post_title stringlengths 5 304 | post_text stringlengths 0 37.5k | post_scores int64 15 83.1k | comment_text stringlengths 200 9.61k | comment_score int64 10 43.3k |
|---|---|---|---|---|
ELI5: Why is there more diversity in hair/eye colour of caucasions compared to darker coloured people? | Why is it so uncommon for darker coloured people to have anything but brown hair/eyes and what varies when it comes to caucasion people? | 222 | ELI5: People need different traits for different climates. The genetic mutations that made it possible for people to have lighter skin in colder areas with little light, made it more likely that genetic mutations would occur in other coloring (such as hair and eye color). It was never beneficial for people in warmer/br... | 55 |
CMV: The Superhero genre is really just centered around spectacle and the creative exploration of superpowers, but there is no real depth to it in general. | WARNING: There is a spoiler for the Marvel film Civil War ahead.
The writer Brandon Sanderson once said, "What your magic *can't* do is more interesting than what it *can* do."
When I heard this phrase it really made me appreciate how true that is. Soon after I watched the Marvel movie Civil War, and realized that ba... | 1,731 | Have you ever read the graphic novel "Watchmen" or watched the anime series "One Punch Man?" If not, I'll refrain from elaborating further for fear of spoiling them, and instead suggest that you take a look at them if you're interested in something that defies your expectations of what the superhero genre is. | 248 |
ELI5: When looking straight at a light, why does the shape of it stay in your vision? | 49 | When we see light, it enters through the pupil and shines onto the retina, the light-sensitive lining at the back of our eyes. If a bright light shines on the retina long enough, the part of the retina it’s hitting becomes somewhat desensitized to light, so when we look away, the desensitized part doesn’t immediately ... | 43 | |
ELI5: how does money enter circulation? | I know that money is printed but how do they get it into circulation? Who gets the free money? | 98 | Newly made money in the US is handled by the Federal Reserve. Large banks already have reserves of cash and branches of the banks are supplied the money from there. When demand for cash increases banks will "purchase" or lend more money from the federal reserve bank. When demand is low cash is returned to the Reserve B... | 30 |
ELI5:How does so much dust accumulate on fans? why isn't it just thrown off? | 95 | Fans are electrically powered moving surfaces and so they contact a lot of dust in the air, way more than a non-moving surface like a wall . That movement also helps them build up a static charge that causes dust to sometimes stick to them harder than the wind that they generate can blow off. Eventually that dust can b... | 54 | |
[LOTR] If Aragorn and Boromir were planning to head to Minas Tirith after reaching Gondor, why did Elrond not choose 11 people for the Fellowship so that there would be 9 people going to Mt. Doom? | Also was there any reason why 9 were chosen for the fellowship other than it sounded like a good number because the Nazgul had 9? | 35 | It wasn't clear at the time exactly what path the Fellowship would take. It's possible they would have all gone to Minas Tirith, but obviously circumstances changed significantly by the time they reached Gondor. For all anyone knew at the outset, there still would be 9 people going to Mount Doom even if they went via G... | 27 |
ELI5: What is being transgender, and how can there be more than two genders? | I'm confused, do transgenders consider themselves to be another gender? I also saw people on tumblr saying how stupid it is to think there are only two genders. Thanks for the help! | 17 | I'll attempt to provide some info on the second point. There's a difference between biological sex and gender identity. Your biological sex is assigned at birth based on biological characteristics, male or female. This is in most cases a binary, except in the case of individuals born with ambiguous sexual characteristi... | 13 |
ELI5: Why do sharks expose their top fins above the surface? | I was watching a documentary on sea lions, and they would see the shark fins and be alerted of there location, what are these fins purpose?
Thnaks | 48 | Sharks -- most species, anyway -- are true predators. Many of those predators hunt air-breathing species... seals, sea-lions, turtles, etc.
The shark would prefer to be far below the surface, as it is a true fish. However, the air-breathers that they prey upon, quite naturally spend a lot of their time at or near th... | 57 |
[Pokemon] How does team rocket repeatedly survive falls from incredible height after "Blasting Off"? | 18 | Don't they always have Pokemon that can float?
James started with his Koffing, correct? All he needs to do is release it, and they grab onto it, and it floats them down. Its as simple as using their pokemon. | 26 | |
(Star Wars: Clone Wars series) why does Sidious seem OK with all the attempts on Skywalker's life by Count Dooku and the Separatists? Is Dooku in the know at all? | Additionally, does Dooku know that Sidious is just using the Separatists? | 16 | The Sith take a very Darwinian view of apprenticeship. Why coddle Anakin when the whole point of cultivating him is to make him grow stronger so he can rule by your side? If Anakin was weak enough to be taken out by Dooku or the Separatists, Sidious would view that as evidence that he wasn't actually Sith material in t... | 44 |
Eli5: How can spacecraft determine their speed once out in space? | 23 | There are a number of ways, but one is by measuring the frequency of the radio signal it receives from Earth. The signal is sent at a precise frequency, but because the spacecraft is moving - normally away from earth - the frequency is 'doppler shifted' down - because between each peak in the radio wave and the next, t... | 22 | |
If you are not an organ donor (by choice), you should be at the end of the list for transplants if you need one. CMV | A lot of people I know are not organ donors because of reasons like "I want to keep my body when I'm dead" or other, rather honestly, tenuous reasons.
I believe if you actively choose not to be an organ donor, you should be considered last for transplants if you need one. Why should someone else's sacrifice go to some... | 79 | It is not for the medical community to decide who should live and who should die. There is nothing that you can do to make yourself less worthy of medical treatment.
