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ELI5: What would happen if a container was opened and closed in space... then brought back to Earth? What would be inside? | I don't understand very much about space, space physics, etc. so I have no idea what would happen.
Here's my hypothetical: If you opened a container (let's say a tupperware box) in space, closed it after a few minutes, brought it back down to earth, and opened it... what would be inside?
Would nothing be inside and air just get sucked into the box? I'm assuming whatever gas inside the box before opening it would be lost after being exposed in space. I'm expecting a very simple answer and I'm probably just very stupid.
Edit: Awesome! Thank you for all the answers and everyone who has contributed to the discussion; I didn't realize that I wasn't the only one who didn't understand "space dynamics" very well. Your collective responses have been amazing and understandable. | 666 | First off, if you did that with a tupperware container, all you'd get is a bunch of crushed plastic. The pressure differential would destroy the tupperware.
But yes, if you had an appropriate vessel, what you would return with is a box of empty space. Nothingness. Open the vessel, and air would rush in. | 583 |
[DC] Why can't the Flash fly? | In [this] (http://i.imgur.com/kizwn9a.jpg) Kid Flash is shown to run fast enough to defy gravity. Flash states he can do this and control how gravity effects him by vibrating his molecules, so couldn't he use this to have some sort of rudimentary flight? It may not be on the level of Superman, but it would definitely come in handy in extreme situations. | 15 | He can in theory, it's just that he's not much use in the air.
Air based combat is typically long range, such as superman superheating things with his vision. Which the Flash isn't equipped for.
And air based travel may be useful, but he could run there just as easily. | 14 |
ELI5: Why are so many scam call centers located in India? | 186 | Because labour is cheap, but equally important, because of the legacy of the British Empire, there is a strong tradition of learning English as a second language.
EDIT - worth noting that on occasions where having faultless English with an English accent is important, call centres (sometimes called boiler rooms) are located nearer home. Spain is a favourite for scams targeting the UK. | 99 |
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Could humans survive in a 21% Oxygen atmosphere at a similar pressure to Earth's if 78% of the atmosphere was a gas other than Nitrogen? | And what gas other than Nitrogen would be the most ideal? | 440 | There are lots of inert gases that would be just fine. Helium, neon, argon, and probably krypton would cause no problems. Xenon has some not-very-well-understood anesthetic effects, so that's out.
Other gases world be fine in the short term, but would eventually decompose. Sulfur hexafluoride is pretty inert, but given enough time it can hydrolyse into hydrogen fluoride. Hydrogen gas would be okay as long as it doesn't explode.
Oh, and don't let anyone feed you some line about heavy gases pooling in the bottom of your lungs and suffocating you. That's a silly chemistry urban legend. | 288 |
ELI5: Why do we even have nightmares? Why is the brain such a massive troll? | 18 | There are a few theories about the purpose of dreams (and may apply for nightmares too.)
*During sleep, the brain has a lot of activity, and it's possible that random sequences of activity in the areas responsible for seeing and hearing lead to fantastic visions of imagination. If this is the case, random sequences could lead to nice, pleasant dreams or just as easily, terrifying nightmares.
*The brain needs to stay active, so it may use the time that you're asleep to simulate threats that could happen in your life and prepare some sort of response. If this is the case, nightmares seem like they'd be the norm (which they kind of are, as most dreams actually are unpleasant)
*The theory that people seem to hear the most is that the brain is consolidating memories, and it takes different memories and cobbles them together like patchwork. If this is the case, there's no saying how they'd be cobbled together, and it'd be just as likely, if not more so that the dreams would be unpleasant.
Source: Am neuroscience major in college. | 16 |
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ELI5: Why doesn't every American citizen pay the same percentage of income in taxtes? | Suppose the government taxed every citizen 20% of their income. Why wouldn't that work? | 30 | Because it wouldn't actually be fairer.
20% of your income when you make 20k is a big deal. Sure, it's "only" 4k, but you can feed a person for months on that much. In contrast, 20% of your income when you make 500k isn't a big deal at all; it may cost you 100k, but 400k is still enough money to buy basically anything you'd want.
So if you accept that poor people should be taxed less (which you must, if you think that percentage of income is a reasonable thing to tax), there's no reason to have everyone pay the *same* percentage. | 62 |
ELI5: Why do different animal species have similar anatomical structures? | 21 | Similar anatomical structures may be due to homology, which means the structure was inherited from a common ancestor that already had that structure. Humans and sharks both have hearts and two eyes because their last common ancestor did.
Similar anatomical structures may also be due to homoplasy, which means the structures independently evolved in each lineage. Hippos and alligators both have eyes and nostrils on the top of their head, independent adaptations to living mostly submerged in water. | 26 |
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Why does it hurt so much to get kicked in the testicles? | And is there an equivalent for women? | 17 | The simple answer is because that area is packed with nerve endings. These nerves serve several functions including sensing pain, but some sense temperature, pressure, chemicals, etc.
Getting kicked in the testicles can set off many of these nerves at once, sending a confusing set of signals to your spinal cord and your brain.
Thus pain, doubling over, vomiting, etc. | 16 |
How is the Moon covered mostly fine dust if the erosion forces of wind, water, and plate tectonics do not exist? | If I remember right there was a point where the moon had mildly active plate tectonics (correct me if I'm wrong), but I still don't understand what other than meteor impacts could cause any erosion on the surface, let alone enough to make a fine dust.
Also on a side note, I know that relative to Earth meteoroids are called meteors when traveling through the atmosphere and meteorites when they've impacted the ground, but how should they be referenced in relation to the moon since it has no atmosphere?
Edit: Despite proofreading my post I still have a typo in my title. Frick. | 27 | Meteors are enough to create the regolith. The moon (and the earth) are constantly bombarded with them, the earth has an atmosphere that burns most of them up before they hit the ground. The moon having no atmosphere has no such protection. | 18 |
ELI5: if I'm feeling a cold/sickness coming on, is it better to exercise or give my body rest? | 28 | If it's a mild cold, exercise at 50% your usual capacity, assuming you regularly work out. Ensure you also get adequate hydration and 8 hours of sleep.
Adjust your exercise accordingly to your level of fatigue. It without fail works for me | 16 |
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CMV: Bees should *not* be equal to humans under law. | [EDIT: For context, someone posted an opposing CMV that was deleted because OP was not open to change. I am, and I found the topic interesting. There is room for good-faith disagreement about the scope of natural rights]
Unlike humans, bees should not be treated by law as equals with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, property, or citizenship.
There are (at least) two ways to justify the existence of Human Rights: First, there’s the Christian/Traditional view that all people are bearers of the image of God and from that image derive some inherent dignity and value that man-made legal institutions are not competent to defile. See, e.g., John Locke; Thomas Jefferson. The Secular View says that human rights are an emergent, as-if truth—their existence as a matter of fact is not falsifiable, but wisdom and experience show that human flourishing is maximized when we act as if human rights exist. See, e.g., Alan Dershowitz; cf. Sam Harris.
Under the Traditional View, the law should not regard bees as the legal equal of humans because humans are qualitatively different than other animals. Bees do not bear the image of God and so lack the same inherent worth. Bees can possess an inherent worth beyond inanimate objects, but not one equal to humans. Animals were made for man, not as man’s equal. See Genesis 2 & 3; John 1.
Under the Secular View, the Bee Rights Issue is stickier because the qualitative, comparative value of human life is not justified by invoking the Divine. Lucky for us, some philosophers recently submitted a legal brief addressing the legal personhood of non-homo sapiens. Brief of Amicus Curiae Philosophers in Support of the Petitioner-Appellant, In re Nonhuman Rights Project v. Lavery, 2017 NY Slip Op 04574 (2017). It outlines four rationales for deciding which creatures possess legal personhood:
* Species Membership—“all and only members of the human species are recognized as persons by the law, and exceptions can be justified solely on the basis of some unspecified relation to members of that species.” Id. at 7.
* Social Contract—“Under this view, society extends rights in exchange for an express or implied agreement from its members to submit to social responsibilities. In other words, rights are connected to moral agency and the ability to accept societal responsibility in exchange for [those] rights.’’ Id. at 14. The Amici are dubious of this justification because “(1) not all rights depend on the existence of a social contract, (2) the social contract does not produce ‘persons,’ and (3) personhood is not conditional on bearing duties and responsibilities.”” Id.
* Community Membership—On this view, personhood is not grounded in discrete traits or capacities of individuals; rather, personhood is something that we achieve through development and recognition within a community of persons. In Ubuntu philosophy, this is captured in the saying “a person is a person through other people” Id. at 21–22 (quoting Eze, 2010, 190).
* Conditions of Personhood—“John Locke, already mentioned in Section 2, described what it is to be a person this way: “a thinking intelligent being that has reason and reflection and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking and . . . essential to it””” Id. at 28–29 (quoting Locke 1689, II. 29 XXVII .9, p.280).
None of these justifications support the equal legal treatment of bees and humans. First, bees are not homo sapiens. Second, the social contract between bees and humans is minimal, and certainly lesser than the social contract between, say, humans and dogs. Third, bees are a group-conscious hive creature that shares no linguistic bridge with humans—they are not a part of our community. Fourth, human consciousness is qualitatively distinct from that of bees. Bees are group-conscious while humans are primarily of individual consciousness. Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind, Chapters 9–10 (2010).
In conclusion, bees and humans are qualitatively different and the law properly reflects that fact. If interspecies symbiosis morally obliged our species to treat another as our equal, dogs rather than bees would be first in line for such recognition. Bees lack the agency and wherewithal for full civic participation, unlike Jerry Seinfeld. Also, it's in the Bible (if you care).
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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 | Generally, posting a CMV implies that the view in question is either controversial or new or being challenged in some meaningful way. Are you under the impression that there's some campaign for bee equality? | 10 |
[Snowpiercer] Why a train? | Why wouldn't they make some sort of underground shelter and harness geothermal heat? | 38 | Some governments may have done just that, but the train was built by a crazy billionaire as a luxury cruiser. It wasn't until the end of the world happened and a bunch of stowaways got aboard that the nature of the train changed.
Some become batman, others become the arrow, others build space rockets of dubious efficacy. This crazy billionaire built a train. | 43 |
ELI5: What causes that sound you hear when you cup your ears? | 151 | Surfaces reflect sounds. Surfaces of certain sizes reflect sounds of particular frequencies. A cupped hand will reflect some high frequencies more than others. The diameter of the "cup" focuses those frequencies into your ear canal, emphasizing them. Since these sounds, which would normally pass your ears unnoticed, are now emphasized, they are perceived as a rushing sound. Also, your position is space is given a reference as your brain interprets sound for clues to your location in relation to all sound-reflecting objects around you. Cupping your hand behind your ear interferes with those clues. Wait until you're older and your hearing naturally becomes less sensitive to those high frequencies and you'll find the effect is diminished or non-existent. | 66 |
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How exactly does “losing” your voice work? What causes it/what is it? | 21 | The body’s response to damage includes inflammation and swelling. Your vocal cords are thin membranes and are very easily damaged by overuse (either too much or too vigorously- screaming a few times or talking loudly all day long). When they get damaged they swell, and the swelling causes them to become thicker and less flexible, meaning the don’t vibrate as well or make contact with each other correctly, and you’ve “lost your voice.” Illnesses can also cause them to swell. | 24 |
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ELI5: If sitting is so bad for us, how bad is the third of our lives we spend lying down (sleeping)? | 339 | First of all, that third of your life is spent sleeping, which you would very quickly die without. I'd say that means lying down is *definitely* healthier than *not* doing it.
