use "racist" to mean "offensive to a particular group divided by a particular ethnic background" even if that's not *quite* the dictionary definition. | 27 |
[Pirates of the Caribbean] Would Davy Jones have been able to collect if Jack had been part of the Curse of Isla de Muerta? | 25 | Yes. He collected Bootstrap Bill when BB was under the curse of Isla de Muerta.
A cursed Jack might be harder to take though since Jack would be fighting against him and immortal, but ultimately Davy Jones can press you into his crew even if you’re already cursed. | 44 |
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ELI5: Skeleton Keys | 132 | A skeleton is different from a modern key. The lock that uses a skeleton key employs a 'gate' to prevent the key from rotating and unlocking the lock. Rotating inside the lock is required to hit the bit that opens the door.
Skeleton keys have a strange shape. This shape matches one or more openings on the inside of the lock. The piece that opens the lock is beyond this gate. Since the key is the same shape as the gates inside the lock, it can rotate inside the lock and pass through the gates, allowing it to hit the mechanism that opens the door.
Anything that isn't of the correct shape won't be able to rotate inside the lock, some piece of the ill fitting key will hit one of the gates and stop it from reaching the mechanism that opens the door.
**EDIT**: Grammar | 48 |
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[Avatar] Why does everyone speak the same language? Even back in the days of Avatar Wan, every human shown had a common language. What event took place that prevented the fracturing of language seen in our own universe? | 110 | It's possible that the language is actually that of the Lion Turtles. Since humans spent countless years living in cities on the backs of these giant beings, and communicated with them, they either learned language from them or just started using it after a while. | 192 |
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[Firefly]What was Saffron's plan? | What was Saffron's plan? Did she move from place to place, reading up on strange marriage rituals, taking advantage of drunk people so she could steal their ship? Because that sounds like a plan with rare opportunities, and there's the fact that she'd probably only be able to use each settlement a few times, depending on its size. Even if she only does it for the thrill of the crime, the space-net people would probably be unable to function with a lack of steady income.
Am I missing something? Or is this just unexplained? | 67 | She was a con woman, we only saw her doing the ~~two~~ three marriage cons not the multitude of other scams.
I also have a feeling she was more interested in transportation and then making a quick buck, spending it until she was out and finding a new mark to get money out of. | 28 |
[Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace] Why does the opening crawl refer to Obi Wan as a Jedi Knight even though he is only a Padawan? | 92 | I believe the reason is much the same way that Obi-Wan makes reference to The Jedi in the original trilogy despite being a Master at that point. "I was once a Jedi Knight, the same as your father... For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic."
In a general sense, the Jedi were referred to as "The Jedi Knights," despite the different rankings within the order itself. Qui-Gon is also a Master, but the crawl refers to him as one of the two Jedi Knights. It is much the same way that Jedis are referred to as "Master Jedi" as a show of reverence or respect (both Anakin and Ahsoka are referred to as such notwithstanding neither being Masters) even though they may not hold the rank of Master. | 118 |
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CMV: If a lawsuit is found to be frivolous, criminal charges should be filed against the plaintiff. | Frivolous lawsuits do nothing but flood the court with idiocy and waste the federal court's time which could be better spent on litigation that is actually necessary. When people file lawsuits over things such as they don't like the color of paint on their neighbor's house, it's clear that the plaintiff is just harassing and/or looking for a payday. The current rule regarding the federal courts is that if 3 lawsuits are found to be frivolous by 1 person, then any lawsuit has to be paid up front. I believe that there should be more punishment for those who waste the court's time.
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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!* | 67 | A plaintiff isn't going to know if a lawsuit is frivolous or not. They don't know the law. That's what lawyers are for. Lawyers are in a better position to know if a lawsuit is frivolous, and that's why we can sanction them if they congest courts with nonsense lawsuits.
In contrast, regular people (most plaintiffs) don't have the special skills and knowledge that would allow them to make this determination, and shouldn't be held personally accountable for the ethical and professional failing of their attorney. | 52 |
What (not) to ask department chair & Dean on campus visit? | I have my first campus interview for a tenure-track assistant professorship coming up next week! It's at a liberal arts college with both teaching & research expectations (teaching load is 3/3 & faculty seem to produce approximately a paper a year).
I'm wondering what questions I should ask when I have my meetings with the department chair & the dean of the college. I of course have a bunch of questions revolving around things like tenure expectations and research resources for junior faculty, but I'm not sure what is/isn't appropriate to ask at this stage (vs. what would better be discussed if I actually get an offer). What kinds of questions would you all recommend asking (or not)? Thanks in advance! | 27 | Department chair: ask about success in the position, challenges for new faculty, what support they have for junior faculty, how your workload is managed pre-tenure, general travel/research points
Dean: ask about big picture things, like how is the new initiative going, how your department/junior faculty can play a part, whatever you see in their 5-year plan (which is probably on the website somewhere with a stupid name, like the Strategic Goals or "Vision 2020 and Beyond")
Wait for an offer for: salary, negotiations for other things like travel or research support, course releases | 19 |
ELI5: If I was dehydrated and there was only alcohol to drink, would drinking it make me even more dehydrated? | 33 | Beer? Compared to drinking nothing, it would often hydrate you. Especially light beer. There is after all a little bit of alcohol (5% or less, in most beers) and the rest **is** (mostly) water.
Alcohol itself is counterproductive and is not in *any* way a water substitute. So 100% alcohol (or very near it) could not possibly provide any benefit.
As the strength increases, at some point there is a crossover where dehydrating effects outweigh the water contained in the beverage. I’m not sure where this point is, but it would be different depending on the person and circumstances. | 37 |
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[DC] just how rich is Bruce Wayne really | Elon Musk is sitting at a net worth of 228B.
The richest person in history Mansa Musa wound have a net worth of 400-500B in today’s money.
So Bruce. Where’s he at? Has someone done the math? Both of his family come from Old Money (in newer continuities at least?) he was a controlling interest in Wayne Inc. and he has his own personal investments.
Taking all Batmans into a type of amalgamation we’ve seen him but a hotel, a bank, fund the Justice League without hesitation (when Wonder Woman said she’d pick up the bill if Wayne Inc ran dry he responded with “you’re kidding right?”) in the Arkham games he corrected a reporter with “multi-billionaire. Multimillionaire is so 20th century” (or something like that).
So how rich is Bruce really? | 503 | Direct numbers are rarely given, however we are given an estimate about wanye enterprises at one point. Let Luthor once said that if lexcorp and Wayne enterprises together make up 97% of the US gdp, which is insane. The question then is how much of Wayne enterprises that Bruce owns.
Even so, odds are he would definitely be richer than any modern billionaire | 418 |
Second choice in job | Any advice on how to handle things when you've been informed post-interview (which you thought went excellently well by the way) that they were impressed but think another candidate might be an even stronger fit and they're moving forward with that while still trying to accommodate your time constraints? | 33 | It means exactly what they said. You are second in the line for the job. If the job negotiations, e.g. salary, starting package, etc, fall through, they will offer the position to you. It happens quite often. Some universities go as far as having 2-3 candidates as 'reserves.'
The time constraints bit sounds like they are expediting any actions to ensure that they can come back to you within your time frame. This may also indicate how close you were to the first choice (i.e. it was not a clear-cut case on who was the better candidate of the two).
This is perfectly normal. If you like the position and it is offered to you, then go for it. | 47 |
[Megamind] Do other superheroes exist or are Megamind and Metro man the only superpowered beings in the world? | 52 | If there were other heroes, one would assume they would've gone after Megamind. If there were other villains, you'd think they'd be mentioned in the news as well when Metroman was "killed". Megamind and Metroman are the only alien babies we're aware of to be sent to Earth and humans haven't been shown capable of naturally developing super powers.
