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Having a bit of a problem with feminist epistemology (not what you think) | Recently I picked up "Feminist Epistemology" aggregated by by Alcoff and Potter. It's an interesting discussion and I'm always willing to look at something that questions my worldview.
I'm kind of lost on what article within it though. In Helen Longino's essay "Subjects, Power and knowledge" she goes at such a length t... | Longino is arguing that there is a big difference between the "context of discovery"--what scientists do in the lab and the "context of justification" what scientists write about what they did in the lab (journal articles, etc). This part of a broader feminist critique of traditional philosophy of science, specifically... | 12 | 22 |
Why is vision grainy at night or in dark areas? | At night time why does human vision appear grainy? | Because your central vision (where you have color perception) is high resolution (higher density of light-sensing cells) but low-sensitivity (requires more light to detect) whereas your peripheral vision is low resolution and high sensitivity (and so works better in low light than color vision).
From an evolutionary p... | 24 | 22 |
ELI5:How did people used to wake up early before alarm clocks? | 1) **Drinking water** - It used to be a common plan that when someone needed to wake up before sunrise they would just drink a great deal of water. Full bladder would mean you'd wake up having to urinate. History is full of pre-dawn raids and military attacks that used this method.
2) **Clepsydra** - Water clocks h... | 513 | 458 | |
What would you characterize as must-read papers for economics students? | I will be starting my masters degree in economics and am looking to further my knowledge of economics as well as delve into how papers are written and research is done. Since I will be writing essays, papers and such I'd like to learn from these.
So, what would you recommend as must-read papers? | The use of knowledge in society - F.A. Hayek
The nature of the firm - Coase
The role of monetary policy - Milton Friedman
The methodology of positive economics - Milton Friedman
On the definition and method of Political Economy - John Stuart Mill
Economic Growth and Income inequality - Kuznets | 35 | 60 |
Best way to make a quick, simple GUI app? | Just went to make a simple utility desktop app an decided I want a GUI for it. But I've never really done this before (mostly done web and mobile), so what are your favorite tools to make a simple desktop GUI quickly?
**What I need to be able to do:**
Show Text, Buttons, Inputs, Images, other basic things and easily ... | C#. Visual Studio Community is free and gives you everything you need. WinForms has been around forever, so there's a vast amount of resources available to help you out. There are lots of other options for building a UI (WPF, WinUI, MAUI, etc), but WinForms may be more approachable (lower learning curve to get up and r... | 13 | 15 |
Why does orbital radius increase with increased velocity? | So apparently our teacher said that if a spaceship increases its velocity for a short amount of time its orbital radius increases, and as a result it takes longer for the spaceship to finish a circle.
But according to V^2 = GM/R if the velocity increases, r has to decrease. So mathematically it doesn't out and it's bu... | The easiest way to see why the size of your orbit will increase is to think about energy. The total energy is the sum of two terms, kinetic energy (which depends only on your velocity), and potential energy, which depends only on your current location, and which grows with distance. For example, the potential energy ... | 19 | 81 |
ELI5: The differences between karate, judo, kung fu, ninjitsu, jiu jitsu, tae kwan do, and aikido? | All of them have different origins and all have different focuses.
Karate is about strikes with hands, feet, elbows and knees (as well as some grapples).
Judo is mostly about throws and takedowns.
Kung Fu is an umbrella term for any Chinese Martial art.
Ninjitsu is about striking pressure points and sensitive areas... | 4,301 | 3,876 | |
[Legend of Zelda] What did the pieces of the triforce actually do? | I know they make you wise/courageous/powerful but is that all they do? All three wielder seem to abilities besides that. | The triforce of courage is believed to grant some degree of protection against dark magic and mind enchantments. Ganondorf's darkness attack failed against Link. In the twilight he managed to resist being transformed into a mindless beast.
It's believed that the triforce of wisdom grants some degree of magical abilit... | 30 | 20 |
I believe individuals are smart, but organizations and groups of people generally only cause problems. CMV | **edit**: I think, thus far, my opinion has altered a bit but not totally. I still think innovation and new, fresh ideas comes from individuals. But organizations and groups (while I still feel that they have many, many negative sides) are the only ways to deal with certain things. I.E., political parties will alway... | Society. Mankind only gets out of the caves and builds cities by forming organizations. Heck, most higher apes can't survive without organizations.
As far as your examples:
* There is also plenty of positive peer pressure.
* Just look around an you'll see plenty of religious nuts and conspiracy theorists without an... | 24 | 36 |
why are images seen through night vision devices, tinted green? | Image intensifiers work by having the incoming infrared light strike a photocathode, which releases electrons when it is struck. These electrons are accelerated via a high voltage field, causing them to travel to a second plate and slam into it at high speed. This second plate is coated with a phosphor which glows gree... | 808 | 907 | |
[Time Travel] How to prove I'm from the future | I've been sent back in time (Terminator-style) to America during the creation of the U.S. Constitution to explain to the founding fathers all the gray areas that have arisen in the past 200 years.
How do I convince them that I'm from the future?
Added question: What gray areas do I warn them about? | Research the time of your arrival before you leave. Write down places and dates for important events. When you arrive make a bunch of predictions and hope they find time travel a more likely explanation than demon possession. | 41 | 35 |
[General Sci-fi]What is the science behind "scanning for lifesigns"? | Besides heat and movement, what other lifesigns could be noticed from outer space or in a vacuum? | Usually the kind of lifeforms that humans deal with have a dependancy on a type of carrier that regenerates the body. For humans this would be oxygen. A method may be to search for oxygen pockets (or carbon dioxide pockets for those who arrive too late).
| 12 | 21 |
ELI5: If looking through a periscope, would a short-sighted person be able to see less far than a normal person? | In a simple, mirrors-only periscope a near-sighted person would need their glasses otherwise everything would appear blurry.
