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[Star Trek] Would the Federation have first contact with a race that wasn't capable of warp but managed FTL travel in some other way (Wormhole manipulation/Space bending, Long Distance Teleportation, etc.)
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Generally, the threshold for first contact seems to be warp travel. What if a race bypasses warp using some novel form of FTL?
| 15 |
Warp travel is just an easy, non-ambiguous benchmark. Basically, if they have warp, they're going to discover alien species inevitably, so no sense in holding back.
If they're already aware of alien species, or have other means of interstellar travel, then the same principle applies.
| 16 |
ELI5 Why do we bleach our grains and wheat if we know its bad for us?
| 18 |
Well, we do a ton of things with our food that is bad for us. If it makes it look good, and improves sales, there is an incentive to do it. All neon-colored foods - any candies and many snacks like Cheetos, too - contain artificial colors, and many of those are the same ones used in cosmetics (not all however). Strictly speaking, carcinogenic materials to ingest, but used in a quantity that is deemed safe. (Now we could have a separate conversation about if it is ACTUALLY safe... But that's another story.)
As for bread specifically, bleaching also has a practical purpose. When making bread dough there is a process of gluten-formation that forms proteins that help give bread its distinct, sticky insides. Bleaching assists the formation of gluten compounds (not sure why personally) and, combined with the market's preference for 'white' bread, makes sense to do.
| 14 |
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Can we see the emitted photons from atoms of the objects when the electrons of those atoms move to a lower energy level?
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I have learned that things have colors when the electrons absorb the photons with particular wavelengths and the rest (photons that are not absorbed) will go to our eyes and make us see colors. And when the electrons lose energy they emit the photons which has the same wavelengths as when they’re absorbed. So my question is: Do we actually see the colors from the emitted photons? And if so it must change the color of the object, right?
This question has been bugging me for ages, please shed a light for me.
| 74 |
The answer is yes. An electron moving from an excited state will emit a photon whose energy corresponds to the difference between the higher lever and the lower level.
The question of “color” depends on the energy difference between the states. We usually talk of color as being a property of photons in the visible spectrum (human color), and there are plenty of instances where we can see the color when the electrons in a gas return to a lower state and the emission is in a wavelength our eyes can see.
The emitted photons are of an energy (and frequency, thus color) that reflects the energy gap from the high energy electron and the lower energy one. Since the energy has to go somewhere, it’s spit out as light of a different color — where color reflects that amount of energy between the high and low states.
The vast majority of electron transitions don’t have color, in the common way we think about it. Some of them are X-rays, which are very energetic and invisible to our eyes. Some are much less energetic, again to the point we can’t see them.
In short, yes, we *can* see visible light from electron transitions. But we can only see (with a naked eye) a tiny fraction of transitions that match that description.
| 15 |
CMV: Obama wasn’t that great. Or bad.
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Despite Obama’s historic achievement as being the first black president, good rhetoric and unifying tone, I don’t think he has too many accomplishments to his era. Here are my positives:
- Obamacare
- Advancement of LGBTQ rights
- Getting out 2008 Recession (many debate the effectiveness of his policies. Certainly we did get out of the recession, but the package cost lots of money.)
Here are my negatives:
- Little to no advancement on criminal justice/black equity
- Lack on environmental action
- Continuation of GW Bush foreign policy
- Drone warfare
The last two are Obama’s largest failures to me. Most people hate Bush and think he’s a dummy because of how he got us into senseless, expensive bloody wars. Obama continued these wars. The only positive I can give him is his decision not to get into Syria. Obama reneged on his promise of diplomacy and getting out of the middle east. He also continued the NSA’s spying on Americans. Foriegn policy is the one thing that the executive branch has full control and responsibility over, and Obama continued Bush’s mistakes. This is the major factor making Obama an average to “meh” president. CMV.
| 33 |
He actually drew down troops in the wars and generally had good relations with our allies.
He passed DACA, but was also aggressive about deportations (despite the lies).
He increased salaries for government contractors.
He started with a large deficit, but shrank it tremendously over the terms.
Unemployment slowly dropped. Trump rode those coattails.
If you recall, Congress impeded him every step of the way. See Merrick Garland as one of the more egregious examples.
So in short, he cleaned up a number of Bush/Republican messes, but was stymied from making real major changes due to his own views and Republicans.
He was not a far left, radical Marxist, atheist, Islamist, socialist who hated America, allowed open border, and wanted to kill white people and the troops. He was a pretty good (not great), moderate president.
| 28 |
[Zootopia] How does currency work across the different districts?
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In the film we see a town for small mammals, and at Mr. Big's daughter's wedding, there is tiny cakes for everyone. Obviously these cakes only require a tiny bit of ingredients to make, so they must not be very expensive, but do the small mammals make less money, or are they all outrageously wealthy proportionally to the rest of the city?
| 310 |
If they're all roughly equal in cognitive capacity, you'd expect small mammals to gravitate toward white-collar work where their size disadvantage is less of a problem. A mouse programmer is presumably just as effective as a giraffe programmer, and mice have much lower expenses, so yeah, you'd expect them to become tremendously wealthy.
The only possible advantage that (some) larger animals have is longevity - more time for individuals to acquire skills and connections in their field. You'd expect successful smaller animals to be very conservative, communitarian, and tribal - amassing connections and wealth and knowledge as a group, across generations, rather than individually. And since that conflicts somewhat with Zootopia's progressive individualist ethos, it would be unsurprising to see those clans amassing wealth and influence on society's margins rather than at the top.
That's the tidiest explanation for why there's a very tight-knit shrew clan with polar bear muscle and a lot of money, living in relative isolation in Little Rodentia.
| 266 |
ELI5: What's the practical application of imaginary numbers?
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My teacher in high school only made some reference to airplanes but I've always wondered what do imaginary numbers actually teach us about the world?
| 25 |
Multiplying by positive numbers can be thought of as stretching (or shrinking) and multiplying by (1) does nothing. Additionally, multiplying by (-1) in mathematics is a lot like "turning around 180 degrees" in real life (like flipping something upside down).
Turning around twice is like making one complete circle and coming back to your starting position. In other words, it is like multiplying by (1) because it does not change anything.
So, in the case of multiplying by (-1), we have (-1) times (-1) equals (1), multiplying by (-1) twice does nothing...(-1)^2 = 1
Now, instead of turning around by 180 degrees, what if you only made a quarter turn of 90 degrees... Call that multiplying by X (for now)... then you have to multiply by X four times to get back to (1) that is, X^4 = 1, and only doing it twice is like turning around 180 degrees (two quarter turns), so multiplying by X twice is like multiplying by (-1), that is, X^2 = -1.
Call that X by i and then i is the "number" that represents a quarter turn. So anything mathematically that includes things that move in quarter turns (or move in quarter cycles) can be described using the imaginary number i.
Complex numbers let us step up the game to describe any kind of turn. It turns out that any turn by an angle θ can be described by multiplying by cos(θ) + isin(θ). Here you can check that for a 1/4 turn (pi/2) you get i, and for a half turn (pi) you get (-1) and for both 0 and 2pi you get back to (1).
So, complex numbers have a real world application to describe things that move in circles or cycles or rotations and the multiplying by a complex number is basically rotation by an angle (the argument) with some stretching (the modulus).
| 28 |
Why did my hair turn from blonde to brown when i was about 6?
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Around the age of 5 or 6 my hair begin to turn from completely blonde to a dark brown. I don't remember how long it actually took to turn completely brown. My hair has been the same color ever since. Is there a definite reason why?
| 369 |
because for some people, the genes that control brown hair pigmentation (eumelanin) do not "turn on" until a certain age. The exact reasons why are currently not clear, but it is a heritable trait. Some people have brown hair always, some have blond hair always, and some switch from blond to brown in early childhood. Just one of those things.
| 158 |
ELI5: why does gas in the united states contain 10% ethanol?
| 82 |
It was supported by environmentalists under the belief that it could replace oil and be amazing for the environment. Farmers loved it because it created a huge demand for their corn products, and came with a bunch of subsidy money too.
Performance guys like it because you can put out more power in an engine with high ethanol content when the engine has been tuned for it.
Realistically, it has caused nightmares for older vehicles and most small engine devices like lawnmower because it damages components not designed to have it in the fuel.
| 76 |
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[D.C/Marvel]What other Superheroes and Villains are on the level of Thor, Supes and flash ?
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Does Apocalypse count ?
| 20 |
Apocalypse and Thanos are usually depicted as being a bit above that level. Usually requiring a combined force of heroes working together to take them down.
But there are multiple super beings around that level; Bizarro, Wonder Woman, Beta Ray Bill, Zoom and Orion to name a few.
For a more concise idea of certain character "tiers" you should try consulting the scholars over at /r/whowouldwin.
| 32 |
ELI5:why is under cooked beef safe to eat but under cooked chicken harmful?
| 33 |
Well first, "safe" is a relative term. No uncooked meat is completely safe. However, beef is generally considered safer than uncooked chicken because some chickens in the US carry salmonella. It's the same reason that you aren't supposed to eat raw eggs or uncooked cookie dough.
However, some other countries don't have a problem with salmonella like in the US and so in Japan, raw egg is used as a topping and half-cooked "onsen" eggs are sold to be eaten as is even in convenience stores.
| 12 |
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ELI5: When a person gets an organ transplant the body's immune system will reject and attack the organ because of foreign DNA. Why does this not apply to blood transfusions?
| 18 |
It \*does\* apply to blood transfusions. That's why you need to match the blood type. The blood type (A, B, AB, 0 etc.) refers to different kinds of proteins on the surface of the blood cells. If your body detects blood cells of the wrong type, it will attack and destroy them.
Blood type 0 does not have any of these proteins on the surface, so people of this type are "universal donors", i.e. their blood can be safely given to all other people regardless of blood type.
Conversely, people with blood type AB are "universal recipients". Because their own blood as both type A and type B proteins, their immune system won't attack blood of any type.
(Note that this isn't the full story, there are other blood type systems in addition to the AB system.)
Bonus info: With organ transfusions, one issue is that the recipient's immune system rejects the organ. But it sometimes happens that the immune cells from the donor that are still in the donated organ start attacking the recipients whole body (graft-vs-host disease)! This doesn't happen with blood transfusions because they typically filter out the white blood cells (immune cells) and only transfer the red blood cells and/or plasma.
| 27 |
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[MCU] Question regarding Eternals and implications raised from it.
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I recently watched Eternals and mostly enjoyed it but the after credits scene has left me pondering some thoughts.
If Eros is an Eternal and the brother of Thanos, this would mean he too is an Eternal (with a deviant mutation)
Would that mean Thanos can be resurrected/rebuilt via the World Forge? And possibly has his memories stored there too?
Also, I understand that Eternals are essentially hyper-advanced androids imbued with Celestial energy and created by the Celestial Arishem however why did he make Makkari deaf and mute?
Could Ajak not have healed her?
| 43 |
There's a fan theory I've seen that Makkari is deaf because being able to hear is useless or even counterproductive when moving at supersonic speeds. If Makkari was deaf from the beginning, there would be no injury to heal.
| 38 |
eli5: why is it so difficult to go a week without eating when we have 10s of thousands of calories worth of body fat?
| 91 |
Just burning the fat reserves you have **might** keep you alive a bit longer, but it certainly isn’t going to do anything when it comes to replenishing the vitamins and minerals that your body depends on. No sodium or potassium? Goodbye muscle functions.
Your body keeps telling you that it’s hungry because it depends on a lot more than just calories to survive.
| 91 |
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ELI5 How did KickBoxers bodies become able to handle huge numbers of punches that could send untrained people to a hospital?
| 86 |
There are several things protecting kick-boxers.
The most important safety factor is the rules. There are a lot of things that you can't really protect yourself against and they're considered too dangerous for a sport so they're banned.
Part of the skill of kickboxing is to make sure the big strikes either miss completely or land on some part of the body where it doesn't matter so much. For example a slight drop of the shoulder can turn a potentially debilitating kidney shot into a fairly harmless punch to the elbow.
Finally physical conditioning not only increases pain tolerance but offers protection too. If you punch most people in the gut your fist will move pretty far into their abdomen and cause damage on the way. If you punch a kick boxer in the gut your fist will slam into a wall of muscle and, if you haven't learned how to punch properly, you'll probably sprain your wrist.
There are still serious injuries in kick boxing. Gloves are primarily designed to protect the wearer. They actually make things more dangerous for the person getting hit. Hands have a ton of tiny little bones, without gloves it's really easy to break those bones when you hit something hard and the head is pretty hard. Even Mike Tyson broke his fist on Mitch Green's face during a bar brawl. Gloves let fighters do a lot more head hunting and that results in more concussions.
| 75 |
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ELI5: China's population was around .6 billion in 1960. How did it increase to ~1.4 in just 55 years, especially with the one child policy in effect?
| 4,044 |
Sometimes when we analyze statistics, we forget to place them into the context of people's everyday lives.
For a very long time, health outcomes have been very poor in much of the world, with a high child mortality rate. When a parent is likely to lose one or more children, then they develop a culture where they have many children, sometimes five or more, just to be sure that they don't run out.
In 1960, China's government began to focus on health care. Infant mortality dropped, life expectancy increased, and for the first time in China's history, nearly all of the children grew up. These children themselves had large families, but *their* children did not.
While it is true that legislation played a role in that, it only helped to expedite this process. We see the exact same forces play out in every country as medicine becomes widely available - a brief population boom followed by a transition to small family sizes. This is because when you grow up without infant mortality, you begin to see all of the advantages of small families over large ones, instead of viewing small families and imagining the loss of brothers and sisters.
