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ELI5: In trading, what does liquidity mean and how does it work | 24 | You can think of it as the 'transferability' of a financial instrument (either cash, or an investment). High liquidity means it's easier to use and transfer an item; low liquidity means you're pretty much stuck with it.
Cash is a very liquid thing. You don't need to find a buyer before you can use it, or involve a middle man. You can just go out and spend it. If all of your wealth is tied up in housing, for example, that's not very liquid. If you can't find a buyer, you're technically *worth* a lot, but if a hot new investment opportunity opens up, you're probably not going to be able to get enough cash together quickly to invest in it.
Similarly, if there's an investment that is constantly changing hands -- Bank of America stock, as /u/Bhimpele said -- then it's considered liquid; it moves around the marketplace a lot. If you have a stock that very few people are interested in buying or selling (and it can be either, not both), it's not liquid. It's either very hard to take possession of it, or if you've got it it's a pain in the ass to get rid of -- therefore it's not easily transferable.
It's liquid because it flows easily from one place to another. | 26 |
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What is the difference between a brain when its sexually aroused and when it's not? Could we replicate this to synthesise aphrodisiacs? | 54 | The difference in the brain between one task and another, or no task at all, is activation of a network of brain regions. Most individual brain regions will contribute to more than one task, but the constellation of activation may be different depending on what that task is. Artificially activating one network would involve stimulating every network area at once. This might be done with electrical or magnetic fields outside the head inducing activity in the cortex, but specific activation like this could need electrodes implanted all through the brain.
This doesn't even touch the fact that we don't really know much about how brain areas coordinate themselves or the nature of information travelling between them.
Sorry to be a downer, but you're better off with Barry White and a bottle of Merlot to get someone in the mood. Brain surgery probably isn't worth it!
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[Harry Potter] Are the owls that deliver the mail magic owls with heightened intelligence and such, or are they just regular owls that were trained by wizards? | 75 | There are presumably magical variants of otherwise ordinary creatures found in the wizarding world. For example, in Prisoner of Azkaban, when Ron was shopping for some tonic for his pet rat at Magical Menagerie, Harry and co. ran across a rabbit who was able to transform itself into a top hat at will. And the shopkeeper also pointed out a set of black mice who were not only more intelligent than the average mouse (and able to skip rope with their tails) but also had a longer-than-normal lifespan compared to an ordinary garden mouse.
Granted, it is possible that these were normal, garden variety animals that were captured by wizards and enchanted to gain higher intelligence, longer lifespans, and magical abilities, but since the shopkeeper offered to replace Scabbers rather than offering to improve Scabbers with these spells, it's unlikely (unless the shopkeeper is a middleman that buys and sells the enchanted animals but is unable to enchant them himself). | 56 |
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[Batman] I'm a professional strongman, dedicated my life to the gym and eating right, there's surely no way a caped crusader can bench 450kg when spending so much time fighting crime? | But in case it's true, what routine does he use and which steroids that he obviously is on does he use | 137 | Due to alleged connections to a certain Gotham billionaire, the Batman probably has access to supplements that won't make it to the market for years to come, if ever. On top of his already insane workout regimens and consistent training, plus his mastery of martial arts you've never even heard of. He also has the ability to mentally manage pain so he can push limits that a professional strongman like yourself would never want or need to push.
Edit: spelling | 146 |
[Game of Thrones] Why are the Greyjoys considered a major house in Westeros? They're essentially pirates, wouldn't that really lend them to being considered scum by the Lannisters or Tyrells? | 45 | The iron islands are considered a nation. Nations have rulers and Greyjoy leads the iron islands. They're considered lesser than everybody else but still accepted to keep them in the greater 7 kingdoms. | 50 |
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ELI5: What causes us to lose consciousness when we go to sleep? | 76 | We don't. You're not unconscious when you're asleep. Your level of consciousness has just being altered. Unconscious means you're not able to react to any stimuli. A sleeping person will react to stimuli that is strong enough, like an alarm clock. An unconscious person won't wake up just because an alarm clock is going off otherwise that's how they'd wake up people from a coma. | 90 |
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ELI5: Regular vs Premium vs Ultimate gasoline | 249 | It's to do with the octane rating of the fuel.
In a petrol engine, the charge (fuel/air mix) is compressed before ignition by spark plug.. When you compress a fluid it heats up, if your charge mixture heats up too much before the spark plug fires then you can get detonation when the spark plug fires, or even self ignition before the plug fires. This can causes engine knocking, overpressure in the cylinder, and possibly engine damage right the way from minor to catastrophic.
The octane rating of a fuel is essentially a measure of a fuel's resistance to self ignition; i.e. higher octane fuel can be run at higher compression without engine trouble than a lower one.
However, running a high octane fuel in an engine designed for regular (lower octane rated) fuel won't give you any benefit over the regular fuel, since you'd need to adjust the engine timing to exploit the higher octane rating.
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ELI5:If deep freezing only puts bacteria to sleep rather than killing them, then why does deep freezing sushi/sashimi fish makes them safe to consume raw? | I've been told that deep freezing food doesn't kill all the bacteria and only puts them to sleep. However, when I look up about sushi/sashimi, they often say that freezing the fish is one of the things they do to kill bacteria. What's the true story here? | 67 | I think you're confusing bacteria with parasites. Freezing kills harmful parasites like tapeworms and roundworms.
The bacteria you're concerned about has nothing to do with the fish itself and everything to do with who handles it. If there is any harmful bacteria on your sushi, I'd blame your chef for not washing their hands. | 80 |
ELI5: What's going on in Syria? | After the Arab Spring events in other countries, I've kind of tuned out the Middle East (not that I'm proud of it) but I keep hearing about all these people dying over there and I can't seem to find a concise start-to-finish account. Thanks!
*edit* thanks for the concise answers, guys - much appreciated | 273 | In Tunisia, protests happened, and the government almost immediately collapsed.
Then in Egypt, protests happened, and the government fought them for a while, until the army said "we won't attack protesters", and the government collapsed.
Then in Libya, protests happened, the government fought them, and so did the army. But then the Arab League and the UN Security Council intervened, and it became a proper civil war, instead of just a massacre of civilians.
Then in Syria, protests happened, the government fought them, and so did the army. The Arab League and the UN Security Council are trying to intervene, but Russia and China are blocking resolutions; meaning it's essentially just a massacre. | 291 |
ELI5: How are high-profile, open marijuana users like Seth Rogen, Doug Benson etc. not pursued by police for breaking the law? | 58 | The police know that prosecuting users doesn't work. Most of the efforts of the DEA and police go towards drug dealers and smugglers.
Also, using Marijuana is not against the law, posessing it is. Furthermore, saying "I used marijuana" is not sufficient cause for prosecution and arrest, especially for entertainers, who often make up stories to establish a character for the sake of their art. | 45 |
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ELI5: why's it when you put some wet fabric, e.g. a towel, on a radiator, it dries all stiff and crusty? | 1,044 | The little fabric bits on the outside of a towel stick together when wet and tend to remain stuck (hence crunchy) when it is air-dried without air movement. A tumble dryer circulates warm air as the towel dries, which tends to separate the stuck fabric bits and the material feels more fluffy to touch. | 1,286 |
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Do my thoughts feel like they come from my head because I know that's where my brain is? | Or have inner monologues always felt like they're in our head? And of that's the case, isn't it obvious that your brain is the originator of thought? Why did it take Alcmaeon of Croton to come along and tell us all the brain is where thought comes from?
I asked this question yesterday on another sub, but I feel like this sub might be more appropriate. | 194 | your eyes and ears are in your head, so everything you see or hear is naturally referenced to your head position (you also, of course, have a feeling of where your head is);
it follows, then, that your visual and auditory imagery (imagining images or sounds) will be referenced to your head position.
so whatever thoughts you have that are composed of sounds or images, it makes sense that they'd feel like they are in your head.
beyond that, it's more guesswork - why do abstract thoughts, e.g. mathematical or emotional thoughts - feel like they're in your head (I think they do)? probably, i think, because they often involve visual/auditory imagery, even if they don't *necessarily*.
there may be more to it than this, but i think that's the simple answer: because that's where your eyes and ears are, and vision and audition are crucial to human thought.
i don't think it's cultural or historical or whatever - there may be examples of philosophers etc believing that the mind/soul is in the heart or the belly or whatever, but i don't think there are clear accounts of some widespread belief in such cultures that thoughts felt like they were in those places. rather, those philosophers were trying to explain/understand things following some empirical rationale. e.g. we can see that if heart stops, person dies; but if head is cracked open, person lives a while but dies of illness. soul must have been in the heart. | 46 |
CMV: Donald Trump suggested his supporters might assassinate Hillary Clinton or her judicial appointments | Donald Trump [said this at a rally in NC today](http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/trailguide/la-na-trailguide-updates-donald-trump-says-second-amendment-1470771050-htmlstory.html):
>“Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the 2nd Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do folks. Although the 2nd Amendment people, maybe there is. I don’t know.”
Many people interpreted this as encouraging his supporters to assassinate either Clinton or her judicial appointments.
The Trump campaign has since come out and claimed that Trump was talking about Second Amendment advocates unifying to vote against Hillary. For example, Mike Pence said:
>"Of course not. Donald Trump is urging people around this country to act consistent with their convictions in the course of this election. And people who cherish the 2nd Amendment have a very clear choice in this election."
**Now, to be clear, we have no way of knowing what Trump *meant*, so all we can debate is the meaning of the actual words he said.**
I hold that if we go by what he SAID, the only possible interpretation is one of advocating violence. The key is in this sentence:
>**if she gets to pick her judges**, nothing you can do folks. Although the 2nd Amendment people, maybe there is.
As the "if..." clause makes clear, in this part of the speech he's making a hypothetical about what will happen if Hillary is elected president. The Trump campaign explanation for his statement thus makes no sense...IF Hillary gets to pick her judges, there is nothing the Second Amendment folks could do about that by voting, because if Hillary is picking judges then the election is *already over*.
To put it another way: Trump's assertion is that Second Amendment folks might be able to do something "if Hillary is picking judges." There's no way he could be referring to voting, because if Hillary is picking judges, the voting has already happened. Moreover, Trump suggests that only second amendment people (gun owners) would have a chance of doing something about her judicial choices. From his own statement, we know that he is:
1. Not talking about voting, because in his hypothetical the voting has already happened, and...
2. He is specifically singling out gun owners as being the ones able to affect a change.
How can this statement possibly be interpreted as anything other than a suggestion that second amendment advocates might shoot Clinton or her appointees?
I'm not sure whether I can be convinced or not, but I'm open to changing my view if you can provide a convincing argument that Trump's words could be reasonably interpreted to mean something else.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 35 | I would argue that although it's clear that Trump insinuated that second amendment people can use force to influence her decision, what's not clear is if he meant assassination or just general intimidation.
The vast majority of the time (not an understatement) guns prevent something from occurring, they are never fired. Merely flashing or pointing your gun will prevent a robbery, etc from occurring.
Nothing in his speech made it clear that he was asking for a gun owner to kill Hillary - specifically. | 24 |
I believe post-mortem organ donation should be obligatory whenever possible, CMV | A few things to justify that:
-You are not your body. Your body is a bunch of flesh and bones. What makes you important is that you have a mind and the ability to function. When you die, you are a rotting corpse and nothing more. "You" seizes to exist (and even for religious people, your soul leaves your body, or whatever). So the body of the "you" stops having rights because "you" isn't there.
-It is needed. There are many thousands of preventable deaths in the west from preventable conditions if we had enough organs. The fact that the corpse in the funeral might look a bit bad is not nearly a good enough reason to let a mother of two die because she couldn't get a new liver.
-It really isn't against religion. Most objections for most social changes can many times be traced to religions. However, all the Abrahamic faiths I know of don't consider your body anything more than a vessel for your soul nor am I aware of any modern non-western religion that places any particular importance into bodies.
edit:Apparently, some religions are against it, however most modern, big religions aren't. So eh, half-point there.
So yeah, bodies don't have rights, it is necessary for many people's survival and doesn't have almost any drawbacks that I can see. | 73 | The general reason to oppose it is that when people fear that doctors will not respect their wishes/privacy/etc they are less likely to go to the doctor. Some people are paranoid that if organ donation is mandatory doctors will not try as hard to save them. Such a policy would severely compromise their medical care and the medical care of their dependents. It doesn't matter whether they are wrong or right in their perception. It matters that they change their behavior because of it.
A compromise position is to make donor-ship a mildly annoying opt-out process instead of an easy opt-in process. This communicates some social pressure to opt in that increases donor-ship.
In any system, murder victims should never be used as organ donors both to preserve evidence and to remove any perverse incentives there. | 37 |
Why does vacuum-energy exist? How can nothing have some energy? | Or maybe I'm just very confused. | 159 | Well any theory that predicts a non-zero vacuum energy also predicts that the vacuum itself has a complex non-trivial structure. Like the vacuum of quantum electrodynamics for example. It can fluctuate, it can interact, it can become polarized.
