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In the early two-slit experiment in quantum mechanics, why does the reader (which picks up the interference pattern), not lead to breakdown of the wave-function, as occurs if the photons are measured during the experiment?? | This is about the breakdown of wave-function / indeteriminism during the classical two-slit experiments, in the study of quantum mechanics. | 34 | It does, which is why, when a single photon is sent through the slits, the reader (a phosphor screen for example) picks up only a single isolated blip, rather than a whole wavey pattern. You only see the wavey pattern after you have sent hundreds of photons through the slits and counted hundreds of separate blips and made a histogram. If breakdown of the wave function did not occur (we would call it "collapse" of the wave function or "state reduction"), then each photon would produce a whole wavey pattern on the screen, but instead we see a blip at a random location on the phosphor screen with probability determined by the spatial distribution of the wave function's amplitude. | 29 |
I read Smilansky's "Should We Sacrifice the Utilitarians First?", and wonder to what degree it's 100% serious, slightly tongue in cheek or something else? | I just read Saul Smilansky's paper [Should We Sacrifice the Utilitarians First?](https://academic.oup.com/pq/article-abstract/70/281/850/5782388), in which he argues that people's views on ethics can or even ought to be taken into consideration when we decide how to treat them, e.g. that self-professed utilitarians, who are inclined to think that it's okay to sacrifice innocents for the greater good also ought to be sacrificed first themselves, should such an option occur. Hence the title.
On the one hand, the paper is written in the usual, serious style of academic philosophy. Advantages of his view are laid out, potential objections are brought up and answered, the view is put into relation with several other topics, etc. And the author is a professor of philosophy.
But I also can't shake the feeling that the paper is somewhat tongue in cheek or meant to be provocative or something like that. There's the funny title, the fact that the considered views of utilitarianism and deontology seem to be very simplified if not strawmanned, the obvious fact that such a view could hardly be implemented in almost all real-life scenarios, and just the whole spirit of the paper seems a bit "Oh you're saying .......? Then I'm sure you have nothing against it if we treat you like ........ . Which all sounds a bit like reddit debates, more than ethics in philosophy.
I'm just wondering, to what degree are some papers or this paper in particular written tongue in cheek? Is there some benefit in laying out such a view, even if the author does not 100% mean it or if it couldn't really be implemented anyway? Any thoughts are welcome. | 130 | Hahaha. I'd assume this is at least partially tongue-in-cheek, especially with respect to the title. However, it doesn't mean that the main point it's making isn't meant by Smilanksy as a serious one; in fact, it strikes me as quite a good one! It seems reasonable to take the ethical position that it is ok to sacrifice utilitarians first, since if they're being logically consistent when giving a prescription that requires the sacrifice of some arbitrary individual, they've sort of just implied a sort of consent as well. | 87 |
Inverse Ship of Theseus, or, when adding to something when does it lose its identity? | Hello /r/askphilosophy
I came across this artist earlier this morning and have been perusing his projects: https://www.flickr.com/photos/90927490@N06/sets/72157632208677161
The TLDL is that he makes, using paper, cutting tools, and glue, very sturdy and intricately detailed models of objects like commercial aircraft.
My first thought was, "That's not paper anymore." He adds many pieces of paper and glue in various ways to make something sturdier and more capable, and shapes it to the object (like an operational gear) that a regular sheet of cut paper could not handle.
You can easily find a catalog of names for paper in various states of folding and adhering (like cardboard) where the paper is changed sufficiently to re-name the product.
If in the Ship of Theseus the question is 'at what point in replacing parts of a large object does that object lose its identity' then my question is, 'at what point in adding to an object does it lose its identity'?
I figured this was a good place to post the thought experiment. Looking for 'variations on the ship of theseus' in google didn't seem to come up with anything useful immediately.
| 25 | This isn't so much an "inverse" of the Ship of Theseus puzzle than the puzzle itself. The Ship of Theseus puzzle concerns the idea of change over time. Whether that's taking away the original parts of the ship, replacing the original parts, or adding new parts, it is still a matter of parts being present at *t2* that weren't there at *t1*. So you would just be dealing with the original problem. | 12 |
[Star Trek] Is it standard procedure for senior officers to leave ships on away teams? | Wouldn't junior crew members be sent and could report back? Surely there's a considerable risk with each of these missions.. | 53 | In the Kirk era, yes, it was very common for the Captain to travel with away teams. By the time Picard took the chair, the Captain tended to stay with the ship, and his Number One would go with the away teams.
The reason *a* senior officer tends to go on away teams is that the Federation missions are generally research- or diplomacy- centric. If you discover a new form of life, or some asshat steps on a flower, causes an interplanetary incident, and is about to be executed for his "crimes," you want someone of rank to deal with the situation.
However, away missions are dangerous enough that Starfleet no longer wants to risk the Captain by sending him planetside. Sending the First Officer is a nice compromise. | 48 |
How would an array of Space Telescopes work? | The image of the Black Hole this week was made possible by connecting many ground-based radio telescopes, making an 'aperture' the width of our planet. What I wonder is; could a constellation of space radio-telescopes connect to make the 'aperture' larger, even solar system sized? Also, would increasing the number of satellites in the constellation increase the resolution of the image? | 80 | Yes, and this is something astronomers would like to do. The science makes sense - you improve the resolution by having a much larger baseline, and if you want a baseline larger than the Earth, you need to start putting telescopes in space. But adding more satellites only contributes to the resolution if each satellite is further away than the previous one. Though more satellites will add to the sensitivity, and will help produce a more complete image.
However, there are a number of technical difficulties involved - this is an engineering and funding problem really. Interferometry involves collecting a huge amount of data and collating it all together, and it requires knowing your position down to about the wavelength you're looking at. For something like the Event Horizon Telescope, this is millimetre level of accuracy in your position, which is more difficult when everything is moving around in orbits in space.
Even on Earth, the data collation can be a challenge: the best way to get huge amounts of data from A to B is actually to ship the hard drives. One of the delays in building the EHT image was that it took a while to ship the data from Antarctica. Trying to do this wirelessly using something you can fit on a satellite is going to be pretty tough. | 34 |
ELI5: How exactly do UN Peacekeeping forces (the deployed troops) ensure peace? | Couldn't unrest still persist even after their mandate is complete, and another conflict still take place? | 23 | It doesn't always work, but the idea is based around a show of force. Essentially, the idea is that by having a large (sometimes larger than indigenous forces) peace keeping army in place, then whatever factions are warring will think twice before taking certain actions. Essentially, it means that for fear of what ever retribution might be brought down on them by the peacekeeping force, should any of those peacekeepers be injured, keeps the indigenous fighters from taking risky actions which might make things worse. | 12 |
ELI5:What is Black Body Radiation? | 21 | A black body is an idealized perfect absorber of electromagnetic radiation. All of it, regardless of angle or wavelength. Including your wifi signal. Given that it doesn't reflect or scatter *any* of it, we call them black. What does it do with the radiation it has absorbed? It gets warm.
Each object emits infrared radiation according to its temperature. You are emitting right now at almost 37°C.
A black body has absorbed all radiation, is in thermal equilibrium, has increased its temperature. What is the only thing it can do now? re-emit the absorbed radiation as infrared thermal radiation. Heat. That's black body radiation.
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An injured caterpillar pupates. Will the butterfly be injured? | Let's assume a caterpillar is injured, but still strong enough to pupate.
I guess that during metamorphosis a lot of organs are rearranged or newly built. However if this rearrangement is based on organs that are not fully functional anymore then wouldn't there be traces of the injury?
| 164 | It would depend largely on what portion of the insect was damaged, assuming it didn't lose enough hemolymph to die outright.
For instance, if it suffered a substantial brain injury - one that inhibits the prothoracic glands, the corpus cardiacum, etc. - then even if it makes it to the pupal stage, the insect will not be able to produce the necessary hormones (prothoracicotropic hormone, ecdysteroids, juvenile hormone) to complete development and become a fully functional adult.
If the larva suffers an injury to the muscles that would eventually become the mouth region, it's possible that the the mouthparts and associated glands would not develop properly, preventing the adult from actually exiting the pupal case.
That being said, some muscles are destroyed during metamorphosis and not replaced. However, they would provide both energy and cellular materials for other developmental processes. | 59 |
ELI5: what is that random high pitch ringing in your ears and why does it happen? | 15 | There are two forms of this.
One is called tinnitus and is an injury caused by loud noise exposure. The other posters covered this one. It's most common from using loud things (firearms, power tools, etc) with no hearing protection. It can also be easily caused by headphones or earbuds if you play music loudly, because they are so close to the ear they can do damage over time even if you think the volume level is comfortable. When using headphones you should always use the lowest volume that lets you hear clearly.
The other one is called "pulsatile tinnitus" and is caused by the blood rushing through your ears. It's literally always there (unless your heart stops - not good) but it's not very loud and you almost never notice it. When things are quiet enough, and you are very relaxed, you may start hearing it as a pulsing "whoosh" or as a high pitch ring that fades in and out. This is actually hearing your own pulse and is completely harmless. It should never be loud enough to stop you from hearing other things, if that is happening you probably have regular tinnitus. | 10 |
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[GENERAL] How could Power Armor be used in Guerrilla Warfare? | Every time Power Armor has appeared in Science-Fiction, it has been used by the occupiers. It is dropped down in drop-pods on landing and It later it stomps down down roads with a squad or fire-team in a held town. Just look at Fallout, where occupied Canada was televised as a place where terrorist-rebels were shot down by Power Armored Troops, Warhammer, where Space-Marine chapters can are regularly put to use combatting insurgencies and terrorist-groups, Homefront, where KPA soldiers in power armor are put to use as back up to SWAT-teams, and many, many others.
What I'm asking is how could that be flipped around, if a rebel, guerrilla group far behind enemy lines took down a convoy, went through it's loot, and found a few suits of cherry, combat armor, how could they put them to use? | 49 | Power armor provides two massive enhancements to asymmetrical warfare in mobility and logistics. Our hypothetical guerrilla can now carry a bomb that used to require a van, and he can escape quickly after his actions.
Unfortunately, I've rarely seen any power armour that can be concealed. The primary strength of a guerilla army is that they can disappear, and power armour doesn't allow that.
I think power armour would only really be useful in "loud" operations involving set piece battles and ambushes. | 57 |
ELI5: What causes water bottles to randomly pop in the middle of the night? | 31 | Two things can do that to a sealed/closed bottle: a change in ambient temperature or a change in ambient pressure. If it's just sitting there and you're not on a plane changing altitude or a cable car going up a mountain, pressure is unlikely to change. The most likely cause then is temperature. It drops over night for example, which cools off the bottle and it's content, this drops the pressure (because less temperature = less kinetic energy of gas phase water molecules and air in the bottle = less pressure these molecules exert on the bottle wall = atmospheric pressure no longer balanced with inside pressure = outside pushes inside = dent.) | 15 |
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ELI5: when someone walks in the snow, how come those footprints disappear when it snows again? Why aren’t the footprints always there, just with more inches of snow? | 18 | If the snow falls straight down sometimes you’ll still see the outline of the footprints.
Usually snow is accompanied by wind though, and the drifting snow fills in gaps and smooths out the surface layer again. | 35 |
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ELI5: How would terraforming Mars be possible? | I recall reading (somewhere) that the core of Mars is dead, and therefor incapable of producing the same type of magnetic field we have on earth.
How could life exist on the surface of Mars without the protection from damaging radiation provided by a functioning magnetic field?
| 29 | Magnetic field protects the atmosphere, atmosphere protects from radiation. Mars used to have air, but it all got blown away by solar winds.
The first step would be creating an atmosphere. It would stabilize the temperature and we wouldn't need pressure suits, only oxygen tanks. To do this we would have to rise temperature with greenhouse effect by producing fluoride compounds (some of them are much more potent than CO2). After a while, the frozen CO2 would start to evaporate, increasing pressure and rising the temperature. There is enough of it, so that the pressure will be comparable with that atop mount Everest.
Alternatively, giant mirrors to make it hotter.
Anyhow, once you have liquid water, you can start introducing algea and plants to make oxygen. | 27 |
[MARVEL] Why are there so many super-criminals in NYC with the Punisher around? | Wilson Fisk, Bullseye, Vulture, Wilson "The Kingpin" Fisk, Hammerhead and have I already said Fisk?
Marvel's NYC is stuffed with criminals. I don't speak about supervillains far above human like Venom or Rhino, just not-bulletproof bad guys like Kingpin.
My question is: how fork are all these still alive with Frank Castle shooting around the city?
What's the canon reason (I'm sure there's one) why he doesn't just kill them all? | 276 | He tries, and fails, because they're better at surviving than he is at killing.
