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2wgk7r | when i allready have to pee, why do i instantly have to pee even harder when i drink something? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2wgk7r/eli5when_i_allready_have_to_pee_why_do_i/ | {
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"Your brain is telling your body to make room. "
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36o4cs | why do people choose to have their problems solved on shows like jerry springer and maury? | One of my biggest guilty pleasures is watching Maury, but I always wondered why people go on the show. It seems like going on national television and acting like a fool (and often showing the world how horrible of a person you are) would be a huge turn off for a lot of people. I've read from previous posts that Jerry Springer is (at least partially) staged, but haven't heard the same about Maury. You don't need Maury to get a paternity test, so why go on? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36o4cs/eli5_why_do_people_choose_to_have_their_problems/ | {
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"You do realize these shows are fake, right?\n\nEDIT: word added",
"It's a free trip to a big city, hotel stay included, many of the people appearing are paid, and a chance to tell all your trashy friends you're about to be on tv. Who cares if the show is fake, they're gonna be on tv regardless.",
"They get a free trip to Stamford Connecticut where they get to stay in a fancy hotel. You may think that they act like fools all the time but their friends at home know that they're hamming it up for the cameras and having some silly fun."
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aj6hjn | the jewish "blood libel" canard involving matzoh | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/aj6hjn/eli5_the_jewish_blood_libel_canard_involving/ | {
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"Not sure what's there to explain. Antisemites invented stories about Jews kidnapping Christian children and using their blood to make matzos for Passover. This was often used an \"explanation\" for unsolved missing children cases.",
"Ignorant racists used to accuse Jews of using the blood of Christians to make matzoh. It’s an example of just how crazy human beings can get.\n\nAntisemitism among Christians dates back to the conversion of Ancient Rome to a Christian state. When the Romans became Christian, they faced a difficult history - according to the stories, Roman leaders executed Jesus, but now they were embracing Christianity so many embraced the re-write of their history of conflict with Christianity by shifting the blame to Jews of killing Jesus. \n\nThis idea persists into the present day, with many antisemitic ideas including the blood libel canard among the stories. \n\nThis blood libel is, of course, false. "
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3jkq7w | why is being too loud rebuked by another loud, prolonged sound? (shhh!) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3jkq7w/eli5_why_is_being_too_loud_rebuked_by_another/ | {
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"In the grand scheme of things that SHHH! is going to attract your attention and through conditioning we are programmed to associate that sound with quieting down. "
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86t43h | how does transferring a car title work when money still owed? | Ok, so I'm getting a new car, and since my dad is in need of a commuter car I was planning on just letting him take over payments.
(Maybe) Helpful info: car loan is through Chase, who we both bank with.
Only 5k left to pay off.
His credit isn't perfect but makes over 6 figures.
We are in California!
Any help would be appreciated! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/86t43h/eli5_how_does_transferring_a_car_title_work_when/ | {
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"Because there would be a contract involved. The contract would state that one or more is bound to meet the obligation to pay. If the agreement is not not met there would be the consequence of them taking the car back and possibly taking more as penalty, as per the language in the contract. \n\nEDIT: ALWAYS read the fine print.",
"You can't transfer the title because it isn't your title to transfer. Your name might appear under owner, but the company with any real control over the title is in the section labeled lien holder. Until that gets removed, only the lien holder can change owner information. ",
"If you still owe money you do not yet fully have the title. It is still put up as collateral on the loan. As such the contract that you signed will stipulate how a sale is to be conducted and who is on the hook for paying the remainder of the loan and how they can pay it. If it goes unpaid they still hold the right to take it as the collateral. ",
"Typically you can't.\n\nThe car usually serves as collateral on the loan, and the lender has a lien on the title. The whole purpose of the lien is to prevent the car from being sold before the loan is paid off. They lent you the money, based on your credit, and they aren't just going to offer the same deal to someone with poor credit.\n\nAlso, if you dad makes 6 figures, he should be able to pay off a $5K loan.\n"
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8xacnx | what physically happens in the first few seconds after the detonation of a nuclear bomb? both in the bomb core and the physics of the blast? | Any links to diagrams would be appreciated. I have a moderate grasp of what happens, and I understand what induces a chain reaction, what I'm curious about is some of the physical phenomena observed in the milliseconds after a blast. What stops the expansion? What happens as the blast expands and contracts? Is this different depending on the type or construction of the bomb?
Edit: for more context on my purpose, one reason I ask is that I imagine that much of the energy radiates from the epicenter at the speed of light, faster than the blast wave (I assume). Is there a mechanism that reflects some of the X-ray and other energy back towards the epicenter, in the first few milliseconds? Nuclear bombs typically have two flashes, but if only one explosion takes place why is this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8xacnx/eli5_what_physically_happens_in_the_first_few/ | {
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"Most newer bombs, aka hydrogen bombs, are actually nuclear fission, then nuclear fusion, and sometimes fission again. Fission is the splitting of heavy atoms, like uranium, and fusion is the joining of two light atoms, like hydrogen. Most bombs are designed to contain the nuclear fission, so that the electrons can bounce around more, and react more with other uranium atoms, so there is more fission, which allows the fusion to happen, because it requires a lot of force and heat to start a fusion reaction. \n\nI’m not to sure of the physics of the blast, besides big boom. ",
"Okay, so a nuclear chain reaction occurs when you take some fissile material and smash enough of it in one place that some [neutron source](_URL_0_) can kickstart the fission of other atoms in an exponential fashion. This amount of fissile material is colloquially known as “critical mass”. \n\nFor Uranium-235, every neutron of sufficient speed that smacks into a nucleus will briefly form U-236 before the energy of that neutron busts the new isotope into two new atoms, releasing two to three new high-energy neutrons in the process. These neutrons then go on to smack the other U-235 nuclei in the warhead, splitting them, and releasing more and more neutrons.\n\nThis doesn’t seem all that crazy, but consider that every interaction takes fractions of a billionth of a second, and that if every neutron managed to find a nucleus, a 60 kilogram lump of U-235 would be entirely gone in 66-70 generations of interactions, taking something to the order of a few nanoseconds. Oh, and it’d release energy equivalent to 480 kilotons of TNT in that time. Scary stuff.\n\nMost of that (85-90%, depending on the warhead) is released as thermal energy, with about two thirds of that being absorbed by the ground and/or air immediately surrounding the warhead as it attempts to reach equilibrium with the extraordinarily powerful heat source next to it (this material rapidly reaches millions of degrees Celsius, expanding into a wide and blinding fireball of hellish plasma before flying outwards in a thermally accelerated shockwave of doom. Interestingly, the shockwave begins on the inside of the fireball, and can obscure the light emitted by it as the front crosses its surface, resulting in a double flash). About 5% of the remaining energy is released as ionizing radiation (high energy photons, electrons, alpha particles, etc; this proportion is higher at low atmospheric pressure and in space) and the rest of it (5-10%) is released over time in the form of relatively slow-decaying radioactive waste. \n\nEverything up until this point has occurred in less than a millionth of a second.\n\nAfter this, the shockwave propagates outwards at enormous speed in the form of a thin spherical shell of highly compressed air, destroying anything that can’t handle tens of kilopascals to several megapascals of sudden pressure changes. The hydrodynamic shock front acts like a spherical piston, ramming the air in front of it in a manner more akin to a solid object than a gas. Once the shockwave loses some of its energy, the vacuum it leaves in its wake begins forcefully sucking the shockwave back towards the center of the blast, picking up whatever debris knocked loose by the initial shockwave. If the fireball is in an area of high enough ambient atmospheric pressure, the heated fireball of air/water/vaporized rock will start to rise due to its extremely low density within seconds of the detonation, further pulling surrounding debris and cooler air towards the epicenter. This rising plume of hot gas followed by a trail of cooler dust and debris coming up from the ground to meet it is what we commonly refer to as a “mushroom cloud”.\n\nEverything up until *this* point has occurred within a minute or so of the blast.\n\nOnce the mushroom cloud loses enough heat to its surroundings, the now-radioactive cloud of dust and rock and small debris picked up by the rising plume starts to drift back down towards the ground as fallout. Occasionally, this material will mix with water clouds and induce muddy, radioactive rain. Material will continue falling in this manner for anywhere between several hours and several days, with some of the smallest particulate letter staying aloft for weeks or months, though about 50% of the particulate matter thrown into the air by a blast will have settled within 24 hours (more if the blast occurs within or underneath a precipitation-producing cloud, or an active thunderstorm).\n\nThis material is considered particularly dangerous due to the presence of biologically available Cesium-137, Iodine-131, and Strontium-90 that can enter food (and by extension people) by biological means. It should be noted that although these isotopes are present in higher concentration near the initial blast, it doesn’t take much for each to become a significant and long-term health risk for previously contaminated individuals.\n\nAnd all of this is only for single fission warheads. Thermonuclear warheads have yields far higher, blasts far more destructive, and use even more fissile material to kickstart their fusion reactions, resulting in more fallout per warhead, even if it’s less fallout per kiloton of TNT equivalent,",
" Let's consider a simple example, the explosion of a 20 kt implosion device. In such a device, the actual nuclear explosion is typically over in less than 600 nanoseconds, by which time the energy produced from all the fissions will have caused the core the expand to the point where a chain reaction can no longer be sustained. Everything after this is an effect of dumping 84 terajoules of energy in a spherical volume roughly 10 cm in diameter.\n\nAt the end of the chain reaction, the temperature of the core will be around 60 million Kelvin. In a vacuum, particles at the core surface would fly off unimpeded. In a bomb however, the expanding core is surrounded by other material: bomb components, the bomb casing, and of course air. Thus, the expanding core creates a shock wave: it is expanding so fast that surrounding materials cannot get out of the way in time and instead pile up in front of it. This results in a thin shell of high density surrounding an inner, roughly spherical volume of very low density.\n\nThis, however, is not what we see in photos of very early fireballs. At the temperatures found in a nuclear fireball, most (roughly 80 & #37;) of the energy is present as low- to mid-energy X-rays.\\[note 1\\] Air is largely opaque to X-rays, so most of the energy radiated from the surface of the fireball is absorbed by a thin layer of air around it, heating it up and eventually ionising it. Ionised air is relatively transparent to X-rays (and being very hot, will itself emit X-rays), so the radiation can penetrate and heat up the air beyond it. Consequently, much of the early fireball expansion is due to radiative transport. Since it takes time to heat up air, radiative transport occurs much slower than the speed of light, but it is still very rapid: much faster than the expansion of the bomb core discussed earlier, and also faster than the expansion of the newly heated plasma itself. The temperature within the fireball at this point is more or less uniform as the energy is distributed quite evenly, showing a slow drop until the edge, whereupon it drops very rapidly to near ambient temperatures. As such, this sphere of plasma created by radiative transport is known as the isothermal sphere.\n\nAs the fireball expands via radiative transport, it cools. Intuitively this happens because the same amount of energy is being distributed over a larger and larger volume, so the temperature has to drop. As it cools, it emits radiation of longer wavelengths, to which air is more transparent. Growth by radiative transport slows as a result, and eventually expansion of hot plasma takes over as the primary mechanism by which the fireball grows. Since the plasma is expanding faster than the speed of sound in air, a shock wave forms. This is known as hydrodynamic separation, and it occurs roughly 100 microseconds after the initial explosion.\n\nWe now turn our attention back to the expanding bomb core. Up to this point, what we've seen so far is a product of the bomb core radiating energy into the air around it. However, slowing expansion by radiative transport means that the expanding shell of bomb material has now had time to catch up with the surface of the fireball, and it joins with the hydrodynamic shockwave around the time separation occurs.\n\nThe surface of the isothermal sphere at this point is still incredibly hot, around 300,000 K. However, the expanding shock wave compresses and heats up the air as it passes, reaching temperatures of around 30,000 K. At these temperatures, air is ionised and incandescent, but since it is much cooler than the isothermal sphere, it appears dimmer. Ionised air is also opaque to visible light, so it obscures the much brighter isothermal sphere behind it. As the fireball expands, the shocked, incandescent air cools and becomes dimmer. This produces the first dip in brightness that you were wondering about, and in our example it happens at around 11 milliseconds. Eventually the air becomes cool enough that it is no longer opaque to visible light, and the isothermal sphere once again becomes visible. Since it is still very hot and emitting a lot of light, the fireball brightens significantly, producing the second, much longer pulse of light.\n\nThe shock wave, of course, continues travelling outwards and destroying things in its wake. Everything from this point can more or less be treated as a very large conventional explosion however, so I won't explain it here as I don't think it's what you're asking about. The specific timings of events described depends on the yield and construction details of the bomb itself, but the essential features remain unchanged.\n\n\\[note 1\\]: This is a consequence of Planck’s law, from which the internal energy of a photon gas can be derived. This is found to be proportional to the fourth power of temperature, which means that the amount of energy present as photons climbs very rapidly as temperature increases. The rest of the energy is distributed among other degrees of freedom (e.g. translational and electronic).",
"The double flash characteristic of nuclear explosions is caused by the interaction of photons with the surrounding air. The initial explosion is so hot (10M Kelvin), it's emission peak is not in visible light, like something that's 'white hot', but in the range of hard UV to soft X-rays. Air absorbs X-Rays, so the air within a few meters of the detonation is heated to incandescence, about 1M Kelvin. This produces an extremely bright light. \n\nAs the shock wave propagates outward, it itself heats and ionizes the air. This air is opaque to visible light, shrouding the super hot interior. While the shock wave is hot, it's not nearly as bright, so the explosion visibly dims. Eventually the shock wave expands and cools enough to reveal the interior, so the light emissions increase to a second peak.",
"[Here](_URL_0_) is a good graphic showing how a 2-stage thermonuclear (also known as hydrogen or fusion) device works. For a plain fission device, it's just steps 1 and 2. \n\nFirst, the chemical explosives detonate to compress the U-235 and/or Pu-239 core. At the same time, as the pit collapses, it starts a chain reaction whereby the uranium and/or plutonium atoms fission, releasing neutrons which hit other atoms and cause them to fission...etc. There's a layer called a tamper which surrounds the pit and reflects the neutrons back. It also delays the explosion of the device so that more atoms can undergo fission. The tamper can be an inert metal or can be made of U-238 which will undergo fission itself and boost the bomb yield. If it's a plain fission device, this is the point where it explodes and releases all the energy. If it's a boosted fission device, a mixture of deuterium and tritium is injected into the pit during the fission process to boost the yield by added a small amount of fusion.\n\nIn a thermonuclear device, steps 3-5 on the diagram take place. The primary releases a ton of x-rays, which in a fission device would just be part of the blast. In a fusion device, these x-rays are reflected back towards the secondary which start the fusion process. This is all happening in a *fraction* of a millisecond. The image u/ThePickeExecutioner posted was taken less than a millisecond after the explosions and the fireball is already 20 meters (60 feet) in diameter. \n\nAs for the double flash, atmospheric nuclear explosions produce a short and intense flash lasting around 1 millisecond, followed by a second much more prolonged and less intense emission of light taking a fraction of a second to several seconds to build up. The effect occurs because the surface of the early fireball is quickly overtaken by the expanding atmospheric shock wave composed of ionized gas. Although it emits a considerable amount of light itself it is opaque and prevents the far brighter fireball from shining through. As the shock wave expands, it cools down becoming more transparent allowing the much hotter and brighter fireball to become visible again.",
"Conventional explosives encase a \"pit\", which is a hollow sphere of U-235 or Pu-239. There are other fissile isotopes you can use, like U-233, but they're less efficient; since it takes the resources of a nation state to even build one of these things, they can afford to be picky about the particular isotopes they use. And some isotopes aren't fissile, like U-238, which is neutron absorbing. Fissile means it can produce chain reactions.\n\nGeometry plays an important role - the shape of the pit and the explosives, and the timing of the detonation of those explosives, all shape the shockwave that impacts the pit, causing it to collapse, compressing it.\n\nThese isotopes are inherently unstable, they randomly decay, releasing neutrons, which, if they strike the nucleus of an adjacent isotope, will destabilize it and cause it to decay. So the pit is designed to minimize this behavior when in storage or armed, and to exponentially increase this behavior when compressed. Now that all the isotopes are in a super dense mass, all close together, the neutrons are more likely to hit a nucleus, causing chain reactions. This process is exothermic, releasing a lot of energy in the form of light and subatomic particles. All of this happens in a fraction of a second, and then the pit is already too disbursed to continue creating chain reactions.\n\nThe whole process is so fast, I've read we perceive reality 80 microseconds late, because stimulus from our senses take that time to get to our brains and our brains have to process it and feed it into our consciousness. If you stood next to a nuclear bomb when it detonated, you would be evaporated before you ever realized the bomb even exploded.\n\nAtomic weapons are typically boosted. That hollow pit? It's a great place to inject additional neutrons to increase efficiency. In the moments before the conventional weapons are detonated, tritium and deuterium, heavy hydrogen isotopes, are injected into the core. You only need hundreds of such isotopes to get a good boost in efficiency. Further, there are light tubes, a type of rudimentary particle accelerator, that flash into the core, further boosting efficiency. This is how these weapons can be variable yield, dialed in before detonation. The amount of hydrogen, and if or when the light tubes are flashed all have a remarkable impact on the outcome.\n\nAlso, the whole thing is wrapped in neutron and xray reflecting materials. Of course, all this gets vaporized, but it only needs to work for a fraction of a second, to bounce energy back into the pit.\n\nThermonuclear weapons require a secondary core. Imagine a paint can with a pipe through the top and bottom. The can itself is made out of U-238, which again, isn't fissile. The inside is typically lithium. Now, when the primary described above goes off, it creates a huge electromagnetic pulse, x-rays, and \"slow moving\" neutrons. We speculate what is happening is the pulse and x-rays cause the secondary to crush, you can see example can crushers and quarter shrinkers on YouTube. The lithium absorbs the slow moving neutrons, super heat, and fuse. The byproduct of this fission is a \"fast moving\" or thermal neutron. They're moving at 17 & #37; the speed of light. Even though U-238 isn't fissile, meaning it doesn't cause chain reactions, it does absorb neutrons, and it is still radioactive. So the housing gets bombarded with these neutrons, and fission. This fissioning housing of the secondary causes the big bang of a thermonuclear weapon. This secondary housing is also the cause for most of the radioactive fallout of these types of weapons.\n\nNow, you can stack stages. You can have a tertiary stage. The Tsar Bomb was a third stage wrapped in a number of thermonuclear warheads, I forget the count, but it was stupid. The bomb was so big it didn't fit in the plane, they had to remove the bomb bay doors and modify the frame to make room. It was designed to yield 100 MT, but the risk of being a dud was too high, so they dialed it back to 50 MT for the shot. This was purely a shock and awe demonstration, to show such a weapon was within the capability of the Russian state. It was far too big to be practical, and far more powerful than ever needed - you could destroy any city with far less. Castle Bravo was America's biggest test shot at, what, 15 MT? And that was by accident - because the lithium-6 they used did the opposite of what they thought was going to happen, instead of regulating the size of the explosion, it accelerated it. But the largest weapons in our arsenal is just over a megaton, and I believe they're used as bunker busters. Most of our weapons are in the variable multi-kiloton range.",
"If you want the serious details (not ELI5), the real source is Glasstone and Dolan's 1977 _[The Effects of Nuclear Weapons](_URL_0_)_, esp. chapter 2, esp. section 2.106 onward (starting on page 63). It goes over the evolution of the fireball and the shockwave very carefully, in perhaps excruciating detail. It is _not_ a simple process to explain.\n\nThe very basics of it are that the initial chain reaction creates a relatively small \"blob\" of extremely hot gasses and plasma, in the realm of 10 million degrees C, and several million atmospheres worth of pressure. This blob, which is about the same size as the original weapon itself, is radiating out a _stupendous_ amount of energy in the form of X-rays. These X-rays heat the air immediately around the main fireball to very high temperatures; so hot, in fact, that they change the chemical and radiative nature of the air so that it briefly is opaque to visible light (which is why you get the \"double flash\").\n\nAt this point you have basically two expanding balls — the central blob and the outer area of superheated air. The superheated air, however, is getting cooled by the atmosphere it is expanding into. So there becomes a layer in between it and the expanding blob/fireball that becomes crunched together (\"snowplowed\"). This causes the creation of a shockwave that \"breaks away\" from the main fireball, and cools to the point where it is now transparent. That shock wave becomes the blast wave and moves through the air, losing energy as it goes. All of this happens in less than a second.\n\nThe fireball expands for a bit but as it cools (still quite hot!) its expansion slows and it begins to rise upward. The initial fireball blob, as it moves upwards, experiences Rayleigh–Taylor instability and a toroidal motion begins inside of it. This causes it to flatten as it rises and it becomes the familiar mushroom head. ",
"There's lots of good descriptions, but my favorite of all comes from Tom Clancy's \"The Sum Of All Fears\" in the chapter titled Three Shakes.\n\n_URL_0_\n\n"
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29buux | what exactly is a "confirmed kill" and how are they confirmed? | Obviously I know what a kill is, and obviously the definition of confirmed means they verify that it actually happened. But, what is the process for confirming a kill? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/29buux/eli5what_exactly_is_a_confirmed_kill_and_how_are/ | {
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"Confirming kills varies by military branch and by country, and also by time frame (ie; confirmation was different in WWII than in Vietnam or today). Many just need it to be witnessed by a spotter, some have to actually retrieve proof of death. For the most part, however, nowadays \"confirmed kills\" are only kept track of within sniper teams. The term gets thrown around a lot in the media because it sounds super awesome, but most modern military branches are not keeping track of their soldiers' kill tallies.",
"You bring back their heart.",
"I did a quick Wikipedia search for TERM: confirmed kill. The first result was the page for SUBJECT: Carlos Hathcock, who was a Marine sniper with 93 confirmed kills. The description of kill confirming was as follows: \n\n > During the Vietnam War, kills had to be confirmed by an acting third party, who had to be an officer, besides the sniper's spotter. Snipers often did not have an acting third party present, making confirmation difficult, especially if the target was behind enemy lines, as was usually the case.\n\nNOTE that this was during Vietnam. I have no idea what the confirmation process is like nowadays. I hope this helps shed a little light, however."
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3mti83 | how did humans become so smart and why are we the only ones? | What led to humans becoming the superior species on Earth, and why is there such an intelligence gap between humans and all other species?
EDIT : Front page in 2 hours! Thank you all guys! To sum up the post so far-
* Humans have developed like a species as a whole
* Humans have bigger brains
* Humans eliminated all other 'smart' species
* Invention and use of tools
* Developed cognitive functions like memory, problem solving, emotions etc | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mti83/eli5_how_did_humans_become_so_smart_and_why_are/ | {
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"There are different theories about this. This means we don't know for sure. But one interesting thing ist that we aren't *that* much more intelligent than other species. Imagine humans without knowledge and tools in a savanna. Would they instantly start chatting and writing books? Probably not. A large part of what we call \"intelligence\" is actually accumulated knowledge.\n\nIn the end, it boils down to intelligence being an evolutionary favorable trait. Those who were more intelligent had higer chances of survival. Also, people compete(d) for resources (especially reproductive privilege) inside of their tribes, which means that the evolution of intelligence has happend in large parts due to inter-human competition. Other animals didn't compete with humans *in that way*. This may be one cause for other animals \"staying behind\" (hehe, behind).\n",
"Might find this interesting:\n\n _URL_0_\n\nFrom his website :\n*In The Gap, psychologist Thomas Suddendorf provides a definitive account of the mental qualities that separate humans from other animals, as well as how these differences arose. *\n",
"Lots of animals think. Lots of animals reason. Lots of animals communicate. Part of the disconnect is writing which is a small part of the mystery. Our species developed writing which allows us to build on previous information. Our generational contributions are effectively immortal and our descendants don't have to rediscover things when they want to get a job done.",
"There's a theory that the only reason we are smarter than monkeys is that we have a small jaw muscle that allowed for more space for the brain to grow. _URL_0_",
"Flukes of mutations, the invention of fire really helped us evolve fast. No longer did we need to chew our food, but we could cook it and digest it a lot faster. \nNot chewing so much weakened the jaw muscles, which really changed our skull shape to allow for more room for our newly growing brain. Which was now growing a lot larger.\nThis new brain was helping us with problem solving, and communicating and memory.\nMemory is a very powerful tool for a species. \nNow we can remember what others tell us, and learn from others mistakes without actually having to suffer.\nWe can learn about the seasons, migration patterns, food sources whilst greatly increasing our survival rate. Which in turn greatly increased our population.\n\n",
"We got the intelligence we have through an evolutionary arms race. The gap exists because we won the arms race and killed off our cousin species that were nearly or maybe just as intelligent as us.",
"The reason we're so 'smart' comes from our use of tools, language and problem solving (these are not limited to just humans, just enhanced). Ancestors of humans were able to use tools in some fashion, much like what we can observe in many of the great apes. Evolutionary pressure which favoured tool use allowed tool using ancestors to have more babies than the non-tool using ancestors. This meant that the tool using ancestors kept having smarter and smarter babies because the evolutionary pressure to use tools was there. This process also goes hand in hand with language and problem solving.\n\np.s. Intelligence in the scientific world should not really be compared between different species, since we may have a high encephalisation index, but we're not the best at everything. Tigers for instance will dominate us in terms of hunting and stealth, that is their form of intelligence. \n",
"There were other intelligent species, but we drove them into extinction. Humans are very good at ganging up on anything they perceive as a threat. Neanderthals were intelligent and lived for hundreds of thousands of years in Europe before we showed up. There was some small inter-breeding, but mostly they were wiped out.",
"There's an insane amount of misinformation here.\n\nFirst, in the question - we are not the \"superior species\" on Earth, we are merely the current apex predator (the \"top of the food chain\"). Evolving intelligence to become that is no more or less superior than evolving chainsaw hands to become that. Also, there isn't *that much* of an intelligence gap between us and other species - we just perceive it as such.\n\nNow, the real question that you should be asking is \"why did humans evolve to be so smart\" - which is a good one. Our big brains make fetal development and birth far more difficult, they use boatloads of energy, and they don't exactly help us become faster or stronger to hunt prey. One good answer to this is simple - there is a huge connection between the size of the neocortex and the size of a group or tribe that a creature can meaningfully connect with.\n\nYou see, humans are pack animals, like wolves. We adapted to the risk involved in hunting and gathering by selecting for larger and larger brains, allowing us to form larger and larger tribes. Thus, when one human in the tribe failed to bring home food for the day, it wasn't a problem, as someone else in the tribe surely succeeded, and with the meaningful connections that our big brain allows, the two tribe members developed a sense of cooperation that allowed for a far better long-term survival rate than simply being greedy.\n\ntl;dr - We got our big brains so we could form big groups and take some of the risk out of finding food, raising children, etc.",
" > why are we the only ones?\n\nThat's what they want you to think...",
" > why are we the only ones?\n \nThe first species to get there will always face that question. We're the only ones right now, but it's not impossible that in another million years octopuses will be driving up onto land in little bubble cars. \n \nAlthough there is the question of whether or not a second species could evolve intelligence with an another already intelligent species around, or would we prevent them (intentionally, or unintentionally).",
"I saw a documentary that said a simple mutation in human's jaw muscles (think about HOW MUCH stronger other great apes jaws are than our own) allowed the skull to expand beyond its previous capacity, paving the way for larger brains that allowed greater intelligence. Humans have big heads. That's one part of why babies are born so undeveloped and helpless, because their large heads and the angle of human pelvises (due to walking on 2 legs) means they must be born earlier in development to squeeze out. \n\nEDIT: /u/CheeseDischarge said the same thing before me",
"A number of things let us thrive. We can walk long distances but when we can sweat and cool off. Lions can't. Humans have the ability to cooperate and be selfless. Chimps and apes can't seem to cooperate if it doesn't help them personally.\n Also there were other primitive caveman species such as the Neanderthal. They disappeared or went extinct the same time our human ancestors showed up. This means humans were probably smarter or more cunning and killed off the Neanderthals.\n We also developed agriculture aka farming. It's easier and safer to grow potatoes than to hunt bears with a spear.",
"As some have said, Language is the big one. Once we developed a rudimentary way of sharing information, even with just grunts and noises, it meant we could share ideas, and pass those ideas on to children. This in turn allowed for incremental advances in everything, as information could be stored, albeit in peoples heads, and later, written down, or scribbled on walls, allowing for further advances as people shared ideas and offered their own.",
"Imagine you've got a cheap netbook computer off the internet, but all the ports are broken, and it doesn't have a hard disk (you're booting from a CD). What's worse is without these features, every time you shut the computer down you lose everything you were working on. Now the netbook's still a pretty powerful piece of technology on it's own all things considered. It's got a lot of memory for remembering and storing things while it's on, and its good at doing small tasks like maths or playing basic games. But, let's face it, you're never going to be able to write that amazing book you want to write using this computer, because no matter how much headway you make, at some point you're going to lose power, and as a result all your work will be gone.\n\nThen one day you finally go and get the internet port fixed on the laptop. All of a sudden this laptop has become a billion times better. It's now got access to unlimited processing, heaps of new games and programs and most importantly ETERNAL AND UNLIMITED STORAGE. Heck yea! This isn't because the laptop has changed, but because it can now communicate with billions of other equally underwhelming computers that can also store some of the information you need, and even hand over new data you didn't have access to before. By all measures this is still a crap computer, but simply by booting into a crummy Linux distro with a web browser, you are able to access gigs upon gigs of already uploaded stuff, and accomplish some pretty amazing things. And now even if the laptop occasionally reboots, you can still just re-open that book you've been working on in Google Docs, and pick up where you left off.\n\n\nThis is pretty much how humans became \"so smart\". We developed the ability to network our brains, through a little trick we call \"speech\". Other dudes and dudettes have gone into futher detail about how this evolved in this thread but it's a bit above my eli5 skill to explain. Then, even more importantly, we recently leveled up to cloud storage of our brains by inventing writing, which is a lot like speech but the signal we're sending out is kept in a book drive until someone needs to access the data. Which is great if one human happens to BSOD, because we no longer lose everything we had saved on them.\n\nAnimals are a lot like that broken netbook, and individually we're really not smarter than the average bear. It's just we've learned to network. 7 billion pocket calculators would end up looking like a supercomputer if you networked them up and let them loose on solving the world's math problems over 100,000 years, but take away that network and you're still left with just a plain old run of the mill calculator foraging for bugs in the Savannah scrub.\n\n\nEDIT: FOR THE LOVE OF BETTY WHITES HOLY UNDERPANTS STOP SENDING ME YOUR POST DOCTORAL THESES ON BEAR INTELLIGENCE IT'S A LINE FROM A CHILDREN'S CARTOON YOU UNCULTURED NITWITS",
"There are different theories about how humanity became so smart, such as opposable thumbs, finer motor control or upright stature. One of the most interesting theories I have heard is the idea that humans have the ability to conceptually occupy the mind of others via mirror neurons unlike any other animal on earth.\n\nThe ability to \"put oneself in anothers shoes\" is the source to humanity's success. Humans are able to understand the behaviours and motivations of their prey/predators and hence are able to hunt/avoid them very efficiently. This also has the effect of the concept of human accumulated knowledge: the ability to learn from others.\n\nLet me just clarify what mirror neurons are. They are basically neurons that fire when an animal both acts and observes another animal performing the same action. What is important is that early humans weren't simply replicating a behaviour or action but had the ability to conceptually understand the motives behind the actions of their prey. This would eventually lead to a level of intuitive understanding of the world around them unlike any other animal species on earth. \n\nFood for thought.",
"My question is, if we wait a few million more years will we have intelligent (on par with humans) versions of every animal? ",
"-Most newborn animals are done growing mentally almost right after birth while our children spend much more time under the care of their parents.\n\n-Bipedalism was big on developing language. It left our hands available for signing and walking upright lengthened our vocal chords to give us a longer vocal range for communication.",
"Non serious answer: Why do you think we're the only ones? \n\nSerious: the average lone human isn't actually all that smart. Drop a random person alone on an uninhabited island, odds are they would survive, but they wouldn't advance anything, or build past the basics they can figure out. They would regress to a more base instinct to survive. \n\n We evolved to use tools and share information. We still do, and have advanced those traits over and over. We are smarter because we teach each other. We prioritize sharing knowledge. \n\nHere's an interesting thought: How many \"cavemen\" do you think figured out how to use and make fire, all on their own? How many discovered it, and how many shared the knowledge? ",
"A lot of it has to do with genetics, too. The human genome has (generally) way more unique protein coding genes than most other organisms. Very recently, the octopus genome was sequenced and found to have about 7,000 more unique protein coding genes than humans, which was surprising to us since many aquatic animals (frog, fish) have undergone genome duplication and that's what we thought also happened to the octopus. When scientists looked at where those new genes were expressed they were nearly all expressed in the brain or sensory organs. It's super cool. Here's a link to a press release: _URL_0_",
"Some scientists are hypothesizing that the development of cooking led human's brains to grow.\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe general idea is that the extra energy gained from cooking food allowed for more energy to be directed towards brain growth. Raw food doesn't allow for the absorption of enough calories to facilitate that growth.",
"Terence McKenna has an interesting alternative theory, coined the \"stoned ape\" theory. He posits that some of the higher human functions, such as abstraction, advanced pattern recognition, tool invention, language development, artistic and creative expression, and mystical/religious experiences, were developed via a close relationship with psilocybin (magic mushrooms) or another similar psychedelic compound. \n\nIf you Google \"psychedelics and glossolalia\" (which is the spontaneous creation of language-like sounds), there are certainly enough reported cases that make the idea of psychedelics as a catalyst for language formation at least plausible. Terence also argues that mushrooms increase visual acuity at small doses, increase the sex drive at middling doses, and would have stimulated transcendent and ecstatic communal experiences at higher doses; and that all of these things would have made us more adaptive and competitive within our early hominid environments.",
"It takes millions of years to evolve significantly, and someone had to be the first. It doesn't mean that eventually another species won't emerge as \"intelligent\", it just means we got there first. This doesn't answer how, but it does answer why we are (currently) the species to successfully organize on a wide scale.\n\nAlso, you could argue that we aren't that far from chimps. They can learn sign language and learn to interact as well as very young humans (it is widely disputed what age they approximate, but they can at least be as functional as a toddler I think).",
"We have such a complex and amazing system. I find it so difficult to believe that we weren't designed. Take our eyes for example. Every time we blink, our eyelids push the moisture to the bottom of our eye and into our nasal cavity which then humidifies the air we breathe.",
"Oh my god, HUMANS ARE SUPERIOR TO OTHER CREATURES.\n\nWe have the ability to reason beyond a primal basis. We can think very far ahead into the future and make plans based on our present actions. \n\nOther animals have displayed basic problem solving and use of tools, however they cannot think abstractly on any level close to a human.\n\nReligion is an amazing example. Dolphins and chimpanzees do not seek or acknowledge the existence of a higher being. Humans have sought a reason or purpose since our \"inception\" where we had attributed most of the effects in our world as the influence of a higher being, this is finally transferring to scientific based reasoning.\n\nOP is asking, why do we, as humans, care about our purpose? That seems to be the major difference between us and other creatures. It allows us to take a broader perspective on basically every issue, and not only focus on the present moment, as animals are wont to do.\n",
"Ask a question whose nature is based in ignorant confusion and you will receive an answer of a similar nature.",
"First off, despite what a lot of the hippies in this thread are trying to trick people into believing, yes, humans are incredibly smart, several magnitudes smarter than any other creature on earth. \n\nThere is an excellent documentary on human evolution (I think its from the BBC, I can't remember) that details how the initial development of intelligence was extremely slow, but then developed extremely quickly. It took a few 100,000, maybe millions of years just to transition from knives to spears in pre-human species. Intelligence didn't really start to develop until our ancestors left Africa and began exploring further north. The climate was very harsh but it came with the advantage of competing with less animals since that weren't able to adapt to the cold. This type of harsh environment created an accelerated natural selection process. And when our northern ancestors returned to Africa a eons later, they found their earlier relatives hadn't evolved at all. They were still using the same tools, hunting the same way. Intelligence provided a kind of feedback loop. Our ancestors increased intelligence allowed them to be more productive. This meant we had better nutrition and better health, which enabled us to evolve larger brains, which then allowed us to be more productive, etc, etc. \n\nNow, as to why only humans evolved intelligence, its part luck and part because we are curious. There were other humanoid species that were intelligent, but they either merged with or were driven to extinction by humans. The development of high intelligence is a rather quick and recent evolution. It's not surprising that you don't see it in other evolutionary branches outside the great apes. Most other \"intelligent\" animals are stuck, much like our early ancestors. Sure, they may use some tools and may have some basic language, but there is little evolutionary pressure for them to evolve higher intelligence. The curiosity of our ancestors lead them to explore areas that forced them to become more intelligent.",
"For a while we weren't the only ones, Neandertal and Homo Sapiens probably existed along side one another for a long time. We were in competition, and eventually we made them extinct.",
"I believe there was an NPR segment on how humans ability to cook food helped us transition ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdom. The excess of calories was able for our brains to use this extra energy instead of storing it in our bodies for survival, we could use these vital calories for our brains to develop more throughout time. Obviously this is a simple summary but if I find the article i'll post it so it goes into more detail.",