Now, because resources are limited and important resources like organs, the people in charge of distributing those resources may sometimes have to decid... | 25 |
ELI5:How does communication between two languages initially develop? | 59 | Usually via description of similar objects. For example, Dog in English is Perro in Spanish. Even if an English person didn't know any Spanish, and vice versa, they could both learn and establish that this furry four legged creature currently wiping it's ass all over the rug because it has worms, is known as dog/perro.... | 74 | |
ELI5: Why do the bottom formula1 teams perform much closer to the top teams when it’s raining? | 18 | It’s less about the cars when it’s wet and more about the individual driver skill. So when the lower teams have great drivers like Fernando and Seb, then those guys will rise to the top. Rain is a great leveller as top speed and ‘slippery’ cars don’t matter. | 29 | |
ELI5: Is the volcano eruption in Chile and the earthquake in Nepal connected? | 134 | The easy answer: Definitely not.
Compared to the size of the earth, these two events are insignificant, and very far away from each other. There is no possibility that the eruption in Chile caused the earthquake in Nepal, or vice versa.
You could argue that both events are the result of plate tectonics, and therefor... | 242 | |
[MCU] I'm a Skrull hiding out on Earth. How concerned should I be that Blue Man Group are Kree in disguise | 29 | You should not be concerned by them. Kree aren't just blue, they can also take all human skin tones as well. If you're scared of Kree, the people painting themselves blue are less likely to be Kree than *anyone else*. | 19 | |
Given an infinite time, what's the predicted end state of the universe? Will it be full of super-massive black holes? | My knowledge and understanding of physics beyond the Newtonian is negligible. I'm just curious if all stars eventually end up in a black hole will the black holes eventually combine due to their gravitational pull to reform the primordial atom?
Maybe this is a stupid question but I've just always wondered if the Big B... | 214 | The ultimate fate of the universe is still very much an open question. There are a few models that commonly considered and which of these models will come into play depends on the large-scale properties of our universe, such as its curvature, it's density and the presence and quantity of dark energy.
The most commonly... | 105 |
ELI5: Why a Guillotine's blade is always angled? | Just like in this Photo [HERE](http://imgur.com/HHHB9nk). | 3,661 | so it slices, rather than chops. The angle blade makes it so that the blade slide across the neck, rather then just having a flat edge chop down.
If you have it just chop down, you stand a much better chance of just crushing the neck rather than having the head get cut off. | 4,025 |
CMV: You don't owe anything to people who care about you. | I came across a conversation wherein someone told me how much they cared for me but all I felt was I do not owe you anything just because you care for me. Be it someone who's your parent or partner enquiring how you are or someone who's an acquaintance asking how are you doing. Just because they care about you doesn't ... | 2,105 | Mostly agreed, but you can take this argument only so far before you end up in strange, if not unethical, places.
The key here is to realize that all people have a right to basic human dignity - meaning the right to not be hurt, harmed, or be considered of low to no worth if they don't do anything to hurt, harm, or d... | 928 |
[Assassin’s Creed] Which assassin from the Assassin Creed series has the highest kill count and why? | 198 | Shay Cormac, before betraying the brotherhood, caused tens of thousands of deaths when he unwittingly caused an earthquake in Lisbon.
If we're talking target kills, probably Ezio. He was actively assassinating from 17 to well into his 60s.
If you're looking for direct kills, target or not, then probably Edward, who ... | 234 | |
Do women with larger breasts have a greater chance of developing breast cancer? | Also curious about other similar scenarios, like does a morbidly obese dude with a large surface area have a greater chance of developing skin cancer? I don't fully understand what cancer is or how it develops, but at a base level I think it has to do with cells mutating or growing out of control, so if there's more of... | 43 | The tissues in the breast are mostly fat. While a number of cancers have been attributed to the accumulation of lipid soluble cancer causing chemicals in fatty tissues, women with "dense" breasts are usually considered higher risk of dying of cancer. Dense in this sense is interpreted as being more muscular than fatty.... | 24 |
ELI5: Why can’t our devices simultaneously connect to 2 WiFi networks to provide an even faster internet connection? | 92 | Fundamentally there is only the hardware available to talk on one frequency at a time. It can be adjusted to hop between channels but at any given time it needs to be on only one.
Conceptually you could use two sets of antennas and associated hardware to communicate over two separate channels at the same time, but you... | 39 | |
[Farscape] Just how fast is a starburst? If peacekeepers were successful at having starburst-capable carriers, would they dominate the galaxy without needing wormholes? | 37 | >Starburst is able to increase the rate at which vast distances are covered by moving the Leviathan into one dimensional space-time. This changes the Leviathan's linear three-dimensional speed into an exponential one dimensional speed where by the distance covered during Starburst is a function of the time spent in ... | 31 | |
CMV: George Carlin used circlejerking more than he used comedy. | I'm not against vulgar humor. I love Louis CK (and I know that Carlin was a big influence for him), but I find Carlin's routines to be very lacking in comedy. It's like he just wanted to drop what he percieved where truth bombes and people applauded.
I know comedy isn't supposed to be nuance, but his take [on religion... | 154 | Carlin was one of those very rare comedians that used social commentary to show people that they weren't alone. When he started off, he was doing impressions, later he was a vulgar humorist but when he was at his best was when he was just basically ranting. People loved him because it was the best form of escapism. At ... | 90 |
[DC Comics/Watchmen] How would the various members of the Justice League react to Ozymandias' plan? Would they expose it or go along with it? | Let's say the Justice League just did what Dan, Laurie, and Rorschach did in the comic, and confronted Ozymandias and found out they were too late to stop his plan. Staying true to the **main universe** versions of their characters: How do they react?
My take:
Least likely to compromise: Batman, Green Arrow
Could... | 43 | Wonder Woman kills him on the spot, so there's that.
Superman is all about *truth*, justice, and all that stuff. Keeping Ozy's secret would go against everything he stands for: that people can become better, if they're only shown the way.
Batman is used to working in the shadows, and loves to keep information from pe... | 57 |
Eli5: how does electricity travel so far on power lines? How do companies sell off electricity to other countries if they're on the same lines? | If the power plant is very far away how do they get electricity to run without resistance?? From the lines to eventually drop volt/amps?