Remember, Punisher is one guy. One guy trying to eat a whale and all he has is a shrimp fork. He's also a criminal himself and has to both avoid being caught by the "good guys" while also trying to take out the "bad guys" with the limited resources he has.
Compare to these guys who have entire support networks designed to insulate them from people trying to do them harm and, despite being notorious criminals, can generally walk around in broad daylight without fear of repurcussion. | 266 |
ELI5: How the NES Duck Hunt "Zapper" gun worked | 23 | Whenever you fired the Zapper, the TV screen would briefly turn black, except for the target, which would flash white. The Zapper was essentially a light detector, and if it were pointed at the white area, then it registered a hit. If there were multiple targets, they would flash white for different lengths of time so that the difference could be detected. | 32 |
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How much would our climate change if the Earth's rotation were to slow by 1 hour? | Imagine if the earth's rotation were to slow by one hour, leading to 25 hour days. How much of an impact would this have on global ecosystems? What about seasons (as the year would have a fewer number of days, therefore leading to shorter seasons)? Would it have any significant impact on the existing phenomenon generally known as 'Climate Change', or better known as 'Global Warming'? | 15 | An interesting scenario! An additional hour but maintaining the same day-to-night ratio may have some local meteorological impact on the short term. For example, there may be slightly higher maximum/minimum temperature because of longer daytime/nighttime. This may increase the chances of events such as forest fires. However, over one day, they should average out such that the longer term weather and climate is no different.
The length of a day is determined by the rate of rotation about the Earth's axis. The length of a year is determined by the rate of revolution of the Earth around the sun. Since the two are independent (think Mercury: 88 Earth-days to revolve around the sun and 58 Earth-days to rotate around its own axis), changing the rate of rotation will not impact the rate of revolution around the Sun, and therefore not affect the length of the seasons.
Extending the period of the diurnal cycle (i.e. the day-night cycle) should not have a visible impact on climate change, which is caused by the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. At least, if there is an effect, it is indirect, e.g. more forest fires leads to more greenhouse gases, or cooler nighttime temperatures cause people to use more heating and thus increasing carbon emissions. | 14 |
ELI5:how can the universe be infinite if it started from a single point | how can something which was said to be the size of a watermelon at one point be infinite? | 18 | There are infinitely many numbers between 0 and 1, but the size of this interval is only 1.
Somewhat similarly the universe at the beginning was infinitely dense but compressed down to a singularity. If something is infinitely dense you can expand it out to an infinite size. | 17 |
[Warhammer 40k] How much does the Imperium know of Chaos? | I know the Space Marines and Inquisition know, but what of the Imperial Guard? How much do they know? Same with the common Imperial citizen.
I remember reading that the Inquisition wanted to exterminatus everyone on Armageddon for their knowledge of the Traitor Legions and the Space Wolves tole em to fuck off.
That begs the question of how much do they really know. | 37 | Generally, between not a lot to nothing. They only know that there are bad things and that if you see a mutant, heretic or alien that you should shoot it, repeatedly. The only guardsmen that knows much about chaos are either heretic or have fought demons and survived. And they basicly only know that they are bloody hard to kill and are something more then just a alien. Maybe they saw one getting summoned or getting possesed, or saw some warppowers, or a warp gate etc. They wont know anything about the gods, who likes what and if bloodletters serve khorne or nurgle, but they will know that its a demon. | 28 |
ELI5: Software patents and why they are "evil" | I'm not quite sure what a software patent is, and Wikipedia doesn't have the greatest information.
Is it like the creation of a file type that others cannot use (.rar where only winRAR can make but others can unarchive)?
Or is it like a process (the way VLC opens a video file)?
| 46 | A computer program is a series of instructions, like a recipe.
Suppose you're making dinner, and decide to mix certain spices together in a bowl then toast them in a pan.
It turns out well, so you publish it as part of a recipe.
Then someone comes along and sues you, saying they invented the idea of mixing those spices together and toasting them. You protest that you didn't copy them, it was your own idea. That doesn't matter. The other guy thought of it first, and now he owns that technique for the next nineteen years. He can charge you whatever royalties he likes, or prevent you from using that technique at all.
Software patents are like that. Patents are awarded for the sort of ideas that programmers come up with all the time, as part of their everyday work.
Getting a software patent is a lot more expensive than coming up with the "invention" in the first place, so only large corporations can afford to do it much. | 22 |
Did our gut bacteria originally ride into our bodies on the kind of food it helps us digest? | Did bacteria that digests sugars first ride in on something sugary? Did fiber-eating bacteria originally ride in on fiber? Is that anything like the way it works?
Edit: If that is the way it works, does it mean we might be able to engineer symbiotic bacteria to help solve hunger issues? | 37 | That's not really the way it works. If you look at bacteria that are naturally present on food sources and then look at the bacteria in the gut that use that same food source, they are usually quite different. Often this is because of different selective pressures in the two environments. Outside the gut, the bacteria are usually in an aerobic environment, inside it is anaerobic. There will also be differences in pH, salt content, other bacteria that are present that may antagonize them and also the human immune system. Some of the early post-weaning colonizers may enter as you theorize, but they are relatively quickly out-competed by bacteria that are specialized in thriving in the gut. Those get in in a variety of ways, some have environmental reservoirs others are gut specialists coming largely from fecal contamination of the surroundings of a child when their microbiome is developing. The initial pre-weaning colonizers come from mother's vagina or skin depending on delivery mode. What you are describing for solving hunger issues is essentially a synbiotic approach of co-feeding a beneficial bacteria and its substrate. These have by and large not proven to be especially effective, though there may be some transient benefits. | 26 |
ELI5: Why is (speaking) censoring done with a beep in most cases | why not just mute the sound? I've seen both kinds of censoring and I dunno why there are different systems. | 130 | Bleep censoring was the best way to edit material in the early days of television. Sound editing after the video had been shot was essentially out of the question. Bleeping started as just covering up whatever profanity was spoken. As time went on though, you could actually edit the sound of a video. How censoring works depends on the tv channel that is airing it. The FCC does not have a rule that everything must use one form of censoring, only that certain material cannot be shown/spoken. Hope that helps. | 50 |
CMV: A deliberate kick to the testicles should be considered sexual assault. | Sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient.
When engaging in an altercation where one person purposely attacks the sexual organs of another, it should be deemed as sexual assault. Including, but not limited to, the testicles. I don't know how to further explain this point, as it seems common sense to me. But here are some points.
-The testicles are a sexual organ
-Kicking them is assault
-Purposefully kicking them with intent to injure is sexual assault
It could also be argued that if a man were to punch a woman in the vagina, that he'd be tried for sexual assault.
As we understand from men and women, regardless of reason, women are much more sensitive (psychologically). So it's viewed as less of a serious issue when a man is sexually assaulted.
It sounds like people want to retain the social integrity of "sexual assault assault" to pertain to much more "serious" offense like rape. But that argument is based on principle, and not the words *sexual assault*.
Edit: My view has been changed...I'm not sure if I'm supposed to continue defending.
The comparison between circumcision and a kick to the balls is what did it.
Circumcision pertains to the genitals, but is not sexual, and some consider it mutilation. Which is enough of an argument for to to realize that there *can* be an area in which the word *sexual* can be quantified. Thanks everyone.
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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!*
| 292 | >Sexual assault is any type of sexual contact or behavior that occurs without the explicit consent of the recipient.
Okay. So let's ask ourselves, is a kick to the testicles "sexual contact or behavior"?
Does the person doing the kicking derive sexual pleasure from it? Barring some pretty rare fetishes, no. And as to those fetishes, there are people who derive sexual pleasure from inflicting ANY pain on others, so we can't really use a rare fetish as a legal standard, otherwise EVERY assault would be sexual assault.
Does the recipient derive sexual pleasure from the act, or WOULD they normally if this wasn't an altercation? Again, barring unusual fetishes, no.
Let's define "sexual": "relating to the instincts, physiological processes, and activities connected with physical attraction or intimate physical contact between individuals."
Is a kick to the testicles a sexual instinct? No. People don't have sex like that. Is this related to the physiological process of physical intimacy? Not really; again, people aren't physically intimate like this. Is it related to intimate activities? Again, not really.
Just because this act happens to involve a sexual organ doesn't make it sexual. Breastfeeding involves a sex organ. A full-body pat down involves a sex organ (or organs). If you want to get liberal with your definition of a "sex organ", nearly any contact of any kind between two humans can be contact with a sex organ; that doesn't make it sexual. And if something isn't sexual, it can't be sexual assault. | 119 |
[Marvel] Does Venom immunity to Spider sense work on Miles? | Venom and Carnage are immune to the spider sense of Peter Parker, but would they be immune to Miles Morales spider sense, or Spider-Gwen, or other alternate reality Peter parkers? What about Parker clones like Ben Reilly? | 51 | Venom and his spawn would set off the Spider-Sense of Miles, Gwen or any spider person from another universe.
And it does not work on clones which is what gave Ben an edge when he fought Venom. If Kaine still had Spider-Sense he would also be fine, and any new clone would be fine.
They specifically have a natural immunity to Peter and only the Peter the black costume was bonded to at that. | 51 |
A question about Australia and free trade. | Hi. I honestly know nothing about Economics so this might be a stupid question, haha.
I‘ve been taking a look at Australia’s economy and how it hasn’t had a recession in more than 27 years, which is an amazing feat. I read that one of the measures they applied was implementing free trade, reducing tariffs (by 25% I guess) and all that.
I’ve been thinking. Due to Australia’s distance to the rest of the world and sheer transportation costs, one could argue that national companies have an advantage over foreign companies because they won’t have to deal with high transportation costs. Therefore, national products tend to be more competitive than their foreign counterparts. Sort of a natural tax, I’d say. Evidently, there will be industries in which this doesn’t apply (tech?).
Therefore, free trade wouldn’t be damaging to the national industry in Australia as, let’s say, Portugal. German products can be delivered in Portugal a lot more easily than Chinese products in Australia.
Thinking now, every country would have this advantage to some degree, but especially Australia because of the long distance.
Am I right? Partially right? 100% Bullshit? Teach me! | 24 | It's not a bad hypothesis. The gravity model of trade (which emphasises short distance as a determinant of trade between countries) is near universal in the literature.
The problem is, when Australia removed it's tariffs in the 80s, the immediate response was the collapse of trade exposed manufacturing. We now make no cars, almost no clothes, not much steel etc. Australia is the poster child for trade and comparative advantage leading to specialisation. We dig things up and do services. We don't do low skill manufacturing (except for things you can't easily trade like food) | 22 |
ELI5: How come in-house brands are almost always cheaper than non in-house brands? | 26 | Marketing and reputation... Crest, Tylenol, or Oreos have spent millions in advertising to get you to buy their brand and think they are the best/highest quality/most effective. So the cost of the advertising is built into their costs that go into determining pricing. Also the intangible benefits of their reputation, ie. "well, 4 of 5 dentists recommend it..." will convince a number of consumers to justify paying more because it must be better.
On the flip side, if a store is selling its own brand, it can shop the manufacturing of said good to multiple plants to get the lowest price, and they cut out a middle man so they pay wholesalers/distributors their cut. Also, stores may use their brands as loss-leaders to lure you in the door so they can make their profits elsewhere. Get that generic, store-brand ibuprofen as their cost, and they make $$$ on the prescription you pick up. | 10 |
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ELI5: What exactly am I paying domain registrars for? | If they don't do hosting and there is no way they have rights to every domain before it's purchased, what service are they providing and is it one that somebody could do without them? | 30 | There are some administrative that need to be paid for (staff, office costs, hosting their own website).
But mainly there needs to be some fee involved otherwise there's nothing stopping people from registering millions of domains, just for fun. | 14 |
ELI5: What about GPU Architecture makes them superior for training neural networks over CPUs? | In ML/AI, GPUs are used to train neural networks of various sizes. They are vastly superior to training on CPUs. Why is this? | 688 | Imagine you have 1 million math assignments to do, they are very simple assignments, but there are a lot that need to be done, they are not dependent on each other so they can be done on any order.
You have two options, distribute them to 10 thousand people to do it in parallel or give them to 10 math experts. The experts are very fast, but hey, there are only 10 of them, the 10 thousand are more suitable for the task because they have the "brute force" for this.
GPUs have thousands of cores, CPUs have tens. | 528 |
CMV: Analog clocks are pointless. | Analog clocks are a throwback to a time when we needed mechanics and gears to create clocks. They are unintuitive, and we are wasting time teaching first graders how to tell time on analog clocks when a superior alternative exists.
Digital clocks are intuitive, easier and faster to read, more reliable, and more accurate. The only acceptable place for an analog clock is on a watch because watches are jewelry first and time-telling devices second.
