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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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... | 26 | 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 |
ELI5: When your first response to hearing a new song is negative, what happens in the brain that makes us start to like it after hearing it over and over? | 20 | One theory that explains why we enjoy music is that our brain rewards us for making correct predictions. Being able to predict things had obviously been important for the survival of our ancestors, that's why our brain evolved to be this way.
So when we listen to the beginning of a melody, the brain tries to predict ... | 24 | |
eli5: Why are there so many bad chemicals in cigarettes? | A cigarette is basically just paper, tobacco and a filter. So how do so many harmful chemicals get in them? | 1,357 | While a lot of the additional chemicals are ‘naturally’ present as part of the tobacco, there are a lot of additives as well, added by tobacco companies to help the smoker better enjoy the smoking process and increase tobacco consumption.
Smoke by itself is quite harsh, and so compounds like menthol are added in varyi... | 1,353 |
[Diablo 1/2/3] Who keeps all those candles lit? | I keep finding lit candles in all these dungeons, oftentimes no monsters present except for some zombies and the like. Who performs candle maintenance within Sanctuary's dungeons? | 28 | Well, with how prevalent magical loot is in all 3 games, it's not a large stretch to imagine that magic has crept into all sorts of professions. When even the most basic wizard or sorceress (read level 1) can conjure a fireball, a magically extended life for candles surely isn't that hard. | 28 |
ELI5: What are Lobbyists? | Example: people say there are special interest groups who "lobby" to keep marijuana illegal. What does that exactly mean? | 17 | Lobbyists are hired by a group of people to talk to legislators. Their job is to persuade them into your way of thinking.
Suppose you owned a logging company and people said "We want to end logging!" You would hire someone whose whole job it is to talk to the legislators and get them to vote no on banning logging. | 12 |
ELI5: How do fish survive tall waterfalls? | Not only survive the impact, but wouldn't they still hit the rocks at bottom? Why aren't there fish corpses all along the river banks at the bottoms? | 93 | Couple things contribute.
Fish are fairly small so they don't gather much kinetic energy. They're also shaped much more streamlined than most animals so they enter water much more smoothly and gracefully.
The surface tension of the water, which is usually what would kill, say, a human, is broken by the water tumblin... | 56 |
ELI5: Why aren't dogs subjected to the "law of diminishing returns"? I feel like my 8 year old lab still gets the same amount of enjoyment playing fetch as he did when he was a puppy--even after playing it practically every single day of his life. | And yet, nothing I do in my everyday life is as fun as it was the first time I did it. I feel like I am constantly in search of something new and exciting. What is it about dogs' brains that allows them to have practically endless joy?
Edit: Thanks for all the replies, and a special shoutout to /u/kouhoutek -- that wa... | 5,661 | Humans tend to anthropomorphize their pets, and attribute human like emotions to their actions. That makes it easier to forget that they are animals and experience the world very differently than humans. What appears to be "joy" could be, and often is, something very different.
In the case of fetch, dogs have a hunt... | 8,061 |
ELI5, Is the FBI and NSA running Tor? | Ever since the big bust of The Silk Road, why wouldn't the FBI or NSA build its own Tor network to track users in the dark web? | 104 | The relevant software is open-source and known to be reasonably secure. The FBI itself said it was mostly helpless against Silk Road and whatnot until the people messed up in their use of TOR to reveal themselves. (Things like client-side scripts, for example, should be off as it could potentially be used to figure out... | 36 |
I'm no computer expert, so forgive me if this is a ridiculous question: What would happen if computers switched to trinary instead of binary? | I don't know if this is even possible, but what if, instead of just 0's and 1's representing off and on, computers understood 0's 1's and 2's for off, half-way on, and completely on. Would that speed things up? Make hard-drives able to hold more data, etc? | 198 | Binary it's really better than any other system, it just happens to be the simplest and easiest to design. Any theoretical increase in performance has to be weighed against the additional work needed to design it, and in almost every case it just isn't worth it to do computation using something other than binary.
Des... | 344 |
ELI5: In reading about NSA PRISM, I've seen multiple statements about how cellphones can monitor you even when powered off. How is this possible? Does this mean that cellphones are never really "Off"? | 24 | Yes, provided they have a warrant to do so, the FBI can remotely activate the microphone and monitor you. This came to light during the federal trial against John Gotti and the Gambino crime family. To make the gathered evidence admissible in court, they had to display the warrants and explain how the gathering took ... | 14 | |
[DC/Marvel] Let's say the Kansas of the Marvel Universe was where Superman landed as a child and was raised similarly by that reality's version of the Kents so he establishes the same ethics and connection to humanity. How would this world react to having Superman in it? | 25 | For starters, Captain America and Superman are fast friends. They form a quick bond, akin to his friendship with Batman.
People of his power level aren't unheard of in Marvel (Thor, The Sentry, Hyperion, etc.), so he doesn't change the superhero game too much. Ultimately, Marvel's heroes just became more effective by ... | 20 | |
ELI5: How come when you stretch or get up fast you black out? | Sometimes, if I've been been sitting for awhile and get up to stretch, I black out. Usually, I lose my eye sight and have a headache, but only momentarily. Why is that? | 36 | When you stand up quickly after sitting for an extended period of time the blood pressure to your brain decreases as blood flow increases to your legs, and you experience a mild form of "postural hypotension". Postural Hypotension is a more severe form, that often results in fainting and is a real medical issue- often ... | 24 |
[Peter Jackson’s King Kong] After Kong’s death from falling off the Empire State Building, what happened to all of the characters? | Was Carl Denham sued or made a criminal due to the destruction wrought by Kong? Did Jack Driscoll and Ann Darrow get married and have children? What happened to Jimmy and Captain Englehorn? Did Preston testify against Carl in court? | 46 | Denham managed to avoid arrest, but his reputation was ruined and he found himself facing multiple lawsuits. He was last seen boarding a ship for Europe, and is believed to have never returned to the United States.