"There was a TED talk about this. When early men hunted for food, they spent their next hours walking in search of the next meal. Also, most of the energy went in digesting the food which was raw meat. When they discovered fire, the meat was partially cooked and it helped the nutrients to be absorbed quicker. This enabled man to only use almost half the calories that they utilized earlier for digesting and assimilation and which in turn enabled faster development of brain. [link for the TED talk I am referring to](_URL_0_)",
"Might find this book interesting: _URL_0_\n\n\"It was not, the authors argue, a biological leap that set humanity apart from other species, but a psychological one: namely, the uniquely human ability to deny reality in the face of inarguable evidence-including the willful ignorance of our own inevitable deaths.\"",
"It's all about written language! We don't have to relearn information every generation, because we can just hand someone a book with all the knowledge accumulated over time, then build on top of that knowledge ourselves. ",
"If you're interested in this then I would suggest reading The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. His argument is that humans have succeeded because we learned how to trade goods and services, and specialize skills individually in order to benefit the whole. ",
"Lol at people saying there isn't a huge intelligence gap between humans and other species. We are literally the only sentient living things that we know about in the entire universe. That alone opens an entire world of knowledge and learning available exclusively to us as a race. ",
"humans are the nerds of the animal kingdom. We can't run fast, we're not strong, we don't see very well, but we're really smart and can make things.\n",
" > **We ignore the inconvenient fact that we choose to define and measure intelligence in terms of our greatest strengths**\n\nMy answer is not so much a great ELI5 but meant to spread information about an interesting strain of research I came across only a few months ago.\n\nA while ago I read an interesting paper by the The Economist titled [\"Whales are people, too\"](_URL_0_). The argument is in essence whales should be considered legal persons because their intelligence is not only near human but their social and mental lives are just as complex.\n\nFirst they point out the immediate points that are easy to acknowledge like how \n\n > dolphins, whales and their kind have brains as anatomically complex as those of humans, and that these brains contain a particular type of nerve cell, known as a spindle cell, that in humans is associated with higher cognitive functions such as abstract reasoning.\n\nThey then start pointing out stuff I had not, previously, realized had been substantiated by research and may not still be, just noticed or theorized if anything. The main that grabs my attention is culture, because if you look at humans and chimpanzees for example the main difference is we have some mechanism that allows for knowledge to be transmitted--the \"intelligence\" we hold so dear is really just accumulated rules, insights, and tools as opposed to a priori behavior.\n\n > Whales and dolphins have complex cultures, too, which vary from group to group within a species. The way they hunt, the repertoire of vocal signals and even their use of tools differs from pod to pod.\n\nThis led me to a Salon piece titled [\"Are killer whales persons?\"](_URL_1_) which is the source of the top quote I use. This article really blew me away. Here are just some of the conclusions:\n\n > Orcas, with their big brains, complex social structures, mysterious communications, and mind-boggling sixth sense, by their very existence, challenge the long-standing belief that human beings are the planet’s only intelligent occupants. Social life for killer whales, as we have seen, is deeper and more omnipresent than it is for humans; their identities are defined by their families and tribal connections; and their empathy is powerful enough to extend to other species. \n\nSo they have social lives and mental lives. They have brains that should be equitable to ours. What, if anything, separates us from them? As you investigate, it's more and more clear the difference is an arbitrary one we have created. If we measures intelligence while viewing personhood as intrinsic to it, you come to a definition similar to this:\n\n > A person has a variety of sophisticated cognitive abilities. It is capable of analytical, conceptual thought. A person can learn, retain, and recall information. It can solve complex problems with analytical thought. And a person can communicate in a way that suggests thought.\n\nBy every indication, these creatures are capable of all these functions. Most interestingly, and something that I think most people do not think about, is their echolocation. Did you know that dolphins eavesdrop on echolocation bullets sent off by other dolphins? Did you know that because of this, there is a growing theory that\n\n > Intercepted echolocation data could generate objects that are experienced in more nearly the same way by different individuals than ever occurs in communal human experiences when we are passive observers of the same external environment. Since the data are in the auditory domain, the “objects” they generate **would be as real as human seen-objects** than heard “objects,” that are so difficult for us to imagine. **They could be vivid natural objects in a dolphin’s world.**\n\nThis implies a sort of social cognition, as the article points out. Just dwell on that. Our cognition is social in a sense but we all are in a sense lonely without true links to the minds of one another. We are intelligent enough to understand that other people have minds, however, but our experiences are not linked enough by sense-date to confirm it, only strengthen the theory of mind.\n\nDolphins, however, and the rest of these mammals, have vivid sense experiences which link one another's cognitive experiences so that what one communicates to another is understood just as well by the others--its decoded/reconstructed/experienced.\n\n > The “social cognition” that arises from this kind of richly shared experience of the world would even lead to a different sense of self than humans experience. Jerison argues: “The communal experience might actually change the boundaries of the self to include several individuals.” This clearly indicates that dolphins—and particularly killer whales, in whom we have observed the most highly developed acoustic skills, as well as the most elaborate social and communicative structures in the delphinid family—have powerful emotional and empathic connection to each other that are integral to their own personal identities as beings in the world. Their togetherness defines them as persons.\n\nTo end, because it's basically just quoting at this point, I want to just point out as they did that we define intelligence in a very specific, narrow, convenient way that also define what we think of as persons. We are truly alone in our mental experiences and our sense of personhood and intelligence reflects that. These beings, however, are intrinsically social and their mental lives shared between one another way that means they are every bit as people as we are--maybe even more so. A crazy thought but an interesting one I think is a nice followup to this ELI5 question you posed. Hope you enjoy.\n\n > When we define intelligence in a way that is appropriate to a species, its capabilities, and its environment, that likewise applies to our definitions of personhood. Our traditional definition of personhood is also deeply anthropocentric, based on an experience of the self that encourages highly individualized behaviors. Cetaceans, on the other hand, experience self in a completely different way, one encouraged by an aquatic environment that produces highly social and empathic beings. However, when we start redefining personhood in a less anthropocentric way, there are deep ramifications. That road inevitably leads to the realm of law and legal rights, nominally the province of every person.\n\n\n",
"I dont think intelligence is what makes us unique or \"human\". If that were your argument you would believe a retarded person was less human than a genius. And thats obviously not true. its only our hubris that makes us believe we are special and that we have a soul whereas the other animals do not. Every time in history we have tried to distinguish ourselves we have been proven wrong: we once said only we had a nervous system,we once said only we use tools, we once said only we understood language. only to be proven wrong time and time again. all conscious existence is precious.",
"Part of it is switching to a meat based diet throughout history. Our ancestors mostly ate vegetables or nut, which you need a lot of to get sufficient energy. This meant that large digestive systems were needed to process large amounts of low energy, low protein food. When we started eating meat which has much more of these necessary supplements, we could get away with smaller digestive systems that use less energy, which in turn leaves more energy for our brains to develop and advance. ",
"As many people have said, we don't know. There are many theories about how and why.\n\nMy favorite is that basically it's because we have to outsmart other humans. It's kind of like why rams have really ridiculously big horns. Rams use their horns to establish themselves as the dominate male and thus the right to mate. So Rams horns keep getting bigger and stronger over generalizations, because the Ram with the biggest horns, usually gets to mate the most.\n\nWith humans, brains are equivalent to ram horns. You have to outsmart other humans. And humans are really fucking smart. So you have to be really fucking smart to outsmart them. And then you need to be even smarter to outsmart the really smart ones.\n\nAnd when I say smart, I'm not just talking problem solving.\n\nWe have to be emotional smart as well. We develop many different personality traits to deal with other peoples personalities. Sometimes it helps us to be in a more dominate/leadership role. Sometimes it helps to be in a more follower/subservient role. Sometimes it helps to lead from behind. Sometimes it helps to be unreasonable. Sometimes it helps to be very reasonable.\n\n",
"I see you haven't taken the Crab People into account. But humans? They're good too.",
"Actually there is a race superior to ours living deep, deep under the sea in a place us mere humans have never reached. \n\nHow have we never reached them? They are guarded by whales, sharks, and dolphins. And if we make it past them they distract us with shiny objects (or as we call it sunken treasure). Oh yeah and they have the ability to breath under water without equipment and don't pollute the environment. But yeah I guess second smartest isn't so bad.\n",
"The written word. It allows education to become more efficient than ever before. This is when we started making exponential strides in our gathered intelligence. It is this documented knowledge that has been extrapolated on from generation to generation that allows our intelligence to grow.",
"humans are not the only species to evolve \"intelligence\", there were other related species in our genus, we can't even say that homo sapiens would be the most intelligent of these (depending on how intelligence is defined) because we can't compare. The only thing we know for sure is that our species survived, this could be because of adaptability, being more violent when competing for resources, physical traits, or even dumb luck.",
"There's a part in \"The Island of Dr. Moreau\" where they discuss something similar, and I've always found Moreau's explanation fascinating. Ironically, the book is basically about why the protagonist disagrees with him, but it did make some sense.\n\nBasically, Moreau proposes that the reason for Human's intelligence is our ability to make more distinguishable sounds than other animals. This lead to use being able to express more complex thoughts and ideas. Instead of just saying \"They bad. We kill.\" We were able to bounce ideas off each other and finally come to something more like \"I feel that group has established an oppressive regime and needs to be overthrown.\" \n\nThis is further reflected in another famous work, \"1984\" by Orwell. One of the first things the government does is start dumbing down the language. Instead of \"Awesome, spectactular, super, incredible, etc etc\" they just use \"Double good.\" By taking words away, they inhibit the general population's ability to convey complex thought to one another, and it becomes much harder for them to ever start a rebellion.\n\n",
"Because God put us here in his image and sent his only son as our Lord and savior to let us be sure of it.",
"There's not as much of an intelligence gap as you'd think. There are many brilliant innovators in the animal kingdom. For example, many apes, monkeys, elephants, crows, and octopi develop and use tools in their day to day lives.\n\nHere's why humans collectively have achieved more than other animals:\n\n* **Communication:** the ability to *share* our ideas and innovations with other humans rather than keep them for ourselves.\n\n* **Written language:** the ability to preserve our collective knowledge. Much of the knowledge you and I take for granted is centuries old. Had we not had access to the previous millennium's gains in art, music, language, mathematics, physics, biology, medicine, and engineering, we certainly would be living more primitive lives, more similar to other animals.\n\n* **Collaboration:** the ability to expand on what others have put forth. The [invention of the internet](_URL_0_) required the invention of packet switching networks, which required the invention of the modern personal computer, which required the invention of pixels, which required the invention of primitive computers, which required the discovery of electricity. In other words, no one person is responsible for all these innovations we take for granted.\n\nThere are some exceptionally intelligent animals out there, but in contrast to humans, their knowledge usually dies out within several generations.\n\nTL;DR: It's not so much that we're more intelligent than other animals (which may or may not be true); it's that we're able to preserve and expand on our knowledge collectively over time.",
"We belong to the species *homo sapiens*. It has been said that, until about 18,000 years ago, we lived with another species, *hobbits*, on planet earth. Scientists found *hobbits*' bones on an island called Flores in Indonesia. They were small and lived on a small island.\n\nMore than the *hobbits*, 30,000 years ago, *homo sapiens* shared the earth with two other species: *neanderthals* and *denisovans* from Europe and Asia respectively, they were both our close cousins. Some of us even made babies with these other species so many people still share them as cousins, even though both *neanderthals* and *denisovans* are now extinct as unique species.\n\nThe *hobbits* were not the only animals living on one small island.\nThe Galapagos islands were made famous by Charles Darwin where he discovered many animals with small habitats and specific lifestyles. As a chain of islands, many animals were hidden away from all the other animals.\n\n1. Many *neanderthal* bones have been discovered in caves, away from other animals. \n2. They had great tools, made complex weapons, spoke a language and were the best hunters but they were only the best hunters of big things. \n3. They didn't know how to hunt small things because they didn't leave their small homeland. \n4. They hunted the frozen European woodlands for 200,000 years before *homo sapiens* arrived from Africa. \n5. When the earth warmed up *neanderthals* didn't know how to hunt any more. \n6. Their frozen woodlands became grassy plains, their big animals went extinct, and so did they.\n7. We came from Africa which has lots of grassy flat land and smaller animals, as Europe became more like Africa we became better than *neanderthals* at hunting there.\n8. We adapted because we travelled, they did not adapt because they stayed in one place. \n\nThis explains how humans adapt to their surroundings better than their closest related cousins. \nAll the surviving animals on earth are more simple than even a *neanderthal* and so our species rules the world.",
"I'd guess that we were just the first, and we are making damn sure nobody else gets a chance to be second",
"We got here second and were all like \"fuck second place\" and killed the neanderthals. No one was close to being third. ",
"I believe a few other animals are very close to our intelligence, having memory, problem solving, emotions, empathy, e.g. elephants, dolphins, whales, apes...etc., but what we have is a high vocabulary and fingers that can manipulate into complex tools and writing that sets us apart. ",
"All of these \"smart is a human term with a human definition\" responses are hilarious. Get back to me when dolphins build a space station.",
"my personal theory on human intelligence derives from the fact that we're pursuit predators. we're not fast, but we can out run any creature on this planet in terms of distance. so that means we need to be incredibly good at tracking. since our noses aren't particularly good, we have to rely on our sense of sight and our brains to do the tracking for us. understanding the way the world works helps us in tracking. \n\na broken twig on a tree might not mean much to most animals, but to us it means \"something about this tall passed through here\", a footprint in some dried dirt will allow us to understand how long ago this footprint was left based on when it last rained in the area and it tells us the direction the creature was heading if we understand the type of footprint that the creature typically leaves (which side is the front and which side is the back).\n\nthe drive for us to understand the natural world and form logical conclusions about the world, i think, is what originally led us to naturally select for intelligence - specifically logical thinking and curiosity in obtaining knowledge about the natural world in order to draw conclusions that might benefit us.",
"It depends on how you measure intelligence. If we judged a fish's intelligence by its ability to climb a tree we wouldn't really hit the mark, now would we? How can you say another species isn't as intelligent as us? I can't build an intricate web like a spider can. It would require an engineering degree. Spiders are born with that \"intelligence\". What about the class system of ants? I couldn't put together a team of humans that worked well enough to sustain all of our lives. Who's to say we ARE more intelligent? Just because humans have industrialized nations doesn't mean much to me. With industrialization has come a slew of diseases and climate factors. It doesn't seem very intelligent for us to destroy our only (current) home. Sorry if this comes off preachy. I got really introspective while watching this spider make his web outside my house today.",
"I would imagine that all animals think they are the smartest.\n\nFor example, birds can fly, fish can breathe under water, monkeys can swing from trees. \n\nIntelligence is a relative perception. ",
"I would argue that our perception of intelligence is a little biased and we simply consider ourselves the most intelligent however all of our language and technology merely isn't sought after by other species. They may think we're idiots for all we know!",
"I'm actually sitting in an Anthropology class learning about this literally right now. According to Professor Minzenberg, all humans cook some of their food, and the process of cooking food makes it more digestable, better tasting and kills the bad stuff in it. This in turn allows us to eat more, which gives our bodies more energy. This energy was used, on a large timescale, to increase the size of our frontal lobes. The large frontal lobe is basically what makes humans humans. ",
"One explanation I've heard is that the big-brain, very-intelligent niche in the animal kingdom is now filled by humans, and thus is now no longer available to any other type of animal. \n\nFor example, after primitive fish and crustaceans came ashore and became the ancestors of modern animals and insects, the niche of animals that inhabit the midway-point between ocean-life and land-life was filled and no longer available. \n\nIf a new fish were to attempt it later then it would be a very easy meal for any cat or dinosaur wandering around on the beach. So that evolutionary path is now forever closed.\n\nSo we don't have competition from cats or deer or anything else becoming more intelligent. If we weren't here, they very well might eventually become as smart as we are. But now we're ahead and we'll stay ahead, and meanwhile they're delicious prey for harvesting and putting in our supermarkets.\n\nThe moral of this evolutionary story: You snooze you lose!",
"A major part others have missed is vocal cords. It would be a lot harder to explain calculus if we could only grunt, right? Also we probably aren't the most intelligent creatures, just the most widespread",
"I wonder if we'd knew if we weren't the first sentient life form on this planet. \n\nSay, dinosaurs had society and intelligence. Unless they mined metals and rock, used tools, left definitive archaeological evidence (which we don't have) - how would we know? ",
"Lots of rose: we don't really know. But I think the worst answer and probably true answer is we killed off the other ones in hundreds of thousands of years.\n\nImagine we had another species closely as smart as us competing for resources. Yeah we fight even with humans but with another species there is even no chance of compromise. I like the nive ideas of us finding intelligent aliens and living peacefully but not sure the end result is going to be that great. Basically damn pessimistic of our long term nature.",
"A couple theories I have come across on this subject:\n1) Our ape ancestors lived in an aquatic environment, encouraging them to shed fur and walk upright to wade through water... _URL_0_\n2) The incredible capacity for RUNNING that homo sapiens possess it how we beat out all the Neanderthals and other great apes as the ice age ended. Running long distances in a very sophisticated fashion (now mostly forgotten) caused our heads to become larger to serve as a weight for balance - increasing the size of our brains. (Born to Run by Christopher McDougal)\n3) Consumption of psilocybin and other natural Psychedelics kick starting artistic expression (Graham Hancock - Ted Talk)\n4) Cooking our meat\n5) Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond (Book & Documentary) is likely a nice resource as well.\n\nAgain, these are theories. Hope this helps somebody =)",
"Dolphin to buddy: Why are we the only species that can speak 3D sonar? Buddy: because we have bigger brains than any other species on the planet.\n\nAnt to buddy: Why are ants 90% of the biomass on earth? How come we are so successful? Buddy: It is our hive mind. Each hive has more intelligence than any other organism on the planet.\n\nBottom line, maybe our idea of success is anthropocentric. ",
"[Man had always assumed that he was the most intelligent species to occupy the planet instead of the third most intelligent. The second most intelligent species were, of course, dolphins...](_URL_0_)",
"Intelligence is not selected for. A little bit of intelligence is a burden because of the massive amounts of calories and childcare required to pamper a brain. Basically humans came from extremely social animals with communication that and planning that comes from social life, took care of children in groups to make extended childhood possible, had spare calories from fruit intake, visualization that comes from traveling in a 3d environment with obstacles (trees) and opposable thumbs (from tree climbing) that allowed tool use. Basically a perfect storm of factors that allowed the big brain strategy catch on. Once it got past a certain threshold and allowed tool making and gaming the system (farming, trapping, fishing, trade) then it really payed off and got extremely heavily selected for. So heavily selected for that our babies are essentially born premature just so their heads can grow even larger after being born (which is why childbirth is so hard).\n\nTL;DR: small vaginas are why we haven't colonized mars yet",
"We are not more intelligent than other species. Humans are as evolved to think about complex ideas and theories as dolphins are at using sonar to find fish. There are many things that animals do in the natural world that we cannot comprehend; there are things that animals do significantly better than even the most advanced computers and technological advances",
"Biologist here with some personal points of view:\nAlmost everyone here is conflating \"superiority\" with \"intelligence/technological prowess/ability to leave the planet\". Humans are certainly technologically superior, and our intelligence and meme transfer certainly exceed that of other species, and include forms of transmission unique to us alone. So let's all stop the circle-jerk about how great and wonderful the human race is. Yes, we stand out. you and your ancestors get a GOLD F#%€ING STAR for effort.\n\n HOWEVER, to assert that this makes us the superior life form on earth is actually possibly an overstep. Superior in what? intellect and directed engineering? probably. top predator on the food chain? ***usually****.\n\nbut abundance? no. coverage of the planet? no. combined mass of all individuals? no. number of cells? no. climate bioengineering? no. resilience and environmental ruggedness? no. best eyes? ears? senses? no, no, no. best cellular machinery/metabolic processes? heck no! rate of reproduction? no. social order? definite no. engineering, including evolved capacity to build? actually a tough call. smart decisions and ability to avoid danger? given that selfie-deaths have actually outnumbered shark mortalities in 2015... well... draw your own conclusions.\n\nthere are species of ants outweigh and outnumber humanity by a large factor, live in a broader range of environments, and live in more perfected societies. they see a broader spectrum of light radiation, and their chemical senses surpass ours by a ridiculous amount. they build with staggering precision that would make an engineer drool, and their leaders can fly. they don't need clothes, and are highly resilient to change. perhaps even best of all? by not flaunting their superiority in a way that challenges human dignity, they live largely unnoticed and mostly unhindered, and stand a good chance of out-living humanity. \n\nand that's one species of a great, great many that co-exist with humans at our worst. we are sculpting the world as we see fit- yes this is true. But nobody asserts that the pine tree is a superior species because it exerts massive influence on the boreal landscape. nobody asserts that the mole is a superior species cause it digs its own tunnels. we have a massive influence, yes. we are very powerful and smart, yes. but we're not gods, and at our current pace, we could easily destroy ourselves. superior is in the eye of. the beholder",
"My personal theory is that we have a number of minor things going for us, and together they give us an advantage.\n\n* Abstracting - we can conceptualise problems and solutions in general and not just for immediate needs.\n\n* Problem-solving - when faced with a need to fix a problem, we can consider multiple solutions instead of simply following instinct.\n\n* Tool-using - we have opposable thumbs and dexterous fingers that make it possible to create and use a wide range of tools.\n\n* Gregarious - we like each others' company and work well in teams.\n\n* Communicative - we can pass ideas around.\n\n* Long-lived - compared to most animal species, we live an extraordinarily long time.\n\nThere are animals who have some of these qualities - dolphins think abstractly enough to recognise themselves in a reflection. Crows can use simple tools and count higher than ten. Ants form teams. But none of them have *all* of those qualities, and we do.",
"there are theories but the truth is that we don’t know. Random mutations or personality qualities that were selected for over many generations. Slow incremental changes. Positive feedback loops for certain activities like intellectual capacity for rudimentary problem solving using tools or abstract thoughts expressed through art. \n\nThe ultimate why will never be known, the right answer is probably why not? ",
"To get laid. No, seriously. Some good books on this. Mainly, the idea that once we were relatively safe and had calorie surpluses compared to other animals mate selection took a push towards requiring demonstrations of more and more social intelligence. Art is showing how sexy our brains are (overly simplified). Part of the claim is the cost, resources, and time necessary for our brains to get how they are wouldn't have been worth it if the benefit was purely survival based. Sophisticated intersocial dynamics and displays lead towards bigger and bigger brains to show off those genes.",
"You're getting a lot of responses along the lines of \"Dolphins can do this\" or \"Dolphins can communicate with sonar\". Yes, that's true, but that is not the same as \"smartness\", which I imagine OP qualifies as \"capacity for abstract thought\". Dolphins don't have nearly the same capacity for abstract thought that humans do--no other species we know of does.\n\nAs to answering the question, there are two theories that predominate, both of which are evolutionary: natural selection and Machiavellian intelligence. Sexual selection could also be part of it.\n\n**Natural selection** is the most encompassing of the two theories. There are a spectrum of ways that human behavior could have interacted with the natural and human environment, such that random mutations for greater intelligence get selected naturally. I'll only discuss two: \n\nIt could be on an individual level: making tools makes me better able to hunt, which in turns gives me more to eat, which in turn means I can both live longer to reproduce more and take care of those offspring. As such, a random mutation that grants me greater capacity for being able to design more complex tools, use more complex tools, and/or copy someone else's tool creation or development makes me better able to survive-- > reproduce-- > take care of offspring. Over generations, my offspring will fair better and take over the population. You can probably think of a lot of other individual-level changes like this.\n\nThere are also group dynamics at play. For example, perhaps someone in a group has a random mutation that makes her more likely to abstractly think about nurturing the group (e.g. she is more likely to produce dopamine when caring for a child than another person and so is more likely to seek out children to nurture). This doesn't necessarily improve her chances of reproduction, but it does improve the overall chances of the group's members reproducing. And over a few generations, her mutation may spread throughout the group.\n\nThe theory of **Machiavellian intelligence** could be considered to fall under natural selection, but it is unique enough that I'll give its own place. The idea is that humans evolved complex abstract thinking because mutations that enabled our ancestors to manipulate others' understanding of the human and natural environment -- via both honest and dishonest communication -- afforded them both material and social advantages for breeding. In short, the ability to communicate abstractly and change the way other people understood their reality gave the speaker some social or material boon that helped her reproduce.\n\nAs such, the reason you see Machiavellian intelligence sometimes separated from natural selection is that this selection comes from the ability to change the social selector itself (i.e., the listener). I don't know whether this is sound logic, however, because tools do the same thing to the natural selector (i.e., the environment).\n\nFinally, there is **sexual selection**. Perhaps mutations for greater intelligence did not directly grant advantages to reproducing, but one party to the reproduction found it \"sexy\" nonetheless. I'll give an example: Man A is smarter and, consequently, paints his dwelling with more intricate, prettier designs than Man B. Woman comes along and sees the two dwellings, thinks the latter dwelling is indicative of better means to support offspring or even just feels more attracted to the latter dwelling, so she decides to mate with Man A.\n\nIt's likely that all of these forms of selection played major roles in the evolution of human intelligence; however, the shared component in each of them is random mutation. ",
"i just think that animals are smarter than us in different ways. a lot of it is purely instinctual which is a different type of intelligence. most animals are perfectly evolved to thrive in their environment.. so in some ways, evolution didn't call for smarter brains when many species were already perfectly evolved to live healthy lives. animals can have senses that are far superior to humans, and many are physically superior. in the end, it's all about lifestyle and evolution. if your species is perfectly evolved to live healthy and continually breed for the next generations, then there really is no need to be \"smarter\". if your species is struggling to survive, this calls for change which can lead to some species not being able to change fast enough to survive and ultimately be extinct, but some will survive and learn small ways to improve their odds at staying alive, breeding and ultimately evolving.\n\nalso, there are still plenty of things that us humans do not understand about other species.. so in some ways they are smarter than us about certain things.. and there is always room for species brains to become more complex and improve through evolution.\nnot exactly answering your question but i thought some of this was worth noting.",
"Nothing separates humans as superior from all other species, humans are animals, we are apes in fact. We are part of the environment. The idea that humans are somehow special is a mindset and not based on anything observed. Everytime someone proclaims \"humans are the only animals that use tools!\" or \"only animals that use language\" or so on, we find animals that do those things. For example ants and termites; various species do agriculture(leaf cutter ants), animal husbandry(aphid ranchers) and even build structures that proportional to their size dwarf anything humans have built.(mound builders). Other primates have been observed making tools, speaking multiple languages and setting traps. [link](_URL_0_)\n",
"There are many, many things that led to our intelligence but some of the bigger theories have a lot to do with diet. One I read recently is that we developed the ability to run long distances, giving us a new hunting style called exhaustion hunting where we just chased things until they couldn't run anymore. Once we got access to meat we combined that with our control of fire which made the food less likely to kill us and softer. Softer food meant our jaws could weaken so our cranium could become less solid which allowed space for our brains to expand as opposed to our ancestors and other modern apes who have smaller, more solid skulls. Think about the soft spot on a babies head as the brain develops. Essentially a higher caloric intake, and a softer skull. Then you can look into things like social interaction leading to communication, hunting tactics used in endurance hunting promoting thought and just thousands of little factors and you can piece together how we got our modern brains. The percieved intelligence gap may just be ego though. Sure we can do things like type and talk but there are other animals not too far behind us on thought. Dolphins are exceptionally smart, chimps and bonobos are as well which is no surprise given they are our closest evolutionary cousin, most other apes can figure out things like language and many can use tools. I'm sure someone has explained things much better and more coherent than me, but hopefully I might get someone interested in learning about such a fascinating subject. Also if the theory I referenced is out-dated and proven incorrect I apologize but I do believe it is still considered a plausible theory.",
"The best indirect answer is it's not necessary to be intelligent to be a successful species. Sharks have been around for 400+ million years and have changed very little. If intelligence was greatly an advantage we would see more intelligent species like our own. On the flip side, intelligence is relative to what you think intelligence means. A crocodile is intelligent enough to surprise attack an animal from the river bank, and they are successful as a species. In terms of critical thinking, we are the exception, but our intelligence will ultimately be our demise if we don't fix our corruption of the Earth.\n\nMost scientists agree that our transition from a more plant based diet to a meat based diet allowed our jaw muscles to shrink and in turn increase our brain cavity to have a bigger brain. This is the most basic explanation. The rest is up to interpretation.",
"Humans are the only species that can deal with a metaphysical (outside the physical world) reality. While other species are perfectly happy after taking care of their day to day needs such as food and shelter, we humans need more and spend any extra free time projecting ourselves into a better future for us, people around us, and our future descendants. We are never satisfied. Life as we know it is not constrained to the day to day but we need to leave behind a legacy. This is a motivation for innovation too, as we are constantly striving to significantly reduce the amount of time we spend on food and shelter in order to dedicate that extra time to pursue other endeavors that further our growth and in turn differentiate us even more from other animals.",
" People still think humans are the smart ones.. Hnng ethical egoism and blind rationale in its greatest example. ",
"tl;dr - monkeys started eating psychedelic mushrooms and learned to talk\n\nDon't forget Terence McKenna's 'Stoned Ape' Theory, which states that as African jungles receded at the end of the most recent ice age, primates left the trees for grasslands where they found hallucinogenic (psilocybin) mushrooms on the feces of herds of animals they followed. The effects of the 'shrooms ultimately led to the development of spoken language (the development of the neocortex), which some consider to be the most important development in modern human intelligence.\n\n[Youtube](_URL_0_)\n\n*Disclaimer: I wrote this for fun, not for serious ",
"tl;dr Our brains are our peacock tails\n\nI'm seeing a lot of misinformation. I think /u/nycdevil has said it best so far. However, I have heard an alternative theory that I think is better.\n\nAs /u/007brendan says, there's a lot of hippies trying to say humans are not all that much smarter than other animals but... we kinda are: _URL_0_ (you'll find similar graphs all over the net.)\n\nThere's a handful of animals that are around our zone, but you'll notice that pretty much all other animals lie very close to the median line, and furthermore H. Sapiens is a long way above it.\n\nBut the obvious question to ask from here is: *why*.\n\nIt's easy to think that bigger brains = survival advantage. But... if that is true, why don't more animals do it? I.e. why are all the other animals on the line, and we're the exception?\n\nWhen you look into it, it turns out that large brain has many severe disadvantages - difficult child birth, long child development, heaps of energy to grow and maintain... since all evolution cares about is passing on your genes, it really makes more sense to be **smart enough** but no more smart than that. That's a waste.\n\nWhat biologist generally find is that when a biological trait doesn't make evolutionary (or, I should say \"from a purely survival standpoint\") sense, it is usually because of **sexual selection**.\n\nThere's environmental selection (if I'm in an environment with plentiful berries, being able to digest berries is an advantage) which will help keep an individual alive long enough to reproduce. Then there is sexual selection which **makes you attractive to the other sex, and makes it more likely you'll get to pass on your genes**. \n\nThis second concept is *easily* as important as the first. It's no good being alive (from the genes' point of view) if you're not being fucked. Also, ironically, sexual traits are usually **counter-survival** for exactly the reason that it shows you can survive **in spite of** the huge disadvantage it gives.\n\nOne of the most obvious cases for this is the peacock's tail. A huge flambouant display of colors and feathers that: Make it difficult to fly, and cost a ton of energy to grow and maintain.\n\nAnd yet, the peacocks with the biggest tails get all the ladies. What does that mean for future generations? Why... bigger tails. Over time, RIDICULOUS tails. It's a feedback loop that just keeps pushing the boundaries. It's entirely possible that peacocks will get better at survival at another area just so their damn useless tails can get BIGGER, rather than getting smaller.\n\nSo, back to humans: They started with above-average brains anyway, just as I bet peacocks started with slightly above average tails. We had the above-average brains because of socialization.\n\nWe take it for granted - politics. It's easy for us, because we've evolved for it. You probably don't even register most of the political manevouring you do on a daily basis. As soon as you interact with another member of your species - remembering you you're friends with, who they're friends with, who you can trust, to what extent, who's a stranger, who's not (and how strange they are), who is LIKELY to be an ally of whom, just based on relationship, how much you can rely on a stranger who you've never met (they'll stop at a red light)... it takes a lot of brain power. You'll notice the other species above the line are social species, and social species in general tend to creep above the line.\n\nSo we start above the line and then... well, not sure from here... but here's the facts:\n\n- we started with an above average brain\n- we now have a brain much too large to justify on purely survival reasons.\n\nConclusion? Sexual selection.\n\nHow to prove? Well... it hasn't been, but here's some thoughts:\n\n- humour is an attractive trait\n- wit and humour is correlated with higher IQ\n- More ingenious people have more things\n- Having things is an attractive trait\n\nThere's more, but there is evidence that nerds were attractive, got the ladies, had smart babies, who in turn attracted the ladies... so on, and so forth until... to nature's surprise, we hit a tipping point about 50,000 years ago.\n\nIt was called The Cultural Revolution. Something... happened. We started painting on cave walls. It all went on from there, but (google it) it's basically said that The Cultural Revolution indicates our brain capacity hit a tipping point where we could now have abstract ideas, as shown by our sudden interest in culture. Painting. Pottery. Etc. Society flows on from there. Everything we have, flows directly from that point. Prior to that point, we were excellent socialisers, and great tool users... but we used the same tools for hundreds of thousands of years - a bit of basic flint, and a strange smooth rock. Not too different from chimps and their stick-and-ant trick. After the cultural revolution though - stone tools, spears, farming... it all happens.\n\nAll because sexual selection gave us a big enough brain, that we could then think abstractly? I like it, and it's not definite, but it's my favorite theory at the moment.\n\nAs a closing note, also see: Human penis size. Way too big for what's required ... sexual selection? An idea I've heard related to that ... perhaps pre-homo species reared up on their hind legs to show off their penis size to get the ladies ... Could upright walking and penis size be related and mostly the result of sexual selection? Food for thought.",
"Someone once explained to me that humans became more intelligent than every other creature on the planet because we document, and pass on our knowledge. Individually we arent really all that smart, but the thousands of years of knowledge collected by humanity as a whole is what got us this far.",
"Don't know if it's been said already, but Terrance McKenna's Stoned Ape Theory is a great Theory for understanding why we are as complex as we are. But, again, just a theory. Who knows. Existence itself is already trippy as fuck.",
"Humans aren't actually smarter than other animals, we are simply less specialized. A cat is a virtuoso at being cat, and don't get me started on octupuses, they have are some weird sophisticated intelligence we don't even begin understand.\n\nSeriously though, humans are the result of aliens from various advanced civilizations on other planets interbreeding with and genetically manipulating the apes that naturally evolved on earth.",
"Well I know this will be a rather unpopular answer but when you consider nature in its entirety, the very fact that we humans are alive and thriving is a bit of a miracle. The conditions to support life - particularly *human* life, is quite narrow. When we look at the universe as a whole, the odds we should even exist are astronomical. \n\nPersonally, I believe the universe has a consciousness, and we were created by it. I understand the theories of evolution and while certainly valid premises, I find it inconceivable that we are what we are by mere chance. Chaos knows no order, and coincidence is abundant on this planet.\n\nMany people get so distracted by religion and the atrocities of the world that they refuse the very idea, but what I've found is universe wants to play with you. Does this mean it's always fair? Not at all. It's a big fan of irony and being clever enough to never get caught. ",
"I love the irony of asking someone to explain our incredible thinking capacity to us in a style that would make sense to children",
"Trying to find an article I read not too long ago -- not having much success, but if I do find it, I'll update this (I read too much, I guess).\n\nBasically, it theorized that our ancestors were forced to learn to walk upright because of the environment -- we needed the protection of the trees, but they were few and far between, separated by relative flatlands with tall grasses. A savanna ecosystem, essentially. Those who learned to stand on two legs to see over the grass and spot predators had a better chance of surviving.\n\nThat, in turn, led to freeing up the hands. So we learned to use them for doing other things, which in turn led to increased brain development as a result.\n\nSo essentially, it was that we were way weaker (prey) that forced us to somehow learn and evolve to something that could survive with those limitations, which eventually managed to kick us up to alpha over time.\n\nGotta love an underdog story, eh?",
"I'm disappointed at the distinct lack of mushrooms in this thread. _URL_0_\n\nEssentially, Terence McKenna's theory is that the massive increase in brain size is due to the human species' correlating increased consumption of psilocyben mushrooms.",
"How do humans know they are smart, that is an understanding built by humans but there is no way to prove it.",
"We likely weren't the only ones. Neanderthals were likely about as intelligent as us modern humans. We just happened to breed better iirc. Which is what allowed us to win the interspecies conflict that would ensue. Humans being the xenophobic creatures we are, didn't like sharing hunting and gathering ground with neanderthals, so we killed them all off. Is it possible other smart creatures existed? Yeah probably. The only example I'm aware of isn't around anymore because we killed them all, so my bet would be we would do the same thing to any other species intelligent enough to threaten us."