However, more modern periscopes use lenses for focus and/or magnification, so they can be individually focused based on your eyesight like binoculars or a telescope. | 70 | 184 | |
ELI5: Why are the gas prices dropping so rapidly after being to high for so long? | - The cost of producing oil mostly depends on its accessibility.
- OPEC is a group of oil producing countries who make up 45% of the world supply.
- OPEC countries like Saudi Arabia have huge relatively easy to access oil deposits, meaning they could produce lots of cheap oil whenever they want.
- Most of the cheap ... | 48 | 20 | |
Why does the Human body reject transplanted organs /tissue and proceed to destroy them but it doesn't kill parasites like worms ? | Every defense mechanism has false positives (for example, when you body attacks itself, like in an auto-immune disorder) and false negatives (for example, when your body doesn't attack a pathogen).
Various parasites have the advantage of having had millions of years to evolve their evasive mechanisms and their defense... | 2,280 | 3,657 | |
CMV: I believe that most (NOT ALL) stop signs could, (and to some extent, should) be replaced by yield signs | **1: Stop signs could be replaced by yield signs**
Stop signs instruct drivers to stop at an intersection no matter what. Yield signs instruct drivers that they need not stop, but that they must give the right-of-way to opposing traffic. In essence, in the presence of other cars, a yield sign functions as a stop sig... | I REALLY dont think this would work, in many places with stop signs the corners are 100% blind until you are 2m from the intersection. With only a yeild sign in front of drivers, no one will stop, or even slow down that much. So now you have people jsut blowing through intersections at 40+km/h because theres no stop si... | 23 | 87 |
ELI5: If radio waves and visible light are just different wavelengths of light, why do we use antennas for radios and photo sensors for light?Why can’t we just use antennas for everything? | You can use antennae for visible light, they just have to be tiny due to the short wavelength of light vs radio. The issue is what you then do with it.
If you want to produce a recognisable image with that light, you need an array of sensors, which is essentially what we have in our eye, or in ccd arrays in cameras. ... | 78 | 66 | |
ELI5: Competitive eating. How can people eat so much in one sitting? What happens to their stomachs and bodies after eating so much? And why does it seem that so many competitive eaters are very skinny? | They are able to eat so much because they prepare. They stretch their stomachs, they practice techniques for speed, etc.
After a competition, it's not unlike how you feel after Thanksgiving. Full, sluggish, tired, maybe even a little nauseous. Just to a greater degree. Most of these people don't vomit after competiti... | 299 | 347 | |
CMV: People who die because they can't afford food or housing are direct victims of capitalism | Neo-McCarthyites like to use "MiLlIoNs Of PeOpLe DiEd BeCaUsE oF cOmMuNiSm" as a carte blanche dismissal of any and all left-of-centre ideas. It is only fair to point out that deaths due to lack of means are directly a result of capitalism.
The idea of "not being able to afford something" *is* entirely capitalist. Whe... | Food banks can exist in capitalism (as evidenced by them... existing).
Capitalism - "an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state."
As it turns out fewer people die in capitalism, than in other regimes. That being said, ... | 78 | 323 |
I believe that high school is a terribly designed system that works against peoples learning and doesn't let people get to their full potential. CMV | * you aren't streamed from the start. Most people are in classes that either move too fast for them and they can't get good grades, or too slow and they lose interest.
* You're punished if you don't go to class. If classes were optional then the people who don't enjoy it wouldn't be there distracting the people who wa... | Going point by point:
* Schools offer extracurriculum to bright students in physics, math, chemistry and biology. Also schools have classifications and specializations - there are schools of physics, math, linguistics, sports, etc. Students get basic package there + additional 4-6 hours of advanced classes. It's alre... | 127 | 332 |
CMV: All vegetarians will either eventually become vegans or they are lying about how much they truly care for animals' welfare. | Preface 1: I'm a vegetarian in the UK. I have been since I was 10. My family eat meat. My girlfriend is a vegan. I care deeply about animal welfare, it is one of the most important things in my life.
Preface 2: There are some people that cannot live a vegan diet, through medical requirements, societal pressure or othe... | Animal products such as eggs and milk can be potentially obtained in a more humane way (especially eggs, which chickens just lay naturally and really require no interference to obtain ideally). They are often not, but they can be. Meat, on the other hand, will always be made by killing animals. That's a very signifi... | 93 | 47 |
Would it be possible for humans to see new colors? | I read an article the other day on The Oatmeal, about mantis shrimp, and it got me curious. Mantis shrimp have sixteen types of color receptors, as opposed to our measly three, which allows them to see colors we are literally unable to imagine. I was wondering if it would even be possible to find a way for us to see ne... | Assuming we had an extra color receptor, for example for yellow we might be able to see more colors:
Currently we have no way to distinguish between yellow (i.e. wavelength ~580nm) and red-green. To our eyes both look yellow and the response of the eye is the same.
With a yellow receptor we might have a different res... | 36 | 79 |
Is Mathematics invented or discovered? | Math and nature stand apart. There are obvious connections as we use math to describe nature, but the catch is that all mathematics is based on a foundation of assumptions called axioms. What you cannot say for certain is that any set of axioms absolutely applies to nature. You can trivially come up with a set of ax... | 29 | 24 | |
CMV: Religions answering man's questions only slow down the progress towards the actual answers(or solutions) | I've been an atheist for 3 years, and recently I'm starting to become anti-theist(which means that I don't hate religious people, but I think that religion is hurtful for humanity).
The question that started this transition is the following: "If 500 years ago we acknowledged that there's no God-granted afterlife, woul... | Religious institutions have played a critical role in the development of Western civilization, particularly surrounding some of the areas you mentioned. Acting as the world's first NGO, the Vatican has long played a role in stabilizing and improving human conditions throughout the Medieval world.