As for sitting down, it's unhealthy because it's not a natural position to be in for extended periods. We're supposed to be moving around a lot. You know how blood circulates around your body? Well, your heart is great at pushing it *down*, but not pulling it back *up*. Walking helps your blood circulate - we've evolved so that the muscles we use for walking help push the blood back up our bodies.
When you're lying down, gravity isn't that big of a problem.
That's just *one* reason. We're also not supposed to have a sedentary lifestyle. We're supposed to get a decent amount of sleep (as discussed earlier, lack of it *will* be detrimental to the point of lethality) but other than that we're built to be active and we've not evolved out of that. So sitting around all day means we're conserving way too much energy that our body doesn't have anything to do with, so it stores it was fat, which makes our body *less* efficient and means we need even *more* exercise.
Again - we've evolved to sleep for ~8 hours, and then be active most of the rest. Not doing either of those is not healthy. | 201 |
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CMV: The justification of making abortion illegal on the basis that “life begins at conception” is a weak justification. | I’ve seen plent of videos like this [one](https://youtu.be/AhXAGt1M8C4) and, rightfully so, the question of morality comes into play with abortion. The argument seen here falls on the basis that the destruction of life is wrong across all boards and what you define “life” to be is what gets used to make the argument put forward in the title.
I want to start with the “heartbeat” argument. Many pro-life arguments that I have come across use the heartbeat as a way to get those on the fence to agree that a fetus (I can’t think of the word that means barely created lifeform, so I’m using fetus) is considered alive because it has a heartbeat. If the heartbeat is the measure of life, then wouldn’t that extend to all creatures that have a heartbeat? Wouldn’t this make the purposeful [abortion of animals](https://youtu.be/I6i2zg-dkOs), whether unborn or born, be an abhorrent breaking of that moral argument?
Obviously, how we weigh human life vs animal life is different, but then that seems to me morally abhorrent too. To me, it seems like the heartbeat argument is not a morally sound argument because then, in order for you to fit your standard of morality, then that would mean you would be against any form of lifeform that has a heartbeat being aborted, human or not. I definitely don’t see the majority of pro-lifers protesting the culling of males in the meat industry as an issue worth protesting. I know I have given one example of “abortion” and I know there are many more cases of actual non-human fetal abortion used in our society that isn’t protested against as widely as I see when it comes to human abortions. I don’t believe that the heartbeat argument can be used as a moral argument against human abortions if it isn’t applied to other types of non-human life.
Let’s go further than that: the argument that life begins on conception. In that same video, Charlie makes the argument that, because that fertilized egg now has it’s own unique dna, it is worthy of being protected/not up for abortion. So, again, does this apply to all lifeforms? Clearly all lifeforms, human or not, have their own unique set of dna. Should we be against the logging industry, then, simply on the basis that they are destroying organisms that have their own unique set of dna?
As I write this, I see more and more that the “definition” of life in these arguments, although seemingly specific, are too vague to be used as a legitimate standard in these arguments. Am I missing something here? I am trying to understand how abortion is morally wrong on the basis that life starts at conception/at first heartbeat/whatever.
Why is that used as a baseline? Why is the heartbeat a crucial component to saying that it is “alive”? Why is a unique set of dna a crucial component as well when that can be applied to all other lifeforms?
Fyi: I believe life starts when the lifeform is able to conciously act within it’s environment, so I can see why late-stage abortion is morally wrong. Having a heartbeat, to me, is not a concious/mindful/purposeful action within the environment. If that was the case, then I would feel very strongly about the killing of insects, fish, plants, and other lower lifeforms who have a circulatory system.
For what it’s worth, I want to say: I am legitimately trying to understand this stance, as many people I respect hold this view yet I see it as logically flawed. I’m trying to understand this perspective.
Edit for newcomers: I’m getting a lot of responses about animal life vs. human life. I was trying to keep this already long post short, but my intention was to give an example of how far the heartbeat/dna argument can be taken (hence why its weak), which is why I used animals as examples. I’m not arguing that we should feel bad about killing a mosquito as equal to killing a baby, I’m just saying that the hearbeat/dna argument can essentially be taken that far. | 15 | I mean, that's a lot of words to miss the point that society has determined that human life has value while animal life does not. While some animal rights activists would disagree, the vast majority of people don't have a significant issue with slaughtering a cow or stepping on a spider - whether it is fully grown or unborn.
So unless you think that people opposed to human abortion should also be opposed to stepping on a spider, and have a reasonable rationale for that belief, your view is just out in left field. | 25 |
[Silly] The philosopher's high | Alright, this is somewhat ridiculous, but hear me out :
Apparently, runners get a feeling of euphoria while undergoing the physical effort that comes from running. Well, I find an analogous excitation whenever I understand a philosophical text, or when I'm battling with a demonstration, or whatever intellectual process I'm faced with.
During exams, for example, if I have to unknot a complex text, the more I'll write, the more I'll understand, and the more I'll understand, the more I'll write. This leads me to a strangely exciting slippery slope that gets me so hyped my handwriting becomes unreadable, and that I have to stop and breathe deeply for a while. My heartbeat even goes up, and my hands get sweaty !
The same goes for essays and dissertations : one discovery leads to another, one aspect to another, and soon I'm all fidgety.
When reading a text, whenever I begin to understand, I have to drop the book and jog around my room frantically, making silly hand gestures and thinking to myself "Of course, that makes total sense !", and I have to scribble whatever on my white board to summarize what I just extracted. This leads to my housemates and friends thinking I am some kind of absolute madman.
I'm here to ask if you guys get the same kind of euphoria from time to time, or if that is an uncommon and weird thing for one to be struck with. Lately it has become even more of a problem, as all the ends of my works are rushed and unreadable, and I systematically have to go through them a second time !
| 47 | Definitely not just you. Making a really killer argument or figuring out a really clever way to present some complicated idea is a hell of a drug. Having to go back through your work and revise it for clarity isn't really a problem, since it's something you should do anyway. As Ernest Hemingway said, "Write drunk. Revise sober." | 23 |
ELI5: How do erasers erase? | 59 | Take a pencil and write on paper. What happens is the pencil "lead" (really a black carbon stick of something called 'graphite') scrapes off and sticks to the paper. It's pretty sticky so it stays and forms letters and drawings.
Now take an eraser to that pencill drawing. Paper was rough and the graphite stuck to it, but eraser materials is a lot stickier than that. So the stuck-on pencil graphite transfers off of the paper and on to the eraser.
The eraser then wears away from contact with the paper and forms a little tiny plastic or gummy pill that contains the removed graphite, and that gets swept aside or blown off the page. The stickier the eraser, the better it removes and holds graphite, which is why newer white plastic-based erasers are awesome but old pink ones sometimes just make a huge mess.
**TL;DR: Eraser stuff is stickier than paper, so pencil stuff likes it better.** | 116 |
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[Captain America] If Steve Rogers had never been frozen, and theoretically lived a normal life after WW2, would he still look like he had even barely aged since the 40's if you saw him today? | 46 | The Infinity Formula, which nick Fury Used, effectively retarded aging.
When the Super Soldier Serum was briefly removed, captain when all old man. He became young again when it was returned
Based on that evidence I'd say it fixes his body at the age of peak performance. So locked somewhere in between mid 20s and early 30s.
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ELI5:Is it possible to get cancer in any part of your body? Are there parts of your body that are immune to cancerous growth? | 48 | There is not (with the exception of hair and fingernails). If a part of your body contains living cells, those cells can turn cancerous.
You can get cancer of the bone, skin, muscles, blood, cartilage, nerves, etc etc. | 34 |
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[Marvel] Does professor Hulk actually need glasses? | Personally I think he wears them so that people see him and don’t immediately think he’s the savage hulk. Either that or it’s like a mental crutch to remind him that he’s still Bruce under all the green | 81 | Maybe, maybe not. What we do know for sure is that professor hulk cares about his image, is popular with kids and parents alike, and has his own fan-clubs with poses and sayings.
He may not need them, but they help give him a friendlier, more human and approachable appearance. Its clear that being just that is important to him | 80 |
ELI5: How do you design locks that allow several different keys open the entry door to the same apartment complex, but also just the door leading to one of those apartments? | 44 | A modern lock have stacks of pins in them where each pin is split in two. Only if you insert the correct key will the pins will align with the cylinder and you can turn the lock. So called master key systems have some pins that is split in three. This means that there are two possible keys that match the lock as there are two different ways to align the split pins with the cylinder. This does weaken the system as now there are more places where a lockpicker can get the lock to open in. It is also possible to have intermediate keys in the system. So for example a cleaner might have a key that only opens some apartments but not all but the manager can open all of them. This is done by having multiple triple split pins in each lock. But of course this makes it even easier for a lockpicker. | 23 |
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[Meta] does every question on r/askscience fiction has to be associated to a universe that is already established? | Is it ok to ask questions about sci fi that may not belong to a franchise or universe or popular media?
What if i wish to discuss possible events that may happen in a sci fi universe whose rules i create? R/worldBuilding | 20 | You can tag it "General SF" if you want to ask about generalities within the genre, for example.
But we primarily answer lore based questions so we cant answer questions about the rules and lore of a universe you made up. | 27 |
CMV: I am a vampire, and I think that humans can and should be sustainably farmed. | As you know, human blood is required for sustaining our unlife. (Though some SJWs insist that animal blood is able to do the job as well, they should be discounted for this discussion.) It is *not* required to kill humans if we don't fully drain them of their blood; they can easily recover from the anemia in just a few weeks with proper care and nutrition.
Using this method, a small herd of 20 or 30 adult humans can provide sufficient food for a single active vampire without killing any of the herd. Additional humans can be used as breeding stock to help replace those who become sick or too old to contribute to the feeding process.
I know that there are some radicals who object on the grounds that humans are sentient beings who deserve autonomy. But this is irrelevant. Humans on ranches already live full and productive lives as our food sources and occasionally as our pets (though I think it is a bad idea to become too attached to a potential meal). | 169 | The problem is that these ranches operate with little regulation or oversight. While there are certainly some vampires who treat their food source humanely, there have been startling accusations of physical, emotional and sexual abuse of humans. Since vampires can't be captured on film, it's difficult to prosecute these offenses even when there's clear evidence that crimes have been committed. There's concern that vampires who engage in sadistic practices with humans could become so desensitized to violence that they attack their own kind. We were all humans once, after all.
Since many vampires don't have the time or energy to keep their own private blood farm, they end up purchasing most of their blood from shops. This removes them from the actual realities of farming. If the blood they're buying is harvested unethically, how will they know? There are no universally recognized standards for sustainable, humane blood farming. There are no regulatory inspections of human ranches. We're all aware by now that "organic" blood is mostly a marketing gimmick, and that so-called "free range" blood is anything but - "sustainable" is likely to be another corporate blood industry lie.