Kong's body was argued over by the scientific community for several days, before the NYPD - eager to get... | 52 |
[The Simpsons] What ultimately became of Hank Scorpio? | The last time we really saw him, armed opposition forces were closing in. However, by the time the family returned to Springfield, a newspaper read: "Supervillain seizes east coast." Seizes. Present tense. He also apparently maintained the wealth and connections to purchase and transfer the Denver Broncos to Homer.
So... | 127 | Apparently he seized the east coast. The fact that Homer no longer owns the Denver Broncos and that the federal government is in charge tells us that he was ultimately defeated. Whether he escaped justice, went to prison, or was killed remains to be seen. | 70 |
ELI5: why do snow storms not produce lighting like traditional thunderstorms? | It’s snowing and I just blew my own mind with the realization that I’ve never heard or seen lightening during snow storms, even severe ones. My thought is that it’s the same amount of moisture as a rain storm, so would it be due to pressure or temp differences? | 65 | It can thunder and lighting during a snow storm. It's called Thundersnow.
The Science
Also known as thunder snowstorms or winter thunderstorms, a thundersnow only happens when a rare set of conditions occur. In fact, people only witness about 6.3 thundersnow events each year. Typically between late winter and ea... | 54 |
[MCU] Who were the Avengers Initiative in 2008? | In 2008 Nick Fury tells Stark, "You've entered a bigger world" that he's not the only superhero in the world.
So who's he talking about?! Barton and Romanov would have been agents at that time, sure, but not really "superheros", Rogers is still under the ice, Banner is hiding somewhere and a pacifist, and Thor he's... | 65 | Iron Man and Hulk were probably the big players. Ant-Man potentially, depending on if anything's revealed about Hank Pym previously using the suit. Cap was definitely known of by SHIELD, but wasn't known to be alive when Fury first met with Stark. They may have even known about Matt Murdock's enhanced senses, even t... | 65 |
[Magic the Gathering]What would a hero or a villain attuned to each of the five colors be like? | A short breakdown of the colors for some basic framework:
White: Peace, law, structured, selflessness, equality
Blue: Knowledge, deceit, cautious, deliberate, perfecting
Black: Power, self-interest, death, sacrifice, uninhibited
Red: Freedom, emotion, active, impulsive, destructive
Green: Nature, wildlife, connect... | 21 | **Heroes**
A white-aligned hero is pretty stereotypical. They fight for good, justice, law and order; what's right. They protect the downtrodden and oppose those who harm others. Think of the Knight/Paladin archetype; someone like Captain America.
A blue-aligned hero would likely be an academic or scientist, who uses... | 46 |
[Fallout] What was the actual point of the Vaults? | The US at large knew the world was most likely going to go down in a nuclear hellstorm, but, rather than have Vault-Tec build a bunch of safe shelters, so a good chunk could survive the initial bombs, they went with saying that, then using the Apature style, basically if humanity somehow hadn't survived the initial bla... | 24 | While many of the vaults have experiments running, the majority where "safe" tests and not expected to last for centuries. In addition there was a number of control vaults, and vaults specific for certain groups ment to survive the war.
Vault-tech's "plan" isn't coherent as it is a company run by many people with con... | 34 |
ELI5: How did the word English word fanny, referring to a woman's pink bits, changed in American to mean ones buttocks? | 46 | It's not clear to me that the meaning changed in America. Some words changed their meaning in British English while preserving their original meaning in America. Anyway, in this case, the word comes from the diminutive of the female name Frances -- which indicates that maybe the British use is the original. | 23 | |
CMV: As a Libertarian, I believe in Net Neutrality because my data is a product of my own labor, which I own, and ISPs don't have the right to handle it | Net Neutrality should be upheld and enforced because ISPs don't have the right to favor or disfavor my communications because they are a product of my own labor, which is my property.
As I modulate a constant voltage through the assistance of computers or other machines the resulting bitstream is the fruit of my own l... | 73 | Speaking from a libertarian viewpoint here - if the ISP doesn't have a right to handle your data, why do they? Surely you need them to deliver your data to the source you desire; i.e., they are providing you a service. Thus, their ability to manipulate data speeds resides entirely within the contract you have made with... | 25 |
I just heard on NPR that 56 million years ago, the earth was 11 degrees warmer. How do they know this? | 22 | It is not "known." It's hypothesized based on indirect observations called proxies.
One of the best and most commonly used proxies for estimating paleotemperatures is the abundance of heavy stable isotopes of common elements like Oxygen. Two stable isotopes of Oxygen have atomic masses 16 and 18 and because of their d... | 47 | |
ELI5 Why didn't Italy ever colonise the New World? | With all the important early expeditions organised by Italian explorers (Columbus, John Cabot, Vespucci, Giovanni da Verrazano etc.), how come Italy itself never established a single long-term colony in basically a whole planetary hemisphere named for an Italian? Even the Dutch had an American empire. | 15 | During the Age of Discovery, Italy was not a country, but rather a collection of city states. England, Portugal, France, Spain, and the Netherlands were large strong nations that could pay for, and support exploration and then the subsequent colonization. During this time, the Italian states were fighting one another... | 31 |
Why is ‘only’ 4.5% GDP growth bad for China? | Per Howard Marks of OakTree, it would be the equivalent of negative growth in the US. Other than compared to expectations and history, it’s still ‘good’ or at least not disastrous, yes? | 46 | If you refer to Solow growth model, you will see that developing countries grow much faster than than the developed ones up until a certain point where they start catching up.
This is mainly due to the cost of technical progress (developing countries don't have to use own resources to innovate) and the capital accumul... | 30 |
CMV: An opt-out organ donor policy is more effective than an opt-in policy and should not be morally concerning. | [A recent comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/76673p/cmv_i_should_be_able_to_sell_my_organs/dobpvgy/) in a CMV involving selling your own organs prompted me to create this post. The poster stated:
>Opt out assumes that your organs aren't actually yours to begin with. **It's a disgusting moral st... | 130 | I actually agree with you but one concern might be that, just as today you cannot harvest organs unless you can prove the person is a donor, there might be people who have chosen to opt-out but died without proof nearby or available would end up having their organs donated against their will. | 11 |
Astronomy - If you were to inject a star's core with a piece of iron, would it die? | After watching how the universe works episode on extreme stars a question popped into my head. Can a form of life kill a star?