The most obvious and ... | 18 | 27 |
ELI5: Why do emotions feel like they're coming from the heart/chest area, instead of the brain? | Strong emotions generally are accompanied by an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate, which are felt most strongly in the chest.
But that's just the European way of viewing emotions. In Japan, for example, the emotional center of the human body is the stomach. This was why Samurai in feudal Japa... | 43 | 65 | |
Why does sunlight cause the colors of objects to fade over time? | I've always accepted the simple explanation that the sun's radiation damages paint, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that I don't know what's actually going on there. Can anyone help me out? | Most of the pigments we use to give colour to objects are organic pigments. Organic pigments happen to have lots of chemical bonds in them that can be broken by exposure to visible and ultraviolet light. So put enough light into them for a long enough time and the compounds that give the object its colour in the first ... | 148 | 185 |
ELI5: What actually happens when soap meets bacteria? | As others have mentioned, bacteria has lipids (basically oil) on the outer layer of their cells, your hands also have oils, and bacteria can deposit on your hands with ease...
The main issue is the fact that oil and water don't mix (you can try that at home, put oil in water, and they will be separate. You can mix tha... | 6,649 | 9,106 | |
ELI5: Why are animals with slightly different genetic traits considered separate species but humans with slightly different genetic traits are not? | Definitely not implying that any group of people are more human than any other. | The general test is do they normally interbreed in the wild in a way that results in offspring that are health enough to breed in turn. If they do, species, if not 2 species.
Human can all interbreed, so all the same species. And our genetic diversity is shockingly small compared to most species dues or a fairly rec... | 48 | 24 |
LUNCH with a Professor? | I have a question and need some guidance.
I have been invited before by my mentor to go out and have beer with her and other students—no problem there.
But, today I was talking to a program director, and I found out some professor from the US was coming to visit and guest lecture at our university. Now, the issue is... | Usually you get a department credit card and pay with that, especially as a grad student (not sure what level you are). Professors sometimes pay for dinners themselves, but they also make a lot more. | 27 | 17 |
ELI5: How are betting odds calculated? | Is it genuine insider knowledge from the betting companies, a fancy algorithm or something else? | 1: From historical trends and past performance, take the population of contenders and figure out the likeliest performance of each against the other. This is easy in a sports team oriented game or boxing match where there's a published record and only two contending teams/players. It's more complex when you have a fiel... | 13 | 15 |
ELI5: Why do bugs all have more than four legs, while basically every other terrestrial animal has four or less? | Insects' evolutionary journey favored 6 legs. Ants can carry items with the front legs and still have 4 legs for balance and weight distribution. A beetle with a big ass has 6 legs to stabilize all that rear weight. Climbing walls with 6 feet means more contact with the wall at any given time.
Think of ants digging ou... | 115 | 223 | |
CMV: Prosecutors/law enforcement involved in miscarriages of justice should be imprisoned | My idea is simple: if prosecutors/law enforcement officers knowingly help convict an innocent person of a crime, these same prosecutors/law enforcement officers should serve the prison sentence intended for that crime. For example, if a prosecutor withholds evidence showing that a defendant is not guilty of capital mu... | How do you differentiate between miscarriage of justice and honest mistakes, incompetence and hard decisions?
It’ll take more resources to try prosecutors for something that’s difficult to prove and ultimately rests on the subjective execution of their job as a professional
It could have a chilling effect if you’re ... | 14 | 48 |
[MCU] It's been 8 years since the Invasion of New York. Why doesn't the Earth have a proper early warning and interception Space Force in case of future invasions? | It's clear that we have the technology to set one up, why hasn't that been a priority? Even a few satellites in orbit around Pluto or further. | How would an array of satellites help? The invasion came through a portal a few thousand feet above Manhattan.
Some around Earth could certainly help to detect energy anomalies and are likely in place, but when dealing with ships capable of traveling intergalactic distances within hours or days, an early warning syste... | 39 | 17 |
Does people quitting jobs not add to unemployment rates? | I've just seen on the news that Biden is touting a low of 3.9% unemployment. This seems odd to me considering we are going through a great resignation, while there are not many new job openings. Does people intentionally choosing to quit and resign from their positions not add to the unemployment rate? Admittedly in my... | By definition, that 3.9% refers to U3, which is:
>U-3, total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force
​
And the Civilian labor force is defined as:
>The labor force includes all people age 16 and older who are classified as either employed and unemployed, as defined below.
Conceptual... | 42 | 43 |
Are there reasons/guidelines to how pills have to be shaped? | Do pills made of the same stuff have to have a different form if they're being sold by a different company? Do certain pills have to have an easily recognizable form that's the same internationally? | Different companies use different shapes for marketing purposes, but a depending on the pill press design, most shapes are fairly easy to achieve. However, for flexibility, round with slightly convex top and bottom is an optimum shape for the common high speed rotary press, with typical speeds of 10,000 hour for small... | 23 | 25 |
ELI5: When Europeans came to Africa and The Americas, how did they communicate with the locals? | Considering that no one knows the other's language. | "Immersion" is a great way to learn a language fast. Move to another country, and refuse to speak in anything but the local language. Within a month or two, you'll be good enough at it to get by.
So if the first group people to meet stayed together long enough, some people on each side would relatively quickly be abl... | 44 | 37 |
[Star Trek] Why are the Borg so bad at multi-tasking? | This is something I always wondered. I would think that the strength of the Borg Collective is that you have the processing power of millions of minds working on multiple tasks all being directed from a single source. But every time we see the Borg, they really only seem to be good at doing one thing at a time.