So as far as we're aware, they either were the only powered people on Earth at the time or heroes/villains are very strict on keeping to their turf. | 54 |
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[Amazing Spider-Man 2] The NYPD sniper doesn’t shoot at Electro—how does this change things in the long run? | 45 | I think Spidey manages to talk Electro down and seeks help, bringing him to the only people he knows who can deal with someone if this caliber: Harry Osborne and Oscorp. This, of course, doesn't sit well with Electro, and so he lashes out and we see similar events to the rest of the movie. | 23 |
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[40k] Is there any joy or any peace in the Warhammer 40k universe? | The Imperium of Man controls 1 million planets. Surely on some of them, there is no war. There is peaceful countryside. There are shopkeepers and accountants, scientists who aren't focused on war and police who aren't glorified thugs. How do you pay tribute and your taxes if you don't have a functional economy.
Even if the empire is constantly fuelled around war, there must be some peaceful world's where the war is far away.
Surely.....right? | 23 | Yes, of course. but you don't hear of the planets where nothing happened, or whose PDF force fends of a pirate warband or the regular Ork skirmishes. It is just that it never makes the news compared to the more dramatic stuff.
It's for the same reason the Space Marines always seem to have to save the Imperial guards ass. Because the Space Marines obviously are not deployed to situations the Guard are handling on their own. | 41 |
[Game of Thrones]how does civilisation in Westeros survive years long winters where agriculture isn’t possible? | I’d have thought years long periods of total famine would result in total societal collapse | 33 | I got the impression (only watched the show) that they started storing food as soon as summer arrived again, and since their summers are longer than usual as well, that gave them enough time to store enough food for the winter. However, that doesn't mean they're prepared for another "Long Night" like the one currently approaching (in the show). | 50 |
Why does my phone camera show the heating elements on my stovetop to be a pink/purple colour when they appear red/orange to the eye? | [Picture.](http://i.imgur.com/8UKDC9k.jpg)
I imagine the camera is picking up the infrared light and shifting it to visible light, but my DSLR camera doesn't do this. What is special about a phone camera that makes it do this, and why the pinkish purple, which is at a part of the spectrum away from infrared? | 22 | When the heat is shown as red to your eye, it is shown in 600 to 900 nm light also known as red. But there is a lot of light coming off in infra red 900nm and higher.
This infra red light is invisible but appears as violet to your camera.
Tldr your camera is showing you light you can't see | 25 |
What are researchers and scientists primarily doing on Antarctic missions? What have been the most significant discoveries or advancements from this study? | 73 | One of the most historically significant discoveries made in Antarctica was the work of Joseph Farman (and many others after him) on the ozone hole over Antarctica and its relationship to CFCs. Farman begin collecting ozone readings in Antarctica in 1957, although his work was largely dismissed by the scientific community at the time. It wasn't until 1974, when two American scientists showed that CFCs could destroy ozone in the stratosphere that anyone begin paying attention and a dangerous ozone hole was theorized. In 1985, Farman and colleagues published a paper in Nature showing that ozone levels over the Antarctic had decreased by 40% since 1975, and that the ozone hole was a very real problem. The discoveries of Farman, and many others over the years, lead to the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty intended to phase out the use of ozone-depleting industrial compounds. The Montreal Protocol was signed by 24 countries in 1987, and has been signed by more than 200 today. The story that begins with Farman's work in Antarctica and ends with the Montreal Protocol, which has effectively eliminated CFCs and stopped the expansion of the ozone hole, is one of the greatest success stories in the history of modern science. | 44 |
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If the US adopted universal healthcare, what would the economic effect be when all the health insurance companies collapse? | Private health care and insurance is a huge market in the US. How many jobs would be lost there if universal healthcare became the norm? Would it be enough for a noticable recession? Is there a way to do this without any ill effects on tbe economy? | 92 | Universal healthcare implies nothing of the sort.
Universal healthcare in of itself means exactly one thing, that everybody has *access to healthcare*. It tells us absolutely nothing about the actual design of the healthcare system.
For the US, that could very well mean a vast overhaul and complete shift to a publicly owned healthcare system, or just an expansion of the existing one with relatively minor changes.
Does universal healthcare imply the loss of jobs? No. Is it possible to have a system of universal healthcare that would cause substantial job losses? Sure. But that could be the case for a non-universal system as well. The actual implementation matters. | 137 |
ELI5: I know many rice cookers use fuzzy logic (or fuzzy math?) So it cooks the rice the right amount of time. How does this work? | 22 | The basic ones are a bit simpler than “fuzzy” logic.
Water can only stay liquid up to 100 degrees C.
While there is liquid water in the cooker it’ll have a max temperature of 100C. Any excess heat put in gets used to turn the water to steam.
When all the water is absorbed or evaporated the temperature can climb above 100C
The cooker has a temperature sensitive strip on it that triggers just over 100C. This could be fancy circuits or it could be a bi-metallic strip with the right thermal properties.
When all the liquid water is gone and the rice temperature goes above 100C the sensor trips and turns the cooker off. | 75 |
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[DUNE] If the Worms of Arrakis were territorial, why didn't the Fremen have to worry about attacks from other Worms while they rode on the back of another Worm? | It's been several years since my last read through of the series, but I remember the point that the Worms were often territorial and would attack other worms who wandered into their area. So why wasn't there a constant fear of attack when riding a Worm? | 41 | You don't know that the fremen don't have to worry about worm attacks, you've just never seen it happen. Although it's also possible that worms avoid one another's territory to avoid trying to feed from ground already fed from, it may not require confrontation. | 25 |
ELI5:How did individuals become royalty and start a legacy? | How did an individual be determined as king? What was the process used to make or determine someone as royal? | 28 | The basic recipe to becoming a monarch is military power plus succession.
In terms of growth, they start off convincing a bunch of their mates to go intimidate and kill enough of their neighbors that everyone around agrees to go along with whatever they wanted. Then they use that power to round up a bunch of soldiers and go threaten to kill a bunch of people from the neighboring village until they go along with the whole scheme as well. Repeat this over and over, conquering more areas, forging alliances with other leaders, and so forth, and eventually they end up commanding a significant amount of military power.
All that can't usually be done in one lifetime (though sometimes it can), so you also need succession. In other words, when they die, someone needs to take over their position and have everyone agree that the new person gets to have all the power the old leader accumulated. This is frequently done through children, but sometimes an advisor or someone similar will end up in the role instead (whether by plan or by treachery). In any case, this means that the power that's been seized doesn't disappear when the leader dies.
Once all that is sorted, then they just need an appropriate opportunity. Sometimes they just have a pretty big area under their control and declare themselves king. Sometimes a kingdom nearby is weak, so they march over there, defeat the king's forces, and claim the throne. Sometimes the kingdom they're nominally a part of has a monarch that dies childless or with only weak children, and so they march their forces over to the palace and tell everyone that they're king now and anyone who disagrees can talk to the big men with the swords. Sometimes they're part of a democracy or republic or something but they think that's dumb, so they march into the capital and tell everyone that they'd all be better off (ie, not dead) if they switch to a monarchy instead.