Technology has improved, and analog clocks are obsolete. People don't use oil lanterns to light their homes, and they don't use horse-drawn carriages to get to work. So why are analog clocks still used so often?
Edit: If you plan on making an "actually they have 2 or 3 pointers lol" joke, please don't.
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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!* | 80 | Analog clocks give you the ability to visualize time. They are actually *more* intuitive than digital clocks. Will 8:48 - 9:12 give me enough time to pick up the kids? With analog clocks, no mental math is required. It's all visual.
Analog clocks are also classier and more visually appealing. Digital clocks require artificially lit displays. Analog clocks can complement other pieces in the room. Digital clocks almost always detract from the interior design. | 230 |
Eli5: Given the enormous difference in speed between sound and light, how is it possible that when watching a movie the audio and video are in sync? Shouldn't the light from the TV reach my eyes nearly 900,000 times faster than the sound reaches my ears? | 23 | Yes, the light does reach your eyes faster than the sound does. However the difference in timing isn't something you can notice unless you are sitting a great distance away from the source; most people aren't viewing their screen from half a mile away.
To complicate matters your brain doesn't even process visual stimulus at the same speed as auditory stimulus. Vision is much more complex so it takes slightly longer to process than sound, meaning if you are anywhere near your television that likely overshadows any difference in travel time anyway. | 53 |
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Does the moon revolve around the Earth in the same plane as the Earth revolves around the Sun? If so, does this apply to all moons? | 19 | The Moon's orbit is inclined about 5 degrees to the ecliptic, otherwise we'd have both a solar and a lunar eclipse every lunar orbit. Most moons orbit close to the inclination of their planet's equator. | 13 |
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[Darkman] Why didn’t Peyton ever go out in the night with his skin? | We see the synthetic skin he develops is reactive to light giving him only 99 minutes in the sun until he’s a bubbling mess, but surely he could at least extend his time if he went out at night? The skin cells aren’t bothered by the light of the microscope so you’d think he’d be able to maybe have extended revenge/date time at night. | 19 | I’m going to go with “most of the time the people he’s impersonating aren’t going to be active at night” and for dates specifically “he just wants to be able to pretend everything is normal for a bit”
When he finally does renounce any hope of regaining his normal life it’s less because of the mask problem and more because he can no longer envision a way of life that doesn’t involve violence | 10 |
ELI5 - How are airplane black boxes made “crash proof” | Pretty much title. I’ve always wondered how those things can withstand massive crashes and explosions and still be reliable to retrieve recordings from. | 237 | Metal box, fireproof, waterproof, installed in the tail of the plane. The tail does already survive the majority of impacts. You can’t crash tail first AND going fast. The plane even if loses control entirely, flies like a dart, and crashes nose first. If it goes on flat spin it crashes flat, and that reduced the terminal velocity anyway, so it’s not fast enough to smash the box.
So it’s both construction and positioning. | 314 |
CMV: Fear over A.I., "artificial intelligence" and super-smart computers that could destroy mankind is dramatic hyperbole and fearmongering. | Where is the evidence that super-smart computers could threaten humanity? Where is there any evidence that there are actually any super-smart computers that can come anywhere near the capacity of the human brain? And where is there evidence of any kind of enlightened reason in machines that would represent a threat to mankind? Can someone explain how at our current technological level, we need to be worried about artificial intelligence and its ability to be destructive to mankind, when the architects of such a system would have the inherent ability to limit the scope of influence of such a system? Isn't this this a mythological boogeyman? And do we have any actual thinking computer-based systems that would even come close to exhibiting the kind of judgmental things we find in fictitious representations of rogue A.I.?
Edit:
UPDATE... let me qualify this criteria.... some people have awarded carats and I don't feel the people who have been awarded those carats have accomplished the objective.
The idea of a "super intelligent artificial life form" is predicated on the notion that such a system has the capacity to learn and adapt. This is what we see in all the portrayals of A.I. gone rogue. I challenge anyone to give evidence of such a system, even on a small scale. Demonstrating a programmed system is good at what it was programmed to do is not sufficient. A fundamental aspect of this is the ability to demonstrate that an artificial system can TRANSCEND ITS ORIGINAL PURPOSE. That's the divide you have to cross. You have to show me a system that has evolved beyond its original purpose and learned a new skill or ability. If you cannot give us practical examples of an A.I. system that has "evolved" even in a minute way, you cannot claim to have demonstrated the claim.
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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!* | 157 | > Where is there any evidence that there are actually any super-smart computers that can come anywhere near the capacity of the human brain?
This is like asking "where is the evidence that we can eventually build drone robots similar to the maneuvering, speed, and durability of bees?"
Well, if bees themselves could do it, then it's by definition *possible*. From then on, it's just an engineering problem, a matter of replicating materials in sufficient imitative detail.
So is it with AI and a human brain. We *know* that a brain-sized pile of atoms are capable of transmitting enough data to produce reasoning, it's just a matter of imitating it.
Wit AI, the threat is that due to the exponential growth of our information technology, it might not just be a theoretical potential that a savant inventor may or may not stumble upon, but a necessity of increasing raw computing power in the next few decades. | 67 |
ELI5:Why are there so many English words in Japan? | Watching a video of the New 3DS review recently, the guy had a Japanese model. In the shortcut settings, there's a setting to turn Wireless and NFC on/off.
On his version the option was called ワイヤレスのための/NFC (no idea if that Japanese is correct, but it'll do for an example).
My questions is why is it labelled <some Japanese text>/NFC (where NFC is in English)? Why not <Japanese word for wireless>/<Japanese word for NFC>?
And now I think about this, I've seen loads of other examples on TV, etc, over the years. | 16 | Why do English speakers use the words schadenfreude (German), hors d'oeuvre (French), piñata (Spanish), al fresco (Italian), in absentia (Latin) and karaoke (Japanese)? Because often different languages will have words that don't have direct translations, and in those cases it's common to just "borrow" the word as is.
In technology, it would be more common for other languages to "borrow" English words/phrases as the most commonly used international language in technology industries is English. **N**ear **F**ield **C**ommunication probably doesn't have an existing direct translation in Japanese, and people who would even know what it is can probably read some basic English, so they've kept it as an English acronym. | 20 |
ELI5: Why do mirrors/reflective surfaces "feel" grey/silver? | If they are supposed to be reflective, I guess a mirror is just the color of things around it. Nevertheless, mirrors and things like mercury are usually perceived to be sort of... Shiny grey. Why is that? Is it just a visual illusion or is there something about that color? | 21 | A perfect mirror reflects 100% of all light. But nothing is a perfect mirror. Some seem green because the glass used in them absorbs the color the least, so more green comes back to you than the other colors. Silver, grey and white are both not actually colors as wavelengths of light. They are the perceived combination of all visible wavelengths. So in theory they are just different kinds of all colors being reflected equally. Specific names are then probably down to impurities. So some greys are warmer bc they have more red in them. Silver differs from grey and white not only in the specific impurities but also it refers to the object being shiny.
So tldr : a perfect mirror would have no color for itsself but everything absorbs at least a little bit of some wavelengths, giving it a light touch of colour. | 27 |
Is there an ultimate guide to how to have long term happiness and contentment? | Hi all,
There seems to be lots of different ideas and guides on this.
I was wondering is there an ultimate comprehensive guide on how to be as happy and content as possible in the long term, that is backed by science,
And one that covers as much of the different parts of life as is possible, if this makes sense? | 37 | a piece of that may be practicing gratitude. generally, the more you practice being grateful for events or things in your life, the more naturally you will look for those things automatically
but life is rough overall lol and it’s more about finding contentment than happiness. happiness is fleeting, it is meant to be that way | 21 |
Have humans always been repulsed by the smell of sweat and other body odors? | I was wondering, what people did before there were cleaning agents(ie.deodorant and bodywash)? Have we been socialized to think that these smells are foul? Or is it a natural reaction to the smell?
EDIT: Thank you so much for all the responses guys, thank you for confirming my hunch about the issue. Finally, thank you for getting me to the front page for the first time. Upvotes for every one!
EDIT: spelling of foul | 587 | Actually, some evidence shows that it is quite the opposite. The opposite sex is often attracted to a certain level of smelliness, as they are also getting a whiff of hormones and pheromones along with the stench. | 564 |
Can I teach student courses using material taken from the internet? | I don't see anything against it... But I know that academia is "weird" about re-using material.
Basically, I've been asked to tutor a lab course about introduction to image processing in python. As you know, preparing all the course material from scratch is something which is super-long and tedious.
I've found two perfect courses, with a full set of exercises and data to run the exercises on, on github, from a very reputable source. The material has a MIT license so I can re-use it freely, as long as the author of the material is concerned.
What about my side? Am I (legally or "morally") required to write all the material by myself? | 70 | Yes, you are good to go. Just make sure if it requires permission, you get it. Otherwise just cite everything so it doesn't appear as though you are taking credit for producing it. More than likely 95% or more of any lecture material anyone every really uses comes from one source or another. | 108 |
[DC/Marvel] How much crime do vigilantes like Batman, Punisher, and Spider Man actually stop? | How much crime do street vigilantes like Batman, Punisher, Spider Man etc actually stop?
In a day, a month, a year? | 19 | Generally, those kind of vigilantes are working out of areas of higher-than-average criminal activity, so there's *something* for them to stop in a daily (or nightly) basis.
Out of the three you named, Batman probably stops the most crime. Gotham has a high criminal population, with more than a few dedicated "professionals" causing problems. Spiderman works a good sized section of New York, but NY is rather hero dense, so he's got a smaller slice of the street mugger/random break-in scene.
But you have to consider the crime they prevent indirectly, as well. Batman and Punisher work through fear as well as direct shows of strength. Gotham might have a high crime rate thanks to the various gangs and mob families, but with Batman's reputation of being anywhere, at any time, common criminals are less willing to go rob a joint at random.
A vigilante like Punisher moves around often, however, so he doesn't keep a particular area in fear of his attentions. When he does strike, he doesn't leave survivors, and he's hitting hard targets, like drug cartels and gangs. He's having an impact, but leaves a vacuum for more of the same types to move in. An area he's hit will be quiet for a time, but as reports of his work elsewhere crop up, the criminal elements seeps back in.
To answer your question more directly: Batman certainly stops several crimes a night, at least. Spiderman probably stops as much over the course of several days to a week. Punisher won't necessarily stop individual crimes-in-progress regularly. He plots out his targets, takes his time, and wipes out as many as he can in one go. Why shoot a mugger when you can toss a grenade into a room of mafioso? In a month, he'll take out more than either Batman or Spiderman. Permanently. | 21 |
Is there and what is the evidence for QFT(QED eg) or string theory? | What does that evidence confirm? What are we certain about that is happening since there are also things theorized. | 236 | QED is the most precisely tested theory in all of physics. It describes electromagnetic interactions, so all known electrodynamic phenomena in nature (light, atomic binding, electron-electron scattering, etc.) are described by QED. | 112 |
What actually causes cracking joints? Is there any real biological benefit? | 18 | Joints are two bones that are enclosed by a fibrous capsule.
The capsule itself is filled with a lubricant called synovial fluid. Synovial fluid contains gases that are dissolved in solution.
When we 'crack' our knuckles, for example, the joint capsule is stretched; but there's only a set volume of synovial fluid in the capsule. A putative mechanism for the 'cracking' sound is attributed to the sudden drop in pressure from the stretching of the capsule, leading to the dissolved gases to rapidly come out of solution.
Basically, it's a bubble popping in your joint space.
As for its whether its beneficial or detrimental, there's a lot of research out there and it's a topic of hot debate. IIRC it doesn't actually cause arthritis though. | 18 |
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If a flight takes longer than 12 hours, aren't they just flying the wrong way around the earth so the earth's rotation speeds it up? | Or does the entire atmosphere rotate with the earth? | 342 | The atmosphere rotates with the Earth, otherwise it would be very windy indeed. At equator it would be something like 15 times hurricane speeds!
Even if there were no atmosphere, though, 12 hours would not be an upper bound on the time to travel somewhere. The plane, as the atmosphere, also rotates with the Earth when it takes off, and must spend time and fuel to change its velocity to make it go where it needs to go. If that weren't the case, you could presumably transport yourself westwards by jumping straight up. | 364 |
Was the Higgs Boson disproved? | Apparently, by 8-year-old daughter's teacher told her that the Higgs Boson had been a miscalculation. I've searched for any sort of reference to this and can't find anything about a Higgs Boson miscalcuation. I want to make sure to give my daughter the right information, so...does anyone know what the heck this guy was talking about? | 50 | Maybe the teacher is confusing it with another recent result from CERN, about the neutrinos allegedly moving faster-than-light. _That_ result was incorrect (although an experimental error, not a miscalculation). But that result was unexpected and not generally thought to be correct in the first place, while the Higgs discovery amounted to finding a particle right around where it was expected to be found. (and there was no _single_ calculation predicting the Higgs, but actually a wide variety of them)
| 103 |
[Star Wars] Do Prothesis, Droids and Lightsabers have to be charged? If no, why? | 32 | A droid the size of R2-D2 up to a droideka (destroyer) with a standard battery can last 100 hours on a single charge.