It is also worth pointing out that from this perspective the vacuum isn't "nothing" but rather the situation where all quantum fields are in their lowest energy state. These vacuum states of fields have both energy and fluctuations. | 97 |
The two hot leads in a 250 volt electrical circuits are said to be "180° out of phase with each other", but 480v systems are 120° out of phase. How does the 120° phase get turned into 180°? | I recently wired an outlet for a welder that was 250v. From some basic YouTube videos, I understand that industrial applications of electricity often use 480v. If 480v is made in three phases, 120° from each other, how is 250v with exactly opposite phases made for houses? | 17 | It goes back to the transformer feeding the house. They are weird single phase, centred tapped transformers. The primary voltage side of the transformer is fed with a single utility feeder. The secondary side coil is centre tapped, and that centre tap is the neutral. The two legs are connected to top and bottom of the winding, making one +120V and one -120V, or 120V 180 degrees out of phase. | 12 |
[DC] What are some situations in which Flash's Speed Force would *not* be super useful? | It seems like super speed solves everything. But what are some situations where being super duper ultra fast isn't actually helpful? | 151 | Maybe not what you're looking for but the Speedforce can instinctively kick in for the Flash causing everything to seemingly slow down around them. This is usually handy in fights or sneak attacks because it gives Flash time to react before most people are aware anything has happened. Unfortunately for Wally West this ability would always kick in when he talked to his father-in-law, causing 5 minute conversations to feel like they stretched on for hours. | 192 |
[Ed, Edd n' Eddy] Is Ed some kind of super hero? | After watching some old episodes of Ed, Edd n' Eddy, Ed in particular seems to be remarkably powerful for a child.
Some of his feats include:
Lifting a house with little effort,
Suspending his full weight from only his tongue,
Being able to force a large bone through his own head with little damage to himself,
Generating enough static electricity to destroy a house and remain unharmed,
Creating an imaginary friend that is able to interact with the physical world by beating up Eddy,
Forcing his entire body through a knot hole in a door without damaging the door.
So what, can all people in that universe do Ed's feats, or is he some kind of super hero without knowing it?
| 70 | Ed doesn't understand things like "the house is heavy" or "your imaginary friend doesn't exist." Everyone in that universe seems subject more to their own understanding of the world than objective laws of physics. Remember, Sarah scares the shit out of Ed, Edd(who understands physical laws) tends to get injured a lot more, and Plank seems to have a personality of his own. | 99 |
CMV: Religious approaches to thinking (i.e. those that have no real facts and evidence supporting them) have no place in our governments and scientific discussions | So, I grew up in a household that was very religious and as a kid it seemed normal. I was personally lucky enough that despite how religious my parents were, I was still given a lot of freedom to do what I wanted, so it seemed that my parents were a bit more open minded than some others.
As I got older though, (as many do) I started to form different political opinions from my parents. One of the things that helped inform my opinions on things was to look at the numbers and statistics that came as a result of different policies so I could have a more informed view of how different rules and regulations affect the world around us.
In my mind, using studies and experimentation makes absolute sense for evaluating a government’s laws and regulations so we can figure out what works and what doesn’t, especially when it comes to issues that have been very politicized. Issues like gun control in the and systemic racism in the US have a lot of emotional baggage attached to them (and rightly so) and that can make it tough for us to see beyond the brutality of the problems we face. But, with proper data, we can come to pretty solid conclusions as to why we have some of these problems and at the very least take some steps to address them.
So after learning these things, I figured that my parents (who are people that seem to care very much about others) would like to hear about this stuff. But, as soon as I start drilling down to the brass tacks of some of the issues that face America right now, it becomes not about the actual problems and facts but fear-mongering about communism and socialism, that Obama is still running the government from the shadows and that the real problem with the United States is that people are leaving Christianity and the Devil is taking over.
When I point out that there aren’t any politicians (with any real power) who are legitimate advocates for socialism or communism (in the sense that they advocate for an entire change of our economic system), that Obama isn’t in power and there isn’t any proof that he is, and that the United States has the freedom of religion enshrined in our constitution, my parents will say that they know that those things are happening because they SEE it and they FEEL it.
Okay, “where is the proof of what you’re seeing?” I reply.
They say they can’t show it to me because I won’t believe it.
Little old me only believes things that come from reliable sources (i.e. not a random guy on Facebook) where there are facts and evidence that back up whatever claim is being made.
Unfortunately, religious thinking has made it so many people no longer believe that facts and evidence matter at all because they’ve been told that the thing that matters above all those things, is this feeling that they have that comes from a “higher power.”
Now, I hope you’ll take me at my word when I tell you that I have no problem with religions, or anybody who thinks religiously in and of itself. I think there are certain cosmic questions that science is very far away from being able to answer, so religious ideas make sense. In the same way that back in ancient times, we had no explanation for lightning, so it made sense to believe in Zeus. But we do know how lightning works, so people don’t really believe in that anymore.
But, those are not most things. if we take a scientific and methodical approach to most problems, we can find answers and solutions.
Frankly, I think the more that we apply these religious kinds of thinking to aspects of our world that are inherently non-religious like our governments, and our laws, the more that we give the opportunity for unchecked power to rise and take away people’s freedoms.
EDIT: Let me clarify something because people are getting a bit confused. When I say religious logic has no place, I'm referring to 1 thing.
When you decide that something is a problem that needs to be addressed, it should be a real demonstrable problem. i.e. "The United States has a lot of obese people, and this is how we know that's happening." Studies cited, etc. As opposed to, "Trans people are groomers." and there isn't any real evidence to back that up, just feelings.
What I am not referring to is the area of religion that informs your morality or the reason you believe this over that. For example, I have a lot of beliefs that are very egalitarian because my religious upbringing led me to that line of thinking.
But when it came to considering how I put my ideals into practice, To me, religion was no longer suited to that kind of a conversation. Hope that clears things up.
EDIT 2: some people seem to be of the opinion that I am massively misrepresenting religions when I see that they are not backed by facts and evidence. I apologize if that came off to you as rude and callous.
When I refer to the idea that religions don’t have any basis in fact or evidence, I am not referring to things that are generally considered to be supported by facts and evidence, like the existence of Jesus Christ.
However, it is generally understood, and agreed that most of what makes up religious beliefs and the things in holy texts, have no basis in evidence based fact.
If you believe in those things, I have no qualms with you as long as, per the my idea as explained in the main post, that you do not use that same logic that you used to believe in those things that don’t have evidence to support them as you do in the rest of your life, especially as it relates to politics and political discussions.
EDIT 3: Just because some thinkers have been able to come up with some evidence that religions are real doesn’t mean that this evidence stands up to real scientific scrutiny. (Also this isn’t what my post is about. Its about those who won’t even bother to find out that evidence. Most people ignore that stuff entirely.)
I.E. Just because a flat earther believes the Earth is flat and has some evidence (no matter how flawed) to demonstrate their opinion, doesn’t mean it is able to overturn all the evidence that goes against that idea.
EDIT 4: I am making a generalization of religious thought as it applies to the average religious person for the purpose of having a discussion. If you want to argue about that generalization, I’m sorry but I’m not interested.
EDIT 5: So, as a rule, generalizing all religious as incapable of rigorous intellectual thought is not only wrong, but also untrue. Going alongside that, If we have a discussion I will no longer be referring to the issue as an issue of religion but as an issue of religious zealots who are ignoring everything other than their religious views to make up their worldview. I might not reply though because I feel I’ve given deltas to everyone who I felt deserved them, but yeah. | 1,459 | Science can not answer many or most of the questions that politics and governance covers. How can science say anything to the philosophical, moral, and cultural views that are the underpinnings of individuals’ world views? How can you test the hypothesis of individual rights? Religion also does not hold a monopoly on beliefs based on scant evidence and questionable logic, secular beliefs are not immune. | 162 |
[Star Trek TNG] Why are so many high ranking Starfleet officers bad people? | It seems that so much of the time it is the Captain of the Enterprise that has to embody the principles of Starfleet, and the admiralty try to undercut it. How did they get to those positions and, given that they do, how does Starfleet still have these principles?
They hold drumhead trials, lie for ulterior motives and pull rank before attempting to communicate or discuss. They know through reports what the Enterprise has been through successfully, and yet they still make it jump through ridiculous hurdles. | 77 | So the main thing is that the history books and documentaries rarely record the actions of the many, many high ranking Starfleet officers who don't break the rules or didn't make illegal schemes to exploit pre-First Contact worlds.
But yes, there are corrupt people in Starfleet. There's some discussion that while the Federation's ideals are amazing, those whose personalities harken back towards the barbaric 21st century are driven to enter Starfleet and gain power, but aren't prevented from doing so because the rest of Starfleet is too enlightened, some would say naive, to do anything to prevent people who want power for the sake of power from getting it.
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[GENERAL CYBERPUNK] I'm a regular hacker in a regular hi-tech-low-life world. I'm about to be sent back to a parallel world's 1990s, naked. How can I make lots of money? | Learning the basics about the period goes without saying, but memorizing winning lottery numbers is useless: I have no idea what exactly would be different in that world. I think I should use my knowledge of both tech and social engineering. Some of the problems science struggled with are already solved, and solutions might be easy enough to reproduce by memory, since I will have no actual gadgets or code. The same goes for scams — some things only work once, and haven't been done yet in that age. On the other hand, the tech will be really archaic and unfamiliar, some of the stuff I know just can't be implemented yet. Last thing: I don't want to try and replace Gates, Wozniak, Torvalds or another *legal* billionaire — I prefer to stay hidden. So how do I make a shitload of bucks? | 33 | So, you went FROM a time it is doable to become rich trough hacking, to a time when hacking is mostly a hobby that are Limited to a few machines, since there are no global network to take advantage of.
Why not just save a step in the process of whitewashing money, and become a legal millionare?
If management isn't for you, just start working for one of those. People will surely have work for a hotshot programmer with revolutionary methods. | 22 |
How does the Ptolemaic geocentric model explain the concept of solar "years" when it assumes the sun rotates around the earth once per day? | I was reading an old Arabic book written in the 1200s AD and in one section it was comparing the Muslim calendar which is based on lunar years and the "Roman" calendar (as it so named it) which was based on solar years.
So the author said that "the Roman year consists of 365 days which is the time it takes for the sun to cross/rotate the Celestial circle once".
I know the model used during the time of the author is the Ptolemaic one since the same book in the first few chapters explains their concept of how the universe works (clearly based on the Ptolemaic model as he even quotes Ptolemy every now and then), and it states that the night and day cycle occurs because the sun rotates around the earth once every 24 hours.
my confusion is, what is exactly meant by "the sun crossing the celestial circle). in other words, how does the geocentric model explain a year based on the sun's rotation that takes 365 days while at the same time establishing that the sun rotates completely around the earth once every 24 hours? | 23 | The Sun moves against the background of fixed stars. If the Sun goes around the Earth once per day, so do all the fixed stars. Except the fixed stars always stay in formation, while the Sun moves about 1 deg eastward against that background during that day. It takes one year to trace a circle all the way around. That'll be the "Celestial circle" in your source. | 25 |
How did humans figure what the sun is made of? | 141 | When gasses become energized, they release light at a certain wavelength. Similar to how you can use a glass prism to split white light into a rainbow, you can use a glass prism to split light into its individual wavelengths. By comparing the wavelengths of the light from the sun to wavelengths that came off of energized gas that we made on earth, we could identify that the sun was made of hydrogen. | 224 |
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ELI5: Why does the stockmarket exist? | 2,884 | Stocks were invented as a way to share risk. European countries had trading expeditions going to Asia and Americas. These expeditions took months or years and were hugely expensive to fund but when successful they were absurdly profitable. The problem was that a ship could sink or get robbed by pirates, or a number of other problems.
The investors also had to stay solvent while waiting for the ship(s) to return.
At one point some very smart people in Netherlands figured that if they sold "shares" of these expeditions they could get many more people involved as investors, thereby the risk would be shared among a greater number of people/companies.
Once the expedition returned the company was dissolved and the profits, or losses, were divided up according to who owned what percentage of shares. Your reward was directly related to how much you invested.
Over time this mechanism evolved to companies in general, not just companies setup for trading expeditions.
Simply put it's a way to raise capital, across a large number of investors which all shares the risk and reward. | 3,040 |
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ELI5: Why does sperm show up under a blacklight? | 24 | Technically it's not the sperm that is glowing. It's the semen. All organic material, especially organic fluids glow under blacklight. Phosphors are materials that emit visible light under UV radiation.
Organic (based on carbon) material almost always has phosphors present. There are many phosphors including oxides, phosphorous, nitrides, sulfides, and countless others that respond to ultraviolet light. That's what blacklights are. UV-A emitters.
All of the above elements and compounds are present in organic material such as your body. Semen is no exception.
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[ELI5] What part of an explosion causes an EMP? - Does it have to be nuclear or would a large enough explosion do it? | 23 | A nuclear detonation produces a large amout of extremely high energy photons (light) called gamma radiation.
Those gamma photons are powerful enough to rip electrons from a large number of surrounding air molecules in a very small space.
That sudden massive electrical charge imbalance in the upper atmosphere generates a very brief but extremely powerful EMP.
Chemical explosives (i.e. Regular bombs) don't have a gamma component and do not generate any meaningful magnetic interference.
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CMV: I believe the fact that women control 80% of consumer spending in our economy gives them power as a sex. | I believe the fact that women control 80% of consumer spending in our economy gives them power as a sex.