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5hajot | what programmed programming language? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5hajot/eli5_what_programmed_programming_language/ | {
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"The computer's processor is built to understand a very simple language called assembly. They work that one out in the hardware itself, by which zeroes and ones flip on and off certain circuits. It's an enormous amount of work to build a machine that understands simple commands. And when I say simple, I mean \"move this byte to that location in memory\" \"add this two numbers\" and that's like it.\n\nEasier to use and \"real\" programming languages get built on top of assembly, or on top of other languages that sit atop assembly. "
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5f1l7w | why does ios get slower and buggier with each update? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5f1l7w/eli5_why_does_ios_get_slower_and_buggier_with/ | {
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"Basically because the more they add to their software it just puts more and more stress on the current devices making them run slower, this is also part of the reason apple releases new devices so often.",
"It doesn't, for most. It's only a small minority that get bugs, only a few issues are present in the native OS. Of course if you have say an iPhone 4, it is definitely not as powerful as the 7, so while Apple does do some optimization and removal of processor heavy features, it can still slow it down. \n \nIt's still better than Android in this regard, where unless you have a Pixel/Nexus/Galaxy it may take a few weeks to get a new update and you are lucky if your device is supported past 2 years.",
"Technically a device won't get slower but as apple optimizes their updates to go along with their top few devices and almost entirely ignore older ones because they push for the purchase of newer devices rather than being able to stick with one from almost a decade ago. "
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933coa | how does a food ingredient, such as cream or fruit, stay edible in a recipe after being used/cooked, yet when left alone that ingredient is spoiled faster than the recipe itself? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/933coa/eli5_how_does_a_food_ingredient_such_as_cream_or/ | {
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"When you cook it, the preparation -- usually the application of heat -- kills most of the bacteria that are currently on it. That means the bacteria need time to regroup and increase their numbers back to the level where they can make the food spoil, which takes time.",
"in addition to what /u/Portarossa correctly says, I have to add the fact that many times, with your spoiling-inclined ingredient, you add also other ingredients, which may prolong the shelf life of the final product, like sugar or maybe lemon.\nAlso, during the cooking period you don't only \"*sanitize*\" the product but also dry it, prolonging the shelf life.\n\n",
"A lot of ingredients can act as preservatives. The dash of lemon juice in guacamole keeps the avocado from going brown in a few hours, for instance.",
"Things spoil because bacteria grow in it. \n\nCooking things kills the bacteria that's already inside them, but doesn't keep other bacteria from growing on them as soon as they cool down. Things like cream and fruit, though, also dry out when they cook, and bacteria need water, so they can't grow on the dried-out fruit as easily as they could on fresh fruit.\n\nAlso, when you cook things, you usually add something like salt, yeast, or lemon juice that kills bacteria. That stays in the food and keeps bacteria from growing, too.",
"It's all about \"hurdles\". When preserving or extending shelf life, you introduce several methods of preservation to the equation. In food processing, you want to add as many hurdles as possible. You can add antimicrobials, change pH away from the best growing conditions for bacterial and also decrease you water activity (aW).\n\nHeating, adding acidulants (lemon, etc), and adding sugar and coking can decrease water activity. ",
"But dairy in a recipe when mixed with the other ingredients and heated is no longer dairy. A chemical reaction takes place. Same with eggs and other ingredients that left unrefrigerated would spoil."
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2yem03 | why do 18 wheelers have to pull over at weigh stations? what if they are overweight? | Drove today from Portland to Vancouver and saw trucks pull into the weigh station. I have always wanted to know why they have to do this. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2yem03/eli5_why_do_18_wheelers_have_to_pull_over_at/ | {
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"Various states have weight restrictions on how heavy and/or long a semi can be. The weigh stations make sure they are following the law. If they are found to be over-sized they can be punished by whatever method the laws of that state prescribe. Most likely a fine.",
"They're required to be under a certain weight so they don't damage the roads, which are only rated to carry a certain amount of weight. Weight limits also apply for safety of the truck and other drivers on the road. If they're overweight, they're likely fined."
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yt1sk | the difference between 'frames per second' and 'refresh rate' | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/yt1sk/eli5_the_difference_between_frames_per_second_and/ | {
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"From what I remember, frames per second is a measurement of the speed at which images were taken in order to construct a video or whatever. Think of it as the speed at which things are recorded.\n\nOn the other hand (again, from memory), refresh rate is the rate at which a series of images can be shown on a screen to display a video or whatever. Think of it as the speed at which images are broadcasted/displayed.\n\nSummary: FPS= recording speed. RR= broadcast speed.\n\nEDIT: I forgot to mention why video games use FPS as a measurement of performance. In a video game, FPS represents the rate at which images, or frames, are rendered. That's why it's a performance benchmark.",
"One is literally inverse of the other.\n\n10 frames per second = refresh rate of 0.1 seconds per frame, though refresh rate is normally measured in milliseconds, so 100ms per frame.",
"All moving images -- TV, computer screens, movies in the cinema -- are made up of individual pictures shown in a progression, very rapidly. Like those flipbooks you made as a kid. You drew a stick figure, and then on the next page the same stick figure with his arm slightly higher, and on the next page slightly higher still, and so on, and when flicked rapidly, it looked to be moving. That's what movies are.\n\nIf we're showing an entire picture at a time, then the number of those pictures in any given second is the frame rate. Frame rate is measured in *frames per second*, or *fps*. You need around 10fps before something begins to actually look like motion. Cartoons are usually 12fps, movies are usually 24fps. TV in the PAL regions -- that is, Europe, Australia, and others -- is 25fps, while TV in the NTSC regions -- USA, Japan, and others -- is 30fps (actually 30/1.001 fps, but 30 is close enough). \n\nA low frame rate ( < 15)will look like an awkward slideshow, where things just jump around. A high frame rate ( > 30) will look like a soap opera or camcorder shoot where things tend to look paradoxically \"fake\" and \"too real\". \n\nThe refresh rate is how many times your screen updates itself in a given second, measured in *hertz* -- or in other words, how many frames it draws, regardless of how many frames you give it. So if your screen is, let's say, 60Hz, it is updating its image 60 times every second. If you feed it a 30fps video, it will draw each frame twice. If you give it a 60fps video, it will draw each frame once.\n\nLCD screens don't have to \"redraw\" frames. When you turn a pixel white in an LCD, it just stays white until you tell it to be something else. If you had an LCD with a refresh rate of 1Hz, it would work just fine, assuming you just wanted to read Wikipedia and not watch movies or anything. But CRTs -- the TVs we used before LCDs came around -- are totally different. CRTs work by drawing the image on the screen, after which it holds on the phosphors for a fraction of a second and then fades away. A CRT with a refresh rate of 1Hz would appear to just flash suddenly once a second and then return to black. So the higher refresh rate, the smoother and clearer the image on a CRT tends to be. Next time you're around a CRT, try to watch it out of the corner of your eye, and the flickering as the screen redraws every 1/50th (PAL) or 1/60th (NTSC) of a second will be painfully obvious.\n\nWhich is one reason that video, especially older standards like SDTV and DVD, are more irritating and complex than what I've described so far. What I've described -- showing one picture, then another, then another -- is called *progressive scanning*. But DVDs and SDTV, and some HDTV types, are actually *interlaced*. This means that they never actually show a complete picture. Instead, they divide the picture up into rows, and show them alternatingly in what's called a *field*. \n\n[Illustration](_URL_0_).\n\nLet's say you have a 30fps video of a horse. You want to show it on DVD. You don't ever actually show the entire horse at once, and you don't show it at 30fps. What you do is take the first frame, and divide it up into alternating sets of rows. You take the odd-numbered rows, and call them Field A, then put them on the screen, with nothing in the missing rows. Then you take the even-numbered rows, and call them Field B, and put *them* on the screen, with nothing in the missing rows. Then you take the even-numbered rows from Frame 2, and then the odd-numbered ones... and so on. And you do this *60* times a second. So while you are showing all 30 of your complete frames, you're never showing the entire thing at once, and you're making 60 little transmissions a second instead of 30. \n\nThat's what the letters in framerates and resolutions indicate. When you change channels, you might notice the indicator read *720p* or *1080i*. *P* means progressive-scanning, the method that shows a complete frame, then a complete frame, then a complete frame. *I* means interlaced, where it's dividing everything up into rows. That's what SDTV and DVD did. And that's the cause of a lot of other video-related problems, too. Because DVDs have to be shown at 50 or 60 signals per second, and movies are 24, you have to use black magic. In Australia and Europe, they just speed the entire movie up by 4% so it's 25fps, then divide every frame into two fields. This means that a movie that took 100 minutes to watch in the theatre will take 96 minutes on DVD there. In USA and Japan, they two-three-pulldowned it -- every first and third frame gets divided into two fields, and every second and fourth frame gets divided into three fields, so that the motion can seem to 'stutter'.\n\nLCDs don't support interlacing, so when you try to watch interlaced video, you get [artifacts](_URL_1_) from merging multiple fields together.\n\nIf you're confused listening to people talking about framerate v. refreshrate today, I'm betting you're dealing with **motion interpolation**. Modern TVs often come with refresh rates like 240Hz. 240Hz is popular because it divides neatly into the film (24) and NTSC TV (30) framerates, letting your TV say \"let's just show that frame 10 or 8 times in a row\" and not having to do the math to fit 24 frames into 60 refreshes. But manufacturers have started adding a feature called motion interpolation, which uses a special graphics chip in your TV to guess what would happen *between* frames of the video and *invent* those frames. So you'll get a 24fps video, that looks nice and movielike, and it'll try to turn it into a 120fps video by inserting its own computer-generated frames. The idea is that your movie will look smoother and more realistic. Which it does! But we associate high framerates with looking cheap and nasty because that's what camcorders shoot, what sports are shown at, what soap operas and documentaries film in. So people hate it. Because a lot of people don't know about this functionality, they'll often say \"My new TV makes everything look fake!\" and blame it on HD or LCD technology. Every manufacturer has their own name for this technology, so you'll have to check your menus and manual, but it's always something you can turn off."
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6rdbjb | what does it mean for an engine to "break in" and why is it important? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6rdbjb/eli5_what_does_it_mean_for_an_engine_to_break_in/ | {
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"Engines are manufactured to tight tolerances, but nothing is perfect. Cylinder pistons never perfectly match their cylinder walls. Bearings never perfectly match their races. Operating at lower loads and varying speeds enables these parts to \"work out their imperfections\" without sustaining damage. The bearing that's a little bigger on the left than the right wears the race unevenly until it's got the matching imperfections. After this break-in period, all the systems should perform to their specifications across their entire operating envelop.\n"
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c1d936 | why do things like coffee, tobacco, spicy foods, etc. speed up the digestive process? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c1d936/eli5_why_do_things_like_coffee_tobacco_spicy/ | {
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"Since this has been ignored I'll give you my understanding which is based on experience in the boutique liquor industry rather than any scientific or academic background.\n\nThe concept of aperitifs and digestifs may be helpful. These are, respectively, a drink you take before the meal, and a drink you take after the meal. \n\nTraditionally aperitifs are bitter drinks like Campari. While aperitif can just mean having a drink before a meal, ostensibly the drink should stimulate your appetite or make the meal more pleasurable. Bitter herbs supposedly stimulate the digestive system - they start the juices flowing. The touch of alcohol should relax you, making your senses more receptive. That's the ideal anyway.\n\nA digestif, again, can just be a drink after the meal, but as the name suggests it is traditionally thought of as aiding digestion. While brandies and sweet liqueurs are often offered as digestifs, if you really want to help digestion you should have some more bitters, for the same reason as an aperitif. It will stimulate the digestive system.\n\nCoffee is both a diuretic and full of bitter tannins. It will make you want to piss and also stimulate digestion, moving everything along.\n\nTobacco's mechanism relating to the bowels I do not know about other than that I intimately know about it. Nicotine for me is directly tied to my defecatory processes.\n\nI'm not sure how capsaicin directly effects digestion, but I imagine it's a similar but more extreme reaction to the bitterness. As bitterness could be a poison, the digestive system activates, ready to purge. Capsaicin could be interpreted by the body as poison, so maybe it acts similarly.\n\nBut if you had enough bitterness to provide a similar *painful* sensation in your mouth to chilli, it is entirely possible that your body would attempt to reject the bitterness like it does the spiciness.\n\nTL;DR Don't drink too much red wine at a Mexican restaurant."
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3a9dlm | why do jurassic park (1993) dinosaurs feel more realistic than jurassic world's? | Or I might be the only one who has this impression. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3a9dlm/eli5why_do_jurassic_park_1993_dinosaurs_feel_more/ | {
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"Because, contrary to popular belief, most of the dinosaurs in the original movie are physical props and not CG. \n\nEdit: _URL_0_",
"The dinosaurs in the originals were physical props augmented by CGI to enhance their appearance. The new film is all CGI. ",
"A lot of CG these days is done in 3rd world countries instead of the US, therefore the people making the 3D objects are less educated and being pushed to do things faster instead of better. Thats why you see like credits that are 100000 people long. They employ people round the clock to draw and animate as fast as they can.\n\nOther reasons I'm going to quote an article from _URL_0_ \n\n\"The move to HD and 4K make CGI less convincing.\n\nCGI is far from perfect. But when the delivery format was celluloid and SD, it masked the imperfections of CGI and made everything look more realistic. Filmmakers furthered the illusion by purposely compositing CGI into poorly lit scenes and behind elements like smoke and rain. Now with the stunning clarity of 2K and 4K (and even more so with HFR), we’re starting to see the cracks in the pavement. As resolution increases, CGI is becoming less convincing.\n\nStylized grades and CGI don’t mix.\n\nThe over-saturated color scheme blooming with every conceivable tone of orange and teal is ruining CGI. CGI needs all the help it can get when composited into a scene. When you splash a hyper-realistic grade over the top, it makes everything look fake including the CGI. This is why Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Jurassic Park look incredibly real. They incorporated CGI into scenes that had realistic lighting and color.Case in point? The new Jurassic World looks like a super hero movie. I half expected Tony Stark to be training raptors with Chris Pratt. The over saturated grade makes it look more like a fantasy where dinosaurs only exist on a computer screen.\"\n\n\n",
"I feel like they humanized the dinosaurs in jurassic world. They reasoned like how humans would and not what you would expect of a dinosaur. I don't want to spoil anything for anyone though. ",
"Related: [Making of Jurassic Park](_URL_0_). This so awesome. Watch it.",
"I agree with you. On top of the physical models and better CGI:\n\nThe original had ordinary dinosaurs that did natural dinosaur things.\n\nThe new one had freakish dinosaurs that did crazy stuff.",
"I'll add to the others who've already said it... The first movie used some full sized puppets. During the filming if not slightly before it, CGI technology was just being developed, and the Spielberg took a chance on it. That movie broke a lot of ground for the development of CGI, and could be attributed to why CGI is such a huge thing now, over using props or puppets. I also think the first movie felt more real because it had us believe that no one knew science had found a way to bring back Dino's, so going into the park was much more awe inspiring to both the actors and the audience. In Jurassic World, the movie has you believe that Dino's have been around for a few decades, and the idea of seeing ones from textbooks has gotten old. "
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ehxi2b | how do the score updates from sports app get sent? | Is there someone in the stadium watching the game and updating it super fast? I'll often get alerts before it happens on TV. They have so much information on each play and I want to know how they get it all. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ehxi2b/eli5_how_do_the_score_updates_from_sports_app_get/ | {
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"It's pretty much just people being paid to watch the game and record everything that happens.\n\nSports statistics are pretty big business. Companies that do this sell their data to TV networks, oddsmakers and even the teams themselves, each with their own uses for the data. Networks like having statistics and odd facts about particular matches, sportsbooks use them to set odds for upcoming matches and teams analyze the data of their players and teams performance and those of other teams to get whatever competitive advantage they can.",
"It is literally that, I have a friend who used to do that for the Score in Toronto, then other companies buy those feeds."
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2ov9ua | why has chess stood the test of time? | I'm wondering what has made chess last so long, without being unchanged or balanced.
It has been pretty much the same for over 500 years, and has been around far longer than that, in slightly different shapes and forms.
However among good players, most games end in a stalemate - and white is playing to win while black is normally playing to draw.
Additionally the first few moves of chess can be pretty much played out of a book ie. the opening is set to a few possibilities, then the game opens up to something different.
I would have thought that people would have tweaked and balanced it over the years, to improve the game - and that has happened, but none of the variants are even modestly popular compared to the original.
Also I would think that a more balanced, deeper and more strategic board came could have been developed by now, and again, they probably have, but none are anywhere near as popular.
So why do we still play the same 500 year old game? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ov9ua/eli5_why_has_chess_stood_the_test_of_time/ | {
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"_URL_0_ This is the game that's historically acted much more balanced than chess.\n\nKeep in mind however, that things like game balance in the way those ideas exist now didn't exist for most of chess' life. Chess sprang up in a culture full of class division, expression the superiority of those classes in the form of a tangible game. Likewise, it then moved around the world to places where strong class division was present socially.\n\nI'd wager the same thing that make chess work and stay strong in peoples interest, was the same thing that made monopoly interesting even though its a boring piece of crap. It jived really well with the social 'ideal'. \n\nPlaying to a draw vs playing to win for white is something that only really applies to stronger players btw; once you've traded the initiative to the other player with a foolish move, you effectively become black. Go gets around this by handing the second player a set of points equal to the difference between the two players 'advantage' for starting.",
"So chess has actually changed quite a bit since it came from India/Turkey (no ones really sure). Chess strategy and theory have also changed throughout the years. In that sense the game is really quite different.\n\nYou're right in a lot of ways too. The pieces have largely remained the same, two different patches of SC2 might have more differences than two variants of chess from different centuries. \n\nSo why has chess stood the test of time? I'd like to think it's because it is an intellectually stimulating game with basically endless possibilities. It's a game of perfect information, everyone knows what's going on all the time, which makes beating someone super satisfying, and losing very motivating. It's simple yet difficult, I believe the saying is \"a day to learn, a lifetime to master.\"\n\nI think it boils down to the fact that chess is an attractive mixture of art, sport, and science. To be a top tier chess player you have to be very creative and forward thinking, you have to be highly technically skilled and methodical, and you have to have that hyper competitive drive to win that doesn't balk in the face of uncertainty. On top of all that, you also have to be really fucking smart and talented, *and* anyone can play it. The barriers to entry are super low, you don't need to buy special pads or shoes or bats or whatever else. You don't need a fancy education. You don't need access to tools, paints, or cameras; it's just you and your opponent out there staring each other down over the board, and if you don't have an opponent you can even play against yourself.\n\nSo in conclusion, I believe chess has stood the test of time because it is a great game. It is highly inclusive, thought provoking and attractive, and oddly romantic in a prideful independence sort of way.\n\nTL;DR: Chess is a dynamite game. If you don't know how to play you should look into learning, and if you've stopped you should start again.\n\nEdit1: Added a couple words\nEdit2: Couple grammar things",
"There have been a few more recent rule changes. Computer endgame analysis has changed some of the 50 move draw claims, and until the mid 19th Century, it was technically legal to promote a piece to either color. But nothing that would factor into the vast majority of games.\n\nAs to why chess is still around, you needed to think of it in terms of an evolutionary process. There have been hundreds, if not thousands of similar board game over the centuries. Some have been so simple, that optimal strategy is easy to discover, and they are no longer challenging. Others are so complex (various 3D chess variants come to mind) the learning curve is so steep that the outcomes are essentially random. Games at either end of this spectrum do not become popular and don't stand the test of time.\n\nChess and games like it stumbled upon a happy medium. Learning a little makes you a little better, learning a lot makes you a lot better, and there is still much to learn even at the highest levels.",
"To get at the heart of your question: it is a game that is simple to learn, but hard to master (the same is true for Go). However, Chess has changed. The pawn's first move being a double move wasn't always like that(it is only about 500 years old). If your king hasn't moved and you promoted a pawn to a rook in front of the king, you could castle vertically across the board. Various other balance issues have been tweaked, but you can't tweak the game too much (not to mention various metas). You can't move away from the tenant of \"simple to learn, but hard to master\" that has made chess so popular. ",
" > However among good players, most games end in a stalemate - and white is playing to win while black is normally playing to draw.\n\nWhile most games end in a draw, they don't end in a stalemate. Stalemate is a specific kind of draw, a draw where one side has no legal moves left. Most games end in a draw by agreement. And I would argue, that both sides play to win until the endgame. If black is losing in the endgame it'll play to draw and same goes for white. \n\nChess has been studied a lot and the reason some openings are more popular than others is that they're more useful. They provide better possibilities to obtain centre control, better pawn structure and better chances to develop pieces. "
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91uck5 | when you have bad credit why do car dealerships raise the payments instead of lowering? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/91uck5/eli5_when_you_have_bad_credit_why_do_car/ | {
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"When you have bad credit, you are more of a credit risk to the financer. People who have bad credit are far more likely to not pay their bills than someone with good credit. This costs the lender money, so they charge a higher interest rate to make it worthwhile to lend money to people who have a track record of not paying their bills.",
"it because they dont trust you to pay it, so it gives them more money every payment that way if you default they made money still",
"Because good credit is rewarded with a lower interest rate. It’s not the dealership raising the price, it’s the bank giving you a higher rate. The worse the credit, the less likely a bank wants to assume the risk. I sold cars for years and had that ONE deal fall through on credit so many times. ",
"If you have bad credit, they think you're more likely to not pay them back all the money they lent you. That means they want to get paid more for lending you money, to offset the increased losses they're going to have among people with bad credit.",
"You’re a higher risk, so the lenders need to cover that risk. If you have good credit it’s a low risk, so they can lower they payments because they will most likely get their money back. \nIt’s more expensive to be poor. Getting a loan, buying food, insurance, etc. It’s a difficult problem to solve because the people lending money need to make money. ",
"If they're going to repo the car, why not get more money? It's better to have money than a crappy car they have to fix and attempt to resell. \n\nIf you can't afford auto insurance because you keep crashing your car, they're not going to lower your insurance payments so you can get insurance. You're not a good bet. The only way to make a profit from people with bad credit is to make them pay more money as a group so that over all of their loans, they will make a profit.\n\nIf you loan to 100 people with good credit and charge them $100 in interest, and 95 of them make all of their payments, you've made $9500 and you now have to pay people the time it takes to recover 5 vehicles and hope you can make some kind of profit on them, or at least reduce your losses.\n\nIf you loan to 100 people with bad credit and charge them $100 in interest and 40 of them make all of their payments, you've made $4000 and now you have to spend more money to manage 60 repo's and the losses that come with that much work. Charge them $200 interest and you get a better deal on dealing with people with bad credit.\n\nA car payment on an inexpensive car with low interest vs. high interest is going to be maybe $50 difference per month. If that is the straw that is breaking the camel's back on a person with bad credit, the car is going to go unpaid regardless of the insurance rate. Having $50 more in their pocket isn't going to fix their other problems.",
"The monthly payment is tied to the interest rate, which is tied to your credit worthiness. Lenders charge higher rates to \"sub prime\" borrowers because the lender is taking a bigger risk. Longer payback terms can also change the interest rate.\n\nThe actual \"value\" of the car itself is rather fixed. If you're buying a $25k car, that's going to set you back the same amount every month regardless of your credit. The actual monthly payment changes because of your credit worthiness and how long you take to pay the loan back.",
" > and if they miss payments you can always still repo the car. \n\nThe issue with this is that a repo'd car is not worth nearly as much as a new car, and it takes time and work to resell it. Repossession is a way for the bank to earn back some of their lost investment and *maybe* end up with a profit, but it's not a guarantee. If a loan doesn't get repaid, the bank generally ends up losing out.\n\nBecause of that, they want to make sure that they get as much money up front and as much total out of the deal as possible. So that if the borrower ends up only making a few payments and then defaulting, at least the bank has earned a little bit more money and has a better chance of a return on the investment. And if the borrower ends up paying the full loan plus interest, the bank has earned more of a reward in exchange for taking that risk.\n\n \nOf course, on the flip side, if you have awesome credit, lenders are actually competing to take your loan, because they feel confident that they'll make easy money. So they're willing to offer low rates and low payments because there's little risk and they know if they don't offer a great rate, you'll pick another lender and they'll get that easy money. It's all a matter of risk vs. reward. If there's a high risk, either you have to guarantee a big reward, or else you have to take steps to mitigate that risk. Higher payments are the easiest means of doing that, and they keep the bank from losing out as badly on taking those risks.",
"When you have bad credit, you are at higher risk of not paying. The added risk means the potential for higher costs -- locating, repossessing, re-selling a vehicle you can't make payments on, plus whatever legal costs, fees are involved in that process. What's it cost for somebody to figure out where your car is, tow it away, make new keys, file the necessary paperwork, do any repairs/reconditioning, sell it and pay commissions to the salesperson... that's easily a few hundred dollars.\n\nAdditionally, loans are often bundled and sold to investors, who expect higher returns for higher risk -- otherwise they'll just invest elsewhere and there is no money available for you to borrow at all and you can't finance a vehicle at all due to your poor credit.",
"Car payments consist of principal (the amount you're actually paying toward the vehicle) and interest (the amount you're paying to which ever creditor you chose). Lower credit ratings are more of a risk due to unpaid bills or late payments. While someone with good credit and someone with poor credit will pay an equal amount in principal for the same car, the good credit rating will be rewarded with a lower interest rate than the poor credit rating, resulting in a higher total monthly payment. "
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3b7o25 | why are things like riding a bike, and swimming, never forgotten, no matter how long of a gap between doing it is? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3b7o25/eli5_why_are_things_like_riding_a_bike_and/ | {
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"Every time you repeat a motor movement, your brain's memory for this task strengthens. It is efficent for the brain to do this so that you do not need to focus on commonly performed tasks. In fact, different parts of the brain are used for more automatic, thoroughly memorized actions as opposed to less familiar tasks. Movements such as biking and swimming are repetitive and often learned in childhood, when the brain is more plastic and able to learn and store information more efficiently. For more information, see: _URL_0_"
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ayu63c | how do highly dense populations such as china or india deal with their dead when there is little land left? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ayu63c/eli5_how_do_highly_dense_populations_such_as/ | {
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"Obviously different cultures have different traditions, but the typical grave is 3ft x 8ft. There have been about 108 billion people that have ever existed on the planet. That means all the dead people throughout all of history could be buried in the area of about:\n\n2.6 trillion square ft = 92,975 square miles = 240,805 square km\n\nThat's about the size of Michigan or Portugal. There's plenty of space on Earth for the dead.\n\nOnce someone has been dead for hundreds or thousands of years, you can just reuse the space in most cases. It's customary for Indians of the Hindu religion to cremate the dead, and their ashes are commonly washed away in a river.\n\n"
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fu2r4d | hospitals are for profit businesses | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/fu2r4d/eli5_hospitals_are_for_profit_businesses/ | {
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" at any given point in time, there are only so many ventilators, masks, hand sanitizer, whatever. and in general the usage rate of those items are not high so manufacturers are not rolling these off the assembly line in high volume or even at all in most cases. but now with COVID-19 we have a 10000x increase in demand. so the supplies don't exist. and everyone is trying to play catchup to produce them.",
"Well, one is that hospitals are normally only equipped to handle so many people at once. This is why \"flatten the curve\" is a thing, it's not to reduce the amount of cases but rather extend the amount of time between cases so that everyone can receive the personnel and supplies they need to get better.\n\nOn top of that, there's only so much that can be manufactured and delivered at any time. This also creates a bottleneck when increased demand happens.\n\nFinally, and a more sinister reason, is that in healthcare businesses currently, money only goes up.",
"The answer is in the title. \"For profit.\" The money that would under other circumstances be invested into the hospital's supplies, repair, or saved for emergencies becomes profit that goes to pay the salaries of the owners. The issue isn't that the money doesn't exist, but that the money is in the personal bank accounts of individuals rather than institutions.",
"Back in the day, hospitals were almost considered a \"public utility.\" Doctors and other medical professionals generally made decisions regarding administration and resources. During the 1970's, companies like [HCA Healthcare](_URL_0_) started buying up local hospitals. Soon businessmen started calling the shots in the acquired facilities. During this time doctors were busy dealing with rising malpractice insurance costs, big pharma, the emergence of large \"group\" clinics, specialization, and other issues. The idea of the family doctor who made house calls became a relic.\n\nHaving businessmen as hospital administrators creates obvious problems."