In th... | Imagine people as computers. Each one has a different lineage of manufacturers and vintages; and consequently has different firmware, OS with a long history and different quirks that evolve because of variation in installed software. The differences mean that when faced with a problem there can be a variety of solution... | 37 | 53 |
why "Steam" is the driving force of most of the power plants for more than 150 years? Does no other fluid has capability to replace it? | Don't underestimate the benefit of it being cheap, clean, readily available and well understood. Another fluid would have to have significant technical advantages over it before making the switch would be worthwhile. | 75 | 36 | |
[Dr. Seuss] Are Whos anthropomorphic bacteria? | I ask because they live on a speck of dust/snowflake. | The Who are the Who, it's plain to see.
Their characteristics are import to notice, that's the key.
A Who has arms and legs and a head full of dreams.
Bacteria has none of these, at least, so far as it seems.
The world of Seuss is silly and unknown. Full of Yooks and Zooks and Wockets a'plenty.
Dwelling on the ... | 38 | 16 |
CMV: I think we should replace marriage with life partnership, and make marriage nothing but an inofficial tradition/ritual without any power. | Marriage is already the secular institution. Religions have their own words for the religious rite one example would be holy matrimony.
Religious people can keep anyone one they want from taking part in their rites.
>Why should we allow any religion to continue dictating who is allowed to live together and who is... | 39 | 17 | |
I believe that prices in stores should included the tax already. CMV. | It makes complete sense to me that listed prices should be the price you actually pay. I know that companies love to have prices that end in 99 cents, but they could just calculate that in when pricing. This isn't a huge deal, but this is how they do it in Australia and some other places, and I liked it better because ... | This is easy to do in other countries that have a uniform sales tax or VAT etc. In the USA sales tax isn't set by the federal government. Different states have different tax rates, and this can vary based on county, city or even locality. Requiring pricing items after tax would make it a nightmare for companies that ad... | 145 | 361 |
Are aerodynamics important for space travel? | Absolutely. There are several ways in which it is important:
1) When launching into space, rocket designers must be careful about dynamic pressure. Usually launchers have a fairing to protect the satellite, which is dropped right after leaving the atmosphere. Also they try not to travel too fast before reaching a (nea... | 11 | 20 | |
ELI5: Why does Facebook change their look so much, and why are they forcing people to switch to timeline, AND when they make these changes why does it sometimes make your privacy settings go back to the default ones? | I mean, I know these changes are things you get used to...but I HATE timeline. I'd like Facebook to stay the same or at least similar. The changes never seem to make things better, more efficient, or even more appealing to the eye. They're just a bother. What the hell, Facebook? | Mainly to increase the presence of ads, likelihood to click ads, and availability of ads.
Also to provide value so people will keep using facebook.
More shared information increases likelihood of others using facebook and data available to advertisers. | 22 | 17 |
[Marvel] How powerful is magic? And what can i do with it? | So last night on the news i heard about some dude named Juggernaut who, through magic, could seemingly never be stopped once he gained sufficient speed. And my cousin Vinny got a tip from some huge dude in space that Doctor Strange is "more powerful by far than any of your fellow humanoids" simply by being a magician. ... | Unless you're predisposed to it genetically (such as having a certain X-gene configuration), learning pretty much any form of sorcery will be an arduous process. But, the potential power you can obtain from it can be nigh-limitless if you apply yourself correctly. You can also obtain magical power through a Faustian pa... | 53 | 54 |
Why do people become more awake after a certain point in the night? | I've talked it over with a few people, and everyone's agreed that there's a certain time of night (it varies between people) after which people aren't really tired and become more awake and aware again. After that point, it's much harder to get to sleep. Why does this happen? | You have two systems that drive you to sleep (1) the homeostatic system that tallies your sleep debt and (2) the circadian system that makes sure you sleep at the right time by regulating both sleep drive and arousal (making sure you stay awake). If you wait long enough during the night the circadian drive to put you t... | 330 | 518 |
Why is the verb for 'to be' so irregular in so many languages? | This is true of every language that I have more than a fleeting knowledge of: English, Hebrew, Greek, Spanish, and German. Some of these languages (German and English) are very similar, but some (Hebrew and Spanish) are very different. Yet all of them have highly irregular conjugations of their being verbs. Why is this... | In language, common words are more likely to be irregular.
This is mostly because these words aren't likely to undergo "analogy", which is effectively people applying common patterns where they otherwise wouldn't be
The past of "Dare" used to be "durst", but through analogy, people just gave it the "-ed" treatment
... | 7,166 | 6,024 |
How are we able to measure the temperature of inaccessible objects such as the surface and core of the sun or the earth's core? | For the surface of the Sun: Measure the radiation spectrum. It depends on the temperature in a quite simple way. For the core of Earth or Sun you need models of the interior of Earth/Sun, then you see what these models predict for things we can measure (like the surface conditions, the overall mass, how earthquakes pro... | 16 | 24 | |
Why does the physical size of computer parts in desktops stay roughly the same? | So I've been building my own pc's since around the late 90s. Since then we've had single cores, dual cores, quad cores, 6 cores and now 8 cores each with varying transistor densities. Why has the actual physical size (the piece of metal you hold in your hand) roughly stayed the same (2cm-2.5cm^2). Why did we land on th... | Firstly, there's the fact that there are standards according to which your computer parts are built (see, for instance, ATX). Diverging from those is a very big deal, and incurs massive costs. Processors don't directly fit in those standards, and their slots change every few months (usually with pin count) - i'm sure y... | 23 | 39 |
ELI5: Social security numbers represent everyone in America with only 9 digits, yet every single account I have - cable, phone, gas, etc. - has at least 12 digits. What purpose do the extra digits serve? | Ability to parse data specific to a region, segment, type, etc. Utility for instance might want to segregate commercial from residential, service areas and other business needs. Having these identifiers in the account number allows data to be sorted quickly and accurately. | 25 | 45 | |