No matter how you slice it, though, it pretty much always boils down to having enough people who are willing to kill anyone who disagrees that they're the monarch that nobody disagrees. | 18 |
ELI5 why do arrows need to have the feathers on their ends? | 77 | The idea behind this is to make the arrow more stable as it flies. Imagine the arrow as it flies. One would generally imagine it flying straight, but no one's perfect so imagine you just chucked it ( or yeeted if you prefer) ahead of you and it tumbles slightly end over end. The end with the feather has more drag which will slow the tumbling as it catches more air. On a smaller scale, this is what happens on a normal shot. The feather causes drag to enact a force on the back of the arrow turning the feather end away from the direction the arrow is going. | 59 |
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CMV: Making a hypothesis before conducting a science experiment does more harm than good (creates potential bias to change the result or the original hypothesis) | (I'll try to keep this short, but feel free to ask me for more info)
**Reasoning:**
The scientific hypothesis is ultimately pointless because from my experience conducting scientific research I have witnessed coworkers change the hypothesis to make the results look better in the eyes of our professor. These changes can be either to make the hypothesis fit the results, or purposely do the opposite in order to make the conclusion look more interesting. The outcome is the same, with the hypothesis becoming obsolete and potential changes in the results leading to bias.
**Potential Solutions**
1. Eliminate the hypothesis altogether
2. List potential outcomes of an experiment instead of a single, predicted one
Edit: Wow thank you all so much for the responses and support. Good job changing my view.
_____
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If you think thing X causes phenomena Y, then you conduct a test that tries to disprove your hypothesis. That, at it's core, is what science is: constant attempts to disprove hypotheses. If your hypothesis is strong and is fails to be disproved and it has predictive and explanatory power, we keep it (at least until it *is* disproved). There is no experiment without a hypothesis because your hypothesis determines exactly what you're testing. | 50 |
ELI5: Why cant "offshore shell corporation" tax avoidance methods used by the wealthy be used by the working class? Is it just because it's cost prohibitive to set up? | 136 | 1. It isn't cost prohibitive but it isn't inexpensive. The cost might run into the thousands per year at the lowest level so if you're not saving that much in taxes, it makes no sense.
2. The right kind of income. Domestic wages and salaries cannot be hidden. So if that is where you're earning most of the income, no luck there - rich or otherwise. On the other hand, holding foreign investment assets and properties, then maybe. Domestic investments and trading income - harder to avoid.
3. Know your end game. Lot of these arrangements are about avoiding estate taxes and such which is relevant if your idea is to pass down a lot of assets. If your end game is living off your investments domestically, these arrangements might be less beneficial.
4. Your own sophistication level and resources. Scammers, fraud etc abound. You do lose protection of domestic laws as well. So there are risks involved and ongoing maintenance. Not for the ignorant - you'll need lawyers and accountants, trustees etc.
Bottom line though, generally speaking this sort of makes sense if there are tens of millions of dollars of assets in play. | 204 |
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ELI5: Non-HD TV looks worse than it did years ago. Have I just adjusted to HD or is the quality actually worse? | 86 | A lot of TV channels are more and more heavily compressing their signals in order to run more channels. For example, here in Australia, 7 used to run at 10Mbit, then they switched to 7Mbit on their main and 3Mbit on a secondary channel, and now 4Mbit/3Mbit/3Mbit across three channels, all of which look a lot worse. It makes them more money. | 66 |
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[Star Trek] If time travel is so easy, why isn't it used more often? Who regulates time travel? | In the 29th century, the Federation has dedicated timeships to monitor incursions and alterations to the timeline, but during the 24th century no such timeships exist. It would appear that one could alter the past without anyone noticing. How does the Federation prevent this from happening? I remember hearing that Captain Sisko of DS9 was questioned about some sort of time travel incident, but I assume that's only because he reported it. | 41 | the nice thing about time travel is, that once you develop it, you can...travel time.
the people of the 29th century monitor all of the time stream, thus the argument that the 24th century does not have such an organisation does not apply. it has one, it is just not been founded yet, and still is monitoring us.
the fun of time travel.
edit:
also something to think about:
the fact that the 29th century does have a federation means that up till then, no one before that date has went back in time to stop the federation, otherwise that organisation would not exist.
though our knowledge of that future might change the future, which is why all information on that matter is classified. | 26 |
[The Incredibles] Why didn't Syndrome fight back against his own Omnidroid? | Doesn't he has the Zero point energy glove that can immbolize anything? Why didn't he use it against his creation when it went rogue? | 123 | He was genuinely shocked that it happened so he froze up, and before he could get his bearings back together it had already KO'ed him.
Remember, the entirety of the actual fight is the Omnidroid knocking the gauntlet off, Syndrome turning around in shock, and then him dodging laser blasts until one fucks up his leg jet, causing it to send him into a wall. This all lasts a grand total of 8 seconds, half of which is him in a uncontrolled flight. | 224 |
ELI5: How do eyes move together? | 63 | Much like how a birds head stays completely locked in place when their body moves and for the exact same reason, your eye muscles are largely reflexive muscles.
So, just as the brain tells your lungs to move, it tells your eyes to move. And it tells both of them to move at the same time to maintain your binocular focus, either on whatever you were looking at if you move your head, or whatever direction you are shifting your gaze to look at if you move your eyes. | 55 |
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[MCU] Why were terrans basically the only people fighting Thanos? | Sure Thanos decimated Xandar, but destroying half of all life is somewhat of a universal problem. Why didn't planets get together and hunt him down before the stones were taken? Even if they didn't know his specific plans they knew he was hunting for the extremely dangerous weapons.
It seems like both stands against him were raged on Earth without much assistance. Couldn't the Guardians have petitioned an army from an alien species, or shouldn't some army have just gone without request - given what was at stake? Why, in the entire universe, were only like, 30 people trying to actively stop him? | 108 | First off, nobody knew his true plans. Second, people were fighting back against him, and losing. Third, when he launched his quest for the Infinity Stones proper, it was a blitz operation conducted only when he knew he could get all six in a matter of days - far too quickly for anyone to effectively rally an opposition against him. | 157 |
What is with the whole “death of the American mall” thing and why isn’t the same happening in other countries? | I hear a lot about how American malls are dying and struggling when they used to thrive. This is interesting to me as someone in Denmark where malls are still very much thriving, we have so many in the Copenhagen area alone. What is happening in the US that causes this and why isn’t it happening in Denmark? | 114 | Most malls in europe are in city centres, not in suburbs where you need a car to get to them. Malls outside cities in Europe also aren't doing well - they were built for a car culture that's (thankfully) dying. | 173 |
Would it be possible for a computer to choose a random number out of an infinite number of possibilities? Or there is no way to program such thing | 25 | There is no way to hold an infinite amount of things in a (finite) computer. Your computer probably has less than a terabyte of storage space; so it can hold a single number that has about 8 * 10^12 binary digits in it.
So, even if you were to fill all of those bytes completely randomly, it would only be able to choose whole numbers between 0 and 2^(8 * 10^12). | 21 |
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CMV: “Being the bigger person” as a concept is idealistic and naive at best and openly harmful at worst | You hear this expression in a multitude of ways - if not as written, then perhaps “When they go low, we go high”, or “karma will get them back.” The problem is, in my eyes, that the society that we have cultivated does not reward this kind of moral victory, and conflates it with weakness and submission.
Firstly, the essence of this phrase is rooted in the idea that a moral victory is the best way to prove yourself as being the better person in the debate, and less willing to stoop to the level of your opponent. Once again, we saw this in the Michelle Obama quote: “When they go low, we go high.” But this approach functionally achieved nothing - going “high” in bipartisan approaches was just met with “low” mudslinging and eventually Obama stopped reaching across the aisle. So essentially, the “low” tactics worked more effectively, which I feel highlights the first issue I have with the phrase - holding the moral victory does not matter in a world where morality is either unimportant or subjective enough to literally be whatever it needs to be for one’s current situation. We find this situation repeated with one of history’s greatest proponents of the idea - Mohandas Gandhi, whose hunger strikes and non-violence were largely initially ignored by the British Raj, since the moral high ground did not matter to them. Only after military force was applied, and the financial exhaustion of the Raj after the war came to a head, did Britain leave India.