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4gyiz1 | why is there a black history month in the us but no asian history month or native american history month | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4gyiz1/eli5why_is_there_a_black_history_month_in_the_us/ | {
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"Black history month is publicized more than any other \"months\", because the history of: slavery, mistreatment, suffrage, inequality, discrimination, poverty, challenges ..of black people."
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2krcnk | there only 12 notes; are musicians limited by this? | I'm assuming that, "in nature," what we call pitch occurs on a continuum and is not partitioned neatly into 12 discrete units. I am aware that there are other "systems" of music from other traditions that don't use the same 12 notes. But all the same, they do use particular, discrete notes (as far as I know at least).
Wouldn't this be like a painter being limited to just 12 colors (multiplied by some number of shades, corresponding to octaves)?
Background on what prompted this: I am no musician, but I do have a cheap little keyboard that I play around with sometimes. I noticed that whatever melody I have in my head—whether it be from some rock song, Beethoven, or 90s video game music—I can usually replicate it using my keyboard. But why? Why don't musicians throw in whatever note has a pitch halfway between B and C? Is it because it would sound bad to most of us?
Or am I wrong to think that some musicians don't do exactly this? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2krcnk/eli5_there_only_12_notes_are_musicians_limited_by/ | {
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"You forget that those notes can combine to create chords. \n\nBut the power of music isn't in the note that's played, a note by itself isn't all that special. A note in context with other notes, and dynamically changing that context over time is what music is about. \n\nMusic is momentary art in time. You may only have a single combination of those twelve notes at any given instant, but then you have all those possible combinations in the next instance and previous instant to convey emotion. It isn't all that limiting. Even in one octave, that's 12! possible choices... That's a huge number.\n\nThat being said, there are composers who make music without discrete pitches. It takes getting used to, because we are pattern recognition machines and to convey something the listener has to have something to latch onto to connect with. Having a defined set of pitches that everyone is familiar with is one of the most powerful starting points for an artist to connect with their audience. ",
"There are only 26 letters in English. Are writers limited by this? ",
"What is important is not the absolute frequency (during history, the frequency of A has changed by more than 10%, more than a semitone, ie more than the difference between two consecutive notes), but the way they relate, that in a chord or an arpeggio, you are playing notes whose frequency are in a simple relationship (such as 3/2), if not the combination doesn't sound right. The scales are such that those simple relationships are usually met (there are issues, see _URL_0_ for more information).",
"Yes, pitch (or frequency) is continuous. We use 12 equally spaced notes per octave (doubling of frequency) because it happens that combinations of these notes have frequencies that are close to simple ratios to each other. That's what makes them sound good together. It's called 12-TET (\"tone equal temperament\"). Apparently there is Arabic music that uses 24-TET so, in that system, you could play a pitch halfway between B and C. 19-TET and 31-TET have also been used.\n\nYou can play other notes with some instruments. Trombones and string instruments like violins are obvious examples where you can play arbitrary frequencies in the instrument's range, but how are you going to notate that? Mostly we use the system we have because it's practical and allows what almost everyone finds to be enough scope for creativity. Anything offering more flexibility is going to make music harder and my guess is hardly anyone finds the minimal gains worth the trouble."
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9r2gq2 | how the nucleotide sequence in dna “codes” for life? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/9r2gq2/eli5_how_the_nucleotide_sequence_in_dna_codes_for/ | {
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"Basically the way that the DNA is sequenced is the blueprint for making a protein, so by copying a particular part of the DNA you then have a template for assembling as many amino acids (proteins) as you need to keep life going. _URL_0_",
"It doesn't.DNA isn't anything resembling a set of \"master plans\". It only losely resembles the software programming that runs computers. Even this is a flawed analogy.\n\nThe two main functions of DNA are: \n\n1) to provide the information to produce proteins, and\n\n2) regulate when and under what conditions certain proteins are produced, or not produced. \n\nThe regulation function is done with a large number of mechanisms.\n\nLife itself doesn't have any master plan. It's the result of the complex interrelationship between proteins, DNA, the structure of the cell, and the organism's environment. \n\nTo put this another way, there is no master plan for producing snowflakes. They simply happen because of the attraction relationship between individual water molecules, when the balance of weather conditions is just right."
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2nr52i | what do people mean when they say "my religious right", and why does this hold up in any legal context? | Do people have the right to claim an action/something is violating their 'religious right' ? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2nr52i/eli5_what_do_people_mean_when_they_say_my/ | {
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"UK perspective here. The first attempts at a right to religious freedom in Britain can be traced back to a pair of proclamations made by James II of England and VII of Scotland in 1687.\n\nThese Royal Indulgences granted broad religious freedom in England by suspending penal laws enforcing conformity to the Church of England and allowing persons to worship in their homes or chapels as they saw fit, and it ended the requirement of affirming religious oaths before gaining employment in government office.\n\nThe right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion is enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights. This right includes freedom to change religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance. Some right wing political groups are seeking to have the UK secede from the ECHR.\n\n"
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8yf806 | is increasing dependence on glasses a real phenomenon? does wearing glasses as a developing child cause eyesight to weaken faster? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8yf806/eli5_is_increasing_dependence_on_glasses_a_real/ | {
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"Yes to the first question. t’s attributed to more people spending more time inside. Scientists did a study and found that the more time you spend outside in bright light, the better your eyesight. Genetics do play a role, but scientists found that making sure you spend at least 3 hours in bright light (the equivalent of wearing sunglasses on a sunny day) improves your eyesight and prevents vision problems. "
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34d2n4 | how do the bank drive thru deposit cylinders make the turns to get to the tellers? | How do tube shaped things make turns in other tube shaped tunnels? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/34d2n4/eli5_how_do_the_bank_drive_thru_deposit_cylinders/ | {
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"The canisters are slightly smaller than the tubes, and the tubes have rounded corners rather than straight 90 degree turns. "
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1zpvwd | what am i smelling when i smell "spring air"? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1zpvwd/eli5_what_am_i_smelling_when_i_smell_spring_air/ | {
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"You are smelling petrichor. It is a combination of oil from plants that have seeped into the ground and a chemical produced from Actinobacteria. It is released from the ground after rain or in the case of spring as the snow melts and the ground becomes damp. Actinobacteria are distributed across the world so most people smell the same spring air. "
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8sdg3t | when movies are filmed outdoors in big cities (a car chase for example) do they shut off the streets, or do they recreate the sets of said location? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8sdg3t/elif_when_movies_are_filmed_outdoors_in_big/ | {
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"I lived in the center of Downtown LA for a couple years and this is what I saw:\n\nWhen they are filming outdoor locations in major cities, they do indeed shut down streets and redirect traffic. They filmed the second Spiderman movie (the raimi one) across the street from my building in an old bank, and the only traffic on the streets for days was crew and cast. One time they even filmed an episode of Law and Order on the corner, and they not only shut the street down, but re-dressed the entire corner to look like New York, complete with snow on the ground and forty taxicabs driving in circles around the block. "
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25e7u2 | what do they actually teach you in business school? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/25e7u2/eli5_what_do_they_actually_teach_you_in_business/ | {
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"Accounting, Finance, Operations Management, Financial Reporting, Marketing, Business Strategy, and most importantly, how to get drunk at a nightclub and call it a business expense.\n\n_URL_0_",
"If it is a good school, they teach you how to think and how to network. Curriculum wise, Harvard Business School teaches the same thing as the business school down the street you have never heard of. You pay for the name and the alumni network associated with it."
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e2b5jh | why can’t great apes speak? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/e2b5jh/eli5_why_cant_great_apes_speak/ | {
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"I wrote this up about a year ago, and I'll post it again\n\nChimpanzee and Bonobo vocal chords/tracts are capable of producing human speech. The reasons that they do not speak are not because they are physically incapable of doing it. When scientists used computers to model the vocal tract of chimpanzees, the computer models demonstrated that the issue with chimpanzees isn't that the vocal tracts don't work to produce human speech. [Here](_URL_1_) is an example of simulated macaque vocal chords producing human speech. (Warning: This is pretty spooky since its computer generated)\n\nIn fact, it turns out that chimpanzees, like the vast majority of other animals, can't learn new sounds at all, and that's why they cannot speak; teaching chimpanzees/bonobos gestural communication works a lot better than trying to teach them to talk. Many chimpanzees/bonobos like Washoe, Nim, and Kanzi have successfully learned a few hundred words in sign language, but they can't learn spoken language since they never learn to produce new sounds-- the only species that can do this to my knowledge are humans, many species of birds, dolphins, elephants, seals and bats. (I've been corrected about this multiple times and have edited in the better info. I don't know if it's good form to credit the people who told me this or not)\n\nI can't really speak for songbirds, but **the reasons why humans are able to produce speech are deeply ingrained in the human brain**. What I mean by this is that it's not just a blanket \"we're smarter than chimpanzees, so we can speak\".\n\nIndividuals who suffer from microcephaly often have brains about the same size as chimpanzees, but every one of these individuals, while they often have speech problems, are better at language than even the smartest chimp. The reason that we're able to speak and that other animals can't is because our brains are wired differently.\n\nTo be able to understand this, you have to be able to understand kind of the basics of human speech production.\n\nNeurologists have figured out that if you damage the posterior of an area of the brain called the superior temporal gyrus on the left side of the brain in humans, they become unable to comprehend speech. This area is called Wernicke's area, and is thought to be strongly implicated in speech comprehension.\n\nWernicke's area has a really strong connection to a region in the frontal lobe of the brain that, when damaged, causes individuals to no longer be able to produce speech. This area, named Broca's area, is strongly implicated in speech production.\n\nThe neuronal tract between Wernicke's and Broca's area is called the arcuate fasciculus. Damage to it causes individuals to become unable to repeat words. IE, they can process the word in Wernicke's area, but they cannot get the information to Broca's area to be repeated. Wernicke's area also has projections to areas around it that are thought to be involved in other aspects of language like grammar.\n\nSo when asking about why humans can talk and why other primates can't, you have to look at Wernicke's and Broca's area. Macaques actually have fairly well developed Wernicke's areas, and are thought to be involved in functional reference calling. Functional reference describes how macaques give different warning calls based on what kind of predator it sees. So, for example, a macaque gives a different call when it sees an eagle vs when it sees a leopard. Damaging a macaque's Wernicke's area will prevent it from comprehending these functional reference calls.\n\n*However*, damaging a macaque's Broca's area will **not** interfere with its ability to make any calls at all. This supports the finding that functional reference calls are actually involuntary. They just don't have the area of the brain dedicated to producing speech like we do.\n\nNeurons in the brain are clustered into units called \"cortical columns\". The individual cortical columns between humans and chimpanzees are about the same, except in two area. In Wernicke's area, humans have much thicker cortical columns than chimpanzees do, suggesting that, in a simplified explanation, that humans dedicate more \"brain power\" to speech comprehension than chimpanzees do. The same is true for Broca's area, and on top of that, a human's Broca's area is also much larger than a chimpanzees.\n\nAdditionally, brain imaging studies have shown that the human arcuate fasciculus, as well as the connections between Wernicke's area and the other semantic areas around it, are incredibly more developed than in other species. [Here](_URL_0_) is a schematic for the differences between them. As you can see, the connections are very weak in macaques, slightly stronger in chimps, but much, much stronger in humans.\n\nSo the question as to why primates are incapable of speech kind of boils down to the fact they don't really have the brain connections needed to produce speech or to be able to put together the individual words needed for language to make meaning.\n\nAdditionally, Broca's area is not just involved in \"generating words to say\" but also involved in the motor aspects of speech. In this way, it is true that chimpanzees do not have the neurons needed to make control their throats and mouth enough to produce speech.\n\nBut why exactly do our brains develop differently like this? This is a tough question to answer, and it will require a much greater knowledge neurodevelopment than we do now. However, one interesting finding is the FOXP2 gene. I don't know too much about it, but the FOXP2 gene is a regulator gene that controls the expression of other genes. Additionally mutations in the FOXP2 gene cause movement disorders in the mouth and face, and disrupts the production of speech. Individuals with a mutation also have smaller Broca's areas. Very interestingly, our FOXP2 protein is distinctly different from those of almost all other primates, who have very similar FOXP2.'\n\n\n**Edit: Another copy and paste**\n\n The target audience of this response obviously isn't literal 5 year olds. One of my pet peeves is that people who write on ELI5 often have no idea what they are talking about, and simplify their answers to the point of uselessness. My goal was to write a response that took a bit of effort to read, but would be as complete and accessible as I could make it. The diction, tone, and length of this post were all written with a casual audience in mind. If you're confused by anything, I am more than happy to elaborate-- I wrote this to hopefully help people learn something about neuroscience, not to seem smart, so if I slipped up and got too technical somewhere, just let me know. I am happy to edit my post.",
"Eh, some apes have been taught to communicate using sign language signs but they haven't necessarily acquired *language*. Vocabulary? Sure. And they have even shown an understanding of quite complex ideas and concepts - even humour and jokes. But that's not language. They haven't shown an aptitude for grammar, for example. In the least offensive way possible, they're sort of on par with older feral children who weren't able to acquire language either - like Jeanie, a famous and extensively studied feral child who learned vocabulary and concepts, but couldn't acquire grammar and language. \n\nBoth of them would say things like \"love baby doll it\" or \"I cat eat bread\". A clear attempt at communication, but mostly just a jumble of words *just* shy of structure and language. \n\nWhich, to the point, isn't all that different from a toddler. They might even have a vocabulary on par with a toddler. They're just missing the brain power or exposure (in the case of feral children) to make it *language*.\n\n\nAs for why they can't speak, it's more likely that they just don't. Either because they're simply disinclined (like how some birds are *excellent* mimics and some birds can't be arsed. It's a natural inclination of some but not others) or because their brains just aren't capable of making the connection. Scientists used to think they physically weren't capable - that, structurally, they couldnt produce the sounds if they wanted to. But more recent studies have found evidence that, based on their anatomy, they probably could produce language sounds. The precise reason they don't, however, is likely that they just can't grasp language like a human brain can.",
"It is coded in your DNA how you get built from just an egg. It contains info to make a whole new living being. However as you are coded in a way that you will be a being that talks, you have that tools avaliable to you in that code and will eventually have that tools in final build. It is really similiar to building a computer. Lets say you were an android in human form; to be able to speak first you need phsical tools for that such as tongue, cords, lungs etc. Then you will need what we can call the hardware. In our brains; we don't start with perfect software(driver) for many things but we get to have hardware(sound card) that allows it to be used to start with. It is such a neat way because we create our own software based on our own hardware. Our senses gather informations which we are not familiar with at first such as sound, noises, light etc. then in time we learn to give them meaning and finally create a software that effectively hears, sees etc. This way we get to have a custom made driver for our own system and even if we would be different from other humans, we get to have a nice working set up since its custom made for each of us. If that wasn't the case and we started with an inbuild software then any difference in our build could make our software have troubles. Here comes to your answer, even with brain power equals to us, without our tools, apes may still not be able to speak as we do since they won't have the process I described. It is not only our intelligence that allows us to use all the sound gathered by our ears to understand. First our hardware along with the software in our brain filters the sound and gives them meaning. Only then we use the filtered sound for listening. If we didn't have strong tools for filtering meaningful noise in a way that can be effectively used in communication, we would have hard time with it as well.",
"The computers of their brains don't have the \"speech card\" installed, and they don't have the hardware drivers for it! \n\n(So what if we could use nanotechnology to install these?)",
" > can be taught sign language\n\nNot one of them has ever used sign language to ask a question.",
"Their brains have all the hardware for vision and none for speech. So you know that universal human reaction to be afraid of snakes and see them in any patterns of leaves etc? Well that takes a big portion of our brain and all the room in a monkey brain. They're really good at understanding what they see and incredible eye hand coordination, like that chimp finishing the american ninja course without a bother.\n\nI know this because most of the inovation in computer vision and AI research can be traced back from the findings on rhesus monkeys in the 80s seeing how neuron layers activate and are creating the thought/notion of a fruit. And I was quite surprised how big of a chunk of brain is used for that and how the same form and structure is present in the human brain, how in monkeys that's the dominant hardware they have, and how in us we have so many other structures like the cortex.",
"I think its limited to their learning and communications skills.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nThey can learn basic things but in order to teach them how to speak they have to conceptualize a lot of complex aspects, like how would you exactly explain to someone who can currently only understand the most basic of concepts such as \"danger\" or \"hungry\" how to say the letter R or for that matter other lingual nuances such as the schwa in the english language? plus there is the matter of grammar and punctuation, in most languages speaking is not as simple as saying letter after letter, different combinations of letters have different sounds and even then, there are certain rules AND exceptions to those rules.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI don't know whether teaching an animal speech is impossible for sure, there are a lot of factors going against it, if it were possible, a major limitation might be their lifespan, they might take much longer to understand such complex things which might take them longer to learn than their current lifespan.\n\n & #x200B;\n\n & #x200B;\n\nIn all honesty, all it boils down to is making a system simple enough for the animal to learn and understand it, the animal's learning skill/rate and the animal's lifespan but the problem is that this is a new field for us so we don't really have any data to be able to determine the right ration or equasion to even determine what are the exact conditions to make this happen.\n\n & #x200B;\n\nI do believe that it is just a matter of time though, if great apes can't speak because they're not evolved enough, they will be eventually and everyday we learn something more and more on teaching speech to animals so we might not be too far off from this becoming a thing within our lifetimes.",
"Some point in the last 5 million years after we forked away from the last common ancestor shared, in newfound isolation both groups started developing genetic differences that were beneficial to them.. Every new born gets 60 genetic mutations where each one can big or small, good or bad..\n\nPretty much every racial characteristic we have come from mutations that we embrace collectively\n\nAt some point a child was born with the FOXP2 gene, a new genetic mutation.. It granted a very subtle difference that allowed the kid to not just grunt out emotional outbursts, but to more easily nail speech vocalizations to create constant identifiers for recognizable objects without frustratingly belting out emotional outbursts while trying... It's a mutation that happened fairly recently in the scheme of things, a link in a long chain of evolutionary changes in our DNA that would allow us to utilize the earliest form of speech. Some accepted it, some didn't.. There were other forks but the subset of homo genus that embraced these changes including speech among many other energy efficient changes likely aided them in proliferating into today's modern day human\n\nTo this very day people are (Very rarely) born with mutations where the FOXP2 gene disappears just as mysteriously as any genetic trait appears.. They have great difficulty using speech even though there is no detectable physical difference. \n\nEDIT: Of course there are other mutations that can impact speech as well.. FOXP2 is one of the important parts of connecting the brain to an organic vocal system that is capable of forming words",
"Since the most popular answer is explained for maybe a teenage person and not a five year old,\n\nTheir vocal chords kinda stink and when they were evolving their brains picked near-perfect short term memory instead of language capabilities.",
" > why can’t great apes speak?\n\nTechnically, humans are great apes.",
"Look into the Aquatic Ape Theory. It's the hypothesis that humans spent a portion of our development in flooded regions, mostly submerged, which is why we lost our fur, and developed advanced breathing techniques. Those breathing techniques are what give us \"manual\" conscious control of our breaths, and allowed our ancestors to begin to develop voice techniques. \n\nIt supposes that pretty much only things which have been flying or swimming have a reason to develop additional breathing controls, and if you don't need to swing wings, or hold your breath under water a lot, you just didn't develop those techniques, and then talking wouldn't work for you much anyway. \n\nSo the idea here is that if you have those advanced capabilities, and you have the brain capacity for vocabulary, you may evolve the other requisite biology for intricate sound communication.",
"The sign language is overstated. You can teach them to make signal for a product. But have you ever seen anybody have conversation with any ape via sign language?",
"Long story short it appears that they don't have the ability to ask questions.\n\nAsking questions gives rise to a conversation and the ability to build a language.\n\nAt this point only humans and one parent have ever asked a question.\n\nThere are multiple other examples why they would happen in ability to have what would be considered conversations.\n\nOn the side note dolphins have full conversations with each other and actually make extended plans and create games between themselves.\n\nSo this probably isn't a completely accurate answer but it almost certainly has something to do with it.",
"I love this! But can you explain it like I'm 5?",
"They aren't crazy smart and they can't learn sign language. \n\nYou were starting from a failed premise, that's why it's so confusing. \n\nRavens are smarter than the smartest great apes.",
"Hi, I’m a linguistic and while neurolongusitics isn’t my forte I can take a crack at this. The prevailing theory for language acquisition is the innate theory. We believe there is some genetic endowment that allows humans to acquire and reproduce sounds. Even that is not permanent though. After 3 months, babies will have learned all the sounds they are capable of natively producing.\n\nThe consensus is that some animals have the required organs for speech production, they are unable to acquire and retain sounds that would form their spoken language.",
"Gorillas and chimpanzees being taught sign language was an interesting experiment, but the unbiased results say that any claims that they actually learned sign language is borderline hoax. At best they picked up a few words here and there, like dogs can. But their ability to properly communicate routinely fails to be demonstrated. What we instead see is the handler running constant interference and imposing her own interpretation.",
"Humans have genetic differences that essentially allow us to vocalise and breathe at the same time. I think there was a chimp who managed a few words at a time but its not usual, they don't have the correct structures. Puts us at the top of the list of animals most likely to choke but being able to communicate complicated ideas vocally is a huge competitive advantage",
"Short version:\n\nHuman speech requires a few things.\n\n1. A vocal tract capable of creating the sounds\n* a brain that is set up to share information primarily via sound\n* a brain that is still plastic enough to assimilate a complex *externally derived* system\n\n\\Numbers 1 & 2 are *hard* requirements. \\#3 is a soft requirement.\n\n\\#1 eliminates the overwhelming majority of Animalia, to say nothing of the other biological kingdoms.\n\n\\#2 eliminates basically everything other than birds, elephants, humans, and cetaceans (dolphins, etc). You'll note that other Apes aren't listed here.\n\n\\#3 largely eliminates pubescent animals (including humans; the \"Wild Children\" and Nicaraguan Sign cohorts imply that if people don't learn the concept of syntax before puberty, they never do/can). This is why Kanzi learned sign when his mother (the original subject) did not. Incidentally, this is my personal hypothesis as to why humans have such crazy long time before puberty: hominids that had a longer childhood (with the corresponding neuroplasticity) grouped together (both out of necessity to protect their vulnerable children and greater affiliation through speech), and the more sophisticated linguistic capabilities produced a significant evolutionary advantage, perhaps even enough to overwhelm their more physically capable rivals.\n\nAnyway, the combination of those three requirements are why the most capable (non-human) users of human speech are birds: if you start them young enough (and you only have a short time before their puberty), they are basically the only species to meet all 3 requirements.",
"No one mentioned the hyoid bone. The hyoid bone is a horseshoe shaped bone that is located under your tongue, close to your lower jaw. It is the only bone in the human body that is not connected to other bones, and is only connected to muscles. The hyoid bone attaches to your tongue, and allows for very precise control over the tongue muscle. This fine manipulation is a big part of why speech is possible.\n\nOther apes have a hyoid bone, but it is shaped differently. The hyoid in other apes is located *behind* the root of the tongue muscle, and so it doesn't allow for the same range of tongue movement as it does in humans. Additionally, it's postulated that the hyoid bone prevents other apes from closing off their airway using their tongue muscle the way that humans do. Think of the word \"hung\". That \"ng\" is caused by closing off your airway in your throat.\n\nThe last thing that I will mention is the amount of nerves controlling the tongue, lips, and cheeks. In humans and apes nerves pass through a vertebra at the top of the spine. In humans, the opening is proportionally much larger than it is in other apes, which suggests that humans have more motor neurons controlling the tongue, cheeks, and lips - the muscles used for speech.\n\nEdit: a couple sources [1](_URL_1_) [2](_URL_0_)",
"There is a lot of well-meaning speculation in this thread. If anyone is interested in a functional reason, a reason that separated humans and apes in the evolutionary story, it is because humans evolved communication because it allowed them to work in fast, efficient, organized teams. This is what helped human beings break away from other animals and go on to dominate in every conceivable niche on the planet. \n\nThe book \"Language and Species\" by Derek Bickerton explores the exact story of this in a fascinating way. What people say about the FoxP2 gene that allowed humans to have vocal capabilities is important, but this is a mechanism of speech, not the reason for it. \n\nA few different genes that reconfigured cognitive organization came together at the right time in this story. First, humans gained the ability to associate a mental representation of an object with a sound. People have pointed to Broca's area and Wernicke's area in the brain which process language, and these are definitely mechanisms for it in the brain, but again this is not the reason. Associating sound and mental constructs allowed humans to have a word conjure a mental representation instead of just the stimuli itself for the first time in history, allowing people to act on information beyond what they could sense directly around them with sight, smell, etc. Suddenly humans were not bound just to the world they could see and smell and hear, but one where sounds could conjure mental constructs in their mind's eye. Voila! The imagination was born, and it allowed human beings to start creating goals that could be bigger than whatever you could literally perceive directly, literally freeing people to picture the valley around the corner and all the game that might be in it; or picture a shelter from the storm, or crops that would be harvested in other seasons. With complex goals, historical information became important and memory became bigger. Human started to represent their world across space and time.\n\nTo be able to do that, though, humans needed to organize information in the brain hierarchically, and that was language also. Linguistically, the hierarchy of cognitive organization corresponded to the syntax of nested clauses and subclauses. We could organize sounds in sequences that would have meaning based on the way they were sequenced across time, with nested sequences creating complex maps of the world around us. Hierarchies of sensory patterns become cognitive constructs; patterns of constructs become organizing classes, etc. Each hierarchical construct could be used to convey linguistically-organized sequences of information that told stories and conveyed causal chains, representing the world around us across space and time, as the world is also hierarchically-organized (molecules > cells > organisms) and changes across time.\n\nFinally, creating a mental representation of the world where language-organized brain unlocked imagination would not have been possible without the social utility of it. Humans had a reason to convey complex information because we could accomplish complex things together through cooperation. If not for cooperation, we would not need to make the investment in an energy-demanding brain to say nuanced things about hunting plans or convey social information that helped people cooperate and organize. Investing in energy-intensive brains required a huge pay-off, and that pay off was the ability to use information for cooperative purposes given our complex tool use from opposable thumbs and the ability to manipulate the environment with nuance, something apes could not do to the same degree.",
" > Gorillas and chimps are crazy smart \n\nCompared to what? A rock?",
"Most apes really can't be taught much in the way of sign language. There's a Bonobo that's somewhat capable, but the signs are arbitrary and incoherent to someone expecting ASL. Koko the gorilla is probably the most famous, but if you look at what was claimed by her researcher/interpreter, you'll see that the findings are greatly exaggerated and willfully presented in the most favorable terms, and the claim that Koko understood and communicated anything approaching \"language\" is absolutely false.",
"They don't have the same vocal cord structure that humans do. It's also interesting that they've never asked a question through sign language or otherwise.",
"Meanwhile on the Dolphin forum: \"Why can't Humans 'Eeeek'?\"",
"Havent seen anyone in the top comments mention it, but Vsauce's Mind Field episode on the Cognitive Tradeoff Hypothesis goes does a pretty good job of explaining *why* it might be that apes dont speak.",
"Gorillas in particular always break my heart because of that intelligence, it’s staring out of their faces. When they’re in zoos & communicating with people in such a clear way it’s obvious they’re self aware to a degree we might never know. They deserve better."