Droids larger than a droideka will generally have the same proportional battery life (around 100 hours), but any larger than that and they are likely to use vehicle engines instead, which last as long as they have fuel; they need to refuel the same way a vehicle would.
Lightsabers last virtually indefinitely, due to their highly efficient use of energy. If one did run out, you would have to rebuild it and replace the power cell.
Standard medical prosthetics will use the body's natural electric output to power their operations. If you wanted an arm that was super strong or had a hidden blaster, you would need the equivalent power source as you would find in a tool that had the same purpose (energy cell, or energy cell and gas chamber for blaster).
Although it's never explicitly stated, I've always assumed that a total conversion cyborg (like Darth Vader or General Grievous) would have to either power himself like a droid or have an extremely expensive extended-life battery. | 28 |
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Can we bounce a signal off something in deep space and see Earth`s past? | I have no idea how science works, I'm in sixth grade, so don't get mad. But couldn't we bounce some kind of energy signal off something in deep space, have it pointed back at earth, decode it, and see what Earth looked like in the past? | 41 | This is a great question, and it's actually exactly how science works. In science you ask questions that you don't know the answer to, and then you try to find out what the answer is.
When you look at yourself in a mirror, you're actually seeing what you looked like in the past. This is because it takes light a finite amount of time to travel the distance from your face to the mirror, and then back to your face. So, if there was a giant mirror one light year away from earth (one light year is the distance that light travels in one year, about 5.8 trillion miles), when we looked at the mirror we would see what the earth looked like two years ago. This is because the light leaves the earth, spends a year traveling through space until it hits the mirror, then bounces back towards earth and spends another year traveling back to earth where it hits your telescope.
If someone went and built a mirror 5.8 trillion miles from earth today, the light from a year ago would be the first light to hit the mirror. This light would turn around and spend a year traveling back to earth, so a year from now we would be able to see the earth as it was a year ago. So, on August 21st, 2015 we would be able to see what the earth looked like on August 21st, 2013.
Also note that this is a very simplified example, where we're assuming a perfectly reflective surface and a perfectly empty universe between the earth and the mirror. | 47 |
If the four dimensions of space and time are intertwined, why can we not rotate an object into "time" the same way we can rotate an object in 3D space? | Forgive me for being naive, but this seems like an intuitive question. | 16 | You can “rotate into time”, just change your speed. Mathematically, changing between different reference frames looks like hyperbolic rotations that mix spatial and time coordinates. Using some identities from complex analysis, you can think of hyperbolic rotations as regular rotations, by imaginary angles. | 48 |
If my breastfed baby catches a cold, then gets me sick, will the antibodies I produce cause her health to improve faster than if she were formula (or otherwise) fed? | .... | 65 | Yes, you transfer IgG via breast milk. IgG will be present in high concentrations in the sinus and lungs of your baby. The quote about 2 weeks is wrong, it is closer to 1-3 days depending if you have prior exposure, which you likely have.
I am a research scientist in infectious disease. | 13 |
There is a question I don't understand | What statement is true according to Kant's transcendental idealism?
a) The external world exists independently of us and we can't gain knoweldge about it via perception
b) The external world only exists when it is percieved, "to be is to be percieved"
c) The external world does exist independently of us but we can gain knowledge about it via our perceptions
d) There exists no external world
e) It's meaningless to discuss whether there exists an external world of us.
&#x200B;
None of these seem to be correct. I think it's answer "a)" but that one doesn't seem entirely correct either. If we are exist in the external world, humans came out of and exists within the external world - can we then really say that we exist independently of it merely because don't have access to it via our senses or perceptions? Given the nautre of our experiences, there must be a mind-independent world beyond experience which gives rise to these experiences in the first place. After all, transcendental idealism does not reject the existence of a physical world. | 17 | A is horse poopie, basically for some of the reasons you described. Unfortunately it is a common enough misinterpretation that your instructor may well think it's the correct answer, and among these it is probably closest. Without wanting to call them out, they may not be specialists in Kant and it can be quite hard to get Kant right when you don't spend a lot of your time thinking about him (or if, as many non-historians do, you already feel that transcendental idealism is a silly doctrine not worth spending time on!) Note also that historians and interpreters still seriously debate how to best understand transcendental idealism, and defend versions of various of these answers.
The problem is that it doesn't really make sense to map Kant's talk of appearances and things in themselves (the proper subject of transcendental idealism) onto talk of an 'internal' and external world. Kant is very adamant (in the 'Refutation of Idealism', for instance) that we can know that there are objects outside of us, and we know so from experience. Appearances are appearances *of* things, and so they really acquaint us with features of a world 'outside' us. What they don't do is give us direct knowledge of things as they are outside of our experience, or 'in-themselves.' Whether this means there really are mind-independent things in themselves fully separate from appearances, or whether it just means that we see the things but only see the features of them that are fit to appear to us, is a subject of serious debate. But you are totally right to point out that something needs to be grounding these appearances either way.
I don't know if the argument from birth has much to do with it - after all, 'birth' is also something that exists as appearance, etc. - but you are justified in thinking something was wrong with this question. | 10 |
Eli5 Where does all the fluid come from in a runny nose? How is there so much? | 20 | A runny nose is generally the product of the body making mucus in an effort to expel irritating substances or infectious agents. Think dust, pollen, germs, etc. This mucus or snot is composed of a small amount of protein and a large amount of water.
The water is sourced from your blood. This is one of the main reasons why you need to drink plenty of fluids when you are sick, as you are expelling fluids through mucus. 90-95% of snot is water so the amount of proteins your mucus glands need to supply is low compared to the total volume which is why it seems so endless. | 28 |
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[Alien vs Predator Requiem] Why does the Predator shoot energy weapons inside his own spaceship? | Isn't that a guaranteed way to either crash or blow up your ship with you inside of it? Why not use melee weapons and hand to hand combat to kill the Alien? | 16 | The alien was a predalien. To the predators that's the singular worst perversion of their existence possible. Killing it by any means necessary even suicide is not just seen as good and right but essential. The predator figured worst case the ship crashes and they all die including the abomination. Best case he killed it with fire before it could lay eggs | 29 |
CMV: East Coast Hip Hop is superior to West Coast Hip Hop - and it's not even close. | The famous "East - West" beef in hip hop seems, to me, to be a very lopsided contest. Both sides have strengths, but in the end the East vastly outstrips the West.
The West can be credited for bringing hip hop to white people, and therefore mainstream America. The importance of N.W.A.'s "Straight Outta Compton" cannot be overstated. Without the breakout of the late 80's, early 90's we most likely wouldn't see the rise of hip hop when it happened. Besides that, the Chronic, Doggystyle, and Tupac's career gave solid credit to the West. So, so far we can give the West:
* Bringing hip hop to a large audience
* Making breakthrough albums in "The Chronic" and "Doggystyle"
* Tupac Shakur's career in general.
However, when we look to the West we also see a lack of raw talent and lyricism that made East coast hip hop so rich. Apart from Shakur, the rap is generally funk based and of simple vocabulary. [This list of rappers by vocabulary is glaring:](http://experiments.undercurrent.com)
the West coast has *no* representation in the top 10 and 2 in the top 20. With Tupac again being the exception, all of the above albums say nothing about hood life other than to glorify it. While this was great at the time to at least *expose* what was going on, it can't compare to the extrapolation that the East made by talking about *how* that life impacts a person.
We've looked at the West, how about the East?
In 1993 Wu-Tang Clan released "Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers" and changed hip hop forever. The production and lyricism on the album surpassed that of anything before, with songs that not only spoke about the life of the streets but talked about how that impacted a person. The kid based flavor was also new, as the inclusion of ninja movies and comic books proved to be revolutionary. But it wouldn't stop there, in 1995 RZA (the head of Wu-Tang) would produce two albums that would be released as individual albums by Raekwon and GZA but involved the full Clan in both. The result was "Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…" and "Liquid Swords" which are both commonly regarded as two of the greatest rap albums of all time. "Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…" introduced the mafioso style of rap that Jay-Z would later emulate in "Reasonable Doubt" and gave a much needed insight into *why* someone chooses the criminal life, on top of describing it. GZA's "Liquid Swords" completed it nicely by further describing the crime life, but giving a darker description of how the criminal life impacts a person and how hard it is to survive in the projects. The dark and gritty sound was a deeper version of what RZA employed on "36 Chambers" and the result was unparalleled by anything else. "Liquid Swords" was a hallmark for production and lyricism in dark rap and together with "Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…" cemented RZA as the best producer on the East Coast.
Meanwhile, the Notorious B.I.G. released "Ready to Die". I cannot overstate how great of an example this is for the effects of crime on a criminal. This comment from /u/prevosis sums up my opinion well:
"I always thought that this album perfectly encapsulated Biggie at the time of the recording of this album. A young, stressed out, ex-drug dealer who just wants to leave the horrible conditions he's grown up in. The whole album revolves around how he is "ready to die", meaning that he as a kid from the hood can die at any time, however, he is ready for it.
The album opens with Biggie's birth. I always interpreted this as Biggie saying that kids are born "ready to die" in the ghetto. The album then shows the experiences that ghetto kids go through, such as crime, sex ("Big Poppa", "One More Chance", "Fuck Me"), dreaming of leaving the ghetto ("Juicy", "Everyday Struggle"), love and tragedy ("Me & My Bitch", "Friend of Mine"), and overall ghetto struggles. This is a great understatement of what the album discusses but it will have to do for the sake of brevity.
Why I think the album is one of the greatest albums ever made? The fact is that this is a dropout, a young kid, rapping to us about how he's lived a life full of vices and full of stress; he's truly ready to die. He's had so much sex with random hoes that he can't even keep track of his own family; he's probably killed too many people to get over; he's an evil man. The entire album culminates in the final track, "Suicidal Thoughts", where he decides to tell Puffy why exactly he's an asshole. He's been implicitly telling us for the entire album that he's ready to die because he's an asshole; now he's explicitly telling Diddy that he is going to commit suicide because of all of the evil in his life.
But does this only apply to Biggie? No. The whole point of making this album was to show listeners that criminals from the hood are not unaffected by the crimes they commit. They have personal problems as well and these can be quite stressful. It's a social commentary on the ghetto, much like how hip-hop music traditionally has described the decrepit conditions which much of black america live in. It is, in my humble opinion, the greatest album of the East Coast Revival movement in 1990s hip-hop. If you haven't heard this album yet, hip-hop fan or not, you need to. It will open your eyes, even if they weren't closed to begin with. 10/10 easily for me."
And I haven't even gotten to the release of the greatest hip hop album of all time: "Illmatic". A young Nas dropped Illmatic in 1994 and made history. Aside from being commonly known as the best rap record ever made, "Illmatic" allowed rap to begin to move away from the "gangster" sound that it had dominated the scene. With jazz paired with some amazing beats from the likes of Pete Rock, Q-Tip, DJ Premier and Large Professor. It's influence on other rappers can't be overstated either; from Wikipedia:
"Many rappers have taken note of Illmatic's influence on their lyricism. Ghostface Killah recounted, “When I used to listen to Nas back in the days, it was like, ‘Oh shit! He murdered that.’ That forced me to get my pen game up. . .The whole Illmatic album forced you to go ahead and do shit . . .It was inspiration." Detroit rapper Elzhi states, "[A]round the time Nas did Illmatic, it made me wanna step my game up. . .He's one of the reasons I did go off into storytelling because his pictures were so vivid. When he displayed his rhyme schemes and his word play and his songs, it made me wanna create visual pictures as well." Casey Veggies also recounts the impact Nas' lyricism had his own work as an underground rapper in the 2000s: “I [got into] Illmatic when I was 14, 15. I didn’t get onto to it till late, but when I did, that's probably the only thing I listened to for six months to a year...After I got heavy on Illmatic, I put out Sleeping In Class. That's when I really tried to sharpen my skills and get better.”
With the likes of Nas, The Notorious B.I.G. and Wu-Tang the East Coast has a large berth over the West. But that isn't even the end: Mobb Deep, Erik B. and Rakim, AZ and many others supply the East with talent.
The West? The West has Tupac and Kendrick Lamar, who came to the scene after the conflict.
