mradermacher/Llama3.1-Reddit-Writer-8B-i1-GGUF
8B • Updated • 2.62k • 1
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If the universe is accelerating, and life that will exist 100 billion years from now cannot detect things that occur in the universe today, can we detect things that happened 13 billion years ago? Would they not have just disappeared? [Details Inside] | According to the ending of this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjaGktVQdNg), Lawrence Krauss states that the universe will continue to expand in such a rate that the life on a galaxy 100 billion years from now will only see itself and will be alone. The information that they gather about the history of the unive... | The word "seeing" has two meanings here, to see as to literally receive visible light or other EM radiation from objects in the sky, and to be eventually updated on their "current" state.
Consider some remote galaxy, the light that it emitted 13 billion years ago is just reaching us. What happens to the light it emitt... | 319 | 943 |
ELI5: How do we know where to search for precious metals? How do we know that 100 ft underneath my yard isn't the largest gold deposit in the world? | Certain rock types are more likely to have certain minerals than others, but for the most part they look around where they found some precious metals and hope there is more. Lot's of guesswork, gambling, and sampling. Maybe you find nothing, maybe you strike it rich. | 23 | 59 | |
Why does fractional banking not cause inflation but the govt printing an equivalent amount of money does? | It does affect inflation - the primary purpose of raising interest rates is to reduce the amount of money created by banks.
The banking system creates money through lending, higher interest rates reduces demand for loans, therefore less money created. | 249 | 103 | |
CMV: Kids should watch cartoons in a foreign language so they can learn it without effort. | I am part of a minority in my country, which means that my native language is not the official one. However, you do have a right to an education in your native language. So from kindergarten to university, you are taught all the subjects in your own language, if you want to. The only caveat is that the official languag... | Gaining familiarity with a language at a young age doesn't mean you can learn it without effort. It can complement formal or informal learning, but the effect will vary widely depending on the kid, and in the best of cases will be just a marginal help.
So, at the end it's basically a gamble, and you still have to hav... | 451 | 1,767 |
ELI5: Why haven't we been able to develop drugs that don't harm us? | There are a lot of things in life that make us happy; however, drugs can stimulate this feeling to reach a peak. Why haven't we been able to develop drugs like MDMA and cocaine that don't harm our bodies? Is it just not scientifically possible? | Drugs only have effects by making our bodies release or decrease chemicals that we already use on a daily basis. The problem is when you start messing with our natural systems it causes them to change.
So for MDMA and cocaine they cause massive releases of chemicals in our brain that give us the stimulated euphoric f... | 236 | 381 |
Why are immigrant farm workers well paid in the US but in Mexico they are low paid and food costs about the same in both places? | I live in an agricultural area in the US and we have a lot of farm workers here who are either on visa or undocumented and they earn pretty good money. I'm not saying the make great money but at least $100 a day easily. I recently went to Mexico City and saw that food prices were pretty similar. Some items were a bit m... | Productivity in the US is higher and workers are paid close to their marginal productivity of labor in competitive labor markets as economic theory says.
The US has higher productivity due to a higher level of capital per worker and likely greater adoption of more sophisticated technology as well. Simply by moving acr... | 46 | 77 |
Should I Major in Economics if I Just Want a Bachelor's Degree? | I'm a sophomore in college and might major in Economics (BA). I've read online that those with just a Bachelors in Economics don't get paid, on average, that high. If that's the case, are there chances that someone with a Bachelors in Economics can get paid $90,000 or more? On the other hand, others have told me that a... | Supplement your economics major with either statistics or computer science and learn to code. Economics will teach you how to think about problems, stats or comp sci-fi will give you the tools to solve them. Very employable combo right there | 25 | 31 |
ELI5 - How do "clearing throats" actually clears our throats? | Im currently down on a fever and my throat hurts so i keep coughing it out. How does it actually helps my throat feels better? | Phlegm/mucus is normally a layer of protection in our lungs and breathing tubes, but when we are ill our bodies often produce too much of it. It can then collect in the throat around the vocal cords which are the tiny folds of tissue that vibrate together when we speak or sing. Coughing or throat clearing is basically ... | 73 | 33 |
[The Elder Scrolls] What approximately is the average lifespan in Tamriel? | I'm trying to figure out how the restoration school of magic affects overall health, so I'm only talking about people who die of natural causes. | It's hard to say, because each race has its own particular life span on average, and then you have many great wizards or otherwise remarkable people who outlive that average by quite a great deal. However, the Imperial Census reports that, on average, citizens of each race live to be about:
Beast Races - 60 years
Hum... | 16 | 15 |
ELI5: How are athletes with different disabilities sorted to compete against each other for the Paralympics? | The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) publishes a handbook that establishes the different levels of disability. There are a ton of categories. Swimming, for instance, has 15 different categories, ranging from S1 "very severe coordination problems in four limbs or have no use of their legs, trunk, hands and minim... | 46 | 21 | |
[Harry Potter] Why did Snape never go public with his potion refinements? | It seems like he could have possibly made himself some good money if he'd sold his updated recipes from the Prince's Potions book to the textbook makers, so why didn't he? | They were improvements to a high school text book.
Your high-school science book was oversimplified to the point of being wrong. (electrons aren't tiny little balls that orbit the nucleus in neat circles, for instance).
Perhaps every master potion maker already knows these improvements and more. | 411 | 298 |
CMV:Being a loyal voter to a party makes a less valuable voter. | For the sake of example, imagine a country with 2 parties, A and B, and that a person X is a loyal voter to A, meaning in 90% of the cases he will vote A.
If A is in power, they won't need do a lot to make sure that X votes A. I mean, what will he do? Vote B?