I dont understand the magic that is electricity I guess. Lol | 35 | There is resistance. And the lines do lose power. By using big cables and higher voltage (lower current for the same power), they can lose less power in the lines, but it's still a significant amount- about 5% of power generated in the US is lost in the transmission lines. That's why we have power plants all over the p... | 33 |
[DC] Who pays for Superman's property damage? | 28 | The insurance company if not you yourself.
Crazy shit happening is why insurance companies exist in the first place. Accidently burn your house down? Talk to the insurance company. Get in a car accident? Swap insurance info. Die unexpectedly? Hope you had life insurance for the family. A genius megomaniac took out his... | 25 | |
I believe that modern, mass media is biased, corrupt, and is only concerned with getting views. CMV | It has always seemed to me that the media is only concerned with views rather than giving it's viewers the whole truth, or any truth at all. I believe their selection bias makes people think this world is an awful place because they only choose to show the horrible/disastrous things that happen in the world. I always r... | 182 | The problem isn't that the media wants "views". What else would media ever want? The only reason to broadcast *anything* is if you want a lot of people to see it.
The problem, if it exists, would seem to be that the media wants to get *paid* for views. But that's been the model of media pretty much for as long as it h... | 46 |
CMV: Retail work is not bad enough to warrant the level of complaints from its workers | Having worked physical labor, retail, and engineering jobs over the years, I think the negativity surrounding retail work is overhyped to the max. The level of complaints about the work do not match to the difficulty, stress, or physical demands of it.
The complaints about poor holiday time (although they all ... | 43 | I think you're conflating the content of a complaint with the reason for it. A retail worker might complain about a rude customer or having to work holidays, but the root cause of the complaint is most likely has more to do with low pay and social devaluation.
You might be able to point out ways that other jobs you've... | 40 |
[Justice League Dark: Apokolips War] Why did Darkseid feel the need to do this? | Darkseid beats the Justice League and kills a lot of the heroes. For those that survived he dismembered their bodies and transformed them into cyborg organism made to serve him as an enforcer. For example, wonder woman entire lower body, forearms, part of her face and upper torso were all taken out and replace with mac... | 16 | As banal of an answer is it sounds, Dude just likes making cybernetic monstrosities.
He's a sadist, he's pretty unambigiously won, every major threat is crushed and he still has a massive army if something goes wrong. Why *not* make heroes into cybernetic monstrosities? | 34 |
Friends always want to debate, use me as a human metric | I'm wondering if anyone has had a similar experience to mine.
​
I'm in the last year of my doctorate. Throughout my experience I have found it increasingly difficult to hang out with my friends. It seems that they always want to debate things, mostly political stuff, and use me as some sort of human metric... | 22 | Well, at least this is not the first OP today who needs reminding that this is /r/askacademia, not /r/relationships
> It makes me question if hanging out with some people is worth it in the end
If your friends are being assholes to you and you feel that being friends with them is not worth it, stop being friends w... | 18 |
How much can boiling a pot of water raise the humidity in a building? | My question is because at my cabin that is heated by a wood stove it gets very dry and we always put a pale of water on the stove to counter act the fire. With out the water every time you walk around and you touch something you get a static shock. With the water on the stove it stops. I'm just wondering how much chang... | 22 | It takes a small volume of water to substantially increase the humidity of a reasonably sized room (ignoring losses of water to condensation etc.).
Example: to increase the humidity of a 20 m^(3) room by 50% at 20^(o)C, you'd only need to boil approximately 170 ml of water.
Of course the volume of water needed increa... | 19 |
ELI5: Why does Paper get transparent if you rub it with fat? | 392 | This is because when fat is absorbed into the paper's pores, the grease-stained part of the paper—which is normally white due to the scattering of light that shines through it—allows less scattering, and the light passes through it, appearing darker in color and translucent. | 311 | |
ELI5:Why do I see articles daily practically saying we have found a cure for things like cancer, yet no cure actually exists? | 1,814 | Scientist here.
We haven't cured cancer, but we have cured MODELS of cancer.
Scientists will often use MODELS of cancer, because there are so many types of cancer. For example, we will take a biopsy of a live person's breast cancer tumor, throw it in a dish, and do crazy stuff with it to make that cancer able to live... | 1,369 | |
How do you get different elemental properties from slight variations in the amount of electrons orbiting an atomic nucleus? | I never intuitively understood how you go from atoms to the actual elements, with all of their specific properties. How can the amounts of electrons in an atom determine the color, shape, conductivity, fluidity, etc. of an element? | 21 | The electrons are the outer shell of an atom, and other than nuclear forces, the main thing that interacts with other atoms. Based on how many electrons make up the outer shell determines how many electrons it tries to interact with other atoms to get to a stable configuration. How many holes it has to fill will deter... | 14 |
ELI5: Why is all soap foam white, regardless of the color of the soap? | 111 | Color can be made a few different ways. When sunlight goes through colored glass, some of the light doesn’t get through and the color we see is the stuff that did get through.
A colored bar of soap is that color because when light hits it, some bounces off but not all of it, and we see the combined colors that did bo... | 71 | |
What is a 'Scientific American' equivalent in Economics? | Hello all,
I am a grad student in Physics/Computer Science and while many in my field might hold a dim view of Scientific American, I think it is a good resource for lay persons that might be interested in science, but might not be scientists themselves. It is good outreach aimed at smart adults, and for the most par... | 42 | Unfortunately there isn't.
The Economist and Financial Times come close, but still maintain a focus on business and finance (like if scientific America only covered engineering).