Lets say a civilization found a way to get a "care package" to the centre of a star with say a missile, and that package was filled with iron. Would the star suddenly die or would it reject th... | 30 | Iron doesn't kill stars, it's just that stars cannot use iron as fuel because the fusion of iron doesn't release energy. When iron accumulates in the core of a star, it means that the star has run out of fuel.
It's a similar relation to ashes and a fire. Ashes aren't what kill a fire. | 34 |
ELI5: In movies and TV shows, anyone shown as a patient in a mental institution are shown to be always wearing a robe and pajamas. Is this factual, or just for show? Also, if it is true, why do they do that? | 48 | From personal experience, no. We were told we could wear whatever was comfortable that obviously didn't go against the rules. There are always various rules about words or images on clothing, anything that could be used to harm yourself or others (some take away belts, shoe laces etc) | 31 | |
[MCU/Marvel] Why do superheroes not collaborate more/share resources in the marvel universe? | I've been thinking about this alot especially as a big fan of the marvel movies. Why do the superheroes not share resources/technology or aid more with one another in the marvel universe? I want to be clear i absolutely love these movies and these characters but they seem to constantly go "lone wolf" and put themselves... | 34 | The first time the three peters fight together in no way home they’re swinging around uncoordinated and getting in each others way, it takes a pep talk for them to fight well together. And they’re the *same guy*. It takes some onboarding for a team to actually work. | 49 |
[star wars] what did the republic intend to do with the clones if they had won the war? | I'm talking about what the Jedi and republic thought would happen, because they have no idea of order 66.
Would they just keep the clones as soldiers in barracks?, Seems kind of inhumane... At least more than it already is.
I don't think they would kill the clones for many reasons.
The republic also isn't exactly ... | 28 | I'd imagine it was largely a "We cross that bridge when we get there" kind of issue.
The clones kind of showed up just as they were needed and for the duration of the Clone Wars, the Republic as a whole were more focused on surviving and beating the separatists than thinking about what they will do with the conveni... | 45 |
[Pokemon Anime] Why did Prof. Oak arrange for 4 trainers to pick their starters in the same day when he only intended to give out 3? | He only gave Ash Pikachu after Ash insisted on taking whatever Prof. Oak had left. So he was just planning to give out Charmander, Squirtle and Bulbasaur.
What would have happened if all 4 trainers showed up at the same time? | 31 | It was clearly a first come first serve situation. Oak is a busy man, he has to care for all the Pokemon that his trainers catch, continue his research projects, and build an audience for poetry lovers.
Oak was already screwing with expectations, since the trainers would only get to pick what was left, rather then of ... | 34 |
Can someone explain Post-Modernism like I'm 5, please? | I just read White Noise by Don DeLillo. Strangely, I recognized it as post-modernist literature, but I can't really describe what exactly that is. I've read up on it on Wikipedia, but that was a can of worms. | 116 | What does it even matter? Nothing has any meaning anyhow. Even the meaning we project on things is a construct of the mind and the only thing that is worthy of attention is the richness of the individual experience, each of which differs from every other. | 133 |
ELI5: When there has been no rain & all the plants you want to keep around are dying, why do weeds thrive? Could we not "breed" that hardiness into our flowers & such? | 142 | For the plants that matter, like ones we eat, that kind of hardiness usually works against large yields. We need plants to perform very well and grow quickly to feed all of us. Weeds survive because they don't grow juicy fruit, or large edible roots. They just devote their all to... weedlike growth. | 72 | |
ELI5: When an app crashes and I send a report, what exactly does that do, and how is it used? | 50 | It tells the developer that the app has crashed, first of all.
But it can also tell the developer what you were doing, what screen you were viewing, what data you were using, what route you took to get to that screen, and so on.
All of this can help fix the bug. Obviously the developer needs to know what screen you'r... | 15 | |
ELI5: how does swatting your hand towards your face in a hot day provide cold breeze instead of hot air? | Or how any fast moving object also provides cold air | 31 | The air isn't cold.
The movement of it across a wet surface (e.g. your skin, your sweat, etc.) causes water to evaporate and moves the evaporated water away. Cooling a human is about facilitating evaporation - the human sweats, air moves across, which allows the water to evaporate, which cools the body (relatively sp... | 24 |
[Batman and Robin] Why were a man and woman imprisoned in the same cell? | Surely locking up Mr Freeze and Poison Ivy together would be prohibited, especially when he has an admitted grudge against her. | 20 | It's *very* strongly implied not to have be done through official channels.
It's amazing what people will turn a blind eye to in normal prisons, never mind in Gotham, third time winner of america's most corrupt police force. No-one's going to particularly care if poison ivy ends up with some...extrajudical punishment. | 32 |
ELI5:Why does my arm feel sore after getting a shot at the doctors? | Just got a shot, arm feels really sore if I move it. Explanation? | 17 | The trauma of the needle itself isn't primary reason you're sore. You are sore because the vaccine is composed of adjuvants in addition to the inactive portions of virus that stimulate the immune system (so as to create better immunity) but this also creates local inflammation in the process. | 10 |
I understand the advantage of adrenaline when I'm nervous/scared, but what is the point of the overwhelming urge to use the toilet? | 17 | You should really look at this from an evolutionary point of view. You've got a point that for humans, who actually go to the toilet, emptying the bowels is quite the hassle and not compatible with quickly running away from danger or fighting your way out. When we look at other species however, it makes a lot more sens... | 13 | |
ELI5: Why do people (myself included) slouch our backs? | And why does it feel so unnatural to keep a 'correct posture' after noticing I'm slouching and adjusting accordingly - is it more muscular, genetic...? Not trying to go hunchback by 30! | 67 | Because from an evolutionary perspective the human spine is a piece of garbage.
Our spines are curved into an S to begin with because we're upright and that places a strain on bones that evolved to be horizontal to the ground. Then we (as modern people) tend to spend all day sitting on our asses in one position gettin... | 46 |
ELI5: What is happening to the human body during a seizure? | What are causes of seizures? And what is our body specifically trying to accomplish during the process of a seizure? | 20 | I know a little bit about this, so if someone wants to elaborate they can.