If B is in power, it would take them a lot of effort for ... | 1. Voters do consider other voters' votes, and there, loyal voters have tremendous value. Consider candidates A, B, and C in a primary, and A's loyal voters are around 50%. Will the other candidates even run in this situation?
2. Same things happen in the general election, but this time with states. This time, let's ... | 33 | 744 |
[Physics] Do fields actually exist? | Take the electromagnetic field, for instance. Photons are quantized, meaning that it takes a threshold energy level for the photon to even exist. On the other hand, photons are excitations of the electromagnetic field.
Putting these two ideas crudely together: if there's no photon, then that means *there's no excitat... | > To put it differently, do fields exist independently from their particles?
Yes, fields are much more fundamental. There are QFTs where there are no "particle-like" excitations, so even though there are excited field configurations there is nothing resembling a "particle" in these theories.
Also, there can exist... | 30 | 15 |
How significantly do plastic dental appliances, things like retainers, Invisalign, or night guards, contribute to the build up of microplastics in the body? | Generally microplastics are formed by either the degradation of plastics disposed of into watercourses, or from the shedding of plastic fibres from fabrics, ropes etc.
Large, solid plastic objects are unlikely to produce microplastics. You might as well worry about the miles of plastic piping bringing your water to yo... | 1,014 | 3,466 | |
CMV: Women have most of the social power in dating/meeting context. This is a privilege, and it should be acknowledged. | Bullet points below in no particular order:
​
\- Pointing out that men have privileges as well will not change my view. I already accept and acknowledge the privileges men receive in American society just because they are men in other contexts.
​
\- I believe that each person should be aware o... | It seems that a lot of your focus is on the initial meetup phase. You have several points that talk about the 'first move'. You don't have very many points that mention either continued dating scenes. Is that accurate? | 17 | 46 |
Why is copying 1000 1MB files so much slower than copying 1 1GB file, given that the same amount of data is being copied? | Any process has overhead - process time needed to set up and tear down that process. Overhead is generally fixed, or close to it.
As an example, let's say that copying a file take 3 operations to set up and 2 to tear down, plus 1 operation per MB transferred. For a 1000MB file, you'd have:
3+1000+2 = 1005 opera... | 70 | 59 | |
[World of Warcraft]Whose genius idea was it to put portals directly to Blasted Lands into every Capital City? | Who exactly decides that the risk of these portals ever malfunctioning within the heart of your city, which other side is right next to a rather large gate that has stampeding demons fighting into the world of Azeroth, outweighs the convenience of porting to the Blasted Lands.
Even if it is to boost your numbers defe... | The portals provide swift transportation for our officers and other important personnel, as well as to ensure a quick flow of information. Should our outposts in Outland fall, or even just the defenses around the Dark Portal, we need to know about it immediately.
They are constantly maintained by rotating mages, some... | 15 | 24 |
CMV: It does not matter that Ariel is black. | Disney recently cast Ariel a black actor and I don't think it matters.
Ariel is a fictional cartoon character who has no ethnic/racial ties to a specific group of people with a certain skin color. Additionally, race is not a key element of her character (i.e. you could replace all the characters in the original film i... | The original Hans Christian Andersen story describes her skin as "fine and transparent" and "clear and delicate like a rose petal", her legs as "white", and her arms as "white". The Little Mermaid is a national icon of Denmark and an important cultural symbol. It would be appropriate for Disney to be as respectful of t... | 57 | 30 |
ELI5:Why Doesn't Minimum Wage Increase With Inflation? | If the point of minimum wage is to be a living wage for the people working on it, and what constitutes a living wage changes because of inflation, why are the two not automatically linked? | In other countries minimum wage is reevaluated every year, and does increase with inflation, with perhaps other factors.
In the US people don't have social rights that some other countries have. But it depends on the state. | 15 | 18 |
ELI5: what is cross-fit and why is it mocked so much? | Basically, it's a fitness programme/movement of sorts that involves high-intensity interval training and some weightlifting.
It has a negative image among some circles because CrossFit practitioners are seen to be quite obnoxious and obsessive over it, so they won't shut up about it among their friends so much so that... | 41 | 35 | |
How long would a lever have to be so that a human can push a object of the size of earth | I heard that in physcs it was theoratically possible if the lever was long enough but how long would it have to be? | weight of earth * distance1 = force that a human can exert * distance2
distance1/distance2 = force that a human can exert / weight of the earth
If we assume that a human can exert a force of 400N, the ratio is about 6.827*10^-24 or 0.000000000000000000000006827.
If the earth-mass object is at 1cm from the axis, the ... | 57 | 115 |
ELI5: why is is still hard to fall asleep when you’re sleep deprived? | When you're sleepy but want it need to stay awake, your body will produce a bunch of chemicals that will help you do so - adrenalin and others, depending on a number of factors.
When you finally want to go to sleep, but your body is still flooded with those, is going to be pretty hard until they're reabsorbed. If you ... | 48 | 59 | |
Why don't hummingbirds stay in flocks like other birds? | Most birds that flock do so for safety (more eyes watching for predators) or because being in a group makes it easier to find food (especially for insect-eating species in the tropics). Some larger species also migrate in flocks, which provides some aerodynamic benefits and helps group members reinforce navigation on l... | 26 | 73 | |
ELI5: If beer is typically 95% water, why does it dehydrate us? | Your body uses a hormone called anti-diuretic hormone (ADH) to maintain sodium balance in your body. Increase ADH urinate less, decrease ADH urinate more. Alcohol suppresses the production of ADH which results in your kidneys creating more urine than the beer you’d consume in a night of binging. | 381 | 364 | |
ELI5: Why are American veterans committing suicide at such an alarming rate? | There are a lot of factors, particularly for those that were on the ground overseas. Just to name a few:
* PTSD and other mental disorders
* difficulty re-adjusting to civilian life
* difficulty securing gainful employment
* survivor's guilt
* suicide contagion theory -- either by word of mouth or publication, he... | 11 | 24 | |
ELI5: Do commanders actually give speeches before a battle (like in LOTR) and can people in the back even hear whats going on? | Modern warfare does utilize motivational speeches to generate morale among the troops. The content of these speeches are likely to include nationalist sentiments, self-professed martial superiority, focus on broadly shared values(ex:importance of protecting family.)