Eli5 how did countries get categorised into east and west when the world is round | Real answers pls hahah no trolling from flat earth people | The categorization came from the middle ages and dealt mostly with Eurasia. Europe was the west, Asia was the east. Nowadays the "west" is Europe and places that were settled by Europeans (North and South America, Australia...) | 8,001 | 11,867 |
Why is the ozone hole only over Antarctica? | It seems like that is a weird spot for it because not a lot of people live near Antarctica to pollute it | In short it's that the conditions there are most suitable for ozone depletion. The polar vortex isolates the Antarctic atmosphere in winter, and the extreme cold allows the formation of high altitude ice clouds, and the ice provides a platform for the damaging chlorine molecules to deplete ozone. An atmospheric scienti... | 253 | 598 |
Can someone explain in detail what happens in our bodies during a cold? | There're multiple levels of detail that can be used to explain what happened. In the broadest sense, the foreign pathogen that causes a cold was unable to penetrate through your hardened, protective skin. But, after you perhaps touched a doorknob with the pathogen, and then subsequently rubbed your nose, the pathogen w... | 13 | 40 | |
Why does high inflation cause less export | In my head it would be the other way around. Could someome please explain why this is the case? | It depends on elasticity but the usual logic is that higher prices (i.e. inflation) means less volume sold which more than reverses the gain from higher prices. There may be other secondary effects such as a devaluing currency that could affect it too. | 11 | 30 |
What are the current limitations of desalination plants globally? | A quick google search shows that the cost of desalination plants is huge. A brief post here explaining cost [https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-a-water-desalination-plant-cost](https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-a-water-desalination-plant-cost)
With current temperatures at record heights and droughts effecting farmi... | The island of Curacao has been using reverse osmosis for seawater desalination for years and has been making the process more and more effecient over time. Its not as large scale as an amarican city would need, but they produce all the drinking water for two Caribbean islands. | 973 | 3,554 |
[General] When you sell your soul to the Devil, what are you really giving away? | Something that has been nagging me lately is the fact that many stories feature deals with the Devil or analogous (selling one's soul for disastrous consequences), yet literally no one ever (from stories with which I'm familiar) asks what they're really giving away; everyone just assumes they know exactly what their so... | Although in some settings the lack of a soul can affect a person during life, in some cases "selling your soul" is merely shorthand for agreeing that one's soul--the consciousness that remains when the body dies--will be subject to the devil's rule after one dies. In these settings, the soul is not removed from the bod... | 22 | 15 |
ELI5: What causes some people to throw up or retch if they smell something disgusting like a rotting animal, or experience something very traumatic like witness someone getting badly injured or receive a phone call with highly emotional news? | This seems to happen a lot in the movies - particularly when someone is witnessing a death or an injury, or receiving a shocking phone call - does it really happen that frequently and if so, why? | Essentially you have a few different mechanics happening here. Smells can cause nausea and vomiting in individuals because the smell causes your brain to assume that you have been exposed to something that is poisonous to you. Horrible smells cause a gag type reflex which suppresses the feeling of hunger, aiding us in ... | 11 | 20 |
Wikipedia explains that String Field Theory is a part a of Quantum Field Theory while regular String Theory is not. What exactly is the difference between String Field Theory and String Theory? | The difference between String Field Theory and String theory is, in the broadest of sense, the same as the difference between Quantum Field Theory and Quantum Mechanics.
QFT supercedes Quantum Mechanics in that it allows particle creation and annihilation dynamically. QM's basic building block is the Schrodinger equat... | 1,452 | 7,388 | |
ELI5: Fibonacci's golden spiral and the golden ratio | First, it is very important to understand what Fibonacci's sequence is. Fibonacci's sequence is the sequence wherein the last two numbers are added to form the next one. The first few digits are 1,1,2,3,5,8,13.
The RATIO comes from what happens when you divide a number by the last one in the sequence. The answer usua... | 16 | 43 | |
ELI5: How are the heights of mountains measured? | Before people had satellites and electronic methods. | It's called surveying. You stand in a spot, measure the angle of inclination when looking at the top of the mountain, the angle of decline looking at the base, and know the distance from it. Using trigonometry, you can calculate the approximate height. If you are far enough away you can use the curvature of the Earth w... | 16 | 17 |
Eli5 how thousands of bats can live together without getting confused from other bats echolocation noises? | Afaik the answer to this is not fully known, but we know that a combination of factors are involved:
1. Bats are capable of distinguishing between their own 'voice' and that of others, similar to how we can. Hearing their own voice is far more disorienting than hearing others' voices.
2. The brain is capable of rejec... | 491 | 744 | |
How would I go about becoming a public policy economist, or go into economic research? | Besides just working for whatever university I graduated from. | Probably depends on what exactly you want to do? Original research? Probably a PhD. Work at a think tank or local government? Masters would suffice. You can probably get an entry level position with a bachelors at a Federal Reserve, think tank, or government org, but your career progression will be limited without a gr... | 13 | 44 |
CMV: Extra accommodations in college are a hinderance to preparing proficiency in the workforce | Throwaway account as I teach at a US university.
I teach both introductory and upper level science courses.
I have students with written documentation from student services that require accommodations. I'm talking about special accommodations - 1.5-2x time on exams, separate testing rooms for exams, access to electr... | In the US, you have the right to reasonable accommodations assistance or changes to a position or workplace - that enable you to do your job despite having a disability. In general, the American Disabilities Act has the employee's back whenever the accommodation is free, such as extra time on tests or training material... | 96 | 98 |
ELI5 Why do some dishes get so hot, sometimes even hotter than the food, after microwaving? | The microwaves generated are absorbed well by water and fat in food. However, some other materials also absorb the same microwaves, often better than food.
Metal is the obvious one. It can absorb microwaves so well it catches fire and/or ruins the appliance.