How can they compete? CMV!
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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!* | 37 | Its a false dichotomy that pits rappers against each other for no good reason. Great rap has come from New York, LA, Chicago, Atlanta and more. Arguing over which coast is the best creates an unnecessary internal conflict. | 25 |
Why can't we divide by zero? | So we've all seen the internet memes. But I was thinking, why can't we divide by zero? | 94 | Well sweetie, because to divide means that something is made up of smaller parts. A 4 is made up by two twos (2+2=4) or four one's (1+1+1+1=4). If you divide 4 by 1, you're asking how many 1's make 4. 1+1+1+1=4 so four one's makes 4. If you asked how many 0's make up 4 there wouldn't be an answer because 0's can't add up to 4. 0+0+0+0=0 Do you understand? | 307 |
ELI5: Order of operations in math (BODMAS, BEDMAS) | eg. 2+2x2 = 6
I know the proper order of operations but WHY are they done in that order? There must be a better reason than "because otherwise you'll get the wrong answer" | 510 | It's not purely arbitrary. There's a logic behind it.
First off there's the brackets, this has to be first because this is how you force an equation to do what you want and override the other rules,if it was after then you'd lose the ability to do something.
Next is exponentiation, multiplication and division.
This group of three are all united under the banner of product actions.
Things that multiply and divide. The order actually doesn't matter for multiplication and division.
After that there's addition and subtraction.
Again the order of addition/subtraction doesn't matter.
So we'll put them under the banner of sums.
So why are products given priority over sums?
This is one of those things that mathematicians the world over and throughout history have sort of silently agreed with one another. The best suspicion is that all products of sums can be rewritten as the sum of products.
EG: you can write (A+3) x (B+5) as (AxB)+(3xB)+(Ax5)+(Bx5), but notice how many more brackets are in the second one.
If you made sums have precedence over products, you could write (A+3) x (B+5) as A+3 x B+3, but then you have to write (AxB)+(3xB)+(Ax5)+(Bx5) once you expanded it out.
Now if you put products before sums (A+3) x (B+5) stays the same but (AxB)+(3xB)+(Ax5)+(Bx5) becomes AB+3B+5A+5B, it's so obvious you don't even need the 'x' symbol anymore and you save time writing parenthesis.
So why exponentiation before multiplication?
Similar book keeping reasons. Exponentiation is basically A^2 = AxA. And the product of sums for (A+1) x (2A+1) = 2(A^2 )+(2xA)+(Ax1)+(1x1).
But the situations where you want to multiply before exponentiating come up less frequently then quadratic equations and such, at least to early mathematicians, so they just save the brackets and write 2A^2 +2A+A+1
#TL:DR math people are kinda lazy/efficient, they came up with this because it takes less time to write it down that way. | 233 |
Is there a name for the philosophical approach of deconstructing concepts? | This is a poorly worded question I’m aware. For example, when asking “what is a chair”, someone might say “a seat with four legs” but then someone will deconstruct that idea further and come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a chair.
Is there a philosophy or philosophical term for this kind of thing? Thanks | 17 | This kind of process, wherein someone thinks they have a firm grasp of some concept but is proved to lack such a grasp, appears in Plato’s dialogues; the confusion at the end of the process is called *aporia*. You might want to do some searching around that concept, if this is something you’re interested in. | 11 |
[Star Wars] How fast is hyperspace? | It's obviously faster than light, but how much faster?
There are different classes of hyperdrives too. Do they make hyperspace faster?
Han boasts that the Millennium Falcon is faster than on the ships, and Nico makes a similar boast in The Old Republic about his own ship. Are they referring to hyperspace or realspace? | 15 | There was some Legendary material that put a standard Imperial-II Star Destroyer at something like 200,000 times the speed of light. There's not really enough canon material citing distances and travel times to do that kind of math though.
Han's boasts are mostly about hyperspace speeds. The Falcon is fast for its class in realspace, but between purpose built starfighters, racing ships, and what have you, she's clearly not the fastest from A-to-B in realspace. Her real advantage is her very strong hyperdrive engines, and a very, very good navicomputer >!based on a very smart droid intelligence with a very unique map of hyperspace routes.!< | 13 |
[Mistborn] Why didn't the Lord Ruler ever try burning Atium with Duralumin? | Given that it shows the ultimate consequences of your actions, wouldn't his doing that have fundamentally changed everything that follows? | 29 | It doesn't show the ultimate consequences of your actions. Normally, atium lets you see a few seconds into the future. With duralumin, Elend was able to see a good bit farther - but there's no indication he saw anything more than an hour or so into the future. Elend was able to see that allowing Marsh to win their duel would lead to the obviously beneficial consequence of Sazed ascending. But if the Lord Ruler just randomly burned duralumin and atium together at some point during his reign, he'd probably just see an uneventful next hour, with no consequential decisions to be made. | 22 |
Do electrons/energy build up at the entrance to the resistor? | I know a resistor limits the amount of current that flows in a circuit, but does this cause a buildup of electrons, heat, or energy at the entrance of the resistor? | 21 | Voltage builds up, current (actual electrons) does not. Think of it this way:
Just because there is a dam doesn't mean the steady-state flow of the river is different. If the damn tried to slow the flow of the river (too much), the river would crest the dam and it would catastrophically fail.
Voltage is the height of the water behind the dam relative to the water on the other side, current is the water flowing through from the high side of the dam to the low side.
It's not a *perfect* example, since there really is no 'buildup time' for a resistor like there is for a dam (say right after construction was completed, or after a drought), but it's a helpful visualization. | 14 |
Why are Saturns rings all on the same plane? | 237 | You'll find that the answer to this question is similar to the answers you'll receive for questions like "Why do all the planets orbit in the same plane?" Planetary rings fundamentally follow the same principles and the consequence is that the chunks of the ring orbit the planet in a coplanar fashion, but let's get down to actually why:
Stars form as a consequence of the contraction of interstellar clouds of gas and dust that collapse under their own gravity and begin to heat at their centers as the pressure in the inner parts of the cloud begin to increase. The material within the plane of rotation (Basically the approximate net rotational direction of the entirety of the cloud, which cannot be zero just from a statistical perspective) will remain distributed around the protostar in the center with enough velocity to maintain stable orbits.
The cloud shrinks, angular momentum must be conserved, and so you end up with an increased angular velocity that allows them to stay in that plane of rotation, moving fast enough not to fall into the star. The remainder of this material, that above and below this plane, freely collapse inward as there's no force preventing them from continuing to fall into the center of the protostellar nebula.
When the planets began to form, they did pretty much the same thing, but on smaller, obviously planetary scales. Rocky material would accrete into bodies orbiting the star with the same direction, and the material would come to rotate in the same direction as the cloud was rotating, which makes sense because the material would always have that initial velocity in that direction and it would simply compound to induce a rotation in that same direction. As a result of this, the various moons that orbit Saturn would come to orbit it in the same rotational orientation.
There isn't a conclusive explanation to where exactly Saturn's rings came from, but the two prevailing theories are that they are either debris from a moon whose orbit decayed to below the Roche limit and was disintegrated by tidal forces, or they are simply leftover material from the formation of the planet billions of years ago. Either way, they still would ultimately orbit the planet in a single plane of rotation- Everything else fell into the center of gravity to ultimately make Saturn, material orbiting within the rotational plane moving quick enough maintained stable orbits and so we see that the moons and rings of Saturn exist in a roughly coplanar orientation.
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ELI5: How come the world is near enough 50/50 male and female. Is there a reason it isn't 70/30 in either way? | 19 | Imagine that two out of three births were female, and one out of three male. Then the average male would have twice as many descendents as the average female. Therefore, producing more male children would be advantageous. The equilibrium – where it is equally advantageous to have male or female children – is at 50-50. (Unless it requires more resources to produce children of one gender than the other, in which case see nvelex09's post.) | 10 |
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ELI5: How do people make money trading stocks? | How people decide where and when to buy or sell? Where the money they make comes from? Is it gambling? Why not? | 34 | Owning a stock is owning part of a company, if you stripped all the complicated parts out it's like a local store saying "hey, you can buy 1% of the store to give us that money now, and in exchange we will give you 1% of the profit every year, and we will let you vote on what we do, but your vote only will count 1%" so if you think that 1% profit will be worth 100 dollars you would love to buy that for 99 dollars and love it even more to buy it for 50 dollars. If you bought it for 50 dollars someone else might want to buy it for 99 dollars and you'd like that too because it's a sure thing for you. If the store poops in all it's food and the news does a story about that then you know the profit is going to be way down and you want to sell sell sell before too many people find out and no one wants to buy your thing. Likewise if you think they are gonna sell the hot new product you'd want to buy as much as possible before the price goes up too much.
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In real life it's gotten very complicated beyond that, and some stocks don't even give dividends anymore and exist just to trade or sell. but the general concept is "I own a small part of this business and get a small part of their profit"
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ELI5: How come movies that gross twice or more times their Production Budget are sometimes considered "Unprofitable"? | I have seen it a lot of times: movies whose Box Office grosses are several times higher than their Production Budgets are considered Flops, or in the best case they "barely broke even". Are there extra spendings outside of Production that can be even higher than the Production Budget itself? | 58 | Movies set up a dummy corporation that exists for the production and distribution of that movie. They "outsource" things like advertising to the studio who "charge" very high fees. Even if the movie takes in a lot of money, they have that very big advertising bill to pay off, so all the money goes up to the studio, and none stays with the company that actually made the movie, making it not profitable on paper. | 45 |
CMV: If all traces of religion disappeared, our current religious views would never re-emerge with the same content at another point in time. | If the Bible/quran and all religious writings disappeared in say, a global extinction event, do you think they would have a possibility of resurfacing when humanity rebuilds?
I would say no, and that if something can only be observed once, how true can it be?
On the other hand, and to extend the question, I would say that the Buddhas teachings can be rediscovered. They concern the experience of the human mind, and sitting in meditation and introspection eventually and inevitably reveals the nature of the mind. It feels like a factual textbook compared to a story book.
I hope that didn't offend anybody, I'm just wearing my opinion on my sleeve. | 22 | I think there’s really three major problems with this argument.
The first is that it already presupposes that the deity described by these religions does not exist. For example, if the Qur’an was lost, whether or not it would be revealed again depends on whether or not the Islamic god exists. Unless it’s actually lost and we can gain some outside perspective and see whether or not it is revealed again someday, the point doesn’t seem to hold much weight.
The second is that many aspects of these religions probably would reappear again. For instance, a doctrine like monotheism probably would result from just natural philosophy, as it did for many philosophers in Pagan Greece who nevertheless came to the conclusion that there was a unified divine force behind the universe such as Xenophanes or Aristotle.
The third is that the doctrines which would be lost would mostly (if not entirely) be things based in historical events. History is obviously not something we can ‘rediscover’ like a lost mathematical theorem. If all the evidence for a historical event, both discovered and undiscovered, were lost, then that event could not be later ‘found.’ This is true if you’re talking about whether or not Jesus of Nazareth resurrected on the third day or if you’re talking about whether Julius Caesar existed. The fact that if a hypothetical historical disaster happened and we lost all potential pieces of historical evidence for these things we would no longer believe in them should be absolutely zero obstacle for anyone. | 11 |
CMV: Religion is Dangerous | I personally am a non believer. I went to church with my family when I was younger and even at a young age I thought it was complete bullshit. If you believe that’s fine I’m not saying you don’t have a right and the following is just my opinion.
People believe so strongly in their religion that they will go to extreme lengths to serve their god or spread their beliefs on to others.
Isis for example tried to take over the world and institute an Islamic state where all people would live under the law of Islam. They killed hundreds of thousands directly or indirectly during there escapades. They did all this is Allahs name.
Jim Jones had such a large and strong following that he convinced people to drink poison laced koolaid leading to the deaths of over 900 people. Jones believed so strongly in his religion he destroyed his and 900 others lives. For what?
The Heavens Gate cult we’re convinced that killing them selves at just the right point in time would gain the access to heaven through some astroid or ufo passing by earth. (Don’t remember which one it was but it was something crazy like that). 39 people killed themselves in one day because of their strong beliefs.
The isolated incidents like jones town and heavens gate are just a drop in the bucket but as history shows many large wars and conflicts were started over opposing beliefs in religion. Terrorist attacks continue to happen because of religious beliefs and I don’t see these things ending any time soon.
Religion does have great morals to believe in and follow by I will give it that. I just think the bad out weighs the good. | 45 | I think a better take would probably be that extremism is dangerous.