There are ethical concerns involved in farming animal blood as well, of course, but the higher sentience level of humans should be taken in to account. Involuntary captivity produces significant stress in humans, and there's emerging research suggesting that humans who have been subjected to stressful living conditions have higher blood cortisol levels. Stressed humans living in overcrowded conditions are also disease-prone, requiring high levels of antibiotics and growth hormones to maintain their health. Could these issues be contributing to the growing epidemic of vampire obesity? It's getting to the point where many vampires are too fat to fly, making them easy prey for angry mobs and vampire hunters. | 63 |
ELI5:Why exactly do we need differential calculus? | I have just started learning calculus, and I get the gist of differentiation and integration and stuff, but why exactly do we need to use it ? I mean, for example, velocity/time is already acceleration, so why can't we just use that in place of dv/dt? | 27 | It is no exaggeration to say that anything university level that requires mathematics will need calculus. In fact it is probably the basics of what you need. Things only get more complicated from there.
Differentiation is basically calculating a rate of change. Turn that around and you get integration, which basically allows you to find out different things given a function, i.e. a graph. It is easy to calculate the area under a graph if it is a straight line. Once it becomes more complicated, like a curve, then it becomes more difficult. So you use integration.
Many topics in advanced education begin to use mathematical models to define things. Even things you wouldn't expect. And often these mathematical models will involve the use of calculus. For example, in psychology you are often required to take statistics, which uses calculus. Even in a management class you can be given a formula which may model a market or effect of change in prices on demand. **These will use calculus to find an optimal solution to something.**
How would that work? well we know differentiation is finding the function that defines the rate of change. How would you find the optimal solution to a function; say the profitability of a product is defined by a curved function; it goes up, then starts slowing down (i.e. curving) before going down, due to the idea of diminishing returns.
What would be the optimal solution? how do you find the "peak"? well that is simple. You find the precise point where the rate of change is 0; it is the precise point from when it increases to decreases. The peak of the curve.
What happens if you differentiate that profit function? you are finding the marginal profit; how much more profit you get per unit of production.
What happens if you integrate that function? you get the total amount of profit. You can even use it to define the amount of profit you get at different points of the curve. | 31 |
[Wolfenstein the New Order]What the hell is BJ!? An invincible golem from Jewish myth!? The wrathful hand of god?! He broke into four of the most secure places ON HIS OWN, killed everyone and escaped! | He even [Spoiler](#s "Had a grenade go off inches from his body and survived.") For those of you keeping score, he broke into the most heavily guarded prison on the planet, then broke into the biggest naval base on the planet, then broke into the most heavily guarded aerospace complex on the planet, then broke into a freakin moon base and THEN to top it broke into the most heavily guarded laboratory in the planet where all the super cyborgs in the reich are made!
ALL ON HIS OWN!
How can one man do this!? What is he?! What is the secret to his invulnerability?! | 170 | He's just *that* badass. He's not the doom marine with fancy power armour and hell-magic keeping him going, he's just grit and rage. He's certainly not invincible, he's just *really* damn good at killing Nazis. | 132 |
[Toy Story] What happens to toys that don't have faces or bodies? | Would a toy that doesn't have any face or body be able to come to life?
Like a Rubix Cube, or a video game console.
If they did, how would they interact with the world? | 21 | Yes. There are plenty of toys without faces or bodies that we have seen:
* Mr. Spell
* Etch A Sketch
* Hand-in-the-Box
* Legs
They can move around using whatever appendages they have (as with Hand and Legs) or just simply by wobbling back-and-forth (as with Mr. Spell and Etch). They can communicate or interact with whatever they have at their disposal, spelling out words, drawing pictures, or with other forms of gestures or pantomimes. | 34 |
[Harry Potter] How could Voldemort think that he was the only person to have discovered the Room of Requirement? | When he stored the diadem in it he assumed that he alone knew of the room's existence. How could that be if the room was full of objects dating back hundreds of years? | 35 | How could Voldemort hide a Horcrux in a vault of a known associate? How could Voldemort hide a horcrux in a fucking shack that can be traced to him rather easily? How could Voldemort make his goddamn snake into a horcrux?
Voldemort is bit conceited. | 65 |
CMV: You shouldn't just throw cigarette butts on the ground | This one seems like common sense to me, but I see people doing it, so there are apparently a variety of opinions out there.
In my view, it is wrong to throw a cigarette on the ground; it is littering. There is no special litter exemption for cigarette butts, and they should be disposed of properly like all other trash.
I know it's not *the worst thing you could possibly litter*, but I am just looking at the right/wrong distinction and not the magnitude of the infraction.
If it helps, the specific scenario I am picturing is the smoker driving down the road and flicking their butt out the window when they're done, though I believe this view extends to throwing a butt on the ground anywhere except a ground-based receptacle. | 44 | Oof. I'll give this a try.
​
Over 80% of smokers say they would properly dispose of their butts if suitable receptacles were available. It's important to note that cigarettes should not be discarded like trash. Trash can be flammable, and disposing of cigarettes improperly alongside trash can be a fire hazard. In environments where there are no suitable places to dispose of cigarettes, throwing them into the gutter is objectively safer. | 11 |
[Star Wars] Star Killer Base seems like a huge effort for something they only could use twice. The Death Star could use hyper drive and didn't require an outside power source. Why not just make a third Death Star? | Update: Thanks again reddit for showing me that I'm completely wrong. | 682 | You call eating a star simply requiring an outside power source? This thing eliminates an entire solar system and obliterates planets half a galaxy away simultaneously. It's a planetary fortress with a hyperdrive. Plus, they didn't have to build the entire thing from scratch, unlike the Death Star. Seems like an huge improvement to me. | 414 |
What are the best documentaries/movies about philosophy you've ever watched? | Edit: Thank you, very much for your suggestions! | 53 | The Derrida documentary is absolutely daft. Have a couple drinks first, but it's a pretty fun ride.
[EDIT: also, unless you're fluent in French, don't have too many drinks, because it's in French with English subtitles.] | 12 |
ELI5: How do countries actually take control of another country once they occupy the capital? | Like, when the capital falls, how does the country fall under the control of the opponent? How does it actually work, can't the existing government just say "No we're not listening to you we're doing our own thing?" Not just the capital but like cities in general, when the city centre falls, what makes the whole city fall? Also, if I'm understanding this correctly, can countries just skip the actual war and just occupy the capital if that's how it works? | 21 | "Occupy the capital" probably implies that they've pushed their forces through the entire country and successfully reached the capital. "Take control" probably means either "literally holding a gun to the leader's head until they 'voluntarily' declare that you're now in control", or "leaving troops all over the country, proclaiming that you're in control now, and daring anyone to argue with your soldiers and tanks and bombs".
There's no switch that's flipped or anything, it's just making a declaration, backing it up with either violence or the threat of violence, and being that way for long enough that people just get used to it and accept that you're in control now. | 43 |
ELI5: What gives gravity its energy? | I understand why/how gravity works when it comes to mass but what gives gravity it's physical energy to move things? | 74 | Ok, i take it as you are wondering how gravity isn't breaking the laws of the conservation of energy.
We cannot create or destroy energy, but we can transform it. So that means that gravity has to get its energy from somewhere, right?
If you drop a brick from a building, then earth's gravity will pull it towards the ground right? So where did that kinetic energy come from? The energy comes from *you*! Well, given that you were the one who carried the brick up the building. That means that you gave *your* energy to your brick. In other words, you gave your brick potential energy that would later on turn into kinetic energy (since you are going to drop it).
**Bonus fact:**
The energy you used to carry the brick comes from the sun! Think about it, the sun gives its energy (in the form of radiation) to plants so the plants can create chemical bonds (photosynthesis). Then you would eat the plant directly, or indirectly (like if you eat meat, the meat comes from animals that eats plants, or animals that eats animals that eats plants).
EDIT: formatting, words etc | 73 |
[Labyrinth] What was Jareth taking about? | His last conversation with Sarah was basically "Be my slave and I'll do whatever you want. It was very hard to discern what he actually meant,his goals, and his plan. Can anyone explain the character a little more? | 20 | He'd do everything for her if she would just allow him to. If she'd just acknowledge him as her king, he would do the flashy and wonderful things that a king can.
The point is, he has the title of king but he doesn't control her unless she lets him. That gives her the real power. He would do anything for her. | 24 |
CMV: No one cares about anyone but themselves | I don't really know how to give much detail on this. It feels like no one, myself includes, gives a damn about anyone but ourselves. If we cared about other people, we would never hurt them. We would do things to help them. We would actually want to hear what they have to say. They'd never annoy us. We'd always want to spend time with them. I don't think anyone has a single person in their life that meets this criteria. Our family, friends, children, spouses, etc. No matter how much we say we love them, we often use them to suit our own personal wants and needs. We ignore their wants in favor of our own. And often, we do it without thinking twice and without remorse. | 49 | I think you believe that caring and love is a simple dichotomy.
Either you love someone and only want to help them, or you don't care and will hurt them if it helps you.
You forget that there is parental love where you will send a child to bed without supper in order to teach them to be grateful for the food they receive.
Romantic love often involves hurting people by working and being forced away from them, in order to secure a future where they can be together more often.
Unconditional love and support doesn't exist, and if it were to exist it would hurt those that the person most wished to help.
But you seem to be dealing with some stuff, so please go get help. Go talk to a doctor. | 30 |
Eli5 Do fish swim slower near the bottom of the ocean? And if so, why? | Every video I see of creatures swimming or moving close to the bottom of the ocean they move slow and I’m wondering if they always do that. | 58 | Yes, deep sea fish tend to swim more slowly. The main reason is food, or rather, lack of food. There's not much food way down there, and as a result the animals that live there have to save energy as much as possible. That means moving slowly and not having much muscle. | 86 |
ELI5: How does a country just turn off the internet? | In recent events, Belarus was reported to have shut down the country’s Internet. How does that happen? Does the government control all the servers, or so they have a kill switch somewhere for all the service providers? What about mobile internet? Logistically, it doesn’t make sense. | 17 | >Does the government control all the servers
In a sense, yes. They send the police (or military) to the server companies and say shut the servers off or face arrest (or worse). They do the same with mobile providers. | 13 |
[Marvel] Other than being stronger/enduranced than humans why don't asgardians not of royalty or of the named gods super-powered or as almighty? Also how much stronger is the average asgardian to the average human? Would a 10yr old asgardian child be comparable to an an adult human ? stronger? | what about a teenager or a full adult asgardian? or do they come into power as they age ? are they all immortal? | 18 | Thor, Odin, Hela, Loki, Heimdall and maybe a few others are the same but different from normal Asgardians. They are somewhat like Jesus compared to humans, still human, still a god. Also the normal Asgardians is much stronger than a human being able to move cars and yes all of them have extended lifespans and slight regeneration powers. There's an Asgardian in the Agents of Shield series who said he stayed behind after Odin and his army came one time ago on earth and he fell in love with the place or something. This is MCU. In the comics i believe the difference between normal humans and Asgardians is massive. Something like a normal human compared to the Hulk | 23 |
Why are re-uptake inhibitors used instead of the neurotransmitters themselves? | You go to the doctor depressed and they say you have low serotonin levels that's why your depressed. So why not just give the person serotonin instead of a drug that just makes your brain not recycle it so quickly? | 163 | Multiple reasons:
* They want drugs with long half lives so that you're not taking it every half hour. Serotonin would be rapidly processed. Reuptake inhibitors get stuck in molecular channels and hang out longer.