Furthermore, the idea of Karma, and the more simplistic way children are taught to “be the bigger person” and not “stoop to their level” in school and throughout their childhood. Both were common quotes from my teachers and authority figures through my childhood, but ultimately, I would find friends who were being bullied trying to adopt this strategy, and it being taken for weakness or submission. The moral high ground held little comfort over physical pain. Yet, when they would actively oppose bullies, either by choosing to defend themselves, or confront them in other ways, they would see results.
I’ve always believed in this ideal, and think that a world where this was an approach we could take would be, for all intents and purposes, a better world. But my experience irl with it has significantly disillusioned me, so I’d like to hear people’s thoughts on the idea. | 23 | "Being the bigger person" doesn't mean being a pushover. It doesn't mean not standing up for yourself. You can still be honest, straightforward, and confident while "being the bigger person."
If you do something vengeful or morally indecent just because they did it too, that would be "stooping to their level." | 10 |
ELI5: any reasons certain companies hire and train from scratch while others doesn't? | Especially those professional levels one that needs certs like engineer dentist accountant developers. I mean, if some companies does that, what make certain companies do it while the norm isn't that? Been trained to do cyber security from scratch work before and yet cyber security is a professional level work.
Also if the company expecting cert and not from scratch training sounds very normal to people, these also ask for a certain level of Foundation instead of just "knowing something". | 514 | It's mostly company culture/philosophy. Some companies want a higher retention rate, so they invest in the employee early on and train them on their system/integrate them into their business. In theory this should lead to higher morale and productivity/reduced error rates. It can also be a case of a very niche business and they need to train since most people wouldn't have the necessary experience that is required.
Some companies have very generic business that doesn't require any special training. Some companies operate in a "lowest cost possible" manner and are willing to have a high turnover to save on employee costs. | 184 |
ELI5: What makes a good interviewer i.e. Charlie Rose, Larry King? | I've been watching Charlie Rose interviews recently and aside from his asking questions that stimulate discussion, I was wondering if there was something more that makes him good at interviewing? | 52 | These kinds of people are very intelligent and well-informed. They do their best to learn as much as they can about what they're interviewing them about, so they come up with genuine interesting questions in that research process. | 30 |
Why do people have different kinds of laughter? | Like, why are some laughs funny and others aren't?
If there has been another ELI5 post, it would be great if someone would redirect me, i couldn't find any. | 40 | Lots of factors. Some of them are physical - people have different pitched voices, different body sizes and differently-shaped insides, and that changes the way anything that comes out of their mouths sounds. And some of it is psychological. Some people, perhaps through shyness or social convention or just a habit of keeping their mouth tightly shut, actually stifle the laugh so it comes out as a snort or a pffffft sound. Someone else might be a big brash extrovert and let out big belly laughs. A lot of people will also have a fake laugh when they feel they ought to laugh at something out of politeness, and that probably just sounds like whatever their idea of a normal laugh is. | 12 |
Is it possible to orbit a planet/star at its escape velocity? | 392 | No, in Newtonian circular orbits, escape velocity is about 41% greater than orbital velocity. In highly eccentric elliptical orbits, the orbital speed at the closest point in the orbit (periapsis) can get pretty close to escape velocity. However, you must remember it's called escape velocity because it's the velocity that lets you escape.
There is also the case of photon orbits around black holes, which are technically at the black hole's escape velocity but it's a different set of physics. | 258 |
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ELI5: What causes the “refrigerated taste” food can get when it is uncovered in the freezer too long? | 19 | All the food inside is drying out and all the moisture takes smells into the air with it. The fridge is closed and small, so all that smelly air is trapped in there. Over time, food left in there a long time will have a dry crust and the humid smelly air will start to go back into the dry crust. The yucky taste and texture is all those mixed smells and dried out crust combined. | 12 |
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Will the perfect moral person, be happy? | Let's assume someone who every decision he takes, is the net most moral decision in every moral system that exist, will that person be the happiest person? What would be his emotional reward for his moral perfection?
Edit: most moral decision in every moral system = think of net moral utility, apply the same logic to the sphere of moral systems | 48 | I don't know what you mean by morally perfect "in all moral systems that exist"... that seems totally impossible, as some moral systems (e. g. Act Utilitarianism and Kantian Deontology) are mutually exclusive - it's totally possible that you are a formidable person according to Utilitarianism, but a monster according to Kantian ethics.
Could you maybe clarify? | 33 |
What is the difference between Anthropology and Sociology? | I've done a Google search, but in general they seem to say they are in fact quite similar, with the difference that Sociology prefers using statistical data, and Anthropology prefers fieldwork but that hardly seems to do much identify what seems to me very different methods, vocabulary, and key figures in the two fields.
Was wondering if someone could elaborate further on the difference, or at the very least, on a university curriculum basis? | 39 | Look in the etymology of the words in order to get a better view of their meanings Anthropology=science of man; sociology=science of society. Anthropology studies cultures, religions, small-scale interactions (in tribes or collectives or small groups), and mainly uses ethnography (field work), narrative studies and qualitative methods. Sociology, on the other hand, studies politics, economics, macro-relationships, social interactions, the influence of concepts such as power, ideology, class, etc., forms of organization, etc. Sociology tends to rely more on "classic" theory (linguistics, philosophy, politic economy, marxism, etc. | 38 |
[W40k] Who's the absolute worst faction to face, being a space marine? | As an imperial guardsmen, they're all equally horrible I'd say, but as a Space Marine, I can imagine there's some leeway in the preference of the foes you might have to face. Which are worst, and which are... least worst? | 78 | The Traitor Marines. Not because of exotic weaponry. Not because of fancy-schmancy tech. Not because of being a "superior species".
The Traitor Marine is you. He who has gone through the trials that forged his mind, body, and soul into chainsword and bolter to defend Humanity. He who has seen the horrors that await mankind should the Imperium fall. Yet, inexplicably, he who chooses to side with monsters. Their fates are what awaits those who falter in their duty as Adeptus Astartes.
EDIT:words | 127 |
Why don't electrons crash into the nucleus of an atom? | If electrons are attracted to protons, what keeps them from falling into the atom's nucleus? | 110 | They do basically fall into the nucleus, in a sense. In the lowest energy state of hydrogen there is zero orbital angular momentum: you can't really say that the electron is orbiting at all. In this state there is a nonzero chance to find the electron inside the proton. A classical analog would be the electron perpetually falling though the proton, coming out the other side, then falling back in again... except this is Quantum mechanics and so you've actually got this smeared out wavefunction along that whole path plus smeared along all possible orientations so it's spherically symmetric.
What keeps the electron from being able to be confined to the nucleus is the uncertainty principle: the smaller a volume you try to confine an electron to, the higher it's spread in possible momentum becomes until it has a high probability of escaping. If you try to confine an electron to the region of the nucleus (10^-15 m) then the electrostatic binding energy is like 1 MeV while the uncertainty on the momentum of the electron is like 100 MeV (give or take factors of 2). Clearly the electron will just escape in this situation. | 135 |
[Alien] What if the Xenomorphs were intelligent enough to set up their own advanced civilization? What would their society be like? | Xenomorphs are extremely clever, but they are basically still animals.
If they evolved to develop human-like intelligence, the ability to invent spacecraft/cities/tech and the ability to communicate intelligently with other alien species (without immediately killing them), what would they likely be like as a society? | 25 | Do we know that they're just animals? We don't really get much of a chance to attempt communication with them, and there's only ever a few of them around. We've seen queens, however, and we know they at least build pretty huge nests, they organize the workers under them and clearly communicate with them. Hell, even the regular drones can clearly observe, learn, plan and implement actions with clear goals - observe the escape in Alien: Resurrection.