None of the behaviours you listed here are unique to religion. You have grifters and charismatic assholes of every stripe in politics, business and every other aspect of human interaction. Religion is just one angle among many. | 26 |
CMV: If you can't speak any English, you should not work a job that demands you speak English. | If you work at a restaurant, call centre, hospital, or other job that requires talking to people and you live in a country where the first language is English, I think that it is acceptable that you speak English. You don't need to speak perfect English, or even English without an accent, but if I want a coffee or something I should recognize what you are saying as the same language that I am speaking.
For example, I am in Canada. Today I went to good old Timmies and the man behind the counter did not speak English. I asked for a french vanilla and a peppermint tea. I was about to put my card in the machine and he turned around and I noticed that the french vanilla was no longer a part of my order. He had said something but I didn't understand. I have no idea if there simply was no french vanilla or if he asked me a question. I was already panicking a little bit but this did not help .
A more serious example would be the fact that at my university, there are some professors that speak no English. The two worst cases wouldbe a Math teacher and an English teacher. People constantly complain that they are lost in their Math class and failing because they can't understand their professor. People also complain that an English teacher should at least know English, but the prof speaks only Russian. These people are pretty much paying to fail a course because the professor does not speak English.
With situations like these, there is no need to have people working these jobs that don't speak English. So reddit, change my view
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Is there any way to verify this? It's highly unlikely that a university would hire an English teacher who cannot speak English, it's mind-boggling. | 119 |
[IASIP] How can Charlie stalk a woman for 15 years and not know her name? | He digs through her trash. It should be on receipts and shit. Identities get stolen all the time. | 83 | Charlie knows. He's known since high school. No one else bothers to remember. Presumably Charlie got tired of everyone asking *"who?"* every time he mentioned her and just started calling her "the waitress" too. | 116 |
what are the economic effects of curbing Union power? (as Thatcher did) | In the late 70s UK, many had become scared about union powers dragging the economy down. Thatcher was elected in as a result of much of this fear, and proceeded to curb union powers via making closed shop agreements illegal, ensuring ballots had to be cast before strikes could be called and ensuring union leaders had to go through elections every 5 years. This has often been characterised as 'democratising unions' by her supporters and as destroying the empowerment of workers by her detractors. My question is, where these measures beneficial to the UK economy? If not then what was the best course of action at the time?
Any corrections on UK history is much appreciated as I'm certainly no expert. | 18 | There are several problems in answering this question objectively:
* The labour law reforms were only one part of Thatcherism, other parts included bringing down inflation (economically costly in the short term), improving government finances (beneficial mainly in avoiding future fiscal crisises, which are terrible for the poorest, but it's hard to measure something that doesn't happen, particularly when numerous other countries are making similar reforms), privatising industries and reforming the tax system towards a broad-base, lower rate approach.
* Numerous other things are changing in economies all the time, e.g. changing demographics as the baby boomers move through the workforce, new technologies working their way through (once 95% of every factory has been electrified or you've gone from 20% of the population being to high school to 95%, the gains from that area are gone). There's been a worldwide fall in productivity growth since the 1970s which may be just the result of the new inventions of the Second Industrial Revolution having played themselves out. Other countries' economies can also change.
* The whole topic was and is politically controversial.
I will say that one thing to bear in mind is that many of the poorest and most marginalised in society live in households where no one is earning a market income, often due to health problems or caretaking responsibilities. Therefore those households don't benefit directly from higher wages, the effects of unions matter to them through the effects on prices and goods/services availability. Any analysis of the distributional impact of reforms that focuses solely on workers is missing an important part of the story from both equity and distributional grounds. | 21 |
How do you test the immune response integrity of a cell without killing destroying it? | 802 | Immune response is typically a coordinated and regulated response of lots of different cells. You wouldn't be able to see the whole response in just one cell, nor would that be clinically useful information if you could. | 181 |
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eli5 What is a liminal space? | I've googled it and I'm left more and more confused. It seems like its just empty rooms. Why does this make people feel uncomfortable.
Do these images affect everyone? | 1,562 | “Liminal” means “transitional”. It’s space that you pass through without noticing like an alley or a hallway. Because it’s something that you normally don’t pay attention to, art that focuses on it can seem unsettling, taking something familiar and looking at it in a new way. | 2,162 |
ELI5: Mute people. | Can they not talk? Do they choose to not talk? Is it a disease or can their brain simply not learn language? | 17 | There are many different kinds of mutism.
One is called selective mutism. This is a person who *can* speak but chooses not to. He may speak in certain situations or to certain people, or he may not speak at all.
Some people are mute because of damage to their vocal folds. This may have been due to injury or accident, such as swallowing a corrosive substance (ie lye), cancer, or external trauma. These people would be able to speak if not for the damage.
Other people have neurological (nerve) damage that prevents their vocal folds from moving properly to form sound. This is generally present at birth, but could result from an event such as a stroke or traumatic brain injury.
The first three types of people can have normal intelligence and although they don't speak, can learn language and can learn to communicate in other ways.
Finally, some people are cognitively impaired to the point that they cannot learn words or language. These people have the mental capacity of infants and usually have a very, very limited ability to communicate.
Source: Speech Pathologist, 20 years. | 23 |
What caused the Chernobyl reactor to explode? | I am researching the Chernobyl accident and what made the reactor explode. I found this page which explains it pretty well http://230nsc1.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/NucEne/cherno.html#c5 but there are still som technicalities i don't think i quite understand. If any of you are familiar with the accident and reactor physics i would love some help! Questions: How did they make the reactor run at "Low power"? Why was the cooling system turned off/low power and why did they have to turn the emergency cooling system off?
I hope i am not violating any subreddit rules, ty for your time :) | 1,162 | the reactor and is turbines were meant to undergo a test to find out whether the spinning steam turbines and generators could produce enough electricity while coasting to a stop to run the reactor cooling pumps while the diesel generators were brought online. This test, far from routine, was derived because, if, for example, the West attacked electrical grids and the plant was disconnected, the reactors would need to be E-stopped, like RIGHT now! Decay heat would still need to be dealt with. This test was supposed to have been done during unit 4s commissioning in, like, '83 or '84. The paperwork was pencil-whipped (extremely kommon in the USSR bekause ahead-of-time konstruction delivery resulted in bonus of many roubles.) Turns out, the communists were preeetty corner-cutty.
The reactor design itself is loaded with flaws. Let's put it this way... The USSR used a cheaper-to-build reactor design than LITERALLY THE WHOLE REST OF THE WORLD! It lacked a heavy steel and concrete containment building, it used the steam directly produced by the uranium fuel to run the turbines (water turned to steam IN the reactor core and there was no heat exchanger separating irradiated steam and water from, fuckin... NOT radioactive water), it used hollow graphite blocks as a moderator to maintaining the nuclear chain reaction (US and West European reactors use pressurized water, so no water, no nuclear reaction), the boron control rods were graphite tipped (which briefly increased reactor output upon insertion, this is important for later) and about 57 other glaring flaws... like safety systems THAT COULD BE OVERRIDDEN!
The test was scheduled for April 25th. It didn't happen on the day shift; because Kievs electrical grid controller asked for it to be done later in the evening, after peak demand. It didn't happen on the evening shift, either, for unclear reasons. So when the night shift started at midnight of the 26th, the dude from Moscow who had been there all day and was to oversee the test was... well, testy. The night shift guys were the youngest and least experienced (the reactor operator was 26 years old) and they'd just been handed a procedure binder loaded with annotations and crossed out procedures.
Note*
Xenon poisoning occurs when reducing capacity in nuclear reactors. Xenon is a fission byproduct that actually absorbs the zooming around neutrons, preventing them from slamming into another Uranium 235 atom, splitting it, and setting even more neutrons free to go slam into other atoms. During stable operation, Xenon is "burned off" at a rate that allows the chain reaction to continue. If control rods are inserted and the reaction slowed, there's an excess of Xenon and it has a control rod like effect, further reducing output. The nuclear chain reaction will nearly stop because of the excess neutron absorbing shit in the reactor over-coming the nuclear chain reaction itself. The reactor should need to sit for 48 hours before attempts by to restart the reaction, giving the Xenon a chance to naturally decay.
So, with that fully explained, let's continue!
The reactor had a thermal output rating of 1500 megawatts (1.5 gigawatts). The test was to be conducted at 1500, but must not to go below 700MW or reactor instability could occur. The reactor had been running at full capacity, but the decision was made to slightly reduce capacity before starting.
1. To begin, manual control was taken and the control rods were partially inserted into the core, reducing reactor output.
2. The operator switched the control rods back to automatic control, thinking the computer would hold the desired output.
3. The automatic system saw the sudden output reduction as a power failure and began plunging the control rods to their fully inserted position, nearly shutting the reactor down.
4. The Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS) tried to start. It was manually overridden and turned off.
5. Reactor output dropped to between 0 and 30 MW (depending on which report is read.)
6. The previously inserted rods were retracted.
7. Reactor output didn't increase.
8. Serious Xenon poisoning had occurred, further slowing the nuclear reaction.
9. The operator was ordered to bring the reactor back up to power, he REFUSED! It went against written procedure. (Poor guy, tried to do his job right, and was blamed for the whole thing)
10. Cranky Moscow dude yelled and made the 27 year old shift chief bring reactor back up: he did. (Being so young, and being a nuclear plant operator or chief was pretty much a dream job in Soviet Ukraine. To argue with a senior official could cost you everything)
11. About half the control rods were now fully retracted, but reactor output was only up to 200MW... too low to test.
12. The coolant pumps were sped up, and additional pumps brought online to try to counteract the Xenon poisoning, this increased water volume, decreased steam volume, and slowed the turbines as a result.
13. Additional control rods were retracted to try to bring steam output up to speed the turbine back up.
14. The equivalent of only 8 fully inserted rods remained in the core. 15 was the minimum. The reactor had over 211 control rods...
15. Hot spots began developing in the core, but instrumentation wasn't present in the interior of the core. The operator noticed the computer was demanding the reactor be shut down. Every safety system had been bypassed. Power output was still too low, Moscow dude insisted they continue.
16. Output finally increased enough and the turbine was disconnected and began its coast down test.
17. Once the turbine was disconnected, the condenser couldn't keep up and raw steam entered the condensate (steam turned back into water) return pipes and caused cavitation in the pumps. The steam in the pumps intermittently stopped pumping water into the core. As pockets of steam collapsed inside the pipes, loud banging sounds could be heard in the turbine hall and near the reactor.
18. The already unstable core began violently producing pockets of steam. Output began surging.
19. 4 of the 8 pumps were still running on the decelerating turbine and began slowing. Even less water was available for core cooling.
20. The core temperature and pressure gauges were pegged. The steam condenser should have kept up and cooled the steam back to water, but it was overworked - pockets of steam continued entering the pumps. The reactor was idiotically kept online to repeat the turbine test if necessary.
21. The core suddenly surged way past its maximum output.
22. Between the noise and power surges, operators decided to "SCRAM" the reactor - SCRAM means, Safety Control Rod Axe Man. It was to plunge ALL control rods to their fully inserted position and stop the reactor.
23. The graphite tipped control rods began descending. Soviet nukes used control servo motors that were notoriously slow, taking 18 seconds to fully insert the rods.
24. The graphite (graphite increased nuclear reaction) tipped rods acted like Vin Diesel hitting the "NOS button" in that first Fast and the Furious movie/turd. The reactor went bonkers.
25. The sudden increase in output fractured the core and the rods became stuck only partially inserted. There was now nothing to slow the reaction.
26. Reactor output soared well beyond what instrumentation could even remotely measure.
27. Pressure built so high it blew the 450 TON lid clean the fuck OFF THE REACTOR.
28. Air and steam rushed into the core, reacted with the zirconium jacket around each uranium fuel rod, created a ton of hydrogen, then blew the whole roof off the building in a second explosion, spewing tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere.
It took awhile for what had happened to sink in. They though the explosion was from a separator drum. They continued trying to operate and cool the core, pumping tons and tons of water into it, all of which blew into the night sky as radioactive steam.
The soviet government blamed the shit out of the operators. There was no way they could, or would, admit that ALL their mighty RBMK-1000 reactors were gravely flawed. They couldn't afford to shut their entire nuclear fleet down because of shitty design! They lied. They knew the reactors were seriously flawed, but they built them anyway. They just decided to build controls to deal with the shortcomings... Then made them by-passable.
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If I pick up my coffee right after I stir it, so that it's still swirling around, will there be a gyroscopic effect making me less likely to spill it? | 3,404 | In theory yes, but in reality you'd probably be more likely to spill it. Once you tilted the cup at all you would lose the swirl as the liquid deformed against the cup wall and that creates imbalances. You can actually try this. Stir up a liquid in a cup where the liquid mass is as great as possible relative to the cup (paper cups work well) and then pick the cup up by your fingertips. Tilt the cup to one side to disturb the vortex and you should feel the cup trying to move around in various directions as the vortex collapses and sloshes against the cup unevenly. | 1,874 |
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[Wheel of Time] How do Aes Sedai avoid heatstroke in hot weather? | It's well understood by those who spend time around Aes Sedai that they are seemingly immune to extreme temperatures. They can even travel to the Aiel Waste and stand in the sun without breaking a sweat.