Antequated warfare did as well. Alexander Suvorov is... | 49 | 68 | |
ELI5: If vegetables are healthy for us, why don't many people like them? Shouldn't our body crave the nutrients? | In evolutionary terms, vegetable items are available in great abundance, but salts, sugars, fats and proteins are far more difficult to obtain. Fast forward to today in the developed world, our bodies are still programmed to seek out these foods and assume that we will get plenty on vitamins ,minerals and fiber from ou... | 3,155 | 3,759 | |
ELI5: Why did the bronze age come first? | I have a cursory knowledge of history at best and very little of forging metals.
Why was it easier for humans to make an alloy like bronze before just refining iron? | Bronze preceded iron as a widely worked metal due to the fact that the metals which make bronze are easily recovered from their ores, and the resulting alloy is soft enough to be easily worked with the raw materials which were then available.
Copper is probably the reason why the Bronze Age came first. Copper is the ... | 28 | 47 |
A level philosophy help: analytic a posteriori | I'm teaching A level philosophy, part-time, this year. I don't have a first degree in philosophy, but I do have a masters andam completing my PhD. Most of the material I considered in my masters was modern, and my PhD is very technical and niche, so I may be missing some basics.
We were looking at the distinctions a... | As Kant formulates it, an analytic proposition is one whose predicate is contained in its subject, or in other words, it is definitionally true - "all bachelors are unmarried" is true by definition, and requires no experience to be true (other than the experience of learning the language, arguably, but that's not what ... | 20 | 53 |
How bad is psychology really? | I'm a high school student and I always thought I'd be a Software developer or a Medical Scientist or Biomedical Engineer like most of my family. But my life got thrown off course a few years ago, I had to a take a break and now I find myself unable to force myself to do something like raw Computer science or Biomedical... | If you're interested in combining psychology and computer science (with the added bonus of increased employability!), you should check out human-computer interaction, which is a mix of computer science, design, psychology, and economics.
HCI programs are usually housed in a university's Information school. It's not o... | 30 | 24 |
I believe that people who are for socialism are people who hate hard work & ambition, and also do not understand the implications of taking incentives away from self-made entrepreneurs. CMV. | In a perfect world, I want every starving child to be fed, every single human to be happy, and every person to come into existence to be honest, loving, and caring. In a perfect world, I want socialism.
But **we don't live in a perfect world.** Seeing that I look through the lens of **reality**, I know that most p... | By providing a minimum under which people cannot fall, socialism **promotes entrepreneurship by guaranteeing the entrepreneur a second chance at starting their enterprise**. If fewer people have to worry about the basic necessities, then there are more people who are free to create something new instead of spending the... | 69 | 15 |
I think increases to minimum wage would INCREASE profits for low margin businesses. CMV. | Recently, while reading another post, someone stated that low margin businesses couldn't survive an increase in minimum wages, and gave the following 2 numbers.
Typical Grocery store has 1% profit margin.
Typical Grocery store runs a 'sales per labor hour' of $150.
It seems to me though that if this is the case, the... | **Costs**: Increasing minimum wage by $10 increases costs per hour to the employer by *more* than $10, as there are costs that increase with the wage of the employee (such as worker's comp and unemployment insurance). The usual rule of thumb is it costs about twice an employee's yearly wage to keep them for a year, s... | 40 | 47 |
ELI5: Why do we get milk/baby teeth then lose them? | It seems a bit redundant to grow a set of teeth then lose them just to grow another set back? Are milk teeth different in terms of composition to your permanent teeth? | This is part of the growth process. Teeth are not like other bones. The bone in your arm can just grow as you grow, but teeth do not grow, so when you need bigger teeth to fit into your bigger mouth, the solution is to grow entirely new teeth. | 94 | 166 |
[The Culture] Are there non-sublimed, non-transcended civilizations in the galaxy that are more advanced and powerful than the Culture? | What about equals in terms of strength and technology? | There are plenty of equals to the culture, who are referred to as 'high level involved' or 'optimae' by civilizations which aren't quite on the cultures level.
Despite the inevitable-in-retrospect conclusion of the Culture-Idiran war, the Idirans were roughly on par with The culture before losing the war, and had alli... | 18 | 16 |
ELI5: How is the velocity of a spaceship measured? | I get that with air crafts you can use a pitot tube to measure air speed, but what do you do if there is no air | The velocity of a spacecraft is measured by taking advantage of something called the *Doppler effect.*
If you've ever watched an ambulance go past you, you've heard the pitch of the siren change as it approaches and goes past you, right?
That frequency shift is directly related to the object's velocity relative to th... | 22 | 23 |
How does the hydraulic ram water pump work and why does it not violate conservation of energy? | [This](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWqDurunnK8) video is supposed to explain how the hydaulic ram water pump works, but I am still very confused.
I thought, that due to conservation of energy, it is impossible to lift water higher than the original source without an external source of energy?
Why is the air in th... | In hydrostatics where the water velocity is zero or small pressure will be equal in the whole system and the maximum height of water will be the same in the whole system.