If you'd like to know more, look into Hans Rosling, a statistician from the Gapminder Foundation. They produce a fantastic digital archive of statistical data, and use it to cultivate educational videos.
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I am currently reading Karl Marx's "Das Kapital". What are some critics I should know/things to keep in mind while reading it?
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Hello, I hope this question fits this sub. I apologize if this question is a bit stupid
I am not a philosophy student and even though I am very interested in it, my exposure to it was quite limited. I learned a bit from Zizeks Videos/films, read Descartes Meditations 1 and 2 and did some research about the general history of philosophy and logic (mainly fallacies) but overall I definitely am a layman.
I was always interested in Marx's Capital, and finally got around to reading it. However, I am afraid that due to my limited exposure to literature like this and philosophy in general, I might not be critical enough towards his ideas, take things he talks about in his book at face value and develop "wrong" beliefs.
My question is: What are some things I should keep in mind when reading Marx? What are some critics I should read after finishing the book, and is there any research I should do before reading it to understand it better? And would it be possible for you to give me a broad understanding about if/which ones of his ideas are generally seen as outdated or simply "wrong" in philosophical circles?
To clarify, this question is not about *how* I should read philosophical literature (like how to take notes) but specifically what would be important for me to not misunderstand Marx.
On a sidenote, I'd really appreciate it if you wouldn't tell me to read other authors except if it is necesarry to understand marx (I do not want to give the impression that I think I 'know better', I simply always was and still am very interested in his ideas and want to learn more about them)
TL;DR: What do I have to read/know to read marx without "brainlessly agreeing" with his ideas and developing unreasonable beliefs?
| 21 |
I don't see why you shouldn't just read it as it is. Marx will have to contend with a lifetime of you being subject to capitalist ideology, which should be quite enough to defend you.
>And would it be possible for you to give me a broad understanding about if/which ones of his ideas are generally seen as outdated or simply "wrong" in philosophical circles?
Well it's a work of Political Economy, which is not the sort of thing basically all contemporary Philosophers get up to. So for instance probably most Philosophers think LTV is wrong, but this will be a received idea from the general state of social ideology, or from other academics, such as economists, rather than something they directly studied.
But outside of Das Kapital, most Philosophers are liberals, and so will disagree with Marx about all sorts of things.
| 52 |
Have we ever found a species which does no fit into the genetic "tree of life"?
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A species that doesn't have any genetic connection to any other species basically. One which could have come to earth on an astroid possibly.
| 51 |
The short answer to this is no.
All living things (I am excluding viruses from this discussion) are composed of cells surrounded by a membrane. They also all use DNA to store the instructions necessary to create proteins. Given these similarities, scientists have concluded that all life on Earth shares a common ancestor. It is important to note that this does not preclude the possibility that life *originated* elsewhere however.
Since all life must perform many of the same functions (DNA replication, protein synthesis, metabolism), there is a subset of genes that all currently known living organisms possess. One of the most well-described of these genes is is the ribosomal RNA (or rRNA) gene. Similarities in this gene are used to determine the "relatedness" of two species since parts of it are not under selective pressure and can mutate at a (somewhat) predictable rate.
| 30 |
ELI5: Who are the voices that schizophrenic people hear in their head?(When they 'hear voices')
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Where exactly do they come from?
| 26 |
Think about how you can imagine a voice in your head, anyone's voice: You know what your mother sounds like, your lover, your best friend. You can imagine all of these, and you can know what they sound like in your head.
The makes schizophrenia different is that a schizophrenic's brain registers these imaginations the same way it would register a *real* sound. The brain reacts the same way it would react to actual sounds, but in reality it is something purely made up by the brain itself, and incorrectly registered as having an outside source.
In reality, the sound doesn't actually exist. They just experience it as if it does.
| 27 |
I feel obliterated. Will I pass my PhD? Should I even bother?
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This post has a trigger warning.
When I [30F] started my PhD, my primary advisor raped me at a writing retreat.
My whole professional life hinged on this person, so I kept working with him. He had a stroke and then his partner was seriously ill for two years. During these two years, I waited without pushing for comments on manuscripts. That means I never published.
His partner died and shortly thereafter he asked me to a "work lunch" wherein he made inappropriate, sexually explicit comments.
I collapsed in a panic attack. I finally filed an anonymous report to my university and had him removed as a supervisor. I was advised that this was the best course of action until I complete my PhD and finish off any papers with intellectual property rights. The anonymous report has no formal disciplinary action.
Tonight, I recieved an email from this person stating that I was a poor communicator and that my writing was too unclear to be publishable. He requested to be removed from all authorship and acknowledgements. Mind you, I've waited years for this feedback. All without publishing from my PhD.
I should feel relieved that I no longer have to work with this person and I do. But I also feel stupid, worthless, and hopeless. Minimally put, his email was purposefully degrading and hostile.
I'm sorry that this is a super self-pitying post. I just don't know if I should pull the plug on my PhD. I'm so tired and empty. What should I do?
Ps Perhaps someone can tell me if the writing was unclear?
EDIT: Oh my gosh. I wish I could say tbat I've read all your feedback without a teary-eyed consumption of one-too-many old fashioneds, but that would be a lie!
I took considerable note of all comments and will respond when sober.
| 266 |
That is a shit situation. You were assaulted and harassed by the person you relied on while you were in vulnerable position. It's no wonder you feel worthless now.
You need to devise a realistic plan for graduating. Find someone--a dean, a professor, an ombudsman--who you trust and who understands the situation. Work with them to find out what your options are. There may be possibilities you haven't thought of.
Also, start seeing a therapist. The panic attack you describe sounds a lot like ptsd. You will not be able to do your best work without dealing with it. And you can deal with it. It will get better with therapy.
You are not stupid or worthless. Your writing is clear. You're in a really hard place right now, but you have reason to be hopeful. You can be hopeful because you have resources available to you that can lead you out of this situation. The most important of those resources is your own ability. Your ability to perform in your field and your ability to find support from the people around you.
| 189 |
Can an archive file be smaller after unpacking?
| 30 |
Definitely - if you compress data that's totally incompressible. When you compress a file, the archiving program will store metadata (headers) that tell it how to unpack the data. If you can't actually make the data any smaller, then you'll be left with the same size data as before plus the metadata, giving you a bigger file than you started with.
| 42 |
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Is there any protection from Covid-19 by "local" herd immunity?
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Even if the US never reaches vaccination levels high enough for herd immunity is there still some level of protection gained by living in a state that might reach 80% of it's population vaccinated?
| 30 |
Yes, and the reverse can happen, too. Clusters of anti-vax propaganda lead to periodic measles outbreaks in specific areas.
Keep in mind that herd immunity is a *secondary* or even tertiary goal of vaccination. Vaccines protect *you*. If you’re protected, you help protect your close contacts. And if enough people are vaccinated, then even more people are protected, until eventually the infection can’t spread and you have herd immunity - a great bonus, but not the main point of vaccination.
| 86 |
ELI5: Why do we sound so weird to ourselves when we hear our own voices on video/audio, yet we sound perfectly fine to others?
| 248 |
Your own voice, when you hear it as you talk, sounds very different to how other people would hear it, due to to interference & echoing caused by your skull.
Other people would hear your voice more like how you sound on recordings, which sounds weird to you because it's not how your hear yourself when you talk.
| 125 |
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Is Math real?
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Anyone want to talk about whether math is 'real' or not? This is one of my favorite topics in philosophy and I rarely get a chance to talk t others about it. I am in no way an expert.
| 149 |
As with everything in philosophy, this is controversial. It's also controversial in more than one way. That's because realism in the philosophy of mathematics can generally be split into two types. Firstly, there is **sentence realism** and secondly, **object realism**. Sentence realism says that all mathematical sentences are objectively true or false, and usually also that currently accepted mathematical theory is true. Object realism says that mathematical objects exist.
One theory that would answer an emphatic yes to your question would be **platonism**. Platonism is the view that there exist mathematical objects like numbers and sets. Platonism also says that these objects are abstract: i.e. that they cannot cause things to happen and that they have no spatio-temporal location. These are quite common sense properties to give to things like numbers - it seems unlikely that we could one day find the number 2 floating out in space somewhere and it would be likewise quite surprising if we found that the empty set was somehow causing things to happen in the physical world. Platonism also has the advantage of making the meanings of mathematical sentences common-sensical as well. Why is "2 is a prime number" true? Well according to the platonist, in exactly the same way as "Jupiter is a planet" is. In other words, "2 is a prime number" is true because there really exists an object called "2" and it really is a prime number, the sentence accurately describes it. Overall platonism is both object realist and sentence realist. However, there are also views that are sentence realist without being object realist.
**Modal structuralism** is such a view. Modal structuralism says that mathematics is objectively true, but not because abstract numbers exist. It says that mathematical sentences aren't even making claims about mathematical objects, they're making claims about structure. To understand this let's consider the structure of the natural numbers.
0 → 1 → 2 → 3 → 4 → ...
The natural numbers start with 0. Following 0 we have 1. The technical term for this is that 1 is the successor of 0. The structure of the natural numbers is that every number (starting from 0) has a successor and only a single successor, and the chain goes off to infinity. If there was an infinitely long queue with a person at the front of the queue followed by a line of others, that would be exactly the same structure. The person at the front of the queue would be acting the part of 0, the people behind them the rest of the numbers. For the modal structuralist, "2 is a prime number" is really saying that if a structure like this were to actually exist, then whatever was playing the part of 2 would have special properties because of the structure it is a part of. Overall modal structuralism says that mathematics is making claims about hypothetical structures, about what they would have to be like if they existed, but it doesn't have to say that such structures actually do exist. It's hard to say whether this view would make mathematics "real", it would certainly make it objective!
Another view in the philosophy of mathematics is **mathematical fictionalism**. Mathematical fictionalism says that mathematical sentences can be true or false, but that they are in fact all false because mathematical objects do not exist. This seems to answer your question with an emphatic no. However, there are agreements between even platonism and fictionalism. It's probably important to note some things that are uncontroversial amongst all views. Nobody disputes that mathematicians exist, that they're doing this thing that they call "mathematics", and that this so-called mathematics has turned out to be very useful indeed, perhaps especially in its application to the natural sciences (one key aim for fictionalists is in explaining why mathematics is useful even though it is not true). One thing that platonism and fictionalism agree on - but disagree with modal structuralism on - is that mathematical sentences are about mathematical objects. This brings us to another view: **formalism**. Formalism argues that mathematical sentences don't really mean anything at all. For formalists, mathematics is akin to a game like chess. There are rules about how you can manipulate the symbols just like there are rules about how you can move the chess pieces, but this doesn't mean that these symbols actually have to represent anything. If mathematics is about anything, it's about symbols, not numbers (so says the formalist).
A final view to add something interesting is the mathematical **figuralism** of Stephen Yablo. Yablo compares mathematics to figurative language. Think of sentences like "the clouds were angry". A sentence like that is clearly not literally true (clouds can't feel emotions) but there is a certain sense in which it carries a lot of information that might give an accurate picture of the world, or it might be inaccurate. If the clouds are dark and thick, the sentence is kind of true in a figurative way at least. If the clouds are bright on a blue sky, the sentence is just a lie. To push this further, let's think about a game of make-believe. In this game, all trees are terrifying bears. In the context of this game, pointing at a tree and shouting "there's a bear!" is true in a similar non-literal kind of way. The important thing here is that the make-believe is prop-oriented; what counts as "true" and "false" in the game depends on objective features of the actual real world. To point at a rose and say "there's a bear" is not only wrong, it goes against an objective standard of being even figuratively true. Likewise, what if mathematics make-believes the existence of numbers so that we can track information about physical things. If this were the case, mathematics would kind of not be real, but there would still be an objective standard for which mathematical sentences are *figuratively* true.
Hopefully this is useful and gives a flavour of a few different positions on this.
(edit: improve wording in a few places)
| 87 |
How do we know a substance is toxic without poisoning someone with it?
| 19 |
Step 1: Don't use it on a human; first try it on an animal model (an animal that has a physiological response similar to a human, not an animal that gets paid to wear to have photos taken). For instance, sheep eyeballs are similar enough in size, shape and composition to human eyeballs. However, dog's will be poisoned by chocolate or grapes but humans are not, so are a bad animal model for toxicity studies.
Step 2: accidental exposure. Factory worker accidentally spills a substance. Someone on drugs thinks it's a good idea to shove a substance up their butt for some reason. "Alternative medicine" and "natural therapy". Usually you find long term evidence of toxicity from people who spend a lot of time or handle very concentrated substances, such as factory workers or applicators.
Step 3: Crazy hard computer modelling. You make a fake substance in a software program and bump it against fake biological receptors. You can see when something fails against some common biological receptors, but you can't test everything so you are really focused on failures and ignore success. An all-clear *in silico* may still be toxic *in situ*.
Step 4: Drug/exposure trials. Deliberate incremental dosing experiment on a human, preferably two humans, and step up concentration until bad signs appear. 1 dose today for me, wait and observe. 2 doses for you tomorrow, wait and observe. This is how Phase 1 drug trials work and why your drug symptoms may include "itchy butt" or "an impending feeling of doom", just because one person experienced that on day 7 of a twelve day exposure test.
| 22 |
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[Scooby Doo] Why are Scooby and Shaggie still so afraid of 'Ghosts' when they have proven time and again that it's a scam?