I recently had an exchange with two redditors who essentially claimed that the power dynamic regarding earning and purchasing in married couples/unmarried partners (ones where the male is the breadwinner, as is statistically more likely) is essentially identical to the relationship between a boss and his underlings; the boss makes the money, and tells the lackeys how to spend it. For example, it might be the executive assistant who is "spending" the money picking up a coffee for their boss, but it's a coffee the boss wanted anyways and the fact the assistant is the one swiping the company card at the local Starbucks doesn't mean they have any real power over the transaction. One redditor compared the male partner to a CEO, the other to Bill Gates. I found the comparison absurd (and intended, so far as I could tell, to try to explain away why women controlling the vast majority of consumer spending doesn't grant women any actual consumer power - so I'll be using these examples as reference points throughout this CMV), but while I got some minor downvoting I didn't get any actual replies, prompting this CMV. I'm curious about this topic.
First off, I find equating a run-of-the-mill relationship to a CEO/employee dynamic to be absurd just because there are so few people actually in such a position; there are only [about 2,000,000](https://www.statisticbrain.com/ceo-statistics/) CEOs in the States, accounting for only 0.6% of the population. They're a rare breed indeed, and making broad generalizations that they're all basically operating the same as any man in a married/cohabiting situation seems absurd for that reason alone. Bill Gates even more so for that same reason: most male breadwinners *can't* be acting like one of the richest men in America simply because they're not even remotely close to that financial status, even if they are bringing home the bacon.
Further, the boss/employee relationship is a bad comparison to husband/wife because while the former has a clear chain of command, the latter is a partnership; an employee *might* feel comfortable voicing their opinions as to why a purchase is a bad idea or to suggest other areas of spending, and while the boss *may* choose to listen, they're under no obligation to actually follow advice from their underlings, and in fact can fire their employees for voicing it, and would be quite likely to do so should an employee actually *refuse* to spend money as they're directed to. This is quite unlike the marriage/LTR dynamic, in which both partners at least theoretically have equal say, although I'll argue further down that the wife/female partner (here being compared to an employee) actually has *more* say. If you're comparing a husband/wife financial spending dynamic to a CEO/employee one, but the wife actually is *choosing* how to spend the money rather than being commanded to do so, it's a poor comparison.
This is compounded by sayings like "happy wife, happy life," or "if mama ain't happy ain't nobody happy," or guys sharing that they've been "in the doghouse" or "sleeping on the couch" (often in homes that *they own;*) there's definitely a culture (at least in the West) that the female partner (even if she isn't statistically likely to be the breadwinner) wields *enormous* power when it comes to determining the success/happiness of the relationship. Even if you make seven figures and your wife is little more than a glorified babysitter (who really just has the kids in daycare for most of the day while she attends Zumba and goes on long chat-walks with her buddies) her influence on the status of your marriage is *not* defined by her ability to bring home the bacon, or even her ability clean/cook/look after the kids; it's defined by her being your partner, one who gets at very least an equal (if not disproportionate, given her measured contributions to the partnership) say in how things are going to go. I mean, can you imagine a scenario where you walk by your CEO working at the receptionist desk, and when you ask them why they're there instead of in their corner office with the floor-to-ceiling windows and the mahogany desk they reply "well my secretary was a little upset with some of my business decisions, so she kicked me out of my office, took it over for herself, sent me down here, and I guess I'll just be in the doghouse until she calms down." What?!?! No! Female partners wield *far* more power in any given partner dynamic than any given boss/employee one, much less one between a CEO or a guy like Gates.
[This](https://hbr.org/2009/09/the-female-economy) examination of female spending power (not a standalone one, either) was rather central to my view. It notes that women control 80% of financial spending and, further, that they spend some $7 *trillion* (read: $7,000,000,000,000... lotta zeros, there) more than they make every year. Collectively, women are spending almost 150% of their combined salaries every year. Well, where is that money coming from? Their husbands and male partners. Which again makes the Bill Gates comparison a poor one; if Gates's employees are spending 150% more than they make on things *they* (not Gates) want, and the extra 50% *is Gates's money,* that's not representative of how Gates actually dictates spending to his employees.
The two folks I discussed this with said that the spending women "controlled" was irrelevant and didn't grant women power because the things being purchased were necessities that both partners (and any kids they might have) simply needed to continue living; making sure there is milk in the fridge and the power bill is paid and Junior has shoes that fit doesn't grant you power even if you're spending someone elses money. I think that would be a fair assessment *except* that women get to decide *where* they're buying milk and shoes, and which milk and shoe brands they'll purchase. That fact alone grants them power; in a capitalistic, consumer society like much of the west, the economy fluctuates based on spending decisions. If women collectively/in general prefer shopping at one store over another, one thrives and the other suffers. Even if we're arguing that the only thing women are spending this 80% on are the bare necessities, their ability to chose *where* they shop gives them power; they can literally shut down certain businesses and boost others to the top based on that "where" decision. Unless anyone is arguing that men are not only dictating *what* must be purchased (which isn't the case), unless they're dictating *where* those things must be purchased (which I also find absurdly unlikely), women have power in controlling those decisions.
As for why I don't think it's the case men are even dictating *what* must be purchased, from the [article](https://hbr.org/2009/09/the-female-economy) I cited earlier:
>Women make the decision in the purchases of 94% of home furnishings…92% of vacations…91% of homes… 60% of automobiles…51% of consumer electronics
Those are some big industries. Decor, travel, real estate, automotive, and electronics. Even in the last category, which one might stereotypically expect men to dominate, women have a slight lead in determining not only *where* electronics are purchased, but *what* electronics are purchased. In other areas, like real estate (which has a $158,000,000,000 revenue per year), women control over 90% of it. If controlling over 50-90% of several multi-billion dollar industries (control largely exerted in deciding how your partner's earnings will be spent) isn't power, I don't know what is. And this also refutes the notion that women are only "in control" of keeping milk in the fridge; they might do that, but the "where" part is huge, and they're clearly far more involved (even leading by drastic margins) in non-essential spending decisions.
Further evidence that it isn't just men "bossing" women around in regards to spending is partly anecdotal, partly sourced by the now twice cited article: most homes are distinctly feminine. If it really was the case that men are not only the breadwinners, but also dictating how their earnings are spent, we might expect most homes in America to be multi-room man caves with neon signs on every wall and nothing but beer and steak in the fridge (a bit of a hyperbolic stereotype, but you get my point). But quite to the contrary, most homes are quite feminine. You don't see neon signs, you see pastel colored walls adorned with flowery pictures; you don't have a fridge stocked with red meat and booze, but you do see a lot of embroidered couch cushions. The fact you even know what I mean when I say "man cave" indicates that women generally dominate the household domain; a wife might allow a man a single room, or perhaps the garage, to be styled and furnished as a man would want, but the rest of the house is hers. Indeed, how many couples do you know of where the man has a more extensive wardrobe and shoe collection than the woman? For me it's precisely 0, even knowing a good number of couples where the guy is fairly fashion-obsessed.
This suggests it's not just the essentials that women control the spending over (which in and of itself gives them power) but also the luxury items (which just gives them more power). They not only decide which supermarkets will do well or do poorly, but also which vacation spots and designer shoe stores get all the cash and which ones dont. That's an absurd amount of control over our capitalistic economy we're talking about, and I don't think that's trivial. It's power. In a society dominated by capitalism, capitalism being dominated by women is a big deal when it comes to the power of the sexes.
To CMV:
I'm looking for reasons why women *don't* in fact control 80% (or even just a majority) of consumer decisions; perhaps I read the stats wrong, or there's a contrary study I haven't come across, **OR** I'm looking for some reason why such a stranglehold on the spending economy doesn't grant women any power. A good foil for this might be to ask yourself if a single man (who makes any salary from poor to extremely wealthy) who controls 100% of his spending decisions has any power on the market. If he does, it would seem that if he had a female partner spending 80% of their combined income, she has some power, too. If you don't feel he has any power, I'd love to know why you think that. This is the crux of this CMV: does controlling spending in the market grant you power, and if women control most of it, does that not grant them some power by extension even if they're not directly earning the money being spent?
Or, of course, some reason I haven't thought of yet.
Things that wont CMV:
Despite the long throat clearing regarding CEOs and what I see as women's revered status in society, neither of those things are central to my view. We can discuss them all you like, but just know that no deltas await you down that road, unless of course you can tie them in some intrinsic way to my view and then change that view.
I'm not trying to get into a pissing contest over how much *comparative* power this stranglehold on the economy gives women as opposed to the breadwinning men, I only assert that said stranglehold *does* give women some measure of power. It's possibly less than the breadwinning men, perhaps more, but that's not relevant to this discussion. If you concede that controlling 80% of spending gives them *any* power, my view won't be changed. I want to know how and why what I see as a rather massive amount of influence they wield in the market doesn't grant them any power whatsoever.
I'm also really not trying to get into a pissing contest about which sex holds more power *in general.* I think that a number of good arguments can be made as to why men do, again in general. It's just that this encounter with the two redditors recently showed me that there are people out there who will deny the fact that women have *any* power at all, even in areas where they seemingly dominate the power dynamic, and I'm curious if this view is widespread and valid or if I just stumbled upon some fringe thinkers.
Cheers, and thanks for reading. Ya'll know what to do.
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 18 | Deciding how to spend money on behalf of your family and then going out and spending it is not _power_. It's labor. It's work. It takes time and effort out of your day. And it's another in the long list of household tasks ("invisible labor") that women are simply expected to do disproportionately to men. The fact that women are expected to do this unpaid labor, and indeed actually do this labor more than men do, is evidence of the _disempowerment_ of women.
To make an analogy, suppose that women were expected to cook every day for their families, and did so much more often than men. Do you think this would _empower_ women because they would get to choose what they eat? Or would it disempower women because they were expected to (and actually did) engage in unpaid labor? | 22 |
ELI5: Why is cancer so common in some organs, and so rare in others? | You always hear about breast, skin, lung, and colon cancers for example, but things like brain, pancreatic, and stomach cancers seem to be so much more uncommon. Are some types of cells more susceptible to damage than others, or are some more resilient? | 41 | Usually cells that reproduce quickly or are subject to DNA damage are going to be more likely to become cancerous.
Cancer is when our own cells begin to replicate without stopping, recruiting resources to feed themselves. It all begins with a single cell which accumulates the right combination of mutations to do all that. Mutations occur when there are errors in DNA replication as cells divide or repair themselves, copying themselves slightly incorrectly.
Most mutations don't really cause any problems or noticeable changes, if they don't outright kill the cell. And it isn't just one mutation to cause a cell to be cancerous, it takes quite a few. But if you have trillions of cells all rolling the dice over and over eventually you will end up getting the right (or wrong) combination.
Cells that replicate more frequently naturally are rolling that dice more often. Carcinogens and things like UV light cause more damage to DNA which needs repairing, again another roll of the dice. This is why someone who smokes is more likely to develop lung cancer but isn't guaranteed, they are making many more rolls but may just never get the combination. Similarly someone who cares for themselves perfectly may get unlucky and develop cancer anyway. | 74 |
CMV:The Democrats should filibuster any Supreme Court nominee that President Trump puts forward. | Hello there, I'm a very progressive individual who works in the human services field. I found the Senate's decision to not even given Merrick Garland a hearing absolutely awful and inappropriate. He was probably the most qualified, even moderate, SCOTUS nominee that Obama could have picked. And for McConnell to say it should be up to the people in the next election to decide who gets put on SCOTUS does not make sense with the constitution. In addition, presidential elections are not people electing presidents but electors. I digress though, but want to make clear that I believe in no fashion that the "people" will ever have a say in who the SCOTUS is. Nor should we. I'm a social worker, I don't know the intricacies of constitutional law.
Now, whoever Trump puts forward will be much more conservative. My understanding is that the SCOTUS should be bipartisan and uphold the laws- not serve as a political ideology. By McConnell delaying Obama's simply because he was a different party but rushing to get Trump's put forward and chastising Democrats is incredibly hypocritical. It takes away the purpose of nominating a SCOTUS, in my opinion. What the position is supposed to be is not what it is and until that can be clarified, I think the Democrats have every right to filibuster. I don't know if we'd get that clarification under this administration, but the SCOTUS should not be some sort of political volleyball lobbed back and forth. It should be held to the same standards, regardless of the party of the POTUS. By caving in and appointing a SCOTUS, the Democratic party is allowing the Republican party to continue to be hypocritical.
I understand that it might seem detrimental and blocking off a function of government, but the Republicans literally have shut down the federal government in the past over their concerns. Why shouldn't the Democrats do the same? I know that two wrongs don't make a right, but rolling over and accepting is not the answer (at least to me).
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> *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 157 | Whichever person Trump nominates tonight will be replacing Antonin Scalia, who was one of the most conservative members of the Supreme Court. Trump can nominate the most conservative person possible, and it won't change the balance of the court compared to what it was before Scalia died.
If the Democrats filibuster or otherwise put up too big a fight on this nomination, the Republicans in the Senate can change the rules to eliminate the fillibuster as it relates to Supreme Court nominees. That would prevent the Democrats from fillibustering future appointees, leaving them with basically zero power to stop them.
If Trump gets to make a second nomination, it will almost certainly be because Ginsburg or Kennedy die/retire. A strong conservative replacing them would have a profound impact on the makeup of the court for a long time into the future.
Therefore, the Democrats would be much better off if they put up a vigorous fight against whoever Trump nominates tonight, but don't fillubuster or otherwise hamper the nominee too much, so that they will still have the fillibuster available to them on the much-higher-stakes second court nominee. | 76 |
I read that horses evolved on the great plains of America and then traveled over the land bridge to Asia. that they somehow died out in the Americas and were later re-introduced with the travels of Europeans. Why did they die out in the Americas and thrive in Asia? | 56 | Horse ancestors originated in North America tens of millions ago, and likely migrated to Asia, then Europe around 10-20 million years ago. Around 12,000 years ago, as the climate changed in North America due to the ending of the ice ages, and humans migrated here, the horses died out and the remnants hunted to extinction. The climate in Asia and Europe remained favorable for horses to live, so they survived there.