Their structures don't look like ours, and their goals don't seem to be much like ours, but how do we know they *aren't* intelligent? | 20 |
[Halo] Why was the UNSC Sabre program such a top secret mystery? | I mean all they were doing was developing ship to ship fighters right? I get that you don't wan't the Covenant finding out, but three seperate administrations dismissing at as preposterous rumor? Why? | 26 | It was the fact that the Sabre had shields. While the UNSC had a decent enough understanding in how shields worked, power generation was always a problem. No UNSC vehicle could be fit with a power source capable of generating enough energy to run the shields while also being small enough to actually fit in the vehicle. At least not without making it witheringly expensive.
The Sabre was the first time they cracked that problem and, as such, the UNSC went ham on the security for the program since it was such a game changer for them. Getting the shields working on the Sabres would lead to getting them working on larger capital ships, including Infinity, and closing the technology gap between UNSC and Covenant even more. | 25 |
ELI5: Why do different car manufacturers have similar vehicle designs? | I saw a post awhile back comparing a Subaru BRZ and Scion FR-S and its stunning the similarity. Is there more, and why? | 17 | Those are literally the same car.
Subaru, Toyota, and Scion (which is a division of Toyota) all sell the same car under different names.
Plenty of other car companies do this. Nissan sold the Ford Ranger under thier badge. The Mitsubishi Eclipse was also sold as the Eagle Talon and Plymouth Laser. | 15 |
ELI5: How does wasp killer spray kill on contact? | 18 | For the RAID type spray, the chemicals are a nerve agent (for the insect) that penetrate through their skin and cause paralysis and nerve damage. They can't move, they can't breathe, and they die (painfully).
For other insecticides, the chemical may cause uncontrolled muscle movements, or prevent the insects from growing from the egg stage, or destroy their digestive tracts. These are longer-term insecticides, and are less harmful to humans. | 17 |
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ELI5: Why are our teachers forced to teach to a standardized test instead of truly teaching? And how can we fix this? | I know we want to make sure the kids learn but we're handcuffing our educators. | 21 | Because test scores are tied to the amount of funding a school gets in many states. And as long as money is tied to scores, administrators will attempt to get as much money as possible, and cut teachers whose classes are underperforming. So teachers are constantly in fear for their jobs. | 16 |
[Star Wars] How do personnel on the Death Star travel from one end of the station to the other? | [This](http://img839.imageshack.us/img839/34/starwarssizecomparison.jpg) here is the relative size of both Death Stars I and II. How the hell do they travel without using shuttles to travel from one end to the other and not lose time while travelling. | 19 | They mostly don't. Each area on the ship has quarters and off-duty spaces for the personnel assigned there. Only the highest ranked officers, in charge of multiple regions, need to worry about travelling long distances. | 22 |
Given that Hawking radiation intensity increases exponentially as the mass of a black hole decreases, how does a black hole "gradually" form out of normal matter collapsing? | If a neutron star, or equivalent, is collapsing as it has enough mass to overcome the strong nuclear interaction, how would it become a black hole? As soon as some matter from the core collapses within the Schwarzchild radius, wouldn't it evaporate extremely quickly (or explode) due to massive Hawking radiation? For example this calculator (http://xaonon.dyndns.org/hawking/) suggests that the first 1 micro-gram of the black hole will evaporate in less than 1 unit of Plank time. Does the rest of the collapsing matter need to supply the micro black hole with more matter/energy than is lost due the radiation? Is it even relativistically possible for it to collapse fast enough to do that? Even if so, would it be possible for it to fail (due to angular velocity for example), and if it fails would the neutron star potentially blow up instead of collapsing? | 303 | The black hole doesn’t form gradually- it suddenly collapses once all the mass of the star is within the Schwarzschild radius.
The sun has a Schwarzschild radius of just under two miles within its core, but that doesn’t mean a mini black hole is forming inside it.
To give another example, we each have our own very small Schwarzschild radius, but all our mass would have to be compressed to within that radius to form a black hole. | 141 |
CMV - Gender Dysmorphia is a mental illness issue | I’ve read an article which was linked in an attempt to explain this on another sub that was removed - please help me to understand something;
the point they are making in the article to claim gender dysphoria isn’t a mental illness is that “gender dysphoria isn’t the underlying problem, it’s society’s inability to account for the existence of trans people (im paraphrasing) through language, societal pressures, etc. Which causes the problem/leads to further issues.
The same logic however applies to all mental illness - isnt the problem with Schizophrenia actually society’s inability to reflect the reality of the affected individuals rather than its own reality?
I.E schizophrenic individuals would function fine if the whole world went along with their delusion?
I don’t see that as grounds to characterise this as *not* a mental illness, when it’s clearly an extreme variation from the norm (which is in effect what all mental health issues are).
The author makes the argument that they are “well adjusted”, which explains why it isn’t a mental health issue, but this doesn’t hold up - the Unabomber functioned perfectly well in society but you’d be hard pressed to try to claim there was “nothing wrong with him” and that society should just accept him.
I understand that Body Dysmorphia is recognized as a mental illness and it is considered distinctly different from Gender Dysmorphia but I don’t understand why.
My interpretation would be that unlike the mentally ill, the trans-community were able to integrate into LGBTQ+ community (due to objective and subjective similarities) and have since been grouped in, so anyone questioning or criticising is automatically a bigot.
I don’t want this to be the case - please CMV.
Edit - https://roygbiv.jezebel.com/stop-confusing-gender-dysphoria-with-body-dysmorphia-al-1583049920
Link as requested | 104 | >The same logic however applies to all mental illness - isnt the problem with Schizophrenia actually society’s inability to reflect the reality of the affected individuals rather than its own reality?
No, the problem is in the hallucinations, inability to make long-term plans, and rapid personality shifts, among the many other symptoms of schizophrenia. These symptoms would occur even if the world schizophrenics lived in was ceaselessly accommodating to their condition.
> I.E schizophrenic individuals would function fine if the whole world went along with their delusion?
Your phrasing betrays your lack of belief in the condition transgender individuals deal with. It is not a delusion, but a genuine disconnect between their gender identity and their biological sex.
The difference you're not grasping is that the gender dysphoria is socially driven. There is nothing biological that requires a male person to wear male clothes, engage in stereotypically male behaviors, and fill male social and gender roles - this is imposed by our society and culture. A gender dysphoric individual who is sexually male will only experience gender dysphoria when they engage in a male gender role, just as cisgendered man would likely experience gender dysphoria if forced to walk down the street in a breezy sundress. The difference is that the cisgendered man may be doing it only for Halloween or a specific instance, whereas the transperson is essentially in-costume all-day, every day, and suffers as a result.
As the source of the distress is driven by social roles, not by the brain, it is not a mental illness in this sense.
| 67 |
[Star Wars Legends: Hand of Thrawn] What would have happened if Thrawn's clone had successfully been created? | Would he have joined the Empire in its current state? Would he have been successful in bringing them back to power? How different would the Yuuzhan Vong war have been? | 19 | The clone would not have been Thrawn for the same reason that every single clone trooper was not the best bounty hunter in the galaxy. How would it have been educated? Flash-learning has been established numerous times as no substitute for quality training and experience. In all likelihood, Thrawn intended his clone to be a figurehead creating the impression that he had never truly died, while Voss Parck and his other subordinates did the real work. | 11 |
ELI5: Why does my leg insist on shaking and why does it feel so good | 98 | I think it has to do with increasing blood flow in your body. You have very big muscles in your leg, and when you don't move them the blood doesn't circulate as fast. But when you move and shake your leg, the blood flows much better. | 17 |
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Why are clouds often discrete? | Especially those stereotypical bunny clouds on a windy day. Are all clouds big enough that each one represents a pocket of air where the conditions for condensation are right? If so why isn't the upper air more uniform?