Some bowls and plates made of certain ceramic also can abso... | 22 | 30 | |
CMV: The system of Significant Figures that we use in most sciences is an inherently flawed system. | As we learn in science classes, it is important to know the precision of our measurements, and it is important to know the difference between exact numbers and measured numbers. The scientific world keeps track of numerical precision through a system called "significant figures". Some classes beat students senseless wi... | There's two relevant factors you want to look at. One is the percent that a measurement is off by, the other is the absolute amount.
If the measurement is 1.1 mm, it can be off by as much as 0.1 mm, or 10% of the length. On the other hand, if it is 1000.1 mm, it can only be off by 0.01%, even if the absolute error... | 24 | 16 |
Eli5 how could an electromagnetic impulse, say from the sun for example, disable a whole power grid? | Lets say you have a high voltage transmission line going between a power station and a city. These can be hundreds and even thousands of miles long. So if you get a powerful electromagnetic wave hitting it then it will act as an antenna and the wave will create a current in the line. Since the line is so long you can g... | 43 | 79 | |
Would someone with an economics degree from the U.S.S.R. be employable in the United States as an economist? | Depends almost entirely on work experience. Someone with an econ degree, even from a US school, from the 1980s would not, in general, be employable as an economist. However, if they had been working as an economist for the last 40 years, they definitely would be. | 23 | 32 | |
[MCU] Why Not A Left-Handed Infinity Nano-gauntlet? | Statistically, more people are right-handed than left. They saw that Thanos' gauntlet hand was seriously f'd up from his Snap, don't you think that Tony or Rocket or Professor Hulk would have planned and instead made a left-handed nano-gauntlet to not permanently disable Hulk's dominant hand/arm? | Between going for another gauntlet, going for another snap, following Thanos' theatrics near-exactly, it's hard to know how much of the mechanics of the Infinity Stones they really understood. With such broad unknowns, it's probably safest to go with what you know works, and stick to what Thanos did as closely as possi... | 43 | 59 |
ELI5: If salt is deadly to snails, how are there sea snails? Also, why is salt deadly to snails? | ​ | In nature, things will always move from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration.
When this happens through a permeable membrane (skin which is not water-tight), we call this Osmosis.
If the % of salt in a sea-snail's body is equal to the saltiness of the water it lives in, he will not lose moistur... | 4,279 | 6,635 |
ELI5: How do people create these amazingly looking space/Milky Way photos? I can barely see a few stars in the nights sky. | Long exposure is one way to do it, yes, but astrophotographers also use a technique called "stacking", where they stack multiple layers of shorter exposure pictures over one another.
Some people prefer to use this method over taking a single long exposure because it's usually easier to fine tune your picture. For exam... | 13 | 59 | |
How long after publishing a paper is it still ok to present it at a conference? | Lets say you haven't published anything new for X months and you have no new results to present since that last paper. Would you still present the results of that paper if X=6? X=9? What about after a year? When would people start to get irritated?
Obviously this question is relevant for a field where people primarily... | In the biological sciences, it’s generally considered inappropriate to present posters or talks of your already published work unless it was purposefully invited. Conference talks/posters are for new things—it can be an extension of the previously published stuff, it just can’t literally be the content of your last pub... | 12 | 16 |
What are some arguments refuting the notion that empirical evidence is the only source of truth or facts? | A popular line of argumentation on reddit is that empirical evidence is the *only* source of truth or facts. Or that it *should or ought* be only source of truth or facts. Or that it is significantly "better"/more reliable than non-empirical evidence.
Then, based on these arguments, of course, they tend to lead to unr... | >it should or ought be only source of truth or facts.
What is the source of *that* truth?
Also, mathematics is a good counter-example. It is clearly *a priori*. Scientistic types will then have to appeal to formalist or analytic theories of mathematics in order to account for mathematical knowledge. But we know, ... | 17 | 22 |
ELI5: Why do many cultures see/teach sexuality as being immoral? | I've seen some people answer this question by saying "because of religion," but that doesn't answer the question, because religion is a human construct, so why would religion teach sexuality as immoral in the first place? | Keep in mind most modern religions were founded thousands of years ago. During this time sex and other related acts were very unsafe. You could easily contract a venereal disease or get your (or your partner) pregnant. Some forms of venereal disease, were pretty much a death sentence, and women quite frequently died in... | 24 | 17 |
ELI5: Why do the same species of freshwater fish (like pike, musky, perch) show up in non-contiguous freshwater bodies- especially in the Wisconsin-Minnesota-boundary waters area? | Wouldn’t the separation create different species? Are they all different species with differences we can’t observe? Were efforts by humans to repopulate a factor? | * most of those lakes are contiguous, connected by small streams and wetlands not shown on maps
* those areas are subject to flooding, enough to mix things up every few decades
* speciation requires thousands of years of separation, enough for lakes and rivers to shift around and reconnect | 10 | 16 |
ELI5: why is it that all humans have ten fingers and ten toes (and other common features) yet genetics allows random mutations for skin color hair color , height, weight, etc? why don't we see random three arms on some people, twelve toes, or three ears ? | Better answer, biology allows (and encourages) variation, above mutation. If your parents have different shades of skin, you are likely to inherent a shade similar, but different than either of them. If your parents have the same hair color, you are likely to as well, but if they have different color or shade, you are ... | 18 | 25 | |
ELI5: If "black" is the absence of all colour, why is the outcome colour "black" when I mix a bunch of colours of paint together? | Paints color is based on what light they absorb. So red paint absorbs all colors but red, the red light bounces away from the paint and hits your eyes.