Modern horses thrive in plains, but remember that pre-historic North America looked quite differently than it does today. Most of what we think of as the "great plains" was covered in vast forests and dense growth. The plains that the horses had lived on disappeared with the glaciers retreating. | 14 |
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[LOTR Movies] Is the prologue a dramatization, or did Sauron actually try to reach for Isildur instead of just killing him? | If the latter, why?
My headcanon has been that it is the former, told in the way of an epic myth or legend where details aren't as important as the larger story (Galadriel narrating that way helps too). It would also explain things like how Bilbo finding the ring only looks passably similar to the 'real' version. | 15 | Sauron had just killed his two greatest enemies in Middle-Earth - Elendil lay broken on the ground, and Gil-Galad was literally burned to death from the heat of Sauron's hand. Gil-Galad's death was mentioned in the books and was planned for the films, but was eventually left out.
Odds are that in his moment of triumph, Sauron was riding a high and wanted to make a show of killing the greatest Man still standing on the battlefield - probably intending to lift Isildur up and burn him to death as well for all to see, demoralizing the Free Peoples and emboldening his army of orcs. He would have thought him self nearly all-powerful in that moment, which is a great weakness shared by the evil powers in Middle-Earth - one that often leads to their downfall. His greatest servant, the Witch-King, would later fall victim to that same prideful thinking, believing that he could not be slain. | 27 |
How do you answer the question "Why should we give you this scholarship?" without sounding pompous? | I'm currently applying for PhD funding, and one of the sections asks for 500 words on why you deserve it, and I can't help but hate myself for every line I write for it.
Do you have any tips for making yourself sound enthusiastic and accomplished without coming across as arrogant?
| 60 | You sound afflicted with a twinge of imposter syndrome colored by a dash of the humbles. But you have to somewhat shamelessly sell your work in the academic world because if you don't, who will?
Conference abstracts, grant proposals, and fellowship applications should have a smattering of the (realistically) grandiose.
So tell them what you are actually planning *to do* with that money. Be specific not only in terms of the what you expect to come out of the work they can fund (presentations, publications, and the like), but also why that work will be an important (this is the grandiose part) contribution to the field in general and the institution in particular.
| 45 |
CMV: People and businesses worried about losing their jobs in the oil industry can and should start working in clean or renewable energy. | Maybe I am a little ignorant here, but I see plenty of arguments that shutting down pipelines (Biden executive order, for example) will destroy the jobs and livelihood of people in Canada and the USA. What I don't understand is why these people, who have to know that their employment is teetering as the globe continues its transition to clean energy, don't just simply transition over to working in clean energy.
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Worked on the oil field? Sweet, you can help in the construction of turbines and solar panels. Delivery? Well, the infrastructure isn't going to magically appear. The way I see it, every job that is lost will inevitably be replaced by a clean energy job, and it is wholly possible it can be transitional for the people that would otherwise be without a career. | 35 | Those jobs will not be in the same locations, require the same skills, pay the same, and likely will not be proportionate in number.
And the globe isn't transitioning to clean energy at all, fossil fuel production is not declining nor predicted to decline in any meaningful way. | 25 |
When they talk about mutations “escaping” vaccine protection, is it a sliding scale or all-or-nothing? | I kept hearing that this Omicron variant has the potential to escape vaccine protection, and the word escape to me implies completely avoid it. Is that what escape means in this context, or does escape mean that it reduces but doesn’t nullify the protection of vaccines?/r/ | 161 | Definitely sliding scale. Those mutations make it more difficult for the bodys defense to recognize it as a threat, but the body will still react.
A vaccine make it easier for the defense to recognize the threat and attack the virus early before it gets a foothold. | 138 |
ELI5: Austrian Economics in the context of fiscal policy | So, I've read some former explanations, and they all seem to deal with the monetary policy aspects of inflation and interest rates. I was just wondering if someone could tell me if/how Austrian Economics handles the fiscal policy problems of taxing and spending. And if you want to explain to me just how the Austrian School works, that'd be great also, the other explanations I found seemed to explain it like I'm six or seven... | 24 | First, the Austrian view of taxing is to do it as little as possible. People are best off when their peaceful trades are interrupted by government as little as possible. Taxes interrupt people who are trading things for money and makes it harder for everyone to get what they want.
With regard to spending, that should also be done as little as possible. Government is not very good at spending wisely because it never really has to worry about running out of money. This is because none of the money the government spends ever actually belonged to the government. It takes other people's money and then spends that. How many candy bars would you buy if you had a dollar in your pocket you got for doing chores? How many candy bars would you buy if you took Dad's wallet and didn't have to give it back? | 18 |
[DC]Has any comic discussed what will happen when Billy Batson grows up? Will Shazam never age even when Billy grows? Or is Batson's growth just stunted in general? | 20 | It appears that while Billy Batson will continue to age and get older, his transformed form will stay the same age. There's one future where Billy Batson ages into being a dead ringer for Captain Marvel, and manages to convince people that he is transformed when he isn't. | 48 |
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ELI5 Why people don't get sick from using the same toothbrush everyday without disinfecting it? | If I spit on something every day and then kept putting it in my mouth shouldn't I get sick? | 121 | The bacteria that are inside of you will still be the same bacteria that left you (toothbrush) and go back inside you (brushing teeth) again. It stands to reason that if they don't make you sick while they were inside you before, they shouldn't make you sick when they go back inside of you again.
Obviously, the same isn't true if you're using someone else's toothbrush. | 99 |
[Superman] Using cold breath, If superman moved quite a distance from earth and blew towards it, could he single handedly slow down global warming? | 46 | > The ice breath is simply due to Superman's increased strength/durability. He can compress great quantities of air in his lungs and expel them as either incredibly powerful blasts of wind or supercooled condensed air.
*Credit /u/CycloneSwift*
For this to work, Superman is going to have to take a *BIG* breath of air from *somewhere*, and blow it onto the planet to cool it down.
The main reason why this wouldn't work, is because the earth is a mostly self-contained system. If you just compresses a bunch of air and then re-releases it into the atmosphere, you might create a localized cold-spike, but that isn't going to be able to take 'heat' out of the system.
In addition, 'Global Warming' is a mischaracterization of the situation. Having a gigantic-air-conditioner isn't sufficient to mitigate climate change. | 52 |
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How the hell does Netflix manage to absolutely block all screenshots (both using printscreen and snipping tool) | I thought it wasn't possible for a browser to retrieve this kind of information from the host (that is, that the host is using an application like Snipping Tool). Isn't that a pretty big security violation if it is possible? | 78 | If you have hardware acceleration on in the browser, it is likely that your video is being decoded with your processor or video card's built-in DRM (Intel Insider, for example), via some technology like HDCP. This let's the CPU/GPU output video to the framebuffer directly after the point the screenshot tool would be able to catch it.
I get around this (when streaming via Discord, for example) by just turning off hardware acceleration in the browser. | 88 |
[DC] How does the Flash not get bored when performing complex/tedious tasks at super speed? | How does the Flash not get bored when performing complex/tedious tasks at super speed?
For example if he had to count every coin on the ground in a major city, it would take him milliseconds from our perspective but how would it appear to him from his perspective with heightened senses? | 28 | An occasionally cited secondary power is that Barry and Wally have a subconsciously and consciously regulated perception of time, and they can go into a trance state of sorts when doing tedious things that wouldn't be considered mentally taxing. | 32 |
[Black Mirror] Why would sex be coded into a street fighter-esque game? | Seriously though, do age-rating bodies no longer exist? If they do, does this age-rate the game as 18+, as it is essentially a form of porngraphy? Why would you put sex in when it blocks out millions of potential buyers who are under the age of consent? | 578 | A pretty fundamental aspect of modern game development is asset re-use. Presumably at some point, a feature-complete avatar system was created and distributed for developers to use in their VR experiences. (consistency is important for immersion, imagine if your hands "felt" different in every game) Each developer extends said template for their own uses, adding features like "falcon punch" on top of the existing ones. As for why this template can replicate a sexual experience, well, why not?
As for age limitations, we don't know if kids are even allowed to use the VR hardware, so that may not be an issue. Alternatively, there could simply be limitations put on children's avatars. This is a good workaround for the age-rating/blocking you brought up. Children simply aren't physically capable of the same things as adults in virtual spaces. (Think Ken doll anatomy) | 458 |
CMV: The foreign policy of the United States encourages unfriendly dictators to pursue nuclear armament as fast as possible if it's feasible and to never give up nuclear weapons under any circumstances. | The United States has a long history of invading/attempting to overthrow the governments of and meddling in the affairs of foreign countries unfriendly to them. This behavior is a consistent trend over it's history, and one that has become more prominent since it's rise as a global superpower. Due to it's desire to assert itself as a global superpower and curtail unfriendly interests, it either creates or overthrows dictators who are unfriendly to it's interests.
Consequently, any dictator who is unable to partner with the United States for geopolitical or ideological reasons is essentially forced to pursue nuclear weapons research as fast as possible, such as Iran. Any trust in the US to not engage in hostile action if not nuclear armed is completely null, given the US's history of overthrowing countries that oppose them. Consequently, if a dictator wants to remain in power he has to make the risk of a nuclear exchange a possible one if he is invaded or overthrown violently. Any expectation of honesty and not being at risk of foreign intervention once research into nuclear weaponry is ceased or limited is a bullshit paper agreement and both sides know it.
Essentially, in steps
1) The US has a history of regime change, and overthrowing both democratic and undemocratic governments that oppose their interests.
2) Any claims from the US to the contrary are either lies or justifications and therefore any promises they that they will not do so cannot be trusted.
3) Dictators wish to hold onto their power, and are afraid of being overthrown, either by military intervention or backed coup.
4) The United States has overwhelming conventional military power, and has a history of effectively destabilising other governments internally.
5) If a dictator wishes to prevent either from happening to their regime, they must pursue nuclear weapons to either 1) Make a conflict nuclear instead of non-conventional, making the US less likely to start one 2) Increase the risk of a nuclear launch/detonation in the event their government is destabilised. | 194 | That’s not enough to get the US coming after you. Take for example: Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan’s an authoritarian dictatorship, its closest allies include Iran and Russia, it’s got a disastrous human rights record, gives Muslims preferential treatment over other religious groups, and it’s even rich in oil and gas. Basically it’s geopolitical and ideological opposite of the US with 0 nuclear weapons.
So how are US-Turkmenistan relations? Fine. They cooperate on normal government stuff like regional security programs, trade, and environmental efforts. They’re not besties but they’re not going to war.
The problem for most dictators is they need an evil other to demonize, and the best way to do this is to use a group the general public’s already suspicious of. Like the US. And then once you’ve created a race of demons that’s the source of all evil in the world, why aren’t you using nukes to destroy them? You’ve got to escalate to cover up your exaggerations. | 83 |
ELI5: What exactly are skin tags and why do they appear on certain people more than others? | Are they like moles, or warts? Or something else entirely? | 716 | Sometimes a cell can't control how fast it divides. The result is a tumor, or just a bunch of cells where they shouldn't be. This is what a skin tag is, but they are not usually dangerous.
The skin in general tend to get these a lot but heavy use or dry areas get them even more often. Genetics and certain diseases like HPV can increase their number.
If you are worried about new or fast growing skin tags, see a doctor. | 339 |
ELI5: Why were the European Colonists not ravaged by American disease unlike the Native Americans who were ravaged by European/African disease? | 1,569 | There's a great CGPGrey video on this on YouTube. Its called Americapox or something.
I think it largely states that it was due to the americas not having domesticated animals which humans stay in prolonged contact with (in densely populated areas like cities), and that most dangerous diseases spread from animals to humans. | 1,368 |
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[Joker-2019][Spoilers] Question about Thomas Wayne | Was he really Fleck’s father? Did he plant evidence that Fleck was adopted? Also, how much of Penny’s story was true? | 29 | Thomas Wayne in most incarnations is a kind man who genuinely wanted to help Gotham. A lot of how he appears in Joker is due to Arthur being an unreliable narrator and only seeing him from speeches where he misunderstood what happened in the subway murder (Thomas had no idea it was self defense) and his mother's twisted view of who Thomas Wayne was to her. Penny probably had a mild flirtation with Wayne while in his employ and just blew it up in her head. "Love your Smile" is a bit flirty but nothing out of line for a boss to put on the back of a photograph especially in the 1970s. | 44 |
ELI5: Why are dentists, optometrists, etc. not part of the "standard" medical community? In other words, why doesn't all insurance cover vision/dental? | I know there is a political and historical answer to this, but I don't know what it is. What I do know is that doctors are saying tooth health is related to heart health, and while perhaps teeth are just cosmetic now that we have grocery stores, blenders, and Thick-it, living with no teeth isn't exactly normal or healthy. Same thing goes for glasses and contacts--why the heck do we not put all health-care providers in the same bracket? I really don't know. I'm sure the answer is money, but I'd like to know the story. Thanks Reddit! | 74 | Great question! The primary answer is money - if these services were covered, health insurance would cost (significantly) more.