Are individual clouds sometimes directly from individual lakes, or other smaller isolated geological features? (not mountains or coasts)
I've never really been satisfied with my understanding of cloud formation, but I get the theory (i think). There was a similar question on yahoo answers, but the answer wasn't very helpful for me. | 30 | Clouds appear to have a very well defined boundaries because of a property of optics. If you went to a cloud an measured the density of water vapor you would find that at the boundary between the cloud and not cloud changed a little but not a lot. This is because the opacity of air is proportional to exp(density of water vapor), so that a small change in the density of water vapor will lead to a dramatic change in the opacity. If you could go up close to a cloud you would see a small transition region, but from far away it looks like a really sharp transition from transparent to opacity. This is what causes clouds to have their distinct shapes and features. | 38 |
ELI5:What is the financial benefit to EA for not selling games on Steam? | 127 | Valve takes a ~30% cut of every game sold on Steam. That 30% is a whole lot of money when you're settling millions of every game you put out. It's so much money that the expense of creating and maintaining your own distribution platform STILL saves you money. | 88 |
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Does lightning impart momentum onto an object it strikes? | What if lightning passes through an airborne body? | 25 | The shock wave of expanding air will certainly push against the object. If the target is a flat surface, the air pressure would generate quite a bit of force.
The actual impact of the electrons isn't going to do much... | 10 |
Why are so many medications something-hydrochloride? | Meaning, is there some metabolic property (for example) of HCl. Or some sort of chemical stabilizer? | 26 | Some medicines are organic compounds that are unable to be dissolved in water or acidic solutions (like the environment in your stomach). Whenever you see the hydrochloride, it means the pharmaceutical company has converted the insoluble drug molecule into a hydrochloride salt to increase its water solubility so it can actually be absorbed in the body. Other salts can be made, such as fumarates. | 32 |
Does quantum indeterminacy affect macroscopic events? | Of course it affects some macroscopic events (such as the behavior apparatuses used in physics experiments), but in general does quantum indeterminacy filter up?
Suppose I were to drop a bagful of marbles. Would there be a non-trivial chance that they would have landed in noticeably different locations? | 16 | Nope. Quantum behavior doesn't 'filter up'. The heavier something gets, the less 'quantum' its behavior is. By the time you've gotten to things as heavy as entire molecules, they don't behave very quantum-mechanically. For instance, you use x-rays and determine the positions of atoms in a crystal to within fractions of an Ångström, which is basically an 'unnoticable' distance on the _chemical_ scale, (much less the macroscopic one).
Besides mass, the other thing that affects whether something acts quantum mechanically or not is the extent its able to interact with the environment, since that's what constitutes a 'measurement' quantum-mechanically speaking. If something is constantly being measured, it can't evolve into a quantum superposition state (aka the 'quantum zeno effect').
So we see quantum mechanical behavior when you're dealing with light objects, such as subatomic particles. And you can see those objects acting together in large-scale quantum behavior when you're dealing with a system that doesn't interact much with the environment. For instance, the electrons in a superconductor (which are typically cold, rigid substances). Or superfluid helium (which is obviously very very cold). The main reason why it's so difficult to build a quantum computer (which works off superpositions) is precisely this - it's difficult to scale it up and still keep it isolated enough to preserve the superpositions.
If a bag of marbles at room temperature could act quantum-mechanically to any significant extent, we'd have discovered QM long before we did. But some quantum superpositions were in fact found before QM, although it wasn't known at the time. For instance, the bonds of the benzene molecule form two possible structures, which Kekulé described as 'oscillating' (in modern chem terminology 'resonance structures'). But they're actually a quantum superposition (or at least can be viewed as such - what qualifies as a superposition of states hinges on how you define your states)
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[Star Wars] My planet just got invaded by the Vong. What can I expect will happen to me and my fellow planet-dwellers? | 18 | Slavery, torture, dismemberment and death. A ban on all technology, especially fire. Lots of physical pain, having you're organs yanked out to be grafted on Vong who may be going up in rank.
Shoot you're friends, family and yourself. You'll be better off. | 29 |
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[D&D] I'm in a group of Wizards who all know Planar Shift and just made a big mistake. Could we travel through time by going through the Planes in a certain order? | We know how time is distorted on the various Planes, is it possible for us to go visit different Planes and, by staying in each one for the right combination of time, go back to fix our mistake? | 16 | First off stay calm. Second off, do NOT plane shift to the clockwork plane of Mechanus, and do not seek out a Secundus named Long-cog Sevenfinger and do NOT try to steal the rising hourglass which he leaves unattended for 15 minutes at midnight while he rewinds his coil.
I’m asking you not to do this, because you and your friends have tried 7 times, and it is getting very frustrating to clean up after you. | 35 |
In a theorized multiverse, how are "universes" separated from one other and can they influence each other? | 370 | Which 'multiverse' are you talking about?
One view of the multiverse is that the big bang was a point origin of our universe, but there may be other point origins far removed from ours. This is the **Ergodic** multiverse. These universes are separated from each other by immense distances. They can never influence each other.
In the **Many-Worlds** multiverse theory, the universe branches off every time a quantum effect settles on a random number. (Or possible only certain quantum effects.) This is where you find your parallel universes where anything that could have happened somewhere did happen. They are not really separated from each other; in this theory, all possibilities exist somewhere, but we humans are only able to follow and understand one of time's infinite threads. There may be faint interactions between these universes, and we can speculate that may lead to one possible universe being able to influence another.
The **Brane** theory leads to a multiverse separated by distance in one of the ten dimensions of space-time, as described by certain quantum string theories. They do influence each other, sharing some gravitational wells and possibly other phenomena -- recently it's been speculated that dark matter is a brane interaction. But these other universes are alien and probably without the same physical laws, so it's not as if you'll see people living there.
And then there are theories where all these possibilities (as well as other multiverses, such as the holographic universe) are all true *simultaneously*. When the theory gets that complicated it's impossible to say what can and cannot interact.
tldr; We don't know whether there is a multiverse, or which of several theoretical multiverses may actually exist. Some allow interaction between universes and some don't. | 111 |
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Help understanding Kierkegaard's "Pleasure disappoints, possibility never." | "If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. " - Soren Kierkegaard
 
How can pleasure disappoint? Wouldn't possibility be disappointing without some sort of reward (ie-pleasure)?
I can understand that the seeking of pleasure is disappointing, or the aftermath of it...but not pleasure in itself, no more than possibility is disappointing without pleasure.
| 32 | Here, Kierkegaard has equated "Pleasure" with "wealth and power"- obviously meaning material pleasures. This is a true-ism we see time and time again in literature. How many stories are there of people who strive for wealth and power, only to find those things empty and unfulfilling. The joys brought on by material pleasures are shallow, fleeting, and in the end, the are never as good as you THINK they will be. They are chocked to death by our disappointment that they do not live up to what we thought they would. The potential.
It's that joy in the potential that is greater. It pushes you forward, ever expanding. The joy of the potential is that joy of hunger, of future, of striving. After the realization of that potential, the doors are closed, and you can never go back again.
Imagining the feast is always a better feeling than having consumed the feast.