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After so many debunkings, shouldn't they be more skeptical?
| 38 |
Some individuals experience a feeling of paranoia when taking THC... roughly 20% of users, according to a 2014 study. As its been long suggested (even amid repeated denials) that Shaggy and Scooby are marijuana users, that probably accounts for their fear.
| 69 |
ELI5: Why do they make gummy multivitamins and supplements, but no gummy medication drugs?
| 29 |
A vitamin supplement basically just needs to get into the bloodstream as soon as possible so that it can be absorbed. A lot of medications are designed to dissolve and disperse into the body in a slow and controlled way. The form the medication takes (capsule, tablet, powder, liquid, etc.) plays a big part in how quickly it gets absorbed.
| 63 |
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What percentage of the stocks of a company do you actually need to buy, to basically have full control of the company?
| 20 |
To have full control of the company, i.e. to do whatever you want without having to care about what other people think your company should be doing, you need 100% of the company.
Anything between 50-100% gives you control, which means you can always pass through actions you think are good. However, minority shareholders have rights. Some of these rights require them to have a certain % of shareholding, like the right to veto changes to the company's structure. But even with 99.99% ownership of a company, you still have fidicuary responsibilities to the remaining 0.01% of shareholders to act in their best interest. This means if you do something which goes against their interests, they can sue you for it.
| 115 |
|
ELI5: When a woman goes into labour, is it her body that decides the baby is ready, or does the foetus send some sort of signal to the mother's body to say it's ready to come out?
|
As above. Also, how would the answer to this title question explain babies that are born premature, or babies that are born so late that the labour has to be induced?
Thank you in advance! I have wondered this for a while!
| 170 |
pregnancy is a continuous process. mother, baby, and placenta are constantly exchanging messages in the form of hormones, nutrients, and immune cells.
its is thought that once a fetus’s lungs are developed, a signal is sent from the fetus to the mother that first initiates labor. that signal causes a “cascade” to begin. mom’s body releases estrogen, baby changes position and starts pressing on the cervix, the cervix starts changing, etc.
| 171 |
[LotR] Why is Edoras the capital of Rohan and not Helm’s Deep?
|
At least in the movies, Helm’s Deep is more defensible, of course, but also seems more spacious and developed than Edoras. Edoras is a collection of houses on a hill while Helm’s Deep is an actual fortress. Why doesn’t Théoden just live there full-time?
Is it hard to get supplies in and out of Helm’s Deep? Is Edoras just a more pleasant place to live?
| 114 |
There's lots of reasons. Meduseld is the traditional seat of the King of Rohan, and let us not forget also where their kin are buried.
Also Meduseld is a fortified hall on a hill in the middle of the plains, which is where the horsemen operate best. And where they can protect their farmers. It is meant to be light and sunny and beautiful, with a straw roof which makes it look like it's capped in gold.
Helm's Deep is a fallback position which is less centrally located. (And further from help, because of the required detour around the White Mountains.) And the Hornburg itself, no matter how pretty it looks from the outside, is still a brutal place hewn from the mountains themselves. All that was near or around it was the ravines it encloses and the hills which surround it. There's a river. And some caves. If you like those sorts of things.
There's no room for riding. No room for farming. No room for a people to live in any sort of comfort.
| 188 |
[MCU] Why do Sorcerors use such outdate weaponry?
|
In MoM, we see that the Kamar Taj use simple bows and arrows, and ancient cannons. Why don't they use modern weaponry amplified by sorcery?
Guns with bullets that auto-aim towards a target. Tanks that have sorceror's shielding the outside with magic. Or open portals in the chamber straight into the enemy's face, or even inside their internal organs? Why use such antiquated weaponry, when it's not even enhanced with magic? Is it a "Noble" art or something? Because I would personally think that "saving the multiverse against the Scarlet Witch" is a bit more of a pressing matter than whether the way you did it was noble or not.
| 87 |
It could be that the materials the old weapons use are more magically conductive, or no real incentive to upgrade. Why make a magical machine gun when a magical bow is about as good as the machine gun would be without the additional hassle of enchanting, construction (if necessary) etc. since the magical bows and cannons already exist?
| 88 |
[Star Wars] What would of happened if The Invisible Hand exploded instead of crash landing on Coruscant killing, Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Palpatine?
|
After general grievous excaped The Invisible Hand the ship started to crash and was ripped in half, Anakin managed to land the burning half of the ship somewhat safely on Coruscant.
But what if it ripped apart in the upper atmosphere and exploded killing the two Jedi and Palpatine?
How would everything play out? How would the clone wars end and the state of the Galaxy become?
| 33 |
Things go...sideways.
With the Chancellor dead, the line of succession would likely go to Mas Amedda, his chief advisor (who was fully aware of the Chancellor's true identity as a Sith Lord and a co-conspirator of the Empire's formation). In the wake of Chancellor Palpatine's demise, Amedda likely does the smart thing and lets the plan drop; he's a career politician and has served in several administrations, and with no future Emperor to reward him there's no future in carrying on with the plan.
Kenobi and Skywalker are hailed as heroes. While the memorials done all over the galaxy are huge and loud and weepy, the funeral itself is a fairly private affair. The Council and a handful of friends, really. In her private residence, Senator Amidala is inconsolable. Only her protocol droid knows why.
After a short bit of R+R, the 501st is redeployed to meet with their contingent on Mandalore to assist Commander Tano and Commander Rex. Whether or not they get there in time to make a difference is anybody's guess.
Without Palpatine to have the leak and Skywalker to receive it, General Grievous is better able to prepare his forces on Utapau. While it will eventually get out - Mas Amedda has to end the war eventually, after all - the resulting battle is far bloodier. But when Grievous is killed, the Separatist leaders all realize the writing is on the wall and surrender on the spot.
Ki Adi Mundi still asks about the droid attack on the Wookiees.
| 75 |
ELI5: How can nonstick cooking spray have zero calories if it contains oil which is usually high in calories?
| 35 |
If you are American it is probably down to the regulations over food labelling.
For example, Tic Tac mints contain sugar. However, since the amount of sugar **per serving** (1 mint) is less than 0.5 grams, FDA labelling requirements permit the Nutrition Facts to state that there are 0 grams of sugar per serving.
| 82 |
|
How does dehydration kill you?
|
Particularly dehydration from not drinking water. I'm not asking about hypovolemia due to hemorrhage, burns, diarrhoea, vomitting or other factors.
I'm aware that dehydration disrupts a plethora of biological processes which leads to a variety of things going wrong in our body. But there must be one (or perhaps a few?) factor(s) that eventually lead to death.
Is it the hypovolemic shock? Is it perhaps dyselectrolytemia?
I have a vague memory in my mind that it's because of hyponatremia, but that doesn't make much sense. We only lose sodium through our sweat and can replenish it from food, which means if we avoid an environment that causes us to sweat and eat enough, that'll prolongue our chances of surviving without watter. Sounds ridiculous.
Hypernatremia makes more sense. If we don't drink water, we lose water content while our sodium stays relatively the same (we lose some through sweat, but sweat is quite low in sodium and we would lose more water than sodium anyways). High blood sodium concentrations would obviously dehydrate our cells osmotically as well as disrupt CNS action potentials.
| 16 |
Dehydration kills you by making you unable to flush out toxins in your urine and feces.
Eventually your kidneys shut down from severe dehydration and you start to build up toxins which will begin the stages of sepsis. You eventually become poisoned by your own toxins that the body is unable to remove.
| 19 |
[General Sci-Fi] How does mind reading work on those who speak other languages?
|
If I could read minds but only speak English, would I be able to read the mind of someone who only speaks Spanish, and presumably thinks in Spanish as well?
If I could read their mind would I only hear Spanish?
| 19 |
It's not about language. It's about thought. They're not translating from your language to theirs. They're translating from whatever "language" of neural impulses you have to theirs. At least the better ones are. If they can only detect surface thoughts, it's pretty much that they know whatever you're imagining. If you imagine a picture, they'll see it. If you narrate your thought process, they'll hear it. And if they don't know your language, they won't know what it means.
| 15 |
[Marvel] How common Is a healing factor among the Heroes and Villians of Marvel? Why does Wolverines get so much attention?
| 164 |
A minor healing factor is pretty common, captain america and spider-man both have one. wolverines is noted because of just how powerful it is. captain america and spider-man can die with how strong wolverines healing factor is there is a strong argument to make that he cannot die, he has been reduced to a flaming skeleton in canon and came back.
| 160 |
|
Why do some materials like iron, gold and other bend, while other like coal or rocks break?
| 1,346 |
It all depends on what kind of bond and structures the atoms form. when talking about metals and rocks, crystal structures become very important. The crystal structure of a compound it decides by its composition and its preparation. Some crystal structures are very rigid and won't bend easily, other materials are actually a lot of tiny crystals that can move rather easily making the material bendy.
This is a very complicated topic and it is hard to not go into too much detail here. The short answer is that it depends on the way the atoms are arranged in the material.
| 313 |
|
ELI5: Why does water in the shower go from mild to scolding hot when barely turning the knob?
| 73 |
The inside of most shower faucets looks like a nose. There's one "nostril" for hot water, and one "nostril" for cold water.
The way that the faucet works is that there's a disc with a single hole in it in front of these two nostrils. When the faucet is off, the nostrils are blocked. As you turn the handle, the hole goes in front of the nostrils, passing cold first, then a mix, then hot.
The hot water is always very hot, and the cold water is always cold. The temperature you get is a result of them mixing in proportion to how open they are based on where that hole in the disc is positioned.
That's why you end up sometimes with very hot water with a small turn of the nob. It doesn't take much to suddenly introduce a lot of hot water, or to push it far enough that only the hot water is open. As a result, there's a huge increase in temperature for a small motion.
| 42 |
|
ELI5:Why do homosexual men have/develop accents?
| 45 |
I read a comment somewhere on here talking about how over the last couple of decades it has actually turned into a form of self-identification, i.e. gay people start using a stereotypical accent to help fit in with the existing gay community, and then it perpetuates until it's the standard.
| 34 |
|
ELI5: How does gravity exactly work and why do objects increase in speed when falling from different heights?
|
I get the apple theory loosely but I want more understanding.
| 15 |
It's important to *really drill in people's heads* that gravity has two parts, the law and the theory.
The law bit is really simple: Objects with mass attract each other. How much they attract each other depends on their relative masses. Attraction means accelerating another object towards you. Here, the Earth accelerates every object towards itself at a constant rate of 9.82 meters per second per second. If we ignore things like air resistance, every object accelerates at the same rate when falling.
The theory part refers to how gravity actually works: is it a field? is it a particle? that's the part we haven't yet figured out.
| 14 |
CMV: I'm a nationalist.
|
_____
First off: I'm from Sweden (very relevant), I'm 20 years young and male (slightly relevant).
Growing up in what is today a multi-cultural society I early started to notice that in many aspects of society Sweden turned for the worse following the inflow of strangers and the multi-cultural policy of our governments. Immigrants have constituted perhaps as much as 25% of all the people that I've had contact with in my life. They've almost exclusively displayed great disrespect towards my own people and have constituted around 80% of all criminals that I've ever met. Befriending many of them I've gained insight in their mentality and way of life and have realised that they harbour a great deal of conscious hatred towards Swedes and wish to take advantage of us; they vote for the left in order to gain access to welfare but are in no way socialistic towards us.
But so far it's only personal experience. So I started to do research and found out that immigrants are overrepresented in all forms of crime - and the more severe the type of crime, the greater the overrepresentation. They are by far more likely to make a living from welfare money than Swedes are. They are by far more likely to vote for the left. Their neighbourhoods are more dangerous and degenerated than the Swedish neighbourhoods. They are more likely to be religiously fundamental. They're more often involved in corruption scandals. And they are more likely to be racist, which gives the irony of multi-cultural Sweden being more racist than old homogenous Sweden - and in a sort of way kills the argument of nationalists being the racist side.
My conclusions are that Swedes need a country where they constitute the vast majority and where the Swedish culture and the Swedish language predominate. I believe that patriotism is needed in order to contribute to the self-esteem of the people. I also believe that we should be open to a certain number of immigrants - regardless of background - who assimilate to our culture and wörk. In short, I want a nation state open only to natives, and to immigrants who adapt and show respect.
EDIT: I have a very troublesome computer so I'm going to have to ask all of you to be patient, since it might take time for me to answer.
EDIT2: Many have argued - falsely - that I claim that Swedes are superior to others. That is not true and I don't know how people get that idea. I might need to clarify myself and say that I argue that cultural homogenity is necessary for a stable society where people feel responsibilty to each other.
EDIT3: Wow! 203 comments so far. I'm overwhelmed by the interest shown in this :)
| 115 |
Socioeconomic status, not ethnic background, is the determining factor on most of the trends you are talking about. Immigrants to any country are switching countries for a reason, and thus are usually of lower socioeconomic status. It's not because of where they are from.
| 58 |
Do men with Jacob’s syndrome (XYY) have a 2/3 chance of fathering a son (rather than 1/2) any given time?
| 51 |
No. Sperm cells don’t divide into thirds instead of 2 during meiosis for those with XYY syndrome. Not only do those cells develop fairly normally, but there are equal chances for male and female children.
Currently it’s thought that the extra Y chromosome is often lost during their sperm production. While men with the XYY syndrome do seem to have a sight decrease in overall fertility, they very rarely pass the condition on.
| 49 |
|
[Warhammer 40,000] What Would Be The Results of Finding a Complete STC System?
|
What would be the full implications of someone (say a Mechanicus Explorator fleet) finding a complete, functioning STC System? I mean a complete system, **EVERYTHING** included. That means, in essence, the entirety of Human knowledge before the Age of Strife.