Secondary, there are politics involved. For a multitude of reasons, dentistry and medicine developed as parallel fields. As such, dentistry is treated as a separate and unique entity from medicine, with its own regulation bodies and schooling.
A (contentious) argument might be made that these aren't quite as "medically necessary" - many people can get by without dental checkups and fillings for years with no ill-effects, whereas cancer treatment or management of heart failure has an immediate and recognizable impact on your health. The cardiac risk arising from poor dental health is itself a controversial topic.
Nonetheless the bottom line comes down to money - these are very expensive services (dentistry especially) and in many cases the money simply isn't there. | 22 |
[Naruto] Is there any difference between "real" Naruto and his shadow clones? | Does it matter which of his versions is the last one standing when all others are dispelled (can he dispell his "original" body)? Is the real Naruto stronger than the others? Is there any benefit to attacking the real Naruto? | 16 | The shadow clones ultimately are still just copies made of chakra. Even the strongest most realistic one is just a portion of his chakra. Nothing physical, no organs or anything like that.
No he can't dispel his original body, through quick movements and distractions he can switch with the clone though. That's basically what the technique is where they replace themselves with a log or something. | 19 |
ELI5: When you get a "refurbished like new" phone as a warranty replacement from your carrier, where did it come from and what did they actually do to refurbish it? | I'll give you the tl;dr:
My 3 month old Samsung Galaxy s5 broke and the service representative determined it was a no fault hardware failure. They are sending me a "refurbished like new" phone.
.....I'm wondering....since the S5 has only been out since April, why would they have a reliable supply of refurbished phones already?
What do they do to refurbish them? Am I going to be getting someone else's problems, or are the refurbished phones just as good as new ones? | 26 | In most jurisdictions, it's illegal to sell a product as 'new' once someone has purchased it and opened the box, even if they immediately returned the product right afterward.
Many of these 'refurbished' phones are just open box purchases that were returned for whatever reason, so they are sold as 'refurbished' at discounted rates even though they are virtually new and unused.
Sometimes refurbished actually involves fixing a damaged or heavily used unit (e.g. by repairing a broken screen or a faulty battery, replacing the outer casing etc.) to bring the device up to a like-new condition.
Items which are certified refurbished usually come with a warranty just like the purchase of a new product and appear to be in new or almost new condition.
The only problem with refurbished items is that there may potentially be a hidden fault (which has not been identified/fixed) that caused the previous owner to return the phone in the first place. So you may be unknowingly getting a phone that already has some sort of hardware problem that's potentially a ticking time-bomb. | 23 |
ELI5: What does "sin", "cos", and "tan" actually do to the calculation? | I've always had a hard time understanding trigonometry because I like to be visual with my mathematics.
Thanks | 37 | Imagine a circle (called a Unit Circle). From the middle of the circle, draw a straight line to the circle. Let's say the line is 60 degrees above the x-axis.
So where does the line hit the circle? (What are its coordinates that is.) If you want to find how high the intersection is, use sin. If you want to find how far to the right the intersection is, use cos. Tan is the y-coordinate divided by the x-coordinate, but hopefully someone else can expand on that.
So if we use the 60 degree example, the intersection happens at (.5, .87) So the sin is .87 and the cos is 1/2. | 31 |
ELI5 how something that seems as insignificant as splitting an atom can create such a large, destructive explosion | 31 | Splitting a single atom releases a very small amount of energy. But crucially if you use the right kind of atoms (such as certain forms of uranium), splitting one atom will cause all the other uranium atoms nearby to also get split. So in an extremely short period of time you will have many hundreds of billions of atoms each releasing a tiny amount of energy. This is the atomic chain reaction which causes a nuclear explosion. | 29 |
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CMV: the only reason anyone uses Windows is because it's compatible with all the other stuff made for Windows, not because Windows itself has any merit. | Title says it all: Windows is, at best, adequate. it's only useful as a platform for other people's better software, which was only made for Windows because everyone uses Windows. Windows (in my experience, particularly Windows 10) is full of glitches like broken updates and broken start buttons. The permissions system is terrible and hamfisted, and the whole thing suffers from the unfortunate condition of being kludged together from an operating system originally written in 1985 when "Computer Security" meant putting your 5 and 1/4 inch floppies in a safe.
edit: holy crap, this blew up a bit. lots of good discussion and honestly a lot of it's beyond my ken. I can't say my view is really changed, but you've at least prompted me to do some more of my own research on the topic.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 672 | You can make this argument about any number of things. Is there a clearly superior alternative? What would the cost to switch be?
These questions can be asked for: driving on a certain side of the road, the language you speak, what measuring units you use.....
See part of Windows appeal is it's universality. | 189 |
Would it be possible to link a telescope on Earth with one on Mars to see farther and more clearly the same way that telescopes in different locations on Earth can be linked? | 49 | Yes, but there's a lot of things that make it tricky.
Firstly, you need to know the distance between telescopes down to a precision that scales with wavelength. So if you're doing radio frequencies, you need to know the distance down to like 10s of cm or tighter. That's doable even even across the entire diameter of Earth if you're careful, but from Earth to Mars it gets tricky, especially as the distance is changing over time (this makes combining the signals a lot more complicated as well!) For visible light we're talking like 100s of nanometres, which is doable on-site for telescopes physically next to each other, but is tricky to do across the Earth, let alone from Earth to Mars.
Secondly, you need to combine the signals somehow. For low frequencies, you get data slow enough you can save it to disk and combine the signals digitally. But even with all our modern infrastructure, this can be too much data to send through the internet. For the Event Horizon Telescope, they literally shipped the hard drives around the world to combine the data, because at that scale it's the most efficient and least error-prone way to do it ("Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway"). So getting that much data from Mars to Earth is a genuine problem. It's even worse in optical and infrared wavelengths, because the frequency is so high that it's just not practical to save that much data, so instead we physically combine the actual beams of light, which isn't really doable beyond telescopes on a single site.
Finally, resolution isn't everything. We actually have ground-based infrared interferometers with much higher resolution than the James Webb Space Telescope. Having a big collecting area is also really important, as that gives you high sensitivity. Also, interferometers only give you resolution in the direction between the telescopes. You'd get very high resolution along the Earth-Mars axis, but low resolution at right-angles to that. Basically, each "pixel" would be extremely long and thin - basically you're getting a high-resolution 1D image of some object (although as Mars and Earth move relative to each other, you could build up a proper 2D image over time). | 59 |
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[Star Wars] Do darkside force users also say, "May the force be with you." Or do they have their own thing? | 550 | "May the force serve you well." - Common one from Lana Beniko.
Edit: Adding some details. The Sith seek to enslave the force, treat it like a servant. The Jedi try to harmonize with the force and be one with it. Different philosophies. | 632 |
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[Pirates of the Caribbean] At the end of Dead Men Tell No Tales, Poseidon's Trident has been destroyed and thus every curse on the sea broken, how can Davy Jones actually be back? (According to the end credit scene) | So at the end of POTC 5, every curse in the sea has been broken and Will is finally freed from the Flying Dutchman and returns to Elizabeth.
In the epilogue, we see Will having a nightmare where Davy Jones walks into his house while he sleeps with Elizabeth. He wakes up, scared, realizes it was just a dream and goes back to sleep. The camera pans down and we see barnacles on the floor, indicating that the it maybe wasn't a dream.
Now, as a thought experiment, how can Davy Jones plausibly be back? What part of "breaking every curse on the sea" revives him? And if every curse is broken, why would he still be a fish monster and not human?
I know the easy answer is bad writing, that it's just a stinger they threw in there to entice fans. But what would be an in-universe explanation? | 23 | Potentially every curse being broken means every curse is rewound to a point before it was enacted. So Davy Jones never enacted the curse that allowed him to cut his heart out and place it in the Dead Man's Chest, thus bringing him back to life.
This therefore would mean that he is back to being human though. So therefore the lobster claw would have just have had to have been a dream, and walking out of the sea can bring water and barnacles with you even in human form.
Alternatively, maybe Davy Jones transforming into a non-human form isn't considered a curse; it was just a normal effect of becoming one with the sea so effectively. In this scenario, either he survived his heart being stabbed, or his heart being stabbed allowing him to die was considered a curse, and with that curse broken he was able to return to life.
One other possibility is that the dream was way more metaphorical than it appears. That despite Will believing he is free of the Flying Dutchman, there is actually something that still draws him to it (perhaps the fact that someone needs to ferry souls to the afterlife still). Thus Will may be sleepwalking and still unknowingly piloting the Flying Dutchman in his sleep, and his subconscious envisions this as Davy Jones returning to claim him. | 16 |
[War of the Worlds] How did The Martian Invasion affect the 20th century? | In 1898, ships from Mars carrying war machines and an invasion cadre landed in England and killed thousands of people before succumbing to bacterial infection and viral spread.
How did history unfold afterwards? | 18 | Well, there have been numerous interpretations across various universes, so you've got your pick.
* **Global Dispatches**: tells us how several politicians, writers, and elder statesmen of the era were affected by the invasion. Teddy Roosevelt seems to have published a book on how to hunt the big buggers. The Chinese take advantage of Europe's general pandemonium to shake off their colonial yoke some fifty years early. Jules Verne is traumatized in the destruction of Paris; for Picasso, it's business as usual; and a young Howard Philip Lovecraft has disturbing dreams in which the Martians call him one of their own trapped in a human body.
* **Famous Monsters**: decades later the Martians have another attempt at global conquest after they annex the inhabited parts of the moon, in a conflict known as the second War of the Worlds (or Worlds War II, if you will). However, by this point there are some defectors and refugees from the Martian Reich, including one or two famous actors
* **The Massacre of Mankind**: by the 1920s, Germany has begun some aggressive expansion when one of their scientists, some dickweed named Einstein, figures out how to reverse engineer Martian tech to cheaply and effectively mass produce aluminum.
* **Scarlet Traces**: suggests that the British government puzzled out the secrets of space travel from scraps after the invasion and is on their way to exploring the solar system by the 1930s, putting them head and shoulders above other global superpowers.
* **Killraven** over in the Marvel Universe leads a resistance against Martians who've actually returned and successfully conquered the planet. | 23 |
ELI5: What makes Swiss bank accounts special? | I hear them mentioned all the time in movies about embezzlement and corporate corruption. What makes them easier to use for that? | 63 | Swiss banks rarely disclose information to foreign governments.
So the IRS rolls up all 'we think this guy is evading taxes tell us how much money he has in your bank.'
To which the swiss bank will reply 'lol nope' | 82 |
[MOD POST] Celebrating 100k subscribers and #1 subreddit for comment length and #3 subreddit for reading level | **This is Mod post 42. You can read the previous Mod Post by clicking [here](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1sxuec/mod_post_cmvs_best_of_2013/), or by visiting the [Mod Post Archive](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/modpostarchive) in our wiki.**
***
10 months ago, /r/changemyview was created as a place for people to discuss their viewpoints and participate in discussion with the purpose of helping each other become more open-minded and to see new perspectives.
Hundreds (thousands?) of deltas later, /r/changemyview has reached **100,000 subscribing open minds!**
http://i.imgur.com/UAoFVW1.png
In addition, statistical analysis[1][2] reveals that we are the **#1** subreddit for comment length by average number of words per comment and the **#3** subreddit for highest [Flesch-Kincaid reading level](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_tests).
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Let's take this opportunity to *celebrate*! Also, feel free to discuss meta issues about /r/changemyview or any suggestions you might have pertaining to the subreddit!
For example, here are some things to potentially discuss in this thread:
* Should we be more zealous about removing topics that have already been posted recently, and how recently? EG: "I think WidgetCorp is bad" followed a few hours later by "I don't see what's so bad about WidgetCorp". Should we make the window longer than 24 hours? Should it include contrary positions such as "I think WidgetCorp is great"?
* What does everyone think of the occasional "CMV of the day" stickies? Should we have more "CMV of the Day" that get stickied to the top of CMV's front page? How should these be selected?
* What rules, if any, would you want added, changed, or removed?
As with other non-submission posts, most of the usual subreddit rules are relaxed so feel free to take the opportunity to get those Rule 5 violations out of your system!
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[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/1qyvlp/update_is_there_a_method_to_figure_out_which/
[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/1scy8c/some_analysis_of_15_million_reddit_comments/
| 419 | I do find it interesting that we have introduced a novel form of debate, in which rather than trying to defeat a person who has an opposing view, we instead sincerely invite someone to change our opinions. So rather than trying to see who is the best debater, we want to better understand the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. And that is a healthier way to debate. | 93 |
How does orbital resonance really work? What causes them and why are some unstable? | 18 | Lets take, for example, the Kirkwood gaps in the asteroid belt:
For asteroids in the asteroid belt, the biggest influence on them by far is the force of gravity from the sun. There is, however, a very minor effect from the gravity of Jupiter. Because force is proportional to the inverse square of distance, we can model the effect of Jupiters gravity as a tiny nudge that occurs when the asteroid and Jupiter are at their closest.
If there is no orbital resonance, this kick always occurs at different points in the asteroids orbit, so the tiny kicks do almost nothing. If the asteroid is in orbital resonance with Jupiter, then those kicks occur at the same spot in its orbit each time, and can, over the course of a few million years, amount to a huge disturbance, resolving itself when the asteroids orbit is either sufficiently perturbed so that it leaves the resonance, or it hits something, or it is flung out of the solar system.