So mix a bunch of paint together and you end up with a mix that absorbs a little bit of everything, and the result is black. | 53 | 31 | |
[Star Wars]What were the different roles of the ARC Troopers vs. the Clone Commandos? What were the differences in training, doctrine, units sizes, tactics, etc? | I know that real-life countries can sometimes have different special forces, but none of the typical kinds of divisions seem to apply to the ARC vs. Commando distinction. I.e. this isn't like a service division (DELTA Force in the US Army vs SEALs in the US Navy) or a role division (Green Berets being unconventional wa... | So Arc troopers and commandos mainly differ in when they were chosen for their roles, and how they where trained which leads to their different roles and uses on the battlefield.
Arcs are chosen from fully grown clones that show exceptional skill, creativity, and leadership. They get additional training in spec ops wo... | 22 | 15 |
ELI5: How do people "blackout" from drinking too many alcoholic beverages but remain conscious with no recollection? | This happens to me way too often so I might as well understand what is happening. | Your brain has to keep track of a lot of different things at the same time. Part of the brain deals with this "what's going on right now" information. It's way too much information to store long term though. So your brain makes decisions on what gets moved into "I should remember this later" parts of the brain and w... | 661 | 827 |
Is human intelligence limited? | It depends on what kind of threshold you mean. It's very unlikely that any human being will be able to keep the whole of science and mathematics in his or her mind at once, for example.
But if you're talking about the kind of intelligence where we can comprehend concepts if we put our minds to a particular concept, t... | 73 | 199 | |
ELI5: is it necessary to use hydrocarbons as accelerants in compressed goods, like deodorants? Why can't nitrogen be used? | Light aromatic Hydrocarbons are convenient because they turn into liquids when compressed by moderate amounts (a few bar). The mixture inside the aerosol canister will be part-gas and part-liquid, with the exact composition depending on the temperature and pressure.
When some pressure is released (by spraying the aero... | 210 | 106 | |
ELI5: Classes, classism, and social mobility in the UK as opposed to the USA | . | In the UK we have the generally accepted classes of working, middle and upper. The place you are put has very little to do with the money you earn and more to do with who you are and who your parents are.
For example, most high earning footballers would be considered 'working class' by themselves and others, it is a b... | 25 | 105 |
Open relationships/non-monogamous as an academic - need to keep secret? | Throwaway account. I am curious how common this is in the academy. Given the unpredictable nature of the jobs market and the need to travel often for field research, and the two-body problem, this arrangement makes the most sense for me.
Another question I have is whether I need to keep this aspect of my life on the d... | Generally, it depends on your colleagues, really, however:
> A third question is whether embracing this kind of lifestyle would preclude me from jobs in religiously-affiliated institutions (**BYU**
Yes. | 124 | 55 |
Serious question: when did pooping become taboo? | Yes, some may consider this puerile, but I'm genuinely curious. Animals poop all the time with no regard for decorum. Yet we, as a species, have developed huge, special boxes so that we may poop privately. There are unspoken rules in bathrooms (avoid eye contact, etc) that reinforce the notion that pooping should be ... | I Could point you towards Norbert Elias's *The History of Manners (The Civilizing Process, Vol. 1)* in wich he does, on a typical eliasian faishon, a sociogenetic analysis of the Manners on French and German society.
Tracing black to the development of the idea of *kultur* and *civilizacion* right at the begginning of... | 25 | 91 |
Why do bats make such good reservoirs for zoonotic viruses? | The main factor is that they are extremely social, living in colonies with millions of individuals while also traveling long distances and interacting with other colonies. They move back forth between colonies picking up and passing around diseases giving them a lot of opportunity to evolve.
Pig pathogens are far mor... | 21 | 31 | |
What's the smallest object you could 'stand on' that would have the same gravitational pull as earth, but you wouldn't have to worry about getting sucked/collapsing/spaghetification ? | Just something I was thinking about... | You have two constraints to deal with:
1. The gravitational field g=GM/r^2 = 9.8 N/kg
2. The tidal field f=2GMh/r^3 where h is your height.
You can combine these into a restriction on r, independent of mass: r=2hg/f. If you're 6 feet tall and you want a tidal force less than 0.01 g (let's say), then this gives you a... | 20 | 15 |
What kind of philosophy is useful for self improvement/life in general? | Would something like stoicism be a good place to start? Basically looking for philosophers or "genres" of philosophy that look at the way we live our lives. | This depends on how you define "improvement".
Do you wish to find meaning in a seemingly meaningless world? Look at existentialism.
Do you feel conflicted internally and wish for balance? Look to Plato and the allegory of the chariot.
Do you want to overcome desire? Buddhism might be interesting. | 43 | 28 |
When colors on fabric or paper fade from sunlight, where does the color go? | Does it just float away? | When a fabric has colour it is caused by a dye or pigmentation.
Colour is caused by deflecting or absorbing certain wavelengths of light.
Dyes are chemical species which absorb light to provide a specific colour due to their particular structure. When exposed to chemical reactions like photodegredation (light breaking... | 15 | 23 |
ELI5: How come my hands get slipperier when they're wet with water, yet laytex/nitrile/rubber/whatever gloves are such a pain to put on wet hands? | Presence of adhesive forces between skin, water and those materials?
Basically, in plain terms, water is "sticky" for those materials, so when there's a touch surface between those materials and wet hands, due to the adhesive forces there's *increased friction* as you try to slide the material over your skin. Increas... | 20 | 161 | |
Why is a frozen and thawed banana so much sweeter, and how does this change its nutritional value? | Putting together the information here
One of the main processes in bananas (and all fruit) ripening is the amylase dependent conversion of savoury or flavourless starches in to sugar (specifically glucose). Amylase is a common enzyme (also present in your saliva) which converts starch to sugar and is an important part... | 2,534 | 8,206 | |
ELI5:How come blowing on fire sometimes helps it burn (such as when kindling), but other times puts it out (such as candles)? | Any time a question about fire pops up, it’s useful to start with the fact that combustion needs three things to happen: fuel, oxygen, heat. If any of those is removed or lowered to a certain point, things won’t combust.