[STC Systems, for those who are curious.](http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/STC)
| 44 |
Hoooooo Son you don't even fucking know.
Let me tell you though. These STCs contain all knowledge from back when we were the top tier, end all be all humans we aren't now. Finding a functioning one that isn't corrupted by Chaos is like when you found your magos' answer keys unhidden in the noosphere. No, strike that, nothing compares.
Imagine having a computer. A great one, that stored all your memories. Every single one. You could access them always, without retrieval failure unlike your basic biological brain. And one day, you lose it. And you realize you stopped learning to remember - you always remembered with the machine. And when its gone, you didn't know what to do. You spend a decade trying to piece your life back together. It's not the same, you know it's not the same, and the few memories you accessed the most, you wrote down.
Then someone finds your computer and gives it to you. You remember **Everything**. You remember everything you ever did, every great thing you ever did (like helping that old lady up the steps, remember? Of course you do). If and when we get an STC, we will be able to produce tanks that make Baneblades look like motorcycles. Titans that dwarf Emperor-Class.
We could cure all disease and fix all problems with a complete STC. The Mechanicus would be forever changed. The Imperium would be forever changed.
Everyone else, understand how important these things are regarded - the rumor of a functioning STC is enough to have us deploy an entire explorator fleet to find it. Literally turning a world over to find it. It's literally the end goal of the Cult Mechanicus.
If we find an STC, all is great.
| 65 |
ELI5: What's the difference between a hotel, motel, resort and inn?
| 27 |
They are general categories that hopefully convey what one can expect from the establishment.
A hotel would have full features, including indoor hallways, room service, laundary, and maid service (to name a few examples).
The word motel derives from "motor" and "hotel" and were originally meant as a place for motorists to stop while driving places. They have sparser amenities and rooms that often open onto the parking lot.
An Inn is meant to connote a more traditional, less corporate, but small-ish accommodation. Often an inn is in a setting that is itself a destination (unlike a motel) but doesn't offer the services or luxuries of a hotel.
Anything that calls itself a resort is doing so because it wants to convey that you can enjoy your vacation largely at the resort itself. So you would expect it to have a pool, nice views, and other activities on or adjacent to the location.
| 48 |
|
[Harry Potter] What is happening in Muslim countries?
|
After all, according to the canons of Islam, it is strictly forbidden to use magic
And as a result, the question arises whether there are ministries of magic in the same Saudi Arabia, and do they commit repressions over magicians?
| 153 |
Go to any Muslim country today and you'll find books of magic in most bookstores. The relationship between Muslims and magic has always been flexible.
Broadly speaking though, there's a distinction between khawass, the use of the natural sympathetic magic of nature and demoniac magic where you use spirits to empower your magic. Muslims in such countries believe they are using natural magic granted by Allah and their own divinely blessed gifts, and would reject those who use forbidden magics like fiendfyre which summon fire jinn to burn and destroy.
Of course some are born to more strict Muslims who forbid all such things, and become obscurials. This can fuel prejudice as some would see them as possessed by jinn.
| 102 |
CMV: Riot is an unoriginal developer and simply copies other game dev’s ideas
|
League of Legends is a copy of Dota, Valorant is a mashup copy of CSGO and Overwatch (which is a copy of TF2), TFT is a copy of Autochess, Legends of Runeterra is a copy of Hearthstone. Riot is a shameless copycat, akin to so many Chinese companies that rip off western products/ideas. They barely even try to hide it in some instances such as Nashor, which is just one character swap away from being the reverse spelling of Dota’s Roshan. I understand that many games these days draw heavy inspiration from others, but Riot is 4/4 in drawing maybe a little too heavy of inspiration.
| 21 |
A: Legends of Runeterra is very, very different than Hearthstone. They're both digital card games, but they play out very differently in terms of when you can interact and how.
B: Making a game in a similar genre to others is not uncommon, unoriginal, or copycat. To argue things like Overwatch is a copy of TF2 is kind of just admitting there are no original ideas at all; everything is a "copy" of some game that strongly influenced it before.
C: Yes, Nashor is similar to Roshan. That's what's called a *reference*. League of Legends was made as a standalone game since DotA was a Warcraft III mod; the fact the developers acknowledged the influence isn't shocking at all.
| 23 |
[Star Trek] In every iteration of Star Trek it's always the bridge crew that goes down to the planet and does stuff. Isn't that we'll... Just really dangerous?
|
The entirety of the command staff, plus usually the only doctor on the ship goes down to the dangerous world and nearly always gets almost killed.
Shouldn't they send some from of F.E.A.R. squad to do this? People with combat and diplomatic training?
What happens if they all get killed (plot armor not withstanding), does this ship have a secondary command staff on standby for this?
For those who forgot, FEAR is First Encounter Assault Recon.
| 369 |
Starfleet fosters a culture of cowboys among their exploration ships. These guys worked their entire careers to lead the Federation's best and brightest into the unknown - to discover new life and new civilizations - so damn straight they're going to be the first ones down on an away mission. They didn't come out all this way just to stare at reports of other people having exciting adventures.
Once they've had their fun, then specialist teams go down to do actual studies of whatever man-eating plant killed the obligatory redshirt this week.
And yes, should any of the senior staff become incapacitated, there are established chains of command for both the ship as a whole, and in any given department to take over those responsibilities.
| 265 |
If water in a vacuum boils at 15C, can you still boil vegetables, pasta rice,... in it?
| 4,010 |
**The cooking of food is done by the** ***temperature*** **of the boiling water, not by the bubbling**. In a strong enough vacuum that water boiled at 15C, you could "boil pasta or rice" in it - it would be bubbling around the food. But it wouldn't cook any more than sitting in regular water at 15C would.
In cooking/recipes we say "boil for X time" *with the assumption* that in regular kitchen conditions water boils at 100C (or a little less at higher elevations). But it's always the temperature that does the cooking, not the bubbling. Plus \[liquid\] water can't get hotter than its \[room-pressure\] boiling temperature unless it's in a sealed pressure vessel. So if you had a vacuum where water boiled at 15C, no amount of heating in an open pot could get the water hotter, it would just boil away so there'd be no way to cook anything with it.
​
EDIT: Fixed some vague wording. Edits are in \[square brackets\].
| 6,276 |
|
[Game of Thrones] What are the pros and cons of using a Warhammer in battle?
|
As opposed to a sword?
| 26 |
You can't cut armour. A guy's dressed head-to-toe in plate, what you going to do? You can grapple the guy or aim for the armpits or the eyeslit, but you gotta accept that a sharp edge isn't good for that kind of opponent.
You can dent armour, though. And you can puncture it. Sure you need plenty of force behind it but that's how a hammer works. Big bloody weight on the end of a stick - smashes a breastplate right in. Do it hard enough and the guy's dead in seconds.
| 65 |
CMV: Partisanship makes it almost impossible to remove a Republican president for abusing his office
|
Trump will likely get acquitted of impeachment soon after the Senate declined to hear witnesses. Of the 4 GOP senators who may have voted to hear witnesses, Alexander and Murkowski voted no because they thought Democrats had already proven trumps guilt and that the Senate had already failed, respectively. Both Collins and Romney have been criticised for even voting to hear witnesses which means that the mainstream GOP position is that it is immoral for senators to want to provide oversight for Republican presidencies or to even investigate them.
Given that impeachment requires 67 senators to vote for impeachment, I believe impeachment is now impossible as Republican senators have just signalled that abuse of power is perfectly acceptable behaviour for Republican presidents. This means that removing a Republican president from office would require 67 or more non-republican senators which would be virtually impossible given the current balance of power among both parties and the GOP advantage in the Senate.
This means that, aside from presidential elections, Republican presidents can now abuse their power as they wish (as long as it never helps democrats) as there is no viable option to remove them.
I will CMV if someone can convince me that Republicans would support removing a Republican president for abuse of power.
| 21 |
Partisanship is the only reason the motion was filed to begin with. If there were a valid impeachment foundation not simply based in Democrat majority partisan voting then it'd be completely possible to impeach a Republican president.
| 22 |
ELI5: Why will electric cars destroy OPEC? We still need to CREATE the electricity to power the cars, right?
| 19 |
Yes, you still need to create electricity. But electricity is seldom generated by oil. It's coal, natural gas, hydro, nuclear power, renewables ...
Meanwhile, oil is pretty much the only supplier of fuel for transportation. (Well 93%) If it looses that position, it will be forced to compete with other energy sources, and as such, will suffer lower prices.
| 14 |
|
[Marvel] I am a sorcerer and I'm looking to punish the Punisher. He got my parents killed in a shoot out. To make sure he never kills again I'm going to banish him to another dimension. is there anyway he could stop me or would anyone intervene on his behalf?
| 30 |
That depends on what you need to do for the banishment spell/ritual to work... if you have to get close or his participation in any way, it could get really tricky.
There's very few people who would intervene on his behalf, much less someone with magical defence capabilities. Most of the time, his alliances are only temporary. It's only a matter of time until others find his methods too extreme or his personality too off-putting. It's mostly other vets who "get it" and can play along. Those might try to bust you, if they notice he's missing and can get a lead on you.
I also would never count on the Punisher being unable to make it back somehow.
| 26 |
|
What experiment would resolve tough questions in your field but can't be performed due to ethical considerations?
|
I'm not a scientist, but I have often wondered whether humans would survive without parental care. Obviously babies couldn't, but what would happen if you took uneducated 5-10 year olds and put them in an isolated environment free of atleast carnivorous predators (they'd still have to deal with venomous insects/animals) ? Would they further develop their language by making up their own words? Would they develop tools? Would they survive?
EDIT: *For all the people replying, I'm aware that feral children exist. This is not a "can this happen?" experiment so much as a "what can happen?" experiment. I'm talking about multiple kids being placed in situation and possibly being studied truman-show-style.*
Obviously such an experiment would never be possible until we develop the ability to simulate the human brain on a computer. What experiments would you like to do but can't because of ethics?
| 438 |
In psychology, many aspects of mind-brain interaction cannot be studied directly, since they would require the destruction of the brains of healthy human test-subjects. As a result, psychology has long looked at people with exotic maladies as a way of gaining insights into what happens when brain-regions are destroyed (though "exotic maladies" often have other confounding effects that make analysis difficult). In the era of fMRI, brain-region activation levels are often used to gain this kind of information indirectly. Some questions about the functional organization of minds could be answered quickly through destructive tests.
An interesting aside: if we do make accurate simulations of human brains on computers, there is some question to how ethical it is to experiment on them (since they are human minds, equivalent to our own, by some theories). What changes would you need to make to a perfect simulation of a human mind-brain to make it ethical to perform otherwise unethical testing upon?
| 182 |
Eli5: Why/how do still images like this one look like they're moving?
|
Optical illusions like: https://imgur.com/gallery/NOg2QCo
How do they trick the eyes/brain into thinking its moving?
| 64 |
Well, human brain tries to interpret the image it sees in a way that makes the most sense to it, though it may not always be correct. So simply said, it is just an error in the way brain interpretes the image eyes capture, as it tries to make sense of it. The shapes, colors and their positioning used in optical illusions are usually not found in the nature or environment around us on a regular basis (often mimicking 3D space on a 2D paper), so the brain doesn't really know what it is supposed to look like exactly, thus fooling it into seeing something that is not really there, but makes most sense to the brain at that moment. Optical illusions sometimes require a certain angle of viewpoint or you have to be able to see it entirely, so there are ways to "see through" optical illusions by either focusing on a certain point, or removing a part of the illusion by lowering your field of view with hands.
| 60 |
[Avatar TLA/LOK] What would happen if an avatar refused to be the avatar?
|
I mean think about it. No one chooses to be the avatar, they get chosen. With that comes all the power but also the responsibility of pretty much solving the worlds problems. What if an avatar didn't want to do that? What if they wanted a simple quiet life or something?
| 99 |
I guess there could be spiritual problems caused by the previous Avatars being upset but rejecting them hard enough seems to weaken the connection between the current Avatar and the previous ones to prevent forced communication. (That's what happened to Aang after the events of the first series because of a conflict with Roku until their reconciliation, even if maybe not all Avatars could do the same thing because they don't all have Aang's spiritual control)
One of the Water Nation-born previous Avatars was a laidback surfer and basically did nothing so he was unable to save his fiancee. (but otherwise he was an avatar born in a generation without great conflicts)
| 81 |
[Fallout 4] Which faction really does have the best interests of the Commonwealth?
|
The Minutemen seem too weak/small to side with.
The BoS are an almost religiously-crazed cult.
The Institute have a huge superiority complex.
The Railroad are a bunch of hippies.
Which ending provides the best ending for the Commonwealth as a whole?
| 28 |
The minutemen have the best interests of the commonwealth in mind. They are not the most well equipped to handle the task, but they are genuinely trying to better life for the average citizen, trying to be a good leader.
The institute as it stands are doing science for the sake of science, instead of to help, although you could theoretically make them help people as director.
The BoS and Railroad care more about helping/genociding the synths than helping the average citizen of the commonwealth.
| 49 |
What in the seven circles of hell is supposed to be in a cover letter? (RA)
|
Applying for jobs as a Research Assistant (UK uni pay grade 5) in psychiatry, and psychology.
For the life of me, every time I discuss this with my mates we always agree to disagree on the content and length.
Edit: My gratitude to all the amazing people that replied!! This has been really helpful and now my understanding is so much clearer. Hope it also helps other lost souls out there.