The Journal of Economic Perspectives is for an advanced undergrad or not field specialist audience. That may come closest to a discussion ... | 36 |
Could Spiderman effectively wield a lightsaber? | Can his spidey senses be a substitute for the force? | 82 | Well With proper training his enhanced reflexes would let him be a skilled swordsman.This applies lesser to any regular being though since there's nothing about a lightsaber besides it's inherent dangerous edge that prevents anyone from wielding it. General Grievous post-modification is a good example of this.
The di... | 51 |
ELI5: What is Fascism? | 21 | Fascism comes from the Latin word *fasces*, which is a bundle of sticks. While a single stick is easily broken, a bundle of sticks is much stronger.
Using the same line of thinking, fascism is a form of government which says "if our people unite into one group, like the sticks, we will be unbreakable." Usually, the pe... | 27 | |
Why are FM radio frequencies always listed with odd decimals (.1, .3, .5 etc instead of .2, .4, .6)? | 126 | The RF spectrum was divided up into various bands for various uses by the FCC. The band for FM radio transmission is 88 to 108 MHz.
From there there's a limit to how much information you can carry in an FM channel of a given band. It turns out that having channels that are 200 KHz wide gives a good tradeoff between ... | 181 | |
[Alien] For a universe with sentient androids indistinguishable from humans, long-term space travel, and off-world colonies; why do computers in the far future look so primitive compared to computers in 2020? | 23 | Reliability and ease of manufacturing.
Energy is cheap and plentiful, and ships built by the lowest bidder have an operational lifespan measured in centuries. Things are built so that they will function continuously for *decades*, without regular maintenance or human intervention. | 45 | |
[Harry Potter] In the regrettable event a deranged wizard goes on a public rampage, killing a significant number of Muggles before they can be stopped could such a major incident be suppressed? | 30 | If you'll recall, Sirius Black was framed for the massacre of a large group of muggles by Peter Pettigrew. The Ministry memory charmed all the witnesses and covered it up as a gas main explosion. Likewise, dragons and other highly dangerous magical creatures get loose all the time. They're usually caught before they ca... | 27 | |
[Mad Max 2015 game] what are your theories about where the oceans went? | Is there canon? The films could be set inland, so the freshwater could be gone but the seas remain, but in the game you clearly are driving around on the ocean floor, now turned desert.
Did the indo-australian tectonic plate get raised above sea-level? If so, how?
Did an a runaway type of technology convert the seas... | 45 | Legends state the ocean dried up, but that's literally impossible. The world apparently is just in the midst of a rampant greenhouse effect, but if it was hot enough for it to boil away we wouldn't be here.
As the legend of Max went on society became more and more tribal and isolated. The story of Max is somewhat limi... | 36 |
ELI5: How come animals tend to fall asleep relatively faster than humans do? | 29 | A lot of factors affect human sleeping patterns, of which animals don't experience.
* stress
* smart phone / computer screen affecting the brain
* caffein consumption near sleep time
things like that, you can even include existential crisis episodes while in bed, and the embarrassing shit your brain won't let you for... | 17 | |
CMV: I don't think factchecking matters a lot since the majority of voters don't seem to care about facts | The rise of political liars --use any example you want but I'm particularly upset at figures like Trump and Boris Johnson-- and the public's refusal to hold them accountable for their lies makes it clear to me that the majority of voters simply don't care about facts. I don't think that's surprising but it does call in... | 21 | But there are some voters who do bother to educate themselves on the issues and on the candidates' views. It's important for those voters to be able to get the most accurate information they can to allow them to make informed decisions. Without fact checking, most votes would be unaffected, some would be worsened, and ... | 11 |
CMV: Drawing comparisons between the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the US led War on Terror is ridiculous and disingenuous. | It's apples to oranges.
Seems to be happening a lot on reddit lately and I'm at a complete loss as to how anybody can do this.
Whataboutism has always been popular, but in this instance - there really isn't a leg to stand on in my opinion. Russian forces are brutally murdering civilians by the thousands in deliberate... | 1,009 | It's not disingenuous in the sense that the US genuinely invaded a sovereign country on false pretences. That much is true. If your point is that invasion and conquering wasn't the aim, and that American soldiers are better behaved and trained, both are likely true. But it still doesn't detract from the main point they... | 596 |
ELI5: How can cgi be used to cast objects on thin air like they do in football matches without the need of a green screen which is used in movies | My understanding of a green screen is that the green screen defines the cast space on which an image or a video is cast on. Any space which isnt green isnt detected as cast space. However in football they just cast stuff on thin air without the use of a green screen. How does that work..... cause movie makers spends LO... | 31 | The purpose of chroma keying is preserving the foreground. The things that go *in front of* the screen are preserved and the shot being composited in goes behind them. In compositing overlays for sports broadcasts and such the overlay is *supposed* to be the "topmost" thing in the final shot. That's what it's there for... | 15 |
If I was drunk, and got a full blood transfusion, would I be instantly sober? | Say I had a BAC of .25, and decided to get an entire blood transfusion to sober up, because the new blood would have a 0 BAC, would I sober up instantly? | 658 | Some of the alcohol would be in your tissues, particularly in your brain which would be what was actually making you drunk. Some of this would leach back into your blood, and the stuff in your brain would take some time to re enter the blood, get to the liver, and get totally filtered out.
But yes, basically you woul... | 474 |
ELI5: why do faces get oily but no other skin like our arms and legs suffer the same greasy fate? | 17 | A couple things
1) Face skin is different than arm or leg skin. Skin doesn't have the same uniform characteristics over the whole body.
2) Usually our bodies are covered in clothing that absorbs some skin oils. Usually our faces aren't. | 10 | |
Surviving a volatile coauthor | TL;DR: My coauthor thinks I am trying to force her off of a paper, and nothing I say/do at this point will convince her otherwise. About 50% of our meetings are coauthor telling me what a bad coworker and bad collaborator I am, and me trying to pacify her. How am I supposed to finish an assigned paper like this?
... | 31 | Keep the emails. Keep your head down, follow the lead of the lead author, and get the paper out.