However, it's revealed that this trick has nothing to do with the One Power, and is actually a trick of concentration.
So what's actually happening to the excess heat if they aren't sweating it off or magicking it away? | 19 | It's like those monks that learn to make their bodies generate heat in cold climates. Only the opposite. They consciously suppress their body's basal metabolic rate through meditation and learn to tolerate a higher temperature by suppressing their sweating. If they really exerted themselves fully, they would get heatstroke. | 13 |
[Passengers] Questions about the speed of the Avalon. | We know a few things. At the time Jim wakes up, they've been in transit for 30 years. You can send messages via laser array, and lasers travel at the speed of light. Jim's message will arrive at Earth 19 years after he sends it.
Does anyone know how the math shakes out on that one? How fast are they going?
| 18 | That works out to an average speed of about 2/3 of the speed of light. The Avalon wasn't constantly accelerating, at least not significantly. It got its "gravity" from rotating the ship about its axis. If it was accelerating, it wouldn't need to rotate, it would simply use the acceleration to simulate gravity. | 11 |
Can someone please explain to me(like im five) what it is with an EMP that disables electronic devices? | 21 | Do you understand how radio works? Electricity moving in a wire in the transmitter creates a wave in the electromagnetic field that surrounds us. This wave moves electricity in the receiver, creating a signal that the receiving radio uses.
Well an EMP is just a really short, extremely strong radio pulse. It creates lots of electricity in every single piece of metal, including long power lines and short ones within electronics. All that metal acts like a receiving antenna, and the electricity generated is enough to blow light bulbs and fuses, as well as destroying silicon chips and transistors in electronics. | 15 |
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[Marvel/DC/etc] Are there other planets out in the multiverse that have a Hero/Villain situation or a lot of attention similar to Earth? | Has this situation been explored? Has it been commented how much traffic Earth gets in terms of all the different systems of the universe appear on the planet? How it is the center of different universal and multiversal events?
Are there other planets and civilizations that has a wide array of super people with different origins and power systems? Like the planet has its regular people, and it has people that are just good with weapons like Hawkeye? Or people just really strong because of experiments like Captain America? Genetic freaks? Tony Stark like inventors? Does the planet have outside alien interference, whether that alien being the hero, or the alien is the origin for one of the people getting powers? Are there magic users? Talking animals? Time travel? Villains? Gods?
My question, being, is there a planet or civilization within the fictions that has a similar stated complexity as Earth, even if the details of which are not as much as Earth’s origin stories? Without it being a mirror Earth? | 15 | Superman's run into quite a few heroes from other planets, such as Vartox or the Superwoman of Staryl. Green Lantern's made it clear that, just as there are the Green Lanterns across the cosmos, some of them have their own rogues to worry about.
You've also got the Legion of Super Heroes, an interstellar group of heroes, and their many foes. Other Legion-era teams include the Uncanny Amazers of Xanthu, where Star Boy hails from, or the Legion of Substitute Heroes. The Amazers were limited to Xanthu, but the Legion and the Substitute Heroes fought crime on many planets. Many of them had powers due to scientific experiments or magic. Villain-wise, you've got the Fatal Five, various crime gangs, the Superman Revenge Squad, and the Legion of Super Villains.
Meanwhile, over in Marvel, you have the Super Skrulls, the Shi'ar Imperial Guard (which consists of superpowered beings drawn from many of their member planets), the Starjammers, the Nova Corps, the Fraternity of Raptors, the Star Lord, Beta Ray Bill, the Guardians of the Galaxy, the *future* Guardians of the Galaxy, the Space Knights of Galador, the Dire Wraiths, and more.
In both universes, space is populated by aliens, and among those aliens you have heroes and villains with all sorts of powers. | 16 |
[Deadpool] Was Colossus going to condemn Wade to die a horrible slow painful death? | Deadpool gets put in a super jail that removes his powers and colossus seems to be totally okay with throwing him in there, but surely he must know that Deadpool has cancer and his regenerative powers are literally sustaining his life as Deadpool seems to be totally aware of while in jail. He was of course disappointed with how Deadpool acted as an X-man trainee but was the lawful good guy who wouldn't kill a fly just going to kill someone by taking them off life support? | 86 | Lawful is in there too, Wade had just shot a man in cold blood on television. He was genuinely trying to help make Wade a better person but actions have consequences and Colossus would have felt conflicted about letting Wade die but publicly saving a mutant willing to headshot an orderly would have been worse for more people. Would anyone trust or respect X-Men if they were expected to show up and cap someone? | 83 |
CMV: Standardized tests and credit requirements for high school graduation should be the same nationwide. | #EDIT: View changed by /u/garnteller.
A high school diploma is vital for many paths of life. However, diplomas between states or even between districts don't reflect the same level of education. Credit requirements may lean more toward STEM or social sciences or electives depending on where you are, and the number of total credits can also vary. Standardized tests required to graduate are also constantly shifting, as well as senior project requirements. For such a universal standard, the requirements should be more strict so everyone achieves the same level of education regardless of where they live. Having different requirements makes it too easy in some areas. I'm not in favor of choosing the lowest standards to be universal, but rather the highest so that high school graduates can be more competitive and more career and college ready. | 19 | The problem here is that, because education is determined on the state, county, and local levels, students from areas with poor primary and intermediary schools won't be able to achieve those highest standards that you would take from the top five schools in the nation. So if you institute the nationwide graduation requirements, you'd have to then address every other level of education prior to that as well.
Then you'd also have to determine protocols for what happens when a student fails to meet those criteria both for graduation and all the levels below. | 12 |
Was anything useful learned by all the human experimentation conducted by Germans and Japanese during WWII? | 20 | There was. Almost all the knowledge on how the body reacts to freezing temperatures was from these experiments. Along with how the human body reacts to phosgene gas, reaction of the human body to altitude/low pressure and an advancement in sulfonamide antibiotics. With these comes the ethical dilemma about the use of this data. Some scientists argue that the data was gained at too high a price for it to be used, especially scientists with Jewish origin. I, however, argue that the data is too valuable to disregard. The past cannot be changed. The dead cannot be resurrected or the suffering they were endured undone. If lives can be saved using this data, then it should be used. Make no mistake, these men were monsters and these experiments shouldn't have been conducted. Unfortunately, they were conducted, but that doesn't diminish the value the data. | 21 |
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Are companies legally required to provide a list and use of all open source software/projects they use? | I wonder if I can just email their public email address and request a list? | 20 | No. There is software that requires that if you FORK it, you must keep it open source. GPL is famous for that. That's why you can't fork linux and make a closed OS out of it. But this is only enforced at a large scale.
I've seen a couple of people whine because a big corporation downloaded their library and didn't give them credit for using it, which would be a nice thing to do but not legally required. | 18 |
ELI5: Why Canada remains a Commonwealth country of the British Empire? | As a Canadian, I understand the countries history.. But why in this day is it still linked at all to Britain in the way it is? | 16 | We were British colonies that formed a country that was mostly autonomous from Britain in 1867. Over time we've gradually gained more and more independence to the point where our connection to Britain is entirely ceremonial. We happen to share a head of state.
Why do we still do things this way? It's a combination of tradition, people not really caring enough to want to go to the hassle of changing it, and the monumental (if not impossible) job of totally restructuring the constitution and the way our government is structured to change it.
Ultimately, why bother changing it? | 15 |
[General Superpowers] What’s the worst power to have, if you don’t have all the supporting powers (for example, super strength but without the durability, or super speed without the friction resistance)? | 91 | Immortality.
Because it *never ends*. You can be either a worn out husk feeling every bit for all of eternity, or you can be feeling nothing as an immobile pile of atoms but still conscious and incapable of moving.
But you're *still there*. At least with every other power, you can die and end it all. | 146 |
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CMV: The idea of "Buy local" or "Buy American" is primarily grounded in selfishness. | Recently there has been a shift from the industrial globalized system of goods (food, handmade items, clothing, etc) to more alternative systems like farmers markets, local businesses, and "buying American" (or whatever country the person lives in).
However, this seems to be primarily based on selfishness.
The idea is that by keeping money in the local economy, that the surrounding region will become more economically strong as increased local spending increases local jobs and profits for businesses (and then taxes for municipalities or the country).
However, this seems to be a selfish type of logic that prioritizes the well-being of people in the community over the 'otherized' "non-community, non-nation citizen"
Instead of a customer supporting a farm in a developing country, they are instead supporting their local organic farmer. While I'm not trying to say that local organic farmers should not have a successful business, the marketing and ideology of "buying local" is often employed to strengthen those already in power, to the detriment of those not in the community.
Buying American is another type of marketing that is often used in consumer goods, especially fashion. I personally like the idea of buying American as it carries connotations of better quality, better labor practices, etc. However, at the same time I realize that I am supporting someone who is already fairly well off (a factory work in Maine, in this case), and not spending my money on a different country whose workers are in more need of employment and financial security.
You could argue that most companies that create their goods in these types of countries use exploitative labor practices and thus should not be supported, but instead of activism and pressuring companies to adopt better labor practices, the marketing speak of buy local/buy american is choosing to strengthen local and regional economies while leaving lesser developed countries to fend for themselves in our globalized economic system.
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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!* | 16 | >You could argue that most companies that create their goods in these types of countries use exploitative labor practices and thus should not be supported, but instead of activism and pressuring companies to adopt better labor practices,
Why is voting with your wallet not considered activism? | 17 |
ELI5: Anti-French sentiment in the United States. | I don't understand it. What I'm referring to is the comments from conservative types like, "the french are a bunch of wussies!" or referencing how they would be speaking German if it wasn't for us in WWII. What happened that would give some people these ideas?
(I hope you know what I'm referring to because I can't understand the sentiment and it seems to revolve around those two themes)
Edit: I don't mean the 'freedom fries' and other silly jokes, I mean actual disdain that I have encountered from conservatives mostly in my own family who think the French dropped the ball in WWII and took an apparently ungrateful stance towards the US for their assistance (which I don't know how true that is among the citizenry even if DeGaulle wasn't grateful but I think that may be for reasons to encourage his countrymen more than a slap to the face of America.) Or if the citizens of France were ungrateful, I do not know why. | 16 | The name calling is used to silence and nullify their arguments.
In WW2 France made a lot of poor decisions when it came to defense. The Germans broke through and stormed Paris, which was given up without a fight.
The reality of the situation is more complex, but the obviously childish sentiment is fun to join in on, and any objection merely adds to the amusement.
The reality is that France didn't agree with America's illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover they were vocal about it. Unfortunately time has shown France's reticence to be entirely valid and America's taxpayers have paid dearly for their mistake.
This makes the namecalling even more satisfying. | 12 |
ELI5: How will the upcoming Russia/US space station remain in lunar orbit without being captured by Earth's gravity? | It's all in the title. How do you keep an object (like a space station) orbitting the moon without that object being captured, and pulled in, by Earth's gravity without using an unreasonable amount of fuel? If Earth's gravity is strong enough to hold the moon in its orbit (less the small distance away from the Earth it moves each year) does it not stand to reason that the Earth's gravity will hold something much, much smaller? | 20 | The force of gravity is inversely proportional to the distance squared between the two things. By having something much closer to the moon than the Earth, the moon will have a greater pull in spite of being less massive. Much like why satellites can orbit the Earth in spite of the sun being significantly more massive. | 31 |
ELI5: How is Xi Jinping becoming the leader of China's armed forces so different from the US President being the Commander in Chief of the American Armed Forces? | Is it just because he isn't elected democratically, or is there something more than that? | 76 | There are two kinds of organization that control PLA: State government and Communist Party (the only political party in China). Nominally, Xi Jinping is the leader of state government, which in returns also act as Commander-in-Chief. In practice, PLA is controlled by special military commission which is a part of Communist Party. Xi Jinping is also a head of this military commission, to ensure that members of the military commitee (which is composed of military generals stays loyal.
But... The ones that CAN declare war is Politburo, which is ALSO led by Xi Jinping. Confused much? So do I. | 13 |
ELi5: How do food manufacturers know how many calories are in the food? | For example, say I was a company who grew tomatoes. How would I find out how many calories are in the tomatoes? Thanks! | 21 | They use Food Calorimetry, basically they burn a sample of the food and the energy released heats some water, the temperature change is a measure of the amount of calories.