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br3b7m | why do wii games have such a larger hacker base than the gamecube? and why are there so many gba pokémon rom hacks compared to the ds lineup? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/br3b7m/eli5_why_do_wii_games_have_such_a_larger_hacker/ | {
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"Ease of access in all cases. The wii has internal memory, and easily accessed (on a pc) external memory as well as exploits. The GameCube has only has memory cards you can’t plug into a pc, there are ways around it but you have to spend money. So wii just needs an sd card and specific game. \n\nGBA game’s at this point have better tools, no one ever made great tools for ds modding, so less user friendly tools, less mods."
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1qg6l7 | what is the process for interviews in the late night shows? | How are interviews for late night shows conducted? Do they go over potential stories prior to the show? How much of the content is not pre-planned? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1qg6l7/eli5what_is_the_process_for_interviews_in_the/ | {
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"Depends on the show.\n\nGenerally, the interviews are tightly outlined but not quite scripted (Jon Stewart and Dave tend to be a bit more free-form than Jay and Conan). The guest will typically talk with a \"segment producer\" before the taping and sketch out a few stories, jokes, etc. This conversation informs the bullet points that are written on an index card on the host's desk. \n\nWhen a host says, \"So, I was doing some research and I read that...\" or \"Hey, I wanted to ask you about something...\", that's essentially a euphemism for \"Let's talk about the next question I'm supposed to ask you.\" When a stand-up comic is the guest, these bullet points are often just the set-ups to the guest's material. \n\nSome hosts are different. For example, Craig Ferguson tears up the paper with the bullet points before every interview (signature move) and just talks to them."
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3ad68b | how do digital cameras capture and transfer what they see into a .jpg? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ad68b/eli5_how_do_digital_cameras_capture_and_transfer/ | {
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"A digital camera translates what it sees on its \"canvas\" into the protocol for a jpg.\n\nStep one is like throwing paint onto a canvas.\n\nStep two is software looking as the canvas and saying \"OK, there is red at 1,1. There is blue at 1,2. Green at 1,3. etc.\"\n\nStep three is more software saying, \"OK, jpg is coded as [position,position,red,green,blue]. So I need to write [1,1,1,0,0]. Then [1,2,0,0,1]. Then [1,3,0,1,0]. etc.\"",
"Light from the subject (like a puppy) is focused onto a sensor chip using a lens, or more than one lens. There are different kinds of sensors, but the basic idea behind all of them are similar. They contain an array of sensor \"elements\" laid out in a [rectangular grid pattern](_URL_0_). When light hits a sensor element, it excites electrons in the element, raising them to a higher energy level. (These sensor elements are basically special-purpose transistors.) The more light that hits an element, the more electrons that get excited. This excitation can be sensed as a voltage by the rest of the element and read out to a processor on the same chip (or another chip). Alternatively, the excited electrons are collected and sent off the sensor array to a circuit that \"counts\" how much charge has been gathered by each element. \n\nThat would only get you a black and white image, though. In order to get color images, there are also a few techniques. The most common is to make the light pass through a [filter that has red, green and blue areas before it gets to the sensor elements](_URL_1_). So each of the sensor elements only \"sees\" light of one color. Another method is to stack 3 sensor elements on top of each other along with color filters. A third way is to use a prism to split the light from the image in to its different colors and use 3 separate sets of sensors to detect each of the primary colors. The data from all 3 sets of sensors is then combined by another chip. \n\nYou now have essentially converted the brightness/color of the incoming light into a set of numbers that represents the image. That image file is stored on a memory chip in the camera, either internal to the camera or in a card inserted into a slot in the camera. Such \"flash\" memory cards store digital bits by storing electrical charges in special-purpose transistors. \n \nThe image data can then be sent out to a device connected to the camera in \"RAW\" format, or it can first be converted to some other format such as JPEG, with or without being compressed first (to make the file size smaller). \n\nNow that you have the image represented as a set of colors/brightnesses (in the form of a bunch of numbers), you can reverse the process. You send the image file to a screen of some sort and have it display those colors/brightnesses in a rectangular pattern with the same width/height ratio as the original. It doesn't matter how big the screen is, as long as that \"aspect ratio\" is correct. You can then look at the screen, and you see the light pattern that was originally focused onto that image sensor chip. It's a puppy!",
"Computerphile recently did a couple of videos on JPEG encoding, well worth a watch: _URL_0_",
"Following video is a commercial from Nokia for their mobile camera, but explains pretty good the process of creating a digital image:\n_URL_0_"
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nabnv | how do audio and video codecs work, and why do we need them? | I'd like to gain a basic understanding of audio and video codecs. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nabnv/eli5_how_do_audio_and_video_codecs_work_and_why/ | {
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"So you have the data corresponding to some movie, and you want your computer to play it. How does the computer make this happen?\n\nIt would be simplest if the data that your computer uses to store the movie *were* the instructions to your screen and speakers to make it work. Problem is, this would be incredibly inefficient; it would be like having a book say READ THE FOLLOWING before every single word in the book. So instead, we just store the data, and have some program whose job it is to convert the data into display instructions. That program is called a codec.",
"Codec stands for compressor-decompressor. When you encode the video, it's compressed so you can fit more movie into the same space. Audio and video are handled separately because you can compress them in different ways. You need the same codec to decompress the movie back into usable audio and video. \n\nFiles like AVI are actually containers that hold the audio and video streams often as separate files. This is why audio and video can become desynchronized. ",
"Do you want to know about the theory behind them, or about which ones are better in which situations and how to use them?\n\nVideo is a series of still images (called *frames*) played rapidly in a row. Most commonly, people will use 24 frames per second (*24fps*) for video; that's 24 still images played quickly enough that it seems like smooth motion. Each of these images is made up from many tiny coloured squares, called *pixels*. Think of a [mosaic art piece](_URL_0_); the more pieces of mosaic -- pixels -- you use, the more detailed the image can be. The number of pixels used in an image is called its *resolution*. To illustrate the differences in resolution: a DVD has 345,600 pixels per frame, HDTV has around 921,000, and Blu-ray has over 2 million.\n\nFor every second of video you see on a Bluray, the player is putting 49.76 million tiny coloured squares on the screen in a specific order. That's a *lot* of information. The player would have to say \"Put a red square first. Then a blue square. Then a yellow square. Then a green square\" to the TV almost 50 million times a second. When it's speaking in plain English like that, just saying what squares go where, we call it *uncompressed video*. Uncompressed Blu-ray video takes up 149.3 megabytes per second (without even counting audio). \n\n*Codecs* are our solution to that problem. They *encode* the video -- that is, they turn that list of \"Put red square here\" plain-English instructions into a special kind of code that's a lot faster and takes less space to store. They will also change parts of the video to make it easier to describe in this code. One trick they might use is to keep non-moving portions of the screen static. Imagine your video is a Simpsons episode where Homer is mowing the lawn. Your uncompressed video, which doesn't use a codec, will describe every single part of the scene 24 times per second, using a LOT of space. You use a clever codec that says \"Oh, look -- *Homer and the lawnmower* are moving, but the house stays perfectly still in the background. We'll describe the house once, and just say *keep that on the screen for 10 seconds*, so we don't have to keep describing it over and over.\" You've saved a lot of space that way. Likewise, while your uncompressed video describes Homer's face as \"yellow pixel, then yellow pixel, then yellow pixel, then yellow pixel\" over and over again a million times, your clever new codec would say \"Repeat yellow pixel 500 times\", saving space. It might even say, depending on what codec you've chosen and what settings it has, \"That tree in the background is made up of 500 shades of green, but let's trim that down to 300 shades, it won't look that much different but it'll save some more space.\" After enough of these tricks, your 900GB video is down to 8GB, small enough to put on a DVD.\n\nWhy are there so many different codecs? Well, it takes a lot of computer brainpower to process a video using an advanced codec. Back in 1990, when computers were slow and computers were just starting out, they would've made quite simple codecs that didn't take a million years for the computer to understand. Now in 2011, because our computers are hundreds of times faster, we can write new codecs that employ very in-depth and complicated tricks. Our priorities have also changed -- now that we can stream videos online without worry, and now that we have 2TB hard drives instead of 2GB ones, we prefer to have big-but-pretty videos, while 1990s folks wanted to keep them as small as they possibly could. \n\nThe codec used on DVDs is called MPEG-2. MPEG-2 dates from 1996, and was written with the goal of being decoded by cheap, low-power DVD players, so it's not very thorough or clever. The codec used on Blu-ray, iTunes video and many online sites is called H.264 or AVC. It is much newer, and was written knowing that it would be used on the strong computers of the late 2000s, rather than low-power devices from the mid-90s. As such, it is much smarter and more powerful -- because it knows it'll be played by powerful processors -- and provides a much higher quality of video.\n\nIf you yourself are looking to encode video, the three most popular codec formats are **MPEG-2** (used only for DVDs nowadays), **Xvid** (used in the AVI files you find online, good for making sure everyone can see it, or that it can be played on phones and other low-power devices) and **H.264** (used for most online, Blu-ray, and HD videos; the best choice in 95% of cases).\n\nNow, as a footnote, let's note what a *container format* is. Many people are confused by this. Containers are things like AVI, MKV, or MP4. These file extensions do not tell you what codec was used to make the video. Think of them more like ZIP files. Most video files contain the video, one or two audio tracks, maybe some subtitles, and some chapters. Each of those things is a separate piece, in a different format, messily separated. So you put them together into a *container*, one file that contains them all, just like ZIP. The exact same video can be represented inside an AVI, an MKV, or an MP4, but they have different features. For example, AVI is 20 years old, made specially for Windows, and only really supports one video with one piece of audio on the top -- but everyone can view it. MKV is more modern, and supports multiple viewing angles, chapters like a DVD, built-in subtitles, multiple audio tracks (so you can embed director's commentary or different languages), but because it's relatively modern, older software doesn't know how to deal with it. When you make a video, you choose what container you want based on your needs, but it has absolutely zero effect on the image quality, and it is very easy to change later.\n\nFor example, today I made a file where the video format was H.264, the audio format was MP3, the subtitle format was SRT, and the container format was MKV. That's an MKV file, but the *video* isn't MKV, it's H.264. MKV's just the container I put all the stuff in.",
"So you have the data corresponding to some movie, and you want your computer to play it. How does the computer make this happen?\n\nIt would be simplest if the data that your computer uses to store the movie *were* the instructions to your screen and speakers to make it work. Problem is, this would be incredibly inefficient; it would be like having a book say READ THE FOLLOWING before every single word in the book. So instead, we just store the data, and have some program whose job it is to convert the data into display instructions. That program is called a codec.",
"Codec stands for compressor-decompressor. When you encode the video, it's compressed so you can fit more movie into the same space. Audio and video are handled separately because you can compress them in different ways. You need the same codec to decompress the movie back into usable audio and video. \n\nFiles like AVI are actually containers that hold the audio and video streams often as separate files. This is why audio and video can become desynchronized. ",
"Do you want to know about the theory behind them, or about which ones are better in which situations and how to use them?\n\nVideo is a series of still images (called *frames*) played rapidly in a row. Most commonly, people will use 24 frames per second (*24fps*) for video; that's 24 still images played quickly enough that it seems like smooth motion. Each of these images is made up from many tiny coloured squares, called *pixels*. Think of a [mosaic art piece](_URL_0_); the more pieces of mosaic -- pixels -- you use, the more detailed the image can be. The number of pixels used in an image is called its *resolution*. To illustrate the differences in resolution: a DVD has 345,600 pixels per frame, HDTV has around 921,000, and Blu-ray has over 2 million.\n\nFor every second of video you see on a Bluray, the player is putting 49.76 million tiny coloured squares on the screen in a specific order. That's a *lot* of information. The player would have to say \"Put a red square first. Then a blue square. Then a yellow square. Then a green square\" to the TV almost 50 million times a second. When it's speaking in plain English like that, just saying what squares go where, we call it *uncompressed video*. Uncompressed Blu-ray video takes up 149.3 megabytes per second (without even counting audio). \n\n*Codecs* are our solution to that problem. They *encode* the video -- that is, they turn that list of \"Put red square here\" plain-English instructions into a special kind of code that's a lot faster and takes less space to store. They will also change parts of the video to make it easier to describe in this code. One trick they might use is to keep non-moving portions of the screen static. Imagine your video is a Simpsons episode where Homer is mowing the lawn. Your uncompressed video, which doesn't use a codec, will describe every single part of the scene 24 times per second, using a LOT of space. You use a clever codec that says \"Oh, look -- *Homer and the lawnmower* are moving, but the house stays perfectly still in the background. We'll describe the house once, and just say *keep that on the screen for 10 seconds*, so we don't have to keep describing it over and over.\" You've saved a lot of space that way. Likewise, while your uncompressed video describes Homer's face as \"yellow pixel, then yellow pixel, then yellow pixel, then yellow pixel\" over and over again a million times, your clever new codec would say \"Repeat yellow pixel 500 times\", saving space. It might even say, depending on what codec you've chosen and what settings it has, \"That tree in the background is made up of 500 shades of green, but let's trim that down to 300 shades, it won't look that much different but it'll save some more space.\" After enough of these tricks, your 900GB video is down to 8GB, small enough to put on a DVD.\n\nWhy are there so many different codecs? Well, it takes a lot of computer brainpower to process a video using an advanced codec. Back in 1990, when computers were slow and computers were just starting out, they would've made quite simple codecs that didn't take a million years for the computer to understand. Now in 2011, because our computers are hundreds of times faster, we can write new codecs that employ very in-depth and complicated tricks. Our priorities have also changed -- now that we can stream videos online without worry, and now that we have 2TB hard drives instead of 2GB ones, we prefer to have big-but-pretty videos, while 1990s folks wanted to keep them as small as they possibly could. \n\nThe codec used on DVDs is called MPEG-2. MPEG-2 dates from 1996, and was written with the goal of being decoded by cheap, low-power DVD players, so it's not very thorough or clever. The codec used on Blu-ray, iTunes video and many online sites is called H.264 or AVC. It is much newer, and was written knowing that it would be used on the strong computers of the late 2000s, rather than low-power devices from the mid-90s. As such, it is much smarter and more powerful -- because it knows it'll be played by powerful processors -- and provides a much higher quality of video.\n\nIf you yourself are looking to encode video, the three most popular codec formats are **MPEG-2** (used only for DVDs nowadays), **Xvid** (used in the AVI files you find online, good for making sure everyone can see it, or that it can be played on phones and other low-power devices) and **H.264** (used for most online, Blu-ray, and HD videos; the best choice in 95% of cases).\n\nNow, as a footnote, let's note what a *container format* is. Many people are confused by this. Containers are things like AVI, MKV, or MP4. These file extensions do not tell you what codec was used to make the video. Think of them more like ZIP files. Most video files contain the video, one or two audio tracks, maybe some subtitles, and some chapters. Each of those things is a separate piece, in a different format, messily separated. So you put them together into a *container*, one file that contains them all, just like ZIP. The exact same video can be represented inside an AVI, an MKV, or an MP4, but they have different features. For example, AVI is 20 years old, made specially for Windows, and only really supports one video with one piece of audio on the top -- but everyone can view it. MKV is more modern, and supports multiple viewing angles, chapters like a DVD, built-in subtitles, multiple audio tracks (so you can embed director's commentary or different languages), but because it's relatively modern, older software doesn't know how to deal with it. When you make a video, you choose what container you want based on your needs, but it has absolutely zero effect on the image quality, and it is very easy to change later.\n\nFor example, today I made a file where the video format was H.264, the audio format was MP3, the subtitle format was SRT, and the container format was MKV. That's an MKV file, but the *video* isn't MKV, it's H.264. MKV's just the container I put all the stuff in."
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2c75c7 | in states not requiring front license plates, what do traffic light cams do? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2c75c7/eli5_in_states_not_requiring_front_license_plates/ | {
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"I live in one of those states, near a city that has a lot of them. There are cameras facing both ways: One in the back to get your license plate number, and one in the front to get your face (so they can prove it was you who was driving).",
"In my state they capture the face with one camera and then when we are in the intersection they capture our back plate with another camera.",
"In order for a red light camera to have any chance of being admissible evidence, it needs to get at least two pictures: one of the car before it enters the intersection with the traffic light in view, and one of the car in the intersection. The angle on the first one almost ensures that the back plate will be visible, since it would have to be taken from behind the car.\n\nThe reason both are required is because if only the first was taken, one could argue they never entered the intersection, and if only the second was taken, one could argue it didn't turn red until after they were in the intersection."
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3ou2sx | if the big bang started with everything in one dense point, why does the observable universe imply there is more beyond what lightspeed has allowed us to see? | I was told the observable universe was limited by the distance light has been able to travel to us since the beginning of it. If the universe started in one place at the big bang, wouldn't things have only been able to move away as fast as the light we'd have to be seeing? I don't know how to word it better, hope what I'm asking is understood. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ou2sx/eli5if_the_big_bang_started_with_everything_in/ | {
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"There's a common misconception that the universe can only expand at under the speed of light. That's false. Objects, things with mass, are limited in the speed of expansion. However, the space between objects is not limited by this. ",
"The universe itself expanded. That wasn't stuff travelling *through* space - which of course is limited to light speed - it was space itself getting bigger. Light speed is the limit for moving *through* space and basically space was getting bigger faster than light could travel across it. Imagine an ant walking across a balloon that is being inflated. There's a maximum speed that the ant can walk across the balloon but the balloon can inflate faster than the ant can walk across it. e.g. by the time the ant has walked a centimetre, the balloon has expanded so that what used to be a centimetre is now 2cm. By the time the ant walks another cm, that centimetre has expanded to become 2cm. And so on. If this carries on you can see that it is impossible for the ant to cross the whole balloon in the time since the balloon started inflating. If there's an ant on the other side of the balloon walking towards the first ant, they might have started out only a few cms apart but they're getting further and further apart the whole time and will never meet unless the balloon stops expanding. \nInstead of balloon, think universe and instead of ant, think light. So there is (according to the current, very well supported theories) light and parts of the universe that we can't see because they are too far away due to the expansion of the universe."
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18z1i5 | why is it that movies look so different from documentaries or newscasts. | I've noticed this from a young age and have always wondered whether its some of of editing, if so what is done? Or is it filmed using a different type of camera or lens? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/18z1i5/eli5_why_is_it_that_movies_look_so_different_from/ | {
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"Depends on exactly what you mean by \"look different,\" but it's probably camera/film quality.\n\nDocumentary film makers can only carry around so much. They likely go with full digital instead of film, and lighter, more durable cameras over high quality ones.\n\nShows that film often and never re-air, like the news, Soap-Operas, use crappy quality cameras/film because it's cheap and don't need it to hold up for very long.\n\nMajor films will often still use film, because while digital cameras are capable of competing in terms of quality, the file size for those digital videos are ENORMOUS, making it really hard to store and edit. Because they have the money and, often, the time, Hollywood movies go for the best of the best. ",
"Frame rate. Movies have 24 fps and documentaries have 48 fps.",
"Movies are show in 24 fps, and the aperture settings are also typically very low. In a documentary or newscast, most everything in the shot will typically be in focus. It's very cinematic to shoot with a low f/stop. \n\nAlso, as stated above, lighting is the main difference between Hollywood and most other forms of film/video. Their lighting setups are very advanced and sophisticated and that is what really makes for beautiful cinematography. ",
"Here's something I don't understand:\n\nOn my TV, Breaking Bad looks like a normal TV show. On my friend's TV (better and newer than mine) it looks it was filmed with a camcorder and more realistic. It looks like I'm watching a home movie. My other friend also has a better TV than I do. We watched Conan the Barbarian. It also looked like it was filmed with a cheaper camera. I said that it looked like a soap opera.\n\n\n\n"
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45moip | why do specially designed mobile websites often work more poorly on mobile devices than the full site? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45moip/eli5_why_do_specially_designed_mobile_websites/ | {
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"A couple reasons:\n\nThere are tons of different display sizes on phones and mobile devices. On desktops/laptops there's a decent amount but fairly standard in comparison. This makes it hard to test all the possible combinations of what the site will end up looking like. Certain features like buttons may end up smaller or larger than intended.\n\nMobile devices have limited processing power. To fix the issues above you can have a script (small program) tweak the sizes of everything to optimize for the display size, but this might be really slow on a phone and get tripped up when you rotate from landscape to portrait modes.\n\nSimilar to above, the scripts that a lot of websites use for interactive content run in the browser on your device. If you don't have enough processing power to handle this everything will freeze or slow down. Even a high end phone processor will get bulldozed by a relatively old PC processor.\n\nAlso I think the more common case is that the websites just aren't that well made. How you interact with a website with a touchscreen vs mouse and keyboard is a lot different and often requires rethinking how you present information and navigate through it. Some mobile websites look more like they stripped a lot of stuff out that would take up screen space but left the overall design the same.\n\nI'm sure there are plenty of other reasons, I don't do much web design."
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6ajirb | when someone misses a few doses of an ssri what starts happening to the brain? | does the reuptake be ''unlocked'', and when this happens wouldn't it be a breathe of fresh air? so i see no reason for withdrawal effects, but why does the brain do this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6ajirb/eli5_when_someone_misses_a_few_doses_of_an_ssri/ | {
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"Reuptake prevents further action by the serotonin, i.e. magnifies the effects. If the reuptake starts occurring again, serotonin levels drop, which likely worsens the existing depression.\n\nIt's kind of like taking off someone's coat -- the coat (SSRI) doesn't actually *produce* heat (serotonin), it just lets your own body heat work more effectively and over a longer period of time.\n\nEdit: a word",
"OP is talking about withdrawal effects.\n\nIn case you're wondering what those lovely effects are, I can tell you as someone who has been taking Effexor XR / Venlafaxine for 20 years or so.\n\n1) \"Brain zaps\" - these are the hardest to explain... some people call them \"brain quakes\" because it feels like your brain literally quivers inside your head, or it feels like sticky spider webs being pulled through the veins in your head.\n\n2) Auditory / Visual hallucinations, usually peripheral. I'll see things moving outside of my peripheral or I'll hear someone whisper my name.\n\n3) Extreme emotion - you'll cry every time you see a puppy or something sad on TV. \n\n4) Extreme depression - your symptoms will worsen.\n\n5) Agitation - Agitation by your normal surroundings, normal things will become outrageous to you.\n\n6) Anger / Rage - self explanatory.\n\nResearch claims that only about 15% of people experience these symptoms and that they taper off within a couple of weeks of discontinuation but I was off of them for a month before finally having to succumb and start taking them again.\n"
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7w446m | how do subtitles done on live tv? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/7w446m/eli5_how_do_subtitles_done_on_live_tv/ | {
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"No expert but I'm pretty sure all live TV is delayed something like 7 seconds so I assume someone types it up in the moments between ",
"One system is based on voice recognition. Since older voice recognition systems had to be trained and only worked well with a single person’s voice, someone whose voice was already trained repeats everything said on the channel into a computer microphone, and the computer sends the subtitles. This is how the subtitles can slightly differ from the actual words said. "
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4dz0ii | why is it so hard to store energy? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4dz0ii/eli5_why_is_it_so_hard_to_store_energy/ | {
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"Nothing is hundred percent efficient. There is always some energy lost. So you are storing some energy is lost. You are restoring some energy is lost.\n\nEDIT: If you are charging your phone it gets hot and the charger gets hot as well, this is the energy that get lost and was turned into heat in the process of conversion.",
"Because energy naturally tends to spread itself out in to forms that are less useful. In physics terms we say that entropy increases. For us to use energy to do useful work, it has to be more concentrated. For example, for a steam engine to create power, a fairly small amount of water is boiled so that steam is formed, and that can drive a piston. If you had a lot more water that wasn't as hot, it might contain more energy overall, but you couldn't use it to drive a locomotive. So we need to store energy in a concentrated form, which is a harder job. \n"
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bgasvo | why does it take us weeks (even months) to feel fit, but only a week of not exercising to feel like we're back at square one? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/bgasvo/eli5_why_does_it_take_us_weeks_even_months_to/ | {
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"Our body is a multi-million year old machine that has evolved into being able to adapt to changing environments as we move around the planet and hasn't quite picked up on the massive changes to modern living the past century. You're emigrating, cool, don't need those upper body muscles just need strong legs and feet for moving. You're farming? Cool, need some strong arms to use tools.\n\nYour body gets stronger by muscles tearing and rebuilding stronger. You go and squat 100lbs 10 times four separate times in 10 minutes, your muscles tear. You do that a few times and your subconscious says to itself \"Hey, we apparently squat 100lbs 10 times four separate times now. That's what the conscious is doing now so lets rebuild the muscles to be able to do that.\"\n\nYou keep doing that and your body maintains it at that level. You add more weight your body responds by going to a higher level. You STOP doing that your subconscious quickly says \"Hey, we apparently aren't squatting 100lbs anymore so redirect those resources to storage because we don't know the next time we'll get food.\" \n\nTL;DR Muscle takes quite a bit more calories to maintain than fat does so if you aren't using it your body believes it is doing itself a favor by getting rid of it.",
"A lot of the feeling is due to how your brain and muscles work together. You aren’t actually losing muscle in the week you take off, your brain is just not used to talking to those muscles. \n\nDepending on what you’ve been doing there might be some stiffness and muscle restriction you’ll have to work through",
"If you've been exercising for months and take a week off, it shouldn't really take you more than a few days to get back on the track."
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3wtohq | why do we struggle to gain balance when jumping out of a fast moving car or train? | Is it our brain malfunctioning or is it something physical that's causes this? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3wtohq/eli5_why_do_we_struggle_to_gain_balance_when/ | {
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"Your body was not designed to handle this scenario, where the ground underneath you goes from stationary (the floor of the train) to fast-moving (the earth).",
"When you jump out of a moving train, your body is still going at the same speed as the train as you are projected forward. If you are landing on a stationary object, your body is still in motion from the train or car, and it becomes very difficult to maintain balance, especially considering you are in the air, and you don't have any friction or footing to help you stand your ground. ",
"It's physical. When you land, your body is still going 50+ mph while your feet are stopped basically instantly by friction. If you balanced instantly and didn't do that awkward stumble and roll, your knees would be shorn away. \n\nIt's kind of like being shoved. If you get shoved, your feet are stationary while your body is accelerating. Landing a jump from a moving car is similar. "
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c37ub7 | why can’t one device connect to two bluetooth devices at once? could this be made possible in the future? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/c37ub7/eli5_why_cant_one_device_connect_to_two_bluetooth/ | {
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"My iPhone constantly connects to my Apple Watch and my Bluetooth headphones at the same time.",
"You can, but you need an app. AmpMe works for android or ios.\n\nSamsung S8 and newer can do it natively.",
"I don't have a lot of knowledge so sorry for the poor answer.\nYou can connect multiple devices at once, for example your headphones and smartwatch to your phone, or your phone and computer to your headphones.\nThe common point is that you have always a sort of master in the connection. When you have a connection with multiple devices one device has to be master and all other devices connect to this master devices and can't connect to anything else. In the case headphones plus smartwatch is your phone the master and in the case phone plus computer is your headphone the master."
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4jinzm | the current situation in venezuela | Post your questions and explanations regarding Venezuela here.
**Please remember to read the rules and (especially) to explain from an unbiased standpoint.**
Edit:
Please also consider seeing posts in r/outoftheloop
* _URL_2_
Stickied post in r/worldnews
* _URL_1_?
Latest r/news
* _URL_0_ | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4jinzm/eli5_the_current_situation_in_venezuela/ | {
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"I can't seem to find a good charity to help Venezuela in this crisis. Does anyone have any recommendations? I'm not rich, but I want to help with donations that will actually go to the people who need it.",
"How will this affect the rest of the South American nations?",
"Note: May not have all the details, feel free to add more specifics please\nA combination of poorly run, corrupt government and bad luck. Oil is the main export of Venezuela. As I'm sure you've heard of, oil prices have been the lowest right now than they have been for decades. This leaves Venezuela with less than budgeted income from their export. \n\nBack in the days when oil was booming, Venezuela would actually have a trade SURPLUS. Meaning they would export more good and services than import. But now, sadly this is now the opposite case. Now they do not even have money to purchase basic essential items. Groceries in Venezuela are now completely barren. They have even sold their fridges because they're was no food to put in them. \n\n80% of the people in Venezuela are now living under the poverty line, with 7.9% being unemployed. Basically until their main import's value increases, they are looking to be in trouble for the couple of years to come. My thoughts go out to Venezuela's over there who are being affected by this disaster. \n[Wikipedia: Venezuela Economy](_URL_0_)\n",
"inflation, dropping oil prices, censorship, assault, high crime rate, oppression\n\n_URL_1_\n\n_URL_0_",
"Hello. I'm from Venezuela and this is my first time posting in this sub. Good to see this is stickied.\n\nAt the moment, Venezuela is going through an economic crisis and an energy crisis. \n\nSupermarkets have little to no stuff to sell. Basic things like milk,eggs or bread can be extremely hard to find depending on where you live. Medicines too, there are people dying because there are no medicines and of course, the government is not importing anything (they probably can't since the country barely has any money). \n\nInflation is going through the roof. One week you'll buy something like a Pizza for 2000 Bolivares (our coin) and next week you'll get the same pizza for 3500 Bolivars easily. And the salaries of common citizens can't keep up. \n\nProfessors that teach in Public universities are getting paid less than minimum wage, and Public universities themselves are getting worse and worse since the government isn't giving them any money to get resources. (I study in a public university).\n\nRegarding the energy crysis. Most of the states have to deal with 4 hour blackouts everyday in order to \"save energy\", and different parts of the country sometimes end up with no electricity for 24hours or more. Same with water, it's being regulated in different places, forcing you to take a bath and use your water at certain times of the day.\n\nThe whole country is extremely dangerous too with lots of people dying every day because of thugs/robbers/etc. Walking in a plaza or a park is never a \"peaceful\" experience since you always have to look over your shoulder to make sure you aren't being followed or anything like that. A couple of my friends (or their relatives) have been robbed and kidnapped already.\n\nI tried to make it quick on each of the aspects. I'm sure someone that has more knowledge than me regarding each of them can give a more in-depth answer. But trust me, the country is going to shit, and the world needs to be informed of this,instead of listening to some of the stuff that the government says in TV.\n\nGoing to sleep now. I'll answer tomorrow if you guys have questions.",
"Most people will blame the low oil prices, but there's more to it than that. The government has expropiated a bunch of companies whose products range from food to cement and anything in between. The government hasn't been able to increase those companies production rate, it has actually fallen, a lot. \n\nLow national production means importations are a must. However, not only the country is receiving less money out of oil sales, there's also a currency exchange control held by the government, currently there's two rates where $1=10VEF and $1=416.62VEF. What's the catch? The government doesn't have many USD to sell, so if a company needs to import, they either hope for the best and stick to buying from the government, or buy at the black market rate which is something around $1=1096.15VEF (just for the record, monthly minimum wage is around 15000VEF). \n\nSo, if you happen to need raw materials and want to stay all legal, you gotta pray for the government to sell you as many USD as you need, otherwise, you might end up like [Polar's beer factories](_URL_0_); if you don't mind buying at the black market rate, the government might expropriate your company and send you to jail.\n\nWe have a stickied thread in /r/vzla so you can ask whatever you want. Keep in mind, the whole political thing is intense in the country, so it will be nearly impossible to find an unbiased answer.",
"Not sure if this is the right place to ask this but.... My grandmother lives in Venezuela. She has told me the energy crisis is partly due to mining (gold mining I think?) that is diverting a river that feeds into a dam used for hydroelectric energy. She says politicians are profiting from this. I haven't found any reports supporting this. Does anyone know if this is really happening? ",
"My sister-in-law moved here from Venezuela years ago but her family still lives there. Her brother just recently escaped to come live with all of us in Canada. \n\nHer mom tells us stories of having to wait in line at the grocery store for sometimes up to eight hours. People in line have been written on their skin with a number to prove their place in line. New jobs have formed out of this for people who are unemployed but are willing to wait in line for others who are better off.\n\nThe country is so dangerous my sister-in-law won't even go back to visit her own parents and grandmother. It's so sad.",
"Bottomline: Who is responsible for this? Why isn't this happening to their neighbours too?",
"Another economic insight from a Venezuelan. With numbers because I like numbers.\n\nMinimum wage is 15.000 bolivares (VEF for online exchange rates) plus 18.000 bolivares in \"Cesta ticket\". Cesta ticket is a figure for an extra payment that most workers receive and it's destined only for shopping groceries and stuff related. It doesn't count per se as part of your salary since it's money most people can't dispose for whatever they want.\n\n**We have three exchange rates**\n\n* **DIPRO**: 10 bolivares per dollar. This is heavily restricted to import food and medicines. It is also one of the sources of the biggest corruption in our country. There are many fake institutions that buy dollars for 10 VEF, then use a portion of it to import anything they required that money for, and sell the rest of the currency in the black market. It's the perfect business.\n* **DICOM**: Currently at 416,62 Bs. This is an exchange rate for the rest of our country needs, but the asignation of currency is less than $5 million a day (technology, parts, communications, traveling, etc).\n* **Black Market**: Currently at 1.096,15 Bs. If anyone has a single dollar here that want to sell, this is the rate they go for. People usually sell slightly below that. Naturally, this impacts directly on the prices of imported goods and inflation.\n\n**So, our wage is, depending on the exchange rate, 1.500$, 36$ or 13,69$**\n\nI guarantee you nobody feels like earning 1.500$. For online currency converters, including Google, they take the first exchange rate, of 10 VEF per USD. This is really messed up and benefits the government, since many people overseas do a simple conversion and think we're actually ok. But no, we're not. When you look at the prices for some food or electronics at that rate, you realize that an Iphone 6s [costs](_URL_0_) over $88 thousand at the official exchange rate.\n\n**Food is scarce.** The most basic ones, like rice, pasta, powder milk, beans, cornmeal and others are hard to find since they're regulated with fixed prices by the government. You have to make several hours in a line every week hoping to find some of that food.\n\n**The food actually easy to find, is expensive.** A Kg of meat recently surpassed 4.000 bolivares (almost 30% of our minimum wage, or 400$ at the official exchange rate), sliced bread is over 800 bolivares, a kg of cheese is over 3.000 bolivares, 30 eggs are on 3.000 bs, 2lts of Coca Cola for 500 bolivares, and it goes on.\n\n**Inflation ended over 180% last year**, but this is a general one. **For some stuff, like gadgets and electronics, it was easily on the thousands.** An LG L3 ii in 2014 was selling for 1.700 Bolivares. Same phone today can be bought for around 35.000 bolivares.\n\nAnd I could continue with a lot of stuff, but that gives a basic idea.\n",
"The family on my father's side are lithuanian. They escaped the Soviet Union during WW2 and ended up in Venezuela. Many of the stories I was told by my grandmother years ago are currently happening in Venezuela: Censorship, persecution, seizing of properties under false pretenses and made up reasons. Long lines in markets for basic everyday products that may or may not still be in Stock by the time you get to the counter (scarcity) and of course, crazy amounts of propaganda. \n\nThe times are different, but history is repeating itself. The most frustrating thing is that she called it over 10 years ago. ",
"They felt that capitalism was a bad thing and now they are reaping the benefits of socialism. That's why the whole socialism/communism thing is falling, unless you're the spoiled kids of America who believe they can make it work. ",
"Venezuela is suffering from a combination of:\n\n- There's been a climate-change induced drought since 2010. This has crippled the country's agriculture and their hydro-electricity. This is a bigger deal than it sounds, because [Venezuela relies primarily on hydroelectricity (71% in 2004).](_URL_0_) Just like in Syria, climate change is an important but often overlooked contributor to their current problems.\n\n- Venezuela also suffers severely from the current low oil prices, because they're an oil exporting country.\n\n- On top of that, the country is mismanaged.\n\nAs a result of this, Venezuela is collapsing.",
"Why is Venezuela implicating the USA? What is America's involvement?"