Once it is over, bring in some of the emails and the draft attached and ask your PI how you could write better. It is imperative that you bring this to your PI as a learning moment for you but also allows the PI to know h... | 31 |
CMV: Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by the FBI | Pieces of evidence in favour of this view are as follows:
* The FBI has murdered black activists before, notably Fred Hampton
* The alleged killed (James Earl Ray) recounted his confession as illegitimate
* The gun used as evidence against him did not match the bullets found in MLK
* The FBI had sent letters harassing... | 20 | Are you saying the FBI is competent enough to kill MLK and keep it a secret for 52 years but they’re not competent enough to blame the right kind of gun? Or did they say it was the wrong gun on purpose so that people could figure out that they were lying? Doesn’t make sense | 21 |
Why is it that low-level languages like C are capable of dealing with system processes and higher level languages, like javascript, are not? | Forgive me if 'system processes' seems a little vague, I do not exactly know what the proper terminology is from an OS standpoint other than 'process'.
For example, Node.JS has http_parser built into it, which is written in C. In fact, Node.JS is built with both C/C++. As I understand it, this is because Javascript, n... | 23 | Many operating systems are written in C/C++ or similar languages. If C/C++ could not do everything you wanted (and this doesn't mean doing things is easy), then no language could those missing things.
Javascript is meant for operating in a specialized environment (web). There isn't a theoretical reason why the languag... | 21 |
ELI5: What is the job of the air mashal? It seems most planes in movies have one, is there one on every flight? | 209 | Air Marshals are basically the police on airplanes. Most planes don't have one. You (probably) won't know if they are on your flight or not.
I've been told that it is really a grueling and boring job. Marshalls fly on average 2-3 flights per day, and the majority of the time they are never needed or called upon. It's ... | 122 | |
ELI5: Why was the gold standard abandoned by the US (and many other countries)? What was wrong with it? What benefits did we get from the new system of currency (I believe it's called the Fiat system)? | 16 | Tying the value of a currency to a fixed resource (such as gold) is inherently dangerous because it doesn't allow you to control the value of your currency.
Consider what occurs in the classic banana republic. The government prints too much money and the value of that money collapses. This creates a huge incentive f... | 11 | |
Do you have an example of something you can prove is immoral? | https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/336j4b/what_evidence_is_there_that_god_exists/cqix184
So I was challenged on this, and I'm a philosophy laymen. Are there any examples?
Now my understanding is you can make a deductive argument for an objective standard on multiple things, then show that doing someth... | 19 | It seems that most ethicists think that something like how you describe the matter is correct. The PhilPapers survey suggests that 56% of philosophers (or 56-63% of philosophers working in one of the major fields of ethics) are moral realists and 67% (71-82%) are moral cognitivists--though these are terms of art, and ... | 19 |
ELI5: How are the heights of mountains measured? | Before people had satellites and electronic methods. | 17 | 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 |
ELI5: how do finger prints know to grow into the same shape | A bit of back story: I cut off most of the skin on the top of one of my fingers including about 85% of the finger print. I noticed as it grows back layer by layer that the new skin is having no trouble regrowing the original design of my finger print.
It made me consider that finger prints are probably encoded int... | 20 | Fingerprint are not in your dna. They're in a fat layer under your top skin layer. If you cut your finger deep enough to damage the dermis layer, your new skin will not have your old fingerprint.
Fingerprint aka the fatty layer pattern are set in place in the womb when the fetus is developing. The random fluid mov... | 24 |
[The Matrix] Aren't Neo and Trinity killing innocent people? | I watched *The Matrix* years ago and started to watch it with my son the other night. I was in and out and didn't see the whole thing so I don't know if there's an explanation and I missed it, but when Neo and Trinity storm the building to rescue Morpheus, they kill a whole bunch of ordinary security guards, then SWAT ... | 74 | Everyone answered your question, but here is a quote from Morpheus which addresses the issue as well:
“The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But unt... | 126 |
ELI5: If all people openly know that most our top leaders are corrupt, why don't we just get rid of them and get new ones? | Every day you hear someone widely making a comment about the corrupt Government officials just making all the money and leaving the rest of us like crap, and we just accept it. With this information being so open, why don't we do something about it?
In every country this is true. It's even the butt of most jokes that ... | 30 | It's important to remember that in a democracy, we are almost always putting our politicians in no-win situations.
Spend too much time in Washington? He's a "Career politician and Washington insider." Spend too much time at home? "He's missed X votes this year. Why isn't he doing his job?"
Also remember that if an i... | 11 |
[Batman, Sa] What would Batman do about Jigsaw? | *[Batman,Saw] | 18 | Jigsaw leaves recordings of his voice somewhere at the scenes of his crimes, not to mention the meticulous setup each "game" requires. The world's greatest detective would find his identity within a single night.
What might likely happen is that he finds the underling/acolyte responsible for the setup and get them to... | 32 |
Why are the blades on wind turbines so long? | I have a small understanding of how wind turbines work, but if the blades were shorter wouldn’t they spin faster creating more electricity? I know there must be a reason they’re so big I just don’t understand why | 4,528 | A wind turbine doesn't really care how fast it is spinning as far as the power output is concerned. For example if you take a small electric motor, it will probably require 1% of a horsepower to spin at several thousand revolutions per minutes (rpm). A container ship engine rotates only at a few hundred rpm but outputs... | 4,409 |
Could billionaires eventually team up and legally "buy" countries to run them? | E.g. Greece went bankrupt a while ago. Since the country can't just disappear like a company, is there a possibility that billionaires will eventually give out private loans or even buy the country to run it? | 162 | No. Countries are not companies.