This tells you how many calories are in the food, it doesn't necessarily tell you how many calories you'll actually absorb from the food when you consume it (which can be impacted by variables like gut microbe composition). | 52 |
[MCU] How Vision is worthy to lift the Mjonir? | 50 | There are two theories, because of course you can't ask the hammer about its judgement:
* Vision is an artificial organism not considered truly "alive" by Mjolnir's enchantment, essentially being able to pick it up the same way Mjolnir does not pull down at an elevator if you put it down on an elevator floor
* Vision is completely selfless, honorable, but at the same time commands respect and authority. Having a warrior's spirit and great personal power even without a weapon, he is as worthy as Thor himself.
In essence, it's hard to tell what Odin meant when he said "if he be worthy". What is "worth" according to Odin? Perhaps he could explain, if he wanted to - but he's not the type to explain himself, and he's dead. | 94 |
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ELIF: How do TV captions work on live broadcast? | 22 | A captioner sits at a keyboard and types, really fast, aiming to get enough of the dialogue transcribed to make sense.
It's quite a skilled job. You sometimes see it go wrong, too - when they just lose the plot and fail to follow what's happening. | 15 |
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CMV: Algorithms that are effective at predicting criminality will necessarily make predictions that correlate with race. | Race is a very tired topic here, I know, but this is one question that I believe could use some more discussion as it also intersects with AI/machine learning - which seems to alternatively have the potential to save humanity or destroy it, depending on who you ask.
Background:
Cathy O'Neil has been on the podcast circuit promoting her book 'Weapons of Math Destruction". In this book (haven't read it but have heard her describe the argument on no less than 3 podcasts), she argues that algorithms designed to remove human bias in deciding bail, probation, and sentencing are racist in of themselves. The argument states that if an algorithm shows racial bias then it must have been programmed wrong, intentionally or not. Critically, the algorithms most commonly disused are not fed racial data directly.
**The view that needs changing:**
Any algorithm that is going to effectively predict future criminality will necessarily also make predictions that correlate to race.
**Here are my priors:**
1) The algorithms are being designed in good faith in an attempt to remove harmful bias.
2) People of different races are not intrinsically more prone to crime, including violent crime.
3) Crime does however correlate to many factors including age, sex, socioeconomic status, past criminal behavior, and neighborhood of residence. Notably, age and sex are also protected classes and are unlikely to be used in these algorithms.
4) Socioeconomic status, past criminal behavior, and neighborhood of residence all correlate well with race in the US.
Thus, any algorithm that uses the most predictive metrics for potential criminality will also be at least partially predictive of race.
This leads me to my conclusion that what people are really complaining about is that these algorithms are doing their intended job: predicting future criminality.
**To change my view:**
I suppose that I'd have to be presented with a number of other metrics that effectively predict crime but do not also correlate with race or another protected class. Alternatively, I'd accept an argument that convinces me that priors 3 or 4 are incorrect. Priors 1 is not necessary to the argument that a better algorithm *could* be made and prior 2 will be assumed as I believe that it's best to do so.
**What will NOT change my view:**
Arguments concerning the general morality of using algorithms to impact decision making in criminal justice will not change my view and will just derail the conversation.
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 121 | The algorithms can only work with the data that they are given. If we take as an assumption that the data it is fed really is accurate to the world, then the algorithm will be predictive. However, concepts like "criminality" especially in the US also involve targeted policing. So if the algorithm has no metrics by which to evaluate the data coming in as actually reflective of reality, than the algorithm will not be dealing with "complete knowledge". | 41 |
ELI5:Why do members of an orchestra need to read music to perform a concert yet members of a band don't read music in concerts? | Does the length of the music make it difficult to remember the different nuances? I can't imagine that they practice less than a band. It seems more difficult as a band member because they would have to know many different songs.
*edit* Thank you all for your reply's. I've been teaching myself the guitar and wondered this while I was talking things over with my wife. I had the feeling that the simplicity of rock songs versus a classical piece was the core issue here. I appreciate all your input and time! :) | 19 | Orchestras can be anything from 30-100 strong. The pieces they play, instead of 3-5 minutes of pretty repetitive music (not to be rude on pop/rock/etc in any way, but there's a structure, and it's easy to learn) are usually around half an hour to an hour long, although this varies hugely. Orchestras are tricky to coordinate and it's a risk to ask that many musicians to memorise a huge piece.
On top of this, there are a lot of directions the conductor would have given the orchestra in the rehearsals that depend on performance practice as well - different time periods had different styles. All the sections have to play exactly the same, and this has to blend with all the other sections of the orchestra.
Band members have probably also written their own materials, and it comes more naturally to memorise this than an hour long symphony.
If it's an opera, you also have the singers to consider - they will have their own nuances that will most likely change each night and it's much easier to anticipate these if you have your music in front of you. | 22 |
Our solar system may be in a bubble which has walls as hot as one million degrees? Huh? | According to an article I came across here: http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/27/tech/innovation/space-local-bubble/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
This doesn't sound right to me. Wouldn't this mean the Voyager probes are basically just going to vaporize soon? And wouldn't this imply that moving anything in or out of our solar system would be extremely difficult due to a barrier of a million degree temperature? Yet, comets and other materials are known to do so? Is this just a terribly written article? | 529 | Most of the gas is space really is very hot! The "halo" of gas surrounding the Milky Way is hundreds of thousands of degrees, and most of the volume of the disc itself is at around 10,000 K - hot enough to ionize hydrogen. And yes, this is partially produced by extremely hot gases flowing out of supernovae. It's only in dense regions like molecular clouds that we start to get down to room temperature and below.
However, on a human scale, space is basically a vacuum. When we are talking about the temperature of a gas, we're basically talking about the average kinetic energy of all the gas particles. For this to make sense, you really need to have enough particles in an area to calculate a proper average, and this is only true if you're adding them up over quite large volumes.
To actually *feel* this temperature, you also need these particles to be bumping into you quite often, so they can transfer thermal energy to you. But this gas is so thin that there really aren't many particles, and they don't get to bump into you very often. This means that you don't actually "feel" warm - your body doesn't get warmed up at all. This is the same for a space probe: even though the gas is super hot, it doesn't really "feel" this very much, and instead its temperature mostly comes from hot much light it is receiving versus how much light it is radiating. | 423 |
I saw on a Netflix documentary that it is possible to make mice bioluminescent by altering their genetic code. Is this possible with all species? How much energy would that cost them (would it affect their metabolism)? Could you make them bioluminescent with any color? | 3,630 | Similar concept but not bioluminescent, fluorescing animals have been made as tests. Cats and rabbits have been made to express green fluorescing protein, so they glow green under blue lights.
An actual strain of fish have been made called Glofish, they have several different colors and are available commercially for purchase. They express the fluorescing proteins as well. It costs them energy they wouldn't otherwise expend, but not so much to affect their life. | 1,958 |
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Why are harmonic oscillators so important? | 16 | Because any physical system sufficiently close to a stable equilibrium can be approximated as a simple harmonic oscillator.
If you have some smooth potential energy function V(x) with a stable equilibrium point x*_0_*, it can be expanded in a Taylor series about x*_0_*.
V(x) = V(x*_0_*) + V’(x*_0_*)(x - x*_0_*) + V’’(x*_0_*)(x - x*_0_*)^(2)/2 + ...
The constant term doesn’t matter, because only differences in potential energy are physical. The linear term is zero, because x*_0_* is assumes to be an equilibrium point, so V’ is zero there. The quadratic term is positive, because the equilibrium is assumed to be stable. So if you can drop higher-order terms, this boils down to
V(x) = k(x - x*_0_*)^(2)/2, where is a constant. This is a harmonic oscillator potential.
Many quantum systems can be approximated as harmonic oscillators too. For example, harmonic oscillator wavefunctions are convenient to use as a nuclear mean-field basis. There are more reslistic mean field potentials based on the shape of the nuclear density, but they don’t have analytic solutions like the QHO does. Additionally in QFT, when you quantize some field, for example the electromagnetic field, you can write the Hamiltonian in terms of creation and destruction operators, which looks exactly like a harmonic oscillator Hamiltonian in terms of oscillator raising and lowering operators. | 27 |
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ELI5: Why does the battery on your laptop or phone degrade if you charge it too much or for too long? | 139 | Lithium Ion batteries rely on very small molecular structures to store charge, and these slowly become damaged. The more energy in the battery (both keeping it fully charged and keeping it warm) causes the structures to break down quicker.
It's a completely different reaction, but it's a little like how iron rusts quicker if exposed to salt water.
We don't actually know exactly why the structures break down, but research as worked out that to save battery capacity you should avoid keeping a battery fully changed and keep it cool, so storing batteries at 50% charge in a cool place will make them to last much longer. | 32 |
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[TF2] When a character is claimed to have done something, does that apply to both teams' versions? | Example: In *Meet the Spy* we learn that the RED Spy slept with BLU Scout's mum. But later in the TF Comics, we learn that RED Spy is *RED* Scout's dad.
Does this mean that both Red and Blu Scout's mums are treated as the same character? Are there two Scout's mums?
The more you think about it, the less sense the TF2 timeline makes. Which is to be expected, it's TF2, but that doesn't give answers. When the administrator hired each Merc was it a separate phone call for Red and Blu? Are they separate people at all?
Head = blown. | 79 | That was after the end of **The Gravel Wars** when there is no Blu and Red teams because there was no more Redmond and Blutarch
And IIRC the game is supposed to be an historical recreation of the events of **The Gravel Wars**, as far as we know there is only one of each class, there is no "Red spy is Blu scouts father" only "Spy is Scouts father" | 50 |
CMV: Obedience is not a virtue; it is a flaw of character. | Obedience to authority figures solely on the grounds that they are authority figures is a moral failing that reduces a person to moral bankrupcy and animality.
If one is instructed to carry out an act, one must question the act upon its merits. Delegation of moral responsibility to others is something that befits a cringing coward, not a person with moral agency. Little Eichmanns who *do* delegate their moral responsibility to others are less than human and should be treated with the contempt they deserve.
The only right course of action for an individual is to strive to understand what is right and wrong, and to direct one's actions in a manner that is maximally conducive to the right. Any less is a shameful failing.
Those incapable of this act are '*less than*', deprived of a fundamental moral faculty that moral agents must possess. It is an overvalued concept that is embraced and cultivated by religions like Christianity, and preserved by those of a regressive and conservative persuation. Obedience is only a virtue to fascists, cryptofascists, totalitarians and authoritarians and those lacking the ability or courage to proclaim their concept of right and wrong and act in accord with it.
| 31 | False dichotomy. There are times when obedience is useful and times when it's not.
For the same reason, there are times when authority is good and others when it's not.
Many have a hard time determining when to apply each one, but that is another problem. | 38 |
ELI5: This may be a stupid question, but you know how the brain, or, rather, thought is powered by electrical impulses? Why aren't they scattered and destroyed like in a HDD when you take a magnet to it? | 28 | HDDs work differently. Specifically, they use an actual magnetic disk to store their data, which is why they are so vulnerable to magnets.
The brain functions via electrical impulses that are too small and numerous to collectively disrupt using an electromagnetic effect, so that's out of the picture as well. | 20 |
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Why did you get into economics? | And why do you like it? | 94 | it’s the perfect balance of quantitative and qualitative.... when i was 15, i went through something which made me realise how lucky i am in comparison to the rest of the world. i became moved by all the poverty and inequality there is. so, i developed a particular fascination in development economics, and economics in general, because it’s so, so, so important we understand the underlying mechanisms of how our human world works.
i love the subject because it’s a combination of everything. maths, psychology, sociology, history, politics, philosophy, etc. it’s so relevant and crucial and dynamic and relates so closely to our everyday life, because it is the study of our everyday life. | 123 |
[Marvel] Could Magneto replicate Spiderman's wall climbing ability? | Spiderman's ability to stick to almost any surface is because of electrostatic forces, right? And Magneto is the master of (electro)magnetism. Could Magneto also cling to surfaces if he wanted to? I'm gonna be asking this about Comics Magneto because movie Magneto and animated series Magneto seem like they can only manipulate metal and Comics Magneto just has more feats. | 23 | Theoretically, yes, but any instance where he’s powerful enough to do that, he’s also powerful enough to levitate himself indefinitely. So there’s not a whole lot of instances where he’d need to cling to a surface. | 30 |
[Marvel] If Mjolnir is broken, is it possible to pick up the pieces? | 25 | It is possible, though the Worthiness enchantment still carries weight. Throg, the Frog of Thunder, is powered by a shard of Mjolnir. And after its recent destruction against the Mangog, one of the few surviving shards was described as still being very heavy by a still-worthy-ambiguous Odinson. | 24 |
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