So every time you do something, your brain has a neuron that fires. Anything from a thought to an action creates a pulse from a neuron.
You see something, a neuron fires, you want to move your arm, another couple fire.
When you're having a... | 13 |
CMV: I have an urge to change my tax forms at work so that they don't take any taxes out. I'll save that money, and put it back in when the shutdown is over. I kinda feel like everyone should do this. | I feel like everyone could do this, and basically tell the government that if they can't play nice and share their toys, they can't play with them at all.
There is a potential that they won't care, because my income is still being reported, and I'm ultimately still responsible for - and will pay - said taxes (because ... | 337 | I think you may be misunderstanding the appropriations bills. It's not that the government has no money, it's that it's not allowed to spend it (on certain things; other things are moving along just like normal) right now.
> An appropriation bill, also known as supply bill or spending bill, is a proposed law that ... | 64 |
ELI5: Why does alcohol normally come in 750 ml and 1.5 L bottles, instead of 1L and 2L? | 214 | 750ml was adopted as the standard for wine long before most of the conversion to metric for liquor. This came about because it was roughly the average size a glass blower could produce using one full breath of air back in ye olden times. This size was adopted by liquor produces for consistency despite what others have ... | 43 | |
What is the orientation of a monarch caterpillar/butterfly while in the chrysalis stage? | Which way is it "facing"? Does it change orientations? | 144 | A caterpillar will, usually hang upside down from a branch when forming its chrysalis. Then the butterfly will emerge from the lower end, or the bottom of the chrysalis. Usually with its head poking out alongside unveiling its back and wings first, as the rest of the body then is pushed out. They then hang upside down ... | 91 |
CMV: A post-scarcity economy would be communist | In the writings of Ian Banks and other sci-fi writers, there is a concept called the post-scarcity economy.
In our current economy, there is a limited quantity of resources, so there is a competition between people/communities/societies/countries for those limited resources. That competition includes, but is not lim... | 16 | I would argue that our *need* for jobs is, and will be more so in the future, more due to boredom and the desire to be valued by others, than it is to provide basic necessities for survival.
Do you think humans will, at some point in the future, stop having the desire to be seen as “high status,” or the desire to stop... | 11 |
ELI5: If World War II era guns were so good, why did we replace them? What advancements have modern firearms made that warrants replacing standard issue weapons? | 147 | After WWII there was a pretty strong effort to look at how small unit engagements had happened and to figure out better weapons and so on from that information. Two big things that became apparent was that it was very rare for small arms to matter much beyond around 300 yards, and that the big factor in small unit suc... | 175 | |
[Flintstones] If the Flintstones characters power vehicles with their feet why don't they just walk at that point? | Additionally, how do they turn? Fred Flintstone's front tire [looks like it's stuck in place](https://i.imgur.com/k8CODRP.jpg) | 17 | A number of reasons. Wheels will keep turning while you rest your feet, the roof keeps the sun and rain off your head, more space to carry stuff, you don't have to listen to your wife complain about sore feet.
As far as turning goes, just grab the sides of the car, stand up, and rotate to whatever direction you want t... | 30 |
[Marvel Universe 616] What could stop Galactus? | At a certain point, it would seem as though the various civilizations would say "Enough of this bullshit!" and try to kill or contain Galactus. So, what would work? | 21 | Beta Ray Bill almost killed Galactus by finding out where he was going to feed and destroying the planet before he got there. So that's one way.
Reed Richards developed an anti-Galactus mecha suit that costs a billion dollars a second to run. That may work.
Doctor Doom stole his powers.
Aegis and Tenebrous beat the ... | 22 |
ELI5: Why does the night sky appear to move slowly even though the earth is rotating at 1,000mph? | 439 | Because mph is the wrong unit. The earth is rotating at 0.0007 rpm, so the stars appear to rotate at the same rate. The minute hand of a clock has an angular velocity 24 times faster than the stars (0.017 rpm), but it still isn't fast enough to be able to see the movement. | 566 | |
ELI5: How the power source of Voyager 1 and 2 function, which made them kept going for almost 40 years (and still going) ? | According to Google it have something called "Radioisotope thermoelectric generators", but couldn't understand how are they able to produce limitless energy to keep going. | 21 | The power source is just 4.5kg of plutonium-238. This radioactive substance breaks down at a predictable rate, half of it decays in every 87.7 years, into Uranium 234, which has a very long half life and so can be considered stable.
The decay produces alpha radiation, fast moving helium nuclei, which will run into oth... | 36 |
ELI5: This Bitcoin mining thing again. | Every post I saw explained Bitcoin mining simply by saying "computers do math (hurr durr)".
Can someone please give me a concrete example of such a mathematical problem?
If this has been answered somewhere else and I didn't find it (and I tried hard!), please feel free to just post a link to that comment.
Thank you :) | 922 | It looks like there's still a bit of misinformation here, so I'll try to clear it up.
**The Big Picture**
Mining increases the bitcoin network's security and fights fraud by calculating what's effectively a checksum for transactions. By contributing their computing power to the bitcoin network for mining, individuals... | 403 |
I [30/F] have been volunteering with a peak psychology professional body for five years. Suddenly removed from their website. What should I do? | Hi everyone,
I have been volunteering with the national peak body for health psychology in my country for five years as the Chair of the Student Subcommittee. For the past year, along with another student, I been responsible for curating content for the newsletter.