Upgraded from the seven circles of hell to the awaiting responses purgatory...
| 22 |
It should be the narrative of how your credentials and experience fit with the specifics of the job description--especially, why you are applying for 1) this job and 2) at this institution.
The CV tells them what you've done. The cover letter tells them why you are a good fit.
| 25 |
What is Max Weber’s critique of Karl Marx?
| 33 |
His critique of Marx (at least, when it comes to "The Protestant Ethic") is that he is too reductionist in his analysis of the development of Capitalism. Marx saw only an economic base, but Weber saw a religious development that contributed to the spread of Capitalism. Weber never said that Marx was incorrect with his economic analysis, but needed to add other factors. In fact, later Marxists would attempt to fuse both theories.
| 31 |
|
ELI5: If I raised a big cat solely by myself from birth, would it eventually want to kill me?
| 51 |
if you raise a small cat by yourself, would it eventually scratch your hands quite badly while playing? probably, yeah. big cats are practically identical to house cats, behaviorally. but when a housecat is funny when it gets aggressive sometimes, a big cat would kill you. it doesn't necessarily *want* to though, no. but it probably would.
| 48 |
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Is it possible to make a program that deletes everything added to a computer in the last five minutes?
|
I think if you misspell a link and you go on a virus site, a program that deletes everything added in the last 5 minutes could solve it.
| 21 |
Theoretically you could create a program that automatically generates a backup every 5 mins but the ability to scan for every change made, and understand what they were would take huge amounts of time.
The other method would be to keep a log of changes made by the user, although this wouldn't be able to undo things like viruses copying themselves in the background.
Realistically, the easiest ways to do something like this would be to create a backup to a separate location, and make live changes to the backup as you do stuff on your computer, but delayed by 5 mins.
This would essentially half the amount of storage space on your computer and be rather pointless for pretty much any application when you could just be backing up individual files.
Also in 99.9% of cases an automatic overnight backup would suffice and be far more practical in terms of processing power & storage space.
| 22 |
ELI5: Whats a warp field and how did NASA accidentally create one?
|
Also, why is it useful?
Thank you!
| 266 |
The idea of a warp field is a bit of theory that works out on paper but we haven't been able to try it experimentally—it requires negative mass. The idea is core to the Alcubierre drive, which would allow for faster-than-light travel.
The principal is that while an object cannot move through space faster than the speed of light, space may be stretched and contracted according to the equations Einstein put forward with General Relativity. This drive compresses and expands space to arrive at a destination sooner than would be possible at the speed of light on un-stretched space.
As for the recent report, it's *probably* just media spouting nonsense. It's a result coming from the group that's investigating the Emdrive, which is another science-fiction-sounding spaceflight engine. The neat thing about the Emdrive is that it claims to be able to produce thrust without fuel. Normal rockets have to shoot fuel in one direction to travel the other, which causes us to have to use even bigger rockets to get them off the ground. This tends to result in *enormous* rockets if you want to go particularly far, and even still you can barely get out of the solar system.
The Emdrive was tested about a year ago at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, as was a similar device, the Cannae drive. These tests have been controversial as they would seem to demonstrate a violation of conservation of momentum, which is quite an extraordinary claim that is backed up with a lot of "I don't know"s and shrugged shoulders. The researchers are pretty sure they've measured a force, but they can't nail down exactly where it's coming from. They've tried to eliminate various mundane sources of the force, but they've also eliminated much of the original theoretical justification for why a legitimate force would exist in the first place (the Emdrive requires a tapered cavity, while the Cannae drive requires a cavity with slots. A non-tapered, non-slotted cavity still produced the same measurement).
Thus, they're looking into things further to try to figure out what's actually going on. In doing so they tried shooting a beam of light through the cavity to measure how long it takes to travel. What they found was that the light traveled faster than expected—faster than the accepted speed of light. This could be possible if an Alcubierre effect is occuring inside of the Emdrive, but there is no theoretical basis for why it would do so (once again, Alcubierre drives require negative mass).
I should point out that this is not the first time that faster than light travel has been experimentally measured. Some time ago faster than light neutrinos were apparently observed, but later investigation showed it to be a calibration error. It is too soon to fully accept the observation as true. For now it's firmly in the realm of "probably just an experimental error but it would be really cool if it isn't and would rewrite a lot of physics."
| 197 |
How does a wild animal population naturally recover from an STD outbreak?
|
Wouldn’t a population be perpetually infected and/or die off as a result of STIs? In the case of animals that engage in casual sex or polygyny, I’d expect STIs would be even more easily spread.
This NCBI article [Disease and the dynamics of extinction](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3427566/) concludes that extinction events due to an infectious disease is relatively unusual…
Without any anthropogenic intervention, hepatitis could easily wipe out troops of bonobos. An outbreak of syphilis would wreck havoc in a pod of dolphins. There may be survivors that recover and possibly develop a resistance…. provided they don’t get reinfected, the disease doesn’t mutate, their reproductive organs aren’t compromised, etc. So, what’s the science behind a species surviving from an STD outbreak in the wild kingdom?
| 1,043 |
It’s very much the same science as any other diseases, STIs just tend towards more chronic infections and lower rates of transmission. Diseases spreading through populations are often described using mathematical models that take into account births and deaths of the hosts, and the proportion of susceptible, infected, and resistant hosts in the population over time. The game for the disease is to keep a pool of susceptible and infected hosts large enough to maintain itself. The only difference in STIs is they have a very structured way of moving hosts from the susceptible group to the infected group, but otherwise the maths is the same.
If you imagine a new disease appearing in a small group of animals, if the damage it causes is excessively high then the group rapidly dies like in the examples you gave. This massively decreases the number of susceptible and infected hosts in the population and it’s likely the pathogen goes extinct. Too few symptoms in the host and the pathogen can’t transmit efficiently, causing the proportion of infected to fall to 0 over time. Once again the pathogen goes extinct.
This middle-ground of virulence, where the pathogen is nasty enough to cause symptoms and spread, but not so nasty it incapacitates/kills it’s hosts and exhausts all opportunities to transmit, is called the trade-off hypothesis. Pathogens can’t know what their optimum level of damage is in advance, they either evolve towards it in time or they go extinct.
That’s the pathogen side of things, the host population may also have some individuals that are naturally resistant to a new infection by random mutation (most commonly they have mutated versions of proteins on their cell surfaces that prevent pathogens from entering them). This means, in the event of a very damaging disease appearing, some hosts start off in the resistant group before the disease has even started, and survive despite the disease killing all hosts in the susceptible and infected groups. Their offspring are also likely to be resistant too, which can revive the host population over time and avoid extinction.
So going back to your question, species can avoid extinction during outbreaks of new diseases either through the disease not being too damaging (or evolving towards less damage if it started off excessive), or through existing resistance in some of the hosts by chance.
| 589 |
[Warhammer 40k]How much heresy can I commit before an Inquisitor finds me?
|
I am an ordinary citizens in an isolated space from god knows where. I am going to commit all the heresy possible until the inquisitor finds me.
| 23 |
Depends, you should hope to be a successful enough heretic to draw the attention of the Holy Ordos. Most likely your neighbor will hear your weird and probably incorrect chantings to slannesh while you rub one out and turn you in to the local police. They have a deacon or even local priest ex-communicate you with a quick spurt of holy water, and you are bludgeoned to death.
But maybe, you're a little better. Your blood cult took a decidedly brass turn and the next thing you know your little blood arena is raided by the Arbites. You get the glory of being gunned down in combat by a man in a visor. They take note of your heretical bullshit and file it with the local Ordo Hereticus headquarters, it becomes a minor datapoint in a vast database.
If your lucky your born to the nobility, to a family who is notoriously long lived. The years pass, and the gluttony of many lifetimes fails to hold together your nearly rotting frame. Papa Nurgle is there for you, and for the low low price of a few servants cooked into delicious stew you can hold on to that mortality. Eventuality things get out of hand and your compound is raided by a Rosette'd Inquisitor and their retinue, your story entertains the Inquisitor's guests and traveling companions for years to come.
Or maybe, you are entirely unlucky born into the lowest depths of the underhive. Never seeing sun, never knowing of the above world you scratch out a living off of rats and what ever half digested effulence pours forth from noxious pipes. At the ripe age of 14 you start to see the lights, and they call you to go above. With rapidly growing intelligence you organize your fellow denizens and begin the task of exploration. Some find paths to the bright places. These places are great and vast, and you become excited. Surely there must be more, if only you can send your people higher. Some do not return, but the ones that do tell of growing splendor and magnificence the higher they go.
In a dream you are shown a special sign, the way to open the top forever. You excitedly reproduce it to all of your people, and instruct them to daub it in all of the secret places of the great hive. Years pass before the last dream unfolds before your sleeping and nearly blind eyes: You are the key! In the first and last ritual you and your fellow underhive mutants will ever perform, you manage to rip a hole in reality using the spire as a great and terrible conduit. Doom is heralded on your planet by the frenzied shouting of ten thousand mutants. As your fellows dash your brains out with rebar on the chosen spot you see the beauty of the open skies, twisting with laughter and color. A half-garbled panic strewn astropathic message is sent out.
Half a sector away a Ordo Hereticus adept is sipping a coffee reviewing the Vermillion level requests for the morning. A persistent warp rift in the Fuerxing system. He quietly recites the cipher codes to dispatch two squads of Grey Knights and mumbles "Fuck Mondays."
| 40 |
ELI5: This commonly thrown around math problem.
|
Someone explain [**This**](http://imgur.com/3NzbI5t) to me like I'm 5.
| 131 |
The question is just tracking the wrong thing. Why would the amount you kept plus the debt you owe add up to $100? This problem is perhaps more approachable if you use some balance-sheet-type arithmetic. Let's start the problem over.
You start out with $0, and you want to buy a $97 shirt. You have $0 in assets (no money and no shirt) and you have $0 in liabilities (you don't owe anyone money).
You take out $100 in loans. ($100 in cash assets; $100 in liabilities - the money you owe.)
You buy the shirt. ($100 in total assets - $97 shirt and $3 cash; $100 liabilities - you haven't repaid anyone.)
You give your parents back $2, and keep $1.
You now have $98 in total assets ($97 shirt; $1 cash)and $98 in liabilities.
| 240 |
ELI5: Why do moons on other planets have sweet names while Earth's moon is just...moon?
| 23 |
The term 'moon' for an orbiting body is derived from the name of our Moon. When we discovered that other objects behaved the same as our moon, the term was simply expanded to those objects.
You'd totally think it's a sweet name, except you're *used* to it being the generic name. But the generic name exists because of it, not the other way around.
Also some people will tell you the official name is Luna or stuff like that. Don't listen to them, that name isn't any more official than The Moon.
| 43 |
|
Are Hegelian metaphysical basis subjected to Hegelian metaphysical basis?
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Alright, I hope I explain myself because I am not very Hegel-read (we all know why), and perhaps my "problem" was addressed by him, for I think it is a reasonable objection (reasonable as in "most people would have thought of it").
If everything, parts and whole Being, follows a "moving" dialectical logic, where things change and evolve through the "dialect" of the different logics.
Now, if this thesis is part of the Being, as everything is, why couldn't we expect it to change at some point? Why dialectics would not be applied to dialectics themselves, changing the system into, let us say, a logic which is "traditional" and static.
| 21 |
I think you've just misunderstood what Hegel is saying. You seem to be taking him to be some kind of skeptic or relativist, and you're doing the usual thing people do with skeptics or relativists by applying the skeptical or relativist claim to their own skepticism or relativism. But Hegel isn't a skeptic or relativist in any relevant sense.
| 11 |
[Harry Potter] Why does the Wizardkind organize itself along modern muggle nation-states boundaries?
|
(TLDR at bottom just in case).
So, why exactly does Wizardkind do this? We see it in their governments, education systems, even sports. For starters, there aren’t there many of their kind, or at least who end up integrated in their society (Hogwarts has 1000 students at any given time in a country of 60 million), so they're condemning themselves to a lack of critical mass for many activities by dividing themselves that way.
In any case, it appears strange given how dismissive even the most tolerant Wizards are of muggle affairs that the Ministry of Magic appears to have some allegiance to the muggle British government. I guess I could be convinced that with "English" or "British" being national identities which have existed for centuries, that muggle-born Wizards have sort of pulled their magical society in that direction. But other examples are not as easy to explain.
I mean, we see a Wizard President of Germany in the latest Fantastic Beasts film. Why the hell would Wizardkind arrange their institutions around such a "recent" muggle country? Shouldn't there be centuries-old Prussian, Bavarian, etc. organizations unlikely to disband due to muggle wars? Would the Magical Congress of the United States sensibly identify with the United States, while simultaneously having an African-American female leader in the 1920s? Why not call themselves the "Magical Congress of North America"?
Perhaps the most egregious example is seen in the Quidditch World Cup in the Harry Potter series. There we can see the flags of Uganda, Kenya, and other recent post-colonial states. I just can't imagine the pre-existing magical societies of those lands identifying with these states. Why isn't there a Baganda Quidditch team or a Bantu Quidditch team? There apparently was an old Flanders team, why would it care to merge with Belgium? There is apparently a modern Moldovan team, why would it ever separate from the Romanian team?
TLDR: It's almost as if Wizardkind looks at United Nations and FIFA member states countries to periodically reorganize their institutions.
| 80 |
It’s just easier and make sense. Remember that wizards and witches used to live with non-magical folks side by side before they made their own world so, for example, England has been a thing for thousands of years. To make something different from that would just make things complicated. Kinda how when the US became independent and rather than rename English things, they were like, “well, it been working so far….” Also, it’s easier to govern as they do have to work with their non-magical political counterparts in matters of security.
| 57 |
[Archer Vice] Why not join Odin?