It's certainly possible that a billionaire could fund a coup or other illegal means to seize control of power, but there is no legal mechanism to buy control of a country. | 195 |
ELI5: It is understandable that English is related to German, Dutch, Spanish, French and so on, so they fall in the same language family, Indo-European. How did Russian, Polish, Hindi, Persian and so on fall in the same group? Is it because of geographic location or something else? | 17 | All Indo-European languages are descended from a single language which linguists have named Proto-Indo-European (PIE) which was spoken 4500-6500 years ago. Linguists first came to the realization that these languages were related in the 18th century, when Sir William Jones noticed that Sanskrit (and ancient Indian lang... | 18 | |
Why is there a trail of red light lagging behind a moving red laser? | Hey! So I was playing with my cat (of course), and noticed when I was moving his laser around quickly, there was a "trail" of light behind it. Why is this? | 74 | This has to do with the eyes having a limited time resolution (a frame rate, if you will, but not literally) and not with the laser leaving a trail. Light from different locations (along the dot's path) is reaching your eyes faster than they are refreshing. | 68 |
[Star Wars] When the Republic became the Empire, did Corusant citizens still have parties at nightclubs like in Episode II? Or did Clone/stormtroopers arrest everyone who was rich or having fun? | 124 | I think you have been listening too much to New Republic propaganda. And lack some common sense.
Trade, business and manufacture were still very much the same as the Obsolete Republic before. People need food, clothes, and more, and that needs to be moved to where it is needed.
The Corporate Sector remained untouch... | 175 | |
ELI5: Why don't people feel the urge to swallow gum? | Since most pieces of gum are bite sized, it seems like something that people would swallow more frequently. Are we just trained not to swallow it? That's why people are more reluctant to swallow gum? Because I have to try to force gum down. | 24 | Yes, we are pretty much trained not to swallow gum. If you give young children gum, they will swallow it. They need to learn not to swallow it. And eventually the idea of not swallowing gum becomes so integrated in your mind, that you start finding it hard to because you are going against everything you learned. | 16 |
ELI5: Why amblyopia (lazy eye) cannot be surgically or anyhow treated at adulthood? I know that if treated properly at childhood that eye can function normally, but why is it hard to develop it later? | 35 | The brain is naturally ~~lazy~~ efficient. If it's getting bad information from the opic nerve in the lazy eye, it'll choose to ignore and favor the good eye. As a person gets older, the brain may completely cut off information from that nerve, even if the lazy eye is fixed surgically.
You want to treat the lazy eye e... | 44 | |
What happens to a non-diabetic when given a shot of insulin? | I get asked this question regularly so I was wondering if anyone can point to an answer. I would think they would be able to decrease the amount of insulin produced by their own body but this is just a guess. | 30 | It would depend how much was given and under what circumstances. Insulin is produced in response to detection of elevated blood glucose, there is no feedback based on the level of insulin itself.
A few units of short acting insulin given to someone who just ate a meal with carbohydrates would have no problems. The inj... | 17 |
ELI5: How did the U.S. rise to a global superpower in only 250 years but counties that have been around for 1000s of years are still under-developed? | The U.S. was a developing country for *maybe* only 100-150 years. After that, the U.S. became arguably the largest economic, military, academic, manufacturing powerhouse the world has ever seen.
Yet, countries that have been around since ancient times are still struggling to even feed or house their population.
How... | 21,851 | Progress over time isn't guaranteed. A devastating war, plague or simply bad leadership can set a country back decades, and these things can happen over and over again.
The US has incredible potential for building a superpower - the geography is nothing short of amazing. It has lots of natural harbors in both the Paci... | 9,812 |
I've read several times that particles and their corresponding antiparticles are constantly being created and annihilated. Why doesn't that violate the conservation of matter? | 17 | By the relation E=mc^2 (energy equals mass times the speed of light squared).
For instance, you may hear of a positron annhilating an electron. What actually happens is that when a positron and an electron meet, they give off two gamma rays (which are photons, and as such have no mass), and a lot of energy. If you t... | 17 | |
[ATLA] Could a firebender use lightning to restart a heartbeat, or the ability to manipulate the heat of an object to create ice? | Jeong Jeong claims that firebending is an element that can only destroy; however, could a firebender use controlled bursts of lightning to restart a heart like a defibrillator? I feel like that would actually be a pretty helpful use of the power.
Additionally, could a firebender create ice through their ability to ... | 20 | The elements are all connected, so it's a blurry line. We've seen waterbenders remove the life and water from plants, animals and other humans, and since water and fire can learn from each other it's not out of the question. The only thing stopping someone is probably their talent. You'd likely need someone on an Avata... | 24 |
Is there any correlation between the frequency of left-handedness in a population and the population's writing system being read right-to-left? | I've always assumed most of the languages I encounter are read left-to-right and top-to-bottom due to the majority of the population being right-handed, therefore avoiding smudging when writing. However, when I take into account the fact that many languages are read right-to-left, this connection becomes more tenuous. ... | 839 | Are there even any instances of abnormal amounts of left-handed populations in history? Probably not many (if any), and definitely not enough to be instrumental in developing writing systems. Remember “writing” didn’t start on paper, so throw out the whole notion of writing being easier one direction or another because... | 298 |
ELI5:Why do some people look "good" fat, and others look "bad" fat? | Kind of a strange question, but I feel like some people get fat and look okay, whereas other people get fat and look terrible.
Does it have to do with the allocation of where the fat is stored? Does it have to do with the person's natural looks?
I'm asking because I'm a decent looking person, but I feel like when I ... | 16 | Confidence goes a long way in this respect. If you feel less confident when you gain weight, you'll feel like you look less attractive. As for others, the ones that look good to you are likely not only confident but also dress for their body in a way that is flattering. Personal grooming goes a long way, too.
Differen... | 10 |
Nietzsche said in The Genealogy Of Morals, published in 1887, "it's clear that tortured states of minds are a disease, we have no doubt about it, but it's a disease like a pregnancy is a disease". What did he mean with this exactly? | 163 | He is saying that even whilst the tortured state of mind is stressful... from it new ideas can be born.