* Your brain has a blood brain barrier to filter out possibly dangerous molecules, viruses, bacteria, etc. Serotonin does not get through the blood brain barrier, so any you took would not make it to your brain. | 191 |
ELI5: How it is possible that before 2. world war only men worked and still earned enough for whole family when today we have whole families (mom, dad, child) working and barely survive? | I asume that then capitalists were paying their workers fair (and actually care for them) instead of minimum required and rather buying 5 rolls royces, couple of yachts and jets like today? Speaking for the majority then and now. Can be? | 28 | People don't realize that our "quality of life" is significantly better than during that era.
Even 20 years ago, we didn't pay for cell phone, internet, cable. Cut that out? That's $200 a month minimum.
Even 20-30 years ago, a lot of people had 1 or 2 pairs of shoes. 2 sets of clothes (daily clothes, church clothes). When you grew out of them, your younger sibling or relative go the clothes. Hell naw did you throw them away or give them to good will.
Everybody has a computer, tablet, electronics and gets new ones every couple of years. If you lived in a modest apartment, had 3 sets of clothes, no electronics, made your own food - your cost of living would decrease probably by 1/2.
Despite people complaining about the inequalities of the rich and the middle/poor, life in a 1st world country is much better. | 40 |
How do doctors know the prescription for glasses for babies/children who are too young to do the usual sight tests? | 36 | They can map the shape of the eye pretty easily and get about 90% of the way to knowing the prescription. Then they need feedback from the patient for the fine tuning. Babies just can’t give that last little part that doesn’t matter much. | 27 |
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How do you estimate the percentage of species not found if you do not know the total the number of species (since they haven't been discovered)? | 527 | A field scientist will not likely have enough time to survey an entire rainforest. However, one can easily survey several 10ft by 10ft patches within the area. Suppose you're in an area that's as large as 1 mile by 1 mile. You select several 10x10ft patches and count all the insects in those locations. You find that on average, there are 5 species present that have already been identified, and 5 species present that are new to science. You can then extrapolate and assume that in the entire square mile patch of land, that only half of the species present have already been identified. So yes, there's some guesswork and statistics involved, but it can be very accurate. Of course, you can actually test how accurate the predictions were by fully surveying the entire area, but this is rarely done due to time and funding constraints. | 180 |
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[Harry Potter] Avada Kadavra is a spell that basically insta-kills you, and is considered "Unforgiveable", I get that. However, is it also "Unforgiveable" to use the effects of other spells to kill? | Such as setting a building on fire, or pushing someone off a roof? | 41 | The term 'unforgiveable' is more about what that spell signifies. Avada Kadavra, Crucio, and Imperio are powerful spells that require a powerful wizard to wield, and, the user must truly understand what using those spells entails. Not just 'know', but, actually *want* to use them.
It shows intent at the purest level. You'll go to trial for using one, sure, but the indicted pretty much admits to guilt simply by using them. | 65 |
[Harry Potter] Why does Dumbledore fiddle with Voldemort's cursed basin of poison for just a couple seconds before immediately concluding that the only way to the bottom is to drink its contents? | I don't want that guy in my D&D party.
Why can't you just flip the basin over or put a hole in it? We know Dumbledore is capable of animating tons of rock and manipulating matter on a fine scale. Why can't you turn the poison into something safe to drink? If you can't do that, why can't you summon something to drink the poison for you, or transfigure yourself into something that can drink the poison safely?
What are the limitations of the charm put on the basin by Voldemort? Does it have to be a basin? Does it have to be poison? Is it a difficult spell to cast, or are there first-year troublemakers breaking into Prefect bathrooms at night, pissing in the sinks, and then charming the sinks with that spell?
**tl;dr did Dumbledore drink magic Drano because Harry forgot his Dremel at home?** | 296 | I think if Dumbledore could have done something to not drink the poison, he would have. It was obviously protected by a very strong magical enchantment and it was clear Dumbledore knew this was the only option (meaning nothing physical/magical would have changed the state of it).
And secondly Dumbledore isn't the kind of person who'd force someone else drink poison. | 174 |
[Cosmos] Tell me about the ship Neil deGrasse Tyson is using. | 35 | Manufactured by a joint-project between Robert Goddard and the then toddler Carl Sagan in '40. Used one of the first liquid fuel motors ever created. Subsuquently overhauled in '56, for Mercury; '70, for Skylab; '87, after the Challenger tragedy; and lastly in '13 after the retiring of the Space Shuttle.
Runs on a hybrid fuel of Sulfuric Acid and liquified dreams. Can reach a top speed of 42c thanks to Douglas Adams's highly advanced-- and classified-- work in quantum physics. Comes equipped with fully stocked bar and air mattress.
Carl nearly wrecked in 1954 driving home from his high school prom-- boy, was his dad pissed. Other than that, not too many fender-benders or accidents.
It's got about 16,000,000,000 lightyears on the odometer, thanks to some stunts Steven Hawking pulled with a black hole, after that time Neil accidentally left the keys at Oxford. | 30 |
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[Detective Comics] Does the Flash mentally age faster? | 25 | The mental effects of the speed force are weird, to say the least.
The Flash can do things like go through thousands of tries of a combination lock, without losing focus or getting bored to death. He can carry on normal conversations with people even though he's perceiving time at such a sped-up rate that normal humans are little more than statues.
This indicates that the speed force insulates the Flash from ill effects of thinking, perceiving and reacting and superhuman speeds, so probably protects him from rapid mental aging as well. | 26 |
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CMV: Firearms should be required by law to be locked when being stored or not in use. | I believe that states should require gun owners to lock their firearms when they are not being used (often referred to as Safe Storage Laws). Locking can include trigger locks, barrel guards, lock boxes/safes, etc. To me, keeping guns locked seems like the responsible action to take as a gun owner. For example, evidence provided in 2016 showed that in Pittsburgh alone 79% of crimes involving firearms were committed by someone who did not own the weapon. There is plenty of global evidence that supports safe storage laws including suicide by firearm rate reduction.
This is for a psychology assignment so I am open to all opinions. I only ask that the conversations remain civil. | 22 | Not everything that is a good idea should be required by law.
For starters, firearm deaths are way down on the list of death causes. Let's start with heart disease and cancer. We could do save far more lives by making it illegal to sell, make or eat high cholesterol foods. Same with cancer and tobacco products.
Now let's think about enforcement. Are the cops going to come into people's homes to check compliance? If so, let's have them check for smoke detectors, carbon monoxide and faulty wiring (and make those all illegal too while we are at it).
At root, we have criminalized enough in our society. We have too many people in jail. Try another way of encouraging people to do what's right on this one. Public awareness campaigns, gun lock giveaways, etc. | 31 |
ELI5: How can a hacker be tracked after he's hacked a system? | Edit: Thank you everyone, it's all very clear to me now! | 201 | You can look at styles and methods of one hack and associate it with the same methods being used in other hacks with known attackers. For example, certain malware programs are known to be Russian others are known to be American. Once you know the attack methods, you can often know the attacker.
The hacker could of made a mistake and left traced that they were there. Those logs might be viable to trace the hacker's origin.
You can trace the released information backwards. Find out who has the information now, then find out where they got it from and so on until you arrive at the hacker.
If you have access to the routing infrastructure of the internet (like the US government does) then you might have the ability to track historic traffic. Giving you the ability to tell who was sending packets to where at what times.
Or it could be ways that we simply aernt aware of. | 60 |
ELI5: Why over the past 15 years, the typical CPU clock speed still remains around 2.8 to 3.2 GHz? | I know you can overclock the CPU to 5.0GHz, but I am not really talking about that.
Desktop CPU clock speed has increased from 1mhz to 2.8ghz over the past 40 years. But has remained at 2.8 to 3.2 average over the past 15 years...
Why not increase it along with other factors as well? What makes 3.0Ghz so perfect?
And if the clock speed is not the bottleneck, why do people that overclock the CPU see improvements in performance? | 355 | We're starting to run into some hard limitations of CPU manufacturing. The faster the clock speed, the more heat the chip will generate. If we push the clock speeds much higher than what they are today then people will need some exotic cooling solutions.
The normal way to increase clock speed without creating more heat is to make the wires thinner which lets the chips use less voltage. But, we're getting very close to fundamental limitations about how small the wires can be. They use to be able to pack twice as many transistors in the same space every 24 months or so. That pace has significantly slowed in recent years.
Finally, when you're talking about things happening in a billionth of a second, you start having problems keeping the entirety of the chip in sync. Electricity flows fast through the wires, but if we go much faster than the time it takes for the electrons to get from one side of the chip to the other will be slower than one clock cycle. This creates all sorts of new problems. | 391 |
ELI5: Why do parents urge/force their kids to finish their food? Won't they just eat what their bodies tell them to? | 23 | Children don't stop eating because they're full, they'll stop eating because they want to go play with something or they don't like peas - in either case, they'll be whining about being hungry in an hour. | 80 |
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Why can't I look at a word without reading it? | 173 | Because the human mind is an expert at pattern and relationship/structure detection and recognition. That is essentially how we think.
We are masters of pattern recognition, so when you glance at a word your pattern mind kicks in and you have no conscious choice but to 'decode' that pattern. (you read the word).
But if you create a 'word' without those familiar patters, you will not 'read' it. So do you read **kzbuudccq**? | 91 |
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If I were traveling at the same speed as an electron, would I observe it generating a magnetic field? | In other words, I know that a moving electric charge produces a magnetic field. So assuming there was a lone electron flying through empty space and I could match speeds with it and observe it while travelling parallel to it. Since, from my frame of reference, neither of us are moving, is it generating a magnetic field?
If not? Intuitively I would think someone traveling slightly slower WOULD observe a magnetic field.
I know this is somehow deeply tied to the questions which sparked Special Relativity, I can never find a good answer as to WHY though. It's been bugging me since I first started learning about Maxwell's Equations.
Thanks! | 24 | Your idea is correct, but in reality you see a magnetic field no matter what.
If the electron were a point charge **with no spin**, the magnetic field it produces would be zero in any frame where it's not moving. And in any frame where the electron *is* moving (no matter how slowly), the magnetic field would be nonzero.
But in reality, electrons have spin. And since they have spin and charge, they have an intrinsic magnetic moment. You cannot perform a Lorentz transformation to remove this magnetic moment, so it's present in all inertial frames.