Looking at the water ram it takes a moving stream of water and suddenly stops it by closing the waste valve. This sudden stop mean the pressure inc... | 19 | 31 |
CMV: High school students should not have to do "arts & crafts" projects. | I'm a father of two teen sons -- oldest is a freshman in college, youngest is a freshman in high school. Through the years I have helped them both with various arts & crafts (A&C) projects, from simple posters, to dioramas, to intricate 3D models made of a variety of materials. Such artistic projects can be fun... | You know how they teach some football players how to do ballet? You might think that one doesn't need to know how to do ballet in order to play football. But the reality is that the muscle memory, flexibility, and coordination involved in doing ballet helps one be a better football player.
Education isn't merely about... | 20 | 15 |
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? | 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 dr... | 13 | 15 |
What are things everyone should know/do for their mental health? | Exercise. Eat well. Practice good sleep hygiene.
Just focus on your breathing for a while a few times a day, especially when you’re anxious. Your brain is like a computer — keep it running constantly, never closing any programs or windows, and it will affect performance. | 22 | 19 | |
Why is Social Darwinism always looked down upon in philosophy? How has it been disproven? | Thank you | Basically, it boils down to the fact that Social Darwinism attempts to use a descriptive theory in a prescriptive manner. Darwinian evolution tells us about how things came to be the way that they are. Ethics, on the other hand, aims to tell us how we ought to be. For this reason, when you try to apply Darwinian theory... | 66 | 21 |
[Harry Potter] How come Fenrir Greyback's werewolf form looks much more horrific than Professor Lupin's? | In Prisoner Of Azkaban Professor Lupin's werewolf form is hairless except for the top of his head I believe and he looks like a typical werewolf besides the hairlessness but Fenrir Greyback who always almost looks like a werewolf even in human form has I think official artwork depicting his werewolf form and it is down... | Certain health and medical conditions are psychosomantic, meaning a person's state of mind can have an effect on their health. Remus mostly rejects his affliction and treats it as a curse that needs to be controlled, while Fenrir revels in being a werewolf and is so depraved that he has turned to cannibalism (which its... | 36 | 19 |
ELI5: Why do almost all animals seem to like scratches? | For social animals like humans and apes, grooming is a social adaptation that was used to bond with the tribe and was beneficial for removing parasites. For less social animals, it’s still a way of staying clean. Animals that don’t groom each other will still rub against trees or whatever to get things off their fur. B... | 18 | 30 | |
ELI5: How do we actually know what vitamins and minerals are in the foods we eat | Bananas , sweet potatoes , and squash, are all high in vitamin k. Aside from Google and health books, how can we find those vitamins and what do they look like ? | We have data from processing samples in a Mass Spectrometer. The sample is broken down into its chemical components and the spectrometer identifies the quantities of each chemical. So we get the exact amount for the small sample and the scientists scale up and give an educated guess as to how much for a full serving/in... | 16 | 24 |
ELI5: How can companys require MANDATORY overtime. It's not in my scope of availability. | If it's legal or not depends entirely on your contract and where you are in the world.
Apparently, in some industries, this is pretty standard.. things like software development will routinely have an expectation to do overtime. | 39 | 149 | |
Eli5: I seriously can’t wrap my head around the idea of “time is relative”. | I just don’t get how time is faster and slower on planets that aren’t Earth and how this affects how we age as well. | Time being relative is a byproduct of the fact that the speed of light in a vacuum is a constant regardless of your frame of reference.
That probably sounded science-jargony and didn't help, so let's take a step back and talk about velocity/speed and frames of reference. There's a classic physics thought experiment wh... | 85 | 70 |
How come in an emergency on a plane, someone on the ground will ask "How many souls on board?" Why not just ask how many people on board? | It avoids ambiguity. The count will include all humans on board, including crew and those not occupying seats (infants). The use is traditional, a carryover from nautical usage. Having a formalized script to follow during an emergency aids in keeping everyone organized and avoiding confusion and panic. | 57 | 36 | |
ELI5: After waking from a coma or a serious head injury, how do people forget their native language and suddenly speak a new one? Do they need previous experience in that new language? | Some people might change to another language if the part of their brain which controls the processing of their native language is damaged. Of course they must know the other language before they can speak it; brain damage isn't going to magically teach you another previously unknown language. | 38 | 75 | |
ELI5 why do doctors work 24 hour shifts instead of the normal 8 hour shift? | It's very simple, it ensures that in most cases one doctor would be able to work with a patient from entrance to the hospital to stabile/release.
Tests, diagnosis, and treatment could be hampered if say the doctor had to hand you off to a changing shift and pass on the information gathered up to that point. It's poss... | 18 | 15 | |
By guessing the rate of the Expansion of the universe, do we know how big the unobservable universe is? | So we are closer in size to the observable universe than the plank lentgh, but what about the unobservable universe. | We measure the size of the unobservable universe by measuring the curvature of the local universe. If it has zero curvature, the universe is flat and infinite. If it has negative curvature, it has a hyperbolic shape, and is also infinite. If it has positive curvature, it has a hyperspherical shape (like a sphere but in... | 2,309 | 5,191 |
Research not moving forward | I just realized that I have not produced anything tangible in last six months inspite being busy all the time. Everyday goes into trivial things like making the error prone supercomputer work, moving huge files ,making ppts etc. It sucks how time passes by and I just cant get ahead. My PI is quite chilled in regards to... | First, make a list, or perhaps a list of lists, of what you need to do to make progress and complete key milestones towards your thesis. Then dedicate time every day to completing key important tasks that progress you towards milestones. What you select per each day should be a limited and feasible subset.