I am a PhD student, and my degree has taken longer t... | 122 | Seems like something another simple email to the organization’s point person would solve. Just reach out again and ask for clarification about why you’ve been removed from the website. It might be another error or more involved. But you’re not going to know if you don’t ask. | 122 |
I have a Chernobyl question and I'm not sure how stupid it is. | I have been reading a lot lately about nuclear reactors and the accident at Chernobyl. When the plant failed they sent in Liquidators to do the cleaning. These Liquidators have been labeled "biorobots" as a substitute for the robots the scientists sent in as an attempt to clean up the mess. The robots failed as a resul... | 60 | Radiation striking a computer can cause bits to flip (1's to turn into 0's and vice versa). This is a common and very expensive problem in space, and is solved with a combination of hardware (such as shielding and using less vulnerable materials to make the chips) and software (such as computing everything thrice). T... | 57 |
What is a good, challenging topic for a Bachelor Thesis? | So I'm in my fourth and last year of undergrad at a University in Europe. In order to graduate, weare required to write and present a senior/bachelor/undergrad research thesis/paper. We have to get a professor to advise and lead us, do our own research, be thorough... Key requirement is obviously some form of econometr... | 60 | I had a chance to talk with one of Harvard’s head policy professors (I don’t want to give too much info out for ID purposes but can talk to a mod to confirm) about a similar topic, and he suggested the footnotes and last few pages of current research papers. He said that often, these are where researchers write their c... | 12 |
ELI5:Why do Americans treat people in the Military with high regard but don't give the same respect to police officers? | They both have dangerous jobs and their jobs are for the service of American people. Military men get discounts and get thanked for their service, but cops don't?
People in the military have committed immoral acts, just like cops. Cops are directly protecting you whereas people in the military do so indirectly. | 16 | There's a lot more opportunities for people to have negative day-to-day interactions with law enforcement.
There's quite a few places that will give discounts to several types of public servants, though, police and firefighters included. It is important to remember that most such discounts are not out of pure generosi... | 22 |
CMV: The Kim Kardashian game proves why we need universal healthcare | Opponents of universal healthcare usually argue that individuals are rational economic actors, who make spending decisions which are better, more suited to their individual needs and more efficient than those which the government would make for them.
"Kim Kardashian: Hollywood" is a new smartphone game where people pr... | 17 | Everyone's hobby is stupid to someone else. Model rockets are stupid, going to a football game is stupid, and fixing an old car is stupid (depending on your preferences)
Disagreeing with how someone spends their leisure income isn't an indictment of rational actors. | 45 |
Why are people with down syndrome almost always obese? | Why do we never see any jacked Down syndrome people? Do they have a genetic condition where they put on weight easier than others? If it is a genetic condition couldn't something be done to counteract the weight gain?
Hypothetically could someone with down syndrome, following an intense workout program and strict diet... | 22 | Down syndrome comes with a number of less obvious physical limitations beisdes mental retardation and the characteristic facial features. In general, they have very poor muscle tone (hypotonia), as babies they are typically floppy, and this continues to adulthood. This doesn't necessarily preclude them becoming a bod... | 11 |
In an interview with Dick Cavett, Richard Burton described a coal seam called "the Great Atlantic fault," that goes from Spain through Wales under the Atlantic to Pennsylvania. Was he full of it? | [Here](https://youtu.be/708q7LjMGso?t=154) is the interview.
He says
>There’s a great seam, a famous seam-a world famous one-- which I believe is called the Great Atlantic Fault. And it starts in northern Spain in the Basque Country, and it goes under the Bay of Biscay and comes up in south Wales. Then it goes un... | 203 | Slightly. We know that there are a number of geological features that span the Atlantic. But the Atlantic has split them in half, they dont run under the Atlantic in a contigous feature. The mid-atlantic ridge is a place where magma pushing up from the mantle pushes apart the NA and European continents. The coal seam w... | 169 |
[Ready Player One] where the fuck is the government in all of this? | A corporation keeps slaves in metal boxes with electrical control and torture devices so they can carry out menial labor in a video game, it is even confirmed that people have died doing this. The same corporation then murders several people with drone placed bombs for financial reasons and gets away with it in a world... | 60 | In the book:
- Indentured servitude is explicitly made legal. You get a job at IOI based on your skill set to be able to work off your debt. Then they take off living expenses and anything else they can think of and people have to work there forever. Also, the jobs are actual jobs like customer service rep.
- They pl... | 58 |
[The Force Awakens][Spoilers] Financial question about the First Order | TFA was good. Obviously a very strong homage to the original trilogy, a huge planet-destroying superweapon included.
My only issue with the Starkiller is how expensive and time consuming would it be to build it. The Empire ruled the galaxy, taxing hundreds of system to fund their military expenses. How a fringe polit... | 122 | The power and authority of the First Order is never really detailed in the movie. It's sufficiently powerful that the New Republic would rather back a insurrectionist force against it than engage in outright warfare, which would imply that it controls a significant amount of the Galaxy. They also have the ability to co... | 158 |
ELI5: Why are people allergic to things? | 15 | The human body is a very delicate thing that hates things from the outside. Therefore, all the things inside your body have antibodies (like a ticket that shows that they're allowed to be there). Sometimes, the immune system (security guards) don't recognize a ticket and over react. This causes allergies. | 10 | |
[Futurama] Who built Hedonism-bot, and why? | *Let us cavort like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean.* --Hedonism-bot
Was he designed to be a Hedonism-bot, or does he have some practical application? How does he support his lifestyle? He usually has humans waiting on him, but he doesn't seem to produce anything... just consume everything.
Who the hec... | 52 | Obviously some rich hedonist who needed a sidekick, and now that he is long dead his robot still spends his money.
Though he does provide an interesting economic boon, he supports the arts and spends his wealth like it was on fire thus getting previously locked up money into the economy. It is possible that he is so... | 43 |
ELI5: What is the meaning behind Nietzsche's statement "God is dead"? | 140 | The psychological need for "god" is no longer there, as civilization has evolved.
The implication is that there was never a "god", just something that Man created to fill a perceived hole in his psyche. | 222 | |
ELI5:What's wrong with Mental Health Care in the U.S.? What are some potential ways to fix it? | Whenever there is some kind of mass shooting the topic of mental health reform always seems to come up. However, I never really seem to see any concrete ideas for reform, or explanations of what is wrong with the current system from politicians. It's seems like a lot of people just use it as a vague buzzword after ever... | 49 | I work in a jail where approximately half of the inmates have diagnosed psychological issues. Many of which get sent of to state hospitals for mental treatment. Most of the time we (as jail staff) wait for beds to become available, while jail medical staff treat said inmates.