Now, if combustion of a fuel releases enough heat to keep the reaction going, and that heat is bei... | 21 | 19 | |
[MCU/TFAWS] Zemo is a smart and resourceful individual. Why doesn't he (try to) learn magic? | Zemo is cunning, resourceful, and wicked smart. He also has a hatred towards super-soldiers; whether that extends to other types of super-beings isn't clear.
So, given his mental acuity, why hasn't he tried to learn magic? Not only would it suit his mental abilities, it would even the playing field against super-sold... | With what time? With what opportunity?
Zemo was a black-ops Sokovian soldier that had a single-minded purpose following his nation’s destruction at the hands of the Avengers. Immediately after that he was in a holding cell for what had to be the remainder of his life. How would he have even heard of Kamar Taj? And... | 292 | 213 |
Why are philosophers so quick to distinguish themselves from "common" people? | I've noticed recently there's a habit for philosophers or for people who study philosophy to talk about "common" or "normal" people, and assume that common people don't think about the world. It's often happened in philosophy classes I've been in where people will say things like, "Most people don't think about the wor... | One reason may be to distinguish themselves from laymen. "Layman" may sound like a demeaning term, but it really is only descriptive of a person who does not have specialized knowledge on a particular topic.
People are less likely to think of themselves as scientists or mathematicians if they do not have professional... | 109 | 73 |
I’ve heard that nuclear fission and/or fusion only convert not even 1% of all the energy stored in an atom. How much energy is actually stored in an atom and is it technically possible to “extract” all of it? | The energy stored in an atom would be the mass-energy of the atom, found by E=mc^(2).
If you annihilate the atom with an antimatter atom, you could convert it all into energy in the form of EM radiation. It's technically possible, but you're more likely to get a whole bunch of other particles too. | 808 | 1,345 | |
ELI5: that sentence that only uses buffalo | Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. I've tried reading about how it works but I always get confused. | What helps is replacing the words with near synonyms.
* Buffalo 1 - a type of **bison**
* Buffalo 2 - a city in **New York**
* Buffalo 3 - a verb meaning to **intimidate**
And now we can make the sentence
New York bison New York bison intimidate intimidate New York Bison.
And if we add a few commas and a few wor... | 15 | 16 |
CMV: Black Lives Matter, the left and left-leaning media are too focused on homicides caused by police and there should be more focus on general homicides | I consider myself to be liberal, and definitely opposed to police violence and force in general. I think Derek Chauvin should be, at the very least convicted of manslaughter. I think we should rethink and restructure our criminal justice system, and end the war on drugs ASAP. I think no knock warrants appear to be unco... | >I think that if Black Lives Matter is about protecting black lives then it ought to rank-order the risks to black lives and give proportional consideration to those risks.
Do you use this reasoning for other policy and conversation as well?
Like, whenever someone brings up an issue, do you mention another issue i... | 31 | 42 |
ELI5: Gonzo journalism | It is essentially learning about your subject by becoming part of it and often taking a side or stance from ones own perspective. Hunter S. Thompson was essentially the king of this method in his time. He would involve himself fully in whatever story he was covering and then tell it all from his perspective and in his ... | 16 | 25 | |
How do I learn scripting languages? | The title pretty much says it but for some context.. I'm relatively proficient in Java and have a decent understand of OOP in general but when it come to scripting languages such as JS and python it seems to be a completely different paradigm that I just can't wrap my head around. When it's simple scripts like FizzBuzz... | What you're really asking is how to structure an application. This is more about understanding and incorporating different design methodologies than understanding the nuts and bolts of a language (though there is considerable overlap.)
This is actually where things get tricky, because there is no exact right answer f... | 13 | 22 |
ELI5: What is an abstract data type (ADT)? | Is a ADT just: int x = 5;
and why is a Linked List not a ADT? | An abstract datatype is like a machine that has a control panel. The user(programmer) can put an item in, take items out, ask questions about the number of items, things like that. But the user(programmer) has no idea, and shouldn't know, how the machine is keeping track of the items.
For a real example there is a... | 30 | 95 |
What are some ethical issues/dilemmas in computer science? | I’m trying real hard to find a topic for a paper I have to write for an International Baccalaureate (IB) class. The topic has to be about an ethical issue or dilemma that is occurring in computer science.
Two topics I’ve found so far are ‘How much protection is enough for web users’ and ‘Are victimless crime better re... | Some obvious ones:
* Is mass surveillance for counterterrorism ethical?
* Are you obligated to falisfy data when not doing so causes an unethical outcome in machine learning? Consider a simple machine that decides whether or not to approve a loan - it works well, but looking at the weights of the net tells you it only... | 18 | 26 |
ELI5: How did we figure out we can only see 3 different colors with our eyes? | I imagine there was a gradual process of discovery and little by little we learned more about the way we process light and send it to our brains. But I'm still having a really hard time understanding how we even started to question how many colors we see in the first place. Would really appreciate an explanation. | First we discovered that we have two different types of light receptors, rods and cones, by dissecting retinas and examining them under the microscope.
we were able to figure out that rods were responsible for low light, black and white sharp details and cones responsible for color vision by analyzing which parts of t... | 15 | 15 |
[Harry Potter] Why didn't Harry, Hermione and Ron use apparition to escape more often? | Watching the Harry Potter marathon on ABC family this weekend, this question occurred to me. Namely in Deathly Hallows, they use apparition to escape the wedding and also the Lovegood home. Why not apparate out of the Ministry..maybe that isn't possible due to an enchantment or something..but all of the other danger ... | There exist spells that can be cast over an area to prevent people from Apparating. Dumbledore used one such spell to prevent Death Eaters from escaping during the final battle in the ministry in Order of the Phoenix.
It's quite possible that, to prevent people from escaping the ministry like Ron/Hermione/Harry would ... | 33 | 24 |
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