]
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"https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1yi9t0/sticky_post_ukraine_venezuela/",
"https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/search?q=Venezuela&sort=new&restrict_sr=on"
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3ofc9a | why and when did san francisco go from being the quirky liberal city known for rain, hippies and lgbt culture to being the most expensive place to live in the united states known as a playground for the rich? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ofc9a/eli5_why_and_when_did_san_francisco_go_from_being/ | {
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"The liberals, hippies, etc., decided that strict zoning was a liberal value. With the result that no high density housing could be built, resulting in a severe housing shortage. \n\nIt was not the success of the computer industry. Plenty of places with successful industry remain affordable to live in. Because they plan to have sufficient housing for the people who work in it. ",
"Anyone who gives one reason is underestimating the mess that exists in SF.\n\nPart of it is that SF has to worry about earthquakes, so until relatively recently, there was a limit on how big a building could be, and still be safe.\n\nPart of it is that the liberals that were in charge of SF for a long time tried to keep it a quiet quirky city, and so limited how much housing could be built.\n\nPart of it is that due to those and similar policies (including the protection of many large parks), and other factors, San Francisco is a relatively beautiful city to live in.\n\nPart of it is that Silicon Valley has become full of high-density industrial and residential developments, and so people want to live somewhere else; but not too far away, and San Francisco looked best.\n\nAll of that and more has resulted in many people who are in the upper-middle and upper classes off of the tech industry have moved into San Francisco; while the \"traditional\" inhabitants of SFs are getting priced out of homes (houses and apartments) they have lived in for years or decades.\n\nWhich does not mean that San Francisco is not a \"quirky liberal city known for rain, hippies and LGBT culture\": many of the new tech people are coming there because they identify with that culture; but unlike the people who created that culture in SF; they are significantly wealthier (predominantly upper-middle class, as opposed to predominantly lower-middle class: these are all people who have to work for a living; but up-and-coming tech pays much better).\n\n\nThe result of all of this is that there is a conflict between the new tech people, who are, for the most part, genuinely trying to fit in, but unintentionally pricing out people in SF; and the people who are currently living there, and being forced out by the higher prices."
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1uavyi | why aren't we taking more deep field photographs? we've only done it twice! | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1uavyi/eli5_why_arent_we_taking_more_deep_field/ | {
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"Making the deep field photograph kept Hubble busy for a considerable period of time. And while the deep field photographs are certainly inspirational and confirmed some very wonderful expectations, they're not hugely educational.\n\nHubble is meant to be publicly accessible. Anyone can submit a proposal and a great many do (in fact Hubble can only take on about 20% of submitted proposals). Hubble is also capable of supplying a great deal of practical information for people's research.\n\nSo sure, the deep field photographs are amazing. But so is the research of the countless other people who want a turn using Hubble.\n\nFrom what I recall, the original deep field photograph took some 500+ hours of Hubble's time. That's a lot of time to take away from all the people submitting proposals."
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6prxt2 | why does tsa make you put your laptop in its own bin? can they not scan it properly when it's in your bag? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6prxt2/eli5_why_does_tsa_make_you_put_your_laptop_in_its/ | {
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"Their goal is to see if anything looks weird. Have you seen a laptop on the X-ray? It's extremely complex. They don't want to make it any harder by combining that with further, overlapping images.",
"You can leave it in the bag. There are specific requirements you need to follow though. Nothing in pockets below the laptop, laptop must be separated in it's own compartment in the bag, and the bag must open flat. Also, nothing on or above the laptop.\n\n\nIt's a rule few people know, including most TSA Gents working the security line.\n\n\nEdit\n\n\nSource\n\n_URL_0_",
"Honestly, I just leave my toiletries and laptop in the bag every time I fly. They've never said anything. Yeah, there's signs that say you have to take them out but I guess it's just not enforced.\n\nNot like I go to a middle-of-nowhere airport either. I live in a city with one of the most heavily traveled airports America. "
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chvjsa | if an atomic warhead detonates while the missile is flying at 1,000 mph, do we get a nuclear explosion moving at 1,000 mph? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/chvjsa/eli5_if_an_atomic_warhead_detonates_while_the/ | {
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"Yes and no. \n\nThe amount of energy released by a nuclear weapon far outstrips the kinetic energy it had by flying at 1000mph. This really muddies any measurement you might make about the movement of the plume.\n\nWill you get a 1000mph flamethrower that carves out a wide swath of death and destruction? No.\n\nWill the body of the mushroom cloud continue with any momentum? No. The kinetic energy will be dispersed very quickly. \n\nYes, technically, that kinetic energy is preserved, but it gets drowned out by the insane amount of heat released and scattered."
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611234 | why do some people 'forget' to breathe when immersed in an activity or under extreme stress? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/611234/eli5why_do_some_people_forget_to_breathe_when/ | {
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"Fight/flight/freeze response. Overload of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline make you either want to run away, fight the thing, or completely freeze up.",
"There's different ways that our brains control what we do, very roughly we could break them up as:\n\n* Instincts - stuff we're born knowing how to do\n* Learning - stuff we figure out through repeated exposure\n* Conscious control - we can choose to override some actions\n\nSo for example pulling your hand back from a hot stove is instinct, walking is learned, and you can choose to walk backwards (which requires thinking about to happen).\n\nBreathing is something that can and does fall in to any of the categories:\n\n* Everyone's born knowing how to breath\n* If we practice breathing (say for swimming or yoga) we can learn to do it differently sometimes\n* We can choose to stop breathing, for example if we smell something bad\n\nIn stressful situations, especially ones we haven't practiced alot, we're paying a lot of attention to everything we do and consciously trying to avoid doing anything incorrectly. We can go overboard trying to control everything and control our breathing by just holding it during tense moments. If it's a situation we've practiced then our breathing will probably be fine, and even if we hold our breath a long time our instincts will eventually kick in.\n\n**TL;DR:** our brains aren't a single unified system always working in a rational way, a lot of behavior is a bunch of [different systems trying to figure out what's best.](_URL_0_)",
"I don't even have to be doing anything to forget to breathe.\nSometimes I just zone out and start staring into space and when I start paying attention to things again, I notice I'm not breathing. \n\nIt's weird.",
"Breathing makes your body move. When concentrating on doing something precisely, this movement could interfere with your precision. It also interferes with the precision of your senses. You can hear and see better if you are absolutely still. ",
"I'm not entirely sure they know precisely why. I have catathrenia, which is a form of sleep apnea where I hold my breath for long durations during sleep and then when I can't any more I let it out in a slow groan. As it gets further on in my life I find this reaching into my waking hours. When working out, staring into space, or concentrating on something, I sometimes realize i've been holding my breath for a minute or more. If I try, however, I can never hold my breath for as long as I do when catathrenia kicks in. Outside a CPAP machine that basically breathes for you, they have no cure for these sorts of apneas. Marijuana has been shown to relax the body and lessen the frequency and severity of apneas, but otherwise they just can't figure it out as far as I know.\n\nBut if somebody does know, I'll be trolling this thread hoping for more info.",
"This intrigues me. I've been married for 18 years. My husband has a CPAP (EDIT: a C-flex CPAP) machine to sleep, and has had one for about 17 of those years. He's done sleep studies and been to doctors, and apparently it's his brain. When he sleeps, it just forgets to breathe. As a result, he would stop breathing for up to a minute at night and semi-wake up (not fully, as he wasn't aware he was doing it) with a gasp, breathe a few times, rinse and repeat. When he got his CPAP, he woke the next morning absolutely amazed, as he had no idea how badly he'd been sleeping. \n\nRecently, I noticed he does this during the day too. It's always been there, but I'd become so used to it, I stopped noticing. When he's semi or fully reclined AND distracted (playing on the computer, reading, watching tv) his breathing gets really weird, just like before he had his machine. He'll stop breathing a few seconds; inhale....hold breath.... exhale long. It's almost maddening when I start noticing it. I asked him why that happens and he said, \"I don't know. It's just hard to breath in that position.\" \n\nI only just now realized, writing this, that it's the distraction in common. If he's laying in bed and we're talking, I don't seem to notice the weird breathing. HOWEVER, at the same time, I don't seem to recall the weird breathing when he's sitting upright at the table and reading either. \n\nI'm not sure how this helps OP, but it does seem to go along with the idea that when distracted (or asleep), it's possible the brain just forgets in some people.\n\n\n\n",
"You stop breathing in order to increase thoracic pressure when performing stressful physical tasks. Stabilizes your body wall.",
"It isn't that they forget to breathe, but their passive control system (heart beat, hunger, thirst, tiredness, and sometimes breathing) lets your breathing rate get too low. Your brain must then override your breathing until you are re-oxygenated.",
"I do this, I thought I was alone. Thank you, OP for posting this and big thanks to all thoes that have responded. I feel better now and better understand something that has bothered me for years. ",
"I was trained not to breathe and it almost made me pass out once. \n\nIn military Chem warfare training you're taught that when you hear \"gas gas gas\" you stop breathing (not hold your breath because people tend to take a deep inhale before holding, and if there's gas around, that's bad) and get your mask out. Except I was getting my mask out for a yearly fit check. For no reason I stopped breathing as I pulled it from the carrier and fumbled with the straps (it is stowed different for long term storage vs. an imminent chemical death situation) and by the time I got it on I was lightheaded and couldn't catch my breath through the restriction of the filter. I almost fell over. Very embarrassing. ",
"I go through this alot as my job as an autobody refinisher (painter). During a paintjob I sometimes notice that I'm holding my breath. Sometimes I have to to myself to breath. Fortunately doing this doesn't distract me from my paintjob, in fact it helps if I breath in pattern as I'm Painting",
"I know exactly what you're on about!! When I did a skydive in Sydney I experienced the same thing. On the plane my instructor/guy I was strapped to said to me \"remember to breath\" and I thought what a ridiculous statement. I've been doing it for 23 years, I got this. Once out the plane however, I seemed to completely forget to breath until I felt out of breath and remembered the advice. It's very interesting that we can forget to do something so important.\n\nedit:punctuation.",
"I do this. It's called [central apnea](_URL_0_).\n\nI've ADD and growing up in the 80s, there was a lot of concern among parents at the time about the drugs used to treat ADD. My parents refused to treat me and I was a very early adopter of computers (I got my first at the age of 5) and we lived in the country away from anyone to play with. So I was likely one of the pioneers when it comes to reinforcing my ADD with technology. \n\nAccording to my shrink it's common to learn coping mechanisms for ADD that are a bit counter intuitive. Because I have trouble focusing and I'm easily distracted, I learned to be able to \"hyper focus\" on tasks. Meaning, I kind of go into a zen-like state where I literally ignore all outside stimuli. This results in situations where I'll be doing something (like typing this message) and if my wife is asking me what I want for dinner I'll not hear her. She'll eventually come up to me, tap me on the shoulder and the shock of getting yanked back to reality is so jarring I'll jump \"WHAT?!?!\" etc... Now that I'm older I can decide to take my own medication, learn to deal with my focus issues but 40 years of coping mechanisms are hard to unlearn.\n\nBut, getting back to your question, this focus issue includes breathing. When I hyper focus like this, I often start breathing *very* shallowly, sometimes stopping all together. I'm doing it somewhat unconsciously. For example, while I'm typing this I have to remember to breath when I get to a period. (breath) I recently had some fairly major surgery and they had me hooked up to all the monitoring equipment... every time they brought in some paperwork for me to sign, while reading it I'd set off all their alarms because it wouldn't register me breathing anymore. If I did not slow down like that, I would have had trouble reading the document. The ADD just wont let me concentrate that long on something. \n\n\nTL;DR: It's like a meditation I do when concentrating. ",
"As someone who has severe back problems I often hold my breath when bending or lifting as a way of helping support my back. It can create other problems though.\n\nAs someone with sleep apnea I stop breathing because my stupid brain secretly wants me to die.",
"Holding your breath increases inter-abdominal force improving performance and power for a short time. It also reduces jitter due too movement also increasing performance... As a trade-off it only lasts a short time and results in subsequent worse performance.",
"When I'm anxious my breathing turns to shit and the closer I get to a panic attack, the less breathing exercises work for me. In fact, they kinda make it worse. \n\nMy boyfriend has a cpap and it helped so. much. when I was having problems that he just ordered a travel one and gave it to me. Most of my anxiety happens at night and this machine takes away a huge part of it. ",
"When my boyfriend and I first got together, I used to forget to breathe while we were kissing. ",
"It's an evolutionary leftover. Holding your breath is part of a small mammal's fright response. Predators (esp feline) are most sensitive to movement. Stopping what you're doing and staying perfectly still is a way to escape being something's dinner.\n\nOther behaviours that are leftovers and their adaptive counterparts:\n\n* Fainting (playing dead)\n* Hiccups (breathing through gills)\n* Goosebumps (raising fur to make body appear bigger)\n* Phobias (usually of venomous animals, for obvious reasons)",
"I have panic attacks and forget to breath during them. I have to consciously do it sometimes. \n\nMy doctor said that when you go into panic mode, a lot of blood floods your lungs, so your lungs can work harder as needed. Unfortunately sometimes that extra blood isn't needed and so you get a tightness in your chest. That tightness can make you hold your breath. I'm sure it doesn't apply to every situation. But to mine it seems to fit. ",
"I stop breathing before my blood gets taken. The nurse always wonders where my vein went. Now I know why. Thank you!",
"By starving your body of oxygen, your cells are forced to use fermentation to produce energy, rather than aerobic respiration. Fermentation leads to the production of ethanol. And ethanol gets you drunk. Being drunk suppresses stress. Everyone likes being drunk. ",
"I'm a public speaking teacher, so I have to warn my students to remember to breathe. In socially exposing situations, the brain basically gets overloaded trying to multitask (which it can't actually do), so stuff starts getting left off the to-do list. I think someone explained this much better than I can, but it happens most often when people aren't practiced and prepared. ",
"I went to the Virginia Military Institute, and one of the things you do is straining. Straining is basically rolling shoulders back, push your forehead back, pin your arms to your side, and your chin in. As hard as you possibly can. The first night you do this you get yelled at to correct it so frequently and so many times that you begin focusing on doing it all right and you're working on every minor detail. Essentially, (at least the way it worked on strain night) you wouldn't want to mess anything up so you consciously went through everything you had to do legs straight, feet at 45*, chin in, blah blah blah but breathing is so basic that you don't think to include it despite its critical importance. \n\nTl;dr: in my experiences, under stressful situations your body tries to perfect everything and in the process forgets to perfect, or even attempt breathing. ",
"I had an interesting conversation with a doctor about this - some people also stop breathing before and during orgasm, causing extreme brain pressure and headaches.",
"I never understood /how/ people breathe during something like exercise, running, etc. I used to get told to remember to breathe, and I physically can't. I can either exercise, or breathe. Even with simple stretching. ",
"I forget to breathe when I'm immersed in a task that requires extreme concetration.\nLike buttering toast.😉",
"To temporarily stop breathing helps a person to hold very still. Very helpful if you are being hunted by a predator. "
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52hbfo | how do dinosaurs have sex, since their tail seems to make it impossible? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/52hbfo/eli5_how_do_dinosaurs_have_sex_since_their_tail/ | {
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3agdk9 | why extinction of species is bad | I can see why certain causes for extinction (say warming and drought) could be bad: they could indicate trouble for our species. I also see how extinction of certain species could be bad for the same reasons (bee's for example).
However, I don't see why the extinction of the eastern puma for example is something we should be particularly concerned about. Is it because we assume every species is integral to the proper function of world or is it philosophical? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3agdk9/eli5_why_extinction_of_species_is_bad/ | {
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"* 1) Philosophical reasons. The eastern puma is beautiful, it deserves to live, it's bad for us to kill things without a good reason.\n\n* 2) Practical reasons. We study otherwise useless butterflies to learn something about how they fly. We gather obscure animal and plant chemicals to make medicines. Every time another species goes extinct, we lose out on any possible future uses we might have made of that species.\n\n* 3) Environmental reasons. The environment is crazy complicated. Sometimes the loss of one species can cause a \"trophic cascade\" of other effects that add up to a big impact on both the environment and us. It's hard to predict those effects in advance, so it really makes a lot of sense to avoid causing them, whenever possible."
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6e2frt | why is it when we jump we push up with our arms to get more height? | Why do we use our arms for extra leverage when jumping since there's effectively nothing but air to push against?
Jumping with your arms flat against your body doesn't produce as much height so why does pushing your arms out and downwards increase your jump height?
Appreciate any explanation anyone has! | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6e2frt/eli5_why_is_it_when_we_jump_we_push_up_with_our/ | {
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"It's all about converting the motion with your arms into momentum. Not sure exactly how it works, but that's the basic concept. Thinking about it the downward motion of your arms can give your shoulders more upward momentum, thus propelling you a little bit higher. ",
" > why does pushing your arms out and downwards increase your jump height?\n\nYou are only seeing half the motion. It starts when you are at the bottom of the jump and swing your arms upward as you push with your legs. By having them moving at a higher speed upward you are storing momentum in them which is turned into movement of your torso and the rest of your body as your arms reach their highest point. Then as you push them downward near the peak of your jump the rest of your body moves upward while your arms move down in reference to your body.\n\n > Why do we use our arms for extra leverage when jumping since there's effectively nothing but air to push against?\n\nYour arms are pushing against your body, pushing the body up as they push down."
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1a5i0d | genes, dna, rna, mrna... how are they all connected? | Studying this atm and i really could use some LI5 input, since it rather got me totally confused...
What does a Gene have to do with proteins? How do they get formed?
Please, ELI5 | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1a5i0d/eli5genes_dna_rna_mrna_how_are_they_all_connected/ | {
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"DNA is dioxyribonucleicacid. RNA is just ribonucleicacid. While the sugar present in an RNA molecule is ribose, the sugar present in a molecule of DNA is deoxyribose. DNA is usually two chains of nucleic acid that contains genetic instructions. RNA is a single chain that is sometimes used for genetic instructions, but is more commonly used in protein synthesis. mRNA is short for messenger RNA. Just a specific subset, also having to do with protein synthesis.",
"All your genetic information is contained in DNA - almost everything about your physical being, like the color of your eyes, the shape of your nose, even your likelihood of getting certain diseases is determined (at least in part) by your DNA.\n\nHow does your DNA do this? All of these physical characteristics are manifested through proteins your body makes, and DNA is like a blueprint for these proteins. The plan to make one single protein (or sometimes one group of proteins) is called a \"gene.\"\n\nWhen one of your cells wants to make a protein, the process begins at the DNA, which is in the nucleus. First, the appropriate gene is found and a template of the gene is created. This template is called mRNA, or messenger RNA. If DNA is the blueprint drawn by the architect, then mRNA is the construction manager who is going to deliver the plans to his crew.\n\nAnd that is exactly what he does. mRNA moves out of the nucleus to the construction site - the ribosome. In the ribosome, the mRNA template is read and a protein is built from specific building blocks called amino acids. That's how a protein is put together.\n\nThere are other kinds of RNA - mRNA is just one. Ribosomes are partially made of RNA called ribosomal RNA or rRNA. And small RNAs are used to read the mRNA - they are called transfer RNAs or tRNAs and are like the individual construction workers who build each block.",
"A gene is the instructions for making a particular protein. It's stored as DNA. When needed it's copied to RNA which is used as a template to make the protein.\n\nA gene is a specific sequence of DNA or RNA that can be translated (by the ribosome) into a protein.\n\nGenes are stored as DNA sequences. DNA is double stranded and much more stable than RNA.\n\nWhen a cell needs a particular protein, the DNA is partially unwound and an RNA copy pf the gene is made from the DNA strand (called messenger RNA or mRNA). This process is called transcription.\n\nThe mRNA is used by the ribosome as a template to make the protein (the gene product). This is called translation.\n\nmRNA is one class of RNAs. Other RNAs include: rRNA (ribosomal, these are parts of the ribosome), tRNA (transfer RNA are involved in translation), ncRNA (non-coding RNAs that don't code for a protein and are involved in regulating the expression of proteins).",
"Zack gave an excellent explanation, but it's more like an ELI12.\n\nLike you're 5:\n\nYou know how we made a house out of Legos yesterday? Well your body is made out of little tiny Legos called \"proteins\". \n\nRemember how we had to look in the instruction book to figure out how to put the Legos together? Your body has an instruction book too. But it's not written in English, it's written in a language called \"DNA\". The DNA has the instructions for how to make the proteins. Remember how one page on the instruction book showed us how to make the chimney, and another one how to make the fence in the garden? The pages in your body's instruction book, written in DNA language, are called \"genes\". (The words are called \"codons\", but let's not make things too complicated.)\n\nRemember how I would read the instructions and then tell you \"find a big red block and put it on top of the white one\"? Your body has to sort of tell itself how to build proteins, too. It uses another thing called \"mRNA\" to do that.\n\nRemember how you had to look for the right piece before you could put it into the house? Your body has to look for the right protein when it's trying to build something. There's another kind of RNA, \"tRNA\", that does that.\n\nCool exercise! But I suspect the ELI12 version is more helpful for you.",
"Let's say you wanted to bake a cake.\n\nYou keep all of your cookbooks (**genes**) in a bookcase (**nucleus**). \n\nYou use a piece of paper (**mRNA**) and copy down the chocolate cake recipe (**DNA**) and then take that piece of paper back to the kitchen (**cytoplasm**). The recipe is your directions to convert the eggs, flour, milk (**building blocks**) into a chocolate cake (**proteins**).",
"Think of it like this:\n\nYou have a hard-drive in your computer that has all of your most important and cherished files that you've been saving since you were a kid. You want to share the information with somebody else on their computer, you're probably not going to give them your whole harddrive. Instead you take a USB stick and transfer over all the necessary information that you want to share and zip it in, then transfer that USB over to their computer.\n\nDNA is the harddrive's (nucleus) important files (genes). The USB which you dont care about if it gets degraded/lost, is your RNA, and perhaps the transferring of these files are your mRNA. Nature works in almost the same way.\n\nProteins are the endproduct and the end-all-be-all of all these cells. They are you and your friend, laughing, joking, crying, over these pictures, interpreting these memories and sort of forming a reaction to what's going on in your lives. In reality, just remember that DNA (nucleus)- > mRNA (cell)- > Protein (cell/environment)"
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8lt77i | if all of today's continents were clumped together as pangea 335 million years ago, did the imbalance of mass affect earth's orbit? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8lt77i/eli5_if_all_of_todays_continents_were_clumped/ | {
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"No. The planet's orbit is not really affected by whether it is balanced or not. Since it rotates 365.24 times every orbit, having a bit more mass (much less than 1% by the way) on one side is an effect that is evened out over time — it doesn't on average change the planet's center of gravity, which is what really affects its orbital location.",
"It would have had a slight effect on things like the length of the day compared to today. More mass near the equator instead of the poles means changes in the moment of inertia and stuff like that. It would not really affect Earth's orbit around the sun though.\n\nHowever the changes in day length due to distribution of mass in the earths uppermost layers, are rather overshadowed by the changes of length of the day due to the moon draining rotational energy from the earth with the tides. The day was probably an hour shorter back then.\n\nThe total energy in the Earth-moon system was however mostly conserved (tidal effects from the sun being much less) so the orbit around our central star was somewhat stable over all that time.",
"No, because continental rock is lighter than oceanic crust, but also thicker. In general, there is the same weight of lithosphere (the uppermost layers of the Earth) everywhere at the surface of the Earth.",
"It should also be noted, water is heavy as fuck. A gallon is over 7lbs, if I remember correctly.",
"We can't know what was on the \"other side\" because all that land was subducted and destroyed as the Pangea side spread.",
"The Earth is so smooth when zoomed out that no matter how you arrange the oceans or continents, it would have almost no impact. I think the example was that if Earth was a billiard ball, all water on earth would be less than a teaspoon spread out. And the earth is smoother than a billiard ball. What seem like mountains and trenches to us are microscopic scratches/grooves to the Earth. ",
"What makes you think the planet is balanced NOW?",
"You're assuming there was an imbalance in the first place. The crust floats on magma. The Earth wouldn't have been imbalanced any more than a bathtub with all the rubber duckies clumped together.",
"No. The shape of the orbit is determined based only on the planet's center of mass. Even a theoretical egg-shaped planet or something with a more extreme shape (like a space station) only orbits based on its center of mass.\n\nThat center of mass has may have changed within the earth over the past 335 million years, but this change has not affected the orbit because of the law of conservation of momentum; any motion within the system does not affect the trajectory of the entire combined system.\n\nEven if there was a massive explosion and the planet cracked in half, the center of mass of the combined two halves of the planet would continue on the same trajectory as the center of mass of the once-whole planet.\n\nBecause of conservation of momentum, the only way to change our planet's trajectory (or any trajectory) is to eject mass out into space. If we were to hurl a continent out into space, conservation of momentum states that the trajectory of the center of mass of the planet+continent must remain the same... but we don't care about the continent any more. The center of mass of the planet will change trajectory from the planet+continent system.\n\nThis is how rockets work to change their trajectory; they eject mass (exhaust) into space. The center of mass of the rocket + exhaust does not change trajectory, but the trajectory of the rocket alone does. We just don't care any more about the rocket exhaust flying out towards deep space."
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a45gi3 | how can you be undocumented yet still go to school without concerns from student or institution? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/a45gi3/eli5_how_can_you_be_undocumented_yet_still_go_to/ | {
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"Because going to school doesn’t require proof of citizenship. \n\nBecause schools are funded entirely by state and local governments and citizenship is a federal government matter. All the schools care about is whether the student is a resident of the district.",
"Because the laws for keeping kids in school do not coincide with the laws about immigration and naturalization. The government institutions that administer the law related to education have nothing to do with the government institutions that administer immigration. Put another way, the Education Department has no jurisdiction over immigration and the Immigration and Naturalization Service has no say in education law. One branch has to assume that the other is doing it's job, even if it isn't. Therefore the Education Department has to assume that all kids in this country are here legally and cannot make a delineation respective of their immigration status. All children are required to be in school or have the opportunity to be educated, that includes the children of immigrants. Since they can't draw a line between illegal and legal immigrants, they have to just assume that all children are legal for the purposes of education and trust the INS will remove any that are not in a timely manner. \n\nNow, that said, the education department has traditionally been a little more left leaning than most departments, even when driven by a right leaning administration. Out of all the typical right leaning administrations, the education department tends to lean the furthest left in terms of availability of education to all children and such (with the notable exception of things like prayer in school). That said, there is a consensus amongst all but the most right leaning educators that all children should have the opportunity to have an education irrespective of their background. In other words, don't punish the children for the sins of their parents. So they don't really make much effort to try and exclude anyone, much less the children of illegal immigrants."
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45csr0 | two percent neanderthal dna | I read today that Eurasians have around 2% Neanderthal DNA, some more, some less. However, I also read that we share 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees. Given that Neanderthals likely shared even more DNA with us than chimpanzees, how does the 2% work exactly? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/45csr0/eli5_two_percent_neanderthal_dna/ | {
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"We, Homo sapiens, banged Homo neanderthalensis and produced viable offspring. Those children, 50% neanderthal, had children with other Homo sapiens, diluting the neanderthal genes. Enough hybrids were born that, by the time neanderthal went extinct, every eurasian had about 2% neanderthal.",
"If you wanted to measure how similar too books were, you could measure by the letter, the word, the sentence, or the page, and get very different values.\n\nThat same is true with DNA. Journalists are bad at science, and when they publish a number like 2%, they rarely dig down deeply enough to say what that actually means. In this case, the 2% Neanderthal and 99% chimp DNA are actually measuring similarity differently.",
"What you're asking is that if Chimpanzees share 99% of DNA with Humans, and Neanderthals share 99%+ with Humans, then how can a Human be 2% Thal when there's less than 1% difference between them to begin with? They're measuring different things. The 2% includes the parts of Thal DNA which are identical to Human DNA. If I mix lemonade which is 90% water with the same amount pure water which is 100% water, the result will be 50% lemonade but at the same time 95% water. We mixed Thals which were 99% Human with Humans who were 100% Human and kept adding more Human until there was only 2% Thal in the mix. But the parts that are different indeed only make up less than 1% of the whole.\n\nFun fact! According to at least [one source](_URL_0_), while some Humans have 2% Thal DNA, not all Humans have the same 2%. Your 2% might not have any DNA in common with my 2%, so between us we have 4%. They've identified 20% of Thal DNA so far and Humans as a whole might contain as much as 40%. That means that with selective breeding and genetic engineering and a complete lack of ethics, we could \"breed backwards\" to a being which is 40/60 Thal/Human. This being would be very similar to an actual 50/50 Thal/Human hybrid which would have existed back when Thals and Humans first did the nasty together tens of thousands of years ago. We might learn a lot from such a being. We might also burn in Hell for creating it.",
" > ACAABAAAACBAAAAAA\n\n > ACAABAAAACBAAABBA\n\nHow similar are those two sequences of letters? One answer is, they're not similar, they're different: a sequence is simply made up of its letters, and if you change the letters you're talking about a difference sequence. A second answer is, they're so similar they're practically the same; if you think about all the different ways of arranging 16 As, Bs, and Cs, the chance of getting two sequences *so* similar just by accident is like, a million to one against; for all practical purposes, they're the same. A third answer is, they're the same in 14 spots and different in 2, so they are 87.5% similar and 12.5% different.\n\nSimple enough, but it leads to vastly different understandings of what \"2% similar\" means. *As I understand it*, when we say that chimps and humans are \"99% similar\", that means that out of 3,000,000,000 nucleotides (the actual letters of the genetic code), 35,000,000 of those nucleotides differ between humans and chimps. You can see the advantage; you don't need to do any analysis of the genome to get that number, just compare the genetic phonebooks and tally every letter that is different. Now, these 35,000,000 differences could, in theory, be crammed into 70 genes that are completely different, letter for letter, with all other chimp/human genes identical; or they could be found in a critical point in every coding sequence, making every single human protein completely different in function from every primate protein; or the differences could be entirely in the junk DNA; this kind of comparison doesn't say.\n\nConversely, when they talk about Neanderthal DNA, *if I correctly understand what they are doing*, they are talking about *gene variants*. Looking at the nucleotides alone, humans-chimps is 94%-98.8% and humans-neanderthals is 99.7% (roughly three million letters). But then they identify Neanderthal *genes* by looking for all genes where the Neanderthals have a variant that isn't found in African populations. A change of just a few letters might be something like one-billionth of hominid *DNA*, but if it creates a different version of the gene, it is more like one-six-millionth of the hominid *genome*, which is substantially larger! So it might be that only 0.001% of your *nucleotides* are new mutations that arose in Neanderthals, but that could be as much as 2% of your *genes*."