Many of these inmates need drugs that ... | 24 |
ELI5:Are electric motors nowadays vastly more efficient than an electric motor from 100 years ago? | I've disassembled electric motors from about the 1950's, and they seem identical to the ones we have today. So have there been any advances in electric motor technology in the past 100 years?
I realize that things have become smaller and more streamlined, and permanent magnets have become more powerful, but these se... | 15 | Electric motors pretty much maxed out on efficiency when they were first created, we have motors today that can hit 99% efficiency, but that doesn't give you the right picture
A motor that you just want spun up to a constant speed can be made very efficient and you just connect it straight to power and you've got your... | 25 |
ELI5: What does it take to make it snow? How come there are countries that never seen snow before? | Im asking because where I’m from ( Baghdad) it snowed for the first time since 1914! Why was this year different? Why hasn’t it snowed before? | 16 | In reality, it is always snowing, everywhere except right on the equator.
People think that clouds in the sky form rain. In reality, those clouds are so high up that it is always below freezing, so every single rain, except right on the equator, is actually snow that melts as it is falling.
Therefore only on... | 20 |
CMV: Capitalism is cannibalistic | Edit: Thank you everyone who replied! I just learned about the delta thing. I'll dish those out when I'm on my PC in the morning (pro tip: don't do one of these things on a phone). I'm going to get off my phone for the rest of the night. Feel free to keep the conversation going, but you won't hear from me until morning... | 196 | Economic history basically disproves your whole argument without getting into all of the technical economic details. Look at America in the 1800's, the most capitalistic, free market economy ever. During that time unemployment was extremely low while America accepted the greatest influx of immigrants probably ever. Fur... | 73 |
ELI5: How has the suit become such an international standard of formalwear/men's fashion, to the point where in his official portrait Kim Jong Un can be seen wearing one? | 193 | The influence of European nations. It became popular through the 20th century in Europe. It became popular as formal wear as official policy in Europe's former colonies (US, South America, and Latin America) imported the design, while their colonies in Asia and Africa adopted/had European fashion preferences forced upo... | 87 | |
How exactly has the Large Hadron Collider been improved for 2015? | From what I understand the LHC could already accelerate hydrogen particles to 0.9999999c. How much faster do they really need to go? | 77 | It is not about speed it is about energy. The LHC always was intended t run at 14 TeV, but in order to see if it really works they decided to run a few years at lower energy and luminosity. Now after more than a year of shutdown and several improvements they are finally confident to run at the desired energy.
Even tho... | 19 |
If the solar system travels thru a nebula or a big dense cloud of matter, can our solar system grow? Can Jupiter or the sun grow in size? | 111 | No. The solar wind creates a "bubble" of plasma that prevents gas and dust in the interstellar medium from touching planets or the sun. And that plasma doesn't touch most planets since it is deflected by their magnetic field. In the few cases when it does, like Mars, it actually takes away more atmospheric matter than ... | 29 | |
ELI5: Why are dodgy websites rigged to redirect you to arbitrary webpages depending on where you click? Are they just ads? Do the number of clicks benefit the website or its revenue somehow? | 33 | So it depends. For legitimate ads then yes the website can be paid per click, so the more people it gets to click on the ads the more revenue it potentially makes.
For non legitimate sites or dodgy sites they could be sending you even more dodgy websites where malware or other malicious code can be injected, for exam... | 23 | |
Eli5: How much of a species' sequenced genome is stable enough to represent a species, as opposed to finer stuff that will keep changing really fast as they breed? | I know this would vary a lot between species, so for example, what's this like in the human genome? | 44 | Honestly, a species isn't really a single genome, but a gene pool. The idea of a species is fluid and changes over time. You can't define a species as its pool is transforming either, all you can do is look back into the past and go "Ok well at some point it definitely diverged from its relatives". Gene pool drift is a... | 12 |
Eli5: Why does splitting an atom cause such a giant explosion? | Where does all the energy come from? | 21 | Splitting a *lot* of atoms releases a lot of energy.
Just like burning one molecule of gasoline does nothing, splitting one atom of uranium does nothing.
Burning a gallon of gasoline releases a lot of energy. Splitting thirty pounds of uranium will destroy a town.
The energy comes from forces within the nucleus. One... | 21 |
ELI5 the proper usage of further/farther and lay/lie please? | I'm an American and these things baffle me, I've been asked to explain it to some family members that aren't native speakers and I always feel like an idiot.
Thanks in advance.
**Edit** Thank you for the concise explaining I appreciate it. Marked as answered. | 20 | **Far***ther* is about distance.
*Lie* is something you do to yourself, you lie (yourself) down.
*Lay* is something you do to something else. you lay it down.
**Difficulty:** The past tense of verb *lie* is **LAY**, while the past tense of the verb *lay* is **Lain**. Amateur word nazis do not know this and wrongl... | 13 |
Brain tumors are known to directly cause depression, but could the opposite happen for someone that is already depressed? | To my knowledge, various different brain tumors can have negative emotional impacts such as depression or anxiety, but if an individual already suffers from these illnesses, could a tumor have a reversing like effect? | 2,153 | The problem with answering this question is that we don't have a good understanding of the mechanisms of depression, biologically speaking. Theoretically, the disruption a tumour causes could well lead to changes which improve emotional wellbeing, seeing as we couldn't say for certain what disruption causes the opposit... | 393 |
ELI5: When i feel a half-sneeze creeping through my sinuses and my eyes start to tear up, what is actually happening? | You all know the feeling when a sneeze just won't fucking happen. The abstract burning, the watery eyes - what is actually going on in my sinuses when this happens? | 42 | A sneeze is a semi-autonomous reflex that requires many muscles activating together to perform. Normally, your body isn't capable of launching so much air at once to clear your nasal passages. Many muscles have to contract at once to force that large amount of air and to also protect the body from the high pressure gen... | 28 |
Why aren't pixels made up of 'RYB' LEDs instead of RGB ones? | Was wondering that since the 3 primary colours are red, yellow and blue would it not make more sense in some applications for yellow LEDs to be used instead of green LEDs for pixel based displays. | 77 | Additive versus subtractive color. RYB (actually Magenta, Yellow, Cyan) are primary subtractive colors. Red paint isn't red light, and yellow paint isn't yellow light. Magenta ink/paint is actually anti-green (it absorbs green), yellow is actually anti-blue, and cyan is actually anti-red. If you combine magenta and yel... | 121 |
[MCU/Agents of Shield] Does Red Skull and contemporary Hydra agents REALLY know why Hydra was founded? If he does why has it never come up? | So after season 3 of Agents of Shield we learn that Hydra was initially started as a sort of cult heralding the return of the first Inhuman to help them take control of the planet. This cult is complete with ritual sacrifices and a lot of borderline superstitious reverence for a single individual. The Red Skull is cons... | 23 | There was a split in Hydra between the heads whose primary concern was seizing power on earth (Red Skull, Dr Whitehall, Alexander Pierce) and the heads whose primary concern was the religious origins (headed by Malick mostly). Red Skull is the modern founder of this branch.