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After ISIS is raided by the CIA, why didnt anyone try to work for Odin instead of becoming a Cartel?
| 15 |
It might not have been an option. ODIN is fairly discriminating in who they hire; notice how quickly they drop Archer when the burn notice goes out on him. They probably wouldn't want to pick up a group of disgraced agents from an organization with a pretty terrible reputation at this point.
Also, Archer did kind of turn the head of ODIN into a rabbit in a human body. That wouldn't make ODIN very receptive to them either.
| 23 |
[Batman] Does the Joker actually WANT to Win? What'd happen if he did?
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Hi guys;
I've seen a couple of things that have got me thinking, the times the Joker doesn't kill Batman, cause it wouldn't be fun, does he WANT to win? Does he have an 'end game plan'?
What'd actually HAPPEN if he did win?
| 46 |
His end game is to make Batman kill him. Thus proving that everyone's moral code can be "broken". In order to get Batman to kill him, he gets to do all sorts of messed up things to Gotham. The Joker won't kill Batman, because that's the only way that Joker can really "lose".
| 79 |
ELI5: Why does GPU drivers update, if the GPU is the same? What will that hcange?
| 20 |
When you write software you use abstract terms. For a simplified example, you might say something like "Show this model on the screen". You do this through a graphics library like DirectX or OpenGL, or through some engine that converts it into a language like that.
In the long past, there was no graphics libraries, and there were no drivers from the manufacturers. The programmers would have to know exactly what commands to send to every card. Back then there were only a few models of popular video cards so this was something that could be done. But as there started to be more models of video cards it started to be too hard to do well. So maybe you need to load the shape of the model into the card in a very different way for one card than another.
Out of this, OpenGL and eventually Direct3d became a thing. The cards were designed to accept more general terms like "load this model". The thing is the cards had to have some way of accepting these commands, and sometimes new cards with new features would come out and need to accept new features. You couldn't rewrite DirectX or OpenGL every time you wanted to use one of these features, and you don't know on the card immediately what's the best way to do something.
So a driver is another translation layer. The graphics library sends an instruction to the driver. The driver decides what the best way to convert that instruction into commands to send to the card is. When you get an updated driver it means that they've either fixed a problem in translation, or made an optimization that translates that better to the card that you have. When new games come out, sometimes the game uses features in a graphics library in ways that are unexpected and can be optimized by changing how they are translated and given to the card, it's in the card manufacturer's best interest to make sure their cards perform well so they often work with developers to make sure they can get the best performance, sometimes necessitating a new driver version.
| 11 |
|
[DC] How could a human superhero, such as Batman, kick, punch, and hurt criminals without killing them?
| 44 |
DC humans are tougher than real life humans, and they get knocked out more easily. There's a significant difference between hitting them hard enough to knock them out for at least a few minutes and hitting them hard enough to cause permanent injury.
| 40 |
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CMV: If school children were treated like adults by teachers, overall behaviour and performance would improve.
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I think it’s counter intuitive to give children freedom at school, because everyone’s first thought initially goes to taking the reigns off and facilitating chaos.
But I think being respected as an equal is an important part of the learning process for a young person. It helps with encouraging them to discuss their views, improves their confidence in saying wrong answers and their confidence overall as the grow into adults.
Even being given the freedom to go to the bathroom whenever they want, or not have to get a planner signed by a parent, in the long-run helps children respect and enjoy the school system more.
Obviously some control and restrictions are necessary.
| 112 |
Sure, teachers respecting kids is a good idea.
But to modify your perspective just a bit here:
>CMV: If school children were treated like adults by teachers, overall behaviour and performance would improve.
... consider that teachers have *a lot* of things that they are responsible for that the children are not.
Namely, the teacher is responsible for the learning of *all* the 2 dozen plus students in the class. As such, there are time constraints the teacher is having to work within, as well as processes that they need to follow in order to keep things moving, focused, and with less disruptions to achieve that goal more effectively.
They are also typically having to impart a large volume of set curriculum to the students in that limited amount of time to prepare them for important exams that impact each students' progression.
Meanwhile, the kids are only responsible for themselves, and only thinking primarily of what they themselves want, with less perspective on those "bigger picture" concerns (which they may not even be aware of).
And things like having parents sign the planner is about having parents aware of / involved in their child's education - which is linked to better student outcomes. Students may not like having to get that signature - but it's not about that. It's about ensuring that parents are at least minimally aware of what's going on with their kid, which is beneficial for the kid.
The school itself also often has *a lot* of rules and regulations that the teacher must follow as part of their job.
Respect is all good. But also, consider that the role of the teacher and the goals they have to work toward involve way more than most students realize.
| 39 |
How to see how much Carbon Dioxide is emitted from burning a substance such as wood or ethanol?
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I'm going to do an Open Ended Investigation and I can calculate how much CO2 is emitted by using chemical equations and whatnot, but I actually need an experiment for the assessment. So is there an experiment (that can be done at home/school) to see how much CO2 is emitted from burning wood or ethanol?
| 16 |
If you bubble your combustion products through a solution of sodium hydroxide, it will convert the carbon dioxide into sodium carbonate. If you can carefully remove the solvent and dry the sample, you can calculate how much CO2 was absorbed by weighing. It won't be easy without specialized equipment, but you might be able to make something work. It is very dangerous to burn things in a closed container, however, and you should talk with your instructor about how to do this experiment safely.
| 13 |
[Star Wars] How did a 14 year old Amadala get elected as leader of a planet?
| 103 |
The Naboo culture puts high stock in the supposed purity and honesty of children.
Padme was from the noble class and all children of nobles go to schools that focus on diplomatic and government training.
Also all other positions in government are seasoned and experienced civil servants. A young monarch will have tons of advice to help them through decisions.
| 143 |
|
How does that divergent sum which equals -1/12 relate to String Theory (among other things)?
|
I'm referring to [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_%2B_2_%2B_3_%2B_4_%2B_%E2%8B%AF) series of course. I'm always looking to learn more about theoretical physics and the like but when I found this "party trick" of a math proof was actually applicable to physics I was speechless.
[Numberphile did a pretty fun video on it here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6XTVZXww) where they, like the Wikipedia page, mention that this sum actually relates to String Theory and other places in physics. So my question is: Where, why, and how does it relate to physics? I can understand the proofs and how strange values like this arise when dealing with infinite sums, but not how they have any REAL application.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no scientist or mathematician, I'm just a college student who studies math and physics in his spare time.
| 381 |
This series enters in the calculation of the **critical dimension** of a string theory. Essentially string theory as a classical (non quantum) theory has a symmetry called conformal symmetry, which is extremely important and in fact one of the essential characteristics.
This symmetry is in general *anomalous*, which means that when quantizing the theory this symmetry is spoiled. However, it is found that for a certain dimension D of the target spacetime (the spacetime in which the string move) the conformal anomaly cancels. This specific dimension is the critical dimension.
Calculating what the critical dimension D is involves the regularization of 1 + 2 + 3 + ... or an equivalent / similar problem. There are many, many approaches to quantizing strings that do this differently. The most simple/popular one is lightcone quantization.
Let's consider bosonic strings (strings moving in D-dimensional spacetime).
In lightcone quantization, the ground energy of the string includes an infinite constant term from the zero-point energy of its infinite oscillators. A string has infinite oscillation modes (indexed essentially by an integer frequency n and a transverse direction i = 1, ... , D - 2) and upon quantization these all become quantum harmonic oscillators. QHOs have a zero-point energy in the ground state equal to hbar/2 * the frequency. This frequency is proportional to n. So in computing the total zero-point energy you end up calculating this sum:
sum over i=0,...,D-2 of sum over n=0 to infinity of n
which is essentially, by the regularization result you refer to, -(D-2)/12.
However, this constant shift in the internal energy has an obvious effect: it affects the mass of the string. Now studying the first excited states one find a particle that is a vector (spin 1) particle. However it has D-2 polarizations, like a massless vector, instead of D-1, like a massive vector. (We are here worrying about restoring Lorentz invariance actually).
So we impose that the mass of this particle amounts to zero. This mass will be proportional to
\- (D-2)/24 + 1
the first term is the ground energy, and the second is due to the excitations we needed to perform to get to this state. Imposing that it's zero (which is actually a hidden way of imposing the cancellation of the conformal anomaly) gives
D = 26
which is the critical dimension for bosonic string theory.
You can repeat this for superstrings (strings moving in D normal dimensions + some "fermionic" Grassmannian dimensions) and the calculation is a bit different but involves again 1+2+3+...=-1/12. The fermionic dimensions contribute a bit differently and the final result yields
D = 10
which is the critical dimension for superstrings.
Now there are many other elegant and almost completely equivalent ways of deriving this result, but the above is certainly the more intuitive. A more geometrical way would be to start from a path integral and to study the scaling of certain operator determinants and in that case we would again encounter infinities, in particular divergent determinants. These infinities are tamed by a procedure called heat kernel regularization which however in this case is basically equivalent to zeta-regularisation.
| 114 |
ELI5: What does it mean when people say that an industry is worth $XXX?
|
For example when people say that the electric car industry will be worth 1 trillion. Does that mean that all the goods sold added together are worth that much combined?
| 29 |
Let's say you are in 4th grade and sell candy bars.
If you have 20 classmates and half of them like candy, your total market is 10 kids.
Now, you sell each bar for $1 and there's 10 potential clients. Your market is $10.
Your friends like candy so much that they buy two bars per day, so $10 x 2 = $20. This is what you are selling daily: $20.
Now, there's about 180 school days per year, so your market is $20 x 180 = $3600. Your local market is worth $3600 yearly.
You have to realize that there are 87.500 elementary schools in the US, and that there are kids selling candy bars in every 4th grade, so. 87.500 x $3600/yr = $315M
$315M is the total market value for the 4th grade candy bar industry.
Now, there are several markets per industry. Here we are assuming that there is only one product in this industry.
Most industries are more complicated, have several competitors and have more products.
Now you can repeat this process for the electric car industry. With some sophisticated analysis you can know how many people are currently willing to buy one, and can forecast the future trends regarding prices and willingness to buy. Like so, you can estimate how much an industry will be worth.
| 11 |
ELI5:Can someone ELI5 the difference between a Will, Trust, and an Estate?
|
Can someone ELI5 the difference between a Will, Trust, and an Estate?
Edit: Thank you everyone for the explanation!
| 30 |
A will is a document that describes how an estate should be handled once the holder has died. It often will talk about how much money his wife and kids get, who gets the house, etc.
A trust is a type of account that can only be withdrawn from for specific reasons. Usually rich people make one for their kids. So if they go bankrupt and all their money gets taken, their kids still have a ton because it belongs to them. The rules vary but usually a kid can withdraw from it to pay for college and put a down payment on a house or start a business, but the dad can't withdraw from it to buy himself a boat, even though it was his money that went into the account.
An estate is everything someone owns, but usually this term is used after they died. They might own houses, cars, a business, and a bunch of cash in the bank. The estate will be used to settle any outstanding debts to creditors and then enacted according to the will of the deceased.
| 28 |
CMV: That players from national teams (English, Spanish etc) should be from, or have heritage from that respective nation
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It always confuses me when I see the "English Football Team" whilst some players aren't even English (Full list of all Footballers for the English team over-time who aren't from England: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_England_international_footballers_born_outside_England). Since any player can play for any team it makes supporting teams based on patriotism pointless since you would be supporting those not from your country.
I can see the arguments that it allows for people from Scotland, for example, to support the Portuguese team if they have a Scottish player. Perhaps clubs benefit from profit when they buy and sell players too - I don't understand football so I may not be correct on this.
At the least I believe that players should've lived in their country's team for a year prior to joining that team.
TL;DR - Only English-born or closely related should be able to play in the English team; and that should be the same for all teams
| 29 |
So long as you haven't played for another national team at senior level (that immediately disqualifies you from playing for another, different national team) you have to fulfil at least one of these criteria:
* (a) He was born on the territory of the relevant Association;
* (b) His biological mother or biological father was born on the territory of the relevant Association;
* (c) His grandmother or grandfather was born on the territory of the relevant Association;
* (d) He has lived continuously for at least five years after reaching the age of 18 on the territory of the relevant Association.
FIFAs existing rules are, if anything, already stricter than the ones you are suggesting.
| 20 |
ELI5: What decides the strength of a currency?
| 68 |
"Strength" and "value" of a currency are two different things, often conflated. I'll try to pull them apart.
The strength of a currency has more to do with the direction in which the currency's value is going. If it's going up, and doesn't tend to fluctuate very much, then it's said to be strong. The exchange rate between the currency and, say, the US dollar could be 1000 to 1, but the currency is strong if last week it was 1050 to 1.
A currency will generally be strong based on three factors.
The first is whether or not the demand for goods from the native country is large. If US cars start suddenly becoming popular, then demand for the US dollars to buy them will go up - making the US dollar stronger.
The second is whether or not other currencies have become weaker. If the world is in a recession, but China alone seems to be unaffected, then the yuan will be seen as relatively strong.
The third is a little less straightforward - it's whether or not the currency is "trusty." People who buy the currency want to know that it will retain its value, that the government in charge of printing that currency will not devalue it, or that the economy is not on the verge of collapsing. The US dollar is one of the "trustiest" currencies in the world, whereas countries that print too much money lower the value of their funds, basically flooding the currency market.
"Strength" of a currency is basically still just an exercise in supply and demand.
| 42 |
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ELI5: How can a cheeseburger from a fast food restaurant cost less than a peach from a grocery store?