So even when the electron is perfectly still, it has a magnetic dipole moment and thus generates a weak magnetic dipole field. | 17 |
Is it common for a professor to tell a student they will write a letter of recommendation with no intention of doing so? | Hello, all. I'm in a bit of a dilemma. I am applying for an internship which constitutes the last year of my undergrad degree. The programs I applied to all require a letter of recommendation from both a chemistry and a biology professor. No problems with the letter from the chemistry professor but the due date for the letters was 2 weeks ago and the biology professor still has not sent hers. She was the only biology professor I had had up until this past semester and I had done well in the classes she taught that I had taken (93%+), besides being an active participant in her classes. I asked her in late September if she would write me a letter of recommendation and she agreed. I provided her with the necessary forms (an evaluation was also required), my personal statement, and a copy of my transcript, all contained in an envelope with my name and purpose on it. I finished my interviews mid-november and after was told that her letter had still not arrived but not to worry because she was historically not late. I emailed her and my chemistry professor after the interviews to thank them once again for being an integral part of this process, hoping that would remind her in the event she forgot. I never received a reply from her (though I got an enthusiastic one from the chem professor). Last week, I received an email from one of the program directors that she had still not received it from the bio professor, so I politely emailed her again to remind her (at this point, it was a week late). I never received a reply. Today, I received a second email that they STILL had not received it. This professor has always replied timely to me when I emailed with a question/to set up an appointment with her. Anyway, thanks for letting me at least vent. I'm not sure what my next course of action should be as it has become apparent that I am not getting a letter of recommendation from this particular professor. | 16 | It's way more likely that the professor is incredibly busy and just forgot about it and hasn't seen your email. Send more emails and try to find her if possible. If there was a physical paper form to fill, bring new copies to her office just in case. | 31 |
ELI5: why do people's face on this picture look weird when seen in your peripheral vision? | [Picture](https://i.imgur.com/tnL0Cn1.gif) | 354 | When faced with rapid fire images on the outside of your focal point, you brain attempts to 'summarise' the details, and basically grabs what your brain determines to be the defining features and really exaggerates them, rightly or wrongly so you can make those split second decisions about what you see but aren't focusing on. | 202 |
CMV: Religion as a whole does not need to be abolished. | **Disclaimer:** I'm an atheist.
With that out of the way, let me explain my view. [Many people on CMV](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/general#wiki_against_religion) have expressed views that religion is harmful to society and has stopped the advancement of science in society. Common examples are used such as killings and wars that have took place on the premise of religion.
However, I do not believe that religion as a whole needs to be abolished. While I feel that certain fundamentalist views need to be abolished, in general most religious people do not engage in such activities, and instead seek to carry out the values of peace, love, etc. that keeps a society together. I think that as long as religion is kept a personal matter, it is alright for religion to exist.
By "personal matter" I mean that people should not engage actively to uphold their own form of morality, and instead follow the rules that keep a community together. For example, while Christians may be against homosexual rights, they should not engage in activity that discriminates against homosexuals or support anti-homosexual policies, but instead advocate against homosexuality on a moral basis. This is under the assumption that homosexuality does not cause any harm to society, which I will not discuss further.
Assuming that people do abide by these conditions, I see no reason why religion would cause harm to society. CMV.
---
**Clarifications (will update as time passes):**
1. By personal matter, I make an exception for the spreading of ideas (such as discussing religion with your children or converting others). The crux is that your actions must not harm others.
2. I'm proposing that by keeping religion as a "personal matter", most harm will be curbed.
---
**List of common arguments (will update as time passes):**
**A** stands for argument, **CA** stands for counterargument.
**A:** Publicly endorsing beliefs that are not supported by strong scientific evidence can be seen as causing harm to society and slowing down progress.
**CA:** I do not think that publicly endorsing religion will cause a significant effect. People are already inclined to believe many things that are not supported by strong scientific evidence. For example, superstitions, pseudoscience, stuff on the internet on sites such as *cough* Reddit *cough*, and much more.
**A: ** Particular parts of religion clash with science. You are either forced to continually change and amend all religions to keep in line with the current scientific world view, or you are telling people to choose religion over science, harming scientific advance.
**CA: ** I'd opt for letting people decide, since it is impossible to amend all religions to keep in line with science. This will definitely harm scientific advance. *[to be completed when I sort out my thoughts]*
---
After spending an hour, I couldn't think of a counterargument to the above arguments. I've awarded the deltas. Thanks for changing my view, /r/changemyview!
I will try to come up with a modified solution and see if that works out. Hope I've at least inspired some discussion on this matter.
_____
> *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!* | 107 | Publicly endorsing and advocating beliefs that are not actually supported by strong enough evidence could be seen as causing harm to society and slowing down progress however, even if indirectly.
EDIT: And this might apply even when the belief leads to some beneficial behaviors, such as 'You should be nice to people because (insert religious motivation)'
| 20 |
Are electrons running through electrical wires bound to any atoms? Or are they just free-flowing? | High school chemistry taught me that electrons exist as part of the "shell" of an atom. Whenever we spoke about electricity in physics class, I always got confused; how can these electrons just be flowing by themselves? Do they not need some sort of atom to exist within? | 26 | Electronic orbitals get a little more complicated when you are dealing with a solid rather than a single atom. High school chemistry only really taught you about isolated atoms. The lower electrons bound closer to the atom's nuclei are indeed fixed there. These do not contribute to electrical effects. It's the valence, or outer electrons, that come into play with electricity.
 
When you throw a whole bunch of atoms together, the atomic orbitals you learnt in chemistry no longer exist. Because of the pauli exclusion principle (the reason why in chemistry two electrons can't share the same orbital) two electrons cannot hold the same state within the solid. This leads to what are known as electronic bands, rather than orbitals.
 
Basically, when you throw two of the same atom together the valence electron states cannot overlap. This leads to two new states very close to the isolated atom energy level, but slightly off and not overlapping. Throw a few billion billion billion atoms together and you basically get a continuous bands of allowed energy levels. The bands are really made up of a lot of discrete possible states of energy and momentum that electrons can uniquely hold, but we treat them as a band. These bands really aren't localised to an atom, their wave function is more so for the composite solid.
 
Now just like an isolated atom has higher unfilled orbitals that an electron can be moved up into by addition of energy without being totally ionized from the atom, there are higher unfilled bands in solids that electrons can move up to given energy without being ionized. These higher unfilled bands have lots of empty states to any electrons that move up into them, so they facilitate electrons moving around. Which is what electricity is. So in electricity the electrons aren't bound to any specific atom, but they aren't ionized and totally free. They are just in a higher energy level, with a lot of very close by empty energy levels, which allow them to move between them freely.
 
In metals the valence band, the band with all the bound electrons that aren't free to move, overlaps the conduction band, the band of mostly empty states where electrons can freely move. This means in metals it takes basically zero energy to get electrons to hop up into the conduction band where they can move about. Simply applying a voltage is all it takes to get lots of electrons to move.
 
In insulators the story is a little different. The valance band, where electrons are at rest, and the conduction band above that have a high energy gap. That means it takes a lot of energy to move an electron up. Very few electrons are free to conduct because of this, so they are poor conductors. The only way to make them really conduct is a very high voltage, which will give the electrons so much energy they will be pulled away.
 
Lastly there is semiconductors, which are the basis of electronics and computers. These are the same deal as insulator, but the energy gap is much smaller. This means at room temperatures, the thermal energy is enough to cause a useful amount of electrons to jump the gap into the conduction band. As well as the electrons that move up to the conduction band being able to conduct electricity, the empty space they left behind in the valance band allows other electrons that aren't moved up to fill their place. In essence, this empty place constantly being filled by electrons appears to move, so we actually treat it as a positive particle known as a *hole* that conducts electricity too. We can alter this energy gap with impurities, which is crucial to making electronics fucntion. Other things can cause the electrons to jump this gap, such as visible light photons giving them the energy. This is the basis behind solar-cells. | 11 |
ELI5 How does reverse image lookup work? | 34 | There's not a single way but the general idea is to first downscale the image to something small (like 32x32) and then use an algorithm that detects disctintive features of that image and encodes them into an even smaller value, it's like some sort of extreme compression. Comparing this encoded values is much quicker since they're much smaller than the original image.
Also the search engine is continually looking for images in the web in order to keep a database of encoded images and the corresponding addresses. So when you give it an image for a reverse lookup the engine encodes the image in the same way, then looks for similar values in the database and finally obtains the images from the stored addresses. | 26 |
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[Pacific Rim] Why did the Jaeger pilots need to be mind connected with the Jaeger? | The documentary shows that they held joysticks with their hands and their feet were strapped to giant walking leg simulators. I don't see them controlling the Jaegar with their mind at all.
Why the need for a risky drift at all? | 29 | The suits contained neural receptors that captured the pilot's brain signals and turned them into commands for the Jager. In other words, the suit does not capture the actual motion but it takes the signals generated by the brain that command the limbs to react. The mechanical peripherals were just like a treadmill so that the pilots can move in place. | 20 |
How do scientists measure the drainage basin of a river? | I read a comment on here saying that most of the continental US drains into the Mississippi River. What sources of water are they measuring, and how do they calculate the total land area that's feeding into a given river? | 15 | In the modern, this is a pretty simple task in most Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In short, if you have a digital representation of topography (digital elevation models or DEMs, think a grid of x,y,z points representing elevations) you can run flow routing algorithms (the mathematical equivalent of placing a drop of water on a pixel in the DEM and using the local slope, i.e. the relationships between that pixel and its neighboring pixels, to figure out which way the drop would flow and then doing that for every pixel to make a map of flow directions) and then flow accumulation (using the result of the flow routing to figure out which pixels flow to which other pixels downstream and/or accumulate flow from other pixels upstream) to produce a map of the drainage area upstream of any pixel in the DEM. Then it's simply a task of querying the right pixel, i.e. find the the pixel that represents the mouth of the Mississippi river and query the drainage area. | 13 |
Cognitive decline post-COVID - does it improve over time? | I understand that evidence at this point might be limited, but is there anything to suggest that the cognitive decline caused by COVID-19 will improve over time, or does it look like the damage would likely be permanent? | 83 | No one knows for sure, but cognitive issues after severe viral infections are common and not really uncommon after even minor viral infections. Even a cold will show lower test scores for several months. Anything that really engages the immune system will. The very minor lowing of skills from minor cases is likely in lines with that and will recover.
On the other hand very severe covid where you have low oxygen for a period of time is more likely to be real actual brain damage. People on ventilators that barely could get oxygen into their lungs for weeks that come out with issues are very likely suffering from that extended lack. | 74 |
ELI5: Nuclear powered submarines. How do they work and manage the nuclear waste and why don't we have more nuclear "stuff" like nuclear trains or nuclear Google headquarters? | 155 | Nuclear submarines are electric submarines with a built-in nuclear power plant. The nuclear reactor powers everything on board, from desk lamps to propulsion to water desalination.
Nuclear fuel lasts a *long* time! Every 20 years, or so, they take out the spent fuel and loads in new fuel. The spent fuel (nuclear waste) is brought to a facility for temporary storage before it can be put in permanent storage (I don't think anyone have built a permanent storage for nuclear waste yet). | 119 |
|
Life generates a lot of odorous particles that float around for us to smell. Where do they all go? Why doesn't the world get progressively stinkier over time? | 29 | Biologist speaking off the cuff: Stinky things of biological origin are generally made of complex (large) organic molecules. These are generally unstable over time and are broken down into simpler, less stinky molecules by heat, light, oxidation, as well as living organisms (bacteria for the most part). | 28 |
|
ELI5:Do animals from different countries have different 'languages'? | 2,025 | yes, this is notable in social creatures, like whales. whales transported from different oceans essentially would have to learn different calls and sounds used for meanings that they already associate with | 2,041 |
|
Was Plato BSing us when he suggested he had a separate, hidden philosophical system which he never covered in his writings? | According to Plato's letters (which I realize have prominent scholars arguing for and against in terms of authenticity) he denies that he has never written, or will ever write, a book on what he "seriously" studies. And as "Whenever one sees a man's written compositions-whether they be laws of a legislator or anything else in any other form-these are not his most serious works, if so be that the writer himself is serious."