The more practical members thought of Malic... | 27 |
[Dragon Age: Origins] Why can't elven mages get the Dalish Elf origin? | So, from what I understand, the Dalish elves live in the wilds away from human civilization and preserve the old elven culture. By contrast, city elves have integrated into human society, live in human cities, and are treated as second-class citizens.
If your player character is an elven warrior or rogue, they can hav... | 51 | It's important to note that the potential wardens are not just generic examples of their kind- they're specific people, with specific families, backstories and lives up until this point. More specifically, these are all situations where Duncan finds a person both worthy of and had completely lost their previous lives s... | 49 |
+'s and -'s used in tables/charts | I wondered what the +'s, ++'s and -'s mean in scientific papers when relating to the growth of microorganisms.
I understand that + would mean growth and - would mean no growth, but would ++ mean increased growth then?
I have added a [picture](http://imgur.com/F0fyeyT) as reference.
In this example would this mean pr... | 167 | From the title of the table i presume it would mean if the bacteria in question are present or not:
"-" would be a negative result (bacteria not present or in very low number)
"+" would be positive
"++" would be a high population | 35 |
ELI5: Why were taxes so high for the rich during the 50's when it was such a conservative era? | 26 | While the *nominal* tax rates on the rich were high in the 50s, the *effective* rates and actual *taxes* were not.
Virtually everything was deductible until the 1970s -- for example, credit card interest was deductible. Corporate and estate taxes were much higher as well, meaning that such deductions could be afforde... | 19 | |
ELI5: Why does a sudden shift from warm to cold lead to a runny nose? | 39 | When warm, moist air hits something cold, you get water droplets appear on the cold surface. (Think about the windows steaming up in your kitchen when you cook)
The same thing is happening inside of you. You have warm, moist air inside of you, and when your nose gets cold then water droplets are formed that makes your... | 22 | |
What word/phrase best describes Tom Nook’s loan program? | This is a goofy question, but...
For those of you who don’t know, Tom Nook is a character in the Animal Crossing video game series. In addition to serving as the primary shopkeep in most of the games, he sees to it that you, the player, have a roof over your head. Your first house (tent) purchase from him is non-optio... | 91 | I think it be considered as non-profit fully subsidized loan. When you buy a house in ANCH, there's no interest rate but the incentive to why you want to pay is due to that you might wanna built a better house. And it's not time lapsed as well as you can pay whenever you want. Not paying or paying won't hurt anything y... | 34 |
[Fist of The North Star] Why do bandits and raiders attempt to fight Kenshiro even after witnessing the brutality and skill with which he deals with their leaders? | The world seems pretty miserable. Is it a form of assisted suicide for them? | 15 | It's just the sort of instinct you go to in times of desperation. Prison Logic, call it. The world becomes separated quite clearly into masters and slaves, and newcomers to your world need to either be made slaves or be destroyed, lest they upset that delicate hierarchy. | 14 |
[Marvel] Why are the x-men hated and the avengers and other mutants are loved? | Whats up with that? | 22 | I believe it is because the x-men acquired their powers through random, natural mutations, whereas other mutants acquired their powers through experimental or accidental means. This threatens some people as the x-men can be viewed as the evolutionary next step for humans. Basically, they fear being replaced. | 52 |
[DC] If Clark Kent decided to quit being Superman and instead dedicate the same amount of time and effort into science and technology, how accomplished could he come? Could he compete with Luthor? And would Lex hate 'scientist Superman!' more or less than classic Supes? | Just realized that 'Clarke Tech' would actually be a pretty great name for a tech company headed by a super-genius (Clarke's Third Law and all that), so had to ask this. | 119 | Pretty damn accomplished.
Precisely how smart superman is varies a lot, but even at his dumbest he's very smart and has a solid grounding in the sciences. At his smartest, he's a literal supergenius. Combined with his advanced kryptonian scientific knowledge, ability to rapidly research topics and supersenses able to... | 79 |
ELI5: What actually decides when I'm born if I'm a boy or a girl? | Sperm, egg or other? | 26 | Your dad's sperm.
Your DNA (the blueprints to build a complete human), is broken up into like little chapers, called chromosomes. Everyone has two copies of all 23 chapters. Or you have 23 chromosomes from mom (the egg) and 23 from dad (the sperm) for a total of 46 (you need all 46 for everything to work but thats ano... | 25 |
Why do some people have good singing voices and some people don't? | Is there an evolutionary reason behind this or just something that happens at random? | 99 | It's more training than anything else. Just as a bodybuilder learns proper technique the singer learns how to control their airflow and the stretch of their vocal chords better. Being "tone-deaf" is detrimental because you can't figure out what's wrong in the technique.
Also, to add on to this a "good" singing voice is... | 28 |
ELI5: Why do sounds outside of the human range of hearing not damage our ears? When a speaker plays an 18 kHz tone at a loud volume level it hurts to listen to, however, if you change the pitch to say 30 KHz it’s as if nothing was being played. Why is this? | I know the air is still vibrating with the same power as before, but for some reason the pressure on the ear goes away. | 18 | AFAIK this only is the case with ultrasound frequencies. High power, low frequency waves (eg shock waves from an explosion) can still damage your ears, even rupturing your eardrums.