However, not all orbital resonances are unstable. Sometimes, the regular boost is such that it will act to oppose deviation from the resonance. Some examples are Jupiters moons Io, Europa, and Ganymede are in a 1:2:4 orbital resonance, and Neptune and Pluto are in a 2:3 orbital resonance. Arguably, the stability of the Lagrange points could be called 1:1 orbital resonances, but that is kind of the is-a-hotdog-a-sandwitch of orbital motion. | 14 |
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[X-Men] If (movie) Logan would've had his adamantium skeleton removed by, say, magic from Dr. Strange, at nearly 200 years of age, would his healing factor have been able to kick back in? | In theory, would he then have lived longer and not sick by the end of his last outing? | 546 | Yes. If you could totally remove him from the adamantium poisoning and the cure which was diminishing his abilities, his natural healing factor would have brought him back to his usual youth and vigor.
EDIT: Maybe not. u/FallOutFan01 has an explanation that says the damage caused by the cure may have been permanent. | 505 |
CMV: Being profiled by police is not exclusive to racial minorites. | You often hear how people in minority communities are subject to profiling by police and that white people don't have too deal with that. I would like to object to that notion.
When I was younger, (I'm now 30) I would be pulled over by police multiple times every month. This would be in different counties and different towns by multiple different departments. I only received warnings until my first speeding ticket at the age of 24. Also I drive about 25,000 miles a year due to work, so it's not like I didn't have a lot of opportunity to speed and get tickets. The reason given on why I received a ticket and not a warning was because I had received a warning two weeks prior.
Throughout my twenties, I had been pulled over more times than I could count, I have been questioned over having Advil in my car, been pulled over for having my third brakelight out by an officer who had only one headlight working and been questioned on where I was going so many times I can't even remember. It got to a point where if a police car was behind me, I assumed I was going to be pulled over (and I was usually correct)
Eventually, it just kinda stopped. I don't know why or how, but it did. I got one more speeding ticket two years ago, but both times I went to court and the fines were taken away. I thought it was my car at first, because I had a non stock exhaust, but I got a different car that was a completely stock Honda Civic and still got pulled over just as much. My current Impreza is modified and the only time I was pulled over in it was the previously mentioned ticket two years ago when it was still unmodified.
One thing I want to point out is that in all these events, I never had any problems with the individual officers themselves. I treated them with respect, regardless of my feelings on the situation. If I was rude or belligerent, I imagine the circumstances may have been different. I have never had any kind of criminal record with law enforcement and the only thing I have ever had is these two speeding tickets.
I don't want anyone to think that I am disparaging minorities or calling me racist it anything like that. I just wanted to share the experiences caused me to form this opinion.
Thank you
Edit: Everybody keeps saying the difference is that racial profiling is what minorities are referring to. Most of my stops by police happened at night so they couldn't even see my race and the car I drive during most of this was registered to my dad and not me, so even if they looked up who it was registered to, it would have no bearing on the color or my skin. | 23 | When people talk about racial minorities being profiled and targeted by police, they’re not suggesting that white people don’t get pulled over. Just that white people don’t get racially profiled and pulled over for being white. | 31 |
I believe that homosexuality is a sin, but that they deserve the same rights and respect as everyone else. I don't think that makes me hateful. CMV. | I believe for religious reasons that homosexuality is a sin. I also believe they should be treated with the same rights and respect as every other person. A lot of people criticize my view that homosexuality is a sin and try to label me as hateful. I don't see it that way. I'm no better than a homosexual because we are both sinners. I think looking at someone lustfully is sin, but I don't believe that should be outlawed either. I don't see why I (or anyone) can't label homosexuality as a sin without being labeled as hateful. I'm not asking you to change my view on homosexuality's sinfulness, though you can try, but change my view on why I can't call it sinful, yet still be all for gay rights and STILL be a hateful bigot.
Edit: grammar
Edit 2: hey thanks y'all for all the responses. This is why I love reedit. It gets me out of the conservative echo chamber that is Texas to hear other points of view. I love talking to people who are very different than me and being able to have an intelligent discussion. This is one of my first posts (long time lurker) so I hope I didn't do anything wrong! | 77 | Telling someone that the way they love another person is sinful is hateful. The term sin implies choice. Sin is a thing to be abstained from. You're telling someone that the way they love and feel sexually attracted to is such a deplorable act that God cannot look at them and that it's so bad Jesus had to be tortured and executed on a cross to make up for their choice.
That's pretty hateful. | 87 |
CMV: The US military should not reinvade Afghanistan, nor get involved in a new Middle East conflict. | So I know that this is a popular view on reddit. My friend and I got into an argument earlier, and he didn't convince me of his point. So I'm coming here to see if there's a more rational argument.
To be blunt: the US was so scared of communism in the 80's that they funded Islamist extremists to repel the Soviets from Afghanistan. These extremists turned into Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and whatever other groups. The US caused the current problem in Afghanistan. and then we go for 20 years, do some good, some bad (drone strikes), and then Biden pulls out like an idiot, leaving our equipment, American civilians, and our Afghan comrades that helped us fight to fend for themselves. We needed to leave, but absolute horrible execution by the Biden administration. To round out this point: The US created the Taliban as it is today, as well as Al Qaeda. Our interference caused the current suffering that the Afghan people experienced for four-five years '96-'01, and now are experiencing again. The US lost the afghan conflict. The enemy that we went to destroy is now in control of the country, and we don't have a fighting force there anymore.
We just lost 13 US service people in a suicide bombing in Kabul carried out by IS-K. Biden drone striked one of their hideouts in retaliation. I reason that this was a decent response, because the idea of invading again is absolutely absurd to me. If someone disagrees with this, I will elaborate more. But drone strikes, are mostly bad. We absolutely do not know who all drone strikes kill, it doesn't matter what civilian deaths are reported. There are countless more that died than what our military reported. For all we know, that IS-K compound was a family compound of 30 people, and 10 of them were IS-K. Drone strikes create more extremists.
And just foreign conflicts in general. Has the US ever succeeded against a guerilla force? I don't think so. Even in general, besides Korea and maybe Syria and Libya, I don't think the US has helped in recent times when getting involved in a foreign conflict. Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, all ended not in the way the US wanted. So tax dollars, resources, and American lives all lost for nothing. Not to mention the innocent natives that lost their lives.
Getting involved in the Middle East is not for revenge, honor or to help a country. Like we invaded Iraq because of 9/11, but we're allies with the Saudis even though they funded a majority (I think a majority) of the 9/11 highjackers, even when they were in the US.
All in all, joining to the military because you think you're going to be a savior in a foreign country is ludicrous to me. Yes, you may improve the lives of some individuals, but in the long run, that's not how it works. It seems like so many recent veterans understand this after their service. It seems like such bullshit to me.
Does anyone disagree and want to discuss? I want to hear the real opposing side, not something based on feelings and the idea of being a superhero in the US military. | 40 | One thing you got wrong was that it was Biden’s idea to leave Afghanistan. Both Obama and Trump wanted to end the Afghanistan war and bring our soldiers out of there, but Biden was the only one to actually do it. Lest we forget Bush got us in there to begin with, promising a quick war. | 10 |
Continually revisions feels like torture | I am doing my MSc in wastewater treatment. My dissertation underwent 6 revisions before it was submitted for external review. I also have a paper that has been submitted about the same work which has been through many reviews.
I just got back a lot of reviewer comments on that paper and I cannot bring myself to address them at all. It feels like torture continually revising the same work over and over. I would rather drop out at this point than read one more sentence. I burst into tears everything I think about having to do it.
How do I force myself to work when I would literally rather have my teeth pulled out than open my laptop? | 38 | Read the reviewers comments. Then put it all away for a few days. Come back and read again. A second reading after a few days is less emotional.
Plan a strategy how to go about responding. Which ones require simple text edits, which more reading, and if any which require experiments.
Remember that the reviewers aim was actually (and this is often forgotten) to help you bring the work to publication. They gave their time freely to make this manuscript better. They are not your enemy, just people trying to help. | 31 |
ELI5: How are "binned" CPU's or GPU's different from their "lower-quality" counterparts? | When a chip manufacturer makes a chip like a CPU, they occasionally "bin" these chips. Some of them are inherently better than others. What about those binned chips makes them better, though? If I were to take two CPUs with the same make and model and crack them open and smack them down under a microscope, what about the binned CPU would make it better than its lesser sibling? | 53 | CPU making isn't a perfect process. A lot of it relies on purity of the silicon wafer that's grown in a lab. Impurities in the wafer may degrade performance. Secondly, the lithography process in which the chips are made isn't perfect. It relies on the traces to be etched on to the silicon by exposing it to UV light. Think of an overhead projector in school with a transparency on it. The areas that are black on the transparency don't react with the solution the silicon is submerged in while the areas that are clear cause the solution to react with the silicon. A CPU maker ideally wants 100% of the chips on the wafer to work, but some of them don't get etched correctly so parts of the chips get disabled and maybe you get an i3 instead of an i7, or maybe you get a 2070 instead of a 2080. | 29 |
[Serenity/Firefly] How sentient are the Reavers, do they have any organised hierarchy, how do they fly their ships and do they kill, rape and eat other Reavers as well? | 221 | The Reavers are humans driven mad by an experimental drug. If they are organized enough to wage war and fly starships, then it would be safe to assume they have some kind of hierarchy. I'd wager they organize tribally and probably have a an order based on who is the baddest motherfucker in the tribe. | 210 |
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ELI5 - If the human body replenishes its cells and has a new "set" every seven years, how do tattoos stay intact? | Sorry if this is a stupid question, I feel a bit dopey for asking! I read that the human body replenishes all of its cells as it grows (the Trigger's Broom thing) and that, on average, humans have a new set of skin cells every seven years. If this is true, how is it the case that tattoos stay intact when the skin cell is replaced? Obviously the ink isn't built into the cell itself, so how do they stay on the skin when the cells are brand new?
Apologies if I'm off-base on anything I've written :) | 12,192 | The ink from the tattoo is not part of your skin cells, the ink is lodged in between your skin cells. So you can replace all the skin cells you want and the ink will still be there.
Tattoos fade over time not because of skin cell regeneration, but because the body knows the ink molecules are foreign objects and your white blood cells will be chipping away at it for the rest of your life. | 9,545 |
Why is Hiroshima and Nagasaki inhabitable after the nuclear bombings? Shouldn't there be lingering cancer-causing radiation? | Would your answers be the same if more bombs were exploded over those cities? | 45 | There are a few answers here.
First. When the bomb explodes there is a large radiation burst, which then goes away. This would not necessarily cause an area to be radioactive, as the radiation is only there while the bomb is fissioning.
Second. When you fission atoms, the waste products are what cause contamination. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs fissioned less than 1% of their fuel. As a result there was very little contamination, and most of it got spread into the atmosphere and dispersed. This would keep residual contamination low enough to not have much of an impact.
If you detonated present day weapons, or weapons designed specifically to contaminate, you may make an area uninhabitable.
| 36 |
ELI5: why does a snapped neck cause instant death?Or does it cause a slightly slower death but Hollywood has played it up to seem instant | 15 | It doesn't always. Many people suffer broken necks and go on to lead normal lives. But if the "snapped neck" severs the spinal cord, the brain is no longer able to tell the heart and other vital organs to continue operating.
Edit: In the latter instance, the brain would probably remain conscious for a short time, but without a steady supply of blood and oxygen the person would suffocate within minutes. | 10 |
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Has a solution been discovered for the curvature of space-time due to the hydrogen atom? | If not, could one do so if the exact locations and momenta of the electron and proton were known using current theory? | 17 | Sure, you could create a stress-energy tensor for the hydrogen atom, plug it in to the Einstein field equations, and see what you get, but the question is "are the Einstein field equations still valid on the quantum scale?" We don't really know how gravity works on really small length scales. | 13 |
[Dune 2021 Movie] why are all Harkonnen soldiers bald? | 31 | Part of what makes soldiers disciplined is looking the same. Uniforms, haircuts, training, etc. It makes your army more effective, and creates a better spirit de corps.
In addition, though, hair makes us look like people. In studies, bald heads creep people out more. It’s an uncanny valley sort of thing.
They’re heads are shaved to take away their individuality, and to scare the enemy. | 62 |
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ELI5 How does Anti-venom for snakebites work? | Growing up, I always thought someday I might be bitten by a poisonous snake (or encounter quick sand as well 😂) and I would read about how people would harvest snake venom in a lab or zoo to create anti-venom- to this day I don’t understand the process- can someone explain? | 21 | So it starts with what venom is. Venom is a specific molecule (or set of molecules) that gets injected into your blood/body and starts causing damage.
To stop that damage from happening, you need your body to be able to target those molecules. Your body normally does this with anti-bodies. The things that stick to flu viruses and bacteria to mark them for your immune system to destroy.
The problem is we don’t have antibodies for venom constantly circulating in our blood, and by the time our bodies make antibodies the venom has already caused damage.
Anti-venom is pre made antibodies ready to be injected into someone to start marking the venom.
So how do we make antibodies? We inject the venom into farm animals, typically horses or sheep, then take blood from the animal that is now full of antibodies from their bodies fighting the venom, and then purify out just the antibodies from that blood. And boom you have some anti-venom ready to get injected into someone.
So yes, they need to harvest the venom itself from the snakes so they can cause the reaction to happen in the animal, so they can then harvest the animals antibodies and use it as anti-venom | 29 |
[Fantasy] Why do wizards always love to live in towers? | 31 | A couple reasons.