According to the seventh letter, the truth about "the highest things of nature" does not at all "admit of verbal expression like other studies". Avoidance of writing is "the greatest safeguard"; it is not right to divulge the truth improperly, the second letter states.
So this leads you to think that he never wrote about his true philosophical system. But I have a hard time believing that.
This is because Plato's associates — Aristotle, Xenocrates, Crantor — base their interpretation of Plato's philosophy on statements made in the dialogues.
How could people so close to him be unaware that his writings contained no serious teachings? | 173 | I think what Plato meant by that was that he understood correctly, that there was a deeper meaning and higher truth to reality than is apparent at once, an existential plane which transcends words and the physical realm and any attempts to describe in writing this meta-reality was at best a fruitless attempt and at worst an irresponsible and mistaken approach to the matter. Think of it as his own greek version similar to the philosophical system in Buddhism about the Two Truths doctrine in which there is a conventional truth and a higher ultimate truth.
Then again, you can't blame him for saying that. 2500 years later, Wittgenstein arrived at the same conclusion. That the word is not the thing and that our model of reality is not reality itself.
It goes to show the timelessness of Plato's mind. A true genius for the ages. | 151 |
[Lord of the Rings] How do Hobbits grow/hunt/raise enough food to sustain their heavy diets? | 123 | the shire is absurdly fertile, and hobbits don't actually eat an insane amount. book describes them as having 7 meals when they can get them, implying they don't always; and from what we've seen a hobbit meal is about what you would expect for a human of that size. add in that they are growing human crops, but only eating hobbit size portions it's not that hard to imagine them keeping their larders full. | 177 |
|
I believe a lot of people will never find "love", CMV | Before all, I'm talking about "common" people, not the ones with major mental disorders, etc. Just people that you'll find on the street that seems "normal". Also just to clarify I'm talking in the strict sense of a partner, as an spouse or lover. Heterosexual by the way. And friendship it's excluded from this view. That's another topic.
According to wolframalpha there are 2.177 billion "adult" males and 2.113 billion females.
Of course demographics vary from country to country. But basically in every culture, there are people that can't find a partner due to psychological or physical problems. Or it may be that the peer group of "x" individual isn't large enough or doesn't have so much contact with the opposite sex.
There are so many factors but in the end it may reduce to a problem with the subject or with his/her environment..
Also, like you read above, there's an unbalanced number. There are more females than males,, and a lot of people are turned off by competence.
Those are external factors, but is in human nature to look only for the best "genes" to perpetuate it's existence, so a lot of *ugly* people seem to struggle more than a *pretty* person to find a partner. Monogamy and all of that is another matter.
Also if we look for dating sites on the internet, it's just more complex, because in my experience there are 10 males for 1 female on dating sites (aprox). And so women become more picky, and so more males find it difficult to get a partner.
So, despite humans being *social animals*, some of them are destined to be alone* for the rest of their existence. And this cycle will continue for the rest of time, or the duration of humanity.
*Alone in the sense of not having a close relationship with another human being.
Tl;DR; Some people are destined to be alone due to psychological, social or just chance factors, and thus will never find love, or a partner.
Edit 1: [take a look at R4R](http://reddit.com/r/r4r), for any given female, her post it's more likely to have 5 or more replies than a male one, which in average will have 1 or 2 replies, if he is lucky, of course that isn't a rule, because female more likely will send a private message than a public post, still it shows something.
Edit 2: [Now I understand the Weltschmerz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz) :(
| 30 | Being in love does not mean you have to be in a stable relationship with another person, you can be in love with someone and have to suffer without them feeling the same way as them. You can be in love with someone and talk to them for hours into the night to help them deal with their anxiety. Or them worrying about their partner who treats him/her much worse than they deserve, and much worse than you would ever treat them. Love isn't permanent either. You can love someone with all of your heart and loose your feelings when they slowly change into someone else. When they change from the person you fell in love with. Love isn't a lifetime pact with another person to never be broken under any circumstances, love is the feeling of caring about someone more than anything, and those feelings may come and go. | 11 |
[Harry Potter] If Snape had already accepted the morality issues about killing Dumbledore, why wouldn't he create a horcrux? | Harry would have seen it in Snapes memories at the end, found the horcrux, and brought snape back to life to thank him. | 23 | Because creating a horcrux involves incredibly dark magic, sacrificing a part of your soul, and things so horrible that people who hear the details feel ill afterwards.
We don't know how horcruxes are created. We know murder is involved, but that is all.
Also, the horcrux must be created by the person who is going to become immortal. Harry couldn't make one for Snape, since it wouldn't be Snape's soul filling the object, but a fraction of Harry's own soul.
In addition to this, if the owner of the Horcrux feels remorse for the act, and Snape regretted killing Dumbledore (Even if he understood it was necessary, he didn't want to), the horcrux would fail and he'd regain his soul with a nearly fatal amount of pain. | 38 |
[DC Comics]If Billy Batson were 60+ years old, would his Captain form still look like a young man? | 27 | Eeyup. Billy has the power of the Gods,, and the wisdom of Solomon.
When he says SHAZAM, he isn't simply activating another form - he's taking a mantle of power drawing from each of the gods. Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury.
So, his form would still be young and powerful.
Also see Black Adam, who has similar power, and who lives in his other form permanently, to avoid his frail elderly mortal body. | 54 |
|
ELI5 As someone from the UK, why are there only 2 main political parties in the US? | In Europe/most of the world, there are lots of political parties, but the US has 2, why? | 202 | **The 3 Most Commonly Cited Factors:**
1. First-Past-The-Post Voting: In much of Europe, parties get seats based on what percentage of the vote they win, so a party that gets 15% of the vote will get roughly 15% of the seats. Thus, smaller parties can still easily win some seats. In the U.S. (and the UK), whichever candidate wins the most votes gets the seat, and everyone else's vote gets thrown away, making it much harder for a smaller party to win seats.
2. Single Member Districts: In any election, only one candidate gets a seat. In Japan, something like the top 2 or 3 vote-getters get seats, so more parties have a chance at being relevant.
3. Electoral College: This is a smaller factor, but a presidential candidate like Ross Perot seems less relevant if he wins no electoral votes than if elections were based on straight up percentage and he wins 19% of it.
**Two Other Factors:**
4. Primary System: In the U.K., the party leadership decides which candidate gets the nomination for every race. If a group doesn't agree with the party leadership, they have to start their own party if they want to run. If this were the case in the U.S., the Republican Party for example probably would not have chosen Tea Partiers to run, and the Tea Party would have had to become its own party. Because we have a primary system however, people from a wide range along the political spectrum can all run under the same party label. As a corollary, smaller movements or major niche issues (Civil Rights, Prohibition, etc.) also tend to get absorbed into one of the two major parties who are looking to broaden their support base.
5. Tradition: If a country only has two major parties at any one time for 200 straight years, people just get used to the idea and are at least somewhat less likely to break the status quo.
EDIT: grammar and such | 133 |
Reducing if, if-else statements possible on c#? | Hi,
I am working on my own project in c# and during this quest of learning I was wondering if there is a way to avoid using too many if statements. I've read that you could use OOP, but nothing that I've seen seems to be coherent for me to understand. For example, I have this code... and I want to find a way to not have to keep adding if statements in case I add another state to my light.
I would like some ideas, there's nothing to solve here lol :)
public void checkColor(string color, int state)
{
if (color == "r" && state == 1)
{
redState = lampOn;
}
else if (color == "r" && state == 2)
{
redState = lampBlink;
}
else if (color == "y" && state == 1)
{
yellowState = lampOn;
}
else if (color == "y" && state == 2)
{
yellowState = lampBlink;
}
else if (color == "g" && state == 1)
{
greenState = lampOn;
}
else if (color == "g" && state == 2)
{
greenState = lampBlink;
}
else if (color == "b" && state == 1)
{
blueState = lampOn;
}
else if (color == "b" && state == 2)
{
blueState = lampBlink;
}
}
Thanks! | 24 | you could separate the two checks as a start ...
var tmp;
switch(state)
case 1: tmp= lampOn
case 2: tmp= lampBlink
switch(color)
case 'r': redState = tmp
case 'g': greenState = tmp
case 'b': blueState = tmp
Though really the first question to me is why you got an int-state coming into the function, and then a lampOn/lampBlink state (which seems to come from variables) and not just a LampState-Enum that is used in both places. | 17 |
ELI5 what happens in the brain during those 10 seconds when you wake up and you don't even know who you are. | 15 | Think of your brain like a computer. When you turn a computer on, it doesn't start running right away. It has to boot up first, filling up various bits of the computer with the memory that makes it able to show you cat videos.
When you wake up, it's kind of like your brain rebooting. | 10 |
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Can Economic theories and models be derived using only formal philosophical logic, or are mathematical proofs absolutely necessary for the derivation of these models? | 15 | No, strictly speaking you do not need math.
However, this is part of the history of economics. It's so math heavy nowadays because math is a clear and concise language. That makes it much more easy to know what people try to say, and to work with that scientifically, test hypotheses, etc.
Certain groups still argue about what some bygone economists were "actually" trying to say because even after elaborating your theses over multiple books, words are still imprecise. Math nicely avoids those issues, and economics is better off for it. | 13 |
|
[Batman] Aside from the obvious two, what are some of the most popular rumours and gossip about billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne? | Everybody's heard the scurrilous claims about him and his youthful wards, which I find extremely unlikely but I'm still not going to reject out of hand because rich people are twisted freaks.
Similarly, everybody knows he's blatantly funding Batman, although the claims that he could actually be Batman are self-evidently ridiculous.
What I want to know is, what other claims do the tabloids and the gossip websites like to make about him? Who do they think he's screwing? What do they think he's wasting his money on? If I were to suddenly start reading celebrity magazines, what impression would I get of him? | 80 | Bruce Wayne is basically a Kardashian. He's always in the tabloids and connected to every high profile female that steps through Gotham. He's been linked to reported Vicki Vale, a foreign diplomat named Talia, exotic dancer Selina Kyle, and numerous others.
Besides being a womanizer, he's got a pretty good image. His Wayne Foundation does a lot of charity work, but his detractors claim he is only a figurehead. | 70 |
CMV: People shouldn’t get mad at or ridicule others for holding differing beliefs without at least trying to explain why those beliefs are wrong. | It is increasingly common in this day and age to have people with differing political beliefs attack each other for those beliefs just because they are different. This is not just a problem between the Democrats and Republicans, but its also becoming clearly visible in the progressive-moderate schism in the Democratic Party itself.
In my opinion, this should not happen without at least an attempt to see the other side’s point of view and change it. Attacking them does the opposite, it alienates the other person from you and your base and only triggers an attack against you. I believe you can’t just baselessly attack someone without a coherent explanation as to why they should change the way they think. Otherwise you can’t complain about them not being able to see your side of the story.