As to why ultrasound doesn’t cause harm: the frequency is too high for our eardrums to react to: they won’t move together with the wave, ... | 12 |
ELI5: Why is having money in tax havens like Swiss Bank accounts considered bad if it is not actually illegal? If it is illegal why is there a Swiss Bank? | 28 | Depositing income into Swiss Bank accounts for the purpose of avoiding taxes is illegal, but there may be other reasons for wanting to keep money overseas and secret/secure. Also, Swiss banks are governed by laws of Switzerland, so U.S. laws have no bearing on whether and why they exist... their laws could be completel... | 22 | |
ELI5: At what point does a game become “solvable”? | I know that “solving” games is a pretty rigorous mathematical topic, but I just want to understand a general concept: where is the line between a solvable and unsolvable game?
Take chess, for instance. Nobody has “solved” chess yet, but of course under certain setups the game is solvable (e.g. those puzzles that are ... | 28 | > Is it the case that all games are solvable, but computational limits don’t allow us to solve a game as complex as chess from the starting position?
This is the important detail. Games like chess and go have enough possible decisions that the ability for a computer to count through them all becomes impossible. T... | 17 |
Why are we adding all the present values? | In the economics lecture, the instructor explained this formula
**F = P (1+i)\^t**
F - Future Value (return)
P - Present Value
i - interest rate
t - time period for which the money is lent
The above formula is very clear to me, it has a very straightforward meaning.
But then he said a little transposition of ... | 25 | Your calculation is for a zero coupon bond - this bond pays a $3 coupon per year on top of the $100 at maturity. The difference between your figure and his figure is the value of the coupon payments.
The value of the principle is $78.35, as you calculated. The value of the coupons is $12.99
$78.35 + $12.99 = $91.34
... | 16 |
[1984] due to shifting allegiances, sometimes Oceania is and always has been allied with either Eastasia or Eurasia. What happens propaganda wise when both nations unite against Oceania? | 32 | Bold of you to assume there's actually a war. Or any alliances. Or an Eastasia or Eurasia. Or an Oceania outside Airstrip One.
The Party are actively opposed to truth as an ideological position, and have total control of all information in Oceania. If something's not directly established on screen (and given the Pa... | 72 | |
ELI5: What physical changes occur in a hard drive or USB stick to store information? | If I save a Word document to a USB stick, what's actually happening inside the stick? Thanks! | 30 | On a USB stick, gates are actually getting fused or opened to represent the binary data. The same thing happens when writing to a SSD. That's why both of them have a limited number of writes before they go bad.
Traditional hard drives store everything magnetically. The head on the hard drive induces a magnetic field o... | 18 |
ELI5: What is the difference between something being "decriminalized" vs. legal? | 26 | "Decriminalized" is still illegal, it just doesn't carry criminal penalties, e.g. prison time.
Traffic violations, for instance, are illegal but not criminal. Still punishable by law, but typically only with fines or demerit points. | 57 | |
ELI5: If your body is dehydrated why do you have to pee so quickly after drinking water? | You would think if your body is dehydrated that it would keep as much water as possible instead of eliminating some of it. | 126 | Part of being dehydrated is that your body refrains from processing too much waste from your blood in to our bladder because it needs to expend water to do so. When you finally start hydrating again your kidneys start going back to work. | 97 |
ELI5 What is Doughnut economics and how does it work? | 119 | It’s an economic model that takes 12 social necessities and 9 ecological ceilings into a single model. Basically we want to fulfill the necessities without damaging the ecosystem. If a society manages to do so it’s considered economically prosperous.
Simplier put it’s a model that measures economical prosperity by aim... | 98 | |
How are trigonometric functions programmed into calculators? | I have had this thought for a while but how do calculators calculate trigonometric functions such as sin(θ) accurately? Do they use look-up tables, spigot algorithms or something else ? | 172 | This could be done in different ways by different calculators, but the easiest way is probably to use an approximation based on a series. For example, sin(x) is equal to x - x^(3)/3! + x^(5)/5! - x^(7)/7! + ...
Since the terms get smaller and smaller the further you go in the series, an algorithm could simply continue... | 138 |
ELI5: how do you "reverse engineer" something? | 63 | You carefully take something apart, study how the components are put together, and how they interact with each other.
For example, if you don't know how to fold a paper plane, you can carefully unfold one to learn what folds to do. | 213 | |
How do we acquire traffic data? | 20 | In Tokyo, there are often guys sitting by busy intersections with clipboards full of clickers (They have a bunch of those round hand-held counter things bolted to a clipboard). They just sit there all day watching cars, clicking counters and making notes. It's not very sophisticated, but it's certainly a method to get ... | 11 | |
CMV: Princeton University (and other ivy league colleges) does not deserve respect because it primarily serves the interests of the rich elite and its student body does not give back to the average American | **Edit: Columbia University is an exception among the ivy league: it is quite diverse socieconomically, with 30% of its undergrads having Pell Grants. However, the rest of the ivy league isn't very economically diverse**
Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton, and progressive commentator,... | 131 | I think you are misunderstanding the reason that Ivy League schools get a lot of attention and respect. It is not about which institutions are best for American society. It's about which institutions accrue the largest personal benefits to the students who enroll there.
Going to Princeton or Harvard or wherever is m... | 79 |
[DC] Is Captain Cold better than Mr. Freeze at freezing? | 101 | Yes. In *Forever Evil*, Captain Cold directly compares his "cold gun"'s abilities (which he had, at the time, absorbed into himself; shortly after the event, he lost that power and had to rely on the cold gun again) to those who just shoot ice. People like Victor Fries use a coolant (e.g. liquid nitrogen) to turn moi... | 122 | |
eli5 Why cant our body repair eyesight? | when we get a bruise or break a bone the body will naturally repair the damage. so why wont our body just naturaly repair eyesight when it gets worse? | 82 | Bad eyesight most often comes because the eye is not in perfect geometrical shape - even if all the cells are healthy and happy you still can see badly - because your eyeballs are in "squished" shape.
and body cant really correct the shape of it. for example when you break a bone, you need something external to keep ... | 62 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.