Kierkegaard is talking about hope. Living in the passionate sense of potential is living with hope. And hope dies when potential dies, especially when that potential dies by achieving material ends. Hope ends with fruition. It never endures. | 29 |
[Comics] What is the simplest superpower that could be used to take over the world? | 33 | The ability to create anti-matter at will. Hold the world hostage.
Telepathy. Find the secrets of the most powerful people and use it to hold the world hostage.
Super Attractiveness. Make everyone love you. | 39 |
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How would you explain the rows of a Linear Transformation matrix to a 5-year-old? | I am not good at math.
I'm trying to understand linear transformations intuitively. So far I understand that the columns of the matrix are the transformations of the standard basis vectors, and I understand why that's the case algebraically.
What I'm struggling to understand is how to interpret the rows of a linear transformation matrix. What does each row *mean*? Why do you take the dot product of each row with an input vector?
Is there any way to explain this without referencing the columns of a linear transformation? | 21 | A five year old is not going to understand linear algebra lol, stop wasting your time, you'd be torturing them.
If this is a serious question, keep it 2D you'd have to draw some triangles and circles and squares and show them what they looked like sheared and rotated and mirror imaged and expanded. Everything 2x2 matrix be decomposed in terms of those. | 14 |
ELI5: What's the point of assigning people more than a lifetime sentence in jail? | What's the point? If someone has more than one life sentences for their crime, they can only ever serve 1 of those life sentences. If it's just for saying they'll never make parole because of their crimes, wouldn't it be better to just say they've been sentenced to life sentence w/o parole? It seems rather stupid as a symbolic gesture because it feels like it's nonsensical.
Edit: I just realized that after I hit submit that assign is the wrong word, and sentencing would be better :/ | 36 | Suppose John Killer goes out and brutally murders three people in three completely separate incidents.
Scenario 1:
He gets caught and the police have evidence for all three crimes, but the prosecuting attorney says, "Look here, the first crime is heinous enough to put this dude on death row. It's a certain-win at trial. Let's save the state the cost of presenting evidence for the other two crimes, because the end result is the same, John Killer ends up on death row." So they try him for the crime and he lands in prison.
Scenario 2:
He gets caught and the police have evidence for all three crimes, but the prosecuting attorney says, "Justice must be served. We understand that the first crime is adequate to put him on death row for his entire life. But the records must show that he was tried and found guilty for all three murders, and he must be sentenced accordingly." So he's tried for all three crimes and receives the death penalty for all three crimes, and he's put on death row.
At this point, you might say, "Exactly! Dude is on death row! He can't die three times! It's a waste of time, money, resources, and in the end it makes no difference!" And in a lot of cases, you could be right.
But suppose that ten years down the road some new evidence surfaces. It turns out that John Killer was framed for the first murder by Matt Mobster, who went out of his way to leave John Killer's DNA at the scene. Then some eye-witnesses recant their testimonies of watching John Killer take out the victim. And it turns out there's a video of John Killer across town at the time of the murder. In fact, there isn't just a preponderance of evidence, there's an overwhelming level of evidence. So naturally John's lawyer gets the first conviction thrown out.
Now, in the first scenario, John would be freed from prison, because he was only sentenced to death once for the first crime.
But in the second scenario, John remains on death row, because he still must answer for the second and third murders. | 40 |
I've been out of high school for years now, but I distinctly remember my high school bio teacher telling the class how we're living paradoxes, something to the matter of "It's incredible how destructive oxygen is, yet how dependent aerobic organisms are on it." | I tried rationalizing it as being something akin to rust, that eventually oxygen binds with too many elements in the body, and prevents certain processes from functioning properly. But I never did get a straight answer out of my bio professor. Did she mean that, in general, O is destructive, but it's a force for good in life? Or did she mean that it's destructive, and we battle it's destructive properties to utilize it for its life-giving ones?
I wish there was more context to give; it was just a high school biology class. | 17 | Oxygen is very reactive. As such, it can be both destructive and useful.
Your bio teacher seems to have found this remarkable. Looked at another way, though, it's not unusual that many of the most useful things are also the most dangerous.
Consider the opposite case: a totally inert substance that doesn't react with anything is not as useful, but it's also not particularly dangerous, for the same reason. | 29 |
[General Cyberpunk] Are there any cyberpunk settings that feature high-tech swords that aren't katanas? | Like, say, a Longsword or a Messer? In a setting with vibroblades and superalloys, could the cruciform guard of a longsword give it some advantage in a duel against another melee weapon? | 59 | System shock uses an electric rapier.
The cruciform guard can be useful depending on circumstances(for instance, I'd say Kylo Ren's guard is more useful offensively than defensively because you don't catch a sword directly on the guard and lightsabers don't slide.) | 37 |
[Iron Man] Was Tony Stark revealing he was Ironman a good idea or a bad idea? | 16 | You can't generalise whether or not it good or bad for supers to reveal there secret identities. It all depends on the individual.
Sure Tony Stark did it, but take this into account; he's rich as fuck so he can afford some serious protection, he's a smug bastard, again he is rich as fuck so if he gets sued for damages he can cover it and most importantly he doesn't really have anyone he cares enough about that villains can go after to hurt him. It was fine for him to do it because he loves the attention and he has very little to lose seeing as he already lives life in the limelight.
Compare those points with Spider-Man if went public... | 30 |
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[X-Men]How powerful is Bishop exactly? Is he a potential Omega ? He's constantly absorbs ambient energy like Havok,can get superhuman physicals and convert/project all types of energy and absorb mass quantities of it. he can even convert other energy into psionic energy and get short hand Psy powers | What exactly is the limit on what he can do ? the way his powers work , he can just about use the same powers as multiple other mutants, ranging over the whole em spectrum including exotic forms like cyclops blast, and that just in combat | 21 | Well we know he is currently rated as an Alpha level mutant. He has versatility, lots raw power, and is nearly invulnerable most of the time. So he is incredibly powerful, that being said, many other mutants can fit into those categories as well.
I think what he is currently missing is scale. Nearly all Omega level mutants have the ability to affect change at a massive level, telepaths who can reach across continents or matter manipulators who can affect giant swathes of land or create huge storms of energy in one form or another. Most big reality warpers. We dont really see Bishop do things like that, at least not alone or being amplified by some external power.
Now could he? Its possible, we don't know the real upper limits of Bishop's ability to redirect force but so far we haven't really seen him pull off a level that the powers that be would consider Omega level. He just doesn't have that kind of reach. | 12 |
[General] Do zombies actually want to eat people, or do they simply want to bite people to spread the zombie disease? If they want to eat people, wouldn't the spread be fairly slow, as most people get eaten, and therefor not as many zombies are created? | 35 | It's kind of like rabies. It makes them more likely to attack people, and attacking people helps spread the disease. But it's not like they want to spread the disease. It just evolved some traits that help it spread. Also, the zombie virus is fairly new. Maybe if it sticks around for awhile it will evolve to make people attack other people without killing them. | 38 |
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How does Communism decide *what* to produce? | I'm broadly aware of the practical reality of how communist countries decided what to produce; five year production plans based on input-output analysis.
I am more interested in the philosophical basis of these production plans. That is, communist ideology has a fairly clear prescription for how goods should be *distributed*; workers should receive the profits of their labor in accordance with the Labor Theory of Value. But the LTV can't help you decide *what* the economy as a whole should produce. At best it tells each person to specialize in whatever they are most productive in, but if that's the only criteria for the production plan then it is quite easy for peoples' basic needs not to be met (you could end up with a country of artists, or toothbrush manufacturers). So the question is: Does Communism have some way of basing production decisions on the LTV, or do they have some other system for deciding what an economy should produce? Or did they just not care and produce whatever seemed like a neat idea at the time?