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The cheeseburger has meat, bread, cheese, pickles, ketchup, mustard and has to be made by a person.
How can this be cheaper than a single piece of fruit (e.g: Peach, Pear, Orange, etc) sold at a grocery store?
| 3,578 |
Those fast food restaurants buy ingredients in such huge bulk that they pay very low prices. Also much of that food is highly processed and as a result it keeps for a long time.
Much of the produce that grocery stores buy doesn't get purchased before it goes bad and has to be thrown out. And so the cost of all of that gets wrapped up into the price of the produce that people do actually buy.
| 2,839 |
ELI5: Why has the video quality of Skype and similar applications remained relatively poor even though residential internet speeds have increased exponentially in the last 15 years?
| 25 |
Short answer: Skype uses real-time unbuffered (mostly) 2-way video without a content delivery network.
When your computer receives anything from the internet it is divided into lots of pieces. At any point these pieces can be lost or delayed and your computer has to request them again. Even on a good day many pieces of data will be lost because of all the complicated things that happen along the way.
If you're watching buffered video, like Netflix, these lost pieces of video don't matter so much - your computer has time to re-request them and stay on top of things. Usually it can even catch up for lost time during moments of good connectivity or low bandwidth video. Skype is different - there's no use in showing you a bit of your sisters face that arrived 5 seconds late, it's either now or never. So what Skype does is ignore missing pieces and try to make the best of what data it has. This will mean some lower quality video.
Then there's the content delivery network. Sites like YouTube and Netflix realise that many people are watching the same videos. To make things faster they distribute these videos on servers around the world in advance. This means you get the data faster and therefore there can be more of it - meaning higher quality. Skype can't do this because.. it's being recorded as you speak.
Finally there's the fact that Skype is mostly 2-way. Not only are you watching a video, you are also sending your own video. Technically this shouldn't make a difference because your internet connection separates incoming and outgoing traffic. In reality it's more complex and your computer is more likely to struggle, it has to 'encode' video - in real-time, and deal with extra network traffic. On top of this, your internet connection is usually slower at uploading than downloading. That 50 megabit connection you were sold is _probably_ only a 50 megabit _download_ speed.
| 14 |
|
ELI5: Why can one of your nostrils be completely blocked up then when you turn onto your side, opposite to that of the blocked nostril, it almost instantly clears up?
| 25 |
Congestion in your nose is primarily caused by the filling up of tissues (“turbinates”) in your nostrils with blood. They are similar to erectile tissue.
The nostril that is on the bottom has higher blood pressure and therefore is more likely to fill up.
You will notice that if you stand up they will both clear up more because the blood drains out of your head more toward your feet.
| 23 |
|
CMV: The Miranda Rights should be stated at the very beginning of every police interaction by law. Not after.
|
To begin, I'm not a lawyer, not by any sense of the word. I'm just a guy who is interested in Law and Phycology.
Furthermore, as I understand it, the Miranda right doesn't take effect until after the arrest AND the police officer must inform that answering the questions must be voluntary. But, I've not seen one case of that happening. ([http://www.mirandarights.org/](http://www.mirandarights.org/))
​
But, I've noticed in my time watching videos of police interactions, I've come notice that 99.999% of the time, police state the Miranda rights after an arrest is made, or sometimes never at all. That to me at first glance is a case of police being disingenuous and not being forthcoming to the people who pay their salaries. But, as I understand it this is to catch criminals in their admission of guilt for a speedy trial.
But in my mind, it's awfully dishonest, cruel, and frankly deceitful to not inform the person any question at the very beginning to ensure that these are you're right and you have every right in the world to tell me "to F off" or "I'm invoking my fifth amendment rights". because if they said something wrong during it, there is nothing you can do to nullify that. I'm not talking about legality, just on the mere principle of the matter that we do it after the fact is just sleazy. If those private prisons occupancy numbers are true, it's very bad optics that they are complicit in ensuring that they are willing to ruin your life and the expense of having a company get more money.
I'm sure some will say "You learned this in middle or high school, you shouldn't have to be told that". Yes, I also learned algebra and I've forgotten most of that as well.
I want someone to change my view that having their Miranda rights read after the arrest is made rather than at the start of every Police or Legal interaction.
| 273 |
Law student here.
As some other comments have pointed out, *Miranda* protects people’s rights during **custodial** interrogation. Not all conversations with the police. The rights aren’t relevant until someone is in police custody.
Now, it is sometimes ambiguous when custody actually begins. Also, as you point out, the rights aren’t always read immediately. It is possible that someone incriminates themselves after custody begins but before being read their rights. This isn’t inherently a problem, though, for two reasons:
1. Information offered voluntarily (not in response to a question) is not covered. If you just blab to the police without being asked any questions, that’s on you.
2. If the police question you after being taken into custody but before reading you your rights, anything you say can be excluded at trial (absent some narrow exceptions). Even if they question you, get a confession, read your rights, then question you *again* and get a confession, both confessions will be thrown out—the first one poisons the later one. This is what *Miranda* is all about: custodial interviews can’t be admitted into evidence if you aren’t informed of your rights first.
So we don’t need to care *too* much about precisely when Miranda is read. Because any custodial questioning that happens before Miranda is useless, anyway.
| 218 |
is race a social construct?
| 21 |
There are two common issues that come up in discussion on this. The first is that people think social constructs are simple fictions. They are not. Social constructs are complex ideas that are created by people. Money is a social construct, for example.
The second is the idea that social constructs are unrelated to the physical world. Money has a physical reality, of course. Race often corresponds to certain physiological characteristics. What makes it a social construct is the way those characteristics are derived from ideas of nations and continents, and could instead be related to social class, geographical region rather than nation, or any number of foundations for dividing humanity.
So, race is a social construct, but social constructs are real, and social constructs have physical aspects.
| 75 |
|
CMV: White chocolate is not chocolate.
|
This may sound like gatekeeping or pedantry but whatever.
Chocolate is the word for products made from the cacao bean. This for the most part is split into cocoa solids and cocoa butter. Milk and dark chocolate products are made with cocoa solids (along with milk, sugar and other things) but the primary component of flavour that makes it distinct is the cocoa solids. Cocoa butter is the primary component of white "chocolate." While it does hail from the same plant, the same bean even, it has a distinctly different flavour, almost opposite colour and different consistency. The similarity is just one of origin and says nothing of qualities. Calling derivations of cocoa butter "chocolate" is as helpful as calling weed hemp and an acorn lumber. Only one of the components should have the title "chocolate."
When someone says something tastes chocolatey, they're invariably talking about the rich flavour of the solids. When someone says something is chocolatey in colour, it is invariably a rich brown. That and chocolate containing solids is far more commonly consumed. White chocolate should be the party that shoves over and renames. It could still be something similar, begining with the "choco-" prefix but it's both confusing and somewhat disingenuous to keep calling these two very different things by one name.
Hell, on a solely marketing note, it may be beneficial to rename the white stuff. Calling it chocolate is only gonna first first buys from people who like chocolate, many of whom will note the stark difference to their preferred confectionery and never touch it again. Meanwhile, there are still plenty of people who don't like chocolate and turn their noses up at the white stuff because of the association. Think of that untapped market. Probably not a huge one but still, why turn them away?
Addendum: It could be argued that chocolate liquor (a product with the same ratio of cocoa solids and butter as the bean) should be the true holder of the title with both of its scions shoving over and being renamed. While I am in principle in favour of this, it would be awfully inconvenient as the food is so popular. White chocolate being so much less popular should be what is renamed.
| 31 |
Like how almond milk isn't milk?
White chocolate has a similar origin, and a similar function as chocolate. You can make a KitKat bar with white chocolate instead of milk chocolate, and it will still function the same, but with a slightly different taste. You can mold white chocolate into shapes just like you would any other chocolate. You can melt it and drizzle it on a desert, or coat a strawberry with it.
Things that taste good with chocolate usually also taste good with white chocolate instead.
There already is a distinction. Putting the "white" in front. Just like how you would put the "milk" or the "dark" in front to differentiate between *those* two.
| 12 |
CMV: Participation Trophies are necessary in youth sports to promote prosocial sportsmanship and allow for the game to be more than about who wins. Many kids will need the encouragement too.
|
When I was a kid I had several trophies on my mantle. From my seven years in Baseball there were only seven participation trophies. From my two years in chess I had three for achievement. Chess didn't have participation trophies because it was less of a team sport. I was obviously better at chess than baseball but I was pushed to do the less nerdy game for longer. Plus both chess and baseball are objectively awesome. I just wish I was better at baseball.
----------
For chess all I needed was my brain for baseball I needed an ultra tight leotard and a protector for my ballsack. Any sport that requires testicular protection is one you should be awarded for just participating in.
-----------
I didn't wanna go up to bat where a third of the pitchers will hit you and it's basically dodgeball. The best I could manage was a slapshot single and fielding wasn't great either. We were in a semi-final match up 7-1 Midway through and I casually fielded a routine ground ball from 3rd and overthrew the first baseman allowing two runs to score. I was benched for the remainder of the game and really wanted to scratch my balls but the sack protector was in the way. I also had to pee. I paid little attention to the game until I started being yelled at because we lost and I couldn't field a damn grounder.
---------
That was in about seventh grade when I also once missed a flyball because I was literally asleep in the outfield. Way back in my first year of youth baseball someone had decided I would wear the torture suit and have balls thrown at me. I don't think I made it past the first out before I intentionally pissed my pants to get out of the catcher's torture suit.
-------
If five year olds are pissing themselves and twelve year olds passing out during a game then they deserve trophies end of story.
-----------
There were ways my nerdiness benfitted me though. I could get on base with a bunt. I could swing at a wild pitch at 0-2 because I knew the catcher would drop it and I could get on base. I also knew to exploit this when stealing bases. I should've been given trophies for imaginative zeal dang it.
If I can't have a trophy for making the game work better for me because I had no RBIs then dammit give me that participation trophy!
Go team!
| 21 |
I prefer the competitive aspect of sports compared to the prosocial stuff that isn't about winning. To me, trying to win IS the fun part of sports, enjoying playing the sport itself is almost secondary.
If kids are pissing themselves so they don't have to play or are falling asleep mid-game, maybe they would rather not be playing in the first place. Most sports aren't structured to be kid-friendly anyway.
| 15 |
The Anarchism Movement
|
please ELI5 the Anarchism movement, what they hope to accomplish, and how participants believe it to be constructive
| 34 |
Anarchists believe that many of the problems with the modern world are a result of *hierarchial power*. This is the kind of power that your boss or your lawmakers have over you; you have to obey them, simply because the system gives them power over you. An anarchist thinks that a system like that is inherently corrupt. No matter how well the system is designed, they say, if you give people authority like that they will always abuse it.
Anarchists hope for a system where society is instead organized like your group of friends. Your friend group may have a leader, but that's just because you like the guy; you don't *have* to listen to him. He can't force you to do or not do anything. They think that a society like that would be the best society possible.
| 54 |
ELI5 How are 3D shapes described in 3D files
|
I am working on a program to render 3D shapes with perspective using python and I would like to know how standard 3D formats "describe" shapes like how all the points and faces are notated. Thank you!
| 47 |
.obj files tend to be the easiest to understand since they can be opened in a notepad to mess with. First they state a list of points and their order matters. Then it gives a list of triangles (sometimes larger n-gon) by writing a list of numbers refrencing points to form sides so each side is a list of points. An octahedron looks like:
V 1 0 0
V 0 1 0
V 0 0 1
V -1 0 0
V 0 -1 0
V 0 0 -1
F 1 2 3
F 1 2 6
F 1 5 3
F 1 5 6
F 4 2 3
F 4 2 6
F 4 5 3
F 4 5 6
V stands for vertex and f stands for face. Notice that the verteces count from 1 because the 0 vertex is reserved for the center or point of revolution. This is a close aproximation to a .obj file and would not be opened by your favorite 3d viewer.
| 13 |
[Powerpuff Girls] Why is Mojo-jojo tried and jailed as a human?
|
What kind of legal decisions were made that landed a dangerous animal, albeit a hyper-intelligent animal, in a city prison? Let alone in general population.
Are there animal rights activists that want him let free in the wild? Are there groups that want the dangerous animal put down?
| 56 |
The law does not specify that only members of *H. sapines* are people. Mojo-jojo is treated as a person because he's a person. From a strict taxonomical perspective, he's an ape. But so are you. If one intelligent ape can be a person, why not another?
Also, the Power Puff Girls were created artificially, and again, are not strictly human. Do you want to be the one to tell them they have no rights?
| 66 |
ELI5: the bibclical story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego
|
*biblical
| 15 |
As per the Bible: Babylon invaded the Jewish homeland and took a bunch of them off to Babylon. Some of their names were changed to Babylonian names. The king made a big statue of himself and demanded everyone worship it. Several Jewish men refused on religious grounds. They were thrown into a big furnace to die. They didn't die. When the Babylonians looked in there was an extra person, presumably an angel/Jesus/God/some other divine emissary who was protecting them.
Edit: added "of himself" for clarity.
| 23 |
ElI5 why do glass cups and other glassware cost so much while the glass in beer bottles isn't worth more than maybe a few cents for recycling?
| 44 |
You're comparing the cost of producing glassware with the monetary incentive you're offered to recycle.
The price you pay for glassware and glass cups is a combination of their production cost -and profit. Plus these items are produced in smaller quantities than beer bottles are.