(There's a... | 54 | 80 |
ELI5: How does store bought chocolate milk stay mixed so well and not separate into a layer of chocolate like homemade sometimes does? | Emulsifiers. Look at the ingredients: other than milk products, sweeteners and cocoa butter the other ingredients in a store brought chocolate are pretty much emulsifiers.
What are emulsifiers? They can make oil and water combine and stay that way. In fact most kitchens have an amazing natural emulsifier in their fri... | 5,235 | 8,599 | |
ELI5: Why do showers/baths refresh and energize? | A very large portion of animals feel refreshed and energized after being clean. Humans feel more relaxed and comforted.
Is this due to chemicals in our brain, or something else? | We are imprinted from birth (and from shared genetic behavior) that cleaning is caring. Mother or Father both increase levels of attention and care when cleaning their young. This reenforces the social connect and yields a positive interaction. That behavior is then carried forward to older independent self-care ritual... | 69 | 130 |
Dogs and humans have been evolving alongside each other for 15,000 years. What other examples of coevolution have species benefited from most? | It’s been suggested that humans lack an adept sense of smell because they could rely on dogs’ sense of smell, and that this enabled more rapid evolution of our brains. | I think it's interesting that dogs have adapted to fulfill emotional needs as well as hunting and guard keeping needs.
But yeah, look at... Pollinators for example as coevolution. A lot of plants lost the ability to reproduce without an insect being bribed to do it for them. And that got creative and weird. | 28 | 23 |
Applying to jobs before end of PhD, "what is your highest level of education?" Well, it WILL BE PhD | And that's the only thing that matters, but then there are these disclaimers at the end of these online forms saying that if I perjure myself I am liable to being banned from the company and if it's a government job, federal charges...
Any ideas? They are check boxes or drop downs or radio buttons - it's not like ther... | For a lot of U.S. gov jobs, the announcement will ask for 2+ years of post-bachelors education OR such and such degree. You won't be given federal charges for answering that, don't worry. On the resume portion, list the phd and list anticipated dec 2016. When you submit your transcripts, they'll show where you are in s... | 16 | 24 |
Why do lung transplant patients have a poorer long-term outlook than other organ recipients? Do we know what causes this? | Healthcare professional here. This is multifactorial. The most common reason is patients with a LIFELONG history of smoking which results in COPD. There are other causes but this is generally the most common cause. Post lung transplants require extensive immunosupresssive therapy which also has a number of adverse eff... | 28 | 30 | |
ELI5: how do computer parts work? | I am relatively into gaming, have my own custom PC, and have been around digital tech since I was a child. I can relatively easily operate a range of systems, and have little trouble working new systems out. What I can't for the life of me understand is how different parts communicate with one another, or how you even ... | How binary works:
It's base-2 arithmetic. It works like base-10, which you are used to, but with only 2 numbers. So in base-10, you count from 0 to 9 and then append a 0 and count from 10 to 19, and so on. In base-2, you count 0 1, then append a zero and count again. You just have to append zeroes faster. Here's a lit... | 33 | 25 |
When you close your eyes and press on them with your fingers, why do you see weird patterns/designs? | I close my eyes and press on them with my fingers, after about 3 seconds I start to see weird moving patterns, like an optical illusion. Like http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18dn0kik4y440jpg/ku-xlarge.jpg that but actually moving. | The photoreceptors in your eyes, in addition to regular light, are triggered by, though less sensitive to, pressure. The effect you see is your photoreceptive cells being stimulated, despite no light being present. | 275 | 451 |
[Psychology] Can adults lose/never obtain object permanence? | Losing understanding of object permanence requires trauma or illness that is severe enough to cause large scale damage.
Inability to understand(learn) object permanence is possible, but once again its back to severe inability of the brain to function, be that to growth or injury. | 827 | 2,158 | |
ELI5: Why are the 'Made In China' stickers and imprints necessary? | They can't be for crediting someone, because you can't give credit to a whole country. So why are they there? | U.S. law requires the country of origin of a product to be clearly displayed on the product, or on the product's container if it is enclosed.
a lot of people also like to have this information available, especially in the US, because due to this law, countries build up a certain reputation for certain products. | 36 | 37 |
[Star Wars] What happened to force sensitive storm troopers? | If a storm trooper trained from a young age began showing signs of being force sensitive what would the empire or first order do with them? | With the Empire, there are standing orders to look out for potential force-sensitives, who are brought to the attention of the Inquisitors.
They may be recruited and trained as Inquisitors themselves - or simply disappear. | 61 | 50 |
[Star Trek] How do people know when a word won't be translated by a universal translator? | Often people will say something like "your *pagh*, or soul", wherein they immediately follow an untranslated word with its (often fairly simple) Federation Standard equivalent. Why doesn't that come through as "your soul, or soul"? Even if they know some words won't be translated, you'd think they'd occasionally be mis... | Sometimes, a translation program is written so certain culturally significant words are not translated. Sometimes it could be seen as sacrilegious for some words to be heard "wrong", or maybe it loses its true meaning if the translator uses an alien equivalent. This seems to be the most probable case for words like *pa... | 15 | 20 |
ELI5:Why does defrosted ice taste different (and worse) than water? | If your question is specific to ice cubes in the freezer, rather than lab conditions: The ice in your freezer absorbs various smells over time....smells from the food, smells from the kitchen, smells from the likely dirty ice cube tray. Or in the case of an ice machine, smells from it. So, when that ice melts, ... | 35 | 37 | |
"Dwell with yourself, and you will know how short your household stuff is." | Came across this in the beginning of Kant's *Critique of Pure Reason* and I'm totally at a loss for the meaning of the statement, let alone it's implications in the context of the preface.