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3dve8l | what gives people who drink a lot that puffy, red faced look? what does it mean in terms of their health? | I've got a few friends who drink often, and they share this common trait of having rosy cheeks and a sort of puffy look about their face. I've jokingly called it "heart-attack face" before, and I suspect I'm not far off, but I'm not really sure about the actual medical implications of it, or if it has a direct relation to their alcohol consumption. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dve8l/eli5_what_gives_people_who_drink_a_lot_that_puffy/ | {
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"There are a few things going on when anyone drinks. First the alcohol acts as a diuretic and causes dehydration. But as alcohol builds up over long term use, you have a hormone that is an anti-diuretic hormone (ADH) that becomes suppressed. So your kidneys over-dilute your urine. When the alcohol levels drop, all the excess sodium is still there which causes edema.\n\nEventually, this can cause kidney issues (nephritis) and cause your kidneys to not work properly at all. Your body retains water which is what edema is.\n\nAs to the redness or flushing, that is caused by both enlarged blood vessels or histamine production from your body trying to get rid of alcohol chemicals.\n\nIf you flush easily when drinking but are not a heavy drinker, it can be similar to an allergic reaction. _URL_0_",
"Drinking causes blood to go to your skin's surface, which causes you to feel warmer and causes you to get a flushed appearance. When this happens frequently, delicate surface capillaries can burst, giving you red lines on your face",
"How much do they drink? I've seen the look, but only on 50+ yo alcoholics"
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8271p2 | why motion sensors don't react to sudden light changes and shadows? | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8271p2/eli5_why_motion_sensors_dont_react_to_sudden/ | {
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"Motion sensors use a PIR sensor. PIR stands for Passive InfraRed, which is basically a 1- or 2-pixel thermal camera. \n\nSince it's only looking at changes in infrared light (which is emitted by mammals and other warm things), it's not going to notice actual visible light changes."
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684388 | why do you feel antisocial when you're depressed? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/684388/eli5_why_do_you_feel_antisocial_when_youre/ | {
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"Being social takes energy. Going out to see people and even just making conversation takes energy. When you're depressed you don't have much energy. It seems much easier to lay in bed and watch tv while you slip in and out of sleep, and it is easier.",
"I'm not a doctor, but for me it's because I learned early on that you can't both pity and respect someone. When my clinical depression hit in high school, I talked openly to some of my friends about it, and all of a sudden I was the broken guy. I was looked down on with pity, and inviting me to something became an act of generosity rather than just wanting me around. And, of course, it's not like they could do anything for me in the first place. \n\nSo for me it's an easy choice: expose my suffering and instability and lose the respect of everyone I know, in exchange for a few kind words, some pity, and absolutely no improvement in my problems? No thank you. \n\nAnd, when the depression hits particularly hard, it's just not feasible to conceal it in person. Much easier to just isolate until it passes. ",
"Personally, there is no upside to interaction. I wont enjoy the conversation, the food, drink or movie or setting so not worth the effort. Also my inner dialogue will distract me and frame things in a way that lower my self esteem. Better to just not try",
"Grossly oversimplified answer:\n\nBiologically: \n\nWe talk to people because it makes us feel good by boosting our brains' feel good chemicals. Depressed peoples' brains dont get the feel good chemicals, so theres no reason to put the effort into a conversation. When we're depressed it's harder for our bodies and brains to put effort into anything. \n\n\nPsychologically:\n\nDepends on the individual, but usually depressed people feel bad about themselves and assume nobody would want to talk to them anyway. \n\n"
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ctg6xy | if light takes 8 minutes to travel from the sun to earth, how does heat travel so quickly? (ie when a cloud blocks the sun it gets colder until the cloud moves) | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/ctg6xy/eli5_if_light_takes_8_minutes_to_travel_from_the/ | {
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"The sun is very far away, the clouds are very close. So it takes a while for the light to reach earth, it's cut off last second by the clouds. On a rainy day above the clouds it's still bright and sunny.\n\n.\nSun distance: 92,000,000 miles\n.\nClouds distance: ~ 1 to 5 miles",
"Because Light (/heat) doesn't get blocked at the sun, it gets blocked at the cloud. The (lack of) heat only has to travel from the cloud to the ground, how far it had travled before doesn't matter.\n\nImagine you have a stream of water, and you block it off just before a water fall. The waterfall will loose water immediately, it doesn't matter how far upstream the source is, it just matters hwo far upstream you blocked it.",
"Because there's a constant stream of light (visible and infrared, which is heat) coming from the sun, and it only gets blocked at the cloud, which is very close to you. It doesn't matter how long it took the light to reach the cloud, it only matters how close the \"blockage\" is to you, which is, depending on the height of the cloud, a few km at most. If we assume the cloud is at 5km, then once the cloud passes, the light is no longer blocked and will hit the ground 0.000016 seconds after it passes the height that the cloud was at before it passed.",
"Because the clouds are 99.9999999% of the way from the sun to you, so it takes 7:59.999 to get from sun to clouds, and milliseconds to get from clouds to you."
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nxadc | stephen hawking's importance to society | Okay I feel like I should explain this a bit. This was just inspired by the topic that has a screenshot of two kids bashing Stephen Hawking. I think both of them are a pair of pricks since it seems like they really don't know what kind of person he is; most of the conversation was on their own speculation and it started getting ridiculous when they started to claim that global warming isn't real, but I digress. My point is, the more I really started to think about it, the more I'm genuinely wondering this question. I believed he helped develop the space program we currently have, and admittedly I still have a *lot* to learn about how far exactly we've come as a planet scientifically so I really am just wondering, but how is his contribution to science relevant? Again, I just want to clarify, totally sincere question here, I'm kind of behind on this kind of thing, but I really do want to learn. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/nxadc/eli5_stephen_hawkings_importance_to_society/ | {
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"I think you could argue that Stephen Hawking's biggest contribution to society has been his work as a popularizer of science, along the lines of Einstein, Sagan, etc. \n\nHis books, articles, documentaries he participates in, etc, are often targeted at the general public in the hopes of educating the average joe about physics and the universe. His books can be a bit complicated, but they're written at a level a lot more people can understand than say an actual scientific paper on black holes.",
"a brief history of time, it stayed on the British Sunday Times best-sellers list for a record-breaking 237 weeks\n\nmade him popular\n\n\n",
"Hey! I think you are short-changing him right now. He have done some good work in physics, most notably the so called \"Hawking radiation\".",
"Hawking is like Einstein's little brother. Only he's had a lot tougher row to hoe than Einstein did, with his medical affliction.",
"Stephen Hawking studies cosmology, which is the science that is interested the origin and evolution of the universe. He is a very important scientist in this field because of his original research, which very few people actually understand. But there are many other scientists in this field who have made equally important discoveries whose names we do not know. One thing about Stephen Hawking that makes him different is the fact that he suffers from a disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which makes him unable to control most of his body. This disease is commonly called Lou Gehrig's disease because the famous baseball player of the same name had this condition when he was older. Part of Hawking's importance stems from the fact that he is a physically disabled man whose mind is nonetheless brilliant, and people find that to be hopeful and noteworthy. Hawking has also written several books and developed several television programs that attempt to make his science accessible to ordinary people. These two things -- overcoming great obstacles and communicating hard ideas to non-scientists -- make Hawking important both as a symbol and a teacher.\n\nEDIT - I am trying to write these as if I was talking to a five-year old, in terms of vocab and such... this is a fuck load of fun.",
"I think you could argue that Stephen Hawking's biggest contribution to society has been his work as a popularizer of science, along the lines of Einstein, Sagan, etc. \n\nHis books, articles, documentaries he participates in, etc, are often targeted at the general public in the hopes of educating the average joe about physics and the universe. His books can be a bit complicated, but they're written at a level a lot more people can understand than say an actual scientific paper on black holes.",
"a brief history of time, it stayed on the British Sunday Times best-sellers list for a record-breaking 237 weeks\n\nmade him popular\n\n\n",
"Hey! I think you are short-changing him right now. He have done some good work in physics, most notably the so called \"Hawking radiation\".",
"Hawking is like Einstein's little brother. Only he's had a lot tougher row to hoe than Einstein did, with his medical affliction.",
"Stephen Hawking studies cosmology, which is the science that is interested the origin and evolution of the universe. He is a very important scientist in this field because of his original research, which very few people actually understand. But there are many other scientists in this field who have made equally important discoveries whose names we do not know. One thing about Stephen Hawking that makes him different is the fact that he suffers from a disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which makes him unable to control most of his body. This disease is commonly called Lou Gehrig's disease because the famous baseball player of the same name had this condition when he was older. Part of Hawking's importance stems from the fact that he is a physically disabled man whose mind is nonetheless brilliant, and people find that to be hopeful and noteworthy. Hawking has also written several books and developed several television programs that attempt to make his science accessible to ordinary people. These two things -- overcoming great obstacles and communicating hard ideas to non-scientists -- make Hawking important both as a symbol and a teacher.\n\nEDIT - I am trying to write these as if I was talking to a five-year old, in terms of vocab and such... this is a fuck load of fun."
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3v979g | what did george w. bush do to destabilise the middle east? | I wouldn't describe myself as a political person but I've become more anxious about what's happening in the world. ELI5 seems like the right place for some simple, factual recaps. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3v979g/eli5_what_did_george_w_bush_do_to_destabilise_the/ | {
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"Saddam Hussein, despite his faults, was a fairly strong leader in a region where those are often in short supply. After he was overthrown, the Shia majority in Iraq set up a Shia-friendly government (Saddam was Sunni and had oppressed Shias under his rule). This government promptly pissed off the Sunnis in northern Iraq, and a fair number of them were happy to jump onboard with (Sunni) ISIS when they came to town."
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2jkj1b | what is the difference between grounded and ungrounded outlets? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2jkj1b/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_grounded_and/ | {
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"electricity is always trying to get to the point with the lowest charge as quickly as possible. normally, this means up the wire, through the device, and back out again. \n\nwhen a device malfunctions, though, it can't go the way it \"wants to\". maybe a wire frayed and is touching the case or something. when this happens, the electricity tries to move toward the earth because the earth is so huge it can basically hold as much charge as we want. \n\nif your device is not grounded, this is usually through your body. if the device is grounded, then there is another wire attached that leads to the ground, and copper is much more conductive than meat, so you don't get hurt.\n\na grounded outlet is simply an outlet that connects from the wall to the earth somewhere. usually something like a water main or a spike in the foundation.",
"Not quite. The ground does conduct the electricity better than \"meat\" but you still get shocked. Its primary purpose is to conduct fault current back to the source as quickly as possible to trip the circuit breaker."
]
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[],
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36mbwd | why does my immune system fight so intelligently against most malignant illness, but go full retard with benign allergens? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36mbwd/eli5_why_does_my_immune_system_fight_so/ | {
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"Mast cells line much of your body's inner skin lining. When confronted with a puncture or other allergen, they release histamine that causes the inflammation reaction along with blood vessel dilation and bronchial constriction.\nSometimes the antibodies that normal immune cells (B and T cells) use to identify antigens accidentally get lodged in these mast cells. If this happens all over the body or especially near the respiratory system, the presence of these specific antigens will trigger them all to release histamine, causing widespread allergic reaction.\n\nSomeone please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm just a high school biology student ;_;"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
3mcg6j | what's they physiological difference between "sleepy" and "tired"? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3mcg6j/eli5_whats_they_physiological_difference_between/ | {
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"text": [
"IMO I can be tired or even exhausted, but not sleepy. Sleepy simply means able to fall asleep quickly."
]
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[]
] | ||
20l6hg | why is colloidal gold particles in solution a red color? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/20l6hg/eli5why_is_colloidal_gold_particles_in_solution_a/ | {
"a_id": [
"cgiaz3z"
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"score": [
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"text": [
"The color of the solution reflects nano particle size. Ruby red is under 20 nano meters. This is what you want. anything over 20 nm is not beneficial for the body. "
]
} | [] | [] | [
[]
] | ||
21lava | what would happen immediately if i were to hold something that was incredibly radioactive | I understand that you would get some sort of cancer or the sort but im talking about something like holding a plutonium rod with no protective equipment | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/21lava/eli5_what_would_happen_immediately_if_i_were_to/ | {
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"Burns, nerve damage, providing you haven't ingested a large amount of alcohol or a experimental radiation drug. You gonna die. Anything above 6gy of exposure means they can't save you. Hit the 25gy+ mark and your dead in about an hour. ",
"You'd end up like this guy: _URL_0_\n\n > Over the next nine days Slotin suffered an \"agonizing sequence of radiation-induced traumas\" including severe diarrhea, reduced urine output, swollen hands, erythema, \"massive blisters on his hands and forearms\", intestinal paralysis, gangrene and ultimately \"a total disintegration of bodily functions\""
]
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[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin"
]
] | |
1rh1jm | horse + donkey = mule | How can two species make something new? Can any other animals/plants/bugs mate to create something "new"? Why/why not? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1rh1jm/eli5_horse_donkey_mule/ | {
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"It only works because they're very closely related species, and it doesn't work completely since the offspring are usually sterile.",
"Daddy Donkey+ Mommy Horse = Baby Mule\nMule can't have babies.\n\nThere are lots of examples of two related species interbreeding. It's tough to understand as humans because we don't have a living cousin. It is commonly believed that early humans would occasionally interbreed with Neanderthals.",
"If they're close enough they can mate and reproduce.\n\nLion + tiger = [liger](_URL_0_) (or tigon)."
]
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[],
[],
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liger"
]
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3xd6gq | why are there so few ancient human remains? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3xd6gq/eli5_why_are_there_so_few_ancient_human_remains/ | {
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"Bones can decay, get eaten by certain animals, erode away, get crushed, or numerous other things. Remember that EVERY animal with bones had a skeletal remains. If they didn't get destroyed, the world would be covered in bones.",
"Without preservation (embalming, mummification, or sealed casket), the human body will decompose in 8-12 years leaving only teeth and bones. Depending on soil conditions, the bones will typically only last for about 100 years. Since most ancient civilizations would simply bury or burn their dead, their bodies did not last long.",
"Fossilisation is talk really difficult. Fossils as a result are very very rare, particularly of animals on land (it's somewhat easier to preserve fossils in water lain sediments).\n\nConsider this: Tyrannosaurus was on the planet for at least 2 million years and we have barely half a dozen fossil finds, none of them near complete (most of them very far from complete indeed). And T Rex bones are far larger and less susceptible to weathering and erosion than ours.",
"Aside from what's already been said, there weren't that many ancient humans to begin with. One estimate of the Neanderthal population is 70,000. That's a barely a blip on the planet."
]
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46thzn | what's the difference between a vitamin in a multivitamin and a vitamin in a real vegetable? | I do not understand why the vitamin A in a multivitamin is less effective than vitamin A from a carrot, for example.
The same goes for minerals...e.g., why the calcium in a multivitamin is less effective than calcium from milk. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/46thzn/eli5_whats_the_difference_between_a_vitamin_in_a/ | {
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"The vitamin A in the carrot is identical to the vitamin A in a multivitamin. The reason it is \"less effective\" is because human nutrition has evolved with people gleaning a complex blend of macro and micro nutrients from foodstuffs, not from eating a bolus of concentrated single chemical compounds.\n\nHere's a good quote:\n > The key question here is whether a purified phytochemical has the same health benefit as the phytochemical present in whole food or a mixture of foods. It is now believed that dietary supplements do not have the same health benefits as a diet rich in fruit and vegetables because, taken alone, the individual antioxidants studied in clinical trials do not appear to have consistent preventive effects. The isolated pure compound either loses its bioactivity or may not behave the same way as the compound in whole foods.\n[source](_URL_0_)\n\nSupplements have their place when a clinical deficiency is confirmed by accepted lab tests; they will correct issues with iron, vitamin B12, etc. But for optimal, across-the-board good health, eating a wide variety of whole foods seems to be the most effective way to ensure all of your nutrient needs are being met.\n\n",
"It's a matter of [absorption](_URL_1_) and [bioavailability](_URL_2_).\n\nVitamins in supplements may be (and [often are](_URL_0_)) subtly different from vitamins occurring naturally in foodstuffs to ensure stable shelf-life at room temperature - we didn't evolve to eat pills to get essential nutrients and creating supplements which suit our systems will require additional understanding of how our bodies work *and* new manufacturing techniques to produce optimal results."
]
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"http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/517S.full"
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"http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/food-nutrition/vitamin-supplements/body-absorb-vitamins.htm",
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioavailability"
]
] | |
1ts924 | if i let two chess engines play each other 100 times, how do they play 100 different games if there must be one optimal game? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1ts924/eli5_if_i_let_two_chess_engines_play_each_other/ | {
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"There is a field of Computer Science called \"Computation Theory\", which is adjacent to AI. \n\nWith our current computation power, we aren't even able to solve a single chess opening (a game after some set opening moves are played), let alone the game itself, so while working with Computation Theory has advanced our understanding of the game very much (in terms of valid plays), we still don't know and can't compute the \"optimal\" responses to a certain move.\n\nWith that said, different chess engines utilize different methods. Some use AI theory to assign values and evaluate each position. Others use a \"backtrack\" algorithm to compute possible board states 3-4 moves ahead and see which move results in a more optimal future setting. Others draw from online databases of countless matches, to see which move had more winning chances in an approximately equal board position.\n\nMost modern engines utilize a combination of the above. Depending on configurations, and think time, 2 chess enginges can play very different styles of chess"
]
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[]
] | ||
501tym | how can airplanes fly through dense clouds and rain without stalling/ ruining the engines? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/501tym/eli5_how_can_airplanes_fly_through_dense_clouds/ | {
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"Actually this is a pretty simple question. Reciprocating engines and radial engines are pretty much like car engines. They are enclosed and for the most part are protected and sealed from water entering the system. Turbine engines take whatever little bit of water that gets inside and burns most of it away. If it was enough water to avoid being burned off, it actually helps clean the inside and the water is pushed out the exhaust with no problem. \n\nNow the clouds actually cause a way bigger problem then what people suggested. Clouds are actually extremely dangerous for one main reason and a smaller secondary reason. First the most dangerous reason. Clouds contain moisture and can cause a carbeurator to freeze in no time flat. It's very cold at high altitudes and any moisture freezes quickly. Venture valves actually reduce the carbeurator temperature 30-50 degrees. Meaning a carb can freeze even if it's 70-80 degrees outside. When going through clouds airplanes will use ipass air (exhaust or engine bleed air) to direct hot air to the carb. (Or if they even suspect icing) This prevents the freezing and allows airplanes to continue flight without \"stalling\" or losing engine power. Technically stalling is when angle of attack exceeds critical values and airflow separates from the upper surface and becomes turbulent. Anyways, to adjust for any changes in atmospheric pressures and engine temperatures, pilots have a control to adjust the rich/lean mixtures to accommodate. \n\nSecondly, according to newtons law, every action has an opposite reaction (will be important in a second) Llift is generated by high and low pressure. Air passes over a wing, high pressure on the bottom and low pressure on top. That high air pressure is pushed down, in return pushes the wing up. (opposite reaction) when airplane passes through clouds (rising air are clouds) The air around clouds is falling and creates the turbulence. Although usually not extremely dangerous, pilots often avoid clouds for this reason as well. \n\nHope this helps. \n",
"Water has more mass than air and cannot make the bends in the induction channeling that air can. It drains out of the carburetor air box. In a jet the water is slung to the sides, not affecting combustion but there is the possibility of a flameout in very heavy rain.\n\nClouds have the same moisture content, measured in \"grains\" per cubic foot or yard as the clear air below it. Because the temperature drops about 3 degrees F each 1,000 feet, there comes a point where the air become saturated and the moisture condenses out of the air, becoming a cloud. More humidity added to saturated air is more than it can handle and it condensed out as rain."
]
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[],
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4sxu5n | how does pirate radio work? | How does pirate radio work. Are pirate radio broadcasters actually "stealing radio" from other broadcasters? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4sxu5n/eli5_how_does_pirate_radio_work/ | {
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"There are fairly strict rules about what frequencies you're allowed to broadcast on, and how powerful a signal you're allowed to send. The point is to keep one station from interfering with another. Pirate stations broadcast without permission from the government, and when their signal overlaps another broadcaster's, it can prevent the other signal from coming through clearly."
]
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[]
] | |
5mtdx8 | how come diabetes causes hypoglycemia if the brain doesn't have insulin dependent transporters? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5mtdx8/eli5how_come_diabetes_causes_hypoglycemia_if_the/ | {
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"Diabetes is known to cause hyperglycemia not hypoglycemia\n\nThe negative effects of diabetes comes from the persistent high blood glucose levels and the fact a lot of cells (I.e. in skeletal muscle) cannot take in as much glucose as they would like due to insufficient insulin (so they use other ways of generating energy to live which over time leads to accumulation of bad substances)\n\nThe brain does not need insulin to take up glucose.\n\nConsidering the brain uses ~20% of your calorie intake and runs pretty much on glucose alone, the brain needs to be able to extract as much glucose from the blood as possible constantly.",
"Type 1 diabetic is due to the pancreas failing to supply sufficient insulin, thereby requiring them to take insulin so they can metabolize glucose (insulin is the key to open the door so that glucose can enter a cell). If they take insulin and don't intake any glucose, e.g. Food, they will become hypoglycemic very rapidly as their blood cells start to use up existing glucose in the blood stream. \n\nSafe range for glucose levels is 80-120, whereas most diabetic patient try to maintain their glucose level in the hyperglycemic range as it has a larger range before it becomes dangerous greater than 600. Whereas hypoglycemia is dangerous at less than 60.",
"Diabetes by definition is hyperglycaemia. It doesn't cause hypoglycaemia.\n\nHypoglycaemia is most commonly caused by taking an overdose of insulin. This could happen to anyone and has been used as a torture method (Google \"Insulin shock\").\n\nObviously it's most likely to happen to people who take insulin to treat diabetes (all Type 1s and some Type 2s).\n\nMost of your body can get the energy it needs from alcohol, simple sugars (glucose and fructose) or fat.\n\nThe brain is one of the few parts of your body that absolutely must get its energy from glucose and cannot use alcohol or fat.\n\nSo if you run very low on blood glucose your brain starves, it shuts down non-critical functions (like being able to think straight) in order to try and keep itself alive, then you go into a coma and die."
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3ds7zq | when movie editors edit a film after production, what's the biggest contributing factor that makes it take so long? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3ds7zq/eli5when_movie_editors_edit_a_film_after/ | {
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"The pacing of the movie. As well trial and error.\n\n Some scenes and sequences don't work once the whole film is together and need to be trimmed, removed, or used elsewhere in the film.; depending on the director this could be a long process. "
]
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[]
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4h3xe2 | how can a smaller, and lower value, company purchase a much larger one? | With the news of Charter possibly getting Time Warner it made me wonder, how Charter can afford, or be able to purchase Time Warner? I looked up their information and as far as I can tell they are worth very little compared to Time Warner. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4h3xe2/eli5_how_can_a_smaller_and_lower_value_company/ | {
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"Seed capital. They raise the capital to do so. In addition, size isn't determined by financial capability. Usually by the number of employees and assets. They can raise capital via a number of means. For Companies, it often means selling shares publicly or privately. They may also simply save capital of many years of operation, or go into an agreement with someone who does have the money.\n\nOh, also valuation isn't based purely on assets and cash either. It's based mostly on potential future earnings. So they may have a lot of capital and assets, but their industry just went to shit, or their product was replaced by the forces of creative destruction. Think of Kodak Cameras then and now. Their valuation at one point would have plummeted, but they wouldn't have lost their assets or ability to buy immediately. It's the value of the business model itself. \n\nEDIT:\n\nFacebook actually has a seriously problem regarding this. They are desperately scrapping everywhere for new revenue streams (which is why the unexpectedly bought the Occ Rift). They were hugely over valued, and now they have to meet those expectations and make returns for investors, but the original business model cannot sustain that. The valuation now rests mostly on the participation of well known creatives and think tanks who work for the company. Even if they have a bad year and go into the red, their valuation could stay high from a relevant perspective. "
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[]
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35ilag | how can a us citizen get dual citizenship in another country? | Leading into election time, people are always saying they will move to Canda if so and so wins.
Well what if I really want to move to Canada or Europe and work as a citizen there, without having to also give up my us citizenship.
Is this possible? How hard is it?
Countries of interests: Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland, France, or Germany. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/35ilag/eli5_how_can_a_us_citizen_get_dual_citizenship_in/ | {
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"Each country has their own rules. Some allow for dual citizenship - Ireland and Israel both do, I believe.\n\nSome don't, and they won't allow you to get theirs without giving up the old. The US is one example.",
"Why would you need to be a citizen? You could live and work in any of those countries indefinitely as a permanent resident while retaining US citizenship.\n\nAnyway, dual citizenship is typically something you acquire either at or near birth. In the [United States](_URL_0_), obtaining naturalization in a foreign state upon one's own application after the age of 18 can (and almost certainly will) cost you your US citizenship.\n\nEdit: So the answer to your question is no. Unless I've missed something and there's some way of automatically obtaining citizenship in one of those nations (so without an application) for an adult, you cannot obtain dual US-(other nation) citizenship."
]
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[],
[
"http://travel.state.gov/content/travel/english/legal-considerations/us-citizenship-laws-policies/citizenship-and-dual-nationality.html"
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6xmql2 | is the nothingness surrounding our universe a different type of nothingness compared to the empty space (nothingness) between two atoms? | Or are they different types of nothingness?
Would it be correct to say that empty space, as in complete nothingness, has always existed; and the universe is just expanding into this nothingness since the big bang. Furthermore this nothingness is exactly the same as the completely empty space between two elementary particles?
So would it be correct to say that there is no outer shell of the universe expanding into something different, but the expansion since the big bang is just mass containing particles and energy moving into this already existing infinite nothingness?
Very difficult to exactly explain my question, but sort of an analogy would be the universe is like a balloon being inflated with the same air inside and outside the balloon, but we call the balloon the portion of air contained inside the rubber as well as the rubber that the balloon is made of. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6xmql2/eli5_is_the_nothingness_surrounding_our_universe/ | {
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" > Is the nothingness surrounding our universe a different type of nothingness compared to the empty space (nothingness) between two atoms?\n\nThis question is incoherent as it is premised on incorrect assumptions. There is no \"nothingness surrounding our universe\" as there is no reason to believe that there is anything \"outside\" our universe. There are no known or theorized edges, and in fact our universe might be infinite in extent rendering the concept of anything surrounding it even theoretically meaningless.\n\n > Would it be correct to say that empty space, as in complete nothingness, has always existed; and the universe is just expanding into this nothingness since the big bang.\n\nNo. The Big Bang was not an expansion from a single point and does not involve a universe of finite size becoming larger. Instead consider an infinite universe except that all points were the same location. That is the conceptual singularity of the Big Bang.\n\n",
"So you're kind of stuck in a loop with what you mean by \"Universe\". There's the observable universe which is roughly 98 billion light years - the range of all of the universe we can observe through the mechanisms of c and cosmic inflation/expansion. There's no evidence that outside this domain that things are any different...because well, we can't observe them. But we can posit that a galaxy on the edge of this space would see a different observable universe - and if laws appear to be the same for that universe as for us *then they should see the same things we do*. Therefore the universe could very well be infinite with the same physical laws everywhere!\n\nWeird right?",
"**tl;dr** - There's no such thing as empty space, the Vacuum is actually full of disappearing and reappearing particles and anti-matter particles. It's a sea of quantum vacuum fluctuations. \n\nHere's a [visual representation](_URL_2_) of the Vacuum, or \"empty space\". \n\nWhile you present a good question, intuitively, it breaks down once you understand that there is no such thing as \"nothingness\", or \"empty space\". Also, there is no consensus for what's outside of our Universe. That can't be answered at the moment and only exists in theory. \n\nNow I'll explain the [Vacuum state](_URL_3_), or Quantum Vacuum. \"Empty space\", as many tend to think about it, isn't empty at all. The Vacuum is governed by Werner Heisenberg's [uncertainty principle](_URL_0_); which states that it's impossible to both measure the momentum and position of a particle. You will have a degree of uncertainty for one or the other. This means that no particle can be truly at rest. This uncertainty can be interpreted as the residual energy of the Vacuum state. When there seems to be nothing, there is something. The energy of the Vacuum is defined by zero-point fluctuations, or quantum vacuum fluctuations. \n\nThe Vacuum consists of continuously appearing and disappearing particles. These particles are \"virtual particles\" as opposed to real particles. They cannot be directly observed, but their effects are measured in experiment. For example; a hydrogen atom in the Vacuum of space will see a change in it's lowest energy level due to these virtual particles. The particles are created in pairs of matter and anti-matter particles of opposite charge, and they annihilate continuously. In the instant that the Vacuum is full of these pairs, the particles leave their signature behind by effecting the energy levels of atoms. Virtual particles borrow energy from the Vacuum, but then must immediately give it back. \n\nCheck out the [Casimir Effect](_URL_1_) which also explains the effects of virtual particles. \n\n**Edit**: Sorry, I didn't really explain this like you're 5. /s ",
" > Very difficult to exactly explain my question, but sort of an analogy would be the universe is like a balloon being inflated with the same air inside and outside the balloon, but we call the balloon the portion of air contained inside the rubber as well as the rubber that the balloon is made of.\n\nYou're interpreting the balloon analogy wrong.\n\nThe universe is the two-dimensional surface of the balloon. It's an analogy meant to help visualize an expanding space (in the balloon's case, a closed 2 dimensional space).\n\nOnly the balloon has a counterpart in the math. The air inside and outside the balloon are meaningless.\n\nConsider an infinite 2-dimensional plane with Cartesian coordinates on it. You can 'expand' the plane, by multiplying the coordinates of every point in the plane by a number (greater than 1). The size of the plane hasn't actually changed after the expansion, it was infinite before the multiplication, and it's still infinite after the multiplication. But the points are all further apart.\n\nWhether or not the universe is infinite is another matter, but the point is, that an expanding space is not required to be finite, and it doesn't have to have an outside that it expands into.\n\n\n",
"To reiterate the mostly good answers here:\n\nYou are starting from a wrong assumption: that there is any nothingness surrounding the universe. The universe is everything, and best to our knowledge, infinite, expanding, and flat.\n\nInfinite means it has always had unlimited boundaries.\n\nExpanding means all the so called empty space between galaxies, which is not that empty due to quantum fluctuates, are moving away from each other, as long as they are not gravitationally bound. This is irrelevant to your question, but it helps to understand the nature of the universe.\n\nFlat means the universe does not curve either back to itself, or bends negatively, which would have some cool properties, but again irrelevant to your question.\n\nThe balloon analogy, the raisin cake analogy, and any others, are OK at trying to represent what the universe is like, but they all fail because they are not infinite, nor are they 4th dimensional, meaning 3 space dimensions plus time.\n\nThe universe is not expanding into anything. It is just expanding. This is a hard concept to grasp, but it is also true. Again, an inadequate analogy. Think of a ruler, with 1 through 10 marked on it. That is the infinite universe. When it expands, it is increasing the distant between each mark on the ruler. But it can never be beyond the ruler.\n\nI think I answered your questions but to clarify a few comments already:\n\nThe Big Bang was not a point. It was a singularity. What this means is at the time of the Big Bang, the universe was infinite, but compressed, as much as it could be due to entropy. Then it expanded. Still infinite. Just more \"space\" between everything. Every point in the universe today, can be rewound, and it would all end up at the same place. But that place is still infinite.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"
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[],
[],
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"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect",
"https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1024/1*Yr4wE4q4x2BQ8DtbhqcuQw.gif",
"https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_state"
],
[],
[]
] | |
282eqd | how does the spray the ref uses during the world cup work? | So during the 2014 Fifa World Cup, Fifa introduced this new technology (that many south american countries have been using for the last ten years), a spray that the ref uses to draw a line on the pitch so that the wall can't move during a free kick, and the line disapears after a few minutes, how does it work? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/282eqd/eli5_how_does_the_spray_the_ref_uses_during_the/ | {
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"I thought they used shaving cream\n\nEDIT: apparently this is wrong... they use a shaving cream-like substance, from what I can gather it's a kind of foam where all the foam bubbles pop quickly (about 90 seconds) after being sprayed, thus leaving no visible mark.",
"ELI5. What is this spray exactly used for in soccer? ",
"I just wrote a blog article about how it works:\n_URL_0_"
]
} | [] | [] | [
[],
[],
[
"http://boblansdorp.blogspot.com/2014/06/how-does-world-cup-spray-work.html"
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5x7eav | how come when birds crash into glass surfaces they leave a white imprint of their bodies? | !? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/5x7eav/eli5_how_come_when_birds_crash_into_glass/ | {
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"Birds make very good use of their body oil. They rub it all over their feathers to keep them water-sealed, zipped, and ready for flight. That white stuff is the oil transfer, like your hand print when you touch glass with your oily hand."