Here pregnancy is used, because whilst it is a burden from going through the burden a new thing is born.
So with the stress and burden comes potential. So it is not strictly speaking negative to be burdened or face... | 176 | |
Why do we forget dreams so easily? | 55 | The hippocampus is a part of the brain used to transfer information from short term memory to long term memory. During dreaming, the hippocampus is suppressed so that you will not form long term memories of your dreams. | 17 | |
ELI5: How did Germany survive through 2 World War losses with billions in owed reparations? | 390 | Well... they kinda didn't, which is why we had World War II. Reparations from WWI devastated Germany, all but guaranteeing it would spend it's future crushed under the debt of reparations and preventing any economic growth - it created a lot of resentment among the German population and gave rise to angry populist mov... | 401 | |
ELI5: Why do striped clothes go crazy on cameras? | 36 | It's called the moiré effect. It's a bit difficult to explain but it happens when the stripes on the clothing is as fine as the pixels on the cameras sensor. The stripes of the clothing doesn't hit the sensors pixel dead on but it's a bit of. So the camera can't make a right stripe of it. And so when the person or the ... | 31 | |
ELI5: the duggars scandal | What's going on that is getting them canceled? | 19 | One of the family, Josh Duggar, was found to be molesting his younger sisters while they slept; it began when he was 15 and continued for several years, while the victims were as young as 4. Jim Bob, the family's father and leader, knew about it, but declined to do anything at first. A year later, he found out that Jos... | 39 |
[Bioshock] How Andrew Ryan found enough money to build Rapture? | The creation of an underwater city seems very expensive, even by the standards of Ryan, who is stated to be a wealth businessman after WW2. Also, he built the city secretly, without the government's knowledge or funding, opposed to Columbia which got a massive money budget by the Congress. So, how did Ryan found enough... | 85 | He pooled his money together with other like-minded individuals to achieve a free thinking Utopia. Andrew Ryan was already very wealthy, and an active member of the scientific community, so he was able to create such a place when using the funding of similarly wealthy scientists.
The entire location was made to be sel... | 71 |
Why don't the Na'vi follow the same body plan as the rest of the Pandoran animals? | Most of the animals visible on Pandora have a hexapodal layout. The horse-analogues, the wolf-analogues, and the jaguar-analogues we've all seen in the reference files the company provided us all have six limbs. And then even as far as those dragon things I've seen videos of, they have breathing vents at approximately ... | 53 | At this point it seems to be a genetic anomaly. Current theories are suggesting that this life form may not be a native species at all, but may have been genetically engineered and introduced to Pandora. By whom and for what reason is obviously unknown.............................Look, basically, the guys upstairs do... | 38 |
ELI5: Helicopter autorotation | How does it work that helicopters can do all their regular flight/landing when their engine power is cut? Does it involve the kinetic energy of the blades? | 45 | Helicopters use what is known as collective pitch, long story short this means that the rotor blades can have both negative and positive pitch and can thus blow wind upwards (negative) or downwards (positive). When a helicopter enters a autorotation the rotor is disconnected from the power source (to allow the rotors t... | 46 |
ELI5: Is whiskey dick an actual thing and if so, what causes this to biologically happen? | 17 | An erection is caused by restricting blood flow out of the penis by muscle action. Alcohol is a nervous system suppressant and so would tend to reduce the ability of the body to direct such actions, which usually result from the parasympathetic nervous system. | 28 | |
What is aftertaste? | Some foods and drinks have an aftertaste (a taste that's different after you've swallowed it). What's going on chemically that makes a particular taste more prevalent after it's left your mouth vs while it's in your mouth? | 50 | Aftertaste can be different for two reasons:
Smell- The sense of smell has a lot to do with the perception of taste. Once the original food is gone you no longer have that intensity telling you what it is you're eating.
Digestion- Some things actually wouldn't taste the same if they weren't being digested in your mou... | 18 |
What happens if you repeatedly melt glass? | If you have glass and you melt it, then allow it to cool and harden, then melt it again and repeat a few times, will the glass become brittle? What change will happen to the glass? | 19 | Glass is already tremendously brittle.
But to respond to the substance of your question: glass doesn't have a memory. It doesn't remember that it's been melted 50 times before in the last 24 hours instead of 1 time. So the parameters that affect the properties of glass are simply those of the most recent melt/solidifi... | 39 |
ELI5: I believe it is impossible quickly "de-radioactivate" something that's (highly or otherwise) radioactive. If that's true, what makes that so? | 54 | It depends on the thing.
If you're talking about a lump of uranium or another material that decays then no because it's nuclear decay is a part of its natural existance.