Original Latin:
Tecum habita, et noris quam sit tibi curta supellex
What does this mean and why does he say it? | He's talking about how we can solve questions of metaphysics by looking within ourselves/examining the necessary structure of our experience of the world. The metaphor is that if you live in your house, you'll end up familiar with what's available to you, in such a way as to make it clear that you had less than you tho... | 14 | 21 |
ELI5: How are new data points created in a video such that a video filmed in 30 fps can be viewed at 60 fps? | How does interpolation work? | Interpolation is a process where a display unit (TV/Monitor) takes two frames and puts them together (similar to an "average") to generate an extra frame in the middle. By inserting an extra frame between each one that was recorded, you effectively double the frames per second and can bring 30 to 60. | 14 | 25 |
CMV: I'm a woman but don't think women have structural barriers to success. | First of all, I realize this is not *that* unpopular of an opinion, except that I'm a 1) college student in a very liberal area and 2) a Democrat and have been for life, so this view doesn't align with many of my peers.
I also want to note that I have been privileged enough to grow up fairly well-off (upper middle cl... | I think you're not seeing the gender barrier because you're focused on the class barrier, that is much more apparent from your vantage point. Once you have a certain status or class, all barriers are weaker compared to those experienced by those in lower classes. | 138 | 154 |
ELI5: The difference between 1080i and 1080p | While you're at it, whats the difference between 1080, 720, 480, etc.? | They're names for different screen resolutions, with the number indicating the number of horizontal scan lines, i.e. 1920 x 1080, 1280 x 720, 640 x 480, etc. The i and p mean interlaced and progressive, respectively. What this means is that with 1080i, every other horizontal line is drawn, thus saving computation time ... | 22 | 20 |
[Neon Genesis Evangelion] Why do the angels attack one by one? | Are they just not sentient enough to understand what cooperation is? Although one of them seems to understand psychological warfare. And are they waiting somewhere until it's their turn to wreak havoc? Or do they come in existence shortly before their attack. | Because each Angel is a totally unique organism with its own set of goals, priorities, and behaviors. Some Angels are sentient, some are not, some are screaming hypercubes, and some are handsome twinks. Their individual reasons also vary, as some Angels are just naturally drawn to Lillith's body like moths to a flame, ... | 114 | 79 |
ELI5: how does cancer actually kill people? | The cancerous cells require massive amounts of nutrients and energy to continue reproducing and building blood vessels to the newly formed cancer cells. The depletion of energy and nutrition from the rest of the body causes strain on other necessary processes and results in some of these processes shutting down or perf... | 20 | 18 | |
ELI5: If your body sweats in order to keep cool, what causes it to sweat when you're cold? | The ELI5 for this is that you sweat for a number of reasons, and the mechanisms that control sweating aren’t only linked to temperature regulation. Certain chemicals or nerve impulses can cause you to sweat in response to a number of stimuli, even when you’re cold. You have sweat glands that, for example, are activated... | 58 | 71 | |
ELI5: Existentialism | Every time I attempt to learn more about this, I become more confused. | Basically it is the idea that the meaning of life is something every individual needs to discover for themselves, rather than the idea that there is a higher power dictating a meaning for our lives. | 12 | 16 |
ELI5: Why can't California seed clouds to cause rain to fall similar to what China did before their Olympic games? | Wat do you mean? Create clouds to produce rain and prevent drought? Because that's not what they did in China, there they only caused existing clouds to drop their rain before they reached the area they wanted to protect.
EDIT: and even that was extremely expensive, so not really applicable for large scale use. | 98 | 250 | |
I feel like I have an obligation to society | I don't actually agree with this thought, but doing what I want and not caring about being productive to society nonetheless creates a sense of guilt. And I'm not able to justify myself. Hopefully you guys can explain why I shouldn't feel bad? | You need a psychologist or a counselor, not a philosopher.
From a philosophical point of view, however, *obligation* is a loaded word. An obligation arises when you have a duty to act in a certain way, and duties only arise in certain relations. What is it about the /u/BeneficialStorm → society relation that ... | 15 | 16 |
How can a feather keep it's color for so long, when other parts of many biological things tend to fade after they are no longer alive or part of said thing? | Many feathers' colors come from their structure, rather than the more common route of molecules like melanin. These molecules break down, like when chlorophyll disappears from leaves in autumn. The microscopic ridges that structurally select for reflected light of a certain range of wavelengths may be more resilient.... | 24 | 17 | |
Does Airbnb systematically displace poor people? | I’ve read the [McGill](https://upgo.lab.mcgill.ca/publication/short-term-cities/short-term-cities.pdf) study, which argues that the rise of housing used for Airbnb primarily displaces new rentals, thus restricting supply and increasing prices. My question is if there’s evidence of the distributional impact of Airbnb, p... | Reading through the figures in the second study it seems that most of the losses are incurred by highly educated, white, high income earners. The model suggests this is probably a lasting effect since PS > PL (market clearing prices of short vs long term renting by absentee landlords. When PS > PL landlords seek ... | 27 | 95 |
I don't believe the patriarchy exists, CMV. | I'll preface that i'm referring to first world countries, especially the US and UK.
I believe that the patriarchy theory is fundamentally flawed on the conceptual level. People who subscribe to the patriarchy theory believe that patriarchy is a system of gender roles that privilege men over women. Therefore, men can ... | I don't believe you can use that word without referring back to a particular vision of Patriarchy produced by a particular scholar, as the term isn't monolithic or totalizing in the way you would like to discuss it. Which feminist scholars' definitions of the process are you contesting? Because "there isn't a patriarch... | 63 | 87 |
eli5: Where do queen bees come from? Does one of the current queen’s eggs have a new queen in it? | Every egg can become a queen (in most bee species). When a hive needs a new queen, a larvae is selected (sometimes more than one and they'll slug it out later) and fed nothing but "royal jelly." Royal jelly is made by workers (it's secreted by some gland on their heads), and while all larvae start on a diet of royal ... | 251 | 252 | |
Can you become immune to strains of bacteria? | I was under the assumption that you only become immune to viruses, but not bacteria. Is that true, and if so why? | You can definitely become immune to strains of bacteria.