]
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[]
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qg6wm | international postage: when i pay for international mail in let's say america, i apply my stamp to my letter, who pays for the stamp to get to the destination? does th international postage rate cover the highest rate of mailing in both countries? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/qg6wm/international_postage_when_i_pay_for/ | {
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"Countries typically have reciprocal agreements for postage. They track mail and settle up at the end of the year."
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4ogznh | sensible and latent heat. | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4ogznh/eli5_sensible_and_latent_heat/ | {
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"Latent heat means you change phase. It takes a lot of energy to change phase so you can think latent as \"late\" and takes longer to gather or lose enough energy. \n\nSensible heat is related to changes in temperature but not phase. So you can think of it as \"sense\" energy meaning you can feel it. \n\n_URL_0_",
"The difference is not in the heat itself, it is in the effect it has in the objects that are getting/giving heat. If you give heat to an object and it changes temperature, then that heat is called sensible heat. If you give heat to an object and it changes phase, then that heat is called latent heat."
]
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"http://climate.ncsu.edu/secc_edu/images/Latent_heat.JPG"
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jsptu | what is the difference between templates and stylesheets and web design? | Haven't got very much experience with web design, and this confuses me. Thanks in advance!
Edit: *in* webdesign. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/jsptu/eli5_what_is_the_difference_between_templates_and/ | {
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"Template - A pre-made base that you can (potentially) build upon.\n\nStylesheets - Documents containing CSS, meaning a document that describes how everything on the page looks.\n\nWeb design - A discipline of design that focuses on the web.",
"Template - A pre-made base that you can (potentially) build upon.\n\nStylesheets - Documents containing CSS, meaning a document that describes how everything on the page looks.\n\nWeb design - A discipline of design that focuses on the web."
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2ckecg | why are we so horny from age 16-21? | Like is that the age a long time ago we would start mating at to survive? I guess the real question is why do we start puberty so young, how did we evolve to here. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2ckecg/eli5_why_are_we_so_horny_from_age_1621/ | {
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"30 here. I'm still horny ",
"Compared to a lot of other animals, humans start puberty relatively late in their lives. The short version is that this gives us more time to develop motor/thinking/social skills.\n\nPuberty is only \"young'' by modern social standards, today it isn't necessary to have children as soon as possible because our lifespan is so long, and providing for children later in life is easier now than it was thousands (or even hundreds) of years ago.",
" > Why are we so horny from age *12-Death*\n\nFTFY."
]
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2pc76j | if all cotton candy is is sugar and food coloring, why does it have such a distinct "cotton candy" flavor? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2pc76j/eli5_if_all_cotton_candy_is_is_sugar_and_food/ | {
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"Because of flavoring in the sugar. That's why they're different colors. ",
"The way you think something tastes is only partially based on what the actual flavour is. Your brain interprets the whole experience of eating it and things like texture, colour and even how it sounds to you when eating it make a huge difference in how you think something tastes\n\nThis may be a bit off topic but I read about an experiment a few years ago where people ate crisps while wearing headphones. One set of people heard a crunchy noise on the headphones when eating, the others didn't. The result then was, that the people hearing the crunchy noise while eating thought that the crisps themselves actually were crunchier.",
"Cotton candy usually has some flavors added to it. The most popular is still vanilla, much like ice cream. Even when there's not, as cotton candy is made by melting dry, granular sugar and spinning it out, some amount of that sugar is going to caramelize a bit, which can add a distinctive flavor/aroma that's similar to vanilla. Texture matters here too, as those fine threads are better at releasing their flavors and aromas when you eat them than granular sugar or sugar that's been melted and allowed to harden into candy."
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1izbjz | passing of time while sleeping | So I am sure we have all had those moments... Close your eyes and magically 2 hours passed.
I have also had the opposite; close my eyes feel like 20 minutes passed but in reality only 3 have! How does our brain do this? I don't think sleep cycles is a good explanation because a cycle cannot be completed in just 3 minutes (in the second case). | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1izbjz/eli5_passing_of_time_while_sleeping/ | {
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"text": [
"You are unconscious. "
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771d5z | why do so many people get knee injuries? | should I be scared to run? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/771d5z/eli5_why_do_so_many_people_get_knee_injuries/ | {
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"Knees are essentially a weak point in your frame. They undergo constant wear and tear whenever you move, they bear a good portion of your weight, and as a joint at the connection between two large bones they are only connected by cartilage, which is weaker than bones and those more liable to tear and break upon impact. \n"
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1jxzpa | what's srs and why does everyone hate them? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1jxzpa/eli5_whats_srs_and_why_does_everyone_hate_them/ | {
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"/r/shitredditsays\n\nBecause people see them as manipulating votes on subs they link to, acting aggressive and confrontational, and constantly railing against reddit despite being (obviously) part of it. Also, because, frankly, most redditors don't care one bit about what they have to say.",
"It *was* a sub-Reddit designed to highlight hypocritical or ridiculous posts and jest about how crazy and morally detestable they are, such as racism, people advocating for Nazi ideology, conservatives saying ridiculous things about poor people...that kind of stuff. \n\nPeople hate it because it's basically been taken over by radical feminists, and has become a voice box for a sub-culture of internet sites called \"The Fempire\", which includes sites like _URL_0_ and other radically feminist productions.",
"The kind of people who would hold up signs that say \"I need feminism because instead of feeling proud about the picture of me graduating college, I feel disappointed because I am more focused on how I look in the photo\"",
"Has anyone tried buying them chocolate yet? In my experience, when females get cranky it's never as complicated as you imagine. Maybe they just want a gesture to show that they are taken seriously (chocolates), and some kind words to let them know you care about them (you look pretty today). ",
"Apparently we're not talking about Safety Restraint Systems on cars...",
"A bunch of carebears with no sense of humor, who get offended by racial/sexual jokes. They are truly mentally defective, with a victim-complex unlike anything I've ever seen."
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abbrrt | what would be different for the middle class if corporations paid their full corporate tax? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/abbrrt/eli5_what_would_be_different_for_the_middle_class/ | {
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"The theory is that there would be less tax burden on the middle class.\n\nCorporate profits don't benefit the middle and working class, mega corporations seldom share their profits with the workforce so only a handful of people (executives and shareholders) benefit.\n\nHigher corporate taxes would increase the federal budget, reduce the deficit and give more money to either lower taxes on the middle class or to generate more programs to support them (ie medicare for all)\n\nBut this would only work if the US passes some kind of legislation to prevent the off-shoring of profits, ie forcing companies to pay tax on income generated within the US.\n\nThe economic reality is when you give more money to the middle and lower class, they spend it. That drives the economy. When you give tax breaks to the rich, they hoard it. That's why trickle down economics is a sham.\n\nThe downside is corporations could react by increasing prices or downsizing the workforce to compensate themselves for the lower profitability. But after an initial shock to the economy this would balance itself out.\n\nSo you wouldn't want to increase corporate taxes by a significant amount overnight. It would have to be a gradual process.",
"ELI5 is not for hypotheticals. Questions like this are better in r/askanamerican."
]
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2mjrxe | what cognito ergo sum( i think,therefore i am) means? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2mjrxe/eli5_what_cognito_ergo_sum_i_thinktherefore_i_am/ | {
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"It's a way of proving existence. Not all of existence, mind you -- but just enough to show that the thinker exists.\n\nI think.\nI am aware that I think.\nIn order to think, I must exist.\n\nI could be hallucinating about being a person, or that the Earth exists, or any number of other things. But the fact that there is a thought means there must be a thinker. I exist. In some form or other, I exist, and I know I exist because I know that I think.\n\nI think, therefore, I am.",
"Descartes was looking at all the things he could doubt about existence, he argued he could doubt the things coming from his senses (what he could see, smell etc) because he argued a wicked demon could be fooling him (a more modern version would be we're hooked up to the Matrix, or are a brain in a vat) through his brain to experience these things but when he worked his way down through the things that hinted at existence, the only thing he couldn't doubt was that he was thinking thing. So he concluded that because he couldn't doubt he was a thing that thinks he couldn't doubt his existence, hence he thinks therefore he is. ",
"It's the conclusion of a deep reflexion about what can we be sure about ?\nAre you sure that you exist?\nYou can think about this question so you have a conscience.\nIf you have a conscience then there is something having a conscience thinking about it. Therefore, you are.\nSo, if you think, you are.\n\nBut maybe you are plugged into a matrix, maybe everything that you feel or see is false. Maybe reddit and this comment doesn't even exist. But there is a form of \"you\" that exist, and you can proove it because you can think.",
"(Note: I use quote marks regularly in this. I am not actually quoting anything with them, but am using them to indicate first person writing. They are not, as far as I know, actually written or said by Descartes or anyone else.)\n\nDescartes, who coined this phrase, was thinking about the question: \"What can I be *absolutely sure* is true?\"\n\nWhat about the world around us?\n\n\"Well,\" thought Descartes, \"some people experience hallucinations or feel things that aren't there. How can I trust my senses? Just because I can sense something, that doesn't mean it *must* be true. How can I know I'm not just dreaming?\"\n\nHe also suggested that men can make logical or mathematical errors, and that since he was also a man he too was fallible, despite being a highly regarded mathematician, and so he cannot trust these truths either.\n\nAnd so he was able to show that he cannot be absolutely sure of the truth of anything.\n\nExcept for one thing: \"For these thoughts to exist, someone must exist to think them. That person is me, and therefore I exist.\" Or: more glibly: \"I think, therefore I am.\"\n\nIf you feel up to it (I don't think a 5 year old could really get their head around it), here is the passage in which Descartes first uses the phrase:\n\n > Accordingly, seeing that our senses sometimes deceive us, I was willing to suppose that there existed nothing really such as they presented to us; and because some men err in reasoning, and fall into paralogisms, even on the simplest matters of geometry, I, convinced that I was as open to error as any other, rejected as false all the reasonings I had hitherto taken for demonstrations; and finally, when I considered that the very same thoughts (presentations) which we experience when awake may also be experienced when we are asleep, while there is at that time not one of them true, I supposed that all the objects (presentations) that had ever entered into my mind when awake, had in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams. But immediately upon this I observed that, whilst I thus wished to think that all was false, it was absolutely necessary that I, who thus thought, should be somewhat; and as I observed that this truth, I think, therefore I am, was so certain and of such evidence that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search.",
"In reference to Descartes's meditations. \nHe means to say that the only true thing he knows, is that his mind exists because he's here questioning things.\n\nConsidering the idea that we live within a \"Matrix\" sort of world in which all of our senses are being manipulated on the outside, we can't be sure of what's real and what's not. \n\nBut we DO know that we are here, thinking.",
"Nice try kid. Read the book, do your assignment!",
"Isn't it cogito ergo sum? Is there an alternate spelling?",
"It's from Descartes 2nd Meditation, in attempt to figure out where a baseline of truth can be found. \n\nIn the first meditation, Descartes presented the possibility of an omnipotent demon that alters every perception of the world. You're in the matrix and the machines are controlling all of your senses. In the second meditation, he makes the statement that no matter what gets thrown at you, there is still a you to acknowledge the world around you, so therefore the baseline to truth must be the I that thinks. Therefore, \"I think, therefore, I am.\"",
"You're walking down the street one day when an obviously distressed and homeless man runs up to you. He starts screaming, the words caked in the smell of alcohol and rotten meat:\n\n\"The Matrix was a documentary! Agents are after me because I know the truth! Nothing is real!\"\n\nYou could look at the ground, put your disconnected ear buds in your ears and walk away, but for once you decide against the hardening of your own heart and you try to connect with another human being. See if you can provide some comfort and help or what-not.\n\n\"Look sir, it's alright. That was just a movie, it isn't real. All of this is. Feel the cool air, the rough texture of the ground, we can sense these things.\"\n\n\"FOOL! Your brain is connected to the machine with copper wires and black licorice! They're feeding you these sensations with cold, metal spoons! ELECTRIC SPOONS!\"\n\n\"Okay... but surely if we were controlled by machines, most people would be able to figure that out. After all, we have reason and math. Logic exists, and thus we could see inconsistencies in the world around us and...\"\n\n\"GRAGHHAGHGAAA! You think you can know the world with your beady peeled-grape eyes! Math is a lie made up of machines! Logic is an illusion! There is nothing you can know for sure as real!\"\n\nTo this you could continue to argue, but it's a difficult proposition to negate. If your senses can be lied to, what can you know without depending on your observations? If your logic can be flawed, the result of purposeful lies and miscalculations, what can you know without experience?\n\nThere is left only one thing you can be sure of: though everything you observe can be false, and everything you think false, if there is observing and thinking, then there must be an object doing that thinking and observing. The one thing you can know for sure is that you exist, because whether you think you do or do not, something is doing the thinking. You think, therefore you are.\n\nSeeing how this dirty lunatic has couched his madness in philosophical tricks, you quickly excuse yourself and keep walking. You tried to be decent, after all, and maybe that counts for something. Besides, you've got to think about what you need to pick up tonight for dinner. You're so engaged in your thoughts, you don't notice the twins in black suits brush past you towards the screaming man."
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j3pl7 | what do people mean when they say a company is a publicly traded business? [li5] | I've never quite understood what it means and how it ties in with stocks/shares. It seems that large companies work like this... but it also seems people can somehow fight for control of a business simply by buying out the majority of it. Why would someone start a business and then go public like that if it risks them losing control? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j3pl7/what_do_people_mean_when_they_say_a_company_is_a/ | {
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"Publicly traded simply means you can buy shares (or portions of the company) within the stock market. By buying a share you own X% of the company and have the right to cast votes in share holder meetings. Pulbic companies also have to make quite a bit of their financial data available, so people can make a better educated decision as to whether to invest.\n\nPrivate companies, on the other hand, don't take public outside investment and are only responsible in making decisions based upon their own (or their private investors) opinions.\n\nAnalogy: Private companies ask mom/dad to throw a couple of bucks their way; public companies invite anyone/everyone to throw money their way in return for a tiny bit of decision making and interest.",
"In response to your last question, people take businesses public because they want to expand the business beyond their ability to fund themselves. As an example, if my business is growing quickly and I need a new office building, I could offer other people a chance to loan me money to buy the building in exchange for a little piece of the profit from my company.\n\nThink about the early explorers for a minute. Financing a trip to the New World was expensive and complicated for one person, so they offered the nobles a deal: loan money to fund the expedition, and you'll get a percentage of the money I get from ~~crushing and exploiting~~ahem, *exploring* the New World when I get back. Modern business works (or is supposed to work) the same way: help fund Microsoft by loaning them some of your money, and they'll pay you back the interest on that loan (a dividend) as their business grows.\n\nI say \"supposed to\" because offerings of stock have become a profit center unto themselves, which is nowadays just as much a reason to take a company public. Rather than investing in a company because I want a percentage of their profits (a dividend), I'll buy stock in them solely intending to *sell* that stock for more money to someone else. This creates a lot of pressure on publicly-traded companies to continue growing and becoming more and more profitable, so that each person that buys their stock can sell it for a little more, which can be difficult to keep up for long. On the business side, since everyone's percentage of the company becomes more valuable as the value of each share goes up, there's a lot of pressure to take a company public so you get a piece of that expanding money pot yourself."
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194efu | what is responsible for the crackling or zapping sounds from electric wire? | I have heard some pretty crazy explanations in the past but none seemed very factual. In fact, most were at music festivals. So what really causes this strange sound? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/194efu/eli5_what_is_responsible_for_the_crackling_or/ | {
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"You mean like power lines?\n\nThat would be what's called corona discharge. Basically, the voltage is high enough that some of the electrons jumping off the wire, and onto the air, ionizing it. "
]
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37mw5u | why does america get involved in international affairs (ukraine, gaza, syria, yemen, pakistan, iraq, afghanistan) while other countries don't? | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37mw5u/eli5_why_does_america_get_involved_in/ | {
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"The United States foreign policy is centered on the use of force (or threat of force) to secure its national interests abroad. The United States can afford to do so because its economy is very large and generates a lot of tax revenue, and a lot of that money is spent on the military. That military then has to be used in order to justify its existence. \n\n_URL_0_\n\n_URL_1_",
"You are making the assumption that other countries do not get involved. This is incorrect. As a US citizen exposed, I'm assuming, to only US media, you are only informed of incidents where the US is involved. And even in those, there are likely other countries involved and either you are not aware or have overlooked where other countries are reported as being involved. For example, Iraq was invaded with a US-led coalition. Meaning that there were multiple countries involved.",
"So France in Mali, Britain in the Falklands, Russia in Crimea, and China in the SCS dont count as active international involvement? \n\nEvery country has a desired state of world affairs which their government feels is most beneficial. Only some countries though are able to actively attempt to realize it.",
"Just as a fair warning:This question is going to inspire a lot of political venom, so try to look for the most objective answer, which I will try to explain below.\n\nCompare the US military budget to their western allies. You'll hear all the time about how we spend more than the rest of the world combined, have more aircraft carriers, etc. This is true, and it also means that we are the most well-equipped to deal with issues efficiently. It's been this way ever since WWI because we were in a good economic position to assist our allies, who we depended on for trade. Since we take on a lot of the financial burden for military aid, it ends up being beneficial to western Europe because it means they can spend less on their own armies and get involved in less wars themselves. In exchange, we get more friendly relations with other nations, trade deals, and stuff like that.",
" > while other countries don't \n\n* Afghanistan\n* United Kingdom\n* France\n* Canada\n* Poland\n* Germany\n* Italy\n* Spain\n* Portugal\n* Czech Republic\n* Australia\n* New Zealand\n* Ukraine\n* Georgia\n* Azerbaijan\n* Uzbekistan\n* Turkmenistan\n* Tajikistan\n\nBesides the US, those countries all played a part in [OEF](_URL_0_).\n\nI'm not sure what else you want. Do you not consider any of those nations to be countries or something? ",
"I dunno about the others. But didnt we make a deal with Ukraine that we would have their back if something happens to them in return for giving up their nikes?\n\nedit: meant nukes, but like it as it is. ",
"Other countries definitely get involved in international affairs. Going down your list:\n\n\n1. US involvement in Ukraine is mostly done through NATO and the EU, so obviously those member states are involved too. Germany, for instance, has been quite involved in negotiations. And let's not forget Russia! I think it's quite obvious they are involved in Eastern Ukraine, but even if you doubt that, you can't deny they were involved in Crimea *while it was still a part of Ukraine*.\n\n\n2. The US has very little direct involvement in Gaza. (In fact, the US has no official relations with Palestine.) Obviously Israel is much more involved there. US involvement in Gaza mostly consists of siding with Israel over Palestine in international matters. If you count that as 'getting involved in Gaza', then Iran siding with Palestine counts as 'getting involved in Israel'.\n\n\n3. Until fairly recently, the US had just been *talking* about Syria a lot. But now an international military campaign is underway against ISIL. Go to [this article](_URL_1_) and look at the list of Belligerents on the right sidebar. The US is far from unique in this involvement.\n\n\n4. You actually have a point with Yemen. The US has had a quite extensive counter-terrorism presence in Yemen since 2001. Basically, the US believes [AQAP](_URL_0_) are one of the biggest terrorist threats to the US right now. Keep in mind that, while the people of Yemen may not like the US involvement, at least the government of Yemen was fine with it.\n\n\n5. As for Pakistan, they are (supposedly) on board with the whole War on Terror thing. Outside of other NATO members, they are one the US's biggest allies in this, and the US sends a bunch of aid there (actually, the US sends a bunch of aid pretty much everywhere). So why does the US have this arrangement with Pakistan? When you are fighting the Taliban, it's helpful to have an ally near the Taliban.\n\n\n6. I completely agree with you on the subject of Iraq. Many of us ask the same question. Again though, note that while the US was *definitely* the driving force for the invasion and occupation, Australia and the UK were involved in the invasion as well. (Not trying to make excuses, just pointing out that other countries *do* get involved.)\n\n\n7. Like with Iraq, the US is massively involved in Afghanistan (both in the invasion/occupation and in building a new government). But this was much more international than Iraq. The US had partners from the beginning, and NATO was involved for most of that period as well. Again, the US was *not* the only country involved. Also unlike Iraq, I think the invasion was not entirely unjustified. The official government of Afghanistan was openly supporting a terrorist organization that had just killed over 3000 civilians. Wars have been started over much less (see Iraq).\n\n\nObviously the US has involvement in a lot of places, and there's a lot of stuff I'm not at all proud of. But I think you've missed most of the worst offenses (Vietnam, Iran, etc.)\n\n\nBasically, the US is involved in a ton of international affairs, but they are hardly the only ones doing that. Sometimes there's a good reason for the involvement, and sometimes there isn't.\n\n\n----\n\n\nBy the way, Wikipedia is generally a good place to get a summary of these types of relations. Just search \"US - whatever relations\". (Sorry if you already knew this.)"
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"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda_in_the_Arabian_Peninsula",
"http://en.wik... | ||
4a6xx0 | why do deserts get so cold at night? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/4a6xx0/eli5_why_do_deserts_get_so_cold_at_night/ | {
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"The desert is warm during the day because the sun shines on everything. In the desert there is no water in the air to make clouds. Clouds are like a blanket in the sky that keep the air warm. With no sun at night there is nothing making it warm and since there is no blanket all the warmth escapes into space.",
"Hot sand and air cool down at night via radiation in the infrared range. Every object above the absolute zero temperature radiates infrared photons. Air (without water) is very transparent to IR rays, so the energy quickly escape into the space. Humid air reflects IR rays better than dry air due to water. Clouds (droplets of liquid water suspended in the air) reflect IR even better. That's why cloudy nights are warmer than clear sky.\n\nWide temperature swings occur at high altitude at all mountain regions, from Himalayas to Hawaii, due to thinner air, lack of clouds and humidity. The higher the altitude, the wider temperature drops. The Mauna Kea summit, HI, is above the tropical clouds, it's quite cold there at night even though the bottom enjoys the 90F tropical summer.\n\nThe dark side of the Moon cools down much faster than Earth due to lack of any atmosphere, there is nothing to reflect the IR rays from the surface. The same would happen to the hypothetical mountain on Earth if it were higher than the atmosphere, at night it would approach 2.7 K, the outer space temperature.\n",
"Because there is little moisture in the air, and the humidity is what's holding on to the warmth.\n\nWater takes a really long time to heat up, and once it's heated up it takes a really long time to cool down. The sun heats up the air during the day. When the air is humid, its water holds on to that heat. So even after the sun goes down, the air stays warm at night.\n\nDesert air is not humid. It has very little moisture in it. So it does not hold on to the sun's heat. So once the sun goes down, the air loses its heat pretty fast.",
"Probably because you put it in the fridge. If you leave it out in the open over night it should be room temp by the morning.\n\nHope this helps!"
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6v0m25 | celsius to fahrenheit | [deleted] | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6v0m25/eli5_celsius_to_fahrenheit/ | {
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"(F-32)*5/9 = C\n(C*1.8)+32=F\n\nIt isn't a very direct equation to convert between the two. Half of one isn't equal to half of the other because there's some addition/subtraction involved before the multiplication/division. Interestingly enough, at -40 C, you're also at -40 F.",
"Kelvin and Celsius have the same size degree. \n\nFahrenheit does not. There are more than 100 degrees between freezing and boiling in Fahrenheit.",
"So here's the thing. Fahrenheit and Celsius start at 0 way above the real zero, or \"absolute zero\". The absolute scale Kelvin starts at absolute zero and is always 273.2 degrees higher than Celsius. Fahrenheit also has its own absolute scale, called the Renkine scale - starts at absolute zero and is always 459.7 degrees higher than Fahrenheit. Both Fahrenheit and Celsius cross over at -40 degrees, so mercury freezes at both -40 degrees Celsius and Fahrenheit. But both scales are based on different things. Celsius is based on the temperature of liquid water from freezing to boiling. Fahrenheit is based on the temperature of brine with equal parts ice and salt at 0 degrees Fahrenheit. When Daniel Fahrenheit was designing his scale, he chose 180 degrees of separation between freezing (32) and boiling (212). So the 180 degrees of separation is exactly why you can't divide that by 2. Try subtracting 90 degrees Fahrenheit: 212-90=122"
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8ebmwb | why do nostril pimples hurt so much more than regular pimples? | explainlikeimfive | https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/8ebmwb/eli5_why_do_nostril_pimples_hurt_so_much_more/ | {
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"There's not really any fat in your nose. Fat cell storage lacks nerve endings so pressure buildup on those areas leaves less pain. In the nose area the pressure is basically put strait on the nerves.",
"I'm going to piggyback off of this: Why do pimples on the edge of your lips hurt so badly? They're the worst for me.",
"Pimples cause inflammation of the surrounding tissue and it's this swelling that causes the pain. The skin of your face and back is loose and able to stretch so the swelling is tolerated better. \n\nThe nose and ears are cartilage and there is much less give to the skin there, and also a lot of pain receptors. The pimple puts pressure on the pain receptors and since there is less room for the swelling, the pressure, and pain, are higher. ",
"Always thought it was because there is not enough flesh there to expand, so the pressure is extra intense compared to other places that have fat/tissue for the expansion to take place. ",
"The surface of your nose is one of the most sensitive areas on your body. I once had a birth mark surgically removed and the insertion of the needle to freeze the area was the most painful thing I have ever experienced. Imagine the pain you feel when your dentist \"sticks\" you before you get dental work done and magnify that by at least 100.\n\nEdit: Swapped the word \"picture\" for the word \"imagine\".\n\n",
"Your face has among the highest number of nerve endings in your body aside from fingers and genitals. \n ",
"Is not just the quantity of nerve endings in the nose (it's a factor but not the only one). It also has to do with the fact that it's in the middle of the head and opening of the skull. There the system is over sensitive for swollen and infection, and the responses are stronger than other parts.\nAs a fun fact: right under the nose is also the worst part to get stung by a bee (yes, even worse than the balls)",
"I see so many answers hit close to home, but not quite.\n\nTL;DR skin over nose is very tightly adherent and pus under it collects and stretches the skin, causing lots of pain. \n\nYes it's true there are a *lot* of nerve endings in your face, but that's part of the story.\n\nHere, try something :\n\nTry pinching the skin off your forearm. Easy right?\n\nNow try the back of your fingers. Not quite, but still there.\n\nNow try your nose. Difficult right?\n\nImagine there's infection and pus building up under the skin. The one in your forearm and fingers have some 'wiggle' room and can take a bit of pus without swelling and bursting for a while.\n\nBut your nose has skin tightly fixed to the underlying cartilage, and if there's an infection there(like a pimple) it will not hold much and stretch like crazy, stimulating all those nerve endings and hence your pain.\n\nSame applies to nostrils by the way. ",
"Neurophysiologist here: \n\nThe correct answer: \n\nThe density of somatosensory (sensation, which includes pain) receptors is higher in the face (and particularly around the mouth, eyes, and nose) than in other parts of the body. \n\nNostril pimples (and pimples on/near the lips) hurt more than in other areas because local inflammation caused by the pimple is activating more pain nerve endings than pimples located in other areas of the body - because of the higher density (pain endings per surface area of skin) of somatosensory receptors in this part of the body. \n\n",
"There are more nerves there, mainly because those areas are associated with senses. Your nose has the sense of smell, and mouth with taste. So the areas with more nerves hurt more. That's also why paper cuts hurt a lot cuz it cut the outer layer where all the touch receptors are. ",
"Your nose has a lot of nerve endings. \n\nWhen I went to a fantasia party, to test out the vibrators, they get you to put them on the tip of your nose. It's the next closest body part that has as many nerve endings as the clitoris. \n\nSo I'd say its the sensitivity. And lack of fat, skin on top of cartilage. :) ",
"Anyone else feel like pimples on the back hurt way more than anywhere on the face?",
"Interesting to note : The scientist who invented the [Schmidt sting pain index](_URL_1_) also conducted a study to find out the most painful areas of the body where you could be bitten/stung. According to [him](_URL_0_) \" The most painful locations were the nostril (9.0), the upper lip (8.7) and the penis shaft (7.3).\"",
"Pro-Tip: Once you pop one and its all swollen and throbbing, crush up an aspirin and wet it, at put a bit of the paste on the wound. Does wonders for the throbbing and swelling."
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"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmidt_sting_pain_index"
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kj2xt | how should i mentally visualize a tesseract? | I'm referring to [this](_URL_0_) sort of "shape".
I see this animation, and I see a cube expanding and collapsing upon itself. However, I've been told that this is not correct, and that it's actually not changing shape, but instead it's simply rotating.
I've tried to wrap my mind around it, and tried to come up with some sort of vision of what it should look like in my mind, but I can't for the life of me manage to get it to "work" in my head. | explainlikeimfive | http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/kj2xt/elif_how_should_i_mentally_visualize_a_tesseract/ | {
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"I will allow the great Carl Sagan to take this one:\n_URL_0_",
"The problem is that you're looking at a 3-D shadow of a 4-D object, also called a hypercube. \n\nLet's say that you live in two dimensions. You look at your friend, Mr. Square. He is a square. You understand that he has four sides, all of equal length. \n\nBut suddenly, Mr. Square starts looking like the three images here: _URL_0_\n\nThat doesn't make any sense to you. You and Mr. Square are buddies in your 2-D world. So why does he look like two rectangles, then a hexagon, then a bunch of quadrilaterals? \n\nIt's exactly the same thing for the hypercube. You think you know a cube, and then it starts moving in a way that doesn't make sense to you. You don't have enough spacial dimensions to visualize it properly. ",
"I will allow the great Carl Sagan to take this one:\n_URL_0_",
"The problem is that you're looking at a 3-D shadow of a 4-D object, also called a hypercube. \n\nLet's say that you live in two dimensions. You look at your friend, Mr. Square. He is a square. You understand that he has four sides, all of equal length. \n\nBut suddenly, Mr. Square starts looking like the three images here: _URL_0_\n\nThat doesn't make any sense to you. You and Mr. Square are buddies in your 2-D world. So why does he look like two rectangles, then a hexagon, then a bunch of quadrilaterals? \n\nIt's exactly the same thing for the hypercube. You think you know a cube, and then it starts moving in a way that doesn't make sense to you. You don't have enough spacial dimensions to visualize it properly. "
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