Thanks for any responses. | 17 | >Does Communism have some way of basing production decisions on the LTV
There are many problems with the LTV (primarily that it has proven useless for explaining real-world economic phenomena), but two traditional problems are worth noting because they undermine the notion that the LTV could be used for resource allocations even if it was true as a theory of value.
First, it doesn't sufficiently account for the use of natural resources, and second, it doesn't sufficiently account for the heterogeneous characteristics of labor. Because of this, attempting to calculate costs / benefits solely in terms of labor time will result in serious misallocations of resources, as the values are systematically leaving out certain kinds of information that needs to be accounted for.
>...or do they have some other system for deciding what an economy should produce?
Essentially they have to substitute political ways of allocating resources for economic ways of allocating resources. Generally, without money prices, producers have no way to reckon the opportunity costs of the various technologically feasible methods of production relative to the economic value they add to the economy, so you get all sorts of productive and allocative inefficiencies.
Depending on the political institutions in question, it's quite likely political incentives will not align neatly with social welfare, so you get corruption, abuses of power, rent seeking, bloated bureaucracies, and so on. And the historical record seems to indicate these problems are quite pronounced when we're dealing with countries that subsume sufficiently large portions of their economies under political direction rather than market direction. So in short you have both informational problems due to the lack of reliable economic calculation and you have incentive incompatibility issues with political processes. | 15 |
ELI5: How do ceiling fans collect dust when they're constantly in motion? | 9,424 | The air moving over the blades actually creates a static electric charge. Like rubbing a balloon against a sweater, this creates an attractive force between the charged blades and dust in the air.
This build-up of static charge is the predominant effect causing the dust to collect over time. | 10,673 |
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why does chicken pox and shingles cause different symptoms when they’re the same virus? | 5,334 | It's more the route of activation for the virus. During the first exposure of the Vzv(varicella-zoster virus) which is contracted through breathing or contact with the rash. The infection begins at the upper respiratory tract where it incubates for about 2 weeks before it enters the lung, travels to the blood stream and migrates to the skin to cause the rash of chicken pox.
In contrast for shingles, after the first bout of chicken pox, some of the virus particles settle into nerve cells (neurons) of sensory ganglia (a group of nerve cells that connect the sensory periphery and central nervous system), where they remain for many years in an inactive, hidden (latent) form. The neurons in the sensory ganglia have nerve fibers that supply the skin and relay information to the brain about what the body is sensing—heat, cold, touch, pain.
When the VZV reactivates, it spreads down the long nerve fibers (axons) that extend from the sensory cell bodies to the skin. As the virus multiplies, the telltale rash erupts. With shingles, the nervous system is more deeply involved than it was during the bout with chickenpox, and the symptoms are often more complex and severe | 2,714 |
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ELI5: If you put energy into a closed system to reduce its entropy, you will have increased the entropy outside of the system. How does that work? | I've heard that if you put energy into tidying a room to reduce its entropy, you will have increased the entropy outside of your room as a result? Is that true? If so, I don't get it. I have tidied up a room and not caused rooms outside to get less tidy.
Edit: Thanks for taking the time to answer. Makes more sense now. | 39 | In order to clean your room, you had use some of your own energy. That energy ultimately came from plants (either directly by eating them or by animals which ate them). The plants gained their energy from the sun which is gradually increasing in entropy as it radiates its energy.
You need to look at the entire system, not just a small portion. | 21 |
If you gathered enough neutrons to be seen, what would it look like? | IF it were possible what would it look like. | 1,676 | It wouldn't really look like anything, because light has minimal interactions with neutron. It would essentially be a diffuse gas. There would be a lot of beta radiation coming from them, so if you put all the neutrons in water together you might see a blue glow.
If you had a neutron star, it would look very bright due to its extreme temperature. | 1,159 |
ELI5. I heard that you burn quite a few calories when you orgasm. Is this true? How or what is burning all those calories? If say someone started masturbating/having sex multiple times a day would they lose weight? | 28 | No, it is not true. Sex itself can burn calories, but that's because of the moving around (physical activity), not due to orgasm. If you have vigorous sex several times per day, it will burn calories, but it's unlikely to be enough to lose a significant amount of weight.
As with all of these types of questions: the ONLY way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you consume. Diets, pills, and supplements that claim to be able to boost your metabolism enough to cause you to lose more weight are lying. Your weight is 85% what you eat, and about 15% your exercise. It's quite possible to be thin and sedentary, and it's possible to have a lot of excess fat and still be very strong. | 41 |
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[Star Wars] Was knowledge that Luke Skywalker could use the Force public during the Galactic Civil War? If so, when did it become known? | 39 | Yes. After the Battle of Yavin Luke served with the Rebellion in several missions and rumours of his abilities begin to spread, he was able to do things the Jedi of old were able to, so of course people began to talk. After he went to Daggobah and trained with Yoda, he openly refered to himself as a Jedi Knight. And after the war was over he made it known that the Jedi were back and that he was looking for Jedi relics and more knowledge of the Force, all culminating into him starting his own training temple, and gathering students to train in the ways of the Force. | 31 |
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I think non-binary gender types are beneficial to our society. CMV | Although I think these new gender types are arbitrary, artificial definitions created by and for people who find the original sets of gender expectations towards one's person based on their sex far too restraining; I think *it's USEFUL for society to create these new gender types, and not just some bullshit with no positive effect*.
It is a tool, a weapon against the current, unrealistic expectations towards members of each sex, and against the prevalent gender stereotypes that are hindering us in paying attention to and understanding each other as individual people, persons, humans ( www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/2115b1/i_believe_that_gender_stereotypes_just_generate/ )
- and not just another "man" or "woman", a member of a category, with clearly defined personal attributes that are not even true (for example, all women are submissive and like being dominated [traits], or all women are whores or gold diggers [stereotypes]).
The creation of these new gender types will undermine previous expectations towards one's display of gender, as people will be forced to accept deviances from the stereotypical masculine/feminine traits (listed here: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/sexual-orientation-gender/gender-gender-identity-26530.htm ). CMV | 20 | The problem is that people are expected to fit into a "box" of societal roles based on their gender. Creating more boxes does nothing to solve the issue.
The better solution is to stop trying to describe and defne people based on gender. Treat everyone as an individual, rather than as a man/woman/other. | 12 |
[The Inheritance Cycle] Selena using the word 'heal' to kill. | So it was mentioned that Selena, Eragon's mother was once taught the word for 'heal' in the ancient language and pitted against a bunch of deadly assassins. She managed to defeat them by healing them of all that drove them to kill. However if she was proficient enough in magic to do that, surely she had to know quite a bit of the ancient language. Why didn't she just use another way? The only thing I can think of was that some kind of restriction was imposed forcing her to use only the word for heal. However then why wasn't that specified? saying that she was 'taught the word' seems to imply she didn't know the ancient language, in which case her proficiency in magic seems absurd. | 33 | Magic in Alagaesia is somewhat intent based. It was linked to the ancient language so you couldn't get a result that contradicted what you said, but the intent of what you were trying to do still matters. The implication in the book seems to be that Selena didn't know more than the word for heal, but it's possible that with the right intention and concentration, that word could be used to have an effect that seems counterintuitive as long as the caster sees the link between what they say and what they want to happen. | 28 |
[Sonic X/Sonic Adventure 2] How was it that in 50 years no one on Earth noticed a rather large spherical object ( the space colony Ark ) a little left to the moon in space? | 66 | It's big, but not *that* big really. Probably small enough that most people just assume it's a comet or satellite - and if they used a telescope they'd just see a big piece of rock, the cannon part was covered up at first after all. | 19 |
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