Immunity is subdivided into two categories: innate and adaptive immunity.
Innate immunity are those features of our immunity that are static and use a somewhat "generalized" approach to protecting the individual. This includes things like the Toll-like receptor... | 15 | 33 |
CMV: Ideology should no longer be important. Any new laws or changes in policy of any kind should be evidence based. | My CMV comes out of climate change concern, however I think it can be applied across many areas.
There is, in my eyes, absolutely no justification in continue to let ideology dictate the course of action on how to move humanity forward.
The ultimate goal of government is to bring justice, promote welfare and generate... | Problem is there are a lot of things people collect data on to "prove" specific ideologies. Its a real issue in social sciences where there are many ideologies competing. For example there are two major theories about where humans evolved there is the out of africa theory and the multiregional theory. Now both those th... | 72 | 136 |
ELI5: How is mass different from weight? | Somebody said they are different because of gravity. | Weight is dependent on gravitational force. It's a measure of that gravitational force, usually on Earth. Mass, which measures the amount of matter in an object, exists whether gravity acts on it or not. The same object has the same mass on Earth, the Moon, or in the middle of space, but has different weights at each o... | 109 | 35 |
ELI5: Why do space telescopes use mirrors to get their images? | Large lenses exhibit a phenomena known as chromatic aberration, where the color of light is not equally refracted. This gives pictures an undesirable rainbow-y look. Mirrors do not exhibit this so they are more suitable for large sizes. | 57 | 58 | |
I have lost the ability to write known algorithms because of work, after 4 years. | I don't think I could write the Kruskal's minimum spanning tree algorithm under 15 minutes and plenty of others. I have been doing so much business logic at work, so that all the algorithms that I have learned at university, I can't write them in a fast manner anymore. I remember most of the names and what they do, but... | > Maybe the most important thing is that to know there is an algorithm for a specific problem and then get a snippet someone wrote in the language you work with? At the end of the day, you need to find a solution so that you can produce value, right?
Yes | 26 | 19 |
Why, on a bad connection, do websites occasionally load without CSS? | Sometimes when my connection is bad websites will load without CSS on the first try, and then when refreshed fail to load at all. This has also been the case at school, where loading a page that should be blocked occasionally work the first time (albeit without CSS), but refreshing brings up a screen saying the firewal... | The css is retrieved via a separate network transaction - first the page is downloaded and interpreted and as the browser finds other page elements that the page is requesting, the browser downloads all those elements - js, css, images, etc. Often on poor/overloaded connections those other elements will time out. | 21 | 29 |
ELI5: Is there a particular reason why most prison doors' bars are vertical? | I would assume horizontal bars would make it stronger because they will have to be shorter (assuming normal door proportions)
EDIT: I mean cell doors
EDIT 2: Ok so its a combo of reasons like making it harder to punch thru the bars, exchange goods, use weight to bend the bars, and no climbing to prevent WWE scenarios... | There is a practical reason. Making them vertical prevents making them a ladder. In addition today in modern prisons there are mainly solide door in order to prevent trafficking of good and maintaining the privacy of inmates. | 64 | 79 |
ELI5: If places like Baghdad and Cairo can reach 40-50 C in the summer, how did they become the center of civilization in ancient and medieval times when there was no air conditioning? | Ancient peoples knew how to put up shade and keep things cool in very hot climates, and both cities lie along major rivers. Almost all ancient cities are along rivers or oceans, since it (a) moderates the climate relative to nearby areas, (b) provides food and water and (c) allows trade up and downriver. | 31 | 25 | |
Is it inconsistent to apply both utilitarian and deontological frameworks when thinking about ethics, depending on the situation? | Example : A person who believes that killing any innocent person is immoral is inconsistent if they also believe that having some collateral damage during a bombardment is justified if this brings prosperity latter on?
I am also thinking that in terms of politics and policies: A healthcare system might be considered go... | So in some cases it seems like Deontological and Consequentialist concerns can lead to contradictory duties or obligations. But some applied ethicists think that what is happening is that both theories give rise to worthwhile and legitimate ethical concerns and ethical truths, and it is our job to parse those out in bo... | 25 | 44 |
How does the area of a black hole's event horizon change with respect to its mass increase? | I understand that the mass of a black hole increases by the same amount of the in-falling mass. Is the (spherical?) surface of the event horizon simply related to the BH's mass as it is to its "volume?" In other words, if the BH were a physical object made of some non-compressible material, say water, for every extra... | The area of the event horizon scales with the square of the mass of the black hole.
In fact, this is how the Schwarzschild radius is defined to begin with. If the area of the horizon is A (which is well-defined and observer-independent), then the "radius" is defined to be the number R such that A = 4\*pi\*R^(2). It is... | 24 | 29 |
What is the difference between a Sea and an Ocean? | To a large extent it's just a matter of what we call them, but the major ocean basins overlie a different type of crust than most inland and nearshore seas. Oceanic crust is basaltic, formed at mid-ocean ridges, and denser, so it floats lower on the mantle. Continental crust is andesitic, formed by subduction zone volc... | 55 | 44 | |
Why does lime juice severely burn the skin when exposed to sunlight? | A range of plants which include the citrus family contain active compounds called furocoumarins in their juice. When this compound reacts with uv-a light on skin surface, energy is released through a chemical reaction and this energy gets absorbed mostly by the skin and as a result severe burns, blisters and hyperpigme... | 40 | 32 | |
How can an almond help with digestion but also be indigestible? | Apparently it's called "roughage". It is "fibrous indigestible material in vegetable foods which aids the passage of food and waste products through the gut" which for example can be an almond. How come there are so many whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes, fruits, and vegetables, that your body can't digest, but also h... | Fiber helps with digestion by absorbing water, which softens/loosens feces.