When you buy beer, you are paying for the beer and a small fee to cover the cost of the bottles. Beer bottles are cheaper to produce mainly because of the volume of bottles created. If beer bottles were produced in quantities similar to glassware, the cost per bottle would be higher.
A recycling fee paid to you doesn't cover the value of the glass, but is an incentive to get you to recycle and reduce landfill waste. That payment price is set by law, not the beer producer. The beer producer does not receive their old bottles back. The bottle is ground up and sold as raw material to glass- and bottle-makers, who might or might not make bottles for the beer producer.
In the far past, soda and liquor producers would charge you a deposit for the bottle, which was repaid you when you returned the bottle to the manufacturer. This is different than recycling today. The bottles were not destroyed, melted down and remade into new bottles. They were cleaned, sterilized and reused by that company. You could only return bottles to the company that you purchased the product from. You could not return Coke bottle to Pepsi and vice versa.
So, you pay for the production cost when you purchase glass items as part of their selling price. You pay the production cost of the bottles your beer comes in as a part of its selling price.
You receive a payment for those bottles when you return them for recycling, but that payment may or may not correspond to what you paid for the bottle in the first place.
| 22 |
|
CMV:I believe America needs a new Constitution
|
I love economics, but one unfortunate principle is that everyone is trying to exploit the markets. An example would be the stock market: everyone wants to find a cheat code for it. The thing is, if enough people spend their time trying to find loopholes in a system, then it will happen. I believe that loopholes and errors are present in the Constitution. It wasn't designed to handle such intense Partisanship. It's mendable, but those who have power to mend it tend to not have the incentive.An example of lack of incentive is Gerrymandering. It ensures re-election for politicians so they would never throw that away to create an equitable America.
I believe that the political stagnation will not change unless disaster forces it too. I shouldn't have to wait for disaster, the Constitution should be able to settle such disputes, but it can't, it's been hacked. We need a new one.
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| 54 |
>It's mendable, but those who have power to mend it tend to not have the incentive.
And what makes you think that it would not be the same people drawing up the new constitution?
Or do you plan on starting a revolution/civil war?
| 21 |
CMV: Non binary activist arent honest with their own definitions.
|
The most common definition of gender I see from non binarys is this one.
>socially constructed ideas about the behavior, actions, and roles a particular sex performs
Here's why I say they aren't consistent with their definition of gender. Under this definition, gender is to masculinity/femininity as temperature is to hot/cold. A gender isn't "man" or "woman" (unless you redefine these) its "girly girl" or "macho man". Take a look at the definitions of masculinity and femininity.
> is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with girls and women.
>is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles associated with boys and men
If you see the similarity in definitions, then you clearly see that gender is just a broader word for this. However, this is the sociological definition of gender, and I'm not the only one who's saying that this is what gender entails.
Quotes from Wikipedia
>Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity
>Gender is a term used to exemplify the attributes that a society or culture constitutes as "masculine" or "feminine". Although a person's sex as male or female stands as a biological fact that is identical in any culture, what that specific sex means in reference to a person's gender role as a woman or a man in society varies cross culturally according to what things are considered to be masculine or feminine
>Early gender identity research hypothesized a single bipolar dimension of masculinity-femininity, with masculinity and femininity being opposites on one continuum.
From [UNESCO](http://portal.unesco.org/en/files/11483/10649049699Definitions.doc/Definitions.doc) (Docs document)
>Gender refers to the roles and responsibilities of men and women that are created in our families, our societies and our cultures. The concept of gender also includes the expectations held about the characteristics, aptitudes and likely behaviours of both women and men (femininity and masculinity).
Non binary activists, at best, woefully misrepresent this definition And at worst, are liars. Sex is the only game in town when it comes to the words, male or female. However, some activist use another definition, which is what your brain is. Whether its male or female or something else, and of course the mismatch of these creates dysphoria/disorder. This definition, while semantically creating more than 2 genders, isn't a very useful way if dividing up sex/gender. This is because this definition relegates gender as sexual characteristic. Gender would apart of sex, not separate from it, and we know the male female divide includes much, much more than neurology. Therefore, when calling someone male or female, we should take into account the sum of their sexual characteristics. With trans and non binary people, only their brain, 1 characteristic out of numerous lines up with the classification they want. _Every_ _single_ other one lines up with the classification that they don't want (including important ones like genes and reproductive organs). and as far as we [know](https://www.nhsinform.scot/illnesses-and-conditions/mental-health/gender-dysphoria), Their brains not matching up is probably caused by abnormal conditions with hormone development and would've been fine under normal conditions.
People also go as far as saying sex is not a binary due to the existence of so called intersex conditions. The problem with this logic is that disorders (intersex conditions are literally called disorders of sex development), don't change classification systems. For example, humans are classified as tetropod organisms. This means we have 4 limbs (2 arms and 2 legs). What the intersex argument amounts is "Hey, what about all those people born without a limb or two! There's a spectrum of limbs out there". Intersex conditions can't exist without causing impairments to some type of bodily function (thus making it a disorder). They also don't provide their own unique reproductive function or gametes, which is a distinct aspect of sexual dimorphism, and for you to advocate polymorphism you would need to prove multiple distinct gametes and reproductive functions for these intersex conditions. Except there arent any. At best, you could say the binary isn't perfect but not that it doesnt exist. Intersex people can nonetheless be classified into male and female. For example, xx males can still be called males due to the fact that they would be males had it not been for an unequal crossover that causes them to be xx.
| 21 |
Which do you think is more likely: that a large group of people, including academic experts, is engaged in a coordinated campaign of misrepresentation and dishonesty; or that you simply misunderstand what they are saying?
| 10 |
How is there a gender wage gap in government jobs?
|
Speaking to CA:
Public ed is overwhelmingly female and they make 20% less than cohorts with similar level of education. Comparing a government job to the private sector is tricky.
But prison guards are overwhelmingly male and can make upwards to $100k at the top end. And you just need a high school education.
How does a pay gap exist in an entity that can create its own wage price?
| 17 |
Gender wage gaps are - nowadays - rarely on a direct like-for-like comparison, ie a woman being paid less than a man for exactly the same job. Rather, it tends to be what roles are offered to women - at top levels most clearly seen in the lack of female CEOs - and also how far women have progressed in similar job categories to their male colleagues. For instance women are more likely than men to take parental leave, are often more likely to deal with child-care, can have often (to men) poorly-understood menstrual or menopausal challenges, and so forth. Each individual item may in itself have an incremental effect, but the cumulative effect can lead to women missing out on promotions, pay-rises and bonuses.
This, alongside residual bias towards appointing men over women (the exact point about CEOs), can suppress women’s career advantages compared to men, and therefore depress wages. In any particular case the justification could appear sound but on a generic level it is obvious that there is a disparity through minor cumulative biases.
For example, Cathy could be on maternity leave whilst Bob deals well with a project. Bob deserves to be rewarded for his work. He gets a decent pay rise while Cathy gets an average one, and his efforts draw the attention of senior management. When it comes to being promoted, Bob gets the job. Is it wrong to reward Bob? No. But Cathy was excluded from the opportunity and could well be the better manager: she just is less well known to senior management. Has Cathy been discriminated against? Again, not as such. But pay disparity grows and it could be that the wrong person has been promoted for entirely logical-seeming reasons.
The public sector is no better at addressing this than the private sector. For prison guards it’s more specific: there are more male prisoners and so more male prison guards. Hence any individual male prison guard has more options for promotion than his female counterpart. But that is an unusual case. For most jobs, it is more down to the generic issues above.
| 37 |
ELI5: Why is the rising cost of housing considered “good” for homeowners?
|
I recently saw an article which stated that for homeowners “their houses are like piggy banks.” But if you own your house, an increase in its value doesn’t seem to help you in any real way, since to realize that gain you’d have to sell it. But then you’d have to buy or rent another place to live, which would also cost more. It seems like the only concrete effect of a rising housing market for most homeowners is an increase in their insurance costs. Am I missing something?
| 11,560 |
You don't have to sell. You can refinance or take out a Home Equity Line of Credit as well. You can also take other types of loans using it as collateral. When people say this though, they're mostly just referring to the idea that they WILL eventually get to cash out all that value one day.
| 7,299 |
CMV: If Donald Trump is really capable of doing half of the things democrats are afraid he will, then he at least possesses the agency to be president
|
Let me preface this by saying that I'm not a Trump supporter and will not be voting for Trump in the presidential election. On the other hand I'm noticing a lot of conflicting criticisms of Trump, especially concerning foreign policy, in that he is incompetent and not capable of affecting any real change, and the same time that he's some sort of modern day Hitler who will irreversibly change libel and immigration laws.
I believe that if Trump is really capable of keeping anyone who practices Islam, the world's second largest religion, from entering the country, then he would at least be living up to him presenting himself very effective politician. This is in contrast to common (and I believe justified to an extent) criticism of Obama, who made a lot of promises to close Guantanamo but in the end wasn't capable of it, and also got cock-blocked by congress at every turn.
The flipside is, if he isn't capable of those things, then a good portion of this doomsday talk about the election is really overblown, and it doesn't really matter that much in the end who gets elected.
| 25 |
There is a middle ground here - you can believe someone to be incapable of actually accomplishing something but still be aware of the damage that would be caused if they attempted it.
Take the Muslim ban as an example. There is simply no way that such a ban would ever get through Congress as it stands today, much less stand up to a SCOTUS challenge if it was somehow enacted. That policy just can't happen in America. However, simply trying to get such a policy passed would degrade our relationships with may of the Muslim countries around the world - How would Saudi Arabia feel about us if we had just tried to prevent their citizens from emigrating to the US?
The position of POTUS is much more than just the actual job responsibilities. He is the figurehead for America - his words and his actions are representative of our country on the world stage. Merely attempting to do many things that he is claiming to do would be very bad for US foreign policy, successful or not.
| 61 |
[Harry Potter] What would happen if you failed a class at Hogwarts? Would you have an opportunity to retry the class the next year?
|
Let’s say you didn’t get an owl in your potions class during in your fifth year finals, would you be able to take the course over the summer? Or maybe the following year?
In the HP universe, is your only shot at becoming an Auror, l determined solely on how you perform on your first exam?
I understand that Aurors want only the best, but there has to be a little wiggle room and ability to retest, right?
| 403 |
Marcus Flint had to repeat his 7th year after he failed his exams. He's initially described as a sixth-year student in The Philosopher's Stone (Book 1), but he's still in school by The Prisoner of Azkaban (Book 3), while Hogwarts only has 7 years of schooling.
I believe that the N.E.W.T. exams can be retaken if the person desires, although that's never explicitly stated, it'd make sense.
| 347 |
ELI5:Why do muscles look like they're permanently in a flexed position after working them out?
|
I've noticed this especially with my biceps, where after giving the a good work out, they look like they're perpetually flexed, and when I actually try to flex then, here isn't much difference.
| 29 |
When muscles are being used or anticipate being used, they fill up and engorge with blood. Same principle as a penis filling up with blood for an erection, after you work out your muscles fill up with blood to stay full.
| 18 |
[Star Wars] Why did the Seperatists bother blocking off Iego from the rest of the Galaxy?
|
In the Clone Wars episode "Mystery of a Thousand Moons" it is revealed that the CIS drove the angels from their moon put a complex death star like security system on it to keep the people of Iego from leaving. It doesnt seem like Iego was a very important planet, being described as a backwater and really only notable for spice smuggling. And when they left the CIS left hundreds of droids behind. The whole thing seems like a massive waste of time and resources so why bother keeping like 15 people trapped?
| 40 |
They probably had some idea where the blue shadow virus cure was, and in anticipation of restarting the project they took steps to lock down the planet so that they would be the only ones with access.
| 15 |
cmv: Calling a non-binary person they or them is absurd.
|
I have no problem with being whatever. But to me it starts getting annoying when they want to be called they or them, that’s what i call the queen or any royalty for that matter. I wouldn’t have a problem calling them “it”, but they obviously wouldn’t tolerate it because it sounds demeaning. Yes you might not feel one or the other but that can be your own problems, i shouldn’t have to change how i adress people in order to fit your world.
It occured to me when i was at a get together and a non-binary person was there(I didn’t know what it was then), so i said oh good for her, and my friend said no, call her them/they. I was taken aback but still tried and every time it felt so wrong, like she was put on some pedastoæ, so i just started saying her instead. She pulled me aside a said i should call her they/them, so i said call me your majesty, and she said no, because “you’re just a guy”. So i said same goes for you, she gave me mean looks the rest of the night.
I would be cool if you could change my mind.
EDIT: I think I have come to the conclusion that I would never do it in Denmark, but it probably isn't as formal as i thought in US or UK for that matter, so i will start calling non-binary people them/they if they speak english.
EDIT 2: I am probably not clear enough, so will say it again. I will call english speaking people them/they, but i would never call a danish person they/them in danish.
Last notes, i don't think my mind will be changed more than it has, thank you for keeping the discussion pretty civil and friendly.
| 21 |
“I asked to see the manager, but they weren’t available.”
“He asked his friend for a donation, but they weren’t interested.”
“Have you seen the local farmer? They said they were coming around soon.”
We already use they/them as pronouns for singular people when the gender is unknown. It’s hardly a stretch to extend that to non-binary people.
| 32 |
[Superman]How come Superman’s biological parents never go with him to Earth if Krypton is advanced enough to build spaceships?
| 33 |
Krypton doesn't have starships. Jor-El made Kal's pod in secret when it became apparent he wouldn't win over the Science Council; his original plan was to make one big enough for Lara to join Kal, but when she pressed him he admitted it would reduce the likelihood of Kal's survival. So she refused.
| 60 |
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