Obviously I understand that some views are severely skewed and don’t deserve the light of day to be argued (ex. all Mexicans are rapists, a wall will stop immigration, the coronavirus is a hoax, climate change isn’t real, Bernie Sanders is a communist), but when it comes to genuine issues of concern, I think time should be taken to civilly argue them. | 16 | Where do we draw the line between "genuine issues of concern" and views that are "severely skewed and don't deserve the light of day to be argued"? Because this is entitlerly subjective but actually pretty important.
People can be genuinely concerned about views we think are ridiculous. Some people are actually genuinely concerned about Bernie Sanders being a communist, for example. But by this post, it seems like it's okay to attack and ridicule them.
And as silly as some views seem, this applies to every topic. For every single issue, there will be some people who are legitimate concerned about it and others who think it's a totally obvious foregone conclusion, not even worth debating.
So who decrees what's a genuine issue of concern and what's allowed to be mocked? You? Me? The president? There's not going to be one judgement everyone agrees on.
Either it's okay to attack and ridicule in all these cases or you should make an attempt to understand and change the opposing view in all these cases. (Or we say that each individual can choose whether they want to seriously argue or just ridicule a certain view.) | 10 |
Why doesn't cream separate into fat and water? | When you mix oil and water, you can create an emulsion. After some time, the oil and water separate into layers.
Cream is an emulsion with a lot of fat in water. However, it doesn't appear to separate (at least not on a scale I have observed). Why not? What keeps it in suspension? | 45 | You have observed curdling, which actually is separation, or the process of "flocculation"; it just happens at a slower rate in cream than, say, a mixture of oil and water. Rate of flocculation is driven by several variables, but all boil (or flocculate?) down to the kinetics of the fat molecules, i.e. droplet radius, droplet density, and viscosity of the liquid it is homogenized in.
| 19 |
[Detective Pikachu] What is the role of Pokemon trainers in this universe? (spoilers within) | Pokemon can’t understand human speech, so trainers can’t give commands or battle strategy. In the Ryme City cage fights, it seemed like they just let the Pokemon....have at each other. The Sinnoh League exists in the world, so clearly there is a culture of Pokemon battling outside of Ryme City.
What is the point of trainers when it seems like the whole world operates like the Battle Palace from Emerald? I don’t think you can communicate battle strategy from emotions.... | 43 | I think it's the same principle as with training, say, dogs, or horses, in real life-- you train them to respond or act in certain ways by rewarding (or not rewarding) certain actions, and nudging them in the direction you want them to go. | 45 |
[MCU] How does everyone understand each other. | So how do asgardians, genetically modified rodents, human-alien abductees with 4th grade educations, tree people, frost giants, kree, thanks, humans and whoever else all manage to speak english perfectly? Not only that, but there have been cases of language barrier in the MCU (the russian guy in iron man 2) so this couldn't be an alternate reality with only one language. | 16 | Asgardians speak the language All-speak which allows every thing with sentience to understand them and likewise. Basically they are so advanced they figured out the root of all language. Probably that magic vs science thing Thor mentioned.
Most cosmic beings like Silver Surfer/Galactus are mentally so far beyond us that all they need are a few words spoken and they can become fluent in a language.
I believe Quill just uses a universal translator. | 31 |
We can't specify the position of an electron around the atom, applying the same principle we also can't specify the position of the nucleus, right? | 18 | Right. The nucleus has a much larger mass, however, which *usually* corresponds to a smaller uncertainty in position. In addition, if people talk about the uncertain position in an electron, they usually mean the relative position of electron and nucleus. Due to the big mass differences, this is roughly the same as an uncertain position of the electron. | 42 |
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ELI5: Why should I care that the NSA is "spying" on me? | Reddit makes a big deal about it, acting like it's a surprise. Patriot Act was signed, I thought everyone knew this was happening. I'm not doing anything illegal, why should I care? | 39 | The NSA is made up of people. People are fallable & can abuse power.
On top of that, the Bill of Rights explicitly says that the government must get a warrant, approved by a judge, based on having legitimate probably cause, before violating somebody's privacy. Even if you don't care about *your* privacy, you should probably be concerned that a government agency is wiping it's ass with the constitution and acting as if the law does not apply to them.
We're a nation of laws. The laws are just as much about restricting government power as they are about controlling citizen behavior. If the government stops playing by the rules, there's no point in having them. | 111 |
CMV:Donald's Weight And Height are fabricated. | During the recent medical exam Donald was listed at 6-3 and 239 pounds. Conveniently coming at 29.9 BMI. A physique equivalent to Colin Kaepernick is 6'4 230 lbs or Luke Kuechly is 6'3 238 lbs.
Now I believe Donal Trump is a petty enough person to lie about frivolous things like inauguration crowd size, so it is blatantly possible he could lie about his weight and height as not to come across as obese as in 30 BMI.
Did the Admiral lied so he can secure his next promotion or the Girther movement a conspiracy CMV.
Edit: Trump's Driving license claims he is [6'2](https://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-drivers-license-height-232948)
_____
> *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!* | 32 | Kaepernick is probably an unfair comparison as muscle weighs a lot more than fat and so BMI puts lots of athletes in overweight etc. As muscle is heavy you will weigh that same as someone who looks a lot fatter so Trump could plausibly weigh the same as Kaepernick and any other athletes you bring up for comparison. | 79 |
How do birds detect magnetic fields to know which way is north and south? | 22 | Their eyes can see it. Light induces the formation of radicals (unpaired electrons) in part of the bird's eye that are affected by the earth's magnetic field. Their orientation to the poles affects the signal, so they can very accurately tell north and south. Without it, their travel over water or at night would be fatally off course. | 15 |
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ELI5:. Why do auto immune diseases like psoriasis only target certain parts of the body or skin and not everything? | 93 | Psoriasis does affect the entire body, it simply is worse in some places for any of dozens if not hundreds of reasons. Some factors are sun damage, friction damage, chemical agitation, etc.
There are also forms of psoriasis that affect more than the skin, such as psoriatic arthritis which affects joints. With this form you will have more skin reactions at the joints damaged by the arthritis. | 66 |
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[Marvel/X-Men] If Magneto hates and looks down on human, how does he have so many kids? | Magneto has a ton of kids in almost every mythos he’s in. In any given universe, he’s had 3-4 kids at least. Even if we don’t count 616 Wanda and Pietro, the fact that he considered them his kids means that he was still involved with their mother.
However, most of these kids’ mothers are humans. Magneto looks down and despises humans and have tried to wipe them out or enslave them before. If that’s the case, why is he so willing to enter into romantic/sexual relationship with human women and father children with them? | 22 | His detachment from humanity built gradually, over the course of many years. He didn’t start out hateful; he was driven to it, in a large part by the death of his first child.
And except when possessed by Sublime, he’s never been fully hateful - just uncaring of human life. Even at his most villainous, he treated humans who weren’t actively fighting him or expressing bigotry with an appropriate courtesy. | 38 |
[endgame] what were the avengers going to do to thanos after they caught him? | sorry if this is a dumb question. I rewatched that endgame scene where the avengers ambush thanos while he is making some soup and one thing I forgot about was that rocket seems genuinely surprised that thor kills thanos. so did they have other plans for him? like were they intending on taking him to trial or was it their plan to kill him anyway? (maybe in a more respectful manner for example) | 585 | There wasn't really a plan.
They mainly wanted to get the stones to undo the Snap.
I think the confusion came more from the ruthlessness and swiftness of the kill, Thor killed him the second he couldn't provide new information.
Not really something Thor is known to do. | 703 |
Why is the Moon now considered a planet based on Alan Stern's findings? | What exactly does his new definition change that would count the Moon as a planet? And is it possible that in the near future this new definition become the more recognized definition? | 25 | The new definition is simply that the body 1) never underwent fusion on its own and 2) has sufficient gravity to maintain a spheroid shape.
Under the new definition, moons like Luna and Titan, dwarf planets like Pluto and Eris, as well as rogue planets and exoplanets, will all be called Planets.
Basically, he hates the fact that Pluto isn't a planet and wants to redefine the term to one that allows Pluto to be called a planet again. | 46 |
ELI5: Why do some people cover literally half of a bed with non-functional pillows? | I'd forgotten /r/toomanypillows was in my sub list but it raised an interesting question: why? Why do this to yourself?
http://i.imgur.com/JygeHJk.jpg
http://www.richardtimothy.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/31-bed-pillows.jpg | 28 | Some people are *really* into function (usefulness). Some people are really into form (aesthetics). Most of us exist on some spectrum in between.
People whose beds are half covered in non functional pillows, you know, the kind where they have to take like half a dozen pillows off the bed every night before bed, are just really into form. They're probably the same people who have a nice 'living room' area that no one is allowed to use. | 35 |
Why are our fingerprints spirals? | 79 | No one can answer that because No one knows about regularity of fingerprints, because fingerprints are not genetic. All of your finger and toe prints are formed when you’re rubbing the inside of the amniotic sac. | 16 |
|
[DC] Which characters has the Joker had the best relationships with? | Note the S. Character***s***.
Anyone who comes in here and says "Harley Quinn" and nothing else is going to get a visit from Jean-Paul Valley.
I'm serious, [he will leap right out of your screen and wreck you](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSDfxde8fSg).
You have been warned.
---
I know he flat out ignored Bruce Wayne, and I guess he enjoys taunting Lex too much to outright kill him (except when he has ultimate power).
Has there ever been anyone that has been crazy enough or boring enough that the Joker would interact with them but couldn't be bothered to harm them or work with them (in the case of fellow villains)? | 20 | Well the Joker is primarily a Batman Villain. So he has a regular relationship with most of those guys!
In most continuities, he's seen as liking the other villains enough to enjoy a few games of Poker with them. (Usually at very high stakes though, and involving a COPIOUS amount of cheating). Even then, it's implied through a lot of these interactions (including with Lex Luthor) that the Joker is invited out of fear, rather than genuine affection for the clown prince of crime.
Really, the only consistent "positive" relationship that he's endured is between him and his former Psychiatrist, Dr. Harleen Quinzel.
The Joker is a demented soul. He is too focused and too hateful and too unpredictable to have long-term relationships with anyone, of any kind, unless they're with poor, stockholm-syndromic, easily abused victims like Harley Quinn. So you're not going to be getting much of a good answer on this one.
(I ain't scared of no Azrael) | 23 |
ELI5: if an other Earth existed, identical in every physical way to our planet, however is located in a different part of the universe, would humans eventually evolve on the other Earth? | Yo. | 26 | No. The series of biological events leading to the existence of humans is an accumulation of VERY unlikely individual events. The reason we have ended up the way we have is not because there is something inherent in the geology of the earth that has driven us toward this outcome. We simply represent one of many possible solutions to a particular problem.
For comparison, consider the marsupial mammals of australia and the placental mammals of africa. These environments are very similar and in each environment, there are categories of animals that have evolved to exploit particular niches. For example, there is a niche for living underground and eating worms. Thus the mole and the marsupial mole. Not closely related at all, but they have many common features such as very large front claws, because they are solving similar problems. For a more disparate example, consider the niche for large grazing animals. Africa spawned antelopes, etc; Australia spawned kangaroos. Not remotely similar or closely related.