1. Towers are highly defensible, especially if you've got ranged attacks (like, say, fireballs and lightning bolts)
2. Towers are smaller than entire keeps or castles, thus easier to build somewhere isolated where one can devote one's self full-time to studying magic without interference. Especially if one's work requires the creation of or harvesting of parts from monsters, isolation is preferable as it prevents escapees from wreaking havoc, which tends to be the kind of thing that gets a wizard slain by knights or adventurers.
3. On many worlds the stars hold the key to some of magic's deepest secrets. A tall tower in a remote place makes for an excellent observatory. | 57 |
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Why is string cheese stringy? | 16 | String cheese is basically a type of mozzarella cheese.
At the factory, when the curd is still hot and the machines (or workers) are manipulating the curd, instead of kneading the curd into itself to form a normal mozzarella ball, they stretch it and knead it into a stick lengthwise, gradually lengthening it over and over, creating many layers. The curd has to have the right moisture content to do this, too moist and it just melts together, too dry and it will not stick to itself even if you press it firmly.
When the curd has reached the correct consistency they stop and usually put it in a brine solution to absorb salt, then package it.
When you peel the ends of the cheese, it will break off in strings because those are the layers that the cheese was folded into. | 49 |
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Never thought about Grad School before but now I'm interested in something pretty specific and think it might be worth a PhD... | I really just need to pitch this thought off some people in-the-know who can set the record straight. I'm really interested in a topic that seems like it'd be worth it to pursue a PhD in. I'm interested in big data/machine learning in regards to genomics and its applicability to medical marijuana. How do I get a PhD in this? Where do I even start? All I have is a Bachelor's degree. Do I need to find an institution that is slightly relevant? Find a professor in a relevant field who can help/mentor? Can I even pick a topic of interest and pursue it? Are PhDs not really like this? Are they more strict/structured than what I'm thinking? Sorry for the dumb questions but googling most of this just brings up the scare articles about how people shouldn't go for PhDs... Not very informative about the inner workings of it all.
*****
**Editing to add:** BS in Computer Science, currently work at an R1 institution in the US in their IT department. Tuition assistance covers 1/2 the cost of grad courses. | 19 | If you have a computer programming background and foundational coursework in either biology or statistics, you may be competitive for a PhD program in computational biology or something similar. However, your research interest is currently too specific and needs to be more generalized. Specifically, you should be saying that you are:
"interested in big data/machine learning in regards to genomics and its applicability to ~~medical marijuana~~ human health." | 24 |
ELI5: Why does your stomach hurt minutes after getting hit in the gonads? | Balls. | 390 | Testes originally form in the abdomen near the stomach and kidneys. The nerves and blood vessels remain attached in that region, even after the balls drop. So when a guy gets kicked in the balls or otherwise has his nuts squished, the pain involved travels up from each testicle into the abdominal cavity, via the spermatic plexus, which is the primary nerve of each testicle, and then to the spine.
| 196 |
CMV: i think venice should be evacuated and left to sink | NOTE ~ I CAN'T CHANGE THE TITLE OF MY THREAD BUT SOMEONE POINTED OUT THERE IS ISSUE WITH MY WORDING.
MY ISSUE IS THAT IT SEEMS VENICE *CANNOT* BE SAVED, NOT THAT IT SHOULDN'T BE ABANDONED. {ETA: if you have information on the renovations taking place, cost, other solutions that they have come up with to combat these problems, that is pertinent to the subject and part of my issue. STOP telling me about how beautiful it is and the historical significance, it has absolutely NOTHING to do with the issue}
the question is "CAN Venice be saved"
i was watching strip the city with my husband last night and the episode was about Venice and the structural issues it's been having with the floods. things such as salt damage, loosening of mortar in the foundations, leaning buildings, etc. and they had very interesting and what i found to be logical solutions for the problems.
but what got me was when they were discussing the land that Venice is built on. the consistency of the earth, to be exact. the type of mud that the land is built on compresses easily, so it is not just the floods that's causing the problem, but rather *the sinking of the city* that is exacerbating the floods. there's no real solution to that. you can't dig under the city and replace it with stronger earth as far as i know. they do have their good solutions to the problems, but isn't that really more just delaying the inevitable at this point?
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 290 | There are efforts in place (including a $5 billion Euro floor prevention project that just became operational) that may prevent the inevitable.
Every day there are more than 60,000 tourists visiting Venice. There is also business and commerce. All would be lost if Venice were evacuated.
And how would you handle the resettlement costs? If you own a multimillion dollar property in Venice, and the government tells you you have to leave are you left with nothing? Where would you move? What would you do with the historical architecture?
**EDIT: Why are so many people downvoting the OP? They are participating and responding. The whole point of CMV is to share views, not to have everyone agree with you.** | 271 |
[Marvel] How does Captain America really feel about the culture of the USA today? | The comics generally portray Cap as an accepting individual, and I accept that. But, the world has really changed. Captain America liking black people is realistic and sensible. But, I cannot imagine how Cap might view gay marriage, trans people, the cold war, etc.
I know in the comics, Cap saw the Cold War and honestly, his being frozen isn't too extreme because waking up in the 60s after the 40s isn't too bad. But as times age, Cap's time frozen ages too. Take the MCU, Cap has spent almost a century in ice. He missed all of that. What does Cap think of communism and socialism? The CIA? The Civil Rights Movement?
Hell, how does he view Neo Nazis and holocaust deniers? That would be a doozy. Imagine how he feels about inflation too.
How do you think Cap feels about all this? Is this stuff why he spends all of his time being a hero? Because he knows he's too separated to ever really join back in? | 57 | gay people existed in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s (have always existed). Cap lived in a major metropolitan area, big enough to have a gay community. Trans individuals existed, even then.
The communities at the time didn't advertise, weren't open about their sexuality or gener nonconformity to nearly the same extent, but they did exist, they did have culture, and we have photographs, films, songs, books, all about these people from the period leading up to WWII (and all through recorded history, but that's beside the point).
Cap might be shocked to see a black man reach Colonel in the US armed forces, but only because he wasn't expecting it that soon. Cap might not know how to respond to gender non-conformity, but a person is a person, and that gives him the ability, the empathy, to treat whomever he meets as a human being, worthy of respect, no matter how they present. If it's cinematic cap, his response to most people's differences is most likely, a sincere smile at the thought that this person, whom might have faced persecution in his own time, can find happiness.
Cap also probably has a soft spot for people who get medical help to be the person they want to be. Remember - steve rogers was a 90lbs weakling before the Super Soldier serum.
Cap might have a bit of a sputter moment with some people who don't fit the 1940's idea of male or female, authority or subordinate, but in general, cap's portrayal is either savvy enough to figure things out or a good enough person to play things by ear and read the goddamn room till he figures the rules out. Rogers is not an idiot, and he can generally figure out the cultural mores. He would have made an amazing spy if the Super Soldier program hadn't gotten him first.
As for politics, the cold war, etc... Well, he was raised between the roaring 20's, the depression, and world war 2. He'd probably seen more drastic change in the world than most before he'd been frozen. He might not be surprised that US and Russia ended up at each other's throats. He'd probably been exposed to real Communism/socialism - the progressive, workers-uniting-to-help-each-other kind - and probably does not have the baseline knee-jerk hatred of it that modern americans seem to have.
He probably disliked the CIA's actions, but from a professional standpoint - they're bad at their jobs based on the publicly available history - and the Civil Rights movement is probably something he both applauded, and wished wasn't STILL fucking necessary.
I believe we have record of cap Punching lots and lots of Neo-nazis, as well as holocaust deniers.
Inflation? Ehh. You live through the depression, you get that money changes meaning pretty fast.
Cap spends his time hero-ing because that's his job. That hasn't changed. It's the same problem superman has - when you're the one that can do the job, you kind of HAVE to do it, because who else will? He may have some issues fitting into modern society, but he does try. And in most continuities, he's had years to do so. You can only bury yourself in the past for so long. | 106 |
[The Lord Of The Rings]How would the War of the Ring would have proceeded if Boromir had gotten the ring and survived Amon Hen? | 71 | Bad.
Considering Boromir was already getting corrupted by the Ring simply by being nearby. Once he had full possession of it, it wouldn't have taken long for him to fall under its sway completely.
Assuming Boromir could master the ring for a short amount of time, Gondor would probably have done better in the war to begin with. But in saying that, Sauron's manpower supply was effectively unlimited compared to the Free Peoples and eventually he would've rolled over Gondor's defences, ring or not. Conventional victory wasn't possible, and whilst using the Ring against Sauron isn't exactly conventional, Boromir simply isn't powerful enough to wield it. Keep in mind as well that once Sauron learns Boromir is wielding the Ring, he will throw everything he has at him. He assumed Aragorn was wielding the Ring at the Black Gate, which is why he completely emptied Mordor to deal with Aragorn's rather small force.
As for Boromir himself, he would either a) die fighting, b) end up like Smeagol, c) fall under Sauron's influence. You also have to remember that the Ring is always trying to get back to Sauron. It would eventually betray Boromir and if it betrays him, especially while he's openly wielding the Ring, it will return to Sauron very quickly.
TLDR: Sauron would still win.
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cmv: Video games have saved millions of lives by distracting and/or supporting players out of desperate real-life situations. | Video games have surely prevented death and injury to millions of people in the world by distracting their players and preventing them from drug relapses/suicide/depression, possibly assault, alcoholism, drunk driving, and possibly hundreds more generally-death or injury prone circumstances.
I believe this argument would be useful in dampening a common baby boomer philosophy against video games, and would ultimately change public opinion of video game culture.
I have seen few lives altered negatively from video games, but there are possibly millions that have been saved.
edit: A few articles I have found recently to support my arguments:
1. [link #1 study on anxiety and VG’s](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34132648/)
2. [video games may increase cognition in depressed patients ](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5816361/)
3. [study with a helpful table showing research on how video games support specific skills](https://games.jmir.org/2021/2/e26575/) | 1,611 | Did *video games* save millions of lives, or did *distractions* save those lives? Would all of those people be dead if we swapped video games with books, TV shows, knitting, or any other time-and-attention-consuming hobby? | 435 |
ELI5: What is a “defeat device”, and how does it work? | I’ve just started watching Netflix’s Dirty Money, and the first episode on Volkswagen’s emissions scandal revolves around defeat devices, how the NGO that discovered the lies couldn’t believe at first that the company had put in place such a device, and that while tests showed that the cars complied to emissions standards in the labs, the same can’t be said when they were tested on roads (I hope I’m right). I just need to wrap my head around the concept. Thanks! | 58 | In this case, it's just a device that senses when an emission test is taking place. When it senses the test is taking place, it alters how the car runs to conform with emissions requirements. In practice, this usually makes the car accelerate less aggressively. So when it isn't sensing that a test is taking place, it runs in a way that does not conform with emissions standards or even its own test result.
It's a way of gaming the emissions testing system. | 38 |
Why are some fruits segmented? | Why are some fruits segmented (like an orange)? Does this provide some sort of biological advantage? | 970 | It isn't necessarily a biological advantage as much as it is a product of fruit development. In plants, a seed (which develops from an ovule) is analogous to an animal's baby, while the fruit can be thought of as the ovary (which is the same term plant biologists use). For citrus fruits, such as oranges, each segment is functionally a different ovary. Interestingly, this is also why you find seeds in each segment as you're eating an orange. You can see this in other fruits too, such as apples, but the segments are only obvious if you cut it in half and look closer to the pit. | 499 |
[Half-Life] What exactly does health measure? | Actual health would presumable be too complex to measure linearly. What exactly does the health bar in the HL games measure? | 26 | Expected chances of survival projected across the next 15 minutes updated by the second based on injures sustained (or lack therof) and remaining treatment medications available within the suit's system. | 44 |
CMV: Fox News should be investigated for making unauthorized contributions to the Trump Campaign. | Fox News seems to be the most-watched news service in the US. When you compare their coverage of anything Trump with the other major services they are complimentary toward him and play down or ignore negative stories. The network promotes a conservative point-of-view (which is probably good for balancing news coverage) but there is a big difference between balanced reporting and blatant support of the Trump Campaign and the Republican Party.
Fox News seem to devote a lot of their air time to in-depth coverage of the good side of the President, including giving him air time for frequent live appearances. This could be interpreted as a contribution to the Trump campaign since the opposing candidate almost never appears, more rarely in a long-form interview environment. It could also be argued that Fox News is at least partly foreign-owned (considering the Murdoch family).
I propose that Fox News be investigated for providing non-monetary but highly valuable contributions to the Trump Campaign and the Republican Party. | 109 | So you want to start a precedent where the government can punish media for reporting with a certain bias while a president is in office who has called the media the enemy of the people for years? How does this not end in the US government shutting down a bunch of networks? | 81 |
Is the universe deterministic? | Read something interesting in an exercise submitted by a student I'm a teaching assistant for in an AI course. His thoughts were that since the physical laws are deterministic, then in the future a computer could make a 100% correct simulation of a human, which would mean that a computer can think. What do you guys think? Does Heisenberg's uncertainty principle have something to do with this and if so, how? | 71 | The universe is not ~~ontologically~~epistemologically\* deterministic. ie, a computer (or a demon as the question was first proposed) cannot calculate the future to arbitrary levels of accuracy.