If you're talking about an object that's been sitting in the fallout area of a nuclear weapon or disaster, then thoroughly cleaning the item will re... | 27 | |
ELI5: Why do I feel compelled to pick at a scab instead of letting the skin under it heal and have it fall off naturally? | 51 | I wouldn't say compelled, but maybe just out of boredom really. You don't spend your time picking a scab while you are on the field playing football, you do it while you are in the middle of a lecture in your Psych. class. You pick at it because it's something to do, and its something abnormal on your body to pick at. | 27 | |
ELI5: Why are the new army uniforms pixelated? What's the logic behind that? | 546 | It's not pixelated. It's a type of camouflage called "disruptive pattern." Basically the sharp angles and contrasting colors make it very difficult to discern outlines, making the wearer difficult to see. | 448 | |
[Marvel] Venom's powers are influenced by Spider-Man, but what if another superhuman had been the 1st host? | The Venom symbiote & its decendants (Carnage, Toxin, Scream, etc.) All display variations of Spider-Man's powers such as webbing, wall crawling, Spider sense as well as enhanced strength, speed & agility)
If Venom's first host had been a different superhuman would it have different powers? Would Carnage & ... | 87 | The personality would always be somewhat similar. Obsessive need to re-connect with the host, with maybe a bit of the host's personality, ie, Venom's haphazard vigilantism and lethal protector schtick that tore up the East Side throughout 2008. The powers, on the other hand, would be different. Let's say, by chance, it... | 47 |
[Predator] how would a Yautja react to an immortal? | If a hunter came across an individual that couldn't be killed , what happens? Do they keep going after the immortal, or do they call off the hunt when they realize they have no means to kill the individual? | 40 | Beat it in a fight collect a trophy and move on. No matter how immortal they are you can trap or at least temporarily defeat them. Once that's done a Yautja can consider itself the better combatant. But that all assumes the immortal is worth hunting. Someone like a highlander that fights constantly is a worthy immortal... | 47 |
Does the 1.9 mile Klystron Gallery have to account for the curvature of the earth during construction? | Aside from walls (e.g. the Great Wall of China), the Klystron Gallery is listed as the longest man-made structure. Given its length, are there special engineering considerations that needed to be taken to deal with the curvature of the earth, or is the curvature not a significant factor at 1.9 miles? | 90 | The main accelerator is a linear beam projector buried 30ft under ground which is straight as a laser beam. The building above it is probably a series of connected, traditionally built facilities which conform to the ground. If they didn't take into account the curvature the buildings at the ends would have an inclined... | 20 |
[Marvel] How many time machines can you find in New York City and who owns them? | 76 | The Fantastic Four definitely have one, if not more.
Pretty sure the Avengers have one, either Stark tech or more likely captured from a villain like Doom or Kang.
There *might* be one hiding inside the Latverian consulate. | 83 | |
ELI5: Why do we put ress at the end of some words, like actress, mayoress and murderess, but not for others like doctress, accountantress, or teacheress? | 12,655 | Your question has mostly been answered, but interestingly, words ending in -tor like doctor used to get -trix (yes doctrix) for the feminine form. It has mostly fallen out of use but you still see it in words like dominatrix and executrix (when drawing up a will). | 7,994 | |
[The Office] I own a business and am looking for a paper supplier. I know Dunder Mifflin provides more personal service than the big box stores, but how does that concretely benefit me? And why do I have to pay for your downtown NYC headquarters, too? | 47 | The main difference is that, assuming you're in Scranton, if you have an issue at any time, someone from their office will be there in person that afternoon to find out what went wrong and how they can make it up to you. With the big suppliers, you'll be lucky to get anything even after several hours on the phone with... | 44 | |
Why do rivers like the Nile and Amazon not form large canyons like the Colorado river did with the Grand Canyon? | Are they just newer than the Colorado river? Or is the ground underneath the rivers not as conducive to erosion? | 179 | Deep canyons tend to form where the land is in a state of slow, steady uplift where a river runs through it. So it's not so much that the water drills down into the earth, rather the earth is rising up around an existing river. | 68 |
Since wifi has trouble going through walls, does it have as much trouble going through a wall of glass than a wall made of bricks? and what would the best material for wifi to travel through is the best? | 24 | Clay bricks are no problem for wifi, and neither are glass bricks.
Concrete is a huge problem, as the water and steel absorbs/blocks the radio waves.
From memory the ideal material for radio transparency is zirconium. So zirconium bricks would be the way to go. | 19 | |
[Rick & Morty] A question about Cop Morty | Is he aware of the irony of his anti-Morty sentiment?
He talks about how Mortys are "raised to be sidekicks", and calls the Mortys in Mortytown "poor Rickless bastards". But he doesn't have a Rick, and when the other Mortys suggest that he's a sidekick to his Rick partner, he goes ballistic.
Is he self-hating, or do... | 91 | He's pretty much the Uncle Tom of Mortys. He is self-hating and idolizes the ideal of Rick; that Ricks are superior and Mortys are morons. He's bitter because he's barely smarter than the average Morty; he knows what a Morty will do all the time. He's a Morty, after all; an insufferable idiot who thinks he's sort of ok... | 140 |
ELI5: What's the difference between a sports jacket and a suit jacket? | 49 | A suit jacket is part of an entire suit, meaning it has pants made of the same material and color. It's a matched wardrobe.
A sport coat or blazer is a stand alone garment that is meant to be paired with any pants that can match, whether or not they are the same color or material.
Generally, the suit is more dressy... | 54 | |
[All Fields] We (non-scientists) like to think of science as, well as an exact science. What is something that is contested in your field, and where do you stand on it? | I guess pretty much what the headline implies: In your field of study, are there any points (even better if they're widely accepted, but still fiercely debated) that there still isn't a solid general consensus on? I don't so much mean "Evolution vs Intelligent Design", but more just "We're really not sure how $THING wo... | 54 | Tissue Engineering. Not really any debates there, but many people both inside and outside the field call it a "voodoo science". There aren't too many underlying principles, and its really just a bunch of labs trying to throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks. We take the principles of cell biology, and try to make a... | 24 |
Why are the motions of spiral galaxies so regular and predictable, as opposed to chaotic billion-body problems? | I know that systems of bodies linked by gravity are chaotic in the majority of cases for n>=3. Why is it that galaxies (in particular spiral galaxies) appear to have regular patterns in their stellar movement? Shouldn't it all be a jumbled mess of billions of bodies interacting chaotically? | 17 | For the same reason that the air acts fairly predictably, even though a litre of air contains *many* more molecules than a galaxy has stars. A galaxy is sort of a (pressureless) "gas" of stars. Although the individual paths of stars might be hard to predict (although easier than predicting the paths of molecules, becau... | 18 |
Why do people love to hate popular things? | 18 | people love popular things, that's what makes them popular.
​
SOME people want to differentiate themselves from that which is popular for any of a great number of reasons, some BECAUSE the thing is popular, others for practical reasons.
​
QUERTY is a pretty bad system for keys on your keyboar... | 11 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.