It is possible that an earth-like planet could come to contain life forms that occupy the human niche, but they are very unlikely to solve their problems in the same ways. | 20 |
ELI5 - How are height requirements calculated for theme park rides? | 35 | ELI5 answer is that they calculate how short someone would have to be to slip out of the restraints, then add plenty of safety margin to accommodate everyone with different-length torsos, legs, etc.
Some rides even have height maximums, where your dangling legs could crash against something. It's the same idea; the max height is calculated and then taken way down, as a safety factor.
In all likelihood someone just outside the limits would be fine. But in these things a huge safety factor is absolutely required. | 47 |
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[WH40K] I'm a child that has been selected to become an Ultramarine... | I have been taken/snuck off world by my parents through traders, what happens to me if I'm found aboard the ship by Smurfs? What if I am found by another Chapter and they try to conscript me, would Smurfs know/ care?
I don't like needles.. | 47 | Honestly? They probably wouldn't care.
Ultramarines would definitely have filed paperwork, but it would probably be kept on the local planet.
Why would they care about you? There are thousands of kids on your planet jumping at the chance to become one of the Emperors angels.
Enjoy your life with your heathen, God-Emperor hating parents. You heretic. | 76 |
I do not believe that police in the United States protect me in any personally significant way and generally do not report crimes committed against me to the police. CMV | I am a mid 20s, white, middle class American who has lived most of their life in a large metro area in the upper midwest (lol reddit right)?
When I have been a victim of crimes or when I've had family members be victims the police have either been entirely unhelpful or made the situation worse for the victim. This experience has been uniform in every police interaction I have had myself or known a family member or close friend to have had. I no longer report crimes to the police unless I have insurance reasons for doing so, I generally would refuse to assist the police or tell them anything, and frankly I look down on people in the profession.
Broadly speaking I don't think that the police, as police, offer much protection or redress. While I acknowledge that were I to get in a car accident and an officer was the first responder they would render me badly needed aid I don't think that matters much because any trained responder would do the same and that isn't the primary job of police anyways. To make my point about the uselessness of the police I'm going to break down three common kinds of crimes I might be a victim of and relate experiences I've had or known people to have that make me believe I should not go to the police.
**Property Crimes**
This is my biggest complaint, it is the kind of crime one is most likely to encounter and I've never seen the police make even the most basic effort at prosecuting these crimes. Several years ago a somewhat unstable girl was feuding with one of my roommates over an ex boyfriend. She entered our house through an unlocked back door (she knew the house), vandalized my friend's room for damages >$500, and was seen by another roommate exiting the front door as she left. When the vandalism was discovered we called the police, they came, were told the story, spoke to the person who saw the guilty party leaving, and received a current address for the vandal's whereabouts. Later the guilty party posted on facebook that her roommate said the police were looking for her-- she thought it was hilarious. We followed up with the police, as did our landlord (most of the damage was to the room itself), but to the best of my knowledge they made no further effort and I am certain that there were no consequences to the vandal.
This is the most egregious experience I've had, but I have never known police to seriously investigate property crimes. My mom had her car twice broken into in a public park's lot, as did many other people, but nothing was done. The people who broke into her card attempted to use her ATM card to pay "Graduation Fees" at a local high school-- my mom attempted to get the police to investigate further but they were unwilling to do so.
So unless I need to deal with an insurance company why the hell would I go to the police if someone steals or damages my property?
**Sexual Crimes**
I have a family member who was sexually assaulted. Not a 'stranger in an ally situation', I understand those to be extremely rare, but a person at a party who my family member hardly knew. He got her out of the common areas of the party and then forcibly assaulted her. She went to the police and had a bad experience doing so. They were unconcerned with her welfare or mental state. They went to great efforts to get her to say she either knew the guy better than she did or had drank much more than she had. The whole orientation of the police's process was not towards proving a crime, or apprehending an offender, but instead trying to create doubt that a crime had occurred. In the end they did nothing other than compound the trauma of the rape. The victim regrets having gone to the police. I entirely believe her story on the basis of long observation of her personal stability and the clear effect this had on her in the aftermath; please don't try and tell me that if it really was as she represented the police would have done more.
If I am ever the victim of a sexual assault, thankfully unlikely, I certainly won't bring it to the attention of police.
**Violent Crimes**
I have never been a victim of a serious assault or attempted murder and the only people I know who have are the kind who 'don't snitch' no matter what happened. So I admit a lack of direct experience here and expect police take such things somewhat more seriously. Still, I don't think I or most people face a significant chance of being assaulted except from someone close to them or strangers mostly when I had some role in escalating the altercation. Most people won't report a family member/SO unless the injury is really serious and if some total stranger decides to jump me and beat me totally unprovoked I think my chances of reliably identifying that person for police are basically 0. So again in this regard I don't think the police provide significant protection; they'll take your husband away in cuffs after he stabs you, but that's about it.
**Don't try and tell me that the police don't have enough resources to investigate these kinds of crimes.**
In the vandalism case $500-$1000 worth of damage was done. I know how many hoops the police would jump through to bust a $1000 coke deal, shit a $50 coke deal. The police have resources, but their priorities are not oriented towards the welfare of citizens and protecting those citizens from crime. I could go into my analysis of the real role of these police, but that's well beyond the scope of this CMV, so all I'll do is name check Michelle Alexander's [landmark work](http://www.worldcat.org/title/new-jim-crow-mass-incarceration-in-the-age-of-colorblindness/oclc/320803432&referer=brief_results) | 71 | > Police in the United States
First off, there is no one, unified police force that follows the same rules, policies, procedures or have access to the same resources. Each individual jurisdiction has their own police force and each county has a sheriff's office, and each state has state police. You are describing some bad incidents with what sounds like a single police force. That's like swearing off all pizza because you don't like the pepperoni Domino's uses.
| 38 |
[Marvel] Why does Doctor Doom keep losing to the fantastic 4 when he was able to render The Beyonder powerless? | 70 | Hubris and emotion, mostly. Doom is ferociously capable, but he has a blind spot around Reed Richards that would dwarf most eclipses.
When Doom turns his attention to non-Reed ambitions, he tends to excel to a universal tier. | 92 |
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[Marvel] How does the economy continue to function? | With cities constantly being destroyed how is there still a functioning market. Investing must be highly unstable unless people are speculating on the need for disater relief. Also, there are a lot of people with the tech to shutdown the banking system on a whim. | 46 | If Stark and others are investing enormous sums into rebuilding the cities, they're likely also investing huge amounts into incentives for businesses to occupy the quickly rebuilt properties. This probably means that large urban areas attract a weird sort of business, one that's willing to take huge risks in return for big rewards. These businesses likely benefit from economic incentives (including huge tax breaks) while also running enormous risks to their physical assets. This lets companies offer high wages to draw in employees, who likely also benefit from an artificially low cost of living. It must be like living in the Wild West, a place of enormous potential and enormous risk.
| 30 |
I keep hearing AI technology is making huge leaps right now, but no specifics whatsoever - so how am I personally impacted by AI and when will its effects become very hard to ignore for the end user? | 23 | well, small things you might not notice outright are happening constantly due to AI constantly getting smarter. AI is responsible for your Google searches becoming more accurate, your ads becoming more relevant, and even new features in your electronic gadgets like your smartphones, like your lockscreen unlocking with just your face from recognizing it. the problem is that since improvement is so gradual, it's hard to notice on a day-to-day schedule, kind of like when you look at pictures of of you and your friends when you were younger and think "wow, we didn't seem that small at the time!"
I think the moment you're after where the advancements in AI will be sudden and impossible to ignore is called "singularity," which is basically where AI become as smart as humans, and therefore are more efficient than us at improving their own intelligence, which would explode the speed of becoming smarter astronomically. that is rumoured to happen in the next couple of decades, which will absolutely be one of humanities most notable accomplishments - for better or for worse (dun dun dun!) | 12 |
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[Superman] How does Superman have such a muscular figure? | I mean, he can bench press the Earth for 5 days straight. With strength like that, there's no way he could work out the necessary amount to reach the tone and muscle size he has. | 19 | He also is not human. His whole body is different, his cells are different. As we have seen in comics/movies, all Kryptionians have a similar body shape that resembles what we on earth would call a desirable shape.
Superman gets his energy from the sun, not eating. and no matter how long he stays in the sun, he will never get fat.
So, in conclusion, he just looks the way he looks because he is Kryptonian. | 19 |
ELI5: What are the mechanisms that enable giant tortoises to have exceedingly long natural life spans? | Is there a genetic component or limited lack of predators? | 17 | The mechanisms that enable giant tortoises to have long natural life spans are not well understood, but it is likely that a combination of factors contribute to their longevity. Some possible factors include genetics, a low metabolism, and a lack of predators in their natural habitats.
Giant tortoises are known for their slow metabolism, which means that they burn calories at a much slower rate than most other animals. This slow metabolic rate may help them to conserve energy and avoid wasting resources, which may contribute to their long life spans. In addition, giant tortoises are typically found in isolated environments, such as remote islands, where they are not exposed to many predators. This lack of predation may also help them to avoid the dangers that can shorten the life spans of other animals.
Overall, the long life spans of giant tortoises are likely the result of a combination of genetic and environmental factors. | 14 |
ELI5:What's the connection between entropy and the end of the universe ? | 22 | Imagine the universe is a box, a really big box. The box is full of water, with a bunch of packing peanuts suspended in the water. The peanuts dissolve in the water over time. It's slow process, but sooner or later all of the peanuts will be completely dissolved in the water. It's like they were never there at all.
This is entropy, and the end of the universe. All the stuff in the universe is slowly dissolving away - through processes ranging from gigantic explosions that scatter star-stuff through the void to physical matter literally vaporizing back into energy over a long, long time.
Once everything is scattered/dissolved, the universe will be "dead", because there won't be enough energy left for anything interesting to happen ever again.
In the analogy, you can't get the packing peanuts back out of the water without cracking open the box and adding energy (in the form of a filter or something). So the packing peanut leftovers will just float in the water forever, not doing anything. | 14 |
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ELI5: How are phobias acquired? | What happens on a physiological level that causes such an irrational conditioning to form? | 66 | It's kinda like a psychological allergy. With an allergy, your immune system is overdoing a normal healthy response. A phobia is when generally healthy fears are exaggerated.
When you have a phobia of something you shouldn't be scared of, there's normally a situational association. Like if you got lost when you were young and when trying to find your mom you got really scared by a cat. Now your scared of cats. These phobias can often be treated with exposure therapy.
Most interesting are non-associative phobias, which are thought to be genetic because they establish themselves the very first time you're exposed to something. | 35 |
ELI5: Why do we say someone was "in" a movie, but "on" a TV show? | 4,172 | It's an interesting phenomenon that goes back to how television was first referred to. A television is a physical object, so when you watched one, you were watching the pictures projected *on* the television screen. "Look, the president is *on* the television."
A movie, however, is not perceived as a physical object, but is instead a collection of information, much like a book or song. Someone is in a movie in that they are included in the collection of information the movie contains
Over time these definitions have merged and blurred, but we still have the "in vs on" division as a relic of an older style of language. | 4,661 |
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