It may yet be metaphysically deterministic in that even though you can't at all calculate the future, if you were to "play out the tape" and then "rewind" and "play it back" the repeat would be the same as the first time through. Of course we don't have a way to time travel, so it's probably impossible to test the notion of whether the universe is metaphysically deterministic. | 68 |
[Lovecraft] What's the deal with the Dreamlands? | So it's this other world we go to in our dreams, but people seem to live there. The story about the town of Ulther, where no man may kill a cat, suggests that there are whole cities of people living there. Are they dreamers too? Do they live, die, sleep and eat? Do they know they live in a dreamland? Can you dream there? | 47 | Dreaming is how human consciousness can enter the Dreamlands, other beings may be able to enter in other ways or may have developed there themselves. The Dreamlands are a real place with real inhabitants, though human perception of them may be extremely skewed and unreliable. | 23 |
[ASOIAF] How would somebody like Ser Loras Tyrell fare in the Night's Watch? How does being gay apply to the oath they take? | The oath that every Man of the Night's Watch takes says that they'll take no wife and father no children. I don't think a gay man like Loras Tyrell is likely to do either of those things, so if he decides to get close with another Man of the Night's Watch, would he be breaking his oath?
| 26 | While some parts of Westeros are homophobic (as seen by the comments of Tywin Lannister when he speaks to Oleanna Tyrell), many other regions don't have a problem with it (Oleanna Tyrell's comeback, the passionate Dornish).
Concerning the Night's Watch:
Many straight brothers frequent the brothels in Mole's Town and technically break their vows every night. The Lord Commanders usually turn a blind eye to this since they have bigger problems (approaching wildling army, impeding attack by the Others, dwindeling numbers, being forced to abbandon castles along the wall)
Chances are they wouldn't care, as long as it didn't interfere with your duties as a sworn brother. | 35 |
ELI5:Why is multilevel marketing legal when it is clearly just a pyramid scheme? | I've had like four people try to get me to participate in ambit energy and I just cannot fathom how they are allowed to operate legally. | 79 | Because it isn't *just* a pyramid scheme. It's a pyramid scheme with just enough focus on the sale of a product to be legal.
The pyramid scheme is only the recruitment part, and if that was all that it was (getting paid to recruit people), then it would be an illegal pyramid scheme. But attaching a product to be sold (a la Amway, Herbalife, etc. etc.) then it can pose as a "legitimate" business. The focus of the business is to sell the product, but you also get a money for recruiting new people.
Nevermind that selling the product is almost impossible and the only likely way to recover losses is by creating additional dupes, as far as the law is concerned, as long as there is a product to sell, it's legal. | 37 |
ELI5: Why is there so much hate against Comic Sans font? | 20 | 1. Comic Sans = Comic style font, sans serif. This is fine.
1. People used it because it looks nice. This is fine-ish.
1. People used it IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES. Unless you're doing the lettering for a comic book, you're using it in the wrong place.
1. The font is hated because it's associated with incompetent computer users who have no idea about font choice or intent. | 39 |
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[Stargate] Physics | Matter can travel out only thru a dialed stargate, but "Energy" can travel bidirectionally. This seems to mean non massive particles, or luxons are bidirectional.
If you had a set of transport rings near each stargate, could a person beam straight thru the stargate in reverse? Are they basically energy at that point?
Or what about an Asgard beam from the other side? Could it beam someone in from the exit?
Brilliant breach tactic if you ask me. | 105 | Ring transporters still use a matter stream so they couldn't go both ways through an active stargate.
Asgard beaming might be possible, but you have to have rather accurate readings on the location you travel too. Which usually means a ship or Asgard sensors in range, at which point you have travelled there with a ship, so you can beam down from it.
No point doing riskier transport through the gate. | 34 |
Eli5: If you have a gas stove, is it more efficient to do "slow-fire" or "high-fire" and how does it work? | We're in the middle of a typhoon right now and it would be nice to know how to conserve gas. | 27 | > is it more efficient to do "slow-fire" or "high-fire" and how does it work?
It is more efficient to adjust the size of the fire to the size of the pot.
On the stoves I've seen, the flames are shot out sideways. The higher the flame setting, the more sideways they travel. A small pot on a big flame can be untouched by the fire.
You want the flames to "crawl" along the bottom of the pan for a bit and then vanish. The heat can then climb up the side of the pot rather than being pushed away from it.
Of course, it depends on what you're cooking as well. Searing something in oil requires a different flame than boiling water for rice or pasta. | 49 |
eli5 - when an engine fires in space and creates thrust - was is it pushing against? | 768 | For every action there is a reaction. The spaceship is pushing against the gas that is created when the engine fires.
ELI5. Imagine you are sitting on an inflatable raft in the middle of a swimming pool. You have 100 baseballs. If you throw the baseballs as hard as you can in one direction, you'll notice your raft moves in the opposite direction. You are basically pushing off the baseball. Now imagine you have 500,000 baseballs and you throw them very hard. That's basically what is happening in a rocket engine. | 1,472 |
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Do we have models to predict how rocks fracture? | More precisely, say I wanted to simulate whacking a smooth, round pebble with a hammer so that a crack appears. Do our current models of rocks fracturing precisely predict the exact geometric shape of these cracks that appear?
What are good references for this? | 20 | Rocks are not homogenous isotropic materials. Cracks propagate as microscopic tips. When they interact with grains or crystals it can deflect the crack. So without a perfect 3d model of the rock at micro scale it is impossible to perfectly predict crack propagation. | 11 |
What causes aftertastes? Why don't all tastes occur immediately? | 31 | Taste is caused by molecules in food binding to receptors on the tongue (plus a lot of scent stuff but we'll simplify that away for now because it's a similar mechanism anyways).
Some of those molecules stay bonded for a longer time than others. | 15 |
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ELI5: why are these fake company tweets causing stock value to decrease? | 19 | Investors selling their shares worrying that the company’s value is going to dive and they’ll take a loss, however the volume of these sales is significant enough in such a small window it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy where the stock then drops | 42 |
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If a pregnant woman were to end up in a coma, would there still be childbirth? | Say that the woman is now braindead and 8-9 months pregnant, would the child die in the womb or would there be sort of an "inactive" birth where the body takes control? | 53 | Yes. The signal to start labor comes from the fetus. As the lungs (last organ to mature) send out higher and higher levels of surfactant this causes Prostaglandin production to change in the mother and this starts the process of inducing the muscles to contract and deliver the fetus. None of it requires upper motor neuron consciousness. | 62 |
CMV: Karl Pilkington is fully conscious of - and plays up to - the persona expected of him | Maybe this is an obvious point, but I never really see anyone discuss it on Reddit whenever Karl Pilkington comes up (such as recently, during the viral wedding proposal video).
People seem to take Karl Pilkington at face value. A lot of people seem to think that his lovably bumbling, naive and (sometimes) foolish everyman personality is a genuine reflection of who he is as a person. In other words: they believe that off-camera, Karl would behave no differently to how he does on The Ricky Gervais show, or on his own spin-off shows, or during viral videos such as the aforementioned proposal.
Now, I know there will be some people who do not read my post beyond these two paragraphs and assume the argument I'm making is that Karl Pilkington is a character created by Ricky Gervais, and the 'real person' is nothing like his on-screen persona. My view isn't that extreme. My view is that Karl consciously and deliberately plays up to and exaggerates the persona that he is expected to portray. He has a great talent for coming up with creatively off-beat ideas, and he (I believe somewhat disingenuously) uses this to present himself as a sort of lovably witless Northern everyman.
You could argue that everyone in the public spotlight plays along with the role expected of them, to some extent. After all: their specific persona is often the very thing that is keeping the public eye upon them. However, I would say some do it more consciously than others. Gordon Ramsay knows that being volatile and aggressive helps his shows' ratings (particularly in the US: and he accentuates that side of his personality more over there). Alan Davies on QI is perhaps another example (in a very similar way to Pilkington).
Essentially my argument is that it doesn't take a genius to figure out the reason why the public enjoy watching and listening to you ("An Idiot Abroad" gives the game away a little in its title) and any semi-intelligent person would realise that in order to retain their celebrity status, they would have to give their audience what they want. And I think Karl is fully aware of this. I also think that if anyone thinks that Karl is not intelligent enough to work out how to cater to his audience, it is *they* who are naive: not Karl.
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> *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!* | 42 | Have you ever listened to the old XFM radio shows? He started out as a producer, and the show was primarily Ricky and Steve talking and playing music, though they would occasionally ask Karl his opinion about stuff. He hadn't been on any TV shows at this point, or even the podcast, wasn't famous, and basically nobody knew who he was, but he's the same exact person you see in "An Idiot Abroad." | 22 |
Why do we hiccup? | 17 | It's a left over nerve action from when we were fish millions of years ago.
Your lungs used to be swim bladders in fish and fish had an automatic way of adjusting the swim bladder to be higher or lower on the water.
For us this auto system now manifests as hiccups.
What triggers hiccups? Actually can't remember, sorry.
| 18 |
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ELI5:How do cities know how big to make the sewers for future growth? | Say a sewer system exists but a new development is going to be built. How does the city know how big to make the sewers? And how does it know if another development will occur down the road in 5 years, necessitating an even bigger sewer? Do they have to go and dig up the entire line to make it bigger all the way tot he sewer plant? | 1,410 | Cities usually makes plans further down the line. This is also why developers have to apply to the city planning commission before they build anything. If the utilities are not designed to handle the new development they will get denied and will have to wait for the utilities to be expanded. The city and developers are constantly talking to make sure the city grows at the right pace. Quite often the city might ask for development of new housing somewhere and build utilities to the site well ahead of time. Other times the developers might see an opportunity for new development and might have to help build the utilities to be allowed to build there. | 386 |
[General] Are there any cases of 'a handful of average people saving the day' that are actually known by the populace they saved? | Playing a ton of video games, I'm actually curious whether there're any examples of a ragtag group of people who somehow save the day, and it's known by everyone. FF7 is the one example that springs to mind, or Star Wars. | 26 | The four hobbits in Lord of the Rings are not only crucial players in the War of the Ring, but return to the Shire to lead a rebellion there. They left as indistinguishable hobbits from many others, but returned heroes, and proved their mettle to free their homeland. | 35 |
I don't think we should "respect" the beliefs of religious nut jobs. In fact, I think we should ridicule and reject them until their change their beliefs. CMV | Obviously, I'm an atheist. I'm one of those guys Bill O'Reilly is thinking about when he claims there is a "War on Christmas". For the record, I think it's okay if you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever - as long as it's in the spirit of taking a day off, hanging with family, stuffing your face with turkey and nothing more.
Culturally, I'm Jewish. And, yes, I love me some bagels, lox and cream cheese. But, that's because of the culture, not the belief in a supernatural being. I believe the Torah (and the bible) are historical allegory and very fascinating insight into people ~6000 years ago. I think much religiously-inspired art is very beautiful But, beyond my historical, aesthetic and sociological interests, I have no interest in religion. I think an actual conviction in the belief of a supreme, supernatural being is not only foolish... but, frankly, retarded.
And, I don't mean "retarded" in the ad hominem, pejorative way. I mean, if you fundamentally believe in god(s), you are rejecting thought, reason and inquisitiveness into the true nature of the universe. By rejecting those things, you are *literally* retarding your intellectual and emotional growth... as well as that of those around you.
All that said, I've heard it said that we should "respect" the beliefs of others. And, to that I say: No! We absolutely should not! If you believe in something so completely incongruent with reality, you're either mentally ill or being willfully idiotic. Since religious folks sincerely believe in the sanity of their views, they don't meet the criteria of mental illness. So, they *must* be willful idiots.
And holding rational, reasonable debates with religious people - especially evangelicals - is pointless. No matter how credible and thoroughly researched your debate argument is, they simply point to the unfalsifiable and untestable argument of - god. You can't prove god(s) don't exist, therefore god(s) exist. You can't prove where the singularity came from, therefore god(s) did it. You can't show me a Blu-Ray video of dinosaurs walking the Earth 14.5 billion years ago, therefore the Earth is 6000 years old.
And, ya know, I would simply laugh it off if it weren't for the fact that 1/3 of the U.S. population holds these extreme beliefs. Many more don't hold these beliefs, but still believe in supernatural beings... which is only slightly less bad. These deluded people influence public policy, voting, funding for science and schools, the economy... everything! We are fighting wars with people who hold these extremist views. We put men in weird hats on pedestals and think they're great guys because they kiss babies, help the poor and don't have sex. Yet, they're brainwashing those babies and poor people with a lie. And they're telling people who have sex - a completely natural and fundamental biological function - that they're bad people. And, lets not forget that they promote bigotry and hate.
So, bottom line: we should NOT humor or respect the beliefs of religious people who believe in supernatural beings. And, in fact, because those views are so demonstratively dangerous, we should shun and ridicule them as much as possible until such views are eradicated from or rejected by all of humanity.
And, if that means a "war" on things like Christmas... so be it.
CMV.
EDIT: P.S. For the record, I'm not looking to have my view on religion changed. I'm an atheist and that's not going to change. Period. But, I'm looking to have my view changed (if possible) on whether or not I should "respect" the beliefs of other... even if their beliefs are stupid and dangerous. | 28 | Your premise supposes that if we ridicule and reject them, then they will change their beliefs. In fact, those actions will only affirm their suspicions that you are a self-important asshole. If you treat them with respect then you are more likely to have a relationship and a conversation and change their worldview. If you make it "us vs them" then you will only back them into a corner where they treasure their belief as if they are a persecuted minority. | 49 |
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