There are three basic components to digestion in the body: Propulsion, chemical/physical digestion, and absorption. Fiber helps with propulsion, but cannot be broken down properly by the body and thus can't be absorbed. Which means that it ai... | 1,611 | 3,302 |
ELI5: How does raising millions of dollars during a political campaign directly correlate to that candidate getting elected? | The more money you raise, the more money you can invest in putting (high quality) political ads on TV, the more you can invest in other media appearances, the more you can invest in contacting people by telephone to get them to vote, basically, all ways of getting your name and message out there. And that is what gets ... | 11 | 21 | |
Do diffused and focused mode of thinking actually exist? | I read this in a book called mind for numbers and is this an actual thing with credible research behind it or not
If so how can I rapidly change between them | Yes, they are. And you don’t want to rapidly change between them. The point Dr. Oakley is making is that it takes time to learn things. You can’t cram and expect to have that information the rest of your life. You need to sit down without distractions and focus on a problem. Eventually, you will need to step away and d... | 19 | 131 |
ELI5: Why do public toilet seats have an opening at the front, but home toilet seats are completely round? | International Plumbing Code and Uniform Plumbing Code in the US dictate that open front seats must be used for facilities that are made for Accessible Design. The Americans with Disabilities Act doesn't require it but plumbing code does. Nobody really likes open front seats so you usually only see them in commercial ... | 81 | 194 | |
ELI5: How are magnets in the road used to regulate traffic lights? | I was at a traffic light and I could help but notice that there were a bunch of metal lines in the road. I 'm assuming that the lines are magnets or something that helps the traffic lights to know when to switch. I was just wanting more detail on exactly how the system is supposed to work. | Traffic light sensors, at least historically, are specialized metal detectors embedded underneath the road. They don't use magnets specifically, but they detect how the presence of metal in a car above it alters the electromagnetic properties of the space around the coil.
However, most municipalities are moving away ... | 12 | 17 |
ELI5: What happens when a modern website "breaks" and it suddenly looks like 1990s basic HTML? | Amazon was doing this to me earlier. Instead of the modern, graphics-heavy site, it was stuck on an crappy version with long lists of blue links instead of images. It finally corrected itself. | To load a page you generally need to download a HTML file with all the text in, a CSS file which describes how to format the text, then whatever images the page includes. If the CSS doesn't download properly then you get all the text, but with the browser's default styling. Eventually you'll manage to download the CSS ... | 28 | 30 |
ELI5:why do people look down on trades even though they can make a living? | at my former high school, one of the councillors liked to remind us that going into trades, such as plumbing and carpentry, is a good option for careers. Attend the local institute of technology and you'll be guaranteed a job, he said. However, almost every single grad went to university for subjects like science, engi... | The narrative that was being presented was that the more education you get, the better your career will be (this benefits schools as they sell education at an increasingly higher and higher cost).
The Information Technology sector had this revelation awhile back. Universities aren't on the leading edge of technologie... | 30 | 46 |
What does Heidegger mean with Destruktion, is that the same as Derrida's deconstruction? | Heideggerian destruktion is a hermeneutic practice specifically employed to demarcate conceptualizations of "what being is" across historical paths. Heidegger's central question and project is always "What is being?"--he is not satisfied with how the ancients, the scholastics, and even modern philosophers treated being... | 11 | 51 | |
[Dune] Why aren't there any male Bene Gesserit? | And if for some reason Paul passed the gom jabbar (box and needle) test but wasn't the Kwisatz Haderach, what would the Bene Gesserit (BG) have done with a male that had precognition and had been taught bodily control and the Voice and was scheduled to inherit a dukehood? Hoped he sired a daughter so they could unite ... | Reverend Mothers of the Bene Gesserit must undergo the ritual of drinking the Water of Life, converting it, and gaining access to Other Memory.
Every male that has attempted to do that has died in the process. Only women and the Kwisatz Haderach are capable of passing the ritual, which is why Paul isn't confirmed to ... | 64 | 23 |
ELI5: Why the senate voted against background checks for gun owners and what exactly that bill proposed. | You already need to pass a background check to buy a gun from a Federal Firearms Licensee (a gun store).
Depending on state laws, one individual selling a gun to another does not need to pass a background check. Though they often must need to state they are not a felon, have a concealed carry license/permit to own a g... | 14 | 19 | |
[The Matrix] At what point does the Matrix break down upon closer inspection? | Could you deduce you were living in a false reality by doing deep astronomical observations? Or experiments on elementary particles? Does every sample of soil have billions of organisms to examine? Is the earth's magnetic field and seismic activity consistent? What about at the molecular level and chemical reaction... | I suspect that the Matrix is easier to identify based on simple intuitions (e.g., deja vu) than complex analysis. Any complex analysis that we're allowed to learn is likely to be wholly handled by the Matrix programming (perhaps with histories about how certain particles can only exist in quantum states to lead us to ... | 36 | 39 |
Is Batman a terrorist? | His whole deal is that he inspires terror in criminals, right? | Terrorism by definition would mean acts designed to cause terror, but usually directed at a civilian populace. Now, seeing how Gothams civilian populace have a decent chance to become criminals, maybe?
Nothing like what today-governments brand terrorism, attacks like 9/11 and 7/7. | 22 | 24 |
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